Cynthia McKinney’s mom said she’s learned that her daughter is on the way home.
Leola McKinney said a friend who contacted the U.S. Embassy in Israel reported that the former congresswoman was released from Israeli custody and taken to Ben Gurion International Airport.
“We finally got word that she was released,” Leola McKinney said late Sunday afternoon. “We don’t know what time she is supposed to fly out. All we know is that they took her to the airport.
“I would be more relieved when I know she’s on the flight,” Leola McKinney added. “But I am relieved that she’s away from there.”
McKinney had been in custody since Tuesday, when she and 20 others were swept up by the Israeli Navy while allegedly trying to sail through a navy blockade. The group says it was attempting to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza.
McKinney and the rest of her group could have been released soon after they were taken into custody but they refused to sign a document admitting they violated Israel’s blockade, according to McKinney’s parents. The group was due to appear in an Israeli court Sunday.
If you thought that your government serves We the People, think again. This is basically how your government is run. What might be news is the amount of brokering fees commanded by the media conglomerates…
By Mike Allen and Michael Calderone
Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said today she was canceling plans for an exclusive “salon” at her home where for as much as $250,000, the Post offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record access to “those powerful few” — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and even the paper’s own reporters and editors.
The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”
With the Post newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Weymouth said in an email to the staff that “a flier went out that was prepared by the Marketing department and was never vetted by me or by the newsroom. Had it been, the flier would have been immediately killed, because it completely misrepresented what we were trying to do.”
Weymouth said the paper had planned a series of dinners with participation from the newsroom “but with parameters such that we did not in any way compromise our integrity. Sponsorship of events, like advertising in the newspaper, must be at arm’s length and cannot imply control over the content or access to our journalists. At this juncture, we will not be holding the planned July dinner and we will not hold salon dinners involving the newsroom. “
The doomed Air France plane which plunged into the Atlantic last month, killing all 228 on board, dropped into the sea so fast that no one had time to put on their lifejackets.
We have been told that Flight AF 447 broke apart in the air but the latest info counters this misinformation…
Instead the Airbus descended ‘belly first’, falling 35,000ft in just seconds and gathering speed as it approached the water.
Yet it still remains unclear what caused the tragedy, which claimed the lives of five Britons.
Horrific details of the last moments of Flight AF 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris emerged in an official report by French air accident investigation agency the BEA.
Chief investigator Alain Bouillard said: ‘The plane was not destroyed in flight. It appears to have hit the water in its flying position with a strong vertical acceleration.’
In Britain, Channel Four covered the news by airing a video of a clash between rioters and Basij members in which a man was seen shooting at the crowd. According to comments broadcast in a video provided by the government in Tehran, journalist Maziar Bahari had provided Channel Four with the footage of the June 15 attack. What was aired by the channel, however, had the scene of the attack on the base censored. The new footage obtained by Press TV shows a group of people attacking the Basij base with Molotov cocktails. The building in question has been deemed as a vital structure and has been confirmed by Tehran officials as an armory.
Press TV has broadcast newly-obtained footage of a controversial clash between Basij members and protesters, which shows the Basij base under siege. Tehran became the scene of violence in recent weeks amidst rallies staged in protest at the outcome of the June 12 presidential election — which saw Mahmoud Ahmadinejad re-elected to a second term in office. People described by Iranian officials as “saboteurs” infiltrated the riots and set fire to a mosque, two gas stations and a military post in western Tehran. At least 20 people were killed and many others were injured in the ensuing violence. The protests came to worldwide attention when major media outlets broadcast footage of what they described as unprovoked attacks by security forces.
Goldman Sachs has played a crucial role in creating every market bubble since the 1920s — and has profited from not only the bubbles, but from the crash that followed as well, says a new expose in Rolling Stone magazine.
An article in the July 9-23 issue of the magazine, written by Matt Taibbi, lists five asset bubbles that the 140-year-old investment bank helped create — and one that Taibbi asserts the firm is currently working to make happen.
The five bubbles the article says Goldman was central to creating are the Wall Street stock bubble in the 1920s, which led to the Great Depression; the tech-stock bubble of the late 1990s, which ended in the 2001 recession; the housing bubble of the past decade, which resulted in the current economic crisis; the oil price run-up last summer, when oil shot up to $140 a barrel, likely helping tilt the entire world into recession; and what Taibbi describes as “rigging the bailout,” when Goldman Sachs’ well-placed alumni inside the U.S. government engineered last fall’s bank bailout in such a way that the company profited massively.
