Coming Failure of Paris Accords With or Without United States

 

There has been a huge amount of clamoring since President Trump pulled the United States from the Paris Climate Accord. Claims that this will guarantee it will fail are farcical at best and sheer straight-faced lies at worst. The Paris Climate Accord will stand or fail on its own merits. The reason for the commotion is due to the loss of being able to point an accusatory finger at the United States and excusing every other nation failing on the fact that the United States also failed and apparently their failure was worse than these other failing nations thus giving them room for excuses. Here is a little secret which is seldom if ever stated, anybody can easily predict which nations will fail and which will actually reach or exceed their Paris Accord numbers and it is easy. Simply determine whether each nation has a growing or declining economy. Those nations with a growing economic output will fail to reach their set goals and those whose economic indicators are in decline, they will be able to reach their set goals. The reason for this being the indicator is with a higher economic output a nation will require increasing energy while a declining economic outlook will lead to their lessening their energy needs. It really is that easy.

 

So, now you ask if there would be some way of taking this into consideration. The truth is that it would be very easy and could be done by altering the means by which the carbon output is calculated. Instead of simply measuring the total carbon footprint and simply using that gross output without taking anything else into consideration, the measurement should be measured against GDP and population. The solution is to take this total output and divide the number by some version of GDP or other economic measure such that you end up with carbon footprint per unit of economic production. This is the true measure of the advance or lack of addressing pollution and its controls on a scale, which is fair and places everybody on an equal measuring basis. But this is not the reason for these ecology agreements like the Paris Accord or the Kyoto Protocols. They have little concern when it comes to bringing pollution and carbon footprints into order and lessening the actual pollution; otherwise, there would be stiffer demands made of countries such as Brazil, India and China. Taking China as an example, it has been found that China is estimated to have released nearly twice the carbon emissions as the United States and around two and a half times the European Union. Yet China is usually given a pass or an inflated target which allows them to continue at their higher levels without embarrassment. The real reason for these climate change and impact treaties is to force the industrialized world to transfer their manufacturing output and production to the third world and thus transfer a large percentage of the new wealth from the industrialized world to the third world. There are a number of problems with this concept and much of it has to do with actually cleaning the environment, something such a transfer would increase the carbon emissions by many fold, potentially as high as a ten-fold increase.

 

Perhaps it is time to inspect many of these undesirable effects such as a transfer of production from the developed world to the developing world would produce. While many nations in the industrialized world have decreasing carbon emissions per unit of economic output, the developing nations would have a steady and unchanging or slightly increasing carbon emissions per unit of economic output as they would continue using coal fired plants and many of the new ones they would require in order to facilitate increased industrialization would be hastily built coal burning plants with little if any sanitizing of the output and transferring carbon emissions straight and untreated into the atmosphere and any other pollutant the new manufacturing would produce would potentially end up in the land or waters also untreated plus the increases of other pollutants such as nitrates and phosphates and other dangerous gasses and water pollutants. Much of this is because these nations do not have the necessary infrastructure to treat and control such forms of pollution and currently do not have the current infrastructure and technology. Due to lack of capital these undeveloped nations have largely agricultural economies and thus depend mostly on coal fired electric generation as this is the least expensive to construct and also the least expensive to operate thus the most production for the least outlay. These nations being forcibly pressed into increasing manufacturing capability over a short period of time rather than gradually allowing for increasing capital paralleling the increasing manufacturing forces them to have to use the least expensive power generation systems to meet the large increase in electrical demand. On the other hand, if allowed to slowly and naturally, then there would be a general increase in revenue as the initial manufacturing is built allowing for any new power generation to be implemented with carbon suppressing equipment such as scrubbers. Then as industrial output increases, the nation can handle it in stages with better planning. Slow and steady is better than forced feeding.

 

For some reality about the United States, we can realize that if every nation could match the United States going forward, then we would have progress in reduction of carbon emissions in a real sense, measured emissions per unit of economic output. This is best displayed using graphs. This graph depicts the carbon emissions per person from energy production from 1960 through 2012. There is one fact which bears keeping in mind exactly what this graph depicts. This is actually two graphs in one, the 1960 through around 1985 and then 1985 through 2012. The end period of both segments shows dropping per capita carbon emissions released in the energy generation industries. There was a reason that the per capita increase after about 1985 was due to the general use of air conditioning plus the movement of people from the north into the south as there was a general migration as airconditioning became less expensive. Additionally, with the end of the 1980’s began the computer revolution and the electronics revolution. The per capita energy use began to explode as the per household electrical demands took off with entertainment systems replacing small televisions and often two such systems in an average upper middle class home. Add in two, three, four or more computers per household and more kitchen appliances and more and more electronics and the power consumption kept climbing yet the increase in carbon emissions was finally reduced to a point where despite each household used four, five, six or possibly ten times the electrical use per household compared to the usage in 1960 and the carbon emissions increased by less than one-tenth. Despite this phenomenal increase in electrical demand there was very little increased in actual carbon emissions release per person. This is one means of making the total carbon emissions make more sense by measuring it against something that also represents demand, which represents actual people and their usage is what is being measured.

