Strategy for Victory! Really. Not just more meaningless platitudes. C'mon, we mean it this time!

American Samizdat: Rebel Scum Since 2001:

"With trembling fingers, I manipulated my trackball and downloaded the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq. I was eager for this information, because to this point, I have been unable to tell what 'victory in Iraq' actually means...

So I downloaded the pdf and read all 35 pages. I think I finally understand the message, and I can summarize it for you briefly...

Winning in Iraq is extremely important. To lose in Iraq means utter catastrophe. Most of the people we need to fight are Iraqis who don't want us there, but they'll get used to us with time. Iraq wants us to force them to want our flavor of freedom. Our goal is to win.

Well, that cleared everything up for me."

The Impossibility of Nation Building

TAPPED: November 2005 Archives:

"Iraq can't both be a sovereign country and have its long-term policies determined in Washington. What if Iraq doesn't want to be a partner in the fight against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction? How is Iraq supposed to be united if Iraq's Kurdish population doesn't want it to be united? How are we supposed to force Iraq's rulers to govern the country 'justly?' And most of all, what about having 100,000+ soldiers and Marines running around the country hunting down bands of insurgent fighters is supposed to achieve any of this? There's a glaring disconnect between the goals of this enterprise, which all have to do with the nature of Iraqi politics and society, and the means at our disposal, which all have to do with killing people and blowing stuff up."

Parental Rights

Eschaton:

"Sometimes I wish the level of debate in our elite national publications could exceed, ever so slightly, the level of late night freshman dorm conversations. When he writes [the father should] 'have a say in whether to keep a baby' what he actually means is 'decide what a woman does with her uterus.' It would be nice if there were some intermediate position, but biology dictates that there just isn't. Either you have the baby or you don't. Someone has the right to make that decision for themselves or they don't. And, of course, he eventually makes that clear. He doesn't mean 'have a say.' He means 'decide.'"

Marines kick ass

How is it that the guy trained to kill the other guy has the most morality?

Wait, that answers the question right there.

Daily Kos: Look The Other Way:

"The nation's top military man, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, said American troops in Iraq have a duty to intercede and stop abuse of prisoners by Iraqi security personnel.

. . . 'It is the absolute responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene, to stop it,' [General Pace] said.

Rumsfeld interjected: 'I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it.'

But Pace meant what he said. 'If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it,' he said, firmly."

Soldiers and Reporters

Fred Reed:

"Much email comes my way, from military folk both current and retired, assuring me that the press consists of leftist commy anti-American liberal tree-hugging cowardly backstabbers who probably like the French and would date Jane Fonda. It is an old song. Having spent decades covering the armed forces, I have seen much of the Pentagon and the press. Things are a tad more complex. A few thoughts:

The military, particularly the officer corps, wants not reporting but cheerleading. The very idea of an uncontrolled press is repugnant. Thus officers try to keep reporters away from enlisted men, who are less political and tend to say things that, while true, are not policy. Thus the edgy, wary hostility in the presence of reporters. The truth of what a reporter writes doesn’t matter to them, only whether it is “positive.”

...The military believes that the press should be part of the team. Its job should be not to report but to support. “Are they Americans, or aren’t they?” To see what the command thinks the press should be, read a base newspaper. It will be a cross between a PR handout and a Weekly Reader.

...Further, soldiers with exceptions are insular, reporters greatly less so. Consider. A kid who goes to West Point lives for four years, in formative late adolescence, with relentless military indoctrination. This is not in all respects bad. It tends to produce a personally honest, public-spirited, responsible man who makes an admirable citizen. These same men can run a carrier battle group, as difficult and impressive a thing as I have ever seen done, and they can do it only because they obey, make sacrifices, and respect the group.

The young cadet then goes to Fort Hood, say, for three years in which he is almost exclusively in the company of other soldiers. Next, three years in an armored division in Germany (the rotations may have changed) during which he is again constantly with soldiers and, since GIs don’t learn languages, unable to communicate with Germans other than bartenders. The Army is his entire existence. By the time he is thirty he is deeply imbued with a bird-politics leftwing vs. rightwing view of things. He is by no means stupid—the academies get bright students—but he is simple-minded. He believes profoundly that one is either on the team or one is with the enemy.

...The two groups live in sharply differing mental worlds. While reporters are more insular than they should be, they are much less so than the military. They see a broader slice of the world and rub shoulders with more kinds of people. The overseas correspondents see more wars than do soldiers. The result is a certain cosmopolitanism which, whether good or bad, is much at odds with the clarity of the military’s outlook.

