Said, in different words, that the illegal conquest Iraqi Oilfields and National Prison-camp Ghetto Rebuilding has been secured and that the Iraqi Puppet Army and Police are sufficiently trained in Western Style Police Brutality. What a victory for Righteousness and Decency! Strange that they never found all those WMDs, though, ain't it? Meanwhile neighboring Syria and Iran are targeted and Guess Which Really Stupid Lie They're Telling Us to justify that? Go on, guess... Ok I'll tell you. WMDs. Apparently a nation like the U.S. which employs torture and assassinations that have historically killed about twenty times as many non-combatants as they do "terrorists" and many of whose political leaders believe they should establish a fundamentalist religious dictatorship worldwide, is the only nation morally fit to have WMDs. Add in that the U.S., which has more of every class of weapon than the entire rest of the world combined, is also the only nation to have used all three classes of WMD, Biological, Nuclear and Chemical. And routinely uses gas and is experimenting with mass Pain weapons against "their own" citizens. Sort of a high-tech version of what they accuse Gadafi and Hussein of doing. And make no mistake, the American Cop or Soldier using torture or killing anybody anywhere in the world, gets just as big a sadistic thrill from his use of violence as any of Saddam or Moammar's worst Gestapo-esque Goon Squad member. They get a bigger thrill when the victim is a Child, elderly or disabled. Yeah. Even the CSPD. I bet they show the Explorers videos of their torture sessions to weed out those who aren't as depraved as Real Cops. There's also the matter of Afghanistan.... And leave us not forget Pakistan. Which General Betray-us has in his sights now that he's the chief of the Central Global Intelligence Agency. The military and Intelligence services have united, wholeheartedly, behind the Conquest of The World for the profit of the 1%. Afghanistan, which they cheerfully predicted would be a cakewalk, like Iraq, which neither of them actually WAS a "cakewalk"... because of their relative poverty, really small populations and lack of actual Weapons of Any Destruction... Afghanistan was ranked the poorest country on earth, had 5 aircraft in the entire country which were destroyed within the first several minutes of the intensive bombing. The second and subsequent waves of bombing were, as one analyst boasted, "stirring up the rubble from the first". I'm not going to apologize for saying this, if any of the Right Wing Trolls who read this haven't figured that out, too damn bad, but Aerial Bombardment is Babykilling and always has been. What the U.S.A.F. has done in Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya is morally equivalent to what the Italian, Spanish and Luftwaffe "volunteers" did in Guernica and Ethiopia. Now some of the Educated Morons in the State Department and Military are making plans Open Threats to do the same to Pakistan and Iran. Let's do some comparison figures to show the accuracy of my next statement shall we? Iraq (by CIA estimates) 30
Tag: Vietnam
Spank a Vet with a warm fuzzy Attaboy
For those who think that the Peace people dishonor the veterans, think a bit on what the most prominent campaigns has to offer in the way of humiliation. One of the "new and improved" corporate motivational methods is called "peer recognition" because research showed that workers don't want to actually be, you know, adequately paid for our labor which enriches our bosses and impoverishes us. No, we want the empowerment of "recognition" for our good deeds. Say (and this happens far too often to be hypothetical) you have an innovation that saves your company many times your annual salary. What does the boss do to reward you? First he patents your innovation and declares it corporate intellectual property, then gives you an award ceremony where he more or less pats your head and tells you "Attaboy!" which those English speakers who own dogs might recognize. There's even an award letter, usually hand-written by your supervisor, saying "Attaboy!" and sometimes a Warm Fuzzy, which is a recognition pin that looks kind of like a piece of pocket lint or a dust-bunny from under a desk. How special, right? Your peers get to recognize that your contribution made the boss wealthier and as a reward you get treated like a dog in front of God and everybody. In the Military, the ultimate enforcement arm of the Corporate Empire, you get something called a "medal" or a "service ribbon" and there's even a medal for not getting arrested for a year. Seriously. This type of manipulative behavior is as old as the idea of organized military. A pay and benefits raise would be a lot more meaningful than a piece of brass or maybe silver with a recycling value of maybe a buck. But gosh darn it, that would be Too Expensive. So the Corporates, the sole beneficiaries of Military Action, get to go even further with the "Thank A Vet" campaign, they get their publicly subsidized (corporate welfare) non-employees to do a really dangerous job, people who are being robbed of THEIR essential rights and freedoms in the name of making Americans (or at least their corporate owners) Free (to take all the resources of the subjugated nations and kill anybody who resists) tend to fight back. Throw airplanes at "our" buildings and such. Add in that the equipment the military uses, at great public expense and huge private profits to the Corporates, is usually dangerous in itself. Take Depleted Uranium, (please) which makes a steel shell more massive in less space. Those of you who understand ballistics would appreciate that and those who don't, study it. It's simple Newtonian physics. With a titanium tip and an explosive charge it can go through any armor. "Terror" groups who are targeted by, say, American or British tanks realize this and if they can obtain an intact round (one that didn't get smashed or exploded) will re-load it and send it back. The uranium, the heaviest naturally occurring element, has value especially in small pieces to be
My Lai every day
From Wikipedia: The My Lai Massacre (Vietnamese: th?m sát M? Lai [t????m ????t m?? l??j]; English pronunciation: /?mi??la?/ ( listen), also /?mi??le?, ?ma??la?/,[1] Vietnamese: [m??l??j]) was the mass murder of 347–504 unarmed citizens in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968, conducted by "Charlie" company, 1st battalion, 20th infantry, 11th infantry brigade, of the Americal Division, United States Army. All of the victims were civilians and most were women, children (including babies), and elderly people. Many of the victims were raped, beaten, tortured, and some of the bodies were found mutilated.[2] The massacre took place in the hamlets of M? Lai and My Khe of S?n M? village during the Vietnam War.[3][4] While 26 US soldiers were initially charged with criminal offenses for their actions at M? Lai, only 2nd Lt. William Calley, a platoon leader in charlie company, was convicted of killing 22 villagers. Originally given a life sentence, he served three and a half years under house arrest. When the incident became public knowledge in 1969, it prompted widespread outrage around the world. The massacre also increased domestic opposition to the US involvement in the Vietnam War. Three US servicemen who made an effort to halt the massacre and protect the wounded were later denounced by US Congressmen. They received hate mail, death threats and found mutilated animals on their doorsteps.