FEMA phones hacked; calls made to Mideast, Asia

WASHINGTON - A hacker broke into a Homeland Security Department telephone system over the weekend and racked up about $12,000 in calls to the Middle East and Asia. ....

Coloradans give Al Jazeera negative reaction

Residents of suburban Golden, Colo., say they don't want the Middle East television network Al Jazeera setting up a broadcast office in town for the coming Democratic convention, forcing the city manager to withdraw an invitation to network officials to join him for a picnic.

According to the Denver Post, Golden City Manager Mike Bestor withdrew an invitation to the crew for the news channel known for broadcasting updates from al-Qaida. ....

Democrat sues Sen. Obama over 'fraudulent candidacy'

A prominent Pennsylvania Democrat has sued Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission, claiming that Obama is not a natural-born citizen and, therefore, is not eligible to be president of the United States.

Philip J. Berg, a former member of Pennsylvania's Democratic State Committee and former deputy attorney general of Pennsylvania, filed the lawsuit this week in U.S District Court, asking the court to declare Obama ineligible for the presidency and to prevent him from running for the position.

However, a WND investigation has found that at least part of Berg's lawsuit relies on discredited claims.

A separate motion was also filed seeking a temporary restraining order on Obama's presidential campaign until Obama's eligibility can be verified. ....

If any, much less all, of these allegations are true, the suit claims, Obama cannot constitutionally serve as president. ....

Berg claims his lawsuit is necessary, not only to protect the Constitution, but also to protect the integrity of the Democratic Party.

"If the DNC officers and/or leaders had performed one ounce of due diligence, we would not find ourselves in this emergency predicament, one week away from making a person the nominee who has lost their citizenship," said Berg in his press release. "The injunctive relief must be granted because failing to do so, (the DNC's) inaction defrauds everyone who voted in the Democratic Primary."

FDA OKs zapping greens for safety

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Consumers worried about salad safety may soon be able to buy fresh spinach and iceberg lettuce zapped with just enough radiation to kill E. coli and a few other germs.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday will issue a new regulation allowing spinach and lettuce sellers to take that extra step, a long-awaited move amid increasing outbreaks from raw produce.

It doesn't excuse dirty produce, warned Dr. Laura Tarantino, FDA's chief of food additive safety. Farms and processors still must follow standard rules to keep the greens as clean as possible -- and consumers, too, should wash the leaves before eating. ....

Feds: Fire took down building next to twin towers

By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer

GAITHERSBURG, Md. - Federal investigators said Thursday they have solved a mystery of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: the collapse of World Trade Center building 7, a source of long-running conspiracy theories.

The 47-story trapezoid-shaped building sat north of the World Trade Center towers, across Vesey Street in lower Manhattan in New York. On Sept. 11, it was set on fire by falling debris from the burning towers, but skeptics long have argued that fire and debris alone should not have brought down such a big steel-and-concrete structure.

Scientists with the National Institute of Standards and Technology say their three-year investigation of the collapse determined the demise of WTC 7 was actually the first time in the world a fire caused the total failure of a modern skyscraper.

"The reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery," said Dr. Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator on the NIST team.

Investigators also concluded that the collapse of the nearby towers broke the city water main, leaving the sprinkler system in the bottom half of the building without water.

The building has been the subject of a wide range of conspiracy theories for the last seven years, partly because the collapse occurred about seven hours after the twin towers came down. That fueled suspicion that someone intentionally blew up the building in a controlled demolition.

Critics like Mike Berger of the group 9/11 Truth said he wasn't buying the government's explanation.

"Their explanation simply isn't sufficient. We're being lied to," he said, arguing that there is other evidence suggesting explosives were used on the building.

Sunder said his team investigated the possibility that an explosion inside the building brought it down, but found there was no large boom or other noise that would have occurred with such a detonation. Investigators also created a giant computer model of the collapse, based partly on news footage from CBS News, that they say shows that internal column failure brought down the building.

