News -n- Views

27 August 2006

Israeli Airstrike on Reuters Vehicle Injures Two

The BBC reports that an Israeli airstrike during the night on a Reuters press vehicle has seriously injured a camera man and a journalist.

Israeli army spokeswoman, Capt. Noa Meir, confirmed the attack and stated that the military didn’t know that the vehicle was a press vehicle.

She said, “There were no clear TV marks (on the car). At least we didn’t see one.” She added, “It’s unfortunate when journalists get hurt, but that is not the intention.”

However, the Reuter’s vehicle was clearly marked on all sides and the roof with “Reuters”, “Press” and “TV”, as stated both by the BBC and as seen in the photographs here and here .

So, it is clear that the Israeli military is lying when it says that “There were no clear TV marks”, and that this was an intentional attack on the press.

Sources:

[1] BBC: Israeli rocket hits Reuters car
[2] Yahoo News vis Associated Press: Israeli airstrike hits Reuters vehicle












24 August 2006

Fox Military Analyst on Syria: “We Can Talk To Them When We Line Them Up and Kill Them”

This is a little “old” - first week of this month - but I just now saw it.

I am speechless. I am nauseated. And knowing that there are men holding high positions in the US that think like this should be a real wake-up call for all of us. These are the type of people we should be really, really worried about.

Fox Military Analyst on Syria: “We Can Talk To Them When We Line Them Up and Kill Them”

With the Bush administration refusing to hold direct talks with Syria, Col. David Hunt, military analyst for Fox News, appeared on Hannity & Colmes last night to offer some advice to the president: “I think we can talk to them when we line them up and kill them.ヤ Stating that “the only reason to talk to some of these guys is to just do that,”. Hunt went on to argue that America should “absolutely, 100 percent” seek regime change in both Syria and Iran if they’re “not going to cooperate.” Watch it:

[VIDEO CLIP]

Strangely, after his tirade, Hunt acknowledged that in some cases, “we have to directly talk to these guys to find out what they want.”

- Scott Keyes

Full transcript:

HANNITY: How naive is this notion ラ the New York Times editorial today ラ that the idea that we can talk to Syria, talk to these terrorist regimes. Can you talk to Ahmadinejad? Can you talk to an Assad? Can you talk to Usama bin Laden? Can you get anywhere? Is that anナ

HUNT: I think we can talk to them when we line them up and kill them. I donメt think ラ the only reason to talk to some of these guys is to just do that. However, weメre not going to wipe out, as we talked offline, the entire country, but we have to directly talk to these guys to find out what they want. If theyメre not going to cooperate, yes, they have to go.

HANNITY: Regime change.

HUNT: Absolutely, 100 percent.

(Source: ThinkProgress.org: Fox Military Analyst on Syria: “We Can Talk To Them When We Line Them Up and Kill Them”)










23 August 2006

Bush Says Iraq Had “Nothing” to do with 9/11

The folks over at thinkprogress.org reported the following earlier this week. So the question arises - what in the world is the US doing in Iraq?

Bush Now Says What He Wouldn’t Say Before War: Iraq Had ‘Nothing’ To Do With 9/11

President Bush was in the midst of explaining how the attacks of 9/11 inspired his “freedom agenda” and the attacks on Iraq until a reporter, Ken Herman of Cox News, interrupted to ask what Iraq had to do with 9/11. “Nothing,” Bush defiantly answered. Watch it.

[VIDEO CLIP]

To justify the war, Bush informed Congress on March 19, 2003 that acting against Iraq was consistent with “continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”

As ThinkProgress has repeatedly documented, Vice President Cheney cited “evidence” cooked up by Douglas Feith and others to claim it was “pretty well confirmed” that Iraq had contacts with 9/11 hijackers.

More generally, in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, the administration encouraged the false impression that Saddam had a role in 9/11. Bush never stated then, as he does now, that Iraq had “nothing” to do with 9/11. Only after the Iraq war began did Bush candidly acknowledge that Iraq was not operationally linked to 9/11.

Full transcript:

BUSH: The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.

QUESTION: What did Iraq have to do with it?

BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

QUESTION: The attack on the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing. Except it’s part of — and nobody has suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — Iraq — the lesson of September 11th is take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody’s ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.

(Source: ThinkProgress.org: Bush Now Says What He Wouldn’t Say Before War: Iraq Had ‘Nothing’ To Do With 9/11










8 January 2006

6.9 Magnitude Earthquake Rattles Greece

Seems like the earth is rockin’ and rollin’ again…..

