Breaking News Events

[Hollylane]

Originally Posted by Corkey

http://news.yahoo.com/driller-wins-a...182239526.html

Just one of the many hazards of Fracking.

#()$*)(*$#*@#)*(#$(*$.....Apparently I have no words to explain how much fracking pisses me off....

[Kätzchen]

I've always believed in never going to bed angry or upset and to do whatever a person can, to make things better for each other and everyone involved.

Story one: >>> LINK

Mr. & Mrs. Yeager (Gordon and Norma) - married for 72 years - died in a hospital holding hands together in the ICU after their fatal traffic crash near home. You'll have to read the article, but this is no doubt the sweetest love story ever shared, to the best of my recollection. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking this, but this is what I'm holding out for - a love that is sheer devotion to each other, through thick and thin, for the lifespan of the entire relationship, to go up in flames together, because I couldn't go on without the other person (the love of my life, if I had one).

I'm sure it will touch your heart like it did mine.



Story two: >>> LINK

Kevin Cotter (a 38 y,o, from Arizona) wrote a best seller which is due out tomorrow in book stores - turned his heartbreak into healing joy for himself and others, with the help of those who have loved him and encouraged him on past his pain. The cover of the book is a photo of him in his ex-wife's bridal gown, out it the snowy woods, posing with his rifle. LOLOL!

I hope this brings laughter to your heart tonight like it did mine.



*night night*

[Nat]

So there are some reports that Muammar al-Gadhafi is dead and others saying he is captured and wounded.

Okay I think it's looking like dead.

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by Nat

So there are some reports that Muammar al-Gadhafi is dead and others saying he is captured and wounded.

I saw that, if he is dead, I so hope the US had nothing to do with it. I think we should stay away from being assassins.

[UofMfan]

Originally Posted by Nat

So there are some reports that Muammar al-Gadhafi is dead and others saying he is captured and wounded.

Okay I think it's looking like dead.

Indeed, there have been conflicting reports.

This is the latest from HoffPo, what stands out to me is the fact that the State Department has not confirmed his capture or death.

Warning, there are some graphic photos in this article.

[AtLast]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44971257...ica/?GT1=43001

'We have been waiting for this moment': Libya confirms Gadhafi is dead
Al-Arabiya TV says it will broadcast photo of blooded deposed leader

SIRTE, Libya — Deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has been killed, the Libyan prime minister confirmed Thursday, following news of his capture and reports of his death.

"We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Moammar Gadhafi has been killed," Jibril told a news conference.

The ousted dictator died of wounds suffered in his capture near his hometown of Sirte, according to a senior National Transitional Council military official and a government minister.

"He was killed in an attack by the fighters. There is footage of that," the NTC's information minister, Mahmoud Shammam, told Reuters.

The military official, Abdel Majid Mlegta, told Reuters that Gadhafi was taken at dawn on Thursday as he tried to flee in a convoy that NATO warplanes had attacked.

"There was a lot of firing against his group and he died," said Mlegta.

But Libyan television showed images on Thursday of troops surrounding two large drainage pipes under a highway where it said toppled leader Gadhafi was found.

NATO said its aircraft fired on a convoy near Sirte earlier, but would not confirm reports that Gadhafi had been a passenger.

"We are checking and assessing the situation,"' a NATO official said. "Clearly these are very significant developments, which will take time to confirm. If it is true, then this is truly a historic day for the people of Libya.''

AFP news agency provided a photograph that appeared to show a wounded or dead Gadhafi. The image has not been independently verified.

NBC's Adrienne Mong, reporting from Sirte, saw a massive convoy heading West toward Misrata. Gadhafi's body was rumored to be in the convoy, she reported, but NBC could not confirm that.

Rebels also said they had captured Gadhafi's son, Mo'tassim, alive in Sirte, Arab news channels Al Jazeera TV and Al-Arabiya reported.

The White House was saying little Thursday morning about developments as it waited for official confirmation from Libya. Past reports of Gadhafi family deaths or captures have proven incorrect.

Even before official U.S. confirmation of Gadhafi's fate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., reacting to reports that Gadhafi was dead, hailed "an end to the first phase of the Libyan revolution." The U.S. and Europe "must now deepen our support of the Libyan people," McCain, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

Military official Mlegta reported Gadhafi's death after Libyan interim government fighters took Sirte on Thursday, extinguishing the last significant resistance by forces loyal to the former leader.

