My students and I read these 9 books this term to understand political polarization, and now I'm smarter. Thanks @chrishachen @tanehisicoates @monkeycageblog @just_shelter @cmMcConnaughy @b_schaffner and others. pic.twitter.com/aVnqA4BMmx
— Jennifer Victor (@jennifernvictor) December 8, 2017
Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren and DJ Yella caused a seismic shift in hip-hop when they form N.W.A in 1986. With its hard-core image, bombastic sound and lyrics that were equal parts poetic, lascivious, conscious and downright in-your-face, N.W.A spoke the truth about life on the streets of Compton, then a hotbed of poverty, drugs, gangs and unemployment. In “Parental Discretion Is Advised: The Rise of N.W.A and the Dawn of Gangsta Rap” (Atria: 288 pp., $26), Times music reporter Gerrick D. Kennedy traces the origins of the group that birthed the first major disruption of hip-hop during the genre’s infancy. Ice Cube once said, “Everything in the world came after this group.” In this exclusive excerpt, Kennedy details the brash arrival of N.W.A.More.
*****
OF THE MANY BIG BANGS that have transformed rap over the decades, N.W.A’s “Straight Outta Compton” is one of the loudest.
It was a sonic Molotov cocktail that ignited a firestorm when it debuted in the summer of 1988. Steered by Dr. Dre and DJ Yella’s dark production and Ice Cube and MC Ren’s striking rhymes, then brought to life by Eazy-E’s wicked charm, the record fused the bombastic sonics of Public Enemy’s production with vicious lyrics that were revolutionary or perverse, depending on whom you asked.
The world hadn’t heard anything like it before. Radio stations and MTV refused to add the title song to their playlists. Critics didn’t get it, couldn’t see past the language, or, worse, refused to acknowledge it as music. Politicians even launched attacks, working to great lengths to condemn the music and its creators.
N.W.A were to hip-hop what the Sex Pistols were to rock — and really, what’s more punk than having a name that dared to be spoken or written in full, and music that incensed a nation?
Red-faced and outraged Americans protested the group, police officers refused to provide security for its shows, and the FBI got involved, but that didn’t stop “Straight Outta Compton,” N.W.A’s debut album, from selling three million records without a radio single.
With “Straight Outta Compton,” N.W.A didn’t just manage to put its hood on the map, the group forced the world to pay attention to the rap sounds coming out of the West Coast. It’s an album that provided the soundtrack for agitated and restless black youth across America with its rough and raunchy tales of violent life in the inner city, expressed through razor-sharp lyrics.
“It was good music,” LA rap-radio pioneer Greg Mack said. “And the lyrics, they meant something.”
The emergence of N.W.A — who billed itself as the World’s Most Dangerous Group — in the late eighties provided a jolt to the rap industry. Public Enemy had already helped redefine the genre by ushering in aggressively pro-Black raps that were intelligent, socially aware and politically charged. But N.W.A opted for an angrier approach.
The group celebrated the hedonism and violence of gangs and drugs that turned neighborhoods into war zones, capturing it in brazen language soaked in explicitness. “Street reporters” is what they called themselves, and their dispatches were raw and unhinged — no matter how ugly the stories were.
Like the Beatles, N.W.A’s lineup was stacked with all-stars: Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and MC Ren would become platinum-selling solo rappers, while DJ Yella helped Dre break ground on a new sound in hip-hop.
They were the living embodiment of the streets where they were raised, and there was zero pretense about it. And when it came to subject matter, with N.W.A, politics took a backseat. Instead, frustrations about growing up young and black on the streets of South Central Los Angeles became the driving force behind their music.
Gangs, violence, poverty, and the ravishing eighties crack epidemic swept through black neighborhoods like F5 tornadoes. People were angry and restless, and without a flinch N.W.A documented its dark and grim realities like urban newsmen.
“Straight Outta Compton” was a flash point that spoke for a disenfranchised community and disrupted the order of those who were confronted with the voices and images of a community they’d much rather ignore. Black teens and young adults immersed in street life, yet looking for something to hold on to, flocked to the album. And so did white, suburban, middle-class teens who knew nothing about the “hood” or a life inside it, but looked to rap as an outlet for rebellion in the same way their parents gravitated toward the angsty countercultural attitudes percolating in rock music during the 1960s.
