If you follow the old highways of the midwest you get into farm country pretty quickly, and you will see the infrastructure used to supply energy. It’s not oil and gas lines I speak of. You see instead rail lines, switchyards, and depots used to supply the older forms of energy: food from grain and animal crops, and coal to power our industrial processes, towns, and cities.
The tracks snake for millions of miles across our landscape, but they are largely forgotten, or thought of as quaint. They are however a fundamental part of this nation, and not just in memory. If the trains stopped tomorrow we would be in a world of hurt. Without them bulk goods don’t go very far, and there aren’t enough Peterbilts and Macks to carry the freight they do. Without the daily bulk runs of dirty coal cars our nation would fall so far behind on the energy curve that we would quickly degenerate to third world status.
Our rail system is antique, here you can see my great grandfather and his engine, and sad to say, the basics of rail technology haven’t changed much at all since he retired back in the ’60s. I would not be surprised to find the engine you see him standing on in 1969 still in service.
It’s time to build modern 21st century rail, we need a high speed coast to coast freightline and while we are at it one for passengers too. It’s time to create a new coast to coast rail right of way and make it serve triple-duty as a power intertie and high speed fiber route as well. What would it take?
Congress creating that coast to coast right of way is the first step.
While many are portraying the resignation of Musharraf as either a bad thing or a good thing, in effect it happened two months or more ago. His old friends and associates have been ignoring him, the stalwarts in PML-Q and MQM have deserted him, and even General Kayanni who he appointed as his replacement Chief of Army Staff has deserted by ducking meetings. His popularity with the Pakistani people of all stripes is almost as low as the US congress is with the American People. He lasted the six months past the elections that I previously predicted he would make it at least as far as, but not much further.
The religious conservative nature of more than half of Musharraf’s base has been decaying since 2006 — it started when he turned his back on the government sponsored terror camps for Kashmiri Jihadis, and this turned some factions within the army and ISI as well.
It accelerated as he started flushing the Afghanistan Refugee camps and repatriating them, with the hudood ordinance wrangling for women’s rights, with the de-certifying of madrassa diplomas, and sped up more with the well-constructed Al Qaeda’s cape of Lal Masjid Mosque to Musharraf’s bull.
Then he lost the urban moderate part of his base with the barring of the Judiciary and the censoring of media in the run-up to elections. If there’s someone in Pakistan that Musharraf hasn’t pissed-off, I’m certainly not aware of who it is. At some point you have to step back to admire his tap-dance across the razor wire of Pakistani politics, and the panache with which he carried off several actions of his tenure as president in a country so factionalized you need a score card to know how to dress when you travel.
In the end patronage is what got him post election. The political and business communities in Pakistan thrive on patronage, and without his partie’s people in the bureacracies and positions of power Musharraf has been a thin paper icon and not a real power the past few months, and the final dregs of his support trickled away.
With Musharraf now gone, the US got the bear’s bad bargain from him, as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) have been securely in Taliban hands the past two years, and during the last year and a half they’ve made steady progress in trying to take over the North West Frontier Provinces (NWFP). Ayman Al Zawahiri and Bin Laden have been directing events, and they’ve created the next generation of Jihadi leadership under his nose. There’s been billions in aid and hardware spent, and now like the bear in the story, we are rambling off with empty paws.
The effects of Musharraf’s departure, like all multi-faceted events, are much more complex than any single pundit can predict, but I will do my best to sketch some possibilities here.
This will put Zardari, a questionable character in his own right, in charge of PPP, as the likely next president - if it’s not then it will be a puppet of his. (This goes with the usual codicil in Pakistan: If he lives, his name probably heads Baitullah Mehsud’s assassination list of 300.) There’s a slim potential to make Nawaz Sharif president, but the chances of that aren’t likely.
