Don't Bomb Iran!

At least not yet anyway.

It's pretty clear the Iranian totalitarian regime is looking to goad the U.S. into a first bloody strike.

Shooting down the drone was a brilliant move since there won't be any grieving families on the television. Nobody got hurt. Then, by muddying the waters over the location of the drone when it was shot down, there will be uncertainty over which party is telling the truth. Is this a case of the "Bully of the World", the United States, looking for an excuse to attack Iranian or is it a war-like Iran attempting to start an international military conflict by shooting down a U.S. drone in international airspace?

The world will ponder since both sides are keeping a straight face.

On the U.S. side, there are calls for reprisal but extreme caution should be observed if past experience will be given attention. If the U.S. should actually fire missiles into Iran or Iranian targets, you know the pictures coming back will be those of civilian casualties and the hurt looks of Iranian diplomats.

Even if we should hit nothing but sand.

It's a miracle of nature that the U.S. can't seem to hit anything but civilians in these Middle Eastern countries. We bomb a military installation and the pictures come back as women and children. In a past experience we bombed a toxic gas manufacturing facility in Iraq and, surprise, it was a children's formula processing plant! Amazing how, with the most advanced tracking systems in the world to date, we can barely hit a terrorist.

But subsequently, the pictures aren't going to look good if we don't wait for further escalation from the ancient brain-trust of the Mullahs.

And wait we should.

We could send them the bill for $ 130 million, the cost of the drone. Then we could threaten to seize Iranian assets if they don't remit the balance within 90 days. That would be the businessman's answer.

Besides, what's one lost drone to the Pentagon? It's a drop in the bucket in their massive secret budget which is most likely larger than 90% of the world's economies.

They'll just order another dozen.

War Mongers to the Front

I'm starting to see the roll a person like John Bolton plays in the Trump administration. With a guy like him always calling for the destruction of "Name-Your-Adversary", if I was sitting in Iran, I could never be sure if the President would be seriously listening to him or not. It would be hard to think he would but there he is chanting "kill, kill, kill" all the time. And President Trump is saying "I don't know how long I can hold this guy back." It makes one wonder if it's a tactic.

Would that it were but it's a deadly game both the U.S. and Iran are playing and it reminds me very much like what happened at Fort Sumter back in 1860 to bring the North and South to begin the American Civil War.

It was important to Abraham Lincoln for the South to fire the first shot in the war. You know, that's important in politics so he decides to just send an unarmed supply ship since North Carolina, having already seceded from the Union, had stopped suppling the fort which was on an island in the harbor. So the southern garrison on the shore, seeing the ship, launched an attack on Fort Sumter and the result was the "War of Southern Aggression" with just about every adult male alive at the time ending up dead.

Iran Becomes North Korea

We know the sanctions are killing the Iranian economy, for what it is, and if we want to pursue any kind of retaliation, the U.S. would do well to keep it economic. The Iran government is trying to find a way to break out of this blockade and save face while doing it. A tall task. So they are rattling away and causing, in reality, minor destruction.

Planting mines above the waterline of a ship tells me they didn't want to actually sink it. They wanted a good fire but again, nobody got killed. I don't think anybody even got hurt unless they fell off of a ladder or something. The ships are insured for this sort of thing. Even the Japanese are downplaying the whole affair since the ship was bound for Japan. So this sort of non-aggressive aggression is mostly designed to bring attention to Iran's 'plight". Not enough there to start a fight.

Plus, it was not an American ship so just leave it to the insurance company accountants.

What to Do

It's pretty obvious. With the pundits all describing Iran as playing a "Long Game", that should also be our strategy as well. The North Korean playbook as been to do just enough to make people nervous and Iran is making people nervous alright but that in itself does not constitute grounds for war. Also, just like North Korea, Iran has threatened destruction of the economic means of their neighbors should the United States intervene militarily. In the case of the Middle East, that's the oil fields.

So standing back and waiting to see just how far Iran is willing to go in this game of chicken will serve the United States interests. Meanwhile it's Iran's economic issues that will continue to work against them. They've squandered their meager GDP over the years on guns for the military and not butter for the people. And now it's come to bite them in the ass. Mullahs and Economics don't mix.

I don't see any other nations stepping up and offering any support for an armed solution to Iranian skullduggery so instead of putting on our "Defenders of the World" hats yet again, we should just wait until Iran does something to piss SOMEONE ELSE off.

