In March 2002 NATO launched Operation Anaconda in Paktia Province, Afghanistan, and most of the heavy fighting played out in the Zurmat District of that God-forsaken wasteland, where the Haqqani Network and other militias still continue to attack NATO outposts and each other and virtually every other living thing, and NATO adds its fair share to the carnage.

We now understand that the men killed were only trying to protect their families,” Brigadier General Eric Tremblay, spokesman for NATO-led forces, said in the statement. The three women were killed during the shooting, NATO said.

NATO had earlier said its troops had found the women already killed, bound and gagged, but later acknowledged that this was untrue. Troops who visited the scene had made the mistake after seeing the bodies bound in preparation for burial, it said.

There are a lot of orphans in Paktia Province.

Looking through DOD photos of soldiers on guard in Zabul Province, Afghanistan, I kept asking myself…

What are they guarding, in the middle of nowhere?

What are they guarding?

“Thanks to Jacqueline Novogratz, we only paid $80 for a delivery at our local
LifeSpring Hospital, and it only took us 53 days of begging on the street
@$1.50 per day to earn that below-market fee! God bless capitalism!
Death to public healthcare! Can you spare a dime?”

Neo-con spokesmodel Jacqueline Novogratz promotes “below-market” solutions for healthcare in the Third World. In her videos, she looks almost as good as Barack Obama!

Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?

Matt Taibbi asks this interesting question in the current issue of Rolling Stone, and answers…

Financial crooks brought down the world’s economy – but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them.

And after describing the chummy atmosphere of an all-day conference attended by “1,500 or so of the country’s leading lawyers who represent Wall Street, as well as some of the government’s top cops from both the SEC and the Justice Department,” where the best and brightest of the million-dollar lawyers who represent Wall Street were Assistant U.S. Attorneys or “prosecutors” for the SEC only yesterday, before they started collecting their deferred bribes, Taibbi gets right down to the nitty-gritty…  

But the real fireworks came when Khuzami, the SEC’s director of enforcement, talked about a new “cooperation initiative” the agency had recently unveiled, in which executives are being offered incentives to report fraud they have witnessed or committed. From now on, Khuzami said, when corporate lawyers like the ones he was addressing want to know if their Wall Street clients are going to be charged by the Justice Department before deciding whether to come forward, all they have to do is ask the SEC.

“We are going to try to get those individuals answers,” Khuzami announced, as to “whether or not there is criminal interest in the case – so that defense counsel can have as much information as possible in deciding whether or not to choose to sign up their client.”

Aguirre, listening in the crowd, couldn’t believe Khuzami’s brazenness. The SEC’s enforcement director was saying, in essence, that firms like Goldman Sachs and AIG and Lehman Brothers will henceforth be able to get the SEC to act as a middleman between them and the Justice Department, negotiating fines as a way out of jail time. Khuzami was basically outlining a four-step system for banks and their executives to buy their way out of prison. “First, the SEC and Wall Street player make an agreement on a fine that the player will pay to the SEC,” Aguirre says. “Then the Justice Department commits itself to pass, so that the player knows he’s ‘safe.’ Third, the player pays the SEC – and fourth, the player gets a pass from the Justice Department.”

So the “incentives” which the SEC offers cooperating Wall Street insiders include immunity from prosecution by the Justice Department, but they can wait until the SEC tips them off that prosecution is imminent, before they come forward.

This is a reward for whistle-blowing that only gets paid when the DOJ has already made its case, and the “cooperating witness” is useless, but he or she gets a free pass anyway.

And that isn’t speculation from some left-wing conspiracy theorist in a tin-foil hat.

It’s right out of the mouth of Robert Khuzami, the Director of Enforcement for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

HARHARHARHAR!!!

Amazon.com now sells used copies of Toilet Training the Retarded online for about $100.

There’s also one review.

I discovered this product and its one review by following an odd link from reddit.com on their page devoted to The Best Writing on Mathematics 2010…

#17 on this list was…

Quite Possibly the Best Collection of creative writing on the entire internet, which links to…

Proporta Elephant Camouflage Kit – NEW by proporta

In stock.

Price: £1,175,000.00  

Dispatched from and sold by Proporta.

And one of the products that customers who viewed the Elephant Camouflage Kit bought instead was “Toilet Training the Retarded.”    

The Wakhan Valley is the Afghanistan of Afghanistan. It’s bleak on a scale where the rest of Afghanistan is lush.

Photo-credit: Bill Weir

But even here, somebody ties a big white bow in this child’s hair every day of the year, although that particular dress is only for special occasions.

Young Americans for Freedom Kicks Out Ron Paul

The Young Americans for Freedom has voted the Texas congressman off its national advisory board in the aftermath of his straw poll win at CPAC over his positions on national security issues.

“Rep. Paul’s refusal to support our nation’s military and national security interests border on treason,” says YAF (Young Americans for Freedom) Director Jordan Marks.

Treason!

But about this Goldwater-era organization, Ron Paul’s political director only responded “I thought they were defunct.”

Not quite, and Wikipedia claims they still have chapters at “several” colleges.

So why was this news-worthy?

12 guys in a tree-house somewhere don’t like Ron Paul! So what?

But Google News returns 662 results for “Ron Paul YAF,” including the New York Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald, Wall Street Journal, CNN, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, Fox News, and the Los Angeles Times, which is to say, every major news organization in the United States.

And it’s all about 12 guys in a tree-house who don’t like Ron Paul!

Is it possible that Corporate News and its masters are terrified of Ron Paul, and grasping at every straw that might discredit him with the conservatives who will dominate Republican primaries in 2012?

Shawn Muhr’s father Dave Muhr and his sister, Erika Muhr-Burris

COON RAPIDS, Iowa – Dave Muhr took over the squat, yellow-brick auto repair shop on the eastern edge of this Carroll County village in 1982.

His youngest son, Shawn, was born two years later. Once the boy could walk, it seemed he’d set out to take over his dad’s business by fixing whatever he could – whether it was broken or not.

Spc. Shawn Muhr was killed by an IED in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on January 29, 2011. He was married to Winifred Olchawa, and had a stepchild, Diven.

A surprising number of Afghan immigrants whom I encountered in the Central Valley in California (mostly around Stockton and Modesto) were born in Parvan Province, and for a while I had the impression that Parvan must be a very big province indeed, but it isn’t, and almost half the people in Parvan Province depend on money that their relatives who were lucky enough to get a job in the USA send home. Some of those men have been working as agricultural laborers in the almond groves of the Central Valley for 40 years, and sending almost every penny they earned back to their families in Parvan Province, where it’s very, very hard to earn a living.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

-Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)