JPost Article From Friend

Report: US sailor spied for Israel

Petty officer Ariel Weinmann has been in a military prison for four months.

Click here to view the entire article:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1154525834949

MSNBC.com Article: A fight against terrorism _ and disorganization

A fight against terrorism _ and disorganization Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, homeland security efforts continued to be plagued by turf battles and missed deadlines.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14254364/from/ET/

[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 08 Aug 2006]

uruknet.info   اوروكنت.إنفو :: information from occupied iraq :: informazione dall'iraq occupato

Speak, Memory Walter A. Davis Today is the 61st anniversary of the dropping of an Atomic Bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The first act of global, state terrorism. (The second three days later on Nagasaki, the city with the largest Christian population in Japan.) Today a new kind of nuclear war is being fought-- as harbinger to the next kind of nuclear war, which will be fought tomorrow. The suppressed story about the Iraq War is the use by the U.S. of depleted uranium weaponry. The cut to the chase: the U.S. li! ttered Iraq with between 315 and 350 tons of depleted uranium during Operation Desert Storm. Five times as much was used during the 2003 invasion. Every shell shot from an Abrams tank contains 10 pounds of DU. The result: all of Iraq is now littered with radioactive dust from DU... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25577 From Israel, To Lebanon KABOBfest Many people have questioned our invasion tactics over the past four weeks. Sure, we've supposedly killed about 1,000 Lebanese civilians, but that number is inflated; really, we've only killed like 10 and Hizballah has been moving those same ten bodies from one bomb site to another in a refrigerated truck and parading them in front of the cameras. It's true, we've destroyed Lebanon's infrastructure, including power plants, roads, highways, and - a couple days ago - the "sole human! itarian link" into the country. But you have to understand, we don't believe that Arabs are "humans," so they don't really need "humanitarian" aid. As John Bolton made clear, dead Lebanese are worth less than dead Israelis... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25567 Israel’s Conspiracy Theories KABOBfest Yesterday, after Hezbollah killed12 Israeli soldiers preparing to fight in Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert met with fifty of his mouth pieces to inform them of the new talking points. In preparation for the widening of aggression against all of Lebanon, Hezbollah areas and not, they needed to get some new spin ready. "Our enemy is not Hezbollah, but Iran, which employs Hezbollah as its agent," Olmert told his spokepersons. Israel often constructs a mythical puppeteer,! far bigger than the opponent it is fighting, to either exaggerate its victories or minimize the meaning of its defeats... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25568 Hijab? Must have. Needlenose I vaguely remember watching some fluff-piece on CNN shortly after our invasion of Iraq about how the blossoming of democracy would somehow be good for women; blatantly preposterous even at the time, as Iraq was one of the mostly-Arabic countries where women could drive, work, walk around without a hijab and even serve in the government. Contrast with Riverbend's latest post: "For me, June marked the first month I don’t dare leave the house without a hijab, or headscarf. I don’t wear a hijab usually, but it’s no longer possible to drive around Baghdad without one. It’s just not a good idea. (Take note that when I say 'drive’ I actually mean 'sit in the back seat of the car’- I haven’t driven for the longest time.) Going around bare-headed in a car or in the street also puts the family members with you in danger. You risk hearing something you don’t want to hear and then the father or the brother or cousin or uncle can’t just sit by and let it happen. I haven’t driven for the longest time. If you’re a female, you risk being attacked."... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25580 The Clearing of South Lebanon The Lebanese Nakba and Israeli Ambitions PAUL LARUDEE Why did Israel remain in southern Lebanon after the departure of the PLO in 1982? The publicly stated reason was to assure the security of its northern border by neutralizing the resistance forces and by maintaining a "buffer" zone. However, it is clear that the most secure period for northern Israel since 1978 and perhaps earlier has been the period from 2000 to the present, when it had no occupation forces in Lebanon ! except for the Shebaa farms. Many Lebanese and international observers suspect that the real purpose of Israel's leadership (as distinct from that of its population) was to seize and ultimately annex southern Lebanon up to the Litani river. If so, it is plausible to speculate that this may not have been the original intention, but rather evolved from the initial successes of Ariel Sharon, then commander of Israeli forces in Lebanon, in occupying the territory in question... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25579 Palestinian refugee camp hit by Israeli gunboats Xinhua Israeli gunboats shelled the largest Palestinian refugee camp of Ain Al Hilweh in Lebanon early Wednesday, causing casualties, official sources said. Media reports quoted Lebanese and Palestinian officials as saying that Israeli gunboats fired two shells, which killed at least one person and wounded three others. But other reports quoted medics as saying that at least two people were killed and eight others, including five children, were wounded in the Isr! aeli attack... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25576 US democracy or an excuse to rape, pillage and plunder? Truth About Iraqis It has become the sign of the times. Pick up a newspaper or browse a website and you will come across at least one news report or in-depth analysis of human rights abuses, torture, murder, rape, and atrocity committed by the US military in Iraq or Afghanistan or in Guantanamo. Or some other CIA-run facility... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25574 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR TUESDAY, August 8, 2006 Today in Iraq Two Iraqi journalists have been killed in separate incidents in Baghdad, police said Tuesday. Mohammed Abbas Hamad, 28, a journalist for the Shiite-owned newspaper Al-Bayinnah Al-Jadida, was shot by gunmen at he left his home Monday in the Adil section of western Baghdad, police Lt. Mohammed Khayoun said. Late Monday, police found the bullet-riddled body of freelance journalist Ismail Amin Ali, 30, about a half mile from where he was abducted two weeks ago ! in northeast Baghdad, Lt. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said. The body showed sign of torture, he added. Ten people were killed and 69 wounded when two roadside bombs exploded in al-Shorja market in central Baghdad. Three separate roadside bomb attacks in Baghdad killed at least nine people. Two of the blasts targeted police, and the third was aimed at one of Baghdad's busiest bus stations. Gunmen stormed a bank in the northern Baghdad district of Adhamiya, killing five people -- three bodyguards and two employees -- before walking away with the equivalent of $4,000... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25573 Behind Bush’s “truce” plan: the drive towards a wider Middle East war Bill Van Auken US President George W. Bush on Monday declared his full support for a US-French United Nations resolution that dictates Israel’s terms to the Lebanese people while allowing the Israeli military to indefinitely continue its occupation and devastation of Lebanon. This document, far from an agreement for peace, represents one more step in widening the war initiated by the Bush administration in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq into a ! regional conflagration that poses an immense threat to working people not only in the Middle East, but in the US and all over the world... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25572 Israel: we are the real victims here Lenin's Tomb So, can anyone tell me, is Yedioth Ahronoth the Israeli version of The Sun or something? Only it's hard to find a more vulgar, brash, racist, propaganda sheet - yet it seems they have not fully calibrated for an external audience. Aside from the rather obvious front page and the news page in which today's top headline is "Ma'alot: Man moderately injured by rocket", they've got this wonderful news article in which Israeli politicians simply brag about their bullyin! g of Lebanon and Arab Israelis. Foreign Minister Livni's comments translated: 'Siniora better wipe away his tears and do as we say and stop telling everyone how terrible it is'. Knesset Speaker Itzik: 'You Arabs had better stop complaining and get behind the war effort or we'll treat you as traitors'. And of course there's the mantle of victimhood, and I quote this in full... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25571 A call to genocide. Lenin's Tomb Haaretz may have spotted Israel's very own Thomas Friedman: Israel should have given Lebanon an ultimatum like this: "Until our abducted soldiers are returned and the rocket fire at our communities ends, we will destroy the communities of southern Lebanon via aerial bombardment, methodically going from south to north, and we will begin within 24 hours." In this way, we would not have endangered even one soldiers in battle... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25570 Because 50% of the U.S. is certifiably STUPID Palestinian Pundit What? You don't believe me? See: Half of US still believes Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The government thinks they can pull one of these off, again: War Pimp Alert: Yellow Cake II - Iran's plot to mine uranium in Africa : IRAN is seeking to import large consignments of bomb-making uranium from the African mining area that produced the Hiroshima bomb, an investigation has revealed... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25569 Religious Zeal and the Killing of the Lebanese Abbas Ali When President Bush was asked (July 25) whether or not there was a contradiction in his position in allowing "Israel to kill people, and civilians, in particular, and . . . trying to aid the very people that have been suffering and killed as a result," the President’s answer was "No, I don't see a contradiction." It is this firm confidence that makes it easier for the President to resist the international call for an immediate ceasefire to save lives and in! itiate genuine measures of reconciliation. The Israelis have warmly welcomed the President’ message and seem determined to annihilate the people in Southern Lebanese in the shortest possible time. This is strongly reflected in their actions and in the attitude of the Israeli army... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25566 Brutal US attack on unarmed Afghans captured by photos Tom Coghlan, The Independent Claims that US troops shot dead up to six unarmed Afghan civilians two months ago in Kabul have been given added credibility with a series of photographs offering visual evidence of military misconduct. The pictures were taken by an Afghan passer-by on 29 May in Khair Kane, a district of north Kabul. The 20 photographs appear to show a group of unarmed Afghan civilians being killed by gunfire from an American Humvee. The allegatio! ns made in Kabul follow other recent incidents in which US troops are alleged to have used disproportionate or reckless force against civilians, most notably in Haditha, Iraq, on 19 November 2005 when US troops allegedly killed 15 civilians... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25565 Collateral Damage is Murder Michael Boldin, GlobalResearch.ca Collateral damage is nothing more than a euphemism for state-sponsored mass murder. It is the term given to people killed in military actions who were "not intentionally targeted." In reality, this is pure propaganda. It has always been morally just to protect innocent people against aggressors. But, on the other hand, it has never been moral, nor has it ever been necessary, to bomb cities filled with innocent people. We rarely see the faces or know! the identities of those reduced to the status of collateral damage. It is a gray area where the victim becomes less than a person. Interestingly enough, during the Vietnam War, both Henry Kissinger and Robert McNamara used the term "integers" to describe those civilian deaths that they preferred not to have publicized as human beings. Such is the amazing power of doublespeak... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25563 Why the Lebanese resistance are clobbering the IDF Lenin's Tomb Eventually, they would have to start asking this sort of question: why are the local European supremacists not beating the brown people? Isn't this what we pay them for? How come they're not doing their job? According to The Guardian this morning, 57 Israeli soldiers have died. The latest estimate for Hezbollah deaths, meanwhile, is 53. The latest estimate for civilian deaths in Lebanon, meanwhile, is 933. Yes, the Israelis have never found any espec! ial difficulty in slaughtering civilians, but why can't they beat what they confidently assured the world was a 'rag-tag' army?... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25560 New and unkown deadly weapons used by Israeli forces 'direct energy' weapons, chemical and/or biological agents, in a macabre experiment of future warfare Professor Paola Manduca, GlobalResearch.ca By now there are countless reports, from hospitals, witnesses, armament experts and journalists that strongly suggest that in the present offensive of Israeli forces against Lebanon and Gaza 'new weapons' are being used. New and strange symptoms are reported amongst the wounded and the dead. Bodies with dea! d tissues and no apparent wounds; 'shrunken' corpses; civilians with heavy damage to lower limbs that require amputation, which is nevertheless followed by unstoppable necrosis and death; descriptions of extensive internal wounds with no trace of shrapnel, corpses blackened but not burnt, and others heavily wounded that did not bleed... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25559 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 7 August 2006 Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice In a dispatch posted at 8:50pm Makkah time Monday night, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that at that hour fierce fighting was under way between Iraqi Resistance forces and US occupation troops in the al-Bu 'Alwan area of ar-Ramadi. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the combat erupted when Resistance fighters assaulted a house that US troops had b! een using as a headquarters since they threw the homeowner out into the streets to commandeer his dwelling. The correspondent reported that large parts of the house were destroyed in the attack, forcing the Marines to rush out into a confrontation with the Resistance fighters. Heavy fighting was raging in the area at the time of writing... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25558 Issa Nakhleh: the Fascist Character of the Israeli State Kurt Nimmo ...In grotesque fashion, the corporate media papers over the repeat of these crimes by Olmert and the supposed "centrist" Kadima dominated government of Israel, refusing to note the obvious pattern of pathological and murderous Zionist behavior. Instead of noting or even hinting at the fascistic character of this behavior, we are told "some civilians are more innocent than others" (Dershowitz) and Hezbollah is responsible for Israel’s exterminati! on of hundreds, possibly thousands of Lebanese civilians. "The Zionist and Israeli leaders have followed in the footsteps of the Nazis. 3,000 Zionist and Israeli political and military leaders, during a period from 1939-1989, participated as organizers, instigators and accomplices in the commission of crimes of terrorism, crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide against the Palestinians and peoples of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt," writes Nakhleh in the preface to his online book... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25557 GI Special 4H8: The Crime Against The 172nd - August 08, 2006 Thomas F. Barton Soldiers in 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment received word of the extension July 27 as they were preparing to depart Combat Outpost Rawah, in central Anbar province, where they had spent most of the previous 12 months. The news hit many hard. Many of those still in Iraq were within a day or two of leaving. Stryker crews had celebrated their last missions "outside the wire." There was an end-of-semester atmosphere at COP Rawah, with soldiers playing practical jokes on each other as they prepared to head home. Then came the news that rather than flying home into the arms of their loved ones, they would be heading into the heart of the violence in Baghdad, where more than 1,600 people died in July as sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi’ites spun out of control. Some soldiers greeted the news with disbelief and tears, others with shrugs. Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25556 Israel widens targets to hit civilian sites Abraham Rabinovich and Martin Chulov ISRAEL plans to ramp up its offensive in Lebanon by attacking the nation's strategic civilian infrastructure to make Beirut more amenable to ceasefire proposals acceptable to Jerusalem. Stung by increasingly deadly rocket attacks and believing an imminent ceasefire to be unlikely, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met his senior security advisers yesterday to discuss proposals to reinforce and speed up the army's northward movement in order! to push most of Hezbollah's rockets out of range of Israel. "We are now in a process of renewed escalation," a senior general defence staff officer said. "We will continue hitting everything that moves in Hezbollah, but we will also hit strategic civilian infrastructure"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=25578 www.uruknet.info: a site gathering daily information concerning occupied Iraq: news, analysis, documents and texts of iraqi resistance available in Italian and English.   You receive this newsletter because you subscribed it. If you think it was an abuse, or simply if you don't want to receive it any more, click here to unsubscribe from the newsletter.

