Summing it up then, both sides want peace, but the Palestinians reasonably want their land back first. Israel wants peace too, but not until it has stolen all of Palestine. It expects the Palestinians to accept this, shut up and leave.
Two US drone attacks have killed at least ten people in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region amid growing discontent over climbing number of civilian casualties. Security officials say the first strike hit a compound near Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan district. The missiles landed in an area where mainly Afghan refugees live. The identity of those killed is yet unknown. Islamabad has repeatedly condemned the attacks, saying they violate Pakistan's sovereignty.
Because it's 11 days before the 9 year anniversary of the "False Flag" attack known as 9/11 here is some Pre-9/11 History for those who still believe the official lie. The Real Story.
Diana Buttu appears on Al Jazeera’s Inside Story with two other guests to discuss the newest round of “direct talks” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In a recent Electronic Intifada interview with Nora Barrows-Friedman, Buttu notes:
The major concern is that we all know that this is going to fail. It doesn’t require anyone with any particular knowledge or foresight to realize that these talks are going to fail. The real question is what is going to come afterwards, and here is where I’m most concerned. For the past 17 years, the PLO, and in particular, Fatah, has had one strategy and only one strategy: negotiations, negotiations, negotiations.
And they have had only one strategy as regards to themselves, and that is survival. We are now at a stage where we are seeing that this is going to be — and I really hope that it is — the final blow to the logic and the ideology of negotiations, that people somehow have to negotiate their freedom.
The real question is, what is this leadership going to do? Is this leadership going to continue to hold us hostage to this tired, visionless lack of strategy? Or is something different going to come?
I’m not concerned with the talks, we know they are going to fail. My bigger concern is about what is going to happen once the talks fail, and is there going to be anybody who is going to come forward with a different plan, a different strategy, a different vision? And that is my fear. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Tony Blair came within seconds of ordering the RAF to shoot down a passenger jet over London in the aftermath of 9/11, his memoirs disclose. The airliner had breached emergency restrictions imposed on British airspace immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and was heading for London. Mr Blair disclosed in his autobiography, A Journey, that he had put the senior RAF commander on alert to await his order and a fighter jet was airborn in readiness to shoot down the airliner.
[Don't Buy 'A Journey' by Tony Blair. You'd just make him richer. -He came from nowhere and now is a very rich man because of his Journey into War Crimes & Evil]
Back in the public eye with the release of his memoirs, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair might lead one to believe it is 2003 all over again. Praising George W. Bush as a great leader and one of the most decisive men he had ever met, Blair also lauds the Iraq War. And if the Iraq War has somewhat faded in Americans’ memories with the myriad false declarations of victory in recent weeks, it is a much more bitter taste in Britain, where public hearings continue into how the nation was brought into such a disastrous conflict. Blair however chides antiwar people to “keep an open mind” and insists that the war was a great success. So great a success in fact that he seems eager to replicate it with a similar war against Iran on similarly false pretenses. How similar? Blair actually cites 9/11 and accuses Iran of “developing nuclear weapons” before concluding that there is “no alternative” to a military attack on them.
The invasion of the much small Iraq came on the basis of false links to 9/11 and false claims of the Iraqi government developing nuclear weapons. In addition to thousands of troops which died in the 7+ years of military occupation, an unknown and perhaps unknowable number of Iraqis were also slain. The number varies, from conservatively a few hundred thousand to well over a million.
Despite the hype, the Iraqi War remains far from over and the 50,000 US troops still on the ground in Iraq are all that is keeping Iraq’s fledgling military propped up, according to military commanders on the ground. “Their logistics systems are just, at this point, way below what their tactical competence requires,” insisted Col. Steven Apland, adding that he expects the new government to request US troops to stay beyond the end of 2011. Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, the new second in command for US troops in Iraq, echoed this opinion, saying that “the Iraqi government are looking at some of the gaps they are going to have in their capabilities in December 2011 and they are concerned about it.”
Of course six months after the election this “new Iraqi government” still hasn’t been formed, but the comments from the US military personnel on the ground point to a reality far different from that of the canned speeches of top officials here in the US, who maintain that the war ended at some point in the past couple of weeks and that the troops still there, if mentioned at all, are just doing some sort of training.
Boy, leave it to the media in this country. They are so wrapped up in a good story they care little about the very thing they are supposed to do. Tell the American people the truth. With the new right-wing media and the old supposedly "liberal" media that is close to right-wing, America gets a raw deal when it comes to getting the truth reported to them. Take the response to Obama's Iraq speech as an example. Who do the media look to to respond?? The liars who got us into a huge, costly, idiotic mistake to begin with.
Lies aren't used just to start wars, but also to escalate them, continue them, and even reduce or end them. And we got a pile of war lies from the president Tuesday evening. Obama claimed the war on Iraq was initially a war to disarm a state. Really? And then "terrorist" Iraqis attacked our troops in their country. Yet if they had done that in our country, I suspect they would still be the terrorists. And then it became a civil war which we were innocently caught up in. Uh huh. U.S. participants in this crime are heroes, always and everywhere. That's sacred. The troops' mission has involved protecting the Iraqi people, and by golly they've done a superb job, as long as we don't mention the complete devastation of Iraq, the million dead, the millions of refugees, and the intense resentment of those remaining toward our country for what we've done to theirs. The Iraqi people now (dead, in exile, in a ruined nation) have a chance that they supposedly didn't have before we destroyed their country, a country that was actually a better place to live in in every way in 2003 than it is now, and in 1989 than in 2003. To hear President Obama, this war has been for the benefit of the Iraqi people, and these wars have been about al Qaeda and 9-11. Obama slid into nonsense about al Qaeda after discussing Iraq and before mentioning Afghanistan, a Bushian maneuver if ever I saw one.
NEWLY RELEASED UNEDITED VIDEO REVEALS WTC 7 EXPLOSION PRECEDES COLLAPSE. Explosion heard at 0:11 mark, just before east penthouse collapse.
[Editor's Comment:] A demolition, alright. Controlled demolitions have to be prepared weeks in advance. -It can take months to set the charges, and set them correctly. Now, WTC7, in addition to housing the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which kept all the records from the Enron and WorldCom scandals (the largest bankruptcies in history), this building also
"housed high-level government offices including the FBI, CIA and the Secret Service. WTC 7 was also the storage facility for millions of files pertaining to active cases involving international drug dealing, organized crime, terrorism and money laundering" (Serendipity).
Does it then seem reasonable to assume that Osama bin Laden, allegedly operating out of a cave somewhere in Afghanistan, for weeks on end, could have been preparing the demolition of WTC7 right under the noses of FBI, FEMA, Secret Service and the CIA? -We don't think so. And considering the million of secret files...doesn't it also seem likely that the same government agencies would have wanted to get rid of all these incriminating files? We do think so. Given the fact that this was a controlled demolition, we now believe elements in the FBI, the CIA and FEMA were among the perpetrators of this heinous crime.
Since the stolen presidential election of 2004, Jonathan Simon has been at the forefront of analysis and research into election fraud in America. Yesterday, Simon published the result of his inquiry into the special election last January in which Ted Kennedy's Senate seat (from the nation's most solidly Democratic state) was offered up by the Democrats to a Tea Party Republican. This was an election with crucial national significance. The Democrats had exactly the 60-vote margin in the Senate needed to push through Obama's health care initiative over united Republican obstruction. Ted Kennedy had been a lifelong champion of that legislation, and his was widely regarded as a safe Democratic seat. State Attorney General Martha Coakley was supposed to be a shoo-in.
But Coakley campaigned half-heartedly -- some would say incompetently. The RNC shoveled money into the race. A media campaign before the election proclaimed that challenger Scott Brown was unexpectedly competitive. Most inexplicably -- perhaps this is the biggest clue -- Coakley conceded the race at midnight, with a quarter of the votes still uncounted.
Police in the central Bosnian town of Bugojno say they have identified the person seen throwing six newborn puppies into the river one by one. The disturbing video provoked worldwide outrage after being posted online earlier this week. Police say they have located the girl, who is apparently a juvenile, from leads given by animal protection groups in the country. The girl's parents will soon be questioned, police say. Under recently adopted animal protection law, people can be fined up to 5,000 euro for cruel treatment of animals. The head of the Sarajevo-based animals group SOS, Velimir Ivanisevic, said his organisation also had information according to which the girl was from Bugojno and the video was made by her brother. "It is a mirror of society and the fact that young people are doing such things shows how they have been raised," Mr Ivanisevic said. He warned that only sporadic cases of cruelty against animals get public attention in Bosnia while numerous brutalities go unreported.
