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Saturday, February 06, 2010
Getting People Out To Vote... at Gunpoint.
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BREAKFAST WITH THE OBAMA'S
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Tuesday, June 30, 2009
From The Daily Beast.,..
Maya Alleruzzo / AP PhotoToday’s pullout from Iraqi cities vindicates Bush’s "surge" strategy, says former Marine Zachary Iscol. The change in tactics—which reversed our fortunes in Iraq—could even help Obama in Iran.
As a Marine, I learned that peace is predicated on compromise, not superior firepower or belligerence.
Today, witnessing U.S. troops withdraw from Iraqi cities, I find the right’s accusations of appeasement levied on President Obama about most issues in the Middle East incredibly ironic. Today’s withdrawal, perhaps the greatest success of the Bush administration, would not have occurred if we hadn’t learned to appease.
Today’s withdrawal, perhaps the greatest success of the Bush administration, would not have occurred if we hadn’t learned to appease.
When President Bush announced the "surge," on January 11, 2007, he was announcing much more than the deployment of 35,000 additional troops to Iraq. He also was adopting a set of successful tactics that had already been implemented successfully by a few industrious officers. It amounted to a radically different approach to how troops would be employed on the ground.
In 2004, I took little risk with the lives of my Marines. It was simply too dangerous. If a vehicle failed to stop as it crashed through our checkpoint, we used deadly force. If a military-aged male was in the vicinity after a roadside bomb detonated, he would be detained. I often wonder if some of our tactics created more insurgents than we were able to kill or capture.
In the violent summer months of 2004, we put the risk on the civilian population, but in 2007, as the surge began and General David Petraeus took over, the force began to accept more risk in order to protect the population. Troops moved out of large, fortified bases and lived in smaller outposts among the population. They patrolled more often on foot instead of in armored vehicles. At first, casualties went up, but then something remarkable happened: Coalition casualties plummeted.
FM 3-24, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual, published on December 16, 2006, encapsulates a number of the paradoxes of counterinsurgency. It turns out, “The more you protect the force, the less secure you may be.” And “Sometimes the more force is used, the less effective it is.”
Perhaps former Bushies are so quick to criticize Obama because they never really bought into the change in tactics and strategy that reversed our fortunes in Iraq. Over time, it was our military, mainly junior officers and NCOs, who realized that the vast majority of people in Iraq were not our enemy—but that our tactics and emphasis on force were turning many of them into enemies. This, more than anything else, is the Achilles’ heel of the counterinsurgent.
Antagonizing and creating new enemies is much more dangerous than failing to kill one, which is why Obama’s limited response to the political unrest and demonstrations in Iran is commendable. Action or support from the United States would largely alienate the demonstrators from greater support from the population of Iran. As the counterinsurgency manual states, “Sometimes, doing nothing is the best reaction” especially when action would be counterproductive or foster greater resentment. Those critical of Obama’s initially tepid response would do better to explain what they hope to accomplish and how through more active support for the demonstrators in Iran.
In 2004, as a young Marine lieutenant, I gave a poster of George Washington crossing the Delaware River to a local tribal leader named Sheik Jabbar. I was 25 years old and he was a foot taller than me, regal, wise, and twice my age. As I handed him the poster, I explained that he had the opportunity to be his nation’s Thomas Jefferson. He graciously accepted the poster and then asked me if I meant he would write his country’s declaration of independence, be its ambassador to France, or serve as its president. He then listed the names of his family’s patriarchs going back 1,200 years. He wanted to be like his forefathers, not mine.
Last Friday, Obama clearly articulated that what is going on in Iran is not about us. It is about the Iranian people seeking justice for themselves. Obama understands, much better than I did, the folly in thinking otherwise. He also understands the incredible danger of taking action and siding with the protesters. Creating the illusion that the protesters are American pawns would alienate them and fracture their ranks. Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction.
Over kabobs, chai tea, and the hookah, I learned a tremendous amount about Iraq’s history and local issues from Sheik Jabbar, and he would often complain to me about the local city council. Unelected bodies, the city councils had been appointed by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority with the intent that they would become legislative bodies after elections were held. For Sheik Jabbar and most of the local people, they were an illegitimate and corrupt governing body that would siphon funds for local municipal projects for personal gain. I soon learned that the tribal councils were much more democratic and just than our appointed councils, but we treated them as an archaic remnant of Iraq’s past and alienated them. So they came to see us as occupiers, supported al Qaeda as liberators, and fought against us.
