I find it ironic that a man in charge of something called the COMMITTEE ON THE CURRENT DANGER, could write something so overwhelmingly cheerful and positive.

James Woolsey is the same guy who performed with the righteous brothers ( whoops, the Doobie bro's) at some sort of Jew convention, as viewable in youtube. And he was the head of the CIA.

Now here is him with some interesting developments in renewable energy.

The Iraq Study Group has released its info. Needless to say I think their recomendations are INSANE. partison, irrational, and most of all ignorant.

The biggest error they have made is to tie peace in Iraq to settling the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, which is so totally irrelevent to the issue there. Of course by bringing it up in the first place the ISG has "proven" it to be indispensibleto the issue, and therefore the enemy will agree. This allows any of the governments interested in strife in Iraq to simple sow discontent with the Palestinians to further their goals. 50 grand for a suicide bombing is not much even for cash straped Iran or Syria, and Palestinians will work cheaper than that if neccesary.

Further they have actually stated that Iran and Syria do not want instability in Iraqw o\verthe short term. this is demonstatably faslse. Iran funded not just their shia "bretheren" (as in my reading they apparently dont have as much love of their co-religionists as topical analysis have suggested), but was actively poring arms into the anbar province and into the loving hands of Jaiash Ansar Al Sunna, who consider Shia only fit for beheading. and this was high tech, very specicfic factory made IEds, not just small arms. they are active in sowing discontent in the area. anyone who says otherwise is ignoring the basic intelegence.

But thatshouldnt be a surprise, as apparently government folk with hands in intellegence don't know half as much as someone with a good breadth of reading.


further reading
mark steyn

As of last friday I have become a non-comissioned officer of Marines. The promotion was a partial surprise, as although I knew I had won a meritorious board, my record said nothing, and I had recieved no word. This was upsetting as I wasn't able to get a camera, and I didn't even have time to get my designated cheverons from my desk. We go to formation, and I march myself and another Marine, Seufert from communications platoon out in front of the company XO and 1st Sgt. Unlike my LCPL promotion I got to call cadence, so I didn't look like a total barrel of ass. Detail halt, step freeze, right face, then stand at attention. Warrent is read, to all ye who repose these present greetings know yea . . . . meritorious promotion etc. and they stick me.

There are three traditions in the Marine Corps for promotion to corporal. Two of them have esentially been outlawed by anti-hazing regulations.

The first is the gauntlet, with the newly pinned NCO walking through a line of punching and kicking corporals and sergeants. Gennerally you have all the NCO's in your company, or at least your platoon. Staff Sergeant Roman , my NCOIC during recruiting, said that he couldn't walk afterwards, so Sergeant Recio (another recruiter, who was in SSgt roman's battalion's STA platoon) carried him up the stairs on his back, so that the STA platoon could get their licks in. He also said that he was bedridden for 2 days afterwards. Not just do I have too few NCO's around, but no one seems to want to do it. Rumor has it that if i were in Comm(unications) section I could get some old corps treatment.

The second is the blood stripe. In order to earn the right to wear the crimson trouser strip, they feel that you ought to be kneed in the leg repeatedly until you limp. I may get that coming, but still the new corps. . .

Finally the wet down. That is where you all go out and drink stupid, except for one thing. The newly promoted person pays. but as it happens all my people are recruiters, and they are all to damn busy to do it. such is life.

November tenth. 230 years.

it has been two as a marine. two shooting badges. two ribons, two stripes (pending. two foreign countries visited. now i seek to go overseas as soon as humaly possible. I cracked a joke recently that if i were to augment into active duty, and and they would give me orderrsto recruiting duty, then i would immediately join Al Queda. and i say that as a jew. apparently some peopel thought this was very clever. meanwhile, i know that if i am ever in a misserable possition in iraq, i can just remeber that it could be worse . . . . i could still be recruiting. sand spiders, sun burn and angry salafist killers will probably seem preferable.
i actually had to con my first sergeant with massive begging in order to get myself deployed. i am stuck i na billet of messenger driver, which i am sure i can con my way out of post haste. i want a fire team, have the rank, the (unoffical) NCO experience, and will have three hard months of grunt training going down at cax before i ship over. i feel ready.
happy birthday, and here is to another 230 years!

In memoriam for Bradley L. Parker

With the passing of yom kippur, the Hebrew day of ascension, a Jew begins major introspection and attempts a complete repentance for all his sins, not just of the past year, but of his entire life. One of the major acts a person can do to spiritually cleans himself is to give generously to charity. It is the Jewish idea that money given to charity isn't an expense, but rather an investment.

having been lax this year, it was time for me to catch up with donations.

that is why I gave in memory of my old firewatchs buddy from infantry training, Bradley Parker. The charity was SPIRIT OF AMERICA, which helps with rebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with spreading democracy throughout the world by providing everything from vocational training to Arabic blogging tools.
I will be trying to put up a link to the site on my side bar so any reader can donate in his name. It is a worthy cause, and he is a worthy man to be remembered.

