Perfectly capturing the essence of Afghanistan

i haven't had the pleasure of traveling outside of kabul either by road or otherwise but i hope to have the experience one of these days soon and, yes, i would very much like to drive this road...


Kabul Gorge near Sarobi
Kabul-Jalalabad Highway


Kabul Gorge near Sarobi
Kabul-Jalalabad Highway

dexter filkins, the nyt correspondent who has spent years reporting from afghanistan, almost perfectly captures the essence of the country in this article...

Afghans Don’t Let a White-Knuckle Highway Slow Them

The 40-mile stretch, a breathtaking chasm of mountains and cliffs between Kabul and Jalalabad, claims so many lives so regularly that most people stopped counting long ago. Cars flip and flatten. Trucks soar to the valley floor. Buses play chicken; buses collide.

The mayhem unfolds on one of the most bewitching stretches of scenery on all the earth. The gorge, in some places no more than a few hundred yards wide, is framed by vertical rock cliffs that soar more than 2,000 feet above the Kabul River below. Most people die, and most cars crash, while zooming around one of the impossible turns that offer impossible views of the crevasses and buttes.

[...]

One day last week, 13 accidents unfolded on the road in a mere two hours, all of them catastrophic, nearly all of them fatal. The daylong drizzle made the day slightly more calamitous than most. At one scene, a bloodied family grieved for their kin trapped in a flattened car. At another, a minibus lay crushed beneath the hulk of a jackknifed truck. At still another, the bottom of a ravine was filled with a car’s twisted remains.

And yet even as those accidents spread themselves across the roadway, the cars sailed heedlessly past. Taxis and buses weaved and passed one another at bone-chilling speeds, with only millimeters separating them from bloody catastrophe.

i learned to drive in the mountains of colorado, both on and off road, and there's nothing i like more than a good driving challenge... i've driven in many countries and dealt with extremely dangerous and truly insane driving habits but, i must admit, afghans are perhaps the most insane of the lot...

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Going to Denver to air your views at the Democratic National Convention? Here's where you might find yourself.

just yesterday on the And, yes, I DO take it personally blogtalk radio show, brother tim and i were discussing the descent of the u.s. deep into fascism territory and tim was bemoaning the fact that when he raises that topic with some folks, they immediately suspect that he's got his tin-foil hat on too tight... well, people, check this out and then tell me how u.s. fascism is an over-the-top point-of-view held only by nutcases and conspiracy theorists...



from raw story...

During the 2004 Republican Nation Convention in New York City, over 1,700 protesters were taken into police custody in one of the most sweeping mass-arrests in US history. Many were held on Staten Island's Pier 57, inside a warehouse which was contaminated with lead and asbestos. Some were held for days, and without proper access to food, water, outside communication or legal counsel.

In Denver, police are preparing what a local political organizer calls a 'concentration camp,' laying in wait for mass arrests anticipated during the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

On Wednesday, a Denver CBS affiliate sent a news crew to crash the police department's improvised detention facility, found in a warehouse owned by the city on the north-east side of town.

"This is a building filled with metal holding cells," described reporter Rick Sallinger, introducing the segment. "We showed up at the facility unannounced today, the doors were wide open, and we managed to shoot for several minutes until a Denver sheriff's captain asked us to leave."

Footage of the warehouse revels tall, chain-link fence capped by barbed wire, and segmented pens each bearing an identifying letter at about shoulder height.

The news crew was not invited, nor welcome. Cpt. Frank Gale of the Denver Sheriff's Department called the facility "a secured area," and worried that information related to the site would be used "by people who are potentially trying to be disruptive."

"Each of these fenced in areas is about five yards by five yards," said Sallinger. "There's a lock on the door. How long those arrested will be kept here is not known. A sign on the wall reads, 'Warning! Electric stun devices used in this facility.'"

"If 300 people are taken to Denver’s temporary detention facility within a short time frame, processing those persons at the rate of 30 to 50 per hour would take at least 6 to 10 hours," notes a letter from ACLU Colorado, sent to the Denver Police Department. "During the Republican National Convention in New York City in 2004, nearly 1,100 people were arrested in a four-hour period. If a similar situation occurred in Denver, it would take at least 22 to 36 hours to process those persons."