But in 2005, two years before the surge, along the Euphrates River Valley, Marine company commanders began working closely with tribal leaders, shifting their emphasis from promoting democracy to promoting the peace. Former enemies became close allies. Soon battalion commanders and regimental commanders were following the path laid out to them by junior officers. The generals followed. Soon even Bush was gripping and grinning with the tribal leaders of Iraq as Democrats in Congress cried appeasement and debated the merits of a bill deriding the Maliki government for offering asylum to former nationalist insurgents with American blood on their hands. Almost overnight, the most violent province in Iraq became one of the most peaceful. This willingness to appease fostered the peace that now enables us to withdraw our troops from Iraq’s cities.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Soldiers Pulling out of Iraq's Cities...
Some 131,000 US troops remain in Iraq, including 12 combat brigades, and the total is not expected to drop below 128,000 until after the Iraqi national election next January.
'Now is the time'
Iraqi soldiers paraded through Baghdad's streets on Monday in vehicles decorated with flowers and Iraqi flags, while patriotic songs were played through loudspeakers at checkpoints.
Once more.... I was not involved in the Green River killings ... that much.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Fuentes Last Hit.... short story
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
forgive forgive forgive
OTHERS.... a short story
He has no name. More a color of thought that was all his own. They knew how to use words to communicate with humans; they were too slow and limited for conversations between the two.
They were thinking together, coming to the same conclusion. The keepers had run into some kind of problem. They would not leave them hungry.
"We were warned." She told him, again and again, as if the mantra could shore up their resolve to act. "We are going to have to... get some food. If they are gone... years will pass before anyone would come to contact us."
"They must have been captured or killed."
"They said ...."
"Yes, if they did not come back, it would be one or the other."
at
They withstand the hunger for another day before making their decision. The risk of going among humans without an intact personality was a sure path to madness. They had known as much since migrating to the planet. Reaching into their minds, and becoming whatever would best suit the situation was an easy trick for an adult. They could become the picture of a tourist if there a hiker happened upon them in the mountains.
As egg as they were, there was a danger that they would start changing without any control, becoming one figure after another as they passed the humans. Some of their kind, in the early years, the first explorers to off ship on the planet, had become so disoriented by their unconscious chameleon changes that they were unable to recover their original selves. A few had responded to treatment, other rs were too far adrift, going from personality to personality like a serial amnesiac. . . until the strain destroyed their minds.
By their egging, their kind were well aware of the problems with the indigenous population of earth. They had been raised carefully isolated, taught to resist the impulse to please... which had been glorified on their last planet, where their kind had been pleasing to one another as a norm. A piece of rock adrift in space, half as large as their planet, was coming in on a collision course and they left. There were centuries of sleep on the ships, as their automatic pilot searched the cosmos for a planet with an atmosphere that they could adapt to live within.
One has taken the female form, the other male. They were going to live together as a couple among the humans, when they were ready. To humans they appeared in their teens, though they had egged three years before.
Some humans knew of their existence. They were considered hostile by the Others, as they called themselves; two of their ships had been discovered, and many glimpsed over the years. Eight of them had been caught, and were said to still be alive. They were constantly drilled on security, self-defense, and how to expire -- one of the Others had been rescued, after various experiments by the humans... who were intent on inter-breeding human and other.
As they went over the situation together, they came to the understanding that if their keepers had been captured, leaving their mountain was the only course of action. They stood up from their seats on the floor of the cave, and walked out into the sunlight and toward the pine forest that lead to the path... they had studied human hikers on the path, all the way down to where they parked their cars. That was as far as they had been,
in progress...
synopsis of what is to come... they begin to use hypnotic like illusions to make people think they are seeing a particular type of person, hiding the alien appearance of the Others. They have two at rest forms. They can either appear as they are, or appear as someone else. They make their decisions based on what they see in other peoples minds.
Immediately, this begins to cause them trouble. The girl begins to attract lust,when she discovers how to become whatever is wanted. The boy learns to appear as whatever a person fears the most, or what a woman wants.
They eventually begin to mentally unravel. They hear thoughts in humans about their purpose in life, after-life, etc.. things they have never considered. The religions and such seem like myths to them. They have been taught only one thing -- how to survive. With most of their education about themselves devoted merely in how to stay alive and mentally stable among humans.
One of them discovers how easy it is to kill a human, when she is attacked -- she becomes their most loathsome, horrible image... driving some mad, others to heart attacks.
In the end, they meet more of their own kind, and are finally told a bit more about themselves. There is a colony of them in South America, where they live in a gated community in the jungle, as many miles away from humanity as they can.
A war is being waged by humans around their encampment, and eventually the two are sent out to confuse soldiers, etc... in an attempt to stop the guerrilla war between a ruthless dictator and a guerrilla brigade. They take the side of the guerrillas, and end up almost getting bombed out of existence.... except, they mess with the minds of the pilots and make them bomb their own troops, etc...
