Wednesday, 30 May 2007
NBC discovers buyouts
Mood:
irritated
Topic: Dumb Press Tricks
Tonight, the NBC Nightly News is going to ask us the rhetorical question - what would you do if your employer offered you money to leave?
Well, you'd probably thank God that you didn't work for NBC's parent company General Electric when they moved half the manufacturing jobs in Indiana south of the border to Mexico or sold them off to Thomson Consumer Electronics (same difference, it just happened through a layer of Frenchmen).
Does anyone seriously think that anyone at GE besides Neutron Jack Welch or his buddies in the executive suite were offered money before they were laid off?
Just when you think NBC couldn't get more hypocritical....
Posted by V.P. Frickey
at 12:05 PM MDT
Updated: Friday, 29 June 2007 11:36 PM MDT
What if JFK were still alive? What a load.
Mood:
incredulous
Topic: Dumb Press Tricks
NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams interviewed famous historian and academic plagiarist Doris Kearns Goodwin on the ponderous question – how would we be different if JFK were still alive? (A verbatim quote - hey, I couldn't make crap like this up.)
Apart from all the clichéd references to JFK’s vitality (code for the fact that “little JFK” kept making public appearances with the “interns” who for some reason clutter up the West Wing when insecure forty-something morons get elected), Professor Goodwin informed us that we were deprived of the sense that there were no limits to what we could achieve, of the boundless optimism… of, indeed, all the benefits of an academe which is endlessly willing to prostitute itself to the Democratic Party.
I mean, come on – JFK was the proto-Bill Clinton. His vitality, we now know, came out of hypodermic syringes wielded by a full-time, 24/7 on-the-staff Doctor Feelgood, and the vacillation which was the true hallmark of his abbreviated career nearly plunged the world into a nuclear holocaust. His personal conduct as President, including his sexual misbehavior, stands as a shining example of What Not to Do in The White House. (Dan Quayle can take comfort in the fact that when he was told he was no Jack Kennedy, it was actually a compliment.)
A close examination of the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis show that JFK was his own worst enemy – as well as the worst enemy of the poor guys on the sharp end of the stick who were counting on him for air support, for timely decisions, for moral support – for some of that courage profiled in a book long, long ago. A photo-recon pilot died because JFK wouldn’t act decisively in the face of clear photographic evidence that the Soviets were infesting the island of Cuba with nuclear weapons – instead of trusting the U-2 imagery and giving the Russians the bad news that they’d have to pick up their toys and leave - or filling the Turkish Caucasus range of mountains with Titan and Minuteman ICBM silos.
Prof. Goodwin also told us that JFK wouldn’t have pursued Vietnam with the ambition that LBJ did. Come again? What happened to that famous vitality? Would JFK’s finest contribution to American history be marked by the broad yellow streak down the middle of his back as he turned South Vietnam over to the murderous Communist regime of Ho Chi Minh?
Anyway, who got us into Vietnam in a big way in the first place? Who gave a nod and a wink to South Vietnam’s military junta to bump Ngo Dinh Diem off with the CIA’s connivance? Who turned Robert MacNamara and his systems analysts loose to mismanage and alienate their way through the Pentagon? JFK.
No, the cult of JFK-nostalgia ignores the fact that Americans went on to achieve every one of the promises that Kennedy’s flacks held out to them – without JFK.
The greatest libel perpetrated on the American people is that somehow it was necessary for someone to steal the 1960 Presidential election so they could proceed in the direction in which they were already moving – away from Jim Crow, toward scientific and cultural greatness, and eventually in a decisive triumph over Communism. All it took was for JFK’s party to lose the 1980 Presidential election.
Posted by V.P. Frickey
at 9:38 AM MDT
Updated: Friday, 29 June 2007 11:37 PM MDT
Thursday, 5 April 2007
Are our schools next? Al-Qaeda claims right to murder 2,000,000 American children.
Mood:
sad
Topic: No Truce with Terror!
HOMELAND INSECURITY
Terrorists - coming to a school near you
US police are ill-equipped to defend against a repeat of the school massacre in Beslan, Russia
_____
Copyright 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
Authorities fear the school massacre that shook Russia a few years ago may be a dress rehearsal for what al-Qaida plans to do in America - only on a grander scale, launching multiple school attacks simultaneously across the country.
In 2004, Chechen terrorists associated with al-Qaida seized a school building in Beslan, Russia, and slaughtered 338, including 172 children.
Three years later, schools and local police in this country are still unprepared to deal with such an assault, experts warn. Most don't have response plans for handling a single active shooter, let alone a cell of trained terrorists launching a large-scale attack.
Yet terror cells secreted inside America may be planning to use buses, as well as other vehicles and methods, as a Trojan horse to infiltrate school campuses and massacre students and teachers.
The FBI and Homeland Security Department last month distributed a bulletin to law enforcement across the country warning that Muslims with "ties to extremist groups" are signing up to be school bus drivers. They also noted "recent suspicious activity" by foreigners who either drive school buses or are licensed to drive them.
