Teuton, don’t worry, even popes don’t have to be infallible anymore to achieve beatification :^)

Posted by: Fran | May 14 2005 13:18 utc | 4

As I read those most recently linked Bageant articles, I realized what it is about his writing that makes me uneasy.

First off, there’s the fact that he isn’t a very deep thinker—he may be glib, but his mental processes aren’t any more effective than those of the people around him who he describes as imbeciles. To him, the world begins and ends with his home town, or at most his home state. So all the predictions he makes are based on the idea that the entire world is going to sink or swim at the same rate and at the same time as his home state. And, like Socrates, he presents everything as a choice between two not-really-opposites—either you’re exactly like the locals, or you’re so different that you might as well be from Mars. The article on dieoff, where he says that we’re all going to have permanent blackouts in a few years, is a good example. Sorry, Joe, not everyone lives in a backward, horrible hole like you. Europe and Asia will probably survive, because they’re smart enough to do something about it now.

The other thing that bothers me about him is his political perspective. Whenever I read his writings about the American left, such as it is, I end up taking away the following:

“Down here, nobody has any redeeming features at all. We’re extremely cruel, and extremely stupid, and extremely right-wing. We tend to be obese and ugly, too, so we aren’t even nice to look at. We have disdain for anyone who differs from us in any of those categories. We think social spending is a waste and we hate other countries and would like to blow them all up. To a lesser extent, the same goes for other areas of our own country which are not the same as ours. In our spare time, we sit around drinking, watching television, and complaining. When we aren’t picking fights, that is. Or randomly shooting at things. Our whole lifestyle is made possible by spending from out of state, but even though changing our lifestyle is unthinkable, we don’t have any gratitude for those who provide it, either. Why isn’t the left making recruiting us its highest priority?”

Quite frankly, from his description, it sounds as though it would be easier to convert northern Republicans to the left than it would be to get these people. And in fact, it sounds like these people would be the last recruits anyone would ever get, because nobody with any sense—and I credit the left with more sense than the right, in general—would want to be on the same side as them. They’re what I would come up with if I set out to make up a fictional group of humans who were as repulsive as possible, as an extreme case to test someone’s goodwill. If there’s a coming dieoff, and things are as bad as Mr. Bageant thinks, then maybe we should just kill them now and get it over with; it would save a lot of trouble in the long run.

Posted by: Blind Misery | May 14 2005 14:56 utc | 6

Oops, omitted ellipsis after first sentence.

Posted by: jj | May 14 2005 17:52 utc | 8

To wit:
The hubris of the money-making townees who cared nothing about public education, or the cohesion of America, the pay packets of workers, farmer’s plight.
Sneering and sniping and sipping Starbucks koffee and eating sushi.
Who just want to be fed – and fed and fed – salad and corn and squash and beef – well we all know who will have the last laugh.
The Kristians will burn them at the stake.
Fanciful?

Posted by: Blackie | May 14 2005 18:29 utc | 10

Canonize John Paul II! Pope sets predecessor on road to sainthood in record 26 days.
“3 “You shall have no other gods before [a] me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them;”
http://bible.gospelcom.net/passage/?book_id=2&chapter=20&version=31
Just sayin’, is all…

Posted by: doug r | May 14 2005 18:48 utc | 12

Oh Dan of steele I agree but do think that ‘squeezed economically’ has relevance. All over the Western world, that is happening.
Food and basic comfort are assured for farmers / rural poor / the last factory workers / part time service workers / wives at Wallmart / etc… Good or fair education (though people like to fool themselves) and health care are not. (US).
More importantly, the American myth which includes both the upholding of old fashioned values (homestead, community, prayer, etc.) and the idea of endless growth and possible social advancement -anyone can be rich if they want – no longer pertain. They have become contradictory.
If you want to be rich -escape- you must become someone else and be a traitor, leave old values behind.
So the squeeze is not directly or uniquely economical but ideological as well.
Ok?

