text:
Compatible Ink Cartridge,Toner Cartridge,CISS
Contact person: Ms Belinda
Tel: +86-755-21007848
Email: email@example.com
Office Add: Room 410, 5th Building, 1970 Technology Park, No. 112, Minkang Road, Minzhi, Longhua, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
Canon FX-10 Black Toner Cartridge 100% compatible with original toner cartridge, laser printer toner cartridge, remanufactured Black toner cartridge.
Model Number:Canon FX-10
Cartridge Color: Black
Print Technology:Laser Cartridge
Page Yield: A4 type paper, Black 2,000 pages at 5% coverage
Compatible Models: Compatible Black Toner Cartridge for Canon FAX L100/120/MF-4120/4140/4150.
Rich Trading Development Co., Ltd laserjet Black toner cartridge Canon FX-10 is a smart choice for your Compatible Black Toner Cartridge for Canon FAX L100/120/MF-4120/4140/4150. ,because Canon FX-10 have Smart and extra fluent printing performance ,Stability quality ,strong fuser film fixation,lower waste powder,no gray background. It replaces the original Canon FX-10 Black Toner Cartridge and is specially engineered to meet the highest standards of quality, reliability and exceptional yields that meet or exceed OEM standards for the Canon FX-10 Black Toner Cartridge and also 70% price saving for such compatible Black toner cartridge Canon FX-10.
Rich Trading Development Co., Ltd can offer you Canon FX-10 Black Toner Cartridge,customs Canon FX-10 Black Toner Cartridge,wholesale Canon FX-10 Black Toner Cartridge . Larger quanity much more competitive prices,any need or any questions,pls e-mail to us :email@example.com ,or call us +86-755-23096633 . tks!


text: Designed for lasting use, this Oxford cot bed offers excellent storage space in a clean and modern design, creating a stylish and organised first bedroom. From our beautiful Oxford range, this cot/toddler bed combines modern, sophisticated style with plenty of spacious storage to fit your nursery. The white panels are crafted with poplar and engineered board, providing long-lasting quality and style, perfect for your new arrival. Our Oxford furniture pieces are complimented beautifully by our Welcome to the World décor collection. Shop Welcome to the World here Oxford Convertible Cot to Toddler Bed Features We know that little ones are always growing, so this cot can be easily converted into a toddler bed for long-lasting use to see you through the years to come. Spacious storage The full-length under-bed storage drawer is perfect for tucking away blankets and bedding to keep them close by. The soft-close drawer ensures baby won't be woken. Safe and adjustable cot base Enjoy easier and safer access to baby with the adjustable cot base, giving you 2 height positions to choose from. Dimensions Cot/day/toddler bed measures H:89cm x W:80cm x L:152cm approx. Designed to fit any Mamas & Papas cot bed mattress: L:139cm x W:69cm x D:10cm Age Suitability Suitable from birth Standards British safety standard BS 14749:2016 Safety Self-assembly required

subset: commoncrawl


text:
De la Costa, Chicago Drink consultant Jamie Terrell's recipe for the house Bloody Mary, inspired by the classic Bullshot, incorporates the tangy South American condiment chimichurri along with veal stock and freshly pressed tomato water. More Great Pitcher Drinks
How to Make It
In a pitcher, combine the vodka, tomato juice, stock, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, chimichurri, horseradish cream and Tabasco; refrigerate the Bloody Mary mix until chilled, at least 1 hour.
Moisten half of the outer rims of 6 collins glasses with the lemon wedge and coat lightly with the celery salt mixture. Fill the glasses with ice. Stir the Bloody Mary mix and strain it into the prepared glasses. Grate fresh horseradish over each drink and garnish with the cherry tomatoes.


text:
Toronto house prices' heady gains expected to continue into 2015
December 4, 2014 by Adil Virani
Filed under Home Series, Latest News, Latest Rates, Mortgage FAQ, Recent News, Selling Your Home, Vancouver Mortgage Broker
Canada's largest housing market continues to show price gains which the Toronto Real Estate Board says will continue into 2015. The board said the average sale price in November was $577,936, a 7.4% increase from a year ago. Year-to-date prices are up 8.4% to an average of $567,198. Related Great news coming if you're renewing […]


text:
What's included with this product: Access to the NCCPT Study Guide online.
The NCCPT Personal Trainer exam is very challenging. Most people learn by doing. We have developed this study guide to help you do just that! Read the chapters in your NCCPT personal training manual first. Use this personal training study guide PDF to check your knowledge. If you can't find the answers, we've provided them for you in the back of the study guide.


