Bloodstar

Yeah, I’m late to the party, but one of the biggest arts of diplomacy is the art of tact and signals. Throwing out a statement on housing in the midst of a sensitive point where negotiations are beginning is like throwing a match into kindling. Do it enough times and it’s all going to go up in flames. You can argue that it’s part of the diplomacy, but I think it was timed to cause the maximum damage to the Obama administration and the potential peace talks by the radical right wing elements in the Israeli administration.

The simple fact it, it’s going to take *years* for any real peace to take hold in Palestine. and I hate to say it, but there’s a strong investment in some aspects of the far right in Israel and also a chunk of Palestinians to ensure that Israel remains in a state of war with the Palestinians the more radicalized they can keep things, the more they can justify their own radical policies and beliefs. Of course, this is at best a dangerous dangerous game to play, and at worst, insane for Israel, because Israel already has enough enemies out there that want to eradicate their country. Usually you want people around you who don’t want you dead. IE. Egypt and Jordan, while their population is not supportive of Israel by any stretch, they’ve also enjoyed decades of peace, and more importantly, their governments have no desire to deal with the destabilization that would come with conflict.

Just as you can’t have Palestinians indoctrinating their children to hate Israel, you can’t have Israelis running around with T-shirts of a pregnant Palestinian woman in a gun sight with the caption, “One Shot Two Kills.” The Palestinian people (along with foreign proxies) have been guilty of radicalizing and being turned into fanatical haters who are willing to die for years, it’s disheartening to see the Israeli people begin their own radicalizing, because it becomes a cycle that feeds and feeds until there is nothing left of rational thought, just hate.

Turning to the peace process itself with the Palestinians: the lack of a coherent strong government in Palestine is hamstringing the peace process. having areas with no governing authority simply leads to lawless enclaves that are lead by whatever local thug wants to take power. Particularly, it enables foreign powers to finance groups and continue to work against Israel via proxies. Unfortunately in order for a strong government to take hold, Israel must accept some risk that the government will also be hostile to Israel. However, I think the risk of an overtly hostile government is smaller than people would realize. Because oftentimes, when a government has power, their first desire is to ensure they keep power, and you keep power by improving life, not by making it worse for everyone.

There’s always a chance that this general idea won’t hold true and a Palestinian government will be totally fanatical and radical and be a nightmare war situation for Israel. But I kinda doubt it.

This isn’t to say that all Israel has to do is play nice and things will get better. That’s not the point of this post: the situation over there is incredibly complex, more so than simply that Israel can do no wrong or is never at fault. more complex than simply saying that every other country is wrong and the Palestinians all need to die.

It also needs to be remember that Israel is run by people who have their own agenda which is not always going to match up with what the United States wants. And despite the best desire to consider Israel to be our BFF, Events dictate that Israel will put their interests first, just as the US must be prepared to put theirs first.

And who knows, smarter people than I have worked on this for years. So if you want to take my thoughts as musings that have no basis in reality, I’m ok with that. it’s quite possible I have no clue what I’m talking about, but if someone has a better take, feel free to respond. I’ll be happy to listen.

Tags: Gaza, World Events, bloodstar by bloodstar
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And, yes that’s hyperbole, But sometimes it’s the only thing that’ll get through some peoples thick skulls. But there is hope yet that maybe we can stamp out more stupid senseless bigotry and discrimination out of society, Sometimes slow and steady wins the race, and I know there are a number of people in the LGBT crowd that feel these changes are taking too long. I can respect their position, but sometimes if you do it at the right pace, you’ll minimize backlash and make the changes a lasting and integral part of society.

He (Defense Secretary Robert Gates) told the senators he understood that any change in the law was up to them. But he made it clear he believes it is time to do away with the 1993 policy, and by implication the outright ban on gay service that preceded it. Alongside (Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike) Mullen, that put the Pentagon’s top leadership at odds with uniformed leaders a rung or two below, as well as with and also with senior members of Congress.

“No matter how I look at the issue,” Mullen said, “I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.” Noting that he was speaking for himself and not for the other service chiefs, Mullen added: “For me, it comes down to integrity — theirs as individuals and ours as an institution.”

