Yes, let's cultivate an enhanced ability to handle combat stress and slip back into life at home

back on 18 august, i posted on an nyt article that was evidently talking about the same thing (see Let's make our troops into cyborgs that can shake off that annoying malaise after killing people)... now time magazine is writing about the same thing...

is this how we want to condition our troops...? do we really want them to be able to kill and then just shrug it off...? is it just me or is this some really creepy shit...?

Samurai Mind Training for Modern American Warriors

[...]

Think military and you think macho, not meditation, but that's about to change now that the Army intends to train its 1.1 million soldiers in the art of mental toughness. The Defense Department hopes that giving soldiers tools to fend off mental stress will toughen its troops at war and at home. It's the first time mental combat is being mandated on a large scale, but a few thousand soldiers who have participated in a voluntary program called Warrior Mind Training have already gotten a taste of how strengthening the mind is way different - dare we say harder? - than pounding out the push-ups.

Warrior Mind Training is the brainchild of Ernst and two friends, who were teaching meditation and mind-training in California. In 2005, a Marine attended a class in San Diego and suggested expanding onto military bases. Ernst and her colleagues researched the military mindset, consulting with veterans who had practiced meditation on the battlefield and back home. She also delved into the science behind mind training to analyze how meditation tactics could help treat - and maybe even help prevent - post-traumatic stress disorder.

Rooted in the ancient Samurai code of self-discipline, Warrior Mind Training draws on the image of the mythic Japanese fighter, an elite swordsman who honed his battle skills along with his mental precision. The premise? Razor-sharp attention plus razor-sharp marksmanship equals fearsome warrior.

[...]

The benefits of Warrior Mind Training, students have told instructors, are impressive: better aim on the shooting range, higher test scores, enhanced ability to handle combat stress and slip back into life at home. No comprehensive studies have been done, though a poll of 25 participants showed 70% said they felt better able to handle stressful situations and 65% had improved self-control.

i'm all for meditation... i've been practicing it on and off since the late 80s, it's taken me in some very positive directions and, quite honestly, has helped lead me to a place in my life more positive and satisfying than i would have ever thought possible... but the aim of this effort creeps me out...

personally, i don't WANT to blow somebody to bloody bits and come away unaffected... in fact, the very LAST thing in this world i could ever imagine doing is blowing someone to bloody bits... i managed to spend 18 months in vietnam without firing a weapon and four - soon to be five - visits to afghanistan without witnessing death (not that i'm not highly aware that it's been all around me), and have found even those experiences to be profoundly disturbing... i simply can't imagine how i would be impacted by the immediate, visceral reality of death and destruction right in my face...

the other thing about this article that really disturbs me is the whole concept of "warrior"... i've posted several times previously on this and i think it's worth repeating one of them here...

from 14 january 2008

i've posted previously (here and here) on the increasing and deeply disturbing prevalence of the term "warrior" to describe those we send off to fight and die protecting the "interests" of our nation monied elites... here's another, equally disturbing one that just caught my attention...

from a lockheed martin press release...

“Lockheed Martin continues to focus on providing our Warfighters with new and innovative technologies that will make their jobs easier,” said Lionel Liebman, manager of Program Development – Applied Research at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control.

also interesting that "warfighter" is capitalized...

what the increasing visibility of these terms suggests to me is that we are continuing to be slowly inculcated to seeing war as an integral part of our society... yes, it's true, that serving our country via military service has, at least in the past, been seen as an honorable calling, whether it's just for one hitch or for a career... these people have always been known variously as "members of the military," "career military," "soldiers," "sailors," "airmen," "marines," or, simply, "our troops"... all of those sobriquets implied government service, love of country, defense of freedom, etc., etc...

but what is implied by "warrior" and "warfighter"...? to me, for one thing, they do NOT imply any of those other things... "warrior," for instance, for me, calls to mind warrior nations like sparta, where the entire society was devoted to conquest, or to descriptions of the marauding huns, usually characterized as a "warlike" people... the only "service" implied is service to death and destruction... "warfighter" is even more chilling... to me, that word implies a weapon of advanced technology, an implement, if you will, of accomplishing that death and destruction...

words are powerful and the words we choose to use convey a great deal about our beliefs and views of the world... "warrior" and "warfighter" make my skin crawl...

my skin is still crawling...

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Happy Labor Day...? Not so much... A holiday outpouring of truth...

here's some of the juicier parts of juan cole's labor day rant... it's a beaut and i strongly suggest reading the whole thing... it captures what should be the essence of this day and places it firmly in the context of our present, sad reality...

The unemployment rate as a write is inching toward 10 percent nationally, and that is only counting people who were still looking for a job recently. A vast bank robbery by the corrupt on Wall Street has robbed them of the credit that made the economy go. Labor Day was passed by Congress under Grover Cleveland to celebrate not only the individual American laborer but the labor movement-- yes, unions, workers' parades, hard hats and blue jeans (before the youth movement of the 1960s appropriated them, blue jeans were working class clothing, and my working class relatives upbraided me for wearing them as an undergraduate) . It is to celebrate all those icons that shills for the barracuda billionaires, such as Glenn Beck, now castigate as "fascist" and "communist."

