The landings by the Allies led by the American and British forces on the 6th of June 1944 on the golden beaches of Normandy in northern France weren't only important because of the fact it gave the Allies a solid foot hold on Western Europe in which they could from there fight the Nazi's on a second front to that of their allies the Soviets, the Allies had a landing force of 175,000 men crossing the English Channel, by the end of the month after securing ports in northern France they had 1,600,000 men and machines on mainland Europe.
Although I may have sounded indifferent to the Allies fight in the Europe as compared to the Soviets who did the bulk of the fighting (killing 4 of every 5 German soldiers killed in the war) the landings in Normandy were vital to the timely defeat of the Germans.
Not only that but the speedy delivery of logistical support for those fighting against the Germans but also carried with it a good psychological effect on the millions of Soviets fighting on the Eastern Front.
The Soviets had suffered over 20,000,000 casualties after being lain under heavy siege by German oppression for nearly three years.
They had suffered massively and their land had been destroyed during the start of the German offensive because of their scorched earth policy which included the dissembling of factories and burning of crops for miles (that can't have been good for their economic growth of industry), to say they were weary of war would be an understatement.
But they had a fighting chance against the German forces, using massive infantry they overran the Germans where they could, eventually 80% of the German Army were sent fighting in the Eastern Front, several of these forces were pulled from Western Europe to avail in the fight to defend the Reich, the Luftwaffe had been put on the defense of Germany, therefore it would be unable to cover several other parts of Europe.
After the Atlantic Wall was formed in Europe, Hitler thought that any landing would be a failure and that if the Allies failed to spearhead a secure reinforcement zone in the north of France the Allied troops would be trapped and slaughtered by the German Army forces.
However history turned out to be much different, if this had been the case it could have seriously broke the morale of the Soviet Army and might have even prompted Stalin to except a peace treaty with Hitler bringing them back to where they started with the 1939 agreement, which would have seen Soviet forces drawing the border with Nazi Europe in eastern Poland, although Hitler didn't have anything sufficient to hit the several American bases in England with at this time, come 1945 if the D-day landings had failed the Americans would have probably hit the heart of Germany with the atomic bomb and burn the Reich from inside out. (That would be a very alternative to the history we have of two Japanese fishing cities being hit by these deadliest weapons in a vicious attempt to deter the Soviets).
However even though the tremendous sacrifice put forward by the Soviets (something that isn't properly remembered) did sufficiently strain Germany's war machine the timely injection of aid that came in the form of the Normandy landings helped the Third Reich come down before it had a chance to properly revive itself and cause more unthinkable damage and horror.
An interesting proposal was put forward by the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
A future Trans-Atlantic security pact, RT gave an interesting analysis suggesting that this will in turn end NATO once and for all:
If this came through this would mean a new peace of our time breakthrough, one we haven't seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago, however since then Russia and the west haven't exactly had the best chances of being best friends or allies against each other, and the existence of NATO in a post Warsaw Pact world is a sad reminder that the west hasn't taken off it's cold war parachute pants!
From recent times close incidents that could have brought the NATO countries and the Russian Federation close to a war, two notable incidents would be:
* An incident in 1995 where Norwegian scientists in cooperation with NASA launched a two-stage rocket. This caused a Russian nuclear alert since the rocket was launched from an area where Americans subs operated and the missile had the same launch profile as the launch of a Trident SLBM.
Boris Yeltsin had ten minutes to make the decision of whether or not to authorize a nuclear launch, this was a major screw up considering lack of communications and understanding between both parties involved
* There was also the Pristina airfield incident in Kosovo in 1999, where Russian troops occupied the airfield in the wake of the war, NATO-Saceur general Clark ordered British troops to confront them and kick them out. The British commander in charge refused and stated "I am not going to start World War III for you".
The war in South Ossetia in August of 2008 which saw Russia launching an offensive against Georgia cost 2,000 people their lives (mostly Ossetian civilians murdered by the Georgian Army), the background to Georgia's war planning are much more serious considering it was planning to join NATO (Georgia is not near the North Atlantic, neither is Afghanistan but I guess that doesn't matter), it had been supplied with military hardware by 15 countries just before that war!
From NATO countries the Georgian Army received about:
* 300 APC's from the NATO countries * 100 tanks * 67 artillery pieces * 99 mortars * 150 anti tank systems * 200 portable anti aircraft units
* The French Air Force had been prepared to deliver four Mirage fighters * The Americans were to supply 15 Black Hawk helicopters
The Ukraine supplied a further 90 APC's, their extremist leader Yushchenko has been opting to join NATO but has since been vetoed (from more responsible European countries), so has Georgia which is good since NATO isn't aligning itself with fascists!
That being said NATO has gone too far, the arms business does make strange bed partners and the donor countries of these arms can't be blamed for the damage caused, but with extremists in power from former Soviet countries in eastern Europe could lead Russia and Europe into a dangerous hostile situation.
