Ask George Smith e-mail: webmaster at dick destiny
Remember! Government spending on sissy civilian jobs programs does not work and increases the deficit!
Government spending on military and defense contracting budgets works! And leads to jobs!
The same thing, long form, at DD blog — from the archives.
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The cause of the the lethal Libyan and Egyptian riots against the American embassies is now known as a promoted video, The Innocence of Muslims, made by someone named “Sam Bacile,” a pseudonym.
No links, as it’s now unavoidable.
However, reading of it today I had the uneasy feeling it was a bit familiar.
At the end of August, this blog — and many others around the web — was sent spam mail about a book called How Fatima Started Islam: Mohammad’s Daughter Tells It All by one Noor Barack, a pseudonym.
The spam blurb:
Did you know that Mohammad was a drunken, child molesting, cowardly pimp? The Ayatollahs and Terrorists do not want you to know the truth about Islam and promise to harm you if you tell anyone. Fight back and read this well written, totally funny, parody on the founding of the so-called religion …
See sample Chapters, the back cover showing Mohammad depicted after a 5 day bender (the terrorists hate this picture), read about the never sober Mohammad having sex with camels, pre-adolescent girls and boys, the terror, sneak attacks, killings, rapes, assassinations, mutilations, back stabbing and mental illness. No other book in the world is at all like this one. Strike a blow for American Freedom by reading it.
I looked at the Amazon page, noted it was a piece of hate literature and promptly forgot the thing.
But today the news about Sam Bacile and the alleged nature of “The
Innocence of Muslims” trailer hinted at something I’d seen recently. It had the same peculiar and hateful idiosyncrasies as the Fatima book.
How Fatima Stated Islam was published first in 2009. And it was in English, a vanity publication by “Camel Flea Press,” vended on Amazon.
Since it was in English one would not expect the insult of it, and
believe me, that’s what it’s loaded with, to have made any impression in
the Muslim world.
However, “The Innocence of Muslims” is visual and, according to the
news, was subtitled/translated in Arabic.
The new spam promotion for the Fatima book came at the end of August.
“The Innocence of Muslims” was made in 2011, allegedly shown once in Hollywood to a near empty theater, but was heavily promoted yesterday in a live Internet stream from hate-pastor Terry Jones’ church.
Are these two things from the same people? The push on them is similar, solely through the web, the only place where they could be marketed. And everyone, from mailers to authors, uses obvious pseudonyms. So maybe.
It’s worth looking into.
Like “The Innocence of Muslims,” it portrays Mohammed as a buffoon and a criminal. From front to back, it is a merciless parade of juvenile, odious slurs and fabrications, passed off as humor, on everything associated with Islam.
Excerpts (warning: very offensive), from How Fatima Started Islam: Mohammad’s Daughter Tells It All:
Fatima: So on the eve of my twelfth birthday, with little fanfare and very matter-of-factly, I was turned out as a whore … The local yokels and camel jockeys who were the bulk of the customers generally would screw one of [us] chippies anywhere and everywhere.
The four pillars of Islam, the founding supports that were needed in order that the religion could flourish and grow, and conquer, were the
essentials. The first three were the camel, alcoholism and prostitution. The fourth and last pillar, the final original building block needed to complete the quartet that enshrined Islam, was the pillar of mental illness.
I was very afraid of someone … seeing [the Prophet] wearing a linen with an obvious yellow-brown stain on the backside.
It’s worth noting the extremist American purveyors of such things want publicity in Islamic nations. Video of riots are vindication, getting them off.
The United States has its own riotous history connected to relatively recent religious offense.
John Lennon and “the bigger than Jesus” thing.
Of course, Lennon wasn’t actually trying to provoke unrest.
Maybe.
Because it would be so unusual after a revolution and the total breakdown of the country for lots and lots of young men in Libya to have automatic weapons, rockets and grenades.
