Word of the Day for Thursday, June 01, 2006

junta \HUN-tuh, JUHN-tuh\, noun:

1. A governmental council or committee, especially one that rules after a revolution.

2. A closely knit group united for a common purpose and usually meeting secretly; also called a junto.

His greatest fear, said Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel laureate and ardent foe of military rule, is that with the death of one tyrant, the world will not press for the entire junta to step aside.
— “Nobel Winner Calls for Nigerian Ruler to Release Political Prisoners”, New York Times, June 12, 1998

The Greek junta that seized power during 1967 mobilized the courts against its foes.
— Charles S. Maier, Dissolution

Two days after the coup, the junta announced that General Videla had been designated President of the Nation.
— Marguerite Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror

Still, the resemblance to political revolution is, in important ways, only metaphorical. Computer nerds aside, there is no junta driving this process of change.
— Andrew L. Shapiro, The Control Revolution

Junta comes from the Spanish word for “joined” (hence, a group of persons joined for a common purpose), from Latin junctus, past participle of jungere, “to join.”

Phish: Junta. Its true.

Originally Posted By Rayman1:
Just reading some of the posts on the Zarqawi stuff. I’m currently working in Baghdad doing intel/security work and my daily grind is dealing with these things. Zarqawi is a Sunni from Jordan and his kind are very much the minority here. His group is attributed to several beheadings, execution killings, bombings, etc. but nothing of major note in comparison to what the Shiite-dominated security forces we put in place here are doing to the people and us.

He more than likely got his AKS-74U from his Chechen merc buddies who came here as snipers. And yes, there are a lot of US weapons out here to include M4’s, M16A2’s, SAW’s, and 240B’s. Getting ammo for them is a problem, though. But they pump out videos in the marketplaces showing attacks on convoys, etc. and grabbing up our guys’ guns and equipment. Most of those scenes are 2003-2004 dated. However, they do have a lot of our stuff.
(more…)