Okay, I give in to all you who can now say, I told you so!
AND -
Dick Cheney gets an award for what?” For not having to reveal it was really him who outted Valerie Plame so he could go to war in Iraq? Cheney is a whack job who is desperate to change the Bush legacy so he does not look as idiotic as Bush.
My friends tell me I’m crazy, but I am still not 100% convinced this was “THE Hoax” – I am still teetering on the edge of the dress rehearsal Hoax for the real hoax. We have all seen the clips and know that Richard Heene is an out of control publicity freak trying to find a way to pitch a “reality ” show through a stunt, or hoax and now, even a conspiracy.
The guy seems to have an abusive temper, as shown when kicking something when that balloon was either launched or got away – and by the accounts of one of the wife swap wives, he has a mean streak and a lust for being a mad scientist, and is an avid publicity seeker, but does it show that this was actually the publicity stunt they aimed for, or was this a screw up before the publicity stunt they aimed for?
Until one of the older kids comes out and finally says we lied about our brother being in the balloom because our dad told us to, thats when I will believe this was not a “before the actual “publicity stunt screw up” . Though those kids at this point are being prepped and guilt tripped all weekend by their folks not to say anything to implicate their dad and mom or they will be orphans. I watched Mayumi stroking her one child’s arm so lovingly in one interview, she clearly loves her children, and one wonders, does she stay so silent because she is a battered wife afraid of her husband’s temper, or is she afraid of arrest? I do see a lot of love for the kids, but is that love abusive and controlling or both? And the bigger question, was THIS the actual UFO stunt Richard wanted to bring in for publicity at all costs even the possibility of jail time and massive fines for this hoax going wrong, or did he think through all the ramifications for saying a child was missing in a flying balloon – didn’t he think of possible theories with his scientific mind?
Below is article on the Hoax out today by AP – my comments in blue:
FORT COLLINS, Colo. – Investigators say they want to question an associate of Richard Heene after e-mails surfaced showing the two had discussed a balloon hoax months ago as part of a public relations campaign for a reality TV show. (discussion does not mean guilt unless the same incident with a missing child in balloon is written and described in the emails)
Investigators said they want to interview Robert Thomas, a Denver man who claimed Heene had told him he was planning a media stunt to promote a proposed reality show. Thomas, a self-described researcher, sold his story to Gawker.com and provided the Web site with e-mail exchanges between him and Heene. Thomas said the show would feature Heene as a mad scientist who carries out various scientific experiments.
(while this part does not surprise me, the underlying issue is, did he tell Falson to hide and pretend Falcon was in the balloon for publicity? Let’s see the emails)
“This will be the most significant UFO-related news event to take place since the Roswell Crash of 1947, and the result will be a dramatic increase in local and national awareness about The Heene Family, our Reality Series, as well as the UFO Phenomenon in general,” according to a copy of the show’s proposal provided to the site by Thomas. (how is a missing child a UFO event? Was it determined a missing child was picked up by alien aircraft and whisked away?) I should be their attorney
Gawker.com editor-in-chief Gabriel Snyder confirmed the New York-based Web site paid Thomas, but declined to say how much for the story billed with the headline: “Exclusive: I Helped Richard Heene Plan a Balloon Hoax.” (no doubt Richard was a publicity whore, and sure he had a plan, but was this the actual hoax involving a missing child? – a 6 year old with rabid ADD who might tell the truth to the press?)
Snyder said Thomas was planning to meet with investigators Sunday night, though sheriff’s officials did not return messages seeking confirmation.
Thomas, 25, said in his Gawker.com story that the plan he knew about did not involve Heene’s children.
this is my point – would Henne use his an unreliable kid for the actual hoax?
The alleged stunt temporarily shut down Denver International Airport, and the National Guard provided two helicopters in an attempt to rescue 6-year-old Falcon Heene, who was believed to be inside the flying-saucer shaped homemade balloon that hurtled more than 50 miles across two counties. The drama played out on live television to millions of viewers worldwide. When the balloon landed without the boy, officials thought he had fallen out and began the grim search for his body. (the father sounded quite distressed on his 911 call and was it calculated that he called FAA first to be on the look out and called a news station because they had a heliocopter to look for the balloon before calling 911? He was smart to call in that sequence if he thought his son was missing or for a publicity stunt. To call 911 first would have meant wasted time on the phone because the FAA would immediately seek something skyward – that sounds like a well thought out sequence, or was it a plan? (guilt points if it was part of hoax)
Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden announced Sunday that he’s seeking charges, including felonies, against Richard Heene and his wife, Mayumi. Alderden said the stunt two weeks in the planning was a marketing ploy by the Heenes, who met in acting school in Hollywood and have appeared on ABC’s reality show “Wife Swap.” (again. yes they planned the stunt but was this the UFO hoax they intended at this time?