“The fact that some of the attackers were armed with rockets and grenades is one of the factors leading to that initial conclusion,” reads the piece.
Honestly, where do they come up with the people who anonymously tell reporters such things?
It’s OK to stop refilling the prescription of stupid pills, guys. You’ve had enough.
Remember, there’s always a self-serving ‘think tank’ you’ve never heard of, with right-wing counter-terror experts consisting of old refugees (in London, or Los Angeles, New York, or DC) from any country you care to name, ready to give the inside poop on what’s really happened.
Today is no exception, from CNN:
According to our own sources at Quilliam Foundation, the attack was the work of roughly 20 militants, prepared for a military assault. It is rare, for example, that an RPG7 — an anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade launcher — would be present at a civilian protest. The attack against the consulate had two waves. The first attack led to U.S. officials being evacuated from the consulate by Libyan security forces, only for the second wave to be launched against U.S. officials after they were kept at a secure location.
And how would he know, being in London and:
[A] former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a jihadist organization that fought against Muammar Qaddafi’s regime in the 1990s. After resigning from L.I.F.G. in 2002, he became a prominent critic of jihadist and Islamist violence.
Ten to twenty years ago. What’s a decade or two and an entire revolution out of the loop, huh?
Update: The al Qaeda’s behind it all theory, laughed out of town by spreading violence and closer-to-the-scene accounts.
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On 9/11, it would also be good to remember what the catastrophe brought on.
Share it.
Lethal trivia: One week after, we were treated to anthraxer Bruce Ivins from the heart of the US biodefense industry. That’s him in the video and the white label pressing of his home-made country 45.
Just think about that for a minute. Bruce Ivins, a man at the very center of one of the more famous defense science installations, used 9/11 as cover to kill, sicken and spread fear in more Americans.
Fort Detrick, the place where Ivins made the anthrax, has never apologized.
“Plus we got lotsa really crazy people …”
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“We’ve been watching with deep concern these so-called green-on-blue attacks, where you have Afghan individuals, some of whom are actually enrolled in the Afghan military, … attacking coalition forces,” Obama said.
There have been 32 insider attacks so far this year involving 36 shooters that have led to 40 coalition deaths, just over half of them Americans. Some 69 coalition troops have been wounded. That’s a sharp increase from 2011, when 35 coalition troops killed, 24 of whom were U.S. troops during the year …
“I’ll be reaching out to President Karzai as well because we’ve got to make sure that we’re on top of this,” Obama said …
[Last] week, the Pentagon said only about 11 percent of so-called “insider attacks” by Afghans against NATO troops this year were due to Taliban infiltration, with the vast majority due to other motives, including personal grudges. Why there would be a sudden increase in personal grudges and other vendettas remains unclear.
Personal grudges and vendettas, two weasel words as different indicators of delusion.
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The U.S. military trainers handed the new recruit, Mohammad Ismail, his AK-47 to defend his remote Afghan village. He turned around and immediately used it, spraying the Americans with bullets and killing two — the latest of nine U.S. service personnel gunned down in two weeks by their supposed Afghan allies.
The shooting in western Farah province was not the only such attack Friday. Hours later a few provinces away in Kandahar, an Afghan soldier wounded two more coalition troopers.
One turncoat attack per month raised eyebrows last year. One per week caused concern earlier this year. But when Afghan forces turn their guns on international trainers twice in a day — as they now have two weeks in a row — it’s hard to argue there’s not something going on …
“There’s no positive spin on this,” said Andrew Exum, an analyst with the Washington-based Center for a New American Security who has advised the top U.S. generals in Kabul.
And he used to be a military blogger.
“I have never heard of anything in Vietnam comparable to what we have recently experienced in Afghanistan,” said James McAllister, a political science professor at Williams College in Massachusetts who has written extensively about the Vietnam War.
Neil Sheehan. David Halberstam. Bernard Fall … James McAllister. Doesn’t ring a bell.
