Out Now

Not Worth It



Right-leaning columnist George Will released a bombshell column Tuesday calling for the removal of almost all ground troops in Afghanistan. His reason? That Godforsaken country just isn't worth the amount of blood and treasure necessary to control it militarily. In other words, it's a lost cause.



The U.S. strategy is "clear, hold and build." Clear? Taliban forces can evaporate and then return, confident that U.S. forces will forever be too few to hold gains. Hence nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try: The Brookings Institution ranks Somalia as the only nation with a weaker state.

Military historian Max Hastings says Kabul controls only about a third of the country -- "control" is an elastic concept -- and " 'our' Afghans may prove no more viable than were 'our' Vietnamese, the Saigon regime." Just 4,000 Marines are contesting control of Helmand province, which is the size of West Virginia. The New York Times reports a Helmand official saying he has only "police officers who steal and a small group of Afghan soldiers who say they are here for 'vacation.' " Afghanistan's $23 billion gross domestic product is the size of Boise's. Counterinsurgency doctrine teaches, not very helpfully, that development depends on security, and that security depends on development. Three-quarters of Afghanistan's poppy production for opium comes from Helmand. In what should be called Operation Sisyphus, U.S. officials are urging farmers to grow other crops. Endive, perhaps?

Some things, in politics just like everywhere else, just aren't worth the price.

Close Call



Those of you Deadheads who can remember the era before the whole Grateful Dead scene became mainstreamed will recall how precious The Grateful Dead Hour with host David Gans was. It was really the only place where you could legally hear material that had not been officially released. It may as well have been called "The Grateful Dead Bootleg Hour." Many times we would actually turn off our stereo on Saturday nights at midnight when it came on, even if we were in the middle of a party. And that was an era when every Saturday night meant a party.

The Grateful Dead Hour still exists, although the specialness it had in the pre-internet era has been reduced by the fact that most everything the Dead ever recorded is now in some way available online. Frankly, I haven't heard the show in years. But I'm saddened to hear that host David Gans has suffered a heart attack, which he describes in detail on his blog:

Something wasn’t right. Ordinarily I would have made another cup of coffee before hitting the road, and I would have had more to eat in anticipation of a long drive with few dining options. I can’t say I had an upset stomach, but I found myself uninterested in food or coffee. Last night’s dinner wasn’t all that bad, but I allowed myself to believe I might have a touch of indigestion or food poisoning.

It was a sort of hot pressure in my chest. One of the reasons I didn’t immediately go for help was that I had felt the same thing four days earlier, after a vigorous bike ride across San Francisco for a lunch date at the Beach Chaletwith a group of friends. On that occasion, the burning subsided in ten or fifteen minutes and I didn’t think much more about it. I had no further discomfort on my ride back that day, nor on subsequent days’ rides.

When I woke up Thursday morning, I had a much more intense version of that pressure in my chest. And this time, the hot pressure didn’t subside.



Gans is also a talented musician and that's his latest record above. To read about the whole heart attack ordeal click here. Let's hope he recovers really quick.

Yuck!

Kelsey Flynn saw a hawk eating a squirrel near her house and took this picture:



Um, I don't think think I would have photographed such a thing.

Today in Hamp

Traversing the woodland way into downtown Northampton this morning I spotted this anti-police graffiti.



Hey cops aren't pigs, they're bears, like this one stuck on a post at Smith College.



Some beautiful flowers on State Street.



Also on State Street I ran into Valley Advocate editor-in-chief and popular outdoors writer Tom Vannah riding his mountain bike.



A fly in the window of Faces.



At the beloved Miss Flo's Diner they are having a special on Irish cuisine.



Northampton mayoral candidate Mike Bardsley has opened a campaign headquarters.



I wouldn't wish the job of Mayor of Northampton on anyone. On the one hand you have a thriving downtown that requires pro-business policies, while at the same time you have an outside downtown electorate that leans so far to the left it's practically socialist. How to balance the two constituencies successfully is a real political high wire act.

Today's Video

For all you pregnant people.

That's Not Funny!

Depression Humor

I didn't post anything yesterday because I spent the whole day in bed sick.



Nevermind my health, should I start dyeing my hair? Anyway I couldn't stand not feeling well enough to do anything, yet forced by illness to just lie around. Good thing I recovered quickly or I may have slipped into a suicidal depression. But at least then I would've been fashionable, with down in the dumps being all the rage these days.

