Kabul, 2005

Modernization Theory was invented by an ambitious academic at Harvard called Walt Whitman Rostow. He said that if you put the right technologies in place and educated key elites then the countries would inevitably develop into advanced capitalist societies. They would go through a series of logical stages (there were five) until you got what he modestly called “Rostovian Lift-off”.

Rostow laid out his theory in a book he called “The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto”.

Rostow’s theories obsessed the American development agencies and they came up with all sorts of ideas about how to turn countries like Afghanistan into modern democracies.

One of the oddest was the belief that it was possible to scientifically discover who the crucial “transitional personalities” were in the society. These were people who had underlying “capitalist personalities” that they were unaware of. A psychologist called David McClelland invented a way of discovering who had these traits – and techniques to then develop what he called “the need to achieve”. He was convinced you could use behavioural psychology to turn people throughout the world into model Americans.

McClelland worked tirelessly to prove his case. Here is one of his diagrams that shows that the frequency of achievement imagery in children’s books in the late 19th century leads inevitably to a rise in inventions in America as they grow up – as shown by the number of patented inventions.

From THE LOST HISTORY OF HELMAND, by Adam Curtis

A girl from Tora Bora

Who is this green-eyed child from Nangarhar Province? Why is she wearing so much make-up? Why are her face and hands so dirty?

In December 2001 American invaders almost captured Usama bin Laden in Tora Bora, a system of caves in the Pachir Wa Agam District of Nangarhar Province in Afghanistan, and all sorts of silly explanations supposedly explain how bin Laden got away, but after nine long years of total failure in every district of every province from Nimruz to Nuristan, the real explanation is obvious enough.

We Americans don’t understand fuck-all about Afghanistan, or any of the people in it.  

Badakhshan, Afghanistan

One of the problems with American plans for “reconstruction” in Badakhshan, Afghanistan is that most of the construction workers who show up for jobs don’t know how to hammer a nail, and this problem isn’t really so much a problem (which American know-how could supposedly solve) as it is a reminder that Afghanistan isn’t just another under-developed country. It isn’t even a medieval country.

It’s a pre-historic wasteland.

Here technology hasn’t significantly progressed since the foundation of Jericho, except in the lucrative but dangerous sub-field of refining raw opium into heroin, and junkies in the South Bronx probably understand more about existence in Badakhshan than all the experts in all the embassies in Kabul.

Tajik opium-addicts in Badakhshan, Afghanistan

(Photocredits: A.K. Kimoto)

Idiots at the Pentagon who constantly claim to recognize “suspected insurgents” through the tiny cameras in Predator drones as they destroy whole villages in Afghanistan…  

Idiots at the Pentagon who hire Blackwater assassins to murder “suspected insurgents” all over Pakistan and Afghanistan …

Those same idiots can’t even recognize the second-ranking commander of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour!

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

The headline from the New York Times shifts the blame to NATO and makes it all sound sort of reasonable.

NATO Is Razing Booby-Trapped Afghan Homes

House got a bomb in it? Knock it down!

But…

Abdul Rahim Khan, 50, a tribal elder from Spirwan in Panjwai District, claimed that in many cases the American troops had been destroying empty homes, even when there were not any explosives inside. However, military officers pointed out, searching empty homes was often too dangerous.

House maybe got a bomb in it? Knock it down!

Village maybe got a bomb in it?

Destroy the whole village!

In Arghandab District, for instance, every one of the 40 homes in the village of Khosrow was flattened by a salvo of 25 missiles, according to the district governor, Shah Muhammed Ahmadi, who estimated that 120 to 130 houses had been demolished in his district.

“And not just Khosrow, but many villages,” says the governor of Arghandab District.

“We had to destroy them to make them safe.”

There were about 6,115 state legislative elections in the United States in 2010, and…

In those 6,115 state legislative elections, Republicans picked a net gain of 998 seats from Democrats.

Republicans now hold 3,735 state legislative seats to 3,119 state legislative seats held by Democrats, a stunning reversal of power from 2006 and 2008.

Republicans have more seats in state legislatures than at any time since Reconstruction.  

So the last time Republicans exercised so much control over state legislatures, the leader of their party was Abraham Lincoln.

