Breakout
Failure accumulates gradually and then its effects become manifest all of a sudden. The slow part is nearly over. The Washington Post reports that Iran and Hezbollah are worming their way into the ruins of Syria. “Officials think Iran’s long-term goal is to have reliable operatives in Syria in case the country fractures into ethnic and sectarian enclaves.”
A senior Obama administration official cited Iranian claims that Tehran was backing as many as 50,000 militiamen in Syria. “It’s a big operation,” the official said. “The immediate intention seems to be to support the Syrian regime. But it’s important for Iran to have a force in Syria that is reliable and can be counted on.”
Iran’s strategy, a senior Arab official agreed, has two tracks. “One is to support Assad to the hilt, the other is to set the stage for major mischief if he collapses.”
Iran is playing a long-term and global game. The Jerusalem Post reports that North Korea’s recent nuclear test was actually Iran’s as well. “Expert warns Tehran may be bypassing int’l inspections via North Korea, says Iranian scientists may have been present at test.” The rogue states have got their supply chain, or soon will.
This is also Claudia Rossett’s contention in the Wall Street Journal. She argues that North Korea, Pakistan and Iran — to name some — have created a distributed research, production and distribution system for weapons of mass destruction.
A big question hanging over North Korea’s latest nuclear test, conducted Feb. 12, is whether it was also done for the benefit of Iran, or was possibly even an Iranian test, courtesy of North Korea’s facilities….
For years, North Korean weapons tests have effectively doubled as marketing displays, rolling out the latest round of North Korea’s lethal wares. “North Korea will sell anything to anybody,” says Bruce Bechtol, a political scientist and former senior defense intelligence analyst specializing in North Korea. Bechtol adds that Iranian officials have been present at every major North Korean missile test, as well as both previous nuclear tests.
Since the 1960s, North Korea’s sales have run the gamut, from conventional weapons, to increasingly sophisticated, longer-range missiles, to collaborating with Syria on the construction of an entire clandestine nuclear reactor with no evident purpose except to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Among North Korea’s many clients over the years have been Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and Libya under Muammar Qaddafi, as well as Iran, and Iran’s satellite Lebanese terrorist organization, Hezbollah.
In this trade, North Korea has created a niche for itself as a full service back shop for rogue states, offering an unblinking willingness to violate any and all international norms in exchange for cash, oil and yet more weapons technology. Not only does North Korea’s regime supply its clients with weapons; it also has a history of providing weapons experts, military training, procurement and smuggling services, money-laundering facilities and in some cases, help with weapons production.
What is essentially a Walmart for terrorist WMD weapons is now in rudimentary existence. This is not as as far-fetched a prospect as it once was. The tendencies are acknolwedged in the open news. The President warned Syria against transferring chemical weapons to Hezbollah. And having done that, he promptly did nothing more.
But Israel bombed a site said to be involved in transferring such weapons to Hezbollah in preparation no doubt for use on the Jewish state. But that can only slow things down.
Israel has said that if it saw chemical weapons on the move, it would act to stop them. By hitting the research center, part of a military complex that is supposed to be protected by Russian-made antiaircraft defenses, Israel made it clear it was willing to risk direct intervention to keep weapons and missiles out of Hezbollah’s hands.
Israel has done so before, in September 2007, when it destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor that was under construction with North Korean help. The facility hit last week was also believed to be a center for study on nuclear issues, officials say.
It’s pathetic to watch the international Western elite paralyzed with political correctness and depend for their physical safety on Israel, which they regard as a rogue state. Their priority is to disarm themselves as quickly as possible right down to the last “high powered magazine”.
One of the more bizarre events from the State of the Union Address was the instructional video shown to reporters on how to escape a biological attack should one occur. Jonathan Tamari wrote, “the surprise of the night, for me anyway, was shortly before the speech when the press staff over at the House asked for our attention so they could show us a video on how to use escape hoods in the event of a biological attack.”
Maybe the possibility of a WMD terror attack is no longer as absurd as it once seemed. The supply network is bound to be expanded as time goes one, like an international Ho Chi Minh trail; interrupted at whiles by desultory efforts by the Obama administration, but sure to grow like a malignant vine. Lyndon Johnson never throttled the Trail. It throttled him.
And there are other indications which suggest that the bad guys know they have got Obama’s number. He’s standing like a deer in the headlights and or perhaps more aptly, like a child hiding behind the lectern. They’re lining him up. When Hillary Clinton went to China in 2012, senior officials refused to meet with her insisting instead on seeing Panetta. Now Foreign Policy reports that the Russian foreign minister won’t return Kerry’s call on the Korean crisis. This lack of respect is telling. President Obama may act like he bestrides the world, but the obvious reality is that not even the president of a fourth rate country like North Korea appears to take him seriously. Even his political enemies were watching the State of the Union speech with a feeling of sadness.
As the speech went on, though, the reason became clear: There were no 2014 budget proposals. The president didn’t even mention his forthcoming budget—again, that’s usually a big part of what this speech is for. And he didn’t make any significant proposal for reforming any government program, for launching any new one, ending any old one, or doing much of anything in particular that he hasn’t been pushing unsuccessfully for years. It was like an eighth-year State of the Union address, not a fifth-year one.
You have to try to cover up such things, of course, especially if you’re a Democrat, and so the president did speak of all manner of obnoxious federal micromanagement initiatives with fancy names—manufacturing hubs, a “partnership to rebuild America,” a challenge to “redesign America’s schools,” an “Energy Security Trust,” and so on. But you know what these things are? They’re nothing. They’re the headings that the wonks in a Democratic White House put at the top of otherwise blank memos at the beginning of a process that, months later, is supposed to end up with a budget and a State of the Union address. And here they were at the end of that process with barely more meat on their bones than when they started. Some of these proposals might “happen” and some of them will not, but there won’t be any difference between the two.
And this makes for a dangerous situation that is growing ever more so at an increasing rate. Perhaps some of the sadness should be reserved for ourselves. When the ship goes down the small fry will be the first in the ocean.
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What does it matter! Let the Games begin. It only cements the idea that 0bama and the Chicago Henchmen are only interested in internal body… Screw the world.
” … like a child hiding behind the podium.”
That’s a lectern; he’s standing on the podium (pod-iatrist, arthro-pod, etc).
Fixed.
As I’ve said before, but now see a way to elaborate, Obambus the community organizer doesn’t do stuff. But not only does he NOT do stuff, he sees it as the highest virtue to not do stuff.
Now, this isn’t quite the derogation of duty that it seems – almost, but not quite. It is the poor man’s impression of how real executives live, they don’t act with their own hands, they work through others.
A community organizer doesn’t HAVE any official powers and HAS to work through others, and so makes a VIRTUE out of powerlessness, out of not acting. And please note that for all their complaining, the true powers that be are certainly happier that way, than they would be giving up REAL power.
So, when Obambus sits hisself down in the Oval Office, he is still waiting for Da Man to do, whatever it is needs doing. He ain’t gonna do it, it would corrode his entire worldview to try. But he can get up and bark out an endless stream of lies, insults, and gibberish and then tell his critics to kiss his Nobel Prize, and none of that conflicts with his worldview or self-image, and for the most part the grandees at WaPo and NYT are entirely happy with these performances and non-performances, these rumps of what was once America.