Until a major country like France, Japan or Spain steps up and says "Something should be done" about Iran, we should just keep working on closing our southern boarder. It isn't like we've got nothing better to do.

So until Iran decides to definitively fire the first bloody shot at the United States, we should wait it out. But if they do decide to pull the trigger first...

That will spell the end for them.

The Media Hates You!

You all voted for Donald Trump and now you're gonna pay!

Where ever you turn its 24 hours of "Hate for Trump!"

There is no hiding from it whether it's in print, on-line, radio, television or, like here in Socialist Massachusetts just idle conversations with people who will blurt out the dumbest Hate Trump stuff. It's ALMOST replaced talking about the weather here in the formerly industrialized North Eastern part of the country we call “New England”. 

Call them what you want "Teachers March, Rally for Kids, Earth Day, March for Science etc. It’s all just another “We Hate Trump” rally. It's a one-note symphony that the Political Left now has boundless energy for playing and their Media enablers never tire of covering. These are the real people! These are the concerned citizens who are only out here because they CARE!

But it was the “other” people, the Tea Party people, who walked out of their regular lives to gather, plan and act that didn’t get such loving coverage. It's not like they were school teachers and other government employees who got the day off to protest or had been told to go, the Tea Party had to get out of their individual orbits on their own time and work to make this change happen since nobody was going to help them but themselves and they knew it. The Tea Party knew their chief opposition was the American Press!

And now we all are under constant bombardment in a war the Media has already lost. But they are not going to let you forget it. Their message is everywhere: Hotmail, Radio, Television and what's left of the print media: "Hate for All Things Trump!”.  

And we thought it was bad when it was just “Bush Derangement Syndrome”. This is 100 times more insane.

How exhausting this must be for all these totalitarian Wannabes. They couldn’t push you towards believing things were going great the last 8 years, they couldn’t push you towards voting for Hillary Clinton and so now you’re going to pay for your stupidity by having to endure this media pounding morning, noon and night until they either run out of money or just start shooting.

Defenders of Free Speech my ASS! It’s quite obvious that there is nothing standing in the way of anybody's 1st Amendment rights when you hear the bile these clowns are spilling. Such venom and hatred coming from supposedly educated people just shows that in reality, they aren’t as smart as they thought they were, were they? 

That may be the hardest part for them to take.

You see, they felt that they were SO close to their much vaunted and predicted total takeover of the American process of governance. They felt they were THIS CLOSE to being able to crowd out all opposition and shout down all opposing voices to their vision of what this nation should be.

But a funny thing happened on their way to the sending people to the Death Panels: They were soundly beaten. 

But it's not that they lost but how they lost. They lost everything totally. Their total control of The Message has been shattered, shattered by the likes of Snowden & Assange, the new Woodward and Bernstein of the Internet Age.

And shattered by the millions of Americans who rather than believing what they heard, believed what they saw and had the courage to endure not only the Media onslaught and name calling but the institutionalized discrimination by the government in their injudicious use of the Internal Revenue Service against honest tax-paying citizens. 

But in all this vitriol and vengeance we see the true face of the enemy. They were there all the time but now we see them for who they really are: The Dictatorial Class.

Their message is clear: You should’ve just sat there and LUMPED IT all, the lack of paying jobs, the want of starting your own small business but being regulated and taxed out of the possibility, the ever rising tax burden and the crazy escalating healthcare costs that are not just jeopardizing your health but the health of your children. You stand there at the grocery checkout watching others using the resources you paid for. And you don’t get nothin’ so sit down and Shut Up!

You should have kept on believing in what you were told. Goddamned it, you must be a moron!

So every moment of every waking day you are going to hear about it from the people who are now shouting from the wayside, the people who thought THEY were the WORD and the POWER when it was YOU the whole time.

And some people still don’t believe in Karma. 

Obama, United Nations Renew Plans for Syrian Intervention

The Setup

First Angela Merkel is trotted out to say she is “Horrified” that there is actually a WAR going on in Syria! She has just now suddenly noticed that people are being killed there. Previously she just wondered why so many Syrians were coming to Germany. Now she seems to have realized why.

Let’s face it, Merkel is under the gun at home right now for her bizarre move to allow Germany to be overrun with unmixable Middle Eastern Visigoths. In part she needs a distraction so now she is shocked, shocked I say, that the fighting in Syria has produced what fighting usually produces: casualties and people on the move.

