Back to Windows (sigh!)

I forgot that the firewall product I need to access the corporate network from home only works from Windows. Sigh! I can attest, however, that Ubuntu Linux runs perfectly on an HP Pavilion DV4000 laptop, and that installing Ubuntu Linux has the side-effect of wiping the disk clean for re-installing Windows XP so that you don't re-infect yourself right back again...

So, I re-installed XP, re-installed the HP applications DVD, then let XP load its updates. Then I installed three products -- an antivirus product, an anti-spyware product, and a firewall product. None of these are from those %^@#$% incompetents at Symantec who made the Norton Antivirus that failed me (those morons aren't getting a dime from me). Then I started re-installing applications from scratch via CD or directly from the web site of the vendor (I did *NOT* install any files from the previous install, since the probability that anything was rootkitted approached unity).

Rather than Firefox and Thunderbird, I am now using Opera and Eudora. Firefox and Thunderbird have over a hundred vulnerabilities listed in the last year alone, and over 20 worms and viruses have been developed to exploit those vulnerabilities. Opera has a total of 17 vulnerabilities listed in the last three years, of which only 4 would allow a system compromise (and none of which were ever exploited before Opera Software closed the hole).

When I get home this evening, I am going to restore my data from my backups. Before I do this, I will first scan everything with the prophylactic software that I just accumulated to make sure there are not, e.g., any macro viruses that have been inserted into word processor files (%@#$ Microsoft! Data files are supposed to be DATA files, not executables!). Note that my backups live on a Linux server, so I don't have to worry about autorun auto-running a virus off of my backups...

Will this stop my laptop from being compromised again? Of course not! Windows suckitude simply can't be patched no matter how many security products you throw at it. But dumping Symantec garbage and zapping Firefox/Thunderbird will certainly help... as for the rest, I will continue to maintain good backups, and foresee yet another system erase/restore cycle at some point in the future before this laptop is retired in May of next year in favor of a new one (mostly because I'm wearing it out -- the letters are starting to wear off of the keys, and the paint on the touchpad has been rubbed off all the way down to the plastic).

Meanwhile, my Ubuntu Linux server simply keeps chugging along... I run apt-get from time to time to update it, and that's that.

-- Badtux the "Windows sucks!" Penguin

GAH! Windows Sux, part II

Well, as predicted elsewhere, Norton AntiVirus was utterly ineffective at removing the trojans and backdoors on the system. Another antivirus product similarly threw up its hands and surrendered. There is one file that I want to save off the system, and then it gets a complete wipe and rebuild from scratch.

One thing I'll note: It appears that Firefox was the culprit that allowed my system to be compromised. Guess it's time to investigate Opera :-(.

Updated 7:49pm -- after checking my backups to make sure they were intact, I am now installing Kubuntu Linux on my laptop. #$%@# Windows! I may install Windows in a virtual machine so I can run various Windows-only software that I own, but as for Windows, Microsoft can go $#%@# themselves...

- Badtux the Compromised Penguin

Pet peeve #151: "U.S. won against British using guerilla tactics"

A commenter says below:

"What's especially interesting is how the American revolutionaries defeated the British in the 1770s. One of the most important aspects of that is that the Americans didn't fight "fair" according to British standards. They didn't line up in opposing lines and mow each other down with musket fire. Those dastardly Americans would camoflage themselves and hide behind trees, rock walls, and hills, and snipe away at the British."

Unfortunately, said commenter is basically repeating propaganda. The fact of the matter is that both Colonial and British forces used a variety of tactics to conduct their war, and skirmishing tactics such as used above were common on both sides of the aisle. The only halfway-effective guerilla warfare during the conflict occurred in the Carolinas when Colonel Francis Marion of the South Carolina militia used guerilla tactics to disrupt enemy communications, capture supplies, and free prisoners. However, he did not use those tactics in any attempt to stop Cornwallis's march. It would have been suicide.

To understand why this is so, you must first understand the limitations of the available weapons of the time. There were basically three types of weapons available:

1. Fowling pieces. These were large-bore muzzle-loading shotguns, typically with a large funnel on the tip of the barrel to allow easily pouring the shot into the gun after you'd poured in the powder and wadding. They were fired off via a flintlock mechanism. They required a significant amount of black powder and shot, had a maximum range of perhaps 20 yards, and were not widely regarded as effective military weapons due to those issues.
2. Rifles. These were muzzle-loading weapons where the bullet was pounded into the rifled lands via a hammer and a rod. The stereotypical rifle of the period was the "Pennsylvania Flintlock". This was designed as a large-game rifle rather than as a defensive weapon, and thus had several attributes that rendered it useless as anything other than a sniper rifle: it had no bayonet mount, it had an extremely low rate of fire (taking perhaps a full minute to reload between shots), and you could fire it perhaps a maximum of three times before the barrel became so fouled from black powder debris that you had to stop and spend several minutes cleaning the residue out of the barrel before you could resume firing. These limitations mean that it was used solely as a skirmishing weapon, where skirmishers would fire a shot then fall back to the main body of troops. There was only one battle in the American Revolution (Cowpens) where the skirmishers were important to the outcome, and that was mostly by accident and mostly because they appeared apparently out of nowhere and panicked the British into surrendering.
3. Muskets. These were smoothbore weapons which could be swiftly loaded with ball ammunition. Downside: They were horribly inaccurate and short-ranged with a maximum effective range of perhaps 50 yards. The only tactics that made sense was to stand in ranks and mass your fire, in hopes that the sheer weight of lead flying at the enemy disrupted their lines before they could be amongst you with their bayonets.

The "queen of the battlefield" was the cannon. Cannon could fire a hundred yards or more with grapeshot that could decimate a company of attacking soldiers. Cannon had one vulnerability -- lack of maneuverabily which made them vulnerable to being rushed by the opponent between shots and captured. Still, American militia without cannon who faced British soldiers with cannon generally broke ranks and ran in the opposite direction.

