AFGHANISTAN: No Lessons Learned

In August 1998, two weeks after a little-known terror outfit called al-Qaida announced itself to the world with bomb attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the US president, Bill Clinton, retaliated with missile strikes against a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. 

Central Khartoum was rocked in the middle of the night by the impact of a dozen Tomahawk missiles, which destroyed the plant, killing a night watchman and wounding 11 others. 

The US claimed that the factory – which was the largest provider of medicines in a country under sanctions – was secretly producing nerve agents on behalf of al-Qaida, but it didn’t take long for American officials to admit that the “evidence … was not as solid as first portrayed”.

The attack, in other words, was simply an act of retaliation against a random target, without any connection to the crime purportedly being avenged. 

I was a university student in Khartoum at the time. I can remember the confusion the day after the explosions, then visiting the shattered site of the factory with other students. 

What was suddenly clear to us then, standing in front of the ruins in a sleepy city that had supposedly become the centre of Islamic terrorism overnight, was the real logic of the “war on terror”: our lives were fodder for the production of bold headlines in American newspapers, saluting the strength, swift action and resolve of western leaders. 

We, on the sharp end of it all, would never be the protagonists. Those were the policy and opinion makers far, far away, for whom our experience was merely the resolution of an argument about themselves. The operation was chillingly, but appropriately, called Infinite Reach.  READ MORE

I. D. I. O. T.

COVID and the Fully Vaccinated

As the number of recorded coronavirus infections in the UK rises again, we spoke to three people about their experiences of catching Covid despite having been fully vaccinated, and how it affected their daily lives.

Clare Jenkins, 44, from Cambourne, Cambridgeshire, contracted Covid this month after her 13-year-old daughter became infected at a party.

“The four of us in the house isolated when she tested positive and were all clear when her isolation period finished, but then four days later my husband started to get symptoms, and tested positive two days later, while I was still negative. A further two days later I also tested positive.”

Jenkins, who has an underlying health condition that puts her at higher risk, has been fully vaccinated since April, and her husband had also had both jabs when he fell ill with the virus.

“It did definitely come as a surprise when we got ill. My husband has been much more poorly with Covid than I was. We were really worried about him for a while – he had the full checklist of symptoms really badly for 10 days.

“We have had to cancel our only holiday planned for this year – two weeks in Cornwall – which we were really looking forward to after a very intense last 12 months. I am also supposed to be running the London marathon and it has massively derailed my training plans.  READ MORE

Lucky

Writing White Rabbit

‘I wrote it on a $50 piano with eight or 10 keys missing, but I could hear in my head the notes that weren’t there’

Grace Slick, singer and songwriter
All fairytales that are read to little girls feature a Prince Charming who comes and saves them. But Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland did not. Alice was on her own, and she was in a very strange place, but she kept on going and she followed her curiosity – that’s the White Rabbit. A lot of women could have taken a message from that story about how you can push your own agenda.

The 1960s resembled Wonderland for me. Like Alice, I met all kinds of strange characters, but I was comfortable with it. I wrote White Rabbit on a red upright piano that cost me about $50. It had eight or 10 keys missing, but that was OK because I could hear in my head the notes that weren’t there. I used that piano to write several different songs. When I started making money I bought a better one.

In the 60s, the drugs were not ones like heroin and alcohol that you take to blot out a terrible life, but psychedelics: marijuana, LSD and shroomies. Psychedelic drugs showed you that there are alternative realities. You open up to things that are unusual and different, and, in realising that there are alternative ways of looking at things, you become more accepting of things around you.

The line in the song “feed your head” is both about reading and psychedelics. I was talking about feeding your head by paying attention: read some books, pay attention.  READ MORE

Expresso Time

 

Back Porch Reflections

 

My wife and I left Myrtle Beach this morning at 6:00 am and pulled into our driveway in East TN at 12:30 pm confirming that it is a 6.5 hour drive...  but, more importantly, we had 5 days of beautiful weather and while hot and humid, there was always a breeze allowing us to feel comfortable for the 7 hours we sat underneath an umbrella right in front of the Atlantic Ocean.