And of course Republicans also picked up 5 governorships and 6 Senate seats and 64 seats in the House of Representatives, and meanwhile there’s really nothing worth reporting about our absurd President and the rest of the Democratic “leadership.”

From the Assciated Press…

Before last month, there had never been a confirmed case of cholera in Haiti.

In March, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said cholera was “extremely unlikely to occur” in Haiti. There were no cholera bacteria there.

Then it did. Even more surprisingly, it did not first appear in a major port, an earthquake tent camp or an area where foreigners are concentrated, but instead along the rural Artibonite River.

Speculation keeps returning to that river and a base home to 454 U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal. They are perched on a babbling waterway called the Boukan Kanni, part of the Meille River that feeds into the Artibonite.

People living nearby have long complained about the stink in the back of the base and sewage in the river. Before the outbreak began they had stopped drinking from that section of the river, depending instead on a source farther up the mountain.

The CDC has said the strain of cholera in Haiti matches one found most prevalently in South Asia.

“It very much likely did come either with peacekeepers or other relief personnel,” said John Mekalanos, Harvard University microbiology chair. “I don’t see there is any way to avoid the conclusion that an unfortunate and presumably accidental introduction of the organism occurred.”

 From Computer World…

A report submitted to Congress on Wednesday by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission expressed concerns over what the commission claims is China’s growing ability to control and manipulate Internet traffic.

The report points to two specific incidents earlier this year where actions taken inside China had a direct impact on Internet traffic in the U.S. and other regions of the world.

The traffic hijacking affected U.S. government and military networks, including those belonging to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Department of Commerce, NASA and the U.S. Senate.

Commercial sites including those belonging to Microsoft, Dell and Yahoo were also affected.

It’s unclear if Chinese telecommunications firms did anything with the hijacked data, the commission said in its report. But the kind of access that Chinese authorities had to the data could enable surveillance of specific users or sites, disrupt transactions, prevent a user from establishing connections to specific sites or divert them to other spoofed sites, the report noted.

“Incidents of this nature could have a number of serious implications,” the report said.

“Incidents of this nature could have a number of serious implications.”

That’s sort of an understatement, isn’t it?

Instead of annihilating this beautiful site, why not give it to a bunch of smart, dedicated posters like Edger, Lady Libertine, LastHorseman, AmericanRiverCanyon, davidseth, Shaharazade, tahoebasha3, and bigsurtree, just to name a few who immediately occur to me.

It takes years to establish any kind of identity or rise above the level of background noise in the blogosphere! And now this high-profile progressive site will just vanish?

This is giving a beautiful gift to the bad guys!

So…

Exactly how much does it cost to keep Docudharma on the web?

Who wants to step up and take some responsibility to keep it going?

I can give some money, and if Edger, Lady Libertine, LastHorseman, AmericanRiverCanyon, davidseth, Shaharazade, tahoebasha3, and bigsurtree and other long-term contributors will run the show…

Then instead of leaving behind a black hole in the progressive blogosphere, which ain’t too healthy anyway…

Docudharma lives!

 

Who invaded Iraq on the basis of bullshit and killed 1,000,000 Iraqis?

It’s senile Uncle Sam, with a Viagra hard-on!

(image removed by request of Jeff Willis- ek hornbeck)

Uncle Sam, Jeff Willis, 2008

Who arrested 758,593 Americans for possession of marijuana in 2009?

It’s senile Uncle Sam, with a Viagra hard-on!

Who killed 500,000 Iraqi children between 1992 and 2000?

It’s senile Uncle Sam, with a Viagra hard-on!

Who bet his house and pension on exciting financial derivatives?

It’s senile Uncle Sam, with a Viagra hard-on!

4065 US airstrikes in Afghanistan only killed 19 civilians, so far this year!

The LA Times reported last week that in the first 10 months of this year, the number of Afghan civilians killed by U.S. and NATO fighters and bombers declined from 54 last year to 19 this year, a 65% drop.

And that’s the official story, as faithfully reported by ABC News, the Los Angeles Times, and many other outstanding representatives of the fearless and independent American press.

Harharharhar!!!