President Obama is expected to restrict US nuclear weapons use, even in self-defense. According to the Times Online, he will announce the doctrine that the US will not retaliate against biological or chemical attacks, for as long as the attacker adheres to the nonproliferation treaty.
In an interview with The New York Times ahead of the unveiling of his much anticipated revamped nuclear policy, Mr Obama said an exception would be made for “outliers like Iran and North Korea” that have violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
But in a striking departure from the position taken by his predecessors, he said that the US would explicitly commit for the first time to not using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that adhere to the nuclear treaty, even if they attack with biological or chemical weapons.
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The given reason for the new declaration is to clarify the circumstances under which the US will use nuclear weapons without necessarily adopting an “no first use” pledge. The President also added he would not develop any new nuclear weapons on the way making such devices “obsolete”.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and assuming that such a policy enhances US security one would expect other countries to adopt similar policies. It will be interesting to see whether the other nuclear powers follow suit. After all if something is delicious other people will want to eat it. If President Obama remains the only person to gnaw on this bone then it only may cater to his own peculiar tastes.
As a practical matter the US has avoided using nuclear weapons in all conflicts since 1945, even against non-nuclear foes, out of the fear of escalating a conflict. It avoided such use even after the collapse of its superpower rival, the former USSR. But the US always sought to preserve an ambiguity over whether or not such weapons might be used, reserving the decision to itself, in order to leave a potential enemy in doubt — and in fear. The immediate change of the new policy, with its exceptions for “outliers like Iran and North Korea” will not be to alter practice but to change the messaging.
Messaging was always an important part of nuclear weapons policy because they were largely used for signaling. Too terrible to use, they were brandished in a kind of ritual display. Their effects of nuclear weapons were so great they bordered on the mystical; and like mystical objects they were shrouded in an an aura of mystery. That included a deliberate amount of uncertainty over where the red lines were. They were somewhere, and the fear was that in an atmosphere of increasing belligerence the ratchet would inevitably take them past a boundary, one which perhaps no one, not even their possessors, knew precisely.
Whereas in the past a foe could never be completely sure that an attack would not evoke a nuclear response, now a prospective foe has the assurance of a US President that he is immune from certain weapons under the given circumstances. One could argue that by restricting the circumstances of a US nuclear response Obama has made harder to escalate a conflict. But the counterargument can be made that President Obama has made the use of chemical and biological warfare that much more likely because prospective foes are, like mischievous children encouraged to test the stated boundaries and run the risk of accidentally crossing the line.
Boundaries are never definite in war and there is a risk to pretending that they are. During the Falklands War, the UK described a total exclusion Total Exclusion Zone within which any Argentinian warship would be fired on. The Argentinian cruiser ARA General Belgrano was sunk by the SSN HMS Conqueror outside the declared zone because the British decided the Belgrano represented a naval threat. An Argentinian spokesman wryly remarked that “Britian may no longer rule the waves, but it still waives the rules.” There descends upon the battlefield a “fog of war” and within that mist it is often unwise to draw neat lawyerly lines. President Obama may be clever, or too clever by half.
Even before Obama made his announcement some experts believed that a terrorist WMD attack on the US was inevitable. Certainly the government, even under Obama, was preparing for it. The New York Times reported in November 2009 that the Department of Homeland Security had spent $250 million dollars deploying detectors which could find smuggled nuclear weapons but “had to stop deploying the new machines because the United States has run out of a crucial raw material”.
The ingredient is helium 3, an unusual form of the element that is formed when tritium, an ingredient of hydrogen bombs, decays. But the government mostly stopped making tritium in 1989.
“I have not heard any explanation of why this was not entirely foreseeable,” said Representative Brad Miller, Democrat of North Carolina, who is the chairman of a House subcommittee that is investigating the problem. …
The government wanted 1,300 to 1,400 machines, which cost $800,000 each, for use in ports around the world to thwart terrorists who might try to deliver a nuclear bomb to a big city by stashing it in one of the millions of containers that enter the United States every year.
At the White House, Steve Fetter, an assistant director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the helium 3 problem was short-term because other technologies would be developed. But, he said, while the government had a large surplus of helium 3 at the end of the cold war, “people should have been aware that this was a one-time windfall and was not sustainable.”
And if the threat of nuclear attack could not be placed at zero, still less was it possible to rule out a chemical or biological attack, because they are easier to make. What has been ruled out, in certain circumstances, is nuclear retaliation. Whether President Obama’s new messaging on nuclear weapons — whether taking the psychological weapon of deterrence of the table along with the weapons doctrine itself — will make the world safer or increase the chances that biological or chemical warfare may be used are unknown. Policy makers have theories, simulation and models about the future. What the future has when it happens is facts. In the meantime, opinions on the subject differ. Until then, who knows?
embedded by Embedded VideoA great amount has been talked and written about what constitutes a sufficient balance and what really is meant by the concepts of “balance” and “deterrence”.
Alva MyrdalDemocrats always assure us that deterrence will work, but when the time comes to deter, they’re against it.
Ann CoulterDeterrence is the art of producing, in the mind of the enemy, the fear to attack.
Sterling HaydenDeterrence itself is not a preeminent value; the primary values are safety and morality.
Herman KahnNuclear deterrence doesn’t work outside of the Russian – U.S. context; Saddam Hussein showed that.
Charles HornerSo, we need to delegitimize the nuclear weapon, and by de-legitimizing… meaning trying to develop a different system of security that does not depend on nuclear deterrence.
Mohamed ElBaradeiThe only peace that can be made with a dictator is one that must be based on deterrence. For today, the dictator may be your friend, but tomorrow he will need you as an enemy.
Natan SharanskyWhy then, lead on. Oh, that a man might know
The end of this day’s business ere it come!
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known.
William Shakespeare
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this promise, like this potus’ others, has an expiration date.
I expect NBC weapons to be used in my lifetime. Sooner rather than later.
The current President appears to be working overtime to make my belief and fear come true.
“I have not heard any explanation of why this was not entirely foreseeable,”
I fear that this will turn out to be the epitaph for our generation, the conclusion that future generations come to when they look back and ponder where we went wrong.
The three conjectures was what brought me to this site oh so many years ago. Now we are almost assuredly doomed to see number two and us along with it – The golden hour is past.
If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
addendum: because it is better to perish as a sacrifice to remove progressive guilt.
Huge demand at Aussie ports from China Japan Korea especially coal for steal –. Might explain why oil
is edging out of its upper boundaries.
(However, high priced oil will put a cap on economic expansion.)
Prior to Desert Storm in 1991 and before Operation Iraqi Freedom, the U.S. let it be known in rather oblique public terms and in more direct private communications that the Iraqi use of WMD would be met with another form of WMD.
Or, when asked how a U.S. strike would make sure that that it got hot enough to destroy bacteriological weapons rather tha just spread them around, Gen Colin Powell replied “We know how to make it hot enough.”
Nukes have already acted as a deterrent against both nuclear and non-nuclear WMDs. Why else did Saddam get rid of his? Why else did Kaddafy get rid of his?
This is the ultimate product of vanity. He has read his press too closely and believes that he is in the process of saving humanity. The problem is there’s a big chunk that will refuse to cooperate. People will die from this.
What does this mean to those countries dependent on what used to be called the American Nuclear umbrella? Is Taiwan adrift? Israel alone?
If I were the mullahs I drop the nuke option today in favor of a big sarin plant. Gotta be cheaper. Guaranteed no Armageddon when I use it.
I think there will be a completely different effect from this decision. I believe it may mean the end of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Our friends, who’ve trusted us to have their backs in the event of a WMD attack, now have even less reason to believe that. Think of Japan, Taiwan, South Korea. What of Poland and Ukraine? Would you trust the President to come in hard in the event of a WMD attack on one of our allies? These folks have the capability to develop nukes in relatively short order. Even the Indians will probably redouble their efforts to create an effective deterrent against their potential adversaries to the north. This worries me more than a chem/bio attack on the US… although that is a significant worry as well.
Not only does this show an allegiance to a political concept of restraining the hegemon it completely ignores that the US, all through the Cold War, based its defensive posture concerning WMD on first strike capabilities. Plus there is the unspoken idea that the number of casualties of WMD will determine the response.
This president has a disturbing habit of making big, bold ostentatious “cross my heart” promises that he then immediately breaks.
If there is any message to be gained from this announcement, it is that Barack Obama intends to use nuclear weapons as a first-strike measure against non-nuclear adversaries, but is trouble by it.
In the strange habit of this president, for some reason he needs to clear his conscience by lying about it first.
Get. Rid. Of. Him. Now! This is worse than stuck on stupid. As I told my twenty-year old son last night I never expected in my lifetime to have a President who would make me fondly remember Jimmy Carter. This is isane. Almost guarantees that we’ll get hit with a biological or chemical attack. If the attacker is a member in good standing with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Club then he gets a Get Out of Nuclear Annihilation For Free card. Guess we’ll just give the attacker a verbal tongue lashing and write him an angry letter how angry we are with him.
“History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.”
~ Ronald Reagan
Obama has just guaranteed America a hot war somewhere on this globe, a war not of our choosing, and a war we probably will be ill prepared to fight. Whether NBC are involved is a crap shoot, but it’ll probably involve conventional forces between major world powers.
Wars are chiefly caused by either (a) evident weakness of one party to an aggressor or (b) errant assumptions by an aggressor about the intentions of the target. America’s primary defense strategy has been deterrence through military strength, but there is no military strength without national will and clear moral leadership. I told my wife in 1997 that Clinton’s weak leadership and moral character evidenced with the intern scandal would result in a war within a couple of years. I had no idea it would be 9/11, but something of that magnitude was entirely predictable.
Some leader somewhere will miscalculate. American boys will once again pay with their lives. Democrat leftists will still blame America and conservatives.
OldSalt
I was trying to start a campaign to call BO, “Jimmy Carter, Jr.” But even Jimmy, wasn’t this dumb.
Many have said, “He’s purposely trying to destroy this country!”
But I say No! He’s out to destroy the world!
Just one more instance where one asks, “If Barack Obama was truly the Manchurian Candidate and hated America, and if his primary objective was to destroy it as a nation, what, to date, would he have done differently?”
My answer: not one single thing. The 52% who voted for this fool are going to pay a bitter, bitter price for their folly. Unfortunately, a lot of people who didn’t make that mistake are going to pay the same price.
If I recall correctly He3 detectors are used to detect neutrons that are emitted from sources like Californium. The container detectors use a large array of scintillators and photomultiplier tubes to detect gammas. They, when used with an appropriate source, can essentially create an “x-ray” image of the container and passively detect any ionizing radiation.
As far as predictions are concerned, as long as there is a political element, like global warming, they will overstate the fear and under represent the facts (Saddam).
Hmmm … upon further reflection, what must our allies who huddle under the U.S. Nuclear umbrella now think?
The U.S. just threw them ALL under the bus. If you are a leader in Taiwan, Japan, Korea – anywhere in the world who assumed that stable U.S. leadership and nuclear deterrent would also defend you, you are now seriously contemplating the Georgian example.
Nuclear “proliferation” is now guaranteed. Expansion of national defenses by countries around the world is a lock. It’ll be the GOLDEN age for defense industries.
(Oops, Herb, #7 got to this line of thought first. Compliments.)
OldSalt
In the end, this is probably just another ham fisted approach to get Iran to the bargaining table. Defcon 1.13.
The only thing I know is that for 65 years the policy has worked.
So naturally, in his quest to “fundementally transform” America
the fool in the White House decides to change it. Our betters in times
past built a civilization that has brought more wealth and security
than any seen in human history – a civilization whose influence has
steadily spread across the globe raising living standards everywhere
and the fool in the White House and his acolytes in congress,
academia and the media want to “transform” and curtail it so that
people can achieve – what?
Chesterton wrote that before one undertakes to reform something
it is vital that the reason the object of such reform was formed to
begin with be determined. Only then can a wise decision be made
as to whether it should be “fundementally transformed”. Chesterton
was pointing out that in his day there were reformers who were set
upon destroying institutions whose reason for existence they would
not consider. It is this mindless drive to reform that leads to
the unintended consequences that routinely erupt with often
devastating effect. It is always undertaken for the best of
reasons and all too often it leads to unnecessary chaos and
suffering. Never in my lifetime have I seen such idiocy
embraced by the “leaders” of this nation.
Maybe he hopes to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Oh, wait … already did. Preemptively. Wot a woild!
But really, isn’t there a whole lot less to this than meets the eye? First, all he’s doing is removing ambiguity, but really, aren’t we already so squeamish that we’re afraid to drop a 2,000 pound bomb, because besides hitting the target it might hurt a child or kill a threatened toad? Second, who can know, separate from a preexisting sqeamishness, that we wouldn’t tear up all previous treaties if someone just makes us mad enough? They wouldn’t like us mad.
As they said over at powerline, this is just Obama preening. It’s what he does. It’s what Democrats, progressives, and academics, mostly do.
Just so we develop nuclear armed predators, y’know, we would never ever use them first, so don’t worry that they’re flying over your caves in Pokiston, our intentions are pure, it says so right here.
I agree there is at least a potential BO is some kind of Manchurian Candidate. If the MSM had done its job, we would know more about this man’s shadowy and perhaps sinister background. It the GOP had done its job, voters would not have been given such an unacceptable alternative as John McCain. But you’re right, we’re all going to pay heavily.
It’s a stretch for me to comprehend what animates this brittle un-American messianic president. His decision certainly reinforces the analysis that Obama believes the USA is the epicenter of many of the World’s problems. Without the motivation of our primary bad behavior, those supposed enemies in the world would never have behaved badly towards us. They are, in short, victims of our badness, not prime actors deciding their course of action on their own and against us. In Obama’s disturbing cosmology, Muslim enemies, or communist enemies, and fascists of all stripes are not enemies at all, but mirrors who only reflect our badness back into our faces.
This nuclear decision certainly reinforces the notion that Obama suffers from a peculiar and grandiose form of infantilism which presumes that all events in the external world are manifestations of the movies playing in his head. That is a frightening thought. Obama’s grasp of reality, his notions of causation in the world are, at the least, delusional.
Of course, it’s possible that the Muslims will stop waging Jihad terror war if we just show them the proper respect. But history and reality inform us that it’s far more likely, inevitable even, that indulging in the peculiar and grandiose forms of Muslim infantilism, (Islamic supremacism, abject paranoid hatred of ‘the other’, terror tactics), will inevitably whet their appetites for more blood and domination, not less.
Which begs the question of what we might continue to expect from a man raised on a steady diet of affirmative action indulgences, and raised far beyond his merit by a crazy social system which supplants earned respect with forced “respect for diversity”? Just like the Muslim world, egged on by the acquiescence of their enemies, Obama too has remained immune to the normal militating influences of honest criticism or earned prestige. Did our raising him to the highest and most powerful office on earth militate Obama’s appetite for more power and dominion, or humble him in any way? Hardly.
So now we can append to the impressive resume in his mind the following:
THIS was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow
And our planet began to heal!
HERE is the ground upon which HE stood,
Accepting the golden laurels of a grateful World!
NOW is the time when the nuclear devil was vanquished forever
By the Mighty Mighty Hand of OBAMA, the Ozymandias of our Time!
Heard rumors/speculations from those claiming to have been “connected” 1990-say 1995 that the reason the DoD didn’t jump on Gulf War Syndrome was that to admit it had something to do with NBC–probably C–would be to admit SH used it and we didn’t nuke him, as we had promised as a response to NBC. IOW, our deterrent would have been compromised.
Obama is a first order thinker. He is unable to see the consequences of his actions. By taking our nuclear weapons off the table he has ensured their use. To adversaries he has just told them they can take a free shot with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons against an ally and perhaps a CB option against the homeland. He is also told our allies that they may be on their own. For countries like Japan, Taiwan and South Korea it will mean that they better build nukes and to nuclear armed allies like India and Israel they might as well come out nuking from the get-go. This is what the end of the nuclear umbrella mean.
Bingo, Mac !
And we know Pres. Osama hates America, don’t we?
His pal Bill Ayers hates America and so does Rev. Wright.
A hijacker can take out everyone on a plane and plenty of people on the ground. A hijacker in the Oval Office can take people out by the millions.
This is dangerous. Obama’s doctrine effectively forces the United States into a dilemma. The first option is to rely upon deterrence by criminals to keep our enemies at bay. The second option is to lay America prostrate to any invader.
In this instance, the difference between surrender and deterrence would become a question of law enforcement. Would law enforcement arrest patriotic criminals who use illegal means to deter enemies from attacking the American people, or would law enforcement look the other way?
Reliance upon criminals for national defense is dangerous; the criminals may take over. One wonders if the present administration is actually trying to create domestic demons.
Obama is not a thinker of any order. He’s a parrot of various doctrines he’s heard, and people have been giving him crackers all of his life for squawking appropriately.
From Newsweak:
” According to a knowledgeable source who would not be identified discussing sensitive national-security matters, President Obama wasn’t briefed on the U.S. nuclear-strike plan against Russia and China until some months after he had taken office. “He thought it was insane,” says the source. (The reason for the delay is unclear; the White House did not respond to repeated inquiries.)”
Words fail to describe the ridiculousness of this man.
Where on the possible to probable scale should be put it being revealed after an attack that key personnel received training under the international partnership program announced in the VOA clip? It is interesting that the news that the US government prepares for delivery overseas is superior to that which is prepared by MSM for American’s to consume.
Nuclear deterrence doesn’t work outside of the Russian – U.S. context
Charles Horner was proven wrong. China was deterred from attacking Taiwan by the US nuclear umbrella. The posturing of Mao that they could absorb millions of casualties proved empty. John Mearshiemer and others argue that proves that the Iranian mullahs will prove no more irrational then Mao, who was viewed in the 1960s as a raving lunatic. Later that swung to a foolish popular embrace of him following the Nixon opening that resembled the distasteful “Uncle Joe” elevation of Stalin during WW-II.
Saying that we will not use them except for “outliers like Iran and North Korea” is an example of how illogical everything that comes out of this back of the college bull session administration is. They really do just make it all up as they go along. All theoretical structures are just deduced from the desired conclusion. All proofs are left to the future.
Obama says that not developing new weapons will lead to there becoming obsolete. The only thing that will become obsolete under his plan will be the ability of the United States to use nuclear weapons to deter an enemy. Potential rivals will be encouraged. In the late 19th century the equivalent to the nuke for strategic thinking was the dreadnought capital warship. The power of the Royal Navy was such that potential rivals were deterred from developing any challenging systems. When that level of superiority was allowed to deteriorate the instability that followed lead to the Great War. A switch away from preponderance to save money after the war was codified in the Washington Naval Treaties. These set the stage for WW-II.
A decline in a Great Power and a shift from preponderance will result in increased proliferation. When the major powers have fewer weapons not only are they relatively weaker then they were previously to a rising second tier power but they are also less likely to respond to sub-critical threats. When the US had 16 carrier battle groups and 16 active duty divisions, and a vast support network, we could respond to a crisis anywhere in the world. Now our unit size is about half what it was, even if each individual unit is more effective. We are much less flexible and less likely to respond. We have only deterred ourselves.
The determination of the administration to denuclearize while pouring resources into social programs is another example of how ignorant of History they are. During the 1950s John Foster Dulles said “we could and would strike back where it hurts, by means of our choosing.” The policy of retaliation and deterrence relied on building more nuclear weapons. It had two justifications;
1. it was cheaper with the Defense budget going down under Eisenhower,
2. it worked setting the stage for 50 mostly peaceful and prosperous years.
The Clinton administration had the US military running all over the globe in a continuous display of conventional force. They did this however without paying for the maintenance of the large conventional forces needed. They were able to live for a time off of the capacity that had been built up over the preceding decade. The Truman administration after the massive draw-down of 1946-50 proposed to restore the conventional force structure of WW-II and launch the United States into a global struggle of “brush fire wars” with Communism. Yes that was the Democratic plan that was revived by JFK and LBJ.
The Republicans preferred a policy of financial restraint that relied less on conventional forces and more on robust nuclear options kept credible by a policy of deliberate ambiguity. Under the Republican model US forces were to be used only for responding to a peer, meaning Soviet, attack, except for a rare emergency preemptive raid as in Lebanon. Small problems were handled by proxies provided economic and cultural support and training assistance.
The people most offended by the use of ambiguity are second rate academics like Obama who want all the plans published and explained for them. The Obama administration chooses to do neither the Republican plan of nuclear buildup ambiguity and deterrence nor the Democratic plan of conventional buildup explicit confrontations and intervention. This is a truly revolutionary policy of ostentatious abnegation of strategic engagement. It is an auto castration by a Great Power that may be unprecedented in human history.
The drawing of explicit lines encouraged the Argentinians to risk sending the General Belgrano out to challenge the British. The drawing of a specific line by Dean Acheson encouraged North Korea to invade South Korea.
Here is what I said last night about this on the last thread.
We now need to think of apologizing to our more robust seniors in France.
In 1945 we were not the least bit ambiguous when Harry Truman promised the Japanese “If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air.” Since then for 64 years every US President said that we would neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons and that if the United States or an ally were attacked we would respond at a time place and by a means of our own choosing. Now Obama chooses to toss it all in the trash. He has just hung out the “Kick Me” sign.
“If I were the mullahs I drop the nuke option today in favor of a big sarin plant. Gotta be cheaper. Guaranteed no Armageddon when I use it.”
But seriously, how much is that promise by this president worth? If push came to shove, this policy could be canceled in a breath. Surely he is man enough — or thought by our adversaries to be man enough — to do whatever is actually necessary when the time comes.
I am OK with this policy cause, as Curtis LeMay demonstrated, you can do just as much damage with fire-bombing. Easier to clean up afterward, too.
I will say the goal of getting to no nuclear weapons or of reducing the number of nuclear weapons the US has is a dumb goal.
Forgive the marker post, I neglected to hit the notify button when deselecting the subscribe button.
If you think that bio- or chemical weapons attacks are “health-issues,” then you’ll welcome the added compulsion to support Obamacare that Obama’s “new” nuke policy will generate.
I’ve been waiting for some lefty like Chris Mathews to make this point, but I grew impatient.
Swine flu, Bird flu, hernias, hoof-and-mouth disease, clogged arteries, skin cancer, cyanide poisoning, inhaled anthrax? What’s the difference?
Nothing, to the Obama administration. In the end, so long as they are virulent, they all equally buttress the progressives’ call for Universal Health Care.
Obama says to the bio-weapon-making terrorists: Bring it On!
I’ve never, in my wildest imagination, thought I would consider Clinton’s derelection of duty ‘fondly’.
The new Obama ‘smart’ policy: Our smarts out smart you.
this is a test. this is only a test. If this had been an actual post, you would have been astonished and amazed by the witty repartee. You may now resume your normal browsing activities.
Amazing that this comes on the heels of the new strategic arms treaty.
And how about the Strategic Air Command policy article arguing that the USA can reduce its strategic nuclear weapons – not delivery systems, warheads – from current 5,000 down to exactly 311.
Three hundred and eleven! 311!
What’s next, remove all SSBNs from patrol!
What is very interesting is that continuing education on “mass vaccinations” including tracking (!!!) is now becoming mandatory for a variety of medical specialties. Mass vaccination against what?
With our government I’d be far more afraid of the vaccination than the infectious agent!
But, don’t worry, they will spare no expense seeing to it that you get your shot (tracking)!
I agree.
It’s 0bama’s perverse way of trying to straddle the line between his constituent’s “peace for our time” sentiment whilst at the same time encouraging the Iranian regime to get on the non-proliferation bandwagon.
Of course the mullah’s are a wee bit smarter and more ruthless than that.
Instead he’s only projected to all the wolves of the world -who would seize land and power by the most ancient of means- that America ‘might not’ even be legally able to let loose the puppies of war.
More dangerously still; the president of the United States has just confirmed that we (through he) have neither the will nor the desire to stand by our allies.
Continuity be damned. He’s transmogrifying the human race into the grotesque image he sees in his mirror.
