Two other militants escaped, one of them badly wounded, after the attack in Kulgam district, south of Srinagar.

The militants had assault rifles but were taken by surprise - police found the remains of pudding they had made to eat when the bear attacked.

More bears like this, please.

The dead have been identified as Mohammad Amin alias Qaiser, and Bashir Ahmed alias Saifullah.

News of the attack emerged when their injured comrade went to a nearby village for treatment.

“Word spread in the village that Qaiser had been killed by the bear,” another police officer said.

Martyred happily ever after! This part’s different. Apparently insurgency has been good for wildlife.

Wildlife experts say the conflict in Kashmir has actually resulted in an increase in the population of bears and leopards.

Following the outbreak of the insurgency people had to hand in their weapons to police - which put a halt to poaching.

As a result, there has been a greater incidence of man-animal conflict, say experts.

There have been many reports of bears and leopards killing or mauling humans in different parts of the Kashmir valley in recent years.

Three years ago, residents of Mandora village near the southern town of Tral, beat a black bear to death which had strayed into the village. 

OK, not so good for that bear. Not so good for the many humans reportedly mauled by bears and leopards, either. There has to be a better way to aid wildlife than insurgency-fueled gun control and feeding them local villagers and the occasional jihadi.

Goldberg, NRO: Obama withdraws from ursine security agreements. Gibbs, “The notion that only big ferocious animals can help us defeat our enemies is one that was fully rejected by the American people in last year’s election.”

Us 40+ types can get bogged down with tendonitis and whatnot. I’d be very interested in your take on when to push thru discomfort, when to sit back with an icepack, cross-training to avoid use injuries, etc.
And maybe some alternative strategies to stay in shape while that strained tendon heals up.
And I bet lots of people would be interested in how to get gym benefits at home with the expense of a gym membership. Times are tough.
Love the fitness posts!

Thank you. I’m loving it, too. Re injuries, I’ve had several … tendonitis alongside the knee, patella-femoral syndrome and plantar fasciitis. All very common. A lot of what I do now is specifically designed to address those issues. Would prefer to make this post slightly less half-assed than the rest in this series, however, so I’m interested in your own experiences, remedies, helpful books and links. Especially if you actually know what you’re talking about. Any thoughts or suggestions, send them in via ”contact” or in comments below. I’m also still interested in hearing your reviews and progress reports re Fit for Combat: When Fitness is a Matter of Life or Death.

Speaking of injuries, don’t for get to donate via Team Marines. Proceeds go to buy laptops and specialized electronics for war-wounded GIs of all services.

(Care to comment? Use the “contact” link to assure me you are a real human being interested in commenting on the topics at hand. Include your preferred screenname and temporary password. Lefty Kumbayah singers, moderate handwringers, meanspirited rightwingers all welcome. This is a free speech zone as long as you keep it clean and make an effort to be accurate.)

In an admittedly unscientific poll of the last five taxi rides I took with South Asian drivers, Abdullah and Mohamed claimed that the U.S. is ruining Afghanistan and making matters worse in Pakistan with drone strikes that are killing more civilians than terrorists. Najeeb and Ibrahim said it’s a travesty that the U.S. is considering reducing its commitment to Afghanistan after all the pledges to rebuild. They are convinced the Taliban will regain power in double time if the U.S doesn’t change things up soon. Ahmed wholeheartedly endorsed the McChrystal report and claimed he heard about it even before it was leaked.

Alas, it appears as if city cabbies are just as divided as the rest of the so-called experts.

I get a slightly different take off that. Out of five immigrants with Islamic-sounding names from the region in question, three want the United States to get on with it, big time. The other two just don’t like the status quo, which isn’t exactly an opinion on which way to go, though with regard to drone strikes, is a distinctly non-Bidenian position. 

(With the Paks pushing into Waziristan, and Allied heat on Afghanistan, those drone attacks could become a thing of the past. As noted by Peter Bergen and Pak news reports, anyway, the drones and the Pak incursion apparently are wildly popular in Waziristan, where a lot of the locals have had it with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The objections tend to intensify the farther you get from Waziristan.)

