Young and beautiful, Olga has stayed in Velesta longer than most trafficked women, many of whom are moved on into Albania and Greece after the local population "breaks them in or gets tired of them," Olga said. Once they reach the Albanian coast, they are easily trafficked to Italy, where the European Union’s lax border controls allow them to be smuggled deep inside the continent.Part 1 of a four 4 series on MSNBC.com.
... The sense grows that one is everywhere being confronted, manipulated and pushed by someone's marketing campaign. Yet despite the torrent, no backlash has emerged like the beatniks of the '50s or the hippies of the '60s and '70s. We have the anti-global demonstrators, but they're obviously idiots. Where's the outrage?While he makes the point, I'm still in mourning over the current state of The Arts (books, movies, painting...whatever). It all seems...ugh. I'll be seeing "Spider-Man" this weekend and expect to enjoy it. I'll buy the next Tom Clancey pot-boiler, though I think his best was his first (saved only by stars of brilliance within his latter works), etc., but when I watch "Casablanca" (for the umpteenth time) I see a certain magic that movies today lack. Nothing I've read in science fiction books of recent years matches the magic of "Stranger in a Strange Land." On and on, etc., etc., etc.
It's nowhere, because the fact is that "Spider-Man" (the ultimate misfit) is really good. So is Sam Adams beer and Starbucks coffee, Callaway golf clubs, Pepsi, Prada, Krispy Kreme, Harry Potter, Barnes & Noble, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, the Discovery Channel, Levis, LensCrafters, Absolut, ESPN, Dominos and Diana Krall.
The mass market in America, the median of quality, has risen, not fallen. We may all be drinking from the same coffee cup and spending weekends together watching the same computerized movie graphics, but, as the saying goes, it's all good. The fears of corporatized conformity were overblown. East Germany was conformity. This is commercial anarchy born of competition.
... Neither of these groups has called for an independent inquiry into the cult of suicide bombing, or asked how Jenin became a nest for terrorists -- the place Fatah itself called the capital of the suicide bombers. They have not asked how these things could happen in a camp that has been administered since the start by a UN relief agency. They have deplored the interception of Red Crescent ambulances by Israeli troops, but do not mention that those ambulances are used to smuggle weapons and even fighters.
They have accused Israel of using child soldiers because some boys can enlist in the army when they're only 17. But they've never mentioned the children who lob grenades for Islamic Jihad. One 15-year-old told a Boston Globe reporter how he threw homemade pipe bombs, helped with ambushes, and acted as a lookout. He said the militants had recruited 50 boys like him and divided them into teams of 10.
Why is anyone reading this tripe? Sure, [Noam] Chomsky's diatribe resonates with a latent anti-Americanism that endures on college campuses. But blaming a left-wing campus environment provides only a partial answer. Books like this from certified intellectuals also satisfy a youthful need to see through the news to detect a hidden subtext. The logic is that only someone as brilliant and fearless as Chomsky can unearth the concealed agenda of the American governing establishment.
It would be unfortunate if Chomsky's momentary popularity overshadows infinitely more reasoned critiques of Bush administration policies. There are serious questions that should be weighed as America girds for final war against Saddam Hussein and dispatches military advisers to nations like the Philippines. Chomsky and his camp followers do not have a monopoly on dissent. The best response to the frenzied e-mailed dispatches from this left-wing crank remains public disclosure and ridicule.
JERUSALEM (AP) - In the aftermath of Israel's military offensive in the West Bank, Yasser Arafat is coming under growing pressure at home - not just from the United States and Israel - to clean up his Palestinian Authority.Good grief, even members of his Cabinet see that Arafat is taking them down the road to perdition's flame. Maybe he really wants to be a martyr.
In stormy meetings with the Palestinian leader in recent days, Cabinet ministers and senior activists in his Fatah movement made a host of demands: municipal elections within eight weeks, voting for a new parliament within six months, a crackdown on corruption and a trimming of the unwieldy security apparatus.
They warned that if the Palestinians don't put their house in order, they will become increasingly vulnerable to U.S. and Israeli dictates. "We must do reforms our way, not the American way,'' said Hussein al-Sheik, Fatah leader in the West Bank.
Yet Arafat remained unmoved.
During a Cabinet meeting last Friday, two days after Israel released him from 34 days of confinement at his West Bank headquarters, he held lengthy monologues about the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon to avoid responding to the reform demands, one of the participants said.
When ministers insisted he get back to the issue at hand, he angrily walked out of the room, sources said. Persuaded to return after a few minutes, he said now was not the time for major changes, but offered to form a committee to look into the complaints - a time-tested Arafat technique for stifling dissent.
Arafat has not commented in public on the reform issue. ...
Tom Paulin does not attempt to hide his anger at what the Israelis are doing in Palestine: it is, he says, "an historical obscenity."But the closing quote is most priceless of all....