Col. Roland Lavoie, spokesman for NATO's operational headquarters in Naples, Italy, said the alliance's aircraft Thursday morning struck two vehicles of pro-Gadhafi forces "which were part of a larger group maneuvering in the vicinity of Sirte," the AP reported.

Mlegta said Gadhafi was taken away by ambulance after NATO's attack.

Gadhafi's head of armed forces, Abu Bakr Younus Jabr, was killed during the attack, NTC's Mlegta said. Ahmed Ibrahim, a cousin and adviser of Gadhafi, was captured along with former government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim, he added.

A Libyan government fighter gave an apparently different account of Gadhafi's capture to the one provided by Mlegta. The unnamed fighter claimed Gadhafi was hiding in a hole, shouting, "Don't shoot, don't shoot," when he was caught.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15385955

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

I saw that, if he is dead, I so hope the US had nothing to do with it. I think we should stay away from being assassins.

Not to worry. It was the British and the French, not the Americans.

cheers
Aj

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Not to worry. It was the British and the French, not the Americans.

cheers
Aj

Not much better, but some. Thank you!

I know its way shallow of me, but it always bugs me when the French can take the moral high road over us.

[UofMfan]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

Not much better, but some. Thank you!

I know its way shallow of me, but it always bugs me when the French can take the moral high road over us.

Well this snipet from HuffPo says it was NATO, which means we were all in it.


"Al Jazeera and Libyan state television are reporting that the Libyan dictator has been killed during a gunbattle in Sirte. A senior National Transitional Council official, Abdel Majid, told Reuters by telephone that Gaddafi has died of wounds suffered during his capture in Sirte. Reuters reports that he was wounded in both legs as he "tried to flee in a convoy which NATO warplanes attacked."

[Blade]

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/201...nd-killed.html

SIRTE, Libya - Moammar Gadhafi, who ruled Libya with a dictatorial grip for 42 years until he was ousted by his own people in an uprising that turned into a bloody civil war, was killed Thursday by revolutionary fighters overwhelming his hometown, Sirte, the last major bastion of resistance two months after his regime fell.

The 69-year-old Gadhafi is the first leader to be killed in the Arab Spring wave of popular uprisings that swept the Middle East, demanding the end of autocratic rulers and the establishment of greater democracy.

"We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Moammar Gadhafi has been killed," Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril told a news conference in the capital Tripoli. Interim government officials said one of Gadhafi's sons, Muatassim, was also killed in Sirte and that another, Seif al-Islam, was captured wounded with a gunshot to the leg.

Footage aired on Al-Jazeera television showed Gadhafi was captured wounded but alive in Sirte. The goateed, balding Gadhafi is seen in a bloodsoaked shirt, and his face is bloodied. Standing upright, he is shoved along by a crowd of fighters on a Sirte roadside, chanting "God is great."

Gadhafi appears to struggle against them, stumbling and shouting as the fighters push him onto the hood of a pickup truck. "We want him alive. We want him alive," one man shouts before Gadhahi is dragged away, some fighters pulling his hair, toward an ambulance.

Later footage showed fighters rolling Gadhafi's lifeless body over on the pavement, stripped to the waist and a pool of blood under his head.

His death decisively ends a regime that had turned Libya into an international pariah and ran the oil-rich nation by the whims and brutality of its notoriously eccentric leader. Libya now enters a new era, but its turmoil may not be over. The former rebels who now rule are disorganized and face rebuilding a country stripped of institutions. They have already shown signs of infighting, with divisions between geographical areas and Islamist and more secular ideologies.

A picture began to emerge of Gadhafi's last hours, though accounts still held contradictions.

Most accounts agreed Gadhafi had been holed up with heavily armed supporters in the last few buildings held by regime loyalists in his Mediterranean coastal hometown of Sirte, furiously battling advancing revolutionary fighters.

At one point, a convoy tried to flee and was hit by NATO airstrikes, carried out by French warplanes. France's Defense Minister Gerard Longuet said the 80-vehicle convoy was carrying Gadhafi and was trying to escape the city. The strikes stopped the convoy but did not destroy it, and then revolutionary fighters moved in on the vehicle carrying Gadhafi himself.

