How dangerous is it to drive on the highway? Open letters to people in the news. Prayers to the victims in Afghanistan. Greece crisis — call me when we have Drachmas. “We don’t have money for groceries, but at least we have gold.” This Week in Frustrating Tech: Stitcher. Homeless person encounter of the week. Academy Award for Con Artists. Goldman-Sachs farewell letter: naive?
Rush Limbaugh apology to Fluke. John Maudlin predicts Japan is in fiscal trouble. Earth attacked by Galactus. Against Their Will absolutely rocks. Should Kony be stuck in an elevator with Rush Limbaugh? Romney, Paul, Obama, and electoral college votes. Terrorism in the Phillipines. Eric Holder finds a 200+ year old loophole in the Constitution to justify droning American citizens abroad.
A homeless man asks for a some food. So, why does the U.S. want to go war with Iran? A destitute man had his bus pass stolen from him. Andrew Breitbart dies. Sports Talk Show guys can only talk about athletes they’ve seen play — lack of historical perspective. Third party cookies baking in the oven.
By Faith Marie de los Santos
DailySkew International Correspondent
Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), an Islamic terrorist group founded in the 1990s with funding from Osama bin Laden, detonated a bomb at 6:55 p.m. outside the Cleopatra commercial store at Serantes St., Jolo, Sulu. Jolo Island is a southern volcanic island of Pilipinas, with a population of 300,000. It is part of the Sulu Archipelago, which some native and Islamic groups (Moro National Liberation Front) claim should be independent from Pilipinas. Yes, folks, ASG is a wing of Al-Qaeda.
Killed in this latest attack were a teacher (Deonila Undug Asiri) and a street vendor (Sindao Mangilala), and among the 14 wounded was a five-year-old child.
The explosion occurred two hours after the police provincial director of Sulu pulled out police personnel conducting checkpoint and patrol. The explosion was created from ammonium nitrate fuel oil (ANFO) placed atop a generator located outside of the store.
Abu Sayyaf Group has also committed a string of kidnappings to earn easy money. They most notably kidnapped Evangeline Taverisma last year. She was a old healthcare worker (midwife) who was walking home at 3 PM from duty. The police in Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) did nothing at first. The villagers and other health workers protested with strikes before the woman was finally released two months later and subsequently rescued.
The strings of violence are too numerous to list here.
However one of the purposes of this article is to create awareness: the United States has pledged $144 million dollars and another warship to the Philippines this year. The U.S. has usually been the Philippines’ largest foreign investor, with about $6.6 billion. Two-way U.S. merchandise trade with the Philippines amounted to $17.3 billion. USAID programs total around $211.3 million per year. In 2006, the Millennium Challenge Corporation granted $21 million to the Philippines for a threshold program addressing corruption in revenue administration. Meanwhile, the Philippines had to shut down 10 embassies due to budget issues. Is any of that money being used to stop the violence in Sulu? Perhaps the islands should be granted full autonomy and independence. If not, they need to be locked down.
One would think that the United States would have some more “interest” in purging terrorists from Sulu. It’s possible that the CIA has told Washington that the terrorists there pose no threat to the United States itself because they have low end technology and are fighting for their “independence”? Which, of course, is two-faced and hypocritical. After all, United States citizens are told that Iran is a threat to the U.S.
How about sending in the drones?
Anyway, I think something is fishy about the whole situation between both governments. It’s true the Sulu police and Filipino army crack down on the terrorists with air raids and shoot-outs, but it doesn’t solve the problem long term.
Just thought I’d spread the word here on the DailySkew because you won’t see this on CNN, FOX, or Drudge.
#1 See your doctor and get a blood test. This will help in identifying which health areas you need improvement on, and how your diet may need to be modified. Have high cholesterol or high blood pressure? Too much sugar in your diet? Overweight or obese? Issues moving your bowels? *Your doctor will tell you which types of food to avoid and which food is fair game.*
#2 The real truth about exercising- you don’t need to go to a gym or jog around a track. You have to try and be mobile at first by walking around the house and do household chores. Maybe stretch in the morning. Play with your kids or other family members. Once you get in the habit of moving around (as opposed to lying in bed or watching TV from the couch and being too lazy to get up), try a cool Wii exercise game like Wii Fitness, Wii Active, or Dance Dance Revolution.
