Eideard

Afghan military already selling heavy weapons to Taliban

Afghan soldiers are selling their weapons and vehicles to the Taliban, sharing intelligence and even signing covert ceasefire agreements with the insurgent group as they prepare for the withdrawal of Nato forces…

Despite Britain and its western allies having spent billions on training and equipping Afghanistan’s security forces, they are freely co-operating with the Taliban and in some cases, ceding territory without a fight or even joining forces with their opponents…

According to the Nato study, Taliban fighters believe they have overcome the American troop surge, that victory and their return to power is “inevitable” and that they can easily subdue President Hamid Karzai’s forces once they take charge of security in 2014.

It also says that after trying by turns to threaten or cajole Pakistan away from its covert support for the Taliban, the Pakistani government remains “intimately involved” with the insurgent group. Taliban prisoners also claim the country’s ISI intelligence agency is “thoroughly aware of Taliban activities and the whereabouts of all senior Taliban personnel”.

In a further setback yesterday, the Afghan Taliban said that no peace negotiation process had been agreed with the international community, “particularly the Americans”. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that prior to any negotiations, confidence building measures must be completed…Har!

A bazaar in Miranshah, capital of North Waziristan in Pakistan’s tribal region, was “increasingly inundated with rifles, pistols and heavy weapons which have been sold by Afghan security forces.”

“The vehicles and weapons were once only acquired on the battlefield. They are now regularly sold or donated by the Afghan security forces,” the report concluded…

Yes, NATO officers, highly-placed Brits, American PR flacks all deny the likelihood of any of these really happening. Of course, all three categories of Blimp have only just progressed from trench warfare to helicopters in the past couple of decades.

The portion of American families living in middle-income neighborhoods has declined significantly since 1970, according to a new study, as rising income inequality left a growing share of families in neighborhoods that are mostly low-income or mostly affluent.

The study, conducted by Stanford University…uses census data to examine family income at the neighborhood level in the country’s 117 biggest metropolitan areas. The findings show a changed map of prosperity in the United States over the past four decades, with larger patches of affluence and poverty and a shrinking middle.

In 2007, the last year captured by the data, 44 percent of families lived in neighborhoods the study defined as middle-income, down from 65 percent of families in 1970. At the same time, a third of American families lived in areas of either affluence or poverty, up from just 15 percent of families in 1970.

The study comes at a time of growing concern about inequality and an ever-louder partisan debate over whether it matters. It raises, but does not answer, the question of whether increased economic inequality, and the resulting income segregation, impedes social mobility.

I don’t hear any Republicans saying this matters. In fact they accuse anyone bringing up the question – of starting class warfare.

Much of the shift is the result of changing income structure in the United States. Part of the country’s middle class has slipped to the lower rungs of the income ladder as manufacturing and other middle-class jobs have dwindled, while the wealthy receive a bigger portion of the income pie. Put simply, there are fewer people in the middle…

And the gap between rich and poor in college completion — one of the single most important predictors of economic success — has grown by more than 50 percent since the 1990s, said Martha J. Bailey, an economist at the University of Michigan. More than half of children from high-income families finish college, up from about a third 20 years ago. Fewer than 10 percent of low-income children finish, up from 5 percent.

RTFA. There is more to consider than education, than changing neighborhoods.

There are examples to consider in the article. There are more in the report [.pdf] itself.

Deaths and health problems from floods, drought and other U.S. disasters related to climate change cost an estimated $14 billion over the last decade.

“When extreme weather hits, we hear about the property damage and insurance costs,” said Kim Knowlton, a senior scientist at Natural Resources Defense Council and a co-author of the study. “The healthcare costs never end up on the tab…”

Scientists and economists from the non-profit NRDC, the University of California-Berkeley and the University of California-San Francisco estimated the health costs for the following events from 2000 to 2009:

* U.S. ozone air pollution, 2000-2002, $6.5 billion;

* West Nile virus outbreak in Louisiana, 2002, $207 million;

* Southern California wildfires, 2003, $578 million;

* Florida hurricane season, 2004, $1.4 billion;

* California heat wave, 2006, $5.3 billion;

* Red River flooding in North Dakota, 2009, $20 million…

The six case studies are examples of events related to climate change that are projected to worsen as the planet warms, the authors said.

