Hugs is All We Need to Save the World

 

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has come to our rescue with a solution worthy of a Facebook new like where one can love, laugh, wow, sad, angry and still can just like. My question is why no hug in this great new Facebook features. After all, was it not Mr. Zuckerberg who recently after the Paris bombings, Brussels bombing and Pakistan bombings stated, “This morning we activated Safety Check in Pakistan after a bomb targeted children and their families in a park in Lahore. Over the last two months, we have activated Safety Check several times for acts of terror – including in Turkey and Belgium – so people in the area can let their friends and loved ones know they’re safe. Each of these attacks was different, but all had a common thread: they were carried out with a goal to spread fear and distrust, and turn members of a community against each other. I believe the only sustainable way to fight back against those who seek to divide us is to create a world where understanding and empathy can spread faster than hate, and where every single person in every country feels connected and cared for and loved. That’s the world we can and must build together.”

 

Further, Mr. Zuckerberg has discovered that all three of these attacks as well as many other terrorist bombings are all designed to spread far and wide “fear and distrust.” Then he has the gall to claim that “understanding and empathy” are the sole means for treating such attacks and not bullets, tanks, aircraft and boots on the ground. He has obviously become too entangled in his creation of Facebook where people can find safe refuge from daily horrors exchanging thoughts and emotions, often through emoticons which stand in the place of actual emotions just as Facebook stands as a substitute for reality. It is this replacement of reality by a caricature on a computerized community where one gains friends through cute kitten videos and virtual roller-coaster rides shared with acquaintances from the four corners of the globe who we know only by the title and profile they present. For all we are aware these people could just as easily be United States soldiers as they could be some African Prince from Zambia who needs help getting their ten million dollars out of some bank in Switzerland. That is the problem with these virtual people with virtual persona and virtual backgrounds. Everybody is as real as their Sims character and just as reliable and trustworthy as few million pixels are capable of being. The problem is this is the world Mark Zuckerberg made as real as the actual physical world thus it is no surprise that his world-view seems just as fitting as a Facebook personae or whatever can be created with a set number of keystrokes. And if you are not happy with the real you one can always simply build a new virtual you where you have everything your little heart desires as long as you have a Yahoo mail or G-mail account and a charge card to complete the deal, that is the reality of our virtual world. This is the new reality which Mark Zuckerberg helped to create which comes complete with proxies et al.

 

For all we know, Mark Zuckerberg not only made his millions of dollars with this Facebook world but it is his reality as well. He may have sunk a little deeper into the Facebook realms than is healthy but when one has the credentials and monies which Mr. Zuckerberg possesses then one can retreat into their little pixilated world and never need surface and see that which is real. For a perfect example of one person going round the bend and relying heavily on a wall of lawyers along with that veil concealing their lives keeping them from creditors or even reality, one need only read the life history about Howard Hughes. His grasp on reality fluctuated from lucid detailed hold on reality to paranoid schizophrenia. Whatever disease has captured the mind of Mark Zuckerberg we may never become privileged to know as when one is as wealthy and well connected it becomes very traumatic dealing with their situation as one will never know whether they are knocked down and playing possum and simply biding their time to make their escape. It is entirely possible and even probable that in the world in which Mark Zuckerberg pictures himself, a big and wonderful hug actually does solve all problems; but in the real world where Paris gets shot full of holes and Brussels explodes with Jihadi violence, there is no Facebook hug that can solve such a situation. Not even a hug which has 64K of a description would bring Islamic State from the darkness and into the light of enlightened society. Claiming that love, or a BIG Facebook HUG would satisfy much of what the Islamic State demands of the world makes as much sense as reelecting Obama again would make. A hug can never replace running the world and no amount of promises or affection would deter the Islamic State from that goal, period.

 

There are going to be those out in the world who will demand to know how I could ever claim that a hug would not end the threat of the Islamic State. Allow me to settle such a demand with some well-known and understandable facts. President Obama has already tried the hug approach and that failed and failed miserably. He has also tried flattery with equal results. Even President Obama ended up using bombs assassinating a number of Islamic State’s high commanders. Truth be told, there has been one group which has dealt with the Islamic State and addressed the necessary steps to not only minimize their efforts but to also press that advantage in order to take back mile after mile of formerly ISIS occupied lands of Northern Syria and Iraq and retain them for quite some time. The world owes the Kurdish Militias, the Peshmerga, a huge debt as they accomplished so much with little assistance and even with little assistance from outside their own ranks. The Islamic State has started another push against the Kurds since the beginning of the month and the success of their push has yet to be determined. Should the Kurds need better supplies it would be in the interest of anyone who opposes the Islamic State despite any misgivings they may have with any singular group. The Kurds have been carrying the majority of the fight against the Islamic State sometimes against the odds. It was Kurdish forces which aided and rescued the Yazidis when their plight was critical and many were stranded largely on a single mountain and things looked desperate. It was unfortunate that the Kurds could not have succeeded at rescuing far more Yazidis but even for such a noble effort there was not to be any sizeable assistance from Europe or the United States. It has been just such actions which have pushed the question as to whether or not the Western World, particularly the United States, honestly were leaving the Kurds out to dry and were never going to truly offer the Peshmerga the assistance to allow them to mount a credible front.

 

We hope that the Western World is not going to simply give the Peshmerga a big hug and wish them well. Rather than a really big hug, the Kurds truly require heavy weapons and air support. At this crucial junction it would be prudent to provide air cover and save the hugs for when the fighting is over and the Islamic State has been ground down and shown to be truly weak. This is what is needed and not hugs or likes on their pictures. There are not many groups which have been consistently and almost exclusively fighting and pushing back the forces of the Islamic State. The Kurds have accomplished much of their success receiving hugs and kudos and little else. For the first years they received likes on Facebook and basically had to do with those hugs to bolster their morale. More bullets and grenades would have been preferred to the hugs on Facebook. Perhaps these were the hugs Mark Zuckerberg was referring though it is doubtful.

 

 

Autobots
Optimus Prime

 

 

Back to Mark Zuckerberg, the man with a plan. His concept that ‘love’ will conquer all, or at least hugs can defeat the Islamic State, ISIS, ISL or Daesh is as preposterous as claiming that President Obama has an integrated plan for the Middle East which will persuade Iran not to develop nuclear weapons, ICBMs and deliver a package to the United States approximately three miles over Kansas City, and no it does not matter over which side of the river as the electrical grid will be toast seconds after the strike. What makes such an attack so horrific is it will hug tens of millions and even hundreds of millions of Americans in a slow death. The electrical grid will die by having its main transformers, the ones which take the high tension wires’ from approximately sixty-six-thousand volts down to two-hundred-twenty volts for delivery to your homes. These transformers are more powerful than the Autobots even including Optimus Prime. These transformers are built only in Germany and Japan and Germany may be an Islamic country all that uninterested if the United States, Canada and parts of Mexico are blacked-out without refrigeration and the vast majority of eighteen wheelers with their sensitive electronics fried and unable to move. Sickness, starvations and marauding gangs will be the rule of the day. Many military units will band together and take over a small fiefdom and rule like overlords until the Islamic forces arrive in number to complete the takeover, and they will not desire more than a mere five or six percent of the population to survive, if that. So, Mark, be ready to lose some weight before you get to hug your Jihadist and when you do let me know how well received a guy on guy hug worked out for you. In the meantime, it would behoove the American voters to find some form of reason and a military veteran or supporter to be President and preferably one with more sense than most of the candidates for President have shown in foreign policy as without a solid, hug free, foreign policy much of the free world will not make it to 2025 and even with a near perfect choice for President this time around does not guarantee American survival.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Deal that Assures a Nuclear Armed Iran

 

The one overriding fact which we have known and has been confirmed by multiple sources is that Iran has what they refer to as “R-265 spheroidal three-stage warheads” which are almost ready to load atop the Mullahs missiles within their nosecones. The Shabab-3 or Zelzal-3 missiles are renamed from their North Korean origins named No-dong-1 and Ro-dong 1 which were in turn basically renamed from their Soviet designed Scud B with later upgraded missiles being based on the Scud C and Scud D. The Shahab-3 or Zelzal-3 have been set to launch reaching Tel Aviv and delivering the warhead for an airburst detonation approximately 650 meters over the greater Tel Aviv metropolitan area. This would make this detonation closely replicate the atomic bombs detonations over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The accuracy of these warheads will depend greatly on whether they will be spin stabilized before reentry or simply allowed to tumble around their center of gravity upon reentry as the earliest of this variant of missile were designed to do. The reentry capabilities along with the possible use of GPS in the spun reentry advanced warhead having an accuracy of as close as within two-hundred meters and if simply using the tumbling reentry which would not have GPS capability would then drop the accuracy to approximately one kilometer. One does need to take into consideration that like horseshoes, nuclear devices have the quality that closeness counts quite heavily.

