Boycott Car and Driver

My letter to HFM:

Dear HFM:

I have long been an auto enthusiast and have purchased Car and Driver magazine for at least a decade - usually at Borders. I am also a military veteran and owner of the military blog Blackfive.net.

I am writing in response to your (1) misuse of the photo of Major Bieger and little Farah who was killed by insurgents which is owned by Michael Yon and (2) your feeble attempts at avoiding responsibility for said misuse. You took a heart-breaking and poignant photo and twisted it to fit your own political agenda. Mike could have benefited from that photo many times over by selling it to outfits like you seeking to undermine our success and change history. Mike has something that you obviously don't value.

Honor.

You have grossly misunderstood the reaction that your blatant disregard for the rights of Michael Yon has caused.

At this moment, I am writing a post on my blog calling for a boycott of Car and Driver. My blog will reach a hundred thousand people by the time you read this letter. I am going to send a few thousand emails as well to military veterans. As you might know, veterans tend to be very motivated people. They'll forward it on...this will go viral. I'll make sure of that.

I'll make sure to discuss your conduct on New England's number one talk radio station this weekend, WRKO - if you get this letter in time, be sure to listen. If you miss this Sunday's broadcast, just tune in the next week. I'll keep at it.

And that's just for starters...

Then, I'm going to boycott your advertisers and ask everyone to do the same.

I don't think you quite understand what you have done. If you think that your fight is with Mike, you're mistaken. There are already thousands of people involved. By tomorrow, there'll be thousands more. We're not in this for money. We're going to fight you for honor and honor alone.

We're in for the long haul.

All the Way,

Matthew

[and, yes, it was difficult to write without calling them "cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys"]

Re: Border Troops Scare Away Illegals

Mexico might be broken, but the list of countries with 100 Million plus population doesn't include many that would make "nice quiet neighbors". I might be naive, but somehow I think Pakistan,Bangladesh or Nigeria would pose a somewhat more challenging border problem.

Border Troops Scare Away Illegals

Sometimes a bad reputation can be a good thing:

"Some migrants have told me they heard about the troops on television and, because the U.S. Army doesn't have a very good reputation, they prefer not to cross," Loureiro said, referring to reports of abuse in Iraq. Others have been discouraged by smugglers' fees that have nearly doubled to more than $3,000.

How long before they learn that the Guard is unarmed, and not authorized to make arrests?

Regardless, this is just a band-aid solution. The problem isn't our immigration laws, or even lax enforcement. The real problem is that Mexico is broken.

Counter Terrorism In The Media

How does a military operate effectively against terrorists when they use tactics like this successfully? Sure, the Israelis have performed their probe and found serious evidence the deaths of 8 Palestinian beachgoers was not at the hands of an Israeli explosive, but that's days after the initial flood of sympathetic media dispatches across the world. It boggles the mind considering how to stem this or counteract it, and despite the best efforts of esteemed thinkers, writers and policymakers, we still don't have an effective strategy. Will we ever?

This issue has been discussed vigoriously on Mil Blogs, especially in light of the rush to judgement over Haditha. Yet are we thinking about the biggest problem of all, which is not the US media, but the global media?

Even if in the near future the US government was somehow able to steer the national press towards a more responsible line, the global media enjoys a far larger audience and is increasingly out of our influence in the "war on terror" (a useless piece of drivel that needs to be replaced ASAP). The onset of citizen blogs and alternative media will help to an extent, but the larger questions remains... how do you wage an effective counter terror campaign in the shadow of a hostile media that willingly spreads your enemies' propoganda but heaps scorn upon even your most serious actions and efforts?

Fighting a war of ideas with BOTH hands tied behind our back (our other main problem being the easy to spread charges of hypocritic policy considering our lukewarm support for democratic reformers in the MENA area who aren't the rarest breed of all, i.e. liberal academic types, our intelligently pragmatic and necessary support of considerably less than democratic regimes from Pakistan to Jordan, our strong support of Israel and India; the great "oppressors" of Muslims in Palestine and Kashmir, etc etc) does not seem very promising.

Project Valour-IT.

Blackhawk sez:

Receipt: XXXX-7103-XXXX-6672: $500

If I can't get over there myself, I can at least support those who have,
and have paid a high price.

Blackhawk is an active duty soldier. Can I get like a *HUGE* Hoo-AH! for Blackhawk?

Acting vice bloviating, indeed!

RE: Anti-Military Pity

I am late in following up on this post by Greyhawk, but oddly enough, this weekend I was working on a piece about the Vietnam veterans who mobilized with us for deployment to Iraq, and couldn't get this done earlier.

