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Stalin's mass murders were 'entirely rational' says new Russian textbook praising tyrant By Will Stewart Last updated at 1:10 AM on 03rd September 2008 Comments (0) Add to My Stories Ruthless: 20 million died as a result of Stalin's actions Stalin acted ‘entirely rationally’ in executing and imprisoning millions of people in the Gulags, a controversial new Russian teaching manual claims. Fifty-five years after the Soviet dictator died, the latest guide for teachers to promote patriotism among the Russian young said he did what he did to ensure the country’s modernisation. The manual, titled A History of Russia, 1900-1945, will...

There is so much evidence of Hillary Clinton’s corruption, you’d think even a reporter for a mainstream news outlet would have to stumble over enough to write or talk about it. But ever since her husband popped up on the national scene, the media has downplayed every scandal. Now, a new book on the Democratic presidential frontrunner examines why Hillary became a media darling before she even set foot in the White House. Media Research Center President Brent Bozell’s “Whitewash” details the media’s efforts to protect the Clintons again and again. The White House travel office mess, “Filegate” and so...

Americans need and deserve the whole Hillary story. From the moment Hillary Clinton walked onto the national stage, the media hailed her as a woman on the verge of history, a feminist trailblazer, a pioneer of women's liberation, like a female Neil Armstrong landing on the moon in Guccis. If her husband was elected president, she would be the first First Lady to have an "independent" career of her own. The many liberals and feminists now in the press corps could visualize one of their own as a White House spouse, chafing at the demand to glue on a plastic...

On This Day In History July 18, 1969: Incident on Chappaquiddick Island Shortly after leaving a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy of Massachusetts drives an Oldsmobile off a wooden bridge into a tide-swept pond. Kennedy escaped the submerged car, but his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, did not. The senator did not report the fatal car accident for 10 hours. On the evening of July 18, 1969, while most Americans were home watching television reports on the progress of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission, Kennedy and his cousin Joe Gargan were hosting a cookout and party...

Tony Snow is about to appear live on FOX & Friends on FOX News. The subject is Bush's push for immigration "reform".

Just saw this on National live Japanese TV a few minutes ago. Our mouths dropped open in partial disbelief, but also with a cynical sense of "well, there they go again".The Japanese Government announced tonight that they are instructing all Japanese textbook publishing companies who produce history books for school children, to specifically take out an reference to "Japanese Imperial Army forcing Okinawa civilians to commit mass suicide during the Okinawa Campaign". This, however, is a historic truth, and well documented by the American military forces and Japanese/Okinawan survivors and eyewitnesses. It is history. But now the current Japanese...

In 1932-33, New York Times reporter Walter Duranty reported from the Soviet Union that there was no Communist-induced famine in the Ukraine, indeed, that no one was dying of starvation there. In fact, between 4 and 7 million Ukrainians were starved to death by Stalin's regime. Though Duranty's name has since been synonymous with Westerners who hid the evil committed by enemies of the West and enemies of liberty, he received the Pulitzer Prize for his false reporting. An unwillingness to identify evil and a desire to hurt those who do confront it were not confined to Western fellow travelers...

The FBI is missing nearly a quarter of its files relating to investigations of recent leaks of classified information, according to a court filing the bureau made last week....

WASHINGTON – After 33 years of secrecy, the U.S. State Department has finally declassified a document admitting it knew the late Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, plotted and supervised the murders of two U.S. diplomats in Sudan in 1973, a cover-up first exposed by WND in January 2001. The document, released earlier this year, with no fanfare, makes it clear the Khartoum operation "was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval" of Arafat, a frequent visitor to the White House throughout the 1990s who died in 2004. In the attack March 1, 1973,...

Five days after an elderly woman was killed in a gun battle that left three officers wounded, Atlanta police chief Richard Pennington said Sunday night his department will review its policy on "no knock" warrants and its use of confidential informants. Speaking for the first time since the Tuesday night shooting death of Kathryn Johnston at her home in northwest Atlanta, Pennington said his office "will turn over every stone to make sure we get to the reason why this tragic incident happened." Atlanta police Chief Richard Pennington says the policy on 'no knock' warrants will be reviewed. Pennington provided...