Russia shouldn't be viewed by Europe as a potential threat any more than any European country should be considered a potential threat, the damage caused by the South Ossetian was a failure for the international community and envisioned some horrible hypocrisy on behalf of the west.
The Russian Federation is a country that has had a lot of history in it's short life and was run into the ground after the USSR collapsed, today it matters, not only for military reasons but for it's size and influence in other parts of the world, a Trans-Atlantic security pact stretching from North America, through Europe to the Russian Far East would more than likely be a more positive change* in the long term for the future rather than trying to decide whether or not to let old Soviet republics with bitter extremists align themselves with most of the great military powers of the west, that would certainly be a disaster waiting to happen!
* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev seldom gets credit for promoting real change!
As the "the Naughties" come to close one has to wonder if the world has become better, worse of indifferent, we as a people (in the west) have become used to the American occupational wars being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan (and the subsequent (sometimes daily) casualties that go with them), the former one has to wonder with detailed hindsight was a wise move to any stretch of the imagination.
The policy of using direct military might to promote an ideology over a third nation was something that drove the Americans to arming the Afghan Mujahideen rebels against the Soviet Army when they intervened on behalf of the socialist Afghan government in Kabul on Christmas Eve in 1979.
Regardless of the fact that 1,000,000 Afghans were slaughtered during the Red Army's nine year presence in the country the truth is from their point of view their comrades were being slaughtered since these rural dwellers of Afghanistan where being armed with high-tech portable anti-tank and anti aircraft guns, something that one their position couldn't take lightly.
Now lets look at Iraq since 2003:
The US had it's fair share in the killings of millions in Central America the same time the Soviets were doing their deeds with the Afghans, but when a third party arms insurgents (in this case Iran to insurgents in the Shia south of Iraq) the Americans don't take this too kindly when they feel the hurt it can cause:
What is different in this case however is the fact that the United States invading Iraq and the Soviets intervening in Afghanistan was that the US went in with the ideals of promoting freedom and democracy, however ended up bogged down in a bloody war with thousands of Iraqis fighting an occupational power for their own freedom instead of having their country transformed into a geopolitical platform for the countless cooperation's to promote their free market ideals.
Well over a million Iraqis have been killed in the past ten years, and probably a million more from the ten years before following the sanctions imposed after the Persian Gulf War of 1991.
The Iraq War has proven over the years that the US Army isn't fit for what it's doing there and most Iraqis resent them for what they have done, the same as the rural Afghans did with the Soviets back in the 1980's, making it okay (in one sense for the Americans) to arm the Taliban of its day, of which Ronald Reagan called:
"the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers"
The dissidents of which American forces in Afghanistan are saying is the main threat to eventual peace and democracy spreading across the region!
The Solution:
The western world should adopt a limited government when looking at countries such as Iraq (and Iran) and under the United Nations if necessary the powers of west (and east) should intervene unilaterally to secure regions directly threatened by these so called rogue states, instead of empires from both sides of the world competing on spreading ideals into indifferent countries and in turn ending up being hypocrites in their own modern history.
It's been a long time since America fought a war where it was under any serious threat, and that was World War II, following that war mainland USA was left virtually unscathed after emerging victorious.
However the threat in 1940 was the biggest direct threat to the United States in recent history:
In the liberation of Western Europe the Americans were on the side of common decency and actually liberating the European people from oppression.
The same cannot be said about the war against Imperial Japan, it was high in cost of not only military hardware and the recovering US economy but also on human life, half of Japan was burned and then the two famous nuclear bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were executed, most likely to deter the Soviets!
From then on America took to introducing its free market to the rest of the world setting up military bases overseas and riding on the high seas in massive aircraft carriers, intervening where it served their "National interests".
Such interventions were over economic greed and in several cases bankrupted other nations, but to this day the idea of a foreign army invading was always the threat if America lapsed in securing its far away foreign security interests.
This has seen it develop into a hyperpower with a greater military than the old Roman, British and Russian empires!
But even after promoting democracy militarily in recent years in Iraq and Afghanistan (over 7,000 miles from the US) Americans don't consider themselves a militant nation, however when one looks at the hard facts its hard to ignore the fact that it really is!
The United States may be the sole hyperpower and may be the only superpower left in the 21st century to influence an ideology as the Soviets once had, however in trying to secure the vast resources in Eurasia a whole ocean away to serve their hefty economic needs may lead to a costly war with Iran and Pakistan.
During the 1990's it failed to reach the top of the global market and meantime several new economic superpowers such as China, Brazil and India have emerged.
As the US continues to send its army into the 'empire graveyard' that is Afghanistan while suffering serious economic burdens the eastern world is once again gone down the road of autocracy and communism.