“We took some fire — fire from South Vietnamese soldiers who probably felt the Americans had betrayed them,” writes Philip Caputo, at the end of “A Rumor of War.”
Exhibition of short term memory problems, too:
Officials say an American soldier has died after an attack on U.S. troops in northern Iraq.
They say two policemen opened fire on U.S. soldiers visiting an Iraqi police station. An Iraqi interpreter was also killed. Three Americans were wounded.
It was the fourth such shooting in the Mosul area in just over a year purportedly involving Iraqi security forces …
BAGHDAD – Two U.S. troops were killed Saturday by an Iraqi soldier who apparently smuggled real bullets into a training exercise and opened fire, raising fresh concerns about the nation’s security forces as the Americans prepare to leave by the end of this year …
Afghanistanization — from the archives.
“Uncle Sam & the JDAMs … responsible for such patriotic anthems as ‘Red Zone Bar-B-Q [Flat Foot Fallouja]’ and ‘Posing for Pix in Abu Ghraib,’ not to mention the Angry Samoans update ‘The Shrub Killings’)… a day will come when we look back and laugh. History works like that.??? — The Village Voice, November 2004
Eight years later and still no one’s laughing. One of the final nails in the coffin of the national reputation.
Iraq n Roll was recorded over the course of a few weeks as a short piece of satire on the war, after the Weapon of the Week column had run its course at the Village Voice.
Often just instrumental punctuated by familiar lines, it was purposely brief, like the two weeks of humiliating national euphoria leading up to “Mission Accomplished!”
It was composed to be one piece, heard linearly from start to finish. You can’t cherry pick it or ignore the words and roll your own play list. The segues from song to song have purpose and the story falls apart if you apply the technology of iPod and shuffle play. (And, yep, I was Uncle Sam & the JDAMs, playing all the instruments except for drums, furnished either by a now old Adrenalinn I or programmable loops and acoustic single shots from Cool Edit Pro/Adobe Audition.)
In 2004 no one wanted satire. No Frank Zappa. They still don’t. There was just the slight beginnings of a surly national hangover that only became more fulminating over the years.
“Oh, yeah?” comes the belligerence. Yes it sucked but we suck less than the rest of the world, or something like that.
Make up an excuse, there are hundreds.
The war was and is a source of national shame. No movies that did great box office were made of it. (Remember Generation Kill? Didn’t think so.) Very few of our celebrity artists had the nerve to sneer at it. The most famous who did, the Dixie Chicks, paid for it with their career.
More records were made with the opposite sentiment, all of them certified dog crap.
I made about eighty Iraq n Rolls. Some were peddled on line, some given away to acquaintances. But most sold in LA County, in Poo-bah’s in Pasadena and Amoeba Records in Hollywood.
No one would review it. I got the feeling the few I sent copies to
didn’t even take it out of the shrink wrap. As today, no one can be bothered.
The tune that earned the most mileage was “I Think We Should Make a Carla Sandwich,” a bonus cut which had nothing to do with the war. It was a joke about Arnold Schwarzenegger and his unquenchable urge to paw women. It was referred on a comedy site and as a result, when I visited Pine Grove the same year, even there a couple people had heard it on the Internet.
Very much a hard rock/classic rock record, Iraq n Roll only departs from the style in its use of drop-in guest vocals by assorted characters.
Can you name them?
Spoiler: The Vice President, Don Rumsfeld, Comical Ali (stupidly called Baghdad Bob by GWB who could never get anything right) and Lyndon LaRouche.
There were even T-shirts made. This was through CafePress at a time when people, including myself, had the stupid idea that you could make anything reasonably priced through publish-on-demand services.
You can’t. All the publish-it-yourself and make-it-on-demand Internet fulfillment houses furnish terrible products which are almost always, by default, overpriced. To keep the prices down you had to select for the cheapest quality materials.
Did you get a T-shirt? I gave some away as promotions.
