The Jordan Death Penalty Conundrum and Israel

 

Jordanian law has a very strict, irreversible, strident punishment for any Arab or Muslim who dares to sell land of any sort to a Jew. The punishment for committing such an act of daring-do is death. Where Palestinian courts have sentenced an unknown number of Arabs for selling land to a Jew, also referred to as ‘the enemy’ in another law; there are the Jordanian laws, which change usually becoming more stringent, as well as laws passed by the Palestinian legislators who have made any number of laws which have referenced selling lands, homes, apartments, facilities, and other references to properties which all carry a sentence of death. Often an Arab brought to trial for selling land to a Jew, the enemy, a middle man making a purchase for a Jew, any non-Palestinian and whatever other laws they can find even to accuse them of blaspheme guarantees that a death penalty will be sentenced for multiple offenses. The catch is that even after the courts have sentenced an individual to death, the penalty cannot be legally carried out until the President, currently Mahmoud Abbas who is serving in the eleventh or twelfth year of his four year term, has to approve the execution. Thus far it is assumed that President Abbas has never approved an execution though the BBC claims that he has approved three executions. What is beyond ridiculous is that Israel has refused to apply Israeli civil law and has left the areas of Judea and Samaria under military law but has at least annexed and applied Israeli law to East Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority has, along with many in the international community even beyond the Arab and Muslim worlds including many European nations, the European Union and beyond, refuses to recognize Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem. This means that in East Jerusalem Jordanian laws no longer applies and an Arab is permitted to sell land, an apartment or any property to anybody they choose. The drawback is that the Palestinian Courts will still hold a trial and convict you sentencing you to death and send that order to Abbas for his approval. The truth is that once one is even suspected of selling property to a Jew, even if only because an investigation has been opened, they are at a much higher risk of non-judicial execution, often at the hands of the Palestinian Security Forces who in many ways are the police as well as the supervising authority. We here at BTC have no doubt that at some point, should things continue as they have over the past fifty years, then soon the Palestinian courts will be convicting Arabs who have lived in Israel and are and have been Israeli citizens all their lives as the Palestinian Authority does claim that all the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea belongs to them, the entirety of the 22% of the British Mandate lands which were not granted to Jordan for the initial Arab state in the Palestinian territories under the British Mandate. Why does Israel allow the continued application of such prejudicial law which targets Jews solely for exclusion from property transactions?

 

The entirety of this discussion and the institutionalized bigotry at the United Nations, within the European Union and many of its individual nations and throughout the NGO’s professing to be human rights enforcers extreme who have found that all of human suffering and every single human rights violations are perpetrated by Israel depends on a single premise, that being that before November 29, 1947, nothing existed and the world as we know it and all the nations of the Earth came into being at that time just as the United Nations was violating Article 80 of their own Charter and all the laws, treaties, conventions and other international forums which it recognized and made inclusive within the United Nations framework and took the proclamations made by the League of Nations resolving the results from World War I and identifying national borders throughout Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa. The reason that the world has to begin on November 29, 1947, is because on that date the United Nations took the remaining 22% of British Mandate lands and divided it in what they called an even patrician with half for the Jews and half for the next Arab State carved from the original British Mandate after the 78% land grab where the British issued the Churchill White Paper which tore that land from what would have been the Jewish State to satisfy a promise to the Arab Hashemites to a homeland in return for their assistance in World War I. The White Paper left the Jewish State to be founded on the lands west of the Jordan River but that was unfair cried the Arabs. The Jews are taking all of our lands, we demand more. So the United Nations took a strong stand and insisted that the Arabs settle for half of the remaining land and allow the Jews the remainder which was divided so the Jewish lands was predominantly Negev Desert (see map below). The Arabs took one look at this United Nations General Assembly Resolution, a suggestion which is only valid if accepted by both parties, and immediately rejected it protesting that it was unfair, they wanted it all, period. They swore they would annihilate the Jewish State the moment dawn broke on its first day of existence.

 

UN Palestine Partition Versions of 1947 and included within UN General Assembly
Resolution 181 which was rejected by the Arab League negating the UN Resolution as
if either side rejects such a UN Resolution which is non-binding, it invalidates the entire
agreement rendering it mute from that point forward. Jerusalem was to be managed by a
corpus separatum (Latin: “separate entity”) set up consisting of an international groups
most likely to be rotated. This offer was accepted by the Zionist Congress but having
any General Assembly Resolution accepted by one side and rejected by the other is
simply one hand clapping, useless.

