From Cougar at CasaDelGato.Com Wed Jul 1 09:08:49 2009 From: Cougar at CasaDelGato.Com (John G. Lussmyer) Date: Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:08:49 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] More Global Warming "Science"? In-Reply-To: <657D539C7F8341DB989BB5D16E48D8C4@exotica> References: <657D539C7F8341DB989BB5D16E48D8C4@exotica> Message-ID: <4A4B6DF1.5020509@CasaDelGato.Com> From another list I'm on: Rune wrote: > Polar bear expert barred by global warmists > > Mitchell Taylor, who has studied the animals for 30 years, was told his views 'are extremely unhelpful' , reveals > Christopher Booker > ..... > Dr Taylor was told that his views running "counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful". His signing of the Manhattan Declaration - a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents - was "inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG". > > > http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5664069/Polar-bear-expert-barred-by-global-warmists.html > I've been seeing multiple reports of similar things happening. Are there that many "science" groups setting their agendas based on politics? Or am I completely missing something? From bentley at crenelle.com Mon Jul 6 23:10:07 2009 From: bentley at crenelle.com (Michael Brian Bentley) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 21:10:07 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] More Global Warming "Science"? In-Reply-To: <4A4B6DF1.5020509@CasaDelGato.Com> References: <657D539C7F8341DB989BB5D16E48D8C4@exotica> <4A4B6DF1.5020509@CasaDelGato.Com> Message-ID: >http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5664069/Polar-bear-expert-barred-by-global-warmists.html > > >I've been seeing multiple reports of similar things happening. >Are there that many "science" groups setting their agendas based on politics? >Or am I completely missing something? Sure. There are lots of idiots out there. From ben at bl.com Tue Jul 7 01:15:21 2009 From: ben at bl.com (Ben Liberman) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2009 01:15:21 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] More Global Warming "Science"? In-Reply-To: References: <657D539C7F8341DB989BB5D16E48D8C4@exotica> <4A4B6DF1.5020509@CasaDelGato.Com> Message-ID: At 9:10 PM -0700 7/6/09, Michael Brian Bentley wrote: >Replies are directed to the list. >If you wish to respond only to the sender, please edit the To: line! >____________________________________________________________ >>http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5664069/Polar-bear-expert-barred-by-global-warmists.html >> > >>I've been seeing multiple reports of similar things happening. > >Are there that many "science" groups setting their agendas based on politics? >>Or am I completely missing something? > >Sure. There are lots of idiots out there. and don't forget the "science" groups that are setting their agendas based on corporate sponsorship religious bias clutching desperately to the now outmoded theory that they based their research on and upon which their chance at tenure depends I am sure that you can come up with "science" group sub-genres of your own... -- ------------------------------ ben at BL.COM Ben Liberman ------------------------------ From mbcrui at gmail.com Fri Jul 10 15:20:28 2009 From: mbcrui at gmail.com (Mary Cruickshank Peed) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:20:28 -0400 Subject: [Goglog] Honest to god. Message-ID: <4A57A28C.4040307@gmail.com> CNN is reporting as a straight news story, that "Psychics see magic in Michael Jackson's life". What is news reporting coming to? I mean, I expect that kind of crap from the Weekly World Reader, but CNN? Aren't they supposed to be journalists? http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/07/10/michael.jackson.psychics/index.html?eref=rss_topstories *headdesk* Mary -- -- Mary Cruickshank Peed We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong. - Sir Arthur Eddington From wtwilson3 at gmail.com Fri Jul 10 16:58:40 2009 From: wtwilson3 at gmail.com (Bill Wilson) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:58:40 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] Honest to god. In-Reply-To: <4A57A28C.4040307@gmail.com> References: <4A57A28C.4040307@gmail.com> Message-ID: <2b35aaaf0907101458i2c57cb9dibaa145ca8cc05224@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 Mary Cruickshank Peed wrote: > I mean, I expect that kind of crap from the Weekly World > Reader, but CNN? ?Aren't they supposed to be journalists? Wow, I'm a 5 too. I must be just like M.J. I'm so lucky. I wonder what Nancy Reagan's astrologer thinks. -- Bill Wilson "Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence." -- Leonard 'Bones' McCoy From jazz at qnet.com Fri Jul 10 21:13:25 2009 From: jazz at qnet.com (Bill Taylor) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:13:25 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 Message-ID: <200907110216.n6B2FwO9024248@mail.zarquon.net> Cecil is based in Chicago. Anyone of you heard of any more about this? Bill Taylor >THE STRAIGHT DOPE 07/03/2009 >www.straightdope.com > >Dear Cecil: > >I recently read a speech by Noam Chomsky in which he says that >during the Vietnam war "soldiers were fragging officers." I, a man >too young to have served in that conflict, have heard this before >but thought it was just a rumor. Can you shed some light on this >dark matter? Tom, Chicago > >~~~~~~ >ANNOUNCING STRAIGHT DOPE CHICAGO! >Cecil Adams has opened up a second front in the struggle against >ignorance - and what more fitting place than his hometown of >Chicago? We thought even non-Chicagoans would enjoy his Straight >Dope Chicago column - it's the last item in this mailing. >chicago.straightdope.com/index.php >~~~~~~ > >Cecil replies: > >I can, but frankly not much and in my opinion, that's a story all by itself. > >Fragging assaulting a superior officer using a fragmentation grenade >or other explosive was surprisingly common during the Vietnam war. >The most reliable figure is 730 suspected incidents from 1969 >through 1971, much higher than in U.S. wars before or since. Oddly, >theres no official count of fragging deaths; one unofficial source >says 86, another 45. > >Prior to Vietnam, assaults against U.S. military officers were rare. >World War I saw one incident leading to court martial per 12,700 >servicemen, a ratio said to have remained fairly steady during World >War II and the Korean war. During the Vietnam conflict, the fragging >rate rose from 1 incident per 3,300 servicemen in 1969 to a peak of >1 per 572 servicemen in 1971. > >Few Vietnam fragging cases went to trial, so . . . > >For more, see: >www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2877/did-soldiers-really-frag-officers-in-vietnam From SteveG at swhi.net Fri Jul 10 21:26:01 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:26:01 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <200907110216.n6B2FwO9024248@mail.zarquon.net> References: <200907110216.n6B2FwO9024248@mail.zarquon.net> Message-ID: <64D020FA83B94555A55B61E49C4BC782@StevePC> Bill Taylor says: > Cecil is based in Chicago. Anyone of you heard of any more > about this? Not sure what you mean. About fragging? Not statistics, but generally, sure. It was a pretty well known phenomenon at the time (late in the war). It was widely known - as popular lore, that is - that this was done to gung-ho or reckless officers by troops who didn't want to be thrown away in a war they knew they could never win. Returning veterans talked about it widely, usually without specifics. The article looks pretty well researched and the guesses look sound from what little I know (or think I know). - Steve G From jazz at qnet.com Fri Jul 10 22:10:45 2009 From: jazz at qnet.com (Bill Taylor) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:10:45 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <64D020FA83B94555A55B61E49C4BC782@StevePC> References: <200907110216.n6B2FwO9024248@mail.zarquon.net> <64D020FA83B94555A55B61E49C4BC782@StevePC> Message-ID: <200907110311.n6B3Bw9q030574@mail.zarquon.net> At 21:26 7/10/2009 -0500, Steve Gruenwald wrote: >Bill Taylor says: > > > Cecil is based in Chicago. Anyone of you heard of any more > > about this? > >Not sure what you mean. About fragging? Not statistics, >but generally, sure. It was a pretty well known phenomenon >at the time (late in the war). It was widely known - as >popular lore, that is - that this was done to gung-ho or >reckless officers by troops who didn't want to be thrown >away in a war they knew they could never win. Returning >veterans talked about it widely, usually without specifics. >The article looks pretty well researched and the guesses >look sound from what little I know (or think I know). I was wondering if his article had dredged up any local stories about incidents, or maybe some better research. Bill Taylor From ben at bl.com Sat Jul 11 00:01:00 2009 From: ben at bl.com (Ben Liberman) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:01:00 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <200907110216.n6B2FwO9024248@mail.zarquon.net> References: <200907110216.n6B2FwO9024248@mail.zarquon.net> Message-ID: At 7:13 PM -0700 7/10/09, Bill Taylor wrote: >Cecil is based in Chicago. Anyone of you heard of any more about this? > >Bill Taylor > >>THE STRAIGHT DOPE 07/03/2009 >>www.straightdope.com >> >>Dear Cecil: >> >>I recently read a speech by Noam Chomsky in which he says that > >during the Vietnam war "soldiers were fragging officers." It was common for stories about fragging to circulate in Vietnam at the time. As far as I know, one of my commanding officers ended up this way. He was a spit'n'polish officer who wore knife-edge creased, starched fatigues, and very shiny boots, and didn't take kindly to being disregarded. I heard that he was later stationed as an officer on China Beach and all of the grunts under him were battle hardened, long hairs, who were pretty much done with being "soldiers". The story goes that he tried to make them toe the line (which would have been a very unwise choice on his part) and that they did him in. You really don't want to piss off a bunch of guys who just spent a year, out in the field, killing and being killed, just because their country told them to. At that point they tend not to place a great of value on any single human life. At the time and place it seemed like "normal" behavior which was one of the reasons that I quit. -- ------------------------------ ben at BL.COM Ben Liberman ------------------------------ From bentley at crenelle.com Sat Jul 11 00:21:33 2009 From: bentley at crenelle.com (Michael Brian Bentley) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:21:33 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: References: <200907110216.n6B2FwO9024248@mail.zarquon.net> Message-ID: This may be one the foremost of reasons why the military is currently all-volunteer. From sarahksmom at yahoo.com Sat Jul 11 02:28:05 2009 From: sarahksmom at yahoo.com (sarahksmom) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:28:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 Message-ID: <419210.87115.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> --- On Sat, 7/11/09, Michael Brian Bentley wrote: > This may be one the foremost of reasons why the military is > currently > all-volunteer. It appears they're more likely to commit suicide or murder their spouses than their superiors. Miriam Solon "Things are not as they seem; nor are they otherwise." --Shakyamuni Buddha, "Lankavatara Sutra" From notification+pdvp~-jm at facebookmail.com Sat Jul 11 07:26:18 2009 From: notification+pdvp~-jm at facebookmail.com (Facebook) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 05:26:18 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] Andrew Peed invited you to join the group "Demagogue Dialogue"... Message-ID: Andrew invited you to join the Facebook group "Demagogue Dialogue". Andrew says, "For grins and giggles, I created a (secret) Facebook group for GogLog. Feel free to join if you like!". To see more details and confirm this group invitation, follow the link below: http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=560258207&k=Z41ZYWQS4WYCUC1BPJZTQQX Facebook helps you find and keep in touch with family, friends and colleagues. You can share unlimited photos, plan events and join discussion groups. It's free and everyone can join. To register, go to: http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=560258207&k=Z41ZYWQS4WYCUC1BPJZTQQX&r If you're receiving this email and are already a member of Facebook, please make sure this email address is associated with your Facebook account. Thanks, Demagogue Dialogue ___________________ goglog at zarquon.net was invited to join Facebook by Andrew Peed. If you do not wish to receive this type of email from Facebook in the future, please click on the link below to unsubscribe. http://www.facebook.com/o.php?c&k=0ffa4d&u=1421858059&mid=c28218G54bfd50bG420b6dG6 Facebook's offices are located at 1601 S. California Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94304. From jazz at qnet.com Sat Jul 11 09:51:51 2009 From: jazz at qnet.com (Bill Taylor) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 07:51:51 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] Andrew Peed invited you to join the group "Demagogue Dialogue"... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200907111547.n6BFlOjo018780@mail.zarquon.net> At 05:26 7/11/2009 -0700, Facebook wrote: >Andrew invited you to join the Facebook group "Demagogue Dialogue". > >Andrew says, "For grins and giggles, I created a (secret) Facebook >group for GogLog. Feel free to join if you like!". You mean you want me to LOOK at you all TOO? Bill Taylor From ben at bl.com Sat Jul 11 10:50:44 2009 From: ben at bl.com (Ben Liberman) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:50:44 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: References: <200907110216.n6B2FwO9024248@mail.zarquon.net> Message-ID: At 10:21 PM -0700 7/10/09, Michael Brian Bentley wrote: >This may be one the foremost of reasons why the military is currently >all-volunteer. Even so, when dealing with a bunch of people who spend a significant amount of their time "killing the enemy", it is probably not a good idea to act in ways that will cause you to be identified, in their minds, as "the enemy". People tend to generalize, and the process of "threat assessment" doesn't end just 'cause you are not on an active battlefield that day. Most people playing WOW should come to the same conclusion after a few bad encounters, but in real life you don't get to learn from your mistakes in cases like this. -- ------------------------------ ben at BL.COM Ben Liberman ------------------------------ From par at richinn.com Sat Jul 11 11:47:36 2009 From: par at richinn.com (Peter Richardson) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:47:36 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] Andrew Peed invited you to join the group "Demagogue Dialogue"... In-Reply-To: <200907111547.n6BFlOjo018780@mail.zarquon.net> References: <200907111547.n6BFlOjo018780@mail.zarquon.net> Message-ID: <6.2.5.6.2.20090711114718.041e5f38@richinn.com> At 09:51 AM 7/11/2009, Bill Taylor wrote: >At 05:26 7/11/2009 -0700, Facebook wrote: > > >Andrew invited you to join the Facebook group "Demagogue Dialogue". > > > >Andrew says, "For grins and giggles, I created a (secret) Facebook > >group for GogLog. Feel free to join if you like!". > >You mean you want me to LOOK at you all TOO? What is facebook? From wtwilson3 at gmail.com Sat Jul 11 11:56:08 2009 From: wtwilson3 at gmail.com (Bill Wilson) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:56:08 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] Andrew Peed invited you to join the group "Demagogue Dialogue"... In-Reply-To: <6.2.5.6.2.20090711114718.041e5f38@richinn.com> References: <200907111547.n6BFlOjo018780@mail.zarquon.net> <6.2.5.6.2.20090711114718.041e5f38@richinn.com> Message-ID: <2b35aaaf0907110956m51417a3eg34ab92462ae113ca@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 Peter Richardson wrote: > What is facebook? It's something the "in" kids do. My mom won't let me. -- Bill Wilson P.S. If you play Farm Town, friend me and send me cows. From sarahksmom at yahoo.com Sat Jul 11 16:03:03 2009 From: sarahksmom at yahoo.com (sarahksmom at yahoo.com) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:03:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 Message-ID: <223993.35120.qm@web58706.mail.re1.yahoo.com> >> At 10:21 PM -0700 7/10/09, Michael Brian Bentley wrote: > > This may be one the foremost of reasons why the > > military is currently all-volunteer. > --- On Sat, 7/11/09, Ben Liberman wrote: > Even so, when dealing with a bunch of people who spend a > significant amount of their time "killing the enemy", it is > probably not a good idea to act in ways that will cause you > to be identified, in their minds, as "the enemy"... I wonder if this kind of violence (I'll call it displaced aggression for want of something better) has become more common and/or more extreme with each succeeding war, and, if so is it because of changing motives for U.S. engagement in combat, changes in the way enlistees are deployed, a more widespread cultural shift. I've been thinking about this for a long time from the perspective of a WWII vet's daughter, a neighbor to sons of Vietnam era combat troops whose fathers are absent (either KIA or absent from home after returning from the war); but not having as much contact with Korean war vets, or people who served in Iraq I or the current mess. I don't know if every WWII vet came back as screwed up as my father, but I wonder. It's like his social development was arrested at 19, and that's where he is at 86. I'm sure other factors in his back story went into it, but that's the age he was when he shipped out to Europe. The point is, everybody has a back story, and the ones that are predisposed to mental fragility by genetics and/or nurture are not going to come out of a war unscathed. But, AFAIK, as violent as my father could be, he never came close to killing anybody he didn't have orders to kill. What I'm wondering is: is it worse now than it was for WWII combat troops? Are today's troops coming out at greater risk of serious mental illness, in a more violent frame of mind? Is displaced aggression more common, more intense? Or is it that the reporting is better? Or some combination of all of the above? There was always the legend that the foot soldier gangsters of the 1920's were mainly returning WWI vets who were repatriated with some sophisticated firearms, had no jobs to return to, and a lot of hostility. Is that true? If so, what can we look forward to with our current crop of vets? What, if anything, is in place for them to keep that from happening? Miriam Solon "Things are not as they seem; nor are they otherwise." --Shakyamuni Buddha, "Lankavatara Sutra" From jazz at qnet.com Sat Jul 11 16:51:42 2009 From: jazz at qnet.com (Bill Taylor) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:51:42 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <223993.35120.qm@web58706.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <223993.35120.qm@web58706.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200907112154.n6BLsS7l028073@mail.zarquon.net> At 14:03 7/11/2009 -0700, sarahksmom at yahoo.com wrote: >Replies are directed to the list. >If you wish to respond only to the sender, please edit the To: line! >____________________________________________________________ > > >> At 10:21 PM -0700 7/10/09, Michael Brian Bentley wrote: > > > This may be one the foremost of reasons why the > > > military is currently all-volunteer. > > >--- On Sat, 7/11/09, Ben Liberman wrote: > > > Even so, when dealing with a bunch of people who spend a > > significant amount of their time "killing the enemy", it is > > probably not a good idea to act in ways that will cause you > > to be identified, in their minds, as "the enemy"... > >I wonder if this kind of violence (I'll call it displaced aggression >for want of something better) has become more common and/or more >extreme with each succeeding war, and, if so is it because of >changing motives for U.S. engagement in combat, changes in the way >enlistees are deployed, a more widespread cultural shift. > >I've been thinking about this for a long time from the perspective >of a WWII vet's daughter, a neighbor to sons of Vietnam era combat >troops whose fathers are absent (either KIA or absent from home >after returning from the war); but not having as much contact with >Korean war vets, or people who served in Iraq I or the current mess. > >I don't know if every WWII vet came back as screwed up as my father, >but I wonder. It's like his social development was arrested at 19, >and that's where he is at 86. I'm sure other factors in his back >story went into it, but that's the age he was when he shipped out to >Europe. The point is, everybody has a back story, and the ones that >are predisposed to mental fragility by genetics and/or nurture are >not going to come out of a war unscathed. But, AFAIK, as violent as >my father could be, he never came close to killing anybody he didn't >have orders to kill. > >What I'm wondering is: is it worse now than it was for WWII combat >troops? Are today's troops coming out at greater risk of serious >mental illness, in a more violent frame of mind? Is displaced >aggression more common, more intense? Or is it that the reporting is >better? Or some combination of all of the above? > >There was always the legend that the foot soldier gangsters of the >1920's were mainly returning WWI vets who were repatriated with some >sophisticated firearms, had no jobs to return to, and a lot of >hostility. Is that true? If so, what can we look forward to with our >current crop of vets? What, if anything, is in place for them to >keep that from happening? I don't think so. Every military member will experience the war differently. They may see or participate in some very bad things, or they may never get very close to any of it. but in any case, how they react to what has happened, and what they carry away with them for the long term is going to be influenced by so many things I don't think you could characterize them as a group at all. The cases of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder tend to be the most obvious. Everybody, including themselves, can see they were screwed up by something severe. The people that treat that sort of thing right after the incident, or after it manifests later say that taking the stress out of the memory is the key to the problem. How it is done varies, but once the memory is defanged, most of the side effects can be extincted too. For people that don't rise to the level of PTSD, but still have trouble with events, it is more problematic. Mostly because they are still screwed up, but less likely to seek or receive treatment. So they ignore it and suffer, or do some kind of accommodation to deal with the situation. That may or may not go very well for them and the people around them. the result is they were "changed" by the war. But in what way? Not necessarily more violently. They could as easily become anti-social hermits, or more solicitous and charitable, or avoid decision making, or any of a hundred things that keeps them from triggering uncomfortable feelings or memories. To me it is just too easy to say war is violent, therefore anyone who goes through one will be more violent forever. It might be true for some, but nothing like that would universally apply. Some people (many, most) will put their experiences in context, integrate it into their lives, and be able to deal with it. How they experience the trauma, and how it is handled during and after will make a huge difference. And their personal makeup of course figures into it. And remember, it is a wide spectrum of experience, even for an individual, over the course of their service. The most psychologically traumatic thing that happens to a person may not be a thing that happens to them personally. I know the things my own father mentions about WW2 and Korea is not so much what happened to him, but coming back to camp and finding another guy in his unit was killed. On the other hand, one of my neighbors would get to thinking about D-Day and head for the beer fridge. My father's older brother, also in WW2 as a combat engineer, was pretty much an alcoholic through the end of his life. In high school, I found out my world history teacher had been at Pearl Harbor on Dec 7 '41 (to see him then, you'd never guess he could fit through a hatch), and he had been a music teacher before that. He was a bit of a control freak, but you could see him stop and do a quick five count before calling out any discipline on class. Obviously there are five million more stories like that out there. It is just too hard to pin one set of behaviors to any particular event early in life until long after the fact, when you can dissect it in detail. Then you can see how a life worth of experience integrated to get that person to that one point. As for worse now than then, it isn't directly comparable. Again they all experience it differently. Something in 1944 might be awful for a person with 1944 sensibilities, and something in 1991 might be awful for someone with 1991 sensibilities. Switch the people and you'd have a mess, but they wouldn't necessarily come out better or worse, just different. Bill Taylor From ben at bl.com Sat Jul 11 18:42:27 2009 From: ben at bl.com (Ben Liberman) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:42:27 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <223993.35120.qm@web58706.