Noam Chomsky, What We Say Goes, Lebanon and the Crisis in the Middle East, Page 18
Skateistan: To live and skate in Kabul
You can donate to Skateistan’s current project to build Afghanistan’s first outdoors concrete skatepark here: http://www.crowdrise.com/DIYSkateparkKabul/fundraiser/skateistan
I will never get tired of this, it’s amazing. And now there’s people doing similar work in Cambodia too. Helping street kids, especially girls, through skateboarding, who’d have thought XP
Death isn’t a competition.
Death isn’t a competition. Brutalization isn’t a competition. Poverty, starvation, oppression, bigotry, and war are not competitions. I think we can muster up enough empathy to care about multiple situations.
I know people are mad that the President is receiving brownie points for speaking up on behalf of justice for Trayvon Martin (RIP, love) but can we please quit comparing the Trayvon shooting to the current wars? Those are too completely separate cases, and trying to draw bad comparisons between them to support your ideology is unnecessary and disrespectful; I understand that people only do this to remind others that we should not allow Obama’s beautiful speeches to turn us away from recognizing his horrific imperialistic foreign policy. But rather than accuse others of limited empathy, why not shed light on Obama’s policies without trying to draw attention away from something as important as speaking up about the Trayvon Martin case?
People should understand to look past the speeches that Obama makes. People should understand the President’s Constitutional violations and send a message out against him, but to place the wars (horrible as they are) over the death of Trayvon just because it received Presidential attention is being misguided at best. Again, those two situations are unrelated.
I personally don’t care what Obama has to say about anything; at this point, I’ve learned to ignore him and look into his Presidential policies instead. Nevertheless, I do care about Trayvon and the many who share his fate; I also care about the countless numbers of children murdered by US imperialism, but I would never compare the two, then tell others to value one over the other. I hear it all the time: “Oh, people are so focused on the Trayvon Martin shooting that they don’t care about the innocent Middle Eastern children!” Stop it. My ideology doesn’t excuse that. Death, and especially the death of innocent children, is not a competition and we don’t need to make it so.
❝
Why is it, do you think, that children are always too young to hear the truth, but never too young to be lied to, systematically, conscientiously, in the name of Education?
— Ward Churchill on Perpetual War and State-Sponsored Terrorism
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As for the talking heads of the I Love Going to War in the Middle East series, they really are amazingly familiar. I say amazingly, as yet again I must implore you to marvel at the giddy pace of the internet age, where every hard-won bit of wisdom is almost instantly lost to amnesia. It used to take close to a generation for everyone to forget the learning of a bitter foreign policy lesson and to blunder into something that forced it to be learned again. It now takes about 10 minutes.
A Brief MUST WATCH: Israel’s Nuclear Weapon’s Program
radical-islamist-globalwarmist:
Watch this and a fun, little quiz below
Fact Time: Israel or Iran
Which state has over 100 nuclear warheads?
Which state has not signed the Nuclear Non-Profileration Treaty?
Which state has initiated wars in past 10 or even 20 years?
Which state is viewed as the largest threat to Middle East by its people?
P.S. Iran is not the answer to any of the questions.
Wake [the fuck] up
[Everything in brackets is mine. Btw you should all follow leptiir ASAP because this girl is keeping up with everything, everywhere somehow because she possesses superhuman powers or something but the point is that you’ll learn a lot just by going through her blog on an immense range of issues.]
There are issues in the entire world. Every single issue deserves awareness not just those you think are important. I think it’s quite sad we pay attention to a few countries here and there while ignoring those who people have barely heard about.
[These links will lead you to mutiple posts on her blog about whichever cause -please do go through them over time, it’s an amazing archive that she’s collected]
Yugoslavia / Bosnia & Hercegovina / Kosovo
Darfur NomadsPain is still pain if you’re a person that’s missin’
We all deserve a life in this Earth that we live in
- Lowkey.
Why is it okay to kill a soldier but not the man sits behind a desk and orders soldiers into battle?
