by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
I am sick of sending blood money to the US government. I am sick of financing meaningless death and destruction. I am sick of sending money to a federal "theocracy" who gives a portion of it to "faith based initiatives" to propagate a metaphysics that neither I nor the founding fathers believed in!
I am sick of underwriting the robber barons of wall street. I am sick of financing the purchase of lethal toys for Donald Rumsfeld and the torture perverts of the Pentagon. I am sick of George W. Bush's thin skin and stupid face.
A documentary of 2004 asked the question:
Should we be worried about the threat from organized terrorism or is it simply a phantom menace being used to stop society from falling apart?
Thanks to GOP exploitation of every negative emotion known to man, society is falling apart anyway. I am inclined to opine that not only are GOP policies a MAJOR cause of terrorism, the relationship is, indeed, a symbiotic one as one writer recently observed. GOP policies cause terrorism.
—BBC:The Power of Nightmares: Baby It's Cold Outside; See the documentary at Le Thé Chez Vierotchka
Bush has made us less safe. His war on Iraq has failed. Iraq is in chaos, civil war, and all but abandoned to its fate in any case. Bush insists on staying when, in fact, it's lost and there is nothing left to do but face an ugly fact and leave —or stay and die ignormiously. And, in the end, we will leave anyway.
Terrorism has replaced the fifties bugaboo: communism. Did that keep us in line —or what? Here's an excerpt from the BBC story:
A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.
...
The rise of the politics of fear begins in 1949 with two men whose radical ideas would inspire the attack of 9/11 and influence the neo-conservative movement that dominates Washington.
Both these men believed that modern liberal freedoms were eroding the bonds that held society together.
The two movements they inspired set out, in their different ways, to rescue their societies from this decay. But in an age of growing disillusion with politics, the neo-conservatives turned to fear in order to pursue their vision.
They would create a hidden network of evil run by the Soviet Union that only they could see.
The Islamists were faced by the refusal of the masses to follow their dream and began to turn to terror to force the people to "see the truth"'.
—BBC: The Power of Nightmares: Baby It's Cold OutsideAt last, terrorism is a distraction from several unpleasant economic facts, most prominently —our entire economy is utterly dependent upon the billions, the trillions that are spent on "defense" which is to say, fighting terrorism.
Terrorism —or, more properly, the phony defense against it —has become an industry, most certainly America's biggest. What do you suppose would happen to the US economy if we immediately stopped fighting Bush's war on terrorism and immediately made the appropriate adjustments to the defense budget? What would happen if we eliminated the Military/Industrial complex which now finds its raison d'etre in terrorism?
Recession? Far worse —the complete and utter collapse of the American economy which is now completely and utterly dependent upon a drug: terrorism! In my youth, I was prepared to get on the bus, report for basic training, and go to Viet Nam. To die? Possibly! After all, I was but a mere slave to the state. What chance was given the sons of poor carpenters and steel workers when America claimed to be defending us against the sons of even poorer farmers in Viet Nam? My country would have expected me to kill them. For God and country!
I wish I could say that I made a big public noise and put my life on the line for my convictions. There was no great moral victory in the mere fact that I did not go to Viet Nam. It was but the luck of the draw, and, in deed, a "draw" for those who opposed not only the war but the draft.
But I have never regretted not going to Nam. I have regretted not having won a point against the forces of fascism. I have regretted not shooting my big mouth off even more so. I have regretted not having been able to make a difference against the machine of state hellbent on grinding us all up in name of national security.
In the meantime, I support the troops by demanding as vociferously as I can that we bring them home! Wars are no longer winnable. The firepower necessary to win the next big one will wipe out mankind. Most governments and all intelligent people know this if Bush does not. Instead, they will grind us up piecemeal, killing the weakest and most vulnerable among us here and there, for symbolic, hollow "victories", braggadocio and propaganda. I wonder how many more poor kids will be asked and expected to kill farmers and peasants in a foreign land just so some GOP asshole can live in a penthouse apartment!
An update From the Liberal Doomsayer:
_________________________________________________________________________________Bushco’s Façade Continues To Crack
So the terror-related charge against overall creep and bad actor Jose Padilla has been thrown out.
