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LPG is primarily Methane, so you can feed things like cow manure into a digester and compress the resulting mathane into a liquid. Many impoverished places use methane digesters such as the Gobar Gas digesters in Nepal.

"It's that fool on television getting paid to play the fool."

There are plenty of independent journalists doing real reporting: Michael Totten and Michael Yon are two.

I know the 'copters are being illuminated by hand-held laser pointers but the photographs do look like those produced by Michael Yon http://www.michaelyon-online.com/the-kopp-etchells-effect.htm showing the Kopp-Etchells Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_rotor.

I am impressed he's found something else to do good with.
But I suggest he look at what Nepal did:
He could fix the sanitation issue and solve a large part of their energy issues very cheaply. He just needs to push some startup money to modify the designs for the different areas and some startup money for a micro-finance so people will be able to buy them.

Here is an article on how nepal did it:
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/gobar-gas.htm

Interesting concept. Fighting a flat enemy seems like trying to smash an invasion of locusts with a hammer. You have to change the rules or the tools. To me, decriminalization and regulation seem like an excellent approach to the war on drugs. I'm having a hard time applying that to the current struggle against murderous assholes though.

My question is: What should we do about them?

Right now we're killing 'em, but that seems inefficient. We have hammers, bu as you say, they are flat. What if we change the rules?

Pay more than the Taliban for the Afghan's Poppies right at the source. We're already there and have a strong presence? 2 birds, one stone. People like customers, Al Qeada loses $$, we get some smack to control as we see fit.

What's not to like?

A blogger that I follow, Michael Yon has quite a problem with people stealing his work, even people who should know better such as Michael Moore (yes the movie producer Michael Moore and I've seen the theft of rights with my own eyes) has stolen his work. In one thread a poster recommended a reverse search engine Tineye, to find photographic copyright violators on the web. You just upload an image or the URL of an online image and TinEye searches its web repository for copies or near copies of the image, Now an average Joe can keep tabs on who and for what his or her photograph are being used for, and if desired put a stop to there illegal use.

Even oboma told there president he better change his ways or this would happen and well he didn't listion.(sic)

Actually it was Bush who said that :

Oddly enough--- only the last Administration with President Bush and Secretary Condi Rice has ever taken a strong reform position with Mubarak.

Obama has either been silent, or supportive of Egypt as it is - don't forget he went to Cairo to speak not that long ago.

Butchered? Civilians, children and reporters butchered with hollow point bullets, you're fine with that. Showing the world it's happening, you call that butchery.

Let me guess.... "collateral murder"?

The "civilians" were armed insurgents, apparently associated with running firefights and rocket attacks through the night. They were also probably in violation of curfew, which would once again make them targets. (You noticed how empty the streets were, right?)

The children should have been left behind by the insurgents attempting to rescue their comrades.

By accompanying the insurgents, and without marking themselves, the reporters made themselves targets. They weren't attacked because they were reporters. That was a risk they took upon themselves when they decided to accompany violent extremists fighting against the Iraqi government.

The lot of them were apparently engaged with the apache's 30mm automatic cannon. The military doesn't use hollow point bullets (Geneva & Hague Conventions, and all that).

2 Iraqi Journalists Killed as U.S. Forces Clash With Militias

Clashes in a southeastern neighborhood here between the American military and Shiite militias on Thursday left at least 16 people dead, including two Reuters journalists who had driven to the area to cover the turbulence, according to an official at the Interior Ministry....

The American military said in a statement late Thursday that 11 people had been killed: nine insurgents and two civilians. According to the statement, American troops were conducting a raid when they were hit by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The American troops called in reinforcements and attack helicopters. In the ensuing fight, the statement said, the two Reuters employees and nine insurgents were killed.

''There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force,'' said Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Baghdad.

Butchery? No. If you want to know true butchery, look at Al Qaeda's attack on the Yezidi.

A U.S. air strike killed a senior al Qaeda militant who masterminded truck bombings on Iraq's minority Yazidi community last month that killed more than 400 people, the military said on Sunday.

"On September 3, a coalition air strike killed the terrorist responsible for the planning and conducting of the horrific attack against the Yazidis in northern Iraq on August 14," military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox told a news conference.

Iraq's government has put the death toll at 411 from the suicide bombings, although the Iraqi Red Crescent has said it could be more than 500. The bombings in the villages of Kahtaniya and al-Jazeera were the deadliest militant attacks in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

A U.S. military statement named the mastermind as Abu Mohammad al-Afri, adding he was the al Qaeda "emir", or prince, in the area where the bombings took place.

