Saturday, May 4, 2013

FICTION: The British Prime Minister's last day in office

"Madame Prime Minister, is there one event which stands out in your mind in terms of importance regarding the world's rapid decline over the past ten years?" queried Elizabeth Darcy, chief foreign affairs correspondent for The Australian Journal.

"The two big events probably were China's anti-satellite work in space and Norway's acceptance of sharia as equal to established law," replied British Prime Minister Persnickety Naiflass.  "However, I would have to add America's infatuation with unfettered capitalism."

"As you remember, China launched anti-satellite missiles into space.  Every country which had satellites in space loudly complained, because China had already destroyed a satellite in space, creating an enormous cloud of debris.  China tested its orbiting missiles twice.  The first time, a spent booster of theirs was hit, creating yet another large debris cloud.  But it was the second test which killed the golden orbital goose.  The missile misfired and headed directly for the International Space Station, which just happened to be in the final minutes of the docking of a regular resupply mission via an unmanned capsule.  The missile ripped all of the ISS modules apart, with the remnants then spinning wildly in space, not to mention that all of the astronauts were killed.  We saw a cascade of collisions, first one satellite, then a spent booster, then another satellite, and so on.  The owners of the satellites quickly used all of their available maneuvering fuel.  Within two weeks, the commonly used orbits were like one of those American demolition derby races.  The ISS was in its low Earth orbit, but the debris now covers much of low and medium Earth orbits.  Iridium and other communications satellites, along with the James Webb Space Telescope and KH-12s, are now shiny space junk.  It is really difficult to put a satellite into a useful orbit now.  Don't forget that all manned spacecraft have used low Earth orbits, except for the moon-bound Apollo ones.  It will take decades of expensive cleanup to make space safe again," added Naiflass.

"We became very dependent on satellites.  Satellite phones stopped working, so people out of sight of cellular towers are now incommunicado.  GPS satellites traveled in medium Earth orbits, so they were safe for a time, but now most of them have since been trashed so most GPS devices no longer function.  The U.S. military is severely hampered by this, as every single vehicle, aircraft, ship, and soldier is dependent upon receiving accurate GPD data.  The geostationary weather satellites still function because their orbits were too high for the space junk, but polar orbiting weather satellites were quickly trashed, with the latter being much more useful because of their proximity to Earth," continued Naiflass.

"But that was only the beginning of the trouble with China," opined Naiflass.

"Madame Prime Minister, Norway passed sharia mainly because of the right-wing shooter, right?" asked Alice Munro, chief foreign correspondent for Canadian Affairs Daily.

"Yes, Norwegians were so ashamed of Beavis' actions that they completely swung to the other extreme," answered Naiflass.  "Some Norwegian woman started voluntarily wearing a headscarf.  Many of the people who were shot on Utøya Island became Muslims or married them and were outspoken in their quest to embrace Islam to prove that they were not like Beavis.  When these people became old enough to run for office, they did so en masse.  They passed legislation to make sharia equal to established law."

"Norway made a grievous error in not executing Beavis.  It should have found a way to do it, perhaps as a military criminal.  His incarceration in that comfy cell with his own telly and workout equipment made a mockery of the 77 people he killed, as well as the people he maimed or wounded.  Norway should have hung him.  Norwegians could not find closure in his execution, so they found it another way," continued Naiflass.

"Do you think the events of the past decade constitute the Third World War or are they different than that?" queried Darcy.

"WWI and WWII were essentially wars between two sides, albeit with many players around the world.  Most people believed that WWIII, if it ever came, would be largely the same.  No, the past decade was a bar fight.  World leaders never quite knew which side to choose.  I am embarrassed to say that Britain and some other countries chose rather badly," continued Naiflass.

"But in our defense, things were so different than the world to which we had grown accustomed.  The USA had been the leader of the free world since WWII.  When it stopped playing that role, many of us hoped that China would assume that mantle.  But no, China only pursued its own selfish interests, with many countries being cut adrift," opined Naiflass.

"North America used to be the industrial and economic powerhouse of the world.  Now, only my country remains as a serious contender in North America.  In your view, what were the causes for the USA's downfall?" asked Munro.

"Churchill wrote a series of books on WWII.  If I had time left, I would devote an entire volume to the demise of the USA," announced Naiflass.

"The States have had an unbroken string of mediocre presidents.  Oral Hardcraft could barely keep his pants on; he was better suited to being president of Italy.  Smirk Mesopotamia and Jive Golfhound might as well have been twin reincarnations of Warren Harding creating a landslide of corruption which buried the country, giving trillions to their friends in corporations and banks.  As a side-note, Golfhound's presidential library is the first one to feature a fully-functional basketball court.  The current president, Craven Chatepelose, the first female president, appears to be content simply being president," continued Naiflass.

"During the two years before Chatepelose's first term, the Republicans won both houses for two years.  They went on a rampage, slashing taxes and creating a mountain of debt as a result.  They sanctioned the building of the F-48, a fighter which was promised to be the best aircraft the world would see for the next 20 years.  They let loose the hounds of fracking, with drilling taking place in every state," added Naiflass.

"Then with the election of Chatepelose, the Democrats regained control of the Senate by a comfortable margin, with the Republicans keeping the House.  Since the Democrats would not support the policies of the previous two years, a form of trench warfare invaded Washington, with neither side being able to advance any legislation.  But since tax cuts had drastically dimished the national coffers, the debt began to rise precipitously.  The only thing the two parties could agree on was keeping the government going by continuing to borrow money from China," continued Naiflass.

"But then the curtain rose on the second act of China's tragedy," suggested Darcy.

"Nicely put," answered Naiflass.  "Yes, the hostility between China and Japan finally reached its crest over the Diaoyu / Senkaku islands, depending upon which country's language one wishes to use.  Both countries had been engaged in a low-grade war over those and other islands for a good number of years.  Many ships had collided in games of chicken and intimidation, with a few sinking, but the damage was always so minimal that all sailors were able to escape with their lives.  Then China upped the ante with their second aircraft carrier, the Shuangdao, which was sent to the islands to guard the landing force which China planned to use to occupy the islands.  Japan had warned China that landings would not be tolerated.  Japan pulled the trigger with multiple torpedoes launched toward the carrier.  The carrier sank quickly with the loss of around 5000 sailors."

"My colleagues in China at that time told us that the average Chinese person went ballistic over the sinking and demanded that the government retaliate in a big way," added Munro.

"Interesting choice of words -- 'ballistic' -- given what happened later.  China began planning a cyber-attack using the code from Stuxnet and Flame, but took it one step farther.  As you might remember, those cyber-attacks against Iran were specifically targeted against its nuclear centrifuges.  Yes, there was a handful of other computers which were hit, but for the most part it was only centrifuges which were affected.  This time, China was targeting everything and anything Japanese: nuclear power generating plants, dams and their associated hydroelectric generation facilities, factories of all sorts, banks, military command and control, government institutions, you name it, they targeted it.  To paraphrase the former leader of Pakistan, China was going to cyber-bomb Japan back into the stone age," continued Naiflass.

"Australians were glued to their televisions, PC monitors, and smartphones as we watched this disaster porn.  We were more interested than most countries because fallout from a local nuclear war, if it came to that, might cause the movie On The Beach to come true," added Darcy.

"We here in Britain started called it "The Phony Asian War" in comparison to the lack of hostilities between Nazi Germany and Britain after the invasion of Poland.  We were as surprised as anyone when China finally unleashed its revenge.  They had emailed untold numbers of emails containing malware which appeared to do nothing for a few months, so Japanese anti-virus products did not sound the alarm.  Chinese crackers had placed malware on web sites Japanese targets were known to frequent, in the maneuver known as a watering hole attack.  And the few spies China had in Japan were able to insert USB flash drives containing malware into infrastructure in a manner reminiscent of the Stuxnet attacks," continued Naiflass.

"All of a sudden, every Japanese nuclear power plant suffered severe problems.  In some cases, the workers were able to shut the reactor down without any release of radiation.  But in about half the Japanese reactors -- and keep in mind that Japan obtains about one-third of its electricity from nuclear reactors -- there was some kind of meltdown and/or vessel breach.  In a few, the highly ironic China Syndrome occurred, with the core melting through the reactor floor.  There were many, many Fukushima Daiichi disasters happening at once.  Millions of Japanese were forced to move to other parts of the islands.  Millions lost their jobs and homes," continued Naiflass.

"Why didn't the USA retaliate as its defense treaty with Japan obligated it to do?" asked Munro.

"Japan was not exactly blameless, as it killed 5000 Chinese sailors.  Also, I learned through the back channels that China warned the USA that it would consider any attack on the behalf of Japan as a clear declaration of total war.  President Chatepelose was frozen with indecision, worried she would go down in history as the one responsible for initiating a nuclear exchange.  And, of course, China was America's banker and supplier of the vast majority of its goods, as the USA had long ago outsourced most of its manufacturing base to China, India, and other countries," continued Naiflass.