Posted by: Blackie | May 14 2005 19:26 utc | 14

Blackie
The American myth is not dead. On the contrary it is what the Rovians are using to beat us all into submission. Most people think they are in the top income brackets. Very few will say they are at the bottom either out of shame or just plain ignorance.
Most people will tell you it is because we don’t have prayer in school and that the homosexuals are running around getting married and kissing in public that the country is in poor shape. Folks think that God doesn’t like this stuff and is punishing us. They will all tell you that you can be rich and successful if you work hard and that God will reward you with money and a new Lexus if you walk with Jesus. I have been hearing this forever, it is nothing new. Billy Graham put on his crusades years ago and some say he was the one that made George W quit drinking. Furthermore, everyone will tell you that US has a moral obligation to bring liberty and freedom to the whole world and those same people are pretty disgusted that these lucky people to whom the freedom has been delivered are not even grateful. How has that changed in the last 200 years?
People honestly believe that by voting Republican they will become rich. They see it as a party of the rich and want to be associated with it. They justify themselves by saying they like the small government platform or the family values platform or because the bornagains tell them it is the only party not tainted by the godless.
I suspect that the number of people voting Republican has not really changed in the last few years. It might have for Reagan’s first term but not since. What has changed is the number of Democrats who vote. Democrats have always taken the black and hispanic vote for granted because they knew those two groups would never vote Republican. Well they were half right, they didn’t vote Republican but because they were being ignored for the other 3 years and 9 months of a presidential term, they didn’t vote Democrat either. The Democrats lost their focus years ago, they sat by, fat dumb and happy and let the Republicans build an awesome political machine and now don’t have a clue how to counter it.

Posted by: dan of steele | May 14 2005 21:02 utc | 16

Love your finds Nugget!

Posted by: b | May 14 2005 22:40 utc | 18

Iraq is a bloody no man’s land. America has failed to win the war. But has it lost it?
……There is no doubt that the US has failed to win the war. Much of Iraq is a bloody no man’s land. The army has not been able to secure the short highway to the airport, though it is the most important road in the country, linking the US civil headquarters in the Green Zone with its military HQ at Camp Victory.
Ironically, the extent of US failure to control Iraq is masked by the fact that it is too dangerous for the foreign media to venture out of central Baghdad. Some have retreated to the supposed safety of the Green Zone. Mr Bush can claim that no news is good news, though in fact the precise opposite is true.
Embedded journalism fosters false optimism. It means reporters are only present where American troops are active, though US forces seldom venture into much of Iraq. Embedded correspondents bravely covered the storming of Fallujah by US marines last November and rightly portrayed it as a US military success. But the outside world remained largely unaware, because no reporters were present with US forces, that at the same moment an insurgent offensive had captured most of Mosul, a city five times larger than Fallujah.
Why has the vastly expensive and heavily equipped US army failed militarily in Iraq? After the crescendo of violence over the past month there should be no doubts that the US has not quashed the insurgents whom for two years American military spokesmen have portrayed as a hunted remnant of Saddam Hussein’s regime assisted by foreign fighters.
The failure was in part political. Immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein polls showed that Iraqis were evenly divided on whether they had been liberated or occupied. Eighteen months later the great majority both of Sunni and Shia said they had been occupied, and they did not like it. Every time I visited a spot where an American soldier had been killed or a US vehicle destroyed there were crowds of young men and children screaming their delight. “I am a poor man but I am going home to cook a chicken to celebrate,” said one man as he stood by the spot marked with the blood of an American soldier who had just been shot to death.
Many of the resistance groups are bigoted Sunni Arab fanatics who see Shia as well as US soldiers as infidels whom it is a religious duty to kill. Others are led by officers from Saddam’s brutal security forces. But Washington never appreciated the fact that the US occupation was so unpopular that even the most unsavoury groups received popular support.
From the start, there was something dysfunctional about the American armed forces. They could not adapt themselves to Iraq. Their massive firepower meant they won any set-piece battle, but it also meant that they accidentally killed so many Iraqi civilians that they were the recruiting sergeants of the resistance. The army denied counting Iraqi civilian dead, which might be helpful in dealing with American public opinion. But Iraqis knew how many of their people were dying.
