Friday, August 14, 2009
August 14 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Re-Defining The Relationship Between Ourselves, Our Homes, And The Earth
6PM PDT: 6,843 acres involved - 65% containment
CalFire Map as of August 14 2009 (AM)
[Click map for large image, link below for current info]
(Note: There is an updated (8/15 AM), smaller map here in JPG format
Last Updated: August 16, 2009 6:00 pm
Date/Time Started: August 12, 2009 7:16 pm
Administrative Unit: CAL FIRE San Mateo - Santa Cruz Unit
County: Santa Cruz County
Location: Bonny Doon area - Smith Drainage
Acres Burned: 6,843 acres
Containment 6,843 acres - 65% containment
Structures Destroyed: 2 outbuildings damaged
Threatened: More than 100 residence are currently threatened in the Swanton and Bonny Doon communities.
Evacuations: As of 3:00 PM, Fire Officials lifted the mandatory evacuation of the Bonny Doon area, allowing the residents to return home with proper ID. Residents should remain diligent and continue to drive safe while both fire and law enforcement equipment will still be working in the area. The possibility of evacuation in Bonny Doon still exists. Approximately 500 residents from Swanton area still remain evacuated.
Injuries: 4
Cause: Under Investigation
Cooperating Agencies: CAL FIRE, Santa Cruz County Sherriff
Total Fire Personnel: 2,165
Engines: 291
Fire crews: 28
Helicopters: 14
Dozers: 31
Water tenders: 21
Costs to date: $ 8.8 million
Major Incident Command Team: CAL FIRE ICT #9
Conditions: Major problems and concerns continue to be the weather, steep terrain and limited access to the fire's perimeter. Conditions continue to be very fluid and may change quickly based on weather factors.
Several road closures are in effect in the fire area and being coordinated by the Santa Cruz County Sheriffs Department and the California Highway Patrol: Empire Grade @ Warnella, Empire Grade @ Ice Cream Grade, Truck Rd Alba Road @ Empire Grade, and Bonny Doon @ Pine Flat
An evacuation center has been established at the Vintage Church at Hwy 1 and Mission. A large animal evacuation center has been set up at the Watsonville fairgrounds and a small animal evacuation center has been established at 7th & Rodriguez.
Phone Numbers (831) 335-0378 (Lockheed Fire Information )
Updates available [Here]
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." August 14 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The Logging Industry Started It And It's Up To Us To Re-Define It... Re-Defining The Relationship Between Ourselves, Our Homes, And The EarthPrefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [192kbps VBR 19:36 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Twitter This Commentary |
President Obama goes to the "Heart of the Beast", Bozeman Montana (really, one of the hipper places in Montana), where he's going to hold a town hall meeting. The "Health Care Resisters" (What's up with that?) intend a show of force then the president goes on to Colorado for another meet-up with the heartland.
The "Death Panel" those nutcases have been talking about turns out to be whether or not doctors will get paid when they have a meeting to tell a patient that they SHOULD REALLY prepare their last will and testament.
The Afghan elections will be rigged and corrupt according to our OWN diplomatic corp, but it will only be, according the Foreign Policy bean counters, 20% corrupt. See this posting for details
Secretary of Defense Gates says winning in Afghanistan will take at least three more years and then 10-15 more to do, what is described and circumscribed by us, as 'Nation-building'. It seems trite to mention it, but they had a nation before we arrived... See this post for details.
The US military has resumed training and equipping the Georgia (Ex-CIS) army because they are going to be the next reinforcements for our military rape of Afghanistan. That alliance is going to make medicated Guinea Pigs and "Crash Test Dummies" out of Georgian soldiers for America's Pharma-Industrial Complex ... See:
Myth, Meth and the Georgian Invasion
Beat the Devil
By Alexander Cockburn
.
.
.
Kirill Benediktov, in his online book on the invasion, reports that these soldiers were equipped--so subsequent searches of bodies and prisoners of war disclosed--not only with NATO-supplied food packages but with sachets of methamphetamine and combat stress pills based on MDMA, aka the active ingredient of Ecstasy. The meth amps up soldiers to kill without mercy, and the MDMA derivative frees them of subsequent debilitating flashbacks and recurring nightmares. Official use of methamphetamine and official testing of MDMA in the US armed forces have been discussed in news stories. [In Full]
The Master of "The Log", Les Paul, passes. He was still pickin' n' grinnin' at 94 years young and running a night club in New York. He didn't just, for all intents and purposes, invent the electric guitar, but was one of the first to develop the technique of recording using multiple tracks. The LA Time has a list of just a few of the musician influenced by him.