Every Sunday since 1979 a so-called "peace vigil" has been held on the Amherst Town Common. Last Sunday they were handing out flyers with the following images on one side. Notice how Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is portrayed as a villain now that the Obama Administration has become the caretaker of the "war machine." (click to enlarge)



What is really infuriating to the peacers is Obama's announcement that no significant troop reductions in Iraq will occur for at least a year - which is essentially the same timetable as the Bush Administration intended. Meet the new boss - same as the old boss!

Now that's depressing.

On the flip side of the flyer was this essay, which I think is funny whatever your ideology.

Bye American
by Will Durst

Can we stop with the waving of the sharp instruments for a minute and speak rationally to this whole ugly recession mess we find ourselves currently mired in? C'mon. You know what recession mess I'm talking about. You're packing a bag lunch and taking mass transit to visit the public library to use their ancient computer to check out the job classified on Craigslist for crum's sake. Yeah, THAT recession mess. Well, you'll be glad to hear we've positively identified the bad guys responsible for this meltdown and they end up having awfully familiar faces.

Go ahead. Guess who's to blame? No, not the subprime mortgage brokers or Bernie Madoff and his ilk or those reverse Robin Hood hedgefund speculators throwing trillions of dollars of derivatives around like paper towels at a chili cheese dog eating competition. Nope. The dastardly bums that created the world wide financial crisis is - us. That's right. You and me. And I hope we're happy.

For making former Silicon Valley start up CFO's toil as Indian casino valets. For driving down the price of two year old Porche Boxters to the level of a 96 Taurus with a blown head gasket. For forcing casseroles and meatloaf onto the menus of three-star Michelin chefs. It's all our fault. And how are we doing in? By not buying enough stuff. Damn us anyway. How dare we?

Who cares whether we're employed or not? Don't we realize we aer the pistons that drive the free market engine? It's our God-given patriotic duty to go out there and buy stuff we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.

We don't do easy. We do compulsory.

Remember how good it felt to buy that brand new DVD we had no intention of ever watching? Aren't you just itching to tear the shrink-wrap off of something with your teeth right now? Anybody can conspicuously consume when things are going well and money geysers from the ground like it did between the Bushes. It takes a true retail soldier to run up credit card bills when banks are raising interest rates so high, it would not be too far off the mark for them to utilize a dorsal fin as a logo.

I wouldn't get this squishy if I wasn't seeing pubescent girls get punched in the guty with our selfish frugality. Girl Scout Cookie sales have sunk to levels not seen since Jimmy Carter was scolding us while wearing cardigans. The Girl Scouts! Okay, that's it. I don't know which of you commie pinko yellow rat cretinous toads managed to hypnotize the rest of us into believing we're so broke we can't afford a couple measly packages of Thin Mints, but you've gone too far. You fiend. How soon before we take out our parsimonious wrath on the innocent producers of Sham-Wow and Snuggie?



Ladies and Gentlemen, I implore you; open your wallets. Ask yourself, "What would Paris Hilton do?" It doesn't matter what you buy. A Jonas Brothers lunch box. A $75 grass fed, hand massaged, Kobe beef porterhouse steak, bathed in boysenberry infused truffle butter. A 96 piece Limited Edition Pewter Napkin Ring Set in the shape of the characters from the Lord of the Rings. Ford. Besides, this isn't about you and me people. This isn't about America. This isn't about Detroit. This is about the Girl Scouts.

Here's a comic book whose time has come around again: Despair Comix! I had a copy of this R. Crumb classic years ago, but I lost it on my various adventures. However I recently became aware of a friend's copy and so I give you this sampler:









Shifting from despair into tragedy, sometime this summer I want to explore the cemetery across from Wildwoods School in Amherst. It's too muddy now.



There is nothing morbid about my interest in cemeteries. I see them not as buriel grounds but as databases. For most people, especially before photography became commonplace, a cemetery headstone was the only permanet record of their lives. There's a story behind every stone, and not always a happy one. Take this one from that Amherst cemetery, for example.



