A round-up of coverage of Senator Obama’s visit to Afghanistan in the US Media.

From CBS News:

The Washington Post:

Obama, traveling as part of an official congressional delegation, landed in the Afghan capital on Saturday morning under tight security amid a surge of Taliban activity in recent weeks. After a briefing at Bagram air base, he flew by helicopter to the northeastern city of Jalalabad in Nangahar province, where he met with U.S. soldiers and local leaders. From there, according to a U.S.-based aide, Obama set out by helicopter for a look at parts of eastern Afghanistan before returning to Kabul for a dinner with senior Afghan officials.

The presumptive Democratic nominee shied away from public comments as his trip began, belying the intense interest in the trip and its political ramifications. McCain used his new weekly radio address on Saturday to attack Obama’s foreign policy credentials and judgment. But as McCain sparred with his rival, the Illinois senator received an unexpected boost from Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki, who told the German magazine Der Spiegel that he looked favorably on Obama’s call for a 16-month timetable for withdrawing most U.S. forces from Iraq.

The Los Angeles Times:

In a speech last week, Obama said that troops should be drawn down in Iraq and two additional combat brigades deployed in Afghanistan, a war he said the U.S. couldn’t afford to lose.

His visit to Afghanistan comes at a time of sharply deteriorating security across the country. Suicide bombings are an everyday occurrence, and the number of foreign troops killed last month was the highest since the start of the war.

The presumptive Democratic nominee and senator from Illinois is part of an official congressional delegation that includes Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.). The lawmakers made a brief visit to Jalalabad airfield in eastern Afghanistan, greeting American troops from their respective home states.

At Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, Obama and the others met with senior military officials and got a briefing from the commander of American forces in eastern Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser. The decision to have the delegation meet with Schloesser probably reflected growing U.S. concern over infiltration of fighters from tribal lands on the Pakistani side of the frontier, which borders Afghanistan’s eastern provinces.

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My post, my views.

Ok, I may use profanity every once in a while but I usually do not get really angry.

I should have known better than click on that link that Lambert posted (I won’t reproduce it here). And I definitely should have known better than read the comments.

It started with the usual stuff that makes Lambert’s title so right on target: If you don’t support Obama, go f– yourself or any variation of that theme, traitors, etc.

And then I read this and I thought I was going to lose it. Like my title says, I’m still trembling with rage:

“At the end of WWII, all the French whores who serviced the Germans were rounded up. Their heads were shaved, and they were tarred and feathered.

At the end of a war, the victorious side settles its debts. If you helped, you get a reward. If you did not help, you are in serious trouble.
Posted by dataguy”

“I like the shaven head and tar and feathering idea for Clintonistas!!
Posted by Mandy”

And then happily moving on the claiming an absence of misogyny.

Maybe it’s because I’m French and my grandparents were members of the resistance and AGAINST the head shaving disgrace. Most of the shaving was done by former collaborators who suddenly had turned resistant zealots when they felt the way the wind was blowing. But I guess ignorance of history is no problem.

I never thought I’d say this: I hate these people.

Charles: feel free to delete if you don’t think it’s appropriate.

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In May, Zimbabwe introduced 100 Million, 250 Million and 500 Million Zimbabwe Dollar Notes. It then added five billion, 25 billion and 50 billion notes. It is now introducing a 100 billion note. Via Agence France Presse:

Zimbabwe, grappling with a record 2.2 million percent inflation, has introduced a new 100-billion-dollar bank note in a bid to tackle rampant cash shortages, the central bank said Saturday.

The new note will go into circulation on Monday, the bank said in a statement cited by state media, joining about half a dozen new high denomination notes already issued this year.

In January, a 10-million-dollar note was issued, then a 50-million-dollar note in April. In May, notes for 100 million and 250 million dollars were issued, swiftly followed by those for five billion, 25 billion and 50 billion.

The southern African nation, currently gripped by a post-election crisis, has been ravaged by hyperinflation which shot up from 165,000 percent in February to 2.2 million in June.

Independent economists however believe the official inflation figure is grossly understated, estimating it could be running between 10 million and 15 million percent.

Zimbabwe’s chronic economic crisis has left at least 80 percent of the population living below the poverty threshold and mass shortages of basic goods in shops.

One is tempted to say basket case, but that would imply Zimbabweans had baskets.

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Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog. My post, my views.

