Haaretz: Netanyahu says 9/11 terror attacks good for Israel

The Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv on Wednesday reported that Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu told an audience at Bar Ilan university that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks had been beneficial for Israel….

“We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,” Ma’ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events “swung American public opinion in our favor.”

Netanyahu reportedly made the comments during a conference at Bar-Ilan University on the division of Jerusalem as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians.

Ask yourself: who else profited from 911, and watch out this issue remained a subject of demogoguery where any concerns raised were taken to be anti-American or an attack on the people of New York? Remeber 2004. The Republican convention made 911 its issue. Remember Rudy, Cheney and Bush at the Garden. It was 911. 911, 911. And then what happened, 80% of the voters in Manhattan, the people most directly affected rejected the propaganda and the 911 focus. Rudy’s attempty to run to become “The President of 911,” as the Onion had it correctly also went down in flames. And yet 911 is still mythologized as if the American people have no questions about it. Reverend Wright, Bill Ayres etc–everyone who dared question the official narrative which my former colleagues of at ABC News never deviated from are denigrated.

How sad that this issue remains one that can’t be examined, just like US policy towards Israel is cannot be discussed. It was disappointing to see Senators Clinton and Obama fall in line, uncritically accepting the view of the Israeli right-wing as the only view and then outdoing each other in threatening retaliation against Iran as if they have nuclear weapons and are prepared to use them. And then there were the phony references to terroism in Lebanon? Have we forgotten how the WMD issue was manufactured to justify war with Iraq. Why is that this issue cannot be debated or discussed?

REPORT FROM IRAN’S PRESS TV: REUTERS CAMERAMAN KILLED IN GAZA

SEE THE VIDEO: CONDI RICE, TORTURE GLADIATOR

Brave New Films: Thanks to a new report from ABC News, we now know that Condoleezza Rice led White House meetings authorizing torture that were so detailed, “the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed.”

AP: WASHINGTON - Democratic Rep. John Murtha said Wednesday that Republican Sen. John McCain is too old to be president. Murtha is 75, four years older than McCain. He says they are nearly the same age, and the rigors and stress of running the country is too much for guys their age.

MARC KUSNETZ LETS LOOSE WITH TWO BARRELS

Memo to: PA democrats From a NY democrat

Re: lies and consequences

There is a well-known judicial principle called “standing,” by which anyone seeking to pursue a legal action must demonstrate his or her right — or standing — to do so. First things first, then — let me demonstrate my standing to say what I have to say to you: I voted twice for Senator Clinton and twice for President Clinton.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I should also say that I fall into that category of American which the Clinton campaign refers to as elitist. Presumably, that makes me condescending as well. So with my bona fides and my shortcomings now established, I can proceed.

My comments are directed particularly to those Democrats who do not reside in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, or any of the other areas where Senator Obama is presumed to have great strength. It’s all you other democrats I’m speaking to — the ones, as Senator Clinton has educated us, who naturally would be suspicious of a condescending creep like me.

Is it hopelessly naive of me to say that the phrase “bum rap” comes to mind, and is now deeply entrenched there? Not merely that I have been bum-rapped, but — much more important — you have too. I’m not sure whether I write more in sadness or anger; either way my conviction is the same: you Pennsylvanians are now being showered with the coins of the Clinton campaign that have been raining down on all of us for more than a year. They are: hypocrisy, cynicism, deceit, a willingness — in fact, a passion - to sow division and mistrust between fellow democrats, and an implacable, unquenchable appetite to win at any cost, with a disregard — a casual disregard! — for truthfulness and common decency.

FBEE EYE STORY

Yesterday I reported on a hearing about the FBI that I caught a snatch of. Here’s the Washington Post report:

Bipartisan groups in Congress are pressing to place new controls on the FBI’s ability to demand troves of sensitive personal information from telephone providers and credit card companies, over the opposition of agency officials who say they deserve more time to clean up past abuses.

Proposals to rein in the use of secret “national security letters” will be discussed over the next week at hearings in both chambers. The hearings stem from disclosures that the FBI had clandestinely gathered telephone, e-mail and financial records “sought for” or “relevant to” terrorism or intelligence activities without following appropriate procedures.

AND IN AUSTRALIA

Government & Policy: Australian bosses’ to get power to check email; part of counter-terrorism measures

Companies will be able to intercept the emails and internet communications of their employees without their consent under new laws being considered by the Federal Government to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure from a cyber attack.

The proposed powers, which the Government wants in place by the middle of next year and which could affect millions of workers, have been slammed as an unprecedented and unjustifiable intrusion on civil liberties.

http://www.smh.com.au/

MEMO TO THE NEW YORKER FACT CHECKING DEPARTMENT FROM THE DISSECTOR FACT CHECKING DEPARTMENT

The New Yorker has a piece this week on the renaming/branding of an apartment building on New York’s Upper Left Side. The building as been named “The Stanton” after suffragist Cady B. Stanton—inaccurately called a ‘Suffragette.” Our fact checkers have learned that a resident of said building, the maker or the film “Doc” (—see dochumes.com), one Immy Humes, had her grade in High School misreported. She was a junior or a sophomore, not a senior, at St Anns—when she discovered that this building at 250 West 94th Street had once been home to THE Ms. Stanton herself. The late Norman Mailer, not known as a friend of feminism, also once lived in the building but could not be reached for comment.

Question: What can you believe anymore?

AND SPEAKING OF FACT CHECKING

Boston paper retracts Clinton-Cheney hunting tale.

Imagine Hillary Clinton hunting with Dick Cheney. That would be quite a story, and the Boston Herald thought it enticing enough to run a feature in which the vice president was quoted as inviting the former First Lady and Democratic candidate to go hunting with him. There was one slight problem. The quotes were taken from a satirical piece written by Andy Borowitz that ran on HuffingtonPost.com. In the HuffPo sendup Borowitz wrote, “‘To be frank, Hillary Clinton’s stories about her adventures with guns don’t exactly pass the smell test,’ the vice president told [”Meet the Press”] host Tim Russert. ‘If she really wants to show that she knows how to handle a rifle, there’s an easy way to do that: meet me in the woods.’” The Herald apparently saw the story on Google, failed to check its accuracy on the NBC News or “Meet the Press” web sites, and ran with it in its print edition Monday morning. The Herald posted a correction on its web site later that day, followed by another one in the print edition yesterday.

And speaking of the Herald, a blast from the past, former Herald Hack, the now retired brilliant sportswriter George Kimball reminded me of a great moment in Boston sports history on the eve of my triumpnant return to
secene of earlier crimes:

“Do you remember when we had the Phoenix-BCN softball game when Bonnie Raitt drove out onto the infield to deposit me on the pitchers mound, and and then you played the Hendrix Star Spangled Banner over the loudspeaker to precede the game?”

No, George, I am having a senior moment. I do seem to remember hunting with Dick Cheney, or was it hunting Dick Cheney?

I am off to Boston to speak at the Ford Hall Forum in the historic revolutionary war arena, the Old South Sea Meeting House at 6PM. Hope to see old friends and meet new ones.

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