Why would a former Guantanamo Bay prison guard track down two of his former captives - two British men - and agree to fly to London to meet them?
"You look different without a cap."
"You look different without the jump suits."
With those words, an extraordinary reunion gets under way.
... catch the video from BBC after the click.
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
The Bull and the Bull Fighter
The "war on terrorism" is a significant example of the effectiveness of asymmetrical strategies; the "David and Goliath Effect". Like toreadors, waving a cape at a raging bull in the bull ring, al-Qaeda fields a single operative with explosives in his underwear at the cost of a plane ticket and we spend a billion dollars installing scanning machines in airports all over the country.
Al-Qaeda abandons Afghanistan for the tribal regions of Pakistan leaving us to spend billions of dollars fighting the Taliban who's goals don't extend beyond the national boundaries of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda's cost is next to nothing but the cost to us is immeasurable.
A large military presence in a foreign country only serves to inflame indigenous resentments. Our presence in Iraq and in Afghanistan is a recruiting tool that al-Qaeda could only imagine in their wildest dreams and, over the better part of the last decade, they've learned how to push the right buttons to keep things going.
They don't need to "win". They only need to keep us chasing our tails to achieve their goal of driving us to bankruptcy. For them to merely survive is the big win for them.
We cannot "win" as long as we continue trying to "fight terrorism" on their terms ... as long as we pursue al-Qaeda as if it were a military entity by putting our military force into the field we are playing to their strengths. Like the art of jujitsu, they are using our sheer weight against us. They count on our macho bravodo that dictates, once committed, we cannot back away. Like a bull in a bull ring, we cannot stop chasing the illusive capes.
Al-Qaeda abandons Afghanistan for the tribal regions of Pakistan leaving us to spend billions of dollars fighting the Taliban who's goals don't extend beyond the national boundaries of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda's cost is next to nothing but the cost to us is immeasurable.
A large military presence in a foreign country only serves to inflame indigenous resentments. Our presence in Iraq and in Afghanistan is a recruiting tool that al-Qaeda could only imagine in their wildest dreams and, over the better part of the last decade, they've learned how to push the right buttons to keep things going.
They don't need to "win". They only need to keep us chasing our tails to achieve their goal of driving us to bankruptcy. For them to merely survive is the big win for them.
We cannot "win" as long as we continue trying to "fight terrorism" on their terms ... as long as we pursue al-Qaeda as if it were a military entity by putting our military force into the field we are playing to their strengths. Like the art of jujitsu, they are using our sheer weight against us. They count on our macho bravodo that dictates, once committed, we cannot back away. Like a bull in a bull ring, we cannot stop chasing the illusive capes.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
The Death Party
David Sirota on Huffington Post
Think about it: On health care, Republicans are arguing that Democrats are "rushing" legislation through Congress - legislation that would bring down the astronomical number of deaths that occur thanks to our broken health care system. At the same time, they are attacking President Obama for not more quickly escalating the Afghanistan War - an escalation that would likely result in a large number of American and Afghan deaths.
Read the rest on Huffington Post after the click.
Think about it: On health care, Republicans are arguing that Democrats are "rushing" legislation through Congress - legislation that would bring down the astronomical number of deaths that occur thanks to our broken health care system. At the same time, they are attacking President Obama for not more quickly escalating the Afghanistan War - an escalation that would likely result in a large number of American and Afghan deaths.
Read the rest on Huffington Post after the click.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Warfare vs. Health Care: What Do Americans Value?
Actions speak louder than words, which means you can tell a lot more about what a person truly values by looking at what they do rather than merely at what they say. We can, though, also learn a lot by looking at a person's contradictions. No one is perfectly consistent, and while some inconsistencies may be due to outright hypocrisy, far more are likely due to blindness — probably a self-defense mechanism to prevent us from truly seeing how our real values may be pulling us in a direction different from what our professed values are.
I think we're seeing this in the contradictions between how people treat America's foreign wars versus how they treat domestic health care. The justifications being offered by conservatives and "moderates" for continuing wars in the Middle East are ignored when it comes to questions about providing domestic health care. So what are the real values which lie behind it all?
Read the rest after the click ...
I think we're seeing this in the contradictions between how people treat America's foreign wars versus how they treat domestic health care. The justifications being offered by conservatives and "moderates" for continuing wars in the Middle East are ignored when it comes to questions about providing domestic health care. So what are the real values which lie behind it all?
Read the rest after the click ...
Saturday, February 28, 2009
A quick calculation
If you spent a million dollars a day ...
every single day since Jesus was born ...
you still wouldn't have spend as much ...
as Congress did on the Stimulus Bill.
