Monday, February 25, 2013

Why?


So bin Laden was blown away by a couple of bullets to his face and chest.  Maybe a bit better than the west-Texas necktie-party that Saddam found to dangle from, but certainly not the way most of us would want to go to glory.  At least the score is settled now.  Or is it?  Actually, what was it all about to begin with?  It has been a long time since the 911 attacks and we have asked and answered in great detail all the questions about that except for one.  That’s the question “Why”.  Why did THEY do that?  Why did they hate us that much?  Why have WE spent almost three trillion dollars killing people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya and other places to get even?  

Was that all for oil?  Did we do it for Israel?  Is it an issue involving Islam and Christianity?  Or Judiasm? Does it go back to the crusades?  Was it just an accident?  Why, indeed?  Why are we still fighting and killing?  Most of the people we Americans kill in this war are innocent – we call that “collateral damage”, and smile a wry smile and sadly shake our heads at the thought.  But most of the people we have killed and most of the people whose lives we have shattered and destroyed were innocent of any crime under any law, or of any sin under any religion.  They were just “in the way”.  They got in our way.  And we were mad.  We still are.  That’s right.  We are mad. We still are. We are mad indeed.

Someone might say that bin Laden deserved to die. They might be right.  Perhaps what our Navy Seals did was an “Honor Killing”.  That being that they implemented a punishment that was
More important than any law
more important than any economic event
more important than any religion
it goes straight to the gut . . . and it comes out of the gut one way or the other.
It is a harmonic between the anus and the open mouth screaming, between the shriek of terror and the cry of “Kill, Kill!”.
It was created back before we were even human. . . 
Still fitting . . . even today.  Especially today.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

You Won't Believe This


In the middle of the night on July 28, 2012,  three people cut through an outer security fence at the Oak Ridge Nuclear Weapons Complex surrounding the building that stores America’s uranium stockpile for its nuclear weapons.  They walked through the hole they made in the fence into an area that was brightly lighted and they poured some blood they had brought with them onto a wall.  Then they cut through a second security fence and entered into the ultra high security area known as the “Intrusion Detection Zone”.  There they cut a third fence and entered through it under the view of security cameras and walked into the area past motion detectors.  There they cut a fourth security fence, entered through that hole and walked up to the most highly protected building in the entire world, the American Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility.  That building holds the United States nuclear weapons-grade enriched uranium.  There they cordoned off a corner of the facility with crime scene tape, read a statement, read from a Bible they had brought with them, poured blood on the building and spray-painted comments on the facility.  With hammers they had carried in, they symbolically chipped away at a corner of the facility.  And they waited.  About two hours later, a security guard appeared and arrested the three intruders without even drawing his gun.

The Oak Ridge Nuclear Weapons Complex suspended all weapons- production operations for more than two weeks while they “retrained” their personnel.  The media reporting, including ABC News, and the New York Times (FN1) , as well as the hearings held in the U.S. Congress was concentrated on the security breach.  The trial for the three intruders, who are activists members of an organization known as “Transform Now Ploughshares”,  is currently scheduled for May 7, 2013.  Meanwhile in addition to personnel retraining, the fences, of course were repaired, reports were filed and America’s nuclear weapons-grade enriched uranium was safe – again?  Meanwhile, other members of the Transform Now Ploughshares group went to the “repaired” part of the outer fence and found that the security forces had repaired the wrong hole.  The hole the entrance group had cut remained there, still open, and readily visible from a security road only 20 yards away, which is patrolled several times daily, the hole in the fence still open and unrepaired AND conspicuous because of plastic ties the activists had tied to the fence cuts.

How can the U. S. military be so screwed up?  Well, it’s not guarded by any U. S. military forces.  They’re in Afghanistan and elsewhere.  And it’s not the local police either, or the state police.  It’s a corporation.  Actually it is several corporations because they keep having problems doing what should be a pretty simple and easy job, at least compared with combat.  DynaCorp was there at one time, Wackenhut provides some security,  Badcock was probably the corporation that had “responsibility” during the activists incursion. 

