Graphic of the Day - Other Brexits

My buddy Blake shared this on his Facebook the other day and now I'm sharing it with you. For those of you not hip about to what this refers, that would be Brexit, the British exit from the European Union. Map by Bezzleford (all rights reserved).

Graphic of the Day - How Dare They

Many of my idiot Conservative (and conservative with a lower-case "c") friends and acquaintances (as opposed to my idiot Liberal and liberal friends and acquaintances) have been and continue to be thoroughly convinced that the perennial paper tiger Iran poses an existentialist threat to the United States and Israel, especially as it pertains to nuclear weapons.There are so many factual and analytical problems with this myth that I'm not sure where to begin. I'm also not sure that I should even bother to address them all here.

However, it is worth mentioning that Iran is a poor and backward country many decades of development behind her neighbors to the south across the Persian Gulf. Sanctions and corruption and mismanagement and ineptitude have taken and continue to take their toll on the nation. When sanctions were upon Iran they had nothing to lose by not cooperating with the U.N. and the West. By lifting sanctions, now the U.N. and the West have leverage over Iran as Iran now has something it values greatly that can be taken away from it. Obama's deal with Iran was actually a great idea and long overdue.

Iran's nuclear program is driven by and designed for the same sort of adversarial scenario as Pakistan's: concern about a strong neighbor dominated by a different ethnic group which speaks a different language and follows a different religion or sect of the same religion, to wit, Pakistan's India concerns and resultant nuclear program compares with Iran's Saudi Arabia concerns and resultant nuclear program. An Iranian nuke would be built for Saudi Arabia, not the U.S. or Israel. The anti-U.S./anti-Israel diatribes by the Iranian government and theocracy are for internal political consumption but are not reflective of Iranian nuclear machinations. Iran is not interested in committing nuclear suicide.

That being said, Iran makes for a great excuse and opportunity for political posturing by Conservatives and conservatives in the U.S. when in fact Iran is a paper tiger that needs to be watched but not worried about. Such distractions divert our attention away from nuclear rival Russia which does pose an existentialist threat to the U.S.

Graphic of the Day - Nation-State Fragilty Index

The folks at the FundForPeace generated this graphic of the global stability sit-rep for each sovereign nation per a color-coded threatcon index. Being the irrepressible geek of random information that I am I could not resist looking at this when I encountered it on Twitter just minutes ago nor can I keep myself from sharing it here. Actually, self-deprication aside, this is fascinating stuff if one is a political science/geography/history aficionado. Left click image to enlarge.

Leon Panetta Kills It

Today Cal Poly held the first two of three graduation ceremonies. The university is divided into six schools and two schools walk in each of the three commencement ceremonies. I walk tomorrow with my fellow College of Liberal Arts graduates and the graduates of the Orfalea College of Business will walk with us. Today I worked crowd control for my company during the 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. commencement ceremonies. I was stationed up in the primary bleacher structure on the west side with the assignment to keep aisles and walkways clear per the fire code. Being positioned where I was I was ideally situated to observe the ceremony which was the third year in a row I worked the Cal Poly spring commencement ceremonies. Today's commencement ceremony attendees were treated to a most excellent speech by Leon Panetta. While I am not a Democrat and do not agree with him politically on many things and view some of the things he did working for the Clinton 42 and Obama Administrations as significant mistakes, I do recognize his lifelong service to my nation and my part of California in particular when he was a local congressman. I also must confess that he gave one hell of a commencement address not once, but twice today. I was duly impressed and must reassess my perception of him. Above, I have a recording of his afternoon address which received a standing ovation more so than after the morning performance of it. I regret that he will not be speaking during my commencement ceremony tomorrow which will be keynoted by somebody else.

Meme of the Week - Kim Jong-un-Connected

Earlier this evening I noticed a tweet on Twitter which reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had just announced that his crazy little kingdom had succeeded in miniaturizing nuclear weapons (makes them small enough to place in missile warheads). That immediately brought to mind this meme which I tweeted in response. To my surprise, there has been a flurry of Twitter-verse positive responses to it this evening which continues into this hour.

