SavvySugar

Obama defies China with Dalai Lama meeting

amybdk — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:04:20 -0800

by Shaun Tandon Shaun Tandon – Thu Feb 18, 6:44 am ET
Source

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Defying Chinese anger, US President Barack Obama on Thursday meets Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who plans to seek assistance in finding a solution in his homeland.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureates will speak away from the cameras in the White House Map Room for a meeting the US administration calls private but which China has warned could worsen relations with the United States.

The 74-year-old Buddhist monk greeted the Tibetan well-wishers, tasting milk and tea which children presented to him and throwing a ceremonial offering of rice over his shoulder.

Lodi Gyari, his lead negotiator in on-off dialog with China, said that the Dalai Lama hoped to speak to Obama both about global concerns and events in Tibet where China sent troops in 1950.

"His Holiness will be asking the president to help find a solution in resolving the Tibet issue that would be mutually beneficial to the Tibetan and Chinese people," Gyari said.

Beijing voices anger when any government leader meets with the Dalai Lama. It has demanded that the United States reverse its "wrong decision" to "avoid any more damage to Sino-US relations."

The Dalai Lama's advisors said the White House meeting sent a comforting message to those in Tibet.

"They will feel encouraged that the president of the United States, a global superpower, is meeting with His Holiness," the Dalai Lama's secretary Chhime Chhoekyapa said. "It means the world has not forgotten them."

The Obama administration not only refused to call off the meeting, but announced that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would also see the Dalai Lama on Thursday at the State Department.

"She has met with the Dalai Lama before and looks forward to the opportunity to do so again," her spokesman Mark Toner told reporters.

"The Dalai Lama is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, internationally revered religious and cultural leader and the secretary will meet him in this capacity as recent secretaries of state have done," he said.

Toner acknowledged that China was upset by the Dalai Lama's trip but said that the United States supported a cooperative relationship with the rising Asian power.

"It's a complex relationship," he told reporters. "There's areas where we agree on; there's areas where we disagree on. And we're going to continue to pursue that relationship vigorously."

The Dalai Lama says he accepts Chinese rule over his homeland, as do virtually all countries including the United States. But China has branded him a "wolf in monk's clothes" and accuses him of advocating separatism.

China in January held talks with the Dalai Lama's envoys including Gyari, the first between the two sides since November 2008.

Many observers believe the Chinese are simply stringing the Tibetan exiles along until the Dalai Lama dies, on the assumption that the Tibetan movement will wither without him.

The Dalai Lama enjoys a wide following in the United States and every sitting US president has met with him since George H.W. Bush in 1991.

In 2007, President George W. Bush awarded the leader the Congressional Gold Medal in a high-profile ceremony on Capitol Hill.

Fending off domestic criticism, Obama did not meet with the Dalai Lama when he was in Washington last year in an apparent bid to set relations off on a good foot with China.

But Obama has this year gone ahead with decisions opposed by Beijing -- including approving a 6.4-billion-dollar arms package to Taiwan, which China regards as its territory awaiting reunification.

Leonard Leo, chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a government advisory board, said he hoped the meeting with the Dalai Lama was "not just checking a political box."

Instead, Obama should seek advice on "how to think creatively" on the thorny issue of Tibet.

"Beijing's objections to Obama meeting the Dalai Lama should not deter the administration from trying to bridge China's plans to improve the living standards of Tibetans and Tibetan demands for religious freedom and protection of their unique culture and language," Leo said.

On the Iranian takeover of an Iraqi oil well

Grandpa — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:00:16 -0800

The Iranian Incursion in Context

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December 21, 2009 | 1629 GMT

By George Friedman
A small number of Iranian troops entered Iraq, where they took control of an oil well and raised the Iranian flag Dec. 18. The Iranian-Iraqi border in this region is poorly defined and is contested, with the Iranians claiming this well is in Iranian territory not returned after the Iran-Iraq War. Such incidents have occurred in the past. Given that there were no casualties this time, it therefore would be easy to dismiss this incident, even though at about the same time an Iranian official claimed that Iraq owes Iran about $1 trillion in reparations for starting the Iran-Iraq War.

Sending a Message With an Incursion

Multiple sources have reported that Tehran ordered the incident. The Iranian government is aware that Washington has said the end of 2009 was to be the deadline for taking action against Iran over its nuclear program - and that according to a White House source, the United States could extend that deadline to Jan. 15, 2010.
That postponement makes an important point. The United States has treated the Iran crisis as something that will be handled on an American timeline. The way that the Obama administration handled the Afghanistan strategy review suggests it assumes that Washington controls the tempo of events sufficiently that it can make decisions carefully, deliberately and with due reflection. If true, that would mean that adversaries like Iran are purely on the defensive, and either have no counter to American moves or cannot counter the United States until after Washington makes its next move.
For Iran, just to accept that premise puts it at an obvious disadvantage. First, Tehran would have to demonstrate that the tempo of events is not simply in American or Israeli hands. Second, Tehran would have to remind the United States and Israel that Iran has options that it might use regardless of whether the United States chooses sanctions or war. Most important, Iran must show that whatever these options are, they can occur before the United States acts - that Iran has axes of its own, and may not wait for the U.S. axe to fall.
The incursion was shaped to make this point without forcing the United States into precipitous action. The location was politically ambiguous. The force was small. Casualties were avoided. At the same time, it was an action that snapped a lot of people to attention. Oil prices climbed. Baghdad and Washington scrambled to try to figure what was going on, and for a while Washington was clearly at a loss, driving home the fact that the United States doesn’t always respond quickly and efficiently to surprises initiated by the other side.
The event eventually died down, and the Iranians went out of their way to minimize its importance. But two points nevertheless were made. The first was that Iran might not wait for Washington to consider all possible scenarios. The second was that the Iranians know how to raise oil prices. And with that lesson, they reminded the Americans that the Iranians have a degree of control over the economic recovery in the United States.
There has never been any doubt that Iran has options in the event that the United States chooses to strike. Significantly, the Iranians now have driven home that they might initiate a conflict if they assume conflict is inevitable.

U.S. and Iranian Options

Iran’s problem becomes clear when we consider Tehran’s options. These options fall into three groups:

Interdicting the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf through the use of mines and anti-ship missiles. This would result in a dramatic increase in world oil prices on the Iranian attempt alone and could keep them high if Tehran’s efforts succeeded. The impact on the global economy would be substantial.
Causing massive destabilization in Iraq. The Iranians retain allies and agents in Iraq, which has been experiencing increased violence and destabilization over the past months. As the violence increases and the Americans leave, a close relationship with Iran might be increasingly attractive to Iraqi troops. Given the deployment of American troops, direct attacks in Iraq by Iranian forces are not out of the question. Even if ultimately repulsed, such Iranian incursions could further destabilize Iraq. This would force the Obama administration to reconsider the U.S. withdrawal timetable, potentially affecting Afghanistan.
Use Hezbollah to initiate a conflict with Israel, and as a global tool for terrorist attacks on American and allied targets. Hezbollah is far more sophisticated and effective than al Qaeda was at its height, and would be a formidable threat should Iran choose - and Hezbollah agree - to play this role.

When we look at the three Iranian options, it is clear that the United States would not be able to confine any action against Iran to airstrikes. The United States is extremely good at air campaigns, while it is weak at counterinsurgency. It has massive resources in the region to throw into an air campaign and it can bring more in using carrier strike groups.
But even before hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Americans would have to consider the potential Iranian responses. Washington would have to take three steps. First, Iranian anti-ship missiles and surface vessels - and these vessels could be very small but still able to carry out mine warfare - on the Iranian littoral would have to be destroyed. Second, large formations of Iranian troops along the Iraqi border would have to be attacked, and Iranian assets in Iraq at the very least disrupted. Finally, covert actions against Hezbollah assets - particularly assets outside Lebanon - would have to be neutralized to the extent possible.
This would require massive, coordinated attacks, primarily using airpower and covert forces in a very tight sequence prior to any attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Without this, Iran would be in a position to launch the attacks outlined above in response to strikes on its nuclear facilities. Given the nature of the Iranian responses, particularly the mining of the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, the operations could be carried out quickly and with potentially devastating results to the global economy.
From the Iranian standpoint, Tehran faces a “use-it-or-lose-it” scenario. It cannot wait until the United States initiates hostilities. The worst-case scenario for Iran is waiting for Washington to initiate the conflict.
At the same time, the very complexity of an Iranian attack makes the United States want to think long and hard before attacking Iran. The opportunities for failure are substantial, no matter how well the attack is planned. And the United States can’t allow Israel to start a conflict with Iran alone because Israel lacks the resources to deal with a subsequent Iranian naval interdiction and disruptions in Iraq.
It follows that the United States is interested in a nonmilitary solution to the problem. The ideal solution would be sanctions on gasoline. The United States wants to take as much time as needed to get China and Russia committed to such sanctions.

Iranian Pre-emption

The Iranians signaled last week that they might not choose to be passive if effective sanctions were put in place. Sanctions on gasoline would in fact cripple Iran, so like Japan prior to Pearl Harbor, the option of capitulating to sanctions might be viewed as more risky than a pre-emptive strike. And if sanctions didn’t work, the Iranians would have to assume a military attack is coming next. Since the Iranians wouldn’t know when it would happen, and their retaliatory options might disappear in the first phase of the military operation, they would need to act before such an attack.
The problem is that the Iranians won’t know precisely when that attack will take place. The United States and Israel have long discussed a redline in Iranian nuclear development, which if approached would force an attack on Iran to prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Logically, Iran would seem to have a redline as well, equally poorly designed. At the point when it becomes clear that sanctions are threatening regime survival or that military action is inevitable, Iran must act first, using its military assets before it loses them.
Iran cannot live with either effective sanctions or the type of campaign that the United States would have to launch to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities. The United States can’t live with the consequences of Iranian counteractions to an attack. Even if sanctions were possible, they would leave Iran with the option to do precisely those things Washington cannot tolerate. Therefore, whether the diplomatic or military route is followed, each side has two options. First, the Americans can accept Iran as a nuclear power, or Iran can accept that it must give up its nuclear ambitions. Second, assuming that neither side accepts the first option, each side must take military action before the other side does. The Americans must neutralize counters before the Iranians deploy them. The Iranians must deploy their counters before they are destroyed.
The United States and Iran are both playing for time. Neither side wants to change its position on the nuclear question, although each hopes the other will give in. Moreover, neither side is really confident in its military options. The Americans are not certain that they can both destroy the nuclear facilities and Iranian counters - and if the counters are effective, their consequences could be devastating. The Iranians are not certain that their counters will work effectively, and once failure is established, the Iranians will be wide open for devastating attack. Each side assumes the other understands the risks and will accept the other’s terms for a settlement.
And so each waits, hoping the other side will back down. The events of the past week were designed to show the Americans that Iran is not prepared to back down. More important, they were designed to show that the Iranians also have a redline, that it is as fuzzy as the American redline and that the Americans should be very careful in how far they press, as they might suddenly wake up one morning with their hands full.
The Iranian move is deliberately designed to rattle U.S. President Barack Obama. He has shown a decision-making style that assumes that he is not under time pressure to make decisions. It is not clear to anyone what his decision-making style in a crisis will look like. Though not a prime consideration from the Iranian point of view, putting Obama in a position where he is psychologically unprepared for decisions in the timeframe they need to be made in is certainly an added benefit. Iran, of course, doesn’t know how effectively he might respond, but his approach to Afghanistan gives them another incentive to act sooner than later.
There are some parallels here to the nuclear warfare theory, in which each side faces mutual assured destruction. The problem here is that each side does not face destruction, but pain. And here, pre-emptive strikes are not guaranteed to produce anything. It is the vast unknowns that make this affair so dangerous, and at any moment, one side or the other might decide they can wait.

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20091221_iranian_incursion_context?utm_so...

The Wall Street Lyin' Journal

amybdk — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:56:56 -0700

Source

The Journal editorial page's whoppers about public-option polls.

By Timothy NoahPosted Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009, at 6:31 PM ET
Click here for a guide to following the health care reform story online.

In an Oct. 20 column ("Sun Rises in East, Sets in West"), I asked why the press was treating as news the public's support for a "public option" government health insurance program when tracking polls showed that support to be nothing new. I came up with three reasons describing subtle biases within Washington journalism. I now realize I should have included a fourth, less subtle consideration: Some of the public option's opponents are telling lies.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, recently kept a straight face while saying: "I'm still trying to find the first American to talk to who's in favor of the public option, other than a member of Congress or the administration. I've not talked to one, and I get to a lot of places. …" An even bigger whopper appears in an editorial in the Oct. 22 Wall Street Journal ("The Public Option Makes a Comeback"). Like me, the Journal was underwhelmed by an Oct. 20 Washington Post story trumpeting support for the public option at 57 percent. The Journal's reasons, however, were quite different. The "reality is that no one wants a public option except the political left," the Journal said. "Doctors and hospitals hate the idea as much as insurers do-and they're far from natural allies. The media are able to counterfeit public support, such as this week's Washington Post/ABC News poll showing 57% in favor, only by asking rigged questions about 'choice' and 'competition.' Who's opposed to that?"

This passage contained two whoppers:

1.) "Doctors and hospitals hate the idea [of a public option] as much as insurers do-and they're far from natural allies."

Wrong. The American Medical Association has endorsed the House version of health reform (text, summary), which contains a public option. Ah, you say, but that's just what the leadership thinks. What about the members? Sixty-three percent support the public option, according to a September poll by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This support "was demonstrated across all demographic characteristics, specialties, practice locations (census division or urban vs. rural setting) and practice types." And that 63 percent does not include an additional 10 percent that favors the more radical single-payer option. When you combine these two figures, 73 percent of doctors favor government expansion into health insurance at least as extensive as what's currently under consideration.

Perhaps the Journal was thinking about a September Investor's Business Daily poll purporting to show that two out of three practicing physicians opposed not just the public option, but health reform generally. The poll got some attention from Fox News and Michelle Malkin, but its methodology was laughably poor, as Nate Silver has demonstrated. Among other problems, the poll was conducted by mail (the same methodology the Literary Digest rode to oblivion in predicting Franklin Roosevelt's landslide defeat in 1936), and the findings were tabulated while responses were still coming in. "There are pollsters out there that have an agenda but are highly competent," Silver concluded, "and there are pollsters that are nonpartisan but not particularly skilled. Rarely, however, do you find the whole package: that special pollster which is both biased and inept."

Or perhaps the Journal is thinking about a June 10 New York Times story by Robert Pear that reported the American Medical Association opposed the public option. If so, it chooses to ignore that the AMA quickly reversed itself (perhaps after hearing from its members?) and endorsed the House bill. The public option goes unmentioned in the AMA's July 16 letter to House Ways and Means chairman Charles Rangel, a principal sponsor of the bill.

The Journal's on somewhat firmer ground when it comes to hospitals, but it still overstates the case. On Sept. 15 the American Hospital Association's chairman, Tom Priselac, voiced "concerns" to the House Democratic steering and policy committee about the public option included in the House bill. On Oct. 12 the AHA stated that it favored the Senate finance committee's alternative-creation of nonprofit co-ops-over the Senate health committee's public option. But I read Priselac's concluding statement about the House version ("Any public-sponsored insurance option should require that provider payments be based on negotiated rates with no link to Medicare payment rates") to leave open the possibility that the AHA will eventually support, however grudgingly, a health reform bill that contains a "soft" public option.

Let's not forget who works in hospitals. Doctors do. And they favor the public option. That may be why the AHA has kept relatively quiet on the subject.

2.) "The media are able to counterfeit public support, such as this week's Washington Post/ABC News poll showing 57% in favor, only by asking rigged questions about 'choice' and 'competition.' "

Let's have a look at these "rigged questions."

Here is the wording of the Washington Post/ABC News poll, which tracked support for the public option from August through October at majorities of 52, 55, and 57 percent:

"Would you support or oppose having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans?"

Here is the wording of a September Kaiser Family Foundation poll, which tracked support for the public option from July through September at majorities of 59 percent, 59 percent, and 57 percent:

"Do you favor … [c]reating a government-administered public health insurance option similar to Medicare to compete with private health insurance plans?"

