Congress Robbing $400 Million From Katrina Victims To Pay For BP Gulf Oil Spill

Years after Hurricane Katrina left a path of destruction throughout New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana much of the damage still remains.

So much damage remains that they still offer “disaster tours” to tourists wishing to see the devastation.

Restoration to almost 20,000 homes which still lie destroyed in Louisiana, with over 7,000 of those homes in New Orleans alone, was supposed to paid for by funds specifically set aside to help those impacted by Hurricane Katrina.

That isn’t going to happen anymore as Mother Jones reporter Mac McClelland informs as as she shines some light on the latest act of disgrace by the Federal Government in her article titled Robbing New Orleans to Pay for BP’s Spill.

Yes, Federal Government has repeatedly assured the public over and over again that BP will pay for every dime of costs related to the oil spill.

But as we have seen throughout this crisis the Government has repeatedly told the public one thing and has done another.

The lip service has even been echoed by President Obama himself on several occasions.

Barack Obama: BP will pay ‘every dime’ for oil spill

President Barack Obama said the US government would make BP pay for everything involved in the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, and questioned whether the company had come clean about the extent of the damage

Watch – Obama:BP Will Pay “Every Dime” For Damage,Promises Justice

Obama even made sure millions would hear that message by making a nationwide prime time address.

Yet Mac McClelland informs us that a supplemental appropriations bill passed earlier this month steals $400 million of funds set aside for victims of Hurricane Katrina in order to fund projects related to the BP Gulf Oil Spill, including $304 million for the remediation and investigation of the spill.

Now a supplemental appropriations bill that passed the House earlier this month would take $400 million from post-Katrina recovery programs like Road Home in order to fund other projects, including $304 million for Deepwater Horizon-related remediation and investigation.

As you can imagine Louisiana residents and other organizations involved in Hurricane Katrina restoration efforts aren’t two happy about the robbery.

To some Louisiana residents, using any taxpayer money, much less hurricane-relief money, to clean up BP’s oil just adds insult to injury. “Any provisions related to the spill should be paid for by the responsible party,” says Monika Gerhart, director of policy and government relations for the Equity and Inclusion Campaign, a nonpartisan advocacy organization. “We’re not yet recovered. So don’t take our housing money.”

Louisiana Recovery Authority Chairman David Voelker begged congress not to pass the legislation because it would mean that almost 20,000 homes in Louisiana that remain devastated from Hurricane Katrina would lose the much need Federal funding for restoration.

In a June 7 letter to the House Committee on Appropriations, Louisiana Recovery Authority Chairman David Voelker pleaded that the rescission of already-dedicated rebuilding funds be stricken from the bill. Without them, Voelker estimates, 19,000 homes statewide will go unrestored, nearly 7,000 of them in Orleans Parish. “If you just drive around, you can see the people need it,” says Taylor Henry, communications director for Republican Congressman Anh “Joseph” Cao, whose district includes New Orleans.

These are our tax dollars being stolen from the poor to to pay for the mess that BP made.

This disturbing pattern of the Federal Government stealing from the poor to give to the rich is one that only continues to get worse.

Congress even recently pushed forward a bill to increase the tax on oil to pay for the BP mess.

Take as another example of the Government’s negligence toward American citizens the actions of the Wall Street investment firm Goldman Sachs who recently made record profits.

They were just given a slap on the wrist for engaging in fraud involving credit default swaps and mortgage securities with a $550 million fine for a fraudulent transaction that made the firm $1 billion dollars.

It’s important to note that Goldman Sachs made $550 million every two weeks in the first quarter of 2010 and the settlement amount is 5% of the $10 billion in bonuses paid last year. One has to wonder why they wouldn’t do it again. After all, shares of Goldman Sachs increased by 2-½% on the announcement that the case had been put to rest, increasing market value by more than the amount they agreed to pay.

To make matters worse the illegal activities that Goldman was charged with are the same illegal activities that caused the Financial Crisis of 2008 and that MSNBC has called the largest fraud scheme ever.

Even countries like Greece have come forward to blow the whistle on the fraud scheme.

What caused the Stock Market Crash? Details of the Credit Default Swaps scandal revealed. Wall Street insiders have been running a mortgage insurance fraud scam. Exposed wall street executives and hedge fund managers have scammed the government and caused the stock market crash of 2008.

Yet the Government continues to allow these crooked corporations to run these scams and when it comes time to the pay for the costs of the activities of these corporations the Government decides to steal money from the poor instead of holding the companies themselves responsible.

The Government is already floating around the idea of implementing European style austerity measures on American citizens.

Even the topic of discussion yesterday on CNN was consideration by Congress to increase the retirement age to 70 and eliminating social security altogether for certain people, both of which are further examples of the pilfering of the taxpayer.

If you like your job, better hold onto it because Congress is thinking about raising the retirement age.

…

But it seems the flashing warning signs of our skyrocketing and unsustainable deficits have finally gotten their attention.

And now they’re getting down to business – with party leaders saying that with people living longer and in better health – the nation can’t afford to keep paying out benefits for as long as 30 years after people retire.

House Minority Leader John Boehner suggests raising the retirement age for full Social Security benefits to 70… for those who are now 50 or younger.

Boehner also says we should provide benefits only to those who need them. He says with the government broke, it shouldn’t be paying benefits to those who have substantial income from other sources while they’re retired.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer also talks about raising the retirement age… and providing benefits primarily to the poor.

That’s right. They want us to pay social security tax our entire life and hope we die before we can collect on it.

Even if we you don’t die first they still don’t want to pay you back the money you paid them for your entire life.

Meanwhile government waste and corruption runs rampant.

We spend a trillion dollars a year on foreign wars, provide hundreds of billions of dollars in welfare to corporations, and continue to fund the negligent and fraudulent activities of corporation like BP and Goldman Sachs.

Argentina cold snap

Kids playing in a rare snowfall - Cordoba, Argentina

Snow makes roads slick and driving difficult in Cordoba, Argentina

Snow in July? Well, that's the case for Argentina this week. It is winter in the southern hemisphere.

An arctic air mass is hovering over the middle of the country, bringing frigid temperatures and leaving snow on the ground. In Cordoba, north and east of the capital, roads and homes were blanketed in white, making driving conditions trecherous, but exciting children with the rare snowfall.

Local newspapers reported that the temperature plunged to -1.5°C in Buenos Aires, on Friday -- making it the coolest day in a decade for the capital. Even the beaches saw white powder. The coastal resort city Mar del Plata was blanketed by snow for two days straight.

Woman bundles up on the streets in Buenos Aires

The snow was easily the biggest story of the day, as most newspaper front pages were dedicated to pictures of the snow. One paper reported snowfall in 12 of the country's 22 provinces.

Meteorologists say the satellite images show that the cold air mass settled firmly over central Patagonia, where temperatures plummeted to -15°C. Maria de los Milagros Skance, the director of the national meteorologist service said, “A cold air mass from the pole moved into the country and affected the entire country and continues affecting it.”

Skance also notes that the air mass caused snow in places that don't get snow and then pushed the cold all the way up into the subtropical northern areas of the country.

