A Climate Realist’s (not so) short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change. Question 7 (of 16) Will a tech breakthrough help us?

NOV. 28, 2015 gave his answers to 16 questions in the N.Y. Times regarding Climate Change. This Climate realist added his answer.

 Answers to Question 1: How much is the planet heating up?

Answers to Question 2. How much trouble are we in?

Answers to Question 3. Is there anything I can do?

Answers to Question 4. What’s the optimistic scenario?

Answers to Question 5. Will reducing meat in my diet help the climate?

Answers to Question 6. What’s the worst-case scenario?

Justin Gillis answer to Question7. Will a tech breakthrough help us?

Even Bill Gates says don’t count on it, unless we commit the cash.

As more companies, governments and researchers devote themselves to the problem, the chances of big technological advances are improving. But even many experts who are optimistic about technological solutions warn that current efforts are not enough. For instance, spending on basic energy research is only a quarter to a third of the level that several in-depth reports have recommended. And public spending on agricultural research has stagnated even though climate change poses growing risks to the food supply. People like Bill Gates have argued that crossing our fingers and hoping for technological miracles is not a strategy — we have to spend the money that would make these things more likely to happen.

My answer to Question7. Will a tech breakthrough help us?

The CO2 increase is already showing its benefits by increasing harvests, forest growth and especially greening grasslands by more than 11%. The greening of the earth is real. See fig:In addition plants use less water to perform photosynthesis as CO2 levels increase.

But we need technological breakthrough to clean up our environment and  provide enough water for a thirsty planet, especially in the 10/40 window. Nearly all large cities in that area suffer a shortage of water. In Teheran the water table is sinking by 6 feet a year, and in Mexico City things ate just as bad. Southern California and Las Vegas depend to a large extent on water from Lake Mead, and unless checked Lake Mead is being drained at an alarming rate, (this winter being an exception).

Making clean water and cleaning up the environment takes a lot of energy, so it would be good to check from where the world gets its energy.

More than three quarter of all energy comes from fossil fuel, less than 0.1% comes from solar panels. To tenfold solar panels will not help much, hydropower is limited, ethanol competes with the food supply, only drastic action will change the situation. May I suggest to switch all electricity production now generated by coal and oil to nuclear power, but not any nuclear power, switch to Thorium based nuclear power generation. Until that is done it makes no sense to use electric automobiles and trucks except in special circumstances. There is a million year supply of Thorium, and Thorium based nuclear energy has only 0.01% of the long term nuclear waste of Uranium based nuclear energy.

Don’t believe me? Check out https://lenbilen.com/2012/02/15/eleven-reasons-to-switch-to-thorium-based-nuclear-power-generation/  and https://lenbilen.com/2012/02/15/eleven-more-reasons-to-switch-to-thorium-as-nuclear-fuel/

Then we can tackle the real problems, such as real (not “carbon”) pollution, water, energy distribution, electrification of the developing world, all worthwhile endeavors.

Answers to Question 8. How much will the seas rise?

Answers to Question 9. Are the predictions reliable?

Answers to Question 10. Why do people question climate change?

Answers to Question 11. Is crazy weather tied to climate change?

Answers to Question 12. Will anyone benefit from global warming?

Answers to Question 13. Is there any reason for hope?

Answers to Question 14. How does agriculture affect climate change?

Answers to Question 15. Will the seas rise evenly across the planet?

Answers to Question 16. Is it really all about carbon?

 

On Data gathering, life. hacking by CIA and Wikileaks.

A tweet can contain up to 140 characters, a limit that is now relaxed, but if each character takes up 8 bits of information (one byte), the it can be said, a tweet is 140 bytes.

The  Authorized version of the King James Bible contains 3,116,480 characters, or about 22,260 tweets. Some people have tweeted that much!