Via Le Monde, Nathalie Menigon, member of the French terrorist group Action Directe, has been paroled. She was serving two life sentences since 1989 with a minimum of 18 years without parole. She actually was already under the statute of “semi-liberte” since 2007 (where an inmate is allowed out during the day to go to work, but has to report to the prison or a halfway house at night and on weekends). The conditions of her parole also include limitations on where and when and for how long she is allowed to travel.

She is also not allowed to discuss her case outside of her legal representation. But she is not allowed to give interviews to the media or to write a book about the events that led to her conviction.

At this point, then, the only member of Action Directe still incarcerated is George Cipriani (his case is to be reviewed in September). Jean-Marc Rouillan (Menigon’s husband and co-founder with her of Action Directe) has been in semi-liberte since 2007 (he has published books and works now at the company that published them). Joelle Aubron was released in 2004 as part of a law that allows for the liberation of very sick inmates. She died in 2006.

Action Directe was the French version of the left-wing groups that engaged in armed actions against representatives of what they perceived to be a repressive state or figures of national capitalism. They parallel the history of groups such the German Baader-Meinhof (RAF) or the Italian Red Brigades. Action Directe is alleged to be responsible for the assassination of George Besse, ex-CEO of the French car manufacturer Renault and of Eurodif, a nuclear power company, as well as the assassination of Engineer General Rene Audran, who was in charge of the French arms sales.

The four members were all arrested in 1987.

(more…)

That little bit from Barack Obama’s speech on national service is not in the transcript of his prepared remarks. So just what does Senator Obama mean by this:

We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

Just prior to those two lines, Obama was talking about something quite different. He goes from talking about increasing the size of the US Foreign Service and opening consulates that have been shuttered (without telling us how he is going to pay for it) and doubling the size of the Peace Corps to the mother of all non-sequitors:

We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

What exactly does Senator Obama mean by a “civilian national security force“? Is he referencing the ATF, FBI, or DEA? Or something new and different say like the Defense of the Revolution Brigades that they have in Cuba and Venezuela where neighbors spy on neighbors? Surely he can’t mean the US Foreign Service and the Peace Corps et al be funded in the billions of dollars. Whatever he is referencing it sounds like a dramatic departure from current practice and current funding. And why did it take the press so long to catch the discrepancy between the speech as delivered and the prepared remarks? Why are the references in the transcript to this Civilian National Security Force deleted or omitted? Should we be worried? He was rather emphatic about it so I doubt that he just got carried away and ad libbed it.

I admit that I do not hang on Obama’s every speech and glean through them with the a fine tooth comb but perhaps I should for the press is not doing its job. It is apparently in the business of unadulterated adoration. If he is proposing something new and different, shouldn’t we be asking questions especially since it sounds rather open-ended and to be frank worrisome for civil liberties.

Here is the full speech on July 2, 2008 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The omission is just past the 16:45 minute mark:

Here is the transcript of the speech from the Denver Post:

As delivered in Colorado Springs on July 2, 2008.

Not quite but we will get to that at the 16:50 mark of the speech. (more…)

Via the Agence France Presse:

US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama arrived in Afghanistan Saturday at the start of a major international tour that will also include Iraq, his office and the Afghan foreign ministry said.

Obama’s office said the senator would visit some of the 36,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan as part of an international effort to defeat a growing extremist insurgency.

“He will meet President (Hamid) Karzai and they will discuss issues of mutual interest,” added foreign ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen, confirming Obama’s arrival to AFP.

The Illinois senator has been outspoken about the need to do more to help Afghanistan as violence linked to the insurgency has worsened with some of the deadliest attacks in recent weeks.

“I’m looking forward to seeing what the situation on the ground is,” the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee told reporters before leaving the United States.

“I want to, obviously, talk to the commanders and get a sense, both in Afghanistan and in Baghdad of, you know, what … their biggest concerns are. And I want to thank our troops for the heroic work that they’ve been doing.”

(more…)

A new ad by the Washington State GOP attacking Michelle Obama’s patriotism.

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Liberties, so say the Hollywood producers at Miramax, is what they took with the upcoming film version of Evelyn Waugh’s masterpiece Brideshead Revisited. And how could Emma Thompson lend herself and her talents to the trashing of one of Britain’s greatest novels is beyond belief. The book covers many themes but it is largely about being Catholic in a changing world. There are love stories throughout but again they center on moral values and choices some made by genetics, others all too human.

