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POPSLee Sandlin: Losing the War Quite long – click through for the full essay. More: I figured people had to know the basics -- World War II isn't exactly easy to miss. It was the largest war ever fought, the largest single event in history. Other than the black death of the Middle Ages, it's the worst thing we know of that has ever happened to the human race. Its aftereffects surround us in countless intertwining ways… So what did the people I asked know about the war? Nobody could tell me the first thing about it. Once they got past who won they almost drew a blank. All they knew were those big totemic names -- Pearl Harbor, D day, Auschwitz, Hiroshima -- whose unfathomable reaches of experience had been boiled down to an abstract atrocity. The rest was gone… I think what my little survey really demonstrates is how vast the gap is between the experience of war and the experience of peace.
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POPSBarack "Houdini" Obama Promises were broken with no apology, the same creative legalese that infested the Bush administration, in the form of John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalez, was again used to deny justice to the inmates of Guantanamo, It was used to justify more torture, more destruction of the Constitution and more illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens
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POPSKashmir - Journey To Freedom In a rare look at the region, Udi Aloni filmed his protagonists as they launched their new struggle. Finally refused re-entry by the Indian government, Aloni was forced to tell the rest of this story far from the land and people he had come to admire.
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POPSNonviolence As Their Weapon "It was 2001. Khatib watched in horror as Israeli soldiers shot an unarmed friend at a checkpoint. Two weeks later, the militant Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade made a revenge attack on the checkpoint, killing seven soldiers. "My first reaction was 'Good for Al Aqsa!' " Khatib said. Then he realized the dead soldiers belonged to a different unit, not the one on duty when his friend was shot. "It made me wonder: This cycle of death, of violent action and reaction, how we can break it?"
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POPSNUKE GAZA: A WORLD GONE MAD "Not since 1948 has this enclave of extremists mounted such a public relations offensive. Christian Zionist President Harry Truman trusted Jewish Zionist lobbyists when he solicited assurances that they would not become what they immediately became: a racist theocratic state with an expansionist agenda destined to create serial crises in the region. The merciless global agenda pursued by Colonial Zionists is the single greatest threat to world peace, as confirmed yet again by Lieberman’s warning. As the primary remaining ally of these Jewish nationalists, the risks to the U.S. increase with each passing day as Tel Aviv works behind the scenes to catalyze yet another conflict. This entangled alliance was destined to provoke resentments that would eventually endanger their super power ally and foremost arms provider. "
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POPS Speech of Joseph McCarthy, Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950 Today we can almost physically hear the mutterings and rumblings of an invigorated god of war. You can see it, feel it, and hear it all the way from the Indochina hills, from the shores of Formosa, right over into the very heart of Europe itself. The one encouraging thing is that the “mad moment” has not yet arrived for the firing of the gun or the exploding of the bomb which will set civilization about the final task of destroying itself. There is still a hope for peace if we finally decide that no longer can we safely blind our eyes and close our ears to those facts which are shaping up more and more clearly . . . and that is that we are now engaged in a show-down fight . . . not the usual war between nations for land areas or other material gains, but a war between two diametrically opposed ideologies.
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POPSImagine Peace The electricity for the light is generated entirely naturally - geothermally from hot water - at the Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant and is one of the reasons for situating the artwork in Iceland. The Imagine Peace Tower is closely connected to Ono's interactive artwork Wish Tree from 1981. The Wish Tree has been integral to many of Yoko's exhibitions around the world in museums and cultural centers where people have been invited to write their personal wishes for peace and tie them to a tree branch. Now amounting to over 700,000 wishes. They are to be housed at the Imagine Peace Tower. EarthCam visitors are invited to send wishes to the Imagine Peace Tower archives by email to wish@imaginepeace.com or by mail to: IMAGINE PEACE TOWER PO Box 1009 121 Reykjavik, Iceland. You can send as many wishes as you like, as often as you like. The site also has many live cams up all over the world, wicked cool stuff!
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POPSMukyokai & Pacifism Small weaknesses in the Mukyokai opposition to Japanese Imperialism do not bear comparison with the outright compromise of the organized churches. As previously noted, the main factor in the Mukyokai independence was its lack of organizational structure. The denominational institutions were preoccupied with administrative and organizational survival, whereas the Mukyokai were free to be responsible for their actions as individuals, and therefore to witness their faith with honesty, integrity, and personal freedom.
