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According to The Washington Post, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta who is stepping down soon has
decided to lift the ban for servicewomen to take part in hostilities. This year, women will be allowed to serve in the infantry, artillery, tank troops and special detachments. Boris Volkhonsky from the Russian Institute of Strategic Research gives more details. Nevertheless, army commanders retain the right not to allow women to take part in certain operations. In particular, service in such special detachments as the Navy Seals or Delta will so far remain unavailable to women (at least until 2016). Lifting the ban on women’s service in the combat troops of the US armed forces partially took place last year when the Pentagon announced quite a few activities available to women. Still, the most fervent activists were not satisfied with it. They were eager to play even more active roles. In November last year four servicewomen sued the Pentagon insisting on the ban for women to be involved in hostilities to be recognized as unconstitutional. They were supported by The American Civil Liberties Union. The arguments in favour of a full lift of the ban are, for example, that in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan where there is no definite frontline women actually take part in hostilities, so the existing rules should be adapted to life realities. In addition, as one of the plaintiffs pointed out, the ban on taking certain positions was an obstacle in her career and as a result meant sexual – sorry, I mean gender discrimination. However, we are not as much dealing with judicial subtleties here as with another grimace of contemporary western society where such high and noble things as equality, the absence of discrimination, etc., are completely distorted and turned into a farce. The struggle for the equality of women has brought absolutely abnormal results. In their ambition to outdo men in everything women sometimes violate all laws that seem to have been established by nature itself. Having gained the right to kill their own unborn babies, US women demand further expansion of their right to kill. Let’s remember the scandal about tortures and prisoner abuse in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. Women were among the cruellest torturers there. At present, women make about 14% in the US 1.4mln-strong armed forces. According to calculations, the lifted ban will open about 230,000 new vacancies. Objections to this decision can hardly be heard among loud approvals. The objections are that the permission for women to serve in small groups in which people are in permanent close contact will give rise to certain psychological, as well as physiological problems. However, after US President Barack Obama allowed open homosexuals to do military service objections about women seem negligible. The founder of the US Center for Military Readiness Elaine Donnelly says that “thirty years of studies, reports and actual experience have shown that in direct ground combat units – the infantry – women do not have an equal opportunity to survive or to help fellow soldiers to survive. The physical aspects of it are only part of the reason.” But this does not confuse women whoinsist on ‘equality’ and US law-makers who support them. Women’s eagerness to hold a rifle and shoot – no matter at whom – overrides all objections. In the 19th century great Russian poet Nikolay Nekrasov wrote in praise of Russian women that they were capable of stopping a horse at full tilt and entering a burning house. Still, the poet believed that women’s main virtue was that they held a baby in their arms and kept a child by the hand. Sadly, today’s feminists seem to have forgotten about women’s primary mission in their trigger-happy mood. Source: Voice of Russia
decided to lift the ban for servicewomen to take part in hostilities. This year, women will be allowed to serve in the infantry, artillery, tank troops and special detachments. Boris Volkhonsky from the Russian Institute of Strategic Research gives more details. Nevertheless, army commanders retain the right not to allow women to take part in certain operations. In particular, service in such special detachments as the Navy Seals or Delta will so far remain unavailable to women (at least until 2016). Lifting the ban on women’s service in the combat troops of the US armed forces partially took place last year when the Pentagon announced quite a few activities available to women. Still, the most fervent activists were not satisfied with it. They were eager to play even more active roles. In November last year four servicewomen sued the Pentagon insisting on the ban for women to be involved in hostilities to be recognized as unconstitutional. They were supported by The American Civil Liberties Union. The arguments in favour of a full lift of the ban are, for example, that in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan where there is no definite frontline women actually take part in hostilities, so the existing rules should be adapted to life realities. In addition, as one of the plaintiffs pointed out, the ban on taking certain positions was an obstacle in her career and as a result meant sexual – sorry, I mean gender discrimination. However, we are not as much dealing with judicial subtleties here as with another grimace of contemporary western society where such high and noble things as equality, the absence of discrimination, etc., are completely distorted and turned into a farce. The struggle for the equality of women has brought absolutely abnormal results. In their ambition to outdo men in everything women sometimes violate all laws that seem to have been established by nature itself. Having gained the right to kill their own unborn babies, US