Daily Archives: 10/19/2009

(Community Matters) hmm, the US Chamber of Commerce opposing healthcare reform? you gotta be kidding me. No wonder Apple, Nike, Target and others expressing concern and/or resigning.

(Community Matters) I’d missed these Advocate profiles of gays and lesbians in high profile positions with the Obama administration.

John Berry
Brian Bond
Michael Camunez
Fred Hochberg
Brad Kiley
Mike Perriello
Nancy Sutley

(Community Matters) First hand account by NYTimes reporter held captive by the Taliban for 7 months, 10 days. Fascinating and a total must read to gain such an inside perspective.

excerpts:

Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become. Before the kidnapping, I viewed the organization as a form of “Al Qaeda lite,” a religiously motivated movement primarily focused on controlling Afghanistan.

Living side by side with the Haqqanis’ followers, I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban was far more ambitious. Contact with foreign militants in the tribal areas appeared to have deeply affected many young Taliban fighters. They wanted to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world.

The Taliban government that had supposedly been eliminated by the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was alive and thriving.

And I found the tribal areas — widely perceived as impoverished and isolated — to have superior roads, electricity and infrastructure compared with what exists in much of Afghanistan. (continued here)

(Community Matters) Barack Obama as a writer.

(Community Matters) US Senator David Vitter (R-LA) dodging reporters & refusing to denounce Republican Justice of the Peace, Keith Bardwell, who won’t issue marriage licenses to interracial couples. Republican Governor Bobby Jindal and US Senator Mary Landrieu have denounced Judge Bardwell, but not the Republican US Senator from his state.