Monday, August 25, 2014

My Summer Beverage (2014):'August-One'

The beverage I've been using to recuperate from my 6-mile walks in the heat sunlight humidity and lack wind.

Ingredients are important, in the sense of WHICH iced tea, which sugar, which lime.

'August One' Drink:

1 Ice made out of spring water.
2 'Whole Foods' '365' Brand Bottled unsweetened Green Tea
3  'Native' (of Brazil) Turbinado (Demerara) Organic Sugar
4 Organic Lime for putting into drink.
5 Limes from Indian store for squeezing into drink (in between normal limes and key-limes in size, some Indian stores have merely normal limes).

In a glass that holds approx 20 oz: squeeze juice of 1/2 organic lime into glass; rinse organic lime-half; set aside organic lime-half. Squeeze juice of 1 lime from Indian store into glass. Add to glass: lots of Sugar, tea. Stir. Add ice. Add 1/2 of organic lime that was set aside. Finis.

Warning: Mary Carman told me, that stirring liquid with lime juice in it in an electronic blender, makes the lime juice taste worse.

Replacing the limes used here with Arnold Palmer style lemons of the small yellow type, will just make things worse.

Limes are different compared to lemons.


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Friday, August 15, 2014

Concise Version of Wiki re Mike Brown Shooting in Ferguson

IMHO as of now, people undervalue: laconic text, skill in elimination of verbosity, value & importance of concise text. 


...August 9...12:00 p.m....Wilson ...ordered them to move off the street... altercation ensued... gun within Wilson's police vehicle...fired...Brown and Johnson began to flee. Wilson left his vehicle and pursued...fired...shots, fatally wounding Brown. Brown died ...35 feet...from the police cruiser...

...the...officer encountered Brown...responding to..."strong arm robbery"...convenience store...Brown fit the description of a suspect...

...the officer attempted to exit his vehicle but was pushed back into the car by Brown, who then assaulted the officer inside the car. Brown...attempted to seize the officer's gun..."more than a couple" of shots were fired in the... encounter.

...the officer who shot Brown was injured in the incident...

...officer pulled up...said, "Get the fuck on the sidewalk."... the young men replied that they were "...a minute away from [their] destination, and [they] would shortly be out of the street."

...the officer drove forward, only to abruptly back up, positioning his vehicle crossways in their path, almost hitting the two..."We were...almost inches away...when he tried to open his door...the door ricocheted...off...Big Mike...closed back on the officer."

...the officer, still in his car, grabbed Brown through the open window around the neck. Brown tried to pull away...officer continued to pull Brown toward him.

...Brown "did not reach for the officer's weapon..." ... Brown was attempting to get free of the officer....the officer...fired...hitting Brown.

Following the initial gunshot...Brown was able to free himself, at which point the two fled...The officer exited the vehicle...fired...striking Brown in the back. 

...Brown turned around with his hands in the air and said, "I don't have a gun. Stop shooting!"...officer then shot Brown several...times, killing him.

...Crenshaw's account

...officer and Brown were arm wrestling before the officer...shot Brown from within his vehicle...officer then chased Brown for...20 feet before shooting him again....Brown then raised his arms in compliance...officer shot him two more times killing him...

...Mitchell's account

...first...shot was fired while the police officer, but not Brown, was still in the vehicle..."After the shot, the kid just breaks away. The cop follows him, kept shooting, the kid's body jerked as if he was hit...he turns around, puts his hands up...cop continues to walk up on him and continues to shoot until he goes all the way down."

According to The Washington Post...police force...93% white while ...population...one-third white...annual report last year...office of Missouri's attorney general:...Ferguson police..."twice as likely to arrest African Americans during traffic stops as they were whites."... two-thirds of the city’s 21,100 residents are black.

...Michael Brown, 18, and Dorian Johnson, 22...Ferguson Market...West Florissant Avenue....suspect grabbed...cigars...Brown...grabbed...Swisher Sweets, valued at $48.99...Brown grabbed...employee by the shirt and "forcefully" pushed him back to a display rack...

...“...murder of their child by this police officer as he held his hands up, which is the universal sign of surrender.”...

crowd... unruly...after...candlelight vigil...150 officers in riot gear...looting businesses, vandalizing vehicles...confronting police....12 businesses were looted or vandalized...gas station was set on fire...30 arrests...windows...broken... arrested face charges of assault, burglary and theft. Police...riot gear...helicopters...Two police...suffered minor injuries 
...August 11, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse a crowd... protesters...threw rocks at police. The police responded by firing tear gas and bean bag rounds upon those protesting, which included State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal.

...August 12, several hundred...seeking...prosecution of the officer...some ...threw bottles at the officers...tear gas...following day......police used smoke bombs, flash grenades, rubber bullets, and tear gas...ordering the journalist to cease recording....Between August 12 and 13, police officers fired tear gas and rubber bullets at lines of protesters and reporters...seven protesters were arrested...August 13...police were clearing...prior to ...curfew...Washington Post reporter...Lowery and The Huffington Post reporter...Reilley were arrested while...charging...phones...using...WiFi hotspot to access Twitter. 

