although your mates are right on one thing, Dublin is different
I was trying to persuade someone at the w/e that if he got anywhere near the asking price for his house in Mayo, he should get down on his knees and thank Allah, Buddha and Jebus before biting their hand off. I also made the statement that no house in Mayo was intrinsically worth the asking price of his. Didn't go down well.
"We are not Europeans. Those people on the continent are freaks."
Hey Zuroph, you sure RPA are the people to talk to about that sort of a thing?
I did a big project on the Luas last year and the only way I got information from the RPA was by physically going down to the office and asking for it. I still haven't received replies to some of the emails I sent, and that was before christmas.
Hey Zuroph, you sure RPA are the people to talk to about that sort of a thing?
I did a big project on the Luas last year and the only way I got information from the RPA was by physically going down to the office and asking for it. I still haven't received replies to some of the emails I sent, and that was before christmas.
Yeah I was directed to the commercial manager who handles all commercial matters related to the LUAS.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK_N91SOiQI&feature=player_embedded[/ame]
Can someone translate what this guy says?
I'm gunna _______ ________ cuz we just killed Bin Laden'?
The killing of Osama bin Laden: how the White House changed its story
Bin Laden not armed and did not use woman as human shield, US admits; Barack Obama's spokesman blames 'fog of war'
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Robert Booth
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 May 2011 15.35 BST
Article history
President Barack Obama told Americans on Sunday night that Osama bin Laden had died in a firefight. The White House now admits he was unarmed. Photograph: The White House/Getty Images
The White House has revised its version of what happened during the raid on Osama bin Laden's home in several significant ways since its first briefings.
It says the mistakes and contradictions are simply down to "the fog of war". Jay Carney, the president's spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday: "We provided a great deal of information with great haste in order to inform you ... and obviously some of the information came in piece by piece and is being reviewed and updated and elaborated on."
Here are the main points of difference:
Osama bin Laden was armed and died in a firefight after resisting
A senior Pentagon official told reporters on Monday in a background briefing that the American team engaged in a firefight and Bin Laden did resist, giving the strong impression he was armed and may have been shooting.
"He was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in," said John Brennan, White House security adviser. "And whether or not he got off any rounds, I quite frankly don't know … The president put a premium on making sure that our personnel were protected and we were not going to give Bin Laden or any of his cohorts the opportunity to carry out lethal fire on our forces. He was engaged and he was killed in the process.
"The concern was that Bin Laden would oppose any type of capture operation. Indeed he did. It was a firefight. He, therefore, was killed in that firefight."
How the story changed
Carney said on camera at a White House briefing on Tuesday that Bin Laden had not been armed. "On the first floor of Bin Laden's building, two al-Qaida couriers were killed, along with a woman who was killed in crossfire," he said. "Bin Laden and his family were found on the second and third floor of the building. There was concern that Bin Laden would oppose the capture operation – operation rather, and, indeed, he did resist. In the room with Bin Laden, a woman – Bin Laden's – a woman, rather, Bin Laden's wife, rushed the US assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed. Bin Laden was then shot and killed. He was not armed."
When pressed on the nature of Bin Laden's resistance, Carney said: "I think resistance does not require a firearm." He declined to elaborate on what other form it had taken.
Al-Arabiya, a Middle East news channel, reported that it had been told by a Pakistani security that Bin Laden's 12-year-old daughter told Pakistani investigators the US forces captured her father alive but shot him dead in front of family members. An official of the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, told the Guardian she saw her father killed but did not suggest he had been captured at that point.
Osama Bin Laden used women as human shields, including his wife who was killed in the process.
Brennan said on Monday: "There was family at that compound and there was a female who was in fact in the line of fire that reportedly was used as a shield to shield Bin Laden from the incoming fire."
He added: "I think it really just speaks to just how false his narrative has been over the years."
A journalist asked if the woman was his wife. Brennan replied: "That's my understanding. It was one of them … She served as a shield … when there was the opportunity to get to Bin Laden she was positioned in a way that indicated that she was being used as a shield – whether or not Bin Laden or the son, or whatever, put her there, or she put herself there."
The story was partially backed up by an off the record Pentagon briefing at which reporters were told by a senior defence official that Bin Laden and some other male combatants "certainly did use women as shields".
But the official said the woman who was with Bin Laden was injured and not killed. The woman who ended up being killed had been used as a shield by "a military age male" who was firing from behind her, they said.
How the story changed
The president's spokesman on Tuesday corrected Brennan, saying: "In the room with Bin Laden, a woman – Bin Laden's – a woman, rather, Bin Laden's wife, rushed the US assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed."
Bin Laden had been 'living high on the hog'
Defence officials briefed reporters on Monday that Bin Laden's compound was worth $1m and was in stark contrast to the "much more dire conditions" endured by his "terrorist colleagues" and speculated on what they might be thinking "when they see that their leader was living, relatively speaking, high on the hog".
How the story changed
Local estimates suggest the house is worth $250,000. Footage from inside the compound shows little sign of luxury. Cooking equipment was shown on the floor, the decor seemed shabby, medicines were left on a shelf with no cabinet and the pantry seemed rudimentary. The paint was peeling outside the building and there was no sign of airconditioning.
Bin Laden's son Khalid was killed in the raid
Brennan told reporters: "Bin Laden died, the two al-Qaida facilitators – the brothers, who were the courier and his brother in the compound; Bin Laden's son Khalid; and the woman, presumed to be his wife, who was shielding Bin Laden."
How the story changed
The name of the son was changed to Hamza in the transcript.
