Israel-Palestine Two-State Solution Officially Dead Says Saeb Erekat

The two-state solution to incessant Palestinian attacks on Israel is officially dead according to Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat. Erekat made the remark in reply to a statement by Israeli Economic minister Naftali Bennet. Deputy Defense Minister Danny Dannon echoed Bennet's recalcitrance on a two-state solution. We thought as much might develop following the brutal Shia-Sunni civil war in Iraq after the 2003 invasion of the coalition of the willing and neo-con bungling of nation-rebuilding.

Gaza's Hamas party has never quit attacking Israel, and as first cousin of the Muslim Brotherhood the two-state solution founded on a secular government in Egypt and a more moderate P.L.O does seem anachronistic. In the current political environment of a destabilized Middle East, with shoulder-fired anti-jetliner missiles purloined from the late Libyan Dictator Moamar Ghaddafi's arsenal possible reaching Al Qaeda of the Nigeria or the Maghreb, and with a recrudescent Sunni collection of visiting terrorist and revolutionaries active in Syria seeking to establish another Muslim Brotherhood branch government Israel is increasingly seeming to be in something like a geopolitical situation like that before the 1967 Middle-East war where a pan-Arabic group  of governments led by Abdul Nasser developed and executed belligerent actions. If Israel were to accept a two-state solution they would in effect simply be cede defense territory before a possible next conflict.  That would not be in Israel's interest.

http://nationaluasi.com/dru/node/1126

While the U.S. administration has said it would start to donate small arms (weapons of war such as assault weapons, grenades, semi-automatic pistols, machine guns and such) to particular illegal combatants in Syria who pro-Syrians might regard as terrorists for eating the intestines of dead government soldiers now and then, the Syrian conflict may continue for a few years with increased support from Hezballah and other neo-Shiite allies of the neo-Shia Alawite Assad Government. With such an alumni of terrorist pros gathering experience in the conflicts of the Middle East Israel will need to increase it's vigilance. After the end of the conflict in Syria pro or con the terrorist underground networks may seek further employment attacking Israel with renewed support from the infusion of small arms and weapons of war loosed during the Arab Spring of Revolt. In time the traditional unifying factor of terrorist networks might resume the trash talk and attack Israel axis of evil.

Probably the better time for a two-state solution was before all of the changes of the Arab spring and profusion of terrorists and terrorist weapons throughout the Middle East. In the present destabilized environment Israel will have to hunker down and increase its defense capabilities and border security. Perhaps in a decade or two after the present generation of radicals ages a little it might be a stable and responsible enough environment of political leadership for a two-state solution with some land in Syria or Egypt going to Palestinians in addition to the Gaza and some West Bank properties. It would probably be best though that evolution through twittering and Facebooked friendly relations and business practices develop such that in time the regional exploitation of workers issues wither away.

Afghanistan's Social-Military Development; Michael Hastings & 'The Operators'

When a reporter working for Rolling Stone magazine did a story on then commander of U.S. and ISAF troops in Afghanistan four-star general Stan McCrystal in 2010 the die was cast for revealing the V.P. 'Bite-me' appellation heard round the world, and General McCrystal's resignation was accepted when the pdf report was leaked. The reporter Michael Hastings wrote a fine book on the in-depth development of the story with interviews with the general and his staff in Europe and Afghanistan as well as a wealth of information about the war, the effect on the people of Afghanistan and the costs. The booked is named 'The Operators' after McCrystal's Special Forces and JSOC personal history. Operators are what Delta force personnel are called. Instead of being another truth-better-than fiction action adventure tale one might expect, The Operators is a high-level view of how politicians and generals got it wrong.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/16/afghanistan-drawdown-take-security-lead-from-us-nato_n_3450858.html?utm_hp_ref=world

The Huffington Post blog today has a story on the soon to be announced transition of Afghan security forces taking the lead from American and ISAF forces in Afghanistan, and it seems about time. Hasting's book provides some detail about the Afghan security forces and American political-military management of the war that are a little disturbing. The war for one thing just didn't seem necessary. We sent a conventional Army to fight against a non-existent insurgency. Initially the C.I.A. supported the Northern Alliances efforts to take down the Taliban successfully helped with a few Blue-72 bombs, Special Forces and bucket loads of cash. Only then did the large military build-up begin to take out an Al-Qae'da that were mostly gone and that had been Arabs and international terrorists doing guest training in country.

