All Posts Tagged With: "ADVANCED"
Congressional Commission Warns of Advanced Iranian Weapon Meant to Attack USA
A congressional commission warns that Iran is developing an advanced missile and a nuclear warhead meant to paralyze the United States.
The Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse has concluded that Iran was planning to conduct a nuclear attack that could disable U.S. infrastructure. The commission said Iran could install a nuclear warhead on a Shihab-3 missile that would result in an electromagnetic pulse that would destroy power, software and electronics. This is the first time such an official warning has been issued. But, the topic has been speculated for sometime.
“Iran has also tested high-altitude explosions of the Shihab-3 a test mode consistent with EMP attack, and described the tests as successful. Iranian military writings explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely harm the United States,” commission chairman William Graham said. “While the commission does not know the intention of Iran in conducting these activities, we are disturbed by the capability that emerges when we connect the dots.”
That missile alternatively named Zelzal (Earthquake)] has a range of 1,350 to 1,500 kilometers (839-932 miles). So it could not reach the continental USA from Iran. Nor does Iran have a submarine capable of subsurface missile launching. So, the weapon would have to be loaded onto a ship and make it to the near coast of the USA. and launch the weapon without being detected and blown to smithereens. If it was successful it would devastate the U. S. infrastructure for months and even years.
The attack scenario involves detonating a nuclear warhead over mid America. The area effected depends upon the size of the nuclear device used and the altitude where detonated.
Part TWO - Intro To Advanced Hypocrisy
In our last class, we talked about the mild hypocrisies, the polite evasions of Level One hypocrisy and the well-meaning lies of Level Two. Both levels share the same motivation—the desire to protect others.
They share something else, too. Us. We all do them all the time. They are the “everyday hypocrisies,” the art of fudging the truth as a social lubricant. Like all lies, they can be dangerous. Level One and Two hypocrisies can have unintended consequences, like having to eat your mother-in-law’s meatloaf every Christmas because you told her you loved it back before you married her daughter and she believed you and now you have to slip it to the dog under the table. But that’s OK, you fake it to make her happy.
There is nothing altruistic about Level Three hypocrisy. Level Three hypocrisy is pure selfishness; it tries to deflect criticism and censure of one’s behavior by smearing others. When a Level Three hypocrite sees the s**t about to hit the fan, he turns the fan around so someone else’s face gets dirty. When he uses hypocrisy to protect himself at someone else’s expense, there is nothing “unintended” about the consequences.
If you are the first guy to call an effeminate man “homo,” while you frequent every glory hole in town, you are committing a Level Three hypocrisy. When you curse a wino in the street on the way to the pharmacy to pick up your happy pills, that’s a Level Three hypocrisy. When you preach fidelity and abstinence from the pulpit while you’re snaking that cute intern, that’s Level Three hypocrisy.
Level Three hypocrisy is an equal opportunity sin. Conservatives have theirs (see above) and liberals have theirs as well. Demanding school busing for diversity, then moving to a gated community in the ‘burbs so your kids don’t have to hang out with the refugees is a garden-variety, Level Three, liberal hypocrisy. Blaming high prices on Big Oil or Big Pharma or Big Agro because your energy, health care and food policies screwed up the economy is a strictly non-partisan Level Three hypocrisy.
A Level Three hypocrite is looking out for number one, and only number one. He doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process.
But a Level Four hypocrite does care. The goal of a Level Four hypocrisy is precisely to hurt people, deliberately, with malice aforethought. Level Four is the murder of hypocrisies.
Level One is saying one thing and meaning another. Level Two is saying one thing and doing another. Level Three is doing one thing and blaming another. Level Four is doing one thing and punishing another for doing the exact same thing.
It is a surprisingly small step between Levels Three and Four, but the difference is life and death. When abortion was illegal, and lawmakers would send their daughters down to Puerto Rico when they “got in trouble,” thousands of their constituents died in back alleys. When today’s legislator was yesterday’s Quaalude-taking, bong-sucking frat boy, you get a war on drugs that claims more victims than drugs themselves. The war on drugs is one massive, mandatory-sentence, cartel-empowering, nation-destroying Level Four hypocrisy from start to finish. Only there is no finish.
Level Three and Four hypocrisies are Frankensteins. They live forever, like the Cuban embargo, hypocritically justified first as a war on communism, then when communism died as a war on Castro, now with Castro on his deathbed as a war on dictatorship (as if Saudi Arabia were Switzerland.) The reasons shift constantly because they aren’t reasons. They are excuses. The real reason the Cuban embargo never stops restricting Americans and hurting Cubans is votes in Florida. It’s pure hypocrisy and everybody knows it, yet it never dies.
Hypocrisy is a slippery slope that gets steeper from Level One to Level Four. Once an hypocrisy gets going it’s hard to stop. That is why we here at Hypocrisy.com have our eyes wide open, looking right, left and straight ahead. And so should you.
We should also look in the mirror, while we’re at it. Because hypocrisy can start anywhere, and it kills souls, too.
Part ONE - Intro To Advanced Hypocrisy
The end of the primary season provides us hypocrisy scholars with an opportunity to step back and study the Big Picture. We have been witness to breathtaking feats of hypocrisy on all sides of the political spectrum.
We have seen the candidates’ paid spokespersons spin dizzying rings around the truth to equally phony anchors on TV non-news shows that are sponsored by companies that pay huge dollars to other companies to make lying commercials about hair-goo and sexless
sedans. We shall soon see more.
But none of that bothers us much, because it’s mild and harmless hypocrisy, for the most part. When Hillary makes her concession speech Saturday and spends the
next few months playing kissyface with Barack like they never said a bad word or had a bad thought about each other we shan’t be surprised. It’s hypocritical, but it’s the way of the world.
More specifically, it’s the way of the warrior. The closest analogy in “real life” is boxing. Two men who have spent twelve weeks verbally shredding and twelve rounds physically pounding each other into raw, bloody hulks, invariably end the contest with a nice, sweet hug.
Do they mean it? I don’t know, maybe, maybe not. But I wouldn’t have it any other way, whether it’s belts or hats in the ring. Making nice might be phony, even hypocritical, but it’s nice.
That is lesson one in today’s lecture in Advanced Hypocrisy. All hypocrisy is not equal. There are degrees of hypocrisy, from the mild and benign to the vicious and malignant. Some hypocrisy is merely politeness, or method of conflict resolution that allows the winner to feel good and the loser to save face. This is gentle, Level One, hypocrisy. Saying something you don’t quite mean to make someone else feel better may be a hypocritical lie, but it is not evil.
Then there is the case of the bald-faced lie told with the best of intentions. A coke dealer tells his fourteen-year-old daughter that he never, ever smoked dope, and neither should she. This is Level Two hypocrisy. It is well-meaning, but dangerous, because when the truth comes out, as it invariably will, it can do damage. If you lied about the weed maybe you’re lying about the smack, she’ll think.
What these two, mild levels of hypocrisy have in common is that they’re committed to help others, to protect them from the embarrassment of your true thoughts or the danger of your true deeds. They are basically selfless acts—any bad effects they may have are unintentional. But there are darker, more sinister levels of hypocrisy. If Level One is a victimless crime, and Level Two a misdemeanor, the next two levels are manslaughter and murder. Levels Three and Four will be the subject of our next lecture. Bring your sharpest pencils and be ready to take notes.
Things are about to get serious.