Hezbollah Responds

By now we’ve all heard about the terror attack in Israel, the retaliation in Gaza against Hamas, the sheer aggression shown, and then the inevitable widening of the scope of it to now include Lebanon and of course the recent boobytrapping of devices. (Which by the way is now being considered a war crime by many.)

The problem is that these actions can only escalate so far before it becomes a war. And the problem with wars is that they can – and often do – spread, as more and more parties take sides and perhaps start supporting one side or the other. And so forth.

But a far worse thing that these skirmishes-turned-large-scale-military-muderdeathkill-operations achieve is . . .

Whatcha Watching?

While we were watching Putin puttin’ the boot into Ukraine and everything going —–> one way and then <—- the other and then —-> —-> and back and forth, there were other skirmishes and wars going on, ships being taken by pirates, and more. China expanded its space in the South China Sea and harrassed Autralian aircraft, other navies’ seacraft, and made threatening faces at Taiwan. Kim Jung Un did – uh, he did – see what I mean? The spotlight was off them and off they went.

There are ageing population pressures. And of course by that I don’t mean that there won’t be an army of doddering old people trying to take over the rest of the world. (Have a read, you’ll be able to follow what I’m saying now much more easily.) No there’s a certain dynamic that goes with ageing populations and wars may suggest a solution that we don’t really want…

These age imbalances happen for a variety of reasons, the mildest of which is less children being born because the toxins we’ve been marinating ourselves, our cities, our food chain, and in fact the whole planet in, nasty little poisons many of which are resulting in falling fertility and birthrates.

China

Some governments actually make the perfect storm of mistakes and drag their birthrate into the subterranean tunnels – qv. China. The government there made some grave errors of management and caused a famine by sheer mismanagement. Ironically – caused by the fear of officials losing their lives if their regions didn’t produce enough food, by grift or by graft, and all exacerbated by intrigues and machinations.

Then they implemented their One Child Per Couple policy because there was still not enough food, and so, suddenly, there were not enough young people being born. Not for then, but for *right now* i.e. for the 21st century.

As of right now, there are more than 300million old people in China who should be in retirement and most of them can’t – because there’s nothing in the coffers for a decent liveable pension. There’s also not as much income to the government, because some industrial giants have had to scale back because they simply don’t have enough able-bodied people to operate now. The missing workforce are the “missing children” that weren’t born during the OCPC period.

Then once the OCPC policy was abandoned, many couples still felt that they shouldn’t bring a child into the declining conditions that China was slipping into.

Many of the young people that were born and raised in the OCPC time have abandoned the work ethic that made China the manufacturing powerhouse it was, and are just doing the bare minimum to retain their job.

They don’t feel appreciated and don’t see the point of being exploited to fix a situation they aren’t responsible for and that they can see isn’t going to resolve quickly enough to benefit them.

Quite a few are even staying at home unemployed and living with their parents and/or grandparents

If that seems a familiar pattern in your country, just think – the whole planet is sliding in that direction, and we’ll probably see negative population growth in our lifetimes. (And I’m old so that means something! ; )

Other countries are also experiencing such setbacks, and some countries, like China, might be tempted to use the time when everyone else’s eyes are elsewhere to start a little bit of “expansion.” If you don’t have enough working-age population then prisoners-of-war make a pretty useful workforce, a new piece of land and its people increase your workforce, and outside blood may turn the birthrate graph back the right way up…

Who Else?

North Korea – remember I asked if you’d heard much from there? We just don’t know because all eyes were on Ukraine and now Gaza. Maybe they’re quite well-armed and just waiting for a chance to let their starved desperate population loose on a neighbouring country.

Japan is having perhaps a worse age crisis than China and could become a tempting target for any number of players that might enjoy extra manufacturing capacity. Taiwan isn’t – as far as I’m aware – having a population imbalance issue but China does tend to make “get ready to come back to your roots!” faces at it and so there’s that.

And why are the United States seemingly hellbent on not permitting even one child to be aborted? Do they know something?

My Real Take On This

. . . is that Governments are mostly stupid. Some exceptional people may raise one government above the others for a while, then another may have a great leader for a term or three. But by and large governments are dull-witted, slow to react, and frustrating to the clever ones that unfortunately (or fortunately…) aren’t “The Leader” at that point. Which is why there are so many small and seemingly insignificant departments in governments that have slowly accrued some surprising powers to themselves…

But as we’ve seen, using the technology that’s easily available across the counter, Ukraine could and did inflict surprisingly serious damage on Russia, and another actor (probably Israel) could weaponise pagers and CB radios. One good hack on one critical network could see a country even as large as the USA brought into terrible distress due to transformers that have been artificially overloaded into failure or explosion, for example.