Israel’s boarding and capture in international waters of The Spirit of Humanity, an unarmed boat carrying relief supplies to the suffering people of Gaza, shows that state-sponsored piracy is a real peril today. It is just one more breach of international law added to the global “rap sheet” of a rogue state that, as Netanyahu remarked a few weeks ago, is not like other countries. But Israel’s capture of this boat was also Netanyahu’s test of Obama’s resolve – a test Obama failed, to his shame and discredit.
The Past as Prologue
It isn’t the first time Israel has done something like this. Virtually everyone who manages to get into Gaza is appalled by the destruction and suffering there. Most of the destruction occurred during Israel’s savage onslaught against Gaza six months ago, accompanied by applause from the US Congress and the Bush Administration, and silence from President-elect Obama. Most of the suffering, before and since that attack, occurred because of the blockade Israel has imposed on Gaza, reducing the flow of basic necessities to a bare minimum and post-attack recovery aid to a meaningless trickle.
A key part of this policy of strangulation has been Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza’s coast and its interception, removal or capture of several small boats attempting to bring humanitarian assistance to the population of Gaza. Tuesday’s totally illegal seizure of The Spirit of Humanity was relatively restrained – they merely intercepted and surrounded the boat in international waters at night, electronically disrupted its onboard navigational devices, then boarded and captured the ship and crew, including several Americans. In the past, they’ve rammed and nearly sunk relief boats (December 2008) or beaten the crew after boarding it (February 2009). Israel always denies wrongdoing and claims it was intercepting war material – the olive trees carried on The Spirit of Humanity doubtless being camouflaged missiles.
Even the NY Times finally found out about this story, several days after the fact. If this had been Iran who captured foreigners in their waters it would have been front page news blasted all over the US papers. In fact this happened a while back. British Navy boats were in Iranian waters and were captured by Iran and subsequently released. In this case, the Spirit of Humanity was in international waters on a mission of peace. This, in fact, is an act of piracy and should gather the media attention that the Somali pirates have garnered…
By Isabel Kershner
JERUSALEM — Nineteen foreign activists of the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement were being held in Israel awaiting deportation on Thursday, two days after the Israeli Navy seized control of their boat off Gaza.
A former United States Representative, Cynthia McKinney, and an Irish peace activist and Nobel laureate, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, were among those being held. Two additional Israeli activists were released without being charged on Wednesday, according to the group.
This time, the Israeli navy commandeered the boat and brought the crew and passengers ashore in Ashdod. The military said in a statement that the navy had previously contacted the boat at sea and warned that it would not be permitted to enter Gaza coastal waters “because of security risks in the area and the existing naval blockade.”
During an appearance on MSNBC, political commentator Pat Buchanan correctly defined the “Climate Bill” for what it really is, not just a new tax on the American people, but a complete transfer of power and wealth to a global government that is using the manufactured fear of global warming to grease the skids for total domination.
Referring to the passage of the climate bill and global warming in general, Buchanan said that the legislation was passed through the use of fear and that, “More and more scientists are coming forward to say this is a hoax and a scam which is designed to transfer wealth and power from the private sector to the government sector and from the government of the United States to a world government. Which is what we’re going to get in Copenhagen when we get this Kyoto two agreement.”
Buchanan labeled the legislation a “tax bill” that would raise the prices of utilities for every American, hammer the middle class and working class, “for a danger that we don’t even know is really there”.
The former senior advisor to three U.S. presidents accused the Obama administration of hyping the apocalyptic myth that the oceans will rise and that cities will be underwater in order to ram through the legislation.
As the years pass and data accumulate, it is becoming evident that global warming is a fraud. Climate change is natural and ongoing, but the Earth has not warmed significantly over the last thirty years. Nor has there been a single negative effect of any type that can be unambiguously attributed to global warming.
As I write, satellite data show that the mean global temperature is the same that it was in 1979. The extent of global sea ice is also unchanged from 1979. Since the end of the last Ice Age, sea level has risen more than a hundred meters. But for the last three years, there has been no rise in sea level. If the polar ice sheets are melting, why isn’t sea level rising? Global warming is supposed to increase the severity and frequency of tropical storms. But hurricane and typhoon activity is at a record low.
Every year in the US, more than forty thousand people are killed in traffic accidents. But not one single person has ever been killed by global warming. The number of species that have gone extinct from global warming is exactly zero. Both the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets are stable. The polar bear population is increasing. There has been no increase in infectious disease that can be attributed to climate change. We are not currently experiencing more floods, droughts, or forest fires.