Fathi Bashaga, spokesman for the Misrata military council, whose forces were involved in the Sirte siege, said fighters encircled the convoy and exchanged fire with several of the vehicles. In one, they found Gadhafi, wounded in the neck, and took him to an ambulance. "What do you want?" Gadhafi said to the approaching revolutionaries, Bashaga said, citing witnesses.

Gadhafi bled to death from his wounds a half-hour later, he said.

Abdel-Jalil Abdel-Aziz, a doctor who was part of the medical team that accompanied the body in the ambulance and examined it, said Gadhafi died from two bullet wounds, to the head and chest.

"You can't imagine my happiness today. I can't describe my happiness," he told The Associated Press. "The tyranny is gone. Now the Libyan people can rest."

Gadhafi's body was then paraded through the streets of the nearby city of Misrata on top of a vehicle surrounded by a large crowd chanting, "The blood of the martyrs will not go in vain," according to footage aired on Al-Arabiya television. The fighters who killed Gadhafi are believed to have come from Misrata, a city that suffered a brutal weeks-long siege by Gadhafi's forces during the eight-month long civil war.

Celebratory gunfire and cries of "God is Great" rang out across the capital Tripoli. Cars honked their horns and people hugged each other. In Sirte, the ecstatic former rebels celebrated the city's fall after weeks of bloody siege by firing endless rounds into the sky, pumping their guns, knives and even a meat cleaver in the air and singing the national anthem.

Libya's new leaders had said they would declare the country's "liberation" after the fall of Sirte.

The death of Gadhafi — and the death and capture of his two most powerful sons — adds greater solidity to that declaration.

It rules out a scenario that some had feared — that he might flee deeper into Libya's southern deserts and lead a resistance campaign against Libya's rulers. Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam told AP that Muatassim Gadhafi, his father's former national security adviser, was killed in Sirte. The justice miniister said Gadhafi's son and one-time heir apparent, Seif al-Islam, had been wounded in the leg and was being held in a hospital in the city of Zlitan, northwest of Sirte.

Sirte's fall caps weeks of heavy, street-by-street battles as revolutionary fighters besieged the city. Despite the fall of Tripoli on Aug. 21, Gadhafi loyalists mounted fierce resistance in several areas, including Sirte, preventing Libya's new leaders from declaring full victory in the eight-month civil war. Earlier this week, revolutionary fighters gained control of one stronghold, Bani Walid.

By Tuesday, fighters said they had squeezed Gadhafi's forces in Sirte into a residential area of about 700 square yards but were still coming under heavy fire from surrounding buildings.

In an illustration of how heavy the fighting has been, it took the anti-Gadhafi fighters two days to capture a single residential building.

Reporters watched as the final assault began around 8 a.m. Thursday and ended about 90 minutes later. Just before the battle, about five carloads of Gadhafi loyalists tried to flee the enclave down the coastal highway that leads out of the city. But they were met by gunfire from the revolutionaries, who killed at least 20 of them.

Col. Roland Lavoie, spokesman for NATO's operational headquarters in Naples, Italy, said the alliance's aircraft Thursday morning struck two vehicles of pro-Gadhafi forces "which were part of a larger group maneuvering in the vicinity of Sirte."

The Misrata Military Council, one of the command groups, said its fighters captured Gadhafi.

One fighter who said he was at the battle told AP Television News that the final fight took place at an opulent compound for visiting dignitaries built by Gadhafi's regime. Adel Busamir said the convoy tried to break out but after being hit it turned back and re-entered the compound. Several hundred fighters assaulted.

"We found him there," Busamir said. "We saw them beating him (Gadhafi) and someone shot him with a 9mm pistol ... then they took him away."

Military spokesman Col. Ahmed Bani in Tripoli told Al-Jazeera TV that a wounded Gadhafi "tried to resist (revolutionary forces) so they took him down."

"I reassure everyone that this story has ended and this book has closed," he said.

After the battle, revolutionaries began searching homes and buildings looking for any hiding Gadhafi fighters. At least 16 were captured, along with cases of ammunition and trucks loaded with weapons. Reporters saw revolutionaries beating captured Gadhafi men in the back of trucks and officers intervening to stop them.

