This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Ex-PH2

  • Latest News From Norkiland (Updated)

    It seems that Kim Jong-Nam, the half-brother of Fatty Kim da T’ird, has been killed by two Norkish women assassins at an airport  in Malaysia. One of those women is currently being held for questioning by the local polizei.

    The Norks have a long history off attempts to assassinate people they perceive as targets, including Park Chung-Hee, the then-president of South Korea in 1968. In fact, more than 90 South Koreans were killed in that attempt, showing us that such diplomacy is not exactly a recipient-friendly style.

    There are several other incidents  related in this story http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38974455 about this most recent attempt, including an attempted assassination of Pres. Chun Doo-Hwan during a visit to Burma in1983. His vehicle was delayed in traffic, which saved his life, but seventeen South Korean officials and 7 Burmese nationals were killed in this attempt.

    The Norks will also engage in revenge killings if some important Nork decides to defect, as happened in 1997.  When Hwang Jang-yop, a senior politician, defected to South Korea in 1997, another prominent defector, Yi Han-yong, was shot in the head by suspected North Korean assassins. He was the nephew of Song Hye-rim, who is Kim Jong-nam’s mother.  Loose connection? I think not!

    It appears that this recent murder of one of Fatty Kim da T’ird’s many half-brothers is simply following in the footsteps of Daddy Kim Jong-Il and Grandpa Kim Il-Sung.

    Do we have anything to worry about over here? Kind of.

    Norkiland successfully launched a ballistic missile last week. The Pukguksong-2 missile (oh, quit laughing!) is analysed to have a range of 750 to 1,800 miles, not quite far enough to get to California where it might improve the real estate somewhat, but enough to be a nuisance. I did try to translate that name and the computer started snorting with laughter at me.   http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/14/north-korea-missile-threat-could-prove-trumps-first-big-foreign-test.html

    But it does have enough range to reach South Korea and Japan, and U.S. bases in both locations where 80,000++ US troops are stationed. Also, it’s a solid-fuel rocket, not a liquid fuel, which means that it doesn’t require fueling on the launch pad.

    Joking aside, picking a quarrel with any country that already has the technology in place that you are seeking, any country that can flatten yours into oblivion, is a bad idea. That’s why the Cold War worked.  It was a Mexican standoff.

    I said a while back that the Norks are learning as they go. So are the Iranians, who also launched a missile successfully last week. Their favorite target is Israel, but the Israelis have reasonably good aim and can shoot down incoming Scuds. (Do we still have those Scud-killers?)

    The Chinese are not particularly happy about Fatty Kim da T’ird’s adventures in rocket science, and like us, the Israelis, the Russians and the French, Pakistanis and Indians, the Chinese have nuclear capability.

    If Fatty Kim da T’ird and Iran want a war, they should be careful what they wish for.

    UPDATE: This becomes more and more odd.

    A third person has been apprehended in the death of Fatty Kim da T’ird’s half-brother Kim Jong-nam. The article says that the person detained is a boyfriend of the Korean woman involved in the murder of Kim Jong-nam.  One of the two female assailants was a Vietnamese woman from Nam Dinh, VN.

    North Korea denies any involvement in the matter.  There was no report related to Kim Jong-nam’s death on Nork News yesterday.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-malaysia-kim-idUSKBN15V06K

    N.B.:  For anyone who thinks a nuclear explosion produces a glass parking lot, it does not. Soil from the impact site is drawn up into the explosion cloud and vaporized, and falls as liquid droplets called trinitite or Almogordo glass. They solidify as rocklike or dumbbell shapes. They are mildly radioactive, but safe to handle, and you can find some on e-bay if you want to waste money. The original Trinity site has been bulldozed over and the stuff is buried now.  Trinitite is similar to Libyan desert glass, which is thought to be the soil liquefied by a meteoric impact and scattered into the desert as liquid, solidifying in chunks as it was expelled from the impact.

  • Kanónes Anarchía

    Anarchy rules…. Well, not quite as much as the wannabe anarchy crowd likes to pretend it does.

