One of many, whom all too many have sneered at, labeling them "Losers and Suckers. "
Many men and women have paid the ultimate price in defense of our way of life.
For the United States, our attention first got drawn to this concept by the United States Civil War.
We lost so many men in that war that we established a special day on which we would gather in peace in order to maintain and clean up the headstones and memorials of our war dead. People would go to the local military cemetery and clean up the grave sites, put fresh flowers on them, and bring a picnic lunch to share. It was not a carnival atmosphere, but a quiet day of contemplation and prayer. The military bands would come later. The Jingoism would come later. But those things don't take away from the true purpose of the occasion.I'm not trying to say that no war is ever justified. But that war, all war, is horrors. It is immoral in the highest degree to wage war for trivial, spurious, or reasons of material gain.
But don't believe me. Ask any of the veterans of the late generational war in Iraq or Afghanistan. I'm not going to bore you with statistics, you can get that at Wikipedia. So, go and have your beer, grill some hotdogs , and enjoy the day. Chances are you've earned a holiday, and so relax and enjoy. But take a moment or two out of your fun and think about the men and women who aren't here to join in the celebration. Remember them, and remember too that as Sherman said:
"I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all
moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the
shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for
vengeance, for desolation. War is hell. "William Tecumseh Sherman
Hymn for the Fallen: John Williams
Any copyrighted material used is done so under the principle of Fair Use, and is intended solely for purpose of editorializing. No copyright violation is intended.
Recently, John Oliver did a segment of his show about the TV show Law & Order and how it's some kind of Police Propaganda show. About how the cops are always shown favorably, the Prosecutors are bastions of ethics and dedicated to seeking the truth. To Oliver, this seems like far from the truth -- American police often use trickery, deceit and underhanded tactics to get a suspect to make a confession, lying about what evidence they have, witnesses they have, victim identifying them, and other things. This all started as a series of decisions by a fairly conservative US Supreme Court that first decided that police could indulge in minor deceptions -- things like suggesting they were going to potentially find the suspect's fingerprints on the murder weapon when they hadn't even found the murder weapon yet. But then, of course, the camel's nose was in the tent. Things progressed in a series of decisions to the point that Police now can straight up lie to you, claiming they have evidence they don't have. Trying to leverage you to not end the interview by saying if you invoke your right to silence they can't help you. By lying and saying you 'could' call a lawyer but legal aid takes weeks now and we'd have to hold you in a cell the whole time. In a way, Oliver is right. (link to his segment below.)
John Oliver Law & Order segment (9-13-22)
Watch the clip for yourself. (full episode available at Youtube. )
I'm not saying Oliver is wrong. Except that the show has in fact dealt with stories of police abuse. I could go hunting and find them all, but I'm going to limit myself to just one, taken from the list of episodes on Wikipedia. Law & Order Season 1 episodes list
The first episode that came to mind was "A Death In the Family" in which a well-regarded police officer is killed on a rooftop. Police first suspect a local drug dealer, but it quickly transpires that he was shot by another officer, who later is exonerated when it comes about that he had lured her up there with the intention of killing her. So, there are multiple episodes across all the L&O franchises in which police are shown to be the bad guys. There is one in which the Central Park Five case is the model for the episode. Detectives who interview the suspect use bad interview techniques to coerce a confession out of a suspect. "Look, we know you were there, witnesses put you there. Just say you touched her."
But in fact this defendant did not rape anyone and was not in fact there. There were no witnesses which put him at the scene -- that was a lie told by detectives. This is later proven by detectives, who exonerate the alleged rapists. But again, I want to emphasize this -- Oliver is not entirely wrong. The show does portray an idealized set of cops, who are hard driving for the truth. Cops who follow the evidence no matter where it leads. But the reality is far different. We have too many detectives who simply go for the first subject to come under their vision and simply don't care about finding the truth of a situation. They find a suspect, bully them into confessing, use scummy tactics wherein they actually lie to the suspect. Oftentimes they cover up evidence that would exculpate the accused in order to make a conviction more likely. It is not unknown for a detective to gun down a suspect and then make sure a gun is found on the body. It's not unknown for uniformed officers to harass and bully people in the street, and gunning down otherwise innocent people is far too regular an occurrence. One of the biggest problems in American policing is the fact that there simply is no national standard for who can be a police officer, what training police cadets receive, what licensing requirements and what standards for use of force. There is little quality control being exercised. Large departments like NYPD and LAPD can have good quality vetting programs but those are not infallible and are often just plain dropped out of a desperation to fill positions. Candidate cadets have even been told what replies to give on psychological testing interviews. Background investigations are often lacking or simply not done. Communities outside of the big cities often just haven't got any standards beyond no criminal record and not physically disabled. An officer fired from a position in one community is often simply allowed to "Lateral Transfer" to another police department in a neighboring community.
Some further comparison and contrast :
Meet the officers of the RampartCRASH unit. They were cops assigned to stop gang violence and crimes such as drug dealing. Except they themselves are worse than the criminals they are supposed to apprehend. TV watchers from the early "aughts" should recognize these men as being the men of the Fox TV production "The Shield". But would you be surprised to know that the show was based on the real-life doings of officers of the LAPD ?
