PufPuf23
PufPuf23's JournalSpeaking of the Dalai Lama, whatever happened to Mullah Omar?
Yes that is right, the Mullah Omar that was the head of the Taliban when the Taliban sheltered Osama Bin Laden prior to and post 9-11.
from wiki:
Mullah Mohammed Omar (Pashto: ملا محمد عمر; born c. 1959), often simply called Mullah Omar, is the spiritual leader of the Taliban. He was Afghanistan's de facto head of state from 1996 to late 2001, under the official title "Head of the Supreme Council". He held the title Commander of the Faithful of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which was recognized by only three nations: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. He is thought to be living somewhere in Pakistan.
Mullah Omar has been wanted by the U.S. State Department's Rewards for Justice program since October 2001, for sheltering Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda militants in the years prior to the September 11 attacks.[3] Those who were close to him say that he requested evidence from the United States regarding bin Laden and his alleged hand in the 9/11 attacks but did not receive any.[4] He is believed to be directing the Taliban insurgency against the U.S.-led NATO forces and the Government of Afghanistan.[5][6]
Despite his political rank and his high status on the Rewards for Justice most wanted list,[3] not much is publicly known about him. Few photos exist of him, none of them official, and a picture used in 2002 by many media outlets has since been established to be someone other than him. The authenticity of the existing images is debated.[7] Apart from the fact that he is missing one eye, accounts of his physical appearance are contradictory: Omar is described as very tall (some say 2 m).[8][9] Mullah Omar has been described as shy and non-talkative with foreigners.[10]
During his tenure as Emir of Afghanistan, Omar seldom left the city of Kandahar and rarely met with outsiders,[8] instead relying on Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil for the majority of diplomatic necessities. Many, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai, claim that Mullah Omar and his Taliban movement are used as puppets by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Pakistan. Additionally, many current and former U.S. senior military officials such as Robert Gates,[11] Stanley McChrystal,[12] David Petraeus[13] and others claim that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are also involved in helping the Taliban.[14]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Omar
I went on an optional Saturday "cultural" field trip to SF's North Beach in the late 60s
when 15 or 16 of age. I attended a then quite liberal coeducational boarding school near San Francisco in the 2nd and 3rd year of its existence 68-70.
Stops included Cafe Trieste (opera and capacino), City Lights Bookstore (where Ferlinghetti read us poetry), the Condor Club (where Carol Doda talked to us and gave us a glimpse of her show http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Doda), Finnochio's (http://queermusicheritage.us/oct2002f.html), Anton Levay's Church of Satan store (Antron present to talk to us), Coit Tower, Enrico's Club, a Cathederal (that the name slips my memory), and dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory. We were at The Condor and Finnochio's early in the day when they were not open for business and got private visits and shows.
I only went to two other nudie bars in my life, both when I was 19 on my epic backpack, thumb, and Greyhound from California to Florida to to DC to New York to Seattle and points between then home: I went to a nudie bar in New Orleans during Mardi Gras and one in Nashville when I went to the pre-Opreyland Grand Old Opera. Never again and I am in my 60s now.
This is the best post I have ever read on DU about Catholicism by far!
Mathew Fox is an honest, intelligent, and spiritually righteous man and humanist.
A (spiritual) fey on those of you that would dare mention the word conspiracy theory.
I was turned on to the writings of Mathew Fox by a practicing Catholic hispanic American girlfriend in the early 1990s.
I was raised in the 1950s and 1960s without religion in the home, a gift from my parents.
The Catholic church should not be messing in American nor any other politics. The Catholic Church should concentrate on putting its own house i n order and banishing the ubiquitous criminality of the upper ranks that diminishes the genuine follwers of the Catholic faith.
A member of Opus Dei is not fit to be a USSC Justice.
My two cents.
There is No Such Thing as a Fair Draft Response
There is no such thing as a fair draft, never has been, never could be. It is not possible to make such a thing fair.