Given the limitations of the weapons available at the time, the most important weapon of any military battle was the bayonet. Your enemy would get perhaps three shots at you in the time it took you to rush him with the bayonet. If you managed to keep a cohesive line, you could then generally throw him over with the force of your rush. The bayonet was also important in holding off calvary. Calvary was fast enough that you'd generally only get one shot at them before they were amongst you with your sabers... but if you held ranks and bristled with bayonets, the horses would shy away and allow your rear ranks to open fire on a now-stationary target.

Needless to say, all of this meant that almost all battles -- whether by the revolutionary army or by the British army -- were fought in conventional format, by soldiers fighting in ranks. The limitations of the weapons available simply made that the most effective way to fight. The notion of the American soldiers "hiding behind trees, rock walls, and hills, and sniping away at the British" applied mostly only to a single battle that was mostly just a skirmish -- Lexington and Concord -- and mostly was applicable only because the British commander in that instance had been overconfident and had sent an under-strength force without its usual company of skirmishers. If the British unit had been at full strength with their usual company of skirmishers, they would have slaughtered the colonials in much the same way they did in New York when the colonials attempted to use the same tactics there against the British landing, by using the hammer vs. anvil approach where the skirmishers fanned out in front of the main van of the force and killed the colonial skirmishers from behind or pinned down the colonial skirmishers until regulars could charge and skewer them with bayonets. All of this was tactics that the British (AND the colonials) had learned during the long war with the French and the Indian allies of the French, and was standard military doctrine regardless of which side you were on.

In the end, the weapons available to you dictate your tactics, and the weapons available during the American Revolution dictated that it would be fought by professional militaries maneuvering in ranks, even within wooded or high-cover areas. It was not until the widespread availability of AK-47 variants, RPG's, etc. that it became truly feasible for a guerilla army using so-called "unfair tactics" to take on an organized army in modern warfare. Civilian weapons simply lack the rate of fire and stopping power to be particularly useful against a 3rd-generation armored force in that sort of war.

-- Badtux the Military Penguin

3rd generation thinking in a 4th generation world

Unbeknownst to most of the world's politicians and large numbers of the world's military leaders, a revolution in military affairs has taken place over the past forty years. As the world's leading militaries have vastly improved their ability to fight 3rd-generation armored maneuver warfare -- the brand of warfare introduced by Hitler's armies in 1939 -- a new brand of warfare has quietly rendered those heavy armored columns obsolete. This new brand of warfare is a variant of an old idea -- asymmetrical guerilla warfare pitting guerrillas against a conventional military -- but takes advantages of the revolution in global communications and trade that has happened over the past forty years to operate completely independently of any state in which they happen to be hosted. This 4th generation of warfare pits non-state actors against the militaries of invading states, and thus far has proven immune to anything that a 3rd-generation military can dish out short of genocide.

Some politicians, such as U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, and some military leaders, such as the IDF's Lt. General Dan Halutz, have belatedly recognized that their nation's beloved 3rd generation military is no longer effective against the new 4th generation threats. However, their response to this fact has been typical of 3rd generation thinking. Rather than come up with a new way of fighting non-state actors, instead they focus upon revamping their third-generation military to fight a fourth-generation war by doing two things: 1. making the ground forces "lighter weight" to replicate the lighter weight of the non-state actors' forces, and 2. massive application of air power in order to "destroy the ability of the non-state actor to fight."

Needless to say, both of these are outdated responses to the problem, and accomplish nothing other than an increase in the body count and an increase in the support base of the non-state actor. For example, in Iraq, the United States has razed several cities and towns using air power to basically make the rubble bounce. The result? err, completely counterproductive. For each civilian killed in the rubble, the insurgency gained two new recruits, to the point where Baghdad itself is now threatened by the insurgency, requiring U.S. troops to be withdrawn from the countryside in order to re-take Baghdad. Similarly, all that "going light" -- going to lightly armored HMMWV's rather than more heavily armored Bradleys, for example -- has accomplished is to increase the body count on the part of U.S. forces.

Similarly, in Lebanon, Israel has been using 3rd generation thinking to fight a 4th generation enemy. Hizballah's armed wing was a few thousand criminals in the south of Lebanon that had the support of less than 20% of Lebanon's people. Lebanon's government had condemned attacks by Hizballah against Israel, but lacked the military power to itself disarm Hizballah -- let's fact it, if Hizballah can fight the 2nd-most-powerful military in the world (Israel's) to a standstill, the chances of Lebanon's much smaller and weaker military being able to disarm Hizballah are nil. But when Israel attacked Hizballah, they used the same tactics as they would have used against a 3rd generation enemy. 3rd generation enemies were armed states such as Germany in WWII, and the use of air power in such a conflict was to destroy their transportation infrastructure, food storage infrastructure, housing infrastructure, and otherwise reduce them to squalid refugees living in the rubble of their former cities incapable of supporting a 3rd generation military. The problem is that Hizballah does not have a 3rd generation military. They do not rely on a modern infrastructure for their combat capability. Like the NVA and VC in South Vietnam, they carry their ammunition on their back from their base of supply (Damascus, in the case of Hizballah). Thus attacking Lebanon's cities (outside of the southern zone where Hizballah's military is active) does not accomplish any useful military goal.