text:
Archive for the 'personal' Category
Confession Of A Woman In A Refrigerator (Speech Without A Title 2.0)
lol conflating disability and DEATH so casually that nobody but disabled ppl notices.
So the thing is, most of this belongs at the bioethics conference, but, but, jesus.
I remember being in high school and not being sure why, exactly, college had to be a thing, because I was going to be dead by the time I was thirty.
(Two-thirds of the way there and I still can't see more than ten years down the line and maybe, maybe a small part of what I'm doing is motivated by now or never, I'll do this right.)
Why would I be dead by the time I was thirty? Well, every other girl like me never seemed to make it to womanhood, it only stood to reason.
At some point, and I've told this story so many times and it never stops making me want to cry, I started hearing about other disabled people. People who were older than me, people who weren't about this thing is going to kill me one of these days, people who weren't about living with, living with, living with, not dying from disease, people who were disabled and alive and not sick, not dying, but raising hell and building lives and screaming, screaming, screaming when we were being killed.
People who used words like we.
I thought, we, yes. We. Okay. We can make this work.
lol conflating disability and DEATH so casually that nobody but disabled ppl notices.
When you are disabled, when you are traumatized and vision-impaired and autistic, even and maybe especially when you haven't been given those access codes yet, you learn to see yourself as the walking dead. You are vast swathes of nonexistence, cut off and left for dead at every missed milestone and swapped pronoun and bruised shin and scar on your face. There are Other People, Normal People, People, and then there is you, and you are defined by the parts of yourself that match to everyone around you, and then the vast swathes of nothing. Disability is absence, disability is inability, disability is death, and you are a woman in a refrigerator.
It takes you a while to learn that you aren't the one who put you in the refrigerator.
It takes longer to learn that it wasn't your body, either.
A lot of us never get to the point where we can say it was you, you tried to kill me, you made me think I was dead, you screamed about the injustice of putting me in a refrigerator while you, you were the one killing me.
lol conflating disability and DEATH so casually that nobody but disabled ppl notices.
And you made me think it was my fault.
One day, I will write a speech that isn't this one, this choked and untitled remixed stew of you tried to kill me, and you made me think it was my fault, and now you will listen.
When you're disabled, you see death everywhere, and it isn't because your body stands out or doesn't stand at all, it's because everyone talks about you like you're in a refrigerator, like you're not real, like you're dead.
And it kills you.
They kill you.
lol conflating disability and DEATH so casually that nobody but disabled ppl notices.
What I am trying to say is that of course, of COURSE, of fucking course we notice, because we can't not, because the bioethics conference has one day for beginning-of-life issues, where they try to cut us out, and then a day for end-of-life, for those of us who slipped by, because last week twins in Belgium asked the state to kill them because no one ever told them that they didn't have to go into the refrigerator.
What I am trying to say is, my friend has a friend who uses a wheelchair and didn't get screened for breast cancer because she's already dead, right?
And you, you, every single one of you who said we are helping, we are saving you, something cruel and unjust has been done, and then you made disability mean death and shoved us into the fucking refrigerator. You killed us.
I didn't know how to die until you taught me.
lol conflating disability and DEATH so casually that nobody but disabled ppl notices.
Question: if nobody but disabled people know that disability and death are distinct and not overlapping concepts, does anyone really know? Or are we just trees in the forest, falling (well, growing, would be the point,) with no one to hear?
What I am trying to say is, I am now Someone Who People Meet, and I know that there is a vast we out there, and I know that I am living and a woman and disabled and that none of these contradict, and I dragged myself out of the refrigerator by the skin of my teeth and said you will listen to me now, and this evening I felt sick when some friends offered to transcribe something for me, and I still can't see myself making thirty.
And what I am saying is, this thing is going to kill me one of these days, and what is going to kill me isn't going to be my back screaming at me or my eyes turning off or my head going through a wall, it's going to be everyone who says we're just trying to get you out of your refrigerator.
I pulled myself out of the refrigerator you put me into the day you started grading people into people and cripples. I pulled myself out the day another woman in another refrigerator told me, like passing on a secret, we aren't dead yet. Someone let me out of your refrigerator, and you can never put me back in there again.
lol conflating disability and DEATH so casually that nobody but disabled ppl notices.
I'm disabled. I'm not dead. I'm not in a fucking refrigerator. I am living, living, living, and I am screaming, screaming, screaming.
And, just in case you should care…
Yeah. I noticed.
Someone who moves like you
Buckle up kids, because this gets long and personal.
So, a long time (~7 months) ago, in a galaxy far, far away (rural New Hampshire,) there lived a sad little girl (or KICKASS ADULT,) named Julia who just so happened to have a friend named C. C and Julia had spent the past several months talking too much altogether about Glee, and C had begun to push for Julia to add a second show to her plate. Some brightly-colored sitcom about derelicts going to a community college.
And Julia was skeptical, but C was persistent, for she knew that if Julia liked the first two minutes, Julia would have a new favorite show. See, C knew something that Julia did not.
C knew that Abed Nadir existed.
Now, there are a couple of things you, gentle reader, must know about Julia in order to appreciate what happens next. First, you must understand that, ever since she had been born and maybe even before, Julia had been autistic. And second, you must understand that, because of this, Julia had spent her whole life watching and learning stories where she had no part, no point of entry, and no value. Julia was trained to imagine herself in stories as someone she was not and could never be, and to define the story of her own life in terms of how it failed to be reflected back to her. And sometimes, most of the times, Julia forgot that she was a person. Stories are important, and she didn't have one. You are a mistake isn't a story. It's barely even a sentence.
I must warn you now that this is not a story of how C or Dan Harmon or Abed Nadir or even Julia herself saved or healed Julia. It's in the script, but Julia wouldn't have a voice in any of those stories, either. No, gentle readers and vicious tumblr-ers, this is a story of what it means to start a new story and see on your screen, for the first time, someone who moves like you.
Do you understand what that means?
It's probably not something you've ever really had to think about. But how someone moves is the first thing telling you whether or not they might be able to be you, and you them. And for the first time in Julia's life, she looked at a character on television and saw a yes.
Abed Nadir walked onto Julia's laptop screen, and nothing and everything changed.
For the next seventh months, there was a lot of CAPSLOCKING IN GOOGLE CHAT at C about Community and Abed Nadir, but very few words elsewhere. Which was odd, because when Julia liked things, she tended to talk about them too much. This was one of many things she and Abed had in common.
Except, here's the funny thing. Abed said "I just like liking things," and it wasn't just not-punished, it wasn't just okay—either of which would have been remarkable and unbelievable—no. It was good.
And Julia, who had endless words for a great many small and unimportant things, couldn't say anything more about Abed beyond he moves like me.
Abed Nadir, you see, is an autistic character.
There's a difference between TV Autistics and autistic characters on television. TV Autistics—Bones, House, Sheldon, Sherlock—are caricatures, and, not coincidentally, all fan-diagnosed. They are socially awkward/anti-social/socially maladapted, eccentric geniuses free of any serious adaptive functioning limitations, motor issues, sensory sensitivities, or language differences, able to manage independently in all major areas of daily living, with a bonus side of savant skills and the empathic range of a rock. They're awesome, but they're a stock character, and they manage to simultaneously hint at the autistic experience without actually meaning it. It's like that poster about gay subtext in popular that was going around a while ago
the irony being, of course, that for a show that is "so gay," it's actually not gay at all. The people in charge have found the perfect ratio of homoerotic subtext (all of it) to actual gay characters (none of them) to keep the fangirls creaming their pants and the money rolling in. No one involved has any intention of meaningful inclusion or exploration. You avoid any potentially unpleasant consequences, because the choice to have a gay character was never actually made.
It should be noted that autism isn't the only reason Julia grew up without People Like Her on television, and it's not even close to the only reason she has a Thing about stories. And that's the curious thing about these TV Autistics—someone who's watched one of them in action is much more predisposed to assume that since Julia is autistic, and since she's got this extended metaphor (bonus points if you say perseveration) about stories going on, stories must be her Special Interest, the framework through which she filters the world, the poor half-human thing.
And they are, but that's because Julia is, shockingly, a person at her core. And people need stories.
Which brings us back to Abed.
It's entirely possible Julia over-identified with Abed, just a tad. Which struck her as first a bit odd—they're nothing alike, Abed thinks The Breakfast Club had a plot and likes falafel and his mom had the decency to leave— and then as more than a bit precarious. This wasn't supposed to happen.
(Somewhere, fiddling with her contacts, C arched an eyebrow and said "it wasn't?" and Julia cyber-kicked her.)
Abed Nadir walked around like a bird or a giraffe, and he couldn't do thumbs-up and he talked too fast and knew too many things and he was sharp and suspicious and easy and trusting. He did things that were simultaneously uncanny/creepy and sweet/thoughtful, and he couldn't do bills or read clocks but he could tell psychiatrists to fuck off and he could fight with his best friend when his best friend tried to take charge, and he was jealous and sharp with his crushes. He had friends and private worlds, and all the scars that come from growing up a mistake, and things were imperfect and messy and painful and visceral but he always emerged okay.
Abed Nadir said "please don't do a special episode about me" and Jeff Winger promised he "wouldn't dream of it."
And then he told Abed to pick one reference, and Abed picked 16 Candles, so they sat on the counter and ate chicken.
(And Abed didn't mind who he was kissing so long as he got to be Han Solo, and also he delivered several babies and got to be the good cop and the bad cop and used his diagnosis to get rid of an unfortunate lab partner and took advantage of a stranger in a bar's patience so he could talk about Farscape.)
And stories are a scary and messy business, full of magic and demons, taunting possibilities and rules-that-aren't, things we can't have and altogether far too many opportunities for a sad little girl's heart to be ripped out of her chest, and Julia kept watching, every week. And you must understand that asking Julia to pick one Abed moment is liking asking Abed to pick one reference.
You must understand that one story is infinitely bigger than zero, and it may still be very small and nowhere near enough, but it's something.
And yes, her heart was eventually forcibly extracted when Dan Harmon broke his promise and Virtual Systems Analysis was the dreaded Special Episode. And Julia remembered how to breathe, and stitched herself back up, because she hadn't really needed that heart, anyway. And when it turned out that someone else would be in charge of Abed next year, she remembered what she had always known to be true about happy endings and said goodbye, mourned more than she had for any corporeal person (which was still not very much,) and folded away that part of herself and went back to not existing.
But for seven months.
For seven months, she had.
Truth Is
Author's note: Yesterday in the blogosphere there was an Autism Positivity Day Flash Blog, sparked by one author noticing that someone had found their blog by searching "I wish I didn't have Asperger's." Due to my own situation, I couldn't participate, but today is Blogging Against Disablism Day, and I still have something to say.
Sometimes in the morning I am petrified and can't move
Awake but cannot open my eyes
And the weight is crushing down on my lungs
I know I can't breathe
And hope someone will save me this time x
Dear "I wish I didn't have Asperger's,"
I want you to know that I understand.
That's the first thing. This isn't going to work if we aren't honest with each other, so, let me be honest. I've thought a lot about that mythical cure, and there have been days, many days, when I didn't have to think at all–when I knew that, if I had a chance, I'd take a cure in a heartbeat.
I need you to know that I understand.
I do. I do. I want the things a cure could give me. I want to have the leading role in my own story, and parts in others'. I want to be able to do the same things everyone else can do in the same way without any extra effort. I want to not feel like a freak. I want to feel safe. I want to be someone my parents can love. I want to know I have a future, and I want to not have to blaze that trail by myself. I want to have worth. I want other people to not think they have a right to me and my space, or else I want it to stop bothering me. I want my words and experiences to make sense to other people, and I want their words and experiences to make sense to me. I want to have to work just a little less hard. I want to have a college degree, a job, and a house of my own, and I want to be able to live wherever I want. I want to be able to assume I'm a person. I want to not have a month out of the year dedicated to my brokenness. I want to be able to assume that it's not me, it's them. I want to wake up and not be terrified or already tired.
I want a lot of things.
It's not a bad thing, to want things.
Check in: can you see, now, that I really do understand? I hope you can. I get a couple of visits from you, or someone with the same keyword search, every week, and I want you to know that you aren't alone, and you aren't wrong.
Okay. I've been honest with you. Now I want you to be honest with me. Can you look at the list of things I want, and tell me if you see a pattern?
I'll wait.
While I wait, I figure, I might as well tell you some other things I'd like to stop being. In addition to no longer being autistic, I'd also like to be cured of
-being a lesbian
-being female
-being so obscenely tall
Really. I'd like to get be able to get married to someone I love in every state. I'd like to be able to walk down a dark street without fearing for my safety. I'd like to be able to sit in a chair designed for someone of my height. And none of those things are happening right now, so I guess I can either fight for them to change, or try to change myself.
Okay. Did you find the pattern? It's okay if you didn't. It took me awhile to understand it. It's subtle.
Every single one of those things I want?
Have nothing to do with being autistic.
Really. Not a single, solitary one.
I should have a leading role in my own story. When I don't, it's because other people aren't treating me like a person. That is not my fault. Pretty sure the one in the wrong there is the one who thinks that a disability means you aren't a person.
Why do I want to be able to do the same things as everyone else? Why is that important to me? If I lived in a world where it was recognized that there are multiple ways to do something and that this is okay and the things I do and the ways I do them are valid and important, would I care? Would I even realize this was something to care about at all?
I would know that I have a future, and that it's a bright and near and real one, if I knew growing up that autistic adults existed. Guess what–they do, they have for thousands of years, and on the whole, they're doing just as well as anyone else.
I want to have worth–okay. See, if I had a friend who felt worthless, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't tell that friend "you're right, you're pathetic. Please change everything about yourself." I'm pretty sure I would tell that friend that the people making her feel worthless were abusive assholes, that she was good at plenty of things, that she was a fantastic person I was lucky to know, and that human worth isn't some tangible thing we can gain or lose. And if I can say all of that to a friend, and mean it…why can't I say it to myself? I'm not special. I work by the same rules as everyone else. And that means I am worth something, whether I believe it or not.
I can keep going through these. I do make sense to a few people, who take the time to listen to me the way I need to be heard, and they make sense to me. That is how relationships work, and there are lots of different ways to communicate. I can have a job, a living situation I am in charge of, and all the education I want, with the correct supports, just like everyone else. It is not my fault that the supports I need differ from the majority, and that is not an excuse or invitation to mistreat or discriminate against me. Etc etc etc.
In the end, there are really two things I want when I say I wish I wasn't autistic or I want a cure. I want to not feel like a freak, and I want to feel safe. Those are hard, scary things to feel and to admit. And, because I'm being honest, I have to ask something even scarier.
What if being cured didn't fix those things?
Because ultimately, if I took a cure, I'd be surrendering. Instead of fighting for my right to be treated and valued as a human being regardless of disability, I'd be letting go, giving in, and letting myself be changed into someone easier, someone acceptable, someone convenient. And I want to be clear–there is nothing wrong with wanting things to be easier or wanting to feel safe or accepted or just being done fighting. That just means that you've been asked to be much, much stronger than everyone else for much, much too long.
But if, in order to be safe I have to stop being me?
Then I'm really not safe at all.
As long as being disabled means being unsafe, then no one is safe. Not really. Disability is a natural part of the human experience according to the ADA. Most people will experience some form of disability, for some period of time, at some point in their lives. So long as we as a society keep permitting exceptions to rules like everyone is a person and treat people like people, none of us are safe. Safety earned by staying within acceptable margins isn't safety at all.
I promised to be honest. Part of being honest is looking at what my words actually mean, what lies beneath them, what ideas are controling what I say. And underneath every I wish I wasn't autistic is a I wish people would stop hurting me or a I wish the world had room for me or a if I blame myself, I can feel like I'm in control.
And it's okay that I feel this way. Well, it's not okay that anyone ever has to feel this way, but I'm not bad or wrong for feeling it. Neither are you. But feelings aren't the same as reality, and in the end, if we weren't autistic anymore, there would still be people hurting others just because they can and just because no one ever told them to stop, and we'd still know that it takes only the slightest deviation before we're vulnerable again. A cure won't ever be able to change that.
What will change that is something a lot harder than a magic pill. What will change that is enough people saying enough is enough and doing the hard work of making our world one where everyone is welcome, all communication is honored, and everyone is safe and valued. And that is going to take time, and there are going to be days, still, as we work to make that happen, where you, where I, will wish we weren't autistic, because sometimes it just hurts.
But it will change. It's changing now. And you shouldn't, and don't, have to. You are amazing and sufficient and lovable just the way you are, and I really, really hope you'll stick around so that one day the rest of the world can know it, too.
your dreams will be reduced down to breathing, and you will be grateful
The thing about not-being-a-person is:
They will say those people and the price of being a person is to nod and agree that yes, those people aren't people at all.
They will have no idea who they are talking to.
You yourself will start to forget, too.
They will say a million small things that sow the seeds for violence done against you, and you will smile and let them.
You will do math, constantly.
How much do I want to be a person today? How much do I want this project to succeed? How much honesty can I afford? How much dishonesty will kill me? What is the cost of coming out? Is there a way to delay, soften, transmute? How long can I survive as half a person?
Your dreams will be reduced down to breathing.
And you will be grateful.
And no one else will know. And so it won't be real.
You will become an expert at folding away pieces of yourself, quietly and automatically and with perfect obedience.
And you will forget that, forget all of it, forget yourself, and then come back to yourself violently as someone smiles and talks, academically or hatefully and there's no deciding which is worse, about those people.
And you will remember that you are not a person. And you will have to decide, all over again, how much longer you can take that.
Metaphors Are Important: An Ethnography Of Robotics
First, a story. (A little Christmas story. I call it: the story of Schmuel. Tailor of Klimovitch.)
(The best part of the story is what I leave out.)
I met a mini!Kurt the other day. He was very blonde, with intense brown eyes, but he was very particular about his hat, and his dad was Burt Hummel in all the ways that counted. I'd guess he was about four–his voice was still all exclamation points.
"I'M MATT!" he said, hiding his face from me, and then trying to run out of the waiting room. It was cool though–I don't know if I even managed ahi.
He was at the stage where he was still mainly echolalic, but he was learning how to store and recombine and modify phrases to work for him. I was excited for him, and almost proud, because he'd mastered two essential skills for that–swapping pronouns, and prompting other people to remember their lines. His dad, trying to bundle him into his coat, was not playing along at first.
"I'M SO CUTE!" mini!Kurt reminded him, trying to make his arms go into the right sleeves. "I'M SO CUTE!? I'M SO CUTE?"
"Yeah," Dad sighed, wrestling with the zipper. "You're cute."
"So cute, that's right."
Mini!Kurt, satisfied that everything was going according to plan, was ready to leave. "BYE!" he called, waving his hand backwards at me, a perfect mirror image.
I waved. Had my mind been more together, I would have flapped.
Echolalia is metalanguage.
Echolalia is an unexpected treasure hunt. You can be watching a bootleg musical you never thought would be any good, but turns out to be beautiful, and suddenly they're going up the scale singing hot hot hot hot, and you're back with Kimba, and he's saying hot hot hot hot–only he's got this elaborate metaphor about fire and anger going on right now, and here it means I think you're mad at me, so I'm mad at you, don't touch me.
And then you're back at your laptop, wondering when he started watching musicals and rethinking half the things you thought you knew.
Echolalia is what you use when language is too much. It's just also what you use when it's not enough.
These things are not opposites.
Walt knows my name, but he'd rather call me Mulan. We're on the swings, trading movie titles.
"101 Dalmations?" I offer.
"Mulan no thank you!" He chides. Considers. "Rio, with Jesse Eisenberg?"
I grin. I'd only said that once, but he'd picked up on my crush, and he offers it back to me when I am having a hard time with the conversation. I try to remember his favorite, as a peace offering. "Kung Fu Panda II, in theaters now?"
I get it right.
Months later, it will still be the best conversation of my life.
Echolalia, from Echo, of Greek mythos, cursed to speak only through the words of others.
We make it work though.About the cursed: opinions aren't the same as facts, and no one ever asked Echo.
To be fair, no one would have listened, either.
As much as I can hate words, I delight in them, too. When I'm echoing, referencing, scripting, riffing and rifting, storing and combing and recombining, patterning, quoting, punning, swinging from hyperlexic memory to synesthetic connection, words are my tangible playground.
Make me talk like you, and you'll get a bunch of syntactically sophisticated nonsense. Let me keep my memories and connections, my resonations and associations and word-pictures, and if you slow down enough, you might hear something ringing true.
These are the words I'm using right now. It's okay if you can't see the picture yet; I can't either. It's coming together though, the more I practice them.
Ethnography of robotics.
Girls like you always get to see Ireland.
Send my love to the leprechauns.
Please don't special-episode me.
Why don't you trust me? Because, honey, you keep setting things on fire.
The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club.
I think they might be four separate pieces. The joy is how they come together.
The bestworst part is no one ever knowing.
(The best part of the story is what I leave out.)
I don't trust my words on my own.
That's not why I echo though.
I know it's tempting, but, listen.
Or maybe I'm lying, because I'm not brave enough to explain.
Don't worry though. I know that Kimba loves musicals now, and Walt named me after a warrior.
We'll get there.