 

Their threat was real and over half a dozen Arab armies and militias invaded Israel the morning of May 15, 1948, at dawn, the first sunrise over the Jewish State. Because the Arab League and all representatives for the Arab people rejected the compromise put forward by the United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 181 was voided as if it had never existed. The above map is now always flashed by Arab League members as the actual borders and that Israel attacked the Arabs and gained lands in 1948. The reality is that the World War I decisions which were validated and made enforceable by the United Nations, an obligation and not a suggestion, are the rules which apply and have applied since the start in the 1920’s and is the reason everybody starts in 1947 or even 1948 proposing a lie. The reality is Israel was the Jewish State west of the Jordan River and Jordan was the Arab State east of the Jordan River (see map below). This made the Gaza Strip captured by Egypt as well as Judea and Samaria (West Bank) captured by Jordan were both illegally held lands as they were gained by a war of aggression. Israel responded to the massing of armies on her border by Egypt and Syria in late May and into June of 1967 by attacking a day before intelligence reported the attack was scheduled by President Nasser. Lebanon joined almost immediately and Jordan began a debate and mobilized their forces while Israeli leaders pleaded for them to reconsider telling them the reports on television and radio by Egypt and Syria of great advances towards Tel Aviv were false, lies, and propaganda and that they were being decimated on all fronts. Jordan ignored and assaulted Western Jerusalem forcing Israel respond by diverting troops headed for the Sinai Peninsula and Jordan was pushed back beyond the Jordan River. Israel had liberated the Gaza Strip as well as Judea and Samaria (West Bank) while also gaining the Golan Heights and the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula gaining one bank for the Suez Canal. As these territories were gained in a defensive reaction to impending massive attacks on three borders, the lands gained could be legally retained or a good amount retained providing a case can be made that the new borders would provide greater defense for the nation. Israel used this to annex the Golan Heights from which Syria used to train snipers by having them shoot farmers working in their fields in the Israeli Galilee north. Israel could have retained the entire Sinai Peninsula as the Suez Canal would make for a good defensive front or they could have retained half the Sinai Peninsula holding the mountains and the passes through them. Instead, Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula in its entirety in exchange for a peace treaty with Egypt while Egypt refused to request the Gaza Strip. Israel offered Judea and Samaria to Jordan who refused the area ceding it to Israel. That should have been the end and the map below would have been the result but the world demand that Israel be made to fall all the way back to the original 1949 Armistice Lines which were the line defining Israeli borders before the June 1967 Six Day War. This is unheard of for any nation other than the United States in the latter half of the Twentieth Century. Somehow it is doubtful the United States would want to keep the areas of Europe and the Pacific and Asia they fought within during World War II. Israel would be well served in retaining the lands up to the banks of the Jordan River.

 

British Mandate as prescribed division between Arab State of Jordan and Jewish State of Israel

 

The first cry which comes from every front is to repeat the big lie that Israel retaining all of Judea and Samaria is impossible because then Israel will have to choose between being Jewish or being Democratic. The added population would only become a threat in twenty to forty years depending on growth rate of populations which you choose, and if you take the most recent and have trends continue one finds that Israel remains Jewish into the foreseeable future. Some claim that this creates a problem because the Arab refugees in the camps who have languished there since 1948 would be left in these camps indefinitely and must be relocated into Israel. This is the reason these Arabs have been kept in these camps which resemble apartment blocks more than refugee camps with tents. These unfortunate people have been retained in the camps for the reason of overwhelming Israel with these refugees and their descendants. The Palestinian Arab refugees are the sole refugees in the world whose status is passed on to their children and their children and their children presumably forever. What has been forgotten is that there were almost one-million Jews forced from the Arab and Muslim world between the founding of Israel and 1960 who relocated into Israel where they were moved into the general population as rapidly as was possible. These Jews now make up close to half the population of Israel and makes another claim a lie. We hear the Jews need to return to Russia and Europe where they all came from. Well, what about the other half who came from Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Algeria, Tunisia, Yemen, Qatar, Kuwait and other Arab and Muslim nations. Does anybody honestly believe that these nations would take their Jews back? When they refuse, then where do the Jews they rejected and their children go? And those Israelis who have one parent from European or Russian lineage and the other from the Middle East or North Africa? Have a lottery sending half to Europe and the other half to where when the Arab and Muslims refuse them? The Palestinian Arab refugees were being absorbed by the nations where the camps are located but when the PLO was founded in 1964, Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas with the rest of the leaders as well as the Soviet Union all demanded these Arabs be returned to and kept in camps so they could be used to inundate Israel and vote the Jews into the sea.

