Say Anything Blog

Inquiring minds want to know.

Here and here.

The government has no intention of revealing the details of what sovereign states were involved in the attack on 9/11, as I have commented on in the past. Now, things are getting more absurd.

...we are disappointed with today’s decision by the panel of

judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in John

P. O’Neill, Sr. et al. v. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, et al., to the effect

that Americans harmed or killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11,

2001 do not have standing to sue the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

While acknowledging that the plaintiffs have pled substantial

information linking the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to certain purported

charitable organizations, and demonstrating their role in facilitating the

activities of Al Qaeda around the world, the panel utilized a unique and

previously unsupported rationale for denying Americans the opportunity to

use US Courts to seek redress for the harms that they suffered as a result

of the 9/11 attacks.

Under the Court’s rationale, were New Yorkers to be side-swiped by a

car driven by an employee of the Saudi embassy, they could sue for the

bumps and bruises that they suffered and the damage to their vehicle, yet

the nearly 3,000 families of those innocents who were brutally killed in

lower Manhattan, rural Pennsylvania and the Pentagon can not pursue their

claims. Additionally, those who plan, conspire and provide support for

terrorists, from havens abroad, cannot be held accountable for their

actions in our Courts, according to today’s ruling.

Yet, in a stinging setback for Cozen and other plaintiffs’ lawyers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said U.S. law bars such lawsuits unless the State Department has found that a government provided material support for terrorist groups.

The State Department has made no such finding regarding Saudi Arabia.

Well, there you have it folks. The government has failed to investigate and rectify 9/11. Private suits have been brought on behalf of the deceased and the insurance companies and a solid case has been made for their involvement in the funding and charities implicated. Those suits cannot go through because the State Department under Bush has refused to list the number one terror financiers in the world as terror financiers. The last hopes of rectifying 9/11 are crashing and burning because of international cronyism.

Just thought you guys might want a little GWOT update. Now go back to talking about how tough on terrorism Bush is.

Old news.

Arnulfo Martinez recalls seeing lots of hombres del ejercito standing at attention. Though he was living on the Belle Chasse Naval Base near New Orleans when President Bush spoke there on Oct. 11, he didn’t understand anything the ruddy man in the rolled-up sleeves was saying to the troops.

Martinez, 16, speaks no English; his mother tongue is Zapotec. He had left the cornfields of Oaxaca, Mexico, four weeks earlier for the promise that he would make $8 an hour, plus room and board, while working for a subcontractor of KBR, a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton that was awarded a major contract by the Bush administration for disaster relief work. The job was helping to clean up a Gulf Coast naval base in the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina. “I was cleaning up the base, picking up branches and doing other work,” Martinez said, speaking to me in broken Spanish.

....

“They gave us two meals a day and sometimes only one,” Martinez said.

He says that Tovar “kicked us off the base,” forcing him and other cleanup workers—many of them Mexican and undocumented—to sleep on the streets of New Orleans. According to Martinez, they were not paid for three weeks of work. An immigrant rights group recently filed complaints with the Department of Labor on behalf of Martinez and 73 other workers allegedly owed more than $56,000 by Tovar.

I wonder why Bush and McCain are pro illegal labor?

I wonder how many illegals KBR has imported since 2005 when this happened?

Man they like ‘em big in Texas.

Mayra Rosales weighs almost 1,000 pounds and is bedridden.

She was indicted last week on capital murder charges in the death of the 2-year-old. Prosecutors said he died after being struck at least twice in the head.

But her lawyer said Rosales couldn’t have beaten the boy because of her limited movement. The boy’s mother said it’s possible her sister rolled onto him.

Rosales was put under house arrest this week because the county jail has neither a cell that’s big enough nor the necessary medical resources. She’s required to wear a GPS tracker until her trial.

GPS tracker? Couldn’t they just monitor the local seismograph?

A fair question.

Whatever precedent the west may have set by recognising Kosovo, Georgia’s breakaway states are only a mountain range away from Russia’s own separatist troublespots. What’s good for South Caucasus surely has to be good for them too. If Abkhazia or South Ossetia are nation states, then why not Chechnya?

The Chechnya situation remains ’sporadically unresolved‘. The WSJ insinuates the same question.

For Ms. Kesayeva, watching events in neighboring Georgia unfold is a bad case of déjà vu. She sees disturbing parallels between Russia’s handling of Beslan and its small victorious war against Georgia. As in Beslan, she says the Kremlin has released misinformation to bolster its cause, establishing an official narrative that it is “unpatriotic” to question.

"Unpatriotic"? Lies? No! Where have I heard that before? Oh, wait. Stateside it’s unpatriotic to question lies (yellowcake?) that get us into war.

Birds of a feather.