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <223993.35120.qm@web58706.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: At 2:03 PM -0700 7/11/09, sarahksmom at yahoo.com wrote: >I wonder if this kind of violence (I'll call it displaced aggression for want of something better) has become more common and/or more extreme with each succeeding war, and, if so is it because of changing motives for U.S. engagement in combat, changes in the way enlistees are deployed, a more widespread cultural shift. People tend to adapt to their surroundings and may take on local values as long as they do not severely compromise the underlying value structure. Some values are more flexible (what do I prefer for breakfast) and some less so (lying/stealing/killing is not ok). The greater they contribute to a perceived threat, the more likely they are to shift so that you can survive. The shift takes time. Moving into a war zone, if you don't shift fast enough you may go crazy or die. I would have to call it a worst case scenario for on-the-job training. Coming back from a war zone, if you don't shift fast enough you may go crazy, or end up in jail, or hurt someone that you love, or someone else may die. >There was always the legend that the foot soldier gangsters of the 1920's were mainly returning WWI vets who were repatriated with some sophisticated firearms, had no jobs to return to, and a lot of hostility. Is that true? I would change "hostility" to "expressed frustration due to perceived lack of options". They were not "just angry", they had social pressures requiring them to survive in a money based society without opportunity. > If so, what can we look forward to with our current crop of vets? Some people, who have been trained to be professionally violent, with no other real training, dumped into civilian life to sink or swim. Some will end up with jobs and families, some in jail, some dead by their hand or others, some in mental institutions. I would guess that this is the same pattern for most wars. Less so for some after WWII and Korea because of the GI bill. Not quite as good for Viet Nam. Probably much worse for the current crop due to the gutting of the GI bill. >What, if anything, is in place for them to keep that from happening? Not much. PS - much of this heavily influenced by personal experience - call it autobiographical -- ------------------------------ ben at BL.COM Ben Liberman ------------------------------ From bentley at crenelle.com Sun Jul 12 01:44:25 2009 From: bentley at crenelle.com (Michael Brian Bentley) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 23:44:25 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: References: <223993.35120.qm@web58706.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I think one big difference between 21st century wars and previous centuries is simply that more people last longer. We (in the industrialized countries) are also more aware of things, lots and lots of things. I can type a random string of characters into a wikipedia search field and read, however accurately that page is written (that area 51 page is interesting), about something that would have taken me a week at the library just two decades ago. So we know better the effects of war on people. From sarahksmom at yahoo.com Sun Jul 12 02:33:01 2009 From: sarahksmom at yahoo.com (sarahksmom) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:33:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 Message-ID: <798607.36359.qm@web58702.mail.re1.yahoo.com> --- On Sun, 7/12/09, Michael Brian Bentley wrote: > I think one big difference between 21st century wars and previous > centuries is simply that more people last longer. > > We ... are also more aware ... I can type a ... string of characters into > a wikipedia search field and read... about something that would have > taken me a week at the library just two decades ago. > > So we know better the effects of war on people. I'd like to suggest other technology-related factors that frankly scare the bejeebers out of me: alienation from human empathy via surgical strikes, push-button warfare, aerial drone attacks, rhetorical obfuscations designed to desensitize people about violence--not just in the military. collateral damage (like accidentally knocking down a temporary cardboard display shelf at a supermarket) casualties (can't be serious because they're casual) surgical strike (like removing a wart, minimal damage to surrounding tissues) neutralize (like Glade neutralizes unpleasant odors) hard target (it's the bad guys, and we get points toward a kewpie doll for hitting it) IED (didn't the FDA take those off the market?) carpet bombing (sounds like you can order it from 800-588-2300 Empire, today!) Nevermind all the trivialization and sanitization of violence on TV and in the movies, etc. The latest trend that alarms me is the dissection of corpses on TV crime dramas. It isn't sanitized, but it certainly is desensitized. In Oneness, Miriam Solon "Things are not as they seem; nor are they otherwise." --Shakyamuni Buddha, "Lankavatara Sutra" From jazz at qnet.com Sun Jul 12 07:38:30 2009 From: jazz at qnet.com (Bill Taylor) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 05:38:30 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <798607.36359.qm@web58702.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <798607.36359.qm@web58702.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200907121246.n6CCk6FX001290@mail.zarquon.net> At 00:33 7/12/2009 -0700, sarahksmom wrote: >Replies are directed to the list. >If you wish to respond only to the sender, please edit the To: line! >____________________________________________________________ > >--- On Sun, 7/12/09, Michael Brian Bentley wrote: > > > I think one big difference between 21st century wars and previous > > centuries is simply that more people last longer. > > > > We ... are also more aware ... I can type a ... string of characters into > > a wikipedia search field and read... about something that would have > > taken me a week at the library just two decades ago. > > > > So we know better the effects of war on people. > >I'd like to suggest other technology-related factors that frankly >scare the bejeebers out of me: alienation from human empathy via >surgical strikes, push-button warfare, aerial drone attacks, >rhetorical obfuscations designed to desensitize people about >violence--not just in the military. That may be an effect you as a civilian experience in front of your TV. But the people that actually handle the weapons, fly the aircraft, set up the artillery, pull the triggers, and analyze the data to prepare the briefings and plan the next mission aren't distanced from any of this. They have the bad news literally at their fingertips. >collateral damage (like accidentally knocking down a temporary >cardboard display shelf at a supermarket) >casualties (can't be serious because they're casual) >surgical strike (like removing a wart, minimal damage to surrounding tissues) >neutralize (like Glade neutralizes unpleasant odors) >hard target (it's the bad guys, and we get points toward a kewpie >doll for hitting it) >IED (didn't the FDA take those off the market?) >carpet bombing (sounds like you can order it from 800-588-2300 Empire, today!) > >Nevermind all the trivialization and sanitization of violence on TV >and in the movies, etc. The latest trend that alarms me is the >dissection of corpses on TV crime dramas. It isn't sanitized, but it >certainly is desensitized. Not that I agree with your premise, but are you suggesting it would be better for the workings of the world to remain a mystery to people? The TV science CSI style is far from reality, but the typical complaint is that it is too realistic and thus disgusting. As for the terminology, you have to call the stuff something. A compact way to refer to complex subjects, so that every briefing doesn't turn into an extended discourse. Or it remains "that stuff over there", "that other different stuff over that way". You may disagree with the reasoning *behind* what they are saying and how we were lead that way. But that is different from disagreeing with the actual content, and in any case you still need a way to talk about the subject. They say there is some power in controlling the language of discourse, and thus we see politicians playing gotcha with various catch phrases, but in the end you still need to find a way to discuss. Bill Taylor From otter42 at gmail.com Sun Jul 12 08:08:19 2009 From: otter42 at gmail.com (Liana Winsauer) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:08:19 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] Andrew Peed invited you to join the group "Demagogue Dialogue"... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <97fc910b0907120608s49c8bca8vc749c4e47c8a5ed4@mail.gmail.com> Gmail is warning me that the message may not really be from who it appears. So, who's using Andy as a sockpuppet? Lon From sarahksmom at yahoo.com Sun Jul 12 09:45:32 2009 From: sarahksmom at yahoo.com (sarahksmom) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 07:45:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] Andrew Peed invited you to join the group "Demagogue Dialogue"... Message-ID: <628525.46772.qm@web58704.mail.re1.yahoo.com> --- On Sun, 7/12/09, Liana Winsauer wrote: > Gmail is warning me that the message may not really be from > who it > appears. So, who's using Andy as a sockpuppet? > > Lon The message was sent via Facebook. It's legit. Miriam Solon "Things are not as they seem; nor are they otherwise." --Shakyamuni Buddha, "Lankavatara Sutra" From sarahksmom at yahoo.com Sun Jul 12 09:46:28 2009 From: sarahksmom at yahoo.com (sarahksmom) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 07:46:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 Message-ID: <217191.36959.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> --- On Sun, 7/12/09, Bill Taylor wrote: > Not that I agree with your premise, but are you suggesting it would > be better for the workings of the world to remain a mystery to > people? The TV science CSI style is far from reality, but the > typical complaint is that it is too realistic and thus disgusting. I think I was not clear on the autopsy bit, but you inadvertently helped me make my point. I've never witnessed a shooting or a fatal accident or an autopsy. I'm not surprised that the dissections shown on tv are as unrealistic as the violence. The first movie I ever saw that took this subject head-on was "Little Big Man" in the scene where Wild Bill Hickock explains the damage one of the bullets he fired did to someone he'd just shot dead. I'm not saying it was the first realistic movie violence ever shown. It was the first I had seen where the impact of a gunshot wound was discussed. The autopsies on "Bones" and "CSI" are educational about violence, perhaps in the same way as Wild Bill's lecture demonstration was. My objection is not to the presence of dead bodies, but to the overuse of sanitized visuals to such an extent that it desensitizes or alienates people. Do people involved in the deployment of attack drones and high altitude manned bombing missions really connect their work with death and maiming of human beings, with the sights, smells and sounds that are unleashed when a bomb hits? Or is it like a video game to them because of its remoteness and mediation through computer graphics? That's the common myth in circulation. There was a movie that came out a few years ago, "A Long Engagement," set in WWI. It had a pretty graphic run of scenes of trench warfare juxtaposed with the indifference of privileged French civilians whose lives were far removed from battlefields (especially the parents who were able to pull strings to keep their sons out of the draft). I was freaked out watching it, and my kid said, "Relax, Ma, it's only a movie." That remark was more disturbing than the movie. I had to explain to her that it was a movie about real events and that her attitude was more like that of those people who gamed the system. It wasn't until Vietnam that American civilians had any idea of how wartime violence looks. Most of us don't know how it smells or what it really sounds like. And the news media have backed away from showing the level of detail that was on display during the Vietnam war. I remember reading someone's account of his body's involuntary reaction to the sound of gunfire in combat. He crapped himself. And he went on to say he never stopped crapping himself, including in civilian life when he heard a sound that resembled gunfire. I asked my father about that, because he hadn't gone into that kind of detail about his combat experiences. He confirmed it for me. He told me the uniform was designed so that he could shake the crap out of his pants legs. I have yet to see that shown in a movie. One of my father's biggest gripes about my mother is that she doesn't have a clue about what went on during the war. The movie "The Best Years of our Lives" centers on that disconnect between returning combat troops and their stateside non-combatant families. Understandably, my father is reluctant to talk about the more horrific things he experienced, and I apologize to any of you reading this who find it disturbing (this whole discussion makes me feel sad and tired), but I think we would have benefited as a family, and as a society, from having someone educate the rest of us about it. Returning combat troops shouldn't have deal with this stuff in isolation, even if they never discuss it directly with their own families. I asked my father about the way the war was described in "Catch 22." He said it was pretty realistic. I asked him if he found any parts of the book funny, and he said something that surprised me then, but I get it now. He said, "I didn't laugh at anything in that book. I cried through the whole thing." My father is not known for his crying. I never saw him cry. He's only told me about two or three instances where he did cry, but I've never seen it. Is that something the war taught him... or just the general "rules" for guys, I wonder. I have to think that swallowing that much grief can't be good for anybody. The only way I can put up with my pop, at all (and this is only a recently unfolding lesson for me), is to remind myself that he never advanced beyond 19, and why that is so. I'm quite worried that we're going to have another similarly socially disabled wave of vets, and that one of our critical jobs as unaware civilians is to make ourselves aware. Miriam Solon "Things are not as they seem; nor are they otherwise." --Shakyamuni Buddha, "Lankavatara Sutra" From wtwilson3 at gmail.com Sun Jul 12 10:11:37 2009 From: wtwilson3 at gmail.com (Bill Wilson) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 10:11:37 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] Andrew Peed invited you to join the group "Demagogue Dialogue"... In-Reply-To: <97fc910b0907120608s49c8bca8vc749c4e47c8a5ed4@mail.gmail.com> References: <97fc910b0907120608s49c8bca8vc749c4e47c8a5ed4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2b35aaaf0907120811j3014f6e5p54edfe87e7f85fff@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Liana Winsauer wrote: > Gmail is warning me that the message may not really be from who it > appears. It would help if you would select the drop down "Report Not Phishing" on that message like I did. That will send the message to Gmail's phishing filter team to help reduce false positives like that. -- Bill Wilson "Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence." -- Leonard 'Bones' McCoy From sarahksmom at yahoo.com Sun Jul 12 10:24:30 2009 From: sarahksmom at yahoo.com (sarahksmom) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:24:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 Message-ID: <751962.21812.qm@web58701.mail.re1.yahoo.com> The other point that I wanted to respond to, but my mail was acting up: --- On Sun, 7/12/09, Bill Taylor wrote: > As for the terminology, you have to call the stuff something. A > compact way to refer to complex subjects, so that every briefing > doesn't turn into an extended discourse. Or it remains "that stuff > over there", "that other different stuff over that way". You may > disagree with the reasoning *behind* what they are saying and how we > were led that way. But that is different from disagreeing with the > actual content, and in any case you still need a way to talk about > the subject. They say there is some power in controlling the > language of discourse, and thus we see politicians playing gotcha > with various catch phrases, but in the end you still need to find a > way to discuss. That's not a valid excuse for mangling the language to such an extent that the real import of the thing being discussed is purged from the discourse. It's not polite or convenient. It's revictimization. Why not call casualties "deaths"? Why not call collateral damage "the death, injury and/or dispossession of non-combatants"? And another thing, not that I'm a fan of warfare: I think, based on what I've been reading the past few days, and conversations with vets, one thing I would do within the military is not give officer commissions to ROTC or military academy grads till they've earned them in the field. Send them out with a rank no higher than an NCO to basic and then into field ops and then give them their commissions. I can understand command staff operating at a remove, but I think it makes some sense to put them on the ground as a tutorial to acquaint them with an unfamiliar set of conditions before they can give orders to forces on the ground in those conditions. I've been reading a lot of 16th C. Japanese history lately, during the centuries-long civil war (a.k.a. "Warring States Period"). What I get from that is that despite the massively hierarchical nature of Japanese society, the military leaders all came up through the ranks. Nothing was theoretical for them. The discipline of their forces was based on two-way loyalty. It wasn't hierarchy for hierarchy's sake. Miriam Solon "Things are not as they seem; nor are they otherwise." --Shakyamuni Buddha, "Lankavatara Sutra" FYI, he was from a military caste family. From wtwilson3 at gmail.com Sun Jul 12 10:37:00 2009 From: wtwilson3 at gmail.com (Bill Wilson) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 10:37:00 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] Andrew Peed invited you to join the group "Demagogue Dialogue"... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2b35aaaf0907120837s7734394bg4d811f18669c4e78@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 Facebook wrote: > For grins and giggles, I created a (secret) Facebook group > for GogLog. Feel free to join if you like!" The link in this message doesn't seem to take me to the group. -- Bill Wilson "Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence." -- Leonard 'Bones' McCoy From wtwilson3 at gmail.com Sun Jul 12 10:38:23 2009 From: wtwilson3 at gmail.com (Bill Wilson) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 10:38:23 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] Andrew Peed invited you to join the group "Demagogue Dialogue"... In-Reply-To: <2b35aaaf0907120811j3014f6e5p54edfe87e7f85fff@mail.gmail.com> References: <97fc910b0907120608s49c8bca8vc749c4e47c8a5ed4@mail.gmail.com> <2b35aaaf0907120811j3014f6e5p54edfe87e7f85fff@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2b35aaaf0907120838v6ff002cam4e16baee34893d45@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 Facebook wrote: > For grins and giggles, I created a (secret) Facebook group > for GogLog. Feel free to join if you like!" The link in this message doesn't seem to take me to the group. -- Bill Wilson "Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence." -- Leonard 'Bones' McCoy From jazz at qnet.com Sun Jul 12 10:58:05 2009 From: jazz at qnet.com (Bill Taylor) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:58:05 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <217191.36959.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <217191.36959.