The Thomas Chronicles

North Korean Disarmament

People have been golf clapping at North Korea’s actions of late.

It was report last week as a diplomatic victory for the Bush Administration. North Korea has suddenly— and seemingly without any smoking-gun reason— has decided to fold on virtually every point in the negotiations to halt their nuclear weapons program.

All this comes after over two decades of diplomacy, which were full of mendacity and trickery on their part. Their delaying tactics, including an enormous incentives package naively negotiated by the Clinton Administration, allowed them to create functioning nuclear weapons, one of which they detonated unin 2006.

But one thing no one— and I mean NO ONE, not the MSM, not bloggers, not talking heads (not that I heard of)— in the media has ask is: why now? After all of North Korea’s maneuverings and defiance for over the past 20 years, why have they chosen at this time to cave?

Allow me to set the stage for what I think the implications of this are.

I blogged last week about our proximity to war with Iran. It leaked through CBS consultant, Michael Oren, that Israel had quietly approached the United States and said in effect:

“If you won’t attack Iran, we will.”

I’m sure you don’t need me to spell out what would happen should war erupt in the Middle East between Israel and Iran, but for those unversed in how intertwined things are, allow me to elucidate.

Iran have allies in Russia and China, both of whom are heavily invested in Iran. Russia has given them countless technological transfers, including their burgeoning nuclear weapons technology, and China is heavily dependent on Iran for energy, without which they sink as a country.

Periphery players are Iranian sponsored proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, Lebanon (which is predominately controlled by Hezbollah now) and Syria, who is a close Iranian ally.

All these players, not to mention Europe, has an incredibly large stake in the outcome of this crisis, and I don’t believe any one of them are willing to sit on the sidelines as a spectator. Not when their survival depends on it.

Should conflict erupt, Israel’s only ally, the United States, will also not idly sit by and watch the Jewish race be destroyed from the face of the earth. One Holocaust is enough, as far as the United States is concerned.

How does all this fit in with North Korea’s recent cave-in to all our demands, evidenced in their very public destruction of their nuclear cooling tower?

In the fall of 2007, September in fact, Israeli warplanes destroyed a secret site in Syria which was housed nuclear material— material that originated from North Korea.

Since North Korea is up to its earlobes in international intrigue with nuclear material in the Middle East, if the United States were to attack Iran any time in the immediate future, North Korea would have to also be on the cross-off list of rogue regimes. I.E. If we’re gonna put down one nuclear-aspiring rogue regime, we’re going to have to take down the one with ready nuclear capabilities as well.

We couldn’t afford to have a nuclear hostile sitting on our flank on the Korean Peninsula that could deal us tremendous amount of harm (Japan would be in jeopardy). Optimal would be to take them both out at the same time.

I don’t think North Korea would sue for terms if they didn’t know for certain that we are proceeding to Tehran. The fact that they would fold totally and in an instant underlines just how close we are.

I think North Korea went belly up to get out of our way, fearing they would be in our sights.

I think this also means that we are on the doorsteps of open war with Iran… and possibly World War III…

Here are a couple of quotes from the book I’m reading:

“These days, people spent too much time striving to understand their feelings—and then ended up with none that were genuine.”

Dialog quote:

“Didn’t you say civilization is as fragile as glass?”

“Maybe it’s worse than that,” she said. “Maybe it’s a mirage.”

“There are always those who’d like to turn out the lights. So far we’ve been lucky. They’ve always just been shy of a majority.”

She turned from the view as if it pained her. “Are we safe here?”

“No.”

“I mean for just a little while?”

“No. Not even for a little while.”

In keeping with my bleak theme of late, I now turn Iran.

For years now, the United States and our allies have been trying to talk Iran down from a cliff that they clearly want to jump from. We are talking, of course, of their nuclear weapons ambitions.

Such ambitions are serious enough considering their heavy investments in terrorist organizations, like Hamas and Hezbollah; but not content with destablizing the region through international terrorism, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has repeatedly called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”

And with achieving the proverbial “bomb”, they have also achieved their means to following through on their threat.

It should be noted here that the Iranians are not Arabs. They are Persians. They are the oldest continuous civilization in the world, older than China in unbroken continuity. We underestimate them at our peril.

And the Persians don’t bluff.

Then, two days ago on June 24th it was leaked to CBS consultant Michael Oren that if the United States will not strike at Iran’s nuclear build up, Israel will.

“The Israelis have been assured by the Bush administration that the Bush administration will not allow Iran to nuclearize… Israelis are uncertain about what would be the policies of the next administration vis-à-vis Iran.”