 

 

Another means for measuring and giving it more meaning rather than simple gross carbon emissions alone is to measure total greenhouse emissions per person, against GDP and with showing populations and GDP from 1990 through 2014. While both populations and GDP increase, both greenhouse emissions measured per person and per unit of GDP decreased from 1990 through 2014, which is impressive. All of this and the different measures of the United States is all well and good, but is what the United States has accomplished at all impressive? That is an excellent question which is also best answered with more graphs.

 

 

Let us now see how China, the European Union and the United States compare in total carbon dioxide emissions with projections into the next decade plus. The comparison is stark and also reveals what we spoke about earlier, if the world were really serious about greenhouse emissions, they would be less concerned with President Trump pulling the United States out of an agreement which is more about transferring wealth from the developed world to the third world and the developing world, in particular China, India, central and southern Africa, South America and much of Asia.

 

Total Carbon Dioxide Emissions for China Compared to European Union and United States

 

The reality is the global emissions accords have worked in sending many hundreds if not thousands of manufacturers to build their plants in China to the point that China was building more than one large coal fired generating plant per month with some estimates putting it at one such plant per week. Such a rate of production of generating plants does not leave much room for building more than the generation plant and little as far as carbon suppression or mitigation equipment. When China sponsored the Olympics in Beijing, it was necessary to all but close shop on all the local manufacturing and request that residents not use air conditioning and other unnecessary electronic equipment and devices. These steps were taken so that the power company could shut down the majority of their power plants starting with those closest to the Olympic camp only restarting some to power the Olympic park and events themselves. This did manage to improve the air quality in Beijing such that the athletes would not be adversely affected due to competing in the Olympics. As a side benefit, the people of Beijing were treated to almost six weeks of clean air which was probably their greater joy and probably had them wishing they could sponsor the Olympics constantly.

 

The Truth About the Air in Beijing and Breathing Masks

 

The above picture shows two young women and one of the Red Guards stationed outside the Forbidden City in Beijing on the right and a breakdown of some of the chemicals that are found in the air in the city. It also tells of the history and how horrific the air quality can reach when the winds die and the pollution accumulates. Having driven into Denver in August when there are often temperature inversions and a reddish-brown bowl sat over the city in the late 1970’s and having read in the late 1960’s how people were safer to breathe through an unlit cigarette (some even claimed a lit cigarette) rather than breathing the air straight as the pollution was making air quality so horrible. I was in Cleveland in late June of 1969 when the Cuyahoga River caught fire, yes, the river caught fire, and burned for quite a distance (see video below). During that time period, Lake Erie was so filled with nitrates and phosphates that the plant life literally made the lake impossible for supporting fish. These were the days when the United States had its worst pollution and industry began to clean up their acts. Power plants installed scrubbers and manufacturers began filtering and treating their wastewater before permitting them to flow into rivers and streams. What people will claim is that government forced them to clean up their acts with the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. The truth is fortunately different. The American public began demanding that Congress do something about the problem and by the time they finally agreed upon what legislation to pass, industry had surpassed their legislated levels by a fair margin with some specific, and often too spectacular, exceptions, which did need persuading. This was the reality; industry even began using their efforts in their advertising in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. So, once again we had Congress passing legislation to close the barn door after the horses had escaped, been rounded up, returned to the paddock and the barn door closed and locked. Then the Congressional representatives ran for reelection bragging about how they saved America from becoming a polluted wasteland. The truth is all too often Congress passes legislation addressing a problem after the problem has passed and then claim they fixed it for the next decade or two.

