According to Terry Harvey the country lifeguards captain “It is their home”. He also added that he did not know what kind of shark was seen off the coast, only that it was “fairly sizable”. But the people who seen this are claiming that it might be salmon shark or goblin shark.
On last Thursday, the video was captured from the height of 10-12 feet long by the crew from the helicopter. The shark just went off without harming any one but still lifeguards alerted every one of the beachgoers about its presence. The crew on the helicopter also said that the shark might be 500 feet away from Surf-Rider beach.
Coincidentally this shark sighting happened just two days before the premier of Television movie “Malibu shark attack” shown on SyFy channel. This movie was featured on goblin shark attack on Malibu.
You can see captured video footage of the shark on Youtube, MegaUpload, rapidshare e.t.c. if you want to see pictures, photos or images of goblin shark and salmon shark then you can also have their look on internet. (courtesy: eweekdays.com)
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Malibu goblin shark attack on Surf-Rider beach
Saturday, July 25, 2009
The Lackawanna Six (Buffalo Six)? How great of a threat?
How Great a Threat Were the Lackawanna Six (Buffalo Six)?
Morning Edition, September 10, 2007 · Five years after the arrest of six young men from Lackawanna, N.Y., questions remain about whether the so-called "homegrown terrorists" are as dangerous as authorities initially suggested. The Jihad Next Door, a book by NPR's Dina Temple-Raston, explores the subject. Temple-Raston discusses the case against the Lackawanna Six with Steve Inskeep.
Excerpt: 'The Jihad Next Door'
by Dina Temple-Raston
Jihad Next Door: Book Cover
Prologue: Mukhtar's Big Wedding, September 2002
Life changed for Mukhtar al-Bakri and five of his friends on an otherwise beautiful crisp September day. He could remember the precise moment when he stepped into the gloom: It started with his hotel room door crashing open. September 9, 2002, was supposed to be the most important day of twenty-one-year-old Mukhtar al-Bakri's short life. His wedding to the teenage daughter of a family friend in Bahrain had been an elaborate affair, something beyond what the al-Bakri family could really afford. His arrival at the wedding hall was greeted by the beating of drums and a cacophony of traditional instruments. The sisters of his bride playfully welcomed each guest with a gentle tap, a sort of blessing, from a stick wrapped in flowers. Attendants donned flowing white gowns and long Arabian headscarves. The bride wore a modest white veil. Waiters lurched under the weight of plates piled high with food. There were dutiful prayers to Allah. It was everything Mukhtar al-Bakri had envisioned. The proceedings were dignified yet oddly fun. It marked a fresh start for him: a new, better phase of his life.
Mukhtar's friends had been surprised, even perplexed, at how seriously he was taking his newfound responsibility. The wedding kindled extraordinary emotions and hopes within him. Frankly, it wasn't like Mukhtar; he was generally carefree and hardly one to suddenly reorder his life. That might explain why they were alarmed when Mukhtar called one of them before the wedding to say goodbye. "You won't be hearing from me again," Mukhtar said over the crackling of a long-distance connection. Why he sounded so fatalistic just before what should have been a joyous occasion is unclear. Maybe, like many people his age, he was being overly dramatic, as one phase of his life closed and another began. He said later he just meant it as a joke, that he was going to drop out of sight for a while and try his hand at being a dutiful husband instead of a hard partying twenty-something. To his friends, the message sounded ominous.
When they started calling each other recounting Mukhtar's message, an entirely different audience was also listening. To the ears of the FBI investigators tracking the call, the talk of a big wedding indicated not a blow-out party in Bahrain but something else entirely. What they thought they heard, all too clearly, was the signature farewell of a suicide bomber — the dialogue of a young man about to meet his maker. As the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks drew closer, America was on high alert. It appeared her enemies — Islamic fundamentalists bent on destruction — were gearing up for something.
Mukhtar's phone call fit neatly into a perceived pattern of events. The FBI had worked up a list of potential targets in the days leading up to the anniversary. Attacks on military bases in the Middle East were at the top of the list, and Mukhtar's phone call seemed like a break, a clue amid an ocean of information pouring into the American intelligence community. The military went on Delta Alert — its highest state of readiness — shortly after the intercept. The young man from Lackawanna who was determined to reorder his life had no idea what his talk about a "big wedding" had set in motion.
* * *
Mukhtar al-Bakri was settled under the sheets for the first time with his teenage bride just before police burst into his hotel room. He had no idea that only hours earlier his name was on the lips of officials at the highest levels of the U.S. government. The FBI and CIA had been briefing President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney regularly about al-Bakri and his friends. Bush and Cheney then gave the order that would make Mukhtar's big day memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Bahrani police officers swarmed around al-Bakri's wedding bed with their guns drawn, sights trained in his direction. They hustled him from his hotel bed, and snapped on handcuffs. He recalled the sound of his teenage bride in tears as the police bundled him down the corridor, lamenting that he never had the chance to consummate his marriage. He knew that there must be some mistake. It never occurred to him that the Bahrain commandos who arrested him had burst into the room expecting to find guns and explosives, perhaps even a suicide vest instead of a terrified young man.
A short time later, and nearly halfway around the world, other arrests followed al-Bakri's. Unmarked sedans and police cars came to quick stops in front of houses and malls and delis. One by one, police and FBI agents rounded up al-Bakri's friends and pushed them into the backseats of cruisers. Anyone watching would have said they all looked scared and baffled. To a man, they were all obedient and compliant, nodding numbly when they were advised of their rights. It took only minutes for news of the arrests to filter through the tightly knit Yemeni community. The bulletins were met instantly with shaking heads and clicking tongues. It wasn't the boys about which the residents were worried, it was the authorities. This was racial profiling, neighbors said. We know these boys. They are just like us. We watch them play soccer. We pray with them. We know their parents and their brothers and sisters and wives. If these six are suspects, then so is everyone else.
