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His kibitzer warned him 23 years ago about the possible repercussions of joining his church. Senator Obama has often referred to Reverend Wright as his Spiritual mentor and role model. Outside of his mother and wife it's Wright that has been the closest to him. He is his father figure or at least it seems that way. The Island PacketHilton Head IslandJanuary 27, 2007In his 1993 memoir Dreams from My Father Obama recounts in vivid detail his first meeting with Wright in 1985. The pastor warned the community activist that getting involved with Trinity might turn off other black clergy...

TWA Flight 847 - 6/85 - Stethem - (1 of 6) TWA Flight 847 - 6/85 - Stethem - (2 of 6) TWA Flight 847 - 6/85 - Stethem - (3 of 6) TWA Flight 847 - 6/85 - Stethem - (4 of 6) TWA Flight 847 - 6/85 - Stethem - (5 of 6) TWA Flight 847 - 6/85 - Stethem - (6 of 6)

—April 1983: suicide bomber rams van packed with explosives into the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans.AVENGED!! —October 1983: suicide attackers carry out near simultaneous truck bombings against barracks of French and U.S. peacekeeping forces in Beirut, killing 241 American Marines and 58 French paratroopers.AVENGED! —March 1984: Lt. Col. William F. Buckley, CIA station chief in Beirut, kidnapped and eventually killed in the beginning of a spate of kidnappings linked to Hezbollah.AVENGED! —March 1985: Associated Press chief Mideast correspondent Terry Anderson kidnapped and then held for more than six years.AVENGED! —June 1985: Lebanese Shiite militants hijack...

DAMASCUS BLAST ON TUESDAY KILLED SENIOR HEZBOLLAH MILITARY COMMANDER - LEBANESE POLITICAL SOURCE

The Terror Network: North America

The United States should conduct military strikes against Hezbollah and Hamas facilities in the Middle East before engaging in any military action against Iraq, the leaders of an influential US Senate committee demanded Sunday. Democratic Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham and his Republican counterpart, Richard Shelby, made their recommendation amid increasing concern among member of the US intelligence community that if faced with certain downfall, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein could hand over weapons of mass destruction to regional terrorist groups. "Against those international terrorists such as Hezbollah and Hamas, we need to be launching attacks on their headquarters and...

UNSCOM Document defines Iraq's Extensive Biological Weapons Program. Iraq began making anthrax in 1985 and was known to continue until 1991. It achieved weaponized anthrax capabilities. Excerpts of document follow. (x) In summary, Iraq has declared the production of at least 19,000 litres of concentrated botulinum toxin (nearly 10,000 litres were filled into munitions), 8,500 litres of concentrated anthrax (some 6,500 litres were filled into munitions) and 2,200 litres of concentrated aflatoxin (1,580 litres were filled into munitions); 76. Iraq's biological weapons programme as described to the Commission embraced a comprehensive range of agents and munitions. Agents under Iraq's biological...

March 7, 2006 Expect Journalistic Tongues to Loosen By Jack Kelly Journalists will be paying rapt attention when Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman go on trial next month for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were officials of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. They received classified information from Lawrence Franklin, an analyst at the Department of Defense, which they passed on to an Israeli diplomat, and to journalists. They are the first private citizens ever to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Mr. Franklin pled guilty Jan. 20th and was sentenced to more than...

Does anyone remember who Robert Stethem was? He was the the U.S. Navy Diver that Imad Mugniyah of the Hizbollah tortured and murdered, and tossed his body to the ground aboard Flight TWA Flight 847 in June, 1985 amid media coverage on the flight from Greece to Beirut. I am currently reading Kenneth Timmerman's book "The French Betrayal of America" to understand the current circumstances of Jack Chirac and his stooge Villipain and their role in the current crisis in the Iraq situtation--it is a must read--Please forgive me for quoting some very interesting background: "Mitterand's lecture (about fighting terrorism...

US vows to track down hijacker freed early By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor (Filed: 23/12/2005) The United States has vowed to track down and bring to trial a Lebanese hijacker who has been secretly released after serving 19 years in a German prison for seizing an airliner in 1985 and killing a US navy diver. The Bush administration said it had asked Germany not to release Mohammed Ali Hamadi, who was jailed for life for his role in the hijacking of TWA's Flight 847 from Athens to Rome and the shooting of one of the passengers, Robert Stethem. Despite...

Man Was Serving Life Sentence For Hijacking, Killing German authorities have paroled convicted terrorist Mohammed Ali Hamadi after he served 19 years of a life sentence for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner and the killing of a U.S. Navy diver, a law enforcement official said Tuesday.

Ceremonies mark ’85 Gander crash 248 U.S. soldiers killed instantly The Chronicle Herals From Our Wire Services December 12, 2005 GANDER, N.L. — Twenty years later, Joe McGuire vividly remembers getting the call. He was at home, asleep the morning of Dec. 12, 1985, when the ring of his telephone jarred him awake with news that an airplane went down after takeoff from the Gander International Airport. There were 248 U.S. soldiers on board the Arrow Air charter flight and eight civilian crew. McGuire, then the assistant commander for the RCMP in Gander, rushed to the scene. "When I got...