“We certainly know that there’s a conspiracy between the husband and wife, you’ve probably seen some of the e-mails and some of the things on the Internet suggesting that there may be other conspirators,” Alderden said.
Alderden said documents show that a media outlet has agreed to pay money to the Heenes with regard to the balloon incident. Alderden didn’t name the media outlet but said it was a show that blurs “the line between entertainment and news.” (Clearly we need to see if they involved using a child in a balloon to implicate the Heenes)
It wasn’t clear whether the deal was signed before or after the alleged hoax, or whether the media outlet was a possible conspirator. (timing will be essential) Let’s call it (my statement) short of speculation that a media outlet was in on the hoax, but let’s not discount the possibility,” he said.
In an e-mail Sunday to the AP, Snyder said editors at Gawker.com had not contacted the Heene family or offered them money for their story, referring to Alderden’s reference to a deal being struck by a media outlet.”No, that wasn’t us,” Snyder said. The parents weren’t under arrest, the sheriff said. He said he expected to recommend charges of conspiracy, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, making a false report to authorities and attempting to influence a public servant. Federal charges were also possible. (hope they are “lawyering up” - they have a lot to prove.)
The most serious charges are felonies and carry a maximum sentence of six years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Alderden said they would be seeking restitution for the costs, though he didn’t have an estimate. The cost for just the two military helicopters was about $14,500. As Alderden told reporters Sunday that the whole thing was a hoax, the Heenes were shopping for snacks at Wal-Mart, where Richard Heene told the AP he was “seeking counsel.”On Monday, the couple’s attorney, David Lane, appeared on the “Today” show on NBC, saying he expects authorities to file charges against the 6-year-old’s parents late Monday or sometime Tuesday. Lane also said the couple are willing to voluntarily turn themselves in to face charges. “These folks are absolutely willing to turn themselves in, so I don’t want to see a perp walk done for media consumption. I don’t think it’s humane to arrest someone in front of their children,” Lane also said Monday, appearing on “The Early Show” CBS. “We’re not sure what charges he’s looking at yet.” (This is key)
In a statement issued Sunday, Lane he has advised the family against making public statements. Once investigators got a good look at the “flying saucer” they determined that the thin mylar balloon covered with foil and held together with duct tape would not have been able to launch with the 37-pound-boy inside, according to Colorado State University physics professor Brian Jones. (though another “expert” said it could carry up to 80 lbs and Falcon weighs 37lbs)
Other parts of the story, including whether the 6-year-old had been hiding in the rafters of the family’s garage during an intense five-hour search also weren’t true, (now this does make it look like a hoax if they prove where Falcon was and why he was awy for 6 hours, who had him?)
Alderden said. “For all we know he may have been two blocks down the road playing on the swing in the city park,” the sheriff said. (this evidence crucial, was their intent of committing a hoax by Falcon being asked to hide and who told him to hide and for how long – implication points there if true)
The sheriff said all three of the Heenes’ sons knew of the hoax, (but was this particular day, the day of the actual hoax or a big screw up??? – One can see by the way Falcon pukes, he is sensitive to his fathers moods and anger, if Falcon comes out and says his dad told him to hide for 6 hours, I am sold on guilt. Otherwise this was dress rehearsal for UFO stunt) – but likely won’t face charges because of their ages. The oldest son is 10. One of the boys told investigators he saw his brother get in the balloon’s box before it launched.(another statement that needs to be expanded – when the older kid admits that their father told him to say Falcon was up in the balloon and helped him hide, then, I will be completely convinced – Falcon’s attention span is so whack that he can’ sit still for 3 minutes without squirming, how did he manage to hide for 6 hours, and with whose help, another crucial guilt point if true)
Alderden said Heene, a 48-year-old storm chaser, inventor and self-described amateur scientist, has a high school education and most recently earned a living by laying tile. Alderden said investigators had an “aha” moment that the story was a hoax when Falcon turned to his father during a CNN interview Thursday and said what sounded like “you had said we did this for a show” when asked why he didn’t come out of his hiding place.
On Friday, Falcon got sick during two separate TV interviews when asked again why he hid.(this kid seems to feel miserably guilty – like he knows he is lying and doesn’t know what to do or say to protect his folks because he knows his father will spew magma, (guilt points)
Alderden said they didn’t question the family Friday because they wanted to keep the family’s cooperation by maintaining the appearance that they believed their story. Records show that police have responded to the house at least twice in the past year, including a possible domestic violence incident in February. No charges were filed.Alderden said officials tried Saturday to persuade Mayumi Heene, 45, to go to a safe house, but she declined. (Am I the only one who thought Mayumi looks like someone with battered wife syndrome, especially when it was suggested during the Diane Sawyer tv interview that she go and help her vomiting son in the bathroom – she seemed very submissive – never allowed to comment)
Alderden said the children were still with the parents Sunday and that child protective services had been contacted to investigate their well-being. On “Wife Swap,” Heene was portrayed as erratic, at one point throwing a glass of milk on a participant on the program. “Clearly, from all indications, Mr. Heene has somewhat of a temper,” Alderden said.|(one of the wife swap wives paired with him said on an interview, she thought he was out of control and had a horrible temper, but she did not think it was a hoax because he loved the kids and would not put them at risk for harm. She also said he was a diabetic who did not keep his insulin under control and she said it was like watching a fire rage, then immediately burn out at times.)