The US war machine was over-armed. I once saw a unit trying to restore order at a petrol station where there was a fist fight between Iraqi drivers over queue-jumping (given that people sometimes sleep two nights in their cars waiting to fill a tank, tempers were understandably frayed). In one corner was a massive howitzer, its barrel capable of hurling a shell 30km, which the soldiers had brought along for this minor policing exercise.
The US army was designed to fight a high-technology blitzkrieg, but not much else. It required large quantities of supplies and its supply lines were vulnerable to roadside bombs. Combat engineers, essentially sappers, lamented that they had received absolutely no training in doing this. Even conventional mine detectors did not work. Roadsides in Iraq are full of metal because Iraqi drivers normally dispose of soft drink cans out the window. Sappers were reduced to prodding the soil nervously with titanium rods like wizards’ wands. Because of poor intelligence and excessive firepower, American operations all became exercises in collective punishment. At first the US did not realise that all Iraqi men have guns and they considered possession of a weapon a sign of hostile intention towards the occupation. They confiscated as suspicious large quantities of cash in farmers’ houses, not realising that Iraqis often keep the family fortune at home in $100 bills ever since Saddam Hussein closed the banks before the Gulf war and, when they reopened, Iraqi dinar deposits were almost worthless.
The US army was also too thin on the ground. It has 145,000 men in Iraq, but reportedly only half of these are combat troops. During the heavily publicised assault on Fallujah the US forces drained the rest of Iraq of its soldiers. “We discovered the US troops had suddenly abandoned the main road between Kirkuk and Baghdad without telling anybody,” said one indignant observer. “It promptly fell under the control of the insurgents.”
The army acts as a sort of fire brigade, briefly effective in dousing the flames, but always moving on before they are fully extinguished. There are only about 6,000 US soldiers in Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital and which has a population of three million. For the election on 30 January, US reserves arriving in Iraq were all sent to Mosul to raise the level to 15,000 to prevent any uprising in the city. They succeeded in doing so but were then promptly withdrawn.
The shortage of US forces has a political explanation. Before the war Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence, and his neo-conservative allies derided generals who said an occupation force numbering hundreds of thousands would be necessary to hold Iraq. When they were proved wrong they dealt with failure by denying it had taken place.
There is a sense of bitterness among many US National Guardsmen that they have been shanghaied into fighting in a dangerous war. I was leaving the Green Zone one day when one came up to me and said he noticed that I had a limp and kindly offered to show me a quicker way to the main gate. As we walked along he politely asked the cause of my disability. I explained I had had polio many years ago. He sighed and said he too had had his share of bad luck. Since he looked hale and hearty this surprised me. “Yes,” he said bitterly. “My bad luck was that I joined the Washington State National Guard which had not been called up since 1945. Two months later they sent me here where I stand good chance of being killed.”
The solution for the White House has been to build up an Iraqi force to take the place of US soldiers. This has been the policy since the autumn of 2003 and it has repeatedly failed. In April 2004, during the first fight for Fallujah, the Iraqi army battalions either mutinied before going to the city or refused to fight against fellow Iraqis once there. In Mosul in November 2004 the 14,000 police force melted away during the insurgent offensive, abandoning 30 police stations and $40m in equipment. Now the US is trying again. By the end of next year an Iraqi army and police force totalling 300,000 should be trained and ready to fight. Already they are much more evident in the streets of Baghdad and other cities.
The problem is that the troops are often based on militias which have a sectarian or ethnic base. The best troops are Kurdish peshmerga. Shia units are often connected with the Badr Brigade which fought on the side of Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. When 14 Sunni farmers from the Dulaimi tribe were found executed in Baghdad a week ago the Interior Ministry had to deny what was widely believed, that they had been killed by a Shia police unit.
The greatest failure of the US in Iraq is not that mistakes were made but that its political system has proved incapable of redressing them. Neither Mr Rumsfeld nor his lieutenants have been sacked. Paul Wolfowitz, under-secretary of defence and architect of the war, has been promoted to the World Bank.
Almost exactly a century ago the Russian empire fought a war with Japan in the belief that a swift victory would strengthen the powers-that-be in St Petersburg. Instead the Tsar’s armies met defeat. Russian generals, who said that their tactic of charging Japanese machine guns with sabre-wielding cavalry had failed only because their men had attacked with insufficient brio, held their jobs. In Iraq, American generals and their political masters of demonstrable incompetence are not fired. The US is turning out to be much less of a military and political superpower than the rest of the world had supposed.

