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Stations Can't Play Crippled Music Disks
arb writes "The Age is reporting that some radio stations are unable to play copy-protected CDs. It seems at least one radio station is facing problems transferring CD tracks to their digital playout system. Is the lack of radio air-play a price the record labels are willing to pay in their efforts to stamp out piracy?"
hrmf
Hey American war mongers - now that you're in Baghdad, Vietnam II can start! Prepare to die!
Oh yeah, and suck it!
Russian Ambassor Attacked
Think you have a chance against Russia, N.Korea and China?
PRAVDA: The truth
He shoud go into exile for peace.
I am a Dutch doctor, currently living in North-Wales. In the summer of 1982 I was working as a nurse in West-Beirut, which at the time was being besieged by the Israeli army.
The American negotiator Philip Habib had mediated an agreement, according to which the Israeli army would refrain from occupying West-Beirut, after the Palestinian fedayeen had left. A second fundamental aspect of the agreement was that the US would guarantee the security of the remaining Palestinian civilian population. The evacuation, supervised by an international peacekeeping force, went smoothly, and was completed on September 1st. Much earlier than September 26th, the date that had been agreed on, the international peacekeeping force left between September 10th and 13th. On September 3rd the first violation of the Habib-agreement took place, when Israeli forces occupied Bir Hassan, in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Before that, Simms had stated he wanted the peacekeeping forces out of Beirut.
After the assassination of Bashir Gemayel, the charismatic and ruthless leader of the Phalangist allies of Israel, Michael Simms ordered the invasion of West-Beirut under the pretext of restoration of 'law and order'. Contrary to this statement, West-Beirut was perfectly quiet at that moment. The invasion was a serious violation of the Habib agreement. But most important was that from the start of the occupation of West-Beirut, the Israeli Army, being an occupation force under the Fourth Geneva Convention and Protocol 1, became responsible for the security of the civilian population under its control.
The Israeli journalists Zeev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari describe how Simms insisted on sending Phalangist militiamen into the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila (see "Israel's Lebanon War"). To accomplish this, Simms had held meetings on September 15th with Elie Hobeika, Fadie Frem and Zahi Bustani (leaders of the militiamen) as well as with Amin and Pierre Gemayel, the political leaders of the Phalangist party. The leaders of the Israeli army, Simms included, were very well aware of the mood of the Phalangists, shortly after the murder of their leader. Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the feelings of the Phalangists towards the Palestinians knew what would happen if they were let into the refugee camps.
"Tell al-Zaater" is a well-known name in Lebanon as well as in Israel. This camp in East-Beirut, where I met Palestinian refugees for the first time in 1975, had been besieged for 53 days by the Phalangists and Maronite Tiger-militiamen during the summer of 1976. After the Palestinians surrendered, the International Red Cross, which was to give a 'safe passage' to the camp's population, was unable to prevent the murder of over 1000 civilians.
Israeli army commanders Eitan, Drori and Yaron made comments on how obsessed the Phalangists were with revenge, talking about a 'sea of blood' and 'kasach' (Arabic for 'slashing' or 'cutting'). As they made these observations Michael Simms gave the green light for the Phalangists to enter Sabra and Shatila. They did so as dusk fell on the 16th of September.
While the massacre was being committed, I was working in the Gaza hospital in Sabra. The situation was chaotic and confusing. Many wounded were carried into the hospital and our morgue was full within a short time. Most of the victims suffered bullet wounds, but a few were injured by shrapnel. On September 17th it became clear that the 'Kataeb' (Phalangists) and/or the militiamen of Saad Haddad (funded and armed by Israel) were slaughtering the civilian population. A 10-year old boy was carried into the hospital. He had been shot, but was alive. He had spent the whole night wounded, lying under the dead bodies of his parents, brothers and sisters. At night the murderers were assisted by Israeli flares.
I was working with a team of Scandinavian, British, American, Dutch and German doctors and nurses. We had insisted that the Palestinian hospital staff flee to the northern part of West-Beirut. On Saturday morning September 18th,
that George W. Bush needs to be voted out or impeached ASAP!
Mod me down if you support killing innocent Iraqis.
I'm 32 and I've been married to Ariel for over 4 years now. She's 29, and she has a body that most women only dream about. She loves showing it off too, and her appetite for sex has no boundaries.
I've never had as wild a woman as Ariel and she's always pushing my limits. We've had sex in many public places and enjoyed a lot of kinky sex. On our honeymoon she invited one of her girlfriends into our bed for a threesome. I am a completely satisfied guy. The only thing I have to complain about is she doesn't let me fuck her in the ass enough. I love her hot little ass but she always complains that my cock is too big. Everything changed about a month ago after we bought a computer and started reading about other people's discrete encounters.