The EST

When we manage to seduce a prospect into our little gingerbread office, the first thing we do is run them through the Enlisted Screening Test, a short practice version of the ASVAB, which is the test they would actually take in order to enlist. It saves both ourselves and the prospects a lot of time, since frankly, most of the people we meet cannot pass the minimum requirements for the service, and we might as well weed them out as quickly as possible.

The format is a standard 4 parts, very much similar to the PSATs, broken down into verbal, paragraph comprehension and two math sections. it is done without the assistance of a calculator or any of the helpful formulas given on an SAT exam. Each section is timed, with the total time runing about 30 minutes.
This test, like the actual AVSAB, is graded on a percentile curve, therefore one's score represents how well one did compared to the rest of humanity. Which means that if you get a 7 or so (which I see all too often), then you may want to start evolving before your decendents end up swinging from trees (Lamarkian anti-scientific thought, but the metaphor has such wonderful imagery). The actual passing score for the Marine Corps (as each service sets their own required score in accordence with their needs on the actual ASVAB) is 31. This is the bare minimum someone would have to get for us to accept him as a brainless motor transport operator in the corps.


We just give them a ten second brief, a pencil and a sheef of blank paper before sending them off to see if our destinys are ment to colide. many get nervous at the prospect of the test, enough so as to walk off with a few quick words. Frankly the recruiters are often not nearly as smooth in talking to them about the test as they are talking about the corps. So kids get a little freaked at the thought of sitting down at that computer and actually doing math.

At the current time i would estimate that two out of three or more of the appointments fail out. oddly enough, of those who pass, most of them get above 50, which puts them in the class we refer to as alpha, meaning that if they score that on the asvab, they will have open for them almost every job in the Corps.

Higher scores are rare. once in a while 70's and 80's appear, and three times i have seen 90's in this office. two were jews, and one was guyanese. judge it howevert you will/

I have decided on a serial discussion of military recruiting from a first hand basis. I want to explore many of the technical problems and systematic flaws inherent, and the myths of whom we advertise to etc.
I shall begin with the first installment, on the package.
Part I: the package

After someone sits down and says that they are one hundred percent sure they wish to join my beloved crotch, the recruiters need to begin the actual paperwork. While there are many many parts to it, the whole of it, put together into a neat envelope, with all supporting doccuments, is called the package.

Lets just understand the size of the wad that goes into this envelope

First there are the accessory documents that are neccessary for the day before.
They are the 680 and 2807 forms, which consist of a request for examination,(in order to take the ASVAB) , and the medical prescreening form. combind total, 5 pages

Then once they are prepared to take the test, and we get ready to enlist them (as you will see later, no one takes the test unless they have stated they are going to enlist), we start the main package

First the 680, which states intention to join, and has the famous page four statment, in which we note down all the little discrepancies that need to be noted in someones records. these generally come in the form of signed statements of understanding, saying that you will take all your injections like a good boy, and that your wife won't complain to the press because she isn't getting money from you while you are in boot camp. Also, there is a section for your parents to sign if you are 17 and they hate you enough to let uncle sam adopt you. total 5 pages.

Education Verification (edvers for short) : one page, two copies. two more pages.

Police record check: two pages, two copies, for another four.

Then come the supporting documents. If a man is single, we need his high school diploma, and his social security card, and his green card, and his birth certificate. And if he is married we need his wife's birth certificate too. And did i mention we need at least three copies of each? 20 more pages.

background checks: the dreaded sf 86, with 48 questions about every facet of your life short of who you slept with last night. an applicant fills out the first 5-6 pages with all the places he has lived, lernt and worked, who bore and weaned him (and whom he may have begat), and half a dozen people who can confirm all of the above. this, with all the parts aswered, and including the ending information release consent forms and signature pages, and the seperate cover page (oneform for citizens and one for non), runs about sixteen pages. of course if the person has several releltives, a long employment record, and lived i na whole bunch of houses over the previous seven years (the extent of the scope of possible investigation), then it can go to 20 pages. and for some bizare reason, we need not three but for copies of thsi form. total, 75 pages (and up up up).

i know it has been too long. but now days i have volunteered for active duty, to do recruiting on official basis. thats right, im in the fleet now. the pay is wonderful, but even though i am off for saturday and most of friday, i still work 12 hours a day every day. It does feel good to be active duty though.

i will try and make more thoughtful comments about recruiting from now on, since i need to at least maintain my writing ability by marking time with some sort of short peices. hopefully, i shoudl havesomethingworth sending around in short order.

alcho0lhol helps getthe ballroollling,since today i hosted the team for a bbq dinner, and like good marines everywhere, the cervecas were in evidence.