64-year-old Tased by cops thrice in own home. 'Hard to imagine something so shocking could happen'A lawsuit has been launched against the sheriff's office in Marin County, Calif., over an episode in which deputies barged uninvited into a 64-year-old man's home and shot him three times with a Taser, screaming "stop resisting" while the incapacitated victim writhed in pain on the floor. The sheriff's version of the episode was that watching "selected" video segments of the events may mislead people.
The incident was reported by KGO-TV in San Francisco, which posted a video: The episode developed late in June when Peter McFarland, a consultant, returned home one night from a charity fundraiser and fell on his front steps, injuring his knee. Paramedics were called to treat his injury. Then as the paramedics departed, McFarland reported, two deputies barged in.
"All of a sudden they just showed up, came in here like there was a fire," he said. The deputies insisted on taking him to a hospital for an evaluation, according to the television report. "We're going to take you to the hospital for an evaluation," one deputy says on the video. "You said if you had a gun you'd shoot yourself in the head."
McFarland said that statement was no more than hyperbole, reflecting how much pain he was in from his fall and the fact he was exhausted. He refused to go and argued with the deputies. He told them to get out of his house and got up to go to bed.
That's when he was shot by the deputies, three times. The officers were yelling, "Stop resisting. Stop resisting," as he screamed unintelligibly while writhing uncontrollably on the floor. His wife was pleading for the officers to stop, telling them McFarland had a heart condition.
An offshore oil rig exploded and caught fire Thursday morning off the shore of Louisiana, sending 13 workers jumping into the water to be rescued by boat. Firefighters battled the flames on the rig’s platform throughout the day and had extinguished the fire by Thursday afternoon. The explosion comes a little more than four months after the April 20 blowout of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig, which left 11 workers dead and resulted in the largest environmental disaster in US history. The vessel catching fire on Thursday, Vermillion Oil Rig 380, was operating about 100 miles south of Louisiana’s Vermillion Bay, about 200 miles west of the BP site, in about 340 feet of water. The rig is operated by Houston, Texas-based Mariner Energy, the 8th largest natural gas producer and 24th largest oil producer in the US outer continental shelf.
On Monday, a man gunned down six members of a Roma family living on a ramshackle estate on the outskirts of the Slovak capital of Bratislava. The murderer, Lubomir Harman, aged 48, was a neighbor of the six victims. Harman had lost his job in 2008, having worked at no less than four different companies since the 1990s. He was a member of his local shooting club and owned six guns, including a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Having shot down the Roma family, which included a 12-year old boy, Harman continued his shooting spree. He claimed a seventh victim, a woman on a balcony, and wounded 15 others, including a 3-year old boy, before being shot down by police.
Last night (1 Sept. 2010) around 150 to 175 Israeli settlers, many armed, constructed an illegal outpost at a new location in the Baqa’a valley, east of Hebron, and attempted to harass a Palestinian family. The Israeli army did not attempt to disperse the settler gathering but later did partially raze the area on which the makeshift outpost buildings had been built – near the illegal Israeli settlements of Kiryat Arba and Givat Harsina, on the opposite side of Route 60, the road where four settlers were killed the previous night. ISM activists were staying in the house of Palestinian farmer Atta Jabr and his family, who have been subjected to numerous attacks due to the proximity of the illegal Harsina settlement and the nearby “Hill 18” outpost. The last incident was just two weeks when Atta and his pre-teen daughter were attacked by six settlers.
Following a visit yesterday to some young prisoners being held at the Megiddo Prison, lawyers for the Ministry of Detainees have stated that the young prisoners testified under oath that they had been interrogated and systematically electrocuted and tortured by Israeli intelligence officers in settlements near to Palestinian cities. According to Salim Redouane who was arrested near Qalqilya on 08.05.2010, he was kept in a camp near Tzofin for 3 hours before being transferred to the settlement of Ariel where he was questioned by Shin Bet interrogators. His head was repeatedly hit against the prison room wall in an effort to get him to confess and he was beaten severely. The investigators threatened to burn his skin if he did not confess to the accusations against him.
An offshore oil rig has exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, forcing 13 people into the water, one of whom was injured, the US Coast Guard said. "All 13 are accounted for and they are all wearing some sort of an immersion suit that protects them from the water," Coast Guard chief petty officer John Edwards told MSNBC, adding that the extent of any injuries suffered by the workers was not immediately clear. The new blast has raised fresh pollution concerns in the region, as the rig was still ablaze. The new explosion comes more than four months after a blast on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers and unleashed an environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.
[Updated at 2:08 p.m.] U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Elizabeth Bordelon tells CNN there is a sheen at the site of the production platform that measures approximately 1 mile by 100 feet. This information comes after Gov. Bobby Jindal who said there were reports of a mile-long sheen.
[Updated at 1:03 p.m.] Mariner Energy, owner of the production platform, said in a press release that no hydrocarbon spill has been reported after an initial flyover of the incident. "Mariner has notified and is working with regulatory authorities in response to this incident," the statement said. "The cause is not known, and an investigation will be undertaken. During the last week of August 2010, production from this facility averaged approximately 9.2 million cubic feet of natural gas per day and 1,400 barrels of oil and condensate." The company also said no injuries have been reported.
[Updated at 12:48 p.m.] David Reed, a paramedic on board the Rowan Gorilla II oil rig located 14 miles from the platform that exploded told submitted an iReport saying he saw all thirteen workers rescued from the water. “We were up here in the radio room and all of sudden we saw a whole bunch of smoke coming from the platform," Reed said. "Shortly after all the radios started lighting up like a Christmas tree. They called any helicopters in the area, any boats in the area to respond, they were saying there were people in the water. There were multiple people in the water.”
AL-KHALIL, (PIC)-- Hundreds of Israeli settlers began Wednesday erecting new settlement outposts in various West Bank locations in what one of them called "the proper Zionist response to the attack (by Palestinian resistance against settlers in Al-Khalil on Tuesday".
Relaying one such incident, a villager named Jabir told the Safa news agency that large numbers of settlers raided the Buq’a agricultural town east of Al-Khalil in the evening carrying large amounts of cement, sand, wood, and water tanks gearing themselves to build illegal outposts in the mountainous region east of the village. The land, which has an area of hundreds of acres, is owned by Abdel-Jawad Jabr, the source said.
“Citizens live in a state of fear and wish to stay in the mountains for fear of settler attacks,” Jabir said, adding that settlers are renewing attacks on the region in wake of resistance operations against them.
The move is one of a series of re-launched settlement activities in Al-Khalil which were put on hold because of the settlement freeze which will come to its term on Sept. 26.
In a separate incident, more than 50 Israeli settlers attacked Wednesday the home of Palestinian man Younis Idris near the scene of the operation that killed four settlers Tuesday evening in the Karyat Arba settlement east of Al-Khalil. Eyewitnesses reported that Israeli settlers attacked the house with stones and empty bottles and tried to set fire to it. A special Israeli force rushed to the scene to protect the settlers, who withdrew after terrorising the Palestinian residents of the house.
A similar attack was recorded on Wednesday afternoon by Zionist settlers on the Burqa village, north of Nablus. The unruly settlers threw stones at inhabitants and a nearby park. Local sources reported that a young man was taken to hospital after the settlers threw rocks at him.
Israel carries out an incursion into the Gaza Strip on the first day of the renewed reconciliation talks between Tel Aviv and the Palestinian Authority (PA). "Few hours ago, Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun…, where Israeli laborers were seen fixing the security fence in the so-called buffer zone," said Press TV's correspondent in the enclave, Ashraf Shannon, reporting on the Thursday incident.
"The buffer zone is an area of 300 meters along the Gaza Strip, declared by Israel, to prevent people from reaching there, especially farmers. But basically they are forcing a 1,000-meter no-go zone in that area. All the people were killed there, including civilians, women and children as well as farmers," he added.
The intrusion came as Israeli and PA officials are in Washington to resume the direct negotiations that broke off at the turn of 2009, when Israel launched a full-scale war on Gaza, killing more than 1,400 Palestinians. Many Palestinian groups have already abandoned hope in the US-brokered revival of talks, citing the White House's partiality towards Tel Aviv and saying that the acting PA chief, Mahmoud Abbas, does not represent all the Palestinians.
