Word: diem
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Times, the brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is a CIA source, providing bases for the CIA as well as the U.S. military and serving as a go-between with parts of the Taliban. If it sounds a lot like Vietnam when Vietnam started to really come apart, it is - President Diem's grotesquely corrupt brother was a CIA source and a noxious agent of influence...
...take it to the bank that the CIA knows all of this, just as it knew in the early '60s that Diem's brother was a corrupt thug. You can also be certain that the CIA would prefer to have untainted sources. But the bone-dry bed of reality in Afghanistan is that there are few if any to be had. In that country, you survive by renting clans, tribes and narcotics dealers, which comes with their unsavory business whether you like...
...other hand, if you think the competition has been buried under layers of scandal and crass commercialism, you may have never been a fan of the torch relay - and you might be incensed to learn that its roots lie in Nazi Germany. Carl Diem, the secretary-general of the 1936 Berlin Games, pitched the event as a way to infuse the Games with pageantry and buff the mythic image of the Third Reich. That year, on its way from Greece to Germany, the flame passed through Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia - all of which...
...have four years. To paraphrase Dylan Thomas, after the first four college years, there are no others. Carpe diem...
...squad still comprises unpaid amateurs (even in South Africa, they are not drawing match fees but a $50 per diem provided by the generosity of the ICC), many of whom look quite a bit older than their listed age. The Afghan National Cricket Academy in Kabul consists of four battered training nets and one bowling machine, a piece of equipment used by serious players to practice shots. When the power cuts out, which happens frequently in the Afghan capital, the machine can't be operated. These are the wretched resources used by the Afghans to compete against nations that have...