The producer of “Wife Swap” said it had a show in development with the Heenes but the deal is now off. TLC also said Heene had pitched a reality show to the network months ago, but it passed on the offer.
Again, when was this deal made? Before or after and how was it pitched to TLC, we need to see the wording — I am still waiting for the results, was THIS how Heene was going to get his big publicity, or was this a stunt/hoax gone awry and one little child is going to pay with tremendous guilt for the rest of his life when he realizes he has told the truth, but angered his father and now the parents face multiple charges and costs, the kids might be put into foster care, and how can the parents deal and pay for all this — unless of course, they end up with a future reality show!
P/S, , it’s two days later and a full investigation is coming and I think I am wrong, they must have drugged that kid and faked it, the folks were willing to surrender, Now they will give them a reality show I bet
Maureen Dowd didn’t go far enough this morning, she didn’t mention that Karl Rove who fed us that dumbass Bush on a platter is now dishing up Liz Cheney to prepare her as the new face of the GOP scare tactics force. This new neo-con group called, “Keep America Safe ” -
One wonders when Liz runs for president, will her father name himself as VIP like he did for Bush? It won’t matter, he will be the brains behind the operation anyway, we can count on that.
Like Maureen said, Liz is trying hard to reshape her father’s legacy, she is a good daughter hating to see her father villanized. She is a dedicated to daddy, she is obsessed by how daddy thinks and talks. She is happy to keep torture and war and secrecy as part of her agenda, it’s ingrained.
And what’s with Mr. “I am responsible for pushing the invasion and occupation of Iraq” Bill Kristol? You mean he has not learned anything from his own failure of vision? Are the GOP so hard headed that they will never acknowledge a blunder in judgment because the idiots were Republicans?
Hey, they could have picked McCain and Ms. Rogue. Do they not see that while the world is still dangerous as hell, most of our allies are glad to consider us number one again — we actually have respect!
I see my GOP friends sitting home, loaded guns at their sides, watching FOX news, listening to Glenn Beck waiting for either invasion or the Rapture – to them Obama is already a failure, even though someone pointed out Obama has kept us safer longer than Bush so far. I know all that could change in an instant, but are we as bad off as Liz Cheney, FOX Noise and the GOP minions want us to think? Am I missing something, should I not be happy or laugh?
Look at Liz, her face is stone cold sober just like that constant scowl on her fathers’ mug, and he is a corrupt man for outing a CIA agent, we know he will not stop at anything if Dick wants something, Dick… WAIT – I JUST HAD AN EPIPHANY – THAT’S IT!!!! Dick wants something, his Project For A New American Century has only netted Iraq, Dick wants to finish his bucket list before that battery in his ticker stops providing his heart with juice! Rove and Cheney, Bill Kristol and the neo-cons are back conspiring again, waiting for the opportunity to get back into office again and finish their dirty work and who better to use than young and impressionable Liz!
Who’s next Dick? You wanted Syria, Lebanon – which is the place we will spend billions on failure? Iran I bet!
Kristol’s PNAC co-founder, Robert Kagan stated, “”The United States Is, and Should Be, an Empire“. I guess that sums it up.,
Look at the stats from Iraq this morning, 85,000 dead from 2004-2008, plus there are a million Iraqi’s displaced who would not be scattered if we had not interfered and occupied, billions of dollars would still be in the treasury. But hey, this was a great money maker for Halliburton, KBR and whatever other subsidiaries of Halliburton that needed government big money contracts. They can thank Cheney who from day one of his co-presidency on the invasion of Iraq, he saw those dollar signs helping fund his pension! Wait! If Dick insisted from day one that he wanted Saddam, doesn’t that make him guilty of pre-meditated murder? Oh, and don’t forget China owns our debt thanks to Bush and Cheney, somehow the GOP always forgets that fact unless it pertains to Obama. (Hey, Dow up to 9981 as I write)
But back to the epiphany, the Bucket List apparently means using Liz as the vessel for PNAC to continue – yep, start a new foundation or group, give it a new face and familiar family name with America in the title and the GOP fall right into line. Do they even know the odds for war with this group at the helm? Anyone named Bush or Cheney is doomed to go to war, it’s genetics, and that’s 100 percent sure!
