What Are Little Boys Made Of?

By Judith Moriarty

NoahsHouse@adelphia.net

4-16-3

There's a sing-song poem that asks; what are little boys made of? Snips and snails and puppy dog tails--that's what little boys are made of. There's a part of me, forever shattered, that shall never be whole again looking upon the inhumanities-the savagery-the butchery-the slaughter of the children and youth these past few weeks of drummed infotainment war. The newest bid for ratings, as one TV commentator remarked, "This war has been a shot in the arm". Ratings-polls-animated Disney-like scenes of troop and tank manuvers. Every station has its stable of 'public relations' hirelings called "experts" in the art of war. Yes war, now elevated as today's new militarized surreal landscape,of, not melting clocks but incinerated people---hulking blackened tanks--vans and automobiles. Vehiles that all once held families-soldiers-hopes and dreams. Life. Maybe not important to many but it was to them.

Lights, camera, action; live footage shows the military kicking down an isolated farm house door ordering the terrified peasant family, the elderly grandparents, little children and parents to kneel in the dirt their hands behind their backs. I feel sick and ashamed that the power-might-and untold blessings of my country, are being utilized in the subjugation, humiliation and terror towards people we've announced such altruistic concern for. Operation Iraq Freedom resembles Operation Bloodlust-Might Makes Right.

War. The Big One--The War to End all Wars--Conflicts--Interventions. All with the usual superlative reasonings to instill moral indignation and national fervor. Stop Communism--Genocide--Freedom--Evil Incarnate. Today its regime change-pre-emptive strikes before a country develops possible nuclear capabilities and oh, yes, to free the people to happily ever after democracy. Will we someday hear the echo of a Defense Secretary Robert McNamara of the Vietnam era, decades later; "It was all a mistake". Small consolation to the 58,000 names on a weeping wall and millions of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians.

The spoils of war; the contracts awarded--the monies realized by those building not hospitals, schools, bridges, roads or housing but cluster bombs, vaporizing incendiary bombs, missiles, tanks, guns, bunker busters, micro-wave weapons, surveillance satellites, retina scans, body scanners, helicopters, drones and planes of every description. War shatters ones illusions of the human race and the ingenious methods they can create for the sole purpose of annihilating one another.

 

War today has killing from a distance. It is, 'at first' hard for a man to look into another man's eyes his same age and kill him. But war by video solves this hesitation. Our space explorations touted as serving mankind now thanks to global positioning can guide missiles ever so more accurately. These shipboard video-arcades are not splattered with the fragmented bone of a laughing little girl in her favorite purple sweater. No trauma need be suffered seeing this footless dead child being lifted from a demolished house where that morning she hurriedly put on her small jacket to run out and skip in the sun with her playmates. No Amber Alert here to warn of impending danger, won't somebody take note. Get the license plate of the bomber.

War intoxicates. It maddens and instills a primal fear. General McCaffrey one of the bleary eyed war hawks recycled from Gulf War I, and now hired on by a public relations firm, was perturbed on one program that the troops didn't have more of a killer instinct they'd have to toughen up. General McCaffrey should know, true 'expert' that he is in the incinerating of rag tag peasants exiting Kuwait after the war was called to a halt. Four hours of cluster bombs--Daisy Cutters saw a highway littered with incinerated grotesque corpses the perfume, baby formula, and diapers (their spoils) mere ashes. This,the highway of death...too awful to be shown on American TV. An official from CNN interviewed on Democracy Now stated that such scenes of carnage and civilians dead or dying are "pornographic". Meanwhile Congress busy with details made sure that menus in their dining hall filled with the aroma of baked ham-turkey-roast beef- salad bars, side dishes of numerous choices and a chocolate dripping snake bar, saw to it that menus were promptly changed to identify the new Freedom Toast and Freedom Fries. Such is the lunacy that war creates. I feel secure and represented.

The masses of people have been cunningly and cleverly pitted against one another in their own domestic slice of war. Obediently and compliantly people chose their teams, or just sat indolently uninvolved, incapable of a thought process which would have them burdened with anymore than remembering to pick up that six-pack and bucket of buffalo wings to slop down, clicking the channels in vacant mindless ever seeking, ever searching escapism. Wrestling or baseball? The choice is too tough. Meanwhile Sally Sitcom is having dry heaves and night sweats that her soaps have been interrupted by something going on somewhere else with a whole bunch of people shooting and bombing.

