Minor rockfalls continued to spall from the extruding lava dome overnight.

Spall are flakes of a material that are broken off a larger solid body.

RAW STORY
Published: Thursday August 3, 2006

A report by columnist Sidney Blumenthal in Salon claims that Israel is receiving intelligence from the US's National Security Agency.

Blumenthal claims to be in touch with "a national security official with direct knowledge of the operation" to supply Israel with signals intelligence from American assets to help it monitor armament transfers from Syria and Iran to Hezbollah. He states that President Bush has approved the intelligence sharing.

Bush is being influenced by neoconservatives in his administration led by Vice President Dick Cheney's staff and Elliot Abrams, senior director for the Near East on the National Security Council. The group, according to Blumenthal, seeks to start a 'four front war' by giving Israel the pretext to strike Iran and Syria. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been briefed, but is not a central actor in the plan.

An excerpt of the restricted-access article is provided below.

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The National Security Agency is providing signal intelligence to Israel to monitor whether Syria and Iran are supplying new armaments to Hezbollah as it fires hundreds of missiles into northern Israel, according to a national security official with direct knowledge of the operation. President Bush has approved the secret program.

Inside the administration, neoconservatives on Vice President Dick Cheney's national security staff and Elliott Abrams, the neoconservative senior director for the Near East on the National Security Council, are prime movers behind sharing NSA intelligence with Israel, and they have discussed Syrian and Iranian supply activities as a potential pretext for Israeli bombing of both countries, the source privy to conversations about the program says. (Intelligence, including that gathered by the NSA, has been provided to Israel in the past for various purposes.) The neoconservatives are described as enthusiastic about the possibility of using NSA intelligence as a lever to widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into a four-front war.

Jade has the intel on where to swim in Olympia over at WTTN .

USA Today: What's the real federal deficit?:

The set the government doesn't talk about is the audited financial statement produced by the government's accountants following standard accounting rules. It reports a more ominous financial picture: a $760 billion deficit for 2005. If Social Security and Medicare were included — as the board that sets accounting rules is considering — the federal deficit would have been $3.5 trillion.

As if that weren't bad enough, the government doesn't even hold their own accounting practices to the same standard they hold private companies to.

Congress has written its own accounting rules — which would be illegal for a corporation to use because they ignore important costs such as the growing expense of retirement benefits for civil servants and military personnel.

This is also not just about the Bush administration.

The Clinton administration reported a surplus of $559 billion in its final four budget years. The audited numbers showed a deficit of $484 billion.

I suppose we all just have to learn to swallow big government, spending and legislation, as part of the collective good of the people.

Find Simona Sharoni's blog here.

I'm not sure if this is the documentary that I've posted on before here, here and here. Since this one seems to consist largely of interview material, I think it is a different project.

A new documentary about the late Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain is set to be premiered at this year’s Toronto Film festival.

‘About A Son’ is said to collate content taken from up to 25 hours worth of previously unheard interviews with Cobain carried out by Michael Azerrad.

The film, directed by AJ Schnack, is described as a “dream-like account of Cobain's own successes and failures, thoughts and experiences, allowing the audience unprecedented intimacy with a legendary figure in popular culture.