Hillary is just too much for me! Her efforts to promote herself off to the American public constantly as being the supposed grand international womens' advocate while simultaneousy advocating FOR more and more Pentagon wars is just even sicker than swallowing any 3 cups of poisoned koolaid laced cyanide tea might ever be! Accepting her US government pr imagery at face value will poison your mind, no matter how much sugar is put in the cup! Isn't that right, Greg Mortenson (infamous author of Three Cups of Tea)? Pentagon Hillary is Greg Mortenson is Pentagon Hillary is who can really tell anymore here? They are both Pentagon's drag queens, Greg and Hillary... Uggalug! ... But does the American public have to force fed this display by Hillary almost every other day? Get me Mitt Romney on the phone, PLEASE! I'd do almost anything to keep form seeing anymore of the Hillary Show! It's just too damn nauseating! See Hillary in Malawi... Clinton meets Malawi's Banda. And Malawi has a problem with witchcraft already. Malawi govt says witchcraft based violence a concern ....Yeah, well.... Then don't bring Hillary into town if your trying to protect people from witchcraft violence, Malawi! Trust us about this, Malawi. Hillary Clinton is a bad witch!
Tag: Greg Mortenson
Pennies For Peace, Stones For Schools, but Dollars For Greg Mortenson Fictions
Yeah, we miss NMT being the lone internet destination for criticism of the TCOT auto-hagiography of Greg Mortenson. Jon Krakauer's expose validates our suspicions, although it fails to explore the likely role the CIA played lubricating the works. Yet even today Mortenson's acolytes still defend his million little fictions as serving a good cause, and his non-school building expenditures as whims due their imperfect savior. So let's be clear about Mortenson's dishonest finances. With the Pennies For Peace raised by schoolchildren, Mortenson buys copies of his own books, at retail price, to boost their rankings, and to ensure his author royalties, which do not flow back to his charity CAI, while it pays the expenses to promote his books.
PPJPC drops justice & peace in favor of Judas kiss & Participatory militarism
You don't care what our neighborhood Pikes Peak Justice & Peace Commission has gotten its leash tangled around --I shouldn't-- but the latest is just too funny. FIRST, in November they sponsored an Israel-BDS protest to boycott a local Ahava outlet and promptly got two participants arrested. Wrongly of course, but the police were awaiting them with a letter fashioned for the occasion by the City Attorney giving the CSPD authority to drive the activists from the private property. Although planning had been kept on the QT, do you think the reception might have been due to monthly confabs which the PPJPC executive director keeps with city law enforcement? Later in debriefing, the director pronounced his incredulity that the "new policy" hadn't been spelled out to him at the last meeting. So what kinds of things do the PPJPC & CSPD discuss? SECOND, just as the PPJPC fell for the Save Darfur intervention-as-peacemaking faketivism, then zipped it for Obama's false hopetivism, now the pitiful dupes call their Muslim-Jewish-Christian "Evening in Jerusalem" gathering a THREE CUPS OF TEA PARTY! Would this be in deference to Greg Mortenson's Western Empire [school] building enterprise? That puts the PPJPC in the company of the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, Mortenson's biggest boosters. The next chance I get I will ask known J&P'ers I promise you -- who are the Idiot Iscariots taking this tack? The PPJPC is soliciting donations from earnest yous and mes in the name of peace and justice, to advocate for forfeiting civil liberties and 3CoT's participatory militarism. On the AHAVA arrests, do we know who tipped off the cops? Not really, but we know the city's actions didn't spring from the media press releases which went out the day before. How much lead time do you figure is required to solicit a written policy from the city attorney's office? Who had that kind of foresight? The official word was that the "new policy" delineating which shopping centers might be major enough to be considered public spaces, and which were only average-sized neighborhood no-free-speech zones, was drafted to preempt populist petitioner Doug Bruce from assailing shoppers at will. But he prevailed against the trespassing charges pressed against him by Costco didn't he. So that pretext doesn't wash, and by no stretch of the law would a Costco parking lot be considered public. There is already legal precedence for shopping centers not being considered the new town squares, and the state of Colorado has already put freedom-seekers aspiring to assemble in malls that they must abide by individual mall rules of conduct. At Chapel Hills mall is means, by permit, one at a time, no more than one day per quarter, no handouts, and a moratorium on all social causes over the holiday shopping period. So a city-wide policy penned by their counsel giving explicit authority for police to remove activists from private property would seem redundant and by its intentional breadth, unconstitutional. But it gives cops-on-the-beat ground not to vacillate.
