Sunday, July 15, 2012

The case for maximum Lattitude "Iran"

     Revolution in Iran is probably not on the horizon. Although the students that led the revolution are a later generation, those who desire that are in a system that has acquired western intelligence skills. This makes organizing a revolution almost impossible. Those who survived the purge that the Khomeini have conducted through the decades are surrounded by people who are tied to the government.
     The mas sad has taught the need to keep things dark, so if Iran signals that it has nuclear capability it is because the Russians have allowed them to do so. A nuclear Iran can, only then, be on the horizon as Russia and Red China attempt to amass the power they wish to wield. The power to close down the oil lanes which will hold the west at their mercy.
      Iran and Iraq are the key to controlling the gulf. Once bitter enemies, Iran has gained an ally in Iraq because of the religious ties they hold in common. Little do they know of the sway that Russia and China will hold over them, Much as north Vietnam learned during the years the Vietnam War raged. They found China to be an unwelcome neighbor and Russia to be just as distasteful. Iran and Iraq would find that their oil would be the slave to Russian and China's whim and those whims would be, to control the world by withholding oil from the markets, creating another 1970 oil embargo that would never end, while they diverted oil and the profits of controlling it, to obtaining a stead fast grip on the flow of oil around the world, and there by forcing a show down over energy. One they think they can win with China's new Navy.
     This is only a very cursory assessment of the situation, but it demands consideration in respect to how to deal with Iran. Sanctions should be accompanied by the determination to use a wide latitude of responses to Iran's continued power expansion. Nothing should be off the table in respect to response, from covert  to military. Military doesn't mean all out war which would be stupidity, but a thought toward cooling off relations with Russia and China and more militaristic position by the U.S. toward them.

The County With No Mafia

Flag-map of New YorkFlag-map of New York (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Map of New York highlighting Oswego CountyMap of New York highlighting Oswego County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)TARAKHIL, AFGHANISTAN - SEPTEMBER 08:  America...TARAKHIL, AFGHANISTAN - SEPTEMBER 08: American project manager Gordan Timm looks over the U.S.-built 105MW Tarakhil Power Plant on September 8, 2011 in Tarakhil, Afghanistan, on the outskirts of Kabul. The $300 million USAID-funded plant has been criticized for the high price of the electricity it produces, mostly due to the exorbitant cost of transporting imported diesel fuel through Afghan war zones to operate the facility. Currently the plant runs at an average of 25 percent of capacity, only supplementing electricity for Kabul, which primarily uses cheaper imported power as well as hydroelectric power produced in Afghanistan. Proponents of the plant say that, although expensive, the Tarakhil plant helps provides energy independence for Afghanistan. Almost ten years after the 9/11 attacks and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. government is spending some $2.5 billion in 2011 alone on development projects in Afghanistan. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)      When the second Nine mile Point plant was built there was an investigation of the cost over runs. The investigation was sparked by the opposition to the plant and the billions of dollars the actual cost of the plant was an the estimated cost. What I will call big power company meets Central New York corruption.
       One investigation discovered that many of the welds in the pipes of the plant were never xrayed as required by the nuclear regulatory required at the time. It derttermined that one xray had been done of one weld on one pipe and been submitted as the welds on all the pipes in the plant up to that point. This probably came out because someone was not payed off as is usually the case in these things.
     While doing the investigation it was reported that the mafia controlled the cement supply to the plant and that this had a huge impact on the cost of the cement and the availability of that cement. To this day no criminal investigation has publicly taken place in to those allegations and yet the nine mile plant stands and there is talk of building another in Oswego near it. Of course it should be stated that no county in Central New York has ever mentioned the mafia in the years before or since nine the nine mile plant was built, so perhaps organized crime hasn't found Central New york.
     Hopefuly, for the Company that is proposing the new plant, this was all just bluster, but one wonder where those billions of dollars in cost over runs went. We never got a real answer to that.
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Trying to be Switzerland