"The enemy is infiltrating us at all levels, and certainly school bus drivers are one area to look at," warned retired Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, president of Killology Research Group, an anti-terror consultancy that trains the FBI and other law enforcement. "And how about high school, middle school and elementary school cafeteria workers? Janitors? Delivery people?"<http://www.wnd.com/redir/r.asp?http://www.killology.com/>
Grossman says some school district security officials he works with have expressed concerns about some of the Muslim employees schools are hiring.
"But no one dares profile them," he told WND.
"Islamic terrorists are already in place in the U.S. and, yes, that includes bus drivers, cafeteria workers and also airport workers," added Grossman, a former Army Ranger and West Point professor.
Floor plans for schools in Virginia, Texas and New Jersey have been recovered from terrorist hands in Iraq, he notes.
<http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31428>
Videotapes confiscated in Afghanistan show al-Qaida terrorists practicing the takeover of a school.
Simultaneous attacks on schools in multiple states would follow Osama bin Laden's goal of crippling the U.S. economy. If multiple schools were hit, Grossman says, parents would drop out of the work force en masse to protect their children. A prolonged labor disruption would cost businesses billions of dollars in lost revenue.
The 9/11 mastermind now in custody at Gitmo recently suggested al-Qaida may be targeting school children. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said in his confession before a military tribunal that while he may not like killing kids, they're fair game in jihad. He claims U.S. forces bombed and killed the children of bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and arrested and "abused" his own children.
<http://www.wnd.com/redir/r.asp?http://www.memri.org/>
According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, an al-Qaida spokesman has claimed Muslims have the right to kill up to 2 million American children in retaliation for Muslim children killed in Muslim lands.
"Osama bin Laden has promised that what has happened in (Beslan) Russia will happen to us many times over," Grossman said. "And Osama tries very hard never to lie to us."
Experts say terrorist cells are aided by many facilitators inside American cities who canvass targets and perform other logistics for such attacks.
"They are in the U.S., in all aspects of life, including the schools - and not just as bus drivers," Grossman said. "And American school children may pay the price," if schools and local law enforcement fail to implement counterterror plans.
Recent events come on top of several other school bus-related incidents involving Mideast men that raise suspicion of terror activity.
They include last year's surprise boarding of a school bus in Tampa, Fla., by two Saudi men dressed in trench coats.
Authorities suspect they were making a dry run to see how easy it would be to hijack or blow up a school bus filled with innocent American students.
Previously, an Arab man from Detroit was caught trying to obtain a job as a school bus driver in New York using fake Social Security documents.
Experts also worry about terrorists operating independently of al-Qaida.
"There are many lone wolves and self-starters out there who could attack at any time," Grossman warned.
<http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54286>
Muslim gunman Sulejman Talovic was loaded for bear in February when he opened fire on shoppers in a Salt Lake City mall. He was armed with a shotgun, a .38 pistol and a backpack full of ammunition. He killed five and would have kept killing if an alert off-duty police officer hadn't returned fire and helped stop him.
If the 18-year-old Bosnian immigrant had targeted his old high school in a similar rampage, the number of body bags would have been horrific, experts say. Such a scenario is local law enforcement's worst nightmare, because school resource officers, or SROs, are ill-equipped to handle such assaults.
Homeland security consultants recommend arming all SROs and training them in SWAT tactics to repel such attackers.
"The time may come when that one cop will have to keep several adults at bay, preventing them from prosecuting their assault plan on our kids until support arrives," said John Giduck, president of Archangel Group , an antiterror training service.
Recent attacks on children in schools in Athens, Ga., Bailey, Co., Red Lake, Minn., and Nickel Mines, Penn., occurred in the absence of armed SROs.
"We can't think that Columbine will be the worst tactical circumstances our SROs will face," warned Giduck, author of "Terror at Beslan: A Russian Tragedy with Lessons for America's Schools."
Posted by V.P. Frickey
at 11:11 AM MDT
Updated: Friday, 29 June 2007 11:45 PM MDT
Monday, 2 April 2007
The John Doe Manifesto - We are ALL John Does!
Topic: No Truce with Terror!
Background on this story: six Muslim clergymen entered a US Airways airliner, began behaving in a very disruptive and loud manner (to an extent that has gotten other airline passengers dropped off at the nearest airport and brought up on Federal charges in the past regardless of their nationality or religion), were removed from their flight, and released after questioning without charges.
Now these people want to sue not only the airline and airport where they pulled their little act, but various passengers and crew on the aircraft who complained about their behavior. The idea seems to be to intimidate people from complaining about behavior which could reasonably be considered suspicious and a prelude to a repeat of the 9/11 hijackings.
The writer of the message below has drafted a "manifesto" or statement of principles on which people should feel justified in reporting behavior such as this, even if it means getting sued by religious fanatics. I agree with it (I called in a report to the local police after observing a couple of Middle Easterners surveying a public artesian water well, just after 9/11 - I could just as easily have been a "John Doe" defendant myself for obeying the government's request that "if you see something, say something") and am passing it on - to all the other John Does out there.
