Are_grits_groceries
Are_grits_groceries's JournalThe protests in Kiev may become violent. More riot police are being brought in:
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On Monday a column of 20 police buses and trucks headed towards the capital from Vasylkiv, 20km (12 miles) south of the city, Ukraine's 5 Kanal TV reported.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25298481
FYI
The man in the third photo is Valeri Klitschko. He is boxing's WBC Heavyweight Champion. This gives him and the crisis a very high profile in the west.
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/03/21742066-boxing-champ-klitschko-emerges-as-contender-in-ukraine-crisis
Doonesbury went all in about sexual assaults in the military:
http://www.politicalcarnival.net
Take that all you assholes who oppose taking sex crimes out of the chain of command.
It's really a chain of criminal enabling.
This mind-boggling profile on Osama bin Laden came out 20 years ago in a U.K. newspaper
This article from Dec. 6, 1993, by Robert Fisk of The Independent, titled, “Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace,” is stunning to consider 20 years later.
Osama bin Laden, fresh off the U.S.-backed mujahideen’s victory over Russia in 1989, flew his men, materials and money down to Sudan, ostensibly to start public works projects. When asked if they were militant training camps, the “Saudi entrepreneur” and future leader of al Qaeda told Fisk: “I am a construction engineer and an agriculturalist. If I had training camps here in Sudan, I couldn’t possibly do this job.”
The piece is fascinating because it is a positive profile of a man who would become a global terrorist mastermind.
Some key lines:
“With his high cheekbones, narrow eyes and long brown robe, Mr Bin Laden looks every inch the mountain warrior of mujahedin legend.”
“He is a shy man. … married – with four wives – but wary of the press.”
“Was it not a little bit anti-climactic for them, I asked, to fight the Russians and end up road-building in Sudan?”
Bin Laden’s work in Sudan purportedly involved overseeing a 500-mile highway from Khartoum to Port Sudan. Fisk reported that “Bin Laden has brought the very construction equipment that he used only five years ago to build the guerrilla trails of Afghanistan.”
This article originally appeared in Business Insider
http://deadstate.org/this-mind-boggling-profile-on-osama-bin-laden-came-out-20-years-ago-in-a-u-k-newspaper/
People have no idea about the bin Laden family's history with the Saudis and the US.
They assume he always hated the US and was plotting 9/11 all his life. He changed quite a bit over time.
"The Looming Tower" is a great read about 9/11 and the long history that lead to it.
If you decorate a Xmas tree and are late doing so, you should be ashamed:
If Mickey can get it done on time, so can you.
It's on! Anti-government protesters topple statue of Lenin in Kiev
Hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters gathered in Kiev Dec. 8 to demand the resignation of the ruling government. In the protests—the third Sunday in a row of such protests—a statue of former Communist leader Vladimir Lenin appears to have been toppled.
"The opposition is ready to sit down, talk, negotiate change in the situation to seek an exit from the current political crisis."
At issue is whether or not Ukraine will join the EU, something supported by the anti-government protesters but opposed by President Viktor Yanukovych. Protesters suspect President Yanukovych is bowing to Russian pressure not to join the EU. Opposition leaders indicated Dec. 6 that they're ready to talk to President Yanukovych about ending the standoff.
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Protesters and police:
http://cir.ca/news/ukraine-protests
As you can see, the police are basically standing down. I have no idea what would happen if this changes.
It's anyone's guess how this will turn out. Putin holds a very high card in that the Ukraine owes them billions in debt. They also depend on Russia or a lot of aid.