Would it also be a surprise you to know that the police station they worked out of, the LAPD Ramparts Division station, was the same one featured in the classic TV show "Adam-12" ? Yup. . . the very same building.
In contrast with this, we have (the aforementioned) ADAM-12, in which paragons of policing Officers Jim Reed and Pete Malloy rode around in the fourth character, Shop number 83012 (or 85012). They enforced the law coldly, impersonally but oftentimes angry with the suspects they arrested, thus showing some humanity. Other officers have problems -- see episode "Badge Heavy" for an example -- but they are dealt with by LAPD's self-policing mechanisms. In short, the show is in fact the propaganda that Oliver believes the Law & Order franchise to be.
To Sum Up:
We need a national standard for police selection and training.
We
need to alter the way in which police are trained : back down from the
militant us vs them mentality, and focus on patience, forbearing and
de-escalation.
A national database of police ethics infractions and incidents of abuse and violence.
A
system in which if you have a serious ethics violation, you should be
done as a police officer right there, and it should be a national ban.
No more revolving door police departments.
National standards
on police interviews, techniques allowed and forbidding lying to
suspects. In Britain, closure rates increased when detectives were given
new standards that included not lying to suspects.
A last word.
A couple final thoughts:
The problem of law enforcement in the United States isn't as one-sided as we would want it to be.
It works best when the community is involved. People have to make use of the machinery or it will cease to function. As difficult as it might be, people need to step up and do the work. Provide police with information they need to solve a crime, even if all you do is phone in an anonymous tip. report not just strange activity but also incidents of police misbehavior. Encourage young people of good character to join the police force. Resist the impulse to vigilante actions. Report for jury duty and if necessary serve on a jury. These actions are part of making a democracy work. If you can't do all of them, try doing one or two. Don't say "I can't change things alone" because you won't be alone if everyone pitches in. Okay. I'm going to step down off my soapbox now.
"I
am relatively certain that it will come out that a fistful of Russian
intelligence operators came to the USA in order to facilitate the
election of the current occupant of the White House. They acted in
collusion with Candidate 1's campaign, and obtained and used data
generated by contractors employed by Candidate 1 to push the election in
Candidate 1's direction. It will be revealed that Candidate 1 received
material aid from these foreign agents, and that Candidate 1 was aware
of these machinations and approved of them. Finally, it will be hinted
at, if not actually brought out, that Candidate 1 was recruited to be an
agent of influence by the Russian government. (Note: this is not based
on sources. it is strictly and only my opinion based on my personal
perception and synthesis of known events and projected possible
outcomes. I am not a psychic, and I do not believe such things exist. I
am however, well up in the news, and in the practices of Intelligence
agencies, including ours and theirs. "
Given all that has transpired in the ensuing four years, how would you rate my prognostications ? I think I'm doing pretty well, all things considered. But considering the nature of the material missing from two of what are now being called the Mar-a-Lago documents, I would really rather have been wrong.
Next we turn to Jared's money woes: One of the things a skilled intelligence operator will do is look for people with access (not necessarily power, but access.) who are having money troubles. The deeper and more private a financial hole the subject is in the better. This is ever so much better than trolling for gays or sexual deviants because people with money woes are much more common. They may be gamblers, speculators in the stock market (another form of gambling.) or maybe they just live too far above their means. Jared was in a deep financial hole. Now Jared has 2 billion to speculate with courtesy of the Saudis. I think it's a pretty easy set of dots to connect, don't you ?
O- -- - - - - - - - - o
A closing remark : On the volume of scandals. Not long ago Fox News pundit Sean Hannity read off, in an angry voice, all the scandals that plagued the Former Guy's regime. He went on for about two minutes, listing all of them. Apparently it never occurred to Hannity that what he was doing is reading the bill of indictments against his hero. You could dismiss some of the investigations as being all sizzle and no steak, but you still have to admit that where there is smoke there is fire, and the former regime did issue forth a whole lot of smoke. These missing Classified documents may indeed be the flames we have been seeing signs of all along. I can only hope the damage control party can get to it in time. TFG blew a hole in the bottom of the ship of state, and men like Hannity helped him light the fuse.
his techno-thriller masterwork "Red Storm Rising." (which he co-authored with Larry Bond).
Clancy wrote what was then, in 1987, a chilling scenario in which the Russians, as prime mover in the Warsaw Pact, suffer a drastic casualty in it's oil production facilities due to poor planning and a group of Muslim fanatics. This causes the fictional Russian leader to decide that the only way to get out of the jam is to seize the Persian Gulf oil states. (with the possible exception of Iran.) If the Soviet controls the Arabian Peninsula not only is their immediate oil need satisfied, but their control would place a stranglehold on US and other economies. And so, the decision is taken. Warsaw Pact will launch a "defensive" battle against NATO, and split West Germany and Austria off, thus fracturing the alliance.