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200907121632.n6CGWW1V030181@mail.zarquon.net> At 07:46 7/12/2009 -0700, sarahksmom wrote: >Replies are directed to the list. >If you wish to respond only to the sender, please edit the To: line! >____________________________________________________________ > >--- On Sun, 7/12/09, Bill Taylor wrote: > > > Not that I agree with your premise, but are you suggesting it would > > be better for the workings of the world to remain a mystery to > > people? The TV science CSI style is far from reality, but the > > typical complaint is that it is too realistic and thus disgusting. > >I think I was not clear on the autopsy bit, but you inadvertently >helped me make my point. I've never witnessed a shooting or a fatal >accident or an autopsy. I'm not surprised that the dissections shown >on tv are as unrealistic as the violence. The first movie I ever saw >that took this subject head-on was "Little Big Man" in the scene >where Wild Bill Hickock explains the damage one of the bullets he >fired did to someone he'd just shot dead. I'm not saying it was the >first realistic movie violence ever shown. It was the first I had >seen where the impact of a gunshot wound was discussed. > >The autopsies on "Bones" and "CSI" are educational about violence, >perhaps in the same way as Wild Bill's lecture demonstration was. My >objection is not to the presence of dead bodies, but to the overuse >of sanitized visuals to such an extent that it desensitizes or >alienates people. When you get into a car or bus and drive through traffic, when you walk down the street and cross a street or traffic passes you, are you aware of what might happen if something went wrong? Since death by traffic accident has never happened to you, are you completely desensitized to it and alienated from it? Painful death is literally inches away from you, yet you manage to function on a more or less daily basis. Why would they be any less aware of it, or any less capable in spite of it? >Do people involved in the deployment of attack drones and high >altitude manned bombing missions really connect their work with >death and maiming of human beings, with the sights, smells and >sounds that are unleashed when a bomb hits? Or is it like a video >game to them because of its remoteness and mediation through >computer graphics? That's the common myth in circulation. A myth is just that. People handling fuels, explosives, or weapons probably don't discourse on it daily, but they are well aware of exactly what they are handling and what might happen "if". Again, this borders on assuming that people who do work you disapprove of don't understand what the work entails. The situation is more likely that they know, they just don't disapprove of it in the same ways you do. >There was a movie that came out a few years ago, "A Long >Engagement," set in WWI. It had a pretty graphic run of scenes of >trench warfare juxtaposed with the indifference of privileged French >civilians whose lives were far removed from battlefields (especially >the parents who were able to pull strings to keep their sons out of >the draft). I was freaked out watching it, and my kid said, "Relax, >Ma, it's only a movie." That remark was more disturbing than the >movie. I had to explain to her that it was a movie about real events >and that her attitude was more like that of those people who gamed >the system. It was a movie abstracted from reality. Dramatized and packaged for presentation, but not real in the sense that those events were historical fact in any sense of truthfulness. >It was a It wasn't until Vietnam that American civilians had any >idea of how wartime violence looks. Most of us don't know how it >smells or what it really sounds like. And the news media have backed >away from showing the level of detail that was on display during the >Vietnam war. The US Civil War happened in plenty of people's front yards. Major wars obviously do not come along very often, but they make a big impression and the effect carries on for years. You don't have to be a genius to suspect that getting sent to war may not be great for your personal best interests, even if you don't know precisely what you'll encounter. People in the 1860s were gaming the draft just like people in the 1960s. You could buy your way out, find substitutes, or just dodge and hope for the best. In WW2, I know my grandfather tried to pull some strings for my father with the local draft board. It worked for a few months. He was allowed to graduate high school. A lot of his class wasn't. That got him a few extra stripes going into the Army, which got him better assignments. He still ended up in Europe, but not in the Pacific, and a few months mattered a lot in a combat zone. >I remember reading someone's account of his body's involuntary >reaction to the sound of gunfire in combat. He crapped himself. And >he went on to say he never stopped crapping himself, including in >civilian life when he heard a sound that resembled gunfire. I asked >my father about that, because he hadn't gone into that kind of >detail about his combat experiences. He confirmed it for me. He told >me the uniform was designed so that he could shake the crap out of >his pants legs. I have yet to see that shown in a movie. Real automatic fire will definitely get your attention. I've never been in combat, but even on a range, you don't mistake the real thing for the movie stuff. >One of my father's biggest gripes about my mother is that she >doesn't have a clue about what went on during the war. The movie >"The Best Years of our Lives" centers on that disconnect between >returning combat troops and their stateside non-combatant families. >Understandably, my father is reluctant to talk about the more >horrific things he experienced, As far as movies go, the D-Day landing of Saving Private Ryan is said to be pretty good. It is about 1/2 hour of blood and gunfire and shot up body parts. As one guy at the time said (something like), "the next step would be to walk through the theatre and start shooting people". Movies aren't going to get the job done. And people who've been through unpleasant experiences usually don't want to relive them or drag others through them. So they tend to stick with each other to talk it over, when they feel like it. Thus you see tons of VFW and AL and other sorts of vet groups. And they do outreach on the social side, just like the VA does on the benefits side. Is it enough? I doubt it, but how do you organize something like that properly? I have no idea. Bill Taylor From jazz at qnet.com Sun Jul 12 11:29:58 2009 From: jazz at qnet.com (Bill Taylor) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 09:29:58 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <751962.21812.qm@web58701.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <751962.21812.qm@web58701.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200907121632.n6CGWYTl030182@mail.zarquon.net> At 08:24 7/12/2009 -0700, sarahksmom wrote: >The other point that I wanted to respond to, but my mail was acting up: > >--- On Sun, 7/12/09, Bill Taylor wrote: > > > As for the terminology, you have to call the stuff something. A > > compact way to refer to complex subjects, so that every briefing > > doesn't turn into an extended discourse. Or it remains "that stuff > > over there", "that other different stuff over that way". You may > > disagree with the reasoning *behind* what they are saying and how we > > were led that way. But that is different from disagreeing with the > > actual content, and in any case you still need a way to talk about > > the subject. They say there is some power in controlling the > > language of discourse, and thus we see politicians playing gotcha > > with various catch phrases, but in the end you still need to find a > > way to discuss. > >That's not a valid excuse for mangling the language to such an >extent that the real import of the thing being discussed is purged >from the discourse. It's not polite or convenient. It's >revictimization. Why not call casualties "deaths"? Why not call >collateral damage "the death, injury and/or dispossession of non-combatants"? Because that isn't what it is. Not all casualties are killed. They may also be injured, either trivially or severely. They are the people that were injured to some degree by the action that happened. Some are dead, some aren't, some were friendly, some enemy, some uninvolved bystanders. But they are all casualties of the action. Collateral damage may not only be non-combatants. It could also be the unintended deaths and injuries and damages of friendly forces (or enemy forces) that were close to the intended target. It only means damage to things you didn't intend to damage, but were damaged anyway. Collateral damage could easily mean you killed some of your own people. Something like half the allied combat deaths in the Gulf War were friendly fire. Presumably we didn't intend to shoot our own people. There was a pretty novel attempt to minimize collateral damage in cities once, due to some unacceptably large damage from a bomb. The original bomb hit the target, but the explosion damaged the building next to it, and that building had something sensitive (hospital, school, orphanage, etc). So they decided to drop training bombs on the targets. They are the same size and weight as the real thing, but had no explosive. Since they were precision guided, they generally hit where they are supposed to, and they are still big and heavy and moving very fast. So the building still got flattened, the people and equipment inside were presumably still killed or destroyed, but now the collateral damage was reduced. >And another thing, not that I'm a fan of warfare: I think, based on >what I've been reading the past few days, and conversations with >vets, one thing I would do within the military is not give officer >commissions to ROTC or military academy grads till they've earned >them in the field. Send them out with a rank no higher than an NCO >to basic and then into field ops and then give them their >commissions. I can understand command staff operating at a remove, >but I think it makes some sense to put them on the ground as a >tutorial to acquaint them with an unfamiliar set of conditions >before they can give orders to forces on the ground in those conditions. Makes some sense. People suggest it from time to time, but it usually doesn't go anywhere. The benefit of having whatever the college grad knows seems to outweigh the practical experience they would have gained as an enlisted. >I've been reading a lot of 16th C. Japanese history lately, during >the centuries-long civil war (a.k.a. "Warring States Period"). What >I get from that is that despite the massively hierarchical nature of >Japanese society, the military leaders all came up through the >ranks. Nothing was theoretical for them. The discipline of their >forces was based on two-way loyalty. It wasn't hierarchy for hierarchy's sake. A lot of, probably most wars, work like that. In peacetime you need a structure to keep the shape of the army in place. But when real fighting starts, the peacetime placeholders get pushed aside by people that really know how to protect and use real forces in the field. And they quickly (try to) reorganize into whatever is most effective for them (the WW2 German army never managed to do it). But they need a starting point to work from, otherwise they're trying to fight a war AND building an army at the same time. Too hard, and counterproductive. Which kind of brings us back to my original post. Officers getting fragged by disenchanted soldiers. According to Cecil, mostly back at base camps. Whether the soldiers were troublemakers looking for some action, or the officers were martinets painting targets on their own backs is still under investigation. Bill Taylor From jazz at qnet.com Sun Jul 12 11:32:13 2009 From: jazz at qnet.com (Bill Taylor) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 09:32:13 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] Andrew Peed invited you to join the group "Demagogue Dialogue"... In-Reply-To: <2b35aaaf0907120838v6ff002cam4e16baee34893d45@mail.gmail.co m> References: <97fc910b0907120608s49c8bca8vc749c4e47c8a5ed4@mail.gmail.com> <2b35aaaf0907120811j3014f6e5p54edfe87e7f85fff@mail.gmail.com> <2b35aaaf0907120838v6ff002cam4e16baee34893d45@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200907121632.n6CGWaMn030184@mail.zarquon.net> At 10:38 7/12/2009 -0500, Bill Wilson wrote: >On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 Facebook wrote: > > For grins and giggles, I created a (secret) Facebook group > > for GogLog. Feel free to join if you like!" > >The link in this message doesn't seem to take me to the group. Me either, but I figured I was just using the application wrong. I'm not a fan of the Facebook interface, so I get easily frustrated with it. Bill Taylor From sarahksmom at yahoo.com Sun Jul 12 12:02:37 2009 From: sarahksmom at yahoo.com (sarahksmom) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 10:02:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] Andrew Peed invited you to join the group "Demagogue Dialogue"... Message-ID: <22238.5370.qm@web58705.mail.re1.yahoo.com> --- On Sun, 7/12/09, Bill Wilson wrote: > On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 Facebook wrote: > > For grins and giggles, I created a (secret) Facebook > group > > for GogLog. Feel free to join if you like!" > > The link in this message doesn't seem to take me to the > group. I had a similar issue, but I thought it was because it came in via my yahoo acct. My FB is under my other email address. Miriam Solon "Things are not as they seem; nor are they otherwise." --Shakyamuni Buddha, "Lankavatara Sutra" From mhagerman at worldnet.att.net Sun Jul 12 12:15:03 2009 From: mhagerman at worldnet.att.net (Mark Hagerman) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 12:15:03 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <751962.21812.qm@web58701.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <751962.21812.qm@web58701.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 2009-Jul-12 , at 10:24, sarahksmom wrote: > That's not a valid excuse for mangling the language to such an > extent that the real import of the thing being discussed is purged > from the discourse. It's not polite or convenient. It's > revictimization. Why not call casualties "deaths"? Why not call > collateral damage "the death, injury and/or dispossession of non- > combatants"? As I understand it, "casualty" isn't the same as "death"; it's "death" _or_ "any injury that makes the soldier unable to continue combat". "Collateral damage" is, I think, an attempt to encapsulate your phrase's meaning in a _short_ phrase. > And another thing, not that I'm a fan of warfare: I think, based on > what I've been reading the past few days, and conversations with > vets, one thing I would do within the military is not give officer > commissions to ROTC or military academy grads till they've earned > them in the field. Send them out with a rank no higher than an NCO > to basic and then into field ops and then give them their > commissions. I can understand command staff operating at a remove, > but I think it makes some sense to put them on the ground as a > tutorial to acquaint them with an unfamiliar set of conditions > before they can give orders to forces on the ground in those > conditions. I agree, on the basis of Heinlein's commentary on the topic in "Starship Troopers". Not that my opinion is significant; I've never been in the military. The topic of psychological damage from combat is too complicated for me to have any _informed_ opinions. I have read that U.S. analysts were unhappy with the statistics that came out of WW II and Korea, that most soldiers _never_ fired their weapons at the enemy; apparently, they fired over the heads of the opposition to prevent them from advancing. After Korea, the Army commissioned research for the purpose of changing this, resulting in changes to the training regimen that makes aimed fire at the enemy a conditioned reflex (or the next thing to it). The researchers apparently didn't consider that the soldiers didn't _want_ to kill other people, and that having done so creates massive guilt complexes. This, it's said, is why soldiers coming back from combat in Vietnam (and after), tend to be more psychologically damaged than those from earlier conflicts. Is any of that true? _I_ don't know, but it seems reasonable. If so, I'd expect the "push-button" warriors (air force bomber crews, drone pilots, etc.) to be less affected than front-line ground troops; they should be more emotionally detached from the consequences of their actions. IQ may figure into it, too; smart people would seem more likely to extrapolate from their actions to the ultimate effects, or to "replay" their experiences mentally. Are there some things it's better NOT to think about too much? Mark Hagerman From sarahksmom at yahoo.com Sun Jul 12 12:29:39 2009 From: sarahksmom at yahoo.com (sarahksmom) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 10:29:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] Andrew Peed invited you to join the group "Demagogue Dialogue"... Message-ID: <760160.2295.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> It doesn't work because goglog at mail.zarquon.net is not a subscriber address in FB and none of us uses it as our address. Doh!. The best(?) one could do is spam us as individuals with invites from within that FB group. I think one has to have a high degree of tolerance for chaos (as in chaos junkie, maybe?) to enjoy FB despite all its messiness. I joined for the politix near the beginning of the presidential campaign and stuck around for more politix and a lot of other purposeful and purposeless activities. Miriam Solon "Things are not as they seem; nor are they otherwise." --Shakyamuni Buddha, "Lankavatara Sutra" > >On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 Facebook (via Andy Peed) wrote: > > > For grins and giggles, I created a (secret) Facebook group > > > for GogLog. Feel free to join if you like!" >> At 10:38 7/12/2009 -0500, Bill Wilson wrote: >> The link in this message doesn't seem to take me to the group. --- On Sun, 7/12/09, Bill Taylor wrote: > Me either, but I figured I was just using the application > wrong. I'm > not a fan of the Facebook interface, so I get easily > frustrated with it. > > Bill Taylor > _______________________________________________ > Goglog mailing list > Goglog at mail.zarquon.net > http://mail.zarquon.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/goglog > From sarahksmom at yahoo.com Sun Jul 12 12:51:28 2009 From: sarahksmom at yahoo.com (sarahksmom) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 10:51:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 Message-ID: <775654.50446.qm@web58707.mail.re1.yahoo.com> --- On Sun, 7/12/09, Mark Hagerman wrote: > The topic of psychological damage from combat is too > complicated for > me to have any _informed_ opinions. I have read that U.S. > analysts > were unhappy with the statistics that came out of WW II and > Korea, > that most soldiers _never_ fired their weapons at the > enemy; > apparently, they fired over the heads of the opposition to > prevent > them from advancing. That's interesting. How are all the infantry deaths accounted for then? > I'd expect the "push-button" warriors (air force bomber crews, drone > pilots, etc.) to be less affected than front-line ground troops; they > should be more emotionally detached from the consequences of their > actions. IQ may figure into it, too; smart people would seem more > likely to extrapolate from their actions to the ultimate effects, or > to "replay" their experiences mentally. Are there some things it's > better NOT to think about too much? Right, and what kind of baggage do they come back to civilian life with? A detachment from, and disregard for, the consequences of hitting targets? How much more insight do they have than 9-year-old "Three Stooges" viewers have about the effects of hitting people? I'm speaking as a summer camp arts teacher who had to set a kid straight about how not funny it was to hit me in the nose with a basketball. The teachable moment (after I got my nose bleed under control) was that I explained to him how all those moves were faked with sound effects thrown in later. We did a unit on basic stage combat, e.g. fake slaps, kicks and punches; convincing looking falls; fake hair and ear pulling. Miriam Solon "Things are not as they seem; nor are they otherwise." --Shakyamuni Buddha, "Lankavatara Sutra" From andyp at zarquon.net Sun Jul 12 18:02:46 2009 From: andyp at zarquon.net (Andy Peed) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:02:46 -0400 Subject: [Goglog] Andrew Peed invited you to join the group "Demagogue Dialogue"... In-Reply-To: <760160.2295.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <760160.2295.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A5A6B96.8070801@zarquon.net> sarahksmom wrote: > It doesn't work because goglog at mail.zarquon.net is not a subscriber address in FB and none of us uses it as our address. Doh!. Yeh, I should have realized that. Hokay, how 'bout this? If you'd like to be invited, drop me a line; since it's a secret group, it won't be showing up in my profile so you won't get at it that way. I did consider inviting those of you who are already friends in Facebook, but I figured I'd make it more specifically voluntary. -- Andy From mhagerman at worldnet.att.net Sun Jul 12 18:25:08 2009 From: mhagerman at worldnet.att.net (Mark Hagerman) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:25:08 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <775654.50446.qm@web58707.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <775654.50446.qm@web58707.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <69B2FFB9-808A-4D94-AEBC-E47F9AA0D03F@worldnet.att.net> On 2009-Jul-12 , at 12:51, sarahksmom wrote: > That's interesting. How are all the infantry deaths accounted for > then? I don't understand; deaths on _our_ side, or among the enemy? If the former, I've no idea. As for enemy casualties, I did say _most_ soldiers fired for suppression, rather than for effect. I seem to recall a ratio of something like 100 rounds fired for each one that was intended to hit. That 1% produced the enemy casualties. > Right, and what kind of baggage do they come back to civilian life > with? A detachment from, and disregard for, the consequences of > hitting targets? As I said earlier, I'm not even an informed layman in this area. What I'd expect is that, since they never became desensitized to killing "up close and personal", and haven't the guilt that one-to-one killing engenders, that they cold return to civilian life with little or no after-effects. It'd be nice if someone who works in the field would pipe up with solid info. Mark Hagerman From SteveG at swhi.net Sun Jul 12 19:17:14 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:17:14 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <69B2FFB9-808A-4D94-AEBC-E47F9AA0D03F@worldnet.att.net> References: <775654.50446.qm@web58707.