Universal Health Care

Senator Edward Kennedy (D)-Mass and Senator Max Baucus (D)-Mont have assured the Obama Administration that the legislation for universal health care will be ready by June 09. (CLICK HERE)

Please write to your elected representatives and insist that members of Congress subject themselves to the same health care facilities to which the public will be subjected, not the separate and privileged Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) plan they currently enjoy at our expense.

With few exceptions, the current administration is comprised of lawyers. There can be little doubt that the final Universal Health Care Act will require private medical insurance accounts and health care providers. This will assure lawyers' job security (right to sue for malpractice claims). Will the cost of health care be lowered like standards will?

Of course not, check your local hospitals. Liability claims eat 40% - 60% of the typical hospitals budgeted allocations now. As standards further deteriorate and lawyers sue, these allocations will certainly rise. Lawyer job security, it seems, is destined to improve regardless of economic crises.

Psychotronic Weapons Research

This is an area where pseudo-science and science meet and the results sometimes seem bizarre at the least. For the most part, there is some agreement that there are biological effects to extremely low frequency magnetic fields. Can those fields be harnessed for the purpose of mind control? It's a question people have been asking for the past seventy years.

The Soviet Union and today, the Russian Federation has conducted significant research into developing Psychotronic weapons that could be employed both secretly and more overtly for the benefit of national policies. Some of the results of researchers such as Igor Smirnov (psychodiagnosis and psychodirection) have been viewed skeptically and without independent scientific review, experimenting with the same methods and obtaining the same results, many scientists will remain skeptical that targeted mind control is anything but a myth.

However, while you are rolling your eyes in disbelief, keep in mind that President Vladimir Putin signed a law into effect in Russia in 2001 making it "illegal to employ electromagnetic, infrasound radiators and other weapons of psychotronic influence with the intent to harm - in effect methods of harming or influencing humans at a distance". The Russians clearly believe that such methods have merit.

Israel and other nations including the US invested time and effort into researching psychotronic weapons. The Israelis attempted to use them to control the Palestinians and found that they didn't work. They used the methods that were developed by the military and security services of the former Soviet Union. CLICK HERE to read more on the subject.

How do I feel about the issue of psychotronic weapons? I'm keeping an open mind.

Irish Republican Army - Rebel Tunes

I'm very fond of Celtic tunes and the tunes I tend to like best are the rebel songs. Mary Black's songs:

 

Crow in the Cradle

 

The Shadow 

I know that if friends of mine at MI-5 (the name changes frequently these days) in Britain see this post, I'll get a telephone call or two.

It doesn't matter, I'm fond of war tunes and the Wolf Tones irrespective of all else. To name a few:

Plastic Bullets

Kevin Barry

Boys of the Old Brigade

The Broad Black Brimmer

Russian Black Sea Fleet Order-of-Battle

Sometimes you need a program to tell who the players are. IF, and I'm not saying when, Russia invades Georgia, a large armored force will deploy south from South Ossetia to cut the country in half and another amphibious force will invade along the Black Sea Coast. This order of battle deals with the Russian force that would strike from the west.

Chief of Staff Vice Admiral P. G. Svyatashov

Black Sea Fleet - Naval Infantry

2 Independent Naval Infantry Battalions (reinforced)

1 Fleet Spetsnaz Brigade (reinforced)

250 Main battle tanks

300 Infantry fighting vehicles

200 Tube artillery

Black Sea Fleet - Naval Aviation (available for operations against Georgia)

1 Naval Attack Squadron (Su-17)

1 Independent Transport Squadron (An-24)

This could be reinforced from other commands.

Flagship - Moskva (Slava Class Cruiser)

11th Anti-Submarine Ship Brigade (3 cruisers, 1 destroyer, 2 guided missile frigates)

41st Missile Boat Brigade

68th Coastal Defense Warship Brigade

247th Submarine Battalion

197th Amphibious Ship Brigade

Russian naval infantry (marines)

Organized Crime, Piracy and al Qaeda - a comparison

A distinction can be drawn between clan based piracy and traditional organized crime only that one normally operates on land and pirates operate on the sea.  At sea, crimes can be easily hidden by the sinking of a ship (or of dead bodies) such that there is little evidence remaining, therefore the crime of piracy has historically been held to be among the most serious that can be committed.

