Who Stole Japan's Submarine?

Great events of history often start with deceptively small incidents.   A glacier melts and suddenly we have Global Warming.  Several gay men dying in a ward in San Francisco in 1984 and suddenly we have the AIDS epidemic.

Or a submarine disappears and we suddenly have the beginning of the end of all civilization.

Recently, Japan lost one of its submarines in the Tsugaru Strait between Honsho and Hokkaido.  They have looked everywhere but can not find it.   They were using this $5M remotely operated submarine to map the ocean floor although some news articles have said that the submarine was actually used to detect other submarines at a distance.  The lost submarine was on a tether, it was not free and autonomous. It is very hard to lose such a submarine, but they did.

Somehow, the cable got cut. No one knows how. They looked everywhere in the area for the submarine, but they could not find it. It did not just drift to the bottom in the area, it did not float to the surface. It disappeared.

Maybe it was an accident and the submarine got caught on something underwater and they just could not find it.  It is, after all, very dark down there.

Graphic from a news article on where the submarine was lost

Or maybe someone cut the cable and took the submarine because they figured it would tell them a whole lot about Japanese technology.   

But, if it was stolen, who would do such a nasty thing? Would China or Russia perpetrate such a criminal act?  These countries are peace-loving dictatorships that regularly talk about destroying the West.   We might do something like this to them, of course.

No, those who would suggest that China or Russia did such a thing are just war mongers looking to increase the defense budget.   This explanation is just a front to hide the possibility of what really happened.  

What else could have happened then?   Notice where the submarine went missing.  That is not so far from the worst oceanic radiation leak in history, Fukushima.   Perhaps the radioactivity from this disaster has caused the mutation of giant underwater monsters.   Everyone has seen the movie Godzilla, we know the score. What if those movies channeled the future of the end of our civilization?  What if these giant radioactive monsters were sleeping but were disturbed by someone dragging a submarine over them?

That is an explanation that you will not read in the Western press anytime soon.

We may all look back at the missing submarine and realize that we were witnessing the Beginning of the End.

I want more submarines !

http://rt.com/news/japan-unmanned-submarine-lost-357/

http://news.ph.msn.com/regional/japan-navy-admits-losing-dollar5-mn-submarine-1

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140129/DEFREG03/301290038/Japan-Navy-Admits-Losing-Unmanned-Submarine

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10603880/Japan-navy-admits-losing-5-million-submarine.html

The Controversy over Zero Dark Thirty

[Foreign Policy Online has an article on the movie and its portrayal of torture in Zero Farce Thirty restating the conclusion of the Washington defense establishment that extraordinary interrogation techniques (e.g. waterboarding) was not effective in general and did not help find Bin Laden.  See
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/12/19/zero_farce_thirty]

We have a major incident brewing between the glamourous and self-entitled motion picture industry which knows everything, and the Washington defense and intelligence community which also knows everything.

It shows every likelihood of blowing up into a big disaster and when it does, it will be the last time Hollywood gets any help from the DOD or intelligence, at least until the next time.

The new Kathryn Bigelow film, Zero Dark Thirty, which is considered a front runner for Best Picture before it is even released is going to say that torture enabled us to get Bin Laden. And Kathryn Bigelow was given access to all sorts of things about the background of that event, to the point where the Republicans in congress are atttacking the Obama administration and the CIA for releasing classified information. And Obama and the CIA helped Ms. Bigelow not knowing that she was going to say this so they have mud on their faces.

Or do they?  Maybe they planned their own humiliation as part of some complicated, mirrors within mirrors game of espionage!   How would we know?   Ok, this is unlikely.  Anyway, back to our story.

There are a number of different issues here.  The first is that no one in the defense and intelligence community that I know of (or have read online) believes that torture led us to Bin Laden.  The second is that the criminals in the Bush administration were never properly reprimanded by Obama (in other words, they were not charged with crimes that they had committed), and thus even though the Obama administration stopped the torture, or we think they did, they are compromised by their failure to punish the guilty.

And so it turns out that the Obama administration and the intelligence community cooperated in extraordinary ways with a filmmaker that was going to turn around and attack them in an area where they are compromised yet, in an odd way, innocent, stirring up an issue they wish would just go away.

What do I mean they cooperated in extraordinary ways?  Consider this: Kathryn Bigelow met the woman who in real life did what the heroine of the movie is going to be shown to do.  Now, the person, in real life is still covert. "Who cleared Bigelow to allow her to meet this person and know her real role?  Why was she cleared?  What else was she told?", you can just imagine the opponents to the Obama administration rubbing their hands in anticipatory glee.

So Bigelow not only damages the career of people who helped her, she gets the story wrong, and in doing so, she helps the case of people who believe we should be using torture.

What a delicious situation.

Cool nightvision image.

Perhaps the result will be that the next administration buoyed by the argument that torture had solid results here, will reinstate torture as our formal policy.  If not, it won't be because the people who helped Bigelow create this slander are there to do it, their career is (ahem) compromised.  Whatever the long term result, in the short term careers are damaged, people are embarrassed, the Obama administration will be under attack for working with this person, and on top of that, torture probably had very little to do with getting Bin Laden.

Thats show biz.

(In a further post, we will go over some nuances here about torture).

Petition to Build Death Star Succeeds

In a remarkable turnaround, over 14,000 signatures were added to the petition to Obama to start building a Death Star by 2016.   The current total signatures is 26,887 as of 10:30 PST on December 13, 2012.

Thanks to all of you who responded to our urgent appeal on this important matter.

See:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/secure-resources-and-funding-and-begin-construction-death-star-2016/wlfKzFkN

The original post:

With only one more day to go and another 12,000 or so signatures required, its looking very bad for the Death Star petition.  It has to reach the 25,000 signature mark by Dec 14th, e.g. tomorrow, in order to be sent on to President Obama.

The petition requests that the US commit to start building the Death Star by 2016.

"By focusing our defense resources into a space-superiority platform and weapon system such as a Death Star, the government can spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense."

To sign the petition, go to www.whitehouse.gov/petitions, filter by "science and space policy" and look for the "Start construction of Death star by ..." petition.

Read more about this exciting expression of public opinion here:
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2012/12/10/over-13000-petition-white-house-to-build-a-death-star.html?col=7000023435630&comp=7000023435630&rank=8