 

The Pentagon National News with its in-bed reporters brings the sterile 'news' of victory-heroics-rescues-memorial services-denials of "Henny Penny" over reporters reactions to a bit of looting by an oppressed people anxious to be about their new found liberating shop till you drop days. With no more risk of having one's hand chopped off for the act of stealing the mantra is, as hospitals, homes, businesses , libraries and museums are looted; "Hands don't fail me now". Thankfully someone had the foresight to surround the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Oil with tanks and troops. Records invaluable to the running of an oil empire protected from harm. No water, no food, no electricity, thousands of civilians killed or maimed, cities burning but glub, glub, glub OUR OIL is safe for this up-coming summer's yachting-escape from stress trips and excursions to Disney Land. Thank God we won.

The lap-dog media has not failed to keep the inflammatory language going of those die-hards not into war and gore labeled as; "treasonous--anti-American--Saddam loving scum---love it or leave it." Nothing too complicated, as today's attention span is programmed to a 30-60 second commercial span. Saddam, the Frankenstein that America built and lavished over the years with money-loans-military equipment-chemicals etc., is, as are all of his ilk, a sub-human mutation of the human species. To imply that those crying for sanity and peace would endorse the actions of a killer and sadist goes to show you how low the bar has been lowered in intelligence and critical sane reasoning in this nation. Most have no idea of the culture-the tribes-the various factions-the great artistry-poetry, music and gifts of the Iraqi people. To Americans, purposed and deliberate, they are portrayed as a mass of withering-towel headed-shroud dressed women, generations behind in development. With all of our technological know-how and various documentaries, very rarely has the Iraqi people in their universities, their lifestyles their creativity ever been shown. The enemy must always be demeaned and seen as other-not like us. When scenes are shown, its the subservient Iraqi waving-rushing for the rice being thrown out of the back of a truck or children grinning with the stick of gum they've been handed. A defeated-humiliated people. Nobody disputes the horrors of a Saddam and many others like him. The answer to such depravity and terror is not to visit a "Shock and Awe" blitz of incomprehensible terror night after night, all the while dropping leaflets of our concern and that we've come to save. It's like the dropping of cluster bombs and food packets in Afghanistan (in chaos by the way) in the same yellow cannisters. Children thinking the unexploded ordinance were food soon learned that these bomblets shred vegetation and children much like the back room of your local butcher shop.

Kosovo. Out of sight out of mind. Americans have Alzheimer disease when it comes to remembering the suffering of others. I still can see the little blond haired boy of about ten kneeling in the dirt of a country lane. His face contorted with anguish and incomprehension, the shredded bodies of his family nearby in an overturned farm wagon seeking escape. A ragged doll, perhaps his sisters lay face down arms outstretched. The pilot at 30,000 feet missed this scene. Who can forget the napalm burned child of Vietnam, another ingenious use of man's creativity. Iraq, the little toddler in her red and orange dress, killed with her family while trying to run somewhere anywhere. An old man at the scene said, "We run but we don't know where to--it keeps us from feeling powerless". The cluster bomb that hit the market place. Too "pornographic" was the single mutilated dismembered hand on a door. My God. Saddam? His family? His thousands of henchmen? Apparently, per usual with evil, safe and sound--whisked off to guarded opulent retirement somewhere leaving his people to die. But then psychopaths have no conscience---he and his are safe and that's all that matters. Most can't conceive of evil of such magnitude. With all the trumpeting of searching out evil from every corner and cranny of the earth; Bin-Laden, his thugs; Saddam and his fellow killers are still on the loose with no mention of our safety or security with their continued existence! Now Syria? What about Evil? Terrorism still lurking? Warring against terrorism is like warring against lust or the fog, a forever unwinnable ridiculous concept.

For those who champion and cry war, for those who froth from their grease stained armchairs to "nuke'em all---turn the place to glass" think of the young men and women not coming home. A father who had twins born while he was overseas....never to know them. He's dead. Saddam lives. What of the mother with two children. She's dead. Saddam lives. What of the fathers in Maryland and Texas with their only sons gone? They're dead. Saddam lives. What insanity of depraved indifference puts mothers in war? What malignant disregard to the possible horrors a young woman might be subject to, puts a nineteen year old girl in the middle of war? A young kid from West Virginia where the unemployment rate in her small butcher holler town is 15%. She joined, like most impoverished kids to get an education. She wanted to be a teacher. We will have her made for TV story not questioning why our poor and minorities are having to make such choices. Another glory tale of war. No corporate elites sons or daughters are over there being poisoned with depleted uranium (used in our weapons) nor are there (minus one) any politicians sons or daughters, for all their patriotic fervor of defeating terrorism. Seems to me that freedom fighting is only assigned to young, impressionable, naive, mostly impoverished youth. For all the accusations of not supporting the troops, if one is not for vaporizing war, I have yet to see a demonstration over the recent cutting of approximately 19 billion plus in veterans benefits. I've yet to see in all the war stories families on food stamps or picking up food packages at local churches because of the pay being lower than one would make working at McDonalds. But then this might be deemed "too pornographic"; something us dumb asses out here are too stupid, too infantile and brain dead to grasp. We might even start to ask if this war business is not making a few people mighty darn rich on the backs of poor folks kids. Can't have any awakening. Shhhh!