If you have a problem wrapping your head around that amount ...
lets quadruple it ...
and we'll have the cost of the Iraq War.
Which do you think will show the better ROI (return on investment)?
every single day since Jesus was born ...
you still wouldn't have spend as much ...
as Congress did on the Stimulus Bill.
If you have a problem wrapping your head around that amount ...
lets quadruple it ...
and we'll have the cost of the Iraq War.
Which do you think will show the better ROI (return on investment)?
Monday, February 23, 2009
How Bush's Policies in the Muslim World Played into Terrorists' Hands
from Robert Cramer:
I just returned from Jordan where I attended a seminar on Islam and American Foreign Policy. What struck me most is that the more you talk to leaders from the Muslim world - the more you study the polling of Muslim attitudes - the clearer it is that George Bush didn't just get the "War on Terror" a little wrong. The basic thrust of the "War on Terror" was 100% wrong - 180 degrees off the mark.
In fact, you could argue, that if Osama Bin Laden himself had designed the strategy, it is hard to imagine how - in its essentials - it could have done more to play into the hands of the small fraction of Muslim extremists who resort to terror.
Bush's policy seemed to presume that if the military could just track down and kill enough Islamic radicals and terrorists, terrorism could be wiped out. But even the Bush administration understood that the small, hard core of Muslim terrorists depends upon support from a much broader group of radicalized Muslims - for new recruits, for money, for protection.
... read the rest after the click. It summarizes some interesting Gallup Poll findings obtained from tens of thousands of random interviews in the Muslim world between 2001 and 2007.
Hint: They DON'T hate us for our freedoms.
I just returned from Jordan where I attended a seminar on Islam and American Foreign Policy. What struck me most is that the more you talk to leaders from the Muslim world - the more you study the polling of Muslim attitudes - the clearer it is that George Bush didn't just get the "War on Terror" a little wrong. The basic thrust of the "War on Terror" was 100% wrong - 180 degrees off the mark.
In fact, you could argue, that if Osama Bin Laden himself had designed the strategy, it is hard to imagine how - in its essentials - it could have done more to play into the hands of the small fraction of Muslim extremists who resort to terror.
Bush's policy seemed to presume that if the military could just track down and kill enough Islamic radicals and terrorists, terrorism could be wiped out. But even the Bush administration understood that the small, hard core of Muslim terrorists depends upon support from a much broader group of radicalized Muslims - for new recruits, for money, for protection.
... read the rest after the click. It summarizes some interesting Gallup Poll findings obtained from tens of thousands of random interviews in the Muslim world between 2001 and 2007.
Hint: They DON'T hate us for our freedoms.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Just a thought ...
from Quotes of the Day
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
-- Albert Einstein
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
-- Albert Einstein
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
What happens when a fly falls into a coffee cup?
The Italian throws the cup and walks away in a fit of rage.
The Frenchman takes out the fly, and drinks the coffee.
The Chinese eats the fly and throws away the coffee.
The Russian drinks the coffee with the fly, since there was no extra charge for the fly.
The Israeli sells the coffee to the Frenchman, the fly to the Chinese, buys himself a new cup of coffee, and uses the extra money to invent a device that prevents flies from falling into coffee.
The Palestinian blames the Israeli for the fly falling in his coffee, protests the act of aggression to the UN, takes a loan from the European Union to buy a new cup of coffee, uses the money to purchase explosives, and then blows up the coffee house where the Italian, the Frenchman, the Chinese, and the Russian are all trying to explain to the Israeli that he should give away his cup of coffee to the Palestinian.
The Frenchman takes out the fly, and drinks the coffee.
The Chinese eats the fly and throws away the coffee.
The Russian drinks the coffee with the fly, since there was no extra charge for the fly.
The Israeli sells the coffee to the Frenchman, the fly to the Chinese, buys himself a new cup of coffee, and uses the extra money to invent a device that prevents flies from falling into coffee.
The Palestinian blames the Israeli for the fly falling in his coffee, protests the act of aggression to the UN, takes a loan from the European Union to buy a new cup of coffee, uses the money to purchase explosives, and then blows up the coffee house where the Italian, the Frenchman, the Chinese, and the Russian are all trying to explain to the Israeli that he should give away his cup of coffee to the Palestinian.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Without commnet
CNN’s Prisoner of War
He had been hunted, kidnapped, and told he was filming his own execution. But CNN correspondent Michael Ware had no plans to leave Iraq. Now, it won’t leave him.
by Greg Veis
“I am not the same fucking person,” he tells me. “I am not the same person. I don’t know how to come home.”
It’s October, six months after our first meeting, and Michael Ware, 39, is at his girlfriend’s apartment in New York, trying to tell me why after six years he absolutely must start spending less time in Iraq. He’s crying on the other end of the telephone.
