The law is revered for itself now, but rationalized by what it protects when it gets discussed philosophically, so that what that is it protects can be pointed to when the law is clearly wrong or incomplete or inadequate. The flaws are excusable because of the larger goal.
This is enacted individually in those who act as protectors and enforcers of the law, they have shrines in their hearts, dedicated to what they hold above themselves.
Excessive enforcement of specific codes and the often violent systemic championing of the concept itself, as well as the kind of propaganda brainwash techniques of child-raising that enforce that reverence blindly, result in what we have now - the inverse of respect for what the law was designed and intended to protect, respect instead for the law itself, the punishment side of the legal protocol first, and what is rewarded by its protection, whatever that is, however far it is from the original design, second - and the near-universal idea that anything that isn't specifically against the law right now is permitted right now.
This is how evil gained the upper hand in human affairs.
Going back to that original impulse, the desire to create some kind of protective barrier around what should be protected, a mammalian drive that's as deep as bones, what should be protected as seen through the lens of human consciousness, means that now anything that has been protected by the law, anything whose being owes its fullness to the protection of the law, can point to itself as the reason for the law existing in the first place. And there will always be something there, protected by the law, as long as there are laws and people who enforce them. Even if it's the antithesis, even if it's what the law was originally designed to protect against - as we have now - the evil the law was brought to bear against hides behind it in safety.
It parallels common attitudes toward wealth. Those who have it generally feel that they deserve to have it, and those who don't have it also feel they deserve to have it.
Which means the systems by which wealth is gotten and maintained are necessary to them wherever they are in that chain, even as those systems change over time.
This sense of the rightness of things, felt as central by almost all who benefit from anything, whether law or economy or the aftermath of disaster, is the main obstacle to real progress here. It's the pavlovian bell-and-treat that keeps the momentum of things implacable, and prevents enlightened change.
This is how evil maintains the upper hand in human affairs.

Sabreen - formed in 1980 with a vision focused on the development of the Palestinian modern song, reflecting the humanitarian and cultural reality in general, and the suffering endured from the political situation in particular.

download:
Sabreen - BoxedIn mp3

Some people were just lying there, some were screaming, some were very, very angry. There were a lot of injured arriving, ambulances coming in and out. The injured were coming by private cars and they were being left wherever. You could see blood here and there.

There is talk [the Israeli air strikes] were targeting the police and security forces but in Shifa hospital, I saw many, many civilians, some dead, some injured, some were children, some were women, some were elderly people.

There are people without their legs in very severe pain. The doctors and nurses were trying to give them painkillers and to keep them alive. Patients are lying there knowing they've lost their legs. Some were asking God if they could die.

from a targeted location:

AFP – Smoke billows from a targeted location inside the northern Gaza Strip during an Israeli air raid, as...


Israel tanks mass near Gaza as jets again pound Hamas
-
Israel pounds Gaza
for second day,
229 ↑ killed
Reuters – Palestinians carry a wounded Hamas policeman as others lie on the ground of their destroyed police compound...
-
Israeli Foreign Minister Says Hamas Is to Blame
-


Calls grow around world for calm in Gaza
Angry protests also took place in several cities around the world on Sunday against Israel after its air strikes in Gaza killed at least 270 people and wounded hundreds more.

-

Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192
-
Curse of the Suicide Bomber: One Sunday's Carnage:
The reports came in all of a sudden: Suicide bombings in four different parts of the world. The toll is not particularly high. But the geographical range reflected the depressing spread of the terrorist ploy — from Sri Lanka, where separatists mastered the technique to devastating effect...
-
Israel strikes Hamas targets in Gaza, 271 dead
-
Fourteen children among 22 killed in Afghan attacks
Fourteen children were among 20 Afghans killed in new extremist attacks
-
Wal-Mart will begin selling iPhones on Sunday giving an enormous new range of distribution for Apple and ATT...