LONDON (Reuters) - The Gay Police Association (GPA) has been reprimanded for an ad which implied Christians were responsible for a huge rise in violent attacks on homosexuals. The advert, placed in The Independent newspaper under the banner “in the name of the father” showed a Bible and a pool of blood. It was a one-off, used to back up the GPA’s claim that the association had recorded a 74 percent increase in homophobic incidents, where the sole or primary motivating factor was the religious belief of the perpetrator..... "The truth behind this rise in attacks is buried in the...

In all the hollering Bill Clinton started when he showed his roughneck followers how to fight dirty in his interview with Chris Wallace, there has been some conspicuous trifling with the facts by FOBs, friends of Bill, including one from his best friend — his wife — who already has a campaign chair for her presidential campaign when she hasn't even announced she is actually running. Look at a couple quotes, and you decide.

Under growing pressure from Democrats and aides to former President Bill Clinton, ABC is re-evaluating and in some cases re-editing crucial scenes in its new mini-series “The Path to 9/11” to soften its portrait of the Clinton administration’s pursuit of Osama bin Laden, according to people involved in the project. Among the changes, ABC is altering one scene in which an actor playing Samuel R. Berger, the former national security adviser, abruptly hangs up on a C.I.A. officer during a critical moment in a military operation, according to Thomas H. Kean, a consultant on the ABC project and co-chairman of...

The Belgian authorities have destroyed archives and records relating to the persecution and deportation of Jews in Belgium in the 1930s and 1940s. Some of this happened as recently as the late 1990s. This was revealed during hearings in the Belgian Senate last Spring. Though the Senate report dates from 4 May the Belgian press has not yet mentioned the affair. The Senate report says that “documents about the period 1930-1950 have been destroyed on a massive scale.” The systematic destructions of the records of police and judiciary from the 1930s and ’40s happened chiefly in Brussels and Wallonia, the...

About a month or so ago, I sent a facsimile to the office of the Senate Ethics Committee. This response was dated July 31, but must have been at my box within the last several days. The last time I had checked it was about five days ago. I tried to present some evidence regarding Hillary's role in the campaign finance fraud of 2000 that is the subject of our film, INDICTING HILLARY. I expressed the willingness of the man with all the knowledge and documents ---- THE DONOR, PETER PAUL ---- to come before the committee and testify. The...

It ran on the 12th of August in mid-afternoon. The program detailed the history of the Ku Klux Klan in every respect but one. This one manipulation tells you the purpose of those running the History Channel, and clearly proves the oft-made charge that said location on the television spectrum is when needed nothing more than a propaganda tool for the modern Democrat Party of America. When it is repeated, watch Ku Klux Klan: A Secret History with the following point in mind. During the first half listen for the political affiliations of Klan members in the North. In Indiana,...

RICHLAND -- Those who knew Naveed Haq said Saturday that to them he was an enigma, a puzzle that they wish they could have solved before his deadly rampage in a Seattle Jewish center. Stunned and saddened by the news, some of Haq's acquaintances recounted many of what they saw as the contradictions of his life. (snip) Yet Haq was frustrated at his lack of friends and female companionship.He told friends he felt alienated from his own family, in part because his career had disappointed his father and also because he had disavowed Islam last year, converting to Christianity. Haq...

Breaking news on the local news program. More later.

SAN FRANCISCO - University of California President Robert Dynes gets to keep his job, butthe Board of Regents pledged Thursday to watch him more closely after outrage about millions of dollars in overpayments to top administrators that prompted calls for his resignation. The regents met in closed session for much of Thursday morning, discussing the situation with Dynes, before announcing their decision to allow him to stay. They pledged to increase their oversight of UC pay practices and policies. Dynes has been under fire since last fall, when reports emerged saying that UC administrators withheld information from regents and the...

Officers Claim Brass Interfered in Investigation of Rep. Kennedy Incident Thursday, May 4; 4:16 pm By John McArdle, Roll Call Staff Police labor union officials asked acting Chief Christopher McGaffin this afternoon to allow a Capitol Police officer to complete his investigation into an early-morning car crash involving Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.).According to a letter sent by Officer Greg Baird, acting chairman of the USCP FOP, the wreck took place at approximately 2:45 a.m. Thursday when Kennedy’s car, operating with its running lights turned off, narrowly missed colliding with a Capitol Police cruiser and smashed into a security barricade...