We have been fighting the war in Afghanistan since 2001. We haven’t won yet. Barry Obamer and Johnny McCan’t both support the effort. Everybody does. Those are the real badguys, right.

Now that things are changing in Pakistan, and seeing that Pakistani intelligence has been against us from the beginning, we might want to rethink our military involvement in Afghanistan. Perhaps we should take a lesson from the Russians and get out while we are behind, before we get further behind.

We have worked with Pakistani Intelligence before. That’s who we had provide arms to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan from 1980-1989. In order to thank us for the help, the ISI rounded up a group of Pakistani students, ‘Talibs’, hardliners, to run the country. Now they continue to fund and supply the same. We call the ISI ‘rogue’ but the reality is that Pakistan, our ‘allies’, are nothing of the sort. Musharrev played us, we let him a bit to maintain our influence, and even that has failed abysmally.

ISI is a disciplined force, breaking the back of al-Qaeda. (?!)

Are we making the same mistakes the Russians did in the 80s? Is Afghanistan winnable? How much more time, money, and effort should we spend on Afghanistan? Is it worth wasting our money, effort, and troops on? Can we really expect a US-backed government to last in Afghanistan without permanent deployment? Who is funding and arming the ISI? Oh wait, we have been. D’oh.

...the civilian government is powerless to confront the [ISI]. The ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, announced on the eve of a trip to Washington last month that the ISI had been brought under the control of the interior minister.

He was forced by the army to retract the statement at 3am the following day.

Similarly a week later, Sherry Rehman, the PPP’s information minister, was forced to withdraw her call for Taliban sympathisers to be rooted out of the ISI.

Until recently, American suspicion of ISI involvement with the Taliban had been offset by Pakistan’s capture and rendition of senior terrorists such as the mastermand of al-Qa’eda Sept 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

A power vacuum following Pervez Musharraf’s loss of military command last year has enabled hardliners within the Pakistani army to press their agenda more actively both in Afghanistan and on its eastern border, in Kashmir.

Many of the ISI’s ideological and strategic convictions were formed in the 1980s, when it commanded and armed Islamic militias against Soviet troops in Afghanistan at the behest of the US.

CIA officials have pointed to continued links between the ISI and the Soviet-era veterans such as Jalaluddin Haqqani, who is believed to maintain close ties to senior figures of al-Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The Pakistani establishment is suspicious of America’s regional ambitions and wary of “encirclement” as its arch-foe, India, increases its influence in Afghanistan.

Also, it appears the ISI has been f*cking the British too.

The Sun said Mr Durcan, 56, had been "tricked into a close friendship by the attractive woman".

It said there was no evidence classified information or British agents had been compromised.

The paper described the woman as a "defence academic" who was "also believed to be an undercover agent for rogue elements within Pakistan's intelligence services".

We have an endearing term up in Vermont for some of the tourists, “Massholes.” From time to time, these types find their way permanently into our fine state, much to our collective chagrin.

The Democrat candidate for governor in Vermont stands to loose miserably this upcoming election. The Democrats have chosen a candidate never stood a chance of winning a statewide election in the first place.

Gaye Symington was born in Boston into the lap of luxury. She moved to her current town of residence in 1988, a late transplant. She is a lifetime politician, having worked occasional jobs such as accountant for the company her husband was president of. The world was handed to Gaye and she is repaying Vermont by seeking the chance to tell the whole state how they should conduct themselves. (PS - She shares a birthday with Hitler. Cosmic, man.) Buckle your seat belts (literally!), Democrats, you’re in for a disappointment. No one up here is looking for someone to tell us how we ought to run our lives, even a neighbor, much less a Masshole princess.

Vermont is not an affluent state. The voting base is hardworking and hardthinking. The last thing anyone wants is an out-of-state princess advising them on how to live their lives. Watch one of the ‘bluest’ states elect a ‘Republican’ governor, again.

With a third party candidate who can pull in 10-20%, Gaye will never win. She’ll write it off to third party meddling, but the truth is Gaye could never win in Vermont. Perhaps she’ll try again sometime in the near future, with less variables in play, so that she can know for sure we don’t want her. I invite her to try again soon - she can afford it, and probably will.

Also, I’m still waiting for the day Vermont begins enforcing its borders to prevent Mass immigration. Constitution be damned, enforce our southern border!

Here. Trouble’s a brewin’ over the Fed drawing lines in the sand, up in Derby Line, Vermont.

For longtime residents accustomed to a simpler life that flowed freely across a largely invisible border, the final shock - and what made most people really take notice - was a proposal by the border agents last year to erect fences on the small streets to officially barricade Derby Line from Stanstead, Quebec, and neighbor from neighbor.

