Football and Iraq

"It is the greatest gift since the fall of Saddam Hussein, and shows how Iraqis from all walks of life can work together to achieve success," said Hozam Mahmoud, a Kurdish policeman, who had abandoned his traffic duties to join noisy celebrations close to the foot of the ancient citadel in the Kurdish regional capital, Irbil.

He added: "Football alone may not be able to heal the nation's deep wounds, but for the moment it has induced a sense of cohesion, and we can all build on that if we try."

One reason for the team's popularity is that its players are drawn from all sections and all parts of Iraqi society.

On the pitch yesterday were Kurds, Sunnis, Shias and Turkomans. The players had overcome kidnap threats, the murder of loved ones, and disruptions to their training schedules."

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Voting machines

"State-sanctioned teams of computer hackers were able to break through the security of virtually every model of California's voting machines and change results or take control of some of the systems' electronic functions, according to a University of California study released Friday."

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Universal healthcare for all pls

countries with universal healthcare

Dont reclassify

"Prof Murray said: "Individuals who - perhaps with some mild predisposition - would not otherwise have developed schizophrenia will do so because of taking cannabis. It's a bit like how people with only a minimal predisposition to diabetes will develop it if they eat too much."

Dr Iddon, the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on drugs misuse, said the study did not convince him it was time to return cannabis to class B.

"I don't think the causal link has been proved. I think cannabis might - possibly for genetic reasons - trigger psychosis at an earlier age."

The MP, who is also a member of the science and technology select committee, said there was a danger of criminalising "hundreds of thousands of young people" if the status of the drug was changed.

If Gordon Brown changes the class of the drug, it won't be evidence-based but for political reasons," he said.

"Since we reduced the classification of cannabis from B to C the usage is going down, so what's the point of muddying the debate again by this yo-yo political policy?"

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AK-47s, Arab Jails & Animal Smugglers: Interview with Conflict Photographer

My buddy Alex Smailes. A very cool cat, amazing photographer and, well, read for yourself...

"We faxed it to friends at Cambridge just to check what it was. They called right away and said, “Where did you find this? Don’t go anywhere near it! Your balls would drop off!” We told the editor of the newspaper we were working for a regional newspaper. He basically came back and said, “Leave that alone.” The actual owner of the newspaper was a member of the royal family! So we put it in an envelope and dropped it off to the American Embassy. That was the last we thought of it until I started getting phone calls in the middle of the night saying Mr. Smailes can you come and meet me at the Sheraton Hotel I hear you are causing a big problem."



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Terror by symbols

"What a telling snapshot of the war between the West and those who would ‘destroy our way of life’. Yesterday Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, released a crackly audio recording in which he denounced the Queen of England and Tony Blair for honouring Salman Rushdie with a knighthood. So, here we have a terrorist who’s stuck in a dugout criticising a Queen who has long since ceased to have any real power for awarding a writer who made a perceived insult against Islam 18 years ago with an order of chivalry for his contributions to an Empire that does not exist.

This is not so much a clash of civilisations as a load of symbolics. It’s a war of gestures between a mythical British Empire and a YouTube terrorist with a chip on his shoulder."

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modern living

the other side - make money

"Guns do not produce value. Guns cannot force people to produce wealth. Unaware of this fact, the government holds the threat of force against the greatest form of human interaction, the corporation. Few would heed to the government's rules or regulations if it were not for the final card that can be played—holding a gun to the individual's head and demanding compliance. Not many people desire to think of extreme cases, or the true source of power. It takes but a few “whys” to reach the answer.

Why do I pay my taxes? If I don't, I will be audited. Why do I comply with an audit? If I don't, the tax collectors will attempt to seize my estate. Why do I relinquish the estate? If I don't a police officer will put handcuffs on me and escort me to prison. Why do I allow another man to shackle my hands with steel? If I don't, a government agent will draw his gun and aim it at my chest. The power of the government is derived from the sanctioned use of force—the muzzle of a gun."

