Gotta use Teddy for a meme....
Webster
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
"I ain't dead....Just super busy"
Sorry for not posting for the past few days, "MeatSpace" has been keeping me real busy lately. I have started my run for my Oral and Practical which is Next week so I have been studying and of course my son needs me to help him with some projects with his truck. and of course work, and occasionally sleep. Yesterday was switching out all his lights for LED's. after spending 15 hours at work.... I will post pics later.
Saturday, October 12, 2019
Post about the Kurds...
I shamelessly cribbed this from the "GodFather" Tom Kratman. Apparently the Neocons and the media are using President Trump's decision to pull out of Syria and the Kurds, and they all are having meltdowns"Orange Man Bad". I am of the mindset, Obungler shouldn't have put us in the middle of the clown circus to begin with. Sure the Kurds are allies, but which Kurds? There are Iraqi Kurds, Syrian Kurds and Turkish Kurds. I am not a peacenik by any means, but we can't be the worlds Policeman. Nobody over there is our friends, well perhaps the Kuwaiti's and the Israili's. The others.....well not so much. The "GodFather" posted this on Facebook and it was a worthy rant.
Our Gallant Allies, the Kurds (and other fairy tales)
Ah, the Kurds. How can mere words render a proper appreciation? They’re trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous…um…no; no, they’re not. Oh, sure, as individuals they can be fairly boon companions, but in the main and in the mass? Not so much.
My first experience of the Kurds – rather, of how the rest of the area
thinks of and feels about them – was before I’d ever met my first one.
This was at a majlis, in the town of Judah (or Goodah), Saudi Arabia,
sometime in December or so, 1990. Citizenship is kind of an iffy and
flexible concept in that part of the world, so there were folk from
Saudi, from Oman, from the Emirates. There was even one Arab who
insisted he was a citizen of the Gulf Cooperation Council, since he was a
fully documented citizen of so many places in the GCC. I had my doubts
right up until he pulled out a bilingual ID card which, indeed, did seem
to list him as a citizen of the GCC. One of the attendees had brought
with him a book detailing the results of the chemical attack on the
Kurdish town of Halabja by the army and air force of Saddam Hussein.
It was really heartbreaking, all those picture of gassed, dead, discolored, and decomposing Kurdish kids, who are, in fact, every bit as cute as the papers and television made them out to be. At least when they’re not dead they are. My team sergeant, Sig, and I were duly appalled and sickened.
The Arabs, though, didn’t seem to understand. To paraphrase, “What’s the problem? Don’t you understand that these were _Kurds_ who got gassed?”
At the time, I found that attitude completely inexplicable.
Fast forward a few months; we’ve incited the Kurds and Shia to rise up and overthrow Saddam. They didn’t, of course, while such an uprising would have looked difficult and might have done us some good. Oh, no; instead the Shia – whose rebellion was spontaneous, anyway – waited until it looked like the Iraqi Army was crushed and such an uprising would be easy. The Kurds – who were organized – waited even longer.
Sorry, boys, but when we offer you a quid pro quo, that doesn’t translate into “free lunch.” Moreover, when we’ve already offered someone a ceasefire it’s a bit late to try to get us to start hostilities again. In short, we owed them nothing.
Fast forward, again, to late May, 1991. I’d come home from the Middle East, hung around a while, and been sent back, this time to Operation Provide Comfort, the Kurdish Rescue, there to quasi govern a few towns, run refugee camps, coordinate humanitarian relief, and such like. While we’re waiting in the camp on the Turkish side of the border, not too far from Silopi, overwatched by a Turkish police fort on a hill, some Kurds got in position to fire at the fort such that, should the fort return fire, the Turks will be shooting at us. So much for gratitude from people you’re trying to save, eh?
Fortunately, Turkish discipline held firm and enlightened Kurdish dreams of advancing the cause of having a homeland of their own by getting their rescuers killed came to naught. After a couple of days at the camp, the crew I’m with and I are ordered forward to link up with the British Marines and their Dutch counterparts, already inside Kurdestan. We’re riding in on the back of a British Bedford Lorry, one which, based on the comfort of the ride, probably crossed the Rhine with Monty in 1945…after enduring the entire war in North Africa. If it had a suspension it was tolerably hard to see, and impossible to feel.
