April 13, 2006
World War II Secret Weapon: the Prune
Apr 11 -LONDON -The humble prune is set to be recognized as one of the secret weapons of World War II. A London auction house, Spink, is selling two grizzled prunes that it says were destined to be stuffed with maps or other documents and smuggled to prisoners of war. The prunes were part of the memorabilia collection of a British spy.
"They are very dry and hard and it's amazing that they have survived," Spink spokeswoman Emily Johnston said Tuesday.
The prunes are part of a collection of World War II memorabilia collected by a British woman, the late Doreen Mulot, a former member of Britain's Special Operations Executive, which was set up to carry out operations behind enemy lines.
Sometimes referred to as "the Baker Street Irregulars" after Sherlock Holmes' fictional group of spies, the executive was set up by Winston Churchill and Hugh Dalton to conduct warfare by means other than direct military engagement.
Mulot was one of as many as a million operatives. Her collection is being sold as one lot by her great-nephew Richard Marshall from the town of Crook in northern England and is expected to raise more than 1,000 pounds ($1,800).
Interviewed by telephone by The Associated Press, Marshall said his great-aunt had lived in a large house in the north London neighborhood of Hampstead "with a large bathroom where they prepared the prunes."
The dried fruit were softened in water, then de-pitted to allow carefully rolled documents covered in waxed paper to be inserted. The fruit was then re-dried and packed into food parcels for the prisoners, who used the information to escape and find their way home…
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/04/11/D8GU56R00.html
Bill Gates secretly paid for Gaza greenhouses
Deal to 'enhance peace process,' but Palestinians stripped, looted facilities
April 13, 2006-- JERUSALEM – In a revelation that surprised many here associated with the deal, it emerged this week the charitable foundation of Microsoft founder Bill Gates largely was responsible for transferring to the Palestinians the high-tech Jewish greenhouses of the Gaza Strip prior to Israel's evacuation of the area.
The greenhouses, passed in a private charity deal last summer, reportedly have been stripped and looted by Palestinian gangs and Palestinian security officers hired to protect the structures.
Prior to Israel's August withdrawal, the residents of Gaza's Gush Katif slate of Jewish communities ran greenhouses known for producing high-quality insect-free vegetables. The Gush Katif gardens featured some of the most technologically advanced agricultural equipment and accounted for more than $100 million per year in exports to Europe. The greenhouses also supplied Israel with 75 percent of its own produce.
The hothouses, worth several hundred million dollars, were passed to the Palestinians in September in a $14 million deal brokered by former World Bank President James Wolfenson. According to reports, Wolfenson personally contributed $500,000 of his own money and the rest was ponied up mostly by American Jews, including billionaires Mortimer Zuckerman and Leonard Stern.
But an article in Forbes Magazine stated the $29 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's biggest charity, provided most of the money – $10 million – to purchase the greenhouses.
...But Gates may not have got his money's worth. According to reports, the greenhouses were looted by gunmen following Israel's withdrawal. Computer equipment and, in some cases, entire greenhouses were stolen. The theft has put out of action about 70 acres of the roughly 1,000 acres left by the Jewish communities, according to Al-Masri.
"The looters took their time to dismantle the greenhouses and to uproot entire greenhouses and carry them away," Amid al-Masri previously told reporters.
Another round of looting struck the greenhouses in February when Fatah gunmen hired to protect the greenhouses abandoned their posts because they had not been paid. Witnesses reported some of the security guards themselves participated in the looting.
As WND reported, Palestinian farmers have had trouble reproducing the bug-free produce previously generated by the Jewish owners. The Palestinian owners reportedly asked the U.S. governmental development group USAID to hire former Jewish Gaza greenhouse owners as consultants for their declining vegetable businesses.
Al-Masri yesterday said the Gaza greenhouses are fully functioning and are producing at full capacity. He also said most of the stolen greenhouse equipment has been recovered by the Palestinian Authority police. His claims could not be independently verified before press time. (did he also say "Islam is a religion of peace"?) http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49710
Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220
Potato gunman convicted in Sweden
Apr 12 12:11 - A man in central Sweden was convicted of shooting potatoes from an apartment window with a home-made gun, Swedish press reported.
A court in Falun, central Sweden, fined him 80 days' earnings for firearms offences.
In August 2005, inspired by seeing a potato thrower on television, the 25-year-old man bought parts for the gun in a local supermarket, Soedra Dalarnes Tidning wrote.