As unapologetically violent, misogynist, and problematic as their lyrics often were, the group’s harrowing depictions of urban nightmares provided a vital response to the growing disenfranchisement from the Reagan-era politics that had transformed the nation and created an economic catastrophe for metropolitan Los Angeles. N.W.A introduced an antihero. The way Melvin Van Peebles’s groundbreaking 1971 film “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” used America’s longstanding perception of black men as seething, violent hunks to politicize the image, N.W.A brought it to life by mixing reality with fantasy through its music — and the result was as terrifying as it was successful.
At its peak, Eazy’s Ruthless Records — a label he started strictly as a means to get off the streets — was the number-one independent label in the industry and the largest black-owned indie since Berry Gordy’s legendary Motown empire. Without Eazy laying down the foundation for hustlers-turned-record-executives, who knows if Death Row, Bad Boy, No Limit, or Cash Money could have existed. How would Jay-Z ever have known he could go from slinging crack cocaine to creating Roc-A- Fella had Eazy not done it less than a decade before?
The number of horses killed at a thoroughbred training facility during North County’s Lilac wildfire has risen to 46, a spokesman for the California Horse Racing Board said Saturday morning.Also at the Los Angeles Times, "At least 46 horses dead, others missing from thoroughbred facility after San Diego County wildfire":
A small number of additional horses remain unaccounted for after escaping from the facility, San Luis Rey Downs, in Bonsall, said the spokesman, Mike Marten.
The racing board previously put the number of horses killed at the facility at 35. The Lilac fire destroyed eight barns at the sprawling, 500-stall facility on Thursday.
Trainer Martine Bellocq also suffered second- and third-degree burns as she tried to rescue six horses from the facility. She was placed in a medically induced coma at UC San Diego Medical Center on Thursday.
Officials said about 360 surviving horses from San Luis Rey Downs were moved to the Del Mar Fairgrounds, and some 850 horses evacuated during the fires are stabled there.
A fundraiser for the San Luis Rey Downs horses on the website GoFundMe had raised nearly $478,000 as of Saturday afternoon.
Another 29 horses died at a Sylmar ranch overrun by the Creek fire Tuesday. There have also been reports of dead or missing horses and ponies from small farms and ranches throughout the region.
Santa Ana winds moved the fires so quickly and so unpredictably that those fleeing had only minutes to leave. In some cases, horse owners said they had to choose between saving themselves and their animals.
Some owners won't know the fate of their animals until evacuation orders are lifted and they can search their properties.
My entire @Sea_Legacy team was pushing through their tears and emotions while documenting this dying polar bear. It’s a soul-crushing scene that still haunts me, but I know we need to share both the beautiful and the heartbreaking if we are going to break down the walls of apathy. This is what starvation looks like. The muscles atrophy. No energy. It’s a slow, painful death. When scientists say polar bears will be extinct in the next 100 years, I think of the global population of 25,000 bears dying in this manner. There is no band aid solution. There was no saving this individual bear. People think that we can put platforms in the ocean or we can feed the odd starving bear. The simple truth is this—if the Earth continues to warm, we will lose bears and entire polar ecosystems. This large male bear was not old, and he certainly died within hours or days of this moment. But there are solutions. We must reduce our carbon footprint, eat the right food, stop cutting down our forests, and begin putting the Earth—our home—first. Please join us at @sea_legacy as we search for and implement solutions for the oceans and the animals that rely on them—including us humans. Thank you your support in keeping my @sea_legacy team in the field.
In this provocative book, renowned public intellectual Ivan Krastev reflects on the future of the European Union—and its potential lack of a future. With far-right nationalist parties on the rise across the continent and the United Kingdom planning for Brexit, the European Union is in disarray and plagued by doubts as never before. Krastev includes chapters devoted to Europe's major problems (especially the political destabilization sparked by the more than 1.3 million migrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia), the spread of right-wing populism (taking into account the election of Donald Trump in the United States), and the thorny issues facing member states on the eastern flank of the EU (including the threat posed by Vladimir Putin's Russia). He concludes by reflecting on the ominous political, economic, and geopolitical future that would await the continent if the Union itself begins to disintegrate.
