The son of a co-worker (not a preacher man) shot this video for a story in the Kansas City Star about the Army’s new approach to basic training:
“A greater emphasis on stretching — then toughening “core” muscles in the torso, back and buttocks — reflects just a portion of the first formal changes to basic training in three decades.”
Long jogs and jumping jacks are out…stretching, reaching and sprinting are in. As in, how fast can you get from one side of a Baghdad steet to the other? Go!
If you liked the Bourne series, you’ll enjoy Green Zone. [If you did not like the Bourne movies… why are you even reading this blog. There is nothing for you here. Hit the back button now.]
IMDB: “Discovering covert and faulty intelligence causes a U.S. Army officer to go rogue as he hunts for Weapons of Mass Destruction in an unstable region.”
I think we can scratch Green Zone from W’s Netflix queue. And if you lost a loved one in that war, you might want to skip this movie, too.
History might vindicate the Bush years but you’ll be damned hard pressed to find any movies that remember them kindly.
The movie is based on Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City.
UPDATE: Got some push-back for closing comments on this post. Do I care about the opinions of the people that read this blog. I do. But this is my blog. This is where I express myself.
If you have something to say about one of my posts and the comments are closed, just say your piece on your blog (you know, take ownership for your views, with your name and everything) and send me a link (stevemays at gmail dot com) and I’ll add it to the post.
The Hurt Locker more than lived up to its billing as an “intense” film. Black Hawk Down intense. Only the men and women who have served in Iraq (or who live there) can say how real the movie is. Real enough, I suspect.
I’m not sure the film makers had any sort of political statement to make about our presence in Iraq, but I came away thinking there is no way to win such a war. Unless the last suicide bomber blowing up the last Humvee with the last chunk of siMMtec counts as winning. Not sure what it would look like for our side.
The “can’t go home again” theme reminded me of Tommy Lee Jones’ character in Rolling Thunder. I still don’t know what to make of the brief appearances by David Morse, Ralph Fiennes and Guy Pearce.
Nobody talks about getting into a land war with China anymore but back during the Cold War, it was generally understood to be a bad idea. And someone would point out that if every Chinese man, woman and child started marching into the ocean, they’d never run out of people because of the birth rate. Which I gather is less of a problem these days.
I only bring this up in the context of more troops for Afghanistan. I don’t know if the Chinese have troops there, but they could if they wanted to. And that’s my point.
Want to find Bin Ladden? Squash the Taliban? No problem. We’ll just line up a a few million of our soldiers, about two feet apart, and walk from one end of (fill in the name of country) to the other. When one of our guys gets shot or falls in a hole, we’ll send a replacement.
Yes, it’s a dumb strategy. But not much dumber than what we’re doing. And since the Chinese leaders don’t have to worry about mid-term elections, they can skip a lot of stupid stuff. But maybe they’d do this, just to clean up our mess.
“You go home. We’ll take care of these rock piles and the whackos who live there. Fix your economy, do something about your schools, and clean up the corruption in your financial and political institutions. When you get your shit together, call us.”
From a new report called Mission: Readiness, an organization of education and military leaders:
“An alarming 75 percent of Americans ages 17 to 24 would not qualify for military service today because they are physically unfit, failed to finish high school or have criminal records. So says a new report from an organization of education and military leaders calling for immediate action on the early-education front.”
“Military recruiters in Kansas City report turning away prospective recruits “in every office, every hour, every day” for reasons including girths too large and credit ratings too low.”
“Even after signing up, 7 to 15 percent of enlistees return home for not meeting all that basic training demands.”
Scariest quote is from retired Rear Adm. James Barnett: “Our national security in the year 2030 is absolutely dependent on what’s going on in kindergarten today.”
“The Handmaid’s Tale is set in the Republic of Gilead, a country formed within the borders of what was formerly the United States of America by a racist, chauvinist, nativist, theocratic-organized military coup motivated by an ideologically-driven response to the pervasive ecological degradation of the land, widespread infertility, and attendant social dislocations. Beginning with a staged terrorist attack killing the President and ousting Congress, the coup leaders launched a revolution which overthrew the United States government and abolished the US Constitution. The new theocratic military dictatorship, styled “The Republic of Gilead”, moved quickly to consolidate its power and reorganize society along a new militarized, hierarchical, compulsorily-Christian regime of Old Testament-inspired social and religious orthodoxy among its newly-created social classes.”
Plot summary of The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood (Wikipedia). Sound familiar? Published in 1985.
My pal Mal points us to this brilliant Craig’s List ad. I’m tempted to buy the car just to meet the man (?) who wrote this.
“OK, let me start off by saying this Xterra is only available for purchase by the manliest of men (or women). My friend, if it was possible for a vehicle to sprout chest hair and a five o’clock shadow, this Nissan would look like Tom Selleck. It is just that manly.
It was never intended to drive to northstar mall so you can pick up that adorable shirt at Abercrombie & Fitch that you had your eye on. It wasn’t meant to transport you to yoga class or Bath & Body Works. No, that’s what your Prius is for. If that’s the kind of car you’re looking for, then just do us all a favor and stop reading right now. I mean it. Just stop.
