The puppy-throwers.

We get what ‘War, Inc.’ is saying—but it’s still worth a listen

There’s a scene in this movie that is its heart. And to obtain the right understanding of War, Inc., the workings of this heart must be understood. If you miss it, the greatness of this film will be lost in the chaos of its [...]

What ever became of Juanito and Maria?

The cover of our first Memorial Day issue was unusual for us: no band photos, no jokes, just Bob Aul’s un-ironic portrait of a man in uniform, standing in front of an American flag. Inside was his story: 19-year-old Private Ernesto Guerra of Long Beach, killed in Baghdad almost [...]

According to the government’s top psychiatric researchers, post-war suicides of soldiers home from Afghanistan and Iraq may exceed combined combat death tolls. Bloomberg reports:
Community mental health centers, hobbled by financial limits, haven’t provided enough scientifically sound care, especially in rural areas, said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. [...]

The LA Times reports today that dockworkers from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (along with thousands of others from the West Coast’s 29 ports) took the day off to protest the Iraq War, a move that effectively shut down all port operations for the day. In related news, Bill O’Reilly says we [...]

We still haven’t quite figured out how to take care of our troops at home and Ed Frawley is just more proof. Frawley, whose son was stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina after a 15-month tour of Afghanistan, caught the base’s ongoing squalor on camera: soldiers fighting standing sewage, rows of broken toilets, broken [...]

Yesterday the LA Times ran a harrowing Op-Ed by Rep. Jane Harman on the rape epidemic in the military. Says Harman:
In 2006, 2,947 sexual assaults were reported — 73% more than in 2004. The DOD’s newest report, released this month, indicates that 2,688 reports were made in 2007, but a recent shift from calendar-year reporting [...]

If there is a spike in IEDs this week, well, you know who to blame.  Nationals fans!

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There’s been a lot of grousing on [...]

…the war goes on and on and on…
Sometime last week we hit the 5th anniversary of our Glorious Experiment in Iraq. It wasn’t mentioned here, but not because we forgot. We were simply too bitter, too weary, to make any sort of fuss.
On Easter Sunday, we reached a new milestone: 4,000 US [...]

SANDOW BIRK’S “THE LIBERATION OF BAGHDAD”
According to the LA Times, a mural by Long Beach artist Sandow Birk (who we’ve written about here, here and here) has apparently rankled more than a few residents of Boyle Heights. The LAPD-commissioned mural was created for the department’s Hollenbeck station but has yet to be installed because of [...]