Life in an Artistic Vacuum

Hey readers,

Back to sardonic bitterness for a post or two now, this evening i'm going to discuss why mankind is in an artistic black hole from which nothing can escape.

Two words sum this up: 'Reality TV'. Yes, i'm going to tackle that vile ever present spectre infecting the psyche of the consumer. I will not rest until I have wrestled it to the ground, broken its neck and stand above its remains roaring in a bestial moment of triumph, alas I fear however that this battle may be long and fruitless.  This form of television seems to be particularly popular and prevalent in the USA. But what is it about America that it seems to have an inexhaustible fascination with pseudo fly on the wall reality shows following the 'lives' of human degenerates from various locales and social classes? Worse still, its taking hold here in Britain! TOWIE, Made in Chelsea, Geordie Shore, and that Irish one. They are all insults to intelligence, morality and artistry. Please for the love of god make it stop! I think anyone with even a modicum of respect for television as an artistic medium died a little inside when TOWIE won a BAFTA...Right? 

 I know i'm essentially beating my fists against a brick wall and that its an exercise in futility due to the unfortunate profitability of these 'shows'. The dynamics are simple, the demand is there, so supply is provided. I wouldn't mind so much if the majority of viewers watched this programming and recognised the participants as the idiots as what they are, but so many appear look up to the 'stars' of this televisual vomit and seek to emulate their behaviour! To add insult to injury the sheer size of the market for this kind of thing stateside is staggering, go on any TV streaming service legitimate or otherwise and 90% of it will be 'reality' crap! how many 'sports star wives' shows can lonely disappointed wives of former high school football stars possibly watch? Anything that doesn't follow the format of Jersey Shore and the like will be some inane semi-scripted bull follwing the 'day to day' activities of some obscure business of subculture. (Something I like to call 'deadliest catch syndrome'.) This stuff is everywhere! Seriously, I'm now going to write a list of shows that appear to follow these formats that I spotted with just few clicks at a webstite:

•  All Star Dealers (presumably poker dealers)
• My Strange Addiction
• Celebrity Rehab (Really? Are we that voyeuristic? Go read OK or something)
• Storage Hunters/Storage Wars (competing reality docu-drama things about self storage companies, no, really)
• Extreme Couponing (not even a word)
• Project Runway (see below)
• MTV Caged
• *Insert Location's* Next Top Model (ooooooh skinny girls in a house competing for a job! Drama!)
• Freaky Eaters
• Doomsday Preppers (lets all laugh at the crazy people that live in bunkers! hahahahah!)
• Sister Wives (oh those Mormons and their ideas...)
• Jersey Shore (yay, role models!)
• Geordie Shore
• *foreign import of the 'shore' format*
• Dance moms (haha pushy parents are HILARIOUS)
• *insert professional sport here* wives (seriously there's like 4 or 5 of these)
• Various celebrity couple docu-soaps (really, too many to even start trying to list all of those)
• South Beach Tow (a towing company reality show? REALLY?)
• Big Rich Texas (Think the hills with more cowboy hats I guess)
• The A-List Dallas (more vapid rich people from Texas, yay!)

I could go on, but we'd be here for days. I hope by now you're starting to see my point. The entertainment industry is utterly saturated with this stuff, its all cheap, all devoid of any depth and barely qualifies as entertainment. I for one have never been entertained by stuff like this. I utterly fail to see the appeal, it's simply beyond me. I don't know maybe my mind is less developed than those that do, maybe I just don't have the insight to see the deep rich messages behind everything. Somehow though, I doubt it. Equally, I doubt my shrieking on a barely read blog will have any real impact on seemingly unending torrent, this tidal wave of morally bankrupt detritus clogging TV schedules, and all the while tightly scripted, well acted and astoundingly produced dramas like Southland undergo budget cuts and cast reductions. Epic series like Game of Thrones are forced to be produced by specialist channels like HBO (admittedly this does have it's advantages) but in the process limiting its audience. Ladies and gentlemen, I implore you, stop feeding this beast, stop driving this stampede lest the future of entertainment be swallowed up and quality programming becomes nothing but a distant memory, preserved by DVD sales and premium cable networks.

Thanks for reading

Wheelchairman2

The Arab Spring...and Syria

Hey readers, how long's it been?