But all the information in the KJV pales compared to the information in every cell of the human body. The numbers will get large, so let us learn about large numbers

One kilobyte is 1000 bytes, Megabyte is 1000 Kb or 1000,000 bytes, Gigabyte is 1000 Mb or 1,000,000,000 bytes, Terabyte is 1000 Gigabytes or 1,000,000,000,000 bytes, Petabyte is 1000 Terabytes or 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes, Exabyte is 1000 Terabytes or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes,  Zettabyte is 1000 Exabytes or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes, —Yottabyte is 1000 Zettabytes or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.

Back to how much data is in our body. We have about 3,2 billion DNA genome pairs in every cell in our body. there are 4 types, so each pair can be packed into 2 bits, which means every cell in our body contains 800 Megabytes of data, the information equivalent of 250 King James Bibles. Giving there are about 37 trillion cells in our body plus about one quadrillion bacteria in our gut the total amount of information in our body is about 30 Exabytes, most of it duplicated, but yet. In addition, all plants and animals contain DNA, so the total information in the world is staggering, far exceeding the term Yottabyte.

If you are an atheist or true believer in evolution that all this came about by chance plus time plus nothing, especially no sign of intelligent design, the math doesn’t add up.

In 2001 the New York City twin towers were destroyed through a terror attack, and the U.S. response was to collect data to capture terrorists before they could attack. The NSA started to monitor all electronic communication through a program called Prism, starting in earnest in 2007, see fig:

This is in part taking place in a large data center in Utah, housing, it is rumored up to one Yottabyte of collected data.  What type of data do they collect? Check this figure:

The question is this: How much of this is linked to terror?

Then, today I found out via Wikileaks that NSA is not alone is spying on us.

CIA malware targets iPhone, Android, smart TVs

CIA malware and hacking tools are built by EDG (Engineering Development Group), a software development group within CCI (Center for Cyber Intelligence), a department belonging to the CIA’s DDI (Directorate for Digital Innovation). The DDI is one of the five major directorates of the CIA (see this organizational chart of the CIA for more details).

The EDG is responsible for the development, testing and operational support of all backdoors, exploits, malicious payloads, trojans, viruses and any other kind of malware used by the CIA in its covert operations world-wide.

The increasing sophistication of surveillance techniques has drawn comparisons with George Orwell’s 1984, but “Weeping Angel”, developed by the CIA’s Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones, is surely its most emblematic realization.

The attack against Samsung smart TVs was developed in cooperation with the United Kingdom’s MI5/BTSS. After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target TV in a ‘Fake-Off’ mode, so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on. In ‘Fake-Off’ mode the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the Internet to a covert CIA server.

As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks. The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.

The CIA’s Mobile Devices Branch (MDB) developed numerous attacks to remotely hack and control popular smart phones. Infected phones can be instructed to send the CIA the user’s geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone’s camera and microphone.

Despite iPhone’s minority share (14.5%) of the global smart phone market in 2016, a specialized unit in the CIA’s Mobile Development Branch produces malware to infest, control and exfiltrate data from iPhones and other Apple products running iOS, such as iPads. CIA’s arsenal includes numerous local and remote “zero days” developed by CIA or obtained from GCHQ, NSA, FBI or purchased from cyber arms contractors such as Baitshop. The disproportionate focus on iOS may be explained by the popularity of the iPhone among social, political, diplomatic and business elites.

A similar unit targets Google’s Android which is used to run the majority of the world’s smart phones (~85%) including Samsung, HTC and Sony. 1.15 billion Android powered phones were sold last year. “Year Zero” shows that as of 2016 the CIA had 24 “weaponized” Android “zero days” which it has developed itself and obtained from GCHQ, NSA and cyber arms contractors.

These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the “smart” phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.

CIA malware targets Windows, OSx, Linux, routers

The CIA also runs a very substantial effort to infect and control Microsoft Windows users with its malware. This includes multiple local and remote weaponized “zero days”, air gap jumping viruses such as “Hammer Drill” which infects software distributed on CD/DVDs, infectors for removable media such as USBs, systems to hide data in images or in covert disk areas ( “Brutal Kangaroo”) and to keep its malware infestations going.

Many of these infection efforts are pulled together by the CIA’s Automated Implant Branch (AIB), which has developed several attack systems for automated infestation and control of CIA malware, such as “Assassin” and “Medusa”.