The names of the Palestinians recently killed in Gaza:
Zuhair Al-Qaisi, 49
Mahmoud Hanani, 44
Yahya Dahshan, 27
Mohammad Haraha, 24
Obeid Al-Gharabli, 22
Hazem Qureqi, 22
Shadi Seqeeli, 27
Fayeq Samir, 28
Motasem Hajjaj, 22
Ahmad Hajjaj, 22
Mohammad Al-Mogari, 25
Mahmoud Al-Ghamri, 26
Husain Barham Hammad, 51
Mansour Abu Nusaira, 21
Mahdi Abu Shweish, 24
Ayyoub Asseyela, 13
Adel El Issi, 52
Hamada Abu Mutlaq, 24
Raafat Abu Eid, 24
Hamadah Salman Abu Mutlaq, 24
Muhammad al-Hasoumi, 65
Faiza al-Hasumi, 30
Naef Qarmout, 15
Bassam al-Ajla, 32
Muhammad Thaher, 25
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I saw that all 11 of my relatives were killed, including my children and grandchildren.
—
Haji Samad - Relative of the 11 victims killed by the US soldier.
Ahsan for Asian Correspondent adds his accurate analysis of the tragedy:
Naturally, we are going to hear about how this was a “rogue” soldier, “acting alone”, and how his actions don’t reflect the wider institution to which he belongs. Obama’s press statement certainly touched upon that theme, saying that “this incident is tragic and shocking, and does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan.”
Sorry, but that’s rubbish. It was only last year when the infamous “kill team” story came out (the details of that story, too, have to be read to be believed). It’s only been a couple of months since the “urinating on corpses” story came out. You wonder about the stories we haven’t heard about. The U.S military may embody a lot of things but a deep respect for the people of Afghanistan is probably not one of them.
(via mehreenkasana)
26 Palestinians killed in Gaza by Israeli strikes, past few days
including five civilians (aka non-Islamic Jihad)
March 14th, 2012
![11/03/2012
A US soldier reportedly carried out a brutal slaying of at least 16 Afghan civilians early this morning in two small villages near his base in the country’s southern Kandahar Province.
“It appears he walked off post and later returned and turned himself in,” military spokesman Lt. Cmdr. James Williams said of the unidentified staff sergeant who is currently in custody.
According to eyewitnesses, the soldier walked into at least three homes in the villages of Balandi and Alkozai and fired at their occupants. Nine children and three women were among the dead, per the latest report.
The deputy commander of Afghanistan’s international troop coalition, Lt. Gen. Adrian J. Bradshaw, stressed that this was “in no way part of authorized military activity.” US officials further denied earlier reports that the shooting was perpetrated by more than one assailant.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai released a statement demanding an explanation for the attack, which he referred to as “an intentional killing of innocent civilians [that] cannot be forgiven.”
The Taliban issued a similar statement, admonishing “the so called American peace keepers” for “once again quench[ing] their thirst with the blood of innocent Afghan civilians.”
This latest setback for US efforts in the region comes just as fury over last month’s Koran burning at Bagram Air Base and January’s corpse urination footage had begun to abate.
The US Embassy in Kabul attempted to diffuse the tension by releasing a statement expressing “deepest condolences to the families of the victims,” but experts say today’s incident may be the “fatal hammer blow on the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan.”
President Obama’s drawdown plan has US soldiers transferring full security control to their Afghan counterparts by the end of 2014.
[photo: afp/getty via msnbc.]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0qe0zICOw1qzpwi0o1_1280.jpg)
11/03/2012
A US soldier reportedly carried out a brutal slaying of at least 16 Afghan civilians early this morning in two small villages near his base in the country’s southern Kandahar Province.
“It appears he walked off post and later returned and turned himself in,” military spokesman Lt. Cmdr. James Williams said of the unidentified staff sergeant who is currently in custody.
According to eyewitnesses, the soldier walked into at least three homes in the villages of Balandi and Alkozai and fired at their occupants. Nine children and three women were among the dead, per the latest report.