"Given Japan's response to the cyber-attack, don't you think President Chatepelose's non-response was the correct move?" countered Darcy.

"Japan's response was downright shocking, considering that it had been devastated by atomic bombs at the end of WWII.  It launched a weapon many of us would never have guessed it had, a hydrogen bomb specifically designed for minimum fallout and maximum EMP," continued Naiflass.

"Did Japan minimize the fallout because of the possibility of the cloud traveling to Japan?" asked Munro.  "And when you refer to EMP, you mean electromagnetic pulse, right?"

"Yes and yes.  EMP is a burst of electromagnetic radiation resulting from a nuclear blast which usually destroys electronic and electrical equipment," continued Naiflass.

"The device was lit off somewhere around Nanyang as an air burst.  The intent of it was to fry just about every electronic device within sight and I mean that literally.  If someone could see the explosion, any device in the area was pretty much guaranteed to be converted to so much junk.  Nuclear physics is not my strong suit so I cannot tell you the altitude of the blast, but I would think it was somewhere between 50 and 100 km.  Shanghai, Chongqing, and many other cities were affected.  Factories immediately stopped.  Hydroelectric plants stopped working.  Warehouses full of electronic products destined for the West became useless.  China lost trillions of dollars in a few seconds," continued Naiflass.

"And all of a sudden, Germany is back to being the world's largest exporter," mused Naiflass.

"The world held its breath for a few days, hoping that another nuclear shoe would not drop.  Luckily, that was the end of the atomic portion of the war, but China had one more card up its sleeve.  Japanese Prime Minister Bushido had rearmed Japan with lots of expensive new ships and aircraft, but China had a number of missile cruisers which had been at sea during the EMP attack.  All of these ships fired a massive salvo at every military installation Japan had, as well as every dam.  Thousands of missiles were launched and they all struck home because Japan's defensive machinery was still out-of-order due to the cyber-attack.  Not only did Japan lose many lives in the floods following the burst dams, but given that its nuclear power plants were all closed, it lost all of its hydroelectric capacity as well.  Not to mention the water which could no longer be used for drinking, farming, or any other purpose.  Bushido now ruled over a nation with no electrical generation capability, millions of refugees, a severe water shortage, little remaining military capability, and a host of other problems.  Of course, Japanese voters sent him scurrying like the rat he was," added Naiflass.

"But this left China with only nuclear missiles aboard its ballistic missile submarines for the most part.  It no longer had much of a conventional navy; many of its ships still sailed, but the stores of missiles for them no longer existed," continued Naiflass.

"I only learned recently that Japan had been very lucky.  Many people in the Chinese government wanted to level Japan using nuclear weapons.  They considered this payback for the way Japan treated China during WWII," added Naiflass.

"Then the other countries in the South China Sea began a conventional war against China," declared Darcy.

"I would not describe it in that manner," countered Naiflass.  "The countries China had been bullying over fish, oil, and natural gas reserves in the region began to reassert their lawful rights in the region.  China could no longer harass them with its navy.  Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, India, and other countries with interests in the South China Sea created a mutual defense league.  Together they forced China to accept international borders.  No longer would China be able to exercise fish-oil-and-gas gunboat diplomacy where Filipino fishermen would be forced to surrender their local fishing grounds.  If there was any good news from China's misfortune, it was that the other countries were finally able to require that any resource exploration in the South China Sea would first be negotiated by all local parties."

"And at the risk of making a sick joke, the dangerous air pollution in China is much better now," added Naiflass.

"What about the Korean Peninsula?  Don't you think that the law of unintended consequences was in full force there?" asked Munro.

"Oh, certainly!  North Korea first became insolvent when the Soviet Union collapsed, as the USSR had been supporting North Korea with oil, food, and other things.  The famines of the 1990s had a lot to do with the loss of Soviet aid.  China had also been supplying North Korea with energy and food, but it never supplied enough.  China had always used North Korea as a buffer zone against the West.  And North Korea used almost all aid to retain the lavish lifestyle of the elite," continued Naiflass.

"North Korea had always been incompetent at farming, largely because it spent the money it needed for tractors on Mercedes Benz automobiles for the elite and all generals at or above divisional level.  But then all Chinese oil, gas, food and other aid simply stopped after Japan's nuclear attack.  The Kim family tried to keep all food for them, the elite, and the military, but quickly the food ran out so there was none left for the military.  The military revolted, with many divisions involved in the mutiny.  The Kim family ran to its palatial estate in the forest north of Pyongyang with only their bodyguards to protect them.  The military surrounded them, and with food from South Korea, simply started cooking spicy meals, allowing the aroma to waft over the soldiers assigned to bodyguard detail.  It was not too long before those soldiers defected, leaving the Kims all alone.  Then the military simply allowed the Kims to starve to death, a fitting end for a family which oversaw the deaths of millions via starvation.  A few members of the family tried to escape, probably because they feared being killed and eaten by the others, but they were caught and sent back at bayonet-point to the compound to die," added Naiflass.

"The new leaders of North Korea wanted to end the state of war between the two Koreas, but they weren't stupid.  They offered to sell their nuclear weapons, U.S. currency printing press, and all counterfeit currency for a reasonable amount of money, but the American Tea Party selfishly refused, saying that any such payments would eat into their tax cuts.  President Chatepelose devised an equitable solution.  Since she was in control of the State Department, she transferred all funds destined for Israel, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan, Afghanistan, and the West Bank / Gaza.  Both Republicans and Democrats complained mightily, but since Egypt and Syria had already changed into Islamic dictatorships and the other countries were close to that, the arrangement worked out well," continued Naiflass.

"On the subject of Australia's reaction to Japan's use of a nuclear weapon, you probably heard that the Australian navy is preventing any Japanese whaling ships from hunting for whales," offered Darcy.

"Yes, I was told by the Prime Minister that Australian navy ships give whalers a choice: turn around and head back to port or prepare to be fired upon.  From what I understand, the first few ships needed a few blasts from a .50 caliber machine gun before taking the threat seriously, but now whalers have essentially given up," continued Naiflass.

"Yes, and most Australians are ecstatic over this, especially given that some of the nuclear fallout rained over Australia.  I will bet you do not know what happened near Taijii in the cove Japan has been using to kill 20,000 dolphins each year.  Someone, almost certainly an Austalian, determined the audible frequency most hated by dolphins and created a waterproof transmitter device to radiate that frequency.  This device was placed in the very end of the cove.  Dolphins rapidly moved away from the end of the cove.  This person then moved the device, or threw in another one, further down the cove, doing this until there were no more dolphins at all in the cove.  Now we have learned that this same person makes sure that the device is always transmitting, probably simply by replacing the batteries.  The slaughter is finally concluded," finished Darcy.

A blood-curdling scream was heard coming from the salon next door.  Darcy and Munro's eyes went wide, but Naiflass hardly reacted at all, as she had heard it before.

"We have not discussed the specifics of the USA.  There was no war, but the USA essentially became a third-world country," interjected Munro.

"Oh, the States -- what a complicated story of riches to rags!" declared Naiflass.

"As I alluded to earlier, America was living week-to-week, budget-wise.  The Republicans had passed drastic tax cuts with no expiration date.  They tried to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, but the uproar was so great that they were forced to back off.  They fully funded the F-48 program, with each aircraft estimated to cost $500 million each, but they were built before the fuel leak and electronics problems were solved, so cost over runs doubled the price.  The debt just kept rising, eventually reaching 300% of GDP, with both parties blaming each other.  They borrowed more and more from China," continued Naiflass.

"And then the bottom dropped out of the debt market because China was out of commission due to the nuclear strike.  China was unable to provide for its own people, let alone prop-up the American spendthrifts.  So the USA defaulted on its debt and allowed its infrastructure to fall apart," added Naiflass.

"Americans had shot themselves in the foot with respect to consumer goods.  They seemed to believe that low prices were their birthright, even though the Chinese-made goods were often of rock-bottom quality.  So when the Chinese factories closed suddenly, there were no Chinese imports anymore.  And because American factories had long since been shuttered, there was no way to quickly make up the shortfall.  Sure, capitalists started opening factories in other foreign countries -- I guess they just couldn't face lowering their stratospheric personal income enough to open factories in the States -- but the ramp-up took months for easily made goods and much longer for more complicated ones like computer parts," continued Naiflass.

"And then fracking was revealed to be a permanent hazard to human health," added Munro.

