Doug's Darkworld

There’s been a developments in Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan, so another extemporaneous post on this scary and developing situation. Iran first. The UN has been asking to look at a military base where it is suspected that Iran may have been testing components for  a nuclear weapon. This has been an issue for at least six months or so. The inspectors spent a few days cooling their heels, and are now on their way home. Much sabre rattling and threats from the USA ad Israel, with Iran not backing down in its own stead, pointing out that the have the right under international law to launch a preemptive attack at the forces arrayed around Iran if they think an attack is imminent.

This is not good, but it’s not what it seems. The military site isn’t a nuclear site, and Iran is within their rights to refuse access to it. Especially since the US has been known to place spies in UN inspection teams, and considering that the “evidence” claiming this base has been used for nuclear testing isn’t exactly iron clad. Look at it this way, would you let your sworn enemy to send their finest James Bond type guy into your most top secret military base on the basis of what you know to be faked evidence? The damage done by something like that could be incalculable, they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. They’ve wisely chosen the known diplomatic damage by refusing entry, instead of the unknown damage a spy could cause.

Does this make an attack on Iran more likely? Yes, yes it does. I still think it’s a crazy idea, but Germany declaring war on France and England in World War One was a crazy idea, and they did it anywise. Add whatever historical examples of stupid wars one wants, there are a lot of them when it comes right down to it. Lastly on Iran, note that this military base is NOT a nuclear facility, yet somehow the UN is demanding to see it? Iran’s nuclear fuel supply and enrichment facilities are carefully monitored, this is another example of the USA making demands that are above and beyond Iran’s treaty obligations. (The UN is now just an organization for rubber stamping pretty much whatever the USA wants.)

Sigh. Moving right along, anti-US riots and protests in Afghanistan, several dead. These were triggered by locals discovering charred copies of the Koran dumped in a local dump by US forces. Two points here, the first being that while the burned Korans triggered these protests and riots, they’re a symptom of deep anger and dissatisfaction at the foreign presence in their country. Secondly, how the hell did this happen? Our forces are unaware that if they were going to burn copies of the Koran, they shouldn’t let the locals know about it? Talk about a PR bonanza for the Taliban. Major facepalm. And in Syria, two western reporters were killed. That will certainly spur more calls for the west to “do something” in Syria.

Not a good morning for news out of the Middle East. As a capstone to all this madness, US proxy forces in Somalia have captured a major town. Yes, decades after our humanitarian adventure in Somalia ended in Black Hawk Down, we are still intervening and Somalia is still a bloody mess. That’s because humanitarian intervention really means invasion, meddling, and often occupation. And oddly enough, people tend to resent outside powers fucking up their country, that’s because it’s their country, something the west has forgotten under the all encompassing Christian religion known as cultural imperialism.

Sigh. Tomorrow I will get back to the GOP’s War on Women, another fine example of Christianity’s dark side.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s a very low resolution copy of the original poster, it’s not being used for profit. Credit: Advertisement from the 1970s by American nuclear-power companies. It’s used to show that times have changed, and that Iran’s reasons for building nuclear power plants are as good as they were then. Of course then they were a US lackey, today they are one of the world’s few remaining sovereign states.)