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <69B2FFB9-808A-4D94-AEBC-E47F9AA0D03F@worldnet.att.net> Message-ID: <6888566F80A04585AF5E5C2795315D9C@StevePC> Mark Hagerman says: > As I said earlier, I'm not even an informed layman in this > area. What > I'd expect is that, since they never became desensitized to killing > "up close and personal", and haven't the guilt that one-to-one > killing engenders, that they cold return to civilian life > with little or no after-effects. I'm no expert either, but although logical, that doesn't sound right to me. It seems to me that *on the average,* those who do not in fact kill anyone are probably about as likely to be traumatized as those who do. Why do I say that? - There are (roughly) three relevant groups: those who know they did not kill anyone, because they made sure they didn't; those who did try to and either know or believe they succeeded; and those who just shot vaguely toward the enemy and didn't really look, and so don't know what effect it had. - The middle group did not *expect* to feel guilt about it, but some proportion of them certainly will. They have to live with the actual knowledge that they killed someone who *may* not have deserved or needed to die. For some of them, even if they were and remain convinced that the shooting was justified, there is still shock and guilt. - The first group comprises those who were, going in, most likely to feel guilty about being there, carrying a gun, and supporting the war effort, even if they in fact avoided killing anyone, and/or to just be traumatized by the experience and the perceived *collective* guilt regardless of personal guilt. And of course they may also feel extreme guilt about shirking their duty - even if they have sincere doubts that it was their duty! - especially if some of their own comrades in arms were killed. I would expect this to be more true in a volunteer/professional army than among draftees. - The third group clearly they were not personally committed to killing the people on the opposing side, although perhaps going in they thought they were; and now have to live with not knowing whether they in fact killed an unknown and therefore possibly (relatively) harmless person, or on the other hand whether they "chickened out" and failed to protect their own comrades in arms as they were sworn to do. And added to that is the knowledge that they couldn't even decide what to do. They may convince themselves that they did kill someone, because that was their (perceived) duty, and then have to deal with the guilt of having done so. (This may apply to some of the second group too.) Of course there are some who, in any given war, have a clear idea of where their duty lies (right or wrong, but clear), act on it, and then have few regrets; but many don't. Among those who decide their duty is to face combat, I have not heard in the past that those who come back battle-scarred are predominately among those who did - or those who did not - actually kill anyone, and I'm not inclined to assume either. - Steve G From ignatz at dminet.com Sun Jul 12 19:28:24 2009 From: ignatz at dminet.com (Dave Ihnat) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:28:24 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] Andrew Peed invited you to join the group "Demagogue Dialogue"... In-Reply-To: <4A5A6B96.8070801@zarquon.net> References: <760160.2295.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <4A5A6B96.8070801@zarquon.net> Message-ID: <20090713002824.GB14399@dminet.com> On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 07:02:46PM -0400, Andrew Peed wrote: > Yeh, I should have realized that. Heh. Normal. > Hokay, how 'bout this? If you'd like to be invited, drop me a line; > since it's a secret group, it won't be showing up in my profile so you > won't get at it that way. Please. Cheers, -- -Dave From ignatz at dminet.com Sun Jul 12 19:30:57 2009 From: ignatz at dminet.com (Dave Ihnat) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:30:57 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <69B2FFB9-808A-4D94-AEBC-E47F9AA0D03F@worldnet.att.net> References: <775654.50446.qm@web58707.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <69B2FFB9-808A-4D94-AEBC-E47F9AA0D03F@worldnet.att.net> Message-ID: <20090713003057.GC14399@dminet.com> On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 06:25:08PM -0500, Mark Hagerman wrote: > I seem to recall a ratio of something like 100 rounds fired for each > one that was intended to hit. Totally ignoring the fact I could google for it, I believe it's more like 10,000 rounds. Cheers, -- Dave "As if this is a cheery topic" Ihnat ignatz at dminet.com From SteveG at swhi.net Sun Jul 12 19:52:06 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:52:06 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <20090713003057.GC14399@dminet.com> References: <775654.50446.qm@web58707.mail.re1.yahoo.com><69B2FFB9-808A-4D94-AEBC-E47F9AA0D03F@worldnet.att.net> <20090713003057.GC14399@dminet.com> Message-ID: <858070E5412C405EB99CE6EF338BD53C@StevePC> Dave Ihnat says: > > I seem to recall a ratio of something like 100 rounds fired for each > > one that was intended to hit. > > Totally ignoring the fact I could google for it, I believe it's more > like 10,000 rounds. AFAIK, there are no meaningful statistics on how many shots were fired for each that was *intended* to hit, because no one could possibly know what the intent was - often not even the soldier who was shooting. I have heard figures that high, and higher for some individual battles, for the ratio of shots fired to soldiers (on either side) actually killed. That may be explained by lack of will, inaccuracy with rapid- fire weapons, panic, or (most likely) a combination of factors. But the ratio of shots fired to shots *intended* to hit is probably far lower, at least if you include the instances - many, I suspect! - in which the soldier doesn't see what he's shooting at, maybe barely even looks, but *hopes* that if he shoots enough bullets, odds are he'll hit the enemy (or scare him away) before the enemy hits him. AFAICT figures are not a whole lot better for the Civil War or the Indian Wars, BTW. - Steve G From sarahksmom at yahoo.com Sun Jul 12 19:46:39 2009 From: sarahksmom at yahoo.com (sarahksmom) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:46:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 Message-ID: <797140.84205.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> --- On Sun, 7/12/09, Mark Hagerman wrote: > ... As for enemy casualties, I did say _most_ soldiers [facing German > enemy troops in WWII] fired for suppression, rather than for effect... Nice word that, "suppression." Help, help, I'm being suppre... [thud] I wonder if anybody has written a dictionary of obfuscatory language. ---Stop here if you don't want to be dragged off into tangent land.--- DISCLAIMER (lest anyone think I had some preference for German troops to stay alive, and here comes a tangent): I believe the U.S. and its allies had to fight and win WWII, but I'm not under any illusion that Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had a grandly moral position to uphold, except for show. They didn't do bupkes for Ethiopia and Spain*. The U.K. was the only country that took seriously its obligation to welcome 55,000 refugees, and that only after making it that much easier for Hitler to dominate Central Europe. *The U.S. retrospectively made it a thought crime to be a premature anti-Fascist , to deflect criticism of its failure to register any official criticism of Franco for overthrowing Spain's legitimate government and Mussolini for marching into Ethiopia, never mind rejecting pleas to help Jews trying to escape Hitler. There were people in Japan who did a better job of that than we did. Miriam Solon "Things are not as they seem; nor are they otherwise." --Shakyamuni Buddha, "Lankavatara Sutra" From ignatz at dminet.com Sun Jul 12 20:08:06 2009 From: ignatz at dminet.com (Dave Ihnat) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 20:08:06 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <797140.84205.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <797140.84205.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20090713010806.GA15130@dminet.com> On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 05:46:39PM -0700, sarahksmom wrote: > Nice word that, "suppression." > > Help, help, I'm being suppre... [thud] Actually, it's real, and not doublespeak. You want *them* to stop shooting at *you*. If you accomplish that, even by just making that scary _whiz_ sound, that's suppression. > DISCLAIMER (lest anyone think I had some preference for German troops > to stay alive, and here comes a tangent): I believe the U.S. and its > allies had to fight and win WWII, but I'm not under any illusion that > Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had a grandly moral position to uphold, > except for show. They may not have known it at the time--and Stalin wouldn't have cared no matter what--but it turned out they did, in fact, have a grandly moral position to uphold. Neither England nor the US, no matter their faults, ever conceived or indulged in genocide and murder on the grand scale the Nazis invented. (Stalin--not yet.) > They didn't do bupkes for Ethiopia and Spain*. The U.K. was the only > country that took seriously its obligation to welcome 55,000 refugees, > and that only after making it that much easier for Hitler to dominate > Central Europe. At that time, it appeared that Hitler was your run-of-the-mill dictator and conquerer. There was no conception that anyone could come up with as heinous a policy as _Die Endloesung_. Stalin--now, he would have acted like he opposed it, but *that* would have been typical Stalin realpolitik. He certainly didn't see anything wrong with liquidating entire peoples who got in his way--by the end, he'd killed more than Hitler and his goons ever did. But no matter their faults, nobody can ever put Roosevelt and Churchill, and their people, in that camp. -- Dave Ihnat ignatz at dminet.com From jazz at qnet.com Sun Jul 12 21:30:40 2009 From: jazz at qnet.com (Bill Taylor) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:30:40 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <20090713010806.GA15130@dminet.com> References: <797140.84205.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <20090713010806.GA15130@dminet.com> Message-ID: <200907130234.n6D2YDS4001769@mail.zarquon.net> At 20:08 7/12/2009 -0500, Dave Ihnat wrote: >On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 05:46:39PM -0700, sarahksmom wrote: > > Nice word that, "suppression." > > > > Help, help, I'm being suppre... [thud] > >Actually, it's real, and not doublespeak. You want *them* to stop >shooting at *you*. If you accomplish that, even by just making that >scary _whiz_ sound, that's suppression. Yep. Contrast this with aimed fire, where you are actively attempting to hit and presumably kill the enemy. Suppressive fire is just fire in the general direction of the enemy, intended to convince them to keep their heads down by making it (more) dangerous to be out in the open. They are different, even though both are potentially lethal. Bill Taylor From SteveG at swhi.net Tue Jul 14 18:06:37 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:06:37 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <419210.87115.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <419210.87115.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <567D6C0866C14C6380EB23DEC2A3058E@StevePC> Michael Brian Bentley wrote: > This (fragging) may be one the foremost of reasons why the > military is currently all-volunteer. Not unrelated, but probably not a cause. By the end of the Vietnam war, it was clear that two things were going to change (that is, clear from the POV of Congress): the US was not going to get into any similarly *unpopular* war soon, and the US was unlikely to get into *any* manpower-intensive war soon. For both reasons together, it was deemed feasible to draw down the numbers of soldiers by a lot and at the same time to increase the benefits and quality of life, so that the increased number who would voluntarily sign up would meet the decreased demand. Fragging or similar violence toward superiors only seems like a high risk if a lot of people are drafted *and* there is widespread hostility toward the conduct of the war - not only in principle, but in specifics, as where neither the troops nor the officers believe any given campaign has real value. In WWII, there were huge numbers of draftees but far less extreme hostility within the ranks, because while the soldiers did not necessarily want to be there or agree with all the decisions their officers made, in general they were conscious of a mission and actual progress. Rarely was there a perception that their officers were going to get them killed *for no valid reason.* Thus when there was no longer a need for a draft (it was ended at the end of 1972), for closely related reasons it would not have seemed probable, either to professional soldiers or to politicians, that there would be a rash of fragging if it were ever re-started. - Steve G From SteveG at swhi.net Tue Jul 14 20:50:09 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:50:09 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <223993.35120.qm@web58706.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <223993.35120.qm@web58706.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <648A303A4E8F49478E9370DF8CC13C5A@StevePC> Miriam says: > I wonder if this kind of violence (I'll call it displaced > aggression for want of something better) has become more > common and/or more extreme with each succeeding war, and, if > so is it because of changing motives for U.S. engagement in > combat, changes in the way enlistees are deployed, a more > widespread cultural shift. Fortunately there is not enough of a statistical sample to draw any sound conclusions from; but I would tend to say the *likelihood* has become higher with time, *all other things being equal,* because of "widespread cultural shift." That is, if you assume two hypothetical wars of similar magnitude, similar lethality, and similar merit in the eyes of the enlisted populace, then I would say violence from enlistees toward officers is far more likely today than in past periods when (a) respect for authority and/or (b) respect for human life were more widespread (e.g. most of US history up to the Baby Boom). That's why (for instance) instances of violence by US troops against their own commanders was far lower in WWI than in Vietnam even though there was, I believe, only slightly greater feeling in the trenches that the war and our involvement in it were really justified. But it's only one tendency. Take any of the variables to an extreme and see what happens - for instance, my understanding is that there were far more assaults on officers by their own troops in the Russian Army toward the end of WWI than among the western nations. The Russians were under harsher conditions *and* had far less reason to believe they were fighting for anything or anyone they believed in. The French, OTOH, were in terrible conditions and not especially well treated or led, but were fighting for their homes and families. But there are lots of other variables. For instance, when I say "periods where (a) respect for authority and/or (b) respect for human life were more widespread," I mean when respect for each was more widespread among the sectors of society likely to be drafted in large numbers, which category itself has changed over time. And it is more or less meaningless to try to compare wars to try to come up with two that have "similar merit in the eyes of the populace," without factoring in cultural shifts in the intervening time. The factors that would cause a war to be accepted as just, or rejected as unjust, by most Americans have shifted *radically* over the past century. (For instance, 100 years ago - or less - it was far more likely, in comparison to today, that 18-year-olds would volunteer for a war if the enemy were a different race, and far less if our allies were.) This is where "changing motives for U.S. engagement in combat" comes in, but I don't think you can put that on any kind of continuum, because it's too variable and does not move in one steady direction over time. "Changes in the way enlistees are deployed" are also relevant but also not in any sense a continuum. The only clear relevance I see to how enlistees (I assume you are including draftees) are deployed would be in relation to what they perceive as necessity - they will endure a lot without complaint if they think the reasons are valid. > I don't know if every WWII vet came back as screwed up as my > father, but I wonder. I don't think this has a whole lot of correlation with the likelihood of violence against superiors. One is caused mainly by resentment, the other (I think) more by fear, horror, repugnance, etc. Soldiers who rebel against the authority of their commanding officers are probably *less* likely than the average to be devastated by the violence of war, for instance. OTOH, I tend to suspect that a lot of soldiers in WWII experienced more shocking and/or continually horrible events than most in Vietnam with *less* psychological harm, because they could find some justification for it, and some hope that persisting despite the horror would lead to something better than giving in to despair. My own father came out with no emotional scars that I could ever see, despite being one of the most peaceful people I've known and despite the fact that he was in the trenches in France and Belgium, including the Battle of the Bulge. But he volunteered (before reaching legal age) because he had a purpose and knew what he was fighting for. He never willingly talked about it later, but only because he didn't think it was something to dwell on. My perception is that a much higher proportion of US WWI vets came back with psychological problems than from WWII. Why? My guesses: - Much higher shock value: the discrepancy between the privations and constant horror of war in the trenches and everything they'd known before was huge. In this connection: - Much lower familiarization in daily life - no radio, comic books, far less literacy - so that they were less prepared for a world so different from their own. And - - Home life was far more comfortable and sedate (in relevant ways) for many Americans before WWI than it had been for Americans before earlier or later wars. The world of 1915 USA was no preparation for 1916 Verdun. (Compare the USA during the Depression - for many, Army life didn't seem all that bad by comparison.) - The fear of gas. Chemical warfare was essentially new and horrifying. Nothing in their education of past wars involved poisons that suddenly are in the air around you and you can't escape. - Stagnation. The war in the trenches had nothing inspiring about it. There was just suffering and death and rarely any sign of actual progress. Even when there was progress, most of the troops knew nothing about it. Compare WWII, in which the experience of many of the troops was that of constant advance, taking over one city after another, or in the Pacific one island after another, with the enemy sometimes making a good resistance but - in every soldier's mind - always going to retreat or surrender soon. - Motivation. WWI was fought to defeat "the Hun" or "the Kaiser" but few people had any very strong feelings about it. Most people didn't think of the Kaiser or most Germans as such awful people. General patriotism was there, and some desire to help the British and French, but people were cool about the rest of it. There was far more feeling that it was not our problem than later, when those caricatures Hitler and Goebbels, and (remember race) the Japs, were the enemy. And remember, this was not only relevant to people considering entering the war, but to the troops in the field. In WWII, they got lots of news about how the enemy was on the run - they got newspapers, and radio, and often mail, all reinforcing the belief that they were accomplishing something. > There was always the legend that the foot soldier gangsters > of the 1920's were mainly returning WWI vets who were > repatriated with some sophisticated firearms, had no jobs to > return to, and a lot of hostility. Is that true? We've discussed this before. I don't know but I don't think so. Statistically there were lots more people accustomed to guns and violence after WWI than before, but I don't think they were most of the ones who actually became gangsters. - Steve G From SteveG at swhi.net Wed Jul 15 22:01:44 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:01:44 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] More Global Warming "Science"? In-Reply-To: <4A4B6DF1.5020509@CasaDelGato.Com> References: <657D539C7F8341DB989BB5D16E48D8C4@exotica> <4A4B6DF1.5020509@CasaDelGato.Com> Message-ID: <59FC91B8B5574FB4A0C8DA03E3B57C0E@StevePC> John G. Lussmyer says: > I've been seeing multiple reports of similar things happening. > Are there that many "science" groups setting their agendas > based on politics? Well, yes, as others have said, there seems to be a lot of that going around, and in few areas is it worse than climate science. But it's really hard to say who is more at fault here, or why. Note that the real controversy here is not over polar bears nor whether there is significant global warming, but strictly whether the global warming is mainly caused by human activities or natural causes. Dr Taylor and his supporters are justly upset if (as it appears from the selected quotes) he is being excluded not because the other scientists consider his science flawed, but simply because they don't want to hear his results. But Dr Mitchell is not a climatologist - he's a biologist. His position is Director of Wildlife Research for the Government of Nunavut. As far as I can tell, he may have little better right to be heard on the subject of the causes of global warming than I do. Scientists keep doing this to themselves. On the one hand they loudly express positions they are not particularly qualified to take (like here, 500 scientists signing a petition saying global warming is not anthropogenic, without regard to which of them knows a damn thing about it); and on the other hand others of them object not on any possible valid ground like "yes, you know about polar bears, not about sunspots and atmospheric flow patterns" but rather that his opinions are inconsistent with those of the majority or "not helpful." (Not helpful to what - exposition of the truth, or a political agenda - is left totally unclear. It may be quite true that his positions are "not helpful" because what he is an expert on is not what they are talking about.) I think a large part of the underlying problem is that many scientists who are involved in areas of widespread concern (climate, energy, health, etc.) figure (a) they have to contribute something to public and political debate, because otherwise people don't have much respect for them; but (b) the public and the politicians would never understand a real scientific discussion; so that (c) they have a need and therefore a right to dumb it down, and replace reasoned debate with forced consensus. To a large extent, unfortunately, they may be right - but it's still discouraging. The result is that the ones who insist on pointing out how truly complicated it is and how hard to reach solid conclusions are rarely heard from, because they are not doing the politicians and the pundits and talk show hosts any good. No one wants to say "sorry, Senator, that solution may be good or totally pointless; so I'll keep working and maybe with luck I'll have a better answer for your successor in office." - Steve G From SteveG at swhi.net Wed Jul 15 22:06:26 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:06:26 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] More Global Warming "Science"? In-Reply-To: <59FC91B8B5574FB4A0C8DA03E3B57C0E@StevePC> References: <657D539C7F8341DB989BB5D16E48D8C4@exotica><4A4B6DF1.5020509@CasaDelGato.Com> <59FC91B8B5574FB4A0C8DA03E3B57C0E@StevePC> Message-ID: <1A7D3EB96179434EB94D98E241526769@StevePC> I wrote: > But Dr Mitchell is not a climatologist - he's a biologist. I mean Dr Taylor, Mitchell Taylor - who was, if you recall, the young physics student in Real Genius. So maybe he does know something about heating and cooling after all. - Steve G From ben at bl.com Wed Jul 15 22:56:14 2009 From: ben at bl.com (Ben Liberman) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:56:14 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] More Global Warming "Science"? In-Reply-To: <59FC91B8B5574FB4A0C8DA03E3B57C0E@StevePC> References: <657D539C7F8341DB989BB5D16E48D8C4@exotica> <4A4B6DF1.5020509@CasaDelGato.Com> <59FC91B8B5574FB4A0C8DA03E3B57C0E@StevePC> Message-ID: At 10:01 PM -0500 7/15/09, Steve Gruenwald wrote: >Note that the real controversy here is not over polar bears >nor whether there is significant global warming, but >strictly whether the global warming is mainly caused by >human activities or natural causes. Dr Taylor and his >supporters are justly upset if (as it appears from the >selected quotes) he is being excluded not because the other >scientists consider his science flawed, but simply because >they don't want to hear his results. > >But Dr Mitchell is not a climatologist - he's a biologist. >His position is Director of Wildlife Research for the >Government of Nunavut. As far as I can tell, he may have >little better right to be heard on the subject of the causes >of global warming than I do. I'm confused. How does his not being a climatologist bare on his being excluded from this meeting? It is a meeting of the "Polar Bear Specialist Group set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission"? Here are a couple of quotes from the original article: "Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming." "But one of the world's leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week's meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group." "Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago." -- ------------------------------ ben at BL.COM Ben Liberman ------------------------------ From SteveG at swhi.net Thu Jul 16 06:43:03 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:43:03 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] More Global Warming "Science"? In-Reply-To: References: <657D539C7F8341DB989BB5D16E48D8C4@exotica><4A4B6DF1.5020509@CasaDelGato.Com><59FC91B8B5574FB4A0C8DA03E3B57C0E@StevePC> Message-ID: Ben Liberman says: > I'm confused. How does his not being a climatologist bare on > his being excluded from this meeting? It is a meeting of the "Polar > Bear Specialist Group set up under the International Union for the > Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission"? Wow. You're right, somehow I missed that entirely and went on to other issues. In that case, probably few of them have, maybe none has, a right to take a "scientific" position on the subject. That's even worse. - Steve G From mbcrui at gmail.com Thu Jul 16 10:39:39 2009 From: mbcrui at gmail.com (Mary Cruickshank Peed) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:39:39 -0400 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <217191.36959.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <217191.36959.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4A5F49BB.7070505@gmail.com> Miriam, I agree with a lot of what you're saying about the desensitization of the overly familiar, it's why my kids aren't allowed to play Halo or Mortal Combat... but... sarahksmom wrote: > And the news media have backed away from showing the level of detail that was on display during the Vietnam war. > The news media hasn't backed away from showing this level of detail, the military organizations have backed away from allowing news outlets that kind of access. Now reporters are "inserted" and the rest have to stay at headquarters or risk the wrath of the Brass. If you should wander around on your own, chances are good your affiliated reporters inside the building won't get their questions answered, won't get "invited" to the briefings, and won't have any official information. And instead of doing what the hell they want to, the big news outlets have gone along with this. > Understandably, my father is reluctant to talk about the more horrific things he experienced, and I apologize to any of you reading this who find it disturbing (this whole discussion makes me feel sad and tired), but I think we would have benefited as a family, and as a society, from having someone educate the rest of us about it. Returning combat troops shouldn't have deal with this stuff in isolation, even if they never discuss it directly with their own families. And society, as a whole, is a lot better informed. My brother-in-law (who was in Iraq for a year) was having a bad day. A water pipe burst and he had to go to work and my sister had to go to work and he was going to have to go home after work and fix the stupid pipe and clean up the basement and ... it was a bad day... so he was grumpy when he got to work. People were overly concerned about him all day. "You ok, Sam?" "Need a break?" "Want to go out for a beer after work and talk about it?" He finally said "WTF?" ... they were worried that he was having flashbacks or that it was the start of PTSD. I was in the military too late for Vietnam, however, a lot of the older guys had been there. I had several friendships that were based on the fact that I wasn't someone's *family*, and that I had a friend who'd been wounded in Vietnam, and I would sit all night and listen... or talk about something other than what the person could not go home and confess to a person who loved him. How do you tell your wife that you shot children? or women? or burned homes? How do you make people who love you understand that you've done horrible things? Mary -- -- Mary Cruickshank Peed We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong. - Sir Arthur Eddington From mbcrui at gmail.com Thu Jul 16 10:45:26 2009 From: mbcrui at gmail.com (Mary Cruickshank Peed) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:45:26 -0400 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <200907121632.n6CGWW1V030181@mail.zarquon.net> References: <217191.36959.qm@web58708.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <200907121632.n6CGWW1V030181@mail.zarquon.net> Message-ID: <4A5F4B16.8040804@gmail.com> Bill Taylor wrote: > The US Civil War happened in plenty of people's front yards. And people took picnic baskets out to watch the battles. Mary -- -- Mary Cruickshank Peed We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong. - Sir Arthur Eddington From SteveG at swhi.net Thu Jul 16 19:13:56 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:13:56 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <200907112154.n6BLsS7l028073@mail.zarquon.net> References: <223993.35120.qm@web58706.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <200907112154.n6BLsS7l028073@mail.zarquon.net> Message-ID: <1CCF46948C3A4614B2AC7331D2EE9042@StevePC> I'm still catching up, and see that Bill Taylor says: > For people that don't rise to the level of PTSD, but still have > trouble with events, it is more problematic. Mostly because they are > still screwed up, but less likely to seek or receive treatment. Especially because for many of them, they got through their active duty as well as they did - or think they did - by being tough. Tough guys don't cry for help. What would their drill sergeant say? Doonesbury notwithstanding, that's one thing that hasn't changed much. - Steve G From SteveG at swhi.net Thu Jul 16 19:19:17 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:19:17 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: References: <223993.35120.qm@web58706.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <9323370820FB497C922A502CE9A3A923@StevePC> Ben Liberman says: > Some people, who have been trained to be professionally > violent, with no other real training, dumped into civilian > life to sink or swim. OTOH, there seem to be quite a few in the current conflict getting real training in being only *selectively* violent, i.e., having to distinguish the ones who will kill you from the ones whom we are supposed to be helping maintain and build a civil society. (Not all, it's clear, but many.) So personally I suspect there will be a far lower proportion coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan than from Viet Nam with their values and perspectives badly knocked out of balance. - Steve G From SteveG at swhi.net Thu Jul 16 19:41:31 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:41:31 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <798607.36359.qm@web58702.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <798607.36359.qm@web58702.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: sarahksmom says: > I'd like to suggest other technology-related factors that > frankly scare the bejeebers out of me: alienation from human > empathy via surgical strikes, push-button warfare, aerial > drone attacks, Yes, and add to that video games used as war training. (I mean literally, entirely aside from the war preparation the average teen gets from commercial video games.) > rhetorical obfuscations designed to > desensitize people about violence--not just in the military. That's a separate issue from technology. Technology in war isn't specifically *meant* to insulate the individual from the meaning of what he's doing, though it can have that effect; it's just meant to accomplish it more efficiently. > collateral damage (like accidentally knocking down a > temporary cardboard display shelf at a supermarket) > casualties (can't be serious because they're casual) Others have commented on these and other terms. There is nothing new about formalized language for war; it's always been one of the ways of telling troops what to do without at the same time making them wonder about it. In any event, "casualty" is a very old word. I would be very surprised to find any soldier connecting it in any relevant way with "casual." (They are linguistically related, but only if you go back to Latin.) > carpet bombing (sounds like you can order it from > 800-588-2300 Empire, today!) No, to most people it sounds devastating. Anyone who has been exposed to military training immediately envision mass bombardment of an area, with wanton destruction of every living thing in it. It's not a term used to give an impression of gentility by any means. > The latest trend that alarms me > is the dissection of corpses on TV crime dramas. I don't watch those shows, but what bothers me is that they exist at all. No, there's nothing inherently offensive about them that I know of, but a decade or two ago there would not have been a large enough audience for them - especially for several of them. People on the average just aren't squeamish any more. - Steve G From SteveG at swhi.net Thu Jul 16 19:54:06 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:54:06 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <751962.21812.qm@web58701.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <751962.21812.qm@web58701.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <18AC09A05D2043ECB81179DCE136FD93@StevePC> sarahksmom says: > It's revictimization. Why not call casualties "deaths"? Often they call them "kills" and refer to "body count." "Casualties" is a broader term and I know of no equivalent English word. (I also don't hear it often lately. On the news I usually hear words like "11 American soldiers and an estimated 23 civilians died today . . . .") If all this distancing from the truth you hypothesize really worked, I imagine we wouldn't have that many traumatized soldiers. AFAICT no one actually involved in it gets much relief, and none to speak of through the use of euphemistic language. Some civilians and politicians may. The big "distancing" effect of modern warfare is supposed to be the ability to kill people a distance away by using missiles. But now the missiles have nose cameras in them. There was a well-publicized instance not long ago in which the people who shot a missile from a warplane or helicopter watched it go in and were audibly upset when they realized they probably hit a "friendly" target. > one thing I would do within the > military is not give officer commissions to ROTC or military > academy grads till they've earned them in the field. That may not be a bad idea. Very hard to manage, but worth considering. - Steve G From SteveG at swhi.net Thu Jul 16 20:02:16 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:02:16 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <200907121632.n6CGWYTl030182@mail.zarquon.net> References: <751962.21812.qm@web58701.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <200907121632.n6CGWYTl030182@mail.zarquon.net> Message-ID: Bill Taylor says: > Makes some sense. People suggest it from time to time, but it > usually doesn't go anywhere. The benefit of having whatever the > college grad knows seems to outweigh the practical experience they > would have gained as an enlisted. I suspect it's more that you only get enough (reasonably) intelligent and educated people to fill the officer corps by encouraging people to go to college and then into the military; and it will be a lot harder to get enough do that if they know they are going to have to live like common soldiers for a while and prove themselves. (And no, I'm not implying that enlisted members are necessarily less intelligent or even less educated than officers, but on the average new volunteer enlistees are, or they'd either be officers or doing something profitable.) - Steve G From SteveG at swhi.net Thu Jul 16 20:04:31 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:04:31 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: References: <751962.21812.qm@web58701.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Mark Hagerman says: > IQ may figure into it, too; smart people would seem more > likely to extrapolate from their actions to the ultimate effects, or > to "replay" their experiences mentally. I suspect that's a valid factor, but only at the low end; most people are imaginative enough for that. - Steve G From sarahksmom at yahoo.com Fri Jul 17 05:01:05 2009 From: sarahksmom at yahoo.com (sarahksmom) Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:01:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 Message-ID: <985417.16594.qm@web58703.mail.re1.yahoo.com> > sarahksmom says: > > The latest trend that alarms me > > is the dissection of corpses on TV crime dramas. --- On Thu, 7/16/09, Steve Gruenwald wrote: > I don't watch those shows, but what bothers me is that > they exist at all... a decade or two ago there would > not have been a large enough audience for them ... People on > the average just aren't squeamish any more. I think that's the point I was trying to make. Miriam Solon "Things are not as they seem; nor are they otherwise." --Shakyamuni Buddha, "Lankavatara Sutra" From sarahksmom at yahoo.com Fri Jul 17 05:19:27 2009 From: sarahksmom at yahoo.com (sarahksmom) Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:19:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 Message-ID: <704045.77746.qm@web58704.mail.re1.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 7/16/09, Steve Gruenwald wrote: > I'm not implying that enlisted members are necessarily less > intelligent or even less educated than officers, but on the > average new volunteer enlistees are, or they'd either be > officers or doing something profitable.) Do what? I thought large numbers of people enlisted in the military as a way to pay for college, so they could come out and do something worthwhile in civilian life. Miriam Solon Does bourgeois always = blinkered? From SteveG at swhi.net Fri Jul 17 06:51:57 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 06:51:57 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <704045.77746.qm@web58704.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <704045.77746.qm@web58704.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <412C8A905F24483D9314FBAED8BCB0D1@StevePC> sarahksmom says: > > I'm not implying that enlisted members are necessarily less > > intelligent or even less educated than officers, but on the > > average new volunteer enlistees are, or they'd either be > > officers or doing something profitable.) > > Do what? I thought large numbers of people enlisted in the > military as a way to pay for college, so they could come out > and do something worthwhile in civilian life. I knew I should clarify. I said less intelligent OR less educated, and ON THE AVERAGE. Those who have not been to college yet may or may not be less intelligent on the average, but some are, and all are less educated. Yes, many do enlist to pay for college, but many others enlist because they are not qualified for anything else. And while we're on the subject, no, I do not think college necessarily makes young men and women into better officers in most respects; but it (a) tends to ensure that they will be capable of dealing with the additional academic training that will be required later, and (b) provides a clear, if largely arbitrary, dividing line from most of the young enlistees, something that can be pointed to as *some* basis to say "respect them." There are probably much better ways of dividing those who should be officers from those who shouldn't, certainly of dividing those who should be leaders in real war situations from those who shouldn't, but not as simple ways. - Steve G From ignatz at dminet.com Fri Jul 17 08:50:28 2009 From: ignatz at dminet.com (Dave Ihnat) Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:50:28 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: References: <798607.36359.qm@web58702.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20090717135028.GD23977@dminet.com> On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 07:41:31PM -0500, Steve Gruenwald wrote: > I don't watch those shows, but what bothers me is that > they exist at all. Pattie actually likes and watches Bones and, in the past, CSI; I necessarily have caught more than my share of them. Bones is based on a series of books about a Canadian forensic anthropologist. While there are definitely gruesome scenes, most of the interest is the by-play between her--a highly intelligent, probably Asberger techgeek--and her liason in the FBI, a typically jock, gut-feel kind of guy with a heart of gold. Sounds schlocky, but there's actually enough real scientific method portrayed, and enough depth to the characters, to make it tolerable. CSI is, well, CSI--basically a night-time soap opera with murder. Something I did notice, however, is that in the first seasons they had lots of gruecam action, focused on the autopsies and in-situ dead meat. Over time, the number of both have been greatly reduced; I don't know if they got negative feedback, or found that there is only so much interest that can be garnered from meat. People, no matter how they might deny it, have a fascination with death and mayhem. From something as innocuous as Halloween, to books that elucidate in detail death, post-death changes, etc., it's a persistent best-seller. So it's no surprise that these shows developed a big following at first. And, to me, it's no surprise that they found that, after a while, the fascination palls, and they had to go back to the interactions of the living actors to keep the shows on the air with acceptable ratings. Cheers, -- Dave Ihnat ignatz at dminet.com From ignatz at dminet.com Fri Jul 17 09:06:18 2009 From: ignatz at dminet.com (Dave Ihnat) Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 09:06:18 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <412C8A905F24483D9314FBAED8BCB0D1@StevePC> References: <704045.77746.qm@web58704.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <412C8A905F24483D9314FBAED8BCB0D1@StevePC> Message-ID: <20090717140618.GE23977@dminet.com> Something I think should be kept in mind is that the days of cannon fodder--in the U.S. military, and other first-world military organizations--are over. The average trooper or swabbie is confronted with an array of technically demanding equipment and procedures on a daily basis; it's no longer "grab yer rifle an' get out there!". The load on officers has risen concomitantly with the pervasive introduction of CIC, networking, advanced communications, etc., but all of these have percolated down to the lowliest PFC on the ground. The point is that you can't look at the troops as grunts any more; everyone, from recruits on up, has to be more highly educated than ever before; and there are very few places that a low-IQ gorilla can be stuffed. They don't even peel their own potatos--it's contracted out. As an aside--this has caused other real problems, because the old "jail or the military" offer made to young criminal offenders isn't working. The mil usually ends up cashiering the real idiots--and, unfortunately, training gang members who return to civilian life bringing skills and knowledge to the gang organization. It's a complicated problem. You *must* have a military; the world just ain't full of kind and compassionate governments. Or, in many places, people. And, given both the aversion of first-world countries to troop losses and the relatively lower number of troops available in a volunteer military, highly efficient weapons delivery systems and force multipliers *are* going to be deployed. Weapons kill and maim--that's what they do. So you have people who will--must--use 'video game' warfare, exacerbating the disconnect first noted in flyboys--tea and hot breakfast back at the airfield, fly out to horror and destruction, then back home to a hot meal and soft bed. But even more so now--sit in an air-conditioned van and tell a Predator drone to launch a Hellfire missile; you don't even go out, personally, to the field. Meanwhile, even grunts in the field have the same dichotomy-- air-conditioned tents, hot grub, then load up, troop out for relatively short deployments--but these *do* get bloody and scary, first-hand--but then back to the almost-normal when they return from patrol. I don't think the mil has figured out how to have people switch from one mindset to another that fast, that frequently. Sorry...the primary purpose of the response got swamped in musing over the general problem. Later, -- Dave Ihnat ignatz at dminet.com From techgrrl2003 at yahoo.com Fri Jul 17 09:34:03 2009 From: techgrrl2003 at yahoo.com (Janet Plato) Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:34:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <412C8A905F24483D9314FBAED8BCB0D1@StevePC> Message-ID: <796682.43955.qm@web33706.