Crisis and Cure: Writing Both Political and Personal

As you know, I’ve been saying for quite some time that Afghanistan under the Taliban is a disaster, and is going to be more of a disaster in future. In fact, I’m afraid it is only a matter of time before the rest of the world gets drawn back into the country just to keep it from imploding. Well, now The New Yorker magazine has printed an article that shows just how awful things are already, and how much worse they’re going to be. Jane Ferguson’s piece, “Afghanistan Has Become the World’s Largest Humanitarian Crisis” goes into grim detail about the country and its problems. The most terrifying statistic? Maybe the fact that “more than twenty million Afghans are on the brink of famine.” Let’s hope that the world gets it act together on the Afghan issue, and soon. And, while we’re at it, let’s hope that the Taliban wake up to the fact that it has to act like a government rather than a murderous legion of suicide bombers.   No matter how much fun blowing yourself up might be. Source: “Afg

  Music is forbidden! Okay, this is probably small potatoes given all the other awful things the Taliban are doing in Afghanistan, but here’s a story that’s peeved me no end. After the Taliban took over that unfortunate country, they banned music.   That’s right. Music. Certain elements within some Islamic communities regard music as illicit. As a result, music and singing have been, in some places, and from time to time, banned in some Islamic countries.(1) The Taliban follow in this tradition.   And, in fact, the Talibani have followed up their victory in Afghanistan by banning music, beating up musicians, and burning precious musical instruments, some of them decades old and utterly irreplaceable.(2) Personally, I find this appalling. Maybe not as appalling as the fact that the Taliban is allowing children to starve (3), but appalling all the same.   But it does say a lot about certain kinds of humorless, joyless, and bloody-minded, theocratic regimes. I mean, think of the marvel of

  Good afternoon, Governor. This is old news, of course, but I’ll share the tale. It seems that the actress/singer Bette Midler said something mildly insulting about West Virginia after that state’s Senator (and major dingbat) Joe Manchin refused to support President Biden. That comes under the heading, of course, of “So what?” Celebrities are always saying something mildly insulting about somebody. That’s just S.O.P. But, then, West Virginia’s governor, Jim Justice, responded by showing his dog’s derrière during his State of the State address and suggesting that Ms. Midler could kiss it. Honestly, that wigs me out a bit. Sure, Midler was insulting, but she’s a private citizen. Justice is supposed to be the governor of an entire American state. He is supposed to be, you know, dignified and stuff like that. He’s not supposed to be displaying a canine’s anus to the whole wide world.   Oh, did I mention that Justice is a Republican? You probably guessed that already. What concerns me abou

Right now, children are dying of hunger.  So children are starving to death in Afghanistan. That’s it. That’s pretty much all there is to the story. If you want more on it, here’s an article on the topic on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Gandhara website: “Afghan Children Starving To Death As Hunger ‘Rapidly Spreading’,” by Abubakar Siddique, Gandhara, Jan 28, 2022. (1)   And why are they starving to death? Because the Taliban destroyed the former government, which was capable of feeding its own citizens, and replaced it with one that can’t. Also, the Taliban lack the resources to purchase, transport, or distribute food to the neediest of its people. Oh, and they may not be particularly interested in doing so. There is evidence that what food resources they do have tend to go to the Taliban’s own supporters rather than those who really need them. (2) What’s that you say? That the West, in general, and the United States, in particular, is really responsible for the problem because “w

  What The Q-cultists think about liberal men. Source is below. One of the Reddit groups I follow is Qult Headquarters. This is a sub-reddit for people who are trying to make sense of the QAnon movement, which seems to have begun as something of a joke, then morphed into a complex conspiracy theory, then turned into a cult, and is now well on its way to being some kind of religion.   Recently, one of the members posted the screenshot above, which had been taken from a the QAnon-supporting site. The screenshot interested me because it said a lot about how a certain class of Right-wing activists see their analogs on the Left—i.e., un-men, not masculine, probably homosexual, and certainly effeminate. On some level, that’s not surprising. Men of all sorts frequently resort to the same (admittedly sexist) vocabulary when they attempt to picture their rivals in an opposing camp. The other side is composed of “wimps” and “weaklings,” whereas they are themselves strong and manly. That said, th

 Just a reminder: Found on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CC9A1wYlnwc/

 This is an oldie but very much a goodie. And too true... Found on Instagram...

