The next big war may not involve missiles, bombs or gunfire.
The next war may simply involve a cyber attack that shuts down our national power grids, leaving us with no electricity. no Internet, no clean water, no food supply and no central government.
In a fortnight I move to an undistinguished town in the middle of Germany, to bring enlightenment and English to the uncouth. I’ve been looking at accommodation websites, sifting through the weirdness for acceptable digs. The real difficulty isn’t the flat, it’s the people. Terrible flatmates are an affliction and a curse. I particularly detest slobs. [Read more →]
If you would like to learn more about the strange little man who, according to the FBI, frightened a nation with deadly mailings of anthrax, thesmokinggun.com has published the FBI’s first batch of released documents .
Fascinating news from Hawaii.
A nice couple that I’m friends with (let’s call them “Tammy” and “Chuck”) recently vacationed on the island of Kauai with their kids “Roy” (age 5) and “Natalie” (age 2). Tammy and Chuck were shocked to discover that a universally beloved member of George W. Bush’s administration was wintering there.
Bodies are hitting the floor with an alarming tempo but are they smote and dead or are they on the deck playing possum? It’s a mixed bag. [Read more →]
Like many contributors to this site, I find that I align closest with the general co-occurrence of values known to the world as “libertarianism.” But surely many libertarians would disagree with some of the arguments I make, so I’ll just say that I agree with libertarians on many — possibly most — political issues. What follows is my best attempt at establishing a philosophical basis for my political views. This post was partially inspired by Mike McGowan’s great series of posts entitled “one guy’s thoughts on libertarianism.” [Read more →]
I keep forgetting that it is winter for most of you… as it is amazing here. However, I am not gloating because I know it will be God-awful come summer. God-awful.
Let’s see, what else has been happening on this fun extravaganza known as Africa? Oh, ummm, have any of you ever heard of some movie called Avatar? I hear it’s pretty big right now. We don’t get any commercials here and I don’t watch any news so I have no clue what is happening back home. In fact, I hear there is some big event happening next Sunday… some kind of bowl game or something? Anyway, they showed the movie here yesterday and are showing it again tonight. I wasn’t able to see it yesterday as I had two final papers to write… I know… war is hell.
Oh and Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, some older actor guy, and some older producer guy all came here. [Read more →]
Today the US Senate passed a bill which will impose economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran. The plan is to “target companies that export gasoline to Iran or help expand the country’s oil-refining capacity by, in part, denying them loans and other assistance from U.S. financial institutions.”
I argued in a post I wrote last year for my blog that this is collective punishment, and is therefore immoral and shouldn’t be done. Despite our leaders’ hearts constantly weeping for the Iranian populace – ”‘The situation in Iran is terrible and it’s worsening. People are dying in Iran as we speak,’ said Senator John McCain just before the Senate [sanctions] vote” — sanctions lower the standard of living for all Iranian civilians. [Read more →]
I read an interesting piece in the Washington Post about how Ilich Ramirez is suing a documentary film company over the “intellectual property” rights to his name and “biographical image.”
Ramirez, better known as “Carlos the Jackal,” is a former terrorist and murderer who is currently serving a life sentence in Paris, France for killing two French security agents. Ramirez was, and apparently remains, an egomaniac. He was a rich, spoiled child who played at being a terrorist. He enjoyed being in the international spotlight in the 1970s and he didn’t mind having to bomb, shoot and kill people to be there.
Steve Chapman — one of my favorite contributors over at reason — wrote a beautifully concise editorial a few weeks ago making the case that Obama’s first year in foreign policy has brought nothing new, despite any conspicuous honors asserting the contrary. One of the most important points Chapman makes is this:
The administration and its opponents both make much of its plan to withdraw all U.S. combat forces from Iraq by this summer and to pull the rest out by 2012. What both prefer to forget is that the previous president agreed to the same timetable. Obama’s policy on the war he once opposed is not similar to Bush’s: It is identical.
