Category: gmoses

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch / OpEd News / Dissident Voice

I was fifty five percent done with my download of America’s Army, the game you can get for free on the internet (or in CD format from your Army recruiter if you don’t have broadband, kid) when notice came down an anti-war list that the Army Reserve is, according to a leaked memo, “rapidly degenerating into a ‘broken force.’” Since memos are to be taken seriously when leaked the day before Congress convenes, I’ve little choice right now but to toggle between my Army made Army game and this Army induced article, which is good preparation, don’t you think for the all-Army future that is bringing purpose and clarity to your muddled life and mine.

The author of the (ahem) leaked memo, James Helmly, is no whiner, having worked his way up from Vietnam-era Private to three-star General and Chief of Army Reserves. In Sept. of 2003 he was quoted in USA Today saying that the Army Reserve is now on “a war footing” and needs to enter full war mode. In fact, he seems to have a pretty clear idea about how Congress can help him fix his ‘broken force,’ according to testimony that he gave to the House Armed Services Committee on March 31, posted at globalsecurity.org. But before we get started on that long, boring agenda for readiness among our children’s children, including perpetual rotation into combat, please start your own download of America’s Army so that you too can begin to acclimatize yourself to the appropriate mood. Meanwhile, please excuse me as I unzip my file.

In a footnote to his Congressional testimony, it appears that James Helmly makes a note to himself to reduce the use of acronyms, “which Congress hates.” Actually, Congress only hates the acronyms it does not use on a regular basis. Some acronyms, like PATRIOT Act, Congress simply loves to speak and hear, even if nobody knows what PATRIOT stands for anymore, the acronym or the word. So Helmly need not give up all acronyms when speaking to Congress, and I like the one he keeps, OPTEMPO. I like OPTEMPO for two reasons, first it does seem to compress the idea of the speed of war, conveying the impression that operational tempo can be conducted at a more rapid flick of the Commander-in-Chief’s wand. As an acronym it conveys an intent to adjust the velocity of things.

The second reason why I like the acronym OPTEMPO is because I find it only three words removed from “statutory” in Gen. Helmly’s testimony to Congress, where he seems to say that a new OPTEMPO for the Army Reserves will require new laws. Since his concerns about what will happen if Congress does not follow his advice have been recently (oops) leaked, we might want to revisit a full paragraph from his March testimony:

Changing the way we employ Soldiers starts with changing the way we prepare for calls to active duty. The current process is to alert a unit for calls to active duty, conduct administrative readiness preparations at home station, and then send the unit to the mobilization station for further administrative and logistical preparedness processing and to train for deployment. This alert-train-deploy process, while successful in Desert Shield/Desert Storm, today inhibits responsiveness. By changing to a train-mob-deploy model, and dealing with administrative and logistical requirements prior to active duty, we will reduce the time needed to bring units to a campaign quality level needed for operations. This will require us to resource more training events at home station through the use of devices, simulators and simulations. As you would expect, this shift in paradigms will increase pre-call-to-active-duty OPTEMPO beyond the current statutory level and will require greater effort and resources to achieve. We are confident that the increased costs will pay significant dividends in terms of readiness and deployability.

You can read the rest of the testimony for yourself, but it looks to me like Gen. Helmly wants to see a beefed up and “rotating” Army Reserve in which soldiers go active on a four or five year rotation. They can work at home, go active, and then rotate back home in what Helmly calls the “train-mob-deploy” model, or what we might better call Bush’s answer to the New Deal. For Helmly, the Army Reserve will need to rely less and less on folks coming out of the Army, more and more on new kids gearing up for their first Army experience. This is handy timing, because older soldiers aren’t coming back to reserves like they used to.

In the new order of things, the Army reservist’s “home station” will be equipped with “devices, simulators and simulations.” Excuse me again, while I click the next button on my InstallShield wizard for America’s Army (these Army downloads are sharp, I gotta say). After clicking everything that says I agree (who knows what we’ll be agreeing to in the future?) the wizard tells me my name and asks me to fill in my organization. Peacefile should do nicely. Install this for anyone on the computer? Why not. Click install. This may take several minutes. Okay, back to OPTEMPO.

OPTEMPO pertains to what Gen. Helmly calls “pre-call-to-active-duty.” In order to provide for the American Army more “predictable and sustainable rotations” of freshly groomed soldiers, Helmly needs good pay and benefits. He needs an advertising budget. He needs support services for families, new computers, and a batch of new contractors who can help secure bases, train leaders, and plan exercises.

“This global war on terrorism, as our president has described, is a long-term campaign of inestimable duration, fought in many different places around the world,” concludes Gen. Helmly’s March testimony. In order to give the President what he needs, Helmly has a pretty clear idea about what Congress needs to do next.