Picture of the Day - Putin On The Wrist

Per a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty article I just read there is a new scent on the geopolitical wind.
Image courtesy RFE/RL (all rights reserved).

Tale of Two Syrian Refugee Memes

Liberals and Conservatives think and act the same way and must be grouped together taxonomically given their similarities. Their collective group comprises seemingly of some of the dumbest members of the human race now walking the earth. They are also some of the most horrible human beings prone to ugly outbursts of hatefulness. Below are two memes I ripped tonight from the Facebook Walls of two of my Facebook "friends." They are tangible evidence of Conservatives' and Liberals' vile and pseudo-intellectual tendencies.

Conservative anti-Syrian refugee meme employing logical fallacy.
Actually, ALL of those snakes would bite you and most probably none of those refugees would attack you.
Conservatives are snakes!

Liberal pro-Syrian refugee meme employing logical fallacy.
In 1939 there were not incidents of Jewish refugees blowing shit up and shooting up concert halls in Europe.
Liberals are worse than Nazis!

The Eternal City Made Mortal

Tonight's attack in Paris by apparently eight or so ISIS commandos in simultaneous attacks on six different locations within the French capitol killing up to 129 (89 at a music concert hall) with 352 wounded (99 in critical condition) leaves me feeling both sad and mad and of those on multiple levels. I feel so sad for the dead and wounded and their loved ones. I feel mad that vile filth walk the earth feeling entitled to take other people's lives and health and happiness without any valid justification and even exult in doing it. This event falls on the heels of the attempted train attack last summer which was thwarted by some off-duty American servicemen. Earlier in the year last winter, there was the Charlie Hebdo attack and now tonight's events have descended upon Paris.

I am sad and mad that my nation, sharing much collective guilt with a lot of other powerful and wealthy nations, did not prevent this from happening by way of stopping ISIS a couple of years ago when it would have been most feasible and before ISIS had killed so many tens of thousands of people in Syria and Iraq, many of them in such horrible ways as they have. The feckless non-leadership of the current President, who resides within his own mind in a lofty redoubt of moral and intellectual loftiness, has monumentally failed as a leader and as a man to fulfill his duties. This has resulted in harm to both the United States and to innocent peoples in the Levant. He once declared a phantasmal "line in the sand" in Syria which he failed to enforce all the while allowing both Republicans at home and V. Putin abroad to make a fool out of him by way of outmaneuvering his clumsy political and diplomatic machinations. Per usual, these machinations were ill-conceived and unfocused from the beginning until now. This resulted in no substantive measures being taken against ISIS. Subsequently, the President ordered the conduct of a tepid low-intensity war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq which was and continues to be strategically ineffectual. It was also easily one-upped by V. Putin when once he recently commenced air sorties by Russia's air force from within Syria. The current President also instituted an anemic program to train "good militants" to fight both the Syrian government and ISIS. The entire history of U.S. assistance to such fighters has been fraught with failure and mismanagement.

Of course, this is not to suggest the President of the United States is alone in being guilty of gross incompetence and inaction as it pertains to ISIS. Europe has dithered over what to do about this problem in typical contemporary European fashion. It might appear that the more decisively-minded genetic lines were killed off in the first two world wars. The Sunni Muslim community has failed to effectively fill the power gap left by the U.S. in this matter and instead provided material support to some of the worst elements in the conflict in hopes of defeating the Syrian government at any moral cost. The Shiite Muslim community has been guilty of supporting the Syrian regime while manipulating the internal politics of Iraq to favor Shiites disproportionately at the cost of undermining the legitimacy of the Iraqi government, especially as it pertains to Sunnis from whom Al Qaeda and ISIS derive and thrive thus adding fuel to the sectarian fires.