6.9 Magnitude Earthquake Rattles Greece.
By PARIS AYIOMAMITIS, Associated Press Writer

Sun Jan 8, 9:51 AM ET

ATHENS, Greece - A powerful earthquake shook Greece on Sunday and was felt as far away as the Middle East and Italy. Minor damage was reported in southern Greece, and authorities on the island of Crete said three people were slightly injured.

No tsunami warnings were issued.

The Athens Geodynamic Institute said the epicenter of the 6.9-magnitude quake was located beneath the seabed about 125 miles south of Athens and 12 miles east of the island of Kithira in the Sea of Crete.

“It was a very powerful quake which shook all of Greece. There have been dozens of aftershocks,” institute head Giorgos Stavrakakis said. “The quake occurred deep undersea and that’s what saved us.”

Stavrakakis said he did not expect any serious aftershocks.

The earthquake, which lasted for several seconds, occurred at 1:34 p.m. and was felt as far away as Cairo, Egypt, about 745 miles southeast of the epicenter.

The quake also was felt across southern Italy but there were no reports of damage or injuries, Italian news reports said.

Clarice Nassif Ransom, a U.S. Geological Survey spokeswoman in Washington, said scientists project that as many as 6 million people may have felt the earthquake.

Police on Crete, just south of Kithira, said three people suffered minor injuries.

On Kithira, regional governor Yiannis Mihas said 50 homes in the village of Mitata were damaged, and the village church was close to collapse.

Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn’t Impact the Pentagon on 9/11, and Neither Did a Boeing 757

New article from Signs of the Times:

Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn’t Impact the Pentagon on 9/11, and Neither Did a Boeing 757  by Joe Quinn

After the release of the QFG Pentagon Strike Flash Animation on August 23rd, 2004, a veritable onslaught of new articles were published that sought to dismiss the “no plane at the Pentagon” theory. One such article, that is frequently referenced by certain ‘9/11 researchers’ was authored by a member of the forum at the “Above Top Secret” (ATS) website. Interestingly, the article was written just a few weeks after the release of the Pentagon Strike Flash animation, which by then, was winging its way around the world and into the inboxes of millions of ordinary citizens. Perhaps you were one of them…

The claim that promoters of the “no plane at the Pentagon” theory were doing immense damage to the truth/accountability movement was raised in Mike Ruppert’s book Crossing the Rubicon. In a stunning piece of warped logic, Ruppert claimed that, while he is quite convinced that it was not Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon, he chose not to talk about or deal with the subject as part of his overall case for conspiracy because of the “implications”. According to Ruppert, the “implications” are that anyone that suggests that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, is then forced to answer the question as to what actually happened to Flight 77. If that’s the case, then we better just wrap up the whole 9/11 Truth Movement and go home and have a beer.

Ruppert balks at the idea of offering an answer to this question to his readers because, he claims, most people would be unable to accept it, and, he suggests, 9/11 researchers serve only to alienate the public support that they wish to attract by stretching the boundaries of the collective belief system. What Ruppert doesn’t explain is why any member of the public would happily accept that U.S. government officials participated in the slaughter of the passengers on Flights 11 and 175 and the occupants of the WTC towers (as he details in his book) yet would be unable to accept the idea that the same government officials played a part in disposing of the passengers of Flight 77 in a much less imaginative way. Let’s be honest here, in the context of 9/11 being the work of a faction of the US government and military, the answer to the question as to what happened to Flight 77 if it didn’t hit the Pentagon is quite obvious - Flight 77 and its occupants were flown to a specific destination and モdisposed ofヤ by the conspirators. That’s pretty simple; cut and dried; no need for much stretching there! But, for some reason, Ruppert (and others affected by this paramoralism) seems to think that killing thousands of citizens by crashing airplanes is easier to accept than cold bloodedly murdering them “in person,” as it were.

Since Ruppert’s declaration about the “no plane at the Pentagon” theory, many other “9/11 researchers”, such as Mark Rabinowitz and Jim Hoffman, have seized upon Ruppert’s idea and even expanded upon it by suggesting that the “no planers” are actually government agents trying to discredit the REAL 9/11 researchers with the ‘kooky’ “no plane” theory.

In order to really understand the insidiousness of this patronising claim that the public could not accept the implications of the idea that a Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon, let’s look at the “evidence” as presented by the ATS member that it really was Flight 77 that impacted the Pentagon that bright September morn.

First, however, I would like to make a few observations about 9/11 research in general.

Anyone who takes on the formidable task of digging into the events of 9/11 is immediately at a disadvantage because the US government has already declared the case closed. The government knows how it happened and who did it and have informed the entire world. As a result, there is no possibility of access to the raw data, to the crime scene or analyses of same. Here is where we meet the major obstacle: since the US government is the prime suspect, we cannot simply take as truth everything - or anything - that they say in relation to the case.