Bottom Line: If the US continues such expensive oversea wars and military developments while swindling the budget it could see itself collapsing entirely in a manner similar to that of the Soviet Union, if this does happen not only may the North American continent be plunged into it's own 'Dark Ages' period of uncertainty, but with a new power in the east rising it may not be able afford the rich capitalistic society it had thrived on.
If this does happen and the world gradually goes down the road reform of the best option available the last years of the United States in history will be seen as wasteful and irrelevant, regardless of how big their military was!
Yesterday in Fort Hood in Texas a United States army soldier opened fire and killed 13 of his fellow troops and wounded a further 30 more before being killed himself, several rumours have come about a handful suggesting that he had argued with military colleagues who supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and had tried to prevent his own deployment.
This follows more deaths of soldiers in the Afghan theater, no clear purpose of the war shown or a reason for deploying a further 80,000 American troops, whose enemy is clearly not the Taliban, but the general Afghan public!
Not only is the United States economy deep down in the dumps at the moment but Obama is sending more young men and women to die in Afghanistan, the graveyard of historical empires going back merely as far as the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 following their eight year bloody conflict with the Taliban of its day the Mujahideen.
Protests in Iran continue, Basij thugs beating the shit out of young Green Protesters doesn't seem to be even news worthy anymore along with that of Israeli threats to preemptively attack Iran which could spark a war that could kill hundreds of thousands if not millions seems to be the norm these days.
While not a believer of a singular European state it wouldn't surprise me if in a mere decade we will have a United States of Europe, but hopefully one with a president elected by the people he/she will be representing and one with blood free hands!
With Cuba being more open in the past year than in a long time in it's history a steady agreed transit of visitors from both sides it might not be long before Cuban citizens can visit their relatives in the United States, before Cubans living in America weren't allowed go back onto the island.
But throughout 1980 a massive transit of Cuban citizens were shifted from Mariel Harbor near Havana straight to South Florida, this became known as the Mariel Boat lift and was soon to turn into an immigration nightmare!
After Castro agreed to let anyone who wanted to leave to do so, this followed when several Cubans attempted to gain entry into embassies particularly the Peruvian embassy and the Venezuela embassy.
Following an incident were 10,000 Cuban citizens crowded the compound grounds of the Peruvian embassy in Havana Castro stated that the port of Mariel would be opened to anyone wishing to leave Cuba, as long as they had someone to pick them up.
A total of 120,000 Cubans arrived in South Florida several forced into detention centers, it was later discovered that several of these people were forced over were as Castro had called them "undesirables, several of whom were dredges from his jails.
This was an interesting episode in Cuban and American relations and was a chance of openness thirty years ago which one could say was completely smeared with dishonesty and sneakiness by Castro.
Geographically (once again) Russia looks like it could be a major threat to Europe, looking at it on a map it would appear that the Russian bear would have a likely chance of crushing Europe, however the Soviet Union has long gone and today this couldn't be more further from the truth, NATO has no real reason to exist except to promote American military dominance around the world, political rhetoric calling Russia our friend rings hollow considering that NATO states seem to be closing in on all sides of the Russian border, as if it still contains the communist pandemic that needs to be prevented from spreading!
While NATO members have a bigger population and an all around much bigger military than Russia does Europe is as densely populated as the main concentration of the 142 millions Russians in Russia which are focused mainly in the west of the country.
Luckily the Ukraine and Georgia were prevented from joining NATO, as that would have really technically militarily encircled Russia, this would make Russia hesitant and (rightfully so) directly threatened.
Bottom Line: The actions of NATO and the EU are not within the bounds of realism, and invoke all sorts of fears in Russia. Some of these are justified and some are not. If the western blocs are not acting rationally in the context of history, the logical thing for the Russians to believe is that they are in danger.
Ron Paul is one of the only politicians that come to mind that tell things how it is about the United States:
Since the Spanish American War of 1898 America in one form or another has interfered with country policies far from its own borders to secure it's interests, this really came to pass after the liberation of Western Europe from the Nazi's in 1945.
Up until 1991 the United States competed with the Soviet Union in the spreading of ideology often destroying smaller countries in the process (Nicaragua comes close to mind there) and setting up parts of the world as buffers against the spread of communism (South Vietnam and Iran) again far from its own borders, however you could argue that this was justified in the name of the Cold War.
Which officially ended in 1991, yet the United States has continued interfering with certain countries far from home launching preemptive wars.
For instance take the 1991 Persian Gulf War:
The US "had to" intervene because Iraq under Saddam Hussein had shown a posture of aggression when he invaded Kuwait, this was true in one sense when you ignore the fact Kuwaitis are ethnic Iraqis and the fact Kuwait 'acquired' its independence in 1961 when it was carved out of Iraq because of its strategic location and the lake of oil that it sits on, you wouldn't be far wrong if you said Kuwait is really just a western oil company with a flag!