CHUCK SCHUMER IS THE BIGGEST DOUCHE IN THE UNIVERSE

I just watched on television Senator Chuck Schumer demanding censorship of the videogame 25 TO LIFE, claiming that it is a "murder teaching tool", and "calling upon all distributers to refuse to stock this video game". This was coinciding with a murder trial of an alabama teen named Devin Moore, who shot two cops after being pulled in on suspicion of car theft. He allegedly played one of the last three GTA titles (Grand Theft Auto III, GTA:Vice City, or GTA: San Andreas). While it hasn't entered as a defense argument, the company that produced GTA, Walmart and Gamestop (which sold the game) and the killer himself (note he is listed last in the press) are all listed as plaintifs. As with all moral panics there are a couple of standard cliche's
1) religious influence of the plaintifs. The plaintif, brother of one of the victims, is a baptist minister.
2) gadfly lawyer who is always suing the same industry and praying to win. the attourny, jack thompson is said to have a long history of waging a "one man crusade against violent video games"
3)mitigating factors that doent get mentioned in the main body: Mr. Moore came from a broken home, and was already implicated in car theft when he murdered the two cops and one emergency dispatcher.
what does this sound like to you? to me it is awfully reminicent of the fraudulent Dungeons and Dragons suicide controversy of the early 80's. that ended when it was noticed that the rate of suicides among D&D players was so much lower than the rest of society that clinically it would have been admissible as a treatment to cure suicidal tendencies.
Similarly video games are getting bad raps despite the massive downturn in violence among videogame playing youth (who are playing more and killing less). further, GTA players have (assuming that the allegations are correct) produced 4-10 murders depending on who you ask, out of 38 + million players . Now with the national murder rate at 5 per 100,000, we should expect at least 180 murders. a reduction to on 18th of the rate!!!!! grand theft auto prevents murders!

Now schumer if you recall tried to prevent the publication of the objectivist novel UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES. So now he has attempted censorship in two mediums. and yet we keep electing him. good job, freedom loving New York

The Senate released a report on genocide george galloway's invlovement with saddam
it ios availible here. (caution, pdf file)
further implicated is the frech minister of interior. and he gave menoey to the popular front for the liberation of palestine.

more here

More Proof That Guilliana Segrina was lying.

Guilliana Sgrena, Red Chief, and the Madness of Truth

By Azriel Peskowitz

Among all the words in the English language that I personally hate, the word truth stands out for special attention. Typically, the words that stick my craw are political terms that have been so misused for emotional content that they often mean the opposite of their actual meanings. Truth has been conflated with fact so that people are using it interchangeably.

But the people who use it most are those whose idea of truth is more than just absurdly subjective and biased, but actually deliberate falsehood which are justified morally by appealing to a "greater truth." It's the Marxist-historicist view of truth, the idea that a philosophy was scientific fact and therefore history would have to follow a predetermined plan, so that facts are irrelevant, since history will justify everything in the end. Like all other totalitarian argumentation this is used as a justification for any form of dialectic falsehood, since it is all for a good cause, and in the end you get to be on the winning side of history anyway. It is a spurious, sophist, self-righteous philosophy that requires massive amounts of doublethink to sustain the existence of such truth. It is the sort of concept that should be shocking to everyone out there who is not, like me, a political science major. This is of interest now because of two individuals in the news recently, Ward Churchill and Guilliana Sgrena. Both have received tremendous media coverage due to self-righteous self victimization, purely through their own acts. Both seem to have a truth problem.

For those who missed the news from Iraq, Sgrena is a reporter for the hard Communist Italian paper, Il Manifesto. As an open sympathizer with Iraq's ousted Baathist regime, she is a stereotype of the old fraudulent pacifist, "not anti-war, just on the other side." She was kidnapped by the same insurgents she had sworn would only attack Americans, since she was on their side. The Italian government covertly negotiated her release, apparently to the tune of several million U.S. dollars.
And then, speeding away to freedom, her driver ran down a broken down highway at close to a hundred MPH into a US Army checkpoint, which promptly fired on them, killing her government escort. Even though even she admits that they were driving recklessly and madly at high speeds (in her words, nearly losing control of the vehicle multiple times), she claims simultaneously that they were driving normally and the attack was unprovoked, (in fact an attempt to assassinate her), and that American "tanks" fired 300-400 bullets into her car (she said she was picking them up off her seat).