-
Captions below photos as they originally appeared.
I'm not sure if my job here is to point out the obvious, to me, propaganda of the presentation, or just leave it here as witness.
This is the work of sadists, and the gloating brag of sadists at what they've done. It's very disheartening, and that not least for where it leads, inexorably now.
Still, it's better to keep saying no.
No.
These images and the writing that accompanied them are sets of lies, real pictures and factual paragraphs that contain nothing as clear as a complete falsehood, but lies just the same.
The war on Iraq had as much support as it did in the US because of exactly these tactics. Subliminal bullshit, selective release of graphic imagery set against what sounds like unbiased reporting, in the absence of any real context or balancing history.
Duplicity and great harm.
It's as though the Jews have given their innocence away to the Palestinians.

Idle holiday musings:
Since the object of torture is to get information that the subject of torture wants to prevent you from getting, is it morally better, okay, superior, to use things like drugs and hypnosis or some new psycho-medical-chemical technique that gets under the conscious resistance of the subject without active trauma, and gives you access to the information as if it were freely given?
My guess is most people considering that would say yeah sure fine. Because it's the pain of it they object to, the messiness, not the breaking of the human being.
Which is why we're all stuck at the crossroads, waiting for that long dark limousine.

The barrages have caused no casualties over the past two days, but there has been property damage, and tens of thousands of Israelis near Gaza have been instructed to stay indoors. TV newscasts have been showing panic-stricken children.

Me quieren matar

this order, set down by creation:

The church, he said, "should protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man was needed, he said," adding: "The tropical forests do deserve our protection; but man, as a creature, does not deserve any less."

Benedict focused his attack on what he described as "gender" theories, "which lead towards the definitive emancipation of man from creation and the creator".

Homosexual groups in Italy called the speech an unfounded attack on homosexuality and, more specifically, on people who undergo sex changes.

Tom Kington/Riazat Butt/GuardianUK 23.Dec.08
-
There's a song, by Lil Wayne, called "Lollipop". It was very popular in 2008. I didn't hear it til last week, because I'm old now and a social outlier. When I did hear it it knocked me out.

So I went and found it on the internet, and listened to it probably 30 or so times since, side by side with Christina Aguilera's "Dynamite", and Britney Spears' "Kill the Lights".

Great stuff, great stuff.

But that "Lollipop" man that was something new. And so melodic.

Yesterday morning, laying in bed and meditating on the day to come, I realized - it's "Cathy's Clown" by the Everly Brothers.

Enough that the Everly's should be getting royalties from it probably.
But the thing is when you hear it there, wherever you hear it first, it seems to have come from there, so all those kids are crediting Lil Wayne and his partner-in-song the late Static Major with creating the tune, when in point of fact they are changing the lyrics and passing it on, carrying it, riding it.
When Wayne sings "Shorty wants a thug"
you can hear Phil and Don singing "When you see me shed a tear"
note for note.
I'm still knocked out by Lil Wayne's version, but it's a version. And the original's trackable back through Phil and Don Everly to the human ecologies of pre-industrial Europe, to the real environment that was ours before we were "emancipated".
And that needs to get reinforced, because of what happened to the people that really sang that music, out of their daily lives and for no recompense, for love only.
When the Pope talks about the rainforest and "man as a creature" it would be uplifting if he could bring himself to recognize that there are still people living in the rainforest right now, people who the Church in its wisdom deemed inferior, subhuman, expendable, fit for slavery and extinction, redeemable only by baptism and haircut and servile roles in civilized society.
People whose ways of living in the rainforest then and now are part of the rainforest, and in harmony with it.
Deep harmony, thrilling harmony when you catch it. Really old music, from before music was enslaved along with its makers.
Free music.
It would also be thrilling, or at the very least inspiring, if the Pope and his organization had been first, or even just among the first, to speak of things like "ecology", instead of following safely along behind people who were speaking of them and getting ridiculed, for their defense of things like "ecology" and "rainforest". How encouraging if the Pope, any Pope, had spoken adamantly when no one but scientists even knew what the words meant, instead of waiting until even the dullest journalist had those words in his vocabulary, instead of waiting until it was safe to speak about these things, because the damage had gotten unavoidably noticeable and those early campaigners had long since brought it to the attention of the world.
None of which is to suggest that homosexuals and heterosexuals are equals in any but the most basic sense of being, of being human and here and therefore unique and treasurable, as much as Olympic athletes and Para-Olympic athletes and children and old people and all the full blooming of what we are, what that is, that "human".
No one would argue that the rose is most centrally there in its bud and bloom. The bloom of humanity is the reproducing female.
A bunch of overweight asexual at best, hypocritically perverted at worst, priests hiding behind that glorious flower and at the same time pretending to defend it, is what I see there.
Singing songs they got from other voices and other hearts, and giving no due praise or recognition to where the music really came from, came to them from, while the rewards keep coming in.

