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FRIDAY,  JUNE 12,  2009

THE FEAR, THE QUIVERING - AT 9:50 P.M. ET:  There is United Nations action on North Korea.  All right, please act nicely and stop laughing.  But there really is.  The New York Times gives us all the drama, wrapped up in a clenched fist.  Well...

UNITED NATIONS — Responding vigorously to a recent North Korean nuclear test, the Security Council voted unanimously Friday on an enhanced package of sanctions that, among other things, calls upon United Nations members to inspect cargo vessels and airplanes suspected of carrying military matériel in or out of the country.

The sanctions in Resolution 1874 were considered tougher than previous versions largely because China and Russia, the closest thing North Korea has to friends, agreed to a mixture of financial and trade restrictions designed to choke off military development.

That actually is the good news.  Now for the asterisks:

Aside from a mandatory ban on arms exports, however, the steps are recommendations rather than requirements, so the potential impact depends on the determination of member states. Both China and Russia pushed to dilute some of the mandatory sanctions sought by the West, Japan and South Korea, and the hesitancy about going too far in punishing North Korea was reflected in their statements.

Oh.  So what, actually, did they do?  Well, China has already issued a statement warning against using force to enforce the no-force resolution. 

But U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice says this step was unprecedented.

Why don't I believe that?  You don't think it's the history of the U.N., do you? 

The story has some further explanation:

But many analysts and former diplomats question whether the new measures will have enough bite to break a cycle — North Korean threats and weapons tests, followed by American-led sanctions and short-lived deals — and persuade the North to give up its nuclear weapons and missile programs once and for all.

“Sanctions won’t bring North Korea to its knees,” said Kim Keun-sik, a specialist on North Korea at Kyungnam University in Seoul. “The North knows this very well, from having lived with economic sanctions of one sort or another for the past 60 years.”

So again, we wait and see, after being assured that we're getting "tough" with North Korea.

Now you can laugh.

June 12, 2009   Permalink

YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE - AT 8:07 P.M. ET:  Just read this slowly and carefully.  It's from London's Telegraph, but it's about the United States:

Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country...

...In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.

COMMENT:  Who authorized this?  Do you remember voting for this?  Aren't these local decisions?  What "charities" are involved, and what gives them the moral right to try to dictate to cities?

I have never seen, in my lifetime, a power grab by the federal government and its favored organizations as great as we're seeing now.  Let's haul out that old colonial flag, with its warning, "Don't tread on me."

June 12, 2009   Permalink

WHY, JUST LIKE CHICAGO - AT 7:10 P.M. ET:  The president of the United States should feel right at home as they count the election results in Iran, which voted for president today.  Ah, it's wonderful when folks overseas copy some of our ways.  From Fox News:

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's interior ministry said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took nearly 70 percent of the early votes counted, but his pro-reform rival countered that he was the clear victor and warned of possible fraud in the election.

The dispute rose up even before polls closed early Saturday, heightening tensions across the capital where emotions have been running at a fever pitch. Mir Hossein Mousavi, the reformist candidate, suggested he might challenge the results.

COMMENT:  It's time for Al Gore's lawyers from 2000 to get on planes and rush over.  Don't be shocked if we're told that the deciding votes will come from a place called Floridastan.  And we know who'll steal this election.  BUSH (!!).

June 12, 2009     Permalink

THE DOUBLE STANDARD - AT 11:22 A.M. ET:  We've had a few things to say in recent days about the remarkable double standard that exists in the nation's media and among some of its "cause" groups.  The latest example, of course, is the silence of so many on the left, especially "feminists," regarding David Letterman's crude "jokes" about Sarah Palin's daughters, and about Sarah Palin herself.  (He also insulted airline attendants.)  Letterman gets a pass because he's on the "correct" side of politics. 

A careful reader alerts us to some stories surrounding another double standard.  When abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered, the press gave saturation coverage, and some commentators suggested that "right wing" talk radio and talk TV might be to blame for the killing.  But when an American soldier was murdered outside a recruiting station by a Muslim extremist, on American soil, coverage was minimum, and we were immediately told that this was another "isolated incident."  Nothing to see here, folks, nothing to see, despite a number of "isolated incidents" involved Muslim extremists in the years since 9-11.