Now, it wouldn't be hard to make a case against her based on her character and words, or even a moral case against her due to her deliberate (though propagandizing) and inadvertent (through causing the delivery of a ransom to the insurgents that will buy more arms) aid to a group that is engaging in the wholesale slaughter of oppressed minorities is support of a Syrian-based (and therefore imperialist) totalitarian movement, and that therefore she is morally a genocidal imperialist, but I prefer to take the more restrained route, and discuss her claims in context of the law. The law of physics.

The smallest weapon aboard anything a civilian could mistake as a tank (such as an APC) would be a M-240 variant machine gun firing 7.62 rounds. Since those can penetrate up to 15 mm of armor plate, the only thing in a car that could stop that round is the engine block. We can assume that under the circumstances someone could imagine 30-40 bullets as 400, but even 30 rounds would have completely obliterated a car, and everyone inside it.

Further, the velocity of those rounds would have carried them through the entire vehicle, meaning there certainly wouldn't have been any bullets sitting on the seat for Ms. Sgrena to throw out. Unsurprising when the (real!) picture of her car surfaced, it had exactly two small bullet holes in its windshield and side from blocking rounds fired when her driver zoomed "over the puddle filled roads) headfirst into the checkpoint." Besides, if the army had her in gunsight and wanted her dead, that car would have been shrapnel. But Sgrena knew what kind of moral cachet she could earn by claiming it, and how readily the crowd would follow. And the title of her story?
MY TRUTH.
Another non-ironic case is with Ward Churchill of Colorado, the world's only red-headed Indian. Now, the statements that cause his controversy aren't really that shocking. Frankly, they are the same childish rants of the European elite, right down to bringing up the death of Iraqi children blamed on the sanctions (instead of Saddam's giving oil money to so many Europeans to write such claims). The only interesting characteristic is that he happens to be a paid member of the same system that he attacks.

The interesting thing is that his entire career is based on lies and violence like he accuses. Whether it was claiming to be Indian to get his job and promotions and to sell his artwork, to plagiarizing said artwork from other peoples images, to fabricating or plagiarizing scholarship (once simultaneously committing perjury) and his military record, to phoning death threats to anyone who stood in his way in bureaucratic matters, to calling for the murder of critics of his like writer Bob Black, to beating the crap out of a 60-year-old grandmother named Caroline Standing Elk, who had expelled him from the American Indian Movement for being a fraudulent native.

Now it doesn't surprise me that he was so successful, since he put an ethnic face on the typical masturbatory transnational progressive view of white European intellectuals. But that 199 professors would sign a statement last week saying that all of his intellectual fraud is protected by freedom of speech? Where are they defending Lawrence Summers' freedom of speech? Summers never lied about scholarship, yet he is pilloried. Why now is there an attack of values?

Why do we trust people whose philosophy is that lying is all right? Is this how we are supposed to search for truth?

QCKnight news from a month ago

more on why mccain sucks

I was half way through this before i realized it was an april fools joke. God damned pagans and their weird holidays.

Despite catching a show of Rollins Band way back in 202, I have never gotten a chance to see Henry Rollins actually perform one of his spoken word performances . Sure he came to town every year, but I usually noticed it only when he was sold out. I had to content myself with what I could steal from kazaa and my old copy of "a Rollins in the wry". But this year he decided to make it impossible to miss by performing for two weeks straight. That and the painful ticket price made sure that a connoisseur like myself would ahve a seat this night.
speaking of seats I must say that this was the first time i had ever attended an event at the zipper room, and not jusdo they have full stadium seating (puting me at such an angle that I was staring at the back left of his head for half the show), but the seating is in old removed car seats. Now it would be mearly mildly amusing punk ambiance, except for the fact that it was way more comfortable than any other concert seating i have previously experienced.
Henry Rolled out on time, and proceeded with his monologue. the man does not sit or move the entire two hours. he stands leaning forward, trying to pull the audience in to him, coiled up and ready to pounce. it is scary to watcha man with so much heat and force raging inside him.
He opened up weak with some really hackneyed material making fun of george bush's verbal ability. not just does he choose an early target, but he uses the same damn material that every other commedian has been doing since 1999.
things improved with the longest one line joke I ever heard, which required a story about 45 minutes long about plan rides, death, and acting in a film as Selma BLair's bodyguard, all of which was just to ask the question "is there non-dairy pussy whip for the lactose intolerant?" as he says, you had to have been there. But i did find out an interesting bit about his philosophy of acting. "i don't know how to act, and i don't like people hiring me to do it, becasue i feel like a thief. But i have one problem. i am a junkie. i am addicted to food, and i like to have it every day". Another classic Rollins act was his travellogue of a trip accross the trans siberian express railline. Vommiting and fighting fat russian matrons ensue.
Rollins touring is an anual event, and he is always the most accessable and interesting spoken word artist. i mean i like hearing about acting in hollywood far more than Lydia Lunch bitching about how all her boyfriends liek to cut themselves. Hell, even standup comedy fans should dig him. and next year he is boumnd to spend a week in new york performing. So get to it!