[5] It would take 30 years before they were honored for their efforts.[6] The massacre is also known as the 'S?n M? Massacre' (Vietnamese: th?m sát S?n M?) or sometimes as the 'Song M? Massacre.'[7] The US military codeword for the hamlet was Pinkville.[8]" If you only type in My Lai into google search, you'll also get a bunch of right-wing horse-shit like "Lt Calley was framed" and the chorus that any VietNamese killed in the war were Unlawful Combatants. I used to hear that crap all the time because I lived very near Ft Bliss. I don't speak much Annamese, the official language of both VietNams, More people spoke French than Annamese anyway. The one word I recognized in that whole descriptor was "sát" which means "kill". VietNam is one of the Disunited Nations hacked together to please the European and American and Australian colonialists who claim hegemony over Asia. The non-Annamese tribal people are described by the French term "montagnard" which literally means hillbilly. Much like the terms "pagan" and "heathen" are a Greek and a Gaelic word meaning "somebody who lives so far out in the tall weeds that he's beyond the bounds of civilization" The old French word for that is "peasant" and most of the latin languages use the word "paisano", literally somebody who is property of the aristocracy and bought or inherited or conquered along with the land and animals, domesticated or wild. The Scots have an ongoing war between the gamekeepers and the poachers, poachers meaning anybody who isn't the landlord who kills a wild animal bird or fish. All the fish in the streams, etc... belong to the English appointed nobility. Every tree in the National Forest here belongs
I’ve been criticized for this picture before…
That is ARVN General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing Murdering Capt. Nguyen Van Lem of the VietMinh. The excuse often given for the General killing a prisoner is that members of Gen Nguyen's family had been killed recently. So had members of Capt Nguyens family, probably at the orders of Gen Nguyen. But, you see, grief and a desire to avenge ones family is a privilege only granted to The Wealthy Elite. How DARE a peasant presume that his moms or his wifes or his child's life was worth exactly the same as that of a Rich Person? And make no mistake, the General, in a country that could best be described as a satrapy, was rich. It's much like you don't have to come from a line of officers in the U.S. to get an appointment to the Service Academies, but if your family were enlisted men for generations it's almost guaranteed that you won't. And Robert E. Lee had an extreme advantage in that his grandfather was the first commandant of West Point and was a close personal friend of George Washington, and John McCain wasn't exactly hampered by his daddy being an Admiral either. Rank isn't supposed to be inherited, like Aristocracy, but it sure enough is. And it still falls back to the time when officers, with titles like earl or duke or Knight, owned the men serving under them. This is another unexpurgated face of war. Just, you know, reminding the people that The Big Pigs don't like for the kids they're recruiting or the people who are supposed to pay their taxes cheerfully to support the wars... to know the realities of it. In the Unexpurgated Face of War comments was the constant running theme that somehow we have to hide the Ugly of war to allow the Glorious to shine through. But there is no glorious, only the ugly. People die, mostly the poor, because there's more of us to begin with, and far lower a percentage of the wealthy get drafted or recruited. People die with great big pieces of themselves surgically removed with explosives or projectiles launched with explosives. You wouldn't think that something as small as a bullet, multiplied impact by the fact that it's hitting at over the speed of sound, would be able to take something as large as both lungs and the heart out the back... But, it does. Some have bulletproof vests, usually the aggressor nation (U.S., Britain) but, there are Vestproof Bullets to counter that. One concept explaining the exact value of a bulletproof vest is that it keeps the internal organs in roughly the same place so cleanup is easier. (the first time I encountered that was in the book Catch-22 by Joseph Heller... Whither the Snowdens of yesteryear?) They're with Capt. Nguyen, and now, Gen. Nguyen By the way, that's not a given name, it's the surname, lots of nations in Asia use the surname first. It's also THE most common surname in the Annamese language, (Annam was the ruling province
Pentagon says bombing civilians necessary, will continue.
Of Course. Then we'll have Nut-Jobs like Charlie from the dead soldier picture comments saying that "No Marine he ever knew ever killed a baby", well, Charlie, Your Comrades Sure The Hell Do, Daily, and the Pentagon says it's "necessary" because mommy and daddy didn't surrender, didn't bow down and lick the jackboots of the NATO Imperial Stormtroopers like you. Some "freedom" y'all are fighting for, Free to submit to Corporate American rule or die, and your kids with you.
Colo. College guest Donald Gregg: the man who hired the man who killed Che
He administered OPERATION PHOENIX during the Vietnam War, the CIA counterinsurgency operation which sought to pacify Vietnam with the targeted assassination of thousands of potential insurgents. For Vice President George H. W. Bush's office, he coordinated the funding of the illegal US covert war against Central America, aka, the IRAN-CONTRA scandal. Yes, he supervised both Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada, each of CIA-state-sponsored-terrorism fame. But Colorado College introduced Donald P. Gregg only as former national security adviser and ambassador to Korea. And CC gave Gregg an honorary degree -- with not a peep from the know-nothings they laud as their exemplary students. I attended because I was insulted by the lecture's title: "What do Ho Chi Minh, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jung Il have in common?" the speaker further slandered the father of modern Vietnam by indulging to associate another villain to the list, that of Muammar al-Gaddafi. But gracefully Gregg acquitted himself by explaining that Ho Chi Minh had been misjudged, and thus perhaps there is call to engage even our most despicable adversaries in dialog, lest we repeat our mistaken policies, as Gregg believes we are doing in Afghanistan. Not much objectionable with that. Actually, you can read Gregg's address, it's virtually word for word the introduction he wrote for a 2009 study of the CIA's unheralded successes in Vietnam. To his credit, Gregg does not echo the ongoing theme that Vietnam was winnable. Relating his more recent expertise about Korea, Gregg offers that Kim Jong Il is more than your common loon. Rather, Il is of unusually high intelligence, underrated by the US, driven despotic by his isolation. Or driven mad by our offense, I'd add. I'm surprised Kim Jong Il tolerates that we name our ambassador in Seoul as the Ambassador to Korea, rather than to South Korea. How dare