Results tagged “military”

General David Petraeus is a details man. Over the course of two hours at Town Hall last night, the former Commanding General in Iraq spat out more names, dates, facts, and figures than we knew what to do with. This is why we have to make an concerted effort to remember a new acquaintance’s name while Petraeus currently serves as the Commander of U.S. Central Command.

This man neglected to pay his Bellevue storage unit fees, and when the owner tried to auction off his belongings, the cops found out about his precious hidden illegal crates of military weapons. Whoops! Ronald Struve pled guilty to all five federal charges in court this morning. His lawyer says Struve has "unusual political beliefs" (no!) and, with regards to the guns, was "apparently keeping them anticipation of Armageddon." This man needs more sunshine, puppies, and donuts in his life, all stuff he'll get zero amounts of in prison, which is where he's likely to end up.

The latest on 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, the Washington soldier who refused to deploy to Iraq in 2006 on the grounds that he believed the war was illegal: a federal judge ruled this week that re-trying Watada on three of the five counts against him in current court martial proceedings would constitute double jeopardy, and therefore he may only stand trial for the remaining two charges. In February of 2007, the first time Watada faced the courts for his unusual actions, the judge declared a mistrial. Looks like our man will be on desk duty for quite awhile yet!

You can tell it's Seafair when your pets are trembling under the coffee table. Nothing signifies the dog days of summer in Seattle like the roar of a defanged F-18 driving your dog to piss himself.

A Bellingham man accused of deserting his Army unit in 2001 has been arrested by U.S. Border Officers. Nicholas Olson, now 29, was arrested in Sweetgrass, Mont., on July 3rd as he was trying to re-enter the country from Canada. He will be extradited to the Army to face charges of desertion.

The most unfortunate victims of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor--which happened 66 years ago today--were surely the 2,333 military personnel who lost their lives.

We haven't read a ton of military history, but we've read enough to know that the most grievous mistakes by battle commanders aren't those that lead to defeat, but those that are made in the wake of victory. The biggest mistakes are by commanders who, having driven their opposition into full retreat, fail to press the advantage, chase the retreaters down, and destroy them. To cite just one example, had Confederate General P.G.T Beauregard ordered...

The host kicked off trivia with theme music, and we were immediately jealous. If we can figure out how to play Darth Vader's entrance theme next time we host at the Old Pequliar, we're totally ripping off that idea.

The protests being staged at the port down in Olympia by the Port Militarization Resistance seem like a huge operation when you read the papers:

Last night, in the middle of the movie round, Seattlest officially became old. "What Canadian actor, who died in Mexico, appeared in seven movies directed by John Hughes, more than any other performer?" we asked.

The trio of authors Akashic's showcasing includes the novelists Felicia Luna Lemus and Joe Meno, neither of whom we've read and therefore can't comment on. But trust us--it's worth going for Chris Abani alone. An exiled Nigerian playwright and novelist, Abani was such a thorn in the military regime's side that they even tried to assassinate him in London (prompting his move to the US, where he currently teaches at UCLA).

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We're not a tough, no-nonsense ex-military policeman. We're not an "extraordinarily smart, almost supernaturally tough, self-sufficient wanderer who, when he decides something needs doing, gets the thing done with his own unique blend of brains and brawn." Our weight may be somewhere in the range between 220 and 250 lbs., but we're nowhere near 6'5" tall. And when we relate our adventures in first person, we scrupulously avoid the singular.

Some guy who decided Halloween was just too fun to be only one day a year got a heavy dose of ironic justice yesterday:

A Puyallup man who posed as a decorated Marine Corps captain for two years will tend graves at the Tahoma Military Cemetery in Kent as part of 500 hours of community service, a federal judge has decided.

Continue reading "Ironic Justice For Puyallup Man"

Watching David Hare's dramatization of the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq last night at ACT, we were reminded of an email exchange we had that summer with an old college friend. Our friend, a Brit, was at the time starting her career as a history teacher, and if we recall correctly, we wrote her something to the effect of, "You know why World War I started, you know why World War II or Vietnam or Korea or the Falklands started...but in ten years, when your students ask you, 'Why did we invade Iraq?', what are you going to say? What's the explanation going to be?" Her despairing response: "They already are asking. And I don't know what to tell them."

Okay, okay. So Pride is actually going to happen. Even now, on the precipice of this extraordinary weekend celebration o' gayness, all our friends have no effing clue what's going on. If they, in all their gay glory, don't have a clue, we figured maybe you don't either. But Seattlest is here for you in these tough times and that's why we're gonna break it down all easy-like and tell you what we think is worth bothering with.

This week's Comment of the Week was posted as a reply to a post about an immigration announcement out of the office of Mayor Greg Nickels and uses the word "homo" six times, including such creative constructions as "homo liberals," "homo culture," and "liberal homos."