“Will I get any better?” he continues. “I honestly don’t know. I can’t see the — right now, I know no other way to live.”
To begin to understand where he’s coming from, Ware wants you to see a movie. He filmed it. It’s just after midnight during the second battle of Fallujah, November 2004. The marine unit he’s hooked up with has cornered six insurgents inside a house, and with no air support available, the only way to take them out is person-to-person. Staff Sergeant David Bellavia doesn’t like the sound of that — odds are one of his men, or he, will die in the pitch-black of an unfamiliar house — but he knows he can’t just let these guys go. So he asks for volunteers to go with him: Three men raise their hands, followed by Ware, who as a reporter (then for Time, now for CNN) is the only one without a gun or night goggles, and still can’t explain why he went along. He just couldn’t not.
... find the rest on Men's Journal.
He had been hunted, kidnapped, and told he was filming his own execution. But CNN correspondent Michael Ware had no plans to leave Iraq. Now, it won’t leave him.
by Greg Veis
“I am not the same fucking person,” he tells me. “I am not the same person. I don’t know how to come home.”
It’s October, six months after our first meeting, and Michael Ware, 39, is at his girlfriend’s apartment in New York, trying to tell me why after six years he absolutely must start spending less time in Iraq. He’s crying on the other end of the telephone.
“Will I get any better?” he continues. “I honestly don’t know. I can’t see the — right now, I know no other way to live.”
To begin to understand where he’s coming from, Ware wants you to see a movie. He filmed it. It’s just after midnight during the second battle of Fallujah, November 2004. The marine unit he’s hooked up with has cornered six insurgents inside a house, and with no air support available, the only way to take them out is person-to-person. Staff Sergeant David Bellavia doesn’t like the sound of that — odds are one of his men, or he, will die in the pitch-black of an unfamiliar house — but he knows he can’t just let these guys go. So he asks for volunteers to go with him: Three men raise their hands, followed by Ware, who as a reporter (then for Time, now for CNN) is the only one without a gun or night goggles, and still can’t explain why he went along. He just couldn’t not.
... find the rest on Men's Journal.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
If the facts don't fit your story ... change the facts
Iraq Ally Lists Were Altered, Study Shows
By THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON — Before invading Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration mounted a significant diplomatic offensive to rally international support, and officials at the White House, Pentagon and State Department went to great lengths to trumpet those nations that joined what they termed “the coalition of the willing.”
But historians researching those early alliance-building efforts say they are troubled by what seem to be deletions of and alterations to the early official lists of nations that supported the war effort. The lists were posted on the White House Web site.
While administration officials acknowledged that the number of nations supporting the war changed over time, academic researchers say three official lists appear to have been changed, yet retained their original release date, making them appear to be unaltered originals.
... more in the New York Times.
My comment: "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
By THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON — Before invading Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration mounted a significant diplomatic offensive to rally international support, and officials at the White House, Pentagon and State Department went to great lengths to trumpet those nations that joined what they termed “the coalition of the willing.”
But historians researching those early alliance-building efforts say they are troubled by what seem to be deletions of and alterations to the early official lists of nations that supported the war effort. The lists were posted on the White House Web site.
While administration officials acknowledged that the number of nations supporting the war changed over time, academic researchers say three official lists appear to have been changed, yet retained their original release date, making them appear to be unaltered originals.
... more in the New York Times.
My comment: "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
How the world works ...
From Kurdistan to K Street
Mother Jones
The routine of Washington foreign policymaking is straightforward and, well, a little boring. Presidents and secretaries of state issue pronouncements in speeches. Diplomats have discussions in ornate ceremonial rooms. That's the official version, anyhow, and even if we're well aware that reality departs from the C-Span, Foreign Affairs version of things, the rhythm, pomp, and ceremony shape our understanding of how countries relate to each other.
This is a story of the other world, the one whose real power players never show up in the CNN headline crawl. It's the story of a man with a habit of popping up, Zelig-like, at the nexus of foreign policy and the kinds of businesses that thrive in times of war—security contracting, infrastructure development and postwar reconstruction, influence and intelligence brokering.
It's also the story of how this entrepreneur and middleman, in the shadowy environment created by the 9/11 attacks and Washington's advance on Iraq, seized the opportunity to propel himself from small-time businessman into global player. The trajectory of Shlomi Michaels is testament not only to one man's driven intensity, but also to the opportunities the war on terror has presented to those with the information, connections, and ambition to seize them.
... the rest of the story after the click.