Sitting next to me is a Staff Sergeant Farnsworth. Farnsworth and I are both grunts, so we’re doing what grunts do when there’s nothing better to do and neither sleep nor playing cards nor reading are possible; we’re analyzing the terrain. It is fiercely rugged, with winding roads going through narrow passes between hills and mountains difficult enough to climb on foot and impossible for vehicles. Reverse slopes were of such an angle as would make defenders largely invulnerable to artillery and would make even high angle mortar fire of much reduced effect. In any case, at a certain point, looking over a particularly defensible pass, Farnsworth and I looked at each other. I no longer remember who spoke first but the conversation went like this: “If the Kurds“ “couldn’t defend themselves“ “in this kind of terrain“ “they don’t deserve“ “their own country.” And that was before we even knew how much they used mines.
*****
A little digression is in order here. As mentioned previously, Kurdish kids are adorable. (The women are also quite fetching, right up until they’re worn out, usually by age twenty-four or so, from being used like mules, which is to say, beasts of burden, but who, unlike mules, can still bear young…and must.) Most people shy away from or are at least ignorant of the reason so many of those adorable kids died. It’s simple; the Kurds starved them to death themselves. It’s a cultural imperative among them, when times get hard, to let the little girls die of starvation (first, of course), and then the little boys. Good guess, dear reader; why, no, I didn’t like that for beans. As a matter of fact, now that you ask, I’m not much for multiculturalism, in general, either.
*****
Interestingly, before we even arrived in our area, there had been an incident – a firefight resulting in several Iraqi dead – between the British Marines and some Iraqi troops guarding one of Hussein’s palaces in that part of Iraq. I asked a British officer about it and his answer was to the effect that, “As near as we can figure, as one of our patrols was passing, two Kurds, from different positions but surely with coordination, took a shot each, close to simultaneously. One shot was at our patrol, the other at the Iraqi on the gate to the palace. Both shots missed, but the Iraqis and our men, thinking they were under attack, reacted as one would expect. We were just a lot better shots, better led, than they were. Poor bastards. One of the reasons we’re quite sure that the Iraqis didn’t shoot first was that, as our men passed, they waved at each other, as soldiers will who have no particular reasons for enmity.”
*****
The main town I ran was Assyrian and Christian, Catholic, actually, having their own rite but being in full communion with Rome. It was an experience to attend mass held in Aramaic, the language of Jesus, a memory I rather cherish despite not understanding a word of it. They are nice people, the Assyrians, seriously nice people. I’ve dealt with a lot of different kinds of foreigners, over the years, even married one, for that matter, and liked almost all of them. But the Assyrians have a special place. They’re also amazingly hardworking. They can’t defend themselves or, at least, they don’t think they can, which amounts to the same thing.
Everyone knows about the Armenian genocide. The genocide of the Assyrians, around the same time period, was about as bad and may have been worse, as a percentage of the premassacre population. And among the chief agents of that genocide? Of both of them, really? You guessed it, the Kurds.
I asked my Assyrian translator there, once, what he and the other Assyrians really wanted. He answered, “We’d like the British to come back and run the place, permanently. Failing that, we’d be very happy to be subjects of the American Empire, if you would just declare one. If that’s not possible, then letting the Iraqis back would be minimally acceptable. Under no circumstance, however, do we want to be under the Kurds.”
That main town was the only one in which no Kurdish babies died, of the smallish number that the Kurds didn’t let starve anyway, and the only one in which there were no political or ethnic murders in that time period. Part of that was probably my own rather forthright approach to domestic harmony – “One incident, just one, and I’ll cut off your food, medical care, and other goodies, causing all your followers to desert you for other groups and leaders I haven’t proscribed!” – but part of it, too, at least for the long term maintenance of the thing, was probably the perception among themselves that the various Kurdish groups needed one safe area in which to engage in local diplomacy, and, since this one area was peaceful, well, why not? That meant a lot of luncheons, meaning, yes, I had the chance to meet most of the bright lights of Kurdish domestic politics and self-determination of the day. I’ve long since forgotten their names, but am pretty sure I could identify most of them in a police lineup and wouldn’t, of course, mind doing so. One in particular stands out in my mind, a rather distinguished looking middle aged barbarian who had once, over what amounts to a domestic dispute, murdered some thirty-seven Christian men, women, and children. And then there was the day the Kurds demanded to be paid. Paid? Why, yes, we were providing free food, free medical care, free shelter, and free security, but they saw no reason not to be paid for unloading the free food and other goodies. I sent the trucks back with the food until they knuckled under.
*****
Thus, it might be better for the United States, before pinning too much hope and faith on the Kurds, to understand that they’re military imbeciles with an unearned and undeserved reputation, that their culture is barbaric, they their one talent seems to be propagandizing and manipulating liberal Western opinion, which is eager to be manipulated, anyway, that any kids who die usually do so because of their own neglect of those kids, that they have no sense of gratitude for any help you give them, that they treat women like donkeys, and that they place zero value on the lives of those who try to help them.
