A post from Nader.org

Options For Revision

Imagine the U.S. military – from the soldiers on the ground to the generals – saying publicly what they are thinking and saying privately about their two draft-dodging but bellicose rulers in the White House.

Sometimes, reporters have gathered a few excoriating statements from the frustrated, beleaguered, often body armor-less GIs. One even demanded Bush’s resignation from his barracks in Iraq, which was shown on national television.

There is also the under-reported Zogby poll released in January 2006 –
the only scientifically sampled field poll in Iraq – which showed over
seventy percent of the soldiers thought the United States should
withdraw in a time period ranging from six months to a year. And this
opinion in the war zone was registered when the situation was not as
bad as the quagmire is today.

As for the Generals, their dissatisfaction with Don Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, goes well beyond his brusque personality into the rigid and mistaken policies from the beginning of this fabricated, illegal war.

Now comes the New York Times reporter, Michael R. Gordon, with a page one story about a forthcoming Army and Marine Corps field manual with a “new counterinsurgency doctrine that draws on the hard learned lessons from Iraq and makes the welfare and protection of civilians a bedrock element of military strategy.”

Some might view this manual – drawing from the experiences of bottom to top military personnel – to be an indirect rebuke of the failed brute, force military policies of the Bush White House. Some may also wonder what took the Pentagon so long to rediscover old knowledge about what succeeded and failed in foreign military occupations. Old knowledge that says reliance on sheer military power, mistreating prisoners, and not safeguarding civilians and essential public services fails again and again.

Well, better late than never. This particular field manual went through many comments, consultations, and drafts before distilling nine “representative paradoxes” of counterinsurgency operations. Their theme is that the more force used, the less effective it is. Staying in touch with the civilian population, instead of staying in compounds, is more effective than a brute force and firepower approach. Dollars and ballots have more impact than sheer weaponry because they strengthen the host country’s restoration of basic services like police, electricity, drinking water, food, health and schools.

Other paradoxes include one that says “tactical success guarantees nothing," and that “most of the important decisions are not made by generals,” but by troops at all levels.

By now you are probably saying, “Isn’t that just repeating the obvious?” Why, yes, but when your dogmatic, messianic commanders are Bush and Cheney, shorn of history, common sense, and critical reactive thinking, the “obvious” has to be conveyed as something new, lest it be seen as what it is – a repudiation of disas trous policies from design to supply to logistics.

click here for all of it

If you're feeling confused about this whole "right and wrong" thing these days when you see all this shit about North Korea and what our responsibility is and whatnot, I recommend paying a visit to nader.org and reading Ralph's latest rants about Iraq.

I haven' read it all, as I write this, but it seems pretty entertaining at least.

I don't mean to blog once a month...

I can think of two people who read this blog, and to you two guys, I'm sorry I never post anymore.

I don't have internet at my house, hopefully once we move to our new location I will be able to get online regularly and with time to do stuff like this. I've blogged from UNO's library before but I've been doing actual work there lately for this "school" thing that I'm signed up for.

Politics: Ummmm, I'm going to be voting for the first time this year. Kind of exciting, I'm casting my govenatorial vote for independent Kinky Friedman for governor of Texas. If anyone has found a reason not to vote for him please let me know; I've read his site a few times and he seems like the best choice, suprisingly progressive. He's not some hopeless joke candidate who's doomed from the start, he looks like he could really win and he's got some good ideas despite his dumb ass ways of relating to dumb ass Texans.

Speaking of elections, I really don't think the Republicans are going down this mid term. Its okay, if they haven't dug their grave deeply enough yet, two more years should be enough to get rid of them for a while.

Keep stopping by guys (John and Ron), I'll get back in the blog habbit eventually. Haha, Ron-John.

"Islam, which I consider to be a cult religion"

I've been going to church at this place in Metarie called Calvary Chapel. Its this seemingly very cool non-denominational church that is oriented to more youthful and chilled out people. However, the particular pastor at the Metarie Calvary Chapel is a TOTAL fundamentalist.

All of the sermons that I've heard him give so far have included the following themes: 1)We're right 2)They're wrong 3)There can only be one Truth and that is the word of Jesus Christ, everything else is wrong.

This morning "Pastor Dave" (as I think of him in my mind, I can't remember his real name) once again got around to talking negatively about Islam. The exact term that he used was "cult religion" and my memory's quote is, "...Islam, which I consider to be a cult religion...". In all my life of going to church (pretty much every single sunday of my life, without fail) I have never heard a pastor blatently regard another religion as a "cult". But here's the real kicker: a few weeks ago, we had a guest pastor. I think this guy was from Colorado, he's the pastor for another Calvary Chapel. His views were not much different at all. His exact words were, "There's no life in Muhammad! There's no life in Buddha! There's no life in ME!". Once again, a Calvary Chapel minister openly disputed and denied other faiths.