"As the Americans are prone to saying, that's gotta hurt!  Yes, fracking was finally proven to contaminate aquifers.  The largest one, the Ogallala Aquifer, is now useless.  Farmers and cities were draining it anyway, causing the water level to drop each year, but now it is filled with the chemicals used by fracking drillers.  The chemicals are similar to MTBE in that they insidiously move throughout the aquifer.  Nebraska, the Oklahoma Panhandle, northern Texas, the western half of Kansas, eastern Colorado, eastern New Mexico, southeastern Wyoming, and southern South Dakota have largely been abandoned.  And North Dakota, scene of massive fracking in the rush to make the States energy independent, is a wasteland, not that it was much to look at before.  Millions of people were forced to move away from their farms and homes because water is a scarce commodity in the American Midwest.  Only cities lying on rivers, for example, Omaha and Kansas City on the Missouri River, remain, because they can take their water directly from the river.  Given that the Midwest was the location for much of America's wheat crop, as well as other crops, the States are now having food shortages, something which was unthinkable just a few years ago," continued Naiflass.

"The Midwest is in uncharted territory.  The water level in the Ogallala Aquifer dropped precipitously and fracking chemicals are rampant.  Scientists can only guess when the Aquifer will be usable again.  Some of the Midwestern states devised a brilliant plan, all things considered.  They brought in buffalo, antelope and a few other native animals to repopulate the region.  It will take decades to bring back the herds North America had before Buffalo Bill -- who got his name by shooting buffalo while sitting comfortably on a train car -- and others eliminated them.  Too bad rhinos couldn't be brought in to live safe from poachers, as they are just a blink away from being extinct due to China and other Asian countries killing them for their horns, but they would never survive the winters," added Naiflass.

"Speaking of food shortages, you probably know that Europe banned neonicotinoid pesticides because it was finally understood that the collapse of bee colonies was due to these pesticides damaging the brains of bees, especially queens.  Slowly, Europe's fruit and vegetable output rose, so it was reasonable to assume that the pesticides were indeed the problem.  But American politicians were having none of that.  They reminded me of the people who ignorantly claimed that vaccines caused autism, even though there have been many, many studies that disproved the original one created by that charlatan, who, I'm sorry to admit, was British.  The bee population collapsed in the States and millions of people discovered the hard way the reality of how fruits and vegetables are pollinated," continued Naiflass.

"What about the many strange personalities seen in the USA over the past decade?" asked Darcy.

"California used to be known as the land of fruits, nuts, and flakes, but now it appears that much of the country is deserving of that moniker.  A good example is Spurious Yakitiyak, writer for Connected Magazine, who, along with a few other people, convinced the Golfhound administration to stop investigating domestic Islamic terrorists on the grounds that it might hurt their feelings.  Yakitiyak often proposed that liberals randomly pick conservatives and call them racists to politically taint them," continued Naiflass.

"The so-called "gang of eight" Senators ripped the heart out of the American technical worker with its opening of the immigration floodgates via increased numbers of H-1B and L-1 visa holders.  These men said with a straight face that allowing hundreds of thousands more foreign workers would somehow improve the unemployment situation.  And, Bob's your uncle, it put hundreds of thousands more Americans out of work.  And those foreign workers, mainly from India, then made matters worse by hiring only their friends and relatives for new positions," continued Naiflass.

"That was the impetus for the rise of the homeless hackers, right?" asked Munro.

"Yes," responded Naiflass.  "The government persists with its transparent charade of cooking the books with respect to unemployment data, simply dropping 500,000 or so people from the ranks of the workforce each month.  If the actual unemployment figure were calculated, I wager it would easily top 30%, with many of the others barely surviving on multiple part-time jobs."

"All of these unemployed technical workers, mainly older ones with skills that were not current, were laid-off because their employers could hire cheaper, younger, foreign employees via H-1B and L-1 visas.  I never understood why the American government did not require companies to simply upgrade the skill sets of the older workers.  Many of these older workers eventually became homeless or ended up in someone's basement or back room.  I still do not know if it was organized or just happened, but many of these older workers taught themselves how to hack through firewalls and into the IT systems of companies responsible for eliminating American jobs, especially Microsoft, HP, and GE.  At first, the hacking was purely malicious, causing their web sites to crash or their internal database to become corrupted.  The hackers would seek out unprotected wireless networks, in a process called wardriving, and use that network, residential or commercial, as a springboard to hack into the target.  But then they realized there was money to be made, so they worked out arrangements with hackers in other countries, especially Russia, to transfer assets from American companies to Russian banks, where the loot would be split among member of the group.  I have been informed by reliable sources that Russian President Rasputin himself approved of the arrangements with Russian banks.  I expect this will continue indefinitely because the U.S. Congress refuses to re-regulate banks," continued Naiflass.

"What of the large number of domestic bombings in the USA?  Do you think authorities will ever get a handle on them?" asked Darcy.

"In a word, no," responded Naiflass.  "The USA is now 50% poverty and 50% anarchy."

"There are mainly two types of bombers: Muslims and the social media generation.  Muslims explode suicide-style backpacks, homicide-style backpacks, bombs in cars, and suicide vests worn by men dressed in full-body suits.  The social media generation consists of psychopaths like the school shooters, possibly after their minds snapped after playing too many violent video games.  Occasionally, right-wingers explode bombs as a result of their perception that Islamists are not being held accountable for their actions.  At first, we only saw them at large events like marathons and city fairs.  Then we saw them at Thanksgiving Day sales, where hundreds of people with more money than sense would mob the entrance of Walmart or another store importing foreign goods.  But then the bombers graduated to smaller venues, for example, markets and movie theaters.  People have mostly stopped attending public functions, putting yet another nail in the coffin of the American economy.  The FBI is overwhelmed because of the budget shortfall, so some bombings are not investigated as thoroughly as they would have in the past.  In the past, America was described as a melting pot, but now it is a free-for-all," continued Naiflass.

"And what has always struck me as both typically American and simply bizarre are the groupies of the bombers.  One of them will be arrested, his photos will be displayed on the telly and on the Internet, and an uncomfortable number of people will comment that the bomber is highly attractive, as if this were merely another episode of The Bachelor," opined Naiflass.

"But that's what you get from a country where the latest trend is to wear Glass to bed, using it to change the virtual appearance of the wearer's sex partner.  Some of these wazzocks -- the derogatory term for them is Glassholes -- set their Glass to depict larger genitalia or breasts than are actually present, causing the person to grab for something which does not exist!" joked Naiflass.

"Other people are having malicious fun with Glass.  It seems that hackers have figured out how to change the video being displayed on a user's glasses.  The hackers watch what the wearer is seeing in real life and then change it for maximum shock value.  If the wearer is in the vicinity of a police officer, the hackers suddenly show part of a slasher movie, causing the wearer to scream, with the police officer then investigating whether the wearer needs to be institutionalized.  I read that hackers had automated the process, using face recognition -- actually I think this would be uniform recognition -- so no Glass wearer is immune," mused Naiflass.

"On America's southern border, Mexico is experiencing a full-blown civil war.  Many Americans do not seem to be aware of the origin of most of the weapons the cartels use.  Back in the 1980s, the Reagan administration shipped large quantities of machine guns, grenades, and other tools of war to Central America in a misguided effort to fight communism.  These weapons were eventually sold to the cartels.  And more recently, we saw the operation called Fast and Furious, in which the U.S. government actually allowed cases of AK-style and AR-15 rifles to be sold to Mexican cartels in a bizarre plan to track them through the morass.  Not surprisingly, many of the weapons were not tracked and some were even used to kill U.S. government agents.  I think it would require an invasion by a well-equipped army to quell the many battles," continued Naiflass.

Another blood-curdling scream was heard coming from the salon next door, but this time Darcy and Munro merely looked uncomfortable.

"What about Europe?  There were no nuclear explosions, but the continent went through radical changes," asked Munro.

"Europe is complicated," answered Naiflass.  "Portugal and Spain became communist.  Northern Italy is a bizarre mix of fascism and communism, with the southern half and Sicily being pure mafia.  Greece became fascist, never coming to terms with its wealthy being allowed to avoid taxes.  Hungary is in a half-war with Slovakia over the treatment of ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia and vice versa.  Germans and residents of other countries which actually paid their taxes revolted and elected new governments.  Most of the EU countries have declared that they cannot see how communist, fascist, at-war, or Islamic countries can remain in the EU.  Border controls have been reimplemented in many countries."

"You two are probably not very familiar with the Sami, the native people living across the northern portions of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, but they were caught up in the Islamic takeover of Norway.  The Sami were allowed by law to migrate from the coast to further inland with their reindeer herds, but Muslims soon decided that the Sami owed them a jizya, the tax on non-believers, payable in reindeer.  The Sami refused and that's when the trouble started.  Muslims started stealing reindeer, and occasionally Sami girls to serve in Oslo harems or worse.  The Sami fought back with rifles, with Finland coming to their aid with its military.  At first, Sweden played its usual neutral game, which meant it allowed Muslims to kidnap Sami women on Swedish soil, but it soon became clear that Sweden and Finland were either going to work together or go to war.  Sweden chose the former and closed its border to Muslims, as did Finland," continued Naiflass.