Why we, or anyone, would place our faith and trust in them…well, it eludes me. To help that lesson stick in your mind I offer a Kurdish National Anthem, written by my team sergeant, Sig, in a moment of complete disgust with them. Every line tells a story: (Tune: O Tannenbaum)
A voice without a hint of shame
Cries, “It’s all your fault; you’re all to blame.
We must be clothed, we must be fed
And when that’s done build our homesteads”
Chorus:
A Kurd can have no greater love
Than his brand new Kalashnikov;
O Kurdestan, my Kurdestan,
Do what you want; grab what you can.
You gave us shelter overhead
Doctors and blankets for our beds.
You’ve saved us from Iraqi raids,
Now tell us when do we get paid?
Chorus
We fought the Turks, we fought Iran
We fought Iraq for Kurdestan.
And now you’ve made us free and strong,
We’ll kill the Christians when you’re gone.
Chorus
This column is dedicated to the memory of Father Hanna Marko, of Mangesh, Iraq.
It was really heartbreaking, all those picture of gassed, dead, discolored, and decomposing Kurdish kids, who are, in fact, every bit as cute as the papers and television made them out to be. At least when they’re not dead they are. My team sergeant, Sig, and I were duly appalled and sickened.
The Arabs, though, didn’t seem to understand. To paraphrase, “What’s the problem? Don’t you understand that these were _Kurds_ who got gassed?”
At the time, I found that attitude completely inexplicable.
Fast forward a few months; we’ve incited the Kurds and Shia to rise up and overthrow Saddam. They didn’t, of course, while such an uprising would have looked difficult and might have done us some good. Oh, no; instead the Shia – whose rebellion was spontaneous, anyway – waited until it looked like the Iraqi Army was crushed and such an uprising would be easy. The Kurds – who were organized – waited even longer.
Sorry, boys, but when we offer you a quid pro quo, that doesn’t translate into “free lunch.” Moreover, when we’ve already offered someone a ceasefire it’s a bit late to try to get us to start hostilities again. In short, we owed them nothing.
Fast forward, again, to late May, 1991. I’d come home from the Middle East, hung around a while, and been sent back, this time to Operation Provide Comfort, the Kurdish Rescue, there to quasi govern a few towns, run refugee camps, coordinate humanitarian relief, and such like. While we’re waiting in the camp on the Turkish side of the border, not too far from Silopi, overwatched by a Turkish police fort on a hill, some Kurds got in position to fire at the fort such that, should the fort return fire, the Turks will be shooting at us. So much for gratitude from people you’re trying to save, eh?
Fortunately, Turkish discipline held firm and enlightened Kurdish dreams of advancing the cause of having a homeland of their own by getting their rescuers killed came to naught. After a couple of days at the camp, the crew I’m with and I are ordered forward to link up with the British Marines and their Dutch counterparts, already inside Kurdestan. We’re riding in on the back of a British Bedford Lorry, one which, based on the comfort of the ride, probably crossed the Rhine with Monty in 1945…after enduring the entire war in North Africa. If it had a suspension it was tolerably hard to see, and impossible to feel.
Sitting next to me is a Staff Sergeant Farnsworth. Farnsworth and I are both grunts, so we’re doing what grunts do when there’s nothing better to do and neither sleep nor playing cards nor reading are possible; we’re analyzing the terrain. It is fiercely rugged, with winding roads going through narrow passes between hills and mountains difficult enough to climb on foot and impossible for vehicles. Reverse slopes were of such an angle as would make defenders largely invulnerable to artillery and would make even high angle mortar fire of much reduced effect. In any case, at a certain point, looking over a particularly defensible pass, Farnsworth and I looked at each other. I no longer remember who spoke first but the conversation went like this: “If the Kurds“ “couldn’t defend themselves“ “in this kind of terrain“ “they don’t deserve“ “their own country.” And that was before we even knew how much they used mines.
*****
A little digression is in order here. As mentioned previously, Kurdish kids are adorable. (The women are also quite fetching, right up until they’re worn out, usually by age twenty-four or so, from being used like mules, which is to say, beasts of burden, but who, unlike mules, can still bear young…and must.) Most people shy away from or are at least ignorant of the reason so many of those adorable kids died. It’s simple; the Kurds starved them to death themselves. It’s a cultural imperative among them, when times get hard, to let the little girls die of starvation (first, of course), and then the little boys. Good guess, dear reader; why, no, I didn’t like that for beans. As a matter of fact, now that you ask, I’m not much for multiculturalism, in general, either.