For example, many in Washington who actually know how the press works (the military actually doesn’t) believe that the press supports the war in Iraq, has until recently given the White House a free ride, and has been adroitly controlled by the government. I agree. If newspapers had been against the war, they would have published countless photos of gut-shot soldiers who will never get a date, paraplegics doomed to a life on a slab, and more Abu Ghraib photos (which they have.) Soldiers don’t know this. In any event, anything but unqualified support is treason.

...More than most professions, the military lives in a world defined by idealism. Being a dentist does not carry an ideology with it. Being a soldier does. The dedicated soldier thinks in terms of honor, valor, loyalty, sacrifice, and heroism, of righting wrong and defeating evil, of proving himself in combat, of glory and exaltation and defending the fatherland. The reporter sees the dead lying in the street, the flies crawling in shattered craniums, the bombed-out cities for year after year without change. He hears this described as progress. To him it is pure bullshit.

Maybe, maybe not. But it is how he thinks.

Journalists are not idealists. Cynical, weary of being lied to, having seen the fraud and self-interest that underlie, as they come to see it, almost everything, they regard the soldiery as a riverboat gambler might regard the Boy Scouts. The soldiery regard the press as a Boy Scout might regard a riverboat gambler. Different mental worlds..."

Heh...

d r i f t g l a s s: Vacation photo from the 2004 RNC?:

"So are comparisons between Bush and Hitler fair? No, and I have tried to avoid making such. He’s a Cult of Personality fascist right down to the soles of his faux cowboy shit-kickers, but he is much more struck from the moldy, banana republic dictator mold."

College for everyone?

Suburban Guerrilla » Buried in Debt:

"Growing student debt, fast-shrinking student aid and few well-paying jobs upon graduation – why are we urging kids to go to college?

Responses

1. james richardson Says:
November 28th, 2005 at 7:22 am

because we hate change.

because our children are our egos.

because americans are supposed to spend their lives in debt.

because a small job market will require every edge a student can get.

because the Heritage Foundation is hiring.

ok… that’s about as witty as i get at this hour."

The Phantom Time Hypothesis

Damn Interesting » The Phantom Time Hypothesis:

"When Dr. Hans-Ulrich Niemitz introduces his paper on the 'phantom time hypothesis,' he kindly asks his readers to be patient, benevolent, and open to radically new ideas, because his claims are highly unconventional. This is because his paper is suggesting three difficult-to-believe propositions: 1) Hundreds of years ago, our calendar was polluted with 297 years which never occurred; 2) this is not the year 2005, but rather 1708; and 3) The purveyors of this hypothesis are not crackpots.

The Phantom Time Hypothesis suggests that the early Middle Ages (614-911 A.D.) never happened, but were added to the calendar long ago either by accident, by misinterpretation of documents, or by deliberate falsification by calendar conspirators. This would mean that all artifacts ascribed to those three centuries belong to other periods, and that all events thought to have occurred during that same period occurred at other times, or are outright fabrications. For instance, a man named Heribert Illig (pictured), one of the leading proponents of the theory, believes that Charlemagne was a fictional character. But what evidence is this outlandish theory based upon?"

Overheard in the Office: The Voice of the Cubicle - 2PM Deliver Invoices to Probation Office

Overheard in the Office: The Voice of the Cubicle - 2PM Deliver Invoices to Probation Office:

"2PM Deliver Invoices to Probation Office

Secretary: There was a black man who lived in my county. He was the only one. We called him Nigger Jim.
Co-worker: What?
Secretary: Oh, it was okay. He called himself that. He was retarded.
Co-worker: Where is he now?
Secretary: Prison.

130 East Main Street
Canton, Georgia"

Conscious Evolution

Breaking Open the Head:

"Only through an intensive effort of conscious evolution – what he called 'self-remembering' – was it possible for an individual to escape being eaten by the moon. 'The liberation that comes with the growth of mental powers and faculties is liberation from the moon.' He argued that humanity was not truly conscious, that mans’ actions were entirely mechanical: 'Everything ‘happens,’ he cannot ‘do’ anything. He is a machine controlled by accidental shocks from outside.' The influences of the other planets determined wars, revolutions, technological breakthroughs, and environmental catastrophes on the earth’s surface. In his system, social progress is an illusion: 'Everything is just the same as it was thousands, and tens of thousands, of years ago.'"

Self Causing

Dilbert Cause and Effect

Chaoism and underlying belief structures

An Exploration of Dark Paganism: Library: Chaoism & Chaos Magic - A Personal View:

"...if you want a one-line definition with which most Chaoists would probably not disagree, then I offer the following. Chaoists usually accept the meta-belief that belief is a tool for achieving effects; it is not an end in itself.