text:
Move over minimalism! Your quirkier, funkier and more vibrant sister maximalism is taking a stand. Maybe it's as we move into the warmer times of the year, we become a little bit more daring with patterns, textures and colours. Truthfully, the results can be downright wacky but more often than not, this interior trend can provide you with a window of opportunity to express yourself – decorating your home in a way you may not have in the dreary, cooler months.
Whatever your interior preferences are, we all like little parts of our personalities to reflect throughout the areas of our homes. It could be a quirky bedspread, a unique painting or brightly coloured, luxury home accessories. Whether you'd describe yourself as a minimalist or a maximalist, little touches in and around your home can send subtle hints about the type of person you are and give your guests an insight into the more creative you. Keep reading below to see our top tips on how you can bring elements of maximalism – Sweetpea & Willow style!
Cushions are a fun and easy way to add an element of texture and personality into the rooms in your home. Whether they're for your bedroom, living room or lounge pops of colour or little quirky touches on this simple accessory can transform a room. The great thing about adding dimension with cushions is you can be as whacky as you like, mixing and matching your cushions in order to create a comfortable and creative little haven!
L-R: Bertie Cushion Cover, Sherri Cushion Cover, Black Edition Cushion – Viridian
L-R: Kirkby Design Arco Cushion – Teal, Meredith Fringe Cushion – Purple, Villa Nova Toubou Cushion – Tabasco
We all know that the right lighting can create your desired atmosphere in a room. But who says it's just the light bulb that can affect the mood in a space? If you're stocked up your collection of eccentric cushion covers and are looking to take the next step in your maximalist journey; lighting is the way to go. With a range of fabulous lighting options available on our website, if you're trying to up your maximalist game – why not opt for a slightly strange lighting feature?
L-R: Eichholtz Oceania Table Lamp, Eichholtz Coyote Floor Lamp, Caesar Table Lamp
L-R: Mini Ostrich Feather Lamp – Cloud, Eichholtz Hildebrandt Chandelier – Large, Floor Standing Ostrich Feather Lamp Gold Base – Dusk
This might be one of the bigger commitments of all the options. However, if you're ready to take a big plunge, fully devoting your time to transforming your living areas – a new sofa is a must. If you aren't quite ready for a brand new sofa, how about an upholstered pouffe to slowly build your courage? Luckily for you, Sweetpea & Willow have a gorgeous range of Handmade in London sofas, with five brand new additions for you to bespoke to your every, quirky need. Have your pick and choose from over one hundred different fabric options available.
L-R: Delphine Corner Sofa, Gwyneth Sofa, Ariel Sofa
L-R: Roma Pouffe, Charlie Sofa, Alderley Sofa
If all of the above is a little too much to process right now, start small. Often in life, when we start small it gives us an insight into the bigger picture; decorating your home should be no exception. You can start your maximalist journey with little accessories first to find your feet. Then you can steer your creativity into the direction that you would ultimately like it to go. A fabulous print, side table or decorative accessory is all you'll need to begin your maximalist dream.
L-R: Obsidian Ink Framed Print, Eichholtz Ace Bowl, Eichholtz Opia Bookends
L-R: Rowland End Table, Tropicana Palms Print, Eichholtz Monkey Stool
Here at Sweetpea & Willow there's something for everyone and if you are taking the maximalist leap – we hope this blog has informed and inspired you on how to subtly and not so subtly add some quirk to your living spaces.
Image Credit – Header Image, Sweetpea & Willow


text:
One of the design blogs I follow is called Bldg Blog, which covers the poetics of the built environment. The latest post shows the track geometry car used by the NY subway to test track in the middle of the night. I like the imagery of the last paragraph that suggests the brightly lit vehicle is "like the subway dreaming of itself."
We modelers spend a lot of time trying to bring life to our railroads - what would your layout dream about?