Crazy Ants: Scary and coming soon to a neighborhood near you
There’s a Reason They Call Them ‘Crazy Ants’
The first time Mike the Hog-a-Nator noticed the ants, they were piled outside his cardiologist’s office. This was two summers ago, in Pearland, a suburb of Houston. There was a forbidding, fibrous heap of dead ants on either side of the building’s double doors, each a couple of feet long. And there were also legions of living ants shuffling over the dead ones — though Mike the Hog-a-Nator had to bend down to see these. Otherwise, so many individual ants were moving so chaotically, and so fast, that the entire reddish-brown tangle at his feet looked as if it were shimmering. Mike the Hog-a-Nator remembers thinking: What the world? Then he went inside for his weekly appointment.
this is a pile of Crazy Ants:
Six years earlier, a doctor found a tumor on Mike the Hog-a-Nator’s aorta. It was inoperable. Mike, who was only 36, was told to live every day as if it were his last. He narrowed his joys and priorities to two. The first was putting smiles on the faces of people who need them, so he started a program he calls Therapy Through the Outdoors. Ever since, he has been taking kids with terminal diseases and veterans with injuries or PTSD on adventures in the 60-acre woodland across from his house. The other was shooting as many feral hogs as he possibly could, which is what he and the sick kids and the wounded warriors often do in the woods.
Mike hates feral hogs, and has always found it very satisfying to clear those hideous, rooting thugs off a piece of land. He has always been good at it too — that’s why people call him Mike the Hog-a-Nator. (His real name is Mike Foshee.) Recently, he even started marketing his own all-natural hog bait, “Pork Smack™ Hog Attractant,” after months of refining the recipe. America has been filling up with invasive species since European settlers first arrived. Feral hogs, which were brought to the continent five centuries ago, are among the most gruesome and destructive. The federal government estimates that there are now five million hogs in 35 states, resulting in $1.5 billion in damages and control costs every year. In its literature, the Department of Agriculture calls the animals a “pandemic.”
But anyway, the ants.
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Much more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/08/magazine/crazy-ants.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2p
Lawd save us!
These would drive me bats*** crazy in one day.
So you think you know pelicans?
Snacking on a duck:
@Earth_Pics
I know they are big birds with big pouches. However, this really brings that point home.
Hide the kids!
State attorney's report: Video of Jameis Winston encounter deleted
Jameis Winston's teammate had a partial video of the sexual encounter between Winston and his accuser but later deleted it, according to documents from the state attorney's investigation released Friday.
More than 200 pages of documents by the State Attorney's Office reveal every step of the sexual assault investigation that ended with no charges against the Florida State quarterback. But the interview notes, text messages and social media records offer few major details about the incident from Dec. 7, 2012.
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That memo revealed investigators told Winston's accuser there were "several perceived problems with the case," including a second DNA found on her pants. The DNA found on her underwear was linked to Winston. The woman didn't identify the source of the DNA on her pants, but investigators later matched it to her boyfriend, who was living in Ohio.
The memo also showed a few dead-ends in the investigation. Winston's teammate, Chris Casher, recorded part of the sexual encounter but later deleted it and discarded that phone. Investigators couldn't find the deleted Twitter or Facebook accounts of the woman, aside from a few images.
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http://www.tampabay.com/sports/college/state-attorneys-report-video-of-jameis-winston-encounter-deleted/2155871
I hope these item are wandering around somewhere on the interwebs and somebody finds them.
I had not heard about any video recordings. This video might provide a little more clarity.
In addition, it amazes me when investigators get alibis from family and friends. They seem to say okay and mark off the person they are vouching for. The people who provided affadavits in the Winston case were his fellow football players.
There were problems with the victim's memory. They found no trace of roofies. I wonder if there is another drug that has the same effect that nobody knows to check for.
This has been a hot mess. Because the cops waited a year before the state's attorney got the case, who knows what evidence was lost. Winston was not charged, but Meggs was very careful not to say he was innocent.
Well, the health department employee checked my cat out.
He didn't even sit down.
I brought Scat out and she was giving both of us the evil eye because we had interrupted her important cat plans.
He took one look at her and said she looked good. I signed a paper agreeing to keep her inside for 10 days. (She's an indoor cat anyway.)
Off he went and that was that. He will check back in 2 weeks to make sure she is not sick.
Original post:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024137654
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