 

 

There is pollution in the world and some of it is dangerous. In Brazil, farmers will burn down square miles of rainforest in order to make farmland they can work, as that is cheaper than trying to buy existing lands. China we have talked about but India is not that far behind them and the Ganges River, which many Indians wash themselves in because the waters are presumed to be blessed and sacred, are instead actually dangerous. The danger levels of the water increase ever mile that one gets closer to its exit into the Indian Ocean. The world would be better served if the third world and developing world were first introduced to modern farming techniques so they could increase yields and feed their people at a lesser cost. By increasing their agricultural output, their economic situation would improve. There should also be work to improve their governance such that they become rule by law and not by man. The laws must apply equally to all including the rulers as other than the Queen and Queen’s Mother in England, nobody is above the law (actually neither are the royals in England though they probably are in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and so forth). Once they have an improved agricultural economy then they can begin to improve their industrial base and with assistance in building clean energy plants, they can do this with minimal decrease, if any, in air and water quality. This is something that should be done properly and in stages and with each nation brought forward only once they have good governance.

 

The age where dictators and their cronies are made wealthy charging for food and other relief sent by the developed world while the people remain hungry, ill, lacking medical care, and impoverished while Big Cheese Who Cares reaps in millions of dollars. Probably the prime example of this is in Gaza with Hamas and with the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas and his gang of merry terrorists. Yes, the developed world has a responsibility to lead and to do so properly and with respect and dignity given to all people. Further, the developed world has a responsibility to share their knowledge and experience in governance to improve the world and spread the rule by laws over other systems which keep people impoverished while their governing classes drive Mercedes on the nations’ dirt roads. Finally, the United Nations has proven completely incapable of performing these tasks and perhaps a new international group of developed democratic nations which can lead and assist the developing and third world nations and provide a message and example through which these nations will desire to learn and progress and have their development made in such a manner that their environment remains clean and their progress performed in proper and planned stages bringing them forward at a pace which matches their ability to develop clean power and their education systems produce a working class capable of the technologies as they are introduced. We believe here at BTC through examples of how such programs have been completed successfully in agricultural development such as this one in Kenya, Ethiopia and elsewhere, medical progress such as providing training and equipment for hospitals to perform surgeries on children with heart problems and other similar programs that these things done properly are doable if only people and nations are willing to make the efforts. Please do check these last links as they depict what is possible and is being accomplished through efforts of people who care for all people.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Lord George Weidenfeld Repays Debt of Life and Other News

 

With all of the threats of war, nuclear proliferation and other threats to Israel and the rest of the world, especially in the Middle East, it was absolutely refreshing to read a story in the Times of Israel titled Holocaust survivor repays ultimate debt via rescue of Syrian Christians about life and the repayment of the gift of life from World War II and a Jew, Lord George Weidenfeld, who was saved from Nazi tyranny and certain death by groups of Christians repaying that debt by rescue of forty-two Syrian Christian families. Under a veil of utmost secrecy, the one-hundred-forty-nine people were taken from lands under the control of the Islamic State’s tyrannical oppression and threat to all Christians and even other Muslims found to be of other than their strict Sunni doctrines, even other Sunni found to be lacking or deficient in their devoutness by any act whether intentional or merely singular lapse, and taken to Poland via Lebanon in a rescue of which hopefully further such are planned. The short version reads more like a Hollywood script where starting in 1938 Austria a group of Christians saved nineteen-year-old George Weidenfeld whisking him out of Vienna to the United Kingdom. Obviously the young lad made good, after all he has been knighted and thus the title Lord George Weidenfeld (pictured below). He is now repaying that debt and the first installment was the saving of these forty-two families. Please visit and read the even at the expense of reading on here as the Times deserves the hits and I am but an unworthy messenger. The specifics which could be made public are to be found in the Times telling.

 

 

Lord George Weidenfeld Holocaust survivor spearhead rescue forty two Christian families from Islamic State territory repaying debt of life with lives

 

 

Quoting 95-year-old Lord George Weidenfeld, who is spearheading the venture, from the article reporting his statement explaining the actions his group initiated with valuable assistance by the British branch of the Jewish National Fund, “We have been deeply moved by the plight of Christians in conflict-torn Middle East countries, and we are supporting the transfer of Christian families to safe havens where they can lead normal lives,” Lord Weidenfeld stated further, “In the 1930s thousands of Jews, mainly women and children, were helped by Christians who took enormous personal risks to save them from certain death. We owe a debt of gratitude.” There is far more including comments from leaders of the British branch of the Jewish National Fund as well as from Sir Charles Hoare, who has advised the Barnabas Fund not to mention the rest of the story.