In Buenos Aires, temperatures are expected to climb until Monday, but there's still a wind-chill factor and light rains that will keep conditions frosty.

With files from Reuters

Roads to Ruin: Towns Rip Up the Pavement

Dan Koeck for The Wall Street Journal

A road crew in Jamestown, N.D., where road repair means reclaiming the original asphalt and processing it to resemble gravel.

SPIRITWOOD, N.D.—A hulking yellow machine inched along Old Highway 10 here recently in a summer scene that seemed as normal as the nearby corn swaying in the breeze. But instead of laying a blanket of steaming blacktop, the machine was grinding the asphalt road into bits.

"When [counties] had lots of money, they paved a lot of the roads and tried to make life easier for the people who lived out here," said Stutsman County Highway Superintendant Mike Zimmerman, sifting the dusty black rubble through his fingers. "Now, it's catching up to them."

Outside this speck of a town, pop. 78, a 10-mile stretch of road had deteriorated to the point that residents reported seeing ducks floating in potholes, Mr. Zimmerman said. As the road wore out, the cost of repaving became too great. Last year, the county spent $400,000 on an RM300 Caterpillar rotary mixer to grind the road up, making it look more like the old homesteader trail it once was.

Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.

View Full Image

Dan Koeck for The Wall Street Journal

Project supervisor Jerry Brickner checked a county road recently converted to gravel in Jamestown, N.D.

View Full Image

Dan Koeck for The Wall Street Journal

The heavy machines at work in Jamestown, N.D., are grinding the asphalt off road beds, grading the bed and packing the material back down to create a new road surface.

In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as "poor man's pavement." Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel.

The moves have angered some residents because of the choking dust and windshield-cracking stones that gravel roads can kick up, not to mention the jarring "washboard" effect of driving on rutted gravel.

But higher taxes for road maintenance are equally unpopular. In June, Stutsman County residents rejected a measure that would have generated more money for roads by increasing property and sales taxes.

"I'd rather my kids drive on a gravel road than stick them with a big tax bill," said Bob Baumann, as he sipped a bottle of Coors Light at the Sportsman's Bar Café and Gas in Spiritwood.

Rebuilding an asphalt road today is particularly expensive because the price of asphalt cement, a petroleum-based material mixed with rocks to make asphalt, has more than doubled over the past 10 years. Gravel becomes a cheaper option once an asphalt road has been neglected for so long that major rehabilitation is necessary.

"A lot of these roads have just deteriorated to the point that they have no other choice than to turn them back to gravel," says Larry Galehouse, director of the National Center for Pavement Preservation at Michigan State University. Still, "we're leaving an awful legacy for future generations."

Some experts caution that gravel roads can be costlier in the long run than consistently maintained asphalt because gravel needs to be graded and smoothed. A gravel road "is not a free road," says Purdue University's John Habermann, who organized a recent seminar about the resurgence of gravel roads titled "Back to the Stone Age."

Paving grew in popularity in the early 20th century as more cars hit streets and spread when the federal government built the Interstate Highway System.

Over the years, many of the two-lane arteries that connect country roads with metro areas have deteriorated under rising traffic and the growing weight of farm combines, logging trucks and other heavy equipment.

Frederick Wachtel, county engineer in Coshocton County, Ohio, says his budget, largely driven by fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees, was off 5% last year, the first decline in nearly 20 years. He is now letting some of his roads return to nature.

In Spiritwood one day recently, a soft breeze carried the scents of cow manure and hot asphalt over the tall broom grass. The giant Caterpillar chugged along at a speed of 2.4 feet per minute and pulverized Old Highway 10 into a black dust with chunks of rock and pavement. A piece of equipment following behind rolled the surface flat.

The machines rumbled along a path carved by homesteaders' covered wagons in the 1800s. Over time, grain elevators and railroad depots sprung up along the route, which became known as the Old Red Trail. Later, the road was paved and renamed Highway 10.

After Interstate 94 was built alongside the road in the 1950s, it became Old Highway 10. Traffic volumes gradually dropped until Old 10 became a lazy backcountry road dotted with abandoned farmsteads. In the 1960s the state gave Old 10 to the counties it ran through, leaving them to pay for upkeep. North Dakota's Stutsman County got a 30-mile stretch.

The gift became a burden. The Stutsman highway department, which gets the bulk of its funds from local property taxes, state fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees, let the road fall into disrepair as it juggled other projects. Every year without major maintenance, the road became more expensive to fix.

Judy Graves of Ypsilanti, N.D., voted against the measure to raise taxes for roads. But she says she and others nonetheless wrote to Gov. John Hoeven and asked him to stop Old 10 from being ground up because it still carries traffic to a Cargill Inc. malting plant. She says the county has mismanaged its finances and badly neglected roads.

"Our expenses outweigh the income," says Mr. Zimmerman, who has been with the county highway department for nearly 30 years. He says the county will pay about $2,600 per mile annually for the newly ground-up road, as against about $75,000 per mile to reconstruct it.

Gayne Gasal, who lives along the redone stretch of road, says it has turned out "better than we all thought." But Sportsman's Bar owner Hilda Kuntz worries that the classic cars and bikers that roll through town in the summer will stay away.

"It's going to kill my business," she said.

Bishop Donald Corder: A Theory of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel

By: Bishop Donald Corder

Financial warfare at its finest can be seen through the historical development of the US Hegemony – domination of a capital intense ruling class – and the parasitic infestation of the Zionist into our world’s revenue streams; thereby enabling them impetus for global sway as a shadow government. Great Britain’s fall at Bretton Woods, was a major milestone in ending the economic warfare with the United States after World War II. The Bretton Woods system was history’s first example of a fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern currency relations among sovereign states. In practice it was a system of rules, institutions, and procedures to regulate the international monetary system and was directly dependent on the preferences and policies of its most powerful member, the United States. Britain’s repayment of post war debt institutionalized U.S. governmental finance capital and provided the US ruling classes greater power over the re-structuring of Europe’s economic and political systems.

Financial warfare evolved in the early sixties with the introduction of economic hit men dispatched to third world and developing nations who then employed flawed statistical data coupled with erroneous profitability forecast and overly enthusiastic endorsement of the nation’s macro business development and enterprise viability. Setting in motion the necessary justifications and rationales for the acquisition of loans by these countries. Thus, turning them into creditor controlled debtor nations when the sought after business revenues did never materialize.

Zionist ruination of the Gaza economy deflects away from Israel their being cornered upon a competitive domestic arena of an empowered Palestinian people. The little Jewish Nation cannot compete with these in an Arab world or an informed global society. A people, who might would rather invest their business, consumer and discretionary monies with vendors who are responsive to their purchasing requirements and ideologies. Consequently, such transfer of wealth setting the stage for a broader coalition and advancement of Palestinian’s own political agendas and autonomy. Alternatively, Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) can be envisioned as an action to help in the facilitation of the Palestinian aspirations.

Political apparatus of the BDS initiatives would ideally seize upon the window of opportunity to negotiate with the regional Arab governments to follow the example set by the Turkish Prime Minister. Wherein contracting with Israel was scheduled for review and possible suspension of business after the high seas murder of Turkish citizens by the Israeli military. Nonetheless, calculations necessary to engage the private sector and providing them rationale along with sufficiently compelling business reasons to join in the BDS thrust. Demands moving beyond the moral outrage often cited as justification to confronting the financial apparatus of the Jewish Nation of Israel.

