perfidy

The Ministry has become belatedly aware that it has been in operation for just a smidge over four years. It is the tradition among "bloggers" to celebrate annually the day when their blog took its first tremulous steps into the internets. The Ministry is no slouch in the tradition department, maintaining in its mountain retreats, coastal fortresses (and indeed in Texan swamps) a wide variety of traditions. Most of these are not fit for publication, and are the subject of terrified whispers amongst our various neighbors.

Therefore, let it be known that two days ago, the 11th of March in the year of our lord Two Thousand and Seven, was the fourth blogoversary of the Ministry of Minor Perfidy. Here, in all its profound and numinous glory, is our first post, entitled, "First Post." Take stroll through our early work, you will find that we quickly settled into our pattern of random political commentary surrounded by ephemera and silliness.

Naked Villainy has an all-new, completely redesigned site that, mysteriously, looks exactly like the old one. Though it was irritating seeing the blank screen over the weekend when I wanted to see if he'd commented on the Civil War post...

The funny thing about this result is that I just can't see well enough to hit much beyond 250m consistently. Even 300m is a little, um, hit or miss, and I never qualified Expert because of it. I fired an SVD once, and was hitting at 500m+ with no optics, but still I doubt that I would ever be capable of real reach-out-and-touch-you shots that real snipers can make. And my personal safety equipment doesn't include far shooters. I do have a Chicom SKS, but even with its robust round I wouldn't trust it much beyond 200, 250m and anyway it's in rough shape. Instead I rely on close-in stuff. Well, it's all about the threat you preceive you're facing. For me, it's zombies, and I'm putting my stock in point defense and escape.

"You scored as Sniper Rifle. You like sharpshooting. Stealth, accuracy and range are your best friends. So you a need sniper rifle (if you don't already have one)."
 

This cow and this cow should not be allowed to meet and breed.

Or so sez Carston Stormer in his second installment in Die Welt. Apparently he is touring Iraq with American forces and writing about these half crazy warriors, their war movie existence, and "extinct" cities like Fallujah. At times the trip really seems to be a vehicle for Stormer to write about himself, but that's really nothing unusual in modern journalism is it?

The short version of the article is that he was waiting for a helicopter by himself, reading a book. After a bit a soldier walks up, seemingly to wait for the same ride, says "God bless you", and sits on the ground next to him. Hilarity ensues.

In my sole interaction in a quasi-journalistic fashion with Special Forces, they were nothing but helpful and professional. Now, I was working for a guy who was there at the invitation of unit leadership. But I think that's nominally beside the point. The fact that Stormer's understanding of SF lies somewhere between a war movie and mythology is enough for you to understand his limitations.

My translation below the fold. For a cleaner version consult with NDR or your local native speaker.

Jesus and the Special Forces

It is said that soldiers of the Special Forces shoot first and ask questions later- which is usually unnecessary by that point. Journalists to these men are “scum”.

Have you ever seen an American war movie? Black Hawk Down or Jarhead? If you haven’t, it’s really not so bad. You see bold men, with full beards and weatherbeaten faces, burnt brown, without uniforms but heavily armed. That is the Special Forces. They jump with precision behind enemy lines, riding on horseback through the desert, a saddlebag stuffed full of dollar bills. So soll schon manch ein Kriegsfürst umgestimmt worden sein (you’re on your own with this turn of phrase, sorry).

In Germany the Special Forces are called the KSK (Kommando Special Kräfte). No one knows exactly what they do, everything is secret. It is said that they shoot first and ask questions later- which by then is usually not necessary. It’s best if one treats it like buffalo- without looking it in the eyes. You might try to photograph them once; at best you’ll lose your camera.

The other day I was sitting on the airfield in Baghdad, waiting for a helicopter and reading Axel Hacke. The sun shone, a nice winter day in Iraq. I was sporting a beard. And I was burnt brown, since when I was home in Germany I took a couple sessions in a tanning bed- the better to hold my endorphin levels (?) in balance on gray winter days. But otherwise, I had nothing in common with members of a Special Forces unit. So anyway that was my look- fatigue pants, bulletproof vest, and smoking a Camel.

