So I want to share three stories with the people here, but I honestly can’t decide which one to post tonight. So I’m doing all three. Why not?
First, the bad news.
Apparently, a “Thursday Night Massacre” in Afghanistan, where we blew up a tanker truck and killed at least 90 people and wounded more, almost all of whom were civilians, happened at 2:30 a.m. on the biggest party night of the week.
In short, it happened while everybody was blind stinking drunk.
There are seven bars on half-square mile Isaf compound. One insider told the Times: ‘Thursday nights are the big party nights, because Friday’s a ‘low-ops’ day. They even open a bar in the garden at headquarters.‘There’s a ‘two can’ rule but people ignore it and hit it pretty hard.’
The airstrike occurred at 2.30am on Friday morning.
Although McChrystal is publicly saying that alcohol was not a factor in the strike itself (yeah right), check out the evidence to the contrary:
General Stanley McChrystal has banned alcohol at the International Forces in Afghanistan headquartersAlcohol has been banned from Nato’s headquarters in Afghanistan in the wake of an airstrike that killed up to 70 civilians.
US General Stanley McChrystal, head of the International Forces in Afghanistan (Isaf), decided to bar boozing after launching an investigation into the bombing in northern Afghanistan.
Staff at the Kabul headquarters were ‘either drunk or too hungover’ to answer his questions.
Yeah it sounds like alcohol played no part whatsoever in the strike. Sure, Stanley, we believe you.
I guess we’re all just getting used to our country having a human-sacrifice machine that would have made the Aztecs proud. It’s about as nice as that grinder they throw the male baby chicks into. Seems there’s more outrage about baby chicks being ground up because they can’t make eggs than there is about the tax-payer funded and supported human atrocities occurring on a daily basis halfway around the world.
But hey, it’s not REALLY affecting us, is it? So it’s okay. I can still watch my football games and buy my lattes at Starbucks, so I REALLY don’t have to worry about it.
And heck, it’s even making some people VERY HAPPY? Who?
Well, it’s winning Obama some Very Important Fans. The people who brought you The Rape of Iraq, the neocons themselves!
They LOVE what Obama is doing in Afghanistan. And they wrote him a letter to prove to him, and the world, just how much they admire him for this.
Don’t Worry, Obama, The Neocons Have Your Back!
This writer puts is extremely well:
By Steve HyndIt is simply ludicrous that any think-tank founded by Robert Kagan, William Kristol, and Dan Senor should be self-described as a “non-partisan organization”. Who do they think they’ll fool? The Foreign Policy Initiative is a reconstituted Project For A New American Century, as is plain from the list of signatories appended to a letter telling President Obama that they support his escalation of the Afghan occupation. It’s a who’s who of the neocon leadership past and present, of the people who brought you Quagmiraq and Quagmiristan in the first place …
(snip)
If you lay down with dogs, you’ll get up with fleas. It’s time to begin drawing bright lines in the Af/Pak debate. The Obama administration and its neoliberal interventionist supporters have aligned themselves with the neocons, the instigators of so much atrocious American foreign policy. That bipartisan consensus of hawks is opposed by another bipartisan consensus of progressives and realist conservatives who oppose escalation, and by the bulk of the American public.
Progressives need to start asking themselves if they’re at all comfortable with Obama’s allies.
Yup, I’m sure glad I voted for Obama. He doesn’t seem to care about what the American people think, but he sure wants to keep those Neocons happy!!! And that’s what’s really important, isn’t it? You know it is.
Pardon me while I puke, okay ….?
Okay, back from puking!
Now here’s the good news. It’s a tiny story, out of poverty-striken Nepal, but it’s just extremely cool.
A new type of solar panel using human hair could provide the world with cheap, green electricity, believes its teenage inventor.Milan Karki, 18, who comes from a village in rural Nepal, believes he has found the solution to the developing world’s energy needs.
The young inventor says hair is easy to use as a conductor in solar panels and could revolutionise renewable energy.
‘First I wanted to provide electricity for my home, then my village. Now I am thinking for the whole world,’ said Milan, who attends school in the capital, Kathmandu.
The hair replaces silicon, a pricey component typically used in solar panels, and means the panels can be produced at a low cost for those with no access to power, he explained.
On a day when a terrific essay here was written by a 16 year old, I am happy to celebrate the work of the world’s teenagers! Now if I could only get my own 13 year old off of Facebook.
Gotta love that. Good old American Nepalese ingenuity!
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but I wanted to send on an “up” note.
Hard to find those.
Swedish hospital over there,too, against agreements. What a screw up! What does it take for O to get our troops home?
Isn’t it plain to see if Kristol agrees and praises you, Obama, it’s time to do something different.
Dear Obama, if you want to do the right thing you do the opposite of what the Right wants! Common fucking sense!!
Introduce you spawn to http://www.instructables.com/
s/he can learn to built some interesting doohickeys and be cool with his/her friends. It can’t hurt… well, it could so have band aids ready.
Your tax dollars at work:
HQ USAFE had a top secret facility that used a $70,000 retina scanner for access to one of it’s levels. One day I noticed that people had stopped using it. I asked why and was told that their commander had deactivated the thing because too many people weren’t able to get in. After a night of drinking, their eyes were too bloodshot to make it through the scanner.
Possible good rumor from the alts is that Obama may “go for” a UFO extra-terrestrial alien disclosure in December, though I highly doubt it.
Kid must be a Maoist!
🙂
don’t get news about this on any MSM. CNN as I clicked by last week had some official ambassador or another being interviewed by Anderson Cooper and the dialog/propaganda was just the same as the early days in Irag. The background looked the same, the enemy is the same and we are just shifting or moving the ‘theater’ as the killers call it.
Between NATO’s drinking binges and the US Embassy Guards Lewd and Deviant behavior in our Embassy in Afghanistan, it’s no wonder that the war has been going on for 8+ years, with no progress. There apparently is a total breakdown of discipline and with unlimited funding by the US taxpayer supporting neverending partying by louts.