Area activists are not amused at the news. CBS carried its footage of the newfound jail to Adam Jung, with Tent State University, and Zoe Williams, a Code Pink organizer.

"Very reminiscent of a political prisoner camp, or a concentration camp," said Williams.

"I mean, that's how you treat cattle," added Jung. "... It's a meat processing plant."

The detention site was supposed to be a secret, said Sallinger.

i grew up in colorado and lived in denver in 2001 and 2002... i would have expected this in other cities but not so much in denver, although, given today's climate, i guess i'm not surprised to see this kind of thing pop up anywhere...

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Kansas R's dumping abortion in favor of immigration (and the violence and hypocrisy that comes with it)

interesting...

from the la times...

[A]s the political season revs up, the executive director of the Kansas Republican Party has issued a stern warning to his fellow conservatives: Abortion is not a winning issue.

"This is not something that the Kansas GOP is going to go out and lead on," Christian Morgan said.

Morgan said that he and his party remain firmly opposed to abortion. Most Republican voters in Kansas feel the same, he said. But Morgan also believes that those voters are fed up with years of fruitless political and legal maneuvering aimed at driving abortion clinics out of business. They would much prefer to see an all-out focus on curbing illegal immigration or cutting taxes, he said.

In an e-mail rebuffing an antiabortion activist who asked for more GOP support, Morgan explained: "My job is to win elections. . . . Your agenda does not fit my agenda."

so, kansas r's are "fed up" with the "fruitless" campaign against abortion and its related violence, so they're choosing to put their money on the wedge issue of immigration and ITS violence instead, eh...? let's see how THAT'S working for them...

this is from the southern poverty law center in an introduction to a list of the more egregious physical and psychological violence waged against latinos in the past two and one-half years...

There's no doubt that the tone of the raging national debate over immigration is growing uglier by the day. Once limited to hard-core white supremacists and a handful of border-state extremists, vicious public denunciations of undocumented brown-skinned immigrants are increasingly common among supposedly mainstream anti-immigration activists, radio hosts and politicians. While their dehumanizing rhetoric typically stops short of openly sanctioning bloodshed, much of it implicitly encourages or even endorses violence by characterizing immigrants from Mexico and Central America as "invaders," "criminal aliens" and "cockroaches."

meanwhile, arguably one of the more vicious individuals to implicitly condone a violent response to immigration problems displays what has become the oh-so-predictable repub hypocrisy... ladies and gentlemen, i give you the odious tom tancredo...

from max blumenthal in alternet...

When Tancredo (presidential candidate and R-CO) hired a construction crew to transform his drab basement into a high-tech pleasure den in October 2001, however, he did not express concern that only two of its members spoke English. Nor did he bother to check the workers’ documentation to see if they were legal residents of the United States. Had Tancredo done so, he would have learned that most of the crew consisted of undocumented immigrants, or “criminal aliens” as he likes to call them. Instead, Tancredo paid the crew $60,000 for its labor and waited innocently for the completion of his elaborate entertainment complex.

During the renovation process, two illegal workers hired by Tancredo were alerted to his reputation for immigrant bashing. They went straight to the Denver Post to complain. Tancredo “doesn't want us here, but he'll take advantage of our sweat and our labor,” one of the workers complained to the Post on September 19, 2002. “It's just not right.”

The Post report momentarily threw Tancredo on the defensive. In a fiery speech soon after the story’s publication, Tancredo blamed his foibles on the INS. “I haven't the foggiest idea how many people I may have hired in the past as taxi drivers, as waiters, waitresses, home improvement people,” he boomed from the House floor. “I haven't the foggiest idea how many of those people may have been here illegally, and it is not my job to ask them.” Then defiance gave way to vitriol as the congressman dubbed undocumented immigrants, “the face of murder.”

