Now that you mention it, yeah, that was a subtble point that I missed. Thanks for bringing it up. It's something cadets have a problem with, especially with support fire. We have to constantly remind them to only take controlled shots at actual targets. The rules of engagement were nice to see as well. What they didn't show too much of was the fact that Somalian militia would use unarmed civilians as human shields, making the job of the Rangers and SOF guys even harder.
Oh yeah... definitely not... he was emphasized a bit more than the other characters, but not nearly as much as Eversman. Actually, the actor looked alot like an actual Ranger I went to Mountain with.
They were not obsessed with it. It's just another part of military culture. And if I remember the book correctly, they only talked about it during a lull in the fighting.
Oh, I agree with you 100%. I wish they hadn't changed it. But people are using that to make the entire movie/book seem distorted and evil. I suppose they have a point. My "cheap shot" comment was in regards to the previous poster's snide comment about him being "a real hero", not about the movie changing the name or that people are pointing this out.
The Grimes character in the movie is Stebbins from the book. Stebbins is serving time at Leavenworth (not sure on the prison) for molesting/raping a child. The producers changed the character's name. I wish they hadn't, just for accuracy's sake. The fact that the guy is now, rightfully, in prison doesn't erase what he did 9 years ago.
You choose one point, that I said "US Special Forces" instead of "Army Special Forces" and attempt to malign everything else. I fail to see how this is incorrect at all. Regardless of that, you also state that I provide no facts or contrary evidence. I'm not going to go through and read my own post to highlight stuff you are fully capable of finding for yourself. An example is that I pointed out the true number of blackhawks that were downed. You can find the rest. Everything I said can be verified by multiple well-respected sources, whereas the article relied mainly on Chomsky as a source of third hand information. Do some more reading on the subject and inform yourself. Furthermore, I am not jingoistic at all, but I am also not a raving anti-American. I merely called the author on some of his assumptions and falsehoods. Such as his assertion that our presence there was to attack the Islamic faith or kill Black people or kill Arabs. I pointed out the absurdity of this statement. When he questioned the timing of the movie, I pointed out how it had been in the works far earlier than the Sept 11 attacks and was not intended to stir up anti-Arab sentiment.
But, I'm done arguing with you. You picked out one point in my response, incorrectly said that I was wrong, and then accuse me of not providing any facts or counter-arguments and instead claim that I have struck a jingoistic defensive posture. How do I respond to that? I think it's clear to anyone who reads this thread who is hiding behind rhetoric.
My terminology is fine. It's your lack of understanding and familiarity with the armed forces that is out of whack. I did not do any name-calling in my response, aside from rightly calling Noam Chomsky an anti-American bigot and a vague anonymous reference to "a punk". I did argue several flawed parts in the article, pointed to a couple of sources of information, and yes, there are facts in my post. As to the original article, some of those "facts" are dubious at best. Most of it is heresay, speculation, and non-sense.
I think that what has irked you so much is that you disagreed with my response. So why not just say that? You don't even need a reason. Instead, you sit there and make petty little snipes about my post that serve no purpose in the argument.
Special Operations Forces includes all elite units such as SEALs, Marine Recon, Special Forces, and Rangers. In short, Rangers are Special Operations Forces, but they are NOT Special Forces. They have two entirely different sets of mission functions.
So, you want to try and argue the rest of the post?
I see... thanks for the correction. I was not aware of this fact. People tend to get it confused when they hear Special Operations Forces, Special Forces, etc...:-)
This article gets so many basic facts just plain wrong that it can't be taken seriously. "The Independent" tends to do great pieces that are not carried in the states, but I can't believe it got so much wrong. To give you a taste of what I mean, the US did not go in to Somalia initially. It was the UN.
Now come on, HOW could this article get that basic fact wrong and expect a reader to take it seriously?
This is true. Stebbins had, to put it euphamistically, a run in with the law. It doesn't negate his heroism in Somalia. But it does mean he should be put away for life.