After a while a soldier came over and planted himself next to me in the gravel. “God bless you”, he said. I nodded and, unsolicited, he told me his life story.

That he was depressed after returning from the the first Gulf War. That he never again wanted anything to do with war. So he got out of the Army. Stupidly he took to drinking, and it cost him his wife. One night Jesus appeared to him in a dream, two weeks after the United States & co marched into Iraq.

“Rejoin the Army, my son”, Jesus said. “Go to Iraq and convert the unbelievers to the True Faith. That is your mission.” He listened. “Jesus was my rescue.” But He had concealed that Muslims make unwilling converts. That’s why you have to kill so many of the guys, said the soldier. It’s really pretty frustrating- but it’s the only way. Then he asked what I did for the Army- Special Forces? Private security?

Journalists are “scum”

“What? No. Journalist.”

“Uups.”

He didn’t run away, but he didn’t say anything more to me, either. Just took another quick drag on his cigarette. A few moments later another guy sat near us. Beard, khaki pants, M-4 machinegun. And he said “Buddy” to me. He too immediately began to chat about his life. The fact that I was trying to read a book was of no interest to either of them.

He said, “I was in the Special Forces for a time.”

“Sir...“, said the one to whom Jesus had appeared, to the other. “Sir...“ No reaction.

It’s a shame that I’m too old for that sort of work now, the bearded one continued. The hip, he said, still has shrapnel in it. Souvenir from Afghanistan. That’s why he’s now with a private security firm. Convoy security, that kind of thing. “Good money, very good money.“

“Sir!“, quacked the other one next to me, this time emphatically. “Sir!“ No reaction.
Then he told me a good deal of the funny and secret details of the hunt for terrorists behind enemy lines.

“So,” he asked me, “What’s your mission in Iraq, buddy? Special Forces? Marines?“

“Ahhh…”, I said.

„Siiiirrrr, now listen up“, said the first one. „That is a J-o-u-r-n-a-l-i-s-t.“

Journalists are sort of the natural enemy of the Special Forces. Or is it the other way around?

Silence.

“Scum,” he said, the one who’d called me “Buddy”, and both men disappeared.

The whole thing was a little unpleasant, and in the whole time I had hardly said a word.

Rocket Jones totally breaks character and links to something relating to rockets instead of his usual diet of never-ending reviews of very, very bad movies. This one is an interesting one - on how economy of scale could make even disposable rockets reasonably affordable. Most of the skullsweat invested in lowering the per-pound-cost to orbit focuses on building reusable vehicles, or in some way using advanced technology to duck the inherent limits imposed by the rocket equation. (Or, the think up crazy shit like using atom bombs or Indian rope tricks.) This guy points out that if we just build rockets in job lots of thousands, they'll be cheaper. I find it hard to find any flaw in what he's saying, especially since our entire economy is based in large part on that very concept. The funding proposal he ends his article with is in line with my own thinking - the key point being that the chicken/egg dilemma is the real stumbling block in the development of affordable space travel. I've said before that a guaranteed government contract for ten launch vehicles of a given level of performance would result in advances pretty darn quick. His idea has the advantage of supporting effectively any launch technology - by aiming at launches, rather than vehicles. A cheap enough disposable rocket could meet the requirements as well as a more advanced reusable, and would be an easier technological target - and would, in the meantime, provide the launch market that everyone insists is there, waiting for launch costs to drop sufficiently. That alone, and certainly in addition to government launch contracts, would get the ball moving.

And all for less than the cost of a single shuttle launch...

You may think that there is no connection between Apple's OS X operating system and German armored vehicles. You would be wrong. I knew there had to be a real reason I wanted a Mac, and not just effete aesthetics.

People who know me well know that my political views are a hybrid - I'm incredibly socially liberal (in fact I'm buying heroin from a gay BDSM enthusiast right now while putting the finishing touches on my homemade beer sales business) but economically variable.