http://www.qcknightnews.com/news/2005/04/12/Music/Punk-Rock.Legend.Speaks.Up.About.His.Life.Travels.And.Career-922018.shtml

I have returned from Norway, with the completion of Battle Griffin 05. There are many stories I want to tell, but only one comes to mind that I could do Immediate Justice to. that is bgecause it is pure dialogue.
It took place right before an overnight liberty, which was particular in trondheim because Norway has the highest rate of one night stands in the world, making it what the Op's O refers to as a "target rich environment".

Company Commander: before we go into trondheim for liberty i want to give you a short brief. the Norweigens are a very tollerent people, and accept things we as americans may find a little disconcerting. so if you see two men kissing dont go over and punch them. and if you see two girls kissing, don't just go over and start throwing dollar bills. And remember, i know that you all are not saints, and you are getting overnight liberty, so for god sakes use a condom.

Intel Sgt: and don't forget dental dams. I bet in two hours Peskowitz will be going down on a hooker with herpes.

other wonderful quotes from other liberty Briefs:

"Charlie company this is your liberty brief: if five of you get a girl back to your room, and you all bone her, the last guy, don't eat her out. and if she blows all of you, the last guy, don't kiss her. "

"Ears Charlie: if you go out and meet yourself a nice jacksonville hunny, and you can fit her through the door sideways, the good to go. but make sure to put a flack jacket on old willy peter. if you come back dripping stuff, i am going to kill you. Now lets make it official. That is the window you are going to accidently hang yourself from witha bed sheet if you screw up out there. I will make it look like a suicide. but that doesn't mean keep your mouth shut. if you screw uop you better tell me the first thing. and that concludes our liberty brief. anyone wanna fight?"

The UN, the EU, and the Kyoto Myth That Won't Go Away By Azriel Peskowitz As of Feb. 16, the Kyoto treaty is officially in effect. The United States is one of the few developed countries that has not signed it. What most people don't understand is that this is a good thing. The Kyoto treaty is an economic neutron bomb waiting to go off. And worse, it won't even achieve what it is supposed to. But the funniest thing is that most of the rest of the world understands this, and for various reasons still signs on. Kyoto's history in the United States is mostly thanks to Albert Gore's single-minded obsession with crypto-fundamentalist environmentalism. Gore had previously revealed his Unabomber-esque luditism with his eco-screed Earth in the Balance, which showed that he was about as tolerant of science as his wife is tolerant of free speech. Fortunately, his other better half, big bubba Clinton, was pragmatic enough to realize the fallacy of pushing a treaty like Kyoto through congress, so he swept the treaty, and his VP's growing insanity, under the carpet But people still believe in the treaty, thanks to talk about some sort of scientific consensus on global warming, instead of dealing with the actual science behind it. So I will attempt to break it down Barney style and explain this issue to all the laymen out there. Scientific validity relies in a large fashion on reproducible results. An experiment has to be proven over and over again, and tested from every angle before it becomes a theory. One thing it never depends on is consensus. Scientific consensus has existed as support for the veracity of phrenology, blood-letting, eugenics, and many other scientific frauds. Now there are some parts of the global warming debate that have been proven. The Earth has gotten warmer, carbon dioxide level is rising, and presence of CO2 and other greenhouse gases do insulate heat in the atmosphere. But even the fabled and unscientific consensus ends at that point. What people don't know is how much of the heating is caused by human activity, how much is merely localized blossoming due to urban environment, and how much is due to natural cyclical climate change. Then there is the matter of testing to deal with. The projections of climate change come from computer models dealing with millions of variables, and due to our imperfect knowledge of the effects of some of these variables, many need to be estimated. This leaves the experiments open to the political bias, and puts the scientific validity of each of these models in doubt. As for reproducible results, not one of these models using past data, could properly predict the current climate. But even assuming that the most extreme predictions were true, then if the world actually stuck to the protocols and destroyed trillions of dollars of productivity by slowing industry to the necessary level, it would still only slow the emission rate by about four years over a century (meaning that we would hit the level that we should hit in 2096 in 2100 instead).

Debate has been stilted in Europe, thanks partially to British science advisor and climate alarmist Sir David King, who has had a strong influence on both British policies on the Kyoto treaty, and on the composition of the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change. He deliberately snubbed the recent Moscow conference on global warming because they dared invite several skeptics and encouraged open debate. But government Lysenkoism isn't the only reason countries signed up. Since industrialized countries have to lower their CO2 production to below 1990 levels, several European countries don't actually have to do any work.

