Petrol station owner Erling Boland was surprised when not only one, but six helicopters suddenly landed outside his Statoil petrol station in Hatlestrand in western Norway.
- I thought it was al-Qaeda or James Bond coming, he says.
The reason for the mass landing was that one of the helicopters was about to run out of petrol, and they all decided to land. They were piloted by German couples in their thirties.
The station sold 250 liters of petrol to the helicopter.
Libya's attempt to rejoin the world is endangered by the disclosure of an alleged Libyan plot to assassinate Crown Prince Abdulla, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. Two independent alleged participants in the conspiracy has provided enough details for the claim to be considered credible.
Those participants, Abdurahman Alamoudi, an American Muslim leader now in jail in Alexandria, Va., and Col. Mohamed Ismael, a Libyan intelligence officer in Saudi custody, have given separate statements to American and Saudi officials outlining the plot.
Mr. Alamoudi, has told Federal Bureau of Investigation officials and federal prosecutors that Colonel Qaddafi approved the assassination plan. Mr. Qaddafi's son, in an interview in London, called the accusation "nonsense."
Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi has renounced terrorism publicly, but if these allegations are true, that has been an obvious sham.
The big question is what on earth Libya would benefit from killing Abdulla. That would surely upset the fragile balance of power in the Saudi royal house, tipping it towards more extremism and possibly trigger an escalation of the fuming civil war. The relationship between Quaddafi and the Saudi kingdom has never been good, but I can't see how he Libya could take such an enormous risk for no gain when it appeared that reconciliation with the west was its primary objective.
There is always the possibility of a plot initiated lower in Libya's rogue intelligence services, of course, but the evidence disclosed seems to point towards Quaddafi himself. Not to mention the possibility that Saudi officials are making stuff up to make sure that Libya doesn't make further moves towards western-orientation and, even worse, democracy. They never liked Quaddafi to begin with.
Noam Chomsky has an iconic position on the left, even among people far less radical than himself. Israeli blogger Benjamin Beersheva has started a very promising blog called Diary of an Anti-Chomskyite, with quality articles dismantling Chomsky's pompous rhetoric. He also prints some rabid letters he receives from chomskyites; always amusing!
Read especially Benjamin's longer debunking, or review, of Chomsky's old book Peace in the Middle East? It is a long article, but well worth the effort.
I hope the left pulls itself together and stops its lemming-like march towards intellectual harakiri, exemplified by its adherence on the empty rhetoric, dishonest apologia for mass murderers and quasi-intellectual babble of Noam Chomsky and the shameless lying of Michael Moore.
Union pickets are still threatening the construction work on the national convention site with only 47 days remaining before the important Democratic party convention.
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association, which has been operating without a contract for two years and has had dozens of members protesting in front of the convention site to draw attention to the conflict.
The ugly union dispute presents a unique challenge to the Democratic Party, which was built on the foundation of organized labor, and to the national labor movement, which is determined to secure a victory for hometown candidate John Kerry in November.
Dem bigshots including John Kerry himself, who will be officially elected the democratic party presidential candidate at the even, are working hard behind the lines to resolve this.
The police union, which has been the driving force behind a yearlong confrontation with the mayor, has had a history of supporting Republican presidential candidates, including George H. W. Bush during his 1988 race against Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.
