"General: We hear ISIS demoralized."
"Airstrikes are debilitating ISIS and the U.S. is listening to their communications, which indicate they are losing morale, the top military commander fighting ISIS says."
Obviously a few hours after I wrote this the blurb changed to something else:
ISIS Cannot Be Defeated By Coalition Airstrikes, Iraqi MP Says; 17 Airstrikes Conducted This Week - November 27, 2014.
But now, once again, the general trend is that, slowly but surely, ISIS/ISIL/IS may be going the way of the dodo:
PESHMERGA SEIZE EZIDI TOWN OF SINJAR FROM ISIS - December 20, 2014.
Mount Sinjar: Islamic State siege broken, say Kurds - December 19, 2014.
Backed by U.S. Airstrikes, Kurds Reverse an ISIS Gain - December 18, 2014.
That remains to be seen of course as the following reversal suggests:
Iraqi forces suffer losses in Baiji fighting as ISIS regains upper hand - December 22, 2014.
Rolling Towards Us The second outbreak in less than three months preempts all other televised programming. Black, gothic, submarine towers emerge from dark waves in the deep grey mist, events far away squeeze out the distance and appear near, too close for belief. Three months ago came the maps we've grown used to: Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus Mountains. War came, war went, and with it diminished Iran's nuclear threats gutturally expressed against U.S. naval forces by a black-bearded man in a black turban. Now the maps and the experts are back, interrupting what has passed for normalcy, The war which receded to nothing has crested and crashed again in a wave of angst. Every day for nearly a week we have watched, drawing new comfort by a shared sense of dé jè vu -- we saw it before and it went away. Still its bigger, much bigger, this time. All the black ships, black maps, and black turbans squeeze together as the geography of war grows more strange: but between the fissures new words wax of submarines tracked and lost in the Atlantic Ocean, nuclear threats uttered against the U.S. mainland, merging with false memories of cities not yet destroyed and things we saw before that went away. Michael McClellan © 1998 Castalian Springs © 1997-2014 Michael McClellan |
Still, medical authorities are quick to warn against complacency.
One day we may be faced with both war and pestilence, and the pestilence may well be ebola as the following dream may be a warning from 1995:
McClellan (early 1995):
Some dwell in houses, many in skyscrapers,
High-rise apartments, billions of people
Watch screens in fear as stars blink and twinkle,
Plague slowly approaches from far away shores.
A tyrant from China frightens the families
Entranced before screens sectioned off into windows:
Obscenities, threats of war, but greater dread comes
As the African pestilence creeps into Europe.
At the time I wrote these two verses I had not yet used a Windows program or operated a computer more modern than a Commodore 64. I was also unfamiliar with the picture-within-a-picture function most televisions now have. At that time there was no reason to be concerned about China. Also the ebola outbreak in Zaire (now Congo) had not yet occurred ... The angry Chinese leader was in a small window in the lower right corner. News of a dangerous exotic disease was being reported in the larger window. |
May 13, 1996 9:00 AM I have had a vivid, terrifying dream that the Soviet Union was reintegrated and that the old style communists were back in power. There was a deep, pervasive sense of dread everywhere because the new leadership was considering using nuclear weapons against the United States. At the time there was an ongoing war in the Middle East -- one which I have dreamt about periodically over the last several months -- involving Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf. It is a war that seems to rise and ebb, widening a little each time it rises again. In the beginning it mostly involved Iraq and the U.S., then Iraq and Turkey, then Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, and so on. Greece has been involved on some occasions, and so have some of the former Soviet Moslem republics. In one report, I witnessed smoke and fire billowing out of a large black mass. The scene appeared to be in black and white. The scene turned out to be the destruction of a great naval fleet in the Persian Gulf. Also, in the dream was a threat repeated over a period of several days of an imminent nuclear attack by the resurrected Soviet Union against the United States. However, the attack never seemed to be carried out. But the times were very, very tense. Most of this appeared televised at home. However, before I awoke, I was watching a televised update on a large screen in a hotel restaurant or lounge. |
I am quite concerned, obviously, not only with the danger posed by China, but the link to a deadly plague -- a potential pandemic.
Perhaps the tide has gone out again and we have been given some respite before it comes back in. But the fourth blood moon comes September 28, 2015 and with it, quite possibly, a resurgent and deadlier form of ebola!
Unfortunately, for Russia and Ukraine, the Ukrainian reaction, Russian incursions in NATO's North Sea and Baltic Sea and airspace, UK airspace, and US airspace, along with the plummeting ruble and danger of economic collapse (and thus the seed of revolution or failure of the system) indicates a slightly different and more alarming story ... and a more immediate one. Here is another dream from 1996 regarding what may be going on in Russia today:
And that is bad enough.
I finally witnessed the nuclear strike in a dream in 2002:
Oh my God, I finally have seen it with my own eyes and it was terrifying!
There is now no question that the United States will be attacked by a massive nuclear missile launch from RUSSIA. It is possible there will be limited attacks by others, including terrorists beforehand, but the most dreadful and destructive attack will come from Russia.
There had been warnings from the Russians for some time regarding our war in the Middle East and elsewhere. I don't know if we were technically at war with Russia or not, but we were definitely bogged down in a war (or in wars) with Iraq and Iran and elsewhere. Neither North Korea nor China was in my mind, but that doesn't mean we weren't at war with them. But we were definitely at war in the Middle East with at least Iran and Iraq.
We were all outside at night, a crowd of us, and there was this eerie sense of anticipation. It was as though we knew what was coming but were hoping it would not happen.
Then we saw them appearing high in the sky, coming from a direction I am still not sure of. I felt a strange sense of "recognition" or "de ja vu" and it made me sick to my heart. I could see four or five missiles that appeared to be red very high in the air, just below the zenith. They seemed centered together in a tight little pack, and they moved slowly, smoothly, but were probably actually moving quite fast in space. I don't know how I knew, but I knew they were MIRVed (multiple warheads).
"Oh, my God!" I heard a woman's strangled cry as we looked up. It reminded me a lot of the "Oh, my God!" I heard actress Veronica Cartwright utter in the chest-popping scene in the first "Alien" movie from 1979. She said what we all felt.
They passed overhead and behind us, disappearing over the horizon. Then we saw what appeared to be a launch of our own ICBMs in the distance -- to attack the Russians. I awoke before hearing or seeing a blast, but I KNEW what was coming.
It seemed this was in the spring or summer, but what year I do not know. I know this event marked our collective death -- most of us will die when this happens.
I am seldom frightened by dreams, however bad they are. But this was eerie and frightening too. The unimaginable, the thing we have always feared, was happening before my very eyes.