That’s definitely more snow than I expected.

Charred Tamatillo Guacamole Recipe

3-4 tomatillos, husked and rinsed
1/2 small red onion, finely chopped
3 to 4 fresh serrano chiles, seeded (the more seeds the spicier) and finely chopped
1/2 cup finely chopped fresh cilantro
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
4-5 ripe avocados, pitted and peeled
Juice of 2 lemons
2 tomatoes, seeded and cut into 1/4-inch dices
2 teaspoons finely minced garlic

The only cooking required is charring the top and bottom of the tamatillos in the oven on broil (5min…).

Last but not least mash it all together and enjoy!

Warsaw Street Performers

Attempt by Mason Thorne

I’m trying to test out posting to Wordp

I’m trying to test out posting to WordPress using the Twitter API and Tweetie on my iPhone.

While trying to be funny, it's utterly depressing.

The McKinsey War

Iraqis treat their Constitution — like the benchmarks — the way they treat what few traffic lights operate here.

With the speech President Obama is about to give addressing the increase of troops in Afghanistan by 30,000, everything old is new again.

The idea of running a McKinsey war, using benchmarks and other tools to assess the Afghanistan government, has already been played out in Iraq. It has gotten us nowhere.

All the surge did was provide a face-saving way for the US to create enough temporary security to leave. Given the chaos of the first four years of occupation, this was an achievement. But the achievement was in preventing total humiliation for the US, not anything close to victory or success stable enough to leave with anything but another civil war as the likeliest outcome. But the US didn’t leave, Obama took the neocon advice, and is still hanging on to the notion that a stable, democratic, self-governing Iraq is possible after only six years of occupation, tens of thousands of dead Iraqis, 5,000 dead Americans, countless wounded and disabled vets, and up to $3 trillion in taxpayers’ money.

As Obama appears to be intensifying the lost war in Afghanistan, with the same benchmark rubric that meant next-to-nothing in the end in Iraq, he does not seem to understand that he will either have to withdraw US troops from Iraq as it slides into new chaos, or he will have to keep the troops there for ever, as the neocons always intended. Or he will have to finance and run two hot wars simultaneously. If he ramps up Afghanistan and delays Iraq withdrawal, he will lose his base. If he does the full metal neocon as he is being urged to, he should not be deluded in believing the GOP will in any way support him. They will oppose him every step of every initiative. They will call him incompetent if Afghanistan deteriorates, they will call him a terrorist-lover if he withdraws, they will call him a traitor if he does not do everything they want, and they will eventually turn on him and demand withdrawal, just as they did in the Balkans with Clinton. Obama’s middle way, I fear, is deeper and deeper into a trap, and the abandonment of a historic opportunity to get out.

Via – The Daily Dish

On The Afghanistan Strategy

Unfortunately, it seems we as a nation are still far to proud to acknowledge that failure is an option. Instead of recognizing the reality we are faced with, we seem set to dig in even deeper. Even more disappointing is that we are digging in with an old strategy that solves little in the long-term, serving only to make the short-term that much more painful.

Not to say that there are/were no options for a relatively graceful withdrawal, it just seems that we have shut the door on them.

Ultimately they point us towards one ray of hope, the role of local tribal elders as the locus of political power.

A culturally adept policy would seek to reestablish stability in rural Afghanistan by putting it back the way it was before the Soviets invaded in 1979. This means re-empowering the village elders as contrasted with the current policy of trying to further marginalize them with local elections(and thus more local illegitimacy).

Johnson and Mason suggest that the Army deploy Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT’s) made up of 80 American soldiers and 100 Afghan soldiers in each of the 200 local districts in the South and East (where the Taliban are strong) in support of the local tribal elders. They are also harshly critical of the paltry State Department efforts to aid local reconstruction.

Via – Afghanistan-A Way Forward

Journalism's Slow, Sad Suicide

My disgust with American newspapers grows with every such woe-is-us piece. They complain and complain about what we’re losing, and howl at the moon over the flaws of what’s emerging, even as they so often fail at remotely living up to their own proclaimed standards.

-Dan Gilmor

"We Are All Prisoners Now"

This past week in one of my classes here in Poland the teacher asked if the rise of internet as an independent platform for people to make their voices heard was actually a reality. She seemed to suggest that while it may sound nice in theory that this wasn’t actually the case and that in the end we are still being controlled and manipulated.

This is a very fatalistic view of the world we live in today and one I simply do not share. She went on to ask (I’m paraphrasing here) if there was any evidence of the internet as an open platform for individuals actually challenging the status quo? My answer, of course, was yes. There are many.

There is no such better example than this past summer in Iran and the role that the internet played in the turmoil resulting from the rigged elections. It gave so many people a voice when their country denied them this basic right.

All those who have left the country out of fear of imprisonment or arrest and all the troubles that they could face due to the government of the Islamic Republic; all those who are forced to see a man of whom they do not approve as their supreme leader; all those who are forced to accept Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as their president; the journalist who is not able to get his report published without censorship; the writer whose book is confiscated or is awaiting a permit for its publication at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance; the film director whose film is handed over to him after being censored while the original copy is retained by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance; the student who is forced to appear in Basij clothing in front of the former U.S. Embassy and shout slogans about which he knows nothing; the woman who is forced to cover her head with a scarf against her will; the woman who has no right to claim custody of her child; the women who don’t have equal rights with men; those who are stopped and strip-searched at night checkpoints by a 26-year-old Basij member; the Kurd who cannot get his education in his mother language; the Turk whose ethnic rights are not honored; the athlete who is not allowed to dress the way he wants …

These are all prisoners; we are all prisoners. Prisoners of a system that has deprived us of freedom in the most basic matters. [...]

The fact that Abtahi and his like are not behind bars anymore is good to see. But the truth remains that neither he nor any of us are free under these conditions.

We are all prisoners of a state that wants to rob us of everything.

I added the emphasis on the last sentence. This is a quote from an Iranian blogger in the NYT blog “The Lede” talking about the state of his country and the imprisonment of a fellow Iranian blogger just recently by the government. “We are all prisoners of a state that wants to rob us of everything.”

It’s very easy to trivialize everything but the power of blogging is something real. It allows people to defy their government and speak the truth. To ask questions and to demand answers.