by Lisa Guliani
Patsy Smullin has run KOBI-TV for the last 30 years, and her father founded it. If anybody would have known Jeff Rense and the supposed 5,000 newscasts he claims to have made, it would be Patsy.
As it happens, Patsy Smullin does remember Jeff Rense, and in two different telephone conversations I had with her over the past few days, she confirmed that he did have a position at her television station for a brief time as a reporter and news anchor. Smullin stressed that Jeff Rense, or “a guy calling himself Jeff Rense” (her words), was employed at KOBI (an NBC affiliate) from June 1983 to May 1984, and she is not aware of him working at any other station in the state of Oregon either prior to his employment at KOBI-TV or afterward. [I would think if he'd worked at other stations previous to his KOBI position, these would be listed on his job application or resume when given to KOBI-TV.]
Patsy had more to say. She revealed that in her experience as Jeff Rense’s employer (and this is a direct quote), “He was not known for his honesty.” Think about it. Patsy Smullin was Rense’s employer some twenty-odd years ago. After all this tiime, the characteristic that has remained clearly in her memory is that “he was not known for his honesty”. What does that say to you? According to Ms. Smullin, at that time Jeff was also involved in several court battles with other people. One wonders if it has anything to do with him not being known for his honesty?
When asked if she could elaborate on the comment she'd made regarding Rense not being known for his honesty, her response was: "Sure. He was a compulsive liar." Also, when questioned as to the claim that Jeff anchored and produced “5000 newscasts,” Patsy Smullin laughed heartily and stated, “This is absolutely false. He never did that here.” Okay, if not at KOBI-TV, then where? Perhaps Jeff Rense will reveal this to us all at some point so we can check it out.
But on his own website, Jeff Rense claims to have been an award winning news director and TV news anchor for 10-12 years (accounts vary). If not at KOBI, then where?
read moreLabels: Jeff +Rense+reinvention+of+what
May 29, 2006 - 2:09PM
Volcanologists were wondering why a lake atop a rumbling volcano on the South Pacific island of Ambae has changed colour from blue to bright red.
Mount Manaro, one of four volcanos currently active in the island nation of Vanuatu, has been showing signs of erupting for only the second time in 122 years.
Vanuatu, formerly called the New Hebrides Islands, is a chain of 13 main islands 2,300 km east of north-east Australia.
"We are still ... trying to understand this change of colour in the lake from blue to red," Geology and Mines Department director Esline Garae said by telephone from the Vanuatu capital, Port Vila.
read more
May 30, 2006
Der Spiegel
In an interview with SPIEGEL, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad discusses the Holocaust, the future of the state of Israel, mistakes made by the United States in Iraq and Tehran's nuclear dispute with the West.
read more
May 31, 2006
Two Iraqi women, one of them pregnant, were shot by US-led coalition forces on Wednesday after their car failed to stop at a checkpoint. The incident could raise already high tensions after Iraq's prime minister condemned the alleged killing of civilians by US Marines last November.
The US military said two Iraqi women were shot to death in a city north of Baghdad after coalition forces fired at a car that failed to stop at an observation post, according to the Associated Press. The announcement came after Iraqi police said a pregnant woman and her cousin were killed by American troops as they were driving to a maternity hospital in Samarra, a Sunni city 100 kilometers north of Baghdad.
Television news footage showed bodies wrapped in sheets outside a hospital in Samarra, while residents pointed to bullet holes on the windshield of a car and a pool of blood on the seat. "I was with the victims, one of them was pregnant and about to give birth," a woman, who didn't give her name but said she was a relative of the victims, told the AP.
read more
Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times30/05/2006
About a week ago, I started to wonder why those governments with most to gain from the "war on terror" - American, British and Israeli - had not been making a lot of noise (via their media lackeys) about the "very real possibility of a terrorist attack at the World Cup" which is scheduled to kick off in Germany on June 10th...
Read more
Laura Knight-Jadczyk
New research lends credence to an
alternative explanation [for the Great Chicago Fire of 1871]: The fire, along with less-publicized and even more deadly blazes the same night in upstate Wisconsin and Michigan, was the result of a
comet fragment crashing into Earth's atmosphere. The comet theory has been around — and most often discarded — since at least 1883, but Robert Wood, a retired McDonnell Douglas physicist, said never before has the orbital parameters of the rogue comet been taken into consideration.
The likely suspect, in Wood's eyes, is a fragment from Biela's Comet, which had been circling the sun every six years and nine months before a close encounter with Jupiter caused it to break into two large fragments in 1845. During its next passage, astronomers noted a 1.5-million mile, 15-day gap between the two pieces. Wood said his analysis of the fragments' positions during subsequent orbits shows that Jupiter's gravity again affected their speed and trajectory, sending the smaller fragment on a path toward Earth that ended in October 1871. He presented his findings at a conference last week titled "Planetary Defense: Protecting Earth from Asteroids," held in Garden Grove, Calif.
Wood cited eyewitness reports of spontaneous ignitions, lack of smoke and "fire balloons" falling from the sky to bolster his theory. If the fire had been caused by comet debris, which is believed to have consisted of small pieces of frozen methane, acetylene or other highly combustible chemicals, it also would explain the cause of the fires blazing north of Chicago, which wiped out 2,000 people and burned 4 million acres of farm and prairie lands.
The deceased included many who showed no signs of being burned, Wood said. "This would be consistent with either the absence of oxygen or the presence of carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide above lethal levels," — a rare — but not unprecedented — situation in large forest fires. In all, over a 24-hour period, an area of land the size of Connecticut was burned.
Wood speculates the main body of the comet crashed into Lake Michigan, with peripheral fragments causing the fires in Chicago, Wisconsin and Michigan. [...]
"What's important about these findings," Wood said, "is that they show you people can actually get killed from something from out of space."
Full Articlecomet
At the present time, when millions of people have read the
Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, it seems that the awareness that man's true history has been hidden is growing apace with the thirst for the truth. In my book,
The Secret History of the World, I deal with many branches of the "hidden stream" of knowledge that have periodically emerged into the world during recorded history as the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Orphic Tradition, Gnosticism, Gurdjieff's Fourth Way or "Esoteric Christianity," Catharism, which went underground as the stories of the Holy Grail and Alchemy, etc, linking them to the most ancient traditions from pre-history, including Siberian Shamanism, the "Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy," as Mircea Eliade refers to the matter.
Thus, it is only fair that I warn the reader that this series of remarks will be comprehensible only to individuals well versed in studies of esoteric history and comparative religions, including
Gnosticism,
Sufism,
the Holy Grail,
Alchemy, (particularly the mysteries surrounding
Fulcanelli), and hermeticism in general. This article plunges directly and immediately into the great mystery. Those who are immersed in Fourth Way Work and who have actually begun to "see" will also recognize the deeper implications of Gurdjieff's work.
read more of this fascinating article
Da Vinci last supper photo
Barbara Liston
Reuters
Wed May 24, 2006
ORLANDO, Florida - New Orleans, still down and out from last year's assault by Hurricane Katrina, is the U.S. city most likely to be struck by hurricane force winds during the 2006 storm season, a researcher said on Wednesday.
The forecast gives New Orleans a nearly 30 percent chance of being hit by a hurricane and a one in 10 chance the storm will be a Category 3 or stronger, meaning sustained winds of at least 111 miles per hour (178 km per hour), said Chuck Watson of Kinetic Analysis Corp., Savannah, Georgia a risk assessment firm.
read more
POSTED: 7:26 pm PDT May 23, 2006
UPDATED: 10:51 am PDT May 24, 2006
OAKLAND -- A horrifying and fascinating disease is affecting thousands of people in the Bay Area, along the Gulf Coast and in Florida. Though some doctors have claimed the malady is psychosomatic, other scientists are making headway unraveling the mystery of Morgellons Disease.
Former Oakland A's pitcher Billy Koch has it. And so do his wife and their three children. And though they can afford top medical care, doctors have no answers.
It started in Oakland four years ago. Koch saved 44 games and was the top reliever in the major leagues. His fastball wowed crowds. And then the strangeness began.
"He freaked out. He wanted to ignore it … I wanted to too. But when it comes to your kids, you gotta stop ignoring it," said Koch's wife Brandi.
She describes their symptoms: "It was the scariest thing I had ever realized in my entire life. There was matter and black specks coming out and off of my skin."
Within two years -- at age 29 -- Billy Koch was out of baseball, partly because of the uncontrollable muscle twitching that went on for months at a time and often kept up him up all night.
read more
Published: Wednesday, May 24, 2006
zaman.com The main cargo section of Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport is ablaze after a massive blast occurred just moments ago.
Black clouds filled the sky after the blast that occurred in the C section of HAVAS cargo department at Istanbul’s main airport. The cause of the blast is still unknown.