More to the point, Khalil continues:

And herein lies the lesson for the Obama administration: decide already. No matter how many more opinions you seek, they will be contrasting and conflicting. There is no hidden oracle within the Beltway or beyond that will provide the answer.

…

Obama’s admirable instinct to consult is getting in the way of the urgent need to move forward. The season for consultation is over. The longer Obama hesitates the louder the doubts grow over whether the U.S. is still able to lead and whether the ultimate decision is the right one.

The question remains: Does Obama have the audacity to decide?

Just ask Najeeb: “The President needs to get on with it already. It’s no good this waiting.”

I’m with Najeeb. A big shout out, while we’re at it, to all the hardworking Muslims out there who just want to make a living in the land of opportunity. Welcome to America, Najeeb. Raise your children to love this country. This kind of freedom doesn’t grow on trees.

The above is part of the Washington Post’s serach for a new pundit. I say hire Najeeb. Meanwhile, here’s Surber with his top pundit of 2008: SNL comic Victoria Jackson.

Oh yeah, and donate via Team Marines.

This really is a new era of hope and change, when the president looks better, more relaxed after taking office than he did before. What’s his secret? Drudge: High-stress basketball, rigorous gym workouts. And lots of golf! It’s that simple. Here’s the best part: It’s taxpayer funded and helps you avoid responsibility! (Important: Avoid straining yourself on weighty war-strategy decisions. No heavy lifting on top agenda items.) 

Sounds like the president’s been following my advice on how to Live Forever, Or Die Trying. He could stand to focus more on being Fit for Combat, but I dunno about you, I’m inspired. I probably should do some bills, balance the checkbook this morning, but screw it, I’m going running! Get with the program. You can be presidentially studly for the holidays, too!

Washington Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli found himself in the middle of an altercation Friday evening between Style reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia and editor Henry Allen, but will not say whether the two have been reprimanded by the paper.

 

… 

Multiple Post sources independently confirmed to POLITICO that Roig-Franzia got hit while defending colleague Monica Hesse from harsh criticism leveled by her editor, Allen. 

Allen, according to the Washingtonian, had told Hesse that a piece she had written was “the second worst story I have seen in Style in 43 years.”

 

Roig-Franzia, also working a story with Hesse that ran Saturday, told Allen not to be such a “c—sucker.”

 

Allen swung twice, with one punch hitting Roig-Franzia, according to sources. Next, staffers on the 4th floor —including Brauchli, whose office is temporarily across from the Style section — jumped in to break up the altercation.

 

Allen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor who already took a buyout, has just three weeks left on his contract, and was not in the office Monday. Roig-Franzia is in the office.

“C-sucker” … sounds like fighting words. A reporter who calls an editor that should be flogged. You don’t usually hear about that kind of thing coming out of the features department. And it sounds a little more like a tabloid newsroom than an august broadsheet, though even tabs have become sedate in recent decades, the suppression of office boozing limiting confrontations to the occasional shouting match and lemme-at-’im standoffs. And I’m sure that’s a good thing. Not like the old days, when a photog and a scribbler famously went to Downtown Crossing, the scribbler dressed in a Santa Claus suit for a holiday feature, they stopped in a bar enroute, one thing leads to another, and next thing you know, back in the newsroom, they’re hearing scanner chatter about a throng of horrified moms and tots watching Santa Claus and some scruffy wretch of a news photog pummel each other on Washington Street. As Allen tells Politico in an update:

In the old days, said the 68-year-old, Pulitzer Prize-winning editor, the press wouldn’t have been so shocked by an expletive-filled, newsroom scuffle.

…

“Back when I got into journalism, the idea that a fistfight in a newsroom would turn into a news story was unthinkable,” Allen said when reached Monday evening. “The guys in the sports department at the New York Daily News, they had so many, you wouldn’t even look up.”