Officers...asked them to leave...gave...45 second countdown...ultimately resorted to...forceful measures ..."Officers slammed me into a...soda machine because I was confused about which door they were asking me to walk out of," Lowery said....

Al Jazeera...journalists...tear gassed... shot at with rubber bullets by...SWAT team...officer ...turning the reporters' video camera toward the ground and dismantling their equipment.  Al Jazeera...statement..."egregious assault on the freedom of the press ..."...August 14...St. Charles...SWAT Team...press release stating..."...SWAT...has not been any part of attempting to prevent media coverage."...video captured...vehicle marked...as "St. Charles County SWAT" roll up to the Al Jazeera lights and camera and taking them down.

St. Louis alderman Antonio French...police...dragged him out of the car...arrested for unlawful assembly.

...Nixon said that Ferguson security will be overseen by Captain...Johnson of the Highway Patrol. Johnson, an African-American...grew up in the community...Governor said, "...people...want their streets to be free of intimidation and fear"... St. Louis county prosecutor...McCulloch ..."...he had no legal authority to do that. To denigrate...the county police department is shameful."

...August 12...Ferguson Police helicopter...fired on from the ground...FAA implemented...no-fly zone over Ferguson....school district in nearby Jennings cancelled the first day of classes...Ferguson-Florissant School District...Ferguson-Flourissant schools...closed...reopen Monday...

...New Black Panther Party's leaders... operating from Ferguson...have inflamed...situation...racist rhetoric...calls for violence against police.

...New Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan...setting up a fund to support...officer who killed Brown.

Hacktivists ...promised...if any protesters were harassed...they would attack the city's servers and computers... e-mail systems were targeted and phones died, while the Internet crashed at the City Hall...

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Military Might Makes Right?

War has broken out in Gaza, in Syria, in Iraq, and in the Ukraine.

IMHO as of now

The outbreak of war is rooted in a 'might makes right' attitude, a mentality that believes that in armed conflict between groups, the 'superior' side always defeats the 'inferior' side.

This theory that the 'superior' side always wins in armed conflict, is contradicted by the deaths of holy martyrs such as Christ and his apostles.

Regarding the 'Beast' of the book of Revelation, the scripture says:

"And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations". This is another example of the 'inferior' defeating the 'superior'.

It was 'given unto' the Beast to defeat the saints. But simultaneously with this power being 'given unto' the Beast, the saints in their sane saintliness still fought against the 'Beast'.  Apparently, though military power had been given the Beast, the 'Saints' still fought the beast, because of the long term good this would do their cause despite their defeat, and/or because despite power having been given to the beast the issue was still in doubt.

Therefore, we conclude that resistance to war-mongering forces can correspond with saintliness.

It is easy to conceive of the triumph of inferiors by way of force, over persons superior to them.

Example:

100 survivors of a shipwreck find themselves on an uninhabited island. 66.67 of the survivors are ugly, wicked, stupid, and insane. The remainder of the survivors are beautiful, saintly, intelligent, and sane. The saintly ones do the saintly thing and resist the murdering lyintg thieving raping onslaught of the 66.67 inferior persons. Yet because the saints were a little bit too defective in their characters, and because there were not quite enough of them, and because they were a little short in terms of the amount of outside help they got, the saints lost. Which is not to say that they were unreasonable to fight.

1. Inferior groups can defeat superior groups in war.

2. War does not always result in an improvement of the human species.

3. It is not always foolish to resist forces that encourage war.

'National Darwinism' is a 'might makes right' type of erroneous attitude. Though the forces that have historically made survival and reproduction difficult for species have changed those species, this does not mean those forces have improved the species they have effected; the changes brought about by environmental pressures do not prove that humans helping other humans to survive and flourish, has damaged the quality of the human species.

And then you what humans are feeling inside in the hear and now, a consideration above and beyond theorizing regarding what will make the next generation 'better'. Which is a theorizing that assumes that there will be a future, which is not guaranteed.

Saturday, August 09, 2014

Ballfaces Oppress Ardunuards

Note: names used here were generated at random using atmospheric-noise based random number generator combined with Rinkworks name generator.

History of Ballface oppression of Ardunuards

The Ballface & the Ardunuard peoples were once one nation called Jadarn. But as time went on, differences developed between the people of Jadarn who the Ballfaces  are descended from,  the Facewads, and the people of Jadarn who the Ardunuards are descended from, the Alrowaeish.

Jadarn evolved into a society that was 90% Facewads, and 10% Ardunuards.

Characteristics of the ancestors of the Ballfaces, the Facewads: males had ugly faces, ugly bodies, penises no longer than 2.6 inches when erect, and a high sex drive; females had a low sex-drive, and were unattractive. The high sex drive of the Facewad males enabled them to reproduce despite the ugliness of the Facewad females.

