Author's posts
Dec 07 2010
Senseless Death in the Korengal Valley
Spec. Pedro A. Maldonado was killed by “insurgents” near the village of Kandalay in the Korengal Valley, in Kunar Province, Afghanistan on October 29, 2010, and I did a sort of double-take about this story when I finally saw it yesterday, because…
After years of sustained fighting and casualties with little evident progress, the US military closed Korangal Outpost on April 14, 2010. Forty-two American service men died fighting in the Korangal and hundreds were wounded, primarily between the years of 2006 and 2009. Many Afghan soldiers died there as well, in part because they had poorer equipment. The valley has been dubbed “The Valley of Death” by American forces.
Dec 06 2010
Babur the Beaver Captures Kabul
Dec 05 2010
Obama’s Massive Environmental Deregulation
From the Center for Public Integrity
The administration has awarded more than 179,000 “categorical exclusions” to stimulus projects funded by federal agencies, freeing those projects from review under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Coal-burning utilities like Westar Energy and Duke Energy, chemical manufacturer DuPont, and ethanol maker Didion Milling are among the firms with histories of serious environmental violations that have won blanket NEPA exemptions.
Some polluters reported their stimulus projects might cause “unknown environmental risks” or could “adversely affect” sensitive resources, the documents show. Others acknowledged they would produce hazardous air pollutants or toxic metals. Still others won stimulus money just weeks after settling major pollution cases. Yet nearly all got exemptions from full environmental analyses, the documents show.
The Center for Public Integrity found some “ironies” in the fine print, and Obama’s stooges made a few excuses, but IMHO the scale of this thing makes any kind of commentary more or less superfluous.
179,000 “categorical exclusions” from environmental regulations!
Dec 05 2010
Obama Isn’t Weak, He’s a Traitor
Barry, Penny, and Michelle
In his column posted December 2, Paul Krugman describes Barack Obama’s apparent “moral collapse” and “a complete failure of purpose and loss of direction” in the White House, and by endorsing an interpretation of Obama’s ridiculous antics which is now so common that even the Obamabot hive at Daily Kos is buzzing with it, Prof. Krugman gets himself tangled up in a variety of mysteries.
The real question is what Mr. Obama and his inner circle are thinking. Do they really believe, after all this time, that gestures of appeasement to the G.O.P. will elicit a good-faith response?
What’s even more puzzling is the apparent indifference of the Obama team to the effect of such gestures on their supporters.
What a puzzle! What can Team Obama possibly be thinking?
But maintaining the theory that Obama is really a good-hearted klutz who trips all over himself while he’s trying to do the right thing now requires the addition of so many fantastical epicyles to keep it spinning that we should probably just junk it, and look for the star around which Obama and his satellites obviously revolve, and that star is the banks.
Dec 04 2010
An Aryana War-Rug From Faryab Province, Afghanistan
Faryab is often called one of the most peaceful provinces in Afghanistan, which means that most of the towns and cities have only been destroyed three or four times in the last hundred years, and in the more distant past, Faryab Province is named for a town which was destroyed by the Mongols in 1220.
Turkoman Aryana weavers originally migrated to Faryab Province from neighboring Turkmenistan to escape brutal Stalinist sovietization around 1930, and many of them emigrated again to the Northwest Frontier of Pakistan after 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and many others likewise after 1991, when the ethnic Pashto Taliban closed down most of the schools, burned down most of the government buildings, and generally tormented the ethnic Turkoman and Uzbek population.
Dec 03 2010
Why Daily Kos Is Probably Wrong About Obama, Again
The recent transformation at Daily Kos from non-stop cheerleading for Obama into bitterly critical diaries at the top of their popularity list reminds me of my last term as a destitute graduate student in 1999, when I couldn’t even afford to ride a bus, and used to walk home from the library late at night through a series of black, Latino, and Native American slums.
After midnight I was more or less alone on the street except for a few gang-bangers who usually recognized me as that guy who taught basic reading skills at the local juvenile prison, out of books by Malcolm X and César Chávez and Russell Means’ autobiography, Where White Men Fear to Tread.
About halfway home I would pass a halfway house for mentally challenged individuals, many of them only recently emancipated from unpleasant institutions or exhausted families. There were almost always three or four residents socializing on their front porch until two or three o’clock in the morning, and after a few nights of getting-to-know-you banter back and forth we quickly became friends.
Promptly at 1 AM all of us would rush inside for the late-night weather report on TV, and we played a crazy game with the weatherman.
