What’s really going on in Afghanistan?

This paragraph from a detailed story about an American soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who is now a prisoner of war, reminds me that based on the mainstream media, Americans know next to nothing about whether the United States is accomplishing anything worthwhile in Afghanistan. The author of this story is Michael Hastings, and he does excellent work for Rolling Stone:

Bowe wrote about his broader disgust with America's approach to the war – an effort, on the ground, that seemed to represent the exact opposite of the kind of concerted campaign to win the "hearts and minds" of average Afghans envisioned by counterinsurgency strategists. "I am sorry for everything here," Bowe told his parents. "These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live." He then referred to what his parents believe may have been a formative, possibly traumatic event: seeing an Afghan child run over by an MRAP. "We don't even care when we hear each other talk about running their children down in the dirt streets with our armored trucks... We make fun of them in front of their faces, and laugh at them for not understanding we are insulting them."
Hastings offers us an insider's experience of a soldier's life in Afghanistan, a deserter, and there's nothing to like about any of it. This article gives us many perspectives of the insanity that prevails in Afghanistan. It starts with an account of the types of deception offered by the military to entice young adults to join.

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Growing income disparity and its consequences

Joseph Stiglitz has some shocking numbers:

Nowadays, these numbers show that the American dream is a myth. There is less equality of opportunity in the United States today than there is in Europe – or, indeed, in any advanced industrial country for which there are data. This is one of the reasons that America has the highest level of inequality of any of the advanced countries – and its gap with the rest has been widening. In the “recovery” of 2009-2010, the top 1% of US income earners captured 93% of the income growth. Other inequality indicators – like wealth, health, and life expectancy – are as bad or even worse. The clear trend is one of concentration of income and wealth at the top, the hollowing out of the middle, and increasing poverty at the bottom.
This is troubling, but not merely for a sense of mathematical equality or even gut level justice. This is bad news because income disparity hurts people in predictable and demonstrable ways.

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Congress votes to keep you in the dark regarding the funding behind political ads

Dear Erich, With their bottomless reserve of lobbyists and money, broadcasters are betting they can muscle their way into Congress and reverse a victory that tens of thousands of us fought hard to win.  And their bet has just paid off. A House Appropriations Subcommittee slipped a provision into the draft budget that strips the FCC of the ability to disclose political ad spending on TV stations. Moments ago that subcommittee voted to pass it! We need your help right now to stop Congress from selling out our democracy: Demand Your Right to Know. Don't Let Congress Kill Transparency. In April, the FCC adopted new rules that require broadcasters to make their political advertising files available online. The decision was an enormous victory for anyone hoping to shed light on the shadowy groups and Super PACs that are inundating local airwaves with misleading political ads.1 Yet as with any hard-won reform in the age of big-money politics, this change is being attacked by unscrupulous members of Congress who answer to fat-cat media lobbyists. The National Association of Broadcasters paid lobbyists nearly $14 million in 2011. And it's spending millions more this year on campaign contributions to Congress. But that's a drop in the bucket compared to over $3 billion in political ad revenues that television stations stand to rake in this election cycle. It's clear that the broadcast industry is pulling out all the stops to bury information about political ad spending on the public airwaves. What's more appalling is that some elected officials are willing to help them do it. Please sign this letter to your members of Congress to demand that they serve the public and not media lobbyists. In the post-Citizens United era, we can't let broadcasters hide their political profits. With the help of you and your friends we can kill this before it reaches the Senate. Thanks for taking action, Tim, Candace and the rest of the Free Press Action Fund team P.S. Last month's victory against commercial broadcasters was a milestone in the fight for accountable media. We defied every ounce of conventional wisdom in Washington by proving that activists, bloggers, consumer advocates and everyday people can join forces with Free Press to defeat a corporate agenda. Help us protect that victory. Contribute to the Free Press Action Fund now. Thank you! 1. Timothy Karr, "Reform in the Age of Corporate Lawyers," Huffington Post, June 6, 2012.

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Trying to fit big trees into a photograph

My 11-year old daughter and I are on vacation in the San Francisco area. Today we visited Muir Woods, an enchanted grove of coastal redwood trees less than an hour north of San Francisco. Thank you, Teddy Roosevelt, for saving this natural treasure. Today, I worked hard to try to capture the immensity of these trees in a photo. Here's the best I could do:

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