Jun 22 2014 - 8:56pm
Nothing more clearly illustrates the absurdity of murder for political ends than this moment of chaos in Iraq and Syria. Imagine spaceships of an advanced alien civilization hovering over that vast desert area and assessing the state of our human endeavors on the basis of the welter of alliances and rivalries to-ing and fro-ing below, leaving trails of blood and traumatized children.
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Jun 22 2014 - 7:05pm
June 22 marks the 73rd anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi Germany invasion of its then ally, the Soviet Union. It was a major mistake, in my opinion, and I think Germany would have won the war in Europe. Especially if it had avoided declaring war on the U.S. after Pearl Harbor -- the second major mistake Germany made in 1941.
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Jun 20 2014 - 4:36am
This past year, my wife and I joined the Great West Virginia Diaspora: all those West Virginians who live outside of the borders of the Mountain State. Displaced!
Well, while it is true that I found work hard to get, even in the Eastern Panhandle, we don't feel that unfortunate, except for not seeing family and friends back home as often as we'd like. We have found a place that is easy for a Mountaineer to feel at home in many ways: the Low Country of South Carolina.
True, the Low Country is flat, but interestingly, you can be fooled about the lack of mountains, as the tall trees lining South Carolina's interstates shield you from seeing all that level land. So one can at least imagine that, behind that curtain of green trees, looms a big hillside the likes of which we took for granted in Preston County, WV. Read more
Jun 19 2014 - 4:50pm
People forget the extent to which Democrats, who controlled the U.S. Senate at the time, pushed for and supported the 2003 attack on Iraq. Remember them or not, theeeeeeeeeey're back!
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Jun 19 2014 - 10:44am
Iraq was saved from ignorant subhuman barbarism by a gentlewoman named Gertrude at the time that the civilized nations of the world were, in a quite advanced and sophisticated manner, slaughtering their young men in a project now called the First World War.
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Jun 19 2014 - 8:57am
On May 29the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) issued a public statement in which it said that it “recognises Guyana as a jurisdiction with significant AML/CFT (anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing) deficiencies”.
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Jun 16 2014 - 12:02am
By Sandy Lyon
Will we dig up paradise to be able to try to tweet a picture of paradise? To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question of our time.
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Jun 13 2014 - 10:37pm
Few things could have spoken more shamefully of political leadership by the Republicans than the combination of responses to the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and the rampant terrorism in Iraq by the ISIS.
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Jun 13 2014 - 12:20pm
Reinvade, reoccupy, and redestroy Iraq. That is the solution to the inevitable civil war that happens when the US pulls out? Will we do it until either Iraq is remade in our image or until the US economy, political environment, and culture is also destroyed?
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Jun 12 2014 - 5:13pm
The risk with any kind of binary-thinking is that there is no real room for difference. You are one or the other. The U.S. loves its binaries: black or white, man or woman, gay or straight. Such thinking misses the complexities of people, limiting us all into narrow boxes. Perhaps nowhere is binary-thinking more obvious today than in what has been called the “fat acceptance movement.”
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Jun 12 2014 - 12:12pm
Dr Franklin Johnston, a strategist, project manager and advisor to the Jamaica Minister of Education, wrote a column in the Jamaica Observer of May 30, 2014 in which he basically contended that the Caribbean Common Market and Community (CARICOM) and the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) are the constructs of “Anglophone black people” and not in the interest of Jamaica.
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Jun 11 2014 - 2:38pm
By Elliott Adams,
June 6th came once more. D-day was a long time ago and I didn't intend to make anything of it. I was surprised by the emotional turmoil I felt, by how I felt about that day in my gut. I realized that while I was born after the war was over, D-day and World War II were a real and tangible part of my childhood. It was part of my family's life, my teachers lives, my friends parent's lives. It wasn't just old men who remembered it, every adult in my youth had stories from that war. It was amputees on street corners selling pencils and people all around me still dealing with it. It was part of my life and it played a role in my enlistment for Vietnam. Of course I felt this day in my guts. Why did I think it would be otherwise?
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Jun 11 2014 - 11:36am
By Shannon Hoffman
Community organizing works. Anyone who questions that statement needn’t look further than our current US president. By leveraging the grassroots, democratic “bottom-up” approach, President Barack Obama quite literally organized his way into office. He spent a great deal of time as an organizer prior to arriving in Washington, which is still apparent in the way he conducts himself during public appearances. He has a way of speaking to “the people” as if he is actually one of the people. Charging ordinary citizens to organize and act together on his behalf during the race played a key role in him securing a place in office.
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Jun 11 2014 - 10:08am
By Robert Fantina,
A lead article on CNN today reads as follows: ‘Fellow soldiers call Bowe Bergdahl a deserter, not a hero.’
It seems that one is defining the term ‘hero’ in a rather odd way, if one can’t consider a deserter a hero. Let’s look first at what desertion from the U.S. military means, in terms of actions and possible consequences, and then more specifically at Mr. Bergdahl’s particular situation, or at least what is currently known of it. Read more
Jun 9 2014 - 4:36pm
By Eric Chitoubol
Do you think Memorial Day should be more than just a day to remember those we have lost as a nation during times of war and hatred? Or should Memorial Day be altered to reflect times of peace and rejoicing to no more lives lost and for war to be over? I believe we can and should make it a day of peace.
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Jun 9 2014 - 9:57am
In April 2014, the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault issued a series of recommendations for college and university campuses related to responding to and preventing sexual assault. Given that one in five college-aged women endure a sexual assault, the White House is to be applauded for prioritizing this issue and for organizing the task force. But of course, it should be so simple to recommend that campuses do the right thing.