A week?? Goodness how lax of me to leave you so bereft of my thoughts for so long! No but seriously, I am sorry, I hope to update more regularly in future. Anyway, on with the show (blog.)

So yes I’m afraid we must delve once more into the realms of relative seriousness for a while, light hearted rants are on the horizon though so fear not, you will not have to endure such drudgery for long, but this is really something I need to write about. The Arab Spring, a glorious uprising of oppressed peoples across an entire region where corruption, institutionalised racism, sexism, and religious hatred are all endemic. Great! Fantastic! The cry for freedom cannot remain unheard forever! Right? Well sort of, the chain of events that triggered the protests, demonstrations and civil wars happened so quickly it made western leader's head's spin. America's reaction to Egypt for example was one of thinly veiled horror at first, why? Because Mubarak for better or for worse had been a source of stability in the region for decades, yes certainly he was a dictator, but he was a friendly dictator, one that listened to the Americans, brought their aircraft and guns and stomped hard on hardline Islamists that dared poke their heads out.

But wait! I hear you cry, aren't America and Britain champions of democracy? Wasn't that the partial justification for Iraq and Afghanistan? Well spotted friends, that is indeed the case, which is why the Obama Administration changed their tune to one of support for the movement, cautiously. (Watch some of the Whitehouse press briefings from later in the spring last year, you can almost literally hear arses being covered.) The thing about the west is, yes we like democracy, but we like our democracy, clean(ish) and secular (in theory – here's looking at you Santorum, or rather, not.) But we've had a fair few centuries to practice it and history tells us that nothing born of revolution is particularly good or stable (e.g. The early years of the French Republic, Communism, The United States...) I'm mostly kidding about that last one, mostly (but it's a topic I will undoubtedly cover at a later date, complete with my usual laconic wit.) Then, alongside a spate of smaller actions across the region (Also affecting various US/UK allied nations in the region and suffice to say certain government responses made things rather awkward for everyone) there was Libya. Ah Libya so simple, so easy. The Arab League hated Gadaffi, the French and British both had large displaced workforces along the coast thanks to oil production, and by the time things got crazy, Egypt had settled down. Not only this but its geographical location meant that both NATO air and sea assets could be utilised very effectively in enforcing a 'no fly zone' (also no tank, artillery or sniper zone, cough.) Additionally, the tactical situation on the ground was ideal, the majority of the fighting was concentrated along the coast, the Rebel faction held a great deal of territory on the eastern side of the country, and the battle lines were clear. Civilians were in danger, heroic rebels were in with a chance of overthrowing an evil git! (That we'd already bombed before a couple of times,) plus (somewhat unbelievably) the U.N said it was OK! Military powers...ACTIVATE! If any of you watched the news at all last year I’m sure you all know how that turned out.

So now we come to the crux of the matter, Syria. You can't see it but I'm grimacing at the thought of this, the Arab League has said it's a bad situation, the U.N says its a bad situation, everyone (sane) AGREES it's a bad situation, and yet nothing yet has been done. Why? On the surface it seems obvious right? Thousands dead and dying much of the population displaced, the country splintered with a madman at its helm, sounds pretty similar to another war the west intervened in doesn't it? Well actually it does, but for those of you who are too young to even have the vaguest sense of what I’m talking about, I’m talking about the Yugoslav wars, particularly the atrocities committed in the conflict between Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Republika Srpska (Bosnian Serbs.) It's too long and complex to detail here but essentially a lot of civilians died very horribly much like Syria, NATO was forced into action after the Srebrenica Massacre, wherein 8000 young Muslim men and boys were systematically slaughtered by Republica Srpska forces.Indeed the causes of the conflict and socio-historical reasons underlying the atrocities were different, but that should not matter. The human cost is the issue, not what the reason for that cost is.