 

I wanted to take a reprieve from the constant drumbeat of largely discussing the horrors which are the news of the world today as it has always been. The old adage of “If it bleeds, it leads” still holds true today. Take a quick glance at the newsstand and read a few above the fold headlines and it is almost always the same, death, injury, horrific events and worse. Stories such as the above seldom make it into Section A of print media. Perhaps that is the one advantage of the online experience, you search the news and you usually get what you were seeking and it is as if it was the lead on page one as to view the rest you need click the news logo to see the actual front page, but why ruin the idea that the feel-good story, the heroic story, the repayment of life with life story as the front page in your version of the news. But unfortunately we need talk about the threats, the world that we are leaving for our children, grandchildren and for the very fortunate to have lived long enough, the great-grandchildren. Sure we take relief every now and then for a story like the above or to talk of great achievements in medicine which make horrific disease treatable or completely preventable or those developments that enhance and prolong life as well as youth and the ever fascinating exploration of space, the final frontier unless you are talking to a marine biologist, then the last frontier is the Mariana Trench and especially the Challenger Deep at the southern end of that trench which is approximately one mile deeper than Mount Everest is above sea level, simply put; if Mount Everest sat placed in the middle of the Challenger Deep you would need to dive over one mile down to reach the summit of Everest and continue the near six miles further to the deepest point of Challenger Deep. The first explorers to descend to the deepest part of the oceans, the Challenger Deep, were U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh and Swiss oceanographer and engineer Jacques Piccard aboard the bathyscaphe Trieste in 1960 and were the only two men to view literally the bottom of the world any time before the twenty-first century. Now one more intrepid explorer has joined the names of humans to reach and view the Challenger Deep when in March of 2012, Cameron, diving solo in Deepsea Challenger, replicated the U.S. Navy’s Bathyscaphe Trieste’s 1960 dive of nearly 11 kilometers (7 miles) into Challenger Deep. Now both the Deepsea Challenger and the Trieste are now on display at the Navy Yard housed in the National Museum of the United States Navy, a fitting tribute.

 

Now, catching up, we return to that horrific front page story we had not yet talked about, the Chattanooga, Tennessee shooting rampage which left four Marines killed and three others wounded as well as a police officer shot in the ankle during the attack. The four Marines were identified as Carson Holmquist, Thomas Sullivan, Skip Wells and David Wyatt. Their Islamist murderer, Kuwaiti-born, Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, age 24, and not a year more, reported to have initially shot at the Armed Forces Career Center off Lee Highway from his convertible around 10:45 that morning then drove to the Naval Reserve support center, where he killed the four Marines and wounded another three. Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez was killed after police intervened and shot him dead. We would like to thank police officers who assisted in ending this saga taking the appropriate steps to protect the community and further to save the nation from what would have been a mockery of the memory of the four upstanding pillars of their communities, these four marines, as during a trial we would have been subjected to the news about the unfortunate, troubled, conflicted and complicated life which the perpetrator tuned soulful and reflective victim of the pressures and discords of being a follower of Islam in the intolerant community replete with often unnecessary hatefulness shown their community oft appearing to ostracize its members. We would have faced attempts to explain the twisted logic that the Marines represented the force, often disproportional force the United States projected during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan adding to the uncomfortable influence American military members who spent downtime resting in Kuwait either incoming or leaving the theater making the clash of cultures unnecessarily displayed. There would have been numerous articles in the mainstream media attempting to justify the unjustifiable. Meanwhile, these Marines leave behind families, loved ones and numerous others whose lives they have graced. Pictures of these people and the Marines who loved them and are still loved by them can be viewed here as well as some additional information.

 

This story links to the ramifications of the recently completed negotiations that formulated the path to nuclear parity with the United States and other members of the nuclear arms capable nations for Iran. This agreement which dare not be perceived in any way as being an actual bonafide treaty has numerous provisions which will slowly leak into the public discourse be it a little too late to afford changes. While the Congress has sixty days in which to review the one-hundred-fifty-nine pages that we edited removing much of the superfluous formatting which we are sure was a part of the confusion interjected in order to mask some of the more immediately threatening as well as down the road allowances and impositions on the United States and Europe which can be reviewed at link below:

Entire Edited for ease of Reading Transcript of Iran Nuclear Agreement with the P5+1 Group

Some of the more detrimental giveaways included in the agreement we pointed out but need repeating as well as additional revelations. There is the offer by both the European Union and the United States to provide expert assistance in removing any detrimental software which the Iranian systems may still have on their control networks and even individual computers. Included in some of the detrimental software, some refer to them as viruses and other have more descriptive names for them, is the Stuxnet invasive software which permitted cyber-attacks repeatedly and potentially still provided these options if remnants of the code remained after Iran supposedly cleansed their software. Additionally this will include updating the Iranian systems with anti-virus and other protective software some of which was likely written in Israel and adopted by the United States cyber-security governmental institutions. The United States has promised to also assist Iran with designing superior centrifuge technology bringing them on par with United States enrichment capabilities. Further security systems and protocols will be provided by the P5+1 nations to Iran as well as other wondrous enhancements to the Iranian uranium refinement systems. But wait, there’s more.