WorldNetDaily: Iranian cataclysm forecast Aug. 22

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51445

Blogger Thoughts:  Outrageous False Fear

The Media Coverup of 9/11

9/11 Blogger - Blogging 9/11 Related Alternative News All comments are welcome! but please avoid hate speech and profanity, and use references when possible.

The Media Coverup of 9/11 By somebigguy The Winnipeg 9/11 Truth Movement presents Towers of Deception: The Media Coverup of 9/11: http://www.stoplying.ca/towers/ Stop Lying is putting on an event up in Winnipeg to expose the media complicity in 9/11. Barrie Zwicker will be speaking and of course there will be an open mic accompanied by a challenge to the local media to debate the facts! When: Sunday, August 20, viewing of 9/11 information videos starting at 12pm. Where: The University of Winnipeg - Lockheart Hall, Room 1L11. Also, here is the press release of Barrie's new book, check it out: http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2006/8/emw420881.htm

Bloglines - Red Cross: Israel denying safe passage

TERRORISM NEWS

Red Cross: Israel denying safe passage By _H_ The Israeli military has denied permission for aid groups to move food and medicine to besieged villages in southern Lebanon for two days, the Red Cross said Monday. Without guarantees of safe passage, the Red Cross has been unable to move supplies beyond the port city of Tyre to towns and villages south of the Litani River, where thousands of people are believed trapped, said Richard Huguenin, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Litani runs roughly parallel to the Lebanese-Israeli border, about 20 miles to the north. The area between it and the border has been the site of the heaviest Israeli bombardment and ground fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas. "It is now a question of the humanitarian consequences of what is looking like a blockade," Huguenin told The Associated Press in Tyre. "At night we ask for permission and in the morning we get either a red light or a green light and for the past 48 hours it has been red," he said. Source

Bloglines - Bloodbath

Suburban Guerrilla Keeping a jaundiced eye on the corporate media.

Bloodbath By Susie on War Crimes On tonight’s Larry King, James Zogby really letting Alan Dershowitz have it, calling Israel’s attacks on Lebanon a “return to the law of the jungle.” He says you can only listen to so many stories of Israel saying they didn’t “mean” to hit civilians before someone has to make them take responsibility for it. Dershowitz retorts that Hizbollah is trying to get civilians killed to make Israel look bad. “This is just a way of absolving a guilty client, as Alan has done time and time again,” Zogby responds. I’ll put up the transcript as soon as it’s posted.