The Last Chance Road fire in the hills outside Santa Cruz California continues. CalFire is calling it Five Percent 'contained' with 4,100 acres burned so far.
(This structure is ABSOLUTELY indefensible, with brush and trees nearby. It's unlikely that fire crews will attempt to save it.)
Photo courtesy of the San Jose Mercury News
(Click the image for their article)
The smoke is easily visible from inside the city, 20 miles from the scene.
Da Buffalo posted some other images, a dedication, and a 'soundtrack' yesterday. Click the image above for the posting.
There is a Google Map detailing the fire area available.
Click the map for the full featured version @ GoogleMaps
[After the news, Les Paul & Mary Ford... "Waiting For The Sunrise". Then, after the commentary, Jesse Colin-Young sings about his "Ridgetop" in Marin California, another semi-rural community North of San Francisco which has been very, very lucky in regard to wildfires over the years. All music, and Travus, courtesy of the respective artists and KPIG radio Freedom California Earth.]
Audio hosting courtesy of: [www.archive.org]
Travus T. Hipp's Commentary Archive Is [ Here]
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Cabale New Service, KPIG Radio, and KVMR radio.
Listen to KPIG, Listen to KVMR
Recorded & transcribed by Da' Buffalo Amongst Wolves
Related @ IceRocket: Travus T. Hipp, Cabale News Service, KPIG, Politics, News, Alternative News, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Domestic Policy, Breaking Politics News, Realpolitik, Republican Family Values, Social Justice
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Fire, Fire On The Mountain - The Last Chance Road Fire 2009
Get updates [Here]
Also see: August 14 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The Logging Industry Started It And It's Up To Us To Re-Define It... Re-Defining The Relationship Between Ourselves, Our Homes, And The Earth
In memory of Jerry Garcia, who's family, until recently, lived in Lompico California, about 10 miles from ground zero of the Last Chance Road fire of 2009
Fire On The Mountain
Grateful Dead
Lyrics courtesy of LyricWiki
Audio courtesy of Archive.org
Recorded 1995-07-02 - Deer Creek Music Center
(Click any of the pictures for larger images)
Long distance runner, what you standin' there for?Get up, get up, get out of the door. Your playin' cold music on the barroom floor. Drowned in your laughter and dead to the core.
There's a dragon with matches that's loose on the town. Take a whole pail of water just to cool him down.
Fire! Fire on the mountain!Fire! Fire on the mountain!
Fire! Fire on the mountain!
Fire! Fire on the mountain!
Almost ablaze still you don't feel the heat. It takes all you got just to stay on the beat. You say it's a livin', we all gotta eat. But you're here alone, there's no one to compete. If Mercy's a bus'ness, I wish it for you. More than just ashes when your dreams come true.
Fire! Fire on the mountain!Fire! Fire on the mountain!
Fire! Fire on the mountain!
Fire! Fire on the mountain!
Long distance runner, what you holdin' out for? Caught in slow motion in a dash for the door. The flame from your stage has now spread to the floor. You gave all you had. Why you wanna give more? The more that you give, the more it will take. To the thin line beyond which you really can't fake.
Fire! Fire on the mountain!Fire! Fire on the mountain!
Fire! Fire on the mountain!
Fire! Fire on the mountain!
All photos taken with a Canon SD630 in Hi-rez mode, 4:30 PM PDT August 13 2009
Location: The steps of the Santa Cruz Main Post Office, and the top of Pacific St. at Water St. Santa Cruz 95060
Distance by air to Last Chance Road, approximately 20 miles.
Tags:
95060,
Forest Fire,
Grateful Dead,
Last Chance Road,
Santa Cruz
August 13 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: We Can Call It 'The Last Chance Fire' Despite It's Official Name
| "All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now."August 13 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: We Can Call It 'The Last Chance Fire' Despite It's Official Name - Musings On My Teenage Years And Fire Crew 'Impressment' Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [192kbps VBR 20:59 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Twitter This Commentary |
There's heavy resistance to the "taking and control" (call it occupying if you'd like...) by 400 Marines/100 Afghan soldiers of a major town in the Helmand province of Afghanistan...However, it MAY make no long term difference at all.