Investigators also ruled out the possibility that the collapse was caused by fires from a substantial amount of diesel fuel that was stored in the building, most of it for generators for the city's emergency operations command center.

The 77-page report concluded that the fatal blow to the building came when the 13th floor collapsed, weakening a critical steel support column that led to catastrophic failure.

"When this critical column buckled due to lack of floor supports, it was the first domino in the chain," said Sunder.

The NIST investigators issued more than a dozen building recommendations as a result of their inquiry, most of which repeat earlier recommendations from their investigation into the collapse of the two large towers.

In both instances, investigators concluded that extreme heat caused some steel beams to lose strength, causing further failures throughout the buildings until the entire structure succumbed.

The recommendations include building skyscrapers with stronger connections and framing systems to resist the effects of thermal expansion, and structural systems designed to prevent damage to one part of a building from spreading to other parts.

No one was killed in the collapse of building 7 because it had been fully evacuated. A new, slightly taller World Trade Center 7 opened in 2006.

A spokesman for the leaseholder of the World Trade Center, developer Larry Silverstein, praised the government's work.

"Hopefully this thorough report puts to rest the various 9/11 conspiracy theories, which dishonor the men and women who lost their lives on that terrible day," said Silverstein spokesman Dara McQuillan.

In discussing the findings, the investigator Sunder acknowledged that some may still not be convinced, but insisted the science behind their findings is "incredibly conclusive."

"The public should really recognize the science is really behind what we have said," he said, adding: "The obvious stares you in the face."

Too Bad She Is Not Running For President!

Maxine on Relevant 'Logic'

Everyone concentrates on the problems we're having in this country lately;


v illegal immigration

v hurricane recovery

v alligators attacking people in Florida

Not me. I concentrate on solutions for the problems. It's a win-win situation.

1. Dig a moat the length of the Mexican border.

2. Send the dirt to New Orleans to raise the level of the levies.

3. Put the Florida alligators in the moat along the Mexican border.




Any other problems you would like for me to solve today?

================= ~~~ ==================
On singing OUR National Anthem in Spanish

I'm sorry, but after hearing they want to sing OUR National Anthem in Spanish - enough is TOO much!

NEVER did they sing it in Italian, Japanese, Polish, Irish-Celtic, German, Portuguese, Greek, French, or any other language because of immigration.

It was written by Francis Scott Key (in English) and should be sung word for word the way it was written.

The news broadcasts gave a translation that's NOT even close.

Sorry if this offends anyone, THIS IS MY COUNTRY!

Would you allow me to come to your country and then allow me to demand that you sing your National Anthem in ENGLISH?

And, because I make this statement DOES NOT mean I'm against immigration!

YOU ARE WELCOME HERE IN MY COUNTRY

Welcome to come through like everyone else has:

O Get a sponsor!

O Get a place to lay your head!

O Get a job!

O Live by OUR rules!

O Pay YOUR taxes!

O And LEARN THE LANGUAGE

LIKE ALL OTHER IMMIGRANTS HAVE IN THE PAST!!!

And please don't demand that we hand over our lifetime savings of social security funds to you to make up for ''your'' losses.

If you don't want to forward this for fear of offending someone, then YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!

When will AMERICAN'S stop giving away THEIR RIGHTS?

We've gone so far the other way, bent over backwards not to offend anyone. But it seems no one cares about the AMERICAN that's being offended!

The Implications of a Russo-Syrian Partnership

Syrian President Bashar al Assad arrived in Moscow on Wednesday for a two-day visit during which he will meet with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. Al Assad’s invitation to Moscow was announced shortly after Russia began its military offensive against Georgia. The timing was no coincidence, and Damascus fully intends to ride Russia’s wave of resurgence into regional prominence.

....Given U.S. sensitivity to developments in the Middle East, Syria is well positioned to give Russia ways to meddle in Washington’s affairs. The threat of increased Russian weapons sales to Iran and Syria, coupled with Wednesday’s hints of a Russian carrier returning to the Mediterranean, are all useful tactics in sending Washington a very clear message: Russia is a great power capable of influencing matters well beyond its own borders.