Bucket List of failures, is that what Liz wants for her father? Because when you look at what he has accomplished, it looks shady and ‘dictatorish’. But
“daughter of Dick” wants to be used if it will further the daddy cause, so the question is, should the Bucket List of Dick Cheney and Keep America Safe be the way forward, be the light and the future? Should War, aggression and occupation be the GOP mantra for our next president? Look at what Bush/Cheney left us with, unresolved Iraq and Afghanistan and now Liz is on a quest for Iran I bet, I would say Liz, become your own person, grow your own set of balls, quit riding his coat tails to make your money.
Your dad’s legacy and his Bucket List vision is not worth the toll it will take on America.
AND BIG props up to Chris Matthews yesterday when laughing at the one word associations during the recent Rush Limpballs interview.
Giving himself one word, “Rush Limbaugh”, Chris blurted out, “phone sex”… LOVE YA CHRIS! 
“Pointing a gun at a child, threatening to shoot him,” Swanson recollects. “I was 25 years old at the time, and it has weighed pretty heavy on me ever since then.” Gunnar Swanson
The question is, are we gaining anything over in Afghanistan and Iraq? When you read that General McChrystal wants 40K extra troops, it feels like – here we go again, more lives and money wasted and what is our real gain? How many years must we stay to stabilize either place?
With our presence comes some positive changes in schools being built, (though apparently some of them quite shoddy) – Read below Christian Science Monitor article.
Education is the key to gaining minds and hearts to a new way of thinking, but even though we build schools, will the education itself and will girls ever be elevated to “human” status in both Iraq and Afghanistan?
We are occupiers – we have also created a class of new haters by our presence. It would take a couple hundred thousand troops, at least fifty years and a big overthrow in the middle east to get real control and peace over there.
Bush and Cheney exploited our surplus on this war folly of theirs. We have lost
Now they want more of the same over there. The GOP especially want more money, more troops, more death, more contracts to be abused. When is it enough for them? When will they admit this is a sham and we are tired of their propping up Bush and Cheney and trying to save GOP face, let’s face reality! When we have to challenge kids as the insurgency because the terrorists cowards need bodies, that’s when we know they are weakest!
The article about Gunnar Swanson who started War Kids Relief, is about
a man who served 12 months in Iraq and saw how the kids at first reacted to our soldiers, they loved taking candy and were happy to see Americans. Then things changed. According to article in October 5th, 2009 Christian Science Monitor: “as violence increased and insurgent activity escalated, more and more Iraqi children were coerced, sometimes threatened, into joining insurgent groups, who then used them against the American soldiers. With kids now representing a potentially dangerous or deadly distraction, all contacts with children were ordered to stop…”
So how do we take a step forward over there and then get pushed two steps back all the time? What’s the point when the Taliban rule? We are fueling the insurgency and the Iraqi and Afghan army that we train drop out and disappear. This is an unending money pit! Stability in both regions is fragile at best, the warlords own Afghanistan and Iraq might go to anyone after we leave, democracy and voting is a concept that can easily be manipulated, look at the recent fraud in the Afghan voting. Karzai was originally put in by Bush because Karzai was an oil man. And recently, BP and China’s CNPC made a huge 20 year deal with Iraq for al-Rumeila oil field, one of the largest oil fields in the world. Saddam could have done that himself, did we need to waste all that money just for BP and China to dominate the oil over there?
What is the answer? Let go of Iraq first, send the troops over to Afghanistan and whittle them down, get us out of this quagmire by Spring and that is my opinion. This is wrong, we only create more terrorists and they are always using children as lethal decoys, even Swanson just hated pointing his weapons at kids and threatening to shoot them. Does Vietnam ring a bell because that’s what we are fighting, a losing war. Bush and Cheney should be have their pensions raided and should be paying the American treasury back for this blunder of theirs. They gave all those damn contracts to be exploited. They hired Blackwater who shot innocent civilians. Lets close up shop and leave. Save that $720 million a day for our own failing infrastructure and lost jobs, we need help in our own economic war zone right here. The terrorists are mostly in Pakistan with al-qaeda, let the drones smack em without us losing lives. This is a money maker only for the defense industry, deploy the troops elsewhere , but bring our money home now, this is where is should be spent first! And people like Gunnar Swanson should be acknowledged for their efforts for peace.
More about Gunnar from Christian Science Monitor:
War Kids Relief (WKR), a nonprofit organization in Northfield, Minn., that works on behalf of children in Iraq and Afghanistan who have been deeply affected by war. Economic opportunities there are extremely limited, even for those few lucky enough to graduate from high school, making young people easy targets for the Taliban.