Pakistan media is reporting that the country's military is on high alert over a possible strike by India.

Ms Rice’s words could damp expectations

the roads sweat petroleum

business sentiment tumbled
-
Biden Set to Oversee Task Force on Strengthening Middle Class
-
the line snakes into the parking lot
-
delinquencies rose across all loan categories
-
In a shopping mall in Thailand, Nong Na sets a new world record
-
A Saudi court has rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off by her father to a man who is 58
-
An 8-year-old Arizona boy charged in the deaths of his father and another man is set to undergo a mental health and competency evaluation
-
A pair of giant pandas made their last public appearance in China on Monday ahead of their long-anticipated departure to Taiwan, marking a blossoming of ties between the island and its arch rival
-
Lonely man jumps into polar bear's cage in Berlin
-
Israel said in an e-mail to Newsday that many troops had the impression that "the war is finally winding down and there won't be endless Christmases away from their families."
Israel, who has visited Iraq three times, added that he has seen the "security environment" in the country improve significantly...
-
American troops will move into southern Iraq early next year to replace departing British forces, the top U.S. general in Iraq said.
-

bright days in the laboratory:

“There are many, many different components of ageing and we are chipping away at all of them,” said Robert Freitas at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, a non-profit, nanotech group in Palo Alto, California. “It will take time and, if you put it in terms of the big developments of modern technology, say the telephone, we are still about 10 years off from Alexander Graham Bell shouting to his assistant through that first device. Still, in the near future, say the next two to four decades, the disease of ageing will be cured.”

Freitas/AAAAM 03.May.06
-
link path Matrullo > Daily Galaxy
-
It's a year old pastiche, and the quoted Freitas was being interviewed in 2006.
He neglected to mention that in addition to the disease of aging, the disease of sex, as well as the disease of evolution, will also be cured. Possibly this aspect of the anti-aging crusade has subsequently received due notice. Possibly it has not.

clear days at the observatory:

"We're observing the unambiguous signature of the effects of dark energy on the growth of structure" in the universe.
Over the very long haul, the Chandra results imply that the universe will not end in a "big rip," with everything violently torn apart, as some astrophysicists had speculated. Instead, objects too loosely bound by gravity to overcome the repulsive force of dark energy will gradually vanish into the distance.

Spotts/ET/Yahoo 18.Dec.08

international solidarity with the Shministim:

We are U.S. military servicemembers and veterans who have refused or are currently refusing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We stand in solidarity with the Israeli Shministim (Hebrew for 12th graders) who are also resisting military service. About 100 Israeli high school students have signed an open letter declaring their refusal to serve in the Israeli army and their opposition to "Israeli occupation and oppression policy in the occupied territories and the territories of Israel." In Israel, military service is mandatory for all graduating high school seniors, and resisters face the possibility of years in prison.