Attacks against Internet infrastructure and webservers are developed by the CIA’s Network Devices Branch (NDB).

The CIA has developed automated multi-platform malware attack and control systems covering Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux and more, such as EDB’s “HIVE” and the related “Cutthroat” and “Swindle” tools, which are described in the examples section below.

CIA ‘hoarded’ vulnerabilities (“zero days”)

In the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks about the NSA, the U.S. technology industry secured a commitment from the Obama administration that the executive would disclose on an ongoing basis — rather than hoard — serious vulnerabilities, exploits, bugs or “zero days” to Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other US-based manufacturers.

Serious vulnerabilities not disclosed to the manufacturers places huge swathes of the population and critical infrastructure at risk to foreign intelligence or cyber criminals who independently discover or hear rumors of the vulnerability. If the CIA can discover such vulnerabilities so can others.

The U.S. government’s commitment to the Vulnerabilities Equities Process came after significant lobbying by US technology companies, who risk losing their share of the global market over real and perceived hidden vulnerabilities. The government stated that it would disclose all pervasive vulnerabilities discovered after 2010 on an ongoing basis.

“Year Zero” documents show that the CIA breached the Obama administration’s commitments. Many of the vulnerabilities used in the CIA’s cyber arsenal are pervasive and some may already have been found by rival intelligence agencies or cyber criminals.

As an example, specific CIA malware revealed in “Year Zero” is able to penetrate, infest and control both the Android phone and iPhone software that runs or has run presidential Twitter accounts. The CIA attacks this software by using undisclosed security vulnerabilities (“zero days”) possessed by the CIA but if the CIA can hack these phones then so can everyone else who has obtained or discovered the vulnerability. As long as the CIA keeps these vulnerabilities concealed from Apple and Google (who make the phones) they will not be fixed, and the phones will remain hackable.

The same vulnerabilities exist for the population at large, including the U.S. Cabinet, Congress, top CEOs, system administrators, security officers and engineers. By hiding these security flaws from manufacturers like Apple and Google the CIA ensures that it can hack everyone  at the expense of leaving everyone hackable.

‘Cyberwar’ programs are a serious proliferation risk

Cyber ‘weapons’ are not possible to keep under effective control.

While nuclear proliferation has been restrained by the enormous costs and visible infrastructure involved in assembling enough fissile material to produce a critical nuclear mass, cyber ‘weapons’, once developed, are very hard to retain.

Cyber ‘weapons’ are in fact just computer programs which can be pirated like any other. Since they are entirely comprised of information they can be copied quickly with no marginal cost.

Securing such ‘weapons’ is particularly difficult since the same people who develop and use them have the skills to exfiltrate copies without leaving traces — sometimes by using the very same ‘weapons’ against the organizations that contain them. There are substantial price incentives for government hackers and consultants to obtain copies since there is a global “vulnerability market” that will pay hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for copies of such ‘weapons’. Similarly, contractors and companies who obtain such ‘weapons’ sometimes use them for their own purposes, obtaining advantage over their competitors in selling ‘hacking’ services.

Over the last three years the United States intelligence sector, which consists of government agencies such as the CIA and NSA and their contractors, such as Booz Allan Hamilton, has been subject to unprecedented series of data exfiltrations by its own workers.

A number of intelligence community members not yet publicly named have been arrested or subject to federal criminal investigations in separate incidents.

Most visibly, on February 8, 2017 a U.S. federal grand jury indicted Harold T. Martin III with 20 counts of mishandling classified information. The Department of Justice alleged that it seized some 50,000 gigabytes of information from Harold T. Martin III that he had obtained from classified programs at NSA and CIA, including the source code for numerous hacking tools.

Once a single cyber ‘weapon’ is ‘loose’ it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by peer states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike.

This is where we are today.  On Saturday, President Trump found out that he had been spied upon in Trump Tower during the election. The Wikileaks revelation lends credibility to this accusation. And of course, CIA can make it appear that the hacking came from, say Russia and then put in some false software, framing the victim.