Investigation of the 9/11 attacks should be approached like any murder investigation. When confronted with a murder case (like 9/11) and a suspect that has a history of deceit and murder (like the US government and its agencies) and who had an opportunity and a motive to commit the murder, do you take as fact any claims by the suspect that he did not commit the murder? Do you seek to fit the facts around his claim that he did not commit the murder? When you confront evidence that suggests that the suspect is lying about his account of where he was and what he was doing, or you find inconsistencies and logistically impossible scenarios in his account, do you ignore these and focus only on the fact that he said he did not commit the murder and try to find and present evidence that backs up his claim to innocence?

The fact is that researchers coming to the 9/11 investigation after the fact, and after the case has been officially closed, are not only confronted with the task of trying to find out what actually happened - they also face the already well established public belief, by which they themselves are also influenced, that the official story is the truth. The best approach for any 9/11 researcher with honest intentions is to, if possible, wipe from their minds the official version of events and take the attitude of someone who has just returned from a 5 year trip to the outer reaches of the solar system, during which time they had no communication with planet earth. Start with a beginner’s mind, turn off the sound of all the conflicting voices and their claims, and just LOOK at the evidence without prejudice.

Now, if the person with a truly open mind is given all of the publicly available evidence and has been additionally furnished with knowledge of the effects of airplane crashes and that of missile impacts, what would such a person conclude about the most likely cause of the Pentagon damage? Of course, not all of the evidence was made available to the public, but there is still sufficient visual evidence from “ground zero” (both in terms of place and TIME), to form a pretty good “best guess”. For a definitive conclusion to be reached, the “private” evidence, like the video tapes of the event that the FBI confiscated, would have to be released, and we don’t expect that to happen any time soon. Of course, the fact that the definitive evidence of the videos has not been released is in itself a key piece of evidence that suggests that the official story of what hit the Pentagon is not the real story.

The purpose of this small introduction is to prepare the reader for the fact that, in his attempted rebuttal of the no 757 at the Pentagon theory, the ATS article author, CatHerder, appears to have succumbed to the influence of the mainstream media shills that have incessantly parroted the official government story about what happened on 9/11 for the three years prior to the writing of the article. As such, he has failed to don the mantle of objective observer of the available evidence that is so crucial to finding the truth, and instead exerts a lot of effort to make the available evidence fit the government claim that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon on the morning of September 11th 2001. Either that, or he/she is part of the “official government cover-up.” After you read everything below, you can make a call on that one yourself.

Here is the ATS article as it appears on the ATS site with my comments interspersed in blue text.  [….]

For the rest of the article, go to Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn’t Impact the Pentagon on 9/11, and Neither Did a Boeing 757.













27 July 2005

Cheney’s Plan is to Nuke Iran

This just in from Justin Raimondo at Anti-War.com:

Cheney’s Plan: Nuke Iran

A recent poll shows six in ten Americans think a new world war is coming: the same poll says about 50 percent approve of the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. Somewhat inexplicably, about two-thirds say nuking those two cities was “unavoidable.” One can only wonder, then, what their reaction will be to this ominous news, revealed in a recent issue of The American Conservative by intelligence analyst Philip Giraldi:

“The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing – that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack – but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.”

Two points leap out at the reader – or, at least, this reader – quite apart from the moral implications of dropping nukes on Iran. The first is the completely skewed logic: if Iran has nothing to do with 9/11-II, then why target Tehran? As in Iraq, it’s all a pretext: only this time, the plan is to use nuclear weapons. We’ll wipe out the entire population of Iran’s capital city because, as Paul Wolfowitz said in another context, “it’s doable.”

The other weird aspect of this “nuke Iran” story is the triggering mechanism: a terrorist attack in the U.S. on the scale of 9/11. While it is certain that our government has developed a number of scenarios for post-attack action, one has to wonder: why develop this plan at this particular moment? What aren’t they telling us?

I shudder to think about it.

The more I look at it, and the more I think of it, the more I sense a monumental evil casting its shadow over the world, and I have to tell you, it makes me wonder how much more time I want to spend on this earth. In my more pessimistic moments, I doubt whether we can avoid the horrific fate that seems to await us just around the next corner, the next moment, looming over the globe like a gigantic devil stretching its wings and blotting out the sun.

It seems to me that the question of whether life is really worth living anymore is inextricably bound up with the question of whether or not these madmen can be stopped. If not, then the only alternative is to live it up while we can and laugh defiantly in the face of the apocalypse. Why write columns, why comment at all, if we can’t have any effect on the outcome? […]

Read full article here.