“They’re stirring up a little hate and discontent with that deal,” said Claire Currier, who grew up in this border area and works at Brown’s Drug Store, which has operated on the same spot since 1884. “We’ve all intermingled for years.”

Get your passport, we’re going to the neighbors’ house.

If you ever end up in Bucharest on your motorcycle, you might want to get it waxed. (second link is not for @ work… or for the fervently religious. )

Saratoga, last Weds. Inspired by Anna’s forthcoming pics.

^on the way in

^clubhouse (on top)

^and they’re off

^the best lookin’ horse

I recently had to call Rob out on his race baiting in an effort to clear up the record a bit. Well, now that the Georgian-Russian conflict is underway, my criticism of Georgian propaganda has been met with comments such as this one from Rodney Graves:

How long have you been a shill for the FSB? Or does it go all the way back to the bad old days of the KGB?

Apparently Randy is out to solidify my case that he’s a propagandist. Again, it’ll be useful to consult the past…

I posted on the fact that Putin has no problem resorting to terrorism. That got minimal comments.

I also posted when we busted one of Putin’s means to facilitate terrorism and he started whining that we shouldn’t be able to extradite the guy. People asked, “What’s the point?”

When a pro-Russian, mafia run state expressed nuclear aspirations, I was critical of that. Nonetheless, Rodney Graves was there to bitch me out for not supporting Lukashenka’s ambitions.

I posted on the first ‘Victory Day’ parade in Russia in 15 years replete with exclamation point to emphasize the date. 2Hotel9 was so out of the loop (stuck in the early 90s apparently) that he insisted the parade occurs every year.

As recently as July, I suggested that Bush is being naive in his relations with the Russians. That one received no comments. Apparently, Bush has just flip-flopped on his initial 'intuitions'.

When I am critical of willingness of some commentators to gobble up propaganda and disseminate it, apparently that amounts to me being on Russia’s side. We hear this rhetorical tactic often from commentators like Rodney Graves and Rob. Unfortunately, the record betrays their willingness to lie for political expediency.

Here.

...the pipeline, though strategically and politically important, is not as big a factor in the conflict that the Georgian government is claiming. President Mikheil Saakashvili would like Western public opinion to believe that this is more than a territorial battle over a disputed region, and hopes that portraying it as a fight to protect valuable oil supplies will attract more sympathy.

In other news, a pipeline has been reopened by BP. And Russia and Georgia are whining to their PR agencies that they aren’t sounding cool enough.

The Brussels PR agency promoting Russia’s side in the dispute with Georgia has been criticised for being part of Russia’s ‘propaganda’ machine.

GPlus has been advising the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation since April 2006. Meanwhile, rival agency Aspect Consulting was hired by Georgia late last year to reach out to Western audiences.

Aspect Consulting founding partner James Hunt told PRWeek: ‘There are agencies that work for Russia but I don’t know how they can be comfortable about that. I feel I’m on the side of the angels.’

You heard it from Georgia’s PR guy! Russia are the propagandists and Georgia are the angels. I guess we’re on the side of angels. Thank goodness. (Barf.)

Turns out some company from the UAE just bought 51% of Poti Port within the last few months.

The Ras Al Khaimah Investment Authority (Rakia) continues its foreign investment with both a 51 per cent stake in Georgian harbour Poti Port…

D’oh.

Oh my god! “Mother Russia” is attacking the region where all the oil pipelines are! They are attacking the pipelines.

Local police recorded 51 strikes. “I have no doubt they wanted to target the pipeline, there is nothing else here,” said Giorgi Abrahamisvili, a policeman who witnessed the attack.

Oh my god! Too bad the pipeline isn’t in the area all of you are claiming it is! Moreover, its too bad that the pipeline, apparently hasn’t been damaged by the 50+ strikes the Georgians maintain Russia has perpetrated on it.

BP operates the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which transports one per cent of the world’s oil needs, or one million barrels a day from Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean. A spokesman played down the impact of the strike, pointing out that pumping was suspended last week because of a terrorist attack in Turkey.

“At the moment the pipeline is not running at any capacity, because there was a fire,” the spokesman said.

Hmmm. As MOFO observes

I’m sorry, but if the Russians had fired over fifty missiles at an oil pipeline, how were they unable to damage it? Are they using rubber missiles now?

BP runs the pipeline and they claim that there has been no attacks on it. Hmmm.

“We’ve seen reports attributed to a Georgian minister saying that the Russians have bombed the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.

“We are not aware of that and I think we probably would be if it were true.”

This brings us to a salient question posed by WOOF.

[Do you t]hink the Georgians are above killing Americans to guarantee American support for the obvious lost campaign of illegal aggression they initiated?

Hat tip to MOFO and WOOF for this one.