I wish the movie hadn't changed the name. But even if it had been Stebbins, what did you want them to do, put the fact on it's own screen? It wouldn't have made a lick of difference other than people could go to google.com and find out he went to prison.
Yeah, my BS detector went off the fucking charts when I read that little piece. Learn a little history before attributing all US military action to corporate interests.
This article is so full of holes it's not even funny. It's sad. This is an example of someone's blinding hatred of the US. The poster didn't even write this which leads me to believe that he's done little reading of the facts and instead has gotten all his information filtered through Anti-American bigots like Noam Chomsky.
Am I saying that being Anti-American automatically disqualifies you from making a statement? No, go ahead. That's your right, protected, I'll remind you, by soldiers willing to put their lives on the line. But, I will emphasize that a character like Noam Chomsky, is not known for his objectivity and I don't care how good a fucking linguist he is, has a tendancy to run with the conspiracy theorists.
For instance, where does Chomsky get his figures for the number dead? And even if 10,000 Somalians were killed, that number pales in comparison to the 300,000 that had died of famine, not even counting the number that died as a result of the warlordism, gun-running, and civil war that had destroyed the nation. I particularly like this sentence, "Bowden's more forgiving account does not contradict Chomsky's in this regard" Since when has Chomsky become the yardstick with which to measure accuracy?
In short, when I write my responses, I am not trying to exonerating US forces, and I do not hate anyone un-American, but I am not going to let some punk run roughshod over the facts and make baseless accusations because of a blinding hatred of the United States.
Now, onto the response.
You bias is showing when you attempt to completely exonerate Clinton of the fiasco. Read "Wrong Turn in Somalia", by John R. Bolton. It is written by a former Bush Sr advisor, and tends to be a little light handed with Bush, but it is an excellent Foreign Policy analysis of what happened to the mission during the transition from Bush to Clinton. Bush wasn't a saint, but Clinton has more than a little blood on his hands.
As to the movie and the book, I've seen the movie, and read the book. The movie is quite true to the book, save a few details. Moreover, the book was not some sort of flag waving little ditty. Bowden includes elements from all sides to give a well-rounded picture of the situation. Yes, there is an emphasis on the US forces, but the point is, Bowden didn't simply write a one-sided account. As for the mission of Task Force Ranger, no, it wasn't there to feed the hungry. They were sent there to give the humanitarian missions some breathing room to carry out their mission. There is no myth about that, so don't even pretend there was. That helicopter attack was reported and not covered up, so where's the lie?
The historical inaccuracy of this article is showing particularly in this paragraph
"After 18 US Special Forces soldiers were killed in the final Mogadishu firefight, which included the downing of a US helicopter, television screens"
1) They were not Special Forces. SF guys are Green Berets. They were Rangers from one of the Ranger Battalions and Delta operators.
2) There were 2 Black Hawks brought down.
Get your facts straight before you start telling people that what they believe on foreign policy is wrong. The fact that this article gets those details incorrect leads me to not believe anything his says.
"The Somalia defeat elicited howls of protest and rage from the military brass, congressional hawks, and right-wing provocateurs itching for an excuse to declare political war on the "liberal" Clinton administration."
What's funny is that this article loves to paint left-wing liberals as the innocents in this debacle. There were none. The bias is amazing in this little piece.
"right-wing extremist George W. Bush occupies the White House"
He is hardly a right-wing extremist.
This next part is full of stuff in the article that just pissed me off:
"CNN film reviewer Paul Tatara describes "Black Hawk Down" as "pound for pound, one of the most violent films ever released by a major studio," from "two of the most pandering, tactless filmmakers in Hollywood history (Jerry Bruckheimer and Ridley Scott)" who are attempting to "teach us about honor among soldiers."
Well, gee, what do you think war is? You send people into war-torn countries on humanitarian missions, or peace keeping missions, and people die? They get shot? Blown up? As for "honor
among soldiers", yeah, it actually exists. I won't
call US Soldiers saints, they're not, but that honor does exist in mass quantities. I think the film did a good job of showing a variety of characters. There are soldiers who are there for moral reasons because they truly want to help, and there are soldiers there just to blow shit up.