Here's what defeat in Afghanistan looks like: Casualty-phobic troops, walls, sand bags, and blast barriers:
Having spent this past July at International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in Kabul, I have seen what defeat looks like. It takes the form of thousands of casualty-phobic troops ensconced behind the walls, sand bags, and blast barriers of a well-protected safety bubble.
When ISAF troops venture out from their base into the "red zone" (i.e. the comparatively safe streets of Kabul) they are prepared for combat. Barreling through the crowded streets of a city that has been called a comparative "safety zone" by those fighting in the south, they jam the phone signals of average Afghans with their ECMs (electronic counter measures) and jam the roads with their convoys. One would think that the coalition vehicles driving around Kabul in combat posture and menacingly waving 50 caliber machine guns at Afghans were storming a Taliban sangar (trench) in Helmand, not competing with rush hour traffic.
For the vast majority of troops at ISAF headquarters, Afghanistan remains an enigma, a threatening land lying beyond the concertina wire of the base. The only Afghan most ever meet is the Hazara carpet seller on base who serves authentic Afghan food once a month. And the only coalition soldiers most Afghans meet are encased in armor-plated vehicles or flak jackets.
[In Full @ Foreign Policy (by an ISAF vet]
When those vets get home, things don't go so well for them either, see the first of three-part series by Penny Coleman, who's written extensively on the tribulations of US veterans of war, about the criminalization and institutionalization of American Veterans
Time is running out on Gitmo - The DOJ and the Pentagon have gone to Michigan's Standish Prison and Ft Leavenworth Kansas (local news reports) to investigate the incarceration of the Guantanamo POWs in those facilities
Iran is asking the IAEA for a resolution banning attacks on nuclear facilities anywhere in the world
Harvey Milk, the Gay San Francisco supervisor assassinated by another board member, and 15 others, were awarded the Medal of Freedom by the White House yesterday.
What WERE all those sirens last night throughout Santa Cruz? Call out the volunteers! Last Chance Road, just up the coast from the Da Buffalo's home pasture at Davenport California is burning... Currently one of the largest fires in the US.
In the 60s and early 70s, Last Chance Road was the local hippie communal land with Yurts, Tipis and various forms of alt-housing 4 miles up an unimproved, rutted dirt road. It's different now...
MUCH different, as the weekend hippies became Yuppies and DINKS (Double Income, No Kids), bought the land bordering Big Basin state park, where the sheriffs used to continually threaten raids thru the back gate to Last Chance, and now the road all the way up to the mill site, the communal center of the community, is paved... suitable for 'Bimmers' and those not-really-offroad-capable SUVs.
(The image above is the 'Mill Site" circa 1970). The 'Woods Hippies' who lived there in those days had a LOT more smarts than these urbanized, commuting, latter day 'hipsters'... They DID NOT bring expensive possessions and build exorbitant housing in this fire-indefensible area... The last wilderness area of Santa Cruz county. Now, the taxpayers will end up paying for the follies of the nuevo-wealthy who, as Travus (gracefully) DID NOT POINT OUT, are often 'too busy' to even clear a firebreak around their homes no less "get their hands dirty" with hard physical labor.
After the commentary (and after the Black Irish Band's "Smokey The Bear") from Da Buffalo's personal collection, Cat Mother and The All Night Newsboys, refugees in the early 70s fleeing the East coast (Boston/New York) to relative sanity in the local woods, and beyond, "The Paranoid Papers: Outdoor Man/This Land/Roll Wheels Roll", from their 1971 album, Last Chance Dance.
Their first album was re-released in the early 90s for it's historic value. They were Jimi Hendrix 'crash test dummies' when he first built Electric Lady Studios, and it was the only album produced by Jimi, who no doubt met them when they played benefits at "Alternate U", a radical free school in New York. Jimi was a "Yippie!" folks... If you have the vinyl of Electric Ladyland, look inside the gatefold cover and in one of the pictures, on his hat, a Yippie button... prominently displayed.
Audio hosting courtesy of: [www.archive.org]
Travus T. Hipp's Commentary Archive Is [ Here]
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Cabale New Service, KPIG Radio, and KVMR radio.
