The fleet that the British sent to retake the Falkland Islands in 1982 departed so quickly that there was little time to distribute the stores over the various ships. The story is told that their entire stock of Mars bars was all in one ship, and the sailors and marines were desperately hoping the Argentinians wouldn't sink that one.

O'Reilly calls David Corn a "guttersnipe."
 

[QUOTE=kladner;395916]Wow! Bill O'Reilly is a serial liar? :shock: Whoda thunk it?[/QUOTE]

[URL="http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/02/david-corn-hits-back-at-bill-oreilly-202828.html"]Corn strikes back[/URL] with facts instead of name calling. :davar55:

[QUOTE=kladner;395938][URL="http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/02/david-corn-hits-back-at-bill-oreilly-202828.html"]Corn strikes back[/URL] with facts instead of name calling. :davar55:[/QUOTE]

Here is a follow-on to the Billo story. I don't really expect anything to happen to O'Reilly for "telling some stretchers[B]**[/B]," since Fox's niche is telling bigger "stretchers" than most of the rest of the MSM. Still, I love hearing a chorus calling for his suspension, a la Brian Williams.

[QUOTE][B]**[/B]YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of [I] The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; [/I] but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly -- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some [B]**stretchers,**[/B] as I said before. [/QUOTE]

Ahem. But as I was saying, I can't help delighting in O'Reilly's fuming and flailing. Here is a [URL="https://t.co/eJSX78uy5C"]direct link[/URL] to the Facebook post by Eric Jon Engberg, who was also in BA in the Falklands wrap-up. He calls BS in detail on BO's claims. The real kicker is that BO was ordered home after he violated explicit policy regarding the use of TV lights in the street at night. The bureau chief considered him disruptive and detrimental to unit cohesion, and that he had risked the life of the cameraman by insisting on lights. (The bureau chief was an ex-Marine, hence the mil-speak description of BO.)

It is interesting how some people get jumped on for lying and some do not.

[url]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/23/robert-mcdonald-special-forces_n_6739184.html[/url]

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;396242]It is interesting how some people get jumped on for lying and some do not.

[URL]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/23/robert-mcdonald-special-forces_n_6739184.html[/URL][/QUOTE]

It [U]is[/U] interesting. In a just world, O'Reilly would be doing a time-out, but as noted above, lying is just part of the job description at Fox. (This is not intended to imply that other outlets [U]don't lie[/U] by omission, spin, or commission. Fox is just more blatant about it.)

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;396242]It is interesting how some people get jumped on for lying and some do not.

[url]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/23/robert-mcdonald-special-forces_n_6739184.html[/url][/QUOTE]

[Half-heartedly] In McDonald's defense, he did actually complete Army ranger training, so less of a 'stretcher' than whole-cloth-blowhard Bill O'Reilly.

=======================

[url=www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-23/israels-netanyahu-lied-about-iran-infamous-clear-red-line-threat-mossad-leak-reveals]Israel's Netanyahu Lied About Iran With Infamous "Clear Red Line" Threat, Mossad Leak Reveals[/url]

Will this revelation affect his upcoming scheduled lying to a joint session of US Congress?

[url=www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/02/gazas-natural-gas-became-epicenter-international-power-struggle.html]How Gaza’s Natural Gas Became the Epicenter of an International Power Struggle[/url]
[quote]Guess what? Almost all the current wars, uprisings, and other conflicts in the Middle East are connected by a single thread, which is also a threat: these conflicts are part of an increasingly frenzied competition to find, extract, and market fossil fuels whose future consumption is guaranteed to lead to a set of cataclysmic environmental crises.

Amid the many fossil-fueled conflicts in the region, one of them, packed with threats, large and small, has been largely overlooked, and Israel is at its epicenter. Its origins can be traced back to the early 1990s when Israeli and Palestinian leaders began sparring over rumored natural gas deposits in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Gaza. In the ensuing decades, it has grown into a many-fronted conflict involving several armies and three navies. In the process, it has already inflicted mindboggling misery on tens of thousands of Palestinians, and it threatens to add future layers of misery to the lives of people in Syria, Lebanon, and Cyprus. Eventually, it might even immiserate Israelis.

Resource wars are, of course, nothing new. Virtually the entire history of Western colonialism and post-World War II globalization has been animated by the effort to find and market the raw materials needed to build or maintain industrial capitalism. This includes Israel’s expansion into, and appropriation of, Palestinian lands. But fossil fuels only moved to center stage in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship in the 1990s, and that initially circumscribed conflict only spread to include Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Turkey, and Russia after 2010.[/quote]

The upcoming addressing of the US congress by Netanyahu will for sure be a speech given at a pivotal time and therefore go prominently into the history books. Can't wait to see the livestream and hear which items made it to the final draft.