I think you will see Al Qaeda declare that PPP is just the newest US puppet, and they will continue their war against the government of Pakistan; they need to do that to survive. Brokering peace in the frontiers isn’t likely except under one scenario, and it’s probable that it will be floated or tried at some point so watch for the following possibility:
I would wager that the the new government would be willing to turn Jihadi ire away from Afghanistan and back towards India and the Kashmir standoff if they think that will bring them peace. With the Kashmir intifada heating up, it’s a likely ploy and scenario to regain the conservative sympathizer vote and to shore up the peace in the frontiers. Without an external enemy to focus the jihadis upon the jihadis will continue to eat the state of Pakistan.
The other challenges before the government are many, and how they answer them will be instructive over the next few months. The economy is floundering, in stagflation from energy and food inflation, coupled with decreased productivity and increased joblessness. Hunger is beginning to stalk the subcontinent once again, and that’s something that could snap the populace into their face very quickly if not abated.
Pakistan is energy deficient, which leads to many of their other woes for you can not support a dense population without abundant, cheap energy.
If they agitate in the Kashmir too much, they will find food supplies shortened, which certainly won’t help matters.
Then of course there are the Islamists, who are trying to overthrow the Government of Pakistan, and if they fail in that, they will next attempt to create the breakaway state of Pashtun land (there are many spellings for the envisioned state to be carved out of FATA, Southern Afghanistan, and NWFP, I’ve anglicized it.)
So lots of challenges, and at this point I have no firm predictions.
Also just a couple notes to correct some misconceptions in other articles I’ve seen in the blogosphere:
It was Richard Armitage who took the message to Pakistan that we would bomb them to the stone age if they did not cooperate according to Musharraf’s memoirs.
It was under Bhutto that the Kashmir genocide through forced migration started, and prior to that General Zia al Haq had been using Bin Laden and AQ to cleanse the hinterlands of Pakistan, like Chitral etc.
UPDATE: The International News has him quoted and confirms he’s still alive:
PESHAWAR: Eleven more tribal militants were killed in ferocious bombing by six Pakistan Army gunship helicopters and artillery and mortar shelling on militant hideouts in Bajaur Agency on Friday as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) vice chief Maulana Faqir Mohammad denied reports about his killing in the ongoing military operation.
There were reports of Maulana Faqir Mohammad’s death in an air attack by two gunship choppers on Thursday. “I did not suffer even a minor injury in the attack on my vehicle, which was indeed destroyed by choppers’ shelling,” Faqir Mohammad said while talking to this correspondent from an undisclosed location on Friday morning.
You just can’t trust reports out of Pakistan, especially those coming from Pakistan Military sources it seems.
Previous report:
As Previously reported Pakistan Army Helos hit a two truck weapons convoy carrying the Leader of the TNSM from the Seway village/Mohmand area, Mullah Faqir Mohammed. There wasn’t confirmation at the time, but an Urdu paper is now reporting official confirmation. Faqir was one of the Talban / AQ leaders set free in the 2006 peace accords which were promptly broken by the Taliban. He was also very close to upper ranks within Al Qaeda per intelligence Sources. More at Memri:
According to the report, the Pakistani officials confirmed that Maulana Faqir Muhammad was killed during the fighting between the Taliban and the Pakistani security forces in the tribal district of Bajaur Agency.
Precision is one of the watchwords of our modern military forces, and precision coupled with either stealth or distance gives you many benefits. The fact that the Raptor can shoot other jets out of the sky before they know it’s there and the fact that our air-to-air missiles can hit targets before we are in their range adds a great deal to the F-22’s threat profile.
Boeing recently demonstrated Air to Ground capability from a C-130 that is awesome in ability to take out targets without civilian casualties. Wired has the article here.
According to the developers, the accuracy of this weapon is little short of supernatural. They claim that the pinpoint precision can make it lethal or non-lethal at will. For example, they say it can either destroy a vehicle completely, or just damage the tires to immobilize it. The illustration shows a theoretical 26-second engagement in which the beam deftly destroys “32 tires, 11 Antennae, 3 Missile Launchers, 11 EO devices, 4 Mortars, 5 Machine Guns” — while avoiding harming a truckload of refugees and the soldiers guarding them
21 More Taliban were killed, however their ground forces overan more checkpoints and villages and are now patrolling streets in the area. The Taliban are denying reports of Abu Yazid Al Masri’s death, while Pakistan security forces say they overheard about his death while monitoring insurgent radios.