With his bald Yul Brynner pate, warm personality, and 100-watt smile, Swanson is a big hit with children. In Cameron, Mo., 16 grade-school children at the YMCA respond enthusiastically as they learn the names of far-off cities like Baghdad, Kirkuk, and Sulaymaniyah. He tells them his first name has nothing to do with being in the military: He was named for his great-grandfather. (Gunnar is a Scandinavian name that means “brave soldier.”) The children seem pleasantly surprised to discover that children in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite their severe hardships, also play soccer and computer games.
After a short talk, Swanson and Fesler pass out paper, pens, and art supplies, and the children write letters to their peers in the two war-torn countries. “A kid over in Iraq or Afghanistan who has received a letter from a kid in the United States will probably hold onto that letter for the rest of his life,” Swanson tells them.
In all, 2,700 letters were collected and will be distributed sometime next year. “…we could really showcase why we are doing this and how we want children in America brought into this.”
Money raised by WKR will go to building a rehabilitation and job-skills training center in Mosul, Iraq, and a vocational training center in Khost, Afghanistan. WKR partners with local groups in both countries.
Swanson’s 1,000-mile walk and his encounters with children were also intended to inspire the children to undertake their own fundraising. Along the way, all manner of lemonade stands, bake sales, carwashes, and other efforts sprang up, contributing to WKR’s project.
As more funds come in, Swanson hopes that construction can begin on the projects. “[The children] can feel like they’re building the youth center in Iraq and the vocational center in Afghanistan,
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from the June 28, 2004 edition – http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0628/p01s02-woiq.html
Quick school fixes won few Iraqi heartsBy Dan Murphy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor BAGHDAD – The US government lists renovations done on 2,356 Iraqi schools in a $70 million effort as one of its major accomplishments. The idea behind it was to meet a pressing Iraqi need and quickly win goodwill from a wide swath of the population. But many Iraqis, like Mustafa Ibrahim al-Jubari, weren’t won over. Mr. Jubari is the deputy principal of the Zam Zam elementary school (named after a sacred freshwater well in Mecca). His two-story building in northern Baghdad smells far from fresh. Jubari points to a four-month-old paint job already peeling, a roof that was caulked but leaks, and new porcelain toilet bowls installed on top of backed-up sewage lines. “You’re lucky that school has been out for a few weeks,” he says. “When they’re here, the whole place stinks.” Though a tiny piece of the more than $18.6 billion committed by the US to Iraq, the money spent on Iraqi schools, and their poor state, ties together much that’s gone wrong here, past and present, as the June 30 handover approaches. Critics of US-led reconstruction efforts say it has been slow to come, poorly targeted, and occasionally littered with waste. To be sure, the real problems at Zam Zam, built in the early 1960s, aren’t America’s fault. Like almost every other piece of domestic infrastructure, the school suffered decades of neglect under Saddam Hussein, who diverted resources to fight two destructive foreign wars and to cronies to shore up his regime. Bechtel Corp., which oversaw the work at Zam Zam and about 1,300 other schools, points out that its contract, part of a larger $1 billion contract to fix Iraqi infrastructure, didn’t include money for long-term problems like sewage. Yet amid a construction program focused on the long-term, the schools program was one of the few designed to touch many Iraqi lives quickly. Education under Mr. Hussein was undermined by indoctrination, so it was a perfect symbol of the US program to transform Iraq’s present and future. But few Iraqis ended up appreciating the effort. “My kids are still on rickety desks in a broken-down school,” says Uday Jabbar Mahmoud, the father of three who works as a security guard in Baghdad. “We’re not seeing any reconstruction. We hear that millions have been spent, but nothing we can touch.” Thanoon Hussein, an engineer at the Education Ministry who checked the work at Zam Zam, says no documents were filed with the ministry on the school by Bechtel or its subcontractor, Al-Assem. He says the average amount Bechtel spent per school was $40,000. “I’d be amazed if $10,000 was spent at Zam Zam.” “We’re grateful that the US and Bechtel tried to help us,” says Nazar Mikhael, the ministry’s chief engineer. “But they didn’t coordinate with us.” Mr. Mikhael says about half of the schools worked on by Bechtel suffer from shoddy work. “The contracting process was scandalous to say the least – some of these things are subcontracted six times,” says Isam al-Khafaji, a former Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) reconstruction adviser who runs Iraq Revenue Watch, a nonprofit that tracks spending here. In a press release, Bechtel says that of 52 formal complaints, only 27 schools have required additional work, 2 percent of the schools it renovated. The company says complaints it didn’t consult with Iraqis are unfair: the relevant Iraqi institutions were “not yet operational because their facilities had been looted and their personnel dispersed by the conflict” when it started work last year. Whatever the extent of the problems with the school renovation program, they illustrate one of the fundamental philosophical dilemmas to confront US administrators here. Spending money fast tends to breed waste. Going slow is safer, but progress is less apparent. “There was a great plan for the war but they failed to plan for the peace,” says Sean O’Sullivan, who runs Jumpstart, a nongovernmental organization that employs about 3,000 Iraqis to demolish war-damaged government buildings and build public housing. He says the US should have focused on short-term projects to get lots of Iraqis back to work and make identifiable progress. |
Obama got Nobel Peace Prize? The conservatives must be fuming! It’s for sure not one person in the GOP party will give our president a word of congrats and I bet when George W. Bush was told by Laura this morning he bee-lined for the liquor cabinet and poured himself a stiff belt or two. He must be feeling miserable and he deserves that, he made our lives fuckin’ miserable by so many boneheaded moves. In fact, I hope he is introspective as he drinks and feels tremendous guilt that he even ran for the presidency in the first place knowing he was as qualified as Sarah Palin! But enough of my trash talk, here’s the scoop. You must know I am as liberal as they come, Russ Feingold is tops on my list, well I think Obama getting this prestigious award is way premature. It’s based on idealistic goals, and while the goals are admirable, anyone can say what Obama has said. It’s when these goals are utilized, then give him the award.