Firefighting crews arrived at the scene and are trying to extinguish the fire.
Initial reports confirm that injuries were sustained in the explosion, however, the number of injured has not yet been confirmed.
Web Posted: 05/23/2006 01:08 AM CDT
Deborah Knapp
KENS 5 Eyewitness News
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has launched an investigation into the skin condition called Morgellons disease.
Since a story about Morgellons first aired on KENS 5 Eyewitness News, the station has been inundated with e-mails and phone calls from the medical community and others how claim to have the symptoms described in the story. The story has received tens of thousands of page views on the MySanAntonio.com
The story was how Les Coble of Pleasanton found out he was not alone.
“God, I’m not crazy, there are other people with this,” Coble said.
Coble is covered with lesions and says he has the sensation of bugs crawling under his skin.
read more
Last Updated Tue, 23 May 2006 11:17:22 EDT
CBC News
Scientists with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are flying over the shrinking Arctic ice cap this summer in an effort to determine just how much the melting ice is contributing to the rise of sea level worldwide.
NASA is using a Twin Otter plane to study ice caps including the Penny and Barnes caps on Baffin Island, the Devon Island ice cap and Agassiz on Ellesmere Island.
"The Canadian Arctic actually has the largest amount of ice on the planet outside of Greenland and Antarctica, so it's an obvious place to try and understand how much water is going from there," said Martin Sharpe, a professor at the University of Alberta.
read more
By SUTIN WANNABOVORN, Associated Press Writer
Last Updated: May 23, 2006, 09:10:10 PM PDT
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - More than 100 people were feared dead Wednesday as searchers recovered corpses from a sea of mud spawned by flash floods in northern Thailand, local officials said.
Rescue teams in helicopters or on foot tried to reach thousands of people stranded in their houses, on trains and in open terrain devastated by floods from days of heavy rain across several northern provinces.
Local officials said Tuesday that about 50 bodies had been recovered in three provinces. But Boonriang Chuchai-saengrat, chief health officer of Uttaradit province, said Wednesday more than 100 had perished in his province alone.
He appealed to government authorities to set up a disaster identification center like one established following the Asian tsunami to record unclaimed bodies and temporarily bury corpses for identification later.
"The search and rescue operation was suspended last night due to low light and will resume today once the sun rises. I hope to have a clearer number of the dead," said Saman Pangwatcharakorn chief of the regional Disaster Prevention and Rescue Center early Wednesday.
Tens of thousands of households had no power.
One of the hardest hit areas was Lablae district of Uttaradit province where dozens of houses were engulfed in mud, their residents trapped within. Others were stranded on the roofs of their houses or in trees.
Uttaradit is about 280 miles north of Bangkok.
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was scheduled to inspect the disaster scene Wednesday.
The government of British Columbia has agreed to formally protect more than five million acres of the Great Bear Rainforest -- one of NRDC's first BioGems and home to the world's last white-colored Spirit Bears. The decision caps a decade-long campaign waged by NRDC and our partners to safeguard this vast ancient woodland against rampant clearcutting. Nestled on Canada's Pacific Coast, between the northern tip of Vancouver Island and the Alaska border, the 19-million-acre Great Bear Rainforest is one of the Earth's largest remaining tracts of temperate rainforest. The thousand-year-old red cedars, Sitka spruce, western hemlock and balsam blanketing this swath of rugged coastline provide vital habitat for wolves, eagles, grizzlies and several hundred Spirit Bears. Found only in the Great Bear Rainforest, the Spirit Bear gets its white color from a recessive gene occurring in roughly one of every ten black bears born in the forest. The Spirit Bear figures prominently in the mythology and culture of several indigenous communities -- known as First Nations in Canada -- that have inhabited the Great Bear Rainforest for thousands of years.
read more
By Simon de Bruxelles
A 50ft wave caused by a force-9 gale left six people injured and the flagship damaged
The Times May 23, 2006
A FREAK wave smashed into one of the world’s largest ferries in the Bay of Biscay, terrifying passengers and forcing the ship to divert to a French harbour.
The wave, estimated at between 40ft (12m) and 50ft high, crashed into the Pont-Aven, the flagship of the Brittany Ferries fleet, at 10.25pm on Sunday, smashing windows and injuring at least six people. Cabins more than 50ft above the waterline were flooded.
Passengers described seeing a wall of water, followed by an explosion and then seeing people running around covered in blood after being hit by glass.
The 41,000-tonne Pont-Aven, which was sailing from Plymouth to Santander in northern Spain, was forced to pull into the French port of Roscoff for emergency repairs.
The 1,150 passengers on board were offered a refund and told that they could return to England on another ship or make their own way to Spain. Some complained that they had been left stranded with no way to continue their journey.
The wave struck at the height of a Force 9 gale that had caused the cancellation of dozens of crossings in the Channel. The £100 million Pont-Aven, the largest and most modern vessel in the fleet, was being buffeted by heavy seas when the wave struck.
Among the passengers were the owners of 19 classic cars who were heading for a rally in Barcelona. Richard Lloyd, of Brackley, Northamptonshire, said: “It had been pretty rough the night before as we headed down the Channel.
“During dinner, bottles were tipping over and things sliding about but, when we turned the corner into the Bay of Biscay, it really got bad. I have never seen seas like it. I saw a huge wave, a wall of water roaring past, and there was a loud noise like an explosion when it hit.
“Minutes later people were running around the ship very frightened. Some had what looked like shrapnel wounds and others were covered in blood.” Mr Lloyd, 60, a motor racing entrepreneur, had been on his way to the car rally with his wife, Phillipa, and 18 other competitors.
He said that they would now have to drive their ageing vehicles an extra 600 miles and might miss the start of the rally. So many entrants were on the boat that the organisers have shortened the event by a day to compensate.
Dave French and his partner, Val Bostock, from Bolton, were on their way to Alicante with their motorcycle.
Ms Bostock said: “We woke up to find water in the cabin and we were on Deck 6, well above the sea. The alarm sounded and we were told to go to the restaurant.
“We knew conditions were getting bad the night before when the magician had to cancel his act because his table kept sliding off the stage.” She said that they were given another cabin on the eighth deck.
“They have said we will get our £400 ticket money back,” she said, “and they did dry out all our wet clothes for us. But we now have to spend another day or two on our journey.”
The ship, which docked at 5am, is expected to be out of action until the week’s end.
big wave
Mon May 22, 10:11 AM ET
MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian police are watching out for possible suicides by brokers and investors after a steep market slide wiped out billions of dollars in share values, officials said Monday.
Policemen were keeping a watch near lakes and canals, possible places where people in distress could head to kill themselves. They said rescue teams were on alert.
"A financial crisis can trigger suicides. We are just trying to prevent them. Till now, no such cases have been reported," said R.K. Patel, a police official in the western city of Ahmedabad.
India's Bombay Stock Exchange Ltd., which had a market value of $657 billion last week after falling 10 percent in the previous two sessions, slid as much as another 10 percent in early trade Monday following sales of stocks held by brokers as security on behalf of their clients.
"Gold has turned into brass. We are finished," said S.S. Gupta, a middle-aged Mumbai broker who said he had lost millions of rupees in two hours of trading Monday morning.
Ahmedabad is considered particularly vulnerable to stock market volatility.
With over five million retail investors, the city is one of India's main trading hubs where people have put in millions of dollars of their disposable income into the stock market.
"I borrowed money to trade in the market. I lost it all in the past two days," said 37-year-old Sanjay Joshi, a small investor. "I don't know how will I repay my loans."
In the 1990s, a stock market meltdown led to several bankrupt brokers and small investors committing suicide across India, some of them drowning in rivers or throwing themselves off highrises.
Analysts described the market slide -- which has been as much as 22.4 percent from an all-time high of 12,671.11 points on May 11 -- as a correction and said order should return soon.
"It seems overdone and the market should stabilize during the second half of this week," said Rajat Jain, Chief Investment Officer, Principal Asset Management Company Pvt Ltd.
suicide
POSTED: 8:16 am EDT May 22, 2006
UPDATED: 1:10 pm EDT May 22, 2006
BRIGANTINE, N.J. -- A large block of ice believed to have been discarded by an airplane fell thousands of feet onto the lawn of a Brigantine residence this weekend.
The ice cube, measured at about two feet all the way around, made a foot-deep crater when it came down Saturday.
The unidentified homeowner notified authorities, who believe the ice chunk fell from the holding tank of an airplane flying overhead.