Characteristics of the ancestors of the Ardunuards, the Alrowaeish: sexy passionate men and women.

The situation in Jadarn deteriorated. The Facewads discriminated against and harassed the Alrowaeish minority.  So the Alrowaeish,  split off into a separate tribe called the Ardunuards and the Facewads became a separate tribe called the Ballfaces.

The worship of a god named Twitsneeze, became traditional for the Ballfaces. Twitsneeze through his priests the Goltpobs promised the Ballfaces that they would eternally enjoy sexual love on the planet Foofhead with 1000 Playboy Playmates if they died for Twitsneeze in battle.

Twitsneeze through his priests the Goltpobs, supposedly commanded the Ballfaces to invade the Ardunuards because the Ardunuards did not worship Twitsneeze.

Twitsneeze through his priests the Goltpobs allowed the Ballface males to have up to 10,000 wives each, the right to divorce any of them whenever they felt like it, the right to unlimited temporary marriages.

Twitsneeze commanded the Ballfaces to surgically remove from all females, without anesthesia, any body-parts that could feel or produce sexual passion. This included: the nipples if longer than one-half inch, the clitoris, the labia if longer than one inch, and the buttocks if the woman's buttocks protruded more than six inches.

The reason for this was that the Goltpob priests and their disciples  and the Ballface males were ugly and unattractive (they are of the same Facewad race), and so therefore women being able to feel sexual passion worked against the interests of the Goltpobs and the Ballfaces.

The Goltpobs proclaimed that the law of Twitsneeze, was that women should have to wear bags over their entire bodies including their heads,  with just little slits for eyes, so that nobody would be able to see the faces or the bodies of beautiful women.

The Goltpobs proclaimed that the Ballfaces must enslave, or kill those who refused to worship Twitsneeze.

The Ballfaces led by the priests of Twitsneeze the Goltpobs, conquered the land of the Ardunuards, because they outnumbered the Ardunuards ten to one; they conquered other territories also.  Ardunuards became refugees, because they were faced with the choice of the worship of Twitsneeze, slavery, or death.

The Goltpobs and the Ballfaces loved their law which enforced the hiding of female faces and bodies, because as a result of the law, in the territories they conquered, the Goltpobs and the Ballfaces,  became the only men who knew which women had beautiful faces and bodies.

This because they conducted annual inspections of the females, to determine whether their genitalia had been properly removed, and also to ascertain which females were virgins.

Hence, in the conquered territories like the land inhabited by the Ardunuards, to this day the females are unable to court and attract men by showing off their faces and their bodies, and  the only men who know what the faces and bodies of the women look like are the Goltpobs and Ballfaces of the Facewads race.

The females of the conquered territories like the land of the Ardunuards, after being surgically deprived of those anatomical features which give rise to sexual passion in the mind, develop a 'it does not matter how sexy a man is' attitude. The result is that marriages that would occur due to the sexual charisma of a man, are replaced by marriages with unattractive men of the Facewad race.

Friday, August 08, 2014

ISIS suprises US Pundits

Note: as for my current physical fitness, I've been doing six-mile walks in less than 120 minutes.

There has been alot of attention paid to the new ISIS group that has achieved 'spectacular' successes against the Iraqi Government Army summer of 2014. The successes of ISIS have come as a big surprise to the pundits.

Ya well, 'pundits' are hindus, what we are talking about here is Muslims.

Iraq which the US took from Sunni Hussein and then left to Shia Al-Maliki, is 63% Shia. Neighboring Syria where the US opposes the Shia Assad government however is only 15% Shia.

Following a lines drawn in the sands mentality, The US has sided with the Sunnis in Sunni-majority Shia-ruled  Syria, and the Shia majority in Shia-majority once-Sunni-ruled Iraq. 

The borders drawn in the sand are what we seen on a map, but the more powerful natural borders in the Iraq/Syria area, are the borders between Shia and Sunni.

Counting Syria and Iraq together as one entity,  only 43% of the total 37 million population is Shia;  and on top of this, you have all the foreign fighters and support ISIS draws from a Muslim world that is 90% Sunni.

Sunnis comprise 90% of the 1.4 billion Muslims in the world; Shias only 8%. Time after time during the course of the past 100 years, Sunni Muslims have shown themselves to be great fighters (Indians Pakistanis, Bangladeshis in World Wars One and Two for example). 

The US fighting against the previously Sunni government of Iraq, far outweighs what little it has done against the Shia government of Syria.  

Yet somehow it has come as a big surprise to the brilliant pundits in Washington DC, that ISIS has enjoyed such great successes.

Naturally the Sunni resistance against the US attack on what was once a Sunni government of Iraq (Saddam Hussein), has produced a highly competent band of Sunni militants, ISIS. 

The US seems to have failed to consider that perhaps: the Shia minority in Syria are more militarily competent compared to the Syrian Sunni majority; the Sunni-minority in Iraq are more militarily competent compared to the Iraqi Shia majority.

