Now that it gets in the way of their wars, I mean:
A once-in-a-century hailstorm took a heavy toll on the availability of airpower to support troops on the ground in Afghanistan.
Details of the incident last April 23 have only recently begun to come to light now that coalition air forces are starting to return to service aircraft seriously impaired in the storm, which occurred at Kandahar airfield. Golf-ball-sized hailstones peppered the airfield and the hundreds of aircraft based there, causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage. Conceivably, a large number of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft will have to be written off.
The storm also caused a number of civilian deaths in nearby Kandahar City.
Details of the storm’s affect on the U.K. Royal Air Force began emerging late last year when RAF, Lockheed Martin and Marshall Aerospace officials revealed work on Operation Weatherman, a program devised to return five of the RAF’s 24 Lockheed Martin C-130J Hercules aircraft to operations.Engineers inspecting aircraft in the aftermath of the storm discovered that C-130Js had suffered “unprecedented damage.” The hail had severely impacted wings, empennages, windows and fuselages. Initial checks showed that more than 850 aircraft panels had been compromised, rendering approximately one-fifth of the RAF’s fleet of 24 Hercules unavailable for flight operations. As a result, the RAF was prompted to push one of its C-17 Globemasters, usually deployed as strategic transport, into use as an intra-theater airlifter.
“This once-in-hundred-years event was reported as a monstrous storm,” says Group Capt. Nick Cox, Hercules team leader at the U.K. Defense Equipment and Support agency.
The Republican fascist right is now admitting that global warming is real. What they are not admitting is that global warming is caused by burning fossil fuels. Big oil and coal will have none of that kind of talk. Nor will the Republicans admit that the drone strike which killed a “high ranking terrorist” in Somalia the other day was a CIA operation. To admit that they would also have to tell us that Obama does not control every drone strike that takes place. The CIA is a secret organization that does all kinds of crap in our names that not even our president gets to know about before it happens. How frustrating for him that must be? It’s one of the reasons that the terrorists attack us. Like on 9-11.
“…A once-in-a-century hailstorm …”
These days, that means about every two weeks.
You may ask, why are we still in Afghanistan, and seem destined to be there for decades? Here’s why:
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-12-03/re-foresting-afghanistan
excerpt – “…Groups of large, multi-national corporations are vying for contracts to extract the mineral riches (1) of Afghanistan for shareholder profit, while promising to make a few Afghan nationals “very rich” and provide job opportunities in the mines for the rest…”
Forget that part about job opportunities for ‘the rest’. Extraction is extraction anywhere it occurs; the only part telling the truth is the part about ‘making a few Afghan nationals very rich’.
Here’s the good news – same article – about what is going on in Afghanistan. Some people are turning their backs on the war, on the mines, and are going back to a better time in their country’s history, when it supported diverse plant life and trees:
excerpt – “…Specific projects include the development of nurseries, introduction of higher quality species of trees to the region, and the re-population of deforested regions with trees. Crucial to this undertaking is a focus on creating awareness about the environment and the needs of the local community, training people to plant and take care of the trees, and providing them with the resources needed to accomplish this task…
…Despite the loss of 60-80% of the nation’s forests and fruit orchards from war, in four short years Samsortya and local Afghan farmers in Jalalabad have dug new wells, established fledgling tree nurseries from seed, and now produce high-quality saplings from cuttings…”
Naturally, the War Machine chooses those who only want to extract wealth and give nothing back. Decent people realize that their land’s future is intertwined with a long-term relationship with trees, soil, and the environment, and turn their backs on the War Machine.
We would be wise to do the same.