But, as our reader notes, there was more to the story.  A few solid journalists did start investigating, including a team, commendably, from ABC.  The ABC reporters recalled the convictions of three Muslim extremists for terror-related crimes, and reported:

All three terrorists worshiped and socialized at a small mosque in Columbus, Ohio, and, according to David B. Smith, an attorney for Faris (ed note:  one of the convicted men), were part of a larger group of jihadists and extremists who frequented the mosque.

The FBI now is investigating reports of links to that same mosque by Muslim-convert Abdulhakim Muhammad who allegedly shot and killed one soldier Monday and critically wounded another in a drive-by attack on a Little Rock, Ark., recruiting station, ABC News has learned.

I haven't seen that anywhere else.  I'd like some answers.

Another story noted by our reader, from the Ohio State University newspaper:

A female Ohio State student was trying to catch a bus to class Tuesday afternoon when she became the victim of a random stabbing.

Police say the 20-year-old student was walking down Stinchcomb Drive near Buckeye Village at 12:55 p.m. when she was stabbed by 34-year-old Wael W. Kalash. Witnesses said Kalash had been walking up and down the street exhibiting "bizarre" behavior before the stabbing occurred.

"There's no connection between the victim and him other than she was at the wrong place at the wrong time, it was a completely random act," said Det. Jay Fulton of the Columbus Division of Police homicide unit.

Connection:  This guy worshipped at the same mosque targeted in the ABC story.  Hmm.

We certainly don't mean to suggest that all mosques preach terrorism.  Indeed, there can simply be coincidences here.  But this is worth investigating.  It is worth the same kind of time the news outlets devoted to probing the associations of Dr. Tiller's alleged killer.  That's what journalism is about.

We thank our astute reader, who asked that his name be withheld.

June 12, 2009   Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 9:58 A.M. ET:  From the great Charles Krauthammer, also commenting, as Victor Davis Hanson does below, on the president's Cairo speech and the bizarre moral equivalencies found within it:

Distorting history is not truth-telling, but the telling of soft lies. Creating false equivalencies is not moral leadership, but moral abdication. And hovering above it all, above country and history, is a sign not of transcendence but of a disturbing ambivalence toward one's own country.

Yes, sir.

June 12, 2009   Permalink

THE CAIRO SPEECH, STILL MAKING NEWS - AT 9:45 A.M. ET:  No presidential speech in recent memory has been more examined than President Obama's "outreach" show to Muslims, delivered in Cairo.  The speech, if we judge reaction correctly, has had virtually no impact in the Muslim world.  But many clear-thinking commentators, examining it, have been appalled. 

The president is a bright man.  But he is not, contrary to public image, an intellectual man.  He exhibits little curiosity, and there's no evidence that he reads as widely as, say, former President George W. Bush, who did read widely.

Here, Victor Davis Hanson examines the president's ignorance of history, as revealed in the Cairo speech.  Not an encouraging picture:

In his speech last week in Cairo, President Obama proclaimed he was a “student of history.” But despite Barack Obama’s image as an Ivy League-educated intellectual, he lacks historical competency, in areas of both facts and interpretation...

...Almost every one of his references was either misleading or incomplete. He suggested that today’s Middle East tension was fed by the legacy of European colonialism and the Cold War that had reduced nations to proxies.

But the great colonizers of the Middle East were the Ottoman Muslims, who for centuries ruled with an iron fist. The 20th-century movements of Baathism, Pan-Arabism, and Nasserism — largely homegrown totalitarian ideologies — did far more damage over the last half-century to the Middle East than did the legacy of European colonialism.

And...

Obama also claimed that “Islam . . . carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.”

In fact...

Europeans, Chinese, and Hindus, not Muslims, invented most of the breakthroughs Obama credited to Islamic innovation.

Do you get the sense that the student may have to repeat this course?