There are so many caring groups out there who have risked life and limb to feed and perform miraculous help for war torn people in Africa and around the globe. And how about a group of individuals with Comet-ME, a group of Israeli activists and scientists who have taken it upon themselves to provide electricity via solar panels and wind turbines for poverty striken Palestinians in a dismal village on the West Bank who use a polluting diesel generator to get their electric?
When you read the article below, you see that this is how you hope people would think, by tossing out politics and sharing resources and providing people with basic necessities, this is the path to peace.
Comet-ME has to be commended for taking a stand that is so unselfish and for promoting good relations between two people who normally have high tensions between them. This is what peace is about, ignoring the politics and doing what is right when people need help. Our world is armed with nuclear capabilities to kill ourselves off in a couple blasts, yet we keep arming, why can’t these asinine world leaders look through fresh eyes at what is best for their people and not their own selfish egos!
All people need education, the ability to have shelter, food, medical help and a way to make money so no one has to suffer, that’s what makes us peaceful, and it seems Comet-ME has taken one step to helping provide a service unselfishly and with “green” technology. If you ask me, Comet ME should have taken the Nobel Peace Prize this year. A SHOUT OUT TO A DESERVING TEAM AT COMET-ME!!!!
P/S How about Doctors Without Borders, now there’s worthy cause!
SUSYA, West Bank – Residents of a West Bank village with no electricity have been helped out of the darkness by unlikely benefactors — a group of Israelis who installed solar panels and wind turbines to illuminate the Palestinians’ makeshift homes.
The villagers of Susya live in tents and caves with power lines darting right above their dwellings, connecting a nearby Jewish settlement to the power grid while bypassing them entirely.
It was this lack of basic services that drew the physicists from Comet-ME, a group of pro-peace Israeli scientists and activists, to this dusty, desolate area. Now the entire village of 300 people has access to power that is reliable, free and green.
At night, rudimentary streetlights dot the otherwise pitch-black village and each home is lit by an energy-saving bulb. Villagers have no access to phone lines, but the power allows them to charge their cell phones.
“Life is easier now,” said Susya villagers Widad Nawaja, standing below the solar panel that powers her home. “We have light. Children can do their homework at night if they couldn’t finish it during the day.”
The residents also hope the new amenities will help them make more money: an electric butter churner means they can produce butter faster than by hand, and two green-powered refrigerators can preserve their produce until it can be sold.
“The communities here are in deep poverty. The project is targeted to help them make more revenue from their own work,” said Noam Dotan, an activist and physicist with Comet-ME.
Comet-ME says it seeks to use renewable energy to empower Palestinian communities like this one, which is among the poorest in the West Bank.
The West Bank, home to some 2.5 million Palestinians, is controlled by the Israeli military, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority governing some areas. Some 300,000 Israeli settlers also live in the territory. The Palestinians want to make the West Bank part of their future state.
Israel provides power to Jewish settlements and military facilities in the West Bank, as well as to most Palestinian cities and towns.
But Comet-ME says some 500 Palestinian families in communities not officially recognized by the Israeli military authorities in this part of the southern West Bank are forced to live off the grid. The Israeli military said it never received a request for power from the community and if it did, the army would study it “in accordance with the relevant laws.”
Susya villagers used to depend on diesel generators which were costly and polluted the air.
The community has faced a series of evictions by the military and has clashed with Jewish settlers in the past. But the villagers and the activists say the work to set up the new power system — done by both Israelis and Palestinians — helped temper mistrust.
