In the past couple of days I've been indulging in some really wild high octane speculation, and I want to do the same today by recalling a story I've referred to before, and which has again been brought to my attention by G.B.

You'll recall that a strange series of events occurred prior to North Korea literally "coming to the table" and those historic meetings between Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump. There were all sorts of "preparatory events" if one is willing to indulge in some speculative dot-connecting. For example, there was the explosion at the Chinese chemical plant in Tianjin, an explosion that I blogged about because of its inherently peculiar signature. You might recall that pictures were taken of the site after the explosion showing a remarkably deep crater. Indeed, the crater was more like a narrow cone than the type of crater that would result from a chemical explosion. This led some on the internet, me included, to speculate that perhaps the plant had been taken out by a so-called "rod of God" kinetic weapon launched from space. Many speculated that this was the USA "sending messages" to China, but I was a bit more skeptical of the "who" than the "what", though I entertained it as a possibility.

Then came the earthquakes near North Korea's nuclear facilities. You might recall that this collapsed the mountain where much work was carried out, and we were told that it was "tired mountain syndrome," i.e., that the North Koreans had so honeycombed the mountain with tunnels and galleries that the earthquake collapsed it. As tensions between the USA and that country mounted, Mr. Trump's rhetoric became very bellicose.

And then there was this very strange event:

And in this article from 2017, there is this:

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis hinted at using a kinetic weapon on Tuesday while discussing tensions with North Korea when he made a Freudian slip. Mattis was asked whether there was “any military option the US can take with North Korea that would not put Seoul at grave risk,” Mattis responded, “Yes, there are, but I will not go into details.” Later during the press conference, another reporter questioned Mattis and caught him off-guard: “Just to clarify, you said that there were possible military options that would not create a grave risk to Seoul,” a reporter asked. “Are we talking kinetic options as well?” “Yes, I don’t want to go into that,” Mattis responded.

What Mattis was referring to was this system, outlined later in the article:

However, the U.S. also has other kinetic weapons in its arsenal that would allow Trump to “totally destroy North Korea” — one of weapons system is the “Rods from God.” What is the Rods from God? The “Rods from God” is a part of the directed energy weapon family; it’s a kinetic energy weapon. The rods are directed munitions, the higher you are (the greater your distance from the planet), the greater the kinetic energy you have. In 2004, published in Popular Science, Eric Adams writes: A pair of satellites orbiting several hundred miles above the Earth would serve as a weapons system. One functions as the targeting and communications platform while the other carries numerous tungsten rods–up to 20 feet in length and a foot in diameter–that it can drop on targets with less than 15 minutes’ notice. When instructed from the ground, the targeting satellite commands its partner to drop one of its darts. The guided rods enter the atmosphere, protected by a thermal coating, traveling at 36,000 feet per second–comparable to the speed of a meteor. The result: complete devastation of the target, even if it’s buried deep underground. The two-platform configuration permits the weapon to be “reloaded” by just launching a new set of rods, rather than replacing the entire system.

In the final analysis Mattis' apparently inadvertent answer to the reporter's question is capable of two explanations: (1) He was deliberately putting out disinformation to the effect that the USA has already deployed such weapons in space, when it really hadn't, in order to bluff the North Koreans and force them to the table, or (2) he was admitting, apparently inadvertently, that it already has them and has already deployed them. Either way, if the intention was to force the North Koreans to the table, it worked, and for a very simple reason: no nation would want to take the gamble that the USA was not bluffing, not even North Korea.

Which brings us to Iran and a strange pattern in evidence once again. During the recent dramatic increase following the US drone attack on General Sulemeini, an earthquake occurred near that country's reactor facility. That could be merely a coincidence, as Iran is in an earthquake "hot zone," and tremors at or near the facility are a common occurrence. But the occurrence of a strong quake in the context of political tensions and events also fits another pattern that we've seen at work before: sell offs of Indonesian sovereign bonds without any explanation, and then, a week later, an earthquake and the dreadful Indonesian tsunami. Then there was the new government in Japan, requests for the USA to shut down its base in Okinawa, and the then US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' threat to Japan to change course, or there would be dire consequences. Then came the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami. These types of events have led other researchers and I to posit the hypothesis that "natural events" in highly charged political contexts are probably not natural events, but the use of exotic technologies to send messages.

If this whole line of high octane speculation be true, then hovering in the background of the current tensions is General Mattis' remark, which no doubt the mullahs in Tehran are quietly and covertly pondering. And that quiet pondering might issue in "sudden and inexplicable changes of direction" just as it apparently did in North Korea's case.

And there's another party probably watching all these developments in Beijing, because, after all, to build out silk roads and railroads across Eurasia, there's one overriding problem: Railroads are permanent features on the landscape, and can thus be pinpointed for interdiction, and rods of God would certainly do the trick.

Just a thought.

See you on the flip side...