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6月30日 SGLI premium increaseThe Life Insurance policy for active duty military members is increasing as of July 1st, while the premium for military dependants will decrease. I suppose whoever is responsible for this determined that since there are so many active military people dying right now that they needed to increase premiums to keep up with costs. That's sad. The blueprint for third world AmericaSarah SolonDMI Injustice Index: The United Estates of AmericaFresh off the press, we present to you the latest installment of the DMI INJUSTICE INDEX. -People who, according to the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, pay the estate tax: "the thrifty middle class and entrepreneurs" From dmiblog.net 6月27日 Crazy RepublicanFrom the NY Times:
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 23, 2006
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Republican gubernatorial candidate's call for creation of a forced labor camp for illegal immigrants drew rebukes Friday from two GOP lawmakers, who labeled it a low point in the immigration debate. Don Goldwater, nephew of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, caused an international stir this week when EFE, a national news agency of Spain, quoted him as saying he wanted to hold undocumented immigrants in camps to use them ''as labor in the construction of a wall and to clean the areas of the Arizona desert that they're polluting.'' The article described Goldwater's plan as a ''concentration camp'' for migrants.
Way to go crazy racist Republican guy in Arizona. Way to make the world hate us even more. Way to make the Spanish think we are all crazy racist genocidal spychopaths like you. What an asshole. (courtesy of Project for the Old American Century) 6月26日 ScandanaviaNot a part of the world that gets talked about much, I know. But they are announcing new construction on a vault in a frozen mountain to store seeds indefinitely in the event of a global crises such as massive global warming or an asteroid strike. The premise is that if our crops were wiped out suddenly, there needs to be some way to protect and regenerate all of the food crops that we grow. Have a listen at the link below.
I'm glad someone appears to be taking the scientists seriously. It's too bad that the US can't seem to pull its head out of its collective ass long enough to listen to the people we have trained to know better. 6月24日 Discord and disagreementYou remember earlier this week when Hamid Karzai said he couldn't stand to see so many Afghanis dying, whether they were taliban or not? He said that the mass killings were no way to defeat terrorism, because it doesn't get at the root of the problem. He said that it makes regular people angry at the power establishment when the people around them start dying in large numbers.
Anyway, what was the American, er, excuse me, the Coalition, response in southern Afghanistan? Kill 82 more people in another day of fighting.
Yeah, that'll fix 'em. Kill all those suicide bombers. That will solve the problem. Way to go counter-insurgency planners. Way to learn from the history of war fighting. Way to listen to the elected president of the country you are operating in. It's sad, really. It's almost like the emperial forces brushing off the pleadings of a colonial governor. I remember reading somewhere that Karzai's administration has almost no control of the Afghan society outside of Kabul. Perhaps one of the reasons for that is that the coalition refuses to give a shit what he says or does. If the occupying army that installed the government doesn't listen to the president, why should any of the citizens listen to him? Why should they think he has any control if the people who allowed him to be elected don't appear to respect him?
Which came first? Is Karzai ignored by the citizens of the country because they don't think he has any power? Or do they think he has no power because they see how he is ignored by the occupiers? It's like a vicious cycle.
So the president's plan that everyone is so proud of involves placing National Guard troops on the border with Mexico to assist the Border Patrol with illegal immigration. There was some issue with some of the governors involved over who would be in control of the troops and who would pay for them. Once the Pentagon signed an order to pay for everything federally, the governator of CA got on board. But then, as often happens with this administration, the advertised package was not what was delivered. Initially, the governator told Washington that National Guard deployment was the wrong way to deal with illegal immigration. Then, once he agreed to send 1000 troops to the border as part of the president's 6000 soldier plan, washington asked him to send another 1500 down to the border. I don't know if we need to create a cabinet level math advisor for the president, or what. but someone needs to let him know that 6000 + 1500 does not equal 6000. I mean, he hasn't even tried his plan for any length of time yet. He doesn't yet know whether or not 6000 will be enough for what he wants to get done. So why is he already asking for 1500 more? what are they going to do? Is he going to have 6000 running admin. details and then put the other 1500 on the border making arrests? Who knows. We may never find out because the governator formally refused the request.
