Eggs Laid by Tigers

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Do we, we animals, like killing? Killing at a distance?

Ut is interesting to compare the Wall Street Journal's report of the devastating fight between the Pakistani army and Taliban fighters in once-beautiful Midora with the reporting of the same events by Al Jazeera's reporters.

The slant is different, and what is agreed is that some 20,000 of Midora's unlucky residents are trapped in a city with no food, caught between the opposing forces, facing death.

Remember that Swat, the district that includes Midora, was "the Switzerland of the East,"with beautiful lodgings, and all the e comforts of the tourist life.

No more. No more.

Here are some pics of ordinary life in Midora, before War came calling.

[Please click on this window: it blows up and is really beautiful]

The photographer who took this portrait commented: "Looking into the eyes of these people, i find sadness more than anything els"

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Al Jazeera's reporters also describe fierce fighting and heavy bombardment in the neighboring village of Orakzai, a Taliban stronghold.

Here are some pics from there [captions are the photographer's]:

Orakzai

Traditional Launch with a local School at Orakzai

Pakistani Taliban militants offer prayers in Mamouzai area of Orakzai Agency in November

12 killed in Orakzai drone attack

A; Jazeera also notes teat the people of Islamabad have solidly supported the killing and dislocation ofd the Pashtun in Swat until recently, when the slaughter has been connected with the interests of the U. I gather that the protests are so far insignificant.

Protesters criticised the offensive as part of Washington's so-called 'war on terror'

[Please note: it is no longer Bush's war on terror]

Labels: Chitral, Pashtun, Swat, tribal aeal, war

posted by durell douthit # 1:28 PM 0 Comments

Friday, May 22, 2009

Strategic importance of Swat and Chitral to global security

This article, from Asia Times, has a clear explanation why Swat and Chiral, along with other nearby

districts, pay an important role in global security. The article is a bit hard to follow because many of the names re unfamiliar t o Western eyes. Study it if you like. Even my friends the Uighurs [pronounced WEE - gur] whom I would gladly see relocated from Guantanamo to Lower Kaimuki, play a role.

Here is a map.

Here are some pictures of the various districts mentioned in the article.

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Swat:

Upper Dir:

Lower Dir [guess who the local leading Talib is]:

Buner:It was the Taliban incursion into Buner that finally lead to Islamabad's decision to move troops against them.

Uighurs:

Te Uighurs [I was originally attracted to these folks by their name, which is pronounced WEE-girs] live net door to Chitral, in a vast desert in North-West China. We are holding Uighurs at Guantanamo, though they have done us no harm, because China is demanding them, we don't want to end them to China for fear it will torture them [to the paradoxical credit of Bushco], and no other country will accept them for fear of China's wrath. I want them to come live in Lower Kaimuki, where I think they would fit right in.

posted by durell douthit # 3:29 PM 0 Comments

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Hope for the future

I spent some time last evening with an old friend, contemplating the multiple horrors of the 20th Century: millions killed in preventable wars, famines, and disease. The prospect for the 21st Century did not appear much better, to us. Drones dropping bombs at random times and places strikes me with a special horror.

After a while, I remembered reading an article in Science News about how bees and ants make phenomenally good decisions about where to relocate a hive or nest. Biologists have been studying how those insects are able to make such good decisions, and an illustration accompanying the article suggests that we, too, sometimes make phenomenally good decisions, as in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Bees and ants have billions of years of experience in selecting nests and hives. That's plenty of time for evolution t wipe out bad decision--making. We are mere infants, by comparison.

But I wonder if, considering humanity as a whole, we might conclude that our capacity for destruction, which now threatens the species with destruction, might be ready for a big increase in our capacity to make good decisions. I know this much: you young'uns don't think about the world in the same way that those more than 65 think about it. That gives me nome hope for our future.

posted by durell douthit # 11:09 AM 0 Comments

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Winter has come . . .

The Ant and the Grasshopper...

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

THEIR MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MY MORAL OF THE STORY: Laughing and dancing are great; wouldn't change a thing. . . ..

posted by durell douthit # 7:06 PM 0 Comments

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Swat, Chitral, and a failed experiment with the Taliban

We have our religious bigots, and sometimes our folks drag someone to death behind a pickup or leave someone to die,tied to a barbed wire fence, and a lot of us believe in the literal truth of the Bible, or think we do until asked to think, and a lot of us are intolerant toward gays, or fundamentalists, or anyone different from us;

BUT

at our very worst, we have nothing like the religious problem facing Pakistan, and now, most acutely in SWAT, the same district as my beloved Chitral.