Yet, all this spyware, hacking and data gathering is simple compared to the wonder of life.

On the meaning of words: If a word changes meaning, did the Constitution change?

—Words matter. The meaning of words matter. Confusion reigns when words change meaning over time.

Thank God Senator Jeff Sessions is approved as Attorney General. He can now  address the insanity caused by the word confusion that arises when words change meaning, and people are attacked for holding an understanding of what a word means that was mainstream just a few years ago.   An example:

In the 30’s the great International Business Machines company was known for how they cultivated teamwork. One avenue was by singing company songs, to boost morale and encourage loyalty among their (all male) management and sales force. It worked, and IBM grew to be the giant it is even today.

ibmImagine this very serious body of IBM employees singing this song to the tune of: “Painting the Clouds with Sunshine“

—We don’t pretend we’re gay.
We always feel that way,
Because we’re filling the world with sunshine.
With I.B.M. machines,
We’ve got the finest means,
For brightly painting the clouds with sunshine.

—Records we make, only to break.
Teaching the whole world to know,
I.B.M.’s line, will all the time, help to grow.
When things don’t look bright,
Our products make them right,
And keep on painting the clouds with sunshine.

Is that conclusive proof that the whole IBM sales force was exclusively gay in the 30’s?

Of course not, but that is the line of thinking the Democrats used to label Jeff  Sessions a racist.

This is exactly why words must be interpreted in light of what the meaning of the word was at the  time the words were written.

And this goes for the constitution too. All changes to the constitution must be made via amendments, not by redefining the meaning of  words.

 

 

President Trump’s executive order on immigration updated, a Limerick.

Executive orders last week:

Just one was in need of a tweak.

Made the green cards exempt,

no more held in contempt;

now humming along, so to speak.

President Trump last week issued an executive order that has created considerable stir. It read: “I hereby proclaim that the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12), would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order.”  And it targets Syrians specifically. “I hereby proclaim that the entry of nationals of Syria as refugees is detrimental to the interests of the United States and thus suspend any such entry until such time as I have determined that sufficient changes have been made to the USRAP to ensure that admission of Syrian refugees is consistent with the national interest.”

Searching through INA 8 the countries of concern are defined  “The order bars all people hailing from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.”

The restrictions used to be for only four of the seven countries, but the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 added Libya, Somalia, and Yemen as three countries of concern,

Trump didn’t select seven “Muslim-majority” countries. US President Barack Obama’s administration selected these seven Muslim-majority countries. 

The word Muslim is never mentioned in the order, nor is Muslim Majority countries.

The total population in the seven countries mentioned is: Iraq, 31 million, Iran 75, Libya 6, Somalia 9, Sudan 39 , Syria 21 and Yemen  about 24 million, for a total of 205 million out of a total Muslim population of 1.7 billion in the world. That means that 88% of all Muslims are not affected by this 90 day review, only Syrian refugees are mentioned, and only that the review will take more than 90 days and require further executive and legislative action.

The executive order was written in haste, and it became obvious it would have been better if the words “excluding green card holding aliens” had been added to “suspend entry”.

Realizing the mistake, President Trump wasted no time to clarify and amend the executive order exempting green card holders.

People, especially Democrats tend to forget that green card holders, resident aliens are still aliens.

President Trump’s executive order on immigration, a Limerick.

Executive orders this week:

One is in bad need of a tweak.

Let green cards be exempt,

not be held in contempt;

while aliens, will no havoc wreak.

President Trump issued an executive order that has created considerable stir. It reads: “I hereby proclaim that the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12), would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order.”  And it targets Syrians specifically. “I hereby proclaim that the entry of nationals of Syria as refugees is detrimental to the interests of the United States and thus suspend any such entry until such time as I have determined that sufficient changes have been made to the USRAP to ensure that admission of Syrian refugees is consistent with the national interest.”

Searching through INA 8 the countries of concern are defined  “The order bars all people hailing from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.”