US-occupied Korea assert to represent the national identity of Korea? As in Vietnam, it's the north doing the heavy lifting toward inevitable unification. Gregg nearly had me convinced he was reformed until he added a forth bogeyman for comparison, Iran. Iran mustn't get nukes, etc, etc, Ahmadinejad unpredictable, can't be trusted, etc. Ho Chi Minh had been demonized Gregg said, based on a wrong-headed anti-Communist domino-theory mindset, yet Gregg is perfectly willing to be stuck to Capitalism's current mindset against Islam. Gregg made such winning arguments for tolerance, respect, diplomacy, and the integrity of the best intelligence officers, but isn't that precisely the neo-liberal spiel? The CC audience lapped it up. Here was the closest most of us will ever get to someone connected to the murder of Che Fucking Guevara, icon of the world struggle against Western oppression. That's explaining the obvious, but I'd add, Che's heroic stature is no more diminished even if only known as a t-shirt image to this crowd. School-of-the-Americas-trained Rodriguez knew the stature of the hero he was cutting down, to this day he brags about wearing Che's watch as a keepsake. Rodriguez returned from this assignment with a piece of notebook paper
Recent rally against Monsanto and a little not-so-very-recent
At a recent rally in Downtown Colorado Springs... Mark made some good points about Monsanto. Here's some more. You remember, as do I, how exactly Monsanto got busted back in the late 70s with the Paraquat Pot? Paraquat is one of their signature lines of "weed" killers, herbicides, such as Agent Orange and Roundup. The company li(n)e is and was that there was no evidence that soldiers exposed directly to Agent Orange had (significantly) higher incidence of cancer than soldiers not exposed to it. Denial because they were being sued. Well, other herbicides they make, RoundUp and Paraquat, contain the same type of chemical, not the active ingredient, but a side-product of the chemical reactions to manufacture the "goodies". A class of chemicals called Dioxins. Their harmful nature ranges from damn that's freakin' scary to OhMyGod we've kicked open the doors of Hell and those are esoteric chemical-talk terms. If you don't recognise them then you're not a chemist. At the high end of the spectrum is where the product was burned. As in, soldiers usually on punishment detail raking up the dead plants and burning them. Monsanto didn't out themselves, nor did the Army. The DEA did instead, by publishing a warning that they had been spraying Paraquat JUST LIKE AGENT ORANGE and J.L.A.O, if you inhaled the burning product it could cause you to die and cited an Army Agent Orange study. The one the Army and Monsanto and Dow and Dupont were denying ever existed. So, the Army stopped using Agent Orange. Big deal, they still use the other chemicals that have that same nasty little add-on, the part they can't get rid of without destroying the goodies, the Dioxins. Now how much would you pay? Monsanto and the U.S. (taxpayers) government paid a settlement in 1983 that equalled about a weeks worth of hospitalization for each veteran who was diagnosed before then. NONE for anybody diagnosed afterward and certainly none for the South VietNamese, Filipino, Thai or other allies who were also sprayed with the shit. They sprayed it around U.S. bases so the native vegetation wouldn't be so overgrown that people could walk right up to the fence. They Still Do. Then there's the Monsanto and Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds connection, tobacco bred to be resistant to A.O. or more specifically, RoundUp. Yep, there was a video article on the NOVA television program in 1990 describing Genetically Modified Organisms and of course, Monsanto was the star of the show. One of their projects was with Big Tobacco growing successively more resistant plants. See, with the herbicides, they only work when the plant is above ground, sprouted. After the cash crop, in this case tobacco, WHICH IS TYPICALLY USED BY LIGHTING IT ON FIRE and inhaling the toxic smoke, has sprouted, no more Agent Ora RoundUp. So they have to kill the weeds before the cash crop sprouts. Doesn't, however, kill the seeds of the weeds like the farmer needs. But at the end of the show, there were tobacco plants being sprayed
‘Call us when WE behead somebody’ …again.
So, what happens when we do WORSE than behead somebody? Say, for instance, gut-shoot a third-world person knowing full well that the only place in town which can treat an abdominal wound is a hospital associated with whatever torture regime we're propping up, or a US Military Hospital who will patch the dude up and then turn him over to somebody like the Saigon Torture Regime? Which is what these rifles were designed for doing. Not for a humane quick kill. The AR series, including the most infamous of all the M16A1 and its assorted A numbers derived therefrom, was designed specifically to gut-shoot. The bullet-barrel-powder combination was ordered so that it would cause massive rips inside the intestines with a very small entry wound. Until Dr Joseph Lister discovered a way to use antiseptic surgical techniques, a gut wound was an automatic death sentence. A slow, painful one that could last days. The theory behind the AR series is that in Third World countries, the Guerrilla Theater, (guerrilla is the Spanish word for "little war" not the fighter therein, A common misuse of the word) the fighters with a comrade so afflicted had a very few nasty choices. Take their wounded comrade with them, slowing them down so the Army would have an easier time capturing or exterminating them, killing him, or leaving him to be captured and his life saved long enough to be turned over to the Torture Regime. We had a candidate for president in the last election, an Admiral's Kid naviy pilot who was most famous for being a screwup, protected by his daddy's rank. Wrecked his third Very Expensive U.S. killer aircraft and the DRVN government took him prisoner. Technically, what he and his fellow pirates err Pilots were doing was an act of terrorism, not a war crime per se because nobody from either the Hanoi government, the Saigon government or the U.S. government had ever formally declared war. It was on the level of 9/11 only using more planes and the killers, instead of dying to accomplish their deeds, would fly back to their carriers or their bases in Thailand or Singapore, neither of which had ever declared war, have a steak dinner, get drunk at the O club and congratulate each other on what brave pirates err Pilots they were. The DRVN claimed to have shot him down, but with his flight record the notion that they were exaggerating sounds plausible. He was given Prisoner Of War Status. The Viet Minh "cong" soldiers were not given such status. McCain bitches a whole lot about the treatment he received as a prisoner, but never once mentions that the prisoners in South VietNam were treated even worse. By the same legal traditions and conditions the U.S. Puppet government in Saigon used, the DRVN could have just as easily executed them as terrorists. Saigon did it routinely, with the help of the U.S. The U.S. Army said they didn't torture prisoners, which is bullshit, but let's
Woody Guthrie at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade!
