Foreign Policy Achievements & the Tripartite Iraqi Struggle

In an interesting demonstration of unintended consequences or Machiavellian manipulation of the American public (rendered easy by a decades-old, thoroughly entrenched government educational system), the diplomatic efforts of the current administration in engaging those formerly considered our enemies -- inc. Iran, the Taliban, al Qaeda, China, & N Korea -- has w/ remarkable effectiveness forged new alliances among our former allies -- i.e., Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, Kurdistan, Japan, S Korea, the Philippines, and other non-Communist SE Asian countries. In particular interest to me now is what is happening somewhat behind the scenes in Iraq as most headlines seem to be consumed w/ the struggle near Bagdad betw. ISIS & the Shiite al-Maliki gov't. Turkey has mended a lot of fences w/ the Kurds as noted in this article. While I have yet to learn enough about the situation to be confident in my speculation, I somewhat disagree w/ the article in this respect: the Kurd(s) quoted disavow any interest in retaking the first major conquest of ISIS (Mosul); however, I think as this Sunni/Shia war grows long in the tooth & ISIS begins to exhaust their strength, their ability to guard their Northern holdings will wane & Kurdistan (perhaps w/ Turkey's help) will see an opportunity to take advantage of that to take Mosul.

Fringe, S5:E9, "Black Blotter"

I was just hearing the quoting of Robert Oppenheimer: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." It struck me as rather arrogant, for any man or group of men to think they have the power to destroy worlds ... so I dug further online to find that, just as most modern quotations are misattributed to recently famous people, this one actually comes from chapter 11 of the Bhagavad Gita. But I think what's more important is that even if one allows for a broader definition of the word "worlds" inc. nations, cities, &c., it's still an arrogant thought/statement/assertion. Psalm 86:9: "All the nations which Thou hast made shall come and bow down before Thee, O Lord, and they shall glorify Thy name" I think the writer didn't bother specifying all the nations in existence because he knew no one in their right mind would think any nations were made by any other than the Lord. The preceding verse, however, helps clarify the matter (based in part on the healthy assumption that no man alone can create a nation & all men act in their own interests so no group can truly act in concert to create a nation without external intervention): "There is none like Thee among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like Thine." To me, this says firstly that there is none that comes close enough in power to God to have the ability to create a nation, and secondly that if there should be any doubt of this fact, even a nation created by a lesser spirit cannot compare to any created by the Lord of lords. Even in the midst of sorrow over making the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer failed to see (perhaps because he, as all fallen humanity, craved to shut out the truth of God's sovereignty over all life) that though he might help create something that could destroy temporal flesh, neither he nor any other human (or humans collectively) could destroy souls -- nor could any spirit other than God. Even God does not annihilate souls, for that would defeat His original purpose in creating them and render Him less potent that He is.

Envirohegemony

http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2012/07/19/20120719freeport-mcmoran-profits-weighed-down-by-copper-prices.html In the above article a clueless Russ Wiles takes at face value the assertion that Freeport McMoRan beat earnings estimates by a penny a share when you ignore the $53M environmental liability "one-time" charge -- because of course you must be able to safely assume the environmentalists will all stop fighting the free markets next year. Anyone w/ half a head knows that once Obama is reelected he will be twice as strict environmentally & otherwise on non-state-owned enterprises & land as he was in his first term. This will hold even more for a mining company like Freeport McMoRan, since the earth is sacrosanct & must be protected at all costs (unlike unborn babies).

Mumbai Contrasted w/ America's Spoiled College Students

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Clean+water+supplies&view=detail&mid=289ACB8C3AE9B462C6AD289ACB8C3AE9B462C6AD&first=0&form=hphot3
In Mumbai, most residents get 1.5 h of running water at 4am or less, sometimes having to walk several miles to compete w/ others for 10 min. of water per day, while the wealthiest resident (worth $27B) uses 400,000 L of water every month, much of which goes to water his hydroponic gardens. If the Occupy Wall St. protesters saw this, I believe they'd stop griping when many of them can afford iPads & iPhones (& probably all have access to plenty clean drinking water throughout the day yet somehow fail to shower frequently enough).