Our room was spacious and clean with excellent water pressure and air conditioning that had a balcony and a direct view of the ocean with a back bedroom that could be closed off from the kitchen, dining and living areas.  We always prepare breakfast and lunch and after a day at the beach, get cleaned up to have dinner somewhere in the area.

While there, I continued to watch FOX NEWS and was totally amazed with what happened in Kabul, Afghanistan at the airport.  I have always had very little confidence in Biden and after this, his status of IDIOT has been confirmed...  at least in my mind.

Who (but Biden) in their right mind would close the military base and move the military out of a foreign country before the Embassy Staff and other Americans along with those who need to get out of town because they helped us for the last 20 years.  

HOWEVER, we cannot ask for his resignation nor can we ask our Congress to IMPEACH him because that would result in Kamala Harris becoming President and I fear she would be much, much worse, especially since she was the first Democrat to pull out of the Presidencial race as a resultl of her own party not really supporting her.

AMERICA has been disgraced in the eyes of the world and terrorism will again flourish in Afghanistan...

WAKE UP AMERICA...

Playing The Carrot

 

Bitcoin and Paypal

PayPal customers in the UK will now be able to use the platform to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency, with investments starting at £1.

But PayPal payments can still not be made in Bitcoin, for example, directly.

Instead, the cryptocurrency will have to be sold for traditional currency and its value then used to make a cash purchase.

PayPal is initially working with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash.

But the currencies cannot be sent to friends or family or transferred to or from of any other digital wallet.

Entry point
PayPal launched its cryptocurrency service in the US, in October, hoping to make them more accessible to a wider audience.

But they remain volatile in value and unregulated - meaning investments are not protected by the authorities, if something goes wrong

"The tokens and coins have been around for a while but you had to be a relatively sophisticated user to be able to access that," a PayPal spokesman told CNBC.

"Having that on a platform like ours makes a really good entry point."  READ MORE

Reflexes

 

Having Sex Positivity

Lately, it seems like anything and anyone can mention sex and earn the label ‘sex positive’: social-media apps, celebrities and ‘girl bosses’, brands selling intimacy products. But when applied in such a variety of contexts, the idea of sex positivity seems to almost lose its meaning – or at least, its definition gets muddied.

Just as businesses and brands liberally use terms like ‘diversity’ and ‘equity’ to appeal to ethically conscientious consumers, “the same thing is happening with either individuals, celebrities, endorsements, organisations or companies saying that they're more sex positive”, says Emily Prior, executive director of California-based NGO Center for Positive Sexuality. While some “definitely are”, she adds, others “use it as a buzzword to get people in the door”.

But how can you tell the difference, when there’s no single, agreed-upon definition for sex positivity? While sex educators, academics, sex workers and pornography directors all tend to agree that the liberal use of the term indicates both taking advantage of a buzzword and a true embrace of its ethos, based on the context, they all have slightly different interpretations of what it means and where it came from. Depending on whom you ask, sex positivity encompasses everything from anti-racism to male nudity in the movies.

Across the board, however, those who talk about sex positivity note that at its core, the term is about openness to a variety of sexual orientations, interests (or lack thereof), identities and expressions. They find that the term has evolved to become both more popular and more nuanced over time, and that its influence extends well beyond the realm of sexuality into society at large.

The (many) origins of sex positivity
While many credit the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich with coining the term ‘sex positivity’ in the mid-1900s, as part of his discourse on sex as a healthy aspect of humanity, other groups embraced a sex-positive ethos well before he did.

“In the 1920s, there were already communities like ballroom culture in Harlem, New York, and feminists of the Village who were part of sex positive and queer communities,” says Swedish erotic filmmaker Erika Lust. Their experiences have just “often been left out of discussions”, she says.  READ MORE

Playng Ball

 

Selfish Mindfulness

Mindfulness is said to do many things for our psyche: it can increase our self-control, sharpen our concentration, extend our working memory and boost our mental flexibility. 

