Hammer Mill Days

Well, great day in the morning... I was wondering where I left that freaking thing. Who might have thought it would turn up in the rock garden? What's next, eh? (Well, the next thing you know, old Jed's a millionaire...) I don't have to tell you - when you start packing your bags for an extended trip beyond the bounds of our solar system, that is when things start turning up... things you haven't seen for months, maybe years. Just yesterday I found a pair of sneakers I'd misplaced during last year's election. The day before that, Matt stumbled across the remains of his first kazoo (the one he'd used to record the theme from our never-completed sci-fi epic, "Destination: Space"). John has been turning up all sorts of remnants of past lives, such as an ancient banjo labeled simply "The Gibson". And I'd rather not get into what Mitch Macaphee has been dragging out of the depths of his makeshift studio in the old forge room of the Cheney ...

While most of the media focuses on health reform efforts in Washington, there's a lot going on in the area of global empire maintenance, now the responsibility of Mssr. Barack H. Obama, Esq. There are, of course, the ongoing wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan, with much of the attention focused on the U.S. soldier captured by an Afghan Taliban group. I did hear other news of the Afghan conflict this week - the Physicians for Human Rights call for a formal investigation into the 2002 Dasht-e-Leili massacre perpetrated by Afghan warlord (and soon to be military chief) General Dostum. This killing of hundreds - probably more than a thousand - Afghan prisoners of war was reported on shortly after it took place. The Bush defense department actively squelched any inquiry, even though FBI agents sent to Guantanamo had collected testimony from survivors of the massacre and felt an investigation into a possible U.S. role may have been warranted. Technically, as the occupying power, we...