Listen to KPIG, Listen to KVMR
Recorded & transcribed by Da' Buffalo Amongst Wolves
Related @ IceRocket: Travus T. Hipp, Cabale News Service, KPIG, Politics, News, Alternative News, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Domestic Policy, Breaking Politics News, Realpolitik, Republican Family Values, Social Justice
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
August 12 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The 'Branding' Of America's Children Incarcerated In 'Educational' Gulags Called 'Schools'
| "All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now."August 12 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Your Children... The Conspicuously Compulsive Consumers Of The Future - The 'Branding' Of America's Children Incarcerated In 'Educational' Gulags Called 'Schools' Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [192kbps VBR 13:46 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ]  Courtesy of CrimethInc, The EX-Workers Collective Twitter This Commentary |
Meanwhile, in America's "war on Drugs"... How's YOUR 'hood'?: From the NY Times, "State-by-State Drug Use (Or, Rhode Island Needs More Rehab)"
Now, the "Global Mayhem Market Report: Afghanistan Edition": BODY BAGS are a "Buy"! - US, NATO deaths from Afghan bombings spike 6-fold in July... US military deaths in Afghanistan region reach 699. (9:30PM PDT, Make that 706 Dead American Soldiers)
More Afghanistan news... In another eight days there will be presidential elections and US, Afghan troops launch operation to protect vote, while Hamid Karzai, Ex-UnoCal consultant shows them how Western "business" is done in the political arena... there are reports that he's preparing to rig the voting in next week's presidential election. (TimesOnline UK)
Next door in Pakistan's 'tribal region' a US drone has hit a 'rebel training camp in Waziristan'. The rebels seem to be holding a Loya Jirga to select a new leader to replace Baitullah Mehsud apparently killed in a drone attack the other day, meanwhile the locals claim the structures hit and destroyed were simply local residences with local civilians.
A number of people in Kuwait have been arrested for allegedly planning a truck bombing.
More Pakistan - Pakistan's nuclear sites? We claim not to know where they are, but the rebel groups apparently do! Pakistan claims repeated attacks on the facilities... apparently not to obtain the nuclear weapons but simply because the military installations are there. Expect US military action if things come apart.
Click the map for more:
The Swiss government and the UBS banking conglomerate have cut a deal with the US that they WILL tell where THEY put your 'offshor-ed' ill-gotten gains.
What's the matter bubbie? Not really a sociable sort of person? Homeless, jobless, trophy wife left for a still-employed, guaranteed bonus Goldman Sachs exec and you're in a bad mood because you feel your society and culture have abandoned you? The Feds think you might be a potential 'shooter' and have taken the 'initiative'... The Lone Wolf Initiative: The Feds are trying to 'detect' ‘lone offenders’.
Federal authorities have launched an effort to detect lone attackers who may be contemplating politically charged assaults similar to the recent murders of a Kansas abortion doctor and a Holocaust museum security guard....and finally, It's nice to be thinking of the future, but the prevailing attitude of the US press seems to be "Never Mind Our OWN Trash And Pollution... Look Over THERE!" The NY Times Fingers China For Trash Pollution It Hasn't Even Generated Yet.
The effort, known as the "Lone Wolf Initiative," was started shortly after President Obama’s inauguration, in part because of a rising level of hate speech and surging gun sales.
"Finding those who might plan and act alone, the so-called lone offenders … will only be prevented by good intelligence, the seamless exchange of information among law enforcement at every level, and vigilant citizens reporting suspicious activity," said Michael Heimbach, the FBI’s assistant director for counterterrorism.
Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley said the FBI is sharing information with his agency.
Agents from all of the FBI’s 56 field offices have been dispatched on a range of assignments, said two U.S. law enforcement officials who were not authorized to speak publicly about details of the program. Among the duties:
• Reviewing records in domestic terrorism investigations that may point to more suspects.
• Analyzing records for suspicious purchases at fertilizer or chemical suppliers whose materials could be used in bombmaking.
• Checking rolls of prisoners scheduled for release or who have been recently released for past links to extremist groups.
[In Full @ The Gates Of Hell]
Audio hosting courtesy of: [www.archive.org]
Travus T. Hipp's Commentary Archive Is [ Here]
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Creative Commons Copyright
Cabale New Service, KPIG Radio, and KVMR radio.
