Updated: Karzai Crazy, Or So The US Says

Foreign Policy, Israel, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Military, Old Right, Terrorism, War

Afghan President Hamid Karzai must be crazy, or at least hopping high, to kick back at the empire that created him. These are what supposedly serious pundits are saying in response to Karzai’s allegation that Western governments and the United Nations committed electoral fraud in last year’s Afghani presidential election.

The Hill: “Over the weekend, Karzai reportedly told members of his parliament that he would consider leaving the political process to join the Taliban if he continued to come under outside pressure.”

The last threat was so obviously tongue in cheek, but Americans didn’t find it amusing. Peter Galbraith, “the US diplomat who worked for the UN in Kabul until last year,” went on Smear TV accusing the leader of our Afghan satellite state of being unstable and toking it up too.

It’s a “bad trip” indeed.

I haven’t searched out reactions on the far- Left and Right to this hint from Kabul that the US has overstayed its welcome. These political factions, however, generally treat shows of Israeli sovereignty with fury and demands for Obama to crush Israel.

My guess is that you should look for the exact opposite reaction from said elements when it comes to our “Muslim allies.”

Since consistency is the touchstone of truth, this scribe is pleased about both Afghani and Israeli resistance to US meddling:

“Those of us who want the U.S. to stay solvent—and out of the affairs of others—recognize that sovereign nation-states that resist, not enable, our imperial impulses, are the best hindrance to hegemonic overreach. Patriots for a sane American foreign policy ought to encourage all America’s friends, Israel included, to push back and do what is in their national interest, not ours.”

Update (April 8): Meanwhile back in the trenches on the side of the righteous, a US “Special Forces team gunned down an Afghan police chief, a prosecutor, and three unarmed women, infuriating locals and drawing a sharp rebuke from politicians in Kabul.”

AND (via the CSM):

In a video conference taking questions from troops earlier this year, McChrystal said with some frustration “we’ve shot an amazing number of people” who were not, in fact, threats. In February, McChrystal apologized to the Afghan people after a NATO airstrike killed 27 civilians.

A scene of “Sulcha” unflods in which an animal is sacrificed and American slobber, and the only words that are sensible and honorable come from a local man, Mr. Sharabuddin:

“… justice would only be served when the Americans gave up the informant who sent the Special Forces squad to raid a house full of civilians and government officials. ‘We want that spy who gave the false information to the Americans,’ Mr. Sharabuddin said. ‘I don’t want the spy for myself, I want him to face justice or be handed over to the commander of the [Afghan army] corps.”

Update IV: Mining Men

Business, Gender, Labor, Law, Regulation

The Upper Big Branch South Mine near Montcoal, W.Va., is where “a methane explosion killed 25 miners and left four more missing and thought dead. The mine, operated by a subsidiary of Massey Energy Co., had been cited for several violations relating to proper ventilation.” This is “the worst mining disaster in over 20 years,” reports the Hill.

A suspect source, the United Mine Workers, “said that the mine had been the subject of 450 safety violations and that the company has paid over $1 million in fines last year.”

Regulation generally works to the detriment of those it is intended to help, since a less-than-honorable company will find the fine cheaper than the fixes needed to bring the mine up to par.

Update I (April 6): Coal-mining accidents always remind me—but not other media member, it seems—that men do society’s most dangerous jobs. Poor men, especially, go underground to make a living; have done so for generations.
Richard Llewellyn’s 1939 classic How Green Was My Valley (your children should have read it) depicts this reality in an achingly beautiful way. The book haunted me for years after I had read it, as a kid. “Margaret’s Museum” achieves a good deal on celluloid.

Update II: The following is from an 1935 article, “The World’s Most Dangerous Jobs.” Since then working conditions have improved for men because of advancement is technology, among other reasons. I also believe that workers in the fishing, timber and electrical power-line fields have overtaken miners as far as death on the job goes:

“‘COME quick! There’s a man hurt!’ Almost ten times every minute, more than 4,000 times each working day, that cry resounds somewhere among America’s great mass of industrial workers.”

“Once every ten minutes that cry means death for another working man. In 1933 it sounded the death knell of 46 men a day. These dying, injured, and maimed men were following ordinary jobs in most cases. They were not stunting aviators, daredevil race drivers, or human flies. Who then has the most dangerous job?”

