Jacob Freeze Rotting food scraps picked out of the dirt and the bins of the backstreets of Harare are piled together in a slimy heap on the ground with torn cardboard as a serving plate. Elias, 15, squats and pushes both hands into the pile, scooping out a chunk of something pink. He gnaws on it, then shouts: “Dinner! Come and eat.”
At the Makumbi children’s home, half an hour’s drive from the city, Sister Alois is upset to report she has had to turn away three abandoned babies brought in by social workers in the last week. “More and more children abandoned, it’s not the African way. There are so many now. They are being left in the bush, some are eaten by the ants.”
“When you walk through the markets, you can see that there is food here. The problem is that the ability to buy it has disappeared. People here depend on livestock to support themselves, but animals are being killed on the edge of exhaustion, and that means they are being sold for far less money. And on top of that, the cost of food basics has risen,” explained Gluck.
“Yesterday I saw women sifting through gravel at the side of the road, trying to find some grains that may have been blown from aid trucks.”
Mariam Tchado, 30, is a single mother of six who says her tiny plot hasn’t grown much of anything since drought descended on the Sahel region of west central Africa last year. “My family relies entirely on me, but I have nothing to give them. I’ve been digging up anthills to find grains and picking leaves off the trees to prepare food,” she said.
A gigantic, towering new tree species in the pea family, Leguminosae, was discovered in the lowland rainforests of Korup national park, Cameroon. Berlinia korupensis reaches a height of 42 metres with a buttressed trunk nearly one metre wide. The species produces stunningly beautiful white flowers, followed by incredibly large pods 30cm in length. The pods disperse their seeds violently for distances up to 50 metres. As the pods dry, their two halves curl in opposite directions, slowly building tension until they suddenly explode.
There are only 17 known examples and the species is critically endangered due to human pressures on the protected forest.
African prize for excellent leadership fails to find a winner
For the second year running, it has proved impossible to find a candidate worthy of a multi-million dollar award for improving the continent’s “quality of human life.”
Jacob Freeze What a beautiful headline in the Guardian!
Afghanistan withdrawal before 2015, says David Cameron
David Cameron yesterday gave the first clear indication of the timing for a full withdrawal of British soldiers from Afghanistan, saying that he wanted troops home within five years.
During the election campaign, he said he wanted to see UK troops start to come home by 2015. But this was the first time as prime minister that he has indicated a timetable for withdrawal.
Obama has committed himself to a review of the US counter-insurgency strategy next year.
Okay, there’s some good news for you! The Prime Minister of England “wants” his troops out of Afghanistan before 2015…
…only 14 years after they invaded that God-forsaken wasteland.
And for any of you beyond-the-fringe leftist radicals who doubt that Barack Obama is capable of making a real commitment to anything…
How about that commitment to… review our counter-insurgency strategy next year?
Pound that into your pointy little negativism, you pin-heads!
And meanwhile, in Afghanistan…
Only nine out of Afghanistan’s 364 districts are considered safe, with the rest under some degree of security threat, Mohammad Munir Mangal, the Acting Interior Minister said on Wednesday.
Nine safe districts after almost nine years of military occupation!
At that rate it would take another 355 years to pacify the other 355 districts of Afghanistan, and David Cameron’s goal of withdrawing by 2015 would have to be pushed back to 2365!
Jacob Freeze This week the President of the United States watched cluelessly while what was already the worst environmental disaster in American history somehow got even worse, winked while a Democratic Congress refused to extend unemployment benefits for millions of desperate citizens, and fired his battlefield commander because of… opinions which the general’s assistants expressed in a bar.
As the Senate scrambles to scale back a $140-billion recession relief bill, the poor, the elderly and the unemployed are bearing the brunt of the squeeze. But NASCAR track developers, movie producers and other special interests are likely to escape unscathed.
In the hunt for ways to cut costs, neither party has proposed curbing the panoply of narrow tax preferences, which Congress has routinely extended each year.
Instead, Senate leaders have proposed a $25 cut in weekly unemployment benefits; temporarily allowed a 21% cut in Medicare fees for doctors; and are planning to withhold or scale back $24 billion in payments many states expected to help pay for Medicaid for the poor.
Tax-breaks for NASCAR developers!
Cuts in Medicaid for the poor!
You gotta love those Democrats!
It’s possible that hydrocarbons are leaking out the bottom or sides of the well. If so, they might erode surrounding sediments and undermine the foundation upon which the 450-ton blowout preventer sits. If such leaks aren’t sealed off in time, the entire structure could topple over. “After that, it goes into the realm of ‘the worst things you can think of,’” writes a commenter on the oil- and energy-focused website The Oil Drum. It was this commenter’s post that has become the subject of wider speculation. “The well may come completely apart as the inner liners fail. There is still a very long drill string in the well that could literally come flying out … at the very least we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more.”