Greyhawk tipped us off Friday to the Guest Op Ed at the Chicago Tribune, written by a Gregory Foster, former commander of the unit responsible for the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War.

You know the Op Ed is out for blood with the title, “The specter of command cowardice.” You can also likely anticipate the general tenor of the piece just knowing who wrote it, one of the commanders most immediately responsible for the local command indiscipline that allowed My Lai to occur.

Fortunately, one of our own Milbloggers, Cdr Salamander has had prior experience with the windy and over-intellectualized Foster. He linked to a Powerpoint presentation by Foster that includes a slide titled, Path to Perpetual Peace. I’d say anyone who even envisions such a concept, short of the Rapture, can safely be discounted as a non-credible military analyst. (Chicago Tribune, are you open to a rebuttal from a credible military analyst?)

Keeping it light

An escalation in sticker application at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan.

Kabobs, mmmm.

RTO Trainer is back at Camp Phoenix (his second deployment!)

Bush in Baghdad

AFP/Getty

President Bush is making a surprise visit to Baghdad, to visit Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at the U.S. Embassy in the Green Zone.

The World's Megacities

Now that CDR Salamander has us thinking about modern day Goths & Huns , there is a good, informative piece from Foreign Policy regarding the perils threatening some of the world's megacities . Of course, from an operational POV, Lagos and Mexico City are two decaying mega cities that could be seeing US/NATO interventions in the future, and I don't mean in future renditions of the Ghost Recon videogame series.

What’s the problem? Sanitation and waste. Lagos is the world’s fastest-growing megacity—and the dirtiest. In 1950, Lagos had only 300,000 residents. Today, it has more than 10 million, a number that is likely to double within five years. A largely unplanned city, waste is a perennial problem. Lagos has no sewage treatment facilities, and nearly all garbage is dumped either in the city streets or in a lagoon just outside town.

Can they handle it? Unlikely. The government has attempted to implement a series of sweeping, but impractical and poorly administrated reforms to rid the city of its waste. A 1985 sanitation drive, for instance, required all residents to participate in trash cleaning days. But the waste they collected was never picked up by the city and left to rot in the streets. More recently, the Kick Against Indiscipline, a new paramilitary environmental protection group set up by the government, has busted some of the illegal dumps in town that are run by gangs. But the group has been accused of corruption and targeting the government’s political opponents. Bureaucrats saw this coming; they moved the capital across the country to the cleaner city of Abuja.

Project Valour-IT

Consider your young soldier of today. Wired. Connected. So used to using keyboards they can thumb-type faster than I can type in a regular way - and I'm pretty good, actually.

Then take away a hand, or the use of it. Or both. Or her eyes.

Then you've got that sullen fellow sitting in that chair up there.

Or, you can give a little of yourself, just a tiny bit - a 6 pack worth of beer is fine. Or soda if you don't drink. If 130 of you who read this space regularly (vice those who've given already this time 'round, natch) give $5 each - that's a voice-activated laptop. The Cluebat Clique (8 people who gave $100 and counting) have already funded one.

How 'bout you make this possible for another wounded warrior of any service to get connected again? Captain Chuck Ziegenfuss was a deployed milblogger who nearly lost his hand in an IED attack. Project Valour-IT, brainchild of Chuck and Fuzzybear Lioness, let Chuck blog again.

Chuck's much better now, and can use a regular computer - but his voice-activated laptop helped him along the path to recovery.

Think I'm blowing smoke? While milbloggers don't cite the BBC approvingly all that often - that makes this story all the more interesting.

C'mon. $5. Tax-deductible.

The Arsenal of Argghhh! will give a "Cluebat of Argghhh!" to the first 10 people who produce a receipt for a donation of $100 or more to Project Valour-IT.*

Cluebats: For those with deeper pockets, there's only 10,9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 0 bats left! (by the way, you don't have to leave the receipt in a comment - email contact is fine for those who prefer to keep things to themselves) to qualify for a Castle Argghhh Cluebat Clique membership! If you want credit for your donation (perhaps not publicly, but you want your bat) drop a note in the comments of this post. My email address is available on the site, as well.

Donate here, or click the graphic up top.

And I'm gonna harass ya until I get those last two Cluebats spoken for.

All original ten have been spoken for. But... since the laptops cost $660 with shipping, and we've come up with $1000 for readers of Castle Argghhh!, I'll put up three more - so we can get *two* with some change left over. Thanks guys!

Just sayin'.

