Stump Lane
in the dirt since history began

BIG BIG FAN of the Radical Gay Agenda here. But. The military? Really? Is this really something to get excited over? Once you voluntarily sign up for an occupation where your primary function is, directly or indirectly killing people, need we worry so much about the morality of whether your employer demands you keep your sexuality in the closet?

Also, I was kind of hoping DADT would remain an out for my kids if the draft should come back: they’d have had a chance to gay it up and get kicked out.

NUMBER ONE: The Nobel Peace of the Dead Prize

Today on Democracy Now! a discussion about the five wars the United States is now conducting.

And a musical number from another decade:

Could this NPR report possibly be Pentagon agitprop meant to counter public concern over civilian deaths in Afghanistan? The piece produces anecdotal evidence by interviewing US soldiers who are frustrated by the question of whether to shoot or not, and imply the rules of engagement are too strict and make it more difficult to do their job. (No word about Predator drone operations which have reportedly been killing 50 civilians for every one militant.) —

Smedley Butler — The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. … Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can’t go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation. —

[Prologue edited for clarity.] Years ago, before my ideas went out of fashion, I went around calling myself a Liberal. I also frequently submitted posts for the Carnival of the Liberals, and still do occasionally. Sometimes I manage to sneak one in there. The Carnival was the driving force behind my beginning a series of long form posts (one and two) in which I began to sketch out my political thoughts in an attempt to figure out what it all meant. Enough time has passed since the second of those posts, that I feel rather radically removed from the younger me that wrote them. This post serves as a continuation of that project, yet picks up not where that different me left off, but instead from where I find myself now.

I AM NOT A LIBERAL. Certainly not in the postmodern United States where words have no meaning beyond their commercial utility, where “Liberal” means “Progressive” means centrist corporate imperialism with a friendly face, and the “center” is nowhere near the middle of the full range of political possibilities.

I’m a Recovering Progressive

Classical Liberalism, if that term can still be used meaningfully, may be onto something in emphasizing individual liberty, but loses the thread in its devotion to free market, laissez-faire economics. A condition which may very well work on a much smaller scale, yet does not obtain in a society such as ours, large enough to necessitate the establishment of a ruling class, which in turn manipulates market conditions to enrich a powerful elite, and then globalizes that influence through military force.

My Liberal/Progressive friends acknowledge this on some level. They are concerned that the system is broken and they want to fix it. But it’s worse than broken: it works perfectly; in accordance with the demands of the powerful. The People have been rendered utterly powerless. It cannot be stated in any plainer or more direct terms. We. Have. No. Power. In directing the governing forces of our political-social-economic system.

Add to this competition over the dwindling, soon to be scarce resources necessary for human subsistence, and the problem comes into clear resolution. Our current situation is untenable. This fucker is too big. Not “too big to fail,” but “so big it must fail.”

One cannot rely on Big Coercion* to insure (sic) healthcare for all. (Or low oil prices, or safety, or whathaveyou.) It is worth examining whether it is right to even request such provisions, when by doing so one legitimizes an institution that directly expends hundreds of billions of dollars a year on military supremacy and conquest. The American Way of Life had a a good run there, but really, to quote myself, “Is it even right to ask for a bigger slice of the pie, when the pie is imperial plunder, taken through violence and exploitation?”

* It is appropriate to call it Big Coercion, when “big” has come to mean “evil” in the parlance of the postmodern commercial utility of vocabulary. Think “Big Oil,” “Big Insurance,” “Big Government,” and so on.

(more…)

A Historic Success In Military Recruiting — [T]he U.S. military has met all of its annual recruiting goals, as hundreds of thousands of young people have enlisted despite the near-certainty that they will go to war. … [T]he economic downturn and rising joblessness, as well as bonuses and other factors, [have] led more qualified youths to enlist. … “We delivered beyond anything the framers of the all-volunteer force would have anticipated[.]” … The recession “was a force … given the unemployment that we had not directly forecast, allowed us to be for much of the year in a very favorable position.” … Historically, there has been a strong correlation between rising unemployment and increases in “high quality” enlistments[.] … [G]iven the success this year, the Pentagon is cutting its $5 billion recruiting budget by 11 percent for next year. — By all accounts, this is a triumph. —

Life was very good. Everyone was enjoying life in harmony and peace, because we have our culture, we have our tradition. We all have a house. We all have a job. We used to work in a coconut plantation, where just after working our work, we used to go to the sea to fish. And there is an idea of share between each other. We all live as one family. And we have our culture, like our special meal, like our music… — Olivier Bancoult describing what was life like on Diego Garcia before the British forcibly removed all of the island’s inhabitants to make way for a US military installation. —

PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS WON the Nobel Peace Prize, and here is what the prize committee had to say for itself:

“We are not awarding the prize for what may happen in the future but for what he has done in the previous year. We would hope this will enhance what he is trying to do.” [New York Times]

And also this:

[Emphasis added.] He mentioned in particular the recent United Nations Security Council meeting on nuclear disarmament and the announcement of the prize noted the special importance the Nobel committee attached to President Obama’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons. [NYT]

Big deal! Lots of people have spoken about nuclear disarmament in the past. And lots of those people’s first inclination to reach the goal isn’t killing Iran for weapons related thought crimes. But that’s all in the future.

The committee chooses to look only backward and not forward. The Peace Laureate himself, on the other hand, prefers to look forward, not back. That leaves only the present. Carpe Diem!

Today we bomb the Moon for suspected water-related activities. The intelligence community has learned that the moon may be concealing significant stores of water in underground facilities. Water is really only suitable for use inside nuclear reactors. Kill the Moon!

For want of information the design was lost.
For want of a design the warhead was lost.*
For want of a warhead the missile was lost.
For want of a missile the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of information.

* For want of a design and manufactured components and highly enriched uranium.

The New York Times reports that Iran no longer wants for information.

It seems leaked portions of a confidential report containing “loose language,” and “not ready for publication as an official document,” titled “Possible Military Dimensions of Iran’s Nuclear Program,” “detailing an emerging sense in the intelligence world,” disclose “conclusions [that] are tentative and subject to further confirmation of the evidence,” that “Iran has done extensive research and testing” and “has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device.”

It’s going to become a pain in the ass to conquer the entire Middle East if we don’t act soon. “Soon” meaning immediately. If it isn’t too late already. The time for inspections and diplomacy is over. Et cetera.

[NYT via: vastleft]

ARE WE MAN enough to do what it takes to destroy Iran’s imagined underground nuclear bomb factories?

[Retired four-star Air Force general Chuck] Wald says U.S. bombs could hit them.

“There are new weapons that have been developed. They’re coming along pretty quick. There’s a 30,000-pound penetrator [bomb] that the Air Force is getting ready to field, that penetrates quite a bit” he says.

The bomb, known as the “massive ordnance penetrator,” is designed to destroy deeply buried targets, such as hardened concrete facilities and tunnels. [NPR]

“It’s the sexiest damn weapon I’ve ever encountered,” purred the fictitious Chuck Wald in my head.

[Via: IOZ and commenter "Nony."]