Let Slip the Dogs of War

Am I missing something? What good does it do to re-examine security procedures and install full body scanners, à la Total Recall, at U.S. airports to stop terrorists on inbound international flights? Certainly, these measures, in theory, are an attempt to thwart another 9/11, and to present the appearance of addressing the safety concerns of American citizens. However, this is backward thinking at a time when the need exists to think progressively, if not aggressively, of the future unthinkable act. Apparently, it is our allies abroad who need to step up their security – or maybe, at the very least, check the terrorist watch list – to prevent the terrorists from boarding planes in the first place. No passport? No luggage? Hello, red flag calling Amsterdam!

What really needs to be realized is that al Qaeda is indoctrinating and training the next generation of kamikaze bombers. Like their WWII Japanese counterparts, their mission is simple: demoralize our will to fight. Similarly, it says something else – al Qaeda is desperate, knowing they are on the verge of defeat despite their best efforts. The Japanese unleashed the kamikaze upon the Allies out of such desperation, as a last gasp at victory out of the clutches of their eventual defeat. And like that time, there is only one response: perseverance. Only through perseverance can we do what is necessary to win, unleashing hell upon our enemy as no time before. We have the might, and we have the resources. As such, knowing the desperate measures to which the terrorists are resorting, it is time, as even Shakespeare knew in his day, to "cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war."

Otherwise, what are we fighting for? 

©2009 Steve Sagarra

Light Up the Darkness

The cry calling for an end to tyranny and oppression has been expressed considerably throughout history, almost to the point of saturation. Mankind has gone “once more unto the breach” so often, marching off to war in search of a world without such conditions, that it seems a continuously hollow crusade. Eventually, perhaps inevitably, new generations of “band of brothers” consistently revisit the Jungian conflict of man’s duality. How many rousing speeches, how many campaigns and how many lives has, and will it take, until the sentiment indefinitely holds?

According to several sources – Mayans, Nostradamus – humanity is exactly three years from the end of days, a foreboding “Age of Apocalypse.” Curiously, neither source specifically mentions the world ending, each predicated more upon a major change to the world as we know it. Whether this change will indeed be an apocalyptic event or a revelatory revolution is anyone’s guess. In either case, the real question is will we be prepared when it occurs.

Nonetheless, the problem lies in molding that “brave new world” before casting off the impediments of the old:  humanity’s insatiable malevolence notwithstanding its own destruction. Certainly, a scan of any particular day's headlines give no indication of that happening any time soon; rather, they are evidence of history’s sadly repetitive theme. Until that time when we do, we will never truly “light up the darkness” as Marley implores us.

©2009 Steve Sagarra

Selfish-Made Men

In my estimation, the Nobel Peace Prize is 0-2 in recent years. As the entire global-warming (scammed) world knows, Al Gore and the Swiss-based Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (I.P.C.C.) received a Nobel “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” However, the already-questionable climate research passed as legit science now appears based on documented lies, pushing it even further into the pseudoscience variety. As such, it would seem the argument for global warming is possibly more “Mann-made” – as in Penn State meteorology professor Michael Mann, whose research is at the heart of the controversy – than “man-made.” But the real question is since the criteria for awarding the prize is ostensibly bogus, do Gore and the I.P.C.C. have to return it? With the Environmental Protection Agency set to declare carbon emissions (i.e. greenhouse gases) a danger – essentially dismissing the argument against the cause(s) of global warming and further perpetrating the myth – it seems unlikely.

Then, there is President Barack Obama, a sitting president, who received his based on...nothing. Well, officially he won it, “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Really? When, and working under what timetable, did he do all this? At least Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were awarded the Nobel – after Congressional consent no less – for existent endeavors:  Roosevelt, as arbiter, for successfully mediating the end of the Russo-Japanese war and deferring the issue to the Hague, and Wilson as founder of the inspired, yet ill-fated League of Nations. Despite such precedents, there is a question as to whether Obama, as a sitting president, even has the Constitutional right to claim the award. Why? The aforementioned Congressional consent, which Obama has yet to seek and Congress has yet to grant.

Time will only tell whether these two laureates indeed “conferred the greatest benefit on mankind,” as stipulated in Alfred Nobel’s will establishing the Nobel Prize, or whether they simply conferred two great farcical frauds.

©2009 Steve Sagarra