Hastings writes that the majority of Afghan soldiers and security forces smoke hashish, as does President Karzai. Homosexual exploitation of boys by Afghan security forces is also common. They have a phrase 'boys are for fun and girls are for children' in Afghanistan. We do not need to support such a Muslim society that is implicitly corrupt perhaps through the effects of decades of foreign intervention.

In my opinion the United States can't get anything right economically and uses military power instead of defensible ecospheric economic intervention that survives anyone's terror attacks. There is just no green economic genius in the U.S. military and politicians tend to be clueless about foreign intelligence before intervention militarily.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Operators-Terrifying-Americas-Afghanistan/dp/0452298962

There are plans to build-up warlords to persist regionally after the U.S. drawdown and let the corrupt at least offset development of a Taliban-led fundamentalist state. In such a political climate U.S. Special Forces might interpolate to attack incipient international terrorist training bases theoretically. Billions being spent tends to be the first congressional response to international terrorism defense even if there isn't any good reason for it. It's as if students with the flunking math scores are running the U.S. government and that isn't very helpful to the economic bottom line or dead civilians.

Accuracy is important in chess, and it's important in economics and war as well. U.S. generals like Stan McCrystal don't have the authority to just win the war, and civilian political leaders haven't the competence to run the war if it isn't conventional at least.  That is one present problem for the American democracy. Wrong political choices and management mean wars are badly addressed. Not even the counter-insurgency techniques of General Petraeus (COIN) derived from Galula's doctrine were meaningful for Afghanistan. Insurgent recruitment increased to resist the foreign invaders (U.S.) whenever we killed an insurgent or two. The 'insurgency' was that of natives at home defending against aloof, wealthy killers spending money on defense items like drunken sailors-maybe to find Bin Laden, who was probably allowed to escape from Torah Borah to Pakistan years before.

Anand (Ind) vs Carlsen (Nor) World Chess Championship Nov. 6 to 26, 2013

The 2013 World Chess Championship match between champion Viswanathan Anand and first-time challenger Magnus Carlsen will be held in Chennai India in November. The 22 year old Norwegian will square off against the 43 year old Anand who is brilliant at counter play.  Carlsen has the highest-ever chess rating at 2864. Anand's rating is fourth in the world at 2786.

The chess world three decades after saturation of pc's and chess programs has taken a turn toward the quick. Timed games online at chess.com may have 10,000 players on any given Saturday. It's free to join and amusing intellectually to play. youtube has many free chess videos from chess coaches like thechesswebsite, MatoJelic and Kingscrusher. Following the action of master-class chess players online in live blitz games lasting five or ten minutes, or as little as one minute bullet games is a refreshing way to clear the cobwebs out. It takes about a year to learn to play at a 1000 level, so there is some work required to move one's score up  the ladder. 

World chess champions of the past started chess playing as early as age four (Karpov). Carlsen was a Grand master at age 13. There are three players with scores higher than 2800 and they all started playing chess early in the morning.

Club chess players are those with ratings between 1200 and 1800. Higher than that one finds FIDE masters (FM's), National and International masters and Grand masters (GMs). In the world there are about a thousand Grand masters. What is interesting about the present highest-level chess play is the large number of players rated higher than 2700. The U.S.A. has a player-Hikaru Nakamura, rated 5th in the world with just two fewer points than Anand. Aronian, Kramnik, Karjakin, Topolov, Grischuck and Caruana are other top-ten rated players that one expects to be challenging in the future, whoever wins the thrilla in Chennai.