Here is the wording of a September New York Times poll, which tracked support for the public option from July through September at majorities of 66 percent, 60 percent, and 65 percent:

"Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan-something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get-that would compete with private health insurance plans?"

Here is the wording of a newly released CNN poll, which tracked support for the public option in August and October at majorities of 55 percent and 61 percent:

"Would you favor or oppose creating a public health insurance option administered by the federal government that would compete with plans offered by private health insurance companies?"

None of these four questions include the words choice or competition, abstract nouns that arguably might color the response. All four contain the verb compete merely to describe objectively what the public option would do.

The Journal's beef, I would guess, is with one of its own polls. (As a onetime Journal reporter, I can attest that long-standing practice forbids parties on either side of the news/editorial divide to go public with mutual criticism. Polling is the province of the news side.) In June the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll asked the following poorly worded question:

"In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance-extremely important, quite important, not that important, or not at all important?"

The question is faulty partly because it characterizes the plan using the potentially loaded term choice but mainly because it doesn't allow the person taking the poll to oppose the public option while acknowledging that it's an important issue. Indeed, the more passionately you oppose the public option, the more important you may rate the issue.

In July and August the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll rephrased the question as follows:

"Would you favor or oppose creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly with private health insurance companies?"
Better.

The first, poorly worded version of the question found that 76 percent thought a public plan was "extremely" or "quite" important. The second, better-worded version still found that a 46-percent plurality supported a public option. The third, using the same wording, found that a 47-percent plurality opposed it. I call that a split decision. Even though the Journal/NBC News poll didn't find a majority favoring the public option in July when it asked a better-worded version of the question, it still found that more people supported the public option than opposed it. Only in August, when right-wing loonies were disrupting town meetings on health reform, did support slip to a hardly catastrophic 43 percent.

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that a late-July Fox News poll came up with a plurality opposed to the public option (48 percent) similar to that found a few weeks later by its corporate sibling, the Journal (47 percent). In this instance, the wording of the question was unobjectionable ("Do you favor or oppose the creation of a government-run health insurance plan that would compete in the marketplace against private insurance plans?"). But some of the other questions that preceded that one were loaded to such a ludicrous degree that they almost certainly influenced subsequent responses. Here are two examples:

"President Obama has appointed over 30 czars to oversee the administration's top initiatives. Czars are advisors to the president who work outside of the cabinet and do not have to be confirmed by the Senate. Are you comfortable with the Obama administration's use of czars as advisors or are you concerned the administration is trying to get around Congressional oversight?"

"Since the 9-11 terrorist attacks, did you think it was the job of the CIA to kill senior Al Qaeda leaders, or not?"

Fox News' somewhat slack attention to detail with regard to polling was nicely illustrated in August when Washington managing editor Bill Sammon and America's Newsroom co-host Bill Hemmer discussed at length the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, which they stated (incorrectly) demonstrated public opposition to the public option. As the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America pointed out, Hemmer and Sammon had gotten the Post/ABC News poll confused with a July Ipsos/McClatchy poll that showed a 40 percent plurality of respondents believed a public-option health plan would provide lower-quality health care than the private sector. What Sammon and Hemmer neglected to point out was that a separate question had asked respondents to identify which of four statements was "closest to your opinion." Here they are, along with the percentages.

"It is necessary to create a public health insurance plan to make sure that all Americans have access to quality healthcare." (52 percent)

"Access to quality healthcare for all Americans can be achieved without having to create a public health insurance plan." (44 percent)

"There should not be a health care overhaul." (None.)

"Don't know/Not sure." (4 percent)

People may have misgivings about the quality of government-supplied health insurance, but they want more of it anyway. Is that so hard to grasp?

What have I been saying about local politics, it seems like forever.

Grandpa — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:15:18 -0700

Glenn Harlan Reynolds: It's the follow-through that matters in New York's special race
By: Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Sunday Reflections Contributor

Next week's special congressional election in New York's 23rd Congressional District seems to have the entire political class in an uproar. Mainstream Republican pols like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich are afraid it portends a grass-roots revolt, or, worse, a third party for 2012.

Surging tea partiers hope it represents an opportunity to make mainstream Republican pols take them seriously. Democrats are afraid it means a lost seat, and perhaps a tidal wave of popular energy on the right. And all of this has a lot of people focusing on what happens on Tuesday.

But, in fact, what happens Tuesday is the least important thing about NY-23.

Whether it's the official Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava (whom many Republicans find too liberal), the insurgent Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, or the Democrat, Bill Owens, Tuesday's victor will have to face another election in just a year. A Democrat won't expand Nancy Pelosi's majority significantly, and a Republican or Conservative won't diminish it enough to matter. For all practical purposes, it won't change Congress.

The real game changer, if any, will be what comes after the election.

The GOP establishment is worried -- rightly -- about the risk of a Perot-style insurgency in 2012. Ross Perot's 1992 candidacy tapped authentic populist dissatisfaction and anger, even as it doomed the Republicans and handed the White House to Bill Clinton. Nobody in the GOP wants to go down that road again.

On the other hand, the populist dissatisfaction and anger is out there again, and it has been for a while. Unhappy over immigration and spending, key parts of the GOP base stayed home in 2006 and 2008. They're even unhappier with Obama, but that unhappiness hasn't translated into a lot of enthusiasm for a Republican Party that many see as nearly as corrupt and elitist as the Democrats.

Though the media and the Democratic Party tried to portray the Tea Party movement as Republican-organized "astroturf," the GOP only wishes that were the case. Tea Partiers are still reachable by the GOP, but if the GOP mishandles things, a Perot-style challenge is very possible.

If Hoffman wins, or even hands the election to Democrat Bill Owens, the grass-roots activists will feel that they've sent a message, and will watch to see if the GOP establishment responds. If the GOP plays its cards right, and indicates that it's received the message that people want a hard line on spending and corruption and smaller government, that energy can be harnessed and put toward the 2010 elections. If it seems, on the other hand, that the GOP still doesn't get it, and if the response is condescending or dismissive, then, well, anything can happen.

If Scozzafava manages to eke out a victory, meanwhile, GOP leaders may be tempted to dismiss the grass-roots anger altogether. This is understandable, but they'd be better off remembering how nervous it made them, and taking steps to address those concerns, rather than dismissing them.

Likewise, if Tea Partiers get too carried away and full of themselves -- like the Nader Democrats of 2000 -- they will wind up handing the elections to people they really don't want running the country. The third-party threat is a good way to get the GOP establishment's attention, but, as they say, the value of the sword of Damocles is that it hangs, not that it falls. Like a nuclear deterrent, it's a threat that's best not employed.

Washington Republicans need to recognize that their constituencies outside the Beltway have been unhappy with them for years, and they need to change their ways to re-establish trust. Ultimately, it's not enough to say that the Democrats are worse. They have to stand for something besides a simple return to power.

For the grass roots, meanwhile, my advice is this: Remember that all politics is local. Got a local Republican officeholder that you don't like? Run against 'em in the primary. Even if you lose (and you probably, but not certainly, will) you'll get their attention.

And look at your local party apparatus. Everybody focuses on national stuff, but getting involved in your state or local party is very easy -- usually, all you have to do is show up. And even a few dozen committed people can make a difference in a congressional district. Party politics at the local level doesn't get a lot of attention, especially in between presidential elections, which means that those who do pay attention can have a lot of influence.

Most importantly, the future of the Republican Party and the Tea Party grass roots will be determined by whether the response to NY-23 is mutually respectful, or mutually dismissive. To my mind, it's more important that people not divide into permanently warring camps than that anything in particular happen in this election.

The nice thing about NY-23 is that it's an opportunity to send a message at low cost, but the cost won't be low if it produces long-running enmity. Instead, it should be a spur for people to get involved in politics at the state and local level now, rather than complaining about the nominees later.

Like it or not (and my guess is that neither likes it very much) the grass roots and the party apparatus are probably better off hanging together than hanging separately. Against an entrenched Democratic Party with control of the presidency, the bureaucracy, the Congress, and the mainstream media, both are better off agreeing to disagree on some issues, while working together on others. That's what winning coalitions do.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Sunday_Reflections/It_...

New Rob Interview with UK's Sunday Times

athena4rob — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:17:58 -0800

On a balmy autumn day in Vancouver, a young man is longing for a walk outside in the sunshine, and deciding against it. Far easier for him to stay in his hotel room, cocooned in five-star luxury with a mobile phone that has run out of charge, safe at least from the girls chanting his name outside. Robert Pattinson, 23 and from Barnes in southwest London, ought still to be one of Hollywood’s beautiful dreamers, moving up the ranks of movie acting, enjoying his American adventure, his guitar, his good looks. Instead he lives in danger of being trampled in a stampede of teen love. He plays the vampire Edward Cullen in The Twilight Saga, the biggest books-to-screen phenomenon since Harry Potter - in which, by the way, Pattinson was Cedric Diggory, heroic golden boy and victim of Voldermort. Boy, his life has changed since Hogwarts.In Canada he is shooting Eclipse, the third of Stephenie Meyer’s quartet of novels. The second, New Moon, is released this month in a publicity extravaganza that will involve shutting down New York’s Times Square. The last time the actor was there, the square was also closed to traffic, for an event only marginally more fascinating to the world: the election victory of Barack Obama. We talk on the phone. Even now, a year after Twilight’s release, Pattinson sounds utterly stunned by the hysteria swirling around him.

The rest of the article, after the jump!

