Kyrgyzstan key US supply route to Afghan war

Kyrgyzstan Protests: Opposition Claims Control

AP: A revolution in the Central Asian nation was proclaimed by leaders of the opposition, who have called for the closure of a US air base outside the capital that serves as a key transit point for supplies essential to the war in nearby Afghanistan.

Kyrgyzstan at the hub of superpowers' plans

BBC News: Kyrgyzstan has found itself in the cockpit of what has been dubbed the new 'great game' in the region -- so-called because the modern big powers jostling for influence there appear reminiscent of the 19th Century contest between the British and Russian empires over access to India.

It has been a scramble for access to energy and other natural resources, trade routes, and more recently Western supply routes for operations in Afghanistan... For Kyrgyzstan -- one of the poorest of the neighbours in this region -- the chief international focus has been access for military bases. The Manas air base has become a key strategic staging post for the US military in Afghanistan -- especially after the closure of the so-called K2 base in Uzbekistan.

That itself followed the souring of relations between the US and Uzbek governments in 2005... But the sensitivities have been growing -- not least from Moscow, as the US-led operations in Afghanistan, and therefore also Washington's military interest in the region, have become ever more prolonged... It took a personal intervention by President Barak Obama to keep the Manas base open to the Americans. Even then it was on a compromise basis, under which Manas was to be described as a 'transit centre.'

But the bumpy nature of relationships in the region has helped fuel a debate over how much commitment the West -- and especially the US -- should have in the region in the long term, particularly if operations in Afghanistan eventually tail off... There are broader Western concerns about stability, governance, access to energy... but how these should be translated into long-term policy, against the background of Russian, Chinese and other local sensitivities, is very much open to question.

Related: US/NATO Afghan supply routes blocked

Image source here.

Iraq video killings 'anything but rare'

Iraq slaughter not an aberration

Glenn Greenwald: The only thing that's rare about the Apache helicopter killings is that we know about it and are seeing what happened on video. And we're seeing it on video not because it's rare, but because it just so happened (a) to result in the deaths of two Reuters employees, and thus received more attention than the thousands of other similar incidents where nameless Iraqi civilians are killed, and (b) to end up in the hands of WikiLeaks, which then published it. But what is shown is completely common...

Just as was true of the deceitful attempt to depict the Abu Ghraib abusers as 'bad apples' once their conduct was exposed with photographs (when the reality was they were acting in complete consistency with authorized government policy), the claim that what was shown on that video is some sort of outrageous departure from US policy is demonstrably false...

The WikiLeaks video is not an indictment of the individual soldiers involved -- at least not primarily. Of course those who aren't accustomed to such sentients are shocked by the callous and sadistic satisfaction those soldiers seem to take in slaughtering those whom they perceive as The Enemy (even when unarmed and crawling on the ground with mortal wounds), but this is what they're taught and trained and told to do...

The video is an indictment of the US government and the war policies it pursues... All anyone has to do is look at the enormous death toll of Iraqi civilians to know that events like this were anything but rare.

Image: Previously classified footage of a July 2007 attack by US Apache helicopters that killed a Reuters journalist and several other non-insurgents, published on WikiLeaks.

Pentagon whistleblowers leak atrocity video

Wikileaks video Exposes 2007 'Collateral Murder' in Iraq

Dan Froomkin, Huffington Post: Calling it a case of 'collateral murder,' the Wikileaks Web site today released harrowing until-now secret video of a US Army Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007 repeatedly opening fire on a group of men that included a Reuters photographer and his driver -- and then on a van that stopped to rescue one of the wounded men.

Watch the video here.

None of the members of the group were taking hostile action, contrary to the Pentagon's initial cover story... Reporters working for Wikileaks determined that the driver of the van was a good Samaritan on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session. He was killed and his two children were badly injured...

Crew members can be heard celebrating their kills... A crewman begs for permission to open fire on the van and its occupants even though it has done nothing but stop to help the wounded. Two crewmen share a laugh when a Bradley fighting vehicle runs over one of the corpses. And after soldiers on the ground find two small children shot and bleeding in the van, one crewman can be heard saying, 'Well, it's their fault bringing their kids to a battle.'...