*****
Interestingly, before we even arrived in our area, there had been an incident – a firefight resulting in several Iraqi dead – between the British Marines and some Iraqi troops guarding one of Hussein’s palaces in that part of Iraq. I asked a British officer about it and his answer was to the effect that, “As near as we can figure, as one of our patrols was passing, two Kurds, from different positions but surely with coordination, took a shot each, close to simultaneously. One shot was at our patrol, the other at the Iraqi on the gate to the palace. Both shots missed, but the Iraqis and our men, thinking they were under attack, reacted as one would expect. We were just a lot better shots, better led, than they were. Poor bastards. One of the reasons we’re quite sure that the Iraqis didn’t shoot first was that, as our men passed, they waved at each other, as soldiers will who have no particular reasons for enmity.”
*****
The main town I ran was Assyrian and Christian, Catholic, actually, having their own rite but being in full communion with Rome. It was an experience to attend mass held in Aramaic, the language of Jesus, a memory I rather cherish despite not understanding a word of it. They are nice people, the Assyrians, seriously nice people. I’ve dealt with a lot of different kinds of foreigners, over the years, even married one, for that matter, and liked almost all of them. But the Assyrians have a special place. They’re also amazingly hardworking. They can’t defend themselves or, at least, they don’t think they can, which amounts to the same thing.
Everyone knows about the Armenian genocide. The genocide of the Assyrians, around the same time period, was about as bad and may have been worse, as a percentage of the premassacre population. And among the chief agents of that genocide? Of both of them, really? You guessed it, the Kurds.
I asked my Assyrian translator there, once, what he and the other Assyrians really wanted. He answered, “We’d like the British to come back and run the place, permanently. Failing that, we’d be very happy to be subjects of the American Empire, if you would just declare one. If that’s not possible, then letting the Iraqis back would be minimally acceptable. Under no circumstance, however, do we want to be under the Kurds.”
That main town was the only one in which no Kurdish babies died, of the smallish number that the Kurds didn’t let starve anyway, and the only one in which there were no political or ethnic murders in that time period. Part of that was probably my own rather forthright approach to domestic harmony – “One incident, just one, and I’ll cut off your food, medical care, and other goodies, causing all your followers to desert you for other groups and leaders I haven’t proscribed!” – but part of it, too, at least for the long term maintenance of the thing, was probably the perception among themselves that the various Kurdish groups needed one safe area in which to engage in local diplomacy, and, since this one area was peaceful, well, why not? That meant a lot of luncheons, meaning, yes, I had the chance to meet most of the bright lights of Kurdish domestic politics and self-determination of the day. I’ve long since forgotten their names, but am pretty sure I could identify most of them in a police lineup and wouldn’t, of course, mind doing so. One in particular stands out in my mind, a rather distinguished looking middle aged barbarian who had once, over what amounts to a domestic dispute, murdered some thirty-seven Christian men, women, and children. And then there was the day the Kurds demanded to be paid. Paid? Why, yes, we were providing free food, free medical care, free shelter, and free security, but they saw no reason not to be paid for unloading the free food and other goodies. I sent the trucks back with the food until they knuckled under.
*****
Thus, it might be better for the United States, before pinning too much hope and faith on the Kurds, to understand that they’re military imbeciles with an unearned and undeserved reputation, that their culture is barbaric, they their one talent seems to be propagandizing and manipulating liberal Western opinion, which is eager to be manipulated, anyway, that any kids who die usually do so because of their own neglect of those kids, that they have no sense of gratitude for any help you give them, that they treat women like donkeys, and that they place zero value on the lives of those who try to help them.
Why we, or anyone, would place our faith and trust in them…well, it eludes me. To help that lesson stick in your mind I offer a Kurdish National Anthem, written by my team sergeant, Sig, in a moment of complete disgust with them. Every line tells a story: (Tune: O Tannenbaum)
A voice without a hint of shame
Cries, “It’s all your fault; you’re all to blame.
We must be clothed, we must be fed
And when that’s done build our homesteads”
Chorus:
A Kurd can have no greater love
Than his brand new Kalashnikov;
O Kurdestan, my Kurdestan,
Do what you want; grab what you can.
You gave us shelter overhead
Doctors and blankets for our beds.
You’ve saved us from Iraqi raids,
Now tell us when do we get paid?
Chorus
We fought the Turks, we fought Iran
We fought Iraq for Kurdestan.
