The U.S. Government has released the evidence used in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui and posted it all upon a web site. Very interesting indeed, though I have only had time to peruse through some of it. I found one picture particularly interesting, seeing how it was a downed light pole conspiracy theorists claim don’t exist.
View the Government and Defense Evidence
All-Seeing Eye has a post up at The Jawa Report laying out the facts in Qana, Lebanon as we know them, but I also think he has missed some crucial details. In brief, he lays out the following facts as known now.
This fact is easily explained as buildings can and do collapse after being struck . . . structural damage and what not that engineers could explain better than I.
This is almost impossible to believe. While I have never lived in a warzone, and thankfully so, if I lived in an apartment building that was hit by a bomb, I’m getting the hell out of dodge once I try to find other survivors. I’m not going to walk outside, look at the building and go back inside to go to sleep. This should be a survivor instinct that we all have.
Other questions arise that I have. Witnesses claim there were two explosions; one from the bomb and another one or two minutes later due to an unknown reason. Was this an ammo dump by Hezbollah? It doesn’t make any sense for the IAF to strike the same location twice with the power of bomb they have been reportedly using. Furthermore, if the IAF goal was to knock the building down, even if the second explosion was from an IAF bomb the building still stood errect and would have needed to be hit by at least one more bomb. There have been no reports of a third, fourth or fifth explosion.
Within a couple of hours after the news hit, elaborate banners were unfurled in Beruit. I am no artist, but I have quite a bit of experience in ordering banners to be made and getting artwork done for various projects. Two hours is not nearly sufficient enough time to get a banner such as this one processed, made and set up for the protest. Sure, the banner might have been pre-made for other reasons or other protests, but it just happened to be displayed on the date of the Qana strike? On a bit of a side note, the image in that banner looks very much like what Obsession talked about too, eh?
With the estimated 50 dead, they were all women and children. Do men not sleep in the same quarters in Qana? Being as Qana is described as a Hezbollah stronghold, or at least was, it is reasonable to conclude most of the residents are Shia Muslims. It would be strange to have so many unmarried mothers in one building anywhere, but in a region where Islam reigns supreme it would be sacreligious. Are we to conclude that the men were able to flee the building while the women and children were not and no man cared to try to help women and children get out of the building?
Perhaps all men were Hezbollah operatives and trying to find new places to fire rockets? Even so, we’ve all seen the videos of Hezbollah rocket firing within towns and the subsequent fleeing into a building and if there were 50 dead, it’s reasonable to conclude there were at least 12 full families involved. All 12 families have a father who is in Hezbollah’s military wing?
The Associated Press supposedly arrived just minutes after the building collapsed. With the wreckage in infrastructure all over Lebanon, why would a bombed building be newsworthy unless it was demolished and there were 50 civilians? It wouldn’t be, or at least any more so than the countless others. What was the emphasis on traveling to Qana to see this particular bombed building over, say, the 10 or so others that were hit overnight?
Qana was the scene of what has been called an “Israeli massacre” in 1996. Israeli shelled Qana after, what else, rockets were fired from within a refugee camp into Israel. Qana has a special meaning to Hezbollah because they know this one incident in 1996 help push the world more to their side. Out of all of the towns in Southern Lebanon, Qana had to be the one hit where 50 civilians died thus revoking the ever-present memory of 1996? The 1996 Qana strike was a boone for Hezbollah, would they ensure they saw another one with, according to Israeli Prime Minister Ehmud Ohmert, two-thirds of their missile launchers destroyed?
Hezbollah knows full well it cannot defeat the Israeli military in a conventional way, but they can and are winning this in terms of public relations. Iran knows this too. There should not be this many inconsistencies when this story has received front-page treatment accross the globe. The story is bound to overlap and fill in the gap if one were to cull together all reports on the incident, but they don’t. Why not?
