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POPSOur Tax Dollars At Work-Blackwater
More from the article as follows: "The Nisour Square shooting was the bloodiest and most controversial episode involving Blackwater in the Iraq war. At midday on Sept. 16, 2007, a Blackwater convoy opened fire on Iraqi civilians in the crowded intersection, spraying automatic weapons fire in ways that investigators later claimed was indiscriminate, and even launching grenades into a nearby school. Seventeen Iraqis were killed and dozens more were wounded." "Those responses deeply worried Blackwater officials. Before the Nisour Square shootings, the company had operated in Iraq without a license largely because the Iraqi government had never enforced the rules. Being blocked from the country would have been costly — the State Department deal was Blackwater’s single biggest contract. From 2004 through today, the company has collected more than $1.5 billion for its work protecting American diplomats and providing air transportation for them inside Iraq." "
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POPSAn Egregious Tragedy Has Taken Place ... into its clutches. It didn't happen to my child but it did, to someone who lived in my community. His name was Adam Walsh and he was a year younger than my own. The Walsh's horrible story, could have been mine. I, many times frequented the same place as Adam and his mom and I forever shuddered to think it my child who was cut from the herd and open to attack. We as a society should warn our children and ourselves that we are but one or two seconds from something so heinous that our lives would never recover. Whenever our children leave the safety of our sight, we should tell them, "Never allow a stranger to talk lies, in order to hurt you. Scream, cry, run and fight if need be, not to be taken by anyone.” Every child, every young person who falls victim to the savages amongst us, must be a reminder that we live in a jungle of predators but worse, these fiends look like us, so we have to be even more vigilant than jungle prey.
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POPSGirl, 17, found murdered in field lured to her death by Facebook predator Checks carried out after his arrest, however, revealed he had moved from his registered home without notifying the authorities. Ashleigh, who was studying childcare at Darlington College, left her house at 7pm on Sunday, telling her mother she was going to stay at a friend's house and would be back the following afternoon.
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POPSAmerican Evangelicals Role In Uganda Effort To ‘Wipe Out’ Gays This barbaric legislation stifles free speech by threatening anyone who is accused of “promoting” homosexuality with five to seven year prison sentences. Snitching on gay friends and family members is strongly encouraged because “failure to disclose the ‘offence’ within 24 hours of knowledge makes somebody liable to a fine or imprisonment of up to three years.” Sadly, this witch-hunt has the blood stained fingerprints of leading American evangelicals. The Fellowship, (aka The Family) one of America’s most powerful and secretive fundamentalist organization’s, converted Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni (pictured top) to its anti-gay brand of Christianity, which is the “intellectual” impetus behind the anti-gay crackdown. The clandestine organization’s leader, Doug Coe, calls Museveni The Fellowship’s “key man” in Africa. Jeff Sharlet, author of “The Family”, writes of the African strongman’s conversion:
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POPSto beaver or not to beaver hmmmm- sometimes a plan just isn't in the thought....but more in the thought of "really" thinking the thing through..............maybe they should call this to bear or not to bear..............
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POPSHow robot drones revolutionized the face of warfare U.S. Air Force fighter pilot Major Morgan Andrews is one such combatant. He kisses his wife goodbye, drives to Creech, a tiny desert air force base in Nevada, and within minutes could be killing insurgents on the other side of the world.
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POPSObama raise drone attacks
The obscenity of this policy is seldom mentioned. " the drone attacks have backfired. As he told The New Yorker, "Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an alienated family, a new revenge feud, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased." And because of the C.I.A. program's secrecy, Mayer writes, "there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile, nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war." The New Yorker further reports the Obama Administration has also expanded the sphere of authorized drone assaults in Afghanistan. An August Senate Foreign Relations Committee report said the Pentagon's list of approved terrorist targets held 367 names and included some 50 Afghan drug lords "who are suspected of giving money to help finance the Taliban," Mayer reports. She quotes the Senate report as stating, "The
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POPS Hammer Wants An Anvil
Fawning “Inconvenient Truth Teller” article inside paints him as a sort of goof savant … a bit like Chauncey Gardiner of “Being There,” he’s been in Washington DC his entire life, everyone likes him, and suddenly they think he’s a genius. The three-decade gaffe-and-reverse record requires some acrobatics, though. The Newsweek scribblers clearly like his go-lite, wack-a-mole strategy though they are big enough to admit at the end that people who actually know what they are talking about say it won’t work. It’s not exactly the Joe Biden embed that I wished out loud NYT’s Dexter Filkins would do as a counterbalance to his McChyrstal piece earlier this week,* but close. Some administration officials, led by Biden, appear to hope that American forces can rely more on counterterrorism operations"attacks by Predator drones and small elite units on terrorist hiding places"to hold Afghanistan together and defeat Al Qaeda. But critics call this “splitting the baby" and say . . .
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POPS‘Leopard Behind You!’ A human in a blue shirt is announced differently from a human in a yellow shirt. In and of itself, it’s not surprising that the sounds animals make are not just noise, or a reflection of the state an animal’s in (scared, happy and so on). But the subtlety of the calls — the full amount of meaning they contain — is only now being appreciated. Animals of one species often respond to the alarms of another. In a small way, it’s like those childrens’ stories that have rats talking to toads, or elephants arguing with ostriches. Predators sometimes respond too. After all, alarm calls don’t just let other animals know there’s danger in the area. They can also let a predator know that it’s been seen. Ambush predators, like leopards, often give up and go away once an alarm has been sounded. <<
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POPSFilms today, books tomorrow? by Mariam Mokhtar "But the scariest thing is how the Puteri Umno motion was passed without debate. An important call such as this should have warranted a little more scrutiny. If the Government were to accede to their request, then it is all Malaysians, who will suffer. Not just Muslims. Movies like the Harry Potter films will not be screened. Lord of the Rings, and even The Wizard of Oz will have to be banned. And what about science fiction films? Alien, Predator and others, may be full of horror, or lack unexplained traditional elements, and thus, will not fit in any religious teaching." In short - ban fucking everything. Would that make 'em happy?
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POPSThe Predator Insurance Company The breathless tone of statements like the one below seem to suggest it is news that insurance companies want to make money. The reason we would rely on insurance companies whose business model is to "target coverage on the healthy and delay payments to the sick" is that the people buying insurance have the opposite incentives and we think that both parties in a free market will set the price at the most efficient level, the level that reflects the actual scarcity value of the goods and services being traded. It is like saying why let the prices of shares be set by stock brokers since they just want buy low and sell high? Because the people selling them have the opposite incentives and we think the price that results from their exchange will best reflect the underlying values of the goods involved.