 

Within five to eight years the Iranians will be freed from restrictions on buying and selling military systems and hardware. Since the Iranians firmly believe that the agreement meant to say these releases from all restrictions are immediate, we can assume that Iran will at a minimum use some discretion in their procurement of arms as if they found it necessary to avoid direct signs of ignoring presumed restrictions, something they have had ample practice and become quite accomplished at putting in practice. Then there is the one-hundred-fifty-billion signing bonus as I am sure President Obama thought for a moment he was signing a new forward for the Chicago Bulls. Further into the maze where items are often written in officialese for lack of clarity, which is actually quite specific and clear when compared to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), the United States agreed that all efforts are to be taken to protect Iranian military secrets, to avoid actions which might be interpreted as being too invasive, especially on sites which have been determined by Iran to be limited access points beyond which military activities take place.

 

So, the area where weapons are being produced, potentially nuclear weapons are being fashioned can be made off-limits to weapons inspectors thus shielding such production. This production could include all or part of this sequence to a modern thermonuclear device. Such an undertaking begins with taking raw uranium ore dissolving the uranium into Yellowcake also known as Uranium Hexafluoride ( UF6 ), then placing the gaseous mixture into the first centrifuge in a sufficiently long cascade such that at the end of the process the gas contains highly-enriched uranium (HEU) of around ninety-five-percent, also known as weapons grade. A few steps more and one has sufficient HEU to manufacture a fissile core which is useable as is for a simple fission bomb or with a small amount more and other rarified such as lithium deuteride fuel for the secondary core, the polystyrene foam or other material which can be transformed into a plasma with great expansive properties for surrounding the secondary core and the special metals used to focus the forces by having exacting specifications and tooling. Getting all the components tooled to tight specifications and virtually no room for error and then when detonated the high explosives the primary uranium bombards the core while the heat transforms the polystyrene into a plasma providing additional compressions where the lithium deuteride fuel is highly compressed and heated to temperatures approaching those of the core of the sun. The lithium-6 atom splits into one tritium atom and one alpha particle when heated and bombarded by protons released from the primary atomic bomb detonation. Finally the fusion reaction is instrumented forcing the produced tritium and the deuterium to fuse producing more neutrons and a great amount of additional neutrons which causes the Uranium 238 to undergo fusion causing even more energy and energy here means explosion.

 

Just as the invasion of Iraq on the intel that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear program despite sanction placed on his regime after the first Gulf War caused several regimes to come clean and actually assist IAEA and others to remove their related weapons sites, the surrender in-Toto by President Obama will now have the opposite affect causing nuclear programs to sprout throughout the world, especially in the third world where might still makes right and they live more in the strategies of Machiavelli than Sun Tzu or Clausewitz where the sublime ruled over the direct fist-in-the-face tactics of the Prince. This will be dangerous enough should even drug cartels find and re-appropriate nuclear weapons from a national armory to their personal armory but the spread of nuclear arms in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) will mean the next time some terrorist group lights the fuse on an additional conflict that the result may be far more civilian casualties than the United Nations ever could ignore. Despite the possibility coming to fruition that Hamas, Islamic State or Hezballah procure or be gifted a nuclear device, or worse, a thermonuclear device, and manage to detonate it from the top of a Tel Aviv eight layer parking garage in center city at two-thirty in the afternoon, exactly what would constitute a disproportional response from Israel. Would Israel dropping one of their weapons over Tehran should the bomb be traced back from Hamas or Hezballah to Iran be considered disproportional? Would a dull coordinated assault on, should the bomb come from Gaza and Hamas, a full on assault from the north to the southern end of Gaza pushing every man, woman, child, goat, sheep, dog, cat, puppy and kitten until the final two-hundred meters were all that was left and then offer to pay every family or individual cash willing to relocate somewhere outside the lands between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River never to return, or if it be Hezballah a full on assault pressing every living soul with minimal exception across the Litani River, would these be disproportional? My bet is immediately after such a calamity the entire world would be threatening Israel to be calm and not to overreact and to wait until the United Nations had addressed the situation. Are there any takers on a bet that this would be the immediate response from the world? Let us first pray that such a scenario ever comes to pass or a nuclear device ever find its way into being used ever again. The horrors and devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the second most disturbing results of World War II with the death camps being the most horrific of horrors.