There are however several problems with intervening in Syria, first off Syria is slap bang in the middle of a diplomatic hot zone, sharing borders with Iraq, Lebanon and Israel. NATO Naval and Air assets are already heavily committed in the area yes, dealing with other potential threats. Which brings me neatly to my next set of problems. Secondly Syria is big time pals with Iran. In fact it was recently reported by the BBC that a high ranking member of the Iranian Republican Guard 'Quds Force' (the hardcore of the hardcore) is serving the current ruling family, the Assad family, in an 'advisory role'. This also raises questions about who else is in country. But what about the U.N? They have peacekeepers right? Yes they do, and broadly speaking they've got much better at their job since Bosnia, so with NATO forces potentially unavailable, why aren't they acting? Well for starters, because of the way the U.N works unfortunately. In order to maintain a balance of power among the permanent members of the security council any member has a power of veto over a resolution passing through the chamber.

Now the issue here is, even when countless human lives are at stake, we don't all get along. Russia and China both abstained from voting over action in Libya thus allowing the Security Council's resolutions on the issues to pass and action to be taken. Why did they do this? International pressure prevented them from doing anything else, Libya was short of friends with any real diplomatic weight behind them. But it was a sacrifice for both nations, Libya was a large export market for Russian and Chinese arms sales, the arms embargoes and subsequent intervention in Libya cut off that market, resulting in a significant loss of revenue for both nations. Naturally they weren't too pleased with this. Syria on the other hand is, as I mentioned before, pretty friendly with Iran, Iran is pretty friendly with Venezuela (another member of the 'America is the devil' club, something that I will also write about) and all three are... Yup you guessed it, large consumers of Russian and Chinese arms. So as a result of this Russia and China have managed to dig their heels in and halt action of any kind, thus prolonging the slaughter of thousands. Lastly there also doesn't appear to be much coherence within the rebel factions, unlike Libya, making the tactical situation on the ground that much harder to deal with.

However recent video footage has also emerged from a military hospital in Homs, where wounded individuals discovered at protest sites (wounded by artillery and snipers by the way) are tortured by regime personnel. Russia has recently been implicated in supplying ammunition to the Syrian Army too, so not only are they apparently fine with the actions of the regime, they may in fact be complicit. What is this the 1980s? (Look up Nicaragua). Are Russia and China so desperate to maintain their spheres of influence that they're willing to turn a blind eye to Artillery strikes against ordinary people? The Parallels are there, something must be done before we have another Srebrenica on our hands.

Thanks for Reading

Wheelchairman2

Facebook... oh dear

Hey readers,

Facebook! Conquerer of the internet, scourge of privacy and cause of productivity issues worldwide... Sucks. Yes really it does – the hypocrisy of this statement is not lost on me as no doubt if you followed a link to this post it will no doubt have been via... my Facebook.

Therein lies the first of my problems, Facebook has practically overtaken any other kind of connectivity, phone calls, texting, emails – everything. To the point where, if you post something interesting for someone's benefit and they don't immediately see it – you will undoubtedly contact them via text or phone call, for them to check their Facebook! Does anyone else see the fallacy in this? Are we so desperate for social validation? Every time we go out pictures are uploaded and tagged – evidence of our myriad antics there for the masses. Oh sure there are many privacy settings, you can restrict who sees what, but the sheer number of people that simply don't bother is staggering. Is it exhibitionism? Vanity? A simple lack of concern? Whatever it it is it's reckless, we as users have no rights to the state of this data, once your account is on there, it's there forever – active or not – a record of your life from whenever you signed up till now is available to staff members of Facebook. There's already been numerous scandals about data being passed along to third parties without permission, the privacy policy has been examined and criticised by a great number of people, yes concessions have been made but is it enough? I'm sure that at a corporate level there will be some safeguards in place to stop abuse of such unparalleled access to personal information, but abuses will happen, it's inevitable, the potential for damage on a personal level is unparalleled.

It's about to get worse too, the new timeline layout starts at 'born' – are Facebook going to implement a feature where you can date tag photographs? Or backdate certain posts? Otherwise I really can't see a point to the feature, but that means a permanent digital record of your entire existence, is anyone really willing to do that? I understand having a private record for posterity but come on...

Which brings me rather neatly to my next series of points, Facebook has for years been somewhat notorious for format and design changes, often quite radical ones without forewarning or options. Timeline is the latest and by far the worst. Not only is it unavoidable, but it's site wide – profile pages and product pages are now exactly the same in terms of layout, which completely defeats the object of having the two different kinds of page. Being set apart from profiles was what always grabbed my attention, custom tabs – custom design... I’ve been informed that many of those things no longer exist. Additionally, a new advertising system seems to have come into force with timeline – rather than quiet ads at the sidebar as with traditional profiles, loud obnoxious ads interrupt news feeds, often directly in your eye line. Some even 'talk' which for those of us that run FB in a background tab (whilst watching TV and films sourced completely legitimately in another...) is extremely annoying to say the least. Why have Facebook done this? I can only guess but I’d assume now the company has gone public, revenue streams have been increased to keep stock prices up, but like most of this post – that's only conjecture.