These six events resulted in an estimated 1,689 premature deaths, 8,992 hospitalizations, 21,113 emergency room visits and 734,398 outpatient visits, according to the study.

In dollars, the largest cost by far was for premature deaths at $13.3 billion. This number was based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s value of a statistical life, $7.6 million, co-author Wendy Max said. This was not meant to put a value on any one life but to calculate how much people in aggregate would be willing to spend to lessen the risk of death from certain causes, including the events cited in the study.

Climate deniers could care less. Flat-earthers and know-nothings could care less. Most disasters they write off as caused by some mysterious deity. What’s left for everyone else is the cost of those disasters. Trying to come up with the money for family illness.

Back in 2010, Richard Muller, a Berkeley physicist and self-proclaimed climate skeptic, decided to launch the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project to review the temperature data that underpinned global-warming claims…

Muller’s stated aims were simple. He and his team would scour and re-analyze the climate data, putting all their calculations and methods online. Skeptics cheered the effort. “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong,” wrote Anthony Watts, a blogger who has criticized the quality of the weather stations in the United States that provide temperature data. The Charles G. Koch Foundation even gave Muller’s project $150,000 — and the Koch brothers, recall, are hardly fans of mainstream climate science.

So what are the end results? Muller’s team appears to have confirmed the basic tenets of climate science. Back in March, Muller told the House Science and Technology Committee that, contrary to what he expected, the existing temperature data was “excellent.” He went on: “We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups.” And, today, the BEST team has released a flurry of new papers that confirm that the planet is getting hotter. As the team’s two-page summary flatly concludes, “Global warming is real.”Here’s a chart comparing their findings with existing data…

Peer review must have, will have, its day. That’s a right and proper part of scientific research.

Still, I have to chuckle over the know-nothings who supported the BEST research project. I’ll bet they’ll be spending the peer review time working like busy little ants to construct new rationales to avoid anything like responsible decision-making to combat the obvious causes of climate change.

Children are becoming weaker, less muscular and unable to do physical tasks that previous generations found simple, research has revealed. As a generation dedicated to online pursuits grows up, 10-year-olds can do fewer sit-ups and are less able to hang from wall bars in a gym. Arm strength has declined in that age group, as has their ability to grip an object firmly.

The findings, published in the child health journal Acta Paediatrica, have led to fresh concern about the impact on children’s health caused by the shift away from outdoor activities.

Academics led by Dr Gavin Sandercock, a children’s fitness expert at Essex University, studied how strong a group of 315 Essex 10-year-olds in 2008 were compared with 309 children the same age in 1998. They found that:

■ The number of sit-ups 10-year-olds can do declined by 27.1% between 1998 and 2008

■ Arm strength fell by 26% and grip strength by 7%

■ While one in 20 children in 1998 could not hold their own weight when hanging from wall bars, one in 10 could not do so in 2008…

Previous research has already shown that children are becoming more unfit, less active and more sedentary and, in many cases, heavier than before.

But the new study also found that children in 2008 had the same body mass index (BMI) as those a decade earlier. Lead author Daniel Cohen, of London Metropolitan University, said this meant that, given their declining strength, the bodies of the recent test group are likely to contain more fat and less muscle then their predecessors. “That’s really worrying from a health point of view. It’s good news that their BMI hasn’t risen, but worrying that pound for pound they’re weaker and probably carrying more fat,” said Sandercock…

“Climbing trees and ropes used to be standard practice for children, but school authorities and ‘health and safety’ have contrived to knock the sap out of our children,” said Tam Fry of the Child Growth Foundation.

“Falling off a branch used to be a good lesson in picking yourself up and learning to climb better. Now fear of litigation stops the child climbing in the first place.”