Look at how many hospitals and health organisations have been shut down by well-chosen-and-targeted malware. Cyber war is a present and very real threat in these times. It’s become the other frontline of war. As well as experienced communications personnel, now we need computer operators for coordinating intelligence, soldiers trained to effectively use the end user equipment to consume and act on that intel, air sea and land drone operators deployed wherever they need to be, tech-savvy artillery operators, etc.

And let’s not forget hacking teams. If you don’t have a hack team and a counterhack team you stand a good chance losing civilian infrastructure. Most governments are seemingly still ashamed that they might have offensive cyberwar hacker units and play up that they have defensive teams. But they all need to change their attitudes – a good hacker is as valuable as a veteran soldier, perhaps actually more so. I’d feel better knowing that some of the people I’ve come to know over my lifetime are preparing scenarios for taking down any enemy should they stick their noses over the border…

In Australia we’re doing the “Sovereign Borders” thing and keeping illegal immigrants out – when we need nothing more urgently than we need a larger workforce so we can get more manufacturing online. With a bigger workforce we could be building our own subs right here right now already and AUKUS becomes more a handshake of allies than an operational requirement. And I’m not kidding – we could be building hulls and control systems and drive systems here and need very little.

Instead, our government here is buying “nuclear submarines – in thirty years or so, probably longer, and even then that’s just maybe if we don’t want the next one off the line” and that basically means signing off on a vaporware submarine.

Our public welfare system was abused by a pack of techno-kakistocrats, to the point where it was directly responsible for many people committing suicide, and is still not up to the task. Our health system needs more automation and personnel, and since COVID some have actually dropped out leaving great big staffing shortages everywhere. Meanwhile government is fiddling with getting us to all hand over our medical records for some reason – and then revealing years down the track that records may have been hacked…

Because we don’t yet have this comprehension that far more than submarines, we need malware defence teams and people to check suspicious traffic and harden the Aussie part of the Internet and all our intranets.

We have drunken dysfunctionals and smug smarmy christopharians parading a piece of coal around in Parliament like some bizarre 19th Century schoolboy prank, and expecting them to know a 404 from a 503. (Y’all know the 404 – document not found, 503 is server not responding and the drunkard we refer to only knows this about technology – that the roadside in a well-known part of Melbourne is a good place to lay down to sleep off a hangover and abuse his mistress over the phone…)

I’m sure – no, I’m CERTAIN – that other countries have similar undignified dignitaries and poodle parliamentarians to contend with – and – well – one of OUR jobs as citizens is to ensure that our country is run by smart and capable people, not some of the dregs we have. Most places will have elections in which we can make our wishes known. If only we’re mostly all on the same page.

We do have tools – we have emails to those politicians, emails and letters to the editor in our newspapers. (And don’t be shy – send it to every editor of every newspaper in your area just to be sure, it only costs a BCC: to do so.)

Send emails to every parliament minister and senator in charge of the relevant portfolios, send it to every government department set up for us to have input or recourse. Share it (and articles like mine) to your friends in social media and messenger and wherever. The message gets stronger them more it’s passed around.

So everyone needs to sort of take this on board. If we let our governments and corporations run free with their stupid and downright dystopian schemes, we won’t survive their manipulations. Take a stand to make things sane again.

Oh and sorry this *seems* to have wandered off the topic – I assure you that controlling our government and the corporations that are supposed to serve us and ensuring that they DO serve us is important, and knowing some of the less obvious stuff I put into that meander down Geopolitical Lane seen through the eyes of a slightly mad old coot could be worth keeping an eye on.

KEEP THE BASTARDS HONEST!

---

Like what I write here? Help me! Share my articles. I’ve provided share icons below, and if they aren’t your social scene hit the [+] one at the end and get dozens more. Like my articles to show me which ones I should do more of, and use the “Discover more from The TEdASPHERE Globe” box to subscribe to the newsletter. YOU get to decide what topics interest you and how far apart you’d like the newsletters – make your own personalised version! Lastly, there are KoFi and Paypal links here and also at the bottom of every page, please – I’m not here starting a $1200 GoFundMe or something just as crazy because I can’t make rent, I’m asking for a five or ten spot, and it all goes into defraying costs for this site and updating the facilities on it. Thank you!