Actually, his son Arlo. Now, usually on Thanksgiving we hear Arlo's "Alices Restaurant". Which is a good song sung for a good cause, the Alices Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement. Unlike a parade at which he sang the song in 1968, in Chicago, and a parade in Colorado Springs where the music was all militaristic, even the Al Khaly Shrine band playing God Save the Queen, the British National Anthem at a St Paddies' parade, with Royal Marines marching in the band, where neither Arlo, his most excellent music or really any radical ideals were expressed, (save for the Military theme of "We get to go to exotic lands, meet interesting people, and kill them in order to take those exotic lands") The Macy's Parade wasn't interrupted by Uniformed Thugs beating up Americans for daring to say that peace is better than murdering people. And his song at the Macy's parade? One of his fathers songs. "This land is made for you and me" which Right Wing Media Lunatic Beck makes a huge Hysterical Anti-Leftist Spasm about, because the song expresses a Communist principle that the land does NOT belong exclusively to the Wealthy. Especially since every square inch of what is now defined as the United States was taken at gunpoint from the original owners, and those who refused, were slaughtered, along with their families. Including the Babies. At public expense and for the immediate and long term benefit of the Very Rich. The ones Beck represents. And his TeaBag fake revolutionaries Unlike the marchers at the St Paddies Parade, unlike the marchers at the Democratic Convention 68, unlike Woody Guthrie, Gleen Beck and his Fascist Fellow Travelers in the Tea Party, not a single TeaBag has EVER been prevented from speaking, forced to the ground or had his face hit with club or Taser or Police Jackboot, the TeaBags have NEVER been gassed or had the PIGS ride into their midst on horseback swing clubs and busting skulls, even though they advocate KILLING Americans. Chickenshit fake-revolutionary PUKES have the full backing of the PIG establishment. Really BRAVE of them. Woody had this sign he would paint on his guatar or printed up on paper and glued to it, For a long time I've been engraving this message on my flutes, (descant Recorders, actually) In tribute to a man loved by the people and hated by the Fascists, like Beck, like the TeaBags, the Republicans... No, I don't think it's hyperbole to mention the FACT that the main difference between a Nazi and a Republican is that the Nazis were far more organized and efficient. They were, at the same time as the Anschluss, organizing in America, actually had rallies at venues like Madison Square Garden. Huge rallies attended by the Elite of the Republican Party. Pastors like Billy Sunday preached at their rallies. The Klan attended their rallies. Kind of like the Tea Party Rally Beck and Palin held at the Lincoln Memorial. Wonderful company they keep, and they get all bent out of shape when somebody
US/UK “Liberators” not allowing Afghan Liberty
What a surprise. The Puppet Karzhai government, as always echoing what Washington and London (but mainly Wall Street) tell them, is refusing to seat Members of Parliament elected "fraudulently". This from the most farcical "democracy" in history. Even the French and American puppets in Saigon weren't so obsequious. Or obviously propped up by Imperial Storm Troopers. That says a lot. The American and Koalition of the Killing soldiers standing guard outside polling places, to make sure nobody did a "terrorist" action like voting for somebody not on the Approved List, allowed those who WERE on the approved list to cast a few hundred thousand Phantom Ballots for themselves, Or So The Story-Line Goes So, what are the Conquero oops "Liberators" going to do next? It's THEIR Pentagon propaganda ploy. They deliberately dealt themselves this card, the question is what kind of bets are they making on this hand? Dissolve the Karzhai Puppet Show completely, declare an "international emergency" that allows the Corporate Thieves to keep the occupation going far beyond that 2014 magic number? Well, that part is a given. But since that wasn't really dependent on the elections anyway... either on Afghan or Iraqi or U.S. or U.K. or E.U. election results... There's a lot of seemingly small steps to take in the 'three years til exit" time frame to ensure they can make such a decision. Rigging the American elections with screams of Fraud being one step. The TeaBags, for instance, want to pass a Noble Law that only those with "valid" Original Birth Certificates can participate in the body politic. Valid as defined by them, of course. Would that mean that my birth certificate, which isn't the original, could be used to prevent me from voting? From speaking? From travel without a "Special Permit" from the Minutemen? Since they, too, are Puppet micro-dictatorships the same way any Afghan or Iraqi provincial governor is. Their Minuteman and TeaParty Brownshirts are no different by any measure than any other group of mindless puppets. Rand Paul and his Koward Kentucky Komrades are in every bit as tenuous a position as any other Banana Republic, no matter how many dissenters they can corner and stomp on in a three-on-one "fight". They were installed by the Corporate Empire and can be uninstalled by the Corporate Empire just as easily. Of course, and you knew there would be an "of course", right? it depends a whole lot on if the Corporate Imperial Stormtroopers can hang on to their ill-got gains in Afghanistan and Iraq. And on their supposition that people who have seen 5000 years of Empires come and go, being so stupid and ignorant that they wouldn't recognize the failed trickery of those failed Empires.
Pullout from Afghanistan? not for another 3 years..
BBC had a story "An hour away from Kabul, despair grows as NATO discusses exit..." Meaning, the BBC is required to report that the war is a positive thing for Afghan people so they focus on government officials who got their jobs handed to them by the American and British Conquerors and Occupiers errr "liberators and nation builders" and will, justifiably, have their heads handed to them by people who had friends and family (anybody in Afghanistan) Murdered, raped, imprisoned and tortured by the NATO Occupation forces. And the reader/listener is supposed to take pity on these poor, sad, wretched pathetic Traitors who sold their own people to the invaders as a means of gaining Puppet Local Dictator status. Awwwwww.... Shed a fake tear with me, Glenn Beck showed us how, put Vicks Vapo-Rub under your eyes... On the other hand, if 3 more years of the Mightiest Empire on earth wouldn't be enough time to build up a sense of safety in the Karzhai Puppet Regime, how long WOULD it take? Analysts who aren't in the pay of the Pentagon say there's no way, and that if the occupation succeeds it could only be by being Permanent. Finally, in other news, Oceania has ALWAYS been at war with Eastasia.
News sources, MSM and the mouths of horses…
See, we constantly get told, on this site and any other site that opposes the wars and the occupations and such, that we're listening to the "Liberal Mainstream Media". Huh? The most frequently criticized "Liberal" media are as rabid a War-mongering Mob as Fox, they're just more polite about it. Sometimes more polite about it. The bullshit with the "Ground Zero Mosque" is being whipped up by the MSM CORPORATE whores just as much as the FOX corporate whores. With an insidious difference, they'll use weasel words rather than coming right out and saying "Hate Muslims! Hate Islam! The REAL 'Obsession' is our Hatred for all things Middle East!" like FOX does. Same with the Wounded Warrior bullshit the Pentagon tries to fill a swimming pool with, and then dump us in. The fault of causing all those wounds and deaths isn't in the Anti-War movement, it's in those who twist their own words to make it appear just, and righteous, to CONTINUE the wars and start others. Why would they do that? Money. What did you think, that the Corporate Press would cut the throats of their Pigs who lay the Golden Turds? Of course they won't. People who were recently in the Military Establishment have a little bit of an excuse. Not much but some. It's called Stockholm Syndrome. "Jonah, from whose rectal orifice did you pull that one?" but, straight from the Horses' Mouths is more like it. Stockholms is well documented because the United States Military uses it to defend against confessions made by U.S. POWs. In every non-declared war in my lifetime, the only POWs treated as such by the U.S. military were those held prisoner by the people the U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines attacked, in their own countries, without a declaration of war. Like McCain. VietMinh "cong" soldiers were handed over to the Saigon Govt troops for torture and execution, not as POWs, but as criminals. Fairly typical, Bush demanded that any American soldiers taken prisoner by the resistance groups in the nations of Iraq and Afghanistan be "treated humanely under the terms of the Geneva and Hague Conventions" while denying any such treatment to the prisoners captured and tortured and killed by OUR soldiers. So here's how Stockholm's works. It's a principle of Pavlovian Conditioning. Like when Dr Pavlov trained his dogs to slobber every time he rang a bell. In the Chinese prison camps during the Korean War, the SAME techniques used to train those dogs, and to train the U.S. soldiers and really those of every established military in the world, were called "brainwashing". Who says so? The U.S. Army When we write of War Crimes committed by the U.S. Army, our sources certainly aren't the Tame Media. They're the often conflicting reports issued by the Army and... from the soldiers themselves. The recently discharged soldiers, well, they're still hopped up on the Industrial Strength Koolaid administered by the Army. In-their-face confrontations against the lies they were told so often is a good therapy for that. It
