Friday, November 4, 2011

Saber Rattling: Is it time for the next big Mid-East Confrontation?

Hmmm...: Within the space of two days, all these articles come out:

From Israel:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to rally support in his cabinet for an attack on Iran, according to government sources.

From the UK:
Britain's armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran amid mounting concern about Tehran's nuclear enrichment programme, the Guardian has learned.

The Ministry of Defence believes the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek, and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations within the coalition government.
And from rightcheer in Amurrica:
As the International Atomic Energy Agency prepares to release its latest report on Iran's nuclear program, an Obama administration official said Thursday that the Islamic regime has a credibility problem.

"Iran, over many years, has been unable to demonstrate the peaceful intent of its nuclear program," Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes told reporters in Cannes, France, where President Obama was attending the G20 summit."
Britain’s armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran amid mounting concern about Tehran’s nuclear enrichment programme, the Guardian has learned.
The Ministry of Defence believes the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek, and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations within the coalition government.
In anticipation of a potential attack, British military planners are examining where best to deploy Royal Navy ships and submarines equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles over the coming months as part of what would be an air and sea campaign.
They also believe the US would ask permission to launch attacks from Diego Garcia, the British Indian ocean territory, which the Americans have used previously for conflicts in the Middle East.
I for one say it's about damn time! Wag that dog Barry! Time go for your second violation of the War Powers Act!
Bombs Away, Barry!

Monday, October 24, 2011

Middle East Update: So Much For The Flowering Of Freedom And Democracy

(A short poorly put together post.) Recent developments in the Middle East do not appear to be good. Muammar Gaddafi was killed by the Libyan rebels. While it is a good thing that he is dead the government that will be replacing him won't be such a good thing.

The transitional government leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil called on Libyans to show "patience, honesty and tolerance" and eschew hatred as they embark on rebuilding the country at the end of an 8-month civil war.Link

Abdul-Jalil set out a vision for the post-Qaddafi future with an Islamist tint, saying that Islamic Sharia law would be the "basic source" of legislation in the country and that existing laws that contradict the teachings of Islam would be nullified.

In a gesture that showed his own piety, he urged Libyans not to express their joy by firing in the air, but rather to chant "Allahu Akbar," or God is Great. He then stepped aside and knelt to offer a brief prayer of thanks.


As noted in earlier post, some of the Libyan rebel leaders are actual terrorist that fought against America in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Islamists have won elections in Tunisia. And America is pulling its ambassador out of Syria.

America will be completely pulling out of Iraq, thus creating a political vacuum that Iran will take advantage of :

With Syria in turmoil, Iran on the march, a more isolated Israel, and Turkey’s ever-more ambivalent policies, now is the worst time to see a diminished U.S. influence in ensuring continued progress in Iraq. A total troop pullout will leave Iraqi security forces much more vulnerable to terrorism, sectarian conflict, and Iranian meddling, and it will leave them much less capable of battling al-Qaeda in Iraq and pro-Iranian Shia militias.

The Afghanistan president said that if there were a conflict between America and Pakistan, that he would side with Pakistan.

It looks like things aren't going so well in Egypt

In the eight months since the Egyptian Revolution, radical Islamic groups are rising to power, the army seems unwilling or unable to stop a growing rash of sectarian violence and the long-standing friendship between the U.S., Israel and Egypt is in serious question.

“I am the enemy of democracy,” Hesham al Ashry said in an interview with Fox News in his Cairo tailor shop. The devout Muslim is a main organizer in a group called the Salafists, which is working to bring Shariah law to Egypt. They, along with the Muslim Brotherhood, have risen quickly in the past eight months to fill the power vacuum left in post-Mubarak Egypt.

The past eight months have given a scary preview of what al Ashry’s opportunity might mean. It was a Salafy Cleric who called for the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Cario, the rocket and suicide bomb attack on a southern Israeli highway which killed 8 and injured more than 40 was launched from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and it was the Army which intervened in a peaceful Coptic Christian protest killing more than two dozen.

“They (the army) are completely frantic, they are (overwhelmed) by these every week demonstrations…the country is going bust. The economy is going down. They are unable to get it to rest (stop),” Sawiris, who says there is only a 20% chance of next month’s election producing a liberal or secular Muslim government, said.


And it looks like the Vatican has been infected with communist. They are calling for a world central bank to help solve the unfair distribution of wealth around the world
The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a "global public authority" and a "central world bank" to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises.[...]

'The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence,' it said.

