Yes, Mercenaries Die. That's Why You're Getting Paid So Damn Much

Watched a documentary tonight about profiteering in the Iraq war by private companies like Halliburton, Caci, Titan, Blackwater, and others. I'm always amused that the same folks protesting using tax money to provide healthcare to their neighbors didn't raise a peep when Halliburton was charging U.S. taxpayers $100 a pop to do a load of laundry for soldiers, and whose blatant disregard for said soldiers' health resulted in death and dismemberment of troops and civilians.

But that stuff's old news. Halliburton and the private contractors' abuses are a rant for a whole nother post. Don't get me started.

In this instance, what struck me as interesting was the way they portrayed the civilian contractors as totally naive casualties of war. These folks went over there with a passionate desire to help, yes, and they felt fucked over when it turned out they were just part of a profiteering system.

BUT.

The company I worked for back in Chicago was among those called on by Halliburton and others as subcontractors in Iraq, and you know what? The package they offer you is pretty sweet. 2.5 times your base salary plus combat pay, generous vacation time, and you only had to sign a 6-12 month contract. I'd have been getting paid almost $100,000 as a project assistant/glorified admin. I gnawed hard on this and finally decided that, you know, we made the mess, we should go over there and fix it.

That was the moral piece I needed to push me over there.

But let's be honest, folks.

It sure as fuck wasn't moralitythat got me interested.

It was that sweet, sweet, $100,000.

The morality just made me feel better about it when I sent off my resume.

Anybody who went over to rebuild Iraq as a private contractor was doing so as a mercenary. As a mercenary, there are certain things you're going to expect: 1) you'll be in a lot of danger, and there's a real possibility you'll come back dead or maimed,  2) because of this, you'll be paid an assload of money 3) because you're a mercenary and are expendable, your employer really doesn't care too terribly about your safety.

Time and again I was struck by these families' outrage that their son/brother/husband had gone over into a war zone to make 100-120-140K driving a truck or 200-250-300K setting up water sanitation sites and being absolutely stunned that they'd been hurt/maimed/killed.

Death is a horrible, horrible thing, but if a soldier dies in a war, do we ask why the government didn't do more to protect them? These days, perhaps we do. Why didn't they have better armor, better intelligence, better logistics? We demand amazing things from our government and rightly so. In a perfect world the war machine would run magnificently and folks whose countries we invade wouldn't fight back. But this is what war is. War is dirty and messy and horrifying and people die. Did we expect something different?

Maybe this is just because I've read and written so much about war, and because so much of my family has served in war (including the Iraq war). Maybe it's also because when I sent in my resume for consideration as a private contractor in Iraq subcontracted to Halliburton that I was very, very clear about just what kind of shitstorm that would entail. I would likely have been one of the folks in the video decrying the abuses of Halliburton as far as waste and endangering soldiers' lives, but I don't know that I'd have been upset because Halliburton put me in a war zone.

Halliburton didn't put me in a war zone.

I had a price, and Halliburton was willing to pay it.

That's what being a mercenary is, and it's not all candy and roses and "hey I'll drive a trunk for 100K and come home smelling like the desert."

Anybody who thinks they're getting paid 100K just to drive a trunk is woefully naive of what the fuck a war zone is, and has absolutely no conception of what it'd be like to be a member of a country that's just been invaded, no matter how right or just or patriotic the invaders feel.

Are we really all this isolated and naive? Do we all make the same sorts of moral justifications like the one I made back then,  ("wellllll... we broke it, so we really should fix i"t) to make ourselves feel better about being profiteering mercenaries? You can pretty it up any way you like, but if you were to offer the same job ("drive a truck and get shot at") to somebody for 20-40K, see just how many sign up for patriotism.

The ones who signed up for patriotism are the soldiers. You know, the ones actually getting paid the shit money to get shot at in the desert. Everybody else is a fucking mercenary.

Me included.

At the end of the day, I was not among the folks selected to go oversees. But I would have gone. For $100K to pay off all those student loans and credit card debt and come back with a fresh new start?

You're damn right I'd risk driving a truck across a mine field for that.

Boxers, Before & After Fights

Before and after.

(via Tyim)

Badass of the Week

Blenda.

And Sometimes You Stand and Fight

A 17-year-old high school marching band student beat up two assailants who tried to mug her as she walked to school in this high desert community about 40 miles north of Los Angeles, sheriff's officials said Tuesday.

My martial arts teacher once said that the cowards are the ones who attack you from behind. This means that if you show any amount of backbone, they're more likely to back off than somebody who, say, punches you in the face. These are the sorts of people who are also less likely to be armed, which definately helped our heroine.

