Apocalypse Now. Run for cover. The turbans are coming. This is the state of Pakistan today, according to the current hysteria disseminated by the Barack Obama administration and United States corporate media - from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to The New York Times. Even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said on the record that Pakistani Talibanistan is a threat to the security of Britain.
But unlike St Petersburg in 1917 or Tehran in late 1978, Islamabad won't fall tomorrow to a turban revolution.
Puppet Masters
Libya's top oil official said yesterday his country is keen to invest in oil-and-gas exploration off Cyprus' southern coast.
Shukri Ghanem said Libya is "very much interested in looking at different possibilities of investment" in a search for oil and gas deposits inside the island's exclusive economic zone.
Ghanem, who is the chairman of Libya's National Oil Corporation, did not elaborate.
He was speaking to newsmen shortly after exploratory talks in Nicosia with Commerce Minister Antonis Paschalides.
Shukri Ghanem said Libya is "very much interested in looking at different possibilities of investment" in a search for oil and gas deposits inside the island's exclusive economic zone.
Ghanem, who is the chairman of Libya's National Oil Corporation, did not elaborate.
He was speaking to newsmen shortly after exploratory talks in Nicosia with Commerce Minister Antonis Paschalides.
Yahweh's 'fiery chariot'
China and a string of other countries are banning pork and other raw meat products from some U.S. states in the wake of the swine flu outbreak, which so far has not been detected in any pigs nor can be spread from eating pork.
After taking hits on product safety for everything from tainted toys to tainted milk, China wasted no time banning U.S. pork imports in the wake of the swine flu outbreak.
China and a string of other countries have moved to ban pork and other meat products from some U.S. states over the past week. The trend on Tuesday drew a rebuke from U.S. officials, who are warning trading partners that such embargoes could trigger "serious trading disruptions."
After taking hits on product safety for everything from tainted toys to tainted milk, China wasted no time banning U.S. pork imports in the wake of the swine flu outbreak.
China and a string of other countries have moved to ban pork and other meat products from some U.S. states over the past week. The trend on Tuesday drew a rebuke from U.S. officials, who are warning trading partners that such embargoes could trigger "serious trading disruptions."
The speaker is John Harris.
The event is "Lawful Rebellion Conference" held in England in January 2009.
Who is actually ruling us? How are they ruling us? And under what law?
Do you ever get the feeling that the government is being run for someone else's benefit and not for the benefit of the governed?
You may be right.
Study the language they use. It reveals a lot.
The event is "Lawful Rebellion Conference" held in England in January 2009.
Who is actually ruling us? How are they ruling us? And under what law?
Do you ever get the feeling that the government is being run for someone else's benefit and not for the benefit of the governed?
You may be right.
Study the language they use. It reveals a lot.
© Unknown
Child victim of the 'ringworm' x-rays
Child victim of the 'ringworm' x-rays
"The Ringworm Children" (translated in Hebrew as "100,000 Rays"), directed by David Belhassen and Asher Hemias, recently won the prize for "best documentary" at the Haifa International film festival, and in the past year has made the rounds of Jewish and Israeli film festivals around the world. But it had yet to come to Israeli television screens. The subject is the mass irradiation of hundreds of thousands of young Israeli immigrants from Middle Eastern countries -- Sephardim, as they are called today. The story goes like this:
In 1951, the director general of the Israeli Health Ministry, Dr. Chaim Sheba, flew to America and returned with seven x-ray machines, supplied to him by the American army.
They were to be used in a mass atomic experiment with an entire generation of Sephardi youths to be used as guinea pigs. Every Sephardi child was to be given 35,000 times the maximum dose of x-rays through his head. For doing so, the American government paid the Israeli government 300 million Israeli liras a year. The entire Health budget was 60 million liras. The money paid by the Americans is equivalent to billions of dollars today.
The torture trail starts and ends in the White House. That is perhaps the most inescapable conclusion to be drawn from the flurry of documents released in the last week - first the OLC memoranda, then a newly declassified report of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and finally an amazing document that Attorney General Eric Holder released yesterday, which has still gained little attention. The Holder note presents a summary of CIA interaction with the White House in connection with the approval of the torture techniques that John Yoo calls the "Bush Program." Holder's memo refers to the participants by their job titles only, but John Sifton runs it through a decoder and gives us the actual names. Here's a key passage:
Zherdevka, a dead-end town seven hours' drive from Moscow, is the sort of place where nothing ever happens. Almost all the cars are old, battered Ladas; the few cafés reek of cheap frying oil and are populated with friendly but tragic-faced people ordering large early morning glasses of vodka.
Amid this quiet provincial decay, an extraordinary drama has been unfolding in recent weeks, unseen to the world. On a bitter April morning under cold grey skies, two days after the start of the new trial of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Moscow, six defendants were brought, amid heavy security, to a hearing in Zherdevka's small local courthouse.
Amid this quiet provincial decay, an extraordinary drama has been unfolding in recent weeks, unseen to the world. On a bitter April morning under cold grey skies, two days after the start of the new trial of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Moscow, six defendants were brought, amid heavy security, to a hearing in Zherdevka's small local courthouse.
Jane Harman
But Pelosi said she was not told what federal eavesdroppers picked up on the call - and never alerted Harman to it.
"It was not my position to raise it with Jane Harman," Pelosi told reporters at the Christian Science Monitor lunch. "In fact, I didn't even know if what they were talking about was real. All they said was that she was wiretapped."
Editor's note: This is an expanded and revised version of a presentation for "Solving the Great American Murder Mystery" Symposium, which was held at Duquesne University 20-23 November 2003. The speaker, who is the leading student of the death of JFK in the world today, has elaborated on the formal paper that he submitted on that occasion for its appearance in this journal, while preserving the sequence of figures and photographs.The formal paper appears following this informal version as an appendix.
"If you want to understand the present, study the past." - Baruch Spinoza
Over a doorway to National Archives I is this quote: "The past is prologue." Although the source is not identified, the quote is actually from The Tempest by William Shakespeare. I passed through this doorway in 1993, when I first examined the JFK autopsy materials with Cyril Wecht. The quote reminds us why history might matter.
"If you want to understand the present, study the past." - Baruch Spinoza
Over a doorway to National Archives I is this quote: "The past is prologue." Although the source is not identified, the quote is actually from The Tempest by William Shakespeare. I passed through this doorway in 1993, when I first examined the JFK autopsy materials with Cyril Wecht. The quote reminds us why history might matter.