It is easy to see how other people and cultures are the victims of their own beliefs. The horrors of Islam and the ghastly state of politics in sub-Saharan Africa, are obvious examples, but we rarely pause to consider the extent to which we are the victims of our own beliefs, and the ability we have to modify them if we wish.

It is perhaps worth considering the recent history of belief in Western cultures before mounting an attack on the very foundations of the contemporary world view. For about a millennia and a half the existence of "God" was an incontrovertible fact of life in Christendom. It was never questioned or thought to be questionable. Hideous wars and persecutions were conducted to support one interpretation of deity against another. Learned men wrote thousands of books of theology debating points which seem utterly tedious and idiotic to us now, but the central question of the existence of "God" was never considered. Yet now, the belief in "God" as the author of most of what goes on in the world has been almost completely abandoned...

We can laugh looking back on it now, but I assert that we now live under a collective obsession which is even more powerful and will appear equally limiting and ridiculous to future historians.

Since the eighteenth century European enlightenment, a belief has grown to the point where it is now so all-pervasive, and so fundamental a part of the Western world view, that one is generally considered mad if one questions it. This is a belief that has proved so powerful and useful that virtually everyone in the Western world accept it without question. Even those who try to maintain a belief in "God" tend to place more actual faith in this new belief for most practical purposes. I am about to reveal what this fundamental contemporary belief is. Most of you will think it is so obvious a fact that it can, hardly be called a belief. That, however, is a measure of its extraordinary power over us. Most of you will think me a madman or a fool to even question it. Few of you will be able to imagine what it would be like not to believe it, or that it would be possible to replace it with something else. Here it is: the dominant belief in all Western Cultures is that this universe runs on material causality and is thus comprehensible to reason. Virtually everyone also maintains a secondary belief that contradicts this - the belief that they have something called free will, although they are unable to specify what this is - but I will deal with that later.

We spend billions every year indoctrinating our young with the primary belief in material causality in our schools. Our language, our logic, and most of our machines, are built largely upon this belief. We regard it as more reliable than "God".

...The main thrust of my Chaoism is against the doctrine of material causality and secondarily against most of the nonsense that passes for modern psychology.

Anyway, now I have to firstly try and convince you that there is something seriously wrong with material causality, and that there is something that could supersede it as a belief...

Before attempting a frontal assault on material causality I shall backtrack a little to gather ammunition. Few people noticed that in the 1930`s a serious crack was discovered in the fabric of material causality which, on the grounds of faith alone, was supposed to cover everything. This crack was called Quantum Physics, and it was pre-eminently Niels Bohr who, with his Copenhagen Interpretation, poked a finger into the crack and pried open a wrap to reveal a different reality.

Basically Bohr showed that this reality is better modeled by a description of non-material causality operating probabilistically not deterministically. This may sound tame at first, but the implications for our everyday view of the world and for our theories of magic are awesome. It brought to an end the era of the clockwork universe paradigm which began over two hundred years ago and which almost everyone still believes in their guts, even if they cannot formulate it precisely. I urge magicians everywhere to give thanks by drinking what is probably the best lager in the world, for it was the Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen that supported Bohr and his colleagues while they did the physics.

The majority of straight scientists find quantum physics as distasteful as a priest would find witch-craft. If they have to use it they prefer not to think about the implications. Even Einstein, who started quantum physics going but made his major contribution in Relativity, felt repelled by its implications, on ground of scientific faith and residual Judaic belief, and wasted much of his later life campaigning fruitlessly against it.

Quantum physics says to me that not only is magic possible in a world that is infinitely Chaotic than we thought, but that magic is central to the functioning of this universe. This is a magical universe not a clockwork one. Causal materialist beliefs were a liberating and refreshing breath of fresh air after a millennia and a half of monotheism, but now, at their zenith, they have become tyranny. Relativity and the fundamental physics associated with it are probably close to a final refinement of the causal materialist paradigm, and as such they now seem a terrible prison. For all practical purposes they confine us to this planet forever and rule out magic from our lives. Quantum physics, which I believe currently to be basically an investigation of the magical phenomena underlying the reality most people have perceived as non-magical for the last two hundred years, shows us a way out.

It may be some time before any significant portion of humanity learns to believe the new paradigm in their guts and live accordingly, but eventually they will. Until then it is bound to sound like discombobulating gobbledygook or tarted-up intellectualism to most people.

I would like to mention my other favorite iconoclasm in passing without explanation. I reject the conventional view of post-monotheistic Western psychology that we are individual unitary beings possessing free will. I prefer the description that we are colonial beings composed of multiple personalities; although generally unafflicted with the selective amnesia which is the hallmark of this otherwise omnipresent condition. And that secondly there is no such thing as free will; although we have the capacity to act randomly, or perhaps one should say more precisely stochastically, and the propensity to identify with whatever we find ourselves doing as a result.