Listen to KPIG, Listen to KVMR
Recorded & transcribed by Da' Buffalo Amongst Wolves
Related @ IceRocket: Travus T. Hipp, Cabale News Service, KPIG, Politics, News, Alternative News, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Domestic Policy, Breaking Politics News, Realpolitik, Republican Family Values, Social Justice
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
August 11 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Lemmings Acting Against Their Own Best Interests - Town Hall Anti-Health Care Demonstrators
| "All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now."August 11 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Acting Against Their Own Best Interests - The Current Town Hall Health Care Demonstrators Are 'Lemmings Marching To The Sea' And No Matter Who's Leading They're STILL Lemmings Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [192kbps VBR 12:00 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Twitter This Commentary |
Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's 'president' and former UnoCal consultant is promising to call a Loya Jirga, a meeting of the tribal groups, if he's elected in the upcoming elections. A ceasefire could result. The Talib is demanding foreign troops out before anything like that happens.
The battles of the town hall meetings - Senator Arlen Specter has been harassed by protestors and there have been people waiting in the rain at Portsmouth New Hampshire for President Obama to speak to a 250 seat hall. Who got there first? Listeners or disruptors? We'll find out soon.
The 2 day meeting in Mexico between president Obama, prime minister Harper of Canada and president Calderon of Mexico has ended in apparent dis-satisfaction for all except the US (Natch!). The Canadians are stuck with a "Buy American" plan built into the US stimulus plan for it' steel industry, a US industry that would need Doctor. Frankenstein's level of 'stimulus' to revive... It's been deceased for at least 30 years, and for Mexico, military funding for their "War on Drugs" and general rebellions that might occur is stuck in congress witn no explicit promise from Obama that he will assist.
The US economy is still 'bleeding out' with deficit spending of $200 BILLION dollars a month and Secretary of Treasury Geithner is asking for a lifting of the spending ceiling... Meanwhile, "This week, outstanding world (financial) derivatives were declared to have reached the 1 quadrillion mark." See footnote #2
Footnote #1
July 21, 2009Back to the index
Summary
These files include formally highly classified US government communications about the Dasht-e-Leili massacre in Afghanistan. The massacre killed thousands of Taliban prisoners of war. The files were released earlier on two websites maintained by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) but are of significant historical importance.
PHR has asked that WikiLeaks house the documents to assure the widest journalistic and public access to the documents. WikiLeaks reaches an audience different than PHR's and having the documents on WikiLeaks' servers helps to ensure that the documents' availability does not depend solely on PHR's web infrastructure.
On July 10 there was a front page New York Times story detailing new allegations that the Bush Administration impeded at least three federal investigations into the Dasht-e-Leili massacre. President Obama has responded to the news on a nationally aired CNN interview with Anderson Cooper. There continue to be new developments in the story to which the FOIA documents continue to add relevant context and information.
In November 2001, as many as 2,000 Taliban prisoners are believed to have been killed in container trucks by US-allied Afghan troops and buried in a mass grave in Dasht-e-Leili, Afghanistan. These Afghan troops were operating jointly with American forces, who were allegedly present at the scene of the crime.
[Documents and Details In Full @ WikiLeaks]
Footnote #2
It's especially ironic that given our preoccupation with numbers, we have arrived at the point where numbers just can't be comprehended anymore.Back to the index
This week, outstanding world derivatives were declared to have reached the 1 quadrillion mark.
Commentators lately -- e.g. NPR's "Planet Money" broadcast -- have struggled to explain to listeners exactly what a trillion is in images such as the number of dollar bills stacked up to the planet Venus or the number of seconds that add up to three ice ages plus two warmings.
A quadrillion is just off the charts, out of this world, not really subject to reality-based interpretation. You might as well say "infinity...
...The number problems we face are now hopeless. America will never be able to cover its current outstanding debt. We're effectively finished at all three levels: household, corporate, and government.
Who, for instance, can really comprehend what to do about the number problems infesting Fannie Mae and the mortgages associated with her?
There's really only one way out of this predicament: to get ready for a much lower standard of living and much different daily living arrangements.
We can't wrap our minds around this, so the exercise du jour is to play games with numbers to persuade ourselves that we don't have to face reality. We're entertaining ourselves with shell games, musical chairs, Chinese fire drills, Ponzi schemes, and Polish blanket tricks (where, to make your blanket longer, you cut twelve inches off the top and sew it onto the bottom).
