Recent headlines focused on a hostage situation in Alabama. Congress is split down the middle over fiscal reforms, threatening cuts where it hurts us most. China and Japan nearly started World War III on 29 January 2013, when the Chinese prepared to open fire on a Japanese destroyer in a disputed sea zone. Why is it people aren’t coming to compromises of late?

In the case of the hostage situation, it’s quite likely a compromise didn’t happen because the hostage-taker was not sane. He refused to act in the best interests of every party involved, including himself, and wound up dead. The hostage could also have been killed: I forgot to mention the recent standoff in Algeria that ended badly for many people. What does it earn a party to stick by their guns if it just means they wind up dead? Maybe there are some principles worth dying for, but $55 billion in defense cuts? A bunch of rocks in the South China Sea? Come on, now. Criminals in standoffs don’t fare well, this we know. But when governments are involved in standoffs with each other, both parties have a high chance of a bad outcome.

In Congress, both parties need to not be ready to “neener neener neener” each other, should one side extend a concession. We need graciousness on both sides, so that we can encourage a functional government. Congress is broken and the partisanship is as disgusting as it is debilitating. This is exactly, EXACTLY the sort of thing that brought down Yugoslavia. We don’t need to go down that road.

China and Japan… the solution is hard. Japan is fading. It needs to step down. Solving major demographic shifts and deep fiscal issues should *not* involve “Go down in a blaze of glory!” as a step. And why should Japan back down in this case? Well, it would be a nice way of starting to say “sorry” for a series of wars that destroyed tens of millions of lives in China and elsewhere. Give China the rocks, it’ll be a nice gesture.

My suspicion is that Congress will make a grudging compromise, but it’ll be so bitter that they will have an even harder time making the next major compromise. They’re not getting better at getting along, they’re getting worse. The USA is not yet at the breaking point. China and Japan are a different story. These guys are already pointing guns at each other, with fingers on their triggers. They are at a breaking point, and that does not bode well for a clean compromise sort of finish.

Even though we’ve got a horrible situation as regards the fiscal arrangements of the US Government, much of the nation’s attention is focused on gun control. Well, all right, then… I’ll join in the national dialogue. Rather than go on and on about how the NRA gave legislation to Congress that left the BATF unable to deal with guns in the very way the NRA recently called for them to do, I’ll look at the outpouring of passionate emotions as regards personal weapons and what lies in store for government men that come a-callin’ for them.

First off, the BATF has around 3000 agents, so it won’t be a coordinated, fell swoop that scoops up all the guns. It’ll be individual visits. So, when the BATF shows up to get at a large stash of weapons, what does the person with the weapons do? If he opens fire, he’s committing a criminal act at the very least. If he coordinates with other people that do not want the same fate, then he’s engaging in fomenting rebellion against the USA and its government. No matter how screwed up the government may be, it’s still the government, and it possesses all the resources of the government, particularly in the area of suppressing insurrection.

“It’ll be 1776 all over again!” I’ve heard that sentiment from a number of people, even if not in so many words. Well, just like our Founding Fathers never had breech-loading weapons, let alone fully automatic ones, it’s fair to also say that the colonial governments of the British didn’t have Apache gunships, A-10 ground attack aircraft, or UAV drones, just to name a few things. No, it won’t be 1776.

If people take Charlton Heston’s “cold dead hands” comment to heart, then there is quite a lot of firepower on the part of the USG to make good on that arrangement. The US Army is not about to switch sides and join with a rag-tag band of patriots that have an aggressive interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. The NRA will not be issuing a call to arms to overthrow the government any time soon – and neither will any other group, unless it’s totally insane. I’ll spot the odd war surplus tank or cannon in someone’s private arsenal – they’re bound to be out there, somewhere – but the US Army and National Guard has got any group of half-cocked 1776’ers totally outclassed in terms of firepower, organization, and ability to attain tactical, operational, and strategic goals.

