78 78s - In Search Of Lost Time - is a streaming mix of beautiful 78s from around the world, collected and curated by Ian Nagoski. "I started sifting through boxes of junky old 78s that no one else wanted about 15 years ago, and almost right away, I made a rule: Anything that wasn't in English, buy it."
[more inside]
posted by carter
on Jan 29, 2012 -
15 comments
Earlier today, the first Viet Nam veteran ever elected to congress, died.
John Murtha (as of this past Saturday, Pennsylvania’s longest serving congressman) was the 19 term representative of Pennsylvania’s 12th district, most notably the home of
Johnstown, and which for most of his service included
Shanksville. He was a hawkish, conservative Democrat, infamous for his involvement in the
Abscam controversy, and most recently
the FBI’s inquiry into the lobbying firm PMA. He could be said to have been very representative, and certainly
very supportive of his blue collar district—
Pro-gun,
anti-abortion, and at first
a supporter of the invasion of Iraq, but eventually
one of its greatest critics. But that criticism came at
a price.
John Murtha was 77.
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posted by Toekneesan
on Feb 8, 2010 -
35 comments
The Wars of John McCain. "John McCain believes the Vietnam War was winnable. Now he argues that an Obama administration would accept defeat in Iraq, with grave costs to American honor and national security. Is McCain’s quest for victory a reflection of an antiquated pre-Vietnam mind-set? Or of a commitment to principles we abandon at our peril? Is there any war McCain thinks can’t be won?"
posted by homunculus
on Sep 26, 2008 -
93 comments
[NSFW]"The following program is in living color and has been rated X by the Vietnam academy of maggots. The purpose of this program is to bring vital news, information and hard acid rock to the first termers and non-re-enlistees in the Republic of Vietnam. Radio First Termer operates under no Air Force regulations or manuals. In the event of a vice squad raid this program will automatically self-destruct." Radio First Termer was a pirate radio show broadcast by "Dave Rabbit," an anonymous USAF sergeant, for 63 hours between January 1st and 21st, 1971, out of the back room of a brothel in Saigon, gracing the dial at 69 MHz and 690 AM.
Fearing reprisal from his superiors,
Dave Rabbit then shut
Radio First Termer down and, after returning to the States, went back to living a normal life. 34 years later, while helping his son on a homework assignment,
Dave came across old recordings of his show. He's since revived
his old persona via
podcast, and has also brought Radio First Termer back to the warzone--
to Baghdad, Iraq. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display
on Jun 11, 2008 -
11 comments
"I've been silent long enough... My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions--or bury the results." Marine Lieutenant General Greg Newbold, the Pentagon's former top operations officer, becomes the latest military insider to raise his voice against the "zealots" who led the US into war in Iraq. He writes in
Time magazine: "Never again, we thought, would our military's senior leaders remain silent as American troops were marched off to an ill-considered engagement. It's 35 years later, and the judgment is in: the Who had it wrong. We have been fooled again... After 9/11, I was a witness and therefore a party to the actions that led us to the invasion of Iraq--an unnecessary war." During the Vietnam war, such discontent among soldiers sparked a massive campaign of disobedience and peace activism (as well as, more darkly,
fragging) within the ranks, as recounted in a new documentary called
Sir! No Sir! Can it happen again? Ask the
Soldiers for the Truth.
posted by digaman
on Apr 9, 2006 -
60 comments
I don't believe they'll give up on the bases and the oil. Nor will its successors, Republican or Democrat. So I think that's what we will be doing, staying forever. Unless the rest of us, outside the government, force change on the leadership of the Democrats as well as the Republicans, which will be difficult and take a long time.
From DailyKos comes an excellent series of interviews with
Daniel Ellsberg; leaker of The Pentagon Papers. Part 1:
The Pentagon Papers and the Overlooked 1968 Leaks, Part 2:
Judith Miller, the New York Times and Government-Controlled Press, Part 3:
The Cult of Secrecy in Government and Its Undermining of Democracy, Part 4:
Whistleblowing and Effective Activism, Part 5:
Iraq/Vietnam Parallels and Other Foreign Policy Fiascos and Part 6:
Bush, the Next 9/11 and the Approaching Police State.
posted by afu
on Mar 23, 2006 -
48 comments
Then:
Q - Mr. Secretary, on Iraq, how much money do you think the Department of Defense would need to pay for a war with Iraq?
Rumsfeld - Well, the Office of Management and Budget, has come up come up with a number that's something under $50 billion for the cost. How much of that would be the U.S. burden, and how much would be other countries, is an open question.
And now:
The estimated cost to US taxpayers of the Iraq war to date is
$250 billion and rising, or $100,000 per minute. Total cost of the Bush doctrine of spreading "democracy" since September 11th -- half a trillion dollars, or nearly the cost of the 13 years of the Vietnam War, adjusted for inflation. What else could we have done with
that kind of money? Also see
here.
posted by digaman
on Feb 3, 2006 -
112 comments
For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men. If convicted, they'll have plenty of time to mull over their sins.
Costly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University, is author of "Transformation of War" (Free Press, 1991). He is the only non-American author on the U.S. Army's required reading list for officers.
