humanz

The developing scenario between Prince Harry, the media, and the Ministry of Defense surrounding the Prince’s military service in Afghanistan leaves me feeling cold and cynical. As a former military officer, I can identify with and understand what Prince Harry must feel with respect to his duty and service in Afghanistan.

A bond develops between an officer and the other officers and troops around him and that bond becomes the basis for trust and teamwork. This trust leads to effectiveness and survivability in a combat zone. For the MOD to bring Harry home prematurely disrupts that trust and causes those left behind to reorganize and deal with their missing team mate, and in effect reduces their effectiveness and thus, their survivability.

I am still not sure what really happened here, but what appears to have happened is quite disturbing indeed. The MOD conspired with the media to keep secret Harry’s deployment to Helmand province. The media kept its end of the bargain as long as the secret remained unpublished, but once it broke online, they all rushed in and acted as if the act of keeping quiet was repulsive to them. Jon Snow, of Channel 4 News, even went so far as to thank Matt Drudge for letting the cat out of the bag because he felt his journalistic integrity was being corrupted daily by the silence.

The MOD, then reacted in the worst way possible by bringing Harry home and destroying his credibility among his brothers in arms. Not only that, and perhaps most significantly, they implied, by so doing, that his life was that much more important than the lives of everyone else they didn’t bring home. Furthermore, the media and the MOD then tried to paint a picture of Harry as a hero. While I feel Harry has acted in good faith and truly sought to deploy with his unit to serve as others are in the region, this act is no more or less heroic than that of every other man and woman who deploys and continues to serve daily in Afghanistan, Iraq, and any other combat zone in which one’s life can be taken in an instant.

It is a sad statement to make in these dark times that what amounts to a token deployment in Afghanistan makes Harry a hero just because he is a royal. I am sure he knows how utterly silly this sounds and even now is in the process of trying to keep the media and the MOD from making him look bad in the process.

The information provided by www.wikileaks.org about a Cayman Island bank seems to have hit too close to home. Bank Julius Baer sought an injunction to delete the DNS records at the site’s registrar; California based Dynadot. The Bush appointed judge presided over an emergency ex-parte hearing and granted the request, which seems to have been immediately executed by Dynadot. Fortunately for truth seekers, the site can be seen at www.wikileaks.be. Go read the story, it is very interesting, and as they say, the truth is often stranger than fiction.

Gore Vidal weighs in on CNN’s dismissal of Rep. Dennis Kucinich from the Iowa Democratic Candidate debate. The media in the US are taking (and being given) too much power. Rather than present you with the facts and your options, they give you your opinion. Come on America, wake up and smell the coffee!

I believe in freedom of speech… as long it doesn’t hurt innocent people. It seems that Pat Robertson has crossed that line, yet again. In another example of misusing his “bully pulpit”, Robertson has accused Muslims of planning world domination. The BBC has the story here.

This is the same “man of God” that called for the assassination of a duly elected head of state (Hugo Chavez) and claimed that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was struck down by divine intervention for having withdrawn from Gaza. In each case he has apologized afterwards, but the man is clearly laboring under some seriously questionable delusions.

I think it is time to put ol’ Pat out to pasture.