In the central quarter where Thursday's final battle took place, the fighters looking like the same ragtag force that started the uprising eight months ago jumped up and down with joy and flashed V-for-victory signs. Some burned the green Gadhafi flag, then stepped on it with their boots.

They chanted "God is great" while one fighter climbed a traffic light pole to unfurl the revolution's flag, which he first kissed. Discarded military uniforms of Gadhafi's fighters littered the streets. One revolutionary fighter waved a silver trophy in the air while another held up a box of firecrackers, then set them off.

"Our forces control the last neighborhood in Sirte," Hassan Draoua, a member of Libya's interim National Transitional Council, told The Associated Press in Tripoli. "The city has been liberated."

Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/201...#ixzz1bLt4jAdi

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

Not much better, but some. Thank you!

I know its way shallow of me, but it always bugs me when the French can take the moral high road over us.

I'm curious, now that it appears that all the French did was force the convoy to stop but that Gaddafi's actual demise came at the hands of Libyans, does that change the calculation at all?

Cheers
Aj

[Toughy]

He was in power 42 years. The US bombed him for 36 of those 42 through Republican and Democratic Presidents.....well we bombed him except for that 10 years W Bush was the pResident....W said he was a 'reformed terrorist'.

The people are rising up all over the world and winning. It gives me hope we can win in the 'free democratic country' called the USA. It's a good day.

Occupy Wall Street all over the US and the world.

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by Toughy

He was in power 42 years. The US bombed him for 36 of those 42 through Republican and Democratic Presidents.....well we bombed him except for that 10 years W Bush was the pResident....W said he was a 'reformed terrorist'.

The people are rising up all over the world and winning. It gives me hope we can win in the 'free democratic country' called the USA. It's a good day.

Occupy Wall Street all over the US and the world.

I do have a different gut feeling about OWS. It really might turn into something world wide that will effect change. But until the US has public finance of elections ONLY, we have a hell of a long way to go.

The Libyan people did the final deed taking him out. Never thought he would stand trial.

[atomiczombie]

There are pictures of his dead body all over the internet and TV. That is just gross and I wish people would stop showing it. When they say he is dead, I believe it. I don't want to look at his bloody corpse.

[AtLast]

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquak...c71667366.html

Oh, yeah.... felt this one! BART track now being looked at for damage. I certainly felt a jolt!!!

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Toughy

He was in power 42 years. The US bombed him for 36 of those 42 through Republican and Democratic Presidents.....well we bombed him except for that 10 years W Bush was the pResident....W said he was a 'reformed terrorist'.

The people are rising up all over the world and winning. It gives me hope we can win in the 'free democratic country' called the USA. It's a good day.

Occupy Wall Street all over the US and the world.

I can't find where we bombed Libya for 36 years. I did several searches trying to find where we were bombing Libya for 36 years and could find nothing. I found several incidents over the period between 1970 and 2006 but nothing that would suggest that we were bombing him pretty much continuously over that time.

The incidents I found were:

Gulf of Sidra incident #1 in 1981-- dogfight between US Navy fighters and Libyan air force. No civilian casualties. President Reagan.

Action in Sidra gulf March 1986 -- US Navy conducting exercises in international waters near Libya. Libyans fire missiles at US ships. US ships fire back at Libyans. No civilian casualties. President Reagan.

Bombing of Tripoli April 1986 -- US aircraft bomb Tripoli in retaliation for bombing of a nightclub in Germany frequented by US military personnel. President Reagan

Gulf of Sidra incident #2 in 1989 -- another dogfight between US Navy fighters and Libyan air force. President Bush the Elder

I can find nothing earlier than 1981, nothing later than 1989 until we get to the present. So nothing under Nixon, Ford, Carter, Clinton or Bush the Younger. I can find only one actual air strike against Libya and that's the 1986 incident. The other three incidents all seem to be acts of aggression started by the Libyans. Gaddafi had claimed the entire Gulf of Sidra was Libyan territorial waters. The recognized territorial limit is 12 nautical miles. Libya claimed that their territory extended out 60 nautical miles. The Libyan military attacked the US Navy in international waters. By all rights of international law and convention, even our military is allowed to defend itself when attacked.