With an accident frequency rate of 65.28 per million man-hours of exposure, say the Safety Council figures, the coal miner works at the world’s most dangerous job.
There are approximately a million miners in this country. While these men are working just one hour of one working day, more than 65 of them will be injured at their work.
The miner then has the world’s most dangerous job.
Second to mining, is lumbering. This occupation has an accident frequency rate of 59.67 per million man-hours of work. Third in the list of most dangerous occupations is the construction industry with a rate of 55.66.
And what is the safest job? At the top of the list of some thirty industries, accounted for in the figures of the National Safety Council, stands tobacco processing with a frequency rate of only 1.43, the safest occupation in this country!
For many years coal mining has led all other employments in the annual number of fatal and permanent injuries suffered in accidents.

Update III: “Mining Safety Reexamined After Another Deadly Disaster in W.Va.”

Update IV (April 7): What I know about rescue protocol in mining accidents is dangerous, but not nearly as hazardous as the slow speed with which the rescue at the Upper Big Branch Mine is proceeding.

They’ve drilled one hole “to release enough methane gas so searchers can enter the mine.”

How many more holes must they bore before they’ll allow searches to brave the Pit?

Presently they appear to be endlessly testing air samples. Can you imagine the time lost sending samples to the feds? Even if they do it on location, which is what I presume is happening, from the vantage point of the relatives this rescue must looks like a Ninny-State operation.

Maybe the authorities involved have decided it is no longer a rescue, but a recovery operation. How I hope this is not the case.

Poor, poor people. But for the grace…

Updated: S. African Savage Chants: 'Shoot To Kill' (AP Sympathetic)

Africa, Crime, Race, Racism, South-Africa

You read about the notorious ANC Youth League president Julius Malema in “‘Kill The F—–g Whites’ In South Africa—Courtesy of FaceBook.” Here the barbarian performs the masterpiece, “Ayesaba Amagwala (The Cowards are Scared), and Dubulu ibhunu (Shoot all the Boers),” in person:

Update (April 6): The Associated Press’ MICHELLE FAUL depicts the racial tension rising in South Africa, pursuant to the farm murder of Eugene Terre’Blanche.

According to Ms. Foul, the white crowd, there to protest (gasp) a murder, was singing “the apartheid-era anthem in the Afrikaans language.” My God; you mean to say South Africans—who settled the continent at the time Americans settled this one—had a national life, much less an anthem before black majority rule!? How dare they conjure Die Stem.

While Die Stem is verboten, “Kill The Boer; Kill the Farmer” is described as an “anti-apartheid song.”

Brenda Abrams, a 30-year-old black businesswoman [BEEE] who was at the courthouse Tuesday to support the family of the younger accused, said a “big fuss” was being made about Terreblanche’s death.

The AP article is obviously considered a correct, or acceptable, take by Drudge, who linked to it. No surprise there.

Updated: S. African Savage Chants: ‘Shoot To Kill’ (AP Sympathetic)

Africa, Crime, Race, Racism, South-Africa

You read about the notorious ANC Youth League president Julius Malema in “‘Kill The F—–g Whites’ In South Africa—Courtesy of FaceBook.” Here the barbarian performs the masterpiece, “Ayesaba Amagwala (The Cowards are Scared), and Dubulu ibhunu (Shoot all the Boers),” in person:

Update (April 6): The Associated Press’ MICHELLE FAUL depicts the racial tension rising in South Africa, pursuant to the farm murder of Eugene Terre’Blanche.

According to Ms. Foul, the white crowd, there to protest (gasp) a murder, was singing “the apartheid-era anthem in the Afrikaans language.” My God; you mean to say South Africans—who settled the continent at the time Americans settled this one—had a national life, much less an anthem before black majority rule!? How dare they conjure Die Stem.

While Die Stem is verboten, “Kill The Boer; Kill the Farmer” is described as an “anti-apartheid song.”

Brenda Abrams, a 30-year-old black businesswoman [BEEE] who was at the courthouse Tuesday to support the family of the younger accused, said a “big fuss” was being made about Terreblanche’s death.

The AP article is obviously considered a correct, or acceptable, take by Drudge, who linked to it. No surprise there.