Live free or die! Sic semper tyrannis! (Death to tyrants - especially the ones who brag about how they'll conquer us and sell our wives and kids into slavery)
The John Doe Manifesto
By Michelle Malkin
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Note: Earlier this month, six publicity-seeking imams filed a federal lawsuit against US Airways and the Metropolitan Airports Commission in Minneapolis/St. Paul. The Muslim clerics were removed from their flight last November and questioned for several hours after their suspicious behavior alarmed both passengers and crew members.
Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten reported last week that the imams, advised by the grievance-mongers at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, also plan to sue "John Does" -- innocent bystanders who alerted the authorities about their security concerns. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., has introduced legislation to protect John Does who report suspicious behavior from legal liability. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty; talk show host Michael Reagan; Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, who heads the American Islamic Forum for Democracy; and Minnesota lawyer Gerry Nolting have all stepped forward to offer free representation to the imams' targets.
Dear Muslim Terrorist Plotter/Planner/Funder/Enabler/Apologist,
You do not know me. But I am on the lookout for you. You are my enemy. And I am yours.
I am John Doe.
I am traveling on your plane. I am riding on your train. I am at your bus stop. I am on your street. I am in your subway car. I am on your lift.
I am your neighbor. I am your customer. I am your classmate. I am your boss.
I am John Doe.
I will never forget the example of the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 who refused to sit back on 9/11 and let themselves be murdered in the name of Islam without a fight.
I will never forget the passengers and crew members who tackled al Qaeda shoe-bomber Richard Reid on American Airlines Flight 63 before he had a chance to blow up the plane over the Atlantic Ocean.
I will never forget the alertness of actor James Woods, who notified a stewardess that several Arab men sitting in his first-class cabin on an August 2001 flight were behaving strangely. The men turned out to be 9/11 hijackers on a test run.
I will act when homeland security officials ask me to "report suspicious activity."
I will embrace my local police department's admonition: "If you see something, say something."
I am John Doe.
I will protest your Jew-hating, America-bashing "scholars."
I will petition against your hate-mongering mosque leaders.
I will raise my voice against your subjugation of women and religious minorities.
I will challenge your attempts to indoctrinate my children in our schools.
I will combat your violent propaganda on the Internet.
I am John Doe.
I will support law enforcement initiatives to spy on your operatives, cut off your funding and disrupt your murderous conspiracies.
I will oppose all attempts to undermine our borders and immigration laws.
I will resist the imposition of sharia principles and sharia law in my taxi cab, my restaurant, my community pool, the halls of Congress, our national monuments, the radio and television airwaves, and all public spaces.
I will not be censored in the name of tolerance.
I will not be cowed by your Beltway lobbying groups in moderates' clothing.
(Blogger note: even when they buy their way into the Capitol building by bribing our new Democratic Members of Congress - and I am definitely going to correct any mistakes I made in the last Congressional elections, come the NEXT ones in November 2008)
I will not cringe when you shriek about "profiling" or "Islamophobia."
I will put my family's safety above sensitivity. I will put my country above multiculturalism.
I will not submit to your will. I will not be intimidated.
I am John Doe.
Michelle Malkin makes news and waves with a unique combination of
investigative journalism and incisive commentary. She is the author of
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0895260301/ref=nosim/townhallcom>
Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild .
Posted by V.P. Frickey
at 5:13 PM MDT
Updated: Sunday, 22 July 2007 10:00 PM MDT
The Iranian Mullahs - Can we negotiate with murderers and terror masters?
Topic: No Truce with Terror!
The liberal press seems to think we can trust the Iran mullahs - the same scum who have been keeping terrorism alive in the Middle East with their oil money and their constant plotting.
This same press seems to think that the Iranians have earned participation in a "Middle East peace process" by paying and arming Shiite mercenaries to kill and terrorize in Iraq.
It's time for a REAL reality check - not more of the leftist lies CBS miscalls "Reality Check" in their Evening News.
Why not listen to what an Iranian has to say about the criminals running his country? Maybe if we'd listened to what some Germans had to say about Hitler in the 1930s, we'd have been more apt to destroy his murder machine back when it would have been easier to do so.
<http://www.iranian.com/Imani/2007/March/IRI/index.html>
Misguided advocates of negotiation with the mullahs, beware
March 29, 2007
iranian.com
Iran's mullahs have repeatedly indicated their willingness and ability to help restore order in Iraq, on the condition that the United States packs up and leaves the region. The mullahs have also pledged on their Boy Scout's honor, although they have never been Boy Scouts, that their nuclear program is strictly for peaceful purposes.
As a further gesture of goodwill, these self-appointed custodians of Allah's earth are volunteering to serve as unpaid policemen of the entire Gulf region, protecting vital U.S. interests, just like the Shah did before them. Sounds like a great gift package from the kind-hearted do-gooders of Allah.