For example, England in 1990 was, due to anti-Thatcher union protection, still using mainly hideously polluting coal technology, and Germany had half its country under inefficient Soviet rule, with the resultant ham-fisted industry and Statist neglect for environment. And since developing countries don't have to cut their emissions at all, none of the third world signatories had anything at all to lose. As for the countries that did stand to lose, many of them have been unduly influenced by the green lobby, which has specific financial interests in keeping the world panicked with the threat of global warming. After all, anti-corporate environmental groups like Greenpeace only get so much from their corporate masters in the big organic food consortiums and the powerful European farmers Unions. If the world realized how theocratic and scientifically fraudulent their claims were, they would stand to lose billions a year in donations.

Fortunately, most of the industrialized countries, including Japan, China, India and Italy have all come to their senses, and declared intention to withdraw from the treaty in 2012, and resist any further UN and EU attempts to obliterate their economic growth. When the repercussions threatened are about as likely as any of Paul Ehrlich's last ten apocalypses, destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs every year no longer seems like a worthwhile deal. So the U.S. is no longer alone. The rest of the world has woken up from the bizarre druidic fantasy the greens are pushing.

originally in the Queens College Knight News

http://www.qcknightnews.com/news/2005/02/23/Opinion/The-Un.The.Eu.And.The.Kyoto.Myth.That.Wont.Go.Away-874548.shtml

Kissing up to the beard
The EU outlaws dissent

The European Union is proving itself to be not just a supporter, but also an active participant in totalitarianism. Again. The EU has agreed to restore contact with The Government in Havana, which had been frozen after imprisonment of 78 dissidents for such crimes as distributing copies of the UN declaration on human rights, or lending books from private collections that Fidel's benevolent and democratic regime doesn't want it's subjects to read. The EU has also agreed to never invite any Cuban political dissidents to speak, or even attend, any functions at their various embassies in Havana. So the EU now officially opposes human rights activists in Cuba. And all Castro had to do was release a mere fourteen of the engulaged dissidents and benevolently agree to allow those dastardly Europeans to start giving him aid money again. It is pretty amazing that they can do this when just months ago it was suddenly chic for once to invite opponents of Castro to speak. Castro had just executed 3 attempted escapees who had hijacked a ferry, after a preternaturally short trial. He had then proceeded to convict the aforementioned dissidents on such official charges as insulting him. It had gotten so bad that even holocaust-denial-funding-Khmer-Rouge-supporting-Mao-praising-genocide-cheerleader Noam Chomsky criticized Cuba. But clearly the old love of Latin autocracy has more staying power than most realize. Here in Queens College, someone even went so far as to distribute official Cuban propaganda in the political science office. The culprit was most likely our own Marshal Tito Gerassi, an old friend of Castro from back when Che Guevera was still staying up nights signing execution warrants. Havana and its fellow travelers call the democracy activists "mercenaries" according to their official press releases. According to that reasoning, any professor or political activist with any endowment, chair, or funding, is a mercenary. There used to be a day when a fellow had to run under machine gun fire and get money from African warlords to be called that. The absolute cowardice of the EU is perfectly in character. This is the same Totalitarian bureaucracy that imprisons people for selling bananas of the wrong curvature, and panders to the anti-science green lobby, wholly and completely owned by the anti-trade protectionist farmers of Europe, preventing the sale of safe GM Corn and Golden Rice, and essentially murdering millions of third-worlders through preventable starvation every year, and blinding another half a million. Some may think I am even the slightest bit happy about how Europe is destroying itself, as if schadenfreude can compensate for a de-facto genocide by eco-imperialism, or that watching them crash could compensate for the cost to America in lost trade. We have ignored Europe's moral and economic bankruptcy for way to long. It is time we realized that this is going to come back to haunt us, and pay more attention to Europe.

originally published in the Queens College Knight News

http://www.qcknightnews.com/news/2005/02/15/Opinion/Kissing.Up.To.The.Beard-870650.shtml

Wendsday I embark for a massive NATO exersise near Trondheim Norway.