We have also refused to participate in unjust acts of military aggression, and many of us have gone to prison or currently live with that possibility as a result. We believe that resistance to unjust war is a bold assertion of humanity in the face of overwhelming violence.
The Global War on Terror, like the Israeli occupation, is propped up by racism and dehumanization and sets the stage for never-ending war and occupation. We are inspired by the brave refusal of our brothers and sisters in Israel to take part in these destructive policies, and we want to let them know today, December 18th--the day of international solidarity with the Shministim, that they have our deepest respect and support.

Courage To Resist
-
via Mondoweiss
: - : - : - : - : - : - : - :

Once in a while some relative, stranger on the street or one of my commanders would say "Well done! You are doing tremendously important work". I received so much praise for the work that I did, frankly, not too well. But I was glad. I was glad that people understand that the fact I am working with children and helping them get ahead, both academically and emotionally, is important. Nobody ever told me they don't understand why I am doing this and nobody ever blamed me for not doing my share for the defence of my homeland. as any boy or girl my age should.

Now, that is all very interesting, because in recent years, since I was discharged from the army, I am doing work that is no worse, and no less significant, than the work I was doing in the army, and for some reason nobody stares at me in the street with pride in their eyes, or gives me a discount price for my falafel. People hear that I am enrolled at a teachers academy and ask with a tone of amazement, or disgust, or both: "What, you want to be a teacher?"

The Duty to Volunteer
Yael Shiloh 18.May.05
New Profile

Mirrors as we're used to them only have one surface, so the analogy won't carry too far, but the mirror of the mainstream, the what-was-once-only media - CNN, the NYTimes etc. - have lately held up two prominent figures to personify the "green" transformation.
Even as Poznan sputters back into geographic obscurity, even as the excessive cold and wet of this winter so far contradict the simple forecast of heat rising to the terminal, neither Thomas Friedman nor Anderson Cooper seem to be able to much more than advocate for smarter consumer choices, though I think what's really working there is a softening, a getting people ready, accepting the fact that the quickest most certain way to reduce the carbon footprint of humanity is to reduce the size of humanity's foot, though neither says anything slightly near that at this time.
Both of them, in their role, or guise, as eco-praetor give out the tacit sense that they've risen spontaneously to this task, and both of them cite no one as predecessor or exemplar. Certainly nothing even close to a recognition that there have been voices and lives up against the inertia and momentum of the seduction process that brought us all here, whether we chose it or chose to work against it.
They're mirroring the shallowest part of the collective mind, the thin consciousness that wakes up now like the fabulous brontosaurus, nerves sending impulses down the football field of body length and back, news that something's happening.
None of the atomized multitude have reason for guilt because none of them did anything intentionally to bring this change.
Like Iraq, it was all a mistake, but a goodhearted well-intentioned mistake with only a little greed and heartless indifference out at its edges.
The thing is there are people among us right now whose lives are as "green" as "green" can get, people who've never stepped outside the harmonic, whose ways of being in the world don't lead, didn't lead to this and won't, because they're old ways, very old, and the result of necessity not desire, or rather the only desire the most basic one - to live, to survive and not foreclose the survival of their children.
Do Friedman and Cooper turn toward these examples? No.
No, they do not. Should they?
Yes, they should. We all should, not because we need to live in exactly the same way they do, but because we need to remember, and we need to feel, as we once did, the way they do still.
-
San Bushmen
Waorani
Cinta Larga
-
Cooper
Friedman

“The weakening of the EU climate package has dealt a devastating blow to the Poznan negotiations. By making concessions to the coal industry, the EU is undermining its own – already rather weak – climate target of 20% C02 reductions by 2020, and will jeopardize its leading role at the Copenhagen negotiations,” Bianca Jagger added:
“How will any country commit to further reductions if Europe’s promises turn out to be little more than hot air?”