Oh, well,... this is just something I am beginning to sketch out.
this work is protected by a commercial common use license. Feel free to spread my words...john scott ridgway
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
sick of politics again...
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
CHICAGO LOSES 5 million a year to corruption....
Monday, June 01, 2009
DALY TOOK A CRITICAL ENTRY OFF MY WAKING UP JESUS SITE.. BRING IT ON, ASSHOLE
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The state of the blog...
After a few months off line, deciding more or less to just keep doing what I do, seems the only solution to my problems. I do not know how much any one reader knows when they come to my work, but I did have some problems, to put it mildly, with the usa over the kind of stuff I write. They do not like revolutionary poetics that tear at their power one bit.
Why do you think dissidents are jailed all over the world? Now think how many of them, probably including you, who feel like there is nothing they can due to effect the powers that be. . .
Sometimes I think I would letting people down if I was to return to mostly comedy, but that is insane. I will say the same things philosophically, and I too prefer to laugh sometimes. Constant, oppressive mourning for the world is one of my poetic driving forces.
I am just piddling around here.
this work is protected by a commercial common use license. Feel free to spread my words...john scott ridgway
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
ADRESS TO OLD PEACE AND PIPEDREAM SHOWS
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Monday, October 13, 2008
TOMMY SMOTHERS is dangerously IGNORANT
His comment calls all military personal ignorant, basically. The people who have given their blood so he could live his privileged little white life are ignorant.
He was funny once. Then a genocide came along and mocked his hippie rhetoric. Boo him at all costs, and squirt him with red kool aide so he can feel a little of the metaphorical blood those peaceniks are spilling in Darfur, afganistan and pakistan as we speak. You kill the terrorists, save the peaceful. He needs to read his history, because Peace is only bought with war. If he can show me one place where the opposite happened, I will let him lick my feet (after I walk in some dog shit... he likes that taste of shit in his mouth so well, obviously).
Saturday, October 11, 2008
I'm back and all the news is good....
Okay, first off, LULU has offered to give me the premium package the usually charge 500 for in exchange for being my publishers. This is a life long deal. So now, for the first time, I will be in bookstores and on Amazon dot com and etc....
So far, I have been putting the books up on the blogs, and there has been a certain transition needed to make a book. The only demands LULU hmade on me was that I put ina bio page, and use the universal isbm number needed for sales.
I cannot wait to see the new editions, which will be out in november. I am proud of these books, and have certainly been working my ass.
During my period away from the computer, I have been oil painting, and setting up a studio with my new partner. He is a master carpenter, professional photographer, and he is not only buildihg us octagonal sets, but he has he tons of toys we can use for the characters. See, we are going to shoot like a hundred of my movies. I will do a lot of these with puppets that I am making out of art dolls. I basically come up with weird faces.... we are working on getting a computer animator to work with us eventually, but for now since we have all these toys we have to palay with them. I am talking submarines we can use in the lake, little helicopters, hundreds of robots... so many robots...
I also have mp3's of most of the peace and pipe dream shows, the internet radio program we did last year, before we all got sick of the lies of the owner. He promised to shoot all my films, let us broadcast from in front of a green screen, etc... and then he had just about enough money to put us on the air twice a week. The emphasis on weed heads brought us a lot of holywood interest.... I was honored to get criticism from Robin Williams, find out Tommy Chong was laughing along. When we had live audiences the were guffawing. Jimmy and Susanne, the highly talented folk I did the show with, want to keep the Haze family alive in films, so I will write a few of them... they have a lot of fans,.
I have also finally been decoratingour apartment. We took such a move down this tim e tha I had not even bothered to put up
I found a tiny gray kitten a few weeks ago. Little thing cried out to me, and then immediatly ran in front of a passing car. the dude slammed on his breaks. Feeling like the world was a bit too cruel for my tastes, I knelt down... and of course out runs this great looking grey kitten. I held him to my chest and he began putting like a drum... the driver was all like, I'll drive it down to the pound... where they would have cut his balls off at four weeks ( usually it is six months) and he stood a chance of getting killed. Which he would have, I later figured out,, because between being this sweet kitty who loves to be kissed, to a basically demonic force attacking everything from the leather couch to a ball of Ruby dog hair on the floor.
The most amazing part of this has Been Ruby's reaction. She immediatly began mothering the kitten. She cleaned it and and started freaking out if other dogs got close to Dash ( she just ran between the kitty and dog when dash, who is certain moods, like I said, is just attaclomg everything possible, as he deals with being filled with that pure kitten joy. Watching this husky, who basically looks like a wolf and is all teeth and cool blue eyes ( she scares the hell out of people, basically, which is part of why no one messes with M. when she is walking Runy), gently playing with the kitty, mouthing (taking paws, heads, torsos, etc... in her moth and biting just enough to hold Dash down with out hurting hims.