Someone said something about terrorism. Neighbors were sure that couldn't be right. These men were native-born or naturalized U.S. citizens. Four were married. Three had children. One rode a motorcycle. Another was voted "friendliest" of his graduating class at the local high school. One sold used cars. Another was a telemarketer. They were all registered Democrats. Why had the authorities singled them out?
Mukhtar al-Bakri was a twin, one half of a pair of Yemeni brothers who had lived with their family in a small, two-story, yellow and green wood frame affair on Ingham Avenue. They were part of the second largest Yemeni community in America, just a stone's throw from Buffalo, New York. The al-Bakri household was actually made up of two families: Mukhtar, his twin brother Amin, their mother and father occupied one part of the house; and his older brother, his wife, and their two children comprised the other. It was a typical arrangement. There was no pressure in this community to have the elder sons marry and go off to make their own way. Instead, the families stayed together with succeeding generations and new members — wives, babies, sisters-in-law — simply folding themselves into existing households the way they did in the old country. Home was a place where meals were big raucous affairs with the men of the house eating in one room and the women, more traditionally, taking their meals in another. A look at the al-Bakris during the dinner hour revealed that all the men resembled each other. Mukhtar and Amin were tintypes. Standing five-feet-seven with wiry frames, they looked younger than their years. Their faces were dominated with oversized brown eyes, and they had ears that stuck out at odd angles from their heads. They carried a perpetually vulnerable look, like someone had just struck them from behind without warning.
Their father, Ali al-Bakri, was working class, a twenty-fiveyear employee at the Sorrento Cheese Factory off Ridge Road downtown. His story was a template for many of the men of his age in Lackawanna's First Ward. He had come to America from Yemen, hoping to find work in the steel mills and to create a better life for his family. The mills inspired such extraordinary hopes that entire clans uprooted themselves for the promise of a better life than the one behind them. The al-Bakris weren't rich, but they had what they needed. The al-Bakri sons had graduated from an American high school with decent educations, and while they didn't have steady work, exactly, they were good boys — or so their father thought.
The truth was that throughout their teenage years the younger al-Bakris were more than a little wild: more of a product of Lackawanna than their native Yemen. Most of the time, their dueling identities hardly bothered them. They played on the Lackawanna High School soccer team (goalie and forward) and drove around the neighborhoods in the rickety cars that teenagers favor. They wore the baggy training pants and hoodie sweatshirts that had become the inner-city uniform among young toughs. They played concussive hip-hop music at earsplitting levels. They ran with a crowd that paddled through life largely unnoticed. They got by doing itinerant day labor, dabbling in petty theft, trying their hand at drug dealing, laundering money. They gambled with friends across the border in Niagara Falls and smuggled cigarettes from Canada. In the early days, the trouble they got into was of the low-level variety where young men in depressed towns often find themselves: there was pot smoking, carousing, and clubbing. Though they grew into more serious offenses as the boys got older, in the beginning none of their scofflaw antics were serious enough to merit the attention of the authorities.
It was the parents of the First Ward, those who kept their children on short leashes, who worried about the people who surrounded the boys. The al-Bakri brothers and their friends formed the kind of group you hoped your own son wouldn't fall into - not because they were primed to do anything particularly bad or evil, but because the al-Bakri boys seemed to be testing limits more-so than normal, and young men who do that are bound, sooner or later, to miscalculate and cross the threshold of good sense.
The al-Bakri parents, for their part, chose to accentuate the positive when it came to their children. They turned a blind eye to the late nights and suspicious acquaintances. They focused instead on the fact that their sons still seemed to find time to attend mosque. It wasn't so much that they were devout — after all, they partied as much as other teenagers — but it was clear that they found something intriguing about being Muslim. The family's trips back to Yemen every couple of years only fed that inclination. While the residents of Lackawanna's First Ward did not have much money to spare, they always managed to scrape together what they needed for the occasional trips back to Yemen.
Those family vacations to the old country transported the al-Bakri boys and their Yemeni neighbors in Lackawanna, quite literally, from one world to another. When they strode into their villages, deep in the Yemeni interior, they were treated as conquering heroes. Lives that were rather bleak and aimless by American standards took on mythic proportions in Yemen. Relatives there had next to nothing by comparison. They lived in mud huts. They had barely enough to eat. Their clothes were ragged. The boys from Lackawanna seemed to have it all: money, opportunity, freedom. The trips had a soothing effect on Lackawanna's young Yemeni men by reconnecting them with a place they hardly knew and, when they returned, helping them feel oddly grateful for the lives they led in western New York.
When the al-Bakri father decided his two sons would marry the teenage daughters of a friend in Bahrain, the preparations were begun more than six months in advance. Mukhtar flew to the Middle East in May 2002 to plan a September ceremony. Those months in the Middle East were fun for him. He had no work to do, just a succession of social engagements to attend and daily prayers to make at a local mosque. In July, he went to visit his sister in Saudi Arabia. The two took a pilgrimage to Mecca. It seemed, as the September 9, 2002, wedding neared, that Mukhtar had finally found his place in the world.
* * *
The FBI had been listening to al-Bakri's phone calls and tracking his emails. His dispatch from Bahrain made the agents swallow hard. The head of the Joint Terrorism Task Force for the Western District of New York at the time was Ed Needham. His job was to bring together federal and state law enforcement officials to identify and investigate international and domestic terrorism. By that fall of 2002, Needham had been working in international terrorism for thirteen years. He had worked for two years with John O'Neill, the man best known as Osama bin Laden's hunter, as a supervisor in the radical fundamentalists unit at the Bureau. It later became O'Neill's famed bin Laden unit. O'Neill and Needham began fighting skirmishes in the war against terror long before it had actually been declared.