Customer service has also been entirely lacking, whenever there have been technical issues with chat, no explanation is given, whenever an update is coming, no warning is given – locking of profiles is done with minimal warning and explanation, and in the cases of this happening wrongfully there's no live support option to deal with it. Meaning that users are often left in the cold (so to speak) potentially for weeks, or they have to make a new profile and gradually recover all the friends they lost.

At the end of the day what I’m getting at is that Facebook users have been jerked around enough, and interrupting our ability to communicate with awful design and unwanted ads (that will no doubt eventually be removable by paying a fee.) For a website that gained its initial popularity for its ease of use and clean design (compared to its contemporaries) it sure has lost it's way.

Perhaps then, it's time to move on?

Thanks for reading

Wheelchairman2

On Nightclubs and Clubbing

Hey Readers,

Sorry about not updating yesterday but after the two mammoth posts dealing with a rather heavy subject matter I needed some time to think about what I was going to write about next. I've decided upon the next subject worthy of my ire, nightclubs. Yes, nightclubs, those establishments that take it upon themselves to provide young people with a place to listen to terrible music, drink overpriced (and lets face it, often watered down) drinks and generally make complete idiots of themselves night after night after night. I'm sure my descriptions (and forthcoming complaints) aren't any different to many other people's but still they annoy me and I need to vent.

So, lets examine the anatomy of a typical night out for many around my age up and down the country. First you resolve either by yourself or with a group to go out. This stage of the process may take place as early as a week before the festivities, or as late as mere hours prior to going out. Then, you have to work out where to go, (this stage is more easily accomplished with early planning, which is often itself initiated with the news of a particular event or promotion.) But, in the event that a night out was a last minute idea it requires either trawling Facebook for hints as to where people are headed that night, or myriad texts/phoncealls which often result in different answers from different people, so then upon completion of this a discussion will inevitably erupt about who wants to go where and why which usually goes something like this 

"We should go here, the music tonight is always awesome" 

"Nah man, that place sucks, -blank- is way better, plus -girl I fancy- is gonna be there tonight"

Then someone else will jump in and the various virtues of certain clubs/bars and who's going to be where at any given time will be debated to a point where either the night falls apart before it's even begun, or consensus is reached.

So for the sake of argument let us assume the latter option is the outcome, great! You've decided where you're going, now what? Well you can't show up when the place opens, it'll be 'dead', you'll be sober and how boring is that? Also you'd look like twats. So... predrinks! Great idea, who's having them? One of your housemates mentions that a friend of his is having some, but you don't know him, should you go? Will it be awkward? Where is his house? Turns out it's miles away, 2 cabs in one night? Screw that, lets host some! OK then, predrinks. That's easy right? Invite a load of people round, have some drinks then go to a club, simple. So you post the event on facebook, drop some texts and make some calls, its going to be awesome! Here with have two scenarios again, scenario 1: no one or hardly anyone shows up, you try and have a good time until eventually you give up and shuffle dejectedly to the club whereupon you will meet the people who were supposedly coming to yours who will then proceed to make awkward excuses for not attending... Or 2: LOADS of people show up, even people you didn't know were coming, or... don't know at all. Do you have enough glasses for everyone? Of course you don't, and some are going to get broken! What about booze, did everyone bring some like you asked? No of course not, those 8 corona's you've got in the fridge for yourself? Grab those quick or, oh no too late, “whose had my coro...” you begin to shout but then suddenly,  there's yet more knocking at the door, Fantastic. Where's the guy that was supposed to be looking after the door? Oh he's getting on that fresher you've never seen before. Good for him, but now it looks like you're going to be door guy for the rest of the night. Now you're phone's going off, oh it's your mate, actually, weren't they supposed to be here by now? You pick up the phone, they're extremely drunk already:

“Alright maaaaate! Look where the **** is your house? Because i'm in a cab right now and we can't seem to find it...” etc. Eventually you direct them to where they need to go and venture outside to wave at them frantically when they step out the cab. Right that's that dealt with – you breathe a sigh of relief, except now, the music's changed! Someone else has put their ipod into the dock and no one knows what happened to yours. Wonderful, to top things off  someone (you) has got to get all these people out your house and into town. Which goes something like this:

“Alright who's ordered a cab? No one? OK how many people have we got? 30? What? Who's missing? OK 33 right, so who's ordering cabs? ...There's one outside already?”

