Items filed under "irony"

NATO Destroys Booby-Trapped Homes in Afghanistan - NYTimes.com

In Arghandab District, for instance, every one of the 40 homes in the village of Khosrow was flattened by a salvo of 25 missiles, according to the district governor, Shah Muhammed Ahmadi, who estimated that 120 to 130 houses had been demolished in his district. “There was no other way; we knew people wanted us to get rid of all these deadly I.E.D.’s,” he said, referring to improvised explosive devices, the military’s term for homemade bombs.

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Tags: Afghanistan, NATO, atrocities, war crimes, human rights, irony, propaganda, no we can't

Many deficit commission staffers paid by outside groups

"We have a very small budget, so we begged everyone we could find in both parties across the spectrum to sign up and help," said Reed, who is on leave as president of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. "Part of our job is not to add to the problem ourselves."

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Tags: deficit, debt, no we can't, special interests, irony

Lawmakers unaware of forged letters before key vote - The Boston Globe

The coalition said that on June 25, it contacted its primary grass-roots lobbying contractor, the Hawthorn Group, and “demanded that Bonner promptly make contact with the affected member offices and organizations’’ about the forged letters. In a letter to Markey, Hawthorn said it instructed Bonner that same day to notify the lawmakers.

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Tags: global warming, Congress, lobbying, astroturf, irony

Op-Ed Columnist - Behind the Laughter - NYTimes.com

Whether it’s Newark, Detroit, parts of Chicago, South-Central Los Angeles, Camden, N.J. — take your pick — we’ve looked the other way for decades as the residents of hard-core inner-city neighborhoods struggled with overwhelming, life-threatening problems and a chronic shortage of resources, financial and otherwise.

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Tags: cities, urban politics, irony, satire, poverty, scandal, crime

Turn Down The Peace Prize? - washingtonpost.com

The North Vietnamese negotiator of cease-fire talks for Vietnam shared the 1973 prize with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, but Tho said it was not possible for him to accept it while the cease-fire was not being honored. Kissinger accepted the prize and donated its monetary award to fund scholarships.

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Tags: Nobel Peace Prize, wtf, irony, history, war crimes

Made in Mass., bomb stirs global debate - The Boston Globe

“Knowing that we are in no way, shape or form contributing to [civilian suffering] is really a very satisfying place to be,’’ he said.

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Tags: irony, Massachusetts, arms dealers, civilian casualties, war whores

Opposition to Obama's Health-Reform Plan Is High, but Easing - washingtonpost.com

But it is the public option that has become the major point of contention, with support for the government creation of an insurance plan that would compete with private insurers stabilizing in the survey after dipping last month. Now, 55 percent say they like the idea, but the notion continues to attract intense objection: If that single provision were removed, opposition to the overall package drops by six percentage points, according to the poll.

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Tags: poll, irony, public option, public opinion, health care reform, no we can't

Eugene Robinson - On Health Care, Democrats Lack Passion - washingtonpost.com

Where are the millions who so passionately chanted "Yes, we can!" at Obama's campaign rallies? Where are the legions who cried tears of joy on election night and tears of pride on Inauguration Day? Is Sarah Palin now the only politician capable of inspiring "passionate intensity"?

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What's that Milton quote on the epigraph to Manufacturing Consent? 'They who have put out the peoples' eyes, reproach them for their blindness' (paraphrasing). Robinson, while maybe not guilty of it himself, is part of a media system that implicitly, sometimes explicitly, trains citizens to be engaged only once every four years, and only in the narrowest possible way: voting yes or no to a platform imposed from above. And now he wonders where all the energized Obama voters are?

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Tags: health care reform, elections, no we can't, irony

A Shiite Schism On Clerical Rule - washingtonpost.com

"It's true," said Ghaith Shubar, a cleric who runs a foundation in Najaf aligned with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most powerful cleric. "The spiritual guidance of the people in Iraq has become stronger than the guidance offered under the system in Iran. The marjaiya" -- the term used to describe the authority of the most senior ayatollahs -- "has more influence in Iraq, spiritual and otherwise, than it does in Iran."

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Tags: Shiites, Iran, Iraq, theocracy, irony, Ali Sistani

2 Somali-Americans Charged With Aiding Terror - NYTimes.com

The indictment states that one of the men, Salah Osman Ahmed, flew from Minneapolis to Somalia in December 2007 to “fight jihad.” Mr. Ahmed, 26, and Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, 25, have been charged with plotting to provide “personnel including themselves” in a conspiracy to “kill, kidnap, maim or injure” people in a foreign country.

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Tags: Somalia, jihad, irony, their terrorism

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