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) crashed his car near the Capitol early Thursday, and a police official said he appeared intoxicated. Kennedy said he had taken sleep medication and a prescription anti-nausea drug that can cause drowsiness. Kennedy, D-R.I., addressed the issue after a spate of news reports. His initial statement said: "I consumed no alcohol prior to the incident."'Later, however, he issued a longer statement saying the attending physician for Congress had prescribed Phenergan on Tuesday to treat Kennedy's gastroenteritis.Kennedy said he returned to his Capitol Hill home on Wednesday evening after a final series of votes...

Officers Claim Brass Interfered in Investigation of Rep. Kennedy Incident... Police labor union officials asked acting Chief Christopher McGaffin this afternoon to allow a Capitol Police officer to complete his investigation into an early-morning car crash involving Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.). According to a letter sent by Officer Greg Baird, acting chairman of the USCP FOP, the wreck took place at approximately 2:45 a.m. Thursday when Kennedy's car, operating with its running lights turned off, narrowly missed colliding with a Capitol Police cruiser and smashed into a security barricade at First and C streets Southeast.

High-ranking members of Bill Clinton's national security team have joined together to defeat Pennsylvania Republican Curt Weldon's House re-election bid this November - in what looks like retaliation for Weldon's efforts in exposing the Clinton administration's Able Danger scandal. In June 2005, Weldon went public with news that Clinton administration lawyers prevented the Defense Intelligence Agency's Able Danger group from blowing the whistle on two al-Qaida terrorists who would later pilot the planes that destroyed the World Trade Center. Though the media downplayed Weldon's bombshell, a number of high ranking Clinton officials apparently haven't forgotten - and they're pouring money...

Proving that he’s just as adept at stuffing an election candidate’s coffers as he is at stuffing his own socks, Sandy Berger hosted an "almost secret" Washington fund-raiser for a recently retired three-star vice admiral last night. Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak Jr, as the Village People would say, is "In the Navy". And when you want to take an Able Danger Congressman Curt Weldon down, what better way than to send in the Navy? Berger, dubbed "Sandy Burglar" by radio meister Rush Limbaugh, gained notoriety for trying to stuff classified documents into his socks and other attire. The man, who...

Thursday, March 30, 2006 No rave crackdown coming Teen rules wouldn't have stopped tragedy, officials say By ANGELA GALLOWAY AND D. PARVAZ P-I REPORTERS Faced with the senselessness of last week's slaughter of six young people hours after an all-night, all-ages dance party, many parents want not only answers -- but also accountability. That has some in Seattle's "rave" scene worried about a government crackdown reminiscent of the controversial and now defunct "Teen Dance Ordinance." But it's more likely that the only new restrictions on raves here will be self-imposed -- with at least two events scheduled for this weekend...

The principals in the Able Danger story have filed suit to restrain the Department of Defense from retaliating against Tony Shaffer and to allow these witnesses to retain counsel during the closed hearings that Congress has scheduled into the data-mining program. Mark Zaid, representing Shaffer as well as contractor J. D. Smith, filed the suit on Monday against the DoD, DIA, the Army, and their attorneys in the DC district court. I've copied the text into the extended entry of this post. Most of those who have followed Able Danger will not be surprised by the allegations in the lawsuit....

I've created an Able Danger Podcast blog to generate a podcast feed so folks can subscribe to this feed and easily obtain any Able Danger audio (mp3) files. Here is the podcast feed for the Able Danger podcasts. The link to this feed is easy to find at the top left corner of my main blog, QT Monster, just above the Able Danger blog roll. Folks can subscribe to this podcast feed through iTunes. From the iTunes interface pull down the Advanced menu, click on subscribe to podcast, and in the dialogue box paste the URL for this podcast feed:...

Sources close to the ongoing Department of Defense investigation into the controversial Able Danger data mining intelligence program, which purportedly identified Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers a year before the worst terror attacks in US history, say the mystery person who actually obtained a much-disputed photograph of Atta for the Able Danger team has now been identified. Ever since the Pentagon-ordered destruction in 2000 of 2.5 terabytes of data unearthed by Able Danger – allegedly including a chart featuring Atta’s photograph that revealed terrorist links and patterns when clicked on – skeptics have long raised doubt about the...