I would have liked a little more back story on this student, tho. I'm always interested in why some people fight back and some people don't (again, them not being armed and her knowing how to use a baton probably helped).

In The Zone

From here. There are some things you just can't make up... and be believed, anyway.

SENTRY: We spotted an Arab female about 100 meters below our emplacement, near the light armored vehicle gate.

HEADQUARTERS: Observation post “Spain,” do you see it?

OBSERVATION POST: Affirmative, it's a young girl. She's now running east.

HQ: What is her position?

OP: She's currently north of the authorized zone.

SENTRY: Very inappropriate location.

[Gunfire]

OP: She's now behind an embankment, 250 meters from the barracks. She keeps running east. The hits are right on her.

HQ: Are you talking about a girl under ten?

OP: Approximately a ten-year-old girl.

HQ: Roger.

OP: OP to HQ.

HQ: Receiving, over.

OP: She's behind the embankment, dying of fear, the hits are right on her, a centimeter from her.

SENTRY: Our troops are storming toward her now. They are around 70 meters from her.

HQ: I understand that the company commander and his squad are out?

SENTRY: Affirmative, with a few more soldiers.

OP: Receive. Looks like one of the positions dropped her.

HQ: What, did you see the hit? Is she down?

OP: She's down. Right now she isn't moving.

COMPANY COMMANDER [to HQ]: Me and another soldier are going in. [To the squad] Forward, to confirm the kill!

cc [to HQ]: We fired and killed her. She has . . . wearing pants . . . jeans and a vest, shirt. Also she had a kaffiyeh on her head. I also confirmed the kill. Over.

HQ: Roger.

CC [on general communications band]: Any motion, anyone who moves in the zone, even if it's a three-year-old, should be killed. Over.

From here.

Weapons for Her

Japan has made several other contributions to the world of womanly weaponry, most of them used by the female ninjas known as kunoichi, who began slipping through the shadows in the 1500s. The kunoichi’s secret weapons included poisons, blinding powders and stealth weapons like the kushi (hair comb), kasa (umbrella), kakute (spiked ring), nekote (steel claws or fingernails) and hari (sharpened needle). These dual-function weapons went mostly undetected on kunoichi disguised as dewy-eyed geishas, but each could be used to kill, and the kunoichi trained hard to do so, quickly and quietly. Worn as jewelry, the kakute made it easy to slice a throat; the kushi could be holding hair one moment and stabbing a vital organ the next.

And yes, when the gym membership runs out...

...in May, I'll be signing up for boxing classes again.

Speaking of fighting...

I don't know what gets me more - that the ax is half her size or that she runs out the door after the guy.

And people think I write fantasy.

(thanks, Tyim!!)

And God's War Isn't "Marketable"...

... Then market it as "literary" spec fiction, yo.

The sight of 30 determined girls, many in headscarves, sparring and shadow-boxing, is extraordinary in Kabul. Women in burkas stalk the streets outside huddled against icy winds.

The teenage boxers, none of whom is older than 18, are part of a new generation which has grown up with only dim memories of Taleban rule and its stifling repression of women. They are ambitious, and can see nothing strange about women boxers.


Seriously, after writing the boxing stuff in God's War, this was kind of eerie to read.

Most Days, Really

More Reasons to Take Martial Arts Classes

Because most fights only have to last about this long.

Speaking of Kicking It....

I was so proud of myself last week! Hardly sore at all after class! I mean, after two days of not being able to walk after my first MA class, the fact that I could get around without much soreness after my second class felt great!

And then I had that third class, where we literally spent over an hour on kicking drills and then when we moved to doing combinations, because this is Muay Thai, the combinations involved - you guessed it - punching and more kicking.

Oddly enough, I didn't start to really feel it until last night, when my hips started to hurt and I realized I was having trouble getting up out of chairs. This morning when I got up, I actually physically pulled my left leg out of bed. You know, just to help it a little.

Oh man. The left leg is in the worst shape, of course. Not my calves, mind, just the hips. It was the calves that killed me after the first class (that's what 10 minutes of jumping jacks will do), but nearly two hours of class, with all those damned kicking drills... it's the hips that are killing me.

Boy, I love being back at this.

Kick It (Redux)

Since there was a big thunderstorm about the time I usually head to MA class and Steph was home early, she went ahead and drove me out to class. I changed into MA clothes while I was there, but since we got out late, jumped outside after class without changing back into my street clothes and hopped into the car.

Stephanie looked over at my shirt. "`When I See Something I Kick It'?" she inquired, as if I had chosen this shirt myself.