While certainly a perplexing holiday to many outside America, Thanksgiving's meaning isn't always clear to those stateside, either. I'll leave the history lessons to California Conservative, except to say it certainly is a major day around this neck of the woods. Can it partly be seen, however, as a day to reflect on that uniquely American way of overcoming life's obstacles? This week, I was interviewed for an entertainment industry trade publication, where I happened to mention two former coaches as influences. In the online article that appeared, there were links added to their own stories, that make this point...

Federal investigators in Germany have unearthed new evidence linking Iran to the 1985 bombing of a US military base that injured 35 people, a report said on Saturday. Iranian secret agents had allegedly detonated explosives concealed in a vehicle at the Frankfurt post-exchange food store on November 24, 1985, said the report in Focus news magazine. Focus said investigators believe the agents were members of a hit squad working on orders from Teheran to eliminate dissidents living in Europe in exile. The hit squad was also responsible for the deaths of two dissidents, one in Hamburg in 1987 and another...

One of the most intensely reported events of the 1980's, Hurricane Gloria hit Long Island, New York and southern Connecticut as a moderate hurricane in September 1985. At the time of landfall on Long Island - Gloria had sustained winds of around 85-mph. However, Gloria was moving forward at 40-mph when it struck land. This combination of sustained winds and rapid forward motion - produced peak winds of at least 111-mph across a narrow area of eastern Long Island. Thus, Gloria is considered a major hurricane on Long Island. In Connecticut, Gloria is considered a category 2 hurricane. Gloria was...

The millions donated to Ethiopia in 1985 thanks to Live Aid were supposed to go towards relieving a natural disaster. In reality, donors became participants in a civil war. Many lives were saved, but even more may have been lost in Live Aid's unwitting support of a Stalinist-style resettlement project Isn't it better to do something rather than give in to despair or cynicism and do nothing? This is the reproachful question familiar to anyone who has criticised organisations that view themselves as dedicated to doing good in the world. To those UN agencies, relief organisations and development groups working...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Twenty years after he drowned in his cabin on the sabotaged Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, photographer Fernando Pereira was honored Sunday with a marble sculpture lowered to the seabed beside the sunken ship in which he died. As supporters and friends prepared to ease the sculpture into 85 feet of water in New Zealand's Matauri Bay, a French newspaper reported this weekend that the French spy agencies that sank the ship in 1985 with two mines placed by frogmen had direct approval from then President Francois Mitterrand. The vessel, the Rainbow Warrior, had been readying to...

Early on the morning of March 16th, 1984, William Buckley left for work at the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Officially, Mr. Buckley, a decorated veteran of the Special Forces, served as the political officer at the embassy. In reality, however, Mr. Buckley was the embassy’s CIA station chief. On his way to the compound, Buckley’s car was stopped by a group of masked men, who forced him from his car at gunpoint. His assailants would later be identified as terrorists from the group Islamic Jihad, which served as an alias for the real perpetrators, Hezbollah. The circumstances surrounding the...

Police in Sweden say Iraq's former information minister could have been involved in the brutal murder of an Iraqi agent there 18 years ago. Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf - "Comical Ali" - became ambassador to Sweden shortly after the killing in 1985. Officers in Stockholm have confirmed they have received a tip-off claiming he was implicated. Iraqi Majid Husain had sought asylum in Sweden and planned to tell officials about Iraq's security apparatus and agents in Europe, it is reported. But he disappeared - his body was found two months later chopped into 54 pieces and stuffed into two suitcases. Police...

Uli Derickson, the Trans World Airlines flight attendant honored for saving passengers' lives in 1985 by both confronting and mollifying terrorist hijackers, died on Friday at her home in Tucson. She was 60. Ms. Derickson was still working as a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines when she received a diagnosis of cancer in 2003, her son, Matthew Derickson, said in announcing her death. On June 14, 1985, when a pair of Lebanese gunmen commandeered a T.W.A. flight from Athens to Rome, Ms. Derickson took the lead in protecting the 152 passengers and crew members. Though the two hijackers spoke...

War brutalizes man, every afghan bears living testimony to this. If the landscape of Afghanistan bears the craters of the endless war, the political and military leadership in Afghanistan also carries war's indelible scars. It is important never to lose sight of this. Ahmed Shah Mas'ud was born to an army family in 1953 in the Panjshir Valley north of the Afghan capital Kabul. His father was a colonel in the Afghan Army and enrolled his son at Kabul's Lycee Istiqlal High School. Upon graduation Mas'ud joined Kabul's Polytechnic Institute. In 1973 King Zahir Shah was deposed and exiled by...

"Mr. President, today as we hear much rhetoric in the U.S. Senate about the spread of communism throughout the world and the need of the United States to make efforts to try to respond to that so-called threat." He said this in the context of supporting his resolution to pressure Marcos and the Phillipines for democratic reform. He may have been right on some aspects, but once again his rhetoric was naive and dangerous.