Surely this event will change France and the French and their way of looking at the world. It will also invariably contribute to the French reassesing how they see their own nation and the role of Muslims within it and that truly needs to happen. However, one wonders if it will also unleash an extremist Right-wing reaction and overcompensation to decades of French pussyfooting around with foolishly liberal immigration and welfare policies. These policies have caused France to become colonized by a people who to a great extent are not interested in becoming French so much as colonizing France in the image of the Old Country and its Old World culture. This won't work for modern French people who are proudly secular and liberal which is at odds with these extremist Muslim elements. These selfsame elements seem to find support enough within the Muslim immigrant society within France to operate with impunity within France. However, the blow-back may have already begun as I have read reports tonight of an immigrant encampment in Calais having caught fire and burned since the Paris attacks.

Overheard ~ What Turns 62 This Year?

A wry joke making the rounds in geopolitical circles earlier this year was the question "What turns 62 this year?" Answer: oil (price of a barrel of oil), the Russian ruble (to one U.S. dollar), and Vladimir Putin (on October 7). All of those things ended up happening, too.

Something For The Counter-Terrorist In Your Life

Collector's Uncut Sheet of IntelCenter's Most Wanted Jihadi Terrorists Playing Cards
Nothing says "I love you" to a counter-terrorist more than these collectible most-wanted jihadi terrorist playing cards reminiscent of the Iraqi Most-Wanted Playing Cards from Gulf War Two in 2003.

Courtesy of IntelCenter (all rights reserved).

Dude Has Been To Iraq

This is my first ever self-composed meme. Of course, I used a meme-generator to do it, but still, I have now joined the ranks of the memenators. Why you ask did I this deed? On my Facebook yesterday a conversation and meme thread emerged about Sean Penn's public spat with the South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone a decade ago. It occurred when Penn became aware that Parker and Stone were making their movie Team America: World Police and early trailers for it showed Sean Penn being satirized over his arch-Liberal political views which he takes much too seriously just as he takes himself too seriously. Below are their remarks on the matter. Note: for those of you not hip on the popular culture of the 1980's, the above image sans the words is a still from Fast Times At Ridgemont High showing Penn as "Jeff Spicoli."

From Canada With Love

In light of the fact that Russia is today allegedly invading Ukraine (perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, BUT...) and a lot of the news media don't seem too excited about reporting it perhaps because it exposes the abject fecklessness of the President they helped elect and reelect the image below is particularly humorous and comes courtesy of our Canadian neighbors to the north by way of their NATO delegation and appears on its Twitter page along with the following Tweet:

"Geography can be tough. Here’s a guide for Russian soldiers who keep getting lost & ‘accidentally’ entering #Ukraine"

For more about this funny side-story check HERE.

I Smell A Fish

In regards to my nation's pending "little war" by way of involving ourselves in the Syrian Civil War of the 2010's I speak as someone too old to be at risk of being conscripted if things go poorly and likewise as a man sans any progeny I have nothing to loose in that regards either. Therefore my vehement opposition to it is not in any way motivated by any self-interest.

I oppose our involvement in that war because we don't have a dog in that fight and there are no good guys there. I oppose our involvement in that war because as I see it why not let the Shiites and Sunnis as best represented by Iran and Saudi Arabia, respectively, play their little proxy war there using monies derived from selling oil to the rest of the world? Why pay we essentially pay the Syrians twice? They're already getting monies from us derived from the sale of oil. I oppose our involvement in that war because we are still recovering from (and paying for) the Iraq War and Iraq Reconstruction as well as our invasion of Afghanistan and continued occupation thereof. Why add another expensive little war to our debt? Syria is not worth ONE single American life! I oppose our involvement in that war because we would be entering on the side also supported by Al Qaeda with whom we have been at war for the past twenty years and thus we would aid that greater enemy in order to oppose a lesser enemy/non-enemy. I oppose our involvement in that war because it would needlessly upset the Russians (for whom Syria is a client state) and although we need to be firm with them we also need to wisely pick our battles with them.