text:
iPhone XR Spy App – Put spy app on someone's iPhone XR
Of the three iPhones launched in 2018, the iPhone XR is the most impressive of the lot. Compared to the iPhone XS, the iPhone XR is downgraded in a number of ways to hit that lower price point. Out of the box, it gets 25 hours of talk time, 15 hours of web browsing, 16 hours of video playback, and 65 hours of audio. Read More


text:
|Let's start the day… Powerball!
|Recently, with TopOnlineLottoSites we played the Spanish top games Lotería Nacional. Many users have scooped really huge prizes and now we are getting ready for a new marathon of super winners — February 16, the San Valentin draw will take place. The odds are 1 to 2.6 (it's an utter record)!
|What should we do today? We recommend you to participate in Powerball. Today this distinctive game will burst out 82.000.000! We remind you that 1-20 lines to choose from are available specially for you!
|Who knows, maybe you'll feel the wind of change very soon? Good luck!
Let's Start the Day… Powerball!
Join our Facebook Group
Furthermore, we at Top Online Lotto Sites have not only created a website with information on online lotteries and EuroJackpot results. We have also created a Facebook group so you can share your experience with others. Come join our Top Online Lotto Sites Facebook group and be part of a fun community of lotto lovers.
Why not try one of our recommended Top Online Casino Sites!
Get to know our Top Online Lotto Sites: About Lottoland, About TheLotter, About Jackpot, About LottoKings, About WinTrillions, About Lotto247, About PlayHugeLottos, About LottoAgent, About MultiLotto


text:
Our healthcare specialists are experts in the medical staffing market – positioned regionally and globally, their specialist training, knowledge and unique skillset, alongside an extensive network of candidates focuses solely on the provision of high-quality candidates around the world.
UK, Ireland & Australasia - Medacs Global Group is one of the leading international healthcare staffing and services companies. Operating under a variety of brands including Medacs Healthcare, Global Medics, Doctors-on-call, Fast Response Healthcare and Litmus Solutions, Medacs Global Group has provided healthcare recruitment, managed services, occupational health, social care, and home care services to customers around the world since 1990.


text:
Seattle likes to tout itself as being "bike-friendly."
I'll admit that it's better than it used to be. When my husband and I bought our house in North Seattle back in 2009, I wouldn't have been caught dead riding my bike around here, because, well, I was worried that I would, in fact, be caught dead.
In the last 7 years, though, I feel that the ambience has improved a bit. There are more dedicated bike lanes. I think car drivers are more watchful (though I ride defensively and yield to cars until I'm sure the driver sees me) and willing to share the road.
But Seattle's hilly geography does not encourage casual bike riding, by normal-looking people wearing normal-looking clothes.
Not so with Amsterdam.
Everywhere, people on bikes. Mostly one-speeds, some pretty beat-up-looking. No racing bikes with curved handlebars and hunched-over riders. No spandex. And no helmets. But when you're only going about 5 miles an hour and there are more of you than there are cars and you have your own dedicated lanes and traffic signals, what's the big deal?
All ages.
Even your dog.
And everywhere, bikes chained up on racks and fences and railings.
And they always seemed to be there. It was like their people never came and got them and took them home. Kind of weird.


text:
Ever since I saw Des's post on Hermes inspired tassel key chains a while ago, I was determined to give her method a try. First, I had to venture into an op-shop (translation for American friends: thrift shop. I learned this fun term from my New Zealand bloggie friends :) ) to search out some leather pants to convert. I was truly hoping for some exciting colors, like Hermes uses, but I only found neutral colors. I did luck out and find two separate pairs – one in black, one in brown. They cost me $14 total, which is quite cheap, considering a real Hermes keyring sells for £120 (almost $180!).
My brother had a whole length of key rings I could use, so I didn't have to buy those and my glue gun has been a staple of my crafting kit for a while.
The only change I made to Des's method was to cut my fringe narrower. My fringe measures only about 1/8 – 1/4 inch wide. I didn't actually measure each one – years of sewing has made me pretty good at judging measurements. :)
Here's my take on Des's idea:
After trying this first one and seeing how easy it was to put together, I decided to make lots more. I kept looking at the top band and feeling that it needed something to dress it up, so I added a matching leather bow. The bow is very simple: just a rectangle of leather, scrunched at the middle, with another leather piece wrapped around the center to hold it together. The center part is made by cutting a long rectangle, about 2 by 4 inches. Fold in both the long sides 1/4 of an inch and glue down. Then, fold the whole piece down the center along the long edge to create a long strip of edgeless leather goodness.
I even started improvising on the theme and making pom poms instead of tassels. In a way, I think I like the pom poms better.
Well, that's my latest crafty adventure. Let me know what you think. Comments and suggestions are always appreciated! :)


text:
Issue #11 (Monthly Online Newsletter)
Your Sensory Organs
Written by Judy Fleming
Our senses, the eyes, the ears, and the skin allow us to see, hear and touch the world around us. They gather information from the outside world so that our brain can process this information and use it as we see fit to enhance our world. Our other organs, such as the brain and heart work so that we can live, as a matter of fact, if they …
Read More


text:
Iraq Report: Attacks fail to materialize after soccer victory
The Iraqi soccer team gave the nation a reason to celebrate on Sunday with a victory over Saudi Arabia and the championship in the Asia Games. There were no major attacks reported during Sunday celebrations, and Iraqi security forces killed a suicide bomber and defused another car bomb in Baghdad. Last week's victory in the semifinals was followed by two brutal attacks by al Qaeda in Iraq against civilians celebrating in the streets; over fifty were killed and 130 wounded in twin suicide car bomb attacks. The Iraqi security forces in Baghdad learned the lessons from last week's attacks, and a traffic ban was instituted on Sunday prior to the completion of the soccer match.
As Operation Phantom Thunder and the Baghdad Security Plan progress in Baghdad and the Belts, some more anecdotal evidence is emerging that the surge is beginning to show real success in the security sphere. The civilian death rate has been reduced by 36 percent since May, and U.S. combat deaths have dropped to an eight month low. While U.S. combat casualties are not a good indicator of success, they are significant in this instance as there is more troop in Iraq than there have been for the past two years, and U.S. forces are now operating outside their bases and are conducting major combat operations in al Qaeda, Mahdi Army, and insurgent strongholds.
Over the past several days, Coalition and Iraqi forces have been active in the Baghdad Belt regions of Diyala, Anbar, and Babil provinces.
Anbar, Diyala, and Babil
While Multinational Forces West launched a major operation in the Thar Thar and Karma regions in eastern Anbar province, another major operation was launched in the far west. Operation Mawtini was launched on July 26 in the town of Kubaysah near Hit. U.S. and Iraqi forces bermed the city and are conducting clearing operations. To date, the operation has resulted in the capture of 124 suspected insurgents and the discovery of 38 weapons caches.
In the city of Husaybah in the Al Qaim region on the Syrian border, Iraqi police captured two al Qaeda operatives. One was a cell leader who "runs al Qaeda in Iraq activities in Husaybuh, is purportedly involved in the planning of future large scale attacks against Coalition Forces in the western Euphrates River valley." The other was a teacher who incited his students attack the Iraqi security forces. Further east in Habbaniyah, the Iraqi Army captured two insurgents behind a series of IED and small arms attacks, kidnappings, financing insurgent activities, and providing intelligence for insurgent activities.
In Diyala province, Coalition and Iraqi operations continue to expand outward from the provincial capital of Baqubah, which has been the main focus of Operation Arrowhead Ripper. A two day operation in Miqdadiyah on July 25 and 26 resulted in seven insurgents killed and one captured. Another operation on July 26 to secure the Turki village resulted in 11 insurgents killed and 13 more captured. Al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents struck back in Baqubah, where car bombs killed three civilians and wounded 25 as they lined up to collect food rations. Insurgents also destroyed the tomb of the Prophet Daniel in the village of Wajihiya near Miqdadiyah.
In Northern Babil, the bulk of the recent operations have occurred in the Iskandariyah region under Operation Marne Avalanche. Since the operation began on July 16, seven insurgents have been killed and 60 captured, including six cell leaders.
Al Qaeda
The unrelenting daily raids against al Qaeda™s network continue. Iraqi security forces captured two members of an extra judicial and IED cell during a raid on the Jihad neighborhood in Baghdad on July 26. Sixteen al Qaeda suspects were captured during raids in Samarra and Tarmiyah on July 28. Coalition forces believe they captured an al Qaeda in Iraq sharia judge and his advisor during one of the Tarmiyah raids. Also on July 28, Iraqi security forces conducted a raid in Taji and captured two al Qaeda cell members responsible for attacks in Anbar province.
The July 29 and 30 operations against al Qaeda's command network in Anbar and Salahadin provinces resulted in eight al Qaeda operatives killed and 40 captured. Coalition forces struck in Tarmiyah, Karmah, Samarra and Baji during raids over the past two days. Additional raids on July 29 resulted in eight al Qaeda operatives killed and 22 captured during operations in Yusifiyah, Tikrit, Samarra, and south of Baghdad in northern Babil province.


