To Win or Not to Win
Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice writes in the Washington Post that “the civil war in Syria may well be the last act in the story of the disintegration of the Middle East as we know it. The opportunity to hold the region together and to rebuild it on a firmer foundation of tolerance, freedom and, eventually, democratic stability is slipping from our grasp.” She warns that the victor of the Syrian civil war will be Iran — even if Assad loses.
In recent days, France, Britain and Turkey have stepped into the diplomatic vacuum to recognize a newly formed opposition that is broadly representative of all Syrians. The United States should follow their lead and then vet and arm the unified group with defensive weapons on the condition that it pursues an inclusive post-Assad framework. The United States and its allies should also consider establishing a no-fly zone to protect the innocent. America’s weight and influence are needed. Leaving this to regional powers, whose interests are not identical to ours, will only exacerbate the deepening sectarianism.
Certainly there are risks. After more than a year of brutal conflict, the most extreme elements of the opposition — including al-Qaeda — have been empowered. Civil wars tend to strengthen the worst forces. The overthrow of Assad could indeed bring these dangerous groups to power.
But the breakdown of the Middle East state system is a graver risk. Iran will win, our allies will lose, and for decades the region’s misery and violence will make today’s chaos look tame.
War is not receding in the Middle East. It is building to a crescendo. Our elections are over. Now, America must act.
In which case it won’t, if she’s expecting the administration to do it. The original sin present in Iraq was that it represented an American attempt to remold a Middle Eastern state in America’s preferred image. From a certain point of view America acting in the world is the root of all evil.
Instead the ‘kinetic military actions’ in both Syria and Libya have been defined as simply efforts to protect a population from violence. Rice writes, “the great mistake of the past year has been to define the conflict with Bashar al-Assad’s regime as a humanitarian one” as if smart bombs were just another form of relief supply, devoid of policy payload.
The currently preferred approach is to settle nothing and defer everything. To kick the can down the road. The New York Times reports that the Obama administration arranged the ceasefire in Gaza by purposely deferring the resolution of every major issue. “In a whirlwind series of meetings over the ensuing days, President Obama and Mrs. Clinton played an instrumental role in sealing the accord, a review of those meetings suggests. But it is also clear that the cease-fire announced Wednesday was achieved by deferring some of the toughest issues, including the pace and conditions under which Gaza’s border crossings might be opened. ”
In another article the NYT reports that by 2014 the administration will be in a position to leave Afghanistan right where they found it: in the hands of the current Afghan regime “with a small counterterrorism force with an eye toward Al Qaeda, senior officials say. ” What has been achieved you might ask? But then why is achievement any more than victory a relevant factor any longer?
The questioned raised by Syria — or Iraq, Afghanistan or Gaza — is whether any war important enough to start is important enough to win. Maybe only bigots ask this question. “Winning” has become a dirty word to everyone except America’s enemies. David Ignatius writes in the Washington Post that if America is unwilling to say who should win the war in Syria by backing them then al-Qaeda will.
Syrian activists warn that chaos will continue until the various governments that support the opposition pool their money and disseminate it through the provincial councils. “Stop asking us to unify until you unify yourselves,” a Syrian activist warned a U.S. official recently. …
The Syrian opposition took a big step forward this month by forming a broad political coalition that includes local activists who started the revolution. But the opposition’s military command is still a mess, and until it’s fixed, jihadist extremists will keep getting more powerful.
The opposite of victory as the goal to war is the “oops theory”; the notion that all wars are like accidents. They start from misfortune must be ended by an act of will or failing that held to a dull, subclinical level for any length of time necessary. This perfectly describes Gaza, and may if the Administration had its druthers describe its future relationship with Iran. Endless war below the newspaper fold.
But Condoleeza Rice argues that such a manageable quasi-war is not what the administration will get in the Middle East. Rather what it is preparing for itself is a region-wide conflagration whose effects cannot be bounded. Perhaps it is already too late to choose between them in the Middle East. It is possible that Syria has already been “won” for the Jihad; that if it does not remain with Iran, then it and Libya and Egypt may fall into al-Qaeda like hands. Maybe by 2014 the administration can only hope to leave Afghanistan as it found it but more likely will be leaving it to the Jihad as well. Then the administration will re-learn the old lesson. The opposite of victory is not peace; it is defeat.
Here are two videos that examine the philosophy of victory. One is taken from a documentary of “Bomber” Harris’s life. The other is from advocacy by Jerry Wills, a noted musician, pacifist and healer.
The most interesting aspect of Jerry Will’s talk is that if you substitute the word “God” for “extraterrestrials” in his argument he sounds exactly like an Old Testament prophet. How strange it is that Western civilization, having spent nearly a century overthrowing God should replace him with the buff, albino humanoids of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus or by Gaia or Xenu, almost as if having burned a Rembrandt the curator replaced it with a child’s drawing. I guess that is progress. But one wonders.
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
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None of this is a bug; it is a feature of the Administration. (And they will blame Israel. And they will blame Bush.)
soon there will not be western money enough for alimenting their mobs, so the’ll eat each others?
so the’ll eat each others?
More likely masses of desperate people will get on boats and seek refuge in Italy, Spain and France.
It seemed obvious that the Arab Spring would end up like this. Obvious to everyone except the New York Times, BHO and Hillary. With leaders and media like these, who needs enemies? Our actual enemies must be laughing in amazement at how their old nemesis, the USA, is falling apart.
Excellent analysis, thank you.
It seems that the war against America, Freedom, and the West is going pretty good.
Very sad.
“More likely masses of desperate people will get on boats and seek refuge in Italy, Spain and France.”
So long as they don’t seek refuge in the U.S.
We don’t need more Muslims — desperate or not.
Wasn’t there a book written long ago that dealt with France nuking a refugee/immigrant fleet of ships coming from North Africa?
I would think France and the other med countries would use force to stop any mass wave of immigrants heading for their beaches.
The bombing of Dresden was planned in Munich, perhaps not intentionally, but actually for all of that. That is all that can be said in Harris’ defense. The problem with kicking the can down the road is the same as putting a band aid over gangrene. You make worse inevitable.
And then the inevitable gets real bad.
One of the favorite methods in the Marxist bag of tricks is to solve a problem by enlarging it. That way the activists get more power. The world also gets a bigger problem into the bargain, a situation met by giving the activists even more power.
The problem does not become apparent because the Marxist faithful believe that the problem will be solved “in the end” when the activists have finally been given all the power they are asking for. It will be OK on the day.
Hence a deficit is fixed by borrowing more money and a crisis like the ‘Arab Spring’ is resolved by not resolving it so that when the solution comes it is “comprehensive”. Someday when Israel stops building settlements, when Hamas is LGBT-friendly and we buy the world a Coke there’ll be peace on earth. But for now a ceasefire that buys Hamas time to import more missiles will have to do.
People somehow think this will work. But it won’t. If the Italians, Spaniards and French reach the point when they are forced to fire on refugee boats the question should be: how did it come to this? What sequence brought things to that point? How many cans were kicked down the road to bring them to that point?
But by then the culprits will be long gone. Perhaps retired to Chicago, or giving speeches at $250,000 a pop. Or maybe in a papal-like job at the UN, above all criticism and beyond all justice. And then there will be only the 21st century Harrises fielding questions for which there are no answers.
Where is ET when you need him?
W #3: agree, there will be masses of refugees. Boatloads across the Med, but I would imagine many busloads as well, and walkers, crossing into Turkey, thence to the Balkans. Greece may be lucky; she’s so broke that nobody seeking succour will pause long there.
HEP-T #7: if France and other countries use force, the media will have a field day. Al-Jazeera will probably lead the swarms of journalists interviewing the wounded, traumatized and disgruntled. This coverage will inflame the occupants of the French city ring-slums, many of whom have shown great talent at burning things over imagined slights. How they will respond to footage of their brethren being pushed back into the sea, is not hard to guess.