What are little boys made of? How can any person on the face of the earth who still retains some semblance of heart or conscience look at little Ali with his arms blown off, terribly burned and cry war? How? Ali, is everybody's little boy. A month ago he was running and playing on his family's farm outside Baghdad never giving it a thought that American would come to "liberate" him and his family while they slept with cluster bombs! No, Ali won't be on one of the many made for TV scenes, running to catch a chocolate bar from a kind soldier. He won't be running and waving thank-you America. With his family dead there is no mommy to tell him that America cares about him; that his arms being blown off and his little body charred was a miscalculation and he announced as mere "collateral damage". Who will tell Ali that a "precision-surgical strike" did just that and shredded his arms? Ali's picture should be plastered all over this nation, "pornographic" or not! Ali's picture needs to be sent to all the media over and over. It needs to be sent to our Congressmen/women who gave over their responsibility to the Executive Branch in declaring war when we voted that decision on them.

 

We need to take Ali's pictures into our churches--those who espouse that God is for us--our God of War has given us victory--look how good our God is. Yes, and remind them that Jesus said when asked, " Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? He called a little child and had him stand among them and He said," I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes .....see that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven." Matthew 18: 3-10

 

God help the nation that glorifies and celebrates the barbarism of war that shreds and vaporizes these little ones and hypocritically sees its own children as sacred icons; with its numerous laws and regulations from car seats, to helmets, to safe playgrounds to rights of the child etc. Ali was somebody's pride and joy. He wanted to be a doctor. He wonders if someone can give him arms. My God what has become of us when as fellow human beings we can't overcome our stupidity, our politics, our bias and prejudice and be the protectors, the nurturers and teachers of our young, the world's young, in compassion, understanding and tolerance? If our leaders are incapable of such humanity it falls upon us the peacemakers to stop this indiscriminate forever killing and diabolical expenditure of bigger and more bombastic ways to kill. "The duties of the individual towards himself are, in reality-duties towards society." Emile Duncein. What we wish for our own we should wish no less for others.

"There are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of nations, is as Shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord, and cultivate prejudices between nations, it becomes unpardonable." Thomas Paine

It will be of small consolation to little Ali that millions upon millions throughout the world marched, wrote letters, poems, and articles to prevent war. It will in no way alleviate the impossible pain he must be suffering, to have him know we implored our government officials, in all countries, to not suffer this cruelty against an innocent people. How can this little boy comprehend that mad men intent on war-power-conquest and spoils, have little to no concern over a little boy in a far off land, who will never again hug his mommy--clap for joy or be the healing physician that he dreamed of. It is simply a time that we grieve for those with no-one to lament their passing and no-one to report the magnitude of what war does to a people. Wars have long echoes heard long after the laughter-back slapping and toasting to victory. A lie. Everyone loses in war and in this particular war we most of all....we once the beacon of safety for the tired-hungry and burdened now the greatest military machine in the world. We whose grandparents arrived here from various oppressors have now become burdened down with grief for suffering humanity at our hands.

"For those who champion and cry war, for those who froth from their grease stained armchairs to "nuke'em all---turn the place to glass" think of the young men and women not coming home. A father who had twins born while he was overseas....never to know them. He's dead. Saddam lives. What of the mother with two children. She's dead. Saddam lives. What of the fathers in Maryland and Texas with their only sons gone? They're dead. Saddam lives. What insanity of depraved indifference puts mothers in war? What malignant disregard to the possible horrors a young woman might be subject to, puts a nineteen year old girl in the middle of war? A young kid from West Virginia where the unemployment rate in her small butcher holler town is 15%. She joined, like most impoverished kids to get an education. She wanted to be a teacher. We will have her made for TV story not questioning why our poor and minorities are having to make such choices."

This war was nothing but police state fascism run amuck. The people of Iraq were a happy and prosperous people for the last thirty years, not the downtrodden and fearful people our corporate media feeds us and would have us believe. In free elections, the people of Iraq unamiously voted for Saddam Hussein to continue to be their president just a few months ago. But of course, the fascist neo-cons who stole the office know better what's good for Iraq than the people of Iraq themselves. A bunch of innocent people dieing for no reason.

BUSH LIED, CHILDREN DIED - It really is that simple.