Or Al Qaeda's attacks on markets: Al Qaeda use two Down's syndrome women to blow up 99 people in Baghdad markets

Do you have any words for Al Qaeda's actions? Genocidal might fit, as they want to rub out the Yezidi as a people & belief system. What about the attack on the market?

I've seen a Photograph made by Michael Yon (third photo in the slide show actually) used without permission or even atribution by Moore; if a film maker will infringe the copyright of another professional, what wouldn't he do? The photo was only taken down after Yon's lawyers started threatening law suits.

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/

Michael Yon was writing about the McChrystal problem months ago and no one on the Left saw anything wrong until Rolling Stone printed what was basically a gossip piece. Problems with ROE and strategy were ignored......the only thing that is seen as important is that McChrystal (and staff) wasn't kissing Obama and Biden's asses.

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/

This makes perfect sense, OPSEC-wise, and within the context of Chinese culture, I suspect is no big deal.

From what I've seen, this wouldn't be a completely insane idea to apply to members of the US armed forces. But, given the role of reservists and the existing penetration of the social web into the demographic of those currently serving, this would be a bear to enforce, and result in a storm of protest, on the assumption it's goal was to cut off alternative sources of information on the situation in Afghanistan.

Ask Michael Yon.

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/
http://www.facebook.com/MichaelYonFanPage
http://twitter.com/michael_yon

"The pussies who call themselves reporters don't go out of the green zone anymore, and it's hard to get anyone to care about a grainy video or far away sounding reports from foreign news sources."

By and large this is true. But there is at least one reporter that does go out and get it done. He doesn't work for a big media company. He's more of the open source model of reporting, supported by tips from his readers. I suggest you read his stuff if you want to know what is happening. Check him out here Michael Yon

Michael Totten is a foreign correspondent and Michael Yon is a combat correspondent who have reported from Afghanistan and Iraq, and who are funded mainly from reader donations.

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/

Question: would Wired and the Huffington Post have broken the Watergate scandal?

Big Government broke the ACORN scandal, and the stuff around the NEA pushing a government message through art funding. That's at roughly the same level in that it's national news that had an impact on congress (they voted to shut of funding for ACORN).

Newspapers have failed to adapt, but they do have a number of useful features which IMHO the web has so far failed to replicate, such as strong editorial structures, proper investigative journalism (not just "in today's blog blog, we blog about a blog about something which someone wrong somewhere else"), accountability

Newspapers are an absolute joke for accountability. At best you may get a retraction so small and buried no-one will ever see it. At worst they simply ignore the fact they incorrectly reported on something and carry on as if what they said was the truth.

The blog standard is far superior, where usually the incorrect section is stricken through (but left readable) with a statement right below saying what they got wrong. The key is that the correction is attached to the original media, far stronger a correction.

And there are real investigative journalists today. Look at people like Micheal Totten and Micheal Yon for excellent independent and pragmatic war coverage of all the major theaters. We'll see more of that as newspapers continue to falter, and more people look for oversight of the government.

Not only are boots on the ground important, but you have to have enough to hold the territory you've gained. It was a hard lesson from the Iraq war that this administration doesn't appear to have learned.

Michael Yon has a great, non-partisan, blog on the war in Afghanistan. Yon is a blogger who used to be a Special Forces member and can see situations developing years before most folks can.

With so many contractors, journalists, and even tourists floating around Afghanistan, some are bound to be kidnapped. The recent escape by David Rohde provides a happy conclusion, though these things often end up with a bullet in the head, or a head sawed off for all to see. Kidnappings are so common in Afghanistan that most barely make the news. ...

David Rohde's journey was peculiar because it's . . . well, peculiar. He is a high-profile man associated with a high-profile company. Otherwise, his kidnapping was just one of probably hundreds, or more.

The dangers of going unembedded are different than when with soldiers. I could give some hints that could increase the safety of correspondents and contractors, but those hints are not for public discussion other than this: If you are a civilian contractor or journalist who goes into areas with possibility of kidnapping, itâ(TM)s important to give written permission for a rescue attempt. For servicemembers, no permission would be needed, but journalists, contractors and NGOs will likely not be rescued without permission from a spouse or close relative, unless that permission was granted in advance. Precious time will be lost gaining those permissions. Most rescues are better done immediately.