It will also occur to readers that the war was so long, people born during it, and the many children who grew up in the time frame, have no idea who these characters were or what was actually going on.
Except for GWB and Dick Cheney it’s as if the entire history of the war, its frauds and minor characters have been expunged.
Where and what was Fallouja? What’s a JDAM? (A computer-guided bomb that elicited magical thinking.)
What was the Thunder Run? (It was the armored ride up Baghdad’s main thoroughfare.)
Few probably remember that while almost none would criticize the war openly in 2004, practically speaking, everyone else of suitable fighting age was privately running as fast as they could the other way.
Originally, the US Army could not meet its recruit/enlistment quotas. Nobody wanted to go to Iraq to get blowed up by IEDs fighting the insurgency and it wasn’t until the economy started to turn sour but good in 2007 that, by necessity, things turned around.
When options ran out there was the military, suddenly looking like the French Foreign Legion for anyone of the right age. (Except France has managed to keep itself out of war for a good long time, now.)
I’ve reissued Iraq n Roll for readers and the curious as an MP3 collection and an archive of .flac files, the latter of which reconstitutes the full audio content of the original CD.
I prefer the original sound — it was well before the Cult of iKit — but you will need a .flac to .wav converter to remake it.
Here is one. Once you have the .wavs, you want to burn it to a compact disc.
For that, I’ve also included the original printable album art for the finished disc and its original prototyping as a black and white mock-up in both archives.
Obscurity! Collector’s items. Have something nobody else wanted or knew about.
And —
— you can throw me a tip/pay a slight amount for them, if you like.
Recommended pricing:
Three dollars and fifty cents for the mp3 collection.
Four dollars and fifty cents for the .flac full audio collection.
Or five dollars even for both. What a steal!
Map of Iraq and secret plan of bad guy and gal strategy compiled by the ULTOR (Ultimate Victor) and MULTOR (Monster Ultimate Victor) combat artificial intelligence machine theologians in the Pentagon’s Special Office of Strategies for Reduction of Adversaries.
Uncle Sam is a trademark of the United States. Uncle Sam wants you, you may fire when you are ready, Gridley; we begin bombing in five minutes, shock and awe, remember the Maine, “We are Coming!”, Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), beware of careless talk, loose lips sink ships, Orange Alert, first pull up then pull down, potrzebie and “Mission Accomplished!” are also slogans & symbols which may add to the enjoyment of “Iraq ‘N’ Roll!”
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No surprise, like the infamous Army of the Republic of Viet Nam, the Afghan military is worthless:
A research report compiled earlier this year by a group of social scientists working for the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System found that members of the Afghan National Army (ANA) are largely seen by U.S. soldiers as unmotivated, highly dependent and making little to no progress …
Soldiers responding to the survey are quoted as stating that the “ANA doesn’t care, they are lazy??? and the “ANA have no motivation to do anything.??? One U.S. Staff Sergeant said that the ANA are not interested in taking on more responsibility, adding that “We do the heavy lifting, they put a face on it.??? Nearly half of soldiers surveyed said the ANA has little, not much or no motivation at all to fight. This lack of motivation often causes coalition forces to take the lead even on missions that are supposedly led by the ANA …
In fact, 62% of soldiers responding to the survey said that so-called “ANA-led??? missions are rarely or never actually planned and executed by Afghan forces.
You would have thought the US military has some institutional memory re the “local fighting forces” of propped-up client states with corrupt central government and populations that want the occupiers out.
Guess not.
