THE AMERICAN WAY: WAR, MOM AND APPLE PIE

Did you ever wonder about the term ‘The American Military Industrial Complex?’   It is said that one third of our national budget is spent on National Security; but, once we include the military, Homeland Security, NSA, CIA (and all the other A’s we don’t know about) along with foreign aide and nation building we are probably closer to fifty-percent. 

We can’t afford health care for US citizens but we can spend a projected one trillion, five hundred billion ($1,500,000,000) for a new F-35 fighter aircraft that so far has been a production disaster.

(Just to get an idea how ridiculous this sum is: If you banged a hammer on top of your desk once every second for twenty four hours a day – it would take you 48,000 YEARS to bang out 1.5 trillion)

I have often written in this blog that war is the natural state with intervals of peace between conflicts in order to regroup.   But the real fact is that war and the military are a financial necessity for this country.  

The base of the US economy is no longer farming, but a military industrial complex.

We buy oil from Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia in turn buys military weaponry from us.   We give foreign aide to Israel and Israel returns the money in the form of weapons purchases.  We don’t just police the world, we arm the world.   We are supplying American weapons to Iraqi Kurdistan to fight ISIL that is armed with American weapons that we originally supplied to the Iraqi military.  This is not new.   The sick joke in Vietnam was: You can tell the North Vietnamese Army from the South Vietnamese Army – because the North Vietnamese have only fifty-percent American weapons. Many of the M-16s in Vietnam were made by the Mattel Toy Company (Made by Mattel – It’s Swell) and I was once issued a military 45 pistol made by Singer – a weapons spin off of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. 

Our economy depends on the military industrial complex.   The military is constantly purchasing tanks, cars, trucks, aircraft, ships, fuel, uniforms, electronic equipment, ordinance, small arms, medical supplies, food and toilet paper…   Much of the U.S.  economy is directly or indirectly supported by military expenditures and by the sales of weapons and supplies sold, or furnished to foreign nations in the form or foreign aide. 

WAR, GOOD GOD YOU ALL – WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR – THE ECONOMY”

the Ol’Buzzard

THE US AND ISRAEL ALLIANCE

The following is a broadcast aired on The Real News.   This is not a favorite news source for me, but the interview with Glenn Greenwald is interesting - if you can stay awake through it to the end.   Greenwald is Jewish in case you are wondering.  

the Ol'Buzzard

I AM SOME DISGUSTED WITH THE HUMAN RACE

We are off and running again.   

We have a crazy genocidal group marching through northern Iraq killing thousands of the civilian population at random and at will.   Shootings, crucifixions, beheadings, and hangings: it seems absolutely appalling what cruelties one group of humans is capable of inflicting on another - this time in the name of religion.  

Nationalistic, religious and ethnic genocides have existed since the earliest recorded time.  People drunk on religion, patriotism or racial hatred are capable of atrocities without regret.   I remember my own attitude in Vietnam: ‘Kill’em all and let God sort it our.’  

We never get to see the true depth of our own involvement, because we are a super power and winners of conflict get to record the history and whitewash their own actions.  

 This of all weeks, the anniversary of our own genocidal carnage in Japan in 1945, we are brought again to witness the baser nature of mankind. 

The President says we must act and I suppose we must.   No one in this country (with the possible exception of John McCain) wants to put boots on the ground. 

This is a no win situation – there is no military solution.   Humanitarian aide and targeted airstrikes can help; but we are taking a risk, for a downed American aircraft and the execution of the pilot will set up a Nationalistic cry and attitude for revenge and reengagement in this waste land of death. 

Here in our own country we have parents screaming hatred and threats at bus loads of children on our southern borders; people willing to kill abortion doctors or gay men; we have state sanctioned executions of prisoners; random gun violence across the nation, and it is not too many years removed since we had public hangings spectacles in courthouse squares in the south.

This is who we are.  It’s not the new world, but the old world recycled with new players and modern technology.    

I am some disgusted with the human race.

the Ol’Buzzard

BE ASHAMED - BE VERY ASHAMED!

