The Lens that Clears the Vision, Thomas Sowell

 

Whenever one sees an article written by Thomas Sowell one can safely believe it will be entertaining, instructive and likely to clarify to its crystalline essence whatever subject or conjecture on which he is writing. Thus was his recent article on his favorite subject, as he is a renowned economics professor, income inequality and why everything in life is not fair or evenly distributed. He writes on this from varying angles always providing examples which even the lesser and uneducated in economics will fully grasp. His example this time was precious as it showed two examples in one lesson, something he likely intended. Apparently somebody seeking high and low for inequality recently attached onto a new cause célèbre which is as silly as it is laughable, the uneven distribution against women at the highest levels of chess. To use another of Prof. Sowell’s examples, this is like asking why midgets are so underrepresented in the NBA or the NFL, as one would have to conclude there has to be some position they would excel at making them desirable. As Prof. Sowell makes as his main point, not that many women, especially young women in high school or college desire playing chess, not even the most nerdy (my observation), and you find largely male membership in Chess Clubs and competitions. My observation was the under-representation of females on the Math Team in my high school of over three-thousand students where there were two out of twenty plus members on the math team, including one reluctant me (long story includes threats of failing grades from my math teacher and faculty advisor to the math team), and we elected one as the team leader. Still, even representation would have required eighteen additional female students or cutting the team down to two boys and girls and being disqualified as each team must have eight members to compete. If memory serves me correctly, there were no girls, young women, in the chess club or on the team and, knowing the fellow nerds who populated these groups, these boys would have killed to have a young woman, or any woman, join their club and team and such a person would have been treated as a goddess or something close.

 

Professor Thomas Sowell

 

Anyway, back on subject. As Prof. Sowell makes clear, the top positions in chess are computed by games won and lost and against whom. I had an uncle by marriage who was a rated chess master with competition points and he never was able to rise higher than competing in local area and sometimes had qualified for state wide competition but never higher. We played a game of chess; he destroyed me eventually, where he commented that I had a head for the game and played a very disorganized but effective game. He wanted me to start entering tournaments and studying the game seriously. Anyone who knows me knows I take very few things seriously, even politics, and find amusement wherever I can find some. Yes, this presidential race in the United States should provide me entertainment galore, or will it be entertainment of gore? I expect it will be a mud-slinging contest with blood drawn on both sides and whoever wins will emerge a walking wounded with wounds the press will allow to heal or continue shooting at depending who wins. End tangent. Chess positions do not care what gender you are, what race you are, what religion you worship or even if you have a religion at all, they care about your proven record and nothing else. One gains points for every win even if it is minuscule as one would gain beating me in a first round match of the Northwest Israel Chess Tournament, if there is one. I am unranked and likely would need to find a more local tournament, say one from my apartment complex, all two buildings of it, or slightly larger (being in Israel I suspect there is a high density of chess players with any serious players). Should you be ranked and placed against a past champion and lose there might still be points, I am not sure how their ranking points are gained, and should you win there would be a larger number of points than beating little old me. So, if a woman, and my guess is there are many ranked women players even if few if any are in the top ten, were to amass serious points and rise in the ranking then she would rate entering the top level tournaments. This is where things get sticky as one might point out that since men hold the top spots, a woman might be on edge and off her game facing all male competition in a tournament. So what are the tournament managers to do, give her a tranquilizer to calm her, which would definitely be an egregious interference and led to investigations that they were attempting to keep her from winning. Believe it or not, they do not simply give women one-thousand competition points for showing up and men two-hundred-fifty-thousand competition points for showing up. They give points for winning games and only for winning games at the beginning and on throughout competition the big points go to winners and others, well, it’s tough when you lose.

 