Failed Musicians, Earning Potential and Tort Reform
Charlie Manson, David Koresh... described as “failed musicians” because they played the guitar, and like the vast thundering herd of people who pick the git-fiddle they didn’t make a career of it. Adolf Hitler, a “failed artist” even though, in the economic blight of inter-bellum Vienna, he actually DID make a modest living selling painted postcards on the street. John Wilkes Boothe, said to be a “Failed actor” by some who had never trod the boards. Because their names are vilified and the demonization of their memory has to be complete. .Something you’d practically have to be a Documentary Junkie to notice, maybe after a marathon of History Channel BioPics.. Fairly subtle. Insidious even. What’s almost but not quite as subtle as a Taser to the testicles or a sledgehammer to the lower skull/first vertebra is the demonization of working class people throughout the world in Tort. The civil liability sections of law. In civil court, “earning potential” is taken seriously. So seriously, in fact, that it proves the LIE of the Capitalist Dream which is foisted onto the workers, that if we work hard and diligently, do a good job putting money into the pockets of our Wealthy Masters, we, too, could have a chance of acquiring Wealth. Compare that BULLSHIT with the descriptions of the Workers of Bhopal, India and their children by the Captains of Industry and their Weasel Lawyers. In the “Unlimited potential for success” of the Free Market, the children of the poorest and most vilified of the working class, were valued at a couple hundred dollars. Apiece. Per HUMAN life. Would you sell your childs life for that? This is about as condescending as if the CEO of Union Carbide were visiting a bordello in the slums, his limousine runs over a child and he tosses a $100 bill out the window, rolls up the window and imperiously waves his driver to proceed, with a “Home, James!” type of dismissive command gesture. This is also the way that the people of the Gulf Coast, even employees of British Petroleum, are being treated in back to back “incidents”. Not just the Oil “spill” that cost 11 human beings (ahem... that’s by BP count and employees who tell a different tale than BP front office do, are punished....) immediately and God alone knows how many to follow. There’s also a chemical “leak” that was described by later censured then fired BP employees as “like a fire hose” in Texas City. Tort Reform advocates have done their job well, and limited the final tally to less than a half billion dollars. The state of Texas is suing BP for a huge release of toxic chemicals—including benzene, a carcinogen—that went on for 40 days at the company’s Texas City refinery last spring. The lawsuit could result in civil penalties reaching into the millions. The release, as we have reported [1], started April 6, just two weeks before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, when a key piece of equipment failed and, rather than stopping production to fix it, BP
Clinton Seeks “Human Rights” improvements in VietNam
Actually the first real human rights improvements came after the French/American Puppet Saigon Government torture freaks were sent into exile. What does Ms Hillary think we're going to do, threaten to go in and get whupped by them yet a second time? Maybe if she could get U.S. troops, and Cops, over whom she has at least SOME nominal authority, to just freakin' QUIT KILLING PEOPLE for such crimes as Dissent, Dark Skin Color, and of course my personal favorite, Dissenting While Dark... at home and in the Conquered errr "Liberated" Territories. Hill, baby, Lead By Example. Because the Pentagon ain't gonna be able to take over any more countries. They won't even be able to hold the ones they've got so far. Meanwhile, a nation taking retribution against criminals who collaborated with the Occupiers isn't in any way abnormal. Oh, and Hillary, about that "lead by example" thing... Free Bradley Manning. Among many others but you do understand that High Profile Political Prisoners do attract a lot of attention to the Raw Hypocritical Hubris of instructing Other Nations in how to deal humanely with people.
Ron Kovic, Private Nation and the mystique of the Token Cripple
Because I get the same kind of crap in lower doses than Kovic and Max Cleland did and still do. When you become disabled at work you're supposed to be grateful for any crust of bread thrown your way, and condemned as a whiner if you point out the guilt of the parties who brought you to that state. With war veterans it's worse. Ron Kovic and Max Cleland were "just fine" in the eyes of the Pentagon, until they started opposing the war, then they were and still are demonized. The Pentagoons, while Cleland was fighting to survive, leaving 3 of his limbs on the cutting room floor, (mixed metaphor there, cutting room is about films) his commanders were filling out paperwork exonerating themselves from any blame for what they had done to him. Like Kovic, and Private Nation, and John Kerry, and Flight Lt Joseph "Country" MacDonald, he was treated with the military equivalent of Honor as long as he consented to be the Token. The Warrior returning and still supporting a lost war. Touching, Heartwarming, (heartburn) but once they chose to speak out, save for Private Nation, they were the darlings of every parade, supporting sending even MORE young people off to kill other people in other lands, other mother's sons... except for Private Nation. Who was Private Nation, you ask? He was one of my ancestors. He, too, fought for the losing side, a hundred years earlier. Late in the war, the Civil one... hence, he wasn't fighting to kill and die in Foreign Lands... he took a Minie ball upside his temple, tore off a chunk of his skull. Surgeon told him, "Private, that's going to kill you eventually" and sure enough, 80 years later, it did. But he was a Confederate. He was fighting for the "states' rights" cause. You know the one, the States' Right to deny Liberty or even the definition of Humanity to HUMAN BEINGS based solely on the shade of their skins, and to deny them that Liberty before they were even born. And to use State Funds and State Police Powers to ensure that they remained in Slavery. In short, he was fighting not for States' Rights, but for States' WRONGS. In VietNam, and now Iraq and Afghanistan, the Slave Owners live off premises, but it's still the same concept. Still sending in the Private Nation and the Ron Kovic of the modern age. And if you get pieces of you blown off, you're supposed to accept it, be rolled around in the parades like a Good Little Cripple, patted on the head and sternly warned not to say anything at all against the regime. If Gunnery Sgt Nick Popavitch, proudly supporting the military that cost his eye and, really, their honor and his... If he ever stands up and says it's wrong he won't be their Tame Token Cripple anymore, and can expect His Comrades will turn on him like a pack of starving wolves on a pork chop. That's
just when things couldn’t get worse…
McChrystal replaced by... Generally Betrays Us. Yep, "king" David Petraeus, the one whose staff leaked a protocol statement he had made sometime last year, announced on the Memorial Day weekend, of a military version of an Executive Order giving himself the power to decide which wars to start. Open ended statement that at one end of the interpretation spectrum, is authorization to commit air strike murder in any country of the world, including America, with no further authorization than his own. The departure point from Constitutional Law or, for that matter, ANY Law, is the authorization to initiate Military Intelligence operations. Much like the operations in Cambodia and Laos which John Kerry was condemned for even stating existed, and which NiXXon, (New name, but the same old gas) had sicced the "plumber" burglars on the Watergate office of Daniel Ellsbergs doctor in order to try to smash Ellsberg... the operation that so massively backfired.... the one in retaliation for Ellsberg "ratting out" the Secret War against Cambodia and Laos. Seems this keeps coming back around yes? Petraeus' mission paper, if accepted by Congress, would legalize that sort of shenanigans. Murder actually. In large numbers, in the Name of the American people, without any permission of the American People.
