Attackerman

When There's Nothing On The Horizon, You've Got Nothing Left To Prove

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

No. 922-11

October 28, 2011

DOD Identifies Marine Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

Staff Sgt. Stephen J. Dunning, 31, of Milpitas, Calif., died Oct. 27 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 9th Engineer Support Battalion, 3rd Marine Logistics Group, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Okinawa, Japan.

For additional background information on this Marine, news media representatives may contact the III Marine Expeditionary Force public affairs office at 081-98-970-3803 or [email protected] .

When There's Nothing On The Horizon, You've Got Nothing Left To Prove

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

No. 921-11

October 28, 2011

DOD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

Sgt. John A. Lyons, 26, of Seaside Park, N.J., died Oct. 26 in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit using small arms fire. He was assigned to the 8th Engineer Battalion, 36th Engineer Brigade, Fort Hood, Texas.

For more information, please contact Fort Hood public affairs office at 254-287-0106 or visit https://www.forthoodpresscenter.com .

All The Beating Drums, The Celebration Guns

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

No. 911-11

October 27, 2011

DOD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation New Dawn.

Sgt. 1st Class David G. Robinson, 28, of Winthrop Harbor, Ill., died Oct. 25 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He was assigned to the U.S. Army Support Activity, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

For more information the media may contact Maj. Charlie Barrett at Third Army/U.S. Army Central public affairs at 803-885-8875 or [email protected].

Treat Pakistan Like The Enemy It Is

My friend Eli Lake has a conceptual framework that, I think, explains the U.S.-Pakistan relationship rather well. While its formal institutions -- the presidency, the top generals, etc. -- cooperate with Washington when it suits their interests, the "deep state" of the security apparatus is at war with the U.S., sponsoring some terrorist groups and tolerating others. 

Now, it turns out, it's even worse than that. My colleagues and I in the Pentagon press corps drew out Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, who runs the day to day war in Afghanistan, into explaining just what the relationship with the Pakistani military involves:

Frontline Pakistani troops aid and abet lethal insurgent attacks on American forces across the Afghan border, according to the day-to-day commander of the NATO war effort. It’s a big reason why rocket and mortar attacks have quadrupled since 2010.

“You’ll see what just appears to us to be a collaboration or was a collaboration or, at a minimum, looking the other way when insurgents conducted rocket or mortar fire in what we believe to be visual sight of one of their posts,” Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti told Pentagon reporters on Thursday morning.

I don't enjoy coming to this conclusion. But it is very difficult to see how non-punitive measures have aided the U.S. in dealing with Pakistan. Massively generous economic assistance, military relief assistance during floods and earthquakes, literally bags full of cash to the military, nuclear-capable fighter jets -- and this is what we get.

Pakistan has a disinterest in stopping terrorism because it knows the aid spigot will subsequently twist shut. So it helps kill Americans. And its sotto-voce argument for why the relationship must continue this way is essentially a threat: You never know what loose-nuke chaos would result...

Fuck that. No more. It's time for the U.S. to stop issuing idle threats about how Pakistan must take on the Haqqanis OR ELSE. Cut off all aid until the Pakistanis stop helping any insurgent networks and shut the safe havens down. Pull the drones from Shamsi to Jalalabad and fucking bombs-away. Let the Chinese move into Khyber-Pakhtunkwa and announce a brand new relationship with the subcontinent's real superpower, India. Watch that shit concentrate the Pakistani imagination.

Part of American leadership is not allowing client states to dick us around. If this is how Pakistan wants it, then it should get a commensurate response. 

With Walid Phares, Mitt Romney Plays With Fire

The Adam Serwer era of Mother Jones begins with Adam's monster expose of Walid Phares, the former apparatchik of a bloodstained Lebanese Christian militia who now co-chairs Mitt Romney's Mideast advisory group. The piece has too many holy-shit quotes to excerpt at length, so you should just read the whole thing, but this is one of my favorites: 

Despite the bloody fighting among Christians, the lesson that many Lebanese Christian exiles took from the war was that Islam was to blame for the destruction that ensued. "There is a problem with Islam…If you want to follow the Koran by the book you have to be like [Osama] bin Laden," says one former Lebanese Forces militiaman. "It is a reality. And Walid Phares knows this reality. He's lived here."

Now: Romney is running a culture war masquerading as a foreign policy. So a reduction of the challenge of terrorism to a religiously-determined Clash With The Muslim would certainly fit into that approach. But like Omar with Proposition Joe, this kind of thing can come back on you. 