It seems to me President Obama is dragging his nation kicking and screaming into a war it wants no part of and I think I know why he's doing it.  The President is thinking about his legacy now that he is in his second term and on some level realizes that a clear-cut military victory somewhere in the world would strengthen his list of presidential achievements following all his failures of leadership over the course of a mediocre Presidency. The President is just as beholden to the military-industrial complex as his Bush and Clinton predecessors were and his masters need more war now that our involvement in Iraq is essentially over and we are on track to leave Afghanistan in similar manner in the not-too-distant future. The President and his advisers at least mildly and perhaps a bit subconsciously are stuck in a Cold War mentality which views a Russian client state as being a de facto enemy and thus anybody opposed to them must necessarily have common cause with us therefore we must assist them. The President is a dyed-in-the-wool "knee-jerk" Liberal and as such is a sentimentalist who possesses a big, clumsy bleeding heart with a weakness for underdogs "freedom fighters" such as is endemic in Liberal circles. This manifests itself as a irresistible urge to dabble in "humanitarian" interventions even in oil-rich nations like Syria which would be unpardonable to Liberals were a Republican President doing the very same thing. Lastly, the President has talked himself into a corner on this matter in trying to look tough over the course of the past year or two when talking down to the Syrian government about how to conduct their suppression of the revolt. Now he fears looking weak if he does not attack the Syrians in response to their latest alleged transgression, to wit, the use of WMD's on civilians in recent days. Some aspects of this alleged attack elicit skepticism as the whole thing makes no sense, sounds and looks suspiciously contrived and thus smells rotten. Sir Winston Churchill once famously said: "The first casualty in war is truth".

Below is the famous/infamous "The Fish Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" by Country Joe MacDonald & The Fish and to my amazement this hawk (me) actually agrees with the general sentiment of the song as applied in general concept to involving ourselves in the ongoing Syrian Civil War .

My Top 10 Rants At Present

Quite a number of things have been chapping my hide lately and a few of them feel like a flaming stick up my ass. I've been planning on posting such a list for some time but tonight I feel pissy enough to actually get around to doing it. Below is my current list in no particular order of significance.