Considering the public debt is 78.4% of the Israeli gross domestic product (GDP), the macro-economic has likewise followed the global economy. Consequently, it has fallen significantly since the now five year old advent of BDS initiatives having come into being. Israel responded to this initiative by seating foreign investment banks UBS, Deutsche Bank, and HSBC as members of Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE). Where, seventy (70) Israeli companies were publicly traded on an exchange having market value in the amount of $188.7 billion (31 December 2009). CIA The World Factbook. These are defensively scattered throughout the London Stock Exchange and The Nasdaq Stock Market, where memorandums of understanding were created to facilitate exchange of shares on the several respected market exchanges. The fragile Israeli economy is protected by large transfer payments from abroad and by foreign loans; with the United States holding a possible excess of 50% of the debt. There does not appear to be a single depository or information clearing house available to supporters of the BDS initiatives and activism, although US Companies with investments in Israel are listed at Global Exchange. Israel is nonetheless deeply susceptible to organized BDS actions on a global scale.

Sophisticated business analysis and reconnaissance must be employed to discover systemic strategic and tactical avenues most likely to aid in the success of the BDS prerogatives. Question of purposes to be achieved (i.e. impact profits, undermine breakeven scenarios or disturb position in the marketplace to simply raise public awareness). Considering the diversity in the Zionist asset base and its financial performance begs the question of whether the holders of wealth can weather the storm or transition into other secondary investment opportunities. How many of their customers does our coalition represent? Can we mobilize the BDS coalition to penetrate the targeted companies’ customer base or its financial access? Individual assessments and business analysis will ultimately provide opportunity to evaluate methodology of the perceived actions and interventions. Vision, influence and capability of leadership must breach the legal loopholes and barriers being erected by the Friends of Israel in their attempts to thwart or circumvent the outcomes of this discussion along with establishing appropriate global infrastructures and logistics.

Although we rally around the idea of Palestinian resistance to global domination of the US ruling class and the piranha terrorism of Israel inflicted upon Gaza. In addition to raising our voices in opposition to and saying no to the designs leading to the exploitation of Middle Eastern oil reserves. More importantly the action levied against Palestine impacts the culture of an entire region. History teaches us that, in certain circumstances, it is very easy for the foreigner to impose his domination on a people. But it also teaches us that, whatever may be the material aspects of this domination, it can be maintained only by the permanent, organized repression of the cultural life of the people concerned. Implantation of foreign domination can be assured definitively only by physical liquidation of a significant part of the dominated population. “National Liberation and Culture” by Amilcar Cabral.

Clear, radical and out of the zone vibrations must inspire the creativity that will be necessary to sufficiently wound the beast of Zion through BDS financial confrontations sufficient to deter their continued designs for the Nation of Palestine, ongoing genocide of its people along with their culture; and subjugation of the Arab Nations. Wherein our failures to come into the power found in a single mind, a single will and a single purpose against this global imperialism will seize from what historically have been a people unencumbered by the worldwide madness gripping the Western and Euro-centric Civilizations. Where children are butchered and torn from their mother’s womb’s with impunity, the spirit of the church is separated from the life of government and moral leadership of an Islamic Nation, whereby the young no longer honor the aged and honorable men and their women, whose lives were poured out to lay the platform now sought to be ripped from the heart stage of the community.

Gone will be the ideological plane born of the physical and historical realities of the indigenous Arabian society, thus nullifying the singular ability to engage and react consciously upon nature and tenants of their own religions; money now becomes your god. Violently usurping the free operation of the process of development and problem solving typically employed by each nation, rather, the productive force and natural resources will be governed from rules being imposed that were born under the roof of another man’s house. It then indicates and conditions the type of material relationships which exist among the groups, between man and nature, between man and his environment, and type of relationships among the individual or collective components of a society. “National Liberation and Culture” by Amilcar Cabral. Such, will forever loom as the grand folly of a people who could have saved themselves in this, the defining hour.

Four dead in Juarez bombing

Juarez-- People in Juarez are recovering from a car bomb that killed four Thursday night. The victims include two federal agents, an ambulance worker and a doctor who was in the area when the bomb went off.

Tonight, we have learned that it was a car bomb that was detonated with the same kind of sophistication that is used by terrorist groups like Hezbollah.

A number of people were injured during the attack. Today we know that seven federal police agents were severely injured. A news photographer from channel 5 in Juarez remains in critical condition. One woman who owns a business nearby talked to us about her fears.

"As it is, we are not selling much. Can you imagine right now people are scared. We used to have many American customers. Right now that has drastically decreased," says the business owner.

According to police, it appears a Ford Focus was driven into a police convoy crashing into two federal police units. Information from officials indicates that there were hand grenades attached to the gas tank of the car in order to cause the explosion. Juarez mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said today that the general public shouldn't be worried because recent attacks have been focused on police. "Luckily it has been limited to either the police or the members of those two groups of organized crime. We don't have any information that leads us to believe any attacks are going to be made on the population itself," states Ferriz.

Law Enforcement has arrested the man they say masterminded the attack. The man is identified as Armando Acosta Guerrero. Authorities say he is a high ranking member of "La Linea", the enforcement arm of the Juarez cartel.

Robert Fisk: They're all grovelling and you can guess the reason

It is the season of grovelling.

Only a week after CNN's Octavia Nasr and the British ambassador to Beirut, Frances Guy, dared to suggest that Sayyed Hassan Fadlallah of Lebanon was a nice old chap rather than the super-terrorist the Americans have always claimed him to be, the grovelling began. First Ms Nasr, already fired by the grovelling CNN for her effrontery in calling Fadlallah a "giant", grovelled herself. Rather than tell the world what a cowardly outfit she had been working for, she announced that hers was "a simplistic comment and I'm sorry because it conveyed that I supported Fadlallah's life's work. That's not the case at all".

What is this garbage? Nasr never gave the impression that she supported "Fadlallah's life's work". She merely expressed her regret that the old boy was dead, adding – inaccurately – that he had been part of Hizbollah. I don't know what her pompous (and, of course, equally grovelling) "senior vice president" said to her when she was given her marching orders. But like victims of the Spanish Inquisition, Nasr actually ended up apologising for sins she had never even been accused of. Then within hours, British ambassador Guy began her own self-flagellation, expressing her regrets that she may have offended anyone (and we all know what that means) by her "personal attempt to offer some reflections of a figure who, while controversial, was also highly influential in Lebanon's history and who offered spiritual guidance to many Muslims in need".

I loved the "controversial" bit – the usual "fuck you" word for anyone you want to praise without incurring the wrath of, well, you know who. The Foreign Office itself took down poor Ms Guy's blogapop on old Fadlallah, thus proving – as Arab journalists leapt to point out this week – that while Britain proclaims the virtues of democracy and the free press to the grovelling newspaper owners and grotty emirs of the Middle East, it is the first to grovel when anything might offend you know who.