And now you’ve made us free and strong,
We’ll kill the Christians when you’re gone.
Chorus
This column is dedicated to the memory of Father Hanna Marko, of Mangesh, Iraq.
Friday, October 11, 2019
Truck Project...
Well y'all remember this truck we got for my son?
My son loves his truck, but he didn't like the grill...See the difference between my honeycomb grill and the regular grill that his truck has.
Well we went to a junkyard where luckily for us, there was a completed honeycomb grill in a junked F150. The Grill color was a very faded black.
Well I primed the new grill and he removed the old grill and headlight surround on his truck..
The old grill primed, I also primed the new insert
Well we went to a junkyard where luckily for us, there was a completed honeycomb grill in a junked F150. The Grill color was a very faded black.
Well I primed the new grill and he removed the old grill and headlight surround on his truck..
New insert painted
New insert in the grill surround.
New grill surround and insert installed. He was very happy with the Mod.
Since I was painting, I decided to paint our wiper arms, they had surface rust and looked really bad, so first thing I did after priming the grill, was priming the wiper arms.
I finished painting the old grill insert
Finished the Black
Looks good.
The wiper arms look really good, far better than the old faded ones that were on there earlier.
I'm going to put the "old" repainted insert in craiglist and market place where my son can recoup the money he paid for the honeycomb grill.
We are planning another junkyard run to see what they have in a week or so.
Monday, October 7, 2019
Monday Music "Modern Love" by David Bowie
Since I have thrown 2 of his songs under the bus, and I did mention that I would do a song from David Bowie that I do like. Well I like this song,Granted that it is a bit campy but it plays well on the radio. David Bowie and Bing Crosby do one of my favorite Christmas songs "Drummer Boy"
"Modern Love" is a song written and recorded by English singer-songwriter David Bowie. It is the opening track to his album Let's Dance, and was issued as the third single from the album in late 1983.
"Modern Love" was the 2nd song Bowie started recording for the album, after its title track, recorded in the first few weeks of January 1983. By the time "Modern Love" was issued as a single, Bowie's Serious Moonlight Tour was underway. The video for the song used footage of Bowie and his band performing the song from concert in Philadelphia on 20 July 1983. A live version, recorded in Montreal on 13 July 1983, was on the B-side.
As well as being a staple of the Serious Moonlight Tour, it was featured in Bowie's set at Live Aid in 1985, and in his subsequent Glass Spider and Sound+Vision tours of 1987 and 1990. It was also performed occasionally during his 2003-4 A Reality Tour. To promote the Glass Spider Tour, as part of his commitment to Pepsi for their commercial sponsorship, Bowie re-recorded the song with Tina Turner for a commercial which aired briefly in 1987.
Friday, October 4, 2019
Quick post...local goins on.
I have been busy with real life, I passed another test on the road to my A&P, I passed my "Powerplant" so all I have left is the "Oral and Practical". This has taken a lot of time this summer to get done.
On a different note, I was an honored spectator where my brother from another mother gave the oath of enlistment to his son at the MEPS station.
My Brother from another Mother first explained a few things about the delayed entry program and that "the Military is not for everyone, and if you don't want to join, please decide now rather than waste time and money in basic training." He told me later that the recruiters hated him when he said that to the enlistee's. when he ran a MEPS station during his career but he believed that he was doing the right thing by both the enlistee's and the Service.
On a different note, I was an honored spectator where my brother from another mother gave the oath of enlistment to his son at the MEPS station.
Getting ready to give the oath of enlistment.
Giving the Oath of Enlistment. His son will be going to Fort Leonard(Lost in the Woods) in Misery
Missouri then off to Fort Sills.
I remembered his son when he was 10 years old and helping me corral cub scouts at the BB ranges I used to run. Jeez how time flies and I was honored to make the ceremony. They say that fewer than 2% of the people in this country serve, or have served. I consider myself fortunate and lucky to count myself in this number and that a lot of my friends have also taken the oath of enlistment. I still even now consider my oath binding despite my getting out in 1991.
Yes I bought myself a "new Rifle"......And Yes it is a "HiPoint"
I wanted a rifle in pistol caliber to augment my pistols, the carbine is in .40S&W like my pistols. I would normally not buy a hipoint, although their warranty is one of the best in the industry.
The Carbine has a good reputation, My dad owns a 9mm version and he loved it. I remembered a couple of years ago where some single mom ventilated 3 wanna be home invaders in Detoilet. I will take the rifle shooting next week, probably at Mack's place of employment on either Thursday or Friday and I will give my impressions at that point.
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