I just picked up an old paperback copy of a Vietnam War book called SEALs: UDT/SEAL Operations in Vietnam by Tim Bosiljevac. The book chronicles the early history of the Sea, Air and Land Teams, from their founding under President Kennedy through the end of the Vietnam War. The SEALs were created to be the Navy’s superhuman version of the Green Berets: “a naval guerrilla/counterguerrilla [force] with an emphasis on direct action raids and missions on targets in close proximity to bodies of water.” I love that line, “in close proximity to bodies of water.” That could mean a puddle…or hell, when you consider that human beings are about 70% water–“bodies of water” could mean just about anything. (more…)
Update: By popular demand we’ve now included the transcript to Ames’ conversion rant. See below.
Even though libertarian ideals of massive deregulation and privatization led to the 2008 collapse of the global economy (just as these same libertarian ideals led to Russia’s collapse in 1998), nevertheless, America is already back to privatizing and deregulating like never before, as Dylan Ratigan has been reporting. (more…)
Mark Ames goes on Boulder, Colorado radio station KGNU to explain the banality of Russian-born author Ayn Rand, the guiding light of the libertarian/teabagger movement. Ames discusses his article “Atlas Shrieked” about how a sad ‘n’ lonely half-wit, Ayn/Alyssa, was nothing but a boring serial-killer groupie mistaken for Yoda by the libertards and teabaggers– despite being ignored as a boring, ridiculous hack in her Russian homeland, where Rand is still largely unknown.
Exiled editor Mark Ames went on MSNBC’s “Dylan Ratigan Show” yesterday to deliver a Memorial Day Rant over the death of the American vacation, and how offensive it is that while Americans get less and less time off from their corporate masters,Europeans in Speedos are flouting their month-long vacation times in our faces.
Watch the video here, and have a lousy Memorial Day weekend! (more…)
An American correspondent stationed in Moscow just forwarded me a WikiLeaked diplomatic cable about me, The eXile, and the Kremlin media-stomping in mid-2008 that killed my newspaper and sent me fleeing home. The June 16, 2008 US Embassy cable–marked “CONFIDENTIAL”–correctly put the crackdown on The eXile in the context of a wider (and scarier) crackdown on other Russian media outlets that coincided with the handover of power from Vladimir Putin to the newly-“elected” President Dmitry Medvedev. The cable was given the highly-ironic header “MEDVEDEV ON FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND THE RULE OF LAW.” (more…)
Before heading back to Moscow in June 2008 to face the Kremlin “audit” of The eXile, which I knew meant the death of the newspaper at the very least, I worked out a deal with my editors at Radar magazine to blog about it for an American audience. I hoped at the very least that it might give me a bit of protection. (more…)
Yesterday, as President Obama ran victory laps at Ground Zero to the cheers of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” eXiled Online editor Mark Ames was up in midtown Manhattan spreading his buzz-kill message to America from MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan Show. Ames describes the post-victory hangover that Americans should be experiencing by now–if they had functioning memories, that is.
Listen to the Radio War Nerd podcast [subscribe here] with guest Gunnar Hrafn Jonsson of Iceland Public Radio on the massacre in Orlando and how online Islamic State jihadis are dealing with battlefield defeats and the shrinking caliphate. Subscribe to Radio War Nerd through the show’s Patreon page.
Ever seen a Monster Truck show? They’re big in Fresno. The thrill is watching civilian cars get crushed by giant 4×4’s. But it’s nothing compared to the monster truck show the Israelis have put on in the last few weeks….
Ames asked me to write a column on how all the wars are going, kind of a war reviewer. And I said yes on one condition, that you people don’t send me emails telling me liking war is a sign…