Now, I was in the military for three of those working crypto at the NSA at Ft Meade for the 1986 and 1989 actions. The bombing was an act of retaliation, the two dogfights were acts of aggression on the part of the Libyans.

Now, one more point lest someone claim that we had no business being in waters anywhere *near* Libya. This was the 1980s. The Cold War was still on. We *know* that one Russian war plan called for starving NATO for oil by closing off the Persian Gulf and seizing all the nations surrounding them if allied with the West. It would have been an act of military negligence for us *not* to hold exercises in an area we were going to have to try to keep the Russians out of. (NATO without oil wouldn't last a week against what the Red Army had planned for Western Europe.) At any rate, if we had incurred into their territory that would be one thing but they attacked our ships in international waters.

I understand (but disagree with) the rush to think that if there's someone more culpable for an international incident that it *must* be either the United States or some other Western nation if the US can't be blamed but that's simply not always the case.

Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

Lest it be lost, congratulations to the Libyan people for being once and for all done with their dictator. Well done! I hope they create some kind of a republic. I hope that they can keep it.

Cheers
Aj

[Toughy]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

I can't find where we bombed Libya for 36 years. I did several searches trying to find where we were bombing Libya for 36 years and could find nothing. I found several incidents over the period between 1970 and 2006 but nothing that would suggest that we were bombing him pretty much continuously over that time.

The incidents I found were:

Gulf of Sidra incident #1 in 1981-- dogfight between US Navy fighters and Libyan air force. No civilian casualties. President Reagan.

Action in Sidra gulf March 1986 -- US Navy conducting exercises in international waters near Libya. Libyans fire missiles at US ships. US ships fire back at Libyans. No civilian casualties. President Reagan.

Bombing of Tripoli April 1986 -- US aircraft bomb Tripoli in retaliation for bombing of a nightclub in Germany frequented by US military personnel. President Reagan

Gulf of Sidra incident #2 in 1989 -- another dogfight between US Navy fighters and Libyan air force. President Bush the Elder

I can find nothing earlier than 1981, nothing later than 1989 until we get to the present. So nothing under Nixon, Ford, Carter, Clinton or Bush the Younger. I can find only one actual air strike against Libya and that's the 1986 incident. The other three incidents all seem to be acts of aggression started by the Libyans. Gaddafi had claimed the entire Gulf of Sidra was Libyan territorial waters. The recognized territorial limit is 12 nautical miles. Libya claimed that their territory extended out 60 nautical miles. The Libyan military attacked the US Navy in international waters. By all rights of international law and convention, even our military is allowed to defend itself when attacked.

Now, I was in the military for three of those working crypto at the NSA at Ft Meade for the 1986 and 1989 actions. The bombing was an act of retaliation, the two dogfights were acts of aggression on the part of the Libyans.

Now, one more point lest someone claim that we had no business being in waters anywhere *near* Libya. This was the 1980s. The Cold War was still on. We *know* that one Russian war plan called for starving NATO for oil by closing off the Persian Gulf and seizing all the nations surrounding them if allied with the West. It would have been an act of military negligence for us *not* to hold exercises in an area we were going to have to try to keep the Russians out of. (NATO without oil wouldn't last a week against what the Red Army had planned for Western Europe.) At any rate, if we had incurred into their territory that would be one thing but they attacked our ships in international waters.

I understand (but disagree with) the rush to think that if there's someone more culpable for an international incident that it *must* be either the United States or some other Western nation if the US can't be blamed but that's simply not always the case.

Cheers
Aj

I dunno.......how about we think about bombing as something different than those big ass possible UFO bombers flying over northern Africa and think about drones that the US military has been using for more years than will make civilians feel comfortable.

Daddy Bush killed whatshisface's girl child in a tent somewhere in that northern desert.

Let us who have served, not contribute to the whitewashing of war. Find a US government that has not been involved in trying to get rid of whateveris the spelling of his name since he took power. Please name me a US government ....other than that assfuckingmonkey who occupied the White House for 10 years bedfore Obama......that was not involved in a lone or NATO action that wanted to change the government of Lybia.

Don't rely on what the mainstream media tells you is happening.......

we only have to use Occupy Wallstreet as the example of media ignoring what is going on....media changing the truth for what money says is true........

[Toughy]

this is not about culpalibilty (sp) ..........blame is always available to everyone involved