Brigantine police sought help from the Federal Aviation Administration to identify which airplane the ice chunk fell from. But there were too many flights in the area at the time the ice fell to make that determination.
ice from sky
By ELAINE ROSE Staff Writer,
Published: Sunday, May 21, 2006
Updated: Sunday, May 21, 2006
BRIGANTINE — No, it wasn't a snowstorm in May, and not even hail, when a Shipmaster Drive resident saw a block of ice fall from the sky and land on his lawn Saturday evening, police said.
The giant ice cube, measuring about 2 feet around, fell from the sky at about 7:34 p.m. and made a foot-deep crater in the resident's lawn, Lt. Raymond Reganato said. No one was injured.
The resident called police, who surmised that the ice chunk fell from the holding tank of an airplane, Reganato said.
“They usually drop it over the ocean, but I guess they missed,” Reganato said.
Police called the Federal Aviation Administration in an attempt to identify the culprit aircraft, but there were too many flights in the area to make a determination, police said.
May 23 (Bloomberg) -- All seven people infected with bird flu in a cluster of Indonesian cases can be linked to other patients, according to disease trackers investigating possible human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 virus.
A team of international experts has been unable to find animals that might have infected the people, six of whom have died, the World Health Organization said in a statement today. In one case, a 10-year-old boy who caught the virus from his aunt may have passed it to his father, the first time officials have seen evidence of a three-person chain of infection, an agency spokeswoman said.
Almost all of the 218 cases of H5N1 infections confirmed by the WHO since late 2003 can be traced to direct contact with sick or dead birds. Strong evidence of human-to-human transmission may prompt the global health agency to convene a panel of experts and consider raising the pandemic alert level, said Maria Cheng, an agency spokeswoman.
``Considering the evidence and the size of the cluster, it's a possibility,'' Cheng said in a telephone interview. ``it depends on what we're dealing with in Indonesia. It's an evolving situation.''
The 32-year-old father in the cluster of cases on the island of Sumatra was ``closely involved in caring for his son, and this contact is considered a possible source of infection,'' The WHO said in its statement. Three others, including the sole survivor in the group, spent a night in a ``small'' room with the boy's aunt, who later died and was buried before health officials could conduct tests for the H5N1 virus.
``All confirmed cases in the cluster can be directly linked to close and prolonged exposure to a patient during a phase of severe illness,'' the WHO said.
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
May 22, 2006
According to a May 16 report in the
Washington Post, US analysts of Africa policy and officials of Somalia's interim government say that the Bush administration is secretly supporting secular Somali warlords, whose groups are battling Islamic groups for
control of Mogadishu.
While the Bush administration has continued to dodge questions about what appear to be “classic” covert operations (similar to those taking place in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Colombia, etc.), Somali government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari has unequivocally declared “the US government funded the warlords in the recent battle in Mogadishu, there is no doubt about that. This cooperation . . . only fuels further civil war.”
read more
May 21, 2006
peacepalestine.blogspot.com/ “Star Wars in Iraq” is a new investigative report by Maurizio Torrealta and Sigfrido Ranucci. The document takes off from the disturbing eyewitness report from Majid Al Ghezali, first violinist of the Baghdad Orchestra, who had witnessed the conquest of the airport by the US Armed Forces. Al Ghezali tells that he had seen the victims of the battle with their bodies shrunken and to have heard talk about the use of laser weapons.
Even the chief surgeon of the General Hospital of Hilla, Saad al Falluji, speaks of an episode involving the horrible mutilations that had occurred to the passengers of a bus that had been hit at an American checkpoint with a mysterious and silent weapon. The Iraqi physician was shocked at the absence of bullets or bullet wounds upon the dead and wounded. The journalists of Rai News 24 had requested information from the Pentagon about the possible use of lethal laser weapons, on their effects and on their usage in war zones, but as of today, they still have not obtained any replies. Taking off precisely from these eyewitness accounts, the Rai News 24 investigation analyses the current use of a new typology of weapons, destined to signal the epochal passage from “kinetic” weapons to those run by energy.
Laser devices mounted on the Humvees have already been tested in Afghanistan and Iraq, officially to set off landmines and hidden explosive devices. In the inquiry there is the detailed description of a weapon considered to be “non-lethal”: the “Pain Ray”. The characteristics of this weapon, that uses an invisible ray that provokes an extremely intense painful sensation, but does not cause death, has brought about the preoccupation of the organisations that work in human rights defence and see in this new weapon the risk of an instrument of gradual and legal torture. It is an alarm that is also motivated by the fact that the studies on the effects of these weapons on the human body are still covered by military secret.
SEE THE FILM
http://www.rainews24.it/ran24/inchieste/guerre_stellari_iraq.aspin English, Italian or Arabic.
READ THE TEXT OF THE FILM in .rtf
An excerpt:
Retired Colonel John B. Alexander The Active Denial System is a Millimetre Wave System, operates at about 93 GHz. It sends out a beam for a very long distance, and what’s important about it is that when it hits the skin it penetrates only a very slight, for a few millimetres under the skin and it it’s the pain receptors and causes, you know, people to be adverse to the pain.
It hurts, it hurts a lot.
The tests that had been run they were to go for 3 seconds, each individual was given a kill switch and nobody made 3 seconds. The answer to the pain is extremely rapid, and you don’t have to do it very long, I mean, it gets your attention instantly.
To understand the consequences this new weapon could have for human rights we went to the Empire State Building in Manhattan, home of the offices of Human Rights Watch, one of the most important human rights organizations.
Marc Garlasco We can see the effects of a gun very easily and understand them, but when you cannot see the effect of a weapon because it is not visible and because the science is not very well understood because technology is so new, then it becomes a grieve concern that enrages the states for potential human rights violations and abuses. And that is something that we have to understand about the Active Denial System, that it exists to create pain and is very different in most other non-lethal weapons where the desire is either to immobilize someone or make it so that they cannot walk in the area. With the Active Denial System the main desire is pain, and we have to be very careful because in international law is very clear that devices created solely for the creation of pain can eventually lead to torture and are therefore illegal, and it’s very critical that the United States does a careful legal review of the Active Denial System and is open with their findings. To date they have not been open.
William Arkin Some people say “ooh acoustic weapons, or High Power Microwave weapons, the Active Denial System, we can use it for crowd control…”
What crowd control? What does that mean?
It pretends that anyone in the crowd is eighteen years old, and male and in good health, and we’re just going to shoot these microwaves or shoot these acoustic weapons on this crowd, and it’s going to be carefully calibrated at a power level, in the intensity and at a range to affect all these eighteen years old men in the crowd.
Well, what crowd is made up of just eighteen years old men?
Look at the Intifada, look at any riot in Iraq today: children, women, pregnant women, old people, and so the effect… the effect that you would need in order to have an impact on a healthy male, you target, would be too much for a child or a pregnant woman or an old person.
Marc Garlasco There’s been a lot of discussion also about the potential for eye damage. They have done some tests on the skin to show that is not harmful, but where is the eye test? And there are concerns raised by scientists about potential harm to the eyes. And we also have concerns about the effects to children, to the infirm, to the elderly… Why are they not producing the data? Why are they not sharing it with us?
As regards the use of the pain ray in the field of war, the military review Defence Industry Daily reports that three Sheriff vehicles were ordered at a price of about 31 million dollars, and that approval has been requested for another 14 vehicles by Brigadier General James Haggin, chief of staff of the multinational forces in Iraq.
Retired Colonel John B. Alexander In my view the next global conflict has already began and we don’t have an understanding of what that conflict looks like. Because of the issues of terrorism for instance the adversaries are going to be I think mixed in with civilian populations. We need weapons that allow us to be able to sort, minimize what they call “collateral casualties”. I think the battlefields are going to be in urban areas.
Can't we all just sign Barbaro's cast?
By Daniel Engber
Posted Monday, May 22, 2006, at 6:56 PM ET
Barbaro's veterinarians say the champion racehorse has a
50 percent chance of survival after breaking his leg at the start of the Preakness. He may not recover even after a successful five-hour surgery on Sunday, during which he had almost
two dozen screws implanted to stabilize his bones. Why is a broken leg so dangerous for a horse?
There's a high risk of infection, and the horse may not sit still long enough for the bone to heal. Infections are most likely when the animal suffers a compound fracture, in which the bones tear through the skin of the leg. In this case, dirt from the track will grind into and contaminate the wound. To make matters worse, there isn't much blood circulation in the lower part of a horse's leg. (There's very little muscle, either.) A nasty break below the knee could easily destroy these fragile vessels and deprive the animal of its full immune response at the site of the injury.
Barbaro was lucky enough (or smart enough) to pull up after breaking his leg. If he'd kept running—as some horses do—he might have driven sharp bits of bone into his soft tissue and torn open the skin of his leg. Though his skin remained intact, he still faces the possibility of infection; any soft-tissue damage at all can cut off blood flow and create a safe haven for bacteria.
