Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
Geez, I’m embarased that this has been the first blog post in about a week. Admittedly, Minneapolis’ school board primary elections are coming up, and profiling six of NINE candidates has kinda eaten up my week, but still. So many interesting things to flap my digital jaw about.
This week saw the third major suicide bomning [...]
Courtesy of Waleed Ibrahim of Reuters, via The Stupidest Man on Earth, comes a behind-the-scenes look at the Iraqi parliament as it tried to get a quorum of lawmakers to vote on the provincial elections law last week.
A Shi’ite lawmaker accused Sunnis of following a ‘foreign Arab agenda’. A Sunni accused the Shi’ites of pursuing [...]
It’s kind of old news, but this is the first concrete evidence I’ve seen in the Western media, and it deserves to be highlighted. From the AP via YahooNews
So, we’re at it again. Gotta love those “dirty wars”. According to the AP article, the Badr organization and Iraqi Security Forces, with the complicity of the [...]
In today’s NYTimes:
“Officials say the administration contracted out so much work in Iraq that companies like KBR were simply overwhelmed by the scale of the operations. Some of the electrical work, for example, was turned over to subcontractors, some of which hired unskilled Iraqis who were paid only a few dollars a day.
“Government officials responsible [...]
This is rather surprising: The Guardian, citing no-one, says the US will establish an interests section – a kind of mini-embasy – in Tehran, and is planning the announcement for next month. Their reporter smells election-year politics, and I concur. It might go some way to undercuting Obama’s main point that Bush (and by extension, [...]
It was peculiar listening to journalists call the exchange of remains today a “prisoner swap” — 200 dead bodies and 5 lives ones, in exchange for the “remains” of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser. Not even their bodies, just bits and pieces.
Undoubtedly a sad day in Israel, and a joyous one in Lebanon. But what [...]
Apparently so, say the Minneapolis police.
Who knew that a car can’t squish me into the curb?
That’s a comforting thought…if only I could trust the passive-aggressive, four-wheeled cows in this cit
Remember the combat outpost attacked a few days ago, and almost overrun?
This one?
It looks like we’ve been pushed out of that district in Nuristan, because US and Afghan troops are pulling out. Carlotta Gall of the NYTimes (*heart!*) mentions this in the above-linked story:
“The American and Afghan army soldiers had moved into the base at [...]
No, not the kind that involves Christian religious officiators dumping water on your head. This is more of the nautical kind, involving fashionable ladies and bottles of champagne.
Ships are built in two stages: first, the hull is put together on a slipway, then it is launched and towed to a dock to be “fitted out”, [...]
Is this really such a good idea? Every time you mention Israel on the ‘net, you bring out all kinds of trolls. Thank God for moderated comments.
So this morning, NPR ran a story about a new law gathering steam in the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) that would strip Israeli citizenship, identity papers, health and unemployment [...]