I'm seriously thinking about bringing my minidisc recorder to a sermon and recording what this guy at the Metarie Calvary Chapel says. Its not suprising that these guys were from a non-denominaitonal church; they probably don't have to answer to as much authority as your standard Methodist or Baptist, or especially Catholic ministers, do.

The testimony of just two prechers probably does not reflect the belief of Calvary Chapel as a whole organization, but it does bring some questions to my mind. Particularly, could this be a church that America needs to look out for? Moreso than southern Baptist churches or the TV evangelicals?

That last blog sucked

What I was trying to say yesterday was that I started off last week with a lot of confusion about my classes. I just now straightened out my last problem and am feeling much better about my time here. I should probably be reading up on these issues that are coming up in my English class regarding the New Orleans tax assessor consolidation and the levee board consolidation, but whatever.

I just now had my first guitar lesson ever. I can't wait to kick ass. Its going to happen pretty soon.

The stuff I said yesterday about not making any friends is pretty true, but I do know a few graduate students who go to this church that my brother and I have been going to on Sundays, they're really nice.

I really do feel pretty out of control still, but at least I have a chance to get over it now that I've gotten all my class conflicts straightened out. I'll blog about political stuff soon.

My first weeks of college

I haven't blogged in a while. I am currently living in Gretna, LA (West Bank, yo!) with my brother Travis, and we don't have internet access right now. We're going to be moving to a different house in a few weeks.

Anyway, UNO has been a pretty flabergasting experience so far. I've been feeling quite out of control of my life for the past few weeks because I can't get on the net at any time that I want and I missed my first class of college because I didn't even know that I was supposed to be there! I found out the next day that there are three parts to this music theory course that I'm taking, at least I've got my schedule figured out now, I think.

I've got this constant feeling like I'm doing something wrong, like I'm forgetting something, or like there's another piece of important information that I'm unaware of. Every moment that I get to relax, I've got this fog in the back of my mind that says there's somewhere else that I'm supposed to be. And my dad keeps emailing me saying we're out of daytime minutes on our cell phone plan, haha.

The weirdest thing about this experience so far is that I haven't made a SINGLE friend yet, nor even had a conversation with any of my classmates. Nor do I feel like I'm accepted by them, as if that mattered. I go to school, sit in the front, listen to the instructors, do what they say, and leave without having shared anything with anyone. The only exception would have to have been yesterday at my ensemble class. At least I actually talked to a few people.

I must seem depressed but I expect things to improve.

George Allen’s Macaca

From Crooks and Liars:

Sen. George Allen has a funny way of communicating with the only non-white at an all Republican event.

S.R. Sidarth, a senior at the University of Virginia, had been trailing Allen with a video camera to document his travels and speeches for the Webb campaign. During a campaign speech Friday in Breaks, Virginia, near the Kentucky border, Allen singled out Sidarth and called him a word that sounded like "Macaca."

"Lets give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia," said Allen, who then began talking about the "war on terror." In an interview, Sidarth said he suspects Allen singled him out because he was the only non-white face in the audience, which he estimated included about 100 Republican supporters.

He could have at least asked him his name since he’s been around his campaign. And yes, what does he mean by Macaca?

If spelled M-a-c-a-c-a, the term refers to a species of monkeys in the Eastern Hemisphere. "Is he saying Sidarth is a monkey?" [Webb spokesperson Kristian Denny] Todd asked. The word M-a-k-a-k-a refers to a town in South Africa. Todd accused Wadhams of "reaching" for an explanation for Allen’s comments. "The kid has a name. This is trying to demean him, to minimize him as a person," Todd said.

Click here to see the original post from Crooks and Liars.

Here's the video below. I don't need to comment any further on this because its completely clear from this video that George Allen is a complete douche bag and should be sacked.

"The best one we've had so far"

I was eating at a taquaria in Pasadena, Texas yesterday with my boss, Larry, and two of his other employees. There was a picture of "The Mexican Elvis" on the wall; I didn't catch what his name was but the story about his alleged assassination by a past Mexican president led Larry to start talking about how "everyone wants to hang Bush". He actually said that President Bush is the best president that our country has had so far! Then he went on about how we should ANNEX ALL OF MEXICO.

He didn't explain why Bush is the best, so I'll explain why Bush is the worst.

1. The tax cuts that "help the economy" are really only helping the corporate elites who benefit from them the most. A glance at some of the numbers may tell you that the economy is strong right now, but a glance at any current personal bankruptcy statistic will show you that something is very wrong. If the economy is doing so well, why are so many people filing for bankruptcy these days? Why hasn't the minimum wage increased since 1997?