    We’ve all been witnessing the violent and noisy public disturbances over the prospect of one person appearing some place – any person, any place – and none of it makes any sense. The ‘protesters’ – and I use that word with caution – don’t want to allow anyone at all with opposing views to even have a chance to speak, not even those whose views are of a mild opposition . They carry signs that can only be described as inciting riot and destruction: ‘Become ungovernable’?? Umm, what??  The Anarchist Alliance?? Huh??  If you’re a true anarchist, there is no alliance because a true anarchist hates and despises organizations. An alliance is an organization, so how can they….? Oh, never mind!

    Refugees?  I can find lots of photos of refugees from the Spanish Civil War that started in Spanish Morocco in the 1930s and spread to the mainland, and there won’t be a whole lot of difference between then and now. Generalissimo Franco was a right-winger in the Canary Islands who urged .the Spanish military to join the uprising.

    A lot of people who were seen as some kind of threat were brutally executed. Spain’s greatest poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, was hauled out of his house and shot by a firing squad. He wrote poems like this:

    El remanso del aire
    bajo la rama del eco.

    El remanso del agua
    bajo fronda de luceros.

    El remanso de tu boca
    bajo espesura de besos.

    This is the advantage of the internet now: the loud, screeching social justice howler monkeys with an agenda can’t stop the online opposition that exposes them for what they are: cheap anarchist-wannabes, people whose lives are built on ignorance, rumor and innuendo, and who cluster around each other in their herd mentality in a way we haven’t seen since the 1930s, when Adolf Hitler started using radio and film to lure people into his clutches. Lack of the kind of constant exposure he’d get now is what allowed him to climb/claw his way to the top of the heap in the Reich that he was setting up, and the destruction that followed it.

    Hitler controlled the German media in the 1930s. Who controls the media now?

    WE ALL DO.

    I think the best possible thing to do is give these idiots more exposure than they can handle, clearly show that there is no ‘message’ at all, just a hodge-podge of anger-driven people letting us know they’re all pissed off about some poorly-defined something, and make sure that everyone knows the violence is not only obvious but also planned, maybe by those ‘black bloc’ gangbangers.

    That’s the gist of it: make sure that everyone knows what it is, that it’s clearly anarchy, clearly property destruction and vandalism under the guise of attempted social justice, and that it is more of a threat than we could possibly imagine. The more exposure they get, the better, whether it’s by the left-leaning media fawning and drooling over them like horny girls at a headbangers concert, or the opposite side of that coin, the right-leaning media standing back, taking it in and asking questions like ‘Are you seriously NOT calling this a riot?”

    I hope you can understand where I’m going with this attitude. We can find the links to all sorts of peculiar stuff, post it, make remarks about it, and shake our heads. There are media outlets everywhere now, from the serious side to the goofs. They are all giving this inchoate, mooing, noisy herd of midget-brained cattle as much exposure as possible while those of us who are still somewhat sensible watch and wonder how in the blue-eyed world these crazy-pants twits think that they are even vaguely attractive to sane people.

    Here’s a good quote from WaPo about the kerfuffle over Ivanka Trump wanting to take a fitness class at a gym in Washington, DC:

    “Social media, the great enabler, enabling people to make fools of themselves everyday.”

    That is a classic. It must have something to do with the gym owner’s shooting off her mouth, thinking that she’d gain some points somehow with the libertards, when in fact, it only backfired on her.

    This is the problem with social media. You shoot your mouth off, thinking it’s just you venting and no one is really watching. No thought is given to the consequences of being a snotty jerk with an agenda.  But people are watching all the time and not all of them are so understanding about being rude to a customer, or destroying someone else’s property over nothing, or throwing what appears to be a public temper tantrum that would embarrass a five-year-old.

    Shutting down emergency vehicles on public highways? Destroying businesses because you can? Saying anyone who disagrees should be killed?

    Those who say and do these things are legally adults.

    Their parents must be so proud.

