UPDATE POST: September 17, 2010
I am happy to hear of a Voice of America program remarkably similar to the one I called for in my last paragraph below, starting with 20,000 radios in remote areas of Afghanistan. I can hardly take credit for the program but it sure seems like the right thing to do and I extend my congratulations and best wishes to those involved in its launch and future success.
ORIGINAL POST: February 10, 2010
I recommend total withdrawal of NATO & western forces from ME altogether - keep quick-strike whack-a-mole capability to ensure flow of oil while retool the west to get off ME oil dependency. Leave the ME to fight among themselves, policed by Russia, India, China & Israel.
Western counties will do much better with 10,000 clandestine feet on the ground than with half-a-million heavily equipped military getting their asses kicked daily by asymmetrical forces. The quick-strike capability is in the carrier battle-groups that already cruise those waters. Every nation needs its equivalent of Homeland Security in perpetuity.
There should also be a relentless information campaign - drop millions of easily-hidden wind-up radios w/ his & her earbuds (one each so while couples listen together they can still hear the fundamentalist thugs coming) and broadcast powerful radio programs 24 X 7 in their local dialects. Airdrop books by the millions - and flood them by radio with info: how to read, do math, basic healthcare, agricultural techniques, human rights, womens' rights, political pluralism & democracy, basic economics, world news. Make it relentless, easy to understand and universal and for decades. That will work much better than sending in the Marines.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
TTC Must Fire Adam Giambrone Immediately
So, Giambrone lied to everyone, on all sides, wanted it all without regard to impact on anyone. No place for that sociopath in public office.
Chairman or floor-sweeper: what does TTC do with employees who have sex on premises; fire his ass is what they should do, with no severance or payout
Chairman or floor-sweeper: what does TTC do with employees who have sex on premises; fire his ass is what they should do, with no severance or payout
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Ominous Events - The Plan for Iran is Coming Together.
Seems like forever that US administrations, Israeli administrations and other governments on the UN Security Council and not, have been talking sanctions and attacks on Iranian nuclear installations as ways to, in order of preference, encourage Iran to stop development of the nuclear weapons or to deliver a series of knockout punches to Iran's nuclear infrastructure, thereby stopping Iran's such development unilaterally.
Over more recent months the policy of ever-enhanced sanctions - i.e. slow strangulation of the Iranian middle-class - has been worked, and sometimes with surprising agreement from the permanent UN Security Council members including those traditionally more likely to support Iran , i.e. Russia & China. But as the effective life of sanctions draws nearer to its end and the attack option beckons, kind of like a late-night end-of-the-line twice-as-ugly any-port-in-a-storm option, China grows less omni-partisan. Maybe it's their growing global military influence, or their desire to use Iran as a proxy to keep USA off-balance, or maybe it's the US' economic & financial cojones firmly in its fist - whatever combination it may be, China feels empowered to flip the bird at the USA and UN on the question of Iranian sanctions. Fine - China has earned the right to rebuff the US once in a while - like when Obama had to kowtow upon his visit to China back in the fall. And now - in need of demonstrating to the home front that he's not the soft-headed pushover some have labelled him, and to give the Chinese a little pushback - Obama has approved sale of some $4.6B of weapons to Taiwan. Defensive weapons, that is. Taiwan wants more, and offensive too, but Obama has said "not yet". Pretty plain to see - Obama is effectvely saying to China "You don't see any particular need to control Iranian nuclear capability? Great - that means Taiwan can be better-armed too!" We'll see if i) Taiwan gets the submarines and fighter jets it asked for - or not and, ii) whether China comes around to support final sanctions on Iran - or not.
Separate, but in my mind clearly related to the Iranian intransigence:
- US military delivers Patriot defensive anti-missile systems to several countries either bordering on, adjacent to, or reachable by the missiles of Iran.