1. Highly ideological people who lack the chops to face me in debate directly with facts but feel compelled to resort to straw man arguments, ad hominem attacks, false causality fallacies, Parthian shots, and other such rhetorical devices (not limited to full-bug-out retreats) of those who know they can't win in a stand-up fight with the facts. I have experienced all these of late and dispatched them without mercy. The exceptions are one of my Parthian shooters got in his car at my yard sale before I could set fire to his dogmatic assertion that Wal-Mart has NOT effectively sent American jobs to China. The other Parthian Shooter unfriended me on Facebook and blocked me there and on Twitter but not before making trite and condescending remarks of a most vapid and candy-assed and self-righteously indignant nature. 
2. I hate tweekers, as in "hate-hate." As a Christian I love the sinner but hate the tweeker. I am certain they can be cured for the cost of a bullet cross-hemisphere to the brain. They are starting to become a problem in my life and the lives of my loved ones by way of being scary and disruptive and unpredictable neighbors who attract an unsavory and ill-tempered element into the neighborhood. In the good old days neighborhoods and communities took care of such problems sans the need for the constabulary and other legal avenues.
3. Liberal hypocrisy gets worse year after year. I realize Conservatives are no better but of late their hypocritical excesses have not been on display to the extent it has for Liberals. From the Liberal (and to some extent black) bias of the Zimmerman saga/non-story story to the water carrying for a Liberal President who has one-upped his Conservative predecessor's "extraordinary renditions" of non-citizens (to which I never objected unlike my Liberal friends who feigned outrage) with now the assassination of American citizens abroad sans trial (to which I don't object personally but my Liberal friends also don't seem to in a convenient turn of inconsistency) by way of drone strikes on foreign soil. Add to that our President using the I.R.S. to help him win a very narrow reelection last year by way of using the I.R.S. to disproportionately go after Tea Party and Patriot Groups in a turn of malfeasance reminiscent of Richard Nixon. Liberals to this day love to excoriate Nixon for doing the very same thing but outrageously call Obama's sins of the same sort a "false scandal". Add to that his being responsible for having a then-defense secretary (Leon Panetta) whom outed the Pakistani doctor whom helped finger Osama bin Ladin which doctor is now in prison for the rest of his life on treason charges in Pakistan. Top that off with the same Liberal President possessing a Vice President who outed the SEAL Team (Six) which killed Osama bin Ladin leading to that unit being targeted by Al Qaeda. Then predictably Al Qaeda got to them and wiped out 15 members of Seal Team Six along with 23 other personnel in the shootdown of a Chinook helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade two years ago. This makes another Bush-era Liberal cause celebre, to wit, the Natalie Plame Affair pale by comparison as no Americans died and yet Liberals at the time went ape shit about that one. 
4. Speaking of the Zimmerman Trial that sure did expose a whole lot of racism in America... within segments of the black community whom tend to come from an arch-Liberal political persuasion of ethnocentric race-baiting, guilt-mongering, blame-gaming, shit-stirring, responsibility-dodging, fact-obfuscating apologetics-for-bad-behavior-purveying on a scale that boggles the mind. This receives little notice given how long and gradual it has been worsening and how bullied into acquiescent quietude White America has been since the 1970's or thereabouts. That time frame is not a coincidence as it is around the time the civil rights movement for black Americans lost it's moral superiority and purity once and for all following a decline that began around the time that more angry elements poisoned the movement. This was symbolically capped off with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s mistakenly tying the civil rights movement to opposition to the Vietnam War in 1967, which ought to have remained a separate issue. Of course, then there is the fact the Liberal newsmedia (they hate that label claiming it does not exist the way the Italian mafia has for years denied the existence of the Italian mafia). Methinks they protest too much! Anywho, the aforementioned Fifth Column Fourth Estate generated an artificial narrative of what happened in this case that played upon the reverse racist propensities and proclivities of those susceptible to such hackneyed and morally-bankrupt impulses and perceptions. By the end of the trial an entire segment of society that was disproportionately Left-leaning and more melanin-rich was convinced of the injustice of an incident which never actually happened as they falsely perceive it to be up to the present. Thank you MSNBC, et al, for your excellent job of informing a large populace of voters and encouraging ethnic harmony and national unity!
5. Speaking of race: I'm tired of that word being abused and misused. When most people use the word "race" or one of its variants they ought to use "ethnicity" or one of its variants. There is no racism anymore given that the Neanderthals and Denisovans are now extinct... perhaps in part as a result of "racism" by early modern Homo Sapiens. However, there is nowadays most certainly ethnicism and ethnocentrism which can be ethnically-exclusive and promote ideas of ethnocentric superiority of the sort that is often misnamed "racism". There is also a myth that blacks continue to systematically and regularly suffer from white racism and white advantage as opposed to what the facts suggest which is that community's own shortcomings and subcultural proclivities and self-indulgence and indeed multiculturalistic ethnocentrism has harmed it and alienated it and separated it from the rest of society to which many of its members seem inclined to blame upon white Americans. This latter subculture and ethnicity of America as a group has quite some time ago gotten over the "black thing" and yet Black America seems stuck in the past and unaware of the changes in the rest of America. For good measure look at the fact that White America helped elect a self-identified black man as President. It has even reelected him in spite of the fact he is no good at his job by just about any measure.