Wasn’t it only yesterday when he was considered to be such a threat to Truth, Justice and the American Way that it was decided by Bushco that he should be held as an enemy combatant (no...it was last year, actually).
So it turns out that Dubya can’t deny due process to an American citizen after all (this comes on the heels of the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision against Bush’s military commissions, which even Antonin Scalia thought was founded on a shaky ruling by The Supremes).
Hmmm...maybe this guy isn’t such a legal genius after all.
44 comments:
Len, people can watch the three instalments of the BBC's The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear on my blog by clicking here. They are about one hour long each. A fascinating and highly instructive watch. If you prefer to add this link to your article and delete this post, that would be just fine with me - as you wish. :)
Thanks vierotchka. I'll add the link to the body of the article...and, if they miss it, they can catch it here. Again...thanks.
"We're going to become guilty, in my judgment, of being the greatest threat to the peace of the world. It's an ugly reality, and we Americans don't like to face up to it."
Wayne Morse, Senator, Oregon
Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Vietnam, February 27th, 1968
"Americans need to face the reality that most of the world sees our nation as the new evil empire, and many people in the Gulf region are dedicated to making sure that the Iraq War is the last hurrah for American militarism. How tragic to admit that the analogy is not entirely implausible… “
Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr.
Plus ça changer, plus ça la même chose...the more things change, the more they stay the same. Many observers focus on the brutality of Vietnam, the way it made us see our neighbours in a whole new light. When some of those boys came back, they were wrecked beyond repair as human beings - unable to think or function in the world, the memory of which was all that kept some of them slogging on until the last bitter day. And that's going to happen all over again, when this debacle is over.
However, what those observers often overlooked was that Vietnam, too, was sold wrapped in lies to a public that would never have supported it, had they known the truth. Oh, sure; there will always be those hungry to see blood spilled in the pursuit of American hegemony, provided it's someone else's blood. The Michelle Malkins, the Melanie Philips...But even the NASCAR dads would never have bought into either war, if they only knew the truth.
Bush the lunatic, placed on his idiot's pedestal by cynical toadies who must sometimes be hard-pressed not to laugh aloud at his pretensions to strategy or tactics, has no option but escalation - to go back is death.
The next apocalyptic trigger may be no further away than the fragile truce in Lebanon.
“…nations of eternal war expend all their energies in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of their people”
Thomas Jefferson
I saw the documentary on Vierotchka's site (3 hours!!!)a couple of weeks ago before her server - Romandie - gave her some troubles...
But i can't recommend it more.
It's a must see for those who wnats to get a good grasp on the neo-con movement.
BBC's production have done an amazing job: It's like attending a great history class lecture without the dramatization.
Indeed, who needs to damatize more the story of the rise of this already immensely frightning band of nutcases!
Welcome back, Dante...you were missed, mon ami!
Also, Mark, great post.
The next apocalyptic trigger may be no further away than the fragile truce in Lebanon.
And then there is the phony terror plot in London. "Phony Terror" is, in itself, a terrorist tactic. Phony terror is just one of the ways George W. Bush is waging war on the citizens of the United States.
Fuzzflash, I am lately making the analogy to Tudor/Elizabethan England. It was a time of revolution and terrorist plots. By the time James I had come to the throne, the time was ripe for Guy Fawkes. And, as I seem to recall, there is evidence that the "aforesaid" (to use Elizabethan terminology) gunpowder came from the governments own stores. But James knew as well as Bush how to exploit fear, hate, and terror. Is this analogy worth pursuing? Do you see an article in it?
Yep! Damien is missed...if there is a link to be found, Damien will have it. He's a hawk : )
BTW —I feel quite at home with your use of a word the pronunciation of which you captured precisely: orwot? Northamptonshire? Orwot?
The MIB have been keeping me busy Fuzzflash (or rather those sobs at Microsoft and Nortons). Cheers to all.
If you do not want to keep giving "blood money" to Bush, just stop paying your taxes! It really is the ultimate form of self-expression in these greed-is-good times. Personally, I have been holding off for three years already...
Put your mouth where your money is!
THOUGH I WAS THE ONLY LIBERAL WALKING THE CONCRETE CAYONS OF HOUSTON.
YOU EXPRESS MY VIEWS COMPLETLY.