Imagine there’s no America
It’s easy if you try…
Obama has a vision
Cause he’s a transnational guy
or-
“You’ve been telling me you’re a genius
Since you were seventeen
And all the time I’ve known you
I still don’t know what you mean….”
This is getting loonier by the moment.
and I hasten to add this thought; does Israel belong to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty?
Here’s a snip from a valuable three-minute read, Nyquist’s The Final Treaty :
“It is, in essence, the language of the final treaty; of the treaty that is coming….” There is an inevitability to certain ideas, for better or worse, and this can be discerned far in advance. Today the “final treaty” will be signed on April 8th, marking the first step in President Barack Obama’s march toward a world free of nuclear weapons. Currently the U.S. deploys 2,100 strategic warheads while Russia deploys 2,600 warheads. According to the president of the Partnership for Global Security, Kenneth Luongo, the larger meaning of the present treaty is the way it delegitimizes nuclear weapons.
There is an eloquent summation of all this in James Burnham’s book, Suicide of the West, where he wrote: “It is a mark of the ascendancy of liberal ideology … in the advanced Western nations, most particularly the United States and Great Britain, that for the first time in history disarmament proposals and pacifist-tending ideas are being pressed not by the nations with inferior arms in order to weaken the stronger, but by the stronger in order to weaken themselves: to sacrifice their relative advantage, and thereby to lessen their ability to defend their interests and ideals.” As Burnham correctly noted, “what is ending in our age is not empire but merely the empires of the West.”
To further make his point, Burnham quoted Louis Veuillot, who wrote: “When I am the weaker, I ask you for my freedom, because that is your principle; but when I am the stronger, I take away your freedom, because that is my principle.” Here is what Burnham calls “the dialectic of liberalism.” It is also the dialectic of the arms control process between Russia and the United States. The treaty that President Obama is going to sign will not disarm Moscow in the same way it disarms the United States.
But do see the article, for the imbedded links.
The above essay is from two weeks ago. His latest, The Bombings in Moscow is from a couple days ago; he fills out a little on the speculations that Mr.X referred to –perhaps correctly –as nonsense in a thread one or two back. “Al Queda or Lubyanka?” asks a Russian Journalist in a memo to the author, who then goes on to wonder if a new terror offensive against America has already begun:
In the shadowy world of Russian intelligence … “Islamic terrorism” is the designated mask in a future Russian terror campaign against America.
(beware the above sentence, there’s two full paragraphs for brevity skipped in the ellipse)
Of course Nyquist ain’t everyone’s cup of tea, and he and all his associates and debriefed former soviets may be stark raving mad and or working for the ammo industry and or hallucinating the ghost of John Birch. But then, a brief scan of his archive’s titles do in fact show rather plainly an unusual perspicacity dating all the way back to 2001 –and that archive is just a click away, take a glance at the titles alone –with the eye just now refreshed by Obama’s brand-spanking new strategic defense policy.
Strategic defense of who against whom, is not at all, imho, considering the stakes and the record of the CiC himself, a wrong question.
As I’ve written many times, Obama HATES America and Americans — too many White people. Obama would view 20 million American dead as “a good start.” What else could the first Black President do?
Obama WANTS the US to be hit. He’s begging someone, anyone to do it. So he can rule by decree, suspend elections, and be America’s hereditary ruler, passing the job onto his kids when he dies. America’s Castro, Chavez, or Kim.
This is Obama. This is who he is. He views himself as the divine providence agent, God’s shadow on Earth, sent to punish wicked White America and Whites for “racism.” He has no intention of every having a contested election again. So he needs a crisis.
He’s BEGGING Iran, or someone, to hit us, hard, killing millions, so he can surrender, become Petain and America’s Vizier. A cultural Muslim and Black President could do nothing else. Let us be honest, Obama’s attitudes are broadly shared by most Blacks, Hispanics, and indeed Democrats. Democrats have not rejected this idea, indeed they’ve embraced it. From Chris Matthews, to Frank Rich, to Harold Myerson, to Maxine Waters, to Hillary Clinton, the idea that lots of “evil White Americans” will get killed is the whole justification. Michael Moore said as much. Almost all of Hollywood would stage a national day of celebration.
Naturally this sounds the opening bell of the nuclear arms race. If America won’t even protect itself, every other nation must do so. Or submit to Islam and Pakistan or Iran (later others). Who will aid Denmark if Copenhagen is nuked over a cartoon and Dane’s refusal to submit totally to Islam? Or Rome’s? Or Madrid’s?
Sure thang turtle, and this stupid shit will go out the window the first time a nuke is detonated OCONUS on US forces or CONUS on an American city.
POTUS can say anything he wants the rest of the folks in charge can also say what they wish it won’t change a thing except to embolden our enemies to attack us because the weapons we would use to protect us are gone. Then the weapons will be assembled again and a person not affiliated with this EX-POTUS’s policy will take charge and use them.
Ummm, any one of us here at The Belmont Club would have demanded Day One to be briefed on what the U.S. nuclear-strike plan against Russia and China was going to be in the event of a nuclear exchange would. In fact, if I found my butt sitting in the Big Chair in the Oval Office I’d want a detailed briefing in front of me before the seat got warm detailing any and all potential threats to the nation and what the planned response to these threats was going to be. And if I didn’t have said briefing in front of me I would use my power as President to start firing people. Any serious CiC would expect nothing less. That President Obambi “allowed” this to happen is beyond the pale. Methinks he didn’t want to know and therefore didn’t ask. Only now when he is about to announce a major shift in US nuclear policy is he claiming he was kept in the dark, as if the military did it on purpose. My BS meter just went off the scale and melted down it overheated so bad.
uh, why don’t you consider California your very front against western attacks, or southern attacks instead of Russia on eastern Europe ?
cuz
Ukraine said “Stop” its integration into NATO
“Ukrainian president signed a decree abolished the inter-ministerial commission on the accession of Ukraine into NATO, but also abolished and the National Center for Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine, which is created by Viktor Yushchenko in 2006.
After the abolition of the National Center for the Integration of Ukraine has lost the right to participate in the Membership Action Plan.
This is a program to adopt new members into NATO.
from Rogozin Head of the Permanent Mission of Russia to NATO
his contribution to the discussion on the future of the missile defence in Europe http://adresno.ru/handels
me thinks, that some people still didn’t acknoledge that times have changed/are changing !
i should’ve added a paragraph from “The Final Treaty”:
In 1990, CIA analyst Peter Vincent Pry wrote: “The balance of U.S.-Soviet strategic lethality and survivability, whether lethality is measured in equivalent yield, countermilitary potential, equivalent weapons, or single-shot kill probability, heavily favors the USSR.” (See The Strategic Nuclear Balance and Why it Matters, Peter Pry.) Sadly, the reduction of the U.S. nuclear arsenal since 1990 has more than compensated for any reductions on the Russian side, due to the lack of hardening of U.S. strategic sites (as lamented by Pry). The nuclear balance, since the supposed “fall of the Soviet Union,” has consistently and steadily increased Moscow’s effective superiority, and the Russians have played an excellent waiting game as they anticipate the accumulation of further advantages.
…in order to set up this link, Yamantau Mountain.
I hope our congressfolk are reading Belmont, and thinking about December 7th, 1941, a day which lives in infamy only because it lives at all, which it does courtesy an enemy using mere firecrackers, iron bombs –and an American president who while he may have been a communist semi-sympathizer luckily turned out to have been no more than that. And was certainly nothing of the kind of a critical switch in an ICBM first-strike response circuit.
How does today’s announcement fit with the latest arms “agreement” with Mr. Putin?
I support General James Matton Scott for President.
“Al Queda or Lubyanka?” asks a Russian Journalist” I would like to know who’s paying him, uh like Kim Zingfeld !
check if it’s a conspiracy
http://adresno.ru/ears
I am appalled to see how some people still can twist very simple facts for their own agendas
I am of the duck and cover generation who went through all the air raid drills, sirens, collecting of canned foods and blankets to store at school. Terrifying to a 6 year old. Assailed by dreams of a radioactive holocaust, I lived with the fear of nuclear war my whole life until Ronald Reagan. Then, slowly, the nightmares abated and finally disappeared. Three nights ago, after years, I had a dream where the nukes were falling once again.
me too, Lucy –your every word.
Frank: Why would you think that Obama is thought by our enemies to be “man enough?” He has already signalled submission to most of them, while betraying our allies.
Annoy Mouse,
does Israel belong to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty?
No Israel does not.
My expectation is that the next theater in the war on Israel will be at the United Nations. The infamous Zionism = Racism resolution will possibly be revived. It may have been premature in 1975, although it served to test the boundaries. If you do a search the centrality of it is clear. 34 years ago Danial Moynihan would not let that stand. Even while Jimmy Carter was President the US fought back.
The Security Council could respond to a complaint that Israel’s failure to enter into and comply with the NNPT is in itself a condition that could lead to a breach of the peace. Another approach would be a complaint that Israel by equipping its Mossad units with stolen or counterfeit passports has breached international law and created a threat to peace.
Really any approach will do since the aim is to establish a legal facade. Picture in your mind a corrupt cop in a film noir taking evidence from some hoodlum who is holding a smoking gun on how he was threatened by two harmless kids armed with heavy book bags and boy scout knives. One of the guys accused of hoisting his back pack provocatively is dead on the floor and the other stands there until the cop walks over and slaps handcuffs on him.
Once it is established by any procedure no matter how corrupt that Israel is in breach of the law then the Council can demand Israel comply and order a series of steps, such as withdrawal of diplomatic recognition by member states, suspension of Israel by the General Assembly, and ultimately blockade and even direct military action. As additional icing on the cake clever lawyers may read article 50 of the Charter and claim that resistance to Israel has imposed terrible costs on other states and that they need to be compensated through special contributions to be paid for Israel and those who supported her, that is by the United States.
This is just the latest chapter by those motivated by the oldest hatred. This war is older even than Islam. For the true Islamists however it remains an organizing principle. They will never stop spreading poison and conspiring to eliminate the Jews. That is the engine from which the rest of their sense of infinite grievance and entitlement flows. Recently on Michael Yon’s Facebook thread, LINK-as I blogged here-LINK, an Islamist apologist defended the Somali pirates by claiming they were really victims defending their poor fishing grounds from capitalist and imperialist exploitation. He then compared them to the poor oppressed people of Gaza. I called him on it, just because it is good to do so, having pointed out the culture of piracy and aggression were built into Islam. The response was of course a stream of personal abuse. If decisively checked however they will adopt a more passive posture.
To be blogged under the title “The Big Squeeze.”
Barack Obama, sound and fury, signifying nothing.
As has been said above- it’s easy to cancel policies, if you need to. Unless we want to destroy large cities or send a message, we don’t need nukes. We’ve got much more precise weapons that are just as lethal but with less collateral damage. Pick your target: a nuke woud destroy the Iranian Parliament building and most of Teheran. A Tomahawk with conventional explosives would destroy the Iranian Parliament just as effectively but kill a lot fewer people.
The chief danger here is in how our friends and enemies interpret BHO’s talking points.
Now that I have access to several sources, I can make up my mind, between manipulations and realities
an exemple:
Georgia is always a good thing and Russia is always a bad thing http://adresno.ru/maf uh, the russian Mafia, in the occurence, is the Georgian mafia
I believe Obama thinks it quite likely that we will suffer the type of attack that could lead to a call from some quarters for a limited nuclear response and is pre-empting that debate. As bold as he may be when it comes to social engineering and drone attacks on individual targets I don’t think he wants the nuclear option on the table even to address the destruction of nuclear or WMD facilities rather than populations.
But Frank, this policy in and of itself may be the reason push comes to shove. The thought occurs that if Bush had uttered the same words he may well have been accused of irresponsibly ‘baiting’ certain countries.
Refer to:
http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nptfact
Key text: “With its near-universal membership, the NPT has the widest adherence of any arms control agreement, with only India, Israel, and Pakistan remaining outside the treaty.”
My guess is that sometime before the November US elections, the Israelis will use their Dolphin class submarines to launch nuclear armed Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Iranian nuclear weapon sites. The Israelis will do this because they have no other strategic option and to do nothing would be equivalent to national suicide.
The fact that Israel is in this untenable situation can largely be blamed on Obama.
Thousands (millions?) of people will die needlessly because the American people were seduced into electing someone utterly incompetent as president (but it sure felt good electing a young black liberal as President!!).
We are witnessing the abject failure of democracy.
Squash head.
I hope you’re right.
Problem is, the folks who should do it come along after we’ve been attacked.
That’s better than nothing.
Better to keep them from starting something in the first place.
Even if that requires looking like a potential meanie from time to time.
Sometimes I think zero & co. are afflicted with the juvenile thinking processes of particularly dim twelve-year-olds.
If not that, then they are actively hostile to the US.
Take your pick.
Jim, re your A Tomahawk with conventional explosives would destroy….:
“…research director of the Arms Control Assn., said other countries would be encouraged to hear that the administration had decided for now not to develop a new nuclear warhead….”
“…the Pentagon will retire the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, a ship- and submarine-launched cruise missile….”
( both quotes from yest article in the LA Times )
Israel will never launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike, no matter how bad the provocation. They will only launch *after* Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have been vaporized. Hope they’ve been working on some deep bunkers so some will survive that day.
Well, there won’t be any more Dome of the Rock to worry about after that. Wonder if anyone has any ideas about what to build there next.
Wretchard,
Pres. Obama’s announcement has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with the dometic political campaigning.
The American people really care about their jobs and their health insurance.
Nukes make their eyes glaze over.
The Obama Administration said what it did anout nukes as an intentional distraction from ObamaCare and unemployment.
This statement is breathtaking in either naivete or worse. What universe exactly does this apply?
Of course America needs nukes, and lots of them, because that is the only way deterrence works. America cannot safeguard and protect its cities from either a truck bomb nuke or “scud in a bucket” poor man’s ICBM from a freighter offshore. “Deniable” proxies, and even outright state attacks, leaving aside factions simply acting on their own or “borrowing” nukes creates a problem.
The above statement implies a willful stupidity of the highest order. Who cares if the Iranian Parliament structure is hit? Its just a building. Iran sent half its kids as human mine clearers and human wave attackers during the Iran-Iraq War. Slaughtered kids as young as nine by the hundreds of thousands! What do the power-makers care? Or the Taliban? Or the ISI? Or factions within the IRGC?
The point of the radical factions is that the US can be attacked with impunity. At worst, a few buildings are blown up, nothing more. That THEY can destroy cities and WE can do nothing back. Statements like the above are prima facie evidence of the willful denial regarding the actual reality because it makes the world of unicorns and rainbows the idiocy it always was. No other possibility in the world of Beslan, Bombay, and 9/11 can be considered.
America needs the credible and direct threat of WIPING OUT THE PEOPLE, completely, of Muslim nations and regions, in order to deter attack. Otherwise, we set ourselves up for losing our cities while we destroy meaningless and empty buildings. Let us be honest, this is what most Democrats want.
Didn’t Michael Moore cry out for Osama to simply kill Red State Americans? Pretty much most Democrats agree with him. Certainly most Blacks and Hispanics. Or SWPL liberals.
We could lose several cities and about half of America would cheer it on. Hollywood would create celebratory movies, and idolize the attackers. Certainly the population could do nothing. The Military is constrained by its oath to obey the Commander in Chief. Obama would probably invite Osama bin Laden over to the White House for a “surrender conference” with ourselves doing the surrender.
It was one man, one vote, one time. There simply is no way Obama would ever hit back at any attacker in any meaningful way. At best the few impotent missile strikes proven by Clinton to be useless.
The experience of 1993-2001, a full 8 years, with the US as the only major power of any note, shows Jim in Virginia monumentally wrong (i.e. failure to deter with credible threats to wiping out the population and/or removing and killing foreign leaders) led to constant terrorist attacks, culminating in 9/11.
Nor should we forget the 1993 WTC bombing. It aimed to kill 50,000 people, by toppling one tower into the other. This at a time when “Feel your pain” Clinton pressed Israel to come up with concessions to Arafat, and responded with “precision” missile strikes that did nothing. Indeed we’ve been whacking terrorists with Predator Drones to no effect.
Eventually, after we lose 4 cities or more, and the military stages a coup, against a failed Sharia-Lite President for Life Obama who has suspended the Constitution, we will simply have to wipe out almost all Muslims. Period. To make examples to save the rest of our cities.
MC, m’dear, it’s a shadow world and we’re all way off in the distance –you and i and everyone here. We’re searching for sense. With affection and all due respect, your words could be as easily applied to you by me as to me by you.
As to Russia vs Georgia, one thing we all know for sure is that Russia is a thousand times bigger and more powerful, and with destructive war and existential threat annexed two large and geopolitically strategic portions of the sovereign state of Georgia, which was and is exactly zero threat to the sovereign state of Russia. It is as if USA had invaded Panama, which owned the Panama Canal, and annexed the canal back to USA. And the Canal had been built BY USA, and then given to Panama, which had then allowed it to fall under narco gangster control via Noriega. And Noriega was not just a jackass like the Georgian president but was an international narco gangster chief beyond taste and fashion objections. And after we had him, we left, vacated. repeat: we left the area. And as an aside, Georgia was invaded and taken by Lenin in i believe 1922 –hardly an ancient historical part of Mother Russia!
Legitimacy ought to come from the ability to wield power effectively, not from the ability to obtain power effectively. Legitimacy ought to come from the ability to discern between “can” and “should”.
The principal reason why the United States of America is in its present predicament is because the pool of potential applicants for political leadership has become so thin. There are many wonderful men and women who would do a better job than the leaders we have had on both sides of the aisle for at least a generation, possibly more. Yet, the United States is selecting increasingly immature leaders. As a rule, American voters choose the person who appears to be the most mature, but if the pool of applicants increasingly acts like a bunch of children, we have a problem.
Perhaps we should consider how to expand the pool. We need to consider people who would never consider themselves to be presidential material, and yet would do a vastly better job than the one in power. We need mature, thoughtful, and brave people who are willing to serve. We need to reverse the political demoralization of America.
From the Post:
“The ingredient is helium 3, an unusual form of the element that is formed when tritium, an ingredient of hydrogen bombs, decays. But the government mostly stopped making tritium in 1989.
“I have not heard any explanation of why this was not entirely foreseeable,” said Representative Brad Miller, Democrat of North Carolina, who is the chairman of a House subcommittee that is investigating the problem. …”
Then Rep. Miller is way out of touch with reality.
The United States has lost most of it’s personnel and science from the cold war days, along with the knowledge and expertise. Thereby losing the ability to even maintain the devices we have now, let alone supply, manufacture or provide new weapons.
It is a national shame and also a well kept secret.
Actually not, It is only a secret from us Americans. The Soviets know, the NK know and the Chinese certainly know.
Papa Ray
Saddam did not give up his nuclear weapons, he was in a box. In 1981 the Israelis bombed the Osirak reactor to prevent him from getting a weapon. At the end of Gulf War I in 1991 we found out that he was six months from having a bomb. After OIF the WMD report by Duelfer said that he didn’t have anything but was prepared to resume the minute sanctions were lifted.
As for Gadahfi, he is reported to have said to Italy’s prime minister, “I saw what happened to Saddam and I was afraid.”
“Mr Obama said an exception would be made for “outliers like Iran and North Korea” that have violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”
I wonder what this means when North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, AND Israel are thrown into the same category of non-signatories of the NPT. What does this leave one to assume as to when one of these attacks the other? Makes it kind of ambiguous to say the least and when weighed against the recent belligerence against Israel by all parties, NPT signatories or not, leaves one with ominous thoughts.
The President (IMO) has shown that he is capable of doing anything to get what he wants. But he has not shown that he wants the right things: a free and safe America.
Whiskey,
I repeat, this nuclear policy shift is about distracting the American people from unemployment and the on-going socialized medicine take over.
The American people really care about their jobs and their private health insurance policies.
Nukes make their eyes glaze over.
Please note that the American government does not need a coup to remove Obama.
The US Constitution provdes the means to remove him outside elections, given the political will to act.
And the American State governemnts are well positioned to provide that will.
Article V of the US constution requires that 3/4 of the state legislatures pass resolutions calling for a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution.
The legislatures can pass resolutions appointing delegates to the convention. Admittedly the latter will be like trying to herd cats but again, that is called democracy.
This can be used as a huge stick to get the Congress and judiciary to act on articles of Impeachment or via Article 25 of the Constitution to remove an “ill” president.
If Congress tries to ignore the states’ call for a Convention to propose Constitutional amendments — like one limiting the term of office of the current president to 60 seconds after ratification — the states can hold one anyway and ratify such of the Convention’s proposed amendments as they want.
It makes no practical difference whether Congress does its job or doesn’t if enough state legislatures decide to send delegates to a Constitutional Convention. 2/3 to 3/4 of the states can pretty much do what they want.
Consider the effect on Wash DC power elites of a proposed Constitutional Amendment that prohibits any branch of the Federal government from imposing any legal, regulatory or administrative unfunded mandate on any state and local government under the constitution, unless fully funded by Congressionally appropriated federal tax receipts.
As a practical matter, Congress won’t just sit there after more than a few state legislatures pass resolutions calling for a Constitutional Convention.
Congress will try to either head things off by passing laws to placate the states, or start sending its own proposed Constitutional amendments to the states.
wws said:
“Israel will never launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike, no matter how bad the provocation. They will only launch *after* Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have been vaporized.”
You’ve just described “national suicide” for Israel. The fallout plume from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv would fall over much of Israel and kill a significant fraction of the survivors from the initial blast. Certainly there would be no economic survival if Jerusalem and Tel Aviv disappeared.
Netanyahu would be derelict in his duty as prime minister to allow this to happen. He has no choice but to act preemptively. The only remaining question is one of timing.
No WE did not “just” throw them under the bus . . . the were thrown under the bus the day Obama-nation became a reality by the “Obama Knights” . . . the fact is that the Obama-cons just did not bother to tell them that the hopey/changey also went for those that considered themselves our allies. Get it folks we have no allies . . . just as we have no enemies . . . in the “Obama Unified Concept of the World” . . . we are but ONE people . . . one for all and all for one. Obama-ization of the earth is part of the hope & change. “The world will just naturally see that this is best for all of US” . . . “Obama Commandment #1″ . . . other 9 to come. Remember he does indeed think that we are going to rename Washington, DC after HIM . . . St. Obamaburg or maybe “Barakscow”
“There are many wonderful men and women who would do a better job than the leaders we have had on both sides of the aisle for at least a generation…”
One must consider the debilitating effect that corruption has on morality. In Washington nothing gets done unless you are willing to get dirt on your hands. Like the gangster code. You are not made until you have killed someone innocent or stolen large amounts of money for the cause. DC is corrupt and anyone or anything that does not draw on that currency is muscled out of political relevance. It is, as Wretchard might deem, a ‘self-licking ice-cream cone’.
PS – those mature, thoughtful, and brave people are coming out of the military every day. You know, the ones that the justice department put out an APB on.
Re: Buddy Larsen @ 36 and Marie Claude,
Regarding the fellow that Buddy linked to, yes I do think he’s a certifiable John Bircher. The ‘blowing up Russia’ equivalent of 9/11 trutherism that the author cites is weak. Here’s my personal anecdote as to why:
You can find the Russian AND English language versions of the Feltshinsky/Litvinenko book at the Biblio Globus book store. I didn’t ask any clerk there, I just looked for it somewhere in the rather large section devoted to KGB/Soviet history and found it in paperback no less. If the all-powerful FSB were censoring this book in Russia, surely they would have banned it from the book store a stone’s throw from Lubyanka?
