Does the World Get You Down?

This is my last blog.  The world is so fuXXed up that it is not possible to comment on all its absurdities.  Besides it is too depressing.  The only way to preserve sanity is to look at it with rose colored glasses, so I shall devote myself to things of beauty such as poetry and literature. 

     If you have not seen my historical novel, “The Quest for Land and Fortune,” may I urge you to go to Amazon and get a copy while they last.  It is narrative non-fiction, the people are all real, but what they said to each other and what sort of blogs they might have written, is fiction, I was not there. 

      The New York Times of December 28, 2014, had a section entitled the “Year in Pictures.  I list the cut-lines to illustrate my point.

01/09/2014  Displaced people on ferry led fighting between government forces and rebel in South Sudan.

02/24  Women took shelter from sniper fire in The Ukraine.

02/19  Anti-government protestors burned barricades in The Ukraine.

04/17  A protestor hurled a Molotov cocktail during clashes with police, Caracas, Venezuela.

04/30  A lockdown drill to address the threat of school shootings in a eighth-grade class, Belle Plaine, MN

03/12  A girl was wounded between riot police and anti-government protestors, Istanbul.

05/05  Mourners attended funeral of Julia Izotova, 21, killed during clashes between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatists.

05/11  Civil War set of a vast food crisis, among the malnourished were a mother and her 5-month old. Malakal, South Sudan.

07/09  Mexican authorities deported miners on a flight back to El Salvador.

07/24  Relatives look into a hospital operating room at those injured in an Israeli air strike. Gaza Strip.

08/15  Palestinians prayed in the rubble of a mosque. Gaza City.

07/01  A Jewish woman prayed during the funeral for three Israeli teenagers who were killed in the West Bank.

07/02  Migrants traveling toward the US on a train known as “The Beast” because of violent crime.Tenosique, Mexico

09/23  A marina owner on the boat dock in the dried-up Huntington Lake CAL.

08/25  Michael Brown Sr. mourns as his son’s coffin is lowered, St. Peters Cemetery, Normandy.

08/27  Yameen Ritaj, 16, left her abusive husband during her pregnancy. Refugee camp, Jordan.

09/05  Medical workers took James Dorbor, 8, into a Ebola treatment center. Liberia.

011/25  Police clash with pro-democracy demonstrators, Hong Cong.

11/28  Senator Mitch McConnell re-elected from Kentucky. (He has declared global warming a hoax spread by those who dislike his state’s coal.)

10/18  Displaced persons camp where 140,000 have been uprooted. Myanmar.

09/27  A cradle left behind by Kurdish refugees along the Turkish-Syrian border.

11/28  Protest because Grand jury decided not to indict Daren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown, Delwood MO.

12/08 Protestors against police brutality in the wake of Michael Brown, Berkeley.

12’16  Women mourn Mohammed Ali Khan, 15, one of 130 students killed during a Taliban attack on a school, Peshawar, Pakistan.

11/18  Ultra-Orthodox Jews listened to a eulogy for a Rabbi Killed in a synagogue by Palestinian gunmen. Jerusalem.

12/06  A four-year-old known as Sweetie, one of thousands, monitored for symptoms of Ebola. Sierra Leone

         I add one event that does not photograph--the new Republican Congress has vowed to cancel Obama's Affordable Care Act.  I suspect that much of the opposition is a continuing racist reaction to the Black President.

See what I mean.  During the Vietnam War, depressed by the daily body count, I stopped listening to network news.  I never began again.  Today, I canceled my subscription to the New York Times.

      Thanks for following my blog.  If you want more, I recommend following Bill Moyers and Robert Reich.

Air Force as Show Business and Special-Interest Politics

At the end of WW II a task force was assembled to study the role of the Air Force in winning the war.  John Kenneth Galbraith was a member of the team.  It concluded that the Air Force was of limited impact and that it was the infantry that had to do the work.  “Attempts at daylight precision bombing in World War II proved ineffective.  The bombers suffered heavy losses, and the enemy had to be defeated the old-fashion way with massive armies slogging across Europe….” The same battle is going on again.  The Air Force wants new, big and super-fast fighters that cost $1.5 trillion each.  Yet, it was the cheaper, slower and more maneuverable A-10 that provided air support to our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Probably, the speedier fighters account for many of the civilian casualties that the Afghans complain about.  Fast planes and drones lack the necessary field of vision to distinguish friend from foe.  The Air Force is determined to eliminate the A-10.  Harper's reports that “Legislators with A-10 bases in their districts who might ordinarily attempt to save those jobs, were offered special inducements by the Air Force.  Thus Michigan’s Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services committee, has been guaranteed a squadron of aerial tanker planes that will provide substitute employment.”
    The military-industrial complex is fleecing us again. I wish Levin had asked for high-speed rail lines rather that jets.

Source: Andrew Cockburn, “Tunnel  Vision,” Harper’s, February 2014.

What a waste!

"An American soldier dies every day and a half, on average, in Iraq or Afghanistan. Veterans kill themselves at a rate of one every 80 minutes. More than 6,500 veteran suicides are logged every year — more than the total number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq combined since those wars began." These wars must stop. They are not worth the cost of destroying the cream of our youth.
Source: New York Times, 15 April 2012

Afghanistan--go slow or get out

Karzai has asked us to go slow, how about real slow as in Get Out?

GBT

Applause to three local congretations of the United Church of Christ who welcomed Michigan Pride attendees this weekend. Unfortunately, Michigan is one of five states to ban all forms of recognition for same-sex relationships. The Bible quoters held a rally at the state capitol while the Pride Parade was in progress in Lansing. Would that the Bible quoters were as emotionally anti-war as they are anti-gay. The Biblical references to love and peace need more attention.

Afghanistan spending

The US has spent $300 billion in Afghanistan. What did we get for our money? The New York Times reports that the Taliban is stronger today than at any time since 2001.
What kind of evidence do we need to change our policy? I am greatly disappointed in Obama. 300 billion would buy a lot of health care and help us get out of this recession, but he and a lot of our politicians do not see the connection.