On the last night of August, the president used an Oval Office speech to boost a policy of perpetual war. Hours later, the New York Times front page offered a credulous gloss for the end of "the seven-year American combat mission in Iraq." The first sentence of the coverage described the speech as saying "that it is now time to turn to pressing problems at home." The story went on to assert that Obama "used the moment to emphasize that he sees his primary job as addressing the weak economy and other domestic issues — and to make clear that he intends to begin disengaging from the war in Afghanistan next summer." But the speech gave no real indication of a shift in priorities from making war to creating jobs. And the oratory "made clear" only the repetition of vague vows to "begin" disengaging from the Afghanistan war next summer. In fact, top administration officials have been signaling that only token military withdrawals are apt to occur in mid-2011, and Obama said nothing to the contrary.
[Sep 2, 2010] US-led forces in Afghanistan have killed at least 16 civilians over the past 24 hours, amid growing public rage over such attacks. Ten civilians have been killed in a NATO airstrike in the northern Takhar province. The victims were reportedly election campaign workers. Afghan President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned the attack on three vehicles carrying election campaign workers. "In the war on terror, pro-democracy people should be distinguished from those who fight against democracy," a statement quoted Karzai as saying. Earlier on Wednesday, six civilians were killed and several others injured in another aerial attack in the southern province of Kandahar. Witnesses say most of the victims were women and children. Loss of civilian lives at the hands of foreign forces has dramatically heightened anti-American sentiment among Afghans. Thousands have taken to the streets in recent months, protesting against rising civilian deaths by US-led forces. Large numbers of Afghans have been killed during NATO's air and ground operations since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
PressTV: [Sep 1, 2010] US-led strike kills more Afghan civiliansAnother US-led airstrike has killed several civilians in Afghanistan's troubled south, amid growing public discontent over such attacks. Afghan provincial officials say at least a dozen people were also injured in the attack, which took place in Kandahar Province on Wednesday, a press TV correspondent reported. NATO has yet to comment on the incident. The incident comes after foreign troops killed three civilians and injured three others in the southern province of Helmand. The US-led military alliance says two women died on Tuesday during an airstrike against alleged Taliban militants. Another civilian was killed in a separate NATO attack in the same region. Most of the NATO forces in Helmand are British and American service members. Loss of civilian lives at the hands of foreign forces has caused anti-American sentiments and deep anger among Afghans. Thousands have taken to the streets in recent months, protesting against rising civilian deaths by US-led forces.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will initiate Predator Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) flights out of Corpus Christi, Texas, beginning on Wednesday, according to a DHS press release. Flights will cover the Texas stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border, which means that aerial surveillance of the entire border, from California to Texas, is now complete.
"With the deployment of the Predator in Texas, we will now be able to cover the Southwest border from the El Centro sector in California all the way to the Gulf of Mexico in Texas, providing critical aerial surveillance assistance to personnel on the ground,"
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano stated on Monday, according to a Reuters report. The deployment comes just weeks after President Obama’s signing of the Southwest Border Security Bill, a supplement to the administration’s Southwest Border Initiative, which provides funding for beefing up border security, including the deployment of additional reconnaissance aircraft.
According to Der Spiegel, the report from a think-tank inside the German military warns that shrinking global oil supplies will threaten the world's economic foundations and possibly lead to mass-scale upheaval within the next 15 to 30 years. International trade would suffer as the cost of transporting goods across oceans would soar, resulting in "shortages in the supply of vital goods," the report states, as translated by Der Spiegel. The result would be the collapse of the industrial supply chain. "In the medium term the global economic system and every market-oriented national economy would collapse," the report states. That collapse could, in turn, cause many countries to abandon free markets principles, the report states. Deals would be struck between oil-exporting and oil-importing countries that would fix prices and remove large amounts of oil from the global market place.
From those same lovable folks who brought you the crimes and abuses of COINTELPRO comes the following brochure, printed at taxpayer expense by the FBI and intended to be issued to law enforcement, requesting that the Joint Terrorism Task Force be called in the event suspicious behavior is witnessed. And what is "suspicious behavior"? Defending the Constitution! Read it yourself on the inside page of the brochure. Defending the Constitution is cause to label you a terrorist suspect. Even referring to it is grounds for suspicion that you are a terrorist, with all the harassment that this suspicion implies!
Before we begin, a challenge: I defy anyone to find a single phrase in Obama’s speech on Iraq last night that couldn’t have issued forth from the foetid maw of George W. Bush (with the possible exception of his mentions of George W. Bush). Barack Obama’s Iraq speech last night is an impressive entry in the annals of war propaganda. In it, he glosses over a criminal war as ‘a remarkable chapter’ in US history, and creates the false impression that the occupation of Iraq is over. He places the responsibility rebuilding a society out of the rubble we created on the shoulders of the Iraqi people (we are, of course, blameless), and tells us that it’s time to ‘turn the page’ on a crime that is continuing, and for which not a single perpetrator has yet even been indicted. It is a wonder that he wasn’t struck by lightning before finishing.
While the US invasion and occupation of Iraq over the past seven years has inflicted multiple disasters on the country, many argue that the US assault on Iraq really began twenty years ago with the US-imposed economic sanctions. Joy Gordon, author of Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions, writes, "U.S. policymakers effectively turned a program of international governance into a legitimized act of mass slaughter." [includes rush transcript]
PARIS — The Swedish authorities announced Wednesday that they were reopening an investigation of rape allegations against Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks Web site, saying there was “reason to believe that a crime has been committed.” The announcement by Marianne Ny, director of public prosecution, marked yet another reversal in the convoluted case. Last month, Swedish prosecutors confirmed they had issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Assange on rape and molestation allegations, but dropped the rape charge after saying it was unfounded. But on Wednesday, Ms. Ny said in a statement that “considering information available at present, my judgment is that the classification of the crime is rape.” She said additional investigation was needed “before a final decision can be made.”
Xymphora: "Prosecutor reopens rape probe against WikiLeaks founder" - reopening what they previously said was a mistake, based on a re-complaint by a woman who was previously reported to be upset at the rape charge. The check from the CIA must have cleared.
Brian Springer - Spin: Using the 1992 presidential election as his springboard, documentary filmmaker Brian Springer captures the behind-the-scenes maneuverings of politicians and newscasters in the early 1990s. Pat Robertson banters about "homos," Al Gore learns how to avoid abortion questions, George Bush talks to Larry King about halcyon -- all presuming they're off camera. Composed of 100% unauthorized satellite footage, Spin is a surreal expose of media-constructed reality.
At least 12 NATO troops were killed across Afghanistan today, capping what has turned out to be the deadliest August yet since the war began. At least five US troops were among those killed, though the nationalities of all the slain have not yet been released. The deaths bring the NATO toll in Afghanistan to 489 this year, just shy of the record toll set in all of 2009. All eight months so far this year have been the deadliest such month in the war, and there is no indication that trend is going to change.
Pilger interviews several ex-CIA agents who purportedly took part in secret campaigns against democratic countries and who he claims are profiting from the war in Iraq. He investigates the School of the Americas in the U.S. state of Georgia, where General Pinochets torture squads were reportedly trained along with tyrants and death-squad leaders in Haiti, El Salvador, Brazil and Argentina. Duane Clarridge defends the right of the Empire to impose it's peculiar form of democracy on whomsoever... 'Get used to it, world'. Collected scenes from world-renowned journalist, author and documentary filmmaker John Pilger's excellent production, 'The War On Democracy'. THE WAR ON DEMOCRACY 7/10
President Obama praised President Bush's commitment to U.S. troops Tuesday as he announced a close to combat operations in Iraq that he said cost America a "huge price." Speaking from the same desk where Bush launched the war, Obama cast the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom -- demonstrated by the departure of 95,000 U.S. combat troops to a remaining force below 50,000 -- as an opportunity for America to "turn the page," both on American involvement in Iraq and American priorities at home, where the economy is still struggling to regain its footing.
Jason Ditz: Obama Lauds Fake End to Iraq War as ‘Historic Moment’ -Praises Bush for 'Commitment to Our Security'. President Barack Obama tonight made his carefully choreographed “end of the Iraq War” speech, assuring Americans that this fake end, as opposed to the other fake ends, stands as an “historic moment” in American history and a “milestone” that “should serve as a reminder to all the world” of America’s military leadership. Little attention was given to the 50,000 US troops still fighting in Iraq, beyond a vague mention to “transitional forces protecting our civilians.” The speech rather focused on the illusory military victory and included claims that security problems in Iraq are among “the lowest on record,” in spite of dramatically escalating attacks on the ground.