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POPSSigning Away Our Sovereignty
We should be aware that Obama intends to roll out for Senate approval a series of international treaties that will further bind America to the will of the international community if they are ratified. Bit by bit, America's autonomous power is being taken away. The Boston Globe provides a public relations gloss by calling these treaties a means of fulfilling "Obama's vision of global cooperation." This is one view, I suppose. Another view would be that our policies will be tied down by these treaties -- and we will be judged by international bureaucrats and held to their interpretation of what our obligations are under the treaties. International treaties require only Senate approval. Obama will begin with treaties designed to achieve his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. But that is just the beginning. Efforts will begin to bind America to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea....This will hurt our nation's ability to mine the world's seas for oil and gas....
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POPSEven When No One Is Around "Humanity's most valuable assets have been the non-conformists. Were it not for the non-conformists, he who refuses to be satisfied to go along with the continuance of things as they are, and insists upon attempting to find new ways of bettering things, the world would have known little progress, indeed."
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POPSBumper Snickers Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs. Out of my mind...Back in five minutes. DON'T PISS ME OFF! I'M RUNNING OUT OF PLACES TO HIDE THE BODIES. You are depriving some poor village of its IDIOT Save Your Breath ... You'll need it to blow up your date! Forget world peace. Visualize using your turn signal. My Hockey Mom Can Beat Up Your Soccer Mom I took an IQ test and the results were negative.
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POPSObama Has Won The 100 Metres at The 2012 London Olympics
Thus, with President Wilson alone, the Nobel Peace Prize death toll is over 50 million and counting. Occasionally the peace prize has gone to actual peace negotiators but usually, per Teddy Roosevelt, when there was nothing left to negotiate. Carlos Saavedra Lamas got his in 1936 for mediating between Bolivia and Paraguay in the Chaco War (1932-35). Both nations were exhausted, 100,000 soldiers were dead, and the Chaco was--as it had been and remains--a vast, useless weed patch. Likewise, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan (1976) and John Hume and David Trimble (1998)--the four of them were standing around when, after 500 years, the fool residents of my ancestral homeland ran out of ammo and beer. Of course, if you go around giving prizes left and right (mostly left) for more than a century, you're bound to give some to worthy people once in a while. With the Nobel committee this usually involves the Red Cross (1901, 1917, 1944, 1963). But the Red Cross doesn't bring peace . . .
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POPSPhilippines-France Diplomatic Relations The Treaty provides that there shall be "constant peace and perpetual friendship" between the Philippines and France and today provides the foundation for the enduring ties between both countries. Historically these ties can trace their roots to the French Revolution, which is said to have inspired Andres Bonifacio and the Philippine Revolution of 1896.
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POPSA Word From The Prez Regardless of one's political affiliations, there is little to criticize here...and I, for one, think it's high time we listen with our hearts.
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POPSObama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty, Claims British Lord How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because captured it – Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize ; of course he’ll sign it. More at source, well worth reading as it affects us all.
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POPSSecond Thoughts I went back and re-read what I had written. And I listened for far too long to the right wing hate machine who did what they could to crap all over Barack's big day. Did I -- and others on the left -- do the same? We are weary, weary of war. Obama is moving too slow for most of us -- but he needs to know we are with him and we stand beside him as he attempts to turn eight years of sheer madness around. Who could do that in nine months? Superman? Thor? Mitch McConnell? Instead of waiting to see what the president is going to do, we all need to be pro-active and push the agenda that we want to see enacted. on't abandon the best hope we've had in our lifetime for change. Now for the tasks ahead. We need you to do all that you promised to do. We need it. The world needs it. Fred (that's Norwegian for "Peace") ---- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O7PnvVgQvA
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POPSJustice of the Peace Bardwell is wrong that mixed-race children suffer because they are mixed-race
More: These desires and questions don't change just because your parents are from different racial backgrounds. And they certainly don't get easier if your parents are from different faiths, different parts of the world, different ... you name it. So Mr. Bardwell is just simply ridiculous if he thinks he's thinking about the children. Yes, children go through tough times, but we are resilient. Even more important, we learn from our challenges -- and I think we become better people. Because I am of mixed race, I cannot simply stick to stereotypes of how one racial or ethnic group behave. I must look at each individual independent of what I think -- and I think that assessment happens when people look at me and try to figure out what I'm all about. This process of not jumping to conclusions, of really viewing people on some deeper level, makes me a better person. And I think it could work for you, Mr. Bardwell.