I doubt if the situation among some working class kids in the US is much different. I do feel that folks a bit further up the income scale – and/or those with the perception and education associated with that lifestyle – are less likely to be failing this way. And that understanding often is acquired outside the education factories grounded in the fear of litigation that Tam Fry notes.

Active lifestyles have sufficient advocates over recent decades to have motivated plenty of American families to bring their children into active exercising patterns. Running, hiking, cycling, skating, soccer, lifetime sports have become a movement that touches many families in the United States – even if it isn’t considered acceptable by either end of our economic extremes, e.g., layabout trust funders or redneck fans of watching almost any sport rather than participating in one.

Afghanistan is the worst place in the world to be a mother and Norway is the best…

“Afghanistan has the highest lifetime risk of maternal mortality and the lowest female life expectancy in the world,” putting it at the bottom of the the Mothers’ Index, which has been compiled for the past 12 years by the nonprofit group Save the Children.

In Afghanistan and the nine other countries at the bottom of the index, an average of one in six kids dies before age five and one in three suffers from malnutrition, the report says.

Nearly half the population in the worst countries to raise kids lacks access to clean water, and only four girls for every five boys are enrolled in primary school.

Five Nordic nations and two in the southern hemisphere made up the top seven countries for mothers.

They were, in order, Norway, Australia, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand and Finland.

Three European nations — Belgium, the Netherlands and France — rounded out the top 10…

A gulf of differences, especially in health, separates top-ranked Norway from bottom-of-the-heap Afghanistan.
In Norway “skilled health personnel are present at virtually every birth,” greatly reducing the likelihood of the mother or baby dying, while in Afghanistan, only 14 percent of births are attended, the report says.

The average life expectancy for a Norwegian woman is 83 years; in Afghanistan, it is 45.

More than eight in 10 Norwegian women use a modern form of contraception, and only one in 175 lose a child before his or her fifth birthday.

In Afghanistan, meanwhile, less than one in six women use modern contraception, and one child in five dies before reaching the age of five.

“At this rate, every mother in Afghanistan is likely to suffer the loss of a child,” the report says.

RTFA to expand your understanding of what it means to be a mother – and where. To clarify for my American readers – an American child is twice as likely as a child in Finland, Greece, Iceland, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway, Slovenia, Singapore or Sweden to die before reaching age five.

You can get the whole report over here [.pdf].

A Pentagon investigation has found insufficient evidence that General Stanley McChrystal, the former US and Nato commander in Afghanistan sacked by Barack Obama last year, violated military policy.

McChrystal’s dismissal came after publication of an article in Rolling Stone, The Runaway General, which portrayed him and his inner circle as being out of control, and making contemptuous and dismissive remarks about the US civilian leadership…

The investigation expressed doubts about the version of some events reported in the article, written by Michael Hastings, who spent several days with McChrystal and his team. The investigation added that it could not substantiate some of the quotes.

The investigation, carried out by the Pentagon’s office of inspector general, concluded: “The evidence was insufficient to substantiate a violation of applicable department of defense standards with respect to any of the incidents on which we focused. Not all of the events at issue occurred as reported in the article…A polite way of saying Hastings is a liar and Rolling Stone is opportunist and unconcerned with journalistic standards.

The article, published in June last year, suggested that McChrystal was unimpressed with Obama at their first meeting, and that one of his team viewed the White House national security adviser, James Jones, as a clown. His team was also alleged to have been dismissive of vice-president Joe Biden and the late state department envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke.

At the time, McChrystal apologised after the piece, saying it was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened. He flew back to Washington to see Obama, who dismissed him, saying: “The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general.”

The investigation’s conclusions open Obama to charges that he was too hasty in dismissing McChrystal.

The former general, though no longer in the army, was partially rehabilitated last week when the White House invited him to join a panel to try to improve the life of military families. The report reached the White House 3 days before the job offer.

The new investigation is more favourable to McChrystal than an initial one published in August last year.

There are lots of details in the report. Mostly boring high dudgeon over situations and context as unimportant than who gives the finger to whom in your daily commute.