Posted by: Nugget | May 15 2005 1:58 utc | 20

we are still missing DeAnander

Posted by: liz | May 15 2005 3:35 utc | 22

compliments to nugget. thanks for the heads up, dude.

Posted by: slothrop | May 15 2005 3:41 utc | 24

The gored matador

Posted by: Fran | May 15 2005 5:54 utc | 26

James Bennett, writing in the Sunday NYTimes News of the Week in Review, admits to some perplexity and astonishment at what he takes to be the self-defeating ways of the Iraqi “insurgency”. He tells us that the “insurgents,” fighting as they do, defy the lessons of common-sense and history (as in Northern Ireland, Viet Nam, and so forth). Well, he’d get a clearer picture of the fighting if he stopped calling it an “insurgency”. Because it’s just a plain old war–the same one we started in March of 2003. We haven’t won it yet, and our opponents–the Iraqi military–haven’t lost it yet. As a force that has yet to surrender, the Iraqi military can be expected to discipline any civilians interfering with their appointed tasks (because it’s wartime, after all, and the battles are being fought on the home soil). Why doesn’t Mr. Bennett recognize this rather ordinary state of affairs? Does he think that a “mission” of some kind has been “accomplished?”

Posted by: alabama | May 15 2005 6:41 utc | 28

From the Independent article @ 9:58 PM:
“The shortage of US forces has a political explanation. Before the war Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence, and his neo-conservative allies derided generals who said an occupation force numbering hundreds of thousands would be necessary to hold Iraq. When they were proved wrong they dealt with failure by denying it had taken place.”
There were practical considerations as well. If a Gulf War-size force had been committed to Iraq for post-conflict stabilization, that stabilization would have had to wrap up in a year because we wouldn’t have had the follow-on forces to replace them. We would have spent most of the store in one go. Would this have prevented the emergence of the guerilla movement? I have my doubts that sheer numbers mattered as much as the unwillingess to establish control in those areas that did in fact have a significant troop presence; this was a very serious problem that could not be solved simply with the addition of more soldiers and Marines, as the more pertinent matter is the quality and objective of their actions. ‘Liberation’ was the favorite word; ‘occupation’ was a dirty word – I would argue that it was pathologically feared by us, for reasons I hardly need to explain. And this was to result in a neglect of occupation’s actual responsibilities, such as securing the borders and protecting the lives and property of citizens. This is what was owed to the Iraqis -by law, by their own right – until such time as a new state is established and sovereignty reverts to them. This could not have been accomplished for the entire country, in a single year, with 450,000 troops; it cannot be accomplished in four or five with regular rotations of a fraction of that number. It cannot be accomplished in any timeframe, with any number of forces, without willingness to enact, in the immediate post-conflict phase, policies that favor something other than chaos and crisis.
The Iraqis were right when they indicated, in polls, that we had gone from being liberators to occupiers. This was the actual fact of the matter. But we did not carry out our duties to them as such even in those areas where it would have been feasible to do so.
I do not believe that serious trouble in the Sunni triangle was unforseen, especially since the Army division that would take on this area in the opening days of the war was prevented from doing so by our friend Turkey. I did hear, more than once, that take-down was going to be relatively quick and simple, and that major worries involved the aftermath rather than the thing itself – and this, too, may have contributed to the decision to stagger forces, giving us, the thinking went, more flexibility over a longer period of time. Was the depth of trouble that ensued anticipated by anyone with any high level input in planning and operations?
@alabama
OIF has broken the Army. MI is broken in capital letters. HUMINT is wrecked – but it wasn’t the war that did it. It’s been waiting decades to be overhauled and we’re just now getting around to rewriting the Bible. It’ll be quite some time before a long and laborious effort can begin to turn a profit.

Posted by: Pat | May 15 2005 10:04 utc | 30

Something interesting on TV tonight
Quote:
DUTCH
There’s growing concern in the Netherlands about high levels of immigration. Some Dutch people blame their government’s liberal policies for recent problems and are heading overseas, to as far away as New Zealand, for what they believe will be a more peaceful life. Others say they should remain in their homeland to help build on their country’s tradition of tolerance.
Cycling home from school just as their mother did 20 years ago. In their small home town near the German border Judith and her twin sisters, Isabelle and Bernadette, enjoy a safe daily routine. But their mother, Gemma, worries Holland is changing. She has decided to sell up the family restaurant and make a fresh start in New Zealand. The country, she says, has become intolerant and overcrowded.
GEMMA MULDERS, RESTAURANT OWNER: They let too much people in the last years. That causes problems, yes. A lot of cultures living very close to each other.
And Gemma’s not alone. In the past five years, the number of Dutch people moving abroad has shot up. At the annual immigration fair, hundreds of people apply for visas. Their underlying reason – immigration.
***
Isn’t it totally crazy to start with????
She (they) are going to New Zealand to become emigrants BECAUSE they hate IMMIGRATION…
I wonder WTF they expect to find in NZ but bunch of immigrants (recent and long time once).
I do believe immigration as such is not a reason for these people to go. My feeling is it’s all about economy and it’s probably is on it’s way down…any information about it?
Is that the truth that in Berlin unemployment is around 23% as friend told me the other night? He visited some friends there recently and they told him so. He said people are angry (which is understandable) and of course the immigrants are easy target always when something goes wrong…
Here in Australia this government is very proud of low unemployment numbers but today I was talking to a group of youngsters (all having Australian university degree and are willing to work anywhere in Australia) and they told me that 3 of them are looking for job unsuccessfully for more then a year.
And now when they add all those solo mothers and disability pensioners that they are forcing back on unemployment benefit their numbers will not be so rosy I assume…But who cares anyway…They just show us that they have guts to give 6X more money in tax cuts to the people that have 6X more than poor who are getting from fucking nothing up to $6 weekly…
This is telling me much of where this country is standing and where it is going…
But that’s my luck I suppose. Where ever I come things are going from bad to worse…ha-ha
Some friends think that we are lucky comparing to some others…I assume those Dutch people also think so…

Posted by: vbo | May 15 2005 14:40 utc | 32

vbo- I think things in The Netherlands are not as wonderful as they seem to some of us who view it from the outside. I was talking to someone who has lived in the US for a while, but who has lots of family still there, and the whole thing with Theo Van Gogh and the retaliation on muslims in Eindoven, etc. reflects a culture clash that goes beyond one person.
The Netherlands has a conservative govt now…of course, their conservative would probably be more like the DLC here…but the conservatives are not friendly toward immigration issues, for the most part.
This, no doubt, creates a climate of opposition within the country, and would seem to feed prejudice against an entire group.
It seems the liberalism of Netherlandish tradition is offensive to a religious minority and there are struggles there…like the US, and while the religion is different…the reaction to modernity is not.
The guy who killed Theo Van Gogh was the equivalent of Eric Rudolph, here. The difference is that Rudolph could “pass” in white American society and so he wasn’t identified with a particular ethnic group.
The Netherlands has a tradition of tolerance, but they also have a tradition of apartheid.

