David Loyn has been an award-winning foreign correspondent for 30 years for the BBC. He has reported from such places as Moscow, Kosovo, Delhi, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Iraq and Kabul. His book Frontline: The True Story of the British Mavericks who Changed the Face of War Reporting was shortlisted for the 2006 Orwell Prize. He is currently the BBC’s developing world correspondent. He lives in London. His recent book is called In Afghanistan: Two Hundred Years of British, Russian and American Occupation. On July 5, 2009, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Loyn by e-mail exchange.

The Talking Dog: Where were you on 11 September 2001 and 7 July 2005?

David Loyn: On 9/11, it was said that I was the first reporter in the world to name Osama bin Laden as the most likely suspect. (It’s a rather heady claim to make in a world of instant reactions, but it may be true). I happened to be close to the live TV news studio and was dragged onto set after the first plane hit, as the BBC took the pictures live. I named bin Laden as I knew him to be obsessed with the World Trade Center; he had tried to blow it up before. And then the second plane hit. It was early afternoon in London and I went from the studio to a TV edit suite for an extraordinary afternoon trying to piece together what was happening as events unfolded for the lead story for the main evening news - at 6′50″ the longest opening item broadcast to date.

On 7/7 in London I had a far more domestic morning as I was taking my son for a piano test. As I arrived there was an odd report on the car radio of an electrical fault that appeared to have knocked out the whole of the London tube system. It soon became clear it was something far more serious as other parents arrived with news of casualties. One of those waiting for the piano teacher turned out to be the wife of a bus driver on the route where a bus had been hit and she was upset as the mobile phone system had crashed, overloaded with too many calls, and she could not make contact She panicked a little and had to be persuaded not to try to travel into the center of town, so I took her to her home instead, and on the way she did get through to find it was not his bus that had been hit.

The Talking Dog: The U.K. title of your book “In Afghanistan” appears to be “Butcher and Bolt,” I suppose a reference to the evident strategy of the British Empire for dealing with much of Afghanistan (if not other places troublesome to it) throughout much of the 19th Century (not to mention a description of guerrilla hit and run tactics). Certainly, you noted a number of incidences of extraordinary brutality in Afghanistan by foreigner and local alike, with currently active warlords such as G. Hekmatyar (now aligned with Al Qaeda) and A.R. Dostam (now on “our side”) for example, being peculiarly cruel and nasty, though by no means alone in that. I have a “chicken vs. egg” type question: can you draw any conclusions from your reading of the history and your knowledge of the region as to what degree the singular brutality that has been engulfing Afghanistan has been “finely honed” as a result of the foreign interventions– starting with British, Russian, Arab and American, or others, if you like… in other words, is there a peculiar barbarity that just exists from the make-up of the people, terrain, living conditions, et al., or has this barbarity been enhanced by specifically Western interventions?

David Loyn: George Forster, in 1783 the first British traveler to leave an account of a journey into Afghanistan, was robbed as he went through the Khyber Pass as countless others were after him. He concluded that Afghans were a ‘rude race of men’, with a ‘fixed contempt for the occupations of civil life.’ The first official British envoy, Mountstuart Elphinstone, who led an expedition to Afghanistan in 1809, exactly 200 years ago, found a country in a rather similar condition to today, racked by civil war, with bad roads and people mistrustful of outsiders. He wrote, ‘To sum up the character of the Afghans in a few words; their vices are revenge, envy, avarice, rapacity, and obstinacy; on the other hand, they are fond of liberty, faithful to their friends, kind to their dependants, hospitable, brave, hardy, frugal, laborious and prudent.’ So it’s hard to blame the west for the diamond hardness and ruthlessness of the Afghan character. But it certainly makes them a tough and resolute enemy when united against a foreign invader. And since the Russian invasion of 1979 the country has been comprehensively brutalised by war, first by Russia and then by the response of the US, UK and other western countries in backing a violent Islamic insurrection against the invasion. This stripping down of civilised values left an open door to those, like Saudi Arabia, who wanted to encourage the virulent and singular strain of Islamic belief that is causing such problems today.

Afghans have an ability to endure pain and hardship that seems to go beyond sanity. During the war against the Russians, one reporter saw a warrior hold his hand over a fire until the flesh melted when his bravery was questioned. And they can be cruel in the way they deal with captives - mutilating them and skinning them alive for example.

The phrase ‘Butcher and Bolt’ was a late nineteenth-century insult for British campaigns in the North-west frontier - i.e. killing to no good effect, destroying villages but not then holding the ground. Winston Churchill, later British Prime Minister, popularised it in an excellent book he wrote about the 1897 British campaign on the frontier. It has strong echoes in the modern era. In the 1980s, a Russian journalist wrote ‘Upon completing an operation, the Afghan-Soviet troops as a rule return to their bases and the regions fall back under the control of the rebels.…In the course of those operations, housing and the agricultural fields are often destroyed, the civilian population is killed, and in the end everything remains the same.’ And when British forces took the war to the Taliban for the first time in their heartland in Helmand in the south in 2006, a disillusioned officer, Captain Leo Docherty, wrote afterwards that they had taken ground but not been able to hold it as the Taliban came back in. Looking back, he wrote, ‘All the well meaning reconstruction stuff is an illusion. The time spent there now seems to have been an egotistical folly.’

The campaign now going on through the summer of 2009, with a significant increase in U.S. forces, is the first serious attempt to break this stalemate, holding ground once it is taken.

The Talking Dog: Your book features an amazing panoply of characters involved over the years, on all sides; I will say that the character I found most amazing was the British officer’s wife: Lady Sale, who kept a diary of many of the horrific circumstances of one particular period of British occupation, including her own leadership in battle. In modern times, perhaps Taliban leader Mullah Omar and the murdered Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massud are also of note, in my view. Can you identify three or four players from the vast cast of characters, any side, that you found compelling in the course of your work, and what resonance they have for the present?