At any rate, these corporations currently “guard” much of America.  Private security guards have outnumbered government police officers since the 1980s.  Coordination between private and official agencies often ovelap and the private agencies now perform work previously assigned to official agencies.  Wackenhut for example has contracts to guard the Internal Revenue Service, the General Accounting Office, the Federal Reserve, Oak Ridge National Security Complex, Savannah River nuclear plant, Jet Propulsion Laboratory,  even Fort Bragg, and this is not a complete list.  They also have various resouces devoted to airports, ports, and specialized Global Response Teams and Executive Protection Services, etc. Wackenhut, DynCorp, Blackwater, Triple Canopy  are four of about forty-five “Private MIlitary Firms” that can be found on a partial list.  (FN2)

(FN1) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/science/behind-nuclear-breach-a-nuns-bold-fervor.html?pagewanted=all

I knew these people.  About 15 years ago my wife and I marched with them every August 9, at Oak Ridge, TN, that date being the anniversary of the bombing of Heroshima.  The  actual account of their penetration into the nuclear site was rather amazing.  An earlier blog had described one of our marches back in 2000:   http://theprettypenny.blogspot.com/2002/08/oak-ridge.html

(FN2) "Capitalism:  Servant or Master” by John Womack, p.21     
 http://www.johnhwomack.com/John_Womack/Capitalism.html

Rubio's Big Moment

Pulling a Rubio

The state of the Union speech was given last night by . . .  hmmm, that seems to have slipped my mind somehow.  At any rate, Marco Rubio dominated the evening with his boo-boo. It was an eternal moment. Four hundred years years from now people will still be saying “don’t pull a Rubio”.   By then that comment will be attributed to either the Bible or Shakespeare .  It wasn’t the sip of water that Rubio took that made that moment eternal. No indeed, people do that all the time, many accomplished speakers sip water while talking.  What made that moment remarkable was the furtive look on Rubio’s face before he did the action, and the look he gave when he reached for that thing that was out of sight, like he was used to sneaking things around, and reaching for unseen things.   That sneaky action seemed right at home in his character, like hoping his parents wouldn't notice, a very basic part of the Rubio moral structure, including his reaction when he knew he had been found out, easily sliding into a practiced air of pretentiousness.

And there was more. He wiped perspiration from his face four or five times and he also had Nixon’s famous 5 o’clock shadow.  He also talked about how bad government was, about how it did so many things wrong.  Then he talked about how much the Rubio family had profited from Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security  and his own education grants.  We might get the impression that government had done its duty and now it needed to go away before it could help some other people who might become parasites on the nation.  

I watched to the end, hoping to find out why he was one of the 22 senators who had voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.  I hate to say this, but I was disappointed. 

Wednesday, February 06, 2013

Guns in America



HOW MANY AMERICANS ARE KILLED EACH YEAR BY GUNS?  According to the NY Times, and the Center for Disease Prevention, 100,000 Americans are shot by guns every YEAR, 30,000 of them die each YEAR, and over 10,000 Americans are shot and killed by other people each year and more than a million Americans have been shot and killed by guns since Martin Luther King was killed. 

SOLVE OTHER PROBLEMS FIRST?  Don't try to say that we must make everything else perfect – eliminate deaths by motor vehicles, alcohol, cigarettes and so on – and THEN we will talk about guns - American Terrorists kill 34 Americans every DAY with guns. Don't blame alcohol, don't blame gangs, don't blame suicide, don’t blame cigarettes or alcohol – Guns empower sick people to change their rants and raves into firepower that blows innocent lives away. Now is the time for gun control. Control. Control – nobody is going to come by and take your guns, but we need CONTROL. Control like we have for a drivers' license, like we have to buy some Sudafed, like we have to do many other things in America. We DO need to ban assault weapons, extended clips and certain bullets and weapons. And more.  You can keep your security gun at home, and take your hunting guns hunting, but get the killer-weapons out of the schoolrooms, movie theaters, shopping malls, churches, college campuses, and off the streets of America.

WHAT IS AN ASSAULT WEAPON?  My definition of an assault weapon is ANY weapon that is capable of, or has been modified to provide what the military refers to as “Suppression Fire”, also sometimes called “Covering Fire”.  Suppression Fire is a procedure in which rounds are fired in rapid succession into a target area to force  people there to hide and take cover.  It denies the people in that area the opportunity to return fire or even to observe what the delivering force is doing.  Somewhat the same effect can be accomplished with extended-bullet clips that permit the firing of one round every two, three or four seconds, then after say 30 rounds have been fired, the clip is replaced in about 5 seconds and another 30 – or maybe 100 – rounds are available.

