Iran: Something about to happen?

The White Man stocked up on gasoline recently, due in part to a rumor from the Pentagon that something big was about to go down that would put a big squeeze on the supply of crude oil. Whatever the case, there is enough information starting to come out from unclassified sources to indicate that a war with Iran could be sooner than we think.

1) An annual intelligence report to Congress has dropped language stating that Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions are a future option and speaks in terms of the present, indicating a radical switch in US policy on Iran. As rocketing oil prices triggered by Arab uprisings wiped out the sanctions damage to Iran, Washington confirmed the worst Saudi and Israeli suspicions that Barack Obama had come to terms with a nuclear-armed Iran, after the US long restrained Israel from nipping this menace in the bud. --debka.com

2) The two Iranian warships that transited the Suez Canal to Syria were carrying weapons to supply terrorists in Lebanon and Gaza. They have been permanently assigned to the Syrian port of Latkieh.

3) Israeli warplanes recently struck a Hamas supply column in Sudan, wiping it out in two passes. This operation involved aerial refueling.

4) The IDF war games in Crete in 2008, dubbed "Glorious Spartan," were primarily for the purpose of practicing penetration of Iran's new S-300 missile defense system, one of which was conveniently located "temporarily" in Crete--exactly as far from Israel as are Iran's nuclear targets.

5) Events in Japan have shown that a direct hit on a nuclear reactor is not necessary to render it inoperative; simply shutting off its cooling system precipitously can lead to a meltdown within minutes. There are many ways of accomplishing this, short of an all-out aerial attack.

If men were still on the moon

This is a copy of the letter that was prepared for President Nixon to read to the nation in the event that the Apollo 11 astronauts couldn't get off the moon. Note that they are still alive, but beyond hope of rescue.

As I think about it, I wonder if this letter really ever would have been read. At least I doubt that it was part of an automatic plan to be put in place in the event that the Lunar Module couldn't take off. In life, it seems, there seldom are automatic plans. Instead there are "options still on the table." Reading this letter was probably never more than one of several different options on the table.

It's really amazing, fifty years into manned space flight, that no astronaut has ever died outside the earth's atmosphere; none have ever been abandoned in space.

Had the Apollo 11 astronauts died on the moon, I expect that one of the subsequent Lunar Missions would have been tasked with retrieving their bodies. But, unless man does indeed return to the moon, we'll never again be faced with that possibility.

The wolf-child phenomenon: a modern view

Anyone familiar with Mowgli of Kipling's Jungle Book has heard of such a thing as a wolf-child. The idea of a child being raised by wolves runs deep in human experience, dating back to the founding of Rome. But on more of an historical note, I recently came across this tidbit in a 1930 book by E. Stanley Jones, an incarnational missionary to British India:

A wolf-child, captured near where I live in India, had lived with wolves from the age of two to the age of eleven. It ran on all fours. Its knee joints were stiff and enlarged from running in this fashion. It would eat only raw meat, and when it was put on a more civilized diet, it took dysentery and died.

Now, Jones never said that he himself witnessed any of this, so we are forced to first examine this story for apparent veracity. Let's begin by listing the alleged facts:

1) Nine years previous to a given date, a two-year-old child had disappeared from society.
2) Shortly before the given date, a being was captured in the wild who met the description of a wolf-child.
3) This creature was identified as being the lost child, now age eleven.
4) The child was then brought back into society, whereupon it died of dysentery.

Now, notice the inferences made from these facts:
1) The child had lived among wolves for nine years.
2) The child had eaten nothing but raw meat for nine years.
3) The child could only walk on all fours, due to its being raised by wolves.
4) The child could only tolerate a diet of raw meat, due to being raised by wolves.

Well, these may or may not be true. All humans start out without the ability to walk upright, and some never attain it; others lose it quite early. Without studying a wolf-child in its natural habitat--something that has never been done by a scientist--it's impossible to say for sure which of these were true. In researching the subject of wolf-children, I found that one universal characteristic is that they lack human language--so Mowgli heads back to the fairy tales where he belongs. It's also rather common in a wolf-child narrative that the child spends somewhere between eight and fifteen years in the wild before making contact with society.

One glaring problem with the veracity of the wolf-child phenomenon is that it has never been studied scientifically. The closest anyone has come is in the case of a Los Angeles girl known as "Genie," who was kept locked in a bedroom by her father until she was 13 years of age. Although she learned some speech after being brought out into society, she has never progressed beyond a most rudimentary level of communication. And she was so traumatized by scientists squabbling over the exclusive rights to study her that she regressed as an adult to the autistic state in which they had found her.

Many 'wolf child' stories can be attributed to an autistic child who is abandoned in the wild but manages to survive until later discovery. His autism makes any transition back to civilised life all but impossible, and he often dies from the sudden change in diet. One should therefore not approach a 'wolf-child' account as showing what happens to someone who is raised in the wild; rather, it shows how animalistic autistic children are by nature, making it all the easier for them to live among animals than among humans.

The idea of a child being raised by wolves runs deep in the human psyche. But when examined in the light of science, it turns out to mostly just be a good story.

