Opium Harvest at Record Level in Afghanistan

Opium Harvest at Record Level in Afghanistan: "Afghanistan’s opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul.

He described the figures as 'alarming' and 'very bad news' for the Afghan government and international donors who have poured millions of dollars into programs to reduce the poppy crop since 2001.

He said the increase in cultivation was significantly fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country’s prime opium growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers if they expanded their opium operations."

(Via NY Times.)

In Navajo country, racism rides again

In Navajo country, racism rides again: "SHIPROCK, N.M. -- No one wanted another 1974. Not the Navajo, and definitely not the city of Farmington, which is still living down the Navajo murders of that spring, not to mention their aftermath.

But here it is, 32 years later, and the old wounds are wide open. Once again, violent, racially charged incidents between whites and Navajos in Farmington, on the eastern edge of the sprawling Navajo reservation, have outraged Indian country. Once again, a city trying to shake its nickname as "the Selma, Ala., of the Southwest" is on the defensive. And, once again, what's happening here in northern New Mexico is prompting talk of border-town racism on reservations all over the country.

This all started with a beating in Farmington in June. A 47-year-old Navajo man who was offered a ride by three white teenagers in Farmington was driven to the outskirts of town, beaten with a stick and punched and kicked. He said they used racial slurs as they pummeled him."

(Via Salon.)

Has Canada Got the Cure?

Has Canada Got the Cure?: "Should the United States implement a more inclusive, publicly funded health care system? That's a big debate throughout the country. But even as it rages, most Americans are unaware that the United States is the only country in the developed world that doesn't already have a fundamentally public--that is, tax-supported--health care system.

That means that the United States has been the unwitting control subject in a 30-year, worldwide experiment comparing the merits of private versus public health care funding. For the people living in the United States, the results of this experiment with privately funded health care have been grim. The United States now has the most expensive health care system on earth and, despite remarkable technology, the general health of the U.S. population is lower than in most industrialized countries. Worse, Americans' mortality rates--both general and infant--are shockingly high."

(Via AlterNet.)

When Government Shrugs: Lessons of Katrina

When Government Shrugs: Lessons of Katrina: "Public policies designed to serve the narrow interests of business and the affluent are the ultimate cause of New Orleans' devastation.

A year has passed since Hurricane Katrina turned New Orleans into the closest thing this country has seen to Pompeii. Although FEMA trailers dot more of the landscape than they did a few months ago, as homeowners have begun to dribble back, at least 60 percent of the city seems unoccupied. It will never be the same. Most of the markers of familiar life, the daily round, swept away, never to return. The beautiful Louis Armstrong song "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?" used to give me a little rush of wistful, sweet nostalgia. Now it makes me sob.

Most of my family lives in New Orleans. Nearly all of them were or remain displaced. My mother's Holly-grove neighborhood sat in four feet of water for nearly a month after the 17th Street Canal ruptured. She left home the day before the storm hit and couldn't move back until New Year's Day. Some family members were more fortunate, some less. Most of them lived in the Gentilly area, which was largely devastated by the breach of the London Avenue Canal. My aunt and uncle's house, only a few blocks from the breach, was inundated, as was that of a cousin who lived near them. She had to be rescued from a rooftop. Even some relatives whose houses weren't flooded remain displaced, as children had no schools and most of the city went without electricity and other services."

(Via AlterNet.)

Cancer cell 'executioner' found

Cancer cell 'executioner' found: "Healthy cells have a built-in process which means they commit suicide if something is wrong, a process which fails in cancer cells.

The University of Illinois team created a synthetic molecule which caused cancer cells to self-destruct.

Cancer experts said the study, in Nature Chemical Biology, offered 'exciting possibilities' for new ways of treating the disease."

(Via BBC News.)