It’s impossible to avoid the apocalypse these days. Whether we encounter the End in the form of news reports on Global Warming, or fears of Iran getting the bomb, or plague panics such as H1N1, we seem to be living in a high point of apocalyptic anxiety, with horrible Doomsdays lurking round every corner. And yet, the End has never been so much fun. Roland Emmerich released his latest apocalyptic blockbuster 2012 in November, and since then we have enjoyed Zombieland, The Road, The Book of Eli, Legion and even Al Gore’s dreadful poem read aloud on morning TV in the presence of a fawning sycophant. Much more is to come, and this is to say nothing of video games, books, comics, or half the output of the History Channel. [Read more →]
The first tumultuous year of the McCain administration has finally concluded. The war hero Senator’s narrow victory over the Clinton/Obama ticket with its litigation and recriminations nearly the equal of Bush v Gore set a difficult tone from the beginning that the Arizona maverick pulled against mightily with America in the middle. [Read more →]
I’m an American soldier. I’m willing to die for my country, my fellow countrymen and their interests. But am I willing to die for oil?
You’re damn right I am. [Read more →]
In Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz today is a story which quotes Syria’s highest Islamic leader.
“If the Prophet Mohammed had asked me to deem Christians or Jews heretics, I would have deemed Mohammed himself a heretic,” Sheikh Ahmed Hassoun, the Mufti of Syria, was quoted as telling a delegation of American academics visiting Damascus.
Hassoun, the leader of Syria’s majority Sunni Muslim community, also told the delegates that Islam was a religion of peace, adding: “If Mohammed had commanded us to kill people, I would have told him he was not a prophet.”
Religious wars were the result of politics infiltrating systems of faith, he said[.]
In my last post I wrote about the amazing job the young men and women aboard the USS Carl Vinson were doing off the coast of Haiti. The aircraft carrier is playing a major role in providing much needed relief to the poor victims of the earthquake.
But we should also remember that we are at war and our troops are in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Washington Post has written a very good piece on an amazing Green Beret, Major Jim Gant, whom one official called the “Lawrence of Afghanistan.”
If you want to know how we can, and will, win the war in Afghanistan, read the piece about this Army officer.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be-bomber of an American airplane on Christmas Day, is being treated like he held up a candy store. As Charles Krauthammer said so well in his recent column, this is nuts!
With the year and season turning; perhaps also the decade and undoubtably the aging of the millenium that seemed so young moments ago, Americans high and low, both bailed and swamped are reflecting on their lives, their faith, the state of the world and the state of their relationships. Many find themselves feeling trapped in arrangements they made joyously and optimistically; wedded in haste and in public, they now regret at length and in the dark privacy of their hearts. Not exempted from this is the enthusiastic practitioner of plural, whimsical marriages, our fine and debonair President, Barack Obama. [Read more →]
A commander-in-chief’s first and foremost duty and responsibility is protecting American citizens. Obama gave a speech and announced that a terrorist’s ability to board an American airliner with explosives in his underwear was a “systemic failure.”
But as Toby Harnden, the U.S. editor of the British Daily Telegraph noted in his column , Obama is in charge of that system.
I agree with Harnden that Obama gets an F for national security.
One question I have concerning full body scans at airports, and the threats they pose to personal liberties, travelers’ dignity, yada-yada-yada … what about the poor schmucks who will have to look at way-too-many images of way-too-many travelers such as myself?
[Read more →]
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been justifiably criticized for her odd statement that “the system worked” in the case of a would-be terrorist on several watch lists who boarded a U.S. commercial with explosives in his underwear.