1984 Debate

WASHINGTON (AP) — Back when federal lawmakers legally could be paid for speaking to outside groups, John Kerry collected more than $120,000 in fees from interests as diverse as big oil, tobacco, the liquor lobby and unions, records show. Between 1985 and 1990, Kerry's first five years in the Senate from Massachusetts, he pocketed annual amounts slightly under the limits for speaking fees set by Congress. Unlike many colleagues, he donated a speaking fee to charity only once, according to annual financial disclosure reports reviewed by The Associated Press. One of the companies to pay Kerry $1,000 for a speech...

I just found out on an interview on CNBC that Kerry supported communists in Nicaragua in the 80's, against Reagan's policy. Kind of like what he did with Vietnam. ----------------- Sen. John Kerry wants to be president of the United States so he can promote a brand of multi-nationalism as the solution to the world's problems. In fact, his views on that subject haven't changed that much since he came back from Vietnam in 1970, urging the United Nations take over command of the U.S. military forces. In April 1985, Kerry, along with Sen. Tom Harkin, ventured to Nicaragua to...

Just over 19 years ago, Islamic terrorists hijacked TWA flight 847. They threatened to fly the plane into buildings if their demands weren't met. On June 15, 1985, the terrorists singled out a US Navy diver, 23-year-old Petty Officer Robert Stethem, because he was American and because he was in the US Military. After many hours of being cruelly beaten, tortured, and finally killed by the terrorists, they threw his body from the plane in a final disgraceful, cowardly act. His body lay on the tarmac for over two hours before the terrorists finally allowed the Red Cross to retrieve...

The article below exposes majoe leading Senate Democrats to be on the wrong side of history in 1985. Kerry's comments are worth noting. *************************************************************************************************** President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) survived a series of attacks on the Senate floor last night as lawmakers rejected five amendments designed to slow or reorient the missile defense effort. The Senate rejected, 78 to 21, an amendment by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) to freeze spending on the "Star Wars" plan at its current funding level of $1.4 billion and forbid experiments that threaten to undercut what Kerry called "the single-most important arms-control treaty...

In 1985, according to the article below, Sen. John Kerry attempted to deny President Reagan a chief bargaining chip in his upcoming summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. ******************************************************************************* September 13, 1985 A federal judge, after listening to 30 minutes of oral argument yesterday, refused to block the Defense Department's first test of a new antisatellite weapon against a target in space, now scheduled for noon today. The test, like the problem-plagued, antisatellite system itself, has provoked controversy in the United States and threats from the Soviet Union. U.S. critics have argued that the proposed system will trigger a new...

In his first major foreign-policy action as a U.S. senator nearly 20 years ago, John Kerry accused the United States of "funding terrorism." Fresh from a trip to the Far East, Kerry made his sensational allegation in Washington before flying to Nicaragua, then in the grip of a Marxist-Leninist junta, to coauthor a propagandistic peace proposal designed to disarm the U.S.-backed forces fighting to oust the Soviet-backed Sandinista regime. Barely three months after being sworn as a senator, Kerry made his mark, and he made it big, as one of the leading opponents of President Reagan's effort to defeat Soviet-sponsored...

In his first major foreign-policy action as a U.S. senator nearly 20 years ago, John Kerry accused the United States of "funding terrorism." Fresh from a trip to the Far East, Kerry made his sensational allegation in Washington before flying to Nicaragua, then in the grip of a Marxist-Leninist junta, to coauthor a propagandistic peace proposal designed to disarm the U.S.-backed forces fighting to oust the Soviet-backed Sandinista regime. Barely three months after being sworn as a senator, Kerry made his mark, and he made it big, as one of the leading opponents of President Ronald Reagan's effort to defeat...

Anyone make sense of this? http://www.midiasemmascara.org/

The Palestinian Authority said it had received US agreement to hand over the body of Mohammed Abbas, the mastermind of the 1985 Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking, for burial in Palestinian territory. However Palestinian Minister of Telecommunications and Technology Azzam al-Ahmad said Israel had yet to approve such a burial for Abbas, 56, who died in US custody in Iraq on Tuesday. Abbas was captured by American forces in Iraq nearly a year ago. "The American side in Baghdad agreed to give us the body of Mohammed Abbas to be buried in the Palestinian territories," Mr al-Ahmad said. "The Red...

<p>MIO -- Declaring their innocence to the end, Raymond and Donald Duvall were sent to prison until they die for the bludgeoning deaths of two southeast Michigan hunters 18 years ago.</p> <p>Prior to the sentencing Thursday, family members of the victims -- best friends Brian Ognjan of St. Clair Shores and David Tyll of Troy -- told the Duvall brothers they had torn their loved ones from them far too soon.</p>

FEDS TAKE PROPERTY FOR A TRAIL; TAKE TAXPAYERS FOR A RIDE William Perry Pendley President and Chief Legal Officer   On May 22, 2002, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ordered the United States to pay J. Paul and Patricia Preseault of Burlington, Vermont, for the unconstitutional taking of their property, that is, without paying for it. The United States was ordered to pay: $234,000, plus interest from the February 5, 1986, date of the taking, for a total of $551,931.30; and $894,855.60 in attorneys' fees. The United States will be writing a check for $1,446,786.90! The United States...