And here we are, and where do you think we are going, and when will we get there.
‘It’s pathetic to watch the international Western elite paralyzed with political correctness and depend for their physical safety on Israel, which they regard as a rogue state. Their priority is to disarm themselves as quickly as possible right down to the last “high powered magazine”’ – well said. It was easier to just read about it in the histories of Gibbon and Churchill. One prays that something decent survives Numenor.
“North Korea, Pakistan and Iran — to name some — have created a distributed research, production and distribution system for weapons of mass destruction” – Rosett should be careful. Doesn’t she know the “Axis of Evil” is a neo-con meme designed to involve the US in foreign wars?
Amazing that reporters at the SOU received a personal briefing on how to protect themselves in case of a bio attack during the SOU yet still can’t see and/or say that the emperor has no clothes.
OT – Wretchard has often mentioned union thugary in Philadelphia. NRO just published a three part series on this subject. Of particular interest is how legislation and even a USSC ruling (Emmons) protects the union hierarchy from being federally prosecuted for their Sopranos-style tactics (http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/340500/goon-city-part-3-jillian-kay-melchior). As the saying goes, “small time criminals break the law, big time criminals use the law”.
I think we have misjudged this man, the president. I’m beginning to believe what we are counting as arrogance or aloofness, an attitude of being above the fray; ‘I strove with no man, for no man was worth my strife’; is actually cowardice. I don’t mean that as a smear but rather an observation.
Obama does not fight. He will lay out the battle plan, issue commands and directives, establish goals, but he will not go toe to toe with an opponent.
He avoids situations in which he can lose.
As a community organiser in Chicago, the greatest drag on the community he worked with was the gang culture. A bolder man would attack that problem headon. Go to the gangs, meat the leaders. Find some way to subvert them to the benefit of all, the gang members included.
In the famous roundtable with congress [Not repeated] he was directly challenged , face to face by Rep. Ryan, and would not engage him.
There is all kinds of cowardice, but they follow the same theme, a dread of being beaten, losing your life or the life that you enjoy.
That why Obama doesn’t break new ground, but rather keeps repeating the same speeches, the same promises and programs that always fail; they are known quantities that at least reap him the praises he’s grown accustomed to.
If I felt opposed to Obumbus, I would do what these other fine international specimens are doing: pee in his soup.
He is a first class wuss, and a lazy, lying jackass. An man too scared to even bother to vote (Pres. Present) in an assembly is just a non-entity.
He seems to think he should act boldly only where there is leftist, eco-union-welfare-illegal immigrant support. Since that doesn’t affect foreign relations, he isn’t sure if he’s allowed to play. The Wuzzies and the slopes are beginning to see he’s an empty suit. (He’ll probably apologize to them for making them nuke our cities. Let’s just hope it’s San Francisco. After all, they deserve it.)
That’s Jarrett’s job, doing important things.
I will tell you: don’t despair. He stole this election just like he stole all the others. Focus on how to stop that, or we truly are lost.
The theory of #6 and 7 of BHO as covering up cowardice with arrogance is well put and has been my gut feeling since 2007.
In addition to his failure to confront the gangs in Chicago there was also the failure of this “progressive” to confront the Chicago culture of political corruption.
Finally, his initially poorly concealed diffidence towards military service and culture was a good clue showing his insecurity in this matter. I even recall a few preening interviews full of false notes in which he claimed that he seriously considered service as a military officer.
The side by side pictures of BHO as a smart*ss undergrad pothead and the young Netanyahu as an IDF commando got it right.
‘Obama is a coward’. If he is a coward, he is much less one than those who fell in line behind him, not daring to risk their position, liberal bona fides or cocktail party invitations; and overcoming their own judgment put him on the pedestal of power.
The late Ed Koch wrote that he always knew Obama would ditch Israel. He simply didn’t expect it so soon. There are probably many others less forthright. They knew who they were electing. They were simply too chicken not to get with the program.
I do not for one minute believe that Obama has brought down the system. Rather the system demonstrated how low it had fallen by elevating him. He was their portrait of Dorian Gray, the sump of their soul, the unwitting mirror of what they had become.
Even if Barack Obama were to resign tomorrow, nothing would change. Any more than anything would change in Chicago if Rahm Emmanuel were to be gathered to his fathers by sudden apoplexy or natural death. City Hall is made up of more than one man. There are many more where he came from. Obama is not the cause, but the effect.
Perhaps Barack Obama’s best service has been to serve as a warning sign; just as slight tremors announce the onset of alcoholism. It’s not the bottle that’s doing it. It is the drinker. Until the man in the mirror changes his ways the bottle will only help him along his chosen path.
Josh, I’m not sure the Buraq has enough of the genuine poor black ghetto experience in him to even warrant him the generosity that he can think on the level of a poor black man, – he’s far beneath that. But you’re right he is a community organizer- and a street hustler at heart.
But to elaborate on your concept, I think the entire hard core left has a similar lack of awareness on how things in the real world get done – meaning that there is real work to be done to accomplish nearly anything.
The Left thinks the world runs totally by osmosis somehow, and will always continue to do so no matter how they destroy the foundations upon which the civilized Western World has been built. Kinda like spending other people’s money – the Left thinks it can throw away the goodwill and political capital built up over generations of past administrations with nary a concern for the consequences in the future. Now some of those foolish moves are coming back to haunt.
The good news is that so far, while we have suffered greatly due to their ridiculous notions, we have survived. Unfortunately, in the future with nearly four more years of this to come, and a near certainty of greater and greater Buraq foibles a coming, there may be more than of few of us that don’t survive the coming onslaught.
walter@6: Go to the gangs, meat the leaders.
Intentional? I thought it to be apt advice.
Perhaps it is less than totally coincidental that as Buraq Hussein becomes a conscientious objector when dealing with foreign threats to America’s interests and existence; he has become a Rambo-wanna-be when dealing with those who would preserve the American Constitution. Aside from the growing risk of a domestic replay of either the Boston Massacre [although not actually likely in submissive Boston] or Sarajevo; there is the question of what the reaction would be if one of his MB BFF’s struck this country. Would there be the normal rage at someone who attacked us, or would blame be placed on the government that set up the attack?
To be honest, Blue areas of the country are not a great concern for me.
Subotai Bahadur
To refuel the USS Abraham Lincoln would cost $3.3 billion; we’ve saved $1.1 billion by providing Obama phones instead. Now those who were unable to view the the biological escape video can at least call for help.
It’s always been about priorities…
Sail on, O noble ship of state
Our commodore, Barack the great
Has set a course for greener fields
While in his sturdy left hand wields
A force of lower power yields
On which he rests our fate
He scorns to take at value’s face
The fact that should his trust misplace
And little folk now have the bomb
He will with smile and cool aplomb
Contend ‘twas worse along the Somme
And exit with some grace
For he will say ‘twas not his fault
He tried with might and main to halt
Iran from nuking Tel Aviv
And even now he can’t believe
That honest Muslims would deceive
And spread his wounds with salt
Ah well, now that the deed is done
And of survivors there are none
And lands lay waste and crops ablaze
And burned out cities in the haze
Obama, in Earth’s final days
Plays golf, he needs some fun
“Lyndon Johnson never throttled the Trail. It throttled him.”