So he is a tabloid man. God bless him. Meanwhile, “second worst story I’ve seen in Style in 43 years” is pretty specific. Knockdown drag-out details and what constituted the first and second worst Style stories in 43 years at Washington’s City Paper. The management geniuses at the Post apparently resolved the matter by banishing Allen, who has three weeks till retirement. No word on Roig-Franzia’s flogging. I guess it’s more of a last gasp than a new tabloid direction.

Malkin, cruelly: Remember that big Post frontpage about conservative incivility?

No clue on the politics of Roig-Franzia, though the potty mouth could suggest a leftward tilt, though Gateway’s groundbreaking research on lefty pottymouth is specific to public political discourse and not semi-private interpersonal relations. Allen, BTW, is a former Marine and Vietnam vet who says he last threw a punch at Parris Island in 1963. Last of the old breed!

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Maybe it’s because, from Guantanamo to Afghanistan, he isn’t handling the GWOT. WSJ, on Karzai’s new term and Obama’s as-yet unmade decision:

… The main problem now isn’t Afghanistan’s President. It is that no one in Washington or around the world is sure whether America’s President is committed to his own strategy—or even if he’ll stick with that strategy if he reaffirms it.

As long as those doubts persist, everyone in this conflict will hedge their bets: the NATO allies, on the number of troops they’ll commit and the fighting they will do; Mr. Karzai, in his dealings with Afghan’s regional kingpins and drug lords; and the Pakistanis, in their own battles with the Taliban.

Most important, the American people will quickly lose faith in a war that they conclude their Commander in Chief is ambivalent about fighting. Reports of puzzled commanders and troops in the field are already multiplying as they wonder why they’re risking death by IED if Mr. Obama isn’t sure about the mission.

AP, apparently getting it: “Karzai’s election increases pressure on Obama.” It’s getting bad when even the AP wants to know what gives with the “marathon deliberations.” GOP’s Boehner actually gets in the first and only opinion on those deliberations in this AP article … “The White House has no further pretext for delaying the decision on giving Gen. McChrystal the resources he needs” … a highlighting which I can assure you, based on long experience reading between AP’s lines, is not insignificant.

OK, maybe some other readers at other blogs had something to do with it.

Starting with the great Villainous Company, which has a great post about Marine war dogs. They get wounded, too. That reminds me. Blast from the past, a great Marine and a great Marine war dog from the Boston Herald archives: 

By rights, John Flannelly should have bled to death under a barrage of rifle and rocket fire 27 years ago.

The 48-year-old Lynn man can thank a dog’s love and strong jaws for dragging him out of the muddy clearing where he expected to die.

“He was my best friend. We ate, slept, did everything together. Wherever we went, we went together,” Flannelly said of Bruiser, the black German shepherd he lived with for nine months in the jungle.

Last week, Flannelly spoke as he walked around with surprising energy for a man who has shrapnel in his head and a bullet in his spine, and who is missing large parts of both lungs, his left kidney, his spleen and gallbladder, half of his stomach, three ribs and a lot of muscle tissue.

“I was wounded real bad the last time,” Flannelly said, recounting the events of a pre-dawn patrol in September 1969 during the Vietnam War.

“The VC had set up a horseshoe ambush. As I walked into the clearing, my dog stopped. There was a bush, and it moved. So I opened up.”

Flannelly carried a 12-gauge shotgun with deer slugs for “stopping power.” He killed the Viet Cong soldier in the bush, but another VC hit him with four AK-47 rounds that ripped open his gut and chest, smashing ribs and exposing a puffing lung. A nasty, churned-up line of scars under his shirt and some yellowed newspaper clippings attest to his story today.

“It knocked me down like a punching bag and I popped right back up. I shot the guy who shot me and fell down again. I tried to get up on my feet, but I couldn’t.”

As Flannelly lay there, a rocket-propelled grenade exploded beside him. It lifted him in the air and dropped him in the mud. Man and dog were sprayed with shrapnel.

“When I came down, I thought I was dead,” he said. “I still had the leash on my wrist, attached to Bruiser’s harness. I unlocked him and said, `Get out of here. Go!’ But the dog wouldn’t go.