The deputy commander of Afghanistan’s international troop coalition, Lt. Gen. Adrian J. Bradshaw, stressed that this was “in no way part of authorized military activity.” US officials further denied earlier reports that the shooting was perpetrated by more than one assailant.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai released a statement demanding an explanation for the attack, which he referred to as “an intentional killing of innocent civilians [that] cannot be forgiven.”
The Taliban issued a similar statement, admonishing “the so called American peace keepers” for “once again quench[ing] their thirst with the blood of innocent Afghan civilians.”
This latest setback for US efforts in the region comes just as fury over last month’s Koran burning at Bagram Air Base and January’s corpse urination footage had begun to abate.
The US Embassy in Kabul attempted to diffuse the tension by releasing a statement expressing “deepest condolences to the families of the victims,” but experts say today’s incident may be the “fatal hammer blow on the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan.”
President Obama’s drawdown plan has US soldiers transferring full security control to their Afghan counterparts by the end of 2014.
[photo: afp/getty via msnbc.]
Kony 2012: Fresh Uganda Oil Find ‘Africa’s Biggest’
What a motherfucking coincidence.
Posted 16/10/2011
14 Jan 2009 “The Times” - -Heritage Oil announced details of a large oil discovery in Uganda yesterday, which the company claimed could be the largest onshore discovery in sub-Saharan Africa.
Heritage said that its latest discovery – Giraffe1 – in the Lake Albert region, could total at least 400 million barrels of oil.
However, Paul Atherton, chief financial officer, told The Times that the wider field it was developing, dubbed Buffalo-Giraffe, had several “billions of barrels of oil in place”, although it was unclear how much of this would be recoverable.
He said that the field, which is 9,000 square kilometers in size – or six times the size of Greater London – was unquestionably the largest onshore discovery made in sub-Saharan Africa in at least 20 years, possibly ever.
Mr Atherton said that of the 18 wells the company had drilled in the basin so far, all had produced oil. “Clearly the entire basin is full of oil,” he said. “It’s a world-class discovery, the most exciting new basin in Africa in decades.”
Previously, the largest onshore fields discovered in sub-Saharan Africa were at Rabi-Kounga in Gabon, where 900 million barrels were found in 1985, and at Kome in Chad, where 485 million barrels were found in 1977.
Mr Atherton said that it would take at least another three years to start commercial production. [this was posted in 2009, do the math] The crude could be exported by road or rail, he said, but analysts believe that the most practical solution would be to build an 806-mile pipeline to take it to Kampala, Uganda’s capital, and then the Kenyan coast. The pipeline would need to be heated and designed to traverse swampy and mountainous land. It would cost an estimated $1.5 billion (£1 billion) to complete.
Heritage and its partner Tullow Oil, which also has a 50 per cent equity stake in the project, would need to demonstrate that the field could produce at least 400 million barrels of oil to justify the cost of building such a pipeline. Richard Griffith, an Evolution Securities analyst, said the latest discovery “thrashed” this commerciality threshold.
See Also - Uganda : Pressure Mounts To Make Public Oil Agreements:Uganda’s oil discovery is already attracting major players like Italian oil giant Eni Spa, U.S. Exxon Mobil, France’s Total and of recent the China National Offshore Oil Company. The country does not have the funds to finance the production of oil and instead signed agreements with oil giants spelling out how the revenue will be shared with investors willing to fund the production phase. The companies will build an oil refinery in Uganda and an oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean. This will enable the landlocked country to sell its estimated two billion barrels of crude oil internationally
Uganda’s oil contracts leaked - a bad deal made worse: The repeated claims by the Ugandan government and the oil companies that Uganda has received a very good deal and the best in the region are not only a fiction, but were reliant on the real terms of the contracts being kept secret. While the contracts will deliver vast profits to Tullow Oil and Heritage Oil, the contracts will prevent the Ugandan people from receiving their due benefits.
Oil extraction and the potential for domestic instability in Uganda: The paper identifies and discusses in detail three sources of domestic volatility that may arise as a result of oil development.
Uganda: Oil could cause war : The attacks are by armed gangs suspected to be rebels of the FDLR, LRA, and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). In the ongoing campaign in DR Congo, President Joseph Kabila is being criticised for failing to restore peace in this vital area.