Thanks, Len; praise from the calibre of such as post and comment on this blog is praise indeed!
It's a shopworn cliché, but those who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The thing is, a generation sickened by the lesson of Vietnam, both military and civilian, swore they did learn and that it would never happen again.
However...
"In 1971, the rock group The Who released the antiwar anthem "Won't Get Fooled Again". To most in my generation, the song conveyed a sense of betrayal by the nation's leaders, who had led our country into a costly and unnecessary war in Vietnam. To those of us who were truly counterculture--who became career members of the military during those rough times--the song conveyed a very different message. To us, its lyrics evoked a feeling that we must never again stand by quietly while those ignorant of and casual about war lead us into another one and then mismanage the conduct of it. Never again, we thought, would our military's senior leaders remain silent as American troops were marched off to an ill-considered engagement. It's 35 years later, and the judgment is in: the Who had it wrong. We have been fooled again."
Lt-General Gregory Newbold, in TIME Magazine, April 2006
Thank you, General, Sir; it is indeed happening again. There are some differences - for one, the corporate profiteering intrinsic to the Vietnam war was nowhere near as naked or contemptuous of accountability as is the case in Iraq. For another, the military has spoken out, though not with the decisiveness necessary, and been marginalized; swatted aside.
So, one thing we (including General Newbold) can take away from this is that the military will be part of the decision-making process only insofar as it is respected, its value weighed and accorded its due.
Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Armitage and Cheney do not respect the military, but see it as a tool - a blunt instrument to bludgeon recaltricant countries into submission. For all his pieties and crocodile tears about Our Brave Men And Women In Uniform, to Bush they are only a means to achieve an end, and no sacrifice is too great.
He has no conscience. And when he dies, I'm confident God will discover there's more soul in a pinata.
Ahhh, Fuzzflash! It's just that the heatwave, here in california, had finaly won to cause my otherwise honorably sound and performing PC to overheat.
I finaly get my PC not to shut down by opening its case and blowing air with a regular household fan. This tactic worked amazing if unsound, however, for the risk of blowing a lot of dust in the computer. Tomorrow, i intend to buy a big processor fan that will get rid of this problem: It's 105F and I don't have air conditioning...
Until this heat wave is gone and I get a fan operating, don't count me in quite yet.
But i believe I'll be plenty operational and available to contribute to this wonderful blog by the end of this week-end...
Completely off topic. A day to be proud. From my old alma mater Flinders U . Go Terry, go! You bloody beauty! (...and no, none of it rubbed off. Same faculty, same teachers, different result.)
Mark: Vietnam, too, was sold wrapped in lies to a public that would never have supported it
Indeed! And Viet Nam was even more insidious than Iraq in that Viet Nam was literally a slow boil. The first "advisors" were sent by Ike. The US had been in Viet Nam for years before it made the front pages. JFK's admin got caught up in the CIA sponsored coup d'etat —an event that may have figured prominently in his decision to withdraw American troops. The theory that his assassination was motivated at least in part because of that decision is credible. The numerous escalations in Viet Nam were all matched in one way or the other by the "other side"; it is a veritible lab demonstration of my thesis: wars are no longer winnable. For years, the conflict was confined to North and South Viet Nam. Nixon took it Cambodia and lied about it. complicating the effort to "win", was the fact that the US in Viet Nam —as in Iraq —had no legitimate indigenous government to defend. At some point, a frustrated power will want to use its biggest, most potent weapon. But in the case of Viet Nam, who do you nuke? Hanoi? That would only have drawn China into the unwinnable Viet Nam quagmire. And then who do you nuke? Peking? As it was then called. No...war are unwinnable in the conventional sense. The last war will be, literally, the LAST war.
Bush the lunatic, placed on his idiot's pedestal by cynical toadies who must sometimes be hard-pressed not to laugh aloud at his pretensions to strategy or tactics, has no option but escalation - to go back is death.