The restrictions used to be for only four of the seven countries, but the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 added Libya, Somalia, and Yemen as three countries of concern,

Trump didn’t select seven “Muslim-majority” countries. US President Barack Obama’s administration selected these seven Muslim-majority countries. 

The word Muslim is never mentioned in the order, nor is Muslim Majority countries.

The total population in the seven countries mentioned is: Iraq 31million, Iran 75, Libya 6, Somalia 9, Sudan 39 , Syria 21 and Yemen  about 24 million, for a total of 205 million out of a total Muslim population of 1.7 billion in the world. That means that 88% of all Muslims are not affected by this 90 day review, only Syrian refugees are mentioned, and only that the review will take more than 90 days and require further executive and legislative action.

The executive order was written in haste, and it would have been better if the wording had been “suspend issuing or renewing entry visas” rather than “suspend entry”. This is what I think is at the core of what the federal judge’s objection, ordering a stay on the executive order, not that all the nations mentioned are Islamic.

People, especially Democrats tend to forget that green card holders, resident aliens are still aliens.

Scientists’ march on DC, a Limerick.

A scientists’ march on D.C. ?

It can’t apolitical be.

For they must get their grants

through political chants.

Conform or get cut, can’t you see?

Sometimes in the near future there will be yet another march on Washington. This time it is from “concerned scientists” that want to take politics out of science, be allowed to be true scientists with no biases or prejudices.  To prove the point they have laid down the ground rules for participation in the march and produced this manifesto: There are certain things that we accept as facts with no alternatives. The Earth is becoming warmer due to human action. The diversity of life arose by evolution. Politicians who devalue expertise risk making decisions that do not reflect reality and must be held accountable. An American government that ignores science to pursue ideological agendas endangers the world.

Let’s take a look at that manifesto. There are certain things that we accept as facts with no alternatives. What happened to scientific curiosity? Is science ever settled? Do they mean there is nothing new to discover?

The Earth is becoming warmer due to human action. Well, for once I agree. We are returning CO2 to the atmosphere in increasing amount, and that is good. If nothing else changed, the logarithmic temperature increase with increased CO2 levels would cause the earth to warm up by 0.9C for a doubling of CO2, more if there is a gain in the system, less if there is negative feedback. The gain factors are mostly due to increased evaporation from warmer oceans, the negative feedback is supplied mostly through increased clouds, coming from increased absolute humidity. (I realise there are many other factors affecting climate, but this is a start, science is by no means settled). What is observed is that the earth is getting greener, and the increased CO2 from 280 PPM to 405 PPM makes the earth able to feed another two billion people without starving, not to mention plants and animals, and also use less water in doing so. Check the figure:increaseThe growth without added fertilizers 11%, extrapolated from the beginning of burning fossil fuels to now the increase is about 42%. This is a transfer of wealth from areas burning the fuel to agricultural areas, mostly in developing countries.

The diversity of life arose by evolution. Now that is a limiting statement. While there is great evidence for adaption, a valid scientific explanation for evolution simply is not credible, apart from intelligent design. The math is not there for another explanation, the DNA code is too complicated and complete including repair codes, start and stop codes to induce aging, and with codes to allow for future adaption already built in!

Politicians who devalue expertise risk making decisions that do not reflect reality and must be held accountable. The number of guilty politicians are too numerous to count.

An American government that ignores science to pursue ideological agendas endangers the world. Agree. No government exemplified this more than the Obama Government.  The Trump administration will restore balance in science, no longer excel in nonsense like this from Charles Bolden  “When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — he (Obama) charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering,”

Podesta’s e-mail hacked, the fallout, a Limerick.

podesta-password-770x478

When password is “p@ssw0rd” you’re hacked,

Podesta’s all e-mails ransacked

publicized by RT

must be Russia, you see.

Did this have election impact?

The Russians are good hackers. They hack and sell passwords, hack and demand ransom to restore computers, hack for industrial and military espionage, I could go on. They have been doing this  since the internet started. The lower level hacking, such as Podesta’s e-mails, is usually done at the cottage industry level, the more sophisticated espionage is controlled centrally.

