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Feb 10 2011
Obama Budget Proposal To Cut Energy Assistance For The Poor
And now for another dose of hope and change from our closet-Republican President!
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, would see funding drop by about $2.5 billion from an authorized 2009 total of $5.1 billion. The proposed cut will not touch the program’s emergency reserve fund, about $590 million, which can be used during particularly harsh cold snaps or extended heat spells, three officials told National Journal.
In 2010, Obama signed into law an omnibus budget resolution that released a total of about $5 billion in LIHEAP grants for 2011. Pointing to the increasing number of Americans who made use of the grants last year, advocates say that LIHEAP is already underfunded. The American Gas Association predicts that 3 million Americans eligible for the program won’t be able to receive it unless LIHEAP funding stays at its current level.
Feb 08 2011
Rybolov’s Photostream from Ghazni Province, Afghanistan
I recropped and slightly enhanced these three photographs from a Flickr photostream signed “rybolov” (http://www.flickr.com/photos/rybolov/) as he very kindly allows under a creative commons licence, and IMHO they represent life in Afghanistan for most of the people who live there just about as directly as almost any of us are ever likely to see it.
Feb 07 2011
Typical Products of Afghanistan and the USA
Judging from the archaeological evidence, we can only conclude that Afghanistan was invaded by primitive “beer-tribes” from beyond the sea.
Feb 06 2011
A Kindergarten Revolution in Northeast Africa
Juan Cole’s website is apparently assembled by an IRC-era net-bot with simple instructions like “Cole-Bot, get Egypt video!”
“5 Year Old Child Heads Demo in Alexandria Egypt!”
“And the wolf will lie down with the lamb, and a little child shall lead them!” -Isaiah 11:16
So judging from the Juan-Cole-Bot and genius reporters like Christiane Amanpour (“The Muslim Brotherhood only wants to support civilian democracy!”), you might think that Northeast Africa is a democratic paradise, except where the USA is propping up a demon like Hosni Mubarak!
So let’s take a little tour of the other prosperous, peaceful, and democratic regimes of that blessed region!
Immediately to the south we find ourselves in the Republic of the Sudan, which virtually nobody calls a “client-state” of the USA, and yet somehow even without the intervention of the Great Satan, those highly independent Muslims have managed to kill a few hundred thousand of their fellow citizens, and then a few hundred thousand more, and then..
Likewise neighboring Libya subscribes to the democratic principle of “one man, one vote,” except that the “one man” is Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, and his “one vote” is the only vote that counts.
And yet again, although nobody calls Libya a “client-state” of the USA, it isn’t easy to discover anything that most of us would recognize as “democracy.”
Rounding out the top right-hand corner of Africa we arrive at the Republic of Chad, where civil war raged for no less than 30 years between independence in 1960 and the ascension of General Idriss Déby around 1990, and General Déby still rules that unfortunate country 21 years later, and continually justifies his ranking as the 15th worst dictator in the world!
And once again, even without American support, Chad has somehow evolved into one of the most corrupt and un-free countries on the face of the earth!
But Egypt would have naturally developed into blissful democracy, except for the Great Satan’s puppet, Hosni Mubarak!
And a little child shall lead them!
Harharharhar!!!
Feb 05 2011
5,000,000 Disappeared Workers, and 20,000,000 Missing Jobs
The front-page measure of unemployment declined in January 2011 from 9.4% to 9%, which translates into a decrease of about 600,000 in the number of unemployed Americans, but the official survey of new jobs showed an increase of only about 36,000,
So how did 36,000 jobs reduce unemployment by 600,000?
According to the usual mob of media pundits, it’s a very big mystery!
“It’s all a mystery,” said Robert Brusca, chief economist at F.A.O. Economics.
“Given the confounding nature of this report, we will have to wait at least another month to see if the labor market is rebounding strongly,” said Heidi Shierholz, of the Economic Policy Institute.
“We don’t believe the extent of the drop in the unemployment rate,” said Stuart Hoffman, an economist at PNC. “It’s like funhouse mirror image, although I don’t know if there’s anything funny about it.”
“Who the hell can make sense of this report? It’s distorted. It’s definitely distorted.”
But it’s only as mysterious as corporate-media tools want to make it, and the difference between 600,000 and 36,000 is just another weak signal emitted by dark matter beyond the fringe of our phony economic “recovery.”
Feb 05 2011
Egyptian Mobs Enforce Female Genital Mutilation
But where’s the video?
Where’s the video of mobs in Cairo enforcing genital mutilation?
Show us the video! Or better still…
Send us a tweet!
Because…
All we “geniuses” of the liberal blogosphere and all we “geniuses” of the progressive blogosphere and all we “geniuses” of the mainstream media actually know about Egypt is what we saw in a video, or read in a tweet!
More than 95 percent of Egyptian women had been circumcised, with the highest levels in poor families living in rural areas of the Nile valley in southern Egypt, according to an Egyptian Demographic and Health Survey conducted in 2005.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
And if the people want to mutilate the genitalia of every little girl in Egypt, what kind of anti-democratic tyrant would ruthlessly oppose them?
That would be Hosni Mubarak, and especially his wife, Suzanne.
