suicide in the trenches

Suicide in the Trenches


I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.


In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.


You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

-siegfried sassoon

patriots

some thoughts while reading how would a patriot act on the train this afternoon:

our government has expanded its power considerably over the last five years, as well as over the past century. where will it lead? i imagine there is always a tendency for systems to grow larger, more centralized, more intense and complex. what is the nature of this tendency? what are examples throughout history of nations growing larger, and eventually overstepping their bounds? what are the mechanisms by which nations fall (debt service, over-expanded military)? what about current talk of our nation becoming one of service jobs as opposed to industrial jobs? what does that really mean? what about all the tax cuts--extreme concentration of wealth, income disparity, loss of a middle class?

which is cause and which is effect?

anything!

i'm going to start writing now. i still don't have definite ideas of what i want to write about; but if i wait for them to appear fully-formed, i'll never write a damned thing. i spend most of my blog-reading time on politics, and i think i have a lot to say about the current state of affairs in american society, as well as the history (and future) of political thought. but i want this blog to focus on a wider field-of-view. over the past year or two i feel that i have made profound insights into humanity's place in the world; i would like to apply these insights both to my personal life and to the politics of our time, in hopes of changing the world for the better. i don't have grand plans for the blog per se; rather, i'd like to use it as a sounding board for my ideas, to help me better form them and learn from them.


just a few of the topics i'd like to expound:

• science as a way of discovering truth


• human morality, its purpose and uses, origins, inconsistencies, and future


• intense consciousness, its mechanism, origin, and singularness


• symbolic communication, and how it has created so much of human society


• evolution in its broadest sense: from the quark soup to "the universe studying itself" in the human mind


• politics/war/community vs. individual: looking at these issues in an evolutionary context


• biological life as systems using the 2nd law of thermodynamics to harness energy (?)


• complexity, hierarchy, centralization, evil?

the world's a wonderful place.

UPDATE: oh, also, lots on elites (which relates to hierarchy) and the way they guide 'history' as we know it; and are they really dumb/blind or in fact extremely intelligent? for instance, democrats like to say that the bush/cheney administration totally blundered the war by 'not planning for the aftermath', which appears to be true; but can it be said that they didn't want this result in the first place? their friends at halliburton and elsewhere within the military-industrial complex are receiving hundreds of billions of dollars for their efforts; the price of oil is up because of increased violence across the middle east, a direct result of the iraq invasion; and, despite the american public's ever-so-slowly diminishing support for the war, they've been able to secure (it seems) large military outposts across the country for years to come (years, they probably hope, filled with war for the remaining oil resources of the region). tie this into resources in general; the end of oil, etc.

"Ready For Anything"

"Ready For Anything": "The prices of both oil and gold continue to rise; the former is now trading at nominal all-time highs, while the latter has been hitting new quarter-century highs day after day. This is excess liquidity coming home to roost. While the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates to mollify foreign central banks, it’s made it clear that any weakness in either the stock market or the economy will be met with massive infusions of liquidity, and dollar-denominated debt will be inflated away. The world is waking up to this, which is why oil and gold march inexorably higher and the long bond is tanking. This is inflation, and the rest of the world is acting accordingly. Today, Iran’s President Ahmadinejad said, 'The global oil price has not reached its real value yet.” He’s right, of course. He knows that every dollar he receives for his oil today will be worth less tomorrow, so Iran (and OPEC) is demanding ever-higher prices for its only natural resource. The nerve, eh? We won’t take that lying down, whi"

Hissy Fit by digby If you didn't get to see Little Lord

Hissy Fit by digby If you didn't get to see Little Lord: "Hissy Fit

by digby


If you didn't get to see Little Lord Fauntleroy have a temper tantrum in front of the press today, do yourself a favor and check it out.




HENRY: Mr. President, you make it a practice of not commenting on potential personnel move.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Of course, I did.

HENRY: Calling it speculation.

BUSH: And you can understand why. Because we've got people's reputations at stake. And on Friday I stood up and said I don't appreciate the speculation about Don Rumsfeld. He's doing a fine job. I strongly support him.

HENRY: But what do you say to critics who believe that you're ignoring the advice of retired generals, military commanders, who say that there needs to be a change?

BUSH: I say I listen to all voices, but mine's the final decision and Don Rumsfeld is doing a fine job. He's not only transforming the military, he's fighting a war on terror. He's helping us fight a war"

disney vacation

nonsense

 

SOS

SOS: "Today President Bush gave the first speech in new series of four speeches that will explain to the American people why we are in Iraq.

In his speech today, the President tossed out an SOS — for Same Old Shit.

If you really care about what he said, you can read a transcript here and a news story here. It’s essentially the same Iraq speech he’s been giving for the past several months — “As Iraqis stand up, America and our coalition will stand down” — with a couple of additions:

1. The bombing of the Golden Mosque of Samarra was bad. The people who bombed the mosque wanted to start a civil war, but you’ll be happy to know that the Iraqi people have already decided not to have one.

2. Iran is exporting IED devices into Iraq, which is very bad. Iran also supports terrorism and has a nuclear weapons program. We’re going to have to do something about Iran one of these days.

Other than that, it really was the SOS — Iraqi elections were good, Iraqi security forces doing a crackerjack job, everything’s just peachy. "

What To Tell The Children by digby I think it's ...

What To Tell The Children by digby I think it's ...: "What To Tell The Children

by digby

I think it's time to assess what we've learned from this business of the vice president getting drunk and shooting an old man in the face.

First, I think we can all agree that it's unseemly for the press to question their leaders when they shoot people. Unless the story involves an official's sexual practices, his private life is nobody's business.

Second, the president has officially delegated all of his most important functions to the vice-president. Good to know.

The third and most most important lesson I take from this is that what matters most in a aituation like this are the feelings of the shooter. I think the president said it best:



'This is a man who likes the outdoors and he likes to hunt. And he heard a bird flushed and he turned and pulled the trigger and saw his friend get wounded,' Bush said.

'And it was a deeply traumatic moment for him and, obviously, it was a tragic moment for Harry Whittington. And so I thought his explanation was a very strong and powerful explanation, and I'm satisfied with the explanation he gave.'

Bush took issue with criticism that disclosure of the incident fueled perception of a secretive White House: 'I think people are making the wrong conclusion about a t"