text:
The US is complicit in arming ISIS
I have never held original documents written by officials in the Reagan administration or the intelligence apparatus that indicated the CIA armed the mujahideen in Afghanistan, yet we can be pretty sure they did. We have enough accounts from presumably credible sources (such as Zbigniew Brzezinski) the US was the major party involved. Evidence the US has deliberately supported ISIS has come to light in the form of classified documents leaked to Judicial Watch. In fact, we already had several reasons to believe the US had been supporting ISIS.
We can speculate on how the US might benefit from creating an enemy like ISIS. It is clear from the way ISIS sprang into the news in mid-2014 the people in power wanted you to begin to see the new face of the enemy. Why would they need such an enemy?
Contrary to the claims of both those who love and those who hate Barack Obama, the Iraqi parliament booted the bulk of US forces out of Iraq, setting the deadline for their withdrawal for January 1, 2012. The Iraqi security forces were apparently strong enough to fight (or make deals with) militias, but would of course need foreign assistance in dealing with a large group of battle-hardened zealots. My guess is by the time we were seeing ISIS all day on the news the White House had already decided to bomb ISIS in Syria and Iraq and send whatever troops they will send when things escalate further.
In mid-2013 you might recall Barack's failed attempt to raise enthusiasm for intervention in Syria. Not only was public opinion lukewarm on the idea, Vladimir Putin actually wrote a very diplomatically worded letter in the New York Times to Americans (but really to Barack). The underlying message was clear: Don't mess with Bashar alAssad or you'll be sorry. So that idea fell apart. We forgot all about it. ISIS came along. Assad's crew, as well as many of the groups fighting them, have done things that would disgust us as much as anything we have heard ISIS has done. But we have not heard about them in the news to the extent ISIS has been shoved down our throats. And remember, to a number of Americans and others, ISIS represents Islam, and Islam (or at least "radical Islam") is the enemy.
The US made some noise of its support for the Free Syrian Army. This was in effect how they recognized a single opposition group as the legitimate rulers of Syria. A number of people are on record as saying many of the weapons and so on given to the FSA ended up going to ISIS. They have presumably been receiving weapons in Syria from the US for three years or more. In discussing Syrian rebels, John McCain has said "the whole National Security Team recommended arming ISIS" and "I know these people intimately." Asia Times reported Pakistani defense sources as saying Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the founder of what evolved into ISIS, received arms from the US via Pakistan as far back as 2004. The Express Tribune quoted an alleged commander of ISIS as having said the same. (Find more here.) Syrian rebels have also described training by American trainers in Qatar, and Der Spiegel reported Americans trained them in Jordan.
Judicial Watch obtained documents demonstrating the US government knew not only US-supplied weapons were being routed to Syrian rebels through Benghazi, but also the rebels were dominated by the radical types Americans are told their government is fighting–al Qaeda, Jabhat alNusra, the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS. The White House knew and made no attempt to stop it. It is likely they wanted to use Syrian rebels as proxies to fight Assad.
It might well have been nothing more than an accident any given shipment of weapons slipped into the hands of ISIS, just as the last two times we heard weapons were dropped ostensibly first for Kurds in Kobane (not an enemy yet but there is no way they will accept US hegemony) and the other day to Iraqis defending the oil refinery in Baiji that ended up in the hands of ISIS might have been accidents. But it is not necessary to give the benefit of the doubt to an institution that has a long record of arming rival groups in wars and playing sides off one another. The results show a more consistent pattern than simple incompetence would imply.
Assad, Syrian rebels, Iraqi militias, even Iran have all failed to provide the Real Enemy, the "evil" that it took to legitimize reentering the region in a large capacity. ISIS has people screaming for blood.
Moreover, we have also learned from reliable sources that Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar (see here, here or here, for example) and possibly Israel have indeed supplied jihadists in Syria affiliated with ISIS with what they needed to become a state—weapons, funding, training, recruits. It is implausible US intelligence services and thus the White House did not know about it, especially considering the New York Times reported as much and Reuters reported on the jihadist elements in the FSA in 2012. They either joined in aiding their most important allies, gave them the green light or were powerless to stop them. Strictly speaking, this is not evidence the US is complicit in making ISIS what it is, but again, given what we know from history, it is hard to believe otherwise.
Surely, if Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States wanted to destroy ISIS, they would be attacking it. Instead, Saudi Arabia has been bombing Yemen. Saudi hegemony over the Middle East is at stake. If the House of Saud is not worried about ISIS next door but feels threatened that Houthis would take over in Yemen, we can infer a lot about their priorities. ISIS is their ally. The US is their ally. They are in league.
Finally, if, in spite of all clues to the contrary, all that has happened has been unintentional, it is obvious all this meddling has not been worth it to you or me. And since it is not ending, we still have no idea what further blowback will come from it all. All these factors contribute to what I infer from the evidence (the results of the empire's actions) is a larger goal of keeping the region unstable. Instability in the Middle East means higher oil prices, more weapons sales, more pretext for repressive policies, more terrorism (thus completing the circle) and more legitimacy for existing regimes as people get scared.
The logic of the new empire
If you want to understand why a coalition of states invaded Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, why drones are bombing people in a dozen countries and why Syria and Iran will probably be next, consider, as one reason, the logic of empire. Empires are always attempting to expand. For at least 20 years now, if not 50, people have been talking about the decline of the US empire. It's not declining. It's still expanding. But it's a new kind of empire.
This empire does not consist solely of the US government. It includes considerable cooperation from other states. Contrary to what some realist scholars believe, states do not represent the people they rule over (and never have), but the elite of the given territory they rule. In recent decades, however, as legal regimes have converged and states have made it easier to make and move money across borders, the elite and their corporations have gone global. National and regional governments have become, to one degree or another, subordinate to this empire.
This empire is becoming less about the US than about multinational corporations and pliant states around the world. The UN and all affiliated organisations designed for global governance, aided in part by well-meaning non-governmental organisations, have spread constitutional and legal norms. Corporations now have the law (ie. words they have written to give them the use of hired guns) on their side when they repress and displace locals, whether kicking native people off their land in far-flung regions or tossing people out of foreclosed homes all over the US.
If states do not play by the rules of empire, they become targets for regime change. While the US is integral, as I mention elsewhere, this modern empire is not only about the US military but whichever militaries the elite want to use so they can enjoy a piece of the action. Look at how they carved up Iraq's oil reserves. They went to oil giants from the most powerful countries, not just Shell, Exxon and BP, but the China National Petroleum Corporation, Japan Petroleum Exploration Co., the Korea Gas Corp, Malaysia's Petronas, Turkish Petroleum International and Russia's Lukoil and Gazprom. The conquerors auctioned off the oil in Iraq those who might otherwise have had the power to block future wars. Now that they profit from war, they are likely to support it more willingly in future.
Historically, all empires have declined and fallen. There are a variety of answers as to why. Suffice to say, we have it in our power to push this empire over the cliff of history as well. But it is not inevitable. The people of the world could eventually cave in, succumbing to the boot on their faces and accepting their enslavement. Most people do not even know what is going on. It is up to those who can see the system for what it is to show others. Resist. Disobey. Fight for freedom and justice. We can have it if we want it enough.
How appeal to national ideals sold Operation Iraqi Freedom
Drawing on sources from political science, history, media and the psychology of nationalism, this paper explains how the Bush administration used what Americans perceive as the virtues of their nation and its foreign policy–freedom, democracy, peace, humanitarianism and God–to win support for its invasion of Iraq.
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." – Malcolm X
"When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic." – Dresden James
"If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion." – Noam Chomsky
Many people live in a world of comforting illusion. They harbour the impression they are in charge of their democracy; they think the police protect their rights from bad guys; they think the military defends their freedom from foreigners; they do not want to challenge their own ideas; and they are convinced they are thinking for themselves. They are offered these illusions on a silver plate from every corner: governments, corporations, religious leaders and mainstream media. The collective term for the lies we choose to wrap ourselves in—or get caught up in—is propaganda.
The word "propaganda" is a widely used and potentially libelous term, so it requires definition up front. For the purpose of this post, propaganda refers to all lies and misleading images the government, corporations and the media tell you in order to control you. As you can imagine, there is plenty of it out there.
Among people who read non-mainstream newspapers, much has been made of a recent bill working its way through Congress, which Barack will probably threaten to veto again and will sign anyway, making psychological operations, meaning secretive propaganda, legal for use by the government within the US. It should frighten everyone, of course, that what was once used for war on third-world populations is soon going to be the norm for US citizens. But I wonder how much this bill will change what has been the norm for so long.
Because governments take as much of your money as you are willing to put up with, they can afford large "communications" teams. They use them to shape your views on their policies, to make you support their policies for all of their reasons. (Find some examples here.)
But most people realise that the government lies. The real key to understanding how the ideology of statism is disseminated is to listen to intellectuals. Public intellectuals are the ones who come up with the ideas that the people end up taking for granted. Originally, it was the clergy that rationalised the state, and got its share of public revenues in return. Now, the state enlists experts to sell its ideas in the media, and why those experts debate what kind of sanctions or bombs to use against Iran and none of them suggest leaving Iran alone. It pays for public education, giving public-school teachers a stake in the status quo. It subsidises professors to sell its ideas to the best and brightest, which is why few ever teach anarchist philosophy or Austrian economics in school. The apologists for the state are rewarded with jobs, prestige and high positions in the planning of the state. It co-opts the people with the intellectual power in society to spread propaganda.
Propaganda, in its broadest conception, creates what Antonio Gramsci called hegemony. The various elements of society influence our consciousness, but the ruling class has the most influence. Since government requires not simply coercion but also some degree of consent, the ruling class projects an image of what the world is, turning what it wants us to believe into "common sense". It is common sense that we need to be governed, for instance, and that democracy means the people are in charge. I studied government for years before I realised that it was based on the threat of violence, rather than consent and collective decision making. Hegemony is the pervasive belief in this common sense conception of the world that enables the ruling class to acquire the consent of the governed. The masses accept the morality, customs and rules handed down to them. Only by learning to think beyond the supposed universal truths imposed on their consciousness can the people shatter the illusions and break free of the ruling class.
Consider the national-security narrative we are exposed to over our lifetimes. We are all Americans/British/Chinese/Turkish. When one of us is under attack by foreigners, all of us are under attack. When foreigners attack or threaten to attack us, it is justified to attack them. When attacking them, whatever needs to happen to subdue them is justified. If innocents get killed, that's the price of it. It is right to take huge amounts of money to build up militaries to enable these things. We are entirely moral in doing all these things, and if you disagree, you hate our country. We take all these things for granted, but why? This and other accepted wisdom is part of the hegemony.
Think of the images associated with this paradigm. Take the photo opportunity. Politicians love going to Afghanistan to get a photo with the troops. It makes their poll numbers rise. Do you think they add that to their calculations when they decide whether or not to prolong the war? But people have been told they are citizens, these are their representatives and their representatives' visiting soldiers they sent to Afghanistan for a few minutes on their world tour helps those soldiers. As long as they believe all that, the politicians have their mandate for war. A magician will tell you his job is about what the eye sees: illusion, not truth. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Take David Cameron's posing with protesters in Tahrir Square in February 2011. All people who yearn for freedom were there in spirit with the protesters. What the shiny smiles hid was the fact that David had just come from touring other restive Arab states with a delegation of British arms dealers. But people do not see beyond the photo op, and are led to believe their government supports freedom.
Terrorism is massively overblown. Everyone is a potential terrorist now. We are programmed to be afraid. How does the use of the word "terrorism" affect us? When we are told that the people killed were terrorists, we are given the opportunity to presume the good guys, the soldiers, are killing the bad guys. Our consciences are assuaged, and the killing can continue. The word militant, for instance, really means anyone who was killed by the US military, such as 16-year-old Abdelrahman al Awlaki. Did more than a handful of people speak out against it?
Could they use another word that would give it a different meaning? Why didn't they use that word? Why do we undergo 'liberation' or 'intervention' instead of invasion? Why do we kill "militants" instead of people? Does it change how we think about the thing? When detention and torture without trial are labeled "extraordinary rendition", most people turn away in boredom. The most despicable acts are cloaked in jargon and made mundane. Do not worry about it: we don't torture men, women or children; only insurgents, terrorists and the Taliban.
Like most subjects related to government, there is a double standard at work with propaganda. Surely a society that believed in basic freedoms would not criminalise speech. It grants us the freedom to be wrong and to lie, as long as we do not violate the non-aggression principle. The government is wrong (as when it said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction). The government lies (as when…well, all the time). It suffers no consequences when caught. Citizens, however, do. Muslims, the new enemy, are targeted in the US all the time for spreading "terrorist propaganda" by speaking out in favour of anti-US-empire terrorism. The US Department of Justice arrested Jubair Ahmad for uploading a video to Youtube that the DOJ considered "material support" for terrorists. He might be locked up indefinitely. The FBI called what he posted propaganda. One wonders how much of what the FBI says is not.
But who is the real terrorist? Anarchists frequently point out the hypocrisy of the state in its justification of everything it does as criminal (and immoral) for everyone else. In the words of Stefan Molyneux,
I can't go next door and threaten my neighbour with force in order to get him to pay for my child's education, but the government can through property rights and the educational system. I can't find some guy in my neighbourhood who's smoking some herb that I find objectionable, lock him up in some basement and then call myself an armed warrior for justice through the War on Drugs. I can't print money based on nothing and use it as legitimate currency; the government can. And I can't create debt that other people have to pay without any choice in the matter. That's called fraud. But for the government it's called deficit financing and it goes to future generations. So government, by definition, is that social entity which legalises whatever is criminal for everyone else in the population…. Law is an opinion with a gun.
(Stefan forgot to mention that invasion and occupation are called democracy promotion and nation building, but then he was in an interview, so we can forgive him.)
Yes, words matter. We are flooded with words like "national security". Those two words have been used to justify everything from aggressive (sorry, "preventive") war to secret meetings between politicians and lobby groups. The UK government told the world Afghanistan's Helmand province is vital to British national security, presumably for the same reasons Guam is to that of the US. The term is ambiguous, because it is used for every priority of the ruling class. It is used so often as to be meaningless.
It is used to glorify military service, along with words like "sacrifice", "duty" and "honour". Militaries market themselves to the populaces that support them by various channels. The US military has been in bed with Hollywood for decades. The Pentagon provides moviemakers with real aircraft, tanks and soldiers for all manner of movies, in return for a favourable image. It has created an exciting, video game-like perception of what it does, instead of the reality of raining fire on villages in distant parts of the world to kill one person deemed a "high-value target".
It is not only in security matters that the state lies. It misinforms and distorts the truth at every turn. Take, for instance, how it has skewed employment figures (in this, an election year) by quietly removing 1.2m unemployed people from the list and celebrating it as a win. People can believe the economy is picking up, even though they see no evidence of it, and will vote for the incumbent, even though Barack has made things worse.
But the state is not the only source of propaganda. Any medium that produces disinformation, lies, coverups, or deliberately misleading images and words is propaganda. The media have been lying to us about war for a hundred years. (Lots of examples here.) Look at the way some of the most popular media soften up the language of the war for Afghanistan. While Afghans protested the repeated killing and descration of their friends and family, media like the New York Times said they were protesting the burning of Qurans only. "Armed with rocks, bricks, pistols and wooden sticks, protesters angry over the burning of Korans at the largest American base in Afghanistan this week took to the streets in demonstrations in a half-dozen provinces on Wednesday that left at least seven dead and many more injured." Not only were the protesters "armed"; as As'ad AbuKhalil observed, "notice that there is no killer in the phrasing." People reading do not have to blame the killers—perhaps protesting killed the people. They portrayed the protests as irrational acts of outrage, just anger over a book. Glenn Greenwald gives an apt analogy:
[J]ust imagine what would happen if a Muslim army invaded the U.S., violently occupied the country for more than a decade, in the process continuously killing American children and innocent adults, and then, outside of a prison camp it maintained where thousands of Americans were detained for years without charges and tortured, that Muslim army burned American flags — or a stack of bibles — in a garbage dump. Might we see some extremely angry protests breaking out from Americans against them? Would American pundits be denouncing those protesters as blinkered, primitive fanatics?
There is no reason to trust the New York Times or the Washington Post. Their kowtowing to power in the run up to Operation Iraqi Freedom should have put them out of business and led their heads to hang in shame. Both papers issued apologies (here and here)—over a year too late—and no one in the newsrooms suffered any consequences. Why would we pay attention to them at all anymore?
Various estimates of the real death toll of that war have come out in the hundreds of thousands; the number may have reached a million. But mainstream media outlets do not report a million. They report low-end estimates of tens of thousands, sometimes adding the words "at least". Regardless, people are more affected emotionally when shown a human face and story. Which Iraqi humans did the media choose to profile? The insurgents. All the more reason to dig in one's heels and keep fighting.
The mainstream media benefit from the status quo and often end up the lapdogs of the powerful. Even when one TV station appears relatively right wing or left wing, that simply means they will defend a different party when it takes power. However, the task before the media is to give us the information we need in order to understand and question power, not to serve it. All corporations receive legal protection and indirect subsidy; in addition, the media that pander best to the powerful get access to top officials for interviews and sources. Media types socialise with government types. Instead of holding them to account through investigative journalism, many of them accept what the government says without question. They also need to fill in blanks due to deadlines, and may embellish or simply quote an official to complete their stories. Those poor people who cannot turn off their televisions are exposed to news that makes them think crime, terrorism and diseases are everywhere. They see one police drama after another, drinking in the image of the heroic cops catching gang leaders and stopping terrorists.
