If you followed the story via the Russian press, you got a detail that AFP (French wire service) and UPI didn't bother to include. Two examples. First, RT reported:
The bikers from Moscow, St. Petersburg and Tula were heading towards Baghdad when they were first blocked by a US convoy.
The tourists attempted to bypass the convoy by heading north of the capital through the city of Kirkuk.
RT is Russia Today. Second, Ekaterina Saviba (Gazeta) reported:
They came to Iraq on May 17 and were detained by the Iraqi military on May 20. "Our attempt to go towards Baghdad failed because of Yanks in Hummers – they didn't let us in. Our guys decided to go round the American checkpoints and pass north of them," report motorcyclists' friends on the Russian motorcycling forum Ruriders.ru. "They managed to ride several dozen kilometers a day, while having long heartfelt conversations with local authorities, all while the outside temperature was 42 Celsius."
In Iraq, violence continues today. Zee News reports that Badoush ("20 kilometres northwest of Mosul") saw a roadside bombing which claimed the lives of 3 Iraqi soldiers. AFP adds that 1 worker was killed and five injured in Diyala Province's Abu Saidah in an armed attack while, in the same town, a roadside bombing claimed the life of 1 Iraqi soldier and 2 Jalawla roadside bombings left two people injured. Mu Xuequan (Xinhua) notes, "Near Baghdad, gunfire broke out in the town of Tarmiyah, some 30 km north of Baghdad, when gunmen attacked the car of the leader of a local government-backed Awakening Council group, an Interior Ministry source anonymously told Xinhua." Through yesterday, Iraq Body Count notes 181 violent deaths in Iraq so far this month.
The following community sites -- plus PRI's The World -- updated today:
THIS JUST IN! THE BAD NEWS KEEPS COMING!
1 hour ago
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That ridiculous Elizabeth Warren3 hours ago
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The failure to preserve our history5 hours ago
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5 men, 1 woman5 hours ago
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The Woman in Red5 hours ago
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Memorial Day Cooking in the Kitchen5 hours ago
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Smash6 hours ago
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The Mamas and the Papas6 hours agoAnd Ruth's "Just say "no" to nukes" which isn't showing up on the link list currently. We'll close with this from Sherwood Ross' "Pentagon War Spending Stifling Overall Job Creation" (OpEd News):Far from being the best way to create jobs, the Pentagon’s $700-billion war-making budget only retards the nation’s job
growth, economists say.
“In fact, compared with...alternative uses, spending on the military is a poor source of job creation,” write economist Robert Pollin and professor Heidi Garrett-Peltier of the Political Economy Research Institute, Washington, D.C.
Whereas $1 billion of Pentagon spending will generate about 11,200 jobs within the U.S. economy, the same sum would create about 16,800 clean energy jobs, 17,200 healthcare jobs, and 26,700 education jobs, they assert.
Those areas will produce between 50 and 140 percent more jobs than the same money spent by the Pentagon, the authors write in the May 28th issue of “The Nation” magazine.
Plus, non-”defense” investments also create larger numbers of decent- to good-quality jobs than the military, as
well as many more low-paying jobs, Pollin and Garrett-Peltier argue.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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