Julian Assange [editor of Wikileaks] said the helicopter crew approached its job as if it were a video game, not something involving human lives. 'Their desire was simply to kill,' he said. 'Their desire was to get high scores on that computer game.'

Images from the video.

Butterflies and dew

Image sources here, here, and here.

Quality of life and 'post-materialist' values

Global Wellbeing Surveys Find Nations Worlds Apart

Ten percent or lower are 'thriving' in 41 of 155 countries or areas

(This is a screen shot; see the original article for the interactive map.)

Why Nations Struggle or Thrive

Richard Florida, The Atlantic: It is not just the level of economic development that matters, but its nature and type. The past several decades have seen a shift from older industrial-style economies and societies to newer post-industrial ones characterized by higher levels of knowledge-based, professional, and creative jobs, more highly educated populations, and a shift toward what Ronald Englehart has dubbed 'post-materialist' values -- a diminished commitment to traditional authority and institutions and a shift toward self-expression, openness, and tolerance.

Comet fragments 'strafed' Canada

Massive comet striking Canada may have triggered prehistoric extinctions

Vancouver Sun: A British astronomer has published new evidence that North America was strafed by thousands of fragments from a massive comet about 12,900 years ago, a theory he says is the best explanation yet for why the planet was plunged into a 1,000-year cooling period and dozens of Ice Age mammals went extinct at that time.

Many scientists have argued in recent years that a meteorite impact centred around Hudson Bay smashed the retreating Laurentide glacier and triggered a distinctly frigid period of global climate change known as the Younger Dryas. But that hypothesis has been controversial, argues Cardiff University astronomer Bill Napier, because even though an extraterrestrial event is likely to have occurred around 12,000 BC, conclusive proof of 'a large single collision' has been lacking.

The answer, he contends... is a scenario in which the Earth is rocked by an hour-long series of comet blasts across a wide swath of Canada and the United States, sparking continent-wide forest fires and other fallout that doomed many large species, disrupted early settlement of the Americas and launched a new mini-ice age...

One of the clues... is a 'nanodiamond'-rich Canadian meteorite that crashed into frozen Tagish Lake along the Yukon-BC border in January 2000. The impact left a precious scattering of uncontaminated rock believed to be more than 4.5 billion years old. Researchers have also documented a thin layer of microscopic 'shocked' diamonds at various North American sites consistent with some kind of extraterrestrial impact about 12,900 years ago...

'A large comet has been disintegrating in the near-Earth environment for the past 20,000 to 30,000 years, and running into thousands of fragments from this comet is a much more likely event than a single large collision,' Napier states in the summary. 'It gives a convincing match to the major geophysical features at this boundary.' He argues that the culprit comet still exists today as part of an assemblage of meteor streams and asteroids called the Taurid Complex.

Image source here.

'The inertia of humans is so huge'

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change

The Guardian: This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and scientist who developed the Gaia theory... 'I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle as complex a situation as climate change... the inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.'...

Lovelock, 90, believes the world's best hope is to invest in adaptation measures, such as building sea defences around the cities that are most vulnerable to sea-level rises. He thinks only a catastrophic event would now persuade humanity to take the threat of climate change seriously enough, such as the collapse of a giant glacier in Antarctica, such as the Pine Island glacier, which would immediately push up sea level.

'That would be the sort of event that would change public opinion,' he said. 'Or a return of the dust bowl in the [US] midwest. Another Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) won't be enough. We'll just argue over it like now.'

Image source here.

Tree ahead

Image source here.

Our path 'is not the only one available'

Wade Davis, in The Wayfinders: These lectures set out to ask 'why ancient wisdom matters in the modern world.' The phrase is somewhat flawed, implying as it does that these many remarkable peoples we have encountered are somehow vestigial, archaic voices stranded in time, having at best a vague advisory role to play in contemporary life. In truth, all the cultures I have referenced in these lectures -- the Tibetans and the San, the Arhuacos, Wiwas and Kogi, the Kiowa, Barasana, Makuna, Penan, Rendille, Tahltan, Gitxsan, Wet'suwet'en, Haida, Inuit, and all the peoples of Polynesia -- are very much alive and fighting not only for their cultural survival but also to take part in a global dialogue that will define the future of life on earth...