KHAR/PESHAWAR: Pakistan Air Force fighter aircraft and military gunship helicopters continued targeting suspected hideouts of militants in the restive Bajaur tribal agency, killing 21 more people, including three civilians, and injuring several others, officials said.
Meanwhile, the security forces vacated yet another important post near Siddiqabad. Sources close to Arab fighters denied reports about the killing of senior al-Qaeda operative and the network’s operational commander in Afghanistan, Abu Yazeed al-Masri alias Mustafa Mohammad Ahmad or Sheikh Saeed al-Masri, in bombing by the Pakistani fighter aircraft on Damadola in Bajaur a few days back.
There are denials on jihadi forums from non-AQ sources, normally when something of this magnitude happens you will see a confirmation or denial from the leadership of Al Qaeda within a week. The leadership has been silent so far, and the others making denials aren’t AQ, they are TTP Pakistan Taliban.
UPDATE: New reports have the military targeting and hitting Mullah Faqir’s vehicle convoy, according to Maulvi Omar, spokesworm for Baitullah Mehsud, Faqir survived. Intel types will want to read this article as it’s a naming of who’s who in the Damadola area. [Most of you know this information already, but it's always good to have more confirmation.]
The tribals left in the region are confirming that the military is actually hitting real Taliban targets while they are there, which is a refreshing change if true. Another report from Dawn reports of the hit on the two vehicle convoy, but doesn’t name names. [International News has a later press time.] The Dawn article does point out that the Military is expanding the area of operation, and from the leaflets dropped they appear to have a “gloves off, weapons hot” approach at the moment.
Meanwhile Baitullah’s assassination list of 300 is getting names crossed off as targetted hits on Pro-Government tribal leaders continue.
Another interesting note here, as tribesmen ask the Taliban to leave Dir. UPDATE: Further Confirmation of Maulvi Faqir Mohammed’s death at the Nation, where they also confirm that like Abu Yazid Al Masri, Faqir was close to Ayman Al Zawahiri and AQ. Update: More at The Long War Journal
Associated Press and Reuters are reporting a missile strike at a Gulbuddin Hekmatyar training camp in Pakistan. The report has 9 militants dead (unamed, but militants usually equals foreign Taliban or Al Qaeda, local TTP Taliban are either named or tagged extremists.) From Reuters:
WANA, Pakistan, Aug 13 (Reuters) - At least nine militants were killed in a missile strike on their training camp in Pakistan’s South Waziristan region, near the Afghan border, security officials and residents said on Wednesday.
In a separate incident, a militant faction leader was shot and killed by a gunman at his office in a mosque in a northwestern town.
This strike occurred in Bhagar, about 22 miles West of Wana, a hotbed and gathering area for Taliban forces in the South Waziristan area. One out of two camps located at Bhagar was hit. According to an unamed Pakistan intel official :
“This camp was run by Hizb-e-Islami and there were about 15 people including foreigners there at the time of the attack,”
Militants sealed off the area and were not letting anyone approach, they aren’t even letting residents who live nearby go there but our information is that they have recovered nine bodies.”
Here’s the wiki page on Gulbuddin, you will see that Hizb-e-Islami (G) and Hekmatyar have a long history, including some ties to Iran.
Update: AFP reports the possibility that Zanjir Wazir, commander of HIG Afghanistan was killed. His brother, Abdur Rehman and Abdul Salam were counted among the dead.
US officials are denying the strike, which was four missiles. Pakistan is known to have laser guided munitions (helicopter launched) and as the training camp’s plot is well known, the missiles could have been targetted via GPS.