those very limited goals

I will immediately begin And, you know I will begin And, you know embassies terrorist embassies terrorist are protected embassies terrorist logistical we can ferret embassies terrorist logistical the Iraqi government embassies are protected remaining to assure embassies you know terrorist we can ferret we can ferret terrorist And you know I will
 I will begin in cooperation with providing activity in the region one of the things that I'll be doing to make sure
to make sure that to remove civilian embassies are protected
troops terrorist embassies terrorist troops terrorist embassies terrorist are protected protected protected protected If we start we can ferret
our troops are embassies protected from Iraq
we can ferret we are going and you know I, you know I will begin
in cooperation with to and our you know I, we, you know I will
If we start we can If we start with the number If we start 
with the number we can ferret we can maintain we can maintain a large enough 
one of the things protected protected we can maintain force in the region one of the things in the region that I'll be doing in our, our, our, our we have we have
we can in Iraq in Iraq in Iraq in Iraq in Iraq we can have
in Iraq each logistical month we can we can ferret we can maintain 
any remaining If we start we can to assure and you know I will that our our, our, our civilian personnel and our, our, our, our if we start we can with the number we can ferret we can maintain
We can we have I will We can we have I will I will begin
we can have we have we can ferret we can maintain We can I will begin
We can responsibly We can responsibly remove
We can responsibly ferret We can responsibly maintain
We can we can I will
I will begin
we can have we can remove we can have we can remove
We can ferret responsibly We can maintain responsibly
We can remove we can that logistical 1 to 2
we can ferret we can ferret responsibly combat logistical
brigades
each logistical month we are training and evaluating
maintaining the integrity and evaluating
And, you know embassies terrorist protected we can
remove all of them [in] 16 months... If we start
We can responsibly remove We can responsibly maintain
If we start
with the number of brigades we have in Iraq today,
we can remove all of them [in] 16 months.
we can remove all of them all of them
all of them
[in] 16 months.
we can remove all of them [in] 16 months.
[in] [in] [in] [in]
all of them
all of them
If we start we can ferret one of the things that I'll be doing
to make sure that troops embassies terrorist
embassies terrorist our our, our, our.
After this After this redeployment, After this we will leave
we will leave enough After this we will leave enough
leave enough troops in Iraq as necessary
After this we will leave enough troops troops we will troops
we will troops we will After this enough leave troops After this
embassies in Iraq in Iraq After this
to guard our troops
our embassy and diplomats in Iraq in Iraq as necessary
in Iraq as necessary, and a, a, a, a, what kind of number's
number's required as necessary After this
If we start After this we can ferret I will
immediately begin counter-terrorism in cooperation with providing
force to strike
each logistical month al Qaeda if it forms After this we can
We can responsibly maintain
We can responsibly maintain a protected
maintain a protected base
that the Iraqis cannot destroy
that support, of . -- is to meet .
that support, of
is to meet .
is to meet

that support

PE Obama (remix)
The World Beyond Iraq 19.Mar.08 / December 7, 2008 (Meet the Press)
via JWN

has funded the operations of various:

Coca is a serious destabilizer—keeping Colombia’s rebels armed and the country’s progress in check. But after almost a decade, U.S.-assisted efforts to reduce the crop’s production in Colombia haven’t just failed; they’ve been downright counterproductive. Plan Colombia was meant to improve security, stamp out drug cultivation, and improve law and order after a decades-long conflict with leftist militants. But coca cultivation rose 15 percent between 2000 and 2006

The United States has spent $6 billion on Plan Colombia, but Colombia still supplies 90 percent of U.S. cocaine.

The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2008/Foreign Policy
-
The bank is that what's getting more and more obvious is so bleak and frightening enough of the audience will continue believing whatever they're told to believe.
Iraq was a mistake.
Bush did it.
Enough of the audience to keep the exits and entrances clear. To keep a pulse in the economy until they're ready to put it down. Or harvest it.
Because if they don't have that docile passive base, if everybody just gets up out of their seats and says "Basta!" and refuses to cooperate the machine won't work. It's inevitable, but the race is to get the next parasite empire set up and fortified before the curtain comes down.
Try this:
Iraq was on purpose and it was successful. What was desired was what happened.
Try this:
The same guys who engineered that are running the international drug trade.
Colombia's on purpose.
Afghanistan had less heroin production under the Taliban than it does under American occupation.