The analogies to Viet Nam are increasingly valid except Bush's model was even more simplistic than the American paradigm in Viet Nam. Bush never thought past his simple-minded approach: overwhelming firepower followed by a puppet regime in Baghdad. Now —we are caught in the cross fire of at least three civil wars: One of them is the war between a guerilla resistance vs the US occupation; another involves Kurds vs other northern Iraqi communities; and the third is between Sunni Arabs and Shi'ites. Bush cannot win. We are holed up in Baghdad! Were it not for the straits of Hormuz, American troops would have no exit. Turkey, as you may recall, was not all that enthusiastic about troops crossing Turkey and may be even less so now. Should Bush attack Iran, some 100,000 plus US troops will be stuck, cut off without escape in Iraq.
"social capital" is no longer fashionable Fuzzflash. It's closely related to the idea that society may have shared interests other than the belief in devil take the hindmost. Pity.
Dante, sorry to hear about your computer problems. Having had my share of hard drive crashes, I can say I understand. I am likewise without AC but have a nice "wind machine". I am also blessed with a patio that is very nice in the early evening. Remember —back up all your files and keep your powder dry : )
Damien, I have friends in Adelaide. Is that your home town? Pictures of Adelaide remind me very much of Austin, TX which is beautifully situated around a river and lake in semi-wooded Central Texas.
re: anonymous...yep! It's easy to feel like the "only" liberal when you are among the corporate canyons of downtown Houston. I am reminded how absurd are skyscrapers. I mourn for London. I learned recently that the height restrictions have been removed. In another 20 years, London will be indistinguishable from Houston and you won't be able to see St. Paul's Cathedral. Go see it now!
Re: Fuzzflash, Would you consider "reviewing" another film Anglaise, the recent V for Vendetta movie, which some consider to be a PARABLE for our times, as a post for this web log site? In exchange I’d be delighted to prepare an essay on "How to exploit fear, hate, and terror--- James 1 of England vis-a vis George of Kennebunkport-On-Crawford
I think that's a great idea....where do we go from here?
Len, you better follow what's going on in the Federal court of appeal. Because, if the judgement that the govenment went "too far" with their NSA eavesdropping program is upheld, it will go to supreme court... Which, of course, the Bushies want, hoping that Scalia and Alitto will weight in their favor.
But if I remember, the SC just went against the white House about Guantanamo...
This means this: If the Supreme court decides to honor Anna Diggs Taylor' jugement (which I believe they would), it'll means that the supreme judges found Bush guilty of a few dozen federal crimes!
The most amazing historical irony may be unfolding right in the front of our eyes: A supreme court engineered by neo-cons may turn against them because neo-cons haven't yet figured that supreme judges are foremost...staunch guardians of a constitution the Bushies have spitted on!
Again: if the jugement is upheld, Bush will be found guilty of at least 30 federal crimes!
looks like there is a justice after all; there is a God; and there is a wonderful country called America...
Automn looks exiting. I have a bottle of champagne in the fridge.
Hello, Dante, and welcome back; that front-porch feeling is returning! Vierotchka and I discussed back and forth, following the August 18th post (GOP Hypocrisy) the possibility that the Supreme Court will refuse to take up the case if it loses on appeal, which is the odds-on favourite among Constitutional scholars.
Justice Alito is not the wild card in this deck, his vote on the NSA wiretapping issue is quite predictable. No, if it goes all the way to the Supreme Court, the one to watch will be Chief Justice John Roberts. He did not vote in "Hamdan v Rumsfeld", recusing himself from the decision. There is no particular reason I can see why he would do so this time, making his the likely deciding vote.
I've speculated the Supreme Court may put discreet pressure on the Sixth Circuit Court to let the decision stand rather than overturning it, so that they won't have to make the call.
That's an outside chance, I concede - however, refusal by the Sixth Circuit to reverse would not likely be highly politicized; that's their decision to make. A reversal with the virtual certainty it'd go to the Supreme Court looks like ducking the responsibility for ruling.
A decision by the Sixth Circuit to let the judgment stand would devolve all the emotions onto the original architect, Anna Diggs Taylor.
Every major decision made in the coming weeks is going to be examined for its intent to influence the Congressional elections. Either way, as you suggest, it's going to be an interesting season!
Slightly off-topic, I know, but I had to mention it. There's a funny link here -
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/08/23/bush-a-man-of-letters/
- which suggests Bush's purported interest in Camus' "L'Étranger" has inspired enough people to call bullshit that it's attracting (probably unwelcome) attention.