When all these things are taken together, they become our narrative, what we believe without questioning. It does not benefit us to leave this situation unquestioned; it only benefits the ruling class.
A fixation on the news is not conducive to understanding. Most news media focus on what is happening now. What is happening is a consequence of what has happened before. However, it is easy to forget or not know about what happened before. How many Americans understand the causes of any of the wars their rulers start? Or of 9/11? How many understand why Iran might want to build a nuclear weapon? We do not ask "why?" enough.
I have heard both Al Jazeera and Russia Today called propaganda. Perhaps that is because the angles from which they view the news and the people they interview are less commonly found in the more mainstream news outlets. To close one's mind by calling something propaganda without having considered it is not wise. The reason we can safely call government communications propaganda is that they are consistently proved to be so. Critical thinkers consider various viewpoints. And in contrast to the records of the mainstream US media, the foreigners have more credibility.
Then there is Fox News. Wait. It's too easy. (You may want to watch Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism for a look at how Fox has erased the line between journalism and propaganda.) Suffice to say, studies indicate Fox News viewers are less well informed than anyone else who watches television. Whatever Fox News says, I object to attacks on Fox from people who believe what they hear on CNN, MSNBC or other corporate news stations. Do you really believe any one of these channels consistently tells the truth? That they do not try to influence your point of view and subtly manipulate you? Why should we trust this source? Do they know what they are talking about? Why would they tell us what they are telling us? Might they have an ulterior motive? Can we speculate what that might be? Why do we only have the choices we are presented with? Why is it only either intervene militarily in Syria or let genocide take place? Why, why, why? We need to consider why they show what they show and what we are missing that they do not show.
When I am asked which news source I think is most reliable, I reply "none". Take a look at the sources for this blog: they are from a variety of people and media. (However, I sometimes repeat some I perceive to be informed or wise. I must admit, I am more likely to believe Democracy Now than Fox News.) To truly understand a phenomenon is to know it from various perspectives. To understand a news story, it helps to read various accounts and ask ourselves several questions about what we read.
Without having witnessed an event ourselves, we do not know what happened. Every source has its own reasons to manipulate the facts, though probably not all do all the time. The best we can do is listen to varying accounts, consider carefully each one's possible motives and assume we cannot be sure about any of them. The worst we can do is listen to accounts that do not vary significantly, pretend each source confirms the other and accept the information as given. At a more fundamental level, we need to question the entire hegemony and move away from thinking the world is as we are told it is.
Iraqi oil and global power
The oil is flowing again in Iraq. Iraq's oil ministry hopes 4.5m barrels per day will be extracted by 2013. Even if production falls short of this goal, it will bring in considerable revenue to those who own it. Where will that money go?
First, it will go to oil companies, executives and shareholders in particular. Not only do large oil firms, which function largely as the right-arm of the modern state, benefit directly from the forced opening up of the resources of weaker states; they also benefit from the higher prices that result from the instability in the newly-"liberated" nation. Let us see which firms have acquired the largest stakes.
The usual suspects, such as Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil and BP, have won the usual concessions. Mixed in with them, though, are the China National Petroleum Corporation, Japan Petroleum Exploration Co., the Korea Gas Corp, Malaysia's Petronas, Turkish Petroleum International and Russia's Lukoil and Gazprom. Iraq's oil is being auctioned off to the powerful people who might otherwise have had the power to block future war. Now that they profit from it, they are likely to support it more willingly in future.
Some Iraqis will make money from it as well. Those in the government, plus the rich and powerful connected to the government, will likely profit heavily. Corruption and inequality will increase. Some of the people who do not benefit from oil revenues will demand some of it. Rather than give it up, the new rulers of Iraq will spend it to repress the Iraqi people. If history is any guide, that repression will lead to protests, religious extremism and terrorism.
Iraq is not very democratic, as a mere glance at the violence of Iraqi politics makes clear. Democracy does not, in any case, mean justice or equality. It does not guarantee that voters will have any control over the oil or see any revenue from it "trickle down". One might say it would be fair to give that oil to the Iraqi people, particularly the millions that lost loved ones over the past twenty years due to sanctions and invasions. Those having babies with birth defects could probably use the cash, too. But then, fairness is not something the powerful tend to bestow on the world.
The spreading around of Iraq's oil to the global power elite will have the effect of making similar aggression against weak but resource-rich states worldwide easier. When Russian and Chinese oil firms profit from the newly-acquired oil fields, they will support more such interventions. Of course, they will protest, but only in public. We have seen the uprising against Gaddafi turned into an excuse to invade another OPEC member. The multilateral nature of the intervention grants it the veneer of legitimacy while the plunderers make off with the booty.
Taxpayers from powerful countries are paying for invasions of weak countries and the killing and torture of resisters so that the world's power elite can become more powerful. Expect less democracy, more terrorism and more "humanitarian intervention" everywhere as a result.
The causes of 9/11
In this post, I will outline the evidence that 9/11 was an "outside job". If that upsets you, consider the following. I do not rule out the possibility that it was also an inside job. There is evidence that it was, and it is wrong to close one's mind to evidence. I do not know if the terrorists were found or trained or paid off by some CIA operative. Because of government secrecy, it is extremely difficult to know the complete truth. Neither am I an engineer, least of all a demolitions expert, so it is hard for me to know which engineers are right and which are wrong. This post presents the evidence that a small group of radicals swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden, believed the US and Israel were at war with Islam, and took it upon themselves to destroy a symbol of American power, hoping to lure the superpower into a cosmic war in which Islam would prevail.
Ron Crelinsten, a terrorism expert at the University of Victoria, says that terrorism is about communication. Every terrorist attack sends a message. It is important to listen to them, or else how are we supposed to stop terrorism? Terrorists are not irrational. They are not crazy. Those accusations are a smokescreen designed to make you listen to the government and Thomas Friedman for explanations rather than the terrorists themselves. But the terrorists can tell you why they are angry, and if we had listened to them, we might not have witnessed their anger in September of 2001. Let us look at a timeline of events that could have given clues to those paying attention that something was going to happen.
May 31, 1996: Four Saudi men were executed for the bombing of a US military mission in Riyadh the year before. The attacks were aimed at American "infidels", 6 of whom died. Three of the four men executed had fought in Afghanistan, and one had fought in Bosnia. This is where you could trace their radicalisation to. They all claimed to have links to Osama bin Laden. They felt that Islam was under attack worldwide, and that they were part of what they believed was a global jihad. They had discussed the Saudi state and were disgusted that it embraced secular law, rather than Quranic law, and how the ulema, Islamic scholars supposed to be independent of lawmakers, "were conspiring with the state to undermine Islam….Saudi Arabia [was] an infidel state." Many Saudi dissidents believe the ulema should have a strong consultative role in politics, as this would mean policies along Islamic lines.
June 25, 1996, less than a month later: In Khobar, Saudi Arabia, an explosion killed 19 Americans and wounded hundreds more in a complex that housed foreign military personnel called the Khobar Towers.
It is around this time that Osama bin Laden begins appearing in the headlines. Naturally, after the 9/11 attacks, millions of Americans asked "why us?" Bin Laden had already outlined very clearly why, and if Americans had realised that, they might have been less likely to use words like "evil" and "senseless" after the attacks.
Journalist Robert Fisk met with bin Laden three times, in 1993, 1996 and 1997.
When I met him again in Afghanistan in 1996, he was 39, raging against the corruption of the Saudi royal family, contemptuous of the West. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, Bin Laden told the House of Saud that his Arab legion could destroy the Iraqis; no need to bring the Americans to the land of Islam's two holiest places. The King turned him down. So the Americans were now also the target of Osama's anger.
The House of Saud invited thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia as protection from Saddam Hussein. We can identify the first two causes of 9/11 here: the corruption of the House of Saud and the American military presence in the land of the Islam's two holiest places.
In 1996, bin Laden said
When the American troops entered Saudi Arabia, the land of the two holy places [Mecca and Medina], there was a strong protest from the ulema [the religious scholars] and from students of the sharia law all over the country against the interference of American troops… After it insulted and jailed the ulema 18 months ago, the Saudi regime lost its legitimacy….
The Saudi people have remembered now what the ulema told them and they realise America is the main reason for their problems. The ordinary man knows that his country is the largest oil producer in the world, yet at the same time he is suffering from taxes and bad services. Now…our country has become an American colony… What happened in Riyadh and Khobar is clear evidence of the huge anger of Saudi people against America. The Saudis now know their real enemy is America.
What bin Laden was saying was basically truthful. Most Saudis objected to the presence of non-Muslim troops in the land of Islam's holiest places, even though they had been asked by the House of Saud to come to protect them from Saddam Hussein, and they weren't actually in the holy places themselves. But by 1996, the threat from Saddam was gone. He was under sanctions, no fly zones and bombing raids. But American troops were still there, just like they are still in Germany, Spain and Japan, long after the threat from a powerful army is gone.
In 1990, there were 31,636 US troops in Saudi Arabia.
1991: 14,943 troops
1992: 4,159
1993 and 4: fewer than 2,000
1995: 2,526
1996: 7,780
2001: 12,075
By 2001, it was clear that the US had not got the message the terrorist attacks over the 1990s had attempted to convey.
In 1997, bin Laden told Robert Fisk he would turn America into a shadow of itself.
We declared jihad against the US government, because the US government is unjust, criminal and tyrannical. It has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous and criminal whether directly or through its support of the Israeli occupation of the Prophet's Night Travel Land [Palestine]. And we believe the US is directly responsible for those who were killed in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. The mention of the US reminds us before everything else of those innocent children who were dismembered, their heads and arms cut off in the recent explosion that took place in Qana [Lebanon]…. The US government hit Muslim civilians and executed more than 600,000 Muslim children in Iraq by preventing food and medicine from reaching them…."
At a different time, bin Laden called the war and sanctions on Iraq "the oppressing and embargoing to death of millions…the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever known".
Now we are adding reasons for 9/11: support for Israel and its war in Lebanon, the sanctions on Iraq that crippled the economy and the people. I do not know if 600,000 children and millions of other people truly died as a result of these policies, but it is not truth that makes decisions but perceptions. Most Americans had no idea about any of this, and were every time misled by their representatives. For nearly twenty years after the first Gulf War, Bin Laden issued specific demands, such as "get US troops out of Arabia" and American politicians responded with "stop trying to force our women into burkas". As a result, we have millions of people believing that "the terrorists" cannot be reasoned with and must be killed. Their solution is to escalate the wars that are, in fact, the causes of the anger and hatred that might lead to another major terrorist attack. They are wars that do not make anyone safer or freer. They kill and terrorise innocent people, including Americans, for the purpose of strengthening the US government overseas and domestically.
August 7, 1998: Hundreds were killed in truck bombs at US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. Bin Laden was then placed on the FBI's ten most wanted list. Some other things happened in 1998.
Bin Laden issued a fatwa, a religious opinion on Islamic law by an Islamic scholar. (Incidentally, bin Laden is not an Islamic scholar and is thus not qualified to issue fatwas.) He called the US military presence in the Arabian Peninsula crusader armies spreading like locusts through the Muslim world and gobbling up its resources. "First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." Second, he claimed that the "crusader-Zionist alliance" had killed more than a million Iraqis through war and embargo. (Bin Laden often refers to "crusaders" when talking about the US, in order to show that he sees little difference between the Crusades and current US foreign policy regarding the Muslim world. Right after the 9/11 attacks, George Bush called the War on Terror that was about to begin a crusade. Probably wasn't the ideal choice of words for winning Muslim hearts and minds.) Third, "the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula."
Why did he mention Jerusalem? What is so special about Jerusalem? Jerusalem is the third holiest site in Islam, because it is where the Prophet Muhammad is said to have ascended to heaven. And many Muslims in the world consider Jerusalem and all of Palestine under occupation by foreigners, supported by the US.
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. Here is what bin Laden said about it in 2004.
The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that…Many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced. I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy. The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn't include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn't respond.
He is not just making stuff up. The US has been indirectly responsible for the deaths of many innocent Muslims at the hands of Israel.
April 18, 1996: During its occupation of southern Lebanon, Israel shelled the village of Qana, killing 106 civilians and injuring around 116 others who had taken refuge there to escape the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. I'll spare you the pictures. Look them up if you are not faint of heart.
Lawrence Wright, in his 2006 book The Looming Tower: al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, says that Mohamed Atta, one of the masterminds of the attacks, signed his will during the operation against Qana, because he was enraged and wanted to offer his life in response. So Israel was a major factor in perceptions of injustice against Muslims and desecration of Palestine and Jerusalem.
Bin Laden's anger had foundation, and Muslims around the world knew it. Most Muslims do not support terrorism, but at least as many have the same complaints as the jihadis. For instance, though most Saudis do not like al-Qaeda, 95% of those asked wanted American troops to leave Saudi Arabia. Terrorists are supported by communities. If the communities are sympathetic to the terrorists' causes, they will fund, shelter and supply them with recruits. People support al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and whoever else not because they are under some misapprehension but because they have seen injustices before their own eyes and they know who did it.
Also in 1998, a memo from Mohamed Atef, al-Qaeda's military chief, said that al-Qaeda was aware of negotiations between the US and the Taliban on a UNOCAL oil and gas pipeline through Afghanistan, and that a terrorist attack would be the way to draw the US in to Afghanistan, otherwise known as the graveyard of empires. Both Clinton and Bush administrations negotiated with the Taliban. After the embassy bombings, the Clinton administration imposed sanctions and continued talking to the Taliban, mostly pressuring them to hand over bin Laden.
In another response to the embassy bombings, Bill Clinton signed off on Operation Infinite Reach, a series of US cruise missile strikes on terrorist bases in Afghanistan and Sudan. Operation Infinite Reach took place in August 1998. Does anyone remember anything else that was going on at this time? The Monica Lewinsky scandal. It has been speculated that Operation Infinite Reach was a way of deflecting attention from Clinton's sex life and raising public opinion of him by killing terrorists. Anyway, one of the attacks destroyed al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The US claimed the factory was making VX nerve agent and its owners had ties to al-Qaeda. The US State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research said the evidence was highly dubious. Noam Chomsky and other critics say that tens of thousands of Sudanese civilians died because they would not have the drugs they needed.
In 2000, a suicide attack on the US Navy destroyer the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen. 17 US sailors were killed and more were injured. Al-Qaeda proudly claimed responsibility. Bill Clinton declared, "If, as it now appears, this was an act of terrorism, it was a despicable and cowardly act. We will find out who was responsible and hold them accountable". (That said, being an attack on a military target, the USS Cole bombing does not actually meet the official US definition of terrorism.) The 9/11 Commission Report says that bin Laden supervised the bombing, chose the location, and provided the money, and that an unidentified source said bin Laden wanted the United States to attack, and if it did not he would launch something bigger. (By the way, bin Laden has been indicted for the USS Cole bombing but not for the 9/11 attacks.) The Report goes on to say that he
instructed the media committee… to produce a propaganda video that included a reenactment of the attack along with images of the al Qaeda training camps and training methods; it also highlighted Muslim suffering in Palestine, Kashmir, Indonesia, and Chechnya…Portions were aired on Al Jazeera, CNN, and other television outlets. It was also disseminated among many young men in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and caused many extremists to travel to Afghanistan for training and jihad.
Things were heating up, and not just for al-Qaeda.
The Report also says that during spring and summer 2001, US intelligence agencies received a stream of warnings that al-Qaeda was planning something huge, CIA Director George Tenet saying that "the system was blinking red." Between January and September 2001, the FBI issued 216 internal warnings about the possibility of an al-Qaeda attack.
The form it did take was a kind of suicide bombing. Suicide bombing is a pretty new phenomenon in terrorism, going back about 30 years. Why suicide bombing? Under what conditions does suicide bombing occur? Since the most visible and horrific acts of terrorism are suicide bombings committed by Muslims, it might seem obvious that Islamic fundamentalism is the central cause. But it is not. Robert Pape has compiled a database of every suicide attack around the globe since 1980.
The data [for all attacks between 1980 and 2003] show that there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world's religions. In fact, the leading instigators of suicide attacks are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion. This group committed 76 of the 315 incidents, more suicide attacks than Hamas.
Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland.
Nearly all suicide attacks are parts of organised campaigns; democratic states are most vulnerable to suicide terrorists; they have a strategic objective: trying to establish or maintain political self-determination by compelling a democracy to withdraw from the territories they claim (nationalist, not religious, goals); their goals, if not necessarily their tactics (taboos on suicide exist in every culture, especially Islamic ones), are supported by the distinct national community they represent (enough people must think them worth defending that they will allow them to recruit, help them hide and consider them martyrs) (for instance, as I said, almost all Saudis want US troops out of the country); loyalty among comrades and devotion to leaders; suicide terrorism is more lethal than non-suicide attacks, which are used for a wider variety of goals; and finally, they work, at least sometimes.
To sum up the causes:
-The perceived occupation of Saudi Arabia
-The "infidel" House of Saud
-US support for Israel
-The 1991 invasion of Iraq and the sanctions that hurt Iraqi civilians
-And the conclusion from all of this that Islam itself was under attack.
Ten years ago today, these factors combined to cause the most spectacular terrorist attack in history.