"We all wear them!" I enthused. "It's our uniform!"

"Oh you're kidding me."

"IT IS GREAT!!!!!"

"So you want me to take a picture for your blog?"

"Eh, maybe when I'm in better shape."

"It can be a `before' picture."

I thought that over. "We'll see," I said.

Until then:

Kick it.

Kick It

Got to class again last night, and signed up "for real" (which involved paying money! That I sort of had!).

Master T. asked about my med ID braclet, and I babbaled on about having type 1 and how I test before and after class, and I keep my emergency sugar right there by my water... I think some part of me was worried I was going to get the "I can't have you here and be responsible if you pass out," but you know, I already signed my wavier. Instead, he told me he has a student he does private lessons with who's also a type 1 diabetic, which is why he asked. Which was kind of neat in a weird way.

I guess it felt good not to be the spokesperson for my weirdness. It's like being "the feminist," "the black friend," "the gay friend," and etc. You can only represent for one aspect of what makes you you for so long before you want to start waving your arms and saying, "I'm more than this! Yes, I'm this too, but there's a huge load of things that go together! I don't want to be The Diabetic!"

Overall, class went a lot, lot, lot better than the first one. I had a partner who was also new, and we spent less time grappling and more time working on stance and punching technique than we did last time. It turns out that I'd so internalized the "keep your hands up" mantra that I'd been holding my arm incorrectly before I punched and losing a huge amount of power.

I need a lot of work. I'm out of shape and, as ever, uncoordinated. Even after all my time at the other gym, picking this stuff up, all this body stuff, it's not easy for me. It's been a weakness of mine my whole life, and it's one of those things I recognize but am really driven to making the best it can be. I may never be a tricky fighter, but I want to be better.

Physcially, I'm a lot more put together after this class than I was after the last one, too. Some of what's killing me is biking half an hour out there and half an hour back. Riding back is a bitch.

And... I'm wondering how much my inability to move for two solid days after class last week also had something to do with having low sugar all night. If you're at 45 for six hours after a 3 hour workout, your muscles aren't exactly getting much of anything to repair themselves.

My dosing strategy worked out really well this time around. Without the dinner insulin, I was able to come home at 150, which is high, but I knew from the week before that I was going to crash at least 50 points overnight, so I refrained from dosing and set my alarm. The low sugar woke me up at 1:30 am, before the alarm, and I tested at 61. I ate some jellybeans and tested four hours later when I got up for the day at 74 (80's a perfect number).

Not bad.

I'm feeling good enough that I think I'll be able to make it to class on Tuesday. Bare minimum, I can start with once a week if I have to, but I'm hoping to keep at two classes a week regularly and maybe add another one on occasion when I'm feeling up to it.

Felt good to be out and about.

On Becoming a Supah Ninjah

Had my first day of MA class at the new school yesterday. Biked half an hour out there, had class for an hour and a half, and biked a half hour back. Tomorrow, I get to do it all over again!

We opened with kicking drills and then did an hour - an *hour* - of grappling. I'm not using to doing a lot of holds & etc. work, and especially not for an *hour,* and we switched up partners a lot, which was good.

One of the tough parts about starting a new school is that everybody's sort of uncertain about what level of contact their partner is comfortable with, and you have to work it out and get comfortable with it as you go along. Something that made me really happy about my last school was that I partnered with guys a lot; being as tall and heavy as I am, it helps me a lot more to get paired with somebody of equal size.

There was a lot of merry dancing in the beginning as all the women in class had been partnered at least once with all the other women in class, and then the instructor finally prodded everybody into mixed-sex pairs.

Most people were great, but I ended up partnered with a guy who was really nervous - either about partnering with a girl or possibly being beat by a girl or *something,* and when I went to practice the hold, wrapping my hands behind his head, pressing my forearms against his chest and pulling his head forward and down, he exclaimed, "Oh, look, cleavage!"

It was the most bizarrely inappropriate (and inaccurate) thing I think I've ever heard in MA class, and my immediate thought was, "Wow, this guy must be, like, 12." I wasn't, in fact, showing any cleavage, as I'm small breasted and was wearing a sturdy sports bra under a high scooped neck tank top.

Perhaps he thought this was a way of alleviating the tension he experienced while being partnered with a girl, or perhaps he thought this would somehow make me feel more relaxed. Who knows? He went on to knock the glasses off my face and leave a big claw mark on my forehead when we should have just been doing some friendly hold-and-release drills. The behavior drew the attention of the instructor and several classmates, who were just as curious as I was about what he was trying to prove showing that he had better skillz than the New Chick.

Dunno.