All the gods and goddesses are within us and non-materially about us as well, in the form of non-local information.

I consider that all events occur basically by magic; the apparent causality investigated by classical science is merely the more statistically reliable end of a spectrum whose other end is complete Chaos..."

See, we're helping them...

Telegraph | News | 'Trophy' video exposes private security contractors shooting up Iraqi drivers:

"A 'trophy' video appearing to show security guards in Baghdad randomly shooting Iraqi civilians has sparked two investigations after it was posted on the internet, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

The video has sparked concern that private security companies, which are not subject to any form of regulation either in Britain or in Iraq, could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent Iraqis."

Intellectual Property and Copyright Infringement

Eschaton:

"Yglesias writes something which everyone needs to understand:

Record companies and their movie studio allies have managed to convince a shockingly large swathe of opinion that the purpose of intellectual property law is to prevent copyright infringement. In fact, the purpose is to advance the general welfare of society.

but judging by the number of people who seem to take issue with this in his comments obviously a lot of people don't. Let's go to the constitution:

Clause 8:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

The key phrases being 'to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts' and ' securing for limited Times.' A lot of the commenters seem to side with Disney et al who, after having made tons of money ripping off fairy tales without paying any royalties, seem to think that copyright law should extend out to time infinity."

See, regime change was important because Sadaam was bad and we made it better. Or not. You know, either way...

The Observer | International | Abuse worse than under Saddam, says Iraqi leader:

"Human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein and are even in danger of eclipsing his record, according to the country's first Prime Minister after the fall of Saddam's regime.

'People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse,' Ayad Allawi told The Observer. 'It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.'

In a damning and wide-ranging indictment of Iraq's escalating human rights catastrophe, Allawi accused fellow Shias in the government of being responsible for death squads and secret torture centres. The brutality of elements in the new security forces rivals that of Saddam's secret police, he said.

...'We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated,' he added. 'A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations. We are even witnessing Sharia courts based on Islamic law that are trying people and executing them.'"

Snatching pebbles is passe'

Inside Bay Area - Inside Bay Area Search Results:

"The ancient Greeks worshipped it. Sigmund Freud said women envy it. And on Tuesday, a man pulled a truck with it.

Yes, you read that right.

He pulled a truck with his penis.

Grandmaster Tu Jin-Sheng, best known for his Iron Crotch, attached himself not once, but twice, to a rental moving truck and pulled it several yards across a parking lot in Fremont. In lace-up leather boots and a black tank top, the 50-year-old tied a strip of blue fabric around the base of his penis and testicles and tugged to make sure it was on tight. An assistant kicked him hard between the legs before he lashed himself to the vehicle."

How odd... I agree with something in the Bible...

Grits for Breakfast: Requiring corroboration for eyewitness testimony might have saved Ruben Cantu:

"What can be done to stop the government from convicting and even executing the wrong people? Blogger Clayton Cramer suggested a great reform proposal in the wake of last week's report by the Houston Chronicle that Texas likely executed Ruben Cantu in 1993 for a crime he didn't commit. Writes Cramer:

At one time, a number of states required two eyewitnesses to a murder before the state could impose the death penalty. Why?

Because America was a Bible-believing nation at the time of the Revolution, and reformed many of its criminal statutes in that era to conform to the Bible. Numbers 35:30 says:

Anyone who kills a person is to be put to death as a murderer only on the testimony of witnesses. But no one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness.

Even though I disapprove of the death penalty, using the Bible's standard on this would certainly have prevented the execution of Ruben Cantu for a crime that he apparently did not commit.

Liberals, unfortunately, would never tolerate writing a law with Biblical input today.

That's a terrific idea, and I think Cramer might be surprised at what liberals can tolerate. The reason a two-witness rule would have difficulty being enacted isn't because 'liberals' oppose it, but because prosecutors and police unions would throw the loudest hissy fit you've ever heard. Trust me on this one -- I know from experience.

After the scandals arose surrounding the Tulia drug stings, the ACLU, NAACP, and LULAC teamed up with ministers and victims families from the group Tulia Friends of Justice to help pass a bill requiring corroboration for undercover testimony in drug cases. (The original bill would have required corroboration for any undercover testimony, but the final, passed legislation required it only for confidential informants or 'snitches,' not police officers.) Still, it has had a big impact.