But is this sudden outrage really just Germany and Turkey acting out of concern for the welfare of the Syrian people?  

For one thing, the rhetoric is just insipid: “No one should excuse or show tolerance toward the Russian air attacks that amount to ethnic massacres….” So said Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Who writes this stuff?

If Merkel and Davutoglu were really so concerned about the people of Aleppo not being massacred, they should be calling for the rebel forces there to surrender but wait, we don't hear them doing THAT. It's either surrender or fight to the death. That has usually been the custom, before the television age anyway.

So since when is trying to win a war an Ethnic Massacre? Yes, Syrians are getting killed, it’s fucking Syria! Who else would they be bombing in Aleppo, Bulgarians? Trying to prove that Russia is bombing Syrians because they are Syrian doesn't fly. They are also helping Syrians, apparently the "bad" Syrians, win the war. Turkey on the other hand, is backing the rebels with arms and other supplies. If they stopped doing THAT less people would be killed.

It's getting harder and harder to find a good guy in all this. In the U.S., we love the Good Guys. It's always good guys vs the bad guys. We get upset when we can't find a good guy. 

Now Ms. Merkel blames the Russians for their bombing runs despite the fact they've been doing this for five months. Can it be that her outrage and calls for the siege to be ended is really only due to the Assad forces being on the verge of final victory? This is an ominous sign.

There is no love lost between Turkey and Russia we know plus president Obama and the U.S. State Department will stop at nothing to undermine an Assad victory. It is beginning to look like they will go to their long standing trump card, the United Nations, for yet another attempt at legitimacy via coalition for their interventionist actions. But the United States is too far away and things appear to be too far along for this to actually work. 

The Syrian Civil War has gone badly for president Obama and the United States. 

 http://freedominanunfreeworld.blogspot.com/2015/09/united-states-of-obama-on-wrong-side-of.html

The Billions of dollars in arms that were “walked” into the country by the United States with the blessing and support of Saudi Arabia for ISIL to mount an offensive on the side of the anti-Assad rebels have not been enough to alter the inevitable outcome. In fact, the ISIL forces were so uncontrollably fanatical that they were attacking the rebels too and forcing them to fight on two fronts. Hardly a dependable alliance.

Iran and Hezbollah have also been instrumental in turning the tide for Assad forces to the point now that even the meager amount of ground troops that Saudi Arabia plans to send into the country will not be enough to stop them. Let’s hope the Saudis stick to fighting ISIL like they have stated publicly and do not draw themselves into bigger troubles than they have already.

A freshly funded post-embargo Iran poses a bigger threat than ever to the Saudi effort to take over Syria. Iran is now better positioned to fund a military contingent on a larger scale than they have in Syria now as well as landing an economic blow on the Arab Kingdom by entering the glutted oil market and continuing to drive the price of oil into the ground since 80% of their Gross National Product is based on oil. The Saudis have already been put under a great deal of pressure by the American fracking industry which produces oil at a competitive profit margin compared to what comes from overseas. There is also the added threat that if oil prices should jump, much of the dormant fracking installations could be brought back on-line quickly.  

Enter the UN

So a propaganda war to get a multi-national “peace” force to enter the fray will have to do.

This is why the United Nations has suddenly put forth a “report” that detainees by Assad forces are being “systematically” executed and that Prime Minister Davutoglu says that the rebel stronghold of Aleppo “is de facto under siege” and that “We are on the verge of a new human tragedy.” Perhaps he was referring to the “old” human tragedy of how Turkish soldiers have been killing the Kurds for as long as anyone can remember.

Nope, having the German and Turkish Prime Ministers dance like puppets on a string is just too neatly cued. These moves are a renewed and orchestrated attempt to keep Russia and Assad from final victory by either more direct armed intervention or the threat of an “International” Tribunal for War Crimes.  There are no more people left to arm so that’s out.

Will they try to indict Vladimir Putin? Have they even indicted Bashir Assad? Whatever they come up with you can be sure it will be ineffectual and all for show since the UN has never helped anybody but themselves in the long run and if they try to interfere and extend the war in Syria, even more people will die.

It always happens with the UN. They intervene, prolong the conflict and more people get killed than would have happened if one side actually won the fight. Look at the job they’ve done in Bosnia. They’ve kept that one going since 1995.  