....More than anything else, Syria’s ability to exploit the Russian comeback in the Caucasus will depend on just how drastically Russia plans to upset U.S. foreign policy at this stage in the game. Syria certainly has assets to offer Moscow, but Russia will be considering much more than just Syria as it moves forward from this point.

Russia Growls, NATO Meows

By Charles Krauthammer

Read the first five paragraphs of the NATO statement on the Russian invasion of Georgia and you will find not a hint of who invaded whom. The statement is almost comically evenhanded. “We deplore all loss of life,” it declared, as if deploring a bus accident. And, it “expressed its grave concern over the situation in Georgia.” Situation, mind you.

It’s not until paragraph six that NATO, a 26-nation alliance with 900 million people and nearly half of world GDP, unsheathes its mighty sword, boldly declaring “Russian military action” — not aggression, not invasion, not even incursion, but “action” — to be “inconsistent with its peacekeeping role.”

Having launched a fearsome tautology Moscow’s way, what further action does the Greatest Alliance Of All Time take? Cancels the next NATO-Russia Council meeting.

That’s it. No dissolution of the G-8. No blocking of Russian entry to the World Trade Organization. No suspension of participation in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics (15 miles from the Georgian border). No statement of support for the Saakashvili government.

Remember: At issue is not military action, only measures — painless for the West — that would significantly affect Russia. In Soviet days, Russia didn’t care because it was at the center of a self-enclosed autarkic system that included 15 Soviet republics, all of Eastern Europe and a collection of overseas colonies. With these all gone, post-Soviet Russia is infinitely more dependent on the international system. It has political/economic pressure points. Yet with Georgia occupied, its infrastructure stripped and its capital under siege, NATO pushed not one of them.

Russian TV is already trumpeting “a crack in the NATO camp.” More like a chasm. Writing in the Times of London, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband even opposes expelling Russia from the G-8 — a perfectly calibrated and long-overdue measure. And a German diplomat says the Georgia issue should not have been brought to NATO in the first place, but instead to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a completely toothless consultative body, and to the United Nations, where inaction is guaranteed by the Russian veto.

To their credit, the French tried to do something. Unfortunately, President Nicolas Sarkozy was snookered by Moscow. Article V of the cease-fire agreement he brokered, allowing Russia the right to “implement additional security measures” within the borders of Georgia, is a blank check for Russian occupation.

So much for Old Europe. New Europe, with fresher memories of Russian oppression, was not so supine. The presidents of the Baltic republics (plus Ukraine and Poland) flew to Tbilisi to express solidarity with the Saakashvili government. Ukraine threatened the Russian fleet with loss of its Crimean base, and even offered to turn two ex-Soviet radar stations over to the West. And Poland dropped its dithering over details of a missile defense battery, agreeing almost overnight to American terms.

Eastern Europe understands the stakes in Georgia. It is the ultimate target. Russia’s aims are clear: (1) sever South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia for incorporation into Russia; (2) bring down Georgia’s pro-Western government; and (3) intimidate Eastern European countries into re-entering the Russian sphere of influence.

Objective No. 1 is already achieved. Georgia will never recover its provinces. They will soon be absorbed into Russia.

Objective No. 3 has backfired, for now. The Eastern Europeans have rallied to Georgia — and to the United States.

Objective No. 2 remains in the balance. Russian tanks have cut Georgia in half. Its largest port has been ransacked. Its capital is isolated. Russia shows every sign of staying in place by maintaining checkpoints and ultimate control.

If conditions continue, Georgia will be strangled and Saakashvili will fall, to be replaced by a Russian client whom Russia will offer to deal with magnanimously. Russia will have demonstrated its capacity to destroy a neighboring pro-Western regime without full-scale invasion or occupation and with zero resistance from NATO. Eastern European leaders will observe this outcome with shock, rethink their reflexive move toward the West and, in time, begin to accommodate themselves to Russian ambitions. Every Russian objective will have been achieved.