  • A Little Bit of History on Valentine’s Day

    Happy Valentine’s Day, to all of you.  Here’s a little bit to ponder while you’re having breakfast or walking the cat. Etiam beatus Lupercalia.

    During the reign of Roman emperor Claudius II, a/k/a Claudius the Cruel, Claudius was having some difficulty persuading people to join the Roman Army, probably because they were more interested in staying with their families than going off to some foreign country and fighting barbarians. Does that sound familiar?  To handle the problem, Claudius banned all marriages and engagements in Rome. St.Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret.

    When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death. Valentine was arrested and dragged before the Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his head cut off. The sentence was carried out on February 14, on or about the year 270.

    Legend also has it that while in jail, St. Valentine left a farewell note for the jailer’s daughter, who had become his friend, and signed it “From Your Valentine.” After his death, he was declared a saint.

    The history is that there were three men named Valentine. One was a priest in Rome, the second one was a bishop of Interamna (now Terni, Italy) and the third St. Valentine was a martyr in the Roman province of Africa. All three men were martyred, according to the Catholic Encyclopaedia.  Valentine’s Day was associated with the pagan festival of Lupercalia, a bawdy Roman date night indeed, but since the Church of Rome detested everything pagan, the ‘festival’ was incorporated into its martyrs’ days as Valentine’s Day.

    That’s the legend. Here are some other things that have happened on Valentine’s Day.

    Feb. 14, 1779,  A Patriot militia force of 340 led by Colonel Andrew Pickens of South Carolina with Colonel John Dooly and Lieutenant Colonel Elijah Clarke of Georgia defeats a larger force of 700 Loyalist militia commanded by Colonel James Boyd at Kettle Creek, Georgia. I believe there’s a tourist attraction near Pensacola, FL, named after COL Pickens.

    Feb. 14, 1779.  Captain James Cook, the great English explorer and navigator, is murdered by natives of Hawaii during his third visit to the Pacific island group. In 1768, Cook, a surveyor in the Royal Navy, was commissioned a lieutenant in command of the HMS Endeavor.

    Feb. 14, 1864, Union General William T. Sherman enters Meridian, Mississippi, during a winter campaign that served as a precursor to Sherman’s March to the Sea campaign in Georgia. This often-overlooked Mississippi campaign was the first attempt by the Union at total warfare, not just a military strike but also aimed at breaking the will of the South.

    Feb. 14, 1929. Sir Alexander Fleming was a young bacteriologist when an accidental discovery led to one of the great developments of modern medicine on this day in 1929. Having left a plate of staphylococcus bacteria uncovered, Fleming noticed that a mold that had fallen on the culture had killed many of the bacteria. He identified the mold as penicillium notatum, similar to the kind found on bread.

    Feb. 14, 1929. Four men dressed as police officers enter gangster Bugs Moran’s headquarters, a garage on North Clark Street in Chicago, line seven of Moran’s henchmen against a wall, and shoot them to death. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, as it is now called, was the culmination of a gang war between arch rivals Al Capone and Bugs Moran. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was the response by Capone to a $50,000 bounty placed on his head by Bugs Moran. A movie based on that event was filmed some years later. “Some Like It Hot” starred Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in drag, and Marilyn Monroe as Sugar Kane, a singer in an all-girl band.  If you haven’t seen that movie, do so. It’s one of Buster Keaton’s last movies, too.  When Jack Lemmon tells him ‘I’m a man,’ and pulls off his wig, Keaton’s response was ‘Nobody’s perfect.’

    Feb. 14, 1943. German General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps launch an offensive against an Allied defensive line in Tunisia, North Africa. The Kasserine Pass was the site of the United States’ first major battle defeat of the war.

    GEN Rommel was dispatched to North Africa in February 1942, along with the new Afrika Korps, to prevent his Italian Axis partner from losing its territorial gains in the region to the British. Despite his skill, until this point Rommel had been unable to do much more than manage his own forces’ retreats, but the Battle of Kasserine Pass would finally display the “Desert Fox’s” strategic genius.