That, in the end, is why actions such as razing Fallujah and destroying Beirut's port are war crimes: those actions achieved no military objectives. All they accomplished was the killing of civilians (unless you wish to say that the blue-jean-clad dead men wearing work boots were Hizballah guerrillas -- but somehow, I doubt that Hizballah guerrillas go around dressed like longshoremen!). Since the non-state actor does not require a 3rd generation infrastructure in order to operate, such destruction affects him not at all. He simply fades into the background and bides his time until the enemy is forced to reduce force levels in some area due to the exorbitant expense of maintaining a 3rd generation military in the field, and then comes back out from hiding and resumes bleeding the 3rd generation military. Short of genocide, there is literally nothing that a 3rd generation military can do to defeat him, because he is capable of blending into the sea of civilians and the only way to militarily extricate him from the sea of civilians is to kill all the civilians. Which, I suppose, is one way of handling the situation, but it would be suitably ironic if a state (Israel) founded upon the saying "Never again" about one state's race-based genocide, would itself engage in race-based genocide...

These ideas about the limitations of 3rd generation warfare are not new. For example, General MacArthur during the Korean War applied traditional notions of destroying the enemy's infrastructure in order to eliminate the enemy's ability to fight, and U.S. B-29 bombers destroyed every bridge, railroad, roadway, and grain depot in North Korea. Mao's Chinese army, which had won against the Nationalists by pitting a 4th generation force against a 3rd generation enemy, used more conventional tactics in Korea but used what might be seen as a predecessor to 4th generation supply mechanisms to avoid being defeated by the 3rd generation American forces in Korea. Chinese soldiers, armed with single-shot rifles, were resupplied by coolies on foot, hauling ammunition and food in baskets. The eventual result was a cease fire and drawing of a treaty line -- the 4th generation military had fought the 3rd generation military to a standstill. Similarly, in Vietnam, the NVA fought a protracted guerilla war in the south. Again, the U.S. attempted to bomb the enemy into submission, using their massive B-52 bombers to drop more bombs upon Indochina than had been dropped by all the combatants in WWII combined. All it did was increase support for the Pathet Lao in Laos, Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the NVA in Vietnam.

The nascent 4th generation military again had defeated the 3rd generation military. Yet nobody seemed to notice. Then came Afghanistan, where the non-state militias fought the Soviet war machine to a standstill, then bled it to death until it was forced to retreat in ignomious defeat. Around the same time, Israel sent their troops into Lebanon, and similarly experienced the same thing -- they were literally being bled to death by the new non-state actors that arose to oppose them. And then George H.W. Bush sent his troops into Somalia on a humanitarian mission. Within six months, the Somalian militias had inflicted humiliating defeats upon the U.S. military, and the U.S. was forced to withdraw.

Yet still nobody seemed to notice that traditional notions of warfare had been rendered obsolete by the huge number of guerilla-ready weapons on the world market, the increasing affluence of the world at large which made those weapons affordable by even the poorest guerrillas, and the improving communications infrastructure of the world, especially satellite communications which allowed someone in Afghanistan to order an attack upon New York City despite the fact that Afghanistan's communications infrastructure had been bombed to rubble repeatedly over the prior 20 year period. And so now we end up with the current situation in Iraq and Lebanon, which pit 4th generation non-state actors against 3rd generation militaries, with predictable results -- the 3rd generation militaries and the nations supporting them are being bled dry by the enormous expenses of maintaining a large 3rd generation army in the field, said 3rd generation military is killing lots of civilians unnecessarily because they do not recognize that what would be a valid military target if fighting another 3rd generation military is militarily useless when fighting a 4th generation non-state actor, and said 3rd generation military is getting their butt handed to them strategically despite any tactical victories that they achieve, managing to do nothing other than destroy their country's economy while increasing support for the insurgents that they hoped to fight.

Yet still... yet still I hear 3rd generation warfare arguments from the supporters of Israel and the United States to justify the thousands of civilians they have slaughtered in their pursuit of non-state 4th generation adversaries. They fail to understand that what would be valid military targets if pursuing a 3rd generation state actor are militarily insignificant if persuing a 4th generation non-state actor, and thus are war crimes. The notion that the world has changed, that it is no longer 1941 and the enemies we face today in Iraq are not conventional 3rd generation militaries and thus cannot be defeated by the same methods we used to defeat Nazi Germany and Japan, literally blows their mind, in much the same way that, in early 1941, the notion that aircraft carriers would be more important than battleships in the upcoming war would have blown most fleet admirals' minds on both sides of the Pacific. Yet the world has changed, whether these heads-stuck-in-mud types want to admit it or not. And unfortunately, their stupidity results in disaster for all involved -- the states that end up being bled silly to fight an unwinnable war, and the civilian population of the states where the non-state actors have set up shop, who find themselves dodging bombs despite themselves having absolutely nothing to do with supporting or provisioning said non-state actors.

What will it take, I wonder, for the 3rd generation thinkers to admit that the world has changed? I'm not sure. All I know is that people are needlessly dying because the 3rd generation thinkers of the world refuse to see that their 3rd generation tactics are counterproductive against non-state actors. Stupidity kills. Literally, in this case. Unfortunately, if stupidity were gasoline, we'd be paying 2 cents per gallon at the pumps. Stupidity is something that there's a surplus of, in this world that we live in.

-- Badtux the Military Penguin

World Nut Daily: Condi's not black

Left: white woman Condi Rice and her husband smile for the camera.

World Nut Daily is in a froth because Palestinian newspapers have called Condi Rice a "black spinster." Because, of course, Condi isn't black, and she isn't a spinster (unmarried older woman).

Alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Progress of the next novel...

"Dead Children" is moving slowly but moving. It's turned out to be about something entirely different from what I originally planned it to be. No drug war, just child prostitution and child pornography, loosely based upon a child prostitution and pornography ring in the Pacific Northwest that included (includes?) several top city officials including several top law enforcement officials in a major city there. Not a very comfortable thing for me to write about, thus the slow progress. I've thought about throwing away what I have and starting over from scratch, but I'm not sure that I want to do that. Putting my protagonist in a situation that is particularly uncomfortable for her is a recipe for some fine drama and character development.

More later at Deadly Lies...