Now that Newsweek Magazine -- along with the mendacious cretins at CNBC -- have declared the "recession" officially over, it's a sure thing that we are entering the zone of greatest danger.
Some foul odor rides the late summer wind, as of a rough beast slouching toward the US Treasury. The stock markets have gathered in the critical mass of suckers needed to flush all remaining hope out of the system.
The foreign holders of US promissory notes are sharpening their long knives in the humid darkness. The suburban householders are watching sharks swim in their driveways. The REIT executives are getting ready to gargle with Gillette blue blades. The Goldman Sachs bonus babies are trying to imagine the good life in Paraguay or the archepelego of Tristan da Cunha.
While extremely allergic to paranoid memes and conspiracy theories, I begin to wonder about the impressive volume of World Wide Web chatter about an upcoming bank holiday -- meaning that the US government might find itself constrained to shut down the banking system for a period of time to deal with a rapidly developing emergency that might prompt the public to make a run on reserves.
God knows, there are enough black swans crowding the skies these days to blot out the sun....
[In Full @ James Howard Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation]
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Travus T. Hipp's Commentary Archive Is [ Here]
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Cabale New Service, KPIG Radio, and KVMR radio.
Listen to KPIG, Listen to KVMR
Recorded & transcribed by Da' Buffalo Amongst Wolves
Related @ IceRocket: Travus T. Hipp, Cabale News Service, KPIG, Politics, News, Alternative News, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Domestic Policy, Breaking Politics News, Realpolitik, Republican Family Values, Social Justice
Monday, August 10, 2009
August 10 2009 Commentary: Robbing The Poor Of Their Transportation - The Cash-For-Junkers Rebate
| "All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now."August 10 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Robbing The Poor Of Their Transportation - The Cash-For-Junkers Rebate Vs. The Paiute Automotive Philosophy... It's Better To Use Different 'Horses' For Different Purposes Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [192kbps VBR 12:46 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Twitter This Commentary |
In The News: Back to work and not much has changed...
Things are STLL not going well in our war on Afghanistan. A new strategy has been announced that may require 40,000 more troops and 5 >>> 10 years of 'continued operations' "needed". More Below
Also, another NATO soldier has been killed and ten days from now the Afghan elections happen. There are only 2 other candidates to split the vote and Hamid Karzai, ex-Unocal consultant (along with Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek Opium warlord from the Northern Alliance allegedly responsible for the massacre of thousands of captured Talib, as Chief of the Afghan army) in.
More Below
President Obama is in Guadalajara Mexico and met with Mexican president Calderon yesterday. Today he will meet with prime minister Harper of Canada. One of the major issue discussed with president Calderon is the NAFTA allowance for Mexican trucks on the roads of the US. there have also been economic discussions
More Below
Attorney General Holder is apparently ready to appoint a Special Prosecutor to look into the CIA contracting out the torture and abuse of Guantanamo prisoners. Expect it back in the news next spring.
More Below
Uighurs fleeing Western China. Over the weekend a KAM airliner from Kabul was turned back and they have been detained in Kyrgyzstan. More Below
In Honduras the illegitimate Micheletti government is prepared to negotiate with them the internationally recognized Zelaya government using Costa Rica and the OAS as intermediaries even as Colombia prepares to allow the US to use their airbases in return for military and economic aid (Plan Colombia) and Venezuela claims a territorial incursion by Colombian forces.
More Below
[After the commentary David Lindley and friends want to tell you all about an American classic you will soon see no more of. Courtesy of the respective artists and KPIG radio Freedom California.]
"(The new) strategy has essentially three legs, more security, followed by economic development, followed by better governance from the -- at the local levels in Afghanistan," Jones said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "My opinion was that we did not have a well-articulated strategy until March of this year. We had a strategy for security. We had a little bit of a strategy for economic development.... And we had a strategy that maybe addressed a little bit of governance and the rule of law. This strategy merges all of those three things."Back to Index
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is currently assessing the American military's involvement there and is expected to release his analysis soon. Raising troop levels is a top point of concern, as many "military experts insist that the additional resources are necessary," as reported today in The Washington Post. Jones was non-committal on troop increases, saying all options are under consideration.