Mother Jones
The routine of Washington foreign policymaking is straightforward and, well, a little boring. Presidents and secretaries of state issue pronouncements in speeches. Diplomats have discussions in ornate ceremonial rooms. That's the official version, anyhow, and even if we're well aware that reality departs from the C-Span, Foreign Affairs version of things, the rhythm, pomp, and ceremony shape our understanding of how countries relate to each other.
This is a story of the other world, the one whose real power players never show up in the CNN headline crawl. It's the story of a man with a habit of popping up, Zelig-like, at the nexus of foreign policy and the kinds of businesses that thrive in times of war—security contracting, infrastructure development and postwar reconstruction, influence and intelligence brokering.
It's also the story of how this entrepreneur and middleman, in the shadowy environment created by the 9/11 attacks and Washington's advance on Iraq, seized the opportunity to propel himself from small-time businessman into global player. The trajectory of Shlomi Michaels is testament not only to one man's driven intensity, but also to the opportunities the war on terror has presented to those with the information, connections, and ambition to seize them.
... the rest of the story after the click.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Who's the enemy?
The military budget in the United States is sacrosanct. To suggest cuts in the military budget attracts expressions of horror in some quarters.
Below is a chart outlining the comparative military spending budgets around the world:
(Note: US Military spending does not include special appropriations on the order of $100Billion annually for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Image Source: Global Issues - Military Spending.)
Interestingly enough, not a single member of the "Axes of Evil" registers on the radar screen yet, we're embroiled in two wars and being fought to a standstill in both. It's been suggested elsewhere that the Iraqi insurgency has been running on a budget on the order of $250 Million ... that's Million, not Billion.
A military that has a budget of between $700 and $800 Billion, fought to a standstill by a bunch of people with AK-47s, RPGs and home made, roadside bombs for seven years?
A military budget that is roughly equal to all the other countries on the planet ... combined?
Something is dramatically wrong here.
Who are we preparing to fight? Perhaps more to the point, who's preparing to fight with us?
Below is a chart outlining the comparative military spending budgets around the world:
(Note: US Military spending does not include special appropriations on the order of $100Billion annually for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Image Source: Global Issues - Military Spending.)
Interestingly enough, not a single member of the "Axes of Evil" registers on the radar screen yet, we're embroiled in two wars and being fought to a standstill in both. It's been suggested elsewhere that the Iraqi insurgency has been running on a budget on the order of $250 Million ... that's Million, not Billion.
A military that has a budget of between $700 and $800 Billion, fought to a standstill by a bunch of people with AK-47s, RPGs and home made, roadside bombs for seven years?
A military budget that is roughly equal to all the other countries on the planet ... combined?
Something is dramatically wrong here.
Who are we preparing to fight? Perhaps more to the point, who's preparing to fight with us?
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Bin Laden Wins
Thank you, George.
In the beginning, bin Laden said he couldn't bring us down. But, he said he'd figured out how to sucker us into bringing ourselves down. The attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was not a military maneuver, it was an economic gambit.
Knowing full well that we would follow him into the wastelands of Afghanistan, his initial plan was to retreat (which he did) and we'd get bogged down in an endless war of attrition that would eventually bankrupt us. His precedent was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In ten years of fighting, the Soviet Union found it had a tremendous drain on its economy. The unpopular war divided the people of the USSR. The end result was a Soviet withdrawal and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. They went bankrupt!
But Bush went bin Laden one better. Finding that Afghanistan lacked significant targets for a glorious war, the Bush administration used the 9/11 attack as an excuse to pursue plans to invade Iraq ... a priority from day one of the administration. Bin Laden must have cheered! The move took the pressure off bin Laden, provided an unprecedented recruiting tool for his cause throughout the Middle East, and we found ourselves embroiled in an unwinable war. Our lack of intellectual curiosity led us into a quagmire with multiple enemies - the Sunni, the Shi'a, the Kurds, and the former Baathists of the deposed Saddam Husein regime. Our ignorance turned it into an exercise in "learning on the job" and the lesson we learned was that no matter what we did in Iraq, we pissed off one heavily armed faction or another.
The exercise drained our economy at a rate of $10 Billion a month while the economic house of cards we'd built over decades of domestic deregulation started showing signs that it was coming apart at the seams.
Our Keystone Cops response to bin Ladin's simple act of hijacking a couple planes and flying them into a couple of prominent buildings in Manhattan became a text book demonstration of chaos theory which posits that the motion of a butterfly's wings on the slopes of Mount Fuji can set currents in motion that eventually result in typhoons in the South China Sea. Bin Laden was a butterfly and the economic consequences of his single act on 9/11 have set in motion economic currents that are about to swamp our ship of state.
It's hard to say you're winning the War on Terror when you just went bankrupt. With a national debt rapidly approaching $11 Trillion that forces us to borrow vast amounts just to service the interest, it's difficult to make the case that we are not.