Slate Article: No Man Is an Island

jurisprudence
No Man Is an Island
Anthony Kennedy's surprising charge to the American Bar Association.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Monday, Aug. 7, 2006, at 12:47 PM ET

HONOLULU—There is something about Waikiki that can render the 5,000 lawyers swarming this town for the American Bar Association convention disinclined to think. The convention center, the streets, and what seems like every hotel in town are overrun with them, lugging around their bright yellow beach bags and their ubiquitous LexisNexis name tags. (Pity the Honolulu drivers whose chances of running down an attorney have skyrocketed to about 1-in-3 this week.)

Seemingly simple decisions, decisions attorneys make in 30 seconds if they're on the clock, may consume 15 minutes in Hawaii. I listen to them debating—the snapper or the ahi, change before mai tais on the beach or after, attend the 11:30 panel on innovations in forensic accounting or flip over and tan the backs of their thighs—and I listen to the long pauses in between. In Waikiki, the billable hour stretches long and languid. Beach books replace case files. Deep thoughts are few and far between.

Unless you are Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. I find myself devoting 15 whole minutes, as I prepare to attend his keynote address Saturday evening, to deciding whether to shower first or to tan the backs of my thighs. As I dart for the ladies' room outside the Hawaii Ballroom at the Sheraton Waikiki—perhaps I can at least wash the salt water off my face—I almost trip over the tall gangliness of the justice himself, flawless in a dark suit and navy tie. The stern commander has arrived to oversee his vast battalion of 60-year-old men in hibiscus-print shirts.

The conference organizers seem to have contracted this same aloha spirit of timelessness. Instead of the obligatory six minutes of musical prelude, we are treated to a gorgeous 45 minutes of song and dance from students at Kamehameha High School. Each song lasts seven minutes. The dancers' hands convey opuses, yet no one checks their watch.

Kennedy takes an enormous amount of abuse from his critics—who have sometimes included me—for his unremitting, agonizing, thinking-ness. His speech here in Hawaii is vintage Kennedy, ranging across history (pit stops at Henry II, Newton, and Blackstone); intellectual theory (Marx, Holmes, and Solzhenitsyn); and—of course—geography. He tells of his own travels in China and Bangladesh and across Africa. He peppers his speech with language to shame a Peretz—prolix, essentiality, and dualisms. The punch line to his opening joke is: "a faint reflection of my former existential self." (This slays the lawyers.)

But Kennedy—for all that he cannot seem to stop being Kennedy, even in Honolulu—arrives with a serious project. He is charging the assembled attorneys to do the job of selling to a doubting world "the essentiality of the rule of law." "Make no mistake," he warns, "there's a jury that's out. In half the world, the verdict is not yet in. The commitment to accept the Western idea of democracy has not yet been made, and they are waiting for you to make the case." Referring to terrorism and violence and totalitarianism, he says, "The tide has gone out, and we are on the beach."

It's a tall order to swallow with your aquamarine bikini-tini. But it's a quintessentially Kennedy point: "Our best security, our only security, is in the world of ideas, and I sense a slight foreboding." The world of ideas may be far from Honolulu. But the world of ideas is the only place Kennedy calls home. To that end, he assigns himself a seemingly impossible task: He wants to define "rule of law" so we can start to peddle the concept worldwide. It is not enough to sell the world on the U.S. Constitution, he says. That is merely a set of "negative commands." He is looking for a positive formulation for the rule of law.

And suddenly he begins to sound like a 4 a.m. UNICEF commercial, describing the number of hours of human labor required to get clean drinking water in Africa and the number of babies who die there each year from diarrhea. "This can be fixed," he says. "This is not rocket science." He tells of the numbers of men who must languish in prison in Bangladesh for a year because they can't pay the $3 fine that would keep them out of jail. (He says he offered $1,000 to keep the next year's worth of men out of jail, and one can't help but wonder if he'd likewise offer to personally pay for decent defense counsel for next year's crop of indigent capital defendants in America.) "Can the world embrace the rule of law under such conditions?"

He describes the American conception of law as a "liberating force, a covenant, a promise." And in spite of the lofty intellectualism and the big words, this speech captures my imagination and that of the assembled crowd for its two quintessential Kennedy traits. The first is the vast sprawl of his imaginative world. He travels the planet and reads widely and he attends lectures on water purification. Then he applies all that knowledge to his conception of the law. And whether you like that expansive scope, listening to him is still a tonic to the smallness and smug certainty that has characterized our political leadership in this country for the past six years. It offers a welcome break from the hermetically sealed constitutional worldview of some of his detractors. Kennedy is a legendary agonizer. But his comments here reveal the extent to which that agony is not an end in itself. His sense of justice and equality is a work in progress, informed by what he learns from people all over the planet who know more than he does. There's something reassuring in his sense that the world is a fluid place.

Which brings us to Kennedy's second great characteristic, the one that has launched a thousand heart attacks over at the National Review Online: Kennedy believes that justice has a purpose. It is not a neutral set of ideals. It is a promise that humans "can dare, can plan, can have joy in their existence." It's premised on the view that poverty and hopelessness and alienation should cause us worry. Maybe that premise is too ambitious. Maybe it is truly not the province of the law to pave over the differences between those who are suffering and those who are not. But Kennedy at least recognizes that all this suffering and alienation is the handmaiden of lawlessness; and that it is as much the task of lawyers to fight lawlessness as it is to serve some dispassionate, neutral machine called the law.

We cannot sell this cold, rational notion of justice and democracy and—as he warns these lawyers—"You can make this case. You must make this case."

Kennedy's inability to find certain, easy answers and his tendency to hold grandiose hopes for the law are fodder for his detractors. This is the Kennedy of Casey, and Lawrence, and Rapanos, and it's the Kennedy that plows up fields of constitutional law and sows seeds of confusion and inscrutable grandeur in their place. This is the Kennedy who drives conservatives nuts with his notion that the courts must fight injustice, regardless of the messiness that ensues. But as he concludes with the charge that our freedom rests on our ability to sell the world on democracy, the crowd is on its feet.