Posted by: fauxreal | May 15 2005 15:46 utc | 34

Pat @ 6:04 AM: a sobering post. And how do you fix a broken army? As for Intelligence (military or civilian): how many competent Arabists can be found in the services and agencies nowadays? When OIF got under way, someone mentioned the number “400” (but I’m not sure whether this was for the CIA, or for the larger community). It might take a new NDEA Title IV funding measure to meet our needs….

Posted by: alabama | May 15 2005 17:15 utc | 36

Ah, I forgot those discussions last year at The Whiskey Bar: we don’t need any Arabists because we have Mossad on our side. That’s how we got going at Abu Ghraib.
Pat, I wonder whether all that thunder and lightning (“shock and awe”?) generated by Operation Desert Storm didn’t just blind our civilian and military leadership. It was so easy! Why wouldn’t it work a second time? And of course it did–except that we went to Baghdad, and the Iraqis went to earth. And then we stayed in Baghdad…….

Posted by: alabama | May 15 2005 18:07 utc | 38

anna missed, dan of steele, sure, good comments.
However, saying that it is the Democrats own fault implies that they had an aim they somehow could not reach. That, as far as I can see, is not so. The Democrats did not neglect the base, detach from it, etc. (In the EU Jospin and others fared the same fate and came in for the same kind of criticism) simply because the base is no longer relevant. No detaching is done as it no longer counts. Only outside idealist observers lament.
Gathering votes there will bring little kudos, power, position, cash. The base no longer counts and everyone knows it.
Playing second fiddle to the corporations and Big biz. that control govmt. provide a little window of opportunity, the chance to survive as a patsy and fake opponent. And self congratulate for being on the right side. It is -in their eyes – the only way to continue playing a role.
As for the American dream, who am I? But reckon it is pretty shredded.

Posted by: Blackie | May 15 2005 18:48 utc | 40

Bah Bah red sheep
Have you any wool,
Yes sir, yes sir three bags full;
One for the master,
And one for his bitch,
But none for my little boy
Who thinks he’ll get rich.
Rah Rah red sheep
How you love the bull,
Oh yeah oh yeah we’re never full;
More for the master,
All to the rich,
But none for my little boy
Who’ll die in a ditch.
Blah Blah red sheep
Do you have no shame,
Can’t see can’t see we’re not to blame;
It’s all for the boss,
And some for the cross,
But none for you’re little boy
Who has to eat your loss.

Posted by: anna missed | May 15 2005 21:14 utc | 42

Just saw the new Billmon and went WOW!

Posted by: Fran | May 16 2005 5:36 utc | 44

Sorry, forgot to link:

Posted by: Fran | May 16 2005 6:43 utc | 46

WaPo Not Just A Last Resort?
A Global Strike Plan, With a Nuclear Option

Early last summer, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved a top secret “Interim Global Strike Alert Order” directing the military to assume and maintain readiness to attack hostile countries that are developing weapons of mass destruction, specifically Iran and North Korea.
Two months later, Lt. Gen. Bruce Carlson, commander of the 8th Air Force, told a reporter that his fleet of B-2 and B-52 bombers had changed its way of operating so that it could be ready to carry out such missions. “We’re now at the point where we are essentially on alert,” Carlson said in an interview with the Shreveport (La.) Times. “We have the capacity to plan and execute global strikes.” Carlson said his forces were the U.S. Strategic Command’s “focal point for global strike” and could execute an attack “in half a day or less.”
In the secret world of military planning, global strike has become the term of art to describe a specific preemptive attack. When military officials refer to global strike, they stress its conventional elements. Surprisingly, however, global strike also includes a nuclear option, which runs counter to traditional U.S. notions about the defensive role of nuclear weapons.
…
Global strike has become one of the core missions for the Omaha-based Strategic Command, or Stratcom. Once, Stratcom oversaw only the nation’s nuclear forces; now it has responsibility for overseeing a global strike plan with both conventional and nuclear options. President Bush spelled out the definition of “full-spectrum” global strike in a January 2003 classified directive, describing it as “a capability to deliver rapid, extended range, precision kinetic (nuclear and conventional) and non-kinetic (elements of space and information operations) effects in support of theater and national objectives.”
This blurring of the nuclear/conventional line, wittingly or unwittingly, could heighten the risk that the nuclear option will be used. Exhibit A may be the Stratcom contingency plan for dealing with “imminent” threats from countries such as North Korea or Iran, formally known as CONPLAN 8022-02.
…
The inclusion, therefore, of a nuclear weapons option in CONPLAN 8022 — a specially configured earth-penetrating bomb to destroy deeply buried facilities, if any exist — is particularly disconcerting. The global strike plan holds the nuclear option in reserve if intelligence suggests an “imminent” launch of an enemy nuclear strike on the United States or if there is a need to destroy hard-to-reach targets.