"What viewers see is "brave and innocent young American boys" getting shot at and killed for "no reason" by "crazy black Islamists" that the Americans are "just trying to help." (Subtext one: America is good, and it is impossible to understand why "they hate us." Subtext two: "Those damned ungrateful foreigners." Subtext three: "Those damned blacks." Subtext four: "Kill Arabs.") "
This paragraph is full of assumptions and low blows. 1) The Islamic faith in Somalia is not played up in the movie at all. It was also not a factor in the attacks. You are drawing a dangerously presumptive causal relationship between the two. The fact is, the people in Somalia just happened to be Islamic. Period, end of sentence, next question. 2) I wouldn't call America good. America has done some awful things in its period of existance. But compared with other regimes, and the warlords in Somalia, we're pretty good. You are not going to get a perfect country, and I challenge you to find one. 3) The fact that the people were black, or Arab, was NOT, I repeat NOT, played up in the movie or the book at all. This article is now just making baseless accusations.
"What viewers will remember is a line spoken by one of the "brave soldiers" about how, in the heat of combat, "politics goes out the window." (Subtext one: there is no need for thought; shoot first, talk later. Subtext two: it is right to abandon one's sanity, morality and ethics when faced with chaos. Subtext three: when the Twin Towers went down on 9/11, America was right in embracing radical militarism and extreme violence, throwing all else "out the window.") "
He was talking about the individual soldier and his personal tactics in trying to stay alive. Not the strategy of a nation. Get it right.
"Considering the fact that Somalia is one of the targets in the next phase of the Bush administration's "war on terrorism," the timing of the film is no coincidence"
Actually, it is. This movie has been in the making for at least a year now and the release date was supposed to be back in November. I can't explain why it was late, but it just happened to fall in with Sept 11.
Hmmm... was there this much controversy when Spaceballs came out? I'm too young to remember, but I don't think so... I suspect that the pornographic nature of this parody is what really has Lucas in a tizzy. Not the ip issues...
That said, a few lines from Spaceballs that would easily translate into Starballz are:
"I see that your schwartz is a big a mine!"
"SUCK SUCK SUCK"
"She's gone from SUCK to BLOW!"
"That... is my virgin alarm. It's designed to go off before you do!"
Great, so Clinton's wrangling over the true meaning of the word 'is' has spilled over into the marketing gurus ath major companies... this is just double unplus good.
Sorry, but when Gnutella first came out, and I looked at the protocol, I thought to myself, "Gee, this is nice, but when that graph of connections starts getting highly connected and you have all those people spitting out queries and forwarding others there is going to be a humongous sucking sound as the bandwidth is taken." No, I didn't read a paper or do the math, but anyone with a basic grounding in graph theory and computer science would see the shortcomings immediately. Yeah, it will evolve and should since I like this kinda stuff... but it wasn't exactly rocket science.:-/
I have to concur... until TI releases a calculator that does RPN, I'm sticking with my HP 48G. Sure, it's slower, doesn't have alot of memory, but I've found that I can do long sets of equations faster than on a TI. I used to use TI's until I got my HP. Now I cring whenever I have to use infix on a calculator.
MY question is, and perhaps you can answer this, why did he wait almost 7 YEARS before filing a lawsuit like this? The cynic in me suggests that they waiting until HP used the chip in enough products to warrent a settlement... that's assuming HP violated a patent at all.
This is an event every year at Drexel University. It's pretty friggin' cool. You can walk around the displays and watch the teams work on the robots... some of the 'bots are pretty damn impressive too. The next generation of geeks!:-D
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Now that you mention it, yeah, that was a subtble point that I missed. Thanks for bringing it up. It's something cadets have a problem with, especially with support fire. We have to constantly remind them to only take controlled shots at actual targets. The rules of engagement were nice to see as well. What they didn't show too much of was the fact that Somalian militia would use unarmed civilians as human shields, making the job of the Rangers and SOF guys even harder.