David Loyn: It is certainly a story rich with compelling individuals. Five that stand out:

Lady Florentia Sale was a gifted artist, writer, and courageous observer - one of the few heroes amid the incompetence and indecision that led to the humiliation and slaughter of around 16,000 British and Indian men,women and children in the retreat of the Kabul garrison through the harshness of an Afghan winter in 1841. Even after she has been injured herself, riding through a hail of gunfire, and seen her soldier son-in-law die in her arms, she still commented on the magnificence of the surroundings as she and other women from the convoy, including her pregnant daughter, were led away to an uncertain future. After several months in captivity, and with the British ‘Army of Retribution’ not far away, she picked up a musket, taking command and turning their Afghan captors into prisoners when none of the few surviving men would do so. Her husband, Captain ‘Fighting Bob’ Sale, commanded the relief column sent to free the prisoners, and was a true Victorian in not letting his emotions show. When a brother officer rode up to ask him how his reunion with his wife had been: ‘he made a hideous series of grimaces, dug his spurs into his horse, and galloped off as hard as he could.’

Captain Thomas Seaton was a British officer in the garrison that defended Jalalabad fort, one of the few success stories during that first disastrous British war. Seaton earned the undying affection of his colleagues by setting up a still to make a very rough and ready whiskey. No sooner had the British built their defences for a seige than they were destroyed by an earthquake, and once the seige began, the ingenuity that Seaton recorded in his entertaining account ensured victory. As they ran out of ammunition they held up red-coated dummies on poles, harvesting the lead musket balls that rained into the fort for their own use. They needed to send out foraging parties to gather grass for their horses, and the Afghans put large flocks of sheep onto the the grass closest to the fort to force the foraging parties to travel further and into harm’s way. One morning the British sent out a large detachment of infantry to form a corridor and then mounted a cavalry charge to round up the sheep, raising morale, and giving them a much needed supply of fresh meat.

Abdur Rahman, the Amir (king) of Afghanistan for the last 20 years or so of the nineteenth century, was a ruthless and canny player of the ‘Great Game’ - the century-long struggle for control of Afghanistan between Russia and Britain. He played one off against the other, although he felt himself caught ‘like a grain of wheat between two millstones.’ He secured the best deal he could for Afghanistan in 1893, when it became clear that the British emissary Henry Mortimer Durand was intent on drawing a new eastern border for Afghanistan through the mountains to its east. The border that now divides Afghanistan from the North-west frontier of Pakistan is called the ‘Durand Line’ to this day. During the inevitable huge frontier uprising that erupted just four years after Durand’s line was supposed to secure peace, Abdur Rahman promised to back Britain, while at the same time encouraging the frontier leaders to mount a ‘Jihad’, a holy war, against the invader. My book includes the first English translation of his call to Jihad, which has direct parallels, including use of the same verses of the Koran, with the call to Jihad made by Osama bin Laden in the same region today.

Mahmoud Tarzi, the Foreign Minister and son-in-law of King Amanullah, the reforming Amir of Afghanistan in the 1920s, was the driving force behind the most determined attempt to reform Afghanistan to date. Girls’ education was guaranteed, child marriages outlawed, pharmacies subsidised, and fundamentalist Wahhabi mullahs banned from preaching. Foreign investment was encouraged, as Afghanistan looked to the success stories of Islamic countries like Turkey, then turning itself into a secular state. It ended in a violent insurrection after the Amir’s wife was photographed on a European trip wearing an evening dress with bare arms. It is this episode that President Karzai is referring to when he cautions western visitors against bringing equality to Afghanistan. He likes to say ‘Remember, the last king of Afghanistan who tried to give rights to women ended up dead.’

Mullah Borjan was the military commander of the Taliban from their beginnings in 1994 until he was killed in their assault on Kabul in 1996. He was a tough and experienced fighter who had endured much in the war against the Soviet Union, and joined the Taliban to end the corruption and criminality among the mujahidin leaders who had won that war (many of whom have resumed positions of power in Afghanistan since the Taliban defeat in 2001, and are still corrupt and criminal). I interviewed Borjan for the BBC the night before he died and was struck by his rational and commonsense approach. He was rather in favour of girls having education once the war was over, and was not a fundamentalist like some of his colleagues. His death robbed his movement of a voice of reason, but there were and are many strains of political thought within the Taliban. It is a major western foreign policy mistake to try to split them off and bring them over; Far better to try to engage with the leadership, however hard that may look, encouraging those within who want conciliation and not confrontation.

The Talking Dog: Your book notes that with respect to the famous interviews you did with Taliban fighters in Helmand province in 2006, you quite literally owe your life to the Pashtun honor code, to wit, once you are a guest of a Pashtun, they will protect you with their life, and so, your host protected you against his allied fighters who regarded you as “the enemy” (perhaps how certain UK parliamentarians felt about you after you did that interview). This, alas, is one of the rationales of Mullah Omar and the Taliban harboring Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda leadership, seemingly on both sides of the “Durand Line” that forms the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to this day, making it a rather difficult endeavor to bring OBL, Zawahiri, et al, to justice. From your historical observations, can you give us an example from the British/Raj era, the Soviet invasion era and the current American/NATO intervention of an outside power misunderstanding Afghan tribal traditions– particularly that one– to the peril of the outside powers? Any particular lessons for the current intervenors from this historical context?