For that was the collective sin of Misses Nasr and Guy. What they said might have made Israel's supporters angry. And that will never do. The reality is that CNN should have told Israel's lobbyists to get lost, and the Foreign Office – which was indeed upbraided by the Israeli foreign ministry – should have asked the Israeli government when it is going to stop thieving Arab land. But as my old mate Rami Khoury put it in the Jordanian press this week, "We in the Middle East are used to this sort of racist intellectual terrorism. American and British citizens who occasionally dare to speak accurately about the Middle East and its people are still learning about the full price of the truth when Israeli interests are in the room."

Which brings us, of course, to the Grovel of the Week, the unctuous, weak-willed, cringing figure of Barack "Change" Obama as he strode the White House lawn with Netanyahu himself. For here was the champion of the underdog, the "understanding" president who could fix the Middle East – finding it "harder that he thought", according to his spokesman – proving that mid-term elections are more important than all the injustice in the Middle East. It is more than a year now since Netanyahu responded in cabinet to Obama's first criticisms with the remark: "This guy doesn't get it, does he?" (The quote comes from an excellent Israeli source of mine.) Ever since, Netanyahu has been McChrystalling Obama on a near-weekly basis, and Obama has been alternatively hissing and purring, banning Netanyahu from photo calls, but then – as those elections draw nearer – rolling over and talking about how the brave Netanyahu, whose government has just destroyed some more Arab homes in East Jerusalem, is taking "risks for peace".

Needless to say, the only good guys in this story are the courageous Jewish Americans who oppose the thieves in Netanyahu's government and the racism of his foreign minister, the Ahmadinejad-like Avigdor Lieberman. And which Western newspaper was bold enough to point out that the house destruction in Jerusalem "effectively end(ed) an unofficial freeze of such internationally condemned demolitions"? The New York Times? The Washington Post? No, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, of course. And anyone who thinks Haaretz is alone in condemning the illegal actions of the Israelis should read the excellent Jewish magazine Tikun in the US, which goes for Israel's Likud lobbyists – for they are Likudists – like a tiger. Their latest target was Neal Sher, the Likudist who used to be in the US Justice Department and who is trying to persuade La Clintone to ban Judge Goldstone from America (where he holds a university professorship) for accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza. And whose government was it that also condemned Goldstone's report? Well, Obama's of course.

Looking back, the Obama grovelling started in that famous Cairo reach-out-to-the-Muslim-world speech, when he referred to the Palestinian "relocation" of 1948 (as if the Palestinian Arabs got up one morning on the birth of Israel and decided that they all wanted to go on holiday to Lebanon). But the moment the world should have got wise was when Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. A man of greater dignity would have acknowledged the honour of such an award, but explained that his own unworthiness prevented him from accepting. But he did accept. He wanted the Nobel Prize. It was more important to accept it even though he did not deserve it. And now? Well, we've all been watching the little groveller this week. Middle East peace? Further colonisation of Arab land? Crisis in southern Lebanon? The continued siege of Gaza? Forget it. Think of mid-term elections. Remember the fate of Nasr and Guy. And grovel.

This Is the Real Netanyahu : ‘America Won’t Get in Our Way…It’s Easily Moved’

Israel’s Channel 10 secured a video (Hebrew) recorded in 2001 during the height the Palestinian Intifada against Israel and the settlements. It records a condolence call Bibi Netanyahu, recently “retired” from politics after losing the prime ministership several years earlier, pays on a group of West Bank widows whose husbands had been killed by Palestinian attacks.

For those on the Israeli right who claim that the Oslo Accords broke down due to Palestinian terror or any such thing, watch this and you will see that Bibi brags that he destroyed Oslo. Even if you discount this by half as the braggadocio of a macho Israeli politician, it’s still eye-opening. Gideon Levy too has written about this footage in Haaretz.

Note in the first passage how Bibi brags that he has America wrapped around his thumb. The cynicism is breathtaking. Here is Dena Shunra’s translation:

Bibi:…The Arabs are currently focusing on a war of terror and they think it will break us. The main thing, first of all, is to hit them. Not just one blow, but blows that are so painful that the price will be too heavy to be borne. The price is not too heavy to be borne, now. A broad attack on the Palestinian Authority. To bring them to the point of being afraid that everything is collapsing…

Woman: Wait a moment, but then the world will say “how come you’re conquering again?”

Netanyahu: the world won’t say a thing. The world will say we’re defending.

Woman: Aren’t you afraid of the world, Bibi?

Netanyahu: Especially today, with America. I know what America is. America is something that can easily be moved. Moved to the right direction.

Child: They say they’re for us, but, it’s like…

Netanyahu: They won’t get in our way. They won’t get in our way.

Child: On the other hand, if we do some something, then they…

Netanyahu: So let’s say they say something. So they said it! They said it! 80% of the Americans support us. It’s absurd. We have that kind of support and we say “what will we do with the…” Look. That administration [Clinton] was extremely pro-Palestinian. I wasn’t afraid to maneuver there. I was not afraid to clash with Clinton. I was not afraid to clash with the United Nations. I was paying the price anyway, I preferred to receive the value. Value for the price.

In the following segment, Bibi boasts about how he emptied the Oslo Accords of meaning by an interpretation that made a mockery of them:

Woman: The Oslo Accords are a disaster.

Netanyahu: Yes. You know that and I knew that…The people [nation] has to know…

What were the Oslo Accords? The Oslo Accords, which the Knesset signed, I was asked, before the elections: “Will you act according to them?” and I answered: “yes, subject to mutuality and limiting the retreats.” “But how do you intend to limit the retreats?” “I’ll give such interpretation to the Accords that will make it possible for me to stop this galloping to the ’67 [armistice] lines. How did we do it?

Narrator: The Oslo Accords stated at the time that Israel would gradually hand over territories to the Palestinians in three different pulses, unless the territories in question had settlements or military sites. This is where Netanyahu found a loophole.

Netanyahu: No one said what defined military sites. Defined military sites, I said, were security zones. As far as I’m concerned, the Jordan Valley is a defined military site.

Woman: Right [laughs]…The Beit She’an Valley.

Netanyahu: How can you tell. How can you tell? But then the question came up of just who would define what Defined Military Sites were. I received a letter – to my and to Arafat, at the same time – which said that Israel, and only Israel, would be the one to define what those are, the location of those military sites and their size. Now, they did not want to give me that letter, so I did not give the Hebron Agreement. I stopped the government meeting, I said: “I’m not signing.” Only when the letter came, in the course of the meeting, to my and to Arafat, only then did I sign the Hebron Agreement. Or rather, ratify it, it had already been signed. Why does this matter? Because at that moment I actually stopped the Oslo Accord.

Woman: And despite that, one of our own people, excuse me, who knew it was a swindle, and that we were going to commit suicide with the Oslo Accord, gives them – for example – Hebron…

Netanyahu: Indeed, Hebron hurts. It hurts. It’s the thing that hurts. One of the famous rabbis, whom I very much respect, a rabbi of Eretz Yisrael, he said to me: “What would your father say?” I went to my father. Do you know a little about my father’s position?