This was coincidentally, the same book store where I found Dmitry Rogozin’s autobiography with the photos of him playing basketball at NATO HQ in Brussells. There is also a HUGE section on KGB including the Mitrokhin Archive books (which detail that folks like the Rosenburgs, I.F. Stone and even Harry Hopkins were Soviet agents) in Russian and English PLUS extensive books on Nazis, Stalin and WWII with Western authors like Simon S. Montefiore and Orlando Figes – hardly whitewashers of Stalin though willing to ask the troubling question of whether Uncle Joe deserved any of the credit for the USSR’s survival under Nazi onslaught. So much for Stalin being rehabilitated, many Archimandrites and high level Russian Orthodox Church figures have denounced any attempts to do so (the ‘good manager’ textbook which drew international headlines was never formally adopted) and they probably influenced Medvedev’s speech last year on that subject.
http://www.amazon.com/Blowing-Up-Russia-Secret-Terror/dp/1594032017
Of course, the presence of “Blowing Up Russia” at one of Moscow’s largest and most patronized bookstores would not be enough to disprove it for this J.R. Lyquist and his ilk. He’d just argue that like The Book in 1984 the Party just puts such books out there as bait to identify potentially troublesome dissidents, and the fact that websites like kavkazcenter.ru that explicitly speak for the Caucasus terrorists and kasparov.ru/khodorkovsky sites (robertamsterdam.com) are NOT blocked is also mere window dressing. The anonymous (and probably paid) smear blogger ‘Kim Zigfeld’ MC referenced for example insists that only 25% of the Russian population has Internet access and therefore the uncensored ru-net compared to China’s Great Wall is irrelevant. Alex Jones also insists that his viewers and readers are tracked and that’s why the Shadow Government allows him to live despite him exposing their inside job plot of 9/11 etc.
At a certain point even if you think there are some things that remain unexplained about 9/11 (like the speculation in airline stocks prior to that event) you have to take off your tin foil hat and ask are you really willing to believe that your own government and President willingly let something like that happen. I know FDR baited Nazi Germany into declaring war on the U.S., but I do not buy that FDR deliberately let Pearl Harbor happen. I think he expected the blow to fall in the Philippines.
In the end, as our host Wretchard points out frequently, sometimes you do have to allow for the cock-up theory of history, how else to explain WWI? Many intellectuals felt that war was coming (read Thomas Hardy’s Channel Guns Firing in the Night pre-July 1914) but Niall Ferguson correctly points out that the European financiers were completely blindsided even if they subsequently found ways to profit from it (move money into neutral Holland, Switzerland, etc.) Maybe the House of Rothschild did know before the European publics that war was imminent and made their bets accordingly, just like Mr. Soros does now. But I cannot accept that they were so all powerful as to have pulled all the nations of Europe into that conflaguration, else why could they have not saved one of their own from the Holocaust in the Second World War?
Not that we needed further confirmation, but Obama’s reported comment that he thought the U.S. nuclear-strike plan against Russia and China “was insane” does provide increased insight into the man’s soul.
Appeasers, whose moral cowardice never allows them the resolve necessary to a fight, always think that confrontation is insane.
Appeasers then rationalize whatever cowardice requires.
Obama won’t fight, no matter the provocation. He’ll bluster, he’ll attempt to bribe and appease and, when all else fails, he’ll surrender.
For Obama it’s all just a game, and losing has no consequences.
It’s just a game, it’s just like hoops
Or so Obama says
The ball comes in the paint, I score
That’s why I am the prez
We used to press them man to man
Sometimes we used a zone
But now it’s time to change our schemes
For defense of my own
I’ll tell the world that we won’t fight
Come hit us if you like
So long as you just only use
A biologic strike
We’re standing down our nukes you see
And hoping all goes well
And hoping others do the same
But only time will tell
We’re up by one, they have the ball
One second left to play
I’ve lost my man, he shoots, he scores
Oh well, it’s not my day
One wonders if the Obama brain trust understands that all the massive bloodletting and material destruction of the 20th century –you know, the one just past a decade ago –was done without nuclear weapons, and that had the afflicted nations had such weapons then, in all liklihood there would have been no WWI and WWII. And at a tiny, really infinitesimal part of the cost of the huge and provocative (let alone non-deterring) standing armies –and military cultures –of the time.
Sixty million dead and a hundred towns and cities burned and flattened in the most biblically, or Roman, or Atilla the Hunnishly complete way, and all with mere iron and gunpowder.
Ban the Bomb is almost tantamount to Love Verdun, Passchendale, Nanking, Coventry, Iwo Jima, Stalingrad, Hamburg, Manila, Omaha Beach, Dresden, Auschwitz, Katyn Forest, Bataan, LeMay over Tokyo. Rivers of blood not spilt because of nuclear weapons –enforcing manners in the same rough way (by evidence of history ONLY way) that Samuel Colt made all men equal.
I don’t think Wretchard mentioned the most likely scenario–the “crippling” cyber attack. Isn’t that the one that would be most dificult to pin on anyone and work out best for those currently in charge?
Got a link to that Strategic Air Command article you cite?
Nice post, Mr. X. –food for thought. double agents, triple agents –it’s like day-trading stocks –you know you’ve crossed some sort of knowability threshold when you find yourself buying and selling the same shares at the same time in seperate transactions, and taking a loss against yourself to make a profit for yourself. It doesn’t make any sense at all until you realize your drift was to some point absolutely sensibly trying to juggle airy invisible property potentialities like coverage and exposure, risk and limit.
uh Buddy, then what was 1989 “just cause” operation ?
uh Georgian history has numerous traces of russian, monghol, persian, ottoman occupation, depends on which powerful country was ruling the proxy aeras. Now, isn’t it funny that most of the soviet influent personnalities came from Georgia too ? and Stalin was a a georgian mafioso from his prime teens too, before he became a church student ! So, me thinks that there are traditions that can’t pass under the bus !
uh look, Saakashvili creates military “georgian youths” like “Hitler youths”
http://www.bruxelles2.eu/
“The ingredient is helium 3, an unusual form of the element that is formed when tritium, an ingredient of hydrogen bombs, decays. But the government mostly stopped making tritium in 1989.”
This is what happens when you allow accountants, clerks, lawyers, politicians and other people who shouldn’t be trusted with anything important to dictate national defense policy.
It never occurred to these morons to ask NSA, or DIA, or even Lawrence Livermore National Lab if such detectors would be likely to detect a terrorist bomb.
Unless terrorists buy or steal an old Soviet nuke, they will probably use a fission device. No tritium involved, thus undetectable to the 250 million dollars worth of taxpayer funded instruments the morons wasted.
A fission device worked fine to gut two city sized targets, and better yield devices are certainly possible today. What took a sizable chunk of the most prosperous nations budget 70 years ago, and many of the world’s most accomplished scientists and engineers, can now be done as a college lab project by grad students in third world countries if the government has access to the raw materials and the will to proceed.
Move away from the big cities folks!
Methinks someone finally realized they had spent hundreds of millions defending against an unlikely threat and were trying to cover their asses.
ah, zut, the link couldn’t be copied, here is the text:
Cultivating a Martial Spirit
In the wake of war, Georgia adds “military patriotism” to the curriculum. Part two of a series.
by Tamar Kikacheishvili
16 March 2010
This is the second in a series of articles on the challenges to education in post-conflict societies.
In mid-January, Nona Mikiashvili found out that her 11-year-old son, Lasha, would begin studying something the authorities here are calling military patriotism in the fall.
Lasha was excited at the prospect that he might get to handle a weapon, but his mother had doubts. “I don’t object to a military course if it includes emergency situations, but it should never be mandatory for all students,” she said. “As for patriotism, it’s impossible to teach at school. I’m really curious how they’re going to teach it. What will they do? Telling students that we [Georgians] are the best, only to have them find out differently later in life, it might cause problems.”
Lasha also does not know what to expect from the new lessons in patriotism. He understands that a patriot loves his country, he said, but “Can someone teach you how to love?” he wondered.
President Mikheil Saakashvili’s announcement about mandatory military patriotism courses in public schools came about a year and a half after the August 2008 war between Georgia and Russia. Presidential spokeswoman Manana Manjgaladze said military-patriotic education, part of a package of proposals by Saakashvili and Education Minister Dimitry Shashkin, would include training in civil defense and cultivating a martial spirit, “which historically was always in the nature of the Georgian people.”
MODERNIZING AN OLD IDEA
The ministry is still working on the curriculum for the course. Natia Jokhadze, director of the National Curriculum and Assessment Center, said the new curriculum will be ready by the fall and classes will start in the upcoming school year. She said military patriotism classes will be taught at every grade level and they will include civic participation, civil defense, and emergency situations.
The announcement of the course has raised fears about the possible militarization of the country’s schools and questions about how patriotism will be defined.
David Zurabishvili, one of the leaders of the nonparliamentary opposition Republican Party of Georgia, said the inclusion of civil defense is simply to give a pretty shape to an ugly idea. “The president announced it, and now the Ministry of Education is trying to figure out how to soft-pedal it to our society. This initiative amounts to militarization, and the idea that everyone must be a militant is the wrong approach,” Zurabishvili said.
Saakashvili was not the first to broach the idea of patriotism classes. In November, Irakli Aladashvili, editor in chief of the military magazine Arsenali, said military education should be taught in public schools. “I think that the upbringing of the motherland’s defenders should start at the school desk,” Aladashvili said, calling for classes in civil defense, first aid, and, optionally, weaponry.
In light of Georgia’s recent experience with military conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Aladashvili said its citizens should be able to defend themselves. “We shouldn’t be compared with other countries that never experienced war. We had wars within the country as well as in the Caucasus region. I covered the war in Chechnya as well. And I think that Georgian students should study military patriotism,” Aladashvili said.
In the Soviet era students were given military lessons, and some countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States still have the subject in their curricula. The textbook for those classes typically included praise for the Communist Party and its ideology. Aladashvili said it would be key that the new classes should not be used to indoctrinate students. “I think politics should not have any place in this modern military patriotism course. It should just be about patriotic souls.”
PATRIOTISM WITHOUT MILITARISM?
Confused parents are not the only ones uneasy about the new courses. Some opposition politicians say it’s a distraction from Tbilisi’s bungling confrontation with Russia. “The Georgian government wants to replace people’s disappointment with a sense of patriotism. They’re just trying to cover up their mistakes and the pain of a lost war with this new initiative,” said Guguli Magradze, leader of the Women’s Party, a member of the opposition Alliance for Georgia.
Better to offer peace education in schools given Georgia’s recent history, Magradze said.
“Peace is the only thing that would give Georgia a chance to take its normal place on the geopolitical map of the world,” Magradze said.
More perniciously, Magradze said, the authorities are hoping to cultivate a more pliable citizenry with such courses. “This subject is in the interests of the ruling party, for the purposes of having obedient citizens who obey the dictates of authority. They want slaves. This idea should cause protest in our society,” she said.
Tamar Chabashvili, principal of a secondary school in central Tbilisi, disagrees.
Calling the new courses “extremely necessary,” Chabashvili said the project would help bring up a new generation of patriots and active citizens. “I think that this subject should include the history and present of the country, including the battles that Georgia had in Abkhazia and the war that happened last year in South Ossetia. It must be a mandatory subject,” she said.
Pavle Tvaliashvili, a consultant on education management and reform at the private Center for Training and Consultancy in Tbilisi, said a course that teaches students how to behave in emergencies would be welcome. Nor would he have a problem with a course that aims to instill patriotism.
“I think that patriotism should be used to teach the important values of mankind such as peace, responsibility, freedom, love. … In my opinion, it’s wrong to kill others. However, sometimes when someone attacks you, you must be ready to defend yourself,” Tvaliashvili said.
Psychologist Gaga Nizharadze, who has written extensively about post-Soviet culture and behavior, said he fears the courses could fuel an increase in violence or bullying among students. Nizharadze said patriotism cannot be taught in a classroom. “Patriotism is not a subject, it’s a personal characteristic and that’s why it’s impossible to have separate lessons in it and to teach it this way,” he said.
Nizharadze said the decision to give elementary school students military courses suggests that the country’s priority has become militarization.
“Actually I’m against teaching patriotism or any other ideology at school. The only ideology in a democratic country should be that all ideologies are equal,” Nizharadze said.
Tamar Kickacheishvili is a reporter for Georgia Today, an English-language newspaper.Home page photo by Rob Sinclair.
Mil-tech Bard ,
Do not assume that States will be able to appoint delegates and control a Convention. Congress gets to set the rules and once it is called for all bets are off. It would be the ultimate pig in a poke and you could find it stuffed with people from every chapter of Acorn. Remember that David Axelrod is the expert on how to pack a Caucus.
…i should’ve mentioned that your In the end, as our host Wretchard points out frequently, sometimes you do have to allow for the cock-up theory of history, how else to explain WWI? implies force majeure when in the proximate sense it was Gavrilo Prinzip’s bullet, and as to his motivation, he was most likely a communist agent engaging in direct action to initiate the crisis (which got out of hand, of course) needed to bring down the Czar. Indeed the communist party enshrined his home and other artifacts, Lenin-tomb-style, as soon as those properties came into its power, in 1944. people like prinzip and, oh, the president seem to have a clear vision of “a” future that, coming at the expense of any sight of the jungle in between now and then, they believe is “the” future.
Oh now I remember. He3 detectors can be used with a neutron source and detect backscatter in hydrogenous material, like plastic. Once upon a time I worked on a plastic mine detector with those detectors in them.
It is his duty but Obama has made clear that should Netanyahu do his duty, there will be severe and fatal economic and diplomatic consequences.
A preemptive Israeli nuclear attack upon Iran will be viewed by a majority of the public and characterized by the world MSM as an ‘unprovoked attack’ and will result in a marked decline in the US public’s support for Israel, which currently stands at 57%. If it dips below 50% as the result of an Israeli nuclear attack it will provide the needed political cover for Obama and the Dems to punish Israel.
So, if Netanyahu attacks Iran with nukes (and he lacks the conventional resources to otherwise effectively attack Iran) Obama has almost certainly informed Netanyahu that he and the Dems will push through a bill through Congress to cut off ALL US aid to Israel.
Further, Obama will then join Russia, China and most of the UN in imposing severe economic and diplomatic restrictions upon Israel, ‘to bring them to their senses’, which of course, will lead to Israel’s financial collapse.
It will be Israel against the world.
That is the conundrum facing Israel. Attack and face the world starving Israel into submission and then a resultant annihilation.
Do nothing and, maybe the Iranian’s don’t attack as Ahmadinejad isn’t in charge and Khamieni, who is in charge is not suicidal.
There may however, be a third option.
Israel institutes a new policy of ‘Mutual Assured Destruction’ between Israel and Islam.
Thus, when Iran gets nukes, Netanyahu responds with the new policy, announced at the UN.
Israel now deems any nuclear armed Muslim nation, or Islamic group attacking Israel with nukes, to be an ‘agent’ of Islam. As it is Islam that is the motivating factor in the unremitting animosity of the Muslim world against Israel and the Jews.
That, given Israel’s size, a nuclear attack upon Tel Aviv and/or Jerusalem would effectively destroy Israel and in retaliation for an attempt at what Israel will now consider genocide, Israel will respond in kind.
Therefore, Israel now serves notice that any nuclear attack upon Israel, whether directly by any Islamic nation or by a terrorist group such as Hamas or Hezbollah will be considered an attack upon Israel by Islam. A state of war will then result between Islam and Israel, who will respond with nukes.
Iran and Mecca will be immediately destroyed and any other Islamic targets deemed by Israel to be complicit will also be destroyed.
What I’m suggesting is that Israel use its nuclear capacity to set up deterrence of Islam.
Israel must face the real enemy and make it crystal clear that any nuclear attack upon Israel will result in Iran (as the foremost sponsor of terrorism against Israel) and every Islamic holy sites’… destruction.
#55 LOTM:
My sentiments exactly. All calls for a constitutional convention are the political equivalent of Pickett’s Charge for well-meaning but naive conservatives and libertarians. Just reinstate the act of abiding by the existing constitution.
It just goes from bad to worse to even worse than that with this guy. I think the GOP just picked up another 10 House Seats and one more in the Senate. If we live that long.
but MC, you must admit, the Georgian right could militarize the entire country, put every man woman and child under arms, brand them with swastikas, and build and buy weapons until not a kernel of corn was let in the nation to eat, and then launch an attack on Moscow, which would get about ten feet inside their own province of South Ossetia before 3,000 Russian Federation fighter bombers and the ranks of SS3′s in the hills looking down on Tbilisi, would blow the city and the whole armed force both clean off the map. you know this is true, so for what end is it necessary to continue trotting out interested party anecdotes calculated to demonize?
Sure, any nation trembling under the iron boot will act strangely. Even the ‘idea’ of an iron boot will do the trick –Look at Cuba –one half-assed gesture by a provoked president of the USA (but 90 miles away), the Bay of Pigs JFK adventure, was enough to give Castro all he needed for the next half-century of running his prison island with the most cut-throat secret service seen in the western hemisphere since the Aztec priesthood –and for what do the people wander about on three dollars a month wondering what a computer looks like? To keep their sugar out of Ronald Reagan’s jellybeans?
Request for Information — If Obama signs an “agreement” with the Russians on nuclear weapons (one that allows the Russians inspection rights in the US), does that not constitute a Treaty?
Under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution (Don’t laugh! It’s unseemly), the President needs the votes of “two thirds of the Senators present” to approve a Treaty.
Has Obama just put his foot in it again?
In trying to show his extreme left-wing supporters that he is still one of them (even after the no public option health bill, and the drilling off the Atlantic coast proposal), he may have put his Democrat Senators in the unenviable position of having to vote for his idiotic proposal.
Or do we just stop pretending that the Constitution even exists any more? Which is probably not the kind of issue that Obama’s Democrats are looking forward to campaigning on.
…and it’s not just that –it’s what to expect from Obama directed verification protocols.
There something in the language about an ‘exempted’ site that the USA will not inspect. Dunno what it is but it could be the Yamantau Mountain Complex? –where you’d keep the family jewels, of course?
Then there’s this, from the INF Treaty, verification of which was found to have been um, either nonexistant or irrelevant, you be the judge.
A total of 73 SS-23s were secretly deployed by the Soviets in Eastern Europe, according to Arms Control and Disarmament Agency compliance reports. If all 73 missiles had been armed with nuclear warheads, their combined firepower would have equaled 365 times the power of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
When the United States received the first reports about the existence of a secret SS-23 force in September 1991, “it sent an electric shock through the intelligence community,” a former intelligence analyst told WND. “The realization that the Soviets had a secret nuclear missile force undermined all our premises about arms control.”
I must agree with Geoffrey, the pressures and threats handed to Netanyahu by Obama and the Euro’s make a pre-emptive strike impossible, because that will guarantee the death of Israel as Obama and the EU implement a full naval blockade while the Arabs impose a land blockade. And yes, Obama would do it. As I said, I do sincerely hope they are working on ways to get enough of the population deep underground when the attack comes, the attack that they will be forced to wait for until they act.
As for the response after that happens, what Geoffrey mentions has been talked about in hushed tones ever since Israel has become nuclear capable – you may have heard of “The Sampson Option”. It referes to the biblical story of Sampson who ended his life by pulling the Philistine temple down on top of himself and thus taking all of his enemies out with him. “The Sampson Option” goes even further than Geoffrey envision, since it is not just Mecca that would be targeted – the idea is that if Israel is going to die, and the men in charge of the nuclear forces see that this is inevitable, then their last act will be to eliminate *Every* major population center in the middle east – not just Mecca, Riyadh, and Tehran, but Damascas, Beirut, Amman, Cairo, Istanbul, *every* major military base of any power in the region, and just for spite, *every* major oil terminal and oil field in the Gulf. Israel reportedly has 400 nuclear weapons, this plan would envision using all 400 simultaneously.
I rather hope it doesn’t come to this, because if it does we’re going to have Strontium 90 and all of it’s radioactive cousins in our rainwater for the rest of our lives and most of our childrens lives – even on this side of the planet.
Armageddon indeed.
Responding to Geoffrey Britain,
It’s unclear what Obama’s agenda is towards Israel, i.e. whether Obama wants Israel to do America’s heavy lifting with regard to Iran or whether Obama genuinely wants to undermine Israel for some obscure leftist reason. IMHO, Obama’s intelligence is overrated along with his political sophistication.
It’s also unclear what’s Ahmadinejad’s agenda. The public comments that he makes about wishing to nuke Israel seem incredibly stupid. It’s conceivable that he’s as incompetent as Obama. However it’s a Hobbesian world in the Middle East and naive/stupid people tend not to live for very long there. This makes me believe there is some sophistication behind Ahmadinejad’s pronouncements that’s not immediately obvious.
The policy of ‘Mutual Assured Destruction’ is ***always*** a bad idea and a particularly bad one when confronted with religious fanatics who believe they’ll be rewarded in the afterlife. Israel would be very unwise to adopt such a policy against the Islamic world.
My guess is that next time Ahmadinejad says something particularly stupid about nuking Israel then Netanyahu will preposition the Dolphin class submarines and then issue an ultimatum concerning Iran’s nuclear disarmament. Ahmadinejad will assume this is simple bluster and then be surprised when his nuclear assets are cratered. What Obama does after this is anyone’s guess. However I think it would be reasonable for Netanyahu to simply ignore Obama (or make soothing/face-saving noises in Obama’s direction) and do what he thinks is best for Israel.
If there is any message to be gained from this announcement, it is that Barack Obama intends to use nuclear weapons as a first-strike measure against non-nuclear adversaries, but is trouble by it.
No. He will not use nuclear weapons: this is an ideological position, an article of his faith; all his lies have been used to cover or served to advance his true ideology.
OK buddy, it’s not like it is an objective reality, but before that one did it in Germany, it was a projecttoo. And Saakashvili didn’t prove so far that he was a responsible leader. The 2008 war was of his choice, expecting that the US leaders would back him, too bad for him it was a pre-electoral time. Though as far as his right to annex Ossetia, look like Ossetians didn’t want to be under georgian rules again, as they already got their official autonomy since 1990.
uh, also, as far as my experience of the net, the Russians aren’t bigger liars than the Americans, since I became interested in the stories that were going on our back because of our non participation into the Irak campain, I have read so many lies and manipulative propagandas against us, that defy any entendment !
This is why the Russians hold it as a joke !
LOTM…not sure why you engaged with that kid on facebook…and he was just a kid, clearly unable to resolve the conflict and contradictions in his own position, (yet he claims a more worldly view of right and wrong), I’m thinking maybe he is a pirate.
The ultimate Defender of Israel is stepping into the arena. This is from one of Yahweh’s prophets Cliff Hilbert:
The End Has Come
Ezekiel 7
The End Has Come
1 The word of the LORD came to me: 2 “Son of man, this is what the Sovereign LORD says to the United States of America: The end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land. 3 The end is now upon you and I will unleash my anger against you. I will judge you according to your conduct and repay you for all your detestable practices. 4 I will not look on you with pity or spare you; I will surely repay you for your conduct and the detestable practices among you. Then you will know that I am the LORD.
5 “This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Disaster! An unheard-of disaster is coming. 6 The end has come! The end has come! It has roused itself against you. It has come! 7 Doom has come upon you—you who dwell in the land. The time has come, the day is near; there is panic, not joy, upon the mountains. 8 I am about to pour out my wrath on you and spend my anger against you; I will judge you according to your conduct and repay you for all your detestable practices. 9 I will not look on you with pity or spare you; I will repay you in accordance with your conduct and the detestable practices among you. Then you will know that it is I the LORD who strikes the blow.
10 “The day is here! It has come! Doom has burst forth, the rod has budded, arrogance has blossomed! 11 Violence has grown into [b] a rod to punish wickedness; none of the people will be left, none of that crowd—no wealth, nothing of value. 12 The time has come, the day has arrived. Let not the buyer rejoice nor the seller grieve, for wrath is upon the whole crowd. 13 The seller will not recover the land he has sold as long as both of them live, for the vision concerning the whole crowd will not be reversed. Because of their sins, not one of them will preserve his life. 14 Though they blow the trumpet and get everything ready, no one will go into battle, for my wrath is upon the whole crowd.
15 “Outside is the sword, inside are plague and famine; those in the country will die by the sword, and those in the city will be devoured by famine and plague. 16 All who survive and escape will be in the mountains, moaning like doves of the valleys, each because of his sins. 17 Every hand will go limp, and every knee will become as weak as water. 18 They will put on sackcloth and be clothed with terror. Their faces will be covered with shame and their heads will be shaved. 19 They will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will be an unclean thing. Their silver and gold will not be able to save them in the day of the LORD’s wrath. They will not satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it, for it has made them stumble into sin. 20 They were proud of their beautiful jewelry and used it to make their detestable idols and vile images. Therefore I will turn these into an unclean thing for them. 21 I will hand it all over as plunder to foreigners and as loot to the wicked of the earth, and they will defile it. 22 I will turn my face away from them, and they will desecrate my treasured place; robbers will enter it and desecrate it.