text:
Where is the Missing CitCo Heavy Equipment?
There are additional details coming out of an investigation into missing heavy equipment that are the property of the Belize City Council. A bulldozer, as well as a flatbed trailer, has been recovered; however, other pieces of machinery are still unaccounted for. Deputy Mayor Oscar Arnold provided an update on the items earlier today.
Oscar Arnold, Deputy Mayor, Belize City
"At the mayor's desk we've received a memo outlining an analysis of the ones that we got in. In a state of disrepair, some of the repairs that were done on the bulldozer were just done roughshod, not done to any technical specifications. We got it without any diesel, any oil, any fluids in there. Everything was taken out, there was no battery. So that is the update on the bulldozer. We understand also that the other piece of equipment which is the Bobcat is being repaired somewhere in Unitedville. We've received, since then a lot of residents calling in with pictures, videos of the Bobcat being used to clear land in Lord's Bank, on the Western Highway, the George Price Highway and even up in Unitedville. There's an individual, I think the name Mike was called, up in that area who was in possession of part of the equipment so as far as that lead, we have our people following that up. I was in the Cayo District yesterday on another matter but I also looked into it in a couple of instances, visited a couple of workshops and people know of the equipment but they can't tell you exactly where it is now. And interestingly, the investigation also shows that these equipment weren't licensed since 2016. So the first day the council got them, the license were processed, the plates were never put on them because the equipment were intercepted at the Works compound and taken off the compound."
Isani Cayetano
"So, armed with the results of this investigation, what does City Hall do next?"
Oscar Arnold
"Very good question. Like I said, we're looking at our options. We're looking at whether there will be legal or criminal recovery of anything. It's hard because an original police report was not done at the time of the people who had knowledge of what was happening. What we're finding out now is that there was a lot of people that were involved in this thing that knew that it was happening and just didn't care."


