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POPSAbkhazia asserts control over Kodori Gorge in dispute with Georgia Dzhonua scoffed at Tbilisi’s assertions that Georgian forces stationed in the Upper Kodori Gorge had been acting in a law-enforcement capacity, rather than as regular soldiers. "Police don’t need bunkers, grenade launchers howitzer batteries," Dzhonua said. "Do your police in America need this? ? Everything that was needed to start a war, it was all there." Georgian officials were in Geneva for the October 15 talks with Russia and were not immediately available to respond to Abkhaz allegations. Abkhaz officials say that a ban has been put on media visits to the Upper Kodori Gorge so long as unexploded ordnance remains in the area. "There’re a lot of mines, unexploded ammunition, explosive devices, so we stopped journalists from visiting," de facto Deputy Defense Minister Maj. Gen. Gari Kupalba told Western reporters on September 30.
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POPSMcCain Pokes Fun At Himself As Well As "That One" "This campaign needed the common touch of the working man. After all, it began so long ago with the heralded arrival of the man known to Oprah Winfrey as 'The One.' Being a friend and colleague of Barack I just called him 'That One,'" McCain said in reference to his bully-like tactics in the second presidential debate. "He doesn't mind at all. In fact, he even has a pet name for me: 'George Bush.'" In attendance Thursday night were such dignitaries as Sen. Hillary Clinton, Gov. David Paterson, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Mayor Ed Koch. nd had some fun with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, host of "Hardball." "I told him, maverick I can do, but messiah is above my pay grade," McCain said. . . . . "So, you know I have fun with the media. We all know that the press is really an independent, civic-minded and non-partisan group … like ACORN. video @ wcbstv.com
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POPSFrom "War on Terror" to "War of Terror" This war in Afghanistan's not about avenging the 9-11 attacks or preventing new ones. It's about killing local fighters, who fight to rid Afghanistan of unwelcome foreigners from Christian-majority countries. What began as a "War on Terror" has long since become a War of Terror. The Canadians and Europeans have long since tired of it. So have the American people, despite the failure of the corporate media to expose the Big Lies that Cheney and Bush continue to promote in order to justify their Terror War. Seven years down the road, there's no end in sight. No hope except for the "fool's hope" that public opinion in the imperialist countries, plus the inevitable resistance of the Afghans to foreign control, plus the military judgement that the war is not winnable will bring this "good war" to an end. The whole article is worth reading. Clip Song
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POPSAmerica's Israeli-Occupied Media During the Six-Day War, Israel attacked and nearly sank the USS Liberty belonging to its closest ally, the USA. Thirty-four American servicemen were killed in the two-hour assault by Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats. Israel claimed that the whole affair had been a tragic accident based on mistaken identification of the ship. The American government accepted the explanation. Dead In The Water - The Sinking of the USS Liberty - 69 min Documentary 'The Israel lobby - The influence of AIPAC on US Foreign Policy' - 51 min
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POPSMoscow calls for anti-U.S. alliance While Russia has insisted it was not intending to supplant NATO, Mr Medvedev made it clear that the US-dominated alliance was partly responsible for the war in the Caucasus by its failure to rein in Georgian "aggression". This is the result of the U.S. throwing its weight around the world for far too long. It is human nature that if one person is constantly directing policy onto everyone else then that person is going to be knocked down for being perceived as a bully. The time has come for the U.S. to relax its role as self appointed world police and let other nations handle their own affairs or we will be “uninvited to the party”. Hopefully, future U.S. presidents will bury this old school ‘might is right’ mentality that Bush/Cheney revitalized when they took office.
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POPSThe Next Financial Bailout Bill Will Not Work
The truth is often so politically-incorrect. You will note that this was published in the UK, not in a US newspaper, and certainly not from the MSM. In other words get ready for a second hard sell since the first bailout bill was rejected (due to pressure from average citizens). Bush will bully-pulpit, Pelosi and Ried will scream again, and even republicans will line up, both Obama and McCain will push the same pitch and try to get wary Americans to sign on the bottom line. But the plan would not work. He says this is why bank stocks, not just investment firms are falling too: traditional banking – collecting retail deposits and making loans to ordinary customers – is barely profitable. Compared with the potential gains from a day at the currency-swap races, or a night in the derivatives casino, current accounts are cold potatoes. That is why bonus-hungry executives, at what we used to think of as boring banks, were so keen to spin the red-hot wheel of fortune. [/quo
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POPSHaving Their Cake and Eating It Too From the article: "Let's imagine that the Alliance Defense Fund and its clerical clients were to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn the Johnson amendment's ban on political endorsements from the pulpit. At that point, what would prevent wealthy ideologues from making tax-exempt contributions to sympathetic pastors' churches for the express purpose of engaging in partisan electioneering? For that matter, what would prevent ambitious pastors from soliciting just such contributions and then using them to bind like-minded ministers into powerful political machines?"
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POPS"Happy Days" Home Buyers Get Mortgages --- Politicians Get Reelected Democrats — and their community organizer “constituencies” — argued that it was “discriminatory” for banks to deny mortgages and business loans to people with poor collateral, poor credit, and dubious ability to repay their loans. Legislators replaced common sense with gouts of political oration about “redlining inner city communities,” “racist banking practices,” and other electioneering formulations that protected incumbency, but shoved bank solvency to the end of a bending limb. The CRA allowed legislators to bully banks into loaning money to people who simply weren’t credit-worthy. The only “collateral” they possessed was electoral: They could repay Democratic lawmakers on Election Day. Now, let’s fast-forward to 1993, when the Clinton administration further liberalized (a.k.a. “reformed”) the already anemic lending restraints of the CRA and created the President’s Community Development Bank, which “…
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POPSSuicide note targets "bully boy" prosecutor She had imported the drug from Mexico that was used in the 2006 death of former Qantas pilot Graeme Wylie, who she and his wife maintained wanted to die. The 75-year-old cancer sufferer also wrote she felt harassed by a Sergeant working with North Sydney Police. Dr Nitschke says Jenning wanted her views made public. "It was her wish that these statements be made clear so that people might better understand why she took the steps she did and chose the path she did," he said.