"... We have yet to be able to measure the implementation of the new strategy, so if you have recommendations, make it in the context of the new strategy. This -- we have learned one thing in six years, we -- this is not just about troop strength," Jones said on CBS. [In Full]
The likelihood that there will be a run-off between the top candidates in the upcoming Afghan presidential elections could spark civil unrest and ethnic violence in the already war-torn country, according to a report released Friday by an international think tank.Back to Index
In a report titled “Afghanistan Elections: Guns and Money,” the London-based International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) says that a combination of factors could lead to a much closer race than expected.
ICOS: Afghanistan Elections: Guns and Money [Download PDF]
Entering this summer, most analysts believed that incumbent Hamid Karzai would regain the presidency with a healthy margin of victory. However the potential for a run-off has been growing, as two of the 41 candidates for President have emerged as legitimate challengers – former foreign affairs minister Abdullah Abdullah and former finance minister Ashraf Ghani. Mr. Abdullah is currently second in most polls behind Mr. Karzai.
However the ICOS report points out that Afghanistan's southern provinces – including Mr. Karzai's home province and power base of Kandahar, where Canadian troops are stationed – are rife with growing violence that will likely lead to several polling station closures on August 20th, when Afghans elect their new leader. That means many Paushtuns, who live in the south and largely support Mr. Karzai, may not be able to vote. On the other hand, the report notes, Mr. Abdullah's Tajik support base in the north enjoys much more security, and so may turn out to vote in larger numbers, increasing the likelihood of a run-off between the two men. [In Full]
President Obama tried to strike a balance between American and Mexican priorities when he met Sunday night with Mexican President Felipe Calderon in Guadalajara, Mexico.Back to Index
While there was no movement on either of Mexico's largest concerns-- a trucking dispute and Mexico's drug war-- the two leaders had a "cordial" 45-minute meeting, says a senior Obama administration official.
Mr. Obama expressed his "strong support" for President Calderon's efforts in fighting the pervasive and violent drug cartels which are affecting the security of both the US and Mexico. But the Mexican government says the delay of the implementation of the Merida Initiative, a $1.4 billion US aid package intended to help Mexico combat traffickers, is holding back their cause.
But President Obama wanted to assure Calderon the issue won't languish forever, "[The President] had expressed the desire to accelerate the implementation [of Merida] over the course of the last four months [since Obama last met Calderon]. We've seen significant progress on that front. That progress was discussed." [In Full]
Los Angeles, Aug 10 (IANS) The US attorney general is set to order an inquiry into alleged abuses committed by CIA during the interrogation of terrorism suspects.Back to Index
Democrats and opponents of the Bush administration have been demanding a probe into the methods used by the agency against terror suspects, particularly at Guantanamo Bay.
President Barack Obama has not ruled out the investigation but he has been reluctant to commit himself, fearing it will open divisions.
But quoting government officials, the Los Angeles Times said Sunday that Attorney General Eric Holder Jr is now poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses against terrorism suspects during their interrogation.
The newspaper said the inquiry will focus on “whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorised”.
It said cases of criminal abuse that have not previously been disclosed also include an instance in which a CIA operative brought a gun into an interrogation booth to force a detainee to talk.
Other potentially criminal abuses have already come to light, including the waterboarding of prisoners in excess of Justice Department guidelines, and the deaths of detainees in CIA custody in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 and 2003, according to the newspaper. [In Full]
BISHKEK, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Kyrgyzstan's police detained two Uighur community leaders after they accused China of "state terrorism" at a rally on Monday and called for an independent investigation of last month's clashes in neighbouring Xinjiang.Back to Index
About 500 Uighurs gathered at a building on the outskirts of the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek with photographs posted to the walls showing what they said was abuse of their kinfolk in China.
The pictures portrayed people being beaten up and held at gunpoint as well as unconscious or dead people lying in the streets.
In Xinjiang's worst ethnic unrest in decades, Uighurs staged protests in the regional capital Urumqi on July 5 after two Uighurs were killed in a clash at a factory in south China in June.
The violence left 197 people dead and more than 1,600 wounded, mostly Han Chinese who launched revenge attacks in Urumqi days later, according to the Chinese government.
About 1,000 people, mostly Uighurs, have been detained in a government crackdown. [In Full]
The interim government in Honduras now says that it is willing to accept mediation talks with a delegation from the Organisation of American States.Back to Index
But it says it will only do so if the OAS Secretary-General, Jose Miguel Insulza, attends only as an observer.