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi Guys, > There are probably much better ways of dividing those who > should be officers from those who shouldn't, certainly of > dividing those who should be leaders in real war situations > from those who shouldn't, but not as simple ways. > I seem to recall some Napolean Bonaparte guy, I think he was a French Lt, once saying that he liked to test people by putting them in tactical situations and seeing if they froze up. He could teach tactics, but a willingness to act was the requirement. I think a degree implies a greatly increased likelihood that they will be able to absorb information, and I think ROTC and the like impart a lot of useful tactical experience, but in the end, you need to assess if the person can make a decision under pressure. I seem to recall US studies saying the best indicator of success was experience under fire early on in one's career. It's been a long time so I cannot be sure I am remembering it correctly. I strongly suspect that we mostly do a good job, and mostly know what we are doing, and it's only when there is inordinate circumstance like a long unpoular vietnam-type war, that we start to get massive pathology. The normal pathology is inherent in every system, and it is only the fact that people are wired to remember the noteworthy that makes the stupidity of the everyday stand out. In short, what Steve said. Janet --- On Fri, 7/17/09, Steve Gruenwald wrote: > From: Steve Gruenwald > Subject: Re: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 > To: "'The Demagogue Dialogue Mailing List'" > Date: Friday, July 17, 2009, 7:51 AM > Replies are directed to the list. > If you wish to respond only to the sender, please edit the > To: line! > ____________________________________________________________ > > sarahksmom says: > > > > I'm not implying that enlisted members are > necessarily less > > > intelligent or even less educated than officers, > but on the > > > average new volunteer enlistees are, or they'd > either be > > > officers or doing something profitable.) > > > > Do what? I thought large numbers of people enlisted in > the > > military as a way to pay for college, so they could > come out > > and do something worthwhile in civilian life. > > I knew I should clarify.? I said less intelligent OR > less > educated, and ON THE AVERAGE.? Those who have not been > to > college yet may or may not be less intelligent on the > average, but some are, and all are less educated.? > Yes, many > do enlist to pay for college, but many others enlist > because > they are not qualified for anything else.? > > And while we're on the subject, no, I do not think college > > necessarily makes young men and women into better officers > > in most respects; but it (a) tends to ensure that they will > > be capable of dealing with the additional academic training > > that will be required later, and (b) provides a clear, if > largely arbitrary, dividing line from most of the young > enlistees, something that can be pointed to as *some* basis > > to say "respect them."? There are probably much better > ways > of dividing those who should be officers from those who > shouldn't, certainly of dividing those who should be > leaders > in real war situations from those who shouldn't, but not as > > simple ways.? > > ? ? ???- Steve G > > _______________________________________________ > Goglog mailing list > Goglog at mail.zarquon.net > http://mail.zarquon.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/goglog > From sarahksmom at yahoo.com Fri Jul 17 11:04:20 2009 From: sarahksmom at yahoo.com (sarahksmom) Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 09:04:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 Message-ID: <806217.75949.qm@web58702.mail.re1.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 7/17/09, Dave Ihnat wrote: > It's a complicated problem. You *must* have a military; the world just > ain't full of kind and compassionate governments. Or, in many places, > people. And, given both the aversion of first-world countries to troop > losses and the relatively lower number of troops available in a volunteer > military, highly efficient weapons delivery systems and force multipliers > *are* going to be deployed. Yes, I get this. The argument was used to subvert the underlying principle of the Japan Self Defense Force and draw them into a support role in Iraq. There is a sector of the Japanese electorate that wants Japan to remilitarize beyond a purely defensive capacity, and Bush played them like a violin. I was in Japan in 2003 during the election campaign, and the rhetoric on both sides was pretty heated. I used to listen to NHK Radio News on the web (Japan's version of the BBC), but the day after the U.S. started its offensive in Afghanistan, suddenly the news feed in Japan was coming straight from CNN, which told me that Japan had stopped thinking for itself. The main domestic objection to recent U.S. military enganglements overseas has been that diplomatic measures were not exhausted, and the supposed triggering factors were falsified (Gulf of Tonkin Incident in Vietnam, and WMD and an Al Qaeda alliance with Saddam Hussein in Iraq). You can argue both ways on Japan's post-WWII status as an equal partner in global security, but I think a little more of the JSDF model in our country would be a good thing. Having a defense-only military has forced Japan to become a diplomatic powerhouse. I'm pretty sure that, if another country is going to overrun them, most ordinary civilians in any country would rather be bought off *for the right price* (political/cultural suppression and lowered living standards not allowed) than killed, maimed, or rendered homeless by military action. 40+ years ago, my father was saying the same thing: "We can end the war in Vietnam in a heartbeat. Just buy the country. It would be a lot cheaper than what we're doing now." I'm not a big fan of economic globalization, the way it currently operates, but I hope there will come a time when all the world's people will have enough to eat; proper housing; drinkable water; access to health care; cultural, religious and personal freedom. It's more likely to come about through fair trade and diplomacy rather than warfare. Miriam Solon "Things are not as they seem; nor are they otherwise." --Shakyamuni Buddha, "Lankavatara Sutra" From ignatz at dminet.com Fri Jul 17 16:39:13 2009 From: ignatz at dminet.com (Dave Ihnat) Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:39:13 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <806217.75949.qm@web58702.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <806217.75949.qm@web58702.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20090717213913.GA6463@dminet.com> On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 09:04:20AM -0700, sarahksmom wrote: > The main domestic objection to recent U.S. military enganglements overseas has been that diplomatic measures were not exhausted, and the supposed triggering factors were falsified (Gulf of Tonkin Incident in Vietnam, and WMD and an Al Qaeda alliance with Saddam Hussein in Iraq). You can argue both ways on Japan's post-WWII status as an equal partner in global security, but I think a little more of the JSDF model in our country would be a good thing. Having a defense-only military has forced Japan to become a diplomatic powerhouse. > I'm pretty sure that, if another country is going to overrun them, > most ordinary civilians in any country would rather be bought off *for > the right price* (political/cultural suppression and lowered living > standards not allowed) than killed, maimed, or rendered homeless by > military action. Uh...'fraid not. I would fight rather than see my home, my country, my way of life suborned at any price. I think a lot of other people feel the same way. One reason I'm feeling so conflicted today is I see out way of life being suborned...by our own politicans. This must stop, and stop very soon--for it cannot be tolerated. If they won't stop it through the normal political processes, those processes will be changed (and we aren't going to like living through the change. > 40+ years ago, my father was saying the same thing: "We can end the > war in Vietnam in a heartbeat. Just buy the country. It would be a lot > cheaper than what we're doing now." Wouldn't have worked; Ho Chi Minh had been fighting the Japanese, French, then Americans--he wanted an independent Viet Nam. He didn't care who backed him--turned out to be the Chinese; it could have been the Americans. (And, to my way of thinking, should have been.) But he wasn't going to accept any sort of buy-out. > I'm not a big fan of economic globalization, the way it currently > operates, but I hope there will come a time when all the world's people > will have enough to eat; proper housing; drinkable water; access to > health care; cultural, religious and personal freedom. It's more likely > to come about through fair trade and diplomacy rather than warfare. it's not likely to come about at all as the world is today. We'll have to stop breeding like flies; gut totalitarian, dictatorial, imperialistic and expansionist governments...we've made remarkable progress since, say, the Middle Ages. But we have such an unbelievable amount of progress that remains to be realized... Cheers, -- Dave Ihnat ignatz at dminet.com From techgrrl2003 at yahoo.com Fri Jul 17 17:33:26 2009 From: techgrrl2003 at yahoo.com (Janet Plato) Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:33:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <20090717213913.GA6463@dminet.com> Message-ID: <208994.21643.qm@web33701.mail.mud.yahoo.com> > > > > 40+ years ago, my father was saying the same thing: > > "We can end the war in Vietnam in a heartbeat. Just buy the > > country. It would be a lot cheaper than what we're doing now." > > Wouldn't have worked; Ho Chi Minh had been fighting the > Japanese, French, then Americans--he wanted an independent Viet > Nam.? He didn't care who backed him--turned out to be the Chinese; > it could have been the Americans.? (And, to my way of thinking, should > have been.)? But he wasn't going to accept any sort of buy-out. > As I understand it, Ho offered the US permanent bases at Cam Ranh Bay but we turned him down because he was a communist. Personally I kind of think we should have supported Ho Chi Minh. The whole communism thing would have passed pretty quickly, although we probably would have overthrown him when he resisted paying peasants a slave wage, just like we otherthrew Guatemala when United Fruit did not get the wages and business circumstance they wanted after some agrarian reform du'jour. But yes, he would not have accepted a buyout, but he would have accepted a lot of cash that helped his country in exchange for closer ties to the west and less influence from China and Russia. Both probably less expensive than the war. I think the war goal was mostly to allow our businesses to continue making exorbitant profits with which to bribe our government and his. Nixon was a real sonnuvabitch and held a long view on these things. If we won VietNam, we may well have reaped a fortune long term in concessions and leases. I want the US to be the good guy, and to realize that although we sometimes have to make rotten deals with shady people, we simply cannot continue to exploit other countries and have our corporations suborn their politics and not expect blowback. We need to move towards more freedom and more self determination, and anything not moving in that direction needs to be a damn lot more important than someone on the board of United Fruit being the head of the CIA and working a deal with his brother at the State Department. The thing is, it gets complicated really fast, and international politics is a massive poker game being played by hundereds of countries with thousands of diplomats and billions of citizen, but all involved in different games. The speech given to the citizens is really meant to bluff the player in a different game, the treaty signed with some government is really a play in the game with some other country, the relocation of military forces is a statement made in the news to your people, but says something else to the other guy who has satellites and on and on it goes. I'm not naive, just jaded. Once I realized being lied to was a necessary part of the game, I began to wonder how you tell who your leaders really work for... I have some thoughts but will save them for another day. I think the world is getting better, but not smoothly, rather in fits and starts. Janet From Cougar at CasaDelGato.Com Fri Jul 17 18:39:45 2009 From: Cougar at CasaDelGato.Com (John G. Lussmyer) Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:39:45 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] Universal Health "care" bill Message-ID: <4A610BC1.20800@CasaDelGato.Com> So, I'm seeing some pretty scary descriptions of what this bill includes. Anyone know of a place that actually analyzes what it does say? -- -- John G. Lussmyer mailto:Cougar at CasaDelGato.Com Electric Vehicle Battery Monitoring Systems, http://www.CasaDelGato.com From jazz at qnet.com Sat Jul 18 00:08:49 2009 From: jazz at qnet.com (Bill Taylor) Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 22:08:49 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] Universal Health "care" bill In-Reply-To: <4A610BC1.20800@CasaDelGato.Com> References: <4A610BC1.20800@CasaDelGato.Com> Message-ID: <200907180509.n6I59TRd013519@mail.zarquon.net> At 16:39 7/17/2009 -0700, John G. Lussmyer wrote: >So, I'm seeing some pretty scary descriptions of what this bill includes. >Anyone know of a place that actually analyzes what it does say? Nope. Can't let people be confused with the facts. They might start thinking for themselves. *MY* Universal Health Care Bill has the following: 1. Companies must issue a policy meeting defined benefits package to any person requesting. 2. Policy benefits payout may be delayed up to 6 months from date of issue and first premium payment. 3. Company may not establish more than 12 premium rate paying pools. 4. Greatest premium payment may not be more than 12 times the least premium payment. 5. The least populous premium rate paying pool may not contain fewer than 1/4 of 1/12th of the total insured pool. Then just establish what the minimum coverage must be for a participating insurance program. And work out how to subsidize people that say they can't afford the premium they are offered. Or just put them in the Publicly owned Option (Medicare part ZZ). Bill Taylor From sarahksmom at yahoo.com Sat Jul 18 08:18:44 2009 From: sarahksmom at yahoo.com (sarahksmom) Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 06:18:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 Message-ID: <56879.38091.qm@web58703.mail.re1.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 7/17/09, Janet Plato wrote: > I think the world is getting better, but not smoothly, > rather in fits and starts. Fits and starts? Yeah. Better? Nah. But not worse, either. Same as it ever was. Take a global view. The Dark Ages in Europe, were not necessarily the Dark Ages elsewhere. My genealogy spans at least three continents, maybe four. Societies flourished and collapsed at different times in different parts of the world. --- On Fri, 7/17/09, Dave Ihnat wrote: > One reason I'm feeling so conflicted today is I see out way of life being > suborned...by our own politicans. This must stop, and stop very > soon--for it cannot be tolerated. If they won't stop it through the > normal political processes, those processes will be changed (and we > aren't going to like living through the change. I'd like to know in detail what subornation means to you. When I think of the word, I connect it to the way it's used in Spanish: bribery. Maybe there is no real bought and sold, only rented. Maybe the rental price is too high to be commercially viable, but everybody has his/her price. Janet mentions the ways in which the U.S. has forced the rental price of Guatemala down. A century before that, the U.K. did something even worse to China in forcing the Chinese government to back down from its war on drugs. Sound familiar? So is the West more enlightened now? Hardly, just sneakier. Miriam Solon "Things are not as they seem; nor are they otherwise." --Shakyamuni Buddha, "Lankavatara Sutra" From techgrrl2003 at yahoo.com Sat Jul 18 09:28:54 2009 From: techgrrl2003 at yahoo.com (Janet Plato) Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 07:28:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <56879.38091.qm@web58703.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <458277.59388.qm@web33708.mail.mud.yahoo.com> > So is the West more enlightened now? Hardly, just sneakier. > I disagree, but lack the numbers to make my point and the will to try and prove it. My thesis is that the same base impulses are present, and when not watched closely some people will do nasty things, but the trend has been towards enlightenment. More people support positive things, and more communications infrastructure makes it harder to hide bad things. I think: - slavery is considered less acceptable today than 100 years ago. - we have the resources to feed everyone, and starvation is less prevalent. - as mass media raises awareness of third world conditions, a small part of mankind is moving to change those conditions, it will be a while before this bears fruit, probably not in my lifetime, but soon. - we have pervasive communications, so now we have some vague notion of what is happening in Iran within minutes to hours of it happening. This narrows the window of opportunity for crap. - there are laws that limit some of the more egregious forms of commercial predation, so monopolies and trusts are harder to form and harder to keep in place in some parts of the world. - large scale war is less likely in general, but given the last 8 years that may be a local trend that is coming undone. For the last 8 years the risk of war was rapidly climbing and we seem to be coming off the brink, but Obama is a bit to willing to seize onto previous perogatives. Team Obama says Yes we can: - wiretap your phone. - send your kids to illegal wars. - hold people without cause for years. - admit that waterboarding is a crime, but some crimes are no longer worth prosecuting because it would be inconvenient. - use the rationale Nixon used to convince Ford to pardon him, that it would tear the country apart. - ignore evidence of legal violations in order to push our agenda nowhere, I mean forward. - have the people who worked for Nixon return to power in 20 years when everyone forgets their name, and a corrupt media sees no value in mentioning it. Sure, people are screwed up, and screwed up things happen. But we are here, talking about it, decrying it, and perhaps working to change it. Yes we can make progress, it just takes a lot of time and a lot of work. Cynically hoping, Janet From SteveG at swhi.net Sat Jul 18 11:46:55 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:46:55 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <56879.38091.qm@web58703.mail.re1.yahoo.com> References: <56879.38091.qm@web58703.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <0829ED067C234B72B0BB760B69A647BE@StevePC> sarahksmom says: > > I think the world is getting better, but not smoothly, > > rather in fits and starts. > > Fits and starts? Yeah. Better? Nah. But not worse, either. > Same as it ever was. Take a global view. The Dark Ages in > Europe, were not necessarily the Dark Ages elsewhere. My > genealogy spans at least three continents, maybe four. > Societies flourished and collapsed at different times in > different parts of the world. And which of them would you rather live in than here and now? Is there someplace in the world where you would choose to live in the 14th century rather than 2009 USA? Some things have gotten worse over time, but mainly - AFAICT - limited to those that are direct offshoots of physical progress, such as pollution. (And don't get me wrong, that's a biggie.) But let me suggest a few things that are better here and now than, I think, almost any time and place in the past. (And yes, some of these are still pretty bad in large parts of the world, but in most of the past they were bad everywhere.) 1. The concept that "all men are created equal." That is, that people's right to life and to decent treatment (by whatever the standards of decent treatment may be) is not conditioned on being the right race, sex, color, or religion. 2. Health. Longevity has been good in some other times and places, but usually combined with high infant and youth mortality. Most important, the impacts of disease (and other trauma such as childbirth) on the individual when they did occur have always been far more devastating than today. 3. Cleanliness. In much of our history it wasn't even much of a concept; for filth to matter it had to be pretty bad. 4. Education and intellectual stimulation. Never in past history have there been major nations in which the majority of people had access to any form of education, reading, news, etc. On the flip side, we have unnecessary and destructive wars, disease, poverty, racial and religious strife, ruthless laws, violent crime, disrespect for humanity, etc., to far higher degrees than we ought to by now - but over most of the world no more than in the past and distinctly less than in most of the past. Pollution is the only serious evil I can think of that has gotten worse on a global basis, and that has been almost entirely a concomitant of too-fast or badly planned positive progress in other areas. There have, certainly, often been spots of civilization where one or more of the above have been kept at a high standard, but I can think of none until recent times where the majority of them could have been. - Steve G From SteveG at swhi.net Sat Jul 18 12:23:29 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:23:29 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <458277.59388.qm@web33708.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <56879.38091.qm@web58703.