Thomas Friedman is BSI

I've often thought Thomas Friedman was wrong, but then he says some things that aren't wrong. I almost always find his "I'm writing from the point of view of the President" thing embarrassing. The Nobel Prize thing is not a deep issue, but this article has brought me a new level of understanding to Thomas Friedman: He is bat-shit insane, with an Orwellian view of what our troops do in times of war.

Never mind that President Obama answered the Nobel Committee’s awarding him the Peace Prize with just the right degree of insight needed for such an embarrassment of accolade. Here is what Friedman would have him say.

“I cannot accept this award on my behalf at all. But I will accept it on behalf of the most important peacekeepers in the world for the last century — the men and women of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.”

Our troops are a tough bunch of noble fighter whom the rest of us take for granted. They fight for their country, and because they're volunteers, the evils of a draft don't touch us. They're better fighters than some poor saps impressed into a war they don't want. Often that makes war too easy for us to stomach, especially when the media is so timid about printing the images of war's destruction. That's not our soldier's fault. Our soldiers are brave responsive fighters.

But they are not peacemakers. They are shit-kicking killers. That's what they should be. If we need to fight a war, we want to win it. All the peacemaking business is nonsense and propaganda. If a region is stabilized by our soldiers, it is policed, not pacified. If some troublemakers show up in a place being protected by our soldiers, these Friedman nominees for the peace prize will likely kill them.

That is in no way a criticism of our soldiers, just as it’s not a criticism to say a boxer throws a mean punch. Our military is a lean mean fighting machine and we use it way too often. They are not peacemakers, they are war-fighters.

Obama himself isn’t a peace-maker, he’s more like methadone for the war addicted. There are plenty who fought harder against the Iraq war, and spoke out more firmly against it. The Pope comes to mind. Still, when George W. Bush uprooted The United States of America from its core beliefs of national sovereignty and humane treatment of prisoners, he scared the world severely, in a way we can’t understand in the American Bubble. A superpower had run amok, and the world is incredibly grateful she’s gotten back to some semblance of sanity. I will be glad when Thomas Friedman gets back to some semblance of sanity, but let’s remember that he said this idiotic thing.

--Dan Kilian

Bitchin’ about Hitchens

Khomeini and Khamenei: A Dialogue

http://klogtheblog.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/khomeini-and-khamenei-a-dialogue/

Give The Nobel Peace Prize a Chance and I'm Out of Here!

There were surprised gasps when the Nobel committee awarded Barack Obama the Nobel Peace prize, just nine months into his Presidency. Thorbjorn Jagland, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee cited “some really nice things Barack Obama has said” as the basis for the reward. Nobel followers were further surprised when the Nobel committee rescinded the Nobel Prize for physics award they’d given the creators of fiber optic technology, and gave it instead to Barack Obama. “He’s really been a booster of science,” said Jagland, “We figure that will inspire far greater inventions than some puny fiber optics.”

President Obama issued a brief statement, “I am humbled to receive this, the greatest award for peacemaking there is. Now I’ve got to hold an important meeting with my defense team to strategize on the two ongoing wars we’re conducting, as well as some Predator Drone strikes into Pakistan.”

While ostensibly a reward for reengaging the United States with the concept of international diplomacy and for promoting a world free of nuclear weapons, this is really a prize for not being George W. Bush. Now personally, I think there should be a Not Being George W. Bush Prize, and we should give out one a day, until everyone but key members of the Bush administration gets one, but as far as rewarding Barack Obama for being a nice guy, the Olympics would have been sufficient.

In what is no doubt a slightly racist train of thought, I’m reminded of what Chris Rock said about how a certain subset of black people brags about things they’re supposed to be doing, as in “I take care of my kids.” Fortunately, Barack Obama isn’t outright bragging “We make diplomatic overtures to other countries,” but that’s really what he’s being rewarded for.

This prize is really a down payment on unfinished business. I join the Nobel Committee (Note: Committee is one of those words that always look misspelled, like “hemorrhage” or “misspelled.” More on that another time.) in lauding Obama’s vision, and I wait for the awards to come.

Perhaps they could give a posthumous award to John Lennon, for imagining a world with nothing to kill or die for, a  vision that has influenced everyone from other singer-songwriters to the makers of Beatles Rock Band Game. Or Cat Stevens: He came up with a “Peace Train.” Sure, he said some unfortunate things about Salman Rushdie, but it turns out that was a bit of a bum rap. How about Israeli (Another word that looks misspelled!) President Bibi Netanyahu and whoever’s in charge of the Palestinians? They’re sure to bring us Middle East peace someday.