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and senior White House officials watched the raid unfold live on monitors
Brennan said on Monday: "We were able to monitor in a real-time basis the progress of the operation from its commencement to its time on target to the extraction of the remains and to then the egress off of the target… we were able to monitor the situation in real time and were able to have regular updates and to ensure that we had real-time visibility into the progress of the operation. I'm not going to go into details about what type of visuals we had or what type of feeds that were there, but it was – it gave us the ability to actually track it on an ongoing basis."
How the story changed
Carney said on Tuesday the updates were "minute-by-minute" and "they were looking at and listening to those updates". CIA director Leon Panetta told PBS on Tuesday: "Once those teams went into the compound, I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes that we really didn't know just exactly what was going on."
discuss the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the general fuck-up that is the ME since then
You really have to go back to Alexander the Great to get a proper overview. The division of his kingdom really set the first fragmented stage of the current ME political map. The Seleucid Empire and the Ptolemaic Kingdoms and their coherency allowed the first Caliphate to take on an air of continuity in the post-Roman North Africa after the Muslim expansions.
After that the theological and political breakdown between the caliphates that would eventually lead to the forms of Islam that we refer to as Wahhabist as well as the justifying power behind the Ottoman dynasty there was almost no coherence between the various Islamic regimes.
Many people forget that Iraq was the first country invaded during the First World War and that for 75 of the 100 years of the 20th Century it was either occupied or fighting an invasion force. The inter-war period saw the emergence of a number of regimes in the ME that were viewed, initially, as afterthoughts by a world recovering from a devastating war. Britain and France secured oil supplies from their various spheres of influence while the US retreated into isolationism and derived their burgeoning oil requirements from domestic supplies and Canada.
After the Second World War the Middle East was seen through 2 perspectives in terms of international diplomacy and geostrategic importance. First, the countries were seen as important bulwarks against Communist expansion south from the Caucuses into even more rich oil fields. Until 1964 the United States would keep Medium Range Ballistic Missile (MRBM) sites in Turkey as a deterrent force, eventually bargaining them during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In order to keep the relative stability western powers began to prop up dictatorial regimes in the Middle East. This deal usually gave a modicum of stability, kept Communism from becoming a mobilising force and secured necessary oil supplies, particularly to US overseas operations.
The backlash from this in the 80's in particular was lead by a radicalised youth that had become increasingly disenfranchised by their "leaders" and this lead to a rise of new leaders underpinned by a religious ethos (the only real unifying force in many of the regions was religion, tribal differences were a complete nightmare so it was only religious appeals that had mass effect).
Borders that could be traced either to the Romans, the British Empire, the Allied Forces or some other non-regional force have also contributed to tribal tensions as many Middle Eastern States contain a number of tribes that have traditional enmities going back centuries. The construction of a sense of nationhood that took centuries in Europe was forced upon many Middle Eastern countries upon which it has not fit. The most obvious modern example of this is Afghanistan which is almost ungovernable as a modern state.
With the collapse of the Communist States and the USSR in particular the USA, who have always required an "other" to fight against, have increasingly turned their gaze to Islam. This has occurred in conjunction with the rise of the Religious Right in the US as a political force and is unlikely a coincidence. The rhetoric of the US is couched in the terms of political discourse but, on a basic level, has a religious undertone until quite recently.
The current collapse of the Middle Eastern regimes is really a product of a soft opening of intellectual borders to modern democratic and post-Enlightenment norms that are all but accepted as givens in Europe in particular. These soft influences, through music, art, television and film, have slowly altered the expectations of the next generation of young Arab men and women who now expect more from their leaders and from themselves.
The past is easy to remember, the future is impossible to predict.
You are technically correct...the best kind of correct
World Record Holder for Long Distance Soul Reads: May 7th 2011
One thing I can't get over is the amount of 3-bed and 4-bed houses for sale with a single, solitary bathroom...are there really many houses built like this? I honestly never experienced this until I moved to Dublin and started looking at homes for sale; I grew up in a 'regular' 4-bed house in Galway (build in the late 70s) and we had a WC downstairs, a big bathroom and an ensuite upstairs. I'm currently living in a 4-bed in Dublin with a WC, two bathrooms and an ensuite. How in God's name are families of three or more people living in a nice big house with only a single bathroom?!!!!! I'd never be able to buy a house like that, unless there was space on the ground floor (under the stairs I guess) for a small WC.
Re house prices, one thing I think won't happen in Dublin (unless there is armageddon in terms of reduction of public service employment and an economy-wide slashing of wages) is decent 3-bed homes in 'prime' areas of Dublin city for €200K or less - which is a dream held by many on thepropertypin I think. For 'prime' areas read most of Rathfarnham, Stillorgan, Terenure, Knocklyon, Castleknock, Clontarf etc... big swathes of the south city and parts of the north city. I just feel there still will be too much cash chasing too few suitable properties - I know several people who didn't buy during the bubble, who are waiting until prices are right, but who have a fair amount of cash squirrelled away. Assuming a professional couple (say a solicitor and a primary school teacher) will be able to get a mortgage of x2 annual earnings in the years to come, that sets a limit for desirable homes far in excess of some of the figures bandied about on the Pin.
People say I should be more humble I hope they understand, they don't listen when you mumble
Get a shiny metal Revolut card! And a free tenner! https://revolut.com/referral/jamesb8!G10D21
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Instead of starting a new show a couple of weeks ago I rewatched all 5 series of the wire again - some show.
SPOILER
I still hate where Bodie gets got - really is a quality character
Iv watched the first 5 episodes of Friday night lights - its pure cheese but it seems good so far. Anybody watch that show? is it worth it?
I watched the first 3/4 episodes after seeing it talked about on here. It was the worst couple of hours of viewing I've had in a while. Switched back to The West Wing and all was good again.
Milan. I get nightmares every now and then of that horrible night. You definitely remember big losses more vividly then big wins for some reason. Ireland v Spain is another fine example...
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