This day (July 3rd 2009) twenty one years ago the American missile destroyer the USS Vincennes fired a missile murdering all 290 passengers on the Airbus A300, the captain later testified stating he had thought it was an Iranian F-14A going in to attack him.
Unless the F-14 was going to prefer a kamikaze reminiscent to the war in the Pacific against Japan there was no way it could have caused any harm to the Vincennes, the model of F-14's given to Iran (under the Shah) were the A models not capable of engaging ground targets, it wouldn't have been able to carry say an Exocet ship missile like the one fired from an Iraqi Dassault Mirage F-1 (Iraq at the time working with the United States) which crippled the USS Stark the year before.
So what is really was was a horrible act of terror, an act of piracy, as a flotilla of Iranian boats went into the Gulf in the following days to retrieve the bodies the crew of the Vincennes were given medals for extraordinary achievements!
George HW. Bush then Vice President said this and I quote:
"I'll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever, I don't care what the facts are."
We know you don't George:
And what compensation did the families of the victims who ended up in a watery grave in the Persian Gulf get, well $61.8 million nearly ten years after the actual event, and to this day 21 years later the US still hasn't taken responsibility nor apologized for the tragedy they caused.
I'm sure if President Obama's diplomacy approach to Iran was worth a damn he would at least apologize and admit that they were in the wrong!
Remember when you were a kid and you first saw Back To The Future II where they go to the year 2015 and there are flying cars, hoverboards, self tying shoe laces, hoverboards and hydrating pizzas, how everything looked so clean and Utopian, and how the future was about to look like such a brighter and happier place.
Well its been twenty years since that movie was made (1989), now its 2009 and there are still no flying cars and no plans to make them!
Apart from great advancements in computers (the internet was unheard in BTTF's version of the future), what can we expect from further beyond than 2015?
A dull horrible hopeless future
The future that the 2006 movie Children of Men gave us was truly amazing, the year 2027 and not a child born in 18 years, the United Kingdom is the only country to regain law and society (just), while the rest of the world has become lawless, people are slowly losing it, life is dull and urban environments are stretched to the max in filth, violence, crime and general ugliness, this may happen in the future from a depression that crashes the current financial system meaning that law and order will fall soon afterwards reducing mankind back to the survival of the fittest.
A corporate controlled future
Man I hate corporations trying to sell me horseshit products I don't need!
But what if these corporations got together and gained more power above the government, of if they got so powerful they were allowed do business like sovereign countries, the 2008 John Cusack movie War Inc. took such a scenario showing a corporation (Tamberlain, based on the read life Haliburton) invading a fictional Middle Eastern country of Turaqistan for its vast oil reserves.
They then open the war destroyed control for business for other corporations.
This might be a stretch but think of this, in theory "anybody can run for president of the United States!"
I wonder who McDonalds wants up there? I wonder who Diet Coke wants up there?
A totalitarianism future
A future very like George Orwells 1984 were a small totalitarian government controls EVERYTHING everyone does every second of their lives, when 1984 came out it was more of a fear of what the world would look like if the Soviet Union took over.
However in 2002 when the US government proposed putting out an implantable RFID chip several hundred people speculated further saying it was the first step towards the rise of a totalitarian government (see video below).
The idea is that these chips will contain the money (hence digital money), from the chips the government can deduct the taxes you owe etc. etc. so you literally become a serf to them, and if you protest what they're doing they'll turn off your chip, and there is nothing you can do, you can't buy food you won't be able to survive!
This scenario may be more plausible in the mere future than the next one;
A future robot uprising
Be afraid, be very afraid
Man makes robot, robot gains intelligence, robot rebels against man and enslaves it.
I'm not going to bring up Will Smith's I Robot simply because I hate that movie with every fiber of my body, many sci fi movies show a robot uprising to be, first cause they were programmed to think and feel and second after they've wiped out most of their creators (see Battlestar Galactica) they will want to look and feel like their creators.
Look like their creators eh!
A future of space travel
Firefly and Alien pull this off the best in my mind, a future where we will have truckers in space, where we discover a series of plants and emigrate to them, a future where space travel is just as common as car travel is on Earth today (okay maybe that's a push, as common as air travel), this scenario is a push considering how we haven't managed to send a man to Mars yet and the fact that our natural resources are on their way to depletion.
And the fact we're still kill each other over ideals, religion and resources shows that we'll probably never get that far in the future anyway!
After watching re watching 28 Days Later awhile ago I was curious on just how fast the RAGE virus could spread and why it wasn't stopped.