As I said in the title, the Republicans are less than pleased by the testimony:

Gates drew unusually pointed criticism from Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee for saying the review would examine how, not whether, to repeal the ban. Arizona Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the panel, icily told Gates he was disappointed in his position and suggested the Pentagon was usurping Congress’ job.

“Has this policy been ideal? No, it has not,” McCain said. “But it has been effective.”

Mullen looked pained when Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., suggested that the Joint Chiefs chairman had preordained the outcome of any study by signaling his own opposition to the ban.

“This is about leadership, and I take that very, very seriously,” Mullen replied, tightlipped.

Effective? Yep, effective in kicking out excellent military officers and veterans because someone either ratted them out or because they had the temerity to express their orientation. I’m sure it’s been really effective having dozens of Arabic translators fired simply because they were gay. So I ask now, why do the Republicans want the terrorists to win?

Tags: Law, Political, Republican Death Spiral, War, bloodstar by bloodstar
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They’re certainly higher now between Pakistan and Iran:

Pakistani police arrested 11 Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers Monday for illegally entering the country, amid tensions over a recent suicide attack that Tehran alleges was carried out by militants backed by Pakistani intelligence officials.

The 11 officers were taken into custody in Mashkel, close to the countries’ border in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, police officer Dadur Raman said. He said officers were interrogating the men and had seized two vehicles.

Another security official said the guards had no travel documents.

I doubt it’ll will escalate, but Iran sure knows how to shoot itself in the foot, that or else this is simply another way to create an enemy to get people to rally around the thug dictatorship.

Tags: Iran, Pakistan, World Events, bloodstar by bloodstar
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And the people are getting exactly what they voted for:

Hamas, classified by the U.S. and the European Union as a terrorist organization, isn’t offering enough to cover losses, said Ghabin, 43, whose husband is blind and who has five children. She blames Hamas for encouraging the investments.

“The imam told us that we wouldn’t regret joining this blessed business,” she said in her apartment in an unfinished 12-story high-rise overlooking the Mediterranean as her husband played the lute. “This happened in mosques all over Gaza.”

Support for Hamas has fallen amid dissatisfaction over its stewardship of Gaza, where the United Nations estimates that three-quarters of the population has insufficient food and more than 40 percent are unemployed.

Maybe they’ll learn one day, and maybe, just maybe enough people will get sick of this shit and there will actually be a serious effort at peace… or at least a reasonable non agression. It takes serious work to make Fatah look good, considering the complaints of corruption levied against Fatah prior to the elections. In the meantime Hamas shows it’s true stripes, a corrupt organization more bent on benefiting a few people.

Qishawi, who plays the electric organ at weddings, said he needs the $6,000 he got from selling his wife’s gold bracelets and their bedroom furniture. The middleman who invested their money in the tunnels seemed trustworthy because he was a religious man, well-known in the neighborhood, he said.

“It’s a complete insult considering that Hamas encouraged people to invest in the tunnels,” said Qishawi, on a couch in his Gaza City living room near a vase of plastic flowers. “Gaza is a desperate place. They took advantage of desperate people.”

What? you expect thugs like that care if you’re desperate? If nothing else, Hamas is doing more damage to the Palestinian trust in religion and maybe that will help diffuse the religious tensions a little bit at a time

Tags: Gaza, World Events, bloodstar by bloodstar
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The Soviets had it, and the Russians still have it active:

Perimeter ensures the ability to strike back, but it’s no hair-trigger device. It was designed to lie semi-dormant until switched on by a high official in a crisis. Then it would begin monitoring a network of seismic, radiation, and air pressure sensors for signs of nuclear explosions. Before launching any retaliatory strike, the system had to check off four if/then propositions: If it was turned on, then it would try to determine that a nuclear weapon had hit Soviet soil. If it seemed that one had, the system would check to see if any communication links to the war room of the Soviet General Staff remained. If they did, and if some amount of time—likely ranging from 15 minutes to an hour—passed without further indications of attack, the machine would assume officials were still living who could order the counterattack and shut down. But if the line to the General Staff went dead, then Perimeter would infer that apocalypse had arrived. It would immediately transfer launch authority to whoever was manning the system at that moment deep inside a protected bunker—bypassing layers and layers of normal command authority.