Also note this from the AFP Story linked above:
Separately on Wednesday a gunman shot dead an Islamist militant leader, Haji Namdar, as he taught at a religious school in the Khyber tribal region near the northwestern city of Peshawar, officials said
It’s a “red on red” killing and retribution for Namdar’s resistance in the Khyber agency, there will undoubtably be counter-strokes, stay tuned.
From the Pakistan Daily Times we have a named source saying that they think Abu Yazid “Saeed” Al Masri is dead. He refuses to confirm until secondary verification from ground sources however.
Strikes by Pakistani fighter jets have killed a senior Al Qaeda commander in the Bajaur Agency, according to unofficial reports on Tuesday. Military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas said the security agencies had intelligence on presence of top Al Qaeda operative Abu Mustafa Al Yazid but his death could not be confirmed as yet by “contacts on the ground”. “I can only speak when we have 100 percent confirmation that he was killed,” Abbas told Daily Times. However, he confirmed air raids in the area by security forces.
UPDATE II:In the International Times they have both Taliban and “Arab” sources denying the death of Abu Yazid “Saeed” Al Masri. This looks like another false report from Pakistan’s Military at the moment, but note that the military also states that intercepted insurgent radio chatter is where they first heard of the death, we’ll give this another 48 hours since Al Qaeda ususally does confirm when we kill a leader.
Update: Apparently after the strike the bodies where taken away, and then sent to separate villages, see this article.
Militants’ positions were also targeted by artillery and mortars from the paramilitary Bajaur Scouts headquarters in Khar, they added. The officials said 21 militants were killed and several were injured in the daylong bombing and artillery shelling on their hideouts.
Officials said the militants later took bodies of the slain and injured colleagues to their headquarters in Seway village of Mamond subdivision. “After their funeral prayers offered in Seway, the bodies of the militants were dispatched to their respective villages for burial,” sources close to militants told The News from Seway.
Sources said the militants from other tribal regions, including South Waziristan, Khyber, Mohmand and settled districts of Mardan, Peshawar, Nowshera, Dir and Swabi also reached the area to fight alongside their fellow fighters in the Bajaur Agency against the security forces.
Today’s Earlier Post:
Pakistan has announced the death of Abu Yazid “Saeed” al-Masri in the Bajaur region as a result of their ongoing offensive there. (The Reuters story specifies an “Unamed Official, but that’s normally how these reports come from Pakistan.) Originally billed as Al Qaida’s leader in Afghanistan way back in May 2007 in an As Sahab video, he later seemed to have been replaced in subseqent announcements by other AQ leaders in Afghanistan as they tried Emir after Emir. I think this was by design after Dadullah’s death, their second tier now leads from the rear. He was the replacement after we killed Mullah Dadullah, and from what I can see he was in the second tier of leadership of Al Qaeda, managing both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Here is the video announcing him as leader in Afghanistan from Memri.
While I’m calling Abu Yazid as a “tier II” leader, some refer to him as Al Qaeda’s number three, he also served time in the same cell alongside Ayman Al Zawahiri in Egypt. Regardless of where you place his position, he is part of the critical strategic leadership for AQ, and this is a tremendous blow to them if the initial reports pan out.
He was the one who declared Jihad against Turkey, and later he pops up in the news claiming credit for the Benazir Bhutto assassination for Al Qaeda. ( Rememeber that many think Baitullah Mehsud did it as well, I would still wager that AQ ordered the killing and that Baitullah managed the logistics.)
You can also see in this dispatch at Memri that he doesn’t distinguish between civilians and government for purposes of Jihad.
Senior Al Qaeda commander Abu Saeed al-Masri has been killed in recent clashes with Pakistani forces in a Pakistani region near the Afghan border, a security official told Reuters on Tuesday.
“He was believed to be among the top leadership of Al Qaeda,” the senior security official told the news agency on condition of anonymity.
