Whose turn is it on Afghanistan’s plains?

It was a hard lesson for the Soviets, and before them the Soldiers of the Queen. I think Kipling’s advice bears repeating as we consider that American casualties are on the rise in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is the Forgotten Campaign of the GWOT, where we’re still taking a victory lap in a pool filling with crocodiles.

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
and the women come out to cut up what remains,
jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
and go to your gawd like a soldier.
    -Rudyard Kipling, The Young British Soldier

from Rudyard Kipling’s..

The man who would be king…

“…and they (the tribe who lived upstream) urinate in the river”
This in reference to the “runoff” election iniative.

Why should all those poor, indeed Indigent, on food stamps and sleeping on park benches Business Leaders in Colorado Springs have to pay for the toxic waste that runs off their parking lots every damn time it rains?

They probably wouldn’t drink the stuff, unfiltered, that comes off their pavement, but, hey, it’s off their property, must be Somebody Else’s Problem.
And the fact that the filtration processes to get the poison out of the water, those processes, yeah…

They cost money. But the people downstream from Colorado Springs (hint: the entire western United States, Mexico, etc… yeah, those people) they can buy their own filtration processes to get OUR poisons out of THEIR water… and all those lawsuits about it? Pshawww… that’s Frivolous Litigation, haven’t they ever heard of Tort Reform?

They don’t want to drink our urine or feces either, but guess what? the amount of runoff water from the pavement really does FLOOD the same treatment plants.
Both here, and in Pueblo, and Wolf Creek, and Albuquerque, and El Paso, Laredo, Del Rio, McAllen, Brownsville…

Not to mention Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Acuña, Matamoros, I won’t even mention these because the people who want to dump their waste for FREE don’t even consider Mexican citizens to be human, just “potential wetbacks”. …and that’s just from ONE of the four major watersheds.

We already are being sued by Pueblo, which has a lot of Civil Servants, federal employees, living there.

Also the Military Bases all around have to filter the same wastes from the same water, at public expense. That would be EVERYBODY’S, in the entire nation, expense.

Did I mention that the runoff water also makes it more expensive to treat the Raw Sewage from our toilets? Why, yes, I did, I really really did.

Should I mention, you reckon, that the same people who oppose this “taxation” are the same ones who think it’s a good idea to change their oil in their front yards and not ever have to pick up their pet droppings?

Why, I believe I just did…

Of course, they’ll try to tell us again that Social Responsibility means Socialism, a word they still try to frighten the working class by using. They’ll also say it’s an unfair burden on the poor, because we’d have to pay higher prices to compensate for the Rich not getting corporate welfare.

Like they seriously ever gave three quarters of a fat rat’s rump about the poor to begin with.

We are the Little Folk, we

I like to think of the “Little Folk” of Rudyard Kipling’s A Pict Song
as non-violent insurgents, more Fifth-Column than pacifist. Bluster and indignation will not push back the imperial armies. But quiet, steady non-conformity will subvert their dominion.
Rudyard Kipling A PICT SONG
Rome never looks where she treads.
    Always her heavy hooves fall
On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads;
    And Rome never heeds when we bawl.
Her sentries pass on — that is all,
    And we gather behind them in hordes,
And plot to reconquer the Wall,
    With only our tongues for our swords.

We are the Little Folk — we!
    Too little to love or to hate.
Leave us alone and you’ll see
    How we can drag down the State!
We are the worm in the wood!
    We are the rot at the root!
We are the taint in the blood!
    We are the thorn in the foot!

Mistletoe killing an oak —
    Rats gnawing cables in two —
Moths making holes in a cloak —
    How they must love what they do!
Yes — and we Little Folk too,
    We are busy as they —
Working our works out of view —
    Watch, and you’ll see it some day!

No indeed! We are not strong,
    But we know Peoples that are.
Yes, and we’ll guide them along
    To smash and destroy you in War!
We shall be slaves just the same?
    Yes, we have always been slaves,
But you — you will die of the shame,
    And then we shall dance on your graves!

    We are the Little Folk, we…

Signed, R. Kipling