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <458277.59388.qm@web33708.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Janet says: > - slavery is considered less acceptable today than 100 years ago. - which is significant way of phrasing the issue - "considered less acceptable." I think it's important to note that while (as she says) "the same base impulses are present," there is a lot of stuff that people do a lot less often than in the past, or even seriously consider doing, because they are "considered less acceptable." People learn what is acceptable behavior and what is not from a variety of sources. When society as a whole as perceived by the individual defines some action as unacceptable behavior, this inhibits most people from doing it. Some will still act out as a result of mental illness, duress, perceived need or entitlement, anger, etc., but most will no longer do it casually or openly. Thus, for instance, not only slavery but most lesser forms of discrimination, rape, child and spousal abuse (i.e. what we today consider should and spousal abuse) are way down on a global basis, and most of them on a local basis, in part because of *legal* standards. I do not merely mean that people are coerced by the threat of punishment, but rather that when a social value has been enshrined in a society's laws - and enforced - long enough, people grow less likely to think of the older course of conduct as something that wouldn't be so awful if you can get away with it - for the majority (not all, of course) they become almost unthinkable. Pollution is starting to get that way in the more modern industrialized countries - it is gradually being transformed from a mere regulatory offense to a shameful antisocial act. Rape presents one unique aspect entirely aside from its evolving aspect as a civil crime (e.g., within the marriage). It is still notoriously prevalent as a tool of warfare (as was usual, though not universal, in the past), but has now become viewed as a major issue in the international law of armed conflict. In past generations most Western nations viewed it as something real soldiers don't do and we didn't have to (or want to) talk about; now, however, since the media have made it clear that some armed forces still condone it, it is no longer a matter strictly for local law enforcement on a case-by-case basis but an international issue. As a result, I believe, over time fewer and fewer *nations* will view it as something that isn't so bad if you get away with it. (The same can be said of other violations of law of war, but this one happens to be a striking current example.) - Steve G From SteveG at swhi.net Tue Jul 21 19:08:39 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:08:39 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] New "church and state" ruling Message-ID: Forwarded not because it's terribly novel, but mainly because I found it an interesting example of just how these things are analyzed. Comment #15 on the site is from me. The decision itself is worth reading for those who like such things. > - Steve G From jazz at qnet.com Thu Jul 23 21:47:01 2009 From: jazz at qnet.com (Bill Taylor) Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:47:01 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <20090717140618.GE23977@dminet.com> References: <704045.77746.qm@web58704.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <412C8A905F24483D9314FBAED8BCB0D1@StevePC> <20090717140618.GE23977@dminet.com> Message-ID: <200907240254.n6O2sRps024026@mail.zarquon.net> At 09:06 7/17/2009 -0500, Dave Ihnat wrote: >It's a complicated problem. You *must* have a military; the world just >ain't full of kind and compassionate governments. Or, in many places, >people. And, given both the aversion of first-world countries to troop >losses and the relatively lower number of troops available in a volunteer >military, highly efficient weapons delivery systems and force multipliers >*are* going to be deployed. Weapons kill and maim--that's what they do. >So you have people who will--must--use 'video game' warfare, >exacerbating the disconnect first noted in flyboys--tea and hot >breakfast back at the airfield, fly out to horror and destruction, then >back home to a hot meal and soft bed. But even more so now--sit in an >air-conditioned van and tell a Predator drone to launch a Hellfire >missile; you don't even go out, personally, to the field. NOT video game warfare, but remotely operated aircraft. Real people and real kills, and real consequences when something hoses up. http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/07/23/wus.warfare.remote.uav/index.html Bill Taylor From ignatz at dminet.com Fri Jul 24 08:15:52 2009 From: ignatz at dminet.com (Dave Ihnat) Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 08:15:52 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <200907240254.n6O2sRps024026@mail.zarquon.net> References: <704045.77746.qm@web58704.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <412C8A905F24483D9314FBAED8BCB0D1@StevePC> <20090717140618.GE23977@dminet.com> <200907240254.n6O2sRps024026@mail.zarquon.net> Message-ID: <20090724131552.GB3180@dminet.com> On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 07:47:01PM -0700, Bill Taylor wrote: > NOT video game warfare, but remotely operated aircraft. Real people > and real kills, and real consequences when something hoses up. The phrase "video game warfare" is quite appropriate. It's not intended to indicate there are no kills or consequences; rather, it indicates that the operators are, quite literally, using the same skill set and are in the same personal environment as if they were playing video games. In fact, the article you directed us to makes this point: 'It [Creech] has also introduced an experimental training program for air force cadets from the videogame generation.' They are aware of negative aspects of this, since they go out of their way a little farther in the article to state: 'He says: "It's pretty clear that it's not a video game, and it is real life and that what I do directly affects someone else halfway around the world. So I don't think that's going to be a big problem for me.' I have to believe inclusion of that quote was either a deliberate fabrication, or in response to a leading question, in either case the purpose being an attempt to allay the "video game" image. Cheers, -- Dave Ihnat ignatz at dminet.com From steveg at swhi.net Fri Jul 24 12:24:48 2009 From: steveg at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:24:48 -0500 (CDT) Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <20090724131552.GB3180@dminet.com> References: <704045.77746.qm@web58704.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <412C8A905F24483D9314FBAED8BCB0D1@StevePC> <20090717140618.GE23977@dminet.com> <200907240254.n6O2sRps024026@mail.zarquon.net> <20090724131552.GB3180@dminet.com> Message-ID: <25983.144.183.224.2.1248456288.squirrel@www.swhi.net> Dave Ihnat wrote: > The phrase "video game warfare" is quite appropriate. It's not intended to indicate there are no kills or consequences; rather, it indicates that the operators are, quite literally, using the same skill set and are in the same personal environment as if they were playing video games. As originally used here, the intent was also to say that the "players" are so insulated as to not take the "kills" seriously. Same skill set, to some limited extent; same environment, no; same attitude, I can't be sure but seriously doubt it. Although you suggest the quote in the article may be "a deliberate fabrication," I think it is quite fair and honest to say that in the current environment, the "players" are well aware that they are actually affecting real people. Of course I'm not in that environment myself. I do think there is a *serious* problem with our society as a whole - most definitely including those raised on violent video games - being trained to treat killing as a sport and in other ways as too easy a thing to justify. If such people enter the military and are then told to do the same thing, those values could carry over. However, AFAIK the decisions on what to target using armed UAV's are not in fact made that casually, not in a "video game" setting, and not for reasons that wouldn't equally apply if they were there on the scene. It could happen; I don't think it is happening. At this point I am not terribly worried about the people actually controlling the UAV's; they don't just decide "hey, let's go get that raghead over there." I do worry about the people who are actually making the decisions, not the operators; many of those may also have a "cowboy" attitude fostered by many aspects of our society, including but by no means limited to the effect of video games. That's a different problem and not a new one. - Steve G From bentley at crenelle.com Sat Jul 25 00:20:42 2009 From: bentley at crenelle.com (Michael Brian Bentley) Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 22:20:42 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] I notice that goglog list messages are available through Bing Message-ID: I notice that goglog messages show up in searches on Bing. Is this intentional? -Mike From teacherrtj at gmail.com Sat Jul 25 05:56:29 2009 From: teacherrtj at gmail.com (Richard Jensen) Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 05:56:29 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] I notice that goglog list messages are available through Bing In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <84dc99b70907250356w104847cfja0eb72a559ce1ecb@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 12:20 AM, Michael Brian Bentley < bentley at crenelle.com> wrote: > Replies are directed to the list. > If you wish to respond only to the sender, please edit the To: line! > ____________________________________________________________ > I notice that goglog messages show up in searches on Bing. Is this > intentional? > > -Mike > If you follow the link at the bottom of the e-mail (put on by the mail daemon) you will see the following phrasing: "Messages sent to GogLog are archived on the web, and are viewable to the general public. If this bothers you, please consider subscribing under a pseudonym. " So, I would expect that yes, it is probably intentional. Rick -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.zarquon.net/pipermail/goglog/attachments/20090725/1f5968ea/attachment.htm From SteveG at swhi.net Sat Jul 25 06:52:10 2009 From: SteveG at swhi.net (Steve Gruenwald) Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 06:52:10 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] I notice that goglog list messages are available throughBing In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <52A243B5EEB84976A80E2FBD3B987ECA@StevePC> Michael Brian Bentley says: > I notice that goglog messages show up in searches on Bing. Is > this intentional? I don't know Bing, but they've been searchable for years, if not always. Personally I don't like it, but it was discussed here some time ago. See also the Archives, visible without using a login ID: - Steve G From Cougar at CasaDelGato.Com Sun Jul 26 08:59:22 2009 From: Cougar at CasaDelGato.Com (John G. Lussmyer) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2009 06:59:22 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] Health Care Bill "analysis"? Message-ID: <4A6C613A.5040900@CasaDelGato.Com> Ok, this actually looks like somebody is READING the bill. (gosh!) Anyone have any idea on how accurate this interpretation is? Dirty little secret time. Below are what has been found in the healthcare bill SO FAR: (Note Pg 59, 124, and 203 especially.) /Following the //mad recommendations of Peter Singer/ / made in NYT's Sunday magazine, it pays to take a look at what is actually in the healthcare bill. It's worse than you can possibly imagine. Somehow, it manages to be Singer on steroids. Who wrote this bill. It has Singer's footprints all over it. Peter Fleckstein (aka Fleckman) is reading it and has been posting on Twitter //his findings/ /. This is from his postings (Note: All comments are Fleckman's) /Pg 22 of the HC Bill MANDATES the Govt will audit books of ALL EMPLOYERS that self insure!! Pg 30 Sec 123 of HC bill - THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benes u get Pg 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill - YOUR HEALTHCARE IS RATIONED!!! Pg 42 of HC Bill - The Health Choices Commissioner will choose UR HC Benefits 4 you. U have no choice! PG 50 Section 152 in HC bill - HC will be provided 2 ALL non US citizens, illegal or otherwise Pg 58HC Bill - Govt will have real-time access 2 individs finances & a National ID Healthcard will b issued! -> Pg 59 HC Bill lines 21-24 Govt will have direct access 2 ur banks accts 4 elect. funds transfer PG 65 Sec 164 is a payoff subsidized plan 4 retirees and their families in Unions & community orgs (ACORN). Pg 72 Lines 8-14 Govt is creating an HC Exchange 2 bring priv HC plans under Govt control. PG 84 Sec 203 HC bill - Govt mandates ALL benefit pkgs 4 priv. HC plans in the Exchange PG 85 Line 7 HC Bill - Specs for of Benefit Levels for Plans = The Govt will ration ur Healthcare! PG 91 Lines 4-7 HC Bill - Govt mandates linguistic approp svcs. Example - Translation 4 illegal aliens Pg 95 HC Bill Lines 8-18 The Govt will use groups i.e., ACORN & Americorps 2 sign up indiv. for Govt HC plan PG 85 Line 7 HC Bill - Specs of Ben Levels 4 Plans. #AARP members - U Health care WILL b rationed -PG 102 Lines 12-18 HC Bill - Medicaid Eligible Indiv. will b automat.enrolled in Medicaid. No choice -> pg 124 lines 24-25 HC No company can sue GOVT on price fixing. No "judicial review" against Govt Monop pg 127 Lines 1-16 HC Bill - Doctors/ #AMA - The Govt will tell YOU what u can make. Pg 145 Line 15-17 An Employer MUST auto enroll employees into pub opt plan. NO CHOICE Pg 126 Lines 22-25 Employers MUST pay 4 HC 4 part time employees AND their families. Pg 149 Lines 16-24 ANY Emplyr w payroll 400k & above who does not prov. pub opt. pays 8% tax on all payroll pg 150 Lines 9-13 Biz w payroll btw 251k & 400k who doesnt prov. pub. opt pays 2-6% tax on all payroll Pg 167 Lines 18-23 ANY individual who doesnt have acceptable HC accrdng 2 Govt will be taxed 2.5% of inc Pg 170 Lines 1-3 HC Bill Any NONRESIDENT Alien is exempt from indiv. taxes. (Americans will pay) Pg 195 HC Bill -officers & employees of HC Admin (GOVT) will have access 2 ALL Americans finan/pers recs -> PG 203 Line 14-15 HC - "The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax" Yes, it says that Pg 239 Line 14-24 HC Bill Govt will reduce physician svcs 4 Medicaid. Seniors, low income, poor affected Pg 241 Line 6-8 HC Bill - Doctors, doesnt matter what specialty u have, you'll all be paid the same PG 253 Line 10-18 Govt sets value of Dr's time, prof judg, etc. Literally value of humans. PG 265 Sec 1131Govt mandates & controls productivity for private HC industries PG 268 Sec 1141 Fed Govt regulates rental & purchase of power driven wheelchairs PG 272 SEC. 1145. TREATMENT OF CERTAIN CANCER HOSPITALS - Cancer patients - welcome to rationing! Page 280 Sec 1151 The Govt will penalize hospitals 4 what Govt deems preventable readmissions. Pg 298 Lines 9-11 Drs, treat a patient during initial admiss that results in a readmiss-Govt will penalize u. Pg 317 L 13-20 OMG!! PROHIBITION on ownership/investment. Govt tells Drs. what/how much they can own. Pg 317-318 lines 21-25,1-3 PROHIBITION on expansion- Govt is mandating hospitals cannot expand pg 321 2-13 Hospitals have oppt to apply for exception BUT community input required. Can u say ACORN?!! Pg335 L 16-25 Pg 336-339 - Govt mandates estab. of outcome based measures. HC the way they want. Rationing Pg 341 Lines 3-9 Govt has authority 2 disqual Medicare Adv Plans, HMOs, etc. Forcing peeps in2 Govt plan Pg 354 Sec 1177 - Govt will RESTRICT enrollment of Special needs ppl! WTF. My sis has down syndrome!! Pg 379 Sec 1191 Govt creates more bureaucracy - Telehealth Advisory Cmtte. Can u say HC by phone? PG 425 Lines 4-12 Govt mandates Advance Care Planning Consult. Think Senior Citizens end of life Pg 425 Lines 17-19 Govt will instruct & consult regarding living wills, durable powers of atty. Mandatory! PG 425 Lines 22-25, 426 Lines 1-3 Govt provides apprvd list of end of life resources, guiding u in death PG 427 Lines 15-24 Govt mandates program 4 orders 4 end of life. The Govt has a say in how ur life ends Pg 429 Lines 1-9 An "adv. care planning consult" will b used frequently as patients health deteriorates PG 429 Lines 10-12 "adv. care consultation" may incl an ORDER 4 end of life plans. AN ORDER from GOV Pg 429 Lines 13-25 - The govt will specify which Doctors can write an end of life order. PG 430 Lines 11-15 The Govt will decide what level of treatment u will have at end of life Pg 469 - Community Based Home Medical Services=Non profit orgs. Hello, ACORN Medical Svcs here!!? Page 472 Lines 14-17 PAYMENT TO COMMUNITY-BASED ORG. 1 monthly payment 2 a community-based org. Like ACORN? PG 489 Sec 1308 The Govt will cover Marriage & Family therapy. Which means they will insert Govt in2 ur marriage Pg 494-498 Govt will cover Mental Health Svcs including defining, creating, rationing those svcs http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2009/07/whats-in-healthacre-bill.html From martinigt at comcast.net Sun Jul 26 15:42:31 2009 From: martinigt at comcast.net (Marinna Martini) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:42:31 -0400 Subject: [Goglog] Why was this classified by the U.S. Government? In-Reply-To: <887088630907261144u6ce1fe13o4498db7287fdd9f6@mail.gmail.com> References: <887088630907261144u6ce1fe13o4498db7287fdd9f6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A6CBFB7.1090707@comcast.net> Jeffrey Czerniak wrote: > Some side-by-side satellite photography tells the story much more > clearly than any "hockey stick" ever could: > > http://trueslant.com/jeffmcmahon/2009/07/26/declassified-arctic-ice-photos/ > > I await Eric's explanation of how these photographs must have been > taken by different satellites with different focal lengths and > different imaging sensors, and thus we can safely ignore this data. > > Jeff > geekable.com > > {#} ---------------------+[ GT/PFRC -- Science Fact and Science Fiction ]+--- > > I was going to shoot off... it's a conspiracy... joking... but... Lately I've been reading the _Republican_War_on_Science_. It is anti-right wing (or anti-neocon, actually), no doubt. What's depressing is how well researched it is. I wish it were a bunch of bunk. Had we not had the obfuscation we've had in the past 30 years, we may have been able to make less wasteful spending decisions... then, and now, about a whole host of things. From my little corner of the government, a lot of fuss is being made about access to resources up and that area, all of a sudden, as if we will be having access to it for a long time to come. About 10+ individuals suddenly have had field work up there this year. Not me, sadly.... The rest of this belongs on goglog, to which I'm subscribed, and I'll post to, but nothing ever seems to come across... Marinna From rrostrom.21stcentury at rcn.com Mon Jul 27 21:05:11 2009 From: rrostrom.21stcentury at rcn.com (Rich Rostrom) Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:05:11 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] FW: The Straight Dope 07/03/2009 In-Reply-To: <208994.21643.qm@web33701.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <208994.21643.qm@web33701.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: >Replies are directed to the list. >If you wish to respond only to the sender, please edit the To: line! >____________________________________________________________ > >> > >> > 40+ years ago, my father was saying the same thing: >> > "We can end the war in Vietnam in a heartbeat. Just buy the >> > country. It would be a lot cheaper than what we're doing now." >> >> Wouldn't have worked; Ho Chi Minh had been fighting the >> Japanese, French, then Americans--he wanted an independent Viet >> Nam. Under the control of of Ho and his Communist associates. During WW II, Ho supplied information to the Japanese on other resistance groups - rather like a drug dealer who informs police about the competition. >> He didn't care who backed him--turned out to be the Chinese; >> it could have been the Americans. (And, to my way of thinking, should >> have been.) But he wasn't going to accept any sort of buy-out. >> > > As I understand it, Ho offered the US permanent bases at Cam Ranh Bay >but we turned him down because he was a communist. It could have had something to do with the legal government of Indochina being France. For the U.S. to step in and recognize some rebel or other as a lawful government when the existing government is a close ally is, well, just a little radical. >Personally I kind >of think we should have supported Ho Chi Minh. The whole communism >thing would have passed pretty quickly... The first thing Ho and his fellow Communists did after taking power in the north was order the liquidation of all "class enemies": landlords, priests, officials of the colonial regime, etc. This element was arbitrarily estimated at 2% of the population, about 270,000 people. District Party committees were issued execution quotas, which collectively added up to that number. This is not something a Jeffersonian democrat does. It is, however, entirely consistent with Ho's long history as a follower of Joseph Stalin, including several years in Moscow at Comintern headquarters. (As it happens, the great blood purge was truncated. About two million refugees fled to the South in 1954, including nearly all "class enemies". The district committees killed those who were left, and reported the job done. The Central Committee reiterated the original death quotas, and demanded fulfillment. The district committees then cast a wider net, leading to victims chosen at random, and people accusing miscellaneous neighbors, either to pursue an old grudge or feud, or simply to divert the hunters from their own doors. When Viet Minh veterans began to appear among the victims, a scandal erupted, and the Central Committee finally called off the purge. About 150,000 had died.) -- | Rich Rostrom rrostrom.21stcentury at rcn.com | | | | Nous sommes dans un pot de chambre, et nous y serons | | emmerdes. -- General Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot at Sedan | From bentley at crenelle.com Mon Jul 27 23:47:04 2009 From: bentley at crenelle.com (Michael Brian Bentley) Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:47:04 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] Health Care Bill "analysis"? In-Reply-To: <4A6C613A.5040900@CasaDelGato.Com> References: <4A6C613A.5040900@CasaDelGato.Com> Message-ID: >Pg 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill - YOUR HEALTHCARE IS RATIONED!!! Health care is rationed now, but the question is to what degree, and according to which set of rules. Right now you can get all