GAH! Windows sucks the big one :-(.

I keep my Norton Antivirus up to date, run the Symantec firewall, and *still* got infected. It appears that it came in via Internet Explorer somehow, since the compressed binaries for the rootkits were found in the IE cache directories when I did the full system scan. Now, I don't run Internet Explorer very often, just for the very rare site that won't render in Firefox, so that puzzles me. But so it goes with Windows...

Anyhow, reason I didn't post anything last night was simple -- I was engaged in all-out war upon the nasty viruses that had crept in via Internet Exploder. Now, some of you ask, "hold it, what is a Linux penguin doing running Windows?" Well, that one is simple. The corporate firewall requires special software if I want to VPN in to work. Said special software only runs on Windows. Gah!

Anyhow, I have my laptop cleaned up now, so hopefully I can get some blogging done. Or not!

-- Badtux the Computer Penguin

Friday Cat Blogging

Decided to give you a different kind of cat this time, although I've blogged this cat before.

I think this cat is cute, but hey, maybe that's just me :-).

Oh, the album is pretty good too, if you're into that melancholy sort of thing. Most albums have at least one song that make me wince. The only such song here is "Names", which makes me wince not because it's so bad, but because it's so depressing.

- Badtux the Cat-appreciating Penguin

That ole' Vietnam Shuffle: Stagflation is back

One way that LBJ and Nixon paid for their wars in Vietnam was basically by running the country deep into debt (in 1967, the military took up 15% of the national income, a large percentage of which was paid for via debt), then printing money to devaluate the debt. The result was "stagflation" -- increases in prices as the money became less valuable due to an increase in the money without any corresponding increases in economic output. Indeed, since inflation also tends to devalue the money that would have gone into investment, it tends to cause a stagnation of economic output.

The Busheviks have had the printing presses turned on for some time now to handle the fact that they're running the country outrageously into debt with their borrow-and-spend invade-everybody-and-let-our-children-pay policies, but nobody's noticed because during the same period, the dollar was the de-facto currency for most of the world and the world's total economic output was also growing. But it appears that this little bit of good news is over: stagflation is back.

I swear, Iraq is just like Vietnam, except without the cool hippy clothes...

-- Badtux the "History repeats itself" Penguin

Money won't buy peace? BULL!

"The time for external adventures is over." Thus says Egyptian leader Mubarrak, when asked if Egypt would intervene militarily on behalf of the Lebanese people.

There are people who say you can't buy peace with money, that my proposal that the setting up of a prosperous Palestine and Lebanon, not bombs, are the solution to dealing with Hamas and Hizbullah, is dangerously naive. But money for peace is a recipe that has worked for over 20 years with Egypt. Egypt is our second-largest recipient of military and economic assistance (after Israel), and is not going to do anything to jeopardize that money. Now, with almost unbelievable pressure upon his government by a very upset population, Mubarrak *still* is not going to send Egyptian forces into battle. Why? Because we're paying him to keep his army home.

So the next time I hear from some right wingnut, "you can't buy peace with dollar bills!", I'm going to tell him, "Bull!" and point right at Egypt. Because Egypt is perfect proof that you can.

-BadTux the "Follow the money!" Penguin

Americans too fat to fit into X-ray, MRI machines

Yes, too fat. And it's hurting their healthcare.

I was about to go out and buy a burrito for lunch, but maybe I'll settle for something a little less fattening, such as a can of tuna and half a cup of rice. Sob!

-- Badtux the "Diets suck!" Penguin

PS -- the good news is that I'm 10 pounds down and my blood pressure is (just barely) back under the red alert danger zone. The bad news is that I need to lose another 10 pounds to be down to my regular weight and get my blood pressure back to normal. Sob! I like fish, but I'm tired of eating so much fish!

The art of practical politics

Israel is probably the #2 military power on the planet right now. Granted, their military is not the largest, and they do not have the ability to project power like the U.S. does, but neither does any other military on the planet (unless you count Russia's mouldering nuclear-tipped missiles as instruments of power projection), and nobody else has Israel's level of military technology and professionalism.

There is no military threat to Israel's existence anywhere in the region. Of the surrounding nations, either they have no real army (Lebanon), an army that is basically reduced to AK-47's and RPG's because all their old Soviet military equipment is worn out and useless (Syria), is basically a friend of Israel (Jordan), or is more concerned with its own internal politics than with Israel (Egypt). Neither Hezbollah nor Hamas have any ability to threaten Israel's existence, despite any nonsense they might spout to the contrary. They may be formidable guerilla forces, but a guerilla force requires a sea of civilians that they can disappear into, and neither Hezbollah nor Hamas have the ability to conduct large-scale operations outside their own particular Shiite or Palestinian sea of civilians. They are a nuisance, and an often-deadly nuisance that needs to be addressed, but they do not threaten Israel's existence.

However, most of Israel's current crop of politicans, much like most of current American politicians, came to power by saying, "You are threatened, and I am the one who shall lead you to safety!". If a threat to Israel's existence does not actually exist, it must be manufactured. Thus the reason for the disproportionate response to Hezbollah's little border incursion. Israel's politicians play these things up to their constituents, saying "they want to DESTROY you!", then compete to see who can be most convincing with the "I will lead you to safety by dropping bombs on rocket sites" "hah! he's a weiner! I'll lead you to safety by dropping bombs on all Hezbollah-owned facilities!" etc., leading up to the inevitable, but not-yet-stated, "I'll lead you to safety by EXTERMINATING ALL OF THE LEBANESE! Then you'll be safe!". The response, to Israeli citizens, is not disproportionate because their politicians lie about the extent of the threat to Israel. If your nation's very existence is threatened, after all, is not any force up to and including the genocide of the enemy that threatens to exterminate you an honorable and acceptable thing to do? Did we not fire bomb the major cities of Japan and Germany for exactly that same reason -- because the Germans and Japanese threatened the very existence of our nation?