The United Nations should keep to just warning North Korea that they better not shoot off another “Satellite” or NEXT TIME they will be in REAL trouble.  This will be your LAST warning, you hear me?!!

Heaven forbid anyone should actually win a war any more. War isn’t supposed to be fair. It’s intense, brutal, kills people and destroys things. Destruction does not build a people, a nation or an economy. It only lays waste to resources, countrysides and human destiny. 

That’s why we should think before we get involved in armed conflict. It's been all too easy when we remove the human element and the national sacrifice from warfare. If we couldn't do that then we wouldn’t have them but then again, the United States leads the world in war. We are the best since we've had the most practice. 

It's a terrible deal these people have gotten and as an American citizen disconnected from the people who call the shots, I feel powerless in the winds of the political forces at play but there really isn’t too much to choose from in this Lose/Lose game of a Syrian Conflict. 

On one side we have Bashir Assad, a person where no truth will ever describe any longer since he has fallen out of favor with the forces of the United States. Is he a brutal dictator? He’s pretty brutal right now and he certainly hasn't pulled any punches when it comes to keeping control of his country from the many outside influences. And did he really use poison gas? Although it is constantly talked about as a given in the U.S. Propaganda machine that passes for the National Press, it has not been proven. 

http://freedominanunfreeworld.blogspot.com/2013/09/un-indisputably-partisan-in-syria-report.html

It has been reported however that the rebels used gas and that so did ISIL. The truth may lie somewhere in between. Call it the Fog of War.

On the OTHER side of this equation is ISIL.  A group that cannot be governed, a group who it has been proven will send a 12 year old boy into a marketplace filled with civilians with a suicide vest on. A group that has cut off the heads of perhaps thousands of people who don’t worship Allah the way they do. A group that has “martyred” many outside recruits whose only mistake was wanting to join them. A group that has vowed to take over not only the Middle East but Europe and the United States as well. THIS is the group Barak Obama has chosen to back in the overthrow of Assad.

There are bad people in this world and there are WORSE people.

You pick one.

North Korea Finally Shuts Up Hollywood

The Conservatives couldn’t do it. The Christian Fundamentalists couldn’t do it. The Muslims couldn’t do it and certainly the Movie-Going American public couldn’t do it but somehow some computer hacker in a bare-lightbulb lit concrete apartment block in the frozen hills of North Korea managed to do what all others could not: Shut Hollywood up and make them actually think about the drivel they try to pass off as entertainment to the world at large and the kind of values they display.

Now despite, actually BECAUSE of the absolute certainty of the Obama administration that North Korea was behind the hack attack at Sony Pictures, I don’t believe for one second that North Korea was the hands-on perpetrator of this deed.

Some proxy either working at the bequest of the North Korean regime or some outraged Anarchist either inside or outside the Sony organization was the real culprit. The quick and whole-hearted ease of the current administration had in putting the finger of blame on North Korea just makes my antenna go up. Something smells about this. Who’s word do I trust more, North Korea or the Obama administration? Hmmmm.

Not that it’s a nice place or anything but we hear a lot of crap about North Korea that turns out to be false. An uncle thrown to the dogs but is seen alive walking around. An old girlfriend executed but there she is in current photos waving. Did Kim Jong Un have them killed or not? And if that’s not true why was it printed as fact?

Don’t you wake up some days and feel like you are a pawn in a huge game of manipulation? First off, who the hell cares what some coked out movie exec says about Angela Jolie? And we already knew she wasn’t a good actor, we didn’t go see Tomb Raider to see her spout Shakespeare.   We went to see her running around in a tight t-shirt and shorts. Was there anyone else even IN the movie? And should we be shocked, shocked I say, to learn that all these yo-yos have tremendous egos? Stop the friggin’ presses.

The world’s obsession with Hollywood is frankly bewildering and the Sony Hack really just serves as tabloid fair but the real story is that Sony did not release the movie “The Interview” and nobody, not the Holy Rollers, Pat Robertson or anyone else could have ever dreamed of doing such a thing as making a movie production company self-censor.

Now whether you think it was a chicken-shit move or not, it’s quite an accomplishment. There were protests to those movies that some outfit in Hollywood put out depicting the assassination of president George W. Bush while he was still in office but what the hey, nobody cares about offending a Republican. But a movie depicting the assassination of Kim Jong Ill, heh, that’s another story.  So in that vein there certainly could be a good portion of us reading about the “damage” to Sony Pictures and thinking, “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of cut-throats”.  And if this is any reflection on the United States ability to protect the nation from outside threats, I am not filled with confidence.  Just the fact that the Obama administration is asking China to help is absurd since if anybody had the ability to hack Sony, China is first in my mind. If the NSA knew it was China, would they tell us?