“He stuck his teeth into my shoulder and started to drag me. So I put my arm around him. He actually dragged me back 25 yards to a bomb crater.”

A nearby chopper came to lay down covering fire for half an hour or more until reinforcements arrived. Flannelly said he remained conscious despite massive blood loss.

“The doctors didn’t understand why I was alive,” he said.

At the hospital in Da Nang, Cpl. Ken Sucharski of Manchester-by-the-Sea browbeat a nurse to get Bruiser into the ward. That was the last time Flannelly saw his dog.

John Saco of Manchester inherited Bruiser and also thanks him for his life.

“In the middle of the night, you’d be on a patrol. He’d stop and sit down, and you’d find a booby trap on a monofilament line stretched across the trail three feet ahead,” he recalled.

“A Marine tried to step around the dog once and I told him to get back,” he said. “Eighteen inches ahead there was a trip wire that would have taken out three men.”

Bruiser’s fate is unknown. Records indicate that war dogs were handed over to the South Vietnamese when the Marines left. Today, the veterans can’t forget the dogs who kept them alive.

“You become more attached to that animal than most people,” Saco said.

“My dog was a hero. I wasn’t,” Flannelly said. “I was just a guy on the other end of the leash.”

That was written in 1996. Regarding his injuries, as he was describing them back then, I remarked he seemed pretty spry for someone shot up that bad. He raised his shirt and showed me. He definitely got shot up that bad. Flannelly died in 2005 at the age of 57.

The Valour IT push is on Veterans Day. All proceeds go to buy laptops and specialized electronics to accommodate the needs of war-wounded vets of all services.

Donate via Team Marines

Part 6 of Crittenden’s “So You Want to Live Forever” series:

It’s getting colder and Thanksgiving is around the corner, which basically encourages people to burrow in and eat, and there are is the endless holiday baking, which people feel compelled to share. They figure they’ll get rid of the temptation and run up feel-good neigborliness points by making it your problem. 

The good news is, if you’re still running, walking and biking 2 to 5 miles a day, plus doing situps and crunches, you can pretty much eat all the candy and baked stuff you want. Consider that a motivator. If you’re working out like that, chances are your discipline is at a pretty high level, and you’ve found that your desire to eat a lot of that crap has gone down, and your enjoyment level has gone up, because you know you’re burning it.

If you’re slipping on exercise, now is the time get back in with a short walk/run/ride. It comes back quicker than you think. Do it now, before winter really sets in. Because chances are you won’t be starting up again then.

Some people move it inside, to gyms and Stairmasters at this time of year. That’s fine. Did you kow that January is the single biggest month for gym memberships, after your American packs on up to 10 extra pounds? Dentists and debt counselors are doing a bangup business at this time of year, too. (Vigorous exercise is really good for your mental health, BTW. It’ll even make you feel good about that mountain of debt you’re dealing with.)

As a cheap bastard, I generally prefered using gravity and the great outdoors as my gym, though in New England, that is sometimes miserable. If you live down south, it’s probably just getting nice outside, but up here, it’s about to become a challenge not just to get off the couch, but to get out the door.

Here’s the good news. By employing layers … cut the sleeves off an old sweatshirt, get some UnderArmor or the equivalent, gets some gloves and a watch cap … you can pretty much run all year if it isn’t actively sleeting or blowing a blizzard. Do your pushups and situps inside, and you’ll be warmed up by the time you go out. It isn’t that bad. Anyway, did I ever say there wasn’t going to be misery? To quote a dour Army Ranger who was unhappy about being assigned to train up a bunch of sad sack, professional half-ass journos for war:

“If I was running this show, there’d be a whole lot more misery.”

Then comes the really great part of winter. No, it’s not snow camping. That truly is miserable. Especially if you’re determined to hike in. I did it once in the White Mountains. It really sucked. I don’t know what I was thinking. I strongly advise not doing unless you’re really demented and/or know what you are doing.

It’s cross-country skiiing.

