Fight Night
Amiri Baraka.
On "The O'Reilly Factor."
I think this transcript speaks for itself.

Military Strategy Quote of the Day

"The highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans. The next best option, he continues, "is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces. The next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field. And the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities. The rule is, not to besiege walled cities if it can possibly be avoided."

- Sun Tzu, from "The Art of War"

Consider this article from the L.A. Times on the history of sieges on cities as The Coalition of the Willing begins to encircle Bagdad. It's not pretty, and not for the reasons you might expect.

Battle Hymn
According to the Austrialian Broadcast Company's news wire, an evangelical Christian organization, In Touch Ministries, has been distributing pamphlets to U.S. Marines in Iraq. The pamphlet contains instructions on how to pray for George W. Bush, and a tear-off response card that they can mail to the White House to indicate that they have been appealing to the Almighty on behalf of their commander-in-chief.
My first question, which the Aussies don't answer, is this: HOW are these things getting to the Marines on the battlefield, and who is responsible?
But, barring that, as both a Christian and a baby libertarian, I'm always very troubled by the people who want to associate religious significance to military actions. On the surface, it would seem as comical as the Holy Hand Gernade of Monty Python fame, but, it runs dangerously close to becoming the New Millenium Crusades. Then again, it's not like anyone ever needed an excuse to unleash the dogs of war. Consider Rage Against The Machine's "Killing In The Name Of": George Bush actually has large chunks of the American people deluded into believing that our forces are killing to preserve peace.

Space Supremacy
This post combines a recurring Macroscope themes of "interstellar kewlness" and "fear of your shady government", all in one fell swoop.

Here's a very interesting article from Space.com about the plans of DARPA, the United States' Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and their mandate from Donald Rumsfeld to help extend America's air superiority up about several thousand kilometers into low Earth orbit. They're working on everything from long distance energy transmission for both industrial and offensive military purposes to drone starfighters to defend orbiting satellites.

Wisdom from the Peanut Gallery
I was patrolling Robert Ebert's section of the Chicago Sun-Times site, trying to find what in his background could have warped his sense of humor so much that he only gave Beverly Hills Cop II a single star. Imagine my surprise when I found this little essay, in which Ebert pinpoints the greatest danger to America in G.W. Bush's war strategy: Bush is thoroughly convinced that God saved his soul to do the good work of re-making Iraq into a democratic state, and that any kind of withdrawal from that course would be a sin.

Can you imagine a scenario where the war has gone badly (e.g. high U.S. casualties with no indication of an end to hostilities, plus escalating retaliatory terrorist strikes on American soil), where the country has stopped supporting the invasion, but the President refuses to heed the word of the people he says he's sworn to protect?

I can.

And it's not pretty. For anyone.

New World Water: The Sequel
According to the most optimistic estimates, 1 out of every 4 people on this planet will not have access to usable drinking water within the next 40-50 years if current trends of contamination & draconian industrialization are not reversed. With that in mind, the United Nations has declared 2003 as the International Year of Freshwater to raise awareness of the looming crisis. You see what people are willing to do over the possibility of an oil shortage. Can you imagine the blood that will be shed if the United States is forced to start rationing out water?

Impeachment: The Next Generation
You know, if I was prone to conspiracy theories, I might suspect that there might be more than a glitch involved when the ONLY post missing from my archive just happens to be the one suggesting an American regime change. But, I'm certain it's just an unfortunate mishap and that Blogger would NEVER stoop to censoring one of it's users.

So, for you're viewing pleasure, here is the whole post from March 7, reprinted for your amusement......

Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark thinks he has enough of a case to impeach Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, AND Ashcroft.

Clark also claims to have turned water into wine in his spare time.

Of course, if the Republicans can try to undue a presidential election over a blow job, then I think "instigating World War III" could conceivably fall into the category of high crimes & misdemeanors. "What's good for the goose", etc. etc. It at least warrants a little thought.

Angry White Men
So, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore is, if nothing else, confrontational. But, in today's climate, where dissent is equated with treason in the eyes of more than a few, his ability to raise a voice in opposition to this 2nd Gulf War on one of the world's biggest stages is definitely appreciated by yours truly. Here, in an op-ed piece he wrote for the L.A. Times a few days after he was booed off the Oscar stage, Moore starts out by letting us know that his own religious faith is the beginning of his outrage. Is he grandstanding? Probably. But at least he's talking.

Incidentally, Variety has indicated that Moore's next film, "Farenheit 911", will be an expose on the relationship between two powerful, aristocratic families:

The Bushes and the Bin Ladens.