2. King George has changed the purpose of the war in Iraq twice now. Before 9/11, he was perpared to go to war because of the whole "No Fly Zone" thing. Immediately after 9/11, Iraq was supposedly stocking up on nukes. Now after thousands of our troops have already died not to mention a countless amount of Iraqi civilians, we're there to "promote democracy" in the region or "restore peace/freedom/stability", whichever sounds right at the time. How he has gotten away with this is completely beyond me.

3. His first veto of his career squelched research that could likely find cures or treatments to currently incurable diseases. His explanation was that stem cell research kills innocent life, even though the research would be done on stem cells that were never going to live in the first place.

4. Lets not forget that whole "Mission Accomplished" fiasco. That was just stupid. (He's the first president to appear in military uniform while in office, only preceded elsewhere by people like Castro and other totalitarian types).

5. He has not shown any kind of concern about the coruption of the Mexican government--corruption which forces so many Mexicans to flee here (sometimes legally). In fact, Bush's relationship with Vicente Fox (Mexico's current president) is quite a friendly one.

6. His administration's shaky consistency on getting permission for domestic wire tapping (which has always been approved when they actually ask for it) is suspicious at best.

7. His old "Axis of Evil" remarks jeopardized relations between South and North Korea, as well as secular progress in Iran. There was a tremendous amout of normalization being made, but North Korea shut its doors to the South after Bush put them in his Axis of Evil. Also, many people in Iran were becoming religiously tolerant and non-violent, but after Bush's remarks they fled back to the Ayatollas and other Islamic fundamentalist leaders.

Need I go on? You could find just as many bad things about every president that we've had, but in no way could anyone in their right mind truely believe that Bush has been the best.

Roots of hardcore

Dead Boys, 1977

Chomsky: media, government, truth

Something we should all think about: Zinn on human nature and war

Happy Birthday Gorni Kramer

Gorni Kramer is on accordian. I'll be honest, I'd never heard of Gorni Kramer until I saw his name on a list of jazz musicians who's birthdays are today.

This is REALLY funny though.

Texas state bird: the mosquito

I don't know what species of mosquito this is, but they scare the hell out of me.

Summer rain brings monsters.

I'm addicted to this song

Fox finally owns up to bin Laden's health

Last night my dad was watching the Astros game. During the commerical breaks he would click upwards one station (eerily convenient for most Southern sports fans' interest) to the Fox News Channel. As I walked in to the kitchen to adorn my pallent with tuna, I heard in the background something that I have known for a few years now: Osama bin Laden is extremely ill and is treated regularly with dialysis!

Apparently bin Laden is now requesting that his followers pray dilligently for his health, but for some odd reason I suspect that maybe Fox News is just a little late on mentioning this fact. Its not that he's gotten worse or recently got sick in the first place, its that this old information is somehow convenient for Fox News now, or perhaps the White House finally acknowledged bin Laden's condition so Fox routinely fell in line regardless whether they think its important.

It definately is important. It was important back in 2002 when Jello Biafra was talking about it in his spoken word performances. It was important when Michael Moore wrote about it in his book, Dude Where's My Country, in 2003. But now that news is credible beyond a shadow of a doubt because the White House or Fox News, whichever was first, has reported it.

Thanks for the info, Fox. Now everyone will finally believe that the big bad warewolf of 9/11 is on dialysis and is therefore not possibly hidden in the caves of Afghanistan or any caves at all, for that matter. When on earth will we ever find that mad man?

Life at the Plant

Yesterday I carried out my assignment of replacing the nozzels at each fire hose station in the power block. See, most of them had this red plastic nozzel and they found out recently (the hard way) that plastic nozzels can wear out and shoot off and hit someone in the head and injure them pretty badly. So they bought these new brass ones. I had to go into the insane maze of this multi-story, steel grated mass of power plant and find all the fire hose stations...with a map that wasn't too user friendly.

I know I just made that sound kinda shitty, but it was actually a lot of fun. It was essentially very easy: just walk to the stations with a bucket full of new nozzels and replace the old dangerous ones (they screw on and off, a monkey could do it...) . The hard part was finding them all, but at least the weird industrial scenery (complete with my hard had, goggles, ear plugs, and steal toe boots) was much cooler than my friend's job at Popeye's.

In my head I kept repeating, and believing: "Beats the hell out of flippin' burgers and dealing with customers!"

I'm a workin' man

I started working at my dad's power plant yesterday: AES Deepwater in Pasadena, Texas (where else?). Yes, I am very much a part of the problem for a change. Needed some variety I guess, but really just desperately need my own money as to not put my parents into debt.

They've got a summer program for college students. They're gonna hook me up with a mowing tractor and I'm gonna bascially be the groundskeeper of this area that they recently bought. I also get to use a forklift!!