...the company can’t pay employees because its creditor, Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, won’t let them. Crain’s Chicago Business reported that Republic Windows’ monthly sales had fallen to $2.9 million from $4 million during the past month. In a memo to the union, obtained by the business journal, Republic CEO Rich Gillman said the company had “no choice but to shut our doors.”

Bank of America received $25 billion from the government’s financial bailout package.

“Across cultures, religions, union and nonunion, we all say this bailout was a shame,” said Richard Berg, president of Teamsters Local 743. “If this bailout should go to anything, it should go to the workers of this country.”

Outside the plant, protesters wore stickers and carried signs that said, “You got bailed out, we got sold out.”

Shenoy/AP 06.Dec.08

French President Nicolas Sarkozy held his long-awaited meeting with the Dalai Lama
-
I told him how important I thought it was to pursue dialogue between the Dalai Lama and Chinese authorities," Sarkozy said after their meeting.
-
Another idea, espoused by chemist Paul Crutzen, who won the 1995 Nobel Prize for his work on the ozone shield, is to scatter masses of sulphur dioxide particles in the stratosphere.
Swathing the world at high altitude, these particles would reflect sunlight, lowering the temperature by a precious degree or thereabouts.
-
Operation River Freedom Denial
-

Exodus/Éxodo

Words by Charles Bowden
Photographs by Julián Cardona

Israel willing to go it alone
-
ISRAEL PREPARING ATTACK ON IRAN
AS U.S. TROOPS PROVIDE RADAR SUPPORT
-

There could be no sharper a reminder, nor a more poignant call to action, than the brutal and heinous violence visited upon the Nariman House and the Holtzberg family, living and working in Mumbai on a mission of peace, scholarship, and spiritual guidance.

As those responsible are brought to justice, as we aid and support the victims and their families, as we work to defeat radical extremism and the terror it spawns, let us find strength in knowing that in the face of those who seek to take lives, there are those who seek to give hope and comfort. In the face of those who wish only to destroy...

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton

-
The IDF is drawing up options for a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities 

that do not include coordination with the United States
-

-
Israel may attack Iran without US approval
-
Karma Kosher Conscripts in New-Age Diaspora Seek Refuge in Goa
-
Israel Preparing to Attack Iran Without US Assistance
-
At least 20 people have been killed and several more injured 

as a bomb exploded near a Shia mosque in Peshawar

  in the northwest of Pakistan, officials have said.
-
Israel preparing for strike against Iran: Report
-
A Tragic End:

Shortly after the terrorist takeover of Chabad House, Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak offered the Indian government assistance in dealing with the attacks and the subsequent investigation. India so far hasn't responded to the offer, Mr. Belotserkovsky said. India and Israel have strong defense cooperation ties, and India has long been a major buyer of Israeli weapons.
[...]
One of the assailants, who identified himself as Imran Babar and said his unit contained six militants, used Mr. Holtzberg's cellphone to call a popular Indian TV show on Thursday. In the call, he fumed about a recent visit by Major-General Avi Mizrahi, head of Israel's Ground Forces Command, to the disputed Indian state of Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim area where Indian forces are battling an Islamic insurgency.
[...]
Once the commandoes started leaving the building, which seemed to indicate their mission had been successful, cheers erupted in the crowd. Shortly thereafter came the news of the hostages' bodies inside.

Trofimov-Anand/WSJ 28.Aug.08
-

Israel is drawing up plans to attack Iran's nuclear facilities and is prepared to launch a strike without backing from the US, it has been reported.
Officials in the Israeli Defence Ministry told the Jerusalem Post that while they prefer to act in consultation with the US, they were preparing plans that would allow them to act in isolation.
"It is always better to coordinate," a senior Defence Ministry official told the newspaper. "But we are also preparing options that do not include coordination."
[...]
Some Israeli security officials fear that the Iranian retaliation for a strike on its facilities could include a large-scale missile attack on Israel from several Iranian allies, disruption of oil supplies to the West, and terror attacks against Jewish targets around the world

Frenkel/TimesUK 04.Dec.08
-
Goyal, Goyal:

Q This is the 9/11 of India. How the President, Washington is taking this seriously after the U.S. 9/11, because what they are saying, we have trained almost 500 people who are ready to strike anywhere in the world, including in the U.S., and they are well trained.