Today's Washington Post has a pretty clear explanation of Pakistan's dual secular and religious courts -- similar in a way to the secular royal courts and the ecclesiastical courts of Merry Old England, which remain, as shadows, in our distinction between equity and law principles.

This dual court system prevails not only in Pakistan but in all Muslim countries, whether Sunni, Shiite, or some other sect. The religious courts apply sharia, derived from the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet. Some apply sharia literally -- as would some of us, had they the power to do it -- and some figuratively, as, say, a Lutheran theologian might apply the Old Testament stricture against eating shellfish, or its preference for enslaving neighbors rather than our own people.

The Wahhabis, out of Saudi Arabia, have an unusually literal and strict application of sharia. That Kingdom set up religious schools all over Pakistan to preach its fundamentalist and anti-Western doctrines, and to support the religious courts that apply their strictures.

The most strict of the strict are what we call the Taliban. I don't know what they call themselves.

A while ago the Pakistan government agreed that the Taliban could set up strict sharia courts in Swat, and provided that appeals could be taken to the civil courts. The people of the district are said to have welcomed the Taliban because the civil courts were slow and corrupt.

That welcome is over, if the Post is to be believed. Thousands of the residents of Swat have fled and there is general condemnation for the brutal way the Taliban apply sharia.

But getting rid of them seems to be a hard thing to do, and there has been a general, growing fear of the more fundamentalist Muslims.

The Post article cites an essay by Kamila Hyat, published in the International News, entitled The Talibanisation of Minds, which holds that the impact of fundamentalist thinking is growing in all of Pakistani society.

That is not good news for our efforts to keep The Bomb out of the hands of our enemies. It is also very bad news for women in Pakistan, but bad news for women carries less weight with our people than fear of The Bomb, unless you are an enlightened part of "our people". I recommend the article to you.

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Swat, like Chitral, was called "the Switzerland of Central Asia" before the Taliban incursion. It is now The Sough of Despond.

Here's how it was:

The Web used to carry lots of ads for hotels and tours in Swat, Dir, and Chitral. It would be as if Waikiki suddenly went out of business. Certainly a few radicals would rejoice, for a while, until the pinch of economic reality set in.

May the Christian Right he held forever at bay, in our homeland.

posted by durell douthit # 11:50 AM 0 Comments

Friday, May 08, 2009

DEATH BE NOT PROUD

DEATH not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

JOHN DONNE

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

DYLAN THOMAS

WHAT GIVES RISE TO SUCH SENTIMENTS? WHAT LEADS WISE MEN TO UTTER SUCH BOLD, DESPERATE ASSERTIONS? DOES ONE NEED TO BE SURROUNDED BY UGLY, HURTFUL DEATH TO PROCLAIM ITS DEFEAT? Here in our Island Paradise, death isn't urgent, even when imminent. It comes easy, dropping slow, as a dew, except for lovers, who know well the reasons for Donne's and Thomas' defiance.

MAYBE TODAY'S STORY IN TH NEW YORK TIMES YIELDS A CLUE. PICTURES THAT ACCOMPANY THE STORY TODAY AND YESTERDAY FOLLOW: [and no, I'm not picking on the US: plenty of others do much worse; somehow when it's done by us, it feels worse.
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And no, I haven't forgotten the living, though this pic, of a random guy on an unremembered Hawaiian beach, may be of a guy long gone, too. Somber day.

Labels: Afghanistan, death, Dylan Thomas, John Donne, Obama, ssshirtless

posted by durell douthit # 9:48 AM 0 Comments

Friday, May 01, 2009

Zabol is We; We are Zabol: who'da thunk it

The Washington Post has an article Friday that illustrates, as well any I have seen, Afghanistan's reality and the special difficulty that it presents to America. I recommend it to you.

The article also gives reasons why invading Iraq, with its cost and waste and its continuing demands, is an ongoing problem for us.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, visited Zabol, in Eastern Afghanistan, across from Balochistan territory in Pakistan (as near as I can make out) and was dismayed by what needs to be done before the area is safe from Taliban incursions from Pakistan. Among many other things, citizens of Zabol need their teachers to have ears: the Talib cut off the ears of those teachers who disobey instructions to close schools.

