Another country

Rob Payne, "The Agony and the Escalation" here, and here.

Dennis Perrin, "Obama's Brand New Bag"






The arithmetically-challenged Thomas Friedman: "we did some stupid and bad things. But for every Abu Ghraib, our soldiers and diplomats perpetrated a million acts of kindness..."

As first lady Laura Bush looks on, President Bush hugs Candace Pierson of Auburndale, Fla., after her son, Marine Cpl. Jordan S. Pierson, was presented the Purple Heart for injuries suffered while serving in Iraq. The ceremony took place Dec. 21, 2005, at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. Also in the room are Cpl. Pierson's fiancee, Kirstin Martin (right), and sister Rachel Pierson. White House photo by Paul Morse

Phan Van Tu was born in October 1989; his injuries, from contact with hitherto unexploded ordinance, occurred in 2003. From Advocacy.net:

Tu was born to poor farmers in the Bo Trach district of Quang Binh Province. Living conditions were difficult for his family so as he got older, Tu helped his parents out by collecting shellfish after school. Then one afternoon when he was thirteen, Tu picked up a bombie* while catching shrimp. By his account, one minute he was in the water and the next he woke up in a hospital, having lost his left arm below the elbow and the lower half of his left leg. Tu also had severe injuries to his intestine that required extensive surgery and a two month stay in the hospital. As his body healed, Tu was able to return home, yet his recollection of that time is not entirely celebratory: “I did not go out of my house because I was so anxious about what people thought about my limb loss. I was scared of their stares and glances, their words and even their sympathy.”

Addendum and correction: When I first came upon the photo of the boy on the right sitting on the sofa, all I knew about the image was that it was from electronicintifada.net and that it came up via an image search for the query "Afghan bombing victim". However he is not from Afghanistan[link]:

Twelve-year-old Mohamed Samer Elhaz Mouss, photographed in October 2006, was injured by Israeli cluster bomblets delivered by Israeli warplanes during the recent Israeli aggression on Lebanon. On 9 August 2006, in the Rashidieh Camp outside of Sour, Mohamed was running from attacking Israeli warplanes and hid behind a tree where he came into contact with unexploded bomblets. (Sam Costanza)

In a sense Mohamed is a victim of the same larger war, that has been waged more or less continuously since 1945 or so, but that is an argument for another day. Here(and here) are images of Afghan children victimized by the Af-Pak conflict.(Some are pretty graphic. Note that the second group of images are related to one specific airstrike that took place in May of 2009.)






Dallas Morning News, "Obama's Afghanistan decision evokes LBJ's 1965 order on Vietnam buildup"


Jonathan Schwarz, "Psych!"

and

Ed Rollins, CNN: "Obama's bold plan makes me want to wiggle my dick"(I paraphrase.)





Arthur Silber, "A Deadly Liar and Manipulator"

additional photo credits: B-52 from Brittanica.com, B-1B from Wired.com, BHO with legless lady from AFP, GWB with soldier's family from Whitehouse.gov, Iraqi Vet playing Gameboy from Life.com, LBJ and McNamara from University of Kansas History Archive(UPI), BHO and Robert Gates from Reuters, cartoon from Thoughts on the Eve of the Apocalypse. Flags of South Vietnam, etc are public domain.

William Engdahl on The Real News

William Engdahl discusses his book Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order. In spite of his invoking the bugbear of the "new world order", this seems like a surprisingly sober argument, at least based on this interview clip.

More from Jim Rogers

More from Jim Rogers, this time sans bowtie:
"Britain & America have no clothes", part 1 of 3.

And, Part 2 and part 3.

I don't entirely agree with Rogers' views. For example, I think the massive US debt going forward means we do need to raise taxes on the wealthy to prevent stimulus-oriented public spending from causing inflation, and to prevent panicking foreign banks contemplating a possible collapse of the dollar.

In part two Rogers says, of the creditor-debtor relationship between China and the US, that

"it's the first time in history that an undeveloped nation financed a developed nation."

I don't know about that-- it seems to me that Europe and the US forced undeveloped nations to finance their growth, through the economic plunder of colonialism. But having said all that, there's still a lot of value to what he offers, and I think his misgivings about the bank bailouts are apt.

(Of course, as with any would-be economic sage-slash-teevee-talking head, it's useful to keep in mind how they might benefit or be hurt by different policies the government may take. This of course applies to Rogers, as well as Warren Buffet and Alan Greenspan, etc. It's very much to Rogers credit that he readily talks about his investment in Asia in this regard.)


cross-posted at Hugo Zoom.