Steve "Jobs" & the Jobless Recovery

Apple's "Hot News" now includes a story about how they're reforming their supplier workplace conditions in Shenzhen by inviting the Fair Labor Association to inspect Foxconn's formerly suicide-riddled plant there:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/02/13Fair-Labor-Association-Begins-Inspections-of-Foxconn.html?sr=hotnews.rss

What they conveniently leave out is the fact that the fair trade standards organization is Fairtrade International (fairtrade.net). Refer to the Wikipedia article on fair trade:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade

The reason I include this mention in my Obamerica blog is because I'm tired of hearing people laud Apple's cofounder for innovation & job creation in America. I'll give him the innovation plaudits but he creates jobs for Chinese factory workers & techies w/ H1B visas in America who send much of their income back to their families in their countries of origin. That's not helping the under- & unemployed Americans get back to work. What's more, his advertizers convince Americans to waste their hardearned dollars on overpriced technologies. Additionally, the tech sector helps the Fed pretend there's no inflation by including low-priced hardware in the items used to calculated inflation but not counting the high monthly data bills associated w/ those products. This, along w/ ignoring essentials like food & fuel & giving a 40% weighting in the average to housing (which almost no one's currently buying) drags down the headline inflation numbers so the Fed can keep up a loose monetary supply in order to keep the interest cost low on an exploding federal debt. That said, Obama's only the latest & worst of a long chain of Repubs & Dems addicted to OPM (spending other people's money to buy votes from nontaxpayers).

Obama's New Transparency: Have Surrogates Trash Competition

When Obama & Pelosi promised more transparency in Washington, they weren't referring to themselves

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_for_Responsibility_and_Ethics_in_Washington#Director

Melanie Sloan, director of CREW, which has been digging up dirt on Republican 2012 presidential candidates (Santorum, Romney, Gingrich, Paul), was a former aide to Biden in addition to Shumer & Conyers.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-11/santorum-becomes-millionaire-in-six-years-after-u-s-senate-loss.html

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/202591-watchdog-gingrich-may-have-violated-lobbying-laws

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/84629/melanie-sloan-crew-ethics-for-profit

http://moorecommonsense.com/2011/09/23/buffoon-week-melanie-sloan-crew/

http://sorosfiles.com/soros/2012/01/so-called-ethics-group-exposed-as-soros-front.html


Pelosi conveniently failed to recuse herself from the anti-ANWR drilling vote due to her investments in T-Bone Pickens' (I call him that for the $12B he swindled from Texan & American taxpayers) windustrial scam:

http://moneyrunner.blogspot.com/2008/08/pelosi-pickens-and-corruption-of-green.html

Softpedaling Our Way Through the Threat Matrix

2011-10-13~ Perhaps one of Obama's favorite new developments is the turning of the Arab world toward a far more virulent strain of Islamofascism. FT.com (via Council on Foreign Relations): "Comment - Iran will benefit from this Arab spring":

'via Blog this'

In my opinion, these revolutions are most likely fostered by Iran to consolidate their anticipated caliphate, esp. in Yemen as an effort to encroach on their chief rival the Saudi Kingdom. I expect the next move is to stir up the Shiites in Dammam (eastern Arabia).

2013-5-23.15:00~ In similar fashion to the Pollyannish desire to bring about intranational peace by disarming law-abiding citizens, liberals think (or claim to believe) they can establish world peace by eliminating, first of all, nuclear arms from the US & Israel. China apparently is taking advantage of the latest manifestation of their efforts (Obama's pledges toward winding down American nuclear arms) by secretly running a nuclear arms race against both the US & Russia. The Japan Times/Opinion: "China’s nuclear program still shrouded in secrecy"

2013-5-24.04:44~TheAtlantic.com: "How Guantanamo Bay's Existence Helps Al-Qaeda Recruit More Terrorists"

The above article cites a public statement by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan ("mouthpiece of the Taliban") & an essay by bin Laden in Inspire (the new Al Quaeda in the Arabian Peninsula fanzine) as evidence that Abu Ghraib & Guantanamo are recruiting tools for terrorists. I think Napolitano & Obama, in believing this trite talking point, are playing straight into the Islamoterrorists' hands, as the latter surely know that drone strikes are much more effective recruiting tools among heretofore moderate Muslims [leaving aside the difficulty of establishing ideological bounds for where Islamomoderates stand in the spectrum of Islamic sociopolitical positions between liberals (favoring tolerance of the existence & free religious expression of competing religions) & extremists (favoring violent means of spreading the religion)]. They know this so well that they know they don't even need to speak out against the drone strikes before their fellow Muslims in order to recruit new terrorists. The drone strikes do the work for them.
So why are we so gullible as to believe Obama's claim that drone strikes are a more effective means of conducting the campaign against terrorism than waterboarding in a piece of Cuba which escapes the attention of Arabic- & Farsi-speaking Muslims (the "propaganda cited in the above article is possibly in the English versions of these media for our ears only).