As Prof. Sowell points out, life is full of examples of inequities. Jobs, wealth, careers, sports, and any other category one can measure even including numbers of the population and numbers of registered voters, both of which women have the slight advantage of fifty-one or two percent against men being forty-eight or nine percent. Women could elect nearly an all women Congress with at least three-hundred out of four-hundred-thirty-five Representatives and easily sixty-five Senators against thirty-five men. President would equally be a woman should only women support their candidacy. This is an important statistical fact which will be very important in the coming Presidential Election as if for any reason Hillary Clinton does not win the Presidency, it will not be because she was a woman and men did not support her as she would win if women and only women voted for her in high nineties percent so Hillary loses only if she does not win the votes of all women. And do not for a minute think her advisors do not know this as it is partly what is behind the “First woman President” sloganeering which is aimed at the whole of the population but is even more targeting women as with the women’s vote Hillary could win with almost no male votes. Hillary is counting heavily that she can win and force a high turnout of minorities, women high amongst them, and swing as many married women to vote for her despite their husband voting for Trump or third party candidates as splitting the household votes by gender Hillary can win hands down as she knows she likely has the singles vote in her favor. The Presidency is Hillary’s for the taking and if she loses, it will be solely because she was unable to convince sufficient women to vote for her and Trump somehow wooing these women voters. With the accusations against Trump and his public history of divorce and other alleged and some proven activities, he should have some degree of difficulty winning the women’s vote. His one saving grace has been that his hosting of women’s pageants and reality television without even the suspicion of improprieties, there is little proof of him acting in any manner other than respectfully over the years of such involvements. Any such accusations which may appear now seemingly out of the blue, they should be considered to be opportunists or politically motivated attempts to take advantage of his candidacy and probable desire to end such intimidations with minimal publicity. The problem, as we see it, is that even if advised to fold before such challenges as quickly and quietly as possible, Trump will be more likely to take these challenges on directly and very publically when he feels assured of no actual wrong-doing. As far as Trump is concerned, if he can win the suit, he can also play this as campaign advertising of his being above board and forthright in his dealings. This is something we will have to observe as the campaign quickens this fall.

 

There is another front that will be brought to the fore, the companies in which Donald Trump has invested and went bankrupt, some almost immediately. One need know about finances at the level that Donald Trump lives in as they sometimes are purchased companies which have assets or other qualities which are required by other assets. In such instances a failing company can be restructured and made profitable providing it can be purchased or merged with other assets or with a structured payment schedule to meet obligations and thus bankruptcy is a means of saving as much of an investment as is economically sound. These bankruptcies are an intricate and necessary part of investing and making the needed adjustment to gain a return on your investment. It is the same as when one buys a new car and trades their older vehicle as the down-payment. When would you trade in your thirty year old baseline truck which barely functions and has not been driven in ten years, in a regular trade-in or when the dealer offers that if you can drive it in they will give you $5,000.00 in trade-in? The answer is obvious and investments are exactly the same, you do what maximizes your return or, in a bad situation, what minimizes your losses.

 

It would be wise to remember that business is business and politics is not. Politics is all about painting your opponents as the greatest evil the world has ever witnessed. This can be accomplished easily with anyone whose life took place outside of politics as the political world is completely opposite of the business world. In politics it is all about looking at inequalities and promising the masses at the bottom you will give them monies from those at the top. This is due to the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of those at the bottom for everyone to ten at the top. A truth which no politician will tell you is that somebody earning two-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars a year is in the top ten percent and those earning over seventy-five-thousand dollars a year are the top twenty-five percent. If minimum wage is pushed to fifteen dollars an hour, that is slightly more than thirty-thousand dollars a year for a forty hour week, that currently in comfortably in the top fifty percent. As it is not possible to have even minimum wage earners be in the top fifty percent, what does one think will be the result? The result is that employers will invest in the construction of robotics to perform these minimum wage jobs just as Wendy’s has already done by replacing cashiers and delivery people from their burger operations and made it an automated system. Similar but less polished systems existed in the 1950’s and were called automat food stores and were big because it was in these years that the minimum wage was increased above the median salary for workers. When this is what happens and those positions which used to be below median salary are forced by minimum wages to be above median, then they will be minimized or erased from the job market as they become unsupportable. When politicians tell you that a company is making undue profit, they are spinning an evil tale that making profit, the driving impetus of all businesses, is an evil when in reality if a business comes close to breaking even and producing no profit, the seeming desire of politicians, then the entire operation comes under inspection and the weaker links are optimized, automated, or cost-lotted out to another company and the people in that department stand for some or all to lose their jobs. Business is in business to make profits and profits tend towards the top but all gain when the company gains as then there are more funds for salaries. All business models have a set percentage they denote as for salaries and the management is tasked with seeing that salaries remain within those guidelines. Often management is granted a bonus for keeping salaries in check and not exceeding their budgeted amount. Anything below budget will then be shared with a set percentage, usually under five percent, is given to the manager for keeping salaries below target. That is simply how business functions at all levels as the vice-president of a company gets a bonuses for keeping costs, including salaries, below target for expenditures, thus giving management limits and limiting managements’ salaries under their control.