Not quite. The Ho chi Minh trail was largely a feint. The vast majority of enemy supplies moved via regular merchant ships from Haiphong to Sihanoukville and then in trucks to the Parrot’s Beak for distribution.
The Norks Paks and Mullahs are working hand and glove in distributing death from the Walmart of Terror? Gee who’d a thunk it? Whoopsie another surprising and completely unexpected event. The file cabinet is starting to look like Felix the Cat’s Bag-o-tricks. It is almost as if there was an Axis of Evil. We know better though since the NY Times and Foreign Affairs have assured us that godless Communist Norks and Sunni Paks and Shi’a Iranians would never work together. Besides the Norks are a client of China, and the Pakis are Observers in the Shanghai Cooperative Organization and the Iranians are so concerned about the Uigur in Sinkiang that they would never sell their gas fields to China and welcome the Chinese Navy into the Indian Ocean, and if they are all tied to China we should feel safer because China is our friend and gave us those big TVs.
The real problem must be that Boooosh and Cheney ate the Carbon Tax. If we just fix that then the Iranians will sing Kumbaya or something. Exactly why may need a little more explanation in step 2. Give them a chance and the Left will form a Grand Unified Theory blaming Neocon Likudniks for Global Warming, and make that the root of all grievances and incoming asteroids. For good measure they could take their fashion cues from John Galliano and start wearing hair curls or “peyes” in mockery of the Hasidim.
As stated in previous articles, there is evidence that the “Progressive” movement has gotten old and full of hacks who only look after themselves (The Bolshevik’s lament). They haven’t had any new ideas since the 1960′s and their peak of true ideology commitment was probably in the 1920′s. I have read the “Diplomat” article over at “Instapundit”
http://thediplomat.com/2013/02/13/5-ways-china-could-become-a-democracy/
And the timeline for the decay and fall of authoritarian regimes, strikes me as quite similar to that of organizations. Given the showing of ass displayed by the current power elites and their brain dead supporters it appears to me that their doom is upon them. The Dems and the Rino’s may not be in existence by 2016.
The axis of weasels is on the inside and in their frenzy to feed and kill will wipe out the hen house and bring the farmer with his shotgun.
Obama mentioned Youngstown, Ohio for its “business incubator.” I suspect that might become the victim of Democrat Special Interest Group Politics. Between the Unions and the Crony capitalist it might produce costly failures — Solyndra anyone.
Meanwhile Youngstown sits on the Utica Shale formation and 100 billion dollars worth of oil and gas. Thousands of good paying jobs are being created. But he does not mention fracking while taking credit for additional natural gas supplies and falling heating costs. The Gas could power industrial renewal but it will be regulated out of existence. Instead of industry he offers bureaucrats.
Obama should have said, “I come here not to praise the Gas and oil industry, but to bury it.”
MANAGE UP! Lots of organizations have feckless leadership. Dilbert documents that every day. So just move forward doing The Right Thing and wait for Obama to fall in behind, “leading” from the rear.
Someone ought to buy Boehner Miss Manners’ Guide to Raising Perfect Children http://tinyurl.com/ad5pw6x
Obama is sulking. So ignore him and go about your business. He wants deficit reduction, pass spending cuts. “We did what the President wanted, cut the deficit.”
What will he do to fight you?, NADA. He will only whine.
Buy earplugs.
John Kerry talks about allowing the Keystone XL pipeline (in exchange for a carbon tax). Go ahead and pass enabling legislation for the pipeline but NOT the carbon tax, thereby taking the decisionmaking process away from Obama. Tell the voters that you agree with John Kerry, the pipeline should be built. They want bipartisanship, give it to them, we and Kerry agree the pipeline should be built posthaste.
Take a page from Simon and Garfunkel, “All lies in jest still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x84OSWAoovA&feature=youtu.be&t=1s
Anytime a Dem says something sensible, agree with him. Even Biden said that Americans hate to be played for suckers. Agree with Biden on that!!!
Be as relentlessly agreeable as a Walmart greeter.
Forget Soetero. Alll the international players have now taken the measure of the man (or the boy, in this case). Let’s think about those other actors.
No self-respecting tyrant can take Obumble seriously. Everyone knows the worst he would do in response to any international incident would be to fire a drone missile at some mid-level functionary as far away from the New York Times as possible. But an attack on the US mainland could have unpredictable consequences — the US military is still potentially dangerous to any opponent, even if it is hog-tied under the current ‘leadership’.
So what do you do if you are Iran, or Lil’ Kim, or Chavez’ puppeteer? It may be that the consequence of Soetero will be the end of Europe.
The obvious strategy for any international opponent is to leave Soetero & his Democrat inner circle to get on with the job of rendering the US irrelevant, and take the battle to Europe in the meantime. Europe has already pre-emptively disarmed, and taken in large number of unassimilated immigrants who can act as a fifth column. It is run by fools, yet still has valuable farms, factories, and technology.
One possibility is that Iran re-establishes the Persian Empire — this time, running all the way to the Atlantic. Another possibility is that Russia quietly encourages Iran to attack, then steps in and occupies western Europe, ‘to defend it, for the children’. Also possible that China & Russia could do a deal — Russia trades Siberia and the ‘Stans to China in exchange for China’s support in beating down the Middle East & Europe. They can leave the Americas & Australia to a later date.
Bottom line, we should think hard before hiding our meager savings in Switzerland for safekeeping. The world is changing.
Several years ago a N. Korean ship put into Iran, then sailed around to Syria, which it reportedly loaded a liquid resin used to make solid rocket motors. Then it went to Germany and then back to N. Korea.
Syrian techs have gone to North Korea to help install later model SAMs; a trainload of them blew up mysteriously a while back. Where did the SAMs come from? Well, Russia deals with Syria.
Iranian ships have gone to the Pacific to monitor N. Korean missile launches. And I corresponded a bit with a guy at the FAS and we concluded that some of the short range N. Korean launches were in reality likely testing upper stages and RV configurations. Like us, they would find it useful to have the rocket pitch over and drive the RV back into the atmosphere under power to simulate an ICBM.
“Experts” have for years poo-pooed the idea of a technological surprise, of new countries devloping ICBM or nuclear capabilities. We would have plenty of warning they said. And with that assurance all matter of political and programmatic mischief was employed against SDI; I saw that many times at the Pentagon.
Now that “surprise” is upon us. And sure enough, it did not come quickly; it was simply ignored.
The lamp post shortage in DC looms….
We are surrounded and infiltrated by enemies. The US populace is like King Theoden and the democrats, MSM and academia are all Grima Wormtongue.
“This is also Claudia Rossett’s contention in the Wall Street Journal. She argues that North Korea, Pakistan and Iran — to name some — have created a distributed research, production and distribution system for weapons of mass destruction.”