It condemned what it called "the idolatry of the market" as well as a "neo-liberal thinking" that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems.

'In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviors like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale,' it said, adding that world economics needed an 'ethic of solidarity" among rich and poor nations.[...]

"In fact, one can see an emerging requirement for a body that will carry out the functions of a kind of 'central world bank' that regulates the flow and system of monetary exchanges similar to the national central banks," it said.

The document, which was being presented at a news conference later on Monday, acknowledged that such change would take years to put into place and was bound to encounter resistance.

"Of course, this transformation will be made at the cost of a gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation's powers to a world authority and to regional authorities, but this is necessary at a time when the dynamism of human society and the economy and the progress of technology are transcending borders, which are in fact already very eroded in a globalizes world."


I don't know how influential the Vatican is. I know at one point it was an influential force in world politics. Today, they might just be a bunch of people wearing clown suits that have no power or influence in the world. But their thought is the prevailing thought among world leaders today.

While the death of Gaddafi and the pulling out of American troops from Iraq might make Obama look good and increase his chances of winning reelection, these and other developments in the Middle East does not appear to be shaping up to be good for America, Israel, the West, or freedom in general. What has been happening in the Middle East is that America has been supporting its enemies whether by fighting a war for them, giving them money, or handing a country to our enemies. So much for the flowering of "democracy" in the Middle East.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Chris Christie: So Much For The New Conservative Hero

Well, looks like politics have ruined what was once a great governor and a possible perceived hope for turning the country around. (There really isn't that much hope when you start looking at America's situation, but figuring that out takes time/effort and might make one sad if you aren't prepared to handle it.) Christie has officially sold out. He is no longer a principled conservative and has instead decided to become part of the political establishment. He has now endorsed the liberal presidential candidate Romney and has said it is intellectually dishonest to compare Romney care to Obamacare. Looks like Chris is the one that is intellectually dishonest:
"Mitt Romney and Barack Obama never met to discuss the federal health care law, but Romney's advisers did. New records reviewed by NBC News's Michael Isikoff point out that 'White House officials had a dozen meetings in 2009 with three health-care advisers and experts who helped shape the health care reform law signed by Romney in 2006.' One meeting, NBC News reports, 'was in the Oval Office and presided over by Barack Obama.' Jon Gruber, one of the advisers who attended the Obama meeting, said that the White House 'really wanted to know how we can take that same approach we used in Massachusetts and turn that into a national model.'"

This is just one small point to show that Christie is himself being intellectually dishonest.

What a sell out, but such is the way of American politics: Americans won't accept or elect a real principled conservative. Americans would rather be lied to and have leaders like Obama. Christie's betray is just another nail in America's coffin along with the Republican's complete and utter failure to address America's looming debt crisis during the debt ceiling deal. Watch Romney become the candidate. Obama or Romney? Looks like a false choice to me.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

I am a Champion







This is what a champion looks like

Sunday, September 25, 2011

How Good People Get Duped Into Supporting Evil

This is a great article from the American Thinker website about how being uniformed on history and current events and not taking the time to look a little below the surface of the prevailing narratives that are present in today's society can cause people to end up supporting evil in a similar way that the German people supported Nazism.
It's interesting how history cycles around to the same old thing, over and over. Ecclesiastes 1:9 reads: 'What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.' Ominous words that are sadly true -- a warning that mankind continuously fails to heed.

Historically, societies have good people and bad. The good people tend to live their lives with good intentions to stay informed, be involved in the community, heed their belief system, behave in a moral way, raise their children to be good people, and work hard. They innocently get swept up in the assumption that everyone else is also, basically good. So, they overlook the evil that encroaches upon their society in dribs and drabs. They look the other way, they make excuses for the bad behavior of others, maybe even taking blame for being the cause of the bad behavior -- all because of their internal belief that everyone wants the same things they want, and believe the same things they believe.

But eventually, and out of nowhere, evil takes command of the society. The good people finally see the evil that has been there the whole time. While evil was still powerless, the good people did not see it, or did not want to see it, so they were blind. Perhaps they could not see it because they did not know what it looked like, smelled like, or sounded like.

Evil is silent. It sneaks up in the night, gaining footholds one drib at a time; one drab at a time. While the good people sleep, it sets a trap for its prey. When morning comes and the people awaken, they find themselves impossibly ensnared by the power of the beast, as it rains terror down upon the land, with full abandon.[...]

As the historical cycle goes, the good people don't stand a chance for they don't study history with the same rigor and attention to detail. Good people learn the stories of evil historical events, such as the Holocaust, with the focus on the horrible outcome. What they learn from the personal stories, the destruction of lives, and the devastating aftermath, is what evil looks like in its death. This is important, to be sure, but much more than that is required if they are to truly learn from history in order to avoid repetition. Good people must study the events that led to the horror with greater scrutiny. They must learn what evil looks like at its birth. What gets lost in the message of history is how, nearly always, good people were duped into complicity and cooperation, with and by, evil. Only if history is analyzed in such a way to determine what the silent evil looks like, and how it draws the good people to its side, will societies avoid allowing the evil to rise, again. And it always rises again.[bold text is my doing]

Evil studies and analyzes history so adeptly that each time it resurfaces it is able to advance more quickly and more powerfully than before, simply because it has learned from history. Good people must then do the same. They must be sure their children learn history -- the causes as well as the effects. If they aren't learning it in school, then it is up to the good parents to teach them. If they don't, they may find themselves like the good people of Germany -- duped, complicit, and guilty.

The evil haunting, or specter as Marx calls it, us today is communism/collectivism that is being prepared to be thrust on the whole world by economic circumstances. Just as the gulags and concentration camps didn't just appear out of thin air but were the end result of a long line of prevailing narratives from philosophy and culture that slowly filtered into the very fabric of society, so too is this modern day evil that is in the "birth stage" about to pop its head out into the world. Some of the prevailing narratives of today consist mainly of lies: man is causing the climate to change, therefore man must reduce his standard of living to save the earth; capitalism has failed and led to the current global economic mess, therefore capitalism must be scraped and replaced by a new system; no one culture is superior to another, therefore it is good to emulate a culture that is not conducive to human prosperity; the IMF and World Bank's stated goals are good, therefore they must be good; and etc. Not taking the time to look beyond the prevailing narratives of our time and taking a look at the foundation that these narratives are built on can lead one to end up "duped, complicit, and guilty" in supporting what can ultimately be called evil, using wisdom and summing up a very complex system into a simple word. It would suck to end up like the German people did after their country had been destroyed and their women rapped.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Post Pax Americana?

A cool post at Hot Air  for strategy geeks, illustrating the re-emergence of regional, Nation-state strategizing because of the withdrawal of American influence and power in the world.  The author touches on many places around the world where groups of countries are manuevering with and against each other in local groups, rather than the great geopolitical groups that have dominated the world since WWII:
  • They touch on the situation in Central/Eastern Europe and the Visegrad group, which I discussed a while ago
  • The games being played between Russia, Iran, and Turkey, and Turkey's apparent attempt to resurrect the prestige of the Ottoman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean
  • Israel's response by teaming up with Greece and Cyprus
  • India & Japan's attempts to contain China in the Far East
  • etc.
Super cool stuff.  The tone of the article is a little sad that American can't dominate everywhere like we used to, but it doesn't seem as depressing to me: make these sponges deal with things themselves.  It'll make them all better countries, and save us money and blood.  We still need to be able to punish our enemies when we need to though and help our friends...that'll have to wait until Obama's gone of course.

Anyway, read the article; fascinating, if somewhat speculative.

OBAMACARE

When discussing the recent government overhaul of America's health care system, one needs to look at it through the prism of this video where Obama states how a public insurance option will lead to a single-payer health care system-- or a government run health care system that "will control the people" in the words of another politician.

Aside from the fact that the new health care law will entice employers to drop their health care plans for their employees:
'Now, it should surprise no one that more and more companies are exploring the possibility of dropping their employee health coverage in 2014. A new study from the benefits-consulting firm Towers Watson finds that nearly 10 percent of midsized to large companies are seriously considering doing just that, and another 20 percent are thinking about it. Still others don't know. 'Many are uncertain how they will respond to the looming impact of state-based insurance exchanges in 2014,' says Towers Watson.
Obama did say that this would happen in the video above.

And there is some new information about parts of Obamacare. It appears that a part of it was know to be "fiscally unsustainable" before it was passed:

Administration officials knew before they even passed the CLASS Act that the voluntary long-term care insurance program it created would be fiscally unsustainable, a new report from select House and Senate Republicans shows.
Obamacare will be one of the most lasting legacies of Obama's presidency that will "fundamentally transform" America: it will transform the relationship between the individual and the government in a profound way and will change the character of the American people by making them look to the government to meet one of their most basic needs. It will also create another unsustainable entitlement program that will bankrupt America and help to "collapse the system". It is one more reason that Obamacare should be completely repealed.