So eventually everyone's accounted for and you've managed to successfully order enough cabs to ferry everyone away from your house except some people have had far too much to drink, there's no way they're getting in... ah the hell with it that's their problem not yours. Also it turns out someone your housemate invited has passed out, so now they're going to stay behind to deal with them. Right, fine whatever. So you all pile into the cabs and make your way into town, everyone seems to be having a great time and even you are starting to feel slightly less stressed now you're out the house. You arrive at the club and the cab driver calls for the fare, So who's got change?

“I've only got a tenner”

“Sorry, need to go to a cashpoint”

“I'm not going to break a twenty for a cab!”

Aaaaaaaargh Jesus! So after some rather frantic negotiations and bad drunken maths, a deal is worked out amongst the occupants and the fare is paid, or one person ponies up all the money upon promises of repayment, likely never to be acted upon. Now all that's left is to get into the club and get on with your evening, except there's a huge queue, damn, now those incessant guestlist invites on facebook don't seem half as pointless or irritating... (Who doesn't like an endless barrage of event requests clogging up their notifications box day after day after day?) And not bringing a coat because 'cloakrooms are a rip off' doesn't seem as smart as it did a few hours ago either. As it happens some of your group are already inside by virtue of having signed up to one, so now you're fragmented oh well no matter, you'll all meet up inside anyway right?

Some time later you've made it into the club, you've managed to get past the bouncers (your ID was in your wallet after all) and paid your entry. Sweet! The music is... the same as what you were listening to in your house just an hour ago but at least you can get a drink right? Except there's a ten minute wait at the bar. Oh well c'est la vie, as you're standing there however some guy stumbles and spills half a pint all over your brand new shirt, at this point he will either a) drunkenly apologise so awkwardly it takes five minutes at which point you'll have missed a free barmaid, or b) angrily demand to be brought a new drink... good luck with that. You paid £5 entry for this?

Yeah, you did, and therein lies the problem, modern clubs are in essence, a massive rip off. You go through all this enormous hassle to get to one only to be confronted with endless displays of drunken idiocy taking many forms, you'll inevitably lose many, if not all of your friends though either them paring off, going for a smoke, or simply using the bathroom (which is often an odyssey in itself), the music is usually terrible and samey (thanks to the majority of chart music being geared towards clubgoers today) you'll stick to the floor, endlessly queue for the bar, likely endure an obnoxious DJ that's too busy yelling stuff to actually concentrate on doing his job and generally have a miserable time and that's before you go home and wake up with a trashed house, a huge hangover and the bitter residual taste of tequila in your mouth.

OK so I’ll level off here, yes this is a caricature of a typical night out (although mostly written from an amalgamation of real life experiences) but be honest with yourself. How many times have you been out, had it all go smoothly and genuinely enjoyed yourself? How many times have you heard a friend talk about a club and not say 'yeah... it was a bit shit to be honest.' Sure you might stumble in and type some status about how good a night you had, but you're drunk for god's sake, you're in no state to make a rational judgement!

You're only young once, and its precious time, we should all stop wasting so much of it in such a manner. Its stupid.

Thanks for reading

Wheelchairman2

A tale of two Nations Part II

Hey readers ,

So yesterday I gave my two cents about Israel's potentially world unbalancing plans to defeat Iran's nuclear ambition. Today I’m going to talk about the nuclear issue and my stance on it. Or at least I’m going to try to. In my last post I was quite clearly anti-intervention concerning Iran, do I want Iran to have nuclear weapons? No of course not, its a matter of both politics and strategy, politically the world is in a very difficult situation in regards to Iran, military intervention would not only be extremely costly, as explained previously, but politically almost impossible to justify. There's no current Causus Belli, a clear reason for war. Iran hasn't invaded anyone, directly attacked another nation for any reason, nor is there some sort of large scale humanitarian crisis a la' Somalia, Yugoslavia or more recently Libya and Syria. But what about Iraq? Ah well see in late 1990 Saddam Hussein ordered Iraqi forces to invade Kuwait and... Oh right, yeah. Well exactly, no one wants to go through that again, at least the Democratic party doesn't.