Some people like snow-shoeing. Never done that. Some people like downhill … it is a bit of a workout, and you ought to be in shape if you’re going to do it.

I like cross-country. Less crowded, less noisy, less filthy and a lot cheaper … four people can rent and ski for less than it costs one person to do the same at a downhill place. If you own your own gear, you can do it for free. It’s also a lot warmer. Anything you go ski to come down, you have to climb up first. It is one of the greatest full body workouts ever invented. I got back to it and introduced my kids to it over the last couple of years. All the people we passed had smiles on their faces like they were high. Which some of the older hippy-looking ones might have been. And there were a lot of old people out there, along with families and the Spandex-wearing hyperathletic skaters. Very short learning curve for beginners. This is healthy, lifelong exercise that will make you want to get outside in the dead of winter, burn calories like no one’s business, and really earn your meal and your beer at the end of the day.

Not quite up to all that yet? Don’t feel bad. A lot of people aren’t. That’s why they invented malls. Here’s a handy guide to holiday fitness, aimed at novices and those for whom sub-freezing workouts might be a health hazard.

In other “Live Forever” business, embed freelancer J.D. Johannes’ Fit for Combat: When Fitness is a Matter of Life or Death is now the site’s top bestseller in nearly a year of Amazon operations. Still waiting for reader reviews and progress reports from all 15 of you who bought it.

Previously:

Old? Fat? Feeling Death’s Icy Chill Down Your Neck? How To Live Forever Part 1, the Crittenden Workout for Middle-Aged Fat Bastards.

How To Live Forever Part 2 The Beer Workout. Drink and be healthy.

How to Live Forever Part 3 Israeli research finding: Advanced geezerdom no bar to exercise’s life-extending benefits.

How To Live Forever Part 4: Fit For Combat You think preparing for combat is healthy? Try combat. Hey, when’s someone going to market the Combat Weight Loss Program?

Run For Your Lives! Just got in that dirty little two-miler …

Odd choice of color schemes. I thought purple was the most progressive of hues, after “rainbow.” You’ll notice that even in my own very Democratically blue state of Massachusetts shows up as gray, only just cracking 50 percent. In fact, you pretty much need to dive to the very bottom of the nation’s granola bowl … Vermont … to hit 60 percent. It looks like DC might be a miniscule bright blue spot, but that’s probably more a case of racial preference and old school Democratic politics than full-on flaming Burlington-style “progressivism.” 

Anyway, Yglesias takes this chart to mean that white males are not sufficiently “progressive.” I dunno, it’s possible it means white males largely didn’t buy the “vote for charismatic inexperience, half-baked socialism and virulently anti-American foreign policy or you’re a racist” line. Maybe they figured that a vote for Obama is a vote for racist preference policies that run counter to their own and everyone else’s interests. All that basically is what is called “progressive” in American politics, which raises the question of who died and let people who believe in that hijack the English language. Racist preference policies, half-baked socialism and virulently anti-American foreign policy? That’s not progressive. That’s heading backward. This nation needs to move forward, out of that morass. 

Rather than insufficently “progressive,” that chart suggests vast swaths of the workaday, tax-paying electorate still has its head screwed on straight.

It also looks like what is theoretically the most powerful segment of American society is willing to let traditional, constitutional, electoral politics play out,* because they know America is big enough to absorb it, and that sooner or later, America usually wakes up and recognizes its own self-interest. And that those vast swathes have equanimously accepted the election of a black president because, all the other abovementioned issues aside, that wasn’t that big a deal. In fact, it was a development to be welcomed.

OK, here’s Yglesias’ conclusion:

I would say that another message is that progressive politics is badly disadvantaged by a situation in which the overwhelming majorities of political leaders and prominent media figures are white men. There are plenty of white men with progressive views, but in general the majority of white men are not progressive and the majority of progressives are not white men. Drawing from the relatively small pool of white male progressives means drawing from a shallow talent pool.

Uh oh. “Progressive politics is badly disadvantaged by … ” Starts to sound a lot like “re-education camp.” Though it’s hard to argue against Yglesias’ theory that white male progressives — or any other variety, for that matter – represent a “shallow talent pool.”