24 May 2005

Holocaust Survivor Says He’s Leaving The US

By Joey Picador at JusticeForNone

One of our neighbors is moving. I’ve been in this neighborhood for about six years now, but didn’t really know them very well at all - just waves and nods, mostly.

So I heard the moving van pull up this morning. When I got home this evening I happened to spy my neighbor (he’s like 85 years old - I don’t know exactly, but he’s old, talks and moves very slowly) standing on the sidewalk next to the van. I walked over and shook his hand, and we started talking. I asked him where he was moving, and he said, “Back to Germany.”

I had been stationed in Germany for two years while in the military, so I lit up, and commented about how beautiful the country was, and inquired if he was going back because he missed it.

“No,” he answered me. “I’m going back because I’ve seen this before.” He then commenced to explain that when he was a kid, he watched with his family in fear as Hitler’s government committed atrocity after atrocity, and no one was willing to say anything. He said the news refused to question the government, and the ones who did were not in the newspaper business much longer. He said good neighbors, people he had known all his life, turned against his family and other Jews, grabbing on to the hate and superiority “as if they were starved for it” (his words).

He said he was too old to see it happen right in front of his eyes again, and too old to do anything about it, so he was taking his family back to Europe on Thursday where they would be safe from George W. Bush and his neocons. He seemed resolute, but troubled, nonetheless, as if being too young on one end and too old on the other to fight what he saw happening was wearing on him.

I gotta tell you - it was chilling. I let him talk, and the whole time, my gut was churning, like I had mutated butterflies in my stomach. When he was finished, he shook my hand, gripping it really hard, until his knuckles turned white and he was shaking. He looked me in the eyes, hard, and said, “I will pray for your family and your country.” He let go of my hand and hobbled away.

I have related this event to you in the hopes it will serve as a cautionary anecdote about the state of our Union, and to illustrate the path we Americans are being led down by a group of fanatics bent on global economic and military dominion. When a man who survived the fruits of fascism decides its time to leave THIS country because he’s seeing the same patterns that led to the Holocaust and other Nazi horrors beginning to form here, it is time for us to recognize the underlying evil inherent in the actions of those who claim they work for all Americans, and for all mankind. And it is incumbent upon all Americans, Red and Blue, Republican and Democrat, to stop them.










30 April 2005

Incoming Cloud Forces Bush into Safe Bunker

The Guardian reported the following yesterday. Odd how a little cloud got the President rushing to safety in a bunker, while on 911, when one would have thought he would have felt in considerably more danger, he was calmly sitting in front of a group of gradeschoolers.

Interesting, that.

Incoming cloud forces Bush into safe bunker

Julian Borger in Washington
Friday April 29, 2005
The Guardian

President George Bush was bundled into an underground bunker, Dick Cheney was evacuated to an “undisclosed location” and heavily armed secret servicemen took up defensive positions when a fast-moving cloud scudded towards the White House, it was reported yesterday.

The cloud that materialised 30 miles south of Washington on Wednesday morning was so dense it triggered radar monitors on the Domestic Events Network, intended to prevent a repeat of the September 11 attacks.

As an anti-aircraft missile battery on the roof of a nearby building was raised to the fire position, a Black Hawk helicopter was scrambled to take a look, but saw nothing except some clouds, one of which turned out to be the suspected aggressor.

The customs and border protection agency did not return calls seeking comment yesterday, but a spokesman, Gary Bracken, told the Washington Post that a cloud was to blame. “It does happen,” he said. “We have to deal with weather anomalies showing up on the radar screen.”

Such false alarms are common, triggered by clouds, flocks of birds or private aircraft wandering off course, but the White House confirmed yesterday that this was not the first time since September 11 2001 that the president has taken refuge in the hi-tech bunker beneath the building, the Presidential Emergency Operations Centre.

It was not clear yesterday what it was about Wednesday morning’s cloud that created such havoc. It was moving at about the speed of a helicopter, disappearing and then appearing again on the radar screen, but the same could be said of many clouds.

The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said the president was in the bunker for only a short time - the all-clear was sounded about 20 minutes after the first alert. US officials claimed that the incident showed how smoothly the alert system was functioning.
By federal law since the September 11 attack, air passengers have to remain strapped in their seats within half an hour’s flight time of Washington. Private aircraft have also been stopped using the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, just across the Potomac river from the Capitol building and the White House, although that ban is expected to be lifted soon.