The man and a group of friends met in a flat in Bojsenburg, in the heart of Sweden, loaded the weapon with potatoes and began firing from the balcony into the car park below, the paper Wednesday.
Authorities confiscated his gun as well as two sacks of potatoes found in the apartment.
Police tests showed the tuber cannon had a more potent firing power than a revolver.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/060412161125.udqe0ag2.html
You mean even if guns are banned people can figure out how to make their own from parts from a supermarket? Wow! I guess the solution is to ban supermarkets!! Remember, if spuds are outlawed only outlaws will have spuds.
Castro could drill off Florida coast
Apr. 06, 2006- U.S. lawmakers aren't the only ones who, because of spiraling oil and gas prices and an unstable commodities market, have been studying the possibility of producing more domestic energy. Fidel Castro has also taken an interest, and his ambitions will, in a surprisingly short period of time, bring the Cuban drilling program much closer to the Florida coast.
...Cuba has neither the capacity nor the technical capability to produce this energy by itself. Castro has called in contractors from Canada, Spain, Norway -- even China -- to do it for him.
And not only has Cuba convened its own little United Nations to help get at vital and abundant supplies of offshore energy, it has chosen tracts of real estate in the Gulf of Mexico as close as 45 miles from Florida...
Imagine what Castro is thinking as we spend our time quarreling over whether we should produce American energy 100, 150 or 250 miles from the Florida coast while he makes arrangements to set up shop hundreds of miles closer. He must love that we've allowed emotion to win out over reason, facts to be dwarfed by fear and our nation's energy policy to be driven by unreasonable environmental concerns.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/14273915.htm
(Of course the environmentalists in the US won't let us (so how much are you paying for gas?))
Rumsfeld to Reporter: “I Have a Real Daytime Job”
April 11, 2006 -- At today’s Pentagon press briefing, a reporter said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld didn’t dispute or address a claim from a book about the run-up to the War in Iraq.
REPORTER: Mr. Secretary, November of '01, the president, according to several books that you haven't disputed, said start planning --
RUMSFELD: You think I'm going to stand around reading your books and disputing things in them or validating or not validating? I've got a real daytime job. I mean, you'd do nothing else but that if you did that. The fact that I haven't disputed something, I mean, if I disputed all the mythology that comes out of this group and the books of the world, I wouldn't have any time to do anything else.
http://newsbusters.org/node/4871
A recent Washington Post column (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/11/AR2006041101078.html), states:
"Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, makes a similar argument about Iran. 'I think of war with Iran as the ending of America's present role in the world,' he told me this week. 'Iraq may have been a preview of that, but it's still redeemable if we get out fast. In a war with Iran, we'll get dragged down for 20 or 30 years. The world will condemn us. We will lose our position in the world.' Brzezinski urges President Bush to slow down and think carefully about his options -- rather than rushing to stop Iran's nuclear program, which by most estimates is five to 10 years away from building a bomb, even after yesterday's announcement."
As you'll recall Zbigniew Brzezinski worked in the failed Carter administration, both who had a less than a stellar track record regarding Iran. On February 2, 1979, Brzezinski wrote to Jimmy Carter in what he called his "weekly reports" on the topic of Islamic fundamentalism, "The conclusion from several studies done in the intelligence community is that we should be careful not to overgeneralize from the Iranian case. Islamic revivalist movements are not sweeping the Middle East. They are not likely to be the wave of the future. If we emphasize moral as well as material values, our support for diversity, and a commitment to social justice, our dialogue with the Muslim world will be helped."
If he was that wrong 25 years ago, when he was in a position to know, why sould he have any credibility with the press now, other than he is just someone else to trot out to criticize President Bush and undermine our foreign policy?
I guess the readers are on to the garbage the mainstream press gives them and is looking elsewhere... hahahahahaha!!!
Earnings fall at three major newspaper publishers
Thu Apr 13, 2006 New York Times Co., McClatchy Co. and (Chicago & Los Angeles Times) Tribune Co. on Thursday posted sharply lower quarterly earnings on high newsprint costs and depressed advertising sales (which is tied to readership).
The results from the three large publishers underscored the troubles faced by the industry, including circulation declines, high costs and competition for advertising money from the Internet and other new media.
