Pakistani troops have fired at two US helicopters forcing them back into Afghanistan, local Pakistani intelligence officials say.The helicopters flew into the tribal North Waziristan region from Afghanistan’s Khost province at around midnight, the reports say.
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Pakistan troops ‘repel US raid’
What the hell is the US doing starting another war? Don’t they have other things to worry about?
Why has Musharraf failed so dramatically to stop the insurgency? One reason is that most of the public is hostile to government action against the extremists (and the rest offer tepid support at best). Most Pakistanis see the militants as America’s enemy, not their own. The Taliban is perceived as the only group standing up against the unwelcome American presence in the region. Some forgive the Taliban’s excesses because it is cloaked in the garb of religion. Pakistan, they reason, was created for Islam, and the Taliban is merely asking for Pakistan to be more Islamic. Even normally vocal, urban, educated Pakistanis — those whose values and lifestyles would make them eligible for decapitation if the Taliban were to succeed in taking the cities — are strangely silent. Why? Because they see Musharraf and the Pakistan army as unworthy of support, both for blocking the path to democracy and for secretly supporting the Taliban as a means of countering Indian influence in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s problems start at the top – Los Angeles Times
This is an excellent article on how the Pakistanis military’s long hold on power has created a situation where the Talibanization of Pakistan is tolerated even by the people who have a lot to lose from it. He has to step away and let Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto fight it out, but I don’t see it happening unless he loses control of the army.
While on the subject of Pakistan, this blog post by Samia Altaf summarizes the hollowness of Pakistan’s “democracy”. Bhutto and Sharif have, in their past incarnations, been about as corrupt and reliant on the army as Musharraf is. So, are they good alternatives to Musharraf? Not really.
And so, it goes, the US shows the western world how to elect a minority candidate. Amazing, and truly transformational. There will be plenty of time for politics and what will happen next, but tonight, amazing. The US, after a few years, finally has a better president than Canada!
This makes my head explode, once again, science is helpless when faced with inertia, and greed. Lead-based paint has been banned in the US since 1978, and if this story is any indication, we’re still seeing the effects of peeling paint. But this bit of research from the University of Cincinnati suggests that not only is lead-based paint being used in more than half the world, it is actually legal.
Study Supports ‘Urgent’ Need for Worldwide Ban on Lead-Based Paint
Environmental and occupational health experts at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have found that major countries—including India, China and Malaysia—still produce and sell consumer paints with dangerously high lead levels.
Why would anyone need to use lead-based paint when alternatives have been available for the longest time, the health effects of lead, especially on children, are very well known, and there is no @#$%^&*# reason other than greed and unwillingness to change. What is the point of all these years of research if it makes no difference at all to the bulk of the world’s population? Depressing.
Guess what, even if lead-based paint was banned today, it’s still going to be on the walls forever. As the paint peels, kids will be exposed, have lowered IQ, and all other kinds of health issues for as long as that house is standing, which in India could be a 100 years.
Grassroots organizing is probably needed, and if effective, the stuff will be banned in India quickly, the government does move rapidly on these kinds of easy to legislate issues. But, enforcement will be lax, and awareness will lag, which means we are looking at (my rough guess) at least 20 years more of this issue.
Once again, the absence of a ban and its implementation affects the poor and uneducated disproportionately. The way I see it happening in India is
And this does not even begin to address what the US is going through now, aging houses, peeling paint, poor people being exposed to dangerous levels of lead.
The world ain’t very fair…
Sea gobbles up five villages in 15 years- Hindustan Times
On Wednesday, a big tidal wave hit the coast in the Satabhaya area of Kendrapara district. It swept away homes and inundated farmland. But was no exception.
Tidal waves like this one have been a regular phenomenon in the area. In the past 15 years, the sea has come inside the land by 2.5 kilometers. And as many as 600 families are leading a precarious existence in the Satabhaya and Kanhupur areas due to this phenomenon.
Satabhaya, as the name suggests, once boasted of seven adjacent villages. Five of them have now been completely devoured by the sea. Thirteen families lost their homes to the surging waters on Wednesday. There was, fortunately, no loss of lives.
Well, the consequences are set for the next 20 years, but still no action from the US on global warming which will determine how things are 50 years from now, I am not holding my breath.
Can cremation be used as an offset under the Kyoto Protocol? Read on..
Seed: New Green Pyre Promoted in India
UN figures show close to 10 million people die a year in India, where 85 percent of the billion-plus population are Hindus who practice cremation. That leads to the felling of an estimated 50 million trees, leaves behind half a million tonnes of ash and produces eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, according to research by Agarwals Mokshda environmental group.
The solution is to design a much more efficient wood burning stove hence satisfying religious sentiments (have to use wood to burn your body) and save lots of wood.
Agarwal built his first pyre, a raised human-sized brazier under a roof with slats that could be lowered to maintain heat. The elevation allowed air to circulate and feed the fire.
It gets even better…
Mokshda hopes its projects will eventually be registered under the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism, which encourages green projects in developing countries.
It allows industrialised countries that have committed to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases to count reductions achieved through investments in projects in developing countries towards their undertakings.
Really, we can get carbon credits by improving cremation practices?? That’s creative! Going all electric on the crematorium would obviously be the best thing, but Hindu religious sentiment being what it is, this is an improvement.
If you want environmentally friendly, this has nothing on the Parsis (or Zoroastrians):
The interior of the Tower of Silence is built in three concentric circles, one each for men, women, and children. The corpses are exposed there naked. The vultures do not take long—an hour or two at the most—to strip the flesh off the bones, and these, dried by the sun, are later swept into the central well
Yes, that’s right, the vultures! Now, that’s energy efficient! Unfortunately, due the use of diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory in livestock, vulture populations in India have declined to the point that this ancient ritual is now in serious jeopardy.
Umm, CNN, not exactly headline or breaking news, is it? Raja Ram Mohan Roy crusaded against it in the 1800s, Deepa Mehta made a movie about it recently. So, why was this on my cnn front page? God knows…
Shunned from society, widows flock to city to die – CNN.com
Ostracized by society, thousands of India’s widows flock to the holy city of Vrindavan waiting to die. They are found on side streets, hunched over with walking canes, their heads shaved and their pain etched by hundreds of deep wrinkles in their faces.