 

On another side, when a candidate claims they can control government spending, especially a presidential candidate who is from the business world, they are ignoring an important reality, they answer to Congress as equal branches and not as president to underlings. Congress can adopt an agenda and has the power to overrule a Presidential veto with a two-thirds vote in both houses. Should Trump win the Presidency he will not even have the total support of the Republicans in the Congress and probably none of the Democrats so he will be facing an adversarial Congress and will have only one means of defeating an objectivist Congress, the will of the people. This was what President Reagan used and made possible with his common sense appeals to the people he made during numerous policy speeches he gave in prime time. We expect a President Trump would need to do likewise as his appeal will be dependent on the support of the public. The one thing Trump would have in his favor is that many people who may not have supported his candidacy and voted for Hillary Clinton or one of the third party candidates (leftist liberals all including the Libertarian Party and of course the Green Party) might support some even if not all of his policy positions and thus legislation towards those ends. Where I find Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan to be somewhat a slur, I would change it to “Make America’s Greatness Known (Evident) Again” as a better and more accurate representation as America is still the world’s leading nation despite the efforts of the past eight years. As far as Prof. Sowell might say, we need a President to bring all America into the best and most competitive edge over the rest of the world so America can shine bright again. The secret for doing this is actually simple; America needs to make everything using smarter and more accurate precision and the highest possible quality and dependability and that will place America at the forefront again. America needs to be amongst if not the best over the rest making America worth the extra cost because the product is worth the extra cost. This is why the majority of the world buys American military equipment and how Israel, Britain, Russia, China, Czech Republic, Germany and a select group of others manage to sell their military equipment. Israel triumphs in avionics and command and control systems for military uses while the Czech Republic makes some of the finest accuracy rifles and dependable assault grade weapons and Germany has a high quality main battle tank every bit as good as the American Abrams and the Israeli Merkava and Russia has the best fighter jets per ruble using less technology dependent systems thus easier maintenance. These are simply proof that when you make the best for a certain price range then you will own that market and America needs to reclaim some markets which though not languishing have been inhibited from moving to the next level by regulations and tax policies which do not reward such improvements. That is it plain and simple and do not sweat that somebody makes more money than you, work harder and deserve that money and you will find you too will advance. Sometimes you might even be required to take a different position in your or in another company for a little less or the same but that is just another opportunity to prove oneself and take off from there. After all, you only make master point in chess by beating somebody who already earned their own masters points and the better chess players you can best, the higher the points you will earn and it is all about amassed points and nothing else.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Walking Peril Facing Europe

 

Yesterday we inundated readers with videos of the different rioters, the Arab youths, the anti-immigrant demonstrators and the old battle of Turks and Kurds now transgressing into Europe. We were depicting the violence from all sides being perpetrated in these collisions of calamities and diametrically opposing factions from Syrians seeking life away from the horrors of a nation collapsing in violence, nationalists demanding these invaders be repulsed, and factions from the Middle East still bearing their grudges hundreds of miles from their natural and contested battle-grounds. We will save you from the videos and leave that up to you. If one desires, you can search the web at your own leisure. Instead let us discuss exactly what these events could bring about in Europe and what would need to happen to make Syria even remotely safe for the refugees to return to their homes and participate in rebuilding a nation torn asunder. Then there is the one question which none of us can truly answer, what would have to transpire to entice these refugees to return to their homes and begin rebuilding their nation? That last question will be the turning point in this continuing disaster. In all of the articles I have read the one item which leaps forth is the lack of any scenario where the Syrian refugees would return to Syria and take part in the rebuilding. The other item which has thrown a wrench into the idea that ending the violence in Syria and Iraq would also end the refugee flood into Europe are the numbers of refugees found to be coming from places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and other places from the Middle East. Other items are that these throngs from the Middle East are just the refugees from one direction while there is in existence another entire stream of refugees coming from North Africa and beyond such as from Libya, Algeria, Sudan, South Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia and other places from the horn of Africa to central Africa and all points north making their way across the Mediterranean Sea in attempts to land in Italy, Greece, France, Sicily or any other of the nations with beaches on the Mediterranean Sea. The one thing which is for certain is that there is no singular solution to all of these separate and diverse origins of these refugees and their disparate routes into Europe and their preferred destinations.

 

What is quickly obvious is that there is no singular origin of the refugees streaming into Europe. With threats, or promises, by al-Qaeda, Islamic State, Hezballah and even Iranian undercover terror proxies who also train, establish and coordinate terror forces worldwide of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to insert their own agents in order to foment terror and other subversive actions; a large part of their plans are to organizing cells for terror purposes and the organizing of Islamic forces across Europe with the intention of changing local laws and setting up Islamic governance throughout the areas the refugees are settling. It is as many of the rioting refugees have been screaming at security personnel, military forces and police that they are there to have the Quran to swallow the Bible. Where many Europeans may not find such a threat as anything which will change their lifestyles and interfere with their secular, religion free lives as they believe that their secularist freedom from religion will be sufficient to prevent any religious intentions from the Islamists. The one item which is threatened is how the world map might look should Islam, especially extreme Islamists take root and control of Europe making one hemisphere look like the map below.

 

 

 

 

This refugee flood into Europe needs to be treated not as accommodating people stripped of their normal lives by a civil war and simply seeking a better place to restart their lives but as what this is, an invasion in force. Many of us are familiar with the Hamas practice of surrounding their fighters with women and children to protect them or their militarily strategic sites with human shields against Israel and how they will place their civilians in the direct line of fire simply to get as many murdered as a consequence of their launching of hostilities as they can then parlay the photos, even if they must invent such horrors, to the media and make Israel appear heartless and as simply murderers of small children, older women or targeting schools or homes. Hamas has been proven to have their own rockets misfire and strike a hospital and then claim it was Israeli artillery and have the mainstream media immediately demand an explanation from Israel for their atrocity of striking a hospital. This will result in the accusation of Israel targeting a hospital to circulate world-wide before the truth is produced which demands but a correction buried deep inside the paper leaving the headlines as believable. The same is about to be used in a slightly different manner against European nations as the refugees including the terror plants stream across Europe and are eventually placed in receiving camps and guarded. Once the invasion hits a snag such as the use of stadiums or camps which still exist from World War II to house the streaming refugees, it will provide their media savvy cameras to take pictures of their suffering and the horrific side of their apparent captivity.

 

Europe is about to meet what in Israel is called Pallywood and is where the Arabs make fake pictures which are sold to the media networks as fact despite the entire scene being manufactured just as the one below was manufactured. The below video about the “Martyrs’ Junction” as covered by 60 Minutes amongst others but the reality is something entirely different than the mainstream media reported. The reason is the Pallywood Production fits the Israel and settlers are evil murderous despicable monsters murdering innocent Arab children while they aided the brave resistance fighters against the massive might of the Israeli war machine. The truth is a bit different and so is what is going down across Europe as the invasion by human wave flooding their cities will eventually employ these tactics if they have not already began filming and giving the world media the unchecked facts they are seeking and desire so completely. Here again we will include this one example but a search for videos using simply “Pallywood” as your search term will supply one with almost uncountable examples taken from across a wide area from before Jenin to the present.

 

 

 

 

There will be some interesting reactions now that the Europeans will very possibly be facing the same tactics which have plagued Israel for the past thirty to forty years replete with faked videos, sobbing testimonies of injurious infractions, accusations of mistreatment, and eventually the elation as freedom fighters self-detonate in pizza shops, fast food restaurants, train stations, soccer matches, discothèques, bus stations and wherever throngs of Europeans can be targeted. Then there will be the media ever ready to suggest that the Europeans had simply drawn such attacked upon themselves and if only they had worked longer and harder on preparing these refugees to fit seamlessly into European society and respect for the Judeo-Christian ethics, which other than being the launching point for numerous wars in Europe, has been the cornerstone of the European society and eventual superiority and gaining the European colonial powers with the tools to spread their influence over much of the world. The presumed colonial possession of the nations of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has been alleged to be over what had to be centuries upon centuries robbing these nations of their free will and oppressing their religious lives and all else which the Europeans were not suitably set to understand, let alone rule any Islamic lands. Of course the European colonial period over the nations which make up the MENA block were under Ottoman Empire rule until the end of World War I on November 11, 1918 to the mid-1940s up to around nineteen-sixty-nine which means that at the most the nations of MENA spent under half a century under European rule. Before the Ottoman Empire there was the original Caliphate with the Byzantine before them and Rome proceeded by Greece and Persia on back into the deep past. The entire timeline and explanation can be found on out article Who were the colonizers of MENA Pre-World War I?

 

Perhaps this influx of refugees may change the European love for everything and anything from the BDS movement incriminating against Israel as they have in the past. Sometimes having the shoe on the other foot, namely your own foot, brings an entirely different perspective and appreciation for things that were once so cut and dry. Now that the eerily creepy and sickening pictures can now be placed on the newspaper front pages, the opening story on the nightly news and the main subject on countless political talk show where this one picture from yesterday could send a very different perspective as those pictured in the foreground are the victims of violence perpetrated presumably by European police or Border Patrol Military Special Forces. This image is simply something which could just as easily have been used against Israel displaying it as the result of Israeli Security Forces overreacting on this unfortunate man except it occurred from a standoff in the streets of central Europe.

 

 

 

 

These sorts of images will begin to be common should the Europeans not find solutions which even the most strident Islamist finds acceptable. The problem with such a solution is that it will require a complete surrender from the nations occupied by the refugees. Their first and most important influence is to get themselves qualified and able to vote in elections as that is the initial striking point, electing from their own ranks. Once they can place their people in strategic jobs such as school boards, land management and zoning, as well as the Parliament, be it national or city-wide or any other susceptible; eventually, once the Arab Muslims reach a certain level of power, they will take complete control over an area. This is an invasion which has as its central theme to take the heartlands of Europe by population bombs placed carefully throughout Europe. This war by attrition has an excellent chance for success simply by sending human wave after human wave and conquering Europe without ever firing a single shot. This is exactly what the “Right of Return” for the Arab Palestinians is all about, drowning Israel under a flood of refugees presumably who are the offspring of the Arabs who fled or were driven out due to their attempts to assist by forming a fifth column to attack the Israeli Defense Forces from behind when they were engaged by the Arab armies in May of 1948. Many Arab Palestinians were ready to answer the call to drive the Jews into the Sea as the Mufti of Jerusalem has claimed would be their complete annihilation. In all too many ways what is beginning to happen in Europe will surpass similar attempts used against Israel and only time will tell what the final verdict will be when it is rendered. Currently things look rather bleak for Europe, the once proud and central power that colonized much of the world for a brief period.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

 

Afraid Things May be Worse Than We’ve Reported

 

Most of the time we have referenced to stories which harbor some severe implications for society and our world going forward. Still, things have the potential to take turns far worse than we have been willing to admit. The nuclear deal with Iran was one prime instance where our reports have avoided taking any extremist lines and tried to remain with the hopes that the actual agreement would prove to have some semblance of sanity. We really wished to report that all is not lost and that despite the obvious reports of gloom and doom still left a single ray of sunshine. We had hoped that the IAEA would at the very least be able to inspect any nuclear site within six weeks of requesting access. We realize that this sounds like wishing on a star and seeing if it gets us very far but the IAEA has proven to be thorough and competent with the ability to find that one part per million which the cleansing of the site missed. That probably was very wishful thinking but that is still preferable to screaming before every last morsel of honest assessment had shown there is no hope. Well, the other shoe has dropped, to utilize an old phrase, and that is the fact that there are parts to this deal that were reached apparently and were negotiated outside of the actual negotiations which included Secretary of State and the leaders of the North Korean talks from the United States Department of State along with the committee members from Russia, China, France, Great Britain and Germany on one side of the table and the Iranians on the opposite side (it was a very big table with one side apparently stretching on forever and the Iranian side manned by at most ten to twelve negotiators). There have been reports and a confirmation from, of all people, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations and current United States National Security Advisor Susan Rice, the proud Administration water carrier and front person for the Benghazi lie blaming a little seen YouTube video, when she brought witness to the Senate hearings on the Iran Nuclear Deal that there is another entire additional set of rules and agreements reached between undisclosed people from Iran and undisclosed representatives of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and people from the White House but apparently not Secretary of State John Kerry and the rest of the merry band of United States negotiators, reached and agreed upon to be included sight unseen in the Nuclear Deal. This additional set of protocols and other undisclosed items which is presumably to be provided to the Senate Investigating Committee in closed door high security setting (we just can hardly contain ourselves waiting for the unofficial leaks concerning this testimony and the denials from the White House and top Republican Senate water carriers) explaining the details of this agreement within the agreement hammered out between the White House and undisclosed representatives of President Obama (we suspect that includes the former National Security Advisor to the President and the current United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power) and the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and undisclosed Iranian representatives without the participation or knowledge of the other five members of the P5+1; which would be Russia, China, France, Germany and Great Britain, and slipped into the agreement under super-secret conditions and without the knowledge of all the P5+1 negotiators including Secretary of State Kerry. This was given further confirmation by Secretary of State Kerry during his testimony where he admitted that there was such a set of additional protocols and other determinations and agreements which were to be included and were really a separate deal made by the White House along with representatives of the IAEA and Iran that Secretary Kerry had been briefed by some undisclosed person who had allegedly actually read this additional agreement in full but which Secretary Kerry had not read despite agreeing for it to be included in the agreement he was bringing to the Congress and that he had no access to as the actual agreement is in the hands of the IAEA who have thus far not only neglected to show Secretary Kerry the terms but apparently have considered Secretary Kerry too much of a risk to allow him access now or potentially even after the Senate has been briefed, and potentially some members permitted to read what will be sworn is the entirety of the additional side agreement, and the Senate, the American people and the rest of the world whom this might be source of unfathomable harm are to trust that the IAEA and President Obama and his Administration team who put this ancillary binding agreement together apparently in order to clarify and stipulate to limitations and other necessary protocols such that with these additional surrenders by the Administration of the ability for the world to be granted the slightest glimpse of the Iranian nuclear program despite what the actual agreement worked out mostly publically before the world, this secretly negotiated agreement supersedes the actual agreement where stipulated but remaining undisclosed to the United States negotiators and the rest of the P5+1 negotiators. If I have this right we are to trust President Obama that this further agreement which will remain a secret shared only with the appropriate Presidential Administration unnamed representatives, unnamed Iranian representatives and unnamed representatives of the IAEA who will also be the holders of the actual agreement and only permitting those deemed qualified to peruse the super-secret agreement to see the actual, or at least the purported actual as how is one to know for sure, and then include it unseen into the agreement which the United Nations Security Council had already cemented all these terms into a Chapter Seven binding agreement. Wow, we are surely glad that was all settled up so nice and clean and without a single drop of blood spilled thus far and for how much longer only the super-secret ancillary agreement and the few privileged to view the finished terms, namely those who fashioned the wording which may or may not include President Obama. It would be interesting to inquire of the President whether even he knows exactly what is in this part of the agreement to which he presumably will sign his name guaranteeing the United States will comply with an additional set of protocols and what-not without having complete foreknowledge. As a show on the Science Channel here asks in its title, “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?”

 

We sure do feel better knowing that the negotiations have all been a dog and pony show put on for the mutual entertainment of the mainstream media, the media pundits, bloggers, editorialists and the world’s public at large while another whole framework and deal has been hammered out between White House unnamed entities and their Iranian counterparts, also nameless, which we suspect had been agreed upon back within weeks if not days or merely hours and which deal included parts we likely have already seen play out and that was namely the public show would continue postponing any deal until the Iranians had sufficient time to produce the dozen nuclear devices which Administration leaks have claimed exist and were almost enriched past the twenty percent level which would have made the resulting uranium attain HEU (highly enriched uranium often abbreviation used to denote weapons grade) and fashionable into at the least a dozen warheads depending on the complexity of the weapons and whether they were to be the initiator for a thermonuclear warhead, a design it is feared may have ‘accidentally’ given to the Iranians before the year 2000 in an attempt to mislead their developers but which failed as the individual attempting to pass off designs with built-in flaws which would have sent the developing scientists down a divergent path but the agent made the necessary correction when he feared the receiving scientist had detected one of the flaws and he realized that coming clean was the only way he could save himself, so the Iranians, North Koreans and the Chinese ended up with one advanced thermonuclear warhead design which took the United States nearly a decade to design and figure out all the required parameters and detonation sequencing. This little gem was loosed during the early George W. Bush Presidency within the initial three months when somebody came across the files on this case and leaked the information before it was buttoned down and sent down the information drain which leads to the black box which has no key (place for highly secret deals and information including especially damaging or humiliating evidence of complete and total incompetence, this gem could not have been executed by George W. Bush as he had not been in office anywhere near long enough to set up such a scheme which would take years to develop). The question that requires being asked will remain notable largely due to the absence of being expressed. At some point it would be nice to find out if the incessant postponing of the final date when the parties agreed upon terms which appeared to have been almost the exact same terms which had been bandied about from the outset of the talks, terms that both sides had known would be the final agreement point largely because there had been private talks between President Obama and representatives of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei back before and immediately after President Obama won a second term. One can only suspect that this was the outset for the actual agreement which will not be the piece of paper being signed with as little pomp and ceremony as possible as all the parties are aware of the worthlessness of the agreement they worked to achieve as the real agreement was hammered out in private by the President’s team and the Iranian representatives, the rest was a show put on as a part of the original agreement and was used to grant Iran time to complete their enrichment of most of their uranium which had been purified to twenty percent. There was absolutely no way that the Iranians were going to give up on the entirety of their uranium which necessitated one or at most two runs through cascades of centrifuges they already had built and tested in preparations for enriching these exact stores. Expecting the Iranians to neutralize all of their moderately enriched uranium would be just as insane as believing that Bashir al-Assad gave up all his chemical weapons stores which was evidenced by his chlorine bombs and the nerve agent found and used by Syrian rebels for which somehow al-Assad was blamed after-all if he had turned everything over the rebels would never have come across some stores of them.

 

After all these delays and the fact that there was an actual deal already agreed upon between the United States and Iran which was partly evidenced when President Obama ordered the lifting of a number of sanctions and released what will be a drop in the bucket compared to the amounts of monies to be released to the Iranians within the next sixty to seventy days; the signing will be done, in secret if necessary, as it is a done deal already written in stone by the United Nations Security Council, the sole entity within the United Nations which can issue binding agreement as we have now witnessed. All has been gathered together and placed in a neat arrangement in order to conceal the super-secret terms concealed in the center of the agreement such that none of it is visible to the public and the promised most transparent administration in history once again had operated in the shadows while misleading the world and the American people, that three percent paying attention. The Administration gave all a brief glance at a carefully constructed view which left the actual deal slipped into the center pages of the agreement where it can remain concealed without informing the allies or the United States negotiating team or the American people. We can assume quite a lot from small comments here and a nervous chortle to a question there all of which depicts a very careful surrender of the American right to have a presence in the Middle East or even to advise and express preferences. The main part of the agreement is not completely about the uranium enriched path to a bomb or even a dozen bombs, it was and always will be for the remaining months, days, hours or even minutes and seconds which time will be wasted or alterations are already in progress to destroy the United States military and its ability to extend its reach beyond the American shores as that is the main unfinished business of the Obama administration. With the American surrender before the granted Iranian might the sole remaining item on the agenda of President Obama is to force Israel to join the NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons) and order and carry out on the destruction of any Israeli nuclear warheads or bombs. Should President Obama fail on his quest to denuclearize Israel then Iran will not be the sole nuclear power in the Middle East and thus will remain opposed and Israel may actually continue to exist for the time being. The real question is how the peacemakers are going to prevent the entirety of MENA nations (Middle East and Northern Africa) who desire and have an actual government from going nuclear and starting the most dread of nuclear arms race, a race which arms some of the world’s most diametrically opposed foes and an area of nations which divide up in so many different members uniting officially and also unofficially that there would be no possible way to stand within such a world and prevent every potential nuclear standoffs from India and Pakistan, to Yemen with Iran and Saudi Arabia, to Algeria and Libya, to Morocco and Mauritania and to anybody or to almost everybody against Israel. A map of MENA nations is almost up to date and is only missing the Sudan, and as the Sudan was split after years of tribal and religious violence, South Sudan; and some go so far as to include Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Djibouti, Eretria, and Somalia.

 

A map of MENA nations is almost up to date and is only missing the Sudan, and as the Sudan was split after years of tribal and religious violence, South Sudan; and some go so far as to include Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Djibouti, Eretria, and Somalia.

 

 

 

By the time everything about the super-secret deal are known it will both be way too late to undo or significantly mitigate the results of the intentional feckless and intentional perfidy being committed by President Obama. Were his actions taken by any President before 1980 and perhaps starting a decade later they would have been impeached and tried for treason all at the same time. This irresponsible diluting to the point of being meaningless all treaties against the proliferation of nuclear weapons and especially in an area as volatile as the Middle East and Africa one may as well throw in South America which we feel assured will follow suit just not to be left out as well as this spreading throughout all of Africa. Additionally, does anybody honestly believe for one second that if Boko Haram had some dirty bombs or even worse actual nuclear warheads strapped down inside large SUVs they wouldn’t use them against Christian neighborhoods, schools etcetera in their crazed desire to denude all of Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and other nearby Christian areas continuing until they reached the shark-infested waters off South Africa? Does anybody believe that Hamas would not, as a part of their reconstruction of Gaza, not place a nuclear device inside a cement truck with an armored cab (driver’s seat and area of operations) and drive it through the Gaza barrier (which is only a chain link fence monitored by remote camera receiving stations) and head north and get as far into central Tel Aviv or near the petroleum processing plants and detonate the device? The answer to either question, if one is being honest, now there is a concept, is of course they would and then some. How long would Kurdish people last if their adversaries had nuclear weapons, or the Druze, Yazidi (who were close to wiped out with conventional weapons and barbarity, or a list of other peoples and the terrorist lurking within or just over the border. Is it at all possible that Syrian Dictator Bashir al-Assad would not have used tactical nuclear weapons on his own people in place of the barrel bombs he did use? The miracle is that we have not blown all quasi-intelligent life off the face of this planet and with us the rest of the large animals thus leaving future archeologists to figure out what it was that caused human-kind to cease to exist in the early parts of the twenty-first century. They will be confused as to the source of the problem which caused mankind to fight nearly to the last man woman and child. Whatever is the next creature which becomes intelligent and is humankind’s replacement will have some difficult questions to ask or to answer unless we as a people take control of our destiny. If it were but that easy for the people to take control of their destiny but unfortunately the vast majority of us are consumed by what the Roman rulers called bread and circuses. The Romans do not get the credit they deserve as they truly knew what would keep the people docile and oddly it was being given their necessary doses of violence every so often. They timed their entertainment such that they were not denied matches going to their finality but as gladiators were expensively trained they could not very well be killed off in a casual manner. All too often men who were convicted of vile crimes were given the opportunity to change their fate in the arena against other convicts if they were lucky, against a trained gladiator, either way the convicts chances were quite poor as the best the only one permitted what one might consider their freedom was the right to fight for their freedom or to more likely die trying. The games have changed but the political target is the same, distractions, distractions and more distractions along with industrialized farming which produces an increased crop which feeds the people and due to subsidies paid to those farming conglomerates as well as the other farmers with the intent of keeping the public well fed, some might claim overfed. Bread and circuses is still the magic formula just as the Romans quieted their public with ample water, ample food, which is subsidized if necessary, and ample entertainment with cable television, movie theaters and sport stadiums where rather than feed the players to the beasts we have player almost as powerful on both sides as they all contest over the winner getting the pigskin for their victory.