Then again, sometimes positive results are obtained luckily and accidentally by way of bumbling and fumbling; perhaps the (again surprising to pundits) new camaraderie between Shia Iran and the Christian US will make the world a better place.

As for the attacks upon Christians and Shias perpetrated by ISIS, conceivably they are forgivable, given that: aside from a little token help for the enemies of Assad's Shia government, Christian US involvement in the middle east has resembled a crusade against the Sunnis; the Sunnis are the majority looking at Iraq and Syria combined; the Shias of Iraq are seen as the political offspring of the US occupation.

Blaming the Iraqi Christians for whatever sins have been committed by the allegedly Christian US, is suspect for several reasons: a persons should not be held responsible for the sins of a co-religionist; every faith contains persons of varying levels of morality; the fact the US is majority 'Christian' does not mean it is controlled by Christians; a person can claim to belong to some faith while internally not believing in it and not abiding by it.

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO) as of now:

Muslims do not have a right to place a tax on Christians in regions Muslims control, which is not also paid by Christians. Such constitutes bullying of the type that is not practiced in Christian-controlled regions against Muslims.

The Koran, which was created 1200 years ago, has roots in the Old Testament of ancient Israel of 4000 years ago, and also in the New Testament of Christ of 2000 years ago.

Muslim belief re Christ springs from that time in Christ's life, when Christ admonished his disciples that they should tell no man that he was the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Christian belief re Christ springs from the later time when Christ allowed his disciples to publicize the fact that he was indeed Christ the Son of God, and also One with God, because there is only one God.

Who knows, how much of the wisdom found in the Koran, is rooted in what Muhammad and his colleagues heard from Christian preachers?

Jews did not seek converts. For 700 years after Christ until Muhammad, the Christian preachers were the only ones preaching the One and Only Supreme God to the pagan Arabs. According to correct interpretation of Muslim doctrine, the Christian preachers who preached to the Arabs of the time between Christ and Muhammad, must have saved many Arab souls from the eternal hell-fire.

Conflating the Koran with God is what in the Islamic world is called 'Shirk', because the Koran contains only some of God's thoughts words and actions.

There are and always have been: evil phonies pretending to be Christian; Christians pretending they are not Christians; Muslims proclaiming that they are not Muslim, non-Muslims pretending to be Muslim.

The fact a Muslim commits a crime against a Christian, does not give Christians the right to retaliate against a Muslim who was not involved in the crime.

Likewise, the fact a Christian commits a crime against a Muslim, does not give Muslims the right to retaliate against a Christian who was not involved in the crime.

The fact a Muslim is imperfect in terms of his thoughts words and actions, does not give Christians the right to oppress the imperfect Muslim.

Likewise, the fact a Christian is imperect in terms of thoughts words and actions does not give Muslims the right to oppress the imperfect Christian.

Regarding music, music is an art-form, that allows man to express his artistic bent, without violating the Scriptural prohibitions against the making of images of things found in the world. The courts of King Solomon and King David featured instrumental and vocal music; their scriptures extolled the use of music as a way to commune with God. Coming after them, Christ and his disciples sang songs together. Christ scolded those who lusted with their eyes, Muslims endorse or demand that women hide their beauty under clothes; but music allows one pleasure without violating the prohibitions against visual lust.

I see it as a form of 'shirk' (Muslim term for conflating that which is not God with God), when persons have such a high opinion of themselves that they persecute religious practices that according to God's Will, should be tolerated. This because the 'Shirker', arrogantly and mistakenly considers his will and his opinion regarding Scripture and the Will of God, to correspond with or to transcend in importance the Will of God. And because the 'Shirker' treats the men who were involved with the production of the Koran, as being gods, when in fact they were humans far beneath God.

I've heard that Muslims believe that all things that happen on earth are the Will of God. Not so Christians. Christians pray that God's Will be done on earth as it is in heaven. They recognize that God's Will is not always done on earth. The fact that God allows something to happen does not mean that what he allowed to happen was His will regarding what is done on earth. God allows things that are not his will to be done on earth because he is a God who hides Himself.

The fact that some Muslim attacks an innocent Christian and kills him, does not in and of itself prove that it was God's Will that the Christian be killed by the Muslim.

Christians were persecuted by Paul before Paul became a Christian. There were at most three days between Paul repenting of persecuting Christians and Paul receiving the Holy Spirit. Christians did not punish Paul or ostracize Paul for having persecuted them. This was because when Paul persecuted the Christians, he did it in good conscience, he believed that the Christians should be persecute.

Hence we have the idea of 'freedom of conscience'. A persecutor Akbar might truly believe that he should persecute Jahangir because of Jahangir's heretical religion. But Akbar might despite being in good conscience, be incorrect to persecute Jahangir. Therefore laws prohibit Akbar from persecuting Jahangir on the basis of religion. Could be that Jahangir is following his conscience despite being incorrect, in which case Jahangir, despite being incorrect, would possess the dignity of conscience, a dignity laws guard against defilement.