Los Angeles officials have debated for decades how best to provide for one of the most basic needs of homeless people.At the photo at the piece, "Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti tours the new Skid Row Community ReFresh Spot hygiene center."
For those camped in the 50-block skid row district, the streets have been an open-air restroom — with only nine toilets available overnight in recent months to as many as 1,800 people camped on sidewalks.
Over the years, the city would install bathrooms and then haul them away after they were commandeered for drug use and prostitution. Some in downtown also worried the restrooms would give a permanence to the homeless camps, and argued that in the lawless atmosphere of skid row, people would not use them.
But with homelessness at crisis proportions, the first new public toilets on skid row in more than a decade opened Monday.
The action represents a new consensus among many downtown interests about how to provide the essential service on skid row. The restrooms also are expected to help in the fight against a statewide hepatitis A outbreak spread by poor hygiene in homeless camps that has killed more than a dozen people in San Diego.
The Los Angeles facilities will be decidedly different from those in the past, both aesthetically and culturally.
A key will be having full-time attendants, whom activists are calling "ambassadors," to monitor the restrooms and make people feel welcome. Homeless advocates also hope to have a snack stand and a bench for resting and chatting with friends, as well as provide feminine hygiene products, which are in short supply on skid row.
The new approach comes as the border between skid row and the rest of downtown is shifting. High-end development is rising at skid row's doorstep, and the tent cities that once were largely limited to skid row are spreading to other parts of the city.
"In other places, the bathrooms might be seen as something that's going to attract certain behaviors or people," said Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council director Nate Cormier, a South Park resident. "We have so many people under those conditions, we're all looking any way we can to turn the tide and deal with the crisis."
The latest $450,000 facility is modest — eight toilets and six showers, operating four days a week, in a trailer on a city-owned parking lot sandwiched between two homeless housing and service agencies. In addition to attendants, the toilets will be monitored by a maintenance crew and security, which organizers hope will forestall the problems that so long soured skid row bathroom politics.
A January expansion will increase the number of showers and toilets and add laundry facilities, officials said.
At the formal opening Monday morning, Mayor Eric Garcetti underlined the community’s role in the project.
"It is for decades that this community has cried out for the need for public restrooms," Garcetti said at the event, which featured a bongo and guitar trio and a dozen other city and county officials. "We know here that this is one step, but it is a critical step."
The celebratory atmosphere was broken when a skid row activist who worked on the project tore up the city certificate of appreciation that Garcetti had handed him.
"It's 10 years late and three times short," General Dogon, a member of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, an anti-poverty group, said as television cameras rolled. "This ain't nothing to what we laid out and what we need."
#SkirballFire It’s eerie driving on the 405 near the Getty Center. There are charred hillsides, white smoke and almost no traffic.
— Elex Michaelson (@elex_michaelson) December 6, 2017
Much like the weekend of #Carmageddon, it appears people are avoiding the westside altogether. pic.twitter.com/yIcPxKZasa
Rita Ora is the busy little bootylicious bee of the 2017 LOVE Advent line-up. Directed by Rankin, the British singer is the latest star to be revealed for the sexy festive tradition. Ora’s sultry performance is set to her latest single, Anywhere, with the GIF-style film setting pulses racing.
“If you are a white farmer / former farmer in #SA and would be prepared to share your truths face to face - katie@katiehopkins.co.uk Jan 2018 … Thank you. I am hoping to inspire ‘real journalists’ to get off their sofa / WiFi to search for the stories that matter” she Tweeted. So what are these “stories that matter”?She also engaged the Economic Freedom Fighters, and I checked them out. They're freakin' hardcore, man. From their "about" page":
Remembering Frantz Fanon who died on this day in 1961 #ForwardToDecolonization pic.twitter.com/I5Ml74OyMr
— EFF (@EFFSouthAfrica) December 6, 2017
1. The ECONOMIC FREEDOM FIGHTERS is a radical and militant economic emancipation movement that brings together revolutionary, fearless, radical, and militant activists, workers’ movements, nongovernmental organisations, community-based organisations and lobby groups under the umbrella of pursuing the struggle for economic emancipation.
