Imagine a lion, four feet away from you; you went around a bush somewhere in Africa and came right on a lion standing over his kill.
He's Pissed. He's really angry, and you notice a couple of females coming up out of the scrub.
He opens his mouth; his huge fangs are dripping a mixture of blood and saliva. You can smell his breath, and it's not just UNPRETTY...
HE ROARS!!!!!
I haven't got it together to post pictures, I'm just too lazy, and at this stage, upset. I thought that this was a serious site. Now I'm starting to wonder.
I hope that I was right... We'll see. You might want to follow me over the fold.
Yes, this is a bit of a rant; but bear with me, because I do think that peace is important.
I stop by here almost every day. I guess you could call me an addict. I used to have another name here, not that I joined very early, but I consider myself as someone who could profitably be listened to. I've posted good diaries, and rants, and bullshit; I've had enough comments recommended that I became a 'Trusted User'. Boy, was I important! I got over that and lost my TU status; I just don't have the time to play the game. I've gotten a few recommends, even had diaries rescued, and realized that if you had some sort of a catchy title, maybe you could stop the seemingly inexorable march of a diary to oblivion; and you could even get to the rec list for stuff that while (somewhat) funny was not pertinent to the situation at hand, just for the ol' backslappin' "Hey Joe How ya Doin'" type of bullshit, IF you had a catchy title.
I feel that the essence of THIS diary is VERY important. More important than much of the stuff that goes on here. VITALLY important for all of us.
There's a painting that they do in Tibet that shows "The wheel of Life".
Way down at the bottom of the wheel, in a little section of the painting, there's a man with an arrow in his eye.
An ARROW In His EYE!!!!!!
What this means is:
"Hey! Wake up! There's a situation that you have to deal with RIGHT NOW!!!!"
The situation that we all have to deal with RIGHT NOW is WAR.
WAR. Roll the word around on your tongue a bit; think about the little girl that saw her family get shot, in Iraq; By The US army. That photo was posted here, a few years ago, and I've never forgotten it. To me the absolutely SHITTY thing that is war is summarized in that picture, in the frozen scream, the absolute horror of that little girl as she realizes that her family is dead, shredded by machine-gun fire.
I do get daily reminders too; when I see a veteran living in the street, and there's more than a few, I remember that:
U.S. veterans face a greater chance of becoming homeless than the general population, say experts. According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, a study released in 1999 found that while veterans count for 9 percent of the entire population, they are nearly 23 percent of the homeless population and 33 percent of the adult male homeless population.
I'm a veteran; I've mentioned that before, here. I enlisted in '63, and was stationed in Germany, as a missile tech.
As soon as I got out, in March of '66, I got a peace button.
I'm going to wear a peace symbol every day, from now on, and work for peace, until we get out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
And if you want to know a little of why I feel this way, you can check out my previous diary. Yeah, I'm making you work; Get yer lazy ass moving! And see what disappeared while people played hopscotch. Here's something that was in that diary:
In February 2009, Congressman Barney Frank, D-Mass., called for a reduction in the defense budget: "The math is compelling: if we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy. I am working with a variety of thoughtful analysts to show how we can make very substantial cuts in the military budget without in any way diminishing the security we need...[American] well-being is far more endangered by a proposal for substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other important domestic areas than it would be by canceling weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we are likely to face."
I'll leave you with this:
There is NO military solution to a social problem. None. Ever. Unless you kill EVERY ONE of 'the enemy', there'll always be someone who hates enough to come back. And you CAN'T kill them all, because WAR HAS CHANGED.
WAR HAS CHANGED. Radically. The whole nature of conflict has changed, and all the tanks and planes and missiles and soldiers will not defeat this particular enemy. So Ike was right; we have been screwed by the military-industrial-(And now -corporate) complex.
And until we realize, individually, as a country, and as a world, that there really are Merchants Of Death, and that they are at this moment the only totally recession-proof business; and that the biggest M.O.D. is Our Nation, The Good Ol' You Ess Of A, and that WE made this and WE have to change, nothing will happen to put a stop to this ripoff, this horrible, shitty, fucked-up, bad, every-kind-of-bad nightmare.
What can we do about it? What can we do about something that has screwed us out of countless lives, countless resources, countless man- and woman-hours, Incredible amounts of money, (Enough to finance Health care, alternative energy, total revamping of infrastructure, and many other 'socialized' programs three times over, and still have enough for a cogent national defense) not to mention the good will of the rest of the world, squandered? How can we end this nightmare?
We can wake up. We have to, in the words of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, "Awaken the sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve".
Yes, Kossacks; It's US. We are the ones that have to bring about a change.
And as I said in yesterday's diary...
Yes We Can. And we will.
And you better recommend this f*$%#@*g diary... or I'll sic the pootie on you.