Only days before the Post’s story appeared, Tancredo had personally reported an honor student profiled in the Denver Post to the INS because the 14-year-old was not a legal resident of the United States. The stunt forced the boy’s family to go into hiding.

now tell me that calling undocumented immigrants "the face of murder" isn't an implicit invitation to violence...

i've mentioned before that i had a one-degree of separation moment with tancredo when i was living in colorado in 2002... my friend, the vice consul at the mexican consulate in denver, was being seriously slimed by the vile tancredo for merely doing his job, helping his own country's citizens, one of whom was the honor student mentioned in the last paragraph of the excerpt above... i won't bore you with the details, but anyone who has followed tancredo's history of bile can easily fill in the blanks...

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Room to train our warriors

Piñon Canyon, east of Trinidad, Colorado

a friend in southern colorado had tipped me off to the controversy that was brewing over this but couldn't tell me what the land was wanted for... i did a search of the local newspaper but couldn't come up with anything... now, i see what the fuss is all about...

The U.S. Army wants 418,000 acres of private ranch land to triple the size of its Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, a training area considered suitable -- some would say essential -- for preparing American warriors to do battle in the Middle East and Afghanistan. The 1,000-square-mile facility would be 15 times the size of the District.

Several dozen ranchers and members of 15 county commissions that voted to oppose the project find themselves pitted against the Pentagon and Colorado business interests in a struggle over property rights, personal heritage and the contested priorities of national security.

[...]

In Piñon Canyon, where prehistoric dinosaur tracks lie near a surviving section of the 1800s-era Santa Fe Trail, the Army sees an opportunity when other training grounds are overtaxed by the demands of war. The move is also part of a long-term reorganization of the armed forces.

To Colorado business leaders, the expansion would help consolidate and enhance the state's growing role as a military hub: It is home to Fort Carson, the Air Force Academy and the U.S. Northern Command.

[...]

The land under discussion is an arid plateau that occupies a sparsely populated slice of Colorado near the New Mexico border. It lies alongside 235,000 acres acquired by the Army in the early 1980s. The open spaces provide rambling room for 67-ton tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles to practice maneuvers within a few hours of Fort Carson, home to a dozen Army units.

i grew up in colorado springs, one of the most military-obsessed (NORAD, Peterson AFB, the Air Force Academy, Ft. Carson, military retirees), right-wing (rabid libertarian, neocon, movement conservative, 24 per-centers), christian fundamentalist (Focus on the Family and at least a hundred similar organizations) towns you will ever run across, so it's no surprise to hear a colorado springs chamber of commerce shill spouting something like this...

Brian A. Binn, president of the military affairs committee of the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, said the benefits to the state economy and national defense are clear. If the ranchers triumph and the training site is not created, he added, other states would be all too willing to accept the troops and the business.

"We have to look sometimes at what's better for the national defense, the greater good," Binn said. "It is a national security issue. The men and women of our armed services deserve nothing less."

the issue isn't jobs, altho' that's one way to frame it... it isn't about needing more space to train our military, altho' that's certainly another way to frame it... it isn't about private property, altho' that's ANOTHER way to frame it... and it isn't even about preserving and protecting the environment, altho' that's yet ANOTHER way to frame it... it's about the fact that the united states is a militaristic, war-mongering country with an insatiable appetite for controlling as much of the world's resources as possible, and an unending need for warm bodies to toss in the path of death and destruction... don't believe me...? take a look at the very well-chosen word carefully and unobtrusively placed in the first paragraph of the above wapo excerpt... did you catch it...?

WE DON'T HAVE SOLDIERS
IN THE U.S. ANY MORE,
WE HAVE WARRIORS!

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Tancredo won't run again

this is exceptionally good news... the three degrees of separation i experienced with him during my short sojourn in colorado in 2002 quite convinced me that he is one of the more hate-filled individuals i had ever run across... i simply could not get my head around the fact that he was actually representing ordinary citizens in the congress of the united states...

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More triple-A, context-free journalism from the WaPo, this time on Colorado's western slope

Drilling at the edge of Grand Mesa on
Colorado's western slope

i grew up in colorado and, although i haven't lived there since 1977 (with the exception of 2002), i still carry the mental and emotional scars of the ceaseless environmental rape of my home state... too bad the washington post, with all its supposedly first class journalistic resources, has no access to history, recent or otherwise...

The Bush administration's aggressive drive to promote oil and gas drilling on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains has sparked growing anger here among traditional Republican constituents who say that the stepped-up push for energy development is sullying some of the country's most majestic landscape.

