Daily Archives: 23 October 2008

Email from Afghanistan

I arrived in Bagram Air Force Base (BAF), Afghanistan on Sept. 27th, 2008, and over the course of two days, turned in my ammunition and sat through briefings about vehicle safety, family discord, suicide awareness, and mental health. Collectively, soldiers call them the “don’t-beat-your-wife classes.”

BAF is a sprawling military base full of shipping containers, new construction, gravel fields, military vehicles, hangars, fast food restaurants, Port-A-Johns and strangers in Army, Navy, Marine, Air Force, French, Polish, and Egyptian uniforms, or with Lockheed Martin t-shirts, or Slavic accents and Kellog Brown & Root (a subsidiary of Haliburton) ID tags hanging from their necks. People would salute me and wear reflective belts at night, which, having newly arrived from the highly kinetic Kunar Province, felt ridiculous. (Read more of my essay on the atlantic.com)

What came from the G7 meeting?

Last week, after the G7 met in Washington, the markets rallied (then crashed again). I don’t know what came out of the meeting – ABCNNBCBS reported enthusiastically: “don’t worry, our leaders are fixing the problem.”

A second, less conspicuous wave of headlines about the meeting betrays its meager results:
–On crisis, Europe to US: ‘I told you so’
–Europe to United States: You’re On Your Own!
–Europe to U.S.: You messed up the rescue, too

Haider’s Last Interview

Jörg Haider, a charismatic far-right Austrian politician was killed in a car accident on October 11th. Since then, there has been rampant speculation about foul play, connecting his death to the politician’s outspokenness about holding bankers responsible.

From list last interview:

“Q. Highly-paid managers caused the misery. Is there sufficient cause to prosecute them for their irresponsibility?

HAIDER: Those who thoughtlessly dealt with entrusted money must reap the consequences. We need stricter oversight, a change of the criminal law, and a special courtyard for economic crimes. Those who earned gigantic sums of money are not poor. Their criminal responsibility must be established, then they must be locked up.” (Read more at rumormillnews.com)

Consipracy theories have been rejected by the Austrian police who said he had a blood alcohol level of 1.8.

SEE ALSO:

Haider widow believes death ‘not an accident’
The widow of Joerg Haider believes the far-right Austrian politician’s death in a car crash may not have been an accident and has saved his body from cremation for a second post mortem, a Vienna newspaper has reported. (Read more from telegraph.co.uk)