“It’s been a little frightening,” he laughs, a sort of embarrassed chuckle that punctuates his conversation, the sound of someone negotiating the best bit of luck they have ever had, not wanting to sound arrogantly blasé or overexcited. “In England no-one had heard of the series when I went for the audition, so it has been a total, utter surprise. The change to my everyday life is so extreme. Before this I was used to working 10 days a year. Originally, I did a three-picture deal, but I wasn’t even really thinking about that… I had no idea that I’d still be working on it now.”
Does the poor boy, who still calls London home, feel he has to hide? “I tend to stay in the hotel because it’s highly publicised where I’m staying all the time. There’s always a bunch of people outside. I can’t really be in LA now at all. It’s not that the fans are threatening, but the paparazzi follow me all night.” This hounding can evoke an absurd sympathy, considering the kid’s fortune and prospects. But then he brightens, telling me he was buying a guitar the other day and had to spell his name 12 times, and the guy still didn’t twig. “I loved that. It was my fault - I wasn’t speaking loud enough.”
When he read the first script, he had no idea how to play it. “I thought Bella, the heroine, would be a damsel in distress and I’d have to be the alpha-male hero type, so I thought I was never going to get it. But when they cast Kristen Stewart, she’s not really like that, so I realised there was a different way to play Edward, to show his vulnerability.” Could he get trapped, find it hard to move on to different sorts of roles?
“It worries me, because the whole Twilight thing keeps getting bigger and bigger, and now it’s so big that even my own ego can’t cope with it. A certain amount of success you can mentally deal with, but there’s a point where you think, ‘Jesus Christ, what is this? I’m not that great!’ I just wanted to make an American film, and I wanted it to be relatively good and to be good in it. I have never pushed to do anything… As soon as you start going to the gym every day and try to look like a movie star, you’re going down a worrisome track.” He laughs. “Being an English guy you get a lot more breaks. You’re allowed to look a little worse. It’s that thing about English teeth. Actually, Canadian teeth are pretty bad.”
To say New Moon is eagerly awaited is like saying the Pope could use a miracle: moreover, it promises to be twice as hormonally charged as Twilight, since it offers two poster boys for the price of one. Taylor Lautner, who plays Jacob Black, Bella’s car-mad friend from the Native American reservation, moves centre stage as the leader of the giant werewolves, her defenders from the avenging vampires. More staggering than his lycanthropic powers, however, is the complete physical transformation of 17-year-old Lautner, who began his career in Disney’s The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl. With his dodgy wig and gangly lope in the first picture, he was no competition for Pattinson, but in New Moon his hair is shorn, his six-pack ripples and his teeth light a path through the forest before him; his physique and prowess are redefining this chapter as more of an action movie than a spooky Romeo and Juliet.
Fearless and as often as possible shirtless, wolf-boy Jake is the third corner in a love triangle, as Bella is torn between blood-guzzler and beast. The martial-arts expert Lautner gained 30lb of solid muscle with gym work-outs. He’s graced the cover of Teen Vogue and had water artistically poured over him by its high-fashion Italian cousin, L’Uomo Vogue. Like Pattinson, he is a teenzine staple and heading for the giddy status of having prepubescent girls and their shameless mothers wanting to know if it’s a case of briefs or boxers.
Five thousand miles away from their ethereal and earthy pin-ups, the faithful are gathered at the Park Inn Hotel near the market square in Northampton. Welcome to Eternal Twilight 2, the unofficial fan convention staged by Massive Events, whose cheery operative Davey is dashing about with a mohican and a clipboard, keeping 800 young (but not that young) women happy. They don’t even complain about the absence of the godlike “Rob”, who at least until New Moon is out on November 20, is secure on his throne. Nobody here much mentions his brown-eyed “rival” Lautner, though the “Who’s hotter?” debate is already revving up, with “Camp Edward” and “Camp Jacob” sweatshirts.
While smitten with him, the Twi-hard posse are relieved Pattinson is not smouldering in their midst. “It’s such a concentration of fans,” says Rachel, 24, a bouncy Essex girl, “you might not be able to control the hysteria. It would spoil the atmosphere.” She thinks there might be tickets in tonight’s auction for the German premiere of New Moon, but is content to be brushing up against the “guests” here, actors who were “protected” from fans while making New Moon, travelling in cars with tinted windows, moving about the set beneath big umbrellas to foil the paps. Katie, 20, a vampire freak, tells me that she was “attacked by the books”, rather than the stars, and couldn’t put them down: she is clearly a lost cause. “They sparkle, they have no fangs, just really sharp teeth. They don’t sleep. It makes it more interesting.” Her friend, a bubbly American called Kendra who’s 35, says: “What I love is that Edward is the perfect man.”And Claire, at 38 a girlish Twilight senior, adds: “He’s an old-fashioned gentleman, chivalrous and protective. Edward has spoilt it for all the other guys. He’s set the bar too high.”
Around us drifts a sea of girls with straight black hair and lots of sequins; Pattinson’s face is tattooed on an upper arm; another fan has lovingly cross-stitched the wolf-pack emblem for Chaske Spencer, who plays one of the Quileute Native Americans in New Moon. Those who have purchased gold tickets (£195) enjoyed a cocktail party last night with the five (not very starring) actors attending the event; queues for autographs and photos snake around the hall. Tonight the auction will be staged: last year a girl blew £300 on a slow dance with the vampire patriarch Peter Facinelli, under a pagoda like the one Bella and Edward smooch beneath at the school prom. Even his empty can of Red Bull went for £20. “It was like, oh, let me catch flu off him, please!”
Last night’s party had a baseball theme, with candy floss and a bucking-bronco sheep from which one girl was toppled, ending up in casualty. But since the novels’ heroine, Bella, played by Kristen Stewart, is so accident-prone, this might have been a weird tribute to the elfin “K-Stew”, over whom fans swoon and coo almost as much as they do over Pattinson. They are also quite keen on the Canadian Rachelle Lefevre, who plays the vicious nomad vampire Victoria and is here as a (handsomely paid) guest, loving every moment. Her bodyguard is in attendance, and one of the organisers makes me promise not to interview the little-known Lefevre. In the real world, you would laugh: she should be so lucky.
But this isn’t reality; it is an arena of common purpose and warm acceptance, a million miles from the drudgery of homework and teenage acne, where boyfriends are never up to scratch and fashion rejects you if you’re over size 14. If the Twi-hards class all their actors as sparkling Hollywood A-listers, that’s all part of the make-believe at the friendliest party I’ve been to all year.
At the auction the star lot is a baseball bat signed by Peter Facinelli, and this evening’s entertainment is a masquerade for which many have crafted ornate masks and splashed out on new dresses. The merchandise rooms are laden with mementos, from kitsch Bella and Edward dolls (£20) to handmade charm bracelets heavy with silver replicas of the book covers. The merchandise for the new film, New Moon, is arriving this afternoon. “Fifteen new lines,” enthuses a stallholder. There are Team Edward hoodies and caps, and Twilight plasters - “for a broken heart”. Sandira Reddy, a jewellery maker who has customised Converse baseball boots (£100), was inundated with orders (in the first book, Bella wears them with her ballgown at the prom). “Twilight has become a full-time job,” she says.
A girl called Ellie is crossdressed as Peter Facinelli’s character, Dr Carlisle Cullen, in a cropped blonde wig and a white lab coat that a friend has embroidered with his name. “I have a different outfit for tomorrow,” she says. “It’s a suit he wears when Bella hurts her arm in New Moon.” Her confidence that other fans will easily identify a man’s suit as being from a particular scene in a 500-page doorstopper says much about their shared application to the saga.
The Twilight phenomenon isn’t just about publishing (more than 70m of the four books sold) or a series of movies, or even merchandising opportunities; it’s about a lifestyle. If once teenage girls’ reading was a private affair, a way of disappearing without your annoying parents calling the police, it can now be performed and celebrated as an event. My own favourite young-teen reads, Jennie James: Top Model, followed by Jennie James: Fashion Designer and Jennie James: Air Hostess (have court shoes, will travel), enjoyed no crossover potential at all, no clubs or actors to follow, only the power that sometimes terrible literature wields over young lives aching for safe adventure and a more polished future.
Times have changed. For the sociable Twilight enthusiast there are tribute bands, parties where little girls paint vampire bites on their necks assisted by their doting mothers, countless websites, fan fiction, internet forums. It is about sharing, rather than shutting your bedroom door to drown out the sound of Crossroads and losing yourself, blissfully alone at last. Stephenie Meyer may be a clean-living Mormon housewife, but she knows how to feed this hype. She is said to track internet discussions of her books for feedback, “worried” about the writers of fan fiction who rework and extend her narratives, because they can never claim the story as their own. How many ideas she gleans in this mutually advantageous to-and-fro we will never know.
When the first Twilight movie opened in the US last year, it took $70m in its first weekend, the largest sum ever for a female director. (Though Catherine Hardwicke was replaced by Chris Weitz on the second film.) At Eternal Twilight 2, the bespectacled Native American actor Tyson Houseman, who looks more like a young Woody Allen than a member of the wolf pack, seems to have grasped the nature of the beast. “I am so delighted to have a part in this franchise,” he declares humbly.
The subject of all the books is eternal: sexual awakening, forbidden love, the odd demon for an added frisson. Seventeen-year-old Bella Swan moves from sunny Phoenix to live with her father in a rainy dullsville town in Washington state called Forks, where every day holds the promise of a wet weekend. On the first day at her new school, she notices a group of staggeringly attractive students, the pale and fabulous Cullen family. With their talcum-powder faces and coal-black brows, they look like refugees from some New Romantic dive in the 1980s, when many of the fans and actors weren’t even born. Insular and superior, the Cullens are - surprise! - vampires. No black capes or little horns, however, not even vaguely prominent canines, their dentistry being as immaculate as the fabulous cars they drive like lightning. They don’t sleep in wooden boxes; they don’t sleep at all. They stay wide awake in a shiny glass-walled house, which they quit in New Moon, leaving Forks bereft of its only interesting residents.
Pretty ordinary (and ordinarily pretty), Bella is in love with Edward - a 104-year-old vampire so stunning you wouldn’t care if he regularly snoozed in a coffin - and he with her. For all its supernatural posturing, it is really a story about the giddy fevers of first love. “It was ridiculous to think I could affect anyone that deeply,” gasps the ever-gasping Bella. Blood-guzzlers have their teeth marks all over popular culture right now, with Channel 4’s True Blood, and the fearless Buffy Summers and her novelisations, whom love-sick Bella resembles not a bit. (Or should that be bite?) In New Moon Edward leaves Bella - who naturally spends the whole book in mortal danger - for her own safety, casting her into a zombie-like depression. She is comforted by Jacob, to whom she is drawn, especially when he rips off his shirt to tend her bleeding face after a motorbike crash. (She has become an adrenaline junkie because Edward returns to her in a vision when she is in danger, leading to all manner of heart-stopping rescues.)
Meyer’s everyday heroine is not a slayer but a vampire groupie; actually, she doesn’t need to hang tough, because these suckers are the “vegetarian” variety, who control their lust for mortal blood, feeding only on animals, and even then only on the non-endangered species (they wouldn’t touch crate veal with a bargepole), which tells us that the author is not just aiming at a teenage audience but stalking it with a big fat net. More importantly, she is appealing not so much to her young readers’ universally presumed race for alcohol, sex, freedom, but the need for something far harder to rustle up: a return to a safer world in this throwback of a town. Bella’s crowd barely have a cell phone between them, nobody spends the evening fibbing about themselves on Facebook, and Bella’s clunky old computer has the status in her life of a rusty can-opener. As for drugs, there is only the high of attraction, the addiction to romance and, in New Moon, danger, which Stewart conveys a little too often with a doped, faraway look. “Am I your brand of heroin?” asks dreamy Bella, as if you selected the stuff from a supermarket shelf.
This absence of brain-sapping habits and gadgets leaves acres of time for dreaming and chatting about boys, trips to the beach, shopping for prom-frocks, homework and friendship, in a small, maybe claustrophobic, but entirely known and manageable environment. For all its scary moments and gory potential, Twilight is a refuge, like all fantasy fiction. No need to get stressed about sex, either. The flirtation in the books is chaste: the girls in Bella’s crowd don’t carry condoms, they are not jaded or exhausted before their time.
It seems that the young women of the “broken society” are identifying in droves with Meyer’s back-to-basics message. With Twilight, the first movie of the series, exit polls in the US showed that 75% of the audience were girls. On a nationwide “mall tour”, the cast was mobbed by 10,000 fans; an appearance in San Francisco became so huge it had to be closed down. In June, Pattinson, who is reported to have raised his fee to £6.8m for New Moon, was nearly run over escaping female fans in New York.
And what of the young man who can’t leave his hotel room? Robsessed, a documentary detailing his unimaginable rise, is released this month; speculation fizzes as to whether he and Kristen Stewart are a real-life couple. A less scary individual it is hard to imagine, though some fans have apparently been alarmed by his wispy chest hair. He mumbles a bit, not in a Brandoesque way, but because he is a nicely brought-up, self-deprecating, privately educated Englishman and somewhat embarrassed by the fuss. As well as loving it. The mumbling is also strategic: “It’s an attempt to cover myself up,” he admits.
When he tells you the hardest part of filming Twilight was having to look convincing in the scene where he threatens four grown men, you believe him. He is the ideal, unthreatening, sensitive object of a first crush, the noughties answer to David Cassidy in a satin shirt. Rather than sleekly groomed, however, he is adorably dishevelled, confiding to Jay Leno that he’s given up washing his hair, which he is contractually forbidden to cut. When a loved novel is adapted for stage or screen, the casting is delicate; one of 5,000 hopefuls who auditioned for Edward, Pattinson claims that fans were “100% negative” about his casting. “That’s just Rob being modest,” smiles Katie in Northampton, who loves him to bits.
Is he embarrassed to have millions of girls in love with him? “The only time it’s embarrassing is when you do a photoshoot and people try to force you to look clean-cut,” he says, “when they use pictures where you’re smiling sweetly and having your hair brushed, because that’s not what you want to be known for. “I don’t really know why the girls love the movie so much. The whole series has become a bit of a cult. People like being part of the club. They’re obsessed. The fan fiction is amazing: I’ve been sent whole novels featuring me as myself, in the Twilight world, with Edward in it as well.”
Anointed as “the new JK Rowling” by grateful British and American booksellers, 35-year-old Stephenie Meyer is ranked fifth on Forbes’s list of Hollywood’s Top-Earning Women and is the only author on the list. She tells interviewers the idea came to her in a dream, but she can barely have imagined how it would transform the life of a stay-at-home mother-of-three who had never really had a proper job, just a devotion to home and hearth and traditional views on monogamy. Meyer put a clause in the contract that the first film had to be PG-13 and has talked of giving airtime to the good kids, the ones who aren’t drinking and sexually active. “When I was in high school the people I related to were Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet, because I wasn’t having that experience.”
Indeed, the Twilight books are a moralist’s charter, an advertisement for abstinence under duress. Bella might be seized by an obsession with Edward’s “liquid topaz eyes” and an “overpowering craving to touch him”, but essentially this is a narrative about good kids not having sex. In Northampton, Sarah, a Twi-mum chaperoning her 12-year-old daughter, says: “It was her birthday, so I thought why not? There is not a lot of sex, none until the last book… and they do get married. When they go away on honeymoon it’s all very discreet.” Uber-fan Katie, by contrast, did not welcome the consummation after the most drawn-out of all literary foreplay. “I really hated it, actually,” she says. “I felt I knew the characters so well, I didn’t want to intrude on such a personal thing.”
Subjected by her creator to what Time magazine dubbed “the erotics of abstinence”, Bella is longing - frankly gagging - for intimacy with the immortal, but also for the protection and stability of a lasting relationship. “I’m the world’s most dangerous predator,” her glittering boyfriend announces, and as a teenage boy with sex on his mind, he is probably up there with the mountain lions and grizzly bears whose blood quenches his family’s curious thirst. Yet Bella is safe.
At first it seems that she has fallen not so much for the cool guy in class as the ice-cold one (literally); the one who, like those romantic blueprints Darcy, de Winter and Rochester, seems in the beginning to disdain her, but will turn out to be merely manly and masterful. Meyer likes to say that the books are about choices, good ones overcoming baser instincts. Edward is their moral centre, the prince of self-control whose magnificent restraint (“I can be patient - if I make a great effort”) saves them both. In the fourth and final book, Breaking Dawn, they marry, Bella becomes pregnant, refuses an abortion (though Edward fears the baby might be monstrous) and is rewarded for her steadfastness.
Bella Swan is a goody two-shoes, quite removed from the alienated products of divorce and dysfunction you might find in, say, Melvin Burgess’s Junk or even dear old Jacqueline Wilson’s books. It is not that she lacks valour: in New Moon she rescues Edward from committing suicide (by exposing himself to daylight) when he believes she is dead. But she is essentially homely, chugging milk and nibbling on granola bars; she is bookish and swotty, a little housewife, eternally marinating steaks, sorting laundry and preparing enchiladas for her father. Caitlin Flanagan, the postfeminist American author, hails Bella an “old-fashioned heroine”, praising Meyer for her canny grasp of what makes young adult readers tick: the fantasy of perfect love, the pain of failure, the thrill of being fought over by two amazing boys, the glorious prize. Meyer’s oeuvre is a literary companion for these days of retrenchment and fear, when girls aspire to be Wags or young mothers, sometimes making you wonder if 50 years of sexual politics ever happened.
Awash with bubbling hormones, self-doubt, sexual frustration and fear of friendlessness, the stories house all the teenage torments. When Bella first sits next to Edward in biology class, he recoils from her, “averting his face like he smelt something bad”. For the average adolescent girl, lack of personal fragrance is the worst crime: but her scent is what drives the muzzled-beast Edward crazy with desire. In return, her devotion renders her helpless, a long way from being an assertive role model, or even a sassy modern chick. Elizabeth Bennet could have taught her a thing or two about maintaining pride in the face of sneering male prejudice.
She may be a washout as a feminist, and a non-starter as an icon of girl-power like the seven-series super-slayer Buffy, but Meyer’s girl-next-door reigns over a magical realm that is a place of greater safety. It is a party you can attend without a boyfriend or designer bag, a badge of belonging that some fans of true romance and vampires might struggle to find in a hyper-sexual, cynical old world. “It’s not so much about meeting the actors,” one happy communicant tells me in Northampton, “as finding other people who don’t glaze over when you talk about what you love. It’s about friendship.”

Jeff Probst blogs 'Survivor: Samoa': episode 1

Lorelei LeFae — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:10:16 -0700

Welcome back, Survivor fans. Okay, enough small talk, let’s get to it.
Back in the good ‘ole days of the movie business, stars and starlets were often discovered having a malt at the corner drug store.
Well, not many folks drink malts anymore and the corner drug stores are long gone, but stars and starlets are still being discovered every week…on reality shows.
If you’re an actor you hate me for even suggesting such an idea. Reality shows responsible for discovering stars? Hogwash. “Reality shows” and “stars” are mutually exclusive ideas, you protest.
Hang on, cause I’m gonna take it one irritating step further. The truly great reality stars of today… often write their own material as well!
Go ahead, writers, pelt me with tomatoes. Throw stones at my head. I get it. I understand the frustration, but it doesn’t deter my beliefs.
In fact, I am going to challenge you to be honest with yourself and with me if and when you respond to this blog.
A new star has most definitely been born. He stands about 5 feet tall and when he slips that buff on top of his head, he transforms into a pirate, missing tooth and all. He was discovered on Survivor, the greatest reality show of all time, his name is Russell Hantz and in addition to being absolutely captivating on television, he writes and delivers some of the greatest material ever heard in 20 seasons of Survivor.
As long as Russell is on the show you are going to be talking about him and I am going to be writing about him. Instead of protesting like you did last season about my infatuation with Coach, why not try “riding the horse in the direction it’s going.” ‘Cause trust me, that is the direction this blog is going.
But for now, a brief detour.
I love Shambo! Shambo is the prototype for what we look for when casting Survivor. The voice, the walk, the hair! I think Survivor fans are going to adore Shambo and root for her to win. Who knows… maybe she will.
She is clearly a bit of an outcast on her tribe and that is part of her appeal. She moves to her own beat but she respects her leader, I’ll refer to him as the “Dreadlocked” Russell, (who is off to a great start leading Galu) and that’s commendable. If I had to guess, I’d say Shambo is already one of the most popular people of this season. While I’m at it, you’re going to like Dreadlocked Russell as well.
Ben is a bully. I don’t really like bullies but I also don’t want Ben showing up at my front door looking for revenge, so I’m going to call Ben the “likable Bully” but the truth is I don’t know him well enough to know if he is likable, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t. Likable, that is. Could be very likable. Probably is.
Marisa doesn’t like bullies. She also doesn’t appreciate anybody telling her what to do. I really liked what I saw of Marisa, but her reluctance to take a step back and “count to 10″ did her in. I was bummed to see her go so early. Attractive women are not in short supply on Survivor, especially this season, but attractive women with a strong point of view are few and far between. Marisa left too soon.
Back to Russell Hantz, let’s just call him “Evil” Russell to make it easy.
I must admit, I am instantly intrigued by a villain who spouts as his philosophy: “The most important thing is honesty.” Then proceeds to make alliances with everyone on his tribe.
Russell: “I have an alliance with the dumb short-haired blonde. I have another alliance with the even dumber long-haired blonde. It’s my dumb-ass girl alliance.”
INSIGHT: Keep in mind that the interviews you see on the show are done in private, away from all other Survivors. So last night when Ashley and Natalie were watching Survivor at home and heard Russell’s comments about them it was for the first time. Imagine watching with your family or your boyfriend as Russell refers to you as part of his “dumb-ass girl alliance.” Ah, this is going to be a fun season.
Without question, the most jaw-dropping sequence in last nights premiere episode of Survivor: Samoa was this one:
Russell: “I lived in New Orleans, right by the levee. The storm (hurricane) was a category five. When it hit… it broke the levee…. I was in my house. Me and my German Shepard, his name was, uh, Rocky.
I tried to get out of the house and realized I wasn’t gonna make it. So I grabbed my axe.
Because as a fireman, one thing you learn that if you go in something you have to be able to get out… The water was rushing in… I looked at Rocky, I couldn’t see him.. It was muddy water. He’s gone, I couldn’t find him.”
Cut to: Russell: I never lived in New Orleans. I’m not a fireman. I never even had a German Shepard. It’s crazy how you can break their hearts by telling them a lie.
In a span of 10 minutes, he emptied everybody’s canteen (his own tribemates) and burned Jaison’s socks in the fire. Not since Denzel Washington in Training Day have you seen someone this evil.
Ah relax, I’m just pushing your buttons. But be honest, your jaw hit your knee when you heard the New Orleans story, right?
Talk about using and abusing a national tragedy for your own good. With that lie alone, Russell earns consideration into the Survivor Villain Hall Of Fame.
Okay, a few more thoughts.
SHOW INSIGHT: You may have noticed, this episode did not have our normal “Survivor Open,” where we show you really sexy shots of all the Survivors. Not to worry, it does exist, we just had so much good material that we decided to use the time to put more content into the show. Look for it next week.
PERSONAL INSIGHT: Voting out Marisa over Mike Borassi? I think it was a mistake. I like Borassi a lot. He’s a great character, but Marisa was strong. Foa Foa made their first mistake and I think it will cost them in challenges.
TOURIST DESTINATION: At the beginning of the show I always say “39 days, 20 people, 1 Survivor.” The spot we chose this time is called “The Blow Holes” located on the island of Savaii in Samoa. I gotta tell you it ranks right up there as one of the coolest places we’ve ever shot the tag line. Those blasts of water shoot nearly 100 feet high. If you watch it again it looks like I must have been drenched by the water, but the truth is, I never got so much as a drop on me.
FINAL THOUGHT:Betsy is a wise woman. She’s on to Evil Russell. You gotta love and trust the insight and wisdom of a cop. A female cop, no less. It’s a two for one deal. You get a woman’s intuition and the experience of a cop. Betsy is right. 100%. Don’t trust Russell.
The question is, will anybody listen?
Until next week…

I will continue to post these each week, but in case I forget you can watch the blog here: http://popwatch.ew.com/2009/09/18/jeff-probst-blogs-survivor-samoa-episode-1/

The D.C. metro area is getting richer every year. That's a problem for the rest of America.