I checked out the remainder of the partial list, and except for the Shakespeare (as if!!), it's pretty lightweight. However, the Carpetbagger Report (link included in the C&L report) discusses a more complete list, which includes "Nine Parts of Desire: the Hidden World of Islamic Women"!! Unless the author was Bob Guccione, I'm going to have to register skepticism.
It seems the Preznit has confused "falling asleep in a snoozie-chair with a book full of big words on your lap" and "reading".
Dante, I've often said that Bush seems to be spoiling for a Constitutional showdown. It's part of his psychological profile and, of course, he thinks the fix is in.
Oddly, however, the wild card may turn out to be Scalia, who has voted FOR privacy in the past. Most notably, he voted against the use of infra-red equipment by cops without "probable cause". "The question we confront today," explained Scalia, "is what limits there are upon [the] power of technology to shrink the realm of guaranteed privacy."
Scalia explained that the Court was making an effort at establishing a rule that would serve to protect Americans' homes from virtual police invasions made possible by a host of high-tech surveillance devices currently on the market, and those yet to come. In a footnote, Scalia briefly outlined some of the new technology that made such a broad rule necessary if the home is to remain a private sanctuary even while Big Brother arms himself with an ever-expanding array of advanced surveillance and policing tools:
The ability to "see" through walls and other opaque barriers is a clear, and scientifically feasible, goal of law enforcement research and development. The National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center, a program within the United States Department of Justice, features on its Internet Website projects that include a "Radar-Based Through-the-Wall Surveillance System," Handheld Ultrasound Through the Wall Surveillance," and a "Radar Flashlight" that "will enable law enforcement officers to detect individuals through interior building walls."
Scalia rejected the government's argument that the thermal imaging was constitutional because it was limited to detecting hot and cold areas and thus did not detect private or intimidate activities going on in Mr. Kyllo's home. Scalia drew a firm line at the door to the home: "In the home, our cases show, all details are intimate details, because the entire area is held safe from prying government eyes."
That kind of technology coupled with widespread surveillance of phone coversations would, of course, make privacy itself non-existent. Government intrusion would exceed even that envision by George Orwell.
If it goes to the Supremes (and it will), I predict Bush will go down in defeat: 5-4 with Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, and Scalia voting for individual privacy.
Moreover, every court must take the language and the reasoning of the referring court into account. Despite the right wing spin machine, Judge Taylor's decision is bullet proof.
Hey, Len; I hope you're right. Perhaps much of what I've seen (relevant to the weakness of the Taylor decision, constitutionally speaking) has been spin. However, the counter-argument relies heavily (no surprise to you, I'm sure) on the president's powers in wartime.
His claim of broad powers in his capacity as Commander-in Chief has largely been accepted, and has permitted him to override whole swatches of constitutional law. I'm not saying it's right - quite the opposite, in fact.
This is truly the line in the sand. If the Taylor decision is permitted to stand, the last flimsy screen half-obscuring the fact that the nation's highest executive is a lawbreaker and a criminal will be swept aside. The Emperor will be revealed in his nakedness.
If Madame Justice Taylor's argument is bulletproof as you suggest, it won't make it past the Sixth Circuit, and the Supreme Court will never see it. There should be no reason for the Circuit Court to reverse a wholly defensible judgment.
And then, of course, I reckon the good Justices might be intelligent enough to realize that if they give in to Bush on this one, they saw off the comfortable, cushy and lofty branch they are sitting on. Somehow, I don't see them voluntarily making themselves irrelevant and putting themselves out of the best jobs in the country.
Mark, this is not wartime for America - what war? What foreign army is the US army pitted against? An occupation is not a war, and neither is there any official war in Afghanistan - peace-keeping and occupation, however clumsy and agressive, do not qualify as waging war. The so-called "War on Terror"? It's not a war. Unless Bush engages in a real war with Iran, he is not a "War President" at all, the GOP's delusions notwithstanding.
Vierotchka, you have hit on the weak point (from the GOP viewpoint) underpinning the whole case; the validity of the "War on Terror" as a real war.
What is a real war? Has it been defined from a legal standpoint? I probably should have looked it up, then I wouldn't need to ask, but I didn't. Anybody know? Does it specifically say there must be an opposing army, or only armed conflict? You can bet it's going to come up - the White House has used variations on the theme (we're at war, this is a nation at war, I am a war president) far too many times to suggest they are just trying out the idea. They've actually done very well at getting it accepted.
