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POPSIs Labour buying silence? After politicising the Civil Service, this corrupt government is now financially rewarding betrayal. Betrayal of an ethos that meant the British CS was the least corrupt in the World. Who can say that this is earned when there are over 3million pensioners still not receiving their rightful benefits, when English men are being suborned into third class citizens in their own country with threats of insidious new laws that prohibit love of ones own country, where these same civil servants act as judge and jury into claims for disability from injured war heroes, these same people who have denied access to personal records that prevent thousands of former soldiers getting a real pensions. Also these same people acquiesce with corrupt political regimes in the hiding of expenses abuses.
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POPSYoutube Users and Viewers BEWARE!
Now every minute you Spend on youtube, you will be feeding the Big Brother machine the Bush admin. has robustly doctored until BB became a strong, very potent bouncing baby for the neocon belief system. Their rule-of-thumb on freedom is "We Will Tell Them They Are Free... FREE TO DO WHAT THEY ARE TOLD TO DO OR ELSE"! All their doings has been leading up to this day... The beginning of the end of Lincoln's eloquent words used during his Gettysburg Address that afternoon of Thurs., November 19, 1863 "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." In just over two minutes, Lincoln enforced the principles of human equality supported by the Declaration of Independence and redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the Union, but as "a new birth of freedom" Hmmm, I wonder what President Lincoln would say about all the shredding of same Declaration by 8 years of Neocon Rule. I'm sure he would be deeply saddened, for sure. :mad:
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POPSThe Guatemala Genicide Case Among the witnesses was Jesus Tecú Osorio, survivor of the Río Negro massacre and winner of the Reebok Human Rights Award. Tecú was a child when the military began attacking the communities of Rabinal with increasing intensity during 1981 and into 1982. He was ten years old when he watched the Army and civil patrols (PAC) enter his village of Río Negro on March 13, 1982, and carry out the massacre that left 70 woman and 107 children dead, including his own mother and infant brother.
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POPSA subtle distinction
I have just read a book by Victor Frankl in which he recounts something of his experiences in Auschwitz and Dacchau. His aim, however, was not so much narration of history, personal or otherwise, but to build a philosophy of living from the ground up. In this case, the ground were the direst circumstances I can imagine - you are reduced to a number, what labour you can give is squeezed out of you so that you can die emptied and exhausted. Even here, according to Frankl (and I must take his word for it), you are still left with one freedom, that of choosing your attitude to your circumstances. He didn't think of himself as a victim - what he was living through was merely the choice that he could make between accepting the role imposed on him or not. He was not a victim because he did not. In asserting his freedom to make that choice, he escaped the role of victim as well as that of number. Lincoln's turn from the objective to the subjective here is as great a victory on the same field.
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POPSBook Drive for Iraq So here's what to do. Have a look at the university's Web site - http://auis.org/. Get some decent volumes together, pass the word to your friends and co-workers to do the same, and send them off to: Nathan Musselman The American University of Iraq—Sulaimani Building No. 7, Street 10 Quarter 410 Ablakh Area Sulaimani, Iraq (+964) (0)770-461-5099
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POPSThe rise and fall of a Sons of Iraq warrior "But his eyes glaze over at a photo of Iraqi officials from a reconciliation conference he attended in mid-June. "They pat you on the back with one hand and stab you with the other," he says bitingly."
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POPSFailed States Index 2008 The Best And Worst
Bangladesh took this year’s hardest fall, set off in part by postponed elections, a feuding, deadlocked government, and the imposition of emergency rule that has dragged on for more than 18 months. These political setbacks were followed by greater economic hardships after a devastating cyclone in November flooded large swaths of cropland and left 1.5 million people homeless. In nearby Pakistan, also one of this year’s worst performers, a beleaguered President Pervez Musharraf sparked waves of violent protests when he dismissed the head of the Supreme Court and declared martial law. In a tragic close to the year, the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto left many wondering about the future prospects of this fragile, nuclear-armed state. Ironically, Pakistanis constitute the largest national U.N. contingent operating in Liberia. More than 9,000 Bangladeshi troops wear U.N. blue helmets around the world, a third of them in the Ivory Coast.
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POPS Suicidal Mystics With Nukes After more UN sanctions were threatened, Ahmadinejad stated: As God promised, the oppressors will have their noses rubbed in the dirt. Now they are fulfilling this promise by themselves... Let it be known that in whatever we do, I see the hand of God and the hidden imam at every moment. The expansion is driven by an apocalyptic vision: that Shiite Islam's long-hidden 12th Imam, or Mahdi, will soon emerge -- possibly at the mosque of Jamkaran -- to inaugurate the end of the world. The man who provided $20 million to prepare the shrine for that moment, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has reportedly told his cabinet that he expects the Mahdi to arrive within the next two years.