…He’s not exactly a lily-white dove, as they say. So my father heard the question and said: “Tell the rabbi that your grandfather, Rabbi Natan Milikowski, was a smart Jew. Tell him it would be better to give two percent than to give a hundred percent. And that’s the choice here. You gave two percent and in that way you stopped the withdrawal. Instead of a hundred percent.” The trick is not to be there and be broken. The trick is to be there and pay a minimal price.

Here are a few of Levy’s choice characterizations of Bibi’s performance in this video:

…Israel has had many rightist leaders since Menachem Begin…but there has never been one like Netanyahu, who wants to do it by deceit, to mock America, trick the Palestinians and lead us all astray. The man in the video betrays himself in his own words as a con artist, and now he is again prime minister of Israel. Don’t try to claim that he has changed since then. Such a crooked way of thinking does not change over the years.

Forget the Bar-Ilan University speech…this is the real Netanyahu. No more claims that the Palestinians are to blame for the failure of the Oslo Accords. Netanyahu exposed the naked truth to his hosts at Ofra: he destroyed the Oslo accords with his own hands and deeds, and he’s even proud of it. After years in which we were told that the Palestinians are to blame, the truth has emerged from the horse’s mouth.

…The government of Israel is led by a man who…thinks that Washington is in his pocket and that he can pull the wool over its eyes.

It should be noted that Bibi isn’t the only prime minister who boasted of such manipulation of the U.S. Dov Weisglass, Ariel Sharon’s Mephisto bragged of “putting the peace process in formaldehyde” via the Gaza withdrawal. He too claimed he had George Bush wrapped around his little finger (though he didn’t say which one).

This seems to be a fashion among right-wing Israel prime ministers. They come to believe their own press clippings. But really who is to blame for this but American presidents who allow Israeli leaders to outwit and outmaneuver them? When has an American president, except perhaps George Bush pere, ever stood up to Israel and won? And I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion it won’t ever happen with the current president.

Source: richardsilverstein.com

Was TWA 800 Shot Down By a Military Missile?

In 1996 TWA Flight 800 was shot down south of Long Island.

The government of the United States, despite the embarrassment of having been caught in court rigging lab tests and lying in its reports, still officially attributes the disaster to a spark in the center fuel tank, while government spokespeople insist that the witnesses who saw a missile hit the jumbo jet are all drunks.

TWA 800 LAWSUIT: THE BURDEN OF PROOF TWA 800 LAWSUIT GOES TO COURT!

Introduction
The Crash

On the evening of July 17th, 1996, shortly after the sun had set, but while the sky was still light, a Boeing 747-131 jetliner, TWA's flight 800, was taking off from JFK airport on its way to Paris, France. On board were 230 people. Approximately 11 minutes into the flight, the 747 was flying at an altitude of 13,700 MSL, or 13,700 feet above sea level. Normally higher at 11 minutes, flight 800 had delayed climbing to make room for another jetliner descending into Rhode Island. The plane was over the Atlantic ocean south of Long Island, New York.

Just as flight 800 received clearance to initiate a climb to cruise altitude, the plane exploded without any warning. Thousands of pounds of kerosene, dumped from the center and wing tanks, vaporized and ignited, creating a fireball seen all along the coastline of Long Island. Under the orange glow of the fireball, sections of the 747 tumbled into the ocean. So completely had the plane broken up that weather radar confused the expanding bubble of debris for a cloud. Audio of mayday calls (requires QuickTime for playback) Early reports of a Mayday call from the doomed flight Robert Kramek reporting the Mayday call

The Official Notification Of The Crash NTSB Identification: DCA96MA070 Scheduled 14 CFR 121 operation of TRANSWORLD AIRWAYS (D.B.A. TWA) Accident occurred JUL-17-96 at EAST MORICHES, NY Aircraft: Boeing 747, registration: N93119 Injuries: 230 Fatal. On July 17, 1996, about 8:45pm, TWA flight 800, N93119, a Boeing 747-100, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Long Island shortly after takeoff from Kennedy International Airport. The airplane was on a regularly scheduled flight to Paris, France. The initial reports are that witnesses saw an explosion and then debris descending to the ocean. There are no reports of the flight crew reporting a problem to air traffic control. The airplane was manufactured in November 1971. It has accumulated about 93,303 flight hours and 16,869 cycles. On board the airplane were 212 passengers and 18 crew members. The airplane was destroyed and there were no survivors.