#3 Set your daily exercise goal for just 10 minutes a day. That’s less time than taking a dump or surfing the web. Just 10 minutes. Once you get in the habit of stretching, walking around the neighborhood or beach, playing with kids, doing household chores, or using a Wii exercise game, push it to 15 minutes. Try to get it to 30 minutes a day- even breaking it up to 3 sets of 10 minutes is accepted by doctors. The key is: you want to break bad habits, and try to curb your food addiction or laziness addiction.
#4 Try to phase out and eventually get rid of the junk food. You can do a search to find out what junk food is, but I have a feeling you already know.
#5 If you simply cannot stick to a diet or are totally lost due to conflicting information, sign up with aweight loss program that allows you to choose delicious meals from healthy lists. You actually save money on those health diets when they send you food vs shopping on your own.
#6 A meal replacement diet like diet cookies curb your appetite without drugs.
#7 Diet pills and fat burners: your mileage will vary, so clear them with your doctor. They have been known to burn fat fast or suppress your appetite or give you energy.
#8 Those suffering from obesity fantasy about weight loss surgery: gastric bypass, Lap-band surgery, stomach staples, liposuction, and other weight loss procedures. I guess in these “losing weight fast fantasies”, your medical insurance covers weight loss surgery. I really hope it doesn’t have to come to that. If you follow these steps I outlined for you, it won’t.
Just thought it was time to go on the record with the following:
– going to college later in life to learn a new career is really difficult. – if you’re a recent High School Graduate (like my nephew A. Freeman) who are enjoying making easy money waiting tables at restaurants or casinos, understand that you need a Masters Degree in SOMETHING to have a SHOT at a comfortable corporate or government job. If you think you can pull a Kanye and produce hit records, or become a famous actor, you might as well buy lotto tickets. The odds are against you. Sure, people make it big. People win life’s lotto. Very FEW people. Since you are likely to be part of the many that don’t make it, you might as well have a solid back-up plan, so you can be accused of being rich by Presidents and Congressmen. – Learning a brand new career in the middle of one’s life when you have a family is pretty hard. – If you can stick with one profession (not a job, but the same masters degree or PhD career path) for your life, you have a better chance at being excellent at what you do. – Career politicians are excellent at … politicking? Changing their opinion at a moment’s notice with a straight face? – When a politician or expert is talking about job training programs for laborers who just lost a manufacturing job that pays a ton of money, understand that those laborers will not earn those same wages after training, they may not find a job at all after being retrained, and politicians just want to pull at your heart strings, show they’ve done what they could to help the unemployed, and ask for your vote. – Unions protect worker rights; they do not necessarily promote work excellence. – If your a High School Grad who thinks you’ll be able to wait tables and make big tips the rest of your life,understand that your present or future boss will get tired of you eventually. – If your a High School Grad who is working retail or whatever and you get promoted to assistant manager, understand that you do not own the place, your authority is illlusory, and you can be fired just as easily as the cashier on aisle 4. – Having “assistant manager” on your resume will not guarantee you get to be an assistant manager at your next job. – Going to college gives you the opportunity to network with future colleagues, building friendships that can possibly lead to career opportunities. – Blind resumes submissions for the worker are an indication that he doesn’t have connections. Blind job advertisements for the employer are proof that he doesn’t have a strong recruitment network in the community.If you care about the environment, you gotta consider switching to CFC lightbulbs. Oh wait, this is the Addictions blog. You don’t care about environmental issues. Okay — do you want some cool home lighting in your house? Man, those CFC lightbulbs do a great job of brightening that house, I don’t care what Glenn Beck says. And the money you’ll save can be used for, uh, whatever your addiction may be!
One of the things that confuses me the most about our home builder is why they didn’t install some hunter ceiling fans in the bedroom. I mean, dang. We’re talking about the air not moving until the A/C kicks on, and then you’re freezing to death, pulling for the covers. The A/C shuts off, you’re getting hot again, your reaching for the water, next thing you know you’ve gotta go to the bathroom. I mean, it’s totally ridiculous! All I’m asking for is some air circulation! Couldn’t the home builder have accommodated that? Oh, yeah. they were too busy building spec homes right before the housing market crashed. Never mind.
We’ve lived at our home for almost two years, and we’re still working out some home lighting issues. Our budget has been extremely tight since we moved in … heck, we’re still trying to get a loan modification, so who knows? We may not even be staying.
If we do stay, I need to do something about the living room/kitchen area. It takes forever for the energy efficient bulbs to get fully bright, and it really doesn’t light up the part of the room with the couch and TV very well. You have to turn on a side lamp, and we’ve already had one broken by our puppy by accident! It happens, I guess.
