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Missing Answers on the Pashtun Troubles
There is a fight building up in western Pakistan where some local warlords from the Khyber area under the banner of the Taliban seemed to be near to get control over Peshawar. The Pakistani government sent a few troops and is shelling some alleged warlord camps.
Peshawar and the Khyber Pass region are the route of two thirds of the supplies for ‘western’ troops in Afghanistan.
In all the reporting about these power struggles in west Pakistan and about the resistance in Afghanistan (if one can separate these at all) two issues are missing.
1. According to this UNHCR request for donations (pdf) there are still 2.1 million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan. Most of their refugee camps are around Peshawar. What is their role in this conflict? What is their position? How do they contribute to the fights in Pakistan and in Afghanistan?
2. Over the last decades many workers from Pakistan have been guest working in the Gulf region. In the 80s they were mostly in Saudi Arabia, now more are in Dubai and Oman. Some estimates say that at times 10% of the male workforce of Pakistan was working in the Gulf region. Pakistan has a Sufi tradition. The radical interpretation of Islam the Taliban adhere to is in the Wahhabi tradition of Saudi Arabia. The guest workers and lots of Saudi money were the vehicle to bring Wahhabism to Pakistan. How much control and influence do the Saudis have over the Taliban position? What is their stand on the trouble in Pakistan and the resistance in Afghanistan?
I have yet to find reports and analysis that really dig into these strategic questions. Answers to those questions and strategic concepts following from these are more important than another ten thousand ‘western’ or Pakistani troops here or there. If there is some radical Islam movement, it is likely Wahhabi. Has anybody ever developed a strategy against that and its source?
Those eco-cars are 220V, which means every house in the US will have to be rewired, especially older East Coast houses on knob and tube %). Those with heavy electrical appliances already have 220V, but your panel isn’t rated for an eco-car. Adding a new 220V service isn’t cheap, especially if 150,000,000 houses just gotta have it before oil hits $200. Then imagine the evening power surge, sagging transmission lines. Surging demand for super-conductor silver-clad aluminum will shoot the moon!
Power Demand Forecast
Beyond the mechanics of getting 220V wired, whether office buildings are required to provide parking lot plug in’s, as they do already up in Alaska for cold weather, or whether you’re on your own, since the electric company doesn’t do house wiring, or whether you decide to buy a Honda gasoline generator to recharge your eco-car (smile), clearly the current electric grid can’t handle simultaneous evening eco-car recharging demand!
Oops, we did it again!
Hence National Emergency Re-Electrification Program as Obama’s opening act. First he’ll have to pry that $43B a year DHS budget out of Michael Cherthoff’s cold dead fingers. Yeah, that’ll happen.
So there will have to be another TVA BPA Neo Deal, another $200B a year in deficit spending, so that by the end of Obama’s first term, with only 10% of the (NY to DC corridor) US re-electrified, and a cool $T down the rathole of Fed bureaucracy, the rest of US will be riding overloaded double-decker soy diesel buses to work, sweltering on the potholed freeways, while NY:DC enjoys a George Jetson future, at least those who work government mandates assigned eco-cars, paid for by all of US.
Obama’s Inauguration Address: “I promise every American, black or white, hispanic or chinese, hmong or vietnamese, indo-pakistani, native pacific islander or newly patriated iraqi-afghan, increased work hours and decreased earning capacity, higher taxes and silent discontent, chicken nuggets on every plate and an eco-car parked over that oily spot in every backyard. Of course the charge will be long, and there will be many dead-battery carjackings beside the freeway. But my fellow citizens, fellow conservatives, our time has come again. This is our moment! Let us unite, shoulder to shoulder, behind one mighty banner for universal electric power! And let us go forward from here not with some faint hope that our cause is not yet lost (double negative infinitive!); let us go forward confident that the American people share our values, and that together we will be victorious in our power-ful pursuit.
In those moments when batteries grow tired, when our struggle seems hard, remember what Eric Liddell, Scotland’s Olympic champion runner, said in “Chariots of Fire.” He said, “So where does the electric power come from to see the commute to its end? From within. God made US for a purpose. We’ll run our eco-cars for His pleasure!”
If we trust in Him, keep His word, and live our lives for His pleasure, He’ll give us the universal electric power we need — power to fight the good fight, to finish the daily commute, and to keep the beer cold in the refrigerator while we watch the silver (code word) spaceships flying in the yellow haze of the sun, flying mother nature’s silver (code word) seed to a new home in the sun … and somewhere a lot closer to the EV grid, because, damn! it’s blacked out as hell down ‘ere!!!!
Thank you very much. God bless you, and God bless the National Electric Power Administration!”
[Psst, sir, the NEPA already has that acronym!]
“Err, I meant to say, my fellow Americans, God bless the Department of Overload Defense!”
[Psst, sir, the DOD already has that acronym!]
“Oh [mike still on] f–k it! Can’t you fools even get my talking points right!?”
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Eco-cars, schmeeko-cars. We are so fooketed! So here’s my question. If CBOT futures speculation really has absolutely nothing to do with the spiking price of oils and grains, even as demand is falling and supply is idling waiting for real orders, then wouldn’t the prudent GWOT thing to do, since speculation has nothing to do with it, be to re-institute the Maker-Taker restrictions in place up until 1984, when Reaganauts deregulated everything to ladder up their S&L payout profits?
Because they know oil prices would plummet to $60 overnight, probably overshooting.
Because they know that gasoline sales taxes would plummet overnight, bankrupting State and local government. Because they know that the Big Oil corporate profits solely responsible for propping up the US markets and US$ would collapse overnight.
Because as loyal, patriotic Americans who watch our borders and guard our skies will tell you, you can’t handle cheap oil!!
Instead we get social engineering in WA DC, letting everyone own handguns now, in the murder capitol of the USA. Remember, speculators don’t spike oil, oil does! %P
Posted by: Eco Carrus | Jun 29 2008 5:43 utc | 9
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