In 2002, the FBI's bench of Arabic speakers and Islamic experts was thin. Gamal Abdel-Hafiz was the agency's first Muslim hire and one of a handful of the agency's Arabic-speaking members. He was home with his wife in Saudi Arabia in early September 2002 when his phone rang. The FBI wanted him to travel to the Kingdom of Bahrain and pick up a suspect. Abdel-Hafiz asked the usual questions: what was he looking for, what was the suspect involved in? The answers weren't forthcoming. "Just go there," his supervisor said, "and you'll get the questions you need to ask when you arrive." Abdel-Hafiz would become the first American to interview Mukhtar al-Bakri after his arrest.
About that same time, Mike Urbanski, a state trooper and member of the Buffalo Joint Terrorism Task Force, was aboard a Gulfstream jet that belonged to the Department of Justice. He had picked up the jet in Washington, DC, and began a thirtysix-hour flight from Washington to Naples, Italy, continuing on to Bahrain. "It was the fanciest plane I had ever been on," Urbanski said later. "We knew we weren't going to be in Bahrain long. Just long enough to pick up al-Bakri and bring him home. But it was a nice ride."
As far as Urbanski knew, he was about to pick up America's first homegrown Islamic terrorist, the first American to train in an al-Qaeda camp and then attempt to slip back unnoticed into middle-class American society. So, when al-Bakri emerged from an unmarked car at the Bahrani airport, Urbanski was surprised to see just a kid. Al-Bakri actually looked relieved to see Urbanski. He had been in Bahrani police custody for five days, and it looked like he hadn't slept in weeks. "I think he thought he'd be safer with us," Urbanski said later. The officers searched al-Bakri before he got on the plane, gave him a green jumpsuit to slip on, and handed him a pen and paper.
"Tell us what you know," Urbanski said gruffly.
He recalled that al-Bakri looked so scared that words literally tumbled out of him. In his nervousness he started to speak faster. Like a skater on thinning ice, he seemed to be accelerating to save himself from drowning. He said he'd been to an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan a year earlier with five friends from Lackawanna. They had fired weapons, learned about jihad, and had returned shortly before the 9/11 attacks. He drew diagrams of guesthouses. He sketched out the details of Osama bin Laden's residence, marking doors, indicating where there were gardens. He talked about meeting Osama bin Laden in a courtyard in front of a stone hut.
Urbanski and al-Bakri talked all the way to America. The young man looked spent when they were done. Not knowing what else to say, Urbanski turned the tables. "Have you got any questions for us?" he asked.
Al-Bakri looked up and his thoughts slowly evolved into words. "Yeah, how are the Bills doing?"
From The Jihad Next Door: The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in the Age of Terror, by Dina Temple-Raston. Copyright © 2007 by the author. Published by PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group. All rights reserved.
Jud Süss
Jud Süss
The most successful anti-Semitic film the Nazi's ever made.
On the even of war in 1939, while Hitler was working through the details of Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, leading the way for invasion of Poland. Nazi Propaganda minister Goebbel's attention was strongly focused on three anti-Semitic film projects:
˚ Der Ewige Jude
˚ Die Rothschilds
˚ Jud Süss
With Jud Süss being the most commercially successful of the three.
Long recognized as history’s most incendiary film, Jud Süss was the cultural centerpiece in Joseph Goebbels’ campaign against the Jews. Released in 1940, it was a box office sensation across Germany and Europe; alongside the movie’s theatrical distribution, it became a staple of Nazi propaganda evenings organized by the Hitler Youth, SS and others.
The film as based on a historical novel, "Jud Süss "written in 1925 by best selling author Lion Feuchtwanger, a Munich born playright, novelist and also a Jew. Feuchtwanger's Jud Süss was an international bestseller and was translated into over twenty languages.
The book was also adapted for the stage by Ashley Dukes in the UK in 1929 and later inspired a film version by English director Lothar Mendes in 1934. But it wasn't until Goebbels saw the British film-adaptation did he realized the anti-Semitic potential the material had, if interpreted not as a human tragedy, but as a tale of Jewish arrogance and infiltration.
Goebbels foray into the film for propaganda was not new, it had been part of the strategy designed by the National Socialist German Workers Party as early as 1930, when the party first established a film department. In order to maximize the effect for propaganda potential, Goebbels took control of the entire German film industry and even nationalized film production and distribution.
A state-run professional school for politically reliable film-makers "The Deutsche Filmakademie Babelsberg" was founded, and membership of an official professional organization "The Reichsfilmkammer" was made mandatory for all actors, film-makers, distributors etc, film criticism was prohibited and a national film award "The Deutscher Filmpreis" was established.
Production began in 1940 under the supervision of Joseph Goebbels, the script was reworked, and Veit Harlan was chosen as writer/director. According to excerpts from Harlan's unpublished memoir, in one notorious Synagogue scene:
"The Hassidic religious service had a demonic effect... The performance was suggestive of... an exorcism"
For that Synagogue scene, and others, Harlan chose "racially pure Jewish extras" from the Ghettos in Prague. Jud Süss was considered Veit Harlan's most significant accomplishment in that he produced an entertaining film with very stereotypical undertones, with the end result being an almost pseudo form of brainwashing to the psyche of the unsuspecting viewer, many people claimed to have taken away from the film a heightened "Germanic pride."
On August 18, 1940, after screening the final cut of the film Jud Süss, Goebbels wrote in his diary:
"An anti-Semitic film of the kind we could only wish for. I am happy about it".
Germany's best known producers, directors, actors and over 120 Jewish extras participated in the film:
Written by Veit Harlan
Directed by Veit Harlan
Produced by Otto Lehmann & Eberhard Wolfgang Möller
Starred: Ferdinand Marian as Jud Süss
Werner Krauss
Heinrich George
Kristina Söderbaum
Jud Süss was launched at the Venice Film Fesitival in September 1940, to extraordinary acclaim; it recieved the "Golden Lion" award and rave reviews.
The film's popular success was overwhelming, the Bielefeld SD reported on October 15, 1940:
"Now it surpasses all expectations. No film has yet succeeded in having such an impact on wide segments of the public. Even people who rarely attend the cinema don't want to miss this film."