Beware of mullahs bearing gifts! The mullahs are diehard adherents of the Islamists' eleventh commandment "Thou shall not lie or dissimilate (tagyyeh), deceive or cheat (ketman) unless they serve a higher purpose."
And to these devoted faithful, there is no higher purpose in the world than serving Allah's biding, as they like it and as they interpret it.
Keep in mind that the very name "Islam" means "submission," unquestioning submission to the will of Allah.
Qur'an 33:36, "It is not fitting for a Muslim man or woman to have any
choice in their affairs when a matter has been decided for them by Allah and His Messenger. They have no option."
And in the Quran itself, Allah gives these fellows their mandate: Cleanse the earth from all kuffar (infidels), and help usher in the golden rule of Islam over a corrupt world. This high-purpose strategic goal of Islamization legitimizes any and all tactics.
Qur'an 8:39 "Fight them until all opposition ends and all submit to Allah."
Allah, in his kindness, leaves a bit of wiggle room for the unbelievers.
Those who refuse to convert or whose life is spared may live under the rule of Islam by paying poll taxes.
Qur'an 9:29, "Fight those who do not believe until they all surrender,
paying the protective tax in submission."
These men of Allah are urged to use every "stratagem of war," to kill and take the disbelievers as captives. The ones they do not kill, mostly women and children, they take as booties of war and slaves. These devotees of Allah have been and continue to be among the most persistent practitioners of slavery.
Qur'an 9:5, "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war."
"Every stratagem," means every stratagem. No heinous act is out of bounds for these savages. They place children, for instance, in the backseat of a car bomb so that it could be waved through checkpoints without inspection.
Then, the adults park the car in the midst of a shopping crowd, run out of the car and detonate it with the children inside. Horrific? Shocking? Absolutely barbaric?
These are the same people who used thousands of Iranian children as minesweepers during the Iran-Iraq war to clear a path for their
more valued armored vehicles.
And as for Iran's mullahs' unyielding drive to acquire the ultimate weapon, it is in obedience to the command of the Quran. And "terrorism," abhorrent to the civilized world, is explicitly enjoined on the faithful.
Qur'an 8:59 "The infidels should not think that they can get away from us. Prepare against them whatever arms and weaponry you can muster so that you may terrorize them. They are your enemy and Allah's enemy."
And for those who advocate retreating to the safety of "fortress America," the following warning should dispel their vain hope. Europe is already partly invaded, and America and other infidel lands are next.
Qur'an 13:41 "Do they not see us advancing from all sides into the land (of the disbelievers), reducing its borders (by giving it to believers in war victories).
It is worse than appeasement to negotiate a "deal" with the Iranian
theocrats because any deal struck with these mullahs is only another ruse for them to further their plans. The UN resolutions are nothing more than pieces of paper good for fire, they can pass them all they want, president Ahmadinejad proclaims belligerently. These Islamists go by their 1400-year-old charter of Allah, the Qur'an the same charter that they hold in one hand while slashing the throat of an innocent infidel and yelling joyously "Allah is the greatest" the whole time.
To the misguided "Supreme Guide," mullah Ali Khamenei of Iran, a few words are in order. The civilized Iranians, descendants of Cyrus the Great, find you, mulla Ali, and your cabal of Islamists guilty of heinous crimes. A partial list of charges is given below.
Domestically
* You do not represent the Iranian people. You are a usurper of power. You are guilty of transforming a noble nation into a world pariah.
* You are denying and violating a long-suffering people all its human
rights.
* You are guilty of beating, imprisoning and torturing a few dozen women who braved participating in a peaceful demonstration pleading for equal family rights, on the recent International Day of Women.
* You systematically beat, imprison, and torture all manners of citizens, from school teachers to students to union workers, for daring to raise their voices against the plight to which you have subjected them.
* You savagely beat and haul to your dungeons of torture and death over a thousand of the tens of thousands of teachers who had recently gathered in front of the parliament requesting nothing more than their back pay and living wages.
* You direct systematic genocidal measures against all non-Shia religious minorities, with Baha'is as prime target.
* You arrest some Christians, even your Quran calls "People of the Book," for observing Christmas.
* You implement barbaric practices of stoning, hanging and amputations for those who are convicted of crimes in your kangaroo courts without due process. You even imprison those few lawyers who rise in the defense of the innocent.
* You plunder, mismanage and dole out Iran's national wealth with the result that the great majority of the people are living in poverty. Iranian women are forced into prostitution to survive or simply sold as sex slaves in Persian Gulf states.
* Your fascist misrule of nearly three decades has driven millions of Iran's best children to four corners of the world. Hundreds of thousands of educated Iranians are compelled to continue the exodus, depriving Iran of the sorely-needed talents at home.
* You spend a fortune on the nuclear program that you claim is only aimed for peaceful purposes, while turning Iran into little more than a gas station nation, with its precious oil wealth squandered and its facilities on the verge of collapse through neglect.
* You have created a suffocating social atmosphere that has driven masses of the people to the use of hard drugs as a way of numbing their pain.