Zabol province is home to some 188,000 Afghans. The government consists of one governor, Gov. Mohammad Ashraf Naseri, picture here with Adm. Mullen, and four deputies.

The Talib blow up roods and buildings and there are no engineers or contractors to fix 'em. There are no cops to stop roving bands of Talib from having their way with the populace. Don't go there unless accompanied by Adm. Mullen. East LA is a picnic by comparison.

President Hussein has pressing responsibilities at home: corrupt and broken financial systems on which we and the rest of the Word depend, crumbling roads, no health care for millions, and so on. Zabol in now part of our homeland, albeit without a vote -- as it should be. We are the World; the World is us. I guess Zabolians get to vote when we tax 'em.

. There is also an on-line newspaper dedicated to Zabol news, from an American perspective. Sorta interesting. You just missed the deadline for applying for jobs in Zabol. Army Lt. Col. James Overbye is organizing football games in Zabol and is soliciting money for more equipment. See here if you want to learn more. Lt. Col. Overbye and his young students are pictured below:

Below are more pics of Zabol.

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I like Gov. Naseri's beard and am jealous of the gentleman pictured above for his thick, white one. Do ye think I'd fit in?

Perhaps I'll move there, in spite of all. I'd guess that I'm older than the governor: the cold, dry climate will age skin, and no dermatologist to preserve ye. I'd guess the governor is a Sunni -- most residents of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan are -- and probably Pashtunwali is important to him. I'd guess that women are safe and protected and enslaved. I'd guess that "macho" doesn't even begin to describe the attitude of dominant males of whatever orientation

If Pashtunwali is important to the governor, then it must be to Adm. Mullen, a complex new part of what is now our world, complex to one who lives in a peaceful, tropical land.

Wow! I love it! (At least in the abstract.) O for a Magic Carpet! If I were young, wouldn't I want to be a part of Zabol's reconstruction? [See the UN job application ads, above.]

Better than Joining Judge Bybee:

Bybee at 53 or se

If 9/11 had happened when I was 25 -- if then I clerked for a Wall Street law firm and Bushco was in power -- would I have been tempted to join Bybee's team? Would I have supplied citations for the torture memos? Would I have found the case of the Texas sheriff who got 10 yeas for waterboarding a robbery suspect? Or would I have missed it? Or would it have been ignored? If Ignored, would I have remained silent?

Can't say that I wouldn't 'uv. The young do strange things. I remember traveling to a national convention of my fraternity, to vote against the Brown University chapter, for having the temerity to pledge a Black man. Did it without thought. Where we grow up matters, whether South Texas or Zabol.

But Bybee isn't young. Phooey on him!

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I never grow weary of comparing us to them though, of course, "They" are "We" ["Us", if you speak Pogo]:

Zabol Queen's Beach, Waikiki

There is a difference in attitude. I wonder if a maiden from Zabol were to be transported to Queen's Beach on any holiday, if she would recoil at the blasphemy?

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Lest you think all is grim in Zabol, consider these pics, from the web, under " Zabol".

Senga33 & Nicram24

Żabol (genetycznie zmodyfikowan)

[No fair if you speak Farsi: you may decide that thee pics atr from Zabol in Iran; what do I know?]

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I cannot read maps well enough to tell if Zabol is in Pashtun or Balochistan territory. Both tribes are Sunni and each has traditions different from the other. Can you tell? It'll make a difference. Balochs, I think, are meaner. In an event, the Taliban seem to come from Baloch territory.

The Balochs live in a vast desert in what the English were pleased to split into Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, for reasons that make sense only to Englishmen.

The Iranians have brutally stamped out Balochian language and customs (Iranians are, after all, the much-despised-by Sunni Shiites]; the Pakistanis have been content to enjoy Balchian natural resources without much benefit to the Balochs, and -- as far as I know -- the Afghans and the Balochs live in harmony, except for the Talib followers.

Water is the essential life ingredient in Pakistani Balochistan; and if you want water, you must apply to the dreaded Government Water Master. No one displeases the Government Water Master lightly.

Here he is, in majesty:

The Government Water Master

posted by durell douthit # 11:07 AM 0 Comments