Twitter This Commentary In The News: Thanks this morning to ChrisM, my MP3Angel, for supplying the news and commentary audio files. The situation in congress is the news ducks are getting instruction from the 'lame' ducks with 100 new legislators who need to be taken around and shown where the copy machine is. Meanwhile caucuses are in session with the ducks picking their new flock leaders... same as the old flock leaders. The president is staying out of the way of the post election flaps. He's back from the G20 mini-conference and soon on his way to Lisbon Portugal for the NATO conference, which like the APEC/G20 conferences just attended is liable to be... contentious. Many NATO nations want OUT of their combat roles in Afghanistan. Don't expect any brilliant ideas on how to occupy Afghanistan coming out of this session. In Afghanistan, the war is going badly, with major fighting in Kunar, Kandahar, and Helmand provinces, and infiltration along the Eastern border by al-Hakami tribal members and other people motivated by the invasion of their kin's land. For elective credits.. Know your social, cultural, and political factions in Afghanistan... Below the synopsis. One of the contentous issues at the NATO conference will be Hamid Karzai's, illegitimate-but-wanting-to-be-loved-by-his-masses president of Afghanistan call for an end to NATO night raids, and a lower profile on the streets of Kabul and other urban areas. General Petraeus is quite upset... More The congressional ethics committee continues it's Red Herring investigation into Charles Rangel's so-called "Ethics Violations" without the delay requested by Rangel to seek a new lawyer. The investigation contains such blockbusters as his Non-Op'd car parked for an extended period in the congressional parking lot and OH MY, receiving, without declaring, rental income from his property in the Dominican Republic. Those are two of the HORRIBLE things he's accused of. Notably, that reporting of foreign rental income is something corporations don't need to do, essentially bilking, under the color of 'law', US taxpayers for BILLIONS of dollars a year. Update: "House ethics panel convicts Rep. Rangel on 11 of 13 counts", at The Hill. [Yours truly (Razer Raygun) saw the corrupting of US tax law years ago when the company he worked for, Seagate Technology, brought Thai workers to the states from their Thai subsidiary to Seagate facilities in Watsonville California. The Thais were housed in company owned housing. Seagate used these folks, allowed in the country as "Trainees" on visas, to work in a full machne shop production environment under a full work load, and the company carted them around (for a fee, including tours around the Monterey Bay and vicinity) on buses owned by a charter bus line invested in by a number of the company's directors.] The Space Shuttle Discovery launch is still on hold after a fourth crack was discovered in the main fuel tank and there's a Hydrogen leak somewhere in the systems. More. For Elective Credits.. Know your social, cultural, and political factions in Afghanistan. Read this extensively researched three page article:

Afghanistan: Mapping the Insurgency by Varun Vira November 11, 2010 The armed conflict with Taliban insurgents and the Karzai government with its international backers for control of the Afghan state is a ‘hybrid[1] internationalized instrastate(sp) struggle’[2] playing out on various levels and with both sides receiving external support. It includes a social level with issues of ethnic and religious identity struggles as well as a search for various groups to reform their political and economic marginalization from predatory elites. The conflict is intensified on a global level by a global war on terrorism and by regional actors in a struggle for strategic influence. Regardless, it is critical to remember that these structural dynamics manifest themselves in a predominantly local context. A myriad of complex local interactions form in essence thousands of “micro-insurgencies” that coalesce to form the dyadic conflict.[3] This best explains the dynamic allegiances of Afghan groups shifting to and from those who best satisfy their communal, developmental, political and ideological needs. The incidence of violent conflict has registered an alarming up-tick. As of mid September 2010, coalition KIA has exceeded 2009’s record high of 521, itself a 77% increase over 2008.[4] Civilian casualties registered a 31% increase as of mid-2010, although the Taliban accounted for the overwhelming majority as coalition forces tightened their rules of engagement.[5] Meanwhile various forms of structural violence persist with the HDI Index ranking Afghanistan 181st out of 182 countries, with abysmal rankings on virtually every metric of human wellbeing.[6] The Taliban Today at least 25,000 insurgents are suspected to be active in Afghanistan, up from a few thousand in 2003.[7] They directly control 4% of Afghanistan with influence and presence in another 30%, a figure rivaling the Karzai government.[8] Officially, they are engaged in a revolutionary struggle for control of the state guided by “the most conservative village Islam, with Deobandi doctrines, with a stress on the importance of rituals and modes of behavior.”[9] This religious emphasis has multiple benefits. It is a source of identity-formation for their cadres, a projected incompatibility between puritanical values and the supposed moral corruption of international and government forces as a means of conflict mobilization.[10] It has also contributed to a zero-sum thinking that sees little utility in compromise or negotiation while they retain the upper hand on the battlefield.... _{[In Full @ Foreign Policy Journal]}

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