 

But we fear a greater contest is on the horizon no matter where one looks and once again the Europeans are ill prepared for this contest and the United States military is also in a stand down size and equipment. Additionally, thanks to the efforts of arms dealers and politically correct rather than honestly correct have squandered their positions by allowing every immigrant to remain and thus you gave your enemy a path within your gates and they are in the heart of every civilization and they are becoming restless as we have not accommodated their every demand and surrendered before them and before their deities. While our enemies were setting up bases from which to operate we were running around like Don Quixote tilting at windmills and calling them great dragons or demons. While they were making plans and scheming about the day when they will unleash the dogs of war while we worried about under-inflated pigskins and ruination of one we could have called a hero though we will be needing real heroes really soon and in numbers unknown. This may be the longest and most drawn out war as it has been being waged already for over fourteen-hundred years through times of peril and times where the conflict seemed in remission but alas it was only catching its breath until the time came and presented itself vulnerabilities in the technologically slaved society. How easy have you made your defeat as your entire ability can be wiped clean within a few seconds as the power grid goes dark. No internet, no GPS, no television, no microwave and soon the morning after the worst hits home, no coffee or tea, easier and to the point, no caffeine. Simply put no electricity and almost every item we depend upon stops including water and sewage treatment and removal. There have been reports and evidence emerging which indicates that the Western vulnerability to an EMP attack is unthinkable. Should a massive EMP weapon, nuclear or purely electronic, and the transformers be knocked out or only three quarters of them destroyed across the United States and Canada it would take as long as six to twelve years before power would be restored to the dwindling number of survivors as prediction actually say worst case scenario and over nine out of every ten people would perish as would the vast majority of crops would not be able to replant the next year as the genetically modified crops are sterile and with the labs shuttered there would be no new seed for the new year. This is just another case of our technology working against our very survival. Almost all of these difficulties could be prevented for ten-billion dollars. That is the price of hardening the entire electrical grid for most of North America covering all of the continental United States, Canada and even much of Mexico and Alaska, of course. With the electricity protected and on we will also have water, food, medicines, fertilizer, hospitals, medicines and almost life as usual. There would still require a checkup on the transformers and other parts of the electric grid. Europe is facing an identical problem set and requires the same though potentially higher priced solutions. After any attempt to take down the electrical grid fails we need to ready for terror assaults on what are deemed soft targets such as those very same transformers, especially the larger versions which make the power ready for home and business usage. All of the potential attacks are intended to tie up resources and force our leadership, both civilian and military, to take resources away from defense of borders and thus have them out of position should an assault come such as a second strike attempt except this time the missiles are carrying high yield warheads of nuclear weapons if they have been produced and high explosive if that is the best available. Any way we look at the Iran deal, especially knowing that there was some kind of alternate deal made through backdoor channels while we were watching what we thought were the negotiations to reach an actual deal and not that the actual deal had already been reached and the above board negotiations were part of the bread and circuses while whatever the real objective was reached under the table and behind our backs. If the deal made in view was as bad as could be, exactly how much did the United States give away when we could not see the machinations. If the backdoor deal was many degrees worse than the upfront deal, as we suspect; we had best be ready for almost anything to break loose but not until the United States or Israel, whichever is denoted for the initial strike, so it will likely be just before or soon after inauguration day as the new government has not even found the shelters or the bathrooms yet, let alone plan a war strategy. In Israel it would be timed for between governments but after the election while there really is no government as the coalition has yet to form. Those are the weakest points in parliamentary governance and federated republic governance, may we surprise ourselves as we may be counting on exactly that to come out of it in one piece.

 

Beyond the Cusp