I don’t think we’re getting the truth as to the source of the hack and until we do, what’s the big deal? It’s all just wind and sails.  Just another distraction while we wait for the next thing to take your attention away from the economy. You buy anything with a credit or debit card at Staples lately?  

Perhaps Sony will pause and reflect upon what they put out for public consumption in the future, or not. It will most likely be business as usual once this blows over, if it blows over.

Everybody seems to be living in fear these days. Fear of losing their job, fear of being attacked on the street or at the shopping mall. Fear of their taxes going up and fear that the healthcare system in this country is ruined. Fear that things aren’t going to be getting any better any time soon.

For whatever the reason, this is not a feeling of optimism. The feeling that is gripping people is not one of happiness, hope or change. At least not change for the good. The more the government steps in to control the situation, the worse it gets. The less freedom we have the less secure we become. It is a paradox that people in government cannot comprehend and the American people are paying the price for it.

But let’s just say for the sake of argument that North Korea did do it, that they did reach in and subdue Sony Pictures that produced and sought to release through either arrogance,  avarice or greed  a movie the North Korean government didn’t like and put them in a bad light.

Good Job.

 

North Korea Wouldn’t Last Two Weeks

If North Korea actually manages to start a war with either South Korea or the United States, they couldn’t possibly keep much of their vaunted 1.5 million man army in the field for more that a week or two.

And why is that, you may ask?

Because they have no FOOD!

Have you seen pictures of their solders? Have you ever seen a skinnier bunch of  baggie clothing in your life?
 

They're basically bags o' bones with military uniforms. Even the once diminutive Chinese look like GIANTS in comparison to the North Korean army. Oh you may think being skinny means “Lean & Mean” but in this case there is a real lack of size and muscle in that group which comes from generations of poor nutrition and scarcity that North Korea’s massively failed system has produced.

The North cannot feed themselves and haven't been able to for decades and since their shabby Democratic People's Republic collapsed, they can't even BUY food. The DPR even has the Communists thinking they're on the wrong path.

As Donald Rumsfeld first pointed out, North Korea is a country of darkness and misery. The North Korean military could be in possession of  all the food in the country but that’s not saying much. There is only ONE fat guy in the whole country!

And to think that China will want to or even be able to get enough food to them fast enough is hard to imagine. The only motivation that the North Korean army has to attempt to storm South Korea’s heavily armed fortifications is because they smell food cooking over on the other side.

China would be wise not come to North Korea's “rescue” if Pyongyang is that stupid or that desperate to start a full scale conflict since a global fall from grace for China could very well spell doom for their robust but still sensitive economy and would most definitely drive other countries back to the U.S. for stronger relations and investment. They may have the big bucks but nobody really TRUSTS China.

There is a saying, and I'm going to screw it up but it goes something like this: "If I owe you $500.00, you own me but if I owe you $ 500 Billion, then I own you." Could a boycott of Chinese goods get their attention from the United States, still home to the largest population of mindless consumers in the world? Look, we're all being taxed to death and money is short but we still run out and buy iPhones and basketball sneakers when the ads come on TV! Oh, and give up our CABLE? That's crazy talk!

Or how about a DEFAULT on our debt to China. Would that get their attention? Then again, there's no telling if the current administration actually has the BALLS to do it but just maybe they will if pushed far enough.

We can always buy our cheap stuff from India, at least THEY like us. Such competition makes the world go around.

So go ahead China, send some troops and help out the global scourge you have cultivated for so long. That will look great. Look what helping out the Assad regime in Syria has done for Russian relations!

North Korea may have a nuclear warhead or two and they can cause much local damage and destruction to their Southern neighbors which will be a sad, sad thing if that happens but once they blow their wad, they’re done, it’ll be over, the iron grip of misery for the North Korean people will be unclenched and the world will be rid of this particular lot of nasties and then it will be on to the next group, I guess. Once the regime is broken, both North and South Korea will become a garden.  

And the world will just caulk up Kim Jong Un as yet another petty tyrant to be swept away by his own lack of benevolence to his people and the world.

Good riddance.