Romney, after all, is a Mormon. He must know what it's like to be part of a religious group that's looked upon with contempt and doctrinal derision, experienced unfair attacks in the popular culture and subject to blithe armchair theology in the media. Mormons aren't the subject of the kind of two-minutes-hate that Muslims are. But when you start stoking the flames of these kinds of prejudices -- and that, at his core, is what Walid Phares is about -- you don't know where the fire can spread. 

The Security State Doesn't Have To Win

Behold the power of the Internet. TSA sexually harasses Jill Filipovic. Filipovic exposes TSA on Twitter. Journalists write about Filipovic's harassment. One day later, TSA -- as Kashmir Hill reports -- disciplines the offender. 

Will it lead to a reduction in future offenses? Hopefully, but too soon to tell. What we do know is that we have collectively lowered both the threshold of tolerance for TSA abuses and the barriers for expressing the reset threshold. All it took was Filipovic's unwillingness to take it. Heroism has a place in everyday life. 

Say No To Drugs

I mean it. I've never touched acid -- way too scared of a bad trip -- and drugs destroy lives. On the other hand, Dock Ellis' famous acid-fueled no hitter, told in animation form. (via an old Boing Boing post)

When There's Nothing On The Horizon, You've Got Nothing Left To Prove

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

No. 909-11

October 26, 2011

DOD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

Sgt. Edward S. Grace, 39, of South Dartmouth, Mass., died Oct. 23 in Silver Spring, Md., from a non-combat illness. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 182nd Infantry Regiment, 26th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade, Massachusetts National Guard, Braintree, Mass.

For more information the media may contact the Massachusetts National Guard at 508-958-3187.

The Punk Rock Boys & Girls Club

Amanda Marcotte remembers the power of Thurston Moore in the age of Clarence Thomas' apparent victory.

I mainly, at that point in time, liked reading books and listening to CDs, and it was the latter that pulled a brick out of my mental wall on this issue. Sonic Youth had a song on their 1992 record Dirty titled "Youth Against Fascism", and it had the lyric "I believe Anita Hill/Judge will rot in hell" on it. It almost feels like an understatement to say that this lyric blew my mind. A man standing up for a woman---a woman he didn't know, especially---in a dispute between a man and a woman over sexualized mistreatment? I had never experienced that before, and probably thought of it as simply impossible. Most women treated other women who spoke up about this stuff like pariahs, so the idea of a man calling bullshit, and being so angry about it, was just unbelievable to me. It felt so incredibly subversive. I didn't want to be caught listening to that lyric. It seemed dirty to suggest that there was any alternative to simply enduring sexual harassment in silence. 

Imagine a place where young boys learned that calling bullshit on men harassing women, and to support the women who did the same, was their obligation as men. Not in a mansplainy or patriarchal way, but as a way to police -- and fulfill -- their own masculinity and humanity. I learned that from punk rock. 

I will never stick up for punk rock or hardcore as a place where women are free from harassment -- or where it's easy to be a nonstraight nonwhite nonmale person. No collection of teenagers and 20somethings is like that, particularly not one based around shared obsessions. But pivoting off Amanda's post, it is important that that is a value punk rock sets for itself, where you will be put on the defensive if you disagree and challenged if you do not live up to the standard. 

Above my desk I keep a photograph that my wife bought for me of ABC No Rio. ABC No Rio is a punk club and (former?) squat on Rivington Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan where every Saturday afternoon a motley assortment of bands perform. I think of it as the punk rock version of the Boys & Girls Club, because that was the role it played for me as a teenager. It socialized me and shaped my values. If you wanted to be part of the committee that booked bands, planned events and made decisions about the direction of the venue, then all you had to do was show up, commit to clean the place up, and submit your suggestion for consensus. That was DIY, an ethic that became a religion and taught teenagers about individual and collective responsibility.

Most importantly: it was supposed to be a place where you would be made to feel unwelcome if you groped someone in the pit; if you made a homophobic or racist remark; or if you engaged in otherwise destructive behavior.

All The Beating Drums, The Celebration Guns

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

No. 908-11

October 25, 2011

DOD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation New Dawn.

Capt. Shawn P. T. Charles, 40, of Hickory, N.C., died Oct. 23 in San Antonio, Texas, from a non-combat illness. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

For more information the media may contact the Fort Hood public affairs office at 254-287-9993, via the internet at http://www.forthoodpresscenter.com , or email [email protected] .