Pass the popcorn, it may be the last batch ever made.
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings (Gods of Wisdom & Virtue) with terror and slaughter return!
From Bill Whittle.
You can only burn away at Reality for so long before the Delusion collapses and the false front comes crashing in on you. Should we take comfort that the Obama admin has deleted the words jihad, terrorism and very nearly Islam from all national security training and policy making documents?
Confucius had a term called the “Rectification of Names.” It meant calling things by their proper, descriptive name and not obfuscating them with euphemisms. How can the people in the U.S. Govt deal reasonably with the political and social implications of jihad when they refuse to name it?
“Harris’ defense” … the bombing of Dresden – Feb 13,14 1945 – “canceled” the death march scheduled for Friday Feb 16, 1945 in which almost all of the remaining Jews of Dresden would have perished.
I’m not sure just what the numbers are – but I think Harris “killed” (if you wish) roughly half of the Jews summoned for the march, the remainder survived.
you do the math..
Mori proclaims himself pharaoh while Jamie Foxx calls Obama “our Lord and Saviour” and the Jihad is advancing across the 21st century Middle East.
Who was it who thought religion was dead? Hell no. It’s only resting. Let’s see now. Who should I profess faith in? Morsi? Obama? Allah? The 12th Imam? Gaia? Xenu? Or maybe Jerry Wills and the aliens from Tau Ceti. I am really curious to know why a world that thinks it is bigoted and irrational to live according to the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount can regard it as perfectly acceptable to adhere to these aforementioned deities and gods. Why is Paul Krugman’s idea that you can create money out of nothing indefinitely not creationism, pure and simple?
The worst that a practicing Christian, Jew or Buddhist can conclude about himself is that he’s no crazier and probably a good deal saner than the rest of the enlightened world. Maybe that is all the best religions are: a handhold or a rope we can grab on to pull ourselves from the vortex of madness.
#7 Hep-t I believe you’re referring to “The Camp of the Saints”
I suspect when/if historians get around to analyzing the past few years they will observe a shift in the methods and motivations of the enemy non-state actors (the terrorists/jihad).
10 years ago Al-Q and the like were operating under a few friendly regimes like Taliban and Iran, and plotting to kill Americans. When they did that, America made their life difficult and they had to hide out or die (or both). Still they plotting in their caves and safe houses to kill Americans until we killed them first. Example: Bin Laden.
Others changed their tack. Instead of planning to take down an airplane or a barracks, they started to work on taking down governments and countries. Why waste years of effort to crash one airplane when you can work to control Libya, Egypt, or Syria?
Why live in a cave or a hole when you can get a palace?
Why play with old soviet machine guns when you can capture a chemical weapons program, aircraft and missiles?
Why live on the run when you can get diplomatic immunity and thumb your nose at the Americans?
The AL-Q and MB folks who switched strategy are succeeding mightily, aided by the haphazard policies of the American administration.
“3. wretchard
Yes, but the Delikatessen image was too temptating
So we’ll have to sell fregates to Greece, knowing tht they would not be repaid back !
7. HEP-T
could you find the title please? I’m interested to find this book
Wretchard quoted:
Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice writes in the Washington Post that “the civil war in Syria may well be the last act in the story of the disintegration of the Middle East as we know it.”
I have a high regard for Condoleeza Rice but events in Syria (while important) are not the last act in the Middle East. Egypt is the place to watch. The Egyptians did not overthrow Mubarak due to a sudden yearning for freedom. The Egyptians have not experienced true political freedom in their entire 5000 year history. What happened in Egypt was their economy deteriorated to the point that the Egyptian government could not pay for the bread dole that feeds most of Egypt.
The concept of “no taxation without representation” is as fundamental to politics as the Second Law of Thermodynamics is to physics. The opposite of “no taxation without representation” is equally valid, i.e. I’ll forfeit my political rights in exchange for free government cheese. Mubarak’s social contract with the Egyptian people was that he could hold absolute power so long as he handed out free bread. However Mubarak broke that contract after he could no longer afford to buy the free bread.
Mori is the new tyrant running Egypt. Mori is worse than Mubarak because Mori is an Islamic fascist while Mubarak was merely a garden variety dictator. Mori will fail like Mubarak did because Mori does not have enough money for the bread dole. The inability of Middle Eastern tyrants to pay for their bread doles is the real reason why the social order is breaking down in the Middle East. I might add that we are observing a similar phenomena in Europe and the United States.
Wretchard said:
“How strange it is that Western civilization, having spent nearly a century overthrowing God should replace him with the buff, albino humanoids of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus or by Gaia or Xenu, almost as if having burned a Rembrandt the curator replaced it with a child’s drawing.”
The movie “Prometheus” was an amazing balls up (I really liked the alien spacecraft). I suspect Ridley Scott has lost it to senility. He began the “Prometheus” project with a decent script. Unfortunately Scott tossed out the original script and hired a known bozo to write some stream-of-consciousness garbage as a replacement. The resultant movie was remarkable, i.e. brilliant special effects, camera work and acting but a non-sequitur movie script. The movie cost $130 million to produce. One would think that $130 million could have been spent of a competent script.
“Kicking the can down the road’
Somewhere, just around the next bend in the road, there is a vast intersection where all of the roads come together, and in the middle of that junction is a thousand ft. tall pile of cans, every can ever kicked down the road.
And soon, the last politician will kick the last can into the base of that pile and the whole thing will come down and bury every human being on earth under the cans.
And we will all become tinsmiths making candle holders, icons, trivits and aviator sunglasses. { I once sat and watched a Vietnamese man, using a rock for an anvil and a tack hammer, turn a Dr.Pepper can and a few pieces of tinted plexiglass from a crashed American helicopter into a regulation pair of Govt. issued sunglasses. You would have been hard put to tell the difference.]
People are infinitly adaptable, govts. aren’t.
It is the great trajedy of our age that on the cusp of our greatest achievments, we have lost faith in ourselves and spend all of our energy trying to make the perfect lifboat to guarentee our survival.
Survival is not a reason to live.
“Winning” has become a dirty word to everyone except America’s enemies.
And Charlie Sheen.
(Condi) Rice says if we don’t follow her advice big horribles will follow. In particular we will have failed states from Morroco to Pakistan. Hey, I live in California so what me worry, but OK let me try. Better the status quo ante, we should support dictators as long as they are our bastards. OK, but that doesn’t seem to be on the table. Then what. There’s a mob out front and one of them is dressed like the statue of liberty, this is a good sign. OK, let’s arm the whole mob, what could go wrong.
Well exsqueeze me, would not that be exactly the failed state, that C. Rice is supposedly worried about?
But what are the options? In Iraq we supposedly did send in American troops to set up and preserve a state in the style C. Rice desires. We are apparently to count this as a success. Hmmm. Well then, *let* us take that as our model, and send in 200,000 troops and 300,000 contractors, depose Assad, set up some handy locals, and then exit stage left. Cost a lot of moolah. Hmmm. Well arming the mob worked in Libya. Well, no it didn’t did it, took every bomb and bullet in NATO inventory and then some, fired by NATO and not by a mob of whatever they have mobs of in Syria.
So where have we got? C. Rice suggests we push on a string, real action apparently being out of the question. I dunno, I do not find that preferable to leading from behind and/or kicking the can down the road.
C. Rice and C. Sheen seem to have much in common.
I think the whole idea in Iraq was to create a base that was simultaneously powerful and attractive. You know, like West Germany, Japan and South Korea, but the Arab version. And then you could use that base to spread out and contaminate the neighbors in a good way. You know, like Libya, Syria and Egypt are doing, except in the wrong way.
Nothing in this is new. The idea occurred to Harry Truman and seemed a natural enough concept to successions of American presidents. It even had the virtue of working in the Cold War context. Whether it would have worked in the Arab world the way it did in Europe and Asia is an open question.
