Feeling Small.

Conditions: Raining like dogs and cats.


Failing The Basics.

After 9/11 the Bush administration demanded the Taliban hand over Bin Laden, the Taliban offered to turn him over to the International Criminal Court, so the Americans bombed, then invaded the country, setting up a puppet government. The attack effectively put the Taliban and Al Queda in the same bracket, and the new Afghani government has been struggling to stay in power ever since. Now, since this is the real source point of terror for the U.S, you'd think this would be their primary focus in the war on terror. That this, above anywhere else, would be the place that they would focus the full force of their might in pacifying the lawless hordes. But no, the tiny country has proven to be a thorn in yet another empire's foot, and the current government is struggling. This week President Karzai had to duck yet another assassination attempt.

Kabul, Afghanistan - The attempted assassination of President Hamid Karzai Sunday came as the latest sign of a trend worrying Western officials: that the insurgency is spreading from the Taliban stronghold of the south to the central and northern regions of the country.

The militant attack, the biggest in Kabul since mid-March, came during a public ceremony. Despite a massive security presence, militants managed to fire bullets and rockets at the president, killing two nearby lawmakers and a boy.

The insurgency in Afghanistan has not been "contained," Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell testified before a Senate subcommittee in February. "It's been sustained in the south, it's grown a bit in the east, and what we've seen are elements of it spread to the west and the north."

A recent study by Sami Kovanen, an analyst with the security firm Vigilant Strategic Services of Afghanistan, echoed this assessment. He reported 465 insurgent attacks in areas outside the restive southern regions during the first three months of 2008, a 35 percent increase compared with the same period last year. In the central region around Kabul there have been 80 insurgent attacks from January through March of this year, a 70 percent jump compared to the first three months of last year.

The numbers are part of a nationwide trend of rising violence. In the southern and southeastern provinces, including the insurgent hotbeds of Kandahar and Helmand, guerrilla attacks spiked by 40 percent, according to Mr. Kovanen's research.

Kabul itself has been largely free from the violence, but as Sunday's attack shows, there are signs that the Taliban's presence is growing here, too. On the sprawling, serene campus of Kabul University, where the nation sends many of its best and brightest, the Taliban has reached an unprecedented level of influence, students say.

- Truthout.org

So, America is not only failing, it's in danger of recording an EPICfail. You know, any true empire worthy of it's name would have completely pacified Afghanistan, rightly or wrongly they would have got the job done. In fact, Afghanistan can probably stand as the true test for any real empire through the course of human history and for the future. If you can take Afghanistan, then you're worthy of respect.

More: Leave Taliban Alone, Afghan President Tells West




Seeking Some Distance.

Remember that whole thing with Barack Obama reacting to controversial statements by his pastor with an intelligent speech about how we all have to be tolerant of each other and sensitive to our pasts? Well turns out that was good for just one outburst. Yes, the the good reverend has fired off another salvo, and this time Obama has made the standard distancing manoeuvre, greeted ravenously by the press.

Lured by the irresistible glow of the spotlight, the reverend launched a media blitz that took him from a softball interview with Bill Moyers on Friday, to a speech to a Detroit meeting of the NAACP on Sunday, to a press conference at the National Press Club on Monday morning.

Barack Obama is now declaring himself shocked and disappointed at Wright's unrepentantly racist and anti-American views--but Obama can no longer plausibly claim innocence in this matter, because he is the one who has encouraged Wright by trying to excuse and explain his views.

This time around, the Reverend Wright told his audience Sunday night that blacks and whites have different methods of thinking. Blacks rely on "right-brain" thinking, which is more creative, while whites rely on "left-brain" thinking, which is more logical. Oh yes, and blacks have a better sense of rhythm. As Victor Davis Hanson points out, if any white man had dared to breathe these hoary stereotypes--particularly the view that blacks are less suited to logical thinking--he would have been permanently cast out of polite society. The fact that Reverend Wright expressed those views to the NAACP (and received, by all accounts, a positive response) merely indicates how far that once-venerable organization has fallen.

Well, the rhythm part I believe. What else did the reverend say?

To the National Press Club, Wright reiterated his claim that AIDS was created by the United States government as a racist plot to kill blacks; he explained that Obama's "distancing" himself from Wright was only a political calculation "based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls"; and he also repeated his praise for Louis Farrakhan--the anti-Semitic, quasi-fascist, dictator-loving leader of the Nation of Islam--as "one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century."

Well, again, he might have a point. Bear in mind that there's no actual statement of value, Farrakhan may just be an 'important' voice, in the same view as Bush being an important voice in the 21st century.

But right or wrong, this is no way to run a presidential campaign. Obama is trying to appeal to everyone in a very calm and intelligent way. Shooting off controversial statements is more in keeping with a stand up routine.

But of course you can't have a few controversial statements getting blown out of all proportion without the news media. Take it away:

The purpose of Obama's famous speech on race was to make Wright seem reasonable, understandable, even mainstream. The Obama campaign's hope, no doubt, was that this would make the Wright story go away. But Wright interpreted it as an invitation. If he's so understandable and mainstream, why not go on a media tour to explain himself to the world? And why not use Obama's own arguments to justify himself and browbeat his critics?

All of this is why it is no use for Obama to backpedal from his association with Reverend Wright, or to denounce him now, six weeks too late. It was Obama who sought to provide the Reverend Wright with immunity from criticism--and he can't complain when the reverend tries to take full advantage of that immunity.

This is the final collapse of the noble promise of the Obama campaign. The man who had once put himself forward as the candidate who would transcend racial politics once and for all has ended up legitimizing a Christian equivalent of Louis Farrakhan--and injecting him into the American political debate.

- http://news.yahoo.com

Actually, yahoo news, no, it is not. What this is, is sensation running rampart over the fields of reasonableness. What we really need here is the lawnmower of sense, and the headphones of peace. Yea.




Who We Are.

A cosmologist and astrophysicist writes about the big bang and other inconsequential stuff, like how we fit into the universe. Behold!

Our universe covers a vast range of scales, and an immense variety of structure, stretching far larger, and far smaller, than the dimensions of everyday sensations. We are each made up of between 1028 and 1029 atoms. This human scale is, in a numerical sense, poised midway between the masses of atoms and stars. It would take roughly as many human bodies to make up the mass of the sun as there are atoms in each of us. But our sun is just an ordinary star in a galaxy that contains around a hundred billion stars altogether. There are at least as many galaxies in our observable universe as there are stars in our galaxy. More than 1078 atoms lie within range of our telescope.

All atoms contain protons. The atoms of the 92 naturally occurring elements that make up the periodic table each have a distinctive number of protons (one for hydrogen, 26 for iron, 92 for uranium).

Living organisms are configured into layer upon layer of complex structure. Atoms are assembled into molecules; these react, via complex pathways in every cell, and indirectly lead to the entire interconnected structure that makes up a tree, an insect or a human. We straddle the cosmos and the microworld - intermediate in size between the sun, at a billion metres in diameter, and a molecule, at a billionth of a metre.

Nature attains its maximum complexity on this intermediate scale: anything larger, if it were on a habitable planet, would be vulnerable to breakage or crushing by gravity. We are used to the idea that we are moulded by the micro-world: we are vulnerable to viruses a millionth of a metre in length, and the DNA double-helix molecule encodes our total genetic heritage. And it's just as obvious that we depend on the sun and its power. But what about the still vaster scales?

- http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Peace out, y'all.