With all the news going on with Syria, Turkey, and Egypt, one important conflict has been overlooked. Specifically, "The Troubles" of Northern Ireland achieved a landmark previously unthinkable: former IRA commander Martin McGuinness and Her Royal Highness Elizabeth II shook hands in an effort to promote peace and show an end to the fight over ( Read more... )

Last week, News of the World, a popular British tabloid, closed their doors days after it was revealed they had reporters and others hack into people's voicemails and other privacy invading measures. In this specific case, agents of News of the World had broken into the voicemail of a girl who had disappeared and was killed. Her parents held out ( Read more... )

Almost two months ago, a fruit cart vendor in Tunisia set himself on fire and in so doing lit a spark of freedom across North Africa and the Middle East. Citizens of Tunisia actually managed to depose a long time dictator in Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. After this was successful, several other countries in the region followed. Egypt, long under the ( Read more... )

Americans have traditionally been defined by two things, people who distrust authority and who love a good fight. It's how we came to be a country and it's how we have continued to define ourselves. It rarely matters what the authority is, someone in this country will start fighting it. One of the more recent and bloody of these battles has been ( Read more... )

Jamie Leigh Jones is suing, or at least attempting to sue, Halliburton and KBR for her gruesome rape, attack and coverup. While this blog doesn't blanch from being graphic when necessary, this one hit particularly close to home for some, so this warning. The descriptions might get a little blunt in places.

( Graphic Content Follows )

It appears last night's midnightranter provoked some responses. Firstly, anonymous responses are fine, they really are. IP logging isn't turned on for a reason, mostly because people should feel free to post whatever they want and not feel threatened that should they say the wrong thing, someone is going to track them down and do terrible things. That said, when ( Read more... )

In this era of needed troops and falling recruitment rates, the American has had to resort to other means to fill necessary gaps. Enlistments bonuses have gone up, recruiters are scammier than ever and recruitments standards have been lowered. This has been going on for years and is really part of standard practice, and all of it makes sense. We're ( Read more... )

Sorry for lack of rants, managed to pull a couple of muscles ranting. I'm just that good. But, tonight, we marked the sad anniversary and grim milestones that 5 years of American war in Iraq and 4000 American soldiers killed in Iraq. That doesn't count other coalition deaths, Iraqi civilian deaths, nor does it include exactly how many terrorists we ( Read more... )

First off, I love good responses that provoke good thoughts and how_i_lie provided one. Also, these are the danger of not getting enough sleep before writing, you leave stuff out. Like the entire paragraph talking about why it's really hope versus despair and why Americans, given choices, will vote real hope versus real despair and why we'll vote unity over ( Read more... )

Last week, the FBI announced they had done something very, very smart in conducting separate investigations parallel to the CIA involving the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. This move was announced about the same time as this memo came to light. This is setting the stage for securing convictions in an American court for some of the most notorious ( Read more... )