insights from the digital future
Fred Flintstone, IQ of 2, coins the phrase “global warming,” begins 24-hour vigil outside White House demanding the return of his wife and puts the Flinstone-mobile lobby on red alert.
All jokes aside… BIGGEST STORM EVER. Seems news outlets are happy to say that its at its strongest NOW. Screw the Jamaicans and Caribbean residents because Florida will be spared in comparison?!?!?
Citizen journalists file first-hand reports at BBC.
In another low blow to free speech, here are the straight deets with help from Think Progress:
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 (UPI) — A talk radio host says his program, slated to debut on a Pentagon radio station Monday, was pulled to punish him for airing audio embarrassing President Bush.
Ed Shultz played an audio tape of Pentagon communications official Allison Barber helping troops in Iraq rehearse for their broadcast video teleconference with the president last week on his progressive talk radio show.
According to People for the American Way [view .pdf of the email], Barber personally called Schultz — regarded as a liberal in the world of talk radio — on Monday to tell him his show would not be airing Oct. 17 after all.
Earlier, Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice interviewed Schultz on the significance of being syndicated on the Armed Forces Network. (read the full interview).
To listen to the Ed Schultz show, visit his website. An .mp3 (or “podcast” as Steve Jobs insists we call it) archive of recent shows is here. Schultz relays the news on his show here (.mp3).
The great Howard Schultz covers Schultzgate in the Tuesday Washington Post. While you’re there, don’t miss these exclusive e-mail clips from Brownie’s office that WaPo somehow got a hold of.
Just one of the gems tucked away on page 11:
“Let them play their raindeer games as long as they are not turning around and tasking us with their stupid questions. None of them have a clue about emergency management.”
Eight British soldiers and two private security guards killed during recent insurgent ambushes in Iraq were the victims of a highly advanced roadside bomb first developed by the IRA, the Independent on Sunday reported.
This contradicts Britain’s recent claims that the sophisticated roadside bombs were supplied by the Hezbollah terror movement via the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
But the technology reached the Middle East as a result of the IRA?s long time co-operation with Palestinian groups, some of which used to be sponsored by Saddam Hussein?s Baath party, a former British Agent told the Independent. “There is no doubt in my mind that the technology used to kill our troops in Basra is the same British technology from a decade ago.”
British intelligence coordinated with the IRA in the development of these bombs thinking that intimate knowledge of the technology would enable security services to counter the attacks. “Unfortunately, no one could see back then that this technology would be used to kill British soldiers thousands of miles away in a different war,” a senior British intelligence source explained.
Iran denied any direct or indirect ties to the attacks and an Iranian ambassador alluded to a fear that Britain would use the issue of Iraq “to put pressure on Iran during nuclear negotiations.”
Over the weekend Iran alleged that the British were behind a third round of explosions in the oil rich Khuzestan province in southwest Iran since June. “We are very suspicious about the role of British forces in perpetrating such terrorist acts,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the ISNA student news agency.
“The claim may not be as far-fetched as we?d like to believe,” says the tendowningstreet blog. However, “Iran does not make accusations without sufficient evidence to support them,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in reference to Britain’s recent accusations. The British government reject these allegations as “completely without foundation.”
In Basra, The military officer in charge of all investigations against British troops serving in Iraq was found dead of an apparent suicide on Saturday. Capt. Ken Masters had been under pressure to contest a number of allegations relating to incidents in which Iraqi civilians have been killed. Master’s biggest investigation was ordered after the incident on September 19 when two British SAS troopers were rescued from a Jameat police station. The dramatic rescue led to a day of violent confrontations on the Basra streets which claimed the lives of seven Iraqis and injured 43, many of them police, according to Iraqi authorities.