[...]

The closest we get to celebrating the workers who built this country is when we talk about "working families," an odd locution, since aside from the idle rich who defrauded the country into bankruptcy last fall, wouldn't that be everyone?

[...]

Fewer effective unions have left American workers at the mercy of predatory company policies. Government has, since Ronald Reagan (who hated organized workers the way the devil hates holy water), also socially-engineered the tax laws so as to throw enormous further wealth at the wealthy. As a result, the average wage of the average worker in the United States has not increased since 1970 (in 2004 the bottom 60% of the population was actually making less in real terms per capita each year than in 1979). In contrast, the top 1% of the population by income now takes home nearly 20% of the country's annual income. The top 1%, about 3 million persons, has gone from owning 25% of the privately held wealth in the 1950s under Eisenhower to owning over a third today. The top 10 percent of Americans own almost all the country's privately-held property.


[...]

Reagan-Cheney between 1980 and 2008 created a new American aristocracy, a small sliver of super-rich, who buy and sell legislators, create whole "news networks" to present far right wing fantasies as "news," have their lackeys invade and occupy whole countries, hold themselves above the law, falsify financial statements, and suffer little or no punishment for stealing billions from the pensions of "working families" (i.e. those of us about whom P.T. Barnum remarked, "one is born every minute".) The Republican Party has come to represent these super-rich. Since .1% of the population couldn't actually win elections, they ally with other groups in society. About two-thirds of evangelicals have joined up with them, about a third of Latinos, significant numbers of mid-western rural families, and obviously large numbers of white southerners. In some cases these are lower middle class people on the make, who want to hitch their wagons to the brightest stars in the sky. In others, they share with the super-rich various resentments of the federal government. This alliance of odd bedfellows (think of Paris Hilton married to Joe Sixpack) is what produces the wackiness of Republican Party politics and media. They can't come out and say that they want the country run for the benefit of 300,000 multi-millionaires and billionaires (almost all of them white), so they say they are all in favor of guns, apple pie, Jay-sus and the Confederacy.

[...]

represents the poor schmucks who make up the 80 percent of the population that has been reduced to peasants by our new dukes, viscounts and princesses who have captured the lion's share of the country's wealth and income. Obviously, elements in the top 20% (and even more so in the top 1%) are not happy about any outbreak of democracy.

oh, god forbid we should even FLIRT with real democracy...

professor cole closes with this and a quote from carl sandberg's poem, chicago...

I celebrate today the organized workers, the ones who can push back against the crooks in pinstripe:

Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people

i see our new class of peasantry wherever i look these days - immigrant labor mowing lawns, joe sixpacks driving fedex delivery vans, stooped, elderly women ringing up purchases at walmart, young teens taking orders at fast food restaurants, middle-aged men manning security guard posts... we're all falling into line, taking our places in the service economy, eating highly processed, unhealthy food, going home to a house with an underwater mortgage to relax in front of our new giant, flat-screen tv that we bought on credit last december...

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Cloud photoblogging

my son tipped me off to this about 20 minutes ago and i took the photo off the back deck at 7:35 p.m. PDT... pretty amazing, eh...?

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Now, let's all feel sorry for the poor lobbyists and defense contractors

how 'bout it...? do ya think you can muster some sympathy...?

In a year when Washington's influence industry should be thriving, with epic battles over health-care and energy legislation, lobbying in many sectors is in marked decline as defense contractors, real estate firms and other companies pull back in a down economy.

Overall spending on lobbying has leveled off for the first time in a decade, according to disclosure data filed with Congress. Lobbying revenue for many of the city's most powerful advocacy firms, including bellwethers such as Patton Boggs and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, plunged 10 percent or more in the first half of the year.

Washington also has 2,200 fewer registered lobbyists than it did a year ago, the lowest tally since shortly after George W. Bush took office in January 2001.

[...]

The formidable defense industry, reeling from tens of thousands of layoffs, has cut back expenditures by 17 percent this year. That was true even with the lobbying effort triggered by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates's cancellation of the F-22 fighter jet and other major weapons projects, which had long survived thanks to the lobbying prowess of major contractors. Northrop Grumman has slashed its spending for lobbying in half, and Boeing and Lockheed Martin each have reduced spending by more than $1 million.

boo-freakin'-hoo...

p.s. ya gotta love that term, "influence industry"...

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And I'm heading back to Afghanistan to face this...

an on-going tragedy of epic proportions continues in afghanistan...

al jazeera...

A Nato air strike is said to have killed between 70 and 130 people in the Afghan province of Kunduz.

Nato say they targeted Taliban fighters who had seized two fuel tankers.

Al Jazeera's James Bays reports from a nearby village, where locals say many of the killed were civilians.

according to several accounts i've read, including juan cole, there were numerous civilians gathered around the tankers hoping to get some free fuel...