Oh yeah, and the president refuses to set a firm date to end the Guard on the Border program. I don't know why. Maybe that would just embolden the immigrants and make them think they could just wait us out until we cut and run from our border, and thus we can't give a timetable for ending a silly program on the border. Whatever. Anyway, the governator decided that HE was going to set a firm end date to the program, at least as far as California's troops are concerned. He signed an executive order to stop deploying CA troops to the border after a couple of years. 2008. Hmmm. Wonder if there is any significance to that particular year, or if he just picked a year out of his hat or something.
So, you ask, what's your point? Well, the governor of CA is blatantly ignoring a presidential request in favor of the interests of his own state. He basically told the president, a member of his own party, that he didn't like that idea so he isn't going to go along with it. When is some news show talking head going to ask him why he doesn't support the president, and then ask him why he doesn't support the troops? When are the rabid 101st Fighting Keyboardists going to decry his crazy destructive leftist treasonist agenda, with no more evidence than a disagreement with the president over a policy issue? When is someone going to decry Karzai and his bleeding heart policy of finding the roots of terror instead of hacking at branches while they keep growing back? When are people in our administration going to give some serious consideration to the duly elected officials of a country that we have occupied for nearly 5 years now?
I'll tell you when.
When pigs fly out of my ass. 6月21日 John Kerry's serviceMaybe we can put the lies to rest once and for all. Many of us already knew this to be the case, but for many years the lies of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have overpowered anyone with sense. For many of us it was obvious that this group of people were hired by someone very close to the Bush administration to spread lies about Kerry during the runup to the election. Of course, a lot of Bush fundies claimed that this wasn't so and no matter what was said to the contrary, they took the SBvets word for it. Over the last several years, it has become a republican mantra to smear war veterans. People should look at this whole situation and see how far a lot of politicians on the right will go to get elected. This has bothered me for years. And it really makes me angry that there are so many people who claim to support the troops but look the other way or participate in the smearing of our vets. 6月19日 Couldn't have said it betterFrom Major Christopher Davis, in "Strategic Insights", a journal produced by the Naval Postgrad School:
"America must move... toward a greater understanding of both the religious as well as the societal differences which comprise the mosaic that is the Muslim world. In other words the United States must start to actually walk the walk of being the example of that “City on the Hill.” “The back-and-forth between the West and Islam, the challenging and the answering, the opening of certain rhetorical spaces and the closing of others: all this makes up the ‘world politics’ by which each side sets up situations, justifies actions, forecloses options, and presses alternatives on the other.”[46]
If America truly yearns for a blossoming of democracy and freedom across the world, the United States must move beyond the current “back-and-forth” that Said is referring to and work to break down the myths and perceptions that have plagued this relationship from the start. One way for that to happen is through a careful reexamination of the West’s strategy for interacting with the Middle East and a radical shift in the policies employed by the United States in the region in general and in Iraq specifically. The current American strategy in the Middle East is the equivalent of building more prisons in order to fight crime: while it is one method for dealing with the problems of the region, it fails to identify or address the underlying causes of the “crime.” Until there is a shift towards an understanding of what is causing movements such as the insurgency in Iraq, or Al Qaeda elsewhere, the United States will continue to be forced to act as the “global policeman” and the dream of others viewing America as the “City on the Hill” will remain just that—a dream."
Air Force Major Christopher Davis is student in the National Security Affairs Department at NPS, pursuing a Master’s degree in Defense Decision-Making and Planning. He is due to graduate the Naval Postgraduate School in September 2006. His areas of focus are Middle Eastern politics and security issues, as well as international terrorism. Major Davis is a career space and missile operations officer who, upon graduation, will be assigned to the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, International Affairs.