Grandpa — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 14:08:06 -0800

Washington's Wealth Boom
The D.C. metro area is getting richer every year. That's a problem for the rest of America.
Radley Balko | January 14, 2009

Take a look at this map. The areas shaded in red are the 100 wealthiest counties in America according to per capita income. At first glance, it's a little misleading, because in the American West, counties tend to be larger in geographic area. But look closely, and you'll see that after the New York City metropolitan area, the largest cluster of wealth in the U.S. is huddled around Washington, D.C.
If we look at household income, the picture grows starker. After the 2000 Census, the richest county in America was Douglas County, Colorado. By 2007, Douglas County had fallen to sixth. The new top three are now Loudon County, Virginia; Fairfax County, Virginia; and Howard County, Maryland. All three are suburbs or exurbs of Washington, D.C. In 2000, 14 of the 100 richest counties were in the Washington, D.C., area. In 2007, it was nine of the richest 20.
All of this is fine if you happen to live in the D.C. area. It's not so great for the country as a whole.
While the D.C. metro area hasn't completely escaped the recession, it's doing much better than most everywhere else. Real estate advisers Grub & Ellis Company recently ranked the D.C. metro area the top market in the country for commercial real estate investment. Investment advisers are high on D.C. area real estate even in down times, because they know the federal government's only going to get bigger. That means more federal employees, more grantees and contractors, and more wealthy lawyers and lobbyists setting up shop inside the Beltway-both to get a piece of the federal budget (or, more recently, the $7 trillion-and-growing pot of federal bailout honey), and, as the federal regulatory state expands, to lobby for regulations most favorable (or, least unfavorable) for their clients.
The problem is that, save for the tech corridor in D.C.'s Virginia exurbs, the Washington Metro area doesn't actually produce anything. Washington doesn't create wealth, it just moves it around-redistributes it. As government grows and takes control of more and more of the private economy-either through spending, regulation, or taxes-more and more wealth that's created elsewhere comes to Washington to be devoured.
The Washington wealth boom is the result of the massive expansion in government over the last 10 years, which has populated the region with an increase in well-paid federal employees, and wealthy federal contractors and lobbyists.
As for federal employees, according to the Bureau of Labors Statistics, as of January 2007, there were 284,000 federal employees living in the Washington, D.C. area, up from 268,000 in 2000. The Cato Institute's Chris Edwards estimates that in 2005, the average federal employee made $106,579 per year including benefits, about twice as much as the average person makes in the private sector. Federal wages are also rising at about twice the rate that wages are rising in the private sector.
What about contractors? New York University's Paul C. Light estimates about 7.6 million people earned their paycheck through federal government contracts in 2005, a 50 percent increase since 2002. That increase in contractors doesn't seem to be trimming the number of full-time government jobs, either. The civil service workforce increased over that period, too, though not nearly as dramatically. Taxpayers paid $400 billion to federal contractors in 2007, double what they paid in 2000. Less than half those contracts were won with competitive bidding.
And lobbyists? The Washington Post reports that the number of registered lobbyists in Washington doubled between 2000 and 2005, to nearly 35,000. Not coincidentally, federal outlays increased over that period from $1.79 to $2.29 trillion. The government put more money on the table, so firms were willing to pay more lobbyists higher salaries to go snatch a piece of it.
"People in industry are willing to invest money because they see opportunities here," one lobbyist told the Post. "They see that they can win things, that there's something to be gained. Washington has become a profit center." Well, not exactly. "Profit" usually means providing products or services their customers want, which leads to voluntary, mutually beneficial transactions that leave both parties better off. In Washington, companies pay lawyers to procure money the government has forcibly taken from taxpayers. The only ones better off there are the companies and the politicians-which is worth keeping in mind the next time you hear how public service is an endeavor filled with honor, while the private sector is a playground for the greedy.
National Journal reported in April that D.C. firms spent $2.79 billion lobbying the federal government in 2007, up 7.7 percent from 2006 - in a down economy. Companies spend money only when they're relatively certain they'll get a good return on their investment. I can only speculate what that $2.79 billion bought, but rest assured, its worth a lot more than $2.79 billion.
The outlook from here is grim. As bad as the Bush administration has been about expanding the size and scope of government, President-elect Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress aren't exactly promising cutbacks. They've promised to expand the federal budget, the federal payroll, and the federal government's influence over the private sector. Obama's stimulus package calls for 600,000 new government employees.
And then there's all of that bailout money. At its core, the concept of a bailout is for the government to take money from people and businesses that didn't make mistakes, and give it to businesses that made lots of them. The waste comes not just from the initial cost to taxpayers, but also in all the money companies will then pay high-dollar lobbyists in Washington to procure a part of it.
America's wealthiest counties ring a city where the chief industry is government - and the entire region's only getting richer. That doesn't seem like a trend that bodes well for the health of a market-based economy.

Obama missing in action

Grandpa — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 03:16:40 -0700

Missing in Action
Obama has opted out of the Iraq–Syria crisis.

By John P. Hannah

It’s hard to believe, but nearly three weeks into a major crisis involving Syrian sponsorship of terrorism in Iraq, the United States is feigning neutrality. That’s a big mistake. Given that almost 130,000 U.S. troops remain in harm’s way trying to bolster Iraq’s stability, and given America’s longstanding concern with Syria’s role in fomenting violence in Iraq, the United States has a huge stake in supporting the Iraqi government’s efforts to pressure Syria out of the terrorism game.

First, some background. On August 19, two massive truck bombs exploded outside Iraq’s ministries of foreign affairs and finance. Up to 100 people were killed and several hundred more injured. Within days, Iraqi TV aired the confession of an alleged accomplice to the finance-ministry attack, who claimed that the bombings had been directed by two members of Saddam Hussein’s outlawed Baath party living under Syrian protection. Iraq demanded that Syria extradite the men. Syria refused. Iraq recalled its ambassador to Damascus. Syria responded in kind.

Refusing to back down, Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki publicly accused Syria of serving as a terrorist safe haven and of harboring a long list of wanted insurgents. Maliki noted that 90 percent of foreign jihadists crossing into Iraq passed through Syria. For good measure, Iraqi TV broadcast a second confession, this one by a Saudi extremist who spoke in some detail of being trained by Syrian intelligence. In a subsequent briefing for foreign ambassadors, Maliki shared evidence of a meeting held outside Damascus in late July between Iraqi Baathists and Sunni extremists in the presence of Syrian security officers. By the end of last week, Maliki had dispatched thousands of police reinforcements to the border with Syria to guard against further infiltrations. He also lodged a formal request with the United Nations for an international investigation of the August 19 bombings and other terrorist attacks, with a special emphasis on the destructive role played by neighboring states.

Remarkably, as tensions escalated between Baghdad and Damascus, the United States had almost nothing to say. The one exception came on August 26, when the State Department spokesman was asked about the deteriorating situation. Reading from prepared guidance, he replied:

We understand that there has been sort of mutual recall of the ambassadors. We consider that an internal matter. We’re - we believe that, as a general principle, that diplomatic dialogue is the best means to address the concerns of both parties. We are working with the Iraqis to determine who perpetrated these horrible acts of violence. But as I said, this is - it’s an internal matter for both - for the Iraqi government and the Syrian government. . . . We hope this doesn’t hinder dialogue between the two countries.

An internal matter? Let’s review a few essential facts. Iraq is a struggling democracy and putative ally of the United States, whose existence was forged in the crucible of an American-led war of liberation. Syria is a brutal anti-American dictatorship that, along with its closest ally, the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a charter member of the State Department’s “state sponsors of terrorism” list. Since 2003 - despite multiple attempts by the U.S. and Iraq to resolve the problem through “diplomatic dialogue” - the Syrian-Iranian axis has worked tirelessly to defeat the American project in Iraq and force a humiliating U.S. withdrawal.

Hundreds of unreconciled Baathists are harbored in Syria. Thousands of foreign jihadists have been welcomed at Damascus International Airport. After receiving money, training, and arms, they have been transported to the Iraqi border to engage in jihad - resulting in the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Iraqis. Syrian Military Intelligence (SMI) - headed by President Bashar al-Asad’s brother-in-law, Asef Shawkat (sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury for his links to Iraqi terrorism) - has been up to its eyeballs in this activity, its agents actively facilitating the work of al-Qaeda in Iraq’s most lethal foreign-fighter networks.

True, as the U.S. military has reported, the flow of jihadists from Syria has slowed significantly in the last year. But this has far more to do with the success of the surge, the overall improvement in Iraq’s security environment, and al-Qaeda’s diversion of recruits to the more promising Afghan theater than it does with any Syrian measures. It’s also true that Syria has in recent years conducted a harsh crackdown on Islamic extremists - but only those who refuse to play by SMI’s rules and stubbornly insist on targeting the Syrian regime in addition to that of Iraq. The objective of the Syrian crackdown has by no means been the elimination of deadly foreign-fighter networks per se, but rather their monopolization under the control of Syrian intelligence. The fact is that while there may be far fewer al-Qaeda-linked networks operating, those that remain continue to conduct lethal operations against Iraq with the knowledge, blessing, and assistance of the Syrian authorities - just as the Maliki government has alleged.
Knowing all this, and bearing in mind all the United States has at stake in Iraq’s success, how can the Obama administration adopt the posture of a disinterested bystander in this conflict? For the first time since 2003, an Iraqi government is prepared to stand up to one of its terrorist-sponsoring neighbors and to take the lead in rallying the international community to its side. And the U.S. remains on the sidelines? What message does that send about U.S. resolve to stand by allies who are under terrorist attack? If Iraq, whose independence has been purchased with immense sacrifice of U.S. blood and treasure, can’t count on American solidarity, what lessons will be drawn by others who look to Washington for support and reassurance against aggressive tyrants?

Even if the United States can’t confirm Maliki’s claims about Syria’s responsibility for the August 19 bombings, it could still easily craft a statement that makes clear whose side it stands on in light of Syria’s violent legacy in Iraq. Something along the lines of: “While we are working closely with Iraq to determine exactly who perpetrated these specific attacks, the United States has longstanding concerns about Syria’s role as a major transit point for foreign fighters and a haven for armed insurgents. We fully support Iraq’s call for the international community to take vigorous steps to enforce U.N. resolutions that require Iraq’s neighbors to prevent the transit of terrorists to and from Iraq, and of arms and finances that would support terrorists. Syria must be made to choose: It can become part of the solution in Iraq, or it can remain a major part of the problem. It cannot be both.” A reassuring phone call from President Obama to Maliki expressing outrage and support would also be helpful, as would a commitment by Secretary of State Clinton to make the issue of Syrian and Iranian support for violent activities in Iraq a talking point in all her meetings at the upcoming U.N. General Assembly in late September.

It’s hard, of course, not to wonder whether the administration’s removal from the Iraq–Syria crisis is not heavily influenced by its ongoing efforts to engage the Assad regime. Before undertaking his own mission to mediate the crisis, Turkey’s foreign minister spoke of an August 30 phone conversation with Secretary Clinton in which the need to insulate U.S.–Syrian relations seemed an important priority. The minister said that “there are extremely positive developments which have recently been emerging in relations between Syria and the U.S. - developments which we also encourage. We attach great importance to this depression between Syria and Iraq not influencing bilateral relations between Syria and the U.S.”

There certainly has been a significant effort by the administration to reach out to the Assad regime, though to what effect remains unclear. Six high-level delegations have visited Damascus in the past several months, pleading for greater Syrian cooperation on a host of Middle East problems. Two of the delegations have consisted of senior military officers from U.S. Central Command seeking Syrian help in shutting down the foreign-fighter pipelines - the second of which traveled just a week ahead of the August 19 Baghdad massacre. The administration has announced that, in response to Syrian demands, it will return a U.S. ambassador to Damascus and ease restrictions on the issuance of export licenses for Syria.

Though U.S. officials privately acknowledge that there has been little meaningful change in Syria’s policies on Lebanon, Palestine, or Iraq, President Obama seems personally committed to wooing Assad. Rumors have circulated of a recent Obama letter underscoring his desire for improved U.S.–Syrian relations. Uppermost in the president’s mind is said to be the goal of re-convening direct peace talks between Israel and Syria after an almost decade-long hiatus. It’s easy to imagine, therefore, that the administration’s hesitancy to enter the Iraq–Syria fray is being driven, at least in part, by its determination not to offend Assad and put at risk the chances for this kind of perceived diplomatic breakthrough.

That would be unfortunate. The United States never does particularly well, especially in the vortex of Middle East power politics, when it disregards the interests of its friends in an effort to appeal to its adversaries. The latter usually perceive such gestures as signs of weakness and indecision, and proceed to intensify their bad behavior. The former, meanwhile, spooked by such demonstrations of U.S. faithlessness, often end up cutting bad deals with America’s enemies in an effort to save their own skins.

When it comes to anti-American dictatorships in general, and Syria in particular, history suggests that leverage and pressure, not reassurance and unconditional concessions, are the most reliable ways to ensure that diplomatic engagement advances U.S. goals. It’s a lesson the Obama administration would do well to heed.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTc2YTE2OTZkMjdjYmEyNjgwMGQ5NDQwMmY...

From Citizens to "Stakeholders": The New American Constitution

Grandpa — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:38:31 -0700

From Citizens to "Stakeholders": The New American Constitution
By Angelo M. Codevilla

"I'm going to get everybody concerned around a big table where all can express their views and their needs. And I'll express mine, and that will make sense of them all because I'll be president."
-Barack Obama, candidate

OBAMA WAS NOT KIDDING. Ever since he became president the media have carried accounts of him and his closest officials meeting with "everybody," meaning executives of banks, auto makers, insurance companies, medical suppliers, energy producers, indeed of major corporations in each sector of American life. They meet for no less a purpose than to mandate new ways for Americans to go to the doctor; to change the kinds of cars we drive, the kinds of places we live, and the work we do; to decide how much we should pay for electricity; and many more things. Corporations that had grown by providing their customers ever more attractive choices now negotiate with the U.S. government and each other about how collectively to structure (read, restrict) their customers' choices in ways that will suit the government while guaranteeing their profits. To object that there is nothing in our Constitution that empowers the government to make deals with some private citizens at the expense of other private citizens or otherwise to shape citizens' lives involuntarily is to have failed to notice that a new constitution has largely superseded the one ratified in 1789. Here is a primer on it.

