Freedom fighters . . .

MAYBE STUPID INSECTS aren't so stupid. According to George Dvorsky's article in io9, "Enslaved worker ants fight back through acts of sabotage", there are species that have developed effective resistance to slavery. 

The ant has been a creature respected by various cultures, and appears in the Bible in Proverbs 6:6 —

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise

Which John Wyndham used as the title for a rather fine novella, now forgotten, "Consider Her Ways", which is worthy of your perusal (Alfred Hitchcock thought so, adapted it for his TV show). 

The story is mostly a first-person narrative. It begins with a woman who has no memory of her past waking up and discovering that she is a mother of some description, in a bloated body that is not her own. After some confusing experiences her memory gradually returns and she recalls that she was part of an experiment using a drug to see if it enabled people to have out-of-body experiences. It seems that the drug has worked far better than anyone could have anticipated: she has been cast into the future. She also realizes that she is in a society consisting entirely of women, organized into a strict system of castes. Her initial contacts have never even heard of men.

Naval nightmare . . .

x 3 = 270,000 tons of diplomacy in a small place

IT SEEMS THAT we narrowly avoided a war off the coast of Iran back in 2007, thanks to the timely action by a top political adviser to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, Gwenyth Todd. According to Jeff Stein at The Washington Post, in an article, "Why was a Navy adviser stripped of her career?", the US Navy had at least one admiral that was out of control.

Three "Big Decks" and support hardware

According to Todd and another witness, (Vice Admiral) Cosgriff’s idea, presented in a series of staff meetings, was to sail three “big decks,” as aircraft carriers are known, through the Strait of Hormuz — to put a virtual armada, unannounced, on Iran’s doorstep. No advance notice, even to Saudi Arabia and other gulf allies. Not only that, they said, Cosgriff ordered his staff to keep the State Department in the dark, too.

To Todd, it was like something straight out of “Seven Days in May,” the 1964 political thriller about a right-wing U.S. military coup. A retired senior naval officer familiar with Cosgriff’s thinking said the deployment plan was not intended to be provocative.

Not intended to be provocative? Yeah, right.

Cosgriff — backed by a powerful friend and boss, U.S. Central Command (Centcom) chief Adm. William J. “Fox” Fallon — was itching to push the Iranians, Todd and other present and former Navy officials say.

“There was a feeling that the Navy was back on its heels in dealing with Iran,” according to a Navy official prohibited from commenting in the media. “There was an intention to be far more aggressive with the Iranians, and a diminished concern about keeping Washington in the loop.”

• • •

Todd feared that the Iranians would respond, possibly by launching fast-attack missile boats into the gulf or unleashing Hezbollah on Israel. Then anything could happen: a collision, a jittery exchange of gunfire — bad enough on its own, but also an incident that Washington hawks could seize on to justify an all-out response on Iran.

Preposterous? It had happened before, off North Vietnam in 1964. In the Tonkin Gulf incident, a Navy captain claimed a communist attack on his ship. President Lyndon Johnson swiftly ordered the bombing of North Vietnam, touching off a wider war that turned the country upside down and left more than 58,000 U.S. servicemen dead.

Don’t tell anybody? No way. Todd picked up the phone and called a friend in Foggy Bottom. She had to get this thing stopped.

Scary, when accountability disappears. Check out the whole sorry tale, and be very thankful  Gwenyth did what had to be done to keep the General Jack D. Rippers under control.

When the flag waving stops

Ross over at The Gazetteer has an interesting question: Who will write the song about our kids' experience in Kandahar?

It came about as a result of this post when Ross pointed out that one of the most popular songs in Australia is Khe Sanh, a pub rock song written in the late 1970s about an Australian Vietnam veteran (and conscript) who receives no help adjusting to life after returning to Australia.

There is a curiosity associated with the song. No Australians, with the exception of close support bomber crews from 2 Sqn, RAAF, were involved in the siege of Khe Sanh. The base was manned by US Marines and any Australians there would have had to have been members of the USMC.

In any case, the song became wildly popular and is now considered an Australian cultural piece and a pub classic. Whenever it is played virtually everyone sings along and it seems every Aussie knows the words. When it was first released the Australian censors classified it unsuitable for air play and it was banned from radio. An Adelaide radio station defied the ban and the song became wildly popular.

Wars, particularly protracted conflicts, tend to generate a form of folk music for that era. The Great War and the 2nd World War certainly spawned a lot of music. Korea, for some reason, didn't seem to have the same basis to produce wartime specific music or even protest songs. Vietnam became the petrie dish of a steady stream of service specific songs but particularly anti-war and protest songs.

The thing is, if some sharp young Canadian does write a song about Afghanistan, it will likely be much like Khe Sanh and Springsteen's Born In The USA: Laments of things gone wrong.

You can hear Khe Sanh at The Gazetteer.

Nothing hides incompetency like a war

There are a few people who use it with skill while others fumble about trying to locate the formula used by so-called Great Leaders in history.

George W. Bush, essentially a useful idiot for a much larger force, continually tried to shift the focus of Americans from his repeated acts of incompetency by deflecting their gaze in the general direction of war. He declared himself a "war president", even after he told Americans the best thing they could do was to "go shopping".

Surprisingly, the current US antagonist isn't in much better shape. In fact he could be worse. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, has made an incredible mess of the place and despite public sabre-rattling, may be more unpopular with his electorate than Bush is with his.

Thomas P.M. Barnett illuminates the conditions which make war for two people in particular very appealing.

One is US presidential hopeful John McCain who, without an elevated level of fear among Americans, doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of actually winning.

The other is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who, without a war with the US or Israel, is almost certainly going to find himself on the unemployment roles and trying to survive in an economy which he is personally responsible for wrecking.

