at least the mass isn't in latin anymore..

I watched a documentary done by a woman on the Taliban in Pakistan. Pakistan has made peace with them in a large area of the Northeast where up to a million people live. The army soldiers on in the Tribal areas and is faced with massive casualties. The spy service is in bed with the terrorists and the government must walk a thin line for on one end of the country they are fighting an insurgency and on the other (in a struggle with India over the fate of Kashmir) they are backing the “freedom fighters”. The fundamentalists in the East and those in West are cut from the same cloth. The country lacks leadership and there are fundamentalists waiting in the wings as well as other factions. The country is unstable. US bombing of strategic targets is turned into a major propaganda tool by the Taliban, what with pictures of dead children, whether or not these were doctored is beside the point. Obama’s optimism is misplaced. Other NATO members including Canada are much more circumspect hoping that they can hold the Taliban at bay until a government not racked by corruption, a competent army and a police force that has the respect of the people and control and eradicate the opium problem. I am not crowing from the roof tops as one who sees the futility of fighting wars against an enemy that fades into the ranks of the civilians and threatens the lives of anyone who would give intelligence to the Allies. The border is a line in the stand. They are Pashtun on both sides of the border. We are there and will be until 2001. We can no cut and run or there will be a guarateed collapase and that would destabilize a huge area of Asia

Poor children in Pakistan are accepted in the Madrasahs where they are trained to hate the infidel and are presented with the opportunity of working for the greater glory of God. Often their parents are paid to have the kids in the school. The filmmaker spoke to a leading recruiter and what was extraordinary was the way he swayed back and forth, when just before we saw kids reciting the Koran doing the same thing. The students memorize the book just to ensure subservience. There will be no Martin Luther for the book is written in Arabic which no one understands. Religions in the Third World often employ similar techniques, not with mayhem on their minds but to rather to guarantee submission.

The Taliban has not been effective in Afghanistan since 9/11 but they will keep coming over the mountain and be mowed down. We are only playing into their fantasies. It is glorious to die with your boots on. Students clamour to be considered as suicide bombers. Iraq stands a chance, above all odds. If only America had just waited for Saddam to die. It wouldn’t have had that long, then the US could support a faction, but bottom line things are getting better, which leaves Obama with egg all over his face especially since he is going into a war no one thinks he can win.

photo from Hishaam Siddiqi

designer babies?

William Saletan in a post on The Slate comes up with what I hope will be the ultimate in pre-natal screening. They can now tell what colour your child’s eyes will be. In the Third World this kind of testing has detected the most basic trait: sex and this has led to innumerable abortions. I “suffer” from a chronic mental illness and am glad the technology was not available but feel certain if it was my mother would have done the right thing, for although my condition is debilitating never have I doubted that life is good and many of those who have had the most profound effect on the human condition would not have beeb here if parents had screened for major disabilities let alone eye colour.

Photo from Jordy_R

must we take up the white man's burden again no matter how heinous tht may sound?

It has been reported that the President of The Sudan blames Western neo-colonialists for the problems in Darfur in light of the judgment that just came down at The Hague and as a result is expelling aid groups in the area who he claims are fomenting rebellion. This is a sad trend. I realize Ian Smith Rhodesian’s regime was racist and that apartheid was an abomination and that African’s still fear neo-colonialism (one must wonder about China’s true motives on the African sub-continent), but when the President of South Africa refuses to condemn Mugabe and parrot his claims that the uproar over his regime is fueled by their old masters. Not only this but South Africa, so long the most prosperous country is going to hell in a hand basket. It really is sad there was such in the ‘60s when freedom was achieved in most countries and it is true that hundreds of years of subjugation left no one competent enough to make a go of it. Divide and conquer and no blacks in the higher echelons of government spelled disaster, for example the Congo’s first head of state, Patrice Lumumba  was a postal clerk. Many must be torn by the guilt that we made the mess in Rhodesia and should not become paternal and rescue failed states and yet with staggering inflation and driving white farmers off the most productive people are starving and typhoid runs rampant. What are we to do?   

photo from Ben Heine

toujours gai....

Gabriel Arana in an article in The Slate argues intriguingly that gay rights advocates should oppose damages being awarded for defamation when someone is wrongly accused of being gay. The reason that homosexuals are now generally accepted and that to see being accused of being one as a slight on one’s character takes us back to the time gays needed to stay in the closet. Libel and slander may be okay but defamation of character implies that gays are somehow still pariahs. Tom Cruise was awarded a huge settlement and the gay man who said he and Cruise had hooked up did not even have the money for his day in court. This was an abomination. Precedent strongly favours the argument. Suits were dismissed when the Communist Party was legal and one could no longer sue for defamation of character if wrongly accused of being a member. There was a sea change when one could no longer gain damages if accused of having mixed blood. Especially now when the President has exactly that: one may be libelous but it is no longer defamation and the gay rights people should come to the rescue of those, like the poor man in the Cruise case

mozart.2.0

Reuters reports that “…[w]hile most children his age sketch on paper with crayons, nine-year-old Lim Ding Wen from Singapore, has a very different canvas – his iPhone.

Lim, who is in fourth grade, writes applications for Apple's popular iPhone. His latest, a painting program called Doodle Kids, has been downloaded over 4,000 times from Apple's iTunes store in two weeks, the New Paper reported on Thursday.”

photo from cr

i go pogo...

Frank. Rich disagrees with Rex Murphy that the Inaugural Speech was a dud. He admits that the oratorical heights Obama reached during the campaign were nothing short of sublime and this speech didn’t approach them. Rather than playing to the crowd (there were no emotional outpourings after every flourish). he called a spade a spade, Obama noted that not only should Wall Street be held accountable but individual citizens also bear the blame. The word citizen was carefully chosen. Rather than “...my fellow Americans” the term citizen implies every one must be involved in the political and economic processes. Too blame CEOs and there golden parachutes only shifts the blame. Pogo’s words ring true, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Rich uses the example of cable station like HGTV and says they are an “…orgiastic genre that might be called Subprime Pornography. Some of the series — “Flip This House,” “Flip That House,” “Sell This House,” “My House Is Worth What?” — still play on even as more and more house owners are being flipped into destitute homelessness.”

photo from Lynn(Gracies mom)-...

'aint no ford but it still 'aint not lincon...

Rex Murphy admits Barrack Obama is a great orator, one who could read the phonebook and still inspire, but calls the Inaugural Address a dud. He writes “It was Vladimir Horowitz playing Chopsticks.” 

photo from born1945