Eideard

Slide Show: a photographer’s view of a city in transition.

It can’t be said often enough that we, the United States and our EU allies have treated the nation of Afghanistan as shamefully, again, as we did after the Afghan-Soviet War.

We jumped in. Pulled a smash-and-grab. Stuffed a few unfortunate locals in at the top and said, “Go ahead and govern, boys!” While we took our dollars and troops off to steal some oil down the road.

Let oil soar above $140 a barrel. Let layoffs and foreclosures proliferate like California’s fires. Let someone else worry about the stock market’s steepest June drop since the Great Depression. In our political culture, only one question mattered: What was Wesley Clark saying about John McCain and how loudly would every politician and bloviator in the land react..?

Unable to take another minute of this din, I did what any sensible person might do and fled to the movies. More specifically, to an animated movie in the middle of a weekday afternoon. What escape could be more complete..?

Indeed, sitting among rapt children mostly under 12, I felt as if I’d stepped through a looking glass. This movie seemed more realistically in touch with what troubles America this year than either the substance or the players of the political food fight beyond the multiplex’s walls.
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A man posing as a priest has been caught trying to hear confessions in St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, a judge in the city-state has said…

“He was caught by surprise in the basilica while he was trying to take his place in a confessional.

“He was wearing clerical garb, but the expert eye of our personnel didn’t need much to sense something strange in his behaviour.”

The documents and Vatican pass appeared legitimate but checks with Italian authorities “unmasked him”, Judge Marrone said, as having posed as a priest before in Italy.

He just loves the good life. Money, power, sex…

An NHS whistleblower, who revealed that nurses caught viewing child porn had been allowed to continue treating patients, claims ministers disregarded her warnings that the disciplinary panel charged with rooting out rogue staff was failing.

Moi Ali, who was on the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), which deals with complaints against nurses and midwives, said she had tried for four years to pursue concerns about child protection. She resigned from her post as vice-president of the council last week.

She said the council was riven by in-fighting, with up to eight members of staff pursuing internal grievances and thousands of pounds spent on lawyers. But when she attempted to warn ministers that the council was being dangerously distracted from its job of protecting the public, she was repeatedly told they could not intervene.

When an official inquiry into the regulator concluded last month that the council had ’serious weaknesses’ – including delays in responding to child abuse concerns – jeopardising its ability to protect patients, Ali believed she had been vindicated.

Instead, she found herself and the other two senior members of the committee pressured to resign by the junior health minister, Ben Bradshaw.

It never seems to matter which country or culture we’re discussing. Blowing the whistle on corruption and criminal behavior must be one of the most courageous decisions in Earth.

Inevitably, the affected bureacracy closes ranks and tries to stonewall any investigation. The whistleblower gets fired and blacklisted. The thugs whose sleazy behavior provoked the incident gets kicked upstairs or wrapped in a golden parachute.

Disgusting!

Justice Department lawyers and investigators have come under more scrutiny after the Sept. 11 attacks than at perhaps any time since Watergate…But the internal unit that polices the lawyers’ conduct has been operating under a growing shroud of secrecy, shutting down what were once regular, public disclosures about its activities…

Officials have declined to say whether even one government lawyer has been found to have engaged in professional misconduct in connection with the war on terrorism — despite often fierce criticism from civil liberties groups, defense lawyers and judges.

After President Bush took office in 2001, the Justice Department reversed a decade-old policy of publicly disclosing detailed summaries of OPR investigations of department lawyers found to have committed professional misconduct.

The OPR also has been far behind in producing required annual public reports summarizing its activities. Last month, it released its report covering fiscal year 2005. That means many investigations undertaken during the tenure of former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales remain under wraps.

Some legal experts say there is an impression that the Justice Department is hiding something.

How could you think such a thing about the chunk of our government concerned with justice?

I know. I know. How could you think any part of the Bush Administration is concerned with justice, legality or ethics?

Probably what John Warner drives forth-and-back to Congress

An influential Republican senator suggested Thursday that Congress might want to consider reimposing a national speed limit to save gasoline and possibly ease fuel prices.

Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia, asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to look into what speed limit would provide optimum gasoline efficiency given current technology. He said he wants to know if the administration might support efforts in Congress to require a lower speed limit.

Congress in 1974 set a national 55 mph speed limit because of energy shortages caused by the Arab oil embargo. The speed limit was repealed in 1995 when crude oil dipped to $17 a barrel and gasoline cost $1.10 a gallon.

Warner cited studies that showed the 55 mph speed limit saved 167,000 barrels of oil a day, or 2 percent of the country’s highway fuel consumption, while avoiding up to 4,000 traffic deaths a year.

“Given the significant increase in the number of vehicles on America’s highway system from 1974 to 2008, one could assume that the amount of fuel that could be conserved today is far greater,” Warner wrote Bodman.

The article ends with a stupid question to Energy Department flunkeys – with even a dumber answer that illustrates how the Energy Department actually is the “Butt-Kissers for the Oil Patch Boys” Department.

But, seriously, is someone bringing back the double nickels in an election year? I think not.

A man flying across Oregon in a lawn chair rigged with helium-filled balloons has reached his destination in Idaho…

A reporter tracking Kent Couch for the Oregonian newspaper says he landed safely near Cambridge, Idaho, on Saturday afternoon.

It was Couch’s third try at the journey.

Couch took off Saturday morning, riding a green lawn chair supported by a rainbow array of more than 150 helium-filled party balloons…

“If I had the time and money and people, I’d do this every weekend,” Couch said before getting into the chair. “Things just look different from up there. You’re moving so slowly. The best thing is the peace, the serenity.

“He’s crazy,” said his wife, Susan. “It’s never been a dull moment since I married him.”

I like the fact that he used Kool-Aid as ballast and a Red Ryder BB Gun to shoot out balloons to balance out lift. Good choices.