So does this mean I want Iran to have nukes, or at least am comfortable with the idea? No, absolutely not, in fact, I’m not comfortable with nukes whatsoever. No one should have them at all. Absolutely no one. In fact, I’d rather they'd never been built at all.  The ultimate irony of nuclear weapons is that they are simply too effective. So effective in fact, they have no real military application whatsoever. Think about it for a moment, the whole purpose of pursuing a war is to defeat your enemy in order to gain something, once it was territory and resources, more recently its been in defence of human rights, or regional stability. Annihilating your enemy is ultimately pointless, even more so when they themselves can retaliate in kind. Everybody loses and nothing is gained, meanwhile the pitiful pockets of survivors stumble around a shattered and poisonous landscape, perhaps periodically stopping to fall to their knees in tattered garments and scream dramatically elongated one-word questions at an uncaring sky. Or maybe pausing thoughtfully to mull over their own inevitable agonizing death in such a place whilst staring off into the middle distance and dryly delivering an internal monologue about human nature, preferably quoting famous thinkers from throughout history. Does this mean I think we should get rid of ours? No, why? Because no one else will. (Which of course puts me in the tricky position of trying to justify the states that have nuclear weapons attempting to stop those that don't from getting them... but that's going to ruin the flow of the post so I won't for now, remind me to do that another time.)

The whole thing seems ridiculous right? A weapon that can't be used by the military! Well yes, precisely, they are utterly ridiculous, but that's not to say they aren't useful. Nuclear weapons have as they have grown in power, developed into something more than a weapon. They're a bargaining chip, a reminder of a nation's status and a powerful deterrent to anyone considering military action conventional or otherwise. Just recently Argentina's government wet it's collective diplomatic pants at the mere thought of a Royal Navy nuclear submarine near its waters (despite the fact that even if there is a submarine in the region, it would most likely be a Trafalgar or Astute class, and therefore only nuclear powered, not armed) and went to the U.N. In a big huff because 'big nasty Britain won't give us back something we didn't want when we gave it to them! Also the potential for the launch of a nuclear strike so close to our coastal waters thus giving us no time to react is scaaaaaaaaaaary!' (lack of punctuation very much intentional – also be on the lookout for a tirade against Argentina's pants-on-head retarded diplomacy - coming soon to a little-read blog near you!) But this incident illustrates my point rather well I think, nukes or, more accurately, the threat of nukes makes them incredibly useful diplomatic tools. It seems to me that nuclear strategy today is used much like when parents make stuff up to scare their children into behaving themselves: 'Stop thinking about attacking us, we've got nukes!' is pretty much the diplomatic equivalent of parents telling children to stop pulling faces else it stays that way. Of course, both are essentially idle threats, but they work, most of the time.

The big fear of course is that one day the threat will no longer be idle, that an irrational force will get hold of such a weapon and have no qualms against using it, is there a risk of that with Iran? Maybe, but probably not, that appears to be the general opinion of everyone sane at least and I’m inclined to agree Iran likes to rattle its Sabre sure, but once you draw a Sabre especially in a room where everyone else has their hands on theirs, it gets kind of difficult to back down and put it away again. (Wow I’ve got analogies on the brain today.) Simply put, regardless of it's political position both towards its own population and the world at large, no amount of religious fervor is going to convince an entire nation that risking annihilation in nuclear fire is a good idea.

I really hope I don't live (or more accurately, die if I’m wrong) to eat my words here, but realistically full scale war against Iran to stop them getting nukes is just not feasible, can we stop them? Not really, should we stop them? Difficult thing to do/justify. So what can we do? Same thing we have since we all got the damn things in the first place, point them at each other. Now how stupid is that?