In the beginning, bin Laden said he couldn't bring us down. But, he said he'd figured out how to sucker us into bringing ourselves down. The attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was not a military maneuver, it was an economic gambit.
Knowing full well that we would follow him into the wastelands of Afghanistan, his initial plan was to retreat (which he did) and we'd get bogged down in an endless war of attrition that would eventually bankrupt us. His precedent was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In ten years of fighting, the Soviet Union found it had a tremendous drain on its economy. The unpopular war divided the people of the USSR. The end result was a Soviet withdrawal and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. They went bankrupt!
But Bush went bin Laden one better. Finding that Afghanistan lacked significant targets for a glorious war, the Bush administration used the 9/11 attack as an excuse to pursue plans to invade Iraq ... a priority from day one of the administration. Bin Laden must have cheered! The move took the pressure off bin Laden, provided an unprecedented recruiting tool for his cause throughout the Middle East, and we found ourselves embroiled in an unwinable war. Our lack of intellectual curiosity led us into a quagmire with multiple enemies - the Sunni, the Shi'a, the Kurds, and the former Baathists of the deposed Saddam Husein regime. Our ignorance turned it into an exercise in "learning on the job" and the lesson we learned was that no matter what we did in Iraq, we pissed off one heavily armed faction or another.
The exercise drained our economy at a rate of $10 Billion a month while the economic house of cards we'd built over decades of domestic deregulation started showing signs that it was coming apart at the seams.
Our Keystone Cops response to bin Ladin's simple act of hijacking a couple planes and flying them into a couple of prominent buildings in Manhattan became a text book demonstration of chaos theory which posits that the motion of a butterfly's wings on the slopes of Mount Fuji can set currents in motion that eventually result in typhoons in the South China Sea. Bin Laden was a butterfly and the economic consequences of his single act on 9/11 have set in motion economic currents that are about to swamp our ship of state.
It's hard to say you're winning the War on Terror when you just went bankrupt. With a national debt rapidly approaching $11 Trillion that forces us to borrow vast amounts just to service the interest, it's difficult to make the case that we are not.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Shock and Awe: Guernica: April 26, 1937
by Joseph Palermo
Seventy-one years ago, on April 26, 1937, the German Luftwaffe used the people of Guernica in northern Spain as laboratory animals in an experiment to see what it would take to bomb a city into oblivion. The head of the German air force, Herman Goering told the tribunal at Nuremburg during his war crimes trial: "The Spanish Civil War gave me an opportunity to put my young air force to the test, and a means for my men to gain experience."
Goering's Nazi flyboys rained incendiary bombs on the center of the market town of some 5,000 residents. In five bombing raids, twenty-nine planes dropped 44,000 pounds of explosives. A firestorm engulfed the central plaza of the city, and biplanes strafed the fleeing civilians with machine guns. Most of the city's buildings were either completely destroyed or severely damaged. The bombing killed 1,650 people, and wounded 889, most of them older civilians, and women, and children. The Nazi bombing of the undefended town of Guernica became the first aerial destruction of a civilian center, and it shocked the world. President Franklin D. Roosevelt correctly called it an atrocity, and Pablo Picasso immortalized it with his anguished mural, Guernica.
But within a few short years the murder of innocents from the air at Guernica was dwarfed by the 45,000 civilians killed in Hamburg, the 100,000 civilians killed in Dresden, the 130,000 killed in Tokyo, and the 280,000 killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In early February 2003, a few days before Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his power-point presentation to the United Nations making the case that Saddam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction," American officials demanded that a curtain be draped over the U.N.'s reproduction of Picasso's Guernica. They believed it would be inappropriate for Powell to make his pitch for aggressive war while standing in front of the 20th Century's most iconic protest against the inhumanity of war.
More after the click ...
My comment:
Trite but too true, "Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it". Did you pay attention in your history classes? Did they even teach you anything about Guernica?
Seventy-one years ago, on April 26, 1937, the German Luftwaffe used the people of Guernica in northern Spain as laboratory animals in an experiment to see what it would take to bomb a city into oblivion. The head of the German air force, Herman Goering told the tribunal at Nuremburg during his war crimes trial: "The Spanish Civil War gave me an opportunity to put my young air force to the test, and a means for my men to gain experience."
Goering's Nazi flyboys rained incendiary bombs on the center of the market town of some 5,000 residents. In five bombing raids, twenty-nine planes dropped 44,000 pounds of explosives. A firestorm engulfed the central plaza of the city, and biplanes strafed the fleeing civilians with machine guns. Most of the city's buildings were either completely destroyed or severely damaged. The bombing killed 1,650 people, and wounded 889, most of them older civilians, and women, and children. The Nazi bombing of the undefended town of Guernica became the first aerial destruction of a civilian center, and it shocked the world. President Franklin D. Roosevelt correctly called it an atrocity, and Pablo Picasso immortalized it with his anguished mural, Guernica.