“Current temperature is 72 degrees Fahrenheit, 22 Celsius, clear skies and a gentle breeze from the southwest,” and we had been outside in exactly that weather only moments before. But someone would immediately scream…
“Sleet and freezing rain!”
“Tornado warnings for the Greater Boston Metro!”
“Hail-stones bigger than Toyotas!”
“Earthquake in the Back Bay!”
Dec 03 2010
Obscure Demonstrations in Daykundi Province
People in Daikondi have been demonstrating for several days, asking the government and international community to discharge the corrupt governor Orazgoni and a judge accused of sexual abuse, Shirzad. They also want the immediate release five individuals who were imprisoned for disclosing information about official corruption and sexual abuse in Daikondi.
There has been no notice by the Afghan government or local or international media.
March 8 2010, 4000 women assembled to pray for peace in Daikundi Province, and that’s all I could find out about the image above, although I searched through Google with a whole variety of search-terms, and accidentally learned that 81 women have incinerated themselves in nearby Herat Province so far this year.
A Hazara girl campaigns for Hamid Karzai in Daikundi Province
Dec 02 2010
Will Somebody Save Docudharma, or What?
So what’s happening? Will DD just vanish one day with no further notice?
Apparently Edger was the leading contender to keep it going, but if that doesn’t happen, how about the incredibly hard-working blogger, gjohnsit, along with dharmasyd and some other regulars as an editorial board?
I’m willing to contribute some money, but nobody tells me anything about what it costs to maintain the site!
Step up, people!
The bad guys are winning everywhere, and one less established progressive site is gravy for them!
Dec 01 2010
Flying Candy in Paktia Province, Afghanistan
Operation Outreach Gardez volunteers toss candy to local children during a recent mission, October 24, 2010. The mission took place outside Forward Operating Base Lightning near a local Kuchi encampment, Gardez District, Paktia Province, Afghanistan. (Photo by U.S. Army Cpt. Kenneth Stewart, 17th Public Affairs Detachment)
Nov 30 2010
Jacob Freeze Exposes Phony Christians at Wall Street Journal
Brian Clegg has posted a review of Martin Bojowald’s new book about loop quantum gravity at the Wall Street Journal, but Mr. Clegg might have just as well spared himself the trouble of writing an intelligent summary of a very difficult book for Rupert Murdoch’s ultra-right-wing rag, because almost all the readers’ comments came from dim-witted creationists whose only interest in anything about science is denouncing Charles Darwin.
You cannot prove by any means that the central concept of one living God is untrue. Stop trying.
But why did reader Charles Sullins post this touching declaration on a thread about loop quantum gravity? God only knows, and it quickly got worse, as the pseudo-Christian spokesperson Keith Beveridge initiated a general attack on “secular Darwinism.”
By definition a world view should be balanced, practical, not too simple, not too complex, and match up fairly well with the world at large. Secular Darwinism fails on many of these accounts, most notably in my opinion in its self referential claim to truth in the face of its fundamental claim that there really is no truth, just molecules in motion.
And then it was God this and God that, for more than 100 comments on an article about loop quantum gravity!
But since you can read any number of articles and comments on those articles about almost any other subject except science in the WSJ without ever encountering the word “God” in any of them, I decided to ask Rupert Murdoch’s pseudo-Christian readership a couple of salient questions.
Nov 29 2010
A “Tree of Life” Carpet from Mazar-i Sharif
Baluchi “Tree of Life” carpet from Mazar-i Sharif
We were born on the ladder of bone
in the tenth generation of sorrowPeace was promised again and again
until even grief was broken
on the wheel of the sun
-Ghodi (trans. Jacob Freeze)
Nov 28 2010
A Photo from Kunduz, Kundûz, Qonduz, Qondûz, Konduz, Kondûz, Kondoz, or Qhunduz
Children playing in a puddle in Kunduz
On September 4, 2009 the German army incinerated about 100 civilians in Kunduz Province, Aghanistan, and because Germany wasn’t officially at war with the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, there was a remote possibility that the German soldiers responsible for this impressive massacre could be prosecuted for homicide.
So the Germans quickly…
…reclassified the Afghanistan deployment in February 2010 as an “armed conflict within the parameters of international law,” allowing German forces to act without risk of prosecution under German law.
Harharharhar!!!
Brilliant! Got a problem with killing a whole lotta people? Just call it “armed conflict,” and presto!
Alles in Ordnung!
A few months later Germany offered the families of victims about $5000 apiece, ex gratia, as they say, as a gift, without admitting liability.
This sum is comparable to the most expensive hunting license in the United States, which Arizona sells to non-residents for hunting buffalo:
$3755.