I, Hans.

Shouldn't we listen to the Afghans ? The Pashtoons ?

Tatobay.com - THE TWIN IDIOTS:
Mr. Obama and his predecessor both responsible for sidelining the country majority and have chosen to give power to a tiny minority (Northern Alliance) Despite comprising more than 50% of Afghanistan’s total population of 32m, the Pashtoons remain poorly represented at all levels of government. Whilst a number of ministers are ethnic Pashtoons, they are mostly coalition installed, pro-American, foreign nationals: Hamid Karzai’s links to US business interests are well documented; the defence minister and former finance minister are American citizens; the foreign minister, German; and the Interior minister, British - tribal Pashtoons do not see them as acting in their interests. Many Pashtoon parties are outlawed - not one is currently active in government - meaning that all Pashtoon ministers are therefore Independents, with little effective power. Real political power lies in the hands of the Northern Alliance warlords - many of whom have committed numerous war crimes, not least against the Pashtoons.

Steve Clemons frustrated in the US. How should I feel in Italy ?

The Washington Note:
But get this -- Wuxi subsidizes firms to offer retraining packages for their employees if they don't lay them off. And the region works hard to increase services to manufacturing firms based here to help them through the crisis -- and more importantly, to assist workers -- both those registered in this province and those who are migrants (i.e. unregistered).

And on top of that, the central government has greenlighted three large scale transportation related projects that it had previously rejected -- including the building of Wuxi's first subway system and a new passenger hub terminal for an express train stop on a line being built both from Shanghai to Nanjing as well as Shanghai to Beijing.

The focus here on keeping people working, on correcting obvious environmental problems, on getting large scale public works infrastructure immediately underway is incredibly impressive -- and makes me even more frustrated with the absence of this kind of focus in the U.S.