For the first quarter, net income fell 14 percent at McClatchy, 28 percent at (Chicago & Los Angeles Times) Tribune and 69 percent at New York Times Co
.http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=businessNews&storyid=2006-04-13T160833Z_01_N13225763_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-NEWSPAPERS-EARNS.xml&rpc=23
Gannett quarterly earnings drop; newspapers struggle
April 12, 2006- Gannett Co. Inc. on Wednesday said quarterly earnings fell 11 percent as advertising revenue dropped at its newspapers, including the flagship USA Today, while high newsprint costs rose further.
Gannett owns about 90 daily newspapers (including USA Today) and runs 21 television stations.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060412/bs_nm/media_gannett_earns_dc_6&printer=1
Other headlines along the same line:
BOSTON AD SKID CHILLS TIMES (12% revenue decline the worst of major newspaper groups) - 03/23/2006
GALLUP POLLING DROPS CNN AFTER 'LOW RATINGS'; FULL MEMO REVEALED - 03/21/2006
'Washington Post' To Cut 80 Newsroom Jobs, Sources Say - 03/10/2006
E.W. Scripps Reports 4Q Loss of $603,000 - 02/02/2006
Knight Ridder profit declines 22% - 01/31/2006
TIMES BOMBS ("paper of record" 2001-04 daily circulation off 19%) - 01/11/2006
Don’t Impose Foreign Law on Americans By Antonin Scalia
http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.19116/article_detail.asp
The Coat
by Ruth Bell Graham
http://www.billygraham.org/DMag_article.asp?ArticleID=680
in case your local media ignored this...
U.S. Trade Deficit Improves More Than Anticipated
April 12, 2006- America's trade deficit showed a bigger-than-expected improvement in February as the politically sensitive imbalance with China dropped to the lowest level in nearly a year.
...For February, the deficit with China narrowed by 22.7 percent to $13.8 billion, the smallest imbalance since March 2005. The improvement reflected a sizable 19.9 percent jump in U.S. exports to China to $4.1 billion, the second highest level on record, led by big gains in exports of American cotton, soybeans and semiconductors.
Chinese imports to this country fell by 16.2 percent, led by declines in shipments of cell phones and computers...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,191440,00.html
Immigration vs. gate-crashing
Apr 12, 2006 by Walter E. Williams
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/walterwilliams/2006/04/12/193238.html
David Bennett <><
http://www.freewill-predestination.com
http://www.knology.net/~lonesomedove
Apr 11 -LONDON -The humble prune is set to be recognized as one of the secret weapons of World War II. A London auction house, Spink, is selling two grizzled prunes that it says were destined to be stuffed with maps or other documents and smuggled to prisoners of war. The prunes were part of the memorabilia collection of a British spy.
"They are very dry and hard and it's amazing that they have survived," Spink spokeswoman Emily Johnston said Tuesday.
The prunes are part of a collection of World War II memorabilia collected by a British woman, the late Doreen Mulot, a former member of Britain's Special Operations Executive, which was set up to carry out operations behind enemy lines.
Sometimes referred to as "the Baker Street Irregulars" after Sherlock Holmes' fictional group of spies, the executive was set up by Winston Churchill and Hugh Dalton to conduct warfare by means other than direct military engagement.
Mulot was one of as many as a million operatives. Her collection is being sold as one lot by her great-nephew Richard Marshall from the town of Crook in northern England and is expected to raise more than 1,000 pounds ($1,800).
Interviewed by telephone by The Associated Press, Marshall said his great-aunt had lived in a large house in the north London neighborhood of Hampstead "with a large bathroom where they prepared the prunes."
The dried fruit were softened in water, then de-pitted to allow carefully rolled documents covered in waxed paper to be inserted. The fruit was then re-dried and packed into food parcels for the prisoners, who used the information to escape and find their way home…
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/04/11/D8GU56R00.html
Bill Gates secretly paid for Gaza greenhouses
Deal to 'enhance peace process,' but Palestinians stripped, looted facilities
April 13, 2006-- JERUSALEM – In a revelation that surprised many here associated with the deal, it emerged this week the charitable foundation of Microsoft founder Bill Gates largely was responsible for transferring to the Palestinians the high-tech Jewish greenhouses of the Gaza Strip prior to Israel's evacuation of the area.
The greenhouses, passed in a private charity deal last summer, reportedly have been stripped and looted by Palestinian gangs and Palestinian security officers hired to protect the structures.
Prior to Israel's August withdrawal, the residents of Gaza's Gush Katif slate of Jewish communities ran greenhouses known for producing high-quality insect-free vegetables. The Gush Katif gardens featured some of the most technologically advanced agricultural equipment and accounted for more than $100 million per year in exports to Europe. The greenhouses also supplied Israel with 75 percent of its own produce.
