I had excellent news from my cardiologist yesterday. Ready to think about other things now. I am horrified by the continuing stream of ” royal” baby hype on television. Truly pathetic – is this 1313 or 2013? Who buys into this nonsense?
I thought the Lib Dem take on Trident missiles was hilarious. This small group of islands does apparently need to retain the ability to wipe out one third of the urban population of humankind, as a defence against something undefined – possibly people we invade getting too annoyed about it – and in order to increase our “influence” in the World. As we plainly have less influence than the Germans, who don’t feel this need for the power of obliteration, I do not quite see how this works. Nor do I see Pakistan, which does have nuclear weapons, as very influential. Nor do I quite understand how our influence can be increased by possessing something under effective American control. But there you are.
Anyway, the Lib Dems have come to the intellectually scintillating conclusion that we do need this world shattering power, but we don’t need it on Wednesday or Thursday afternoons or on Saturday mornings, which will be cheaper. Brilliant, and plainly does not dodge any big ethical or practical questions at all.
“Flaming June
18 Jul, 2013 – 10:16 am
There are casualties of course who have our sympathy.”
While one thinks over the best possible ways of conveying this sympathy, I would suggest that discussion of the heatwave best be moved to the more apt “We’re not dead yet” thread. Ditto for other off-topics.
LOL Nevermind, i see the not-a-mind space you come from.
Pure personal attack and not the slightest response to my valid questions, but never mind its what i expected. Don’t know why you would need a holiday — your mind is already on one.
welcome back craig –
hope your health continues to improve.
the military industrial complex, and all its offshoots & ennablers, are sadly thriving while so much else continues to decay.
i’m off to watch the Ashes….from the couch. not a bad way to relax.
best wishes.
As usual, Uzbek, you make a good point. But, discarding any pretensions to morals and ethics I may have for a minute, is it not the case that in these inherently conflicted states, that a hard man, or hard dynasty, usually arises, and maintains a significantly better level of order than we are currently seeing in Syria, for a long time?
I mean, I don’t know how you are supposed to measure these things, but the numbers of killed, wounded and displaced in Syria are colossally greater than anything Assad showed any signs of inflicting on the country, and the spur to the originally peaceful revolution’s turning violent was surely the West’s tacit support for regime change, and the prospect of active assistance, a la Libya, to that end?
“Their ISI/Jihadist alliance has been able to assure the defeat of ISAF in Afghanistan and the survival/pending revival of the Taliban and the propagation of the AQ philosophy/phenomena”
Source please.
Anyone interested in the intricacies of the CIA/ISI/Jihadist alliance could do worse than looking at the work of Maloy Krishna Dhar, former Indian intelligence officer.
Thanks for that MJ.
This is his blog now run by his son. RIP Maloy
http://maloykrishnadhar.com/
Nature notes.
The fields of barley are now silvery gold and the heads of the stalks are bent over awaiting the blades of the combine harvester. There are odd flecks of scarlet from the poppies and there are some very tall wild oats which stand out above the crop.
Overnight, an animal, probably a badger, has dug a 3ft deep hole in a terraced flower bed in my garden, probably to get at the contents of a bumblebee nest. What a shame for the bees. Now I have to make the damage good.
~~
Did anyone else see that amazing Ken Loach film The Wind That Shakes the Barley?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_That_Shakes_the_Barley_(film)
~~~
I see that we have a replacement Resident Invigilator above.
Re dispersal of Pakistani nuclear components –
Pakistan, as far as it is possible to discern from open source material, also stores its nuclear weapons unassembled withthe fissilecore separated from thermonuclear explosive, delivery vehicles, and the arming, fusing, and firing (AF&F) systems. These components are stored in facilities scattered around the country. Although such separate storage provides a layer of security against unauthorized use and theft of an intact weapon, it could also potentially make it “easier for unauthorized people to remove a weapon’s fissile core if it is not assembled.” Additionally, dispersal “may also create more potential access points for acquisition and may increase the risk of diversion.”
While the U.S. has targeted approximately $100 million worth of its overall aid to Pakistan toward increasing its capacity to secure its nuclear assets, U.S. officials still remain largely in the dark about the location and storage situation of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
Nonetheless, even if terrorists were able to acquire a fissile core from a weapon they would not be able to detonate it without either acquiring the AF&F system or developing their own system to implode it. They could, however, mine the weapons-grade uranium from the fissile core. However, given that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are likely to have anywhere between 15 and 25 kg of uranium metal in their core, the prospective nuclear terrorists would need to mine multiple cores to obtain enough fissile material (between 40 and 60 kg) for a gun-type weapon.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01495933.2013.773700
Refers to this in text:
68. Kerr and Nikitin, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons,” 9 (no publisher etc supplied -K)
Now can we stop swinging our handbags, please?
