Blog Flux Directory Subscribe in NewsGator Online Subscribe with Bloglines http://www.wikio.com Blog directory
And, yes, I DO take it personally: 06/08/2008 - 06/15/2008
Mandy: Great blog!
Mark: Thanks to all the contributors on this blog. When I want to get information on the events that really matter, I come here.
Penny: I'm glad I found your blog (from a comment on Think Progress), it's comprehensive and very insightful.
Eric: Nice site....I enjoyed it and will be back.
nora kelly: I enjoy your site. Keep it up! I particularly like your insights on Latin America.
Alison: Loquacious as ever with a touch of elegance -- & right on target as usual!
"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."
- Noam Chomsky
Send tips and other comments to: profmarcus2010@yahoo.com

And, yes, I DO take it personally

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Some people don't need habeas corpus

This is precedent-setting.

Afghan forces hunt fugitives after Taliban jailbreak

The destroyed entrance gate of the Kandahar prison
that was attacked by Taliban militants.
Photograph: Allauddiin Khan/AP


A huge manhunt was under way today for at least 870 fugitives, including 390 Taliban militants, who were sprung from Kandahar's main prison in an audacious assault last night.


[...]


None of the prisoners had yet been tracked down, the deputy justice minister, Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai, told Reuters.

"It was a very unprecedented attack and, together with foreign forces, an operation has been launched to track down and arrest the prisoners," he said.

The police chief of Kandahar province, Sayed Agha Saqib, said 390 Taliban prisoners were among the 870 inmates who fled the prison during the attack late Friday.

A Nato spokesman put the number of fugitives at around 1,100.

"We admit it," Brigadier General Carlos Branco said. "Their guys did the job properly in that sense, but it does not have a strategic impact.

"We should not draw any conclusion about the deterioration of the military operations in the area. We should not draw any conclusion about the strength of the Taliban."

Prison staff said the assault began when a tanker full of explosives was detonated at the Sarposa compound's main entrance, wrecking the gate and a police post and killing the officers inside.


[...]


A local politician said 15 policemen were killed in the storming of the prison and subsequent clashes.


[...]


Wali Karzai, the president of Kandahar's provincial council and the brother of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said the prison held about 350 suspected Taliban fighters.

"There is no one left," he said.


I knew it was just a matter of time, before this sort of thing happened. Judging by it's success, be prepared to see more of the same in the future.


And dontcha just love that part about "..but it does not have a strategic impact"?

Labels: , , , ,

Submit To Propeller



[Permalink] 0 comments

Friday, June 13, 2008

John Pilger - Freedom Next Time

from google video...
Australian journalist, author, film maker John Pilger speaks about global media consolidation, war by journalism, US military's quest for domination/hegemony in the post 9/11 era, false history in the guise of 'objective' journalism.


Labels: , , ,

Submit To Propeller



[Permalink] 0 comments

RIP Tim Russert [UPDATE]

he was two years younger than i am...

more when it's available...


[UPDATE]
Tim Russert, the host of “Meet the Press,” and NBC’s Washington bureau chief, has died. He was 58.

Mr. Russert was a towering figure in American journalism and moderated several debates during the recent presidential primary season.

Tom Brokaw, the former anchor of NBC Nightly News, came on the air at 3:39 p.m. and reported that Mr. Russert had collapsed and died early this afternoon while at work. He had just returned from Italy with his family.

Labels: , , ,

Submit To Propeller



[Permalink] 0 comments

The Afghanistan donor conference in Paris

Photobucket

i know several folks who were there...
Donors led by the United States pledged about $20 billion in aid to Afghanistan on Thursday but said Kabul must do far more to fight corruption.

The lion's share of the assistance, $10.2 billion, was put forward by the United States at a Paris conference that exposed frustrations both at the inefficiency of the Afghan government and the failure of donors themselves to coordinate their aid.

Six-and-a-half years after U.S.-led forces toppled the Islamist Taliban government, Afghanistan is still grappling with an insurgency, drug trafficking, corruption and poverty.

there's no way in hell that the afghan government is going to fight corruption when the senior members of that government are among the chief beneficiaries along with the mega-u.s. contractors like louis berger, dyncorp, kbr, etc...

the photo below was taken yesterday approximately a block from the offices of the project where i worked and lived up until last friday morning...


Photobucket
A disabled man begs on a roadside
in Kabul June 12, 2008. Donors led
by the United States pledged more
than $16 billion in aid for Afghanistan
on Thursday but said Kabul must do more
to fight corruption and the international
assistance must be better coordinated.

REUTERS/Ahmad Masood

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Submit To Propeller



[Permalink] 0 comments

Straight talk or double-talk

oh, johnny... it looks like we hardly know ye...

Labels: , , , ,

Submit To Propeller



[Permalink] 0 comments

Thursday, June 12, 2008

I'm sticking a toe back in the blogging water

after talking to brother tim about how i've been struggling with keepin' on, i suddenly trip across something that truly expresses my views on the upcoming election...

Labels: , ,

Submit To Propeller



[Permalink] 0 comments

If it were only true

Ya gotta love it..........