Posted by: b | May 16 2005 10:19 utc | 48

I know this is way out there, but I think I’d be remiss to not try to point all this out-
The more I think about the article below, on proselytizing in the Air Force Academy the more it scares the daylights out of me.
Letsee. An extremely well organized and funded push to elect fundamentalists to congress started in the mid 1980s. It takes a congressional/senatorial endorsement to get into one of the military academies…
Now there’s an overt push to make cadets toe the fundamentalist line…
Then there’s this site which is neither Christian nor American, but an abomination, and is obviously well bankrolled:
http://www.forceministries.com/,
It looks suspiciously reconstructionist, a group with no respect for the Constitution, and who has been associated with the likes of Howard Ahmanson & family , who have been philanthrophising the fundamentalist Christians and investing in electronic voting machine companies for decades.
The Military academies are the hopper for the largest fraction of future military Generals. If enough Generals put their faith above the Constitution, we, as a Constitutional Republic, are toast.
Extremist groups have taken power many times in history through careful leverage and good propaganda. I think there are those who are trying exactly this. Do I think they’ll succeed? I hope not, This country is nothing, if not diverse, but I do think it is very important to make sure people know about these folks…
-Tom Meacham
This article is mocking and condescending, putting the Chaplain’s credentials in quotes- she’s a “Lutheran Minister.” No, she’s a Lutheran Minister. This is not a valid news-story, it’s propaganda.
And be sure to note the ads at the bottom of this article…
____________________________
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/5/12/150704.shtml
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Thursday, May 12, 2005 2:57 p.m. EDT
Chaplain Wants Christ out of Air Force Academy
Here’s a story that will throw you for a loop: a “chaplain” at the U.S. Air Force Academy is complaining that the school’s administration has a “systemic and pervasive” problem of promoting religious values with a Christian bent.
The chaplain, Capt. Melinda Morton, a “Lutheran minister,” spoke out publicly on Tuesday as an Air Force task force arrived at the academy to investigate charges that officers and staff members pushed their religious beliefs on cadets.
And she claimed that a tolerance program developed at the academy, called Respecting the Spiritual Values of all People (R.S.V.P.), was watered down after it was shown to officers.
Maj. Gen. Charles C. Baldwin, chief of chaplains for the Air Force, screened the 90-minute R.S.V.P. film in October, according to Capt. Morton, and asked her, “Why is it that the Christians never win?” in reaction to some of the program’s depictions of cadet interactions.
“Chaplain” Morton’s complaints about too much religion at the military academy is creating waves, and earned her hero status in a report in the New York Times Thursday.
Gen. Baldwin acknowledged in an interview that he felt too many scenes in the film portrayed Christians at fault for excessive evangelical proselytizing.
He also said he asked that the Air Force cut segments on non-Christian religions such as Buddhism, Judaism and Native American spirituality.
The problem in dealing with proselytizing and church-state issues at the academy, he explained, “always is, when is a person crossing the line, or when are they being a positive person of faith, like our president.”
Last year, the Colorado Springs academy invited Yale Divinity School professor Kristen Leslie and six Yale graduate students to visit the school and observe how the chaplains minister to the cadets.
A memo from the Yale team cited the “stridently evangelical themes” at a worship service attended by 600 new cadets.
Leslie said a chaplain urged cadets to pray for those who didn’t attend and “remind them of the consequences … those not ‘born again will burn in the fires of hell.'”
But academy spokesman Johnny Whitaker disputed that account, saying several other chaplains told him that no one mentioned burning “in the fires of hell.”
Morton, a 48-year-old “Lutheran minister,” said she was removed from her post as executive officer to the chief chaplain, Col. Michael Whittington, last week. She claimed the dismissal came after he pressured her to deny details of what happened at the religious service.
But Whitaker said Whittington sent Morton an e-mail on May 4 saying he was removing her “to ensure a smooth and complete transition” for new leaders.
Morgan said she had stepped forward because “it’s the Constitution, not just a nice rule we can follow or not follow. That includes not using your power to advance your religious agenda.”
She acknowledged that after speaking out, “I don’t think I have much future in the Air Force.”
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Posted by: INFOHAZARD | May 16 2005 10:42 utc | 50