Al-Masri, which means Egyptian, was the senior most Al Qaeda operative to have been killed in Pakistan’s tribal belt since the death of his compatriot, Abu Khabab al-Masri, an Al Qaeda chemical and biological weapons expert, last month
You can also see that Abu Yazid Al Masri, like all Al Qaeda leadership, interprets Jihad the way he wants to at the moment. Here he specifically states that blowing up mosques is forbidden, but later you saw Al Qaeda suicide bomb the mosque at Charsadda in an attempt to get Aftab Ahmed Sherpao:
In the interview, Abu Al-Yazid stated that Al-Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the Danish Embassy in Islamabad last June. He said that the bomber was a Saudi, and added: “We are proud to have carried out [this operation], and we congratulated our brothers for completing this task. We timed the attack in such a way that no Muslims were in the vicinity.” Abu Al-Yazid also stated that Al-Qaeda had been responsible for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. On a previous occasion, he claimed that the organization had carried out the December 27, 2007 assassination of former Pakistani prime-minister Benazir Bhutto.
Referring to the permissibility of suicide bombings, Abu Al-Yazid said that eminent Islamic scholars around the world had issued fatwas sanctioning them. He added: “Suicide attacks are justified by Islamic shari’a. [However, Islamic] scholars [who are affiliated with] governments issue whatever fatwas they are told to issue… However, suicide attacks inside mosques are forbidden.”
Meanwhile the offensive in Bajaur is continuing, I think the ruling coalition in Pakistan has realized that they must get AQ and Baitullah before the terrorists get them. ( Baitullah circulated a list of 300 PPP and PML-N stalwarts up for assassination last month.)
Pakistan has announced the death of Abu Yazid “Saeed” al-Masri in the Bajaur region as a result of their ongoing offensive there. (The Reuters story specifies an “Unamed Official, but that’s normally how these reports come from Pakistan.) UPDATE:In the International Times they have both Taliban and “Arab” sources denying the death of Abu Yazid “Saeed” Al Masri. This looks like another false report from Pakistan’s Military at the moment, but note that the military also states that intercepted insurgent radio chatter is where they first heard of the death, we’ll give this another 48 hours since Al Qaeda ususally does confirm when we kill a leader.
Originally billed as Al Qaida’s leader in Afghanistan way back in May 2007 in an As Sahab video, he later seemed to have been replaced in subseqent announcements by other AQ leaders in Afghanistan as they tried Emir after Emir. I think this was by design after Dadullah’s death, their second tier now leads from the rear. He was the replacement after we killed Mullah Dadullah, and from what I can see he was in the second tier of leadership of Al Qaeda, managing both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Here is the video announcing him as leader in Afghanistan from Memri.
While I’m calling Abu Yazid as a “tier II” leader, some refer to him as Al Qaeda’s number three, he also served time in the same cell alongside Ayman Al Zawahiri in Egypt. Regardless of where you place his position, he is part of the critical strategic leadership for AQ, and this is a tremendous blow to them if the initial reports pan out.
He was the one who declared Jihad against Turkey, and later he pops up in the news claiming credit for the Benazir Bhutto assassination for Al Qaeda. ( Rememeber that many think Baitullah Mehsud did it as well, I would still wager that AQ ordered the killing and that Baitullah managed the logistics.)
You can also see in this dispatch at Memri that he doesn’t distinguish between civilians and government for purposes of Jihad.
Senior Al Qaeda commander Abu Saeed al-Masri has been killed in recent clashes with Pakistani forces in a Pakistani region near the Afghan border, a security official told Reuters on Tuesday.
“He was believed to be among the top leadership of Al Qaeda,” the senior security official told the news agency on condition of anonymity.