Thanks for reading,

Wheelchairman2

A Tale of Two Nations or: why Israel should stop worrying and just keep an eye on Iran

Hi there readers, just a quick warning, this is going to be a long one. So make a cup of tea or something and settle in.

OK lets get a few things out the way first, when it comes to the whole Israeli-Arab conflict, I fall on neither side, sometimes one actor is right, sometimes the other is, at the end of the day its all hidden behind a mask of religion and so as a result, is at its very core, stupid. Which as you might have realised by now, is something I don't have any time for. So I will be skirting around the issue of Israel's right to exist and if anyone should choose to comment, I will not respond to any rhetoric leaning one way or the other. This might also venture into TL:DR territory for some of you but please, if you can, stick with it.

(Deep breath). Right, now that's out of the way lets get on with this. As anyone that has paid any attention to any sort of international news over the past 8 years or so, you will have noticed that Iran is not exactly in the western world's good books, nor has it been for a while. Not only have there been some very questionable election results of late, but more pressingly (and distressingly) it has quite publicly been developing a nuclear programme. I'm not going to write a complete history here, it's far too complex, but needless to say there has been round after round of talks, negotiations and most recently, U.N. Mandated economic sanctions levied at Iran in attempts to deter it from further developing nuclear capability. Iran has of course maintained that it's intentions are peaceful and only for providing energy, thus far there hasn't been any concrete evidence to suggest otherwise either, radiological monitoring equipment hasn't managed to pick up any sort of test explosions as of yet, so perhaps they are telling the truth.

Perhaps not, Iran has frequently decried Israel's (undeclared, unacknowledged but essentially universally known) nuclear status and it's president is well known for his 'anti-zionist' rhetoric, including some very inflammatory comments made in 2005 at a summit against 'Zionism'. Additionally, as mentioned before Iran's nuclear programme is no secret and as recently as last November the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published a report detailing the fact that Iran had in fact begun undertaking experiments geared towards gaining nuclear weapons capability, Iran rejected this report (obviously) and accused the IAEA of having a 'western bias' (there's a turn up for the books). Thus the war of words continues. “But where's the stupidity in this?” I hear you ask, excellent question.

Iran is a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, an international treaty recognising the 5 official nuclear weapons states, USA, UK, France, Russia (formerly the USSR) and the People's Republic of China ( and imploring all of them to disarm, eventually) and making the other signatories promise not to make any of the big bad bombs themselves. It hasn't worked, not really, both India and Pakistan successfully developed their own weapons in the mid 20^th century and North Korea (a country that continously delights in diplomatic... insanity) is also believed to be in posession of several small(ish) devices in the kiloton range ( each enough to turn a decent sized city to ash and glass) although their capability to deliver such devices accurately is suspect (at least over long distances.) The whole thing is one giant international headache and very, very irritating.

But wait, didn't you say that Israel had nukes earlier? Also, how come India, Pakistan and North Korea get away with it? Why is everyone so het up about Iran? Why yes I did say those things didn't I, and once again an excellent question! It's here we stumble onto yet more idiocy and several snags to boot. See, what with the whole issue of national soverignty, and the lack of any real enforcement of the NPT there's not much anyone can do. Except maybe America, prize to who can guess why that is! (Hint: it's not because everyone else said they could). Except India is an allied nation and Pakistan is... well again I'm not going to write an entire history book about that but lets just say no one wants to come down on either side of that particular equation. Add to that the United States less than stellar reputation with the Pakistani authorities right now and with their internal troubles... that's definitely a story for another time. North Korea, while undoubtedly utterly mental not only has significant potential to do damage to its Southern neighbour which again, happens to be a staunch U.S. Ally, but also has the PRC (kind of) behind it, so again, not really much anyone can do. Although just in the last few days North Korea has agreed to freeze its nuclear programme in return for food aid. (Not that it's citizens are told that, incidentally this news came shortly after it threatened military action in response to joint U.S.-ROK exercises...Aaah diplomacy).

