Grasscity.com, The World in Review 2002, What the Hell is going on???

2002: GNN Year in Review
GNN Editors, December 31, 2002

“I think we could have an explosion in the Middle East. It could turn the whole region into a cauldron and destroy the War on Terror.” - Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser, Bush Sr.

Number of times George W. Bush has said Osama bin Laden's name in public since July 8 : 0 (source: Harpers)

"Yankee dollar talk, to the dictators of the world, in fact it's giving orders, and they can't afford to miss a word!" I'm So Bored With the U.S.A. (The Clash)


January: Human Rights Watch charges Enron subsidiaries with paying local law enforcement to suppress opposition to its power plant south of Bombay, India, including beating pregnant women with batons. A former Lebanese Christian militia leader whose men massacred hundreds of Palestinian refugees at the Sabra and Shatila camps in 1982, is assassinated a few days before he was to testify against Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon in a war-crimes trial in Belgium. A teenager flies a small airplane into a Florida office building, dedicating the act to Osama bin Laden. It is reported he was taking Accutane, a prescription acne medication linked to suicides. GNN's Adam Porter reports, "A flood of cheap opium [from newly liberated Afghanistan], at up to 90% discount, is heading towards the softening chests, the dewy eyes and the loving Mums. Maybe yours." GNN wins the 2002 Sundance Online Film Festival "Live Action" category for their NewsVideo, "Crack the CIA." Bush refers to Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the "Axis of Evil," changing the word "hate" to "evil" at the last minute. Speechwriter quits. Shortly after, CNN airs a video of Osama bin Laden in which he says, "Freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people and the West in general into an unbearable hell and a choking life."


February: The Pentagon says it is planning an Office of Strategic Information, which will plant news items in the foreign media, some of which "may not be true." Pollution is so bad in Yellowstone, National Park Service pumps fresh air into ticket booths and provide park rangers with respirators. The General Accounting Office sues Cheney to force him to reveal which energy execs advised him on the administration's energy policy. Cheney refuses. GNN's Gavin Rose reports Bush's education plan is a financial windfall to one of his biggest corporate buddies, McGraw-Hill. Thousands protest the World Economic Forum in New York. Tens of thousands meet in Porto Alegre, Brazil to figure out solutions. Coca-Cola is accused of aiding death squads in Colombia.

March: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention releases a report saying virtually every American living in the United States since 1951 has been exposed to nuclear fallout. "Operation Anaconda," the largest battle in the war in Afghanistan, ends and is declared a success. Later it's learned that despite killing over 800 Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, hundreds if not thousands got away as a result of double-dealing by local warlords the Americans had hired to actually do the fighting on the ground. GNN publishes Newswire entitled, The Price of Propaganda, revealing: "Muslims who watch Al Jazeera have long known that bin Laden hates Saddam, or so he says on a videotape that his Al Qaeda organization released before 9/11."

April: Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez is apparently overthrown in a coup led by several generals and the country's corporate honchos. Latin American leaders denounce the coup. American officials herald it as a victory for democracy. Oil prices drop. Turns out Chávez never relinquished power. Al Giordano, publisher of Narco News Bulletin, declares in GNN, "The failed coup d'etat against Venezuela marks a turning point not just for authentic democracy in our América, but also for authentic journalism. The remote-control attempt by Washington and commercial interests - including various media giants within and outside of Venezuela - to topple the government of President Hugo Chávez by force has only made him stronger." The world's first war-crimes tribunal is founded. Bush threatens to "unsign" the treaty creating the tribunal, and Congress passes a law making it illegal for Americans to take part. Adam Shapiro, a New York Jew, helps ambulances get to Palestinians under siege in Arafat's compound. His parents' lives are threatened in Brooklyn. GWBush.com releases radio spots linking Halliburton, Cheney's former company, to Saddam Hussein.

May: A mass grave is discovered in Dasht-i-Laili, Afghanistan; evidence implicates Northern Alliance in the murder of several hundred Taliban prisoners. Padshah Khan Zadran, an Afghan warlord, fires 200 rockets into Gardez, killing 25, mostly women and children. An American ally, Zadran says he would "kill them all: men, women, children, even the chickens." President Bush announces a revamped Neighborhood Watch Program: "Community residents will be provided with information which will enable them to recognize signs of potential terrorist activity, and to know how to report that activity, making these residents a critical element in the detection, prevention, and disruption of terrorism." The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will be supervising the program. Earth Liberation Front spokesperson Leslie Pickering tells GNN: "The ELF are arsonists. They are vandals. They are criminals. I don't have any qualms about that. But they aren't terrorists." Arafat is still trapped in his bunker by Israeli troops. GNN's Anthony Lappé writes, "Arafat, on the siege diet - all the rage in the West Bank these days I hear - is winning the propaganda war. Michael Wolff writes in New York magazine, 'the cockroach look works for him.' This is what passes for media criticism." Also in New York magazine: Kuwait is hip again. "Along with four hundred of the swankiest New Yorkers, Milanese and Parisians around, [reporter Vanessa Grigoriadis] traveled to the desert kingdom to celebrate the opening of Villa Moda, a 100,000-square-foot clothing and accessories mega-store par excellence," Lappé writes. "Fashion editors gushed over the burquas, 'I hear they do wonders in bed,' said one. 'Bedouins are so cute,' gushed another." Minneapolis-based FBI agent Coleen Rowley sends a letter to FBI director Robert Mueller, "I have deep concerns that a delicate and subtle shading/skewing of facts by you and others at the highest levels of FBI management has occurred and is occurring." Pakistan and India are close to nuclear war.