"Norway had never been a member of the EU.  It had treated the Sami poorly in the past.  As a matter of fact, in the first half of the 20th Century, Norway actively tried to eliminate Sami culture and force them into being Norwegian.  This attitude persisted in Norway, and when mixed with Islamic intolerance, made it easy for Norway to discriminate against the Sami once again," added Naiflass.

"It took a while for the news to emerge, but Muslims had been creating harems and bordellos in Oslo, with the latter being filled with non-Muslim slaves.  The Koran is full of justifications of slavery by the Muslim prophet Muhammad, so the practice of kidnapping non-Muslim women to serve as sex slaves goes way back, to the 600s," continued Naiflass.

"Is that why Norway was kicked out of NATO?" queried Darcy as she adjusted the headscarf which was mandatory for all women in Britain.

"Certainly," answered Naiflass.  "Having a member kidnap residents of another country is not something NATO could tolerate."

"And something to ponder: the situation with Norway's vast reserves of oil is similar to the situation in Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other Islamic countries with enormous deposits of oil," continued Naiflass.

"You said before that Norway should have executed Beavis.  In a similar manner, don't you think the UK should have deported its many Islamic criminals and terrorists?" asked Munro.

"Hindsight is always 20-20.  Yes, we should have deported Muhammed al Childmolester, Muhammed al Rapist, Muhammed al Tubebomber, Muhammed al Busbomber, Muhammed al Childgroomer, Muhammed al Violentimam, and the others who remained solely because Britain did not have the courage to deport criminals in opposition to rulings of the EU Court of Human Rights.  I dare say Churchill would have found a way to rid our islands of vermin like them," continued Naiflass.

"But we found the time to ban that American preacher who burned copies of the Koran and the Dutch politician who wanted to stop immigration of Muslims.  They were controversial, to be sure, but they never espoused murder, let along actually committed it," opined Naiflass

"Because of the backlash against austerity, the Tories and Lib Dems were thrown out of office, with Labor coming back under yours truly.  I will admit that I did not see the danger in copying Norway's policy with respect to sharia.  We had already allowed separate sharia courts, but those only affected Muslims.  We changed the law so sharia was on equal footing with the great tradition of English law going back centuries.  We allowed ourselves to be shamed into believing that we were Islamophobes," admitted Naiflass.

"A country cannot exist under two mutually-contradictory systems of law," declared Naiflass.

"Do you think BBC News was a major player in the UK turning into an Islamic country?" asked Darcy.

"Yes, that is certainly true." answered Naiflass.  "Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall were world-class rapists and child molesters -- and there were many others.  Given the atmosphere of fear resulting from sexual harassment and bullying by 'untouchable' senior managers and stars, BBC News became a place where the natural horror regarding rape and molestation became desensitized, so when Muslim gangs started grooming girls for sex, BBC never sounded the alarm.  The culture at BBC News was so tainted that even when someone made a complaint of sexual harassment, and that complaint was upheld, the perpetrator was often promoted shortly thereafter.  We never heard of this because all BBC News contracts included a gag order preventing employees from ever discussing the problem in public."

"And the typical British disdain for the French was mixed in, too.  I remember hearing some of the BBC News almost-stars, the ones who were heard on the American NPR, for example, who haughtily denigrated France's banning of the burka, sneering that it is rare in France.  This was both true and irrelevant, because France was trying to ban the full-body suits which masked whether the wearer was a man or woman, with these suits called burkas, nikabs, and other names," continued Naiflass.  "History has proven that France and Belgium were right to ban these outfits."

"Why were imams in British mosques allowed to teach a virulent and jihadist form of Islam?" asked Munro.

"Over the past few decades, many, many mosques have been built in the UK.  Of those mosques, at least 80% were teaching the most radical type of Islam, Wahhabism and Salafism, teaching jihad, Islamic supremacism, and hatred and contempt for Jews and Christians.  Often these mosques were not proposed as such, but were disingenuously introduced as a community center, inter-faith center, or another innocuous term.  Little by little, Britain was being inundated by dangerous, religious nutters.  The stage was being set for the final act," continued Naiflass.

"We always thought that Justa Chowderhead, the Muslim demagogue, was just blowing smoke when he proclaimed years ago that the Queen would eventually be wearing a headscarf.  It's even more amazing given that Chowderhead was a party animal in his college days, drinking heavily, taking drugs, and fornicating with non-Muslim women.  Of course, now he is a self-righteous Muslim dictator.  He must have studied the history of Germany leading up to WWII because he and his followers used Nazi tactics to gain power, strong-arming people to get his way.  We saw the use of Islamic stormtroopers standing outside the businesses of people who tried to stand up to the categorization of non-Muslims as inferior to Muslims, holding signs informing potential customers that the business must not be patronized," added Naiflass.

"The writing was on the wall, but we were too blind to read it.  When Muslims clashed with Jews, many people on the left dismissed it as the usual Zionism.  When Muslims clashed with Christians, many people on the left dismissed it as the legacy of the past, for example, the Spanish Inquisition and other Catholic excesses.  But when Muslims clashed with pacifist Buddhists, we really should have awoken from our politically-correct slumber.  The signs held by Buddhists reading 'The world is not only for Muslims' should have been our canary in the coal mine, a clear signal that Muslims were attempting to dominate the entire world, with any other religion being something which needed to be eradicated," continued Naiflass.

"Luckily, this was not true in all other European countries.  The last straw was the claim by Muslims that any criticism of Muhammad was not acceptable.  It does not require a barrister to understand that prohibiting criticism of Muhammad is a slippery slope.  Once that law is in effect, Muslims can claim just about anything.  Since Muhammad had multiple wives, polygamy must be legalized.  Since Muhammad married a girl who was only 6 or 7, that must be made legal.  Since he proclaimed that non-Muslim girls and women can be enslaved for sex, that must be legalized.  Since Muhammad declared that alcohol is forbidden, shops selling alcohol can be forced to close.  Since Muhammad declared that dogs are unclean, dog owners can be forced to avoid areas which Muslims frequent, which eventually will be everywhere.  Freedom of speech, religion, and behavior go out the window under sharia," declared Naiflass.

"In a few European countries, the roundup for Islamic extremists has already begun.  Cartoons insulting to Muhammad are published and when the predictable demonstration against them is seen, the demonstrators are corralled and prevented from leaving by heavily armed police.  Each member of the crowd is interviewed one by one, with visitors and others lacking permanent status deported within two days.  Permanent residents are fingerprinted, photographed, and warned that they are now in the database," continued Naiflass.

"Why wasn't the Defence of Britain Party more of a factor in preventing the UK from turning Islamic?" queried Darcy.

"Unfortunately, we in the government largely prevented that," admitted Naiflass.  "As with liberals in the States, we foolishly trumpeted Islamophobia as the greater threat.  We arrested many of the leaders of the DBP, harassing them and preventing them from contributing to the discussion as to whether Islam was compatible with traditional British values.  Using state-sponsored honeytraps, spies, and entrapment, often with the assistance of MI5 and the Guardian, we damaged the reputation of the DBP beyond repair.  That said, the DBP added to its own downfall by demanding that Britain isolate itself from the Continent.  France and Belgium, and later Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Finland, and other countries, banned the face veil, that blatant symbol of Islamic oppression of women, while Britain never did.  We could have learned something from them."

"There is some good news in the world, however.  Your two countries, Australia and Canada, as well as Germany, are now sanctuary countries for people fleeing Islamic and other oppression.  I find it satisfyingly ironic that Germany, the country which was responsible for killing approximately six million Jews during WWII, is now a sanctuary country for Jews and other religious groups.  This is hardly the time or place for this sentiment, but a paraphrased line from The Clash's song London Calling just struck me: phony Islamophobia has bitten the dust!" declared Naiflass.

The prime minister's personal assistant entered the lavatory.  "Madame Prime Minister, it is time," she said without emotion.

"I must admit, I was never very religious," Naiflass said with an almost imperceptible, sad sigh.  "After I read the story in Revelation of how Satan was sent down to Earth after losing the battle with Archangel Michael, I realized that God must not be very powerful if he cannot handle his former employees.  Dante's Inferno described Satan as residing in the ninth circle of Hell, with his lower body frozen in ice.  But recently I have become to believe that the legend is true, but not in the way it is presented to us.  Muhammad is Satan.  He was sent to Earth to inject his malignancy into as many people as he possibly could.  He brilliantly wrote the Koran, the most deceptively evil book ever written, which has influenced billions and has been directly responsible for tens if not hundreds of millions of deaths since the 600s.  And the 40% of Muslims who believe that suicide bombings are justified when 'defending Islam' must not understand that their god is an invalid, incapable of defending it himself."

Naiflass stood and composed herself.  "I would say 'See you later,' but that would be unrealistic.  Goodbye," she concluded.

"Thank you so much for speaking with us today.  Goodbye," responded Darcy as she donned a full face veil.

"Yes, thank you very much.  Goodbye," added Munro as she too donned a full face veil.  Both journalists wanted to make their escape from occupied Britain as quickly and safely as possible.

