Claims of Victory

Wars that don't end in the total destruction and surrender of one side ....

"Mission accomplished" US President Bush 2003

   ... can often produce strange definitions of victory.

Only The Devil Loves Wars

One of the surprises of the war in Iran are the casualty figures ...

Tehran Bombed - Low Comparatively Casualties?

 

.... I say surprises, because considering the sheer volume of munitions being expended by all sides, especially by the US and Isreal, but also by an Iran lashing out in all directions, you would expect many thousand upon thousands of dead and wounded.

Fair Swap?

In the USA and the leftie woke press (like the BBC), the release of the previously largely unknown black lesbian basketball player Brittney Griner, in a prisoner swap, has been greeted as almost like the release of Nelson Mandela .....

Griner For Bout - A Fair Swap?

..... with almost minute by the minute reports of her progress westward.

The Goats That Ate The World

Invasive plants and animals are part of the curse of modern forms of transport and trade .....

Nothing Can Eat The Poisonous Cane Toad And Live .....

.... and the cane toad in Australia is perhaps the poster boy of introductions that have gone spectacularly wrong.

Seven Stans - Cockpit Of Terrorism

And now the world prepares to go to hell in a set of basket cases ...... as the largely failed US led NATO mission leaves Afghanistan at the end of the year, the Jihadist forces are already setting up bases inside Afghanistan in order to attack one or all of the seven 'stans'. Afghanistan, Krgyzstan, Kazakhstan,Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan. Most of them are weak, economically poor, and already embroiled at a high level in the corruption brought about by the drug monies flowing out of Afghanistan.

There is no avoiding the fact that the US never really understood the region, and far from leaving it a better place, has by its mighty presence, largely destabilised the whole socio economic arena of the region to such an extent, that its possible that as well as Afghanistan; Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan could also become destabilised over the coming decade, with at least two of these becoming Jihadist / Taliban strongholds.

The Seven 'Stans' The New Cockpit Of Terrorism?

The most vulnerable countries are Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which share over 1,200 miles (1,900km) of borders with northern Afghanistan .... with Tajikistan in particular already propped up by 6,000 Russian troops. In the Badakhshan province on Afghanistan's north-west border, up to 500 Taliban militants have already ousted the Afghan forces from several districts in the province, and are now trying to take control of Iskashim, a key district and town, that also lies along the Afghan border. It is only separated from Tajikistan by the narrow Panj river which freezes over in winter, making forays into Tajikistan much easier.

So far from eradicating the problems of a terrorist state in Afghanistan, the West has merely spread the troubles over a wider area, and like the cork on a Djinn bottle, it can no longer be put back after being pulled. The fact that the 'stans' cannot agree on a common plan to protect their region after 2014 just makes the likelihood of a failure by one or more of them all the more likely ... a domino effect if you will, only this time its not the Communists, but an infinitely more frightening enemy.

Empires End

The 'American Empire' seems to be drawing to an end after about seventy years of total economic and political dominance, and as the economy falls into a cycle of deep recessions which is mirrored by the other *Western economies retracting with it, there are some strange stories popping up


Empire Nevada, Modern Ghost Town.

 

 .... not least of these are the rust belt towns in Europe and the USA, and now these are spreading into previously prosperous suburbs.

 

Lord's Resistance Army

At last someone in the West's conscience has got the better of them, and after Libya, where the US took more of a support role, the US President, Barack Obama, has finally decided that the scandal of the Uganda bandits known as the 'Lord's Resistance Army' must be ended. This genocidal group is led by Joseph Kony, a man who is probably technically insane (and who is is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court), but who leads his rag bag bunch on murderous across a swathe of central Africa.

"I have authorised a small number of combat-equipped US forces to deploy to central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of (LRA leader) Joseph Kony from the battlefield" .... in other words "Wanted Dead or Alive" (preferably dead ... in this case few liberals would quibble with that).


Lords Resistance Army - Rag Tag Bandits

The LRA are guilty of mass murder, rape, looting, and kidnappings in several nations, and appear to be able to survive being attacked by soldiers of several nations (Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Central Africa Republic), across whose borders they roam. About 30,000 have people died and mant thousands horribly maimed, as the LRA has spread terror in northern Uganda for more than 20 years, displacing some two million people in that country alone.

The US is sending about 100 soldiers to Uganda to help regional forces battle the notorious Lord's Resistance Army. All the troops will be combat-equipped, but primarily would be providing information and advice .... whats so sad about this is that as little as 1,000 combat troops, and a handful of helicopter,s would destroy this group inside a couple of months.

Still, hats off to Pres. Obama, some action is better than nothing.

Hurricanes And Women

Hurricanes and Typhoons were always seemingly named after women.


Hurricane Irene Hits The Colonies

 

Apparently in 1953, the US National Weather Service picked up on the habit of their Naval meteorologists, in naming the storms after women. 

The Lost "Drugs War"

Occasionally this blog looks at the insidious nature of the drug scourge that the Western world has created for itself. This affliction, fuelled entirely by a couple of feckless generations who use drugs to a value of $380 billion a year, primarily from the retail drug sales.

This drug using group are estimated to be around 4% of the worlds population but generate a trade that brings much sorrow and crime to the world.

The invasive nature of this drug trade was starkly illustrated when a story came out that showed that 95% of dollar bills in Washington DC, bear traces of the illegal drug cocaine. This figure for the US capital is up 20% for the last two years.

Other countries where notes were tested were Canada, Brazil, China and Japan. China had the lowest rates, with only 12% of its bills contaminated, other big US cities such as Baltimore, Boston and Detroit had the highest average cocaine levels in the US on their dollar bills. In the US the cleanest bills were collected from Salt Lake City, home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, better known as the Mormons.

Europe has not been spared these sort of results, and in fact as long ago as 2003, in Germany, nine out of 10 banknotes showed clearly measurable amounts of cocaine according to the Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research in Nuremberg. The same tests run looking for concentrations of cocaine on Spanish euro notes, found that they were almost a hundred times that of the levels recorded in Germany.

The only balance to this is that Bank notes can pick up traces of cocaine directly from users snorting it through rolled up bills, or when cash is stacked together, and its assumed that the latter is the main cause of the high levels of the drug traces.