Summary of the storyline and plot of the film Jud Süss
Duke Karl Alexander of Württemberg takes an oath to the constitution as he begins his reign, promising to do everything "according to old Württemberg loyalty and honesty." But shortly after becoming duke, he wants to hold his own with neighboring sovereigns, and demands a personal guard, an opera, and a ballet.
The provincial council, headed by Counselor Sturm, turns down the duke's demands. But he knows what to do. He sends Herr von Remchingen, a practiced courtier, to Frankfurt to find the Jew Süss Oppenheimer, who sees his chance. Like a thief, he sneaks across the Württemberg border and shows the duke how to make money. "Does not the emperor in Vienna have his financial advisers, whom he allows to collect taxes, customs duties, and bridge tolls?" The citizens of Württemberg complain, but the small rebellions that break here and there against the steadily growing taxes and crude methods of the Jew's officials are brutally suppressed. The smith Hans Bogner is hanged because, driven to desperation by the Jew and his lackeys, he answers force with force. The duke is satisfied with his Jew. Süss transforms Württemberg into a land "flowing with milk and honey."
He finds new ways to finance the duke's expensive tastes, and Süss himself gets rich too. Karl Alexander rewards the Jew for his matchmaking services with new privileges and with a letter giving him immunity from the law. The ban on Jews is lifted. Hundreds of Jews move to Württemberg and Süss makes sure that they can all get rich. Röder, the duke's war comrade, attempts in vain to make himself the spokesman for the ruined farmers and citizens. Karl Alexander brusquely rejects him. The old Rabbi Loew, who knows how to read the stars, vainly warns Süss Oppenheimer: "The Lord punishes Jews who forget who they are!"
Süss continues on his way, even attempting to marry Dorothea, the daughter of Counselor Sturm, who is engaged to Faber. Sturm stops him, and Faber and Dorothea are married. Under the pretext that Sturm is leading a conspiracy against the duke, Süss has him arrested.
When the council resists the duke's arbitrary use of power, he dissolves it, thus breaking the oath he took upon becoming duke. Following the advice of the Jew, he determines on a coup to make himself the absolute monarch.
Afraid, Dorothea goes to the Jew. Süss releases Faber. But at what price? A few hours after his release, Faber carries the body of his young wife from the Neckar River. Now rebellion breaks out! Röder is the leader. The duke, who would gladly be out of the situation that Jew Süss has got him into, uses the presence of the emperor's emissary in Ludwigsburg to leave Stuttgart, giving Süss a free hand to carry out the coup. He dies of a heart attack during the festivities at Ludwigsburg, which renders void his grant of immunity that gave the Jew immunity for all his crimes. Süss is arrested as he tries to escape.
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On September 30,1940 Reichsführer SS, Heinrich Himmler, ordered all SS and police members to see the film during the coming winter. It was shown to SS units, and Einsatzgruppen about to be sent east on their murderous assignment, and was also sent to non-Jewish populations of areas where Jews were about to be deported, by 1943 viewership of the film was reported as over 20.3 million people.
Veit Harlan, received the 1943 Universum Film Archiv award, but after the war his notoriety faded. Harlan was the only film director of the Third Reich to be tried for crimes against humanity. The prosecutors choosing to focus on his use of the SS to recruit (persuade) ghetto Jews to perform as extras.
Harlan was determined to depict German Jews as Eastern Jews to justify their expulsion from Germany, Harlan sought extras first in Lublin in January 1940, but later settled on Jews from the Prague ghetto. Harlan was later acquitted on all counts.
The star of the film Ferdinand Marian was banned from a career on film after the war. When he died in a car accident on 7th August 1946, it was rumored that he had committed suicide.
Jud Süss was the most notorious yet most successful anti-Semitic feature film ever made.
Sources:
Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels Teil I: Aufzeichnungen 1923-1941
"The Demonic Effect": Veit Harlan's Use of Jewish Extras in Jud Süss (1940) Susan Tegel University of Hertfordshire
The German Propaganda Archive
The Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television Since 1933 Published by Wallflower Press (London, New York).
The "Years of extermination" by Saul Friedlander. First Harper Perennial 2008
Jud Süss
Jud Süss 1 magyar felirattal rendező : Veit Harlan - Jud Süß
Jud Süss 2 magyar felirattal rendező : Veit Harlan - Jud Süß
Friday, July 24, 2009
Omar Bhatti - Michael Jackson 25 year old son
Despite the rumors about 25-year-old Bhatti, Ricky Harlow, who was signed by Jackson to MJJ Records in 1996, and spent time with the two at the Neverland Ranch, says it isn't so.
"They had a father-and-son type of connection," Harlow says, "but I never thought he was his biological father. They met when Little Michael did a contest impersonating Michael Jackson in Europe in the mid-1990s."
Unconfirmed stories say that Bhatti's mother was a caregiver for "Blanket" and that his father was one of Jackson's chauffeurs, but People.com is reporting that Bhatti was a fixture in Jackson's life since he was approximately 11 years old. He was referred to as "Little Michael" and "Little Monkey" by those close to the superstar.
"Here are some little-known facts about Omer," Dimond says. "He was at Neverland during the 2003 raid and was questioned extensively by police. He was questioned again in preparation for the grand jury.
"I learned during those interviews that Omer became agitated and nervous when the officer asked him whether Michael had ever given him 'Jesus Juice' or shown him pornography."
Dimond continues, saying, "Two independent law enforcement sources have told me that they always treated Omer as a 'victim' of Michael's."
But Ricky Harlow tells People.com that he has only good memories of his time at Neverland.
Keep checking back for all the latest on the investigation into Michael's death.