The gear issue is enormous, even while the weather promises to be only slightly below freezing. Lets see what I am looking at:
1) a brand new vector pack, issued just for this exercise in original wraping. While everyone says that vector packs suck, they are still way better than my MOLLE pack, a sentiment which I would feel even if the frame on the MOLLE were intact. (it wasn't when they issued it, and it is worse now). 0ne thing I like is that the sleeping system carrier is easier to pack, since it zips shut. Also, the lack of a major plastic frame, and the fact that it is one solid piece make it much easier to work with. However, I dislike the drastically smaller side pouches, which are much harder to pack. While there are two on each side, which should give equivilent or better carriage space, and a thinner profile, they are still harder to pack.
2) balaclava: not as good as my old neck gaitor, but as far as I can see, Brigade Quartermasters no longer carries those. And the less exposed skin the better.
3) buffallo fleece: I haven't tried this yet, and am bringing along the green fleece anyways, since it works well, and it never hurts to have a spare.
4)Coyotee watch cap: These are the newest and most high speed cover that the Marine Corps offers, and are made of a fuzzy new fabric that feels so soft against the skin. But I have no clue on how warm it actually is. It also has less material than the old black watchcaps, so you can't cover as much head, plus they are near impossible to replace in a civilian store if I lose mine.
5)Gloves: I have an inner shell which seems like my old outer shell, meaning i need a seperate set of contact gloves, and I have an outer shell, which looks like the kind of gloves pinned to a kindergardeners winter coat. Mittens work better for extreme cold, but you can't fire a weapon with mittens.
6)overwhites: The actual parka and pants are just a thin cotton sheet, which doesn't do much to actually protect you. In fact it does nothing when dry, and when wet will proceed to freeze you to death. Fortunately it will probably be so cold that it won't get wet. They only exist for one reason: to make you white.
7) mickey mouse boots: these are large and white, and have a layer of air space between the shell and the inner lining. it actually has to have its valve opened before loading on planes so it doesnt burst. it works so well that you have to change your socks every few hours to get rid of the sweat.

So I naturally pulled out the charge card and the computer and got some essentials for myself. There is nothing more dangerous to a bank account than a lance corporal on a mission with a hunger for gear. Except maybe my mother at a clothing sale.
I bought an Under Armour tactical cold weather turtleneck, which was an error because it most of the time conducts heat away from your body, instead of keeping it inside. also, it would have cost 20 percent less if I had gotten it at the Fort Hamilton PX, instead of online. Also I got polypropalyne gloves and socks. The gloves are helpfull so that my skin doesnt freeze on contact with any metal surface, and the socks are polypropalyne liners with moisture wicking design so that i can go a few more hours without changing socks. Hopefully they will dry faster too.
I also bought myself a new spyderco folder, which besides being an up brand name, only cost 16 dollars, so it will be no biggy to replace. it is amazingly small, and has a wonderfully sharp serrated blade.

Alone in the Dark was the worst movie I have ever seen, worse than even The Hollow Man and Balistic: Ecks vs. Sever. It had no plot and no character. Here is the review I wrote for the QC Knight News on it's raging crapulence.

Azriel Peskowitz
Knight news movie reviews
ALONE IN THE Dark

Fewer men in film are more horrible and repulsive than Uwe Boll. A few years ago Uwe Boll directed an adaptation of the arcade game House Of the Dead. The comic strip Penny Arcade did a parody interview like this. Narrator: “Mr. Boll, what made you as a director take on a project like house of the dead?” Boll: “vell, first I am hating ze movies. I am also hating ze people whoa re watching ze movies.” Narrator: “we noticed that you striped out everything that made the game itself unique or interesting. Boll: “yah well you see, it is also ze game I am hating”. This ‘director’ (not that he deserves that title) hates video games so much that he bought the rights to four others to spread out the atrocity. The first, Alone in the Dark, came out last week. It passed on some information that I already knew, such as that Christian Slater’s career is over, and information I didn’t know, like that Tara Ried’s career is over.
This movie is about. . . dragons. Kinda. And it is about Slater as some sort of Indiana Jones rip-off who also is an agent for some anti-weirdo government branch, which happened to have run some nasty experiments on him when he was a lil’un. The evil professor who done did this dastardly deed also seems to be controlling some of those evil dragon creatures that look like Geiger’s aliens but with less detail, which are trying to kill the entire world. That is according to the reviews I read, since seeing the movie, I couldn’t remember any plot whatsoever. In fact the entire movie was so disjointed that it was like I hardly even saw it. There was just stupid talking combined with stupid loud action sequences. The action usually was just lots of people in SWAT gear (SWAT meaning Batman and robin style breastplates with everything but the nipples, not anything that might resemble tactical gear) firing blindly into every direction while industrial music blasts.
The acting is pretty bad too, with Tara Ried looking downright pudgy in her glasses and bunned hair, and sounding like a wooden ten year old mincing words that are to big for her. The villain is unconvincing and has no motivation. Stephen Dorif is wasted. And even with brand new muscles, Christian Slater is still a balding cokehead.
The worst atrocity is how this movie presents professional operators in action. As the hallmark of bad movies, they always behave in manners that are so tactically unsound that a child could fight better than them. This movie has you believe that a team of about forty of them would get slaughtered by 17 (exactly seventeen!) unarmed and bullet vulnerable zombies, without being able to mow down their attackers with ease. But they deserve to get slaughtered for those costumes, that are to ugly to be called gay, even with the rampant homoeroticism. No Gay man would ever be caught dead wearing that, and no person with a pulse should ever be caught dead seeing this movie. And if you see Uwe Boll on the street, please kick him in the jewels before he reproduces. You might just prevent the anti-christ.