Not only that but comparing Saddam to Hitler and trying to display the Iraqi Army as baby murders isn't a just cause for blowing away Iraq's infrastructure and then starving a million of its citizens through harsh economic sanctions before invading the country in its entirety 12 years later.
The cure really did turn out to be worse than the illness in this case!
But what people have said to me is that now Obama is president things are going to be a lot better, no more wars, but still his foreign policy remains the same, America under Obama is far from keeping to its own.
I will ignore the fact that in the past two years the US has set up Africom which puts US forces in 53 African nations spanning across most of the continent.
But what startled me the other day was when asked about why he was sending more and more US soldiers into Afghanistan with no clear sign of a victory he responded with:
“You have to learn lessons from history.”
I'm not sure if he was referring to the lost British Army in Afghanistan from the 19th century, or the fact Jimmy Carter’s administration was responsible for creating, training and arming al Qaeda in the first place and that Jimmy Carter signed an order supporting the Mujahadeen against the USSR in 1979 which spurred the Soviet Union’s invasion that resulted in a decade long bloody war that ended in the Soviets withdrawing after 15,000 of them had been killed and bringing Afghanistan into a bloody civil war that saw the Taliban eventually bought into power!
If only America could have a president that is not oblivious and ignorant to history, I hope that it was a slip up on Obama's half, or even if it was ignorance because if it wasn't then it seems to put forward the fact that he is no better than Bush before him!
Bottom Line: If America and its people restore a country with great potential back to a republic and maybe deal more with internal affairs more than foreign affairs maybe just maybe the federal government will be able to help it's own people!
You know put out wildfires in California or in the case of New Orleans be able to give humanitarian aid to its own people instead of worrying about the rest of the world!
September 11th of every year following the attacks on that Tuesday morning in 2001 have proved to by a memorable occasion and one as an excuse to watch TV, but approaching the eighth anniversary one has to wonder how the "free American" public bought themselves down the road into their current status in the world and the world we live in today.
Don't get me wrong the 9/11 attacks were horrible!
But what came out of them was much worse, shortly following the recession the Military Industrial Complex seemed to be benefiting the most from the attacks building more invisible planes that fight it's invisible enemies.
For instance a large candle vigil was held for the victims of the attack on the World Trade Center on the streets of Tehran and after a month of the coaltion carrying out it's stupendous bombing of Afghanistan blowing up mountains and getting no results Iran helped them teaming their Northern Alliance allies with the United States Air Force which seized Kabul and helped coalition forces take down the rest of the main Taliban forces from there (more on that later).
But as the smoke was still rising from Ground Zero and the steel sold for half price scrap to Asian companies George W. Bush made his axis of evil speech pointing an accusing finger at Iran since it sponsored terrorists, such as Hezbollah I assume who actually spoke out against the attack, gave it's condolences and were enemies of Bin Laden in the first place, yes possible friends and new Allies were broken as the world questioned if America was responsible enough to be a superpower and probably wondered why it was being hostile to the rest of the world.
Especially France, an international boycott of France? Remember how stupid it was just because they wouldn't commit to a war against Iraq because, eh, they wanted a bulletproof reason before sending their young men and women to possible death.
The Iraq War was waged on a continued lie and saw Americans focusing not on the Sunni extremism originating from Saudi Arabia (the nationality of 15 of the 19 hijackers) or the exiled bin Laden but more on al Queda in Iraq! Which accounted for about 1% of all insurgency actions.
Four thousand dead troops later and the US was becoming so unbearable to the rest of the world whom had previously been with America all the way on catching the 'bad guys' who carried out such a horrible act, Americas questionable actions saw even strippers in Amsterdam going into politics with American tourists!
Although George Bush was an obvious thug in Americas eyes he still got in a second time when it was already far too late, the inauguration of Barack Obama included a speech where he stated about Iran that he was "willing to hold out a hand if you are willing to unclench a fist," or something like that, but looking at the last eight years of US foreign policy its hard not to laugh at such a statement!
If 9/11 had been used the right way and the War on Terror wasn't an endless war (who was the enemy? bin Laden?) to shape the world for American interests but rather a promotion of a bi-polar world with Russia to make it safer for all instead of repeatably taking a piss on Mark Binghams grave!
Relations with Iran and the US since Ayatollah Khomeini stepped off of his plane in Tehran in 1979 showed Iran breaking all rules of diplomacy especially after it seized American hostages in the US embassy in Tehran.
Before the seizure of hostages however one man named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran's current president) opposed the idea stating that it would boost the influence of the Soviets and that the real threat to them was not the Americans but Russia and the Marxists.
Saddam Hussein's Iraq was an alley of the Soviets and when over 70,000 Iraqi troops along with several divisions of tanks crossed the border into the oil fields of southern Iran the Soviets didn't condemn or oppose it and the UN Security Council called for a ceasefire but made no demand for Iraqi forces to withdraw from Iran, yes it failed to condemn a country that invaded another!
