notamarxist

Is there a Disney live action remake that’s actually good? A single one?

Most people have figured out that Iran was very unlikely to just say "The Strait is wide open!! Sorry!! Please don't bomb my power plants!" What always trips people up is that they assume Trump doesn't know that. That he actually believes the IRGC will just bend over backwards. It's a common mistake at lower levels of chess. Assessing your own options, comparatively, is the easy part. But assessing your opponent's options accurately? That's the hard part. Trump is extremely good at that. It's why he's so good in negotiations and foreign policy. (Aka negotiations with guns and bombs) Most analysts aren't very good at that. They aren't looking at the board from Trump's perspective. Let's do that here. You issue that ultimatum. You have to assume that you'll have to make good on your threat. You bomb the power plants using the graphene bombs that will disrupt electricity for the next 24 or so hours. Why the hell do you want the lights shut off for 24 hours? Most people assume it's either neutral or negative to regime change. They assume that because it's the opposite of how we conducted ourselves in instances like the Arab Spring or that Ukraine kerfuffle. But the Arab Spring approach was always off the table. They banned the internet. We have ways around that, but nowhere near enough circumvention to actually coordinate a revolution. So, how the hell were we planning to do it? I'd be using the living hell out of CIA Operations Officers, MOSSAD Officers, and probably even ODA's. (A contingent of highly trained Special Forces.) In order to give those guys operational freedom, I'd have made sure to disassemble the IRGC until they were a scattered mess of loosely organized soldiers that lack the capacity for robust counterintelligence. Oh, right, that's what we've been doing from Day 1 of Epic Fury. These guys would be able to communicate with each other even after the lights go out. At least within their various units and networks. But once the lights go out? The regime loses its technological advantage over the insurgents. The scattered mess of the IRGC will no longer be able to communicate with nearly enough precision to defend themselves from several attacks simultaneously. Can we field several attacks simultaneously? Of course! That's how the CIA largely runs intelligence networks nowadays. We've essentially borrowed the best pieces of how terror cells operate. On-the-ground autonomy. Everyone is structuring and planning a separate attack that no central command will have to green light. They've been given a collective go signal. When the lights go out. You go. They've been given 48 hours to make final preparations for whatever plans they have in store. They'll be given a 24 hour window where the enemy is blind, deaf, and dumb. At that point, the regime will have to defend itself from a thoroughly established ground force made predominantly from the protestors they'd have wished to kill. And then, as they dig in their heels for the fight right in front of their face? Tripoli descends upon their flank and we seize Kharg Island, cutting off the IRGC's ability to fund its own defense.

Over the past several weeks, Carrie Prejean Boller has complained that she was removed from the Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty because of her Catholic beliefs, and she has called out myself and other Catholic members of the commission for not defending her. This is absurd. Mrs. Prejean Boller was not dismissed for her religious convictions but rather for her behavior at a gathering of the Commission last month: browbeating witnesses, aggressively asserting her point of view, hijacking the meeting for her own political purposes. The Catholic position on matters of “Zionism,” to which I fully subscribe, is as follows: all forms of antisemitism are to be unequivocally condemned; the state of Israel has a right to exist; but the modern nation of Israel does not represent the fulfillment of Biblical prophecies and hence does not stand beyond criticism. If Mrs. Prejean Boller were dismissed for holding these beliefs, it is difficult to understand why I am still a member of the Commission. To paint herself as a victim of anti-Catholic prejudice or to claim that her religious liberty has been denied is simply preposterous.

Your Excellency, you shared with me through text message to me that my position reflects Catholic teaching, especially that the modern state of Israel is not the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. That is the position I expressed, and yet I was removed from the Religious Liberty Commission. Respectfully, it is difficult not to conclude that this commission does not truly care about religious liberty when a Catholic can be removed for faithfully articulating the Church’s teaching. Asking me to deny Catholic teaching in order to satisfy a political ideology is itself a violation of my religious freedom. As Pope Leo XIII warned, “To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamor is raised against truth, is the part of a coward.” Whether I serve on this Commission or not, my voice will only grow louder for those being persecuted for their faith. I believe this appointment was ordained by God, and I will not abandon my Catholic faith to keep a position on a commission that has abandoned its mission. If my religious freedom is not protected, then no one’s is. Please speak up. Please stand up for Catholics. Be brave, Bishop Barron. The world needs brave men.

Joe Kent: “There is zero evidence that Iran was trying to build a nuclear weapon, Netanyahu is warmongering.” The Deputy Speaker of the Iranian Parliament: “We tried to develop nuclear weapons, but couldn't keep it secret.”