Image credit: U.S. public domain Philadelphia Museum of Art 1917 Juan Gris, Chessboard, Glass and Dish

Snowden's Theft of N.S.A. Data Indicates Broad Exposure to Digital Corruption

Edward Snowden's theft of N.S.A. surveillance information to reveal to the public and Communist Chinese the depth of technical penetration of communications networks does indicate the tip of the iceberg of data mining the upper classes and criminal gangs exploit. Douglas Bamford's excellent 2009 book on the N.S.A. The Shadow Factory provided a in-depth look into the covert-overt agency. Private sector data mining companies track a lot of information too. Not just online either; r.t.f. chips in everything from smart cards to automobile parts and phones are tied in to computer networks tracking the location of hard-wired Americans.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Shadow-Factory-Eavesdropping-America/dp/0307279391

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_mining

http://www.kypost.com/dpp/news/region_central_cincinnati/downtown/data-mining-is-big-business-for-kroger-&-getting-bigger-all-the-time

It is interesting that any sort of debate exists on Snowden's violation of public trust. Democracy requires that people obey the laws voluntarily. That the N.S.A. does data mining means that its part of the real modern world. The public ought to be alarmed about the inherent insecurity of Internet communications and general data tracking yet of course they aren't. It's too complex and abtruse of a topic to be concerned about and if their privacy goes out the window well, they already probably tweeted something about their criminal activities anyway.

It is probable that a complete reformation of the Internet and cell phones, rtf card readers and other surveillance structures should be redesigned to enable virtually complete privacy. The crackerbox palaces of modern high-rise office buildings that collapse like a house of cards if hit by some jet fuel explosive should be phased out and modern artificial mountain range living structures with high-quality ecosphere contribution phased in. No one in politics has any interest in a competent reform of anything though. Evolution toward the global warming, mass extinction of bio-diversity, mass human population collapse through conflict, scarce resources and the death of individual freedom from the interference-of-others via mass control,  the concentration of wealth and repression of individual free enterprise because of the corporatist controlled political environment will probably go ahead like a reciprocal of the recession of glaciers. Not too worry. It will be twitted and reported when it happens.

Development of Marine Nitrogen Cycle Knowledge & Global Warming

Development of knowledge of the marine nitrogen cycle has increased the past twenty years. Molecular biology and genetic database technology provided new insights into what, where and how oceanic nitrogen is transformed, fixed and sequestered.  The recently published McGill University study (see article link below) showed that a few thousand years are needed for the oceans to adapt to global warming. 


http://aem.asm.org/content/68/3/1015.full  Nitrogen Cycling in the Ocean: New Perspectives on Processes and Paradigms

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130614111606.htm McGill University study to quantity ocean nitrogen cycle response to climate change.

More protection for S.E. Alaska salmon habitat would be helpful if that fish is to survive in the century ahead in the wild.

http://m.juneauempire.com/state/2013-06-11/scientists-ask-protections-salmon-tongass

Pres. Obama to Arm Rebels, P.M. Cameron Claims Syria Used Sarin & Killed 150

Though Germany invented Sarin gas in 1938 the United States and Britain developed large stocks and perhaps the first casualty was a British test subject at Porton Down. Sarin is about 500 times more powerful than cyanide and can kill  in a minute. Sarin is a nerve agent and messes up neuro-chemicals. The administrations of the U.S., Britain and France claim the Assad government used Sarin on the rebels and killed 150 of them. We are a little skeptical because it is a potential excuse for U.S. intervention on the side of the rebels.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/14/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE95C16L20130614

If the Assad government used a chemical weapon it would be quite bad (it was outlawed by the U.N. in the 1990's). We wonder though why Assad would use such a politically dangerous weapon to kill just one-hundred people instead of conventional yet effective weapons of which he has plenty. We wonder if the claim is another Gulf of Tonkin resolution or W.M.D. in Saddam Hussein's Iraq quanta of political flim flam? Twice-burned once shy.  With defense outlays for Afghanistan winding down in 2014 the military-industrial complex may be searching for new places to drop munitions for profit (defense contractors need to resupply the U.S. military for profit).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22908836#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

Senator McCain has already called for U.S. intervention to ground the Syrian Air Force. Cratering explosives on airfields and maybe Stinger should-launched missiles for Al Qaeda visiting rebels might do the trick. One wonders if the Syrian Air Force was used to kill just one-hundred rebels with Sarin by air drops of bombs?

