Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: They faked those moon landings too, you know

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  • Riddley Walker,

    Muldoon blog Dinner

    That bloody Birch's pointy teeth are beginning to give me the willies. I've asked Thea to tell him if he calls again that I'm in the lav or having a nap.
    Actually I was having a nap in the lav this afternoon when it came to me in another dream. It was a sort of big long floating cable thingy - I almost had my finger on it when bloody Banks burst in on me. Reckoned he was looking for some linament or something, said he'd pulled a muscle in the toilets at Bellamys.
    Apparently Winnie was showing off and the young lad had fainted.
    I'm not sure about that one.

    AKL • Since Feb 2007 • 890 posts Report Reply

  • WH,

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/24/AR2007042401500.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

    I spoke with a half-dozen prominent GOP operatives this past week, most of them high-level officials in the Reagan and Bush I and Bush II administrations, and I heard the same devastating critique: This White House is isolated and ineffective; the country has stopped listening to President Bush, just as it once tuned out the hapless Jimmy Carter; the president's misplaced sense of personal loyalty is hurting his party and the nation.

    "This is the most incompetent White House I've seen since I came to Washington," said one GOP senator. "The White House legislative liaison team is incompetent, pitiful, embarrassing. My colleagues can't even tell you who the White House Senate liaison is. There is rank incompetence throughout the government. It's the weakest Cabinet I've seen." And remember, this is a Republican talking.

    Since Nov 2006 • 797 posts Report Reply

  • hamishm,

    Muldoon blog. After dinner Go back to work. Peters rings up and starts whining about the lack of decent booze and how his clothes got rumpled. I'm going to set up a box that he can put $10 everytime he starts whining, and we'll go out and spend it at the end of the year.
    Have to go to use the communal lavvy since my own one smells of liniment. Meet that Waring women, tell her some girlies around Parliament cheer the place up a bit.Might have to watch that one too.

    Since Nov 2006 • 357 posts Report Reply

  • WH,

    If you're interested in US politics you might want to read Rahm Emanuel's
    (D - IL) latest speech on the Bush Administration...

    When you put it all together like that... damn.

    Since Nov 2006 • 797 posts Report Reply

  • Nobody Important,

    Nice hat tip Weston, thanks for that link

    Under this Administration, the federal government has become a stepchild of the Republican Party

    And of course once they've got everyone toeing the Republican Party line they can then switch gears to have them follow the Christian Fundamentalist line.

    And of course Armegeddon won't come till the Middle East explodes in a mushroom cloud.

    where will you be when the Rapture comes? will you be saved?

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report Reply

  • Rowan Wernham,

    Before you write off people who believe the current US administration had a hand in 9/11 as "crazies" I would recommend you also watch "Improbable Collapse". (Google Video)

    It is not just young activists who believe the circumstances around the collapse of the buildings is very fishy but also very sane and down to earth seeming college professors.

    Given the information presented in films like "Loose Change" and "Improbable Collapse" and also considering the ways the US administration has aggressively pushed their own unpopular and unrelated military agenda on the backs of these attacks while companies such as Cheny's former friends at Halliburton have made ludicrous and often illegitimate profits, I think the theory demands a little more than such a casual dismissal.

    The idea that it was terrorists who were solely responsible for the attacks has become deeply embedded in the public imagination. However the actual details of these events are very hazy and the research into them totally insufficient. Serious journalists may well steer clear of what seems to be a conspiracy theory. But think for yourself, Cheney, Rumsfield, Bush and their cronies, they are sinister people and openly a part of an ideological group dedicated to ensuring American cultural and military dominance in this century.

    If you ask me it is much less a stretch of imagination that these people were implicated in the attacks than it is to believe a troupe of guys with box cutters could simultaneosly hi-jack 4 planes and crash 3 of them into major american landmarks, two of which were rigorously constructed buildings yet somehow as a result of a short explosive blast from half empty plane fuel tanks fell at basically un-obstructed speeds an hour later exactly into their own footprint, generating all the hallmark chemical and physical symptoms of controlled demolition.

    The security company for the WTC is owned by a Bush, the towers were subject to unusual intrusions by security teams in the time preceding the attacks. It was entirely within their capabilities to rig those buildings to collapse.

    These are the same people who went to Kenneth Lay's funeral, one of the greatest white collar criminals in history, a person responsible for thousands, even hundreds of thousands of hard working middle class american loosing their lives pensions , and nodded as he was called a good man whose actions were mis-understood, and who will now be in heaven.