Internationally
* You look far and wide to support any and all terrorists. Your delusional theology mandates the creation of horrific conditions in the world so that your Hidden Imam is compelled to appear and establish his rule.
* You spare no efforts at sabotaging any settlement between the Palestinians and Israelis. You arm and train all Palestinian factions such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and any and all that come.
* You direct similar criminal schemes on your eastern flank, in Afghanistan. You consider any democratic system as the enemy of Islamofascism, and rightfully so.
* You work ceaselessly, expand Iran's stolen funds, and do all you can in support of your Shia co-fascists Hezbollah in Lebanon.
* Your hands are dripping with the blood of thousands of Iraqis, victims of your bloodthirsty kin mercenaries aiming to kill a budding democracy in Iraq next door.
* You supply your mercenaries with armor-piercing projectiles for killing and maiming the coalition forces in Iraq. Your cowardly killing by proxy, using these roadside planted bombs, has taken the lives of nearly 200 Americans.
* You interpret the highly subdued reactions of the coalition to your savage actions as indications of weakness. So, you find it in yourself to venture into direct confrontation by capturing lightly-armed British sailors and marines in Iraqi waters.
Misguided advocates of negotiation with the mullahs, beware. The mullahs are on an Allah-mandated mission. They are intoxicated with Petrodollars and aim to settle for nothing less than complete domination of the world under the Islamic ummeh.
It is precisely for this reason that they consider America and the West as "Ofooli," setting-dying system, while they believe their Islamism as "Tolooi," rising-living order. They are in no mood of negotiating for anything less than the total surrender of democracy, the very anathema to Islamism.
And to you, the misguided mullah Ali Khamenei, don't be fooled by the
sycophants who misinform you. Don't threaten the West by either
as-yet-to-come online nuclear weapons or your fantasized sleeper cells.
You will be terribly disappointed when Iranian expatriates everywhere will be among the very first to help the authorities find your sleeper cells, if any actually exist, and put them into permanent sleep.
Freedom may suffer retreats periodically and tyranny may advance
occasionally. Yet, free people everywhere will meet any challenge and pay any price to safeguard the precious treasure of freedom for themselves and the finest bequeath they can leave for the next generation.
Comment
<mailto:
TIMES@iranian.com?subject=Imani,%20Politcal% 20correctness>
Amil Imani is an Iranian-born American citizen and pro-democracy activist residing in the United States of America. Imani is a columnist, literary translator, novelist and an essayist who has been writing and speaking out for the struggling people of his native land, Iran. He maintains a website at AmilImani.com <
http://amilimani.com/> .
Posted by V.P. Frickey
at 2:05 PM MDT
Saturday, 3 March 2007
Cause and Effect - American Consultant Paul Joyal Shot in Own Driveway Days After Criticizing Putin
Mood:
incredulous
Topic: Martyred for Freedom
Paul Joyal, nationally-known commentator on national security, was shot in the driveway of his own home last Thursday (March 1st, 2007). Only days earlier, Joyal and his associate Oleg Kalugin (a former director of the KGB who now lives in the United States) both appeared on MSNBC and offered their opinions that Russian president Vladimir Putin authorized the assassination of KGB defector Aleksander Litvinenko earlier this year in London.
Quoting from an article on MSNBC on February 25th:
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17332541/)
"Who killed Alexander Litvinenko?
He made scandalous accusations that struck at the heart of the Kremlin and ended up in a real-life spy story of political intrigue and murder
By Ann Curry
NBC News
Updated: 4:45 p.m. MT Feb 25, 2007
This report aired Dateline Sunday, Feb. 25, 7 p.m. on NBC.
Ann Curry
"Paul Joyal, Russia expert, security consultant: A message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin: If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you and we will silence you in the most horrible way possible."
The Web article (clearly a transcript of a story presented on NBC's evening television news program) continues:
This haunting image of a figure in his hospital bed (Litvinenko) has become a world famous picture of tortured suffering.
It tells the chilling story of a man who took on the powerful and was silenced. He believed he was fighting for justice and made scandalous accusations that struck right at the heart of the Kremlin.
But he ended up in a real-life spy story of political intrigue, conspiracy and murder.
Joyal: It’s just unprecedented.
Disturbing mysteries involving Russia and politics are nothing new:
- Georgi Markov, the dissident writer was murdered with a poison pellet from an umbrella;
- Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukranian presidential candidate was poisoned;
- Paul Khlebnikov, an American business journalist, was gunned down.
But what happened in London may be even more sinister.
Joyal: He was a citizen of the United Kingdom. That has to mean something - that you shall be safe from this type of political retribution.
Six years before that photo was snapped, the same man, Alexander Litvinenko, left his home in Russia to start a fresh life in England.
Joyal: I was fascinated with the guy.
Security consultant Paul Joyal, who is a Russia expert critical of the Kremlin, struck up a friendship with Alexander in visits to London.
Ann Curry, Dateline anchor: And what was your impression?
