Opinia.USSAN FRANCISCO — A member of the Russian parliament has criticized Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski for his comments during a visit this week to Washington, but the Polish foreign ministry has disputed the accuracy of Russian news reports quoting Sikorski’s statement. The point of dispute is whether Sikorski has publicly asked for U.S. troops to […]

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A lot of discussion is being made about the attack on Fort Hood, where a psychiatrist went amok and decided to kill his fellow soldiers.
Here in the Philippines, we sometimes see a quiet guy suddenly go “amok” and machete his relatives or superiors. Usually people can’t understand it, but actually everyone figures he had finally […]

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In science, there are all sorts of gossip that tweak the infallibility of scientists.
For example, the discovery of the “big bang” was postponed until they cleaned the antennae of Pigeon poop, and found it was the sky, not the poop, causing the hum of  the big bang.
And Penicillin may have been discovered because of carelessness […]

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How does one respond to an unpopular tyranny who is threatening to start a war? Do you try to encourage them to reform, with soft words and promises to help if they turn to cooperation? Or do you be blunt and articulate the idea that unjust government must reform, because freedom lives in the hearts […]

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What do Children Owe Toxic Parents?
Post
A lot of feedback about stopping bullying by toxic parents focused on what children owe those abusive parents.  After all, even though they harassed, abused and tormented their children, those parents still fed, clothed and housed them.
Many of those parents now claim that a debt is owed them.  No matter […]

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Toxic parents can make your life miserable, especially if you’re still trying to win their approval or if you think you must see them during the holidays.
Most people can call it quits with bullying lovers, end false friendships and divorce abusive spouses.  But stopping bullying by toxic parents seems more difficult.  And it’s even harder […]

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Opinia.US SAN FRANCISCO — Due to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to prolong her stay in the Middle East, her scheduled meeting in Washington with visiting Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski has been cancelled. The announcement of the cancellation was made Tuesday by the State Department spokesman Ian Kelly.

Tomorrow, of course, she has a meeting […]

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Would Jesus pack heat?
An easy question you say, since Jesus told his followers to “turn the other cheek”, and this quote is often quoted by those opposing all war or violence of any sort…mainly by those living in safe suburbs and working in tenured academic jobs.
Yet this article states that some pastors in the Detroit […]

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I was startled to find this important editorial in the NYTimes:

A Final Verdict on the Presidential Salute

After a couple of paragraphs explaining the writer’s expertise in saluting, and another couple of paragraphs on the history of presidential salutes, we come to the conclusion:
(President Obama’s) salute, it struck me, was impeccable in every way.
Huh?
It’s true that […]

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It is as if the entire Washington press corps has forgotten everything any of them knew in 2001 and early 2002 and have no perspective on what is going on in Afghanistan now.
In late September of 2002 newspapers were flooded with glorious tales about the Northern Alliance – and the NA deserved every bit of […]

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Ah, Halloween is here, and the TV channels are full of stories of witches and ghosts and goblins of all sorts.
Most of it is harmless fun: art and literature helps mankind be able to confront the evils around them in a way that strengthens their ability to hope that confronting the more real evils around […]

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You may or may not know that the largest film industry in the world is not Hollywood, but Bollywood: the film industry of India. But do you know which country has the second largest film industry in the world?
Nollywood.
The Nigerian film industry.
According to Wikipedia the industry is a $250 million dollar industry which produces […]

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October 14th. The big chill was early, even for Albany. A press conference was being held in the park across from the New York Court of Appeals. The highest court in the state was set to hear Goldstein et al v. New York State Urban Development Corporation. The press conference speakers and their supporters were […]

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Ah, how quickly the grandchildren grow up. The grandsons have changed from computer game freaks to college geeks, and the granddaughters are now budding teenagers, on the threshold of being a woman.
In the past, the “Themes” for birthday parties were various Disney princesses; now little girls are starting to grow up, so the Theme of […]

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TedLipien.com, SAN FRANCISCO — Bill Clinton might have asked what the “enhanced” definition of “to enhance” IS? The U.S. Embassy in Warsaw is busy blaming a Polish translator for mistranslating U.S. Ambassador Lee Feinstein’s TV interview answer about Polish troops in Afghanistan, which caused a diplomatic uproar in Poland. In an interview broadcast last […]