The Signs of the Times had an interesting comment on this report, relating it to possible UFOs:

Comment: Apart from the pathetic image of macho Bush and Cheney fleeing to a bunker at the approach of a cloud, we note the marked difference in protocol from that which was observed on the morning of September 11th 2001. On that particular day, when the US was clearly being attacked by sources unknown, and it was certainly possible that the life of the President was in danger, Bush was allowed to remain exposed for at least 20 minutes as he sat reading to children at a school in Florida. Why was there no immediate “whisking away” at the first sign of danger then? Is it possible that Bush’s handlers were well aware of the nature of the threat and knew that there was no plan to “take out” the President?

And what type of threat might there be hidden in a cloud? The following is a report on a UFO sighting:

“On many occasions, UFOs are reported to become gradually engulfed in a vapor cloud. The fully developed cloud then looks like any other cloud in the sky and affords the UFO a very convenient “hiding place.”

“The series of photos made by the army private shows not only the rare ring object, but also shows it gradually becoming engulfed in a vapor cloud.”

Could this be what the White House was really upset about?






22 April 2005

Sharon vows to defy Bush over expansion of Israeli settlements

I discovered this article over at Signs of the Times, and am including it here due to the excellent commentary by the Signs of the Times editors at the end of the piece.

Sharon vows to defy Bush over expansion of Israeli settlements

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
22 April 2005

Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, vowed to continue expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank despite his admitted differences with President George Bush on the issue.

In his most uncompromising comments yet on the settler question, Mr Sharon depicted the planned withdrawal from Gaza as the only way of preserving the largest settlement blocks on the Palestinian side of the pre-1967 border with Israel. “I am doing everything I can to preserve as much [of the West Bank settlements] as I can,” he said.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, which will be published in full today, Mr Sharon acknowledged that the US and Israel did not, in the paper’s words, “necessarily see eye to eye” on settlement expansion.

But Mr Sharon underlined his determination to go ahead with it in defiance of US exhortations by pointing out that settlement growth had always gone ahead in the past despite formal expressions of US opposition to it. He said hundreds of homes were being built in two West Bank settlements, Ma’ale Adumim and Betar Illit. […]

Mr Sharon, in the interviews, extended his claim on West Bank settlements by declaring that henceforth “Jews will always live in” Hebron.

Although the US President has agreed that the main existing settlement blocks should remain in Israel in any final deal with the Palestinians, no such public endorsement exists in the case of Hebron.

Denying that he would come under pressure after disengagement to start further withdrawals from the West Bank, Mr Sharon repeated to Ha’aretz that talks on this would await fulfilment by the Palestinians of their obligation to dismantle the armed factions.

In terms which will fuel the claims of critics that the route of the separation barrier is intended as a de facto future border, Mr Sharon indicated that demographics - the future proportion of Jews to Arabs in Israel - had been a factor in not locating the barrier further to the east and even deeper into Palestinian territory. The present route has already been widely internationally criticised for cutting into the occupied West Bank. Mr Sharon said that an even more easterly location would have left “hundreds of thousands of Palestinians” on the Israeli side, which would have been a “major problem”.

Comment: Sharon continues to be bluntly honest about his goals. First fence the Palestinians in. That is the purpose of the Wall. Then, make life so miserable for them that they “choose” to leave.

Meanwhile, the international community stands by and nods its collective head at how the Palestinians must fulfill the demands of the “Road Map” as their people are killed in a war of attrition: a few here, a few there, day in , day out, over the decades.

Stealing Palestinian land has been denounced by the international community as contravening international law, several UN resolutions and the Geneva convention, yet the Bush administration continues to sanction it. In 1991, Saddam attempted to steal Kuwaiti land which he claimed rightfully belonged to Iraq. In response, the US attacked and bombed Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi conscripts and thousands of civilians.

Notice how blunt Sharon becomes when he’s giving an interview with the Jerusalem Post. He’s openly saying that it doesn’t matter what protestations GWB makes to the media, Israel will ignore him and continue to expand settlements anyway. The pullout from Gaza is not about peace but legitimizing the border and appropriating more land on the West Bank. Because he is speaking to an Israeli newspaper, intended for an Israeli audience and he lets his real intentions show when he says, “Jews will always live in Hebron.”

Compare this to the media coverage in the States when Sharon visits Crawford Ranch. All about cease-fires, giving concessions, keeping to the roadmap, and praise for each other as men of peace. This is what the American public sees, and is one of the reasons why most remain so ignorant as to the real situation in the Middle East.






10 March 2005

The 911 Truth Movement and Peak Oil

Joe Quinn has written a good article about peak oil and the 911 Truth Movement called Ruppert and Hopsicker Co-Opting the 9-11 Truth Movement which I thought might interest a passersby or two.

Be sure and take a look if you’re interested in these two topics.
















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