Oh yeah... definitely not... he was emphasized a bit more than the other characters, but not nearly as much as Eversman. Actually, the actor looked alot like an actual Ranger I went to Mountain with.
They were not obsessed with it. It's just another part of military culture. And if I remember the book correctly, they only talked about it during a lull in the fighting.
Oh, I agree with you 100%. I wish they hadn't changed it. But people are using that to make the entire movie/book seem distorted and evil. I suppose they have a point. My "cheap shot" comment was in regards to the previous poster's snide comment about him being "a real hero", not about the movie changing the name or that people are pointing this out.
The Grimes character in the movie is Stebbins from the book. Stebbins is serving time at Leavenworth (not sure on the prison) for molesting/raping a child. The producers changed the character's name. I wish they hadn't, just for accuracy's sake. The fact that the guy is now, rightfully, in prison doesn't erase what he did 9 years ago.
You choose one point, that I said "US Special Forces" instead of "Army Special Forces" and attempt to malign everything else. I fail to see how this is incorrect at all. Regardless of that, you also state that I provide no facts or contrary evidence. I'm not going to go through and read my own post to highlight stuff you are fully capable of finding for yourself. An example is that I pointed out the true number of blackhawks that were downed. You can find the rest. Everything I said can be verified by multiple well-respected sources, whereas the article relied mainly on Chomsky as a source of third hand information. Do some more reading on the subject and inform yourself. Furthermore, I am not jingoistic at all, but I am also not a raving anti-American. I merely called the author on some of his assumptions and falsehoods. Such as his assertion that our presence there was to attack the Islamic faith or kill Black people or kill Arabs. I pointed out the absurdity of this statement. When he questioned the timing of the movie, I pointed out how it had been in the works far earlier than the Sept 11 attacks and was not intended to stir up anti-Arab sentiment.
But, I'm done arguing with you. You picked out one point in my response, incorrectly said that I was wrong, and then accuse me of not providing any facts or counter-arguments and instead claim that I have struck a jingoistic defensive posture. How do I respond to that? I think it's clear to anyone who reads this thread who is hiding behind rhetoric.
My terminology is fine. It's your lack of understanding and familiarity with the armed forces that is out of whack. I did not do any name-calling in my response, aside from rightly calling Noam Chomsky an anti-American bigot and a vague anonymous reference to "a punk". I did argue several flawed parts in the article, pointed to a couple of sources of information, and yes, there are facts in my post. As to the original article, some of those "facts" are dubious at best. Most of it is heresay, speculation, and non-sense.
I think that what has irked you so much is that you disagreed with my response. So why not just say that? You don't even need a reason. Instead, you sit there and make petty little snipes about my post that serve no purpose in the argument.
Special Operations Forces includes all elite units such as SEALs, Marine Recon, Special Forces, and Rangers. In short, Rangers are Special Operations Forces, but they are NOT Special Forces. They have two entirely different sets of mission functions.
So, you want to try and argue the rest of the post?
I see... thanks for the correction. I was not aware of this fact. People tend to get it confused when they hear Special Operations Forces, Special Forces, etc... :-)
This article gets so many basic facts just plain wrong that it can't be taken seriously. "The Independent" tends to do great pieces that are not carried in the states, but I can't believe it got so much wrong. To give you a taste of what I mean, the US did not go in to Somalia initially. It was the UN.
Now come on, HOW could this article get that basic fact wrong and expect a reader to take it seriously?
This is true. Stebbins had, to put it euphamistically, a run in with the law. It doesn't negate his heroism in Somalia. But it does mean he should be put away for life.
I wish the movie hadn't changed the name. But even if it had been Stebbins, what did you want them to do, put the fact on it's own screen? It wouldn't have made a lick of difference other than people could go to google.com and find out he went to prison.
This is a cheap shot.
