Again in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — Less than two hours after President Obama left Afghanistan airspace on Wednesday, explosions shook the capital and the Interior Ministry said a suicide attacker had exploded a large bomb at the gates of a compound used by foreigners in the east of Kabul, killing seven Afghans.

 The dead included four civilians who were passing in a car when they were caught by the blast, a security guard at the compound, a student and another person who was on foot nearby, said Sediq Sediqqi, the Interior Ministry spokesman. Hospital officials said 18 other people had been hospitalized with injuries, including seven schoolchildren who were at a nearby school, and one person was in a critical condition. 

 The attack took place at the gate of a large compound called the Green Village, which houses private security guards, some foreign diplomats, United Nations employees and other foreign workers in the city, the spokesman said.

Another Attack on Tom Palaima by Me

 In the American Statesman today:

Re: April 26 Tom Palaima commentary,
"Incentives to cheat are many, but that's
no excuse."

Palaima writes, "some students in field
such as engineering, biology, marketing,
pre-law and pre-med can be so fixated on
doing well in their majors that they think
courses like mythology were they are
required to read, analyze, think and write,
are light entertainment."

Well, for students in of the hard disciples (sic)
Palaima seems to think so little of, a course
in mythology is light entertainment.

Certainly is is compared to those student's
majors where they also must read, analyze,
think and write.

Steven Zoraster

Germany's nuclear power phaseout turns off environmentalists

KLEINENSIEL, Germany — When the German government shut down half the country's nuclear reactors after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, followed two months later by a pledge to abandon nuclear power within a decade, environmentalists cheered.

A year later, however, criticism of the nuclear shutdown is emerging from a surprising source: some of the very activists who pushed for the phaseout.

They say poor planning of the shutdown and political opportunism by the government have actually worsened the toll on the environment in Germany, and Europe, at least in the short term.

To make up for the lost nuclear power, which supplied 22% of Germany's electricity before the phaseout began, the country has increased its reliance on brown coal, a particularly high emitter of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and a major contributor to global warming. Brown coal now supplies 25% of Germany's electricity, up from 23% a year ago.

Terrible Austin Infrastructure

Around 1960 my family was thrilled because Los Angeles built a sidewalk along Woodley Avenue in front of my house in the San Fernando Valley. The city was building sidewalks along all the streets in our neighborhood. Suddenly, I no longer had to walk home from elementary school on dirt paths alongside heavily trafficked roads. A few years later my younger brothers and I were able to walk to middle school on sidewalks, unlike my older brother who had walked on dirt.

Flash forward to 2012. Today I live in the Highland Park/Balcones neighborhood of Austin, which has poorer infrastructure for foot traffic than I experienced over 50 years ago in California. Mostly I walk in the street because there are no sidewalks. Behind Camp Mabry on Edgemont Drive and Madrona Drive there are no sidewalks. Up the hills west of Balcones on Ridge Oak Drive, Crestway Drive, and Highland Crest Drive there are no sidewalks.

There are sidewalks around Highland Park elementary school and along Balcones from Perry Lane to Northland. That’s it. If it were only me doing this it would not be worth an editorial in this newspaper. But many others use the same streets. I often pass other walkers and joggers, including neighbors walking dogs and parents pushing babies in strollers. All doing so in the street, because there are no sidewalks
Children who live farther than one block from the elementary school usually aren’t allowed to walk to and from school because that’s where the sidewalks stop. Although, I do occasionally see children walking on my lawn to keep off the street.
In fact, when I visit my family back in the San Fernando Valley, I notice that people who walk enjoy sidewalks that are usually better maintained than the sidewalks along most Austin streets outside of downtown.


City Council members say they want Austin to be a pedestrian friendly and walkable city but the evidence is lacking. The city often supports expenditures on consultant studies, incentive programs and grand initiatives while ignoring basic infrastructure needs such as neighborhood sidewalks.

Austin should get its priorities straight. If we truly want our citizens to exercise and walk to work and school when they live close enough to do so, let us spend money on the means to help them do so safely.

Reaction to Austin's Water Shortage

As I walk or drive around the Highland Park/Balcones neighborhood I notice how nature and man have combined to adapt to the recent water shortage. Lawns are usually in poor shape, if not actually dying. Plants that are doing well are things like Crape. Myrtle, Rosemary, Sage, Pyracantha (commonly known as Firerhorn) and many different cacti. Roses bushes are few, and those I looked closely at are doing
poorly. Those yards that look best often have as much well laid out rock paving as plants.

I started looking because I was worried that our yard would itself look bad compared to those of my neighbors. Well, not a problem. Our yard is no worse than many others, however, a brief period of thought sent me to the nearby nursery to buy Mountain Laurel, Sage, and Cacti to plant in my own front yard.