David Loyn: During both of the nineteenth-century British wars, the warning signs of impending doom were ignored until it was too late. Gifted as we are with the perfect vision of hindsight this is rather easy to see. But in the first war there were those in the British camp, particularly an Indian secretary, Mohan Lal, who had seen the storm clouds gather from the beginning as the British, confident in the success of their ability to wield overwhelming force, did not properly reward Afghan tribal leaders who had come over to their side. During the weeks before the insurrection, it was Lal who recorded how tribal chiefs were angry as their subsidies from Britain were cut just as food prices were going up and wages for government jobs going down. The night before the uprising began, the civilian head of the British occupation force, Sir William Macnaghten, talked of ‘a season of such profound tranquillity’. But Lal had recorded the most telling sign of change: mullahs had stopped saying prayers for the British-installed Amir, Shah Shuja, in the mosques. As the US-led force in the 21st century is discovering, Afghans follow power. If they believe that the occupying force is wavering, then they tend to withdraw support. The most astute British observer in 1841, Captain Seaton, complained of inconsistency in the British approach, ‘a mixture of iron and clay . . . utterly unsuited to the fierce tribes of the country, who soon detected the weakness of their rulers’.

The Talking Dog: Jared Diamond (”Guns, Germs and Steel” and “Collapse”) might suggest that geography is destiny, at least in terms sociological and cultural, and hence, people from lush, fertile, relatively flat islands (like Britain) or peninsulas may develop different societies from people from landlocked, infertile mountainous countries (like Afghanistan). You have certainly noted that the Afghan character is not unrelated to their spectacular mountainous and largely uninhabitable country, which, if nothing else, provides useful cover for guerrilla combat. Based on your historical observation and long familiarity with the region as a journalist, do you find any merit to this proposition, and, based on the interplay of the Afghan national character and the Afghan national geography, how would you advise international policymakers to proceed?

David Loyn: Geography certainly defines Afghanistan’s destiny. Less than 5% of the land is irrigible farmland; the rest is deserts and mountains, framed by the right-angled ranges of the Hindu Kush across the middle, and the Suleiman Mountains running up the east of the country. But this does not mean it was always poor. In the 1970s Helmand exported more raisins than California, thanks to the Helmand irrigation project (based on the Tennessee Valley Authority). That fertile valley now grows about 90% of the world’s illegal opium. Afghanistan is on a geographical crossroads, trampled across by invaders for thousands of years, but none has stayed the course. There were big mistakes made after 2001, with raised expectations that women would ‘throw off the burqa’ and that a western-style voting system would somehow conjure up a civilised society as if by magic out of nowhere. In a highly critical report the World Bank talked of an ‘aid juggernaut’ descending on Kabul, sucking out the translators and officials for itself, rather than building the capacity of the Afghan state. Dealing with local corruption might have been a better use of international effort. In the first year after the Taliban fell, government revenues were actually lower than during the Taliban years, as local warlords creamed off the cash again for themselves. There is a growing realisation that it will not be possible to create something like Switzerland in the Hindu Kush, and eight years on there are far lower expectations about the kind of society that can be built. Respecting Afghans’ ability to do things for themselves and then letting modern notions of sexual equality spread out from the cities would be a better way forward. But without stability and competent government none of this will happen.

The Talking Dog: Your book notes a 40-year gap of relative peace and prosperity (in Afghan terms) during the reign of former king Mohammad Zahir Shah from the early 1930’s until the early 1970’s; he just died in 2007 in his 90’s. The remaining, more turbulent part of the last two centuries, discussed in your book, has been marked by a number of foreign interventions in Afghan affairs. In your view, to what do you attribute this uncharacteristic period of stability (during which, also uncharacteristically, Afghan living standards improved… they have since deteriorated again)? To what effect do you see a brilliant strong man, cooperative local war lords, intelligent central administration, or quiet from sources abroad (unlikely given that this period saw the dismantling of colonial empires including neighboring India and Pakistan, World War II, and much of the Cold War) or sheer luck… or something else? Although restoring Zahir Shah himself to the throne was thought of, and evidently rejected as a post-9-11 possibility, what other policies do you see as likely to restore Afghanistan to a position of relative stability– like the Zahir Shah era?

David Loyn: It is one of the great ‘what ifs’ of history - what if Zahir Shah had come back to power? He certainly had respect in many quarters. There was a strong pro-king movement within the Taliban themselves. But his time was over, and with some grace he blessed the swift no-nonsense meeting of tribal leaders - the Loya Jirga - after the Taliban fell, that engineered the coronation of Karzai as President instead, with the Taliban excluded from the process. Zahir was a clever ruler, who played Europe, Russia and America rather well for 40 years, before being ousted by his cousin in a palace coup as reform demands grew too loud to ignore in 1973.

The Talking Dog: While I had vague conceptions of such European overlays on the Asian map like the Durand line (and the Sikes-Picot line to the West), until I read your book, it had not really dawned on me that the Durand line was actually a demarcation of the extremes of (pre-partition) India, nor did it dawn on me that “Pashtunistan” was conveniently divided in half, and has proven “ungovernable” by both the weak Afghan state or the somewhat stronger Pakistani state alike and, of course, is where OBL, Zawahiri are presumably enjoying someone’s hospitality). I regard myself as extremely well informed by American standards, and I even took a college course on Modern Indian and Pakistani history… and yet, was ignorant of many of the basic historical facts until I read your book. To what extent do you believe that the lack of even the most basic understanding of the South and Central Asian regions by American (and to some extent, European) policy-makers has resulted in what I’ll call not merely disastrous, but potentially apocalyptic policy results (for example, if the Taliban acquire control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal at Rawalpindi and environs… from which they are less than 100 kms away in the Swat Valley)? How would you suggest alleviating this– aside from having people read your great book– i.e. how can we get more Westerners (or even Westerners who matter) to get a greater understanding of the region?