Okay some background, the RAGE virus is basically follows the road of any zombie virus, it's an infection in the blood, when a host is bitten by an infected they turn into an unstoppable RAGE infected killing machine, the virus in the movie was introduced through chimps and some animal right activists breaking in to free the chimps from a research center, they ultimately end up with the chimps infecting them and a scientist, then as this virus spreads from a single clinic to infect 99.9% of Britain's population in 28 days.
This brings into question, those three infected manage to infect (lets say a village of about 300 people) and let it spread from there, did any farmers not have a shotgun, don't people not have any knives or anything to defend themselves?
I've pointed out several problems with 28 Days Later before but when our characters in that movie encounter the British soldiers who've secured a Victorian style mansion in the woods are armed with just their SA-85's seem to have no problem defending their area.
Yet at the start of the same movie it was stated that the main infection had sparked and rampaged throughout the countryside, and that the army blockades had been overrun, of course the mansion one we saw in the movie was overrun from an internal dispute and a chained infected being let loose, but surely the entire British Army could have at least protected London from this outbreak!
Now onto 28 Weeks Later, this was probably the biggest crap fest of a movie I have ever seen in my life, it could have been brilliant, even though it was action packed (towards the second half that is) it was the biggest disappointment of a sequel I have ever seen since Alien 3, it just reeked of bad writing.
The story focuses on 28 weeks after the initial infection had broken out (hence 28 Weeks Later) and shows the US Army securing London, District One (based on the Green Zone in Baghdad apparently) is set up to house civilians being imported into the city, the infection is dead until some woman who is immune to the virus is found, kisses her husband, he becomes infected and less than 10 minutes all hell breaks loose!
The extreme lengths that the writers go to to make this disaster happen is just unreal, apparently the woman who had been quarantined didn't warrant a guard or any kind of surveillance, this one lone infected manages to take down several armed American soldiers almost instantly!
Then when the Red Alert is actually issued every single civilian freaks out, you think a closely guarded military complex would at least give the civilians a drill in case you know, SOMETHING LIKE THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED, and putting over 200 civilians in one confined area is obviously the best thing! Sure when was a containment room set up to actually contain something!?!
And just to make the situation worse the commanding officer actually orders that the whole city be plunged into darkness. How does this help the situation? It panics the survivors and makes it even harder to see whats going on. This makes less than no sense.
While the US Army snipers guarding District One are ordered (wait for it) not select the tenth of the people infected but shoot everybody! As if the whole containment strategy couldn't get any stupider it did!
Why not just drop napalm around the areas were the infected (and those fleeing civilians are), on screen I counted about 10 infected running and getting burned, and then after it a bigger horde of about 60 running towards the underground.
So there you have it, the danger of the fictional RAGE virus even though the writers set it up (well in 28 Days anyway) is made to be ten times as dangerous than it could have possibly been!
In the early 1970's shortly after the Provisional IRA was founded they had big plans, very big plans for seizing back Northern Ireland, after acquiring several new arms from Libya including over 1,000 AK-47's, several MP-5 sub machine guns and a handful of SA-7 portable surface to air missiles along with several American arms (the new AR-18 at the time) the IRA had plans to retake Northern Ireland by force, their taking was to be inspired by the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War.
The vast plan included attacking and seizing British Army border strong points with the element of surprise, then as the British tried to reoccupy their position with helicopters they would then be downed by the IRA's SA-7's, having to rely on armoured vehicles the IRA would be able to ambush them and cripple them using RPG-7's, they also planned to attack the Royal Navy with 106 mm Cannons mounted on motorboats, while this was going on British embassies on the continent would have been attacked.
This however failed to materialize after they lost the element of surprise after one of their ships importing the arms (the Eksund) was intercepted by Irish and French naval vessels, for these reasons (even though they had enough weaponry) the IRA were forced to abandon any hopes that it would work properly.
Now here's my scenario on a big plan they may have had in the early to mid 1980's.
During the 1980's both Britain and the Republic of Ireland were in recession, the Falkland Islands had been invaded and the UK invaded in war winning them back from Argentina, this was around the same time that Israel invaded South Lebanon to counter the PLO presence there which ultimately locked them in several long years of fighting the newly formed Hezbollah.
The IRA at the same time were doing everything to provoke the British, firing mortars at 10 Downing Street in London and the attack on Brighton Hotel in 1986 showed how close they were to killing the British Prime Minister.
So what if Britain had retaliated like Israel had done in 1982 and set up a large presence in the Republic of Ireland replacing the present Irish government who were unable to successfully destroy the IRA cells in the republic, this would have resulted in British paratroopers probably seizing the big Irish cities like Dublin and Cork and setting up puppet governments there reminiscent to the Soviet War in Afghanistan.