    Lets face it, the current climate in the USA is certainly not one of accepting reality, and within that there is very little space for people who are asking very vital and legitimate questions about the world changing events on September 11.

    Auckland • Since Apr 2007 • 1 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    If you're interested in US politics you might want to read Rahm Emanuel's
    (D - IL) latest speech on the Bush Administration...

    When you put it all together like that... damn.

    I'm in no doubt at all that history will regard this period in American political history as a bizarre and shameful one.

    The detail of who got favours in the first 18 months of the Iraq "reconstruction" is genuinely mind-boggling. Kids with no other qualification than that they'd finished university and had worked on the Bush campaign got plum jobs and contracts. Some of them committed massive frauds, others were just incompetent.

    You can watch the Channel 4 documentary God's Next Army on Google video. It looks at the evangelical university Patrick Henry College, which has delivered a tide of the faithful to Washington jobs. Same deal with Pat Robertson's Regent University - check Bill Maher's recent rant about that:

    You know how whenever there's a major Bush administration scandal it always traces back to some incompetent political hack appointment and you think to yourself, "Where are they getting these screw-ups from?" Well, now we know: from Pat Robertson. I wish I were kidding, but I'm not. Take Monica Goodling, who before she resigned last week because of the U.S. attorneys scandal, was the third most powerful official in the Justice Department of the United States. Thirty-three, and though she had never even worked as a prosecutor, she was tasked with overseeing the job performance of all 95 U.S. attorneys. How do you get to be such a top dog at 33? By acing Harvard, or winning scholarship prizes? No, Goodling did her undergraduate work at Messiah College -- home of the "Fighting Christies," who wait-listed me, the bastards -- and then went on to attend Pat Robertson's law school ...

    {snip}

    But there's more! As there inevitably is with the Bush administration. Turns out she's not the only one. Since 2001, 150 graduates of Regent University have been hired by the Bush administration. And people wonder why things are so screwed up. Hell, we probably invaded Iraq because one of these clowns read the map wrong. Forget religion for a second, we're talking about a top Justice Department official who went to a college founded by a TV host. Would you send your daughter to Maury Povich University? And if you did, would you expect her to get a job at the White House? I'd be surprised if she got a job on the "Maury" show. And then it hit me: This is why Bush scandals never catch on with the public -- they're all evangelicals of course, and nobody is having sex.

    So there you have it: It turns out that the Justice Department is entirely staffed with Jesus freaks from a televangelist diploma mill in Virginia Beach.

    The video is here.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • hamishm,

    Mr. Maher is going to find himself in Gitmo if he isn't careful. I saw him refer to the Commander-in-Chief as "President Shite for brains" last week.
    But the Justice dept. thing seems to be a special case of idiocy, Gonzales said "I don't recall" 45 times in 3 hours!!! He even said that he didn't recall about not recalling at one stage.
    Future historians will conclude that our universe took a wrong turn into the sewn up leg of the Trousers of Time, I think.

    Since Nov 2006 • 357 posts Report Reply

  • Heather Gaye,

    two of which were rigorously constructed buildings yet somehow as a result of a short explosive blast from half empty plane fuel tanks fell at basically un-obstructed speeds an hour later exactly into their own footprint, generating all the hallmark chemical and physical symptoms of controlled demolition.

    I think there are a lot of problems inherent in second-guessing the expected vs actual results of this kind of event. I think it's very easy to contrive more "plausible" scenarios when you have some elementary physics, but ultimately the elaborate scenarios I've heard - rather than proving the conclusion that the twin towers destruction was an inside job, they actually rest on that as a premise.

    One problem with the physics involved in the destruction of the twin towers, is that a lot of people know what a controlled demolition looks like - but very few people know what a plane crashing into a building looks like. Here's an opinion, just one, that I found after a friend pushed the "controlled demolition" angle. Granted, it doesn't even touch controlled demolition, but it is still *coff* eerily plausible, and mentions some quite obvious factors that the "jet-fuel burns too cold" brigade ignored.

    I'm not saying that all alternative theories should be cast aside without consideration, but I think too many people latch onto half-formed ideas primarily because they're exciting and they make people feel clever. Those theories then become the popular counter-argument despite their own scientific or logical shortcomings, which is counterproductive, in my view.