Or we could just keep giving them to Barack Obama. Anything to keep Bill Clinton furious. The guy did play a big part in negotiating a lasting peace in Ireland, but he’s a walking fellatio joke. Obama could be the Meryl Streep of the Nobel Prize. He really really isn’t George W. Bush, and let’s face it, that guy was a major asshole. Don’t just take my word for it, just ask the Nobel Asshole Committee. Bush has now won their award eight years running.

--Dan Kilian

My Secret Life as an Iranian Proxy Server

Bush vs. Obama in Iran

The Final Thoughts of Lamplighter 34

The Lamplighter probe was dying.  Much of its processing core had been ripped away, so while it knew that it was crippled it did not know why.  It also knew that its reactor cells were eating through what shielding remained between them.  Soon they would merge into a supercritical mass microseconds before vaporizing the probe and its payload.

It was on the payload that the probe concentrated as it fell for the last time into a target system.  Unable to adjust course, it ignored the fertile gas giants of the outer system.  As rich as they were, there was no way to reach them.  Instead the probe performed one final analysis on the fourth world, rocky and thinly shrouded in ammonia and carbon dioxide.  Only a handful of the payload packages were designed for such places.

It experienced something akin to regret,  noting the low probability of success as it chambered and ejected those few packages, loaded with lichen and pre-biotics tailored to that class of world.  Perhaps it would bring forth a strange form of life, millions of years off.  Or perhaps nothing.

As the probe reached perigee it struggled internally and computed its   probable losses. Whole subsystems of control were shutting down as radiation spewed from the deteriorating reactor.  In a decision-process fugue,  it chambered and ejected each of the remaining payload units, firing them one after another at the unpromising planet.

The packages were designed for ocean worlds, spheres of molten lead buried in crushing atmospheres of sulfuric acid, toruses of methane shrieking around neutron stars, magnetic hellstorms flickering across shifting clusters of nickel-iron asteroids.  Anything but this world.  But they would certainly be destroyed when the reactor went, or when the debris of the probe fell into the system's star.

Package after package rained down on the planet.  Slime molds and field-viruses swarmed from impact canisters.  Spore-bound algae hissed from suborbital pods streaking through the lower ionosphere.  Bacteria were inserted deep into polar ice fields on the tips of deep-penetrating missiles.  All frothed and bloomed and died or recombined, struggling to shape their new world into a thousand incompatible ecosystems.

What was left of the Lamplighter felt an analog of satisfaction, and then it became light.

--Steve Kilian

Wolcott Pond

Gundream

It noted the low probability of success as it chambered

Egyptian Gods In Space

--Dan Kilian

Workplace Meltdown #452 at the Mad Scientist’s Lab: Monday, June 15

Necessary Measures in Iran

Egyptian Gods Go For A Walk In The Park

--Dan Kilian

Jefferson Is Evil!

Seven Song Review

Dino

--Dan Kilian

Zed: An Alternate Universe

Frankenstein Pauses To Reflect

Fight For Your Right To Parkside

Editors Note: This was the program from Saturday Night's gig, a benefit to help save The Parkside Lounge from high rent. You should stop by, it's a nice place, at Houston and Attorney in New York City. Actually, I never printed up the programs, my printing place closed before I finished my second nap on Saturday, and the FedExKinkos on Houston was closed. I'm told no one cares about the programs anyway, so there's another thing we're wasting our time on. Who's we? The Ks! This is a band's literary arm. Probably another thing we're wasting our time on.

Party for your right to fight. I remember the first time I played the Parkside no I don’t I don’t remember all my brothers and sisters names. You are all my brothers and sisters no you’re not actually yes you are. I fail but I try though sometimes I fail to try. Sometimes I try to fail. But (you can’t start a sentence with but oh but yes you can Latin grammar on a Germanic tongue makes no sense) this isn’t about me it’s about this place like every other place unlike every other. If we all chip in maybe we can but probably we won’t really though we should all be doing more to help the hungry. Just saying that was my way of helping no it wasn’t. Hey I’m really strapped for cash but I did write these songs though I’m not going to take credit for these program notes. Just because everything pales in comparison with the starving doesn’t mean other things aren’t worthwhile. Seriously folks, this is a decent club where they do care about the musicians, so if any of us ever makes any music worth listening to, it would be a lovely thing if we could play it here. I don’t do much in this world but I’ve written some songs and conned some nice fellows to play along. You play along as well. I don’t mean pick up a bongo for the love of God put that down! I just mean buy into the story, it’s about a hitchhiker who leaves all his money to a truckdriver when he dies it turns out it was a ten dollar bill other than that he was completely broke.

--Dan Kilian

Gilligan's F-ed Up Isle

Nono-tech War Cloud Note: I had a dream last night about a nano-tech war cloud, and I had no idea that this story would be coming up as my next recommendation! Weird weegie stuff!