Drift - Rachel Maddow

By Wayne Brown

I must admit to being a rabid fan of Rachel Maddow. In my experience, she is the smartest person in the public eye. For many, her fame and success distract from the depth and insight of her insights.

This book is a deeply informative history of the USA's "drift" toward militarism. Don't be distracted by the fact that it's an entertainment page-turner.

Rachel reviews the process that led to the US military going off the leash from the Viet Nam war to the present day. As usual, I will use this post for a few notes on the subject.
=============================================
I was skeptical about the Grenada invasion from the start. Maddow provides the details. It's worse than I thought. A farce from start to finish.

=== DUE TO TECH BLUNDER, EXTENSIVE NOTES LOST ===

DynCorp's sex slaves in Bosnia. Claim that US law did not apply in Bosnia or USA.

Some sex slaves with 14-year-old sex slaves.

Sex videos.

DynCorp was bought out approx 2020.

=================== Designed for TV War =============

The new operating metaphor was lots of threats - Saddam being #1

The key to Cheney's role in subcontracting military support to companies associated with Cheney.

$300 billion LOGCAP contracts. No idea how many people. MPRI->L3 training officers ...

No systematic review of contractor performance.

Al Gore was behind the LOGCAP monster.

Privatization made it easier to go to war.

Rachel's sources are amazing. She seems to read everyone's memoirs.

"Bosnia never existed and it never will" - Melosevic. 

Americans in the Balkans for 8 years!!

People don't care about the deaths of contractors. "Pay to play, pop up army."

============== Chapter 8 "One Hell of a Killing Machines =========

Blackwater --XE - Acadami (wasn't that the one who absorbed MPRI?)
"Death TV" 
CIA is a fighting force,  totally unaccountable. Doesn't even acknowledge the existence of drones.
CIA is now de facto branch of the Armed Forces. The budget is also not revealed.
Also, domestic surveillance. 
Private contractors are not legally accountable to congress.
JSOC Joint Special Operations Command - Elite bad-ass soldiers. 1,000 "Ollie Norths" directly coordinated by the White House. No congressional oversight at all.
The public is not only out of the decision loop, they don't even know wars are happening.
Our way of waging war now involves minimal pushback. Minimal impact on the public.
Lost more to suicide than enemy fire.

Reserves deployed at last to Iraq. Through sheer repetition and volume, America has gotten used to it. In 2001, the US spent as much as all others combined. Balkans 1 to 1 contractor. 

Bush massively cut taxes while 2 wars ramped up. 850,000 people with security clearances. Cost just added to the deficit. So, no cost at all. Reason to stay in Iraq, Afghanistan a moving target.

"Can do Central" :)


======== Chapter 10 OMFG - A Nuclear Career Field ==========

C-130 refits 8 million each. "Wing Box" -- i.e., they need to be retired.
8 Trillion on nukes. Nobody knows how to refurbish existing weapons.
At one point, 31,000 weapons were ready to go.
Not easy to walk away from an 8 Trillion investment.
Looking for a creative new use for nukes.
11 lost nuclear bomb
about 2,500 are ready to go now
650 million allocated to upgrade the nuke force







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Facebook and Bing - A Killer Combination

By Wayne Brown
Image
 This is a partial list of groups I belong to that focus on Generative AI art: Facebook creates community. I use BING as a kind of Generative AI university: BING U.  I prefer the role of student, so my job is to find good teachers. Think of me as the guy who shows you around the campus and knows his way around, but he's a student himself. Microsoft BING is free and very powerful. It's an excellent way to learn Generative AI and a standard tool that everyone in my imaginary school has. The way to find a teacher is to see their work in a Facebook group. Then, save the picture that caught your eye in a Word document (or document editor of your choice). For example ... Joe McIntosh What we have found here is not only the prompt for the picture but a teacher who shares the prompts for all his pictures. Look for artists who work primarily with BING. Don't get distracted by other platforms or techniques. Learn to do one thing well before shopping for better tools. The best Facebo
Read more

A Process ...

By Wayne Brown
Image
She will be 105 in September. She struggles to recognize her four children, let alone her countless grandchildren. Today, she said, "Nobody told me how to die." She has always wanted to die in her own home, an oversized place that has always had room for an endless parade of visitors. She has always been very "social." Although she struggles to remember the old friends dropping by, she chats happily "on automatic." There are a lot of relatives. She was raised on a farm near North Battleford, Saskatchewan, where her Russian parents raised 16 children. I asked "AI" - specifically Claude 3 Sonnet , to describe this situation in a short essay. I have taken the liberty of letting Grammarly , my AI writing assistant, make a few corrections to Sonnet's purple prose. This is the slightly edited version: She sits in  the twilight of her extraordinary life, a living embodiment of resilience and grace. At 105 years old, her eyes, dimmed by time, still h
Read more

Warp Speed Generative AI

By Wayne Brown
Image
Jump to Warp Speed Warp 2 Warp 3 Warp 4 "Warp Speed"  Illustration of " Language is a Virus " Laurie Anderson Completed in the time it takes to perform the song For a very long time, I have tried to master information processing tools and "wire" them together into a "machine" that suits my purpose. "Warp Speed Generative AI" combines several powerful families of AI tools to turn an idea into one or more pictures. Along the way, we get an explanation of the original idea, references and a detailed explanation of the style. I call it "Warp speed" because AI seems to give me whiplash as it takes my idea and runs with it. I just hang on and enjoy the ride. "Warp Speed" is a response to the current obsession with prompts: how to write them, when to share them, how to monetize them, what books to read, what courses to take and so forth. AI can write pretty good prompts. "Prompt Engineering" is an endangered speci
Read more