An interview with Martin Van Creveld. See also
Nowhere To Run
posted by y2karl
on Nov 29, 2005 -
73 comments
Operation Barbarella - from the London Review of Books, a review of
Jane Fonda’s War: A Political Biography of an Anti-war Icon by Mary Hershberger.
So, what is the story behind Jane Fonda? You will find few people so reviled among macho warrior types. Back in the Depressingly Christian Private School (DCPS) that I went to, to hear some of the things she had been accused of you'd have thought she was the Whore of Babylon herself.
The truly interesting thing about this article isn't the discussion of the reality of Fonda's anti-war protesting measured against the myth, but as an illustration of the kind of pass-it-along info, whose truth is a matter of almost-scriptural faith, that serves as the conventional wisdom concerning the Left in the ill-educated backwaters that compose so much of our nation. This kind of thing is the political equivilent of the story of the midget who hanged himself on the set of
The Wizard of Oz.
Additional reading: the
Snopes page on Jane Fonda.
Via Linkfilter.
posted by JHarris
on Nov 13, 2005 -
34 comments
Col. David Hackworth, who billed himself as America's most decorated living soldier (he had eight Purple Hearts and ten Silver Stars), died in Mexico
this week at age 74. Hackworth saw combat in World War II (having joined the Army at 15), Korea, and Vietnam; in 1967 he and
Gen. Samuel Marshall wrote the
Vietnam Primer, a "lessons learned" document prepared for the Army to explain how
not to fight a guerilla war. In 1971, after years in-country, Hackworth turned publically against the war, telling ABC News that it could not be won and moving to Australia, where his anti-nuclear efforts earned him a United Nations Medal for Peace. Hackworth was a distinguished war correspondent, a self-appointed advocate for the average soldier who used
his website as a soapbox, a best-selling
author, a critic of American tactics in the Iraq War, and possibly the only figure respected by both
WorldNetDaily and
Common Dreams.
posted by snarkout
on May 6, 2005 -
33 comments
"We are here to hand over to you the power in order to avoid bloodshed." Today is the
thirtieth anniversary of the
Fall of
Saigon.
A
secret plan to end the war. After the rewarding the Vietnam war's
technocratic architect with the
Presidency of the World Bank, after the twin failures of President Nixon's
"madman plan", to scare the
Soviet Union into concessions over Vietnam out of fear of Nixon's insanity, and of
"Vietnamization", turning over
responsibility for the war to
the South Vietnamese, the North nevertheless
won the war.
Disposable helicopters.
Operation Frequent Wind, the
chaotic evacuation of the
American Embassy, brought to
a close fifteen
years of
American hubris. Karl Marx, who got little else right, observed "History repeats itself, the first as
tragedy, then as
farce."
posted by orthogonality
on Apr 30, 2005 -
50 comments
For young deserters, refuge is hard to find It seemed like a drastic but simple solution: a step over the border into a country that had offered sanctuary before to Americans fleeing their homeland.
Instead, the growing band of US soldiers who have sought political refuge in Canada after defying orders to serve in Iraq have found themselves in a political limbo.
posted by Postroad
on Apr 25, 2005 -
83 comments
Let our cities be our swamps and our buildings our jungles After witnessing the
Pentagon's inconclusive retreat from both Fallujah and Najaf without achieving the "success" of pacification or elimination of the local resistance, it seems that apart from incidentally killing several thousand Iraqis, causing lots of property damage, uniting Shias and Sunnis, and
promoting minor clerics into major resistance leaders,
today's Pentagon forces are quite ineffectual within dense urban areas. I am reminded of the words of the ex-Deputy PM of Iraq, Tariq Aziz, on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq:
People say to me, 'You are not the Vietnamese. You have no jungles and swamps' ... I reply, 'Let our cities be our swamps and our buildings our jungles.'.
posted by meehawl
on May 27, 2004 -
48 comments
"Cops of the World": remembering Phil Ochs --------------------------------------------
Ochs lyrics: “We're hairy and horny and ready to shack. We don't care if you're yellow or black. Just take off your clothes and lie down on your back.'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys. We're the Cops of the World.”------------
LISTEN to his songs (realplayer/quicktime)
Amidst the
unilateralist talk of invading Iraq, and the (mostly media ignored)
“biggest anti-war protests since the Vietnam War” [quote-Wash.Post,Oct. 27] last saturday, I thought of
Phil Ochs......some of his songs [see Ochs
lyrics index] haven't
aged well, but some are still as
searingly acidic as the day he wrote them, as above or in
”Love me, I’m a liberal”:“Once I was young and impulsive, I wore every conceivable pin...But I've grown older and wiser, and that's why I'm turning you in. So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal.” ------- Phil Ochs ------- (born 1940, suicide 1976)
posted by troutfishing
on Oct 29, 2002 -
22 comments
Dead Men Walking Thomas Lipscome urges us to think about 4th generation warfare, the nature of the battle, and the potential dangers well beyond the idea of nations such as Afghanistan and Iraq. From the article:
"Terrorists become extraordinarily resourceful playing weak hands against the strong and rich. So do revolutionaries. And it is time to realize bin Laden is both" This article is short yet wide-ranging, neatly bringing together the Balkans, Clinton, the Media, and 4G warfare.
via follow me here
posted by cell divide
on Nov 28, 2001 -
3 comments