Greg Mortenson brings war to Pakistan
Three Cups of Tea, now Stones Into Schools author Greg Mortenson saw stones turned against Americans as the US suffered its first soldier casualties from an IED in the northwest boarder region of Pakistan. The US troops were training the paramilitary Frontier Corps, mercenaries hired to protect the all-girls schools built by Mortenson's Central Asia Institute and USAID to which local Muslims and the Taliban take such umbrage. Oh, and lots of teenage girls were killed and injured too. You thought Pakistan was already seeing plenty of casualties? Well except for a US contractor killed in a hotel bombing, all the deaths have been Pakistani civilians, killed by the score in daily air strikes by US drones.
Greg Mortenson US occupation pitchman
Greg Mortenson, stealth poster boy for the GWOT Pax Americana, nominated for the same Nobel suggested for Henry Kissinger, will be in Denver this Sunday at Red Rocks, to emcee JOURNEY OF HOPE, to collect "Pennies For Peace" to build Western Education settlements to justify more US military advance camps, and to lead a "Prayer For Peace." Wanna bet it's not an Islamic prayer?
Yuppie Feminist Brigade comes to life on behalf of US Imperialism in Afghanistan
It's impossible to make this yuppie humanitarian interventionist lunacy up on our own, and since we at Not My Tribe have talked so much about Greg Mortenson and his Three Cups of Tea, why not take a quick look at Jay Leno's wife's new "cause celebre." See: Jay and Mavis Leno turn serious about the plight of Afghan women. Move over Darfur. Move over Tibet. There's a new 'In' thing for yuppie America to focus its tears on. And the new team has on board CNN's Christiane Amanpour, former National Organization for Women President Eleanor Smeal, knuckle chinned Jay Leno and wife, and wait!!! ...where's Madelyn Albright? It must just be a matter of time before she and the President's wife come into the act, too! Whooppee! The Imperial Yuppie Feminist Brigade is now coming to life to save women in Afghanistan! Move over Greg Mortenson! Humanitarian interventionism tied now to terrorist extermination by Pentagon drone! Isn't this all so sweet? I know that the Muslim women of occupied Afghanistan must just be so happy about this 'aid'. Bombs away! Bombs away with NOW, Ms. Magazine, and the 'Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission' propaganda drops on dumb-founded America, too! Hollywood America appeals to Shopping Mall America to CARE!
Greg Mortenson encircles Swat Province, US drones launched from Baluchistan
Not many maps show the location of the Pakistani airport from which US drones are launched against targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. To plot the Shamsi Airport in Baluchistan, I started with a graphic supplied by the Central Asian Institute (CAI) showing Greg Mortenson's school building projects, which appear to encircle the Taliban resurgent Swat Province, where schools are a battleground. Recognize the map above? It's an updated diagram of CAI's progress in northern Pakistan, making it all the more clear that school-building is taking point in our Western incursion in Southwest Asia. Think-tank pundits are describing the Southwest Asian conflict as having become the Afghanistan and Pakistan War. With 17,000 more US troops moving in (who knows how many more contractor mercenaries), Europe pulling its NATO soldiers out, and Kyrgyzstan ousting our base, we might as well become more familiar with Pakistan. By the way, the furor about our military use of the Shamsi Airport has more to do with where we are deploying the drones. The US was given permission by the Pakistani government to use several bases in Pakistan from which to direct our attacks on Afghanistan. The bases are in Karachi, Jacobabad, Pasni and Dalbadin. Shamsi is noteworthy because it is being used by the CIA, and because its drones are monitoring regions in Pakistan itself. We need zoom out only a little from this map to see that the US actions here are part of an encirclement strategy against China, Russia, and to the West, Iran!