U.S. capital inflows slow in March
Foreign central banks net sellers first time in 19 months

Foreign central banks became net sellers of U.S. assets for the first time in 19 months in March, helping to slow foreign capital inflows into the United States by 46%, the Treasury Department said Monday.
Net capital inflows fell to $45.7 billion in March from $84.1 billion in February.
It was the lowest level of capital inflows since October 2003.
It was the first time since October 2004 that foreign inflows have fallen short of the U.S. trade deficit for the month. The trade gap was $55 billion in March.
The United States demands nearly $2 billion a day in foreign capital to finance its current account deficit. So far, the requirements have generally been met, even though U.S. interest rates remain relatively low.
In March, net foreign purchases of domestic securities fell to $60.1 billion from $98.1 billion in February. U.S. net sales of foreign securities, meanwhile, were little changed at $14.4 billion.
Foreign central banks sold $14.4 billion in U.S. securities on net, the first net sales since August 2003, after the central banks purchased $18.7 billion in February.

hmmm – time to go short US$ again?

Posted by: b | May 16 2005 16:44 utc | 52

@Fran – sell, but the question is against what.
By blowing the stability pact the EURO finance ministers did manage to stem the rise of Euro vs. US$. Also I don´t think that China will revaluate soon. As more pressure the US puts on China as less are they willing to do something.
So against what could the US$ decline? I´will stick to and add to Silver and may start shorting treasuries again one of these days. Who knows what´s up – the markets have no real direction in my view. Maybe it needs some blow up to get a direction again.

Posted by: b | May 16 2005 18:19 utc | 54

Iraq: Operation Matador another failure for the U.S.
….Primed for battle, the Marines found only booby traps. Sometimes they found them too late.
On Wednesday, two artillery rounds buried in the road detonated under an Amtrac, blowing a two-foot-wide hole in its armor plating. The explosion set off ammunition inside the vehicle, creating an inferno.
As the Amtrac burned, a 24-year-old Marine in a nearby vehicle grabbed his helmet in both fists and wrenched it. “I hate this country!” he screamed….
….Sometimes, the Marines busted up wooden furniture belonging to poor farm families and threw their polyester blankets and clothes in a jumble on the floor. A handful of the hundreds of Marines involved in Operation Matador walked out of homes with a pillow or blanket to cushion the ride in the Amtrac. Sometimes, Marines agreed at one commandeered house as they drank a rousted family’s tea, they beat up suspicious-looking men if that was what it took to get information that could save lives.
“…Frankly, I’m tired of going around not seeing anything, not knowing anything, and then having Marines, guys I know, get blown up by mines,” Kalouf said. “We can’t stand all their IEDs and mines, crap like that. Because we can’t do that.”

Posted by: Nugget | May 16 2005 21:03 utc | 56

U.S. approves Iraq trade by man named as Galloway middleman
The Jordanian businessman accused of passing oil money from Saddam Hussein to George Galloway has revealed that he is once again trading in Iraq and making trips to America with the approval of the US authorities.
Fawaz Zureikat was speaking publicly for the first time since he was named by a US Senate investigative committee examining the United Nations oil-for-food programme. He told The Independent that neither the new government in Baghdad nor US officials had raised any objections to him renewing his trade with Iraq….

Posted by: Nugget | May 16 2005 23:57 utc | 58

US ‘backed illegal Iraqi oil deals’
The United States administration turned a blind eye to extensive sanctions-busting in the prewar sale of Iraqi oil, according to a new Senate investigation.
A report released last night by Democratic staff on a Senate investigations committee presents documentary evidence that the Bush administration was made aware of illegal oil sales and kickbacks paid to the Saddam Hussein regime but did nothing to stop them.
The scale of the shipments involved dwarfs those previously alleged by the Senate committee against UN staff and European politicians like the British MP, George Galloway, and the former French minister, Charles Pasqua.
In fact, the Senate report found that US oil purchases accounted for 52% of the kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil – more than the rest of the world put together.….

