Notes From a Grumpy Old Man: War On Kurdistan, Iran May Already Have A Nuclear Bomb, What, Me Racist?

Today in history: On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.

I don't know why I have been obsessed with Iran lately, maybe I just like their president as a comic figure, although many people on the street outside of his country like him for standing up to the Great Satan... The return of the double agent Shahram Amiri to Iran is an interesting story. Much of his stories about being mistreated in the US are made up, though the CIA did abduct him and drug him, so I guess he has a right to be pissed. Us and Israeli intelligence has been looking at the six years of nuclear info that he had given them, now with the eye that it was all misleading, red herrings planted by Iranian intelligence. Their assessment is that Iran may well have a nuclear bomb ready to be tested later this year, so my predictions of a preemptive strike by Israel and the US on Iran soon maybe more accurate than I thought, although Mark Lynch also has noted all of the hawkish commentary of late and pooh poohs the arguments in his link above.

Another war is blossoming, between Syria, Turkey, and the Kurds. Turkey and Syria have launched two massive attacks that have left hundreds of Kurds dead, and soon they may encroach into Kurdish lands in Iraq. The killer twist to this is that Syria used drones with missiles in these attacks, which were given to them by Turkey, who just bought them from Israel. In fact, Turkish soldiers just finished up training on how to use the drones and were being taught inside Israel. I guess they are clearing the way for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Beirut later this month... And then, the President of turkey joins with the President of Syria in saying that Israel should lift the Gaza blockades entirely. Israel should do this, but it shows a deep level of hypocrisy, especially from Syria, who won't give citizenship to Palestinian refugees and has kept them purposely in abject poverty while living in refugee camps. At least the people in Gaza can now buy chocolate candy bars. No electricity or running water, and Gazans still can't freely leave, but there's chocolate for that afternoon pick-me-up snack...

Well, the cat just erased all of the international news sites I regularly go to by rolling his head across the computer's keyboard while sleeping. This is the second time he has done this, and I'm not even sure how he did it... One thing that struck me, though, while reading through newspapers in Africa and the Middle East, is how often rape is reported as a crime. US newspapers don't do that anymore unless you go to the police department web site and look under crime statistics. Israel gets the win for the creepiest story today, with the anesthesiologist who met two women through an online dating site, then drugged them before raping them... And child witchcraft is on the rise, hopefully it won't create inquisitions and executions during the night...

I was actually trying to find information on a story I saw on the Rachel Maddow show last night, about a group of men who were arrested in South Africa on June 6th for trying to sell a "dirty bomb" containing cesium for a few million dollars. They had radioactive material in lead-lined containers in their possession, and were chased by police in a shootout in a parking lot... Today, they were released on bail and are expected to show up in court next month. Good luck finding them. No other information has been released, other than they had parts to an industrial nuclear bomb, whatever that is. No info on where they got it, if there are others, how big it is, and how lethal it might be. Of course, guesses are Pakistan, Iran, India, or Brazil top the charts as to where it might have come from, just because North Korea is too closed off. South Africa would be my last choice on where to sell it, but it probably was smuggled in during the World Cup by agents from Iran, as I remember reading on an Israeli intelligence site that agents had been dispatched to cause trouble during the World Cup. And there were the conventional bombings in Uganda attributed al-Shabab... And no word on who bribed the judge to let these men out on bail, where they will have a month to disappear from view...

Hopefully, the cap on the BP oil spill line won't blow up, though it looks like the damned thing is leaking, and BP knew about it. BP sure has given a bad name to the oil industry and giant oil companies. Notice that Shell and Exxon are laying low. They know that if it was themselves in the public eye, they would come off just as bad. BP has lied and tried to keep information from the public at every turn, yet they keep getting caught. In order to keep geologists and scientists from testifying in any future court dates, BP has been trying to put every scientist in the Gulf region under contract, with stipulations that they not share any of their research involving the oil spill for three years. A few universities have gladly signed their whole science departments onto the gravy train...

I'm not sure which is creepier, Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin wanting to have their own reality show on TV, or the tea party organizations that are denying that they have racist elements. that there are organizations trying to organize and speak for the tea party folk is disquieting enough, no, wait, there is Michelle Bachmann creating a tea party caucus in the House and naming herself the chairman. There have been demeaning and racist signs at every tea party rally ever held. A lot of racism goes on and the people doing it aren't even aware that they are perpetrating it, which is why there are such outraged protests that they are not racist at all. I had a black girlfriend for awhile, and she would point out the things friends would do or say that offended her as racist. I realized that every black person in America is exposed to some form of racism every day of their life, and most of it is subtle, like the body language of fellow passengers on a bus, or fellow workers during a break. Often, if it was pointed out to the person, they would get offended and be in loud, verbal denial, just like the recent reactions and protests against the NAACP charges. I'm sorry, it's impossible for me to be a racist...