Update: AFSis sez "My post is up today... and yes, I've made my donation. It's not "cluebat" worthy, but it's all I could spare."

I say - If you gave all you could spare, you gave more than most!

Here's a list of those blogs supporting this drive (that we know about - if you aren't listed, lemme know!)

[sound of sledgehammer and saws, and the occasional curse while yahoo-farkled links are fixed]

There! All better!

Mudville Gazette
The Armorer at Castle Argghhh!
Blackfive
Smash
Da Goddess
BloodSpite
Boston Maggie
Small Town Veteran
Righty in a Lefty State
Homefront Six
One Marine's View
A Rose By Any Other Name
Echo9er
AFSis at My Side of the Puddle.
The Countervailing Force
Thoughts by Seawitch
The Cool Blue Blog
Dadmanly
High Desert Wanderer
Silent Running
My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
Blue Star Chronicles

More on recent North Korea threats & activities- with a twist

Spook86 has a follow on to previous posts on the recent activities and threats of the North Koreans here, in which he refers to a 2003 incident of DPRK interception of an RC-135 and suggests:

One final (albeit remote) possibility is that the potential TD-2 launch is a giant ruse, designed to lure U.S. collection platforms to the area, and (possibly) attempt a forced landing in North Korean territory.

What'cha doing in 2012-2018?

Well by any measure, if RADM Chris Parry, RN is right - you will be kissing your U.S. passport and wondering when you are going to be recalled. Eddie, here is a Brit who has no problem saying stuff in public.

ONE of Britain’s most senior military strategists has warned that western civilisation faces a threat on a par with the barbarian invasions that destroyed the Roman empire.

In an apocalyptic vision of security dangers, Rear Admiral Chris Parry said future migrations would be comparable to the Goths and Vandals while north African "barbary" pirates could be attacking yachts and beaches in the Mediterranean within 10 years.

Europe, including Britain, could be undermined by large immigrant groups with little allegiance to their host countries — a "reverse colonisation" as Parry described it. These groups would stay connected to their homelands by the internet and cheap flights. The idea of assimilation was becoming redundant, he said.

Parry predicts that as flood or starvation strikes, the most dangerous zones will be Africa, particularly the northern half; most of the Middle East and central Asia as far as northern China; a strip from Nepal to Indonesia; and perhaps eastern China.

He pinpoints 2012 to 2018 as the time when the current global power structure is likely to crumble. Rising nations such as China, India, Brazil and Iran will challenge America’s sole superpower status.

This will come as "irregular activity" such as terrorism, organised crime and "white companies" of mercenaries burgeon in lawless areas.

The effects will be magnified as borders become more porous and some areas sink beyond effective government control.

Parry expects the world population to grow to about 8.4 billion in 2035, compared with 6.4 billion today. By then some 68% of the population will be urban, with some giant metropolises becoming ungovernable. He warns that Mexico City could be an example.

NPR and Daniel Schorr

Sometimes, the two of them? In combination? They drive me nuts. A sample:

“From Guantanamo to Haditha, the administration’s war on terrorism occasionally reveals some stark contradictions. I am still trying to understand how a squad of US Marines could kill up to 24 civilians in Haditha, including women and children, and then claim they were following normal rules of military engagement. One wonders what kind of rules of engagement cover house to house shooting and hand grenades."

I disagree with Mr. Schorr, at length. My place.

Re: Ignorance of the (Military) Law is No Excuse

AL, I just posted a response to that very same article at Op For.

While I was a little easier on Umansky than you were, I admit I don't have your legal background to fall back on.

My problem with the Slate piece was the premise in which it was based. Umansky was upset that it took so long for an investigation to be launched into the civilian deaths in Haditha, so he decided that the military legal procedure -as a whole- needs "improvement."

I don't want to write the same response twice, so here's part of what I wrote at my place:

The fact that the military considered Haditha a legal engagement prior to Time magazine politicizing the situation should be telling. But while the military is still trying to ascertain exactly what happened at Haditha, Umansky has already taken the next step, saying, in essence, that "there was a massacre, and shame on the military for taking 4 months and the prompting of a magazine to launch the proper investigation."

I don't like the whole implication of guilt that Umansky is selling.

Ignorance of the (Military) Law is No Excuse

Slate's Eric Umansky has a fairly drippy piece today titled "JAGged Justice" (get it? Because we're JAGs! *sigh*) Anyway, the piece argues for...an independent prosecutor(?) for the Army. Aside from the default reaction of WTF, let's delve a lil deeper into GEN Umansky's proscription for all the ills facing the military justice system.