However this would have strengthened the IRA and gave them the fight they were looking for, many Irish were out of work and wouldn't want to appease a British invasion that overtook their government, what you would be looking at is even more joining the IRA and the British fighting an enemy that was everywhere and at the same time nowhere, the British were mad and went on to the IRA's territory and play the game their way!
Although the British had obviously learned that lesson without having to go to war against the republic after seeing what had happened when Israel went into Lebanon, (a war that lasted until 2000 and border skirmishes continue to this day!).
The British government had failed to beat the IRA (the Provos from 1969 to 1997 not the Real IRA that killed two British soldiers last May) militarily but they did politically, because if they had went into the Republic to hit the threat from the heart it would have resulted in as a I said a very bloody war pitting a hefty amount of the Irish public against the British, this would have been foolish and dangerous, (I doubt no British government could have survived) however the British did manage to beat them politically and to this day we have peace in the north of Ireland.
And the current Real IRA are mostly just petty criminals and drug dealers who are attempting to break the peace process in the north, they are however deeply condemned by the people of Ireland and the people of England.
* If Britain invaded Ireland like in my scenario the Provos may have been known in history as freedom fighters like Hezbollah was!
After World War II fascism had died, it now seemed that the battle between the ideologies of capitalism and communism was now to start, except that it ended in more of an arms race that ran the Soviet Union into the ground in 1991 and leaving the capitalist power the United States to thrive in a unipolar world.
But I'm going to exam the history of the mid to late 20th century on this one, for instance the socialists in Latin America that were aided in part by the Soviet Union and resulted in the Cuban Missile Crisis which showed the gap between the two powers.
Totally anti establishment
Socialist rebels like Che Guevara in Latin America attempting to fight for a world wide communist revolution, after the revolution in Cuba in 1959 he even helped Castro acquire nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union, Castro whom in 1994 confirmed to former defence sectary at the time Robert McNamara that their intent was to launch as many nuclear missiles at the US and be killed themselves in the process, that's how serious the battle for ideologies had become!
However you'd be a hypocrite and a fool to just criticize the Soviet Union for what they did in the 1960's, the United States exercised its power over the world holding it hostage to it's nuclear weapons and exercising its power and force far beyond its borders.
Apart from being a democracy it took quite a time to give rights to black citizens, a likely World War III had been averted by John F. Kennedy whose logical thinking averted the death of millions and the eventual confrontation between capitalists and communists, he was accused of appeasing communism and often criticized for that;
Many in the US preached that communism wasn't a political ideology, but a way of life, an evil and malignant way of life which spreads like an epidemic and as such should be quarantined, when John F. Kennedy was shot and Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president he changed Kennedy's policy with Vietnam just four days later!
Not wanting the south to fall to communism he had the north bombed for weeks on end, more bombs were dropped on North Vietnam than of Western Europe in all of World War II!
So the containing of communism, but the Vietnam War was a lot more complex than that, the fact that the Americans didn't help the Vietnamese in the French Indo China war in their struggle to gain independence from a colonial power shows that the Americans really wanted a war, what resulted was over 50,000 US soldiers killed and over 3,000,000 Vietnamese!
Ronald Reagan the B-actor who became president and remained president of the US in the 1980's showed his worth by invading the island midget state of Grenada and making jokes about communism, when relations between the US and the USSR finally opened in the late 1980's the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991.
The new Russia was going to be a capitalistic one!
The Cold War was over and for the next ten years the biggest concern to the free world was Monica Lewinsky!
Today communism around the world wasn't thriving against capitalism like in the 1960's, except in the Peoples Republic of China where all our iPod's and Big Macs come from.
But these days we're face down in a worldwide recession, Wall Street brought the American economy to its knees less then 20 years after the Soviet Union collapsed from economic pressure the west is crippled while China is basically the same as ever.
So at the end of the day pretty much none of the biggest three ideologies that fought it out in the 20th century, communism, capitalism and fascism none are proved to be prefect and all had serious strains pulled on them, but at least in the capitalistic system we're not required to share our possessions.
I have to say I was expecting to have the shit scared out of me or at least be grossed out when I watched the Japanese movie Battle Royale, just to give you some background is you never heard of this movie;
Battle Royale is about a nationalist socialist Japan, in which students on a "study trip" are gassed in their bus and bought to a remote island where they are forced to play a game, in which they are given a variety of weapons that they are to use to kill each other until only one student remains.
Their movements are restricted by metal collars, later identified as Model Guadalcanal No. 22, around their necks which contain tracking and listening devices; if any student should attempt to escape The Program, or enter declared "danger zones", a bomb will be detonated in the collar, killing the wearer. If no student dies in any 24 hour period, all collars will be detonated simultaneously!"
Now you're probably asking how the hell I found this amusing, its the way the movie starts, as if it's a fun sporting event, except it's on an island and they are all forced to kill each other, after that it got a bit stretched out and like a sports event, (and I hate sports) updating on screen how many students are left after a kill.
The weapon distribution scene is rather amusing, for instance the one student who gets a kick out of it (the guy who has fun) is armed with an Uzi while the good guys (well the guys who stick together and don't kill each other) and armed merely with a frying pan handle! And another armed with a paper fan!
It was about halfway through the movie I begun to question the whole point to the game, I mean they are using these games to eliminate the weaklings in society, but doesn't that mean when they cut down the population doesn't that mean the main survivors in society would be a load of cold blooded mass murderers!
That being said I enjoyed Battle Royale, (especially the set up at the start), and I would recommend it, its a two hour experience different than any other movie I have ever seen!
Did you ever hear people emphasizing the dangers of global warming, please, anyway whose afraid of global warming are morons, especially if they live in neither England or Ireland, oh the green house effect, more warmer days and less rain, and the water slightly rising, what a tragedy, anyone living on land below sea level is asking to be flooded!
Every time I see someone driving a Hybrid I feel sick, they are trying to slow down the process of more sunshine for us all, they would rather see us all having miserable cold and dark weather.
But one could imagine the telling someone in the 1980's that by the early 21st century our main fears would be a terrorist in a cave and climate change.
I mean back in the 1980's both the United States and the Soviet Union were waiting in parachute pants for Armageddon to start, if a nuclear war was fought millions of people would have been killed instantly.
Screen shot from The Day After
The cities of Tallinn, Kansas City and Moscow were the biggest hot spots in case of a nuclear exchange, the residents of which would have been killed instantly and mass amounts of radiation emitted into the air, in a matter of hours the nuclear war targeting cities would have killed millions more than both world wars combined, and detonating large amounts of nuclear weapons especially over cities would cause large amounts of smoke and soot to be injected into the Earth's stratosphere blocking the sun and bringing cold climate change almost instantly, now top that with radiation poisoning that will infect thousands instantly and have long lasting effects.
These days are gone (that still being said Russia isn't at the best of terms with the west and still has 14,000 nukes) and now we're worrying about slight climate change that will make the planet hotter and cause ice to melt, (as if ice melting wasn't an eventuality), if you had your doubts about global warming I hope I've helped you realize that it's more bogus than terrorists that "threaten" us from caves in Afghanistan.
In the past month I have gotten about 50 comments on this blog (I know I can't believe it neither), some positive and some negative, I have nothing against people who don't agree with my point and I like to counter peoples comments rather than delete them, but there are a few people who are ruining this, people who the common internet people like to refer to as trolls.
These are ignorant malignant people whose only desire is promote ignorant and racist remarks of little relevance to no relevance (an example of no relevance), retarded traits that go as far as to deny the holocaust!
Thankfully I only ever had to delete one comment off of this blog on Nazi Germany because it was most horrible and designed to hurt a group of people just because of who they are.
Although this is a small change I encourage the 99% of you out there that can post legible comments to comment, whether or not you are agreeing or disagreeing with me I will post them, once they have a point, no matter how stupid that point is! However trolling is not allowed on this blog, because at the end of the day trolls aren't really people!
In the weeks and months before the Six Day War the Soviet Union was spreading its influence into the Middle East, it backed radical governments in Egypt and Syria such as Nessar who had become the Arab worlds chief spokesman for the Arab world on the Israeli problem.
When the Six Day War begun Israel became victorious in the early hours of the war (it had begun) destroying most of the Egyptian air force in air strikes in Sinai, they were completely caught by surprise and over 80% of their air force was destroyed in a matter of hours.
During this time the Soviet navy had increased their presence near the war moving 20 war ships into the eastern Mediterranean, the US responded by sending in the US SIxth Fleet to be within one hundred miles of the Israeli coast, except for the USS Liberty which came near the Sinai coast. They were in international waters flying the American flag, what need would they have for an armed escort?
On Thursday the 8th of June it had reached its destination, what was on shore was a nearly complete Israeli victory, they had seized the West Bank and were pushing forward to capturing Jerusalem itself!
On at least nine different occasions Israeli aircraft buzzed the Liberty, Israel was Americas allies, and it was obvious they knew just that, it was a clear summers day, what could go wrong?