On my home computer, the America’s Army installshield is asking me do I want to install GameSpy Arcade? “GameSpy Arcade is the fast, free way to find games and opponents,” says my nifty dialogue box. “Join millions of other players just like yourself!” I like that exclamation point that follows “other players just like yourself!” I’m going to remember how enthusiastic folks get about that phrase the next time someone calls me a commie because I think equality would be enjoyable, you know, where millions would be just like myself, etc., and we could play these games together more often. “Would you like to install GameSpy Arcade?” Click yes. Oh wow, look at this. Click yes, yes, yes.

What’s cool about GameSpy Arcade, says the screen now in front of me, is that it offers “cheat free servers.” This idea is appealing, because the next time I get my ass kicked online playing WarCraft, I would like to know that it wasn’t because of cheat codes. So okay, sign me up for another download. But I do wonder how GameSpy got itself bundled into the Army install shield. Maybe I could get some help from the info hacks on this. Does the Army take bids for little perks like this? The “wise” wizard also offers SeeMePlayMe and Xfire, both of them service providers that will take your credit card number right away. At last, when I start up the game finally, it confines my cursor inside the military frame, no more toggling here. Either play America’s Army or don’t.

As I roll the credits for America’s Army, looking for the music composer, I think about the creative and strategic genius that is being put to work here with tax dollars that have been borrowed from our children’s children. Free war games all around, in preparation for a future of interminable strike forces and routine rotations into and out of combat. Here is the new American system, ever ready for the next little war in the next little country. Boot up America, your Army is waiting, and your ship of state is puffing hard, damn the leaks and full speed ahead. Click yes to play.

LINKS

Helmly Memo Leaks
http://blog.democrats.com/node/2347

OPTEMPO
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Aug1999/n08181999_9908181.html

Helmly Calls for Reserve War Mode—USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-09-15-reserves-chief_x.htM

Helmly Testimony
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/2004_hr/04-03-31helmly.htm

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch

My New Year’s resolution is to be more reliable than the New York Times, not simply on par with its mea culpas. But more importantly, I want to live a life worthy of the transparent universe, a world in which every human error will be transcribed, imprinted, and preserved on a Justice Department chip.

It was Yoshie Furuhashi who got me thinking about the transparent universe. Her exquisite weblog treatment of Wal-Mart included a tiny detail about dust-sized inventory chips that will be scattered over everything in the Wal-Mart distribution chain. At first the little bugs will be readable from close range, but later on, who knows? We may be able to scan them from satellite. Thanks to these dust-chips of inventory and our new satellite capabilities, we will soon be able to report planetary inventory. Every roll of toilet paper, yes, and every kilo of hash will be scrupulously reported from planting time to final flush.

So what are we going to do with Wal-Mart’s inventoried planet? Why, of course, we are going to do just what Karl Marx said to do. We’re going to democratize it and put it to work for the workers. After the revolution, there won’t be any room for Fox News on cable, because the bandwidth will be taken over by really important information, like where is the toilet paper kept, where is it being made, and which way does it travel across the Pacific Ocean, east or west?

Then we’re going to have a digital channel for income inventory, where you can see how much everybody in the world gets paid this week. Everyone who is underpaid will be linked to an employer who will then be called into the Justice Department for an explanation. Like I said, no error will be forgotten. And everyone who is overpaid (bad news for North America) will be balanced by computerized assessment, linked preferably to someone belonging to a class of people that the violator has explicitly disparaged. Ann Coulter’s capital gains, for example, will be transferred to Islamic schools. My excess earnings will go to ex-Fox pensioners such as Ann Coulter, etc.

It was A. Philip Randolph, the great radical leader of train porters and civil rights, who said that income transparency would solve the problem of democracy overnight (I read it somewhere at the Schomburg). So please stay tuned for channel Cayman-Geneva, where the holdings of all numbered accounts will finally be revealed. No more Kudlow and Cramer BS about how to be Bull-headed all the time, we’re going to have a financial channel that actually shows you where the money is, including Kudlow’s and Cramer’s.

Tracking all the kilos of pot, heroin, hash, and cocaine will also usher in a great age of freedom when it is seen who really gets most of the good stuff and all of the money. This information will also be kept on chips at the Justice Department to control for hoarding and profiteering. Bust the trusts, not the people, that’s what the newly-minted DEA badges will say. According to my NORML newsletter this week, the combined law enforcement authorities of the USA busted three quarters of a million people for pot last year. That’s 750,000 people kicked around by the state for what? Believe me, when the narco-trade goes public, that nonsense will stop.