Joyal: He was full of life. He was strong-willed, obviously. He was very courageous.
In London, Alexander, his wife, and their son were taken under the wing of a Russian tycoon who set them up with a modest home in the suburbs and supported Alexander’s freelance writing career.
Marina, a ballroom dance teacher, enrolled their son Anatoly in an international school."
-
Four days later, on Thursday, April 1st, Paul Joyal was shot.
Quoting from MSNBC again:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17424538/
"Expert in Russian poisoning case is shot -
FBI joins investigation, but officials think it’s just local crime"
By Pete Williams
Justice correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 11:45 p.m. MT March 2, 2007
"WASHINGTON - FBI agents say they are assisting police in suburban Washington who are investigating the shooting of a Russian expert — a man who spoke out on "Dateline NBC" last weekend and strongly suggested that remnants of the KGB were responsible for the bizarre poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko.
The Russian expert, Paul Joyal, was shot Thursday night as he got out of his car in front of his house in Adelphi, Md. Investigators in Prince Georges County say a witness claims to have seen two men running away after the shooting. Joyal remains hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the midsection. Authorities have not said whether they've been able to talk to him.
Joyal is a long-time consultant on security and Russian affairs. From 1980 to 1989, he was director of security for the Senate Intelligence Committee.
On last weekend's "Dateline," he said of Litvenenko's death: "A message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin: 'If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you and we will silence you — in the most horrible way possible.'"
'Dateline NBC' investigation
The shooting has certainly raised eyebrows, because Maryland police are well aware of Joyal's views regarding the Litvinenko death. But at this point, they have no evidence suggesting the shooting was anything other than an example of the rising crime rate in Washington's Maryland suburbs.
Local investigators are highly skeptical that his shooting was anything other than street crime.
NBC News Web Extra
In an odd twist, another person who appeared on the "Dateline" broadcast died of a heart attack last month.
Reporter Daniel McGrory of the Times of London, who has written about the Litvinenko case, died Feb. 20, before the "Dateline" segment was broadcast. He was 54.
His family said he "died suddenly at home." He was a veteran British foreign correspondent who had reported from several war zones. Just before his death, he had been reporting in Pakistan."
© 2007 MSNBC Interactive"
--
Now, this is familiar. I grew up right in the middle of the Cold War - people dropping dead like flies from time to time after fouling up the KGB's plans is, sadly, a familiar theme. Recognizable as all hell. Engineers and scientists in Europe working on Star Wars projects turned up dead from mysterious , violent causes all through the mid-1980s.
Just it was rare in the old Cold War for it to happen to Americans, because both sides were controlled by pragmatic men who recognized that there were limits they could not push.
Now, it seems that the guy in charge on one side doesn't recognize any limits.
The only real question after that development is "How long until the war starts?"
Posted by V.P. Frickey
at 2:54 PM MST
Monday, 26 February 2007
Ya Gotta Like George
Topic: minor chuckles....
YES, I'M A BAD AMERICAN
by George Carlin
I Am Your Worst Nightmare. I am a BAD American. I am George Carlin.
I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family, not some mid level governmental functionary be it Democratic or Republican!
I'm in touch with my feelings and I like it that way!
I think owning a gun doesn't make you a killer, it makes you a smart American.
I think being a minority does not make you noble or victimized, and does not entitle you to anything.
I believe that if you are selling me a Big Mac, do it in English.
I believe everyone has a right to pray to his or her God when and where they want to.
My heroes are John Wayne, Babe Ruth, Roy Rogers, and whoever canceled Jerry Springer.
I don't hate the rich. I don't pity the poor.
I know wrestling is fake and I don't waste my time watching or arguing about it.
I've never owned a slave, or was a slave, I haven't burned any witches or been persecuted by the Turks and neither have you! So, shut up already.
I believe if you don't like the way things are here, go back to where you came from and change your own country!
This is AMERICA.
I want to know which church is it exactly where the Reverend Jesse Jackson preaches, where he gets his money, and why he is always part of the problem and not the solution.
Can I get an AMEN on that one?
I think the cops have every right to shoot your sorry rear if you're running from them..
I also think they have the right to pull you over if you're breaking the law, regardless of what color you are.
And, no, I don't mind having my face shown on my drivers license. I think it's good..... and I'm proud that "God" is written on my money.
I think if you are too stupid to know how a ballot works, I don't want you deciding who should be running the most powerful nation in the world for the next four years.
I dislike those people standing in the intersections trying to sell me stuff or trying to guilt me into making "donations" to their cause.
I believe that it doesn't take a village to raise a child, it takes two parents.
And what is going on with gas prices... again?
I believe "illegal" is illegal no matter what the lawyers think.
I believe the American flag should be the only one allowed in AMERICA!
If this makes me a BAD American, then yes, I'm a BAD American.
If you are a BAD American too, please forward this to everyone you know.
We want our country back!
We NEED GOD BACK IN OUR COUNTRY!