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POPSThe Bush Doctrine: Preventive, Not Pre-emptive War While Krauthammer (neoconservative columnist) desperately covers for Palin in the aftermath of the ABC Gibson interview Robert Schlesinger gets it right. Palin and Gibson were both wrong, and Palin not even close. His playground analogy makes it clear and that the neocons have confused "pre-emptive war" with "preventive" demonstrates the difference between just and unjust war. For the record, Charles Gibson didn't get the Bush Doctrine right either. But at least, unlike Sarah Palin, he had an idea of what he was talking about (a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for the last six years). Read the full article. Recall Ron Paul's excellent line in the republican debates about America's greatest moral problem: "We in the past have always declared war in the defense of our liberties or go to aid of somebody... But now we have accepted the principle of preemptive war — we have rejected the Just War theory of Christianity. [/q
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POPSThe Death Of OPEC September 11, 2008 “We will see what the market requires and we will not leave a customer without oil." “Saudi Arabia will meet the market’s demand,” a senior OPEC delegate said. OPEC will still have lavish meetings and a nifty headquarters in Vienna, Austria, but the Saudis have made certain the the organization has lost its teeth. Even though the cartel argued that the sudden drop in crude as due to "over-supply", OPEC's most powerful member knows that the drop may only be temporary. The downward pressure on oil got a second hand. Brazil has confirmed another huge oil deposit to add to one it discovered off-shore earlier this year. The first field uncovered by Petrobras has the promise of being one of the largest in the world. That breadth of that deposit has now expanded.
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POPSThe Coolness of Command Do we really want a president who shoots first and asks questions later? I think the last eight years answers that.
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POPSWhen Barack's Berserkers Lost The Plot
'I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion,' she said as she deftly detached journalists from their readers and viewers. 'I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country.' In Britain, the most snobbish attacks on Margaret Thatcher did not come from aristocrats but from the communist historian Eric Hobsbawm, who opined that Thatcherism was the 'anarchism of the lower middle classes'. George Osborne, of the supposedly compassionate Conservative party, revealed himself to be a playground bully when he derided Gordon Brown for being 'faintly autistic'. In an age when politics is choreographed, voters watch out for the moments when the public-relations facade breaks down and venom pours through the cracks. Their judgment is rarely favourable when it does. Obama knows it. He was warning American liberals to stay away from the Palin family. He understands better than his supporters that it is not a politician's enemies who lose elections, but his friends.
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POPSJoe Klein defends the media's handling of Palin I obviously don't know how this will play out, but i would think that to some extent McCain and Palin's direct assault on the media for its treatment of Palin (which seems so unjustified considering the importance of the issue) could actually backfire. Rather than backing off, could this actually instigate the media to do even further digging as a means to justify their behavior?
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POPSFrom the Mouth of a Conservative: The Palin Pick "To the extent the experience, qualifications, and national-security arguments are taken off the table, Obama wins." No kidding. That's why the Palin pick appears superficial, a desperate grab to pick up disaffected Hillary voters, and to help us forget that John McCain has been in Washington DC a long time. And while the pick temporarily distracts the US from one of the greatest speeches delivered in history of the US (Obama's last night), within 2 weeks Palin will be seen as a liability, another deer caught in the headlights like Dan Quayle. The allegation that she had a trooper fired for divorcing her sister won't help, especially since the firer said he was pressured from her to fire the trooper. That no doubt credentials her with Rove and his Rovian minions within the GOP.
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POPSCorporations in Brain Drain - Will Boomers Help?
Quote excerpt: "Companies historically haven't been proactive in getting older workers to train younger workers to do their jobs. " It is my (humble) opinion that the work ethics of the younger workers have changed over the years. When I walk by a (younger) worker's desk and see them surfing the web or iPhoning, iTuning and iChatting on company time, it pisses me off. Whatever happened to asking a co-worker who is swamped, if they could use some help? It's called "Team Work" and I haven't seen much of it coming from the younger crowd. I also see more bully attitudes. Those of us that have been working our asses off over the years don't appreciate this attitude in the work place nor do we have time to deal with it because we're 'busy.' Hello? And what's this crap excuse "It's not my job," or "that isn't in my job description." I had one young gal working with me, in college, bright and intelligent and took initiative. Quick learner. However, everything she did
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POPSCommission Finds Oil Price Manipulation The article goes on to say "...overall, most experts say the incidents are so scattered, and the energy market so large, that it's unlikely a single trader or group of traders can have substantial sway over prices." Of course, if this turns out to be an even fairly common crime, then the cumulative effect could be much larger. After the big corporate crime wave of '04, I think it's foolish to give them the benefit of the doubt.
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POPSCuba: "Bone-headed" Sanctions Failed. Sanctions are failing in Gaza. They failed in West Berlin and now in Cuba. Have they worked anywhere? You can understand people being prepared to starve to death than to give in to a bully like Bush and his 'regime change' mania.
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POPS“Bully guide” Bully facts” are that “bully victims” can be anyone young or old, male or female, rich or poor, it can also happen anywhere, at work, school, neighborhoods. I hope this blog will give you ”bully help” with a “bully strategy guide” and hopefully show you ”how to stop bully”.