05 Sep '07 16:43
www.kabulgolfclub.com
just felt like sharing one of the 'few' 'success' stories from Afghanistan.
Man, once people start playing golf, civilisation is not far off.
Says the Soviets closed the club, and the Taleban kept it closed because golf was un-islamic.
don't know about you, but I feel very close to God when I split the fairway with a perfect, slightly drawn, drive.
courtesy of knightwest
13 Oct '07 00:32
She then declares: "I WILL NOT stand for this"! University administrators then stage big protest, but refuse to give up video showing who the perpetrator is until the police threaten a subpeona. Why would they try to stonewall the police investigation if they were so upset? You'd think they'd want to help find the guilty party.
Anyone else smell a Tawana Brawley story in the making?
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/2007/10/11/2007-10-11_columbia_professor_i_will_not_stand_for_.html
courtesy of Sam The Sham
18 Oct '07 06:20
BAGHDAD (AP) — Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has pressed U.S. Embassy officials in recent meetings to pull the Blackwater USA security firm out of Iraq even before the six-month deadline he initially set, a top aide to the Iraqi leader said Wednesday.
The aide said the Americans responded that they cannot give al-Maliki an answer until the FBI finishes its inquiry into the incident in which Iraqi officials say Blackwater personnel killed 17 Iraqis.
FBI agents on Saturday began questioning survivors and other witnesses to the Sept. 16 shooting by guards in four Blackwater gun trucks. Iraq's government says they opened fire without provocation; the company says the guards responded to an attack.
The State Department also has teams in Iraq looking into what happened. Patrick Kennedy, the department's top management official, is said to be studying whether the agency should continue using Blackwater to provide security.
Al-Maliki's aide, who spoke on condition he not be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, said an Australian-owned security firm whose employees mistakenly shot and killed two Christian women Oct. 9 does not face eviction from Iraq because it quickly apologized, cooperated with authorities and offered compensation for the deaths.
Iraq's government is demanding $8 million compensation for each of the 17 people reported killed in the Sept. 16 incident involving Blackwater.
The al-Maliki aide said the prime minister's office also is drafting legislation that would cancel Decree 17, a measure issued by the former U.S. occupation government that put private security companies outside Iraqi law.
Continuing tension along the border with Turkey, meanwhile, exposed new sectarian fissures in al-Maliki's government. The Turkish parliament voted Wednesday to authorize a military offensive into the Kurdish region in northern Iraq, where Turkish Kurd guerrillas have bases.
Sami al-Askari, a close al-Maliki aide, complained in an interview with the U.S.-funded Radio Sawa that leaders of the autonomous Kurdish region only acknowledge they are part of Iraq when they need the central government to come to their rescue.
"They consider that whatever goes on in their region is a Kurdish affair, but when they face a crisis they remember they belong to the country and are part of the Iraqi government that should defend them," he said.
Al-Askari, who is a Shiite Muslim like the prime minister, also derided Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Arab and often a harsh critic of al-Maliki, for going to Turkey to try to defuse the crisis without first consulting with Iraq's government.
His criticism of al-Hashemi was echoed by government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh, who said the tension on the border was a national security issue that must go through official channels.
Also Wednesday, a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol and killed at least seven officers near Diwaniyah, in a Shiite area south of Baghdad that has seen fierce clashes between Shiite factions in recent months.
Violence in the area around Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, also has targeted the U.S.-led coalition. Suspected Shiite militiamen fired mortars at two military bases and shot at a Polish helicopter Monday, prompting a battle that killed five civilians and wounded dozens, including two Polish soldiers.
Also Wednesday, the military said a U.S. soldier was killed Sunday by small-arms fire south of Baghdad.
In the north, a suicide bomber driving an explosives-laden truck struck a checkpoint manned by Kurdish troops in Diyala province, where U.S. commanders have decided to begin the drawdown of American forces.
The attack in a mountainous area near the Iranian border killed at least one Kurdish soldier and wounded more than 10, said Jabbar Yawir, a spokesman for Kurdish forces. He said the soldiers were in a brigade that arrived last month as part of the U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown that began in February.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, but the suicide bombing bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq, which has staged several attacks recently after promising an offensive to coincide with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which ended this week.
U.S. commanders have said the increase in troops ordered by President Bush — and the stepped up operations that followed — have left al-Qaida fractured and pushed militants into remote areas.
Officials have cited a drop in suicide bombings from more than 60 in January to about 30 a month since July, along with a decrease in the flow of foreign fighters across the borders. But they acknowledge they have been unable to stop the car bombings and suicide attacks usually blamed on al-Qaida.
courtesy of MightRight
17 Nov '07 03:35
Here is the "Final Cut" Watch it all before debating the issues.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6499230265406230477&q=Loose%20change-%20Final%20cut%20site:video.google.com&total=42&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=7
I know there are alot of skeptics out there, so, if you really do not believe, watch the documentary and take notes on why you think the information presented is either incomplete, faulty or just plain inaccurate. Thank you.