David Loyn: Reading my book is obviously a start as an answer to your question! The Bush/Blair years were a period when complicating factors like context and history were not allowed to get in the way of policy. It has become a truism in British intellectual life to say that Tony Blair did not ‘do’ history, either in domestic or international affairs - everything was fashioned as if new. And the belief in the Bush White House in the overwhelming ability of US military power to prevail, blinded policymakers even to simple known truths about conflict - such as that conventional forces, however powerful, usually lose against unconventional guerrilla groups, if those groups have a safe haven, high morale, and some local support. The Taliban have all these strengths, and have time on their side. Politicians around President Bush ignored reality even written down in their own military’s counterinsurgency doctrine: ‘Insurgents that never defeat counterinsurgents in combat still may achieve their strategic objectives.’

The USA inspired, armed and funded the mujahidin in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and then walked away once communism had been defeated, leaving the Afghans to pick up the pieces. (I was talking to an ex-CIA officer recently, who had been involved in running the war against the Soviet Union from the North-west frontier in the 1980s, and when I put this point to him about continuing responsibility he said simply ‘Well, we weren’t in Afghanistan in the 1980s’ - factually true, but morally corrupt). When 9/11 happened, there was not a single person on the CIA’s books who spoke Pashtu - the language of the Taliban.

Obama plays in a different league. In his recent Cairo speech his acknowledgement of US complicity in bringing down the Iranian leader Mossadeq, elected in 1952, was an extraordinary turnaround, and noticed across the region. So let’s see.

The Talking Dog: Please tell me your impressions of former Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson, both from your research and personal experience if any. (For readers less familiar, Wilson, of course, was the prime Congressional mover in getting clandestine funding for Afghan mujahadeen, and in particular, what I view as his murderous legacy of indiscriminate funding of violence (notwithstanding the glamour of having Tom Hanks portray him in a movie) that (again, my opinion only) led as directly as anything else I can think of to the events of September 11th.)

David Loyn: I have never met Congressman Wilson. I relied heavily on the wonderful book by the late George Crile, who chronicled Wilson’s role in persuading the US that Afghanistan was the place where Soviet communism could be defeated. The Tom Hanks film is a pretty good take on the story (although for me it underplays the sheer pleasure, and enormous appetite, that Wilson had for women and drink.) Where the film parts company with history is in showing Wilson apparently failing to raise more than a few hundred thousand dollars for education and reconstruction in Afghanistan once the Russians were out. The facts are that US military funding for the mujahidin continued on a colossal scale for a further two years, even after it was obvious to anyone, including some on Wilson’s staff, that the mujahidin heroes of the war against Russia were now turning the guns on their allies and on Afghan civilians in a war for the spoils. It was this fighting more than any other single factor that inspired the rise of the Taliban. The road to 9/11 began when the USA took its eye off the ball in Afghanistan between 1989 and 1992.

The Talking Dog: . As my college classmate President Barack Obama prepares for a “surge” in troop strength in Afghanistan (as he promised during his campaign), what specific advice (other than perhaps “read the book”) would you give him, based on your reading of the historical legacy of the prior foreign interventions–British and Soviet– that took place there? Any advice re: dealing with the current situation in Pakistan and its Taliban uprising, in this context?

David Loyn: If you ask people in rural Afghanistan, or in the Pakistani North-West frontier, why they are backing the Taliban, the answer that most often comes back is that the Taliban provide justice. It may not be the kind that we would like - sharia law has some notoriously harsh penalties, such as amputation. But the worst failure in Afghanistan since 2001 has been in allowing corruption to return so that the police and courts did not provide justice. How could 2 million refugees be expected to return to their land if warlords were again controlling things? It is the same story on the Pakistani side of the mountains. Easy access to justice has deprived people of any recourse other than to the Taliban. And the failure to provide any education has opened the door to Wahhabi religious schools, madrasas, some financed from Saudi Arabia, who teach little other than the recital of holy texts by rote. Any western-designed policy that does not address this, and do it in a way that respects local customs, is likely to fail. Expensive and cleverly constutructed aid programs designed outside the country have not worked so far. One of the popular reasons for the war against the Taliban was because of their harsh treatment of women, but the outspoken Afghan woman MP, Malalai Joya now says that ‘Rights for women in Afghanistan are worse now than under the Taliban.’

The Talking Dog:. Anything else that I should have asked you but didn’t or that the public needs to know on these critical subjects?

David Loyn: The one continuing theme across two centuries of foreign intervention in Afghanistan is the ability of insurgents to politicise their Islamic faith to inspire jihad against the invader. It was this that the US exploited so effectively in the 1980s against Russia and it has come back to bite the hand that fed it. Even the word Taliban is not new. Winston Churchill, later British Prime Minister, who was a war correspondent in the 1897 frontier war, identified taliban among the enemy and said they were the most ferocious. He wrote that they corresponded with theological students abroad, and ‘lived free at the expense of the people.’ And it goes back even further than that, as detailed in my book. In the 1830s, the Amir that Britain wanted to depose, Dost Mohammed, took a cloak believed to have belonged to the Prophet Mohammed from its case in a mosque in Kandahar, displayed it to the people and declared himself ‘Amir al-mu’minin’, leader of all muslims. With this declaration as king and priest he roused his people against the invader. The next person to do that was the Taliban leader Mullah Omar in the months before he took Kabul in 1996. Afghans remember this history; perhaps we should have more of an idea of it.

The Talking Dog: I join all of my readers in thanking Mr. Loyn for that interesting and informative interview, and I commend interested readers to check out “In Afghanistan“.