Of course, reality is that THERE IS NO CURRENT THREAT TO ISRAEL'S EXISTENCE. What there is, is serious but managable problems (Hamas and Hezbollah) which can be addressed via far less drastic methods than Israel is using. But you can't say that in Israel, or, for that matter, on the pages of the New York Times, because if you do state this simple little truth you're an anti-semitic nutcase who wants to exterminate Jews and probably a neo-nazi too.

In the absence of a threat to national existence, Israel's actions simply look evil. But from the viewpoint of Israel's deranged political scene, which is all based upon who can best scare the populance into electing them under the "our nation's very EXISTENCE is threatened and I am the one to lead you to safety!" theory (Mencken's First Law of Practical Politics), it makes perfect sense. And after all, for my fellow Americans, certainly we're well acquainted enough with our own politicians to know that politicians have absolutely no problem implementing insane policies based upon a lie (Iraq, anybody?)...

- BT

Stab in the back

Sigh. The neo-cons never seem to learn. According to them, the only reason we lost in Vietnam was because we didn't "stay the course". Because we "didn't use enough force" because our troops were "stabbed in the back" by dastardly liberals. Thus we can somehow "win" in Iraq, unlike in Vietnam, because our Dear Leader is "resolute" and will "stay the course" and "use enough force." Maroons. The whole bunch of'em. Reality, of course, was somewhat different.

Enough of the nonsense about how "we coulda shoulda won in Vietnam, if we'd just stayed the course." We killed probably 5,000,000 North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, and never came close to defeating them. We probably would have needed to kill three times that -- i.e., genocide -- to "win" domination over a defoliated landscape of demolished buildings and bones, but it's unclear, short of nuclear weapons, that we had the ability to do that even if we'd wanted to become a nation of mass murderers. And nuclear weapons would have meant WWIII with the Soviets.

Indeed, by the end of the war we were effectively bankrupt (at the peak of the war over 15% of the U.S. economy was going to pay for the war) and our army, the best in the world in 1965, had largely disintegrated into a poorly-led armed rabble more interested in scoring heroin than in killing NVA. This wasn't an issue of "staying the course". We had nothing left to stay the course with -- no army left that was worth the name (yes, there were still a few well-led units, but most of the army in 1972 was worthless), and no money to equip and pay them. We were defeated.

Get this straight, people: THE NORTH VIETNAMESE WHIPPED US. They bankrupted us just as badly as the Afghans bankrupted the Soviet Union. The stagflation of the 1970's was the U.S. Treasury frantically printing dollar bills in order to inflate the currency to the point where the Treasury didn't have to default on the Vietnam War debt, the act of a bankrupt nation repudiating its dept in the only way that modern nation-states ever seem to do, by printing money. We were whipped, folks. The "stab in the back" historical revisionist nonsense put out by the neocons is just as stupid and ill-informed as the "stab in the back" nonsense put out by Hitler (i.e., that the Jews "stabbed Germany in the back" and that's why Germany lost WWI).

But still, I hear this "stab in the back" myth for the Vietnam loss passed around neo-con circles like some piece of wisdom received from God Himself. The fact that 15% of the largest economy on the planet wasn't enough to win the war... the fact that the Vietnam War lasted longer than any of our nation's other wars and thus was hardly "cut and run"... those little facts just don't register on their little war-mongering minds. No wonder they persist in urging us to "stay the course" in Iraq, and why they want us to get involved into yet another guerilla war in southern Lebanon -- they haven't learned the lessons of Vietnam because they REFUSE TO SEE THEM. No blindness like willful blindness, I suppose...

-- Badtux the History Penguin

Saddam: "Just shoot me."

Seems that Saddam, when found guilty, wants to die via firing squad rather than via hanging.

I think that can be arranged. But maybe he is hoping that the firing squad will be made up of Democrats, in which case the only thing they'd manage to shoot was each other...

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

The straight razor...

LUCAS
"This was monitored out of Cambodia. This has been verified as Colonel Kurtz's voice."

COLONEL KURTZ (on tape)
" I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving. "

ON TAPE
"11th transmission, December 30th, 0500 hours, sector KZK."

KURTZ (on tape)
" We must kill them. We must incinerate them. Pig after pig, cow after cow, village after village, army after army. And they call me an assassin. What do you call it when the assassins accuse the assassin ? They lie.. they lie and we have to be merciful for those who lie. Those nabobs. I hate them. How I hate them..."

In the aftermath of reports (including in the Jerusalem Post, hardly an Arab propaganda outlet) that IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz had ordered the military to destroy 10 buildings in Beirut in retaliation to every Katyusha rocket strike on Haifa... I wonder... how long is it before we hear Halutz's voice on the radio, muttering about snails and straight razors?

-- Badtux the "History repeats itself, over and over again" Penguin

Note: For those wondering if the Jerusalem Post is an "Arab propaganda outlet": It has been reported by the BBC, interviewing the head of the UN relief agency, that eighty twelve-story apartment towers have been destroyed in the Shiite suburbs of Beirut. This pretty much matches up with the above statement by General Halutz, which the Israelis first denied, then said "well, reporters must have misunderstood", then finally said "well, okay, someone said that to the reporters, but he was mistaken"... eight Katyusha rocket strikes, 80 buildings destroyed in Beirut. Coincidence? You make the call.

How Israel Lost

Click on map for bigger version A Jewish blogger asks, "Israel was attacked. How did Israel become the villain here?" Well, Israel became the villain when they became the villain!