But within a few short years the murder of innocents from the air at Guernica was dwarfed by the 45,000 civilians killed in Hamburg, the 100,000 civilians killed in Dresden, the 130,000 killed in Tokyo, and the 280,000 killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In early February 2003, a few days before Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his power-point presentation to the United Nations making the case that Saddam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction," American officials demanded that a curtain be draped over the U.N.'s reproduction of Picasso's Guernica. They believed it would be inappropriate for Powell to make his pitch for aggressive war while standing in front of the 20th Century's most iconic protest against the inhumanity of war.
More after the click ...
My comment:
Trite but too true, "Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it". Did you pay attention in your history classes? Did they even teach you anything about Guernica?
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Fill in the Blank
an echo from the past:
"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of [fill in the blank]. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in [fill in the blank]. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.
"This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of [fill in the blank]. Recently one of them wrote these words:
"'Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the [fill in the blank] and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.'
"If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in [fill in the blank]. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad [fill in the blank] into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of [fill in the blank] immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.
"The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in [fill in the blank], that we have been detrimental to the life of the [fill in the blank] people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.
"In order to atone for our sins and errors in [fill in the blank], we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war."
-- from Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech in 1967 at the Riverside Church in New York criticizing American's war in Vietnam (minor edits limited to [fill in the blank].).
My Comment:
The more things change, the more they remain the same. When war becomes a private enterprise and a profitable business, there can be no end to war. There can be no peace - for if there were peace, the profits from war would cease.
"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of [fill in the blank]. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in [fill in the blank]. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.
"This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of [fill in the blank]. Recently one of them wrote these words:
"'Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the [fill in the blank] and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.'
"If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in [fill in the blank]. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad [fill in the blank] into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of [fill in the blank] immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.
"The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in [fill in the blank], that we have been detrimental to the life of the [fill in the blank] people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.
"In order to atone for our sins and errors in [fill in the blank], we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war."
-- from Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech in 1967 at the Riverside Church in New York criticizing American's war in Vietnam (minor edits limited to [fill in the blank].).
My Comment:
The more things change, the more they remain the same. When war becomes a private enterprise and a profitable business, there can be no end to war. There can be no peace - for if there were peace, the profits from war would cease.
Strategic Manure
by Charley Reese / on AntiWar
Sen. John McCain is already spreading the old "strategic interests" fertilizer along the presidential campaign trail while pretending to be an expert.
Let's hope he really can explain what interests require us to maintain troops in Germany and Japan 63 years after the end of the war. What exactly is the purpose of those troops? Are we expecting the Mongols to descend on Japan? Does he expect the Cossacks will ride across the plains to attack Europe? Does he think that two of the greatest economic powers on Earth – Japan and Europe – are too poor to defend themselves? The old boy is living in the past.
When American politicians talk about strategic interests, they are talking about just what I called it, manure. We have no strategic interests in the Middle East whatsoever. We wish to buy oil there. Last time I checked, those countries that produce oil were selling it to any country willing to buy it, whether that country had troops in the area or not. Since oil isn't edible, there's not a heck of a lot you can do with it if you don't sell it.
More after the click ...
Sen. John McCain is already spreading the old "strategic interests" fertilizer along the presidential campaign trail while pretending to be an expert.
Let's hope he really can explain what interests require us to maintain troops in Germany and Japan 63 years after the end of the war. What exactly is the purpose of those troops? Are we expecting the Mongols to descend on Japan? Does he expect the Cossacks will ride across the plains to attack Europe? Does he think that two of the greatest economic powers on Earth – Japan and Europe – are too poor to defend themselves? The old boy is living in the past.
When American politicians talk about strategic interests, they are talking about just what I called it, manure. We have no strategic interests in the Middle East whatsoever. We wish to buy oil there. Last time I checked, those countries that produce oil were selling it to any country willing to buy it, whether that country had troops in the area or not. Since oil isn't edible, there's not a heck of a lot you can do with it if you don't sell it.
More after the click ...
Friday, April 04, 2008
100 Years of Peaceful Occupation in Iraq
from Crooks and Liars
So, for those keeping score at home, McCain 1) endorsed a multi-decade presence in Iraq; 2) denounced a multi-decade presence in Iraq; 3) re-embraced his first point; and 4) blasted those who agreed with his second point as being incompetent.
At the risk of sounding impolite, this guy is starting to make Bush look like he’s engaged and knowledgeable.