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Notes (condensations of articles found on internet):
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Two battalions of Iran’s (93% Shia) Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are reported to be operating in Iraq (63% Shia) to combat...(ISIS) attacks against the Iraqi government. In late June 2014,...ISIS changed its name to the Islamic State and said it would rule...as a Sunni Muslim caliphate overseen by...Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Islamic State, an al-Qaeda offshoot, has seized... northern Iraq since June 2014.

...August 3 2014... death of IRGC Colonel Kamal Shirkhani, who was killed in a mortar attack by Islamic State militants... in the city of Samarra, Iraq.

“When the Islamic State reached Shi’ite areas in Iraq, the Revolutionary Guards had forces there who fought them...A number of them were killed,” 

...Iraqi security forces have “largely dissolved” as fighters against the Islamic State advance on Baghdad...

...Iran has now mobilized up to 20,000 Iraqi militiamen from groups it funded and trained. Those same militiamen had attacked U.S. troops ...

June 11 2014...during the battle at Mosul...Iraqi security forces outnumbered ISIS fighters by ...15 to one...government troops suffered...“a dramatic collapse of morale.”

...Iraqi Prime Minister...al-Maliki on June 11 2014...said, “The commanders who retreated and wavered must be punished.”

After...ISIS seized...Mosul...150,000...fled...ISIS...issued an edict expelling...Christians who...ISIS...destroyed Christian and Jewish religious artifacts...

David Curry, president/CEO of Open Doors USA:...

According to Open Doors, the Islamic State gave Christians an ultimatum...July 19-20 (2014): 1) Stay....convert to Islam; 2) Pay Islamic tax (...too much for most families...); 3) Leave Mosul taking nothing but their clothes. Christians who stayed would be executed.

...July 14 2014...Iraqi army... desertions in June 2014 during...fall of Mosul ... government has relied heavily on Shiite militias and volunteers ...

Saddam Hussein, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Egypt’s Anwar El Sadat. All of these rulers were tolerant toward Christians and other religious minorities living in their countries....anti-Western revolutionaries who took...Iran in 1979 established ... Shia ... government intolerant of...religious nonconformity.

...ISIS is allied with rebels fighting Assad in Syria  who have received U.S. support...

Senator ...Paul (R-Ky.)...aware of...connection between...anti-Assad rebels and...ISIS...May 21, 2013...“...You will be funding...allies of al-Qaeda.”


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BEIRUT—...U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

...Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, an offshoot of al Qaeda, rapidly gaining territory...

Iran has invested...resources over the past decade to ensure Iraq emerged... a strong Shiite-led state. The so-called Shiite crescent—stretching from Iran (93% SHIA) to Iraq (63% SHIA), Lebanon (41% SHIA) and Syria (15% SHIA) —was forged ...

Two Guards' units...were tasked with protecting Baghdad...

Iraq's military was trained and equipped by the U.S...in several cities...Iraqi soldiers surrendered without a fight....

...U.S. opposes Iran's support for Syrian (15% SHIA) President Bashar al-Assad...

...Assad regime...is an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Shiite militia trained by Iran, weapons and cash ...flow from Iran to Syria via Iraq.

...ISIS,...urged the group's Sunni fighters to march toward..."filth-ridden" Karbala and "... city of polytheism" Najaf,... "settle...differences" with Iraq's Shiite PM al-Maliki.

Iran's view:...sectarian battle between...Islam-Sunni and Shiite...proxy battle between...Saudi Arabia (3% SHIA) and Iran (93% SHIA).

"...Islamic Republic of Iran, won't tolerate...violence and terrorism…. We will fight...violence and extremism and terrorism..." 

...short-term,...crisis in Iraq will only strengthen ...Iran ...


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...160 computer flash sticks revealed the inside story of Isis...that came from nowhere with nothing to having Syrian oil fields and control of Iraq's second city...Isis swept through...northern and central Iraq over three stunning days... three divisions of the Iraqi army shed their uniforms and fled.

The capitulation of the military ...allowed Kurdish forces to seize ...Kirkuk...

... "Before Mosul, their total...assets were $875m ...Afterwards, with the money they robbed from banks...military supplies they looted, they...add another $1.5bn..."

ISIS leaders had been meticulously chosen. ...top tier – all battle-hardened veterans of the insurgency against US forces nearly a decade ago ...strategic acumen of Isis was impressive – so too its attention to detail. "They had itemised everything...Down to the smallest detail."

...Isis secured massive cash...from...oilfields of eastern Syria, which it...commandeered in late 2012...some of which it...sold...to the Syrian regime... reaped windfalls from smuggling...raw materials pillaged from the crumbling state...antiquities from archaeological digs.

...in less than three years, Isis had grown from a ragtag band...to...the most...rich and capable terror group in the world.

