Welcome! "What's Happenin'?" is a casual community diary (a daily series, 8:30 AM Eastern on weekdays, 10 AM on weekends and holidays) where you can hang out, talk about what is going on with you, listen to music, talk about the news and the goings on here and everywhere.
Maybe you have seen some news stories that you think are not receiving enough attention and you'd like to post links to them. Maybe you'd like to just chat among friends about your life, your health, your family or social circle, your pets, etc. You can also post links to your own writings here on dkos or elsewhere. Perhaps you want to share some pictures or music or links to other things. This is your kind of place to talk about what's happening.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. If that is what you want, find another place to do it. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact. This diary series is produced by the TeamDFH group but anyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is welcome.
Good Morning!
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Drop in any time of day or night to say hello. |
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A Few Quotes for This Morning
A side note - there are some great quotes about this scattered throughout the video above!
We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace. ~William Ewart Gladstone
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. ~Mother Teresa
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Five great enemies to peace inhabit with us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride. If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace. ~Francesco Petrarch
A warless world will come as men develop warless hearts. ~Charles Wesley Burns
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. ~Albert Einstein
I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it. ~Dwight Eisenhower
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News
Things are not going well in Egypt right now. Power - no matter whether in Egypt, Oakland, or wherever - does not like to be challenged...
Death Toll Rises From Clashes in Cairo
CAIRO — Egypt’s military rulers escalated a bloody crackdown on street protesters on Saturday, chasing down and beating unarmed civilians, even while the prime minister was denying in a televised news conference that security forces were using any force.
In one of the most incendiary developments, video cameras captured soldiers stripping the clothes off women they were beating on the pavement of Tahrir Square.
The contradiction in the military-led government’s statements and actions appeared to represent a shift in strategy by the military council. After trying for months to preserve some credibility and collaboration with the Egyptian political elite, the ruling generals on Saturday scarcely acknowledged the demands made by their newly appointed civilian advisory council the night before that the military cease its violence and apologize to demonstrators.
In the same vein, things that makes you go, hmmmm...
Is the Pentagon out to stifle the Arab Spring?
(TomDispatch) As the Arab Spring blossomed and President Obama hesitated about whether to speak out in favor of protesters seeking democratic change in the Greater Middle East, the Pentagon acted decisively. It forged ever deeper ties with some of the most repressive regimes in the region, building up military bases and brokering weapons sales and transfers to despots from Bahrain to Yemen.
As state security forces across the region cracked down on democratic dissent, the Pentagon also repeatedly dispatched American troops on training missions to allied militaries there. During more than 40 such operations with names like Eager Lion and Friendship Two that sometimes lasted for weeks or months at a time, they taught Middle Eastern security forces the finer points of counterinsurgency, small unit tactics, intelligence gathering, and information operations -- skills crucial to defeating popular uprisings.
These recurrent joint-training exercises, seldom reported in the media and rarely mentioned outside the military, constitute the core of an elaborate, longstanding system that binds the Pentagon to the militaries of repressive regimes across the Middle East. Although the Pentagon shrouds these exercises in secrecy, refusing to answer basic questions about their scale, scope, or cost, an investigation by TomDispatch reveals the outlines of a region-wide training program whose ambitions are large and wholly at odds with Washington's professed aims of supporting democratic reforms in the Greater Middle East.
Sadly, there are always unintended consequences. Wouldn't it be great if TPTB owned up to them?
Libya’s Civilian Toll, Denied by NATO
TRIPOLI, Libya — NATO’s seven-month air campaign in Libya, hailed by the alliance and many Libyans for blunting a lethal crackdown by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and helping to push him from power, came with an unrecognized toll: scores of civilian casualties the alliance has long refused to acknowledge or investigate.
By NATO’s telling during the war, and in statements since sorties ended on Oct. 31, the alliance-led operation was nearly flawless — a model air war that used high technology, meticulous planning and restraint to protect civilians from Colonel Qaddafi’s troops, which was the alliance’s mandate.
“We have carried out this operation very carefully, without confirmed civilian casualties,” the secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said in November.
Yeah, those unemployed folks are just lazy and don't want to work... /snark
Casino gets 16,000 job applications in 4 days
CLEVELAND (Reuters) - A soon-to-open Cleveland casino was bombarded with job applications from 16,000 people in just four days after announcing openings for 750 positions, a casino official said on Saturday.
Due to the high volume of responses, the Horseshoe Casino took down about half of the job openings on Friday and is now shifting through the resumes to find qualified candidates.
"We are utilizing employees all across the county to review applicants," Jennifer Kulczycki of Rock Gaming, parent company of the casino, told Reuters Saturday.
Gotta watch that butt-dialing...
Police: Thieves pocket-dial 911, leading to arrest
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Police in Wisconsin's capital city barely had to try to catch a pair of unlucky suspected thieves.
(snip)
Investigators say the duo didn't realize one of them had accidentally pocket-dialed 911. A dispatcher listened in for nearly an hour as they discussed what they had stolen and where they might sell it. Police say they even described their vehicle.
This headline made me do a second take. Unfortunately, it's true and it's bad...
The Clap is Killing the Koalas
Chlamydia isn't the only concern for your average koala. Overdevelopment is threatening the marsupial's habitat, and climate change presents its own risks. But sexual disease is now a driving factor in the animal's path toward extinction.
There may be only 43,000 koalas left in the wild, says The Telegraph, citing recent biological studies. That population is in "dramatic decline," scientists warn.
Whatever...
"Whatever" deemed most annoying word: poll
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Do you want to kill a conversation? Try saying "whatever."
Words like "you know" and "like" might be irritating to hear, but for the third year in a row, it's "whatever" that holds the most power to annoy, according to an annual survey by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.
Very cool...
Valuable gold coin appears in Pa. donation kettle
GETTYSBURG, Pa. (AP) — Someone has dropped a rare coin worth about $1,700 into a Salvation Army kettle in central Pennsylvania. Again.
The Evening Sun newspaper of Hanover reports (http://bit.ly/... ) a gold South African Krugerrand was discovered Wednesday in a kettle outside a Walmart near Gettysburg.