Look, nobody denies that Israel has a right to protect themself. But Israel went from good guy to bad guy when they responded to a few idiot guerillas in the south of Lebanon by bombing EVERY SINGLE MAJOR TOWN AND CITY IN LEBANON (yes, *EVERY* town above 1,000 in population) including those in the mostly-Christian and Sunni North because a few hundred nutballs in the south of Lebanon kidnapped a couple of soldiers and fired off a few antique Russian rockets mounted on high-tech launching devices (sticks). Look at that map above. Israel has rained destruction on parts of Lebanon that are predominantly Christian and Sunni in order to "punish" them for something that people they don't like (the Shia) did in the south of Lebanon. In short, Israel was attacked by Afghanistan, and bombed Iraq in response.

Don't give me the BS that this was somehow "defending Israel". Hezbollah is gloating right now. They had a 17% approval rating in Lebanon and were well on their way to being snuffed out by the Lebanese in their own way, which did not, BTW, involve sending the Lebanese "army" (a lightly armed border patrol with maybe 20,000 "soldiers" max) to try to militarily defeat a force which had held off the second-most-powerful military in the world for over a decade (what utter nonsense -- if the region's most powerful army, Israel's, could not disarm Hezbollah militarily during the 1980's and 1990's, Lebanon's tiny "army" certainly couldn't). Lebanon's plan was to build a prosperous peaceful Lebanon and gradually marginalize the armed wing of Hezbollah until they looked like a bunch of stupid hicks in the south and were basically forced by community pressure to give up their arms, and it was working -- 17% approval rating, remember?

So what happens? Hezbollah figured the only way to retain any relevance in Lebanon was to provoke Israel in order to prove that Israel was a bunch of racists who literally believed that it was okay to kill 100 Arab women and children for every Israeli civilian killed. Mission fuckin' accomplished. Hezbollah now has a 100% approval rating in Lebanon, and Israel... well, Israel has lost, and just doesn't realize it yet. Because they did exactly what Hezbollah wanted them to do -- bomb Lebanon back into the 1980's when the country was rubble. Every single bridge. Every single airport. Every single port. All bombed. Every single town has had at least one bomb fall on it. People had been laughing at Hezbollah's racist anti-Jewish sentiments, where Hezbollah called Israeli Jews "a bunch of baby-killers who would like to exterminate the Arab race." They're not laughing anymore. Mission accomplished. Bombs falling on you tend to stop laughter. If you know you haven't done anything wrong, yet an Israeli bomb falls in your town... what conclusion could any rational man come to, other than that Israel hates you and would like to exterminate you? Whether it's true or not is irrelevant, that's what anybody is going to think in that situation. And then they'll flock to the one organization which has been saying that all along: Hezbollah. An organization that was dying, suddenly has thousands and thousands of new-found converts. Congratulations, Israel, you just single-handedly revitalized Hezbollah!

We all know how effective these tactics have been with the Palestinians. It seems, however, that the Israelis don't learn any better than the Decider in Chief. Like the Decider in Chief, their policy apparently is "Stay the Course", and if the course ain't workin'... well, the solution is to keep doin' it! Here's a clue: If something ain't workin... then *STOP DOING IT!*. This policy of punishing civilian populations for the actions of a few idiot guerillas isn't working, and gives credence to the idiot guerillas when they spout the nonsense that Jews are all haters who love exterminating Arabs because they hate all Arabs and Muslims. Maybe people would stop listening to that nonsense, if Israel quit playing into the idiot's hands and quit doing exactly what the armed wings of Hezbollah and Hamas want them to do?!

In short, Israel has lost. They lost because they played right into Hezbollah's hands and did exactly what Hezbollah wanted them to do. Prosperity is the enemy of violence. You and I don't go and kill crooked politicians in Washington because we are relatively prosperous and don't want to lose all our goodies. By destroying Lebanon's prosperity and making hundreds of thousands of new recruits for Hezbollah, Israel has assured that Hezbollah will be a thorn in their side for yet another decade or more.

But maybe that was the plan? Because peace... well, for politicians who have made their careers by saying "You are threatened, and I am the one who will lead you to safety", isn't peace the least desirable thing to have?

-- Badtux the Map Penguin

Were the Israeli soldiers captured inside Lebanon?

The above map, purportedly published by AFP (which then had Israel purportedly revoked the press credential of AFP's reporter in Israel in retaliation for violating Israeli press censorship laws -- yep, Israel censors its press, unlike Lebanon), shows the Israeli soldiers being captured within the borders of Lebanon.

Neither Hezbollah nor the IDF have any reason to confirm (or deny) this -- Hezbollah wants to foster the impression that it can enter Israel and kidnap Israeli soldiers at will in order to impress its own constituency, and of course an Israeli incursion into Lebanon sans an attack upon Israel would be an illegal trespass upon another nation's sovereign territory, thus making it legitimate to arrest any Israeli soldiers found in said territory in much the same way that Mexican soldiers found north of the Rio Grande would be subject to arrest on a number of charges (carrying automatic weapons without a Federal permit being the least of them). Hezbollah has no problem at all with provoking Israel to kill as many civilians as Israel has the stomach to slaughter (which appears to be an unlimited number, based on their targetting of hospitals, shelters, and soup kitchens owned by Hezbollah in Beirut) in hopes of "proving" that Israel is a bunch of blood-thirsty savages who aren't fit to be seen in civilized company, while it would be embarassing to Israel if the entire reason for its attack turns out to be based upon a lie (i.e., that Hezbollah attacked Israel first, rather than vice-versa). Thus both would have an incentive to lie about where that initial capture of Israeli troops took place.

Will we ever know the truth? Not likely. No matter where those troops were captured, Hezbollah is gloating as Israel proves that they are exactly what Hezbollah has been claiming all along -- a bunch of racists who literally believe that Arab lives are worth less than Israeli lives. Israel has played right into Hezbollah's hands. Hezbollah wanted to prove to the world that Israel was a bunch of blood-thirsty savages who would gleefully kill a hundred Arab women and children in retribution for the death of a single Israeli citizen, and voila, what did Israel do? You guessed it. They did exactly what Hezbollah wanted them to do.