Looming behind the most crucial dynamics is the possible presidency of Barack Obama, suggesting that war may become inevitable due to the fear of peace. [...]

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency has been a disaster for the Iranian people. Despite all the oil wealth, inflation is raging and the economy goes nowhere. Add in a stunning birth dearth, the world's worst brain drain, plus Iranian prostitutes headlining European brothels, and this is clearly a society in a death spiral. With restless students chanting in public for Ahmadinejad's death, little wonder the man pines for a splendid little war.

Ahmadinejad's one popular success has been to champion Iran's brazen reach for nuclear capacity, an effort cleverly designed to emphasize the strategic dangers of attempted regime change by outsiders. [...] But Ahmadinejad's time grows short. A bevy of candidates seeks to oust him next year, and his opponents now head the parliament, the crucial Assembly of Experts and Tehran's city hall. With Obama currently leading decisively polls for the U.S. presidency, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, faces the prospect of losing his most useful -- for internal politics, that is -- external enemy, reducing Ahmadinejad's utility as frontman.

You really do need to read the whole column. For even more though, Barnett provide even more clarification on his blog.

That too, is something you need to read.

Problem right now is how many sides would welcome war. "U.S. Plays Down Military Showdown" is a couple of quotes from Gates and an Undersecretary of State, meaning two counties heard from but hardly the "U.S." that matters right now on this subject (Bush-Cheney). Both, in my mind, have no problem with an Israeli strike on their watch that could easily suck us into combat. Time is short.

Of course, you'll want a bottle of something after all of that. 151 over-proof should work for a short time.

Your moment of music history

On December 1st, 1971, thirty-six years ago today, John Lennon's Happy Xmas (War is Over) was released.



Haven't we done well since then?

Witness

Last Monday was Memorial Day in the United States. To many Americans it represents the unofficial start of Summer and involves picnics and social gatherings. Indianapolis gets lively.

To others Memorial Day has a meaning quite apart from celebration, big-store sales and 500 mile motorsport races. It is a time to remember lost family members. And to many it is a day to reflect on past events and lost comrades.

It is difficult for veterans of war to speak of the bad days. When they do, it's for a variety of different reasons. Sometimes it's self-therapy, sometimes it's the need to experience an irrational feeling of guilt, sometimes it's an attempt to verify one's very participation in something that, in the end, probably wasn't necessary and sometimes, it's just to provide a picture of war others will never know if the only exposure they have is a television or a video game.

These stories come from two veterans of war. Read on and feel the absence of glory. Learn.
From Rez Dog:

I really never knew him but he has been my companion for many years.
Some say he was an asshole jerk. I can't say for sure.
All I know is that the brief time we were together left a lasting impression.
You see, I watched him die.

His death was not dramatic or heroic. Just dumb.
An accident in a war filled with many accidents.
The difference was that I saw it happen.
I watched him die.

He fell out of a helicopter that was his ticket to safety.
A medical evacation for a minor cut,
Hardly even a wound,
A convenient excuse to get out of the jungle.

But nobody expected him to die.
We watched him rising toward the chopper
Cursing his good fortune, each of us
Wishing that we were ascending in his place.

The chopper's big rotors slapped the air
As it hovered above the moutainside.
Its turbines screaming,
Waiting to carry him back to the rear.

I saw the medic leaning out of the door.
I saw the medic reach out to pull him in.
I saw him put his feet on the skids.
And I saw him fall away from the chopper.

He fell abruptly, violently.
No slo mo effect. No eternity to reach the ground.
Just a rapid free fall and a bone crunching THUD.
Mere seconds ended his life at 19.

We wrapped him in a poncho
And hooked him to the cable again.
This time he made it,
Boots pointing upward as they disappeared into the open door.

But this time was too late.
The chopper carried away a corpse,
Leaving us to our thoughts, black and evil.
No one wanted to trade places with him now.

All these years I've remembered his fall
And seen his body break upon
That nameless mountain.
All these years his death has been my companion.

I did not know him well
But he remains with me still.
Even now all I really know is that I saw him die.
That seems to be more than enough.

And from Minstrelboy:

Timmy was following all the rules I had taught him. He wasn't on the trails, he was walking carefully through the heavier brush. He stepped on a mine anyway. We all froze and began to carefully crawl to where he was. One leg was completely blown off and he was bleeding badly. I called to him to lie still. He didn't. He was screaming in pain and fear and he was trying frantically to locate his lower leg. He triggered another mine, this time with his torso. That killed him.

We carefully worked our way to his body without setting off any other mines. By that time a chopper with a medical team had landed nearby. All we were able to do was to get his entire body collected. The chopper team guys came and started to put Timmy into a body bag. I told them to stop. They looked at me in annoyance. That was as far as they went with their expression. I guess the look on my face suggested to them that silence was the safest course of action.

I put him into the bag myself. Slowly. Gently. Then, before transferring his torso to the bag, I took my canteen and a scrap of Timmy's field blouse. I washed his face and put his cap on. Then I handed his dog tags to the chopper crew. I told them "Thank you for that moment. Carry on."

I wrote to Timmy's family to tell them how sorry I was that their son had been killed. Later, once I was out and back in the world I stopped in to meet them and invite them to a show that I was playing there.

For a couple of weeks, in a brutal war zone, the presence of one young man made an impact on me that I doubt I have been able to describe. Just by being young and clean he drew me out of a very thick, hard shell that I had formed. By being an innocent he reminded me that there was still some innocence left in the world.

Food for Thought . . . .

As a follow up to this previous post, Catnip over at Liberal Catnip has an excellent analysis on the Democrats' current stand on the Iraq debacle.

As a MoveOn supporter it has definitely given me pause.














Read it and see what you think . . . .

(Cross-Posted from Moving to Vancouver)