The truth that many Americans find hard to take is that that mass U.S. assassination on a scale unequaled in world history lies at the heart of America's military strategy in the Muslim world, a policy both illegal and never seriously debated by Congress or the American people. Conducting assassination operations throughout the 1.3 billon-strong Muslim world will inevitably increase the murder of civilians and thus create exponentially more "enemies," as Gen. McChrystal suggests -- posing a major long-term threat to U.S. national security. This mass assassination program, sold as defending Americans, is actually endangering us all. Those responsible for it, primarily General Petraeus, are recklessly seeking short-term tactical advantage while making an enormous long-term strategic error that could lead to countless American deaths in the years and decades to come. General Petraeus must be replaced, and the U.S. military's policy of direct and mass assassination of Muslims ended.
A senior Iranian lawmaker says investment of effort into preserving Israel's existence is futile and that the regime should give the Palestinians their rights. "The massive turn out of the world's Muslims on the Quds Day proves the fact that investment of effort to maintain the existence of the Israeli regime is a futile endeavor," deputy head of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of Iran's Parliament (Majlis) Hossein Sobhani-Nia said on Wednesday. Initiated by the late Founder of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Imam Khomeini, the International Quds Day is observed on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims all over the world are urged to hold rallies in support of the Palestinian resistance against what Imam Khomeini commonly referred to as "the illegitimate Israeli regime occupying Palestine."
[Editor's Comment:] What is the difference betwen a Zionist squatter ("settler") and a Zionist soldier? -The latter has a uniform. That's one difference. Another one is that whereas the soldiers steal Palestinian land indirectly, the squatters do so directly. Both groups, however, are choking life out of Palestine and stealing Palestinian land big time. There are more similarities though: Both the squatters and the soldiers kill, maim & torture Palestinians. On top of that, Israel is in fact nothing but a land grabbing military dictatorship masquerading as a so-called democracy. The lawmakers take their orders from the army and the army takes its orders from the settlers & rabbis, both of whom are religious extremists and both of whom are armed & dangerous. Now, the Resistance just killed four of Palestine's tormentors. Let us be clear about this: we do not condemn this attack. To put it bluntly: we sincerely hope they would kill more squatters, and soldiers too -as many as it would take to reverse the process of ethnical cleansing and Zionist land grab in Palestine.
Some on the Israeli left ("murder is not resistance") and some peaceniks who have their heads in a cloud have raised a great hue and cry about these killings. Ignoring the fact that Hamas now has claimed responsibility for them, and trying to save the Hamas of their dreams, they now speculate about who really could have been behind this, assuming that 1) killing these squatters is stupid somehow and that 2) it would only give the regular Zionist army a pretext for yet more attacks against Palestinian civilians. These people haven't realized yet that 1) the killings are not stupid. They are tragic but necessary and 2) that the Zionists fundamentally don't need pretexts of any sort, none whatever. Creating facts on the ground, the Zionists now are carrying out their age-old plan for the so-called Eretz Yisrael, no matter what. More importantly, the peaceniks don't seem to understand that for Palestine ever to be free again, blood has to flow, and abundantly so. There are no two ways about this. These people have no deeper understanding of the problem of Zionism, and as a consequence, they end up taking the side of the oppressors. A good place for them to begin would be to analyze the relationship between the squatters and the conscripted Zionist army. They might eventually come to the conclusion that the squatters are but the spearhead of a militant Zionist movement which has its roots in the age-old Talmudic mindset permeating all of Israeli society. This mindset has no room for "the other" -in this case the Palestians, all of whom are slated for etnical cleansing and/or utter extinction. Fools on the left and unrealistic peaceniks in the solidarity movement ought to shut up and analyze the dire predicament of the Palestinians plus the Zionist mindset. Rather than being the dupes of the Zionists, trying to drive a wedge between Hamas and the Palestinian people, we should all support Hamas and stop being coy about militant resistance against oppression.
As soon as it was published late last year,Torat Ha’Melech sparked a national uproar. When I went into the Jewish religious book emporium, Pomeranz, in central Jerusalem to inquire about the availability of a book called Torat Ha’Melech, or the King’s Torah, a commotion immediately ensued. “Are you sure you want it?” the owner, M. Pomeranz, asked me half-jokingly. “The Shabak [Israel's internal security service] is going to want a word with you if you do.” As customers stopped browsing and began to stare in my direction, Pomeranz pointed to a security camera affixed to a wall. “See that?” he told me. “It goes straight to the Shabak!”
According to the book’s author, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, “Non-Jews are “uncompassionate by nature” and should be killed in order to “curb their evil inclinations.” “If we kill a gentile who has has violated one of the seven commandments… there is nothing wrong with the murder,” Shapira insisted. Citing Jewish law as his source (or at least a very selective interpretation of it) he declared: “There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”
Xymphora: "How To Kill Goyim And Influence People: Leading Israeli Rabbis Defend Manual for For Killing Non-Jews" You can find fruitcakes in every religion making outrageously violent racist statements. However, the Jewish case is different. For one thing, Jewish religious writing contains more explicitly violent hatred against other groups. More importantly, Israel is a military dictatorship run by generals who take religious direction from the settler movement, and these Jewish fruitcakes are leaders of the settler movement. The Jewish crazies have inspired real violence, and their words could lead to massive genocide. It is not improper or bigoted to point out the direct connection between Jewish religious writing and Israeli state violence, particularly as the connection is becoming more dangerous.
Zuabi testified before UN panel probing Israeli naval commando raid that left nine Turkish citizens dead on May 31. Israeli Arab MK Hanin Zuabi testified before a United Nations panel probing Israel's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May, telling the panel that commandos who boarded the ships intended to kill, Army Radio reported on Tuesday. A UN inquiry team began hearings on Monday with Jordanian activists about the May 31 Israeli raid on a Turkish ship trying to break an Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. Nine Turkish activists were killed in the raid.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair regrets "with every fibre of his being" the victims of the Iraq war, but had no regrets over ousting Saddam Hussein, he writes in his memoirs published on Wednesday. Tony Blair’s long-awaited memoir says the former British prime minister doesn’t regret the Iraq war - although he wept for the victims - and carries revelations about the politician’s alcohol use, his interactions with the queen and his testy relationship with his successor. Tony Blair’s “A Journey” was stirring political passions as it hit bookstores Wednesday, with excerpts revealing that the former British prime minister cried for soldiers and civilians killed in Iraq, but still thought it was right to invade and topple Saddam Hussein. The decision to go to war remains Blair’s most divisive legacy. In excerpts from the book released by the publisher late Tuesday, Blair says
“I ... regret with every fibre of my being the loss of those who died.” “Tears, though there have been many, do not encompass it,” he says. But, he says, “on the basis of what we do know now, I still believe that leaving Saddam in power was a bigger risk to our security than removing him and that, terrible though the aftermath was, the reality of Saddam and his sons in charge of Iraq would at least arguably be much worse.” “I can’t regret the decision to go to war,” he says.
Griffin's COGNITIVE INFILTRATION is a lucid and compelling exposure of the contempt held by the official defenders the 9/11 myth for dissenters who have seen through their Big Lie. These officials expect that no one will be able to penetrate the murk of Sunstein's latest defense of the pretext for the US wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, now covertly expanding into many other countries. But with David Ray Griffin's book, everyone who is concerned with bringing their carnage and criminality to a stop, as well as to reverse the rapid erosion of civil liberties in this country, will have no difficulty remaining clear-headed in the face of the "cognitive infiltration" carried out by the holders of high office and their agents.
The building of new Israeli settlements on Palestinian territories will be one of the key and determining issues in upcoming peace talks that will be held in the US capital Washington DC. Israel has been criticised by all sides, including the US, for its illegal construction of thousands of homes, which have been separated by an imposing wall. Nour Odeh reports from the Palestinian village of Al-Walajeh in the West Bank, where many are suffering from the unlawful settlements.
