What a surprise, the Repugs and McSame want to water down a bill that our troops so much deserve especially those who were forced to fight an unnecessary war. Here is a way to try to prevent one more Repug insult to the American people and another is to throw out as many of the Repugs as we can in November.

http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1138/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=2146

RMP, my point is that anointing Petraeus means something far more ominous than simply rewarding a Schweik. It means that we -- the Imperialists among us, at least -- fully intend to fight these resource and population control wars of the future, forever if necessary. The police become the military, the military become the police. The dividing line between domestic and foreign policy is erased as control over the future comes to be understood by those in power increasingly as an issue of class rather than of nationality.

Petraeus and others like him are the cornerstone. Whether or not the rest of the edifice gets built is another question, but we can already see in the Baghdad embassy the plan of its future outposts, here as well as overseas.

It's called perception management.

As McLuhan put it:

The content of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.

The wonder is why someone as smart as Brown and Sesno appear so clueless about the cognitive aspects of their own medium.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain...

Agree with your main point. I only see Petraeus as a vehicle for the military-industrial complex to find new ways to make money as the threats change. Instead of letting the complex create and shape the threats, we need to stop looking at others as threats instead of global partners.

I heard the CEO of Proctor and Gamble on Charlie Rose last night make a comment about how to solve tough, complex problems that is our only hope for the future. He said you take sharp people who know how to listen to and respect each other, put them in a room, and ask them to come up with a solution. Both at the national and international level, we have lost the skill and desire to listen and compromise. Our NIMBY culture sees problem solving as one where I will agree with it as long as I don’t have to sacrifice. If we want to solve our world problems, we all need to learn and be willing to sacrifice. That goes for our national problems as well.

Instead of seeing technology as a way to make my life easier, we should be looking at how technology can make life more fair for all. Teaching listening, fairness and compromise ought to be the number one priority in our schools and families around the world.

... my point is that anointing Petraeus means something far more ominous than simply rewarding a Schweik. It means that we -- the Imperialists among us, at least -- fully intend to fight these resource and population control wars of the future, forever if necessary. The police become the military, the military become the police. The dividing line between domestic and foreign policy is erased as control over the future comes to be understood by those in power increasingly as an issue of class rather than of nationality.
Petraeus and others like him are the cornerstone. -- William Timberman

I don't read as widely as either of you, so there are aspects of this issue that you undoubtedly have a better grasp of, but, how is Petraeus a stalking horse for this corporatist agenda? The massive compound in Baghdad that is ironically called an "embassy" -- I can see that. But why do you see Petraeus in this light?

@RMP and WT

From an article in 2004 detailing the conclusions of a secret Pentagon study on climate change and the resource wars likely to follow:

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

[...]

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver

For a critique of the article and additional info, see

http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/401-450/00401_british_blowback.html

Celiacs will. And people like me, who though we are not technically celiacs, still cannot eat wheat.

Last estimate I heard projected something like one in every 144 people (in the U.S.) probably have celiac.

I guess a rice shortage will certainly have the desired winnowing effect... given that a celiac's life-expectancy is normal, as long as they follow a gluten-free diet.

http://www.celiac.com/articles/639/1/10th-International-Conference-on
-Celiac-Disease-Research-Yields-New-Findings-on-Prevalence-Screening
-and-Celiac-Related-Conditions-by-Michelle-Melin-Rogovin/Page1.html

And for those whose diets rely almost entirely on rice... well...

I was thinking it might be a good idea to spend more time at "Free Rice," since it would be the humane thing to do, and might enhance our vocabularies, as well.

http://freerice.com/