Here is the trailer to the upcoming Miramax release which paints the story as a love triangle:

A love triangle? Notwithstanding the fact that Charles’ and Julia’s torrid affair took place long after the opening salvos of Charles’ and Sebastian’s platonic romance, the book is about religion and how it destroys everything though certainly Waugh didn’t quite intend it that way. Waugh was a convert to Catholicism and Waugh wrote that the novel “deals with what is theologically termed ‘the operation of Grace’, that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by which God continually calls souls to Himself.” I daresay many of his readers took the opposite view or at very least, I did. It is hard not to when the Marchmain family, apart from the innocence of Cordelia, finds itself so ripped apart. I can understand Waugh’s romantic notions of nostalgia but the faith he attempts to convey is so simple-minded that in truth from my perspective it does little but destroy. Either you believe it wholesale and hope to soldier through it or its overwhelming hypocrisy destroys everything in its path. Asking questions is not very Catholic. There are many reasons I left the Church, but Brideshead Revisited was one of those that gave me the courage to do so. The book and the series gave me an insight in what not being a Catholic might be like. I have never regretted become an apostate.

I fell in love with the series back in the early 1980s and it was pivotal to my own life in ways I can’t even begin to fully describe. My own struggles reconciling Catholicism with my own homosexuality seemed so real when seen through the lens of Sebastian’s own conflict as told by Charles Ryder. Not knowing any homosexuals well at the time, I came to know Sebastian as well as myself. You might say Sebastian was my first boyfriend. In him, I could find solace if intemperate. Before the series was over, I had read the novel twice. I still read it in parts from the time. I made my partner read it so that he might better understand the influence of Catholicism on my life. The lines drop out of the novel as if from my own live. “We must make a Catholic out of you.” “I have six black Cordelias.” Sebastian had Aloysius, I had Mono. We were both in love with our childhoods and not so much with adulthood despite the “naughtiness high on the catalogue of grave sins.” I came of age wondering if Sebastian’s flaws were my own. Oh, to have Charles’ secular temperament. Undoing Catholicism, I have found is my life’s work.

The First Luncheon

Sunbathing

Venice

Charles Reminisces

The Making of Brideshead Revisited by Granada Television

There are things that can never be improved upon. Brideshead Revisited is one of them.

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Here is the Saturday, July 19th, 2008 edition of interesting reads from around the world.

Nepal Set to Elect Its First President
Having abolished the monarchy, Nepal is set to elect its first Chief of State this week. The role of President is largely ceremonial but Nepal will choose a higly symbolic one. He is to come from the ethnic minority Madheshi ethnic group of southern Nepal. The story from Reuters.

Thai-Cambodian Border Dispute Grows
Cambodia and Thailand continued to reinforce their troops along a disputed border area near an 11th century temple Saturday, even as they prepared for talks to avert a military confrontation. A report from the Associated Press.

French Nuclear Leaks
Long seen as the world’s most effeciently run nuclear power industry, the French nuclear power industry has had an embarrassing set of setbacks. Areva confirms second leak in two weeks, this time at a nuclear plant in south-eastern France. More from the UK Guardian.

Mbeki To Heed UN and OAU on Zimbabwe
Under pressure to expand his troubled mediation efforts, South African President Mbeki agreed on Friday to work more closely with the African Union and United Nations to bring an end to the Zimbabwe crisis. More from Johannesburg’s Mail & Guardian.

Russia’s Energy Clout
The Asia Times looks at Russia’s growing clout in the world’s energy markets and how Russia is unabashedly using its energy muscle to achieve its political goals.

Credit and Energy Tight in Vietnam
Thahn Nien News reports that companies in Vietnam are airing their grievances at a conference as tightened monetary policy and a power shortage have left them without money or electricity.

Spain’s Real Estate Crisis
Since the 1960s, in effect, Spain has been the centre of housing and real estate boom that has seen its warm coasts transformed with condos galore serving as second homes for cold-weary northern Europeans. And with increasing prosperity, many Spaniards too bought homes and vacation homes to boot. That boom is at an end. Germany’s Der Spiegel reports:

Spain’s economy is in trouble. Rising property values earlier this decade lured many Spaniards into the market. Now that the bubble has burst, the crisis is quickly spreading through the country’s economy.

Texas Approves Mega Wind Farm
Kudos to Texas. Texas sate regulators have approved a $4.93 billion wind-power transmission project, providing a major lift to the development of wind energy in the state.

The planned web of transmission lines will carry electricity from remote western parts of the state to major population centers like Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. The lines can handle 18,500 megawatts of power, enough for 3.7 million homes on a hot day when air-conditioners are running.

More from the New York Times. Wind power is a potent and clear-energy solution that requires full development.

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