23 “Prepare chains, because the land is full of bloodshed and the city is full of violence. 24 I will bring the most wicked of the nations to take possession of their houses; I will put an end to the pride of the mighty, and their sanctuaries will be desecrated. 25 When terror comes, they will seek peace, but there will be none. 26 Calamity upon calamity will come, and rumor upon rumor. They will try to get a vision from the prophet; the teaching of the law by the priest will be lost, as will the counsel of the elders. 27 The king will mourn, the prince will be clothed with despair, and the hands of the people of the land will tremble. I will deal with them according to their conduct, and by their own standards I will judge them. Then they will know that I am the LORD.”
” Barack Obama I warned you NOT TO TOUCH MY HOLY LAND! Yet in your arrogance and pride you and your top officials CONDEMNED MY PEOPLE AND MY LAND!! You are trying to force my people into splitting My Holy City! You also recently split your own nation by forcing open the jaws of the citizens and forcing them to swallow an abomination called Obamacare.
“Therefore says the Lord God I will physically split your nation in two with an earthquake like has never occured before. It will begin in the city where you began your corrupt and detestable political career, Chicago, and will split open the earth to the Gulf of Mexico. It will cause a chasm in the earth that will swallow up cities and people. Millions will die and the devastation will be beyond belief. The blood of everyone who dies will be upon your hands for all eternity, you will never escape the guilt.
“This is the beginning of horrors that will be unleashed upon the USA, just the beginning.”
A Tomahawk with conventional explosives won’t destroy buried nuclear facilities. Once Iran has nukes the entire military paradigm changes, including attributes of conventional warfare. That’s of course, part of why we handle the North Koreans with kid gloves, China being the other.
If Iran then seizes the Strait of Hormuz, one way or the other, the caca hits the fan. Especially if Russia and China back the Iranian’s play. Obama won’t attack and gas at the pump goes to $12+ a gallon. That, combined with our deficit, quickly escalates into economic collapse.
Good to see so many strategic thinkers pounding the keyboards. Most of it is excellent, but then this is the BC.
Stalin said to his intelligence chief Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of the CHEKA and master of the Lubyanka.
There’s one thing about power that you can’t deny. It’s the one thing in the world you can’t fake; either you have it or you don’t.”
Obama has been and will continue to destroy the United States from within and by virtue of this lastest pronunciamentos encourage our adversaries to bring the attack to us from afar. There is simply no economy in giving the tools away, which he has done. Reflective of what obamas teachery is doing is the old Roman attitude toward their rivals in the Punic Wars, the expression “Punic fides” which means treachery .
We have a traitor in the white House,whose ill conceived policies will cause more deaths and greater proliferation of WMD’s worldwide. He is a fool.
The Left has poo-pooed the Cold War from go and essentially said the whole thing was a Right Wing conspiracy to control the public in a grip of fear. The big ‘O is relinquishing the instruments of defense as an act of Progressive faith in Leftist tropes. You see, once the lion lays with the lamb the jackals all go vegan. It is just pure liberal clap-trap looking for legitimating its cause through weakness. It has conservatives bunched up tight while the admin tries to press the peregruzka button. We’re so skewered.
Oceania had “Double-think.”
America now has “Unthink.” Which, I gather from what Obama is saying, involves naive, hobgoblinish consistency in reversing long-standing policy.
See also under “oppositional disorder” and “narcissistic compulsive disorder.”
Geoffrey Britain,
Responding to Eggplant:
I briefly considered responding point for point, then realized that, in my view, you have so many misapprehensions about the true situation (no offense intended) that I would in all likelihood be wasting my breath.
Time, that great corrector of unrealistic expectations, shall determine which of us has the more accurate view of the situation. Till then, we shall simply have to agree, to disagree.
It may be of interest however to learn that I pray that you are right and I, the one mistaken.
For if not, you are in for one hell of a surprise and disappointment…and it will be a much worse situation we face, than you appear to be presently prepared to accept.
i think it’s Gen James Mattoon Scott –right? but either way, i like him too –rule 1, survive –if you need to sacrifice yourself, your doing, not the other guy’s.
Excellent thought that Obama suffers from a “peculiar and grandiose form of infantilism which presumes that all events in the external world are manifestations of the movies playing in his head.”
Liberals generally suffer from this malady. They think the external world represents what they want, not what actually exists.
I first began to suspect that there was something mentally wrong with them when none would admit that our civilization depends on oil. When I asked if they planned to grow food in their yards, I got the “look,” meaning “shut up now.”
After this experience, I began to notice this lack of interest in facts in other contexts.
Obama seems to be an extreme example of this mindset.
# 23 tdiinva:
You hit it on the nose. There is no longer even the prospect of an American deterrence against attacks, either on allies, or on the homeland. Add to this the certainty of the Three Conjectures coming into play, and we know what the next couple of years is going to bring. Those who once were our friends had better nuke up, big time.
After we are hit, the entire nature of what our country has been and has aspired to will be changed. It will not be a good thing. Right now, I dearly hope that those who are our Oathkeepers are taking detailed notes.
Our one hope of forestalling this involves the elections in November. That hope is a forlorn one. There is no assurance that they will be allowed to take place, and quite a strong indication that it will not. Even if it does happen, there is no assurance that the vote count will be honest, nor that those in oppostion to the regime will be allowed to be seated if they win.
Before, our belief in the likelihood of a WMD strike on one of our cities in the next couple of years was conjecture. Rational conjecture given the nature of our enemies, their capabilities, and our reluctance to counter them effectively even if it costs American lives; but still conjecture. That conjecture has now become a certainty. We have functionally promised immunity to those who strike us.
Two things. Do not neglect to invest in the right kind of “precious metals” and supplies. And do not forget that what is to come is not just the fault of Buraq Hussein Obama; but the blood will be on the hands of literally every one of his supporters, both Democrats and those farther Left [TWANLOC]. At this point there can be no claim of ignorance or innocence in what is to come.
Subotai Bahadur
Felix was right from his view –coercive power (different from say, a Reagan’s exemplar power) further breaks down into active and passive power.
We began seeing the weaponized passive power in deadly earnest in 2004 –we called it “BDS” –it was hostile refusal to be governed nor allow the government to govern at all, in the normal way –’rule or ruin’ –as enunciated by Lavrentiy Beria: …at last a weary populace can seek peace only in our offered Communist State, at last only Communism can resolve the problems of the masses.
(and again, like Felix, rrrrright he was, because the ‘problem of the masses’ –is communism! )
The active mode, well let’s let Obama’s Manufacturing Czar explain it.
Mil-Tech, only a distraction? I would not rule that out- in fact odds are good you are correct. But try this one out: Israel is hit with chem or bio attacks of grand proportions. Even though we know the country of origin of the terrorists, the nation itself condemns the attack, blah, blah, blah. This is attractive precisely because Obama has given out the anti-nuke card. Weakened by the attacks and standing alone, Israel is over-run in a matter of months and ceases to exist as a nation. I believe it is Obama’s final solution to the Israeli problem.
Casus in its many meanings is discussed under CASUS BELLI.
Foederis is the genitive of foedus which literally is “a league” or “an alliance between two states,” but came to mean the document creating the alliance.
When an attack was made on one of the nations so allied, it became a casus foedris, obliging all the other nations in one way or another to commit their resources to the war that followed.
The United States has many such treaties all of whose efficacy is now in great jeopardy, if that is possible given the response from signatories to already existing treaties which are as a fart in the wind. The unilateral action of obama effectually removes the checkmate we held over real and potential adversaries and has signaled the era of a new and more threatening world of thugs and dictators. His kind of people.
it could be peaceful, subotai. something of a sequence where, to keep the union pension funds at least half funded we mothball all but say two or three of our carrier battle groups. all the while Iran ratchets up trouble bleeding into KSA until the Saudis make a isudden surprise trek to Moscow to plead for Russian protection. The KSA oilfields –the source which by quality, quantity and ease of lift sets OPEC pricing, then go behind the Russian strategic weapons shield, the west is asked to leave, and bingo, game over. Rthe transfer of all but breadloine GDP from west to east will tip over and become permanent so quickly we won’t even know it happened. Al Gore, longtime Kremlin agent who appears at the moment to be a loser, will have by delaying tactics run out the clock on our autonomy powers and from then on, even if we want to drill ANWAR or California coast to save on the new “Blue Sky” oil price, should the Kremlin say “we’d rather you didn’t, the environment and all”, we will say “Yessir, thank you sir, whatever you say, sir. May we still have our monthly allocation? we’ll trade you Alaska for it, it’s worthless to us now anyway.”
Maybe the last Jew will aim the last JerichoIII at the city of the painted harlot and bring down the temple on the heretics, Samson-like, hey –
Yea, but I still wonder what was in that miles long convoy going into Syria, that was seen from one of our satellites and confirmed by two of Saddam’s Generals.
For some reason nobody seems to want to know – or even remember.
Papa Ray
Krauthammer on Fox tv just said that — “…the umbrella is gone, and that’s new.”
For anyone interested, here is Obama’s thoughts on nuclear disarmament from his college days at Columbia. (It doesn’t look like his thinking has changed much.)
Hey, Rahm knows you don’t let a good crisis go to waste.
To paraphrase H.L. Mencken originally used to describe marriage is that we
“Now have our 16 inch necks in 15 1/2 inch collars”
Getting back to the title of the piece, which is a play on the famous Herman Kahn book, the main significance is that no one in DC is thinking about the unthinkable any more.
Ronald Reagan and G.H.W. Bush oversaw the greatest reduction in arsenals since WWII, greatest lessening of tensions, and greatest reduction in nuclear weapons not because they refused to think about how to fight a nuclear war but because they did think very carefully.
Recall how we have discussed here to a very small degree in the past the question of whether we should use a counter force or counter value approach to dealing with threats such as Al Queda and Iran. Failing to think about that in advance virtually ensures you will get the answer wrong. A nuclear exchange on any level is not simply a “spasm war” where you launch everything you have and wait to die. Neither is it some sort of symbolic act where the opposing capital cities are destroyed as a means of counting coup or achieving tit for tat.
You need to figure out what you need to do to deter the enemy and what you need to do if war actually breaks out. I don’t know whether counter value or counter force works best with our enemies but I sure hope someone has given it some thought, because when the radars and DSP birds tell you the war has started it’s too late to start a discussion. But the current Administration seems to believe that it is somehow offensive to even think the unthinkable. And as Herman Khan put it almost 50 years ago, that situation makes the unthinkable more likely.
The idea that the White House will convene a group of lawyers to decide how to hit back is ridiculous. Back during the Cold War we used to worry about whether we should Launch On Warning – launch based on radar and satellite info of an attack or Launch Under Attack, launch only after the first warheads started exploding. Convene A Legal Seminar After Attack Is Over was never an option; but that seems to describe Obama’s approach.
How odd. Is there any historical precedent for the leader of a nation effectively inviting their enemies to attack them by giving assurances that he won’t hit them back if they do? I can’t think of any.
I just hope that when and if they do decide to take the Obamanation up on his offer that they hit Washington D.C. with the chemical or biological weapons. I can’t think of any area that contains a higher concentration of worthless people in our nation than that.
From Carles #63 and it’s reference to obama and nuclear war to this:
“He [Obama] was arguing a straightforward Marxist-Leninist class-struggle point of view, which anticipated that there would be a revolution of the working class, led by revolutionaries, who would overthrow the capitalist system and institute a new socialist government that would redistribute the wealth,” says Drew, who says he himself was then a Marxist.
“The idea was basically that wealthy people were exploiting others,” Drew says. “That this was the secret of their wealth, that they weren’t paying others enough for their work, and they were using and taking advantage of other people. He was convinced that a revolution would take place, and it would be a good thing.”
http://tinyurl.com/yzj6ne6
Obama is a clear and present danger to the US and is a traitor to the beliefs and spirit of our founding …he is a Marxist and half of this nation voted for him with the aid of a Rachel Carson Silent Spring press. Well we just loaded up another heap of white mans Burden by having this dungmeister in the White House.
data, to help frame what we need to think about, in the blogroll.
why would they hit their own beach head?
67. Charles
My apologies
H
Isn’t it somewhat ironic that the Obami’s save the harsh language and aggression for domestic political opposition, and the nations of the world that are republics. They are upset with the Chinese I think because they becoming a capitalist oligarchy instead of staying “pure” communist.
Given that it looks like the price of gas is going hit $4 a gallon with a parallel increase in diesel. The economic hit from NBC attack on top of everything else wrong with the US economy would be….not nice.
The factors are to many to figure but my gut says Obama has only a 50/50 chance of being in office before 2012.
“A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married”
The only thin shaft of daylight I see in this current announcement is that BHO hasn’t kept 98% or so of the promises he’s made. Why should this one be any different?
I blogged this as ‘Obama Changes Nuclear Posture to Fetal Position’. I would no longer question his willingness to launch a nuclear weapon, he’s stated that he wants a nuclear-free world, and negotiated a pointless arms reduction treaty with Russia that basically is cover for Russia to decommission weapons systems they cannot pay for in any event. Congress killed the Reliable Replacement Warhead program in 2008 and the Obama administration nailed the coffin shut in 2009. Simply through expiration and inability to guarantee effectiveness our nuclear stockpile therefore has a limited shelf-life. Should it come to pass that say the W76s or W88s on the Trident missiles cannot be refurbished, expect to see lots of Ohio-class subs tied up at the docks. We can’t pay for those AND healthcare, so one of them has got to go. He’s no more likely to reach for the football than Perez Hilton is to play professional football. He has a personal aversion to nuclear weapons, to deterrence, to the things of the past that he considers unseemly and ineffective at maintaining the peace he has inherited as President.
Were I a US opponent, I would be working hard on bioweapons now. Low signature, hard to detect a plant or research lab. No real need to track down hard-to-find (or refine) transuranic elements when a DNA sequencer or biological fermenter can be had on the open market without question. Lethal pathogens are all around us, and with some good PhDs a weapons program can be had. I don’t see the keys being twisted in control silos when 20 or 30 cities are trying to fight tularemia outbreaks, or a couple of guys who crossed the border in Arizona rent a car and take a thousand-mile trip through the wheat belt of the US and Canada with a few pounds of Ug99 spores. By the time he decides to act, our bodies will be thick on the ground.
His attitude demonstrates that our deterrent is a hollow threat. If you won’t ‘provide for the common defense’, then don’t talk to me about making sure the government can help me enjoy my ‘life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’. The latter does not happen without the former. But what do you expect from someone who loudly and publicly proclaimed that The Surge in Iraq wouldn’t work?
given the Russians army budget, and their non stabilized economy I doubt that they represent any shoulder to rest upon for a protection, apart selling technical knowledge for clinging money. You’re all “dreaming” stories about communism without having experienced it, ask Russians, Polish, Czechs, Easter German, Hungarish… if they regret the old good times ! they didn’t read communism theories in books, t’em !
Interesting remark re strategic bomber leg of the triad, in the comments (@ Feb 07 2009 @ 7:16 a.m.), from “Dmitris” in this run-thru of the Russian strategic rocket force –the RVSN (Raketnye Voyska Strategicheskogo Naznacheniya).
No offense taken or intended. I’m hoping we’ll somehow muddle through this but not overly optimistic. I’m enjoying life one day at a time and glad that I don’t live in Israel (my sympathy and best wishes to those of you who do live in Israel).
wws
“I rather hope it doesn’t come to this, because if it does we’re going to have Strontium 90 and all of it’s radioactive cousins in our rainwater for the rest of our lives and most of our children’s lives – even on this side of the planet.
Armageddon indeed.”
Well we all know that taking a couple of Potassium Iodine pills will make it all alright.
Don’t we?
Papa Ray
My BS meter just went off the scale and melted down it overheated so bad
mine too –spontaneous combustion
Alexis:
“…the criminals may take over.”
???
Have you checked to see who is running the country?
#70 Was just listening to Stefen Halpers on the Lars Larson Show and he made the very same point, after a few jokes about the French. He’s with the Nixon Center.
My mind keeps going back to Kipling:
“As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”
the Gods of the Copybook Headings –they kill us but they’re how we survive –we can’t leave anything alone as is, we have some sort of anti-status quo tendency that anticipates and damps what nature or the Other has always waiting around the bend of time or the river. Always we reach places and circumstances where we have to contemplate extinction of not just one but all. Whatever makes us fight each other, dispersed us so no one catastrophe could wipe out the species. So far.
LOL –good one, ma cherie.
I may be a little dim, or missed a subltety in someone else’e remarks, but this has
less to do with our strategic posture (although it has a lot to do with our strategic
posture!) than is has to do with the ongoing “culture war” and our post-racial
president.
As I am constantly reminded by intruding reality, there is nothing “post-racial”
about Obama at all. This particular item is a landmine targeted for the future,
as well as the fawning present.
To wit: another president is seated in 2013, and views this sort of posture as
“folly”. He/she wishes to reverse it. Not only will this next president be
denounced as a “warmonger”, etc., but also as lacking in racial understanding and
sensitivity (you know the word here), not just in America but also in much of the
Second and Third World. This will be something of a political land mine in doing
what is right, never mind the necesity of rebuilding the old warheads that are likely
as not defective now to a certain percent.
This particular item, along with others, will be part of the guerilla political
defense mounted against the successor to Obama.
Perhaps this is what was meant by one commentator above as “Al Qaeda or the Lubyanka.”
C’mon people. Dontcha know this strengthens deterrence? By a lot.
You see, all of the President’s promises, like, don’t mean very much — they are said to come with an expiration date. So by promising to not retaliate under certain circumstances, he is putting the fear into adversaries that he will indeed retaliate . . .
good point on the “no love lost” –but that is for the man in the street, not for the intellectuals managing the long-range projects in the Kremlin. Industrial-age intellectuals with ideologies + state power + enough time = let slip the dogs of war every damned time.
also, the RTS is up about 120% since the crash (and the Sauds helping Bush) engulfed Russian biz –and the Ruble has been getting stronger every month for about 18 straight months now. Ever since Putin’s dazzling string of diplomatic victories (which i don’t think Americans have been following anywhere NEAR closely enough) segued off the west’s pretend anger over the invasion of Georgia.
of course, we’d already seen the top all-time invasion of Georgia, in 1864 when the best American general save G. Washington did a doozy of a georgia invasion, tying up every loose string except one, that is arresting every male named Carter and sending them all to Devil’s Island forever, to hang out with them Frenchmen and not breed any future politicians.
#72 Buddy Larson
Not only the blogroll at the site you linked to, but also take a look at the list of articles on Iranian missile silos and the Saudi strategic missile force. I had not known that the Iranians had moved to silos from TEL’s, and the Saudi piece has some pictures and data that I did not already have [some were already stashed away in my files]. Many thanks. The new data will allow me to update a project I did a few years ago.
#70 Tcobb
There are a number of historical examples of leaders of nations inviting outsiders in to supposedly take part in civil wars, supposedly on their side. It does not have a good track record, as the outsiders generally decide to stay and take over. As far as a leader inviting attack, the closest example is Benedict Arnold. I believe it is on point.
Marie Claude’s reply at April 6, 2010 – 5:19 pm
You’re all “dreaming” stories about communism without having experienced it, ask Russians, Polish, Czechs, Easter German, Hungarish… if they regret the old good times ! they didn’t read communism theories in books, t’em !
If I am correctly translating what you said, you are implying that we are imputing the risk to our nation to a Russian Communist conspiracy. And that we are wrong because Russia is not a threat because Communism is “dead”. While I will note that we are in fact facing one of the variants of authoritarian socialism here at home, and the issue is in doubt; I think you misinterpret our meaning.
We are now in a multi-polar world. That world is not peaceful. The addition of hostile powers into the mix, each with their own goals hostile to the goals and existence of the other powers means that survival is at stake for all, whether it is admitted or not. The United States has its goals and desire to survive on its terms. The EU based its founding on being a counter to the United States. France and Germany have goals within and without the EU that overlap and conflict at times. China has its desire for its hegemony. And Islam in both Salifist and Iranian variations is the enemy of all outside the Ummah. Russia, Communist or not, has been a dictatorship with expansionist interests ever since the fall of Kievan Rus. It has not always been a true world class power, but it has always been quite willing to use other means than brute force, never hesitating to interfere in others’ affairs, or to use 3rd parties against those in their way.
The world is becoming more dangerous, and in the absence of one power dominating who yet has scruples against simply wiping all opponents out, a far more unstable place that is far more likely to have a series of nuclear wars. You are French, and of course hope that France will prevail either singly or at the head of the EU. I have my doubts. Those who do survive what is to come will find a world far different from the one that they are envisaging now.
Subotai Bahadur
Glancing at a few more comments apparently someone made the call for another constitutional convention.
Well there’s nothing wrong with the framework of our government. It was formed by the greatest collections of minds perhaps in all history.
The difficulty is with the citizenry and just how committed they aren’t, on a year in, year out basis ready to protect what they have and to educate themselves on the issues and the candidates, the competing world ideologies, and threats and how to control their destiny.
Term limit talk was all the rage a decade ago but we get a shot at changing things RADICALLY every two years should we be so moved. Instead too many citizens are at the mall and only begin to start paying attention to their civic responsibilities once the train jumps the track.
Perhaps overworked but apropos:
Cassius:
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)
Cassius, a nobleman, is speaking with his friend, Brutus, and trying to persuade him that, in the best interests of the public, Julius Caesar must be stopped from becoming monarch of Rome. Brutus is aware of Caesar’s intentions, and is torn between his love of his friend Caesar and his duty to the republic. Cassius continues by reminding Brutus that Caesar is just a man, not a god, and that they are equal men to Caesar. They were all born equally free, and so why would they suddenly have to bow to another man? On another level this phrase has been interpreted to mean that fate is not what drives men to their decisions and actions, but rather the human condition .
If the person who made the comment had any minute concept of how difficult it was to keep the first one going and what an absolute FUBAR having another one would be they simply are horrifically uninformed.
It is OUR responsibility to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States regardless of whether you have formally taken that oath or not. That means staying engaged daily in just what is going on, to not rely on one source but many, and to be active , not passive citizens.
Now just do it.
ask Russians, Polish, Czechs, Easter German, Hungarish… if they regret the old good times !
I recently located a distant relative of mine in Prague (my grandfather was one of 13 children and he is the only one who emigrated to America. One went to Canada and another to Argentina.)Thank God for the Internet, what would have required a trip back to the Old Country and God knows how much digging around in incomprehensible (to me) marriage and baptism records is now available with a few Google searches. (Unfortunately, my Czech relative’s English is not very good and my Czech is almost non-existent. (Now I want in the worst way to visit Prague, which I understand is a very beautiful city.) My father knew the language but his children only learned the curse words! Nevertheless, my relative does not miss Communism in the slightest and he tells me that is true of the Czechs as a whole. They remember the Cold War as a period when they were dominated and humiliated by the Russians.
Some of my father’s family did not fare well during the 20th century, to put it mildly. A great-uncle was killed by Nazis and another imprisoned for years under the Communists. When Europeans wonder why Americans are so fiercely patriotic, well, there you have part of the reason one American is.
How the Russians view Communism is another question. Many Russians still admire Stalin, because they have not been taught about the gulags in Russia. I think many Russians remember that the USSR was great and feared during the Cold War and there was “order” – unlike now, when there is chaos, crime, etc. The Czechs have memory of being a peaceful democracy between the wars, before Hitler invaded. The Russians have no such memory and a historical affinity for “strong men.”
That is the funniest thing I have heard in months. I really could not stop laughing. Frank, put down the mouse and call your shrink.
All see him as a weak horse, friends or enemies. Bank on it.
“Obama is not a thinker of any order. He’s a parrot of various doctrines he’s heard, and people have been giving him crackers all of his life for squawking appropriately.”