Aside from that, it was a really good experience. We finished up with some time with glove and mitts, which felt sofuckingunbelievablygoodyouhavenoidea. It's been awhile since I got to hit things.

I had a lot of anxiety about getting back to class. I usually end up being the fattest person in class, and last night was no exception, so I spent the evening doing just as many pushups as everyone else and muddling through things I should probably have asked for more help with. Always trying to prove things...

What I told myself when I first started MA classes back in 2004 (dear lord was it that long ago?) was that, even if I sucked and got everything wrong and was totally weak and uncoordinated and had the body type of a mushroom that I would never again be totally new and unfamilier with how to hit things, with forms and how to do drills and all that. Sure, you have to relearn things and get back into it and recondition and all that, but it's never totally new. You're only totally new ONCE. That space in your head for all of this stuff has already been pushed out, and your body can get back into it a lot more easily than it did the first time.

That kept me going, and yeah, it payed off. Because starting a new school is a *lot* easier than it was starting my first school. I feel like less of an idiot (and less of a mushroom), and less uncoordinated, and the whole deal. I don't feel incompetent, and I already know some of my biggest strengths and weakneses.

When the class formed up for the night, I realized that the shirts that everybody was wearing read:

When
I
See
Something
I
Kick
It.

Yeah.

Something tells me that me and this MA school will get along just fine...

Yeah, I Need to Get Back to Watching Fights...

I didn't see the fight, but knowing the result sure makes me miss watching `em. I was surprised at the result, actually, even having seen De La Hoya when he was seriously out of fighting shape.

Free Hugs

On Thursday night I was walking home from work downtown when I saw a woman on the corner of Washington and State holding up a Free Hugs sign. I'd already seen the original Free Hugs video on YouTube, so I had a little shot of happiness at seeing somebody out in Chicago doing the same and prepared to step hastily by and get to my train.

But as I passed by and saw her hugging people, my step faltered, and I wanted to turn back.

I really wanted a hug.

Here was this person offering some bit of comfort without requesting anything in return, without obligation, without any power-crazy or twisted ulterior motives (that's the idea, anyway). You don't see that a lot. You don't get unconditional comfort or affection all that often.

It made me wonder if this is what the appeal of prostitution is, that you can pay someone to pretend to care about you for an hour. The difference, in this case, of course, is that Free Hugs are given without the need to receive anything in turn. I'm not shaking hands or giving out blow jobs because I can't pay my rent. It's done out of pure compassion as opposed to desperation/material gain.

And man, did I want to turn around and go back, to the point where I started crying there in the street, because I couldn't believe that it was possible for anyone to give me something without desperately needing something back, without taking something away from me, and I was so, so tired; after the year or two I've had, I felt like I had nothing to give to anyone, and I couldn't turn back and receive that hug because I didn't have anything to give her in return.

So I cried on the way home on the train, and I thought about a world full of free hugs, of compassion without obligation, of being able to give of yourself without fear of having someone try and take it all away.

I would like to live in a world like that, or even a world where I believed that was possible.

One of the best heroines I've come across in a really long time is Nausicaa of comic book fame. She's strong and compassionate and will fight if she needs to, but prefers negotiation and the showing of love and compassion over brute force if possible. I loved the idea that that heroine could exist. The idea of nonviolence and universal love as a means of changing the world is what draws me to stories of people like Ghandi or Jesus or even MLK. I want to believe that love can change the world. I write about bloody, violent, mean people who fight hate with hate; they're the sort of monsters created by societies that use hate against hate, that keep order through strength and submission.

That is not the world I want to live in, and it's not the world I want to believe in. I write about it because it fascinates me, and because I hope that someday, if I can understand it, I can find an alternative to it, one that I really believe in. I don't buy the idea that all we need to do is stand in a circle and put flowers in our hair and dance around saying "I believe in fairies!" (what about health care? Who's going to make insulin? Who's going to do the laundry and build the houses and make great medical breakthroughs if we're all standing around in a circle all day patting each other on the back?), but I know that there's an alternative to all this blood and anger and hate.

Sometimes I feel that what I do with a lot of my writing is take all of the anger and hate and violence that I've absorbed from the world and try and excise it through writing. Otherwise I just turn it inward, and it seethes inside of me and treies to claw itself out, and it chews me to pieces. I'm tired of being full of self-loathing.

I want to be able to let good things in, to appreciate all that good stuff, all those free hugs, without the desperate fear that by letting those things in, by releasing all the fear and anger, I'll become weak and vulnerable.

The only way to learn how to fly is to let everything go. I know that, but the fear of falling, the fear of falling... that's the worst fear of all.