Sunday, December 26, 2010

All In


What a week it has been:
Democrats, pundits, and the gay community are all cheering the legislative successes of the Christmas season.
The celebration marking the end of DADT arrived right on time. Answered prayers, a Christmas present, timed to correspond to the birthday of the Prince of Peace, gays, lesbians, bi's and tranies, have won the right to fight along side their straight brothers and sisters. Now that Spartan lance can be used to advance the forces of US military might the world around. (In the name of historical accuracy remember that Sparta waged war on Athens because it feared the spread of Athenian democracy.)

I say let's seize the day. When the forces of egalitarianism are on a roll, and the honor of being a soldier in arms has never been higher, let's organize to extend to those repeatedly denied, the opportunity to join the fight. I have never understood the arbitrary age of 18 as being the minimum acceptable for admission into the armed forces. In this age when any 10 year old possesses the hand eye coordination to dominate "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" the video game, it is obvious that represents a transferable skill for modern warfare, say drone missions. Let's stage a competition for those younger men and women who want to compete and the prize will be enlistment.

As a senior with so little life left to lose I think that it is a fitting and proper that my, most selfish gen, give back service for the gifts we have enjoyed. The best of us are tactical, and in many cases the health services available to us on mission exceed those in our local community. I want to be able to join.
I don't want to overlook the most egregious of the sins of recruitment omission. Our physically challenged brothers and sisters have proven their metal in Special Olympics and everyday feats of overcoming barriers to access. This is a military that fights with its minds and as long as a citizen is in his right mind I believe we can accommodate their desire to be treated as whole citizens. Dismembered Vets who are heard every night expressing a desire to return to their units abroad should be allowed.
Maybe no person deserves the right to re-up more than the abused Vietnam veteran. No one thanked him for his deployment at the time. This is his chance for redemption. We will respect him for his service.

Ironically, the only peace protest this week was conducted by Veterans for Peace

More at The Real News




This was the week in which Civil defense forces in Seoul, Korea ran drills shutting down the city and moving tens of thousands of citizens into bomb shelters. Their political leaders are heard to say they want to fight the complacency of the average citizen re the prospects for a confrontation with the North.
This was the week of the START treaty approval. I hope you got a chance to listen to a piece of the so-called debate. Naysayers were not going to allow Russians to limit our tactical nuclear war machine, our missiles on rails, or in any way inhibit the effectiveness and battle readiness of our nuclear warheads and their delivery systems. They won. Here is a summary of the treaty
The UK Guardian has an analysis of the numbers of nuclear weapons in the world and who has them.

While the START treaty was being debated Americans were told of the survivability of a nuclear war and, contrary to popular belief, we are instructed to stay home, hide in the basement and stay off the highways.

Wired Magazine published a piece ‘Regional’ Nuclear War Would Cause Worldwide Destruction that contains a realistic study of the consequences of a limited nuclear exchange.
Here is another conclusion from a study by the American Geophysical Union of the effects of a very limited nuclear exchange: Cooling from a limited nuclear exchange would create two to three consecutive "Years Without a Summer", and over a decade of significantly reduced crop yields. The authors anticipated that the smoke in the stratosphere would partially destroy Earth's protective stratospheric ozone layer as well, but did not model how large of an impact this would have. Clearly, even a limited nuclear exchange could trigger severe global climate change capable of causing economic chaos and widespread starvation.

We have something like a dry run in the aftermath of the "accident" at Chernobyl.

Nobody has a better take on this then Randy Newman

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