    Feb. 14, 1962. President John F. Kennedy authorizes U.S. military advisers in Vietnam to return fire if fired upon. At a news conference, he said, “The training missions we have [in South Vietnam] have been instructed that if they are fired upon, they are of course to fire back, but we have not sent combat troops in [the] generally understood sense of the word.” In effect, Pres. Kennedy was acknowledging that U.S. forces were involved in the fighting, but he wished to downplay any appearance of increased American involvement in the war. The next day former Vice President Richard Nixon expressed hopes that President Kennedy would “step up the build-up and under no circumstances curtail it because of possible criticism.”  Yes, THAT Nixon.

    Happy Valentine’s Day.  Movies recommended include Shakespeare in Love, Some Like It Hot, And Walt Disney’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’.

    Thanks to History dot com for the general info.

  • Abu the Chechen is Dead

    Some times, old news is what we should look at and not ignore. The following news item is from last year.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-shishani-idUSKCN0ZU1CG

    The Islamic State’s best recruiter was a red-bearded Chechen who, some time back, fought against the Russian Army during those disruptions in the Central Asian states. Now he’s dead, killed a while back per US MI, and the ISers are looking for a replacement who speaks Russian. Last July (2016) Abu Omar al-Shishani (Abu the Chechen), a close military adviser to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in combat in the Iraqi district of Shirqat, south of Mosul, Amaq, as reported by a news agency that supports IS in July 2016. He was considered to be the ISers best recruiter because he spoke Russian.

    Last Spring (2016), there was a war going on in Azerbaijan between some Armenians and local native Azers.  How many times has Azerbaijan popped up in the news? And how many times has anyone sent military forces in there? It appears to still be underway, as a local serviceman, Fuad Gafarov, was KIA by shelling from Armenian forces on Feb. 11. However, Russia is attempting to intercede by providing a diplomat to work on conciliation between the two countries of the South Caucusus.  http://news.az/articles/karabakh/118796

    Azerbaijan is a beautiful country. The mountains of the area are just stunning.  Hikers, photographers and birders would groove on the landscape. The Azers want stability and prosperity, not disruption and destruction.You can’t market your exotic products if shipments can’t get out. You can’t attract tourists to your local beauty spots or cuisine if they’re worried about getting shot at, can you? I did not know that Azerbaijan was famous for its cuisine, but apparently, the kabab and the sherbet and baklava should definitely be on your agenda.  The Azerbaijan government does want to expand its ties with the U.S.

    If you look at the Google maps of the South Caucusus, the whole area is not just awash in oil and other nice things; it’s also next door neighbors to Iran.  Bound on one side by the Caspian Sea and on the other by Armenia and Georgia, Azerbaijan is kind of stuck in the middle of a squabble it didn’t start.

    Why does this matter? Because Russia wants a stable Central Asia and South Caucusus, too. Without stability in the region, the entire area of Central Asian states will go up in smoke again, and Putin will have to deal with more than just a few disgruntled Chechens.

  • Getcher Recipes Here!!

    As we all know, food is love, and we all love food, especially if we’ve had Korean War-era field rations… or Spam.

    I am going to be busy for a while, so you’ll have to do without  my glorious person until I get back.

    However, I will give you an ingredient if you want to try that angle, and here it is: the infamous, very misunderstood and somewhat oversalted canned pork shoulder product called SPAM.

    I’ve made hash with SPAM. It also comes in a low-sodium version as well as a variety of flavors including SPAM w/Ham, SPAM bacon and hickory-smoked.  It ain’t Grandma’s World War II version any more. No, I’m not advertising for Hormel’s honorable product. But maybe Sparks could make Ham & Mofos out of SPAM.

    And there are, of course, Monty Python’s memorable ‘SPAM, SPAM, SPAM’ episodes.

  • Weekend Open Thread

    And you thought I forgot, right? Never!  Not in a million years would I do that!   I’m going to be embedded with the Marines in Kyrzakistan, so whatever you’re going to do, have some fun with it.  You remember Kyrzakistan, don’t you? Lovely place. I think it was referenced by someone who occupied the seat of Secretary of State a while back.