Dear Josh,
The above comment accurately and succinctly describes Obama — to a T. One of my current betes noires (bete noire: from the French, literally, black beast) is the mantra — vide Brooks, that Obama is both intelligent and an intellectual. He is, of course, neither, but to define him with precision would lead me open to various charges of being non P.C. — and much worse.
One of my couplets(my only unrhymed couplet):–
Lies are the means by which we embalm the truth,–
So as to make it fit to be remembered.
Repectfully, Parchellan (Parchellan: from a Middle Welsh vatic poem: a little pig with nails).
P.S. Please do not share this with anyone save Fernandez and Simon.
HABU #80,
Concur, Full Stop.
Free advice for all. If you have a mother and if you also have a blog and on the later are recorded your musings critical of the Social Security System then you may not want to introduce your mother to your blog.
…which reminds me, someone in the administration –that is providing the administration don’t already know it and see the bug as a feature –needs to study the link between between demand for Uncle Sam’s debt and the ability of his military to police his trade, and make US profitable and safe for his business partners around the globe –not to mention his own backyard –which thereby guarantees a “safe haven” for investors around the world looking for same. Up to now, it has been assumed that the same sort of people would always be running DC money, a little veer left or right from time to time, but the Greenback would be as durable as paper money can be, and never get grabbed holt of by no pissant half-assed college marxists who somehow parlayed the USA’s miserable celebrity worshipping voter fraction into running the dadgum country for cryin’ out loud.
Anyhoo, the long treasury bond rate went high into the double digits the last major fiasco president, Carter, when the pressire from entitlements was but a small fraction of what it is now and growing. We endured carter’s interest rates via a frozen economy, low M2, which we’re doing again, but much more topsy and vulnerable –and even Carter had figured it out by 1980 and had Volker in to try to win the election ‘on the come’.
hasn’t Obama ever looked at all that? I mean before the crack-outta-the-box 800 billion payoff to his supporters, the Stimulus bill? he must know what he’s doing (hell he’s got a million scholars pouring info to him) –and boyoboy is that ever scary. Glad i live in Texas, the wind is blowing plenty cold enough here, i can only imagine how it must feel in some other areas of the nation.
OK, here is where I get serious.
Talk is good, debate is even better, but it’s time that all of us start to do something more.
YES, I’m Writing this to YOU, ALL of You!
You may have read where I talk about what I do, what my group does and what others do other than write words on the net.
Here is Bill Whittle telling you the same thing. I hope that you take this to heart, make the necessary plans and preparations and just do it.
Bill Whittle: Support your local Tea Party and More.
If you won’t do it for yourself do it for the generations of Americans to follow us.
Do not let them down.
Watch this video. Five minutes of your time now to watch this and several hours here and there later is not too much for our children. Gather your friends and get out and just do it.
The liberals will give their all and millions of dollars to get their voters out, we must do even more or we…
WILL LOSE
Bill Whittle: Support your local Tea Party and More.
Please………
Papa Ray
P.S. You will have to register, no big deal, no hassle, just fill it in. They have excellent video presentations and debates there. Everybody should take advantage of their efforts to defeat the liberals – The ones who wish to destroy America.
Subotai, re the data link, you’re very welcome, and knowing it will help update an area of your threat analysis work –made my day!
Habu, on tv the other day, Kudlow interviewed a Tea Party coordinator named Ryan Hecker (sp?) who btw made the repeatable statement “we are the middle fifty percent” (which imho ought to be more poetically “we are the middle half”), and also promised that on April 15th, his project, polling Tea Parties wherever they can be found with a spokesperson, a “Contract for America” would be released (note slight change from the Gingrich inspiration).
Anyhoo, getting to the point, the three elements he said as being ‘in’ as of now are 1) return to Constitutional governance, 2) rejection of the nationalization of American enterprise via the cap & trade act (and here you will blow a fusee), 3) a Constitutional balanced budget Amendment.
FYI.
It seems that the multi-polar world that so many people wanted to see has now come to pass. By implication, if we won’t use nukes to protect ourselves we surely won’t use them to protect our allies either. And as far as conventional forces go, forget it. It takes a long time to send troops in any great numbers to distant locations. Look how long it took us before we deemed we had the troops in place to invade Iraq.
I expect that a lot of countries will be building their own nuclear arsenals very soon whether they are signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty or not, since now its just a toothless piece of paper. Who will enforce it?
And let us not forget what happens in a multi-polar world. You have shifting alliances and an attitude of “do unto others before they do unto you,” the same situation that gave us WWI and WWII.
The Hope has gone south but the Change is coming on strong.
Interesting stuff here, perhaps…
Aging nukes a problem?
Draw your own conclusions.
Israelis are an incredibly stoic people. good thing –or there wouldn’t BE any –can you imagine in one lifetime not only a beyond-incredibly evil genocidal attempt on your tribe, but two of them? An exodus from the horror of nazi europa to the promised land, there to have to fight a sixty year war of survival while building from scratch a great nation on the world stage, and then, and THEN, just when a sworn-to-kill-you enemy comes up with the Bomb, to have your great lifetime ally, in whom your trust in the alliance had actually been built into your defense procurement and warfighting strategies, up and elect a tinhorn marxist jihad-symp who can’t pronounce ‘corpsman’ because he’s never even overheard a soldier talk much less taken the barest interest in the first damned thing about military exigency, as president –and have him tell you, in the last minute of the eleventh hour of the Bomb promising to try to wipe you off the planet for the SECOND time in a lifetime, that frankly my dear he doesn’t give a damn?
…i rejoice at the thought of touhgh clear-eyed young veterans entering and cleaning out the stupid moon-eyed ingrated academy, on their way to cleaning out the venal, corrupt, ugly DC.
needed: a structure, a concept, a method, a floating provisional committee of friends of the Constitution, to locate and draft for a run for office, the best people, whose qualities would include astonishment at the knock on the door from we who want he or she to stand for office.
MC, the fundamental heuristics, the signs of inclusion vs exclusion, include most prominently, language and deeper still, alphabet. Try that as a frame for pursuing the truth of Georgia-the-state vs Georgia-the-imperial-district territory.
One should not forget the Story of the Trumpeter.
We should consider the idea that those who cheer on any nuclear attack may have a higher level of moral responsibility for atrocities against us than the perpetrators of the act. Terrorists act the way they do because they play to an approving audience.
So, if terrorists attack any American city with nuclear, biological, and/or chemical weapons, one should to consider which cities would applaud such an action. The dossier is already available. Remember who celebrated the September 11 attacks.
For retaliatory strikes, these five cities should be on the list.
Gaza
Nablus
Riyadh
Peshewar
South Beirut (al-Manar headquarters)
Nuclear deterrence is based upon a credible willingness to boil the sea where the fish swim. Those who shelter al-Qaeda or the Taliban, particularly those who live along the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier, are on notice that any attack causing mass casualties within the United States or its allied nations may lead to a level of harshness not yet seen from the United States of America, even during World War II.
May those who pray for nuclear war burn in Hell.
Hugh Hewitt thought the most significant issue about today’s announcement was that the US would no longer do research on newer nuclear weapons. If so, that is more troubling than Obami’s declaration to not use nuclear weapons on non-nuclear states (with all of his usual caveats). I say this because I doubt there are many decision makers who believe anything Obami says.
I agree with an earlier comment that the most likely outcome is a rush to get nuclear capability by those who erroneously thought they were under the US “nuclear shield”. Don’t you think the Saudis and Taiwan are already shopping around for a willing seller of technology?
How can anyone believe it is going to get safer in this world?
You know the one about a scorpion and a frog?
“Because that is what scorpions do!”
I wonder if the Japanese will go not only quietly go to nuclear missile project but also start fast tracking an anti-ballistic missile system? I also imagine they are thinking about the atomic depth charge.
“worse is better”
–V.I. Lenin
The purpose is to deter the US from using its military. Whether that is from active malice towards the US like whiskey thinks, mindless pacifism, or a belief that the US is a force for evil in the world and the less it can influence the world the better. I lean towards the ‘He thinks the US is a force for evil in the world’ explanation, aka the ‘God damn America!’ explanation to quote his spiritual mentor.
He also hopes to lock in this US weakness, for example by tying up an ever increasing portion of the federal budget with health care, social programs and transfer payments to starve the military, and reduced the economic growth to decrease the future ability to reverse this trend.
That is the European solution: ‘Military? We can’t afford any military! We don’t have enough money for the important things in the budget as it is!’
Imagine a Chamberlain, but one that mothballs the Royal Navy and forbids the RAF to order bombers.
Barack Obama being the exception that proves the rule, I guess.
My favorite line from my favorite poem. Sad that we’ll have to rewrite it now, since under ObamaCare we’ll have fewer bandages but still an apparently unending supply of burnt fools.
…and alas, that’s what frogs do too.
Some time, apparently months after he moved into the White House, Obama had the intricacies of America’s nuclear policy explained to him and he reacted with horror saying it was insane. That story if true in itself proves that Obama is really like the clueless protagonist in Being There. Others bend reality to accommodate the fact that he is there and treat his ignorance as evidence of some hidden depths. The depths are actually as shallow as Antietam creek. He simply floated into the office without an idea as to what it meant. This has for years been a plot device in Hollywood to use as an escape from reality. Theater people deal in archetypes, there are only a limited number of basic plots or characters. One of the staples is that in movies like The Prince and the Pauper or Trading Places in which an unqualified amateur assumes the identity or position of someone with power, and does a better job. The definitive treatment of the Hollywood fantasy was in Ivan Reitman’s Dave. Did any of these movies help mold young Barry Obama’s view of the world? What made it effective as a theatrical device was the knowledge that it was an escape from reality. The thought that it could happen for real is not entertaining. Note, film clip links present.
Since at least the Spanish American War very American President or serious candidate for the office, has spent years closely studying the important foreign policy and defense issues that would face the country and was familiar with the positions behind those doctrines. This was true for those who had greater experience in domestic policy and it was true for those from the Left as well as the Right. Even Eugene Debs knew what the policies were and could debate over the implications of changing those policies. That holds true for Jimmy Carter, or Bill Clinton, or even George McGovern, the former bombardier who specialized in agricultural policy while in the Senate. They may have been wrong but they had been reading about the subjects and would not have expressed shock when told what the United States strategic doctrine and programs were.
From Obama’s conduct it appears that he had never actually sat down and read NSC 68, which was declassified 35 years ago. His conduct is worse than that of someone who follows the ideological prejudices of the editors of the wiki. He behaves more like someone who has not actually read even the wiki but has gotten by for years by cribbing others third hand accounts on the subject matter. He is never in a real debate where the format means he has to disk exposing himself to an honest debate that would reveal how shallow his grasp of the subject is.
The benefit of the British Parliamentary system is that the Prime Minister is forced to endure regular LINK-Question Time in public.-LINK In that setting they are treated as a peer of the other MPs. Here in America the Executive can wrap themselves in the cloak of Head of State and hide on a podium. The Confederate Constitution had the innovative compromise idea of having Cabinet Officers present in Congress and available for regular questioning.
Once Obama went to the Republican retreat where he was presented by the MSM as having defended himself in debate over Health Care but the reality was far more controlled to protect him and the exposure of his errors was glossed over. Before the election he relied on racial blackmail to ensure that he was never pressed and he was allowed to pass by with platitudes and outright falsehoods, as he did when he debated McCain.
The United States is adrift, floating towards reefs both known and uncharted, without a competent hand on the tiller. The International Rules for Preventing Collision at Sea, the COLREGS, and the domestic nautical regulations specify that the signal to be hoisted on any vessel “not under command” that is not able to safely navigate either by sail or restricted in its ability to maneuver by its own power is two vertical black balls by day and two vertical red lights at night. The sailor’s mnemonic is “Red over red, Captain is dead.”
After years of cossetting if Obama ever faced real questioning would he crack under the pressure? -LINK
The Ship of State is heading into stormy seas without a competent Captain in Command. -LINK
To be blogged under the title “Red Over Red.”
Habu, I completely agree. We don’t need a new Constitution, we need a new commitment to the one we already have. We may need a few “clarifying” statements, perhaps made with considerable force, to undo some of the damage that’s been done over the years, but there’s little chance a new Constitution would be any better than the one crafted by the Founders.
We’re coming to a window of time where the American mood will not only tolerate but demand big changes. All of us need to act now to defend the Last Best Hope. There are occasionally discussions of weapons, armed conflict and civil unrest. Indeed these things may happen, almost certainly will happen on some (hopefully small and isolated) scale. But even in the most dire scenarios, bullets and lamposts would never be anything more than a prelude to the real solution.
The real solution is to rediscover the structures and patterns of a functional Republic, to rediscover and re-enshrine the duties and responsibilities citizens owe that Republic. To prove we’re worthy of our forefathers (biological or ideological) again. Things have gotten to this point because we’ve neglected our duties, allowed con men and hustlers – parasites – to eat away at our Republic. We’ve allowed the most vile among us to make us think the task of legislating is contemptible, then let these same scum talk us into deputizing them to do the dirty work for us. This is how we’ve sold ourselves out. What utter fools we have been.
Be fools no more. Congress was once a noble place. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi do not belong there. Reclaim it from them. Reclaim your statehouse and City Hall. 300 million people and Barack Obama is the best we can do? I hardly think so. Expect better and demand it of yourself and your fellow citizens.
Who is behind the vail,
With the Holy of Holies?
You are close Richard
Yes, Ray. And this was the guy that wanted to “annexe” all the ME Oilfields!
Mostly harmless? Certainly not.
I rather hope it doesn’t come to this, because if it does we’re going to have Strontium 90 and all of it’s radioactive cousins in our rainwater for the rest of our lives and most of our childrens lives – even on this side of the planet.
I thought airbursts didn’t produce appreciable fallout. And unless you’re targeting buried bunkers, no military wants to use ground bursts, as airbursts do more damage to surface structures.
Oh, but some of Iran’s nuke sites are buried … yes, those would have to be ground bursts.
Still, though, I don’t see a whole lot of radiation in the air. We set off, what, 20 aboveground tests over the course of the Cold War, and it didn’t AFAIK contaminate the whole atmosphere.
Willing to be corrected, of course.
I don’t know if anyone remembers, but there was a news story in late September 2001 that the US was testing its krytrons for the first time in many years (to make sure they still worked).
“Oh, good”, I thought – “They’re dusting off the big boys”. This messaging project had a salutary but small effect (with Libya, and with Syria, although to a limited degree).
I still believe there were two moments where nuclear weapons could have been used to good effect – the first was at Tora Bora in December 2001, when OBL’s presence was confirmed there, and the second was at Fallujah in April 2004. In the former case, I favored a BOOB attack, in the latter, of course, I would have evacuated the city before erasing it.
The enemy believes (again, and probably correctly) that they can measure and prepare for our responses in advance. Victory is only possible when they lose the ability to even DREAM of what “B” will be if they do “A”.
Buddy, wow, that “geimint” blog article on Soviet ICBMs is fantastic; another particularly useful find from the Belmont Club comments.
Hopefully it won’t be _quite_ the timesink that discovering Honor Harrington turned out to be..!
the fundamental heuristics, the signs of inclusion vs exclusion, include most prominently, language and deeper still, alphabet. Try that as a frame for pursuing the truth of Georgia-the-state vs Georgia-the-imperial-district territory.
there is no doubt that Georgia started the hostilities in August 2008 (uh no need to adopt K12 teacher vocabulary, as we all know does mean nuts!)
http://91.121.127.28/ceiig/pdf/IIFFMCG_Volume_I.pdf
But the context was tied to the former US policy in the Balkans and to the recognition of Kosovo independance, for which Russia hadn’t been consulted, thus Russia was awaiting for Georgia to give her the opportunity to assert a political revenge over America interferrence within countries that are considered as slavic “brothers”.
ans still Saakashvili is a narcissic psycho !
#90, Gokart-mozart: agree completely. And if we had used nukes on Tora Bora, we might not have needed to use them, or much of anything, at Fallujah. Because the enemy would have gotten the memo. Funny to think of nukes as a kind of marketing but every action carries a story forward and outward, and I think the Tora Bora story would have held up pretty well.
A Tora Bora nuke would have other benefits. The obvious one is that it would have disposed, conclusively and summarily and with minimal expenditure of our blood and treasure, of some people who needed killing. The less obvious benefit is that it would generated a great deal of invaluable data on real-world weapons performance. That information is part of our strategic advantage. Having a nuke is one thing. Having it, and knowing exactly what it will and won’t do, is a whole lot more.
With regard to my earlier comments on the Constitution the most damaging usurpation of power occurred fairly early on in the case of Marbury v. Madison.
Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803) is a landmark case in United States law. It “formed” (usurped) the basis for the exercise of judicial review
Notice it did not say exercises for the first time the courts constitution power for judicial review of all legislation coming from the two other branches, it states it “formed “ the basis for judicial review. It remains an egregious overstepping of SCOTUS defined powers in the US Constitution.
The Third Article of the Constitution is the last one mentioned and the least written about in the Federalist Papers because the Founding Fathers developed the Constitution in the order of what they felt was the most important to the least important. Legislative first, Executive second , and the caboose was the Judiciary in third place.
Article III
Section 1.
The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.
Section 2.
The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;–to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;–to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;–to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;–to controversies between two or more states;–between a state and citizens of another state;–between citizens of different states;–between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.
In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.
The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any state, the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may by law have directed.
Section 3.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.
Note that nowhere DOES Article Three of the Constitution grant the Supreme Court the right of UNLIMITED judicial review. The various factions that were warned about in Federalist Number 10 many times have found their way into law against the will and legal authority of the other two branches of government. Anytime you can have five judges overturn Congress and the Executive you have a problem and unrestricted judicial review is one, if not the biggest problem we have. It is a naked usurpation of power not granted but allowed to remain, much to our detriment .
Setting aside the hyperbole, “Nuclear deterrence is based upon a credible willingness to boil the sea where the fish swim.”, allow me to once agains say that Afghanistan is the perfest target for a nuclear strike.
Nicely targeted precision strikes that will rearrange all the cave systems where the rats hide.
Go nuclear it’s clean and effcient!
Have a nuclear day.
http://www.mafirearmsafety.com
From the other great leader:
Iran’s president attacks Obama on nuclear “threat”
snip…
Ha…shortcomings? hands? guns?
Does Ahmadinejad think he knows something about Obama we don’t? I don’t know really but I doubt it.
I think he is just egging him on, kinda joking with him, kinda like friends do sometimes when they are playing a game against each other.
Only problem is, this is a very dangerous game.
Papa Ray
Regarding the new format, it’s hard to follow new posts that are added as direct replies to existing comments.
I (think I) understand the push towards directionality of dialogue. A convenient improvement would be adding the option to view comments as either threaded or linear, by date-time stamp.
(And deselect the subscription option as the default.)
92. Habu
The supreme court knocked down a bunch of FDR’s “reforms.” He responded by increasing the number of supreme court justices and packing it with liberals.
The congress has just usurped their power by doing this health care bill. There are now 15 states suing the federal government over the bill–up two as of yesterday to now include Arizona and Nevada.
The supreme court has swung back to being “conservative.” There is a good chance that they will overturn at least one mandate in the health care bill.
Is your argument one that the supreme should not have that power?
2 times I ry to post a response, gone with the wind !
can’t see my post, is it a bug that is after my IP ?
I see the regulars have developed their own informal work-around to the threaded-linear issue.
Carry On.
again
good point on the “no love lost” –but that is for the man in the street, not for the intellectuals managing the long-range projects in the Kremlin. Industrial-age intellectuals with ideologies + state power + enough time = let slip the dogs of war every damned time.
For having seen a few Russians intervening in one of a proxy enterprise that they bought, they aren’t “socialist” anymore, but are very aware of the international standards of auditing, advertising… plus, they have beautiful girls as intervenants, to who french guis were bowing
so I don’t know what kind of intellectuals you’re referring to, they must live in your country !
also, the RTS is up about 120% since the crash (and the Sauds helping Bush) engulfed Russian biz –and the Ruble has been getting stronger every month for about 18 straight months now. Ever since Putin’s dazzling string of diplomatic victories (which i don’t think Americans have been following anywhere NEAR closely enough) segued off the west’s pretend anger over the invasion of Georgia.
it doesn’t look like so
[http : / /www .rts. ru/en/] (might cuz someone doesn’t like this link)
hmm so far I remember the context, Bush was sitting close to Putin at the opening of the China Olympic games, so me think he was aware of what was going on in Georgia, but didn’t want to get involve with the conflict. Surprising that 1000 American arms trainers and or experts in warfare left Georgia at the very eve of the conflict.They sure knew what was happening ! Bush escuse was that it was just 3 months before the elections, I suspect that he didn’t want to add to his reputation as “warmonger”, he had already 2 major wars on his shoulders, if he had said anything to suppose that america was supporting Georgia, that would have implied a american army intervention there too, and your country would still fighting there, since the Russians wouldn’t have left the piece too. Not good for your righty party, for the coming elections, and still for the next decades presidential elections. so the calcul was easy, laissez-faire, and let Mc Cain opened his mouth !
of course, we’d already seen the top all-time invasion of Georgia, in 1864 when the best American general save G. Washington did a doozy of a georgia invasion, tying up every loose string except one, that is arresting every male named Carter and sending them all to Devil’s Island forever, to hang out with them Frenchmen and not breed any future politicians.
I’m not aware of the Devil’s Island anecdote, can you tell me more ?
The almost 1000 word comment that I submitted about 9 hours ago went into moderation and then vanished. To say that I am unhappy is an understatement. It is available on my blog here, http://mrnewyorkcity.blogspot.com/2010/04/red-over-red.html.
OT, but thought some might like to join the dicussion. Matt Taibbi has replied to Wretchard’s ‘stop me before i steal again’ http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2010/04/06/babies-and-bathwater/
Charles, you need to brush up on your US history. FDR ATTEMPTED to pack the Supreme Court. Attempted is the key word. His proposal to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court was seen for what it was: a naked power grab and attempt to circumvent the Constitution because the Supreme Court had ruled against his policies. It was one of the reasons that the Democrats were punished in the 1938 mid-terms. My maternal grandfather went from being supporter of FDR to an opponent in large part because of the attempt to pack the Supreme Court.
“The Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, frequently called the court-packing plan, was a legislative initiative to add more justices to the Supreme Court proposed by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt shortly after his victory in the 1936 presidential election. Although the bill aimed generally to overhaul and modernize all of the federal court system, its central and most controversial provision would have granted the President power to appoint an additional Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court for every sitting member over the age of 70½, up to a maximum of six.
During Roosevelt’s first term in office, the Supreme Court had struck down several prominent New Deal measures intended to bolster economic recovery during the Great Depression, leading to charges from New Deal supporters that a narrow majority faction of the court was obstructionist and political. Since the U.S. Constitution does not limit the size of the Supreme Court, Roosevelt, having won an expanded electoral mandate in his reelection, sought to counter this entrenched opposition to his political agenda by expanding the number of justices to create a pro-New Deal majority on the bench. Opponents viewed the legislation as an attempt to stack the court leading to the name “Court-packing Plan”.
The legislation was unveiled on February 5, 1937 and was the subject, a month later, of one of Roosevelt’s Fireside chats, which the President had used with considerable success throughout his first term to muster public support for his legislative agenda. Shortly after his radio address, on March 29, the Supreme Court upheld a Washington minimum wage law in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish by a 5–4 ruling, after Associate Justice Owen Roberts joined with the wing of the bench more sympathetic to the New Deal. Because Roberts had previously ruled against most New Deal legislation, his apparent about-face was widely interpreted by contemporaries as an effort to maintain the Court’s judicial independence by alleviating the political pressure to create a court more friendly to the New Deal. His dramatic move came to be known as “the switch in time that saved nine”. However, since Roberts’s decision predated the introduction of the 1937 bill, this interpretation has been called into question as an anachronistic “winner’s history.” Six weeks after this court victory, Willis Van Devanter, one of the consistent opponents of the New Deal, announced his resignation from the bench, alleviating the pressure to reconstitute a more politically-friendly court. Public support for the President’s plan, which had never been particularly strong, dissipated quickly in the aftermath of these developments. Roosevelt’s proposed legislation ultimately failed after the U.S. Senate voted 70–20 to recommit the bill to the Senate Judiciary Committee following the sudden death of Senate Majority Leader Joseph T. Robinson, whose efforts would have been essential to the bill’s passage. In recommitting the bill, the Senate explicitly instructed the Judiciary Committee to strip it of its court-packing provisions.