    Morningside • Since Nov 2006 • 533 posts Report Reply

  • Nobody Important,

    From Heather's link story:

    My point is that given the inadequate partial sprinkler system, the use of lightweight long-span steel bar joists, deficient ‘fireproofing’ on the steel, and large open areas undivided by fire walls, any uncontrolled large area fire would have eventually produced the same total collapse. The importance of early fire control, to save lives by prevention of collapse in most ordinary constructed buildings is generally not appreciated even by engineers. Many years ago hard experience had taught the Fire Dept. that when the fire was beyond their control in the old brick and joist, first generation high-rise buildings the fire forces were withdrawn and the fire fought from the outside in anticipation of collapse

    So why then were the people told to stay on their floors? They were actually told to return to their floors when they tried to use the firestairs. And as the death toll proved, there were a lot of firefighters in the building - obviously doing nothing if the fire was allowed to burn uncontrolled.

    I've read so many 'conspiracy' websites I have brain fatigue and don't know black from white anymore. All I know is that at one stage Noriega, Sadam, and Osama were all friends (or at least on the payroll) of the good ol' USA.

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    And as the death toll proved, there were a lot of firefighters in the building - obviously doing nothing if the fire was allowed to burn uncontrolled.

    More like knowing nothing. The breakdown in communication between agencies was a major problem on the day. I gather the NY police and fire departments are still using the same, incompatible radios they had back in 2001. Given the billions that have been laid out since in the name of security I really do find that astonishing.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Nobody Important,

    For shame RB, how dare you impune the legacy of Rudolph Guilliani "the World's Mayor" ...

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report Reply

  • Danyl Mclauchlan,

    Given the billions that have been laid out since in the name of security I really do find that astonishing.

    I suspect high value targets in Nebraska and Omaha are vitally well defended.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 927 posts Report Reply

  • Riddley Walker,

    le Tigre's 'My Metrocard' sums up Giulliani in qute catchily.

    AKL • Since Feb 2007 • 890 posts Report Reply

  • Riddley Walker,

    but really conspiracy theories aside, science and existing fact on the matter to the fore, there are many aspects of 9/11 that don't add up.
    it's not surprising that many aspects of such a momentous event are not released to the public (i expect there was lots about Pearl Harbour that was suppressed for a long time if not for ever), which will in itself make for inconsistencies and irregularities.
    but going on its track record the current administration also seems capable of fairly extreme and alarming disregard for conventional ethics.

    AKL • Since Feb 2007 • 890 posts Report Reply

  • Nobody Important,

    does anyone know if Triangle TV plan to screen the PBS special about the run-up to to the Iraq war by the news media, presented by Bill Moyers?? 90 minutes long and evidently quite good ...

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report Reply

  • 3410,

    NI, you could phone and ask them.

    Auckland • Since Jan 2007 • 2618 posts Report Reply

  • 3410,

    NI, is this what you're talking about?

    Auckland • Since Jan 2007 • 2618 posts Report Reply

  • Anne M,

    <quote.but going on its track record the current administration also seems capable of fairly extreme and alarming disregard for conventional ethics.</quote>

    True. But their track record on a) competence and b) getting all participants to not blab and finger-point has been pretty dismal.

    Since Nov 2006 • 104 posts Report Reply

  • Simon Grigg,

    there are many aspects of 9/11 that don't add up.

    I still can't get my head around that damned miraculously surviving passport

    After being much reported, it seems to have almost disappeared from the official record.

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report Reply

  • Nobody Important,

    NI, you could phone and ask them.

    thanks for the link 3410, I'll call them Monday ...

    NI, is this what you're talking about?

    Yup!
    "Buying the War," a 90-minute documentary that explores the role of the press in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report Reply

  • 3410,

    Second link has streaming video of the whole thing.

    Auckland • Since Jan 2007 • 2618 posts Report Reply

  • Riddley Walker,

    But their track record on a) competence and b) getting all participants to not blab and finger-point has been pretty dismal

    i think that very much depends on the fields of operation in question.

    AKL • Since Feb 2007 • 890 posts Report Reply

  • hamishm,

    I think that this sums up the current administration pretty well It's about foreign aid for Katrina victims

    Allies offered $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash. But only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to U.S. officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent.

    At the time there was a lot of internet bleating about being let down by "so-called" allies. It turns out that that wasn't true but that the fault lay with U.S. Government.

    Since Nov 2006 • 357 posts Report Reply

  • Nobody Important,

    "....Second link has streaming video of the whole thing...."

    Ta! (it was late so I just skipped to the site and bookmarked it for later perusal)

    Gee, who needs TV when you can just watch everything online? Amazing! Now, if only someone could invent a small handheld device so I can watch stuff without being chained to the computer.

    Kind of like a Walkman-With-Video, if you will ...

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report Reply

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