 

The chance of a war in the MENA area where nuclear weapons are used as the first strike weapon of choice or the immediate retaliator weapon as the assaulted nation knows their military might is absolutely insufficient to wage a war with their aggressor and that their sole chance to survive is to end the war with an immediate strike with nuclear weapons. Whatever the reason, at some point one side will see the writing on the wall and be facing a devastating takeover from a hostile force which if their main religious observances are different could mean inquisition style cleansing of the population and another massacre for religious purity. When, it is generally agreed that it has been answered by the agreement reached earlier this week, then that result will very likely be tied directly into the surrender before the Iranian path to their nuclear weapons and a signal that the United States no longer enforces the NPT (Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty) and that the road to nuclear weapons has been blown wide open. Does anybody doubt that if the Sudan had nuclear weapon amongst its arsenal that they would have delayed using it in the southlands for one minute? What if Boko Haram were to get their hands on some nuclear weapons, what would be the fate of Nigeria, Cameroon and the rest of that region. The horrific scenarios are enough to boggle one’s mind while frightening their socks off. These few little mentions in the agreement along with a release of funds almost beyond reason in amounts that when included in the added revenues now that Iran can sell oil to anybody at any time brings the totals well into trillions of Euros or Dollars, the measuring currency does not diminish the amount. Even if the terms were to freeze Iran for fifteen years, a full five years beyond the usually touted number of a decade, does anybody honestly believe that anything will have changed, that they will not be having their “Death to America rallies across the lands and led by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or even the next Supreme Leader will honestly change their positions. The only change would be their no longer chanting “Death to Israel” because their news programs had already announced Israel was destroyed. This may not mean Israel was even scratched but they were told that the news continuing as if Israel still existed was all part of a Zionist plot and just as Egypt celebrates their glorious victories over Israel in June of 1967 and October of 1973, Iran will pick an empty date where they have a prolonged break between holidays and at the opposite end of the year from Ramadan to celebrate the day Israel died. Israel still exists and not a single blade of grass was scorched but the Iranians remember the gripping coverage lasting almost three days before ultimate victory by a super-secret military group even more clandestine and more highly trained than even the Quds forces. The Iranians will immediately be allowed to import advanced missiles and the United States is promised to assist Iran in their development of anti-missile and anti-aircraft and anti-cruise missile systems in order to secure Iranian airspace from any potential attack on their nuclear sites. They will also be free to purchase tanks, aircraft, advanced fighters, advanced naval vessels, and any other weapons systems they desire with very few limitations, so few that nobody appears is aware of any. This will likely lead to Iran possessing ICBMs capable of striking anywhere on the planet within about twenty-five meters accuracy which with nuclear weapons and cluster munitions is close enough. Is there a term for this kind of complete and utter fecklessness combined with malicious intent against one’s own country and arming the enemy and releasing or easing almost to the point of release sanction and implementing the most superficial inspection routines which were tried with more vigorous implementation against North Korea which led them to nuclear weapons in under a year despite their research at that time being less advanced than is the Iranian program, is there a term for such? Of course there is. Traitorous, treason, perfidy, treachery, sedition, double-crossing, double-dealing, and I believe that name Judas Iscariot also went with such actions though Judas performed a greater betrayal than simply a nation; but going forth I am sure that when somebody betrays their country they will be able to add the name of Barack Obama to the names such as Guy Fawkes, Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Mordechai Vanunu, Ephialtes of Trachis; and now history will tell if Barack Hussein Obama will be added to this list of notables.

 

Beyond the Cusp

Welcoming NORAD Back to Cheyenne Mountain

 

The United States military has decided that the conditions are currently of sufficient threat that they have decided to send NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) to scurry back to the warm confines of the Cheyenne Mountain complex and its independently supplied internal electricity generations and grounded steel walls where they have no susceptibility to an EMP pulse no matter the degree of severity, even the most fearsome solar storm which might char and disintegrate the entire North American electronic grid. Apparently the decision to reposition to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs has struck a snag or two or more. They claimed the savings and ease of commute made the move economic and practical sense, especially as the Cold War had past and there is no overriding threat demanding they continue using a base which provides the level of protection as the Cheyenne Mountain Facility. Well, well, what could have occurred to alter that line of reasoning and should the average American be concerned, well, concerned at least as much as the military and the commanding staff of NORAD apparently are being. Perhaps if we view the reasoning we can decide exactly how much of a threat there is and whether serious concern might be necessary.