In reference to Iraq, President Obama promised that “no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.” Is he unaware that the United States imposed democracies after World War II?

Yes, he's unaware.

Obama also stated: “For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights.”

With all due respect to our president, this assertion is again not fully accurate. The only thing that ended slavery in the United States was the Civil War, which saw some 600,000 Americans — the vast majority of them white — lost in a violent struggle to ensure that nearly half the country would not remain a slave-owning society. Also, the massive urban riots of the 1960s and 1970s were certainly violent.

Details, details.  This historian doesn't understand that when the Divine One speaks, details are not important.

This list of distortions could be easily expanded. President Obama, in elegant fashion, may casually invoke the means of politically correct history for the higher ends of contemporary reconciliation. But it is a bad habit. Eloquence and good intentions exempt no one from the truth of the past — President Obama included.

COMMENT:  And yet, the mainstream media refuses to clamp down on Obama.  Hanson includes other historical distortions the president made in other places, like saying in Germany last year that he didn't look like other Americans they'd seen representing the U.S. - forgetting that our last two secretaries of state have been African-American.

Can you just imagine if Bush had delivered an inaccurate speech?  The press, which obsessed over whether the Bush administration outed CIA employee Valerie Plame, would have gone bananas.  (That's not an intended insult to the banana community.)

Obama gets away with it.  He's probably supplied more misinformation to school children than any other president, aside from Bill Clinton's lamentations about sex.

June 12, 2009   Permalink

NORTH KOREA MAY TEST AGAIN - AT 8:18 A.M. ET:  I don't like "may" stories because they're not really news.  I'll make an exception this time because of the urgency of the subject.  North Korea seems increasingly belligerent:

WASHINGTON (AP) - North Korea may be preparing for its third nuclear test, a show of defiance as the United Nations considers new sanctions on the dictatorship for conducting an underground nuclear explosion in May, according to a U.S. government official.

North Korea conducted an underground explosion on May 25, its first since a 2006 atomic test. The official, who spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the unreleased information, would not provide details regarding the assessment.

A draft U.N. resolution proposed Wednesday would impose tough sanctions on North Korea's weapons exports and financial dealings and allow inspections of suspect cargo in ports and on the high seas. North Korea has threatened to retaliate if new sanctions are adopted.

North Korea already is a pariah to many countries and has been under tough economic sanctions for years. Last month's reported test defied a Security Council resolution adopted after the North's first underground atomic blast in October 2006.

COMMENT:  Why shouldn't they conduct another test?  What have they lost so far?  The reporter talks about "tough" sanctions previously imposed on North Korea.  That's misleading.  If they were really tough, they would have changed the country's behavior.  Obviously, North Korea doesn't see them as that punishing.

Again, our meekness is driving this.  Who will tell the president?

June 12, 2009   Permalink

IRAN VOTES - AT 7:40 A.M. ET:  Iranians go to the polls today to elect a president.  Will they turn Ahmadinejad out of office?  The campaign has been lively, even vicious at times.  But remember a basic fact:  No matter who wins, the ultimate power rests with the mullahs.  Also, please note that no candidate has pledged any compromise on Iran's nuclear program.  So, if a so-called "moderate" wins, and the White House goes giddy, stay calm.  It's a show.  The Washington Post sets the scene:

TEHRAN, June 12 -- A long column of provincial, working-class Iranians, clad in black and walking in flip-flops, streamed into a highway underpass, heading for a reelection rally for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Standing on a high ledge safely out of the way, a group of cosmopolitan youths looked down at the crowd of mostly out-of-towners. "Go back to the zoo!" shouted a teenager with gelled-up hair and a green T-shirt, a sign of support for Ahmadinejad's main challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi.

"Sissies!" the marchers yelled back.

COMMENT:  At least they're communicating.  My friend, Iranian political analyst Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, says that there will be bitter infighting among the Iranian leadership, regardless of the outcome of the election.

We will be following the returns closely.  We'll also tell you if the winner sends a tingle up Chris Matthews's leg.