In other words, Israel is not going to wait for the U.S. Presidential election. They will act before then unless we act first. Which means such an attack could happen some time within the next four months.

News of this leak is reverberating through the world, and many fear that we are on the edge of a precipice and World War III. Some articles like this one, even outlined how it could start.

Israel, without doubt, does not have the resources to sustain a war with Iran. If they do attack Iran, they will be destroyed by their opponents, unless the U.S. (whom is their closest ally) does not provide military relief (i.e. combat Iranian forces).

Now here is where it gets hairy (and scary).

Iran’s closest ally is another powerful country, you may have heard of it; Russia. They have together (Iran and Russia) what is called a ‘mutual cooperation agreement’ which includes a stipulation that explicitly aims to allow, encourage, and protect the Iranian atomic program.

In short, Russia has agreed to defend Iran - specifically if their nuclear ambitions are derailed by another country.

What’s more - Russia has a very similar agreement with their closest ally, and you have heard of them too, they boast ‘the million man army’; China. The agreement between Russia and China is far more blunt. They aim to work together militarily and economically in order to counter ‘western’ hegemony in both fields.

However, what this author failed to factor in is the terrible necessities of Europe, China and likelihood of the surrounding Arab nations joining the conflict against Israel and America.

Europe would have to be dragged into the fray because their lifeline depends on Russia and Middle Eastern natural resources. If those supplies fail to reach them, their lights go out; and European winters are very, very cold.

Ditto China. China is buying oil futures like there was no tomorrow because, like Europe, if the oil does not flow from the Middle East through the Strait of Hormuz, their lights also go out. The difference between China and Europe is that China is desperate in extremis. I suspect they wouldn’t need any nudging from Russia to enter the war or to fulfill their treaty commitments.

China’s very survival depends on the war’s outcome.

It is clear that Israel does not trust a possible Obama Presidency. Why should they?

Obama’s advisor has met with Hamas on numerous occasions. Obama’s church gave an open invitation to Hamas to promote their propaganda in their church bulletin.

The fact that he has left the church alleviate any concerns with regard to Obama’s relationship with this church. If anything, his farewell comments to the church indicated that he approved of what the church has done.

“This is not a decision that I come to lightly, and frankly it’s one that I made with some sadness…Trinity was where I found Jesus Christ, where we were married, where our children were baptized. We have many friends among the 8,000 congregants.”

…

“It’s clear that now that I am a candidate for president, every time something is said in the church by anyone associated with Trinity, including guest pastors, the remarks will be imputed to me, even if they totally conflict with my long-held views, statements and principles.”

It seemed he showed great reluctance to leave a church that shouts racism from the pulpit and supports terrorists.

Israel’s misgivings are not unfounded.

So, instead of sitting on their hands to see the election’s outcome, Israel is going strike, and God help us when or if they do.

Early last year, beekeepers and various news organizations noted with astonishment how the honeybees in the United States are vanishing. Last year, beekeepers on the East Coast have lost up to 70 percent of their honeybees, while their counterparts on the West Coast lost 60 percent. This was noted in the New York Times and other publications and there hasn’t been any answers as of yet.

This is probably old news for some people, but it was new news to me. I venture off into broad esoteric subjects from time to time to hear what people on the fringe are saying and doing. I encountered the subject of the incredible vanished honeybees on one of these ventures and thought to myself, “What the heck? This can’t be true.”

Like many other topics, I did some digging off the net to corroborate the story. Being familiar with some journalistic techniques I learned in college (I was a Journalism minor), I set out to find at least three independent sources to confirm the initial report I heard.

I didn’t have to look very far. Low and behold, this story has been quietly cascading across the world for over a year. From Canada to China, from Taiwan to England honeybees around the world are vanishing, and the scientists, despite mapping out the genetic code of honeybees two years ago, are utterly dumbfounded.

It would be one thing if beekeepers found their bees laying prostrate dead in and around the bee colony, but that is oddly not the case. In most cases, the bees are simply– gone.

Millions of bees around the world has vanished without so much of a good-bye and the only traces they’ve left behind are their dead or dying offspring. Diana Cox-Foster, who works with the CCD Working Group, told the UK’s Independent newspaper that researchers into this phenomenon were “extremely alarmed” and that this crisis “has the potential to devastate the US beekeeping industry.”

Moreover, she added, the symptoms of the bee’s demise and disappearance “does not seem to match anything in the literature”.

One Florida beekeeper, Dave Hackenberg, said, “They weren’t dead, they were just gone.”