Forget all the nonsense about how Israel is going to somehow "degrade" Hezbollah. Hezbollah was going to be disarmed within the next three years if Israel had done nothing at all. It is impossible to defeat Hezbollah militarily -- they fought the world's second-most-powerful military to a standstill last time the Israelies tried to hold southern Lebanon, and they're no weaker today than they were then. The Lebanese had a plan to wean Hezbollah from its wayward ways, a plan which did not depend upon somehow defeating them militarily with the (non-existent) Lebanese army. Their plan was simple: to build a modern and prosperous Lebanon, one filled with peace and prosperity, the most peaceful country in the Middle East, and then co-opt Hezbollah until the armed branch of Hezbollah looked like a bunch of ignorant hick rednecks if they kept holding on to their arms when there was no need for them.

Lebanon was the only place in the Middle East where Shiite and Sunni and Christians got together in the same coffee houses and worked out their differences over java rather than via death squads, where there was no press censorship (note that every other nation in the Middle East -- including Israel -- censors its press), no secret police "disappearing" people in the middle of the night... it was the place where, when others in the Middle East were weary of the oppressive police states or violent anarchies that they lived in, they fled to Lebanon for a few moments of precious peace. Lebanon had fought out its civil war, and everybody had come to the conclusion that there was enough war, enough killing, that the time for peace had arrived. And they were making it work. Oh, there were the occasional little glitches, but by and large, they were making it work.

But all of that is gone now. Peace, I suppose, simply cannot be tolerated in the Brave New World that is Bush's New World Order... peace is a threat, for it shows that there is a way besides killing, a way besides death, and if Lebanon's peace had managed to co-opt Hezbollah and eliminate that threat to Israel... why, we can't have that. How would Israel's rulers scare their populance into voting for them to lead them to safety if there was peace? What would happen to military contractors' profits if we all embraced peace? Why, politicians who ran on a platform of "you are threatened, and I will lead you to safety" might get thrown out of office, and arms makers might have to (gasp) GET REAL JOBS! No no, cannot have that. Thus it is important -- no, IMPERATIVE -- to destroy the only peaceful country in the Middle East, before that nasty "peace" stuff caught on. Can't have that kind of bad influence hanging around, y'know!

- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Another Bush "victory"

Seems the Pakistanis, now that Bush is gracing India with more nuclear fuel for its atomic weapons program, have decided they need more nuclear weapons too.

Thanks, Mr. Bush! Pakistan is one bullet away from going Taliban, and now not only will they have the Bomb, but they'll have *more* bombs! The world's peoples thank you. Especially the ones who will be glowing in the darky as soon as Mushariff gets his bullet...

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Israel heading for genocide

There is only one way to win a guerilla war in an foreign land against guerillas who blend into the population, and that is genocide. The other methods used to win a guerilla war (secret police, death squads, etc.) are not available to you because you are an occupier -- you do not speak the language, you don't know the people, you don't understand the culture. Genocide is "it", so to speak.

Some folks wonder, "if Israel, the #2 military power in the world, could not win against Hezbollah in South Lebanon in the 1980's and 90's, why do they think they can win now?". One reason, I suppose, is that one of Hezbollah's backers, Syria, no longer has Soviet support since the collapse of the Soviet Union, while Iraq is out of the game. But that does not account for the "Iran Factor" -- Iran is certainly capable of providing Hezbollah with all the old Soviet-era guerilla weapons and ammunition that they can stamp out in their hundreds of weapons factories that they've bought from the Chinese. But another reason might be that they intend to go about it differently now. Think: If the problem is that the guerilla blends into the sea of civilians, how do you get rid of the guerilla? That's right, GET RID OF THE CIVILIANS! I.e., GENOCIDE.

This explains why Israel would bomb the ports and airport and all bridges, and put up an aerial and sea blockade. They want to isolate Lebanon so that reporters cannot easily enter and exit and, if they make it to Lebanon, cannot easily file reports. Don't believe the bullshit about how "Hezbollah brought weapons in through the airport thus we had to bomb it." If you want to bomb the airport that Hezbollah gets its weapons through, you have to go a bit to the south to Damascus. There's only one conceivable reason to bomb those bridges and ports, and it has nothing to do with anything Hezbollah. Rather, it's to isolate Lebanon, so that Israel can then slaughter as many civilians as necessary to remove the 'sea of civilians' that the guerilla hides amongst without international reprobation of the slaughter.

Not that there would be any more international reaction to the slaughter than there was in Darfur. As far as the major powers are concerned, if you're not a white Christian or white Jew you aren't human, and thus don't merit the concern of the world. As a former Israeli tank commander explained to me, about why he had no problems firing shells into Palestinian apartment towers -- "Palestinians aren't human. They're dirty smelly savages, cockroaches on two feet. We ought to exterminate them all." Yes, that's how Israelis think about Palestinians and Lebanese. Those nasty untermenschen are not God's chosen people, they're ugly nasty bad-smelling Arabs, thus they don't count as human.

Israel was formed as a reaction against the ethnic and religious-based genocides of Hitler's murderous regime. Now it appears that Israel itself is set to commit ethnic and religoius-based genocides. Congratulations, Israel. You have become that which you hate.

-- Badtux the History Penguin

Hey! You! Get yer effin head out of your behind!

Yeah, that's YOU I'm talking to, you in the yellow Toyota blocking a full effin' lane of CA-17 on the uphill from Saratoga. Yeah, it's a hundred effin' degrees and the highway is almost that steep, but shit, my 20 year old motorcycle has half the cooling system per CC that your Toyota has, and it's just fine. Now me, I'm baking because you're too fucking stupid to take your goddamned car to a mechanic and have your radiator cap checked and your fucking radiator boiled over and you came to a stop right in the middle of a fucking lane, blocking half the goddamned highway and putting slippery goddamned radiator grease all over the road, but my goddamned motorcycle is just fine. Because, you see, I'm not STUPID like you are. I know that effin' radiator caps don't last for effin' ever, and I check it every time I change the oil to make sure it's still sealing and still has the right spring tension.