June 12, 2009   Permalink

THURSDAY,  JUNE 11,  2009

OH, NOT AGAIN - AT 9:07 P.M. ET:  We've reported before on how this administration treats America's allies.  Britain, France, Germany and Israel have felt the chill, and Japan and South Korea can't be too excited by our appeasement of North Korea.  Enemies are a different story.  Hey, pal, can we talk?

Well, it's happened again, this time involving Gitmo detainees.  You can't really make this stuff up.  Fox News didn't:

Looks like trouble in paradise.

Though the Obama administration proudly announced Thursday that it had freed and resettled four Guantanamo detainees in Bermuda, the British government is complaining that it was not adequately consulted on the deal.

And since Bermuda is a British territory, that means the prisoner transfer may not be permanent.

"The Bermudan government should have consulted us as to whether this falls into their competence. Foreign affairs and security issues would usually fall under U.K. government," one British official told FOX News, adding that they would pursue a security assessment. "It's unlikely any more (detainees) will go to any British overseas territories."

Bermuda Premier Ewart Brown also released a carefully worded statement confirming that the British colonial governor, after meeting with him Thursday morning, had questions, and is "seeking to further assess the ramifications" on behalf of the United Kingdom before signing off on the deal.

COMMENT:  I guess the White House thinks that the people of Bermuda speak Bermudan, just as the president said recently that Austria speaks Austrian.  (It's German, of course.) 

Didn't someone notice that the British weren't consulted?  The sheer incompetence here is tough to believe.  Will the mainstream media criticize the Obamans for this latest flap?  What do you think?

June 11, 2009   Permalink

UTTERLY DISGRACEFUL - AT 8:14 P.M. ET:  There was a time, there really was, when the Democratic Party was the national-defense party, the party whose presidents built the institutions to defend us against fascism, then Soviet Communism.

No more, no more.

June 11 (Bloomberg) -- Legislation to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan hit a roadblock in Congress over whether to block a lawsuit seeking to force the release of photos of U.S. troops abusing suspected terrorists.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey ended a conference committee meeting today when lawmakers couldn’t agree on whether to include a Republican-backed provision to block the lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. Obey said the measure wouldn’t pass the House with the provision, while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said it wouldn’t pass his chamber without it.

COMMENT:  The provision to block the photos, a provision that has the tacit support of the White House, was originated in the Senate by Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham.  Senator Graham has expressed open dismay at the fact that anyone who cares about the safety of our troops would try to kill the provision.  Both the Pentagon and the CIA have argued that release of the photos - showing entirely atypical behavior by a few misguided soldiers - could result in a major backlash against American troops in harm's way.

And yet, the hard-left Democrats in the House want that blocking provision removed.  Of course, they also want the photos released.  They will tell you, without much of a smile, that they want them released because "we are a democracy" or "the people have a right to know" or something like that.  The real reason they want them released is that they despise the military, they represent leftist districts, and they believe 9-11 was our fault. 

The hard left was thrown out of the Democratic Party by Harry Truman in 1948.  He won the election that year without them.  They crawled back in the late sixties, and became dominant in many districts in the early seventies.  They are back big time today, with some of their longstanding members emerging as committee chairmen.

What is happening must make Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson turn over in their graves.  The president can step in and influence this, but apparently he declines to do so.

UPDATE - AT 8:33 P.M. ET:  From The Politico: 

House-Senate negotiators reached agreement on a $105.9 billion wartime spending bill late Thursday after last-minute assurances that President Barack Obama will use all his powers to prevent the disclosure of controversial photographs depicting the treatment of detainees held by the U.S. military.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel came to the Capitol in the evening to personally deliver this message to Democratic senators, and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) later read aloud a letter from Obama pledging to use every “legal and administrative remedy” available to prevent the disclosure of the pictures.

COMMENT:  Looks like the desirable provision is out of the bill, based on presidential "assurances."  This, however, may not satisfy Republicans in the Senate.  There's too much of a loophole here.  If courts decide against the administration, the photos can be released.  All the president is pledging is to fight the release, not to prevent it.