the health care you want by using economic leverage. This leaves out 47 million people, who are (this is debatable) more likely be constituents of the Democratic party. If they were constituents of the Republican party, they might have been inclined during the last couple of decades to accommodate their needs. At the moment, health care costs increase about 10% every year, I understand. I don't know this for sure, I haven't been paying all my costs the last few years. That means that a larger chunk of salaries will go to insurance coverage, with larger organizations pushing back on price more successfully than smaller ones. Currently, if you go with an HMO plan, the private sector decides whether to pay for some of your medical procedures. I believe this is also true for PPO plans, the ins. company decided to not pay for a comprehensive set of blood tests probably done for the third time when all we wanted was blood sugar related tests. We signed up for a PPO family plan through the contract house I'm working through, but discovered that we couldn't afford the plan and discontinued our involvement. It was pretty much what we had when I worked for a large network hardware/software company, but my income was higher. I still make a pretty good income, but nevertheless we'll be setting up a plan with a 5K-10K deductible and lower monthly rate. Many of these talking points are largely accurate, but as the whole bill is in flux they may or may not survive the process. NPR had a piece a few days ago talking about the effectiveness of the various lobbies. One lobby has spent 40 million dollars during the last few weeks, and appears to have had considerable success convincing who theoretically are your representatives to pay considerable attention to their desires. The problem with bills of this size and scope is the number of special interests. Democratic interests have a tendency to splinter when groups don't get their way. From ignatz at dminet.com Tue Jul 28 08:23:20 2009 From: ignatz at dminet.com (Dave Ihnat) Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:23:20 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] Health Care Bill "analysis"? In-Reply-To: References: <4A6C613A.5040900@CasaDelGato.Com> Message-ID: <20090728132320.GB31339@dminet.com> On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 09:47:04PM -0700, Mike Bentley wrote: > NPR had a piece a few days ago talking about the effectiveness of the > various lobbies. One lobby has spent 40 million dollars during the > last few weeks, and appears to have had considerable success > convincing who theoretically are your representatives to pay > considerable attention to their desires. That would be the pharma lobby. (I heard the same piece.) > Democratic interests have a tendency to splinter when groups don't > get their way. That's always been a problem with the Dems; they're, essentially, a coalition of the non-Republicans. (Now expecting that thumbnail observation to be shredded, since it's not a 5,000 word mini-thesis with footnotes...) Cheers, -- Dave Ihnat ignatz at dminet.com From martinigt at comcast.net Sun Jul 26 15:42:31 2009 From: martinigt at comcast.net (Marinna Martini) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:42:31 -0400 Subject: [Goglog] Why was this classified by the U.S. Government? In-Reply-To: <887088630907261144u6ce1fe13o4498db7287fdd9f6@mail.gmail.com> References: <887088630907261144u6ce1fe13o4498db7287fdd9f6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Jeffrey Czerniak wrote: > Some side-by-side satellite photography tells the story much more > clearly than any "hockey stick" ever could: > > http://trueslant.com/jeffmcmahon/2009/07/26/declassified-arctic-ice-photos/ I was going to shoot off... it's a conspiracy... joking... but... Lately I've been reading the _Republican_War_on_Science_. It is anti-right wing (or anti-neocon, actually), no doubt. What's depressing is how well researched it is. I wish it were a bunch of bunk. Had we not had the obfuscation we've had in the past 30 years, we may have been able to make less wasteful spending decisions... then, and now, about a whole host of things. From my little corner of the government, a lot of fuss is being made about access to resources up and that area, all of a sudden, as if we will be having access to it for a long time to come. About 10+ individuals suddenly have had field work up there this year. Not me, sadly.... The rest of this belongs on goglog, to which I'm subscribed, and I'll post to, but nothing ever seems to come across... Marinna From ignatz at dminet.com Fri Jul 31 09:25:31 2009 From: ignatz at dminet.com (Dave Ihnat) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:25:31 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] Bank Holiday? Message-ID: <20090731142531.GB31769@dminet.com> I don't know how I got on his mailing list, but an investor named Alex Feldman has been sending me newsletters with his take on the economy. (What's he get out of it? After a couple of months of these, his office called to see if I wanted to move my investment accounts to their company.) He's generally very conservative, and foresees a real collapse in the offing. He's bullish on gold, believing it's going to dip a bit now, then climb to as much as $2k/oz. This last one, today, is what prompted me to post this here--if true, it's troublesome. But is it true? What do y'all think? -- Dave Ihnat ignatz at dminet.com --FELDMAN: If you didn't think I was completely insane already, here is something that might put the nail in the coffin. This is from Harry Schultz & Bob Chapman and I am not suggesting I agree but it would not exactly shock me either. "Some US embassies worldwide are being advised to purchase massive amounts of local currencies; enough to last them a year. Some embassies are being sent enormous amounts of US cash to purchase currencies from those govts, quietly. But not pounds. Inside the State Dept there is a sense of sadness & foreboding that 'something' is about to happen, unknown re a date--just that within 180 days, but could be 120-150 days." Bob quotes another source that "Panasonic has told their people to be back in Japan by Sept 09." Harry Schultz, dean of newsletter writers, has quoted the Chapman letter of May 30 regarding US embassies being sent large amounts of cash with which to buy local currencies, to last them a year. Here is Harry's remarkable take on the situation: "My HSL suspicion is that the elite plan another FDR style "bank holiday" of indefinite length, perhaps very soon, to let the insiders sort-out the bank mess which is getting more out of their control every day.*Insiders want/need to impose new bank rules. Widespread nationalization could result, already under way. It could also lead to a formal US$ devaluation, as FDR did by revaluing gold (& then confiscating it). But devalue against what? The euro? Doubtful. Gold? Maybe. Or vs. the IMF basket of currencies (which seems more likely)& much in the news recently. Any kind of bank holiday will push the US$ lower, which may be a bonus benefit to their ongoing scenario of letting the $ fall. Such a fall would get the devaluation they want without having to declare it. In sum, the insiders want more bank & system control, fewer banks & a lower US$. A bank holiday would suit all their needs. Obviously, U can't open safeboxes if the banks are closed, so plan accordingly. All this is speculation, but we have to go with what we've got, scraps of info that point to certain possibilities. In any case such a closure will, IMO, come sooner or later, as the worst of the embedded derivatives are still to be faced. We are years away from solving them because the controllers don't want to; their fingerprints are all over them. *** PS: during the FDR bank holiday, thousands of banks never reopened; it was a face-saving way of shutting them down. I would guess the same would occur today; thousands have little or no net value, loaded with debt, bad mortgages. --END FELDMAN From Cougar at CasaDelGato.Com Fri Jul 31 09:41:49 2009 From: Cougar at CasaDelGato.Com (John G. Lussmyer) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:41:49 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] Bank Holiday? In-Reply-To: <20090731142531.GB31769@dminet.com> References: <20090731142531.GB31769@dminet.com> Message-ID: <4A7302AD.2040804@CasaDelGato.Com> So, move investments into Foreign stocks? Dave Ihnat wrote: > Replies are directed to the list. > If you wish to respond only to the sender, please edit the To: line! > ____________________________________________________________ > I don't know how I got on his mailing list, but an investor named Alex > Feldman has been sending me newsletters with his take on the economy. > (What's he get out of it? After a couple of months of these, his office > called to see if I wanted to move my investment accounts to their > company.) > > He's generally very conservative, and foresees a real collapse in the > offing. He's bullish on gold, believing it's going to dip a bit now, > then climb to as much as $2k/oz. > > This last one, today, is what prompted me to post this here--if true, > it's troublesome. But is it true? What do y'all think? > -- > Dave Ihnat > ignatz at dminet.com > > --FELDMAN: > If you didn't think I was completely insane already, here is something > that might put the nail in the coffin. This is from Harry Schultz & > Bob Chapman and I am not suggesting I agree but it would not exactly > shock me either. > > "Some US embassies worldwide are being advised to purchase massive amounts > of local currencies; enough to last them a year. Some embassies are being > sent enormous amounts of US cash to purchase currencies from those govts, > quietly. But not pounds. Inside the State Dept there is a sense of > sadness & foreboding that 'something' is about to happen, unknown re a > date--just that within 180 days, but could be 120-150 days." > From mbcrui at gmail.com Fri Jul 31 10:11:01 2009 From: mbcrui at gmail.com (Mary Cruickshank Peed) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:11:01 -0400 Subject: [Goglog] Bank Holiday? In-Reply-To: <4A7302AD.2040804@CasaDelGato.Com> References: <20090731142531.GB31769@dminet.com> <4A7302AD.2040804@CasaDelGato.Com> Message-ID: <4A730985.2020605@gmail.com> We bank with a small, locally owned bank. If they close it "indefinitely" I know where the president lives, and the Sr. Vice President lives 2 streets over. It sounds like another conspiracy theory to me... Mary -- -- Mary Cruickshank Peed We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong. - Sir Arthur Eddington From mhagerman at att.net Fri Jul 31 10:56:15 2009 From: mhagerman at att.net (mhagerman at att.net) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:56:15 +0000 Subject: [Goglog] Bank Holiday? In-Reply-To: <4A7302AD.2040804@CasaDelGato.Com> References: <20090731142531.GB31769@dminet.com> <4A7302AD.2040804@CasaDelGato.Com> Message-ID: <073120091556.5099.4A73141F000C70C9000013EB22218801869B0A02D29B9B0EBF020E039D0A090E0803@att.net> -------------- Original message from "John G. Lussmyer" : -------------- > Replies are directed to the list. > If you wish to respond only to the sender, please edit the To: line! > ____________________________________________________________ > So, move investments into Foreign stocks? Probably not. The world economy is a lot more interconnected than it was in the 30s; a bank holiday would likely crash a number of foreign markets, too. I've no idea how one might profit from anticipating such an event. The best bet, I'm afraid, is to buy commodities of some sort, something that has actual, real-world value. Classically, that would be gold, but silver, copper, or oil, even grain or some other reasonably durable stuff should work. You won't make a profit, but you might preserve your investment against currency-based losses. Of course, if the bank holiday doesn't happen, you lose the transaction costs involved in buying and selling. For my own part, I've a bit of cash squirreled away, but I don't really expect a banking holiday at this point. I think, if it were going to happen, it would've been done early this year, shortly after Obama's apotheosis. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.zarquon.net/pipermail/goglog/attachments/20090731/f306f535/attachment.htm From jazz at qnet.com Fri Jul 31 11:17:41 2009 From: jazz at qnet.com (Bill Taylor) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:17:41 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] Bank Holiday? In-Reply-To: <20090731142531.GB31769@dminet.com> References: <20090731142531.GB31769@dminet.com> Message-ID: <200907311617.n6VGHhO7006521@mail.zarquon.net> While anything is possible... It looks like some prudent risk handling mixed with wild speculation and conspiracy mongering to me. FDR did order a bank holiday and bank evaluation back in 1933. It did allow or force many banks to close and never reopen. But since that time the FDIC and other agencies were formed to do better oversight. Bank closures are up, but are they so far up that FDIC et al can't handle it? And the US Treasury above and beyond them? Unclear to me, but I doubt it. Even if so, I suspect the regulators would prefer to let the marginal guys paddle for their lives for as long as possible, rather than have lots of mass closings. Which just leaves us with the possibility that they do see such a huge wave coming that a massive cut off is the only good alternative. Possible, but how would anyone detect something like that from the outside? And how does it look different from the usual bank secrecy? We see references to "insiders" and "elite", but who are they, and when has financial trading ever been any different? Someone always knows something, others are always in the dark. The shadowy insiders are just the same old people doing business as usual. Bill Taylor At 09:25 7/31/2009 -0500, Dave Ihnat wrote: >I don't know how I got on his mailing list, but an investor named Alex >Feldman has been sending me newsletters with his take on the economy. >(What's he get out of it? After a couple of months of these, his office >called to see if I wanted to move my investment accounts to their >company.) > >He's generally very conservative, and foresees a real collapse in the >offing. He's bullish on gold, believing it's going to dip a bit now, >then climb to as much as $2k/oz. > >This last one, today, is what prompted me to post this here--if true, >it's troublesome. But is it true? What do y'all think? >-- > Dave Ihnat > ignatz at dminet.com > >--FELDMAN: >If you didn't think I was completely insane already, here is something >that might put the nail in the coffin. This is from Harry Schultz & >Bob Chapman and I am not suggesting I agree but it would not exactly >shock me either. > >"Some US embassies worldwide are being advised to purchase massive amounts >of local currencies; enough to last them a year. Some embassies are being >sent enormous amounts of US cash to purchase currencies from those govts, >quietly. But not pounds. Inside the State Dept there is a sense of >sadness & foreboding that 'something' is about to happen, unknown re a >date--just that within 180 days, but could be 120-150 days." > >Bob quotes another source that "Panasonic has told their people to be >back in Japan by Sept 09." > >Harry Schultz, dean of newsletter writers, has quoted the Chapman letter >of May 30 regarding US embassies being sent large amounts of cash with >which to buy local currencies, to last them a year. Here is Harry's >remarkable take on the situation: > >"My HSL suspicion is that the elite plan another FDR style "bank >holiday" of indefinite length, perhaps very soon, to let the insiders >sort-out the bank mess which is getting more out of their control >every day.*Insiders want/need to impose new bank rules. Widespread >nationalization could result, already under way. It could also lead to a >formal US$ devaluation, as FDR did by revaluing gold (& then confiscating >it). But devalue against what? The euro? Doubtful. Gold? Maybe. Or >vs. the IMF basket of currencies (which seems more likely)& much in >the news recently. Any kind of bank holiday will push the US$ lower, >which may be a bonus benefit to their ongoing scenario of letting the $ >fall. Such a fall would get the devaluation they want without having >to declare it. In sum, the insiders want more bank & system control, >fewer banks & a lower US$. A bank holiday would suit all their needs. > >Obviously, U can't open safeboxes if the banks are closed, so plan >accordingly. All this is speculation, but we have to go with what >we've got, scraps of info that point to certain possibilities. In any >case such a closure will, IMO, come sooner or later, as the worst of >the embedded derivatives are still to be faced. We are years away from >solving them because the controllers don't want to; their fingerprints >are all over them. *** > >PS: during the FDR bank holiday, thousands of banks never reopened; >it was a face-saving way of shutting them down. I would guess the same >would occur today; thousands have little or no net value, loaded with >debt, bad mortgages. >--END FELDMAN >_______________________________________________ >Goglog mailing list >Goglog at mail.zarquon.net >http://mail.zarquon.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/goglog From jazz at qnet.com Fri Jul 31 11:17:41 2009 From: jazz at qnet.com (Bill Taylor) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:17:41 -0700 Subject: [Goglog] Bank Holiday? In-Reply-To: <20090731142531.GB31769@dminet.com> References: <20090731142531.GB31769@dminet.com> Message-ID: <200907311617.n6VGHhft006522@mail.zarquon.net> While anything is possible... It looks like some prudent risk handling mixed with wild speculation and conspiracy mongering to me. FDR did order a bank holiday and bank evaluation back in 1933. It did allow or force many banks to close and never reopen. But since that time the FDIC and other agencies were formed to do better oversight. Bank closures are up, but are they so far up that FDIC et al can't handle it? And the US Treasury above and beyond them? Unclear to me, but I doubt it. Even if so, I suspect the regulators would prefer to let the marginal guys paddle for their lives for as long as possible, rather than have lots of mass closings. Which just leaves us with the possibility that they do see such a huge wave coming that a massive cut off is the only good alternative. Possible, but how would anyone detect something like that from the outside? And how does it look different from the usual bank secrecy? We see references to "insiders" and "elite", but who are they, and when has financial trading ever been any different? Someone always knows something, others are always in the dark. The shadowy insiders are just the same old people doing business as usual. Bill Taylor At 09:25 7/31/2009 -0500, Dave Ihnat wrote: >I don't know how I got on his mailing list, but an investor named Alex >Feldman has been sending me newsletters with his take on the economy. >(What's he get out of it? After a couple of months of these, his office >called to see if I wanted to move my investment accounts to their >company.) > >He's generally very conservative, and foresees a real collapse in the >offing. He's bullish on gold, believing it's going to dip a bit now, >then climb to as much as $2k/oz. > >This last one, today, is what prompted me to post this here--if true, >it's troublesome. But is it true? What do y'all think? >-- > Dave Ihnat > ignatz at dminet.com > >--FELDMAN: >If you didn't think I was completely insane already, here is something >that might put the nail in the coffin. This is from Harry Schultz & >Bob Chapman and I am not suggesting I agree but it would not exactly >shock me either. > >"Some US embassies worldwide are being advised to purchase massive amounts >of local currencies; enough to last them a year. Some embassies are being >sent enormous amounts of US cash to purchase currencies from those govts, >quietly. But not pounds. Inside the State Dept there is a sense of >sadness & foreboding that 'something' is about to happen, unknown re a >date--just that within 180 days, but could be 120-150 days." > >Bob quotes another source that "Panasonic has told their people to be >back in Japan by Sept 09." > >Harry Schultz, dean of newsletter writers, has quoted the Chapman letter >of May 30 regarding US embassies being sent large amounts of cash with >which to buy local currencies, to last them a year. Here is Harry's >remarkable take on the situation: > >"My HSL suspicion is that the elite plan another FDR style "bank >holiday" of indefinite length, perhaps very soon, to let the insiders >sort-out the bank mess which is getting more out of their control >every day.*Insiders want/need to impose new bank rules. Widespread >nationalization could result, already under way. It could also lead to a >formal US$ devaluation, as FDR did by revaluing gold (& then confiscating >it). But devalue against what? The euro? Doubtful. Gold? Maybe. Or >vs. the IMF basket of currencies (which seems more likely)& much in >the news recently. Any kind of bank holiday will push the US$ lower, >which may be a bonus benefit to their ongoing scenario of letting the $ >fall. Such a fall would get the devaluation they want without having >to declare it. In sum, the insiders want more bank & system control, >fewer banks & a lower US$. A bank holiday would suit all their needs. > >Obviously, U can't open safeboxes if the banks are closed, so plan >accordingly. All this is speculation, but we have to go with what >we've got, scraps of info that point to certain possibilities. In any >case such a closure will, IMO, come sooner or later, as the worst of >the embedded derivatives are still to be faced. We are years away from >solving them because the controllers don't want to; their fingerprints >are all over them. *** > >PS: during the FDR bank holiday, thousands of banks never reopened; >it was a face-saving way of shutting them down. I would guess the same >would occur today; thousands have little or no net value, loaded with >debt, bad mortgages. >--END FELDMAN >_______________________________________________ >Goglog mailing list >Goglog at mail.zarquon.net >http://mail.zarquon.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/goglog From drsulak at zarquon.net Fri Jul 31 11:44:40 2009 From: drsulak at zarquon.net (Dale Sulak) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:44:40 -0500 Subject: [Goglog] Bank Holiday? In-Reply-To: <20090731142531.GB31769@dminet.com> References: <20090731142531.GB31769@dminet.com> Message-ID: <4A731F78.1060103@zarquon.net> It's that kind of measured analysis that makes me want to move my eggs into his basket. A bank holiday would imply all other methods, including debt swap with US Treasuries did not work. And we know what that means! If there is a bank holiday, we'll likely have bigger issues that trying to preserve the value of our monetary assets. Dale.