Switzerland has a great economy and it's banking sector is the key to that. Other countries have tried to be Switzerland, but it has always resulted in a train wreck. The most recent train wrecks have been Iceland and the U.S., but Europe is about to follow.
     People envy the Swiss economy, but they don't understand that it can't be translated to bigger countries who have large numbers of immigrants and natives, who don't have highly technical skills. The reason that everyone has to have that kind of expertise is that Switzerland's population is mainly that type of people and they simply don't allow people who don't have those kinds of skills to live there. Of coarse there are a small number of people there who are not, but Switzerland is expensive, so they have to be employed by the wealthy or supported by the needs of the wealthy. For instance, farming can be a lower skilled industry, because the wealthy don't really worry about food prices. They pay what it costs. But anyone who doesn't have demand for their skills simply can't afford to live in Switzerland. Still that doesn't stop people in other countries from the delusional belief that it can be done every where.
     For 4 decades the Republicans have tried to make the U.S. into Switzerland and it has resulted in worse and worse depressions. There is no such things as a bad recession. A bad recession is a depression and that is what we have now. If every economist was not owned by the government we would hear the truth about the state of the economy. Nevertheless. Republicans are deluded into thinking that people will do what is in their own interests economically and that simply isn't true. The drive to be top dog always causes people too take short cuts or take more risk than is prudent to get ahead. That is human nature and the reason why big corporations had boards of directors that answered to stock holders. Absent that accountability, corporations always crash and burn. The best example of this is Chase's latest fiasco. No CEO should survive losing 7 Billion dollars unless they are related to Jesus Christ. CEO's are not particularly bright they simply have good decision making skills and get good advice. They also get the inside scoop from their buddies when it counts and have deal making abilities. Most are anal retentive too.
     Still Bush 1 and Bush 2 the sequel both listened to some dumb ass who told them that the U.S. could be Switzerland if only we let people off their leashes. We see how that has worked. Thirty million have lost their Jobs. Mitt Romney's answer to that is that they will leave the country if we simply cut them off. Yes sir! You too can get ready to give up your citizenship if he wins, because he wants people with no money to leave. How do you like Paraguay?
    Too Hispanic for you. Well get your passport ready because the rich can buy their own services and that means you will be unemployed.
     The idea of having an economy based on Switzerland has been kicked around for decades and that is the political fight we are involved in. Do we whittle down our economy to the point that only the rich and their chosen can have opportunity in the U.S. and kick everyone else to the curb after they are no longer useful. That is how it was before Social Security and pensions. When you are no longer able to work, you get nothing and are left to die. Millions died that way, in the poor house, isolated,  without any life, or meaningful activities. This is no exaggeration either. Before unions people worked as many hours as the boss said and for no living wage. Vacations were for the rich. Their lives had meaning watching the rest of us work ourselves to death while they played. It's also the reason they went to hell, so if aunt Molly had millions don't expect to meet her in heaven, "just saying". You can't enslave people and go to heaven as Ebenezer discovered that. That is an aside.
     The question is, whether to shrink the population to the degree that a million people can be served by the rest of the population while they play and pretend to be royalty. The answer to most is hell no, but most don't know that they are voting away their citizenship yet. People are already retiring to Mexico to live a better life. The south has almost finished purging itself of the poorer people. Jobs are few there and people there simply can't afford to stay there. The kids there see no future at all and they have fallen in to hopelessness.
     That is the way you get to a Swiss economy. Unfortunately where do the rest of the U.S. citizens go. No where. Even the ghettos in the cities can't sustain themselves.
     The real question will be, when will the people no longer accept this as a given and turn on those who are trying to take away their lives. Americans have never gone down without a fight and even the rich can't afford to keep people in prison. That would especially be the case if they had to hire private armies to protect themselves from the rest of society and how would you stop IED's. The rich would be captive to their houses unable to use the roads. Is that the America they want. I think we lived those days when Dillinger and others were heroes. Of course in these days they are portrayed as cold and callous killers, but to the poor they were fighting against the wealthy who enslaved and kept others impoverished just like the Swiss economy would do here.
     There are a lot of guns out there too and when it's your choice to go to the poor house will you just give yours up? Americans are fighters. Is it back to the 30"s or the beginning of a revolution. We are at the tipping point. The aristocracy in France never saw it coming.