Maybe not. Maybe nothing will work with the Islamic world. Ataturk gave it his best shot and it was still not enough. Still it was a model with some prospect of success. Then along comes a president with a brainwave. He’s impatient with Cold War model and dislikes the handprints of GWB that are all over it; so he sees the answer in “leading from behind”. Maybe if we arm up our enemies they’ll get tired of beating up on us and we can buy the world a Coke. We are now in the process of seeing how that works out.
Perhaps we are doomed. But there’s doomed and there’s doomed doomed. I think we’re in “doomed doomed”.
Don’t confuse Jerry Wills with the Hollywood stuntman who had exactly the same name and died a couple of years ago. (Jerry Wills, stuntman wasn’t known to have had healing powers like Jerry Wills, starchild has.)
I meant to blog about Jerry at some point, but Mr. F just saved me the trouble. Anyway I think more people read his column than mine.
Walter Adams @ 18,
Black Africans also have amazing skill at turning tin cans and other bits of junk into art objects. I’m married to a South African. It’s a cultural quirk of South Africans to buy this junk and then put it on display in their homes.
Walter Adams said:
“It is the great trajedy of our age that on the cusp of our greatest achievments, we have lost faith in ourselves and spend all of our energy trying to make the perfect lifboat to guarentee our survival. Survival is not a reason to live.”
The human race was poised for greatness in the early 1970s but at the last minute we lost our nerve. Maybe it was due to the stress of the Cold War or the allure of free government cheese, hard to say… Defeating Obama was our last chance to recover without serious pain. That chance was thrown away. I blame the Republicans as much as the moonbats. The moonbats were born stupid but the Republicans should have known better.
wretchard @ 20 said:
“Ataturk gave it his best shot and it was still not enough.”
The failure of Ataturk’s political model is a genuine basis for despair. Ataturk’s model was the Islamic world’s single solitary example of success. Now we see that model was also programmed to fail just more slowly than the others.
agimarc @ 23 asked:
“What I don’t understand is why a rebel overthrow of Assad would be in any way considered a victory for the Mullahs of Iran.”
Assad’s defeat would be a victory for al Qaeda. Many of the people trying to overthrow Assad are al Qaeda. There are no good guys in the Syrian conflict.
What I don’t understand is why a rebel overthrow of Assad would be in any way considered a victory for the Mullahs of Iran. Syria was Iran’s Evil Twin Skippy, the vehicle by which Iran exercised it control over Hezbollah, Hamas and Fatah. When Assad goes away, why is that a Good Thing for Iran? There’s a reason Hezbollah has been very quiet during the recent festivities and it is not because Iran is about to gain influence. There is also a reason Russia now has troops in Syria and it is not to support Iran. The entire place is dissolving into chaos and nobody but nobody is going to be able to impose their New Order on any of it. Iran is about to be SOL 30 years of investment in Syria and Lebanon. My two cents. Cheers -
Wretchard, obviously you are not an adherent of the current world dispensation. If such should come to pass, the Italians, Spaniards and French [especially the French] will blame the evil Americans, but not the current government thereof, for not feeding the starving Islamic hordes gratis. They will be joined in this by …. the current American regime. Who will add that it was also Bush’s fault for not destroying the Israeli state and making MENA into a paradise on earth. [and sadly, the amount of "sarc" as to coming events is there, but minimal]
And I suspect that being in Australia and insulated from firsthand exposure to the corruption of our system is making you over-optimistic. I will grant your “above all criticism and beyond all justice”; but there is no indication that the culprits will be out of power in the foreseeable future. Once you have successfully made the margin of fraud exceed electoral reality, and blatantly so, you dare not allow another honest election. However, once that obtains, any constitutional limits to power are dissolved.
Subotai Bahadur
The question of the moment is whether the Egyptian army will decide that Morsi has, in fact, overreached and then act to nip this thing in the bud.
Unless he’s been able to buy them off with the usual combination of threats and promises.
Still, there was a recent report that the army (assuming it’s a monolithic force) was supporting the outraged jurists; however, who’s to say what that really means? Or if it’s even accurate.
One can’t but wonder how bloody this thing may get.
On the other hand, maybe Tom Friedman can write another column criticizing Bibi for not being more amenable to the glorious dawn of Egypt’s popular will, thereby throwing everyone off balance and enabling cooler heads to prevail in the utter confusion (or paroxysms of hysterical, uncontrollable laughter). Perhaps.
Meanwhile, here’s a brief sample of Dutch humor:
http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=293504
Not as funny as Condoleeza Rice, mind you. (What was she actually thinking? That Iran is going to emerge the winner even if Assad goes down? And that that’s why the mullahs are pulling out all the stops to prop him up? Never realized she was that imaginative….)
What I don’t understand is why a rebel overthrow of Assad would be in any way considered a victory for the Mullahs of Iran.
I think what Rice is arguing is that a Salafist-led rebel overthrow of Assad (as distinguished from an American controlled rebel overthrow) would play into Teheran’s hands because then the West will essentially have become a nullity in the Middle East. In either case one Muslim theocracy or the other will have triumphed.
One inexact comparison to the current dilemma was the race to Berlin. Then the quesiton was: who did you want to get there first? Eisenhower or Zhukov? Everybody wants Hitler dead, but who kills him may matter.
In this case most everyone wants Assad gone. Ok. But who sits on his throne when the dust clears?
Does it matter? Some administration supporters argue going by Berlin analogue, it doesn’t matter; that whoever wins in the Middle East we can deter them. So whether Iran or Saudi wins, who cares? Why not kick the can down the road?
Well the short answer for Israel is that they will probably catch grief either way. They’re too close to the action to escape unscathed and at all events the victor will have them in their sights. For the Europe I suspect the problem will be refugees and of course, oil. For America the problem will be oil, but possibly refugees too, since Europe will be awash with them and Europe’s problems eventually become Washington’s.
Over all, an uncontrolled conflagration in Syria is a movement in the direction of higher risk. It’s like backburning to control a forest fire where the burn is bigger than the forest fire. At what point are you just spreading the fire rather than controlling it?
I thought that the huge flaw in the idea of Africans seizing ships and sailing to the West in vast numbers was that if they had the smarts, energy, organization, and gumption to do so they would not even have to leave Africa to vastly improve their lives. It would be like saying “Incompetents of the World, Unite!”
But that may not be so true for the people along the south shore of the med. They would not be trying so much to flee incompetence as to flee too much competence in the area of killing and tyranny.
What can you say, but, “Wing Attack, Plan R.” Maybe Gen Ripper will save us.
The American Government cannot, let me say that again CAN NOT be fixed! There are tape worms in the tape worms, to try and remove the tape worms will surely kill the patient just as letting the worms continue to consume all that is left, the humane, the compassionate thing to do is to shoot it in the head, burn the remains so the worms are destroyed, Refresh the tree of Liberty!
…would play into Teheran’s hands…
No one knows.
For who’s to say the jihadis (after they finish massacring their way through Syria—if it comes to that) won’t decide to deal with the accursed Shi’a (in Iran and in S. Lebanon) before they set their sites on the damned Zionists?
No one knows. Not even Condoleeza.
One thing is certain, though. Obama is sure earning that peace prize!
“We win. They lose.”
- Ronald Reagan
“What is our policy? Victory.”
- Winston Churchill
Islam is a political supremacist ideology in the guise of religion. With the current government in Washington totally oblivious to and in fact abetting this supremacist ideology, there is little hope for any change in the future behavior of our overlords.
In regard to our last election, I blame the republicans, who could not be bothered to get off their ‘leading from behinds’ to vote our overlords out of office.
A stronger GOTV effort might have worked, there were close to 2 million fewer pubbies voting.
What happened to the idea ‘It’s the economy, stupid’,
with stated unemployment 8% and real unemployment and underemployment closer to 25% and Romney still could not win?
Where Will It End?
As far as kicking the can down the road,
let’s open a giant recycling center and make something useful out of all those cans.
Maybe a spaceship to Uranus.