That was when Israeli Mirages begun attacking the Liberty crippling it after firing rockets and machine guns at its deck, in this horrific incident 34 Americans were killed! The Liberty had been crippled but was still able to send out a distress call to the American Sixth Fleet.
Knowing full well that the Liberty had been attacked the aircraft carrier USS America went into condition November, nuclear armed A-4 bombers and their fighter F-4 escorts were launched, the US had been prepared to retaliate against Egypt since they presumed it was them that had attacked the Liberty.
Ready aircraft had been launched (the ready meaning nuclear armed aircraft).
The US embassy in Cairo was warned that an attack was coming, the US had been ready to nuke that city and possibly kill thousands of people instantly and have hundreds more die slowly from radiation poisoning!
The aircraft were already on their way when Defence Sectary Robert McNamara gave the order for the aircraft to turn back not wanting to see a mushroom cloud over Cairo, McNamara wasn't the perfect defence sectary but he was right about what he said about going all the way with nuclear weapons, and that was essentially the complete destruction of nations!
Apart from widely accepted fact that Israel had attacked an American ship and killed 34 of its crew is bad enough, but imagine if the Sixth Fleet had gone all the day and incinerated Cario and killed thousands of people that lived there!
This clearly was a narrowly averted catastrophe that would have ever lasting effects to this day!
A horrible thing happened in 1948, those poor Jews who had endured the evil inflicted on those and their dead friends, relatives and loved ones moved into Palestine and cleared the Palestinians from their homes and fought a ruthless war with those Arabs and the British forces there, the state of Israel was born from the blood of the fallen Arabs that had been killed or forced from their homes!
And not only that the zionists who had forced the Palestinians from their homes and indulged in the blood shed called Israel the home for the Jews of the world, every inch of the home for the Jews was stolen from the Arabs.
"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."
Winston Churchill
So superior people like the Jews of the world have more of a right to Palestine than the generations of Palestinians that had lived there up until 1948!
The Six Day War in 1967 saw Israel being threatened by its Arab neighbours and them firing the first shots of the war which saw Israel bombing Egypt and Syria and in another incident attacking the USS Liberty an American surveillance ships nearby killing 34 Americans, Israel seized several more territories extending into the holy city of Jerusalem and seizing the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights.
These territories had been held, the initial Palestinian territories from the 1948 war and the other territories from the 1967 war, the image below describes Israel's policy to the Middle East better than a thousand words!
After the Yom Kippur War in 1973 large scale war with its Arab neighbours seemed to have ceased and no big wars as such had happened since, apart from the Israeli invasion of South Lebanon, and Hezbollah the resistance fighters who pushed them back as far as the disputed Shebba Farms area are branded as terrorists?
Remember the war in Gaza it was branded how dangerous the rockets Hamas had, this thought makes my brain hurt, so if you manage to WOUND someone with a homemade rocket its considered dirty murder while instead when you kill innocent civilians with guided missiles from high flying F-16's that's not, so killing people with fashionable weapons isn't really killing them then?
Israel is a fascist state, and in case you thought you read that wrong I will repeat if so there will be no mistake.
ISRAEL IS A FASCIST STATE!
It's people are brainwashed in believing they have a right to the land and have a so called honorable duty to join the army, although that being said not all of them are bad!
But a day will come when Israel will bite more than it can chew in a war that could destroy nations with their use of nuclear weapons, and when it remembered those Israeli's who sat by and watched it all lead up and end like the horrible way it will be known as this centuries good Germans!
I mean I know abused children abuse their children but Israel has taken it a step too far over the Palestinians.
I mean those poor 1,600,000 Palestinians or so who are forced to live in concentration refuge camps have no homes no work no life! This conflict has gone on long enough, a reasonable solution needs to be put in place and a two state solution with its capital being East Jerusalem isn't nearly enough!
First of all Israel's nuclear stockpile needs to be completely dismantled, all nuclear weapons destroyed, no nation such have nuclear weapons be it Pakistan or Palestine, then each Israeli citizen who had lived in Israel for more than five years should be legible to $1,000,000 on top of a paid home elsewhere (I'll come to that in a minute), a Palestinian state will be established with its capital being Jerusalem, all Israeli military hardware will be handed to Palestine on the bounds that it only be used for self defence, all Palestinians will have the right to return to their homes that were taken from them in 1948.
Now for the Israeli's a canal should be dug on the northern border of Florida and made into the new Israel. Enough is enough. And it will get its statehood (even though its in the United States) and its pride, it will be like the Vatican in Italy, and have a military just like that and its own internal security counter terrorism force.
That in my mind is the only way ultimate peace can be once again established in Palestine.