Robert Fisk and the language of power, danger words: Competing Narratives
Celebrated reporter -and verb- Robert Fisk had harsh words, "danger words" he called them, for host Al-Jazeera where he gave an address about the language of power which has infected newsman and reader alike. Beware your unambiguous acceptance of empty terms into which state propagandists let you infer nuance: power players, activism, non-state actors, key players, geostrategic players, narratives, external players, meaningful solutions, --meaning what? I'll not divulge why these stung Al-J, but I'd like to detail the full list, and commit not to condone their false usage at NMT, without ridicule, "quotes" or disclaimer. Fisk listed several expressions which he attributes to government craftsmen. Unfortunately journalists have been parroting these terms without questioning their dubious meaning. Fisk began with a favorite, the endless, disingenuous, "peace process." What is that - victor-defined purgatory? Why would "peace" be a "process" Fisk asks. How appropriate that some of the West's strongest critics are linguists. Fisk lauded the current seagoing rescue of Gaza, the convoy determined to break the Israeli blockade. He compared it to the Berlin Airlift, when governments saw fit to help besieged peoples, even former enemies. This time however, the people have to act where their governments do not. I read recently that the Gaza Freedom Flotilla might be preparing accommodations for Noam Chomsky to join the passage. Won't that be an escalation? I imagine if Robert Fisk would climb aboard too, it would spell doom for any chance the relief supplies would reach the Gazans. A ship convoy with Chomsky and Fisk on board would present an opportunity that an Israeli torpedo could not resist. Here is his list. If you can't peruse the lecture, at least ponder these words with as much skepticism as you can. The parenthesis denote my shorthand. peace process (detente under duress, while enduring repression) "Peace of the Brave" (accept your subjugation, coined for Algeria, then France lost) "Hearts and Minds" (Vietnam era psych-ops, then US lost) spike (to avoid saying: increase) surge (reinforcements, you send them in you're losing) key players (only puppets and their masters need apply) back on track (the objective has been on rails?) peace envoy (in mob-speak: the cleaner) road map (winner's bill of lading for the spoils) experts (vetted opinions) indirect talks (concurrent soliloquies, duets performed solo in proximity to common fiddler calling tune) competing narratives (parallel universes in one? naturally the perpetrator is going to tell a different tale, disputing that of victim's; ungoing result is no justice and no injustice) examples: occupied vs. disputed; wall vs. security barrier; colonization vs settlements, outposts or Jewish neighborhoods. foreign fighters (them, but always us) Af-Pak (ignores third party India and thus dispute to Kashmir) appeasers (sissies who don't have bully's back) Weapons of Mass Destruction (not Iraq, now not Iran) think tanks (ministry of propaganda privatized) challenges (avoids they are problems) intervention (asserted authority by military force) change agents (by undisclosed means?) Until asked otherwise, I'll append Fisk's talk here: Robert Fisk, The Independent newspaper's
Teabag solution to AfPak gun shortage
TeaBags, Militia, Minutemen... get off your "Patriot" arse and donate your rifles to the Army. Uncle Sam needs YOU(r rifles)! You silly bastards say you bought them, and keep buying more, for the "defense" of America, right? Against OTHER AMERICANS of course. But the Army says it needs more high powered rifles, you know, the ones that you buy to make yourselves feel less pathetic and weak and victimierrr ummm.. "More Macho".(strong hint: you can't buy manhood... if you could George Bush and Karl Rove and Glenn Beck would have already bought up all the available supply.) My cousin Hank was assigned to a detail burning a warehouse filled with New, still-in-the-packing-grease AK47s in Iraq after GulfWarz One. One of several. They put Willy Peter (W. P. = white phosphorous) which burns hot enough to melt concrete,throughout the warehouse. For the longest time the Russians were practically giving them away, $50 to offset shipping and handling + a promise that you would use them to make trouble. People sell them at gun shows starting at $200 apiece. Usually, the Pentagon pays premium prices for essentially Garbage. Like the M16. I fired that one in the Air Force. Piece of Shit doesn't do it justice. One reason was the M1 Garand and it's derivatives, like the M14, could chamber and fire Russian ammunition. Which is a couple of microns shorter in the shell than the American .30 caliber. More or less. The shell is smaller, the slug isn't. Bottom line, if a GI captured an AK in the many many many Non-Declared Wars like VietNam, Algeria,, Korea, etc. It would be extra weight to carry around because once you popped off the remaining shells in the magazine, your Government Issue .30 cal rounds wouldn't fit the chamber. Russian ammo was a subscription-only service. Part of the selling points for the M16 was that nobody else's ammo fit it. You buy the rifles for an ungodly expensive price, then you sell the immortal souls of all your soldiers to Colt Arms for the Purina Gun Chow. So, now, the Army in it's Infinite let-us-buy-bullshit Financial Wisdom, discovers they need new guns. Those of you who bought Korean and Algerian era M1 and M14 rifles for cheap once the Army had Reduction In Force measures and dumped them onto the Surplus market, you know those rifles still worked and still DO work perfectly for their assigned tasks. Which is of course Killing People. There's a bunch of Mausers, in the same caliber used by the AK, made for trade to the Spanish Civil War, you can buy for 25-40 bux apiece if you buy them by the hundred lot. Still work perfectly. The Afghans and the Pakistan traders had a field day with them using them against the Soviets. Probably about half the sniper rifles being used against the Invaders and Occupiers oops I mean "Liberators and Nation-builders" are of that grade. Mauser, unlike Colt, NEVER made anything that was a cheap piece of shit. The Army was paying (in 1979) $700 per
Propaganda Story “Military Medics Fight to Keep Afghan Boy Alive”
While in actuality, they were just prior to the kid getting blown apart, fighting to kill him. Military Medics are NOT non-combatants. They're COMBAT support. That was impressed on us in Basic Training and once again in Tech School, we were to be basically Monkey Mechanics, keeping the Human Fighting Machines in good working order. Every bit as dehumanized and coldly efficiently calculated as the base armorer keeping the Rifles in good working order. The base Veterinarians office keeping the Police Attack Dogs in good working order, and a subset of that, the Base Exterminator (yes, under the command of the Base Veterinarian) whose job is to control wild animals, like the flocks of birds near the runways, skunks, coyotes, rats, cats both native and feral, wild hogs, etc etc... And to use Herbicides like Agent Orange to kill the native vegetation, so that there's a clear field of fire. They SAY all this is necessary because if we don't do that, we wouldn't be able to provoke and fight Wars. Help me out here, I'm not seeing an actual Downside. A far simpler solution than patching up the kid after first dismantling him, how about just Get The Fuck Out Of HIS Country, and stop using