The episode had several negative consequences for the Roosevelt administration. It exposed the limits of Roosevelt’s abilities to push forward legislation through direct public appeal and, in contrast to the tenor of his public presentations of his first-term, was seen as political maneuvering. Although circumstances ultimately allowed Roosevelt to prevail in establishing a majority on the court friendly to his New Deal agenda, some scholars have concluded that the President’s victory was a pyrrhic one.”
Very difficult to keep track of what is going on . . . 181 comments . . . numbered to 101, makes it impossible to know where the other 80 comments went. Help, Help, Help!!! I lose my linear thought process . . . darn I wish I knew what the new stuff is.
lotm, I’ve had a comment or two vanish as well, and that never happened before the recent formatting change. They were rather short and nothing of consequence, so I just said “hmm” and let them go – that was the reason for my “test” post. At least it’s a lesson to always hang onto a copy of whatever you write – glad you did. I think it’s worth trying a repost, since I’m sure the problem is purely technical and probably something that RF himself is trying to track down right now.
and for the record, I still object to the box on the bottom of each post awaiting submission which attempts to trick me into subscribing to the “Dally Digest” (sic) for Pajamas Media. I don’t want to subscribe, and I don’t want to be forced to reiterate that choice on every post.
Subotai
If I am correctly translating what you said, you are implying that we are imputing the risk to our nation to a Russian Communist conspiracy. And that we are wrong because Russia is not a threat because Communism is “dead”. While I will note that we are in fact facing one of the variants of authoritarian socialism here at home, and the issue is in doubt; I think you misinterpret our meaning.
right ! Russia is more capitalist than you or than we are !
But also with a strong state control, not on businesses but on people ! Besides this is in Russia tradition, Czars had their secret police too, what we see it the 19th century Russia, with its orthodox religious as state agents too !
Well, as long people mind their businesses, (like in China too), they aren’t threaten of anything, a bit like by us too, our renseignments know all about each french citizen ! and if we would plot to kill our president or any political responsible, I tell ya that the sources will be quickly discovered and I wouldn’t like to be arrested as a political terrorist, cuz, the internment conditions are much more harsh than for a normal criminal, they get beaten, uh, some say tortured !
The EU based its founding on being a counter to the United States. France and Germany have goals within and without the EU that overlap and conflict at times
not at all,the EU were founded after the war, first for Germany and France, for avoiding any further conflict with each other, what EU has become nowadays, it’s getting above our heads, an administrative abstraction with no responsability ! If it had been created to counter the US, I suppose that you wouldn’t have had the free hands to interven wherever you wanted ! cuz instead of having 27 countries that aren’t solidary, one strong voice would have said, Don’t go there, otherwise you’ll see my punch !
But EU is turning into a german sphere ruled ! not good !
Marie Claude, there’s a story out this morning that illustrates just how useless the EU is becoming to it’s members – in fact, worse than uselss to the point of being dangerous. A Dutch naval captain yesterday found that the only way to gain authorization in time to confront a group of pirates and retake a seized vessel was for him to avoid the heirarchy in Brussels entirely and instead to simply go through his own direct chain of command.
Thanks to the fact that he was willing to quickly and completely bypass the EU apparatus, the rescue was successful.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gB7YMEDuCwwY9ncDOtPAkEI4-H2wD9ETSR1O2
When the first order of business in dealing with imminent danger is to work on ways to evade the bureacracy in charge, that bureacracy no longer has any reason to exist. At best, the EU is another Holy Roman Empire, another useless bit of European bureacracy that did next to nothing for most of it’s existence and finally died unloved and unlamented. I believe a certain famous Frenchman was the one who finally put it out of it’s misery. (or was he Corsican?)
Sooner or later, the EU will meet a similar fate.
LOL –love to see the dialogue transcript of THAT backstory –
The Orwellian project continues.
AP: Not all terrorism: Obama tries to change subject at the same time as this,
AP: Reports: US OKs radical US-born cleric for death.
Now much as I am going to restrain an impulse to grieve if Anwar al-Awlaki achieves his eternal reward these two news stories do combine to illustrate how arbitrary and dangerous the US government has become. Each separate act can be examined on its own merits and defended but the collective pattern is disturbing. Particularly when you include the earlier efforts to provide a civilian trial for captured terrorists and the orders to treat people captured in battlefield engagements as law enforcement encounters.
What are terrorists to be called now? For no good reason except partisan hatred the Left rejected the well crafted and historically accurate description of captured terrorists as Unlawful Combatants. Maybe they will be recast as Kinetic Disaffected Devoted Idealists or KiDDIes.
Awalki is different why? He really is a traitor. Unlike most of the loose terrorists, Awlaki should be eligible for a civilian trial followed by an execution. He committed his worst offenses as a US citizen on US soil as opposed to others who conformed more strictly to the Bush administration model of a military attack by an unlawful combatant. So the justification for treating him differently is not found in the logic of the Obama and Holder positions regarding the law. The real reason I think to target Awalki for elimination is political. By his connection with Major Hassan of Fort Hood he embarrassed the administration. That is a good reason not to kill him. Awalki is a nexus that ties together many threads of al-Qaeda and domestic security problems. Rather than kill him from 20,000 feet I would send a Brigade into the hills of Yemen to chase him. Right now he is a more valuable intelligence target than is Osama bin Laden. Why does the administration want to silence him?
The greatest threat to a Democracy is that a politician will be tempted to abuse his office to order the elimination of those who he finds a threat or embarrassing. That is Tyranny. It always begins with steps targeted at those who are not in themselves worthy of defense. That is why the ACLU defends the most despicable people it can find. Not being a libertarian I think that the ACLU frequently get it wrong. In this case we have someone who clearly deserves to die. If possible that should happen after he has been thoroughly interrogated and not for the personal convenience of any politician.
The argument for deleting the use of the terms “terror” and “Islam” from US security documents is insultingly fraudulent. The administration has the nerve to use Ronald Reagan’s talk in China about the wonders of America to defend the scrubbing of the English language in documents that are designed not for use in overseas diplomacy but for our own internal use. Reagan of course had on many occasions challenged Communism to it’s face. More important he always reminded the American people of both the virtues of our system and the evils of our enemies. Obama does exactly the opposite. He apologizes to everyone for the evil he sees in America and he consistently works to weaken our belief in what made us exceptional and better than those who want to harm us. He refuses to tell either those who are our enemies or the American people why our enemies are wrong.
To be blogged as “KiDDie Hunting.”
Q: “Can a Frenchman conquer Europe?”
A: “Corsican!”
Absolutely correct on every count. Arbitrary, capricious, gangland rule –the big man just don’t like him, or the big man just DO like him. What a way to keep the ego-booming tribute-producing special pleadings coming. Why have DOJ parsing the penumbra between the lines while predator drones search out the reach of a very opposite doctrine? Why put Tim McVeigh on the Indy-500 gurney before anyone could be certain he wasn’t still holding critical info? What was gained by that? Deterrence of the next terrorist?
Read it, liked it and wish it were here also.
Papa Ray
Japan and South Korea have just announced they support Obama’s actions. Obama’s not the only one who has their head in the sand.
Japan welcomes new U.S. nuke strategy, calls on others to follow
S. Korea welcomes U.S. Nuclear Posture Review
“The real reason I think to target Awalki for elimination is political.”
I think this is just quid pro quo for other sovereigns. The sovereign of America is exercising his right to punish his subjects visa vie Russian example except there is no need in this case to use polonium.
MC, please, you DO remember Yuri Andropov? the intellectual genius whose life work was deep memetic warfare against USA? A career unhindered by fear every two years or four that the other party would come to power and haul his ass in front of Patrick Leahy to be character assassinated on TV?
in regards to RTS, see chart here.
Re your hmm so far I remember the context, Bush was sitting close to Putin at the opening of the China Olympic games, so me think he was aware of what was going on in Georgia, but didn’t want to get involve with the conflict, i have to say, i have watched your command of English language evolve admirably over time, and am always most impressed by your mind, nationalist loyalty, tenacity, and joie de vivre, but this comment, Je regrette de dire, est au-dessous sous votre normal, et il est non sens absolu.
Lastly, the Devil’s Island reference was just a joke –i was thinking of something Gen’l Sherman might have done while in Georgia, that is to protecting the 112 years-into-the-future republic by rounding up all the male Carters and sending them to (hmm, need something familiar to MC, the Foriegn Legion? Devil’s Island @ French Guiana?) to hang out with Papillon.
oops, forgot you may not savvy a ref to the American Civil War –
http://www.bing.com/search?q=general+sherman+georgia&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox
Buddy,
I generally agree with your comments. Frankly I’m amazed that any Jew in America supports Obama. However it appears that Obama is still popular amongst liberal American Jews. I guess(?) liberal ideology trumps common sense and morality.
Israel is between a hammer and a hard spot. To repeat the tired out metaphor: Obama has thrown Israel under the bus. It’s now clear that neither Obama or the Europeans will do anything about Iran. Israel’s options appear to be:
1) Live under Mutual Assured Destruction with religious fanatics deciding whether or not Israel lives or dies.
2) Get nuked and respond with the Sampson Option (escalate to WW-IV and slaughter millions of people)
3) Make a preemptive attack with submarine launched nuclear weapons against Iran’s nuclear weapon’s sites and then deal with the response from Obama and the Europeans.
4) Do nothing and have 1) or 2) happen by default.
All of these options are terrible. However if I were Netanyahu, I would select option 3). The Europeans are feckless and Obama at best is incompetent and at worst a coward or a fool. Obama’s or the European’s disapproval should not be deterrents against national survival.
He apologizes to everyone for the evil he sees in America and he consistently works to weaken our belief in what made us exceptional and better than those who want to harm us. He refuses to tell either those who are our enemies or the American people why our enemies are wrong.
If we employ Occam’s razor as a tool of analysis, we must come to the conclusion that he does not seek to explain why our enemies are wrong because he doesn’t think they are wrong at all.
The totalitarian kicks in the face of an opponent merely because they are an opponent. The “Progressive” kicks in the face of an opponent for the opponent’s own good. And as for the person whose face is being kicked in we should feel some pity, for it is unlikely that he will be able to differentiate between the two.
And for that matter, neither can I.
Buddy
uh in the RTS link (a russian one) that doesn’t seem to look so good, as in your chart
umm I have been fowllowing the Georgian events from both sides of the pond, and you’re only advocating you policy side, as I’m in de middle, between the 2 blocks, I can have a more neutral vision
what I wrote in a above post,
“But the context was tied to the former US policy in the Balkans and to the recognition of Kosovo independance, for which Russia hadn’t been consulted, thus Russia was awaiting for Georgia to give her the opportunity to assert a political revenge over America interferrence within countries that are considered as slavic “brothers”.
again, my reply was swalloed
wws, the Dutchs did what our forces always managed to do according to our own anti-piracy laws, charge ! until now all our operations were successful too !
The EU will break down soon or later, the money crisis exacerbated how we can’t agree on rescuing a country. This is also my hope, to recover our sovereignity , like de Gaulle envisioned it ! It might be implying to cross difficult times but the goal is worth of it, that’s at what I work on the net, diffusing my opinion to our politicians and journalists when opportunities occur !
now, did you know that we had such a union during the last quater of the nineteen century, until 1914 ? it was called “latin union”, (you can find a wikipedia link in french, uh, I fear that this board won’t edit my comment with it), the funny thing is that history is reating itself, it ended with a war with Germany, probably that the EU will end with a new war with Germany too.
uh the Corsican didn’t ask the european populations what they thought of us, they just had to comply !
Buddy, c
an a American fight the English ?
yes a Frenchman !
…history repeating…(dunno why my words are eaten too)
Can a American…
WWS on this sub-thread (RE: Operation Sampson):
I’d like to know where you got your figures for Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
What about the delivery systems? Israeli nukes are delivered via cruise missile or fighter / bomber.
The Tor-M1 short range SAM systems Iran began operating a few years ago are effective point defense against gravity bombs.
The SAM system has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to “shoot down” falling bombs in mid flight. The physics package of a nuclear device doesn’t react well to high-speed shrapnel or 200G concussions.
The Tor-M1 is also deadly against cruise missiles. Needless to say its unclassified estimated kill rate vs. modern fighters is 80% per missile launch within effective range. It’s designed to launch two at a time.
This is a modern RADAR system with solid-state electronics and microprocessor control. It doesn’t have any conventional vacuum tubes to burn out or any analog electronics that need constant tuning by highly trained technicians to maintain in working order. It utilizes electronic scanning from a phased array antenna, so again there aren’t a bunch of clunky servomotors to slew the radar that won’t work for lack of adequate maintenance. It’s also a pulse Doppler system with frequency hopping over a fairly broad spectrum. Electronic Warfare (EW) aircraft may be able to jam it, but maybe not. The frequency hopping is programmable, so just because we or the Israelis tested against a similar system and have the jamming preprogrammed in ECM pods doesn’t mean it will work if some motivated Iranian technician, engineer, or the Russians they hired to help maintain the equipment reprogram the frequency hopping periodically. This is standard procedure by the way, as well as training with one set of hopping routines and frequencies and then using a completely different set in a real world attack. If they’re on the ball, they use each real-world frequency set once, and only once.
Then there’s the Russian S-300. It is long-range, high-speed death for non-stealthy aircraft if operated properly. I cannot comment here about Iranian S-300 capabilities except to say that if they have them up and working properly, any Israeli attack on or near a S-300 defended target is a suicide mission. There’s a reason NATO analysts chose “Tomb Stone” as the name for early S-300 RADAR systems. It’s deadly.
In short, Sampson was envisioned in an earlier era, before the Soviet Union fell and Russia got over their pretensions of fighting Americans in air to air combat and winning. Since then, modern Russian SAM systems have become dangerously effective.
I don’t believe the Israelis have the capability to eliminate Tehran, Arak, Natanz, Qom, Esfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad, Tabriz and a dozen or more other Iranian targets a very long way from Israeli airspace. If you then start adding in targets in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Turkey, Saudi, Yemen, and what about Pakistan, they only nation that could currently respond with nukes?! The list is huge. The distances are immense. The Israeli air force is small!
Sampson was only ever bluster from people with idiotic ideas that nuclear weapons were magical doomsday devices with “super secret powers”.
Israel could certainly take out most major cities, oil facilities, and some nuclear facilities in Iran by using their nuclear arsenal. They will lose a large portion of their long distance strike aircraft if they do.
They also might lose their very expensive German built submarines depending upon what Obamassiah orders our Navy to do. Although I can’t see the U.S. military following orders to attack Israel, I can easily believe our SSNs, frigates, and destroyers would follow orders to prosecute and sink any unidentified submarines launching cruise missiles in the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, or Mediterranean.
Tarnsman
Hmm your right. I stand corrected. wuz the effect of long liberal rule and not court packing that made the court liberal for several generations.
Hey Larsen,
You’re using my picture! Please check out my family photo.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_h8EM343xS_c/S7zaxeOghqI/AAAAAAAAAAs/FU_361uU4Zw/S220-h/Annoy+Mouse+Family.bmp
AM
I like the reply to capability but it is hard to keep track of the thread and where it is happening. The last half dozen or so comments are burried somewhere.
LifeofMind #103:
I think that the two greatest fears of the Left are:
1. We will find out what THEY really are.
2. We will find out what our enemies really are.
Awlaki capture alive offers the possibility that No.2 will become self-evident. And this might lead people to discover No.1 when we find out that Awlaki is basically Rev Wright in a burnoose.
5.Charles
For the demand that China Japan and Korea expect to show up– US personal savings rate will have to come down–which so far has not happened. Total US savings is in the red because of federal government borrowing. But the citizenry–as of dec 09– is still socking away savings and paying down debt.
After falling for awhile US demand for foreign oil looks to be rising again.
Don’t forget the third, which is that we will find out WHO they really are, and WHO they are connected to, and WHY, that being what they expect to gain from it.
(This may actually go beyond the count of three, but as the saying goes, there are only three kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can’t.)
they’re kind of roughing up old wretchard over there –a mis-reading of the piece, i believe –i registered on the site and tried to write a heads-up –
ach, the language barrier came up when i wrote “Corsican!” MC, my very weak joke –called a ‘pun’ –is that in spoken english it sounds like “Of course he can!”
by golly you’re right –the resemblance is stunning –especially in our heads and shoulders –wow!
buddy, I guess you spoke out of your anglo-saxonnery spirit
If I was Israel?
I’d hit iran now with an EMP…
follow that up with selected hits on iran’s most valuable asset…
her oil refineries….
If you had to, hit the Bushehr I plant and a handful of othersites…
then step back and work on hezbollah, hamas & syria
In my world it is: there are only 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
MC, two points:
1) is it right that Georgians should suffer (and some die) the loss of territory, and very nearly sovereign existence altogether, because Russia took insult at something USA did?
2) to say that Russia was merely contesting a legality, a point of order is to *completely* ignore the map –the very real and extremely important improvement in Russia’s geopolitical military position in now enjoying both
[a] a naval base (Abkhazia, potentially, and planned, and announced) separate from the Crimea,
[b] very close to Georgia’s remaining port, and
[c] very close to Turkey’s northern naval base, and also
[d] a military base (South Ossetia) on the south side of the mountains,
[e] independent of the tunnel that is the only winter communication line in the Ossetian region, and
[f] which debouches onto the open (military-movement friendly, air-cover range friendly) plains
[g] which carry all the way to the gigantic oil terminals of Baku,
[h] as well as the petro pipelines that transport the Caspian Basin and
[i] central Asian production to Europe and the west,
[j] as well as Turkey’s eastern frontier,
[k] Iraq’s northern (and Kurdish) frontier, and
[l] the entire northwestern approaches to Iran,
[m] and whatever else i forgot to point out.
now, woman, WILL you, finally, at long last, by God, YIELD?
Can someone here help me with how you would expect Japan, S Korea, Taiwan, etc… to develop all of the capacity needed to nuke up? Do you expect this to be more of a homegrown phenomenon, or what components would they likely buy vs. build? How long would it take one of these countries to get to the point of having nuclear capable missiles? I appreciate the BC insight.
steepe…
5 months
The Constitution spells out four paths for an amendment:
(1) Proposal by convention of states, ratification by state conventions (never used)
(2) Proposal by convention of states, ratification by state legislatures (never used)
(3) Proposal by Congress, ratification by state conventions (used once for the 21st Amendment repealing Alcohol prohibition)
(4) Proposal by Congress, ratification by state legislatures (used all other times)
The only Article V limit to the Amendments proposed by such a convention is on removing State representation in the US Senate.
See:
Article V – Amendment
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
At no point in this formal amendment process does the President have a role. He cannot veto an amendment proposal, nor a ratification.
This point is clear in Article V, and was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in Hollingsworth v Virginia (3 US 378 [1798]):
The negative of the President applies only to the ordinary cases of legislation: He has nothing to do with the proposition, or adoption, of amendments to the Constitution.
Which gets back to the point that the States can pass a Constitutional amendment to remove a sitting President, if the President sufficiently motivates the elected legislatures of those States, and there is beans the President can do constitutionally to stop it.
The States are a recognized as a seperate sovereign power apart from the Congress with a special power to call a Constitutional convention. Congress may propose Constitutional _Amendments_, not a _Constitutional Convention_.
The Constitution provides that the state delegations sent to a constitutional convention by state legislatures are solely the decision of the state legislatures. The choosing the composition of those state delegations is strictly a State and not a Congressional power under the US Constitution.
Once a Constitutional Convention is going. Congress has no control over the amendments that are created by the convention and placed before the states.
And please note the text of the proposed amendments is where the choice between state legislature or state convention ratification is made.
See:
http://www.usconstitution.net/constam.html
http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_acon.html
RWE @ 1:03 pm,
the two greatest fears of the Left
Tcobb @ 1:32 pm,
Who they are & there are only three kinds of people
It is the Aristotelian training in the Western tradition. All problems end up having three explanations or possible results. No matter how you need to stretch or pound the facts to fit.
Tbere is a bright line for that approach that runs from the Greeks to Hegel and through to Marx. Oddly enough the Hindus, whose ancient Sanskrit is very close to early Greek and basic Indo-European also categorize in groups of three. Do people raised in other Eastern traditions default to a binary approach?
steeple,
Japan is rumored to be two turns of a wrench away from having a usable device. Taiwan possibly has the capacity already based on cooperation with Israel 30 years ago. For South Korea there are no great obstacles. Remember that Pakistan, not exactly a modern marvel like Switzerland, pulled this off.
Politically, almost can’t chance a pre-empt launch on Iran, much less a nuclear one (the jihad-symps and usual suspects at UN and across Islam and more would ceaslessly and forever scream “Hitler was RIGHT!”) –all context would go up with the mushroom cloud. Israeli heavy-response is stuck with trying to act in the minutes-long window after Iran begins to make a proveable move against her. A shrinkage to almost zero of the tiny window she had in the hour before the Six Day War.
Mossad is on the spot.
As I understand it, about 30% of Japan’s electrical power comes from nuclear plants. If you have nuclear reactors, and you know what you’re doing, its fairly easy to produce the stuff it takes to make atom bombs. And don’t tell me the Japanese are ignorant.
Taiwan also has nuclear reactors. So does South Korea. The Jninn is out of the bottle.
One of my co-workers in a long ago job and far away place was married to a newspaper reporter employed by a major metropolitan outlet. The co-worker told me that the spouse was instructed to compose news articles for an audience with an average educational level around eighth grade. Or High School, under duress.
True story. Unless he was lying.
Something about the “big boys” making decisions behind very closed doors – is, I think, the relevant connection.
That was only slightly oblique. Moving onto a totally different subject, the tragic Massey coal mine deaths are being reported in a suspiciously opportunistic manner that degrades the coal industry at what is a critical milestone in the history of energy development. I merely note that the western coal deposits – outside of Appalachia – are surficial, which means open pit mining rather than tunneled excavation.
(To LotM@103 in case this comment doesn’t fall right.)
Looked into this a while ago. Can’t recall the precise numbers, but the populations of Hiroshima & Nagaskai today are something like 5 times what they were when they were nuked. In contrast, the population of Dresden, which got a good old-fashioned English fire-bombing round about the same time, still has not recovered to WWII levels. There are worse things than a nuclear explosion — such as 40 years of socialist government.
There are something like 45 countries today with nuclear reactors. We certainly could see an explosion (pun alert!) in the number of nuclear weapons capable countries, now that the Nobel Laureate has brought peace in our times. For a small country such as Taiwan or Poland or Saudi Arabia, the only real defensive use of nuclear weapons is the Samson option — attack us & your major cities will be turned to glass, along with most of your elites and many of your ordinary citizens. The unintended consequences of Obama’s sophomoric pacifism will likely be the source of much lamentation.
I would still be interested to hear the assessment of BCers on whether Democrat Senators will shortly have to vote for Barry’s Excellent Nuclear Treaty, and what the unintended consequences of that might be?
Steeple #110:
As to nuclear-capable missiles, Japan has been building their own large rockets for decades, beginning with small solid vehicles that eventually were developed and clustered to give an orbital capability, then they moved on to building copies of US Thor Delta boosters, and finally they developed their own M-5, H-2 and H-2A boosters. Those last three vehicles use large solid rocket motors that could be adapted easily to ICBM use.
When South Korea bought launches on US Delta boosters in the 90’s they required that they be taught how to launch them as part of the deal and that they build parts of the boosters themselves. Most recently they cooperated with Russia to launch their first large indigenous rocket, based on the new Russian Angara booster. The launch was a failure and it is virtually certain that the engine and probably most of the vehicle was built by the Russians, but South Korea clearly has been working on gaining expertise in space launch for some time now. That expertise is directly applicable to missiles.
I don’t recall anything that Taiwan has done in the area of rockets, but they certainly have some impressive technical capabilities. Cooperation between them and South Korea seems to be a likely scenario, and don’t forget that Israel has an interest in countering North Korea given the close cooperation the Norks have with Iran.
For re-entry vehicles, the technology required is similar to that of solid rocket motor nozzles, so they can do that. The one area that I think would be challenging would be fusing – how to you detonate the nuke at the right altitude? They may be able to buy this technology from Russia if not develop it on their own.
And as for Russia – frankly, even the USSR was the world’s biggest arms bazaar, and the Federal Republic of Russia far more so.
For Japan the thing to look for would be a change to their Constitution, which would remove the current prohibition on their owning nuclear weapons.
Obama, the perpetual undergraduate, convenes a seminar to talk about, you know, throwing away those nasty nukes
If the incentive is there Japan can be a nuclear power within a year. South Korea, Taiwan, perhaps two to five years, unless they’ve been working on it already behind the scenes, in which case it will happen faster.
Absolutely not. One of the constitutional powers given to the SCOTUS is defined in Section 2 of it’s powers. If you’ll take a peek you will see that in cases between the Federal government and a state or the states it has “original” jurisdiction meaning that the case does not have to , in fact must not go through the Appelate Courts …it goes straight to the Supremes.
Absolutely not. One of the constitutional powers given to the SCOTUS is defined in Section 2 of it’s powers. If you’ll take a peek you will see that in cases between the Federal government and a state or the states it has “original” jurisdiction meaning that the case does not have to , in fact must not go through the Appelate Courts …it goes straight to the Supremes.
Consumer Credit: OUCH!Here is a pretty good graphic of the way in which US consumer’s are paying down debt. ie the expansion is fueled by government debt that doesn’t have a multiplier effect. This link talks about how consumer borrowing declined in February–after advancing in January.
This goes to the question: are the ships in Australian ports sending iron to japan Korea and china anticipating an economic rebound that won’t happen?
1) is it right that Georgians should suffer (and some die) the loss of territory, and very nearly sovereign existence altogether, because Russia took insult at something USA did?
loss of territory, since when ? it seems that Ossetia had a privileged statute during the soviet era too, and that it de facto decleared its own autonomy after that the soviet union became obsolete, of course there was one nationalist Georgian that claimed it as part of the very Georgia, it seems that the people there were passed under the bus, where elsewhere a referrandum would have make the decision !
The
aspiration for independence was complicated by the ethnic diversity of regions,
that demanded independence based on the ethnicity. Such regions appeared to
be Abkhazia, former South Osetia, Djavakheti in the south of Georgia settled
by Armenians mostly.
so this claim of a nation as Georgia has a short past,it’s like an artificial creation, Belgium has the same problems today ! and before the soviet union, regions were ruled as ethnical representations
The conflict between the Georgian government and the former Soviet
autonomies transformed into an armed confrontation resulting in the de facto
separation of these territories from Georgia. The first of the two conflicts
started in December 1990 when in response to the activities of Ossetian
separatists’, the then Supreme Council of Georgia announced the abolition of
the Autonomous Region of South Ossetia.
1. By its essence, the Georgian ethnic mentality stands close to the so-called
Mediterranean “Shame and Honor Society” and was strongly affected by
the bicentennial rule of, first, the Russian Empire and then the Soviet
Union. Abolishment of the country’s state sovereignty resulted in national
infantilism, on the one hand, and emerging of a para-society (in the kind of
state officials’ criminal clans), on the other;
2. On the present stage of development, the clan mentality and modernist and
post-modernist views have merged. Western values and paternalist thinking
are often intermingled;
3. There are relics of tribalism in the country. They especially revealed
themselves in 1991-93 during, first, the overthrow of the government and
then the civil war. At that time, the residents of the western Georgia
supported ex-president Gamsakhurdia, while those of Tbilisi (together with
former Communist nomenclature) backed Shevardnadze;
4. The disintegration of the USSR and economic crisis destroyed the old
ideological and economic bases. As the society knows little about the
western liberal values and no groups of economic interests have been
created yet, nationalism turned out the leading ideological factor of the
society;
5. Despite a critical situation in the country exacerbated by ethnic conflicts,
the migration caused by ethnic reasons is rather insignificant against the
background of general emigration. Migration is mainly caused by economic
problems;
6. In 1992-98, there were some signs of underestimating the nationalism by
the Georgian political elite. As a rule, any event is considered only in the
light of criminal clans’ interests and subversive activities of the neighboring
countries (first of all of Russia). The role of a nation’s self-identification is
assessed only post-factum;
…
http://www.nato.int/acad/fellow/96-98/losaberi.pdf
so you see that Georgia is a amalgam of different populations, different religions… that needed a more subtile president, it’slike in Irak or Afghanistan, try to unify different ethnies under the same banner !
Now, the US ingerence in Georgia inner affairs didn’t do any good either.
2) to say that Russia was merely contesting a legality, a point of order is to *completely* ignore the map –the very real and extremely important improvement in Russia’s geopolitical military position in now enjoying both
[a] a naval base (Abkhazia, potentially, and planned, and announced) separate from the Crimea,
[b] very close to Georgia’s remaining port, and
[c] very close to Turkey’s northern naval base, and also
[d] a military base (South Ossetia) on the south side of the mountains,
[e] independent of the tunnel that is the only winter communication line in the Ossetian region, and
[f] which debouches onto the open (military-movement friendly, air-cover range friendly) plains
[g] which carry all the way to the gigantic oil terminals of Baku,
[h] as well as the petro pipelines that transport the Caspian Basin and
[i] central Asian production to Europe and the west,
[j] as well as Turkey’s eastern frontier,
[k] Iraq’s northern (and Kurdish) frontier, and
[l] the entire northwestern approaches to Iran,
[m] and whatever else i forgot to point out.
yeah, and how did you get your 200 and more bases around the world ? pacifically ? Hmmm!
now, woman, WILL you, finally, at long last, by God, YIELD?
the woman has to say that the US role in Georgia was a provocation for Russia, also that the US didn’t care of the populations there, but of integrating forcefully Georgia into Nato, despites the Europeans considerations, but of BAKU too and of the pipeline crossing Georgia, that BP constructed [say even Sarah Palin saw some interest to defend BP in Georgia, one wonders why! when she can't position it on a map (that was my lol contribution)]
It is interesting to note that Turkey defection to support the US policy is dating from these events too, and is becoming colder and colder to participate into the US NATO decisions
so the woman spoke, not for your bon plaisir !
LOTM , man I know what you’re saying. Now when I compose something of any length I first do it in WORD and then paste it to the thread, thus having a backup.
Best,
Habu
RWE said:
“For re-entry vehicles, the technology required is similar to that of solid rocket motor nozzles, so they can do that. The one area that I think would be challenging would be fusing – how to you detonate the nuke at the right altitude?”
The RV frustum is made of carbon-phenolic which is similar to what is used in solid rocket motor nozzles. However an RV nose is typically made of carbon-carbon. Both carbon-carbon and carbon-phenolic are tricky to manufacture. For example: NASA got the pre-carbonized Rayon fabric wrong for the Space Shuttle solid rocket booster’s carbon-phenolic throat. Consequently the throat tended to spall out chunks of carbon-phenolic rather than simply ablate away. It was only through the Grace of God that a Shuttle solid rocket booster didn’t fail due to nozzle burn through.
To make carbon-carbon and carbon-phenolic correctly, a nation needs to invest millions of dollars into an R&D program and build up an industrial infrastructure. As of today, the United States can NOT manufacture carbon-phenolic because we shutdown our last rayon fabric factory. Manufacturing rayon is very polluting and due to EPA regulations it was not economical to maintain a rayon manufacturing capability in the United States. The Europeans still manufacture rayon for use in automobile tires as do the Chinese.
I’ve always wondered how they do the fusing for RVs. Obviously it would have to be some sort of barometric fuse. However an RV is still going supersonic when it reaches its target altitude. How do you build a barometric fuse that penetrates an ablated heat shield to sense stagnation pressure? I guess the penetration would have to be through the base of the RV where there is less ablation. However the barometric fuse would likely be spoofed as the RV approached peak dynamic pressure. It’s probably a barometric fuse coupled to a G switch or a timer. At this point the fusing technology becomes tricky….
There are three kinds of people. Those who divide people in two types, those who don’t, and those who think it might be three.
Seems too me if you could navigate 4000 miles and land on a tennis court you could reckon when to detonate. I think the tricky part is command and control for fail safe operation and the nanosecond timing to detonate your critical mass.
It’s my understanding from hallway gossip that the Japanese currently have no assembled nuclear weapons. However the Japanese could easily assemble a nuclear weapon in a matter of days. Supposedly they already have the weapons grade transuranics made and stockpiled for a rainy day. After it becomes clear that the United States will no longer provide a nuclear shield then the Japanese could become a nuclear power in a matter of weeks (nukes with bushido, don’t you love it?).
Obama probably doesn’t realize that he’s letting a genii out of a bottle. We already suspected that Obama was incompetent. His new nuclear weapons policy removes all doubt. Of course the moonbats are shrieking with orgasmic joy. I guess from Obama’s perspective that’s all that really matters…
I have been thinking for some time now that Russia’s and China’s failure to take leadership in NPT, especially their intransigence in regards to Iran and North Korea, would eventually lead to the breakdown of NPT and go against them in the near term. The balance of power of course doesn’t go to Iran and NK, or Venezuela for that matter but to Russia’s and Chinas’ enemies which there are quite a few. The only reason I could think that they’d allow this to go against them in this way is because they had already determined that their enemies already had this capability under wraps.
Expect another Cuban missile crisis. Where? In Cuba.
Judicial review; a continuation.
First, the Constitution allows for no such judicial power. In fact, it forbids such power. Second, it is a dangerous doctrine that erodes the very heart of our system of checks and balances.
The power of judicial review was fabricated by the Marshall Court as a tool to avoid controversy. Even the most mainstream Con-law scholars maintain that Marshall, not wanting to betray allegiance to his own Federalists and desiring to not be challenged by President Jefferson, cleverly crafted his argument for judicial review to circumvent the issue at hand. Clever it may have been, but constitutional it was not. Sadly, we have paid for Marshall’s endorsement for judicial review ever since.
Besides finding no power of judicial review anywhere in Article II of the Constitution’s provision of judicial powers, the Supremacy Clause found in Article VI presents a barrier against such a power .
It reads:
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
Here we see the judges are to be bound to the Constitution and the laws of the land made in pursuance to the Constitution. This does not mean the Court must act unjustly by being bound to unconstitutional legislation, but it does mean that the Court cannot be above the law as some omniscient arbiter . Rather, the Congress makes laws and the judges must use those laws to rule in cases. No where throughout the document is the Court granted the power to overturn law by its opinion . In a nation founded on separation of powers, it cannot be so. For, if the Court possesses the power of judicial review, it has the power to legislate, veto, and drive executive policy all by the power of its opinion. That is the very definition of legal tyranny.
Virtually ALL of the Western Style power reactors are totally unsuitable for use in Plutonium production.
And there is no way to reverse this trait.
The USSR standardized on the Hanford/ Graphite Moderated design. That design and the Heavy Water Moderated CANDU ( and successors ) ARE suitable for ‘alternate duty.’
However, the nature of alternate duty would cause any such a change in focus to become quite apparent very quickly.
Without Converter Reactors and without Enrichment Trains even an advanced society will still have to start at the beginning.
Every aspect of Light Water Reactors is designed to frustrate alternate duty use. Believe it.
Of note this mine, and those in the area, are normally working Metalurgical Coal ( aka Met Coal, also Coking Coal ) i.e. the stuff used exclusively by the STEEL INDUSTRY.
It commands a hefty premium for it’s LOW ASH content. It will also assay for low levels of Phosphates… The mills really hate that stuff.
As such this mine is part of the Steel Economy, not power production. These very mines normally EXPORT a large fraction of their output. ( typ. to Europe )
Some of the citizens are still saving. And they are not all saving the conventional way at a bank.
Millions more are slowly using their hard earned and saved money because they either don’t have a job or they are forced to work part time jobs with limited hours and mostly low pay.
Others are using their savings to buy metals, including the kind that have gunpowder behind them. They are also buying food, water and other supplies that store well are good for barter – and other items for “disasters”.
Still others have used saved and invested money to buy small tracts of land or small homesteads and such that are away from any populated cities and it isn’t because they just like country living.
Lots of changes now and even more coming. Be prepared.
Papa Ray
Annoy Mouse,
Only a D-5 launched from an Ohio Class submarine could do about that, i.e. Circular Error Probable (CEP) 90 meters. The old Peacekeepers (MX) could also do that but they have all been scraped. This sort of accuracy is difficult to do. It requires precision laser ring gyros coupled with a star tracking and/or a GPS guidance system. Again the fusing technolgy isn’t obvious. The RV would be stepping along at about 1 km/sec. If the fusing was based purely on a timer, then an error of 1/10 second would translate to an error of 100 meters (greater than CEP). Getting the altitude right with a nuke is critical due to how the blast wave is formed. To maximize body count, you want a pure reflection of the blast wave off of the ground. However if you do it wrong then the blast gets elevated onto a “Mach Stem” and the body count goes way down. Each specific target has an optimal detonation altitude. Lockheed Martin used to hire guys to determine optimal detonation altitudes for specific towns in the Soviet Union. I once had dinner with a person who did that for a living. Sort of like having dinner with a hangman (kept the conversation nontechnical).
Nothing other could be expected from the Poltroon in Chief.
BTW, the new PJM scheme is a clunker. It’s impossible to work the interleaved replies. Other blogs that use this format are repellant.
e.g. Zero Hedge, The Oil Drum, etc.
Only someone who never posts or reads would think it an improvement.
What happened to our punch bowl?
There’s a theory going around the Internet that consumer spending has been driven by people giving up on their mortgages. Here’s a link:
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2166-Consumer-Credit-OUCH!.html
If a family isn’t spending money every month on rent or on the mortgage then magically they have additional money to spend on toys and entertainment.
These people are like children riding a kiddy car towards a cliff. Lots of fun and laughter until they tip over the edge.
Habu @ 119: yessir! and if we wanted to have some form of review, binding or otherwise, it should still not be by a bunch of senile appointees accountable to nobody.
unfortunately, Congress clearly loves the idea of review, it lets them pass garbage with the hope and expectation that SCOTUS will overturn it as absurd, and they can pander to all sorts of special interests using that as a shield. without the review I’d expect them still to pass the garbage.
I’m sure that Russia would sell almost anybody anything for the right amount of cash or something else they wanted or needed.
As far as that goes, the guy in Pakistan is loose again and I’m sure he would be glad to help out and even be a middle man for Pakistan.
The Chinese might even help someone, for oil or such, since they are like a never filling hole when it comes to energy.
Who knows what will happen. Greed, money and power drive everything and keep the world going around and around and around….
Until somebody makes a terrible mistake.
Papa Ray
We are forecasting 12-14 months. OH…you were talking about nukes. Well I’m thinking more like close to a year, give or take an accident or miscalculation.
But things are moving so fast and in in various directions it is difficult to plan anything.
Papa Ray
Blert,
What say about light water nuclear reactors is correct, i.e. they are engineered NOT to produce weapons grade material. The Japanese have been doing nuclear fuel rod reprocessing (a wise choice IMHO). Typically plutonium is chemically extracted from the reprocessed fuel rods. The plutonium from a fuel rod tends to be “overcooked”, i.e. it has too much Pu-240. Pu-240 can not be used in a nuke and is considered a contaminant for weapons grade Pu-239 plutonium. However the Japanese are also major innovators in isotope extraction technology. It would not surprise me for a moment if the Japanese have been quietly extracting high grade Pu-239 from their raw plutonium reprocessed from fuel rods.
“Remember that Pakistan, not exactly a modern marvel like Switzerland, pulled this off.”
Yea, but with help from who? Or is it Whom.
Papa Ray
Wouldn’t it be nice if the gremlins that code scatter here could find it in their sweet unblemished little hearts to cookie (or something) so that you wouldn’t have to insert your name and email each dang time you comment?
Nah…too much to ask for, now I sound like LoTM..
Eggplant:
Yes, I know about carbon carbon. Thiokol had some big time problems trying to use it as a replacement for phenolic nozzles in the Star 48 motor – had two fail on orbit. And that was after they gave up on the G-90 carbon throat insert during development when they found that the stuff could not be manufactured with materials properties tight enough to be useable for rocket engines.
But the missiles we are talking about don’t have to be the very best around, just good enuf. And we are mainly talking about IRBMs, not ICBMs. I guess that even subsonic GE Mk II copper beryllium heat sink RVs would do and there are probably some off the shelf composites that would work too.
They don’t need hardened launch sites, either. The Thors we put in England were soft sites, and the coffin launch CGM–16E Atlas were not that much better. You only need hardened launch sites if you are worried about a counter-force strike and we can be pretty well assured that the bad guys won’t be shooting at Japanese, S Korean, Taiwanese, or Israeli launch sites.
I too have thought about the RV fuzing problem and I don’t know how they do it. Barometric pressure would be too unreliable, especially with a supersonic RV. Timing would never work. Radar would be a real problem. GPS is not very good for altitude even disregarding the reception problems during re-entry. Impact fusing is out, needless to say. Maybe a laser rangefinder? The US had a special outfit up by DC that did all the fuses. And remember how upset everyone got when a couple of nuke fuses were shipped to Taiwan by accident? Maybe the old MK II design would be the best – that low speed re-entry would make fusing easier.
I sometimes wonder about Australia and other far off countries. What are their plans and hopes and…well, I just wonder.
Then I get back to the six Ps…
Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
Works every time, well, that is in-between taking care of my kids.
Papa Ray
P.S. Ref: Senators. Give them a good enough bribe and they will do anything. And it looks like it is getting to where they would do it on the lawn in front of the White House in broad daylight with cameras rolling.
Roman bath houses or the floor of the Senate.
Papa Ray
Charles 116, all of the evidence that we see points to a healthy recovery in Asia while the US and Europe lag. Also, all of the countries supplying Asia such as Australia, Canada, and Chile are all faring well. We have to fight the urge to be US centric, as we clearly aren’t leading this recovery in typical fashion. 64 dollar question seems to be can China absorb more production via internal demand than they have historically. So far, it looks like they are.
Only at BC could I get the response you all provided to my earlier question; many thanks.
Well if the crats are in another four years you can be sure that they will be selling off all our “surplus” military equipment.
Want a five million dollar tank? Step right up, we have hundreds for sale at the bargain price of two million each, complete with spare parts.
Shipping extra of course.
Papa Ray
Hummmm. 90 percent of what you say goes right over my head and means nutting. But I’m thinking OP-SEC here. Can we not be giving tips nor stuff that somebody might need or use. Things that you think are common knowledge just might not be or if they are there is no need to highlight them.
Just saying… (smiley face here)
Papa Ray
ouch, okay, that’s what i get for asking you to yield –will i ever learn? –but rather than argue you point by point, out of mercy for the thread, let me retire from the rain of Frankish hammer blows here with but two small rear-guard observations: Russia’s holding territory that the otherwise-beloved UN on down considers to be part of Georgia (who has recognized Russia’s puppeted provincial declarations of independence? Burkina Faso? The Thin People’s Democratic Republic of North Korea?), so the go-it-alone, Cossack Cowboy precedent is set, & all the USA need do now is find a few English-speaking dual citizens in Caracas and we can go unload some old ammo on Hugo and expect to hear not a peep out of Putin or MC either one.
…and two, your shot at Palin –that she may not be able to put her finger on a map at Baku, implies that you intended to draw a contrast to presumably more intelligent Russian politicians who CAN place their fingers on the map at Baku.
So, MC, ask yourself, if you were an Azerbaijani, would this fact give to, or take from, your hope for your independent nation in the future?
You seem very well informed. So…tell us why the U.S. has at least a hundred nukes in storage in Turkey? Or is that just a made up story, lacking any basis in fact?
And what the hell are we going to do about getting them out now that Turkey seems to have cowed it’s Miltary and is going full steam toward a full blown Islamic State?
Just asking.
Papa Ray
Sorry this didn’t directly connect with your comment but things are so scatter-brained and cross connected here anyway, I thought I would just ask.
Congress has to ratify the treaty. Correct?
“No where throughout the document is the Court granted the power to overturn law by its opinion.”
Yea, well then you should mention… if they get to the point where the liberal part of the court is indeed the omniscient arbiter or thinks it is, they will try to do exactly what you say they can’t.
What then, they are not elected. Should we just ignore them, invite them to tea and scold them, or what?
Just asking, for future reference.
Papa Ray
Good point. The idea of media/political spin still stands, however, if not more so. Will the environmentalist lobby deem their position less credible aggressing against “dirty” coal as an export commodity rather than as a domestic energy source (not to mention the various CTL technologies under development and build-out), particularly within the context of regenerating steel as a domestic manufacturing sector? Will it even make a difference? Do the enviros have a formal position on met-coal that is distinct from coal used for energy? Should they? – vis a vis the “Big Man” theory of back-room decision-making? Just to question the legitimacy of what we call “public policy”.
(Massey was cited for two safety compliance failures on the day of the methane explosion, but it remains unclear to what extent those failures contributed to the explosion, which begs the question of regulatory criteria that are not only inadequately enforced, but irrelevantly constructed as well – of what use is a safety room with air supplies without the GPS equipment to locate the rooms in the event of a failure incident?)
Not exactly–the Senate has to ratify it. But even so what a lot of people don’t seem to understand is that an international treaty can’t really nullify the bill of rights, which are amendments to the US constitution. To the extent that the original wording of the Constitution conflicts with the amendments, the original wording loses. That’s why they are called “Amendments.”
Papa ray, did you see this, yesterday?
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.f2ad1f74fe9302203b34f1dc60ba222c.401&show_article=1
The Turk gov’t saying that Israel is the ‘main threat to peace in the mideast’?
Not long ago, before the sinister August of 08, the Turks ands Israelis were allies, working on a pipeline terminal together, training together, forming a strong pro-freeworld link between southern Europe and the Levant. Jeez how quickly things change
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/04/026003.php
when across the ocean sea the fortress redoubt of freedom elects (apologies to Chesterton’s “Lepanto”) Mahound…in his paradise above the evening star…
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees;
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.
I’m not sure, but don’t look at me, I used the rest facilities a hundred miles or so back.
Papa Ray
First time I see you advocating for UN, so UN good when it goes your way, but did you care of UN for Irak ?
(who has recognized Russia’s puppeted provincial declarations of independence? Burkina Faso? The Thin People’s Democratic Republic of North Korea
dunno, and I don’t care, anyway that would be a proof that Russia hasn’t the same weight like you do in UN, though I noticed that none dared to contradict Russia for that, uh may be the bear is really impressioning the civilised plebe of Washington, and Putin’s tanks are no longer in Georgia, if he really did want to control Georgia, I suppose that he would have needed troops on the place!
USA need do now is find a few English-speaking dual citizens in Caracas and we can go unload some old ammo on Hugo and expect to hear not a peep out of Putin or MC either one.
I’m sure that some smart people are cogiting a plan… uh faut bien qu’ils s’occupent au Pentagone ! you can do whatever you like with Chavez, he isn’t in our sphere, and I don’t plan to visit Venezuela, (rather Argentina)
implies that you intended to draw a contrast to presumably more intelligent Russian politicians who CAN place their fingers on the map at Baku.
uh, no need they can watch it from their windows !
So, MC, ask yourself, if you were an Azerbaijani, would this fact give to, or take from, your hope for your independent nation in the future?
Does your country have something invested there ? oh yes, what a question ! but it’s a Turkish back yard, “Turkey has been a staunch supporter of Azerbaijan in its efforts to consolidate its independence”, so no worry, the Turks are strong,(on dit ici “fort comme un Turc”) if a conflict occurs, it will be more likely with Armenia. But
Azerbaijan-Turkey talks on gas transit to Europe have failed,
According to report, talks between Azerbaijan and Turkey didn’t succeed, and the reason is Turkey’s process of normalisation of relations with Armenia.
“Negotiations were brought to a stop for more than a month ago,” Deutsche Welle paper quotes Turkey’s Minister of Energy Taner Yildiz as saying. He said that the main reason of failure is a political one.
The Turks will have to add some lukums within their negociations
But what do you think of Kyrgyzstan ? will Putin invest it, cuz there is a harsh revolt going there, so far he just said to the Kyrgyzes to calm down ? have the Americans something to say too?
wow –i checked back in, and now they’re misreading my explanation of their wretchard misreading –
some of them think that wretchard was arguing in *favor* of financial shenanigans –calling him ‘people like fernandez’ who ‘obstruct every decent thing thing we try to do’ and ‘i wish a judge would just say, kill all those mother f**kers’.
i don’t think they’re actually reading the piece. seem to rather prefer just jumping at a chance to assume they’ve been offended –collect and nurse an insult –reform-minded folks, interested in what’s wrong with the system, missing the part of the system fail fueled by people who jump to conclusions and go off full-bore & half-cocked.
anyhoo, i wrote another very mild-mannered extension of the first post, the ‘you may be reading him wrong’ post –that’s about all i can do for the home team, if they don’t get it now, it’s becuz they don’t wanna.
“These are the President’s weapons” –if that helps throw any light on the subjek.
Papa Ray, well informed ? uh I try to update myself !
You’re right, it’s a upside-down world, see, even your best advocats in EU, are returning their jacket ! so, it makes me wonder why they appreciated you so much, is it because of the money that you left there ?
http://euobserver.com/9/29820 EU could benefit from Polish-Russian rapprochement
and like you I don’t trust Erdogan, as far as your question:
Baku – APA. today- Turkish National Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul said Wednesday that there was no official information about the U.S.’s leaving some of its nuclear weapons in Turkey, APA reports quoting turkishny.com web-page. Gonul visited Governor Mevlu Bilici of the central Anatolian province of Kayseri on Wednesday.
When a reporter recalled the news stories saying the U.S. had nuclear weapons in Turkey and it would leave some of them in Turkey, Gonul said that an official information had not been made yet.
However, Turkey acceded to the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) to reduce the nuclear weapons, added Gonul.
Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe was signed by the State Parties in Paris, on November 19, 1990, during the Summit of the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Upon its approval by the parliaments of the State Parties, the Treaty entered into force on July 17, 1992. Turkey is one of the State Parties to CFE Treaty. CFE Treaty is one of the milestones in the way of disarmament and it is legally binding.
On Tuesday, U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled his administration’s new nuclear strategy that reduces the role of atomic arms in U.S. security. Under the new plan, the U.S. promises not to use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them. Obama’s plan would lessen the role nuclear weapons play in U.S. defense planning.
An International Nuclear Security Summit will take place in Washington D.C. on April 12 and 13. Turkish Prime Minister will attend the summit.
Lucy and Buddy@ 43
Three and a half years ago I had a feeling.
Couldn’t shake it.
Fired up the Bike.
Took a ride.
Couldn’t shake it.
Let the bike take me.
This is where it took me
Wrote it down.
http://heyyoukidsgetoffmylawn.wordpress.com/2007/09/06/a-billion-dots-and-more/
MC, perhaps you should familirize yourself with the term “frozen conflict” as used by Putin.
Re Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, i urge you to search [ Nagorno Karabakh ]
…or just read this for starters.
Kyrgyzstan, the Transcaucasus states, Moldavia, almost all the old USSR states, have, due to ‘left behind’ Russian ‘peacekeeping forces’ (such as those who Putin had to rescue the night they drove old Georgia down), whose rationale in turn is the protection of ‘russian-speaking enclaves’ containing a scattering of dual-passport quasi-Russian citizens resident in the areas in question, what Putin calls “frozen conflicts” in place –frozen when USSR dissolved, and since latent, and seeminly insoluble, situations needing a strong-handed ‘security guarantee’ –which only Putin can provide. When the time is right, or, best case, just on its own, due to the native’s knowledge of the crosshairs on their sovereignty.
which brings up another term for you to search: “Finlandize” or “Finlandization”.
…and to answer your question, no i have no personal interests at stake in these matters –i argue with you because i like you and i want you to see the light.
wow –read the first part –good stuff –and saved it for later –when in the right contemplative frame o mind for lit –meantime here’s ya one back, another ‘get on the bike and ride’ journey tale, “Kid of Speed, one girl, one motorcycle, one camera, one closed territory of Chernobyl”.
http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm
ah, light, much appreciated
As far as I can remember, Baku has always been a “hot place” for conflicts, I read a novel about 30 years ago, called “Baku”, it was about the periple of a family “Ben Said” that left Baku for Europe in the fifties, through Malta… don’t remember the author name. Anyway it already described ethnical conflicts there, with Russians in between, and oil was ignifying the blazing heats of the whole
uh, you forgot “Lebanisation”
As Obama flies off to Prague to sign a treaty with Russia in the capital of the serially betrayed Czechs, by Simon Shuster in Moscow, LINK-Time: Kyrgyzstan Uprising: Did Moscow Subvert a U.S. Ally?-LINK The last paragraph;
This was a textbook KGB coup. It would not surprise me if some old hands from the CIA were listening to events unfold and reading them off in advance like actors watching a well remembered performance. We need to go back to wearing hats and suits with wider lapels. It is time to dig out the Eric Ambler and Graham Greene novels. It smells like 1949 is here for a return engagement, only worse than Henry Wallace, who eventually did admit his errors, won the election.
To be blogged under the title “Spring in Kyrgyztan.”
BTW, I commented on Michael Ledeen’s Facebook page regarding Obama’s sanity and Clinton’s.
turn it up loud, friends, and think hard.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1930097,00.html
(snip from October 2009 article, bolding mine)
The first bottleneck between the Oval Office and Afghanistan is the country’s lack of sea ports (the nearest harbor is some 400 miles away) and a dearth of airports. Beyond geography, the flow of troops is limited by the U.S. military’s requirements for training and dwell time — R&R at home, between deployments. And then, perhaps most critically, there is the enemy. The Taliban’s lengthening shadow across Afghanistan is making it increasingly difficult to supply the 65,000 troops there now or to send in reinforcements.
(See pictures of a U.S. Marine offensive in Afghanistan.)
“We’re resupplying between 30% and 40% of our forward operating bases by air because we just can’t get to them on the ground,” says a senior Army logistician, speaking on condition of anonymity, referring to the roughly 180 U.S. outposts around the country. That’s because the Taliban control much of the “ring road,” a circular route that links Afghanistan’s few major cities. “Trucking contractors trying to supply some of them aren’t making it,” he adds. “The Taliban are just wiping them out.” Such constraints will limit the flow of troops to Afghanistan to about one brigade — some 4,000 troops — a month.
Most U.S. troops arrive in Afghanistan via air, largely through the Manas air base outside Biskek, Kyrgyzstan. But little of their gear gets there the same way. Instead, it’s crammed aboard ships, departing primarily from U.S. ports for the 45-day voyage to Karachi, Pakistan. Then there’s at least two weeks of ground travel into Afghanistan. The challenge, says one Marine officer preparing to head to Afghanistan if Obama gives the order, is to marry up his unit’s 5,000 troops with their gear, including 2,000 vehicles, somewhere in the middle of Nowhere-istan at the same time. “There’s a lot of physics you can’t overcome when it goes by sea,” he says. All his gear, except for vehicles carrying top-secret communications gear, will get there by ship. “You don’t want those,” he notes, “going by container ship through Karachi.”
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1930097,00.html#ixzz0kUH2g66W
uh, Putin is in, in incresing demesuratly the price of the oil deliverated to Kyrgyzstan.
http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav040610a.shtml
any treaty language is overridden by any part of the Constitution, amendment or original.
Papa Ray: I once wrote an analysis of what the Chinese were learning from launching U.S, made satellites and the main point I made was that we did not appreciate how ignorant they were. They were learning things one would assume they knew but in fact they did not. This fell on deaf ears because the technology transfer people were even more ignorant in that area of expertise than were the Chinese. And I was not an intelligence analyst so therefore I could not do intelligence analysis and could be ignored. Or rather it fell on deaf ears until I got hold of an old friend with a similar background who had gotten into intel, looked at what I had done and said “Holy Crap! How come no one else has figured this out?”
So I appreciate what you are talking about.
But anyone who can build such missiles knows far more about this than do I. Some of the North Korean short range missile tests are clearly development flights for RVs and fuses – they don’t go very far at all but instead pitch over and drive the warhead back down under thrust to simulate ICBM velocities – we have done the same thing.
Illustrates one of the problems with Matt Taibbi’s venue – hip, young, and cool.
With miles to go before they sleep.
I just listened to a very stern-looking black reporter (Ridley something) on Joe Scarborough’s show suggest that mainstream America still behaves with a “strain” of anti-intellectualism, as in we don’t get what is good for us.
Ridley, meet Matt Taibbi and his audience.
Yea, well they increased the rent on “our base” last year from 16 million to 60 million a year.
Want to bet if the rent is going up yet again?
Papa Ray
I believe your right. Rather than face the task of political suicide from the greens, left wing libs and anti nuke folks in his on party he would take his own nuclear reposte off the table before the event happens. This way he can say he was bound by law NOT to respond in kind to an attack with Nukes on America, save his political career and run again for another term, his legacy pure an unstained by using a weapon of mass destruction.
Of course the folks incinerated, irradiated and with their lives shortened by fallout from an enemy attack with nukes won’t be voting for him they will be standing in that long, long line waiting for national health care to aid them most likely for all the pain meds they want until they die in that line waiting.
LOTM, the Chinese didn’t want the U.S. base in that country either, but TIME won’t write about them because it doesn’t make for as ‘sexy’ a headline and because we can’t have a Cold War with the ChiComs since they own $2 trillion of our debt. Better to talk about ‘KGB’ than the real 800 pound gorilla in Central Asia, and one that just lent several billion to the Moldovan government.
As for MC’s point, I’m sure Russia raising the price of oil it sells to Kyrgiz will soon be denounced as more ‘energy imperialism’ by the usual suspects (silly Russians, expecting people to pay market prices for fuel) – Jamestown, Heritage’s Leon Aron, maybe AEI’s guy (though what he says in English in D.C. and what he says in Russian in Moscow are quite different) and the WSJ again saying evil Putin is trying to drive America out of Central Asia. NOBODY talks about the Chinese wanting us out, we keep pretending it’s just the Kremlins…
Poles reconciling with Russia? That was more or less inevitable, as was a Turkish-Russian relationship (Didn’t you see that NYT article with the miniature Kremlin and bathing beauties at Antalya a few years back?). T
The real embarassment to the Cold Warriors is the Moscow-Jerusalem repproachment which isn’t supposed to be happening since the evil Russians are arming Iran. Apparently the Israelis don’t see it as quite that simple, they are selling UAVs to the Russian military (and probably other tech we don’t know about) plus they halted arms sales to Misha the Tie Eater months before he attacked South Ossetia. Israel now has visa free travel with Russia, while the U.S. still keeps the Jackson Vanik amendments on the books. Putin complained about this absurdity with Hillary when she came to Moscow recently. The only thing perhaps more absurd in foreign policy related laws is the U.S. embargo against Cuba, which actually prevents Americans from going Galt against Obamacare by using medical tourism.
Like the Chinese pushing us around and even buying up mines in Afghanistan along with Karzai cabinet members, like Soros funding the Colored Revolutions in addition to MoveOn.org and apparently getting paid back with insider tips, as a Washington conservative you just don’t go there.
GL, i know who you mean –i too can’t recall last name, Ridley “Scott” the film director keeps crowding it out me brane. But unless there’s more than one very partisan-left big-time reporter-cum-propagandist first-named ‘Ridley’ who is black and outspoken, then that’s the guy somewhat notorious for *waaay* bending polling data ‘conclusions’ toward helping John Kerry in the 2004 elections.
#110 steeple
If you have the ability to launch a satellite weighing 155 kg with an apogee of 350 km. or so, picking your orbit and track, you have the launch and guidance capability for an ICBM that can carry a nuclear weapon. Fusing does determine the efficiency of the blast; but keep in mind that pure deterrence is all they are after, not counter-force capability against hardened pinpoint targets. It does not really matter to the Chinese government if the radius of the 20 psi overpressure ring in Beijing centered on Tienanmen is .8 mile or .5 mile. What matters in their calculations is that all of Beijing will be gone, even if the fusing and CEP are not sufficient to take out a hardened silo. [That and perhaps the fact that they live in the Zhongnanhai compound real close to there. How good is the Chinese early warning system?]
Start counting the countries who have space programs. Japan is able to launch a 510 kg. spacecraft to hit an asteroid, land on it, attempt to collect samples, and it is returning in June of this year. [course correction to aim it at the earth was on 6 April. 4 more fine tuning maneuvers scheduled] Supposedly, Japan developed a new high temperature heat shield material for the re-entry vehicle that will withstand a high speed re-entry from space. They have picked the landing spot in the Australian desert.
If they can do that, I’m betting that they can cobble together a system capable of hitting a city on earth, right smartly. If they have not already done so. It is noted that Japan has a booming nuclear industry that does reprocess fuel itself.
I also note in passing that India has successfully launched and deployed a very large lunar probe. Launch mass of the total spacecraft was 523 kg., although the lunar impactor observed by their lunar orbiter was only 35 kg.
Taiwan has scientists who worked at Los Alamos and Sandia. It has nuclear reactors. It was forced by the Clinton Administration to supposedly dismantle its nuclear weapons program in 1993. I think that they hid their nuclear program and kept it. The big part of the Manhattan Project was proving it could be done. I’m pretty sure that there is no need to recapitulate that, just look in any decent sized library for the technical details and how to. I have been watching Taiwan’s weapons procurement. They are buying a bunch of cruise missiles that have the range to form a deterrent, but are not accurate enough to be worthwhile if they have just conventional warheads. That makes no sense. If they have small nukes though, China could have to start measuring those 20 psi overpressure zones.
South Korea gets 45% of its electrical power from nuclear reactors, has multiple advanced nuclear research institutes and projects, has its own fuel handling and processing capability, and is exporting nuclear reactors. They also have a very modern industrial base. And they are developing cruise missiles. And it must also be noted that a manned aircraft deterrent force is easier to develop than missiles. The ROKAF and the JASDF are very good.
Poland has one research reactor, the Czech Republic has 6 power reactors and 3 research reactors. While they probably have no missile programs, they do have aircraft that can be modified. Russia is not that far away.
That glow coming from under Obama’s foreign policy bus is probably Cerenkov radiation.
I also note that fusing and re-entry cones are not problems with cruise missile and aircraft delivered weapons used for countervalue targeting.
Poland and the Czech Republic need a deterrent, but we can be pretty sure that the EU will not allow them to develop one, for two reasons. 1) The EU would feel about the existence of a Polish nuke the same way that Obama would feel about a Texas nuke. 2) The EU really does not want anyone to stand up to their beloved neighbor to the east. Both because they have as an article of faith that there is no threat to the east or south; just across the Atlantic, and because if they considered the possibility that such could exist, they would have to develop some sort of contingency plan.
As far as recent foreign policy developments and Obama’s actions, I cannot accurately describe the situation without dropping below the carefully maintained level of civil discourse here.
Subotai Bahadur
It wasn’t the raising the price, Mr.X, it was raising it not a few percent but 30%, without warning and only midway thru a three-year contract, on the pretext that the Kyrgis were reselling some of it at a profit to the Ami airbase (BTW, if true, and who knows, then, so what?).
This sudden expensive surprise set off the street demos, which then escalated in the usual react, respond, react, respond escalattio until the anti-government dissidents –in the usual 1970s Afghanistan model –caught and murdered a high-ranking minister or two, putting the rest of the government to flight, and allowing the Kremlin-friendlier oppo leadership to step forth as peacemaker –the only power (natch!) able to actually stop the fighting and –zut alores! –get that pesky petro contract problem solved.
russian business already considers Slovakia as its back door into the EU –none of the nations south and east, that is on the Black Sea side of the Carpathian Mountains –the great European watershed –are much interested in nuclear deterrance. And why would they be –the oil is to the east, and to the east there is less liberty but also less endless PoMo angst and cultural self-loathing. To the north of the Carpathians, see the new 21st century cold war front –now ideological rather than military anyway. Here we are over here, fighting to the intelectual death in a fog of fret about our goddamned health care, while the huge world ocean liner sails off toward…? Red Star? Swastika? Solar Disc? Utah?
Subotai, probably that EU was feeling more finlandized by the US than of the USSR !
Buddy, Russia has an “aggressive” capitalism goal, and times urge, cuz soon oil will be out, be by dry sources or be by new energy supplies
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/medvedev-oversees-deals-in-slovakia/403504.html
uh Slovakians are “slavic brothers”, got to think that Russia is looking after them again, d’ya remember, Russia entered into WW1 becuz Serbs had been attacked by those bloody German-Austrians !
Mr x, I’m afraid, you didn’t read the 30%, in a poor and ruined country like Kyrgyzstan, it’s a question of life or death
the ancient wisdom, biblical and seriously restated in Lincoln’s “House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand” speech, seems now, thru the info, digital, and globalization revolutions (‘real’ revolutions!), to apply to the house of the planet Earth. We need to remember the meaning of the thought –not that the house must fall (indeed, in driving down to the deepest level, a physical piece of the planet, or the planet itself, can’t ‘fall’ –fall from where, and to where?), but that one way or another the division of it will, because it must, end. i dunno –maybe the master program adjusts every thousand trips around the sun, or something. Anyoo the DC/Wall Street zombie jamboree sure showed up right on schedule, ten years either side of the accounting page turn at the millennial. Dissolve of USSR structure, too, at 1991, in the zone. now 2010 we’re at the other end of the zone. We the west now see our own errors, our own faults, our own lies, just as did the east at the front end of the tuern 20 years ago. So in a way, the east has jumped ahead, just as the west did at the previous millennial turnover. That previous turn, the east commenced fighting with itself, yielding, ceding the field to the west, and in China’s case, or say the Han people’s case relinquishing under a confident and ruthless central authority a previous thousand year global leadership in return for some relief from the same thousand year ‘small war’.
Long/short, can we learn, and if we can, what is the lesson?
Interesting speculation on fuzing a reentry vehicle, I’d never thought of it before yesterday.
It occurs to me that an accelerometer could be used to monitor the deceleration profile and therefore infer when the vehicle has descended to certain altitude, when it is nearly time to fire. I don’t have a good handle on the terminal speed, and more specifically the stagnation temperature at that point and also the retained heat – so I’m not sure if taking an optical or radar peek out the front would be practical or not. But I do recall reading of impressive decelerations of reentry vehicles (hundreds of Gs), so perhaps there’s hope for a reasonably low (M<3?) terminal speed?
Hmm, now I'm wondering whether advanced RVs are able to do any last-minute fine course corrections…? My guess is that they must (in order to get those CEPs), and that's so much of a bigger problem that simple fuzing for altitude ought to be (somehow) comparatively trivial.
RWE said:
“Some of the North Korean short range missile tests are clearly development flights for RVs and fuses – they don’t go very far at all but instead pitch over and drive the warhead back down under thrust to simulate ICBM velocities – we have done the same thing.”
NASA did this a bunch of times for the Apollo Program, e.g. Project Fire 1 & 2, AS-501, AS-502, etc. These sorts of test flights are called “pile drivers”.
Project Fire 1 was launched on 14 April 1964 by an Atlas launch vehicle. The payload was a reentry vehicle with three nested beryllium heat shields each separated by phenolic-asbestos insulators (no way the EPA would allow us to fly this today). After launch out of the atmosphere, the reentry vehicle was hammered back into the atmosphere by an Antares II-A5 solid rocket motor with a relative entry speed of 11.43 km/sec.
The reentry vehicle was spin stablized. As each heat shield melted down, the centripetal acceleration would spin off the old heat shield fragments and expose a new heat shield. The whole thing was wired to the gills with calorimeters, radiometers and high precision accelerometers. We still use Fire data today to calibrate our computer codes (I’ve used it extensively).
Fire 1 had an interesting failure mode and was not considered successful. Murphy of Murphy’s Law struck with a vengeance and somehow caused the jettisoned burned-out Antares rocket motor to get ahead of the reentry vehicle. Through out Fire 1′s descent, the bow shock from the Antares was flicking back and forth across Fire 1′s heat shield and invalidated the reentry data. Who would have thought such a goofy thing could happen? With Fire 2, they put a retro rocket on the Antares stage to make sure it would stay behind the reentry vehicle.
There has been some conversation about doing sample return missions from Saturn (return ring material geysered up from the moon Enceladus). The sample return vehicle could have a reentry speed of 16 km/sec. None of our current engineering models are capable of simulating that sort of reentry speed. It would be extremely useful to do another pile driver like Fire for these higher reentry velocities and advance our reentry engineering models beyond what was learned in the 1960s.
MC, shame on you, you must know that our president OboMa has decided the Austrian language means they are not Germans anymore!
For those interested, you might want to watch and listen to these videos:
New Rules of War with Hanson and Arguilla
Excellent discussion where Victor Davis Hanson explains why war is inseparable from the human condition.
I have completed watching two of the five videos and can tell you that these are vintage VDH, excellent through and through.
Papa Ray
Buddy
Many thanks Buddy for your link. I have spent the last couple of hours there. It is an amazing link. The writing, the feelings, the awsome pictures, the history of it all is breathtaking. I have also started reading her second story there about the “Serpent’s Wall”. It also is amazing.
From her story “Ghost Town” these words fit here, and also in VDH’s narrative.
All you have to do is look at her pictures and imagine that it could be your neighborhood at some time in the future. According to some, 400,000 have died from this comedy of errors.
And now it appears we have a Joker for our President.
May God guide us.
Papa Ray
Many thanks Buddy for your link. I have spent the last couple of hours there. It is an amazing link. The writing, the feelings the history of it all is breathtaking. I also started reading her second story there about the “The Serpents Wall“. It also is amazing.
From her story “Ghost Town” these words fit here, and also in VDH’s narrative.
All you have to do is look at her pictures and imagine that it could be your neighborhood at some time in the future. According to some, 400,000 have died from this comedy of errors.
And now it appears we have a Joker for our President.
May God guide us.
Papa Ray
JOHN Ridley, since full attribution seems warranted. Real pistol.
No.
Only once when he was telling a joke about an American arriving to Austria ready to go on a kangaroo safari. So I am not sure that would count.
Austria/Australia is ignorance but more sinister was the 57 slip –his “57 states in the USA” remark was defended as a mis-speak –while thinking ’50′, he said ’57′. However, coincidentally, there IS a 57 state OIC, the Organization of the Isalmic Conference, a permanent delegation to the United Nations, with 57 member states. Dedicated to ‘recovering the occupied territories of the Palestinian peoples’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisation_of_the_Islamic_Conference
YES –John Ridley, he did some major league news distorting for NPR, trying to get Kerry elected, and got caught at it, joining perforce the galloping Dan Rather and Mary Mapes, ghost writers in the lie.
Papa Ray, yep, from your persona on the net i’d've figured you to catch the strange wind blowing thru that story. The wormwood is a real chill, and that’s the truth. Chernobyl released into a wind at that time of year took radioactive particles right over West Germany, which set off the near revolutionary Green Party gains in the Bundestag, and energized green parties all over thw world –resulting in here, that many more obstructions to American energy development. In a way, Chernobyl was the shovel they dug our grave with, the grave we’re trying to climb back out of now, hollering against the darkness “Nope, ain’t dead yet, you betcha!” –Wormwood, Revelations, indeed indeed indeed, are they chance or are they little glimpses of something seen and sent back to us from the future past.
I spent the afternoon with a friend from Houston, who drove up to talk a little biz but mainly to talk about his son the Marine in Afghanistan, and what the Kyrg news means. I just listen, these days i’m fresh out of thoughts. all i know is that a president is very very important to morale, and it’s a bad thing to have the wrong thing in the office. The kid dropped out of A&M to do Four in the Corp for the Country –and, well, hell, here we old farts sit watching the Unkpapa and Lakota and Cheyenne all around creeping thru the greasy grass