BBC News has a graphic video of Honduran government soldiers spraying tear gas pellets into a massive crowd inside a fenced security pen. The size of the crowd looked to be creating a crush that was pushing people against the fence, and obviously they were trying to get out, but I saw nothing that justified the use of tear gas.

The Wall Street Journal says that the soldiers started tear gassing the protesters after some of them threw stones. The WSJ article also says that the crowd “was trying to break through one of the fences surrounding the runway.” It didn’t look that way to me, at least not in the BBC video. Furthermore, the soldiers had shields to deflect the stones; the protesters had no protection against the tear gas.

The larger question, of course, is why the right-wing revolutionaries in Honduras’s government are having to use lethal levels of violence against their own people (at least one bystander was killed, and eight wounded, after the soldiers opened fire on the crowd) to defend a “democratic” political transition (NOT a coup) that Hondurans supported and wanted.

Excitement over President Obama’s impending visit to Africa - particularly in Ghana - is reaching a fever pitch. According to columnist Christian Agubretu of Ghana’s My Joy newspaper, one reason for hope is that the president has requested a tour of Ghana’s infamous Cape Coast Castle, a major embarkation point for Africans who were kidnapped and sold into slavery.

For My Joy, Christian Agubretuwrites in part:

“Clearly, the dungeons where the slaves were kept and the “journey-of-no-return” that they were forced to experience were more than hell. Despite the scrubbing and use of detergents, the stench of dead bodies, blood stains and human excreta still remain. Again, one can see the finger and toe marks on the walls where slaves in chains struggled to breathe. It was a horror that history cannot erase. … When President Obama sees these things he will definitely ‘cry,’ and this must be translated into a ‘Marshall Plan for Africa’ to salvage her from the dependency that arose out of the slave trade, colonialism and neo-colonialism.”

By Christian Agubretu

July 3, 2009

Ghana - My Joy - Original Article (English)
One of the greatest historical events ever to occur in Ghana will be the august visit of U.S. President Barrack Obama. On the airwaves and the newspapers, one can already discern the warm and rousing welcome that awaits and that will reflect legendary Ghanaian hospitality.

The visit means so much to Ghanaians and the whole of Africa - and one cannot understate the social and economic benefits that at the same time, will serve one of the purposes for which America stands.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

While the Potter films were earning him millions of adoring fans around the world, Radcliffe’s role as the bespectacled boy wizard was causing resentment at school.

However, with an estimated £30 million fortune in the bank and Hollywood at his feet - all before his 20th birthday - Radcliffe said his life is proof that that ‘uncool’ kids come out on top.

Your typical celebrity fluff. Then this:

Radcliffe has been reticent on the subject of religion in the past, but in an interview to promote the latest instalment in the film franchise, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, released on July 15, he said: “I’m an atheist, but I’m very relaxed about it. I don’t preach my atheism, but I have a huge amount of respect for people like Richard Dawkins who do. Anything he does on television, I will watch.”

He joked: “There we go, Dan, that’s half of America that’s not going to see the next Harry Potter film on the back of that comment.”

More from The Examiner. And the LATimes countdown to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Princean has an “exclusive interview” of Ratcliffe, sans the atheist talk.

Via PZ Myers, “If only Radcliffe had an excuse to take his clothes off for atheism.”

After I updated my previous post on Honduras exiled president Manuel Zelaya’s attempted return to Honduras with the news that he has landed in El Salvador, Fausta’s Blog has reported that shots have been fired at the Tegucigalpa airport and that Noticias 24 confirms “at least two dead, according to a police source talking to AFP, in a clash between demonstrators and the armed forces at the airport.”

The blog also has a lengthy video of the clashes at the airport between the armed forces loyal to interim Honduran president Roberto Micheletti and thousands of demonstrators loyal to Zelaya.

The video quite graphically shows the numerous tear gas attacks, but have your Spanish dictionary handy for the animated Spanish commentary.

Headlines such as “Honduran military told to turn back Zelaya’s jet,” and “Zelaya nears Honduras, asks soldiers for loyalty.”

And reports that the interim Honduran president, Roberto Micheletti, has ordered the military to “turn away the plane;” that thousands of Zelaya supporters are gathering at the Tegucigalpa airport waving Honduran flags and posters of Zelaya; and, finally, that protests at the airport have turned violent as interim government security forces have fired warning shots and tear gas at Zelaya supporters as they attempt to enter the airport to greet the returning president.

According to reflector.com Zelaya said, while en-route to Honduras:

I am the commander of the armed forces, elected by the people, and I ask the armed forces to comply with the order to open the airport so that there is no problem in landing and embracing with my people…Today I feel like I have sufficient spiritual strength, blessed with the blood of Christ, to be able to arrive there and raise the crucifix.

And interim president Micheletti, refusing to withdraw his order to prevent the plane from landing, has said that he would not negotiate with anyone until “things return to normal.”

At a news conference, according to reflector.com, Micheletti said: “We will be here until the country calms down…We are the authentic representatives of the people.”

What makes the entire situation even more confusing, and delicate, is that, according to reflector.com:

At least three other planes left the Washington area separately, carrying Latin American presidents, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States and journalists. They were trailing Zelaya to see what happens in the skies over Honduras before deciding where to land.

Flying with Zelaya were close advisers and staff, two journalists from the Venezuela-based network Telesur, and U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, a leftist Nicaraguan priest and former foreign minister who personally condemned Zelaya’s ouster as a coup d’état.

It is reported that the aircraft Zelaya is flying in is a small Venezuelan jet provided by Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE:

There are now reports that the Venezuelan plane carrying exiled president Zelaya has landed in El Salvador, and unconfirmed reports that shots have been fired at the Tegucigalpa airport.