The Obama administration develops laws and practices toward any sector of American life by holding "summit" meetings with what it calls the "stakeholders" in that sector, satisfying and modifying the stakeholders' interests into a scheme that supports its own political standing and objectives. For each sector, it appoints what it calls a "czar," who shepherds the stakeholders into line, binding both the government and the stakeholders. It expects Congress to follow, and the people to consent. Thus in July 2009 Obama argued that since "the doctors, the nurses, the hospitals" (meaning the leaders of some associations with whom he had been meeting) had agreed to his plans for restructuring America's health care system, "including even Wal-Mart" (more on this below), any wholesale objection to his plan was somehow illegitimate. Although in America this way of governing has grown gradually only over the past half-century, it is common around the world.

First developed in 1920s Italy, what we are coming to know as stakeholder government is akin to the regimes of Argentina, Mexico, and the European Union. Herein I explain what should be obvious: Unelected "stakeholders" gathered by "czars" around big tables make for bodies politic very different from officials elected and removed by the general public. Recall Aristotle's lesson: Any polity's character and identity depend on who makes the rules. Stakeholder government must make America different from what it has ever been, and more in the image of the countries where it has been practiced.

The Difference

UNDER THE U.S. CONSTITUTION, whose form if not substance has been copied around the world, laws are made by legislators, each of whom represents voters with diverse interests and views about their own and the common good. Such legislators arbitrate conflicts within and among interests. As well, they "enlarge and refine" the public's views of the common good. The voters, for their part, may accept or reject the legislators' or executors' actions by voting them out. Crucially, this Constitution limits the extent of the government's role in people's lives. By contrast, under the constitution that is now fast waxing solid among us, decisions about what cars we will drive, how we will go to the doctor, how much and what kind of energy we will use and at what price are no longer up to individual consumers, nor even subject to our collective judgment as citizens. Rather, they are being made by stakeholders around the big table under the guidance of their czars. Crucially, no constitution limits what they may agree to impose on their fellow citizens.

By governing explicitly through "summits" with "stakeholders" rather than through representative institutions, the Obama administration is leaving no doubt that, in the new American constitution, "stakeholders" are the only citizens, and that neither voting nor taxpaying qualifies as stakeholders the individuals who used to be known as citizens.

Mere interest in any field does not qualify anyone or any group as a stakeholder. Thus, for example, while our government considers teachers' unions and state governments and certain nonprofit groups as stakeholders in the field of education, it does not recognize parents as stakeholders. Nor are car buyers stakeholders in the auto industry, whereas bondholders, labor unions, and management are. Whereas citizens are supposed to be created equal, stakeholders have only such status as the sovereign authority manages to give or take from them. Thus, in the auto industry, the Obama administration chose to rank the unions first, management second, and some bondholders ahead of others. The energy business's stakeholders include the various companies involved in the production of energy plus farmers and environmentalists. But not consumers. By definition, non-stakeholders have no stake.

Our Not-So-New Constitution

BARACK OBAMA IS BY NO MEANS the first American to believe that minimally intrusive government based on representation of individuals in localities is a barrier to doing what needs to be done to improve people's lives, and that it does not fulfill people's spiritual need to feel part of things bigger than themselves.

Woodrow Wilson's 1885 book, Congressional Government, faulted the U.S. Constitution for not creating a power able to deal in detail with the reality of "modern industrial organization, including banks, corporations, joint-stock companies, financial devices, national debts, paper currency, national systems of taxation...so that the play of the civil institutions shall not alter the play of the economic forces, [and thus accurately to regulate] the complication and delicacy of the industrial system." Wilson wrote that competent government must be like "a foreman [who] take[s] a hand in the work which he guides; and so I suppose our legislation must be likened to a poor foreman, because it stands altogether apart from that work which it is set to see well done." A competent government must also have full power "to remedy the mistakes of the legislation of the past." In short, according to Wilson, a new constitution that reaches over citizen-voters and their elected representatives should transcend the Constitution of 1789. This new constitution should run the nation's vital organs directly, with full power over details. Planted by Wilson, this Progressive dream continued to grow in the minds of America's ruling class.

The version of that dream that Obama named "The New Foundation" in 2009 had been gestating since the 1930s creation of "independent" agencies endowed with powers "quasi-legislative and quasijudicial" to govern broad areas of national life. With each passing year, Congress has given broader and less defined authority to these agencies, and ever less defined mandates. Bureaucracies with names like the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency exist on the state level as well, and take their cues from their kindred on the federal level. Almost half of state funds come from the federal government. At all levels and in each of the fields they cover, these agencies are and cannot be but the sum, the expression, the guarantors, the regulators, of the interest groups in their field. Presidents Clinton and Bush held "White House Summits" on all manner of subjects, to develop policies in concert with interest groups and then to get Congress to ratify faits accomplis. Obama means to bring these developments to their logical conclusion.

Stakeholders Are Artificial

WHAT EXACTLY IS A "STAKEHOLDER"? How does anyone qualify as a stakeholder?

What is the difference between a society organized on the basis of stakeholders rather than of citizens, families, localities, states?

Because the Constitution of 1789 (and its imitators) is based neither on socioeconomic classes nor on socioeconomic functions, it takes no position on the relative value of medicine, mining, banking, or farming, or of the individuals and corporations who perform these functions. Much less is our Constitution about arranging and rearranging functions, making some in any given field into winners and others into losers. That is because our Constitution and its imitators presuppose that government exists by the consent of the individuals who live under it, all of whom are "created equal." By sharp contrast, stakeholders are not equal individuals, but rather unequal collective entities.

In the 19th century the word "stake," which had meant a bet, also came to mean a share, a claim, or an interest. A 1975 British management textbook defines "stakeholders" as "the persons and groups having a direct stake in our organization: the owners, employees... customers, suppliers, financiers, managers, the area in which the organization is established, etc." But as used currently in the U.S., the term is hardly distinguishable from "interest groups" or "corporations." Hence "stakeholder primacy" is close to what one might call in economics "producer primacy" and is diametrically opposed to "consumer primacy." Under the new constitution, privileged access to power defines any corporation's socioeconomic functions, its status as a stakeholder, and constantly readjusts that status vis-à-vis other stakeholders. Government rightly arranges and rearranges each group's roles and functions, deciding who and what are to be on top or below, because modern stakeholders, interests, or corporations have no natural or customary right to exist as they do.

Indeed, when such as Obama gather "everybody around a big table," they mean in practice that they will choose those in any given function, field, or sector whom they think counts or should count. That is why everybody does not include you. Those who are chosen to be around the ruler's table will count if they had not counted before, and those whom the government chooses to leave out will not count as much afterward as they had before. Thus each automaker, health care provider, producer of various kinds of energy, etc. has enormous incentives to beat out others in their field for a seat at the table. For stakeholders, the price of privilege is to lend themselves, and their increasingly captive customers, to the rulers' agenda. The stakeholders pay in the coin of political support, and receive in return the privilege to profit from the rules they help to shape. Privilege flows down, support flows up. As stakeholders serve the rulers' agenda with the rulers' support, they function as parts of the ruling party. This is the nature of the beast, and has been so everywhere that this form of rule has manifested itself.

Artificial Morality

WHAT DO SUCH REGIMES OFFER to the vast majority of persons who are not around the big table, the non-rulers and nonstakeholders who are necessarily on the wrong end of the special deals? After all, even the rank-and-file members of government-connected labor unions or ordinary shareholders of favored industries get only the crumbs that fall from the big table. Somehow, such regimes must divert the many from measuring daily reality against largely unrealistic hopes of material benefit. Hence such regimes try to transcend the facts of daily life, typically by presenting themselves as agents of national enterprises-the less well-defined the better-that will raise the nation to a new, higher moral and spiritual level, as well as eventually fulfill everyone's private dreams. Cynically or not, these oligarchies live by filling voids in the non-favored masses' souls. The bigger these voids, the better.

Though the Obama administration and its supporters represent disproportionately American society's most secular elements, there is no mistaking its claim to righteousness and its followers' faithful commitment to transcendent ends, including, prominently, controlling the earth's climate. Thus Michael Knox Beran wrote: "In rejecting the Anglo-American politics of limits, Obama revives a political tradition" of seeking "a communitarian paradise" in which "citizens forsaking their own swinish pursuits would become happy in the pursuit of a common good" and end up loving one another. The charismatic leader would cause their sinful society to do penance and fill their spiritual emptiness. That such attitudes could support a constitution that consists of trading privilege for political support is strange to reason. But, in America as elsewhere, reason often counts less than passions, especially partisan ones.

Mutatis mutandis, what is happening in America is just another variation of a well-known phenomenon with many local names.

Italy

THROUGHOUT THE LATE 19th and early 20th centuries, progressive critique of representative constitutions was all the rage among Western intellectuals. But it was summed up most coherently in Italy in the 1920s. Along with Joseph Schumpeter, the Italians argued that mature capitalism naturally produces large entities in capital, labor, and endeavors of all sorts. Because the most successful of these want to secure themselves from competition, they demand protection and coordination from the state. The state grants these demands ostensibly because the public good demands that producers and consumers, creditors and debtors be harmonized to their own good. Not incidentally, those who run the state draw power from their role as harmonizers. Hence, beginning in 1925 the Italian government established in each sector of public life a corporazione, and pressed the principal industries in that field to join it. It also pressed workers to join that sector's labor unions. Business and labor then worked out their modus vivendi in meetings with their senior partners in the Ministry of Corporations.

As Benito Mussolini explained at the Ministry's inauguration, "The Ministry of Corporations is an institution...where balance is achieved between interests and forces of the economic world. This is only possible within the sphere of the state, because the state alone transcends the contrasting interests of groups and individuals, co-coordinating them to achieve higher aims. The achievement of these aims is speeded up by the fact that all economic organizations [are] acknowledged, safeguarded and supported by the Corporative State...." (sic) In sum, the state nominally ratified the decisions of the workers' and of the owners' representatives. In reality, all such representatives worked under the watchful eye of the state, which mediated and shaped their decisions, and sometimes dictated them. Moreover, the participants in these arrangements of "cooperative consultation" valued their status because they knew they were privileged to have been chosen for it, and because they profited from the privilege. The core of Mussolini's party consisted of persons moved by interest, not ideology. Privilege ran the system, not force.

Mussolini gave this amoral system moral cover with the general population by mocking the liberal pretense that man can find secular meaning individually. The state, he wrote, can fulfill human imagination by letting individuals feel part of things that are obviously beyond the power of any person to achieve. By hoping together, cheering together, believing together in things so big that they can only be accomplished together, through shared rituals, through faith in the truth of science of which the state is the effective arbiter, individuals are fulfilled more than through any intellection.

So while Italy's regime in the 1920s and '30s empowered hundreds and enriched thousands, millions of ordinary Italians celebrated with parades, sound and light, oaths, subsidized art and literature, the myth that they were the reincarnation of glorious Romans. The regime talked a lot about "faith" and "religion." But the place that the regime allotted to the Catholic Church in the official culture was just a place; the state led the people in self-worship, and the Church was to be just another acolyte.

Argentina

WHEREAS IN 1890 ARGENTINA'S per capita income was 81 percent that of America's, by 1913 it was only 70 percent. As the Argentine people continued to grow relatively poorer amidst arguably the world's grandest natural resources, the presidents and congresses produced by elections under their liberal constitution increasingly became vehicles for citizens expressing mutual grievances.

In 1943 the army staged a coup d'état to stop the strife and integrate contrasting grievances into a social whole. The minister in charge of the labor movement, Col. Juan Perón, quickly dominated the government, became president, and instituted "a new human solution, a third philosophical position." This new arrangement would avoid "the extremes of proletarian domination, of social immobility, of vengeance for past wrongs, of abuse of wealth." The new order "institutionalized existing labor organizations, thus placing them within an order of social peace, converting them into a constituent of state power...constituting one of its pillars, adding to the nation's equilibrium and harmony." Note well that while labor leaders exercised more power than ever under Perón, they now held their offices by his leave.

The same was true of other social entities. Perón established an industrial bank, which engaged explicitly in preferential lending. Some sectors-e.g., agricultural export-had a harder time getting loans because they did not fit his view that Argentina should disengage from Britain as much as possible. Others, especially industrialists whose plans fit with his economic nationalism, got easy terms. Especially favored were vehicles, machinery, pharmaceuticals, plastics. Tariff policy served the same ends. Within each sector, executives who showed themselves most harmonious got preferential treatment for government contracts. In sum, the partnership of management, labor, and government yielded impressive profits to the partners while impoverishing the nonpartners and disempowering all but the Perónists.

The Argentine regime of the 1940s and '50s, the echoes of which endure in our time, was possible only because it was upheld by the pseudo-religious worship of Juan Perón's wife, Evita-a phenomenon all the more significant for being so unlikely. Only because millions of otherwise intelligent people were so emotionally addled as to importune the Vatican to declare Evita a saint could they overlook the ruin that her husband's regime was bringing upon them. Privilege kept the regime together at the top, while enthusiasm about Juan and veneration of Evita made the unprivileged feel good about themselves.

Mexico

THE INSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTIONARY PARTY (PRI) that stamped its character on Mexico from 1934 to 1990 developed out of the circumstances of the Mexican revolution of 1910, not from ideas. Nevertheless, that shape belongs to the same genus as that of the constitutions we are considering, and as such sheds further light on the nature of that genus.

For more than three decades prior to the revolution, Mexico had been ruled by the technocratic dictator Porfirio Díaz, under the forms of a U.S.-style constitution. But neither Díaz, nor his technocrats, nor the figurehead congressmen really represented the country's increasingly antagonistic prominent citizens, some based on the land, some in industry, others in the army, all well armed. From start to finish, the revolution was about which of these claimants would be left standing, and what he would do with the others' retinues. After nearly 14 bloody years, the winner was Plutarco Elías Calles who, having physically eliminated his opponents' retinues, spent the next four years persecuting Christians with fire and sword. In 1934 Calles made Lázaro Cárdenas president, thinking he would be his tool, but who arrested him and pacified the country by institutionalizing the ruling party. In sum, the PRI, as it was named in 1938, was all about Mexico's barons agreeing to share the loot in peace under any given president, while jockeying for a better share under the next one-including the labor and peasant leaders who kept their charges in line and passed the crumbs to them.

The PRI made small farmers members of the National Peasant Confederation (CNC), and enrolled wage workers, by sector, into the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM). Each of these became a "sector" of the party, along with the "military sector" and the "popular sector." The military sector was then folded into the popular one, and that effectively subdivided into interest groups both functional and geographic. That the party secured the loyalty of each group's leaders by franchising to them the power to extort from those below their level, which power subsequent levels franchised further down in ways that we characterize as corrupt, is less interesting than the fact that the PRI's essence is unremarkable in the modern world: Government power organizes society into groups that agree to be thus organized in exchange for the wealth that comes from privileged power over their subordinates, subject only to demonstrating loyalty to the system.

Officially anti-Christian, the PRI tried to build an official culture for Mexico that would legitimize its rule and fulfill the people's longing for moral meaning. That culture had three components, touted on murals, in curricula, and in subsidized literature: "We are all Indians, and ours is the continuation of a glorious pre-Columbian history." "The Gringos stole our land, try to oppress us in countless ways, but we resist them heroically." "Unlike and against the Gringos, we are part of the world's progressive movement, and believe that the state exists to take care of the people." These myths, along with patronage backed by force, made modern Mexico what it is.

The European Union

THE EUROPEAN UNION uses the word harmony arguably more than any other to describe what it is about. The ideas of Jean Monnet and friends in the 1920s that germinated into the
1956 Treaty of Rome and eventually the EU arose out of the desire to restore some of the harmony that World War I had destroyed. It is difficult to overstate the contrast between how freely persons, goods, and ideas moved throughout Europe before 1914 and the passports and protectionism that persisted after the war. It is just as difficult to argue against the widespread sense that, prior to 1914, increased popular representation had made governments throughout Europe more bloody-minded than they had ever been. For Monnet and other heirs to the 18th-century Physiocratic tradition of Diderot, the path to peace and prosperity lay in de-emphasizing political repre sentation. If people could be habituated to treating each other as valued suppliers and customers rather than as political adversaries, then they would live in peace and prosperity once again.