With practice, we should become less emotionally reactive – allowing us to deal with our problems more calmly.

One ‘benefit’ that you might not expect to gain, however, is heightened egotism. 

Yet a recent study suggests that, in some contexts, practicing mindfulness really can exaggerate some people’s selfish tendencies. 

With their increased inward focus, they seem to forget about others, and are less willing to help those in need.

This finding, alone, should not be a cause for you to cease meditating, if you do find it useful in other ways. 

But it adds to a growing body of research suggesting that mindfulness training can have undesirable side effects as well as potential benefits – and many psychologists now believe that the potentially negative consequences of certain meditative practices should be advertised alongside the hype.

The ‘me’ in meditation
The study comes from Michael Poulin, an associate professor in psychology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, who wanted to investigate whether the effects of mindfulness might depend on its cultural context and the existing values of the people who are practicing it.  READ MORE

Umbrella Toss

 

A Few Cartoons

 

Wakey... Wakey...

CO2 is the Future

 

Biden's Gun Regulations

20 GOP states push back against Biden gun regulations

Attorneys general say Biden's proposed gun parts rule is unconstitutional

Attorneys general of 20 states are fighting back against an "unconstitutional" Biden administration proposal to regulate gun parts.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich led the 20-state coalition in authoring formal comments urging the rejection of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) proposed new rule on firearms parts that followed President Biden's effort to regulate so-called ghost guns.

"Private individuals and businesses have the right to assemble firearms for their own use — a fact borne out in early American history and expressly recognized by the Gun Control Act," Morrisey said in a statement. "The Second Amendment is a core tenant of our Constitution, and this regulation would treat the activity of assembling firearm parts as a problem to be stamped out, rather than a right and tradition to be respected."

Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier this year proposed further regulations of ghost guns to stem gun violence in America. Ghost guns are homemade firearms that aren't marked with a commercial serial number because such parts have been exempt from federal laws.

The Biden administration effort aims to crack down on individuals buying partially-finished frames and receivers, referred to as "80% receivers," without undergoing background checks or recordkeeping practices with traditional commercial gun sales. Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control group, has argued that the lack of regulation of ghost guns is the fastest-growing gun safety problem in America.

But the GOP-led states contend that federal law authorizes the ATF to regulate complete firearms and receivers, not the individual parts of an incomplete receiver, and new regulations could put certain gun parts manufacturers out of business. READ MORE

The Universe

 

Cats & Ancient Egypt

Along with hieroglyphics, obelisks and geometric patterns, cats feature prominently in ancient Egyptian art, reflecting the animal’s unique status among the people who dwelled along the Nile River. The animals were initially adopted as useful predators in ancient Egypt and gradually became symbols of divinity and protection.

“Though it is hard to say the Egyptians thought one thing or another, since so much change happened across their 3,000+ years of history, the ancient Egyptians, in general, did not worship animals,” says Julia Troche, an Egyptologist, assistant professor of history at Missouri State University, and author of Death, Power, and Apotheosis in Ancient Egypt: The Old and Middle Kingdoms. “Rather, [they] saw animals as representations of divine aspects of their gods.”

Whether or not they were worshiped as deities, cats were an integral part of ancient Egyptian life. And, based on mummified cats discovered in tombs alongside humans, they carried an important role in the afterlife, as well.

Cats Provided Companionship and Pest Control
For most of the civilization’s history, ancient Egyptians saw cats as mutually beneficial companions, according to Troche. “Cats might come inside when it was hot, and they in turn would chase away dangerous animals, such as snakes—many of which were venomous—and scorpions,” she explains.

Some of what we know about the function of cats in ancient Egyptian society comes from scenes of everyday life depicted in paintings on the walls of tombs. “In tombs scenes, cats are shown laying or sitting below chairs, chasing birds and playing,” Troche says. “In some mortuary texts, they are shown with a dagger, cutting through Apopis: the snake deity who threatens Ra (the sun) at night in the Underworld.”  READ MORE