Well it's official. Bin Laden is a mass murdering fuckhead, or at least claims to be one. And it only took us three months to prove it.

Just listening to GW Bush talking about how great this war has been at testing our military. The quote was something like "War: Better than any blue ribbon panel." It's awful to hear this rhetoric about how W's plan to protest --er, or was that protect -- the public is to basically bomb the world into peace and justice. I'm not so naive as to forget that force has governed international realtions since they've existed, but he's not exactly describing a world that I want to live in. It disturbs me that there seems to be so little debate about the root causes of all of this. Why is there such a sense of the "other" in this world? How different are we, really, from one another that we are -- both sides -- willing to kill thousands to achieve our ends.

Which brings up another great theme of the week: Kenny's dispatches from Afghanistan. As much as he has his own agenda and as much as he seems to have blown an opportunity to file more interesting reports with his "lone wolf in Afghanistan" strategy (successul duration = 24 hours), I'm glad he did what he did, and the things he has to say are far more interesting than many of the reports that I've read about this war. Way to go, Kenny!


Got some photos of our old living room today. This one was taken the day before we ripped out all the carpets. It shows me fortifying myself for the week of wandering ahead.

This is Kenny's report on what happened. It makes some good points, but what struck me the most was that if you really want to get into some trouble, all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other.

Well here it is. The Canadian Press report on Kenny's fascinating, bungled Afghan odyssey. To use a Kennyism, "This thing just refuses to die."

Good news! They've freed Kenny. I did get a lot of mileage at the Latin American Club last night talking about how my ex-roomate had been captured by the Taliban, and regaling everyone with Kenny Crack stories. It just never seemed possible that anything seriously bad could happen to Kenny over there. It wouldn't have been in character. Too bad, though, I was about to launch my "Free Kenny" campaign. I guess my political activism will have to wait.

One line from the story about his liberation struck me. It seems that the Taliban thought he was a spy and really needed to be convinced that he actually was a journalist. According to one observer:
"The Taliban say, 'We would have allowed him in if he had approached us,'” That seems very Kenny, who always seemed to prefer doing things the hard, notorious way.