A WEEK OF INFAMY

This is a week of American shame.    An atrocity committed so heinous it is beyond comprehension.   It falls in the same category as the Jewish Holocaust:

On August 6, 1945 a United States B-29 bomber (the Enola Gay) released an atomic weapon that detonated 1900 feet above Hiroshima, Japan, killing 140,000 of the 350,000 inhabitants and leveling two-thirds of the city.   Less than a week later a second bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki killing 70,000 of the 270,000 inhabitants: women, children, old men and women – non combatants.  

 

This genocidal attack by the United States killed almost a quarter of a million civilian, and the radiation from this attack caused sickness, casualties and deformities of the population for decades after. 

9-11 will be covered in high school history books; but you will find no mention of this crime against humanity.  

Teach this to your children and grandchildren - otherwise they will never know. 

 the Ol'Buzzard

NOT YOUR HARRY POTTER

A BUZZARD BOOK REVIEW

SO MANY BOOKS - SO LITTLE TIME

J.K. Rowling has a begun a mystery series by the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith.    It features a hard boiled detective in the manner of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. 

In the first of the series The Cuckoo’s Calling we are introduced to Comoran Strike, a thirty-five year old Afghan war veteran that lost his leg in combat, and his newly acquired secretary Robin Ellacott.  

Anyone that is a fan of classic Dashell Hammett, Micky Spillane and Chandler will fall right in to this updated version of Rowling’s  new British Private Eye. 

This in not your Harry Potter; but a hard drinking, hard smoking, hard fighting one legged private eye and his sidekick secretary.

If you like mysteries you might give this a try.

the Ol’Buzzard

    

DELAYED MAINE WEATHER REPORT AUGUST 1, 2014

A DELAYED POST

When I was young my cousin and I always laughed at what the aunts and uncles talked about when they got together.   The women always talked about their ailments or people they new that were dead and the men always talked about the weather. 

Even today when I write my cousin (the only kin that I keep in touch with) I always begin the letter with the weather.   Perhaps it is something in my DNA.  

Well, the temperature here in the western Maine mountains was sixty-six yesterday and it is fifty-two and foggy this morning.  

It seems a little early but there are already red leaves starting to appear on the maple tree in front of the house and on the sumac along the road.   This could be the sign of an early fall and long winter. Perhaps I should consult the wooly-bully caterpillar. 

I still have one more cord of firewood to have delivered.   So far I have about two and a half  cord in my woodshed and that is what I expect to burn in a normal winter; but better too much than run short.  

Some folks might think that the beginning of August is a little too early to begin thinking about winter – but they don’t live in rural Maine.    In Maine you are either in winter; relived to see winter go; or thinking about the next winter.  

Don’t get me wrong: I love winter – especially that first crisp white snowfall of the year.   Winter is why we choose to live in Maine.  

the Ol’Buzzard

INTROSPECTION

Our lives consist of returning serves and mindless self gratification, sometimes spliced with simple blatant mindlessness: sitting in front of a TV or computer.   We spend very little time in reflection; perhaps we unconsciously avoid it. 

With me, introspection – reflection - (Is the hokey pokey really what it’s all about?) automatically occurs at the beginning of the third drink – when I am by myself.

For someone prone to depression introspection probably isn't a healthy pursuit, in that depression in itself is an unhealthy state…the sound of one hand clapping. 

However, for me it brings on the realization that I am a self proclaimed intelligent creature accidentally inhabiting a meaningless world.   It is not a bad thing to realize that you – yourself – are not the center of the universe.   That actually you are little more than brief electric pulse existing in a momentary flash in one of a million bubble parallel universes… or simply an evolutionary accident.   

I must say that occasionally I enjoy sinking into this alcohol induced funk.  The only down side is I always have the urge to break out my old pipe and tobacco – I gave up smoking years ago.    How nice it would be to sit in the dark on my front porch, surrounded by the Maine woods, and drink whiskey and smoke my pipe.  

But you see, even though there is no meaning to this world (wars, genocides, governments…a struggle to get by) there are personal pleasures (as brief and passing as they may be) that make me want to stay around as long as possible; so therefore I avoid the pipe and usually content myself with the third drink. 

the Ol’Buzzard