Humankind's Worst "Pandora's Box"

It occurred to me today, humanity's biggest and worst "Pandora's box" must surely be gunpowder, first, so many centuries ago but explosives in general.

Certainly drugs are another and they destroy lives but it seems our ability to shoot and kill each other and blow each other up has become far bigger. And a far bigger problem and threat to humankind.

I look around the world today, city to city, state to state, region to region, here in America but across nations, too, and the world, and it seems clear we seem to be exploding and so, imploding.

From our neighborhoods and the streets of Kansas City, indeed, nearly every city of our own nation, we see shooting after shooting, nearly daily.

Senseless, needless, totally unnecessary shootings. And far too many killings, from all that.

Same, as I said above, in all our big cities.

It divides us, too, the rest of us who aren't shot and killed. We have our opinions but so many don't know what to do about it.

Then, all those guns and the desires and perceived needs for them and for more guns ends up creating now companies and corporations. And these corporations, by their nature, must not just exist but must grow and grow, perpetually, and thrive and grow more.

And this corporate growth and the demand for more infinite growth means all they want to do is sell more and yet more weapons, guns. So there are yet more and more and more guns---on our streets, in our homes, in our society.

And guns are no solution. Guns don't solve problems. Far from it. Quite the opposite, in fact.

So we have guns, expanding in numbers all across our own nation then they are expanding across the world.

And one of the worst places on Earth they're expanding in numbers may well be the Middle east where, along with bombs, people are shooting and killing enemies but also strapping bombs on themselves in order to blow up and kill their enemies.

The most bizarre of these situations that destroys the very societies they're in is that of Sunni Muslims killing Shi'ia Muslims.

From what I understand, to people of cold, straightforward logic, the differences between the two groups, even though they're both Muslim, is extremely small. And yet, even though small in differences, they are committed to annihilating each other and their numbers, along with anyone and everyone else they disagree with or whom they find "in their way."

Insanity.

With the world seemingly blowing up, so to speak and no pun intended, certainly, Pope Francis recently said this:

Pope claims Christmas is a 'charade' 

due to continued war

We have wars breaking out now in Europe, more in the Middle East, still in Afghanistan, Syria, so many places.

Then there are the bombs. Always the bombs.

Still the corporations build more.

We learn nothing.

Link:  Peace can only come from the heart not guns and bombs

Side note:  I'd thought about this article for a couple days, anyway and decided to write it yesterday, last evening. By sheer coincidence, after having written it, I discovered that on this day, November 25 in 1867, Alfred Nobel patented dynamite.

20 more American Soldier Casualties in Afghanistan this week

Military Deaths for Oct. 17, 2010

The latest U.S. Defense Department identifications of casualties in Afghanistan:

•Marine Lance Cpl. Joseph C. Lopez, 26, of Rosamond, Calif., was killed Oct. 14 in combat operations in Helmand province.

•Army Sgt. Carlos A. Benitez, 24, of Carrollton, Texas, was killed Oct. 14 when his unit was hit with an improvised explosive device between Moqur and Darreh-Ye-Bum.

•Army Spc. Rafael Martinez Jr., 36, of Spring Valley, Calif., also was killed in the Oct. 14 attack.

•Army Pfc. Tramaine J. Billingsley, 20, of Portsmouth, Va., also was killed in the Oct. 14 attack.

•Army Sgt. Eric C. Newman, 30, of Waynesboro, Miss., was killed Oct. 14 when his unit was hit with an improvised explosive device in Akatzai Kalay.

•Marine Lance Cpl. Alec E. Catherwood, 19, of Byron, Ill., was killed Oct. 14 in Helmand combat operations.

•Marine Lance Cpl. Irvin M. Ceniceros, 21, of Clarksville, Ark., was killed Oct. 14 in Helmand combat operations.

•Army Pfc. Jordan M. Byrd, 19, of Grantsville, Utah, was killed Oct. 13 by small-arms fire in Yahya Kheyl.

•Marine Cpl. Justin J. Cain, 22, of Manitowoc, Wis., was killed Oct. 13 in Helmand combat operations.

•Marine Lance Cpl. Phillip D. Vinnedge, 19, of St. Charles, Mo., was killed Oct. 13 in Helmand combat operations.