But Russia is not the only hacker. China is much more prolific, at least as sophisticated, and has the goods on all U.S. citizens (more than 20 million) with top secret or secret clearance, and all government employees.

There are two types of corporations in the U.S. Those that have been hacked, and those that don’t know yet they have been hacked.

Other actors are North Korea, Iran, Nigeria, and many US allies.

Are we innocent? Hardly. Here is a snapshot of one day in the world of cyber attacks

When all these hackings were starting the Bush Administration did very little to combat it. The Obama administration did even less as hackings grew in numbers and level of sophistication. By doing nothing, he gave away trillions of dollars worth of intellectual property, and jeopardized our security.

Now, after losing the election Obama wakes up and expels some some Russian diplomats from two compounds that have been doing mostly industrial and military espionage since the 70’s.

Way to go, Obama. First you used U.S. taxpayer money to try to prevent the re-election of Israel prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu won in a landslide.

Then you went to London and said “If the U.K. voted to leave the E.U, Britain would be left back in the queue”. Brexit won convincingly.

You campaigned hard for Hillary Clinton and ridiculed Trump as much as you could. Trump won in an electoral landslide.

Now you think you have found the culprit: Putin’s Russia.

At least Trump is forming a group to report within 90 days how to handle cyber security in his administration and for the whole country. It won’t be easy or cheap, but it must be done to preserve freedom.

Obama, like the Lion in Wizard of Oz gets Medal of Courage, gets medal of Distinguished Public Service. The 100th and final verse in the Obama song.

On Jan 4, 2017 soon exiting President Obama added another prestigious medal to his Nobel Prize collection when he had Defense Secretary Ash Carter award him the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service.

Secretary Carter awarded his boss the medal during the Armed Forces Full Honor Farewell Review for the President held at Conmy Hall, Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Virginia. The ceremony was sparsely attended, only the required crew of brass bothered to show up.

Carter insisted that the medal was a token of appreciation for Obama’s service as commander in chief, the Associated Press reported.

Like when the Wizard of Oz gave the Medal of Courage to the Lion lacking courage.

wixardofozbraverymedal

barack-obama-medalIt was too much for one member of the Obama honor guard, so he passed out during the speeches.

c1wubb6wqa0oaln

This completes the 100 verses of the Obama impeachment song (as if sung by President Barack Hussein Obama to the tune of “Please release me, let me go”)

Service Medal for myself

I am a narcissistic elf;

soon to be put on the shelf.

My judgment – or lack speaks for itself.

Here is the complete impeachment song: https://lenbilen.com/2015/02/25/the-complete-obama-impeachment-song/

One more verse to the Hillary Nursery rhyme: Hillary left alone.

Hillary at breakfast this morning at Mohonk Mountain House, upstate New York. Photo by my former NYT colleague Mike Smith.

 This adds one more verse to the Hillary Clinton nursery rhyme:
 Hillary, Hillary, where have you been?“It’s none of your business, for I am the queen.”

……more……………

Hillary, Hillary, why so alone?

“Lost election and friends, I am bad to the bone.”

The whole nursery rhyme: https://lenbilen.com/2015/05/17/hillary-clinton-as-a-nursery-rhyme/

Christmas 1941 versus Christmas now. Parallels are eerie.

75 years ago, today, Dec 26, 1941, three weeks after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill addressed a joint session of Congress, urging a complete commitment to the war effort. World War II had been raging since September 1939 with the British hanging on by a thread and the U.S. sitting on the sidelines, only offering limited support. After invading Denmark and Norway, Hitler decided to invade the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France the night of May 10, 1940. This was the moment Britain chose Winston Churchill as Prime Minister.

05/13/1940. The British Prime Minister Winston CHURCHILL gave the speech (on the BBC) he just delievered at the House of Commons : “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat (…) What is our aim? (…) Victory, Victory at all costs – Victory in spite of all terrors (…) for without victory there is no survival (…). No survival (…) for the impulse of the ages, that mankind shall move forward toward his goal. I feel entitled at this juncture, at this time, to claim the aid of all and to say, ‘Come then, let us go forward together with our united strenght’.” Next summer the Britain battle started, causing important destructions in London; the Royal Air Force nevertheless succeeded to push back the German air attacks.

