Paul E. Ester's Flogger

No matter what Flash-blinded web monkeys would have us believe, the Internet is a text-based medium: especially its major discussion forums (IRC and Usenet) where people from all over the world can interact and share information. A popular misconception about text messages on the Internet is that, to be an effective communicator and earn the respect and admiration of your peers, you must be able to write lucid prose; that your messages, articles, posts and pages must be easy to understand and pleasant to read.

Nothing could be further from the truth.
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Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an “almost daily” basis in defiance of international conventions.

The story of America’s involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait — which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq’s acquisition of chemical and biological precursors — is a topical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms proliferators, all on the principle that the “enemy of my enemy is my friend.”… Rest of Article

Mexican lawmakers are also considering a bill that would form a Mexican congressional district encompassing the entire United States…. Rest of Article

Mass Layoff Statistics Program Is Discontinued This is the final news release for the Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program. Since 1994, the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration has funded the program. That funding will end on December 31, 2002. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been unable to acquire funding from alternative sources and must discontinue the MLS program. Limited historical data will continue to be available at http://www.bls.gov/mls/ on the BLS Web site. … Rest of Article

In a major surrender to Israeli diplomatic pressure, BBC officials in London have banned their staff in Britain and the Middle East from referring to Israel’s policy of murdering its guerrilla opponents as “assassination”. BBC reporters have been told that in future they are to use Israel’s own euphemism for the murders, calling them “targeted killings”.
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Three-quarters of the Special Forces personnel in Afghanistan today are citizen-soldiers from the National Guard and Reserves. Their presence frees active-duty Special Forces to train for a possible war in Iraq. For the first time in a combat zone, Special Forces here are commanded by a National Guard officer.

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Some pictures from afganistan.

In Russia Bear three children, get a house free / In Europe -Persistent Drop in Fertility Reshapes Europe’s Future / The World, More -Index tracks global aging crisis

An agreement has been signed in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, paving the way for construction of a gas pipeline from the Central Asian republic through Afghanistan to Pakistan.


The project has been around for some years

The building of the trans-Afghanistan pipeline has been under discussion for some years but plans have been held up by Afghanistan’s unstable political situation.

This follows a summit meeting bringing together the presidents of the three countries last May when the project received formal go-ahead.

The pipeline would represent the first major foreign investment in Afghanistan in many years. … Rest of Article

“If you don’t violate someone’s human rights some of the time, you probably aren’t doing your job,” said one official who has supervised the capture and transfer of accused terrorists…. Rest of Article

The article forgot to mention Syria, Israel, and Algeria.