150,000 barrels per day! That’s 6,000,000 gallons of raw oil per diem! 4 times the Exxon Valdez every week!
And don’t forget that Obama/Salazar went to court to get BP that permit!
It doesn’t really get any worse (for the rest of us) than 60,000,000 gallons of raw oil per day in the Gulf of Mexico, but for Barack Obama…
Because Glenn Greenwald just devoted two long columns to exposing Obama’s bullshit excuses for his do-nothing Presidency.
The White House is intervening at the last minute to come to the defense of multinational corporations in the unfolding conference committee negotiations over Wall Street reform.
A measure that had been generally agreed to by both the House and Senate, which would have affirmed the SEC’s authority to allow investors to have proxy access to the corporate decision-making process, was stripped by the Senate in conference committee votes on Wednesday and Thursday. Five sources with knowledge of the situation said the White House pushed for the measure to be stripped at the behest of the Business Roundtable.
And likewise through a dozen different scenarios Greenwald demonstrates that Obama has tremendous power to impose his own agenda…
But it’s a neocon agenda, and it’s all working beautifully, thank you very much!
Jacob Freeze The very tip-top of the New York Times’ front page today is occupied by this flaming headline…
McChrystal Is Summoned to Washington Over Remarks
An angry President Obama summoned his top commander in Afghanistan to Washington on Tuesday after a magazine article portrayed the general and his staff as openly contemptuous of some senior members of the Obama administration.
The author of the article — Michael Hastings, a freelance journalist — appears to have been granted intimate access to General McChrystal’s inner circle. Most of the comments seem to have been uttered during unguarded moments, in places like bars and restaurants where the general and his aides gathered to unwind.
A McChrystal aide is quoted saying of Mr. Holbrooke: “The Boss says he’s like a wounded animal. Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he’s going to be fired, so that makes him dangerous.”
The article also describes a conversation in which General McChrystal and an aide talk about Mr. Biden. “Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” General McChrystal jokes.
“Biden?” suggests a top adviser. “Did you say ‘Bite me?’ ”
In a parallel universe, where Planet Earth is inhabited by intelligent life-forms, Obama would say…
“Soldiers have been grousing about higher-ups for at least 5000 years, and only a shit-head of a reporter like Michael Hastings would repeat what soldiers say among themselves off-duty in a bar, and only a shitty “life-style” magazine like Rolling Stone would print it.”
But on our stupid branch of the multi-universe, on Planet Stupid, where shit-heads rule…
This story is a very big deal.
(And if you think I’m a cheerleader for McChrystal, read this.)
Jacob Freeze US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates delivered a very optimistic report about Afghanistan to Congress last Wednesday, June 16.
“I think we are regaining the initiative; I think we are making headway.”
But on Saturday a different assessment was published by the United Nations.
Violence in Afghanistan has continued to increase in recent months, as has the use of improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a new report.
And “anti-government” violence isn’t just more intense, it’s also better organized.
There are also an average of two more complex suicide attacks per month — bigger operations involving more assailants — double the average for 2009, the report said.
“The shift to more complex suicide attacks demonstrates a growing capability of the local terrorist networks linked to al Qaeda,” it said.
Meanwhile “collateral damage” continues to make blood enemies for the United States and its puppet-government in Kabul.
Ten civilians, including at least five women and children, were killed in NATO airstrikes in Khost Province, the provincial police chief said Saturday.
But there’s always good news for somebody in the Global War on Terror!
The United States Embassy here said Saturday that the company once known as Blackwater Worldwide has been awarded a contract worth more than $120 million to protect new United States consulates in the Afghan cities of Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif, The Associated Press reported.
Jacob Freeze 40 people were killed in an explosion at a wedding party June 9th, 2010, in the Afghan village of Nadahan. Both the Taliban and NATO immediately denied responsibility.
This story never made the headlines on my desktop RSS feeds of world news from Google or Reuters or the Guardian or the Washington Post or the New York Times, and after I finally noticed it on IPS and began looking for some background, my search results for “Nadahan” on Google also produced a surreal collection of hits for the Spanish phrase “nada han…” including “como nada han occurido.”
The blast hit in an area that is largely considered a Taliban haven, and village residents said they thought they were attacked in an air bombardment. Mohammad Rassool, a cousin of the groom, said helicopters were circling above the compound before the explosion.
Also prominent among my search results for “Nadahan” was the Spanish version of a famous aphorism about the Bourbon Dynasty, originally applied to Charles X, “Ils n’ont rien appris, et rien oublié.”
Nada han aprendido…
They never learned anything…
They never learned anything…
They never learned anything…
They never learned anything…
They never learned anything…
They never learned anything.