U.S. forces lost 22 soldiers in Afghanistan, mostly to roadside bombs, since Friday, marking a bloody step-up in the insurgency as a major U.S.-led offensive seeks to capture the spiritual homeland of the Taliban movement in Kandahar. Five more U.S. soldiers were killed Tuesday, while three Afghan workers for the British charity Oxfam were killed by a roadside bomb in Badakhshan, which had been one of the safer places in the country.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released findings Monday on inspections carried out in late August of the facilities of two egg companies at the center of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened thousands in the US in recent months. The companies have issued recalls of more than 550 million potentially contaminated eggs. Inspectors found abominable conditions at Iowa farms operated by Quality Egg—parent company of Wright County Egg—and Hillandale Farms. Their findings included piles of manure, seeping manure, uncaged birds tracking manure, maggots and flies too numerous to count, and patently unsanitary work methods.
Submarines in the depths of Baikal may have solved one of the great mysteries of the Civil War. The long-lost gold of White commander Alexander Kolchak could be within reach of submersibles exploring the lake as part of a scientific mission. Environmentalists working with the mission told journalists: “Deep-sea vehicles found rectangular blocks with a metallic gleam, like gold, 400 metres below the surface.” Local residents say that sunken railway wagons found last year match those used on the Circum-Baikal Railway during the Civil War, fuelling rumours that the Admiral’s lost riches could be nearby. And the latest find, on the bed of Cape Tolstoy, has reinforced that hope.
Hurricane Earl could still stay out over the Atlantic, but it’s going to be a close call. So East Coast residents should practice evacuation in case hurricane Earl comes ashore. As powerful hurricane Earl heads away from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, federal officials are warning coastal residents from North Carolina to Maine to plan evacuation routes in case they need to seek safer ground. Based on the expected storm track, Earl may stay just out to sea and parallel the coast. But a storm surge from the hurricane could cause significant damage to the coast as its winds have already hit 135 miles per hour. Bill Read, the director of the National Hurricane Center, said Tuesday that he expects the first signs of the storm to come late Wednesday with big waves along the North Carolina coast. By Friday, Long Island and Cape Cod could see the big swells and dangerous rip currents.
A gunman shot dead six members of a Roma gipsy family and another woman in the Slovakian capital Bratislava yesterday. Fourteen more people were wounded in a gun battle with police following the murders - including a three-year-old boy and an officer who was shot in the head - before the gunman committed suicide. His identity and motives are still being investigated, police chief Jaroslav Spisiak said, although it is known that he was a Slovak aged about 50.
At least six more US-led soldiers have lost their lives in separate incidents in the troubled eastern and southern areas of Afghanistan. NATO issued a statement on Tuesday, announcing that four American soldiers were killed in a bombing attack in eastern parts of Afghanistan. In a separate incident, a fifth US soldier died in a militant attack in southern Afghanistan. The deaths bring the number of American troops killed in Afghanistan since Friday to 22. Meanwhile, an Estonian soldier died of injuries sustained in a bomb attack in southern Helmand Province. At least 485 US-led forces have lost their lives in Afghanistan so far this year. The increasing number of troop casualties in Afghanistan has caused widespread anger in the US and other NATO member states, undermining public support for the continuation of the Afghan war.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) have filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., demanding to know more about an alleged policy of assassinating Americans thought to be involved in terrorist activities. "The United States cannot simply execute people, including its own citizens, anywhere in the world based on its own say-so," Vince Warren, Executive Director of the CCR, said in a media advisory. "The law prohibits the government from killing without trial or conviction other than in the face of an imminent threat that leaves no time for deliberation or due process. That the government adds people to kill lists after a bureaucratic process and leaves them on the lists for months at a time flies in the face of the Constitution and international law." The groups have sued President Obama, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Department of Defense. WaPo: Civil liberties groups challenge constitutionality of secret U.S. program to target terror suspects for killing.
Less than two weeks ago Americans were glued to their TVs for footage of the “last brigade” of US soldiers withdrawing from Iraq. With embedded MSNBC journalists and in-studio officials trumpeting a military victory, an America exultant in having finally “won” the war, it was extremely successful, and that 50,000 US troops are still there and hundreds of Iraqis have died since the announcement was really only a minor hiccup. It was so successful, in fact, that the Obama Administration has decided to do it again, which is one of the advantages fake endings of wars have over actual endings.
We are still under siege, darkness...And hunger...
Do you still remember us?!
To get water we have to walk so far...To fill a bottle or a jar...
Do you still remember us?!
We still have No food...Or medicine to be fed...Our kids...are dying every day...
in their beds...And many have just tears to shed...
Do you still remember us?!
Death! is everywhere...that sometimes we have No place, to make Our prayer...
Do you still remember us?!
We have nothing but pain...illness...And daily sadness...to Share...
Do you really still remember us?! -At least in your prayer?!
***
Gaza children implore you! They are dying due to the blockade!
There is 'growing humanitarian crisis,' happening in Gaza...
There is an EXTREME restricted access, to food, water, and medicine!!
● We, reserve combat officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, who were raised upon the principles of Zionism, sacrifice and giving to the people of Israel and to the State of Israel, who have always served in the front lines, and who were the first to carry out any mission, light or heavy, in order to protect the State of Israel and strengthen it.
● We, combat officers and soldiers who have served the State of Israel for long weeks every year, in spite of the dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty all over the Occupied Territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country, and that had the sole purpose of perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people. We, whose eyes have seen the bloody toll this Occupation exacts from both sides.
● We, who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Territories, destroy all the values we had absorbed while growing up in this country.
● We, who understand now that the price of Occupation is the loss of IDF’s human character and the corruption of the entire Israeli society.
● We, who know that the Territories are not Israel, and that all settlements are bound to be evacuated in the end.
● We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements.
● We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.
● We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel’s defense.
● The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose – and we shall take no part in them.
Lebanese counter-intelligence continues to round up a number of alleged Mossad agents embedded inside the Lebanese political structure and telecommunications sector, according to reports reaching WMR from Beirut. Although Hezbollah provided Daniel Bellmare and his UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) office in Beirut with six DVDs showing Israeli surveillance drone footage of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s locations prior to his remote bombing assassination in February 2005, Bellemare wants Hezbollah to turn over more data on how Hezbollah was able to intercept Israel command and control communications with its drones over Beirut. WMR has learned that Bellemare’s team is riddled with Israeli agents and CIA agents who are also working on behalf of Israeli intelligence. Hezbollah has charged, and WMR has previously reported, that Mossad was behind the assassination of Hariri in order to rid Lebanon of Syrian forces and destabilize the country, thus weakening Hezbollah’s influence. The operation against Hariri, as WMR also previously reported, involved the CIA and operatives for the CIA proprietary firm Blackwater, now known as Xe Security. Israel is obviously concerned that some of its agents in Lebanon, of which there are many, may be double agents passing intelligence to Hezbollah.
SAN JOSE MINE, Chile—As Chilean government rescuers prepare to start the months long task of digging out 33 miners trapped half a mile below ground, questions are emerging about whether the men will be paid during their ordeal.
The firm that ran the mine, Cia. Minera San Esteban Primera, has said it may have to declare bankruptcy, because of the shutdown of the mine and the flurry of government investigations and civil actions it is facing. The local mining union has asked the government to step in and meet the San José payroll starting in September. But on Monday, government officials said that, while they are keen to assist the miners, the government isn't legally permitted to pay their salaries.
The salary debate unfolded Monday as the government made final preparations to start using a massive 30-ton drill to burrow down to where the miners have been holed up since Aug. 5. The government said it could take three to four months to reach the miners and then hoist them out.
A labor ministry subsecretary, Bruno Baranda, replied that the government "cannot legally, within the regulations, take over labor responsibilities such as paying salary or pension benefits." He and other government officials said the government had planned to offer the miners training and assistance in finding other jobs. That doesn't answer the question of how the workers' families will survive until they are rescued.
Three days before the direct peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are officially launched in Washington on Thursday, a Palestinian official revealed on Monday that Israel began to expand two Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The Palestinian state-run news agency Wafa has quoted Ghassan Daghlas, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) official, who is in charge of the Jewish settlement file in northern West Bank, as saying that the expansion have begun in the settlements of Elon Moreh and Giv'at Gilad north of Nablus.
"We saw the Israeli authorities allowing five caravans into the settlement of Elon Moreh north of the city of Nablus," said Daghlas, adding that similar expansion has taken place into the settlement of Giv'at Gilad on the road between Nablus and Qalqilia.