Posted by: Nugget | May 17 2005 1:13 utc | 60

Pictures from Iraq

Posted by: Nugget | May 17 2005 1:47 utc | 62

Interestinmg Knight Ridder take on operation Matador. Marine-led campaign killed friends and foes, Iraqi leaders say

When foreign fighters poured into villages with jihad on their minds and weapons in their hands, some Iraqi tribesmen in western desert towns fought back.
They set up checkpoints to filter out the foreigners. They burned down suspected insurgent safe houses. They called their fellow tribesmen in Baghdad and other urban areas for backup.
And when they still couldn’t uproot the terrorists streaming in from Syria, tribal leaders said, they took a most unusual step: They asked the Americans for help.
The U.S. military hails last week’s Operation Matador as a success that killed more than 125 insurgents. But local tribesmen said it was a disaster for their communities and has made them leery of ever again assisting American or Iraqi forces.
The battle, which pitted some Iraqi tribes against each other, underscored the complex tribal politics that compound the religious and ethnic tensions plaguing Iraq.
In interviews, influential tribal leaders and many residents of the remote border towns said the 1,000 U.S. troops who swept into their territories in the weeklong campaign that ended over the weekend didn’t distinguish between the Iraqis who supported the United States and the fighters battling it.
“The Americans were bombing whole villages and saying they were only after the foreigners,” said Fasal al Goud, a former governor of Anbar province who said he asked U.S. forces for help on behalf of the tribes. “An AK-47 can’t distinguish between a terrorist and a tribesman, so how could a missile or tank?”

Posted by: b | May 17 2005 9:15 utc | 64

Parallel universes?
‘Star Wars’ Raises Questions on US Policy
by David Germain

Lucas said he patterned his story after historical transformations from freedom to fascism, never figuring when he started his prequel trilogy in the late 1990s that current events might parallel his space fantasy.
“As you go through history, I didn’t think it was going to get quite this close. So it’s just one of those recurring things,” Lucas said at a Cannes news conference. “I hope this doesn’t come true in our country.
“Maybe the film will waken people to the situation,” Lucas joked.

Posted by: beq | May 17 2005 17:38 utc | 66

You are welcome r’giap.
Iraqi public opinion:
The occupation of Iraq is today less about rolling back Iraqi military power, dislodging a tyrant, or building a stable democracy than it is about fighting an insurgency — an insurgency that is now driven substantially by the occupation, its practices, and policies. We can take a first step toward understanding the insurgency by locating it within the broader field of popular Iraqi opposition to the occupation, which is widespread. Iraqi public opinion has been polled repeatedly since the beginning of the occupation by a variety of firms. Their findings leave no doubt about the main contours of Iraqi sentiment regarding the occupation:
On balance, Iraqis oppose the US presence in Iraq, and those who strongly oppose it greatly outnumber those who strongly support it.
US troops in Iraq are viewed broadly as an occupying force, not peacekeepers or liberators.
On balance, Iraqis do not trust US troops, think they have behaved badly, and — one way or another — hold them responsible for much of the violence in the nation.
There is significant popular support for attacks on US forces, and this support probably grew larger during the course of 2004, at least among Sunni Arabs.
A majority of Iraqis want coalition forces to leave within a year or less. Formation of a permanent government early in 2006 is the “tipping point” after which a very large majority of Iraqis may desire immediate withdrawal.
Vicious circle: The dynamics of occupation and resistance in Iraq

Posted by: Nugget | May 18 2005 0:29 utc | 68

ALERT ALERT!
Anybody here see David Griffins C-span talk? Remember, his referal to the Space technology?
If you don’t know about it, you will…
Fire From the Sky!?
http://tinyurl.com/c8qqw
[b]Air Force Seeks Bush’s Approval for Space Arms[/b] (nytimes.com). The US Air Force seeks to develop several frightening weapons,including one called “Rods from God,” which would fire metal rods at a target from the edge of space, striking with the force of a small nuclear weapon. With a presidential directive expected in the weeks to come, what consequences could an approval have on the global community?
…it’s about to get phunky!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 18 2005 4:58 utc | 70

Losing in Iraq
The Bush Administration wanted a short conventional war with a decisive, glorious victory; they have a drawn-out guerrilla war and an approaching humiliating defeat….

Posted by: Nugget | May 18 2005 5:17 utc | 72

@citizen k – you are absolutly correct regarding Chinas US$ reserves. I don´t understand what those folks in Washington do not get here.

Posted by: b | May 18 2005 9:08 utc | 74

FWIW
and the
first, third, and fourth entries here
may be worth a look (the second part of
the second is also amusing). No guarantees
as to veracity of the first link.

Posted by: Anonymous | May 18 2005 14:40 utc | 76

Not a Pretty Picture

“History,” Hegel said, “is a slaughterhouse.” And war is how the slaughter is carried out.
“War is madness. Often when I was in it, I would think of my work as dedicated to stopping it. But I know that’s unrealistic. When I considered the readers who would see my photos, I felt I was saying to them: ‘If I hurt inside, I want you to hurt too. If something brings me to tears, I want to bring you to tears too.’ “

Posted by: beq | May 18 2005 16:45 utc | 78

Another rat jumps ship.

Posted by: beq | Jun 1 2007 14:55 utc | 80