  Head on over to Xcargo ! Hi, Everyone, As you know, I maintain multiple blogs. There is this one, “Crisis and Cure,” and there is my private blog, a.k.a. “ explosive-cargo ,” which I maintain at my website here:   https://www.michaeljaytucker.com/blog And there are a couple more in other places. Well, quite frankly, I have found that I am a little overwhelmed. I have some real trouble keeping all these different blogs going, while I also do my little videos, and do other writing, and, well, you know, eat and sleep and whatever. So, I’m going to try to do a bit of consolidating. This blog is going to merge with my personal blog, Xcargo. I will continue to post here for a short while longer, but by 14 Feb (Valentine’s Day!) I will shift over mostly to https://www.michaeljaytucker.com/blog Don’t worry! I’ll still be doing political stuff and saying nasty things about the Former Guy, and QAnoners, and Moscow Mitch, and all the rest. I’ll just be doing it there rather than here. In other

  Onward and Upward! Hey, Everyone, Be sure to check back tomorrow. On Monday I’ll be announcing officially that I’m moving this blog to new and more spacious quarters. It will be at https://www.michaeljaytucker.com/blog More to come!

Hi, Everyone, Just a quick note. On Monday, I’ll be announcing that I’m moving this blog to new quarters. Be sure to come see me at https://www.michaeljaytucker.com/blog ~mjt

  He's The Problem I find myself writing a lot about Covid in Russia. That’s because there is a lot of Covid in Russia. According to a January 29, Associated Press article, the country is up to at least 110,000 new cases a day.* And it is probably much more than that because Moscow hasn’t exactly been forthcoming about the numbers of its people catching and/or dying of the disease. Why is the country having such high rates of infection? Mostly because Russians are highly resistant to getting vaccinated. They just don’t trust the shots — even though Russia was the first country off the mark with an effective Covid vaccine, Sputnik V. And why don’t they trust vaccines? Partly because Putin’s Russia has been engaging in a long-term, far reaching effort to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt (the fabulous FUD) about western vaccines . The trouble being that rumors have a way of coming back to get you. Russians have been hearing the same disinformation that everyone else has…and so… T

What sort of regime normalizes self-destruction? Hey, everyone! So, as you may recall, I wrote the other day about seeing a photo of a Talibani soldier “guarding” a demonstration…who seemed to have a suicide vest around his middle. I asked: a) how did the demonstrators feel about being “protected” by someone whose life’s calling seemed to be blowing himself up (and taking as many innocent bystanders with him as possible) and b) what kind of a regime would employ suicide bombers as guardians of law and order (answer, a very much f**ked up one). Well, I thought about that picture a bit and I wondered if maybe, just maybe, I’d overreacted and maybe (I hope) it wasn’t a suicide vest the man was wearing. Maybe it was just some kind of weird ammunition carrier or something.   So, to make certain, I emailed the author of the article in which the photo had appeared, specifically Ron Synovitz, who writes and edits for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Gandhara (i.e., Central Asian)   page. To m

  "Guarding" ...with a bomb stuck to his gut.  So here’s a tale of protectors…who are suicide bombers.   As you know, I am perhaps weirdly fixated on the Taliban and Afghanistan. I’m convinced that the new regime is so unstable that it is only a matter of time before things get very nasty, indeed. Worse, I think that the rest of the world will be very, very lucky not to get drawn into the mess that the Talibani are making. Well, here’s an update on that. And it involves a guy in an explosive vest. I was reading an interesting article on the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Gandhara site. That’s where the RE/RL folks post news and views on Central Asia in general and Afghanistan in particular. The piece in question was “Cash-Strapped Taliban Uses Foreign Aid Intended For Starving Afghans To Pay State Employees,” by Ron Synovitz.(1) The article was about how the Taliban has been quietly funneling foreign aid meant to feed Afghanistan’s starving population (and they are starving