Yeah, my BS detector went off the fucking charts when I read that little piece. Learn a little history before attributing all US military action to corporate interests.
This article is so full of holes it's not even funny. It's sad. This is an example of someone's blinding hatred of the US. The poster didn't even write this which leads me to believe that he's done little reading of the facts and instead has gotten all his information filtered through Anti-American bigots like Noam Chomsky.
Am I saying that being Anti-American automatically disqualifies you from making a statement? No, go ahead. That's your right, protected, I'll remind you, by soldiers willing to put their lives on the line. But, I will emphasize that a character like Noam Chomsky, is not known for his objectivity and I don't care how good a fucking linguist he is, has a tendancy to run with the conspiracy theorists.
For instance, where does Chomsky get his figures for the number dead? And even if 10,000 Somalians were killed, that number pales in comparison to the 300,000 that had died of famine, not even counting the number that died as a result of the warlordism, gun-running, and civil war that had destroyed the nation. I particularly like this sentence, "Bowden's more forgiving account does not contradict Chomsky's in this regard" Since when has Chomsky become the yardstick with which to measure accuracy?
In short, when I write my responses, I am not trying to exonerating US forces, and I do not hate anyone un-American, but I am not going to let some punk run roughshod over the facts and make baseless accusations because of a blinding hatred of the United States.
Now, onto the response.
You bias is showing when you attempt to completely exonerate Clinton of the fiasco. Read "Wrong Turn in Somalia", by John R. Bolton. It is written by a former Bush Sr advisor, and tends to be a little light handed with Bush, but it is an excellent Foreign Policy analysis of what happened to the mission during the transition from Bush to Clinton. Bush wasn't a saint, but Clinton has more than a little blood on his hands.
As to the movie and the book, I've seen the movie, and read the book. The movie is quite true to the book, save a few details. Moreover, the book was not some sort of flag waving little ditty. Bowden includes elements from all sides to give a well-rounded picture of the situation. Yes, there is an emphasis on the US forces, but the point is, Bowden didn't simply write a one-sided account. As for the mission of Task Force Ranger, no, it wasn't there to feed the hungry. They were sent there to give the humanitarian missions some breathing room to carry out their mission. There is no myth about that, so don't even pretend there was. That helicopter attack was reported and not covered up, so where's the lie?
The historical inaccuracy of this article is showing particularly in this paragraph
"After 18 US Special Forces soldiers were killed in the final Mogadishu firefight, which included the downing of a US helicopter, television screens"
1) They were not Special Forces. SF guys are Green Berets. They were Rangers from one of the Ranger Battalions and Delta operators.
2) There were 2 Black Hawks brought down.
Get your facts straight before you start telling people that what they believe on foreign policy is wrong. The fact that this article gets those details incorrect leads me to not believe anything his says.
"The Somalia defeat elicited howls of protest and rage from the military brass, congressional hawks, and right-wing provocateurs itching for an excuse to declare political war on the "liberal" Clinton administration."
What's funny is that this article loves to paint left-wing liberals as the innocents in this debacle. There were none. The bias is amazing in this little piece.
"right-wing extremist George W. Bush occupies the White House"
He is hardly a right-wing extremist.
This next part is full of stuff in the article that just pissed me off:
"CNN film reviewer Paul Tatara describes "Black Hawk Down" as "pound for pound, one of the most violent films ever released by a major studio," from "two of the most pandering, tactless filmmakers in Hollywood history (Jerry Bruckheimer and Ridley Scott)" who are attempting to "teach us about honor among soldiers."
Well, gee, what do you think war is? You send people into war-torn countries on humanitarian missions, or peace keeping missions, and people die? They get shot? Blown up? As for "honor
among soldiers", yeah, it actually exists. I won't
call US Soldiers saints, they're not, but that honor does exist in mass quantities. I think the film did a good job of showing a variety of characters. There are soldiers who are there for moral reasons because they truly want to help, and there are soldiers there just to blow shit up.