Now we'll find out if it'll stand up to legal scrutiny.
Thanks, fuzzflash, for the legal blog suggestion, I'm going to check it out right now. It should have occurred to me that, with perhaps the legal case of the decade simmering, legal types would be just as abuzzz as laymen.
Vierotchka, Mark...good comments. Indeed, we are not legally at war. The question is: will the Supremes buy into Bush's argument that greater latitude must be given him because we are "at war". Without going in to detail, I found an interesting chronology of case law that suggests that Bush's measures go far beyond powers that even real war time Presidents have assumed and/or demanded of Congress. The Alien and Sedition Acts of the obvious example but the nation was, in fact, in a real war at the time. As odious as they were, the Patriot Act, arguably, exceeds them. Thomas Jefferson, who succeeded Adams, opposed them; by 1802 they were repealed or had expired.
If the case can be made that because the war was begun upon numerous and various frauds, that it was unnecessary, then the case can be made that the war time powers are, likewise, unnecessary and even unconstitutional.
Dante: I have a bottle of champagne in the fridge.
And, one day, that very bottle of champagne will be sabered by a band of "revolutionaries" beneath the statue of Voltaire in Ferney!
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
Len:
I predict Bush will go down in defeat: 5-4 with Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, and Scalia voting for individual privacy.
I would side with Mark regarding Chief Justice John Roberts: Roberts is the wild card on this one for his strict interpretation of the constitution. i agree with Len regarding scalia's staunch privacy activism, but i believe this one will prevail the homeland security side of the case, demanding higher scrutiny on American people chatting with their homies in the Middle-east.
My prediction, 5-4 against Bush's eavesdropping program with Roberts, Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, while
Scalia will write a dissent just for the hell of it...
Len, re Adelaide: I lived there for ten years some time ago. It's a beautiful city of about a million people stuck on the edge of scrubby land that drifts into the vast Australian desert. They have always had water supply problems. It attracted a lot of German settlers in the gold rushes of the 1850's, along with a number of Scots - all very capable and civilised. And the women are beautiful, Nicole Kidman lookalikes. Nicole herself was born in Hawaii but her father was related to Sir Sydney Kidman, an iconic Adelaide cattleman with holdings 1/3 the size of Texas spread out across the continent. So there's a lot of pastoral history in Adelaide. It's a lovely place but a bit isolated. It has a reputation for conservatism (of the good kind) and as a great place to raise kids. I live closer to Sydney now, but thankfully still in the countryside.
I loved Sydney, I visited there in '95 with HMCS VANCOUVER. We spent the first weekend at the Garden Island Naval Base, but the following weekend we tied up right across from the Opera House, directly under the Coathanger Bridge. It's a fabulous city, so clean for its size (at least downtown, where I was).
Unfortunately, I didn't get to see much else of Oz, although a few crew members did a bit of a road trip. They came back replete with new Aussieisms, such as "PKD's", which was slang for "Poor Kangaroo Decisions", meaning a dead kangaroo at the roadside.
I loved Australia before I ever saw it, from Neville Shute's "A Town Like Alice", one of the best books I ever read when I was younger.
"We're far away, so we're ok..." I'd never heard of "PKD's" before Mark. But there's the old favourite "don't come the raw prawn" you can say to people who are trying to sell you bullshit. Glad you enjoyed what you did. We are indeed the "lucky country", warm and wealthy and gun free. We've managed to deport almost all of our cringing soapies to the UK (as some sort of payback for the way they sent us out here) but we haven't eradicated them completely from our own screens. Visit again, Mark. You'd be most welcome.
This reminds me of Hiroshima and Nagasaky, also levelled by American-made bombs... :(
I'm sure Len would want me to point out that's "Nagasaki", after all the times you catch him in grammatic pecadilloes!
You're right, Mark! I guess I was in Russian mode... oh, and on second looks, the devastation cannot be compared, I must have been in a Russian hyperbolic mode! :)
...and you must have known that in Russian, the letter "y" represents the sound "oo". That'd make it "Nakasaku".