Naiflass turned and walked out of the lavatory into the salon.  For the first time she saw the long knife being wielded by a husky bearded man in preparation for her ritual beheading.  As he turned to face her, he accidentally kicked a wicker basket, causing it to overturn and spill its contents of the heads of senior managers from BBC News and the Guardian.  The necks of the two heads were ragged because their former owners were not decapitated in a quick, humane fashion; the heads were sawed off as one would saw a slice from a loaf of bread.

She hoped she could be as brave as her heroine, Sophie Scholl of the White Rose.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

UPDATE: China declares war in the South China Sea

Reuters' article, China consolidates sea claims as Asian diplomacy struggles, describes the next phase in China's quest for domination of much of Asia's seas.

As I have written in this series, China declared last year that as of January 1, 2013, the entire South China Sea belongs to it.

The map of this BBC News article will help illustrate the issue.  As you can see, the Scarborough Shoal lies only a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Philippines.  The Scarborough Shoal is not remotely close to China.

Yet China has unilaterally decided that the Scarborough Shoal, as well as the Spratly Islands and Paracel Islands, solely belong to it.

This is similar to Canada staking a claim on Alaska's Kodiak Islands or the USA's staking a claim on Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands.

"I lost my livelihood when we lost the Scarborough Shoal to the Chinese," said Mario Forones, just one of many Filipino fishermen who was "chased off aggressively by large, fast-moving, white Chinese ships armed with guns and rockets ... Chinese vessels had laid down thick undersea ropes to keep fishing boats out."

"It's really scary now," said Miguel Betana, a 45-year-old boat captain, who has fished at the shoal for 15 years.  "I have had worse experiences at sea, but being chased by a very fast Chinese ship I was thinking what if the ship rams our boat or if they shoot us.  No one will ever find out."

It is not only fish which is at issue.  The entire region is full of oil and natural gas deposits.

Hua Chunying, spokeswoman for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announced "But as you know, the Scarborough Shoal is indisputably part of China's territory, and China will ensure that its sovereignty over this area is not being violated."

* * * * *

BBC News' article, Philippines 'discovers rare pangolins' on Chinese ship, reported on China's never-ending effort to eat most of the world's animals into extinction.

A Chinese ship was caught with at least 400 protected pangolins, aka scaly anteaters, when it ran aground on the Tubbataha reef.  This reef is not in the middle of the South China Sea, as the map included with the BBC News article clearly shows; it is within the archipelago of the Philippines.

BBC News noted that the pangolin is highly prized for its meat and scales in China.  It and many other endangered animals are used for Chinese "medicine."

The boat is the seventh Chinese fishing vessel caught in the area since 2002, according to a statement from Tubbataha Reefs National Park, with the operative word here being "caught," i.e. many other Chinese ships were here stealing Filipino resources, but had captains competent enough to avoid running aground on a reef.

The 12 Chinese fishermen face poaching and attempted bribery charges, the latter because, in China and all other communist and former-communist countries, honesty is considered to be something in which only fools indulge.

* * * * *

President Thomas Whitmore in Independence Day: "They're like locusts.  They're moving from planet to planet ... their whole civilization.  After they've consumed every natural resource they move on ... and we're next."

Monday, April 15, 2013

Fiction reference points for "The war of immiscible ideas"

I added a section to Chapter 6 because I realized I needed to address the billions of dollars stolen by the Kim family and toadies thereof, as well as a few other issues.  The first sentence of the new section is "The room was filled with diplomats."  I also added a paragraph to Tolgfors' soliloquy in Chapter 6; the paragraph begins with "However, the welfare of the children must be paramount."  And I added two paragraphs to the Epilogue (they begin with "We had some problems" and "The third category involves the evil").

These additions, as with so much of what I wrote regarding an anticipated overthrow of North Korea's totalitarian government, are the inverse of Donald Rumsfeld's shoddy plans in Iraq, i.e. these additions deal mainly with the aftermath of a coup, not just the actual military actions.

Please note that I wrote the first four chapters while Kim Jong-il was still alive.  I then took a break for one year and he had the good sense to die during this period.  I rushed his death into my story.

It is appropriate that I announce this on April 15, the anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-sung, the sadistic, bloodthirsty founder of North Korea, as well as the 100th anniversary of the day to settle one's affairs vis-à-vis the Sixteenth Amendment, which Americans celebrate with reverential pilgrimages to the post office.

All chapters of The war of immiscible ideas can be referenced as follows:

Friday, March 29, 2013

North Korea: threats, videos, and Red Dawn

Hollywood is known for making movies with no hold at all on reality.  Wild Wild West was a great example of this.  The lead actor, Will Smith, played a Secret Service agent in the Old West.  Given that he is black, he would have been lynched before too long.  Not to mention that ludicrous giant mechanical spider.

The original Red Dawn was a classic example of gaping plot holes.  The enemy, the Soviet Union, supposedly brought over troops and equipment in regular airliners to fool our defense system.  However, given that the largest planes of the time probably carried only 400 passengers, hundreds of these planes would have been required to bring in enough troops and equipment in a short period of time to fight a war in our backyard; this would have been duly noted by commercial and military radars.  Large airliners are not noted for their ability to evade fighters and would therefore be sitting ducks for F-15s and other attack aircraft.

Even worse was the complete omission of our ballistic missile fleet.  Trident submarines started to be deployed in 1981 with the Ohio-class boats.  These "boomers" carry 24 missiles, with as many as eight MIRVed warheads each, meaning that each submarine carried as many as 192 warheads.  1984, the year of the release of Red Dawn, saw six Ohio-class boats sailing the seas.  The previous missile technology, the Poseidon, was still in use and being phased-out in favor of the newer Trident missiles starting in 1979.  It would take a little research to determine exactly how many Poseidon and Trident missiles were in service at the time, but it is safe to say that there were many hundreds of warheads available for use.

Red Dawn claimed that Washington DC and Strategic Command headquarters had been hit by nuclear warheads and then the two sides decided to fight a conventional war to prevent further nuclear exchanges.  This is one of the stupidest ideas to ever emerge from Hollywood and that is saying something in a town which gave us Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and White Chicks.  As soon as a Soviet missile was launched, the American military would spring into action.  If an American city was hit, the boomers would retaliate, wiping from the face of the earth Moscow, Minsk, Kiev, St. Petersburg, and every other Soviet city and military base worth mentioning.  No president would hesitate to retaliate.  The possibility of Soviet forces reaching the heartland of the USA was as remote as the odds of Justin Bieber making a song adults will enjoy.

John Milius wrote and/or directed the first two Dirty Harry films, Apocalypse Now, Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn, and other movies.  His political views are of the right-wing variety.  He was quoted in 2001 as having said: "I've always been considered a nut.  They kind of tolerate me. It's certainly affected me.  I've been blacklisted for a large part of my career because of my politics -- as surely as any writer was blacklisted back in the 1950s.  It's just that my politics are from the other side, and Hollywood always veers left."

* * * * *

Radio Free Asia's 2010 article, Korean Children Left in China, reported on the thousands of Korean or Korean/Chinese children who have been orphaned in China due to North Korea's policies.

When she was asked why her drawings showed so many balloons, 10-year-old Yeon Ah replied, in a manner reminiscent of Dorothy singing Over the Rainbow: "Because balloons fly up to the sky.  I wish we could fly, too, and that is why I draw balloons."

Chinese laws contribute to the problem, given that they forbid taking in a stranger's child as if it were one's own.  China also refuses to recognize North Korean refugees as political ones; instead it considers them to be economic refugees, deserving of no special treatment.

The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea offers satellite imagery, photos, and reports on North Korea.  Its 2009 report, Lives for Sale: Personal Accounts of Women Fleeing North Korea to China, details the harrowing life of women who just want to live a halfway decent life.  It makes for depressing reading.  The organization is one of the very few to attempt to change China's attitude towards North Korean refugees; today China forcibly repatriates them back to North Korean, even thought it knows they will be subject to imprisonment or execution upon their return.  It also monitors the ever-growing prison camp system, of which North Korea denies the very existence.

38 North, a program of the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS is another good source of information on North Korea in English.  Jenny Jun's recent article, Dealing with a Sore Lip: Parsing China's "Recalculation" of North Korea Policy, reported on the nuanced relationship between North Korea and China.  Jun wrote, in contrast to the mainstream media's assertion that China has moved to the West's point of view, that China "letting the 'abandonment debate' run its course is intended to signal a warning to North Korea to behave better rather than serious consideration by top leadership to scrap the alliance and seek unification of the Korean peninsula."

* * * * *

Red Dawn has been remade, with the evil villain now being North Korea.  IMDB's site for the movie includes the tidbit that the villain was originally China; this is noted in the trivia section.  Trivia, indeed.

The Atlantic's article, The Ridiculous 'Red Dawn' Remake Is Even More Absurd Than You Think, gets right to the heart of the matter.  North Korea is only a third-rate enemy, as all it can currently do is threaten South Korea and Japan.