Web Site Story is a beautifully shot & acted, wonderfully witty parody of West Side Story that’s burning up the internets. It was written and directed by Sam Reich for CollegeHumor. On his blog Sam says it’s a tribute to his three big loves — film, theater, and the internet:

Jeff Rubin, king of puns, thought of the title. The opening Google Maps shots are analogous with the rooftop shots that open the “West Side Story” movie. ”The Skateboard Escape” from Back to the Future is actually on Hulu. eHarmony recently opened up a sister site for gays called Compatible Partners, but still refuses to accept gays into eHarmony because of its Christian backing.

The music was done by Carl Sondrol, who had legit trumpeters visit his Chicago recording studio, while the singing was recorded here in New York by Morgan Whirledge. In most cases, it’s the actual actors doing the singing.

All the interiors were shot in studio and all the exteriors on very cold rooftops in Williamsburg. ”The Net Song” was done using a rotating platform that Vince and our PM Bennett thought of day-of. ”Twitter” and “Pandora” were choreographed by Celia Rowlson-Hall.

The last scene, “Evite,” was shot until 6am. We used a scissor lift to get those epic crane shots. Around 4am, Bennett said “I wanted to go home, but then I saw the shot, and now I don’t care how long we’re here.”

Bravo all around!!!

Via The Bilerica Project:

Most notable, perhaps, is the “America” parody. While two girls sing about their excitement over eHarmony, five gay theater guys give the discriminatory site a delightful verbal spank.

Bonus hit: Introducing Bing. The Better Way To Google.

I have tried my very best to find a single, well thought out policy speech, statement or remark that explains her views on current political debates and I have come up empty. I have searched for almost a year and I have come up with nothing. This is a woman whose conservative political credentials are Christian centric and very limited. I haven’t heard or read her views on the current global economic disaster in great detail, I haven’t heard about what she thinks could be the solution to peace in the Middle-East, I haven’t heard about her thoughts on Health Care but I do know her views on gun rights, abortion and the role of religion (Christianity) in American society.

Again, this woman frightens me.

She should also frighten the life out of true conservatives. No I’m not talking about the pseudo-morally pure politicians who claim to have fiscal constraint but oversaw the 8 years before Obama took office, I am talking about conservatives in the same mold as the men and women who helped Clinton take control of the deficit - men and women who are now a rarity both in the Senate and the House. I have to believe that such Republicans still exist. I have to believe that they are not all Libertarians or ‘Blue Dog’ Democrats. I have to believe that Palin also conjures up unpleasant feelings within the very depths of their souls because this woman can realistically become President of the United States one day.

Whats the saying? Only in America.

In Palin I see the end of the mainstream elected Conservative political thinkers.

Many might have ill-feelings towards Mr Gingrich but you could never say that his political views were not thoroughly thought out. You would have never seen Gingrich do Couric as Palin did it. Mr Gingrich can look at his work in the nineties and hold his head up high. Instead in Palin I can envision the rise of Pop Socialcons – compassionate conservatism without the compassion. The ultimate hijack of the Republican Party by the religious far-right wing all packaged with a wink and a smile.

I know how this all sounds, call me sexist, call me a socialist or call me an elitist – that’s all fine with me but please tell me how she would get the banks loaning money again. I am happy to be considered all of the above but if you can tell me how she plans to calm the growing tensions in the Middle-East I will gladly be pleasantly surprised by Ms Palin. But I am unable to find such mind easing statements.

It’s disappointing because America needs a respected, functioning, intelligent opposition to Obama’s Democratic Party. If there was ever a time to sell real fiscal Conservative values it would be now, when job loss rates are at its highest in 26 years and confidence in the American financial market is at an all time low. But instead America has an opposition party that is in meltdown and foams at the mouth and screams ‘SOCIALIST’ every time Obama is on the television screen (which is alot).

If the Republicans want steer their way out of the political wilderness, Palin is NOT the driver to help them do so.

About three weeks ago, I had the pleasure of reading a book that was just hitting the bookstores. As a matter of fact, I had to wait a couple of days before my bookstore got its order in.

I was so impressed by the book that I did a “book review” for The Moderate Voice and a couple of other web sites and publications—I am not a professional “book reviewer,” this was only my second or third review.

In the book, “Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath,” the authors (Michael and Elizabeth Norman) compellingly describe what became one of the cruelest episodes in the annals of “modern” warfare: the infamous Bataan Death March and the starvation, imprisonment, torture and killings of tens of thousands of American and Filipino soldiers by their Japanese captors.

The book is about true American heroes, and it was appropriate and gratifying to see it this morning—on the Fourth of July weekend—on the New York Times “Best Sellers” list, a mere three weeks after its release.

It entered the list as number 16.

I have no doubt that this spell-binding, emotive, harrowing and beautifully written account of suffering and heroism will continue to climb on this prestigious list.

I am proud to have reviewed it.

Sketch, above, is of Ben Steele (the book’s protagonist), self-portrait in Bilibid prison hospital, Manila, 1943.
Copyright 2009 Ben Steele, with permission of the artist.

Barack Obama has chided Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, for “cold war approaches” to relations with the US, saying Putin had “one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new”, just days before the two men meet in Moscow.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Obama said the US was developing a “very good relationship” with Putin’s successor as president, Dmitry Medvedev, over issues such as nuclear arms reduction. But the American president acknowledged the balance of power in Russia by saying that he would also meet Putin, because he “still has sway”.

“I think that it’s important that, even as we move forward with President Medvedev, that Putin understand that the old cold war approaches to US-Russian relations is outdated – that it’s time to move forward in a different direction”, said Obama. “I think Medvedev understands that.

“I think Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new. To the extent that we can provide him and the Russian people a clear sense that the US is not seeking an antagonistic relationship, but wants co-operation on nuclear non-proliferation, fighting terrorism, energy issues, we’ll end up having a stronger partner overall in this process.”