“This is an example of the coexistence between Arabs and Jews, and this is a very important thing,” said Mohammad Ahmed Nasser Nawaja, wearing a traditional Arab robe and carrying the cell phone he charged thanks to the new power system.
Meanwhile, word has spread to other villages lacking electricity. Comet-ME hopes to power up the remaining off-grid families in this area over the next four years.
FACTOID: A MAN IN HIS FORTIES RAPES AN EIGHT GRADER – JAIL HIS ASS
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE ROSES HOLLYWOOD! MAKE POLANSKI SERVE HIS TIME AS A RAPIST AND SODOMIZER OF A 13 YEAR OLD – HE DESERVES IT! The guy gave that girl booze and drugs to make her comply, think about it – would she have complied without all the chemicals? She asked him to stop, he kept right on.
What point is it to say his Mother died in Auswitz, or to bring up his murdered wife and child? Or even that the victim has forgiven him? Those sympathy points don’t cut it -LIKE THEY ARE SAYING, HAD IT BEEN A PRIEST, THE LIBERALS WOULD HAVE DEMANDED HIS HEAD, (OR BALLS) ON A PLATTER! (And I am liberal, just not crazy forgive everyone for a crime like rape of a minor liberal)
Let Polanski write his next script from a jail cell where he deserves to be!
Photocredit: AP.
Iran seems to be getting off on firing short range missiles. The Revolutionary Guard are like little boys who have just discovered the ‘power of their part’, launching their little weapons in the excitement of recognition. They want the USA and the rest of the world to take them seriously with their uranium enrichment, I do!
Iran wants to blast Israel off the map at some point. Ahmadinejad takes all his talking points from the ‘Big Brother’ Mullahs pulling the strings. They keep insisting the Holocaust did not exist and Israel needs to go. It makes one wonder when does their talk and bragging turn into action?
Tomorrow they are going to jack off a long range missile – OY!
Michael Isikoff of Newsweek says there are two options, entertain a military option and bide time or get China and Russia to help tame the beast by withholding money. I am afraid of the third option, Benjamin Netanyahu and his itchy fingers, when does Israel feel threatened enough by Iran and the nuclear upgrades to “do the deed” and show Iran how it’s really done as they did to Iraq and Osirisk? This is really scary stuff! Politics and religion are two irrational words and worlds.
Iran itches to be a top stud, it’s tired of being upstaged by the bigger, more potent weaponry, especially Israels. We watched Ahmadinejad lie through his teeth this week about everything, but is this show of manhood real, or is he just excited by the potential ‘blow job’ by one of their long range projectiles upon the Jewish state? When do we call his bluff, or is it not a bluff? We should consider that we are on the brink of a World War!
Remember how over a year ago Cheney mentioned that he was hoping that Israel would do “the deed” for the USA by bombing Iran? Hopefully cooler heads will prevail, (sorry, but the cliche works there,) but this divide between Ahmadinejad wanting the Jewish state removed and Israel feeling threatened by them is a very precarious position as we all watch.
Today Pope Benedict remarked,”History has demonstrated the absurdities to which man descends when he excludes God from the horizon of his choices and actions,” Apparently The new Pope did not have a history lesson, does he not remember the Crusades, Inquisitions and Bush’ war in Iraq where God gave the thumbs up” for G.W. to invade? Apparently the Pope is not versed on how many gods have a hand mixing the pot! Here’s some recent headlines today with undertones of God in them – hopefully the last one in blue is the direction of the future, I’m very skeptical:
JERUSALEM – Israeli police used stun grenades Sunday to disperse Palestinian rioters at a volatile Jerusalem site holy to Jews and Muslims, police said.
RAMOT MENASHE PARK, Israel – Israeli and Palestinian hikers are taking to the hills in the footsteps of their ancestors — deploying maps, holy texts and walking boots in the long-running battle for control of the Holy Land.
A young Muslim woman is suing Abercrombie & Fitch after the company allegedly declined to hire her because she wears a hijab. Does she have a case?
WASHINGTON (AFP) – More than a thousand Muslim men and women gathered Friday outside the US Capitol to hold a prayer meeting and demonstrate against prejudice against Islam.
NEW DELHI (AFP) – The children of Hollywood star Julia Roberts have been given Hindu names during shooting for her latest blockbuster in India, which has upset some locals over its use of a temple, reports say.
HARTFORD, Conn. – The growing number of Americans who don’t claim religious affiliation are more likely to be male, younger, living in the West and politically independent, a new report finds.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Conservative Christians, a key base for the Republican Party, said on Saturday they were targeting 16 Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in the 2010 congressional elections.