Al-Masri, which means Egyptian, was the senior most Al Qaeda operative to have been killed in Pakistan’s tribal belt since the death of his compatriot, Abu Khabab al-Masri, an Al Qaeda chemical and biological weapons expert, last month
You can also see that Abu Yazid Al Masri, like all Al Qaeda leadership, interprets Jihad the way he wants to at the moment. Here he specifically states that blowing up mosques is forbidden, but later you saw Al Qaeda suicide bomb the mosque at Charsadda in an attempt to get Aftab Ahmed Sherpao:
In the interview, Abu Al-Yazid stated that Al-Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the Danish Embassy in Islamabad last June. He said that the bomber was a Saudi, and added: “We are proud to have carried out [this operation], and we congratulated our brothers for completing this task. We timed the attack in such a way that no Muslims were in the vicinity.” Abu Al-Yazid also stated that Al-Qaeda had been responsible for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. On a previous occasion, he claimed that the organization had carried out the December 27, 2007 assassination of former Pakistani prime-minister Benazir Bhutto.
Referring to the permissibility of suicide bombings, Abu Al-Yazid said that eminent Islamic scholars around the world had issued fatwas sanctioning them. He added: “Suicide attacks are justified by Islamic shari’a. [However, Islamic] scholars [who are affiliated with] governments issue whatever fatwas they are told to issue… However, suicide attacks inside mosques are forbidden.”
Meanwhile the offensive in Bajaur is continuing, I think the ruling coalition in Pakistan has realized that they must get AQ and Baitullah before the terrorists get them. ( Baitullah circulated a list of 300 PPP and PML-N stalwarts up for assassination last month.)
Most Americans would not recognize the acronym “BMD” or understand its meaning, but Ballistic Missile Defense is a keystone to our strategic defense systems as well as those of NATO.
Russia, China, and a raft of third world thugs and dictators are as openly and adamantly opposed to the program as Obama is.
James Lewis at American Thinker has an article up about this, and I will take a moment here to completely underline one of the key effects of BMD for Geo-political strategy. To help you understand this effect I’m going to explain what I call the “Snapshot Bully Scenario.”
While nuclear war would be unthinkable with either Russia or China, and Ballistic Missile Defense at present isn’t designed to cope with their large arsenals, BMD does prevent the “snapshot bully” scenario. A single nuclear shot or threat of one by Russia or China against a neighbor they were trying to coerce would be unlikely, but it’s also unlikely that the response would be nuclear in return if they were given slight pretext and only one nuclear device were used or threatened. The opposition would be world wide, but it probably wouldn’t be military since that would initiate WWIII at a nuclear level. The precedent for limited nuclear weapon use was already set by the US when we used them against Japan.
What’s more likely is that Russia or China could threaten through proxy - a nuclear armed North Korea, Pakistan, India, or Iran backed by a tight alliance with either Russia or China could use the snapshot bullying tactic of a single shot or threat of a single shot to gain compliance, and that would be more likely than the direct threat scenario outlined above. Not to mention that if Iran gets nukes, it’s likely they will share the awful bounty with people like Hugo Chavez to threaten our allies in this hemisphere. Without BMD it’s likely that the Eastern European or South Asian country threatened would knuckle under to whatever demand was made under coercion from snapshot nuclear blackmail.
The current BMD program (once in place) completely removes that threat, since it makes it highly unlikely that a single shot would succeed in reaching target. Japan is already protected from snapshot scenarios, as are others in the area by their BMD batteries and ships.
China and Russia’s strategic nuclear forces also make the conventional armies of countries in East Europe and the Sub-continent of Asia somewhat useless in defending against an ally of either Russia or China, and there are many other scenarios you could imagine where the ability to defeat a single nuclear shot becomes extremely important beyond just that of the madman with a nuclear ICBM scenario most people think of.
Barack’s opposition to BMD and the space program is clearly a disaster in the making for the US and our Allies. Please write or join here and let your support of BMD be known. ( Please note that I am conservative, and oppose Barack Obama and the Democrats in general, but the MDAA is Non-partisan and supports the concept of BMD in general without lobbying for any particular technology.)
The Newest McCain Ad in the “Not Ready to Lead” series, in this one you wonder if Obama will change and invert the famous John F Kennedy quote to “Ask not what you can do for social justice, ask instead what social justice will do to you…”
John McCain is a realist - he has the foresight to look ahead at the nine billion souls who will soon populate this planet, and what they will need. They will need energy in quantities undreamt of, and the only way to solve that dilemma is an “All of the Above” approach. We need every energy source working if we would not have the planet plunged into poverty, misery, filth and despair. The first step on that path is making energy cheaper and more abundant in America so that we may continue to feed the world.