What else? Land. Real Estate holdings. Donald Trump, you’re fired. All your luxury-schmuxury condos will be given out on the basis of who puts in the most hours for the shittiest pay. Hot, hot water, sleep-number beds, and remote-control fireplaces given out to every gal working the counter at Rite-Aid. But if you can handle the task, Donald, you could be hired for that, too. And, of course, you’d have a claim on all the excess income that I earn from say, my profits at CounterPunch.

Finally, these inventoried motion detectors are going to be good news for the sexual revolution. That sound you hear is all the hypocrisy of starched Christianity going pop. Look who’s doing it with whom. My word. And all these years, we let them guilt whip us? No more. You just know the masturbation channel is going to be a total mess.

Workers of the world, hang in there. The difference between those who point and those who get pointed at is rapidly approaching a curve. The rest of you, have a Happy New Year anyway.

DISCLAIMER: Any reference to workers revolution is intended for entertainment purposes only, and is not to be confused with inciting jihad. Apologies also to Donald Trump for naming him in the same breath with Ann Coulter. No similarities in character are intended to be imputed from such proximities of prose. The difference between the two of you is huge. Finally, to Keith Stroup, this was supposed to be a kind of thank you note for your work, but somehow I wandered off topic. Mea culpa, Keith. Enjoy.

The following speech act represents very well what counts for cool in the USA today:

“To The People Of Islam:
Just think: If we’d invaded your countries, killed your leaders and converted you to Christianity
YOU’D ALL BE OPENING CHRISTMAS PRESENTS RIGHT ABOUT NOW!
Merry Christmas”
Pasted from the Ann Coulter Homepage
anncoulter.com
Dec. 30, 2004

NOTE: Will the State Dept. consider this “inciting.” Designate anncoulter.com a terrorist org. Will Fox, etal. refuse to broadcast her opinions via satellite. Or will the double standard apply: Crusade sells, jihad incites. (No question marks needed for rhetorical questions.) –gm

From a European reader who wishes to remain anonymous:

Just spent a few boring hours going through the forum of the newspaper “Le Monde” to figure out what was the fuss about Al-Manar TV, not pretty reading, it seems like the anti-anti-Israel is really gaining ground, but anti-Israel (or anti-Zionism or plain anti-colonialism) are also closing the gap on the cultural (or for the believer racial) issue, finally claiming their Semitic identity.

Seems that the protocol of Zion are the problem indeed (since it is forbidden to publish them /sell them and read them it is difficult to figure out if they are only ridiculous or actually a problem) but one book should definitely be taken out and burnt: “The old testament” inciting hatred against most of the non-Jewish middle east, including, in the children book version against Egyptian, etc…… and promoting genocide (of the Amalek), philistines (a minister of the church reminded us that they still exist today and are called Palestinians!).

Other interesting facts collected reading “Le Monde”: 3 separate incident of anti-Jewish acts actually proven not to have been such, first one arson of a Jewish centre for which some Arab kids were actually sent to prison was in fact a accidental fire (caused with cigarettes by the security guard), the infamous non Jewish girl, not attacked by anti-Semite and lastly another arson of a Jewish building committed by a (Jewish) employee, but initially blamed by the entire political class and Israeli establishment, proof that Jews are not safe in France (who is safe or not safe anywhere?).

Occasionally “Le Monde” will remind us that most anti-Muslim act (including police brutality versus teen-ager and act committed by Jewish “terrorist” organization BETAR) are not worth publishing because they are too common, maybe one remembers in “tolerant” Holland the murder of a Muslim family (children rescued by a neighbour) by another nice European. Guess Michael Neumann published a few articles in Counterpunch along that line.

Normally I suspect that censorship is stupid and counterproductive but coupled with the right type of propaganda it is really frightening. I remember last year, the censorship of Al- Jazeera (still not allowed in Irak) and taking down Yellowtimes.org for showing pictures of dead Irakis and a link to Al- Jazeera to get more information. And more recently taking down Indymedia (not very clear where it came from and why exactly).

Sad thing is most are not even aware of the existence of Al-Manar TV and they just have in the periphery of their mind the idea that it is a terrorist organization successfully brought down by joint US_FRANCE operation, for others at least we can ask question about what is going on and may be why some people in Lebanon do not have our vision of Israel/garden of Eden, we can even wonder why exactly we have this ridiculous crusade against Islam (in the name of feminism???) we might even try to discover what Islam is about and why not that there are plenty of other religions practiced on this planet (the one with the Christmas tree, by the way, is definitely not christian) including centuries old Chinese atheism!

Happy New Year

PS: Sorry I could not resist writing all this after reading your second piece on the subject!