Right to the north of Iran was the Soviet border, the Shah's Iran had been America's most powerful ally, for it's strategic location and it's borders, and during the 1970's the Shah was buying up a lot of modern military equipment from the United States such as the 80 ordered (and 79 delivered) F-14A Tomcats which designed and built to defend US aircraft carriers from long distances, along with that ordered were over 300 F-16's but none were delivered, along with that already present were several different SAM networks and some very mobile but highly advanced army units would delay Soviet ground movements towards the south of the country to give the Americans time to defend Iran.
In 1980 that had all changed, the US Navy helicopters failed to reach Tehran to rescue the American hostages in the ill-failed Operation Eagle Claw and the Soviets ally Iraq had begun an invasion, after acquiring information on US estimates that doubted the present Iranian military were probably unable to properly operate it's tanks, SAM networks and fighter jets.
They were in one sense right but the Iranian military quickly rebuilt itself and had sent Iraq on the defensive in 1982 and resulted in a further six years of Iran on the offensive in a bloody war that would cost 1,000,000 lives on both sides!
Apart from that fact both the United States and the Soviet Union supported Iraq, the Soviets keeping open usual business with Saddam's government supplying them mainly with tanks and fighter aircraft as usual, while the US supplied Iraq (remember an ally of the Soviet Union) with thousands of assault rifles, and a handful of UH-1 Huey's for the Iraqi army after 1982 defending their vital oil interests in the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia.
However if the Soviet Union had invaded Iran in lets say the mid 1980's it would have been met with little opposition from the UN until they had crushed the Iranian regime and its accompanying military, it would have put them in a position with a massive eastern border to oil rich waters of the Persian Gulf and right in short striking distance of Saudi Arabia and the other smaller countries of the pro Western Emirates.
It would also have opened up the large strategic land that is Iran for use by the Soviet Army and Air Force as a base in their war against the rebels in Afghanistan which would further isolate Pakistan.
However a war with Iran with Iraq as an ally would have forced the Soviet Union into deeper economic turmoil as Khomeini had truly united the country together under religious ties, as proved by the amount of volunteers that fought off and demoralized the invading Iraqi forces.
However it would have been worth it in one sense in the long term considering that it would have given the Soviets a massive platform for military forces to influence and dictate how things work in the Persian Gulf, along with it's ally Iraq very evenly splitting both superpowers control over the oil rich region, and would have enabled the Soviets to close off America's oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz which could have crippled several western economies, it was here where US Navy warships had to protect their tanker convoys during the 'Tanker War' phase of the Iran Iraq War.
It's an interesting scenario and one which I'm sure was considered by the Soviets and feared by the Americans.
Admiral Yamamoto once said that "you cannot invade the United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."
This rings through to be entirely true today, America has a military bigger than any of their Allies or their enemies and could take on a rather large war economy and fight multiple wars at any one time,
Following discussions on IMdB and one or two on my own posts, the scenarios most people paint are ones of which would be a sea borne invasion by the Peoples Republic of China, a Red Dawn type large troop invasion right across the Pacific, the writer of this comment put in a lot of thought into this scenario, but the truth is since the end of World War II the United States has managed to triumph a military buffer far beyond it's border against other potential superpowers, for example the United States Navy has controlled most of the Pacific Ocean for nearly half a century now.
It is the most modern in the world with a variety of attack submarines, ballistic missile submarines, a single one of their 11 Nimitz class aircraft carriers can hold 90 fixed wing aircraft, are about a mile in a length and have a 20 storey infrastructure and a crew of 6,000, and has more air power than most aggressor states have in their entire inventory!
So with these giant machines 'o war patrolling far beyond the American coastlines in the oceans of the world I doubt a force large enough would manage to breach these defences, and even if they did the United States Air Force is big enough to deter any threat that would in turn fighting a war far from home, and apart from that even if the front line F-15's, F-16's, F-18's and F-22's (* sigh) fighters were outmatched there are hundreds (and I mean hundreds) of older fighters lying in the hot air of the Nevada Desert which could be readied and flyable once again in as little as eight days in case the United States come under such an unlikely threat.
I know I have been focusing mostly up to this stage on air and sea power, the United States Army has some 1,473,900 active troops along with some 200,000 Marines, plenty to defend it's ground when organized properly and very well up there with the largest standing armies in the world.
Infiltration is probably the most plausible thing that could bring down or cripple the United States, the failure to respond to a natural disaster in New Orleans in 2005 and responding by sending in armed soldiers to take peoples guns could in one sense show a serious flaw in the way things between the government and the people are run in America, but this is one eventuality the government is surprisingly well prepared for:
There are some 600 FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) camps spread all across the United States, they are guarded 24/7, but are currently are empty of prisoners, yet fully staffed and ready to receive prisoners if martial law is ordered from the high command, another reason for their existence is in case of some mass exodus of illegal aliens crossing the Mexican/US border, which would be quickly rounded up and detained in detention in these camps.
