I thought I read that the US was paid to conduct the invasion of Iraq the first time, i.e. $80 billion (if we had RFID then we wouldn't have lost $1.5 billion in material left and lost on the beach then, perhaps since, like the often mistaken urban legend, "tore down the 3rd Ave. El sold it to the Japanese and they fired it back at us" used against us there and elsewhere from the first Iraq invasion operation, according to the award given to the inventor by the DOD, their facts not mine. By the way the El train stayed up on 3rd Ave. in the Bronx until the Cold War. A Japanese architect designed the WTC and "Twin Towers" the first to use nut-and-bolt construction instead of rivets.

It seems confusing that as we entered Afghanizstan just after the events of 9/11/01, after which then PM Tony Blair warned we were going to lose some of our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, long after the failure of diplomacy over the shared oil field under the "line in the sand" between Kuwait and Iraq, and Iraq had turned into the state of "billigerent" for the invasion when Kuwait failed to appear at negotiations. It would be hard to argue we weren't "hell bent" the call of patriotism was/is very strong, and participation in the first coalition had cost practically "nothing" in funds, at least as I recall it. In fact we have had much to lose, though as Nathan Hale, his statue in 1999 moved to the front of City Hall Park in NYC, when I was excavating in the "first almshouse cemetery" in it, was known to have voiced a regret of having only one life to lose for his country, it is still a fact that we do, and we should examine closely those that would give it away. 

Newsvine - U.S. was 'hell bent' on Iraq war, U.K. envoy says

One case I was on the periphery of, that William Kunstler was involved in, was the charge of "racism" in the school district I attended by a Blackfoot native American who was a former personnel director at Maimonides Hospital, who in a commuter accident, however, that put her in a wheelchair, in the early 1970s. Her youngest daughter wrote about her discovery of her native roots for a former English teacher I once had who reportedly commented on her paper "I have an uncle who is a Wamponoag and he says the Indians got what they deserved" to which the mother responded as a charge of "racism" against the school, which William Kunstler also became involved in. She later, with the assistance of Running Bear, returned to the Blackfoot reservation and it seems access for the handicapped also got a little better in the nation. I had worked at a Zum Zum in the Smithaven Mall with two of her daughters.

My favorite case he handled was the native American who unknowingly courted an East German spy. They were going to hang him during the end of the "Cold War" stationed as he was in what was West Germany today the unified country of Germany.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Posted by: George Myers August 27, 2009 - 12:50PM
Bronx, NY-  On The Media - Don Hewitt - CBS

I had a cousin, George Murray, who worked for the "other side" though the disclosure of a Vietnam spy inside the Don Hewitt organization, an assistant to Morey Safer, might blur distinctions. He was an Army Captain in Korea that worked making films for the DOD after serving in NYC, landed a job in the film-editing room at NBC, and when the director for "Huntley & Brinkley" was out sick, filled in and became their regular director and later award winning producer for NBC according to noted author and television journalist Edwin Newman. A short contract was not renewed and his last work in TV was producing the coverage for CBS of both parties Presidential conventions of 1976.

George Murray died while in Mexico City, with his wife, an Avon executive, and Mr. Newman, at his eulogy in the U.N. Chapel, reread a letter he had to send to reporters in then South Vietnam, working at risk and peril, gathering the "soldier's view" of what became known as the "Vietnam debacle" their work had been canceled by "higher ups". Also called "Madison Avenue's war", since it was never declared by Congress, the entire CBS company (and others?) was sued for its news department's report by General Westmoreland, over allegations of "body count" manipulations in a post "debacle" news retrospective, command then held by the general.

It was quite an "irony" that the spy had eluded detection by Don Hewitt, whose excellent reports at "60 Minutes" helped define a new generation of news reporting.

Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

Crews dredging PCBs from the Hudson River rip away remnants of what was once Britain's largest fort in Colonial America, a mistake that incensed local officials.

Worked on this problem on and off for the last 25 years. Odd to see the dredged materials going to Texas by rail, when an appropriate clay deposit was tested for archaeological significance right nearby in the early 1980s. My first CAD maps, submitted to the state.

The "shanghai" of citizens of other countries was one of the issues we fought the War of 1812 over, the taking of seamen from our ships to be used in the British Navy, besides the invasion of Canada that led to the burning of the White House and the fall of Baltimore, MD. I cannot see how the "ideology" of America is served by the clandestine purchase of over 20 jets and the imprisonment, in some cases suspects paid for from informants, without due process or anything remotely like a trial. I've also seen the so-called "observations" of "dangerous" people in our own hemisphere, John Lennon on the Stony Brook University, NY campus and info obtained under either the FOIA or the FOIL (in NY) of another working for archaeologists in Puerto Rico, and quite frankly, in both cases, the persons watching should have had sobriety tests, in my opinion.