So why Iran? Well, there are various reasons for other nations to be nervous, for starters Iran has been linked to the funding, equipping and possible training of various terrorist and insurgent movements both in the region and outside. The majority of the population of Iran are followers of the Shia branch of Islam and the government often speaks out against the Sunni ruling classes of various states to its south, not least of which, Saudi Arabia. In fact defence spending in the southern gulf states has increased exponentially over the past few years as a result of the potential threat from Iran. Thirdly, despite having an elected legislature and President, true power lies with the 'Supreme Leader' of Iran, an unelected religious figurehead who (apparently) has sole control over the countries armed forces and intelligence agencies. Finally, in response to recent U.N. Sanctions, Iran has conducted several large scale, live-fire naval exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane through the Persian Gulf, that could potentially severely hamper, if not cripple trade both regionally and globally if blockaded.

So this seems like a simple decision, Iran is a dangerous state, developing the most deadly weapons ever known to mankind, controlled by a religious demagogue with no checks against his absolute power and is threatening global commerce? We must stop this madness! Right? Well no, the truth of the matter is, that would be a very, very VERY dumb idea for a multitude of reasons, and there isn't a great deal of stomach for such a campaign amongst western military leaders. The Chief of the defence staff in the United States was recently quoted as saying that he personally, believes that Iran is a 'Rational Actor'. i.e. they aren't going to launch a load of nukes at Israel, or anyone else for that matter, just because they say nasty things at international summits. Unfortunately there are (reportedly) certain elements of both the Israeli and American governments that won't take the expert's word on this. In fact Israel is (allegedly) preparing a variety of strategies involving airstrikes, to cripple Iran's nuclear infrastructure (because apparently endless cyber-attacks and other 'subversive' methods haven't been effective enough) and hey, it worked against Syria's (alleged) facility back in '07!

Yeah, it did, with two very key differences: 1. Syria is a lot closer to Israel than Iran . 2. There was only one facility, half built in the middle of nowhere. Iran's facilities on the other hand are everywhere. The BBC recently published their own article discussing such plans including a map of the facilities identified thus far, along with potential routes for Israeli aircraft. (Which I will link to at the bottom of this post.) OK, time to get really technical. These factors present multiple hurdles for any military operation, Israel would have to use the longest range aircraft they have in their inventory, the F-15I, a locally adapted version of America's most successful fighter aircraft ever, an extremely capable piece of equipment. But given the distance to the targets and the number of targets, a lot of aircraft would have to be involved in the operation in order to have a decent chance of destroying/damaging them sufficiently. These aircraft would then themselves have to be escorted by yet more fighters, so that assuming the strike craft manage to actually get past Iran's relatively sophisticated air defence mechanisms, they don't then get shot down by Iran's rather large fighter inventory, consisting of F-14s (as made famous in top gun, yeah that one, sold to Iran prior to the revolution) MiG-29s (a highly capable Soviet design from the early 80's created to compete with the very aircraft Israel will be using) and potentially an undisclosed number of Sukhoi-30 MKI's a modern update of another much larger Russian fighter, designed to compete with contemporary American updates to their own designs. Much like the latest version of the... yup, the F-15I (and you thought the cold war was over). So an Airstrike alone is out of the question, and even if by some miracle all the aircraft made it to their targets, there's absolutely no guarantee all the hits would be effective, and then the planes still have to make it back, light on fuel, and presumably on ammo.

So what else could they do? Well there's always the option of a Submarine strike, except Iran's navy isn't anything to be sniffed at, and launching cruise missiles at multiple targets is even less subtle than a bombing raid, compounding the issue is the fact that all these facilities are full of staff, and mostly operational, unlike the Syrian facility that was purportedly deserted (a fact disputed by the North Korean authorities). Additionally, the targets are a mix of civilian and military targets, an attack on this scale would be nothing less than an act of war. Not a smart move against a nation with a military numbering at over half a million troops, not including police or paramilitary units.

So by now, you might see where this is headed, a big old mess essentially. Iran has already publicly stated that they will, if threatened launch a pre-emptive strike (which given their recent developments in medium and long range missile technology is more than an idle threat). America, having already fought a costly war in the region and still in the middle of fighting another further east, would inevitably be sucked in, as would the rest of NATO, then who knows? Iran happens to have observer status with the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO, the successor to the Warsaw Pact and for all intents and purposes, Russia's version of NATO,) and is a large consumer of both Russian and Chinese military hardware, basically, if this ball starts rolling, its headed nowhere good.

Thanks for reading,

Wheelchairman2

(to be continued)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17115643 - BBC article on potential strike plans