| 2009-10-16 |
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“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” -- Sir Winston Churchill
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| 2009-10-12 |
1902-05
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“You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives—the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. You have established reconcentration camps. Your generals are coming home from their harvest bringing sheaves with them, in the shape of other thousands of sick and wounded and insane to drag out miserable lives, wrecked in body and mind. You make the American flag in the eyes of a numerous people the emblem of sacrilege in Christian churches, and of the burning of human dwellings, and of the horror of the water torture. ”
-- Senator George Hoar’s famous denunciation of Roosevelt on the floor of the US Senate
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| 2009-07-17 |
2009-07-17
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Two high explosive bombs rocked two luxury hotels of Ritz Carlton and JW Marriott in central Jakarta Friday morning, killing at least 9 people and wounding more than 50.
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| 2009-07-17 |
2005-10-02
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In Indonesia, a string of explosions on Indonesia's resort island Bali have killed 20 people, including some foreign tourists, and injured more than 120 others
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| 2009-07-17 |
2004-09-09
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In Indonesia, a bomb blast outside the Australian Embassy in Indonesian capital of Jakarta have killed eight people, injuring some 160 more.
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| 2009-07-17 |
2004-01-10
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In Indonesia, four people are killed and three are injured by a bomb in a cafe in Palopo on central Sulawesi island.
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| 2009-07-17 |
2003-08-05
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In Indonesia, a car bomb explodes in front of the JW Marriott Hotel in central Jakarta, killing 12 people and wounding 149. Fifteen Islamic militants alleged to be members of Jemaah Islamiyah regional terror group have been convicted over the blast.
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| 2009-07-17 |
2002-12-05
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In Indonesia, a bomb explodes outside a McDonald's restaurant on Sulawesi, killing three people and wounding 11 others. Jemaah Islamiyah-linked militants are blamed for the blast.
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| 2009-07-17 |
2002-10-12
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In Indonesia, just before midnight, two bombs explode almost simultaneously in a night club district on the tourist island of Bali, killing 202 people, most of whom are foreign tourists. Thirty-three alleged Jemaah Islamiyah operatives have been convicted so far and three have been sentenced to death.
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| 2009-07-17 |
2000-12-25
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In Indonesia, bombs explode at 11 churches across the country on Christmas Eve, killing 19 people and injuring about 100.The attacks have been blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah.
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| 2009-07-17 |
2000-09-13
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In Indonesia, a car bomb explodes inside the garage of the Jakarta Stock Exchange building, killing 10 people and injuring 16. Police claim Acehnese separatists rebels are behind the explosion.
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| 2009-07-17 |
2000-08-01
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In Indonesia, a blast kills two people and seriously injures the Philippine ambassador to Indonesia.
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| 2009-07-17 |
1999-04-19
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In Indonesia, the ground floor of Jakarta's main Istiqlal mosque is damaged by a bomb allegedly set off by Jemaah Islamiyah. No one is injured.
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| 2009-07-16 |
2009
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Convergence of ‘Taliban’ and ‘Pushtan’
In the South of Afghanistan (and across the border in Pakistan) the Taliban are increasingly becoming indistinguishable from the Pashtun people. The Pashtun tribes are a good home for the Taliban.
The problem with the convergence of ‘Taliban’ and ‘Pushtan’ is that the Pushtans comprise around 40% of Afghanistan’s population and are the largest single ethnic group. That’s an awful lot of people to fight.
-- According to Keith Rice
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| 2009-07-16 |
2009
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The government in Afghanistan is corrupt
In Afghanistan, the government structure the West helped set up and is now trying to sustain is demonstrably corrupt – arguably from Hamid Karzai down.
-- According to Keith Rice
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| 2009-07-05 |
2009-06-29
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Poland signed a contract on gas supplies with Qatargas.
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| 2009-07-05 |
2009-06-29
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Gazprom signed an agreement with Azerbaijan to purchase all of its export gas.