Wow, just thirty years old, and with his own graphics company! The unique headstone is a good reflection of his artistic nature, yet that somehow makes it even more poignant. Well, at least when you die young no one can accuse you of not fulfilling your potential. Death is the one airtight excuse for failure!

Sometimes when I fret about getting older or what my life has become I try to remember to be grateful that I've survived to have a life at all. Many of my friends who did not live as recklessly as me are gone, and that makes me believe that I survived for a purpose - if only just to tell their stories. In any case I try to keep in mind the wisdom of that Pine Point philosopher Mean Mary Jean who once said, "Whenever I find myself worrying about getting older, I remind myself of those I knew who were denied the privilege."

Amen.

Today's Video

Freddie Mercury of Queen was so flamboyant that people didn't always notice what a fantastic band he had. Unfortunately Mercury was promiscuous even by queer standards, allegedly taking on up to three partners at a time, and ended up dying of AIDS at the peak of his career. Too bad he didn't live to see today when the chorus to this song is sung by the audience of every sports stadium in the world.

UMass Peace Protest

Give war a chance?

So I'm waiting for the bus in downtown Amherst this afternoon, when I see this lady with a peace sign.



It turns out she's on her way to a big rally in front of the UMass Fine Arts Center against the violence in the Middle East. Of course my nose for news compels me to attend. When I arrive I'm surprised by the size of the crowd.



I recognize a lot of my fellow crazies from the pro-panhandling crusade. The whole event is constantly being photographed and filmed.



Some protesters are obviously pro-Palestinian, but the majority I think are just peacers who are opposed to all warfare and who condemn the use of violence under any circumstances.



I hate violence too, but I don't agree that war is never justified. I admire the activism of these peacers, but not their cause. What they're doing is playing on people's emotions in hopes of getting people to feel that war is never justified, which is nonsense.

If a person broke into your house armed with a knife and threatened to rob you and hurt your family, would you say to the intruder, "I'm a pacifist, and because violence never solves anything, I will therefore do nothing to stop you. Can't we talk about this instead?"

Or would you attack the intruder with every bit of physical force you could muster in order to disarm him and protect your loved ones?

A person behaving like a pacifist in the face of such a threat would actually be encouraging violence, and certainly would inspire no one's respect. Nations are simply collections of people, and while people and their nations should avoid resorting to violence whenever possible, no sensible person believes that it is never necessary. What else can you do when another person, or another country, decides that they are not interested in talking things over, and makes clear that they intend to get whatever they want by force unless somebody stops them? You respond by giving them what every bully understands best - a punch in the nose in the form of either a fist, on the personal level, or a cruise missile, on the national one.

It is inaccurate to say, as so many peacers do, that war has never solved any problems. In fact war has solved some of the biggest problems mankind has ever faced. Was it a mistake to go to war to end slavery? Should Hitler have been confronted by a candlelight vigil? Would communism have fallen to repeated verses of Kumbaya? Will terrorists be convinced to surrender by sit-ins and hunger strikes? Whenever evil has gone on a rampage, the lesson of history is that evil will succeed until those opposed to it fight back.



It seems to me this is the case in this latest phase of the endlessly violent farce playing out in the Middle East. The other day Israel stopped fighting for three hours in order to let international relief agencies in to help the wounded. The Palestinians responded by showering Israel with bombs for the entire three hours. How can Israelis deal with such opponents, who completely reject peace as an option?

The whole mess is made only more complicated by religion, which is no surprise since religion seems to figure into most wars. The religious angle turns everybody who gets killed into a martyr, and of course then martyrs must be avenged, and so the cycle of violence goes on and on. The world doesn't need any more martyrs, even the ones that die looking incredibly sexy, like Saint Sebastian.



Seriously, why are we still behaving so primitively in 2009? That's the real question.

I've decided to take a break from the vault material for awhile. Before I do, here's a few loose scraps from the recent excavations.

This is my mother's PTA membership card from the World Famous Thomas M. Balliet Elementary School. Notice how the PTA leaders all use their husband's name rather than their own.



Here are activists standing outside the Pine Point Library on Election Day in 2005.



Also in 2005, this is former State Rep. Paul Caron with WAIC host Tony Gill.



Valley appliance baron Manny Rovithis relaxes at Salvatores on Boston Road in Springfield.



On a Northampton mailbox is some useful information for the future.



Finally, don't let me sink too deep.