Stand by for more action on this story.

June 11, 2009   Permalink 

THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL - AT 8:06 P.M. ET:  Once again we're seeing the cultural biases of the press in full bloom.  Yesterday there was a disgusting murder at the Holocaust Museum in Washington.  A devoted African-American security guard was murdered by, allegedly, a well-known racist and anti-Semite.  Appropriately, the press has gone into the accused's background, and has done some good reporting.

But there was another incident yesterday.  The not so Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr., for 20 years the pastor of our president, said that "them Jews" won't allow him to talk to President Obama.  The sickness of that statement is breathtaking, and yet there is no outrage whatever in the mainstream media, and virtually no coverage, except for terrific, alert sites like Gateway Pundit, which hits the story here.  Oh, by the way, Wright has now apologized and claims he didn't mean all Jews, only Zionists.  America must be so relieved by his generosity.

This man Wright influenced the president of the United States.  He married the president and first lady.  The president named his book, "The Audacity of Hope," after one of Wright's sermons.  And yet, the press is silent on Wright's continued outrages.  No one wants to ask, "How much of this poison was injected into the president's veins?"

Imagine if it were discovered that a Republican president had gone to a church whose minister preached racism.  That minister would have his whole background exposed by the press, and his name would constantly be linked with that of the president.  Except for a few brave journalists - very few - Wright is given a pass.  So was President Obama, who said during the campaign that, although he'd spent 20 years at Wright's church, he'd never realized what the man believed.  No questions were asked.

Double standard?  Huge. 

June 11, 2009   Permalink 

DEMS AGAINST DEMS, AND YOU'LL SEE MORE OF THIS - AT 11:55 A.M. ET: We discussed this at The Angel's Corner last night, the revolt of moderate House Democrats, up for reelection next year.  From The Hill:

More and more Democrats are ready to vote against Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s climate change bill, according to a congressional committee chairman who opposes his leader.

The House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) said Wednesday that he’s at an impasse with the lead sponsor of a climate change bill strongly backed by Pelosi (D-Calif.), and that his list of Democratic members who would join him in voting against the measure is growing rather than shrinking.

“We’re stuck,” Peterson said regarding a clash he’s had with House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) over a number of issues in the bill. “And there’s a lot of issues that haven’t even come up yet.”

COMMENT:  It is a shock to many liberals that there are Democrats who will not buy into an idea simply because it's popular in Manhattan, Beverly Hills, and on campuses in Massachusetts.  Many moderate Democrats represent tough-times districts where people work hard, are frightened about their jobs, and skeptical about "scientific" warnings that seem to be based on some very shaky science.

It is quite possible that we will see Congress dominated by a coalition of Republicans and moderate Democrats, as it was for decades in the middle part of the last century.

June 11, 2009   Permalink

MORE ENLIGHTENMENT AT THE U.N. - AT 11:29 A.M. ET:  For those of you who follow the great reform efforts at the U.N., which will undoubtedly turn the organization into the freedom-loving, peace-seeking organization that we all want, consider:

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The next president of the U.N. General Assembly will be a Libyan politician, marking another step for the once-isolated country as it seeks an increasingly larger role in world affairs.

Ali Abdessalam Treki, who has been in charge of his nation's relationship with the Africa Union, won election Wednesday by acclamation rather than a vote in the General Assembly, the world's forum for debate among 192 member nations.

How inspiring.  And...

The country has continued to re-emerge on the world scene with its current non-permanent seat on the 15-nation Security Council, where the real power at the U.N. is concentrated.

But, Libya's ambassadors have blocked U.S.-proposed remarks on Darfur. The country has also led Arab efforts seeking to open border crossings into Gaza without monitors and to keeping tunnels Hamas has used to smuggle arms.

COMMENT:  Another great day at the U.N.  I don't believe, by the way, that the Obama administration raised any particular objection to this obscenity.  After all, we must reach out and understand.  Can't we all get along?

Perhaps the families of victims of Pan Am 103, which was brought down by the work of Libyan agents, raised some concerns.  But, you know, we must go beyond those emotional people.  We're intellectuals, you know.