The emerging backlash from ranchers and sportsmen, which is occurring despite an economic boom driven by drilling, is threatening GOP primacy in at least one corner of what has been a solidly Republican West. Long the most reliably conservative expanse of a state that has gone red in six of the past seven presidential contests, Colorado's western third shows evidence of the "purpling" that has made Colorado look increasingly like a swing state.

the western slope and particularly grand mesa contains some of the most beautiful country anywhere, but leave it to the bush administration to not give a shit about anything so poofy as that... what's almost as bad is when a major newspaper ignores history and leads you to believe that what's happening is just another political power struggle... here's what i wrote to the wapo...

what incredibly irresponsible reporting...! i simply cannot believe you wrote this entire article without a single reference to the nearly century and a half of economic boom and bust and environmental rape colorado has suffered in the name of mineral and other resource "extraction," the most recent of which took place in the very same western slope area 30 years ago, leaving rifle, parachute and parts of grand junction and glenwood springs in economic ruin... yes, the oil shale industry that descended on that area in the 70's with all the attendant fanfare turned out precisely as predicted by then governor dick lamm, a huge source of jobs that created an equally huge demand for state and local resources (roads, schools and other infrastructure), which then took a nosedive, leaving behind virtual ghost towns and the voters holding the bag... had you deigned to include that part of the story, the ire of the republicans and the rest of the populace would be infinitely more understandable...

fools...

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Prisoners working on farms and in call centers. Are immigrant "detainees" next?

ya know, i don't have anything against inmates in correctional institutions being expected to work, but i have major problems with using them to subsidize business... it would seem to me, in my congenitally fevered state, that there would be a huge incentive for business to use MORE inmates in order to reduce the cost of doing business, and for government to incarcerate MORE people to supply the demand...

In a pilot program run by the [Colorado] state Corrections Department, supervised teams of low-risk inmates beginning this month will be available to harvest the swaths of sweet corn, peppers and melons that sweep the southeastern portion of the state.

Under the program, which has drawn criticism from groups concerned about immigrants’ rights and from others seeking changes in the criminal justice system, farmers will pay a fee to the state, and the inmates, who volunteer for the work, will be paid about 60 cents a day, corrections officials said.

what i want to know is what "fee" the farmers will be paying...

A group calling for changes in sentencing, the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, is also uneasy about the program. The group views the inmates’ pay as problematic.

“This feels like the re-invention of the plantation,” said Christie Donner, the group’s executive director. “You have a captive labor force essentially working for their room and board in order to benefit the employer. This isn’t a job training program. It’s an exploitative program.”

But Ari Zavaras, executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, said the merit of a hard day’s work outdoors was invaluable to an inmate.

“They won’t be paid big bucks, but we’re hoping this will help our inmates pick up significant and valuable job skills,” Mr. Zavaras said. “We’re also assisting farmers who, if they don’t get help, are facing an inability to harvest their crops.”

it was back in 2004 that this story appeared...

About a dozen states — Oregon, Arizona, California and Iowa, among others — have call centers in state and federal prisons, underscoring a push to employ inmates in telemarketing jobs that might otherwise go to low-wage countries such as India and the Philippines. Arizona prisoners make business calls, as do inmates in Oklahoma. A call center for the DMV is run out of an all-female prison in Oregon. Other companies are keeping manufacturing jobs in the USA. More than 150 inmates in a Virginia federal prison build car parts for Delco Remy International. Previously, some of those jobs were overseas.

At least 2,000 inmates nationwide work in call centers, and that number is rising as companies seek cheap labor without incurring the wrath of politicians and unions. At the same time, prison populations are ballooning, offering U.S. companies another way to slash costs.

i also would like to know what the call centers are paying...

when those being held in immigrant detention centers start being used in this fashion, the full plan will be revealed in all its ugliness...

Two advocacy groups for refugees said on Wednesday that the Bush administration routinely detained immigrant families in prisonlike housing that separated young children from their parents and sometimes provided inadequate medical care, food and educational opportunities, despite calls from Congress to house such families in “nonpenal, homelike environments.”

ah, the united states... ya gotta love it...

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