That is why so much hinges on the next few weeks, a time of maximum pressure on the Saakashvili government. The goal of this war is to demoralize and dominate Eastern Europe. Its outcome depends entirely on one development: Whether Russia succeeds in bringing down what it contemptuously calls “the Tbilisi regime.” The fate of far more than Georgia is at stake.

What's triggering Russian aggression?

Russia may have an important reason for reasserting itself in the Caucasus beyond recalling the grandeur of the old Soviet Union or even controlling the flow of oil from the Caspian Sea: It may be seeking control over a buffer zone between its borders and a rising level of radical Islam, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin. ....

New York: Egyptian national with Sudanese passport builds unmanned drone designed to carry 600 pounds of explosives -- FBI says no terrorism

by Jihad Watch

Just a random Egyptian national with a Sudanese passport in Calverton, Long Island building a random unmanned drone that carries random explosives. Heck, have a little sense of perspective! If you think this has anything to do with terrorism, next thing you know you'll be locking up Methodist grandmothers in Kansas when they build their unmanned explosive-carrying drones! Just a little backyard fun here, folks. Move along.

"Unmanned Drone On L.I. Sparks Terror Investigation," by Jonathan Dienst for WNBC.com, August 22 (thanks to all who sent this in):

NEW YORK -- An unmanned drone being built by an engineer on Long Island sparked a large counter-terrorism investigation across the New York area, officials tell WNBC.com. Police said they had stumbled upon overnight testing of the drone at a little-used airstrip in Calverton, Long Island.

The investigation began in February of last year, when investigators first learned testing of the drone was underway. Officials said the drone was being designed to carry more than 600 pounds of explosives.

"It could be in the air for 8-10 hours and there's potential harm if it is carrying a large amount of toxic material," NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in explaining why his department's counterterrorism officials were concerned.

Police surveillance video obtained by News 4 New York shows a white van rolling onto the tarmac, a small group of men jumping out and ground testing the unmanned flight vehicle.

Kelly said the engineer building the drone never reported his work to any agency including the Federal Aviation Administration or local authorities. Investigators said concern increased for a time when they learned the man behind the project was an Egyptian national who had entered the U.S. on a Sudanese passport. [...]

"It was such a bizarre set of circumstances," said New York State Homeland Security Director Michael Balboni. "Of course we watched it as closely as we did anything that was on our radar screen."

NYPD officials worked with Suffolk County police and the FBI to determine there were no ties to terror. Under questioning, the engineer said he was an inventor hoping to sell this drone model to the U.S. military. NYPD Lieutenant William McGroarty said during the investigation they had other questions....

In this case, police said there is no evidence any laws were broken as the drone was tested on the ground. Officials said if it had gone into the air without prior FAA approval, it could have been considered a crime....

Andy McCarthy explains what's fishy about this:

First, as we might recall from other investigations over the past several years, it is the practice especially of the FBI to find "no ties to terror" in any case involving Muslims where there is no known evidence of a relationship between the subjects of the investigation and any established terrorist organization (such as al Qaeda or Hezbollah). Because of concerns about "profiling" — despite the fact that we are under siege by Muslim terrorists — the fact that investigative subjects happen to be Muslims is deemed irrelevant (as if, in a Mafia investigation, you would have to ignore whether a subject was Italian or not for fear of being accused of Italophobia.) There is no concession in the report that the subjects of this investigation are Muslims. I'm gonna go out on a limb, though, and guess there's an itsy-bitsy chance given that the engineer in question is an Egyptian national with a Sudanese passport. The happenstance that the subjects may be Muslims would not of itself make them guilty of anything — but it's not irrelevant.