A hedge of Pyracantha

But I will never plant Pyracantha. I took out a 50 linear foot hedge
of Pyracanth a when I was 14, and today I recoil in fear when I see
just one of those horrible plants.

Yet Another Afghanistan Killing by the Usual Suspects

Rogue Afghan police officer: A Taliban infiltrator’s road to fratricide
The Washington Post
By Kevin Sieff and Javed Hamdard, Published: April 1

KABUL — Before the Afghan police officer named Asadullah killed eight of his colleagues and one civilian Friday morning, he spent years as a Taliban fighter, targeting men he called infidels and crisscrossing the Pakistani border with teams of insurgents.

But his first collaboration with the insurgency was the one his neighbors still find the most egregious: He granted the Taliban permission to kill his father, Ehsanullah.


Afghan and Western officials said they uncovered those details in conversations with Asadullah’s family and friends after the new police recruit and Taliban sleeper agent apparently drugged his colleagues and shot them in the head while they slept.

The incident is one of the bloodiest cases of fratricide in the 10-year-old war and comes amid a surge in attacks by rogue Afghan army and police personnel on their Afghan and American colleagues. At least 16 NATO service members have been killed by men in Afghan army and police uniforms since January, an increase compared with the same period in previous years.

From a Blog Post on Islam in Norway

“In March 2011, the renowned Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitz came to Oslo. He offered to lecture at three Norwegian universities without payment. They all turned him down. Thereafter, Dershowitz wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal where he conveyed how anti-Semitic Norwegian academics let him know that he was persona non grata. This affair made me ashamed to be Norwegian. I am looking forward to the day when the present government will be defeated. Then hopefully, an end will come to their propaganda and the misleading image of Israel which they continuously portray to the Norwegian public.”

The New York Times on Egypt and Palestine

The New York Times really thinks that brokering a closer relationship between Hamas and Fatah is a move towards stability in the Middle East? Yes, according to the first few paragraphs from an online article:
-------------------------------

CAIRO — As it prepares to take power in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is overhauling its relations with the two main Palestinian factions in an effort to put new pressure on Israel for an independent Palestinian state.

Officials of the Brotherhood, Egypt’s dominant Islamist movement, are pressing its militant Palestinian offshoot, Hamas, which controls Gaza, to make new compromises with Fatah, the Western-backed Palestinian leadership that has committed to peace with Israel and runs the West Bank.

The intervention in the Palestinian issue is the clearest indication yet that as it moves into a position of authority, the Brotherhood, the largest vote getter in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, intends to both moderate its positions on foreign policy and reconfigure Egypt’s.

Copy of an e-mail I sent to Tom Palaima this Morning

Professor of Classics at UT Austin had yet another anti-American column in the American Statesman this morning. His twisted wording managed to imply that the United States is uniquely evil in the way it wages war. As a classical scholar Dr. Palaima know this is not true. Obviously he does this to further his agenda amongst less educated. He shows great contempt for his readers many who will not see though his false arguments.

Still, I suspect most American veterans themselves would dislike the article, no matter what they felt about our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is the e-mail:

---------------------

Professor
Tom Palaima


I read you guest editorial in the American Statesman
this morning. I was bother by it because you seem
to indicate that the insane action of one American
soldier was indicative of the unique way we wage war.

You certainly did not mention that killing of otherwise
innocent civilians and captured soldiers has been a fact
of war since the beginning of history. The Romans
sacked cities that did not surrender, killing among others
Archimedes during the capture of Syracuse during the 2nd
Punic War.

I have on my shelves books with eye-witness accounts of
American killing captured German soldiers during WW2.

Of course we both know I could go on and on.

I and everyone I know is for leaving Afghanistan and
everywhere else in the Middle East today.

But you as a classical scholar should offer you readers
more information about long history of crimes committed
during wars since, well, since forever.

I am sure that most reading of you article do not have
the deep knowledge that you, and I, and even my wife share.

I am truly disappointed. Any thought of going to Thursday's
evening talk which I knew about before reading your column
just ended.

Steven Zoraster
3329 Perry Lane
Austin, Texas 7831

Cyrenaica Still Wants to be Independent

16 March 2012 BBC

Libya rally on Cyrenaica autonomy plan ends in violence

Vehicle belonging to pro-federalism supporters damaged by youths in Benghazi. Anti-federalism protesters drove the rally from Freedom Square, Benghazi, witnesses said.

Clashes at a rally calling for a semi-autonomous territory to be created in eastern Libya have left one person dead in the city of Benghazi, reports say.

Witnesses said a crowd demanding a semi-autonomous region of Cyrenaica was attacked by armed men.

The plan calls for a regional parliament with control over the police but stops short of dividing Libya.