6. This is not to say that I have not been a bit annoyed with Conservatives lately. They now are inclined to viciously attack our President for doing things like spying on the American people via NSA when that was going on under the Patriot Act throughout the Bush 43 Administration, but where was the Conservative outrage then? Note: those intelligence-gathering activities did not and do not bother me on a practical level but as someone concerned with the ever-growing size and power and expense of our federal government I doubt the constitutionality of where things have wandered to and where they are headed. I also fail to see the real need for much of this Homeland Security activity and internal intelligence-gathering (which has become lavishly lucrative for many firms which is the real driving force of it). When there were failures in following then-in-force methods and procedures in American counter-terrorism that directly led to the few successful terrorist attacks on our own soil such as 9/11 and the Boston Bombings. However, I digress. Where was the Conservative outrage on expanding government after 9/11 where there is now outrage in the expansion of government under Obamacare? Where was the Conservative outrage regarding our invasion of Iraq on a false premise while there is now constant Conservative consternation over much more minor involvements in Libya and Syria to which we are far less invested in blood and treasure?
7. On that Syria note I must confess that I am flabbergasted that the Obama Administration is sending monies to Sunni rebels in Syria of which some are Al Qaeda-affiliated formations whom are also receiving support from Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Persian Gulf Sunni-majority nations. On the other side of the axis is the Syrian government which is Shiite-dominated just like their Hezbollah allies in Lebanon and both of which are supported by Iran, the world capital of Shia Islam. First off, why are we taking sides in a fight in which we don't have a dog? Second, why are we supporting rebels some of whom we are Al Qaeda-affilated, a terrorist network at vicious war with us and against whom we are fighting and killing and detaining people at Gitmo at great expense in blood and treasure?  Thirdly, why are we sending these people money twice since they are not only receiving direct payments from us but also indirect payments as their support from other parts of the Sunni Islamic world comes from money we paid those oil-rich nations for their oil?
8. I have experienced an odd and annoying work experience lately with an employer who shall go unnamed here as I don't wish to burn bridges: I'm technically still employed by them although I'm not getting called in to work for them. After passing my job interview with flying colors and having my hand shaken and being quite literally welcomed to the team and having attended all meetings and the one work shift to which I was called in I now find myself on the outside for not having ingratiated myself enough to the ruling caste and acting like an excited little puppy to be there for just above minimum wage. Now I'm hearing of dissatisfaction growing in the ranks with one employee quitting due to harassment by other hens and attendance is light thus far even for big events such as the recently half-filled big-name event. Perhaps if they called me I could help them out. 
9.  Something I have long noted since I started reading blogs but that has been violently shoved in my face to a far more intensely distasteful degree in recent weeks since I became fully-engaged on Twitter and have followed some popular bloggers is this: the perpetual, petty and pernicious pedantry and sniping and nitpicking by those on the Right at those on the Left (and the reverse as well) over mostly minor and irrelevant fluff and/or distorted and exaggerated cause celebres. The Tweets just keep coming until I unfollow various and assorted bloggers since they are fanatics of the sort Sir Winston Churchill described as "one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject". The content is sometimes very funny and clever after the tradition of famous wits but most of the time is monotonous and mundane, strident and shrill, not to mention belaboring a point and being prone to beating a dead horse. I have trimmed back the number of bloggers I follow to merely two and I'm contemplating cutting them loose, too.
10. I have many loved ones and acquaintances who are hooked on a variety of "reality television programs" which on some level most of us realize are as real as "professional wrestling". However, most people don't seem to appreciate how selectively and creatively edited these programs are and to what extent people in these programs are playing to the cameras and the degree to which the producers steer the narrative not to mention control the personnel lineup on each show. If these shows were reality then there would be no "casting" and nothing would need be planted or prearranged. In the past several months charges of planting items in storage units for the program Storage Wars went to court but were ultimately cast out. I have had a personal conversation with a guest of Cash & Treasures whom hosted on adventure and told me what I already guessed had to be the case: stuff is planted so the pretty host of the show can find it in a one-hour television show. While watching another program (Call of the Wildman) at my mother's house the other day I saw the characters in the show opening up cupboards in a kitchen in an abandoned house and like a game show some had raccoons and such animals while most did not. The whole scene seemed so staged and unlikely. How did a raccoon end up in a cupboard with no means of ingress and egress aside from the closed cabinet door? Why did it hardly seem to react to the sight of humans and cameras? How could such an abandoned home hold so many animals just wildly leaving there and so conveniently to be found by the "Turtleman" and his entourage? This kind of programming is simply a means to maintain network ratings while saving a lot of money not hiring actual unionized actors and writers and directors and such as one would in a program that is entirely "fictional". Thank God for The Walking Dead, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad.