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What the Hell is wrong with that? If these pedophiles lust after young kids and most likely will never be trusted alone in society without thinking of kids to fondle and rape, why not do a chemical castration? In fact, how about looking at The procedure for all the pedophile priests in the Catholic Church, they could get a group discount and bring back their “Castrati” to sing once again!
photo: citymayors.com
I saw the title crossing the AP just a few minutes ago and see that they can actually do it – close the border! So what the hell took so long? Bush wouldn’t do it, Obama won’t do it, but bring a few guns to the party and we get serious! Why not keep it closed and just open on a few occasions, like when we bring truckloads of illegals and criminals back into their own country! We need to get serious about how people become citizens! Our resources are draining away under our own weight- add to that
millions of people who need what we all need, but can’t pay for it either- Yikes!
The Value Voters met last Friday. Let me say I love the thumbnails on the site, Some of those Values Voter demigods just scream of hypocrisy. Of course there’s the bankrupt Stephen Baldwin photo showing a much younger Baldwin during his brooding, maybe even druggie years. I could not resist snickering at Newt, ‘have an affair while your wife is down and out with cancer’, Gingrich, (all done while condemning Bill Clinton for the same thing.) I noted Bill, The high stakes gambler Bennett whose compulsive gambling caught up with the “Czar” of Bush’s National Drug Control Policy, the same one who commented on a radio show after the caller suggested that allowing abortions took money away from the social security pool to which Bill argued, assuming those aborted were even productive seeing most were of single mothers, and talked of crime saying, “aborting all African-American babies “would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but the crime rate would go down.”
Love seeing the spry, Phylis Schlafly who hates gays, would like a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage yet her son John is gay, but I suppose he can control it for his mother’s sake.
And of course we have a mix of smart brains like Newts, and downright quotable dummies like Michele “McCarthy” Bachmann who ‘called for the media to probe members of Congress to determine who held “anti-American” views,’ (she has links devoted to her stupid quotes just like Bush.)
These are just a few names standing with their version of freedom and the American way and the rest of us scathing free thinkers who dare go beyond the box.
If you look at the site, http://www.valuesvotersummit.org/ – the first topic was a full douching of their favorite vote grabber, fear. The Heritage Foundation’s movie, 33 Minutes, about how a missile sent from anywhere could hit us in 33 minutes and we are UNPREPARED. But how is that awful when so many of them are living for the Apocalypse anyway? Don’t most yearn for God bringing them home as the rest of us ‘heathens’ are sent to H-E double hockeysticks?
A few of the topics were, and YES, these are the REAL titles:
GLOBAL WARMING HYSTERIA: THE NEW FACE OF THE “PRO-DEATH” AGENDA -
TRUE TOLERANCE: COUNTERING THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
THUGOCRACY – FIGHTING THE VAST LEFT WING CONSPIRACY
Bill Maher must have gotten enough material for a half dozen shows based on “Newspeak” alone!
The photos beckon you to wonder if this should be called Inquisition 2009. If this were the 1600s and this panel sat with Galileo before them, poor Galileo would still be condemned as a heretic for denouncing geocentrism.
To many of those pictured, including Mike Huckabee, the news from last week in the Associated Press is just untrue.
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Customs agents have taken possession of fossilized dinosaur eggs that apparently were smuggled out of China and auctioned for $420,000, it was announced Thursday. The fossils were seized late last week from the Bonhams & Butterfields auction house in Los Angeles.
The 22 eggs, each 65 million years old, were so well-preserved that curled-up embryonic raptors are visible inside 19 of them.
WHOA, 65 million years old! But according to Huckabee and some other of literal Creationists, the world is only 6,000 years old. Yet, Huckabee got the highest points scored to become their presidential nominee for 2012 in the Value Voters straw pole, a man who totally discounts science! A man who would probably suppress findings based in science and logic beyond his scope of thinking. (George W. Bush did that too by suppressing the scientists reports who opposed his own views, he got called on that later.)
Why not Romney? What did he do wrong – oh, must be his Mormonism, maybe due to Joseph Smith’s losing the whereabouts of those golden plates and Smith’s need for a harem. Go figure.
Watch at http://www.southparkmormon.com/
This panel, these people so dedicated to their “values” of a Theocratic stranglehold over the rest of us, who claim to be more “patriotic”, more “American and freedom loving”, more knowledgeable for what is best for the rest of us, sounds like a scheme for mind control and suppression of thought. It seems like the panel set up for a future, a future to bring us back to ‘basics’, those “basics” defined by a few select dystopian minds, and it does look like a select group, especially with people like Dobson and Perkins so wanting to set government policy and standards. This “Values” Summit, so limited in scope, so unbending, scares me. The fear of everything via chaos is the goal with no solid answers on the economy, healthcare, Iraq, War, only the use of current events as a catalyst for their 2012 mission. (I guess people have no recollection of what was done by conservative Republican domination for the past 8 years.)
Is this still 2009 or am I looking at photos of the future The Ministry Of Truth! Oh holy Orwell!