If you say "no exemptions no matter what" that is going to put a lot of people into harms way who are physically unable to fight.
Even then, there will be champagne units for the well-connected like Dubya.
There is no such thing as a "perfectly" fair draft. I am suggesting a lottery for all regardless of sex.
One important item would be to do away with military privatization and mercenaries too and enlistment as a path to citizenship.
Acceptance to the military academies should also be blind and on pure merit.
Legacies such as McCain should go away. Better then would it have been a smart and empathetic man such as Jim Morrison, son of Admiral "Gulf of Tokin" Morrison, I joke. There would be still COs and no one put in positions without the intelligence , physical ability, mentality, or will for the assignment, that would be inefficient. People would work in food services and the like rather than contractors. Champagne unit assignments would be criminal acts. The system would not be "perfect" because the ideal is not possible and humans are an inherently unfair and tribal species. But a system and checks and balances should be designed.
I was an active anti-war protester in SF/Berkeley
I can just imagine what sort of reception your pro-draft stance would have received there.
Then the suggestion would have gone over like a lead balloon and I would have kicked myself in the nuts if someone did not kick me first.
The Vietnam draft was blatantly unfair. I had a choice to register in Contra Costa county (east SF bay area) which was a good draft board for non-religious COs because I was going to high school there or 400 plus miles away in my rural and poverty-stricken home. Fortunately, the location of my high school both politicized and gave me more information. Friends that registered in my rural home had a much greater chance of being drafted or were given a choice of military or jail for minor infractions like under-aged alcohol or disturbance of peace. Where I would register was on an Indian Reservation and the kids were mostly Indians, timber workers, and the chronically poverty stricken. The discrimination between my home draft board vs the white middle and upper middle class registration in Martinez was blatant. I shouted this far and wide at the time.
I grew up in a culture where my Dad went to 8th grade, hunting was a way of life, and I never had a BB gun but was given a 22 rifle for my 10th birthday. Age 17, I had my last hunting license and last killed or shot a firearm (with one exception. I shot cones and twigs from the upper branches of trees for science research at one point 30 years ago). This was heretical. My Dad, an over aged WWII volunteer in January 1942 that spent 3 years in England, France, and Germany never really forgave me for this failure as his only son.
That was then and now is now. Now there is an economic draft. People are not 2 or 3 years and out. Many volunteer as there are no jobs and they get training and travel and can retire in 20 years with a pension, skill set, and favorable hiring and other priviledges. The military has become a good or only career choice. If the children of wealthy and professional class people - those financially secure -had their children at risk and no military privatization of functions. There would be a higher proportion of those drafted in support jobs and not in the line of fire. COs, like some in Vietnam, would have alternative service such as working in the National Forests or Parks and other public works.
Unfortunately, some have to serve in the military. In theory, the rich and secure would have much more personal risk to their families. We need to reduce the militarizism of the USA. I would expect far less veterans putting in 20 years and retirement and more three years and out. This assumes a smaller and less aggressive military as well. I may be wrong but we need something better than now. Kids get out of high school today and the military is their career choice because the military is the only way to get a secure job and education
and planned for a non-religious CO but was over 300 in Draft lottery.
Would a "fair" draft accomodate conscientious objectors?
See above.
A fair draft is the surest way to reduce wars and the size and cost of military.
A draft does not reduce wars, it provides a ready source of cannon fodder for any damn fool war the pols want to start.
The only way it reduces the cost is if you pay the draftees next to nothing. That would cause economic hardship on their families.
It pushes training costs up through the roof, and of course all of those veterans are entitled to benefits.
A "fair" draft can be a pressure to reduce wars and make more people look at our bullying and violent foreign policies. In theory, again this may be wrong, there would be far fewer victims of an economic draft and fewer veterans putting in 20 years for retirement and a greater percentage of 3 and out.
Less people should look to the military as a way to get ahead or make a career.