Why should their voices be heard? There are scores of reasons... but to sum up, two words will do. Climate change. There is no serious scientist alive who questions the severity and implications of this crisis, or the factors, decisions, and priorities that caused it to occur. It has come about because of the consequences of a particular world view. We have for three centuries now, as Thom Hartmann has written, consumed the ancient sunlight of the world. Our economic models are projections and arrows when they should be circles. To define perpetual growth on a finite planet as the sole measure of economic well-being is to engage in a form of slow collective suicide. To deny or exclude from the calculus of governance and economy the costs of violating the biological support system of life is the logic of delusion.

These voices matter because they can still be heard to remind us that there are indeed alternatives, other ways of orienting human beings in social, spiritual, and ecological space. This is not to suggest naively that we abandon everything and attempt to mimic the ways of non-industrial societies, or that any culture be asked to forfeit its right to benefit from the genius of technology. It is rather to draw inspiration and comfort from the fact that the path we have taken is not the only one available, that our destiny therefore is not indelibly written in a set of choices that demonstrably and scientifically have proven not to be wise. By their very existence the diverse cultures of the world bear witness to the folly of those who say that we cannot change, as we all know we must, the fundamental manner in which we inhabit this planet.

Astronomers find 10 times more universe

European Southern Observatory: Astronomers have long known that in many surveys of the very distant Universe, a large fraction of the total intrinsic light was not being observed. Now, thanks to an extremely deep survey using two of the four giant 8.2-metre telescopes that make up ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and a unique custom-built filter, astronomers have determined that a large fraction of galaxies whose light took 10 billion years to reach us have gone undiscovered. The survey also helped uncover some of the faintest galaxies ever found at this early stage of the Universe.

Astronomers frequently use the strong, characteristic 'fingerprint' of light emitted by hydrogen known as the Lyman-alpha line, to probe the amount of stars formed in the very distant Universe... 'Astronomers always knew they were missing some fraction of the galaxies in Lyman-alpha surveys,' explains Matthew Hayes, the lead author of the paper, published in Nature, 'but for the first time we now have a measurement. The number of missed galaxies is substantial.'... Many galaxies, a proportion as high as 90%, go unseen by these surveys...

Different observational methods, targeting the light emitted at different wavelengths, will always lead to a view of the Universe that is only partially complete. The results of this survey issue a stark warning for cosmologists, as the strong Lyman-alpha signature becomes increasingly relied upon in examining the very first galaxies to form in the history of the Universe. 'Now that we know how much light we've been missing, we can start to create far more accurate representations of the cosmos, understanding better how quickly stars have formed at different times in the life of the Universe,' says co-author Miguel Mas-Hesse.

Image source here.

Israeli: 'The world is sick of us'

The plague of darkness has struck modern Israelites

Akiva Eldar, in Haaretz: One of the harshest of the 10 plagues has smitten the children of Israel this Passover, and they are stumbling about in pitch darkness, bumping blindly into anyone in their way as they head toward the edge of the precipice. Warm friends, cool friends, icy enemies... it's all the same.

And if that's not enough, the myopic Jewish state also has gone and collided head-on with the ally that offers existential support. Israel has become an environmental hazard and its own greatest threat. For 43 years, Israel has been ruled by people who have refused to see reality...

On [March 28]... the Arab League marked the eighth anniversary of its peace proposals, which offer Israel normalization in exchange for an end to occupation and an agreed solution to the refugee problem, in accordance with UN Resolution 194. But Israel behaves as if it had never heard of this historic initiative... Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu... simply refuses to see that the world is sick of us.

They never gave any thought to the decision by the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations to turn Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's state-building plan from a unilateral initiative into an international project.

The Quartet declared that it was backing the plan, proposed in August 2008, to establish a Palestinian state within 24 months. This was an expression of the Palestinians' serious commitment that the state have a just and proper government and be a responsible neighbor. This means Israel has less than a year and a half to come to an agreement with the Palestinians on the permanent borders, Jerusalem, and the refugees. If the Palestinians stick to Fayyad's path, in August 2011, the international community, led by the United States, can be expected to recognize the West Bank and East Jerusalem as an independent country occupied by a foreign power.

Image: Gustave Doré, The Plague of Darkness; source here.