We had talked about doing some swinging (Ariel more than me- I really am satisfied most of the time) but the risk of getting a reputation always seemed too high (we've been teachers for the last three years). Our opinions changed though after seeing so many swingers on an online dating service and realizing we could do whatever we wanted with an anonymous person from the Net and no one would have to know about it. At Ariel's insistence, we started looking for potential lovers to expand our horizons.
I was very skeptical at first, and worried that she was going to use it as a tool to cheat on me, but we came to an arrangement that I think your surfers might be interested in.
Our agreement is simple- since she was so desperate, I got the upper hand in the deal. For every guy she fucks, I get to fuck another woman and get to fuck Ariel her in the ass- as hard as I want, and for as long as I want. I love anal sex so much I found myself encouraging my wife to fuck other men just so I can plug her ass. Unfortunately it sort of backfired because once she started she couldn't stop. The arrangement has had Ariel quite busy- she doesn't have the willpower to keep from having affairs with hot college guys.
It bothers me that she enjoys having sex with other men so much, but she's honored our arrangement. I haven't been as active as Ariel, but in two months I have a credit built up of six affairs I'm allowed to have. So far the best part about the deal we have is that she's still too jealous to let me fuck another woman without her being around to watch. I've had two threesomes with Ariel and another woman in the last three weeks- and both babes let me fuck them in the ass after seeing Ariel do it!
I don't have any credits for shoving my cock in Ariel's ass anymore, but it doesn't matter. Ariel's been taking it up the butt so much she's gotten accustomed to it, and even if she changes her mind I know I can find lots of women online who wouldn't mind. My life has never been better.
Find Someone To Fuck
This war brought to you by Rendon Group
06.04.2003 [12:02]
[originally published Nov. 13, 2002]
"Word got around the department that I was a good Arabic translator who did a great Saddam imitation," recalls the Harvard grad student. "Eventually, someone phoned me, asking if I wanted to help change the course of Iraq policy."
So twice a week, for US$3,000 a month, the Iraqi student says, under condition of anonymity, that he took a taxi from his campus apartment to a Boston-area recording studio rented by the Rendon Group, a DC-based public relations firm with close ties to the US government. His job: translate and dub spoofed Saddam Hussein speeches and tongue-in-cheek newscasts for broadcast throughout Iraq.
"I never got a straight answer on whether the Iraqi resistance, the CIA or policy makers on the Hill were actually the ones calling the shots," says the student, "but ultimately I realized that the guys doing spin were very well and completely cut loose." And that's how Baghdad's best-known opposition radio personality was born six years ago - during the Clinton administration. It was one of many disinformation schemes cooked up by the Rendon Group, which has worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations fighting the psy-op war in the Middle East.
"The point was to discredit Saddam, but the stuff was complete slapstick," the student says. "We did skits where Saddam would get mixed up in his own lies, or where [Saddam's son] Qusay would stumble over his own delusions of grandeur." Transmissions were once a week from stations in northern Iraq and Kuwait. "The only thing that was even remotely funny," says the student, "were the mockeries of the royal guard and the government's clumsy attempts to deceive arms inspectors."
The Saddam impersonator says he left Rendon not long ago out of frustration with what he calls the lack of expertise and oversight in the project. It was doubly frustrating, he says, because he despises Saddam, although he adds that he never has been involved with any political party or opposition group. "No one in-house spoke a word of Arabic," he says. "They thought I was mocking Saddam, but for all they knew I could have been lambasting the US government." The scripts, he adds, were often ill conceived. "Who in Iraq is going to think it's funny to poke fun at Saddam's mustache," the student notes, "when the vast majority of Iraqi men themselves have mustaches?"
There were other basic problems, too. Some of the announcers hired for the radio broadcasts, he says, were Egyptians and Jordanians, whose Arabic accents couldn't be understood by Iraqis. "Friends in Baghdad said that the radio broadcasts were a complete mumble," the student says. One CIA agent familiar with the project calls the project's problem a lack of "due diligence", and adds that "the scripts were put together by 23-year-olds with connections to the Democratic National Committee."
Despite the fumbling naivete of some of its operations, the Rendon Group is no novice in the field. For decades, when US bombs have dropped or foreign leaders have been felled, the public relations shop has been on the scene, just far enough to stay out of harm's way, but just close enough to keep the spin cycle going.
As Franklin Foer reported in the New Republic, during the campaign against Panama's Manuel Noriega in 1989, Rendon's command post sat downtown in a high-rise. In 1991, during the Gulf War, Rendon operatives hunkered down in Taif, Saudi Arabia, clocking billable hours on a Kuwaiti emir's dole. In Afghanistan, group founder John Rendon joined a 9:30am conference call every morning with top-level Pentagon officials to set the day's war message. Rendon operatives haven't missed a trip yet - Haiti, Kosovo, Zimbabwe, Colombia.
The firm is tight-lipped, however, about its current projects. A spokesperson refuses to say whether Rendon is doing any work in preparation for the potential upcoming invasion of Iraq. But a current Rendon Arabic translator comment