France's deportation of Roma is nothing short of state-sponsored racism. When will the international community stand up for us? What era are we living in? The sad answer is that we are living – once again, it would seem – at a time when France is harassing and expelling its Romany population in the name of law and order. Last week, the French government began the roundup of more than 700 Romany immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania, and ordered special flights chartered to send them back to their home countries. The deportations will begin on Thursday. Over the past month, the French government began dismantling Romany camps; at present, more than 50 camps all over France have been destroyed by the state. At the same time, France has announced two other policies directed at Roma, Travellers and other immigrants: the criminalisation of entire families rather than just individuals and the stripping of citizenship from immigrants with criminal convictions.
The actual footage of Pastor Steven Anderson getting Tazed and breaten by DHS agents! We also examine interstate check points and watch how the pros from www.CheckpointUSA.org handle it.
As official videographer for the U.S. government, Kurt Sonnenfeld was detailed to Ground Zero on September 11, 2001, where he spent one month filming 29 tapes: "What I saw at certain moments and in certain places ... is very disturbing!" He never handed them over to the authorities and has been persecuted ever since.
Gareth Williams was a UK spy "who made regular trips to the US National Security Agency." On 23 August 2010, the police found his body in an MI6 flat near to MI6 HQ in London. According to "a source" Mr Williams’ body was found during a "welfare check" by police following a call from one of his colleagues at GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) in Cheltenham. According to Nicholas Anderson, a Former MI6 agent, "It took nearly two weeks for the FCO (Foreign & Commonwealth Office) employee assistance head to follow up on why he hadn't been at work."
Iran's oil output stood approximately at 3.8 mil-
lion bpd in 2009.
Iran has discovered 13 new oil and gas fields with in-place reserves of 14 billion barrels of oil and 45 trillion cubic feet of natural gas within the past 12 months.
The Islamic Republic has also exported around 2,200,600 barrels of oil per day in the past year, according to a report published on the Oil Ministry's SHANA news agency.
The report added that Iran's revenue from oil exports during the past year reached $69.1 billion.
Earlier this year, National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) director of exploration Mahmoud Mohaddes announced plans to explore new reserves of 500 million barrels of oil and 5 trillion cubic feet of gas per year during a five year plan. Mohaddes said that during the course of Iran's fourth five-year development plan (2005-2010), the country has discovered 19 new oil fields and eight new gas reserves.
Iran is OPEC's second-largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia. In 2009, Iran's crude production stood approximately at 3.8 million barrels per day. The Persian Gulf country sits on the world's second-largest gas reserves after Russia.
Two private security contractors in Afghanistan were killed by coalition forces who mistook them for "insurgents", the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said Saturday. The incident happened Friday on a highway in the central province of Wardak, ISAF said. A coalition patrol on the highway had just been fired at by insurgents in a location known as a hot spot for attacks, ISAF said. A vehicle then approached the coalition patrol at a high rate of speed with a man shooting out of the vehicle's windows.
"Perceiving the vehicle to be a threat, the gunner fired at the vehicle and killed two of the occupants," ISAF said.
The truth that many Americans find hard to take is that that mass U.S. assassination on a scale unequaled in world history lies at the heart of America’s military strategy in the Muslim world, a policy both illegal and never seriously debated by Congress or the American people. Conducting assassination operations throughout the 1.3 billon-strong Muslim world will inevitably increase the murder of civilians and thus create exponentially more "enemies," as Gen. McChrystal suggests—posing a major long-term threat to U.S. national security. This mass assassination program, sold as defending Americans, is actually endangering us all. Those responsible for it, primarily General Petraeus, are recklessly seeking short-term tactical advantage while making an enormous long-term strategic error that could lead to countless American deaths in the years and decades to come. General Petraeus must be replaced, and the U.S. military’s policy of direct and mass assassination of Muslims ended.
Following Obama 'Victory' Address, Efforts to Sell End of War Ring Hollow. It has been a week and a half since the American public was told in no uncertain terms that the “last brigade” had left Iraq, and President Obama took time out of his vacation yesterday to declare his campaign pledge to end the war “a promise kept.” Pointing out that the war hasn’t really ended is of considerable interest to some Americans, notably the families of the 50,000 US troops still fighting it, but nowhere is the reality of the situation more sobering than on the streets of Baghdad where, after seven and a half years of American occupation, the rising violence and the prospect of several more years of occupation and fighting make this supposed “end” a tough line to swallow. Not that Iraqi media outlets aren’t desperately trying to go along with the “end” terminology, reporting that a sniper shot what would have been, in any other time, called a US combat soldier. But now he is a “US reconstruction team servicemen entrusted with protecting the US reconstruction,” and his being shot must come with two paragraphs about how the US has withdrawn all combat forces.
That the withdrawal was a complete fiction, however, is not a closely guarded secret, and in the run-up US officials readily admitted that their plan was to simply rename all their combat troops to something else so they could announce there weren’t any left. This has left the post-announcement reporting centered primarily around stating the obvious or towing the official line.
Hundreds of infrastructure projects are incomplete or abandoned. A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children's hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets. As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted — more than 10 percent of the some $50 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency. That amount is likely an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. And it does not take into account security costs, which have run almost 17 percent for some projects.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rushed on Sunday evening to distance himself and his government from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s death wish for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian people, after the flood of angry Palestinian reactions to the comments. “These words do not reflect the approach of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, nor the position of the government of Israel,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: A US-Israeli exploration group said on Sunday it will begin drilling for natural gas at a new site off Israel’s Mediterranean coast in October and that there was a small possibility of reaching oil under the gas. The main objective in drilling at the Leviathan prospect is to recover commercial amounts of natural gas.
Noble Energy, which leads the group and owns 40 percent of Leviathan, has said the well has gross unrisked mean resources of 16 trillion cubic feet of gas [453 billion cubic meters] and has a 50 percent geologic chance of success. The consortium also includes Delek Drilling and Avner Oil Exploration, which hold 22.7 percent each, and Ratio Oil Exploration with another 15 percent. Delek Drilling and Avner are units of conglomerate Delek Group. The group said in a statement they will be drilling at a depth of 5,095 meters for natural gas. It said that a secondary target would be to drill for oil at depths of 5,800 to 7,200 meters. The upper layer has gross unrisked mean resources of 3 billion barrels of oil but the probability of geological success is 17 percent. The lower layer is estimated to have 1.2 billion barrels of oil but its probability of success is just eight percent. Israeli energy shares were up 6 to 9 percent.
National service? I hear the left-wing collectivists pushing this idea on the public on talk shows and written media. Yeah - we're all going to get together, bring shovels, pickaxes, hoes, hammers, saws - and with donated materials we will, together, rebuild our now-crumbling police state into a shiny new police state. But there is one thing President Soetoro and his NWO cronies ask you to leave at home - your brain. Serve your country as a citizen - not a slave. Hold your "representatives" accountable - there is strength in numbers.
A July 14, 2010 file photo shows protester Greg Johnson,
right, and counter protesters Ina Marshall and Tim Foster,
left, arguing during a demonstration against a planned
mosque and Islamic community center in front of the
Rutherford County Courthouse in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
One of the most under-reported political stories is the increasingly vehement, nationwide movement -- far from Ground Zero -- to oppose new mosques and Islamic community centers. These ugly campaigns are found across the country, in every region, and extend far beyond the warped extremists who are doing things such as sponsoring "Burn a Quran Day." And now, from CBS News last night, we have this:
Fire at Tenn. Mosque Building Site Ruled Arson. Federal officials are investigating a fire that started overnight at the site of a new Islamic center in a Nashville suburb. Ben Goodwin of the Rutherford County Sheriff's Department confirmed to CBS Affiliate WTVF that the fire, which burned construction equipment at the future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, is being ruled as arson....The chair of the center's planning committee, Essim Fathy, said he drove to the site at around 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning after he was contacted by the sheriff's department. "Our people and community are so worried of what else can happen," said Fathy. "They are so scared"...
ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the “ground zero mosque.” This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to “reclaim the civil rights movement” (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier.
The concert was one of the “Commanding General’s Spiritual Fitness Concerts,” and featured the band Barlow Girl. According to the band’s web site, BarlowGirl is “tender-hearted, beautiful young women [they are three sisters] who aren’t afraid to take an aggressive, almost warrior-like stance when it comes to spreading the gospel and serving God.” Major General William E. Chambers, a self-described born again Christian, created the Commanding General’s Spiritual Fitness Concert series at Fort Eustis when he was the commanding general there. The revelation that US soldiers were punished for refusing to attend a religious rock concert on their base is the latest evidence that Christian fundamentalism is supplanting the Constitution in the American military.