What I Got Wrong About the War

What I Got Wrong About the War: "Fukuyama's sharpest insight here is how the miraculously peaceful end of the cold war lulled many of us into overconfidence about the inevitability of democratic change, and its ease. We got cocky. We should have known better. The second error was narcissism. America's power blinded many of us to the resentments that hegemony always provokes. Those resentments are often as deep among our global friends as among our enemies--and make alliances as hard as they are important. That is not to say we should never act unilaterally. Sometimes the right thing to do will spawn backlash, and we should do it anyway. But that makes it all the more imperative that when we do go out on a limb, we get things right. In those instances, we need to make our margin of error as small as humanly possible. Too many in the Bush Administration, alas, did the opposite. They sent far too few troops, were reckless in postinvasion planning and turned a deaf ear to constructive criticism, even from within their own ranks. Their abdication of the moral high ground, by allowing the abuse and torture of military detainees, is repellent. Their incompetence and misjudgments might be forgiven. Their arrogance and obstinacy remain inexcusable."

(Via TIME.com.)

Nobody needs to actually destroy a jetliner these days to ignite a debilitating plague of panic and foolishness.

Ask the pilot | Salon Technology: "Case in point, America's airports in August 2006. We seem to be losing our grip, sliding from a state of reasonable anxiety to one of mass hysteria. At this rate, we're making the task of the terrorist easier by the day; nobody needs to actually destroy a plane anymore to ignite a debilitating plague of panic and foolishness. Merely planning the act is liable to get the job done, encouraging an entire population to act like lunatics, surrender its dignity (and liberties), and squander away millions of dollars.

If you're one of the 21 bomb plot suspects still sitting in British prison right now, it's mission accomplished. No sooner were we told that a London-based conspiracy had come within days of blowing up several jetliners -- an allegation now subject to doubt -- when we were hit with a gantlet of preposterous security restrictions and a flurry of overreaction:

On Aug. 16, a United Airlines flight en route between London and Washington made an impromptu stop in Boston because a passenger threw an uncontrollable fit. Before being restrained with plastic handcuffs, the 59-year-old woman urinated on the cabin floor, which apparently was reason enough to summon a pair of F-15 fighters to intercept the 767. (She was not the first airline passenger to so relieve herself in an episode of what we used to call 'air rage' -- a term that has become almost quaint in the current, overcharged atmosphere.) The aircraft was evacuated on the runway, and passengers were delayed several hours while canine units inspected hundreds of checked bags."

As another example, check out the first hand account here.

(Via Salon.)

AlterNet: How Washington Goaded Israel

AlterNet: How Washington Goaded Israel: "There is increasing evidence that Israel instigated a disastrous war on Lebanon largely at the behest of the United States. The Bush administration was set on crippling Hezbollah, the radical Shiite political movement that maintains a sizable block of seats in the Lebanese parliament. Taking advantage of the country's democratic opening after the forced departure of Syrian troops last year, Hezbollah defied U.S. efforts to democratize the region on American terms. The populist party's unwillingness to disarm its militia as required by UN resolution--and the inability of the pro-Western Lebanese government to force them to do so--led the Bush administration to push Israel to take military action."

(Via AlterNet.)

Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible? Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible? | The Register

Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible?: "The al-Qaeda franchise will pour forth its bowl of pestilence and death. We know this because we've watched it countless times on TV and in the movies, just as our officials have done. Based on their behavior, it's reasonable to suspect that everything John Reid and Michael Chertoff know about counterterrorism, they learned watching the likes of Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Vin Diesel, and The Rock (whose palpable homoerotic appeal it would be discourteous to emphasize).

It's a pity that our security rests in the hands of government officials who understand as little about terrorism as the Florida clowns who needed their informant to suggest attack scenarios, as the 21/7 London bombers who injured no one, as lunatic 'shoe bomber' Richard Reid, as the Forest Gate nerve gas attackers who had no nerve gas, as the British nitwits who tried to acquire 'red mercury,' and as the recent binary liquid bomb attackers who had no binary liquid bombs.

For some real terror, picture twenty guys who understand op-sec, who are patient, realistic, clever, and willing to die, and who know what can be accomplished with a modest stash of dimethylmercury.

You won't hear about those fellows until it's too late. Our official protectors and deciders trumpet the fools they catch because they haven't got a handle on the people we should really be afraid of. They make policy based on foibles and follies, and Hollywood plots."

(Via Salon.)