The First Hints Almost at once, eyewitnesses were being interviewed on radio and TV who reported that something strange had preceded the explosion of the 747. Witnesses, many on the ground, reported seeing a bright object "streaking" towards the 747. The object in question turned in midair as it closed on the jumbo jet. Witnesses reported horizontal travel, as well as vertical. The broad geographical range covered by the eyewitnesses eliminates foreground/background confusion. To be seen as being near the 747 from so many different directions, the bright object had to actually be in the immediate vicinity of the 747. Other pilots in the air reported seeing a bright light near the jumbo jet before it exploded. In the days following the disaster, many industry executives privately concluded that TWA 800 had been shot down. What Was The Bright Object Detected On Radar? There was an initial report that something had been picked up on Air Traffic Control radar, but this report was quickly withdraw. Associated Press on (07/19/96) reported " Radar detected a blip merging with the jet shortly before the explosion, something that could indicate a missile hit." It's important to remember that in normal operation, Air Traffic Control radar does not detect aircraft, but aircraft transponders. A transponder is a special type of radio in the aircraft that listens for a radar beam. When it detects a radar beam, it immediately sends out a coded signal with an identifying number (assigned by the Air Traffic Controller on the ground) as well as the altitude of the aircraft. The Air Traffic Control radar will then use this extra data to display useful information to the Air Traffic Controller. All air traffic operating inside the Terminal Control Area is required to have an operating radar transponder. Unless the Air Traffic Controller displays the skin paint return, any air traffic without a transponder will not be seen. Was The Bright Object A Missile? The descriptions given by the eyewitnesses and by pilots in the area (including an Air France crew) are not inconsistent with a missile. No alternative explanation for the bright object has been forthcoming. ABC World News Sunday, 07/21/96, interviewed witness Lou Desyron, who reported, "We saw what appeared to be a flare going straight up. As a matter of fact, we thought it was from a boat. It was a bright reddish-orange color. ...once it went into flames, I knew that wasn't a flare." The Washington Times, on July 24th, 1996, reported. "Several witnesses...saw a bright, flare-like object streaking toward the jumbo jet seconds before it blew up. ABC News said yesterday that the investigators had more then 100 eyewitness accounts supporting the [ missile ] theory." The New York Post, in its story of September 22, 1996, reported, Law-enforcement sources said the hardest evidence gathered so far overwhelmingly suggests a surface-to-air missile... The FBI interviewed 154 "credible" witnesses -- including scientists, schoolteachers, Army personnel and business executives -- who described seeing a missile heading through the sky just before TWA 800 exploded. "Some of these people are extremely, extremely credible," a top federal official said. FBI technicians mapped the various paths -- points in the sky where the witnesses said they saw the rising "flare-like" object -- and determined that the "triangulated" convergence point was virtually where the jumbo jet initially exploded. The New York Times, on July 19th, 1996, reported, " [ Witnesses reported ] a "streak of light" hitting the plane just before it blew up." And perhaps most tellingly, from the Associated Press, on September 23, 1996, "...a source...said on condition of anonymity... ``There's metal bent in, metal bent out. Metal you can't tell. I see a hole going in and a hole going out..." "Sanitizing" The Debris Field. Almost immediately, information was leaked by the FBI and the Navy which implied that there was an object of extreme biological danger aboard Flight 800, one which posed a serious risk to anyone who picked it up. Although later retracted, the story, coupled with reports of bio-suited soldiers along the beaches of Long Island, created the impression that the FBI and NTSB did not want anyone looking too closely at any of the wreckage. Why Did Attention Focus on a Test Missile? Initially, it was claimed that there was virtually no explosive residue on the 747 wreckage. In normal practice, missiles being tested or used for training have dummy warheads; inert packages which are the same size and weight of real warheads but which do not explode. In many cases, such practice munitions are recovered and reused. An Associated Press Article on March 10, 1997 reported the following: The report said "compelling testimony" indicated a missile hit the plane on the right side, forward of the wing, passing through the fuselage without exploding. This is consistent with a test missile with a dummy warhead. Of course, it was not known at the time that evidence of explosive residue was even then being concealed from the public, but by that time, the claimed lack of explosive residue had suggested a test missile to most observers, and attention began to focus on the Navy's Cooperative Engagement Capability system, which had been undergoing tests, including live missile firings, along the Atlantic seaboard all that summer. When it was finally revealed that there was explosive residue on the remains of the Boeing 747, the mainstream media tried to explain it away as contamination from a bomb sniffing dog training exercise that ultimately turned out to have taken place on a different aircraft entirely. Had it been true, remnants from a training exercise did not explain a swath of residue ten rows long and three seats wide reaching from an obvious perforation in the forward section trailing back to where the forward section broke away from the rest of the 747. The Very Odd Behavior Of The Navy. Unique to this crash was the intense participation of the Navy, which immediately dispatched its best deep salvage vessels to the area, and kicked out the New York Police Department divers, who had legal jurisdiction in the area. While the beaches of Long Island were swept by soldiers in humvees, the Navy bottom-searched an area of the Atlantic half the size of Rhode Island. Most unusually, the Navy searched out 20 miles to either side of the known debris field, even though the 747 could not have glided that distance from its altitude of 13,700 MSL even if left intact. The Navy justified this extensive search by claiming that they could not locate the aircraft flight recorders, the "black boxes", even though numerous private boat owners reported hearing the locator pings on their sonar and fish finders. When the black boxes finally appeared, it was reported that they had been found directly under the Navy's deep salvage vessel. Despite early denials, the Navy finally admitted that there had been three submarines present in the area on the night of the crash. The Trepang; a Sturgeon class attack submarine, the Albuquerque; a type 688 Los Angeles class fast attack submarine equipped with vertical launch tubes, and the Wyoming, a nuclear ballistic missile submarine just out of Groton on sea trials. It has just surfaced that something went wrong on those trials, delaying the commissioning of the Wyoming, and her captain and exec were relieved of command. Most recently, it has been learned that the Aircraft Carrier Teddy Roosevelt also participated in the CEC exercises but was not admitted to be present at the time. The Cover-up Begins. No sooner had the 747 hit the water than dozens of internet intelligence operatives flooded the internet with posts claiming that Flight 800 had been the victim of a terrorist shoot down using a Stinger man portable missile. It is an historical irony that it was this sudden activity by intelligence operatives, many of them known for their work in the Vincent Foster cover-up, that first alerted many citizens (including this writer) that something was very wrong indeed with the official story. Up until the time when the high pressure sell-job for terrorism hit the net, I was of the opinion TWA 800 was just another tragic crash. Regardless, the "proof" lay in the reactions of the intelligence operatives when several knowledgeable people pointed out that TWA 800, at the point where it exploded, was too high to be reached by a Stinger, and that the lack of obvious impact damage to the engines ruled out an IR guided man portable missile. The spooks, in predictable fashion, postulated "super Stingers" that had never been de-classified but were still in the hands of terrorists. One operative went so far as to suggest that a Stinger's operational altitude could be doubled just be re-programming its chips. All in all, the facts in the case were clearly subordinate to the pursuance of the agenda of selling the terrorist theory. Ultimately, I posted an article entitled "The Dog Didn't Bark". The thesis was simply that none of the parties present that night reacted the way one would expect them to react had the missile come from an unknown source. 24 hours later, the "terrorism" theory had vanished from the playbooks of the intelligence operatives, and in its place was the claim that a sparking fuel pump in the center tank caused an explosion. However, the cockpit switch for the fuel pump was found in the "off" position and the cockpit voice record did not record the flight crew turning it on. The NTSB Chairman's report of November 15th, 1996 made it quite clear that no evidence existed of fault in the fuel probes and pump system of the center tank. Never-the-less, the "frayed wire in the center tank" theory continues to be the cause for the explosion and crash promoted by the government. James Sanders Author James Sander's wife works for TWA. She lost friends on flight 800, and as rumors of a missile kill of flight 800 began to circulate within TWA, James was asked to look into the matter. In his book, "The Downing Of TWA Flight 800" James Sanders related the story of how one of the TWA employees working in the Calverton hanger became so disgusted with what he saw as a deliberate cover-up that he provided to James Sanders two samples of cloth from seats from TWA 800, to be tested by an outside, NON-government linked laboratory. On the seat fabric samples was a bright red residue which had stained three rows of seats in the aircraft, rows 17-19. Tests on the first sample revealed elements which experts confirmed were consistent with the combustion byproducts of a military solid fuel rocket motor of the powdered aluminum and perchlorate type. James Sanders then gave his second and last sample to CBS news for them to have tested. CBS promptly turned around and gave the sample back to the government. Once the sample had been returned, the government declared that the red residue was seat glue, choosing to simply ignore the fact that it has been seen on only three adjacent rows of seats out of the entire aircraft. The FBI, showing a double standard, then went after James Sanders for theft of part of the airplane, even though the FBI's man in charge, James Kallstrom, had removed a souvenir from the aircraft himself. Meanwhile, tests conducted on the glue used on the seats and the Atlantic seawater in the area proved once and for all that the red residue was not glue, and yet another of the government's lies stood revealed. Charles Basset and the Red Residue The tests on red residue, seat glue, and seat material The Official Story The official explanation for the crash of TWA flight 800 is that the eyewitnesses who were there are all idiots. It's not said in those words, but that's been the general tone. The government is so dismissive (read "afraid of") the eyewitnesses that James Kallstrom requested that they not be allowed to speak at the NTSB's "public" hearings into the disaster. The assumption is that almost 200 people who were actually there don't know what they saw, but that a bunch of bureaucrats who were not there do! It is the government's claim that for a reason still not clearly understood, the fuel vapors in the nearly empty center fuel tank of the Boeing 747 suddenly exploded, and blew the nose off of the 747. The 747 then continued in stable flight, pulling into a vertical climb. It is this climb which the government insists the eyewitnesses all saw and mistook for a missile approaching the airplane. At the top of this climb, the 747 then exploded into a fireball and fell into the ocean. There are, needless to say, many problems with this story. First of all, it requires virtually everyone who saw the event to mistake a climb initiating two miles up in the air for one initiating from the surface of the ocean. Secondly, the two videos used to support the government's case did not even match with each other, damning at last one of them as a work of fiction. Thirdly, the claim that the 747 could maintain stable flight long enough to execute a climb has been disproved by calculations done by one of the designers of the X-29 and by model simulations. Finally, given the condition of the aircraft following the initiating event, the evidence in the debris field proved that it would have been structurally impossible for the wings of the 747 to support level flight, let alone a climb.