2. The EFF is a radical, leftist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movement with an internationalist outlook anchored by popular grassroots formations and struggles. The EFF will be the vanguard of community and workers’ struggles and will always be on the side of the people. The EFF will, with determination and consistency, associate with the protest movement in South Africa and will also join in struggles that defy unjust laws.
3. The EFF takes lessons from the notation that “political power without economic emancipation is meaningless”. The movement is inspired by ideals that promote the practice of organic forms of political leadership, which appreciate that political leadership at whatever level is service, not an opportunity for self-enrichment and self-gratification.
4. The EFF draws inspiration from the broad Marxist-Leninist tradition and Fanonian schools of thought in their analyses of the state, imperialism, culture and class contradictions in every society. Through organic engagement and a constant relationship with the masses, Economic Freedom Fighters provide clear and cogent alternatives to the current neo-colonial economic system, which in many countries keep the oppressed under colonial domination and subject to imperialist exploitation.
5. The EFF is a South African movement with a progressive internationalist outlook, which seeks to engage with global progressive movements. We believe that the best contribution we can make in the international struggle against global imperialism is to rid our country of imperialist domination. For the South African struggle, the EFF pillars for economic emancipation are the following:
a. Expropriation of South Africa’s land without compensation for equal redistribution in use.
b. Nationalisation of mines, banks, and other strategic sectors of the economy,
without compensation.
c. Building state and government capacity, which will lead to the abolishment of
tenders.
d. Free quality education, healthcare, houses, and sanitation.
e. Massive protected industrial development to create millions of sustainable jobs,
including the introduction of minimum wages in order to close the wage gap
between the rich and the poor, close the apartheid wage gap and promote rapid
career paths for Africans in the workplace.
f. Massive development of the African economy and advocating for a move from
reconciliation to justice in the entire continent.
g. Open, accountable, corrupt-free government and society without fear of
victimisation by state agencies.
6. The EFF appreciates the role played by the fathers and mothers of South Africa’s liberation movement. The EFF draws inspiration from the radical, working class interpretation of the Freedom Charter, because, since its adoption in 1955, there have been various meanings given to the Freedom Charter. The EFF’s interpretation of the Freedom Charter is one which says South Africa indeed belongs to all who live in it, and ownership of South Africa’s economic resources and access to opportunities should reflect that indeed South Africa belongs to all who live in it. The EFF’s interpretation of the Freedom Charter is that which says the transfer of mineral wealth beneath the soil, monopoly industries and banks means nationalisation of mines, banks and monopoly industries.
7. The EFF’s interpretation of the Freedom Charter also accepts that while the state is in command and in control of the commanding heights of South Africa’s economy, “people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions”, meaning that there will never be wholesale nationalisation and state control of every sector of South Africa’s economy. Nationalisation of strategic sectors and assets will be blended with a strong industrial policy to support social and economic development.
8. Economic Freedom Fighters will contest political power, because we are guided by the firm belief that we need political power in order to capture the state and then transform the economy for the emancipation of black South Africans, especially Africans. The forms in which the EFF contests political power will, from time to time, be reviewed in the light of prevailing circumstances, but the primary role of mass organisation and activism, as a means to raise the political consciousness of the people, will remain the bedrock of our political practice.
9. Therefore, the EFF will be involved in mass movements and community protests that seek the betterment of people’s lives. The EFF will also associate with movements that demand land through land occupation, aimed at making the message clear that our people do need land. The EFF will support all trade unions and workers that stand up in demand of better working conditions and salaries wherever and whenever they do so. The EFF will not be bound by narrow alliance loyalties that compromise the interests of workers just because they are in a different trade union. Our pursuit of the basic demands of the Freedom Charter is above forms of organisation that the working class, and indeed black people, may fashion in the course of struggles. In other words, alliances and other forms of organisation are relevant to the extent that they maximise our march towards realising the vision outlined in the Freedom Charter.