There have been times when rescues could have occurred but permission was slow in coming. Our "rescue people" are the best in the world. I cannot address the situation of David Rohde because I do not know the facts, other than that he was kidnapped in Afghanistan and taken to Pakistan. After he hit Pakistan, everything changed. The first days after a kidnapping are crucial. ...

And so that's about it. I sat on David Rohde information and am happy to have done so. Would the New York Times have done the same for a soldier or for me? That would be their decision.

Michael Yon
Afghanistan
The Road to Hell: Part II

That's a pretty good catch-22, if he wasn't a Pulitzer winning Journalist, his kidnapping would have been as newsworthy a purse snatching in NY.

You might call mainstream journalism crap, and some of the writing along with the various media biases are certainly worthy of that term, but the mainstream media is still the place where we get the boots on the ground to actually find out what's happening in the world. Take that away and I don't know how much 'reporting' the blogosphere can actually support.

Reader-supported independent reporters Michael Yon and Michael Totten have been doing an extraordinary job with their reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other locales.

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/
http://www.michaeltotten.com/

Independent journalism is a myth.

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/

It's no myth, it's alive and well, and sometimes, it makes all the difference in the world.

The level of communications is set to jump even more as networking waveforms are developed and comm systems link up even more. If you look at the CONOPS for some future capabilities, the guy on the original foot patrol could have sent video of the entire firefight to the other patrol, or to an Apache/A-10 overhead and then back to the Battallion. Texting is already in place, but if you listen to any Marine or Army officer talk, voice will always rule supreme. Yeah, you'll have streaming video, IM, texting, etc. But the platoon leader wants to hear voice, and more importantly, the inflection in his voice. I'm sure this article's author backed his man because he heard the sincerity and urgency in his men's voice while on patrol.

To all the posters saying, "Soldiers don't think". Please STFU. You're just being dumb and either anti-military, biased, or just spouting crap you heard on CNN. I taught new recruits in the Air Force as a special duty assignment at Vandenberg. I have friends who are Marines that leave and go to Iraq more than you go to the dentist. If there's any common thread between all the branches it's this: accountability is much higher, better skills required , and critical thinking never been more demanded. You can point to Abu, but you're ignorant of the thousands of patrols who held back their trigger finger to allow a bad guy get away because of the civilians behind him. The hundreds of additional hours spent planning ATOs (Air Tasking Orders) so that __IF__ a bomb missed it would not hit innocents and that the proper munition is used for the target, building, support, etc. If you're still not convinced, spend at least an hour reading the foot patrols blogged here and then click "Next". Spend some time poking through his dispatchs.

There are plenty of places on the web for anyone that wants to be better informed about what is happening in Iraq. Just for starters...

Multi-National Force - Iraq website.
          Today's top stories:
          Iraqis Displaced from Homes Now Returning in Droves
          Soccer Stadium Opens with Tourney
          Mahmudiyah Hatchery Receives First Egg Shipment
          Soldiers Distribute Fertilizer to Farmers

The Long War Journal
Michael Totten's web site
Michael Yon's web site (He has just published a new book: Moment of Truth in Iraq )

Some Iraqi bloggers:
Iraq Pundit
Iraq the Model

Some useful news of the war does slip through:
Al Qaeda chief slams Muslims for lack of support
Iraq: After the bombs, the tomatoes
Violence Leaves Young Iraqis Doubting Clerics

"No ambiguity in the term"? When a roadside bomb attacking military vehicles is "terrorism", the word has lost all meaning.

The original post's line "No ambiguity in the term" reference was to Islamist, not terrorism. I'm not sure how that was confusing. But since you bring it up....

Do you think most people could go out on a limb and agree that suicide vest attacks at funerals, car bombings of schools, mass kidnappings (where the victims are likely to end up in mass graves ), and roadside bombs targeting children are still terrorism? What about attacking worshipers at a mosque with rockets? What about when they try to destroy an entire village? What about poison gas attacks on city government?

The fact that terrorists attack military and police units doesn't mean they aren't terrorists. The presence of a few police or soldiers at a site being attacked doesn't mean that the attack isn't terrorism.

The word terrorism hasn't lost its meaning, but some people seem to lack the ability to discuss it in a meaningful and reasonable way.

I liked his answer to question #9. Most of the time the feds should butt out and let states follow the will of their citizens. I can only hope that this philosophy also extends to the federal education department, housing, attempts at federally run universal health care, agriculture, and almost everything else not specifically listed as a federal responsibility in the Constitution.