Here's hoping more doesn't find himself in a freak plane accident before it's finished.

Calm Like A Bomb
Yes, Tom Morella is a musical genius with the electric guitar, but we all know who was the REAL heart and soul of Rage Against The Machine. And, while Chris Cornell & Audioslave are a heck of alot of fun, in the end, they're just dancing around the issues like so many angels tiptoeing on the head of a pin.

By contrast, Zack De La Rocha busts out a pair of steel-toed combat boots, stomps a mudhole in the issue, walks it dry, then spits on it to make it mud again before stomping some more.

Favorite Zack lyric from favorite Rage song "Ashes In The Fall":

A mass of promises
Begin to rupture
Like the pockets
Of the new world kings
Like swollen stomachs
In Appalachia
It's the priests that fuck you
As they whisper holy things


Of course, Zack is probably too mad at the world to actually take the time to finish a solo album (rumors of collaborations with Trent Reznor abound). In the meantime, he and D.J. Shadow have ALOT to say about Gulf War II on this solo track, "March of Death".

Paranoia
Courtland Milloy, an African-American columnist for the Washington Post, was milling around the Jefferson Memorial and asked some Park Service folks about some contraption stuck onto the monument. Within minutes, he was surrounded by 10 cops, demanding to see his identification. Read for more details on how quickly you can become a suspect these days.....

Sadly Ironic Quote of the Day

"The missiles are flying, gentleman. Hallelujah. Hallelujah."


-Nero-like future President of the United States Greg Stillson (played by uber-peacenik Martin Sheen) as he launches a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union in "The Dead Zone", based on the book by Stephen King, now a weekly TV series on the USA Network.

Shock and Awe
blitz·krieg ( P ) Pronunciation Key (bltskrg)
n.
A swift, sudden military offensive, usually by combined air and mobile land forces.

[German : Blitz, lightning (from Middle High German blitze, from bliczen, to flash, from Old High German blekkazzen. See bhel-1 in Indo-European Roots) + Krieg, war (from Middle High German kriec, from Old High German krg, stubbornness. See gwer-1 in Indo-European Roots).]

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

This essay from Common Dreams, which draws some unnerving parallels between pre-Nazi Germany and modern America may seem exploitative on the surface. But the point is clear: wars of agression are always cloaked in the veil of imminent national security.

Hearst Would Be Proud
According to this report on Common Dreams, a progessive news outlet, the recent pro-war rallies around the country have all been organized by Clear Channel, the massive radio conglomerate. Doesn't this get dangerously close to manufacturing news?

Into the Darkness
Now that the die are cast, here's an editorial from Truthout.com, on just how bad things might get.

Remember, conservatives: this is what you wanted. Enjoy it.

Hurts So Bad
I'm a child of the '80's, so he'll always be John "Cougar" Mellencamp to me. But he, like The Boss, The Besties, & The Material Girl, has thrown his artistic talents into the anti-war soundtrack. Check out his latest, "To Washington". During his last concert tour, he'd taken to projecting the following words from Albert Einstein behind the band:

"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."

Collateral Damage
While I was passing time today, someone on Micah Wright's forum reminded me of "Johnny Got His Gun", which, right now, ought to be required reading for anyone who is even thinking about joining the army and serving his country. Micah Wright, incidentally, is the guy who writes "Stormwatch: Team Achilles", the comic book about a team of United Nations peacekeepers specifically designed to thwart superhuman violence around the world. Great stuff.

Anyway, Johnny Got His Gun is about a kid named Joe who's recruited to join the U.S. Army during the 1st World War. He gets hit by a mortar and, as a result, loses both arms, both legs, both ears, both eyes, his nose, and his mouth as far back as his neck in the explosion, but does not die. He doesn't have identification so, instead of being sent home, he's kept alive in a military hospital in France up until the 2nd World War. Needless to say, he can't talk. He has no way to speak to the outside world except by nodding his head in Morse code, and he can only receive messages from the outside world when people trace letters on his chest. Needless to say, he only learns this over the course of years, where he winks in and out of consciousness and sanity, remembering his past life, his dream life, the life he could have had, and how he ended up in this place ("serving his country"). In the end, he asks the generals who finally figure out who he is 30 years later to please kill him as a mercy. They reject that idea, keeping him on life support and restricting access to him so that none of the nurses who treat him ever communicate with him. It ends with him nodding his head, over and over again "S.O.S......S.O.S........S.O.S........"