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| 2009-07-05 |
2009-07-05
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Look, Israel can determine for itself -- it's a sovereign nation -- what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.
[...]
Whether we agree or not. They're entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that. But there is no pressure from any nation that's going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed.
What we believe is in the national interest of the United States, which we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest of Israel and the whole world. And so there are separate issues.
If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice."
Joe Biden, Vice-President of the USA, interview with George Stephanopoulos, ABC News
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| 2009-07-04 |
2005
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In Honduras, Jose Manuel Zelaya is elected as President.
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| 2009-07-04 |
2009-06-28
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In Honduras, the military arrested President Jose Manuel Zelaya, the same day he vowed to follow through with a referendum that the country's Supreme Court had ruled illegal,
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| 2009-07-04 |
2008-12-14
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In Israel, Richard Falk, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, was barred from entering the country after the Foreign Ministry charged him with "legitimizing Hamas terrorism" and "drawing shameful comparisons to the Holocaust."
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| 2009-07-04 |
2009-06-30
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Israel seizures a ship carrying relief aid for the Gaza Strip
Israeli authorities intercepted the vessel, which was also carrying 21 pro-Palestinian activists, and said it would not be permitted to enter Gaza coastal waters because of security risks in the area and its existing naval blockade.
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| 2009-07-03 |
2008-05-06
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Energy is the basis of the world's welfare and prosperity: Lankhorst
"First, we need energy to maintain high economic standards and raise them in the largest possible number of countries. Second, energy is the foundation for the world's new future. We can use it to alleviate possible negative consequences of climate change provoked by global warming.
[...]
Energy consumption could be a reason for the warming, but it is also key to solving the problem."
-- Gertjan J. Lankhorst, CEO of GasTerra
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| 2009-07-03 |
2007-09
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The EU appointed the former minister of foreign affairs of the Netherlands, Jozias van Aartsen, as coordinator of the Nabucco project. His mandate was expanded shortly afterward as “EU Coordinator for the Caspian Sea-Middle East-European Union Gas Route”, with Nabucco as the priority.
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| 2009-07-03 |
2007-05 / 2008-06
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The Austrian government and OMV company gave Gazprom 50 percent ownership of Nabucco’s designated terminal near Vienna, suggested sharing the use of Nabucco’s throughput capacity with Gazprom, and agreed to build an extension of South Stream through Austria, potentially preempting Nabucco.
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| 2009-07-03 |
2006-06
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Austria launched Nabucco as an EU project during its presidency of the EU.
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| 2009-07-03 |
2008-06-24
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Gazprom announced that more than half of South Stream’s total projected capacity would be used to meet already existing supply commitments.
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| 2009-07-03 |
2009-02-18
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Russia's first-ever plant for liquefied natural gas (LNG) was inaugurated near Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in the presence of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Britain's Prince Andrew, Netherlands Economic Affairs Minister Maria van der Hoeven, and Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso. The plant will process gas from the Sakhalin-2 extraction project, consisting of several offshore fields in the Sea of Okhotsk.
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| 2009-07-03 |
2008
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Lukoil bought a 49 percent stake, with an option to expand it later, in the Italian ERG group's ISAB refinery in Sicily (with its declared total processing capacity at an impressive 16 million tons per year).
This is Lukoil's first major acquisition in Western Europe.
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| 2009-07-03 |
2009-06-20
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Russia's Lukoil has broken into Western Europe's most lucrative oil refining and retail market by taking over Dow Chemicals' 45 percent stake in Total Raffinaderij Nederland (TRN).
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| 2009-07-03 |
2007-12-20
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Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan finalised an agreement, in the presence of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan's leader, to build a pipeline, dubbed Pricaspiysky, to transport gas to Russia.
The new pipeline will skirt the east coast of the Caspian Sea carrying 20bn cubic metres a year of Turkmen and Kazakh gas north to Russia's Saratov region.