 

The reason announced by the military for returning NORAD was that it is now feared that the North Koreans and potentially their allies in Iran have perfected miniaturizing of their nuclear warheads and might place one atop a North Korean mobile KN-08 mobile launch vehicle. This sent the military command of NORAD scurrying within one of the world’s safest locations deep within Cheyenne Mountain buried deeply under a few thousand feet of rock, mostly granite, and encased in steel and concrete with two sets of blast doors unrivaled, one backing the other making a double door with a dead space between them to absorb any force which might manage to pierce the outer door. These blast doors close making the tunnel reaching the Cheyenne Mountain a perfect arc opened at both ends so as to pass and blast-wave from a nuclear or other device detonated near either entrance an easily followed natural flow-path right through the mountain, past the blast doors, and on out the other side. The Cheyenne Mountain location not only easily houses the necessary personnel to cover and maintain their functions without break along with their families and a full garrison of Marines but also hold the supplies that would permit operating completely closed-off safe from any attack, especially any nuclear or EMP attack. We described a means by which both Iran and North Korea could launch and use a weakness in the radar protection and by mimicking the orbit of a weather satellite, an orbit both nations have used previously for launches, near the end in the final paragraph of our article titled, ”Is North Korea Sabre Rattling for Attention or Real Threat?”

 

There are further reasons for moving NORAD back to its original safely, armored, buried, EMP proof and self-supporting location which they abandoned in favor of easier access as they have been monitoring since 2013 as reported by an ABC News reporting coverage from 2013 by Martha Raddatz ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent which can be viewed below. Needless to say that placing NORAD back where they should never have left will be a far cry from ending the threats from a nuclear armed North Korea, who has been threatening a nuclear EMP first strike against the United States, or Iran as they also could use such weaponry to cover far more evil intents than just striking NORAD. There is the possibility that either Iran or North Korea could launch at a closer target causing just as much harm on the global scale and have a dastardly effect on the world or the United States. North Korea has regularly threatened their South Korean neighbors and even regularly launched rockets into their waters and threatened far worse. Iran, on the other hand, has threatened not only the United States but also Israel, Saudi Arabia and other of her neighbors. Iran is currently engaged in three wars already, there is the Syrian Civil War where Iran and their terror allies of Hezballah fight the plethora of Sunni militias all having some degree of attachment to al-Qaeda or other terrorist organization, fighting in Iraq against ISIS, a Sunni terrorist organization which follows a strident version of the Quran by which they have destroyed numerous historic relics and other precious items claiming that because they were objects which they determined were un-Islamic and thus unworthy of being displayed and especially considered precious or of any value to the human race, and now Yemen where they are arming the Houthis and may even provide them with intelligence as well as command and control assistance.

 

 

 

 

The threats made by the likes of the Ayatollahs of Iran and those made by Kim Jong-un are usually merely saber rattling meant for domestic consumption and to give the people faith that their nation is able to stand against anybody. The fact that they get media coverage as well bolsters the belief making them appear more important. The other problem is that in many ways the leadership of both Iran and North Korea actually do mean those threats they make and would act upon them if they felt they were readily executable. This makes the North Korean threats to use a hydrogen bomb on the United States as an EMP generator to destroy the North American electronic grid far more serious. The fact that these leaders continue to allow their people to suffer unnecessary hardships due largely to their leaderships’ threats of warmongering which leads their nations to face sanctions is just as monstrous and evil as one can get. The further fact that they and their coterie live lives of lavish excess eating caviar, roast duck and champagne while their people, especially the people of North Korea, starve or make do with tree bark and grass soups can only be defined by Evil as the word for such extravagances and lavish life styles and the unbelievable difference between the lives of the privileged few enjoy as compared to the lives of their military members is only exceeded by the further difference approaching the same scale between the lives of apparent excess lived by the members of the military compared to the veterans and the population as a whole. The members of the military are not the problem as in many cases parents push their children towards the military such that they can have a better level of life than the parents had suffered. These radical differences exist almost as a caste system between the political leadership at the top, the military in between and the population and the elderly living lives beyond any desperations than most of us are capable of even imagining, let alone understanding. The most absolute depravity is displayed with the fact that the North Korean elite actually will make these threats and back them through actions which if ignored might actually lead to the North Korean leadership in particular to reigniting the state of war which continues to exist between the North and South Korea simply to hold talks where along with the demands from the leadership is also requests for food and other aid to be given the people to prevent even more deaths due to starvation, malnutrition, and the desperate lack of medical attention to treat and care for the people.