Great to see you back again Craig. Here’s best wishes for a strong recovery and active blog-life.
@Komodo. 10 46am
“…our historical fear of France getting jiggy.”
I thought they already did, in 1066, and won.
Seems to me your King Harold needed a visor more than a Trident.
As for the usefulness of nuclear weapons, here’s what Admiral Lord Mountbatten had to say back in 1979. “The nuclear arms race has no military purpose.
Wars cannot be fought with nuclear weapons. Their existence only adds to our perils because of the illusions they have generated.”
As the highest ranking naval officer he would have been well informed.
On July 8, 1996, the World Court, the International Court of Justice at the Hague, made it clear that nuclear weapons are just plain illegal.
As with so many of the matters discussed here it seems to boil down to the dominant power elites ignoring both common sense and international law for as long as they can get away with it.
It’s up to us to keep the issue boiling.
Articulation of the current bizarre interactions of the politicos is an art, and it is so refreshing to find that you have just achieved that. The notion of not having massive weapons of mass destruction on; Wednesday or Thursday afternoons or on Saturday mornings as a cost saving measure indeed is a brilliant analysis of the mindset of the intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt group of operatives; entangled in a dichotomy between their rhetoric and their deeds, trying to navigate the waters of deceit and fraudulent promissory aspirations.
Sky “news” had found the need to pull out the old Liam Fox, who then pontificated; “to counter the threats of nuclear blackmail, UK needs to get even more subs and nukes and not less” (paraphrasing). The amiable Sky stenographer however failed to ask blackmail by whom, and what entity, thus leaving the blackmailer to the imagination of the punters “consuming” the “news”!
Interesting that in the same package Liam Fox tore into the amount of interest on government debt that will be paid next year is to exceed the budget for education, adding that is what socialists did for this country. Fact that the socialists were busy helping the banksters out, to keep them in the champagne life style and bonus culture these delicate fraudsters are so accustomed to, somehow was not entertained by Liam Fox. Further highlighting his contempt for the plebs by stating such a blatant and obvious untruth.
The last segment of Woman’s Hour was interesting.
The Sleep Room is a ghost story written by former clinical psychologist Frank Tallis. It’s based on the true events of a psychiatrist who put patients to sleep for months and gave them electric shock treatment while they were sleeping in order to help them recover from depression, schizophrenia and other mental health conditions. The hospital was in London and the majority of the patients were young women. The last real life sleeping room closed down as recently as 1972. Frank Tallis discusses why he decided to write a supernatural thriller on this subject.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b036w398 (iPlayer coming up)
It was said that the psychiatrist William Sargant had been recruited by the secret services and did not maintain confidentiality. The CIA at the time were interested in his research findings as they were looking for ways to erase parts of the memories of ex-agents. The research would be also be of use in their brainwashing techniques.
Frank Tallis’s note.
http://www.franktallis.com/sleeproom.htm
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/us-military-and-german-police-respond-to-facebook-post-about-nsa-walk-a-911451.html
Just an example on how tetchy the NSA is now getting.
Daniel Bangert wanted to walk with friends and plant a few flowers improving the top secret NSA Dagger complex in Griesheim, as seen here.
thanks to ed22 for the photo.
http://www.alltravels.com/germany/hesse/griesheim/photos/current-photo-54415988
“I thought they already did, in 1066, and won. ”
No, that was the Normans.
Hmmm, Sofia (Vous êtes francaise? Merde. And thank you for our Norman architecture – a distinct improvement on Saxon.)N
Unfortunately, nukes do have a useful purpose, whether we like it or not. Blackmail. And I’m afraid the only response to that is “if you do it to us, we’ll do it to you”. On that basis and no other, until international law can somehow be made to apply internationally, I think we’re stuck with nukes in some shape or form. How many, and who should control them, in the absence of effective agreed oversight of all, is a moot point.
It used to be the understanding that nukes – or our nukes, anyway – were purely for deterrent purposes, but the current language from PR-land, as well as recent noises made by the US and Israel re. Iran, seems to be shifting in the direction of ‘justifying’ first-use, pre-emptively, in response to the perceived threat rather than the action. I join you in saying no to this.
And pace arms salesman extraordinaire Liam Fox, we do not need more of the bloody things in packages ranging from family-size to Buy 1000, Get 1000 Free. Our posts crossed, Passerby.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/interview-hsbc-swiss-bank-whistleblower-herve-falciani-on-tax-evasion-a-911279.html
Interesting interview with Herve Falciani, the Swiss bank whistle blower. He says that he would like to help Mr. Osborn with his tax havens and banking friends. Will Gideon get in touch with him?
off course he will……
@Komodo. 12 08pm
Presque correct, mon ami. Une bonne partie du mélange est français.
@Fred. 1158Am
Quelle langue les Normands donnent aux Anglais sauvage?
C’était, bien sûr, une mission civilisatrice.
Eh bien personne ne peut pas réussir à chaque fois!
re: Germany has no need for nuclear weapons.
No they don’t, but it is still a prime target as it is forced to harbour vast amounts of these weapons on its territory, still.
Germany has excused itself from the nuclear MAD club, not wanting to disturb/scare the minds of little Englanders who still live in/of WW2 times.
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/dambusters_to_return_to_norfolk_s_raf_marham_to_fly_the_first_joint_strike_fighter_jets_1_2284435
There is a lesson in this, i.e don’t get f…d over by NATO’s arms swingers and logistic nuts.
Sofia –
They were bloody Vikings ffs. Just because they spoke French…and wouldn’t learn our fair English speech*…. doesn’t mean your peasantry were superior to ours.
* Not a single French word in that bit
@Sofia
What language do Scots speak?
The Normans were Norse, the clue is in the name.
You’re getting near a place I can see myself, Nevermind. With stockpiles of US nukes on our soil (God knows what’s in the bomb dumps at Lakenheath/Mildenhall, for instance, but they probably glow in the dark), we have absolutely no need for an independent deterrent – the US’s own interests ensure that its own deterrent will be invoked if its stockpiles are threatened. The question of what happens if we disengage from the US’s foreign policy, or if the US decides,as it may well do, that its European aircraft carrier is redundant, is less clear. Personally, I can’t wholly dismiss the validity of deterrence.
@Komodo. 12 51am
Sauf, naturellement, “supérieur”!
“Ne suis-je pas assez puni de n’être point Anglais?”
Voltaire
PS. The F-35 is a pile of crap. As at March this year…
http://nation.time.com/2013/03/06/more-f-35-turbulence/
Much more, including the $159M (admitted, probably less than the truth) unit cost, on the same site.
Meanwhile The Enemy is just taking delivery of these pretty little numbers:
http://asian-defence-news.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/russian-af-to-get-first-t-50-fighters.html
Like.
= better. Just the italicised bit. It’s hard to avoid our Latinate words, including Celtic and Spanish, which are shared with (pffft) French.
lol, anyway.
PS. The Queen is still Duke (sic) of Normandy. EN-GER-LAND!!
@Fred.1 02pm
“What language do Scots speak?”
Last time I was there it sounded like some rather strange of off-shoot of English.
But if you really are asking me what language they used to speak, well, of course, it was Irish.
It was of course the Scoti who kindly invited themselves to the country that now bears their name, bringing with them the water of life, the Gaelic language, and of course the famous Scottish good looks.
“But if you really are asking me what language they used to speak, well, of course, it was Irish.”
No, half of Scotland never spoke Gaelic.
Speaking French didn’t make the Normans French any more than speaking English makes the Scots English.
well, of course, it was Irish., Not quite. Granted, they’re both Q-Celtic, but while Scots Gaelic is similar, it’s not the same. Breton is P-Celtic, before you mention it. Probably quite prevalent in France prior to its being civilised by the Romans, whose language was also Celtic in origin.
@ Komodo – Until recent times there were two languages in use in Scotland. Scots in the Lowlands, and Gaelic in the Highlands. Neither language is in general use today.
Scots was once perhaps the longest continuous form of English in use in the world. It was the language of government in Scotland in the middle ages, when Norman French was the government language in England. Most of the poems of Robert Burns are in Scots for those who want an idea of what it was.
Neither language is much used today in everyday life. For example, my late mother-in-law’s first language was Gaelic, yet none of her descendants speak it today. Indeed there are more Gaelic speakers in Canada that there are in Scotland. My father, who was brought up in the 1920s in Stranraer, spoke Scots (the language of Burns) as a boy but not as an adult. Most Scots today speak a more standardized form of English with a Scots accent. I am no linguist, but it seems to me that Scots, or indeed Chaucerian English, are more Germanic sounding than today’s language.
Tapa leibh, Roderick. You are of course right. But the above conversation is more of the nature of idle badinage (French word) between the Auld Enemy and the Evil French.
English on both sides of the border has picked up a lot of foreign muck since Chaucer’s time. The basis is indeed Germanic, from the Saxon/Frisian component. James I and VI wrote in Scots – which is still recognisably more English than anything else, and can be understood, just, by an English speaker. Some of the words -“scriever” for “writer” may seem alien, but reflect a common Latin (or-“makkar” – Germanic) influence remaining in one while being lost by the other tongue.