Anybody gotta a twinkie?
Wretch #8:
It has been my belief, and an assertation that I have made in several venues, that the chief diplomatic crisis that the U.S. will face will be the scenario that you have described. Either that, or its cousin, when Mass deportation of Muslims from Europe is undertaken.
Whose side would we take? R2P refugees, or the rights of citizens and civilization from a hostile takeover?
Where Will It End @ 32 said:
“In regard to our last election, I blame the republicans, who could not be bothered to get off their ‘leading from behinds’ to vote our overlords out of office.”
Obama should have been defeated by a wide margin. Obama is arguably the worst President since James Buchanan, Jr. The failure to defeat Obama can only be partially blamed on our corrupt and incompetent MSM. Most of the blame should be directed at the extremely poor leadership shown by the Republican party, alias the “stupid party”.
Where Will It End asked:
“As far as kicking the can down the road, let’s open a giant recycling center and make something useful out of all those cans. Maybe a spaceship to Uranus[?]”
I do trajectory and thermal protection system studies for the Space Program. We just finished some mission design studies for Venus and Saturn. The bosses liked our work and supposedly we’re to be tasked to do Uranus (the planet with the funny name). Obviously there is no money to actually send actual hardware to any of these planets. These studies are more busy-work than anything else (“welfare” for rocket scientists). Uranus is interesting because it’s an ice giant planet (not a gas giant like Saturn and Jupiter) with an axis-of-rotation that is almost in its orbital plane (Uranus rotates sideways). The moon system of Uranus is intact unlike the moon system of Neptune. Something (Pluto?) passed through the moon system of Neptune and scattered everything around willy-nilly. That “something” left behind a Kuiper belt object as the moon Triton. The planetary scientists say that Triton is of only modest interest because the process of it being captured by Neptune would have destroyed its original state as a Kuiper belt object. Truth to tell, all the planets of the Solar System are interesting and worth having a probe sent to them. I hope we do Saturn and/or Venus in my lifetime preferably before I retire.
0bama is no more a “Christian” than the Church he sat in for twenty plus years is a “Christ worshiping Church” lead by a Hate filled Black Power egomaniac, 0bama is a Muslim sympathizer (his finger wears it proudly and his Ghost written books speak of his fondness for it, Israel is doomed), 0bama is a broken communist, Anti Western Colonialist Fascist! 0bama has a well proven Foreign Policy MO. There is no “Peaceful” return to the Melting Pot of Yesteryear, America is a Tribalized race warfare get Whitey MOB Now and WE DID IT TO OURSELFs… Freedom requires blood, blood has not been spilt for real freedom since the Civil War and it will take that amount of blood to bring Liberty back or it will never return. 0bama and the Demoncrats will pour more and more foreigners into America as they can get because it divides America more and more and Demoncrat’s believe they can stay on top so long as they keep everyone else at everyone else’s throats! 0bama and Eric Holder are closet bigots which have shown themselves on more than one occasion in 0bama’s first term, They work with anyone as long as it promotes them and their agenda an just as quickly toss them aside (under the bus) when there is no further use or they become to troublesome to continue to use.
It is quite odd that more liberals have not seen the danger inherent in Obama worship. One corollary of the separation of Church and State is that the President of the United States is neither God nor Christ nor Zadok.
Jamie Foxx openly reveres Barack Hussein Obama as our new Messiah. It is precisely such worship that ought to be worrying to people who care about the governance of our country. Such worship brings fanaticism into the bloodstream of our politics – and a cult of personality at that.
Real statesmen must not only compromise, but they must negotiate with people they may intensely dislike – they prefer the best interests of their country over personal animosity. There were times when even Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson could find common ground. Real statesmen not only befriend other politicians, but they also allow other politicians to claim credit for compromise. In contrast, a deity who promises to “bring people together” effectively forecloses on the possibility that the other side of the aisle can claim credit for a successful compromise.
Jamie Foxx merely reinforces the dangers our Republic faces. How long can our system of government survive when a large number of Americans regard their favorite politician as not merely their savior but their God-Emperor? There is something inherently dangerous in deifying any kind of man while he is alive – even Augustus Ceasar was deified after he died! That is the danger of the halo, the halo painted onto Obama’s picture for his 2008 presidential campaign advertising.
Cults of personality are dangerous to any republic, even to the United States of America. One problem with letting this cult go unchallenged is that it opens the door to future cults that may be even more dangerous. When one’s elected leader is treated as a God-Emperor, not only is republicanism threatened by a theocratic monarchy, but secularism itself is also threatened. How can a secular state truly be possible when one’s President is regarded by a powerful plurality as a living deity?
Is America turning into a Nation of Ewoks?
Alexis @36…
Try Barry as Zardoz — spewing out small arms from his lips… the ultimate fight-talking head.
“Push back twice as hard.”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070948/
In many, many ways this plot is too true for the 0bama Pink House.
For in it we’re shown the vast disconnect between the self-selecting elites and the real world.
Or, as Hollywood would have it: between the reel and the real.
Marie Claude:
The novel is (I’m pretty sure) “Le Camp des Saints” by Jean Raspail. Since I don’t speak French, I’m not too sure how good the Wikipedia article is, but here you are:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Camp_des_saints
@Marie Claude
Camp of the Saints.
Agimarc #23:
Iran is like the USSR. They view chaos as being in their favor, an opportunity to have additional influence, or at least survive their own incompetence given so many of their enemies are in disarry. They may not be right, but it is much easier to burn down a house than it is to build one; entropy tends to win, anyway.
Eggplant #22:
I think we missed our opportunity mainly in the 1990′s. G.H.W. Bush got no help with his vision of space exploration, no help from either a Dem Congress or the feather merchants of NASA. This was followed by our Holiday From History with the Clinton Admin. With the end of the USSR we should have been able to expand and advance in so many areas. But a Vietnam War protester proved to like military adventurism, of all things, and that, combined with various policy errors and things like the CRA and the pointless Dot Com bubble, killed our chances
Re # 3. wretchard
“More likely masses of desperate people will get on boats and seek refuge in Italy, Spain and France.”
If they will have fuel to run the boats.
“The opportunity to hold the region together and to rebuild it on a firmer foundation of tolerance, freedom and, eventually, democratic stability is slipping from our grasp.”
As rebuilding the ME upon a foundation of tolerance, freedom and, eventually, democratic stability was never within our ‘grasp’, such an assertion demonstrates that Condoleeza Rice still has little understanding of the issue. Ignorance may be forgivable and is always correctable, failure to learn from the mistakes of the past however is perverse obstinacy.
#10,
“How can the people in the U.S. Govt deal reasonably with the political and social implications of jihad when they refuse to name it?”
Surely you jest. What possible evidence is there of the administration wanting to “deal reasonably with the political and social implications of jihad”?
#14,
There has been no shift in tactics. Radical jihadists have sought control of ME nation states for 50+ years. Obama has merely facilitated the metastasization of Islamic radicalism by pulling American support from our former ‘strong men’.
#17,
Not to denigrate Egypt’s importance but the ‘last act’ in the fall of the ME to overt Islamic radicalism will be the fall of the House of Saud.
#20,
“Maybe nothing will work with the Islamic world. Ataturk gave it his best shot and it was still not enough.”
Could we ‘work’ with the Nazi’s? Ataturk failed because the ideology of Islam is irredeemably opposed to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. The ideology of Islam cannot be reformed because to do so requires rejecting Muhammad as a prophet.
#24,
“Once you have successfully made the margin of fraud exceed electoral reality, and blatantly so, you dare not allow another honest election. However, once that obtains, any constitutional limits to power are dissolved.”
That is exactly correct. It will just take another election (or two) to convince everyone on the right.
#29,
Keep the horse before the cart. The American government can’t be fixed because along with some judicious voter fraud, 47%+ of the American public have rejected the medicine needed to fix the patient.