The Mark of the Beast

. . . that the Image of the beast should both speake, and cause that as many as would not worship the Image of the beast, should be killed. 16 And he causeth all, both smal and great rich and poore, free and bond, to receiue a marke in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17 And that no man might buy or sell, saue he that had the marke, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisedome. Let him that hath vnderstanding, count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man, and his number is, sixe hundred threescore and sixe. --Revelation 13, OKJV

It's been close to forty years now since A Thief in the Night came out. I recently watched it again, realizing that back when I first saw it, I couldn't imagine that the world would last another forty years. One of the lines in the film is that "the antichrist could be alive right now and we don't even know it." Well, the likelihood now is that he wasn't, but I sure thought at the time that he might well be.

There were a lot of things in the movie that seem out of place in today's world; the clothing styles are embarrassingly out of date, for example. Interestingly, the designs of vans and helicopters haven't changed much since then, but the villan who spoke into a walkie-talkie would most likely be using a cell phone if it were filmed today. One of the most striking things about the film, looking back all these years later, was the way the Mark of the Beast was portrayed. It was a tattoo physically imprinted on the skin in a quick and painless procedure, consisting of three alternating rows of lines and circles. The heroine says of it, "You know that's computer code for six six six." After escaping from jail, she finds it impossible to enter any store without having received the Mark.

In other words, the Mark of the Beast was a symbol recognisable to a computer, but read manually. In a sequel that came out several years later--after bar code scanning had become common in grocery stores--the hero makes a "counterfeit mark" that he and the heroine can use to buy food and calculator batteries. So the Mark had moved from simply being a computer-generated symbol of loyalty to an actual computer interface that allowed one to pay for a purchase.

So the question is, is the Mark of the Beast simply a symbol of loyalty, or a computer interface? It may be a bit of both.

If the Mark is simply a symbol of loyalty, it would be impossible to counterfeit. It would be like flying a counterfeit American Flag; there's no discernible difference between an authorized flag and an unauthorized duplicate, for purposes of showing one's patriotism. After 9/11, Americans thought nothing of flying American flags that had been made in China, a country at active war with the US in cyberspace. If the Mark is a computer interface, then it doesn't appear that having a counterfeit would help any in avoiding the wrath of God upon all who bear the Mark; it would still indicate tacit submission to The Beast.

Now we bring in the National ID number and its increasing control over every aspect of an American's life. It is now required to disclose one's National ID number to:
-register a birth with the government
-receive medical care paid for by any government agency
-get government help in finding a job
-get government help in heating a home
-get government help in buying food
-get government help in paying a phone bill
-get reimbursed by the government for traveling to a VA appointment
-live in a house where any of the above government involvement is directed
-get credit
-purchase anything electronically
-use a bank account
-buy a car
-register a car
-drive a car
-receive an ID card, without which one cannot vote
-buy real property
-earn wages
-pay taxes on wages
-pay wages
-deduct taxes from wages
-leave the country
-re-enter the country

A few of these can still be done without a National ID number, but only by claiming that one's Number is 000-00-0000. It would be perjury to have any other number and not disclose it. This is obviously only a temporary situation; the Number will eventually become mandatory for everyone, and this is something that was impossible before the ubiquity of computers.

By the time the Mark of the Beast comes out, it will not be necessary for identifying anyone; his National ID Number, with Biometric Encoded Data, will take care of that. It will simply function as a sign of outward loyalty; a sign, moreover, that will be also entered into the database tied to one's National ID. Thus, without the Mark, no one will be able to do anything that isn't possible now for someone who doesn't have the National ID Number.

Which is pretty much everything, or soon will be. In a way that was not possible even 30 years ago, the road is now paved for implementation of the Mark of the Beast.

Update June 6, 2011: This website, last updated on Feb 09, 2011, states that the SSA will, as of June 3, 2007, issue 666-prefix numbers "on a random basis." 99,999 of these will be available.

UPDATE Nov 3, 2011: The above website was updated again 10 days later, on June 13.

UPDATE July 2012: I'm looking at the above website (as updated June 29th, 2012), and noticing something I never did before: the 666 prefix is specifically excluded from the new randomization policy! I quote:
"Previously unassigned area numbers were introduced for assignment excluding area numbers 000, 666 and 900-999."
So, Uncle Sam is not yet ready to play the role of The Beast. I guess that's good--for now.

Martyrdom as a weapon: it works both ways, Efendi.

The Main Square of Zawiyah, Libya has been re-named Martyrs Square in honor of the protesters killed by forces loyal to Muammar Gadaffi. "People want martyrdom. There were children out protesting," reported a resident.

For decades, Islamist propaganda has urged young Muslims to aspire to martyrdom--that is, risking, or in many cases deliberately losing, their lives to kill the evil forces of Judaism and Christianity. But it appears that this pedagogy is coming back to bite, as evil forces perceived within the Dar as Salaam are its new targets.

There is absolutely no way to stop someone who's not afraid to die. And there is no greater danger to the powers that be than a populace that doesn't fear them. Gadaffi is determined not to go down without a fight, but as long as only a few thousand of his people--say, around one-half to one per cent of all Libyans--are willing to walk into firing range and keep going as he mows them down, he will run out of ammunition before they run out of resolve.

And of course, it only takes one person, not afraid to risk seeing his entire family slaughtered if he fails, to fire the deadly shot that will take out Gadaffi for good.