When he met his Cabinet on May 13 he told them that “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” He repeated that phrase later in the day when he asked the House of Commons for a vote of confidence in his new all-party government. The response of Labour was heart-warming; the
Conservative reaction was luke-warm. They still really wanted Neville Chamberlain. For the first time, the people had hope but Churchill commented to General Ismay: “Poor people, poor people. They trust me,
and I can give them nothing but disaster for quite a long time.”

Excerpt from his speech: “We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all
our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war
against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable
catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I
can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in
spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be;
for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no
survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British
Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages,
that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task
with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered
to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all,
and I say, “come then, let us go forward together with our united
strength.”

battleof-britainThen came The Battle of Britain, which would have been lost but for Winston Churchill and the Royal Air Force. Winston Churchill and Major general Hastings Ismay were travelling together in a car, in which Winston rehearsed the speech he was to give in the House of Commons on 20 August 1940 after the Battle of Britain. When he came to the famous sentence, ‘Never in the history of mankind have so many owed so much to so few’, Ismay said ‘What about Jesus and his disciples?’ ‘Good old Pug,’ said Winston who immediately changed the wording to ‘Never in the field of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few’

Words change history. Britain fought mostly alone in despair awaiting the inevitable invasion that they were in no way prepared to fend off. But then came Pearl Harbor. When Winston Churchill heard about it and that the U.S. had entered the war he slept soundly that night for the first time since the war started. Summoned to the U.S. he gave an impassioned speech to Congress. It was the day after Christmas, so the seats were mostly empty, but he finished the speech with the famous V sign to roaring applause.

About the Japanese he questioned, “What kind of a people do they think we are? Is it possible that they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?” As for the German forces he claimed, “With proper weapons and proper organization, we can beat the life out of the savage Nazi. These wicked men who have brought evil forces into play must “know they will be called to terrible account if they cannot beat down by force of arms the peoples they have assailed.”

That was then. What is happening now is in many ways worse. Germany and Japan were well defined entities, Russia and Iran may be, but the real enemy is the ideology of Radical Islam with a two fold approach in conquering the world, terrorism through Jihad, where the “martyrs” are assured of direct entry to heaven, the other is through “emigration and multiplying.” Normal warfare will neville-chamberlai_1000460cnot solve this epic battle of the 21st Century. It must be fought with ideology.

 Yet the parallels are eerie. Neville Chamberlain came back from meeting with Hitler in Munich with a piece of paper where Hitler promised that after annexing Sudetenland the had no further territorial ambitions. Neville Chamberlain proclaimed “Peace for our time“. That lasted one year.

peaceiranObama has “negotiated” a deal with Iran that is much worse. It proclaims to delay Iran’s entry into the nuclear club by 10 years, but does nothing of that sort. Iran can have bombs within six months, and they have the rockets to deliver them. Hitler promised peace, Iran promises that “Israel must be wiped from the Face of the Earth” and “Death to America“. For these promises Obama and John Kerry agreed to abolish the sanctions and give Iran 140 billion dollars, some of it in cash that could be immediately dispersed to their terrorist groups.

Obama’s and Chamberlain’s shame:

Was “Peace for our time” just in name?

When Iran gets its nukes

it’s too late for rebukes.

It’s Winston’s and Benyamin’s claim.

The best way to explain Obama’s negotiating behaviour is that he is delusional. All obama-churchillother interpretations are worse. One telltale sign was when Obama told the British to take back the bust of Winston Churchill that had been on prominent display in the Oval Office. He replaced it wirh a photo of himself walking on water.

Obama shows signs he can’t hack it.

The consequence starts to attack it.

Winston Churchill was right,

We must still face the fight.

The bust of old Winston: Take back it!

The final blow came right before Christmas this year. Obama withdrew his support for Israel by abstaining a resolution to condemn Israel’s settlements. This will further destabilize the Middle East making the task of the incoming Trump Administration much more difficult.