A series of leaks to the New York Times and the Washington Post over the past week has revealed that members of the Afghan government headed by President Hamid Karzai are paid agents and informers of the CIA. The revelations began on August 25 when senior Times’ correspondents Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti reported that a close aide of Karzai who is accused of corruption, Mohammed Zia Salehi, had been on the CIA payroll for “many years”. The information was provided by anonymous sources “in Kabul and Washington,” suggesting it came from high up within the US military or the Obama administration itself. Two days later, the Washington Post cited other US sources alleging that the “CIA is making secret payments to multiple members of the Karzai administration”. The Post stated:
“The CIA has continued the payments despite concerns that that it is backing corrupt officials and undermining efforts to wean Afghans’ dependence on secret sources of income and graft”.
The CIA revelations underscore the cynical nature of the American propaganda used to justify the war since 2001. Venal individuals who take payments from a foreign occupying power and plunder the country have been portrayed as the representatives of a democratic future for Afghanistan. The Afghans who have resisted the occupation and fought for the liberation of the country have been labelled terrorists, killed in their tens of thousands and hunted down by 150,000 foreign troops.
Floodwaters have inundated a large town in southern Pakistan, spreading further destruction in an area where hundreds of thousands of people who fled to higher ground are in dire need of food and water.
Almost all of Sujawal's 250,000 residents fled from the town before the water rushed in, but the damage to homes, clinics and schools added to the widespread devastation the floods have caused across Pakistan, said Hadi Baksh, a disaster management official in southern Sindh province.
Authorities in Sujawal were trying to limit the damage, but the water level has already risen to 5ft (1.5m) in the centre of town and up to 10ft (3m) in the surrounding villages, said Anwarul Haq, the top official in Sujawal.
The floodwaters also threatened Thatta, one of the major cities in southern Sindh and the base of operations for local authorities trying to cope with a disaster that has overwhelmed the Pakistani government and international partners who have stepped in to help.
The floods began in the mountainous North West about a month ago with the onset of monsoon rains and have moved slowly down the country toward the coast in the south, inundating vast swaths of prime agricultural land and damaging or destroying more than a million homes.
"A Friday Dose Of Father Coughlin - August 27, 1939". Coughlin is, of course, a 'monster', because he believed usury was evil and because he was against American involvement in the Second World War (and because he was an 'anti-Semite'). Coughlin believed:
1. Unions should be strengthened. 2. Child labor should be stopped. 3. The working man should have a living wage. 4. Wealth should be redistributed through increased taxation of the wealthy. 5. The Federal Reserve should be nationalized to end the Depression by preventing the cash squeeze imposed by the banksters (I wonder what he'd think of the cash squeeze the banksters have the United States under today?). 6. New Deal policies were correct (but he later turned against Roosevelt believing that Roosevelt had been captured by the banksters). 7. Money wasted on wars should be distributed to the poor.
In summary, an utter monster. It is hilarious that 'progessives' in America are trying to make some kind of point by airing radio broadcasts from the 1930s of a guy who was so far to the left to be unrecognizable to today's 'progressives'.
JERUSALEM: Just ahead of renewed peace talks between Israel and the Palestine, an influential Israeli spiritual leader has denounced the move, dubbing the Palestinians and their leader "an evil and bitter enemies of Israel"who should "perish from this world."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the upcoming launch of peace talks an opportunity to secure endurable peace, lasting generations. But, Ovadia Yosef, spiritual head of the religious Shas party in the government, denounced the talks, scheduled to kickstart on September 2, and said,
"Abu Mazen (nom de guerre for Abbas) and all these evil people should perish from this world," "God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians," Rabbi Ovadia was quoted as saying during his weekly sermon at a synagogue near his Jerusalem home.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu today said he is optimistic that a that a deal will be reached during the talks.
Sound too conspiratorial to be true? Like the cover-up ops of spy novels? Well, it's reality. And it is possibly the most bizarre, inhumane and abusive way that the White House is expanding its power over the American people. It's not an extremist belief or theory of the far right. It's a fact that has been confirmed by The New York Times, The Washington Post and MSNBC and even documented by the far-left online magazine Salon.com. And it's the gravest nightmare of U.S. citizens and abandonment of our Constitution to date: a presidential assassination program in which U.S. citizens are in the literal scopes of the executive branch based upon nothing more than allegations of terrorism involvement as the branch defines it.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Seven U.S. troops have died in weekend attacks in Afghanistan's embattled southern and eastern regions, NATO said Sunday. Two servicemen died in bombings Sunday in southern Afghanistan, while two others were killed in a bomb attack in the south on Saturday and three in fighting in the east the same day, NATO said. Their identities and other details were being withheld until relatives could be notified. The latest deaths bring to 42 the number of American forces who have died this month in Afghanistan after July's high of 66. A total of 62 international forces have died in the country this month, including seven British troops.
Fighting is intensifying with the addition of 30,000 U.S. troops to bring the total number of international forces in Afghanistan to 120,000 — 100,000 of them American. Most of those new troops have been assigned to the southern insurgent strongholds of Helmand and Kandahar provinces where major battles are fought almost daily as part of a gathering drive to push out the Taliban.
This 30-second ad will appear on TV screens all over New York City. Please go to BuildingWhat.org to contribute. Every $750 raised will allow 10,000 more New Yorkers to see the collapse of Building 7 for the first time.
A federal cybersecurity bill that critics say creates a presidential "kill switch" for the Internet could be added on to a defense spending bill and passed without much debate, technology news sources report. Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE), one of the sponsors of the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, told GovInfoSecurity.com that the Senate is considering attaching the bill as a rider to a defense authorization bill likely to pass through Congress before the mid-term elections. "It's hard to get a measure like cybersecurity legislation passed on its own," Carper said.
Backstage at the Restoring Honor event in Washington, Sarah Palin talks to reporters about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“I hope that Dr. King would be so proud of us, as his niece Dr. Alveda King is very proud as a participant in this rally,” Palin says. “This is sacred ground where we feel his spirit and can appreciate all of his efforts. He who so believed in equality and may we live up to his challenge.”
PressTV: Dream deferrers converge on DC. A huge rally of US conservatives in Washington has drawn criticism from progressive groups as it has coincided with the anniversary of a civil rights event. At the "Restoring Honor" rally, about 100,000 conservatives and advocates of the Tea Party movement gathered at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday to, as the organizers of the event said, honor US principles. The event was led by right-wing icons such as Fox News conservative talk show host Glenn Beck and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, AFP reported. But African-Americans and civil rights groups have criticized the organizers' choice of time for holding the rally since it coincides with the 47th anniversary of civil rights legend Martin Luther King Jr.'s historical speech at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall.
Two vessels carrying 46 international human rights activists have reached the Gaza Strip, despite Israel's strict 14-month siege of the Palestinian territory. The end of the mission to symbolically break the siege came after Israel backed down from an earlier warning to the 'Free Gaza' protest group not to breach the blockade. Al Jazeera's Ashraf Amritti in Gaza said:
"The arrival of these two boats is a very symbolic gesture for the Palestinian cause, to end the siege, end the occupation. In fact, those phrases are written across the peace boats which carry flags from more than 70 nationalities."
The boats set sail on Friday on a 370km voyage from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus carrying activists from 17 countries, including Israel, with the aim of drawing attention to Israel's blockade of Gaza and its affect on the people there. The boats sailed through choppy waters into Gaza City's main port on Saturday, where they were greeted by thousands of people waving Palestinian flags, many of them sailing around the harbour in boats.
The senate blocks investigation of BP. The House voted 420 to 1 to give the presidential commission investigating the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico full subpoena power. The Senate blocked it. No subpoena powers. No real investigation.
Here is an important matter that I have been sitting on for days and that people who care about American support for Palestinian oppression need to be aware of: the extent to which Firedoglake, a leading progressive site, suppresses criticism of Israel. The battle demonstrates that even inside the left, the Israel lobby is a strong force. Indeed, the founder of the site, movie producer Jane Hamsher, has dismissed concern for Palestinians as a "pet issue." As I have said often, our country cannot make progress on this critical policy issue until people who care about Palestinian freedom find one another and make a political combination to take on the Israel lobby. And one way we will find one another is by taking on the corruption inside the left when it comes to human rights in Palestine.
The latest evidence of FDL's entrenchment is an exchange yesterday at Firedoglake's community site, The Seminal. An FDL author whom I follow-- Kathleen Galt, who writes under the name Leen and for whom Palestine is front and center-- did a post called "Change?" saying that Israel/Palestine continues to be off limits for the liberal mainstream media.