Today marks one year since Israel’s military incursion into the Gaza Strip, known officially as “Operation Cast Lead.” On December 27th of ‘08, Israel began a week of targeted air-strikes which included, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, “37 houses; 67 security and training sites; 20 workshops; 25 public and private institutions; seven mosques; and three educational institutions” in the Hamas-governed territory. This was followed on January 3rd by an air-land phase which lasted until Israel withdrew all combat forces on January 17th. At the end of the offensive, somewhere between 1150 and 1450 Palestinians had been killed — three different pro-Palestinian human rights sources estimated 1444, 1409, and 1387, respectively, while the Israel Defense Forces counted 1166; thirteen total Israelis had died at the end of operations. [Read more →]
November 2009 — It is Sunday here in Africa. The sun is pretty strong for it being a “Dark Continent” and all. Regardless, the weather is predictably hot but not near as bad as what I call “The Devil’s Breath” or what others might call Kuwait. Wait… let me back up…
…I flew up to Cleveland, Ohio to meet with the small group of guys that were picked for this unique mission. I wonder what I can say about the mission, as most of what I specifically do is classified. Please don’t mistake that for actually being cool. I just simply can’t talk about it. If I did tell you, you most likely wouldn’t think it was all that cool. Real secrets aren’t like in the movies. They are, in actuality, pretty boring. [Read more →]
I recall Christmas, 1970, when I was an 18-year-old sailor stationed aboard a swaying aircraft carrier off the coast of North Vietnam.
We young sailors, like our civilian counterparts back home, thought of ourselves as young, hip and cool guys. After all, we were teenagers during the swinging 1960’s, a time noted for drugs, sex and rock music. The 1970’s promised to be cooler still, we believed.
As we were eating our Christmas dinner the 1MC, the ship’s public address system, offered Bing Crosby singing his Christmas classic, White Christmas. A lot of young, hip and cool guys became misty-eyed.
Following up on my earier post about the court martial of three Navy SEALs who are accused of roughing up a known, brutal terrorist in Iraq, I’m pleased to report that there are a good number of people who are also outraged over the criminal charges against the SEALs.
One outraged American is Bill Bruhmuller, a retired Navy SEAL Master Chief Petty Officer.
The “Sunday Talk Shows” were a-buzz yesterday with Obama Administration statements of commitment to the War in Afghanistan, reports the NYT. A couple of samples:
“We have strategic interests in South Asia that should not be measured in terms of finite times,” said Gen. James L. Jones, the president’s national security adviser, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We’re going to be in the region for a long time.”
…
Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” General Petraeus said that the Obama administration was not planning a “rush to the exits” in Afghanistan, and that depending on the security conditions there could be tens of thousands of American troops in Afghanistan for several years.
Today, December 7th, is Pearl Harbor Day.
On this day in 1941, the Imperial Japanese launched a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, our naval base in Hawaii.
A friend sent me the link to an interesting piece from the German magazine Der Spiegel – not exactly a publication of the vast right-wing conspiracy, as my friend pointed out — that criticized Obama’s speech at West Point.
Obama has been criticized from both the left and the right for the speech, and the West Point cadets looked a bit underwhelmed at his less than rallying call-to-arms.
Notoriously heedless of his own safety and well-being, President Obama plunged into the Global Struggle Against Man-Caused Disasters by appearing before an array of thousands of young, savage fighters from, as reported by respected frontline journalist Chris Matthews, the enemy camp. The rest of us know this institution as the US army service academy located at West Point, NY. [Read more →]
Yesterday, President Obama requested that additional troops be sent to Afghanistan, the New York Times reports. The actual number of soldiers is unknown, but according to the Times piece, “senior advisers to the president have said Mr. Obama intends to commit roughly 30,000 more troops.” [Read more →]
It was not so long ago that Americans and the rest of the world marveled at the ability of the U.S. Navy SEALs to take out the pirates holding a merchant ship captain captive on a life boat off the coast of Africa.
To prevent the pirates from killing the captain, the SEALs had to shoot them as they sat on a small boat swaying in the sea. The SEALs took this amazing action from the deck of a nearby Navy ship, which was also swaying in the sea - no small feat indeed.
Yet, the U.S. Navy has now placed on trial three Navy SEALs who captured a well-known, brutal and murderous terrorist in Iraq. Instead of a medal for capturing him, the Navy has accused the SEALs of abuse. You see, the poor, misunderstood terrorist claims he was struck by the SEALs.
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