But the reasons for replacing China with North Korea are intriguing.  The Atlantic opined that it has to do with the ever-increasing Chinese film market and this certainly had something to do with it.  But the movie creators had to know that the choice of North Korea would be ridiculed as a complete joke.  Could it be that corporate and/or government interests became involved, reminding Hollywood types that China holds trillions of our debt and manufactures just about everything we buy -- in other words, annoying China could result in American capitalists losing money and we certainly cannot have that.  And given that the movie was shot with Chinese actors, with the change of villain done in post-production, the intended audience must fit the demographic of people who think all Asians look alike.

Red Dawn is Dan Bradley's directorial debut.  IMBD noted that he has been involved in many movies as a stunt coordinator, starting back in 1983.  Was he chosen to direct this farce because VIPs realized that no serious director would touch the farcical plot?  Or was he simply more malleable, given that he wanted to break into directing?

Johnny Knoxville, an actor in The Dukes of Hazzard, said of Bradley that "everyone in Hollywood wants Dan Bradley to shoot their car stuff."  However, there were no car chase scenes in Red Dawn, veering or otherwise.

* * * * *

Kim Il-sung was a brutal dictator in the mold of Lenin and Mao.  He simply did not care if millions of people died, as they did during the Korean Conflict and afterward.  His songbun policy separated North Koreans into three caste groups: core, wavering, and hostile, with the percentages being, respectively, 20, 55, and 20 (read HRNK's report Marked for Life: Songbun, North Korea’s Social Classification System).  Once one was classified as less than core, it was highly unlikely one would ever rise back into the ranks of the favored.  Core people are called tomatoes (red inside and out), wavering people are called apples (red outside, white inside) and are in need of further "education," and hostile people are called grapes, politically unredeemable.

He spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the "Hotel of Doom," the Ryugyong Hotel which was started in in 1987 and left unfinished for almost 20 years because the breakup of the Soviet Union eliminated his sugar daddy.  He created a prison camp system which currently holds 200,000 political prisoners (read HRNK report The Hidden Gulag).

Kim Jong-il was a selfish, spoiled gourmet, who ate lobster and drank fine French wine while his people starved.  Millions of people starved to death during the 1990s, but he shares that blame with his father.

Kim Jong-un, aka Junior, is his father's son, a chip off the old blockhead.  His actions so far are those of a second-generation spoiled brat.  He was educated in Switzerland, but his classmates remember someone who studied little other than basketball; come to think of it, that sounds like Barack Obama.

Tim Peters, someone who has been actively helping North Korean refugees for many, many years and founder of the Christian group Helping Hands Korea, believes that Kim Jong-il's sister and brother-in-law, Kim Kyoung-hee and Jang Sung-taek, are actually in control of North Korea; Junior acts like a self-important frat-boy, but he actually controls nothing.  In an interview, Peters likened Junior "to a five-year-old attempting to speak at a PhD conference."

Peters also commented that "most of the monetary transactions in North Korea are in Chinese yuan, [meaning that] North Korea is gradually becoming a satellite of the Chinese empire."

* * * * *

Representatives Sander Levin and Charles Rangel are urging the government to designate China as guilty of trade secret theft.

"It looks very much as though the Chinese government is stealing our companies' trade secrets and passing them along to their SOEs (state-owned enterprises), and possibly other Chinese companies.  It is difficult enough for our companies to compete with the endless massive subsidies and other industrial policies of the Chinese government, but add trade secret theft into the mix and it is miraculous that our companies are able to compete at all," Levin and Rangel said.

26% of American Chamber of Commerce in China members who responded to an annual survey said their proprietary data or trade secrets had been compromised or stolen from their China operations.

"This poses a substantial obstacle for business in China, especially when considered alongside the concerns over IPR (intellectual property rights) enforcement and de facto technology transfer requirements," said the report.

Some people would say this complicates matters with North Korea because China is its only friend and our only leverage against North Korea.  However, this has always been specious and we now have the proof that China is not our friend, ally, or reliable business partner.

* * * * *

Much has been made of the four videos North Korea has recently made depicting its victory over the USA.  The first one, released at the beginning of February, depicts a North Korean cameraman dreaming of a major American city engulfed in flames after a missile attack.  The second one depicts Barack Obama in flames.  The third one depicts the Capitol building exploding in a fireball.  The fourth one depicts depicts paratroopers descending on Seoul in an invasion; the narrator states that "The crack stormtroops will occupy Seoul and other cities and take 150,000 US citizens as hostages."

Could these videos be in response to Red Dawn?  The switch from Chinese to North Korean troops could have been taken by Pyongyang as official government propaganda.

A reinforcement for the videos could be the upcoming birthday of Kim Il-sung, the founder of North Korea, on April 15.  Last year was the really big celebration for the date, given that he was born in 1912, but Junior was still learning the ropes, as his father, Kim Jong-il, had died not long before on December 17, 2011.  Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il are venerated as gods, so their birth dates are held to be sacred.

South Korea recently threatened to destroy many of the 35,000 statues of the two North Korean gods.  Could the videos be in response to the threat to destroy these sacred statues, as the Telegraph's Tim Stanley wondered?

Dennis Rodman, the fruitcake of the NBA, visited North Korea in February.  The look on the face of the North Korean girl in the photo accompanying the Telegraph's article speaks volumes about how normal people view Rodman.  Rodman addressed a crowd of thousands, telling Junior, "You have a friend for life."  Rodman later said that Junior is waiting for a call from another famous black basketball player, Barack Obama.  Rodman declared that "He's a good guy to me," adding, that "as a person to person, he's my friend.  I don't condone what he does."

I'm sure that is similar to what John Wayne Gacy's friends said about him.

The U.S. government is tiring of Junior's tantrums because it recently sent B-52 and then B-2 Spirit stealth bombers flying over South Korea in a unsubtle hint that attacking the USA would be a suicidal move.  The B-2 bombers traveled non-stop from their base in Missouri to show that the USA can strike anytime, anywhere.

In response, Junior "finally signed the plan on technical preparations of strategic rockets of the KPA, ordering them to be standby for fire so that they may strike any time the U.S. mainland, its military bases in the operational theaters in the Pacific, including Hawaii and Guam, and those in south Korea," declared KCNA, the official DPRK news agency.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that "We are concerned that alongside the adequate, collective reaction of the U.N. Security Council, unilateral action is being taken around North Korea that is increasing military activity."  As usual, Lavrov got it wrong; this is not remotely unilateral.  In the very recent past, North Korea sank the Cheonan, with 46 deaths of South Korean sailors; there was no justification or warning of this attack.  North Korea fired artillery at Yeonpyeong Island, with four deaths of South Koreans; there was no justification or warning of this attack.  North Korea has been threatening to launch all-out war for a few months now.

Our sanctions appear to be having little effect on the North Korean leadership because China is not serious about changing how things go there.  The elite can still buy luxury goods on their jaunts to China, checking in plasma televisions, Sony Cyber-shot cameras, DVD players, karaoke machines, face creams, perfumes, refrigerators, washer-dryers, and everything including the kitchen sink on their flights home from China.

In the final weeks of WWII, Hitler descended into madness.  He continued to order divisions here and there, never accepting that they had been eliminated in combat and did not exist any more.  Junior is doing the same type of thing.  He is currently planning where to target his missiles, with some of the choices being Washington DC, Los Angeles, and Austin.  The problem is that even his best missiles might just be able to strike Alaska, with the continental USA being far out of reach as the map on this BBC News article clearly shows.

North Korea's missiles need a few more test launches before they can reliably hit targets in Guam and Hawaii.  No more test launches can be tolerated.  From now on, every time North Korea brings a missile to a launch pad, it must be destroyed there via cruise missile.  We cannot wait until North Korea perfect its toys of targeted death.  If we adopt this policy now, North Korea will know that if it attacks South Korea or Japan, the USA will destroy its installations with impunity -- and therefore it will not attack in the first place.

It is highly likely that the North Korean military is considering another submarine attack like the one on the Cheonan.  It is essential to neutralize this threat.  We need to make an announcement that North Korean submarines have just 24 hours to return to base.  After that, all submarines will be sunk on sight with no warning.  And then we need to do it.

A partial naval blockade of North Korea must be considered.

As I wrote before, China is using the port of Najin on the eastern side of North Korea.  This port is the last ice-free one going all the way around Russia to Murmansk.  Najin is important to China and Russia would dearly love to start using it.  Boarding and searching all ships leaving/entering Najin and anywhere else on the eastern side would severely impede both North Korea and China's trade.  China would protest mightily, but we need to make sure China knows that the games are over.  All military ships would be ordered back to base.  All ships containing luxury goods would need to be sent back to prevent Junior and the top leadership from gathering any more trinkets; the effect of this on the leadership must not be underestimated.