We are, in fact, over half-way there, and yet we continue to live on a prayer--a prayer that the latter half of SIFF contains nearly as many fine films as what's been shown thus far. Seattlest applies our well-honed knowledge of all things cinema to the SIFF catalogue in order to point out some notable films playing this weekend:

Another group of noobs got rescued off Mt. Hood recently, and we scanned the news looking for what people had to say on the subject. We follow climbing-related news not because we're climbers per se (in fact Seattlest is really nothing of the sort), but to keep tabs on what the rest of the world thinks about "extreme" sports. And sadly we've found that digging up people saying stupid things on the topic of high-altitude climbing is about as easy as shooting some of Dick Cheney's friends in the face.

At the Microsoft Strategic Account Summit yesterday morning Bill Gates dropped some future knowledge on the assembled ad men and tech types. A few of those nuggets we found particularly interesting and insightful:

Everything we know about dodging the draft by heading to Canada we learned from The Brothers K and popular mythology. So, we don't know much. Little before our time, there. Despite the fact that today's army is all volunteer (and today's Canada is more Conservative) there are still some soldiers waiting out Iraq up north. Almost everyone that this Salon article mentions seems to have already pulled a shift in the Middle East and is in Canada dodging a redeployment. The article talks about these soldiers (they estimate some 250 of them) and the great lengths that Canada has gone to to see that they are returned to the U.S. military.

--Turns out the military doesn't always want to hear about toxic gas.

The scoreboard at Everett Memorial Stadium will be incredibly accurate this season. Why? Because Dino Rossi is buying a minority share in the Aquasox, and he tends to get bitchy when people lose count.

Example number fourteen of Seattle's trend towards blandness, homogeneity and steady corporate march (wingtipped jackboots) towards complete and total cultural entropy comes today via sporting goods retailer G.I. Joes, or, as they are currently rebranding themselves, "Joes." Mother fucking "Joes?" God dammit. Seattlest loved G.I. Joes. Its mix of urban trail gear and skiing equipment alongside camping, hunting, fishing and outdoor work gear gave us hope that Red and Blue might one day get along. At least it acknowledged that we all occupy the same outdoors. Don't get us wrong, we love REI, but normal people's idea of a weekend getaway doesn't involve $60,000 summits in Asia. G.I. Joes was an outdoor outfitter for normal people. It started as a military surplus store way back whenever, thus the name, but today "Uh, excuse me, where are your bayonets?" is going to get you nothing but a blank stare from staff. Maybe a wave over towards the knives, if you're lucky. It was funny that the place was named G.I. Joes and there wasn't a whiff of military gear. The name didn't make it obvious that it sold outdoor equipment, but you figure it out eventually. "Joe's" sounds like a fucking diner. "G.I.'s" would have been better, even.

"We're gonna send you to military school" will no longer be an idle threat only of rich parents, if Governor Gregoire gets her way. She's backing a "boot-camp-style" academy for our state's high school dropouts.

The governor is seeking about $6 million to build and operate the academy, which would serve about 300 dropouts each year — two intensive five-month sessions of 150 youths, drawn from around the state.

Continue reading "Scared Straight, Washington-Style"

Realizing that trying to protect our way of life with humans gets people killed, the Navy has decided to do the job with sea lions and dolphins.

In some ways, we wish we could experience Sundance every week, but on the other hand, we're pretty f-ing exhausted. So it's a good thing that this is our last day here. We've had a great time with both the movies and the festival-goers. We've had film discussions with strangers everywhere we went, we've argued with film critics, and we've interacted with some really remarkable people, including two Lauras from Portland, a Bermudan film festival programmer, and a wonderfully chatty fag from NYC. Normally, we hate people. We tend to avoid meeting new people (most of them suck), and we definitely aren't prone to striking up discussions with strangers. But at Sundance it's different. Film really can bring us all together.

President Gerald Ford's memorial service is today, we thought we'd present these remarks Ford (shown here with George Harrison) made about Seattle upon his visit here as president on September 4th, 1975. Not the most interesting reading, but they seem extemporaneous and are perhaps a good snapshot of what one president thought when he thought of Seattle in the 70s: fish, Boeing, and international trade:

It is really wonderful to be in Seattle, and I do thank you for the beautiful salmon. We are now the beneficiaries in my State of Michigan, not of salmon quite as large as that, but salmon. We started developing a few years ago by transplanting some salmon from this area of the world, and we now have tremendous supplies in Lake Michigan of Coho salmon. And we are proud of it. They don't match that salmon in size, but they do remind us of the west coast and the wonderful opportunities that all of you have who live here.

Continue reading "Gerald Ford on Seattle"

--A five-car pileup on I-5 yesterday was caused by a guy looking at his BlackBerry while driving.

--Why you should care about the Centralia mine closure.