…

So why was the US not informed about Perimeter? Kremlinologists have long noted the Soviet military’s extreme penchant for secrecy, but surely that couldn’t fully explain what appears to be a self-defeating strategic error of extraordinary magnitude.

The silence can be attributed partly to fears that the US would figure out how to disable the system. But the principal reason is more complicated and surprising. According to both Yarynich and Zheleznyakov, Perimeter was never meant as a traditional doomsday machine. The Soviets had taken game theory one step further than Kubrick, Szilard, and everyone else: They built a system to deter themselves.

By guaranteeing that Moscow could hit back, Perimeter was actually designed to keep an overeager Soviet military or civilian leader from launching prematurely during a crisis. The point, Zheleznyakov says, was “to cool down all these hotheads and extremists. No matter what was going to happen, there still would be revenge. Those who attack us will be punished.”

a fascinating read into the mentality during the Cold War.

Tags: War, World Events, bloodstar by bloodstar
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Whatever happened to Wilderness Survival? These kids look like they’re going to Iraq.

Tags: Image of the day or Week, Political, War, bloodstar by bloodstar
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Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Who said it?
[Read more →]

Tags: Political, War, bloodstar, quotes by bloodstar
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Maybe this is a good thing, if it pushes Pakistan to deal with the Taliban, and the US can continue the troop build up in Afghanistan:

A decision by Taliban militants to withdraw from a peace deal in a tribal region close to the Afghan border threatens to open a new front for the Pakistan army as it battles the insurgents in two other areas.

Militants close to the border are behind a spate of bombings that are destabilizing nuclear-armed Pakistan. They are also blamed for attacks on Western troops in Afghanistan, where violence is running at record levels eight years after the U.S.-led invasion.

The disintegration of the truce in North Waziristan was the latest failure of a government pact with local Taliban leaders. The agreements have been criticized abroad because they effectively cede space to the insurgents.

A smart poppy program being implemented will also help keep the general population of Afghanistan from being pushed to the Taliban.

Tags: Afghanistan, Pakistan, World Events, bloodstar by bloodstar
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Having Taliban rivals fighting each other can’t be bad, just seems a pity to have the head of one faction dropped so quickly, though it’s possible the other people in the faction could get a new leader and decide they’d rather fight each other. That’d be really nice.

A Taliban faction leader who was seen as the chief rival to the militant group’s Pakistani head was fatally shot Tuesday, reportedly by one of his own guards.

The attack on Qari Zainuddin appeared to be a sign that divisions within the Taliban have broken into the open as they come under military assault. The army is clearing out militants from the Swat Valley and has been pounding strongholds of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in the South Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan in apparent preparation for a major offensive.

Tags: Pakistan, bloodstar by bloodstar
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Unfortunately it’s going to be a little tougher to root the Taliban out of Karachi:

Even as Pakistan’s military drives the Taliban from bases in the Swat Valley, 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) to the north, militants are holing up in Karachi, making it harder to rid the country of Islamic extremists. U.S. officials say the extremists pose a security threat in the nuclear-armed state and aid Muslim insurgents battling NATO forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

Karachi, a city of 18 million people, has two faces. One is the commercial capital, where women are seen in the workforce and in public life, entrepreneurs live in million-dollar homes and jeans-clad teenagers hang out in shopping malls and cafes.

…

The other face is the rundown warren of narrow streets in districts like Sohrab Goth and Baldia Town, where authorities have little control and walls and bridges are daubed with slogans like “Welcome welcome Taliban” and “Long live Taliban.”

“Karachi has more bombs, dynamite and Kalashnikovs than any other city in Pakistan,” said Fateh Muhammad Burfat, head of criminology at Karachi University.

Though pushing the Taliban away from the cities and forcing them into places where they can’t train, and have to rely on the good will of others to survive is at least a start.