 

What makes these situations even more horrific is that these conditions are not all that uncommon throughout many of the third world nations. Contrary to the apparent belief, very few if any of these situations would be alleviated by changing their governance to a democracy as this would simply result in their electing the elites back into power. The first step the world needs to take also is not necessarily food aid and other such generosities as providing such aid deprives the farmers of a local market for their produce which results in their requiring aid because they are unable to sell their produce. Where aid most likely will be required to feed the entire population, the farmers must also be able to market their produce. The kind of aid which would go the furthest would be to allow corporations to set up factories and thus provide a basis for an economy and set the nation on the road towards a functioning economic base which is currently nonexistent. These factories also need to provide jobs not solely in the major cities but throughout these nations. Currently many of these nations lack even a rudimentary base for economic production which stands between them and receiving such investments.

 

Of course there are indicators that these problems may be coming to what are currently considered first world nations as the economic bubbles have begun to deflate one after the other and in some economies the house of cards is already collapsing. This is evidenced in Europe where the attempt to place all nations on a single currency has simply led to exposing the disparate economic models causing economic collapse as this unitary currency system collapses where had these nations retained their own currencies then there economies could have survived these downturns as their currency would have been permitted to respond to the change in their economic situation according to each individual nation allowing for a more favorable return on investments which cannot be had under the unified currency of the Euro. That their currency was beyond their control simply exasperated their financial difficulties and making any response simply beyond their control as they have no means of altering the value of the currency to respond to the situation and difficulties faced. This problem was unavoidable for as long as each nation was permitted to set their financial and economic policies while sharing a single currency. This removed their ability to control the single most important item in their economies, the cost of labor. Once the cost of labor separated sufficiently from the values set for the Euro itself made the problem become irreconcilable. These problems which are only growing while those nations with healthy economies are increasingly pressed to support the less wealthy nations within the European Union in particular, and to an extent throughout the third world, the difficulties are only going to be pushed to a point where the whole financial constructs begins to fray to the point where there are no longer solutions under the current systems. In too many cases simply continuing to patch the problems while ignoring the central causes will lead to what we would call the “point of exasperation” which is where the nations giving support are brought down as the cost and needs for support reach levels beyond any reconciliation and all hope is lost and the people then turn to their governance and demand relief leading all too probably to revolutions where the violence makes even the hope for investment to flee and refuse to make investments where such expenditures are the only hope for salvation and the start of normalcy.

 

Still, where is one to take the first step towards addressing the problems, and in the case of North Korea even coming to grip with the reality the people face, and after making that assessment then turning the nation around and giving the people hope. There exists no single solution though in many cases it is the leadership’s setting of priorities which has simply aggravated the situation leading to a downward cycle which results eventually, if permitted to continue, to the unsettling set of conditions in North Korea. Solutions, and not just feel-good knee-jerk reacting, must be found and those solutions are not pumping food and funds as simply feeding the hungry for a week, a month is not going to provide the hope and the means for the people to help themselves which is so desperately what is needed. In many of these situations there exists a disparity where the very wealthy live almost in a different world than do the masses. These situations are of a kind which led to revolutions which is what eventually led to the changes in the Western world though not all nations benefitted fully from the gains made since the industrial revolution and now the information age. The efforts to attempt to bring a third world nation into the information age in one fell swoop are not the solution as such an economy is unsustainable when considering the education and familiarity with such tools is taken into consideration. One needs to walk before they can run and the same can be said for national economies. The initial problems are infrastructure, both materially and by the population as a whole. When these problems are what is addressed then there can be progress but simply shipping tons of food aid which sometimes sits unloaded and goes bad rotting in place for the lack of trucks and a distribution network as even aid packages require a certain level of infrastructure before even that is of any substance. And yes we realize that in places like North Korea and Iran part of the problem is the governance though that is an even more difficult nut to crack. There is no universal solution and as far as the threats from North Korea and possibly Iran, there is no solution beyond preparing for the worst and hopefully cutting the head off the hydra and preventing it from simply replacing that bad head for another. Iran is a nation with the wherewithal to save itself if only the people can be freed to take on the challenges directly, but that cannot happen while their leadership is intent on spreading their version of Islam to the world. Such belligerence is not to be tolerated and must be opposed, something the P5+1 negotiations is apparently refusing to oppose rather than complying in the hope that things will improve before World War III is launched from the missile pads within Iran. North Korea will remain beyond help for as long as the leadership is tolerated rather than opposed and the situation resolved. Step one is provide a path to better governance through ending the state of war between North and South Korea, until that is addressed there can be no change to the situation. These are stark and difficult challenges which is why they are also the most pressing and dangerous challenges the world is currently facing with the growing gap between the first and third worlds, a gap that is threatening to become unbridgeable.

 

Beyond the Cusp