In this video you see Senator McCain call on Congress to come back and work on the energy problem.
Newsbusters has video here of Bob Herbert of the New York times either displaying vast ignorance, or craftily deciding to try to slip one by the audience, follow the link, you decide, then come back.
As the Time spread above demonstrates with a Barack Obama quote, the crafty pol has made the Paris comparison himself.
Here’s what Newsbusters had to say about the incident:
We’re all familiar with how an Obamania overdose produced strange tingling sensations in Chris Matthews. A new, virulent strain of the affliction has now emerged, claiming its first victim in the person of Bob Herbert, who on live national TV saw visions of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Washington Monument where none existed.
Obviously the column you see from different angles in the McCain Celeb ad is the Victory Column, or Siegessaule, a monument tainted with some Nazi history. Anyone who’s been following the campaign with the slightest interest knows about the column, and the controversy. The question of why Barack chose to speak at the column was asked by many since he was given a choice of sites, but was stopped from speaking at the Brandenburg Gates.
So now that we know the victory column is a phallic symbol thanks to Bob Herbert’s Freudian insight, is Bob Herbert going to ask Barack Obama why he chose to speak in front of a giant symbolic penis with victory perched atop it?
Although this topic is pregnant for puns and potent for innuendo I will refrain and just reflect that Obama’s glamour once again has seasoned journalists seeing things that simply aren’t there.
Apparently willing and able to talk about an ad he hasn’t even seen. John F’in Kerry - Reporting for duty!
Just in case you are not getting this, the original “Celeb” ad is here. You can see that the narrator not only says Obama’s not ready to lead and says no to offshore drilling, but that it’s also in bold text across the screen. John F’in Kerry, clueless again.
Soviet Russia’s most famous dissident writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, has passed on. He died of a stroke earlier today. I will always remember him for his courage and the example he set for all. Below is my favorite quote from him, it rings as true today as it was the moment he said it in interview:
The line between good and evil runs through every human heart.
The full paragraph this is condensed from comes from The Gulag Archipelago:
Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhlemed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.
This is an update to the previous story from CBS with rumors of Zawahiri’s injury or death from the July 29th strike in Pakistan. WIth help from Pakistan the document has been examined by experts - the letterhead appears too old, one no longer used since Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was consolidated under Baitullah Mehsud, it’s in Pashto instead of Urdu, and doubt was expressed about the signature. More from Dawn:
They noted that the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan no longer used the letterhead. According to them, they now used an Urdu letterhead while the one shown by CBS was in Pashto.
Mehsud’s signature also seemed different from the one he usually uses.
The letter is dated July 29, a day after a US missile strike killed six people, including an Al Qaeda chemical and biological weapons expert near Azam Warsak village.
A Mehsud spokesman Maulvi Umar, however, rejected the letter and said it was a fake. “We deny it categorically,” he said
The remaining question is whether CBS will take up the “fake but accurate” defense in this case.
If you follow the old highways of the midwest you get into farm country pretty quickly, and you will see the infrastructure used to supply energy. It’s not oil and gas lines I speak of. You see instead rail lines, switchyards, and depots used to supply the older forms of energy: food from grain and animal crops, and coal to power our industrial processes, towns, and cities. 
If the trains stopped tomorrow we would be in a world of hurt. Without them bulk goods don’t go very far, and there aren’t enough Peterbilts and Macks to carry the freight they do. Without the daily bulk runs of dirty coal cars our nation would fall so far behind on the energy curve that we would quickly degenerate to third world status.
Our rail system is antique, here you can see my great grandfather and his engine, and sad to say, the basics of rail technology haven’t changed much at all since he retired back in the ’60s. I would not be surprised to find the engine you see him standing on in 1969 still in service.
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