10. The EFF is guided by revolutionary internationalism and solidarity that defined the politics of the July 26 Movement, which led the Cuban Revolutionary struggles. We will partake in international struggles that seek to emancipate the economically unliberated people of Africa and the world. We will form part of the progressive movements in the world that stand against continued imperialist domination.
Aims and Objectives:
To establish and sustain a society that cherishes revolutionary cultural values and to create conditions for total political and economic emancipation, prosperity and equitable distribution of wealth of the nation.
To attain and defend the National Integrity and Liberation of the oppressed black majority of South Africa.
To participate in the worldwide struggle for the complete eradication of imperialism, colonialism, racism and all other forms of discrimination.
To participate in, support and promote all struggles for the attainment of the complete independence and unity of African states and by extension, the African continent.
To oppose resolutely, tribalism, regionalism, religious and cultural intolerance.
To oppose oppression of women and the oppression of all other gendered persons.
To oppose patriarchy, sexism, and homophobia and any cultural or religious practices that promotes the oppression of anyone, women in particular.
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 8, 2017
Holiday gift guide https://t.co/o0atK2lX6q pic.twitter.com/nrVDsOXbcM
— O.C. Register (@ocregister) December 8, 2017
TWITTER- @AugustAmesxxx ❤— AugustAmesFan™ (@AugustAmesFan) December 4, 2017
INSTAGRAM- https://t.co/UB42y0wW9q ❤
ONLYFANS- https://t.co/CpeVxiWNnI ❤
WISHLIST- https://t.co/Qj9lsCzcnV ❤ pic.twitter.com/9FLF3XehkW
August Ames was a porn star who said she would not have sex on camera with a guy who had done gay porn. Apprently the "tolerance brigade" of gay porn starns litterally hounded her until she really did kill herself
— Kinda Bored & Why Am I Wasting Time Here? (@lamblock) December 8, 2017
The Gaystapo drove August Ames to suicide because she wouldn’t work with a crossover actor in a state where it’s no longer illegal to knowingly infect someone with AIDS.
— Craigé Schmuckatelli (@CraigR3521) December 8, 2017
For a while now, the joke has been that political correctness is moving so swiftly that not only will you have to approve of gay sex, it will become mandatory. I don’t mean this as an unfortunately literal bit of gallows humor, but Ames’ death does raise eyebrows because it speaks to a frightening dystopia where any traditional deference to female vulnerability becomes subservient to liberal pieties about sexuality.RTWT.
The day Ames killed herself, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about a case involving a Colorado cake baker who doesn’t want to make cakes for gay weddings. The baker, quite understandably and credibly, insists there’s a rather large expressive and artistic component to his vocation, so he shouldn’t be forced to endorse any particular message or religious ceremony he disagrees with. The counterargument is that it’s just a cake, and as long as you’re open for business, you have to serve anyone without discrimination.
Well, I’m scratching my head trying to figure out how Ames’s detractors weren’t extending the exact same logic of “public accommodation” to her. After all, she’s open for business, if you want to call it that. Wouldn’t it be discrimination to exclude working with an entire class of people?
Pearl Jam
Alive
9:17 AM
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
American Girl
9:16 AM
Capital Cities
Safe And Sound
12/06/17
9:13 AM
Pink Floyd
Another Brick In The Wall
9:10 AM
Berlin
The Metro
9:06 AM
AC/DC
Dirty Deeds
8:54 AM
Third Eye Blind
Semi-Charmed Life
8:49 AM
David Bowie
China Girl
8:45 AM
Elton John
Rocket Man
8:40 AM
Kings Of Leon
Use Somebody
8:37 AM
ZZ Top
Sharp Dressed Man
8:32 AM
Dead Or Alive
You Spin Me Round
8:22 AM
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Dani California
8:17 AM
Fleetwood Mac
Say You Love Me
8:13 AM
REO Speedwagon
Keep On Loving You
8:06 AM
New Order
Bizarre Love Triangle
8:03 AM
“Women have had it with bosses and coworkers who not only cross boundaries but don’t even seem to know that boundaries exist,” Time magazine writes. “These silence breakers have started a revolution of refusal, gathering strength by the day.” pic.twitter.com/NUr6wo50ZR
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) December 6, 2017
End of Apartheid in South Africa? Not in Economic Terms. This a powerful @NYTimes read ... https://t.co/jyNPeqaTYT
— Jason Burke (@burke_jason) November 15, 2017
CROSSROADS, South Africa — The end of apartheid was supposed to be a beginning.Still more.