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You can’t beat American delusion — this time on the non-existent Afghan air force:
The budding Afghan air force was supposed to receive $355 million worth of planes custom-made for fighting guerrillas well ahead of the U.S. withdrawal in 2014. Equipped with machine guns, missiles and bombs, those reliable, rugged turboprop aircraft are cheaper to operate and easier to maintain than fighter jets …
The Afghans won’t get the planes on time. The Air Force initially awarded a contract to a U.S. company to supply Brazilian-designed planes. But it canceled the contract after a Kansas-based plane maker filed suit to block it, and the Air Force decided the contract had insufficient documentation. The Kansas congressional delegation also lobbied hard against the Brazilian plane …
Air power is essential for policing Afghanistan, a mountainous land with forbidding terrain, harsh weather and few roads. Recent events have underscored its importance in quelling the insurgency. When the Taliban staged attacks in Kabul and across the country in April, Afghan security forces managed to end the assault thanks to U.S. air support.
The country’s previous occupiers knew this well: As the Soviets withdrew in 1989, they left to the Afghans over 400 military aircraft, including over 200 Soviet-made fighter jets. Remnants of that defunct air force—rusting supersonic Su-22 attack planes, bullet-perforated Mi-6 heavy lift helicopters—now litter the boneyard of Shindand, the hub of the Afghan air force near the Iranian border.
Maj. Gen. Mohammad Baqi, the top Afghan air force commander at Shindand, likes to bring young Afghan trainees here for a history lesson. The scrap heap, he says, is a reminder of “what a strong air force we had” before the base was battered by Afghanistan’s civil war, and before its runway was cratered by U.S. bombs during the 2001 campaign to oust the Taliban.
Read the whole thing if only for the astonishing levels of bullshit and cognitive dissonance.
What made the United States think Afghanistan could have an air force? It’s not even a functioning country. On both sides, people with so little sense they couldn’t pour piss from a boot with the instructions printed on the heel.
Forty seven million Americans on food stamps and we’re trying to buy an air force for the crooked semi-government of Kabul.
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Eric Raum, who works for the United Service Organization, helped produce the video. On his blog, Raum explains how it all came about:
“A few weeks ago, a friend of mine here in Afghanistan, Randy Moresi, approached me about the song ‘Call Me Maybe’. I had just returned to Kandahar from the U.S. and had been taken back by how big of a hit it was, as we often miss out on the latest and greatest while in the ‘Stan and I hadn’t heard it before. She said that people were creating covers of the song, and that it would be a lot of fun for the guys and gals out here if we could create a military version. With a day off looming, we got to work trying to get things organized.”
Create a military version. Well, only a couple pages full of soldiers doing exactly the same thing, with varying degrees of production value.
So how do you pick who’s going to get the good video cameras, the dance move coaching, the hi-fi recording and the Final Cut Pro editing job? Rhetorical.
Meanwhile (you knew this was coming):
KABUL, Afghanistan—The Taliban said they detonated a bomb on a fuel tanker Wednesday and then opened fire on other NATO supply trucks in a morning attack that destroyed 22 vehicles loaded with fuel and other goods for U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Elsewhere in the country, a suicide bomber killed three Afghan soldiers at a checkpoint in the east, while militants killed nine more government troops in an ambush in the south. Three NATO service members were also killed in insurgent attacks.
The violence comes as Afghan forces are taking charge of security in more areas across the country ahead of the planned withdrawal of the U.S.-led coalition’s combat forces by the end of 2014. To show they remain a resilient force, insurgents are conducting targeted attacks, even in relatively peaceful parts of the country.
Such gay music. Good for morale. But it’s a shame to waste it so mindlessly on delusions.
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Pointed to in a Krugman piece, another graph showing compensation stagnation for most workers as national productivity grew. The nut sentence: “The divergence of pay and productivity has meant that many workers were not benefiting from productivity growth — the economy could afford higher pay but it was not providing it.”
The conclusion: Stagnation cannot be fixed without the re-establishment of “decent and improved labor standards” and “raising the minimum wage to half the average wage.”
From the Economic Policy Institute here.
You’ll notice the slope of the line for productivity gain for most of the war on terror years actually increases a bit.
And that for most of the Vietnam War years, despite the social upheaval and cost — which created no deficits in the way the war on terror has despite costing many more American lives — wages mirrored growth in productivity.
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