The first 20 minutes or so of the Able Danger conference call was previously posted here. The next three audio clips are here, here and here. Attending this conference call with Congressman Weldon were: AJ Strata from The Strata-Sphere, Dana from Common Sense Political Thought, Curt from Flopping Aces, Mike of Able Danger Blog, QT Monster, Rory O’Connor, Pierre from Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill, Bluto from Jawa Report and The Dread Pundit Bluto.

Some traditional intelligence officials, however, seemed either skeptical or jealous of LIWA's capability. At one conference, "Able Danger" analysts identified four major al-Qaida hubs - the Middle East, East Africa, Balkans and the Far East - in about 90 minutes."Because we weren't an intelligence organization, we got a lot of bad press," he said. "Folks thought we were running fast and loose with the data."By April, the "Able Danger" team was told to end its support of SOCOM. During the month's long work stoppage, SOCOM's patience ran out, and the military command transferred the work to a Raytheon facility in...

Able Danger identified Mohammad Atta and at least 2 other 9-11 hijackers more than a year before the 9-11 attacks. Why was the data that connected Mohammad Atta as a possible terrorist threat to the United States destroyed, and why wasn't this information shared with the FBI so the 9-11 attacks might have been prevented? 1. Dr. Stephen A. Cambone, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, explains that there wasn't any prohibition against sharing Able Danger information with the FBI. One of Dr. Cambone's colleagues says, "...we share in Army intelligence and DoD intelligence, we share information with the FBI...

In his Washington D.C. office last Thursday, a slightly tired Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa) was lamenting to Canada Free Press the ongoing suppression of Able Danger. Eric Kleinsmith and two colleagues had given testimony in open session before the House Armed Services Committee the day before. Weldon said that he had found it demoralizing that sincere witnesses, who had turned out for the hearings in full military dress, had been identified on committee papers as "only Mr."

China Study Rocks The Hill and Unleashes The Purge: While Cambone tried to link the data purge to this 90-day rule, Weldon and the other witnesses (with first hand knowledge) pointed to the LIWA China Study that was being done in parallel to the Able Danger study. I have stated all along this was the lynchpin, the source of all later cover ups and mistakes and lost opportunities. We all know the story so I will not repeat it here, but what we learned from the hearings is how far up this went. Weldon let slip that the initial China...

No you're right Tony, and the significance here is that the FBI Director back then, Louis Freeh said in October of last year on national television, that if he had had the Able Danger information the FBI might well have been able to stop the hijacking. In our hearing past week, and we had both classified and unclassified, we had five people that testified under oath that they believed the same thing. That if the data they collected, that if the analysis they did had been able to be passed to the FBI, they agree with Louis Freeh, that would...

MediaChannel.org used the powerful new MediaVision tool to monitor television news coverage of the Able Danger Congressional hearings. To our astonishment CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" was the only news show to give Able Danger any significant coverage. We were so shocked by the lack of coverage that we created an online campaign to try to pressure TV news networks to cover, as Lou Dobbs put it, "what could be the biggest scandal of our lifetime." Click here to send networks an email demanding coverage! So, sadly, here it is. All the TV coverage we could find thus far:

25th Item: Holy Cow! Weldon has a signed affidavit from a witness that talked to one of Cambone’s staff recently and who said Cambone’s group was going to ‘kill this story’ and Shaffer had no credibility. The name is Butch Willard This is right after Cambone claimed no one was not trying to ‘bring the information forward’. If Weldon is right, Cambone just perjured himself and is in hot water now. The witness is an ex intelligence officer (woman). They moved all this to the closed session!

Program mysteries unresolved By: KEITH PHUCAS, Times Herald Staff 02/17/2006 WASHINGTON - When all the facts about "Able Danger" are revealed, the history of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will be rewritten, according to Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who accused the Pentagon at a Congressional hearing Wednesday of trying to hide the former data mining effort that claims it identified hijacker Mohamed Atta more than a year before the terrorist attacks. In 2000, the Defense Department shut down the program without explaining why and ordered the wholesale destruction of mountains of personal information swept into the project's data sets...