Paulin, currently professor of English at Hartford College, Oxford, a leading poet and, for several years now, a controversial TV pundit, is among the few British intellectuals who has dared to criticise Israel, questioning even its very existence.
"I never believed that Israel had the right to exist at all," Paulin told Al-Ahram Weekly.
If there is one thing Paulin clearly abhors about Israel, it is the Brooklyn--born Jewish settlers.No one ever said an Irishman was subtle.
"They should be shot dead," he says forcefully. "I think they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them."
The Thirties are coming round again in Europe. Fascists are flourishing politically in France and Italy, and now comes the murder of Pim Fortuyn, a populist politician who might have done well enough in the forthcoming Dutch elections to hold the balance of power in that country's parliament. But it is the widespread Jew-baiting that best reveals that Europeans are evidently incapable of learning from their history.And on, tales of freedom of speech. What continues to evade so many people is the notion that with freedom comes responsibility.
... What a world! You can only read a certain amount of this stuff before you start to avert your eyes. What on earth can anyone hope to do about all this? All the simple explanations for the horrors that stain a large part of our planet have been used up. We now know that it's not the fault of colonialism, or neo-colonialism, or capitalism, or socialism. It's just the way these places are. They can't handle modernity, for some cultural reason we don't understand and can't do anything about.Heard this on Rush, had to read it myself. Wowzers.
That's the context in which I see the Palestinians. The Palestinians are Arabs; and the Arabs, whatever their medieval achievements (as best I can understand, they were mainly achievements of transmission — "Arabic" numerals, for example, came from India) are politically hopeless. Who can dispute this? Look at the last 50-odd years, since the colonial powers left. What have the Arabs accomplished? What have they built? Where in the Arab world is there a trace or a spark of democracy? Of constitutionalism? Of laws independent of the ruler's whim? Of free inquiry? Of open public debate? Where in your house is there any article stamped "Made in Syria?" Arabs can be individually very charming and capable, and perform very well in free societies like the U.S.A. There are at least two recent Nobel prizes with Arab names attached. Collectively, though, as nations, the Arabs are no-hopers.
All of this applies to the Palestinians. ...
California and eight other states are seeking penalties for Microsoft's antitrust violations that go beyond those in a proposed settlement with the federal government. A key provision in the states' proposal would require Microsoft to disclose technical information to rivals so their software would work seamlessly with Microsoft's Windows operating system.Nevermind that crackers already bust into Windows XP without any of the operating system's "security" features released for public scrutiny. As was said:
National security
But Microsoft Vice President Jim Allchin, who heads the company's platforms groups, testified Tuesday that such a requirement could put national security at risk.
Requiring more disclosure "would make it easier for hackers to break into computer networks, for malicious individuals or organizations to spread destructive computer viruses and for unethical people to pirate" Microsoft's Windows software, Allchin said.
Under cross-examination, Allchin conceded that hackers had already been able to break into undisclosed security functions for Windows even though technical data such as that being sought by the states wasn't made available.Oh, the panicked do run about so....
Ramallah May 8th 2002 Wafa; A Palestinian Leadership spokesman stated:Gag! Color me surprised, but the "press release" doesn't condemn the action so much as condemn the timing.
The Palestinian Leadership strongly condemns the violent operation in Rishon Letsiyon that targeted civilians; saying that the timing of such an operation...
Hundreds of Bay Area kids will be heading up to Sacramento this morning for a field trip on democracy -- with their first lesson being how to lobby.I am so sick and tired of every other political campaign ending with (or containing an element of) "for the children."
Classes from San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley -- some with students as young as 10 -- are being bused to the state Capitol to protest the education spending cuts recently announced by Gov. Gray Davis.
As of last count, nearly 300 San Francisco students ranging from the fourth to 12th grades were scheduled for the "field trip." Over in Oakland, at least 19 busloads will be taking more than 500 kids -- plus 450 adults.
All courtesy the state teacher, education and service employee unions -- with a helping hand from the local school districts themselves.
Just to make sure the trip has an "educational" component, Oakland school officials insisted that their kids first write an essay explaining why they wanted to go.
Palestinian groups urged their leader Yasser Arafat to reject the deal to end the siege, saying that letting Palestinians be sent into exile played into Israel’s hands. Fatah, the faction headed by Arafat himself, issued a statement urging its leader not to ratify the deal and calling it a "dangerous humanitarian crime". Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantisi, a senior leader of the Hamas, said the deal was a disaster and would weaken Palestinian demands for the return of tens of thousands of refugees to their homeland. "It reinforces the principle of transfer adopted by Sharon and the rest of the Zionist gang," Rantisi said. An official of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said the deal amounted to Palestinian approval of an Israeli policy to expel and exile people. A spokesman for the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine described it as "a mark of shame".No mention of the PA's "condemnation" of the Tel Aviv attack.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration, flouting the advice of major allies and outraging human rights organizations, renounced on Monday any obligation to cooperate with the new International Criminal Court. ...So Bush is evil for formally withdrawing, but Clinton is great because he signed a treaty he never had any intention of actually allowing to go into effect? (Senate must ratify any treaty for it to be "binding" on the US.) I...I'm so confused.