The governor [Kunduz Governor Eng. Mohammad Omar] said the Taliban fighters hijacked two oil tankers carrying aircraft fuel for NATO forces from the Kunduz-Baghlan Highway. The militants were distributing fuel for free when the raid took place.

But a security official, seeking anonymity, said the death toll was more than 200. He claimed warplanes struck the people who had gathered to receive free oil distributed by the hijackers. The official would not give further details.

what with the unrest due to the disputed election results and the completely understandable outpouring of rage over civilian deaths, it's going to be a tough time to be headed back there, but back there i will be as of a week from this sunday... unfortunately, being there is no more of a guarantee of an informed perspective than sitting here in the u.s... anyway, stay tuned...

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Arrest and charge FOOTBALL players for assault? What about those who authorized torture?

look no further for evidence of the essential hypocrisy that runs deep in our national character than the endless bloviating going on today on espn about lagarrette blount of the university of oregon football team who assaulted two opposing team players in a game yesterday against boise state... the following piece summarizes the discussion very succinctly...

It was Boise State 19, Oregon 8. Also, it's so long to Ducks running back LeGarrette Blount, who should be kicked off the team today for what he did on Thursday at Bronco Stadium.

Blount punched Boise State's Byron Hout in the face on the field after the game. Then, Blount put a fist to the helmet of Ducks' teammate Garrett Embry, who was trying to play peacemaker. And what we have here is a low moment that can not be greeted with tolerance.

Blount left the field struggling with two police officers and two stadium security guards, and with Ducks assistant Scott Frost being towed along. There was a hostile brush with a Boise State fan, too. In the end, there was chaos and volatility all around this team, courtesy of Blount.

The Ducks running back should be arrested and charged with assault today for slugging Hout, who wasn't even looking. Also, Blount should be served up by first-year head coach Chip Kelly as a reminder of everything the program should never become.

would that we could champion such accountability among those in our national leadership who sponsored the commission of war crimes and those who carried out the nefarious deeds...

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"Mr Gomez, Tear Down This Wall"

This jewel was sent to me from And, Yes, I DO Take It Personally friend, Betmo. Thanks, Kiddo!

From the Miami Herald..........

Mexico nabs 6 in theft of border-fence steel

TIJUANA, Mexico -- Police in the Mexican border city of Tijuana say they have arrested six men for stealing pieces of the U.S. border fence to sell as scrap metal.

[...]

Police said Wednesday in a statement that the men may face federal charges because the fence area is considered federal property.

Slooooooowly I turned..........

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Wednesday sunset and moonrise photoblogging

sorry... i can't help myself... there's just something about sunsets and moonrises that render me completely helpless when i have a camera available...



7:34 p.m., PDT, taken facing ESE


7:35 p.m., PDT, taken facing WNW

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Sigh... Yeah, it DOES feel like Bush's third term, doesn't it...?

argue with this if you dare...

dave swanson in tomdispatch via information clearing house...

[The] dark fantasy of a third Bush term is also an accurate portrait of Obama's first term to date. In following Bush, Obama was given the opportunity either to restore the rule of law and the balance of powers or to firmly establish in place what were otherwise aberrant abuses of power. Thus far, President Obama has, in all the areas mentioned above, chosen the latter course. Everything described, from the continuation of crimes to the efforts to hide them away, from the corruption of corporate power to the assertion of the executive power to legislate, is Obama's presidency in its first seven months.

Which doesn't mean there aren't differences in the two moments. For one thing, Democrats have now joined Republicans in approving expanded presidential powers and even -- in the case of wars, military strikes, lawless detention and rendition, warrantless spying, and the obstruction of justice -- presidential crimes. In addition, in the new Democratic era of goodwill, peace and justice movements have been strikingly defunded and, in some cases, even shut down. Many progressive groups now, in fact, take their signals from the president and his team, rather than bringing the public's demands to his doorstep.

If we really were in Bush's third term, people would be far more active and outraged. There would already be a major push to really end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan. Undoubtedly, the Democrats still wouldn't impeach Bush, especially since they'd be able to vote him out before his fourth term, and surely four more years of him wouldn't make all that much difference.

double sigh...

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Alex Gibney and Bill Moyers on "Money-Driven Medicine"

as always, bill moyers manages to burrow in to the guts of what's really happening in contemporary issues...

here's a trailer for the documentary, money-driven medicine, that was offered on bill moyers journal in shortened form...



a snippet from the documentary's producer, alex gibney...

The fact is that, in a mixed system where private enterprise and public monies inhabit the same space, inefficiency and extravagance are profitable. Remember the military industrial complex? Private contractors make profits by charging the government for cost overruns. Defense contractors call this "cost plus." Pharma calls it "No Public Option."

Why is it that free marketeers are so afraid of competing with a government program which, in their religion, is inherently inefficient? Well who wants to compete with a public option that won't take 10-20% in overhead, lobbying costs, administration costs and profit? That's my bonus, dude. Whoops, I mean, I have a fiduciary responsibility to deliver the highest possible return to my shareholders.

watch it... read it... it's some truly infuriating stuff that unsurprisingly validates most everything we already know...

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