Maybe the fact that Kennedy is suddenly experiencing his moment in the sun isn't just a historical accident of a four-four court with a guy in the middle who can't seem to make up his mind. Perhaps this country is actually ready for what he's selling: the twin notions that the world is an enormous, embattled, struggling place and that the law has a responsibility to try to fix it. Not just in service of the Constitution, but in the service of freedom.

Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2147247/

Copyright 2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

Blogger Post: Perhaps Kennedy is clueless about 9/11?

Video: “Popular Mechanics” editor debunks 9/11 myths on O’Reilly

BS on FOX News Hot Air The world’s first, full-service conservative Internet broadcast network

Video: “Popular Mechanics” editor debunks 9/11 myths on O’Reilly By Allahpundit on The Blog Got a special request for this from the Blogfather himself, who just received his review copy of the new book. The website is here. By all means, click through on the “Original Story” in the upper lefthand corner and read the PM article about 9/11 if you haven’t before. It’s important to spread this information far and wide, especially now that Truther pigs have taken to harassing private citizens whose stories don’t fit the narrative. Update: I’ve been waiting for days to find an Insta-hook worthy of this link. And now I have. Sidearms + miniaturization? Glenn Reynolds, call your office! Comments

Strange Times at the Pentagon

George Washington's Blog

Strange Times at the Pentagon By George Washington Navy Historian Barbara Honegger says that there are multiple lines of evidence showing that an explosion occurred at the Pentagon on 9/11 at 9:32 a.m. The official story says that Flight 77 did not hit the building until 9:37 a.m. (top of page 10). For example, in an interview for the new version of Loose Change (7:00 into the video -- you can pull the scroll bar at the bottom left to the correct time, and it will take you right to the right place), Honegger said: • Several clocks at the Pentagon stopped at 9:32, a full five minutes before the official time that the Boeing 757 hit the building • High-level, credible witnesses place the incident time at 9:32 • A Pentagon worker said that he witnessed a bomb squad at a subway station near the Pentagon prior to the attack on the morning of 9/11, but there were no bomb squads there on previous or subsequent days I asked Pentagon survivor April Gallop whether she knew when the explosion occurred at the Pentagon. April sent me the following email in response: "I looked at my watch before I looked at the computer, it was 9:30 am. Later that night, I looked at my watch it stopped at 9:30am." Does Gallop's testimony reinforce what Honegger is saying or not? Or is this another example of moving timelines to fit the official story? Or does it corroborate Matthew Everett's theory that there was a military exercise occuring at the Pentagon on 9/11? I honestly don't know whether this is an important lead or a red herring and a distraction. But I hope that its all sorted out, one way or the other, in the near future.

Bloglines - Disturbing reports

CANNONFIRE Joseph Cannon (cannonfiremail@yahoo.com)

Disturbing reports By Joseph Reports are coming in of electoral shennanigans in two of the most closely-watched primary races. Cynthia McKinney's campaign, it has been alleged, has suffered from having her name left off the ballot. I received this message from McKinney: One voter went to vote and my name didn't appear on the ballot. The voter went and complained, and then when she went back to cast her vote, my name was on the ballot. This occurred at Wadsworth Elementary School. The machine that tallies the total vote broke down at Stronghold Church around 2:10 pm. At 3:15 it's still down. Meanwhile, problems with the machines have cropped up in the Connecticut Lieberman/Lamont face-off: Though polls open at 6:00 a.m. sharp, Davis Street didn't open until 6:35. "I found no voting booths open," said Dr. Herbert Sacks. "That's the first time in thirty years that anything like this has happened." "A lot made an effort to come out early," Garner said. "We have commitments and those would not allow us to be here on the other end of the day." "There are people who commute distances to New York and are due at work, they take the train to be there at seven and don't get back into town early enough to vote, so it effectively disenfranchises them," Lyndee Gold said. I've been screaming the word "REVOTE" since 2000. Will anyone listen this time?

Bloglines - WING TV continues to oppose evidence on 9/11 TV Fakery (08/08)

911tvfakery History on 9/11 TV fakery

WING TV continues to oppose evidence on 9/11 TV Fakery (08/08) By ewing2001 WING TV continues to oppose evidence on 9/11 TV Fakery, insulting 10 9/11 Scholars (08/08) August 8, 2008 Update: Rick Siegel signed as 11th 9/11 Scholar the 9/11tvfakery petition WING TV As usual, WING TV argues with "eyewitness reports" (and ignored the reports, of those in front of the Towers who didn't see any plane at all) and "photos", instead of analysing the videos, which do NOT match with any objects in the videos at all, as they falsely claim. WING TV furthermore claimed, that the ultimate conclusion of the TV fakery findings must be allegedly that 'nothing' at all hit the South Tower, while this is still an ongoing investigation from the forensic angle. WING TV once again proved, that they didn't analyse any footage at all, instead only being satisfied with photos. WING TV also didn't address the so called "white elephant plane", which circulated the South Tower, noticed also by TV Host Diane Sawyer, but then leaving the crime scene at time of explosion in the South Tower. WING TV described the research as the product of "insanity" and "incoherency", therefore decided to insult 10 respectable 9/11 Scholars, who recently signed a petition to bring this evidence on 9/11 TV Fakery into public awareness.

Bloglines - 9/11 Commission Chairmen Admit Whitewashing the Cause of the Attacks

Thomas Paine's Corner Thomas Paine's Corner is a site dedicated to advancing universal human rights, fostering social and economic justice, and supporting the cause of all oppressed, exploited, and impoverished human beings on our Earth.