#30,
“who’s to say the jihadis (after they finish massacring their way through Syria—if it comes to that) won’t decide to deal with the accursed Shi’a (in Iran and in S. Lebanon) before they set their sites on the damned Zionists?”
Perhaps. Hate does equal stupidity. But 62% of Egyptians believe that Ahmadinejad is Egypt’s friend.
#32,
Millions of conservatives stayed home, deciding that there’s little difference between the patient (America) dying of a (relatively) sudden drug overdose or sclerosis of the liver. Perhaps they’re right and sufficient shock will awaken the patient or perhaps they accelerated the collapse of modern civilization.
#33,
The “chief diplomatic crises” we will face will pale compared to the terrorist threat from a nuclear armed, radical Mideast and the coming sovereign bankruptcy of the West.
“Cults of personality are dangerous to any republic…”
It presupposes that the Left will always maintain power, why else would they willfully abandon checks and balances? Because they can Mau Mau a virulently maleviolent right wing back out of power? Don’t count on it. They believe that abusive power will always support their personal causes and not be turned against them.
RWE @ 40 said:
“I think we missed our opportunity mainly in the 1990′s. G.H.W. Bush got no help with his vision of space exploration, no help from either a Dem Congress or the feather merchants of NASA. This was followed by our Holiday From History with the Clinton Admin. With the end of the USSR we should have been able to expand and advance in so many areas. But a Vietnam War protester proved to like military adventurism, of all things, and that, combined with various policy errors and things like the CRA and the pointless Dot Com bubble, killed our chances”
I previously argued that the “turning point” was in the early 1970s. I argued this mainly because that was when the availability of cheap petroleum peaked in the continental United States and also when the Space Program was actively dismantled. One could counter argue that the United States had no real freedom of action in the early 1970s because we were fully engaged in the life-and-death struggle against the Soviet Union where instant thermonuclear annihilation would have occurred in the event of a strategic miscalculation. RWE’s point about the early 1990s has some validity. Like the end of WW-II, the end of the Cold War gave the United States some latitude in selecting a national direction. IMHO, George H.W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) was an obvious lost opportunity. VSE would have kept alive the vast scientific and engineering infrastructure setup for the Cold War by retasking it towards genuine space exploration and industrialization. Unfortunately, George H.W. Bush lacked the political horse power (he was no LBJ) and there was no real money or national will supporting VSE. This lack of national will could be attributed to the long duration exposure to Gramscian agit-prop (our culture had absorbed too much Marxist-Leninist poison during the long struggle against the Soviets). One could also argue that the actual branch point was the period around 1949/1952. Perhaps we should have gone whole hog against the Soviets and taken them down promptly with minimal exposure to Gramscian agit-prop rather than through the long process of the Cold War. However there’s no way the American people would have supported that given the nation was war-weary after WW-II. Truth to tell, maybe there was no opportunity to follow any path other than the dreary one that we are currently on. Another (much uglier) conclusion is the wrong guys won WW-II, i.e. democracy is a bad idea. I’m not prepared to accept that last possibility. However if the American era leads to worldwide social collapse then that last possibility will be difficult to ignore.
Perhaps we are doomed. But there’s doomed and there’s doomed doomed. I think we’re in “doomed doomed”.
Well, I’m afraid I think so too. But I hope I’m wrong and I may be, it’s happened before.
It’s Toyota, Sony, Xerox and J.R. Ewing who brought down the Soviets. The people grew sick of it and wanted their swag. And Reagan was there to cheer them on, at least. Today Apple and Facebook have already conquered the uncivilized world, like the Huns and Rome they want the new civilization, and arguable have about as much of it now as the originators – who are on their way down, the enervating long-term results of success. Watching the US disintegrate before my eyes, it’s like all those zombie, alien-invasion stories come true, Zul without the Ghostbusters. Yet, will Apple and Facebook really stand still for it, people WANT their smart phones and Internet, people are NOT sick of it. It will take stronger centripetal forces, stronger dysfunctional central governments, more (“I, Mudd”) Norman libbots taking care of us until the whole place just dies of too much happiness (also chronicled in the scifi stories of Cordwainer Smith, who prescribed “The Rediscovery of Man”), than before, until the people DO get sick of it, even with iPhones. Maybe there are more points of equilibrium. Probably so. Ugly to those who remember better days (in our rose-colored memories), but not a complete disintegration. Maybe the Internet *is* the First Foundation.
Would you buy it for a quarter?
–
ps – and of course fracked energy and probably thorium, too, that will give the world a huge boost we hardly deserve.
24. Subotai Bahadur
“If such should come to pass, the Italians, Spaniards and French [especially the French]”
oh that’s a logic deduction from a policeman, hey, the good ol clichés !
yet untertained by the fried freedom fighters
you find more anti-americanism in Germany than in France
38. SparcVark
thanks I found out with Eggplant
It sure that massive immigration will become a problem, finally our governments are trying to deal with underdevelopment in our former colonies, they are delocating and or creating several manufactures there, so that the populations find locally a job, ie our cars manufacturers come to mind.
during the libyan campain, the brit paper “the guardian” accused our carrier to not have rescued a libyan boat-people that was sinking in its aeras.
Wretchard #20 – “Whether it would have worked in the Arab world the way it did in Europe and Asia is an open question.”
There would have been a far better chance of it working had the US effort not been plagued with internal backbiting and perfidy.
The Democrats used the failure to find Saddam’s WMD stash as a weapon against Bush. In so doing, they discredited the nation-building effort Bush was undertaking. How could the US’ allies look at the savage internecine conflict within US politics and take heart from it? Morale was wrecked for the sake of political gain.
Had the Democrats supported the effort or at least not provided as much aid and comfort to the enemy in opposition, I have no doubt the outcome in Iraq would have been brighter. As it is, it’s still not as bad as some think. But it is nonetheless a tragic wasted opportunity, followed up as it was with Obama’s repudiation of the Iranian opposition.
OT:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-20410424
Yang Jisheng: The man who discovered 36 million dead
The Untold Story of Mao’s Great Famine, published in the West this year to high acclaim.
Yang, aged 72, is neat, small, swaddled in two jumpers despite the shafts of winter sunlight that stream across his desk. He is rummaging through his shelves on the hunt for a book whose title is important: by a Western author whose name has slipped his mind.
“Something about slavery?” he says. I try the name Hayek and after a bit of transliteration it works. He had stumbled on Friedrich von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom in a library and chuckles with mild scepticism when I tell him it is probably the most influential book in Western economics:
“Before I read Hayek, I had only read works the party wanted me to. Hayek says that to use the state to promote a utopia is very dangerous. In China that’s exactly what they did. The utopia promoted by Marx, even though it is beautiful, it is very dangerous.”
Even now, 50 years on, Chinese official history insists the famine of 1958-61 was a natural disaster. Yang’s work demonstrates the famine’s massive scale and its direct, political causes.
“Another (much uglier) conclusion is the wrong guys won WW-II, i.e. democracy is a bad idea. I’m not prepared to accept that last possibility. However if the American era leads to worldwide social collapse then that last possibility will be difficult to ignore.”
And the most cynical conclusion of all is that it really didn’t matter who won WW2; that as a culture we were doomed to destruction either way. Perhaps the only real questions were a matter of timing and method, not of destination.
GOODBYE
At great cost we tried to bring peace and prosperity to people who do not want it. At great cost we tried to change a tribal land only to leave it as we found it. Listen, deep in the night, when all is silent save the stirring of the leaves in the trees, and you will hear the American war dead quietly ask, what for?
Goodbye to all those castles in the air
Goodbye to all the dreams we tried to share
Goodbye to freedom and what freedom taught
Goodbye to all our guys who died for naught
Goodbye to dreams of bringing region peace
Goodbye to giving life there a new lease
Goodbye to nation building and what’s more
Goodbye to all our dead who cry what for
Goodbye
Condoleeza Rice is a devout and serious Christian-Presbyterian
She is concerned with fate of the Christians in Syria
Syria has a large Christian population and gave safe haven and refuge to almost 1 million Christian refugees from Iraq.