Other related Executive Orders worth noting (from past and present) I have listed below:
Executive Order 10990 Allows the government to take control over all modes of transportation, highways, and seaports.
Executive Order 10995 Allows the government to seize and control the communication media.
Executive Order 10997 Allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels, and minerals.
Executive Order 10998 Allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.
Executive Order 10999 Allows the government to take over all modes of transportation.
Executive Order 11000 Allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.
Executive Order 11003 Allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.
Executive Order 11005 Allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways (notable pieces of infrastructure that could help defend against an invading force) and public storage facilities.
Executive Order 11051 Specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.
Executive Order 11310 Grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.
They seem to be prepared for it all, however the precision and carrying out of what they are unlawfully authorized to do could have it's initial human error, that being said it is almost impossible in today's militaristic climate to invade North America!
So the new Red Dawn in my mind is going to be a bit of a stretch if they go down the Chinese east invades west in a mass troop deployment manner like in the 1984 original which I also had problems with but nevertheless enjoyed!
* The American super carriers (particularly the Nimitz class) are most definitely an offensive weapon, the geography of the US ensures that a smaller more strategically based Navy could defend their territory (including Hawaii) instead of their current Navy that protects all of their global interests and are also used as a show of power against America's enemies and potential enemies!
For nearly three years now I've had to endure the horrible politics of the west towards Iran's nuclear program, never have I heard so much hypocrisy and so much lies put out on behalf of the west, I don't know what I should have expected considering the fact that the US fell out with Iran because of it's own people rising up and taking control over the dictator that was the Shah, before that however they were fine with Iran developing nuclear power:
Since of course it was mining it's oil resources away from the people and building up it's military and army to use as a buffer against the Soviet Union spreading into the Middle East and disrupting American oil interests.
However these days Iran has been described as an Axis of Evil and threatened by the United States who are still sore over the revolution and Israel who wants to keep their nuclear supremacy in the Middle East and want Iran devoid of any form of nuclear energy including nuclear power!
And they've on numerous occasions threatened to destroy these sites including Natanz (top and bottom pictures) and the Bushehr uranium enrichment program in a city of the same name.
An Israeli strike (nuclear or conventional) to destroy this one site would result in the radioactive poisoning of residents of countries across the gulf such as the United Arab Emirates or Oman, not only that but it could render Bushehr a ghost town and several people in it's 165,000 populace dead!
Hasn't the horrible catastrophe at Chernobyl not thought anyone anything?
And apart from that if Israel (very likely) fire the first shots at nuclear power stations such as these Iran have threatened in turn to strike back in this case at Israeli nuclear weapon sites that the world learned existed back in 1986 thanks to the brave Mordechai Vanunu who revealed to the world Israel's nuclear secrets such as the site he worked at Dimona.
Anti-aircraft gun at Natanz
Bottom Line: Iran like any other country in the world has the right to develop nuclear energy for it's people since they're moving on knowing that (unlike Saudi Arabia) that one day their oil will run out and preparing for the future, they should not be intimated by the threat of being preemptively attacked and have every right to defend themselves and their region against western attackers!
In World War II the United States remained neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor, yet before did support the Allied cause, legally giving them weapons through lend lease, yet private companies in the United States were at the time making profits by making business with the Nazi's.
Nazi Germany's war effort was largely supported by two organizations, one of which was called IG Farben. IG Farben produced 84% of Germany's explosives and even the Zyklon B used in the concentration camps to kill the Jews in their millions!
Also IBM (which later made personal computers) produced counting machines to help the Nazi's keep track of the vast amount of prisoners in the big concentration camps such as Auschwitz.
The Luftwaffe could not operate without a special additive patented by Rockefeller standard oil. The drastic bombing of London by Nazi Germany for example was made possible by a 20 million dollar sale of fuel to IG Farben by the Rockefeller standard oil company. This is just one small point about how America business funded both sides of World War II.
Another thing worth mentioning is the Union Banking Corporation of New York City. Not only did it finance numerous aspects of Hitler's rise to power, along with actual materials during the war, it was also a bank used for Nazi money-laundering. Which was eventually exposed for having millions of dollars of Nazi Money in its vaults. The Union Banking Corporation of New York was eventually seized for violation of the Trading with the Enemy Act.
The director and Vice President of the Union Bank was Prescott Bush, George W. Bush's Grandfather and of course our former George HW Bush's father, both of whom were presidents of the US!
But well before all of this in 1933 a group of wealthy businessmen that included the heads of Chase Bank, Goodyear, the DuPont family, Standard Oil, GM, and Senator Prescott Bush attempted to recruit Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against President Franklin D. Roosevelt to take down that government and in the insuing chaos install a fascist dictatorship in the United States!
Although it never got past its initial planning stages and Smedley did testify to a congressional committee in 1934.
Though many of the people who had backed the planned Business Plot still maintained financial ties with Nazi Germany up through America's entry into World War II.
People who compare Barack Obama to John F. Kennedy make me bitterly sick, there is a big difference and ignorance of history right there.
John F. Kennedy was a sad individual, his father Joseph Kennedy was pro Nazi and because of that most people probably expected Kennedy not to mess with the fundamentals of the establishment, yet if you look at his few years in office you can see that rather quickly through his own suffering he had discovered a personal sense of himself and begun to think of things such as economic recovery, going into and exploring space, making peace with the Soviet Union, and we all know what happened him in the end!
Now we have Obama who promised 'change' after the disaster of the Bush years and the start of the recession that occurred just before he took office.
I liked the guy I honestly did, when he won I thought it was too good to be true, he seemed to be an easy going person, calm and seems to be at peace with himself (very different than Kennedy), but what the main thing that matters at the end of the day is what he does, and the most important thing is the truth.
However Obama evidently is a notorious liar, and has carried on Bush's policy which include legalizing the Patriot Act and even keeping his former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and making the dirty war in Afghanistan even dirtier by throwing in more troops who are fighting not the Taliban but the people!
His promise of change has already turned out to be a lie, in the history of the last hundred years there were several infamous political leaders who came to power promising a better life and 'change', here I list the most popular three:
Vladimir Lenin
The take over of Bolshevik led by Lenin was at the time portrayed in Russia as the peoples revolution.
He talked about the positive change, yet during the times of Lenin and Stalin some 40,000,000 Russians were exterminated, those were people who spoke out against this revolution for their own sake or the sake of their friends and family!
Adolf Hitler
Hitler came to power when Germany was in a horrible economic situation in the years following World War I, he came in promising change and a better life for the people, he made the infrastructure of Germany better, made the Volkswagen (peoples car) to help people bring the German economy back up, yet during all of this he eliminated political opposition and made himself dictator, and within ten years of coming to power he waged the most horrific war in history slaughtering millions of people and eventually died after Germany was ravaged and destroyed and divided between two superpowers who were eager to destroy each other on its soil!
Mao Zedong
Mao came to power in China in 1949 promising yet again change and a better life for his people.
Within five years however under him 60,000,000 Chinese were wiped off the face of the Earth, yes 60 million of the people he had promised change to.
Now I'm not saying that the same will happen in today's United States but if it does it shouldn't be really be that surprising considering history of the promise of change.
Leader of the South American country Venezuela which (wait for it) has a hefty amount of oil, Chávez promotes a political doctrine of participatory democracy, socialism and Latin American and Caribbean cooperation.
I don't see a problem in this, basically he's thinking modern, people be free but also help their fellow man, he is seen by the United States as a threat to democracy in Latin America and George W. Bush even went as far to compare him to Fidel Castro!
He is also an outspoken critic against globalization and American foreign policy.
I'm not saying he has a point but I think we'd have a better world without a McDonald's on every street corner, and people helping each other? Yes he is a serious threat.
Kim Jong il
If only the US took him more seriously. Kim Jong il is a real stereotypical bad guy, his people live off grass while he builds more and more missiles that he might one day aim at Los Angeles or even Hawaii.
Kim has one of the largest DVD collections in the world apparently has attempted to make his own movies over the years, his regime bans people from internet access, foreign films and self expression!
His politics seem to be if he's not happy or has a hissy fit decides to point his missiles at cities full of innocent people to make his balls feel big!
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
In 2005 president of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said this about Israel:
"Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."
In English according to every professor in Farsi from Tel Aviv to Tokyo means;
"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".
Then a lie stating he said Israel should be wiped off the map accelerated across the media and the US and Israel took turns threatening war on Iran and in some cases in 2006 George W. Bush put the nuclear option on the table!
This is comparable to outspoken critics of communism in the United States during the 1960's calling it "an evil and malignant disease that spreads like an epidemic" So criticizing a social system isn't allowed outside the US?
Saddam Hussein
In 2003 a series of ugly lies sparked a hasty invasion crushing Saddam Hussein's Iraq, in a matter of days using 250,000 highly trained soldiers and marines equipped with the latest weaponry from the worlds only hyper power, Iraq of course had been blown to the stone age by that same power (America) 12 years before and heavy sanctions forced them into a slow recovery starving to death over a million Iraqi citizens.
And their antagonist Saddam Hussein who they'd failed to take from power (even though they defeated him) in 1991 was found hiding in a spider hole after the shock and awe bombings of his country made him run for the hills!
Osama Bin Laden
Accused for organizing two hijacked planes to be flown into the two towers and have them collapse (from the gas in the airplane as he said himself) and sponsoring other attacks on America and its allies Osama bin Laden is world master at hide and go seek!