It probably explains the how and why of Obama inviting General McChrystal into the Administration, last week. As admission that our news-as-entertainment-media prompted the removal of a significant military leader from the South Asian theatre. The only surprise is that the Kongressional Klowns didn’t follow through with their usual opportunism, sound bites and slapstick. Yet.

A government-sponsored scientific committee studying water monitoring in Canada’s oil sands has backed assertions that multibillion-dollar energy developments are polluting waterways and it urges more stringent oversight.

The report by the independent scientists, appointed by Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, said an incendiary study by water ecologists last year appeared to be right in its contention that toxic substances downstream from the developments do not occur naturally.

An industry-funded body had long said heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic aromatic compounds, or PACs, found in the Athabasca River watershed north of Fort McMurray, in northern Alberta, occurred naturally as bitumen leached into the river…

The northern Alberta oil sands are the largest source of oil outside the Middle East and are the target of billions of dollars worth of development plans. However, the environmental impact, including greenhouse gas emissions, forest destruction and water pollution, are under heavy criticism by green groups…

In December, the federal panel reported “there was no evidence of science leadership to ensure that monitoring and research activities are planned and performed in a coordinated way”…

Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner said the report will be used by the province’s own newly appointed panel as it works to design a better monitoring system.

And as usual the “better monitoring system” won’t mean a damn if the system is thwarted by political malingering controlled by the corporations wallowing in the trough of their profits.

Same as it ever was.

CFO of Goldman Sachs on TV monitor on the floor of NY Stock Exchange during testimony

A divided U.S. investigative panel released on Thursday a wide-ranging assessment of what caused the financial crisis that rocked global markets from 2007-2009.

The 10-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was created by Congress to deliver a bipartisan report on the origins of the crisis, but it failed to deliver a consensus view.

The main report was endorsed only by the commission’s six Democratic members, undermining its impact as the post-crisis Dodd-Frank banking reforms of 2010 are being implemented.

I hope no one out there in citizen-land actually expected Republicans to participate in naming their primary sources of income as bearing responsibility for the financial crisis and the Great Recession.

Below are the main points of the…majority report:

* We conclude this financial crisis was avoidable.

* We conclude widespread failures in financial regulation and supervision proved devastating to the stability of the nation’s financial markets.

* We conclude dramatic failures of corporate governance and risk management at many systemically important financial institutions were a key cause of this crisis.

* We conclude a combination of excessive borrowing, risky investments, and lack of transparency put the financial system on a collision course with crisis.

* We conclude the government was ill prepared for the crisis, and its inconsistent response added to the uncertainty and panic in the financial markets.

* We conclude there was a systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics.

* We conclude collapsing mortgage-lending standards and the mortgage securitization pipeline lit and spread the flame of contagion and crisis.

* We conclude over-the-counter derivatives contributed significantly to this crisis.

* We conclude the failures of credit rating agencies were essential cogs in the wheel of financial destruction.

If you’d like to peek at the beginnings of analysis, try this article over at Bloomberg.com.

Police said she thought it demanded their involvement because she had used pound coins for the eyes and teaspoons for the arms.

The woman, from Chatham, Kent, has been ”spoken to” by officers to advise her about what constitutes a real emergency.

Kent Police issued a transcript of the ”completely irresponsible” call which they received overnight as they fielded thousands of calls from people because of the sub-zero conditions.

In the call, the woman tells the operator: ”There’s been a theft from outside my house.

”I haven’t been out to check on him for five hours but I went outside for a fag and he’s gone.”

The operator asks ”Who’s gone?” and the woman replies: ”My snowman…

The incredulous operator asks her: ”Do you mean an ornament?” The woman replies: ”No, a snowman made of snow, I made him myself.

”It ain’t a nice road but you don’t expect anybody to nick your snowman…’

Chief Inspector Simon Black, from Kent Police’s force contact and control centre, said…”We have spoken to her and advised her what is a 999 call, and this clearly was not.”

Har!