A naval blockade of the western side of North Korea would be problematic because this is China's backyard.  Given China's sabre-rattling over the South China Sea, it is likely that a major U.S. Navy presence in the Korea Bay or Yellow Sea would be more than China would tolerate.  However, U.S. Navy attack submarines could sink any North Korean submarines without forcing China to lose face.

It is time to stop playing games, basketball or otherwise, with Junior.

Friday, March 1, 2013

FICTION: The war of immiscible ideas, epilogue

HEARING BEFORE THE EAST ASIAN AND PACIFIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE OF THE U.S. SENATE.

CHRISTIAN TOLGFORS: Senators, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for the opportunity to speak in this honored venue.

I had one main plan, to ignite the fires of nationalism.  I intended to light a bonfire so large and intense so that even the naked hippies at the Burning Man Festival would be forced to kneel down in deference to a greater power.  But I could build all the bonfires I wanted and nothing would have happened without help on the inside.

Adolf Hitler's Germany was overthrown, but not before the deaths of millions of people, mainly Eastern Europeans and Soviets.  And even though the Holocaust is an established fact with countless photographic, movie film, physical, and written records, there are imbeciles who claim that it only involved a relative handful of people.

A similar situation exists today in Turkey where the Islamist government refuses to accept that the Ottoman Empire was directly responsible for the deaths of two million people -- the Armenian Genocide -- starting in the late 1800s.

This is why we held the get-together for the women forced into prostitution to serve the Japanese army leading up to and during WWII, the so-called "comfort women."  As many of you remember, we staged a peninsula-wide advertising campaign to notify all women who were wronged via this Japanese cruelty.  The response to this campaign overwhelmed us, to be honest, and we were forced to hold it over an entire week in Panmunjom.  We invited all of these women, who are sadly entering their last years with many living in poverty, to sit for a video interview.  I think we have something like 50,000 of these interviews being edited as we speak.  We had to ask for assistance from every television station and university on the Korean Peninsula to handle all of these interviews.  When the editing is completed, we will allow the interviews to be viewed in two places: the reunification museum in Panmunjom and on a dedicated website.  Dangerously ignorant Japanese like the current prime minister who insist that the so-called "comfort women" volunteered to serve as pin cushions for the Japanese army will have a difficult time explaining the 50,000 interviews, most of which are simply painful to watch.

This gathering was limited to Koreans, but since the event, we have had many Chinese, Filipino, and other nationalities ask if they can attend next year's gathering.  It will be interesting to see what the total count ends up being.

The Soviet Union fell, not because Ronald Reagan made his famous speech in Berlin -- "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" -- as the "tax cuts create jobs" crowd ignorantly believes, but because its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, was not willing to use machine guns against his people.  He believed in "socialism with a human face," as he naively believed Soviet citizens, given the choice, would retain the communist system.  He told a Communist Party conference in 1988 "the imposition of a social system, a way of life, or policies from outside by any means, let alone military force, are dangerous trappings of the past," effectively renouncing the Brezhnev Doctrine, the policy governing the ruling of Eastern Europe by force.

In July 1989 in Strasbourg, Gorbachev proclaimed "The social and political order in some countries changed in the past, and it can change in the future too, but this is entirely a matter for each people to decide.  Any interference in the internal affairs, or any attempt to limit the sovereignty of another state, friend, ally, or another, would be inadmissible."  In response, in August approximately 2 million Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians held hands across the three countries in the Baltic Way demonstration against the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.  In September the Monday Demonstrations started in Leipzig, East Germany; by October, these demonstrations attracted more than 300,000 people. In November the Berlin Wall fell.

Reagan did not win the Cold War.  Gorbachev allowed it to end by inaction because given a choice, intelligent people will choose something other than a totalitarian government.

Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Nikita Khrushchev did not hesitate to kill their subjects to maintain the dictatorship.  Vyacheslav Molotov, a true believer in Bolshevism until his death in 1986 and Stalin's foreign minister, said in his quasi-memoirs that Stalin was like a lamb compared to Lenin in terms of brutality and that's saying something given that Stalin ordered the killings of more people than anyone except Mao.  Speaking of Stalin and Khrushchev, it is an insult to the president who served during both of their reigns, Dwight Eisenhower, to say that Reagan won the Cold War all by himself.  Eisenhower had to deal with the last weeks of Stalin, then with the period where we really had no clue who was running the Soviet Union, and then with Khrushchev.  Former general Eisenhower also cut the defense budget by 20%, never started a single war, and was the last Republican president to have a budget surplus, something today's politicians should remember.

The leader after Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, was a doddering, old fool.  He loved receiving medals, even for things he did not do.  By the end of his life he received a chestful of medals for heroic service in WWII, even though he had relatively easy duty.  Brezhnev loved to kiss, as Jimmy Carter found out, and he would pretty much kiss anything that had a pulse.

Actually, I'll bet Brezhnev would have been superb in a Superbowl commercial for GoDaddy.com.

The leader after Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, may have been the most dangerous General Secretary since Stalin.  He served in Budapest in 1956 during the uprising.  The sight of Hungarian secret policemen being hung from lamp posts left a lasting impression on him.  He saw first-hand what happens to totalitarian government leaders after those institutions fail.

He suppressed information revealing that the West was not actively involved in the Prague Spring.  Regardless of whether he truly believed in the conspiracy theory or simply wanted to manipulate the Politburo, the end result was the same.

There is no doubt that Andropov would not have allowed the Soviet Union to fall.  He would have been happy to bring out machine guns and tanks and slaughter large numbers of people to maintain power.  If he had lived just ten years more, it is entirely possible he would have passed power to that other famous KGB operative, the current Russian president, leaving the Soviet Union intact.

Back to Korea.  The evil Kim family would have continued its grip on the throats of Koreans for decades more, except for the brave actions of Colonel Kim Yu-shin and the many officers who decided to put an end to the deprivation once and for all.  But their lives were not the only ones being risked.

A great American, Rodney Dangerfield, often joked that he lived in a neighborhood which was so tough that after tackling a player in a football game, the other team went after his family.  The same thing would have been true for the families of "The One Hundred" if the coup had been foiled.  Hitler ordered the members of the 1944 plot against him killed and used guillotines to kill the members of the White Rose Society in 1943, but he left their families alone.  For the Korean officers, their spouses, children, parents, and siblings would have been painfully executed, along with their distant cousins; the Kim family would have ensured that their family tree was eradicated down to the roots.

North Korea was never going to fall by itself or via the actions of some mythological American president.  It needed to be an inside job.

We had problems with some South Koreans wanting to close the border to their Northern cousins.  They were a mix of people who want nothing to interfere with their hedonistic lifestyle and people who must worship at the First National Church of Goldman Sachs, similar to the USA's corporate crowd and groupies thereof.  These people seriously asked us to close the borders, by force if necessary, to keep the unwashed Northern masses out of their consumerist paradise.  We explained to them that they had two choices.  First, they could raise their own taxes so that Northerners would be able to stay in their homes without starving.  Or second, they could watch as millions of starving Koreans crossed the border to satisfy basic needs.  Were these people honestly proposing that we employ machine guns at the border to maintain their precious half-country?

When we were crafting the reunification treaty, we took the opportunity to fix a few problems with current law.

The first is one of my personal pet peeves, that of people driving while using a mobile device.  We made it illegal to drive while using any form of Wi-Fi or cellular device.  We fixed the penalties as follows: driving while using a cell phone, whether hands-free or hands-on, will result in the same penalty as driving while impaired due to alcohol; and driving while texting will result in the same penalty as driving while under the influence of alcohol.  Plenty of studies have shown that texting while driving is just as bad as drinking to excess, with respect to reaction time.

The second category involves animal cruelty.  It is common to eat dog meat in China and it was common in Korea.  Was.  It is common to eat dolphin and whale meat in Japan.  Japan kills some 20,000 dolphins and 1000 whales each year, calling it "scientific research"; more like research into the culinary tastes of Japanese businessmen.  We banned the sale of dog, dolphin, and whale meat in Korea.  We banned whaling and intentional killing of dolphins.  We even tightened the fishing laws so fishermen must try their very best to not catch dolphins accidentally.

The third category involves the evil Internet search company.  We banned their video-mobile from the entire Peninsula, as well as other vehicles with cameras on their roof, hood, and/or trunk.  We also banned their cyborg eye wear, as we do not need Glassholes running amok.

Most of the other constitutional changes involve religion.

We invited the Dalai Lama to visit Pyongyang because for the past seventy years or so, religion has been banned often under punishment of death.  Our main purpose was not to annoy China -- that was a bonus -- we wanted all Koreans to know that religion is now up to them.  That said, religion has no place in government.  America first saw how religion kills with the slaughter of the Pequots by the supposedly peaceful Pilgrims shortly after their arrival in the New World.

