Get Out of Afghanistan NOW

The dead:

Mohamed Dawood son of Abdullah
Khudaydad son of Mohamed Juma
Nazar Mohamed
Payendo
Robeena
Shatarina daughter of Sultan Mohamed
Zahra daughter of Abdul Hamid
Nazia daughter of Dost Mohamed
Masooma daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Farida daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Palwasha daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Nabia daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Esmatullah daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Faizullah son of Mohamed Wazir
Essa Mohamed son of Mohamed Hussain
Akhtar Mohamed son of Murrad Ali

These human beings, most of them children, some of them under six years of age, are dead. They were murdered by Sergeant Bales, who's own life had fallen apart. He had lost his house, he was sent to Afghanistan, rather than made a recruiter, after three tours in Iraq. He was never diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder.

No, he was just a killing machine for the Pentagon. He was sent to kill, and that he did. Now these average ordinary human beings in a foreign country are dead. Who's responsible for this? We all are. Every last one of us. We don't pay enough in taxes to support the wars that our leaders drag us into. After visiting retribution on Osama bin Laden, we should simply have gotten out of that country. Karzai is a crook and we keep him in power with our killing machines, the robot boys we have made of ordinary americans, now drugged with despair and the thrill of murder. Wow.

These were people, mainly little girls. Little girls. That's what this war has come to.

Out now. Today.

Tell the President, and tell Mitt Romney and Santorum and John McCain and all those old farts, OUT NOW.

And may the Lady's mercy be visited on the souls of these newly gone from the physical world. We love you, like the Israelis love the Iranians and like the Iranians love the Israelis. Most of us are just fine with most of you. It is the leaders and the money men and the power freaks and the hyper religious that drag most of us down the hill and over the cliff to this death and destruction.

So, Bales went mad. Put him out of his misery. Hang him, like they would've even fifty years ago. It would be a mercy.

I Speak for the Trees

The end of another strange time. What really happened to winter this year? It was milder than I can ever remember. There was a bit of snow, but nothing too serious. And it melted and went away. Now here we are, well into March, and it is 80 degrees today, and every day. What is going on? I know climate data is all over the place, but surely there are aspects of global warming to this trend. Meanwhile, Europe had one of the most severe winters they have ever had. Is there something desperate going on in the ocean's currents? Are we going to be okay?

Meanwhile there were more earthquakes in Japan this week. The earth itself seems a little shaky now. It is odd, to think how much affect the human animal has actually had on the much larger ecological system that is the planet as a whole. We are dumb as a can of irradiated dirt if we don't catch on to living in the whole system.

At the very least, we should be planting ten trees for every tree we lose for any reason. And we should, as a planetary race, accept the responsibility to quash all deforestation in the tropics and rain forests. We are fucking the environment if we don't do this.

I like to think, on days like this, that I'm sort of an Ent. Like the ones in the book, not in the movie. The LOTR movies, they fucked up the Ents royally. The people who made those movies simply didn't understand the religious significance of the Ents and the tree stuff in general. They actually really removed it from the story. Tolkien probably turned over in his grave and started weeping. They didn't get it.

Anyway, I'm sort of an Ent, in the sense that I understand that the most important classification of life on this planet is not the human, nor mammals in general, but that part of the floral kingdom that we call trees. Trees are the necessary genus that enables all other life to exist. Oh, maybe simple molecular life would be okay without the forests, but even the fish in the seas depend on the work of the Trees.

You should all remember this, every day. If you want to pray for something, or to something, pray to the trees for their continued health and reproductive success. And then pray to the Lady for giving us the trees. Remember, they were here first. If we lose them, then we will simply fade out ourselves. All the wheat in Kansas and all the corn in Illinois will not support the human animal in even a small city. Not for long, anyway.

Thanks to the Lady for helping me see clearly. That is Her mercy, that is Her grace.