The hothouses, worth several hundred million dollars, were passed to the Palestinians in September in a $14 million deal brokered by former World Bank President James Wolfenson. According to reports, Wolfenson personally contributed $500,000 of his own money and the rest was ponied up mostly by American Jews, including billionaires Mortimer Zuckerman and Leonard Stern.
But an article in Forbes Magazine stated the $29 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's biggest charity, provided most of the money – $10 million – to purchase the greenhouses.
...But Gates may not have got his money's worth. According to reports, the greenhouses were looted by gunmen following Israel's withdrawal. Computer equipment and, in some cases, entire greenhouses were stolen. The theft has put out of action about 70 acres of the roughly 1,000 acres left by the Jewish communities, according to Al-Masri.
"The looters took their time to dismantle the greenhouses and to uproot entire greenhouses and carry them away," Amid al-Masri previously told reporters.
Another round of looting struck the greenhouses in February when Fatah gunmen hired to protect the greenhouses abandoned their posts because they had not been paid. Witnesses reported some of the security guards themselves participated in the looting.
As WND reported, Palestinian farmers have had trouble reproducing the bug-free produce previously generated by the Jewish owners. The Palestinian owners reportedly asked the U.S. governmental development group USAID to hire former Jewish Gaza greenhouse owners as consultants for their declining vegetable businesses.
Al-Masri yesterday said the Gaza greenhouses are fully functioning and are producing at full capacity. He also said most of the stolen greenhouse equipment has been recovered by the Palestinian Authority police. His claims could not be independently verified before press time. (did he also say "Islam is a religion of peace"?) http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49710
Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220
Potato gunman convicted in Sweden
Apr 12 12:11 - A man in central Sweden was convicted of shooting potatoes from an apartment window with a home-made gun, Swedish press reported.
A court in Falun, central Sweden, fined him 80 days' earnings for firearms offences.
In August 2005, inspired by seeing a potato thrower on television, the 25-year-old man bought parts for the gun in a local supermarket, Soedra Dalarnes Tidning wrote.
The man and a group of friends met in a flat in Bojsenburg, in the heart of Sweden, loaded the weapon with potatoes and began firing from the balcony into the car park below, the paper Wednesday.
Authorities confiscated his gun as well as two sacks of potatoes found in the apartment.
Police tests showed the tuber cannon had a more potent firing power than a revolver.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/060412161125.udqe0ag2.html
You mean even if guns are banned people can figure out how to make their own from parts from a supermarket? Wow! I guess the solution is to ban supermarkets!! Remember, if spuds are outlawed only outlaws will have spuds.
Castro could drill off Florida coast
Apr. 06, 2006- U.S. lawmakers aren't the only ones who, because of spiraling oil and gas prices and an unstable commodities market, have been studying the possibility of producing more domestic energy. Fidel Castro has also taken an interest, and his ambitions will, in a surprisingly short period of time, bring the Cuban drilling program much closer to the Florida coast.
...Cuba has neither the capacity nor the technical capability to produce this energy by itself. Castro has called in contractors from Canada, Spain, Norway -- even China -- to do it for him.
And not only has Cuba convened its own little United Nations to help get at vital and abundant supplies of offshore energy, it has chosen tracts of real estate in the Gulf of Mexico as close as 45 miles from Florida...
Imagine what Castro is thinking as we spend our time quarreling over whether we should produce American energy 100, 150 or 250 miles from the Florida coast while he makes arrangements to set up shop hundreds of miles closer. He must love that we've allowed emotion to win out over reason, facts to be dwarfed by fear and our nation's energy policy to be driven by unreasonable environmental concerns.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/14273915.htm
(Of course the environmentalists in the US won't let us (so how much are you paying for gas?))
Rumsfeld to Reporter: “I Have a Real Daytime Job”
April 11, 2006 -- At today’s Pentagon press briefing, a reporter said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld didn’t dispute or address a claim from a book about the run-up to the War in Iraq.