text:
Download friendcaster for facebook reviewTitle of archive: friendcaster for facebook review
Dоwnlоаds: 5717
Sіzе: 45.02 MB
Speed: 18 Mb/s
Nick: chicarkee
Dаtе: 21.08.2012
Сompaction: Zip
AMWAY Thailand - Official Page 128,806 คนถูกใจ 17,102 คนพูดถึงสิ่งนี้
OneLouder Apps, Kansas City, MO. 9,571 likes � 82 talking about this � 156 were here.
friendcaster for facebook reviewFriendCaster for Facebook, for iPad and. FriendCaster Pro
An�lise e Dicas | Tablet Genesis Tab GT.
friendcaster for facebook reviewTwitter: http://twitter.com/#!/Grewell22 Check out my channel page for more android videos! http://www.youtube.com/user/ZachhFros
FriendCaster Pro for Facebook OneLouder Apps - Kansas City, MO.
FriendCaster for Android (Facebook app.
http://www.mestremobile.com.br Dicas no Wifi: 1:51 Melhor navegador: 3:12 Jogos: 5:02 FriendCaster/Facebook: 7:45 Camera: 8:52 Youtube e videos em HD: 9:27
FriendCaster Pro - the best Facebook experience on Android devices, with no ads !
FriendCaster for Facebook, for iPad and.
Emirhan Yasdıman has worked at SEM (Senior SEO Analyst), studied at Marmara University, lives in Istanbul, Turkey and is from Istanbul, Turkey. Join Facebook to
Friendcaster 5.0 is the best Facebook app.
AMWAY Thailand - Official Page | Facebook
Facebook, Done Right. Now available on iPad, Android Phone, and Android Tablet, FriendCaster offers the best Facebook mobile and tablet experience available, for free.
I'm not a fan of the official Facebook Android app. I hinted at that in my review of the third party client Fast Facebook, and I have a feeling I'm not alone in


text:
Walton And Hall Suspended
DeKalb's Interim CEO, Lee May, placed the county's purchasing director and CEO Burrell Ellis' former secretary on paid leave Monday, April 21, 2014.
Kelvin Walton and Nina Hall were involved in alleged corruption in county government procurement processes. May said that he decided to suspend Walton and Hall to rebuild public trust.
Read the rest of the story at this link:
Two Tied To Corruption In DeKalb Suspended
or view the video at:
2 DeKalb Officials Accused Of Accepting Bribes Placed On Administrative Leave (4/21/14)