Very well written analysis that claims US policies actually affect other cultures' views of and actions toward America. A shocking thought to some of you, I know. Well worth the read. 6月16日 Republican midterm side showFrom Pen and Sword:HR 861: War Without End, Amen
I spent the morning watching the House debate on Resolution 861, introduced by Henry Hyde (R Illinois). You may remember Hyde as the guy who led the charge to impeach President Clinton for lying about not keeping his pants on. Now, he says we all owe young Mister Bush our thanks for acting in Iraq. HR 861 is a sham. The Republicans put up a bill full of platitudes, allowing no proposed amendments. And hidden in the middle of the platitudes is this tidbit: …it is not in the national security interest of the United States to set an arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Iraq… In other words, this bill is a yes/no vote on whether to allow Mister Bush--and his succesor--to keep our troops in Iraq forever. (Read more here) The Republican party is a party of empty rhetoric and circus side shows. The only thing they care about is trying to muddy up the issues at hand. The side show this summer features gay marriage, flag burning, and now war propaganda amendments. When are we going to elect people who care more about the good of the country and less about empty rhetoric and mind-numbing catch phrases? How about some actual intelligent debate? No? 6月13日 The cost of war"A chilling report from the Boston Globe on Thursday revealed that the amount of cash the U.S. military has paid to families of Iraqi civilians killed or badly injured operations involving American troops “skyrocketed from just under $5 million in 2004 to almost $20 million last year, according to Pentagon financial data.” The payments can range from several hundred dollars for a severed limb to a standard of $2500 for loss of life."
(h/t to Inkwell Insurgency)
Btw, I did the math on this. Well, a quick estimation anyway. 20 million dollars could mean that about 10,000 innocent Iraqi civilians were killed just last year. For the morally corrupt, before you start spewing off about terrorists and such, I must remind you that we only give money to Iraqis that we deem are innocent civilians. Before you go to bed, think about the bloody corpses of all the innocents that have been killed in the name of...who knows what. Because the Iraq war had nothing to do with the war on terror. There weren't any WMD. The Republicans have decided to build their damn bases afterall. After promising that they would NOT put permanent bases in Iraq. Which means that they have no plans to pull the troops out any time in the forseeable future, neither have they ever. We are nation building people. And we are mass murdering to do it. And before you start jabbering on how I am so mean and we are not doing any such thing, tell me this: what is 10,000 dead innocent people in one year if it is not mass murder? What do you call it to make yourself feel better? These are PEOPLE! 6月9日 Goodbye free flow of informationI will miss you.
I wonder when we will start seeing the effects of this new legislation. I was told to write something "happy"So, here is something to ponder from daleelama:
A man told his grandson: "A terrible fight is going on inside me -- a fight between two wolves. One is evil, and represents hate, anger, arrogance, intolerance, and superiority . The other is good, and represents joy, peace, love, tolerance, understanding, humility, kindness, empathy, generosity, and compassion. This same fight is going on inside you, inside every other person too."
6月8日 Tell the Republicansto put their money where their mouth is.
Navy Times is reporting that the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee is not approving the 2.7% raise for active duty that was in the version of the bill that the full House has already approved. Instead, they are planning to go with the lower 2.2% increase that Bush wants. The full House wanted to try to close the gap between military and private sector pay raises, but this subcmte is working behind the scenes to tighten the country's belt at the expense of the military families who struggle to get by on what we get paid. The richest of the rich in this country get their tax breaks, the corporations get their government handouts, all during a time of 'war'. But the House republicans can't find it in their hearts or their pocketbooks to give the military members fighting this 'war' an extra 0.5% raise next year. I hate to say I told you so, but I fucking told you so. This fiscal year was the last one under a plan passed by Clinton that scheduled a minimum raise for military of 3.2% every year. This is the first budget that the Bush administration has had full say-so over the level of our raise. I told you it wouldn't be as high as Clinton's raises. I told you so. I told you that he was going to continue cutting taxes for the rich, even though their kids don't have to bleed in this damn 'war'. They aren't sacrificing a goddamn thing for Bush's adventure into neverland's hell. Bush: "Let them eat cake!" Voices of reasonThe Salon article "George Bush Sr. asked retired general to replace Rumsfeld" comes the closest of any other article to explaining my take on the whole Iraq fiasco. It confronts many aspects of the war including why it went wrong and why it is still being waged wrong. Here is an excerpt:
"Before the Iraq war, the administration received and dismissed warnings of the dangers of a prolonged occupation from the State Department, the CIA and the military. A month before the invasion, in February 2003, the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute published a paper by a team of its experts, "Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario." Civil war, sectarian militias, anarchy, suicide bombers and widespread insurgency -- if there was a lengthy occupation -- were predicted: "Ethnic, tribal, and religious schisms could produce civil war or fracture the state after Saddam is deposed ... The longer a U.S. occupation of Iraq continues, the more danger exists that elements of the Iraqi population will become impatient and take violent measures to hasten the departure of U.S. forces." But the Bush administration simply ignored this cautionary analysis. Among the report's cogent warnings was that insurgents could incite violence to provoke repression, forcing U.S. troops into an uncontrollable "action-reaction cycle." Nearly three years after the invasion, the Marines in Haditha were apparently caught up in that whirlwind."