You see, I’m a knee-jerk fiscal liberal. How can it possibly be that there are limits to what the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world (and how good it feels to write that, ya know!) can accomplish? But of course, this lovely theory crashes and burns in practice. I would love, in an ideal world, for our government to handle feeding the poor and clothing the naked and fighting all the good wars and making peace in all the bad ones, but here in the real world, the list of low points in government competence just in recent years is longer than King Kong’s member and growing. Therefore all available evidence suggests that, no matter what my candyland fantasies are, the government is really bad at doing anything even slightly more important than deciding on which Thursday Thanksgiving should fall.

Let me share with you a story I heard recently. It’s a funny story, if by funny you mean “sad,” and it’s a perfect parable for why our government is not to be trusted under any circumstances.

You see, the small seaside town I live in is home to a National Park Service historical site, which as I’m sure you’re all aware means there’s some land, a brown building, and some signs around telling people what it’s all about. As far as parks go there’s a lot of cool stuff to draw on, including a fullsize working replica of a cargo ship from the great age of sail, numerous historic homes, and the good (?) luck to have been the site of a major event in early American history that still brings in tourists by the busload.

But for all the potential, the tours and interpretation at this park (“interpretation” in the public history sense of ‘helping people understand what they’re looking at and why it matters’) are kind of for shit, and I’ve always wondered why.

Back in the 1980s, my small seaside town was not as gentrified as it currently is, and very close to downtown there existed some pockets of serious sketchiness. At that time, the lead protection ranger (the guys with guns) at the Park was a guy whose name I’ll say was Duke. Duke’s job was to enforce the laws of the USA and the Commonwealth on the grounds of the park and in all the adjacent buildings it owned. He had a team of armed rangers who helped him with this important mandate.

One day, the local police force turned up in great numbers to a house owned by the National Park Service, and proceeded to invade the upstairs apartment, which was rented out to civilian tenants. It turned out that this raid was the culmination of a three-year investigation into a major drug trafficking ring operated out of that apartment, which I remind you was owned by the United States of America. Among the parties convicted of felonies were two of the park’s protection rangers, who had participated in drug transactions while armed, on duty, in the employ of the Federal government, on the grounds of the very park they were being paid to protect.

Duke was taken entirely by surprise by the raid; nobody had thought to tell him. It soon emerged that this was deliberate – the drug activity had gone on for so long, and so blatantly, that the local police were convinced that he was either in on it or spectacularly, stupendously, incompetent.

This being the US Government, Duke was not fired from his job for being stupendously incompetent at doing it. Instead, he was placed on a brief administrative leave and then moved to another department. That’s right… Duke, a dangerously incompetent law enforcement officer whose training was nonetheless in the area of law enforcement, was put in charge of the Interpretation department, with the historians and tour guides, where he remains to this day. That is why the tours for the most part suck at the National Park in my small seaside town.

In another more recent case, it took four years for the National Park Service to terminate the employment of a ranger at the same park who was convicted on child porn charges, including, I believe, some based on evidence found on his work computer.

So, as I prepare my 1040s this year, I thank the deity of my choice (“none of the above”) that the business of running our country is in good hands. Clearly the US Government is using my little National Park site as a holding cell for all the morons and misfits, the drain circlers and mouthbreathers, the nebbishes and ne’er-do-wells, who they accidentally gave jobs to and now feel too sorry for to fire. With all of them here, everyone else can go about the business of managing our nations’ affairs with the intelligence, decency, and wisdom that such weighty matters deserve.

Clearly.

Comic book hero Captain America has been killed off by his corporate masters. With a sniper bullet. From my title, please don't think that I am speaking ill of Captain America. Cap was always, after Batman, one of my favorite comic book heroes. I think that putting him down in this manner is cheap. It's Captain America, fer chrissakes. Cap should have gone down, if at all, in a blaze of glory saving us from a certain doom. Martyrdom, if anything. Heroic sacrifice. Not a pot shot on the streets.

Perhaps someday, Sports magazines will report on sports, and not offer fatuous environmental pap.