JERUSALEM — Officials involved in the fraught Israeli-Palestinian peace talks said on Tuesday that an agreement was near to extend the negotiations through 2015 in exchange for the release of Jonathan J. Pollard, an American serving a life sentence for spying for Israel. The agreement would also include the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including citizens of Israel, and a partial freeze on construction in West Bank settlements.
Malaysian government continues to backtrack after initial evidence in case of missing flight is proven false
MALAYSIA (INTELLIHUB) — Malaysian officials told relatives of passengers from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that there was sealed evidence, which will not be made public. The sealed evidence reportedly includes air traffic control radio transcript, radar data and airport security recordings.
Family members of the missing passengers are becoming increasingly frustrated and impatient with the treatment that they are receiving from investigators. Many are now casting doubt on the initial report that the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean, killing everyone on board. Family members are suggesting that the Malaysian government prematurely announced that the plane had crashed, acting on faulty evidence.
“We demand you retract announcement that MH370 ended in south Indian Ocean and continue search-and-rescue operations,” one relative said at a briefing earlier this week.
The premature announcement of the crash was sent through a text message to relatives, on behalf of the Malaysian government, nearly a week ago. Since then it was discovered that the object they had found in the ocean was not wreckage, but random unidentified “junk”.
Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges discussed “recent conflicting federal court decisions on the legality of NSA spying” in a talk at the Connecticut Civil Liberties Conference at Central Connecticut State University on Saturday.
The all-day event, which included other speakers, was sponsored by the Connecticut Coalition to Stop Indefinite Detention, the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Connecticut, United Action Connecticut and other activists groups.
People want to believe medical science gives us, at any given moment, the best of all possible worlds.
And of course, the best of all possible worlds must have its enemies: the quacks who sell unproven snake oil.
So let’s look at some facts.
As I’ve been documenting for years, the medical cartel has been engaged in massive criminal fraud, presenting their drugs as safe and effective across the board—when, in fact, these drugs have been killing and maiming huge numbers of people, like clockwork.
I’ve cited the review, “Is US Health Really the Best in the World?”, by Dr. Barbara Starfied (Journal of the American Medical Association, July 26, 2000), in which Starfield reveals the American medical system kills 225,000 people per year—106,000 as a direct result of pharmaceutical drugs.
World economics seer Louis-Vincent Gave, of the Gavekal Partnership, has explained the pivotal meaning of the Crimea Incident in a larger context which he calls a looming “World War IV” —the conflict between the Shia and Sunni branches of Islam, in which Sunnis control larger reserves of oil, but Shia populations are restive in the very places where that oil is pumped. If a rising axis of Russia, Iran, Syria and Iraq takes hold – (the latter three Shia-ruled, currently) – then fear will tighten across the Sunni belt.
(* Clearly, in its decades of tension and expense and geopolitical importance, the Cold War was a tepid-simmering “World War III.”)
Tensions will drive arms sales and raise oil prices, which is the only condition under which Russia prospers. U.S. efforts to sap the strength of that alliance make a major reason for the Obama Administration's peace efforts with Iran… which Vladimir Putin will try to wreck.
It is also a good reason to ponder whether Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan — himself politically embattled — might do the one thing that would settle matters in Syria… sending in the Turkish Army. Even with the excuse of humanitarian reasons, it would be risky. (The threat to Russia's Tartus naval base would raise tensions to stratospheric levels, though.)
The real locus of what-if pondering must zero in on Saudi Arabia. Are they sufficiently unnerved by the Russia-Iran-Iraq-Syria axis… and simmering problems with their own restive Shia populations… to decide upon a change in policy? To back off from their blatant efforts to manipulate and poison American political processes, for example, and to instead meddle in more constructive ways?
BANGKOK – It is by no mere coincidence, when telltale evidence of a Mossad role in the MH370 hijack was starting to snowball, that Israel's embassies and consulates were suddenly shut down due to a “strike by diplomatic staff”. This fork-tongued alibi was obviously meant to prevent law enforcement agencies across Asia and the Western world from questioning Israeli intelligence agents and military attaches about the whereabouts and fate of the hundreds of passengers.
The Jewish state's diplomatic corps has retreated further into a tortoise shell, perhaps because of the hammer blow from investigative journalist Christopher Bollyn, who previously exposed Israel's hand behind the 911 attacks. Based on eyewitness reports from a network of plane watchers in Europe and in Israel, Bollyn reports that an identical production model of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 is being kept out of regular service inside a hangar at Tel Aviv Airport.
Seattle-based Boeing assembles aircraft in pairs as its standard practice, but the question is how one jet was leased by Malaysia's national carrier while the matching plane was secretly turned over to the Israeli government without a purchase order from state-run El Al airlines.
Bollyn uncovered the fact that the two jets were delivered to a third-party company, whose top manager has a longtime connection with the George Soros. From the timeline of events, it is obvious that the plane transfers and subsequent electronic hijacking were part of a larger strategy, which was aimed at:
