Weeds in the MENA Garden

 

 

If one were to ask the European Union, the United States, the United Nations and the world media who is responsible for the unrest throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) the resounding echoes would continue to scream Israel for likely the rest of eternity, but is that an honest assessment or simply a knee jerk automatic programed response spurred by anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic hatreds? The easiest way to tell would be to take a quick whirl around the MENA nations and see what the truth is. Let us start our excursion at the western edge and head to the east and see what we will see.

 

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.

 

Coming into the North of Africa from the Atlantic Ocean the first country we would visit would be Western Sahara where we would find Morocco has occupied Western Sahara since 1975 in violation of resolutions by the United Nations Security Council and International Court of Justice ruling. Any efforts to dislodge Morocco from Western Sahara have been blocked directly by the United States whose full support of the Moroccan occupation shows no sign of relenting. The conflict reemerged as the “Independence Intifada” in 2005 which has remained as depicted in map below. Despite numerous efforts to defuse the situation the standoff remains.

 

Occupied Western Sahara
by Morocco Shaded Area
and Western Sahara Unshaded

 

Continuing on from the Morocco-Western Sahara conflict we next visit Mauritania which has had a rocky recent history including two military coups, the first was in 2005 followed eventually by elections for a new president in 2007 followed by the second coup in 2008. General Abdul Aziz took power after the coup but found the nation had few supporters amongst them predominantly were Morocco, Libya and Iran while the United States and European nations rejected the legitimacy of the coup continuing to refer to Abdallahi as the legitimate president of Mauritania. After the resignation of Abdallahi there were elections which allowed Abdel Aziz to become the civilian president. In February 2011 there were waves of unrest as the Arab Spring spread to Mauritania demanding President Mohamed Abdel Aziz institute political, economic, and legal reforms. The unrest culminated in April of 2012 as thousands of people in Mauritania attended demonstrations in the capital calling for President Mohamed Abdel Aziz to resign. Currently the nation is under military rule with the legal system based on Islam and Sharia.

 

Heading across the southern end the picture in Mali, Niger and Chad is the constant internal strife between Christian governments and Islamic uprisings with much of the major horrific attacks conducted by the terrorist group Boko Haram which literally means Western education is forbidden. Boko Haram follows Saudi Wahhabism and has pledged their loyalty to the Islamic State. Along the north there has been steady unrest in Algeria and especially Libya since the NATO backed coup where President Obama declared that the United States was leading from behind in the ouster of and eventual execution (murder) of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. In Libya the nation is in fractious rule of numerous terror groups and tribal armies with some having declared alliance with the Islamic State. In the south east there is the Sudan which bled in the south especially in the Darfur area. Eventually the Sudan was force to divide allowing South Sudan to become independent. In October of 2015, South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir issued a decree establishing twenty-eight states in place of the ten constitutionally established states. The decree established the new states largely along ethnic lines. He took it to the parliament for approval as a constitutional amendment in November and the South Sudanese parliament empowered President Kiir to create new states.

 

This brings us to Egypt where the recent history has played out live and large in the Western media. The Arab Spring riots led to the removal of President and military strongman Mubarak. The elections were held fairly soon after Mubarak was forced to step down largely by the United States backing of the Muslim Brotherhood. These elections overwhelmingly approved Muslim Brotherhood candidate Morsi to the presidency and a large Muslim Brotherhood majority in the parliament. Within the year new rioting broke out protesting the implementation of Sharia despite warnings from Turkish President Erdogan to the Morsi government to slow their radical changes or face resistance. This led to the military removing Morsi and arresting him for election fraud. New election instated former General of the Army Sisi as President though he still had an Islamist and presumed Muslim Brotherhood controlled parliament. The Obama administration refused to recognize Sisi and demanded that Morsi be reinstated; a request which was roundly ignored. Unrest still exists between Egypt and the United States which will be resolved by the Presidential election this November in the United States. As to what either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump might choose to do is a complete mystery at the present time as neither has addressed foreign policy beyond Hillary’s claim to deep knowledge claiming her time as a Senator of New York and a stint as Secretary of State under President Obama which included the Benghazi, Libya fiasco amongst other miscues and Trump claiming to have conducted business deals with numerous foreign governments and met many world leaders though particulars remain largely unconfirmed. Egypt has also faced unrest largely from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic State where both are vying for control of the Sinai from where they would presumably unseat Sisi and retake the presidency. Hamas in Gaza was seen as providing assistance to these and some Iranian backed groups in the Sinai thus earning themselves a complete sea and land embargo enforced by Egypt from their waters and land borders with Gaza. The Egyptian blockade is often ignored with the large amount of attention paid to the Israeli “blockade” which is actually an inspection of goods before allowing their delivery to Gaza usually within one or two days done to assure that weapons are not being imported by Hamas and the other terror groups which rule Gaza. Egypt too is a work in progress.

 

We will return to Israel subsequently but meanwhile on to Lebanon where the terror groups Hezballah runs the government with an opposition often afraid to act to remove the terror group as previous attempts have resulted in untimely deaths. Lebanon cannot be addressed without discussing Syria and the state of war which has more facets than hewn crystals. The main three forces are Syrian dictator Bashir al Assad who has retreated to the Alawite tribal areas along the Mediterranean coast and Lebanese border. Assad is backed by Iran and their proxy, Hezballah, out of Lebanon. These are the Shiite forces which also receive tactical support largely in the form of air strikes by the Russians who are protecting their port area along the Mediterranean coast. Inland there are Sunni groups, oft referred to as terror groups, supported largely by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Finally there are the forces of the Islamic State which stretch into Iraq where they face the Iraqi Army backed by Iran who uses mostly IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps) placing Iran at either end of the Islamic State. The Islamic State has been largely self-financed though there have been rumored support from Qatar. There is another group in northern Iraq and extending into northeastern Syria which is controlled by Kurdish Militias which are opposed strongly by Turkey. The Kurdish forces were at one time rumored to be receiving training by Israeli trainers on a clandestine mission though many have refuted that this was just a means of explaining the Kurdish forces resilience and holding their own against Islamist forces considered to be better equipped.

 

This takes us to the Saudi Peninsula and Jordan which we can count as a single unit of the GCC (Gulf Coordination Council) which is a group backed mostly by Saudi Arabia which includes Kuwait and the Gulf States and to a lesser extent, Jordan. Saudi Arabia has a close working relationship with the Egyptian government of President Sisi who are jointly facing terror groups including those supported or aligned with Islamic State as well as Iranian backed terrorists and the Houthi Tribes in the Yemen civil war, a front where Iran backed and Saudi Arabian backed forces are in direct confrontation. The United States has opposed and presumably attempted to prevent, though with little success, arms shipments to the Houthis by Iran and also opposed the bombing sorties from Saudi Arabia with equal lack of success and the belligerents continue to fight on. In the southernmost areas of Yemen, the prized areas which overlook the narrow passage from the Red Sea into the Arabian Sea, called Bab el-Mandeb Strait are a group of fighters originally claiming alliance with al-Qaeda but recently changing their alliance to presumably the Islamic State. These groups have benefited directly from Saudi raids as has the currently recognized Hadi-led government.

 

Yemen Battle Map

 

Lastly let us finally look at Israel. On the Golan Heights IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) have returned fire when fired upon by intention and otherwise has unofficial drop points for wounded individuals, civilian and combatant though no difference is noted, wounded and in need of treatment. IDF soldiers take these wounded and treat them in their field facility with the more serious cases transferred to Israeli hospitals for treatment. After treatment the individuals once sufficiently recovered are returned from whence they came at same drop points. All sides can view the individual drop points and all points are respected by other fighting factions in an unarranged agreement as all sides use this treatment method and no one side wishes to risk being cut-off from Israeli treatment and have to rely on whatever resources they have available. We have no information as to whether any Iranian forces have received treatment from the Israelis though if placed in civilian clothing they would receive the same treatment as any other individual. The Israeli border with Lebanon is currently quiet as Hezballah has sufficient on their plate with forces in the Syrian conflict and rumored even to have some fighting with IRGC or Houthis in Yemen. Intelligence believed to be accurate estimated that Hezballah has stores of rockets of varying size and capable of striking Tel Aviv, Bathsheva and even Ashkelon as well as guided missiles from Iran capable of striking anywhere in Israel including the southernmost port city of Eilat carrying warhead as large as two kilos and potentially five or ten up to one-hundred kilos warheads on their short and medium ranged rockets of which they possess as many as one-hundred-seventy-five-thousand. On their larger missiles they have warheads of as much as seven-hundred-fifty kilos on modified Zilzal-2 with a four-hundred km range and which they possess an estimated one thousand. Their Fateh-110 missile has a range three-hundred km range striking at Mach 3.5 carrying a four to seven-hundred kg warhead of which Hezballah possess more than twenty-thousand and lastly there is the Shaheen-II two stage missile which has a range of two-thousand km making able to strike anywhere in Israel and into Egypt. Each missile is capable of flight altitude of up to three-hundred km, is GPS guided, and varies a one-thousand plus kg warhead making it potentially capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and retaining it guidance hardware. It is doubtful that Iran has, let alone provided Hezballah with a deliverable nuclear warhead. Such is not far from the horizon for Iran but their providing Hezballah with such a weapon is doubtful.

 

The remaining fronts for Israel are with Jordan and Egypt which are both peaceful and with the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Judea and Samaria as well as with Hamas and ally Islamic Jihad and other terror and criminal groups in Gaza. The front with the PA is largely one where there are terror strikes which can be planned by Abbas and the his PLO terror groups or the less planned but instigated through calls for violence from PA figures, PLO figures or any of a litany of groups most of which are either headed by Mahmoud Abbas or are willful practitioners at his beck and call. The most recent round were stabbings carried out largely by Palestinian Arab and some Israeli Arab youths as well as car rammings along with rock and Molotov cocktail throwing with rioting which are carried out routinely by PA controlled terror groups, the Tamini family instigators who work closely with European Union and other European NGOs whose main aims are to cause any violent response by Israel which is filmed and the instigation causing the defensive act is edited and with careful editing and juxtaposition of stock footage, prerecorded footage or actual footage with any questionable instigations by the Arabs edited over or out completely compiled into the final product which is then transmitted throughout European news agencies within a matter of a couple of hours and they run with it unedited as if it were an actual news story followed by their governments and the European union then condemning Israel for use of disproportional force or the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Gaza front is another area where Iran attempts with some success to smuggle arms mostly containing rocket motors and rocket parts and technology. Funding for Hamas comes from UNRWA as well as from the PA making the European Union, United States, United Nations and individual European nations as well as numerous Arab countries direct or indirect financiers of Hamas terrorism and rocket attacks as well as Arab instigations and propaganda which permeates their entire society from their media to the schools, summer camps soccer leagues and every aspect of childhood and raising the children to hate Jews as well as Israel. The Hamas Charter calls not only for the annihilation of Israel but of Jews worldwide. Similar language is found in Islamic Jihad and Hezballah pamphlets and charters or constitutions. The hatred goes well beyond Israel and includes Jews everywhere as well as Western culture and societies. Hamas and their allies as well as Hezballah desire a world caliphate under Sharia and openly claim so. The main difference is whether the caliphate would be Shiite or Sunni, for the rest of us that is a minor comfort.

 

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

 

Obama Iran Ploy is Working and We’re the Fools

 

Almost daily we can read any number of articles from all parts of the Western nations and even at times in Asian and Middle Eastern news services proclaiming how President Obama is such a rube and a fool allowing himself to be led by the nose down the primrose path to oblivion. Many of these articles also point out what fools his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have been for not insisting that President Obama wake up and smell the nuclear weapons. Now where I may agree heartily that Secretary of State John Kerry is one of the grandest fools to ever walk out onto the world’s stage for all to assess, I am a little more reluctant to claim the same of Hillary Clinton though I will agree that she is an opportunist and knew that crossing President Obama would have been political suicide if she was going to ever gain his support in her quest for the White House. Her foolishness was believing he would ever stoop to assisting anybody where it serves him not. So, now on to President Obama who is without a doubt the grand architect and even has Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani (from here on to be referred to as the ‘Smiling Cheshire Man’ after the cat from Alice in Wonderland that after its gone its oddly wicked smile remained to charm the unsuspecting {see picture below}) both believe they are playing the American President for the fool. It serves President Obama to have his detractors believing and calling him an idiot who is unable to see the forest for the trees as this forces the Democrats and leftists who support President Obama and tout him as the most brilliant man to ever grace the Oval Office to line up and defend him and placing the majority of the left wing media, and especially the New York Times to support his craftiness in that he is drafting an agreement with numerous little technical details which will deviously prevent the Iranians from reaching a breakout point on nuclear weapons for the rest of eternity. So, who is right and why?

 

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani smiling for report on how he and Iran charmed the world reminding all of the evil laugh as the Cheshire Cat faded away leaving only his wicked smile and it just fit calling him the ‘Smiling Cheshire Man’

 

 

A quick aside we had to include about Iranian President Rouhani and the quotes we caught right before press time and just felt had to be distributed to our friends and readers. The Iranian President Rouhani the ‘Smiling Cheshire Man’ was quoted by Nasim news agency stating, “Even if the nuclear talks fail, our diplomacy showed the world that we are logical. We never left the negotiation table and always provided the best answer.” Further, the ‘Smiling Cheshire Man’ stated, “Twenty-two months of negotiation means we have managed to charm the world, and it’s an art.” Well Mr. Smiling Cheshire Man, we have some news for you, we have not been charmed and know you for the jovial, familial, back stabbing, confidence grabbing, lying, betrayer of trust, sinister evil Smiling Cheshire Man that you are.

 

Believe it or not both sides are right and for the wrong reasons. Those calling President Obama the fool are wrong though they are correct that only a President of the United States who was a fool would allow these negotiations to have dragged on and be giving away the store as each deadline approaches before extending the talks one more time. The Democrats are close to right when they claim that President Obama is a smart man but are wrong that he is designing an agreement which will trick the Iranians preventing them from developing nuclear weapons as quickly as they are able. What most people are overlooking, likely because to even think it is considered treasonous even if it becomes known as true is that President Obama has been aiming the entire time to give Iran the cover, the funds and the freedom from inspections and the ability to do as they please precisely because his aim is for Iran to join the nations of the nuclear club and at the same time facilitate the Russian bear, a.k.a. President Putin, to flex his bare chest and retake control over whatever he feels bold enough to take and to provide China the wherewithal of claim all of the South China Sea as their private bathtub and the control over all the islands and atolls they can reclaim and/or build in the remaining time he is in office. Still, the crown in President Obama’s crown will be the hegemonic rise of Iran with their taking control of the southern Shia provinces of Iraq, defeat ISIS and impress their rule on all of Syria and possibly Lebanon as well placing them on the northern border of Israel and closer to Hamas to supply them through military convoys through the Israeli blockade, a confrontation he would condemn in the most serious terms while sliding them a private note congratulating them on their bold strategies. If I were Saudi Arabia I would be very wary of any Shiite uprisings in the northeast territories, especially the oil field lands and I cannot give serious enough warnings to King Abdullah II ibn al-Hussein of Jordan as his lands would stand between the Ayatollahs and their desired conquest of the Arab Palestinian lands in Judea and Samaria giving them fronts against Israel on three sides and nearly encircling the Jewish State. Where Iran would tout being on Israel’s borders as their greatest achievement and opportunity, they would eventually rue the day they strove to accomplish that feat in order to attack Israel directly.

 

Meanwhile, President Obama sits back in the White House, or out on the golf links, reveling in his brilliant handling of the United States media, his fooling the right into believing he was merely incompetent and not treasonous thus avoiding possible impeachment. Imagine how fast the House would bring up charges of impeachment and the Senate find the President guilty if it ever became known that he was actually planning the neutering of the United States’ ability to project power beyond her shores, leave the nuclear weapons stores in such disrepair as to possibly render over half the American nuclear arsenal beyond retrievable repair through not funding inspections and cancelling critical maintenance, rendering the United States military to a state of lacking in readiness rivalling their state right before World War II. And President Obama has further worked on souring relations with the most vital of allies starting with his disrespect shown the British Queen, Prime Minister and the entire British Isles with his thoughtless and insulting gifts when they first met, the disrespect of actually touching the Queen when they first met as Michelle Obama did and on top of all this having called on the British Embassy for them to come and remove the bust of Winston Churchill during his first few days in office. Then moving on to the barrages of insults thrown at Israel and her Prime Minister being refused press meetings as was the norm and having him enter through a back door of the White House and leaving him to, as stated to Netanyahu’s face, go have dinner with his family and for the Israelis to reconsider their position and send for him should they decide to be more reasonable and even arranging to meet Israeli President Peres in the Blair House rather than in the White House as is customary between heads of state. Additionally, his disregard of the Saudi Arabian Royal Family as well as his treasonous interference in Egyptian politics in a bald-faced attempt to place the Muslim Brotherhood as rulers in Egypt and retain them there even against the will of the Egyptian people. What else does he need to do, go to Paris and ask President Hollande if he has any clean white flags he can borrow as he forgot his handkerchief?

 

President Obama still has to tread his near treasonous path at the very least until the fall of next year though he will probably be permitted great amounts of latitude as the Republicans appear almost fearful of protesting President Obama’s actions too vehemently afraid they may be accused of being racist while the Democrats, at least those completely in the tank for the President, seem all too eager to use that label on anybody who dares to challenge the greatness and brilliance they appear to hold Obama as possessing. Meanwhile, President Obama can simply continue and carry on in much the same manner as he has to this point with possibly a few extra rounds of golf thrown in thus aiding in the belief that he is unconcerned with the pressures and responsibilities of the office. Of course the Presidency has appeared to have drawn an extra decade or more off of his life judging by the greying of his hair and other certain differences in his appearance and mannerisms (though I have often suspected that since Richard Nixon Presidents have dyed their hair greyer rather than to cover the grey). Most Presidents, as with President Obama, tend to become more deliberate and slow down in the meter of their speech and become more soft spoken as the office has likely taxed them and struck them with some very unexpected and, as they were unappreciated, sleepless nights and shocking revelations and forced the meeting of threats beyond those we are ever aware of and perhaps that is for the better. A sure sign that there has been collusion between the American Administration and the Iranians will be if come next fall the two parties are still negotiating a mutually agreeable parting gift that President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry can cheerily grant the Iranians virtually everything they could possibly have dreamed to have had included. Negotiations being handed off to the next President is near completely impossible as the Iranians would not tempt the following administration being anywhere near as accommodating as has the Obama administration. It would be doubtful that President Obama would want to have the negotiations continuing during the lead-up to the elections as it would play into the hands of a Republican campaigning on foreign policy disasters such as the Iran negotiations and having it hurt the Democrat candidate. The one thing that has been so troubling about the Iranian nuclear program negotiations was who in the State Department thought having pretty much the same team members from the failure that were the North Koran nuclear negotiations that resulted in North Korea testing their first nuclear weapon within a year of completing negotiations now negotiating for the United States with Iran unless the desired end is identical to those results. Would it beyond probability that should President Obama sign an agreement with the Iranians mere days, or even weeks, before the end of his term in office and after the elections have determined the next President might actually lead to an investigation into possible irregularities and even collaboration between President Obama, certain high members of his administration and high officials in the State Department be investigated as a credible investigation could be useful in setting the record straight and alleviating suspicions which would be sure to arise.

 

There are many other suspicious events and seeming collusions to foil the regular systems and critical checks and balances through the two terms of the Obama Presidency which have given witness either to a level of competence by the administration or a level of collusion which would be extremely troubling should it be proven true. The original passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), Obamacare, which was not supported by a single Republican vote but still required party discipline beyond normal enforcement yet this is exactly what was achieved. Then the two separate reviews by the Supreme Court, both of which many had predicted would cripple the entirety of the program as should either case have struck down vital and necessary implementations and interpretations would have mortally wounded the legislation and potentially caused a crisis which could have caused the complete rollback of all of the many tentacles of Obamacare throughout the healthcare industry and forced a reset back to the systems which existed previous to the passing of Obamacare. There have been reports of irregularities with elections which have exceeded previous levels in scope and severity which could be relegated to better tracking abilities using computers and predictive software as well as possible party politics. The record increases in people receiving food stamps, welfare, disability payments and other government relief payments which have come under scrutiny but still there has not been irrefutable evidence of collusion by the White House beyond pressing changes in policy attitudes, a change which within the prerogatives of any Administration and are not outside of party politics. Still, it would seem that we have been bombarded with a seemingly unending and ever building torrent of such reports and suspicions which may also be another result of the widening distance between the two extremes in the political arena where candidates who just a decade or so past would have easily been considered mainstream in each party are now looking at their party which seemingly have slid ever further to the extremes making agreement and cooperation nearly impossible or at least highly improbable. Perhaps President Obama’s terms in office may be the harbinger of a new normal where whichever party is out of control of the White House will be critically hyper-scrutinizing every single word, policy, spokespersons, advisors or any other iota of data all seeking any crack in the armor to launch a partisan attack in an attempt to wound and weaken the President and thus impair their ability to get their agenda accomplished. In all honesty, if this results in near paralysis in domestic policies and forces future Congress sessions to each be even less productive each term, then this just could be to the benefit of the American people as there are already more laws and regulations than any law abiding person could ever comply with and not be in contradiction of the law almost hourly if not at least daily. At some point the people need to honestly ask when does a society become too litigious, when does a government be found to be passing laws to justify their positions and salaries? By the time such discussions reach the general public it is way past time to turn things around and there will never be an end in sight through the existing systems, so once it becomes an issue the issue has already passed by and the evidence will soon permeate that society. Such a question can never be discussed too early and yesterday will always have been preferable to tomorrow to breach such a discussion.

 

Beyond the Cusp