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

 

Second Beheading and Still No Plans?

In what was probably a moment of unusual crystal clarity, President Obama told reporters, “I don’t want to put the cart before the horse. We don’t have a strategy yet. I think what I’ve seen in some of the news reports suggests that folks are getting a little further ahead of where we are at than we currently are.” The President commented further stating, “There’s no point in me asking for action on the part of Congress before I know exactly what it is that is going to be required for us to get the job done.” President Obama did have some appropriate statements where he stated, he has asked America’s top defense officials to prepare “a range of options” about what the United States could do to go after ISIS in Syria, which he described as “a safe haven” for the Sunni extremist group. The President’s most salient statement came when he stated, “We need to make sure that we’ve got clear plans, that we’re developing them. At that point, I will consult with Congress and make sure that their voices are heard. But there’s no point in me asking for action on the part of Congress before I know exactly what it is that is going to be required for us to get the job done.” President Obama also made clear that these things take time and require a regional strategy. He also asserted, “We’re not going to do that alone. Clearly, ISIL has come to represent the very worst elements in the region that we have to deal with collectively, and that’s going to require us to stabilize Syria in some fashion. And stabilizing Syria means that we’ve to got get moderate Sunnis who are able to govern and offer … a real alternative.” Obviously those who have hounded and stressed that the President had stated that there is no plan and this meant he was clueless has been somewhat a whole lot of grandstanding.

 

Could President Obama have initially stated his position more diplomatically? Obviously there probably were some poorly chosen phrasings. Did much of the media make a mountain out a mole hill? Of course as it has appeared to become the main job of the mainstream media, to play gotcha and tear down anybody anyway they are able. The fact that he has instructed the Pentagon and other sources to research and present plans and to check out and find allies, especially other Sunni and Arab allies who are willing to assist and thus provide most likely a more deeply understanding plan and a way of addressing the situation which would provide a solution which would be workable beyond any initial military solution which is obviously going to be an integral and important component of any plan. It would have been a far more judicious for President Obama to have stated that he has requested the Pentagon and State Department to coordinate and present him with plans by the end of the week for his and his administration advisors to review and make additional requests and make further inquiries to assure that they all have a full understanding and can make intelligent decisions. He might have added that he desires to make intelligent decisions and not rush in where others fear to tread without a solid and workable plan which has sufficient support from our allies in the Middle East and around the world such that we can maximize those contributing to our success. Actually, it was somewhat unlike the President to feed the ravenous patrons of the media such red meat with his, “We don’t have a strategy yet,” comment. But, as they say, that which has been said cannot be unsaid, especially if any of the mainstream media heard your comment, and as the President was fielding questions there were plenty of media sharks just waiting to feed.

 

This second beheading murdering Jewish-American journalist Steve Sotloff should instill some urgency in the White House, Pentagon, State Department and any intelligence and other contributors in preparing any strategies for moving forward. There will be those who will state the obvious that much of this problem might have been avoided had there been some plan instituted early in the Syrian civil war when the majority of the rebels were presumably mostly secular while others claim that had a Iraq Status of Forces Agreement been reached and the negotiations for such had been initiated earlier so as to allow for separation of time between signing such a treaty from the immediacy of the elections which likely caused reluctance of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki fearing that such an agreement would have cost him the election. What those making these protestations refuse to recognize is that the radicalization of Islamist rebels has been growing ever since the Iranian revolution in 1979 which paved the way for a state actor which financed terrorism across the Middle East and even reaching into the far reaches of the globe including governing and entire city in the tri-state area in South America where Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil borders meet. Iran has financed and provided aid and training for Hezballah in Lebanon, supported Bashir al-Assad’s reign of terror in Syria and Hamas in Gaza. Iran recently boasted to having provided Hamas with the technology and production know-how to produce the longer range rockets utilized by Hamas in the recent fifty days plus of rocket barrages which began weeks before the initial Israeli Defense Force (IDF) actions in Gaza and lasted throughout the conflict. As al-Assad with assists from Hezballah and Iran had raised the levels of carnage and destruction to unheard of levels it is almost poetic justice that something like ISIS should come from the dark heart of the Syrian civil war to not only oppose Iran but also threaten the Iranian control of the government and military in Iraq. Still, it is not good for the world that there is another terrorist group which has the violent brutality which rivals those backed by Iran even if they would be a balancing force against the Iranian terror forces. This has been proven with the recent beheadings, slaughters of Christians, Yazidis, Kurds, Shiite Muslims and even fellow Sunni Muslims as well as anyone else who does not match up with their world view and aims. In many ways this current horrific panorama playing out across the Middle East from Gaza and Lebanon across Syria and Iraq and anchored at the other end by Qatari financing and Iranian fanaticism and seemingly every permutation which has evolved into the savagery of ISIS balancing the brutality and insanity of Assad’s Syria and Hamas and Hezballah.

 

The reality of the threats which have grown and spread throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa, often abbreviated as MENA, have taken what was originally labelled the Arab Spring and turned into a worldwide disaster where terrorists and tribal armies are fighting for dominance and threatening the established norms from Mali to the tribal lands of Pakistan. ISIS is simply the latest horror to be produced by this misguided attempt to micromanage changes across this large area of the globe turned nightmare. The repairing and rifts and tears will take far longer than the explosive results we are reaping now of which ISIS may appear to be the most pressing, but that remains to be seen as there are likely more surprises waiting just around the next corner. There will be plenty more opportunities for President Obama and whoever wins the coming elections to take the White House to be quoted saying exactly the wrong phrase in response to media questions. What might we take away from this dustup? The first item would be to research exactly what our leaders have said and not rely on any sensationalism which simply takes the worst possible sound bite and edited out the rest of the President’s or other spokesperson’s comments because they did not serve their ulterior motivations. Politics is a dirty little business and it is not made any less so by the media seeking sensationalism from every interview and who cares about the facts and reality. Still, we had best hope that the world as well as President Obama came up with a reasonable and workable set of plans which address not only ISIS but the rest of the formidable and escalating situations spreading across the globe. Yes, sure, we can all run about screaming and pointing fingers as our world crashes down about our shoulders or we can pull together and try to find a reasoned and workable set of solutions which will actually address these problems before they explode even further. Time is getting short and these problems are not about to get any easier to find solutions so we had best find ways to support solutions and leave the games of the mainstream media outside of the realm of reasonable people seeking real solutions. Feeding the media frenzy will not produce a single solution and might only serve to exacerbate the problems beyond any ability to find a path leading to solutions before we pass this world on to our children and grandchildren, and they really do not need the residual disasters which we refused to find solutions for before it became too late.

 

Beyond the Cusp