June 11, 2009   Permalink

LET THE HYPE BEGIN - AT 8:01 A.M. ET:  Iran votes for president tomorrow.  President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces competition from "reformist" candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.  It may be close.  Be careful, though, about words like "reformist" and "moderate," which will be thrown around loosely.  Real moderates tend to be absent from the Iranian leadership.  You have to have the approval of the ruling mullahs to run at all. 

Will the result make any difference to us?  Fox News has a solid report:

But the election -- though highlighting deep political divides -- will have little effect, if any, on Iran's relations with the U.S., says Lawrence Eagleburger, former secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush.

"If the elections mean anything, it will be to force some changes within Iran but will have very little impact on our bilateral relationship," Eagleburger said.

Iran's key policies are dictated by the country's ruling Islamic leaders, who have so far rejected overtures from the U.S. and its allies to suspend uranium enrichment.

The president has control over certain domestic policies and serves as the international face of the country. But the non-elected theocracy, headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, oversees all major decisions and directly oversees key government posts such as the foreign, intelligence and defense ministers.

Another view:

But former top Iran negotiator and U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns hardly downplayed the significance of Friday's elections. On issues of nuclear enrichment, Burns said that it "does matter who the president of Iran is, but what matters more is the position of the Supreme Leader."

"The election on Friday is going to be consequential in the sense that the candidates are clearly different in ideology and style -- and there seems to be a stronger reformist element in Iranian politics," he said.

COMMENT:  We'll see who's right.  The real danger for the U.S. is that, if the "reformer" wins, the appeasement group within the U.S. will see it as vindication.  It will not be.  A "reform" victory will not shut down one centrifuge in Iran's nuclear program.

June 11, 2009   Permalink

THE CHALLENGE - AT 7:46 A.M. ET:  We now have a new car industry.  The New York Times states very well the situation that industry is in, particularly its former leader:

DETROIT — Fiat will set a new direction at Chrysler, which finished its tour through bankruptcy court Wednesday, completing its deal to join forces with the Italian automaker.

At Ford, a chief executive brought in from the aircraft industry is helping to shake up the company.

But it will be up to the federal government, which will own a majority of General Motors when it emerges from bankruptcy, to tackle what is perhaps the most difficult challenge in Detroit: transforming G.M.’s insular culture — at times as bureaucratic as the government’s — to make the company more competitive.

If the effort fails, the Treasury may never recoup the $50 billion it has provided G.M.

COMMENT:  The GM culture has been legendary for generations - a culture isolated from the world, incapable of change, and almost uninterested in the very cars it was producing.  The idea of the government running a car company that is overly bureaucratic is almost laughable, but I can't deny that it's one of the most fascinating stories around today.

Let's hope the GM execs can get in touch with their inner Buick and make things work.  I wonder how many of them have driver's licenses.

June 11, 2009   Permalink

CAUTION JUSTIFIED - AT 7:26 A.M. ET:  Yesterday we urged readers to be cautious about a widely circulated report that two passengers aboard Air France flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic off Brazil last week, had the same names as two people on a terrorist watch list.  We noted that identical names do not always translate into identical people. 

Our caution was justified.  It was only the names that were identical:

Meanwhile, two terror suspects who died alongside 226 other passengers on the stricken jet have been ruled out as a cause of the disaster.

The two men only "shared the same name" as known Islamic radicals, posthumous security checks found.

Although their bodies have yet to be recovered, France's Interior Ministry confirmed that a "deep and wide-ranging investigation has allowed us to clear them."

We promised to follow the investigation into this crash because it was mysterious, and terrorism is always a concern.  The clearing of the two passengers does not absolutely rule out terrorism, only that the two passengers had no problematical backgrounds.

At the same time, the mysteries build.  The bodies of passengers have been found more than 50 miles apart, indicating that the plane broke up in the air in stages, not in one big burst.  But why the plane broke up is still unknown.

June 11, 2009   Permalink