In April, Obama met Medvedev and spoke of “the beginning of new progress” in relations, praising the Russian president as “critical” to that movement. After that meeting, the two men issued a statement saying they were ready “to move beyond cold war mentalities”.

Obama’s latest remarks clarify that he sees Putin standing in the way of progress, particularly on issues such as weapons reduction.

Here’s MSNBC’s take on it:

[L]et’s talk about freeconomics. I don’t believe everything will be free on the Internet. There will be plenty of paid business models. For example, if you want to watch Major League Baseball games live over the Internet, you’ll pay for that. If you want to use services like the FT and the WSJ frequently (more than 10x per month), you’ll pay for that. If you want to watch HBO over the Internet, you’ll pay for that. If you want a Twitter desktop or mobile client, you might pay for that too.

That said, Fred’s favorite business model is freemium. It works by offering basic services for free, and makes money by charging a premium for advanced or special features.

Fred spent part of his 4th of July weighing in on the Chris Anderson/Malcolm Gladwell contretemps around Anderson’s book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, released this week. Noting that “Gladwell got pretty negative on Anderson and his book in the New Yorker piece” [link], Fred responds:

Lambasting file sharers and entrepreneurs who rightly recognize that free is the right way to build market share on the Internet might be fun and make certain people feel good. But it’s ignorance of a fundamental fact. And that fact is that free, ad supported media works best on the Internet. We have seen it again and again. … Once you have built that audience, you can deliver upsells via freemium models, you can monetize it via advertising and you can branch out into other services which are easier to monetize.

His backup example comes from a Silicon Alley Insider post on Facebook that estimates revenues this year at:

• $125 million from brand ads
• $150 million from Facebook’s ad deal with Microsoft
• $75 million from virtual goods
• $200 million from self-service ads.

Fred considers those numbers reliable.* He expects self service ads and the virtual goods revenues to grow strongly in the next year and the company to be profitable. His conclusion:

The Internet allows an entrrepreneur to enter a market with a free offering because the costs of doing so are not astronomical. And most entrpreneurs who take this approach will maintain an attractive free offering of their basic service forever. But that doesn’t mean that everything they offer will be free. That’s the whole point of freemium. Free gets you to a place where you can ask to get paid. But if you don’t start with free on the Internet, most companies will never get paid.

In Chris Anderson’s response to Gladwell’s review, he understands that newspapers are one of the industries most affected by Free and anticipates the bane of his year ahead will be questions about the future of the newspapers from journalists.

I hate to get all Jeff Jarvis-y on you but, again, the question for journalists isn’t where is journalism going? The question is how to get there from here. Rather than digging in their heels and bemoaning the loss of a status quo remembered through rose-colored glasses, they should be pushing the business side of the house to figure out a freemium model that works.

* ADDED LATER: Mikkel’s comment below suggests I didn’t do Fred’s post justice. Of the Facebook numbers he says they are “Low for sure, but enough to operate at breakeven.” What I’m reading says Facebook is not losing hundreds of millions. If you can point me to something, I’m always interested.

In the very first, pilot episode of this show where we see a murder but don’t know the killer, Vincent D’Onofrio’s Etc. Robert “Bobby” Goren seems to be just one more TV detective. D’Onofrio’s acting could is pro forma TV cop fare in this first entry. Even the show’s plot line is more standard TV fare (more of a robbery “caper” plot). This isn’t a small matter because in the end Criminal Intent, in its first seasons, became a hit not just due to the crisp writing and direction, or to Kathryn Erbe as Goren’s less caffeinated partner, Alexandria Eames, but due to D’Onofrio’s classic, often quirky, multi-layered performance as Goren.

Perhaps the only TV cop as fascinating as Goren was Dennis Franz, as Andy Sipowicz on NYPD Blue. With each episode during the first season, you can see D’Onofrio’s Goren become more complex, crafty and fascinating…the way he leans into a suspect or cocks his head while questioning them…smells a dead person’s hand…uses the Columbo style trick of walking away from a suspect then turning to ask one more (damning) question…reacts to getting an idea that solves the case…draws suspects into his vision almost hypnotically using info he has gathered about them until the criminals reveal a clinching detail or lose it and confess. It is indeed a show of many surprises, twists, red herrings, guest stars showing their true acting chops, scripts masterfully written capped by a superb supporting cast that includes Jamey Sheridan as the detectives’ CO and the quintessentially cool Courtney B. Vance as Assistant District Attorney Carver.

But what delivers the production in the first season is D’Onofrio who at first glance can be a theatrical acquired taste much more out of the Marlon Brando method acting school than 1950s or 1960s police show actors. With each episode, the series gets stronger and the genius of the characters of Goren (Holmes) and Eames (Watson) — and the actors who play them — grow. The only time the first season collection seems to jump the shark is during episodes involving Goren matching wits with his criminal nemesis Nichole Wallace. Yes, Holmes had a master criminal nemesis, too. But the Goren-Wallace match ups appear throughout the serie’s years and those these episodes seem like strained over-reaching and are only worth one viewing.

The other episodes pass an important test: they can be viewed multiple times — which is why Law & Order Criminal Intent is run over and over on several cable stations.

FOOTNOTE: On many TV series that survive or are hits, season two is often worth viewing as well since that’s when a series has established its main premise and comes into its own. Further years of TV shows can become increasingly spotty: shows can become either proforma and plot lines a little too coincidental or far out. For instance, on NYPD Blue it seems as if anyone Sifowitz came was close to wound up dead. Franz’s award-winning acting never sagged but the script-writers’ ideas did.