The wife of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Suzanne, is lending her prestige to a national campaign against practices harmful to women, in particular female genital mutilation (FGM).
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a deeply entrenched cultural tradition practiced by various ethnic groups in more than 28 countries on the African continent. The practice is also found among populations in countries on the Arabian peninsula, in the Middle East, and in Southeast Asia.
With the recent increase in emigration of African populations, African immigrants have imported the practice of FGM to Europe and other Western countries. Serious attention to the enactment of preventative measures against FGM in Western countries can no longer be postponed. To this end, AIDOS (Italian Association for Women in Development), NPWJ (No Peace Without Justice) and TAMWA (Tanzanian Media Women’s Association) have obtained the financial support of the European Union and other donors to execute an international “STOP FGM” Campaign. Seven other NGOs from Mali, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Egypt, Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya are also taking part.
So Suzanne Mubarak isn’t just leading the charge against female genital mutilation in Egypt, she’s leading the charge for 500,000,000 women all over Africa!
And so what?
POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
Cut those little girls!
Mubarak bad. Mob good.
We know, because we saw it in a video!
And since you love those videos so much, check out this classic!
And now you know what you’re cheering for, when you cheer for those “democratic” mobs in the streets of Cairo!
But don’t forget who’s cheering with you!
The men in this poor farming community were seething. A 13-year-old girl was brought to a doctor’s office to have her clitoris removed, a surgery considered necessary here to preserve chastity and honor.
The girl died, but that was not the source of the outrage. After her death, the government shut down the clinic, and that got everyone stirred up.
“They will not stop us,” shouted Saad Yehia, a tea shop owner along the main street. “We support circumcision!” he shouted over and over.
“Even if the state doesn’t like it, we will circumcise the girls,” shouted Fahmy Ezzeddin Shaweesh, an elder in the village.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
Jan 20 2011
Old News from Qala-e-Ragh, Chora, Oruzghan, Afghanistan
“It was 4 hours in the night when I heard a noise and some five or more bombs exploded. The bombs fell right on our house.”
“I was under the rubble themselves. People pulled me out. I was unconscious. They took me to the hospital in Tarin Kowt. Ten days I stayed there when I went to Kandahar for more specialized care.”
“There they told me that almost all my relatives were killed.”
Jan Mohammed Sultan lost his wife, six of his nine sons, two of his three daughters, a host of grandchildren, nieces and nephews and in-laws as his sister.
“The government says that the dead were Taliban.”
“It is not allowed to show the faces of women. But my sons showed the relatives to government representatives to prove that the Taliban were not. Also, they let the children see.
“Why you threw bombs on them?” they asked.
All quotes above were translated by Google from http://uruzgan-slachtoffers.bl…
Jan 19 2011
“Getting Even” for 9/11, Again and Again
On January 2, 2002, the total number of civilians killed by American bombs in Afghanistan surpassed the number of Americans who died in the WTC on 9/11, but as far as I can determine, no one in the United States commemorated the ninth anniversary of that grim milestone, on January 2, 2011, and we’re still “getting even” or “getting ahead” by killing more and more civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq and sacrificing the lives of more and more of our own brave soldiers even now, more than nine years later.
Jan 18 2011
Jared Loughner’s Convenient Craziness
Until he started shooting, Jared Loughner was just another alienated semi-delinquent still living with mom and dad, and this demographic is now so populous that one of Obama’s signature “accomplishments” was extending mom and dad’s health insurance to cover their low-functioning twenty-something kiddies.
Then Loughner shot a Blue Dog Democrat and a federal judge, and every little fuck-up retroactively turned into crazy.
This is a very reassuring diagnosis for Blue Dogs and federal judges, while they sell out all of us to “corporate persons.”
“You would have to be crazy to shoot us, no matter how much we fuck you over.”
Jan 16 2011
Ethnic Minorities of Southern Afghanistan
Afghanistan is a land of many ethnic minorities!
Some of the ethnic minorities of Afghanistan are the Pushtun, Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik, Aimaq, Baluchi, Afghan Hindus, Afghan Sikhs, Hazara, Nuristani, Pahai, Brahui, Pamiri, Kyrgyz, Arab, Gujjar, Kurd, Tatar, Wakhi, Ashkunu, Kamkata-viri, Vasi-vari, Tregami, Kalasha-ala, Hindko, Shughni, Munji, Ishkashimi and Qizilbash.
(Americans who have an opinion about anything related to Afghanistan are invited to write a brief essay about each of those tribes!)
The many ethnic minorites of Afghanistan are mainly united by their national cuisine, in which fetal remains of dogs and bunnies are suspended in aspic and either baked or eaten raw.
And it’s just this unique combination of xenophobia, delicious food, mutual incomprehension and hostility among more than 30 ethnic minorities, and five-star accomodations that makes Afghanistan an eternally popular destination for military tourists!
Note: I gleaned most of the information in this essay from online sources in Brahui, a Dravidic language which originated in South India and gradually lost about 85% of its original vocabulary during 2000 years of exile in Afghanistan, and apart from the usual difficulties of translating hybrid-pidgin-gibberish, some additional inaccuracies may have been introduced by taqiyya, or taqiyah, which is either a short round cap or the Islamic practice of lying about more or less everything to avoid religious persecution.