The current Syrian regime protects Christian lives-therefore Syrian Christians support the Assad regime.
Syria clearly needs reform
But the current Syrian opposition will slaughter the Syrian Christian population with no mercy.
Syria is the most ancient Christian country-remember St Paul
America is a Christian country-we need to protect Christian lives in Syria, the Levant and Africa-where Christian lives are now in real and present danger.
Condoleeza Rice is on the right track in her call for saving Christian lives.
OT:
A One-Sided Suicide Pact
by EDWARD CLINE November 24, 2012
Soeren Kern, writing for the Gatestone Institute in his November 16th article, “IslamNeeds a Fair Chance in Germany,” reported a significant development in Germany that portends dire consequences for that benighted nation and for all of Europe: the city of Hamburg signed a “treaty” with organizations representing its Islamic population.
The “treaty” features a series of concessions, not by the Muslims to secular authority, but by the secular government of Hamburg to the Muslims. The “treaty,” which requires ratification by the city’s Parliament, grants Muslims “rights” and “privileges” enjoyed by no other religious group there.
Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/a-one-sided-suicide-pact#ixzz2DNmvEub2
OT:
“Bad” – MICHAEL JACKSON
Your Butt Is Mine
Gonna Take You Right
Just Show Your Face
In Broad Daylight
I’m Telling You
On How I Feel
Gonna Hurt Your Mind
Don’t Shoot To Kill
Come On, Come On,
Lay It On Me All Right…
I’m Giving You
On Count Of Three
To Show Your Stuff
Or Let It Be . . .
I’m Telling You
Just Watch Your Mouth
I Know Your Game
What You’re About
Well They Say The Sky’s
The Limit
And To Me That’s Really True
But My Friend You Have
Seen Nothing
Just Wait ‘Til I Get Through . . .
Because I’m Bad, I’m Bad-
Come On
(Bad Bad-Really, Really Bad)
You Know I’m Bad, I’m Bad-
You Know It
(Bad Bad-Really, Really Bad)
You Know I’m Bad, I’m Bad-
Come On, You Know
(Bad Bad-Really, Really Bad)
And The Whole World Has To
Answer Right Now
Just To Tell You Once Again,
Who’s Bad . . .
The Word Is Out
You’re Doin’ Wrong
Gonna Lock You Up
Before Too Long,
Your Lyin’ Eyes
Gonna Take You Right
So Listen Up
Don’t Make A Fight,
Your Talk Is Cheap
You’re Not A Man
You’re Throwin’ Stones
To Hide Your Hands
But They Say The Sky’s
The Limit
And To Me That’s Really True
And My Friends You Have
Seen Nothin’
Just Wait ‘Til I Get Through . . .
Because I’m Bad, I’m Bad-
Come On
(Bad Bad-Really, Really Bad)
You Know I’m Bad, I’m Bad-
You Know It
(Bad Bad-Really, Really Bad)
You Know I’m Bad, I’m Bad-
You Know It, You Know
(Bad Bad-Really, Really Bad)
And The Whole World Has To
Answer Right Now
(And The Whole World Has To
Answer Right Now)
Just To Tell You Once Again,
(Just To Tell You Once Again)
Who’s Bad . . .
We Can Change The World
Tomorrow
This Could Be A Better Place
If You Don’t Like What I’m
Sayin’
Then Won’t You Slap My
Face . . .
Because I’m Bad, I’m Bad-
Come On
(Bad Bad-Really, Really Bad)
You Know I’m Bad, I’m Bad-
You Know It
(Bad Bad-Really, Really Bad)
You Know I’m Bad, I’m Bad-
You Know It, You Know
(Bad Bad-Really, Really Bad)
44. Eggplant
Another (much uglier) conclusion is the wrong guys won WW-II, i.e. democracy is a bad idea. I’m not prepared to accept that last possibility.
I don’t accept the first conclusion, but I do accept the second one. Democracy is a bad idea. It is not a stable form of government, and the Founders knew it. That’s why they created a republic instead. They went to great lengths to avoid democracy.
Voting must be an earned privilege, not a right. Only productive members of society should be able to vote. The universal franchise will inevitably destroy us, and it may already have.
One question about the Middle East is becoming increasingly important:
Does Russia want Israel to survive?
53. Charles
Another one from Gatestone
‘Do Americans understand the Muslim view of war? Throughout the Muslim world, there were celebrations with people singing and dancing and giving each other sweets, celebrating Hamas’s victory over the Israelis. Hamas suffered serious losses. As Ehud Barak, Israel’s Defense Minister, stated at the news conference in which he announced the ceasefire, many Hamas leaders were eliminated and their military capabilities were sharply degraded.’
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3465/hamas-victory
How do you make any agreements with these people?
Do you do a ‘Pinky Square’
With respect Dr Rice, I really don’t want anyone without kids, without ‘skin in the game’ making decisions about our future, especially in regards to our mortal enemies.
Another quote from the article:
‘Ibn Hazm wrote: “When at war, show your enemy no mercy, but when you have him at your mercy, you must give him breathing room but you dictate the terms.” The loser has no say in the terms; only the victor has.’
Sound like anyone we know?
Marie Claude (16),
What do want the book for? It’s coming to you in real life!
Earlier I said:
“Another (much uglier) conclusion is the wrong guys won WW-II, i.e. democracy is a bad idea. I’m not prepared to accept that last possibility.”
Rickl @ 55 replied:
“I don’t accept the first conclusion, but I do accept the second one.”
I should clarify my earlier comment by mentioning that there were three great evils in WW-II, i.e. Naziism under Hitler, Communism under Stalin and Japanese Imperialism. The evil of Naziism was “white hot” and so terrible that it would eventually burn itself out. The evil of Communism was of a nastier sort that was sustainable for a longer period of time and tended to corrupt the various democracies that stood up against it. A policy of “containment” against the Nazis probably would have been successful, i.e. the Nazis in Germany would have eventually folded like the Fascists in Spain under Franco. The Soviets also eventually folded but only after poisoning the surrounding democracies with Gramscian agit-prop. It’s an open question whether or not the Nazis would have invented their own form of Gramscian agit-prop had they survived WW-II. The “ugly question” is whether it would have been better for the Nazis to be allowed to be victorious against the Soviets and then fail due to their own contradictions as did the Spanish Fascists. The obvious ethical downside with this alternative history is the Nazis would have completed their genocide agendas in Europe and the Soviet Union. However the Communists would have been prevented in proceeding with their follow-on genocides in China (Cultural Revolution) and southeast Asia (Pol Pot, Boat People, etc.). The morality of this alternative history is not obvious.
[I have exceeded my four comment limit (sorry Wretchard) so I'm done with this thread.]
Watch out for Jamie Foxx’s act, Wretchard. He is parodying Obama’s idolizers, much as Sacha Baron Cohen porodied the Arab dictator type in his “Dictator” movie.
Mr. Foxx is on our side, and his satire bites deep. Catch a couple dated episodes of “Living Color” (circa 1982 – “I gotch U”) and then watch Foxx’s leaden “The Kingdom,” and you’ll get a sense of the man’s comic/political range.
Both Cohen and Foxx offer their parodies of tyrannical governance from inside the protective fold that Bush’s
War on Terrorsoft war against Islam provided them. And I think that, deep down inside, they both know it.The only countries who have taken in Christian refuges and protected Christians in the Levant- are Jordan, Syria,Lebanon and Turkey
Egypt, Libya and Israel do not care anything about Christian lives– by their behavior.
The Levant and the Maghreb were Christian for more than a thousand years
American Christians need to protect and further Christians health and interests in the region-America is a Christian Nation
Iranian Refugee in Turkey Beaten for His Faith
‘ Convert to Christianity loses another job as co-workers learn he’s not Muslim.
