Okay, having just made fun of Italian fascists for being terrified of Christmas ornaments that emphasize commonalities between Islam and Christianity, I come across an even more disgusting phobia. The Taliban are so terrified of school girls that they are declaring jihad against them:

Taleban militants in the Swat valley in north-west Pakistan have threatened to kill girls who attend school.

A local Taleban commander ordered parents to stop sending their daughters to school by 15 January.

In comments broadcast on an illegal radio station, he threatened to blow up schools which enrolled female students.

This year alone, Taleban militants have destroyed more than 130 schools in the Swat valley. They want to bring in Islamic sharia law in the region.

Militant attacks on schools in the region have deprived more than 17,000 students of education.

What fucking dickheads! There is something deeply pathological about people who are terrified of school girls. It would be outright pathetic if it wasn't for the fact that they actually carry out violent attacks on children for simply wanting an education.
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I recently wrote about the very strong possibility that Zimbabwe is well on its way to complete collapse, which would almost certainly mean tragedy as bad or worse than we saw in Rwanda, Cambodia and Bosnia and are currently seeing in Darfur.

But, turns out that, according to an analysis published in Foreign Policy magazine, Zimbabwe is not at the top of the list of failed states...at least not yet. Perhaps not surprisingly the Sudan leads the list as the most unstable nation on earth. Neglect by the international community is cited as part of the reason for the situation in both the Sudan and Zimbabwe. But for two states among the top ten failed states, neglect is not the problem. Iraq is number two and Afghanistan is number 8. Interestingly our ally, Pakistan at number 12, does slightly worse than North Korea, which comes in at number 13.

The rankings take into account 12 factors, including economy, human rights, refugees, etc.

No one would look at North Korea or Zimbabwe and see them as anything but failed or failing states. Dictatorship by a corrupt and self-serving leadership is ruining these, and other, nations in a very predictable way. And the crises in Somalia and Sudan, for example, are clearly crises that could have been dealt with better had the international community done something before things got this bad. In the case of Somalia are best opportunity was early in the Clinton Administration where we had secured most of the nation. But a single petty strongman shooting down a single helicopter, spooked Republicans in Congress who proceeded to insist that we cut and run from Somalia. We left, allowing the nation to collapse into such chaos that Islamic Fundamentalists (with al-Qaeda links) and Ethiopia became the competing chances for some semblance stability.
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Location

Germans find radiation linked to ex-spy contact | Top News | Reuters.com or Trace spread of nuclear death.

Jupiter, Mercury and Mars Conjunction Visible with Naked Eye - Science News - Playfuls.com - Science & Technology or triple celestial clusterfuck.

Second Russian hospital hit by fatal fire - CNN.com or Siberia is burning.

globeandmail.com : globeinvestor.com : World's richest 2% own 40% of all household wealth or a yawning global gap that invites screams of horror.

Saddam's nephew escapes Iraqi prison - Yahoo! News or it will be a Sunninsurgent christmas.
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Location

In Bush's "Forever War" crusade against Islam, one of the nations he has touted as a strong ally has be Bahrain, the oil-rich nation that has long balanced Shiite and Sunni Islam in relative stability. Bush's failed foreign policy has destabilized huge swaths of the Middle East, creating conditions that I have been predicting are ripe for a rising, religious extremist caliphate, a united, fundamentalist Islamic movement that will rise from the Republican failures to dominate the Middle East for decades to come.

Muslim extremists are rising in Iraq, a nation that before our invasion was predominantly secular and modern. The Taliban and al-Qaeda is resurgent in Afghanistan and Pakistan, becoming powerful enough that Republican Senate FORMER-Majority Leader Bill Frist is talking of cooperating with the Taliban to save our asses in Afghanistan. Somalia has now been taken over by a new, Somali Taliban.

Now, our ally Bahrain is slipping into the extremist camp. This, more than anything previous, is proof that we are losing badly to extremists...as our moderate Muslims world wide.
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For some time I have been writing about the fact that Bush has lost the war on terrorism and has, in fact, pretty much been enabling the rise of a new, extremist Caliphate that aims to control lands from Africa to Pakistan (and hence to have a nuclear capability). Some of my writings even came to the attention of BBC radio some time back.

Well, now even Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is admitting that the Republicans have lost the war against terrorism. From Salon.com:

Frist: Taliban Should Be in Afghan Gov't

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By JIM KRANE Associated Press Writer

October 02,2006 | QALAT, Afghanistan -- U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Islamic militia and its supporters into the Afghan government.

The Tennessee Republican said he learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated on the battlefield.

"You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished, we'll be successful."
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How can I bear it; buried here,
While overhead the sky grows clear
And blue again after the storm?
O, multi-colored, multiform,
Beloved beauty over me,
That I shall never, never see
Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,
That I shall never more behold!
Sleeping your myriad magics through,
Close-sepulchred away from you!
O God, I cried, give me new birth,
And put me back upon the earth!
Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd
And let the heavy rain, down-poured
In one big torrent, set me free,
Washing my grave away from me!
Renascence by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Safia Amajan was murdered yesteray in Afghanistan. The other American war. The one we were successful at, driving the Taliban out, and restoring peace and democracy to. That war. Remember?
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