No doubt most of you are wondering by now why I'm spoiling a good read and what Clancy's fictional scenario has to do with the current very real war in Ukraine. I'm getting to that, but bear with me as I construct a scenario: Putin wants to wreck that portion of Ukraine not under his control so as to put an end to their threats of taking back the portions of the Donbas that his operatives have encouraged to separate from the main Ukraine country. It goes without saying that he also wants to keep them out of the Crimea he so badly wanted to re-integrate into Russia. Ukraine with it's leadership in prison (in Russia) and leaders installed by Putin would not be able or willing to drive Russians out of those territories. So now we come to the attempt at provocation. Putin has for years been manipulating events in Crimea and Donbas so that when the time came all three areas would break off from Ukraine and either request Russian "protection" or outright cede themselves to Russia to run by fiat. (both ends would be sufficient for Putin.) So, he cooks up this fiction about De-Nazifying Ukraine and protecting Ethnic Russians in the Donbas and Crimea. It is of course complete fabrication. The Ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine would have been content to remain there had not the mysterious "little green men" been there to "help" them separate from the rest of the country, in exactly the same way that "little green men" and "volunteers" helped Crimea secede from the nation. Well now let's turn to the Tom Clancy fiction again.
Why it is surprisingly similar. . . Why it should be familiar :
Late last night, I tabbed back into Firefox and looked at my twitter page. When I did so, I found that my twitter account, @tzed928 had been locked, because of a post I made which the Twitter bots decided was a suggestion to self-harm or suicide. My twitter handle is a name I made up as something short and relatively anonymous back when I was playing World of Warcraft to allow me to tweet images and text out of the game. From there, my participation grew until I was tweeting regularly out of that account. Well, that is now coming to a close. Earlier that night, someone with the handle @jtrebach posted a tweet of a then-unknown root and then asked if anyone would eat it if they were hungry. the captioned tweet below is the reply I made. A relatively sensible suggestion slice off a small piece of the root and rub it on the web between your finger and thumb. If you fee a burning or tingling sensation, discard the root and do not eat. read the survival guide. According to the almighty Twitter Bots, this is a suggestion to self-harm or suicide. In Fact, it is entirely the opposite. The picture was, as I later found out, that of a mandrake root. Mandrake root is dangerous and can be harmful or fatal if swallowed. It contains datura. The procedure that I suggested would have saved unknown numbers of people from a fairly horrible death by poison. The irony is not lost on me.
Notes:
Twitter is a registered trademark of Twitter inc and used under the fair use exception, to wit: "purpose of research, private study, criticism, review, news reporting, education, satire or parody"
World of Warcraft is trademark Activision Blizzard and used without permission under the fair use exception, for : "purpose of research, private study, criticism, review, news reporting, education, satire or parody
Note: As if it needed saying : I do not condone, endorse or recommend self harm of any kind.
Note: I will not relent on this. I was not and am not wrong. My tweet violated no terms of service. It's intent is crystal clear to anyone who is not a moron or a robot.
Note: The irony is not lost on me that you can demand the head of the President of the United States on a platter, cheer on the nazi party, use whatever racist slurs you want, but mention "take your knife and slice . . . " and you get banned. I'm lookin at you, Jack Dorsey.
Marcie was tired. Although bruised and broken
by the beating the thralls had given her, she dragged herself to her feet,
nearly screaming as one broken rib jammed into a lung. She didn't care. The alien overlord
was here, and she needed to be on her feet. For just a few minutes more.
The being spoke
through its favored thrall by attaching one of it's tentacles to the thrall's neck. "You are the one called Scanlon. Why do you
come here to die? You cannot beat us... you cannot win" The aliens had come from Proxima Centauri b with technology superior to Earth's but they did not use the expected saturation atomic bombing. Nukes had been used, but Judiciously. Tactically The large scale bombing had been done by Fuel-Air boosted bombs. The Pentagon, Capitol, White House, Arlington Hall, Joint Base Langley and more had all been leveled by FABs. So-called concussion bombs Some said a nuke salvo would have been kinder. But the Proximans were not kind. Why be kind to ants one steps on ? Why be nice to slaves, when cruelty was more useful.
Consider, I wrote this in the first year of TFG's regime. I stand by what I said then, and say it again now:
This
is not going to be a well-received post. Donald Trump or no Donald
Trump, the time is going to come when we will just have to
take the hit and take North Korea out. I know. It's not something anyone
wants to think of. It's not a pretty outlook. Friends, I do not say
this lightly or without forethought. Kim Jong Un, and his generals, are
in fact a kleptocracy, but with the added kicker that they're unstable.
belligerent and if they feel backed into a corner they will take steps.
And if they have deliverable nuclear weapons, there is no stopping them
from using the nukes. You should note that they are not shooting them at
Guam, which they have threatened, but at Japan, an even bigger devil in
their worldview. We will have to brave the thousands of artillery
weapons they have, accept the pain and deaths from that, and push
forward anyway. Note please that I do not wish to do this. I have long
said that war must be the last tool from the box. But, the Chinese will
do nothing to topple the Kim regime, and they are the only power who
could. If the North Koreans will not moderate themselves, we will in the
end have no choice but to wipe their military off the face of the
earth. All right, I've said enough. I've probably said too much. But I
cannot at this time see any alternative in the near future. I hope I'm
wrong.
