you can tell Rubin's a shady sort: any analyst prepared to give a presentation to the Turkish general staff is clearly at home with fluid accounting, and this also explains his occasionally getting fisked by Kurdish writers.

---

In a written statement provided to the BBC, Shell hit back at Amnesty saying the group had made no attempt at open dialogue.
The firm dismissed the report, saying: "There is little of value in it. No new insights. No findings that might help change the way things are."

what a shower of cunts.

'Hunger: tie your stomach tightly and wait, it will leave you'. Ishag Mohammedin, from Furawiya, was stoical about the pains of hunger. There is little to say about hunger per se. Hunger was something that people had just to put up with.

de Waal, 1989, p. 112

FUCK THIS FOR A GAME OF SOLDIERS

for at least the second time a major BBC anchor (Matt Frei earlier today in this case, Bill Turnbull once on the breakfast sofa) has characterised the nationality of ISAF troops under fire as American and British.

no mention of troops from, say, the Netherlands, Canada and Denmark.

NOT FUCKING GOOD ENOUGH.

at the periphery or at the vortex?
Bourgeois

summer 2007

sat in a Belgian bar, drinking beer alone, noting the famous actor with two thrilled ladies at his table nearby, reading this

"The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War"

It is likewise my opinion that colours and other sensible qualities are on the objects
	- Bishop Berkeley

"God will help us to overcome all enemies and we believe we shall defeat them. We are not worried about their quantity and whatever weapons they have"

30 seconds lads

Roskilde, Friday December 26th, 2008.

three mates done for by a bomb in Helmand.

the three Danish soldiers killed by an IED on Wednesday were due to end their tour in August.

"In other violence, four private Afghan security guards were killed on Tuesday when they were attacked while escorting trucks that supply foreign forces bases in southern Afghanistan, police said.
"The guards returned fire. The fighting between them lasted for one-and-a-half hours. Four guards were martyred," deputy provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Shaheedani told AFP."

BobFromBrockley, we salute you:

'For a spectacular example of the left getting it wrong, we turn to our old friend George Galloway, defending the Ahmadinejad theocracy. (H/t Ent/JohnnyG.) A slightly softer version comes from John Wight at Socialist Unity, wondering (in an article which, I have to say, is pretty good in places) if what we are seeing is a "counter-revolution" because it is middle class people doing the protesting. (Odd that when Palestine Solidarity action, university occupations and throwing eggs at BNP leaders is done by middle class people in the UK that doesn't make it counter-revolutionary.) He also uses the uprising as an opportunity for facile anti-Americanism'

British American Tobacco has beefed up its stake in the massive Indonesian smokes market (250 billion tabs produced annually).

Kretek cigarettes, a blend of clove and other flavouring ingredients directly mixed with the tobacco, are incredibly popular there, and make up about nine tenths of all cigs smoked in Indonesia.
(it's also an industry responsible for an awful lot of jobs.)

Indonesia is the only country in Asia that has not signed up to the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

CAR: 'Who's who with guns'

SOAS cleaners - "5.Amnesty for all those involved." - brilliant campaigners win through occupation

Noreen Jong-Il explains Juche

in the Korengal Valley with the American Battle Company last October