That dynamic parallels the distributed coalition that pushed Obama up through the ranks since he left Occidental. In order of appearance and staging: the Hawaii community of socialists and communists, the matured Weathermen (experts at mock-up identities), the Robeson-Chicago wing of the Communist Party, the Saudis and Pakistanis, the Chicago machine, the Iranians, and finally the whole of the socialistic global academic and elite establishments.
Wretchard @9: “I do not for one minute believe that Obama has brought down the system. Rather the system demonstrated how low it had fallen by elevating him …”.
Very true. I had a minor role as a surrogate debater on behalf of McCain/Palin during the 2008 campaign in PA with a focus on the Jewish community. McCain was by no means perfect, but his experience and character were so far ahead of BHO that the motives of his (BHO’s) supporters among regular voters (the PA Democratic party hacks were easy to figure out) were a puzzle.
Since 2008, politics has been a painful lesson as to how far our country has fallen.
I wandered away about half way through O’s SOTU speech last night. It was the usual nothing burger. Long on atmospherics and nothing more.
However, early in the speech I did agree with him that there is another very big– bigger than fracking imho– technological revolution coming. That’s 3d printing. O’s idea was to expand an experimental federal 3d printing testbed facility in Ohio to 15 facilities spread around the country. (Similar federal facilities for materials research are also spread around the country. These facilities work in partnerships with colleges and corporations in their neighborhoods.)
I think there should be one of these facilities in every state.
Breakout? Wasn’t that … no, last episode of The Prisoner was “Fallout”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFIMH_KB-So
I thought that was weird, until I started living through the Obamanation.
“Things fall,apart, the center cannot hold….” and once the world understands the USA is out of the superpower business, countries that relied on the US nuclear umbrella will look to their own resources for their own survival. In Asia, I would expect South Korea, Japan, possibly Australia to start building their own nuclear weapons. That will not do much for stability in the area, but better nuclear proliferation, the thinking will go, than a nuclear strike from North Korea.
In the Middle East, well, an Iranian bomb might well lead to a bandwagon effect, with most Arabic countries kowtowing to Iran, and doing everything they can to point the Persains towards Israel. Israel, in turn, knows full well she cannot survive a full scale nuclear attack from Iran, and she also knows the Iranian leadership has publicly and repeatedly declared such an attack to wipe the “little satan” off the face of the earth, is Irans goal. If I was advising Netanyahu, I would be telling him to pre-empt with a nuclear strike of his own. What that would do the region and the economy of the West I leave to your imagination.
Blast From past #15: When the French left IndoChina, Ike and Ridgway put their heads together and inserted a regiment of Marines into NE Thailand. They had the Ho Chi Trail interdicted.
It was the Kennedy-McNamara-Whiz Kids axis that failed to utilize this force and then withdrew it. It was William Westmoreland who concocted a so-called strategy that did not take the lack of interdiction into consideration.
The seaborne supply route through Cambodia was disrupted in 1970 and then later restored. It seemingly played a minor role until the Final Offensive of 1975.
And the POL came by pipeline down the Ho Chi Trail. It was anything but a feint thank you.
A few NVA went di qua Ben Hai. Most di qua Lao. None di qua Cam Bot.
I know. I interrogated enough of them Wore out 16 brand new waterboards doing it. The trail was a freeway.
“As the saying goes, ‘small time criminals break the law, big time criminals use the law’.”
Well said. Bankers and the CEOs of megacorporations, for example.
Dave @ 27 – Whatever the capacity of the Ho Chi Minh trail was at any one time, the key interdiction was mining Haiphong Harbor, Operation Pocket Money
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Linebacker#Operation_Pocket_Money
Even today, 90% of all trade is sea borne. Cutting North Vietnam off from its suppliers in the Soviet Union and China drove Uncle Ho to the Paris Peace Table pronto.
So you want to drive a stake through Syria? Mine Tartus harbor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartus#Russian_naval_base
Want to stop North Korea? Mine her harbors.
We (and the UN) are still technically at war with North Korea. So what would a naval blockade be but war by other means? Who are they going to get to do anything about it, the UN Security Council? Just like Russia and China, we have a VETO too! Hell, we are essentially the LANDLORD!
Remember how the Left crapped their pants when the Contras mined Corinto in Nicaragua?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua#Sandinistas_and_the_Contras
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corinto,_Nicaragua#United_States_Intervention
America needs to start acting like The World’s Only Superpower!
Until we do, the spoiled brats will terrorize the kindergarten.
It’s long past time for Daddy to come home and restore order!
BTW – Remember how my beloved A-6E’s turned the road from Kuwait to Iraq into The Highway of Death? Damn, we designed one hell of a plane!
Wretchard #9,
The old words of Livy come to mind: We can endure neither our vices nor the remedies for them.
My considered opinion is now that the overwhelming majority of the American people—be they Republican, Democrat, or indifferent—instinctively saw right through Obama from the very beginning, at least at a subliminal level. But the trashiness of the culture and the general malaise of the times have so imprisoned the better angels of our nature that a slow-burniung, cronic despair has set in. Obama’s election, and reelection, were the expressions of a deeply unconcscious, collective death wish. It was the only way out.
I think this explains the sort of cathartic hypostasis underlying phrases like “Hope and Change.” Americans were hoping, but for what exactly they did not dare to name. Hoping to slough off the charade of modernity, the painted-on happiness, the illusion that living outside the rules will bring peace to the soul.
I think further that anyone who honestly interrogates himself about this will see that it is the truth, that the desire to have done with this culture is buried deep inside him and must perforce be suppressed lest it interfere with the necessary activities of life. The Obama Age was all carnival and hedonism, which is always intimitaely related to masochism and self-loathing. We have reached the end of ourselves and are weary of keeping up appearances.
Embracing the truth now will bring a lot of material unpleasantness but some much-needed spiritual clarity. Furthermore, the majority of the people and the culture itself will steadily come to insist upon it. In the coming years anybody who tries to carry on in party mode will be marginalized and exhiled.
Obama will be remembered, if at all, as the cycle’s last cynical outburst of bufoonery, as the “one last drink” and “one last dance” as the growing awareness of tomorrow’s hangover already sets in.
24. Charles
Fracking is real.
Socialized 3d printing is like your prediction 4 years ago that GM would unveil the Magic Battery now known as The Volt.
—
Islamist Censorship Charges On
Now sharia advocates are trying to stop the use of the word “Islamist.”
– Karen Lugo
In just the latest episode of censorship in the prophet’s name, Muslim activist groups now want reporters to stop using the word “Islamist.” “Islamist” is an important and useful word — it identifies the politically motivated Muslims who are intent on injecting sharia into Western law and culture, and distinguishes them from other followers of Islam.
There is no question that sharia is anathema to the American sense of individual liberty and civil rights, so actual Islamists must hide behind Muslims who have no interest in bringing Muslim Brotherhood–style regulations to America. Uninhibited discussions of the conditions in Western Europe’s sharia enclaves evoke instant rejection of similar arrangements here in the U.S. Thus, the conversation must be stripped of frank terms such as “Islamist.” Those who seek to promote sharia are anxious to bypass debate on the matter on the way to cultural domination.
If it can happen in London — as it has — it can happen anywhere in the civilized world. Caving to Islamist demands and criminalizing public debate as hate speech set the stage in Britain for Islamist vigilantes to accost Londoners who violate sharia’s rules on modesty, alcohol consumption, and homosexuality. Days ago, CNN’s OutFront covered the most recent manifestations of Muslim gang tyranny in Britain, Denmark, and Spain. The feature also showed Islamist bands demanding that Britain’s sharia courts, now merely endowed with civil authority, expand to prosecute criminal actions, including “un-Islamic behavior in Muslim areas.”
Two recent video
recordings – removed by YouTube, then reposted at alternate sites — show Islamist “patrols” staking out turf in areas of London while declaring,
“This is not-so-Great Britain, this is a Muslim area. We are vigilantes implementing Islam upon your own necks.” A collective Western “Brava!” goes out to the women who responded, instead of meekly complying, “I cannot believe it!” and “I am so appalled, this is Great Britain.”
Islamists certainly do not want the American public to consider the current international campaign to make inspection of Islamism a crime. In January, journalists and journalism students were invited to a conference in Istanbul where Turkish deputy undersecretary Ibrahim Kalin announced that the Turkish government “has been working on projects to have Islamophobia recognized as a crime against humanity.” Prime Minister Erdogan committed the Turkish government to “immediately start working on legislation against blasphemous and offensive remarks” and bragged that “Turkey could be a leading example for the rest of the world on this.”
Doug @ 31 – Turkey and Sharia?
What do you think one single mine in the Bosphorus would do to “Sharia”???
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosphorus_Bridge
Hmmmmmm! Only 3,524 feet? Piece of cake!!!!
Bottles up the Russian navy in the Black Sea too! No oil exports, so their cash flow dries up. Pootie Poo will have apparatchiks all over his ass!
Pitchforks and torches in the streets of Moscow!!!
Let’s show Obama some real CHAOS!! But this time in socialist capitals.
A piece of Islamist “wisdom”…
THE STRONGEST HORSE
All the President’s Googly Men
…Mr. Brennan, on the other hand, was lively and wide-awake, the better to maneuver the U-turns through his conscience, renouncing many of the things he had been so confidently saying about the threats to the West from the perversions of Islam. It was if he had waterboarded his conscience.
Mr. Brennan once energetically defended the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that extracted crucial information from evildoers, information that prevented further harm to Americans. “There [has] been a lot of information that has come out from these interrogation procedures that the agency has in fact used against the real hard-core terrorists,” he told CBS News in 2007. “It has saved lives. And let’s not forget, these are hardened terrorists who had been responsible for 9/11, who have shown no remorse at all for the deaths of 3,000 innocents.”
This so infuriated Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that they commissioned a partisan “study,” no Republicans allowed, not to determine whether the enhanced interrogation techniques actually worked, but to conclude that they didn’t. (Alice ran across this kind of “study” from the queen in Wonderland: “Sentence first, verdict afterwards.”) The “study” concluded, 350 pages of argle-bargle later, that the enhanced interrogation did not work.
Mr. Brennan was thoroughly housebroken when the Senate committee asked him just the other day what he thought about all that now. “I must tell you,” he said, contrition puddling around his ankles, “that reading this report from the committee raises serious questions about the information that I was given at the time and the impression I had at that time. Now I have to determine what, based on that information as well as what the CIA says, what the truth is.” Rarely has anyone so clearly expressed the Washington code, that conviction and conscience are important, subject only to the prevailing wind.
Mr. Brennan is eager to embrace the company line, tough on al Qaeda during the Bush years, soft on al Qaeda now that he serves a president with a soft spot in his head. It’s not that the president and his men want to go easy on terrorists — his drones have killed terrorists, even when accompanied by women and children, by the dozens. He just can’t call terrorists for who they are. The terrorist who tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit was “an isolated extremist.” When a terrorist tried to blow up Times Square, his homeland security secretary called it a “one-off.” Those evildoers, in their telling of it, had nothing to do with radical Islam. The White House still hasn’t got its stories straight on what happened at Benghazi.
When the president hears “the sweetest music this side of heaven” (apologies to Guy Lombardo), his heart goes all googly at the sight of the crescent moon. He wants acolytes who can share the googly.
After the recent “Innocence of Muslims” YouTube controversy and the resultant Muslim riots, I visited a Southern California mosque and had a conversation with the chairman of its board.
When I inquired as to his position on free speech he replied that the criminal punishment for offending Muslims should be equal to that for burning a mosque.
So far, America’s institutions have chosen to defer the moment that the culture must be defined and defended. Islamists have stepped into the void.
For instance, at Islamists’ behest, the DOJ, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security have purged from counterterrorism manuals references to the connection between Islamic radicalism and jihadist terror.
Many city- and county-level agencies have followed suit. If our law-enforcement agencies cannot stand up to the threat, how can we expect the media to?
Those who doubt the need to identify and engage this activist element should consider the words of Zuhdi Jasser, an American Muslim civil-rights leader whose family emigrated from Syria in pursuit of American liberty. In his autobiographical book, A Battle for the Soul of Islam: A Muslim Patriot’s Battle to Save His Faith, Jasser writes:
For the Islamists, total power is the ultimate goal. They will feign respect for “democracy” (e.g., elections), but ultimately their path is one that seeks to change the rules of the game to an Islamocentric system rather than one centered in reason, under God, with unalienable rights for all.
Caving to demands for speech codes dangerously skews political arguments and makes the voices of the censors only louder. When one side of the argument is censored or restrained, conspirators are allowed to perpetrate a fraud on the majority. This is exactly how Islamists have been selling Americans on the idea that sharia is soft, socially just, and not a threat to the American way. By maligning the use of the word “Islamist” and thereby suppressing inspection of Islamism, sharia advocates hope to dismiss as racist any who would challenge them.
It is not too late to frame the debate and press American Muslim leaders for honesty. Unapologetic and public conversations are key to defending American constitutional standards, and they demand clarity of terminology.
Islamist Censorship Charges On
18. MachiasPrivateer says:
“Anytime a Dem says something sensible, agree with him. Even Biden said that Americans hate to be played for suckers. Agree with Biden on that!!!
Be as relentlessly agreeable as a Walmart greeter.”
————————————————————————
I agree!
programmr @ 35 – And be sure to show them your pearly white Chesire Cat grin!
As to the word “Islamist” “distinguishing (those who want to spread Sharia law) from other followers of Islam” How can you be a follower of Islam, as it is written in the Koran, and fail to support spreading Sharia law everywhere? Sounds like a contradiction to me. So, maybe “Islamist” is unnecessary. Instead of “Islamist”, just say “Muslim”.
“international Western elite paralyzed with political correctness” – I contend that the PTB are content sucking the life out of the hopes and dreams of the billion or so lives in the West while destroying another billion more, yet unborn whose future depends on the wealth now so nonchalantly squandered. It isn’t political correctness, it is triumph over reason which is the most delicious kind of thuggery, the thinnest veil over a visceral hatred for humanity, and in its critique, an underlying hatred of God.