CIA: Manipulate Europe on Afghanistan

CIA report into shoring up Afghan war support in Western Europe, 11 March 2010 (.pdf)

Wikileaks: This classified CIA analysis from March outlines possible PR strategies to shore up public support in Germany and France for a continued war in Afghanistan. After the Dutch government fell on the issue of Dutch troops in Afghanistan last month, the CIA became worried that similar events could happen in the countries that post the third and fourth largest troop contingents to the ISAF mission. The proposed PR strategies focus on pressure points that have been identified within these countries. For France it is the sympathy of the public for Afghan refugees and women. For Germany it is the fear of the consequences of defeat (drugs, more refugees, terrorism) as well as for Germany's standing in NATO. The memo is a recipe for the targeted manipulation of public opinion in two NATO ally countries, written by the CIA. It is classified as Confidential/No Foreign Nationals.

Image source: Wikileaks.org

'We have shot an amazing number of people'

Tighter Rules Fail to Stem Deaths of Innocent Afghans at Checkpoints

The New York Times: American and NATO troops firing from passing convoys and military checkpoints have killed 30 Afghans and wounded 80 others since last summer, but in no instance did the victims prove to be a danger to troops, according to military officials in Kabul. 'We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,' said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who became the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan last year...

The persistence of deadly convoy and checkpoint shootings has led to growing resentment among Afghans fearful of Western troops and angry at what they see as the impunity with which the troops operate -- a friction that has turned villages firmly against the occupation. Many of the detainees at the military prison at Bagram Air Base joined the insurgency after the shootings of people they knew, said the senior NATO enlisted man in Afghanistan, Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Hall...

One such case was the death of Mohammed Yonus, a 36-year-old imam and a respected religious authority, who was killed two months ago in eastern Kabul while commuting to a madrasa where he taught 150 students. A passing military convoy raked his car with bullets, ripping open his chest as his two sons sat in the car...

'The people are tired of all these cruel actions by the foreigners, and we can't suffer it anymore,' said Naqibullah Samim, a village elder from Hodkail, where Mr. Yonus lived. 'The people do not have any other choice, they will rise against the government and fight them and the foreigners. There are a lot of cases of killing of innocent people.'... Numbers do not include shooting deaths caused by convoys guarded by private security contractors. Some tallies have put the total number of escalation of force deaths much higher.

Image source here.

Canada 'pandering' to US, 'sell out' on Israel

The Globe and Mail:

In the most scathing condemnation of Canada's growing silence before the world, Robert Fowler, the eminent diplomat who was kidnapped by Al Qaeda... relentlessly catalogued the 'wanton squandering of Canada's reputation,' as a respected voice within the dialogue of nations.

Domestic political posturing 'by politicians of every stripe in Canada as they compete to corner the 'ethnic vote' coupled with what he described as a relentless pandering to the superpower to the south has led to a 'small-minded, mean-spirited, me-first, little-Canada, whatever-the-Americans-want foreign policy.'...

Specifically, 'the scramble to lock up the Jewish vote in Canada' has caused this country to 'sell out our widely admired and long-established reputation for fairness and justice in the Middle East, in particular, for the cause of just settlement for the Palestinian people.'...

Mr. Fowler urged the abandonment of the mission in Afghanistan, arguing 'we will not prevail' because Canada and its allies are 'simply not prepared to foot the massive price in blood and treasure which it would take to effectively colonize Afghanistan... and replace their culture with ours, for that seems to be what we seek, and the Taliban share that view.'

Maclean's: Fowler charged the Liberals in the room with standing for little or nothing when it comes to foreign policy. He was even harder on the absent Conservatives, accusing their government of abandoning a Canadian legacy in the world, and, more specifically, of adopting an 'Israel, right or wrong' policy that has undermined Ottawa's credibility abroad. He asserted that there's an 'iron-clad link' between a failure to push for a fair resolution to the Israel-Palestine problem and the rise of Islamic terrorism.

For making this connection, he anticipated the ugliest sort of attack. 'It seems that anybody who presumes to acknowledge this blindingly obvious linkage is immediately labeled anti-Semitic,' Fowler said. He went on: 'I guess we are supposed to presume that the allure of jihad will inexorably dim as Israel builds ever more settlements in illegally occupied territories in contravention of a myriad of international judgments.'

Image: Canadian Press