This car was engineered by 3rd degree ninja super-warriors in the highest mountains of Japan to serve the needs of the man that cheats death on a daily basis. They didn’t even consider superfluous nancy boy amenities like navigation systems (real men don’t get lost), heated leather seats (a real man doesn’t let anything warm his butt), or On Star (real men don’t even know what the hell On Star is).
No, this brute comes with the things us testosterone-fueled super action junkies need. It has a 265 HP engine to outrun the cops. It’s got special blood/gore resistant upholstery. It even has a first-aid kit in the back. You know what the first aid kit has in it? A pint of whiskey, a stitch-your-own-wound kit and a hunk of leather to bite down on when you’re operating on yourself. The Xterra also has an automatic transmission so if you’re being chased by Libyan terrorists, you’ll still be able to shoot your machine gun out the window and drive at the same time. It’s saved my bacon more than once.
It has room for you and the four hotties you picked up on the way to the gym to blast your pecs and hammer your glutes. There’s a tow hitch to pull your 50 caliber anti-Taliban, self cooling machine gun. I also just put in a new windshield to replace the one that got shot out by The Man.
My price on this bad boy is an incredibly low $10,900, but I’ll entertain reasonable offers. And by reasonable, I mean don’t walk up and tell me you’ll give me $5,000 for it. That’s liable to earn you a Burmese-roundhouse-sphincter-kick with a follow up three fingered eye-jab. Would it hurt? Hell yeah. Let’s just say you won’t be the prettiest guy at the Coldplay concert anymore.
There’s only 69,000 miles on this four-wheeled hellcat from Planet Kickass. Trust me, it will outlive you and the offspring that will carry your name. It will live on as a monument to your machismo.
Now, go look in the mirror and tell me what you see. If it’s a rugged, no holds barred, super brute he-man macho Chuck Norris stunt double, then contact me. I might be out hang-gliding or BASE jumping or just chilling with my ladies, but I’ll get back to you. And when I do, we’ll talk about a price over a nice glass of Schmidt while we listen to Johnny Cash.
To sweeten the deal a little, I’m throwing in this pair of MC Hammer pants for the man with rippling quads that can’t fit into regular pants. Yeah, you heard me. FREE MC Hammer pants. Rock on.”
Thanks to Melody and Nathan for treating us to the powerful documentary Burma VJ, part of Columbia, MO’s True/False Film Festival.
“A tense suspense thriller in the guise of a new-form political documentary, begins in 1988, when Burma’s military junta brutally shot and killed 3,000 demonstrators, imprisoned opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and outlawed independent journalism. In the years since, the Democratic Voice of Burma, a “television station in exile,” has begun sneaking images of the repression out of the country. Using cheap handicams, cell phones, short-wave radio and satellite feeds, the DVB transmits startling footage across the globe, fueling international outrage against the totalitarian government. When the nation’s Buddhist monks decide to take to the streets in September 2007, joined by tens of thousands of students, the DVB was there, allowing the world to watch both this event and its brutal aftermath. A testament to the courage of journalists and a cautionary tale for dictators, Burma VJ is truly inspiring.”
Nathan figured I’d enjoy this film because he reads this blog and knows I’m interested in journalism/media/video. And he was right. This story grabbed me from the beginning.
If I could ask one of the generals who control Burma just one question, it would be: Which is the greater threat to your dictatorship, guns or video cameras?
At the end of the film, the director, Anders Ostergaard, talked about the film and the audience was invited to donate money that would be used to buy more and smaller cameras for the DVB (smaller cameras are less likely to be discovered).
I take for granted that I can take a photograph, shoot some video or make an audio recording in any public place. And then publish it here for the world to see. I’ll try to remember there are others risking their lives and freedom to do so. One of my favorite lines from the film: “Those who are not afraid to die,come to the front.”
I assume Burma VD will be available on DVD, if it’s not already. I encourage you to watch it.
Just finished reading a very long piece on the Bush administration in Vanity Fair. Almost 40 pages printed from their website. It reads like a very depressing, but gripping, novel. Painful but hard to put down. I’m posting here because I don’t consider this politics. If you don’t want to wait for The Golden Bush Years chapter in the 2080 history books, read this Vanity Fair account. Sort of a high colonic to start the year off clean. A few nuggets from the final page:
“Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell: As my boss [Colin Powell] once said, Bush had a lot of .45-caliber instincts, cowboy instincts. Cheney knew exactly how to polish him and rub him. He knew exactly when to give him a memo or when to do this or when to do that and exactly the word choice to use to get him really excited.
Bob Graham, Democratic senator from Florida and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee: One of our difficulties now is getting the rest of the world to accept our assessment of the seriousness of an issue, because they say, You screwed it up so badly with Iraq, why would we believe that you’re any better today? And it’s a damn hard question to answer.
Meanwhile, the Taliban and al-Qaeda have relocated, have strengthened, have become a more nimble and a much more international organization. The threat is greater today than it was on September the 11th.
David Kuo, deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives: It’s kind of like the Tower of Babel. At a certain point in time, God smites hubris. You knew that right around the time people started saying there’s going to be a permanent Republican majority—that God kinda goes, No, I really don’t think so.”
