Author's posts
Apr 29 2011
Our Hopeless War
On February 28, 2011 Polish and American Soldiers with TF White Eagle in Ghazni Province Afghanistan hand out blankets, coats and school supplies in a small village near Ghazni City. Two days later the villagers burned the items in a protest against Coalition Forces. (US Army photo and caption by Ryan Perez.)
Apr 29 2011
Photo from Our Hopeless War in Afghanistan
On February 28, 2011 Polish and American Soldiers with TF White Eagle in Ghazni Province Afghanistan hand out blankets, coats and school supplies in a small village near Ghazni City. Two days later the villagers burned the items in a protest against Coalition Forces. (US Army photo and caption by Ryan Perez.)
Apr 28 2011
What Happens When You Tickle a Baby Penguin?
No political significance! It is what it is!
Apr 27 2011
“Gray Eagle Draws First Blood” in Afghanistan
Service sources have confirmed that the U.S. Army’s MQ-1C Gray Eagle UAS has participated in its first lethal combat engagements in Afghanistan.
“For QRC 2 we have already fired in anger and we have destroyed some of the enemy. So we had ‘a first.’ We had a Gray Eagle up there, we lased/self designated and we killed an enemy. Then we lased another target for an A-10 and it dropped something onto [the target] and also took out the enemy. So we are weapons capable.”
Apr 27 2011
“Gray Eagle Draws First Blood” in Iraq
Service sources have confirmed that the U.S. Army’s MQ-1C Gray Eagle UAS has participated in its first lethal combat engagements in Afghanistan.
“For QRC 2 we have already fired in anger and we have destroyed some of the enemy. So we had ‘a first.’ We had a Gray Eagle up there, we lased/self designated and we killed an enemy. Then we lased another target for an A-10 and it dropped something onto [the target] and also took out the enemy. So we are weapons capable.”
Apr 24 2011
Goodbye to Satoyama
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/na…
Radiation leaks from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant will force people in Iitatemura to abandon satoyama–natural woodlands near human communities. Residents of Nagadoro district in southern Iitatemura have been devoted to preserving the picturesque satoyama woodlands. A gentle stream burbles through the landscape, where residents grow vegetables.Hatsuo Sugishita, 61, who left his company to operate a stone processing and sales business in the town after he inherited a plot of land there, has cherished the satoyama with his wife, Takiko.
“We haven’t decided anything–where we’ll go or how to earn a living. If nobody lives in the satoyama, this place will soon be ruined. Even if we can come back, the satoyama can’t be returned to its original state,” Sugishita said. “I want people in the Kanto region who received the benefits of the nuclear power plant to understand our feelings.”
Apr 23 2011
All You Need To Know About American Movies
Two of these guys were combat photographers. The other guy is a hunky little actor who plays a combat photographer in a new American movie.
Apr 22 2011
“Fisherman shot dead in Indian nuke protest “
The funeral procession of the fisherman Tabrez Sayekar being taken out at
Sakhri Nate Village in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra on Wednesday.
(Photo: Vivek Bendre)
“The Maharashtra government has promised an inquiry into the death but also suggested the protests were politically motivated by the right-wing Shiv Sena Party and not based on genuine local concerns.”
No “genuine local concerns” about six huge reactors, on a coast with an average of four significant earthquakes every year!
In a slightly larger context, Shiv Sena (The Army of Shivaji) was originally a movement (instead of a political party) composed of Maharashtri Marathi-speaking peasants and laborers resisting the influence of much more prosperous immigrants from other Indian states who grabbed the best jobs in globalized Mumbai.
But after a few years party-leaders transformed this genuine indigenous movement first into shock-troops to break up Communist unions in Mumbai and later forged a political alliance with Rajiv Gandhi’s BJP, with its incoherent but definitely racist and anti-muslim hindutva agenda.
Apr 21 2011
Surprise! More Bad News from Fukushima!
An official at Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, admitted Wednesday that fuel of the plant’s No. 1 reactor could be melting.
Describing the possible meltdown, Matsumoto said it can be compared to a state in which molten fuel accumulates like lava.
So what happens if that red-hot nuclear lava melts through the bottom of the containment vessel?
Nobody knows.
And meanwhile, what’s happening at Reactor No. 2?
The core at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor has melted through the reactor pressure vessel, Democratic Congressman Edward Markey told a hearing on the nuclear disaster on Wednesday.
“I have been informed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the core of Unit Two has gotten so hot that part of it has probably melted through the reactor pressure vessel,” said Markey, a prominent nuclear critic in the House of Representatives.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has reported to a Cabinet Office safety panel that nuclear fuel pellets in the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors at the quake-hit Fukushima power station are believed to have partially melted.
And at No. 4?
Fukushima No. 4
100 tons of plutonium are stored in that beautiful facility!
Apr 20 2011
Orphans and Refugees in Parwan Province
I assume that these children are refugees, because you almost never see such an incoherent mix of costumes anywhere except the camps. Are they really orphans? What can I tell you? They’re dirty, they’re alone, and they look like orphans to me.
This photo shows up on three or four websites devoted to Parwan Province, and a couple of them are infested with malware. On the others there’s only the same bizarre caption: “Beautiful Parwan Province.”