Biography of Susan Eisenhower - Granddaughter of Dwight D. Eisenhower
 Susan Eisenhower is President of the Eisenhower Group, Inc, which provides strategic counsel on political, business and public affairs projects. Ms. Eisenhower has consulted for major companies doing business overseas such as IBM, American Express, Diebold Corporation and Loral Space Systems and she is a Senior Director of Stonebridge International, a Washington-based international consulting firm chaired by former National Security Advisor, Samuel "Sandy"Berger. At the same time, she is a Distinguished Fellow of the Eisenhower Institute, where she served as both president and chairman. After more than twenty years in the foreign affairs field she is best known for her work in Russia and the former Soviet Union. During that time, Ms. Eisenhower has testified before the Senate Armed Services and Senate Budget Committees on policy toward that region. She has also been appointed to the National Academy of Sciences' standing Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) where she is now serving a fourth term. In 2000, a year before September 11, she co-edited a book, Islam and Central Asia, which carried the prescient subtitle, An Enduring Legacy or an Evolving Threat? Ms. Eisenhower has served on many government task forces. In the spring of 2000, the Secretary of Energy appointed Ms. Eisenhower to a blue ribbon task force, the Baker-Cutler Commission, to evaluate U.S. funded nuclear non-proliferation programs in Russia, and since that time she has served as an advisor on another DOE study. In the fall of 2001, after serving two terms on the NASA Advisory Council she was appointed to serve on the International Space Station Management and Cost Evaluation Task Force, which analyzed ISS management and cost overruns. She is currently a member of the Secretary of Energy's Task Force on Nuclear Energy. She has also served as an Academic Fellow of the International Peace and Security program of Carnegie Corporation of New York, and is a director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Nuclear Threat Initiative, co-chaired by Senator Sam Nunn and Ted Turner. Susan Eisenhower has spoken at many diverse types of gatherings: from Harvard and UCLA; World Affairs Councils; and corporate gatherings; to specialist audiences, such as the one assembled at the Army War College, where she gave the 1998 Commandant's Lecture. She has also given full speeches, by invitation, at other prominent places, such as: the National Press Club, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, the Hollywood Bowl, The French National Assembly, and the White House. Ms. Eisenhower's first professional experience was as a writer. In the 1970s Ms. Eisenhower lived overseas for six years, first while a student at the American University in Paris and then as a London resident and stringer for The Saturday Evening Post. Later she wrote a column for Wolfe Newspapers and went on to write for business. Within the last ten years, Ms. Eisenhower has authored three books: two of which, Breaking Free and Mrs. Ike, have appeared on regional best seller lists. She has also edited four collected volumes on regional security issues – the most recent, Partners in Space (2004) – and penned hundreds of op-eds and articles on foreign policy for publications such as The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the Naval Institute's Proceedings, The London Spectator, and Gannett Newspapers. She has provided analysis for CNN International, MSNBC, Nightline, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, This Week with David Brinkley, CBS Sunday Morning, Good Morning America, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Fox News and Hardball, as well NPR and other nation-wide television and radio programs. |
| Susan Eisenhower: Barack is the best choice Susan Eisenhower: Republican for Obama |
Mount Hood ( MT. Hood )
Mount Hood’s snow-covered peak rises 11,249 feet (3,429 m) and is home to twelve glaciers.(Older surveys said 11,239 feet (3,426 m), which is still often cited as its height). It is the highest mountain in Oregon and the fourth-highest in the Cascade Range. Mount Hood is considered the Oregon volcano most likely to erupt,[8] though based on its history, an explosive eruption is unlikely. Still, the odds of an eruption in the next 30 years are estimated at between 3 and 7 percent, so the USGS characterizes it as “potentially active”, but the mountain is informally considered dormant.
Timberline Lodge is a National Historic Landmark located on the southern flank of Mount Hood just below Palmer Glacier.
The mountain has six ski areas: Timberline, Mount Hood Meadows, Ski Bowl, Cooper Spur, Snow Bunny and Summit. They total over 4,600 acres (7.2 sq mi; 18.6 km2) of skiable terrain; Timberline offers the only year-round lift-served skiing in North America.
Mount Hood is part of the Mount Hood National Forest, which has 1.067 million acres (1667 sq mi/4318 km²), four designated wilderness areas which total 189,200 acres (295.6 sq mi; 766 km2) acres and more than 1,200 miles (1,900 km) of hiking trails.
The glacially eroded summit area consists of several andesitic or dacitic lava domes; Pleistocene collapses produced avalanches and lahars (rapidly moving mudflows) that traveled across the Columbia River to the north. The eroded volcano has had at least four major eruptive periods during the past 15,000 years.
The last three at Mount Hood occurred within the past 1,800 years from vents high on the southwest flank and produced deposits that were distributed primarily to the south and west along the Sandy and Zigzag Rivers. The last eruptive period took place around 170 to 220 years ago, when dacitic lava domes, pyroclastic flows and mudflows were produced without major explosive eruptions. The prominent Crater Rock just below the summit is hypothesized to be the remains of one of these now-eroded domes. This period includes the last major eruption of 1781–82 with a slightly more recent episode ending shortly before the arrival of Lewis and Clark in 1805. The latest minor eruptive event occurred in August 1907.
The glaciers on the mountain’s upper slopes may be a source of potentially dangerous lahars when the mountain next erupts. There are vents near the summit that are known for emitting noxious gases such as carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. Prior to the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, the only known fatality related to volcanic activity in the Cascades occurred in 1934 when a climber suffocated in oxygen-poor air while exploring ice caves melted by fumaroles in Coalman Glacier.
Since 1950, there have been several earthquake swarms each year at Mount Hood, most notably in July 1980 and June 2002. Seismic activity is monitored by the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory located in Vancouver, Washington, which issues daily updates.
The most recent evidence of volcanic activity at Mount Hood consists of fumaroles near Crater Rock and hot springs on the flanks of the volcano.