So when the USG manages to pass a set of restrictions on gun legality and someone from the same government shows up to take the firearms, my guess is that most folks will hand them over. Grudgingly and muttering dire prophecies and vile slurs under their breaths, but the folks will hand them over. A few will go down fighting, but there will be no 1776, no 1861, not even a 1968. All the talk about rising up against an overpowering government is just that – talk. The government is overpowering, and, at the end of the day, isn’t about to be bothered by interpretations of the 2nd Amendment that are at variance with its own.

I remember reading about the Triangle Factory Fire in my US History. The greedy owners locked exits and didn’t keep the building up to snuff so that it would be a deathtrap for the workers. Americans were outraged at that and demanded that workplaces be safe. Now I read of another garment factory fire in Bangladesh – and it’s not an isolated incident – and realize that owners can stay greedy longer than we can stay vigilant against them.

The greatest threats to democracy, freedom, justice, and equality come from above, not beneath. It’s the people with power and money that continue to work to steal more power and more money from everyone else. If they can do one of those moves honestly, fine. If not, they’ll cheat.

Americans and Europeans and Japanese enjoy laws that require workplace safety, limits on the length of the workday, and prohibitions on the exploitation of children. Those things will make labor more expensive and will reduce overall profitability, but they serve society by not working the general population to death.

So what do all the so-called “job creators” that are throwing tantrums in the USA do? If possible, they move their operations to where they don’t have to have workplace safety, limit the workday, or worry about exploiting children. They dive right on in and re-create the terrifying conditions we revolted against. They find poor people and make slaves of them.

The solution is simple: hold those corporations responsible for the conditions they create. We already have laws that allow us to prosecute people for going overseas to commit acts of depravity that are illegal here. Extend the concept to corporations. If they want to do business in America, they have to treat their workers overseas as well as they would have to treat American workers.

Of course, that would just mean those fat cats would put more effort into less-visible illegal activities, but at least we’d be able to end our civilization on a moral high note. Because until the parasite upper class ceases to be so, we will be forever tormented by their sociopathic schemes to undermine all that is good and just in our world, that they might be able to murder to get gain.

The ancient Zoroastrian scriptures encourage mankind to think good thoughts, to fight against lies and chaos. I feel that’s an appropriate introduction to an essay on how I tried to make sense of the latest messes in Libya, Syria, and Iran.

First, Iran. It’s a nation of Shi’a Muslims and its leader, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, hates Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Israel. Netanyahu hates Ahmedinejad right back. The Sunni Arab states in the Gulf region hate the Iranians because they’re Shi’a. Don’t worry about the differences between the two branches of Islam: they are sufficient enough for radicals on both sides to want to kill each other. Israel and the Gulf Arabs have common cause to want to see Iran rendered incapable of exerting influence in the region.

Next, Syria. While most Syrians are Sunnis, the leadership has come from Alawites, who are kind of like Shi’as. That’s why Iran has supported the Assad regime. If Assad falls, then Sunnis take over and Iran loses an ally in the region. Moreover, the Shi’a Hezbollah in Lebanon would lose a major backer. Israel hates the Hezbollah, so it’s a big win for them to have Assad lose power. Even if radical, anti-Israel nutjobs took over in Damascus, Israel would cut them to ribbons on the Golan Heights and they’d be more likely to wage war on Hezbollah for control of Lebanon. Divide and rule.

Now, Libya. This hits close to home because of the recent loss of the US Ambassador there. To make sense of that nation, we need a bit of history. Back in 2011, that nation rose up in revolt against its dictator. Like so many other dictatorships, this dictator drew most of his support from his tribe. That meant the revolution devolved into tribal warfare, with a range of tribes allying together to overthrow the dictatorial tribe. In the wake of that overthrow, they fell upon each other. Libya remains a lawless, dangerous place where there’s been a wave of bombings since August 2012 and an actual mini-war around the town of Bani Walid – Moammar Qaddafi’s base of support – during the month of October.

So, when people ask in the USA, “If there’s a spontaneous demonstration, do you bring your rocket launchers and automatic weapons?” the answer is “Yes, if you’re in Libya.” In August and September, there were a number of political and military assassinations to go along with the militia clashes. The place is practically a Somalia on the Mediterranean. Government control there is collapsing, with two governors of the Benghazi region having resigned – the people claimed they were incompetent and corrupt, while the governors claimed they had no money or support forthcoming from the central regime in Tripoli.