It had earlier refused to accept the delegation because it said Mr Insulza lacked objectivity.
He has called for the reinstatement of President Manuel Zelaya, who was toppled in a military coup in June.
It's not known whether the OAS will accept the terms for the visit.
The meeting had been planned for Tuesday, but a new date has yet to be announced.
Mr Zelaya was sent into exile after a coup in June amid a power struggle over his plans for constitutional change. [In Full]
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Recorded & transcribed by Da' Buffalo Amongst Wolves
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Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Where The Crank Labs Are... AKA "Californians in Prison, By County"
A panel of federal judges Tuesday ordered state officials to lower California's prison population by about 40,500. No mass prisoner releases are imminent, but the order eventually could affect some counties more than others, since many counties send a higher proportion of residents to prison.Da Buffalo commented @ Google Maps:
"Where the Methamphetamine labs are in California" would be a useful comparison. But as someone who's watched the drug culture over the last 40 years morph to nihilistic escapism, and has lived in California for the last 33 of them, I'd say the prison-industrial complex is making 'bank' on Meth.
View Californians in Prison, By County in a larger map
Also See: Methland... @ Global Guerillas
(A PDF of the prologue to Nick Reding's book "Methland" is available here)
Why Midwestern Small Towns Have Been Ravaged by Meth Addiction @ Alternet
(with a recent review of the now-released Nick Reding book and discussion)
...and this Travus T. Hipp Commentary: Incidental Illuminations And A Closer Examination Of The Situation In Burma - We Have Some 'Conflicts Of Interest' Besides Chevron/Texaco Oil... Drugs & Gems
(The drug now driving Burma's underground economy is NOT Heroin anymore)
In summation... my socio-cultural insight @ the Global Guerrillas article (and a partial answer to this statement pulled from the Alternet article):
"Aside from its ease of manufacture -- you can make meth out of readily available industrial and pharmaceutical products, enabling a twenty-first-century variant on the moonshiners of earlier generations such as Jarvis -- the drug's most novel aspect was its clientele: the same predominantly white small-town residents who had watched the urban depredations of crack cocaine from afar and told themselves that they weren't that kind of people. "We're in Iowa, for God's sake," a former Oelwein high school principal, explaining his decision to request police patrols of his school, tells Reding. "We don't do that." In mainstream America's Rockwellian imagination, police officers in towns like Oelwein were supposed to be stopping high school kids from making out in cars on prom night. In the meth age they suddenly needed bulletproof vests and hazmat training."
I live in a town where there are literally hundreds of teenage speed freaks and AFAICT (and I've been watching the drug culture since the sixties) it fill a hole in one's psychology that, in consumer cultures such as the U.S. and most of the Western industrial world, is caused by the media's endless pitch that one is never good enough, the car is never classy enough, WHAT? You don't have a diamond studded Rollie on your wrist?
...and of course, the girl is NEVER skinny enough or self-assured enough to get the boy she likes (or so she thinks).
In other words all that advertising batters their self-esteem to the point, when it's all said and done, our children take a drug that essentially makes it easy for them to say: "I don't give a f*ck what you think!"
Last fathers day, I was listening to a local radio station.
There was this loud audio-compressed pitch for a local superstore.
BUY A CELL PHONE... BUY A PLASMA TV... BUY THIS... BUY THAT!... BUY SOMETHING!!! (the ad really said that last...), and after that ad, a PSA for methresources, the US government's meth self-help site.
Go figure.
Oh, and by the way, Perdue Pharma, the folks who brought us "Hillbilly Heroin", OxyContin (Rush Limbaugh's favorite), another curse on the rural youth of America, were fined a few million dollars and slapped on the wrist for lying to doctors across America about the non-addictive quality of their product.
The FDA told them it was OK to say that it MIGHT be less addictive... but that's NOT what their sales reps told the doctors.
Why hammer on the poor rural folks of America in need of a few extra buck to make the mortgage for the shack, and not put companies like Perdue Pharma out of business entirely for creating a generation of teenage junkies?
I'll answer that... Because the imprisoning and 'programming' of American youth is BIG dollars, and attacking the pharmacological source of another plague isn't.
The local smoothie store, 'Jamba Juice', employing kids in, and just out of high school, makes it quite clear on their job app that if you've been in a 'program' it no problem at all.
They expect you've been institutionalized by the time you leave High School.
Sick.
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