[url=pando.com/2015/02/27/the-war-nerd-why-did-mohammed-emwazi-become-jihadi-john/]The War Nerd: Why did Mohammed Emwazi become Jihadi John?[/url] | PandoDaily

Pair of articles on the Houthi rebellion in (takeover of) Yemen by Pando's Gary Brecher:

o [url=pando.com/2015/03/28/the-war-nerd-a-brief-history-of-the-yemen-clusterfck/]The War Nerd: A Brief History Of The Yemen Clusterf*ck[/url]
[quote]The Houthi are being bombed now by the Saudi AF, which is in a way the sincerest form of Saudi flattery. The Saudis are afraid of these Shia Yemeni. One of the reasons that “…people of the [Saudi] South know very little about Yemeni politics” is that the Saudi rulers make sure they don’t get any information. The last thing the Saudi authorities want is for the Shia of SW Saudi Arabia to remember that they were once part of a huge, powerful Shia kingdom that stretched south to the Indian Ocean. Najran was once part of that kingdom. It’s only been Saudi territory since 1934, when the Saud family leased the province from Yemen on a 20-year term. They kept it when the term expired, because by that time Saudi Arabia was rich and closely allied with the US and Britain, while Yemen was weak and poor.

The Saudis, with sleazy friends in Langley and unlimited cash to throw around, have incredible control over world media. They do such a good job of suppressing news about their long war with the Shia of Yemen that, until I lived there and got the story first hand, I didn’t even know that the Shia of Najran had actually risen up in armed rebellion in 2000. And it was an [url=https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/holiday-inn-surrection/]incredible story[/url] of a glorious, though doomed, rebellion.

In 2000, the Shia of Najran got sick of being told by their Saudi Provincial Governor (a Saudi princeling, naturally) that they were [i]rafidii[/i] (“nay-sayers”) and [i]takfiri[/i] (“apostates”). The Najrani grabbed their guns, scared off the Saudi national police and drove Prince Mishaal into hiding in the Najran Holiday Inn. You can still see the Holiday Inn; it’s as good as a Gettysburg monument to the locals, though the bullet holes have, unfortunately, been covered over.

That unknown rebellion ended with massive Saudi secret-police reprisals—more holes in the desert than a Joe Pesci golf tour. Once they’d killed off the ringleaders, the Saudi authorities went back to slower, less bloody methods.[/quote]
Also lots of good stuff on the history of the Turks and British-colonialists (who finally were forced to decamp in 1967) in Yemen, including gems like this summary of the state of Yemen and the wider Arabian peninsula in the 1960s:
[quote]Arabs were getting very “modern” at that time. It’s important to remember that. You know why they stopped getting modern, and started getting interested in reactionary, Islamist repression?

Because the modernizing Arabs were all killed by the US, Britain, Israel, and the Saudis.

That was what happened in the North Yemen Civil War, from 1962-1967. After a coup, Nasser backed modernist Yemeni officers against the new Shia ruler. The Saudis might not have liked Shia, but they hated secularist, modernizing nationalists much more. At least the Northern Shia kings ruled by divine right and invoked Allah after their heretical fashion. That was much better, to the Saudi view, than a secular Yemen.

And the west agreed. To the Americans of that time, “secular” sounded a little bit commie. To the British, it sounded anti-colonial and unprofitable. To the Israelis, it raised the horrible specter of an Arab world ruled by effective 20th-century executives. States like that might become dangerous enemies, while an Arab world stuck in religious wars, dynastic feuds, and poverty sounded wonderful.

Why do you think the IDF has not attacked Islamic State or Jabhat Al Nusra even once?[/quote]


o [url=pando.com/2015/03/30/the-war-nerd-to-lighten-the-mood-heres-the-cheery-tale-of-dammaj/]The War Nerd: To lighten the mood, here’s the cheery tale of Dammaj[/url]

[URL="http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/26/8287509/ikea-refugee-shelter-flatpack-photos-iraq-syria"]Ikea's flat-pack refugee shelter is entering production[/URL]
UN refugee agency buys 10,000 lightweight 'Better Shelters' for delivery this summer
[QUOTE]Each unit takes about four hours to assemble and is designed to last for three years — far longer than conventional refugee shelters, which last about six months.

That's important considering the prolonged refugee crisis that has unfolded across the Middle East. The ongoing war in Syria has spurred nearly 4 million people to leave their homes, according to UN figures, and as the conflict enters it's fifth year, there's still no end in sight. Many have sought refuge in neighboring countries, while others have tried to cross into Europe.

The crisis has put considerable strain on refugee camps, but the Ikea Foundation, Ikea's philanthropic arm, hopes the Better Shelter could make life a little easier for those staying there. Measuring about 188 square feet, each shelter accommodates five people and includes a rooftop solar panel that powers a built-in lamp and USB outlet. The structure ships just like any other piece of Ikea furniture, with insulated, lightweight polymer panels, pipes, and wires packed into a cardboard box. According to Ikea, it only takes about four hours to assemble.[/QUOTE]