Legal Insurrection: “It’s a center-right nation which elected someone who convinced 53% of the voters he was a centrist. Some people knew better then. More people know better now.”

Lefties at Lawyers, Guns & Money get the prize for the post that jams the most non-sequitor per line into a post that ignores the subject matter it is addressing, capping it with: “And the fact that Obama is trying to implement the platform he ran on proves that he really put one over on the American public.” LG&M commenter chimes in helpfully:

Obama is trying to implement the policies he ran on?  Which policies?  Transparency? The end of DOMA?  Health care insurance reform with a robust public option? 

Hang on, the idiocy prize may need to go to OpenLeft:

What if the last election had taken place under the laws and customs that existed in most states in 1860?  In other words, what if only white men could vote in 2008?

Well, the good news is, the Democrats didn’t win in 1860. Interesting exercise, though. The Republican win in 1860 was good news for the United States of America, all its black citizens, and the cause of freedom, though Abraham Lincoln’s resolve to save the union and his moves to end slavery did end up costing 600,000 American lives. Imagine if today’s “progressive” values prevailed then. Bull Run: “Quagmire!” Antietam: “U.S. out of North America!” Gettysburg: “Why do they hate us?”    

Apropos of which, Surber weighs in with a Civil War vet’s warning from the grave. 

Ha! Crusty old teabagger! Gotta love ‘em. The G.A.R. halls would have been full of them.

In more recent left-right electoral news, via HotAir: Scozzafava endorses Owens and Hoffman bounds ahead.

Malkin on ACORN and Obama’s efforts to progressivize the right-leaning NY 23: Snortworthy and O’s “air traffic controller.”

Gateway: Obama slide continues. Down 33 points since January.

* Unlike some White House occupants and their advocates, who have launched attacks on free speech and hold that dissent is unpatriotic racism. More post-racialism, please.

“We will transfer and expand our fighting in the Middle East so we can defend Al Aqsa mosque from the Israelis,” Al-Shabab commander Abdifatah Aweys Abu Hamza said in Mogadishu, the Somali capital.

He is apparently the leader of a new Al-Shabab armed group calling themselves “Mujahedin Al Aqsa,” or “Al Aqsa Holy Warriors,” which they said is assigned to attack Israel.

It is not clear whether Al-Shabab has the capacity to carry out its threats against Israel.

No, but if it does in any way, shape or form, I’m pretty sure Israel has the capacity to address it … and hopefully will address the daylights out of it. Could be a pretty effective answer to the Islamic terrorist group that has been ravaging and destabilizing already war-ravaged and destabilized Somalia.

But Rashid Abdi of the International Crisis Group warned that the group should be taken seriously.

“We should not underestimate the capacity of Al-Shabab,” he said. “This is a deadly organization, a formidable foe.”

Abdi said the group had been mutating from a nationalist group into a terrorist organization more like al Qaeda, which was behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

“If you look at the rhetoric and language and if you look at the Web sites, if you hear their preachers or their scholars speak, it is completely indistinguishable from al Qaeda leaders,” Abdi said.

The group has also become more vicious in Somalia, a local human rights expert said.

“The most gruesome and gross violations of human rights are committed by Al-Shabab,” activist Hassan Shire Sheikh said. “They have also instilled fear. They just shoot, they kill, they maim and they lash.”

The group also threatened African neighbors on Friday, including Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Eritrea, Ghana, Sudan and Uganda. They have in the past threatened African nations that provide peacekeeping troops to the war-torn country.

OK. Threats all around. So far they remain a largely localized problem, though as the people who are anxious to abandon Afghanistan keep pointing out, if we insist on fighting them there, then sooner or later we’ll have to fight them in Yemen, the Sudan and Somalia, too. Each conflict in its own time, according to its own needs, I say. And if al-Shabab would prefer to be taken out by Mossad, that’s fine with me. Heads up, al-Shababis: Cell phones blow up.