A Tank's Death From Two Perspectives

It seems tonight is tank death night on Eclectic Arcania. While researching details of the previous tank death story I found this video sequence from the current Syrian Civil War taken earlier this year. It is "dash-cam" footage or rather, armored personnel carrier and tank turret footage from a Syrian Government armored mechanized forces' offensive operation in the Damascus suburb of Darayya. There, they clash with rebel forces whom are utilizing urban warfare techniques sans any heavy weapons. We see footage of the death of a Syrian Government T-72 tank (at least that is what it is identified as by various different sources) as viewed from the aforementioned type of film. We also see spliced into this mostly government footage near unto the end the same tank being hit but from the perspective of the Syrian rebels whom killed that tank and its three-man crew. Fascinating (to the point of mesmerizing) stuff and there is nothing graphically gruesome for those of you who are squeamish and like to be forewarned. Note: I have now seen quite a bit of Syrian Civil War battle footage. It seems the rebels are always Al Akbar-ing after every damned thing they do that works out from blowing up an occasional tank to downing an occasional chopper or jet. Something tells me they need to leave God out of this unholy business.

99 Luftballons

With all the concern lately about North Korea and their ambition to develop the ability to deliver a nuclear weapon via ICBM to the continental United States combined with a growing concern regarding Iran's similar aims and now add to that the terrorist attack in Boston, MA, the other day and it feels like there is a level of stress of impending doom not felt in my homeland since 9/11 but with more of a nuclear fatalism attached. I must admit that I myself have been mentally contemplating and preparing emotionally for that possibility in the not-to-distant future for some months now and it continues. I am not fearful but I am feeling a growing sense of possibility regarding it and in my mindset I intend to survive. However, that requires I start gaming for it now and mentally-emotionally I already am all the while I'm hoping it is unnecessary.

With that in mind below is the best and most famous song of the 1980's in regards to expressing a young generation's fears of nuclear apocalypse and protestation against that possibility. German band Nena created the pop rock gem "99 Luftballoons" (99 Balloons). There was a German and an English version but the German version sounded better and was more true to the artist as it was in their mother tongue and the subsequent English version had some revisions. Below the music player are the English-translation lyrics. Enjoy!

You and I in a little toy shop
Buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got.
Set them free at the break of dawn
'Til one by one, they were gone.
Back at base, bugs in the software
Flash the message, Something's out there.
Floating in the summer sky.
Ninety nine red balloons go by.

Ninety nine red balloons.
Floating in the summer sky.
Panic bells, it's red alert.
There's something here from somewhere else.
The war machine springs to life.
Opens up one eager eye.
Focusing it on the sky.
Where ninety nine red balloons go by.

Ninety nine Decision Street.
Ninety nine ministers meet.
To worry, worry, super-scurry.
Call the troops out in a hurry.
This is what we've waited for.
This is it boys, this is war.
The president is on the line
As ninety nine red balloons go by.

Ninety nine Knights of the air
Ride super-high-tech jet fighters
Everyone's a superhero.
Everyone's a Captain Kirk.
With orders to identify.
To clarify and classify.
Scramble in the summer sky.
As ninety nine red balloons go by.

Ninety nine dreams I have had.
In every one a red balloon.
It's all over and I'm standing pretty.
In this dust that was a city.
If I could find a souvenir.
Just to prove the world was here.
And here is a red balloon
I think of you and let it go.

Source: Songmeanings.net

Gangnam Style vs. Kim Jong Style

With both the now-ebbing "Gangnam Style" craze and its creator Psy and the still-escalating tensions with North Korea and its sheltered, overindulged, and petulant leader Kim Jong Un it was inevitable that somebody would blend the two threads. So it happened and  below is the result. In the first video player you see the pop-cultural phenomenon"Gangnam Style" and below that is the spoof music video "Kim Jong Style". Watch them in descending order so that the visual gags in the spoof make sense.

Kim Jong-il Is So Ronery

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's ruinous reign of repression ended two days ago. This seems to me a fitting way to remember him.