 

Iran was known to have had difficulties with their tumbling warheads self-destructing upon reentry. We can expect that this problem was eliminated either through stronger warhead construction or simply by designing warheads to spin upon reentry thus eliminating the problem caused by tumbling while also increasing accuracy, a double bonus. Further, if a Shahab-3 or Zelzal-3 were launched from western Iran, say Tabriz, Iran, then any variant of these missiles would have sufficient range to reach Tel Aviv and the updated version could easily make such a trip and would have sufficient range to be fired from downtown Tehran thus making a big show around such a launch. There are still unanswered questions about the advanced multi-stage missiles which Iran may have developed and their potential range. Such ICBMs would easily be capable of striking within the United States with some estimates placing even Chicago within the limits of the most advanced Iranian multi-stage missiles. It is also known that Russia shared with Iran their plans for a Super EMP device which is claimed to be easily placed atop any Iranian missile and not only having no interference with its range but as it is lighter than most other warheads, including conventional warheads, would actually permit for an increased range. It has been verified that Iran is capable of striking anywhere in Europe up to and including Paris with London just beyond their insured and validated missile capabilities. On the other hand, even should Iran not have yet to developed an actual ICBM capable of striking within the United States, Iran has allies in Central and South Americas who would bring much of the United States well within range though assembly and setting up such a rocket launch would likely be detected well before its launch.

 

The greatest fear of an Iranian strike on the continental United States would come from one of two sources; either the Iranians have developed a multi-stage or possibly a single stage ICBM with sufficient range to cover the distances from Tehran which is 9879 kilometers or 6139 miles or 5334 nautical miles to New York City, 10200 kilometers or 6338 miles or 5507 nautical miles to Washington D.C, 11846 kilometers or 7361 miles or 6396 nautical miles to San Francisco, 10880 kilometers or 6761 miles or 5875 nautical miles to St. Louis and lastly10755 kilometers or 6683 miles or 5807 nautical miles to the furthest point, Seattle, Washington in the northwest. Of course there is the fact that Iran has perfected the ability of launching one of their Shabab-3 or Zelzal-3 missiles from aboard a freighter camouflaged as carrying regular cargo in shipping containers which would place every last part of the United States within easy range and also not allow sufficient time for any coastal cities such as Boston, Baltimore, Washington D.C, New York City, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego and its Navy Base at Coronado, San Francisco and Seattle to react and implement anti-missile units into position to protect them from such attacks launched from less than fifty miles off the coast as the freighter would simply appear to be heading for the docks to download their cargo and then in a short transformation time become an active missile launching base with perhaps half a dozen or more missiles to attempt to launch at various targets before they were engaged by Air Force, Navy or Army air assets destroying the offending ship.

 

These frightening realities brings us back to the crux of the situation, the Iranian ability to covertly manufacture nuclear warheads for any of these systems and thus bring their mass chants of “Death to America! Death to Israel!” to fruition and by doing so place itself as the leader of the Muslim world, and more importantly placed all the Arab nations in a weakened position with their populations suddenly desiring to join the Shiite leaders of Iran giving up on the apparently weaker Sunni leaders. As we know, nothing succeeds like success and mortally wounding both the United States and Israel would definitely depict Iran as the strong horse, the stallion amongst a herd of neutered geldings. The supposed impossibility is for Iran to successfully conceal at some secret instillation a series of twenty or more cascaded super-sonic centrifuges spinning Uranium-Hexafluoride gas (UF6) with each centrifuge pulling its gas from the central cylinder of the previous centrifuge and spinning the slightly purer UF6 gas which allows the lighter isotope of Uranium 235 (U-235) from the heavier isotope of Uranium 238 (U-238) with each stage of the cascaded centrifuges makes its contribution of stripping away the U-238 spinning it to the sides of the centrifuge while leaving the U-235. Originally the Uranium Ore mined from the ground is made up of over 99% U-238 and mere traces of the desired U-235. The entire negotiations revolved around how Iran could be monitored thus making the production of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) impossible and easily detectable thus only permitting Iran to enrich their ore to make Uranium that is of a low enrichment no higher than twenty percent and very little of that with much of their Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) limited to five percent or three percent which can be used solely in their reactors and also used in medical procedures which may use enriched Uranium as high as twenty-percent.

 

According to President Obama, there now exists, thanks to United States Secretary of State John Kerry, an agreement which “has reached an historic understanding with Iran which, if fully implemented, will prevent it from a nuclear weapon.” President Obama continued convincingly claiming, “I am convinced that if this framework leads to a final comprehensive deal it will make our country, our allies and our world safer.” President Obama literally lit up as he boasted, “Today after many months…we have achieved the framework for…(a) deal, and it is a good deal, a deal that meets our core objectives,” he stipulated that it cuts off every pathway to developing a nuclear weapon. Continuing along I was worried that the American negotiators were going to simply roll over on every point simply to give President Obama a foreign policy achievement which would cover three pathways to prevent Iran attaining nuclear weapons. The first pathway blocked was the Arak Heavy Water reactor where Iran will not be permitted to collect and process the spent rods allowing them to process Plutonium. Iran has also agreed to never build another heavy water facility. The second pathway involved Iran simply only being permitted using one-third of their existing centrifuges, closing its Fordo Plant for the next ten years. Further, Iran must not stockpile materials required for building a nuclear weapon for the next 15 years. They must also neutralize any Uranium making it useless in the manufacture of a nuclear weapon. Iran has theoretically agreed upon a twenty year full inspection routine which is presumably so invasive and thorough that should Iran transgress on any of the former items that the world will know of it long before the Iranians are able to reach building a nuclear weapon. That begs the question as to what if the inspections is where they renege, then the world would be blind to any other forbidden acts or clandestine work towards the manufacture of a weapon.

 

The entire framework depends on Iran permitting free and untethered inspections of their every platform where it is suspected that work towards a nuclear device is progressing. The agreement also depends on Iran being at least a full year away from its breakout point, something where Israel disagrees claiming they have approximately six weeks or less to a breakout point thus making many of the points stressed by President Obama appear optimistic. This so-called framework also depends on the fact that President Obama and the Iranians agree on exactly what each word of terminology actually mean and the definition of every term. This framework is also still months or even years from being an actual agreement and meanwhile the Iranians are refusing to answer direct questions from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), continuing to spin their centrifuges including those at Fordo, and working on any unfinished items on their way to a nuclear weapon. There is many a slip ‘twixt the spoon and the tongue. This has proven to be excessively valid when dealing with the Iranians. They have often come back after agreeing to stipulated terms and explained that what the P5+1 thought some phrase means is not even close to what the Iranians interpreted as the meaning. It is very similar to Princess Bride when the Spaniard, Inigo Montoya, stated to Vizzini, “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.” The Iranians have already backtracked when confronted with actual implementation on previous agreements claiming that there must have been an unfortunate misunderstanding which will then entail weeks of straightening out a misunderstanding claimed by Iran and by the time everything has been reworded properly the entire section of the agreement will have been basically neutered and rewritten to favor the Iranians progressing to wholesale production of nuclear weapons. My fears is that in these negotiations that the United States will have proven by the end that they have been completely hoodwinked and made to appear bonkers with Iran getting everything they desired when all is said and done and every paper signed making a furious roar but signifying nothing. The question the world should figure out is who will be the first victim once Iran has nuclear weapons, Israel, the United States or possibly Saudi Arabia or Egypt. That is the question which has the experts completely vexed and unknowing each giving their own expert advice, my not so expert advice is first will be the United States and it will prevent their retaliating while they start frantically attempting to restore the power grid with minimal fatalities allowing Iran a free hand to accomplish whatever their evil little heart’s desire. After taking out the United States from the game, the Iranians will know that they have built the world’s largest deliverable nuclear stockpile and then they will begin to start using them to attain their own ends. When Iran starts down this path using their nuclear devices, then the world will understand true chaos meant to facilitate their ends and opening the world to such chaos in order to bring on the Twelfth Imam. These negotiations are actually Iran buying time while they assemble their nuclear arsenal and plot the best way to maximize the effects and ramifications of their utilizing all of their weapons in order to cement their place as the new hegemonic power in the world. The Iranians, especially their rulers, are set upon returning Iran to the glories and conquests of the entire world as had their forefathers, the Persians. This is also another reason that the Iranians desire to conquer or at least defeat the Americans as they are seen as the new Greek empire because of their governance using so many of the Greek concepts of democracy and republic. The time to start worrying is when the Iranians complete their talking as that means they are done with talking and now believe it is the time for them to act. That will be the time to have your plans ready as the Iranians will be committed to accomplishing theirs and that you can bet on and take it to the bank.

 

Beyond the Cusp