We recently bough a lot of cameras, since we are doing the animation in a, and I hate to make this comparison because our content will be very different... nut like Robot Chicken.
I am excited about writing the thank yous and acknowledge e ts in my books. I am trhying to make it funny,because I generally skip this shit until the end of the book, than if I really like the author, of course I am hungry for anything about them.
The Jesus aspect of my life has been on the down low, thogh on Saturdays that will chang ea bit when I join operation push. Rev. Jackson's son, the spokesperson for operation push, studied finance and i have found his explanations ot the crises with the the mortgages the most easily understood, and outraging. They speak for the the little guy there, and want a package that will save the homeowners, as wel as the damned backs. My brother lost his house because of this shit. another friend of mine worked for one of the these sleazy companies and kept teling me I could get a house, even I live a small disability and M. does social work and both of us fucked up our credit. Me with all the medical bills of course, and her with a flush of credit cards she used after losing a high paying job and refusing, at first, to face her new poverty.
I am going to operation push's first saturday service tom. after listening to his speaches over and over. You know, i studied Military Intelligence at NEIU under an ex black panther (he was actually a prominate Jewish anti war agent, who refust vioolence and what not... he was a young professor at the time. I learned about all the tricks the fbi uses.
Sure came in handy when Homeland Security basically attacked me. They took down my blog and changed some of the stories, taking out violence. They also blocked it from certain parts of the country, let alone the world.
I guess they have a right to fear me... here I am, a legitimate king of england, if not fo the german hapzburgs taking over... I will be republishing an out of print book that takes us back to like 300 hundred. I never thought this would have been important to me, but I only discovered all this shit and 32 and it has kind of given me someonething to liv up to. You will not believe how wealthy we were. We funded webminster abbey by giving the church hundreds of villanges and towns.
I drove cab for fifteen years, and just kind of studied whatever seemed like I would nee to be a good novelist --- a writer whgse fucking first book wouldn't be about some damn coming of age novel. I tried to do a video thing of Columbia's professors and if they weren't writing semi rascist coming of age novels, it was book length poem on unicorms.
Oh, well. We also have in the works a thing where we will show you all of the differenbt neighborhoods in chicago, the artists who live and work there, and well as//// well, We are are going to start going to old folks holms and recording five minute interviews too, in a differrent vein. When I interview people, I ask them to write the questions I should ask. I figure everyone has pretended to get interviewed a time or two....
I have a warm cat on my lap, but I must go down to the sas station and buy coffee, since we are out and I am staying up all night. I just kind of sleep whenever, four hour battle naps. I finished like five paintings, and deesigned qute a few more. The break form the cdomputer was kind of nice, though I apologize to those who are involved in the total waf for total peace who may feel aboned. I have been working on new strategies.
By the way, did you hear that fuck head Tommy Smothers on the emmy's saying that peoplw who thin we can war to peace are just ignorant. That crispy old fuck. When they chased his tv show off the air, he just ran off with his tail between his legs. They came after me with death threats and druggings and other shit... and I soldiered on, survived taking on the neo cons and homeland security, etc... becase my connections made with spies when i WAS going to school proved to them theat i DO NOT BELIEVE IN VIOLENCE.
protestors end up fighting cops, who are just union workers, and that is stupid. Like I say, during a just revolotuion, the police will be the first to march with you.
Did you hear about the sherrif here in cook country who is now refusing to do evictions? That man is a hero. Those fucking banks are using the sherif's like they are employees and and you can imagine how must evictions have jumped recently. One officer said that working evictions was the saddest thing he had ever to done as a cop. I am going to do all I can to help this sherrif to stay in office.
Well, I am so tired that I need coffee. In four and a half hours, I get to put on my new black suit, and this kind of weird shirt, the kind you see mexican's and charlie sheen wearing. This one is black in the back, has a black collar.... then down the two sides are strips of whit with red and black designs, going up and down in a colum in the middle of the white... the red and blke designs elude to languages and fire;. When I was at the church store when i ALWAUS SHOP when I can (The two sisters behind the counter always give me the best advice, and know my size and taste and are as sweet as honey). It is a nice hipter outfit,
Since I am going to be doing all these films, I have losing writing and working out. for me this mjeans I
This is a work in progress, at 3 am, and I will keep writing on it for awhile...
You are welcome to spread my poems by ANY MEANS NECESSARY.
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There is some overlap... but they are all different.
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