Everyone has to have a hard hat and safety glasses and wear ear protection and steel toe boots and I got a bunch of petroleum coke on my hands today and felt like a badass factory worker. Even though I'm just a summer temp. Haha. But I changed the HELL out of them hose nosels!

A wake up call about illegal immigration from Mexico's elections

From the AP via Yahoo! News:

Mexican expatriate voters hindered in U.S.

[...]

Apathy also was an issue. Some said that they came to the United States because Mexican governments had failed to create economic opportunities at home, and that they didn't see that changing anytime soon.

clickhereforallofit

That sentence that I bolded, enlarged, and italicized is the root of the problem of illegal immigration. Our government does absolutely nothing to stop it either, in fact, these "free trade" agreements that the Bush Administration touts so proudly are what causes that situation. "Free trade" means allowing corporations to go into foreign lands where they'll exploit poor people's labor with no penatly (thats the "freedom" of "free trade", freedom to exploit for the sake of profits).

Our president and Mexico's current president, Vicente Fox, are completely on the same page when it comes to economics, and thats what is causing the corruption in all the Latin American countries where we've installed and/or supported right wing governments who sign with our "free trade" agreements. Migrant workers flee Latin America because they can make more money if they're exploited in America rather than being exploited in their native countries, not to mention the social services that are available (and should be).

My church's new pastor claims an attack on Bush's "Faith Based Initiatives"

I go to church pretty much every Sunday. I've been going to Highlands United Methodist Church for my whole 18 years of existence.

We recently got a new pastor.

Today her sermon was about how "our church's history is America's history". She later got around to talking about how politicians try to "bump down religion" at every chance that they get, and told us about how the government "shut down" this rehabilitation facility because it was Christian and therefore unconstitutionally receiving federal funding. She called this a "huge blow on President Bush's Faith Based Initiatives", and said that the government did not replace the program with anything that was as effective at keeping ex-inmates out of prison.

I'll give her that; it definately was a blow to Bush's Faith Based Initiatives, but why can't the rehab facitlity simply become a private establishment? The government can't fund it, or own it, but that doesn't mean that the place can't exist. Being a religious establishment, how hard would it be to get donations from church's all over the country, especially with this supposed success in keeping ex-criminals from committing more crimes after they're released? With a success story such as that, what church wouldn't want to take constant donations for that establishment?

All of a sudden the government should be there to help, as long as its a church and not just some lazy "welfare queen" who abuses the system. You can help yourself, but we can't.

Warped Tour

I haven't posted anything in a while.

I'll just talk about today at the Warped Tour.

Anti-Flag
The Casualties
Less Than Jake
Bouncing Souls
NOFX
Against Me!

Underoath SUCKS. Thursday SUCKS. AFI SUCKS. Rise Against, whatever.

I lost my EFFING wallet during the Casualties cuz I tripped over all these people who tripped over this thing that was covering the cables that run from the stage to the sound booth. It never turned up at the lost-and-found places. Didn't lose a whole lot of cash though and my mom cancelled the debit card and gas card that were up in there. Guess I need a new drivers license. Damn Casualties.

Official: 7 arrested in Sears Tower plot

From the AP via Yahoo! News:

Seven people were arrested Thursday in connection with the early stages of a plot to attack Chicago's Sears Tower and other buildings in the U.S., including the FBI office here, a federal law enforcement official said.

As part of the raids tied to the arrests, FBI agents swarmed a warehouse in Miami's Liberty City area, using a blowtorch to take off a metal door. One neighbor said the suspects had been sleeping in the warehouse while running what seemed to be a "military boot camp."

The official told The Associated Press the alleged plotters were mainly Americans with no apparent ties to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations. He spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt news conferences planned for Friday in Washington and Miami.

[...]

Security at the 110-floor Sears Tower, a Chicago landmark, was ramped up after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the 103rd-floor skydeck was closed for about a month and a half.

A spokesman for Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Illinois officials had been in contact with the FBI about the arrests. He would not comment further, referring additional questions to the FBI.

The FBI's headquarters in Miami sits near a residential neighborhood just east of Interstate 95.

clickhereforallofit

Those last three lines are how I think we should be defensively fighting terrorism. Bombing countries is offensive and does virtually nothing to solve the problem, if not actually make it worse, which is something I've asserted many times before.

So there are still Muslim fanatics living in the States. Bombing Afghanistan didn't drive terrorists away from our soil, and the civilian deaths over there and in Iraq are tailor made to ignite even more hatred of us with even more people who originally could have been ushered on our side had we left them alone. My point: the overseas "War on Terrorism" doesn't make us safe from terrorist attacks. I've lost count of how many times I've written about this!