President Obama is astride of the back of the American dream and he is riding it into doom and what if Obama was simply ‘good’ in a liberal sense, which is to say, banally evil?
Obama in failure falls back to his narcissistic goals and, failing that, proffers more social deconstruction.
“O’s idea was to expand an experimental federal 3d printing” – Guaranteed boondoggle. Think Solyndra. The communists will not succeed with a planned economy by employing toy-making wunder-weapons. If so, why didn’t the CNC, water jet, laser, EDM, completely revolutionize the economy? They contributed that is all. 3D printing has been in extensive use since the early 90’s. I personally used 3D printed (selective laser sintering[SLS]) for some government deliverables in ’93 and 3d stereo lithograpy (SLA) in ’91 to produce investment cast prototypes that were used for first article. I have used it yearly since then. It is old hat. The government wants to put cheap 3D printers in community colleges so the more industrious students can make dildos and hash pipes while obtaining skills for jobs that are already taken by H1B *foreign labor. Make me a piece of H11 steel with a tolerance of +/- .0002” and we must talk. Until then what industry needs now is less government meddling and less government competition for investment dollars, i.e.;, if the government would just pull their d!ck out of the @$$ of American business and let the market choose the winners things would be just grand.
I have worked in industry for 30 years and by far the dumbest people I have ever met were some H1B visa holders working for an engineering company. A place I was at last fall had a slew of them and they all talked CHinese openly in front of us round eyes and Mexicans. The project engineer was a freaking moron who called herself MOM (manager of men). Dumb as a box of rocks. (do we need to go to all ends of the earth for people like this?) Anyhow, the fired her and a month later went out of business. The Brazilion engineering manager hated Americans. Good riddance.
Wretchard,
Why do we imagine the world’s rogues think Obama weak? Perhaps they are very impressed with his ability to disarm the most powerful nation in the world? Perhaps they admire his ability to cripple the strongest economy in history? Perhaps our premises about Obama’s goals are incorrect. Perhaps he has intended to get exactly where we are?
That is my nightmare…and what makes the nightmare even worse is that so few intelligent people are willing to stare into the darkness and consider that possibility.
Matt (#30), I find that I agree completely with your post – it matches up with what so many people I know think and feel now. I find it rather darkly amusing to know that those who remain fervently and deeply committed to Obamism are, without fail, those who I have always considered to be the most mendacious and ignorant people I have ever met. (and I thought that long BEFORE they proved it with their latest bout of Emperor worship)
For me, I would sum up your post in a much simpler mantra: Let It Burn.
Annoy Mouse @ 38 – There are two types of people in this world.
Those who believe in meritocracy.
Those who believe in mediocrity.
Re. #37 Robert Speirs; I suggest an even better word for a Muslim citizen of a Western democracy such as the USA or the UK. And it applies even more to such a citizen who converts to Islam.
Traitor.
“Officials think Iran’s long-term goal is to have reliable operatives in Syria in case the country fractures into ethnic and sectarian enclaves.”
Everyone is lining up for a share of the kill except for us. We gave up hunting and are no longer useful members of the tribe.
There is a place I would love to have Obama visit when he comes to Israel this year.
The location is in the Golan Heights and was named The Valley Of Tears by Israeli soldiers after the 1973 Yom Kippur War and is still known by that name today.
From those hills one Israeli batallion of 100 tanks looked down as the attacking force, 1,260 Syrian tanks, the latest Russian models with night vision equipment backed by an entire Infantry division and supported by 140 artillery batteries came rolling towords them.
At the end of the battle when the Syrians finally retreated one dozen Israeli tanks remained, mostly without ammunition. The surviving crews watched what was left of the Syrian Army pull back through the smoking hell of the dead and burning vehicles and wept.
That small force was all that stood between the Syrian onslaught and Jerusalem, which is where Obama will spend his time.
I want him to understand how thin the frontline is for countries like Israel and South Korea. From those hills he could see Syria where Iran, Hezbolla, and Al Queda are right now building armies and competing for control of the VX gas missiles Assad will leave behind. If he looks below him he will see the Israeli vinyards planted with such great hope.
I want him to understand but I know that he would not. He would be mindful how he looked in front of the reporters. He would spout another useless platitude about “our mutual security interests” and call it a job well done as if his words meant anything at all in this place where the dead stand sentry while the living make wine.
A little detail from the SOTU showed what a spectacularly mendacious man Obama is. He said, in so many words, that the sequester was a “very bad idea.”
It was him, or the WH in aggregate, that came up with the sequester. He managed, in the SOTU, to disparage his own idea, without admitting that he was the author. He knew that with the MSM wind in his rhetorical sails, he could pin the blame for the sequester on the Republicans without even mentioning them by name or even pointing at them as the authors of that stupid gimmick. Of course, this is the same man who colluded with Monica Crowley to sabotage Romney.
It says volumes about our fellow “citizens” and our “betters” that such a prolific and infuriating liar is President.
Re # 30. Matt
“My considered opinion is now that the overwhelming majority of the American people—be they Republican, Democrat, or indifferent—instinctively saw right through Obama from the very beginning, at least at a subliminal level.”
Sorry, I respectfully disagree. I know a number of highly educated young (and not so young) idiots who piss their pants in excitement. I think they are representative sample of contemporary young “intelligentsia” and are the product of an educational system willingly submitting itself long time ago to “progressive” propaganda. So the fact that educational system is loosing steam is positive development in my op. Unfortunately it is doing so very slow.
I have said this here before and will say it again. Anyone, Anyone who thinks there are Musselmen practicing Mohammedism that can be a moderate is a useful fool for the Cult of Death! To start off the fact you cannot converse with a Musselmen of Mohammedism because the Musselmen is not to speak to a non-Musselmen except for the act of conversion to Mohammedism otherwise everything a Musselmen says to you is “Taqiyya” for the Quran (4:139, ,5:51, 5:57) forbids Musselmen to have non-Musselmen friends!
“Taqiyya” (deceit or dissimulation, Qur’an verses 2:225, 3:28, 3:54, 9:3, 16:106, 40:28 and 66:2) establishes the legitimacy of Lying, breaking Oaths and generally scheming against “NON-Musselmen”
The Arabic word for “friends” is “Awliyaa”, which has four literal meanings: (1) Allies; (2) Friends; and (3) Guardians. In Verse 60:13, the Arabic word used was “tatawallu”, which is derived from the root word “Awliyaa”.
There is a reason to call them followers of Mohammedism and not what the brainwashed idiots call them, read the real history of Mohammedism and you will know the truth!
re $44 “…Of course, this is the same man who colluded with Monica Crowley to sabotage Romney.”
Do you really believe this?
Romney sabotage Romney. If he could not (or, rather, would not) put the fat jurno in its place and than turn around and tell the pres. the truth (with full ref. to Obama own and Hillary’s activities at the time) he would be as pres. not much different from the present occupant of the WH.
#46
I quite agree. I stopped using Islam and all its variations some time ago in favor of Mohammedanism. And regardless what anybody tells us, Mohammed the person is as central to belief, if not more so, than Allah.
