U.S. Special Forces to Burma: Help or Hindrance?

With Afghanistan and Pakistan hot spots, and Special Forces still used in Iraq to train Iraqi commandos, the United States is in no rush to deploy them to Burma. However, without active intervention on behalf of the Burman civil opposition and the ethnic armed opposition, President Bush’s bans on imports from Burma and the export of financial services to Burma, as well as asset freezes on institutions and individuals, are but half-measures. On February 20, a state department spokesperson acknowledged as much when he stated that the United States Burma policy is under review. Full story »

If an entire tree can be held in a tiny puddle – what does that say about our human struggle to control our world?

There are some wonderfully descriptive and colorful words I’d like to hear on television. I know that they’re being uttered; after all, most of us can read lips to a certain degree.

Our ears may hear bleep, but our eyes see lips moving that say shit, asshole, fuck, cocksucker, and motherfucker. Sometimes our ears will gather additional evidence. They will hear mother followed by bleep instead of fucker. Sometimes the ears will detect ass followed by bleep or bleep followed by hole but never the compete asshole. But the ears never hear cock followed by bleep or bleep followed by sucker because, it seems, Almighty Television Execs think cocksucker is so reviled a concept as to ever be partially bleeped.

I rarely view pricey premium channels such as HBO or Showtime. But my friends who can afford such luxuries assure me that there’s rarely if ever a bleep to be heard. It’s shit and fuck and motherfucker and cocksucker, etc., as far as the eye can see (or, rather, the ear can hear).
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Do you have what it takes?

That’s the basic question that drives Ben Sherwood’s book The Survivors Club. In a crisis, what determines whether a person survives? “Why do some people live and others die?” Sherwood wondered. “How do certain people make it through the most difficult trials while others don’t?”

The reasons, of course, vary—but they’re also quite surprising.

In The Survivors Club, Sherwood, a best-selling author and award-winning journalist, delves into the science of survival. He talks to survival experts, doctors, psychologists, training instructors, rescuers, and researchers in an attempt to find out just exactly what “it” is for a clearer sense of what it takes to survive. Full story »

I just thought inquiring minds might want to know. Full story »

Have at it…

Harry Kalas, the long-time broadcast announcer for the Philadelphia Phillies and the voice of NFL Films, passed away today. Kalas died in the booth prior to today’s game between the Phillies and the Nationals. The cause of death was not immediately known.

“We lost our voice today,” said Phillies team president David Montgomery.

In fact, baseball and football fans alike were struck dumb by the news. Full story »

Hot links from recent days: My favorite loony elected official warns of “politically correct re-education camps” for youths … Robots are replacing humans as the great explorers, observes Jeremy Hsu … Woe is Colorado: Wildlife’s losing ground to sprawl, there’s mercury in the lakes, and forests are turning brown … RIP Tom Braden; Crossfire was at its best when it was Braden & Buchanan … The plight of Haiti continues to shame the Western Hemisphere … The surviving Beatles put on a show … Spotless minds may soon shine eternally … Howard Zinn discusses class in America … Our friend Brad Friedman says: Hey, AP nitwits, Franken won … America’s first solar-powered city? … Paging Dr. Jones: Mugabe has stolen the Ark … Would you pay for news online? … A second sequel to the animation classic Heavy Metal is in the works, and Rob Zombie might direct a segment … In other metal news, Ronnie James Dio is penning an autobiography … We’re at the dawn of personalized medicine, says Fergus Walsh … “Whanne that Aprill with its poems sote/The doldrums of March hath perced to the rote” … $150 million in Nigerian bribes are sitting in Swiss banks … Humans and aliens might share DNA roots, writes Brandon Keim. Hey, I saw that Next Gen episode! … Microsoft believes Net usage will overtake traditional TV in Europe next year … Oh, great. Now insurers will get bailed out. Developers must be next … Speak of the devils: “We clearly overbuilt.” You don’t f?!king say … Fox comes up with this week’s Sound Business Solution™: Capitalize on misery … What could possibly make Kanye West regroup his shit? This … Adam Carolla chats with Trek legend and gay icon George Takei … And speaking of gay, Matt Drudge wants you to know that he does not love sex with men. He prefers eggs. ∞