Screw them Ayrabs and take their oil. I could care less. Washed and waxed my SUV today and that gas guzzler needs feedin' again. Gas prices are too damn high.

...how many dead children does it take to fill up your tank?

When Iraqi children die, they sink, and over time, hundreds of feet of mud containing the organisms accumulate. Bacteria removes most of the oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur, leaving mainly hydrogen and carbon. Lack of oxygen keeps the animals and plants from decaying completely.

The partially decomposed organisms create a slimy mass, which is then covered with layers of sediments. Many sediments are tiny particles that come from the breakdown of larger rocks, usually by weathering. Over millions of years, many layers of sediment pile on top of the once-living organisms. The weight of the sediment compresses the mud into a fraction of its original thickness.

Now We're Cooking!

When the depth of burial reaches about 10,000 feet, heat, time and pressure turn the organisms into different types of petroleum.

Barker likens the process to cooking. “If I turn the temperature of the oven up, things cook faster. If the temperature is turned down, it cooks slower,” Barker said.

Higher temperatures usually produce lighter petroleum. Lower temperatures create a thick material, like asphalt. As the heat continues to alter the substances, gas is often produced. Depending on how much gas is present, sometimes it will stay mixed with the oil and sometimes it will separate. At temperatures above 500 degrees Fahrenheit, the organic matter is destroyed and neither oil nor gas is formed.

The mud and silt become more and more compressed and turn into a rock known as shale. As the mud is being compressed into shale, the oil, gas and saltwater are squeezed out. The fluids move from the original rock, known as the source rock, to a new rock, called a reservoir rock.

Porosity

It is economically unfeasible for humans to extract oil and gas unless worthwhile amounts are trapped in reservoirs. Many people assume petroleum is contained in underground hollow cavities, or lakes. In truth, an oil reservoir is a rock with many pores which hold petroleum, much like a sponge holds water.

A pore is a small, open space in a rock. A rock’s porosity is the ratio of pore volume to total volume and is expressed as a percentage.

The shapes of sediments affect the porosity of a rock. Generally, sediments are not perfectly round, but occur in many shapes. Sediment size and how closely sediments are packed also are variables. The third factor that determines a rock’s porosity is the amount of material that precipitated from seawater and accumulated in the pores. A porosity of 5 to 20 percent is usually considered average for sedimentary rocks.

If the pores are connected, the rock is said to be permeable. Permeability is the ease with which a fluid can move through a porous rock. Sandstone is the most porous and permeable of the sedimentary rocks. That’s why much of the world’s oil and gas occurs in sandstone. Carbonate rocks such as limestone and dolomite are also good reservoirs for oil and gas.

Reservoir Rocks

A reservoir rock must be able to contain oil, gas and water, which are the reservoir fluids. Pores in the reservoir rock are first filled with saltwater from the sea. When oil and gas flow into the rock, some of the water is displaced. However, not all of the water is forced out. Therefore, oil drillers usually find water with high concentrations of oil and gas.

Oil and gas travel through pores of the reservoir rock, with the help of water, until they reach an impermeable layer of rock through which they cannot pass. Shales are the most common impermeable rock.

Oil Traps

Oil traps usually form because of rock movements deep within the Earth’s surface. Over many years, rock formations break and slide, causing spaces where petroleum is trapped. The most common type of trap is an anticline, where rocks are pushed up to form a dome. Oil and gas might lie in reservoir rock just under the top of the dome, which is capped by an impermeable layer of rock.

Another common type of trap is the fault trap, which is formed by a fault, or fracture, of the layers of rock. The rock on one side of the fault sometimes slips down so that a porous reservoir rock is next to a nonporous rock formation. This creates a seal, and the petroleum is trapped.

When parts of the reservoir rock itself are impermeable, often oil is trapped. This is known as a stratigraphic trap. The stratigraphic trap category also includes side-by-side changes from one type of rock to another.

Now that the oil has been cooked, moved and trapped, it will stay there until rock formation movement causes a change in its surroundings, or until humans decide to drill a well in that spot.

Thanks for that!

I didn't realize it took soo many of those little bastards to fill my tank! Thank god those ayrab fuckers breed like rats. I need to make a road trip.

You know a gallon of MILK costs twice as much as a gallon of GAS?

That's fucked up, ain't it?

...formations. Unlike your Soul which would appear to be Igneous. Rather hard and black.

That a gallon of milk cost SO much more than a gallon of gas. I mean, with these liberals shouting about "BLOOD FOR OIL" and "CHILDREN DIED" you'd think it were gold we're talking about. But milk costing so much more than gas, that's uncanny!

...that in your case it is not the "Milk of Human Kindness".