World War II flattened the remaining obstacles in the way of Monnet's vision by discrediting what was left of nationalism in Europe. By the late 1940s the need to eat and to be warm had overwhelmed all political questions except whether to align with America or with Stalin-for most, not much of a question. Moreover Germany's Konrad Adenauer, France's Charles de Gaulle, and Italy's Alcide de Gasperi, the principal figures of postwar Europe, advocated both siding with America and European integration. As Catholics and patriots, they envisaged a Europe of nations governed by elected representatives. Theirs would have been a chastened, wiser version of pre-1914 Europe. They supported the Treaty of Rome's integration of European markets, sector by sector, under a European Commission, as part of a "political Europe." Their vision failed because there was little political substance left in European hearts and minds, and no sentiment for common, purposeful political existence. Hence the technocratic work of the Commission ended up being all the Europe that's there.

The fact that the EU deals with people's lives technocratically does not negate the political character of the things it touches. Who is to rule over whom? Who will gain and who will lose? What kinds of activities, what sort of life do we encourage, what do we discourage, and what do we prohibit? What do we honor and what do we dishonor? What, if anything, do we kill and die to protect, or to destroy? Since 1993 the European Union's Commission, courts, and parliament have made countless decisions about such matters as well as about the length of condoms and the specifications of lawnmowers. Their decisions about energy have made scores of billionaires, while other decisions about agriculture and fishing have put thousands out of business. Their decisions about what constitutes human rights have effectively promulgated a moral code common to Europe's ruling class but alien to all of Europe's nations. Nor does anyone pretend that these decisions emanate from "the people" of Europe, since perhaps the sole item concerning European affairs on which there is unanimity is that the European Union suffers from a "democratic deficit." Lack of popular mandate notwithstanding, the EU is especially active in cultural affairs, specifically rejecting Christianity as even one among the bases for its legitimacy. The EU is very loud in affirming its own moral superiority, but this substantively empty claim moves no hearts.

Our New Foundation?

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES between the New Foundation that President Obama is instituting and the regimes of the European Union, or of 1920s Italy, PRI Mexico, or Perón's Argentina are beside the fact that all are variants of one kind of rejection of liberal representative government. What does this rejection mean in America? Here is how it works among us.

Arguably the main American constitutional event of 2008-09 was the passage under the Bush administration, with support from future president Obama as well as from virtually all the nation's major interest groups, of a $700 billion bill to purchase "troubled assets" from big banks. All agreed that unless the government were given this huge sum with unprecedented latitude and in a hurry, the average American would see his life's savings disappear. By 2008 the hurried demand for large, unspecified powers under the threat of imminent disaster was no longer exceptional. The Obama administration made it the rule, and used the money to build its "New Foundation."

The Obama team (different from its predecessor only in degree) purchased few "troubled assets." With most of the money it bought stakes in the biggest banks, with which it leveraged them to support its political agenda, including the takeover of General Motors and Chrysler, which Obama had also made dependent on the government by lending them "troubled asset" money. Chrysler (with GM to follow) having failed financially, the Obama administration forced it to give a 55 percent stake in itself to the United Auto Workers union, a major constituent of the Democratic Party. The government took the next 30 percent, and gave the remainder to Italy's Fiat, in exchange for management and technology. In so doing and against bedrock bankruptcy law, it gave some 43 cents on the dollar to the UAW's unsecured interest in the company and only 28 cents to secured creditors. Meanwhile, part of the deal worked out with the favored stakeholders was that they would produce mainly small cars, with better fuel economy. But few believed that the American public would buy them. Doing this lent support to the administration's claim of moral authority as savior of the earth from global warming. In an event that would have been unremarkable in Europe or the Third World, the Obama administration took assets from persons independent of it, transferred them to political allies, and bolstered in the popular mind the rationale for its rule.

What does it take to become a stakeholder in our new constitution, and what does it yield? Consider the Service Employees International Union. Andy Stern, its president, said, "We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama-$60.7 million to be exact-and we're proud of it." Stern claimed that he hired people who "knocked on 1.87 million doors, made 4.4 million phone calls, and sent more than 2.5 million pieces of mail in support of Obama." He had borrowed some 20 of those millions. But he is reaping fabulous returns on his investment.

The union has 2 million dues-paying members whom Stern and his associates got, according to the Los Angeles Times, by forceful or fraudulent takeover of locals as well as by bribery and intimidation. But Stern is now a stakeholder in just about any matter he chooses. Most visibly, on April 15, 2009, his lawyer and lobbyist were part of an administration virtual "round table" that decided to withhold $6.8 billion of "stimulus money" appropriated for the state of California unless the state restored a $7.4 million (1.4 percent) cut it made in one of its programs, which happens to be serviced by Stern's union. Surprised, California secretary of health and human services Kim Belshe said, "The involvement of a stakeholder in this kind of state-federal deliberative process is unusual at best...outside any norm I am familiar with." Alas, this sort of thing is becoming the new rule.

One corollary of that rule is that powerful stakeholders like the SEIU can help turn former opponents into new stakeholders. Thus when President Obama said, wryly and proudly, that even Wal-Mart was supporting his health care plan-the very Wal-Mart that the Democratic Party had demonized for its resistance to unionization-he was in fact acknowledging yet another debt to the SEIU. Stern's union, along with liberal groups, had so harassed Wal-Mart that it agreed, in exchange for peace, to endorse the Obama health plan's requirement that employers provide health insurance or pay the government 8 percent of gross income. Not incidentally, if the plan became law, Wal-Mart would be insulated against potential competitors who did not offer health insurance.

Whereas the big banks, GM, and Chrysler became stakeholders by accepting partnership with the Democratic Party and the United Auto Workers union, and the SEIU did it by brute force and money, even as Wal-Mart was forced into an auxiliary role, an outfit by the name of Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society did it by presenting the administration with a plan for a single electronic registry of all American health care records. The company had tried to sell its plan to Congress as a cost-saving measure. But it then realized that the plan would help the Obama administration grasp the whole of the U.S. health care system in order to impose its priorities on it. Hence, HIMSS got a $36.5 billon contract, for starters. Its money and its status as a stakeholder came from pure lobbying and networking with vendors and customers, who saw opportunity in the administration's proclivities.

In sum, in America as elsewhere, stakeholder government grows by its essential internal dynamic: the more the rulers' power grows over more matters, the greater the incentives of people to do whatever they can to become stakeholders.

Where does stakeholder government hit those of us who are part of the general public? Consider colonoscopies. In May 2009, after consultation with stakeholders, Medicare proposed no longer paying for the electronic, noninvasive, "virtual" kind, and only for the kind that involves insertions into your colon. The makers of the electronic equipment for the virtual ones disputed this immediately. What will and will not go up your colon depends on to which part of the industry the money will go. Under our new constitution such questions, regardless of how important to you they may be, are reserved for stakeholders.

Hence it is poignant to read William Greider, an enthusiastic supporter of Obama's New Foundation, expressing shock in the Nation about its results. Greider wrote that Obama's actions had taught people such as himself "a blunt lesson about power, who has it and who doesn't. They watched Washington rush to rescue the very financial interests that caused the catastrophe. They learned that government has plenty of money to spend when the right people want it. ‘Where's my bailout,' became the rueful punch line at lunch counters and construction sites nationwide."

Greider continued, "If the largest bank holding companies are given privileged proximity to the source of government protection, then everyone in finance and commerce will want to become a bank holding company, too. We are already seeing this happening as former investment houses like Goldman Sachs and non-bank financial firms decide to join the system. Why not General Electric and Microsoft? Where does this end? What does it mean for smaller enterprises that lack the scale and influence?" He concluded, "Government and politics would become even more responsive to big money, but also able to tamper intimately with private enterprise, picking winners and losers based on political loyalties, not on performance."

Why should Greider or anyone else have expected that government, especially one made up of bankers and bank regulators, would not have plenty of money for them? Why should anyone expect that a government that has the United Auto Workers as a constituency, or that wants to harness the auto industry or the energy industry to its plans, would not pay to support and shape them according to its vision? Why should anyone expect that persons who watch government dispense privilege to its supporters and enablers would not want to pay the price to join their ranks? Why be surprised that the bigger the government, the bigger a friend it is to those connected with it, and the more indifferent to the unconnected? It would be just as unreasonable to expect water to flow uphill.

Nor does it make sense, under this genus of constitutions, to rue the substitution of political loyalty for performance, because in these constitutions, political loyalty is the only kind of performance that counts.

What's It to Us?

THE MORAL BASIS OF OUR "New Foundation" consists of the desire that many have to support it, whatever it might be. For many, the will to affirm collective action is much less a matter of ideology than of eagerness to escape what they experience as a meaningless America. Thus in an influential 1997 Wall Street Journal article, prominent neoconservatives William Kristol and David Brooks regretted that so many Americans had chosen to elect Republicans who pledged to get government off their backs. "Wishing to be left alone is not a government doctrine," they wrote. They argued for government that would lead America to "a grand destiny," to "national greatness." What would that look like? Candidly, Brooks explained elsewhere, "It almost doesn't matter what task government sets for itself as long as it does some tangible thing with energy and effectiveness.... Energetic government is good for its own sake. It raises the sight of the individual. It strengthens common bonds. It boosts national pride. It continues the great national project." Italians, Argentineans, Mexicans, and others are familiar with such pseudospiritual summonses to what the French intellectual bureaucrat Jean-Marie Guéhenno calls "religions without God."

Adherence to the regime's official truths and refusal to challenge their moral substance is a prerequisite for working within the system wherever political loyalty also becomes the measure of cultural, spiritual matters, whether in the European Union, in 1920s Italy, 1950s Argentina, in Obamaland, or in PRI Mexico. In practice, however, such moral bases of government are but thin cover over the raw trade of privilege for power.

Moreover, in America as elsewhere, while giving lip service to official truths enhances one's self-image, actually taking them as moral authority is another matter. In this regard, the moral basis of our "New Foundation" is emptier and engages hearts less than that of Mussolini's Italy, Juan Perón's Argentina, and Mexico's PRI's dinosaurs. Encouraging people to think of themselves as saviors of Planet Earth by driving small cars is thin stuff by comparison with images of glorious Rome, of saintly Evita, of the great Montezuma. Our New Foundation requires either habituating oneself to be enraptured by empty words, or getting used to swallowing questions that naturally come to mind (e.g., how can the world be burning up when the last decade has been colder than the previous?), or uttering official lies. In sum, if you are not a stakeholder-and odds are you won't be, can't be-the Stakeholder Constitution will impoverish you morally as well as materially.

poted on 4 sites.

Grandpa — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:07:52 -0700

Michael Yon

Online Magazine

Home Michael's Dispatches Precision Voting

Precision Voting

31 August 2009Helmand Province, Afghanistan
The historical Afghan elections scheduled for 20 August were days away. While the west mostly continued to vote for Afghanistan, the big question was, “Will Afghanistan vote for itself?”
The latest media wave splashed into the main voting centers in places like Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Herat and Lashkar Gah. The larger cities only account for perhaps 20% of the Afghan population. Whereas the easy and obvious stories are in the cities, a crucial and larger dimension-the other 80%-would unfold in the boonies. Most Afghans would have no chance to vote.

The election was to be run by Afghans. In theory and in practice this would be a recipe for disaster. The strategic thinkers cannot be faulted for this; after nearly eight years of war, if the west were still running the elections, the elections and government would be a failure to begin with. By comparison, the Iraqi elections on 30 January 2005 (less than two years after invasion) were run mostly by Iraqis. In the voting of October and December of that same year, Iraqis had two more runs at the ballots, which were increasingly successful. Afghanistan, however, is different. This would be only the second election in history.
There are no good choices here. Either we run the elections and the central government and in doing so undermine the same central government we are investing in, or we allow that central government to run the elections and probably watch it undermine itself. But who knows?

We need more troops. The leadership tells us that the Taliban and associated groups control only small parts of the country. Yet enemy influence is growing, and so far, despite that we have made progress on some fronts, our own influence is diminishing. For example, an excellent British infantry unit that I embedded with in Iraq and now Afghanistan, the “2 Rifles,” is staked out in the “Green Zone” around the Helmand River. HQ for 2 Rifles is at FOB Jackson near the center of the map above. There are several satellite FOBs and Patrol Bases, each of which is essentially cut off from the outside world other than by helicopter or major ground resupply efforts (which only take place about once a month). The latest ground resupply effort from Camp Bastion resulted in much fighting. The troops up at Kajaki Dam are surrounded by the enemy, which has dug itself into actual “FLETs.” FLET is military-speak for “Forward Line of Enemy Troops.” In other words, the enemy is not hiding, but they are in trenches, bunkers and fighting positions that extend into depth. The enemy owns the terrain.
The British are protecting Kajaki Dam but otherwise it’s just a big fight and no progress is being made. The turbine delivery to the dam, which I wrote about last year, was a tremendous success. Efforts to get the turbine online have been an equally tremendous failure. Bottom line: the project to restore the electrical capacity from Kajaki Dam is failing and likely will require multi-national intervention to bring it online and to push back the enemy.
We need more helicopters. Enemy control of the terrain is so complete in the area between Sangin and Kajaki that when my embed was to switch from FOB Jackson to FOB Inkerman-only seven kilometers (about four miles) away-we could not walk or drive from Jackson to Inkerman. Routes are deemed too dangerous. Helicopter lift was required. The helicopter shortage is causing crippling delays in troop movements. It’s common to see a soldier waiting ten days for a simple flight. When my embed was to move the four miles from Jackson to Inkerman, a scheduled helicopter picked me up at Jackson and flew probably eighty miles to places like Lashkar Gah, and finally set down at Camp Bastion. The helicopter journey from Jackson began on 12 August and ended at Inkerman on the 17th. About five days was spent-along with many thousands of dollars in helicopter time-to travel four miles. Even Generals can have difficulty scheduling flights. Interestingly, when I talk with the folks who reserve helicopter space, they say the Generals are generally easy-going about the lack of a seat, but that Colonels often become irate.

A helicopter finally was heading from Camp Bastion to FOB Inkerman, which is cut off from its own headquarters at FOB Jackson only four miles away. The war and fighting can vary dramatically around Afghanistan. In Sangin, the enemy uses mostly fertilizer bombs, which, along with normal leave schedules, has rapidly attrited the battalion to the point that replacements have been sent. Conversely, four miles away at Inkerman, it’s still mostly a gunfight, though the use of bombs is increasing. Inkerman sits on the desert side of “highway” 611 that goes from Highway 1 (the “Ring Road”) to Kajaki. The 611 marks the border between the deadly Green Zone and the desert. The road is almost completely controlled by the enemy. Only tiny patches of the 611 are under serious NATO/ISAF influence. Some will take issue with this statement; if they claim to be in control, they should readily accept the challenge to drive in an unarmored car in those areas they claim to control.

To help avoid being shot down, the helicopter approaches Inkerman from the desert side. (In fact, two days later on the 19th, a similar helicopter was shot down near here.) The Afghan road system is the human equivalent of ant trails. After thousands of years of living here, the Afghans have not cracked the code on road building. Many people will say that geography has been cruel to the Afghans, and that the mountainous, landlocked terrain is the problem. Yet this does not explain away the success of landlocked, mountainous countries such as Austria and Switzerland, nor does access to the sea guarantee anything more than saltwater. The meek have inherited this plot of earth because the strong don’t want it enough to take it.

Where liquid water can be found, so too can Afghans.

Some people point back to the “good-old days” in Afghanistan, when hippies could smoke hash and swim naked in the streams. The good old days in Afghanistan did not leave much evidence of progress in the form of roads, architecture or written history.

The stories of foreign invaders do not explain away the great walls built around nearly every home and every mind. The problem is not the terrain. The problem is not that Americans and others supported the Mujahadin when they fought the Soviets. The problem is not the artificial boundaries penciled in by the British all over Asia and the Middle East. The people are backwards and many want it that way. You can fly over a compound in the desert, miles from the next compound, and still it will have walls. Afghanistan is the land of a million Alamos.

As the pilot brought the helicopter to the yellow pin called FOB Inkerman, an Afghan man had parked his car just near the front of the base on the 611. He took out a shovel and began digging, hidden by his car, he thought, at a spot where a bomb had recently detonated. A British soldier fired a warning shot and the man drove away. An Apache helicopter eventually attacked the car out in the desert. There he was, just within direct view of Inkerman, digging in a bomb. This is typical of the larger situation.