... The administration of former President Bill Clinton signed the treaty setting up the court in 2000 so the United States could take part in talks on arrangements for the new body.
But both Clinton and the Bush administration said they did not intend to ask the Senate the ratify the treaty, on the grounds it could be used for politically motivated prosecutions of U.S. officials or military personnel.
Hamas has once again cast its bloody veto over any move to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the question now is how the other players will vote. Sixteen Israelis were killed and more than 50 wounded as a suicide bomber struck at a pool hall in Rishon Letzion, south of Tel Aviv. The first such attack inside Israel in a month was timed perfectly to coincide with Ariel Sharon's Tuesday visit to the White House, where President Bush was pressing for progress toward a political solution of the conflict. Sharon, who heard the news during his meeting with Bush, flew home almost immediately, warning that the work of his West Bank offensive was not yet finished. Other Israeli spokesmen blamed the attack on Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, while the PA, for its part, condemned the bombing -- for which Hamas has claimed responsibility -- and promised that they would "not be light-handed in punishing [the perpetrators] who have caused great harm to our cause."Oh, snort! The attack was also "perfectly timed" in the sense that it occurred within a day of Arafat being allowed to wander about free again. Strange coincidence? Meaningful? Who knows. I ask again, if Arafat is in charge, then he's either doing a lousy job, or he's responsible for these attacks. If he's not in charge, why bother to talk to him? He has proven himself less than relevant--at best!
Too much of a good thing, Mae West once remarked, is wonderful. That seems to be the spirit motivating many in the world of intellectual property today, though the results are wonderful only in that word's original sense: Cause for wondering. And what some of us are wondering is how long it will be before every idea, however trivial, is locked up tight by someone.
After thousands of studies, hundreds of millions of prescriptions and tens of billions of dollars in sales, two things are certain about pills that treat depression: Antidepressants like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft work. And so do sugar pills.Amazing, simply amazing. Obviously, Andrea Yates should have been sucking on sugar all these years.
Many in the West assume that the Muslim world has already answered by honoring the human bombs as "martyrs." And the chorus of voices from the Muslim world does support that assumption. Foreign ministers from 57 Muslim countries met in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, this month with the stated intention of defining terrorism and distancing Islam from terror. Instead, they ended up endorsing the suicide bombers.If this is a revival, God have mercy on us all. Amir Taheri, the author, finishes on this note:
Iran's former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, says he would accept the suicide of even 10% of Muslims in a nuclear war to wipe Israel off the map. Algeria's president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, has described the bombers as "innocent blossoms of martyrdom." Ghazi Algosaibi, Saudi Arabia's ambassador in London and also a poet, has praised the human bombs as a model for Muslim youth in an ode. Ismail Abushanab, the Hamas leader in Gaza, says that 10,000 Palestinians should die while killing 100,000 Israelis as part of a strategy to "put the Jews on the run." And Saddam Hussein says the suicide bombers are "reviving Islam."
Islam forbids human sacrifice. The greatest Islamic festival is the Eid al-Adha which marks the day God refused Abraham's offer to sacrifice his firstborn and, instead, substituted a lamb. A god who refuses human sacrifice for his cause can hardly sanction the same to promote the strategies of Mr. Abushanab, or Yasser Arafat. Islam also rejects the crucifixion of Christ because it cannot accept that God would claim human sacrifice in atonement of men's sins.True, true.
Some, like Iran's President Mohammad Khatami, present suicide bombings as acts of individual desperation. This is disingenuous. One of the girls who blew herself up, murdering almost a dozen Israelis, had been recruited at 14 and brainwashed for two years. Mounting a suicide operation needs planning, logistics, surveillance, equipment, money and postoperation publicity--in short, an organization.
But then, the recruiters never use their own children. No one related by blood to the leaders of Hamas or Islamic Jihad has died in suicide bombings.
Arafat's wife, Suha, says she would offer her son for suicide attacks. Mrs. Arafat, however, has no son, only a daughter, living with her in Paris. It is always someone else's child who must die.
I'm here to help you realize/ understand that you will live no matter what! It is up to you people to open your hearts and minds. There is no such thing as death. The people I've dismissed from this reality are not at all dead.I assume that dozens of mental health specialists will rush to his aid. They'll question why he should even be put on trial, that he needs mental help not punishment, etc.