Tags: Pakistan, bloodstar by bloodstar
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Now if only the US could cut off any retreat back into Afghanistan it would put a serious dent into organized resistance by the Taliban and al-Qaida:

Pakistan’s army launched airstrikes and ferried in tanks and artillery as it confirmed Tuesday that it was preparing a major offensive against insurgents in al-Qaida and the Taliban’s safest haven along the Afghan border.

The highly anticipated military operation in South Waziristan is seen as a potential turning point in the yearslong and sometimes half-hearted fight against militancy in Pakistan. It could also help curb Taliban attacks on Western forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

Tags: Pakistan, War, bloodstar by bloodstar
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And pay for it in spades after blowing up a Mosque, killing a number of people and really pissing off the locals who’d previously turned a blind eye:

In another area of the northwest, the military said it had secured two villages in Upper Dir where militants had holed up after being fought into retreat during five days of clashes with a citizens’ militia that sprang up to deliver payback for a recent deadly mosque bombing. It said 34 militants were killed, and one civilian died in a militant rocket attack.

The army used helicopter gunships to target militant positions in the operation, which also included the Bannu and Hangu regions as well as Upper Dir, and two local Taliban commanders were among the dead, said three intelligence officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to give information to reporters.

Taliban in the villages of Shatkas and Ghazi Gay were still beseiged by the militia, which destroyed a number of bunkers and an ammunition cache, the military said.

In general, the Taliban are getting pinched by US forces in Afghanistan and the Pakistani forces, they not going to simply go away, but their desperation to cause fear and strife backfired badly with the Mosque bombing

Good.

Tags: Afghanistan, War, bloodstar by bloodstar
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If they didn’t have nukes and enough artillery pointed at Seoul to level the city in the first hour of conflict, this wouldn’t be a big deal:

North Korea threatened a military response to South Korean participation in a U.S.-led program to seize weapons of mass destruction, and said it will no longer abide by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.

“The Korean People’s Army will not be bound to the Armistice Agreement any longer,” the official Korean Central News Agency said in a statement today. Any attempt to inspect North Korean vessels will be countered with “prompt and strong military strikes.” South Korea’s military said it will “deal sternly with any provocation” from the North.

Tags: Political, War, World Events, bloodstar by bloodstar
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This is one that will cause nightmares for people:

Russian officials estimated yielded a powerful 10- to 20-kiloton blast — enough to flatten a city and far more than North Korea managed in a 2006 atomic test.

Pyongyang’s unprecedented defiance raises the stakes in the mounting standoff over its nuclear program.

Last month, Pyongyang launched a rocket despite international calls for restraint, abandoned international nuclear negotiations, restarted its nuclear plants and warned it would carry out the atomic and long-range missile tests.

“We’re heading for a full-blown crisis with the North,” said Peter Beck, a Korean affairs expert who teaches at American University in Washington.

It’s not going to be the US that stops North Korea, and if North Korea really goes crazy you’ll see a full blown arms race take place all over Asia (much to the chagrin of China), and even worse, what if North Korea decides to sell a nuke, or use a few on South Korea and Japan? (there’s somewhere around 40,000 US troops in South Korea and more stationed in Japan, and a Nuclear Attack would certainly kill/injure a number of them)

Dying countries seldom act rationally

Tags: Political, War, World Events, bloodstar by bloodstar
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Unexpected and welcome, I suspect when the Taliban decided to advance last month, the was a meeting of the minds and a realization that really, the Taliban was threatening to take the government down. Somehow, governments don’t like being threatened:

Pakistan rejected an offer of peace talks to end fighting with Taliban militants in the northwestern Swat Valley as the conflict threatened a humanitarian crisis for more than 900,000 people forced to flee their homes.

Taliban guerrillas have repeatedly reneged on earlier peace accords in the region, Afrasiab Khattak, a senior minister in North West Frontier Province, said by phone from Peshawar today. “They never had the intention of laying down arms,” he said.

Pakistani security forces are battling an estimated 4,000 insurgents who reneged on a February accord and advanced closer to the capital, Islamabad, even after the government agreed to impose Islamic law in the region. About 870 militants have been killed since the offensive began April 26, the army said.

Tags: Pakistan, War, bloodstar by bloodstar
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