Get it all after the click ...
So, for those keeping score at home, McCain 1) endorsed a multi-decade presence in Iraq; 2) denounced a multi-decade presence in Iraq; 3) re-embraced his first point; and 4) blasted those who agreed with his second point as being incompetent.
At the risk of sounding impolite, this guy is starting to make Bush look like he’s engaged and knowledgeable.
Get it all after the click ...
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
"Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month."
Barack Obama on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 in a speech in Charleston, W.Va.
So, I went to Politifact.com to find out if that was true. Here's what I found out:
Yes, families pay more for Iraq war than cable. It's True.
The cost of the Iraq war has often been expressed in billions or trillions, numbers so big and abstract they remind us of Carl Sagan's description of the universe (“billions and billions of stars…”).
The candidates have cited alternative uses for the war money, saying it would have been better spent on health coverage for the uninsured (Sen. Hillary Clinton) or on more school teachers (Sen. Barack Obama).
In a speech on March 20, 2008, Obama took a different approach and emphasized the personal cost of the war.
“When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you’re paying a price for this war,” he said in the speech in Charleston, W.Va.
At $100 per month, the war cost to each U.S. household would be more than cable TV (average bill: $58), but less than a car payment (average bill: $400-500).
So, I went to Politifact.com to find out if that was true. Here's what I found out:
Yes, families pay more for Iraq war than cable. It's True.
The cost of the Iraq war has often been expressed in billions or trillions, numbers so big and abstract they remind us of Carl Sagan's description of the universe (“billions and billions of stars…”).
The candidates have cited alternative uses for the war money, saying it would have been better spent on health coverage for the uninsured (Sen. Hillary Clinton) or on more school teachers (Sen. Barack Obama).
In a speech on March 20, 2008, Obama took a different approach and emphasized the personal cost of the war.
“When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you’re paying a price for this war,” he said in the speech in Charleston, W.Va.
At $100 per month, the war cost to each U.S. household would be more than cable TV (average bill: $58), but less than a car payment (average bill: $400-500).
Monday, March 31, 2008
The Truth Be Known ...
by Joseph A. Palermo
The corkscrew descent made everybody's stomachs churn as the C-130 transport plane seemed to fall from the sky. The flak and hot metal pounding the wings and fuselage sounded like popcorn popping and quickly reached an ear-splitting crescendo. Two of the plane's engines were hit and coughed their final sighs before shutting down. A minute later, a powerful jolt let everybody know they had finally hit the tarmac and a brief feeling of relief swept the occupants. Although weapons and gear were thrown around, the aircraft was apparently in tact and everybody was still alive. Hillary Clinton began barking out orders: "Okay, I want to secure this LZ in under 2 minutes, Comprendo?" she shouted in a firm and even tone. "Sinbad -- grab one of those RPGs and take point about 20 yards north-northeast! Chelsea -- take that .50 cal about 20 yards to the northwest and start laying down cover fire! I'll hold up the southern flank." Hillary then turned to General Nash who was still strapped in his chair: "You better not leave our asses hanging out there General! I want cover fire! Don't fuck this up or I'll have your ass dipped in marmalade!" The droning of the sputtering engines and intense gunfire almost drowned out Hillary's commands. "I don't want any zips in the wire General!" she screamed. And then she turned to the other terrified soldiers in the plane and said: "Just do your fucking jobs people and everybody's gonna make it outta here!"
Get the rest of the true story after the click ...
The corkscrew descent made everybody's stomachs churn as the C-130 transport plane seemed to fall from the sky. The flak and hot metal pounding the wings and fuselage sounded like popcorn popping and quickly reached an ear-splitting crescendo. Two of the plane's engines were hit and coughed their final sighs before shutting down. A minute later, a powerful jolt let everybody know they had finally hit the tarmac and a brief feeling of relief swept the occupants. Although weapons and gear were thrown around, the aircraft was apparently in tact and everybody was still alive. Hillary Clinton began barking out orders: "Okay, I want to secure this LZ in under 2 minutes, Comprendo?" she shouted in a firm and even tone. "Sinbad -- grab one of those RPGs and take point about 20 yards north-northeast! Chelsea -- take that .50 cal about 20 yards to the northwest and start laying down cover fire! I'll hold up the southern flank." Hillary then turned to General Nash who was still strapped in his chair: "You better not leave our asses hanging out there General! I want cover fire! Don't fuck this up or I'll have your ass dipped in marmalade!" The droning of the sputtering engines and intense gunfire almost drowned out Hillary's commands. "I don't want any zips in the wire General!" she screamed. And then she turned to the other terrified soldiers in the plane and said: "Just do your fucking jobs people and everybody's gonna make it outta here!"