Second, as I recount in Willful Blindness, the first known activities of the jihadist cell that eventually killed Meir Kahane in 1990, plotted to kill Hosni Mubarak in 1992, bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, and was stopped a few months later in the midst of plotting to bomb other New York City landmarks, was the FBI's investigation of paramilitary training over several weekends in July 1989. The Muslim men in question — who at the time were not known to have ties to any established terrorist organizatoin but went on to carry out the aforementioned plots — piled into vans at a radical mosque in Brooklyn and traveled to a shooting range where they conducted shooting practice with a variety of weapons, including AK-47s. The FBI closed the investigation when the men discovered they were under surveillance and complained that they were being harrassed.

The shooting range they chose for the training was in Calverton, Long Island.

Companies import poisonous Chinese toothpaste in disguise

Four defendants pleaded guilty yesterday to importing from China more than a half million tubes of toothpaste falsely labeled as the popular brand Colgate and containing a toxic chemical found in antifreeze.

According to a U.S. Department of Justice statement, the defendants were responsible for 518,028 tubes of toothpaste worth an estimated $730,419 that were shipped into the country and distributed to bargain retail stores in several states last year.

Laboratory tests conducted by the Food and Drug Administration and the Colgate-Palmolive company revealed the toothpaste not only lacked fluoride but was also tainted with bacillus spores and diethylene glycol, a sweet-tasting poison found in engine coolant.

According to the FDA, the toothpaste contained enough diethylene glycol to pose a health risk to any consumer, but especially to people with compromised immune systems, infants and children. ....

Russia takes control of Turkmen (world?) gas

By M K Bhadrakumar

From the details coming out of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Moscow over the weekend, it is apparent that the great game over Caspian energy has taken a dramatic turn. In the geopolitics of energy security, nothing like this has happened before. The United States has suffered a huge defeat in the race for Caspian gas. The question now is how much longer Washington could afford to keep Iran out of the energy market.

Gazprom, Russia's energy leviathan, signed two major agreements in Ashgabat on Friday outlining a new scheme for purchase of Turkmen gas. The first one elaborates the price formation principles that will be guiding the Russian gas purchase from Turkmenistan during the next 20-year period. The second agreement is a unique one, making Gazprom the donor for local Turkmen energy projects. In essence, the two agreements ensure that Russia will keep control over Turkmen gas exports.

The new pricing principle lays out that starting from next year, Russia has agreed to pay to Turkmenistan a base gas purchasing price that is a mix of the average wholesale price in Europe and Ukraine. In effect, as compared to the current price of US$140 per thousand cubic meters of Turkmen gas, from 2009 onward Russia will be paying $225-295 under the new formula. This works out to an additional annual payment of something like $9.4 billion to $12.4 billion. But the transition to market principles of pricing will take place within the framework of a long-term contract running up to the year 2028.

The second agreement stipulates that Gazprom will finance and build gas transportation facilities and develop gas fields in Turkmenistan. Experts have estimated that Gazprom will finance Turkmen projects costing $4-6 billion. Gazprom chief Alexei Miller said, "We have reached agreement regarding Gazprom financing and building the new main gas pipelines from the east of the country, developing gas fields and boosting the capacity of the Turkmen sector of the Caspian gas pipeline to 30 billion cubic meters." Interestingly, Gazprom will provide financing in the form of 0% credits for these local projects. The net gain for Turkmenistan is estimated to be in the region of $240-480 million.

From all appearance, Gazprom, which was headed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for eight years from 2000 to May 2008, has taken an audacious initiative. It could only have happened thanks to a strategic decision taken at the highest level in the Kremlin. In fact, Medvedev had traveled to Ashgabat on July 4-5 en route to the Group of Eight summit meeting in Hokkaido, Japan. ....

FEMA warns of ‘cloned vehicles’

WASHINGTON — The federal government is telling emergency managers to be on the lookout for fake emergency and commercial vehicles, as security tightens in the two cities hosting this year’s presidential conventions.

Terrorists could used these “cloned vehicles” to conduct surveillance or to carry out an attack, according to an Aug. 21 bulletin from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Cloning a vehicle is easy and relatively cheap, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau. ....