Judith Sikade envisioned escaping the townships, where the government had forced black people to live. She aimed to find work in Cape Town, trading her shack for a home with modern conveniences.
More than two decades later, Ms. Sikade, 69, lives on the garbage-strewn dirt of Crossroads township, where thousands of black families have used splintered boards and metal sheets to construct airless hovels for lack of anywhere else to live.
“I’ve gone from a shack to a shack,” Ms. Sikade says. “I’m fighting for everything I have. You still are living in apartheid.”
In the history of civil rights, South Africa lays claim to a momentous achievement — the demolition of apartheid and the construction of a democracy. But for black South Africans, who account for three-fourths of this nation of roughly 55 million people, political liberation has yet to translate into broad material gains.
Apartheid has essentially persisted in economic form.
This reality is palpable as turmoil now seizes South Africa. Enraged protesters demand the ouster of President Jacob Zuma over disclosures of corruption so high-level that it is often described as state capture, with private interests having effectively purchased the power to divert state resources in their direction. The economy keels in recession, worsening an official unemployment rate reaching nearly 28 percent.
Underlying the anger are deep-seated disparities in wealth. In the aftermath of apartheid, the government left land and other assets largely in the hands of a predominantly white elite. The government’s resistance to large-scale land transfers reflected its reluctance to rattle international investors.
Today, millions of black South Africans are chronically short of capital needed to start businesses. Less than half of the working age population is officially employed.
The governing party, the African National Congress, built empires of new housing for black South Africans, but concentrated it in the townships, reinforcing the geographic strictures of apartheid. Large swaths of the black population remain hunkered down in squalor, on land they do not legally own. Those with jobs often endure commutes of an hour or more on private minibuses that extract outsize slices of their paychecks.
“We never dismantled apartheid,” said Ayabonga Cawe, a former economist for Oxfam, the international anti-poverty organization, and now the host of a radio show that explores national affairs. “The patterns of enrichment and impoverishment are still the same.”
South Africa began the post-apartheid era facing challenges as formidable as those confronted by Europe at the end of World War II, or the Soviet Union after communism. It had to re-engineer an economy dominated by mining and expand into modern pursuits like tourism and agriculture, while overcoming a legacy of colonial exploitation, racial oppression and global isolation — the results of decades of international sanctions.
“It’s a very deep structural problem,” said Ian Goldin, who served as a senior economic adviser to Nelson Mandela when he was president of South Africa, and is now a professor of globalization at the University of Oxford in Britain. “The Russians had capitalism before the Soviet Union. Africans lost their rights 300 years ago. It’s a much longer period of subjugation.”
Even so, from 1998 to 2008, the economy expanded by roughly 3.5 percent a year, doubling the size of the black middle class. The government built millions of homes, extended the reach of clean water and electricity, and handed out cash grants to millions of poor people.
But the global financial crisis of 2008 ravaged South Africa, destroying demand for the mineral deposits at the center of its economy. It wiped out half of the roughly two million new jobs that had been created in the previous four years.
Today, South Africa is a land of astonishing contrasts.
In the Sea Point neighborhood of Cape Town, a sweep of apartments and restaurants alongside the Atlantic Ocean, women gather on the beach for an evening yoga class — some black, some white, some Asian. Children of multiple races scamper through a playground, a scene unthinkable during apartheid.
High above the city, atop the ridgeline at Table Mountain, American exchange students recount a sky diving experience while pointing smartphones at the orange sun arcing toward the ocean.
To the east, the parched land vibrates in the golden light. Judith Sikade’s tin roof is down there somewhere, reflecting the last rays of the sun.
In her community, people are cooking over coal fires and breathing in fumes. Children run barefoot on paths littered with broken glass. Grown-ups exchange word of the latest armed robbery.
All the while, they keep an eye out for the police, who frequently descend bearing sledgehammers to tear down the shacks, given that they sit on private land.