State GOP chairman Stephen Minarik yesterday blasted Attorney General Eliot Spitzer for preventing one of his top aides from testifying at a congressional hearing on pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures, calling him a "horrible hypocrite" on national-security issues. Minarik's attack came in response to a report in yesterday's Post that Spitzer personally intervened with the House Armed Services Committee to get Deputy Attorney General Dietrich Snell out of testifying. The panel is holding hearings on a Pentagon cyber-intelligence program code-named "Able Danger" that had information on 9/11 mastermind Mohammed Atta a year before the attacks. "Mr. Spitzer must have a feeble...

Audio of the today's entire Able Danger hearing is posted here.

Rep. Curt Weldon: I've learned some additional things that are new. You saw the Arlen Specter hearing in Judiciary that occurred in September. It's very troubling to me that it appears as though the DOD witness did not tell the truth. We had testimony that all of the Able Danger data-mining material was destroyed. I now know that that's not the case. In fact, I now know there's data still available. And I am in contact with people who are still able to data mining runs on pre-9/11 data. In those data runs that are now being done today, in...

The Able Danger portions of the House whistleblower hearings is posted here.

Leaders of Sacramento-area Islamic organizations joined a national effort Tuesday to educate Americans about the life and philosophies of the Prophet Muhammad. Organizers hope the program will help turn the international controversy over editorial cartoons published in a Danish newspaper into a learning experience about the meaning of Muhammad. "He is our guide, our teacher. And for us to have him be caricatured and put into cartoons was very offensive, and this is why many of the Muslims reacted," Irfan Haq, spokesman for the Sacramento Area League of Associated Muslims, said at a news conference at the SALAM Center in...

I am now liveblogging the US House Subcommittee hearing on national security whistle blowers. Lt. Col. Shaffer just finished his opening statement. He will be questioned during this hearing. You can listen now on C-Span Radio. The permalink to this post is here.

WASHINGTON — An active-duty military intelligence analyst has told congressional investigators that 9/11 pilot Mohamed Atta surfaced 13 times in a controversial Pentagon computer program before he executed the attacks, The Post has learned. Congressional sources said last night that an officer in the Pentagon's secretive Land Information Warfare Center told the staff of Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) about the computer hits.

It's looking like the Able Danger story (which the 9-11 Ommission Commission totally disregarded) may be about to take off. I'm told that this Wednesday's House Armed Service joint subcommittee hearing on Able Danger will have some surprises.

Everything you always wanted to know (but were afraid to ask, or the answers were classified…) about the controversial Able Danger data mining project, which identified four 9/11 hijackers a year before the terror attacks. 1. Did Anthony Shaffer, or anyone on the Able Danger team, obtain a photo of Mohamed Atta from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), as Shaffer’s interview with Government Security News (GSN) states? The photo of Atta came from an information broker who provided it and others. Shaffer’s comments were made to GSN based on his knowledge at the time, which came from his knowledge...

PBS whitewashes anti-dad biasLast November, I wrote about the controversy about the Public Broadcasting Service documentary, Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories, which claimed that male batterers and child abusers frequently gain custody of their children in divorce cases after the mothers' claims of abuse are disbelieved by the courts. The film caused an outcry from fathers' rights groups. In response to these protests, PBS announced a 30-day review to determine whether the film met the editorial guidelines for fairness and accuracy.Unfortunately, it seems that the review amounted to little more than a whitewash.On December 21, PBS issued a statement acknowledging...

Here it is: Final Report

A report commissioned in mid-1999 by Rep. Curt Weldon (R) looks into possible Chinese front companies in the US seeking technology for the Chinese military. Dr. Eileen Preisser and Michael Maloof are commissioned to make the report. Dr. Preisser, who runs the Information Dominance Center at the US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) and will later become closely tied to Able Danger, uses LIWA's data mining capabilities to search unclassified information. According to Maloof, their results show Chinese front companies in the US posing as US corporations that acquire technology from US defense contractors. When the study is completed...

Columbus - An Ohio Supreme Court disciplinary panel has reprimanded Justice Alice Robie Resnick for professional misconduct as a result of her Jan. 31 drunken-driving arrest. Wednesday's unanimous decision by a special panel of 13 court of appeals judges ends a humiliating chapter for the 66-year-old jus tice, who has not said whether she in tends to run for re-election in November. Resnick is Ohio's lone statewide elected Democrat. Resnick declined to be interviewed, issuing the following statement: "I have accepted responsibility for the incident which took place on Jan. 31, 2005. Today, I can put the matter behind me...