In The News November 2, 2009
Many think that Iran is a country that is just trying to spread its doctrine and that the people that live there, live humble and, according to their standards, pious lives. The truth of the matter is that the higher ups in the Revolutionary Guard are running a good portion of the country.The commanders in the Revolutionary Guard maintain houses in the old soviet projects, where they have modest cars parked outside, but many of them really maintain a second residence and that residence is a mansion with all the luxuries, in a rich part of town. They drive expensive cars and will try and finish anyone who interferes with their lifestyle. They do not want to lose power and will stir up all sorts of hate to maintain their positions. Do the religious leaders in that country really have control of them? It doesn't look that way from here. They now control many of the major business in Iran including oil and gas and are not about to allow any meaningful negations with the western powers. Peace is their enemy.
Hamid Karazi Here we go again, we never learn our lesson. This country has continuously propped up unpopular governments all over the world, only to see them come tumbling down. A few that come to mind were South Vietnam, Panama, Chile and many others including Iran. We can all see the problem countries like Iran caused for us, because of this. Now we are doing the same in Afghanistan. The people there don't want Hamid Karazi and he knows it, thus he has perpetrated all sorts of election fraud, either directly or indirectly. It is so bad that a new election is needed and as of the writing of this article, his main opponent is thinking of not even running again because he feels that he can't get an honest election. In 2001 Karazi was the object of a US friendly fire attack and obviously survived. He has been a critic of the US at times and stated that we allowed the Taliban to get strong. On the other side of the coin, he warned many different countries about terrorist attacks to come and claims that his warnings were disregarded. He also stated that Al-Quida must be purged from Afghanistan for the war to be won.
House Of Representatives The vote on the revamping of health coverage is still being fought for. A concession was given to hospitals and doctors that would allow them to negotiate fees, but the insurance lobby is fighting tooth and nail. There is a lot that they don't like in the bill and not the least of it would be a government option, where you could purchase insurance from the government that would supposedly be competitive with the private companies. We have been getting hints lately that this type of insurance would cost more than private insurance. These leaks seem to be meant to sooth the private sector, but I don't think that they are buying it. They also hate the idea that they have to insure everybody even if they have pre-existing conditions. This has been their holy grail. Many a person that wanted insurance, or even had it and need a procedure, was hit with this and refused payment. The insurance lobby is very powerful and it will be interesting to see who votes against this bill, because at least some of these votes will mean that these people are in the lobby's pocket. The economy is being talked about a lot lately. We hear that it is coming back to where it was before the financial problems. We also hear that unemployment is mostly down. The stock market indexes are pretty high right now, but the truth of the matter is that the stock market is no longer an indicator of the economy. It is a tool where those that know something, which is called insider trading and is illegal, use this to make money. Huge funds control the market by moving assets around in such numbers that it drives the stock up and least long enough, most of the time, for those that knew this is coming to make a nice profit. The unemployment numbers are not true indicators of unemployment at all. First of all there are too many categories left out and second of all they doesn't reflect those that have used up their benefits and were dropped from the rolls. It may be that our economy will never return to what it was several years ago and has no hope of being what it was, relatively speaking, even further back than that. The earth is a limited pie and there are just so many slices that can come out of it. Every emerging nation is using their cheap labor to compete for sales and the more established countries are feeling the pinch. More and more resources are required for these new industrial countries and this type of competition for resources could lead to war someday.
Somali Pirates The Somali pirates are at it again. They have now hijacked two people that are said to be environmentalists and as of this writing are demanding seven million dollars, now get this, for the damage they did to the environment. Yeah like they would care anything about that, even if it wasn't a lie. New equipment is starting to find its way on large tanker and container ships. The equipment consists of water cannon type devices that make it almost impossible to bring a small boat alongside. There are also squads of armed men that will be put on each ship, along with ear piercing noise generators and bullet proof wheel houses. It seems to me that a couple of good old 50 caliber machine guns would do the trick, but according to treaty this is not allowed on a commercial vessel. Also as of the writing of this article, troop levels have not yet been agreed upon in Afghanistan by President Obama. Instead he wants to know all the options before committing to something that might last for years. I can understand this, but he is dealing with us and history has shown that we do not have much patience. It does seem like an endless occupation in Afghanistan will not accomplish anything. The longer we stay there, the angrier the people there get as they become victims of bombs, missiles and bullets. In a couple of more years we will find that we are so hated that it will not only be terrorists that we are fighting, but the Afghanistan public. |
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