(In)security

"Americans, especially millennials, can understand this. The destruction of Vulcan in the first film changed Kirk and Spock’s timeline; 9/11 changed ours. How many young Americans learned Arabic and Pashto or studied counterterrorism and international relations because nineteen men flew three planes into a building and one into the ground, killing thousands? The September 11th attacks prefaced a decade marked by the proliferation of Islamic terrorism, long and painful wars in the Middle East, a toxic and divisive political climate in the United States, weakened protections for civil liberties, and vast expansions of government power. Is that who we are now? Is that who we want to be from now on?" – Matt Ford 

“Few nations as fantastically wealthy and militarily puissant as the United States could lose a war to an enemy as backward and impoverished as the Taliban without an impressively clueless political culture wallowing in narcissism and moral retardation.” – Mark Safranski

                                        The Stockdale Paradox  

Jocko Willink - How to Triumph Over Tragedy & The Loss of Good People

                                                Travis Haley - Change Your Expectations

"iGen is showing mental health issues across a wide variety of indicators. They're more likely than young people just five or 10 years ago to say that they're anxious, that they have symptoms of depression, that they have thought about suicide or have even [attempted] suicide. So across the board, there's a really consistent trend with mental health issues increasing among teens." – Dr. Jean Twenge (via)

"[Being on a phone has] the same reward pathways as addiction, absolutely," – Dr. Judson Brewer (via)

“The core reality of war isn’t that you might get killed out there—that’s obvious—the core truth about war is that you’re guaranteed to lose your brothers.“ – Sebastian Junger @ Which Way Is The Frontline From Here? The Life and Times of Tim Hetherington

“In December 2007 the company agreed to finance the jump. Red Bull will not say how much it invested in the effort, all told, but the figure, including engineering, fabrication, and marketing, is reportedly $28 million.”

“The game was like a mental exercise with consequences: how to take this Austrian stuntman as high as he needed to go, let him fall through the speed of sound, and guarantee to keep him alive.”

“… Baumgartner had developed a claustrophobic aversion to pressure suits. Such aversions are not uncommon among would-be astronauts and high-altitude pilots, but they almost always manifest themselves at the start and lead to automatic disqualification. Baumgartner was different because initially he had been fine with the suit, and had grown claustrophobic only gradually, over time. He hid the struggle until he could hide it no longer. Speaking to me of the morning he broke down, he said, ‘I knew we were going to the Brooks chamber test, and I would have to stay in that suit at least six hours. You can fight for an hour, but not for six hours. It was just overwhelming. So I disappeared. I went to the airport at six o’clock in the morning. I cried like a baby because I had lost my program. I’m thinking, everything that I did so far, all those years of BASE jumping that led to this point, and now the suit is a problem. It’s not the skydive, it’s not flat-spinning, it’s not whatever. It’s the damned pressure suit.’”

“In Red Bull’s Santa Monica offices, the company’s high-performance director engaged a sports psychologist named Michael Gervais, who specializes in helping people to function well under stressful conditions. Gervais began to work intensively with Baumgartner, using biofeedback and conditioning techniques, training him in language use and thought control, and working extensively—if incrementally—with the pressure suit itself. After a few weeks Baumgartner was making progress. Speaking of it recently, he recalled, ‘Mike said, ‘Think about the good stuff. O.K., look at this suit. If you put it on and look in a mirror, you look like a hero, you know? There aren’t many people in the world who have their own suit. Even astronauts, they don’t have custom-made suits. Your suit is made especially for you. It’s your friend. It turns you into a superhero.’ And so you look in the mirror, you know, and ‘Yeah, I’m looking good!’ Then you start thinking, Yeah, I’m the only person who can go up in a capsule. And I walk out with this suit. It protects me. It gives me the right to be there at 130,000 feet. So it’s an easy trick, you know? The most important thing is your brain.”

“I had been invited to Gary Gordon’s hometown of Lincoln, Maine, to participate in honoring his memory with a ceremony and monument to his courage and professionalism. In order to prepare some remarks for my statement, I got a book on the Medal of Honor from the local library… what I found truly astounded me… in a small pocket, was the library checkout card… the last reader had taken it home almost twenty years before… a young teenager named Gary Gordon.” – Mike Durant, “In the Company of Heroes”, (p.385) In terms of talking about talking about the Medal of Honor, it’s worth pointing out that Robert Howard actually trained Randy Shughart

Afghanistan’s famed war carpets are getting a makeover — once again

KABUL – Forget Russian tanks and Kalashnikov rifles, F-16 jets or rocket-propelled grenades. In the Afghan capital and other cities, some of the country’s expert weavers are now emblazoning their carpets with images of the ultimate American high-tech weapon: drones.

“People want these carpets to illustrate that drones were an important part of the war, to show how effective they were,” said Haji Naseer Ahmed, 56, a slim and gray-haired dealer who was seated inside his small shop filled with carpets of every hue.

“Effective” is an arguable description of the U.S. drone war in Afghanistan. But what’s clear is that to most Afghans and Westerners, drones are an emblem of the high-tech conflicts the United States has been waging for more than a decade here and around the world. And Afghanistan’s weavers have long told the story in their carpets of the wars that have gripped their nation.

[…]

Perhaps there will be other emblems of war to add to his carpets – and attract interest.

“After the Americans are gone, we don’t know who will come here next,” said Ahmed. “Perhaps the Islamic State will arrive, and I’ll weave their black flag and their black outfits into my carpets.”

The only thing that is certain about his life, he said, are his carpets.

“From them, our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren will learn about the story of Afghanistan’s wars,” said Ahmed. “My carpets will last forever.”

“My first morning was met with a great calm. I immediately felt safe among the men and women of the PKK. Working in between their training sessions, I walked with guerrilla fighters single-file to a hilly outcrop to capture some portraits. The women may be diminutive but are actually formidable. Some carry the signs of a hard-fought war: chemical burns, chapped hands and scars. All the women are treated as equals to their male counterparts, but it is the men who will readily admit that a woman can fight better because she is a natural creator of the world, so she therefore has more to lose— and therefore more to fight for.” – Joey L.

Jason Amerine Special Forces ODA 574