New York Daily News November 24, 2015

Stasi: Wake up! It's already World War III

By Linda Stasi

What if they started WWIII and nobody noticed?

News flash: We're in it and we all better start caring. No? Despite the fact that we have a worldwide terror alert, armed conflicts, religious wars that harken back to the Dark Ages, escalating international terrorism - only one world leader, Pope Francis, has dared to call it what it is: World War Three.

Don't believe it? Believe this then: Globalsecurity.org estimates that right now in the world there are 30 ongoing wars and 22 conflicts. That's 52 countries at war or in conflict. The U.S. alone has ground troops in 134 countries.

On Tuesday, Turkey downed a Russian warplane upping the ante of an official start to WWIII to: Very Scary. Yet what did Britain's Secretary of State Philip Hammond call it? "Potentially serious." Seriously?

Warsintheworld.com puts the number of wars being waged right now even higher. Factoring in militias, guerrillas, and terrorist organizations, they estimate the number of countries currently at war at 65. Meantime, only 61 countries were involved in WWII. That's why Pope Francis calls our current state, the "piecemeal third world war." And he's right - with the "piecemeal" being the worst part of the evaluation.

Difference is that during the first two world wars we knew who the enemies were and what countries they called home. Now we don't. How is that two of the world's top three superpowers - the U.S. and Russia - whose incredible intelligence fueled the Cold War, have been surprise-attacked by terrorist groups whose threats they underestimated, didn't understand and didn't appreciate until it was too late?

The U.S.'s oxymoronic intelligence left our ineffectual president seemingly clueless about who the hell we're even battling - or should be - from day-to-day. ISIS? Al Qaeda? Boko Haram? The Salafi-Jihadists? What about the homegrown terrorist next door? Russia? China? Iraq? Iran? Syria? Who?

What has the $635.9 billion we spent on intelligence since 2001 bought us? Oh right, 70% of it was spent on independent outside contractors who got rich even as terrorist attacks like Benghazi were being planned. Now like cockroaches, terrorist groups backed by oil money and rich sheiks who shake our hands while stabbing us in the back, are multiplying out of control. And like cockroaches, each time we think we can bomb the latest terrorist organization out of existence, they evolve and multiply into something bigger, different and more elusive, popping up where we don't expect them with more weaponry at their disposal.

As Lawrence Kolb, VP of the Council on Foreign Relations and assistant Defense Secretary under Reagan recently told Frontline, the enemy of the U.S. and of the world is instability. The president still doesn't get that.

Interesting factoid to think about as we enter the holidays - in the midst of all this war, who negotiated the release of 98 Assyrian hostages held by ISIS? No, not the ambassadors, but the head of the Assyrian Church of the East in Syria.

HE'S POPE FRANK-NESS

The pope has declared that this year, Christmas is "all a charade. The world has not understood the way of peace. The whole world is at war."

He should be known as Pope Francis the Truthful since he's the first pope to say what's on his mind instead of what's on the mind of the Vatican establishment since the Medicis.

Francis also said that folks who sell guns and weapons are hypocrites if they call themselves Christians. What? He doesn't like those happy Christmas ads for assault weapons? What next? Will he disapprove of kicking off the White Christmas season with Black Friday sales and riots? Positively un-Christian!

AWESOME INSIGHTS FROM BAM: BE CAREFUL

The president's answer to the travel terror alert? Be careful.

Now, call me jittery, but is that the best he can do? Apparently so. Hell, this week the Government Accountability Office even admitted that George W. Bush's billion buck bioterror system detectors that he unveiled to great hosannas way back in 2003 don't work very well.

Hey Fred, is that a sneeze or a lethal intentional release of a biological pathogen such as Antrax? Damned if I know, Charlie.

STAT'S NOT OK, DONALD

Dear The Donald: Happy Thanksgiving. We've been friends and frenemies for-what - 25 years now? You've always been fair to me and I to you. Sure, I pissed you off when I said you stood 56 feet in the wind when your hair blew and that you looked like you had a couple of sandwiches. Cheap shots, I admit. But now? In diplomatic language, WTF?

That tweet you posted of the black gangbanger alongside insane stats about black on white murder? Take the one that stated how whites are killed by blacks 81 percent of the time, while whites are murdered by other whites only 16 percent of the time. Hmmm. Thing is? When the Daily News ran those numbers by law enforcement, turned out you were 66 percent wrong 100 percent of the time. That's a very big margin of error - even for a pol.

Two things: When in hell did you start channeling Joe McCarthy and have you considered exorcism?

BENDING REALITY ON YOGA

Why has it become a joke that a Canadian university cancelled yoga classes because Hindu students complained with the way that yoga, which is rooted in their faith, has turned into a commercial practice complete with idiotic yoga clothes and fancy mats?

Antonia Katrandjieva, a practitioner for 30 of her 42 years on earth, and founder of Yogea, a practice that builds on traditional mind/body yogic traditions, says, "The problem is that there are too many instructors and not enough teachers these days. You can't learn a spiritual practice in a 200 hour course. Traditionally it took about 20 years of study to teach yoga ... but five years is often acceptable."

You wouldn't go to a workout class that co-opted kneeling, dovening or repeatedly making signs of the cross as exercise-would you? What would you even wear?

EXPRESS LINES

The CEO of hookup site, Tinder, Sean Rad, cluelessly told an interviewer that feminism led to promiscuity and that sodomy means being turned on by intellectuals. Clearly such a fool won't be getting any intellectual sodomy anytime soon …Pfizer, maker of Viagra, merged with Allergan the Irish maker of Botox in a $160 billion deal. So two products that pump people up merged at a pumped up price, so Pfizer can move to Ireland and deflate its US taxes? ... Australian teen Samra Kesinovi, the poster girl for ISIS after she ran away to join the terrorists, has reportedly been beaten to death for trying to escape. The heartbreaking lesson? You lie down with dogs, you don't get up.