logical

[still.trucking]

We fight for the freedom to fight for the freedom to fight.

The idea that our foreign policy is linked to American rights and freedoms is only a marketing strategy.

Instead of reaching for an honest understanding of US foreign policy- we take the easy route by just making the blanket claim that we send “The Troops” to distant lands to protect or defend American rights and freedoms. Whatever the era, whatever the mission, whatever the result- defending American rights and freedoms has been the reason to deploy the US Armed Forces. This groupthink is our comfort zone.

http://web.mac.com/aleko/iWeb/Site%202/ ... 60050.htmlbroken link

John Quincy Adams about America:

“Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy ... she is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

[mnaz]

yes, the freedom/war loop.

and its cousin/corollaries..

the courage/war loop, the honor/war loop, the service/war loop, the . . .

i think i wrote a poem called "the loop" one time. not one of my better ones...

[stilltrucking]

Strange days
strange loops

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach

[stilltrucking]

Loop

First rule of the loop....
freedom is blood sacrifice for profit.

Second rule.... close the loop.

Send the young, the wise, to the cross.
Honor and glory are untouchable.
Dissent is the devil, in God exhaust.
Defeat all enemies unseen, real or imagined.

Europe once threw a mustard gas brawl.
A thousand Hemingways jumped at the chance,
threw punches at another flag,
melted fists, fabric and earth.

What mattered was the code,
the loop.

--------

I saw the greatness, the maneuver;
the breakthrough, staked with borrowed blood.
I saw it clearly as purposeful moral courage;
a megaton sermon on the mount.

I built a box around me, severed all ties.
I hum to the frequency of an air conditioner.
My desert is always a perfect 72 degrees;
cable news on dish, old glory pins on their lapels.

I have already experienced heat.
I pray to it from my bunker.
I worship the staggering payment.
I remain triumphantly confident.

What matters is the code,
the loop.
http://studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtopic.p ... oop#p17102

I liked it a lot alos mars reply.

Marksman45 » Tue Mar 22, 2005 8:41 pm

:start
while (done==0)
{
Death()
Horror()
Collect(profit)
If (profit>0)
done = 0
Else
done = 1
}

If (greed!=0)
Goto (:start)

[mnaz]

thanks jack. well, i think there's truth in it, but it should have been written "leaner"... these are the kind of poems people don't want to read anyway. sometimes, i think, because so many posters on the forums i frequent have relatives serving their country... i mean, how does one protest that?

main reason i try to remain as pacifistic as possible is that it's the always the young who are sent to war, and too many times in my reading or in picking up hearsay, it seems these folks, as they age, call out the bullshit of their war experience.... that, and too often we can look back on war and ask, why was it necessary? especially in this postmodern age of disinformation and media witchery...

[stilltrucking]

Yes the families. American families, you know I am a real live nephew of my Uncle Phil born in a shtetl in Woodbine N.J.

We had a discussion a couple of years back, Doreen's son was in it, you, jimboloco me doreen I forget what all

Somebody called the troops murderers. I did not see it that way, some yeah you know about the bad apples, but it is a different situation than vietnam, it is still the poor bearing the brunt, the middle class, small town big city kids who get to go to college get free medical care, get short shrift.


Sorry ]
yeah the families, I worked with a guy in virginia, good old boy salt of the earth, his brother killed in vietnam

and john prine singing about the korean war

speaking of families watched Body of War last night

in the meantime listening to an audio book about deep time and the earth's core.
we have had a easy time of it the past forty thousand years "geologicaly" the past forty thousand years.

I would like to find that thread with Doreen's son
in the meantime what does it matter, all my fears for Clay are manifesting

thanks for droping by maestro. I
always feel h onored when you do

love peace and taco grease from deep in the heart of the holy land.

[mnaz]

yes, the bad apples. i think more about the "bad apple institutions," i guess... 12,000 years of them, and such. and with our current spike in humanity and tech and war-making capacity and degradation of mothership earth... well, it's a concern.

anyway, yeah "deep time" is a mind screw. i enjoyed john mcphee's "basin and range," where he does a fine job getting into rock, and rock - time, though it is meaty enough on the science that i can only take so much at a time. it wasn't the book i thought it would be. which is good...

[stilltrucking]

I remember a comment a retired colonel made about the so called bad apples at Abu Ghraib. "It is the barrel that's bad"