9/11 Commission Chairmen Admit Whitewashing the Cause of the Attacks By Jason Miller "...al Qaeda committed the heinous strike [on 9/11] because of the U.S. military presence in the Middle East and American support for Israel" August 7, 2006 by Ivan Eland The Independent Institute As both the Bush administration and its client government in Israel, with their invasions of Arab states in Iraq and Lebanon respectively, make the United States ever more hated in the Islamic world, a new book by the Chairmen of the 9/11 commission admits that the commission whitewashed the root cause of the 9/11 attacks—that same interventionist U.S. foreign policy. Former Governor Tom Kean and former Congressman Lee Hamilton, chairmen of the 9/11 Commission—the publicity hounds that they are—want to keep the long retired, but much celebrated, panel in the public mind. They have written a tell-all book about the trials and tribulations of the panel’s work. Despite the commission’s disastrous recommendations—which led to a reorganization of the U.S. intelligence community that worsened its original defect prior to 9/11 (a severe coordination problem caused by bureaucratic bloat)—and apparent whitewashing of the most important single issue that it examined, the chairmen are trying their best to write another best seller. The book usefully details the administration’s willful misrepresentation of its incompetent actions that day, but makes the shocking admission that some commission members deliberately wanted to distort an even more important issue. Apparently, unidentified commissioners wanted to cover up the fact that U.S. support for Israel was one of the motivating factors behind al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack. Although to his credit, Hamilton argued for saying that al Qaeda committed the heinous strike because of the U.S. military presence in the Middle East and American support for Israel, the panel watered down that frank conclusion to state that U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq are “dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world.” Some commissioners wanted to cover up the link between the 9/11 attack and U.S. support for Israel because this might imply that the United States should alter policy and lessen its support for Israeli actions. How right they were. The question is simple: If the vast bulk of Americans would be safer if U.S. politicians moderated their slavish support of Israel, designed to win the support of key pressure groups at home, wouldn’t it be a good idea to make this change in course? Average U.S. citizens might attenuate their support for Israel if the link between the 9/11 attacks and unquestioning U.S. favoritism for Israeli excesses were more widely known. Similarly, if American taxpayers knew that the expensive and unnecessary U.S. policy of intervening in the affairs of countries all over the world—including the U.S. military presence in the Middle East—made them less secure from terrorist attacks at home, pressure would likely build for an abrupt change to a more restrained U.S. foreign policy. But like the original 9/11 Commission report, President Bush regularly obscures this important reality by saying that America was attacked on 9/11 because of its freedoms, making no mention of U.S. interventionist foreign policy as the root cause. Yet numerous public opinion polls in the Islamic world repeatedly prove the president wrong. The surveys show that people in Muslim countries admire American political and economic freedoms, culture, and technology. But the numbers go through the floor when Islamic people are asked about their approval of U.S. foreign policy. Much of this negative attitude derives from mindless U.S. backing of anything Israel does. In addition, Osama bin Laden has repeatedly written or stated that he attacks the United States because of its military presence in the Persian Gulf and its support for Israel and corrupt regimes in the Arab world. The Bush administration has worsened the anti-U.S. hatred in Islamic countries, which drives this blowback terrorism, by its invasion of Iraq and its support of Israel’s excessive military response in Lebanon. Unfortunately, innocent Iraqis and Lebanese are unlikely to be the only ones afflicted with the damage from U.S. interventionism. Innocent Israelis and Americans have been, and will likely continue to be, the victims of policies that have been sold by President Bush on the basis of making the citizens of both countries safer and more secure, while the 9/11 Commission obediently has covered the administration’s tracks. Ivan Eland is a Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute, Director of the Institute’s Center on Peace & Liberty , and author of the books The Empire Has No Clothes , and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy . Fair Use Statement In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 of US Copyright Law, this attributed work is provided via Thomas Paine’s Corner on a non-profit basis to facilitate understanding, research, education, and the advancement of human rights and social justice.

Bloglines - Mounting Public Opinion Forces Fox into Retreat

pyramid.blog-city.com pyramid.blog-city.com

Mounting Public Opinion Forces Fox into Retreat In propaganda But now the Bush administration's parrot has been forced to descend deeper into the circles of illogical defense-- showing the forced hand in trying to suppress information about the truth of the September 11 attacks.

Bloglines - Excerpt from "Omissions and Distortions"

The United States of Amnesia “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -Mahatma Gandhi

Excerpt from "Omissions and Distortions" By Sean Wheeler I have run into so much "debunking 9/11 truth" propoganda lately that I felt obliged to begin transcribing what I feel to be the most compelling evidence of a government conspiracy. This is information that cannot be refuted by Popular Mechanics, NIST or FEMA. This is not opinion or speculation. This is fact. If you don't believe it, you can look it up. I cordially invite those who believe in the "19 hijackers and Osama in a cave" theory to respond to this post with your views or opinions. Look for more excerpts from David Ray Griffin's book "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions" on this page soon. ---------------------------------- Excerpt from "Omissions and Distortions" Ashcroft and David Schippers Two days after 9/11, Attorney David Schippers publicly declared that over six weeks prior to 9/11, FBI agents had given him information about attacks planned for "lower Manhattan." This information, Schippers claimed, was highly specific, including the dates, the targets, and the funding sources of the terrorists. Schippers said further that the FBI field agents told him that their investigations had been curtailed by FBI headquarters, which threatened the agents with prosecution if they went public with their information. Finally – to get to the part of Schippers’ claim that is most relevant to our present concern – he reported that six weeks prior to 9/11, he tried to warn Attorney General Ashcroft about the attacks, but that Ashcroft would not return his calls. David Schippers… had been the Chief Investigative Counsel for the US House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee in 1998 and its chief prosecutor for the impeachment of President Clinton in 1999. He should have, accordingly, been both well known and well respected in Republican circles. We would assume, then, that the Commission would have asked Ashcroft about the claims publicly made by Schippers. Did Ashcroft know about his calls? If so, why did he not return them? But we find no sign in the Commission’s report that these questions were asked. We would also assume that the Commission would have interviewed Schippers, to get the story directly from him. The Commission would have been interested to get Schippers’ testimony under oath about the apparently highly specific advance knowledge FBI agents had reportedly given him. When one does a search for the name of David Schippers in The 9/11 Commission Report, however, one finds not a single reference.