MS. PERINO: Well, we -- India has been the victim of terrorist attacks before, but so has Pakistan. One of the things that is different in this attack is that six American citizens were killed. But you'll remember the terrorist attacks on the Parliament building several years ago fostered a lot of tension between Pakistan and India, as well. They've been able to have cooperative conversations, even though they might be tense. That's the kind of diplomatic solution-making that we're trying to foster here.

White House Press Corps 01.Dec.08
-
Same Goyal, separate, different, other USgov press thing:

Q Two questions. One, there is a cry throughout India as far as the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and also cry here. Yesterday at the American University, Americans and Indians and Jews all got together, because Americans were the victims. My question is that only Westerners, especially Americans and Jews, Israelis, and British were the target of those terrorist attacks -- so what are we doing now?

MR. STANZEL: Well, as you've seen this week, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, as well as Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, have been traveling in the region to express our solidarity with the people of India, who have been victims of this attack, as you noted.
There are other, many other countries' citizens who were impacted by this attack. We think it's important to understand everything that occurred, to investigate fully what happened. And we have, working with our partners in India and in Pakistan, countries like us that have seen the real negative impact and the threat of terrorism over the years, we have to work together to make sure that we take on and tackle those challenges and confront the terrorists where they are.

Q And second, according to The Washington Post, and New York Times, and also Indian and American intelligence officials, now there is a clear (inaudible) of Pakistan link - at least two groups in Pakistan. Don't you think India has a right or should strike out those terrorists inside Pakistan?

MR. STANZEL: I will let the assessments about what took place just last week, in terms of the terrorist attack in Mumbai, will let the experts in the intelligence community talk about those linkages. We have always said that countries have the right to protect their citizens, and they should

whitehouse.gov

-
a green flag on every lamp post:

azadi
The city floated on a sea of smiles
azadi
The freedom to be raped by Indian soldiers
azadi
Surrounded by a sea of green flags
azadi
Nanga bhookha
azadi
all Indians who are not nanga or bhooka
are and have been complicit
azadi
how easily victims can become perpetrators
azadi
replace the green flags with saffron ones
azadi
Perhaps now that the threat of violence has receded
azadi
and there is some space
azadi
in which to debate views and air ideas...

Arundhati Roy[remix]/GuardianUk 22.Aug.08

-
Who’s writing this foreign policy, M. Night Shyamalan?

because the scale of China is still rather small:

"Right now we do not have the courage to invest in financial institutions because we do not know what problems they may have," said Mr Lou.

Helena Cobban/JWN 04.Dec.08

Family of man trampled at Wal-Mart

Les Fins de Conflit de Longue date Comme l'Israël Rendent la Tondeuse à gazon En Palestine

Last Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, I was in the local Food4Less getting some evaporated as opposed to condensed milk, and there was a moment when I turned into the aisle where those things are and an alarm began to go off, in the back of the store behind the doors that separate the customers' back of the store from the working area in the actual back of the store, where there must be an alarm system back there that someone had triggered, a repetitive digital sound like a car alarm, and as I turned and stood scanning the rows of baking items the Christmas carol on the store's sound system blended perfectly at the volume of the alarm from the back of the store, so that the sounds merged and became one sound.
Then yesterday I was at the desk here which is also the kitchen table and roommate #1 was watching television in the living room which is open plan, what sounded like a newscast though it may not have been, and the fish tank, in between where I was and where the television is, was bubbling, and the sounds merged and became one sound.