Continue Article
The Daily Mail19th May 2006
It has become a big no-no in school lunchboxes because of its unhealthy reputation.
But it seems that Sunny D, formerly known as Sunny Delight, is not half as bad for children as it is for fish.
Around 8,000 litres of concentrate used to make the drink leaked into a watercourse on Wednesday morning, turning the river bright yellow.
Dozens of fish were found floating on the surface, poisoned by the lurid mixture.
The spill of 'sub-standard' juice was a category one pollution incident, the most serious kind, according to the Environment Agency. read more
The British-funded Ice Patrol is usually busy in May, protecting shipping from rogue bergs. But it's all gone alarmingly quiet this year, as Michael Park discovers
Published: 21 May 2006
A mere 1,000 feet above the frigid waters of the North Atlantic the debate began in earnest. The pilot of the US Coast Guard's sturdy C130 plane believed the object which had appeared on both of the plane's radars was an iceberg. One of two young but experienced ice observers on board disagreed.
To definitively identify the target, the plane started to descend to a mettle-testing 400 feet. This was part of the mission, and what is demanded of the staff of the International Ice Patrol (IIP) by the hundreds of ships that traverse this relatively small part of the ocean and rely on its findings for their safety.
Ever since the Titanic struck what was actually one of more than 350 icebergs drifting amid the northern Atlantic shipping lanes in April, 1912, the US Coast Guard has undertaken annual iceberg patrols to help protect passenger and freight vessels that sail through the congested waters east of Canada and down the east coast of America.
"Before we started there were 113 recorded sinkings caused by icebergs," says Michael Hicks, the present Commander of the International Ice Patrol. "There have only been 19 since (omega) the Titanic sank, and all of those were vessels that chose to ignore our warnings."
In the past, in a single year, more than 2,000 icebergs have been spotted, tracked and on occasion ineffectually bombed by aircraft, in order to prevent calamitous disasters at sea. Yet in other years, including this one, few if any bergs manage to migrate south from the Arctic Circle. If the unidentified floating object below the approaching plane is in fact an iceberg, it will be the first one seen in the shipping lanes since May 2005 a situation perplexing to oceanographers but emboldening to those shouting loudly about the effects of climate change.
read more
Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times22/05/2006
At this late hour, having already had my fill of incredible nonsense passed off as truth, I need to get something off my chest. Everyone who retains but a residue of that once common human attribute that is now seems vanishingly rare - common sense - can clearly see that the major Zionist organizations and entities (the State of Israel, the ADL, AIPAC and the NeoCons to name but a few) have, for the past 60 years, shamelessly manipulated the deaths of 6 million Jews to further their own selfish agendas. But what, exactly, is the agenda?...
read more
One Survivor Confirmed After Early Morning Blast
(Page 1 of 2)
HOLMES MILL, Ky., May 20, 2006
(AP) An explosion in an eastern Kentucky coal mine killed five miners Saturday, Gov. Ernie Fletcher said. A sixth miner was able to walk away from the blast and out of the mine on his own.
The blast at the Darby Mine No. 1 in Harlan County occurred between midnight and 1 a.m. EDT while a maintenance shift was on duty, said Amy Louviere, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration. It was the latest in a string of mine accidents to hit U.S. coal country this year.
"We don't know the details of the cause," Fletcher told The Associated Press.
The five dead miners were found by rescue workers, the governor said. The rescue teams initially found three dead workers and later found two more, he said.
Authorities identified the victims as Amon Brock, Jimmy Lee, Roy Middleton, George William Petra and Paris Thomas Jr., but their ages and hometowns were not immediately available.
The survivor, identified as Paul Ledford, was taken to Lonesome Pine Hospital in Big Stone Gap, Va., where he was treated and released, hospital spokeswoman Amy Stevens said.
Fletcher said Ledford was closer to the mine's exit than his co-workers.
It was not clear how many workers were on duty when the blast occurred, but Louviere said no production was going on at the time.
The underground mine, operated by Kentucky Darby LLC, is located about 250 miles southeast of Louisville in a mountainous area near the Virginia border. A man who answered the phone at a Kentucky Darby office declined to comment Saturday, saying the company was too busy.
Relatives of the miners gathered before dawn at the Cloverfork Missionary Baptist Church near the mine to await word about their loved ones. State and federal mine officials informed the family members of the deaths, said Mike Blair, the church's pastor.
Continued
What's Up in Space -- 20 May 2006
UNSTABLE COMET: Comets have heads and tails. It's that simple. So what's happening to comet
73P-C? It looks more like an hourglass. Its pinched shape is "increasing dramatically," says
Clay Sherrod of the Arkansas Sky Observatories, who took this picture last night:
73P-C is the biggest and until now the sturdiest fragment of dying comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3. While other fragments
fell apart in recent weeks, fragment C held together. The suddenly pinched shape may signal an overdue breakup.
Glowing like an 8th magnitude star, fragment C remains an easy target for big
backyard telescopes. Look for it in the eastern sky just before dawn:
sky map.
HANOI, May 19 (AFP) May 19, 2006
At least 20 Vietnamese sailors died and 91 remained missing Friday after Typhoon Chanchu sunk up to nine fishing boats in the South China Sea this week, rescue officials said.
The ships were hit by the storm on Wednesday and Thursday, which cut radio contact to the mainland, said an official from the regional Search and Rescue Center in the central city of Danang, asking not to be named.
"Vietnamese fishing vessels that survived the storm picked up the bodies and rescued 30 people," said the official. The boats were on the way back to Danang in the central Vietnam region many of the fishing crews came from.
Three of the shipwrecks were reported Thursday, with 22 people missing, mostly from central Quang Ngai province.
Officials said they learned on Friday afternoon of the 20 deaths and 69 more missing sailors from six additional boats that were sunk.
More than 70 Vietnamese fishermen were also stranded on the remote Chinese island of Dong Sa.
Vietnam has asked China to help the stranded fishermen and search for more survivors, said an official of the National Search and Rescue Centre in Hanoi.
OHH so true!Signs of the Times
May 18, 2006
Thanks to our friends at
Onnouscachetout, we can finally present you with the video the Pentagon should have released... if a Boeing 757 had really hit the Pentagon.
LINK
May 18, 2006
US REPRESENTATIVE JACK MURTHA
Senior House Democrat Jack Murtha warns that the details of a reported massacre in Iraq last year will prove "a very bad thing" for the US.
A senior House Democrat with close ties to the military claimed Wednesday that U.S. Marines wantonly killed innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, in an early morning raid last November, buttressing a March report by Time.
"Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood," said Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania, a decorated Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam and is among the most influential Democratic voices on military matters. "This is going to be a very, very bad thing for the United States."
Asked about his sources during a midday briefing on Iraq policy in the Capitol, Murtha confidently replied, "All the information I get, it comes from the commanders, it comes from people who know what they are talking about." Although Murtha said that he had not read any investigative reports by the military on the incident, he stressed, "It's much worse than reported in Time magazine."
The civilian deaths are under review by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which is also responsible for the Marine Corps. A Navy spokesman declined to comment on Murtha's claims, saying that the matter is part of an ongoing inquiry. He would also not comment on when the investigation into the incident would be completed.
In March, Time described an incident in the western Iraqi town of Haditha -- the worst alleged case of U.S. troops deliberately killing civilians in Iraq. Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20, was killed in the early morning of Nov. 19, 2005, by a roadside explosive device. In the hours that followed, Marines searched three houses, killing a total of 23 people. According to Time, the Marine Corps' initial report claimed that 15 civilians had died in the same blast that killed Terrazas -- and another eight insurgents were killed after a subsequent firefight with Marines.
But Murtha contended Wednesday that the military's initial report was wrong. "There was no firefight," he said. "There was no IED [improvised explosive device] that killed these people."
Last month, the Marine Corps relieved of command three officers who oversaw the military unit responsible for the Iraqi deaths at Haditha -- Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment.
Murtha, widely known as a foreign-policy hawk, grabbed the national spotlight last fall when he suddenly called for the orderly withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. His press briefing Wednesday was a six-month follow-up to that initial call for withdrawal. The Pennsylvania Democrat argued that part of the responsibility for the Haditha killings lay with the Pentagon leadership, who had stretched soldiers too thin. "These guys are under tremendous strain -- more strain than I can conceive of -- and this strain has caused them to crack under situations like this," Murtha said.
The psychological strain Murtha described has been well documented. Veterans describe the violence of war as having a numbing effect on soldiers, making it possible to carry out otherwise unthinkable acts. This is especially true when a fellow soldier has been killed. "Once you reach that point, all sorts of restrictions you may place on yourself are removed," says Rion Causey, a medic in the infamous Army platoon known as Tiger Force, which may have killed as many as several hundred unarmed civilians in the central highlands of South Vietnam in 1967. Causey did not participate in the atrocities.
