An Afghan girl holds a toy received from US soldiers who have been delivering aid, including blankets, shoes and radios to villagers in Paktika Province, Afghanistan. (BBC)

Aafia Siddiqui

Aafia Siddiqui has been sentenced to 86 years in prison for allegedly taking an M-4 rifle away from a US Army warrant officer and firing it twice at him and other Americans in a small room, although no bullet fragments or shell casings from the M-4 were found at the scene of the crime, and Aafia Siddiqui’s fingerprints were not found on the M-4. The only bullets and casings found there came from the pistol with which the Americans shot Aafia Siddiqui twice in the stomach, and…

The only evidence against Aafia Siddiqui was the testimony of the men who shot her.

“It seems extraordinary to imagine that four U.S. agents who’d gone to pick her up – two military, two FBI – along with at least two Afghan translators, were somehow surprised by this woman, who overpowered them, grabbed a gun, flipped the safety, fired off a couple of shots, and then could only be subdued by shots to the torso,” said the Asia-Pacific director of Amnesty International, Sam Zarifi.

NATO patrol in Oruzgan Province, Afghanistan

A donkey in Wardak Province, Afghanistan

The population of Wardak Province, Afghanistan is blah blah. The history of Wardak is blah blah. The politics of Wardak is blah blah. The demographics of Wardak is blah blah.

And that’s all America wants to know.

Now look at the donkey!

5th Century AD Hephthalite coin of King Lakhana

The Hephthalites were a Central Asian nomadic confederation of the AD 5th-6th centuries whose precise origins and composition remain obscure. According to Chinese chronicles, they were originally a tribe living to the north of the Great Wall and were known as Hoa or Hoa-tun. Elsewhere they were called White Huns.

(Wikileaks transcript of CIA intercept translated from Arabic by Jacob Freeze)

“Marwan! Let us plan how strike America! Xmas terrorisms I am visualize!”

“Excellently you is think, Mohamed! Plan, then fly most direct New York outgoing nearby Hamburg International Airport!!!”

“No. Got to plan Xmas terrorisms from ass-hole of nowhere!”

A nest of al Qaeda in the Nari District of Kunar Province, Afghanistan

“Where what? Say to me not you is meaning back of beyond aka Naray (Nari), on no road nowhere no electric nothing Afghan crevasse/jumblejumble, where those there indigenous human him only got beans for eat/sell!”

Planning Xmas terror in Nari Kunar!

“How go thou in/out, Mohamed?”

“Fly Hamburg Karachi, Karachi Kabul, Kabul Jalalabad, buy donkey, walk/ride 34 days.”

“Why?”

“Got to meet there with al Qaeda mastermind!”

The Green Mosque is almost the only building left standing in ancient Balkh, Mother of Cities.

The most popular poet in America was born here in AD 1207.

Can you make a mirror out of straw and mud?

But sweep away mud and straw

and a mirror may be revealed!

Everything that exists is an empire of delight.

Jesus was delighted by the love of God.

His donkey was delighted by oats.

You entered this world as a nameless star

and now you ask me

“How can I find my way through the night?”

Forget your name

and let the love inside you light up the sky!

Azeri Folk Life carpet from Nuristan Province, Afghanistan

The Turkmen who came out of Central Asia into Persia and the Ottoman Empire were Oghuz and now their descendents speak a dialect of Northern or Southern Azeri.

The Kizil Ajak are considered to be one of the identifiable component tribes of the old Ersari Confederation. The Kizil Ajak are one of the Turkmen tribes in Northern Afghanistan that was south of the Russian market influence in the 19th century and consequently have a distinctly different look.

Cows, ducks, goats, pheasants, chickens, walnut and almond orchards, oak and mulberry groves…

This is the fabric of life for most of Afghanistan, but for American “nation-builders” the infinite spectrum of Afghan folkways and tribal allegiances transplanted from all over Southwest Asia and the Middle East is nothing but an impediment in the course of cultural, social, and economic development which inevitably culminates in global capitalism and our own shit-culture.

Rock with a fucking hole in it

A pile of shit-law appears below this Wikipedia image of “art” by some idiot.

“To the uploader: please add a detailed fair use rationale for each use.”

Okay! So here’s my detailed fair-use rationale:

Fuck off and die!

And here’s my detailed fair-use rationale for the expression “Fuck off and die!”

Staff Sgt. Justin E. Schmalstieg

Renee Drummond-Brown, whose son, Specialist Cardell Nino Brown, was close friends with Mr. Schmalstieg, described him as “a very brilliant mind.” She said Mr. Schmalstieg spent so much time at her house as a child that she considered him a son.

Even as a child he was unusually quiet and calm, she said, traits that would have served him well as a bomb technician.

“He was the one with the peaceful spirit,” she said.

Spec. Sean R. Cutsforth

His wife said he played football as well as baseball at Brentsville, and was also on a traveling youth baseball team. She said Cutsforth received a scholarship to Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk and spent three semesters there. He studied recreation and leisure activities and coached swimming.

She said she is expecting a child. It’s a boy, she said.

“Them as a couple, they really completed each other,” said Beth Whitaker, a family friend. “They were each other’s best friends.”

Lance Cpl. Jose A. Hernandez

Mirna Collazo, Hernandez’s ex-girlfriend, thought of a promise that Hernandez made before he was deployed to Afghanistan. Collazo said that she and Hernandez dated for about four months, but separated in large part because he didn’t want her to carry the burden of his fighting in a war.

“He always said, ‘I don’t want it to be hard on you,'” Collazo said. “But little did he know, it still is. He said, ‘If you promise me that you’re going to see me when I get back, I’ll promise you that I’ll come back.’ Now I’m just left with his promise.”

While the liberal blogosphere and mainstream media obsessed about Julian Assange (He’s just like us bloggers and reporters, only way sexier!), and devoted any left-over time to DADT (1100 Americans might have to change careers!), meanwhile in the cold hard world that mostly doesn’t give a fuck about symbolic issues…

North and South Korea have lurched to the brink of nuclear war.

An unofficial US envoy visiting North Korea has warned that the situation on the peninsula is a “tinderbox”. The envoy, Bill Richardson, made the comments after talks with officials in Pyongyang, whom he asked to exercise “extreme restraint”.

He said he had urged them to let South Korea go ahead with planned live-firing exercises on an island which was shelled by the North last month.

North Korea has warned it will launch “unpredictable self-defensive strikes” if the drill goes ahead on the island of Yeonpyeong, which lies close to the disputed inter-Korean western maritime border.