Waving money around, or I've read recently, putting phone numbers on American cigarette packs to call for info about turning in "insurgents" reminds me a bit of how badly the leaflets were dropped in Somalia which translated "We are here to enslave you" due to the screw-up in intelligence and translation it was reported in the American press. This again is another example of Republicans complaining about the "War Powers Act" as used by Democrats and when in office pushing them to the limits, after running for office on the promised limitations of such acts. Where is the oversite? Former President Bush in the first term stated the VP was in rights to keep his high-level meeting secret with the energy industry and I guess that's where it started, everything else too, secret, even from the Executive branch's own budgetary review agency, and above subpoena by the Office of Management and Budget, the OMB.

I hope this investigation continues for our own ethics and safety and because it is in violation of other nation's law, one, Ireland whose citizens who wore black shamrocks the Easter it "caught" the US flying through its airports in "extraordinary rendition".

My cousin's son just graduated from there. It's good that they caught this guy, it shows we're at least going to make the effort to prosecute "white-collar" crime, not just the "penny-ante". The "white collar" was invented in Troy, NY allowing the management class to wear their shirt more than one day, replacing the collar, which was bulk cleaned. The collar workers mostly women and children, working in the steam and bleach for low wages, were organized by Kate Mullaney, her house in Troy recently put on the US National Register of Historic Places. While sitting next to Susan B. Anthony she was the first woman elected to the management of a union, in Germania Hall, once on NYC's Bowery also the name of what may be the "oldest street in America" (Encyclopedia Americana). In 1999 I was co-researching the area and it has since been torn down, as well as the building noted feminist Kate Millet lived in and tried to stop its destruction next door to Germania Hall, as part of the Cooper Square Urban Redevelopment, once to demolish 25 square blocks of the Lower Eastside (ca. 1971).

In a new "smaller" community development effort, in what was once historically both New York City's Theater District and denominational (Quakers and Methodists) and surviving two marble vault non-denominational cemeteries, art museums and other cultural institutions have arrived to compliment what might be regarded as the oldest continually operating arts organization in the U.S., the Amato Opera, nearby the Bouwerie Theatre. CBGBs alas, did not survive there. Don't think there were any payoffs or crooks, just old-fashioned commercial use of the NYC Landmarks Commission website, with posted number and address for the apartments before there was even a review of the site, community hearings, and research, which I never heard comment on, nor received a copy of what was submitted. I did watch the public hearing on cable in the Bronx after 9/11/01.

I saw a part of the security video tape from I think was a parking garage. It was unbelievably fast and unbelievably low. But I'm not a pilot, nor am I paid to be one on TV. I wanted to see it over the controversial opinion by some Arab authorities, that a system exists for guiding planes remotely in some cases and they thought they could not discount the opinion as it appeared almost surreal in execution. However GPS and other controls might make it possible? What I found highly "ironic" if there could be a use of the term for this tragedy, was the point of impact. The Pentagon had just begun retrofitting its facility ("largest office building in the world") with bulletproof glass and other mods according to Preservation news, and while the section was partly empty due to that fact, it seemed a chosen point of impact in terrorist thinking. A horrible fleeting moment on tape.

Growing up in the "Cradle of Aviation" on Long Island, NY where the Grumman Corporation's friend's parents were involved in aerospace, i.e., the Lunar Excursion Module (L.E.M.) or nearby one might spot a one man helicopter flying over the potato fields from Gyrodyne, today an area developed out of farms into the growing Stony Brook University, I was struck by the implied military focus, if you will, of most of it. The F-101 Voodoos, nuclear capable, redesigned into the F-14 Tomcat, 80 sold to the Shah of Iran, where they were also supplied with over 3,000 employees to train Iranians for it, in a compound outside Tehran, were the mainstay of the US and Canada air-strike capabilities. Beyond the military emphasis, we must encourage more civil aviation at the "ground" level that will encourage more women into the civil aviation field, so that future pilots and personnel are more balanced by gender for the future non-military uses of space. I look forward to Tighar "finding" Amelia Earhart and perhaps Fred Noonan this season.

The BBC had a story. A former heroin addict was working in Afghanistan convincing farmers there to raise pomegranates instead of poppy. Pakistan once had the sun-blocker as cash crop until it was taken out of skin cream products. Maybe more botanical research should be done there also, like finding an organic source or substitute for of a product like sun-blocker. They could sure use it in Australia.  - Sat Jun 27, 2009 9:13 PM EDT

I've read 50% of the opium from poppy growing (for morphine) comes from Tasmania in Australia, according to the report on the wallabies who are stoned on the plant and are creating little "crop circles" reported in the press. H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" was dedicated in the introduction of the book to the natives of Tasmania who perished having no immunity to the diseases carried by the rest of the world, totally wiped out. - Sun Jun 28, 2009 3:03 PM EDT

Newsvine - US announces big shift in Afghanistan drug policy