Then we certainly should not force people into the military.
I can see military or alternative service for the unfortunate luck of the draw or those that truly want the experience. One would naive to think we do not need a military. My rough proposal would do away with the often dishonest recruitment process we have now as well as the economic draft. Again, individuals would not be put in positions without the physical ability, intelligence, mentality, or will for there jobs and would have the option of alternative service.
Military and war is the most useless and inefficient use of humanity and the natural world.
On that we agree.
Yea! We agree. IMHO the USA needs to be a far less militarized society. I believe now that a more fair but still imperfect lottery system with alternative service option would be a pressure to reduce the size and cost of military and cause the secure and decision-making individuals to have more thought against violence as foreign policy. If the USA was actually under attack, I think there probably would be plenty of volunteers eager to protect their familes and lives. Like my Dad in WWII. I likely would have thought much different during Vietnam if the USA was under invasion.
Good day to you.
The military bases used to invade Afghanistan were also in place before 9-11
in Krygystan and Uzbekistan. We no longer have those bases because they kicked us out with Russian verbal support.
Georgia was the aggressor and loser in the war they initiated. There was USA and Israeli military equipment and advisors in Georgia, the neocons didn't plan for a Russian military response.
Post 9-11 the Taliban offered up OBL with Pakistan as an intermediatary.
We know Iraq was a fraud and many of us and most of the world knew at the time.
Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador (Rumsfeld's axis of evil of the western hemisphere) were surrounded by new USA DoD bases under the rubrique of the War on Drugs prior to 9-11. We lost the bases in Manta, Equator and Paraquay and supported failed coups in Venezuela and Bolivia under GWB. Plan Colombia began under Clinton.
Post Obama there were a successful coups in Honduras and Paraquay and an expansion of military presense in Colombia and Costa Rica. One of Zelaya's "sins" in Honduras is that he wanted to make the airbase a public airport, the USA's largest base in Latin America, main staging area for Iran-Conta, and refueling stop for the plane for the Zelaya coup.
The major military base in Djibouti was also in place at the pinch between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden and AFRICOM was in the works. There has been a steady expansion of small DoD bases / footprint in Africa ever since, most that are hard to find any public information about.
All these initiatives flow out of the Project for a New American Century plans that were published under Clinton.
In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, the US Forest Service offered the heavy lift helicopters and airtankers (for fires) used in the western USA for wildfires and were refused.
The Gulf Horizon was permitted with a Categorical Exclusion under NEPA (National Environmental Planning Act, good Nixon era environmental legislation. There are three levels of review under NEPA: Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), Environmental Assessment (EA), and Categorical Exclusion (CE), in declining intensity and time of scientific planning and assessment ad public opportunies to review. The Gulf Horizon CE spill plan was boiler plate with wildlife and fisheries species protections from Alaska NEPA documents. A Fed employee signed that CE and presented the responsibilty of a chain of command through the federal bureaucracy to political appointees at the Secretary and Deputy Secretary level. Why weren't they prosecuted or at least fired like the token fines and criminal convictions of BP and associated employees and companies?
I was bitten age 5 by a Dachsund with a scar on my right cheek to prove it
tho it does not show much now as I am in my 60s.
"Peanut" was supposedly "my" (never thought to ask for) dog but 7 year older sister dominated the dog from when he was a new puppy as a gift for my birthday (an age inappropriate pet but this was early 50s extremely rural and a way of life now essentially gone).
We ran three very tame horses and a mule in our large fenced yard fenced essentially treated as large slow dogs and had other horses, cows, chickens, pigs, nearby. Peanut had a bad habit of chasing livestock until one of the yard horses or the mule kicked Peanut to a near death experience. As an aside, most dogs have the sense to be afraid of large pigs.
My parents had a party and barbeque and Peanut took my steak and bit me bloody and stitches in the face and I never saw the dog again.
The other dogs that were around then were my grandfather's hunting hounds. They were all lovers.