In that mess of Libya, particularly in Benghazi, someone – terrorist, militiaman, whatever – killed the US Ambassador. Given the chaos in Libya, I can perfectly see it as an unpremeditated crime of opportunity. Given the chaos in Syria, I can also see it as blowback. In Syria, the saying goes, “If you feed a scorpion, it will sting you.”

Many of the fighters against the Assad regime are foreigners, and many of them are Libyan. There may be actual pro-democracy men in the anti-Assad resistance, but most of them are rabid, atrocity-inflicting, card-carrying Islamist extremists. That’s why they’ve been able to match or beat the rabid, atrocity-inflicting, card-carrying Assad extremists. Those anti-Assad forces need weapons, and Libya is a ready source of undocumented weapons that can be shipped anywhere without regards to niceties like proper paperwork or Congressional approval.

The weapons and the fighters flow across the border with Turkey. Turkish towns were shelled recently – while the Western leaders tried to blame Assad, the Turks in the area blamed their own government for using those same towns as staging grounds for aid to the Syrian rebels. When the shelling of Turkish towns failed to produce a massive response, Israel began reporting Syrian shells landing on the Golan Heights, and duly responded in kind.

While it makes no sense at all for Assad’s forces to be provoking both NATO and Israel to unleash an American intervention in their nation, it makes perfect sense for hawks in America, Israel, and the Gulf Arab states (who fund those Islamist extremists) to create false-flag provocations to trigger a conflict that reduces Iran’s influence in the region. This brings me back to that Syrian saying… Osama Bin Laden was killed in May, 2011. The Libyan rebels didn’t enjoy major victories until some time after that – when al-Qaeda men were reported to be in the mix. al-Qaeda men are now reportedly all over Syria right now. Is it a coincidence that the decapitation of al-Qaeda’s leadership was followed by their participation in operations that benefit US-Israel interests?

At any rate, the tragedy of a US Ambassador in Benghazi now serves as a distraction to the larger series of tragedies in Libya, Syria, and – possibly in the near future – Iran.

One day, Jill Kelley started getting threatening emails from an anonymous person. She reported those emails to an FBI friend of hers. The FBI not only determined who was sending the emails, they went and found all the emails that person sent. It was at that point that they discovered the affair between the sender, Paula Broadwell, and former CIA head, David Petreaus. Why didn’t the FBI just determine who sent the emails and tell her to quit? We’ve got lots of people with bitter breakups that only get a lousy restraining order. Why did this investigation have to go beyond that?

It’s because it was yet another opportunity for the FBI to flex its muscles, that’s why. The FBI took down Richard Nixon when the #2 at that organization got passed over to lead the FBI when Hoover died. We like to think Woodward and Bernstein did all the investigating of Watergate, but they were acting on information supplied to them by a bitter FBI executive that wanted revenge. Now we’re seeing an FBI investigation go too far into personal lives to dismantle the power of the man at the head of the CIA.

The FBI didn’t have to go that far. Once they determined who was sending the emails, they had all they needed for a criminal case. Motive? Rivalry, plain and simple. Broadwell’s not even being charged, even though it’s an open and shut case. She sent threatening emails, and that’s against the law.

Petreaus didn’t have to go out in shame, either. The president could have been informed of the situation and then quietly asked for Petreaus’ resignation. Petreaus could cite either family or health concerns like every other executive surrounded by scandal, and that would have been that. There would have been whispers of infidelity here and there, but the stock story would be the aforementioned, lame, tired yarn about family or health concerns. Instead, the whole thing is public and Petreaus is taking all kinds of flak over it.

How did the affair come to light? Eric Cantor found out about it and raised a stink back in October. How did he find out? An FBI agent informed him and – oh, wait, we’ve heard this story before…

Once again in America, our secret police have demonstrated their ability to take down a powerful opponent, this time the head of our spy networks. Bureaucratic turf wars are one thing… power grabs are quite another.