While on the campaign trail, Barack Obama made greening America’s infrastructure a huge priority for his administration. As noted in the Los Angeles Times, Obama planned

to spend $150 billion over the next decade to promote energy from the sun, wind and other renewable sources as well as energy conservation. Plans include raising vehicle fuel-economy standards and subsidizing consumer purchases of plug-in hybrids. Obama wants to weatherize 1 million homes annually and upgrade the nation’s creaky electrical grid. His team has talked of providing tax credits and loan guarantees to clean-energy companies.

His goals: create 5 million new jobs repowering America over 10 years; assert U.S. leadership on global climate change; and wean the U.S. from its dependence on imported petroleum.

He’s currently battling Congress for the appropriations required to turn his vision into reality, and the resistance from Capitol Hill raises once again a question that’s been bouncing around the office here for the last six months: why not revise the tax code to make wind, hydroelectric, solar and other renewable technologies “like-kind” with traditional fossil technologies? This would allow energy companies that wanted to transition into green energy to employ Section 1031 Like-Kind Exchanges, thereby speeding the switch-over considerably. Full story »

Many folks like a good shoot-’em-up Tom Clancy novel, filled with supersecret spy stuff, technologically amazing weapons, and daring young men and women outfitted in black with killing gizmos of all kinds. So, too, do some folks like movies that show ultra-military sophistication and operations, many adapted from those same Clancy novels.

In novels and movies, presumably, no one really dies if fictional operational details are revealed.

But should we be reading details of real, life-at-risk military operations, such as those found in The Washington Post and The New York Times and other press outlets regarding a kidnapped merchant marine captain? Especially when those stories carry not a single named source?
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UPDATE: As of this moment (Monday, 9am MDT), IAMX leads Animal Collective by a 69%-31% margin. If you haven’t already, give both artists a listen and register your opinion in the poll box below.

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First, the results. In Match #1, S&R readers preferred The Well Wishers over Andrew Bird 52-48%. The contest was a neck-and-neck, see-saw affair from the opening bell, and our congrats to both artists. Jeff Shelton and Co. now advance to the second round where they await the winner of…

Match #2. Here we see our first true clash of styles, with Indie squaring off against … let’s call it darkpop, shall we?

In the red corner, hailing from the UK, Full story »

We’re a decade into the new American century, the neoconservatives are still leading the country on a march to the cliff, and most of the citizenry still hasn’t caught on to what’s happening.

I’ve been bumping into a wandering soul at various stops along the information highway of late who claims to have “lost soldiers in war.” In one discussion thread, this ostensible leader of lost soldiers insists that the surge in Iraq was successful because “we had the lowest number of casualties ever last month, which sounds like a win to me.”

I can’t tell if this person really commanded troops in war, or is a Pentagon viral propaganda operative, or if he’s just a computer generated personality disorder. I’d like to believe that someone who led troops in combat knows that casualty rates (aka body counts) are seldom if ever accurate indicators of how a war is going. The Union suffered more casualties than the Confederacy in the Civil War. The best Vietnam casualty figures we have indicate that roughly 1.1 million North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong personnel were killed in action compared to 47,378 Americans (U.S. combat and non-combat deaths combined totaled over 58,000). Full story »

The Limitations of Humanitarian Aid

When a people are, as the U.S. Committee for Refugees describes the Karen, “one of the most ignored groups in one of the most difficult humanitarian emergencies,” humanitarian aid is obviously of the essence. We contacted Tim Heinemann, director of Worldwide Impact, a non-profit organization currently focused on supporting the oppressed people of Burma, for insights into the plight of the Karen people.

“We are rather missing the point with humanitarian intervention as the sovereign panacea for what ails Burma,” Heinemann said, perhaps reflecting his experience in the U.S. Special Forces. That’s because, “U.S. aid goes largely to NGOs working the Thai side of the border helping refugees who have [already made it] to Thailand. The refugees back in Burma running for their lives and doing all the dying [get but] a token trickle of humanitarian aid in the form of rice and medicine that is best described as pitiful.” Full story »

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) likes the fact that Barack Obama is a better listener than Dubya, but says

“Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists.”