women demand further expansion of their right to kill. Let’s remember the scandal about tortures and prisoner abuse in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. Women were among the cruellest torturers there. At present, women make about 14% in the US 1.4mln-strong armed forces. According to calculations, the lifted ban will open about 230,000 new vacancies. Objections to this decision can hardly be heard among loud approvals. The objections are that the permission for women to serve in small groups in which people are in permanent close contact will give rise to certain psychological, as well as physiological problems. However, after US President Barack Obama allowed open homosexuals to do military service objections about women seem negligible. The founder of the US Center for Military Readiness Elaine Donnelly says that “thirty years of studies, reports and actual experience have shown that in direct ground combat units – the infantry – women do not have an equal opportunity to survive or to help fellow soldiers to survive. The physical aspects of it are only part of the reason.” But this does not confuse women whoinsist on ‘equality’ and US law-makers who support them. Women’s eagerness to hold a rifle and shoot – no matter at whom – overrides all objections. In the 19th century great Russian poet Nikolay Nekrasov wrote in praise of Russian women that they were capable of stopping a horse at full tilt and entering a burning house. Still, the poet believed that women’s main virtue was that they held a baby in their arms and kept a child by the hand. Sadly, today’s feminists seem to have forgotten about women’s primary mission in their trigger-happy mood. Source: Voice of Russia
someone who had suffered particularly as a result of her attempts a decade ago to alert the world to Armstrong's doping. "Emma O'Reilly is one of these people that I have to apologise to," said Armstrong, who had described the Irishwoman as "a prostitute and an alcoholic" in a bid to destroy her credibility. "She is one of these people that got run over, got bullied." O'Reilly was also one of the people who got sued by Armstrong in his aggressive strategy to suppress the truth of what he was doing. Asked by Winfrey how many others he'd sued, Armstrong replied: "To be honest, Oprah, we sued so many people I don't know... I was a guy who expected to get whatever he wanted and to control every outcome. It's inexcusable. There are people who will never forgive - I understand that." Contrary to what many in the cycling world had feared before the interview aired, Armstrong did not try and portray himself as the victim. "I don't look around and say 'Oprah, I am getting so screwed here'. Were there days early on when I said that? Absolutely, but those days are fewer and fewer and further and further in between." Occasionally during the interview, the 41-year-old revealed glimpses of the psychology that had helped him construct his 'one big lie'. "I went and looked up the definition of cheat," he told Winfrey, "and the definition is to gain an advantage on a rival or foe, but I didn't view it that way. I viewed it as a level playing field." In his view, "the issue of performance-enhancing drugs was 'We're going to pump up our tyres and we're going to put water in our bottles, and oh yeah, that too is going to happen'." Ultimately it appears that at the height of his fame Armstrong came to believe his own fairy tale of the cancer sufferer turned sporting champion. "This story was so perfect for so long," he explained. "You overcome the disease, you win the Tour de France seven times - it was this mythic, perfect story, and it wasn't true." Reaction to last night's interview was swift. Travis Tygart, head of USADA, the body who did most to bring Armstrong to justice, said: "Tonight, Lance Armstrong finally acknowledged that his cycling career was built on a powerful combination of 
Investors are dumping Facebook's stock, spooked by slowing revenue growth, the lack of a financial outlook and plans to spend more money in the coming months. Are they right? Only if they are thinking in the short term. Investors can expect Facebook's stock to be volatile for a few years. But analysts say those willing to wait will likely be rewarded - someday. "I view it as a tomorrow stock," says Christian Bertelsen, chief investment officer at wealth management firm Global Financial Private Capital. "The whole thing on Facebook is, look, if your time horizon is hourly, weekly or even monthly, this is not the stock for you," he adds. "You need to take a much longer-term view on it." That's about three or four years, he says. Founded in CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room in 2004, Facebook was a product of the PC era. Now, in the age of mobile computing, a growing number of people are accessing Facebook through their iPhones, Android gadgets and tablet computers. Yet Facebook is only now starting to figure out how to make money from its mobile audience. "The company is going through an almost painful transition from desktop to mobile," Baird analyst Colin Sebastian says. He calls Facebook "a speculative investment," but one with plenty of potential. "With almost one billion users, Facebook is amassing the most comprehensive user profile database in existence," Sebastian says. This, he adds, offers a "significant opportunity" to reap a big chunk of the global advertising market, which is currently at $500 billion a year. "Amazon comes to mind immediately," Bertelsen says. After that company went public in 1997, at the time mainly just an online bookstore, critics were quick to cry dot-com bust, call its business a broken, and so on. Today, it is the world's biggest online retailer, selling everything from DVDs to vacuum cleaners to Web storage. "Now they are the retailer to the world," he adds. 