- US military runs test of ship-launched defensive anti-missile systems in the Pacific, ostensibly to show North Korea who's the boss, but obviously Iran is watching & listening too
- US is at or very near completion of its super-sized bunker-busting bomb, designed to detonate far below the surface of, for example, a hollowed-out mountain where Iran thinks (hopes) its nuclear installations are safe
- resident of rural south-eastern Newfoundland report several large flying objects (missiles) passing through their skies, visible for some minutes until they vanished across the horizon. That would be the test of large (bunker-buster-sized) cruise missiles (flying relatively slowly @ 400+ mph - that's why they were visible for so long) with large exhaust flames (very heavy cargo means big rocket motors) in a undersea-launch test near a rocky rural coastline (as if from the Persian Gulf).
Obama needs to demonstrate a number of things at home and abroad and, unhappily enough, an Iranian attack would achieve a number of his objectives. So long as he can defend Iran's neighbours and Israel from retaliatory strikes, he may be much more likely to go at it than ever before.
I wonder if anyne has given thought to striking only the entrances to Iran's nuclear installations with theater-sized neutron bombs - i.e., small nuclear explosions that don't kill many people but render the sites permanently 'hot' i.e. highly radioactive virtually forever, and therefore almost impossible to continue working. Not a nice option but maybe better than wholesale mass conventional destruction.
Blame it all on Scott Brown.
Over more recent months the policy of ever-enhanced sanctions - i.e. slow strangulation of the Iranian middle-class - has been worked, and sometimes with surprising agreement from the permanent UN Security Council members including those traditionally more likely to support Iran , i.e. Russia & China. But as the effective life of sanctions draws nearer to its end and the attack option beckons, kind of like a late-night end-of-the-line twice-as-ugly any-port-in-a-storm option, China grows less omni-partisan. Maybe it's their growing global military influence, or their desire to use Iran as a proxy to keep USA off-balance, or maybe it's the US' economic & financial cojones firmly in its fist - whatever combination it may be, China feels empowered to flip the bird at the USA and UN on the question of Iranian sanctions. Fine - China has earned the right to rebuff the US once in a while - like when Obama had to kowtow upon his visit to China back in the fall. And now - in need of demonstrating to the home front that he's not the soft-headed pushover some have labelled him, and to give the Chinese a little pushback - Obama has approved sale of some $4.6B of weapons to Taiwan. Defensive weapons, that is. Taiwan wants more, and offensive too, but Obama has said "not yet". Pretty plain to see - Obama is effectvely saying to China "You don't see any particular need to control Iranian nuclear capability? Great - that means Taiwan can be better-armed too!" We'll see if i) Taiwan gets the submarines and fighter jets it asked for - or not and, ii) whether China comes around to support final sanctions on Iran - or not.
Separate, but in my mind clearly related to the Iranian intransigence:
- US military delivers Patriot defensive anti-missile systems to several countries either bordering on, adjacent to, or reachable by the missiles of Iran.
- US military runs test of ship-launched defensive anti-missile systems in the Pacific, ostensibly to show North Korea who's the boss, but obviously Iran is watching & listening too
- US is at or very near completion of its super-sized bunker-busting bomb, designed to detonate far below the surface of, for example, a hollowed-out mountain where Iran thinks (hopes) its nuclear installations are safe
- resident of rural south-eastern Newfoundland report several large flying objects (missiles) passing through their skies, visible for some minutes until they vanished across the horizon. That would be the test of large (bunker-buster-sized) cruise missiles (flying relatively slowly @ 400+ mph - that's why they were visible for so long) with large exhaust flames (very heavy cargo means big rocket motors) in a undersea-launch test near a rocky rural coastline (as if from the Persian Gulf).
Obama needs to demonstrate a number of things at home and abroad and, unhappily enough, an Iranian attack would achieve a number of his objectives. So long as he can defend Iran's neighbours and Israel from retaliatory strikes, he may be much more likely to go at it than ever before.
I wonder if anyne has given thought to striking only the entrances to Iran's nuclear installations with theater-sized neutron bombs - i.e., small nuclear explosions that don't kill many people but render the sites permanently 'hot' i.e. highly radioactive virtually forever, and therefore almost impossible to continue working. Not a nice option but maybe better than wholesale mass conventional destruction.
Blame it all on Scott Brown.
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