Murtha visited the Haditha region in August, three months before the incident. According to Murtha, a U.S. general there said at the time, "I don't have enough troops to do my mission."
HONG KONG (Reuters) - China evacuated more than 600,000 people as the strongest typhoon on record to enter the South China Sea in May bore down on the south coast on Wednesday, causing flight and shipping delays around the region.
Typhoon Chanchu, packing winds up to 170 kmh (106 mph), was forecast to make landfall northeast of Hong Kong in Guangdong province later on Wednesday after killing 37 people as it swept across the Philippines last weekend.
Chinese state television news said some 320,000 people were evacuated from their homes along the coast of Guangdong province, while over 300,000 were moved in neighboring Fujian province.
Fujian called back all ships to port, and Guangdong called back in more than 58,000 vessels as schools suspended classes, it said, adding that strong rainfalls brought by Chanchu were posing flood threats.
An ore-carrying Belgian ship with eight crew members aboard was trapped some 200 sea miles offshore on the South China Sea on Wednesday and a Chinese rescue vessel was expected to reach it on Thursday morning, the news broadcast said.
In Taiwan, where most areas were lashed by heavy rains, rescuers winched to safety the crew of an oil tanker that had run aground off the coast of Kaoshiung in the south after being hit by a large wave, television footage showed.
RESCUE SHIPS ON STANDBY
On the southern coast, road workers struggled to keep motorways along the coastline clear of debris including tree branches as large waves crashed over the embankments, television pictures showed.
The government issued warnings to residents in central mountain areas of landslides and flooding caused by the heavy rain, as mountain rivers already had begun to rise, threatening bridges and roads.
Shipping links between Taiwan's outlying islands of Quemoy and Matsu and the Chinese coastline were suspended as the storm approached, media said, with the central weather bureau saying Quemoy and Penghu island's would be directly threatened.
In Hong Kong, winds of up to 65 kmh (40 mph) caused flight delays and some shipping services were suspended, but the former British colony's government weather observatory said the threat was receding as Chanchu churned northwards.
In China, rescue ships, helicopters and thousands of paramilitary troops were standing by, and all sea transport to the Chinese island province of Hainan had been halted, state media reported.
In the Philippines, Chanchu killed at least 37 people and "affected" about 53,300 people in wide areas of Luzon and the Visayas, the National Disaster Coordinating Council said in a report on Monday.
Latest News: May 17, 2006
The Political Economy of Love And The Eradication of Extreme Poverty in The World
The main argument or hypothesis of this short essay is that to eradicate extreme poverty in the world – which, with the proliferation of nuclear weapons, climate change due to pollution, and various forms of violence (war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, terrorism), is one of the four or five most dangerous challenges facing humanity today – the primacy of reason needs, in particular in the distribution of the world’s resources, to be replaced by the primacy of love. That inevitably will lead to a better, more equal and more just, sharing of the world’s resources
Share The World's Resources read more
The Pentagon Caper
By Michael Weiss
Posted Wednesday, May 17, 2006, at 6:27 PM ET
Conspiracy theorists haven't exactly been placated by the Defense Department's release of footage from two cameras that showed Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon on Sept. 11. Also, Adam Nagourney's losing-is-the-new-winning strategy for the Dems is not widely seen as a muscular counterpoint to Karl Rove.
The Pentagon caper: Footage from two Pentagon security cameras, recording the terrorist attack on the facility on Sept. 11, was made public Tuesday by the Defense Department, which had withheld the material because of Zacarias Moussaoui's trial. Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, the legal activist group that sued for access to the video under the Freedom of Information Act, explained: "[W]e hope that this video will put to rest the conspiracy theories involving American Airlines Flight 77." Keep hoping.
Amphetameme.org, a collective of "educated, curious, critical thinkers," finds more questions than answers: "If you've followed the conspiracy theories, I don't think these two videos disprove them at all. On the contrary—if you don't clearly see a large passenger airplane in the videos, your skepticism should be piqued." And Jennifer, a 22-year-old living in Marabella, Spain, writes on her MySpace blog: "Though I hate to say and all of you hate to admit it, it looks to me, that it is more likely a missile. It's the right size and a much more believable size than the nose of a 757."
Continue Article
18.05.2006
By WILL JACKSON
EVER wanted to know what a fridge hurtling through the atmosphere at 57,000km/h looks like?
Well, even if you haven’t, watch the skies tonight and you might be able to see.
The huge fireball that swooped across the sky about 6.20pm on Tuesday was actually a refrigeratorsized hunk of comet, astronomer Andre Claydon said yesterday.
The Earth is passing through debris left by Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann which has broken up into about 64 pieces, said the director of observation at the Springbrook Observatory near the Gold Coast.
Some of these pieces were hitting the atmosphere and would continue to create a spectacular light show for another five days.
However, they were unlikely to be quite as incredible as Tuesday night’s meteor, which caused quite a stir across the region.
A police spokeswoman said it was seen travelling west as far inland as Warwick in Queensland.
She said a Warwick farmer alerted police about 6.30pm of what he thought was a fireball from a plane crashing on his property.
However a search of the area found nothing.
Police were then inundated by sightings of a ‘green ball of light’.
Andre said the meteor shower would have appeared much closer than it actually was.
"As it comes in through our atmosphere we get a magnification effect, so it always looks a lot closer, but it is probably 60 to 70km inside our atmosphere," he said.
"I had a number of phone calls specifically from the eastern part of Australia regarding a meteor shower that has come through and broken up into a few pieces."
Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times17/05/2006
It only took four and a half years, but finally the U.S. government has seen fit to confirm what so many of us have been saying all along - Pentagon security cameras recorded no evidence of a Boeing 757 hitting the Pentagon.
The videos comprise the footage from each of the two security cameras stationed close to each other at one end of the Pentagon. The first video contains nothing new given that it is simply the footage from which 5 stills were taken and released in early 2002 by the Pentagon, the extra footage merely being the scene after the impact. The second video comprises previously unseen footage from the security camera that is slightly closer to the impact point. The Pentagon alleges that in this video the "nose cone" of a plane can be seen in one frame. It should be noted that the security cameras appear to be the standard type installed in train stations and airports around the world. Most people will have seen footage from such cameras showing people walking in "jumps", which is due to the fact that the camera records a still image every 2 seconds or so.
read more
A federal district court in Miami has ruled that the Bush Administration violated federal law in issuing permits for a massive limestone mining project adjacent to Everglades National Park. If constructed, the mining pits could have destroyed 30 square miles of habitat for rare wading birds, diverted water flows from Everglades National Park and poisoned the drinking water of millions of Miami-Dade County residents by allowing dangerous microorganisms to infiltrate local wells. The ruling comes after a four-year legal battle waged by NRDC and our partners.
The ScotsmanWED 17 May 2006
IAN JOHNSTON
GLACIERS in equatorial Africa that are one of the ultimate sources of the River Nile will disappear within two decades from the fabled Mountains of the Moon because of global warming, scientists warned yesterday.
The legendary status of the Rwenzori Mountains, on the border between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, was established when the second century Greek geographer Ptolemy made the then preposterous claim that meltwater from their ice-capped peaks made its way into the Nile.
And for the local BaKonzo people the snow and ice of the mountains, known as Nzururu, is the father of gods responsible for protecting them from other tribes and dangerous diseases.
A century ago, glaciers were estimated to spread over some 6.5 square kilometres, but they now cover less than one square kilometre and are retreating by between ten and 30 metres every year.
read more
This is just stupid, it's the same video they released four years ago with a little bit added, this so no more proof than we had before.
What about the videos from other cameras that were filming the pentagon, where are they??? hmmm?
I guess it's the best our inept government can come up with after FIVE years..Here is a link to the videoTuesday, 16 May 2006, 17:42 GMT 18:42 UK
The US defence department is to release a video of the plane crashing into the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, legal rights group Judicial Watch has said.
The US was to release the previously unseen footage at 1300 (1700 GMT).
American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the US military headquarters, killing 184 people, after it was hijacked as part of an al-Qaeda plot.
The release of the video, taken from a Pentagon security camera, comes after a Freedom of Information Act request.
read more
16may06
SOUTH-east Queensland residents have been startled by a bright, green ball of streaking light that initially sparked fears of a plane crash.
A police spokeswoman said the suspected meteor was seen travelling east to west in the region from Bribie Island, across the Sunshine and Gold Coasts as far inland as Warwick.
She said a Warwick farmer alerted police about 6.30pm (AEST) of what he thought was a "fire ball" from a plane crashing on his property.
A search of the area found nothing.
Police were then inundated by sightings of a "green ball of light".