"...They had done this all themselves. There was no state actor at all behind them, which we had long known. They don't need one."...

Foreign jihadists, many from Europe...stormed into Mosul and have spread through central Iraq...

..."We knew they had infiltrated the ministries..."


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(CNN)...al Baghdadi, who has transformed a few terror cells...into the most dangerous militant group in the world.
The ISIS has thrived...during...civil war in Syria and...security vacuum that followed ... departure of...American forces from Iraq.

...aim of ISIS:...create an Islamic state across Sunni areas of Iraq and in Syria.

...2006, al Qaeda in Iraq -- under...al-Zarqawi -- ...brutal treatment of civilians as it tried to ignite a sectarian war against...Shia....bombing...an important Shia shrine in Samarra, which sparked retaliatory attacks...moderate Sunni tribal leaders nearly destroyed the group.

... Iraqi forces ...lack of professional soldiers...division of military units along sectarian lines...lack of...equipment ...such as attack helicopters and reconnaissance capabilities.

...ISIS exploited...perception among...Sunnis that they were being persecuted by the Shia...government led by ...al-Maliki...arrest of senior Sunni political figures...suppression of Sunni dissent...

...Baghdadi...Ph.D. in Islamic studies from a university in the capital....He formed his...group in...Samarra...Diyala areas, where his family was from, before joining al Qaeda in Iraq....served four years in...U.S. prison camp...developed a network of contacts and honed his  ideology .... released ... 2009 ...

ISIS wants...Islamic...state, stretching across the region.

ISIS...Sharia law in the towns... Boys and girls must be separated at school; women must wear...full veil...brutal justice, music is banned...fast is  enforced during Ramadan.

...al Baghdadi focused on secrecy ...money....Extortion... robbing banks and gold  shops was another.
...suicide attacks...assassinations...recruitment of Sunni tribal fighters... prison raids that liberated hundreds of fighters...attacks on police patrols...large-scale attacks aimed at capturing...territory.

...Al Baghdadi...avoiding the alienation of powerful tribal figures....One of the group ... al-Adnani ... : "...our mistakes, we do not deny...we will continue to make mistakes as long as we are humans. God forbid that we commit mistakes deliberately."...it is trying to win favor through...social welfare programs ...recreational activities for children ... food and fuel to the needy ... clinics.

...Syrian President Bashar al-Assad lost control over large parts of the North and the long border with Iraq...ISIS...could build a rear base where it could recruit foreign fighters, organize and escape from any Iraqi army operations.

Al Baghdadi ... sent operatives across the border as early as ... 2011...group...changed ... name -- adding "al Sham" for Syria.

...For western counterterrorism agencies, the combination of fanaticism and disciplined organization is the nightmare scenario.

 ...ISIS' success against what are seen by ... Sunnis as loathsome Shia regimes in Syria and Iraq has attracted thousands of foreign fighters to its ranks, enabling it to ... prepare ... offensive in Iraq.

...ability to...suicide bombings and attacks on the security forces ... in several regions at once... resilient force...sophisticated attacks. ...  fighters used bulldozers to remove barriers 
...ISIS ...little ability to govern... unpopular, and has no sway outside the Sunni community in either Iraq or Syria."

...weakness of the governments ISIS is  confronting -- and the hatred for those governments among Sunnis -- means that a few dozen truckloads of fighters can seize...cities, overcoming forces many times larger by their sheer ferocity and battle experience.

..."ISIS has become indisputably the most effective and ruthless terrorist organization in the world."

"It...has attracted...fighters, not just from Iraq and Syria, but also from Saudi Arabia...Jordan."


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1483 million Muslims in world. 113 million (7.6%) of these are Shia.

Shia majority nations: Azerbaijan (75%, 5758K Shia) ; Bahrain (61%, 362K Shia); Iran (93%, 61732K Shia) ; Iraq (63%, 20780K Shia); 

Iraq (63% Shia, 13389K Shia, total population 21422K); 
Syria  (15% Shia, 2388K Shia, total population 15609K);  
Iraq & Syria combined: 15777K Shia, total population 37031K; 43% Shia.


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Thursday, August 07, 2014

Demoulas Market Basket Controversy

Essentially, the Demoulas Market Basket directors fired allegedly generous-to-workers Arthur T,  replacing him with allegedly selfish greedy mean-to-workers CEO duo of  Gooch & Thornton. This led to strikes by the Market Basket work-force, who demanded reinstatement of the allegedly generous Arthur T.  Arthur T has offered to buy Market Basket from those who fired him. So far Market Basket has been acting/talking tough with their rebellious employees, and refusing to sell to Arthur T. This story has for some reason fascinated the media.

The logical solution I see here: The outraged Market Basket workers marshal their own financial resources to help Arthur T to increase the amount he can pay to buy the company, whilst in the process acquiring a certain percentage ownership of the company, which they would then share with Arthur T.