The encirclement of US rivals is apace
"Washington policy now encompasses a series of 'democratic' or soft coup projects which would strategically cut China off from access to the vital oil and gas reserves of the Caspian including Kazakhstan. The earlier Asian Great Silk Road trade routes went through Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Almaty in Kazakhstan for geographically obvious reasons, in a region surrounded by major mountain ranges. Geopolitical control of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan would enable control of any potential pipeline routes between China and Central Asia just as the encirclement of Russia controls pipeline and other ties between it and western Europe, China, India and the Mideast." -William Engdahl In this light does it become more clear why American intelligence interests support FREE TIBET efforts, and Greg Mortenson's Central Asian Institute "western education" encirclement of China's southern border! Bruce Gagnon of Organizing Notes has assembled some notes on the growing conflict in South Ossetia, Georgia, and the implications it poses for a broader military engagement. I'll reprint Bruce's article here: WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT GEORGIA-RUSSIA CONFLICT? I must admit that I am not an expert on the Georgia-Russia conflict that is now underway. But I have been following issues there for some time and have learned to see some linkages between what is going on in places like Poland, Czech Republic, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, China, and the Georgia-Russia conflict. So here are some random, and not so random, observations and quotes that I think might give us all something to ponder. * It's all about oil and natural gas. Russia has the world's largest supply of natural gas and Iran has the world's second largest supply. There is much oil and natural gas up in the Caspian Sea region. Which ever country controls this part of the world will have a jump start in controlling the keys to the world's economic engine for the foreseeable future. * The expanding economy of China has tremendous need for energy. China now imports much of its oil via sea (thru the Taiwan Straits) and the U.S. has in recent years doubled its naval presence in this region pursuing the ability to "choke off" China's ability to import oil. China is looking for alternative, land routes, to transmit oil thus pipelines through Central Asia become crucial. U.S. permanent bases in Afghanistan and attempts to put military bases in other Central Asian countries is in large part an attempt to create the ability to control these pipeline routes. F. William Engdahl, author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, maintains that, "Washington is out to deny China east land access to either Russia, the Middle East or to the oil and gas fields of the Caspian Sea." Engdahl goes on to say, "A close look at the map of Eurasia begins to suggest what is so vital for China and therefore for Washington's future domination of Eurasia. The goal is not only strategic encirclement of Russia through a series of NATO bases ranging from Camp Bond Steel in Kosovo to Poland, to Georgia,
Spook Steve Recca wants us to feel safe
Commander Steve Recca, of the new DoD endowed UCCS Center for Homeland Security, told his Shove Chapel audience last night that Homeland Security is about being safe. That means everything to him from keeping his daughter safe at school to keeping the streets safe from excessive snow fall. Does the DHS want a crack at Climate Change? Recca also explained that Homeland Security is about community. Yes, community: the local community and the global community. Whatever does he think "homeland" refers to? Manitou? Planet Earth? Before Bush and Ashcroft I'm pretty sure "Homeland" had only ever meant Nazi Germany, needing to be kept safe from Fascist-haters like socialists, anarchists, discontents and others who objected to Nazi land grabs. In the Soviet Bloc security would have been about community: the community of neighbors ready to rat on you. Steve Recca kept Homeland Security affairs out of Greg Mortenson's presentation until the end. Then, to cap off the questions from the audience, from the darkened anonymity of the public microphone, Recca asked for everyone's patience while he read an "email from a Marine at an FOB (Forward Operating Base) in Afghanistan." In this "email" a soldier explained how protecting one of Mortenson's schools was the most important goal of his mission, etc, etc. The inattentive audience may have become too accustomed to visualizing boiler room letter writing sessions assigned to soldiers in the field, or soldiers laid up in VA hospitals with nothing else to do but hand-write form letters dictated to them by military PR specialists. Those Letters to the Editor sent to newspapers across the country, or emails to Dr Greg in this case, may be outsourced to India for all we know. In any case, the Colorado College audience was bored of it. I'd like to see Recca explain what role propaganda or jingoism plays in Homeland Security. Commander Steve Recca is a career spook, now pioneering the post-graduate studying of keeping white America safe. I can understand that DHS might require information sharing with the Intelligence Community. Does it have to be part of that community? Is that the "community" Recca was talking about? Will Homeland Security be training its airport shoe-sniffers to conduct surveillance and torture too? Steve Recca doesn't bring transportation or border guard experience to his job. His background is entirely about spying. 1983- graduate (with honors) of U.S. Naval Academy 1990- Master of Arts (with distinction) from Naval Postgraduate School 1990 to 1993- tours on USS YORKTOWN, USS TEXAS, USS AMERICA 1993- Staff, Commander Naval Forces Europe (CNE), in London Intelligence Watch Officer, Head of the Current Intelligence Branch. 1994- Certificate in International Political Affairs from University of Zurich 1995 to 1997- Special Assistant and Speechwriter for the Secretary of the Navy 1997 to 1998- Office of the Director of Central Intelligence, speech writer, member on Director's Long-Term Planning Board 1998 to 2001-American Embassy in Oslo, Norway,