Massive Firepower to dismantle his country, and stop using that firepower to dismantle HIM and other PEOPLE like him. You God-damn blow people apart then for a propaganda photo-opportunity patch one of them back together, to what, show that you're not the Dehumanized Uniformed Drones (duds) who are forcing your "Superior" civilization on his people? Because you're so God-Damned culturally and morally sophisticated that you Owe It To Him and his fellow Kids to murder them if they don't bow down to that "superior" sophisticated culture? And of course the "superior" Military. They told us in Tech School that in combat zones we should scrape that Red Cross off our helmets. Told us that there was a Commie Propaganda campaign that started in the Korean war, saying that American Military used the Red Cross symbol to smuggle munitions. I'll find the post I made about that, A Dynamite Box label for "red cross BRAND military grade Extra Dynamite 1949" written in Chinese. The boxes I had found in a military landfill on Ft Bliss, Texas, had the inscription in English. Which your average Chinese or North Korean soldier wouldn't have been able to read any more than the Redneck War-pigs here would be able to read the same thing in Chinese. All they would be able to understand would be the Red Cross symbol. But of course the VietNamese people and the Laotian and Cambodian and Chines were just, you know, Lying because that's what Commies do. Besides, "We are here to win your hearts and minds.... or just burn down your goddam huts"
The “difference” between an IED and a land-mine
Is the difference between a Militia Group (like those commanded by Washington) and the VietMinh or the Taliban "Insurgents" A matter of Semantic Perspective that's vital to propagandists, espicially if the Propagandists don't have anything better. It's the so-called "difference" between "conqueror" and "liberator" , USAF Bomber v Suicide Bomber Decapitation with a sword and decapitation with a .50 caliber round fired frim a Vulcan electric motorized Gatling gun. Waterboarding as War Crime when practiced by the Imperial Japanese Army and waterboarding as "enhanced interrogation" when done by the Imperial American USMC, CIA and DHS. Tianmen Square and the Boston "massacre" or the Honduran "counterinsurgency". The Anschluss and "Regime Change". Genocide against European minority groups and Genocide against American Indians. The list goes on, but the main difference is that Land Mines are forbidden for deployment and the Terrorist States who deployed them mandated to clean them out, destroy them and compensate the Mostly Civilian Child victims of their monstrous use (or their families). In a treaty that the former ChickenHawk President refused to sign on the ridiculous notion that it violated U.S. Sovereignty.... even though the United States doesn't actually deploy land mines or, (as in the case of the terroristic bombing and mining of The DR VietNam, which one of the Major Party presidential candidates from the last election was doing when he was captured) on territory that's recognized as United States Territory. Other than in the Insane Delusional definitions of the U.S. "nationalists" like Bush and his demented disciples. (Special "shout out" to our Homeboys Bob Newman, Dobson and Haggard on that) There are two major parties in our Corporate Dictatorship, one votes as a bloc, no exceptions, and anybody who breaks ranks is called a traitor and shown the door. The "Other Party" currently in the majority in the House, Senate and Executive branch has enough Right Wing extremists, only the Republican Press calls them "moderate democrats" to sway any ratification of the treaty to either vote it down, or have it watered down to a Null Argument, or worse, charge the Children of Afghanistan and VietNam with crimes for destroying United States Government Property by exploding "our" Land Mines. I bet Dobson and Haggard and "Gunny" Bob would love that option. They probably have pictures of little kids with various parts blown off that they use for Porn. "Gunny" Bob is allegedly a Vet, I don't know if he has a collection of human hands harvested from the kids he killed during his "service" but he strikes me as That Type. Yeah, that's confrontational. So is calling the Quakers "Terrorists" because they dared to ask His Royal Lowness to stop lying, and published detailed lists of "Gunny" Bobs lies. A paid Right Wing Propagandist like him would appreciate the "Difference" between a Land Mine and an IED.
You have forgotten what to remember
Can someone please explain to me what it means to fly this flag? The POW-MIA flag is ubiquitous these days around veterans. Our town hall flies this black flag halfway below the Stars and Stripes. When the latter is at half mast, the former hangs indecorously low. Which reminds me of a pirate ship stalking a wavering Old Glory. I understand POW and MIA, and "you are not forgotten." But there is no flag for the veterans, the dead or wounded, to whom does this lone flag speak and why? Since the Gulf War, the US military maintains that it loses track of none of its soldiers. We've had POWs but they've been returned, and we've had MIAs whose bodies have been found. One was recovered even recently, though it was the body of a pilot lost over Iraq, understood to have died. Casualties at sea are still sometimes unrecoverable, but at least something about American war-making proficiency now permits us to confirm deaths even sans corpus. Supposedly. US military engagements between those wars, and later, have been kept outside public scrutiny, or not officially admitted. As a result, they've added no POWs or MIAs for the home front to worry over. Which leaves Vietnam, from whose era comes the dark silhouette of a bent inmate in the shadow of a prison guard tower. According to the last report, there remain 1728 American soldiers missing in action in Indochina. They are unaccounted for -- it might be more fair to say--not missing persons, expected to turn up. During the Vietnam War, the MIA list gave hope that your soldier wasn't among the fallen. It was a hope that loved ones could cling to for even years after the fall of Siagon. On the radio, a Dick Curless hit from 1965 continued to resonate even as the war receded from memory. "Six Times a Day" told of a bride in post-WWII Germany who met the trains every day, awaiting the return of her German soldier, held by the Soviets in war-reparation labor camps until the Russians considered them to have atoned. Was this what we expected Vietnam was doing? Six times a day the trains came down from Frankfort The night he came ten years were almost through She held him close and said I knew you'd be here He said I had no doubt you'd be here too American wives were determined to wait even longer, except evidence of post-war prisoners never came. There was speculation of a cover-up, suspicions which politicians like John Kerry and John McCain do little to assuage. After the war, some believe that prisoner GIs were left behind, whom the North Vietnamese hoped to exchange for war reparations. Instead of paying, it's conjectured that the US government chose to deny the existence of those men. No American diplomat has ever confirmed the scenario, and no surviving GI has ever surfaced. The closest we've come to rescuing POWs was at the movies, when Rambo went back for a jailbreak and
These days we outsource our POW-MIA
According to Nation Magazine, there are 131,000 homeless vets, and about 18 suicides per day among America's 25 million vets.