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Then and now Compiled from official statements and records, a list of military activity around the TWA 800 crash site as admitted to at the time, and as subsequently revealed in later years. James Kallstrom admits possibility of missile FBI head acknowledges terrorist missile could have brought TWA jet down Kallstrom admits three Navy ships were closer to the TWA explosion than the USS Normandy Excerpt from a RealAudio interview of James Kallstrom by Reed Irvine of Accuracy In Media. IRVINE: Let's open up the report, lets open up the record, lets take out the secrecy. That's the point. KALLSTROM: Ya, I think it would be good to do that at this point now that the criminal case is not open. But it's in the hands of NTSB... IRVINE: Hay, the bureau [FBI] just sent [Congressman] Trafficant a letter saying they couldn't identify three vessels that were in the vicinity for privacy reasons - come on. KALLSTROM: Well, ya. Well, we all know what those were. In fact, I even spoke about those publicly. IRVINE: What were they? KALLSTROM: They were Navy vessels that were on classified maneuvers. IRVINE: What about the one that went racing out to sea at 30 knots? KALLSTROM: That was a helicopter. IRVINE: On the surface? ... KALLSTROM: Well, between you and I the conventional wisdom was, although it's probably not totally provable, was that it was a helicopter. US Navy Master Chief on USS Trepang admits Navy shot down TWA 800. UPDATE: Latest report is that the Master Chief has retracted his story, citing concerns over his Navy pension. The "Drone Fax" In 1997 reporter W. Michael Pitcher of "The Southampton Press" newspaper broke the story of a Riverhead, Long Island resident who mistakenly received faxes of official documents related to the federal TWA Flight 800 investigation. The resident, Dede Muma, had a telephone line connected to her own fax machine with a number close to the number being used to direct investigation-related faxes to FBI and other personnel on Long Island. A transposition of the last two digits in the intended destination's phone number by the sender connected the sending fax machine to Ms. Muma's fax machine instead. The cover sheet of the fax Ms. Muma received indicates it was from a worker at Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical in San Diego to a co-worker helping the FBI on Long Island. The fax, actually multiple faxed pages, concerns rear structures of a drone aircraft Teledyne Ryan manufactures for the US military: the "Firebee" drone. The separate pages of that fax appear at this link.

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The following letter is posted here with the permission of the author, Jack Cashill. TWA 800 Controversy Heats Up On a warm June evening in Kansas City, the historic home of TWA and the current site of its huge overhaul base, a group of 75 or so airline pilots watched the documentary Silenced : Flight 800 and the Subversion of Justice in stunned horror. Afterwards, not a one among them, either publicly or privately, challenged the video's thesis that TWA Flight 800 had indeed been shot down. Offered instead were corroborating details, particularly from angry TWA pilots, about the money trail and the inexplicable Pentagon visits of then TWA CEO, Jeff Erickson. Said one TWA pilot. "90% of us believe there was a government cover-up." From the Boeing community in Seattle the response has been much the same. Writes one Boeing engineer, a man who had spent countless hours helping analyze TWA 800 on Boeing's Cray Supercomputers, "I brought it (Silenced) to work today and showed it during lunch to eight of my fellow Boeing workers. The room was deathly quiet the entire time . . . . My impression then was a missile strike and it is even more so today." Even more troubling is the response of Mike Wire, the Philadelphia millwright on whose presumed testimony, the CIA based its notorious animation of TWA 800 rocketing upwards like a missile. "The video "Silenced" presents a factual reenactment of what I saw that night. My part of the video also is what I told the FBI a few days after the incident at an in-depth interview at my residence. As you can see what I saw originated from behind the houses on the beach that is why I at first thought it to be a firework. It most definitely didn't start up in the sky like the FBI/CIA story says. I don't know how they could (come) up with that scenario because it doesn't match what I saw and told the FBI or what other witnesses I have talk to since May of 2000 had reported." Writes Dwight Brumley, a 20-year Navy vet who watched the tragedy unfold from above, after watching Silenced. "The CIA animation in no way represents what I saw that night. Based on the time line, as I understand it, the "flare" that I reported seeing off the right side of and below USAir 217 COULD NOT, I repeat, COULD NOT have been TWA 800 in crippled flight just before and after it exploded. There are two reasons why. First, TWA 800 would have been moving in my field of view from left to right, not from right to left as I clearly observed; and Second, my understanding of the basic laws of aerodynamics leads me to conclude there is no way that TWA 800, with the nose section gone, could have possibly climbed 3000-4000 feet as the CIA video portrays." Not all responses to the project, however. Have been supportive. In the May issue of Kansas City business magazine, Ingram's, and comparably in a five part WorldNetDaily series, I wrote of Peter Goelz, the then managing director of the National Transportation Safety: "Instructive in Goelz's technique was his handling of Kelly O'Meara, a reporter for The Washington Times Insight Magazine. Some time after the crash, O'Meara interviewed Goelz about some radar data newly released by the NTSB itself. "As soon as O'Meara left his office, Goelz called Howard Kurtz of the rival Washington Post to plant a story. Kurtz would quote Goelz as saying "She really believes that the United States Navy shot this thing down and there was a fleet of warships." As O'Meara's audiotape revealed, It was the mocking and evasive Goelz who raised the issue of missiles, not O'Meara. "Wrote Insight editor Paul Rodriquez, 'In my experience as a veteran newsman, journalists would never roll over and allow government bureaucrats to use them to slime their colleagues. Yet that precisely is what recently happened.'" Peter Goelz was quick to respond. In a letter dated, June 5, he wrote: "Your story, like O'Meara's is a mélange of half-truths, outright falsehoods and sheer stupidity. The sad thing about your piece and Ms. O'Meara's is the hurt that they can cause to the 100's of Navy personnel who worked 24 hour shifts to recover all 230 victims and for the family members of flight 800 who may read your groundless charges. In the end there were no missiles, no bombs, no mystery fleet, no fleeing ships, no terrorists, no U.S. Navy involvement. It was just a tired old 747 with an empty, explosive center wing tank. For all those involved it was a tragedy of incalculable pain. For "pundits" like you, a topic for sport and financial gain. Shame on you. Shame on Ingram's." When Goelz saw the WorldNetDaily series he responded once more, this time by email under the subject heading, "GARBAGE." "Just finished you (sic) five part WND series-it's really garbage-and to think you're trying to make a buck off it as well-I fear it's a new low. By the way, I just checked on Amazon.com and (James) Sander's book (Altered Evidence) is currently rated as the 92,000th most purchased book. Don't start the new pool just yet." For the record, under President Clinton, Peter Goelz ascended from the ranks of the Missouri River gambling lobbyists to become chief administrator of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in just a brief few years. Ironically, he uses the same tactics against me that he denies having used against Kelly O'Meara: ridicule, intimidation, blind charges of profiteering, and the pious exploitation of the US Navy and victim families. In truth, neither in the article nor in the video, Silenced, do I even infer that the Navy shot down Flight 800. In fact, three of the most compelling witnesses in the video are Navy people; a fourth is a family member. For the record, Goelz's NTSB refused to let any of the 736 official eyewitnesses-several of them experienced military observers--testify at either hearing, and it disallowed all discussion of explosive residue (found all over the plane) lest the FBI one day reopen the criminal case. And yes, as he knows and the FBI acknowledges, there was a fleeing ship. As to the plane, it was not particularly old and certainly no more explosive than the average 747. If the NTSB had believed what Goelz has said, they would have recalled those planes quicker than you could say "Firestone." Ask the machinist's union. Ask any TWA pilot. Ask a Boeing engineer. After spending $40 million, the NTSB was unable to identify a scenario that would allow the plane to blow up In the video, my partner James Sanders and I did something the NTSB refused to do-talk to the eyewitnesses, position them on site, review the drawings they made for the FBI, and much more. The fifth anniversary on July 17 presents the last great opportunity to share this story with a mainstream media that definitely does not want to hear it. If the overwhelming public response in the last two weeks is any indication, this is one story that may well from the bottom up.