“Where’s the freedom?” Ms. Sikade said, anger rising in her voice. “Where are the changes?”
Having retired from my lawprof job, I experience weekends as the time when the people with structured jobs flow into activities that the nonstructured among us can do all the time. That affects me slightly. My job was already relatively unstructured, except for class times and the occasional meeting, so I was already experiencing the joy of the unstructured life (especially in the summertime). And when you let go of your structured employment, you will employ yourself doing something. In my case, I was and continue to be strongly structured to write this blog every morning, but the nonstructured thing about it is ending the process — breaking the trance. I don't have to break the trance because a structured task is approaching. I love that! I was pretty sure I would love that, and I chose to retire from my lawprof job so I could jump fully into the nonstructured life. Looking back on the year, I'm thoroughly happy about where I have landed...Keep reading.
U.S. airstrikes rise sharply in Afghanistan — and so do civilian deaths https://t.co/NXnAQsCfLP pic.twitter.com/Qpg2OgzVcv— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 4, 2017
As U.S. warplanes flew above a cluster of villages where Islamic State militants were holed up in eastern Afghanistan, 11 people piled into a truck and drove off along an empty dirt track to escape what they feared was imminent bombing.
They did not get far.
An explosion blasted the white Suzuki truck off the road, opening a large crater in the earth and flipping the vehicle on its side in a ditch. A teenage girl survived. The 10 dead included three children, one an infant in his mother’s arms.
The lone survivor of the Aug. 10 blast in Nangarhar province, and Afghan officials who visited the site, said the truck was hit by an American airstrike shortly before 5 p.m. Relatives expressed horror that U.S. ground forces and surveillance aircraft could have mistaken the passengers, who included women and children riding in the open truck bed — in daylight with no buildings or other vehicles around — for Islamic State fighters.
“How could they not see there were women and children in the truck?” said Zafar Khan, 23, who lost six family members, including his mother and three siblings, in the blast.
In a statement after the incident, the U.S. military acknowledged carrying out a strike but said it killed militants who “were observed loading weapons into a vehicle” and “there was zero chance of civilian casualties.”
Pockets of Nangarhar remain inaccessible to outsiders because of fighting, making it impossible to independently determine the cause of the fatal explosion. What is not in question is that in the 17th year of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, American airstrikes are escalating again, along with civilian casualties.
Operating under looser restrictions on air power that commanders hope will break a stalemate in the war, U.S. fighter planes this year dropped 3,554 explosives in Afghanistan through Oct. 31, the most since 2012.
American officials say the firepower has curtailed the growth of Islamic State’s South Asia affiliate — known as ISIS-Khorasan, which they believe numbers about 900 fighters, most of them in Nangarhar — and enabled struggling government forces to regain ground against Taliban insurgents in other provinces, such as Helmand, where a Marine-led task force has helped coordinate a months-long offensive.
But innocent Afghans are asking: At what cost?
The United Nations mission in Afghanistan documented 205 civilian deaths and 261 injuries from airstrikes in the first nine months this year, a 52% increase in casualties compared with the same period in 2016. Although both U.S. and Afghan forces conduct aerial attacks, preliminary data indicate that American strikes have been more lethal for civilians.
In the first six months of 2017, the U.N. said, 54 civilians died in international air operations, compared with 29 in Afghan strikes. Twelve additional deaths could not be attributed to either force, the U.N. found.
In the case of the blast in Nangarhar province in August, U.S. officials have continued to assert that the American airstrike that day struck only militants. But they have since offered an alternative explanation for the civilian deaths. Responding to questions from The Times, coalition officials said that a passenger vehicle — presumably the Suzuki truck — hit a roadside bomb planted by Islamic State militants slightly more than a mile from where the airstrike killed the militants. It was the roadside bomb that resulted “in multiple enemy-caused civilian casualties,” said Navy Capt. Tom Gresback, a spokesman for coalition forces in Kabul.
Afghans vigorously dispute that account. The district police chief, Hamidullah Sadaqat, said there was only one deadly explosion in the area that afternoon. Rozina, the 17-year-old survivor, said her memory was clear...
