The Mine Kafon — invented by Massoud Hassani — is a cheap, wind-blown landmine clearance device made primarily from bamboo, plastic and iron. (Photo: Massoud Hassani)
As a child, Hassani’s playground was a field full of landmines. “When we were kids,” he explained, “we used to make these wind-powered toys and play with them on this desert full of explosives, and they’d get stuck out there.”
Those toys were the inspiration for his Mine Kafons. More.
(via npr)
Nobody can tell the foreigners to stop what they’re doing,
A few hired slaves are ruling the country.
O Kabul! We will clean you from these black faces,
Lines of committed believers are formed.
--From “Kabul is set on fire,” by Hafiz Ikramuddin, Aug. 8, 2008.
The lines above are from Poetry of the Taliban, an anthology of 200 poems, edited by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Keuhn, that has been newly published by Hurst & Co. in the U.K. The same volume will be published next month by Columbia University Press in New York. A fuller précis, with a few notes about an old and unsurprising controversy, can be found on the NYT’s At War blog, here.