Sukey take it off again
One of the greatest blogging joys is giving a post a title. I favor arcane, abstruse or esoteric titles, mainly because it's fun to take disparate notions and weave them together, if only in the tapestry of my mind. I think obscure titles draw potential readers into what might be easily-ignored prose by eliciting in them the type of curiosity that would lead them to utter something akin to "what the hell does that mean?" I wrote a recent post called Not my three cups of tea wherein I questioned the motives of Greg Mortenson's supporters. The hagiography surrounding Mortenson, who had managed to build a few schools and co-write an incredibly crappy book, Three Cups of Tea, smacked of neocon propaganda. However, upon finishing the book, I decided that without a doubt Mortenson was the bravest, most caring and compassionate soul on earth and, if there were any nefarious motives to be found, they were definitely not his. I felt a need to set things straight so I wrote a clarification and entitled it Polly put the kettle on, which seemed an obvious choice to me. Apparently it was not obvious to others (Eric). Polly Put the Kettle On was a rhyme written in 1797 by a father of five children, two boys and three girls. The boys liked to play loud and rambunctious games, while the girls played more quietly. When the girls had had enough of their brothers' obnoxious ways, they would pretend they were going to have a tea party, an event that the boys would likely be required to attend. "Polly put the kettle on" was threat enough to send the boys running outside leaving the girls to talk and play in peace. My title was meant to convey that I no longer wish to hear any noise about Greg Mortenson being a tool for the government or being an interloper in doing-just-fine-without-him Pakistan. I will chase you noisy boys (Eric) out the door so I can admire the intrepid and visionary man in peace. See, I told you it was obvious.
Promoting education and ignorance
Have I a verdict on Greg Mortenson now that I've had a chance to see him? He's an incredibly likable guy, doing great good; to my values, doing fantastic work. But I'm a secular westerner, concerned about preserving the ideals of the enlightenment, and worried about the challenge posed by overpopulation. Are these the concerns of Islam? Do fundamentalist Muslims favor personal fulfillment of the individual and smaller families? Greg Mortenson is advancing my agenda and I'd certainly like to think this will lead to prosperity and peace for everyone, but in the meantime I'm certain these actions are antagonistic to Muslims. I'd prefer we consult with Islamic leaders about prospects for peaceful coexistence, not peace engineered on curbing their numbers. Perhaps Greg can champion the educating of Americans to tolerate other belief systems, some of which may not value literacy above family and religion. Westerners subject themselves to schooling because it's the cultural conditioning with which we equip ourselves for our complex post-agrarian world. Does everyone need it? Do Pakistani girls who are going to marry by age twelve need to be literate? Critical thinking and scientific understanding are values of ours. Getting married at a later age, and having fewer children, are values of ours. If Islamic fundamentalists are rushing to indoctrinate adherents with the intention of recruiting Jihadists to attack western encroachment, you have to admit Mortenson's conquest by education would be one of the causes. Mortenson's methods are infinitely preferable to our military's, but they are invasive all the same. The disservice of Greg Mortenson's lecture tour may be that he's selling an over-simplified solution. Mortenson preached a message of hope not fear, hurrah, to an audience that really wants to hope. With Pennies for Peace, we can hope that kids' pocket change will bring us closer to world peace. With the Central Asia Institute, we can hope to end-run our own government's incurable ways. Is it true, do you think? The white elephant in the room was so palpably invisible Dr. Greg may well have trained with David Copperfield. Not even lip service to it: Capitalism. Mortenson's idealism does not address globalization, the World Bank, debt, impoverishment by design, intentional destabilization, protracted war-making, etc. We the People may want world peace, we the people of the world could possibly come together through education, but will our industrial mechanisms allow it? Americans can't even fraternize with Mexico! The fantastic promise of Mortenson's efforts would distract Americans from the more difficult challenge at hand, for which many of us perhaps are finding it harder to muster hope: arresting the destructiveness of our market forces, our government and its corporate oligarchy. Putting our hopes in schooling the children of Islam will be of little avail if our military-driven economies increase their plundering and exploitation all the while. That's who I think is behind the promotion of Three Cups of Tea. That's why the Center of Homeland Security sponsored Mortenson's visit. That's why a self-defined hapless do-gooder is getting such traction. He's selling a fix
Polly put the kettle on
