Sorry this blog is going political (and losing the Japan and bicycle posts),

but times are fucked up.

Good god, just days ago I wrote this comment:

Is this crap about Iran the new distraction? Well-timed to distract against a citizen's movement? Iran, at best, is Iraq's problem. They are a nuisance, but not an existential threat, to countries without a shared border: Israel.

If we are lucky, the 1% has lost the plot; if we are unlucky they'll resort to fascism to get it back. At a certain point they may decide if they don't enslave us, they'll lose it all. If they make that choice... the rest of us have all the authority we need

And so it comes to this:

Yet alarmingly, the assumption that Obama would never be so dumb as to start another Middle East war [Iran] is questioned.

Just what American money, military, or public consensus is still up to fighting strength to do that?   And 'nuclear proliferation'... how is it the purview of the old nuclear states under international law to have the authority to police emerging nuclear states?  Besides, we're looking at it the wrong way round.  MAD works (until it doesn't...)!  America never directly went to war with the USSR, China, or North Korea.  Hmm...  Not my preferred version of peace, but in this world I'll take what I can get.