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| 2009-07-03 |
2006-04
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In Russia, the Putin government announced the first stage of construction of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean Pipeline (ESPO), a vast oil pipeline from Taishet in the Irkutsk Region near Lake Baikal in East Siberia, to Perevoznaya Bay on Russia’s Pacific Ocean coast, to be built at a cost of more than $11.5 billion. Transneft, the Russian state-owned pipeline company will build it. When finished, it will pump up to 1.6 million barrels/day from Siberia to the Russian Far East and from there on to the energy-hungry Asia-Pacific, mainly to China. The first stage is due to be completed by end of 2008.
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| 2009-07-03 |
2009-07-03
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Russia expects to earn 57 billion rubles ($1.8 bln) annually from oil exports to China.
-- According to Sergei Shmatko, Energy Minister of Russia
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| 2009-07-03 |
2008-10
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Russia and China reached an agreement to build a Chinese leg of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) oil pipeline.
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| 2009-07-03 |
2007-11
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The ambitious East Siberia-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline is slated to pump up to 1.6 million barrels per day of crude from Siberia to Russia's Far East and then on to China and the Asia-Pacific region.
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| 2009-07-01 |
2007-02-12
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'Compassion' becomes 'tyranny' when enforced by government power.
-- Glen Allport, in his article, How the Baby Boomers Almost Saved the World ...and why they failed, in Strike the Root
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| 2009-07-01 |
2003-09
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“Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants.”
-- John Taylor Gatto, a three-time former NYC Teacher of the Year, in Against School, Harper’s Magazine, September 2003
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| 2009-07-01 |
1873
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The first kindergarten of the USA opened in St. Louis. Its purpose, according to its superintendent, William Torrey Harris, was not literacy, but to rescue children from poverty and bad families by bringing them into the school system early in life.
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| 2009-07-01 |
1840
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Friedrich Froebel opened the first kindergarten in Germany
Friedrich Froebel opened the first kindergarten, in Germany, in 1840, as a means of "socializing" children, writes Joel Spring, in The American School, 1642–1885.
"As the name implies, the kindergarten was conceived as a garden of children to be cultivated in the same manner as plants."
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| 2009-06-30 |
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“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”
-- Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25, United Nations
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| 2009-06-30 |
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The philosophical basis of all human rights are shaky.
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| 2009-06-30 |
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It is not clear whom should provide (universal) healthcare.
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| 2009-06-30 |
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All rights possessed by an individual imply a duty on the part of others.
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| 2009-06-30 |
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Health care is difficult to define.
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| 2009-06-30 |
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Health care should not be considered a human right.
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| 2009-06-30 |
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Current single-payer proposals come much closer to fulfilling the human right to health care than the market-based reform plans.
-- According to two of Amnesty International’s ally organizations, the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative and the National Health Law Program
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| 2009-06-30 |
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Healthcare Is A Human Right
-- According to Sameer Dossani, Amnesty International
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| 2009-06-28 |
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Hezbollah could surpass Al-Qaeda as the most serious long-term threat to the United States
-- According to Michael Chertoff, former head of homeland security, in his new book
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| 2009-06-27 |
2008-11
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In the UK, the Forced Marriage Act is passed
The act is a civil measure, preventing parents and family members from forcing their children to marry against their will.
According to the act, any person involved in the "aiding, abetting, counseling, procuring, encouraging or assisting [of] another person to force, or to attempt to force, a person to enter into a marriage" or "conspiring to force, or to attempt to force, a person to enter into a marriage" will be held liable for their actions.
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| 2009-06-24 |
2002-01-26
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"Oil and gas are not the ultimate aims of the U.S. It’s about control. If the U.S. controls the sources of energy of its rivals -- Europe, Japan, China and other nations aspiring to be more independent -- they win."
-- Pepe Escobar, a writer for the Asia Times, in his article, The roving eye, Pipelinestan," Asia Times, January 26, 2002
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