Now, obviously you're too fuckin' stupid to do shit like that, so I got a suggestion for you: TAKE YOUR GODDAMNED CAR TO A DAMNED MECHANIC, you asshole MORON! And no, f'ing goddamned JIFFIE LOOB is *NOT* a goddammned mechanic, those are just a bunch of just-outta-high-school knob turners who don't know shit and who wouldn't be working at Jiffie Loob if they did. Look in your Yellow Pages under "Auto Repair", for cryin' out loud. I betcha that you'll see just OODLES of REAL fuckin' mechanics there, y'here?

And YOU, in that brown piece of shit Honda blocking the other fucking lane 5 miles further up the road: So you thought you were fuckin' being *SMART* by letting the con man at the auto body shop tell ya, "Look, I'll just pull the dent out of the radiator and we'll charge the insurance company full price for a new radiator and nobody will ever know but you won't have to pay the deductible!"? Now look how smart you are. Your stupid turd-colored car is just sitting there spilling green slime all over the fuckin' highway as steam rolls out from under the hood, and you're blocking half the fuckin' highway because, look. You bang a radiator real hard in an accident like you had when you ran into that old lady's rear bumper because you was fuckin' doin' your makeup while talkin' on the cell phone, and it makes those little tubes detach from the fins and it don't work worth a shit anymore. That insurance adjuster didn't specify a new radiator because he wanted to pay for one. He specified a new radiator because you fuckin' NEEDED one, you cheep-ass fuckin' MORON! And I'm just BAKING here because look, I'm riding a motorcycle and I don't HAVE fuckin' air conditioning to turn off like the sign sez I'm supposed to. But do you care? NOOOO! You saved a fuckin $200 deductible, TWO HUNDRED FUCKIN' DOLLARS, boy, aren't you fuckin' smart? You ask me, they shouldn't bother towing your stupid ass off the highway. Just shove your stupid brown turd colored car off the fuckin' cliff, and let the rest of us get going, shithead!

Oh no. A half mile further, and here's *ANOTHER* goddamned car with its radiator boiling over blocking half the fuckin' road. Damned classic Jaguar. Goddamned Limies, bad enough that the Lucas electrics were produced by the Prince of Darkness, but apparently they never figured that hills would ever get higher than a few hundred feet or temperatures ever higher than the mid 80's. Okay, so it's a hundred fuckin' degrees and you're climbing a 4,000 foot hill. What does the sign say to do, you stupid fuckin' moron? Yeah, that's right, it says *TURN OFF YOUR AIR CONDITIONING!*. What? You say you'd get hot? What the fuck do you think *I* am, sitting here waiting for cars to pick their way past your fucking stupid ass on my completely un-air-conditioned motorcycle, sweating in my riding leathers? And hey, I got the same fuckin' advice for you that I had for the moron in the Toyota: GET A FUCKIN' MECHANIC, you MORON! Yeah, your stupid piece of English shit car has half the radiator it really needs. So fuckin' what? A good mechanic knows how to handle that. Take my old motorcycle. It, too, has half the radiator it really needs. But you know what? I haven't gotten above 3/4ths on my temperature gauge. Because it's got the right juice in the radiator to handle this temperature and this grade -- 80% distilled water 20% antifreeze/antiboil (water carries heat, antifreeze doesn't, only use for antifreeze in hot weather is to keep the radiator from boiling over and you reach close to 100% antiboil protection at the 80/20 water/glycol mix), *PLUS* it has some shit called "Water Wetter" in there (basically a miscable oil) which makes that 80% water work even better. You say your mechanic never told you about shit like this? Well, did you even *TELL* your fuckin' mechanic that you were intending on going up 30% mountain grades in 100 degree heat trying to get the hell out of the Valley to a nice cool beach somewhere? How the fuck was he supposed to know that you were gonna do something so stupid on a 50/50 winter mix? Fuckin' TELEPATHY?

And YOU, random blog reader: This heat ain't nothin to fuck around with. If you're not a mechanic yourself and you haven't taken your car to a mechanic lately to have him check your coolant mix, radiator cap, radiator hoses, and everything else that's a normal service item to make sure everything's working right when the weather gets hot, *DO IT*. The last fuckin' thing your kids need is for your stupid cheap ass self to strand them in the middle of fuckin' nowhere in 100 degree weather without any fuckin' water to drink on some mountain grade where there's no real shoulder to pull off so you're all just kinda dangling on the edge of a fuckin' cliff because it's too goddamned hot to stay in the car and cars are blowing by honking their horns and shit at you and the tow company says it'll be at least four hours before they can come get your car because every tow truck in the whole fuckin' region is tied up hauling fucking morons back home where said morons thought takin' their car to Jiffy Loob every few thousand miles was "maintaining" it... is that what you want for yourself? No? Then TAKE CARE OF YOUR GODDAMNED CAR, for cryin out loud. And no, I don't mean take it to fuckin' JIFFY LOOB for some fuckin moron even dumber than you to open the hood and look in it and say, "Doh, there's an engine under here awrite!". Shit, you could do that much yourself and get the same goddamned result. Take your piece of shit car to a MECHANIC. Someone who actually KNOWS somethin' about cars. Got it?

This public service message courtesy of a VERY hot and steamed penguin, literally -- YOU sit in 100 degree heat in riding leathers going absolutely nowhere because a buncha cheap morons are too fuckin' stupid to take their cars to a mechanic, and see how YOU like it...

-- Badtux the Automotive Penguin