Mara Rosaria Carfagna
Maria Rosaria Carfagna (born December 18, 1975) is an Italian politician and former showgirl. After obtaining a degree in law, Carfagna worked for several years on Italian television shows and as a model. She later entered politics and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for Forza Italia party in 2006. On May 8, 2008, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi appointed her Minister for Equal Opportunity, a move that received international attention due to her background and her appearance. Carfagna has been called “the most beautiful minister in the world”, and was ranked number one on Maxim’s “World´s Hottest Politicians”
Karrine Steffans
Karrine Steffans (born August 24, 1978) is a former music video performer and porn star turned New York Times best selling author [1] twice over upon scribing both Confessions of a Video Vixen in 2005 and The Vixen Diaries in 2007.
Upon publishing Confessions of a Video Vixen with HarperCollins Publishers[2], Steffans departed on a promotional tour and has been interviewed by many journalists in the world including Bill O`Reilly, Geraldo Rivera, Donnie Deutsch and in April 2006 was a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Entering the New York Times best selling list at number seven and peaking at number five, Confessions stayed on the list for over twenty weeks in hardcover and spent several more weeks on the list a year and a half later in paperback.
The Vixen Diaries, published by Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group USA (formerly Warner Books)[3], shared a similar fate, entering the New York Times best seller`s list at number six in the politically charged fall of 2007, even ahead of Bill Clinton`s latest book.
The Vixen Diaries read much differently than Confessions of a Video Vixen as it told the story of a woman on the mend, working her way through a less than savory past and into a brighter future.
May 2006 during a promotional tour to promote her book Confessions of a Video Vixen, she unsuccessfully filed suit seeking a temporary restraining order to block the distribution of the video.[4] In the same month she appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in a segment titled, "Smart Women on Stupid Girls." The press release about her appearance said she "was 21 years old when she made her video debut. She danced in videos alongside some of the biggest artists in the industry, including Jay-Z, R. Kelly and LL Cool J. She quickly became a full-time booty shaking, breast baring dancer—but success came at a price."[4] Currently Karrine is preparing for the July, 2009 release of her new book entitled The Vixen Manual: How To Find, Seduce, & Keep The Man You Want.
In 2006, she began dating 50 year old confirmed bachelor and libertarian political satirist Bill Maher
Luck: Movie Review
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| Director: Soham Shah
Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Imran Khan, Shruti Hassan, Danny Rating:
Reality television comes to big screen but the fear factor is that it's too pretentious. So in the same South African city where Akshay Kumar played host to daredevil girls, Sanjay Dutt challenges an eclectic group to perform stunts for his betting business. Predictably you also know their order of elimination with the junior artists getting knocked-off first and subsequently the hero (Imran Khan) surviving over the villain (Ravi Kishen). Ironically, while reality shows are unnecessarily scripted, films which need a tight script are loosely written. The first half of the film is merely devoted to character introductions though none are convincingly established. For the zillionth time, Sanjay Dutt repeats his gun-toting act, moving around in sherwani, jackets and a French beard in the company of black-suited bodyguards. What more, even his name isn't any different - Musa. Ram Mehra (Imran Khan) has to repay the 20 crores that his late father had lost in stock market. Retired Major Jawar Pratap Singh (Mithun Chakravarthy) has the same conflict that Amitabh Bachchan had in Kaante - needs money for his ailing wife. For the neighbouring country connection, the script takes a Shortcut (Chitrashi Rawat). The best is yet to come! When a loose noose fails to hang rapist Raghav (Ravi Kishen) to death, he is officially set free by the law. The group is hand-picked by Tamang (Danny) for Musa who indulges into the most synchronized corny conversations in the film. As he gets the team to South Africa, Musa makes them aim on each other at point blank range (in a scene directly lifted from 13 Tzameti) and only peripheral characters from the circle are subtracted. What follows is a series of terminal tasks where not the mighty but the lucky would survive. So the characters have their legs gobbled up by rubber sharks and look plastic as they fall off parachutes. Amidst all this action, the director is inclined to force a mandatory romance track (through nonexistent chemistry between Imran and Shruti Hassan) and a rape attempt to reach a speeding climax. The opening and ending action sequences by Allan Amin are convincingly choreographed but the intermediate stunts appear too artificial. The director tries to cover up the patchiness of the action by Santosh Thundiyil's erratic camerawork but it only disturbs more. The banter between characters in confrontational scenes looks too rehearsed. Each one has a dramatized mugged-up response to complement the opponent's remarks. The emotional connect with viewer is certainly missing despite director Soham Shah's repeated attempts to induce sentiments. Sanjay Dutt's screen presence in the film is equivalent to Akshay Kumar's contribution to Fear Factor minus his stunts. Imran Khan gives a decent performance though he can go easy on his lip movements. Shruti Hassan is synthetic and fails to impress. Danny is better amongst others but his character is short-lived in the second half. Ravi Kishen, Mithun and Chitrashi are passable. The script of the film relies too much on coincidental luck. Director Soham Shah rubs too hard on luck but at the same time stresses on the adage that 'the only thing certain about luck is it's going to change'. On that thought here's wishing him better luck next time! | |||||||
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The Book of Eli 2010
The Book of Eli is an upcoming post-apocalyptic drama film directed by the Hughes brothers and starring Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman. Filming began in New Mexico in February 2009. The film is scheduled to be released on January 15, 2010.
Premise
In a post-apocalyptic world, a lone hero (Denzel Washington) guards the Book of Eli, which provides knowledge that could redeem society. The despot of a small, makeshift town (Gary Oldman) plans to take possession of the book.[2]
Production
In May 2007, Warner Bros. signed the Hughes brothers to direct The Book of Eli, based on a script by Gary Whitta. The film is the brothers' first since From Hell in 2001.[3] The script was subsequently rewritten by Anthony Peckham, and in September 2008, actor Denzel Washington was cast into the lead role.[4] In the following October, Gary Oldman was cast to star alongside Washington.[2] Filming began in February 2009 in New Mexico.[5]
Cash for Clunkers Car Buying Stimulus Bill
For a list of vehicles eligible for the Cash for Clunkers rebate:
Click here to see eligible new vehicles you can purchase
Click here to see eligible used vehicles you can trade in
Cash for Clunkers — now officially known as the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) — is a federal program passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama on June 24. The program is meant to encourage consumers to trade in older, less fuel-efficient vehicles for new vehicles that get better fuel economy by providing a credit worth up to $4,500. Modeled after several programs that have already been successfully implemented in Europe, the program is expected to begin on July 23 and end on November 1, 2009.