Get the rest of the true story after the click ...
War always brings unintended consequences
The Opium Brides of Afghanistan
In the country's poppy-growing provinces, farmers are being forced to sell their daughters to pay loans.
Newsweek
Khalida's father says she's 9—or maybe 10. As much as Sayed Shah loves his 10 children, the functionally illiterate Afghan farmer can't keep track of all their birth dates. Khalida huddles at his side, trying to hide beneath her chador and headscarf. They both know the family can't keep her much longer. Khalida's father has spent much of his life raising opium, as men like him have been doing for decades in the stony hillsides of eastern Afghanistan and on the dusty southern plains. It's the only reliable cash crop most of those farmers ever had. Even so, Shah and his family barely got by: traffickers may prosper, but poor farmers like him only subsist. Now he's losing far more than money. "I never imagined I'd have to pay for growing opium by giving up my daughter," says Shah.
The family's heartbreak began when Shah borrowed $2,000 from a local trafficker, promising to repay the loan with 24 kilos of opium at harvest time. Late last spring, just before harvest, a government crop-eradication team appeared at the family's little plot of land in Laghman province and destroyed Shah's entire two and a half acres of poppies. Unable to meet his debt, Shah fled with his family to Jalalabad, the capital of neighboring Nangarhar province. The trafficker found them anyway and demanded his opium. So Shah took his case before a tribal council in Laghman and begged for leniency. Instead, the elders unanimously ruled that Shah would have to reimburse the trafficker by giving Khalida to him in marriage. Now the family can only wait for the 45-year-old drugrunner to come back for his prize. Khalida wanted to be a teacher someday, but that has become impossible. "It's my fate," the child says.
Afghans disparagingly call them "loan brides" — daughters given in marriage by fathers who have no other way out of debt. The practice began with the dowry a bridegroom's family traditionally pays to the bride's father in tribal Pashtun society. These days the amount ranges from $3,000 or so in poorer places like Laghman and Nangarhar to $8,000 or more in Helmand, Afghanistan's No. 1 opium-growing province. For a desperate farmer, that bride price can be salvation—but at a cruel cost. Among the Pashtun, debt marriage puts a lasting stain on the honor of the bride and her family. It brings shame on the country, too. President Hamid Karzai recently told the nation: "I call on the people [not to] give their daughters for money; they shouldn't give them to old men, and they shouldn't give them in forced marriages."
More after the click ...
In the country's poppy-growing provinces, farmers are being forced to sell their daughters to pay loans.
Newsweek
Khalida's father says she's 9—or maybe 10. As much as Sayed Shah loves his 10 children, the functionally illiterate Afghan farmer can't keep track of all their birth dates. Khalida huddles at his side, trying to hide beneath her chador and headscarf. They both know the family can't keep her much longer. Khalida's father has spent much of his life raising opium, as men like him have been doing for decades in the stony hillsides of eastern Afghanistan and on the dusty southern plains. It's the only reliable cash crop most of those farmers ever had. Even so, Shah and his family barely got by: traffickers may prosper, but poor farmers like him only subsist. Now he's losing far more than money. "I never imagined I'd have to pay for growing opium by giving up my daughter," says Shah.
The family's heartbreak began when Shah borrowed $2,000 from a local trafficker, promising to repay the loan with 24 kilos of opium at harvest time. Late last spring, just before harvest, a government crop-eradication team appeared at the family's little plot of land in Laghman province and destroyed Shah's entire two and a half acres of poppies. Unable to meet his debt, Shah fled with his family to Jalalabad, the capital of neighboring Nangarhar province. The trafficker found them anyway and demanded his opium. So Shah took his case before a tribal council in Laghman and begged for leniency. Instead, the elders unanimously ruled that Shah would have to reimburse the trafficker by giving Khalida to him in marriage. Now the family can only wait for the 45-year-old drugrunner to come back for his prize. Khalida wanted to be a teacher someday, but that has become impossible. "It's my fate," the child says.
Afghans disparagingly call them "loan brides" — daughters given in marriage by fathers who have no other way out of debt. The practice began with the dowry a bridegroom's family traditionally pays to the bride's father in tribal Pashtun society. These days the amount ranges from $3,000 or so in poorer places like Laghman and Nangarhar to $8,000 or more in Helmand, Afghanistan's No. 1 opium-growing province. For a desperate farmer, that bride price can be salvation—but at a cruel cost. Among the Pashtun, debt marriage puts a lasting stain on the honor of the bride and her family. It brings shame on the country, too. President Hamid Karzai recently told the nation: "I call on the people [not to] give their daughters for money; they shouldn't give them to old men, and they shouldn't give them in forced marriages."
More after the click ...
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