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POPSEx-Army commander says MoD 'institutionally incapable He cited personal reasons for leaving, but it was widely reported that he was unhappy with the MoD's treatment of British soldiers. He had commanded the 7,750-strong 52 Infantry Brigade in Helmand in 2007/08 and achieved much lower casualty rates in the operation to take Musa Qala than comparable operations by other British brigades, which he attributed to the adoption of different tactics. Maj-Gen Mackay's paper claims that if the military was to be successful in battle, it had to use a more 'behaviourist' approach alongside its traditional 'kinetic' power.
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POPSA remarkably bitter take on the "top ten stories of the last decade" -- in short, we're hosed The last paragraph is worth quoting in full: "The meaninglessness of elections: This is the most embittering revelation of all. Despite the greatest electoral majority since Johnson crushed Goldwater in '64, Obama has betrayed everything he ran on. In every case where he had the opportunity to confront power " in financial bailouts, financial regulation, health care, wars and military spending, utilities and global warming, national surveillance " Obama has sided with the rich and powerful against the interests of the American people. He has probably engendered more cynicism, more disaffection with government than any president since Richard Nixon. It will deal a staggering blow to the hopes of mobilizing masses of people again for a real takeback of government. And he's not even one year into it."
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POPSGlobalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches and Homophobia
This report reveals the truth about what is going on and should be required reading for American church leaders," said Jim Winkler, the general secretary of the international public policy and social justice agency of The United Methodist Church. Full report and Executive Summary (PDF) @ clip source. Although written primarily for a U.S. audience, Globalizing the Culture Wars is certain to cause a stir in English-speaking Africa, where conservative U.S. evangelicals have for too long escaped the close scrutiny of African social justice activists and movements. Project Director Kapya Kaoma is an Anglican priest from Zambia now leading churches in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. A doctoral candidate at Boston University School of Theology, he has studied in evangelical schools in Zambia and the United Kingdom. ... An active campaigner for women’s reproductive rights, Kaoma is a passionate activist for social witness in the world.
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POPSA Left-Handed Commencement Address: Ursula K. LeGuin at Mills College, 1983 More: I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.
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POPSWe want the truth behind the 9/11 attacks
Something doesn’t make sense. 700+ engineers and architects, 200+ pilots and aviation professionals, 400+ professors all question the official account 9/11. http://patriotsquestion911.com/ 956 architectural and engineering professionals and 5,369 other supporters have signed the petition demanding of Congress a truly independent investigation. http://www.ae911truth.org/ These are not nutcases. These are highly educated infividuals who have expressed significant criticism of the 9/11 Commission Report or have made public statements that contradict the Report. Building 7 http://www.wtc7.net/ is a controlled implosion. This building was never touched by an airplane. The building fell straight down. The only way a building falls straight down into its own footprint is if the structure was carefully prepared to fall straight down. The U.S. government is asking us to believe something that defies physical laws. Don’t we want the truth? http://www.truthjihad.com/
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POPSWhat is "rape culture"?
Click through for the whole thing. More: Rape culture is treating straight sexuality as the norm. Rape culture is lumping queer sexuality into nonconsensual sexual practices like pedophilia and bestiality… Rape culture is rape being used as a weapon, a tool of war and genocide and oppression. Rape culture is rape being used as a corrective to "cure" queer women. Rape culture is a militarized culture and "the natural product of all wars, everywhere, at all times, in all forms." Rape culture is 1 in 33 men being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is encouraging men to use the language of rape to establish dominance over one another ("I'll make you my bitch")… Rape culture is 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is not even talking about the reality that many women are sexually assaulted multiple times in their lives. Rape culture is the way in which the constant threat of sexual assault affects women's daily movements.
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POPSCynic's Dictionary samplings more: LAWYER A personal advocate hired to bend the law on behalf of a paying client; for this reason considered the most suitable background for entry into politics. HALF LIFE The span of time required for a thing to deteriorate to 50 percent of its original potency: about 24,000 years for plutonium atoms... a few centuries for great civilizations... three weeks for a hit song... four days for a child's enthusiasm over a new $90 toy... 24 hours for the fresh sense of purpose acquired at a motivational seminar... 15 minutes for the warming afterglow of a "feel-good" movie... ten seconds for a sudden impulse to shove the papers off your desk, slug the boss, and board the next plane to Tahiti.
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POPS"Women Hold Up Half The Sky" Modern human culture represses, exploits and disenfranchises women and girls on a worldwide basis. What kind of world would we have if this other half of humanity were empowered to take action?
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POPSA grief like no other: listening to the families of murder victims More: The increase in the U.S. murder rate has been accompanied over the past few decades by a rising incidence of crimes once considered rare. Mass murders, serial murders, and murders committed by strangers have become more commonplace.… Since 1966 hundreds of books have been published that follow murderers along their paths of destruction… And yet just a handful of books have looked at murder from the victim's perspective.… During the past twenty-five years hundreds of articles in psychiatric journals have examined the homicidal mind. Fewer than a dozen have explored how a homicide affects the victim's family. In a study of murder in Romantic literature the theater scholar Laurence Senelick used a phrase, "the prestige of evil," that goes a long way toward explaining why our culture has become obsessed with the murderer while ignoring the victim.
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POPS Paris Evolving Under the Gaze of Notre Dame’s Gargoyles "Like other medieval gargoyles, those decorating Notre Dame were intended as drainage spouts, with internal passages that carry rainwater from the roof and out through the gargoyles’ mouths. The word gargoyle actually comes from the French gargouille, which originally meant “throat” or “gullet”, and Latin words like gurgulio, from the root gar, “to swallow”, representing the gurgling sound of water." "Of course the monstrous appearance of the gargoyles is no happy coincidence, and many believe they were designed to frighten away evil spirits. Da Vinci Code fanatics and conspiracy theorists will doubtless make some secret symbolic connection between these gargoyles and the minds of medieval masons, and of course such hybrid chimeras have made appearances in popular culture everywhere from The Hunchback of Notre Dame to Ghostbusters. Do they threaten damnation or worse to sinners? Judgment Day awaits in Paris."
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POPSWar Is Hell "Palin doesn't just line people up on different sides of an issue; she turns them against each other. It's not enough to hate her; you also have to hate those who don't. Or, if you like her, the attacks on her make it difficult to imagine having any use at all for her enemies. Palin somehow makes the culture wars personal; she's their ultimate symbol. And war is hell, no matter what form it takes."
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POPS"Whenever two or more of you gather in My Name, you need a $10,000 permit" "The county asked, 'Do you have a regular meeting in your home?' She said, 'Yes.' 'Do you say amen?' 'Yes.' 'Do you pray?' 'Yes.' 'Do you say praise the Lord?' 'Yes.'" The county employee notified the couple that the small bible study, with an average of 15 people attending, was in violation of county regulations, according to Broyles. Broyles said a few days later the couple received a written warning that listed "unlawful use of land" and told them to "stop religious assembly or apply for a major use permit" -- a process that could cost tens of thousands of dollars.
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