We also should object to any reference to Mohammedanism as an Abrahamic religion. The religion created by Mohammed is as different from Judaism and Christianity as a cat from a blue whale.
m @ 30: The old words of Livy come to mind: We can endure neither our vices nor the remedies for them.
That’s very good.
There is nothing new under the sun.
It’s not all happy, happy, joy, joy in Iranian land. They have had a spot of trouble over the last few weeks.
WSJ is reporting a Revolutionary Guards / Quds Force general killed in Syria. The Iranians blamed it on unspecified Zionists.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324162304578302530164834200.html
Ledeen wrote earlier this week in To the Point News (paywall) about an explosion in a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz that killed eight and got a bunch more treated for irradiation. Tunnels involved have apparently been walled off.
He also mentioned an explosion at a heavy water facility and a gas line explosion leading into a new underground nuclear facility near Fordow.
Someone has been busy. And if true, I’d expect the Iranians to start getting real nervous. Cheers -
31. Doug
24. Charles
Fracking is real.
Socialized 3d printing is like your prediction 4 years ago that GM would unveil the Magic Battery now known as The Volt.
—
Agree that Fracking is real. But it wasn’t real only 3-4 years ago. Now its so big its shifting the way central bankers are thinking about the dollar.
3d printing is now about where fracking was 3-4 years ago. At that time people inside the industry understood how big it was but no one else really. Also, 3d printing will take longer to unfold than fracking. 3d printing will take over the economy at about the same rate of speed as the desktop computer did back in the 1980′s. But its effects will be just as profound as the desktop computer in the 1980′s and the internet in the 1990s.
But the proof is in the pudding. We’ll just have to wait & see how this pans out.
Here’s an economist & a forbes article on the subject.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/09/3d-printing
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/12/07/manufacturing-the-future-10-trends-to-come-in-3d-printing/
#43 spindok
My friend, you do not understand. He would be thinking all the while;
“So close. They came so close. If only they had air support. If only they had another armored division and more artillery support, they would have done it. Next time we will not make the same mistake.”
Israel, and for that matter America, are on their own in battling the Enemy. Today, the Institutional Republicans cut and run on the Hagel nomination for Secretary of Defense just as new reports came out about Hagel saying that the State Department was controlled by Israel. Led by McCain, the Institutionals are going to give up, rather than fight Obama on anything. There is a time of trial coming for both countries, and there is no organized force defending western civilization or the Constitution in our government. May there be such an organized force defending western civilization and Israel’s survival in Jerusalem.
Subotai Bahadur
Machias Privateer@32.
Nice one.
Modern mine insertion from 25,000′ via precision guided parachute off a C-17 tailgate.
One pass.
Plausible deniability a cinch.
Repeat as needed.
Lovely.
And a delivery method that represents the essential difference between us and a barbaric cult with a death wish that can’t produce the power or the technology to carry out its toxic fantasies by frontal assault.
“Bottles up the Russian navy in the Black Sea too! No oil exports, so their cash flow dries up. Pootie Poo will have apparatchiks all over his ass!” Sorry to cut short your fantasies Matthias, but quite a lot of Russian oil may be exported via the Druzhba pipeline to Europe, St. Petersburg, and Nahodka bay in the Far East thanks to the spur from the pipeline to China. And Pootie Poo as you refer to him could smack the dollar tomorrow by announcing he wants payment in other currencies for crude. He hasn’t been stockpiling more than a Statue of Liberty’s worth of gold for nothing. Twisted martial fantasies about restoring America’s greatness through aggression won’t change the drooling down at the polling place or Wal Mart or stop the stupid in D.C.
Not Uncle Joe @ 54 – Re-start Japan’s nuclear power plants and drive Russian Far East LNG exports down to slice Pootie Poo’s foreign exchange receipts some more.
That would strengthen the yen as well and bolster Japan’s economy. This reduces the currency devaluations that are roiling the markets.
Re-starting German nuclear plants would also bolster Germany’s economy and save money for their consumers.
Kill new US EPA regulations on CO2 and a bunch of coal power plants are back in business to drive down electricity rates.
What is needed is to ensure Turkey fears the USA more than Moscow. No better friend, no worse enemy. We’ve already got Patriot missiles in Turkey. How about we offer to carve out a bit of Syria and give it to Turkey to sweeten the deal, give another part to Iraq, the Golan Heights permanently to Israel, the southern part to Jordan and the balance to Lebanon. Syria ceases to exist.
Let Assad go into exile in Pyongyang, as he blew his chance to choose Paris.
Bob Murphy @ 53 – As a Chicago police detective (a woman) once told me, it’s easier to make friends than make enemies. We just want Turkey to remember who their friends are!!!
If Russia begins to see local political resistance, it will only encourage the Green Movement in Iran too. We could start a preference cascade for us and against the Russia-China-Syria- Iran Axis of Evil. And letting the Alawites in Syria join Lebanon would offer them added protection against the Sunnis. Good fences make good neighbors.
“What is needed is to ensure Turkey fears the USA more than Moscow. No better friend, no worse enemy. We’ve already got Patriot missiles in Turkey. How about we offer to carve out a bit of Syria and give it to Turkey to sweeten the deal, give another part to Iraq, the Golan Heights permanently to Israel, the southern part to Jordan and the balance to Lebanon. Syria ceases to exist.” What you’re proposing is aggressive warfare, plain and simple, something the U.S. as the good guys denounced and hanged people for at Nuremberg.
“If Russia begins to see local political resistance…” as my acquaintance the Moscow-based fund manager Eric Kraus likes to say, foreign interests have a tendency throughout history to think that if they cause the Russians enough pain they will back down, from the Swedes to Napoleon to Hitler. But there isn’t enough pain in the universe for that.
The USSR ultimately collapsed because the Russians themselves knew their system was broken, and Reagan made it clear he had no beef with the Russian people only with their rotten Soviet system. Contrast that with what you and the delusional anti-Russia lobby fanatics in D.C. are proposing, not noticing that the entire foundation for their ambitions (the petrodollar and its hegemony) is about to crumble.
Japan’s problem has very little to do with LNG, and everything to do with what Spengler calls civilizational despair (not to mention the suddenly awake tectonic plates and Fujiyama arising from its slumber — do you think Zhirinovsky mentioned ‘earthquake’ and ‘tsunami’ weapons just in passing for kicks?).
I’ve noticed of late Tokyo has started making aggressive noises toward China and Russia at the same time. I suspect the sons of Dai Nippon should they decide retaking Sakhalin is a good idea to distract their people from economic implosion will fair about as well as Misha the Tie Eater’s U.S.-Marine trained legions did against the Russian 58th Army in 2008…they might last about two or three days before surrendering or retreating back across the strait.
http://johnhelmer.net/?p=8571
Modern Japanese herbivore men are not their grandfathers to go out with banzai charges when the spetsnaz show up for them. No one wants to see a truly remilitarized Japan, not even the Filipino government.
Charles 24 and Doug
Allow me to expand my comment at 17.