Another adult-style (as opposed to childish) possible move: The workers put together money, which combined with Arthur T's big money, allow Arthur T and the workers to take control of not 100% of Demoulas Market Basket, but, rather, more than 50% of it, whilst at the same time those selling stock to Arthur T & the workers receive more per share compared to what they are now being offered.

A third possible common-sense solution: Allegedly the 'greedy' shareholders who own half of Demoulas are getting 'cheap' with workers because they want to increase dividends for themselves. The result should be an increase in dividends for the 'nice-guy' Arthur T., who owns the other half of Demoulas, the company which fired him Arthur T. So then the thing to do is for Arthur T., to in some way continue his nice-guy relationship with the Demoulas employees, by sharing his dividends with them: (tongue-in-cheek humor...for example, free soda-pop on Mondays, free cup-cakes on Tuesdays, free ice-cream on Wednesdays, etc).

Following is my condensation of 'DeMoulas Market Basket - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia':

(note: 'good' and 'bad' are used for identification purposes and do not imply moral judgements made upon those involved)

DeMoulas...name Market Basket...chain...71 supermarkets ... 2014 ... ownership...leadership disputes ... protests ... international ... attention.

...1916 (DEMOULAS YR 0), Greek ... Athanasios ... Demoulas ...opened...store in Lowell, Ma...specializing in...lamb...1954 (DEMOULAS YR 38)...sold... store to two...children...("Mike") (BAD SON 2) & George (GOOD SON 1). Within 15 (1969, DEMOULAS YR 53) years...transformed...into ...supermarket chain...15 stores.

George (GOOD SON 1)...died... in 1971 (DEMOULAS YR 55)...making Mike (BAD SON 2)...sole head of the...chain...each brother had promised to provide for the other's family in the event of...death...

Lawsuit...1990 (DEMOULAS YR 74)... heirs of George...(GOOD SON 1) claimed...Mike (BAD SON 2) had defrauded them...of 92%...of company stock by moving assets into shell companies, such as...'Seabrook Sales Inc.'...claiming...these were separate companies from DeMoulas....

... 1994 (DEMOULAS YR 78), Judge...Lopez ruled...Mike (BAD SON 2)...had defrauded George's (GOOD SON 1) family out of... $500 million; Judge's order transferred  51% of Demoulas' stock to George's (GOOD SON 1) family.

Mike (BAD SON 2) died in 2003 (DEMOULAS YR 87)...age 82...2006 (DEMOULAS YR 90)...(GOOD SON 1) George's  son, Arthur S (SON OF GOOD SON 1)...owned...$1.6 billion...

2008...directors elected Mike's (BAD SON 2) son Arthur T (SON OF BAD SON 2) president...corporation.

...2014 (DEMOULAS YR 98), Arthur T (SON OF BAD SON 2)... fired by...directors. Two consultants have since...run the company.

CEO...position...filled by...Gooch...Radio Shack exec ... Thornton ... of supermarket ... Albertsons...

...2014, six top level corporate workers resigned...after the...firing of President Arthur T (SON OF BAD SON 2)...300 protestors ... outside ... flagship store in Chelsea.  Protesters characterized ... new executives ... "goal ... raising prices, cutting benefits, loading up with debt...selling off real estate--in order to pay ... dividends to ... controlling shareholders ... warehouse ... office workers ...  strike ... shelves bare at...Market Basket locations ... 2014, protests ... by employees and customers ... at ... demanding Arthur T's (SON OF BAD SON 2) reinstatement...feud has slowed construction of...Waltham, MA store...

Arthur T (SON OF BAD SON 2) offered to buy the...company from his cousins (CHILDREN OF GOOD SON 1) ... 2014 ... Arthur T (SON OF BAD SON 2) was ... only ... bidder for ... 50.5% ... of ... company held by the family of Arthur S (SON OF GOOD SON 1)...

Consumer Reports ... Market Basket...No. 7 supermarket ... 2012 survey...three stores in the chain's history have...closed...Market Basket's  flagship store is in Chelsea, MA...

Details of My Condensation
411 Words (26% of original)
2682 Characters
Sentences 47
Paragraphs 14
Avg. Sentence (words) 9
Avg. Sentence (chars) 58
Keyword Density
31 (11%) son
12 (4%) demoulas
12 (4%) bad
9 (3%) yr
9 (3%) good
8 (3%) arthur
5 (2%) 2014
5 (2%) store
5 (2%) mike
4 (1%) market

Details of original Wiki Article
1584 Words
9741 Characters
Sentences 57
Paragraphs 48
Avg. Sentence (words) 28
Avg. Sentence (chars) 171
Keyword Density
28 (3%)market
24 (3%)stores
22 (2%)demoulas
22 (2%)basket
17 (2%)store
15 (2%)massachusetts
14 (2%)arthur
11 (1%)2014
11 (1%)company
9 (1%)2013

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Wednesday, August 06, 2014

Waltham Y Exec Dir Application

8/6/2014

Spent 4 hours approx 1230 AM - 430 AM 7/6/2014, filling out a very lengthy job application I found at the YMCA website, to apply as is traditional for the Waltham YMCA Executive Director Position.