Andre Claydon of the Springbrook Observatory near the Gold Coast said he had received scores of sightings of what he thought was a meteor shower from across the region.
He said the meteor shower would have appeared much closer than it actually was.
"As it comes in through our atmosphere we get a magnification effect so it always looks a lot closer but it is probably 60 to 70km inside our atmosphere," he said on ABC Radio.
"I had a number of phone calls specifically from the eastern part of Australia regarding a meteor shower that has come through and broken up into a few pieces."
The Astronomical Association of Queensland's Peter Hall told ABC Radio: "It sounds like a meteor to me.
"Most of them are the size of a grain of sand but this one must have been larger."
by Lisa Guliani
WingTV.net
On May 1, 2006, after a 24-hour respite following our participation in New York City's huge April 29th anti-war rally, WING TV returned to the road once again with three destinations in mind: Shanksville, New Baltimore, and Indian Lake, Pennsylvania. Victor Thorn and I wanted to spend a couple of days in these locations and re-tread some of the area covered in our book, Phantom Flight 93: The Shanksville Flight 93 Hoax.
read more
by Jason Gutierrez
AFP
Sat May 13, 2006
MANILA - Tropical storm Chanchu continues to lash the Philippines, leaving at least 21 people dead as heavy rains triggered landslides and left parts of the country under water.
Floodwaters submerged two provinces in the central Visayas region and several villages in Leyte's Sogod town were cut off after landslides and floods damaged a bridge and vital highway.
Chanchu was tracking west-northwest towards the South China Sea and was expected to have moved on by Sunday morning, the state weather bureau said.
In the worst accident during the storm, motorboat Mae Ann 5 capsized just off the central city of Masbate Friday.
Officials are unsure how many passengers were aboard, but coast guard spokesman Lieutenant Commander Joseph Coyme said 21 bodies had been fished out of the water.
read more
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Saturday 13 May 2006
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove.
During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning.
Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, did not return a call for comment. Sources said Fitzgerald was in Washington, DC, Friday and met with Luskin for about 15 hours to go over the charges against Rove, which include perjury and lying to investigators about how and when Rove discovered that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative and whether he shared that information with reporters, sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said.
It was still unknown Saturday whether Fitzgerald charged Rove with a more serious obstruction of justice charge. Sources close to the case said Friday that it appeared very likely that an obstruction charge against Rove would be included with charges of perjury and lying to investigators.
An announcement by Fitzgerald is expected to come this week, sources close to the case said. However, the day and time is unknown. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the special prosecutor was unavailable for comment. In the past, Samborn said he could not comment on the case.
The grand jury hearing evidence in the Plame Wilson case met Friday on other matters while Fitzgerald spent the entire day at Luskin's office. The meeting was a closely guarded secret and seems to have taken place without the knowledge of the media.
As TruthOut reported Friday evening, Rove told President Bush and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, as well as a few other high level administration officials, that he will be indicted in the CIA leak case and will immediately resign his White House job when the special counsel publicly announces the charges against him, according to sources.
Details of Rove's discussions with the president and Bolten have spread through the corridors of the White House, where low-level staffers and senior officials were trying to determine how the indictment would impact an administration that has been mired in a number of high-profile political scandals for nearly a year, said a half-dozen White House aides and two senior officials who work at the Republican National Committee.
Speaking on condition of anonymity Friday night, sources confirmed Rove's indictment was imminent. These individuals requested anonymity saying they were not authorized to speak publicly about Rove's situation. A spokesman in the White House press office said they would not comment on "wildly speculative rumors."
Rove's announcement to President Bush and Bolten comes more than a month after he alerted the new chief of staff to a meeting his attorney had with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in which Fitzgerald told Luskin that his case against Rove would soon be coming to a close and that he was leaning toward charging Rove with perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators, according to sources close to the investigation.
A few weeks after he spoke with Fitzgerald, Luskin arranged for Rove to return to the grand jury for a fifth time to testify in hopes of fending off an indictment related to Rove's role in the CIA leak, sources said.
That meeting was followed almost immediately by an announcement by newly-appointed White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten of changes in the responsibilities of some White House officials, including Rove, who was stripped of his policy duties and would no longer hold the title of deputy White House chief of staff.
The White House said Rove would focus on the November elections and his change in status in no way reflected his fifth appearance before the grand jury or the possibility of an indictment.
But since Rove testified two weeks ago, the White House has been coordinating a response to what is sure to be the biggest political scandal it has faced thus far: the loss of a key political operative who has been instrumental in shaping White House policy on a wide range of domestic issues.
Rove testified that he first found out about Plame Wilson from reading a newspaper report in July 2003 and only after the story was published did he share damaging information about her CIA status with other reporters.
However, evidence has surfaced during the course of the two-year-old investigation that shows Rove spoke with at least two reporters about Plame Wilson prior to the publication of the column.
The explanation Rove provided to the grand jury - that he was dealing with more urgent White House matters and therefore forgot - has not convinced Fitzgerald that Rove has been entirely truthful in his testimony and resulted in the indictment.
Some White House staffers said it's the uncertainty of Rove's status in the leak case that has made it difficult for the administration's domestic policy agenda and that the announcement of an indictment and Rove's subsequent resignation, while serious, would allow the administration to move forward on a wide range of issues.
"We need to start fresh and we can't do that with the uncertainty of Karl's case hanging over our heads," said one White House aide. "There's no doubt that it will be front page news if and when (an indictment) happens. But eventually it will become old news quickly. The key issue here is that the president or Mr. Bolten respond to the charges immediately, make a statement and then move on to other important policy issues and keep that as the main focus going forward."
Rove Informs White House He Will Be Indicted By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Friday 12 May 2006
Within the last week, Karl Rove told President Bush and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, as well as a few other high level administration officials, that he will be indicted in the CIA leak case and will immediately resign his White House job when the special counsel publicly announces the charges against him, according to sources.
Details of Rove's discussions with the president and Bolten have spread through the corridors of the White House where low-level staffers and senior officials were trying to determine how the indictment would impact an administration that has been mired in a number of high-profile political scandals for nearly a year, said a half-dozen White House aides and two senior officials who work at the Republican National Committee.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, sources confirmed Rove's indictment is imminent. These individuals requested anonymity saying they were not authorized to speak publicly about Rove's situation. A spokesman in the White House press office said they would not comment on "wildly speculative rumors."
Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, did not return a call for comment Friday.
Rove's announcement to President Bush and Bolten comes more than a month after he alerted the new chief of staff to a meeting his attorney had with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in which Fitzgerald told Luskin that his case against Rove would soon be coming to a close and that he was leaning toward charging Rove with perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators, according to sources close to the investigation.
A few weeks after he spoke with Fitzgerald, Luskin arranged for Rove to return to the grand jury for a fifth time to testify in hopes of fending off an indictment related to Rove's role in the CIA leak, sources said.
That meeting was followed almost immediately by an announcement by newly-appointed White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten of changes in the responsibilities of some White House officials, including Rove, who was stripped of his policy duties and would no longer hold the title of deputy White House chief of staff.
The White House said Rove would focus on the November elections and his change in status in no way reflected his fifth appearance before the grand jury or the possibility of an indictment.
But since Rove testified two weeks ago, the White House has been coordinating a response to what is sure to be the biggest political scandal it has faced thus far: the loss of a key political operative who has been instrumental in shaping White House policy on a wide range of domestic issues.
Late Thursday afternoon and early Friday morning, several White House officials were bracing for the possibility that Fitzgerald would call a news conference and announce a Rove indictment today following the prosecutor's meeting with the grand jury this morning. However, sources close to the probe said that is unlikely to happen, despite the fact that Fitzgerald has already presented the grand jury with a list of charges against Rove. If an indictment is returned by the grand jury, it will be filed under seal.
Rove is said to have told Bolten that he will be charged with perjury regarding when he was asked how and when he discovered that covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the agency, and whether he discussed her job with reporters.
Rove testified that he first found out about Plame Wilson from reading a newspaper report in July 2003 and only after the story was published did he share damaging information about her CIA status with other reporters.
However, evidence has surfaced during the course of the two-year-old investigation that shows Rove spoke with at least two reporters about Plame Wilson prior to the publication of the column.
The explanation Rove provided to the grand jury - that he was dealing with more urgent White House matters and therefore forgot - has not convinced Fitzgerald that Rove has been entirely truthful in his testimony.
Sources close to the case said there is a strong chance Rove will also face an additional charge of obstruction of justice, adding that Fitzgerald has been working meticulously over the past few months to build an obstruction case against Rove because it "carries more weight" in a jury trial and is considered a more serious crime.
Some White House staffers said it's the uncertainty of Rove's status in the leak case that has made it difficult for the administration's domestic policy agenda and the announcement of an indictment and Rove's subsequent resignation, while serious, would allow the administration to move forward on a wide range of issues.