I know a little bit about Youngstown, Ohio. In 1960 it had one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. Washington, DC was still a bit of a backwater. Youngstown had great schools. Immigrant Kids from inner city schools won scholarships to Ivy League Universities before affirmative action. The local university had an excellent science and engineering program. Why was that? Because of all the industry that was concentrated in the region. And there was a lot of awfully rich people around.
In the mid 1970s the mills closed taking a lot of the local supporting industry along with it. That was in cards for quite a while.
But at the time there was a highly trained workforce available. Infrastructure already in place. Available commercial sites. Lots of wealth and potential investment capital. And almost Zero subsequent development. Politicians wanted to get a hi-tech blimp factory. Didn’t happen. Too bad. As you know, hi-tech blimps are still the wave of the future.
Why so slow to develop?
Well, there’s also the corrupt Democrat Machine. There’s the mafia. There are strong unions and a history of radical political agitation. If that was not enough there was the EPA (if anyone bought industrial property they had to clean it up — like, three feet below ground level).
Now the workforce is gone and the capital is gone but I’m not sure the corruption is gone (though I know and like some of the local politicians).
We had local gas developers (DL Energy) who proved less than competent. I’ve made comments about their achievements here. They let so much gas leak you could smell it miles away (I assume they released stenching agent at the time — so they acted somewhat responsibly). They injected brine to force out the gas. The high pressure injections caused earthquakes so they had to stop. Then they dumped the brine in the local river.
This is all being blamed of “fracking.” I suspect the local political culture is to blame for allowing these guys to operate. So it will all be used to tar Chesapeake Energy which is investing billions around here.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/02/post_101.html
By the way, local landowners are getting a lot of money for their mineral rights. So Fracking may go on.
Peter Boston #48: Islam non-Abrahamic? I think you are on to something there. The alleged connection to Abraham is simply because Abraham and Mohammed
both came from the mideast. Now that you mention it it seems apparent that the two lines of theo-cultural thought are N-O-T related. Thank you sir. You gave me what I think will be a valuable insight.
43. spindok One reason I’m amused by the fanaticism displayed by the pro-Syria rebel propagandists on Twitter who call me a Russian agent or somesuch is because I’ve actually BEEN to the Golan Heights and looked down on Syria from there. In other words, I know where the incoming will be once Assad is removed or forced into the coastal enclave while the Muslim Brotherhood/Al-Qaeda jihadis attack the Golani brigade. Naturally @ReginaldQuill, the now Qatari-funded Saban Center and the other useful neocon idiots will be ‘shocked, shocked’ that jihadis once again as with the lynching of Ambassador Stevens bit the hand that had fed them.
EOT for me.
Not Uncle Joe -
You have a bunch of errors.
The people with the pitchforks and torches in the streets so of Moscow would obviously be Russians. The argument would be between Putin and the Russian people.
Japan is buying huge amounts of Russian LNG at very high prices to substitute for their idled nuclear plants. Re-start their nukes and they don’t need the LNG, which they cannot afford anyway.
As to supporting the petrodollars, quite the opposite (including Russian income from their petrodollars). Displace oil consumption with nukes and coal and the price of oil drops!! In the long run, lower oil prices helps poor nations buy food (e.g. Egypt). And it hurts troublesome nations whose income comes from petrodollars (Iran, KSA, Russia etc.)
The goal is to weaken the axis of Evil Russia-China-Iran-Syria-North Korea, AKA those engaged in nuclear proliferation, without resorting to military action (other than reminding Turkey who their real friends are).
Islamism = Islam + Communism
Islamist = Islamic Communist
Dictator and tyrant Enver Hoxha proved that it’s possible to combine them.
Perhaps in his image, Arafat was coined by Moscow’s First Directorate of the KGB — before he was released upon the world brandishing the aegis of the PLO — itself also a creation of the KGB.
It’s not given enough ink: Islamists (like OBL) spend more time spouting Communist dogma and Hard Leftist tripe than they do from the Koran. Since these screeds are seldom published in the West, even avid followers of the jihadis are unaware of just how deeply KGB imprinting still orders their minds.
That’s ironic: now Putin’s FSB (nee KGB) wishes it could turn the switch off.
========
It’s often remarked what weird bedfellows the Left and the Islamists are.
After contemplating just how much Communist agitprop is crammed into Islamists — it’s not so strange, after all.
As for the totalitarian impulses — they are twinned — in their hearts.
PB @48…
I’d label Islam as anti-Abrahamic.
For it’s creed is not dissimilar but the inverse-function thereof.
More as a black parody of truth and logic — it’s a neolithic, warrior-elite, rules set…
With Mo’ self-elevated as the amoral warrior-chieftain for all time.
Whereas Moses brought forth the written laws of God — Mo’ was reputed to have killed anyone who wrote his dicta down — particularly if these words were subsequently thrown back in his face.
His whimsy changed so that he had to come up with his ‘abrogation’ escape clause.
For Mo’ everyone is to be bound by the words of Allah — except himself — of whom all vices are options.
========
We’re assured that the Koran was and is the absolutely correct word of Allah, by way of Mo’, even though he prohibited any from writing it down… and the first attempts began generations after all of the principals were dead.
That span of time approximates the existence of the US Constitution. (!)
First Century Judea is better documented.
MP @ 60
Russia is not a player in LNG exports.
LNG is not — on the whole — replacing the missing atomic electric power.
Instead, Japan is importing heavy distillates to burn in her older thermo-electric plants.
They had been relegated to ‘topping’ service when atomic plants provided the base load capacity.
It must also be true that Japan is importing coal (Australia) to raise steam, too.
Any way you figure it, Japan, Inc. is being run at a loss.
From now on, she has to liquidate her US Treasury position.
54. Not Uncle Joe
“Sorry to cut short your fantasies” If I may jump off from your thought;
In the words of the Polish commander who was roped into the ‘Market Garden’ fiasco;
“If you know these bridges are critical, don’t you think the Germans know that to? What will they be doing while you’re taking their bridges from them?”
If we know the Russian Navy can be bottled up by mining the Bosporus, its a sure bet the Russians know that to. And have devoted a lot of thought to it. Russia has had at least two very good lessons on the importance of a secure sea route to supply a land campaign; The Crimea and Stalingrad.
If Hitler had possessed the wit and the ships to force a supply line through the Black Sea, Stalingrad might have turned out differently. But, like Napoleon, he could not seem to think in terms of a co-ordinated sea-land campaign. That seems to be an English and American monopoly.
It’s wonderful to think that any conflict involving the U.S. Navy is going to unfold like a Tom Clancy novel. The gods of the sea don’t read novels, but the Russians do.
Wretchard: “He was their portrait of Dorian Gray, the sump of their soul, the unwitting mirror of what they had become.”
EXACTLY.
(For those who missed Wilde’s novel, Dorian Gray was able to be eternally youthful and beautiful in appearance, while the sins and wicked passions he indulged would etch themselves into his portrait, hidden in the attic.)
I have to chime in with Beverly@65, Wretchard’s quote was brilliant:
“I do not for one minute believe that Obama has brought down the system. Rather the system demonstrated how low it had fallen by elevating him. He was their portrait of Dorian Gray, the sump of their soul, the unwitting mirror of what they had become.”
Wretchard, you have an amazing gift.