Tuesday, July 18, 2017

MISSILES IN A MAGICIAN’S HAT

- Guest Blogger Nitzakhon

MISSILES IN A MAGICIAN’S HAT

In their performance a skilled illusionist will use theatrics to get you to pay attention to one thing that is trivial while they, or their assistant, do something core to the trick elsewhere. It’s called misdirection, defined as:

MISDIRECTION (noun): the action or process of directing someone to the wrong place or in the wrong direction


NORTH KOREAN FIREWORKS

So “Little Kimmie” in North Korea has nuclear weapons. Gee, thanks President Clinton, I thought the deal you made with them was going to preclude that. And now they have a missile that can, in theory, deliver a nuclear payload to Alaska or Hawaii.

With some work – OK, not so easy I admit – that range could be extended to the Left, er, west coast… and onward to all of the US. Of course there are factors like re-entry, guidance, targeting accuracy, fusing, reliability of the warhead, and all sorts of other hurdles that I’ve read about in multiple analyses.

But when I heard about the launch and the subsequent media circus about it, the one thing that immediately crossed my paranoid and sneaky mind was a very simple question: Are we being misdirected from something else?


BAD PEAS IN A POD WITH A SIDE OF MANIFEST DESTINY

That North Korea and Iran are working together is an open secret. Apparently, Iranian scientists and technicians have attended North Korea’s test launches. Iran has tested a missile with North Korean origins. They both hate America… and snowballs melt in Hell, water is wet, Democrats are seditious traitors WINK! What else is new, right?

Iran is a Shiite state run by fanatics. And while I certainly will not claim to be an expert on Islam in general, or Shia Islam specifically, I think I know more than the average bear on the topic. Shiite Islam has, as a central belief, the concept that the Islamic version of the Messiah will not return until there is a world war:

For those unacquainted with the more obscure tenets of Islamic theology, the 12th Imam is held by devout Shi'ite Muslims to be a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed who went into "occlusion" in the ninth century at the age of five and hasn't been seen since.

The Hidden Imam, as he is also known by his followers, will only return after a period of cosmic chaos, war and bloodshed – what Christians call the Apocalypse – and then lead the world into an era of universal peace.


This peace would, by necessity, be built on the ashes of a destroyed non-Islamic world. Of course, the Iran Deal, and in general conciliatory gestures by the West towards Iran are not seen by them as we see them, but as displays of weakness:

For Khamenei, the appeasement policies of the West, and particularly the U.S. administration, are viewed as a sign that the non-Muslim nations are becoming weaker and that Muhammad’s “divine guidance” is coming true. The ayatollah does not view the lifting of sanctions on Iran as a “diplomacy” being triumphant, but rather reaffirming his religious belief in Allah and the Mahdi.

The Islamic world is built on a shame culture, not a guilt culture, thus it is easy to paint the West as being shamed by weakness. This essay by Dr. Sanity, SHAME, THE ARAB PSYCHE, AND ISLAM, is a must-read, must-share, must-bookmark essay on that as it relates to Arabs and Islam specifically, with good insights into shame culture in general.
This insight is doubly-critical because North Korea is also a shame culture (and thus it will be very difficult for Little Kimmie to “walk back” his bellicosity), as are many in Asia; but we also have another aspect to be concerned about: “Scientific” Marxism.

Committed Marxists believe, with a true-believer zeal, that it is inevitable that societies will “evolve” towards the Great Utopia. This zeal matches the Jihadist fervor (frontpagemag.com’s founder, David Horowitz, is spot-on correct in calling our domestic Leftists missionaries). Thus, assuming Little Kimmie is such, he would believe that even his death would only be a setback in global progress towards “real Communism”. According to many accounts true-blue Commies like Castro and Che both urged the USSR to use its missiles on Cuba to attack America – because it would take out the USSR’s adversary and thus advance The Cause.

Whether fanatic Shiite Iran or Communist North Korea, both sides have strong motivation to eliminate America from the global scene and a belief that this is necessary for their Cause to advance.


A FLASH IN THE SKY

On July 9, 1962, the US detonated a high-altitude thermonuclear warhead in a test called Starfish Prime. The resultant shower of high-energy particles hitting the atmosphere created an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP). Fortunately, it didn’t do much damage to critical infrastructure being mostly over the ocean… and given the relatively crude electronics of the day. But it opened eyes to what a nuclear explosion above the atmosphere really does.

Today, the EMP threat is far greater because of how dependent our society is on electricity. Here’s a PJ Media video on it. The not-very-conservative Economist chimes in. And while Slate’s article is dismissive of the level of risk – not considering that it is the risk as weighted by the consequences that is the important consideration – note this one paragraph (bolding added, one thought added in []):

An adversary looking to carry out such an attack on the United States would need ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. The missiles either need to be capable of an intercontinental launch or have a platform [like a ship] that can both move within range of the U.S. homeland undetected and launch a missile.

Consider this 90-minute fictionalized account, American Blackout 2013 - National Geographic, of a ten-day national power outage caused by a cyberattack (also a concern, but more rapidly fixable). Now, multiply that power outage time by 10… by 20… months without any electricity at all.

Nukes? Check. Missiles? Check.


SHADES OF THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER

Early in the movie The Hunt for Red October (and, IIRC the book too) one of the characters comments that the Russians could – with that titular silent nuclear missile submarine – park a couple of hundred warheads right off the east coast and it would be all over before anyone even knew what was happening.

But it wouldn’t take that many. Just a few individual ships, each with 1-2 missiles, would do the EMP trick quite nicely. Judge Jeanine Pirro did quite a good piece about the threat, video here.

Iran has been suspected of making dry runs, and has been observed launching missiles from ships to proper EMP altitude. They’ve talked about EMP attacks. And Russia has a cruise missile that can be hidden in a cargo container… what a plausible-deniability way for Russia to attack us; apparently according to the Pirro video above, the Russians gave EMP advice to the North Koreans!

Rockets capable of launching into EMP altitude? Check. Practicing missile launches from ships? Check. EMP understanding? Check.


SUMMING UP

So, are these Nork missile launches just a distraction to make us all a-twitter about them, while their ally Iran progresses towards triggering the war that would bring the Mahdi – under the cover of the North Korean misdirection? Or could the Norks also be working towards it on their own? I suspect both: that each country is working towards an EMP attack, but that they are also cooperating.

Given that:

  1. Both nations want America gone from the world stage. (As do others!)
  2. Both nations believe in the inevitability of their ideology’s success.
  3. Both nations have ideologies that are willing to sacrifice millions to gain their goals, including their own peoples.
  4. Both nations are working on missiles and nuclear weapons.
  5. Both nations are known to be cooperating in developing those missiles and nuclear weapons.
  6. Both nations understand the critical role of deception in war.
  7. Both nations understand asymmetric warfare against a militarily-superior foe.

Incentive? Check.

It’s not if they try, just when; soon, they’ll have means, motive, and opportunity. So harden the grid; write your local officials, your state officials, your Senators, your Congressmen. Write to the President. The grid must be hardened, tested, and hardened more. While purchasing and storing spare transformers and other critical materials will not be cheap, the alternative is catastrophic. And each one of us must, to the extent they can, prepare for the possibility that the power goes out – and for a long time.

As Bill Whittle concludes, “…if we keep ignoring this threat, we’re in trouble.”


SQUIRREL!

Will this be our future?

Bright-eyed satellite image analyst to their commanding officer: “There will be several freighters roughly equidistant from the east, west, and gulf coasts in a few days…”

Commanding officer: Don’t worry about it – focus on the upcoming North Korean missile launch.


L’Nitzhakhon! (To victory!)

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