Europe Threat Alert Scale...and Ultrarunning

This bit, allegedly written by John Cleese, British actor and comedian,  once of Monty Python's Flying Circus, was making the rounds early in 2011.  I tried to source it, but there were just too many hits.

Image credit: Wikipedia.

Somehow I missed it then, but better late than never, right?

ALERTS TO THREATS IN 2011 EUROPE: BY JOHN CLEESE

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Libya and have therefore raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross." The English have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots have raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let's get the Bastards." They don't have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France 's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability.

Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."

The Germans have increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbor" and "Lose."

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from "No worries" to "She'll be alright, Mate." Two more escalation levels remain: "Crikey! I think we'll need to cancel the barbie this weekend!" and "The barbie is canceled." So far no situation has ever warranted use of the final escalation level.

Oh, and the Ultrarunning connection?  Regardless of my personal threat level, going for a trail run is always a good idea.  It washes clean the psyche and lifts my spirits.

 

Organization Name FAIL

I work for the Defense Department.  Face it, our end product is death and destruction. I get it, that we want to have the best kick-a** weapons in the world. 

But guys, could you have come up with a better organization name than this one: US Army Joint Munitions and Lethality Life Cycle Management Command (JM&LLCMC)??

No political correctness here!

From their web site, they have a list of "What We Do (Core competencies).  The list is pretty routine, largely what you'd find on many Fortune 500 websites...until you get to the last one:

--What we do (Core Competencies)

--Research, Development, Engineering
--Acquisition / Program Management
--Logistics, Industrial Operations, and Contracting
--SMCA Executor & Field Operating Activity
--Demilitarization and Disposal
--Industrial Base Management & Transformation
--Munitions Readiness Reporting
--Manage World-Wide Assets
--Centralized Ammunition Management
--Integrated Lethality Solutions

What the heck is an Integrated Lethality Solution?  I guess you don't want to have any Non-Integrated Lethality Solutions.  I can only presume that you don't want to be lethal in a willy-nilly way...it must be organized and part of a larger comprehensive plan for death and destruction.

This whole sorta surreal discussion reminds me of the George Carlin quote on flamethrowers that I've previously posted about, here:

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.

   

War Criminals...and Ultrarunning

Now this is kinda ironic...but again, we've been told that we are not looking back....

Via a link from Avedon Carol: Obama Bans War Criminals, but Not Our Own, by Nat Hentoff.

"By executive order on Aug. 4, President Barack Obama refused entry to the United States of war criminals and human-rights violators (Jurist.org, Aug. 4). He ignored, as he often does, the deeply documented factual evidence of war crimes committed by the Bush-Cheney administration - along with grim proof that the Obama administration also violates our anti-torture laws and the U.N. Convention Against Torture we signed. 

The United States also signed the Geneva Conventions, which mandates - and please pay attention to this, President Obama - each contracting party "shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches (of the Geneva Conventions), and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts."

This means that you, President Obama, are obligated to bring the foregoing list of war criminals [George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, David Addington (counsel to Cheney) and John Yoo author of the unsparingly cruel, aptly dubbed "torture memos" from the Ashcroft Justice Department that gave "legal cover" to allow torture] during the Bush presidency into our courts - or, before that, be subject to an independent criminal investigation."

I guess what boggles my mind is why the Very Serious People in Washington cannot see this with the clarity that I and my friends see this.  Wait, they're not stupid, of course they see what I see...and choose to provide "professional courtesy" (read: cover) for their predecessors, hoping to establish precedent in case they themselves will need cover from the subsequent administration for their present actions.

Oh...and the link to Ultrarunning?  For those of us gentle people who quietly run trails, seeking solace and solitude, the concept of torturing another human being fills us with revulsion.  That our elected leaders do it our our name to "keep us safe"...I'd just rather be unsafe.

 

Looking Back, With Regret (part 2)

Part 1 ran on Saturday.  Regrets seem ubiquitous these days.

From Crooks and Liars on 30 Aug 2011. Somehow I doubt this will ever happen, but it's nice to imagine.  I suppose that it's better late than never, but Wilkerson could have had more credibility had he broken ranks at the time rather than now, a number of years later:

The former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell pledged Tuesday to testify against former Vice President Dick Cheney if he is ever tried for war crimes.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson told Democracy Now's Amy Goodman that he would participate in a trial even if it meant personal repercussions.

"I, unfortunately -- and I've admitted to this a number of times, publicly and privately -- was the person who put together Colin Powell's presentation at the United Nations Security Council on 5 February, 2003," Wilkerson said. "It was probably the biggest mistake of my life. I regret it to this day. I regret not having resigned over it."

SNIP

Joining Wilkerson and Goodman to discuss Cheney's new book "In My Time," Salon's Glenn Greenwald said that it was disturbing to see the former vice president treated simply as an "elder statesman.

"The evidence is overwhelming... that Dick Cheney is not just a political figure with controversial views, but is an actual criminal, that he was centrally involved in a whole variety not just of war crimes in Iraq, but of domestic crimes, as well, including the authorization of warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens in violation of FISA, which says that you go to jail for five years for each offense, as well as the authorization and implementation of a worldwide torture regime that, according to General Barry McCaffrey, resulted in the murder -- his word -- of dozens of detainees, far beyond just the three or four cases of waterboarding that media figures typically ask Cheney about," Greenwald explained.