It's written by Dalton Trumbo, who was, I believe, blacklisted from Hollywood during the HUAC hearings for being a communist. I saw the movie about 4 years ago and it really left a mark on me. Metallica has a song called "One" which is inspired by the movie and actually contains clips from the film in the video. It's also EXTREMELY heavy. The song ends with these verses:

Darkness Imprisoning me
All that I see
Absolute horror
I cannot live
I cannot die
Trapped in myself
Body my holding cell

Landmine Has taken my sight
Taken my speech
Taken my hearing
Taken my arms
Taken my legs
Taken my soul
Left me with a life in Hell


Anyway, it's a great, dark song. I started reading the book years ago and I had to stop. It put me right there inside what was left of that man's body. It was too much. Too horrifying.

Like I said: Should be REQUIRED high school reading.

Now, this is not to say that no one should join the Armed Forces. Clearly, these are the people that help create a world where people like me can criticize leaders who senselessly waste the sacrifices they're willing to make. And we are all eternally in their debt.

But, by the same token, EVERYONE should understand what, at a very human level, "going to war" really means. It's not just the coolness of smart bombs and stealth fighters. It's broken bones. Shattered bodies. Torn flesh. Eternally shattered lives.

And lots and lots of blood.

My point is, clearly there are things worth losing a leg or your capacity for speech over. But "freedom" and "liberty" have become such overused terms that they've almost lost meaning in the public discourse, especially when they're used to justify atrocities that fly directly in the face of their meaning. This entire country is so collectively distanced from the juicy side of war that it's almost anticeptic for everyone except the poor bastards on the "tip of the spear". We're only a few steps away from Eminiar VII in the Star Trek episode "A Taste of Armaggedon", where they let computers do the fighting and the people who are selected as casualties just step into a disintegration chamber so they can be neatly filed away as a confirmed kill. Without the horror of war, we have no incentive against war.

After all, why do you think the French and the Germans are so opposed to this war? Yes, the British suffered under the Blitzkrieg, but being bombed is a far cry from having you entire country overrun and enslaved, or, in the case of German towns like Dresden, completely reduced to a pile of cinders. Horror is a palpable, vivid, living memory in the minds of "Old Europe". We should learn from them rather than scorn them for not being as "bold" as we are. After all, "fools rush in...."

Blackout
On the anniversary of Dr. King's murder, this group is hoping to organize African-Americans to stage a mass work stoppage in protest of the war.

Not a bad idea. And maybe we shouldn't limit it to Black people.

Remember this guy?

In his own words, he sees the acquisition of a nuclear weapon as a religious obligation, to inflict a "Hiroshima" on the United States.

According to this essay from The Nautilus Institute, had The U.S. not overthrown the Taliban and scattered Al Qaeda to the four winds, they would probably have a nuclear weapon by now. Of course, they would have had help from some very naughty nuclear scientists from Pakistan and from Islamic extremists in former Soviet republics that still house nuclear material.

Still at large.
Still looking for nukes.

Now, remind me again why Iraq is the most dangerous threat to American security?

Fall Down. Go "Boom".
Three years ago, while Time Warner stock was still flying high, Ted Turner was, for reasons known only to himself, very concerned about the global insecurity of the world's stockpiles of weapons grade nuclear material and the fact that the government didn't seem to be doing enough about it. So, being the egregiously rich guy that he is, with access to just about anybody, he sat down with former Senator Sam Nunn and, beginning with money from his own pocket, founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an independent organization dedicated to helping to contain the threat through lobbying, policy papers, and financing non-proliferation efforts around the world.

Proof, yet again, that there are more ways to contribute than we usually think.

The NTI just published a report that basically says shooting up Iraq & North Korea are barely the tip of the nuke iceberg and that there are literally dozens of sights around the world where decommissioned, yet active, nukes exist that aren't accurately secured because, for instance, it's cold and the guards don't have properly snug uniforms. And if these guys can figure this out, you can bet Al Qaeda did a long time ago.

This editorial from today's New York Times tries to find a reason why the government isn't doing anymore about this. One factor: there is no large industrial concern that stands to make money from cleaning up old nukes.

Another factor: the idea of a nuke going off in an American city is just too horrible for most people in power to even want to think about, let alone discuss in a concrete fashion.

Voice of Reason, Part Deux
In typical, Clinton-esque fashion, Bubba suggests a third way, that straddles the need to disarm Iraq and the desire to avoid a pre-emptive and divisive war, following the guidelines set down by the British. When G.W. Bush says he's a uniter, not a divider, he should take some lessons from the master first...