•Marine Lance Cpl. Joseph E. Rodewald, 21, of Albany, Ore., was killed Oct. 13 in Helmand combat operations.

•Marine Pfc. Victor A. Dew, 20, of Granite Bay, Calif., was killed Oct. 13 in Helmand combat operations.

•Marine Lance Cpl. Raymon L. A. Johnson, 22, of Midland, Ga., was killed Oct. 13 in Helmand combat operations.

•Army Spc. Matthew C. Powell, 20, of Slidell, La., died Oct. 12 at Kandahar Airfield of wounds from an improvised explosive device suffered at Ghunday Ghar.

•Marine Sgt. Frank R. Zaehringer III, 23, of Reno, Nev., was killed Oct. 11 in Helmand combat operations.

•Army Staff Sgt. Dave J. Weigle, 29, of Philadelphia, Pa., was killed Oct. 10 after his unit was hit by a hidden explosive in Zhari province.

•Army Spc. David A. Hess, 25, of Ruskin, Fla., also was killed in the Oct. 10 incident in Zhari.

•Marine Lance Cpl. John T. Sparks, 23, of Chicago, was killed Oct. 8 in Helmand combat operations.

•Navy Corpsman Edwin Gonzalez, 22, of North Miami Beach, Fla., was killed Oct. 8 by an improvised explosive in Helmand.

•Marine Cpl. Stephen C. Sockalosky, 21, of Cordele, Ga., was killed Oct. 6 in Helmand.

Link:  http://www.kansascity.com/2010/10/16/2320693/military-deaths-for-oct-17-2010.html

10 Things We Must Remember on Memorial Day (guest post)

Posted on May 31, 2010
By Nora Eisenberg/AlterNet

According to Yale historian David Blight, Memorial Day (first called Decoration Day), the U.S. holiday commemorating fallen soldiers, got its start at the end of the Civil War. In 1865 in Charleston, South Carolina former African-American slaves exhumed Union soldiers from a mass grave on the site of Charleston’s exclusive racetrack and buried them in individual graves, a ten-day project that ended in a day of celebration of the nation, peace, and freedom in which thousands of Charleston’s black families gathered to decorate graves, pray, play games, and picnic. 145 years after the end of our Civil War, our nation is engaged in near civil wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which we had a part in starting and no plans for ending.

“We don’t do body counts,“General Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S. invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, famously remarked, when asked about Iraqi civilian casualties. We do do body counts of our own—though we don’t talk about them much. Thanks to groups like Veterans for Common Sense, Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs data have been publicized, and thanks to projects like Iraq Body Count, we do count them.

As we picnic and play this Memorial Day, let’s try to remember that:

1. To date, there have been 90,955 documented U.S. troop casualties in the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of these, 4,378 troops have died; 37,280 have been wounded in action; and 48,272 have been medically evacuated due to injury or disease.

2. The Department of Defense last year warned that as many as 20 percent of veterans (360,000) may have suffered traumatic brain injury from IED blasts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Blast injuries generally do not result in skull fractures or loss of consciousness yet the Institute of Medicine has reported that these traumatic brain injuries may cause diffuse brain bleeding and result in PTSD and problems with mood, attention, concentration, memory, pain, balance, hearing and vision.

3. 508,152 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are patients in the VA system. Thousands more are waiting as much as a year for VA treatment for serious ailments including traumatic brain injury. 243,685 (48 percent) are mental health patients and 143,530 (28 percent) are being treated for PTSD. A recent University of Michigan study demonstrated that PTSD sufferers have more physical illness in later life as their immune systems take back seats to systems needed for crises.

4. Every day, five U.S. soldiers attempt suicide, a 500 percent increase since 2001.

5. Every day 18 U.S. veterans attempt suicide, more than four times the national average. Of the 30,000 suicides each year in the U.S., 20 percent are committed by veterans, though veterans make up only 7.6 percent of the population.

6. Female veteran suicide is rising at a rate higher than male veteran suicides.

7. In 2009, there were 3,230 reports of sexual assault including rape, according to the DoD, with many more that number thought to be unreported. In a 2003 survey of female veterans 30 percent reported being raped in the military. A 2004 study of veterans with PTSD reported that 71 percent of women seeking treatment said they were sexually assaulted or raped while serving in the military.