In Britain, John Chapple, who chair the London Beekeepers’ Association, lost all 14 of his bee colonies and he said, “I could attribute some losses to a failing queen bee or wax moths, but there were a few I could find no reason for.” And elsewhere he was quoted as saying, “The mortality rate is the highest in living memory and no one seems to know what’s behind it.”

Well, “mortality rate” is a bit of an assumption actually. Beekeepers have walked the effective range of their honeybees and, in the cases where the bees have disappeared from their colonies, they haven’t found a single bee. No bodies. Nothing.

As one part-time beekeeper said, it was “like somebody had moved out of their house”.

Scientists have started calling this phenomenon Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD. Some of them have hypothesized that the strange disappearance has to do with an HIV-like virus afflicting them. In fact, “[t]races of every disease that has affected bees over the last 100 years are now being found in the stomachs of the infected insects.” Although this fact is interesting to note, that neither explains the sudden inexplicable disappearance of bees from their colonies nor that fact that, in most cases, no bodies are found.

Even as peculiar and as alarming as this is, many people are not aware of the implications of such a massive die-off of bees. As of now, the only people noticing it are the beekeepers, farmers and various aficionados of the bizarre and inexplicable. But people will take note of it soon. They would have to.

Why? Because a full one-third of all our food is either directly or indirectly related to honeybee pollination.

And with 60 to 70 percent of our bees vanishing out of thin air, we might see a dramatic decline in our food production. In addition to producing honey, the pollination done by honeybees is vital to the process of reproduction in plants. Various crops like almonds, fruits, and other crops depend heavily on the pollination done by bees.

But don’t take the severity of the situation just from me, Albert Einstein said:

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

Needless to say, what is at stake is much more than just honey.

Because of the massive disappearance of honeybees, some farmers are becoming desperate.

Crop farmers have tried to pollinate their crops without bees, and in some cases they’ve gotten very creative. They’ve tried blowers and even mortar shells. Scientists have tried using other bees, like the blue-orchard bees which seem more resilient in colder temperatures than the honeybee, for the purpose of pollination, but they agree that none comes close to the effectiveness of honeybees.

With the recent rice shortage, the new fungal infection, Ug99, that, according to the UN can affect one-fourth the world’s wheat crops, and the droughts and flooding across the world affecting food production, this bizarre disappearance of bees makes the future seem even more ominous. Indeed, the enormity of what we’re facing sounds almost Biblical in scale.

Could this be the first rumblings of the famines foretold in our Christian prophecies?

… it might just be.

Consider one thing more.

The disappearance of bees began in late 2006, took on steam in early 2007 and became a worldwide phenomenon by the end of that same year. If the bees finish their disappearing act by the end of this year, and if Einstein was correct in his four-year assessment, then we will be in deep trouble by 2012…

Since Judeo-Christian tradition has always linked honeybees and the honey they produce with the presence of God’s grace, is it a coincidence that mindless, motiveless violence like the Virginia Tech Massacre in April 2007 is increasing as the honeybees vanish?

Is God’s grace withdrawing from the Mankind?

An acquaintance of mine asked me yesterday if there is any good news going on in the world. I rattled my brain for a bit to see if any good news dropped out, and strangely, I couldn’t think of any. Indeed, all forecasts on the immediate horizon seem to be either bad or worse.

The more optimistic predictions by people with, no doubt, more sunny dispositions that myself attempt to allay fears by pointing out that we haven’t yet seen a precipitous fall and that although our economy is slowing down, there are indications that we are seeing some leveling off.

That, however, isn’t optimistically suggesting that these fears are unfounded and are part of hysterical “fear-mongering”. They aren’t saying that we are hitting a dry patch and we’ll soon return to the sunny uplands, ascending to infinity and beyond. Even their optimism acknowledges the fact that we’re riding a downward incline.

So, why this bleak outlook of the world? We’re seeing a confluence of many different factors all happening at the same time, and the fear is that a synergy would occur between them and produce a catastrophe the likes of which we’ve never seen. The factors are to multitudinous to be enumerated here but they are there– all over, in fact– if you want to search them.

This brings me to the old question: Is the cup half full or half empty?

I think that to dodge the question and say that there’s a whole pitcher of lemonade somewhere on the kitchen counter would be to ignore the facts.

If one is to focus strictly on this proverbial cup, is it half empty or half full? Firstly, we have to acknowledge that a) there is a cup; it exists and b) that there is water in it. Secondly, one must acknowledge the fact that there is a finite supply of water.