"What viewers see is "brave and innocent young American boys" getting shot at and killed for "no reason" by "crazy black Islamists" that the Americans are "just trying to help." (Subtext one: America is good, and it is impossible to understand why "they hate us." Subtext two: "Those damned ungrateful foreigners." Subtext three: "Those damned blacks." Subtext four: "Kill Arabs.") "
This paragraph is full of assumptions and low blows. 1) The Islamic faith in Somalia is not played up in the movie at all. It was also not a factor in the attacks. You are drawing a dangerously presumptive causal relationship between the two. The fact is, the people in Somalia just happened to be Islamic. Period, end of sentence, next question. 2) I wouldn't call America good. America has done some awful things in its period of existance. But compared with other regimes, and the warlords in Somalia, we're pretty good. You are not going to get a perfect country, and I challenge you to find one. 3) The fact that the people were black, or Arab, was NOT, I repeat NOT, played up in the movie or the book at all. This article is now just making baseless accusations.
"What viewers will remember is a line spoken by one of the "brave soldiers" about how, in the heat of combat, "politics goes out the window." (Subtext one: there is no need for thought; shoot first, talk later. Subtext two: it is right to abandon one's sanity, morality and ethics when faced with chaos. Subtext three: when the Twin Towers went down on 9/11, America was right in embracing radical militarism and extreme violence, throwing all else "out the window.") "
He was talking about the individual soldier and his personal tactics in trying to stay alive. Not the strategy of a nation. Get it right.
"Considering the fact that Somalia is one of the targets in the next phase of the Bush administration's "war on terrorism," the timing of the film is no coincidence"
Actually, it is. This movie has been in the making for at least a year now and the release date was supposed to be back in November. I can't explain why it was late, but it just happened to fall in with Sept 11.
In short, get your facts right.
Hmmm... was there this much controversy when Spaceballs came out? I'm too young to remember, but I don't think so... I suspect that the pornographic nature of this parody is what really has Lucas in a tizzy. Not the ip issues...
That said, a few lines from Spaceballs that would easily translate into Starballz are:
"I see that your schwartz is a big a mine!"
"SUCK SUCK SUCK"
"She's gone from SUCK to BLOW!"
"That... is my virgin alarm. It's designed to go off before you do!"
:-)
What we have here, gentlemen... is a CD-Gap!
Great, so Clinton's wrangling over the true meaning of the word 'is' has spilled over into the marketing gurus ath major companies... this is just double unplus good.
Sorry, but when Gnutella first came out, and I looked at the protocol, I thought to myself, "Gee, this is nice, but when that graph of connections starts getting highly connected and you have all those people spitting out queries and forwarding others there is going to be a humongous sucking sound as the bandwidth is taken." No, I didn't read a paper or do the math, but anyone with a basic grounding in graph theory and computer science would see the shortcomings immediately. Yeah, it will evolve and should since I like this kinda stuff... but it wasn't exactly rocket science. :-/
So uh... how many tankers does it take to keep the thing fueled?
You missed the "I wonder if we can be a beow...." nevermind.
I have to concur... until TI releases a calculator that does RPN, I'm sticking with my HP 48G. Sure, it's slower, doesn't have alot of memory, but I've found that I can do long sets of equations faster than on a TI. I used to use TI's until I got my HP. Now I cring whenever I have to use infix on a calculator.
That makes sense now... thank you for the input.
It stated in the article that he knew about it in 1997. That's 4 years ago. So the question remains.
MY question is, and perhaps you can answer this, why did he wait almost 7 YEARS before filing a lawsuit like this? The cynic in me suggests that they waiting until HP used the chip in enough products to warrent a settlement... that's assuming HP violated a patent at all.
This is an event every year at Drexel University. It's pretty friggin' cool. You can walk around the displays and watch the teams work on the robots... some of the 'bots are pretty damn impressive too. The next generation of geeks! :-D
"Wow, if this is all some people can think of how to spend their time and money, the economy must be worse off than we thought."