The biblical requirement for corroboration was very much a part of the debate surrounding the Tulia legislation, a message carried door to door at the Texas Legislature in 2001 by Reverends Charles Kiker and Alan Bean from Tulia Friends of Justice. (I've still got a copy of the flyer they distributed with a headline reading, 'The Bible and the ACLU Agree: Require Corroboration for Drug Sting Testimony.')

In fact, as Rev. Kiker would be quick to point out, the corroboration requirement in Mosaic law is more extensive than what Cramer cites. In Leviticus 19:15 we're told that all accusations of crime must be corroborated: 'One witness is not enough to convict a man accused of any crime or offense he may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' Jesus (Matthew 18:16) and the Apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 13: 1 and 1 Timothy 5:19) both affirmed this tradition for New Testament believers."

Military surveillance of Americans. Saying "Big Brother" gets a little redundant after a while...

Pentagon Expanding Its Domestic Surveillance Activity:

"'We are deputizing the military to spy on law-abiding Americans in America. This is a huge leap without even a [congressional] hearing,' Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a recent interview."

Just lovely.

David Price: How US Anthropologists Planned "Race-Specific" Weapons Against the Japanese:

"...describe one 1943 OSS document, the 'Preliminary Report on Japanese Anthropology,' which which reveals that World War II-era anthropologists were recommending culture- and race-specific means of killing Japanese soldiers and civilians. This report sought to determine if there were 'physical characteristics in which the Japanese differ from others in such a way as to make these differences significant from the point of view of carrying on the war'. The person who write this report remains remains classified, but a list of scholars consulted by OSS includes anthropologists such as Clyde Kluckhohn, Fred Hulse, Duncan Strong, Ernest Hooton, C. M. Davenport, Wesley Dupertuis, and Morris Steggerda."

Veganism/Athletics

A Vegan Strength Coach Gives Some Tips on Vegetarian Strength Training - Mike Mahler's Aggressive Strength:

"The Basics
Contrary to what many people believe, it is certainly possible to get bigger and stronger on a vegetarian diet. Like any other diet, the key is to ensure that you are getting adequate calories and a balance of protein, healthy fats, and carbohydrates. To be clear, I follow a vegan diet for ethical reasons not because I think that it is a superior diet. If I had access to organic raw milk and organic eggs in which I knew for sure that the cows and chickens were treated well, I would consume milk and eggs. In my mother's native home of India, cows are a sacred animal because of the milk that they provide. Milk and yogurt have been staples of the Indian diet for centuries and along with ghee are considerd very nutritious and great for well being, health, and strength. Perhaps, some day I will own a farm in Montana and take care of some cows and chickens ;-) Until then, I will avoid dairy and eggs and other forms of animal products. I am adamantly against factory farming and think that it is very cruel to animals. How would you feel if you lived in a cage your entire life and could not enjoy the most basic pleasures that most of us take for granted? I encourage you to educate yourself about factory farming and to go out of your way to get organic eggs and dairy products...

Many vegetarians and people in general make the mistake of getting too many calories from starchy carbohydrates and overly processed foods. Moreover, many vegetarians de-emphazise the importance of protein in the diet. While I do not think that you need 2 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight like many of the fitness magazines recommend, you do need more than 5-10% of your diet coming from protein. 25-30% is a good number to shoot for if gaining muscle is your goal. Some great sources of vegetarian protein include: black beans, pinto peans, lentils, split peas, kidney beans, navy beans,pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, pistachios, almonds, cashews, peanut butter, almond butter, 'hemp bread',and for protein powders I like pea protein isolate and rice protein.

Next, do not make the mistake of following a super low fat diet if you are an athlete. Comsume healthy fats such as almonds, flaxseed oil, peanut butter, pumpkin seeds, olive oil, and coconut oil to ensure that you are getting the health benefits of fat in your diet. Super low fat diets will cause your energy to plummet and your skin to dry up. Coconut oil is the only form of saturated oil for vegetarians which is necessary for healthy joints and well being. Try eating a baby coconut each day. Drink the water and use a spoon to eat the 'fleshy' part of the coconut. Or try adding some coconut oil to shakes. Rotate your Essential Fatty Acid oils each month. One month, try flaxseed oil, the next hempseed oil, then Udo's Choice Oil, and Pumpkin seed oil. You will be amazed at how much better you feel with a good amount of fat in your diet. Low fat diets suck! Especially for athletes.

Finally, get most of your carbs from fruits and veggies, and the rest from healthy grains such as: quinoa and oats. Avoid rice (all forms) pasta, and processed cereals if you want to lose fat and avoid the 'buldge' that many high carb eaters have. The skinny fat look is not a good one to emulate so strive for balance at each meal."