Representing yourself is a ....... lot of work if you expect to win. If you want to "make a statement" or "stand up to them" you're making a serious mistake. These people play for keeps and it's a big stakes game. So if you're not ready to play, don't put your money on the table. The court house is no place for pussies.

Even if you trust your lawyer, he may only be partially working for you. You see, after your case is over, he's still going to have to work in that court with that judge and with the lawyers of the opposing party. He's going to make sure that he gets paid and that the other lawyer gets paid, even if it's your money.
- perkel

War Tracker: Latest briefing

CNN.com - Seven U.S. POWs freed in Iraq - Apr. 13, 2003

It is one of the ironies of history that Aryan, a word nowadays referring to the blond-haired, blue-eyed physical ideal of Nazi Germany, originally referred to a people who looked vastly different. Its history starts with the ancient Indo-Iranians, Indo-European peoples who inhabited parts of what are now Iran, Afghanistan, and India. Their tribal self-designation was a word reconstructed as *arya- or *rya-. The first of these is the form found in Iranian, as ultimately in the name of Iran itself (from Middle Persian rn (ahr), “(Land) of the Iranians,” from the genitive plural of r, “Iranian”). The variant *rya- is found unchanged in Sanskrit, where it referred to the upper crust of ancient Indian society. These words became known to European scholars in the 18th century. The shifting of meaning that eventually led to the present-day sense started in the 1830s, when Friedrich Schlegel, a German scholar who was an important early Indo-Europeanist, came up with a theory that linked the Indo-Iranian words with the German word Ehre, “honor,” and older Germanic names containing the element ario-, such as the Swiss warrior Ariovistus who was written about by Julius Caesar. Schlegel theorized that far from being just a designation of the Indo-Iranians, the word *arya- had in fact been what the Indo-Europeans called themselves, meaning something like “the honorable people.” (This theory has since been called into question.) Thus “Aryan” came to be synonymous with “Indo-European,” and in this sense entered the general scholarly consciousness of the day. Not much later, it was proposed that the original homeland of the Indo-Europeans had been in northern Europe. From this theory, it was but a small leap to think of the Aryans as having had a northern European physiotype. While these theories were playing themselves out, certain anti-Semitic scholars in Germany took to viewing the Jews in Germany as the main non-Aryan people because of their Semitic roots; a distinction thus arose in their minds between Jews and the “true Aryan” Germans, a distinction that later furnished unfortunate fodder for the racial theories of the Nazis.

allied casualties of war in iraq:

American
102 killed
11 missing
7 prisoners of war
399 wounded

British
30 killed

lawyers are too worried about being ostracized by their community if they speak out against their fraternal brothers or sisters.

America has more laws and restrictions on the books than any country on earth. More people are incarcerated in America than Red China and Russia combined. More stupidity flows from our supposed free and democratic system than ever envisioned by any civilization in world history.

Even the toilet in your bathroom is regulated now and they can put
contractors or property owners in jail or fine them substantially if they
put a real toilet in. This is freedom they tell me.

- Roger Fredinburg, LIBERATE AMERICA NEXT, April 7, 2003

IRAQ WAR STATISTICS


Published April 4, 2003


• Casualties: Among U.S. troops, 52 dead, seven captured, 16 missing, according to the Pentagon and family members. Among British troops, 27 dead, none missing or captured.

• Time line: Thursday was the 15th day of the war, which began in Iraq on March 20.

• Iraqi deaths: No estimate of military casualties. Iraq says nearly 500 civilians have been killed.

• Bombs dropped in Iraq: 725 Tomahawk cruise missiles and more than 12,000 precision-guided munitions have been fired.

• Iraqi prisoners of war: U.S. forces are holding more than 4,500 prisoners of war, Central Command said. On Monday, British Defense Minister Geoff Hoon said there were 8,000 Iraqi prisoners of war in all.

• Oil: More than 600 oil wells and three oil refineries are under coalition control. About 50 oil trenches are afire around Baghdad.

startribune.com