Author: Brandon

According to a report from the Pentagon’s testing and evaluation office, the Defense Department wants to “target an adversary’s space capability by using a variety of permanent and/or reversible means to achieve five possible effects: deception, disruption, denial, degradation and destruction…”

Pentagon Exercises Focus on Space Control

Space control is military jargon for the ability to ensure one’s own access to satellite capabilities while denying space-based services to adversaries. It encompasses both defensive measures designed to protect satellites as well as what the Pentagon refers to as negation — measures to counter or destroy enemy satellite capabilities.

I’m mad at Hunter S. Thompson. I’m mad at the way he lived his life, whacked out of his gourd, so to speak, on any chemical you can think of, and how he met his death, apparently a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Either way, it was a waste. After becoming a counterculture icon in the 60s and 70s, Thompson faded into obscurity, where he has remained, locked away in a “compound” in Aspen, Colorado, for most of my lifetime. Reading his “Hey Rube” columns occasionally in the past few years, it was reasonably clear to me that Thompson was insane, and the most obvious culprit was drugs. It is literally impossible for most people to believe the amount of junk Thompson did in his adult life. In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Thompson writes:

The sporting editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy – five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high – powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi – colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.

Continue reading “Hunter S. Thompson, 1937-2005”

Bruce Gagnon is reporting, on his blog “Organizing Notes”, that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has come out in favour of a long-term occupation of Iraq;

Hillary Clinton, who hopes to become president, is on the Sunday morning talk shows saying that our troops might be in Iraq for some time to come. “We’ve been in Korea for 50 years,” she said. “We are still in Okinawa,” she told the TV cameras. Right wing Sen Lindsay Graham (R-SC), sitting next to Hillary during the interview on Faze the Nation, chimed in that even though “Sen Clinton and I are on different ends of the political spectrum, we both agree that our troops will be here for a long time.

Gagnon goes on to say;

Hillary will try to rehabilitate herself with progressives by talking about social programs in the U.S. But how can we have social programs in the U.S. when we are spending our national treasury on an over bloated Pentagon and a disastrous war in Iraq?! How long will we be fouled by those “progressives” who claim that we can afford “guns and butter”?

I cannot confirm what Hillary said, since I have the Jon Stewart disease; I cannot watch punditry shows, where party hacks trade internal memorandum-inspired party-line talking points. It’s good work if you can get it, I suppose, but I will only consult these shows if I have a doctor-certified incurable case of insomnia (the shows do provide that one service, but I have to ask; is it worth the abyssal boredom inflicted on the unsuspecting audience?)
Nevertheless, one must wonder what anti-war Democrats will think of this sort of thing. HRC is making her big push for 2008, and this is part of it. The War Party, with its dual headlock on the two parties, must be appeased. I know what some of you anti-war Dems are thinking – she doesn’t really mean it; she’s just saying what she has to say at this point. Maybe, but I doubt it. Besides, how valuable can she be as a candidate if she can’t even stand against the War Party at this early date?

Saturday, between 4 and 6 pm EST, Scott Horton will interview the tastefully named Scott Horton (they’re not the same person … at least I don’t think they are.) about the rotten apples who run the “Special Access Program”, a black ops torture and humiliation scheme exposed by Seymour Hersh, and Brian Doherty about the “Real ID Act.”
Listen Live on the Republic Broadcasting Network.

Bill Maher sure is popular. I have never gotten so much mail about anything as I got about this. The typical message went along these lines; A) I don’t have a sense of humour, so B) I am unable to appreciate the subtle irony of Maher’s remarks, therefore C) I should shut up, even though D) virtually none of us actually watched the show. Well, it doesn’t work, because I got two messages from people who did watch it, and agree with my interpretation of Maher’s remarks. He was not being ironic or satirical (two of the most common adjectives used in the emails). Far from it, Maher’s remarks were intended as serious commentary and accurately reflect his views.
Further, CNN has made available a transcript of the event, and I can therefore confirm the accuracy of my quotes.

“But Iraq, we attacked because we could. That’s what the historians will write eventually. They’ll write, why Iraq? No weapons. They didn’t attack us on 9/11. We could. We needed to do make a statement to the Arab world and I don’t think it’s the worst idea in the world to make that statement which was, you know what? You attack our country like you did on 9/11, I’m not only going to kick the asses of the people who did it, I’m going to kick your cousins ass too. They had nothing to do with it, that’s just how ticked off we are. There’s something to be said for that method of diplomacy.

But Iran, that’s a different story. That’s a big country. I know a lot of Iranian people. They’re not Iraqis. They’re not backwater people.“

And this exchange which I also reported, concerning North Korea and Africa. At first, Maher sorrowfully rules out the possibility of intervening in North Korea, but then urges Bush to consider it anyway; Continue reading “More on Maher”

On Larry King’s mostly unwatchable show, I just caught the thoroughly disgusting Bill Maher say something pretty close to this; “You know, attacking Iraq wasn’t such a bad idea; we attacked them because we could. They had no weapons and we could do it. You know, it was a statement to the entire Arab world. We said that you attacked us on 9/11, and now we’re going to attack you, and your cousins, who had nothing to do with it. Mess with us, and we’ll kick your a$$, and your cousin’s a$$.”
Maher also suggested that attacking North Korea and (I guess) the entire continent of Africa, for humanitarian reasons of course, would also be a good idea.
If this greasy bastard loves war so much, why doesn’t he give up his hedonistic lifestyle, take up arms, and join the mayhem?
King inexplicably said absolutely nothing to all of this. And I’m sure none of Maher’s colleagues or friends, media critics or certainly any of his fans, will come along and say that there’s something funny about this. Except in radical quarters like this, reactionary hyperboli of this sort nearly always passes by without comment. Is there going to be any mention in the mainstream press? I doubt it. Maher sounds like Julius Streicher, and this stuff is right out of Der Stürmer, but I guess few care.