Helicopter landing site at FOB Inkerman.

Two platoons are stationed at Inkerman; meaning only one platoon at a time can leave the base. Using one platoon to cover this area is like trying to water a football pitch with a drop of water. The enemy fights just outside the base, even planting IEDs in view of the guard towers. On my first morning at Inkerman, one of the platoons was outside the wire in the corn. They came across tripwires and other booby traps. The enemy was so close that soldiers could hear the enemies’ own radios crackling nearby in the corn. A firefight ensued. Machine guns and mortars were fired. The white smoke is a screen launched by the mortars to help the infantry platoon break contact. There are too few troops to fix the enemy and prosecute attacks.

Cleaning the mortar tubes after the fire mission.

Restacking unfired mortar bombs.

The platoon comes back to base. Amazingly, despite the dire situation, British morale is high. My respect for the men and women here only grows by the day.

The soldiers keep streaming in from the mission. The Pentagon and British MoD spin lies (though I have found Secretary Gates talks straight), but veins of pure truth can be found right here with these soldiers. The Pentagon and MoD as a whole cannot be trusted because they are the average of their parts. There are individual officers and NCOs among the U.S. and U.K. who have always been blunt and honest with me. Among the higher ranking, Petraeus and Mellinger come to mind, but for day-to-day realities this is where it’s at. Out here. Nothing coming from Kabul, London, or Washington should be trusted.

A recent controversy was stirred in the U.K. by my photos of British soldiers in the GZ (Green Zone) wearing brown uniforms. There is some truth to the controversy, but in fairness to the British MoD, only part of the battles take place in the GZ. Much of the fighting takes place in the deserts. Even individual missions often alternate between the Green Zone and the Brown Zone, and so neither green nor brown is perfect. The British SAS and American special operations forces are using camouflage that is more suitable for both environments. It would cost very little to outfit these soldiers in better camouflage.

These men and women will never get the credit they deserve.

The women are medics, and they brave the combat just like the infantry soldiers. But again, they will never get the credit they deserve, and so we joked that they should just let people think they spent the entire tour at Camp Bastion. Who would believe that they were out there in the thick of it? On this day, an Afghan man showed one of these medics a rash on his arms, but the medic carried no such medicines out into the fighting. When medic Evans said she had no medicine, a young man picked up a big stone and was preparing to hit her. Rhian instantly pointed the rifle at the man who put down the rock.

Still streaming in.

Another day in the war.

Finally they are all in the gate and nobody is shot or blown up this time, and I say a quiet thank you for bringing them back in one piece.

After each mission soldiers drop gear and go immediately into a debriefing to discuss what has occurred. They discuss things that were done well, things that were done not so well, and there is discussion about how to improve before the next fight. They talk about the performance of the enemy and any good moves or bad tactics used by the enemy. They talk about any gear that may have failed or performed well.

The soldiers knew they were doing well and I knew it because they invited me on more missions than I could possibly go on while still being able to write.

Some things could have been done better-always the case even among the most experienced soldiers-so the soldiers talked it through, and after it was over they headed back to re-issue new ammo, clean weapons, recharge batteries for various gear, and prep for combat on a moment’s notice.

About three hours after the firefight, an Afghan man was brought to FOB Inkerman with the note above. The note was signed with the name Dr. Haji A. Baqi, who the British said is a doctor for the Taliban. (Not necessarily a “Taliban doctor,” but someone who definitely treats Taliban.) The Brits said that Dr. Baqi gets medical supplies from the ICRC. The referral says the patient was “SHOUTED BY GUN,” and judging by the small bullet hole it might well have been a British gun.
Normally, a correspondent would not be permitted to publish photos of a captured enemy (while embedded with British or U.S. forces), but this guy was not captured and he was not being detained. He was not officially deemed the “enemy,” despite that his hands were soft and he likely was hit during that firefight.

The medical team: Nikole Cunningham, Rhian Evans, Jonathan Richards, Daniel Yeoman, all led by Dr. Gabriel Shaya, going to work on the suspected Taliban. His only real problem seems to be the bullet hole (entry and exit) in the abdomen. Luckily for him, he seems to have been hit by the same bullets used in American and British assault rifles (5.56mm), which lack the power to make the definitive hits caused by more powerful weapons. The man was alert throughout.
Dr. Shaya tries to find a vein, but ends up drilling into the guy’s right tibia to deliver fluids. This is Dr. Shaya’s first combat deployment. On August 2nd the monthly convoy was moving up from Camp Bastion to resupply bases that no longer see fresh apples, fresh milk, or fresh anything. The convoy had been harassed along the way and the enemy already knows the expected convoy routine, so they were busy with ambushes. When the convoy passed by FOB Inkerman, Captain Shaya was on QRF (Quick Reaction Force) duty. A nearby IED strike caused a casualty just near the base. Captain Shaya loaded up with only two other soldiers into the Pinzgauer vehicle. Darkness was falling when the total of three soldiers launched out of Inkerman and Dr. Shaya thought it was exciting to be on his first mission, but he also knew the dangers, having worked for three weeks at the Camp Bastion trauma center. Shaya was sitting in the back and realized that if the Pinzgauer got hit with an IED, he might break his neck on the partial ceiling, so he shifted to sit under the open space. He began to ready his gear to accept the casualty, when about five minutes into his first mission, BOOM!, the front of the vehicle apparently hit a pressure plate.
The explosion did not seem loud to Dr. Shaya. Dust and smoke filled the darkening air as the vehicle came to a stop, and part of the truck fell onto Shaya. His arms and legs were still attached but due to a partition he could not see either man in the front. He shouted to them and they both responded and both were wounded. The easiest, quickest way to the front was to crawl out the back and open the driver and passenger doors, but there might be IEDs because the enemy often plants bombs in clusters. Dr. Shaya did not want to walk on the road until it had been cleared. They were alone in the dark. He didn’t even want to turn on his red flashlight. He could climb over the top but did not want to be an obvious target, so he shouted to the front for them to use the radio to call for help. The truck had no radio.
Dr. Shaya climbed over top to the front, but didn’t want to turn on his light. Soon he saw a dim light approaching from down the road and he felt anxious. As the light grew closer and closer the anxiety increased, and it came closer still until he saw it was the company Sergeant Major and some soldiers. The anxiety evaporated into profound relief. The soldiers opened the doors and Dr. Shaya saw that the driver’s lower right leg was gone, while the dashboard had crushed in on the passenger who was in great pain. The driver was trapped by the steering wheel, and while soldiers tried to pull him out, Dr. Shaya, now between the driver and the passenger, tried to lift up the steering wheel and finally they got him out to a stretcher where Dr. Shaya had to screw into his tibia to administer fluids. Dr. Shaya thought the driver was losing his will, and so he gave a pep talk and tried to keep him in the fight. The other patient was screaming as he was pulled from the vehicle. He was a large man and difficult to move, and continued to scream with pain as he was put onto a stretcher and the IV was inserted. Three morphine doses later he was still in great pain due to a severely fractured femur, and as they drove in another vehicle back to base he screamed on the bumpy road. Dr. Shaya was painfully honest with his recounting, saying that during the stress of his first combat, he had forgotten his weapon and medical bag on the damaged vehicle. He was upset with himself that he could not administer more because of that oversight. “The journey back seemed to take an eternity,” he said. The British MERT helicopter was circling in the darkness overhead and when it landed at Inkerman, he ran off, helping with the stretcher, when he should have been preserving his strength for other casualties.
Dr. Shaya told me that when he returned to the medical tent, “When I got back, I was shattered (exhausted) and shaken.” He began to pack another medical kit in case he had to crash out the gate on his second mission, yet now soldiers were arriving for treatment after the initial blast that wounded the first soldier, and only when all of that was done could Dr. Shaya relax, and begin to feel the pain from his own throbbing, bleeding elbow.
Combat is the cruelest teacher. Dr. Shaya, who makes no pretense of being a combat soldier, had been five minutes into his first mission when suddenly he was alone in the dark with two seriously wounded men.

Dr. Shaya treating the suspected Taliban. Maybe this was the guy who blew up the vehicle.

Soldiers examine the referral note, signed with the name Dr. Haji A. Baqi, wherein the suspected doctor of the Taliban describes symptoms.

Backside of the referral note.

Call sign 'Pedro': One of the great untold stories of this war.

The 129th ERQS (Emergency Rescue Squadron), flying a pair of HH-60G Pavehawks, launched from Camp Bastion to retrieve the suspected Taliban who was deemed a “Cat A” casualty. Category A means the patient requires immediate evacuation. Total flight distance (given the route) from Bastion to Inkerman back to Bastion would be about 100 miles.
Among the British combat soldiers in Afghanistan, Pedro is the only thing more popular than mail. When friendly forces are in need, Pedro will come anywhere, anytime, during any weather, and their helicopters have gotten the bulletholes to prove it. The United States Air Force runs the only rescue service that will always be there, no matter what, no matter that there is no moon for flying, or the dust is too heavy for everyone else, or you are in a firefight. American Army helicopters in Afghanistan fly with the red cross on the side. Flying with that symbol makes it illegal for our people to carry weapons. The decision seems ridiculous; the enemy will only use the red cross for an aim point. While the Army flies armed with a red cross, Pedro flies with miniguns. And they bring some of the most highly qualified medics in the entire U.S. military–which is saying a lot. They bring miniguns, and powersaws to cut soldiers out of MRAPs or other twisted hulks, and scuba gear when troops and gear are lost to the water. If our people can manage to get there, Pedro can manage to get them out. Pedro rescues people every single day.

The lead aircraft, Pedro 35, brings two pilots, a gunner, a rescue officer, a flight engineer, and two PJs (elite “rescue specialists”; these men are a story unto themselves).
When Pedro 35 landed at FOB Inkerman, the two PJs along with the rescue officer, Captain Dave Depiazza received the patient while British soldiers brought the suspected Taliban toward Pedro. The PJs like to meet the ground troops outside to make sure the patient is properly categorized, assessed, and loaded. One challenge with some ground troops is that they will rush the helicopter during a “brownout” and start to load the patient feet first (or headfirst), when the PJs might need the patient the other way; the PJs want the head near the lifesaving airway equipment, and since helicopters vary in configuration, the PJs need to take control early to save seconds. They want to spend no more than 30 seconds on a hot landing zone; the aircraft do take hits but they have been lucky so far. (A Pedro from Kandahar Airfield was shot down in July. Luckily all survived and kept doing missions, but the helicopter was ultimately destroyed during a recovery mission that went awry.)

Sometimes Pedro 36 comes in first, but this time Pedro 36 flies top cover while Pedro 35 loads the patient.

Pedro 36 racetracks low watching for ground threats. The door gunners can-and often do-return lethal fire in a couple seconds.

Pedro 36 roars low and then both disappear and head back to Camp Bastion. When the Pedro 35 landed near the Bastion trauma hospital, Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman happened to be visiting the hospital as the PJs helped unload the suspected Taliban. (Just the day before, when I had spent some hours with the Pedros before heading back out with British infantry, one of these same PJs said he would clean the operations center for a week if he could meet McCain. I said to him, “Fat chance you’ll get to meet with McCain,” and so imagine the PJ’s surprise when he carried the suspected Taliban into the hospital and accidentally ran into Senators McCain and Lieberman, and shook their hands.)

The war is a busy place and far too much happens out there than can possibly be explained. Llater that night, a platoon launched on a mission to raid several compounds. I was invited on the mission on 18 August but did not go due to the usual writing-crunch and impending elections, and so during breaks I sat in the ops center and listened to the radio calls. The raids unfolded, and after half a night the soldiers brought back six suspects, one of whom had run from the soldiers and urinated on his hands to remove explosives residue. The terrain had been rough and the night was dark and so two soldiers busted their ankles.
Major Ian Moodie, commander of B Coy 2 Rifles, guaranteed me that in the morning there would be a gaggle of locals, including elders, who would arrive to demand release of the prisoners. Major Moodie said this problem is exacerbated by the helicopter shortage; if he could get the prisoners extracted as soon as they were captured, he would be able to say that the prisoners had already been moved and there was nothing he could do, but already in the past he had decided to release prisoners to cool tensions.
Later in the day of 19 August, locals arrived to demand release of the six. All were released except for one, who was finally picked up by a helicopter on the evening of the 19th, the day before the latest historical Afghan elections wherein Abdullah Abdullah and Hamid Karzai had reached the showdown to decide who would become the President of one of the most primitive countries on Earth, but one that probably gets more international press and attention than Japan and Germany combined.

As the helicopter lifted off with the prisoner, the JTAC who talked the helicopter in said to me that “Axle” Foley, another JTAC four miles away in Sangin, was about to call in a bomb from a B1. The fighting had begun and it was not even election day. Taliban in the area were threatening people to stay in their compounds and not vote.

On the afternoon of the 19th, before our election-day mission on the 20th, “Snowy” meticulously cleaned every speck of dust off his weapon. He disassembled the magazines, cleaned the springs, and individually cleaned each bullet.

Snowy then counted every last bullet-twice-and I joked that if his weapon failed the next day, cleaning would not be the issue. The weapon was ready, it seemed.... Meanwhile, my BGAN satellite communications gear was malfunctioning on the evening before the election. Hours would be wasted before it was ascertained the satellite gear was officially broken. Murphy’s Law was in effect for all guns and gadgets. I’ve come to a remote base and can report what others are not seeing, and the crucial link was broken at the crucial moment.
At about 2245 a rocket banged and zoomed overhead but missed the base and exploded seconds later somewhere out in the darkness. Orange illumination rounds drifted down nearby and in the far distance, some casting long, flickering shadows. Radio chatter at the ops room said that an SAS (British special forces) helicopter had been shot down north of us and one troop was wounded, and that the enemy was moving toward the crash site which was still occupied by British soldiers. I headed to bed because the mission on election day was likely to include serious fighting. The alarm was set for 0330, but by midnight there had not been time to get a wink. Just after midnight, having seen no less than 10 meteors streak through the darkness above, sleep came. The alarm sounded and I pulled out of the cot, already dressed for the mission, and pulled on the boots in the dark. Sometime around 0400, there was a distant thud as the helicopter that had been shot down was destroyed. (An officer later said that two bombs were used, but I heard only one.)

By 0436, the soldiers were ready to launch on the mission and there was time for a few images on this historic day in the middle of nowhere.

The soldiers had erected a memorial for lost comrades.

Metal detectors and other gear were tested.

It was time.

The mission began.

Suspected bombs were marked along the way. Dozens of them. The metal could be anything from an old bullet to a nail. For years, the enemy has seen us with the metal detectors and so are making bombs with LMC (low metal content).

The soldiers on point with the metal detectors have an incredibly dangerous job. They must watch for all sorts of ambushes, high and low. The enemy uses command wires, pressure pads, trip wires and radio-controlled devices. Some people say the enemy bombs are cowardly, as if we are in a gentlemen’s duel. Others might say IEDs are no more cowardly than our using B-1Bs and A-10s.

Election day begins.

Our mission was to move to an over-watch position to prevent Taliban from harassing voters on their way to Sangin. Most people in Afghanistan would not have a chance to vote even if there were no Taliban. British officers told me that between here and Kajaki, for instance, there were no polling stations.

Fatal funnel: the enemy often plants bombs in walls, or simply throws grenades over top.

Often after ground has been “cleared,” soldiers far down the line get blown to pieces.

Open areas make us less predictable for IED strikes, but now we are extremely vulnerable to machine-gun, RPG fire and other weapons such as B10 rockets. Luckily they are terrible shots with mortars.

If we get ambushed, the only cover is accurate return fire, but the enemy of course tries to hide their firing positions.

Nobody from either side was dead yet. Not here, anyway.

We reached our objective; an occupied compound that British forces had used three times before and this boy was waiting. Afghans often stand with an arm behind their back, or they walk up and down steep mountains in the same fashion.

Nearby compound with a possible IED at the corner.

Several sections occupy different compounds giving us better arcs for mutual fire support.

The opium had already been harvested and the poppy bulbs were hard and dry. How many bulbs does it take to buy one bullet? The drug dealers are getting rich, and so a strong central government is a natural enemy.