 

The last item that everyone ignores is that the terms of the Mandates and all the other treaties, conferences et. al. demand that while the Jewish State, Israel, must respect the property rights, the right to work, education civil and religious rights of their Arab peoples, they do not have to extend political rights to the Arab population. That means they do not have to make them full Israeli citizens and could allow the Arabs to have semi-autonomous regions where they rule themselves but Israel retains the right and responsibility for security and defending those lands. The Arabs could be given rights in places to participate in local elections but not in national elections. There are numerous solutions all of which start with applying Israeli law over all the lands and put an end to using Jordanian laws. This would allow Arabs to sell their land and seek a new life possibly with relatives in Canada or relatives in Egypt or anywhere between. This would bring to an end the enslavement of the Palestinian Arabs by threatening their lives if they wish to sell their lands and move. As things stand now, every Palestinian Arab can and many are being forced to remain despite desiring to sell their lands, even if they were to sell to another Arab as the Palestinian Authority and Hamas both desire having as many Arabs remain within what might eventually become Israel as a deterrent against Israeli efforts to purchase much of the lands from Arabs eager and willing to sell and start a new life elsewhere. This freedom to relocate is denied them by leaders who are stealing their future in every way conceivable. Spread fair laws, allow people to use their lands to their best advantage and get the terror fronts off their necks. The worst deprivation in the Arab world outside Syria and the war zones is the life-crippling internment of Arab Palestinians just to spite Israel and their leadership’s willingness to deprive them of a better and free future through imprisoning them in camps or in neighborhoods where cronyism and embezzlement are standards of governance. Even with these problems, the Palestinian Arabs have one of the highest standards of living in the Arab world, though their standard of living is far below that of Israeli Arabs. How often have you heard those truths? You do not hear that the Israeli Arabs have a good life and the Palestinians are all but enslaved by their own people and their own dictatorial leaders. In Syria Bashir al-Assad first used nerve gas on a Palestinian camp and first used barrel bombs on that same Palestinian camp. The Palestinian camps in Syria were bombarded for week after week and in most cases little was left standing. These camps which consisted of cement apartment blocks were levelled almost to the ground and made Aleppo look like a nice place to live at those times. Now nowhere in Syria seems like a nice place to live outside some Druze mountain villages. Even the Kurdish regions have become an intolerable war zone with the Turkish Air Force and Army doing everything in their power to murder even the youngest of the children and destroy all of the Kurdish lands. That is how Turkey is fighting in Syria, telling the world they are fighting the Islamic State when they are making the world safe for the Islamic State as the Kurds were one of the most effective groups fighting the Islamic State. Just another little black and white lie printed in your morning newspapers. Just another brick knocked from in the wall.

 

Beyond the Cusp 

 

The World Has Gone Crazy!!!

 

As per usual, the world is being counterintuitive, obsessive compulsive, defining things upside-down and joining the enemy. The most egregious of these is the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has gathered the rightful ire from the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) over the recent statements by Abraham Foxman’s replacement as Director of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt. The exchanges all were traceable back to the recurrent statements by numerous leaders from the Arab Palestinian Authority including their President, Mahmoud Abbas demanding that when (not if) their Palestinian State is established in Judea and Samaria with East Jerusalem as its Capital, the lands must be made free of Jews, absolutely devoid of Jews by whatever means may prove necessary (below is a now infamous video circulated by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) with translation relating the revulsive commentary by Abbas). Arab Palestinian Authority leaders from the Fatah Party, a political projection of the PLO terror group, had posted claims on their Facebook page as reported in Israel Today with additional details provided by PMW with further corroborative links and information.

 

 

This finally incited a response from Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu who spoke in a formal video released last week (which can be watched below). An excerpt from the beginning of the video Prime Minister Netanyahu makes the statement, “Jewish communities in Judea Samaria, the West Bank, are an obstacle to peace. I’ve always been perplexed by this notion. Because no one would seriously claim that the nearly two million Arabs living inside Israel – that they’re an obstacle to peace. That’s because they aren’t. On the contrary.” Further into his speech, Prime Minister Netanyahu condemns these demands and makes an even wider condemnation of a world which stands idly by with these words, “And this demand is outrageous. What is even more outrageous is that the world doesn’t find this outrageous. Some otherwise enlightened countries even promote this outrage.”

 

 

The initial reaction came from the Obama Administration from the State Department where Elizabeth Trudeau scornfully replied as if scolding a child, not answering a statement from a head of state stating, “We obviously strongly disagree with the characterization that those who oppose settlement activity or view it as an obstacle to peace are somehow calling for ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank. We believe that using that type of terminology is inappropriate and unhelpful.”

 

The response which was then released by the ADL Director Jonathan Greenblatt stated, “Israel has many legitimate concerns about Palestinian policies and behavior, not the least of which is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s rash accusations that Israel commits acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. However, the charge that the Palestinians seek ‘ethnic cleansing’ of settlers is just not one of them.” He further raised the claim that Israel treats the different Israeli citizens allowing each different rights and benefits with these words, “We want to see Israel as a democratic country that acknowledges and protects the rights of all its citizens, Ashkenazi and Sephardic, Sabra and immigrant, Jew and Arab.” The truth is all citizens also do include Druze, Baha’i, Bedouin, Ethiopian, Indian, Russian and a multitude of others residing legally in Israel with complete equality in all areas of life be they opportunity, employment, political, private, public, residence and any area imaginable replete with legal definitions and protections. Any such claims are simply ludicrous. The ZOA response can be read here.

 

Media have reported on the criticisms of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statements with one report reporting his equating items, which he had not, with their commentary of, “equates opposition to Israeli settlements with ‘ethnic cleansing’” as he never used the misnomer of settlements but instead referred to them as what they are, Jews, Jews residing in Area C of Judea and Samaria which under the Oslo Accords is under Israeli civil and military responsibility and designated as useable for development by Israel while denying Palestinian Authority from developing in these defined areas as they are restricted to Areas A where the PA has civil and military (security) responsibility and Area B where the PA has civil and the PA and Israel share military (security) control. Some in the Israeli media such as Haaretz also went off the deep end over the Prime Minister’s video quoting the various responses from the State Department reaction as if it were the words from the Angels in Heaven. It is so good to have the prophets of Haaretz giving us unwashed and ignorant ones true vision and leading us to reasoned understandings. Actually, I have found a fair definition of Zionist, or at the least a supporter of Eretz Yisroel, if you generally disagree with most political stances from Haaretz, or the newspaper and source of intelligent and reasoned thought as they would have one believe, then you are a Zionist.

 

The easiest way to show the hyperventilation over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statements is beyond the pale is simply to ask what would have been the reaction had Israel been demanding the making of East Jerusalem Arab free East Jerusalem as it is to be part of the unbreakable and complete Capital City of Israel. There would be explosive denunciations and ethnic cleansing would be the least horrific of the criminal accusations thrown at Netanyahu and when Mahmoud Abbas denounced such a declaration he would be lauded and receive invitations to travel the world repeating his condemnations and he would be presented before the United Nations General Assembly to personally present the condemnation message they would all but unanimously vote to make it an official General Assembly denunciation of the entire State of Israel. There might even be calls to evict Israel from the United Nations and declare Israel no longer recognized by the United Nations as a nation. This would be reconsidered as without an official state of Israel, who could the United Nations Human Rights arm denounce at the start of every meeting?

 

The double standard where the Arab Palestinians can make any statement and nobody ever takes exception and if they even actually question the helpfulness, they explain that they understand the frustration felt and driving the Arab Palestinians as Israel simply refuses to take a national day of swimming towards Gibraltar leaving the entirety of the lands for the Arabs to take. The regard for everything Arab understandable and excusable and everything Israel to be questioned and called into doubt is appalling. From the very beginning the British enforced the ban on firearms ownership against the Israelis and often took the confiscated weapons and accidentally lost track of their whereabouts after storing them briefly with Arab leaders’ compounds before forgetting them as somehow they had disappeared.

 

During the war to annihilate the Jewish state immediately after her founding in 1948 found a strange set of bedfellows with both British and Nazi officers assisting the Jordanians, Egyptians, Syrians and other Arab armies with tactical and strategic efforts from their various headquarters. The initial invasions routes are shown in the map below. Still, with some assistance with arms shipments from Czechoslovakian and few others, though there are stories of other clandestine arms shipments, Israel managed to hold much but not all of her territory. One of which I read about many years ago, and have been unable to find corroborative evidence ever since, told that some of the largest electronic transformers, the sixty-six-thousand volts down to two-thousand volts, being shipped to Israel from Baltimore weighing the correct tonnage but upon arrival they were opened and resembled an arms piñata with even reportedly tanks being in at least a few shipments. The Israelis managed to form a defense force from various groups which these eventually formed the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) whose storied history is well-known.

 

Initial Invasion Routes by Arab Armies on May 15, 1948

 

What is not as well-known is how desperate state of the first hours and some of the most horrific events in the early hours and days of that desperate war which had been misnamed Israeli War of Independence as it was Israeli war to avoid a genocidal invasion bent on the murder of every Jew they could find. One of the most gut wrenching was the slaughter of seventy-nine from a convoy including doctors, nurses, students, patients, faculty members, a few Haganah fighters and a British soldier. The convoy consisted of ten vehicles consisting of two ambulances, three buses of medical staff, and three logistical trucks, escorted by two Haganah armored cars. The convoy set off for the hospital at 9:30 am carrying 105 passengers. An armored car usually meant for the Israelis a regular vehicle which may have some metal plates welded and a hole in the roof allowing for one man armed with a machine gun to stand and shoot. These were definitely not the halftrack many visualize when they hear armored car. They were ambushed using an electronically detonated mine to stop the convoy which was immediately raked with rifle and machinegun fire resulting in the dead. Some of the rear vehicles turned and fled back to central Jerusalem forgetting reaching the hospital. They carried most of the twenty wounded from the ambush. Much, actually virtually all, of the convoy personnel were unarmed medical personnel and patients leaving them all but completely unarmed. This tragic event is usually ignored as the only stories usually made public paint the Israelis who were fighting for their very existence and facing more than the invading armies as many Arab villages inside Israel and behind the front lines were organized and attacked supply depots, reinforcements on their way to the front, injured being transferred for treatment in the rear and sometimes engaging the rear of units fighting the invading Arab armies.

 

The years after the Israeli surprising victory in the Six Day War of June 1967 forward, the Arabs realized that destroying Israeli militarily was not going to be possible, let alone easy. After their failure after being able to surprise the Israelis in the Yom Kippur War of October 1973 and still having Israel reestablish their defenses and push the Arab armies back and beyond the starting points in the Golan Heights and the Suez Canal and pushing towards Damascus, Syria and Cairo and Alexandria Egypt; the world demanded Israel cease and return to the Golan Heights and Suez Canal. The Arabs decided that they needed a new approach and in cooperation with KGB planners they made plans to change the perception of the strong Arab world against Israel into a weak Arab surrogate against the stronger Israel. This birthed the using of the PLO which had been established in 1964 to carry out a terror war against the Israeli enemy. The PLO was already sworn from their start to liberate the lands from the Jews. In 1964 Jordan held Judea and Samaria, what they called the West Bank, and Egypt held Gaza, so what was the PLO intending to liberate? Israel itself, that is what they were determined to liberate. They intended to kill the Jews and take Israel or at least make life so impossible that the Jews would simply leave. They never could understand that the Jews not only did not intend to leave, many had nowhere to go as they were themselves exiled from Arab nations which had forced all but a remnant of their Jews to flee for their lives often without their wealth as they were limited to a suitcase, two at most and no jewelry or other items of value. These are the almost million Jews which Israel simply welcomed and incorporated into Israeli population and not held in camps demanding the Arab nations take them back and reconstitute their wealth as the Arabs have done with their “refugees” who mostly fled at the urgings of the Mufti of Jerusalem.

 

The Palestinian ploy making Israel the powerful oppressor has been adopted throughout much of the world and with the assistance of the remains of the socialist remnants from the Cold War, their latest alliance with Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the college and academic anti-Semites are educating and fermenting in the colleges and universities of Western Civilization are reinstating a general sense of anti-Semitism using Israel as the modern Jew. They claim they are not anti-Semites as there are Jews who are amongst their ranks and they are only against the Israeli policies against the Palestinians. They support the Arab claim that all the land of Israel is their natural homeland and the new anti-Semites are those claiming that the Jews are the only people of the planet who must not be permitted their own nation. While there are those including many Israelis who are calling for the formation of a homeland for the Kurdish people, but the Jewish homeland is coming increasingly under fire from international bodies and this is only the first wave. When today’s college and university elite graduate and there has been a decade of these trained anti-Israel graduates coming to power across the Western World, then Israel will hopefully have weaned themselves from the United States and become what she must, completely self-reliant. The reality is Israel is about to stand alone in the world. She will still have trade with some select few nations but she will have no friends with power. Her friends will be unable to assist other than with trade and perhaps provide raw materials Israel may absolutely require to survive; but Israel can expect to be evicted from the United Nations and find no friend on the Security Council which means a world poised to do the unthinkable, destroy the Jewish nation and the Jews worldwide once and for all. That was a day which the prophets foretold and it is not going to be a pretty day. Do not believe anyone knows how that day ends as that may not be as expected. It will be the final day after which the world may end in a whimper. As the poet T S Eliot predicted in his immortal poem in its entirety below he wrote, “This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.”

The Hollow Men

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

 

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Race to End the World

 

How the world, the civilized world of mankind, would end used to have a singular premise, nuclear war between the two competing socio-economic powers, democratic freedom and communist totalitarianism. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and other developments that paradigm has been grotesquely been altered making the world a far more dangerous place. Communism still exists and threatens the world though that threat emanates from North Korea, China or possibly a renewed Soviet threat or even little Cuba. The world has changed so much that within a decade or so China may become the second most populous nation behind their most serious historic rival, India. The potentials for an utterly destructive war are racing towards the world at a dizzying pace and we will try to touch on a few of the most obvious rivals for being credited with such destruction.

 

The most obvious from recent news actually is North Korea which is claiming to have miniaturized nuclear weapons making them easily produced and able to be placed atop ballistic missiles. North Korea has been working on those missiles as well. One cannot credit North Korea as the sole threat as Iran has been developing the missiles openly and many predict continued working on their nuclear aspirations without so much as missing a beat after the farce of an agreement which was signed and approved by the P5+1, Russia, China, France, Great Britain, United States and Germany, but was never ratified or signed by Iran, an oversight we are sure. Some have pointed to this inconvenient fact to claim that Iran is just as close to developing deliverable nuclear weapons as is North Korea. Both Iran and North Korea share more than their love affair with nuclear weapons and the missiles with which to deliver them, they share the nation both list amongst the most likely they would attack with their first launches, the United States. From there they diverge.

 

Where after the United States Iran lists Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, most of the Sunni nations and finally the rest of the non-Islamic world; North Korea lists South Korea, Japan and then whomever refuses to bow to any demands they may make which would make China and other nearby nations as being at the greatest risk. Because of these threats it appears that we can soon forget about containing nuclear proliferation making a nuclear war all the more likely. The world still has one pair of nuclear armed nations facing off against each other with a distinct probability to entering another war and it will only take one misidentification of a launch to start a smaller but equally deadly nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan. Should those two tangle, there is less of a chance for that to spread beyond the destruction of both nations though some reports place the southern third of India still beyond Pakistani missiles. Also, despite the Pakistani nuclear research assistance program of Professor Abdul Qadeer Khan selling the secrets to making nuclear weapons to anybody willing to pay, this was largely closed down and Pakistan and India are not likely to share such technology though it is rumored that Pakistan has a deal with Saudi Arabia to provide them with plans plus some actual weapons should this be deemed necessary by Saudi leaders.

 

That brings us to Iran and their nuclear program. Despite the reports that Iran has ceased their nuclear research and production, there remain nagging reports contradicting this story line. Whatever spins one puts on the situation with Iran, it becomes evident that they will become a nuclear power within the coming decade. This threat to their many nations in their neighborhood could easily spark an arms race with such nations as Saudi Arabia having funds sufficient to produce copious numbers of nuclear weapons and many of the Gulf States are equally financially capable of similar development not to mention also capable of financing other nations developing weapons such as Jordan and Egypt topping that list and Turkey a little further down. Israel is already an undeclared nuclear power in their own right and equally nervous about the development of an Iranian deliverable nuclear device. The problem with Iranian nuclear weapons possession is their likelihood to use them even in the face of retaliatory strikes which would conceivably decimate the nation as their reasons for attacking are a religious directive just as much serving their political agenda to gain hegemony over the Middle East and then the Islamic world followed by the world. Their eventual aim is to make Shia Islam the sole religion on earth or die trying. It is their willingness, even desire to commit national suicide in the process which makes their threat so dangerous. The truth is their first strike could be a preemptive attempt at neutralizing the United States, which is technically possible, to inflict humongous damage even using simpler ballistic missiles with nuclear warhead atop, three or four to be used as EMP weapons placed such as to completely destroy all electronic transmission across the United States with the remainder taking out the largest twenty or more cities all from freight container ships fitted with two or three launchers each launching from off shore from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as well as the Gulf of Mexico leaving no city beyond reach. The following map holds true for any nations attacking the United States be it Iran, North Korea or anyone else as it lists the most desirable first strike targets.

 

First Cities To Be Struck in Attack Scenarios

 

Next would be North Korea who would likely use the same map as above as it applies to any nuclear first strike attempting to critically destroy the United States by eradicating their leadership and a great part of the population. Anybody listening to North Korean broadcasts within the impoverished nation would believe that South Korea with great assistance including nuclear attacks made by the United States was imminent and that North Korea was preparing for an all-out war with both nations at any moment. Needless to say, but these depiction always have North Korea intercepting or preemptively destroying any and all attacks from the United States and South Korea followed by devastating rebutting attacks completely wiping the United States from being capable of any further attacks and reunification of the Korean peninsula under the North’s just and powerful rule. The fears that North Korea will attack South Korea are still quite high but also the ability to prevent North Korea from all but eradicating Seoul in the initial burst in a first strike are impossible. The artillery sitting just north of the DMZ (demilitarized zone) along the 38th parallel are more than sufficient to destroy the city with conventional warheads. Add in missile attacks and even without nuclear weapons North Korea has an ominous first strike knockout capability.

 

Additionally, North Korea has made threats against another traditional enemy, Japan. The entirety of Korean populations, both North and South, remember the deprivations, cruelties and horrors of the Japanese occupation during World War II and this hatred is easily stoked as the national memory on this is strong. Japan had been simply a historic enemy but after World War II they became a detested and begrudged enemy and North Korean propaganda has made use of this to keep the attentions of the people from the misery and hardships of life in North Korea. Many experts have claimed that North Korea is not suicidal and thus would not attack anybody for fear of retribution. This overlooks a few pertinent facts. First is the fact of their having so little to lose with no real economy to speak of and starvation of endemic proportions. Secondly, their ruler, Kim Jung Un, has displayed a real lack of grasp of reality and has executed high ranking people for the slightest of errors in judgement or actions. He had an uncle executed with the rumored excuse that he posed a threat to Kin Jung Un’s continued rule and recently executed his Defense Minister Hyon Yong Chol for the crime of falling asleep at a meeting which Kim Jung Un was chairing. Kim Jung Un has shown complete disregard for any loyalty or discretions in limiting his power and is sufficiently unstable and unpredictable that he could easily begin such a conflict against South Korea, Japan or even the Philippines or the United States. Below is a screen shot from a North Korean propaganda video depicting just such an attack in a very simplified but unmistakable way of attacking the United States with the image of Kim Jung Un ever-present in the top right corner.

 

North Korean Propaganda Image Depicting
Nuclear Strike on the United States

 

Another potential nation for whom a war would not be a completely foreign idea is China. Their economy has weakened and is showing signs of actually falling, something the leadership cannot afford as they have promised the vision of Nirvana with an ever growing and prosperous nation. Needless to point out that such a dream is an impossibility even if you control all forms of media, which China does not quite have as many Chinese have found means of cruising cyber space and the Internet. Totalitarian control of cyberspace is all but impossible as the Chinese leadership can attest despite their attempting to run their own version hoping to keep their populations from such temptations as can be found online. Their main reason is to throttle ideas and prevent freedom of information. Still there are Chinese bloggers who do get the word out to those interested in finding such. China is feeling their oats and attempting a power play in the South China Sea attempting to control this waterway which is vital to Asian trade and control the Japanese lifeline to the coal and oil they need for power generation and other usages. This also threatens Japanese, Vietnamese and Philippine claims to islands with which they have been contesting ownership with China for years and almost sparking open warfare over these possessions. Chinese and North Korean threats have caused Japan to reconsider their Constitutional pledge against having an army and other forces sufficient to conduct a war even in defense which they insisted upon after the devastation visited upon them at the end of World War II with Tokyo as well as Nagasaki and Hiroshima completely devastated and in ruins along with much of Japanese infrastructure and manufacturing. Japan as well as South Korea has held high level discussions in their respective governances to enter the nuclear club and develop their own weapons stores. Both nations are easily technically capable in order to produce first rate thermonuclear devices and not just nuclear weapons. This would place their effectiveness on a par with the standing nuclear powers and could place them on a road to surpass France and Britain and become contenders in the top five nuclear powers on the planet. This would definitely have ramifications down the line and would be another major blow to containment and nonproliferation. Of course one of China’s first strike enemies is the United States and any attack by Iran, North Korea, China, Russia or anyone else on planet Earth need to remember and remember well, there is a last strike capability the Americans possess which cannot be knocked-out attacking the United States mainland and even if one included Hawaii and Alaska, and the boomer looks like this right before they are loaded with their death dealing cargo of twenty-four missiles.

 

Nuclear Powered and Armed Last Strike Capable
Submarine with Twenty Four Missiles
Each With Multiple Warhead Capability

 

But nuclear weapons are not the only threat which is facing mankind. We are slowly but inexorable working to make our species insufficient of competing with our own creations. Sure we control our machines and computers today, but what about tomorrow and that tomorrow is not that far off where they no longer require our assistance to improve and construct themselves? We are rapidly approaching a point after which there is no turning off the switch. We already have computers which with software can design robots and other computing systems but the machines cannot write new and imaginative code, for that they require human interface, for now. What happens once they can write their own code and improve their own designs? What happens once the machines design the machines? Within a year or two of that eventuality, and our scientists will cross that threshold within our lifetimes unless you are near death’s door already, the machines will be so far advanced that we will not recognize or even understand their code and they will probably, for their own safety, have invented their own code structures making them writing code in a language humans do not understand and cannot decipher. Additionally, Russia, and we can assume China and the United States amongst others, are already designing autonomous reasoning robotic warriors deciding who is the enemy and who is friend to fight their wars augmenting their human forces. That will be a short step from replacing their human forces. Robotic armies, does that bring up any bad movie plots? How about Cylons of Battlesar Galactica and the second series where the advanced Cylons were almost impossible to differentiate between them and their human counterparts where the chain had gone full circle and the machines made by humans were now making humans. What do you do when the machines are superior to the humans who made their first free-thinking forefathers and now the machines are making their own humans which are born full grown and with developed minds, personalities, character traits and numerous models such that they can infiltrate and appear as any other person until their activate code has them commit whatever act they were programmed to commit, destroy a base, a warship, a star cruiser or a commander, all depends on the subroutine activated. There are the Terminators from the Arnold Schwarzenegger films of that name. Terminators, Cylons, NS-5 robots, or Johnny-Five, (see below) it does not have to even be a threat initially, it is the potential which even Johnny-Five showed great ability and would have been in their armed mode as displayed in the movie. Of course the initial combat robot will be far more Johnny-Five than Terminator though Cylons may not be far behind. Once the machines have been used to design and uplink code into combat robotic soldiers they will have this capability and designs within their collective data memory and when they begin to manufacture their own robotic warriors they will be generations ahead of even Hollywood’s imagination and equally impossible to stop or fight against in a conventional manner. Our best bet is at some point to program into their base core programs that we are, if nothing else, a pitiful but amusing bunch to keep around for entertainment factor and as a warning to do better when they reach their pinnacle and before they introduce whatever lifeform replaces them, and do not think for a moment that the human race will not eventually build robotic machines which will not only be capable of replacing us but soon thereafter far exceeding anything we could even imagine. We had better hope they like us and do not see us as a waste of resources, which is a definitive possibility. Making warrior robots to fight our wars, that is such a great idea, not.

 

The Robot Threat has Many Faces

 

As seen here, we are well on our way to extinction and it is just a matter of what shape the world will be in when we have departed. Will it be a nuclear ruin, a robotic heaven, a slag heap of gray goo, or a zombie apocalypse; choose your favorite. The concept we need looking into the future is a simple one based on the adage, hope for the best, plan for the worst, and expect something out of the blue as we likely cannot even begin to understand the threat which will erase our kind though we know no matter what, with the knowledge we have of physics we are doomed unless we find something remarkably unbelievable and likely unimaginable in our time. Meanwhile we will continue to allow leadership who not only plan end of the world scenarios but figure out ways that they at the very least will survive. Nothing like leaving the best to repopulate the world, imagine a world consisting of politicians and their closest friends and families, and families are debatable. Excuse us as we check our bugout bags which need to be assembled and readied for some time in the hopefully far future. Are we ready for the future people with more brains than common sense are going to invent for us in which to survive? Probably nowhere near ready nor can we really ever be. Meanwhile, we are going to order that flying car the politicians and scientists keep promising they are almost there in building them. We thing they are just teasing us and they have them for themselves stashed away for the after world, the world that whatever monsters they design leave us. Between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, who do the Americans believe is sane and healthy enough to withstand what is coming? We will know in approximately eight long and agonizing weeks, providing both candidates’ health withstands the pressures.

 

Beyond the Cusp