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POPSCheers, President Bush, You Win! And through it all you avoided repercussions. Even losing GOP House and Senate majorities hasn’t slowed you down much. There's so much raw evidence to impeach your ass that it would be as easy as Dick Cheney shooting a lawyer in the face. The rap sheet is a mile long. Yet you remain 100 percent unscathed, threatened by nothing more than a pretzel getting stuck in your craw. That's amazing. My peasant hat is off to you.
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POPSObama caves on the spy bill Great, get others to spy for you and then go to congress to give them immunity. No, I don't feel like my civil liberties are being eroded.
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POPSCanadian Wins Major International Book Prize De Niro's Game , which follows characters caught in the civil war in Beirut in the 1980s, is "a magnificent achievement for a writer writing in a third language," the five-member international jury said in its citation. "Its originality, its power, its lyricism, as well as its humane appeal all mark De Niro's Game as the work of a major literary talent and make Rawi Hage a truly deserving winner." The Beirut-born writer, who lived through nine years of civil war in the Lebanese capital before his family emigrated to Canada, called himself "a fortunate man. "After a long journey of war, displacement and separation, I feel that I am one of the few wanderers who is privileged enough to have been rewarded, and for that I am very grateful."
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POPSWest Virginia, Rogue State Formed Unlawfully
It's West Virginia Day June 20th. The state was formed illegally by a minority insurrection 145 years ago. Beautiful state, but with an unlawfully formed government. This is lifted from West Virginia's own archives. History records the controversy. "there is no evidence that the majority of people within the counties which were to compose the new state had ever given its assent to its formation." Fruits of the Civil War, "Old Dominion" Virginia was ripped in half. Virginia has never officially recognized the rogue state of West Virginia in law. Lincoln himself called it merely "expeditious", not legal. Lincoln and Congress had no more authority to permit the state anymore than Bush could authorize West Pennsylvania or Northern California. During the Civil War those who supported the Yankee Union position were called "anti-Virginians". State's rights was greatly trampled which the Constitution itself in the 10th amendment defends. It's been rougher eve
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POPSFISA Legislation: Congress Still Dithering! That bill hit a wall when the trial lawyers asked Pelosi to preserve their chance to earn huge contingency fees in lawsuits against the telecoms alleging the sort of class-action tort claims used to blackmail big companies into high-dollar settlements. These lawsuits aren’t merely the latest evolution in class action ambulance chasing. They are a form of “lawfare”: the use of the courts to interfere in America’s conduct in the war the terrorists are waging against us. The compromise measure reportedly enables the telecoms to obtain civil immunity by showing a court a request for cooperation from the government that assured the company that cooperation was legal. The trial lawyers and several liberal senators, chief among them Wisconsin’s Russell Feingold, are trying to block the compromise. Their amen chorus among the politically-activist media are working hard to help them.
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POPSKing John Gave His Consent To The Magna Carta 15 June 1215 Magna Charta, is the thirteenth-century document regarded as the foundation of English constitutional liberty. By early spring of 1215, England was in the throes of a civil war. King John's blundering foreign policy had disrupted the Angevin Empire and had alienated a considerable number of his former followers. More significant were his repeated violations of feudal and common law. These abuses caused most of John's barons to revolt. Between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Magna Carta was largely forgotten. The civil conflicts attending the War of the Roses and the strong arm of the Tudors blotted out the memory of the Magna Carta. Contemporary literature of the Tudor period (1485–1603) is strangely silent about the charter, and William Shakespeare in King John made no reference to what probably was the most important event in the life of that monarch. Had the great dramatist known of the charter, he would hardly have passed over so significant an episode.
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POPSLogjam of War Contractor Fraud Suits
The exact number of qui tam cases stuck in legal limbo is unknown because the cases are kept under strict seal. But sources who have been following the issue closely estimate that there are between 50 and 70 Iraq contracting fraud cases under seal. Under normal circumstances, when the DOJ receives a qui tam case, it conducts an investigation into the whistleblower's claims. If there is sufficient evidence of significant fraud, the DOJ joins with the whistleblower to sue the company in question and recover the government's money. The whistleblower can receive up to 30 percent of money recovered as a reward for their service to the taxpayer. Not a single qui tam case against war contractors has been joined by the Bush administration DOJ despite the possibility of recovering billions of dollars for the US taxpayer and reining in war profiteers, who continue to cheat and defraud the government and the US troops mired in battle. Go to source for full story.
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POPSMore Insanity From Columbia University When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Columbia last fall and made a similar claim ("In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country."), students laughed and booed. They recently, however, elected to award Massad the Lionel Trilling Book Award for making the nearly identical claim. Last year, Marty Peretz reported some good news: Columbia University had declined to give Massad tenure. Apparently, Peretz spoke too soon. After cries from the Middle Eastern Studies Department, the Provost agreed to appoint a second ad hoc committee this year. Will Columbia have the good-sense to banish him once and for all?
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