I began school two weeks ago, after a vacation that was hardly time consuming, and yet i havent been writing any content worth a moment's effort. I haven't been writing because of an addiction to Fallout 2 and KOTOR. And sheer laziness.

School this semester consists of merely a night class of the european novel, twice a week. Aside from my newspaper duties, I am otherwise practically no longer in attendance. The class studies are currently on classic gothic novels, but soon we will be moving on to more tawdry elements. Unfortunately those include a work of De Sade. I read 120 Days of Sodom, and it was hideously boring. "day one, raped girl a, took it in pooper from french guy with cleverly obscene name. Day to raped boy b, and took it in pooper from uncle" etc. etc. but we also get terry southern and Nabokov's Lolita. Still, i think i will enjoy this class, and after four classes, the professor doesnt know my name, which is a unique experience.

IN my spare time i have been doing more recruiting, which mixed with creatine means that i ahve gained about 8 pound from my normal weight. hopefully that doesnt mean dragging ass on runs. but we will find out with the spring thaw. today i will begin a major project, starting from the begining of my blog, and cleaning up the entire works, in terms of punctuation and spelling. wish me luck.

http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/world/Full_Story/did-sgsAtWaxCKF0EsgTbBP-2fa91M.asp

bahahahahahhahahahahahahaahhaahahahhaahahahahaa

again, global warming inst a lie, it is just missunderstood.

The first abu Gihrab conviction occured today. Specialist Charles Graner guilty on all counts. Any pity I had for him evaporated long ago when he started blaming superiors. It was a losing horse to ride in the trial for an obvious reason.

The Prisoners he was abusing were all petty criminals. Yet he wanted us to believe that his commanding officers would endanger their very careers to order him to torture people who they knew had little useful inteligence. Especially since it all (at least the photo part) occured in one nights time, and was likely predicated by the prisoners either starting a large fight (read riot) or engaging in some recreational forced sodomy. If he were claiming that it was to teach a bunch of middle age arab men that turning out some 15 year old boy in their cell is inappropriate behavior , through the means of sexual degradation, than it would merely be a case of violating laws to do an ethical act.
But he never claimed that, instead breaking faith and spreading lies so obvious that only journalists and civilians could believe it. That they were told to do politically dangerous interogations of petty criminals, or that they were undertrained, despite being professional prison guards.
While I understand the idea that all major violations are considered leadership failures, and that there were some serious problems with general karpinsky, who may have only kept her job due to the fact that she was a female and they needed more female commanders, i no longer feel that we enlisteds are so infantile that we cannot take resposibility for our own actions. Specialist graner had a USMC tatoo on his arm. if he were ever a real marine he should have known that excuses are for lesser men.

WHY I am not an environmentalist:

whenever it is cold and you are going into the field, Bring gor-tex. either that, or accept your inevitable death. This weekend 2/25 spend its time up in camp bruckner, a training area of west point, where we sat around in the sub freezing whether and icy rain and triend not to lose fingers and toes. Problems about: i came as advance party, and dicovered that we completely reddesigned the setup for the operations tent. we added a third tent to the setup, which was good, except we didnt know how to configure it, in which direction, where to put the walls etc. lots of annoying lifting occured. then the fet began freezing in our suede boots. we had a remedy for this, in our plastic mickey mouse boots with the inner gas lining. but there is a side effect. since your feet are so warm in your boots, they sweat, till your socks soak and your feet turn white in about 16 hours. the first night i discovered another suck of it. not just does your body cool off even when properly ensconsed in your bivvy sack because you stop moving, it also dehydrates, which is compounded by an unwillingness to drink water which would require me to run 50 meters outside the tent to piss.
light frozen rain doesnt hurt to badly when you have polypropalyn on, but everyone around you assumes you will die becasue you ahve the wrong layers on. plus a poncho isnt a good alternative. apparently noone uses them anymore so wearing one tells everyone that you forgot your gortex, which means that your squad leader will be afraid of catching flack.

I found myself staying up 2-3 hours that night making the biggest terrain map i have ever seen. supposedly i got a class on this in school of infantry, but i can't remember it. i achieved, but it still sucked. my thank you was a statement that the officer giving the brief surrived the brief without inccident. he himself called me ove rto thank me, but i still am wondering if i fucked up.