In no way am I saying this was a Hezbollah public relations move because I don’t know, but it at least should be considered. There have been a number of convenient factors related to this entire war that it is mentionable that this incident that will likely define the war should be looked at and questioned.
We’re three weeks away from some Iranian surprise as announced by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian funded Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has also repeatedly announced a surprise is on the way for Israel. Are the two messages connected?
On August 22 Iran, on their timeline, will give the world the response regarding a proposal for Iran to end it’s military nuclear program. August 22 (Rajab 27, 1427) is the day Muslims celebrate Mohammed’s ascension into Heaven called the Miraj.
According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad was carried on a Buraq, a miraculous horse with a human head, from Mecca to Jerusalem, where he ascended into heaven and met the other prophets.
A great light shone upon Mohammed’s body in the Aqsa Mosque and a prophet was received while his followers cheered. Ahmadinejad now plans on remaking that divine light over Jerusalem.
And now, according to Ghadry, Ahmadinejad is planning an illumination of the night sky over Jerusalem to rival the one that greeted the Prophet of Islam on his journey. What the Iranian President, he says, is “promising the world by August 22 is the light in the sky over the Aqsa Mosque that took place the night before. That is his answer to the package of incentives the international community offered Iran on June 6.â€
What would light up the sky over Jerusalem with regard to Iranian involvement? One can conclude this means either a Hezbollah assault on Jerusalem, an Iranian war against Israel in Jerusalem or a nuclear bomb. The latter is the most far-fetched only because it’s not believed Iran has a nuclear weapon, but what else would create a series of magical lights that light up the sky over the sacred mosque, that’s built on top of a synagogue by the way?
Ahmadinejad has made it perfectly clear he wishes to end the life of the state of Israel, wiping it from the map, in several speeches and an entire conference held to discuss ‘The World Without Zionism.’ What is often not told in the the Western media is that during this same conference Ahmadinejad called for the complete destruction of the United States and the imagery used at the conference was an Israeli globe falling after the United States globe was already on the ground laying in shatters.
Ahmadinejad is a firm believer in the Twelth Imam who is the Shia Muslim right-doer who emerges from a well in Qom, Iran during the Apocalypse to save mankind. He travels down to Qom periodically and drops letters down the well, presumably to the 12th Imam. The 12th Imam is much like other religion’s doomsday scenarios and outcomes, but in Shia Islam the Apocalypse must be brought upon by mankind and it is desired. In order for the Shia Islam apocalypse to come to fruition, or at least how Ahmadinejad believes it, there must be a great war and the clensing of certain areas and certain people. That area is present day Israel and the people are Jews.
I have no clue what massive surprise Ahmadinejad has planned for August, 22 of this year, but it’s clear Iran has no intention to accept the proposal or even negotiate over the nuclear proposal. To add insult to injury, the United Nations has decided to go back on a previous deadline that already passed and extend the deadline for an Iranian answer to August 31. Either would have already commenced by now. With the current war in Lebanon between the Iranian proxy Hezbollah and Israel, Iran may be setting the table for a massive escalation in hostilities. Could Iran be buttering up Israel for Ahmadinejad’s doomsday scenario?
I had no clue.
LEADING Islamic clerics in Indonesia yesterday agreed to ban Muslims from watching, making or broadcasting television gossip shows.
“The Koran strongly forbids any gossip-related activities and [gossiping] people could end up in hell,” said one.
Thanks for clearing that one up chief.
UPDATE: Did The Scotsman jump the gun?
Senior clerics in Indonesia gathered in the city of Surabaya for the national congress of the 40 million-strong Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) have decided to delay issuing an edict prohibiting Muslims from watching or producing television gossip shows. After lengthy discussions, the clerics agreed to leave a decision on the issue to the organization’s central board.
“The central board will have two weeks to discuss the issue,” a member of the board, Maruf Amin, said after the close of the three-day congress on Sunday.
I don’t like gossip shows and I could care less about Hollywood gossip in particular, but is it really such an afront to God that there would have to be a fatwa against gossip?