Jacob Freeze From the Washington Post…
Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.
Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the The Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.
Jacob Freeze On one side we have two brilliant strategists and great team leaders, and on the other side there’s a telegenic spokes-model and a semi-senile dinosaur.
And unfortunately for all of us, the great leaders are competing for bragging rights about a kids’ game, while the bozos are fumbling and bumbling and humbugging our world into oblivion.
The Lakers draft Kobe Bryant. McCain drafts Sarah Palin. Obama drafts Larry Summers.
Harharharhar!!!
McCain and Obama are idiots!
And since it’s pointless to ask how we could convert American politics into something more like the NBA, with brilliant leaders instead of clowns in charge, because we all know that isn’t going to happen…
We might as well ask how to convert the NBA into something more like American politics, and that would be simpler than you might imagine, because…
All we have to do is make sucking up to the fans the only qualification for coaching, with the proviso that none of the candidates has any kind of record as a coach, or even as a player.
“You/We are the ones we/you were waiting for!”
“I love your values!”
And if you subtracted sucking up to the fans from McCain and Obama, both those clowns would disappear, like smoke blown away from a mirror.
Jacob Freeze 
These photographs, along with about 20 others from an exposition about Afghanistan in the Fifties, were recently posted on ForeignPolicy.com, and the commenter jacqueline on firedoglake sent me a link. All of them are out of copyright.
Jacob Freeze 
Alvin Greene said he won the Democratic U.S. Senate primary by crisscrossing South Carolina to stump, but he refused Thursday to name a single place he’d visited.
He said he put $2,000 of his own money in the race, but had only one campaign flier to show, and was reluctant to part with it.
The state’s highest-profile Democrat, U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, called for investigations into how Greene paid his $10,400 filing fee, his lack of federal election reporting and how he managed to capture almost 60 percent of Tuesday’s vote without campaigning.
Harharharhar!!!
At last the Democrats have nominated a candidate entirely untainted by their miserable record as corporate suck-ups and roll-over puppies for the neo-con agenda!
Hurrah!
(And I’m not the only one cheering!)
If this 32 year-old man without a cell phone or computer, who has never held any political office, has no job and is “on the not-guilty side” of a felony charge, can become the Democratic nominee for Senate from South Carolina, then literally anyone can. That means me, or you, or that guy on the street corner who talks to cats.
Alvin Greene has broken down the last barrier, a barrier some refer to as “being somewhat qualified to hold office.” Now, with $114 in his campaign account, no job, unclear funding sources and “involuntary” discharges from the Army and Air Force, he is ready to take on the system.
This is the greatest political story of my generation! But it won’t have a happy ending without you, my friends!
So break open those piggy-banks and make a contribution to Alvin Greene’s campaign for the United States Senate from South Carolina…
…just as soon as he has a campaign, or a website, or a campaign fund, or…
Whatever!
………………………………………………………………………..
Update: After staring at this story for 24 hours without anything like an idea, it finally occurred to me that there’s always an alternative to paying a big-time filing fee if you want to run for public office, and since one of the questions that everybody in the MSM echo-chamber is asking is…
How did Greene come up with a $10,400 filing fee to run in the Democratic primary, it might be more worthwhile to ask…
Why bother?
Why pay $10K when there’s always an exception for indigent candidates? Otherwise an un-Constitutional qualification for office by wealth will have been surreptitiously imposed!
For example, in Bullock v. Carter the Supreme Court ruled that…
It seems appropriate that a primary system designed to give the voters some influence at the nominating stage should spread the cost among all of the voters in an attempt to distribute the influence without regard to wealth. Viewing the myriad governmental functions supported from general revenues, it is difficult to single out any of a higher order than the conduct of elections at all levels to bring
Page 405 U. S. 149
forth those persons desired by their fellow citizens to govern. Without making light of the State’s interest in husbanding its revenues, we fail to see such an element of necessity in the State’s present means of financing primaries as to justify the resulting incursion on the prerogatives of voters.
(3)
Since the State has failed to establish the requisite justification for this filing fee system, we hold that it results in a denial of equal protection of the laws. It must be emphasized that nothing herein is intended to cast doubt on the validity of reasonable candidate filing fees or licensing fees in other contexts. By requiring candidates to shoulder the costs of conducting primary elections through filing fees and by providing no reasonable alternative means of access to the ballot, the State of Texas has erected a system that utilizes the criterion of ability to pay as a condition to being on the ballot, thus excluding some candidates otherwise qualified and denying an undetermined number of voters the opportunity to vote for candidates of their choice These salient features of the Texas system are critical to our determination of constitutional invalidity.
And likewise at all times and in all places where a filing fee which many people could not afford to pay has been imposed.