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THE MAGIC WING BOX - WHY THE OFFICIAL STORY IS IMPOSSIBLE! THE ATTACK BY THE FBI AGAINST JAMES SANDERS A RETIRED ADMIRAL CALLS FOR A CONGRESSIONAL PROBE. THE FDR DATA INDICATING AN EXTERNAL SHOCKWAVE. THE CIA SIMULATION OF TWA 800 AND WHY IT IS A LIE! THE SHOOT DOWN OF ITAVIA FLIGHT 870. EVIDENCE OF THE SHOOT DOWN OF ITAVIA FLIGHT 870. THE SHOOT DOWN OF AER LINGUS FLIGHT EI 712. THE NOSE GEAR DAMAGE. THE CARGO DOOR THEORY DISPROVED. TOM SHOEMAKER'S WANTED POSTERS

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CARTOON FROM THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER This cartoon is included to demonstrate that the handling of this case by the FBI has not escaped the notice of the mainstream press. The quality of the reproduction in the paper itself prevents me from giving proper credit to the artist. Cited under fair use. Click to download full size image(239K).

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SOME HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS FOR ACCIDENTAL SHOOT DOWNS OF CIVILIAN PLANES BY MILITARY FORCES. THE SHOOT DOWN OF ITAVIA FLIGHT 870. EVIDENCE OF THE SHOOT DOWN OF ITAVIA FLIGHT 870. THE SHOOT DOWN OF AER LINGUS FLIGHT EI 712. THE SHOOT DOWN OF THE IRANIAN AIRBUS. SOME HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS FOR COVER-UPS BY MILITARY FORCES. THE U.S.S. IOWA. PROOF THAT THE NAVY ENGAGES IN COVER-UPS. THE GULF OF TONKIN. MORE PROOF THAT THE NAVY ENGAGES IN COVER-UPS. THE COVER UP OF USS LIBERTY.

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GENERAL INFO EYEWITNESSES STATEMENTS AND POLICE REPORT SCANS. EXCERPTS OF JAMES SANDER'S BOOK, "THE DOWNING OF TWA FLIGHT 800". ASSORTED MISSILE THEORIES THE CASE AGAINST THE TERRORIST MISSILE. THE CARGO DOOR THEORY DOES NOT EXPLAIN THE EYEWITNESS SIGHTINGS. THE NOSE GEAR DAMAGE.

COLLECTED NEWS STORIES INITIAL NEWS ARTICLES

COLLECTED FACTS EXPLOSIVE RESIDUE LINES UP WITH HOLE IN PLANE. THE 11/15/96 NTSB CHAIRMAN'S BRIEFING. SCORCH MARKS ON THE RECONSTRUCTED AIRCRAFT. PROOF THE PLANE CAME APART BEFORE THE FUEL EXPLOSION. THE ORIGINAL AIRCRAFT. POSSIBLE MISSILE TRACK. THE COURSE TRACKS OF THE P-3. THE FIRST RADAR IMAGES THE SECOND RADAR IMAGES RESIDUE ANALYSIS DEBRIS FIELD ANALYSIS WARNING ZONES PURPORTED RADAR IMAGES OF EXPLOSION KABOT PHOTOS, DRONES, AND KRIEGER'S CONTRAIL WEAPONS SYSTEMS AND CEC

THE POLITICAL DIMENSIONS THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES STARTS ASKING ABOUT THE MISSILE. PROOF THE INVESTIGATION IS POLITICALLY DIRECTED. Clinton's Executive Order Exempting the Naval Special Warfare Development Group from the Federal Labor-Management Relations Program.

MISC MISC 747 SPECS ASSORTED MAPS

Other TWA Flight 800 websites. Flight 800 Independent Researcher's Organization The Press-Enterprise Flight 800 Page Flight 800 discussion list

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The Passengers

The Crew of TWA 800

Sandra Aikens-Bellamy, 49, off-duty TWA employee
Rosie Braman-Mosberg, 47, off-duty TWA employee
Dan J. Callas, TWA Crew
Richard Campbell, 63, TWA Flight Engineer
Paula Carven and son Jay, 9, off duty TWA flight attendant
Jacques and Connie Charbonnier, 66 and 47, working FSM and F/A
Janet Christopher, 48 TWA 800 crew
Debra DiLuccio, 47, TWA 800 crew
Warren Dodge, TWA 800 crew
Daryl Edwards, 41, off-duty TWA service supervisor
Douglas Eshleman, 35, off-duty Flight Engineer
Ana Gough, off-duty TWA flight attendant
Joanne Griffith, 39, off-duty TWA employee
Erik Harkness, 23, off-duty TWA employee
James Hull, 48, TWA 800 crew
Lonnie Ingenhuett, 43, TWA 800 crew
Arlene Johnsen, 60, TWA 800 crew
Capt. Ralph Kevorkian, 58, TWA 800 crew
Oliver Krick, 25, TWA 800 engineer
Barbara Kwan, 40, TWA 800 crew
Ray Lang, 51, TWA 800 crew
Maureen Lockhart, 49, TWA 800 crew
Elaine Loffredo, 50, TWA 800 crew
Eli Luevano, 42, TWA 800 crew
Pam McPherson, 45, TWA 800 crew
Grace Melotin, 48, TWA 800 crew
Gideon Miller, 57, off-duty TWA pilot
Marit Rhoads, 48, TWA 800 crew
Mike Schuldt, 51, TWA 800 crew
Capt. Steve Snyder, 57, TWA 800 flight crew
Rick Verhaeghe, 48, TWA 800 first officer
Lani Warren, 48, FSM TWA 800 crew
Jill Ziemkiewicz, 24, TWA 800 crew, 96-hire, her first and last Int'l flight.