Though final details of the program are still being hashed out by the folks at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), below are details of the Cash for Clunkers program as we know them today. The program would offer a credit that allows consumers to save from $3,500 to $4,500 on a new-car purchase. There are also various credits for trucks and work trucks.
The program divides cars, trucks, SUVs and minivans into several categories, in most cases based on weight and size of the wheelbase. Vehicles that are traded in are to be crushed, not resold, and the sticker price of the replacement vehicle they purchase is not to exceed $45,000. Miles-per-gallon figures below refer to the EPA's "combined" mpg window sticker values.
Consumers should know that in cases where your used car is worth more than $4,500, this bill will probably not make financial sense for you.
Cash for Clunkers at a Glance
| Do I Qualify for the CARS Program? What Are the Vehicle Requirements? | ||||
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| If my current vehicle is a... | Then the new vehicle I buy must be a ... | My new vehicle must get at least this mpg (combined)* | But also improve the mpg by... | The credit I can get is... |
Passenger Automobile
| Passenger Car | 22mpg | 4-9 mpg | $3,500 |
| 10 mpg or more | $4,500 | |||
| Category 1 Truck | 18mpg | 2-4 mpg or more | $3,500 | |
| 5 mpg or more | $4,500 | |||
Category 1 Truck:†
| Passenger Car | 22mpg | 4-9 mpg | $3,500 |
| 10 mpg or more | $4,500 | |||
| Category 1 Truck | 18mpg | 2-4 mpg | $3,500 | |
| 5 mpg or more | $4,500 | |||
Category 2 Truck:†
| Passenger Car | 22mpg | 4-9 mpg | $3,500 |
| 10 mpg or more | $4,500 | |||
| Category 1 Truck | 18mpg | 2-4 mpg or more | $3,500 | |
| 5 mpg or more | $4,500 | |||
| Category 2 Truck | 15mpg | 1 mpg | $3,500 | |
| 2 mpg or more | $4,500 | |||
Category 3 Truck:†
| Category 2 Truck | NA‡ | NA‡ However, the new vehicle must be similar in size or smaller than the trade-in | $3,500 |
| Category 3 Truck | ||||
*MPG requirements are based on EPA's combined city/highway rating
†GVWR = Gross Vehicle Weight Rating
‡Not Applicable; Category 3 trucks do not have EPA MPG ratings
Basic Eligibility Requirements | |
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| Trade-in Vehicle |
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| New Vehicle (Purchased or Leased) |
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Description of Vehicle Categories
Passenger cars: The old car you would like to trade in must have been manufactured in 1984 or later, and must get 18 mpg or less city/highway combined. If the mileage of the new car is at least 4 mpg higher than the old vehicle, the credit will be worth $3,500. If the mileage of the new car is at least 10 mpg higher than the old vehicle, the credit will be worth $4,500.
Category 1 Trucks: These are all SUVs (Chevy Tahoe, Toyota RAV4), minivans (Dodge Caravan) and small pickup trucks such as the Chevy Colorado and Toyota Tacoma. The old vehicle you would like to trade in must have been made in 1984 or later, owned, insured and operated by you for one year, and must get 18 mpg or less city/highway combined. If the mileage of the new vehicle is at least 2 mpg higher than the old vehicle, the credit will be worth $3,500. If the mileage of the new car is at least 5 mpg higher than the old vehicle, the credit will be worth $4,500.
Category 2 Truck: These are full-size pickup trucks such as the Ford F-150 and Toyota Tundra, and full-size vans such as the Ford Econoline. Versions of these trucks and vans that earn an EPA combined rating of 15 mpg or better are eligible for a credit. If the mileage of the new truck is at least 1 mpg higher than the old truck, the credit will be worth $3,500. If the mileage of the new truck is at least 2 mpg higher than the old truck, the credit will be worth $4,500.
Category 3 Truck: These are full-size heavy-duty work trucks such as the Ford F-350, F-450, etc. Under the agreement, consumers can trade in a pre-2002 work truck (any pickup truck or cargo van with a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating from 8,500-10,000 pounds) and receive a credit worth $3,500 for a new work truck in the same or smaller weight class. There will be a finite number of these credits, based on this vehicle class' market share. There are no EPA mileage measures for these trucks; however, because newer models are cleaner than older models, the age requirement ensures that the trade will improve environmental quality. Consumers can also "trade down," receiving a $3,500 credit for trading in an older work truck and purchasing a smaller Category 2 truck weighing 8,500 pounds or less.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Mark Buehrle's perfect game: Lifelong White Sox fan Mike Hall reflects on the moment
My family is made up entirely of White Sox fans. A few years ago we created a season-long game where we all pick "a guy." At the beginning of each April we choose a White Sox player, and for the rest of the season, that player is our guy. When he does something well, we give the family member credit as if they were the one who did something positive. Its like our own uber-simplified form of fantasy baseball. My mom may not know much about the south siders, but she knows that, as she'd say, "Thome's my homey!"This year the rest of my family chose the following players- Jim Thome, Paul Konerko, A.J. Pierzynski, Jermaine Dye, and Carlos Quentin. The common trend is that they're all position players. Except for me and my guy.
Every year we've done this game, I've chosen a guy who will only take the field every fifth game. And its just about a Hall family consensus that I've won our game every year. Why? Because my guy has always been Mark Buehrle.
People are often confused on how to spell his last name. As we know from Thursday, its simple: just seven letters... P-E-R-F-E-C-T.