Accidentally noted in 'legal skill' section, that I defeated 82% of my fellow-test takers on the Law School Aptititude Test. Then when I returned to correct the error I could not correct the error. It was a typo. Actually I defeated 62%. When I tried to re-enter the application to correct the error I could not.

I filled out the questions best I could, when they demanded what month of what year I moved into where I live, I just sort of guessed, because it was long ago, but I did the best I could. And so it went with a few questions for which answers were demanded, re which, no way I could remember exactly which month I did something 10 years ago.

After I went through the 4-hour process, I got a pdf from the online program I was dealing with, showing part of the info I submitted:

PDF record of part of Waltham Y Exec Director Application

The program demanded a cover-letter from me, which it did not include in the pdf output it produced at the end:

Greater Boston YMCA cover letter

At the end of the process, I felt like 'Paul struck down by his vision of Christ'. Because I saw in my life, a strangely moving mix of: god, heroism, endurance of persecution, tragedy, achievement, talent, and some other things.



9/2/2014

August 27, I responded to the Greater Boston Y's email of August 6 to me, re my application for Executive Director job at Waltham YMCA (their only communication with me so far re my application):

August Response to Email from Y re Job

This time, and also last time a couple of years ago, the the best I could get from the  'Greater (than Hobbs)' Boston YMCA re my application was a machine-generated auto-response, produced in 0.0053 nanoseconds.

I've been angry about this job, because though not a talkative person I've encountered at least a half-dozen persons some of them important, who express contempt for the Greater Boston YMCA hiring practices. Absent encountering those, I would be my usual mild-tempered mild-mannered self. Hypothetically this has to do with my human nature: for thousands of generations, humans have lived in tribes wherein it makes natural sense to be angry when several persons agree with you but mild-tempered otherwise.

Points coming to mind lately (my opinions as of now):

1. It's comically pretentious when people pretend that some job position requires much more experience than is actually necessary. Fact is the importance of 'experience' varies widely depending upon the position in question. Overemphasis on experience, leads to underemphasis with regards to other factors. Dishonesty in terms of how important a given employment-placement criteria is, gives rise to a generally dishonest and incompetent organizational culture, featuring lies leading to poor performance.

2. The YMCA Administrators serve the YMCA not vice-versa. YMCA Administrators overemphasizing criteria they are strong in, is something that serves not the YMCA but the YMCA administrators.

3. Administrators who make hiring decisions excluding those who are more competent than themselves is obviously unfortunate.

4. Administrators excluding from the workplace persons who are more attractive than themselves is obviously a case of something going wrong.

5. It contradicts the spirit of Employment Law, when employers overemphasize experience, when judging a disadvantaged applicant who is accomplished talented skilled and competent. This because the disadvantage makes it difficult to obtain experience.

6. It contradicts the spirit of Employment Law, when employers trash persons who go to the top whenever 'experience' is not an issue, simply because said trashed persons lack 'experience'.

7. The 'experienced' persons that the experience-obsessed gush over, are merely examples of persons who have occupied important positions for years without accomplishing anything beyond the mediocre.

8. There is the supervised, paid, on-the-job experience they are obsessed with. Then there are other types of experience that can be at least as important: the simply having been alive for many years; the 'experience' of time spent reading info sources; the 'experience' of time spent writing about the subjects read info sources are concerned with; the 'experience' of self-supervised projects; the 'experiences' one has when not on the job.

9. They value 'experience' so much. Not because it allows for the 'experienced' person to make mistakes when confronted with things he has not dealt with before, but because such experiences involving new things, improve the persons's ability to deal with various possible events. Therefore, they value instances wherein an 'administrator' or some such pretentiously-titled critter encounters something new. How then is it, that they fail to value 'inexperienced' persons, seeing that the 'inexperienced' persons have more learning experiences dealing with new things, compared to the 'experienced' persons?

10. Obsessive emphasis of 'experience', leads to a de-emphasis regarding voice, personality, appearance, intelligence, and sexiness (qualities which carry no weight with the typicalists who dominate these parts). Relatedly, in this geographical area there are large numbers of very public displays of charity for those who are the opposite of being talented/gifted, yet concern for the talented or gifted is absent. It defies the Spirit of the Laws, that employers fail to accomodate talented inexperienced persons by providing on-the-job training (OJT), allowing for a job to be split between an inexperienced but accomplished person and an experienced person, etc.

11. The C in YMCA stands for Christian, not Catamite. Scripture describes the 'gifts of the spirit': "God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues" (1 Cor 12:28). These gifts are not bestowed by way of human credentials. Obsessive overemphasis regarding human-bestowed credentials leads to serious damage by way of underemphasis re abilities of the 'gifts of the spirit' type.


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