ISTANBUL, June 15 (CDN) — Since Iranian native Nasser Ghorbani fled to Turkey seven years ago, he has been unable to keep a job for more than a year – eventually his co-workers would ask why he didn’t come to the mosque on Fridays, and one way or another they’d learn that he was a convert to Christianity.
Soon thereafter he would be gone.’
http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/turkey/4590
Will Legislation Pass Asking Turkey to Return Churches to Christians?
This religious freedom resolution calls upon the government of Turkey to honor its international obligations to return confiscated Christian church properties and to fully respect the rights of Christians to practice their faiths in freedom.
http://anca.org/return/media.html
The Syriac Orthodox monastery of Mor Gabriel was founded in 397 and is one of the most ancient of all Christian monasteries. It lies in Mardin Province in south-eastern Turkey, not far from the Syrian border.
The monastery plays a crucial role in preserving the Syriac Orthodox liturgical and everyday language and as an institution also represents the cultural heritage of the Syriac Orthodox population.
On 13 June 2012, after a year-long legal battle between the Mor Gabriel monastery and the Turkish Treasury concerning ownership of land around the monastery, the Court of Cassation in Ankara ruled against the monastery. At first instance, a court had found in favour of Mor Gabriel, which had been able to substantiate its claims to the land by showing that it had paid taxes on it since the 1930s. The Court of Appeal, however, took no account of the proof of tax payments, with the result that around 28 hectares of land were awarded to the Turkish State. It can be assumed that this ruling was politically motivated, and the monastery is now obliged to enlist international aid in its fight to hold on to the land it is threatened with losing under the expropriation proceedings.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+WQ+E-2012-006996+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN
I can go on and on but don’t want to hijack W’s blog.
please excuse my anger at the antisemite.
If he continues to spew his crap and I am logged on I will keeping fighting him. Ignoring evil is condoning it.
Eggplant
“It’s an open question whether or not the Nazis would have invented their own form of Gramscian agit-prop had they survived WW-II. ”
they have survived
“”The Nazis are convinced that they must finally conquer because they have freed themselves from the chains of morality and humanity. Thus they argue: “If we conquer, this war will be the last one, and we will establish our hegemony forever. For when we are victorious we will exterminate our foes, so that a later war of revenge or a rebellion of the subdued will be impossible. But if the British and the Americans conquer, they will grant us a passable peace. As they feel themselves bound by moral law, divine commandments, and other nonsense, they will impose on us a new Versailles, maybe something better or something worse, at any rate not extermination, but a treaty which will enable us to renew the fighting after some lapse of time. Thus we will fight again and again, until one day we will have reached our goal, the radical extermination of our foes.”
http://mises.org/etexts/mises/og/chap6.asp
-http://www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com/articles/Intelligence_Report_EW-Pa_128.html
-http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1179902/Revealed-The-secret-report-shows-Nazis-planned-Fourth-Reich–EU.html
Hey Guys, it’s getting to be time “To Speak Power to Weakness”.
1)Obama is a metrosexual wussy who has been bossed around by a bunch of radical feminists (The Three Valkyries. Michelle, Nancy Pelosi etc. etc.). The poor fool can’t even smoke or eat a cheeseburger in the White House!
2) America is still the World’s Only Superpower, if she is led by a Real Man.
3) The only thing Joe Biden ever said that makes sense is that Americans hate being played for fools.
4) It is becoming increasingly obvious that Obama has been playing the electorate for fools. Even Fans of Snooki will realize they have been had when their extended unemployment benefits finally expire after nearly two years on the dole.
5) Obama has no leadership vision to offer from his perch “leading from behind”.
6) The chaos that will ensue in fractious nations under the Islamist grip is simply evidence of Darwinian Natural Selection from various pre-existing creations of God. “The Survival of the Fittest”! God is a relentless innovator who believes in “continuous improvement”. That is why “God helps those who help themselves”. God does NOT believe in the “Origin of Species”, as The Creator, He knows better!
7) Got a bunch of old, obsolete Beta versions hanging around? How about a “Great Flood”? Put the Chosen Ones into an ark under a Real Man such as Noah and let the rest drown.
8) Drive down the price of oil (by building the Keystone XL pipeline, for instance) and a whole bunch of bad actors will run out of cash because they do not have the ability to run their own affairs. Without foreigners running their country, the KSA would be left with only a whole raft of Slacker Saudi Princling Playboys! Putin could not buy off the nomenklatura, A-Jad would be swallowed by the hungry Persian masses. There will be tons of sheep looking for God! And he who has the amber waves of grain to make the bread rules! Cut the cost of diesel fuel and the delivered cost of bread goes down as the cost of running those tractors on the farms and those trucks on the delivery routes goes down.
As the Rolling Stones put it back when they were the Bad Boys of Rock and Roll http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzcWwmwChVE
I think Mick must have learned something at the London School of Economics.
OT — But interesting…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2228110/Irish-company-U-S-Oil-Gas-drilling-Nevada-sitting-187million-oil-barrels.html
It’s the contention of U.S. Oil and Gas, of Dublin, Ireland, that it’s too soon to say…
But they’ve discovered high quality, light crude oil and condensates in the middle of the Nevada desert.
One oil man is so manic that he projects that Nevada will be ultimately known as the largest oil producing state of America.
He might just be right. For ten years the largest single domestic production well, 4,000 bbl/day, was in the next valley over.
Curiously, the pay strata and grade of oil found are unique to this test well. Regular Nevada grades are much heavier.
The management is talking their prospects down which is classic behavior with a major strike. Whenever such an event occurs, the players try and moderate expectations within the general public… so that they can nail down leases at the most favorable rates.
The fundamentals of Nevada geology would seem to dictate that the actual oil field is extensive — with sweet spots here and there.
This firm used the latest tricks to prospect. The actual drilling was a snap. It’s the first hole they bored. (!)
======
And in other news, a Chinese oil outfit has found oil in Afghanistan. Their first test well is 2,000 bbl/dy.
Plans are already afoot to punch more holes and to construct a nearby refinery inside Afghanistan. As you might imagine, the price of refined products within Afghanistan is sky high. So any producer should be able to get his money back in under two years — probably less.
If your first effort spits out 2,000 bbl/dy — then the whole field is probably good for 100,000 bbl/ dy.
It’s in the northwestern part of Afghanistan.
Source: Stratfor.
It would seem that ISAF’s logistical situation is taking a shocking turn.
And, of course, such production would mean that Afghanistan could very quickly turn out to be the bigger prize than Pakistan — which would be relegated to economic backwardness.
In the Permian age, Afghanistan’s land was pretty much a continuation of Arabia and Persia. So it may prove out that she’s apart of the oil patch just like her neighbors.
Though this link does not refer to the situation in Syria, per se, it is a corrective to C. Rice’s (but not only Rice’s) view of “victory” and “defeat”—at least as it pertains to the Middle East….
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3465/hamas-victory
Barry…
Let’s just cut to the chase: muslims practice a Neolithic rules set — entirely barbarous warfare.
The Greeks invented the term entirely to describe such behavior. The ‘bearded ones’ was a particularly apt term for those unable to shave — for lack of cheap water.
[ Our custom was highlighted in Lawrence of Arabia -- as our hero shaved, brazenly, in the middle of the desert, literally his mark of civilization. ]
As for Hague Conventions and Geneva Accords — they are but scraps of paper to muslims.
Their entire ambit is in contravention of bloody Mo’s dicta.
The Greeks, you say? (What about Genesis 25:18—Hey, maybe the ancient Greeks read the Bible, i.e., first ever course in comp. lit.?! Down by the Agora…. By the way, are Barbarians unable to shave or unwilling to shave?)
Ah well, yes, you’re right of course, but that’s just the point:
We can’t “cut to the chase”. The West is unable (or unwilling!!—BTW Arafat is back in the news! triumphant return! talk of the town!! to critical acclaim—how’s that for deus ex machina!!) to “cut to the chase”.