Asked to clarify his comments after the breakfast speech at the Trussville Civic Center, Bachus said 17 members of the U.S. House are socialists.

Not 16, not 18. 17.

Which raises a number of questions and concerns. Full story »

Some time ago, an idea to save Afghanistan floated on a few editorial cycles.  Afghanistan grows some of the world’s best pomegranates, coincidentally the “nature’s miracle” of the moment.  If we could just get Afghans to grow pomegranates instead of poppies, they would become wealthy by exporting fruit to the “developed” world.  Peace would follow economic stability and democracy would follow peace…or something like that.  There are countless plans to “get Afghanistan right”, but they all follow the basic path of the Great Pomegranate Plan.

They all stumble into similar failings too.  It’s hard to get delicate fruit out of a country without significant transport infrastructure.  Not many health-food companies will be overly keen to set up processing facilities in the region.  The plan will only remain successful so long as the pomegranate is not usurped as the king of live forever foods and customers in the developed world can afford to splurge on wildly expensive health food.  Oh, and the fact that huge tracts of mature pomegranate orchards were cut down and replaced with poppies over the course of the good war.

We’re not getting Afghanistan right, and nothing in the latest plans suggest that we will get it right any time soon.  Are we even sure what it is we hope to accomplish or even why we’re trying to accomplish it?

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The Deproliferator

President Obama’s speech in Prague “represents a fundamental and important transformation in U.S. thinking about nuclear weapons,” said Arms Control Association executive director Darryl Kimball in a press release. “Obama is not just pledging to ‘pursue’ nuclear disarmament — as past U.S. presidents have done — but to make it the strategic goal of U.S. policy to eliminate all the world’s nuclear weapons.”

Taking advantage of the occasion to go on the offensive, Kimball added: Full story »

Well, okay – four chords. Enjoy.

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At the moment, it’s a bad time to be a political fundraiser. The deep pockets of corporate and other donors normally counted on to keep the election money machine well-oiled have suddenly gone shallow.

According to Paul Kane and Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post, donations are down — way down. Consider the first two months of 2005, 2007, and 2009: $48.8 million in ’05; $41.6 million in ’07; and a paltry $30.7 million this year. That’s expected, write the Post reporters, in the early months of odd-numbered years after presidential or mid-term contests.

It’s known as “donor fatigue.” It’s particularly bad at the moment because so many candidates dunned so many donors in an election year that saw the presidential election cost more than a billion dollars.
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Each time a newspaper’s corporate owners — and these days, most never worked as journalists — cut the editorial staff, the paper’s readers lose access to a mind and a pair of eyes that keep watch over government, business, and the public’s interests.

Until the discovery of newspapers as profitable cash cows by Wall Street more than four decades ago, newspapers were owned by people who had 1) worked as journalists, 2) understood the community the paper served, 3) believed in the public service mission of journalism, and 4) understood the need for an appropriate profit to maintain that mission of serving the public interest.

Those owners and publishers understood what they were selling — the ability of their editorial staffs to tell both wanted and needed stories to their readers about their communities. They knew that readers wanted and would buy their papers for sports, Dear Abby, and crossword puzzles. But they also knew their readers needed and would also buy well-done, “eat-your-spinach” stories about corrupt government and its agencies; misbehaving businesses; shenanigans of politicians; and fire, court and police activities. But that’s all changed now.
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I recently offered up an open letter to America’s progressive billionaires where I noted how much better conservatives have been historically at making best use of their intellectuals and at assuring that those laying the foundation for political action were taken care of. That is, the Daniel Bells of the world didn’t have to slave at two jobs to scrape together half a salary, and as a result they were able to do important work that paid off – and handsomely – for their patrons.

In truth, the problem runs deeper than just “our side’s” billionaires, or so it appears. It started the other day when some prominent Left Blogistanis decided they weren’t going to keep their mouths shut anymore. The first shot was fired in a Greg Sargent piece at Who Runs Gov: Full story »