"The Bush way of war has been ahistorical and apolitical, and therefore warped strategically, putting absolute pressure on the military to provide an outcome it cannot provide -- "victory." From the start, Bush has placed the military at a disadvantage, and not only because he put the Army in the field in insufficient numbers, setting it upon a task it could not accomplish. U.S. troops are trained for conventional military operations, not counterinsurgency, which requires the utmost restraint in using force. The doctrinal fetish of counterterrorism substitutes for and frustrates counterinsurgency efforts." So Zarqawi's deadThat's nice. I, along with many others, hope that this means the number of attacks will go down, things will be generally safer there, the terrorist cells run around for a while like chickens with heads cut off, etc. But based on comments by "official" Al-Qaeda in Iraq spokesmen quoted in the MSNBC article, they are already pushing the idea of his martyrdom. I hope things turn out for the best in this situation, and that President Bush means what he says when he calls this “a severe blow to al-Qaida and... a significant victory", in so far as it leads to the expedited removal of large numbers of US troops from the country. Strategically, I find it interesting that he was hunted and killed by a special ops team with help from Jordanian special ops working in the area. We didn't find him at a checkpoint. He wasn't spotted on a routine patrol. A special ops unit called in an air strike after spending two weeks gathering intel quietly. As I said to Mike in an earlier post, the large bulky force structure we have set up there is not terribly useful for hunting terrorists. They are too large a force, too slow, and too visible for the job that needs to be done. Small mobile units apparently accomplish the objective with some expediency.
Also, Mike raised this question today:
"Will the U.S. pilots involved in the bombing campaign be arrested and court-martialed if "innocent civilians" were killed?"
The Pentagon makes a distinction between accidental civilian deaths, murder, and collateral damage. Let me explain, based on descriptions given by military spokesmen in news reports, for those of you who may be unaware off the difference. The pentagon assigns value to human life based on the situation surrounding their death. If someone was killed in a mission with a verifiable military objective, but that person was not the target of the mission, that person counts as collateral damage, and their life isn't worth much of anything, even if you had to kill 11 other people to get to the one person you were looking for. We have seen evidence of this from the Ishaqi incident. If a person was shot in the head for not stopping at a checkpoint, while being rushed to the hospital because she was in labor, that counts as an accident, and her death may be worth some money to the family as compensation for the loss of the loved one. Personally, I find it ironic that there was not more of an outcry over this accident among the "Culture of Life" Republicans who care so deeply about the well-being of fetuses. If a person was killed by soldiers who premeditated that person's death, as in the case of the guy that was drug into the street, shot 4 times in the face, and had a shovel and an AK-47 thrown next to his body, (the troops involved have admitted to this, so I think they speak for their own guilt. I don't think I'm declaring anyone guilty in a premature fashion.) I think that's what they consider murder. They may come up with another name for it, but I think you get the idea.