Straight from the Onion



McCain Vows To Replace Secret Service With His Own Bare Fists

Labels: , ,

Submit To Propeller



[Permalink] 0 comments

Monday, June 09, 2008

One of THOSE days...

i'm looking for something uplifting and all i see is the usual sobering crap...

Labels: , ,

Submit To Propeller



[Permalink] 0 comments

Sunday, June 08, 2008

Bill Moyers at the National Conference on Media Reform - "You're not alone"

from videofreepress... forty minutes and worth every second spent watching...
Legendary journalist Bill Moyers address the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis, June 7, 2008.



extraordinarily powerful stuff...

p.s. have i mentioned lately that bill moyers is one of my very few personal heroes...?

Labels: , , , , ,

Submit To Propeller



[Permalink] 0 comments

It's not just the big mining companies that wreak destruction

Photobucket

on the brazilian gold rush from al jazeera...
Thousands of gold miners have flocked to Brazil's Amazon rainforest to find their fortune.

Now, only about 1,000 miners remain, still hoping there's more gold to be found.

But their mining activities are leaving behind a trail of destruction across the rainforest.

Labels: , , , ,

Submit To Propeller



[Permalink] 0 comments

Funny...? Yeah, but I wouldn't be in the least surprised if it was true...

Photobucket

(and a tip o' the hat to bg...)

Labels: ,

Submit To Propeller



[Permalink] 0 comments

Aw, crap...! Four and half months outside the U.S. and look what greets me when I get back...

for four and a half months, the google ad web crawler "saw" that i was outside the u.s. and inserted banner ads on the blog appropriate to the geographic ip address where i was accessing the site... now that i'm finally back in the u.s., look what jumps out at me when i open up my own blog site...

Photobucket

bite me, mccain...

Labels: , ,

Submit To Propeller



[Permalink] 0 comments

Can you spot the only woman in this photo NOT wearing a headscarf?

PhotobucketPhotobucket

Photobucket
U.S. first lady Laura Bush (2nd R) and
Afghanistan's first woman provincial governor
of Bamiyan Province Habiba Sarabi (R)
are seen during a surprise visit to Bamiyan
June 8, 2008. First lady Bush made an
unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Sunday
with an appeal to the international community
not to abandon the war-torn country in the
face of resurgent Taliban violence.

REUTERS/Larry Downing (AFGHANISTAN)

having just returned yesterday from afghanistan, i'm particularly sensitive to the need for women foreigners there to respect and blend in with local tradition... i had to pull one american woman i was working with aside a couple of weeks ago and insist that, in meetings with locals outside of our project offices, that she please keep her headscarf ON rather than unconsciously letting it slide off and not putting it back in place...

every afghan woman that i came in contact with over the past two and one half months constantly adjusts her headscarf to make sure it stays on her head... yes, you can make the argument that the locals should respect OUR traditions too, but to that i have only one response... it's THEIR country, not ours... and, yes, i know that laura bush would be shredded by the insane, right-wing hate-mongers if a photo of her wearing a headscarf appeared in the media, but, goddamit, she SHOULD have been wearing one...

p.s. this also explains part of why i was subjected to such heavy security and physical inspections when i flew out of kabul on friday morning... it ALSO explains why two colleagues from the project had to cancel the trip to bamiyan they were planning for this weekend... everybody was getting ready for laura's "unannounced" visit...

related story...

First lady Laura Bush, on a mission to highlight signs of rebirth in war-weary Afghanistan, ventured outside of Kabul on Sunday to an area that symbolizes both the destruction of war and Afghanistan's attempt at rebirth.


Mrs. Bush, on her third unannounced visit to the country, flew into the Afghan capital then immediately boarded a helicopter for a 50-minute flight to Bamiyan Province, the farthest she has traveled from Kabul.

[...]

The first lady's visit comes ahead of a donors conference in Paris, where the U.S. hopes billions of dollars in international aid will be pledged to help the embattled nation. Afghanistan was ruled by the repressive Taliban until U.S. forces invaded following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"The people of Afghanistan don't want to go back and live like that," Mrs. Bush told reporters on her plane as it made the nearly 14-hour flight to the Afghan capital. "They know what it was like. The international community can't drop Afghanistan now, at this very crucial time."

[...]

Mrs. Bush is spending several hours on the ground to meet with President Hamid Karzai, visit U.S. troops and see a police training academy that is training female recruits.

President Bush has defended Karzai against critics who say his government is weak and isn't doing enough to battle corruption and drug trafficking. Mrs. Bush said the U.S. and other nations should not blame Karzai unless they are going to give him credit for all the progress that's being made.

"It's really not that fair," she said. "I think it's undermining, frankly, to blame him for a lot of the things that may or may not be his fault. He inherited — just by becoming president — a country that's been totally devastated. It is very, very difficult when you have al-Qaida and Taliban all over the borders and making incursions into Afghanistan, and it's intimidating for everyone."

the karzai government is shot through with epidemic corruption on a scale that dwarfs the corruption i've seen in even the most thoroughly corrupt governments in argentina, macedonia and mexico... any progress in afghanistan is strictly a result of serendipity... if a tenth of the money being poured in there actually made it to where it needs to go, afghanistan would be dramatically better off than it is today...

Labels: , , , , ,

Submit To Propeller



[Permalink] 0 comments