Until, well, until, as Churchill said of Americans….
(Or until Venezuela gets nukes? But maybe not even then….)
In any event, if you liked Rhodes (above), here’s someone whose analysis is really impressive, creative, on the ball, outside the box (actually, out of his mind—but in a useful kind of way):
http://jordanzad.com/index.php?page=article&id=103048
(Oh, um, right; here’s a translation:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.co.il/2012/11/jordanian-paper-accused-mb-of-being.html )
So if Obama is still looking for a Secretary of State, he really need look no further. This guy is his man.
And so, one can only expect that it’s going to be a long, long slog….until we actually begin to even think about waking up.
Keeping in mind that “the worse it gets the better it gets”(R).
File under: Our man in the White House
OT:
Thorium To Be Tested in a Working Nuclear Reactor
By Brian Westenhaus | Mon, 26 November 2012 22:49
A Norwegian company led by Alf Bjørseth will start burning thorium fuel in a conventional test reactor owned by Norway’s government with help from U.S.-based nuclear giant Westinghouse.
The company has completed a 2-year thorium fuel cycle feasibility study which concludes that thorium-based nuclear fuel has several advantages over uranium-based fuel, including better waste characteristics, improved proliferation resistance, and abundant raw material supply.
Thor Energy has established a consortium that will fund and run a 5-year thorium irradiation project to be conducted at the Norwegian government owned Halden Nuclear Reactor. Halden, typically described as a “test reactor,” also provides steam to a nearby paper mill. The move should bring thorium closer to replacing uranium as a possible safer and more effective nuclear power source.
Thor’s chief technology officer Julian Kelly explained Thor Energy will deploy a mix of solid thorium mixed with plutonium – a blend known as “thorium MOX”.
The plan isn’t the one most thorium enthusiasts have been hoping for. Many professionals believe thorium’s advantages are most pronounced in alternative reactor designs such as molten salt reactors and pebble bed reactors, rather than today’s conventional solid-fuel water-cooled reactors.
Some thorium fans have realized it may be best to insert thorium into the energy scene by first putting it to use in reactors that already have regulatory approval.
Best or not, Thor is testing the thorium fuel in a conventional reactor at Halden cooled by “heavy water”. This is not the same as regular light water reactors built commercially around the world. The cooling is by deuterium or water with an isotope of hydrogen.
With plutonium seed in the fuel mix, the reactors would not only generate power, but they would also eliminate dangerous waste left over from other nuclear operations and thus help address the problem of what to do with that waste.
The consortium reaches pretty far. Thor will fabricate some of its own thorium MOX in partnership with Norway’s Institute for Energy Technology. Britain’s National Nuclear Laboratory – owned by the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change – will also provide some, as will the European Commission’s Institute for Transuranium Elements.
Westinghouse is helping to fund the project, as are other of Thor’s industrial partners including Steenkampskraal Thorium Ltd., a South African company that is developing a thorium-fueled pebble bed reactor. Other partners include the Finnish utility Fortum and the French chemicals company Rhodia.
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Thorium-To-Be-Tested-in-a-Working-Nuclear-Reactor.html
65. blert
I have been hearing rumors of oilmen talking about massive oil deposits in wierd formations in western utah and nevada for maybe two decades. Always seemed that something about the geology frustrated their efforts to extract it in volume. It was like they could “see” it but they couldn’t get it out. In the last year I’ve read that they have the same problem in the Monterrey basin in California only not quite so severe. That is they can “see” it. And they can extract it to some extent but the drillers havn’t quite cracked the code for extracting the oil in volume. Same was true in the Bakken formation in North Dakota. Up until about three years ago the drillers could “see” the oil and extract it to some extent but they didn’t know how to drill the oil in volume from the formation. That is it seems that each formation has its own code. Its not that fracking or horizontal drilling will do it. These are merely tools. There’s some kind of code to the geology that has to be mastered as well before the oil flows in volume. Anyhow, the drillers first cracked the code in Montana and then took what they learned back to North Dakota since the geological formation was the same.
Maybe they have cracked the code in Nevada.
66. Barry Meislin
I’m not really getting the view that Hamas won that confrontation.
Israel has just taken out big chunks of Hamas infrastructure and leadership–while suffering negligible damage themselves. As well, the Israelis have laid down a chit to the effect that the next time there is Hamas rocketry–Hamas can expect similar results–minimal damage to Israel while major damage to Hamas leadership and infrastructure.
Yes, one may get that impression. And it may even be “true”.
Depends, though, on how one defines “won”.
Once again, Israel whacked a very dangerous mole, and sure, there were some huge achievements; but it doesn’t take a weatherman to tell that that mole will be back soon enough with even more tricks.
Moreover, one must not overlook the huge cost—in money, in damage, in lost work days, in lost contracts with foreigners who were in Israel at the time and believed it was more or less of a secure country, in morale, in anxiety, in five deaths, in the grim perception of Egypt’s ambiguous role in all this (or of Obama’s), in the knowledge that those tunnels will be redug and the Iranians will start resupplying, in the view that this thing will just not end.
But also (mostly?) because of things like this:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/162579
and
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/162581
etc. multiplied exponentially, now and into the next generation….
True, things change and nothing remains static. And Israel achieved many things (and will achieve many more). Most importantly, perhaps Israelis once again got more than a glimpse of reality, even if not every one of them is prepared to recognize it.
In the meantime, beyond the drifting smoke (and mirrors) in Tahrir Square and the mostly pin-point wreckage of Gaza, Abbas is preparing to unveil his own private end-game as part of the master plan for the destruction of the Jewish State.
And so, til the next time….
File under: Death, taxes, and Palestinian aspirations
wws @ 50: “And the most cynical conclusion of all is that it really didn’t matter who won WW2″
That conclusion is not cynical. It just depends on who we see as the players in WW2 and what our time scale is.
If we chose to see the players as political philosophies and chose a time scale of half a century, the clear winner of WW2 has been ‘Fascism’ — what today tends to be sloppily referred to as crony capitalism, ie a system where private ownership is permitted, even encouraged, as long as the private owners do what their political overlords tell them and pay the appropriate tithes.
Western Europe is now Fascist, with business still in somewhat private hands but totally controlled by the Political Class. Same is true for Russia. China has evolved from communism to Fascism. And, the most unkindest cut, the USA is now functionally a Fascist nation, where Soetero’s best & brightest direct companies to build photovoltaics that no one wants and windmills that no one needs.
Fascism will eventually collapse because of its own inefficiencies. But give the philosophy credit — it currently rules the world.
It was almost amusing to read Iranian leaders every day during the Israeli operation issuing speeches calling for the Arab nations to rise up and fight Israel. Really? Because you guys didnt exactly bring down the thunder on the Zionist entity either.
Meanwhile even their Hezzie client to the north with all of those missiles and other good stuff just stayed quietly in their bunkers.
What about Lebanon? Few days ago the Lebanese president blasted Iran for the unauthorized launch of its drone from Lebanon into Israel. The drone itself is another one of those silly propoganda “victories” they are trying to promote. It didnt even have a camera according to the Israelis who looked at the fragments after blasting it from the sky. Just a toy airplane on a preprogrammed path from the looks of things.
Meanwhile the Iranians can’t seem to shoot down any of the US drones we have flying over their stuff so they are complaining to the UN. They didnt shoot down the one they got either, it just failed and landed.
Maybe Hezbolla sees the writing on the wall and are calling the Iranian bluff for what it is.
The whole mess with it’s delusions of grandeur, the rivers of fire it will unleash on the unbelievers, the great march into ‘liberated’ Jerusalem atop the bodies of vanquished Jews, its nonexistant transcendant culture and glorious achievement. All of it is an illusion. The whole culture rests on a hashish dream of magical warriors and castles in the sky.
Maybe Bush had it right after all. In Iraq the mirror was shattered and the cracks are still spreading through the Arab world. The ugly truth beneath it becomes more obvious with time.