Obsession is a new documentary culling together media reports within the Middle East that incite violence and spread complete fabrications of events and outright lies about the West as a whole. The “West” though is a term used to describe everyone who lives outside of the Middle East. Terrorism analysts such as Steve Emerson as well as former PLO terrorist Walid Shoebat and a daughter of a ‘martyr’ are featured in the film.
It’s fairly long (1 hour, 17 minutes) which is why I’m posting it on the weekend, but well worth the watch. You can pre-order a copy of the film and there will, supposedly, be a second installment in the future.
Push the play button or you can watch the video on Google Video on a larger screen size.
I couldn’t make this stuff up: “KLAP (Keep Language Above Politics) is the hope for the world.” via BlogCritics.org
I was being far more prophetic than I thought when I wrote “Immigrant Foods Threaten America” on Blogcritics. This is the power of words. We can only save the world from a fall into some kind of Mahmoud in Wonderland by opening borders freely to words of all origins. [snip]Answers Please has pages of words of foreign origin organized by the languages of their origin. It is a fine resource for those who will be joining the KLAP movement. (MORE)
Oh. My. Goodness. Sign me up.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as “pizzas†which will now be known as “elastic loaves,†state media reported Saturday.
The presidential decree, issued earlier this week, orders all governmental agencies, newspapers and publications to use words deemed more appropriate by the official language watchdog, the Farhangestan Zaban e Farsi, or Persian Academy, the Irna official news agency reported.
The academy has introduced more than 2,000 words as alternatives for some of the foreign words that have become commonly used in Iran, mostly from Western languages. source
Originally posted at Right Truth
Al-Qaida launches Web TV. What’s the world coming to? Hezbollah has al-Manar, which was bombed and taken off-air by Israel at the beginning of the present war. They were back on-air within hours with mobile transmitting equipment. They have been consistently on-air since. Can’t keep a terror propaganda machine down long, apparently.
Al-Qaida has launched an Internet television channel that broadcasts speeches by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and documentaries about its war with the West.The Arabic–language site is called al-Firdaws and it appears to be in an experimental stage.
Currently the videos air between 8 p.m. and midnight Mecca time.
Like most traditional Islamic television channels, the broadcasts open with a reading from the Koran, followed by a film on al-Zarqawi and various videos.
The end of programming comes with Jihadi songs, calling for Islamic martyrdom. source
Al-Manar is blocked in the USA by Executive Order 13224. You can still watch videos and read articles on their website.
For a time US corporations like Coca-Cola and Proctor & Gamble actually advertised on al-Manar. You could watch an advertistment for an American product one minute and an add requesting donations to Hezbollah the next minute.
Fox News Channel reports that a large number of Christians actually put money into al-Manar because it was ‘a good investment’.
Originally posted at Right Truth
Compare Hezbollah’s success in this war vs Israel’s success in the war over the last 18 days. Who’s winning, who needs to change their strategy, who has the most to lose, and what do the next few days hold for each side? Yesterday Israel crossed a new area of the Israeli-Lebanese border with their tanks and soldiers. Are they listening to the Israeli people who want their military to increase their attacks?
Hezbollah has done what no other Arab fighting force has done. It has not cracked under Israeli air-land attack. … Simply by resisting and not collapsing, it is establishing itself as the most effective fighting force yet to engage the Israelis.Hezbollah can’t do better than it is doing now. … It is, therefore, in their interest that a cease-fire be declared as soon as possible. If the war ended today, Israel would have achieved nothing definitive in its attacks. Rockets would still be available for attacks on Israel. Israel would not have room to maneuver in south Lebanon. A peacekeeping force would stand between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah as equals. It follows that Hezbollah should want an unconditional cease-fire right now. (more after the jump)
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad displays the flag of terror organization Hezbollah with pride. This man will do anything for publicity, to keep his face and name in the news.