June: FBI director Mueller admits the bureau might have been able to prevent 9/11 if it had responded to a variety of intelligence reports. A federal jury awards $4.4 million to Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, two Earth First! activists who accused the FBI and the Oakland, CA, police of framing them for a 1990 bomb blast that severely injured them. Before Bari died in 1997, she wrote, "It blew right through my car seat, shattering my pelvis, crushing my lower backbone ... The man in charge of my case was Richard Held, director of the San Francisco FBI office." Held had a 25-year history as one of the principal operatives of COINTELPRO. U.S. State Dept. launches Radio Sawa, a radio station that airs a mix of propaganda and pop music aimed at Muslim youth around the world. Hamid Karzai is elected to rule Afghanistan; some Afghan politicians complain warlords were given key positions over more qualified professionals.

July: WorldCom, America's second largest long-distance company, announces it had hidden $3.8 billion in expenses over the last year. GNN's Adam Porter asks, "Are these giant, formally well thought of corporations just bad apples, or is the whole market system itself no more than a work of fiction?" Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan blames "infectious greed" for the falling stock market. Bush says, "I believe people have taken a step back and asked, 'What's important in life?' You know, the bottom line and this corporate America stuff, is that important? Or is serving your neighbor, loving your neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself?" Unarmed village women holding 700 ChevronTexaco workers inside a southeast Nigeria oil terminal let 200 of the men go but threaten a traditional and powerful shaming gesture if the others try to leave - removing their own clothes.

August: The Justice Department says it would not use mailmen to spy on citizens as part of TIPS, its Terror Information and Prevention System. Calls to the government's TIPS number by a Salon reporter are answered by the "America's Most Wanted" television program. In congressional hearings, Khidir Hamza, a former leading scientist in Iraq's weapons program who defected to the west, says Saddam is close to developing a nuclear bomb. Bush Sr.'s National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft joins the chorus of naysayers against an Iraqi invasion, reportedly telling Bush Jr. that such an action might cause an "explosion in the Middle East." Human Rights Watch reports up to 1,200 non-citizens have been secretly arrested since 9/11 saying, "The U.S. government has failed to uphold the very values that President Bush declared were under attack on September 11. It has ignored basic restraints on a government's power to detain that are the hallmark of free and democratic nations." Police in Nigeria fire tear gas and beat women who were blocking the gates of ChevronTexaco and Shell offices, one woman is reportedly shot dead. Months before Trent Lott's gaff, GNN's Sander Hicks reports Bush wrote letters of support to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a pro-slavery historical society, praising it for its 'dedication to others' and for the group's 'high standards.'

September: White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card says, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August" (referring to Iraq). Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair meet at Camp David to talk about Iraq; both men cite a satellite photo showing activity at an old Iraqi nuclear site as evidence that they must invade. They also mention a 1998 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency which they say shows that Iraq could be six months away from developing nuclear weapons. "I don't know what more evidence we need," Bush says. But the IAEA report, it is soon noted, never said that. "In fact, the report said that Iraq had been six to 24 months away from developing the bomb prior to the Gulf War and the subsequent weapons inspections but that there was no evidence that Iraq had retained the physical capability to develop nuclear weapons now. An IAEA spokesman pointed out that Bush had also misinterpreted the satellite photo: 'There is no new information about any Iraqi nuclear activity,'" reports Harpers magazine. U.S. launches the Iraq Public Diplomacy Group, "which includes representatives from the CIA, National Security Council, Pentagon, State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development," and plans to publish a brochure and hold interactive teleconferences targeting "opinion leaders" in Europe and the Middle East. Eleanor Hill, staff director of the Congressional intelligence inquiry into 9/11, testifies in front of Congress that "from 1994 through as late as August 2001, the intelligence community had received information indicating that international terrorists had seriously considered the use of airplanes as a means of carrying out terrorist attacks." The Saudi royal family spends millions on PR to bolster its image in the United States. A federal appeals court rules the Bush Administration's policy of holding secret deportation hearings is illegal. "Democracies," the court writes, "die behind closed doors." GNN reports that "with coffee prices at their lowest in history we're witnessing an estimated 150,000 coffee refugees-coffee farmers who can no longer afford to farm their land-around the world." It's revealed George Bush is a stockholder in the Yellow Pages. GNN reports a self-professed spy who claimed to have tried to warn the world about 9/11 named Delmart "Mike" Vreeland is in the employ of a former Reagan White House arms dealer and that his Navy records had been tampered with. GNN releases first segment of its "Aftermath: Unanswered Questions from 9/11" NewsVideo series.

October: GNN's Adam Porter writes from London, "'Britain reserves the right to bomb niggers.' It isn't a well known policy of the British government, it rarely makes it into party manifestos before elections. Not even in the small print, only in the deceptions. Only in the decisions." A sniper terrorizes the DC area, the Pentagon brings in military spy planes to track the killer. GNN reveals they are the same planes used to hunt leftist guerrillas in El Salvador and Pablo Escobar in Colombia. Amnesty International reports 236 Palestinian and 61 Israeli children have been killed in the fighting since September 2000. Jerry Falwell calls the prophet Muhammad a terrorist in a 60 Minutes segment produced by GNN ally Solly Granatstein. Riots break out in Bombay, India killing five. North Korea admits it has resumed work on its nuclear arms-program. CIA begins operations in Kurdish Iraq. Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota dies in a plane crash on his way to the funeral of a steelworker. Applied Digital Solutions releases an implantable microchip ID for use in people. CIA Director Tenet sends a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee that says Saddam Hussein is not an imminent threat and is unlikely to attack the United States, unless provoked. Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" opens. GNN writes, "Moore abruptly cuts to a montage of America's bloody foreign adventures over the last 50 years, from the oil fields of Iran, to the death squads of El Salvador, all to the tune of 'What a Wonderful World'… This is a film that is going to piss off a lot of people." As of Dec. 31, the film is still in theaters. Run DMC's Jam Master Jay is shot and killed.

November: "Secrets of the Tomb" author Alexandra Robbins tells GNN, "As soon as Bush got into the White House, one of the first social gatherings he had was a reunion of his Skull & Bones members. Then almost immediately he started appointing other members of Skull & Bones into positions into the Justice Department and later the Office of Homeland Security." Freelance journalist Jason Leopold accuses former Enron exec and current Sec. of the Army of ordering losses to be hidden while at Enron. Salon retracts story. The NYT's Paul Krugman fails to back him up. GNN tries to get to the bottom of the mess. Chechen rebels take over a Moscow theater; Russia pipes in a narcotic gas that kills 120 hostages. The NRA holds a pro-gun rally in Tucson, Arizona, two days after a Gulf War veteran shot and killed three nursing professors nearby. Narcos News' Peter Gorman reports in GNN that the U.S. Marines may be headed for Colombia. The Defense Dept.'s Information Awareness Office goes "primetime." GNN writes, "The reality is this technology is not just being developed to nab the bin Ladenites among us. It is part of a move by the government on all levels, from local police departments to the highest reaches of the national intelligence agencies, to gather detailed information on anyone who might threaten the administration's goals, whether that's drilling for oil in the Arctic or bombing for oil in Iraq. Recently, it was exposed that the Denver police had dossiers on 3,200 individuals and 208 organizations, including a 74-year-old nun and an 82-year-old great-grandmother." The Democrats lose control of the Senate. Homeland Security Act passes into law. Only nine senators oppose the bill, including Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), who says, "Osama bin Laden is still alive and plotting more attacks while we play bureaucratic shuffleboard." On C-SPAN, Dan Burton (R-In.) admits he voted for the bill without reading it, and didn't even know there was a provision in it that opens the door to widespread vaccinations of Americans as well as a "get out of liability free" card for the big pharmaceutical companies who produce the controversial vaccines: "This amendment was thrown in at the last minute. I am guilty of not knowing about it. I don't think anyone else in the House knew about it either...My committee was the committee of jurisdiction. They went around me." A disgusted caller comments, "It's a sad commentary that we pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars and you don't know what you're voting on." GNN's Stephen Marshall reports one of the chief beneficiaries of the bill is Eli Lilly, whose President and CEO, Sydney Taurel, was on the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council. Bush asks Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, "Do you have blacks, too?"

December: Henry Kissinger is appointed to head the government's 9/11 investigation; quits when it's required that he disclose the clients of his super-secret consulting firm. GNN interviews a former Iraqi atomic weapons scientist who claims Saddam's nuclear weapons program is in shambles. He points out Eisenhower gave Iraq the blueprints to the Manhattan Project, in what might be the first instance of Cold War "blow-back." Women in Afghanistan complain of continued repression, despite lack of Taliban. ABCNEWS reports FBI special agents Robert Wright and John Vincent say they were called off criminal investigations of suspected terrorists tied to the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. The BBC's Greg Palast told GNN a similar story earlier in the year. Two GNN NewsVideos, "S-11 Redux: Channel Surfing the Apocalypse" and its collaboration with Eminem, "White America," are accepted to the 2003 Sundance Online Film Festival. The U.S. edits Iraq's 12,000 page weapons declaration before distributing it to other members of the U.N. Security Council, removing the names of 150 companies (including many from the Fortune 500) that were listed as contributors to Iraq's arms programs. North Korea says it is kick-starting its nuclear weapons program. Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov blames Bush for the crisis: "How should a small country feel when it is told that it is all but part of forces of evil of biblical proportions and should be fought against until total annihilation?" The Clash's Joe Strummer dies, sang, "You have the right to free speech as long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it."