Personally, I believe there is something worthwhile here. The collapse of WTC7 which held data to the crimes of some of the most financial elite in the country totaling billions of dollars worth of fraud was not caused by fires, this is pretty obvious to anyone with some common sense. Also, the missing gold from under the WTC1 and 2... The eyewitness testimonies of secondary explosions which are not included in the official reports... the list goes on.
This is potentially the greatest crime of our century... the greatest single example of misinformation and distortion of facts. The greatest cover-up North America has ever seen.
Isn't this potential worthy of investigation?
courtesy of ChessJester
27 Jan '08 08:40
McCain is a dirty one. Today he took an interview from 2005 by Mitt Romney on one of the morning news shows...
McCain is saying that Romney was in favor of setting a time table.
They edited the interview to make it appear that Romney did support. Right as we speak, McCains man is being taken apart by Sean. He has the interview that shows beyond a doubt that McCain is a liar. Romneys very next words before editing are "I would veto ANY legislation that sets a deadline for withdrawal. Of course I would. Look. We didn't go to the Germans and tell them that if we hadn't won by a certain date that we would surrender, and we can not tell the terrorists that we will surrender if we haven't won by a certain date. We need to win. Period."
Do you think the Snake McCain will get away with it with the full support of the drive-by media? Only Fox is capable of reporting his lies, and over there half of them support McCain.
courtesy of StarValleyWy
09 Feb '08 00:07
During penalty kicks, the best course of action for soccer goalkeepers is to jump neither right, nor left, but rather to do nothing and remain in the middle of the goal. Politicians, I've often thought, should also do nothing, so as to minimize all the harm they can do whenever they meet, or they should just work at undoing all the bad laws they've already created. Discuss:
http://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/4477.html
courtesy of der schwarze Ritter
01 Mar '08 05:31
Obama had such a great shot at Hillary the other night, and he blew it. Hill keeps saying that Obama's plan will leave out 15 million in the quest for health care. Obama always comes back with "no, he's goning people the CHOICE of having it or not." Why doesn't he take her to task and just say that she wants to make healyh care mandatory? Then she'll be forced to say that, yes, her plan makes it impossible/illegal for anyone to opt out of the nation healthcare plan. And THAT, my friends, would be the end of Hillary's run.
courtesy of PinkFloyd
17 Aug '07 12:05
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly#Famine_Follies
"[edit] Famine Follies
The Irish Potato Famine of 1845-49 led to the building of several follies. The society of the day held that laissez faire, not a welfare state, was the appropriate form of civil management. The concept of a welfare state was a century away, and at that time reward without labor, even to those in need, was seen as misguided. However, to hire the needy for work on useful projects would deprive existing workers of their jobs. Thus, construction projects termed "famine follies" came to be built. These include: roads in the middle of nowhere, between two seemingly random points; screen and estate walls; piers in the middle of bogs; etc. [Howley, James. 1993. The Follies and Garden Buildings of Ireland. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-05577-3]"
courtesy of zeeblebot
03 Jun '07 05:09
“Cyberterritories of Whiteness: Language, ‘Colorblind’ Utopias, and Sistah Vegan Consciousness”
http://www.sistahveganproject.com
Cyberspace can be a central site for excavating the invisibility of covert whiteness (a tacit form of racialized consciousness), which does not manifest itself at the surface level in the same overt manner that extreme white cyber hate "imagined communities" do. Through the application of Critical Race Theory and Black Feminist methodology-based discursive analysis, this thesis investigates performances of whiteness in a vegan/animal-rights-oriented website called Veganporn.com. As a progressive forum associated with social justice, Veganporn.com provides a radically different environment in which to examine white supremacist ideologies; ideologies typically found in more overtly-racist, "extremist" online dialogues already examined by critical research.
i don't believe that veganporn.com is a progressive forum associated with social justice. I don't see the point of breeze harpers master thesis, other than trying to package herself as an ad hoc "expert" in media and racism.
Discourse analysis of a specific Veganporn.com forum topic revealed three major themes in the computer-mediated discussion: (1) discursive patrolling of epistemic borders to "protect" Standard English and colorblind expressions (whiteness) of veganism/animal rights from non-Standard English and non-white racialized expressions; (2) the use of blackface cyber-minstrelsy to reinforce the "superiority" of Standard English (whiteness) over the "inferiority" of speakers of Black English and Ebonics; (3) the premise among several white-identified Veganporn.com participants that a vegan- and animal-rights ideology is "colorblind" thus making invisible the current socio-historical implications of power structures created around white skin color.
Though this thesis focuses on one discussion within a forum, the analysis of this event offers insight relevant to understanding whiteness as a system, an ideology, and a structure. Specifically, by employing certain theoretical components of critical race studies (racialized consciousness, social ontology of whiteness, and racial mapping), my analysis reveals how the World Wide Web can be an effective site for cyber-ethnographers focusing on "decoding" whiteness within progressive social justice movements.
Amazingly breezeharper finds instutional racism reflected in one thread on VeganPorn. This is beyond silly.
courtesy of eldragonfly
30 May '07 03:03
Germany has said that potentially disruptive activists might face as much as 2 weeks of detention during the Group of Eight summit in June. They have built a fence around Heiligendamm and plan to track the activists using scent samples... wow.
courtesy of lepomis