Iranian hatemonger Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sparked fury yesterday by flying Hezbollah’s flag in his parliament building.
He ordered the flags to be placed on MPs’ desks as a show of support for the guerillas. Diplomats handling the Middle East crisis branded the stunt “unhelpfulâ€.
Highly-placed sources revealed there had been a “torrent of contacts†between nations desperate for peace.
It is believed that Hezbollah chiefs have privately agreed to a plan to halt hostilities.
A top-level source said: “I would put my money on a ceasefire in days not weeks.â€Â source
In the last few days, some Arab countries who had seemed to side with Israel are changing their tunes.
Rising Arab anger over the Israeli offensive against Hezbollah appears to have pushed conservative rulers in the region to refocus their criticism away from the Shiite guerrillas and onto Israel.
The most dramatic turn has come from Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally whose king initially rebuked Hezbollah for carrying out “uncalculated adventures” with a cross-border raid that captured two Israeli soldiers. This week, however, King Abdullah warned that “if the option of peace fails as a result of Israeli arrogance, then the only option remaining will be war.”
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, an important mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict for the last 25 years, now mixes his condemnation of Hezbollah’s move with sharp criticism of Israel’s response.
It was “disproportionate, to say the least,” Mubarak said in remarks posted Friday on Time magazine’s Web site. source
No word on Jordan, so hopefully they are standing firm. Fox News Channel is reporting this morning that Syria and Iran signed a ‘war pact’, that if either were attacked the other would fight for them. No details on the wording. That sounds silly to me because as far as I know Syria doesn’t have much of a military to offer Iran. Maybe just another way for Ahmadinejad to get in the news?
Originally posted at Right TruthÂ
Is the Arab world being divided by the Israel-Lebanon-Hezbollah war? You can bet your boots on it!
Even in articles I don’t agree with, there can be found elements of truth. I’m willing to give credit where credit is due. David Hirst in his article titled, “The ‘Arab system’ is dying in Lebanon“, says:  ”If there was long a vast divide between Arab rulers and ruled, a vast contempt of the latter for the former, Hamas and Hizbullah, together, have crystallized them in the most flagrant manner.”
It is true that some Arab countries surprised everyone in their response to the Israeli-Lebanese-Hezbollah present situation (war/conflict/fighting, whatever history ends up calling it). When “Saudi Arabia, backed by Egypt and Jordan … came out with its harsh criticism of Hizbullah, … it struck a sympathetic chord not just with the Lebanese state, but much of its people too. And understandably so, incensed as they are by the way in which other states, notably “sister-Syria”, with serial obduracy use their small and defenceless country to wage proxy wars, because they will not, dare not, wage direct ones of their own.” source
The actions of these three countries and others who are not so outspoken, siding with America and Israel was a ‘stab in the back’ of other Arab nations, creating a divide in the so-called “Arab system”.
… the Palestine problem is the central issue of Arab politics, and of the so-called “Arab system” which – through its chief institution, the Arab League, embodying the collective will of 22 Arab states – is supposed to guard the higher interests and basic security of the Arab “nation”. But the system manifestly does so no more; …Â source
Speaking of the Arab League, “Some of the Arab League money recently transferred to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been paid out to Hamas ministers this week, according to PA sources. The US has been actively working to keep international funds away from Hamas.
Meanwhile, European Union Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner announced Thursday that the EU had begun to transfer money to PA health workers, in concert with a mechanism designed to ensure that no money reach Hamas. Some $40 million has been designated by the EU for health purposes. source
You may remember that Hamas was against this EU money going to the hospitals and health workers. Hamas wanted the money to be sent directly to them. Big surprise.
Is all this leading to World War III as Newt suggests? Are we already in WWIII? If so, whose on which side? The answer may end up being very interesting. If we are in WWIII, then the situation in Israel-Lebanon is just one important battle in that war.
Originally posted at Right TruthÂ
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