On Iraq, I can only hope that he reads some of the reports from people over there such as Michael Yon, Michael J. Totten, etc.

the strategy employed, air strikes and cruise missiles, causes a lot of civilian casualties.
It does? are you sure I think you are confusing a BGM-109 Tomahawk or a AGM-84H/K Harpoon with a AGM-114 Hellfire. The Hellfire is a semi-active homing anti-tank weapon not a cruise missile that is primarily air-launched from army helicopters or occasionaly fron a MQ-1 Predator.

If you want to know how they are really used read Michael Yon's Guitar Heroes posting.

Michael Yon is still over there, embedded as they get... and with no corporate support,etc. http://www.michaelyon-online.com/

With the amount of blogs focusing on the very negative aspects of Iraq, they also probably don't want soldiers to be demoralized by reading something like that.

One blog I really enjoy reading is Michael Yon, who is a former special forces, now freelance journalist who uses his connections to follow a group around in Mosul. He gets some real awesome pics and writes very interesting dispatches about what's happening with that squad...his most famous entry, "Gates of Fire", is where he actually joined in the action and started fighting when they were ambushed.

But yeah, it's interesting to read a blog that supports the soldiers in Iraq and focuses on the positive sides of the war, without being blatant propoganda.

~Jarik

So lets list our favorites, or good ones, or whatever...

http://michaelyon-online.com/ - embedded reporter with no corporate sponsor, etc. Does it all on his own, takes *amazing* photos, and writes well...

All I'm saying, and I didn't want to make this a religious debate, that when you take a few people, compared to millions of people you don't hear of, to bias your point of view, is only destroying your point not enhancing it. What your doing is equivalent to pointing at a couple of bad apples and making the blanket statement that all apples are bad because of that couple!

I agree; that's a bad idea.

countering fundamentalist Islam with fundamentalist Christianity

The MoveOn.Org ad was highly offensive. For one it was a partisan political attack on somebody who is not an elected official. The attack claimed that Gen. Petraeus had betrayed America, in essense accusing a Commanding officer of treason by violating his oath to defend the country. It was also published before he even gave his report to Congress, so how could they know he was lying. Having listened to his report and read it as well, it was pretty clear that he was being honest about what was and was not working.

I am not sure why you think Gen. Petraeus has run the Irag war poorly as he has only been running it since January of this year. The media named "surge" is not just an increase in US troops, it is being waged with a change tactics, and a strategy to truly knock down Al Qaeda in Iraq so that some sort of political solution can take hold. Even the NY Times has reported that has made progress.

If you follow the actual bloggers who are in Irag, they are reporting it like they see it. Several of them have reported good and bad things that have happened. They have found a lot of postive results since the summer offensive kicked off last June. Here are links to three of them of have spent a lot of time in Iraq.

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/ ( Look for dispatches who probably has spent more time in Irag than anybody else)

http://www.longwarjournal.org/ (Bill Roggio and now other in the field bloggers reporting on Iraq and Afghanistan)

http://www.michaeltotten.com/

Feminists love her, west coast and east cost liberals love her. And that's it. And you can't win an election on that alone.

Hillary will win votes with her position on the war. You'll notice all the D candidates are anti-war, and all the money is spent convincing people that Hillary is bad because of her moderate position on the war. Being anti-war is only popular right now because of the heavy politicizing of it, all the D candidates are campaigning on their anti-war stuff, but Hillary has the presidential election in her sights, which requires that she take a more reasonable position on the war to get some of the moderate vote. She will certainly need it.

The war may be at a turning point, however. I was reading http://www.michaelyon-online.com and I was surprised all the good news that's not being reported in the mass media.

It needs to return to the time where a reporter simply told what they saw,

You might look at a couple of independent weblogs by reporters who are currently embedded with the military in Iraq. They're on the ground, not beholden to corporate bosses, and telling it like it is. They give a much rosier picture than US mainstream media provides. Their personal politics are right-leaning, but if that's a concern to you, just go into it with your conservafilters turned on.

I should point out that while their reports have been published on the Fox News website, their reports are subsidized exclusively by reader donations.

Per your request:

"Al Qaeda in Iraq"

source:

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/bless-the-beas ts-and-children.htm

google cache of same:

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:IogAn4ppk18J: michaelyon-online.com/wp/bless-the-beasts-and-chil dren.htm+Bless+the+Beasts+and+Children+yon&hl=en&c t=clnk&cd=7&gl=us

Those beasts and children are all dead. By the hand of "Al Qaeda in Iraq".