On October 7th 2001 and Americans and the British started their hunt, on that day F/A-18's and Tomahawk cruise missiles hit several Taliban targets, after a month they'd begun targeting singular caves!
By December of 2001 a videotape was found by US forces, the smoking gun showed bin Laden confessing the attacks, the thing is his facial features particularly his chin change size (probably when he's lying).
And he changed his facial styles more over the years than any human being I have ever seen.
Yes he is the deadliest antagonist to America;
Since he hasn't been caught yet and the al Jazeera version looks different than the CNN version I'm guessing the whole Osama crazy is a load of bullshit! And no one in their right mind could mix up pronouncing Obama as Osama!
Ronald Reagan: An ex B-actor turned president and outspoken critic of communism, in office for 69 days at the time of the assassination.
John Hinckley, Jr: A failed singer song writer who saw the movie Taxi Driver fifteen times and became obsessed with Jodie Foster who played a 12 year old prostitute.
Hinckley begun stalking Foster but wasn't impressing her by saying he was impressed by her playing a 12 year old prostitute, somehow he thought shooting the president would impress her.
Hinckley bought a Röhm RG-14 .22 cal. blue steel revolver from a pawn shop along with devastator explosive rounds, on the morning of March 30th 1981 Hinckley was having breakfast at McDonalds when he found that Reagan was at the Washington Hilton Hotel, he decided to make his move writing a letter to Foster saying he hoped to impress her by the magnitude of his action.
You gotta wonder what this man was thinking, as Reagan walked out of the hotel greeted warmly by the crowd six rounds exploded in the air within three seconds, that's how long it took for Hinckley to empty his gun, hitting a secret service agent and Reagan puncturing his lung only narrowly missing his heart.
Reagan was bought to hospital for four days, Hinckley was found not guilty for stalking an actress and shooting the president of the United States since he was clearly insane, he was committed to a mental institution where he remains to this day!
The second in commands at the White House begun debating the availability of the nuclear football which was still in the possession of an army officer who was with Reagan for most of the day, Secretary of State Alexander Haig told everybody that he was in control as an oddly large number of Soviet nuclear submarines were closing in on the east coast.
Hinckley had political connections with the Bush's, Scott Hinckley was even a friend of George HW. Bush's son!
George HW. Bush Vice President at the time first felt what it was like to have his finger on the nuclear trigger.
Tell me when Lord!
Reagan survived it (miraculously considering his age) and borrowed a quote from boxer Jack Dempsey when he said to his wife "Honey I forgot to duck"
It was a very amusing episode in recent American history, and after getting shot Reagan didn't even attempt to enforce stricter gun laws so loonies like Hinckley couldn't get their hands on revolvers packed with explosive rounds unlike his successors Bush and Clinton!
Obama and Medvedev's agreements on nuclear arms reduction today has being described as a breakthrough, although that being said I doubt they'll break much ground until that US missile shield that's being established in Poland and the Czech Republic is fully removed since it is (rightly so) considered a threat to Russian security, the shield is supposed to stop missiles fired form neither Iran or North Korea, although I somehow doubt that will ever happen!
That being said the US and Russia still have ample amount of nuclear weapons to wipe each other out, the US arsenal numbers some 8,000 warheads, 2,500 of these are on 15 minute alert to be launched while Russia has 14,000 warheads left over from the Soviet Union.
Towards the end of the Cold War the Soviet Union had 39,000 nuclear weapons while the Americans were "behind" with 21,000 warheads, when Reagan and Gorbachev finally got talking there was a brief moment in which arms reduction became a reality, the Soviets dismantled several of their SS-20 missiles and observers from both sides observed the other dismantling missiles.
This was very short lived, when the Soviet Union collapsed instantly three former Soviet states still had nuclear weapons, Belarus had 61, Kazakhstan had 1,400 and the Ukraine had 5,000, they all voluntarily gave them back to Russia where most of them were dismantled.
The US meanwhile in the late 1990's encouraged Pakistan to build up its nuclear weapons stocks to over 60 nuclear weapons to counter India's nuclear weapons (an ally of Russia), Israel (an ally of the United States) have several nuclear warheads and missiles that threaten every city in the Arab world.
See what I'm getting at, Pakistan and India need to have serious limitations until neither of them have nuclear weapons, this will be difficult since Pakistan built so many nukes because of its size compared to India.
You know my stance on Israel their nuclear weapon should also be destroyed before they get into a war that might end up with them setting the whole Middle East on fire!
So in my mind all of this needs to happen before the US and Russia can talk serious about an end to nuclear weapons, that being said the reason it never got fully underway before the Soviet Union collapsed was because Reagan didn't want to get rid of Strategic Defense Initiative (the Star Wars missile defence), and Obama has already said he is reluctant on removing the missile shield from Poland and the Czech Republic.