Bloglines - FOX furiously ridiculing 9/11 - US government conspiracy theories

News Hounds We watch FOX so you don't have to.

FOX furiously ridiculing 9/11 - US government conspiracy theories By Chrish on War on Education Ever since Scripps Howard released poll findings last week that 36% of Americans believe it is at least somewhat likely that the federal government was involved in or took no action to prevent the attacks of September 11th, FOX news talking heads have been ridiculing and dismissing the possibility. On the other hand, they have yet to cause such a kerfuffle over the equally remarkable poll finding that the number of Americans who believe WMDs were found in Iraq has risen to 50%. We don't need to ask why the double standard.

Bloglines - CNN, Israel, and American public opinion

Left I on the News A leftwing view of the day's news and the way it's presented in the media

CNN, Israel, and American public opinion By Eli This week I wrote: I can hardly watch TV for 15 minutes without seeing an Israeli government spokesperson, and if I include American apologists for Israel, the time is even shorter. Well, this isn't a scientific survey, but I think it's gotten even worse. Last night, flipping channels during commercials (I can't watch news all the time), I flipped past CNN twice. In both cases, in less than five seconds I was listening to an Israeli government spokesperson. Then this morning I tried again. 20 seconds later, there was Ehud Ohlmert. There is incidentally, a very serious message in all this. Ask yourself why the Israeli government is putting so much effort into influencing the American public. I suspect you know the answer. It's because, probably even more than the Israeli public, it is the American public who hold in their hands the power to stop this war, to stop Israeli war crimes, by demanding that our government stop funding them (and stop providing political cover for them). Demonstrations this Saturday aren't going to do that, there's too far to go. But they are an important step. United for Peace & Justice wants you to call your Congressperson and the White House every day, and sign a letter to, of all people, John Bolton. Those things won't hurt, of course. But only massive public demonstrations of opposition to this war, as with the other ongoing U.S. wars, really have a chance to move public opinion, and in turn the government. Get out this Saturday to one of the national demonstrations being organized by ANSWER, or to whatever local events you can find. Stand up! Speak out! Stop the war(s) on the world! [I really do need to update that graphic on the top of the page - with all the countries I managed to fit in, I didn't include Lebanon!]

Bloglines - Among Young, Bush's Approval 20%

Drudge Retort Red Meat for Yellow Dogs

Among Young, Bush's Approval 20% Youth Give Bush Poor Grade, Hurting Republican Hopes, Poll Says Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush's hopes of attracting a new generation of voters to the Republican Party may be fading Younger Americans are far more critical of his job performance than the broader population. A Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll of Americans age 18 to 24 found Bush's approval rating was 20 percent, with 53 percent disapproving and 28 percent with no opinion. That compares to a 40 percent approval rating among Americans of all ages in a separate Bloomberg/Times poll. Much like Franklin Roosevelt attracted a new generation of voters with the New Deal, Bush and his administration have had high hopes of drawing younger voters to his party. He has sought to do that through policy initiatives aimed at creating an ``ownership society,'' and public relations tactics like a Youth Convention at the party's 2004 national convention, in which his twin daughters took the stage. Among the initiatives aimed at drawing a new generation into the Republican fold are health-care savings accounts, elimination of the so-called marriage penalty in the U.S. tax code, and Bush's proposal to create private investment accounts from a portion of Social Security payroll taxes. `Younger Americans really want to see some leadership,'' Bush said last year as he launched his Social Security plan. Instead, the Social Security initiative flopped in Congress after attracting criticism from the public and lawmakers of both parties, and health-care savings accounts haven't done much to expand coverage, with only about 1 percent of the U.S. population currently participating in them. Social Issues Bush's 2004 re-election strategy also may have damaged his party's standing with younger voters by stressing things intended to drive religious voters concerned about social issues to the ballot box, such as opposition to gay marriage. ``The very cultural issues the president wants to use to rally his party's base are exactly the issues that are alienating younger voters,'' said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. ``Across a broad swath of social issues, younger Americans see the administration as being out of line with what they believe.'' The war in Iraq is also a major factor driving down public opinion among young voters, said Hans Riemer, political director at Rock the Vote, a group that works to get young people involved in civic life. ``Young people take it very personally,'' he said. ``They feel like it's their generation that's been asked to sacrifice.'' One poll participant, K.C. Chojnacki, an 18-year-old starting her first year in college, expressed those concerns in a follow-up interview. ``I disapprove mostly because I don't agree with the war,'' said Chojnacki, who is from Andover, Minnesota. ``We're going to have to deal with the repercussions, like having to pay for it.'' Comments

British Petroleum's 'Smart Pig'

BRITISH PETROLEUM'S "SMART PIG"

The Brilliantly Profitable Timing of the Alaska Oil Pipeline Shutdown

by Greg Palast
For The Guardian (UK)
Tuesday, August 9, 2006

Is the Alaska Pipeline corroded? You bet it is. Has been for more than a decade. Did British Petroleum shut the pipe yesterday to turn a quick buck on its negligence, to profit off the disaster it created? Just ask the "smart pig."

Years ago, I had the unhappy job of leading an investigation of British Petroleum's management of the Alaska pipeline system. I was working for the Chugach villages, the Alaskan Natives who own the shoreline slimed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker grounding.