Major Abu Nidal Hasan to meet Jack Ruby
So who was the Fort Hood shooter, do we know? The media's got the back story all lined up for it to be Nidal Malik Hasan, he has three names like all assassins (and sound bites), and now the Army is trotting out witnesses to point their fingers at the Muslim Major. Addressing reports of multiple gunmen, the Army says "there was only one shooter." Although five of the victims may have fallen to friendly fire. So there was a "friendly shooter?" Which one was Hasan? I'm thinking the multiple shooter stories came out of the Army deciding the shooter was Hasan, but witnesses insisting it was another soldier. Sooner than contradict what they'd seen with their own eyes, Investigators and victims agree to disagree, until a uniform narrative can be worked out. With a mess of dead soldiers, all dead by PTSD, who the hell cares which killed which? But poor Major Hasan's name had the right evildoer pedigree, with an Abu Nidal ring to it, which could bring Americans to a boil. What's going on right now, by the way, big picture wise? Is the American public vacillating about sending more troops to Afghanistan? It took a 9/11 surge of Muslim-hating to send our invaders off in the first place. The Army must have shit bricks when it turned out that Hasan was still alive. The fall guy they'd chosen wasn't dead. It's hard to pin the tale on someone who can still tell. But who am I kidding? Either we're going to see a Jack Ruby pay a visit to Hasan in the hospital, the end, or the military's going to control Mr. Hasan with its usual heavy hand. And that's the New World Order MO. I can already see Jose Padilla being shuttled between tortures and deprivations, losing his mind as the government confounds him with accusations. Hasan is already as cooked as Padilla. No matter what happened, we'll see confusion and confession and absolutely no access to civilian lawyers or the press. Hasan is this year's American Taliban, the caricature John Walker Lind painted as America-hating wuss. The Army's having nobody think this is PTSD. Did you see the JAG lawyer on CNN, ruling out PTSD because Hasan was an officer? Antiwarriors can laud the shooting as "fragging" but it's not. Fragging means to kill your superior officer. At Fort Hood, the only dead were grunts. Antifada antiwarriors can hope this was Islam striking back, hitting Americans with their own MO. But where was the collateral damage? Where were the wives and children, the innocents among the dead soldiers? Nope, none of those. The evidence indeed points to a principled Mujahadeen who wanted to kill only the US killers, or the soon to be deployed killers. The Fort Hood shooter might have been sparing the readying soldiers the horrors of Afghanistan, and the DU poison they'd bring back to their families. The real story is that this is what PTSD looks like, and it may have played out as Russian Roulette, it wouldn't
Shootout at the OK Fort
Hood. Texas. At a base theater and sports complex. Some of the News people are already speculating al Qa'eda. Sounds like horseshit to me. Three guys in uniform is all they've been told and it leaps to being a Terror Attack. Look at the rational side here, People... in Uniform... on a Very Large Army Base in the middle of Texas ... in the middle of that base... when everybody on base is on alert and have been for the past, oh, let me see... 8 years and almost two months.... Did I mention the fact that it's an Army base? Now, on base, you're not allowed to carry a loaded weapon. That's a very important safety measure for the soldiers. Aside from the possibility of say, three soldiers going apeshit and killing a bunch of their comrades, there's the very real probability that somebody would get accidentally shot. The US Army has about a couple of billion man/years worth of experience in the handling of Firearms. They actually know what to expect and take measures to prevent it. IF somebody representing either a foreign or domestic hostile group managed to penetrate to the heart of Fort Hood with loaded firearms, what kind of really draconian regimentation would the Piggoes have to impose on us in order to "keep us safe"? Think the Airline inspections are rough, try getting on a military base sometime. Shit, the Peterson Field front gate allowed Miss Johnnie on base, followed her around, (by the way, they weren't SPs, they were Mercenary "soldiers" and probably the Blackwater Death Squads) and then they threatened to arrest Miss Johnnie for going on their base, following instructions from the VA, to get her ID card. The best way to describe Miss Johnnie is "frail" at the best of times, VietNam widow, and at the time she thought the cancer was coming back. And these Mercenary Pigs were threatening to arrest her for claiming the health care her late husband left to her. Given that experience, I find it really difficult to believe that any Foreign Insurgents actually infiltrated the Greenest of Green Zones on Fort Hood Texas. Maybe I'm wrong, but I sincerely doubt it and the assumption that it's al Qa'eda is so unjustifiable that... well, there aren't enough words in the English language to describe how unjustifiable that kind of Panic Mongering Propaganda would be.
I was watching Jacobs Ladder just now
I was watching Jacobs Ladder just now. Just a little bit intense. Definitely not your standard war flick. You know, the guy who recommended the film to me, he'd been there, in Nam. And in the VA outpatient clinics too. One of those from Louisiana-East Texas that I just slip right into jawin' with, easy... we call each other Cousin even if we've never met before. God Damn this is a bad movie. Not bad scripting or acting or plot. The bad part of it is that it's something real. Would they, if they could? Agent Orange. LSD. Depleted Uranium. They denied they ever did any of that. Denied it and killed people who stood in their way of keeping it secret. They killed them with lack of care, with the denials that the conditions and most importantly the causes of it. Agent Orange is just a weed killer. One of thousands of chemicals they use on military bases routinely. DDT is illegal in the U.S. and in countries that have treaties. But if the Army is "in country" in a nation that has no government, or at least none that the Pentagon recognizes... well, you do the math. Depleted Uranium, they almost killed my cousin Hank with it. And denied that it WAS uranium poisoning. They said that the uranium is encased in titanium thus harmless. Ever see a bullet casing? not the shell that ejects out of the back of the chamber, the Bullet. The Projectile. See what it looks like after slamming into whatever mass is big enough to stop it. At anywhere from just under the speed of sound to twice the speed of sound, like the DU rounds. The Peace Activists put enough heat on the Army to actually get them to DO something about it. This won't fit on a bumper sticker or tee-shirt. But when they ask what the hippies ever did for anybody, along with their bullshit lies about ending slavery and fascism... Tell them Sgt T. Hank Brown, United States Army. Alive today. No thanks to any of the Pentagon supporting Loudmouths who infest the "counter protest" part of any Peace Rally. No God-Damn thanks to ANY of them. If that's not enough for any of them to accept, add in Sgt Howard Lanning, USAF. NOT alive today, and the people who chant about "love it or leave it" or "my country right or wrong" or well... you know the rest of their Brainless Chants. Their Lock-step Alle Sieg Heil approach to any criticism of their Beloved Army is what killed him, and a literally uncounted number of other Agent Orange victims. They killed him with their condemnation of anybody who opposed their War-mongering and all it's nasty tentacles. Tentacles like giving Monsanto a blank check immunity to prosecution or lawsuits for their money-grubbing part in the War. They're slowly killing his widow too. Because of the intervention of the Civil Liberties Union, among others. ACORN. Urban League. All those who the Army condemns as being worthless... Because