Category Archives: Americana

Why are we in Afghanistan? We shouldn’t be.

Americana, Current Affairs, War

I don’t understand why we are in Afghanistan. I don’t understand what we are fighting for. I don’t understand what our men – and women – are getting wounded and dying for. I don’t know, even, how we would know if we were winning.

We are paying for truck companies to bring supplies in from Pakistan and up the highways across Afghanistan that, in many cases, we paid to build; then the truckers have to pay off the Taliban to pass on those highways. Or get killed. We are fighting the Taliban and funding them. And we can’t stop because we need the supplies to fight the Taliban but, if we were not fighting them, they wouldn’t be getting all that money. It is more bazaar than Catch 22.

Our strategy is to develop Afghanistan but almost everybody we hire is corrupt and Karzai’s family is especially corrupt. Because we are there, houses in Kabul rent for over $6,000 per month. The owners now live in Bahrain or Dubai, or some other nice safe place on the Gulf Coast. Drug export is a – if not the –  major source of export income for Afghanistan and the counter-narcotics mission is a waste of time and resources that just alienates the Afghans we are trying to get on our side.

Paradoxically, under Obama, we now have more troops in Afghanistan so we can fight the “big war” with American troops, just as we did in Vietnam. The plan in Afghanistan is to flood an area with troops, secure it, then rebuild it, and leave them a new, rebuilt area, in control of our “good” Afghan allies. In Vietnam, this was called the Oil-blot Strategy with fortified Strategic Hamlets. It doesn’t work.

When Obama first started talking about Afghanistan being the good war, I thought it sounded like such a good idea. I was wrong – which means nothing – and Obama was wrong – which means a lot. We should get out. Say it was a mistake, say we got Osama and we won, say whatever; just get out. This will not end well and it is time to cut our losses.

 

Occupy Wall Street far west edition

Americana, Around home, Politics, San Mateo County

I went to an Occupy Wall Street protest last Friday. We occupied an overpass over Highway 92. The theory being that this overpass was one of 74 bridges have been found to be structurally deficient in San Mateo County. That is a pretty amazing figure; San Mateo is one of the richest counties in the United States and pretty consistently votes democratic and even we doesn’t take care of our infrastructure. There were 122 people signed up to be here and I talked to a couple of people who said that they hadn’t signed up so there were probably somewhere between 120 and 150 people spread out over the overpass.

They were just regular people, some of whom took off work early and some – like me – that didn’t have work to take off of. The crowd seemed completely middle class.

 

 

I especially liked the accidental juxtaposition to the sign in this picture.

It was mostly a late middle age group although there were people of all ages.

I am not sure how much of what I saw and felt was reality and how much is my projection, but – with that qualifier – everybody seemed more sad than enraged, disappointed with a deeping realization that it wasn’t going to get better. At least without a huge amount of work on our part. I talked to one woman who said that it was a typical San Mateo crowd, We are nice people who don’t make waves. These are people who believe in democracy, who haven’t given up or they wouldn’t be here. They are aware that America’s day in the sun is ending but are not happy with the government only helping the rich.  I had the sense that they weren’t going away.

 

 

 

 

Two questions and a macro lens

Americana, Around home, Photography

Last summer, Michele bought a seedling at the San Francisco Succulent and Cactus Society show. She bought it because it was fuzzy and the deer – seen here looking for something tasty after chomping down on an Acacia sprout –

don’t normally eat fuzzy plants so it seemed like a good choice for the backyard.

Then, a week or so ago, it bloomed at the very tip, right where the new leaves are. I have no idea what the plant is and I am pretty good at identifying plants partially because I am a lumper and not a splitter.  A lumper says that an onion is a Lily and leaves it at that, a splitter wants to know exactly what kind of onion it is. With cacti, the lumper sees the fairly common tree cactus and sees a Opuntia of some kind, or – maybe – a Opuntia brasiliensis; a splitter sees a Brisiliopuntia brasiliensis. Being a lumper is much easier.

After photographing the plant, I went for walk around the neighborhood and saw a baseball laying by the side of the trail where there are no houses. I am tickled by the fact that the ball is OFFICIAL LEAGUE which – let’s face it – is never Official League. Actually, we used to use Official League as a joke, sort of like Industrial Strength or the amp goes to 11. Also, as you can see, the ball is made in China.

Now, for the two questions: what IS that plant? and, are real major league baseballs made in China? or are they still made in the good ol’ USA because baseball is our national pastime, after all?

The Free Press

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics, Psychological Musings

Check out the two pictures above. According to Sociological Images, what really happened is that the police complained to the New York Times and they changed the article. I am not much of a conspiracy kind of guy but I do think that the press does have a point of view and is susceptible to influence. Even the New York Times. We liberals think that Fox is a right wing propaganda machine and the rest of the press is neutral. That is not true.

Almost all the press is owned by the establishment  and tends to back the establishment and protect the establishment and listen to the establishment. We, on the other hand, are pretty much trained to passively and uncritically absorb whatever is in front of us. So when the New York Times says that In a tense showdown over the East River, police arrested hundreds of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators after they marched onto the bridge’s Brooklyn-bound roadway we believe it. Except that that isn’t what really happened.

 

 

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