  • Deja Vu All Over Again

    GEN Nicholson, CDR-US Forces Afghanistan, says we need to send more troops to Afghanistan to ‘break the stalemate’ in that country. He uses the term ‘thousands’. As some of you have indicated, there is a trust level with the locals that seems to be thinner than spring ice.   http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/nicholson-afghanistan-more-troops-stalemate

    What I take away from reading this article is that, while the Afghans are in the fight, the expectation of them by us is that they will fight the way we do, which ignores the centuries of their history of individual tribes constantly squabbling with each other and only uniting against what they consider to be a common foe.

    To be clear, I would rather not see US forces expected to carry the burden of this, but instead, to shift it entirely to the Afghans. Nicholson does point out that he believes if we pull out entirely, there would be new terrorist attacks against the US. He doesn’t specify whether he thinks they would be as external attacks, or repeats of those we’ve already had since 2001 and those in France and Belgium.

    When I read this article, I felt compelled to review the history of Afghanistan, and how the people there will be friendly one minute and undermine you the next. Whether Nicholson is going with his gut or basing his opinion on info he can’t give out publicly, my reaction to it is that I do not want to see this ramp up into a war in which we do the bulk of the work.

    It bankrupted the Soviet Union to try to fight in the mountains of that country. The British Army couldn’t deal with the Afghans, either . The infamous Khyber Pass stopped them cold, because it is a notorious ambush spot where, in 1842, the Afghans engaged in a massive attack on Elphinstone’s army of 4,500 British and Indian troops, plus 12,000 camp followers including women and children, killing all but one British doctor and a few Sepoys, who managed to escape to Jalalabad, and Elphinstone and a few officers who surrendered as prisoners.

    In view of all of this, and the fact that tribalism also has an ancient and very stubborn hold on that place, and that the Soviets couldn’t break the deadlock, why are we there? Why does no one consider the long-term history of those people? They’ve never done anything except make war on each other, unless it’s outsiders and then they loosely unite to fight and chase off the outsiders.

    I’m only trying to understand this need to keep doing the same thing over and over, with no results that go any further than frustration, higher and higher costs, and losses that we do not need to suffer. We are, in fact, chasing our tails.  Why?

  • News from Norkiland

    Back in September, I reported that the Norks had succeeded in an underground nuke test that yielded 20 to 30 kilotons, which is up to three times the explosive impact of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.  The detonation generated a 5.3 seismic reading, per the USGS, and yes, a quake near Punggye-ri, the underground test site.

    Subsequent to that, a high-profile North Korean official Thae Yong Ho defected to the South in London and has been supporting information filtering out of that not-so-secret gulag on the other side of the DMZ.

    More disturbing news is coming out of North Korea now that the head of Norkiland’s secret police, Kim Won Hong, has been dismissed by Fatty Kim da T’ird, a/k/a ND:tBF. This was confirmed by South Korea’s Unification Ministry.  ‘Dismissed’ is a polite word for prison candidate.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-kim-idUSKBN15I095

    Well, Fatty Kim da T’ird does like to have people executed for not standing up straight at parades, so this is not really a surprise.

    Perhaps we need to view Norkiland with a less jaundiced eye and instead, keep a weather eye on that hidebound bunch. The South may laugh at them but they haven’t asked us to leave yet, have they? No, they haven’t. In fact, they seemed to be happy to have SecDEF Mad Dog there for a visit a few weeks ago.

    And we must not forget or sneer at their experiments with nuclear weapons, and the fact that they are seriously working to produce and launch missiles with nuclear warheads attached.

    However, in the Norks’ one-sided race to get ICBM nukes on the launch pad, which requires enormous incentive to achieve, you have to start wondering what Kim Won Hong’s offenses actually were, and whether or not these purges and executions are doing less to scare people than they do to piss them off.

    Revolutions against tyrants have been started with less incentive