Today, a personal story of a national tragedy. Five years ago, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-born New Orleans building contractor, stayed in the city while his wife and children left to Baton Rouge. He paddled the flooded streets in his canoe and helped rescue many of his stranded neighbors. Days later, armed police and National Guardsmen arrested him and accused him of being a terrorist. He was held for nearly a month, most of which he was not allowed to call his wife, Kathy. Today, in a rare broadcast interview, Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun join us to tell their story, along with the man who chronicles it in the book Zeitoun, Dave Eggers. [includes rush transcript]
I am deeply confused by the claim in the article The Deaths that Chilcot Forgot and published by the Morning Star, that according to Iraq Body Count only 106,000 violent deaths have occurred within Iraq since 2003, a figure that is contrary to everybody who actually works inside of Iraq, when even according to the Iraqi Government themselves, there are now, at minimum, over three million orphans within Iraq.
Couple that with the fact that over one million widows have been created since 2003 and in 2006/2007 alone, at the height of the sectarian tensions, there were an estimated 3.000 deaths "reported" per month and these figures do not even include the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi deaths caused by the UN imposed sanctions .
Majority of the hospitals have also been unable to keep an accurate record of Iraqi deaths, due to shortages and with civilians also being fearful of collecting the deceased from mortuaries because of the various death squads, the reality is that Iraqi deaths caused by the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, is likely to exceed even the one million number, that is universally recognised by all consistent organisations and international bodies.
As Iraq Body Count only include the deaths which have been "documented" by the Western media , the denialism that now exists surrounds the fact that many undocumented deaths do include those who have died due to a lack of medicines, trauma related suicides, shrapnel and combat induced injuries, along with birth defects and still births, caused by displacement and the use of chemical and biological weapons.
Shortly after Australia banned flu vaccines in children due to an alarming increase in vomiting, fevers and seizures caused by the vaccines (http://www.naturalnews.com/029586_A...), Finland has now suspended H1N1 vaccines due to increased reports of narcolepsy in children and teens. Narcolepsy is a nervous system disorder characterized by extreme fatigue and daytime sleepiness. It indicates a serious malfunction of the brain and nervous system.
Finland is now reporting that narcolepsy is appearing in children immediately following vaccination with H1N1 vaccines. So far, six children are confirmed of suffering the neurological side effect and nine more are in the process of being confirmed, reports The Epoch Times (http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/con...).
Israel planning to attack Hezbollah arms depots in Syria. Israel cannot exist without attacking someone. War is in their blood. And the U.S. should be held responsible for this disease. After all, if it were not for the U.S. supplying Israel with over $3 billion a year in the most sophisticated weapons Israel would not be the monster it is today. Israel is not satisfied until they eliminate every one of its Arab neighbors, falsely portraying themselves as the victims while promoting this lunatic idea that the Arabs intend to “wipe Israel off the map.” For your information, there hasn’t been anything even resembling Israel being wiped off the map, while we have seen in just the last few years, all of Gaza nearly wiped off the map and the same thing true with Southern Lebanon. Now if Syria or Hezbollah made a pre-emptive attack on Israel right now, especially with this latest intelligence on Israel’s military buildup on Syria’s border, who do you think would be blamed for the attack? Of course, Syria and Hezbollah would be blamed. Israel would be given the green light to retaliate and the U.S. would support Israel all the way.
Unusual Evacuations & Power-Downs in the WTC 911 Demolition: Take a close look at the manner in which WTC 7 collapses straight down. For the building to collapse in this fashion, all of the load bearing supports would have had to fail at exactly the same time. The claim that the collapse was the result of a fire requires the fire be equally distributed throughout the entire floor of the building, providing equal heat for an equal amount of time, so that all the load bearings members would fail at the exact same moment. Do you find this plausible?
Barack Obama plans to visit Jerusalem and Ramallah in the coming year to press Israel and the Palestinians to make painful concessions in order to clinch a historic Middle East peace agreement in 2011. The president, who set Middle East peace as one of his top foreign policy goals, will oversee the relaunch of direct peace talks between the sides next week in Washington. In order to achieve the ambitious target date set for a comprehensive peace agreement within a year, leading to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, the president plans to take a hands-on approach. He will make his first visit as president to Israel and the West Bank to shore up support for the deal.
German intellectuals on Saturday called for an end to US and Israeli military threats to Iran. They criticized the United States for orchestrating UN sanctions on Iran over nuclear program. More than 40 prominent German personalities, among them politicians, lawyers, artists, publishers and journalists, urged the UN Security Council in a petition to deal with ongoing US and Israel threats against Iran, saying it was a 'clear violation of the UN Charter.' The intellectuals accused the US of wanting nothing less than Iran's total surrender on the issue which they said was simply unacceptable. The row over Iran's nuclear program has become a matter of 'national dignity', the statement said. The group reaffirmed the need for 'serious and credible negotiations' based on 'the fact' that Tehran was not even interested in having a military nuclear program. The peace activists stressed that Iran could not 'be forced' to give up part of its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), alluding to Tehran's right to have uranium enrichment.
Police in Afghanistan have confirmed that the US-led warplanes are to blame for the killing of six Afghan children in the country's volatile east. Police said on Friday that the children were collecting scrap metal in the mountain of eastern Kunar Province when a US-led plane dropped bombs on the area on Thursday.
"In the bombardment six children, aged six to 12, were killed. Another child was injured," AFP quoted a regional police commander as saying.
NATO confirmed in a statement that the US-led military alliance has carried out an airstrike in the mentioned area. The US-led attacks have left several Afghan civilians dead across the country over the past few days.
In a recent meeting with US Congressmen, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that the United States was not making progress in the war because of the growing civilian casualties. The issue of civilian casualties has long been a source of friction between Kabul and Washington. The UN has put the number of civilian casualties at nearly 1,300 so far this year. It blames a quarter of the deaths on foreign troops.
Antiwar: Bombing in Kunar Province Killed Children Collecting Scrap Metal. In the wake of ana revenge attack on an apparent Taliban attack on a police station in the Kunar Province, NATO warplanes bombed a group of small children between the ages of 6-12, killing six of them and wounding one other. The children were collecting scrap metal on a nearby mountain. There were apparently no Taliban at the site of the attack, according to local police. NATO said it was “aware” of the reports and is investigating.
Three weeks ago the US Defence Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) published a notice, as it is legally required to do, announcing that Israel has ordered massive quantities of various fuels suitable for military use, and in the case of the order for JP-8 jet fuel, suitable only for military use. The massive order is valued at some $2 billion and, as well as the 284 million gallons (1.075 billion litres) of JP-8 jet fuel, the order also includes 60 million gallons (227 million litres) of unleaded gasoline and 100 million gallons (378 million litres) of diesel fuel.
The Israeli government has issued a statement warning Palestinians of the consequences of their efforts to extend a permanent appeal to the international community about Israel's occupation. Issued by the Foreign Ministry, the document warns against Palestinian efforts to draw the attention of various UN agencies to Israel's practices and human rights violations in the occupied territories and inside Israel itself. According to the Ministry's statement, the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is also preparing to submit an appeal to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, asking for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails and detention camps to be declared "prisoners of war". In a telling link to the current settlement "freeze", due to end next month, the document drew attention to the Palestinians' threat of what the Foreign Ministry calls "civil disobedience" in response to the expected resumption of settlement construction.
An article in Hebrew-language Yediot Wednesday reported the Palestinian Authority-led boycott of settlement-produced goods is having an economic effect on settlement industry, according to a translation by Israeli news blog Coteret. Officials and business owners from the Ariel settlement attested to the effects of both the Palestinian-led boycott of settlement goods as well as the impact from international solidarity boycotts like the divestment announced in Norway Monday.
Ted Clement-Evans introduces a detailed and forensic-like analysis of the transcript of the BBC Panorama programme “Death on the Med”, broadcast on 16 August 2010, which reveals chronic bias and lack of impartiality on the part of the BBC. An extraordinary document has been sent to the BBC – a carefully detailed and forensic-like analysis of the transcript of the Panorama programme “Death on the Med”, broadcast on 16 August 2010. Below is the transcript of this programme, together with the resulting dissection and complaint of bias and lack of impartiality which is now in the hands of the BBC.
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US drone attacks kill 10 in Pakistan 