"And as a result, Dick Cheney goes around the country profiting off of this, you know, sleazy, sensationalistic, self-serving book, basically profiting from his crimes, and at the same time normalizing the idea that these kind of policies, though maybe in the view of some wrongheaded, are perfectly legitimate political choices to make. And I think that's the really damaging legacy from all of this."

But I guess we're looking forward and not backward.  Sure, we invaded a sovereign nation under false pretenses, tortured and violated personal privacy under the guise of homeland security, spilled the blood of tens of thousands, depleted our treasury...nothing to see here folks, just move right along. 

Somewhere on Mars....

From the incomparable Driftglass, a post about the Mars Rover, which he points out is "Operating 3,000% beyond design specification...And run by the Evil Gummint."

I, for one, am always inspired by our efforts in space and feel it's shortsighted to cut back. 

Back to Driftglass, who feels the same:

Scientists directing NASA’s Mars Opportunity rover gushed with excitement as they announced that the aging robot has discovered a rock with a composition unlike anything previously explored on the Red Planet’s surface – since she landed on the exotic Martian plains 7.5 years ago – and which offers indications that liquid water might have percolated or flowed at this spot billions of years ago.

Barely three weeks ago Opportunity arrived at the rim of the gigantic 14 mile ( 22 km) wide crater named Endeavour after an epic multi-year trek, and for the team its literally been like a 2nd landing on Mars – and the equivalent of the birth of a whole new mission of exploration at an entirely ‘new’ landing site.

This is what Hope actually looks like: a small helpmate to mankind made by our species with love and exquisite precision, slowing ambling across the surface of an ancient world, enduring so far beyond anyone's wildest dreams as to border on miraculous, and sending back dispatches from the Final Frontier in silent streams of 1s and 0s.

Remind me again how tax cuts and Creationism were responsible for landing this tireless emissary of the human race on Mars?

 I continue to think that something from space--an asteroid perhaps, or actual proof of other life--is about the only thing that has any possibility of altering our headlong rush to destroy this planet and ourselves along with it.

 

Cats in Art: The Effects of Intemperance (Steen)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi. 
Last week's post was Jan Steen's painting of Children Teaching a Cat to  Dance, and the week before it was his Children Teaching a Cat to Read. 

Guess I'm just on a Jan Steen roll right now (I greatly admire him and his attention to detail).

Image credit Gandalf's Gallery, here. Jan Steen, The Effects of Intemperance, c. 1663-1665, oil on wood, 76 cm x 106.5 cm.  I am unsure about where this particular work is held. From Gandalf's description:

The woman slumped on the left, whose purse is being picked by a child on the extreme left, is sleeping off the effects of alcohol. As in many other paintings by Steen, it is the foolishness of their elders that encourages the children to misbehave. Here the child throwing roses to the pig illustrates a popular saying about foolish behaviour (to throw roses before swine). In the background an old man is seducing a young girl, another of the pitfalls of alcohol. As in many of Steen's paintings the coarse subject is in sharp contrast to the refined rendering of the various textures of the objects on the floor and the shimmering fabrics.

Oh, and in the center right a cat is being spoiled...just like things are meant to be.

Looking Back, With Regret

Richard Cohen, columnist for the Washington Post, looks back with regret, in a 6 Sep 2011 post called The Longest Day.  The opening quote is from one of my all-time favorite books.

The teacher stands before a class of young men. He is flanked by open windows. A military parade passes outside the school, and martial music fills the classroom. The teacher, Mr. Kantorek, is exhorting his students to enlist. "I believe it will be a quick war," he says, "and there will be few losses." It is 1914, the war lasted four years, and the losses were staggering. This is how the movie "All Quiet on the Western Front" begins. So did Sept. 11, 2001.

Now it is 10 years later, and the war is not over. We fight still in Afghanistan and Iraq, wars now without purpose or, in the case of Iraq, reason. Like those students, we got high on war fever and marched off led by men - a president and his vice president - at least as incompetent as the German kaiser or, on the other side, that gaggle of statesmen and field marshals who allowed Europe to be convulsed by a war whose effects are still being felt.

The passage of time blurred its purpose, and so we fight, as Hannibal did in Italy, because we can't think of what else to do. This is an odd reason to die.

It seems we have become habituated to war. It's the new normal for anybody under the age of about 15 or so--a state of perennial war is all they now know.

 

The Best Feeling in the World…and Ultrarunning

I’m talking about how one feels during a race...specifically the time when you realize that you will finish.  Maybe for a 50K the issue of just plain finishing is not all that important a question for most, but in a hundred miler, the issue could certainly in doubt.

So, I’ve read race reports from 100 milers who pointed to a realization in the race that they could walk it in and still finish under the time limit.  For example, suppose you make it to 80 miles in 22 hours, and you are still capable of walking 3 mph.  So simple math (the only kind you can do in your head at mile 80) tells you that even if you can no longer run, you could walk and still come in under 30 hours.

There are other thresholds along those same lines, say 90 miles in 25 hours and you can walk 2 mph.  You get the idea.

But for me, the salient milestone is what I affectionately call “The Land of Single Digits Remaining,” and it works regardless of ultra race distance. Whenever I come to the point that there is less than 10 miles to go, I heave a mighty internal sigh of relief.  I KNOW that I could practically crawl 10 miles if I had to.  The remaining 10 miles tick off like clockwork and the finish line comes into view, and another memory has been made.