On a scale of 10 Law & Order Criminal Intent gets a 10.

Why not? Palin/Sanford in 2012, with the slogan: “Save time — we’re already in Crazy Town.”

On Palin’s surprise resignation announcement Dowd writes:

What looked like a secret wedding turned out to be a public unraveling as the G.O.P. implosion continued: Sarah wanted everyone to know that she’s not having fun and people are being mean to her and she doesn’t feel like finishing her first term as governor.

She can hunt wolves from the air and field-dress a moose, but she fears being a lame duck? Some brickbats over her ethics and diva turns as John McCain’s running mate, and that dewy skin turns awfully thin.

Maybe there’s another red Naughty Monkey high heel to drop — there’s often a hidden twist in Sarah’s country-music melodramas. Or is this a reckless high-speed escape from small-pond Alaska, where her popularity is dropping, to the big time Below?

Read it in full.

First, the FBI quickly shot down reports suggesting that Palin is being investigated on corruption charges. Meanwhile, Palin’s lawyer issued a stern warning to the news media that Palin will go after those who pick up and publish defamatory, speculative material from weblogs. Fading away, this exactly ain’t…

The FBI:

A day after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin resigned, a federal official in her home state dismissed one potential explanation for her sudden and unexpected resignation: a rumored FBI investigation into the former Wasilla mayor on public corruption charges.

Despite rumors of a looming controversy after the Republican governor’s surprise announcement Friday that she would leave office this month, some of them published in the blogosphere, the FBI’s Alaska spokesman said the bureau had no investigation into Palin for her activities as governor, as mayor or in any other capacity.

“There is absolutely no truth to those rumors that we’re investigating her or getting ready to indict her,” Special Agent Eric Gonzalez said in a phone interview Saturday. “It’s just not true.” He added that there was “no wiggle room” in his comments for any kind of inquiry.

The FBI has been active in mounting corruption investigations in Alaska, some to see whether local, state and federal lawmakers illegally received favors, money or free construction work from businesses or people seeking favors.

Palin’s attorney:

Ratcheting up her offensive against the news media, Gov. Sarah Palin’s attorney threatened Saturday to sue mainstream news organizations if they publish “defamatory” stories relating to whether Palin is under federal investigation.

In an extraordinary four-page letter, Alaska-based attorney Thomas Van Flein warns of severe consequences should speculation that until now has largely been confined to blogs about whether Palin embezzled funds in the construction of a Wasilla, Alaska, sports arena find its way into print.

“This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law,” Van Flein warned, citing Alaska liberal blogger Shannyn Moore.

Much like Palin did in her Facebook statement Saturday, Van Flein savages the news media in his letter.

“Just as power abhors a vacuum, modern journalism apparently abhors any type of due diligence and fact checking before scurrilous allegations are repeated as fact,” the Anchorage attorney wrote.

Neither the Times or the Post made any mention of the embezzlement rumors in their Saturday editions, but sources close to Palin consider the letter a warning shot to stay away from the topic.

This could cause some blogs to think twice, but it’s going to be unlikely to stop infooutlets such as the Huffington Post, TV/cable networks, or big newspapers to (a) not republish material that is already on the Internet and being widely quoted and (b)sending out their own teams of reporters to look into every nook and cranny of Palin’s life. And if this did succeed, would Democrats then follow suit and go after conservative blogs running unfounded rumors and those outlets that print or broadcast them?

An ongoing open “war” between Palin and the media, spilling over into courtrooms and being covered by the new and old media, would help Palin shore up her base. But Palin’s her problem as a politician with aspirations is that she doesn’t want to run for President of the base but for an office that will require that she wins over some others who either don’t like her or have doubts about her, too.

And in terms of seriously expanding her supportive constituency polls since the election show that she has a failing grade. Her crossover appeal so far seems limited to crossover listeners from Rush Limbaugh to Sean Hannity.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/24521.html#ixzz0KOuI1kZU&C

Eric Allie, Caglecartoons.com

This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

When you’re busy not catching a single fish for dinner, the family will have to find other ways to feed themselves. To the left you will find another of my nephews, Riley by name, solving the problem in a new way. The kids are fond of the old smores treat, where you put chocolate and a freshly toasted marshmallow between two crackers and melt the whole thing down a bit. This is done regularly at our camp fire on the point. Somebody brought along a bag of massive, over-sized marshmallows and I made the mistake of opining that nobody could get a treat that size into their mouths. Never one to shrink from a challenge, the kid did his best. Thankfully, I’m not responsible for cleaning either him or his clothing.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

It’s madness for the service to discharge gay translators and the like. But the military leadership still seems to believe that the core of the policy must be preserved in order to maintain the effectiveness of combat units — politicians from both parties are unlikely to question that assessment.

Forgive the double entendre, but I wonder if the threat to unit cohesion is any different on the front lines than it is in the rear. The scenario often brought up with regard to gays in the military is “What if he’s looking at me in the shower?” No one I know asks, “What if he’s looking at me instead of firing back at those insurgents over there?” In that regard, the analogy to women doesn’t hold; there is a physical reason that women are restricted from serving in combat units (although when you’re fighting an insurgency, any unit can find itself in combat).

Leaving aside the logic, I’d be more than glad to support a repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” for non-combat units, if there’s a consensus behind that approach in the military. If gays can serve openly in non-combat units, I’m fairly confident that their service will earn them the right, in the not too distant future, to serve in combat units as well.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

The MSM has one standard for covering captured American journalists and another for captured American soliders.

The New York Times has one standard for covering the current president’s town-hall meetings and another standard for his predecessor’s “town hall” meetings.

But what you really wanted to know is that Gwyneth Paltrow has one standard for loving America and another for loving Europe.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly