The Consolations of Philosophy
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Peace Activists on the Flotilla
Never mind what the press or the diplomats say happened, the above is what happened. The Times Online reports that “Security Council members, who had broken off from their spring holiday to hold an emergency session prepared a draft document calling on Israel to lift its blockade and immediately release the ships and hundreds of international activists arrested on board them. ” That some of the “peace activists” were members of the Islan Haklary Ve Hurriyetleri Vakfi, itself an organization of ill-repute, is irrelevant. Nothing must get in the way of the narrative, the facts least of all. But the reason anyone should care about the gap between reality and conventional wisdom has nothing to do with what one may think of Israel. The main reason to worry is that it illustrates the Western addiction to fiction, an addiction which sooner or later will have practical consequences. That addiction was also being pandered to on the other side of the world.
Another truth that no one wishes to admit is that North Korea sank the South Korean warship Cheonan, an act which the Security Council will no account denounce with the same vehemence as the interception of the “peace activists.” Notwithstanding the physical evidence nor the recovery of the North Korean torpedo which sank the ship, since China doesn’t admit to North Korea’s culpability what is factually true can never become officially true. It’s the narrative and the narrative and the narrative. The Christian Science Monitor reports that Seoul is already adjusting itself to the emerging line.
One day after China refused to take a stand against North Korea over the March 26 sinking of South Korea’s Cheonan naval ship, South Korea appears to be moderating its rhetoric against the North over the Cheonan sinking. …
First, South Korea’s defense ministry said it was putting off a propaganda campaign of balloon drops and mega-loudspeaker broadcasts into North Korea that the North had said it would answer by firing into the speakers. Then South Korea’s unification ministry indicated the government was carefully modulating its responses to the Cheonan sinking in order to test the North Korean response.
“We should decide policy considering various considerations,” was the highly ambivalent reply of the vice unification minister, Um Jong-sik, when asked why the government had decided to delay a propaganda blitz that was certain to invite outrage from the North.
Both cases demonstrate that nothing is more paramount either to the establishment nor to the politically correct sections of the media than the maintenance of a lie. For the lie is in the service of the greater good. High reasons of policy will be invoked to explain why the truth should not be so. But the extreme reliance on fantasy by parts of the Western establishment goes well beyond surrounding a kernel of the truth with a “bodyguard of lies.” Instead it is the lie itself which is guarded by even more falsehoods. Gradually and inexorably, an entire political class has staked its existence on continuation of falsehood. The greater good is the fiction. Deception has become a necessity in itself.
As a result, any moderately well informed individual knows that there is no Islamic extremism, nor even terrorism. There are only man made disasters. Everybody knows that we can borrow our way out of debt, that the welfare state is the sustainable wave of the future; that Egypt has no border with Gaza through which it can provide supplies if it wanted; that the UN has kept Hezbollah from importing hundreds of missiles into Lebanon; that the thought of a handful of Jews has kept hundreds of millions of oil-rich Muslims from attaining prosperity; and that Global Warming is the main danger facing the planet Earth. That these assertions are untrue hardly matters; that they are indisputable is what seems to count. For who shall dispute them?
Reality might. And therein lies the problem.
Here’s what is going to happen with one hundred percent certainty. All of these lies will explode with considerable force in the faces of political establishment. Nothing can prevent it. Just as reality eventually exposed the hollowness of the financial bubble and showed that nothing was “too big to fail,” eventually it will demonstrate to our extreme cost, that no lie can be maintained forever. That is the real reason anyone should really care about what happened on the “peace flotilla.” We are as corrupt as a preacher in a whorehouse. It ain’t what we don’t know that will hurt us, it’s what we know that ain’t so that will drive the dagger into our hearts.
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The Jihad Flotilla and the Media War Against Israel
Who still dares call a spade a spade?
The wardrobe malfunctions of the various Emperors are blindingly obvious to those judgemental enough to question the fitness of our rulers.
Only some people actually have enough personal integrity to bitterly resent being lied to. Legitimate institutions worthy of the allegiance of honorable men avoid rubbing their constituents’ noses in mendacity.
They no longer respect or fear their marks or they would be less blatant about it.
I’ll consider the anti-Israeli narrative (from the Turks, Europeans, Obama, whoever ..) when Hamas (a.k.a. Iranian) missiles fly into European cities. As long as Palestinians, Arab’s, and Iranians intend to kill every Israeli Jew – man, woman, or child, I support Israel’s ABSOLUTE right to self-defense. That defense includes a Naval blockade, and killing armed “Peace protesters” trying to circumvent the legitimate sovereign will of the Israeli government. The only question I have is whether nation-states such as Turkey actually understand the consequences of their actions, which would be war at their doorstep. When they support surrogates in a war action another sovereign state (i.e. Israel), they in effect have declared war against that sovereign state.
I am sorry about any Palestinian innocents who may get in the way of an Israeli bullet, particularly so, when they are pushed to the front by uncaring Palestinian leaders.
Israeli has her back against the wall. Iran is loading up Lebanon and the West bank with offensive missiles seconds from major Israeli populations centers. Iran has demonstrated the will and is demonstrating the means to exterminate the Jewish state. Obama’s government in America has all but declared that it will support Israel’s enemies with it’s last vote at the UN which would impose a unilateral Nuclear disarmament regimen on Israel. (Barry Obama, that feckless nave, will be the author of the next Middle Eastern war possibly the first Nuclear action since WWII, through his “even handed” support of Israel and her enemies.)
Israeli’s actions should be seen as the start of her desperate “last stand” defense, rather than from a political perspective.
- OldSalt
One of the more interesting historical examples of fantasy was that of the Far Eastern colonial empires before World War 2. They were addicted to fantasy because it was politically unacceptable to make the investments and endure the rigor which would perforce come with facing the facts. It was one thing for Europeans to spread the myth of Western invincibility to overawe the natives. It was quite another to believe it themselves. And they did, because they had become too lazy, too invested in the social rigamarole to make the effort that would result otherwise. The thought was the father of the deed. And the deed was fatal.
Everything that was wrong about the European empires is contained in that one, throwaway phrase, which probably got some approving laughs. That attitude was the single greatest cause of the subsequent catastrophe. The lack of aircraft, the bad plans, the poor execution, the obsolete materiel. None of these compared to the curse of that arrogance. The incredible inability to even hear the threats the enemy makes today; to understand the plain language of his menaces when they are uttered unequivocally; the reluctance to believe the obvious facts now, in 2010, are every bit as dangerous as Shenton’s crazy attitude.
The collapse of Singapore was stunningly swift. People who had only a few weeks before worried about what they were going to wear to the Raffles were marched off to concentration camps where they would soon be glad of grubs and maggoty rice. The colonial empires had lasted so long that the generations who grew up within its system of privilege believed it was a part of nature. They began to mistake manner for actual superiority. Cocktail laughter, Oxbridge connections, polo playing ability became more important than competence. Today we elect people who look good and speak in complete sentences because it has become more important than the possession common sense. We choose leaders with no executive ability because they are ‘cool’. And are we any better than those ghosts of the Raffles? Or is it just the same old foolish reliance on fashion in place of brains?
Superiority became tautological. Doubters were reviled as rubes. The empires had to last because the yellow man was inferior. The fact of the Zero, the Kido Butai, the Japanese advance across China, even the collapse of the European governments before the Nazis did nothing to shake this terrible, terrible addiction to fantasy.
In fact the British Army in Singapore was completely and utterly overmatched. It was rapidly defeated by a much smaller force; a qualitatively superior force. Only after they had accepted this fact, after they had come to turns with reality was a recovery and eventual victory possible in Burma.
It was the existence of an unforseen circumstance — the power of the United States — that made even a small recovery of the old European empires possible. Left to themselves they would have been fighting the Japanese way into the 1950s if they had ever persisted that long. In the event the Empires themselves were eventually doomed. But it would have been a bold man to have claimed that in the spring of 1940.
Of all the handicaps that a culture can labor under, no disadvantage is quite so heavy as an addiction to lies. The sheer inability of the intellectual and cultural leaders, the priests of political correctness, to see past their own conceits is a terrible burden to endure.
There is no epithet so foul as ‘peaceactivist’.
The f word, the c word, the n word; they are almost compliments by comparison.
When I really detest someone, and wish to express my contempt, I will call him the p word.
The yellow man was inferior when the white man arrived, technologically, militarily, organizationally, or the yellow man would have driven the white man off.
Empire-building is not for shrinking violets. Keeping an empire is mostly about cowing the subject peoples and keeping them cowed. That takes more balls and moral certitude than the white man can muster up anymore.
“When the harm be done, there will be no curing it.” The Iliad
“It was the existence of an unforseen circumstance — the power of the United States — that made even a small recovery of the old European empires possible. Left to themselves they would have been fighting the Japanese way into the 1950s if they had ever persisted that long. In the event the Empires themselves were eventually doomed. But it would have been a bold man to have claimed that in the spring of 1940.”
Containment and George Kennan, The Marshall Plan, and European Socialism.
Limbaugh:
“He recognized they were bad people. His assessment of how to contain them was incorrect. He did not say that they were inherently bad or evil people. They were just insecure. Which, course, was not the case — and Kennan, if you want to know, was one of the foremost intellectual architects of the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan is where we rebuilt Europe after World War II. So I’m glad the caller mentioned George Kennan because I haven’t heard that name in I don’t know how long. Throughout the eighties and even into the nineties — well, mostly the eighties when the Cold War was hot and when Reagan came along. That’s when George Kennan’s stature rose again. Because Reagan scared the left.
“Oh, no! Reagan’s going to wipe these guys out! The bombing starts in five minutes,” and that wasn’t containment. They feared annihilation where, of course, the Soviets would fire back and we would lose. (interruption) Well, I’m not going to sit here and criticize the Marshall Plan. It’s a done deal. It’s over and done with. I would have to say that the roots — in my humble opinion, just off the top of my fertile mind, since you’ve asked me, Snerdley, just what I think of the Marshall Plan — I’ll bet you that we could commission a study, and we would find that the building blocks of Western European socialism are intricately bound to the Marshall Plan. You remember Churchill. Churchill was victorious in World War II, and two months later he’s voted out of office because he was perceived…
And Thatcher. There’s a great story on this in the American Spectator today on Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill, contrasts in conservatives. It’s a study for anybody who wants to study conservatism today, which model to take. So the Marshall Plan comes along and we basically rebuilt the place, and it was a giant welfare project, maybe born of good intentions. I mean, the place had been destroyed. But has anybody ever rebuilt us? We’ve done it ourselves. So I’ve always been suspicious of the Marshall Plan as having a… I don’t know what impact or how big a role, but clearly European socialism has been on the march for many, many, many, many moons — I mean years, decades — before it began its fervent march here.
You asked me about the Marshall Plan and George Kennan. The thing you gotta understand about George Kennan and the reason why he was so revered with all these other contradictory things about him: He never, ever wanted to defeat the Soviets. He wanted to contain them, and as you know, that became the bible of our foreign policy with the Soviets. Contain them, balance of power. What’s her name, the idiot. Madeleine Albright. “We need two or three more superpowers. We can’t be the lone superpower! We need another superpower so that it’s balanced out out there,” making no moral distinction between the good guys and the bad guys. “No matter if the United States is an agent for good in the world, an agent for decency. We need a competing superpower to keep ourselves in check.”
That was the thinking. And you can see the survival of the George Kennan belief system, the containment, today. What are we doing with Iran? What are we doing in North Korea? We’re trying to contain them. We’re trying to contain Al-Qaeda, although with Al-Qaeda, we are going to war with them at various places but we’re not trying to wipe ‘em out. We’re trying to contain them into certain countries, areas of certain countries. Now, the Marshall Plan. At the time the Marshall Plan was underway, it was criticized for not eliminating Central Planning. The Marshall Plan kept in place the whole Central Planning concept there. It was criticized for not eliminating Central Planning and restoring a market economy in Europe. It didn’t do that, especially in those countries which had adopted more fascist and corporatist economic policies. So it was a money giveaway. “Here. We’re going to rebuild you,” but we didn’t require any change.
We rebuilt a totally destroyed continent, but we rebuilt it as it was. So that’s why I say the Marshall Plan helped cement the whole notion of European socialism. They just got to sit around and soak it all up. They didn’t have to do anything for it. In fact, they required us to bail ‘em out on the war in the first place.”
Rolling Back the Socialist Tide
Yes, Israel is being framed. And it does not have to be
a very good frame for Israel’s enemies to immediately pass a Bill of Attainder.
In retrospect, not only should the boarding party not shown so much restraint, there should have been no boarding party.
Instead, the flotilla should have been sunk without warning. That would have gone a long way towards Israel confirming that they will be the badasses that survive regardless of what their opponents think of them. If they do that, hostilities will greatly abate.
Again using 20-20 hindsight: Had the right kind of warhead been available, this would have been a darned good time to have used a nuke. A wildly disproportionate response with one of those oh-so-horrible things would have persuaded many, many towelheads——starting with Iran—–that they really
don’t need WMDs themselves. This is quite contrary to what our reactions would be. But we are Westerners and Christian Gentlemen. We fight back. Our problem children are orientals. They (for the most part) are neither Christians nor Gentlemen. They are bullies who
can’t wait to make dhimmis of themselves when faced with
determination.
Try to keep that in mind folks.
One of the things that Israel will get whacked with is that the interception took place in ‘international waters’.
Can anyone think of any good operational reason that prevented the IDF from letting the p***ceact*****ts from crossing the line before going in?
We choose leaders with no executive ability because they are ‘cool’.
I’m thinking the simultaneous rise of Lady Gaga and Barack Obama is no coincidence.
Salt Lick: Have Barack Obama and Lady Gaga EVER been seen together???????
Doug@#8: Doug I think El Rushbo slightly missed the mark. The Marshall Plan basically consisted of supplying their central banks (Banks of Issue) with sufficient dollars to provide backing for their local currencies. This was in view of the fact that Yurps had their precious metals looted and their industries flattened. Dollars—–then convertible to gold at $35 an ounce by governments——were the means of filling the gap. It worked because they used primarily free-market techniques to get going again. It was after the rebuild that their social welfare states began taking off. Same thing here: The (soi disant) Great Society etc had to wait until the effedts of the Depression and WWII were overcome before indulgences could take place.
However, Rush is right about the drawbacks of containment. While it was the best we could do to start with, it had to be replaced with “We win, they lose”, and not a moment too soon.
One of the tactical advantages the left has over the center/right is they give permission to overschooled but undereducated and underintelligent, immature, intellectually foppish camp followers to look at themselves as being super bright and one of the “cool kids”.
Take someone who got a bachelor’s in some BS subject like women’s English Lit, failed to thrive in the real world and ended up being a public school teacher, someone who watched as others more bright and competent (but not necessarily as schooled) than themself succeeded both in terms of material stuff and respect in the community.
The left tells that person that all they have to do is listen to NPR (an activity which also has the effect of reinforcing the narrative and screening out data which tends to shred the narrative), read all the right blogs and parrot their platitudes (understanding is not required), go to a few “candle light vigils” or “walks for ____________”, vote for the “correct” people like Obama, and they can then go about their life calling themselves very smart and savvy, and can consider themselves to be morally superior and better human beings, regardless of whether or not the facts and results support those conclusions.
Instead of opinions or voting being logically derived things based on true western values, they are badges worn at the direction of others to identify to the world (you think) that you are OK, in order to deal with your insecurities regarding your lack of success in the real world. Understanding and sincerity are not required. Simply vote for Obama, listen to NPR (and make sure you tell everyone you do), hate gun owners and Christians, and you, too, can go through life knowing that you are one of the very very smart elite ones.
It should never be underestimated how strongly this all appeals to a certain type of person.
no mo uro: Since you have signed in at your (lovable)
curmudgeonly best, I reckon I can go to sleep now.
You might want to peruse Sowell’s “Visions of the Annointed”. Good look at self-congratulation as the basic for public policy.
At any rate, insomnia has been replaced by irresitible drowsiness, so catch you later.
Dave,
Be sure to read this:
Rolling Back the Socialist Tide
Fascinating read about Labor’s victory over reality after WWII.
Much like the Ascendancy of
“We are the people we have been waiting for.”
—
“Vision of the Annointed”.
Is a must read for the current circumstance.
I think I may know where it is tucked away.
reality eventually exposed the hollowness of the financial bubble and showed that nothing was “too big to fail,”
But it did not to those in charge. Where is the prison holding Chris Dodd, Barney Franks, Jamie Gorelick, Franklin Raines and Barack Obama who created the trillion dollar fraud? When the organs of power, to use Old Left terminology, are controlled by what is in effect a parasitic conspiracy the ability of the systems, economic or political, to return to the mean when disturbed fails. In constitutional terms the government becomes unable to guarantee a Republican form to the States or execute its responsibilities, protecting against invasion or insurrection, to them. The interests of the controlling elite and the constituent citizenry diverge. Since the costs are borne by the citizens and not by those creating the fraud the perpetrators are empowered to progressively corrupt more institutions.
This is the Gramscian march that happens first in education, then in international forums, and proceeded through religious establishments into the communications, the legal and then the financial services industries. Now that they are established and ensured that they suffer no sanction for the damage caused, they were “to big to fail,” they can paralyze the central government and then deconstruct the residual pools of market information and popular sovereignty.
That explains the pressure being brought on Arizona. Both Israel and Arizona are places where the alternative narrative, reality based information, persists. That in addition to simple political thuggery and traditional antisemitism underlay the hostility of the parasites to both. Many Jews thought their political affiliation with the Left and their personal support for fantasies would have protected them but they misjudged. The linkage between the antisemitic fantasy, the Islamic supremacist fantasy, the socialist fantasy and the national socialist fantasy go very deep. Antisemitism truly is as August Bebel said “the socialism of fools.”
People who had only a few weeks before worried about what they were going to wear to the Raffles were marched off to concentration camps where they would soon be glad of grubs and maggoty rice…
Superiority became tautological. Doubters were reviled as rubes…
It was rapidly defeated by a much smaller force; a qualitatively superior force…
Of all the handicaps that a culture can labor under, no disadvantage is quite so heavy as an addiction to lies. The sheer inability of the intellectual and cultural leaders, the priests of political correctness, to see past their own conceits is a terrible burden to endure.
This excerpted quote describes to a “T” what current actions by our administration are doing to collapse the western civilization. And what will happen to the elites/progressives. You are a very insightful cat Wretchard! Top notch in my book.
Every time Israel is wedged like this, given no choice but to act, the media rise up and condemn. They don’t condemn those who will not recognise Israel, those who keep attacking it. The wall is seen as unfair, not the bombings which made it necessary. The attack on Gaza was characterised as brutal, not the rocket attacks from Hamas and Hezbollah. The people of Gaza have themselves to blame for the situation they are now in – they were given a chance to show that they deserved to be part of a two state solution – they blew it big time, and elected Hamas as some sort of crazy defiance move. The two state solution is a forlorn dream, an ever-receding mirage which the so-called palestinians are in fact unworthy of. Let them go to Jordan, which is as Palestinian as anywhere ever will be, or Lebanon, or Syria. All this makes no sense to the Friends of Gaza – who are no friends to the free world.
Jordan and Egypt managed to reach a form of accommodation with Israel. Lebanon could have. Turkey has slipped backwards under the Islamists, who now seek to kill their Army, who in turn might topple them if left to their normal routines. Lebanon is a glove puppet again. Syria not much better. I am quite disgusted at the way the western media is piling on at this time. Wretchard is right. The comfort of the quilt of lies is illusory, and it will go up in flames.
“For the British military command in Singapore, war was still fought by the ‘rule book’.”
I have a book written by an RAF pilot who fought in the defense of Malaysia. He describes how the RAF fighters scrambled, and on the way to intercept the Japanese noted a flight of twin engined aircraft a short distance away. They recognized them, said “Those are ours bombers.” and did not investigate. But in fact they were Japanese operated Lockheed Model 14’s and copies of them, carrying paratroops for the invasion.
Last that night, after a day of disaster, the pilots got together at a hotel for dinner. Dinner at a downtown hotel! I think after that Americans would have been eating cold beans out of a can at the airfield as they manned their guns.
As for the Peace Flotilla, Fox News was showing video that explained the “Israel opened fire first.” Israeli commandos boarded the lead ship, were beaten by men with steel rods, were having their guns taken from them and only opened fire when they received permission to do so.
Buy Ammo
If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything. – Mark Twain
One of the things that Israel will get whacked with is that the interception took place in ‘international waters’.
One possible response.
Wretchard is so very right. A line is being drawn in the sand, we don’t see it clearly just yet but there will come a day (sooner than I would like, but come it will none the less) when there are but two choices; Stand with the priciples of classical Western Civilization or march down the Path of Folly into a new utopian Dark Age.
We have (as a planet)have followed the Insane Socialist Dream too often in the past century, at the cost of oceans of blood and mountains of treasure, for any reasonable person to think that The Lie will ever (or could ever)turn out differently. Thus, the only reasonable deduction is that the proponents of The Lie must have that result is the expected outcome.
I for one do not wish, or intend, to participate in the New & Improved Marxist/Islamic Utopian People’s Nirvana.
And I will not march quietly into that darkness.
I wonder what the Big Zero would do if one of our ships was torpedoed?
What would the Big Zero do if “The religion of Peace” started a flotilla of peace activists ships bring AK47s, RPGs and explosives into Detroit River to liberate the oppressed Muslims in Detroit – probably the same as the IDF (if he did anything at all).
22. Barry Meislin
That looks good, plus IIRC the Oslo Accords gave the IDF the right to monitor access to Gaza. But, in thinking aboutit, the Palis have never followed ANY rules so why should their supporter/allies bother?.
20. what is “occupation” the only change I would make is; Buy (more) Ammo.
The tide has already swept in. We are submerged in a sea of idiocy.
How else can you explain how a person who actively promotes racial division, deviancy of every description, and the elevation of our enemies can get elected to the highest office? Reality is whatever you want it be and words have no meaning. Obama is not the cause – merely a manifestation.
It is not whether or not we are entering a Dark Age. We are already there.
Consoled as he may have been, Boëthius still lost his head.
27. Cris,
Let us hope that that Philosophy spares us such consolation and allows us to keep our heads, figuratively as well as literally!
26. Peter Boston,
In my darker moments I would agree with you, much hangs on the November elections, and those in 2012. I think that there may still be enough design margin left to allow for a correction without a catastrophe. Hence my agreement with “what is “occupation”" about the desirability of larger supplies of self defense. The tide may be rising, thus it behooves the Keepers of the Light to move to higher ground (and be ready to defend it).
Ledger , Having seen Detroit last summer, the proper course would be to let the activists have it. Maybe they can turn it into a Palestinian homeland and let the local Gangster Disciples become the new Hamas.
The “peace activists” off Israels shores were in the mode of activists outside the pentagon written about by norman mailer in armies of the night back in 1967.
word this morning on the tv is that the “peace activists” want to do it again.
hopefully the Israelis will figure out a different strategy for dealing with this stuff. I liked the idea of disabling the propeller mentioned earlier. But there are likely other better ideas.
29. trangbang68
No. Don’t even think that.
“One of the things that Israel will get whacked with is that the interception took place in ‘international waters’.”
Doesn’t matter. Blockades ARE Legal, or at least sanctioned by International treaty, which is as close as it gets to legal in this world. Where that blockade takes place is irrelevant. The US blockade of Cuba was done in “international waters”.
The thing to remember about propaganda is that there is no history of it ever succeeding in the long term. Short term yes but over the long haul the facts stay and the propaganda fades. The Propaganda Campaign against Israel is over 40 years old. Israel is still there and it would take forever to list all the clever lies that were created then died over that 40+ years. The first modern propaganda campaign was created by Nazi Germany. We know how that ended. The Soviet Union took up the mantel and got extremely good at propaganda. So good that they believed their lies, which was a major cause of their collapse.
The MSM has the attention span of a sex starved rabbit. In a week it will be something else. Meanwhile, Egypt has opened their side of the border. That means Hamas will be getting major weapons supplies from Iran. That will force Israel to respond in some way. Blockade of Egypt? Canceling the peace treaty with Egypt? Attacking Iran? Who knows, Israel has such a huge technical advantage over it’s enemies that they have many options.
“Gentlemen, you may be sure that of the three courses open to the enemy, he will always choose the fourth.”*
*
_Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke to his staff
No drilling in ANWR
No drilling on shore
No drilling close to shore
A massive oil leak in Gulf deep water, with a convenient
bureaucratic snafu to prevent repairs, etc…etc…etc…
All to keep America beholden to a death cult,
All to bring Israel’s only support down, so that the vultures can eat their Jewish carrion. Anti-oil politics, The Green movement, Cap and trade, Global Socialism, all seem geared for one thing – A Final Solution, and a beast to be born to accomplish it!
.
A vulture was hacking at my feet. It had already torn my boots and stockings to shreds, now it was hacking at the feet themselves. Again and again it struck at them, then circled several times restlessly round me, then returned to continue its work. A gentleman passed by, looked on for a while, then asked me why I suffered the vulture. “I’m helpless,” I said. “When it came and began to attack me, I of course tried to drive it away, even to strangle it, but these animals are very strong, it was about to spring at my face, but I preferred to sacrifice my feet. Now they are almost torn to bits.”
“Fancy letting yourself be tortured like this!” said the gentleman. “One shot and that’s the end of the vulture.” “Really?” I said. “And would you do that?” “With pleasure,” said the gentleman, “I’ve only got to go home and get my gun. Could you wait another half hour?” “I’m not sure about that,” said I, and stood for a moment rigid with pain. Then I said: “Do try it in any case, please.” “Very well,” said the gentleman, “I’ll be as quick as I can.”
During this conversation the vulture had been calmly listening, letting its eye rove between me and the gentleman. Now I realized that it had understood everything; it took wing, leaned far back to gain impetus, and then, like a javelin thrower, thrust its beak through my mouth, deep into me. Falling back, I was relieved to feel him drowning irretrievably in my blood, which was filling every depth, flooding every shore. Franz Kafka
“These are not the droids you are looking for”
It’s that old Jedi mind trick, these are not the torpedos you are looking for.
how come that those *activists* opened fire first? its all can be seen on video that was made during the accident.
wretchard, great post, and with the addendum about Singapore.
It is after all the defining characteristic of the progressive to dream, and it is easier to pretend to attainment of the dream than to actually get there. Not to mention inflating any contingent fact into a necessary essence. “I AM THE GREATEST” screams Mohammed Ali, and on that day, perhaps he was, but even if so sic transit gloria mundi.
Then again there is poor sick multiply traumatized senile Europe. Local BC consensus seems to agree with their servile reaction to screaming, seething muslim goatherders. Sic transit gloria mundi.
I suggest it is simply time for us to stop playing patty-cake with the like of these. If we have a mission in Afghanistan, let us be about it. And perhaps, at this point, we owe it to ourselves to take on such a mission. Maybe it’s time to make good on that Viet Nam cliche, destroying a place in order to save it. Don’t even tell me we’re incapable of such things, all those bombs and bombers we have didn’t just grow there by accident.
–
But rather than go on in that vein, we have – Obama. I see he features high on your subject of fantasies. Indeed, my analysis from day one has been that he features high on the list of Americans acting even more servile than the Europeans. Elect a guy who calls himself Barack Hussein Obama? I don’t want to know a goddamn thing about a man with such a name, the idea of such being elected president a few years after 9/11, is absurd, disgusting, wretched, vile.
Well then, …
Son of Max @ 10: I think the Israelis decided to do it in international waters because they were there at night, and they were trying for surprise and/or hindered video coverage, perhaps they even had word of additional ships planning to meet them nearer to shore. Plus, in general, the closer to the goal, the higher the stakes. There was no legal issue at all of them doing it in international waters, though I suppose from a PR point of view they could have done it closer in. OTOH, if they were even on the horizon from Gaza shore, the Israeli naval forces could have taken fire from shore, or a sally of small boats from shore. Israel’s navy is nothing like a US fleet.
LOTM @ 16: OK, but your jail should have ten times the number of wall street execs, it is NOT NOT NOT the political class that created the bubble, other than a misguided and senile Alan Greenspan and his low (negative) real interest rates. Do not mistake your political fantasy for the facts of the matter here and let the actual perps get away free.
One thing not discussed so far is what this does to the internal politics of Turkey. There is a history of the generals stepping in and overthrowing the government when it deviates too far from Kemal’s vision. Do they really want to be aligned with Iran and their allies or be a part of the west? What happens to NATO if Turkey becomes 100% Islamist?
wretchard:
So, what does it mean that Singapore’s political establishment has decided that its dependency upon “US dominance and intellectual leadership” is no longer wise?
wretchard writes: “Of all the handicaps that a culture can labor under, no disadvantage is quite so heavy as an addiction to lies. The sheer inability of the intellectual and cultural leaders, the priests of political correctness, to see past their own conceits is a terrible burden to endure.”
And Anton writes: “Stand with the priciples of classical Western Civilization or march down the Path of Folly into a new utopian Dark Age.”
Richard’s title, “The Consolotions of Philosophy,” refers to the great prose-poem of late antiquity, “The Consolation of Philosophy,” written (c. 523 A.D.) by the Roman senator Boethius. From an old senatorial family, educated in the classics, he was in prison for (allegedly) plotting against the Ostrogoth emperor Theodoric. The quotation from Richard, above, could serve as a summary of the “Consolation,” in which the prisoner Boethius, guided by Lady Philosophy, works towards an understanding of lies and truth.
After Boethius . . . the troubles and tribulations and tribalisms of the Dark Ages. But the Middle Ages never forgot Boethius or the “Consolation,” the greatest of works of late antiquity.
Chaucer was a disciple of Boethius and a student of the “Consolation.” Here is a stanza (modernized a little) from “Lack of Steadfastness”
“Sometime this world was so steadfast and stable
That man’s word was [his] obligacioun;
And now it is so false and deceivable
That word and deed, as in conclusion,
Be nothing alike, for turned up-so-down
Is all this world for mede [gain] and wilfulnesse,
That all is lost for lack of steadfastnesse.”
meanwhile, “activists” are saying they will send two more ships.
oh, goodie.
I think, in general, the more they try this, the better the Israelis look, almost no matter how they handle it.
Great, The North Koreans and I.H. are waging “Peace” on the high seas. The UN lost their legitimacy long before they elected Iran to the Woman’s Rights counsel. Words have lost their meanings or humans any assignment there of.
The Canadians are NOW saying that their cradle to grave health care model is unsustainable.
@32. Rosinante
The thing to remember about propaganda is that there is no history of it ever succeeding in the long term.
The propaganda that associates German National Socialists and Italian Fascists with “The Right Wing” has been highly successful over the last sixty-five years.
Thomas Jefferson wrote a highly successful piece of anti-British propaganda 234 years ago.
Gateway Pundit has tracked the connection between Bill Ayers, Bernadette Dohrn, and Jodie Evans – all on the Obama’s buddies list – and a Turkish based terrorist group to the Gaza Idiots.
Media Matters is pissed, not because Ayers, Dohrn, and Evans are openly chummy with Islamist terrorists, but because somebody had the temerity to point out how close all these enemies of civilization are to Obama.
anton #28
It’s not the end of the world. Plato and Aristotle came after Athenian democracy was trashed by the Spartans. I just have no illusions about how deep this hole is and how much our polity has already been transformed into a patron-client ‘archy of some sort. Republicans on the Hill get a better class of clients.
If there are more idiot ships can we get Jane Fonda on one of them?
PB @ 42: If there are more idiot ships can we get Jane Fonda on one of them?
LOL! Maybe Ted will pay for her ticket!
Y’know, the Turks seem to want the “credit” for this, and I can’t help but think they are playing to Obama as if he were a Moslem, hoping he will play along. And he may yet.
But if he does, I think it may finally be too much for Rahm Emanuel, and maybe even too much for Hildabeast.
Fun threatens us from all sides.
news Flash, Al Gore and wife are “amicably separating”.
–is anything not connected to everything anymore?
BTW, someone at BP had named the block where the spill is, the “Macondo Prospect”.
Also, the oil and gas were burning off on their own, until the fire ships sank the rig.
Also, the man who made the on-site decision to displace the 14-plus pound mud with 9 lb seawater (and who is now unable for ‘medical reasons’ to speak with the outside world) made an error tantamount –in danger and clarity as well –to playing russian roulette with all six chambers loaded, on the excuse that he was in too much of a hurry to waste time unloading five of the chambers.
Also, there is much, much more on this –so much i’m afraid of it. I spent years on the rigs, I understand the details and the mechanics, and i’ve spent a year or two studying the financial meltdown, too. I’m nearing the point of needing the consolation of philosophy.
*** from the wiki, Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude:
In the narrative of One Hundred Years of Solitude, the town grows from a tiny settlement with almost no contact with the outside world, to eventually become a large and thriving place, before a banana plantation is set up. The establishment of the banana plantation lead to Macondo’s downfall, followed by a gigantic windstorm that wipes it from the map. As the town grows and falls, different generations of the Buendía family play important roles, contributing to its development.
The fall of Macondo comes first as a result of a four-year rainfall, which destroyed most of the town’s supplies and image. During the years following the rainfall, the town begins to empty, as does the Buendía home. The final stroke is, in fact, presaged in the manuscripts written by Melquíades 100 years before.
***
“Magic realism” –the new category named for the work of this author.
I think possibly the most ominous part of this scenario is that Turkey appears to have overtly and categorically crossed the line into whatever complex anti-American alliance is currently represented by Iran/Hezbollah/HAMAS (I will refrain from mentioning the Shanghai Cooperation Organization). Running a provocation out of one’s country – particularly one as blunt as this one – is probably a form gang-style induction hit: “here – you have to prove one last thing: go provoke an international crisis for Israel, and then we’ll talk about the next steps of our larger cooperation.” I consider, for example, Putin’s recent declaration that Turkey is now a “strategic partner.”
I think prior to this event Turkey’s loyalty to US/NATO was clearly wavering, but the oscillations could be plausibly explained by short-term regional self-interest and similar consolations. But now things are different. Turkey has already announced that the next “aid group” convoys will be escorted by the Turkish Navy. This is not good.
Interesting that North Korea and Turkey should at virtually the same time and for no apparent strategic or public relations reason decide to radically alter their relationship with their nearest rivals and farther negotiating partners. I’m thinking this is a much more ominous situation than it appears to be.
33. Right Wing Realist
From the previous thread, I had a few comments, of which you might look at. But still, most don’t really understand what exactly our present day progressive liberals are all about. Read the VDH link, he gets more than surface deep.
37. Paul from Boston
One thing not discussed so far is what this does to the internal politics of Turkey. There is a history of the generals stepping in and overthrowing the government when it deviates too far from Kemal’s vision. Do they really want to be aligned with Iran and their allies or be a part of the west? What happens to NATO if Turkey becomes 100% Islamist?
It has been discussed here and in other places. Turkey is finally going to be able to go “All Islamic”. Their military has been jailed, brought up on charges and are going to be shackled from now on out. The Islamics in Turkey have won. Not withstanding another coup, which nobody expects, since most of those who would do so are behind bars, with more to follow.
43 Josh
“Fun threatens us from all sides.”
Well if we had a real leader I would use that word. But as it is with Obama and his backers running the show, I won’t go as far as to call it “fun”.
Maybe “Terrifying” would be my word.
44. buddy larsen
Heh…are you referring to this kind of Macacdo?
This might look like a man caused disaster but Mother Nature had the high card and you can be sure she will play it whenever it is least expected.
We are just children playing in her back yard.
Papa Ray
Yes, it is time for the fantasies to be put aside and for reality to be faced, for otherwise a ‘nuclear realty’ will sooner or later be imposed upon us.
If Israel acts as the proverbial ‘canary in the coal mine’ for the West, then it can also act as the way-shower.
The primary obstacle to Israel fulfilling that function is its own left, which has fully bought into the narrative of political correctness.
Israel’s back is against the wall, which the recent anti-Israel resolution passed last Friday at the UN’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference demonstrated.
That is the first of many realities Israel must face.
Obama isn’t going to lift a finger to stop Iran, he’s already decided that he can live with a nuclear Iran.
Which means Iran is going to get the bomb.
Israel is going to have to figure out how to live with it too.
That’s the next reality Israel must accept.
Israel has already proven that she can withstand conventional armies and conventional attacks.
It is a nuclear attack upon Israel, direct or terrorist, which poses a mortal danger to Israel.
It is virtually certain that Israel’s liberal left will stick their heads in the sand and, propose acceptance of conditions that would lead to Israel’s surrender and dissolution or genocidal extermination.
Between the Israeli left and Islam, the left is the far greater threat because they are blocking the implementation of effective defensive strategies.
That is the third reality Israel must accept.
There is only one effective strategy for dealing with a nuclear Iran and a nuclear terrorist attack which would destroy Israel.
That is the fourth reality Israel must accept.
That strategy recognizes that Islam will continue to throw logistical resources at Israel, if necessary for the next 1000 yrs.
That strategy recognizes that Israel is under assault from Islam, that ‘rogue’ nations and terrorist organizations are merely Islam’s agents in its war with Israel.
That is the fifth reality Israel must accept.
That strategy recognizes that Muslims do not value their nation’s, tribes or individual survival and, that there is only one thing that Muslim’s cherish more than Israel’s death…the survival of Islam itself. Not Muslims who, in Islam have no individual value but Islam itself.
Therefore, the only strategy that has a prayer of deterring a nuclear attack upon Israel, is to make Islam itself accountable.
That strategy would consist of a new doctrine that would declare that any nuclear attack upon Israel, by any nation or terrorist organization… will bring a nuclear response; the utter destruction of Mecca, Medina and a complete conventional attack leveling the Dome of the Rock.
Islam would now face a choice; a nuclear attack upon Israel will result in all of Islam’s holiest shrines, ceasing to exist within moments of a nuclear attack upon Israel.
That is the reality with which Israel must confront Islam.
Announcing such a doctrine with its identification of Islam as Israel’s enemy, will necessitate Israel acknowledging its possession of nuclear weapons and Israel accepting the consequences of telling the US to-go-pound-sand. The ending of US aid to Israel.
That is the sixth reality Israel must face.
To neutralize the predictable response of the left through the EU, the UN and the hostile Obama administration, that doctrine must also state that in the event of any blockade, embargo or aggression against Israel by the West, the Saudi and Iranian oil fields and the Strait of Hormuz will be targeted for nuclear attack.
That is the reality with which Israel must confront the West’s leftists.
Israel must make clear to both Islam and the West that any attack upon Israel, nuclear or otherwise that threatens the existence of Israel… will result in the unthinkable happening, for them.
That is the reality with which Israel must confront the world.
I often hear that “Israel is the canary in the mine”, meaning that if Israel is in danger the danger will eventually come upon the rest of us.
However, this analogy assumes there is a miner who cares to listen, and a mine owner who has the equipment and is willing take the necessary precautions to fix the danger.
Gentlemen, Israel is still the canary. But the mine is now a union shop. The new miner would just as soon have that bird stop squaking “danger” – permanently. After all, the union safety man is on the job. And the mine owner? He is selling the safety equipment to buy cigarettes for his buddies.
PS, the $ behind the “aid” flotilla is a designated terrorist organization – by the US
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/terror-finance-flotilla
I kept meaning to ask, about the flotilla, why there isn’t a Somali pirate around when you really need one?
Regarding the BP oil mess, BP is apparently running highly informative and realtime feeds off their own site, here’s a random page:
http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=9033657&contentId=7062491
–
GB @ 47: I think Israel is well aware of most of what you write, and the threat to Mecca is already decades long-standing and nuclear.
Buddy re: Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Márquez is a commie and a useful idiot (at least he was last time I checked — 20 years ago?), but that is a brilliant and enthralling book. A worthwhile source of distraction in these trying times for anyone that wants to depart temporarily into a magical fantasy world (that don’t mean it’s pretty, btw). I might just pull it off the shelf again myself.
Jay: the $ behind the “aid” flotilla is a designated terrorist organization.
Jay, Jay, Jay. Haven’t you been listening to Dear Leader? There are no terrorists any more, and no terrorism. This was a man made contingency, made by men. And by “activists,” no less, of the community kind, from whence all good on earth springeth forth. Kind of like a ship loaded with Obama-style lawyers waving red-lining law suits at banks. We know how well that played out.
In ’1984,’ Orwell made the point that it had only been war and the threat of war that forced the elites running previous governments and societies to be realistic and efficient. The world order of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia locked in a perpetual but low-level struggle in which victory or defeat were impossible, freed the elites to impose whatever ideas and regimes they wanted, because their survival no longer depended on whether things actually worked.
Well, it’s 2010 and here we are—ruling elites totally detached from reality in the US, much of Europe and the Anglosphere, insisting that, “Two plus two makes five.” And the war and threats of war about to force reality upon those who want to survive more than they want to continue believing, contrary to all evidence, that 2+2=5.
The question may be whether the elites are capable of seeing reality, and acting on it, in time. The fact that Obama’s Jewish support has cratered gives me a bit more hope that I had 3 months ago. OTOH, the fact that he has ANY remaining Jewish support is not a good sign.
Europe seems even more hopeless.
47. Geoffrey Britain
You talk of Israel and reality as if it is something that most should already know. And you would be right. But knowing and doing something about it are so far apart now as to almost be impossible. Years ago we had leaders and others that would acknowledge your points, facts and conclusions, not only in Israel but in the United States.
And do the proper and right things.
Now as you alluded, the left controls not only the narrative but the direction, possibilities and efforts of both countries.
We – Israel, England, the United States and other countries are deep in the grasp of people who are our enemies not only in physical, psychological and political fact but in day to day reality.
The reality of now and in the foreseeable future.
We had best hope that most of our troops, Officers included and LEO forces believe in and adhere to the Oath Keeper’s Promises. Because it appears that it is going to come down to that.
Yea, buy more ammo and prepare your families.
Papa Ray
Josh,
I’m 61 yrs old and perhaps I somehow missed it but I have never heard that the official policy of the Israeli government is to target either Mecca, Medina or the Dome of the Rock for immediate destruction in the event of an attack upon Israel involving WMD, much less all three.
And without an official policy or doctrine that acknowledges Israel’s possession of nukes and the certainty that, in the event of a WMD attack, directly or by terrorist proxies, Israel would certainly use them against Islamic holy sites, your assertion stands upon, at the least, uncertain ground. Could you be assuming ‘facts not in evidence’?
I also cannot recall Israel ever formally identifying Islam as her enemy, necessary to justify a doctrine of reprisal against Islam’s holiest sites.
Such an official doctrine would also have an incalculably important impact upon Muslim Imams. As even in Islam’s most repressive regimes and regardless of the political structure, Islam’s Imams have inordinate influence.
For those Imams, consideration of the prospect of Mecca, Medina turned into glass parking lots with the Dome of the Rock reduced to utter ruble… would be anathema and those Imams would announce their outrage, horror and I predict, ‘hesitancy’ in continuing to support any actions, which might result in that outcome.
Which is the goal of that proposed doctrine; effective deterrence.
29. trangbang68; Those bozos wouldn’t last a week in Detroit; the media would refuse to go in and cover their antics and the drug-dealers would rub them out when they tried to horn in on the narco-traffic. The dope-dealers in the Big D already have all the AK-47s they want (and they don’t waste bullets shooting in the air).
Papa Ray,
Yes to, “buy more ammo and prepare your families”.
“We – Israel, England, the United States and other countries are deep in the grasp of people who are our enemies not only in physical, psychological and political fact but in day to day reality.”
Undeniably true, their grasp on power however is still more tenuous than they would have us believe, whether that grasp solidifies will be determined by the elections of 2010 and 2012.
That is the reality of now and in the foreseeable future.
“We had best hope that most of our troops, Officers included and LEO forces believe in and adhere to the Oath Keeper’s Promises. Because it appears that it is going to come down to that.”
If the elections of 2010 and 2012 go badly for freedom and liberty, barring an unforeseen ‘wild card event’ I believe your assessment is almost certainly correct.
If Democrats retain Congressional power after the mid-terms or regain it in 2012 with the reelection of Obama, the left will seek the de facto dissolution of the US Constitution.
Peterike/50; the so-called “Mississippi Canyon” horizon has been known for decades to be potentially the big game-changer for American oil production, if and when the deep-water technology became well-enough developed, and oil prices high and stable enough, to justify the exploration & production costs. The operation that blew up was one of the two or three main forces trying to open the Mississippi Canyon. no light game there.
Hence it’s all the more mind-blowing that the disaster was brought on –proximately –by the lowliest kindergarten level mistake imaginable, that is, letting the weight of the column of fluid fall below what was needed to contain formation pressures. All these weights were known, and the rig crew knew (see harsh arguments at April 20 11am meeting) what was going to have to happen, though not that the BOP would fail. The BP error behavior is unexplainable.
Knowing this, then one reads that the block is named (these drilling sites are named by the winning secret bid for them, at the bid auctions, often held at the Houston Astrodome) after a town destroyed by the hand of God, for the sins of market capitalist usurpers.
Makes ya wonder *who* named it, and *who* told that now-sequestered rig company man to just go ahead and displace, and to ignore the reality of the hole in the ground.
The impetus to wonder about these weird questions comes from either a feeling of nefarious plans converging (“Love Canal, sequence II”), or a compulsion to appear idiotic in blog comments, one or the other, or both, for sure.
42. Peter Boston wrote;
“If there are more idiot ships can we get Jane Fonda on one of them?”
Oh, my friend, I agree, but why limit ourselves to just her? I could add several hundred to that list!
Perhaps the IDF could get a couple of those Nork “mystery torpedoes” that you can illegally sink a boat with but suffer no international repercussions. That would greatly simplfy things.
GB @ 54: The Saudis and Wahabis have been the enemies of Israel from day one, plenty of Israelis want to build the third temple where the dome inconveniently stands, and all of these factors have only increased in recent years.
However, your point is interesting – should they make it explicit?
The counterargument is that it would not be any more effective if explicit, Islam loves death, even the Saudis – especially the Saudis – hate the veneration of anything, any place, and I don’t know that the Kabbah has any particular dispensation from that, even with the hajj as a pillar of Islam. Anyway, denial of reality, as well as denial of the strength of opponents, are unofficial pillars of Islam. Might even lead to a double-daring of Israel to go ahead and do it. And if they did, frankly, so what? I prefer bulldozing the Dome and Al-Aqsa, preferably yesterday. Maybe make a gift of the pieces to Turkey, in exchange for yesterday’s flotilla.
buddy I and my oil field buds have had those thoughts. We have all listened to those that were there and read most all of the available material.
After much…and I mean much discussion and thought over weeks, we have come to the conclusion that it was nothing more than what causes most oil field accidents.
Failure of Equipment
Failure of Management
Failure of those on the job (employees).
And the last cause that is always negated or forgotten for most everybody until they are reminded in the most harsh ways.
Mother Nature is a cruel Bitch and she likes to demonstrate it when your least expecting it.
Papa Ray
I prefer bulldozing the Dome and Al-Aqsa, preferably yesterday.
Agree with the sentiment, but that’s the weak move. Turn the Dome into a Church or Synagogue. That will sting a lot more. And bust the rock itself into a million pieces.
You could make souveniers out of the shards. Put a chunk of the rock in a box labled, “I went to Jerusalem and all I got was this stupid rock.”
Saw Jesse Jackson on TV lying about the Arizona law. It is no exaggeration to say that Jackson is a preacher of hatred and will say anything or do anything to denounce the white race. I have found that nine out of ten of my Liberal American friends are comfortable with lying outright to make a political point. That they have already tossed out logic and facts and are entrenched on the side that says I hate you and will piss on your grave; there is nothing that I am willing to believe in order to fully denigrate you.
I am pretty sure this is how genocides are started. But remember, there is good racism and bad racism and that means there is good genocide and bad genocide. The important thing about waging good genocide is to have your victims squarely on your side, to do it slowly and incrementally, and if you can, keep the enemy from wanting to breed, if you can do that, and you can if you take over the school curriculum, you are one away generation from victory.
“Deception has become a necessity in itself”
This is of course what we expect from tyrants like China, though it is becoming increasingly clear that China has more liberties in business than we now have in America. Politically, we are not far behind, we already have a one party media. China is setting the baseline of acceptable behavior and acceptable beliefs and all of the governments under her spell are going to go along with them no matter what that portends.
“Y’know, the Turks seem to want the ‘credit’ for this ”
Turks will be the latest contenders for the Caliphate, which they no doubt see returning to Istanbul. The lust for the Caliphate is great. The secularists did not grasp for that ring of power; the islamists cannot resist it.
Turkey having weighted the geopolitical scales, Israel may need to think about liquidating its wealth and prepare women and children for evacuation. Israeli liberals might decide to stick around for the new political order, having bought into an Israel-South Africa analogy. Foolish them. South Africa is largely a Christian nation.
Will Obama allow Israeli refugees entry into the U.S.?
Following any denouement involving the demise of Israel, perhaps we can expect an acceleration of the further development of Richard’s “Three Conjectures,” which ends in the ending of Islam, brought about by itself. The “Conjectures” has always been the script for the endgame in the region, if Richard is correct.
Newcomers to the Belmont Club will need to search for that famous essay.
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/05/31/the-consolations-of-philosophy/#comment-109214
Re: Doug @ 8
In his book Fascist Europe Rising Rodney Atkinson (brother of Rodney, aka the British comedian Mr. Bean) accused George Kennan of being soft on the Nazis when he was a State Department envoy in Berlin. Basically he says the Nazis permitted Kennan to lecture on geopolitics to German audiences as WWII was getting started in Poland. The ‘science’ of geopolitics as some here may recall was one of the Germans’ favorite hobbyhorses in the interwar years, with Albrecht Haushofer building off of Mackinder. Mackinder’s ‘Heartland of the world island’ ideas allegedly influenced Hitler to aim for a direct assault on the USSR in Barbarossa rather than take the easy route around Turkey/Gibraltar/Egypt. If the Nazis had sent even a quarter of their Barbarossa divisions into the Middle East and told the Japanese to link up with them in India, the whole history of the world might have turned out differently, as Johnson wrote in Modern Times. Thank God they did not, though the Russian people had to bear the brunt of the Nazi fury. The Soviets also killed or captured 1 million Japanese, though admittedly that was against a poorly supplied and demoralized force in Manchuria in 1945. Nonetheless, Zhukov’s victory over the Japanese in the Far East forced Japan to turn to the southern strategy.
Whether Kennan saw Hitler as a bulwark for the containment of Soviet Bolshevism or rightly perceived Nazism to be even more dangerous in the immediate term than Stalinism is an interesting historic question. But hell, as Wretchard points out in his end note on Singapore, figuring out what anyone was thinking in the 1930s and 40-41 besides fear, complacency and hatred (the emotions underlying appeasement and fascism) makes one’s head hurt.
Rosinante, that Von Moltke quote was from the elder, the one who succeeded in 1871? Or the younger who couldn’t quite pull it off in 1914? Or the third who probably got captured by the Russians in the East in the 1940s? There are too many to count. I actually had a distant panzerkommandant cousin who was killed at Kursk. Hence my fascination with the German question.
I am more and more convinced the Three Conjectures will never happen. The West lacks the will.
WHY after all did the British neglect Singapore? Because they were in a rigid, caste-class system where competitive men could not shoulder aside unqualified, non-performing men, through merit advancement and achievement. It was a nation addicted to lies because it was a nation addicted to hierarchy and bureaucracy and stasis.
Now, look around. Who voted for Obama, 70-29? Who is addicted to fantasy lies about women being able to command male competition for them, at age 45? Or be the subject of epic battles between hunky vampires, werewolves and other fantasy creatures all the time?
No group of people is more addicted to fantasy, and consumes it more, than women, when talking of the West. Women, politically, have got it mostly their way. A fantasy of “paintball guns response” to an armed flotilla, instead of simply sinking the ships and denying it (strength has its own virtues). A fantasy of voting for the Black, and Muslim man, in the hope of appeasing the enemy (a typically female response). A fantasy of refusing to name the enemy so he won’t get mad. A fantasy of being quite menopausal, and arousing male attention from a hot 20 something, and making out in a Dubai beach with no real consequences.
A parallel universe Singapore, with rough and ready men trying to advance, would have “seen the little men off.” Because they would have been just as ruthless as the Japanese, prepared, with weapons, jungle fighting techniques, dug in emplacments, mortars, anti-aircraft, dug in underground hangars, and more, with the latest technology to deal with the Japanese. Each man figuring out new and gruesome ways to use technology to kill as many Japanese as possible, in the certainty that this would get him advanced. Where title, family, respectable Oxbridge connections (really only a female-centric world cares about that stuff) don’t matter. A world where a jumped-up thug can become a Merovingian King. Or suchlike.
I am not arguing for the burqua or chador. But I am arguing to curb the power of female fantasy to rule the West. To do away with the idiocy of connections, power, status, breeding, family history, and so on to determine one’s course in life, with the perhaps random factor of fame. To end both Jersey Shore and Gossip Girl. Both Sex and the City and PC dogma.
The ongoing interrogation of passengers who were aboard the Marmara – the Gaza aid flotilla’s flagship – revealed that the majority of those who attacked the Israeli Naval Commandos boarding the ship have direct and indirect Global Jihad ties. Yvet News
What’s the over-under this never makes it to the NYT or CBS? 5-1; 10-1?
What’s the over-under that nobody in this administration will consider the possibility that Turkey is not an ally of the US? 100-1?
We all know histories mood tendencies to swing like a pendulum. Its last momentum is stayed finally by the inertia of self destruction, so that the fortunes of man must be sacrificed at last. The wealth of a lifetime of toil blighted by political folly is wasted. It is a shame that no generation can see the extents of the damage from extreme horizon to the next but must focus on the obsession of fools staring blithely at the current wreckage.
Papa Ray @ 60: I agree with what you say, but my small rant here, this was the Deepwater Horizon, one of the most sophisticated, challenging, and expensive rigs and holes in the world, and one like to think that this is NOT the place for SOP corner-cutting.
But we have the example of the O-rings on the space shuttle. Just nothing much to say, after that. Although more people died on the Deepwater Horizon. Not to mention in any of how many coal mining disasters.
I’ve been on advanced (software) projects of various kinds, and one wants to think that these merit extra care, for the money and the risks involved.
But noooooo …..
Of course, the greenies and liberals and dreamers of all kinds like to think this was all preventable, that all corner-cutting is criminal and culpable. What hurts most is when this appears to be true, that there are credible allegations of a number of small items, maybe no one of them would have caused the disaster, but they added up.
OK, just heard a blurb on the radio, Obama wants to “bring to justice” … somebody … about the oil. Is there any way any of this is criminal, or even civil negligence? After all, people did die. I think it’s all nolo contendre and covered by the stated limit on liability.
But as a BP stockholder, I have reason to be pissed in any case.
Josh, yes drudge is running with the headline now…”Feds Open Criminal Probe of BP.” Just in case you were wondering, BP does NOT stand for Black Panthers.
Whiskey, i’ve wondered if the two world wars didn’t say to both sexes, “let’s have the women try it for awhile, men ain’t doing so well”.
Papa ray –thanks –and you’re probably right. There’s just some crazy things about the job. i speak from the perspective of having worked deep hot ‘trouble’ holes all over the Gulf of Mexico (and elsewhere), as a drilling fluid tech –a ‘mud engineer’ (i won several ‘top hand’ performance awards in the deepwater Gulf) –as well as served as a district tech mgr for a gulf coast drlng fluid outfit –and have dug into some of the details –i’ll get more, too, i hope, when some feelers come back, from some of the old contacts who know the rig personnel. I’m not pushing, understandably.
But BP and Oxy –partnering in Colombia and Pakistan, have some ‘splainin’ to do re several topics, not the least of which is the futures mkt gyrations of summer ’08. In the last four or five years, BP has trashed the industry in two sensitive areas already, before this latest, which will close the Mississippi Canyon and layer on so much FedGov to the oilpatch as to measurably strengthen global oil exporters. Both on the Alaska Pipeline and in a Texas refinery trying to expand output, BP has had accidents big enough to change the politics (reported last three years OSHA “willful and egregious safety/maintenance violations” –BP leads with 760, followed ny Conoco and Sunoco with 8 each).
BP has a paid-for cash cow field in Colombia worth 8 bbl/yr bottom line, and as “Chiquita Banana death squad defender” Eric Holder can tell you, the FARC influences anyone who has to “work the monte” in FARC-land. Iran has supposedly been sending agents to FARC-land, to learn and teach, and even on the surface, BP has heavy trade going with Iranian oil intersts –look it up.
The Hez are in Mexico, too. One could almost imagine a USA gulf coast front from the Pacific to the Atlantic, in the minds of the Mullahs.
as he announced a few hours ago, in addition to the several new panels of oil-patch regulators, Obama has just started sending in ‘work-release’ inmates from i guess federal prisons, to the beaches to help clean. He wanrts 20,000 nat’l guardsmen sent, too. this spill is gonna federalize the coastline of the south at least thru the summer.
oh, and to anyone following the Citi-to-Oxy at unexplainably-low price saga of Citi/Phibro: The ‘too big to fail’ trader Anthony Hall that Obama evidently needed pay-czar Ken Feinberg to cleanse Citi of, came to Phibro (now Oxy) from BP, right after the 2006 election. Phibro, one of the handful of high-frequency oil futures traders, fronting the dark-pool (secret) hedge fund clients, that so spooked the markets –and demoralized the people at the gas pumps –in the summer before the 2008 election.
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If you want a little Flotilla you can call your own
Full of people that’ll make you feel you’re not alone!
How much is that Killer Flotilla?
Take our advice
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Josh @59,
“However, your point is interesting – should they make it explicit?
The counterargument is that it would not be any more effective if explicit, Islam loves death, even the Saudis – especially the Saudis – hate the veneration of anything, any place, and I don’t know that the Kabbah has any particular dispensation from that, even with the hajj as a pillar of Islam. Anyway, denial of reality, as well as denial of the strength of opponents, are unofficial pillars of Islam.”
My assessment is obviously that there would be great value in making the threat absolutely explicit. Islam loves the death of infidels and martyrs but the Imam’s reluctance to personally lead the charge, leads me to suspect that the destruction of Islam’s holiest shrines might be quite another matter.
Regardless of the Saudi’s expressed disgust with the veneration of images and physical objects, I notice they place quite a high value upon the status of having Mecca, Islam’s holiest shrine in Saudi Arabia. Can we agree that the Saudi’s have raised the ‘art’ of hypocrisy to rare heights?
Two million Muslims visiting Mecca every hajj and it being the sworn obligation of every Muslim to, if at all possible, visit Mecca at least once in their lifetime, has to count for something.
Denial is a human failing and reality its certain cure.
Under the right circumstances, Israel or the US might demolish the Rock, which the Dome houses, then turn to Islam’s rulers, Imams and Mullahs and say, “OK, shall we raise the ante? Want to go for Medina next? Or are you all in and Mecca’s on the table too?”
…and as i mentioned earlier, the spill was not a spill –it was instead a flare, a ‘burn-ff flare’ –until those two fire boats uselessly spraying water at the flare for two days finally managed to fill the rig spaces with enough water to sink it –thus breaking the riser pipe, killing the flare, and starting the spill. is anybody seeing any of this in the MSM ?
Buddy,
That’s what I (with no inside background to speak of) thought.
Given that both the Mexican spill and this one supposedly continued due to the final safety cut off ram encountering a joint in the drill pipe, wouldn’t it be wise to have TWO rams separated by enough distance so as to always be able to sever the pipe, esp in deep water operations?
The admin not bringing in supertankers, and not letting Jindal dredge makes them complicit in the greatest environmental disaster yet to have occurred in this country. It turns my stomach to even think of the death and destruction, so I pass on watching any videos.
I would hope that you will join the discussion at “THE OIL DRUM” “ROCKMAN” and several others have info from being currently employed.
I had no idea the vast amounts of specialised knowledge and level of detail involved in those operations.
Did you moniter density as well as gas content as part of your job?
—
69. starling said…
“Josh, yes drudge is running with the headline now…”Feds Open Criminal Probe of BP.” Just in case you were wondering, BP does NOT stand for Black Panthers.”
—
True, but no exculpatory evidence has yet been found clearing either the Panthers or Minister Farakahn’s Chicago thugs in this matter.
In truth, BP stands for Big Ph… Ups.
SecDef Gates is contemplating naval cut backs just as the North Koreans sink a South Korean warship and just as the Turks try to run an Israeli blockade.
We could easily handle such problems at one time. I’m not sure we can now.
Doug
I kind of meant to imply that the Black Panthers are the other BP that ought to be getting the government’s attention
Buddy it was instead a flare, a ‘burn-ff flare’ –until those two fire boats uselessly spraying water at the flare for two days finally managed to fill the rig spaces with enough water to sink it –thus breaking the riser pipe, killing the flare, and starting the spill. is anybody seeing any of this in the MSM ?
Fascinating. So who gets the “credit” for the fire boats?
And further, had the flare been allowed to continue, what would be the end game in that scenario? Let it burn for months?
All a parlor game at this point, but still interesting to know.
i’ll take a look, Doug –thanks. yes, it gets hairy, when the difference between ‘losing returns’ and preventing a kick becomes near-zero. That’s where you have to ‘set pipe’ before you can drill ahead. that’s also where anyone –even a lone operator, especially a supervisor assumed to’ve read the gauges and interpreted the tests properly, can sabotage the whole thing very easily. Which i guess makes Papa ray’s point. but still.
i’ll get off this –i had thought it tied to the mediterranean action but now i can’t remember how –so i’ve been off-thread the whole way –
***
peterike –it would still have to be killed –but vastly less a problem with the seabed-to-surface communication contained. not to mention, no thousansds of barrels of oil in the sea drifting to beaches and thus making a bad enough car wreck into an excuse to ban the highway or maybe all highways everywhere.
dunno who sent the fire boats –i imagine Coast Guard, on its own volition –”fire at sea” –
I don’t believe the paintball idea was necessarily wrong. The view from outside the ship was that this is a bunch of protesters who happen to be on a ship. How do we disperse protesters? Show of force, pepper gas, batons, they make their point then we let them know it’s time to go. Those paintballs are not filled with Sherwin-Williams’ finest, they’re packing full-strength OC and when they pop their targets are much less able to participate in offensive actions. The goal was not to raise welts, it was to pepper gas people who were putting up resistance.
What was not known was the degree to which the passengers were armed & ready to repel boarders. On five of the six ships, there were no reported injuries. Only on the big ship was there active resistance. The riot-control approach might have worked if the troops could have been deployed fast enough, and here I’m going to have to defer to those with actual experience deploying from ropes out of helicopters as to whether that could be done in a better way. Because the troops could not gather in sufficient numbers to obtain local control, the “passengers” posed a real threat to their lives. In any jurisdiction but the country where Great Britain used to be, being set upon by 5-6 people at a time wielding bats, knives and metal bars constitutes a legitimate threat to your life or that of others, and lethal force is justified. Lethal force is what happened.
Maybe some other riot gear, like stingball grenades might have been useful, or flashbangs. But once the first Israeli Marine Commando was on the rope below the helicopter, those options were pretty much lost for fear of damaging your own man.
I would imagine there is not a lot of literature about tactical takedowns of cruise ships full of rioters. There’s probably plenty in the special operations field about how to take a ship with live ammo and a free-fire zone, but this is a new one to my experience. I don’t believe we’ll see anything like this again.
Anton, As far as the local drug dealers taking out the Palestinian rabble. Works for me. When I was in Detroit, I had a great breakfast at a Greek restaurant in Warren or Hamtramck. The city ain’t all bad. It’s just shocking to see an American city that jacked up.
#78 buddy larsen
Gerard over at American Digest has the solution for plugging the oil leak in the Gulf:
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/enemies_foreign_domestic/how_to_plug_the_oil_leak.php
Would kill the proverbial two birds with one stone.
The “fire boats” are the same OSVs that bring the mud and drill pipe. They normally are equipped with fire nozzles.
Here’s what is going to happen with one hundred percent certainty. All of these lies will explode with considerable force in the faces of political establishment. Nothing can prevent it. Just as reality eventually exposed the hollowness of the financial bubble and showed that nothing was “too big to fail,” eventually it will demonstrate to our extreme cost, that no lie can be maintained forever.
I agree. But at the same time I will submit to you that the political class whose existence and power rests upon lies will not go quietly into the dustbin of history. It is far better, from their perspective, to maintain their status and privileges form as long as they can even if it means the destruction of the society that provides it to them.
I have had a weird life. One of the things I did for thirteen years was being an attorney. For the most part my work consisted of criminal defense work. For what its worth (IMHO which probably doesn’t mean very much) the basic difference between a criminal and an ordinary citizen revolves around their concepts of time. Yes–time. Many of my clients who were guilty of the crimes for which they were charged were not stupid people but they had a definite and constant flaw. They could not envision the tomorrow that they sculpted today by their actions.
Never mind that I am the only one with access to the vault and it is robbed, it can’t be traced to me TODAY. The idea that tomorrow it would be clear to all that they were they only ones who could have committed the crime just doesn’t seem to matter to them. Weird but true. As long as the consequences for their behavior aren’t going to hit upon them at the moment, they consider them to be inconsequential. Instant gratification rules above all.
And so it seems to be with the political class today. They have become just a more privileged class of criminals with the same mindset as the person who breaks into your house to steal your property so he can sell it to buy crack cocaine.
Re: Magical Thinking
While I agree with everything that has been posted, it’s important to realize that this is not unique to Western nations.
The Japanese Militarists were no less racist than the whites they displaced, and their generalized belief in their martial superiority was only suspended by a few in their leadership, namely Yamamoto, whom nobody listened to except when he told them where to place ships and aircraft. That “sleeping giant” comment was not far off the mark, the apparent Western inability to conceive that the Japanese could create technologically-superior weapons of war like the Zero and the Type 93 torpedo was matched only by the Japanese inability to conceive of the flood of rapidly-improving technology that would come pouring at the out of the factories of the United States. Misperceptions are a common fact of life because we do not know what we do not know.
Misperceptions can be reinforced by events to become functionally unquestionable. The Japanese idea of their individual military superiority would seem to be reinforced by their early successes in Singapore, the Philippines and other actions of the early war. The British before them had swept the world of opponents pretty much wherever they chose to go, with a few notable exceptions (and weren’t the Americans really just British cousins, anyway?). Things are the way they are because that is the way they have been, for all people and for all time. Questioning the status quo is rarely popular, particularly when issues of national or racial pride are at stake.
In our current conflict with Islamism, there are some basic assumptions the Islamists held until shortly after 9/11.
One — the Americans have military power but cannot use it effectively.
Two — their military power is subordinate to their political structure and if there are casualties, the Americans will go away.
Three — devotion to Islam makes you a better soldier and individually more powerful than the kaffirs with the uniforms.
Four — being willing to die makes you stronger than the Americans.
Five — we beat the Russians. Can the Americans be so difficult?
All of these assumptions were reinforced by events beginning with the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident in Somalia to the 1993 WTC bombing, from the Khobar Towers bombing to the attacks on our embassies and culminating with the near-sinking of the USS Cole and the 9/11 attacks. All five of their assertions were basically proved out to their satisfaction.
All five have subsequently become much harder to defend, and appear to be mostly magical thinking that events temporarily made believable. The brave warriors of the ummah do not stand and fight the Americans any more, because the martyrdom rate is astronomically high. The guys in the uniforms shoot straighter and do not back off when attacked. They are not the Americans your imam were telling you about back at the madrassah. They are still in Iraq more than seven years after the invasion. Next year, they will have outlasted the Russians in Afghanistan. By pretty much any objective standard, Iraq is in the ‘win’ column for the US. Afghanistan is yet to be decided, but if there is a positive outcome there it will be the first since the British Raj. Does anyone believe that it was OBL’s plan to live in a cave in Pakistan and have his bowels turn to water at the thought of anything electronic coming near his hideout? I believe that what has happened is far from his intended result.
There are bad timbers in the bridges we all build to understanding, and because of blind spots and prejudice and other logical fallacies they only seem to appear when the bridges collapse for one reason or another. Often, we don’t even know why our assumptions have failed, it takes deliberate action to figure out why things go wrong. We are hampered by a political system that places a higher price on properly assigning blame than questioning the underlying assumptions that led to the failure. The BP disaster is, like all disasters, a series of small mistakes that culminate in a massive disaster. A dead battery in the BOP, misreading of data, a decision to switch from mud to seawater, someone was two seconds too late pushing the cutoff switch and the gas exploded on the drilling deck of the Deepwater Horizon. For want of a nail, the shoe was lost…They are hampered by a religious system that does not adequately prepare them for the capabilities of the modern world. They will be consistently surprised by our counter-stroke, and we will be consistently surprised at their inventiveness in taking things they cannot build and using them to destroy things we cannot easily replace.
Even when people get big contrarian predictions right (e.g., Nouriel Roubini and Meredith Whitney in the subprime debacle of 2007-8), is it because they are gifted seers or just because their set of biases and prejudices happen to line up with the shape of things to come? And if they do, how long does the congruence last? Nobody knows.
I guess as Westerners we have more to lose from a freedom and lifestyle standpoint, so we should be more concerned about this than others. But the curse of magical thinking is not unique to the West. It plagues our opponents to an equal measure, because it is part of the human condition.
s/82; –and what with the 11 missing it’s likely that no one even gave an order to start the hoses –dunno if this ship had one but the permanent facility that burned in ther north sea some years ago –Piper Alpha –had a fireproof room where iirc some crewmen survived –Coast Guard would’ve gone straight to the possibility of a rescue –
68. Josh
“But as a BP stockholder, I have reason to be pissed in any case.”
And you should be as thousands of other stockholders are, and the families and friends of those that were killed.
And of course those that make their living in the Gulf.
But bad things happen to good people, and I can guarantee that those guys that were working that rig wanted it succeed and were “good people”. Even the biggest screw off there would not have done something that would have endangered or compromised the rig. He would have done like he should have and ran for help.
The biggest failure was earlier, much earlier. When equipment was installed that was defective out of the box or became that way over a period of time. One said that it was the wrong kind of BOP but that is a matter of opinion.
The next failure was management, the local – on the rig management – who let the owners or “brass” tell them what to do and when. They tried to tell them.
That was the biggest mistake by far. Just like Soldiers and Marines that are boots on the ground, you don’t have someone from afar tell them what and how to do things, and override their SOP and opinions.
The next mistake was equipment failure, big time on many levels. One failure evidently caused by a modification that was not rectified after it was done for testing purposes.
Or so they claim. Some say that the BOP controls and wiring were destroyed before they could work as intended. One man was killed even before he could push the button he was reaching for, or maybe he did hit it and it just didn’t work as intended.
Nobody will know until all of that gear is brought up and examined and even then we are not sure that it will conclusive. There are no black boxes.
The next mistake, if you want to call it that – was that they had hit an area that had enormous pressure that evidently didn’t make it self known until later, much later. Pressure that was more than expected or experienced and those present have the time to do what most likely wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference in time to do it.
Yes the cement job was not complete but the bottom plug should have held. It had held up to that point, but was showing a very gradual increase, but not enough that even the most experienced well hand was alerted until it was too late. Some were becoming alarmed at that point but then it was too late, Mother didn’t give them a second chance.
Then of course the final result which was not a mistake at all, even if they had completed the top plug, would not have withstood the enormous pressure that came bursting from Mother’s bowels, either due to a new channel of gas entering the drill stem or to just an increase in the original area due to Mother Nature.
That is when everything was shoved up the stem and out into/onto the rig and then heartless Murphy took over and found an ignition source and then is when 11 men went to their maker.
When Hell erupted on earth in just a few seconds.
Their families should be consoled that it happened so fast that none of them suffered, but we know that it helps very little.
God gives and God takes away and man if he is not smart enough or viligent enough will be taken away, not in anger or such but because even if God does take care of fools, drunks, children and some of the rest of us, HIS regard is not for every second of the day or everyone who is in need. Because as he has alluded, He will help those that help themselves.
I guess that doesn’t include most of those who make mistakes, cause them or get cross-ways with Mother Nature. At least that was the general feelings and mood of the guys I pal around with. The one with the least amount of time in the Oil Patch has 8 years, four on the floor or in the rafters ( up in the rig) and four in the “control room”
They could be wrong, because they were not there and all the info we get could be filtered or changed. We most likely will never know.
Papa Ray
While reading all this, I could not get the thought out of my mind that there is a connection between the IDF’s almost kid glove treatment of the so-called “peace activists” and the refusal of the Japanese to sink the anti-whalers who are using violent means against them: there is even a documentary show called “Whale Wars” on the Animal Planet channel. These violent protesters are pirates and should be resisted with full force; even to the point of sinking the “activist/pirate” ships with accompanied drowning of all hands; at the least, there should be trials and long prison terms.
In my view the left-and the target of the “activists” has been seduced into supporting; or maybe they are the same persuasion-has given the so-called “peace activists” good-guy status.
Darren – “Re: Magical Thinking”
Well said.
GB @ 72: I think Israel should demolish the dome and reclaim the land as an in-your-face to the Palestinians, Saudis, and jihadis worldwide. Should have done it in 2000 or soon thereafter. Should do it today.
Yeah, it might bring on attack from south Lebanon, but that’s coming anyway, so why not have it on your own schedule.
Might bring an attack in the Security Council, but frankly, who made them the guardians of every mosque in the world?
Israel simply cannot keep backing down. It has not been their history. They have nowhere to go.
I suppose they can try to kick the can down the road until Obama is gone, but with the clock running in Iran, I wonder if they can get there.
PR @ 86: I do not disregard the possibility that this was all up to mother nature, but the thing is, in the face of various corner-cuttings, it’s very hard to prove innocence.
It’s pretty clear the BOP failed to function. I understand that’s not all that rare a failure, but even so, for BP not to take extra super care of the BOP on this kind of a project, is a failure of omission, failure of imagination, if nothing worse.
njartist49,
My view is that it would be good if some international enforcement organization could halt the Japanese, Chinese, et al from their rapacious and self-defeating practices.
Whales are still but a tiny fraction of their pre-1900 populations, and sharks are being wiped out and discarded so that a tiny minority can enjoy their beloved shark fin delicacy.
Proper management and stewardship of the resources would allow INCREASED harvesting at a later date after restoration of sustainable population levels.
Currently, many species are headed for extinction, or maintaining a minimal and unreliable breeding population.
68. Josh
“But as a BP stockholder, I have reason to be pissed in any case.”
And you should be as thousands of other stockholders are, and the families and friends of those that were killed.
And of course those that make their living in the Gulf.
But bad things happen to good people, and I can guarantee that those guys that were working that rig wanted it succeed and were “good people”. Even the biggest screw off there would not have done something that would have endangered or compromised the rig. He would have done like he should have and ran for help.
The biggest failure was earlier, much earlier. When equipment that was installed that was either defective out of the box or became that way over a period of time and testing didn’t show it up.
One said that it was the wrong kind of BOP but that is a matter of opinion. On a hole that deep, there was no history to fall back on that helped.
The next failure was management, the local – on the rig management – who let the owners or “brass” tell them what to do and when. They tried to tell them, but evidently went along with their wishes and/or orders.
That was the biggest mistake by far. Just like Soldiers and Marines that are boots on the ground, you don’t have someone from afar tell you what and how to do things, and override your procedures and opinions.
The next mistake was equipment failure, big time on many levels. One failure evidently caused by a modification that was not rectified after it was done for testing purposes. This has been verified when the Underwater Robot tried for a day to complete a simple task. Or so it is understood now. But without the gear topside and examined by those that built it and installed it, it may never be really verified beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Or so they claim. Some say that the BOP controls and wiring were destroyed before they could work as intended. One man was killed even before he could push the button he was reaching for, or maybe he did hit it and it just didn’t work as intended.
Nobody will know until all of that gear is brought up and examined and even then we are not sure that it will conclusive. There are no black boxes.
The next mistake, if you want to call it that – was that they had hit an area that had enormous pressure that evidently didn’t make it self known until later, much later. Pressure that was more than expected or experienced. Even if those present had the seconds needed, it most likely wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference.
Yes the cement job was not complete but the bottom plug should have held. It had held up to that point, One said that it was showing a very slight gradual increase, but not enough that even the most experienced well hand was alerted or alarmed until it was too late to rectify.
Mother didn’t give them a second chance. She rarely does.
The final result which was not a mistake at all, even if they had completed the top plug, it most likely would not have withstood the enormous pressure that came bursting from Mother’s bowels, either due to a new channel of gas entering the drill hole or to just an increase in the original area due to Mother Nature.
That is when everything was shoved up the stem and out into/onto the rig and then heartless Murphy took over and found an ignition source and that is when 11 men went to their maker.
When Hell erupted on earth in just a few seconds.
Their families should be consoled that it happened so fast that none of them suffered, but we know that it helps very little.
God gives and God takes away and man should know – if he is not smart enough or vigilant enough – he will be taken away, not in anger or such but because even if God does take care of fools, drunks, children and some of the rest of us, HIS regard is not for every second of the day or everyone who is in need. He intended for us to be the masters of our own faith.
I guess that doesn’t include most of those who make mistakes, that cause them to get cross-ways with Mother Nature. At least that was the general feelings and mood of the guys I pal around with. The one with the least amount of time in the Oil Patch has 8 years, four on the floor and in the rafters ( up in the rig) and four in the “control room”.
They could be wrong, and they say so, because they were not there and all the info we get could be filtered/ not quite true or changed. When Hell comes visiting, thoughts and memory most times can’t be trusted.
We most likely will never know.
As you must know all of this is conjecture and opinion, Only those that have passed over and God knows the truth.
Papa Ray
38 Alexis wrote:
“So, what does it mean that Singapore’s political establishment has decided that its dependency upon “US dominance and intellectual leadership” is no longer wise?”
It means one of two things:
1. They know that they can no longer rely on the US in a political or military crisis, or,
2. They are now a wholly owned subsidiary of Beijing Inc.
Darren/84; if i may quibble with a small part of your fine post, you and papa ray are both correct in saying more or less that it is very difficult to avoid a bullet that you can’t see coming at you. Detail here is that after the well was bottom sealed, the proper procedure is to test the seal. Long and certain and expensive, a wire-line cement-bond electric log –a Schlumberger job. A short cut with just marginal decrease in reliability is a negative-pressure test –an isolated wellbore not circulating shut-in will with a good seal show negative pressure at the top of the borehole, at the casing head. They ran this test, amnd a LOT of pressure developed –meaning there is a wellbore intrusion. As far as i can tell, this test was rerun, and a compensation was made for the gas-entrained mud. This test was accepted as showing a proper seal, and the rest is history.
but -it’s hard to even put into words how necessary it was to have circulated the well –’bottoms up’ –before making any assumptions of contaminated mud. Everybody on the rig save the mess hands would’ve known this. had they done so, the pump strokes vs pump pressure would’ve told them immediately that there was an inrrusion –at a point in time the kick could’ve been caught easily, even with the unknown BOP problems. Pumping ‘bottoms up’ is always the automatic procedure after any event changing the wellbore, even any long stoppage of circulation, as the round-trip on a bit change. Bottoms up, you always pump bottoms up, you always pump bottoms up. it took a specific ‘or-else’ demand from the company man, the BP man, to skip this –and it sparked a fight being reported by witnesses. The seawater weight vs mud weight is what pulled the kick up thru the rig, but the displacement would not have been done had they pumped bottoms up and noted that the pumps were stroking higher at lower pressure, indicated something light and expanding in volume moving up the wellbore. At one point, the sign of signs came –mud flowing out of wellbore with the pumps off. this happened –as reported –18 minutes before the blowout. That’s the two seconds you mention, with a thousand or so left over. but still, no order to shut the preventers. It’s almost as if BP had been holding a gun on those guys and making them jump off a cliff. of course even those who knew a kick was coming –like the driller who was at the dispute meeting, and ‘on the brake’ when it blew, and is also among the dead, followed orders. BP was paying the bills, and most of those guys have young children who need stuff.
W: Nothing is more paramount either to the establishment nor to the politically correct sections of the media than the maintenance of a lie… Gradually and inexorably, an entire political class has staked its existence on continuation of falsehood. The greater good is the fiction. Deception has become a necessity in itself.”
Telling lies, either overtly or through clever Orwellian Newspeak, is an absolute requirement for totalitarian government. The other requirement for totalitarianism is the acceptance of government lies by millions of people – either directly for the blatant lies through a process of direct acceptance – or through the labyrinthine psychological process of controlled insanity and denial – Orwellian Doublethink in response to the lies of Newspeak. Observe how O’Brian explains this to Winston Smith:
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously (the truth and the lie), and accepting both of them… with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth… Those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is; in general the greater the understanding the greater the delusion; the more intelligent the less sane… You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident… I tell you Winston that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else; not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes and in any case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth… If human equality is to be forever averted; if the “high,” as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently; then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.” George Orwell – 1984
W: “The incredible inability to even hear the threats the enemy makes today; to understand the plain language of his menaces when they are uttered unequivocally; the reluctance to believe the obvious facts now, in 2010, are every bit as dangerous as Shenton’s crazy attitude.”
“The heresy of heresies was common sense.” George Orwell – 1984
94. buddy larsen
Yea, we entertained what went through the Driller’s and others minds during those last few minutes. Most likely he was on the horn trying to tell someone that he needed to hit the button. Or maybe he did hit that button, and nothing happened. How many times did he hit it.
Cursing all the while.
Until God opened his arms and accepted him?
We will never know, but like any good hand he stayed in the fight and didn’t run.
Papa Ray
RE #68 and #69 regarding Obama trying to establish who is to blame
I don’t understand why the administration is fixated on finding who is culpable at this point.
If you happen upon an automobile accident, your first thought shouldn’t be to determine who caused the accident. Instead, a normal person focuses on helping the injured and making sure oncoming traffic doesn’t cause another wreck. Then, after those things are taken care of, you clear the debris and then you determine what happened and who is at fault.
In the case of the oil spill, the first focus should be on minimizing the damage of the oil that is already spilled and stopping the leak. Only after that is done should the focus shift to determining what happened and who might be at legally culpable. Obama’s focus seems to be ass backwards.
You wanted Obama and Lady Gaga together?
Ask and yee shall receive;
http://www.politico.com/click/stories/0910/obama_lady_gaga_compete_for_limelight.html
W: “Of all the handicaps that a culture can labor under, no disadvantage is quite so heavy as an addiction to lies. The sheer inability of the intellectual and cultural leaders, the priests of political correctness, to see past their own conceits is a terrible burden to endure.”
Our current American Socialist (Marxist) Priests of Political Correctness are becoming indistinguishable from Oceania’s Socialist Inner Party – the “Priests of Power.”
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others… We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we’re doing… Power is not a means, it is an end… The object of power is power… Always there will be the intoxication of power… We are the priests of power… Power is power over human beings, over the body; but above all over the mind… The real power; the power we have to fight for night and day is not power over things but over men. How does one man assert his power over another… by making him suffer… Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing… We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back… Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling; everything will be dead inside you… You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.” George Orwell – 1984
papa ray, i think you just rang my bell why this is bothering me so much –that drilling rig, fifty miles out to sea all alone, is a world of its own. America is the crew on duty –that’s the papa rays there on the brake handle hitting the horn and cussin’. the pressure coming up is the well known foreign you know whos, and the BP company men giving those insane orders letting the pressure come hit the crew –the head honcho who was ‘in the shower’ when they needed his word, and is now sequestered under doctor’s orders (with his two trainees having ‘taken the fifth’ at the hearings last two weeks) are obama & the current administration. the derrick hand, up there rackin pipe and the first to go to the promised land, why that’s Ben Israel. We have got to check the blowout preventers. i wish i knew how.
“the UN has [not] kept Hezbollah from importing hundreds of missiles into Lebanon”
Let’s step back from today’s headlines and remember some ancient history: Israel and Hezbollah had their small war four years back, during which Hezbollah bombarded Israeli cities. The “World Community” (WC) harshly condemned Israel, and pressured it to cease fire and withdraw in exchange for the unanimously approved United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701. This resolution mandated that international forces be stationed in Lebanon and that Hezbollah be disarmed. Result? Hezbollah is now much better armed than before. The WC’s reaction? “Not our problem.”
Back to today: Israel faces Hezbollah in the north, while in the south it is confronted by Hamas, an organization proudly committed to Israel’s destruction. But for some strange reason, Israel insists on maintaining a blockade on Gaza. Inconceivably, Israel does not trust the WC to prevent Hamas from arming itself with the longer-range rockets it seeks. How odd! How unexpected!
And now for the ineluctable forecast: Should Israel accede to the WC demands for an end to the blockade, the following will happen in short order:
1. Hamas will obtain longer-range rockets from Iran
2. Hamas will fire those rockets at Tel-Aviv, and probably at a certain textile factory.
3. Israel will retaliate in a manner which will make its previous Gaza operation look like child’s play.
4. The WC will profess shock, shock!
But at least the WC will in this case, finally understand Israel’s actions…
Hey, why is my crystal ball laughing?
At “THE DRUM” there was talk of a Schlumberger crew coptering off the platform the morning of the blowout.
Some claimed they were dismissed just when they were needed most, others claim they evacuated for their own safety.
#s 94,97–That man’s name was Jason Anderson of Midfield TX (near Bay City in Matagorda Co). I knew him and his family and they have been told he was indeed trying to trigger the BOP. Shortly after, he disappeared.
May he rest it peace.
bob, we should lend-lease Israel a B-52 wing, tomorrow. That’d turn the heat WAY down for a LONG time.
***
Doug –they would have been dismissed most likely –intial task done, and their wire-line services no longer needed, the cement-bond log having been –unbelievably under the circumstances –declined. I don’t think any safety evac would have pertained, the whole problem was the ignoring of that factor.
***
Gordon, amen (and it is indeed a small world)
Buddy: “America is the crew on duty.” Our America is on duty. Others far above them in position, the politicos, the academics, the media, barely recognize them as human, certainly not as important as the shrimp and the seabirds. Because in large part they don’t know anyone who does that kind of work. The men and women on the rig and on the ships are beyond their caring or even imagining.
Buddy #94:
A couple of years ago I had the occasion to obtain a copy of an OSHA report on an industrial accident: 21 pages citing violations of regulations that were in reality unrelated to the accident (was an explosion instead of long term exposure to the chemical) followed by a half-page summary of what the witnesses said occcured but with no real forensic investigation of what did and why. Based on this I conclude that OSHA are bureaucrats and that’s all.
I am used to reading USAF, NASA, and NTSB mishap reports in which they actually try to figure out what happened and what to do about it. So if OSHA does not even do that, who is reponsible for oversight of operations like those on the platform? It is readlily apparent that the Fed Govt does not possess the expertise in that area, but is there any agency responsible for anything on that kind of rig other than stuff like discrimmination in hiring, sexual harassment, or the toilets being dumped overboard?
Just heard a report on ABC news, discussing the Gaza flotilla, referring to the Israeli attacks on Gaza in 2009 (?) that “killed 100,000 Palestinians”.
My ass.
Regarding Turkey, allow me to repeat a previous comment:
1. It’s been clear for at least several years that Erdogan and the AKP are not particularly fond of Israel and the West.
2. They haven’t been free to fully act on this and cut ties due to the enduring strength of secularist/Kemalist elements (among which, crucially, the Turkish military).
3. The recent flotilla was backed by Erdogan and his allies. This was done with the knowledge that Israel would be obliged to stop the flotilla (lest Tel-Aviv become hostage to Hamas).
5. It is becoming clear that the hard-core “peace activists” who instigated the violence on the Mavi Marmara were Turks. This action would inevitably lead to IDF counter-violence.
6. The resulting incident is now presented in Turkey as an Israeli military assault on Turkish ships and citizens, whipping up Turkish public opinion.
7. Erdogan et al can now withdraw from any ties with Israel, as none of his opponents would dare side with the back-stabbing Zionists.
8. Even better, his opponents can now be retroactively discredited for their former ties with Israel.
Similarly, imagine if Turkey actually goes through with the mooted idea of sending further ships accompanied by a military escort. Should Israel confront them, Turkey would invoke Article 5 of the NATO Charter. A lack of NATO support would supply Erdogan with an excuse to throw NATO under the bus as well.
106. Skookumchuk,
Think of the vast differences in knowledge and expertise between this admin and the men on that platform.
Not to mention courage, dedication, work-ethic and etc.
And the even more vast lack of respect for any of the above by the academic royals for the un-annointed untermenchen.
RWE, in the olden days up thru the 80s, the company itself (how quaint!) in the persons of its employees were charged with the safety/maintenance oversight. Outfits that let this slide, had a rep, and second-rate employees, and usually got along on po-dunk shoe-string jobs. there was esprit de corps, company colors, spirit of competition that made a slacker get shunned and soon gone.
skook –Nietsche had the best word on them, “tarantulas of equality”.
josh –reminds of the “Jenin Massacre” –
re eric holder’s criminal prosecutions –when those two BP rig bosses took the 5th, they opened themselves for criminal prosecution. That they did it at all makes me think the fix will be in –was in already –as it has been for every single one of the whitewash committee congressional hearings on everything that has happened over the last couple years.
I think – I hope – if Erdogan tried to send Turkish military ships as escort, the military would overthrow him.
Before or after the sinking of said ships.
Josh:
I wouldn’t exactly shed tears were that to happen, but would the Turkish military really want to fight on that hill? Side with a foreign power (Jews, no less) who has just humiliated Turkey against their very own democratically elected President? (Granted, a junior officer might just regrettably go insane in Erdogan’s immediate vicinity, but that wouldn’t solve the larger problem.)
doug/110; re that expertise and experience gathered over long years of merit-sorting (and thousands of wells drilled trouble-free):
(open)
Especially hard hit have been drilling contractors and other oil service companies that are losing business due to the offshore drilling moratorium imposed by President Obama in the wake of the spill.
President Obama’s recently announced six-month moratorium on drilling operations could lead to the loss of 40,000 U.S. jobs by the end of the summer, according to Lee Hunt, president of the International Association of Drilling Contractors.
The first wave of job losses is expected in less than two weeks when all deepwater offshore drilling officially comes to a halt.
The 8,250 people who work on these rigs—approximately two rotating crews of 125 workers for each of the 33 idle rigs—will be the first to lose their jobs.
(close)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704875604575280983140254458.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
***
josh, bob, Turkey, already well under Erdogan rule, was quite happily cooperating with Israel on a number of projects, including a proposed Caspian petro pipeline terminus. the whole alliance turned to crap on the unanswered Russian invasion of Georgia. the mountain came to Mohammed, as it were, and Mohammed is not one to stand on principle.
Washington let this one get out of hand. They played the ‘let us beat up on Israel card’ thinking they could swerve away before things went too far. Now the law of unexpected consequences has taken a hand. By some terrible cascade of events, the US may wind up losing Turkey as Carter lost Iran. Obama’s legacy whether he meant it or not, may be the loss of Israel and the loss of Turkey.
We’re not there yet, but the competence this crew has displayed so far in economic management, the oil spill, North Korea, the Middle East and just about anything else, I wouldn’t count disaster out. Hope and change? Hope and pray.
Don’t forget Afghanistan, wretchard –where the first thing this bunch did was go to work seriously and permanently undermining our ally Karzai’s democratic legitimacy.
As if Afghanistan were Nebraska, and they were running against Karzai for mayor of Omaha.
(note, me Mongo after 8 pm, whem click wrong line on drop down menu so much fun to do)
Isn’t Turkey long lost already? Not letting the 4ID into Iraq in 2003? Being excluded by the EU for the last ten years? Becoming increasingly Islamic? And now, this?
Here’s a thing I meant to drop in over the last couple of days – blockade is a nasty kind of thing anyway, it hits the wrong people if anything at all, and is always a strain on the blockader. I was not in favor of blockading or embargoing Saddam Hussein in Iraq, nor of Iran, and think that the Israeli blockade of Gaza was never a very good idea. “Kiss me or kill me, but don’t bore me,” said Clint Eastwood, Sergeant Thomas Highway, in “Heartbreak Ridge”.
Buddy Larsen,
It sure sounds like you have a wealth of oilfield experience, my own experience is limited to driving past oil wells in East Texas. It does sound like corners were cut on the Deepwater Horizon, and there were people that became overly goal-oriented as the end of a long drilling expedition drew near. Probably, any one of those errors has not led to a disaster on it’s own. Corners are cut all the time in dangerous operations, and the vast majority of the time, things work out fine. It’s all well and good to insist that this does not or should not happen, but it does happen, we all know it, and can all probably remember some time or another when “good enough” actually turned out to be good enough.
All of those cut corners put together, in these particular circumstances, was obviously something entirely different. It was a long process where at up to any point but the withdrawal of the drilling mud the disaster might have been averted. It sounds a lot like the KAL 747 crash on Guam — the culture did not allow the people who knew a disaster was coming to stop the process in any meaningful way. This will hopefully result in an overhaul of practices for BP and Transocean, and the industry as a whole.
This spill will probably not exceed Ixtoc I in volume, there may be some unexpected consequences due to the depth and pressure at 5,000 feet versus 160 but the ecologic damage will not be irrecoverable. BP will pay billions in damages, but they have the billions to pay. The problem will be the misguided attempt by the government to “prevent” this from happening again, with both unintended consequences and intended but unspoken consequences, both deleterious.
darren, this disaster is just SO perfect, such a gift, to the left wing, which has been itching for an attack line into the American oil industry and has been largely flummoxed by FASB accounting procedures which reveal the industry to be just another industry, return-on-investment-wise. But now they have perfection, a perfect crisis, an environmental disaster hurting the common folk, and with it will burn the industry at the stake, and then nationalize the ashes.
Meanwhile, the attack on Israel is also an attack,perhaps principally an attack, on the independence of the Saudi oilfields, the product of which prices world oil and keeps the KGB gnarled up at about a third to half what they know they could charge if only the Sauds were scared of them, which they will be before long, if not already, with this ‘hope-you-see-we’re-feckless-so-you-won’t-see-something-worse’ administration in power in DC.
I guess we now know that the true mission of the Turkish shipmates wasn’t to be peace keepers, but to be community organizers!
Buddy (#114):
“Turkey, already well under Erdogan rule, was quite happily cooperating with Israel on a number of projects”
That doesn’t quite contradict my thesis, as it clearly posits/recognizes the existence of powerful Turkish elements interested in cooperation with Israel. I do claim that Erdogan was never one of them.
“the whole alliance turned to crap on the unanswered Russian invasion of Georgia.”
I disagree that Russia played an important role in this process; the Turkish Islamist ideology possesses enough explanatory power on its own, and the timeline doesn’t seem to fit. (Not that I’m particularly fond of the Russian regime; I simply disagree with your a-la Athanasian Creed: “There is the Russian problem, and there is the Turkish problem, and yet there are not two problems, but one problem.”)
(But I offer you a modified version: “There is the Russian problem, and there is the Turkish problem, and there is the Iranian problem, and there is the North Korean problem, … … … ; and yet there are not two-hundred problems, but one problem: Barack Obama.”)
(The above was tongue-in-cheek.)
(Partly.)
wretchard (#115):
We agree on Obama’s competence, but I’m not sure that anyone really lost Turkey but the Turks. (And maybe the EU.)
Josh (#117): “Isn’t Turkey long lost already?”
If by that you mean that it hasn’t really been on board with us, indeed. If you mean that Turkey has crossed the point of no return, I don’t claim to know. Experts (real ones) disagree.
Regarding the blockade, it is indeed a pain. But I’m not convinced that the alternatives are better, and more importantly, neither is the Israeli government.
22. Barry Meislin
One of the things that Israel will get whacked with is that the interception took place in ‘international waters’.
One possible response.
Thanks Barry
Whiskey, I am more and more convinced the Three Conjectures will never happen. The West lacks the will.
Sadly, I agree with you, the harder reality is that my own country will not enter any fray or worse enter on the wrong side, and we are powerless to stop the slide. My military aged children will have to decide if reality trumps morality, If it is better to hunker down and wait or rise in a near certain suicide pact.
Papa Ray, the danger of Saddam was that he was running a competition with the Iranians, starting with support for Hamas, that would tip the region in a radical Islamic tilt for power. In that race Iran had to be given the edge, but you could not count out Saddam as attacks on the west were, it seemed to me, to be the measure of martial islamic spirit.
Now because of a bumbling attempt at sealing any deal at all with Syria, and not paying attention to the Turkish slide that has been ongoing for the past fifteen years, We are paying the price. Turkey could abide Saddam as he suppressed the Kurds, Turkey could abide post Saddam Iraq as long as they kept the ppk under thumb. Turkey could not abide our overtures with Syria, showing preference to a nation that not only sided with Iran in killing US Troops in Iraq but was complicit with the deaths of US Marines in Beirut, provided a conduit to Hezbollah that was at times a life line too, and is the home of record to more terrorist organs than Hohner has harmonicas. Turkey could not abide being shut out of EU membership and Russia is breathing life into Turkish skittishness. But the nature of Turkish loyalty is not yet decided.
We put Israel in this position, lets hope they planned on the notion that one day as Peter Boston reminds us “America would stand up and stab itself in the back.”
president Obama had better find a way to cool the situation down and not empower the islamists. It does not happen by ignoring the criminal acts of the flotilla organizers nor does it come by staying silent. It comes with supporting friends and damning stupid inflammatory acts.
Have “international waters” become sacrosanct now, because of the inversion of laws and common sense?
Kennedy blockaded Cuba in “international waters”. Under no maritime treaty have blockades either been illegal in international waters or have they ever been expected to be enforced in anything but “international waters.”
Hilariously, the Irish are now determined to run the Israeli blockade. The Irish? Don’t they have extreme problems, like an amazing debt to GDP ratio that tops the world at 1024% or so? This is a farce and a circus.
Everybody’s lost their minds in this world. We have truly as a species lost our bearings and can no longer speak about simple things like basic morality. Chalk it up to things like the Frankfurt School of philosophy and so forth, but I guarantee you nobody in the boat with the camel (yes, they were in the boat with a camel) has any idea about that.
Trend, fashion, drama, peace activism, monetary policy, nuclear weapons — luxuries of the deluded and dangerous, all.
Get with Boy George or with Pablo Escobar or with Papa Ray, I’m afraid.
Note: one of these is not like the others.
Forgot to make a point about something important that I’ll only mention now: the blockade was not Israel’s. It was Israel’s and Egypt’s.
“Peace Activist” is of course Orwellian Newspeak for thug, terrorist or terrorist supporter – it is a lie couched in the clever and deceitful use of language. Orwell explains further:
“His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of Doublethink; to know and not to know; to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies; to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them… The official ideology abounds with contradictions, even when there is no practical reason for them… Even the names of the four ministries by which we are governed exhibits a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts; the ministry of peace concerns its self with war; the ministry of truth with lies; the ministry of love with torture: and the ministry of plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.” George Orwell – 1984
On the oil disaster in the gulf, there’s only one thing to do: snatch up HAL while it’s artificially cheap. That’s what you can do for yourself, the rest is out of your hands. The crisis is, instead, in the hands of incompetents.
And, realize, that this crisis is a microscopic illumination of your larger problem: your future is in the hands of incompetents. Furthermore, realize that this will not change, ever, as long as we grant authorities more power than they can competently wield (and that’s not much at all).
I think Prime Minister Erdogan may be attempting to engineer an open war between Israel and Turkey.
Another possible response.
Well, then we have this:
“Turkey launches long-term diplomatic war against Israel”
And here is an earlier post by the Baron:
“Dueling Caliphates”
Lots of conjecture there along with facts that make you think that he is right. One thing for sure is that the “civilian government” in Turkey has apparently neutered their military. [Read - Islamic Government]
NATO? Most are a bunch of sniveling politicians who wear their countries uniforms. No more real military men than many of Obama’s ass kissers in the DOD and Pentagon.
No good is going to come of all this for damn sure.
Just one more crisis that won’t go to waste. I can’t wait to see what the next two and a half years will bring (if the world lasts that long). We have been averaging at least one major crisis every couple of months for the last year or so. Seems like there is a record trying to be set…
All according to plan, I’m sure.
Papa Ray
P.S. Yes, Darren “good enough” usually fits and fills the bill. But in the oilfield, sometimes that can be dangerous. There have been 4 or 5 men killed this year that I personally know about in the West Texas fields and many injured. Some not even reported by the local papers or TV stations.
Believe it or not.
But the crews and the ol’ timer Oil guys know about all of them and are constant subjects of discussion in the mornings with coffee. Along with the state of our Republic and the antics of the rest of the world.
As I said earlier somewhere, energy deaths and injures are kinda like deaths from driving our highways. Reported locally or sometimes not. It has become an accepted reality in both driving and in drilling.
But it is nowhere as bad in the oil patch as it used to be. Safety is pounded into every workers head. Even if he does nothing but drive around checking meters. But even with all the new fangled equipment and such accidents still happen.
It is a dangerous occupation.
To Bed, hopefully not to dream.
Papa Ray
93. Bruce
38 Alexis wrote:
“So, what does it mean that Singapore’s political establishment has decided that its dependency upon “US dominance and intellectual leadership” is no longer wise?”
It means one of two things:
1. They know that they can no longer rely on the US in a political or military crisis, or,
2. They are now a wholly owned subsidiary of Beijing Inc.
………..
North Korea and Burma are wholly owned subsidiaries of the PLA (People’s Liberation Army.) That’s why there is no give on North Korea. That’s why a pipeline is in the initial stages of being constructed from Burma into China. The PLA wants a way around the straights at Singapore. Its a choke point.
In articles I have seen in the last year I’ve read that the Chinese military is concerned that their military build up of sea capabilities in south east asia is being met point for point by the nations of that region. Likely what’s happening is that judging by fleet maneuvers with US ships in the area Singapore Malasia Thailand Viet Nam Phillipines and Indonesia are working collectively to counter point by point the military capabilities of the Chinese.
That’s the reason the Chinese have started work on a pipeline through burma. They have concluded they can’t guarantee that they can keep open the choke point at the singapore straights–in case there is a war.
So the answer to your question is no. Singapore is not a subsidiary of the Chinese. Likely these nations see too that –judging by Burma and North Korea — the consequence of falling under control of the PLA is not happy.
There is something else. Part of the reason that these nations can’t depend so much on US protection is that so much of US power projection is dependent on carriers. Modern warfare may be fast neutralizing the capabilities of these ships in peer to peer contests.
Of course part of the reason too is that everyone can see that China is in a fast development period akin to the development period of the Japanese in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
Finally, unless the USA makes a number of changes in the coming years–which after Obama…I think will happen–the USA won’t be able afford a lot of ships.
Today Chinese warships regularly pass through the Straights at Singapore to join a flotilla of ships from India, Russia Europe, japan and the USA and likely others on station off the horn of africa to ward of Somalia pirates.
Dang, forgot the most important link:
“Turkey threatens action; Israel on alert”
Nite..I hope everyone has “sweet dreams”.
Papa Ray
Where is Habu?
Josh/118. . . The blockade was instituted because the Israelis don’t want ships to bring weapons into Gaza.
Habu is probably in Montana long about now. he was ‘spose to drop by here on his way –but may’ve been discouraged by my two Doberman/Rhino crosses barking –or maybe the motion-detecting 40 mm quad Bofors swiveling around up there on the roof.
seriously, this thing with Turkey may be a distraction –to ‘spread’ Israel’s reaction while Iran runs up to the bomb –which IAEA has just made some ultra-chilling announcements concerning. Look for multiple crises all at once to cover the Iranian bomb rollout –NoKo for sure will drag US attention at the chosen time.
Lord, see to your children –time is short.
Wonder where Mohammed al-Baredi retired to? bet he gots lotsa gold, he sure did a fine job covering the Mullah’s swift rise to 1945.
don’t know if this will help settle things down vis-a-vis Turkey
Israeli MK Ayoub Kara Talks to Turkish Mufti About Flotilla
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/137828
Josh (#50): “I kept meaning to ask, about the flotilla, why there isn’t a Somali pirate around when you really need one?”
Given the number of Ethiopian immigrants, surely Israel could have mounted a false flag operation. Followed by a humanitarian rescue of the survivors.
Excuse me while I spend some time giggling.
we had ample time
to have backed the turk kurds
but now we’ve gone and elected
a bunch of curt turds
burma shave!
Buddy,
You left out all the lost jobs in Brazil, China, Venezuela, etc though.
After all, they will all be following BHO’s example, right?
Related to Wretchard’s “What is truth?” and my Turkey obsession, an article by Noah Pollack. Dedicated to Fnord.
Status on the UN Security Council is at least a part what Turkey is seeking, all the dollars none of the blame.
140. Doug
You left out all the lost jobs in Brazil, China, Venezuela, etc though.
After all, they will all be following BHO’s example, right?
I thought BHO was following theirs.
#130
Such eloquence, such brevity.
(A rare and most admirable combination.)
P.S. Anton, here’s another possible response, though Bob has pretty much said it all….
Josh,
“Being excluded by the EU for the last ten years? Becoming increasingly Islamic? And now, this?”
Turkey escluded herself. She doen’t want to become a under-european country but a major player in ME
http://www.leap2020.eu/Turkey-s-awakening-Its-gradual-exit-from-the-Western-camp_a4361.html
MC: Agreed. Perhaps Turkey should be invited to resign from NATO? As said membership is rather vital to their capabilities (both good and bad), the invitation might keep them on the straight and narrow.
Just a thought.
Rosinante #100 — Perfect.
Lady Gaga saluted Obama later in the evening when she told the crowd: “I think we can all be very excited for our future because it seems as though we have a president that’s just as historic and legendary that can really make a change for us.”
And she sang John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
What an amazing time to be alive, when the highest species on the planet becomes, in wretchard’s words, “addicted to fiction.”
Is it possible that the species’ ability to create narratives in its head is now what causes it the most suffering? Has progressive education, affluence, and a deceptive media created a populace like that nutjob who studied Grizzlies (and eventually got eaten by one) and confused them with Teddy Bears?
doug/140; right you are to wonder –from Thibodeaux Looz yana to Pascagoula Mizz yippi, another hunerd thousand politically unemployed good ole boys with nuthin to do but sit around the house whistlin Dixie –route march tempo.
The IDF has convincing evidence that 40 of the flotilla cell are Al Qaeda. They were equipped with bullet proof vests, night vision goggles, and weapons. Given that fact we must follow the implications:
1. Why is Obama still condemning Israel and piling on?
2. Why did the Turkish government put 40 Al Qaeda martyr wannabes on a Turkish flagged ship to Israel?
The answers lead straight to hell.
The Obama administration, either deliberately or from colossal incompetence, values its street cred with the Islamists higher than the survival of Israel.
Turkey is an Islamist country – as much an enemy of civilization as the Ottomans before it.
It’s on.
jeez –i just went outside to get the newspaper, and was attacked by Israeli commandos
there’s two of them –they’re hanging out in downtown dripping springs, drinking up all of Texas’ coffee and donuts.
we have to get them out of there –25 million Texans will be absolutely unable to function as long as they’re there drinkin up all of texases coffee and donuts
Any word on the four Nork Sang-O-class subs?
Cannoneer,
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2010/05/27/42/0301000000AEN20100527003400315F.HTML
Where are the other two? What is the range of a “300 ton mini-sub”?
Human history shows that societies have major shared illusions. I am unable to think of one society that avoided them. The Japanese themselves, as they marched in sneakers through the jungle towards Singapore also had a whole bunch of shared illusions.
The Brit had his foolish remark about the ‘little men’ — for their part those Japanese believed themselves invincible modern era sumurai, under a Emperor who was a deity fulfilling their national destiny.
The Brits had an Empire whose energy of creation they still imagined they had, but it was long gone. The Japanese were building an Empire that they imagined they would have the energy to hold, and so wild was their overconfidence that they attacked Pearl Harbor, wakening the world giant.
The US has never sought to be the world giant. It is what we are, though, like the huge mighty child born into a large family of smaller siblings.
Our biggest mistake is not a delusion as to our strength, it is a delusion that somehow we can be smaller than we are, and magically fit into the clothes worn by the rest of our far smaller brothers. That’s silly.
@29 trangbang68 “Having seen Detroit last summer, the proper course would be to let the activists have it. Maybe they can turn it into a Palestinian homeland”
Hasn’t that already happened? Now, all “Peace Activists” need are the AK’s and the explosives. Let’s turn the ruins of Detroit into the rubble of Detroit… and let it spread.
/sarcasm
ledger, either that or we could put the Peace Activists in prison –they could share cells with the Crime Fighters.
James Cameron. The director, of Titanic and Avatar. They’re bringing James Cameron in to advise on the BP oil spill.
Over guys like Buddy Larsen? Yep.
James Cameron!
You can’t make this stuff up; it’s breathtaking.
trangbang, ledger, buddy,
Better to just leave the “peace activists” on a street corner in Detroit. The locals would have far less regard for the well-being of such creatures than the IDF.
Detroit PD is swamped as it is, the “peace activists” would certainly have to wait a few hours for their frantic 9-1-1 calls to be answered. The Palis could walk to Dearborn and fit right in, while all the Euro do-gooders (the few that made it to the Ambassador Bridge alive, that is) could cross over into Canada for repatriation.
I am not sure they would notice the difference between Detroit and Gaza except that Gaza has better weather, no, wait a minute, Gaza is in better shape.
155. Cowboy
He is just getting a first-hand for his next “disaster flick”.
Hopefully it will be a documentary covering the two-year long Obama Administration, not some whiny enviro-crap like Avatar.
60. Josh.
The Rock of the Dome of the Rock is the altar stone of the Jewish Temple. I do not recommend damaging it.
Call a lie a ” narrative ” makes it no less a lie.
thanks for the props, cowboy –i didn’t mean to go into a pressure control lecture like that –but BP is testifying like that old joke about the murderer on the witness stand: “what happened was, I was aiming the pistol at the victim and pulling the trigger when suddenly, shots were fired!”
Cowboy,
Maybe not as stupid as it seems, for some aspects of the operation. The major complicating factor in this spill is the depth of the well, there’s few people in the world who have more experience operating in a deep environment than Cameron. After Titanic he went back down and shot another, longer movie at 15,000′ depth, Ghosts of the Abyss with a pair of custom-designed cameras and lighting rigs. He’s a pretty technical and innovative dude, I don’t particularly care to hear his input on the politics of the thing but if he has some tips or suggestions on ROV operation, lighting so the engineers can see to do what they need to do or pretty much anything else, I’d welcome those contributions.
Buddy would have been very useful before the explosion, if for no other reason than to remind people of what standard and safe operating procedures are (e.g., “bottoms up”) and maybe sit there with a shotgun in the back of the BP guy until they realized that something was very, very wrong with their well.
At this point, there are no experts because there isn’t any prior experience with a gushing well at a mile below the surface of the sea. Seeing as every solution tried so far in the last 45 or so days has failed and the only sure solution is the relief well that won’t be done until August (assuming they can keep drilling through hurricane season) at the earliest, if Jim Cameron wants to plug the well with his ex-wives, well… anything is an improvement at this point.
I think maybe the worst thing I have heard so far is the trial balloon of “nationalizing” BP to be sure they pay all claims to the satisfaction of the federal government. The things the government could have done (approving the offshore sand berms, approving the surface burn) they have not done. All this crowd of morons can do is suggest the first thing that comes to hand — seizing the means of production. Does it trouble anyone else that their reflex arc runs through Das Kapital?
According to the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea, 12 June 1994:
SECTION V : NEUTRAL MERCHANT VESSELS AND CIVIL AIRCRAFT
Neutral merchant vessels
67. Merchant vessels flying the flag of neutral States may not be attacked unless they:
(a) are believed on reasonable grounds to be carrying contraband or breaching a blockade, and after prior warning they intentionally and clearly refuse to stop, or intentionally and clearly resist visit, search or capture;
(b) engage in belligerent acts on behalf of the enemy;
(c) act as auxiliaries to the enemy s armed forces;
(d) are incorporated into or assist the enemy s intelligence system;
(e) sail under convoy of enemy warships or military aircraft; or
(f) otherwise make an effective contribution to the enemy s military action, e.g., by carrying military materials, and it is not feasible for the attacking forces to first place passengers and crew in a place of safety. Unless circumstances do not permit, they are to be given a warning, so that they can re-route, off-load, or take other precautions.
Darren, you must be joking. If these wizards were serious about bringing in someone with relevant sub-sea experience, why not Robert Ballard? Tapping Cameron is nothing but a grand-standing prop routine. How tiresome of them. And how typical.
“The Rock of the Dome of the Rock is the altar stone of the Jewish Temple. I do not recommend damaging it.”
That of course would prevent any faithful Jew or Christian from taking any action that would damage it – but it will do nothing at all, and in fact will encourge the Iranians to detonate an airburst nuke about 1800′ above it. The first of many such blasts to occur across that area of the world over the next several hours.
When the Rock is cleared of all previous structures, that is how it will be done.
Dick Morris wrote a nice screed against our fearless leader, refer to:
http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/100913-obama-doesnt-have-a-clue
Lifeofthemind @ 158 wrote:
“The Rock of the Dome of the Rock is the altar stone of the Jewish Temple. I do not recommend damaging it.”
I don’t think so. The Second Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus. What little that remained was obliterated after the Bar Kochba Rebellion was crushed by the Romans and the entire city of Jerusalem was razed to the ground. A Roman Temple was built on the site of the Jewish Temple as a new city name “Aelia Capitolina” was constructed upon the site of ancient Jerusalem (the ancient Jews who were not slaughtered by the Romans, fled from Judea). The Roman Temple later morphed into a Christian church and ultimately morphed into an Islamic building. The original altar stone is probably buried in some refuse heap outside the city walls of Jerusalem along with what’s left of the Ark of the Covenant.
An important point is modern day Jerusalem is built upon Aelia Capitolina. The Jewish city of Jesus is long gone.
Darren, Does it trouble anyone else that their reflex arc runs through Das Kapital? …yes, but only 24 hours a day every day. In fairness, the suggestion apparently came not from the WH posse but from a friendly cheerleader, that is, Berserkeley econ prof, CNBC regular (The Kudlow Show), and former Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton, Robert Reich.
Mr. Reich, who stands about five feet tall, is said to have been in a bad mood ever since years ago he strolled into a seafood restaurant and asked the maitre d if they served shrimp, and was answered, “Of course, sir, we serve everybody!“
150. Cannoneer No. 4
Any word on the four Nork Sang-O-class subs?
…………
Might be a good idea to take out one or all of those quietly. I mean really soto voce. Like while they’re underwater at sea somewhere. So that the only way the world would know about it is if the Norks announced it. I just don’t think its good to shrug off the sinking of a ship.
With the israelis I think the idea would be to disable the hamas ships at sea so they have to be towed.
Betsybounds: Exactly. Actually it is worse than that: It is a sociopathic confusion of fantasy with reality.
He is a movie director. No, he does not know a single thing about this. No, taking a camera crew underwater does not qualify him for anything remotely like this challenge (those are specialty production crew that do that sort of shooting, BTW; a director rents them and they have their own production and logistics managers). The only thing more preposterous than calling on him for this is defending the call in the first place. What complete buffoonery.
(One wonders if someone had to tell someone “No, Mr. Secretary, those deep sea “aliens” were just CGI graphics used in a movie. No sir, They really are not down there. No Sir, We cannot contact them” Mr. Secretary: “Right. Of course not. (BTW, what’s CGI?)” )
We are truly at a point of deep rot; I wonder if we can recover.
I cannot understand why there is not a horde of about 7 million citizens descending on DC demanding that the whole lot of them quit.
I would say it was like living in the USSR, but even they were not this stupid, idiotic and arrogant.
To think of all the slander and abuse heaped on Bush after Katrina, none of it even remotely deserved, and then to see this nincompoopery and have them actually get away with it is beyond belief. Truly it will take more than a couple of elections to fix this country.
148/Peter re: vests and night vision googles on 40 al Q ops
I was listening to the John Batchelor show last night and he was saying that the ship was trying to smuggle contraband into Gaza – just that it wasn’t materiel – it was men. So, it seems that your comment further explains what was meant by that assertion.
The other ships did not resist boarding by IDF with such fervor, so something was clearly different with this ship. I think that the whole operation was intended to get those men on the ground as part of some larger operation underway. As others have said – the fuse has been lit, noiw just a question of when it arrives at the powder keg and goes boom.
169. novanglus
148/Peter re: vests and night vision googles on 40 al Q ops
……
This morning the tv talk shows say the Israelis want to quickly deport all but those 40 or so men.
163. betsybounds
They might have called Ballard — who referred them to Cameron. If you want to find a wreck, call Ballard. If you need visualization at depth, call Cameron. They have different skill sets.
Sometimes, calling all the same people into a room results in the same results. It occasionally takes someone without technical expertise to question basic assumptions and propose a solution that isn’t obvious to people who have carved channels of thinking through a complex problem.
The quick & dirty solution to this problem is a two-thousand foot bore beside the current bore and a low-yield underground nuke to crush the existing bore and stop the flow. They could have had that done by now if they had started from that premise. They know the geology of the Macondo Prospect pretty well, else they wouldn’t have put a couple of hundred millions into boring a well. A nuclear detonation a half-mile under the sea floor couldn’t possibly cause any more ecological damage than the millions of barrels of oil that will leak until they fix the thing.
Cameron can’t really hurt anything, the “experts” have had a month and a half to try to fix this and have been 0-fer to date. There are maybe a few hundred people in the world that have as much time in submersibles at incredible depths as Cameron, and very few that have experience at conceiving of and implementing technical solutions to unexpected problems at those depths. Of the few who figure out gadgets to solve problems below crush depth for normal submarines, fewer are billionaires who can get their CAD/CAM shop to spit out equipment on-demand and on unreasonable schedules. I’d have his number on speed-dial for something like this, along with Ballard and John Craven.
Wretchard,
The ultimate objective of these “Peace Activists” is to smuggle an Iranian nuclear weapon into Gaza to be fired at Ashkelon.
Iran and its lefty friends (Caroline Glick’s “Red-Green Alliance” between Western Leftists and Islamists) will try this over and over until Israel starts killing them all.
See:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cf645e98-6da9-11df-b5c9-00144feabdc0.html
“The Free Gaza Movement, one of the organisers of the flotilla, pledged a new attempt to run the embargo on Gaza. Audrey Bomse, a spokeswoman for the group, said the MV Rachel Corrie could reach Gaza “in the next four days”. The ship is owned by the Irish Free Gaza movement and carrying a number of Irish citizens, and Dublin called on Israel to allow it to deliver its cargo unimpeded.”
The only question now is _when_ someone will be killing some one else with weapons of mass destruction in the Mid-East.
Not IF!
The Islamists are on-record wanting another Jewish Holocaust and are diligently acquiring the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to go with that will.
See this peice by Strategypage.com:
Syrian Secrets Revealed From On High
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htart/articles/20100602.aspx
Google Earth users noted five compounds, that appear to be closed to all but authorized personnel. Inside these compounds there appeared to be entrances to bunkers dug into adjacent hills. In 2003, Syrian sources reported that Iraqi chemical weapons were sent to Syria, and some were storied in bunkers near Masyaf. These bunkers are believed to hold other munitions, including missiles being shipped to Hezbollah facilities in Lebanon. There, hundreds of tunnels and bunkers are used for storing Hezbollah munitions, personnel and vehicles. Satellite and aerial photos have seen weapons being brought in and out of these tunnels. Syria denies providing Hezbollah with any weapons.
.
The M600 missile is a copy of the Iranian Fateh which, in turn, is a copy of the Chinese DF-11A (which had a range of 400 kilometers). The M600 is a 8.86 meter (27.5 foot), 3.5 ton rocket with a half ton warhead.
.
Range is about 250 kilometers. This might account for the reports, late last year, that Syria had provided Hezbollah with SCUD missiles. Both the M600 and SCUD are ballistic missiles, but the M600 is a more modern design. SCUD was developed from the German World War II era V-2.
Israel has the WMD means already, but hasn’t screwed up the will to use them…yet.
The answer to that question of depends whether Israel will act for its survival, first or retaliate in it’s death throes, later.
Mongoose,
Just a reminder — the experts CAUSED this disaster. The experts CAUSED the subprime meltdown and the unregulated credit-default swap roulette game and lent far more money to the PIIGS than they could ever repay. The experts told banks that AA and AAA rated CDOs were five times safer than loaning money to actual, operating companies. The problem is not that amateurs are having delusions of competence. The problem is that the experts are having the same delusions. Things have become so complex that nobody is capable of keeping all of the variables in mind, or even really getting a global view of the situation. The fiction is of competence, that being an “expert” means you won’t make mistakes, that we can rely on experts in government to fix our problems or that turning things over to the experts is always the best idea. The pilot of every commercial airliner that has flown into the ground has been more of an expert in powered flight than any of the passengers. This has not saved a single passenger when the engine fell off or the control rod snapped, or when the pilot followed the “expert” opinion on flight management (e.g., the V2 speed on the Chicago DC-10 crash in 1978). Expertise simply does not measure up to the sudden appearance of a Black Swan event.
The experts you call after the first set of experts blows everything up are differentiated only by the fact that they will make different mistakes than the first set of experts, leading to a different set of unintended consequences. The fact that Ben Bernancke will not make the same mistakes that led to the Great Depression does not mean that he will not make mistakes that lead to the Greater Depression. The best we can hope for is that the overlapping biases and predispositions of a variety of people cover most every negative outcome when we start doing things like drilling for oil a mile under the ocean. They are inherently risky, and there will never be a situation where all eventualities are fully realized and all hazards contained. The foolishness is depending on experts to do that in the first place. Risk can only be mitigated, never eliminated.
>66. whiskey
>
>I am more and more convinced the Three Conjectures will
>never happen. The West lacks the will.
The world of the Three Conjectures will happen because Israel has a nuclear dead man switch:
Israel stations nuclear missile subs off Iran
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7140282.ece
Three German-built Israeli submarines equipped with nuclear cruise missiles are to be deployed in the Gulf near the Iranian coastline.
.
The first has been sent in response to Israeli fears that ballistic missiles developed by Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, a political and military organization in Lebanon, could hit sites in Israel, including air bases and missile launchers.
.
The submarines of Flotilla 7 — Dolphin, Tekuma and Leviathan — have visited the Gulf before. But the decision has now been taken to ensure a permanent presence of at least one of the vessels.
.
The flotilla’s commander, identified only as “Colonel O”, told an Israeli newspaper: “We are an underwater assault force. We’re operating deep and far, very far, from our borders.”
Is anyone else struck by the facts that,
a) Israeli Jews in German U-boats,
b) Armed with nukes,
c) That are carried on cruise missiles using American technology,
d) Whose bomb designs were tested by then-apartheid
South Africa in the South Atlantic,
are stalking Iran’s Jihadist Regime?
A post nuclear excahnge in the Middle East world is one where nuclear genocide has been set loose and the fantasy driven western females Whiskey complains of will run from western politics like scaulded dogs.
Too much harsh reality does that.
IAEA
A grand sequence of authoritative glyphs, standing before your eyes as four great structures, like the pyramids of Egypt, like high rise hotels on Miami Beach, like four World Trade Centers.
The people on those ships shouldn’t be released until Corporal Shalit is released. And they should be released in the same condition.
every thing under the sun casts a shadow, even a spirit-object such as Duty casts a shadow. the shadow of the duty to prevent frank madmen, proud genocidal suicidalists, from developing an atomic bomb, is that such a task can be so critical it could never be left up for grabs, so to speak, open for bidders to try it on spec.
so the duty has no breach (even though everything has a breach), and so the penalty for dereliction is forced to zero (and beyond, to a dereliction of penalty).
This job is so important, said the IAEA, that not just anybody can do it.
“But,” asked the people, later, “…what was that job?”
Mil-tech Bard: Three German-built Israeli submarines equipped with nuclear cruise missiles are to be deployed in the Gulf near the Iranian coastline.
The flotilla fiasco exposed Israeli unpreparedness, so they talk tough to compensate.
The ultimate objective of these “Peace Activists” is to smuggle an Iranian nuclear weapon into Gaza to be fired at Ashkelon.
100,000 Jews die. Israel retaliates and 8.5 million Iranians die in Tehran, all Iranian nuclear sites are hit, and Gaza turns to glass as “collateral damage”.
Now, Hamas is refusing to accept relief supplies coming in through Israel. Does Hamas think these supplies now have ritual cooties or is Gaza not really as destitute as these activists claim?
teresita, you in military intelligence should know better than anyone that in comparing discrete entities the truth is in the parts of the whole, not in the halves of implied ratios.
165. Eggplant
“The Second Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus. What little that remained was obliterated after the Bar Kochba Rebellion was crushed by the Romans and the entire city of Jerusalem was razed to the ground. A Roman Temple was built on the site of the Jewish Temple as a new city name “Aelia Capitolina” was constructed upon the site of ancient Jerusalem (the ancient Jews who were not slaughtered by the Romans, fled from Judea). The Roman Temple later morphed into a Christian church and ultimately morphed into an Islamic building. The original altar stone is probably buried in some refuse heap outside the city walls of Jerusalem along with what’s left of the Ark of the Covenant.”
1. The Temple was not entirely destroyed. The western retaining wall still stands and is the original construction. You know, the one where all the Jews pray. The Temple Mount itself was not destroyed. To explain, the site was originally a hill which was walled off and filled in to create a rectangular area with a flat top to build on. The buildings on top were leveled, but the substructures and tunnels were not destroyed. The “altar stone” is a giant piece of bedrock which is part of the original enclosed hill. Picture an iceberg, only the tip is sticking out. I doubt the Romans or anyone else could have moved it.
2. The Holy Ark was not buried in Jerusalem. It was taken as booty by Titus. See the arch of Titus.
http://www.letsrollforums.com/Blog/ArchOfTitusSpoilsofJerusale.jpg
If it was not looted by the original Vandals or another barbarian tribe during the fall of Rome I would wager it is in some labyrinth under Vatican City.
3. The Jerusalem of 2000 years ago it not lost, but is merely a few feet underneath. Archaeologists recently think they have identified the Jerusalem of 3000 years ago – the palace of King David. see: http://www.aish.com/jw/j/48961251.html
http://www.aish.com/jw/j/90205622.html
The past is never far.
“This might look like a man caused disaster but Mother Nature had the high card and you can be sure she will play it whenever it is least expected. We are just children playing in her back yard.” — Papa Ray
Don’t anthropomorphize impersonal natural forces… they hate that.
Hamas are protesting that the powered wheelchairs delivered by the Israelis from the “Peace Flotilla” are useless because the batteries have been removed.
Something tells me the batteries were the intended cargo in any event. A formidable portable power source for, I dunno — remote-launching Qassam rockets or detonating IEDs, maybe? No good for in-flight electronics, too heavy, but they are deep-cycle rechargeable batteries that pack a relative electric punch.
“I disagree that Russia played an important role in this process; the Turkish Islamist ideology possesses enough explanatory power on its own, and the timeline doesn’t seem to fit. (Not that I’m particularly fond of the Russian regime; I simply disagree with your a-la Athanasian Creed: “There is the Russian problem, and there is the Turkish problem, and yet there are not two problems, but one problem.” Finally, a Belmont Clubber other than X and maybe Kinu asks for evidence that the Russkies are involved, in the crisis du jour rather than just bloviating. Or was it all the money from those half naked Russian tourists sunning themselves in all-inclusive Antalya that somehow funds the evildoers?
mr X/194; In lieu of compromising my secret listening devices plastered into the Kremlin walls, How’s this, for starters?
***
(just up @ instapundit)
June 2, 2010
JENIN REDUX: As Reality Unfolds About Flotilla, World Media Continues with Fictional Narrative. This is why people chiding Israel for poor PR miss the point. It doesn’t really matter what they do, since the press will just lie about it. That seems an argument for much less restraint, rather than more. . . .
Posted at 3:45 pm by Glenn Reynolds
***
buddy
A website about how the Turks really didn’t slaughter 1,000,000 Armenians when the Ottomans knew they were at the end of their fork in the road. How does one find those places?
I’m sure there will be lots more chatter about whether or not the Turks are going all in to reestablish themselves as the seat of the Caliphate. The days of Empire are still a living memory in Turkey so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s discussed at dinner parties and in fancy clubs.
Owning a piece of the (somebody else’s) world to do with as you please has motivated more than a few over the years.
Muslimworld is so backward and so dysfunctional that it wouldn’t take much more than a resolute will from the West to stuff Jihad Genie back in the bottle for another 500 years. Alas, resolute will went out the door a generation or two ago when men had no illusions about the Turk.
Re # 13. no mo uro
“One of the tactical advantages the left has over the center/right is they give permission to overschooled but undereducated and underintelligent, immature, intellectually foppish camp followers to look at themselves as being super bright and one of the “cool kids”.
Are you talking about McNamara of Vietnam fame?
Uh oh, my comment was endorsed by Mr. X. Maybe I should reconsider.
More seriously, given that Turkey is both turning away from the West and becoming Islamist, one wonders how that will affect the situation in Central Asia. Russia, Turkey, China, even Iran… what jolly fun! But no, let’s focus on the Gaza Strip.
Darren (#161): “if Jim Cameron wants to plug the well with his ex-wives, well… anything is an improvement at this point.”
You almost managed to tie together two of the threads. Rather, the well should be plugged with the Hamas flotilla.
quickie, Glenn Beck just started –he’s ‘doing’ the history of Israel, tie-in to the freedumb flottila, as it pertains ti the macro-sho –if you can’t watch it now (Fox) it re-broadcasts again later tonite –
PB/186; yes, that “Nagorno Karabach conflict” in the late 80s actually killed 30 or 40 thousand and displaced a million more –and has been a ‘frozen conflict’ (as Kremlin calls them) since the USSR costume-change of 1991.
now, suddenly, two things start happening simultaneously: Russia & Armenia ease up on oppo to Turkey & Azerbaijan re Nagorno Karabach, and Turkey turns against western influence in mideast & N africa –re longtime Russian project. maybe it’s just a coincidence, huh?
Bob: More seriously, given that Turkey is both turning away from the West and becoming Islamist, one wonders how that will affect the situation in Central Asia. Russia, Turkey, China, even Iran… what jolly fun!
Yes, this means when we want to send the Fourth Infantry Division into northern Iran through Turkey, they mightn’t let us. Gosh that would be so disappointing.
Teresita (#191):
Anabasis.
If we really wanted to piss off the Turks, all we would need to do is give Greece some F-16s. It’s not like they could pay us for them anyway, might as well give them away.
Went on a cruise to the Eastern Med a couple of years ago, it was enlightening. The most entertaining thing I can think of would be to put a Greek tour guide and a Turkish tour guide in a room with one t-shirt that said “The Victim”.
…it occurs that one of the basic confusions about all these turbulent locii is that since the 2006 elections, on a deep background level, the USA has been backing Russian foreign policy. this should have worked out much better for the state of Israel –this superpower background cooperation. that it has anything but done so is a head-scrtatcher –almost as if some bargain has been struck between the Kremlin and the jihad. something like, no serious jihad infiltration into the Russian heartland, and Russia will try to pry USA and Israel apart sufficient to give the jihad a shot at Israel. so then two years later USA elects Obama and it’s like Mohammed and St Andrew and Santa Claus all together blessed the deal.
Darren (#193): “The most entertaining thing I can think of would be to put a Greek tour guide and a Turkish tour guide in a room with one t-shirt that said ‘The Victim’.”
Heh. Anyone remember Serdar Argic?
[PS: Hey, let's start a rumor: Serdar Argic was aboard the Mavi Marmara and was murdered while heroically defying the Arme^H^H^H^H Jewish barbarians!]
Any bubbleheads lurking care to speculate about the best places for a Sang-O to ambush George Washington next week?
The PLAN might do the deed and let the Norks take the blame.
cannoneer, one of my dolorous imaginings is that when next the big balloon goes up, it’ll start with with an ambush of a US carrier –and then a mystery and apologies and scapegoats, with an eye toward an American president who will dock the fleet, to keep it safe, German High Seas Fleet after Jutland, like. the worst imagining of all is a gaggle of carriers pulled in close, like to cover an army in Afghanistan or something.
Petraeus 2012. no more perfesser c-in-c’s –especially red ones.
“The Japanese themselves, as they marched in sneakers through the jungle towards Singapore also had a whole bunch of shared illusions” bvw@152.
Yes, and they too had been warned, by, amongst others, Hector Bywater in his book “The Great Pacific War”. Published in 1925, it was intended as a message of deterrence, to warn the Japanese that although they might achieve sweeping victories in the early days of a surprise attack they would be over-extended and inevitably defeated by the greater resources of the USA.
Yamamoto knew Bywater personally, and Yamamoto’s concern about US strength is well known, but unfortunately Japanese planners mostly took from the book the lessons which suited them, and ignored the warning, believing that warrior spirit would prove stronger than industrial might.
This is the ultimate consolation of philosophy.
Dennis Hopper Recites If by Rudyard Kippling on Johnny Cash Show
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
–Rudyard Kipling
it wasn’t the sneakers that kept flanking and surprising the Singapore forward defense all the way up the peninsula –it was bicycles. thje japanese didn’t just ride them when they could, they pushed them along draped with three body-weights worth of supplies, and made riverine crossings without motorized logistics –always getting ‘there’ ahead of the blocking forces attempts to prepare positions.
Wretchard: While you make very good points, I believe you are being a few shades too hard on the colonial authorities in Asia during and prior to WWII. I must state clearly that Singapore was very much the exception to the rule which sobered up enough after the initial defeats in the North to begin taking the IJA seriously- albiet not effectively enough to actually endure its assault-, and even prior to the war even in Singapore there were rather loud voices at the top (particularly the military command) shouting that Singapore’s defenses were not enough to withstand a serious attack by the Japanese. While they tragically were ignored, they did try.
And secondly, while hubris doubtless played a role in several fiascos in the Pacific during 1941 and ’42 (namely in Singapore and to a lesser extent the Philippines), I believe you severely overemphasize the confidence of the Western colonials in their security. Indeed, well before the Japanese had actually entered the war, most colonial authorities were PAINFULLY aware of their strategic vulnerability and spent much of their time petitioning London and Washington to ramp up troop levels and training. Hong Kong and Guam were perhaps the most overt cases of this (being as they had a front-row seat of the Japanese military buildup and were separated from other Western Allied colonies by dozens if not hundreds of miles of Japanese-dominated ocean), but the Dutch and the Raj were also rather prescient, with the Dutch in particular advocating a withdrawl from Boreo and Java to Sumatra and New Guinea while practically begging for all the supplies they could get. In addition, the main component of the Western defeats in the early phases of the Pacific war was not arrogance but lack of coordination and proper supplies. MacArthur was perhaps one of the few who took the Japanese seriously within the US military hierarchy but even he was woefully disorganized and understrength when the time came to actually fight. While the West did indeed overestimate itself, it did so more or less marginally (for instance, by discounting the importance of aircraft carriers because of their experiences in WWI and the naval war so far, which emphasized Battleships and anti-Sub warfare), and took it largely for granted that the issue was trying to delay the Japanese enough to free up troops from Europe to help the matter. Which they largely succeeded in doing, albiet far less skillfully than they had hoped.
And it is notable that they did not make the same mistakes again. Even in Malaysia and the Philippines, the Japanese army’s extremely light equipment and armarment was revealed to be a fatal flaw, and one which was taken full advantage of later in Burma and the Island hopping campaigns. And when storm clouds again surfaced over Indochina and Korea after the war, the Western powers did not hesitate to spit hundreds of thousands of well armed, well trained veteran troops into the firing line.
A more apt comparison in my opinion is that of Spain and its Morrocan protectorate from 1900-1936, which saw even greater Spanish hubris than Singapore even had on far thiner justification break down just as thoroughly after Annual only to lead to a savage melee for control, and the rising of Franco and the other coup leaders in that war is something I will leave you to read into as you choose, though with the note that it is quite possible that such a situation may happen here in a country of intense political polarization even regarding the military coupled with the arising of a few skilled, charismatic, and very, VERY embittered men. That such a thing did not happen after Vietnam is something I regard as a minor miracle. We may not be so lucky.
little known fact, there was supposed to be an aircraft carrier with the Prince of Wales and Repulse. En route it damaged itself slightly in a collision in Kingston, Jamaica, harbor –and stayed for repairs, missing the rendezvous. The two battleships (actually a battleship and heavy cruiser) ran without air cover thinking they were out of enemy land-based air range. They weren’t –this is how the allies began to learn of the long ranges the Japanese had achieved by lightening those Bettys and Judys and Vals –so much that in air combat they were coffins. trade offs, always.
The shock of losing those two capital ships –en route to interdict and bombard the Japanese army moving down the peninsula, as well as open the seaward approaches for sorely-needed supply ships –to an inferior air force –must’ve been one of the British peoples’ lowest points of WWII.
The last 2 comments raise the following completely ridiculous question in my head: What if in WW2, the Japanese and German militaries had switched places? (Specifically: What if the German military had the mindset, strategy, technology, etc of the Japanese, and vice-versa.)
(The preceding was an attempt at refuting “There is no such thing as a stupid question.”)
Darren @ 173: I agree with this post!
But also, the suits can choose whichever “expert” is most convenient, which gets you off to a bad start, and for that matter they can then choose the next “expert” and the next and the next.
Same thing happens in war – peacetime generals are generally (!) worthless, so you start trading them out until you get competent ones – and the first one to succeed, wins!
Follow-up: Ich luge
#202, Buddy, I have to disagree. First it was a Battleship and a Battlecruiser. A BC IS NOT a cruiser. It has the Guns of a battleship with the speed of the Cruiser, which means little or no armor.
Second, the IJN had the best air force on the planet between 40 and 43. Better planes and the best pilots. The IJA had the 2nd best air force on the planet during that period. Better planes and the best pilots.
The biggest part of why the Japanese ran wild for the first 6 months and then held on for the next year was the quality of their pilots.
Arguing equipment is mostly a waste of time, since the opponents in WW2 had what they thought they needed or at least what they wanted. That said, if the Germans had been flying the Zero-sen instead of the Bf-109, they would have won the battle of Britain. If they had had the Betty instead of the He-111, it would have been a cakewalk. The Val was better then the Stuka.
Japanese pilots had more air hours on the average. In combat time they were about equal, since the Nazi’s had Spain and the Japs had China.
It is a major argument among air historians whether or not the Japanese used Zero’s in the Burma campaign or the ‘Hemp’, which was the Army fighter of not quite equal performance. Regardless, they shot Spitfires out of the sky. Something like a 15 to 1 kill ratio. Granted that could be credited to the Pilots. The Jap pilots of that period almost all had over 1,000 hours in the air while the Brits seldom had more then a couple of hundred. Plus the Brits of that period used furball tactics, since that was what worked best against the Germans. Nothing in WW2 did the furball like a Zero.
The US Navy and the Flying Tigers eventually developed tactics that negated the Zero’s performance advantages and made it a target. In the ETO, we just built fighters that would out Messerschmitt the Messerschmitt. Plus by ’44 our pilots had a minimum of 200 hours BEFORE they were eligible for Squadron service. The Nazi’s were sending up boys to die with less then 1/10th of that. Air war is about attrition. Experienced pilots build up their hours and get better. Rookie pilots get dead.
An important thing to understand about the difference between philosophy and theology is that philosophy is man centered whereas theology is God centered. As an example of something that is God centered here is the 23rd Psalm. (not the king james version)
Psalm 23 (New International Version)
Psalm 23
A psalm of David.
1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
3 he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, [a]
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
Interesting thread. no mor uro (13) wrote:
Take someone who got a bachelor’s in some BS subject like women’s English Lit, failed to thrive in the real world and ended up being a public school teacher, someone who watched as others more bright and competent (but not necessarily as schooled) than themself succeeded both in terms of material stuff and respect in the community.
That insight immediately reminded me of a comment written by a lefty Canadian environmentalist over at the fever swamps of the Guardian several months ago. The lefty Canuck decried the oil drilling in Alberta for all the usual lefty reasons but then ended with a spiteful rant. To paraphrase, he was bitter because the roughnecks and roustabouts were uneducated men who laughed at his degree. They earned 3 times more than what he, the environmentalist, a fellow with a master’s degree, made. I really wish I had saved the comment. A leftist unwittingly gave the world a great glimpse into the workings of the “progressive mind.” Angry disdain, rank envy, and blatant snobbery coated with a very thin veneer of faux concern for Gaia.
You sure that’s not man centered, Charles?
The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
David, the King.
He had a rough life, very unsettled. As 23 says, his only comfort was really in his experience with The Divine, which, to him, was always to be had, although at times in a one hand clapping sort of way.
Thoughtful thread, a migration of themes like some major birdway.
#203 and 206
Interesting, but I would probably have to say that in the end the Germans would have been crushed even more thoroughly than before and the Japanese would probably have done vastly better than they did but would have eventually gone down.
For one, the Japanese doctrine on land emphasized the light infantryman’s initiative and fanatacism to overcome more numerous and better equipped forces, which did NOT work well for the Japanese themselves save when facing forces worse off than they were (KMT, Soviet/Mongolian border units, etc). For Germany, this approach would have been epically disasterous on the Russian Front for the simple reason that the Soviets were more numerous and some of them had beaten the Japanese at their own game in the battles for Mongolia. More probably, the waves upon waves of German infantry would have gotten stuck on and been chewed up by things like the Maginot Line and the Western Allied heavy armor. Japanese lack of emphasis on the tank would have likewise been problematic. While some early German tanks like the Panzer I were easily worse than some early Japanese tanks, that was the exception to the rule, and the Japanese tanks on the whole were too mechanically unreliable and generally too few to really make a difference. The Matilda and Char Bd1-bis would have toyed with them, like they historically did with the Panzers I, II, and 35, and while the Western Allied DID have their fair share of crippy tanks in 1940 (WWI vintage, anyone?), this was equalized by their fortified areas and later the hedgehog defense. That and these tanks are nowhere near as past as the German tanks were, and the result is that Fall Gelb turns into at best a WWI-esque static war until the Western Allies bring out enough heavy firepower to blast the lightly armed German infantry out of their trenches and back to Germany.
German and Japanese airborne units were more or less equivalent in their training and equipment, and so I do not forsee any major differences between the two.
The Naval theater is where it would get interesting, because strategically in this universe Germany has a VERY large fleet and absolutely NOWHERE to use it without breaking the Western Allied blockade in the North Sea. And technologically the Kreigsmarine would be the equal or superior of the Western Allied navies on the high seas. Which means that we would probably see numerous tactical and possibly strategic gains in the North Sea for quite some time, though with a risk: the Germans are fighting in VERY close corridors, which would make even a carrier at risk to a battleship or destroyer, and so as long as the Western Allies could reliably replace ships, a breakout- even with the entry of the “Italian” navy- is unlikely to accomplish much save perhaps occasionally cutting the transportation and communication lines across the English channel.
And to respectfully contradict Rosinate’s assessment of the Japanese air forces, I must state that the Zero was not a wonder weapon and it is dubious to say the least if it could have won the battle of Britain in 1940, and much afterwards definitively not so. The Zeke had a dismal record flying over enemy territory that was actually populated and defended adaquately (see the battles for Kohima-Imphal), and it was vastly less armed and armored than the Bf-109. Yes, it would have given an advantage to the Luftwaffe by allowing them to operate well over Britain itself, but that in and of itself is a risk due to the VERY heavy British investment in AA. Japanese bombers likewise had a superior range and payload, but WOEFULLY inadaquate armor, which in practice would have devastated them up against the Hurraine or the early Spitfire, nevermind the late Spitfire, the Mustang, or the Tempest. The Japanese preformance using their planes was woefully mixed- by the end of the war in Burma the kill ratio between Spitfires and the Japanese fighters was directly the inverse of your cited claim and had been for three times as long as the Japanese had had a favorable kill score to it at all- and I see no reason to believe that the Germans would do any better using them, PARTICULARLY since the Japanese had been gaining combat experience for over ten years prior to the attack on Pearl, whereas the Germans would have only had Spain and Poland to do so. Which means that they likely would have not been comfortable with their aircraft. In addition, since Europe was the primier front of the war, it means that there would be no grand screwups adapting tactics used against Bf-109s and Stukas in Europe against Zeros and Tonys in the Orient: they would have simply learned the later and stuck with it throughout the war in Europe. Coupled with the embargo on Germany and the Japanese military’s own difficulty controlling its military applied to the Germans in Europe (which means border issues with the Russian bear, likely without victory in the West), and Germany would go down.
Japan would have VASTLY better chances. German infantry doctrine would have been devastating in the hands of the Imperial Army in China and the Soviet frontier and would likely have given us a run for our money until we learned like we did in Europe how to deal with them and beat them at their own game. Likewise, German land doctrine would have been a GODSEND to the IJA in China and the Soviet frontier. It would probably have been how Barbarossa was supposed to go, only even better. Think about it: trained and drilled heavy mechanized infantry coupled with extremely powerful and mobile armor (Panzer III, IV, Panther, etc) against an enemy with next to no armor to speak of and with training and equipment that makes the 1941 Red Army look good, in a comparatively mild climate so there is no Russian winter absolutely ripping through the Japanese lines. If we assume that the Japanese would be in 1937 roughly what the Condor Legion was at the time, they might even stand a good chance of conquering China or at least effectively knocking it out of the war and seizing the coast before the historical declaration of war. Against us, things would have been far dicier given German “issues” with planning an amphibious invasion, but we would have probably seen Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Sumatra fall. However, the further out into the Pacific that we get the more the weaknesses of the German doctrine become appararent.
Namely, their air and naval forces. The Bf-109 had a fuel capacity that was insufficient to take it far over Britain when launched from Channelside aircraft fields. In the Pacific, that would have been fatal. VERY fatal. Ditto for the German bombers, ESPECIALLY the Stuka. In short, the Japanese would have been able to obtain air dominance over sections of the front against us using their superior experience, but would not be able to hold onto it for long, even considering the need to transport forces to the Pacific from Europe and the resulting tactical and strategic f ups. When I must seriously consider if the KMT air force would be able to devastate the Japanese Air Forces in this scenario assuming historical land advancements and the like, you know the Japanese air forces do NOT have a great deal of longevity.
The fleet, if anything, is an even bigger issue. Simply put, plans for Hitler’s Kriegsmarine were built more or less of of the blueprints for the WWI High Seas Fleet. The very same fleet that the Western Allied navies at the time effectively defeated in the conflict for the North Sea. Which does NOT bode well. Deemphasis on Aircraft carriers and the lack of suitable aircraft to use with them (virtually nothing the Germans had would have been suitable for carrier deployment without VERY intensive modifications if that: the “Italian” air force might have been better but even they were on the whole inferior to Western Allied planes) means there is nothing like the destruction of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, and indeed it likely means that the Japanese navy would have been devastated even assuming nobody learns the lessons of the Aircraft Carrier.
In addition, the Japanese have an additional disadvantage: unless Tokyo imbunes their servicepeople with an absolute terror while dealing with the Western Allies like the Germans had while dealing with the Soviets and Yugoslavs, they are going to face mass surrenders on the order of Tunisia, the Breton ports, and the Ruhr pocket. Even assuming the adoption of paramilitary units and an army-outside-the-army like the SS, the Japanese would probably have seen things like the surrender of their Philippine garrison far earlier and an actual capitulation on Okinawa. This would probably be fatal to the Japanese in the long run, as without the Bushindo code keeping them in line providing them with the absolute determination many have identified them by, the Japanese military will eventually collapse as- like we saw in Berlin- the military brass gets fed up with the Emperor or vice versa, which will speed the end of the war in the Pacific.
In short, the Japanese would do vastly better, but in the end both would still probably fall.
wow –great thread, migratory indeed –King David, the 23rd Psalm, a wild roman candle from Teresita in her usual way, and a slug of fascinating alt history –
rosinante/206 –great post –but have to say, my ‘inferior air force’ was litotes, set up (poorly) by the part about allied intelligence on same being built up under fire, by two sinking RN ships delivering a thousand jack tars to davey jones locker.
Those thousand hour IJN fighter pilots were good, alright –maybe TOO good –in that their brilliance hid the normative from the admirals, and left them unprepared to cope with how to fight their never-again-ideal replacements after the black swan –the hundreds lost –at Midway.
It is over forty years since I stood in the Dome of the Rock. If you see it there is no doubt that stone is the altar that was fashioned from the living rock without the use of metal tools. See Exodus 20:21
The saga of Saburo Sakai
(and a hearty salute to the allied pilots who had to contend with men like this)
209. Teresita
David is a great man of God. If you had highlighted the references to God you would have gotten an equal or greater number of references. While David is a great example of a man in touch with God but we cannot access the divine personality through him. We can only do that through Jesus.
Psalm 22 (New International Version) King David
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
In Matthew 27:45-46, it says, “Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. 46And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” If Jesus is God, why would He say this?
First of all, Jesus quoted Psalm 22:1 which begins with, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”. Jesus quoted this Psalm in order to draw attention to it and the fact that He was fulfilling it there on the cross.
Consider verses 11-18 in Psalm 22:
132. Charles
Of course part of the reason too is that everyone can see that China is in a fast development period akin to the development period of the Japanese in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
…………….
A corollary of this is the question as to whether the PLA will be like the Japanese military. The Japanese military was at one point a competing element of the Japanese government after the Meji Restoration. Later it became dominant in the Japanese government.
Currently the PLA is a competing element in the Chinese government. Its unknown as to whether the PLA will become dominant in the Chinese government. What has become clear to everyone in the theatre is that as the PLA’s power has grown –so too has its ambition.
Beyond North Korea and Taiwan, I think that PLA’s thinking currently revolves around supplying oil to China in time of war–which they cannot now insure–because of Singapore, the nearby straights, and the military systems and alliances that Singapore maintains.
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That last sentence –could as easily be phrased ……Beyond North Korea and Taiwan, I think that PLA’s thinking currently revolves around supplying oil to China in time of war–which they cannot now insure– because of the USA, the Strait of Malacca, and the military systems and alliances that the USA maintains…
Singapore’s concern is that the tide is currently running against the USA. (this will change. Singapore is a weather vane.)
Having made the discussion of Chinese oil security…what would be the strategic implications if both the Chinese and the USA one day became energy independent?
Boeing, PetroChina Sign Biofuels Agreement in Efforts to “Green” Air Travel
Looks like the lights are going down and the curtain is about to rise, the show is about to begin.
somehow the odor is not so much of popcorn but of Kimchee and it smells deep.
Luck to us all.
yep –ever since 1860 –get enough theatricals in DC and they’ll manage to kill the lights and raise the curtain. Like you said, luck to us all.
Turtler (#211):
Thanks. I couldn’t have hoped for a better response.
Two relevant quotes brought to my attention by Porphyrogenitus:
“The non-inevitability of events we nevertheless know are bound to come.”
T.S. Eliot: “Half of the harm that is done in this world Is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”