So, to answer your question, according to the Pentagon's system for assigning a life a value, any civilians killed in this incident were in the vicinity of a known target, and therefore, by the system I described, are collateral damage. Some business-suited desk jockey in the Pentagon can very easily justify to himself the killing of civilians in this manner, because they don't have to think about them as dead people who had lives and families. They assign them a euphamism like collateral damage, and treat it the same as if a building next door had been knocked down by a bomb or something. So no, the pilots will not be court martialed, because there were no "innocent" civilians in the building. Any potential civilians were collateral civilians to a military mission, and therefore their deaths, should these hypothetical civilians exist, would be justified in the completion of the military objective. That's how it comes out in the office buildings thousands of miles away, anyway. Is that view of human life right or wrong? That is up to the reader to decide. I thought we had a coalitionFrom the Times:
"Britons begin to turn away from alliance with America
THE British public has become increasingly cool towards American policy and critical of its role in the world after the sustained violence in Iraq."
(H/T to Vic at Inkwell Insurgency)
6月7日 Interpreting election resultsWhat is the Republican election strategy to get people out to vote? Put some divisive ballot initiative up and hope that it mobilizes the evangelical base to come out strong for your candidate, right? It worked in the 2004 election. There were gay marriage bills or amendments in something like a dozen states that really got the base worked up into a frenzy. Is it still working this year? Let's see.
Some of you may remember Roy Moore, disgraced former Chief Justice of the Alabama State Supreme Court, the man of 10 commandments infamy who basically told a federal judge to blow it out his ass when it came to the large statue of the commandments in front of his court house. Dozens of people from across the country took off work to go sit outside the courthouse and protest the "activist" federal courts imposing the rule of law and the constitution onto Roy Moore. You know, "how dare they tell him that the law says he can't leave the statue here, god is above the law," that sort of thing. So the rest of the state Supreme Court voted to throw the bum out and removed the statue anyway.
Anyway, yesterday he was running for governor in the republican primary on the premise that god provided the law of the land through the bible and the heathens who want church and state to remain seperate are ruining the country, or something like that. He made sure to tell everyone that he wasn't a one issue candidate, he was in favor of tax-payer funded vouchers for private schools too, cause its just not fair that people should have to pay to go to a Christian school. Right. Whatever. Anyway, the local news polling was all over the place for the last few weeks. A poll by the Fox affiliate in Montgomery a couple of weeks ago had Moore over the incumbant by 12 points or something. A poll in Mobile last month had him down 40 points. Who knows.
There was also an amendment on the ballot to ban gay marriage. Now, based on the known Republican strategy, this amendment should have brought people to the polls in droves to vote to restrict civil rights for as much as an estimated 10% of the population, and, by their logic, they should have then voted to put the religious theocrat into office too, right? That's how this thing is supposed to work, right? Wrong.
As it turns out, about 900,390 people voted in the amendment referendum, and the ban passed 81-19% among all voters on both sides. While this frightens me, it was not entirely unexpected. The surprising thing is that 917,902 people voted in the democratic and republican primaries for governor. This is a state where about 2 million voted in the presidential election, so 900,000+ in an off year primary is no small feat. But not everyone that voted for governor took the time to vote for the amendment. That seems contrary to the goals of the republicans. By the Strategy, it should have been the other way around, right? The number of votes for democratic ticket was about even with the number of votes on the republican ticket, so a significant number of the people that voted to ban gay marriage, also voted on the democratic ticket, which I find interesting for a whole different list of reasons.