"We need to start fresh and we can't do that with the uncertainty of Karl's case hanging over our heads," said one White House aide. "There's no doubt that it will be front page news if and when (an indictment) happens. But eventually it will become old news quickly. The key issue here is that the president or Mr. Bolten respond to the charges immediately, make a statement and then move on to other important policy issues and keep that as the main focus going forward."
Posted on Fri, May. 12, 2006
AP NewsBreak: Verizon faces suit over NSA
BETH DeFALCO
Associated Press
TRENTON, N.J. - Verizon Communications Inc. faces its first lawsuit that claims the phone carrier violated privacy laws for giving phone records to the National Security Agency for a secret surveillance program.
The lawsuit filed Friday asks the court to stop Verizon from turning over any more records to the NSA without a warrant or consent of the subscriber.
"This is the largest and most vast intrusion of civil liberties we've ever seen in the United States," said New Jersey attorney Bruce Afran, who sued with attorney Carl Mayer in federal district court in Manhattan, where Verizon is headquartered.
USA Today reported on Thursday that the NSA has been building a database of millions of Americans' everyday telephone calls since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Verizon, AT&T Corp. and BellSouth Corp. provided data, the newspaper reported.
Verizon said in a statement that because the NSA program is highly classified, it wouldn't confirm or deny whether the company participated in the program. It also declined to comment about the lawsuit.
The lawsuit seeks $1,000 for each violation of the Telecommunications Act, or $5 billion if the case is certified as class-action.
Afran said that he and Mayer will also ask for documents dealing with the origination of the program and President Bush's role in it.
Afran and Mayer have filed numerous lawsuits against New Jersey officials over such things as political appointments and finances.
Think Progress | Posted May 12, 2006 04:42 PM
CongressDaily reports that former NSA staffer Russell Tice will testify to the Senate Armed Services Committee next week that not only do employees at the agency believe the activities they are being asked to perform are unlawful, but that
what has been disclosed so far is only the tip of the iceberg. Tice will tell Congress that former NSA head Gen. Michael Hayden, Bush’s nominee to be the next CIA director, oversaw more illegal activity that has yet to be disclosed:
A former intelligence officer for the National Security Agency said Thursday he plans to tell Senate staffers next week that unlawful activity occurred at the agency under the supervision of Gen. Michael Hayden beyond what has been publicly reported, while hinting that it might have involved the illegal use of space-based satellites and systems to spy on U.S. citizens. …
[Tice] said he plans to tell the committee staffers the NSA conducted illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of U.S. citizens while he was there with the knowledge of Hayden. … “I think the people I talk to next week are going to be shocked when I tell them what I have to tell them. It’s pretty hard to believe,” Tice said. “I hope that they’ll clean up the abuses and have some oversight into these programs, which doesn’t exist right now.” …
Tice said his information is different from the Terrorist Surveillance Program that Bush acknowledged in December and from news accounts this week that the NSA has been secretly collecting phone call records of millions of Americans. “It’s an angle that you haven’t heard about yet,” he said. … He would not discuss with a reporter the details of his allegations, saying doing so would compromise classified information and put him at risk of going to jail. He said he “will not confirm or deny” if his allegations involve the illegal use of space systems and satellites.
Tice has a history for
blowing the whistle on serious misconduct. He was one of the sources that revealed the administration’s warrantless domestic spying program to the New York Times.
PRESS RELEASE
Date Released: Friday, May 12, 2006
Source:
Goddard Space Flight Center
Scientists using NASA's Swift satellite have detected X-rays from a comet that is now passing the Earth and rapidly disintegrating on what could be its final orbit around the sun.
Swift's observations provide a rare opportunity to investigate several ongoing mysteries about comets and our solar system, and hundreds of scientists have tuned in to the event.
The comet, called 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, is visible with even a small, backyard telescope. Peak brightness is expected next week, when it comes within 7.3 million miles of Earth, or about 30 times the distance to the Moon. There is no threat to Earth, however.
This is the brightest comet ever detected in X-rays. The comet is so close that astronomers are hoping to determine not only the composition of the comet but also of the solar wind. Scientists think that atomic particles that comprise the solar wind interact with comet material to produce X-rays, a theory that Swift might prove true.
Three world-class X-ray observatories now in orbit---NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the European-led XMM-Newton, and the Japanese-led Suzaku---will observe the comet in the coming weeks. Like a scout, Swift has provided information to these larger facilities about what to look for. This type of observation can only take place in the X-ray waveband.
"The Schwassmann-Wachmann comet is a comet like no other," said Scott Porter of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., part of the Swift observation team. "During its 1996 passage it broke apart. Now we are tracking about three dozen fragments. The X-rays being produced provide information never before revealed."
The situation is reminiscent of the Deep Impact probe, which penetrated comet Tempel 1 about a year ago. This time, nature itself has broken the comet. Because Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 is much closer to both the Earth and the sun than Tempel 1 was, it currently appears about 20 times brighter in X-rays. Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 passes Earth about every five years. Scientists could not anticipate how bright it would become in X-rays this time around.
"The Swift observations are amazing," said Greg Brown of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., who led the proposal for Swift observation time. "Because we are viewing the comet in X-rays, we can see many unique features. The combined results of data from several premier orbiting observatories will be spectacular."
Swift is primarily a gamma-ray burst detector. The satellite also has X-ray and ultraviolet/optical telescopes. Because of its burst-hunting ability to turn rapidly, Swift has been able to track the progress of the fast-moving Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 comet. Swift is the first observatory to simultaneously observe the comet in both ultraviolet light and X-rays. This cross comparison is crucial for testing theories about comets.
Swift and the other three X-ray observatories plan to combine forces to observe Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 closely. Through a technique called spectroscopy, scientists hope to determine the chemical structure of the comet. Already Swift has detected oxygen and hints of carbon. These elements are from the solar wind, not the comet.
Scientists think that X-rays are produced through a process called charge exchange, in which highly (and positively) charged particles from the sun that lack electrons steal electrons from chemicals in the comet. Typical comet material includes water, methane and carbon dioxide. Charge exchange is analogous to the tiny spark seen in static electricity, only at a far greater energy.
By comparing the ratio of X-ray energies emitted, scientists can determine the content of the solar wind and infer the content of the comet material. Swift, Chandra, XMM-Newton and Suzaku each provide complementary capabilities to nail down this tricky measurement. The combination of these observations will provide a time evolution of the X-ray emission of the comet as it navigates through our solar system
Porter and his colleagues at Goddard and Lawrence Livermore tested the charge exchange theory in an earthbound laboratory in 2003. That experiment, at Livermore's EBIT-I electron beam ion trap, produced a complex spectrograph of intensity versus X-ray energy for a variety of expected elements in the solar wind and comet. "We are anxious to compare nature's laboratory to the one we created," Porter said.
The German-led ROSAT mission, now decommissioned, was the first to detect X-rays from a comet, from Hyakutake in 1996. This was a great surprise. It took about five years before scientists had a suitable explanation for X-ray emission. Now, ten years after Hyakutake, scientists could settle the mystery.
For Swift images of comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, visit:
Saturday, 13 May 2006, 11:59 GMT 12:59 UK
Red alert for Indonesia volcano
Thousands of people living on the slopes of Mount Merapi in Indonesia are being taken to safety, because of fears the volcano may be about to erupt.
Old people, women and children have been taken to emergency shelters, after officials monitoring the volcano raised the threat status to the highest level.
The volcano has been rumbling for weeks but is becoming more volatile.
Streams of lava have been flowing down one side of the mountain, which is also spewing out hot volcanic ash and smoke.
However some villagers have refused to move because they do not want to leave their crops and livestock.
Danger zone
The lava has not reached any residential areas - but the BBC's Rachel Harvey in Indonesia says the authorities are not taking any chances.
"This morning we raised the status of Merapi to the top alert which is the red code," Subandrio, head of the Merapi section at the Centre for Volcanological Research and Technology Development said on Saturday.
"Every resident has been ordered to evacuate."
Military trucks have been used to ferry thousands of people away from the danger zone.
Officials have been struggling to conduct mass evacuations as some villagers are reluctant to leave their valuable farmland.
Some residents told officials they are worried about their property, cattle and crops.
However on Saturday a resident told Reuters news agency by phone: "Everything ran smoothly, just like the exercises".
No choice
The scientists still cannot say when the volcano will erupt nor how powerful any explosion might be.
Merapi - which means "mountain of fire" - is now in a state of "constant lava flow".
A gas cloud from the volcano's last eruption in 1994 killed 60 people.
Local television has been showing dramatic night-time pictures of a stream of lava slipping down one side of the mountain.
