Murdoc ended up with an extra hardcover copy of Inside Gitmo: The True Story Behind the Myths of Guantanamo Bay by Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu

So let’s give it away!

Leave a comment here if you’d like to be entered in the drawing. The rules will be the same as for the Air & Space Magazine drawing a couple of months ago:

Contest Rules:

• Book will only be mailed to US mailing address. Sorry. No exceptions.
• Murdoc’s immediate family cannot enter.
• Please enter only once.
• Sending Murdoc cash is permissible but will not improve your chances of winning.
• If (and only if) you win you will have to give me your real name and mailing address.
• Winner will be chosen randomly and all results are final.
• Entries must be posted to the site by 2359 hours ET on Wednesday, 1 April 2009
• I can’t think of any more right now but I’ll add them if I do.

To Enter:

• Leave a comment on this post.

That’s all there is to it. Leave a comment and I will have a winner chosen from all entrants using the Random Integer Generator at Random.org. If the random number 13 and you have the 13th comment on the post, you win a copy of Inside Gitmo: The True Story Behind the Myths of Guantanamo Bay. Simple as that.

From the Sea to the Stars

A two-in-one:

Sea Siege—The nuclear war had come at last and the research team on an island in the West Indies thought they had been lucky to survive. But survival was going to require more than luck, when they found themselves under attack by sea creatures out of darkest legend, directed by a previously unknown intelligence from the depths of the sea which was determined to eliminate mankind as a competitor and seize what was left of the world for itself.

Star Gate—Long ago, the Star Lords had come from a dying Earth and settled on the Earthlike planet Gorth where they found a primitive society and helped the inhabitants to rise to civilization. But now the native folk of Gorth have grown resentful and jealous of the Star Lords, who have refused to share their secrets of immortality and their powerful weapons—technology which led to the loss of Earth. Though some of the Star Lords are preparing to resume wandering among the stars, others cannot bear to leave their adopted world and instead travel through an interdimensional gate to another Gorth in a parallel universe. And when they find that in this universe the Star Lords from Earth came as conquerors and enslaved the people of Gorth, their course is clear. They must battle their counterparts to free Gorth—even if it means their own destruction.

And don’t forget the adventures of Murdoc Jern: Search for the Star Stones.

Frank Frazetta's take on 'Scramble the Viper Squadron, we're going to kick some tin-can ass!'

I’d seen a couple of these before, but not all of them. It seems I’ve seen at least one other that isn’t included, too, that I think was a different take on the “Ice Planet Zero” image and was used as a cover for the novelization I read when Battlestar Galactica first came out. (Though maybe that wasn’t actually Franzetta.)

See the rest here.

Falco is dead?

Product Description
“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone crunching zombie action.

You people and your zombies. Enough is enough. No more, folks. Seriously.

Did I mention that Max Brooks has a new one coming out soon?

Last week Buckethead pointed out this video:

Remember, George W. Bush was just like Hitler and his administration was Nazi. This sort of thing, meanwhile, is constructive. I mean, Bruce Springsteen didn’t play at Bush’s inauguration, did he?

(Uncomfortable question time: Aren’t these people saying that they weren’t being great mothers and great fathers before Obama was elected? That only now they will represent their country with pride, dignity, and honesty? That they didn’t care for the elderly until now? That they didn’t meet their neighbors? Suddenly they’re going to worry about the environment today? Seriously, I was doing a lot of these things already. Why weren’t they?)

Obviously the video is drivel. The problem is that many people are going to buy the drivel. Buy it by the bucket.

Ace:

Celebrities Who’ve Maligned America for Eight Years Suddenly Announce “We’re All In This Together”

Remember when they put out a similar video after 9/11? Nope, me neither.

He also uses a naughty word.

The Iowahawk transcription is, predictably, a bit funny.

Dirk Benedict as Starbuck

Dirk Benedict seems upset.

There was a time, I know I was there, when men were men, women were women and sometimes a cigar was just a good smoke. But 40 years of feminism have taken their toll. The war against masculinity has been won. Everything has turned into its opposite, so that what was once flirting and smoking is now sexual harassment and criminal. And everyone is more lonely and miserable as a result.

Witness the “re-imagined” “Battlestar Galactica,” bleak, miserable, despairing, angry and confused. Which is to say, it reflects in microcosm the complete change in the politics and morality of today’s world, as opposed to the world of yesterday.

For the record, at one point I was telling people that I thought the new BSG was maybe the best sci-fi television series ever. I had my quibbles with some of the politics and with some of the twists and turns in the storyline, but it was overall outstanding.

Then, one day, I basically lost interest. I don’t think I’ve watched since Starbuck (the girl one) flew out of the cloud or something at the end of an episode or season or whatever. We TiVoed the following episodes but never got around to watching them. Sometimes I wonder what ever happened with those people, but I don’t wonder hard enough to watch.

Also for the record, I’m not much of a television watcher to begin with. So my opinion on the viability of television shows doesn’t really count for much.

Regarding Benedict’s points about feminism, sexual harassment, and the “un-imagining” of BSG, I’ve got to say that even if I don’t agree 100% with him on everything, I think he’s coming from the right direction on most of it.

Very timely: Inside Gitmo: The True Story Behind the Myths of Guantanamo Bay by Gordon Cucullu:

The U.S. military detention center at Guantánamo Bay—known to the public as Gitmo—has been called the American Gulag, a scene of medieval horrors where innocent farmers and goat herders swept up in Afghanistan and Iraq have been sequestered, tortured, and abused for years on end without access to legal counsel or basic medical services.

Gordon Cucullu, a retired army colonel, was so appalled by these reports that he decided to see for himself. In a series of visits he inspected every corner of the camp and interviewed dozens of personnel, from guards and interrogators to cooks and nurses. The result—coming just as the Obama administration wants to close the facility—is a riveting description of daily life for both prisoners and guards. Cucullu describes the six camps reserved for different levels of compliance, details the treatment of prisoners, and examines their experiences in detail, including the techniques used to interrogate them, the food they eat, their medical care, how they communicate with one another, and the many ingenious ways they contrive to assault and injure their guards.

While some prisoners were indeed treated harshly in the early days, when the hastily built camp was flooded with battlefield captures and fears ran high of another 9/11-style attack, Cucullu finds that these excesses were quickly corrected. Current treatment and oversight routines exceed the standards of any maximum-security prison in the world.

Despite what the public has heard, these are not innocent goatherds but dedicated jihadists whose overriding goal—as they themselves candidly say—is to kill Americans. Should they now be released to return to the fight, perhaps on American soil? Read this book and decide for yourself.

Book Bomb for The Founders’ Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms by Stephen P. Halbrook:

USS Nebraska (BB 14) coaling near Veracruz. 1916.

Displacement: 16,094 tons
Length: 441′3″
Beam: 76′2″
Draft: 25′10″
Speed: 19 knots
Complement: 1,108
Armament:

• 4x 12″ guns
• 8x 8″ guns
• 12x 6″ guns
• 11x 3″ guns
• 4x 21″ torpedo tubes

Class: Virginia

The Nebraska was launched in 1904 and decommissioned in 1920. Found via Naval & Nautical Blog.

More battlewagons below!
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