There is nothing more thrilling than being the wild one on the outer edge of the pack, seeing the horizon more clearly than those safely ensconced in the middle of the herd. It isn't easy being a lonely maverick, relying on animal instinct to find hidden dangers, while other more domesticated souls happily munch nuggets of truth dispensed by politicians and mainstream media. But someone has to lead the way. I thought I'd found an opportunity to indulge my inner maverick. I had high hopes that the Three Cups of Tea avalanche was hiding lots of neocon propaganda, a pitiful campaign to convince those of us with bleeding hearts that, indeed, our government is engaged in noble warfare against terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the training ground for Islamic fundamentalists determined to wipe out Western culture. After all, who would know the terrorist's heart better than Greg Mortenson who has spent much of the past fifteen years in remote Himalayan villages developing relationships with local leaders and gaining an understanding of these tribal cultures? Well, I'm disappointed to admit that, after finishing the book, I am smack in the middle of the Mortenson love fest. Other than forgetfulness, disorganization and a chronic lack of punctuality, I can find no fault with this man (I feel like Pontius Pilate). After the 9/11 attacks, the book gets a whole lot better. The writing, literally painful to read in the first half, begins to flow in such a way that you are not constantly mindful of the fact that you are reading. Political intrigue, physical danger, unflinching bravery, and an uncanny ability to discern the good guys from the bad guys--always in pursuit of his mission of educating the rural poor--does make Mortenson seem larger than life. So much so that co-author David Oliver Relin stops mentioning his physical stature in every paragraph. The complexity of tribal societies makes for interesting reading. Puppet governments in big cities have no standing in remote mountain villages. Tribal councils and religious leaders in Iran interpret and enforce the law. Mortenson makes an interesting distinction between warlords who take tariffs from opium smugglers to create private militias and commandhan who plow the profits into the people's welfare. One bad, the other good. He makes few moral judgments of the mountain people and their ways, poppy production included. He saves his scathing indictments for the US government and its minions, and seemingly refuses to cooperate or be used by them in any way. I hope I can find a front row seat tonight and catch Mortenson's eye. I want to give him the oft-sought-but-ever-elusive Mango wink of approval. Some maverick, she.
Not my three cups of tea
I remember a time, not so long ago really, perhaps last month, when I was blissfully unaware of a wayward mountaineer named Greg Mortenson. After nearly reaching the summit of K2, and having lost his porter and his way on the descent, he limped, hungry and cold, into a tiny town in northeast Pakistan called Korphe. After several days spent recovering from his misadventure, Greg Mortenson stumbled from the village leader's hut into the rarefied Himalayan air. I am only halfway through the book Three Cups of Tea, One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time which attempts to tell of Mortenson's journey through Pakistan and Afghanistan, and his quest to build schools for impoverished children. A brave and noble mission no doubt. I must say, however, that the book is the most poorly written of any I've read since my Fabio days. I imagine Mortenson's adventure was dangerous and thrilling, likely rivaling fellow climber Jon Krakauer's Everest adventure. Krakauer's tale was a positively riveting account of the experience, and Into Thin Air remains one of my all-time favorite adventure stories. Three Cups of Tea, on the other hand, well, sucks. I say this not to be unkind, but because I am wondering how on earth it ended up on the New York Times bestseller list. Here is but a small sample of the creamy pablum co-author David Oliver Relin dishes out: ...Why couldn't the flag of crescent and star lead these children such a small distance toward "progress and perfection"? After the last note of the anthem had faded, the children sat in a neat circle and began copying their multiplication tables. Most scratched in the dirt with sticks they'd brought for that purpose. The more fortunate...had slate boards they wrote on with sticks dipped in a mixture of mud and water. "Can you imagine a fourth-grade class in America, alone, without a teacher, sitting there quietly and working on their lessons?" Mortenson asks. "I felt like my heart was being torn out. There was a fierceness in their desire to learn, despite how mightily everything was stacked against them....I knew I had to do something." That something became a big something, and Greg Mortenson will share his story at Shove Chapel on January 15. In Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson, besides being of impressive stature, a point made on every page of the book, is portrayed as little more than a socially stunted somewhat incompetent drifter. So how did this guy, who couldn't find a decent ghost writer, suddenly become a master of self-promotion? A book tour, magazine covers, even promotional materials sent home in my child's school backpack. It's pretty amazing. I am, as I said, only halfway through the book but I've not read anything about Mortenson's mission of peace. Korphe's village leader confided to him that, although he ran his fingers reverently over its pages, he couldn't actually read his treasured
Greg Mortenson’s own cup of tea
Greg Mortenson finds himself on the vanguard of Pax Americana the same way he stumbled into the mountain village beneath K2. He has no idea the enormity of the power behind his continued fortune.
Stealing Muslim women from terrorists
Greg Mortenson, author of THREE CUPS OF TEA, thinks that building secular schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan will not upset their Islamic communities and not incite further religious war and terrorism.