Guantanamo's Wreckage

I have recently become involved in a BBC effort that solicits commentary and analysis of BBC-produced programs.  It gave me the opportunity to listen to this documentary broadcast on the Guantanamo Bay prison - but  with the emphasis on prisoners who have been released.

It is a program that does not spoon-feed the listener the viewpoint they are supposed to be adopting like so many US "cable news" programs these days.  You actually need to think here - the story is told through the experiences of real people who were incarcerated at Guantanamo.  The story eventually tells itself very well, and it is not a pretty one for US citizens who in a very real way are responsible for the unjust, inhuman, and quite frankly invented reasons for keeping some of these people there at all.

Is It a Bird, a Plane? (Well, It's Supposed to Be!)

Comes the totally unsurprising word now that the F-35 is still broken (and still several times over budget).

The Marines have just grounded their whole fleet (for the tiny little reason that the engines have been bursting into flame) but if memory serves the Marines were the ones who got their first F-35s lacking some parts, like guns!  (Update -- the whole US fleet of F-35s has now been grounded).

If the Marines ever feel safe enough to actually fly all the way across the Atlantic in one of these things (where is Charles Lindbergh when you need him?), they now know they have a backup weapon - drop a flaming engine on the enemy!  Oh, wait...there is only one engine....scratch that idea.  Besides, the pilots apparently can't see well enough to aim anything at anyone anyway!
 

The Mystique of War

This insightful TED Talk by Sebastian Junger, a journalist who has covered many war zones is well worth watching.  This is why our politicians need to stop sending our young people off to far corners of the world on ill-designed quests for the politician's satisfaction of some abstract ideology, and then assuming that everything is going to be just fine and there will be no after-effects from the experience.

Naughty, Naughty Pentagon!

Sometimes I wonder if it is avarice, shrewdness, indifference, or just plain old incompetence that makes the Pentagon the worst run cabinet-level department almost since its inception.  At least a small part of the Senate (which is still getting a few things done, unlike the comatose House) is asking some pointed questions.

Thanks George and Dick!

There is no way to say for certain if Iraq would have fallen apart on its own by now, but there is very little doubt that the Molotov cocktail thrown into the country that accelerated things tremendously was George II's ill-advised, probably illegal, and trumped-up invasion of Iraq.  Not to mention the huge toll it took and is still taking, and will be taking on this country for decades to come.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27789229

We Need More Guns!

Don't we ?????

...even more

...and more

...and more

...some more

...more   (updating this is getting to be a daily task...this is only for June, and it is only the 10th)

...more

...more (this one shows why the very presence of guns in your residence raises the possibility you will be killed by one tremendously - something the CDC was researching until the NRA goons leaned on the wimpy Congress to abandon it).

...one more, with one day in June still to go

...a final coda to the gun-crazy tragedies of this lead-filled month.  The sad thing is it wasn't all that special a month by gunfire standards...in the United States.  About 20 children per day, or 7,000 per year are injured or killed by a gun both accidentally and intentionally in the US.  You need to go to a third-world country under constant war or civil unrest to match such a dismal record.

And finally...a chilling picture of what this looks like to the rest of the world, and what it might say for the US's continued involvement in the world, if people are too afraid to come here and bring their knowledge and ideas..

A Poignant Picture for Two Nations

Photojournalism at its finest.

Despite my prior post...no this is not in the US.  This is a polling place in the Ukraine.  I certainly hope that is a toy weapon that innocent little girl is holding, and not an "adult" weapon carelessly put aside while voting.  Still -- it makes for a thought-provoking picture from several perspectives doesn't it?

Credit: Konstantin Chernichkin/Reuters