It's fun to pick each other up on trivia like this, because this blog oozes with intelligent folks. I just came from a blog where "abundent" is just one of a host of borderline-illiterate spelling mistakes.
On my first visit here, Len picked me up for using "criteria" when the context called for "criterion".
Re:Straits of Hormuz-If the US invades Iran we wold be totally blocked.I don't know how wide the strait is or how wide or how deep the the shipping channel is,but a couple of super tanker sunk by Iran would turn the world economy upside down.A sinking of a large barge in the Houston ship channtl plays havoc with the Port of Houston.
Mark - On my first visit here, Len picked me up for using "criteria" when the context called for "criterion". - actually, it was me (my first response ever to you!) - but I am flattered that you should confuse Len with me!
Anonymous - you're quite right. In fact, we discussed the Strait of Hormuz in the comments of past posts here on the Cowboy - if you are interested, you can find them here and here. The shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz are indeed very narrow, the rest of the Strait being too shallow save for small fishing boats. You can find a map of the Strait of Hormuz and the shipping lanes here, and there's a good entry about the Strait of Hormuz in Wikipedia - an excerpt: The strait at its narrowest is 21 miles wide, having two 1 mile wide channels for marine traffic separated by a 2 mile wide buffer zone, and is the only sea passage to the open ocean for large areas of the petroleum exporting Persian Gulf States.
No!!! Was that you, Vierotchka? I hate to make spelling mistakes, but sadly, most people don't notice.
Public education is free in North America, and there's no excuse for not being able to spell, but the proliferation of errors in modern English is nearly criminal. I wrote in to my local newspaper not long ago to tell them to stop using the word "snuck" instead of "sneaked", because as soon as you allow something incorrect to gain wide acceptance without comment, it's in the dictionary (as a colloquialism, or something like that). If you're quoting somebody and that's the way they speak, it's OK, but it's a different thing to talk like the trailer park when you are responsible for informing the public.
Anyway, your correction served its purpose, and it's a mistake I will never make again! Thanks!!!
The Straits of Hormuz are a known strategic liability, and the U.S. Navy (and likely others, but theirs is the principal interest in the region) have detailed plans for clearing the Straits in just such an emergency as described, using demolitions and clearance divers. Still, it's a symbolic threat as well, and any public perception that Iran could close the Straits would likely cause an immediate spike in the price of oil; so, mission accomplished.
Vierotchka is right on the mark with regard to the Straits. The Houston Ship Channel,however, is not nearly as wide, and, in fact, an artificial turning basin was constructed to allow ships to turn around. Additionally, "supertankers" cannot even navigate the channel. They off load at "super ports" offshore, as I recall.
Fuzzflash, indeed "Pluto" will be missed...but to dismiss its planetary status on the basis of an odd ball orbit seems as arbitrary as the criticism that it is little more than an odd shaped snow ball.
Jupiter may be the largest "planet"...but shouldn't REAL planets at least be solid? Unless I missed a new development none of the really big "planets" —Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus —are solid. And, I seem to recall, that one of them, possibly Neptune, is actually brighter than mere reflected light should be. Perhaps they are not planets at all, but failed stars.
The new definition is dodgy. The new criterion is that if gravity makes it round, its a planet —solid or no.
However, our own Luna is round AND solid. So, it's a planet.
Besides —who's to say we don't revolve about the moon rather than the other way 'round? It's all relative, after all. Remove the moon and Earth's orbit will change.
Actually, the new criterion is, "If the president says it's a planet, you're not allowed to say it isn't"
Mark - No!!! Was that you, Vierotchka?
Yes, it was me! :D
Mind you, I too have been known to make spelling mistakes, most of which are typos, but not all! I have an immense love for the English language, and whenerver I see it being bastardized, I cringe...
See - I made a typo in my post above - probably because of the medicine I take for my nerves (physical nerves, not mental/emotional ones)... :D
Oh boy...I make typos all the time, Vierotchka, you must CRINGE when you read me! LOL LOL
Mark: "If the president says it's a planet, you're not allowed to say it isn't"
Good one! He would love to be able to tell us what to think, wouldn't he? Even though he claims he doesn't care —a subtlety lost on those who do not "do nuance".
I've tried to summarize the implications of some recent events: Another Loser of Lebanon II: America
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