Posted by V.P. Frickey
at 4:46 PM MST
Saturday, 3 February 2007
Mood:
don't ask
Topic: No Truce with Terror!
"Time to Run" - it's not just a novel any more.
On FoxNews' Sunday Morning show, Sen Barbara Boxer (D, CA-(ca)) once said "Nations cannot survive with foreign troops defending them."
Great Britain, Germany, Italy, the other countries in the military arm of NATO, Japan and South Korea are probably alarmed that their national existence has been in danger since 1945 owing to the presence of troops from the United States of America.
Germany in particular must be reeling if Senator Boxer is right, because it still has forces from several former occupying nations stationed within its borders.
Apart from economic doldrums which can be satisfactorily explained by the ravages of socialism and deficit spending, however, Germany seems to be fine. One of their largest multinationals, DaimlerChrysler, is not just Europe's biggest automaker (if you exclude European subsidiaries of the American-based multinationals General Motors and Ford, such as Opel, all the various national Ford operating companies, and the former passenger-car divisions of Volvo and Saab) but Europe's largest defense contractor.
West Germany was able, based largely on its economic might, to overcome virulent threats from Mikhail Gorbachev and dire predictions and warning from politicians throughout Europe of all political leanings to reunite with its ruined Communist other half and thus eliminate Soviet Russia's strongest European ally.
NO ONE would have predicted as late as the mid-to-late 1980s that this would happen - that Germany would become the master of her own political destiny again, in open defiance of the Soviet Union.
Imagine, SIXTY WHOLE YEARS have passed in which all of these nations and others have been defended by American troops, and according to Barbara Boxer, their survival is in mortal danger!
The major contribution Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy and company make to political discourse in the United States is that just one of their shorter public utterances can sustain many paragraphs of adverse commentary on the part of the knee-jerk left which they help lead.
Seriously, would the current crop of Democrats have insisted that the US withdraw from Germany, Italy and Japan on a fixed, two-year timetable after the end of World War II? Or from the Korean peninsula by 1956?
If not, why do they want to hand Iraq to Al-Qaeda, the Sunni extremists and the Ayatollahs of Iran and their puppets? Is humiliating George W. Bush and Bush's party actually so important that Boxer, Pelosi and friends must encourage the terrorists of Iraq to kill our neighbors, sons and daughters while they are at it?
If the United States is ever balkanized - as Iraq will be if we pull out when Boxer, Reid, Clinton and Metzenbaum want to do it - it will be the crowing of chickens coming home to roost. The political left's cynical lies, if successful, will destroy the unity and resolve that galvanized our country into action after September 11th, 2001.
If these people ever get the power they crave to the exclusion of our country's security, they will destroy our nation's will to survive as nothing has since the aftermath of the Vietnam War (another struggle against tyranny ended at the whim of the inside-the-beltway faction of the Democratic Party, with John Kerry playing a leading subversive role).
During that FoxNews interview years ago, Senator Boxer made heavy weather of the fact that many of her constituents based in places like the Marine Corps air station at Twenty-Nine Palms are serving in Iraq and some of them are dying. I'd be very interested to learn what her constitutents in the US Armed Forces think of her active political support of the terrorists in Iraq (and, by extension, Al-Qaeda - which has chosen to stake their global reputation on the success of the mass murderers to destroy that country's government).
My son also died in Iraq, killed by a bomb which would probably not have been built or buried if Al-Qaeda hadn't thought they could win their war at the American ballot box (as the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese did - with the help of John Kerry and his friends in Congress). Those murdering swine went to the trouble of mining that road because they knew that killing an entire Bradley full of National Guardsmen would set off an extended press cycle in the American homeland - with the press baying away.
Sergeant Armand Luke Frickey, Louisiana Army National Guard and US Army privately had nothing but the bitterest contempt for the Iraqi terrorists' helpers in Congress and Big Media. His death and those of his squad mates is directly traceable to the Democratic Party national leadership's cut-throat political maneuvering and the support of the “mainstream media” to weaken our political stance in Iraq. The national press needed a stack of bodies, and....
If nothing else, the idea that the terrorists can win if they just kill enough Americans can be laid directly at Pelosi, Reid and their political colleagues' feet for demanding withdrawal at any cost. Look at the timing of these attacks - every time the left side of the aisle in Congress needs political traction, an incident occurs, and innocent people die.
The partnership may only be tacit, but it sure appears to exist. The Democratic Party's victory last November was bought with blood.
Posted by V.P. Frickey
at 2:43 PM MST
Updated: Sunday, 4 February 2007 6:58 PM MST
Friday, 2 February 2007
Another Scandal from Iraq - It's a Scandal That the Press Won't Run the Good News
Mood:
loud
Topic: No Truce with Terror!
Another of the thousands of good news stories from Iraq which Big Media won't tell you. You know, the stuff that the 'insurgency' doesn't want the world to know... (and why is the press doing their work for them?)