Like most of you I was texting friends and family from the 7th inning on. I posted more tweets in that final half hour of the game than I normally do in a week. Sitting on my couch I was literally nervous. And I can only imagine what my neighbors would have thought if they heard me scream like a mad man when Dewayne Wise made one of the best catches in regular season baseball history.
Let's pause there for a second. Ozzie put Wise in the game for his defense. (ah, decent call there Skip!) Wise is a lefty. When he got on his horse there in the 9th, it was his right-handed glove that was closest to the wall, giving just enough reach and mobility to make that catch-bobble-catch. And as #31 walked through the sky to make that grab, I couldn't help but remember just a few days ago when the team made a roster change. They had to send an outfielder down to make room for Carlos Quentin. Many were surprised that Kenny Williams sent down right-handed Brian Anderson- a man known for his glove- and kept Wise in Chicago. (ah, decent call there GM!)Though that catch will go down as one of the most legendary in baseball history... it is given that added importance because of the job done by the man on the bump.
Buehrle didn't just throw a perfect game. He did it without his regular catcher behind the plate. He did it in a hitter's park. He did it against the defending league champs. He did it against a pretty good hitting team (2nd best On Base Percentage in MLB, 3rd most runs scored in MLB, 5th most hits in MLB). He did it while, once again, shattering baseball tradition by openly talking about his perfect game to his teammates.
Now for a handful of years I've claimed that he's one of the two most underrated players in baseball, along with Roy Halladay. I still believe that. I'm not going to get caught up in the emotion of the day and say the lefty's a Hall of Famer, cause he's not (yet). But lets look at his stats.
38th round draft pick.
8 full seasons in the majors... 8 seasons of 200+ innings pitched.
30 years old with 132 wins.
4 all star games.
1 all star game start.
1 World Series title.
1 no hitter.
1 perfect game.
How about the valuable things that don't show up in the stats. Like how on the mound, he does his work faster than the Micro Machine guy. (someone clocked how long Buehrle was on the mound Thursday at 32 minutes total). Or how in '05 he started a World Series game, and then the very next game entered in the 14th inning so he could use his tired arm to give the Sox the save. Or the way he handled his latest contract. Do you remember when he was negotiating his new deal in 2007? His concern wasn't more money... everyone knew he could get more money elsewhere. He took less cash to re-sign with the Sox. He wanted to make sure there was a no-trade clause in there...so he could stay in the only MLB uniform he's ever known.Probably at least five great years away from being seriously considered as one of baseball's best. But on the south side he can quit right now and he'll sit right up there with Billy Pierce, Hoyt Wilhelm, Ted Lyons and Red Faber as the best hurlers the black and white have ever seen.
Personally, I've only had a chance to meet him one time. I was lucky enough to throw out a first pitch in July of that magical 2005 season. And sure enough, Buehrle was the man at the receiving end of the ceremonial toss. As he jogged back to the mound to give me the ball to keep, he joked, "Now make sure you're nice to me on TV."
Before I end this, Cubs fans probably haven't continued to read this article... they probably quit once they realized there wasn't much here for them. But I'll end it by reminding north side supporters... at least you're not the Mets. The entire Metropolitan organization has zero no hitters... Mark Buehrle has two.
That's my kinda guy.
Jon Gosselin Dating Kate Major
He Moves Quickly!
Octodad Jon Gosselin, 32, is now dating Star Magazine reporter Kate Major. According to New York Daily News, Kate Major, 26 had not intended for this to happen. As Kate Major explains, "I went to do a story on Jon and ended up falling for him." Jon Gosselin and Kate Major are currently vacationing in Southampton where they are staying with Michael Lohan (father of Lindsay).Jon Gosselin wastes no time. Although he has not completed divorce procedures with wife Kate, he has already dated Hailey Glassman, 22 and now Kate Major. Of course, given Jason Mesnick's Bachelor fiasco with Melissa Rycroft and Molly Malaney, Jon Gosselin's rapid switcheroo is not terribly shocking in comparison. If Kate Major's relationship with Jon Gosselin lasts, one has to wonder if he would be ready to have kids again in the future.
Jon Gosselin Now Dating Kate Major: Reporters Dating Celebrities
One does not normally hear of reporters dating their subjects. If anything, many public figures spend hours hiding from the media and paparazzi. For Princess Diana, her attempts to escape the paparazzi had tragic consequences. Yet it may not be so unusual for reporters to become increasingly fascinated with their subjects on a personal level.
In Sleepless in Seattle, Meg Ryan's character was so moved by Tom Hanks' radio call that she wanted to learn more. Being a journalist, her character had an advantage of having the research tools to learn more about his character, where he lives, and his occupation. Interestingly enough, actress Meg Ryan herself has a journalism degree from Northwestern.
Of course, on paper Tom Hanks' character from Sleepless in Seattle seems more appealing than Jon Gosselin. Tom Hanks' character was an architect who missed his deceased wife, had a precocious son, and was looking for genuine love. Jon Gosselin is a beleaguered reality star with eight children and tabloid-ridden divorce proceedings. Of course, maybe Kate Major sees another side of him.
Maybe Kate Major feels compassion for Jon Gosselin's recent woes. Maybe she is dating him in hopes of gaining exclusive information for her stories. Or maybe she genuinely likes him. Only time will tell if Jon and Kate Major will last.
Kate Major is not the only reporter to date a television or film personality. In January 2009, Hollyscoop reported Renee Zellweger dating MSNBC's legal correspondent Dan Abrams. Yet Dan Abrams has also been romantically linked in the past with Elle Mcpherson and Law and Order's Elizabeth Rohm. Dating a reporter was a departure for Renee Zellweger, as she has been romantically linked in the past with Jim Carrey, George Clooney, and Kenny Chesney.
Sources:
Star magazine reporter Kate Major professes love for Jon Gosselin as couple vacation in Southampton, Amanda Sidman, New York Daily News
Renee Zellweger Dating MSNBC Reporter, Bridget Daly, Hollyscoop