As we occupy his home, this Afghan boy plays like he is killing us with a rifle and then wants to see his photo.

The man of the house says he is worried that on our fourth stay, the Taliban will think he is collaborating and will kill him. Asked if he will vote, he says no, and that nobody in this area will vote because the Taliban will kill them.

Climbing around these compounds takes its toll. One can only imagine how many bones are broken. Often, the entrances of the compounds are laced with explosives, so the soldiers blow a “mouse hole” through a wall, or use ladders to scale, and so the enemy now places booby traps atop walls. Again, some people will say it is a “security violation” to say that the enemy places bombs atop walls, as if the enemy doesn’t know that the enemy has placed bombs atop the walls. People will say it’s a security violation to say that we use ladders to climb walls, when every day countless thousands of Afghans see us with ladders. We’ve been fighting this war for nearly eight years. The enemy knows we listen to radios, cell phones, and just about anything else we do. It’s the people at home who do not know. The enemy has learned our tactics and psychology.

Joseph Etchells had been killed nearby almost exactly a month ago, on 19 July. “The Kopp-Etchells Effect” dispatch was written partially in Joe’s memory. Several times, the events of Joseph’s loss were recounted to me, in clear hopes that important details would be told. I said not to worry, it will be told. The missing details were that soldiers had complained about not having enough ladders to scale walls to avoid dangerous compound entrances. During a mission the soldiers needed to get over a wall but were without a ladder, and so Joseph Etchells volunteered to go through the entrance, where he stepped on a pressure plate.

The compound we occupied on election day was littered, partially with batteries. Soldiers do not throw away old batteries, but collect them in boxes because the enemy digs through trash to collect batteries to make bombs, but just as often something like this is benign.

Afghans in this area typically live with their animals.

Many believe that the Pashtun people are one of the lost tribes of Israel. If true, some Taliban might actually be descended from Jews, which would be one of the most severe ironies of humanity. Some branches go off and earn Nobel Prizes and unravel the secrets of the universe while advancing humanity by leaps and bounds, while another turns malignant and doesn’t know how to build a road.

The FST (Fire Support Team) goes into position over-watching a road leading to Sangin. The mission is to prevent any roving bands of Taliban from interrupting voters traveling to Sangin.

The family keeps two myna birds whose wings have been clipped, and the Hazra interpreter tells me the birds can talk. I tell him that birds of similar appearance, also called myna, are sold in America. “What if the bird says, ‘I love Mullah Omar.’” I asked the interpreter. “Then we must shoot it!” he answered.

The heat increases and the soldiers wait.

The first customers arrive. Maybe they are a probe.

The men are searched. If others were planning to come down the road on this day, none do.

A radio call said there was an IED strike nearby, in the area of Patrol Base Wishtan, which would be on or in the area of Pharmacy Road (the subject of the latest dispatch “Bad Medicine.”)
Later we learned that two soldiers were killed at Wishtan: Sergeant Paul McAleese, 29, and Private Jonathan Young, who was 18.
According to the BBC:
They were killed while on a routine foot patrol near the town of Sangin, in Helmand province, on Thursday. Their families have been informed.
Their deaths bring the total number in Afghanistan since 2001 to 206.
Lt Col Nick Richardson, spokesman for Task Force Helmand, said: "It is with deep regret that we report the deaths of two soldiers in Helmand Province.
"Our deepest heartfelt thoughts and sympathies go out to the bereaved family, friends and comrades of these brave soldiers."
The MoD said the deaths were not connected to Thursday's presidential elections in Afghanistan.
Every mission here on the 20th was connected to the elections. The idea that the losses were not connected to the elections seems off, not that it would make a difference to the fallen. Yet the slights and spins, often for no apparent reason (even if not the case here), undermines the messengers.

There would be much fighting around Afghanistan this day.

Men were watching us and roving around at a distance of about 900 meters. Sniper Keiran Jones is told to fire a warning shot.

Fighting was kicking up in the distance, and FOB Inkerman was starting to get attacked. Out in Sangin the fighting would last all day.

Rifleman Keiran Jones keeps his eye on the target while rolling the foam earplugs. The man watching us is wearing a white dishdasha and a white turban.

BAM! Keiran Jones launches a bullet from the .338 rifle, which cracks just a few feet away from the “dicker.” (Watcher.)

Another FST member has already recorded coordinates for targets and is ready to start a fire mission using mortars or the 105mm howitzers.

Rifleman Keiran on the scope. The snipers would fire about half a dozen times this day, and not all were warning shots.

Steady…

BAM. Dust fills the air and reflects off the morning sun.

Re-chamber.

Steady…

BAM. More dust.

The snipers are cleared to kill a man, the same one who has been watching us, as he peeks his turbaned head around a corner about 900m away. The shot is difficult because Keiran is in a tough and painful position to shoot from. I joke that they need to do “sniper yoga” and Jones replies with a chuckle, “No sh*t. It’s a stress position.” Both snipers stayed in positions that were agonizing for their legs and backs. There were no good places to get a relaxed shot.

Keiran Jones aimed for the man’s head and BAM! The supersonic bullet that could kill an elephant raced toward the target.

Keiran was very upset, thinking he may have missed, though others thought he might have hit the man. The shot would have been an easy shot if Kerian were prone, but the muscle stress in the growing heat was adding up.

The snipers stayed for hours up in that sun, sometimes taking alternating breaks, but they were in competition to get the enemy.

Like dueling banjos.

I sat in between them for about 20-30 minutes and all three of us were aching from the positions, though my position was far easier and shaded by one of the snipers.

They stayed at it.

Jones, drenched in sweat, takes a micro-break.

Fighting continued in the distance over in Sangin. We saw bombs drop and the mortars and howitzers were firing dozens and dozens of rounds, while the Apaches were hammering away with their cannons, and launching about 30 rockets through the day.

The compound and our soon-to-be ambush spot.

CPT Ed Addington keeps an eye out. We could hear firefights but other than the snipers peeling off some shots, we were not in contact.

We were not trying to hide. The Brits wanted everyone to know we were there.

A jet drops a bomb in the Green Zone.

Down inside the compound, soldiers began to try to compress themselves into any sliver of shade but the shade kept shrinking. Though we had occupied the compound, soldiers respected the house by staying outside.

The dog looked thirsty but when I tried to give him water, he launched out like the Killer Rabbit on Monthy Python. If not for the rope around his neck, there might have been a death match. The dog seemed completely insane, as if he had been attending al Qaeda seminars. The soldiers couldn’t believe that five minutes later, little Cujo was still viciously growling. I slid the water close enough but by several hours later he still never took a sip.

Medic Nikole Cunningham goes into firefights in the middle of bomb-laced country. Nikole said her family thinks she never goes on missions.

The family was long gone, but two boys came back and fed their grandfather (apparently) who was very old and stayed with us.

The plan was to stay all day, but we were told that by late afternoon, only 245 ballots were cast. And so it was decided that we should head back before dark, which would make it easier for us to avoid IEDs, but more difficult to avoid ambushes from machine guns and RPGs. No matter what you do. . . .

Everybody expected an ambush. The enemy had had most of the day to cook up something.

Off we went, down the middle, taking chances with the machine guns, RPGs and other rockets, but avoiding the more likely IEDs for the first leg.

The Taliban is in complete and uncontested control of the nearby power station. We don’t even have enough soldiers to take and hold the power station, and so the enemy controls the on/off switch, and they charge locals for power. While we generate electricity up at Kajaki, the Taliban makes money off it. It’s no wonder why the Taliban laugh at the idea of negotiating.

The thought went through my head, “If I were the enemy, I would ambush us right. . . . ” ZIP, SNAP, CRACK, CRACK, CRACK!
Their machine-gun fire was accurate and we all dove to the ground.

ZIPT! SNAP SNAP! Some bullets hit between this soldier and me.

There’s Snowy, who had cleaned his weapon with surgical care. He had wiped down every bullet and every millimeter of the magazines. His weapon was working just fine. For now.

Sapper Cameron Baldry starts to get up, and I think, “Why is he getting up?” Bullets were snapping by.

The soldiers often complain that when they hit the dirt, some of the bulky radio frequency gear they carry gets in the way of their helmets. When soldiers are down in the dirt they cannot aim their weapons because their faces are stuck in the ground. So Baldry rolled into a sitting position to return fire.

Meanwhile behind me, Snowy’s weapon began to malfunction.
I was making video when a soldier fired a Javelin missile which impacted close to the nearest compound.

This is where untrained fighters usually crack and run away in a jumble. British soldiers, however, are well-trained. While some provided covering fire, others peeled off in an organized fashion.

At this point another Javelin was launched and can barely be seen in this photo.

Impact: I’d never seen a Javelin explode like that. Usually they are like gigantic hand grenades, but this one looked like a bomb from a jet.

What in the world did he hit?

A fireball gathered and left a mushroom cloud.

None of us knew what had been hit, but of course there was speculation that the Javelin had found ammunition or bomb-making material. Maybe a tractor, I thought.

We went to a nearby compound that was empty and I stayed low near the front thinking this was the real ambush and that a cluster of bombs was about to kill half of us.

A soldier dropped his pants to see where he had been hit. Apparently a bullet had sent a rock into his thigh. The fire truly was accurate. We truly were lucky that several of us did not get hit. Meanwhile, other soldiers were checking ammo levels and doing redistribution as needed. After every firefight, the Brits (and Americans) check for wounds, redistribute ammo, and check critical gear. Two or three British soldiers asked if I was okay. Meanwhile, leaders would consult maps, develop SA and figure out what they wanted to do next. It cannot be stressed enough to check your buddies for wounds. Soldiers have often died because in the adrenaline rush and cascade of survival juices, or sometimes simply because they are still fighting, troops don’t realize they are badly wounded, and so they bleed out and die.
Being just a writer, it’s not my domain to intrude, but after every drama I closely watch their uniforms and hands for blood. All the soldiers are well trained, but some are still just teenagers and so you start to feel responsible for the younger ones, especially.

'Did you see those bullets hitting between us!?'

Sapper Cameron Baldry, a twenty-three-year-old soldier from 2 Troop, 11 Field SQN of the 38 Engineer Regiment, pointed at me exclaiming something like, “Did you see those bullets hitting between us! They were striking right between us!” I chuckled, saying yes, it was close, and those guys are good shots but we got lucky. Baldry’s antenna had been shot off but he didn’t get shot.

We headed back to FOB Inkerman, avoiding many markers for potential IEDs.

Aircraft could still be heard, and there was fighting in the distance.

Marker.

Marker.

Fighting continues to our left, but it’s in the far distance. To our right about a thousand meters away someone is using a signal mirror, probably tracking our movements.

The heat and the weight cause some soldiers to pause, and finally we are back on base and somehow got away with no fatalities or even injuries.
There is no telling how much ammo was fired by 2 Rifles elements in Sangin, Wishtan and elsewhere, but the soldiers from Inkerman fired at least 1,100 rounds of 5.56 (rifle and link), 800x 7.62mm, 3x Javelin, 133x 81mm mortar, 172x 105mm howitzer. The Apaches fired about 500x 30mm, 28x flechette rockets and a Hellfire. Someone dropped 2x 500lb bombs and a British Tornado strafed, while American A-10s and Belgian F-16s also joined up.
Too much was going on to keep up, and in fact the base had been hit while we’d been gone, destroying someone’s sleeping space. Soldiers on base had identified at least one firing point and kept eyes on, and we got back just about the time I saw John Loughday and Simon Wagstaff trying to kill someone with a Javelin as the enemy occupied a firing position with what soldiers identified as a B10 rocket laucher. The first Javelin failed, and so they grabbed another and launched. With six seconds of flight time to that target, the single enemy saw the messenger coming his way. Instead of praying he made a run and I heard the explosion. The men radioed down from the tower, “Hello Two Zero this is crow’s nest. Good strike one enemy dead.”
The day kept going but a man can only record so much. My sat-gear was broken and so there was no way to file a detailed account of the election day, which in this area was a failure.

The next morning, on the 21st, ten men showed up to the FOB to talk about the generator that he said had been hit by the Javelin missle during the ambush yesterday. The soldiers had previously been to his compound and confirmed that he had a nice generator, which now apparently was the victim of a Javelin missile and had gone out as a fiery mushroom cloud. As a heat source, it would have stood out as a nice target to lock the Javelin onto. As a side note, the man said they had gone to Sangin to vote and had voted for Karzai. Yet we had watched his compound all day and nobody had left it to travel to Sangin. Furthermore, three days later, I was present when the same platoon occupied a compound of the man wearing blue (above). On the 24th, he said he had not voted. We occupied his compound on the 24th because British soldiers thought it was being used by the enemy. Yet here he is on base on the 21st, part of the party asking for money for the blown-up generator. On the 24th he said he didn’t know any Taliban and had only been here for a month. He spontaneously said he knows that Barack Obama is the President of the United States, but when asked, did not know who Michael Jackson was. On the 21st he was on base, while on the 24th I sat with him for about an hour while we waited for the enemy to square off for a fight. (And there came another firefight.)
On the 21st, the elder said the generator cost about 70,000 Afghanis, or about $1,400, but the most that could be paid from this base was $300. The inanity of it all is difficult to fathom in one sitting. We were taking machine-gun fire, apparently from his compound or that area, but he had no information about the Taliban. Probably because he is Taliban. We blew up his generator and now he wanted to get paid.

Later the evening of the 21st, soldiers held a ceremony for recently lost comrades and the next day they were right back out there in combat.
On the 22nd there was business as usual. A patrol was out on the road and a man was driving toward them on a motorcycle. The daylight was fading and a warning shot was fired but the man kept coming so a soldier went lethal and shot to kill, grazing the man’s arm. The man didn’t realize at first that he had been shot, or where it had come from.

Dr. Shaya and crew treat another gunshot wound on FOB Inkerman.

As with young American soldiers, nobody seems to believe that a man cannot hear a warning shot while he’s riding his motorcyle, or that he can’t see soldiers wearing camouflage during the last rays of daylight. Despite being in countless firefights wherein we often have great difficulty identifying firing positions (such as two days earlier when machine guns were nearly hitting us), many young soldiers think that firing a warning shot is enough. We all know that snipers who are in hiding fire only one shot to avoid conveying their firing position. Warning shots mean nothing to an old man who needs glasses, who is riding a motorcyle at twilight in an area where gunshots are more common than frogs. So a small piece of flesh was stripped from his arm and the man got off light.
The world kept turning and on the 24th “Bad Medicine” was published just after midnight Eastern Standard Time, and that morning before sunrise the soldiers were going on a dangerous mission and I went along. The result was a firefight and much mortar and cannon fire using prox fuses, delay and airbursts into the enemy position. Though we had information that the enemy was trying to get us with IEDs, we escaped getting blown to pieces. When I got back to base, there was a message from British MoD that my embed had been canceled (about one month before we had agreed it would end) without warning. The message and timing were clear enough. “Bad Medicine” was published, and I was out. The soldiers at 2 Rifles were astonished. The MoD gave the reason that it was unfair to the journalists who were clamoring for spots, but my sense was that MoD had created a convenient excuse that was kept in the chamber, and now they had pulled the trigger.
I responded to the MoD:
Thank you for the message.
The precipitous decision by the MoD to cancel my embed after today's dispatch is unfortunate.
The sudden reversal after today's dispatch -- apparently a publication that did not sit well with the MoD -- will cause me significant headaches. As you know, there are many balls in the air, and the MoD has effectively shoved me out of the way.
Please forward to Ltc Richardson that the message was received.
Michael----
And so that was it. My last day with the British 2 Rifles had ended the same as it had ended in Iraq. In combat. I’ll miss the British soldiers. They constitute a truly professional force–if dangerously underresourced. It has been my honor to accompany them in combat. In theory I would do so again anytime, but in practice this will be the last time MoD will have a chance to cut me off in mid-flight, wasting much time and resources that should have been devoted to telling the story. Barring a guarantee from a British General Officer that something like this will never happen again, my days of covering British operations are over.
On Sunday morning, 31 August, the United States Air Force “Pedros” took me on three missions. Please stand by. This is very interesting.