The difference between a man seeing the cup as half full or half empty is the difference of whether or not he is grateful for what is, in fact, there. He cannot close his eyes and say that the cup is actually full when it is not; he cannot play make-believe since reality is incapable of playing along.

No, the key is gratitude; being thankful for what was given. Gratitude sees the cup as half full; ingratitude see the cup and say that what’s there is not nearly enough.

Well, I try to see things as half full and savor all the many blessings I’ve received. Being drenched in ill tidings around the world, to see things as half full is a contrary action for me and I’m sure it is true for most people as well. We cannot give in to despair nor give in to our fears. But we cannot shirk away from what we see transpiring either.

So, I have a question for people reading these words.

Have you encountered genuine pieces of good news out there for our future?

For myself, the best news I can think of is the certain and absolute knowledge that my Lord Jesus Christ will return, that despite how things appear now, I know we’re winning and I know we’ll win. More souls will be saved in this time than the rest of time combined.

On the conservative blogs, it is commonplace for commenters and bloggers to denigrate homosexuals and say that much of the injustices done to homosexuals are greatly overblown and is, in reality, just part of a vast gay conspiracy to homosexualize society.

The more fundamentalist of bloggers and commenters tend to oppose gay rights and gay marriage on the grounds that it is unnatural, immoral and say, in so many words, that it is an abomination (some even overtly say this). They contend that they are the ones being victimized, not gays. Some fundamentalists even say that to prevent or challenge their outspoken bigotry is a denial of their religion, that they are the ones oppressed by society.

Well, this view doesn’t jive with what I’ve seen in my time and it certainly doesn’t jive with this video report.

The officer hit Johnson several times with the handcuffs wrapped around his knuckles. In the video, you can see the flash of the metal. The tape shows another officer holding Johnson’s shoulders as she tries to protect herself.

After taking several blows, Johnson stands up and swings back.

“I was afraid. I had had enough. Like I said, I thought the other officers that were witnessing this would at least try to stop him,” Johnson said. “I mean, he hit me so hard. Like the third time he hit me, it split my skull and I had blood coming out. So I jumped up,” Johnson said.

Watch the video on the side. Tell me this is okay.

This kind of thing is not an isolated event, and I’m not even talking about police brutality here. Stories like these in the gay community are legion…

To be fair though, there are also many, many conservative bloggers who do not denigrate homosexuals and see them as humans with a simple right to exist. And to them, I tip my hat.

Imagine being fined or fired from your job because of the direction you part your hair. You prefer to part it to the right, others to the left, and still others right smack dab in the middle.

Or how about his, imagine being fired for putting too much sugar in your morning coffee. The boss would like to have a regulated amount dispensed into every container of coffee and excessive amounts will be penalized.

I know, I’m being circuitous about this, but I view this anti-smoking persecution in the same absurd light. Truly, what business is it of anyone if someone decides to smoke?

First, they created smoking sections inside public buildings. Understandable.

Then, they kicked them outside. For the public health.

Next, they congregate them into a area outside the building away from doors. The smell drifts in.

And then, they won’t allow smokers to smoke inside cars with non-smokers or minors. It’s really for their interest.

Then, they won’t allow them to smoke inside their apartments because the smell lingers in the hallway. It’s inconsiderate to others.

Not only do smokers bear the brunt of utter strangers berating them about their “filthy, disgusting, stinking” habit, they are now being fired from their jobs, forced to take blood tests from employers (which violates privacy), and even forced the offenders’ spouses to take blood tests.

This. Is. Tyranny. And bigotry. And discrimination. And persecution.

It’s all this in order for a others not to be inconvenienced because, God forbid, what would happen if they catch the scent of a cigarette on the street somewhere.

Howard Weyers tried the “carrot” approach by giving his employees incentives and encouragement to quit smoking. But when that didn’t work, he resorted to the stick. A big stick.

Weyers, owner of a health care benefits administrator in Lansing, Mich., gave his 200 employees an ultimatum in 2004: Quit smoking in 15 months or lose your job. He refused to hire smokers. Ultimately, he extended his smoking ban to employees’ spouses and monitored compliance through mandatory random blood testing.

Weyers’ method, while effective, wouldn’t fly in California because the state has laws that prohibit employers from making hiring or firing decisions based on employee participation in a legal activity. But participants in a smoking cessation forum hosted Monday by the Commonwealth Club of California found the idea nonetheless intriguing.

“We’re talking about ending an epidemic. This is a global pandemic,” said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, likening Weyers’ approach to controlling an outbreak of disease.

What happens when you’re the one doing the minority behavior? When you’re the one targeted by the mob?

What then?