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Jun 6 2014 - 3:08pm
The Supreme Court not long ago really did determine that corporations are/were people for purposes of campaign contributions and other matters. Now, no matter how you or I might feel about that decision, it remains the law of the land. And, logic suggests, even insists, if an entity is really human, it must be subject to the laws that govern all other humans.
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Jun 6 2014 - 10:31am
A unique conference is planned in Charlottesville, Va., featuring the latest technologies for the practice of large-scale killing. The Daily Progress tells us that,
"to allow participants to speak more freely about potentially sensitive topics, the conference is closed to the media and open only to registered participants."
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Jun 5 2014 - 12:01pm
It is shameful that golden opportunities to produce more food in the Caribbean and significantly reduce the astronomically high annual food import bill of US$4.75 billion are being woefully neglected. If this misguided trend continues, the economies of many of the countries of the region will be increasingly imperilled.
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Jun 4 2014 - 9:47am
The most patriotic Fourth of July celebration I've ever been to was not in Washington, D.C., but at a little lake in Virginia. We were picnicking on the shore of the lake along with about 75 not very close friends and family. This was a few years ago. I must have been 8 years old.
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Jun 3 2014 - 11:17am
Getting old is something most of us will face and most of us would choose to face. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some fears along the way and I have many that date back to my childhood. In my lifetime, the whole idea of getting old has been somewhat re-defined by my generation -– the baby boomers. Now, sixty is the new fifty, and seventy is the new sixty, and so on. Like most things we boomers do, it’s foolish and, in this case, just a form of denial.
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Jun 2 2014 - 5:21pm
National officials certainly assume that war has a future. According to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, world military expenditures totaled nearly $1.75 trillion in 2013. Although, after accounting for inflation, this is a slight decrease over the preceding year, many countries increased their military spending significantly, including China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Indeed, 23 countries doubled their military spending between 2004 and 2013. None, of course, came anywhere near to matching the military spending of the United States, which, at $640 billion, accounted for 37 percent of 2013’s global military expenditures. Furthermore, all the nuclear weapons nations are currently “modernizing” their nuclear arsenals.
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Jun 1 2014 - 10:56am
Like so many other US military bases overseas, the Okinawan locals who oppose the base are told that the US military is there to protect them. Indigenous opposition is brushed aside by the presumption of position--there is one way to protect people and the US military is the best at it.
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May 29 2014 - 11:27am
A remarkable American voice has been stilled, but the entire world is poorer for it. Many of us –- including me –- never met Maya Angelou, yet her writing and especially her poetry had a profound effect upon us.
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May 28 2014 - 9:16pm
No human being wants to be ruled by their people's murderers. Forgiveness through restorative justice may be possible, but being ruled by murderers is asking for too much.
Yet, that seems to be the Hobson's Choice behind the Afghan presidential election, which is into its run-off between Dr. Abdullah / Mohaqiq's team and Dr. Ashraf Ghani / General Dostum's team, neither team having won more than 50% of balloted votes in the first round.
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May 28 2014 - 8:50pm
One of my favorite quotes by the easily quotable late Israeli statesman Abba Eban was his reference to his foe the PLO’s Yasser Arafat. Eban summed up so much with: “Arafat never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity!”
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May 28 2014 - 2:21pm
"Never teach your children to admit that their fathers' were wrong in their efforts to maintain the sovereignty, freedom and independence which was their birthright"---Jefferson Davis.
* * *
June 3, 2014, is the 206th birthday of Jefferson Davis, who was born in Christian County, Kentucky, on June 3, 1808.
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May 28 2014 - 9:45am
There were 160 active-duty Army suicides in the year from Oct. 1, 2008, to Sept. 30, 2009, according to a Pentagon report released July 29. Then a headline on the New York Times August 1 front page tells us: "Afghan strategy has fresh focus: targeted killing."
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May 27 2014 - 10:03am
Do you know any young couple planning on having more than one or two children? I ask all young people I meet about their “family” plans and I rarely hear them say they plan on a big family. The social norms in Western Society have changed so radically in just a few decades that having children and building a family have become second thoughts after getting a new BMW.
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May 27 2014 - 10:02am
Do you know any young couple planning on having more than one or two children? I ask all young people I meet about their “family” plans and I rarely hear them say they plan on a big family. The social norms in Western Society have changed so radically in just a few decades that having children and building a family have become second thoughts after getting a new BMW.
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May 25 2014 - 12:59pm
Is economic inequality growing in American higher education?
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May 25 2014 - 9:21am
The three laws of robotics, according to science fiction author Isaac Asimov, are:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
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May 24 2014 - 9:17am
Jeju Island, South Korea –- For the past two weeks, I’ve been in the Republic of Korea (ROK), as a guest of peace activists living in Gangjeong Village on ROK’s Jeju Island. Gangjeong is one of the ROK’s smallest villages, yet activists here, in their struggle against the construction of a massive naval base, have inspired people around the world.
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May 23 2014 - 4:17pm
El Dorado Hills, CA – "John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General" by Stephen M. Hood was selected as the 2014 winner of the Albert Castel Book Award.
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May 22 2014 - 2:53pm
Negotiations between Canada and the 15 member-states of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) are now in danger of ending without result on
June 30 – a ‘drop dead’ date that both sides accepted toward the end of last year. After six rounds of negotiations since March 2009 – the last one being held in Canada in March 2014 – the Canadian government has reportedly told CARICOM governments that they should ‘raise their level of ambition’ or, on
June 30, Canada will end the talks.
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