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When last Zimbabwe was in the news, people were dying of cholera, there was a huge inflation rate that made the local dollar worthless, and the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party, along with an MDC offshoot, had agreed to make a unity government with the President Mugabe.
But although the verbal agreement was that Tsvangirai’s […]

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Missouri has responded effectively to cyber bullying via web sites and text messaging; has your state?
After the Lori Drew case in Missouri, in which a MySpace account was used to bully 13-year old Megan Meier, who committed suicide, Missouri legislators passed laws criminalizing cyber-bullying, harassment and abuse, and schools created zero-tolerance policies.  School authorities and […]

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Ah, a British paper just pooh poohed the British victory at the Battle of Agincourt, saying that Prince Hal was not outnumbered 4 to 1, merely outnumbered 2 to 1.
Actually, the author misses the point, which is that the elite knights of France got slowed down by the mud and were massacred by ordinary British […]

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Between all the stories of terror, selfishness, and violence, we sometimes need to read about a person who just tries to help in a small way.
So in today’s Atlanta Journal Constitution, there is a story about a retired woman, Margaret Freeman,  who helps children thrown away by their parents.
Those who are still alive, she helps […]

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The latest kerfuffle on the Health Care bill is that the Obama church has leashed the Am Cath types against the Catholic bishops.
For those of you who are not Catholic, much of the church bureaucracy is full of those who claim Vatican II to justify changing the Catholic church into a Episcopalian wanna be church.
Luckily, […]

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The headline reads: Save the Planet: Eat a Dog.
No, it’s not an anti Filipino satire about poor rural people in the provinces who eat dogs. It’s actually a post in a New Zealand paper that reports on the “carbon footprint” of Fido, Kitty and other meat eating pets.
Victoria University professors Brenda and Robert Vale, architects […]

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The founder of Human Rights Watch, Robert Bernstein, has watched as his organization has lost its focus and come unmoored (to mix metaphors), and has written a piece in the NY Times about what he sees as the principal reason.
AS the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding […]

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President Obama was brought up in Asia, yet he seems clueless about Afghanistan, and of the geopolitical problems in this area.
The press is even worse, preferring the simplistic out of date explanations of the “Afghanistan is Viet Nam” meme, or the “Stop the war” meme, or stressing civilian casualties “reported” by Taliban linked sources without […]

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Opinia.US SAN FRANCISCO — Tony Blinken, national security adviser to the vice president, said in a briefing with reporters before Biden left for Europe October 20, that leaders in Warsaw, Bucharest and Prague should think less of what the U.S. can do for them and more about what they can do with the United States.

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In this recession, lots of specific problems crop up that we moan and groan about.  But habitual whiners and complainers want us to wallow in their negativity even in the best of times.  In her article in the Financial Times, “Office moaners are something to groan about,” Emma Jacobs points out that habitual complainers can […]

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We’ve had a few sunny days here in the Philippines to finish harvesting the rice. Our fields are on high ground, so the main problems we face are finding a dry day to cut and thresh the rice, and a rice mill to dry it.
Usually in our area, rice is dried in the hot sun. […]

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In this day and age, it is difficult to get people to clearly tell you what they believe and support. It’s pretty much impossible to get this honesty from politicians. I have decided to air out my views on a variety of topics, at the risk of possibly alienating a few. I believe it is […]

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As the US government takes steps like government controls of major industries and attempting to hijack 1/5th of the economy via health care reform, another country is moving in quite the opposite direction during this global recession.
Cuba’s workplace cafeterias are closing, President Raúl Castro keeps saying the well-off shouldn’t get the same subsidies as the […]

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One of the more bizarre headlines in the news is a report that two people died in a “sweat lodge” and quite a few more people who were there required hospital treatment.
Any physician hearing of this will suspect the deaths were from one of two causes: One carbon monoxide (which reportedly has been ruled out) […]

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As anybody who spends time muckraking can tell you, pursuing stories about political corruption can take you to some passing strange places. Particularly in New Jersey…
In July the FBI bagged a passel of Jersey pols on corruption charges. Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini was among the indicted. An intriguing rumor about Beldini surfaced […]

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