REPORTER: Mr. Secretary, November of '01, the president, according to several books that you haven't disputed, said start planning --
RUMSFELD: You think I'm going to stand around reading your books and disputing things in them or validating or not validating? I've got a real daytime job. I mean, you'd do nothing else but that if you did that. The fact that I haven't disputed something, I mean, if I disputed all the mythology that comes out of this group and the books of the world, I wouldn't have any time to do anything else.
http://newsbusters.org/node/4871
A recent Washington Post column (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/11/AR2006041101078.html), states:
"Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, makes a similar argument about Iran. 'I think of war with Iran as the ending of America's present role in the world,' he told me this week. 'Iraq may have been a preview of that, but it's still redeemable if we get out fast. In a war with Iran, we'll get dragged down for 20 or 30 years. The world will condemn us. We will lose our position in the world.' Brzezinski urges President Bush to slow down and think carefully about his options -- rather than rushing to stop Iran's nuclear program, which by most estimates is five to 10 years away from building a bomb, even after yesterday's announcement."
As you'll recall Zbigniew Brzezinski worked in the failed Carter administration, both who had a less than a stellar track record regarding Iran. On February 2, 1979, Brzezinski wrote to Jimmy Carter in what he called his "weekly reports" on the topic of Islamic fundamentalism, "The conclusion from several studies done in the intelligence community is that we should be careful not to overgeneralize from the Iranian case. Islamic revivalist movements are not sweeping the Middle East. They are not likely to be the wave of the future. If we emphasize moral as well as material values, our support for diversity, and a commitment to social justice, our dialogue with the Muslim world will be helped."
If he was that wrong 25 years ago, when he was in a position to know, why sould he have any credibility with the press now, other than he is just someone else to trot out to criticize President Bush and undermine our foreign policy?
I guess the readers are on to the garbage the mainstream press gives them and is looking elsewhere... hahahahahaha!!!
Earnings fall at three major newspaper publishers
Thu Apr 13, 2006 New York Times Co., McClatchy Co. and (Chicago & Los Angeles Times) Tribune Co. on Thursday posted sharply lower quarterly earnings on high newsprint costs and depressed advertising sales (which is tied to readership).
The results from the three large publishers underscored the troubles faced by the industry, including circulation declines, high costs and competition for advertising money from the Internet and other new media.
For the first quarter, net income fell 14 percent at McClatchy, 28 percent at (Chicago & Los Angeles Times) Tribune and 69 percent at New York Times Co
.http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=businessNews&storyid=2006-04-13T160833Z_01_N13225763_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-NEWSPAPERS-EARNS.xml&rpc=23
Gannett quarterly earnings drop; newspapers struggle
April 12, 2006- Gannett Co. Inc. on Wednesday said quarterly earnings fell 11 percent as advertising revenue dropped at its newspapers, including the flagship USA Today, while high newsprint costs rose further.
Gannett owns about 90 daily newspapers (including USA Today) and runs 21 television stations.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060412/bs_nm/media_gannett_earns_dc_6&printer=1
Other headlines along the same line:
BOSTON AD SKID CHILLS TIMES (12% revenue decline the worst of major newspaper groups) - 03/23/2006
GALLUP POLLING DROPS CNN AFTER 'LOW RATINGS'; FULL MEMO REVEALED - 03/21/2006
'Washington Post' To Cut 80 Newsroom Jobs, Sources Say - 03/10/2006
E.W. Scripps Reports 4Q Loss of $603,000 - 02/02/2006
Knight Ridder profit declines 22% - 01/31/2006
TIMES BOMBS ("paper of record" 2001-04 daily circulation off 19%) - 01/11/2006
Don’t Impose Foreign Law on Americans By Antonin Scalia
http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.19116/article_detail.asp
The Coat
by Ruth Bell Graham
http://www.billygraham.org/DMag_article.asp?ArticleID=680
in case your local media ignored this...
U.S. Trade Deficit Improves More Than Anticipated
April 12, 2006- America's trade deficit showed a bigger-than-expected improvement in February as the politically sensitive imbalance with China dropped to the lowest level in nearly a year.
...For February, the deficit with China narrowed by 22.7 percent to $13.8 billion, the smallest imbalance since March 2005. The improvement reflected a sizable 19.9 percent jump in U.S. exports to China to $4.1 billion, the second highest level on record, led by big gains in exports of American cotton, soybeans and semiconductors.
Chinese imports to this country fell by 16.2 percent, led by declines in shipments of cell phones and computers...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,191440,00.html
Immigration vs. gate-crashing
Apr 12, 2006 by Walter E. Williams
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/walterwilliams/2006/04/12/193238.html
David Bennett <><
http://www.freewill-predestination.com
http://www.knology.net/~lonesomedove
posted by David Bennett | 6:14 PM
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