TREAT MENTAL ILLNESS, DON'T RESTRICT GUNS?:  According to a research project by Ronald Kessler,  Harvard professor of Health Care Policy who led a survey of Americas mental health, called the National Comorbidity Survey Replication, "one-quarter of all Americans met the criteria for having a mental illness within the past year, and fully a quarter of those had a "serious" disorder that often interfered with their ability to function.  Meanwhile, our mental health programs have been reduced again and again and, as a number of people have pointed out recently, "It is easier to get a gun than to get mental health help in America"

GOOD GUYS WITH ARMS?:  We don’t want armed guards in every classroom, not even in every school.  We don’t want them prowling our movie theaters, campuses, malls, churches, restaurants, bars and so on.   Actions such as this would TURN AMERICA INTO A POLICE STATE.

ARM TEACHERS?:  We don’t want to arm our teachers, preachers, waiters, firefighters, bartenders, They have other work to do.  And ANY one who is carrying a loaded gun NEEDS to be totally aware of that weapon every minute he or she has it on their body.

HITLER CONFISCATED REGISTERED GUNS?  No.  He didn’t.  Hitler ENCOURAGED private gun ownership.  The German private arms were confiscated by Eisenhower and the American armies when they moved across the German farmlands and cities after the German armies had been destroyed. 

CONCEALED CARRIERS?: We don’t want “everybody” carrying a concealed gun.  That could cause, for example in a restaurant  that a loud noise – a dropped plate or something like that – to cause “carriers” to reach for their weapons.  Some other confusion and someone could shoot.  Instantly, other “carriers” would pull their weapon out and shoot at the shooter, thus drawing fire themselves from others across the room.   And if anyone has a “Bushmaster” then catastrophe would turn into carnage. 

HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN?  None of us can predict the future.  But to live any life REQUIRES that you make intelligent observations about the conditions under which you live.  We can all draw inferences from actions out of the path.  And one thing the past now “predicts” will happen in America is more Mass Murders, more killing of children, of shoppers, or church people and so on.  Most of these seem to take place far away from where WE are, but the bad ones do seem random as to location.  And when an American Terrorist’s shooting kills YOUR wife or YOUR child or YOUR grandchild, then it all changes, and you change too.

THE SECOND AMENDMENT.   “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. “ EVERYone agrees that it is clumsily worded and people have argued about what it really means ever since it was written.  According to the Holy Bible, you can evaluate a tree by the fruit it bears "You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?"  – and the Second Amendment has NOT provided a “well regulated militia” – it has done the opposite, and we have gathered thorns and thistles from it.  It is time to wake up and demand a change.

NO right is ever absolute.

RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS:  When our Founding Fathers wrote this amendment, there were no real pistols, only dueling pistols that would fire one bullet.   The "rifles" were musket-type weapons that would fire one bullet and required power to be added before each shot.  Revolvers were invented around 1835 to 1845, as were rifles.  In 2010, of course, “arms” could include repeating rifles and pistols, weapons that fire armor-piercing and incendiary bullets.  Most people today appear not to include weapons in such “arms” category as nuclear or atomic weapons, bombs, flame throwers and such other military “arms”.  But – that’s today.  What about twenty years from now?  Is an act of defining what “arms” means an act of infringement?

WHO ARE AMERICAN TERRORISTS?  Any one who conducts a mass shooting creates terror.  Thus that person is one who creates terror, hence a “terrorist”.  Do American Terrorists have a common agenda?  Other than a certain fascination with guns, probably no.  But BECAUSE they are American Terrorists, we have no other nation to declare war against, no other nation to bomb and invade and kill their innocent women and children.  THINK ABOUT IT – if some foreign power started killing Americans at the rate of 30 a day, 1,000 a month, and so on, even the Tea Party people would demand war, be willing to pay higher taxes, enlist thousands of Americans in the military and want to bomb and invade.

WAR IS WORSE?  The TOTAL combat deaths in ALL American wars, in some 235 years, has been “only” 651,000  which is still 350,000 LESS than that 1,000,000 shot dead in American theaters, malls, campuses, restaurants, classrooms, private homes and public streets by American guns in the last 44 years alone!