In 2004 Iraqi rebels used an artillery shell with two-part Sarin precursors to attack a U.S. convoy ineffectively because the shell needed to rotate at high speed to mix the Sarin and an I.E.D. wouldn't do it. Syria has artillery and tanks to launch Sarin-precursor filled shells (not like creme-filled donuts) if they wanted to, so where is the effectiveness of a no-fly zone for controlling a possible Sarin attack from the air? It seems possible that former Iraqi rebels have a store of Sarin-precursor filled artillery shells that they might be able to use as guest-rebels for Team Sunni in Syria. We are skeptical about the Sarin fog of war, and hope for restraint from the Condor legion wing of the U.S. Government lusting for no-fly zones abroad until use of chemical weapons becomes a solidly witnessed and documented fact. 

A substantive approach to verification of quanta of contemporary history requires a probability curve of use consistent with military objectives in the given political environment. The allegation of technical use of Sarin gas by the Assad government of Syria thus far is not convincing. It seems to be a managed political level akin to claiming the unemployment rate was 7.9% before the Nov. 2012 Presidential election rather than 8.0. True or not there were still 30 million souls out of work in the U.S.A.


Image credit of Rocky Mountain Arsenal 1970 Sarin dtest rabbit-Library of Congress photo taken by U.S. Forest Service employee.

Evolution as Intelligent Design- Evolving Moral Positions and Intellectual Content v.2

 Sartre once said that he had evolved a new idea on what an intellectual is. President Obama used the phrase that he was evolving a new opinion about homosexual marriage decades later. Evolving subjective intellectual content is a self-regarded activity these days. One cannot be sure if such intellectual development evolves because of random chance or the natural selection of saying what the people want to here most in order to get political power (regardless of the merit of the idea). If evolution of ideas is powered by conscious, intentional thought then evolution comprises design. That paradox is ponderous. It means that evolution and intelligent design are synonyms. Evolving an opinion about the whore in the harbor of Babylon the Great trading with all the nations of the world might be easier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g8JVK4Fppw Sartre on 'What an Intellectual Is'

If morality is what people actually do in a social context, then perhaps ethics is a description of the normalized procedures for implementing moral choices. Certainly people seem to choose to do wrong often enough with select ethical criterions, yet perhaps for atheists without belief in a transcendent moral structure there is no wrong, but only evolution. How can it be wrong for Hitler to invade Poland within an evolutionary criterion? For Christians and Dietrich Bonhoeffer that wickedness of the Reich should have been morally and actually opposed?

One may reasonably oppose the existence of a logical condition as being present if there is present some sort of factor that cannot coexist simultaneously.

Not (A & B).

A or B

A & B

If one can prove these simple conditions to be valid for select, or Universal circumstances inclusive of an omnipotent God then I suppose one would have a hard to defeat bunker position with a clear enough logical field of fire, yet I believe that the presence of evil (if one recognizes evil and is not just atheistically 'evolving' an advantageous position does not satisfy the Universal disjunct logically.

Not simply because complex numbers evidently are used for description in quantum mechanics and one day for quantum computing that transcend the binary 0 or 1 criteria of computers today, but for the reason that God stipulated right out that people have original sin and a fallen nature. The premise is that given immortality mankind might become even more wicked than now. Mankind is given to labor and women to go through childbirth and mortality would abbreviate the evil of human experience.

That doesn't mean that human beingness is bad-only that the human nature to go wrong needs to be overcome through faith, yet I wanted to remain on logical grounds rather than that of faith for the present.

I have no idea what sort of things God might want to accomplish in eternity. I believe that God is tougher than NFL players with those concussive head injuries however, and he might be able to withstand tough things in the Universe that he creates perhaps as stress tests. Certainly human beings going through some of those horrible times were quite remarkably tough. Those Christians eaten by lions or burned alive for their faith were of strong moral character. Even some Buddhists that have burned themselves in protest of war showed a certain ability to overcome the horrors possible of the mortal coil, yet one would think that it should be evil rather than one's self that does evil in-the-world.

I think that the problem of evil is not something that precludes the existence of the Divine being-especially since He exists for eternity, sent His Son to share the experience and is has enough time to make things right.