Posted by V.P. Frickey
at 1:22 PM MST
More Chirac on Iran - "Teheran would be immediately razed... "
Mood:
celebratory
Topic: Good News for Once
You know, I'm beginning to like this new Chirac... you have to wonder if Nicolas Sarkozy had a little tête à tête with him between the press conference he retracted and this new one.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467864411&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFullFeb. 1, 2007 10:19 | Updated Feb. 1, 2007 13:40
Chirac retracts remarks on Iran threat
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
PARIS
French President Jacques Chirac said in an interview with three
newspapers that Iran's possession of a nuclear bomb would not be "very
dangerous" and that if it used the weapon on Israel, Teheran would be
immediately "razed," according to a newspaper report.
However, Chirac - who made the comments during a Monday interview with
The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune and Le Nouvel
Observateur, a weekly magazine - called reporters back the next day to
try to have his quotes retracted.
In an article posted on its Web site Wednesday night, the New York Times
said the Monday interview was tape recorded and on the record.
Chirac's initial remarks would mark a big departure from France's
official policy of deterrence and work in preventing Iran from obtaining
nuclear weapons.
"I should rather have paid attention to what I was saying and understood
that perhaps I was on the record," Chirac said in the second interview
on Tuesday, according to the New York Times.
On Monday, Chirac said of Iran and its nuclear program: "I would say
that what is dangerous about this situation is not the fact of having a
nuclear bomb. Having one or perhaps a second bomb a little later, well,
that's not very dangerous."
Instead, Chirac said, the danger lies in the chances of proliferation or
an arms race in the Middle East should Iran build a nuclear bomb.
Possessing the weapon would be useless for Iran - whose leader has
called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" - as using it would mean an
instant counterattack.
"Where will it drop it, this bomb? On Israel?" Chirac asked. "It would
not have gone 200 meters into the atmosphere before Teheran would be razed."
In the second interview with the same newspapers, Chirac retracted his
comment about Teheran being razed. "I retract it, of course, when I
said, 'One is going to raze Teheran,"' he said.
Chirac also said other countries would stop any bomb launched by Iran
from reaching its target.
"It is obvious that this bomb, at the moment it was launched, obviously
would be destroyed immediately," he said. "We have the means - several
countries have the means to destroy a bomb."
Regarding his comments that Israel could be a target of an Iranian
weapon and that Israel would retaliate, Chirac said: "I don't think I
spoke about Israel yesterday. Maybe I did so but I don't think so. I
have no recollection of that."
--
Better and better - we have Chirac on record now saying that Israel would have to stand in line to zap an Iranian missile before it had gotten 200 meters over ground.
Now, those who know nuclear weapons know that destroying a missile with a nuclear weapon not from one of the Big Six older nuclear powers is not as simple as all of that.
If Chirac wasn't speaking out of his, er, hat about that 200 meters figure, this means that plans are underway to do the intercept of the Iranian nuclear missile 200 meters above Iranian territory. It is highly unlikely that an Iranian nuclear device would be what is known as "one point-safe" or designed not to go off with a nuclear yield if accidentally destroyed.
The implication of Mr. Chirac's remarks, then, is that the problem of an Iranian nuclear weapons program would be a self-correcting one if Iran ever launched, because somehow (one suspects the US Airborne Laser Laboratory or similar capabilities would be involved) an Iranian missile would be destroyed with its payload 200 meters above its launch site. Given the probable state of Iranian nuclear weapons technology, this would mean a nuclear detonation would happen 200 meters above the launch site, meaning that unless the launch site was extremely hardened against nuclear blast, it would be destroyed immediately.
Now, did Mr. Chirac mean when he said that "Teheran would be immediately razed" that the launch sites are known to be fairly close to the Iranian capital, or... is there something else in the works?
It isn't pretty, but Jacques Chirac's remarks are how nuclear deterrence will be handled - nuclear nonproliferation is going to be strictly an optional thing from now on, and countries unwilling or unable to acquire their own nuclear weapons will have no other choice than to seek cover under some other nation's "nuclear umbrella" if they feel they are at risk.
We know how the Israelis have opted to handle their nuclear security issues - by being the biggest, meanest (and until now, the only) nuclear power in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, this policy has been at least partly invalidated by Iran's acquisition of the nuclear bomb; additionally, it is probable that other Islamic states, Pakistan certainly, have nuclear weapons and are one coup or assassination from their own indiscreet threats to use them on Israel.
Unfortunately, Israel has not (as far as the public knows) bought the ability to launch their missiles from outside Israel, so the minute a hostile power owns enough nuclear weapons to carpet-bomb Israel, it would be in a position to destroy the Israeli nuclear arsenal by a simple process of elimination - or more likely, touch off the Middle Eastern powder key by putting Israel in a position to either "use 'em or lose 'em" - in which case, all of Israel's enemies would logically be on the receiving end of nuclear annihilation.
We live in scary times. It's nice to know that at least one European leader has grasped the nettle and publicly discussed Iran's fate should their leader live up to his threats. It's the only way to handle the problem.
Posted by V.P. Frickey
at 7:43 AM MST
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