8. The number of U.S. service men and women killed in Afghanistan has doubled in the first quarter of 2010. compared to the same quarter last year. In the first two months of 2010, injuries tripled, with U.S. casualties expected to rise still more with the troop surge in Afghanistan.

9. 2,052,405 service men and women have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Over 40 percent of them have been deployed two or more times. Some will have been deployed as many as five years Currently 94,000 U.S. troops are serving in Afghanistan and 92,000 in Iraq.

And last but not least:

10. Estimates of civilian deaths from violence in Iraq alone range from a conservative 105,000 (Iraq Body Count project) to over 1.2 million (UK pollster Opinion Research Business), with estimates by Johns Hopkins at 655,000. More than 125,000 civilians have been injured in Iraq and 4 million displaced, with civilian death and injury in 2010 rising each month. By most estimates, tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed or injured since the 2001 invasion, over 200,00 have been internally displaced, and over 2 million have become refugees, with civilian deaths and injuries rising dramatically in 2010.

The war in Iraq is in its seventh year. The war in Afghanistan, in its ninth year, is the longest war in our history. On Memorial Day, as we remember the dead and wounded, ours and theirs, the latest installment of 30,000 new troops is readying for new battles with Taliban fighters in Kandahar.

When will they ever learn, oh, when will they ever learn?


Link to original post:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/10_things_we_must_remember_on_memorial_day_20100531/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Truthdig+Truthdig%3A+Drilling+Beneath+the+Headlines

This is not your Grandfather's war

Okay, the President finally came out, after collecting all his information and doing his just homework (unlike the previous clod) and told us what he wanted and needed for our war in Afghanistan.

And it was "leaked" out so we knew what it was, too--30,000 more troops to go over as soon as possible.

Okay, blah, blah, blah.

We all knew it. We're resigned to it, let's move on.

I'm not being flip about war or our soldiers going to war, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying this was not a surprise.

What I would like to say is--could we stop acting like this is a war we can win in any way?

This is not World War I. This is not World War II.

This is not, as I said in the title, your Grandfather's war.

And it's not your Father's war, either.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a war against terrorism, as though we haven't been told that, what? a thousand times?

Terrorism is an ongoing mess, folks. Terrorism is some nut seemingly randomly shooting people. Terrorism, we have found out, is right-wing fundamentalists (hear that, Pat Robertson?) strapping bombs to their chests and blowing as many people up as they can, thinking they're going to some lunatic heaven, with--how many was it?--71 virgins waiting for them. (I wonder what the female suicide bombers get).

Terrorism isn't, as we've found out, a standing army, waiting to attack us. It is a disparate group of people, loosely defined and organized who do their best to make their opposition's (read: virtually everyone else) lives miserable.

So could we stop talking about "winning this war", please?

We won't "win" Afghanistan or the Afghan war.

To "win" this war, we would have to rebuild virtually the entire country AND educate its people and no one has the time or money to do that.

To repeat: The Afghanistan war is not a war ANYONE can win.

Some day---and hopefully soon--we will have to leave Afghanistan, just as all the other invading armies have. We will have to do what Russia did, not that long ago.

And you know what? Russia survived. More than that, no one talks about how they were "defeated". Russia found it couldn't "win Afghanistan", so they took all their toys and went home.

Which is what we should do.

And the sooner, the better.

So, all you right-wingers out there--all the Glenn Becks and Rush "Porkulus" Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys and Bill O'Reillys and yes, even local Thomas McClanahans should stop talking about "winning Afghanistan".

No one wins Afghanistan, folks. Look into it. It just doesn't happen.

And it ain't gonna happen.

You don't win a war against terrorism.

You just educate as many people as you can and always stay on your guard, to watch for the nincompoops.

The previous administration didn't read that Daily Presidential Brief about terrorists training to attack us by plane.


Side note: If you want to know more on this, you might read Norman Mailer's book "Why Are We at War?" or any number of other books on the subject.

Links: http://voices.kansascity.com/node/6737
http://summit.clubmadrid.org/keynotes/a-global-strategy-for-fighting-terrorism.html
http://milo.com/why-are-we-at-war