Even then, courageous government inspectors and pipeline workers were screaming about corrosion all through the pipeline. I say "courageous" because BP, which owns 46% of the pipe and is supposed to manage the system, had a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warn of pipeline problems.

In one case, BP's CEO of Alaskan operations hired a former CIA expert to break into the home of a whistleblower, Chuck Hamel, who had complained of conditions at the pipe's tanker facility. BP tapped his phone calls with a US congressman and ran a surveillance and smear campaign against him. When caught, a US federal judge said BP's acts were "reminiscent of Nazi Germany."

This was not an isolated case. Captain James Woodle, once in charge of the pipe's Valdez terminus, was blackmailed into resigning the post when he complained of disastrous conditions there. The weapon used on Woodle was a file of faked evidence of marital infidelity. Nice guys, eh?

Now let's talk timing. BP's suddenly discovered corrosion necessitating an emergency shut-down of the line is the same corrosion Dan Lawn has been screaming about for 15 years. Lawn is a steel-eyed government inspector who has kept his job only because his union's lawyers have kept BP from having his head.

Indeed, it's pretty darn hard for BP to claim it is surprised to find corrosion this week when Lawn issued a damning report on corrosion right after a leak and spill were discovered on March 2 of this year.

Why shut the pipe now? The timing of a sudden inspection and fix of a decade-long problem has a suspicious smell. A precipitous shutdown in mid-summer, in the middle of Middle East war(s), is guaranteed to raise prices and reap monster profits for BP. The price of crude jumped $2.22 a barrel on the shutdown news to over $76. How lucky for BP which sells four million barrels of oil a day. Had BP completed its inspection and repairs a couple years back -- say, after Dan Lawn's tenth warning -- the oil market would have hardly noticed.

But $2 a barrel is just the beginning of BP's shut-down bonus. The Alaskan oil was destined for the California market which now faces a supply crisis at the very height of the summer travel season. The big winner is ARCO petroleum, the largest retailer in the Golden State. ARCO is a 100%-owned subsidiary of … British Petroleum.

BP could have fixed the pipeline problem this past winter, after their latest corrosion-caused oil spill. But then ARCO would have lost the summertime supply-squeeze windfall.

Enron Corporation was infamous for deliberately timing repairs to maximize profit. Would BP also manipulate the market in such a crude manner? Some US prosecutors think they did so in the US propane market. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) just six weeks ago charged the company with approving an Enron-style scheme to crank up the price of propane sold in poor rural communities in the US. One former BP exec has pleaded guilty.

Lord Browne, the imperious CEO of BP, has apologized for that scam, for the Alaska spill, for this week's shutdown and for the deaths in 2005 of 15 workers at the company's mortally sloppy refinery operation at Texas City, Texas.

I don't want readers to think BP isn't civic-minded. The company's US CEO, Bob Malone, was Co-Chairman of the Bush re-election campaign in Alaska. Mr. Bush, in turn, was so impressed with BP's care of Alaska's environment that he pushed again to open the state's arctic wildlife refuge (ANWR) to drilling by the BP consortium.

Indeed, you can go to Alaska today and see for yourself the evidence of BP's care of the wilderness. You can smell it: the crude oil still on the beaches from the Exxon Valdez spill.

Exxon took all the blame for the spill because they were dumb enough to have the company's name on the ship. But it was BP's pipeline managers who filed reports that oil spill containment equipment was sitting right at the site of the grounding near Bligh Island. However, the reports were bogus, the equipment wasn't there and so the beaches were poisoned. At the time, our investigators uncovered four-volume's worth of faked safety reports and concluded that BP was at least as culpable as Exxon for the 1,200 miles of oil-destroyed coastline.

Nevertheless, m'Lord Browne preens himself with his corporation's environmental record. We know BP cares about nature because they have lots of photos of solar panels in their annual reports -- and they've painted every one of their gas stations green.

The green paint-job is supposed to represent the oil giant's love of Mother Nature. But the good Lord, Mr. Browne, knows it stands for the color of the Yankee dollar.

BP claims the profitable timing of its Alaska pipe shutdown can be explained because they've only now run a "smart pig" through the pipes to locate the corrosion. The "pig" is an electronic drone that BP should have been using continuously, though they had not done so for 14 years. The fact that, in the middle of an oil crisis, they've run it through now, forcing the shutdown, reminds me, when I consider Lord Browne's closeness to George Bush, that the company's pig is indeed, very, very smart.

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Greg Palast, an energy economist and investigative reporter, is the author of "Exxon Valdez: A Well-Designed Disaster." His reports can be seen on BBC Television's Newsnight, Democracy Now! and in Harper's Magazine.

Beginning noon today, at http://www.gregpalast.com/mailing/link.php?URL=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5ncmVncGFsYXN0LmNvbQ%3D%3D&Name=&EncryptedMemberID=NjE3NzA%3D&CampaignID=24&CampaignStatisticsID=16&Demo=0&Email=bgiltner.6958@blogger.com, read, "Trillion Dollar Babies: Big Oil's War Bonus" from Palast's recently-released New York Times bestseller, "ARMED MADHOUSE: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War."

Media requests to: interviews(at)GregPalast.com

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Lying

Humint Events Online The 9/11 hijacking attacks were very likely facilitated by a rogue group within the US government that created an Islamic terrorist "Pearl Harbor" event as a catalyst for the military invasion of Middle Eastern countries. This weblog will explore the incredibly strange events of 9/11/01, and other issues of US government responsibility.

Lying By Spooked The question really is NOT whether the government and the media are lying about 9/11. There is no doubt they are lying about it to some degree. The question really is: HOW MUCH ARE THEY LYING? In my opinion, they are lying A LOT.