When will the politicians who support open borders be held accountable for their policies? Kate Steinle would still be alive today if it wasn't for San Francisco's sanctuary city policy. h/t @michellemalkin @seanhannity pic.twitter.com/nJFKnTfJtw
— Nick Short 🇺🇸 (@PoliticalShort) December 1, 2017
Goats can change everything.
Their milk provides great protein to help children grow. The family can also sell any extra to earn money for medicines and other necessities.
A healthy dairy goat can give up to 16 cups of milk a day. Goat’s milk is easier to digest than cow’s milk and is an excellent source of calcium, protein, and other essential nutrients that growing children need. Goats are practical animals — flourishing in harsh climates while producing valuable manure to fertilize crops and vegetable gardens...
My lecture against squeezing out free speech from colleges got me smeared. The students who smeared me got a safe space complete with coloring books and markers.(More at Legal Insurrection.)
See u in two!!!! pic.twitter.com/3Ct1fjNt3d— Courtney Friel (@courtneyfriel) December 2, 2017
ABC News faces criticism after correcting bombshell Flynn-Trump report https://t.co/iW0t98jW4i pic.twitter.com/GMglUAREzW
— The Hill (@thehill) December 2, 2017
Yeah, that’s a big *correction,* not a clarification. Flynn erred for lying about it, not for making inroads during transition like literally every other admin prior, including Obama admin. https://t.co/WvVtmXB2dI— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) December 2, 2017
— RamTrucks (@RamTrucks) December 2, 2017
— RamTrucks (@RamTrucks) November 30, 2017
— RamTrucks (@RamTrucks) November 28, 2017
Conservatives let SF have it over verdict in #KateSteinle case. https://t.co/EvRLHAtuza via @jfwildermuth @rachelswan pic.twitter.com/Oui2YaabSz
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) December 1, 2017
#BREAKING: #KateSteinle trial verdict: Jose Ines Garcia Zarate acquitted of murder and manslaughter in killing at Pier 14 in S.F. https://t.co/j88ocGJ6Ll pic.twitter.com/5eI2tG8FtD
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) December 1, 2017
Chronicle editorial: Justice not served in trial of Kate Steinle's killer https://t.co/71K643dlgK pic.twitter.com/6GP1HhrDdH
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) December 1, 2017
INFURIATING: Illegal alien acquitted of murder, manslaughter in shooting death of Kate Steinle https://t.co/c0vmbaZr7P
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) December 1, 2017
Awful: Dan Bongino lays out MADDENING 'mockery of justice' timeline in Kate Steinle death https://t.co/gfxdmLluPT
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) December 1, 2017
BOOMAGE --> Guy Benson ZINGS California over #KateSteinle verdict and it's PERFECT https://t.co/iYEZ2UmBNN
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) December 1, 2017
'Damning indictment'! Michelle Malkin NUKES Pelosi & open borders pols after Kate Steinle verdict https://t.co/yKMnzoWQa8
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) December 1, 2017
I've talked to several people who say Rep. John Conyers is super stressed out and this is taking a toll on him. Now, Mr. Conyers is in the hospital while still maintaining that he did nothing wrong. https://t.co/P0xYdw4Zdm
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) November 30, 2017
NEW: Longtime Rep. John Conyers has been hospitalized for stress-related illness, his spokesperson says. Conyers has faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, and recently stepped aside as ranking member of House Judiciary Committee. pic.twitter.com/sDxNONyjnD
— ABC News (@ABC) November 30, 2017
NEW: Longtime Rep. John Conyers has been hospitalized for stress-related illness, his spokesperson says. Conyers has faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, and recently stepped aside as ranking member of House Judiciary Committee. pic.twitter.com/sDxNONyjnD
— ABC News (@ABC) November 30, 2017
Walmart just pulled a T-shirt that said: ‘‘Rope. Tree. Journalist. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.’’ pic.twitter.com/WPPHFfNlBu
— Marie Connor (@thistallawkgirl) November 30, 2017
"Rope. Tree. Journalist. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED." T-shirt has been removed from @Walmart's website at RTDNA's urging. https://t.co/lA8FGCUnHt pic.twitter.com/qnDiVGIwTN
— RTDNA (@RTDNA) November 30, 2017