Scientology was banned outright because it is not a religion.  It is a predatory, totalitarian cult which employs a surfeit of shysters to suffocate opponents with legal motions.  It is an immortal manifestation of Ron Hubbard's roach motel: members check in, but they are never allowed to check out.  I cannot fathom why it has not been outlawed in all civilized countries.

As to Islam . . . it is an all-encompassing political ideology, not a religion.  Islamic leaders often call for the implementation of sharia, aka Islamic, law, which would result in all other religions being subservient to Islam.  Women would be second, if not third-class, citizens.  As we have seen in the UK, because Muhammad married his favorite wife at age 6-7 and consummated the relationship at age 9-10 -- those are her ages; he was over 50 -- Muslims today believe that young girls are ripe for exploitation.  As a result, child grooming in the UK has become an epidemic.  A number of British imams openly preach to their followers to not work, accept welfare, and use their time to force the conversion of the UK to an Islamic state.  That will not happen in Korea.

People often say that only a small minority of Muslims are killers.  That is both true and misleading.  There are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world today.  If only 1% are killers, then 15 million are dangerous.  And back to the child grooming in the UK, regular Muslims did not inform on their fellow Muslims; old-fashioned police work was required to bring the deviants to justice, so the 99% of Muslims who do not actively kill are obviously sympathetic to those who do.

The laws we passed with respect to Islam are as follows:
  • The burka and face veil are banned in public,
  • All citizens, residents, and tourists are allowed to speak their mind with respect to non-belief, for example, they are allowed to "insult Islam" by declaring that Muhammad was just a man or make a movie depicting any religious figure -- remember that libel of the dead is not against the law,
  • All people are free to change their religious status as often as they wish, to become atheists, Muslims, Christians, Jews, or any other religion regardless of the person's previous religion,
  • Anyone calling for the implementation of sharia law will be charged with the same crime as would someone calling for the overthrow of the legally elected government, and
  • Unlike in the UK, where the courts routinely refuse to deport violent criminals because the thugs whine that they are family men, deportations of people actively attempting to overthrow the government will take place promptly, only taking into account how dangerous that person is to Korea and Koreans.

In the case of someone throwing acid, lye, or another corrosive on another person, often by Muslims but certainly not always, we set the penalty at 20 years in prison with no possibility of parole; you throw, you serve.

We also copied some of Germany's laws which transferred some wealth of the Western half to the newly-freed half.  We created a Minister of Reunification who will ensure that Northerners are not forgotten, educationally or infrastructure-wise.  A direct report of the Minister of Reunification is the Vice-Minister of Refugees and Orphans who will ensure that the large number of homeless people have a home.  These people will work together to ensure that Northerners are educated in the ways of the West, not the least of which includes how not to be conned by carpetbaggers, snake oil salesmen, grifters, and other capitalist parasites who are drawn to the aftermath of a disaster like flies to manure.

That said, the entire Korean Peninsula is now open for business.

I am ready to take your questions now.

* * * * *

Han-na Song-Tolgfors and the twins, Tan-na and Kan-na, were sitting directly behind Tolgfors.

"Can we get some ice cream now?" asked Kan-na breathlessly.

"I want chocolate chip!" declared Tan-na.

Song-Tolgfors laughed quietly.  "No, we must wait until Christian is finished with his testimony.  We will get ice cream in a couple of hours."

Without turning around, Tolgfors extended his hand back to where the three were sitting.  In his hand were two foot-ends from a pair of nylon stockings.

Both girls tittered.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Eliminate North Korea's Kim Jong-un

In totalitarian countries, major media announcements are approved in advance by the rulers.  To ignore this process would be suicidal for a bureaucrat.

China's Global Times is not quite the equivalent of the Soviet Union's Pravda, but it is close.  It recently printed some opinions suggesting that China is tiring of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's tantrums with respect to nuclear weapons.

The Telegraph UK reported that the Global Times declared that China "should exact a heavy price from North Korea for a nuclear test" and that "China shouldn't be taken hostage by North Korea's extreme actions."

Given that China supplies much of North Korea's food and energy, one would think these words would have an impact on Junior.

This would be North Korea's third nuclear test, with the first two having been carried out under Junior's father, Kim Jong-il.  The first two tests were in 2006 and 2009.

And North Korea, aka the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, wants everyone to know the intended audience, if not target, of its nuclear arsenal: the USA.  North Korea declared that their third nuclear test is part of an "upcoming all-out action" against the USA:
We do not hide that a variety of satellites and long-range rockets which will be launched by the DPRK one after another and a nuclear test of higher level which will be carried out by it in the upcoming all-out action, a new phase of the anti-US struggle that has lasted century after century, will target against the US, the sworn enemy of the Korean people.
. . .
Settling accounts with the US needs to be done with force, not with words, as it regards jungle law as the rule of its survival
. . .
The U.N. Security Council should apologize for its crime of seriously encroaching upon the independence of a sovereign state ... and repeal all the unreasonable ‘resolutions’ at once.

Junior has clearly never visited the "sworn enemy of the Korean people" because if he did, he would find that the almost two million Korean-Americans have found a happy home here, opening restaurants and other businesses.

Besides, the never-ending famines in North Korea would suggest that the Kim family is actually the sworn enemy of the Korean people.

China's foreign ministry distanced itself from a similar Global Times editorial, calling the claim "only the opinion of the media," but given that China is a repressive, communist country in total control of the media, the government was only trying to weasel out of its previous declaration for reasons known only to the leadership.

It may be only the usual nonsense we hear from the most repressive country in the world, but the Telegraph UK reported that North Korea might be attempting to explode two nuclear weapons in a relatively short time-frame to demonstrate that it has the right stuff, technologically-speaking.

We have heard this type of bluster before -- Junior is without a doubt his father's son -- but this time North Korea has put its video where its mouth is.

A video (see here) was uploaded to YouTube by the North's official propaganda website, Uriminzokkiri.  It depicts the dream of a pampered North Korean (i.e. he is not a scarecrow like most North Koreans).  He dreams of a North Korean space shuttle flying around the Earth.  He dreams of a unified Korea, undoubtedly under DPRK terms.  And then he dreams of New York City in flames after a nuclear-tipped missile attack.

Junior isn't nearly as intelligent as Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who had visited the USA before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and had seen American industrial capacity first-hand.  He predicted that Japan would have success for only six months and he was proven correct.  I'd predict that the DPRK would have less than 30 minutes success before being vaporized.

Not to mention that North Korea has imprisoned 200,000 of its people in concentration camps.  North Korea has 25 million people, so given that South Korea has 50 million people, does Junior dream of imprisoning 400,000 South Koreans after reunification?

When the question of intervening in North Korea arises, some people bring up the subject of Bush the Younger's excellent adventure in Iraq, with the never-found WMD.  However, this is comparing apples and oranges because the DPRK not only has been proven to possess WMDs, it brags about them.

Another comparison could be made with Iran, which most people believe to possess at least the capacity and the will to manufacture nuclear weapons, if they do not already have them.  Yet many people, largely neo-cons, advocate military intervention in Iran yet they do not do so for the DPRK.  And the reason is obvious: oil.

It won't be long before North Korea figures out how to shrink nuclear weapons down to the point where they can be loaded onto their missiles.  And then we might discover just how ineffective our much-vaunted anti-missile systems are.

It is time to bid adieu to Junior and his sycophants.

BBC News showed us the way with its article Satellites uncover North Korea.  We know where Junior and the favored members of the Kim family live.  Their complex of mansions north of Pyongyang includes a swimming pool complete with water slide.

Yes, there are lots of buildings, but we have lots of cruise missiles, and there wouldn't be a North Korean version of Paul Revere crying out that the missiles are coming.

The other option involves the private train running between the compound and Pyongyang.  Railways make for a good ambush because trains cannot leave their tracks, unless derailed.  It would require insider cooperation, but an effective and economical bushwhack would consist of a few trucks driven to a point just above the tracks, assuming a tunnel.  The tracks would be dismantled slightly so as to cause a minor derailment.  The exhaust of the trucks would be channeled into the tunnel via long hoses, causing an intense atmosphere of carbon monoxide.  When the train derailed at that point, all of the occupants would die in a very short time.  A few toadies and hangers-on would also perish, but who ever said justice was pretty?

We would need to ensure that China and Russia stayed out of North Korea after the smoke cleared.  Russia probably would not interfere, but China would be very worried that U.S. forces would join South Koreans north of the 38th parallel.  We would need to have a pointed conversation with China: our military will remain south of the 38th parallel and your military will stay out of the Korean Peninsula.  The reunification of Korea will be an internal Korean matter.

We would also need to rapidly convert North Korean Juche nationalism to generic Korean nationalism, but that would not be too difficult.  When South Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel and visited North Korean military installations, the weapon of choice would be food and lots of it.  Soldiers would be invited to bring their families to the base.  When North Korean children, who today usually only eat two meals per day, were eating as much as they want, the war would be over for everyone watching.

Or we could just hope that the missiles never arrive.