War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
‘Cause suicide is painless it brings on many changes and I can take or leave it if I please. …and you can do the same thing if you choose. — Johnny Mandel, (M*A*S*H lyrics) (Illustration found here). The suicide rate for the US military is staggering. From CBS News last Friday: The Army’s suicide rate is…
Hypocrisy, from Wikipedia: The act of pretending to have beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie. Hillary Clinton telling Cambodia to confront its tortured past: “It’s a very disturbing experience and the pictures — both the…
From a Bill Moyers speech last week at Boston University: George Bernard Shaw once complained that journalists are seemingly unable to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization. And Tuesday’s midterm elections is a bike crash bred with the end of walking-around sense, thus creating an empty vacuum between the ears of…
Torture is oldie-goldie rock music — after nearly 40 years, enough is enough of Pink Floyd. (Illustration found here). In all the documents dumped on the world’s people from WikiLeaks these past few months the ones painting the real ugly picture is the graphic displaying the US tendency to use torture methods — on anybody,…
In the release by WikiLeaks of its batch of Iraq war logs Friday, and a quick, rapid look-see, the biggest sense is of frustration, and a tightening of the conscience, in the horror and misery caused by a small group of arrogant assholes who will never, ever receive true justice in this life. (Illustration found…
The Dick can blubber along with the best of them — and if he shoots you in the face, well, you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and if he “outs” a CIA operative involved with keeping track of nuclear weapons there’s the ancient catch-phrase from the Polish army, ‘tough-ski, shit-ski.’ Or…
“Always find your target true And we will always pay for you To turn a terrorist’s skin a paler hue.” — To A Drone: A Poem (Illustration found here). The so-called drone war in the Af-Pak theater is getting more dumb-ass everyday — not only are these remote-controlled killers running nearly blind, but this whole…
One of the great bad boys of history, Osama bin Laden, is reportedly living in a house in northwest Pakistan, hanging with his chief lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in relative comfort, and apparently still calling the shots for al Qaeda all over the globe. According to CNN, the third member of the most-sought-after trio in recent…
In a conflict that’s moving quickly from mismanaged to just plain foolish, Afghanistan is seeing a spike in civilian deaths, especially in the southern part of the country where US and NATO troops are attempting, once again, to drive out the Taliban. The International Red Cross, despite reporting the number of bystander injuries are “hitting…
In deep spaces of the dark side, there’s no daylight, ever. Dying! Dying in the night! Won’t somebody bring the light So I can see which way to go Into the everlasting snow? — Emily Dickinson The Dick apparently will not be denied and will not go peacefully into that ugly, ugly night. Although looking…