Category Archives: Current Affairs

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.

 

Dinosaurs were birds department

Current Affairs, Evolution

One of the things that interests me about Science is how it is a reflection and enlargement of an individuals reaction to change. A healthy individual. When I was at college, one of the required courses was a two year general science course that included Chemistry, Physics, Geology, and Astronomy, among other things. At the end of the Geology stint, we talked a little bit about continents floating around which was a theory put forward by a sort of loony German meteorologist named Alfred Wegener. I remember our teachers pretty much ridiculing him and his theory as being pretty far out and unproved although he did have some interesting points. It sounded more plausible to me than to the teachers, then I forgot about it.

Years later, I got interested – maybe obsessed is a better description –  in human evolution. I read everything I could find on human evolution and, in passing, started seeing lots of references to  plate tectonics. All of the references seemed to take the floating continents for granted. In fact almost everything seemed to be based on the reality of the floating continents. The geological community had gone from denial – Wegener seems loony – to bargaining – maybe Wegener has some good points but there is more/less to it than that – to acceptance.

I have posted about this before, but it is interesting – much more than interesting, really, fun – to see the same thing happening with dinosaurs. They used to be slow and stupid; cold-blooded. Then, maybe, warm blooded – but that seemed sort of unbelievable. Then, OK, maybe warm blooded but still like reptiles. Then, maybe – but probably not – the predecessor to birds.

Now, they have found a new fossil Talos sampsoni – nice name, BTW, Talos for talon, I presume and sampsoni for Sampson; Sampson talon –  and the talk is how the animal is a fast killing machine using its talons. All the bird-like characteristics are just taken for granted. He/she does give Angry Birds a new meaning.

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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Glow in the dark

Current Affairs, Psychological Musings, Uncategorized

In an article on looking for a cure/vaccination for AIDS, I read – almost in passing – that they have made a kitty that glows in the dark. It seems that researchers were able to place genes a from a glow in the dark Jelly Fish into a cat’s egg. The glowing gene is used as a marker insuring that the egg accepted an anti-AIDS gene they are working on. This leaves me pretty much speechless. For all sorts of reasons.

One is that the article is so nonchalant about the whole glowing kitty thing. A little bit like the glowing kitty part is something we all know about and the interesting part is the AIDS, well, it is probably more important in the short run, but making a kitty glow in the dark; that is – as Che said about sanitation – revolutionary.  How long before we have Replicants?

Gaddafi’s Creepy Love Den

Americana, Current Affairs, Uncategorized, , ,

 

When I saw the headline, Gaddafi’s Creepy Love Den in The Dailyt Beast, my first thought was  a remembrance of a Peter Arno cartoon in which a stuffy matron, reading the newspaper that says Mayor caught in love nest and looking up at her equally dignified husband, says “What is a ‘Love Nest’, dear?” Of course,  I remember it because I didn’t know, at about ten, what a Love Nest was either; I’m sure that my mother’s explanation was in good taste.  “Love Nest” is just not a term you hear these days, but – then – neither is “Love Den”. I hope they are both coming back.

When I was at an impressionable age, my family had three joke books that helped shape my sensibilities. There were other books and – I’m sure -other joke books, but the three that stick in my mind are the aforementioned Peter Arno book, a James Thurber book with a name I can’t remember, and Up Front by Bill Maudin. They all three had a sort of whimsical sarcasm that I like to think is in my DNA.