But scientists warn that the greatest danger could come from hot gasses expelled from the volcano's crater.
Volcanologist Bambang Dwiyanto said the alert had been raised because "there has been constant lava flows that cause hot gases".
Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla toured the area on Thursday and ordered 50% of the population in the danger zone be moved.
Indonesia, part of the Asia-Pacific "Ring of Fire", has at least 129 active volcanoes.
Mount Merapi, which some locals consider sacred, overlooks the ancient city of Jogjakarta.
One of its deadliest eruptions was in 1930, when about 1,300 people were killed.
Do you live in the area? Have you or do you know anyone who has been affected by the evacuation? Send us your experiences by using the form below:
I visited Marapi in 1994. What concerned me most was that the city of Jogjakarta has a population of over 10 million people. If Merapi was to erupt on a massive scale this could be one of the worlds greatest humanitarian disasters. Tim Butler, UK
I have friends in Indonesia and wish everyone is more willing to leave since the eruption is very dangerous and death is imminent. don't worry about life stock because they are replacable but your life can't. The soil in the farmland will become much more fertile after the eruption. Sherwin Lo, Marietta, USA
I live 35 km to the east of mount Merapi. Luckily for me, the eruption never affect areas in the east of Merapi but only to the north and northwest. After the eruption, the sky will be very dark and it will rain of ash and dirt for about two hours. When I was a kid, the eruption didn't affect us directly but the whole town was covered by thick-gray-ash and we spent hours to sweep it off our roof and garden.Yesterday I heard that some poor farmers wanted the government to buy their cattle and livestock because it is the only possession they have. It's an old old story, EVERY TIME Merapi erupts, there are ALWAYS dead victims. Usually it's the ones who decided to stay in the Merapi's vicinity. Winarto, Solo, Indonesia
I am a Canadian who used to live in Yogyakarta 20 years ago. I fell in love with the people, the land and climbed Merapi. It was common to leave at dusk in order to watch the sunrise from the peak of Merapi. I stay in touch with my friends there who are nervous - remember this if from the land of Krakatoa and one only needs to think of Pompeii to realise what could happen. Spencer Campbell, Canada
Thu 11 May 2006
MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippine coastguard said on Thursday an oil tanker had exploded off the coast of Bataan province, west of Manila.
George de Jesus, a member of the Philippine coastguard, told Reuters rescue operations were underway.
Radio reports said two crew members were critically injured. There were no immediate reports of fatalities or the cause of the explosion.
The Philippines' largest oil refiner, Petron Corp, has a 180,000 barrels per day oil refinery at Limay on the southern tip of Bataan. No one from the company was immediately available for comment.
The Philippine Department of Energy was checking reports of the explosion.
IAN JOHNSTON SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT
POLLUTION is far more damaging to humans than originally thought and is causing genetic mutations which could eventually wipe us from the face of the planet, according to a leading scientist.
Dr Laurence Loewe, of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology at Edinburgh University, said researchers had under-estimated the threat from small but damaging mutations of DNA caused by pollutants such as exhaust fumes and chemicals.
Although these might not immediately cause disease, as they build up over generations they can reach the point within a population where more and more people become infertile and, ultimately, the group dies out.
Most experts had believed small mutations were irrelevant as they did not cause disease.
But, according to a mathematical model of the way they affect populations, there is a real danger from the accumulation of such defects, and this could already be affecting some endangered species.
Dr Loewe said: "Previously, we thought all these small mutations did not matter. The medical community would say, 'If it doesn't add up to a disease, we won't care'.
"The evolutionary community would say, 'Deleterious mutations are going to be removed by selection, so we don't care'.
"But if you keep accumulating more and more [damaging mutations], some years down the line, the overall quality is so much worse."
Humanity cannot rely on natural selection to deal with minor alterations to DNA.
read more
Posted May 10, 2006
A Bush administration proposal to sell almost 1,000 acres in the Ocala National Forest is dead, according to U.S. Rep. Ric Keller and environmentalists who blasted the idea as a shortsighted solution to raise money for rural counties.
Keller, R-Orlando, and other critics Tuesday applauded a House subcommittee's decision not to include in a 2006-07 spending bill a plan to sell thousands of acres in national forests. The land sales would generate up to $800 million to help pay for roads and schools in rural areas including Lake and Marion counties.
"It effectively kills the sale of the Ocala National Forest," Keller said. "I think it's a dangerous precedent to sell off national forest lands whenever there's a funding shortfall."
Despite Keller's glee, a U.S. Forest Service official said the proposal is still alive. Forest Service officials have said the 300,000 acres targeted in 35 states are remote and hard to maintain, representing only a sliver of 193 million acres of national forests.
"There are many steps left in the legislative process, and clearly there's much work ahead," said spokesman Dan Jiron, noting the proposal also must be considered by several other committees.
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Wed May 10, 2006 8:11am ET
By Martinne Geller
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A hurricane with only moderate intensity could wreak havoc in New York City because it has been years since the nation's financial center faced severe weather, government forecasters warned on Tuesday.
"The first time we get hit here with a Category 2, it's going to be disastrous," said meteorologist Michael Wyllie of the National Weather Service, referring to the scale used to rate hurricane strength.
Wyllie said powerful storms have missed New York in recent years, unlike parts of the Gulf Coast, where periodic storms "thin out the trees and the buildings."
Gloria, the last big storm to hit the New York area, caused about $900 million in economic losses along the East Coast in 1985, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"It's not like we can all run down to Home Depot and pick up these two-by-fours to board up windows," said John Koch, lead forecaster at the NWS forecast office in New York. "What we want people to do is know what they are going to do with their family and their pets."
Koch urged residents to familiarize themselves with the location of evacuation zones and make plans to have extra dry clothes, medicines, batteries, water and copies of valuable documents.
Although evacuation orders might be limited to low-lying areas, Koch said high winds could put tall buildings throughout the city at risk.
"Winds increase with height, so you're going to see much stronger wind on the 30th floor or the 50th floor of a building than you do at the surface," Koch said.
Wyllie said he expects the hurricane season, which starts June 1 and lasts until November 30, to be similar to last year, which saw an unprecedented 28 storms including Katrina.
"If there are more storms out there, odds are you have a higher chance of being hit," Koch said. "It could be this year, it could be five years from now, it could be 10 years from now."
Comet Swinging Close
Last Sunday night Comet Schwassmann- Wachmann 3 crossed the Ring Nebula in Lyra. Read our ongoing coverage.
INTERVIEW WITH IRAN EXPERT
"Ahmadinejad Isn't Bluffing"
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent US President George W. Bush a letter. But it's not likely to make any difference in the ongoing conflict over the country's nuclear program. Iran expert Wahied Wahdat-Hagh told SPIEGEL ONLINE why not.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Wahdat-Hagh, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote a letter to US President George W. Bush. In the letter, he once again questions Israel's right to exist, accuses the US of lying about Iraq and insists on his country's right to use nuclear technology. What message is Ahmadinejad trying to communicate?
Wahdat-Hagh: The purpose is to show strength. It's Ahmadinejad's way of saying: "We are powerful! You are a cowboy! Islam, though, is the true democracy and your system will collapse." Former Iranian President Khatami used to give interviews to CNN. But Ahmadinejad has gone directly to Bush and told him straight to his face that Iran is going to continue with the strategy it has thus far followed.
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Monday, May 8th, 2006
An enthusiastic standing-room-only crowd packed the Wisconsin Historical Society auditorium Saturday to hear ex-Bush Administration insider Morgan Reynolds prosecute top administration and military officials for the 9/11 inside job.
Reynolds indicted Richard Cheney, George W. Bush, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Meyers, confessed WTC demolisher and insurance-fraudster Larry Silverstein, and others for mass murder, Conspiracy, and other charges including high treason. The enthusiastic response from the overflow crowd was a de facto vote for conviction on all counts.
The former Director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis, showed that the defendants conspired to create a false cover story of suicide hijackings in order to “blow the World Trade Center to kingdom come” with explosives—a shock-and-awe psy-op designed to coerce the American people into supporting a pre-planned “long war” in the Middle East, massive increases in military spending, and the rollback of Constitutional civil liberties.
Reynolds stated that everyone in the worldwide intelligence community knew that 9/11 was an inside job as soon as it happened, with the obvious stand-down of US air defenses, controlled demolition of the World Trade Center, and non-protection of the President in Florida being the biggest tip-offs. The head of the Russian equivalent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the former head of the German intelligence service Andreas Von Bulow, former National Security Agency official Wayne Madsen, and former MI-6 agent David Schayler have all openly called 9/11 an inside job, while former CIA official Ray McGovern has confirmed this directly in private, and indirectly in public by way of his ringing endorsement of David Ray Griffin’s work on 9/11.
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