Practically there is are few other differences. Elisaveta Aleksandrova, who follows this blog has made the comparison between the Russian mafia, kidnapping members/associates from the Bulgarian mafia in the modern world. She further points out that there is a point where mafia corruption touches the highest portions of the government and impacts government policies. She asks whether al Qaeda may have involvement with these mafias.

Mafia groups are selfish and guard their territory that provides them wealth. With the exception of the mafia in Chechnya (Чече́нская Респу́блика) which is largely sunni Muslim, organized crime groups in Russia and Bulgaria would be completely at odds with al Qaeda because of the philosophy that al Qaeda brings to its operations - which clearly mirror organized crime. There have been situations in the past were al Qaeda worked in concert with Islamic groups in Chechnya, but they seemed to be relationships of convenience rather than permanent alliances. Wahhabism (the conservative form of Islam practiced by al Qaeda) is so extreme that it is often incompatible with the way other Muslims view themselves and the world.

So while terror, kidnapping, murder, money laundering, and piracy would seem meld seamlessly between groups, it seldom does in the real world. There are other motivations that have to do with territory and personal enrichment that often get in the way of cooperation. 

Organized crime is parasitic. It needs legitimate business to continue in order for it to exist. It needs to corrupt governments to aid its efforts. The criminal goal is to make money.

Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization because its goals are political - it wants to turn back the clock so we can all live in a strict Islamic world in the way the religion was practiced in the first three centuries after it was founded under Muhammad and the Salaf (السلف الصالح‎) 

Piracy & Somalia Revisited

There are some in the West who believe that the political situation in Somalia can be solved through an international commission doing this or that. There have been fourteen such initiatives since 1991. Care to guess how many of them have achieved ANYTHING positive? Another United Nations initiative seems to be as neutered at the outset as the UN is itself.

The Horn of Africa is a strategic choke point for shipping transit and surrendering the territory to radical islamist organizations (including al Qaeda) should be avoided. At present Somalia is governed by a weak Islamic government with little control or legitimacy outside the capitol. The reality is and has been that clans rule the country on a regional basis. Calling Somalia a country is a term of art, not reflected by the reality on the ground.

Political choices: The Pirates (anti-al Qaeda) or the al Shaabab (pro-al Qaeda).  Not much of a choice.

Recommendations for the US - 

• Keep an Amphibious Ready Group in the straits between Yemen and Somalia to protect US interests and to support our NATO allies as required. 
  
• Avoid the temptation to engage the Somali clans on the ground (either the pirates or al-Qaeda win) because there is absolutely no winning strategy there. Somalia is one of those hell holes that's not worth one American life.
• Establish a proactive stance at sea where Somali pirate ships are engaged at will by US forces. (more or less shoot first and ask questions later at sea) The presence of armed Somali civilian craft in the area constitute a clear and present danger to shipping.

Thai Pirates - Crime of Opportunity

During the 1980's Viet Nam went through a period of ethnic cleansing during which time Vietnamese people who had ethnic Chinese roots were encouraged to leave the country. These refugees were the so-called "boat people".  Though statistics are not precise, they numbered between 500,000 and 600,000.

The boats they sailed in were essentially "floating junk" and they were inevitably overcrowded and once at sea, those onboard found they didn't take enough food or water with them. They were vulnerable in every sense of the word. Some people took what wealth they had in the form of gold and silver "thin ingots" often called "taels", though a tael is a measurement of weight. 

Thai fisherman, in an effort to separate these people from their money and to take women as slaves or for their own purposes from the ships turned to piracy in large numbers. CLICK HERE  -- and HERE for more information. The lucky women were sold as sex slaves in brothels in Thailand. The unlucky ones were used, and were tossed into the waves. The links provided above, document people who didn't make it, and of the ships that were not sunk (if they sank we have no record of them) also document the number of times they were attacked (by different pirates).

There was no cry from the international community because there was nothing to ransom and no nation wanted to take responsibility for the refugees they saved. 

As a footnote: The USS Dubuque LPD-8 (above)  (CLICK HERE) did not stop and render aid to a Vietnamese refugee boat in the South China Sea. The refugees resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. 58 people were died/eaten by other passengers. The commanding officer, Captain Alexander Balian, USN was relieved of command of his ship, but claimed that he was acting under standing orders not to assist refugees on the high seas. I suspect that his claim was sincere and that there was a policy in place.