Here's the kicker: Roy Moore LOST his primary election, 67%-33%. That's 306,332 - 153,308 votes. And four out of the five theocratic Supreme Court Justice candidates lost their primaries as well. Perhaps the voters of Alabama are smarter than anyone gave them credit for. While they did vote to ban gay marriage, they didn't follow along with the Republican/Rove-ian strategy of then voting for the theocratic candidate that goes right along with the divisive social control issue of the day. This does not bode well for the Republicans coming into this election cycle. I would use this as a quick judge of how the strategy will play out in November. Perhaps people are starting to realize that they can change their minds a lot faster than they can change their elected leaders, and they are starting to vote for the better candidate, instead of the one that appeals to their basest instincts. Maybe they are voting for the incumbant, Bob Riley, who said recently that he will try to raise taxes on the wealthy because poverty and the widening gap between rich and poor in his state is a moral issue, instead of voting for the candidate who said that giving a tax break to those who send their kids to private school is a moral issue. Maybe it's just a fluke and the theocracy will fall neatly into place in November just as planned. But this at least gives me something to be hopeful about until then. 6月6日 Informative or Treasonous - Part 2I will start part two of my segment by letting you all know that the excerpts that I posted in Part One were in fact from the June 5th edition of the Army Times. I was at the commissary on Saturday and I saw this:
 So, I bought a copy. It was quite a good article. But, the cover of this particular paper, that is only sold on military installations, got the wheels turning in my head. I thought to myself, "What would the right think if this were the NY Times or the Washington Post?" There would probably be an outcry. Then, the oddest thing happened today. Newsweek put an early release of their June 12th edition online. The very first thought when I saw the cover of Newsweek was, "They stole the cover picture from the Army Times." But, like I suspected, the Newsweek article is already getting attacked by the right. I read the Newsweek article that they have online, but personally I think the Army Times article is better, and surprisingly, at times, less biased.
One of the reasons the right gives not to publish articles like the one above is that it will hurt the troop morale. But, honestly, do you think the military members don't already know these things? Are they saying that the Army Times is hurting troop morale or ,more ludacrous, wants us to lose the war on terror? According to caveman, yes. He believes that "even the military have treasonist..."
So many on the right wing want to stifle ANY kind of discussion of the war that even military publications that state things contrary to their skewed view of the world are deemed treasonous. We have seen it before though. Bush has come out and said that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 and the right wing dismissed it. The war on terror is like a drug to them. If something isn't exactly as they have dreamed it up to be, it must be a lie.
But, the main reason that I have written this is to keep things honest. In the coming days and weeks, the right will try to take people's focus off of the Iraq war and the Haditha incident by changing the subject. They will yet again attack the messager so that they do not have to address the message. I am writing this to give you all ammunition for when the Bushites start screaming over the coverage of the Haditha situation. They will scream about how this is only being covered because the "liberal" media wants to undermine our soldiers. They will dishonestly claim that this is only a big deal to the "left" and the military isn't that concerned about it. When that happens, just remind them that the Army Times wrote an article on this too.
6月4日 A day at the moviesGATTACA is the future. The future is now.
Brimming with the genetic patterns of more than 3 million Americans, the nation's databank of DNA "fingerprints" is growing by more than 80,000 people every month, giving police an unprecedented crime-fighting tool but prompting warnings that the expansion threatens constitutional privacy protections. With little public debate, state and federal rules for cataloging DNA have broadened in recent years to include not only violent felons, as was originally the case, but also perpetrators of minor crimes and even people who have been arrested but not convicted. Now some in law enforcement are calling for a national registry of every American's DNA profile, against which police could instantly compare crime-scene specimens.
Chris Asplen [said] "When it's applied to everybody,... frankly you wouldn't even know it was going on." In recent years, for example, crime fighters have initiated "DNA dragnets" in which hundreds or even thousands of people were asked to submit blood or tissue samples to help prove their innocence. At least 38 states now have laws to collect DNA from people found guilty of misdemeanors, in some cases for such crimes as shoplifting and fortunetelling. At least 28 now collect from juvenile offenders. The federal government and five states, including Virginia, go further, allowing DNA scans of people arrested. At least four other states plan to do so this year, and California will start in 2009. Opponents of the growing inclusion of people arrested note that a large proportion of charges (fully half for felony assaults) are eventually dismissed. Blood specimens are not destroyed automatically when charges are dropped, they note, and the procedures for getting them expunged are not simple. Informative or traitorous?You tell me your opinion of the content of an article I found. I will post some excerpts from the article and based on the excerpts, you tell me whether the article writers are informative or traitorous. If traitorous is too strong for you, you can also tell me if you think it is hurting the troop morale to print articles like this one. After I get a few responses, I will disclose to you all the paper that published it.
My response:
I think it is highly informative and not the least bit traitorous. It in no way hurts the troop morale to inform the public of events the military is already fully aware of.
Btw, here is Part Two. 6月2日 Oops! |
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