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this guy scored some great gols

wimbledon

“She’s playing hard to get,” Murray said. “He’s trying too hard,” Jankovic said. “But we’re having a lot of fun. It’s a great game we’re playing.” Yesterday, in the evening sunlight, they were 4-1 up in the third set. Some devastating service returns from Jankovic gave them break points, but Murray kept returning into the net. “I was telling him, ‘Jamie, let’s go. This return, hit a good one because you are going to get many kisses’,” Jankovic said. Finally he did, and she served out the match."

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FTC Abandons Net Neutrality

Bad News

"The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided to abandon net neutrality and allow telecoms companies to charge websites for access.The FTC said in a report that, despite popular support for net neutrality, it was minded to let the market sort out the issue.This means that the organisation will not stand in the way of companies using differential pricing to make sure that some websites can be viewed more quickly than others. The report also counsels against net neutrality legislation".

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the Pacific from space

Facebook

http://www.albumoftheday.com/facebook/

How many people ever lived...

Number of people who have ever been born: 106,456,367,669
World population in mid-2002: 6,215,000,000
Percent of those ever born who are living in 2002: 5.8

so much for the argument that 75 percent of the people who had ever been born are alive at the moment...

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Royalties

"Tomorrow is the so-called “Day of Silence.” Thousands of US webradio broadcasters will get together to turn their radio streams off for a day to protest the newly-introduced higher rates that SoundExchange intends to charge them."

from the comments

mullingitover
26 June, 22:32

Last.fm board meeting:

“Chairman: So, this new law is going to dramatically increase the price of running a radio station on the internet. Many small stations will suffocate and die with the increased costs of operation.

Board members, in unison: WICKED!

Chairman: Yeah, totally. We’re getting sweet deals with the labels, so this will barely touch us. We just have to share some marketing numbers with them and help with promtions. Maybe a little payola, just like the radio stations.

Board member: But what about this day of protest they’re talking about?

Chairman: Whatev. We’ll throw up a blog post about how we’re already paying the rates, and we’re putting up a massive struggle but we’re surviving. Make the whole thing look like a bunch of rubbish.

Board members: Hear hear!

Chairman: [cackles maniacally]”

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Where is middle-earth...

"Created by Tolkien somewhere in the 1930s, the map shows the ‘mortal lands’ of Middle-earth, which according to Tolkien himself is part of our own Earth, but in a previous, mythical era. At the time of the events described in ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’, Middle-earth is moving towards the end of its Third Age, about 6.000 years ago.

Tolkien didn’t create Middle-earth ex nihilo: ancient Germanic myths divide the Universe in nine worlds, inhabited by elves, dwarves, giants, etc. The world of men is the one in the middle, called Midgard, Middenheim or Middle-earth. That term doesn’t thus describe the entirety of the world Tolkien thought up. The correct term for the total world is Arda – probably derived from German Erde (’Earth’) and only first mentioned posthumously in the Silmarillion (1977); and Eä (for the whole Universe)."

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Plagiarism

Saw this over on Caribbean Free Radio - seems a Telegraph journalist got caught red handed plagerising (typos and all)...her excuse wasnt the smartest either...AND the telegraph editors seem uninterested by the whole thing...

surf

Cape Town, South Africa, June 19 2007: Grant Baker from South Africa surfs a wave at an offshore reef known as the 'Dungeon' off Cape Town. Local and international big wave surfers were practicing for the annual Big Wave Africa competition.
Photograph: Nic Bothma/EPA

Oprah figuring out socialism

Hamilton wins!

"The son of a former British Rail worker, Hamilton is mixed-race - his father's family originates from the Caribbean island of Grenada - and he is the first driver of Afro-Caribbean origin to race in F1."



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Simon Barnes today...

"I have seen this serenity, this extraordinary sense of composure, very, very rarely. Perhaps in Tiger Woods, certainly in Roger Federer, when he is not playing Rafael Nadal on clay. I saw it in Brian Lara, in that extraordinary period of his life when he scored at least a single century every time he went out to bat. I have seen it in patches with Zinédine Zidane and Johan Cruyff."