A Fistful of Euros
It's good to find - at last - a pro-European blog! With a quote from the eminent (and now very late) historian, H.A.L. Fisher on the top. "Purity of race does not exist. Europe is a continent of energetic mongrels." Rather fine.
Blogging a noisy and socialistic view on politics, security, and whatever may take my fancy. "All the world now is in the Ranting humour" - Samuel Sheppard, 1647
Friday, October 10, 2003
The same blogger who prepared that article, Mediocre Fred, has also recently written at length on another Ranter target, the US fraudster and conspiracy propagandist Lyndon LaRouche, who is apparently standing for the Democratic presidential nomination. LLR, the editor of Executive Intelligence Review, is famed whereever faintly anti-Semitic gun nuts meet for his idiosyncratic explanations of the world. It was his rag that popularised the Princess Diana assassination babble, and you see his stuff in all sorts of supposedly respectable places on the net. It's the usual stuff - international financiers, world government - and we know what that usually means. This is him on the men behind Arnold Schwarzenegger:
"I would simply say it's a banking group, a private financial banking group, which was involved in France in setting up of the Banque Worms operation, which gave us the Vichy government and those who invented Hitler, and those who were plotting the Nazi takeover of Europe during the 1940s. The same group, exactly the same group"
Which turns out, surprisingly, to be the gentlemanly Anglo-French banking house Lazards, one of the last old-fashioned Jewish family-owned merchant banks left.
"And the key thing are the synarchists. The synarchists are the same. Lazard Bros. in France was part of the Nazi operation during WWII."
Really?
Here's some of Fred's comments on him:
"But America is no place for quitters, and LaRouche has put his hat back in the ring for 2004. He has a campaign Web site and everything.
Why LaRouche? Well, for one thing, he isn't tainted by political experience, like so many other candidates out there. He has a lot of views, which he's not shy about expressing. And he's been to prison on federal conspiracy charges. Now, other candidates might try to hide that bit of biographical information or cook up some sortof excuse. But Lyndon LaRouche is no ordinary candidate. To him, his jail sentence is a key selling point. According to his literature:
LaRouche is the only presidential candidate to have been convicted in a Federal criminal case. As the measure of a man's virtue is often the numerousness and savagery of his enemies, the fraudulent character of that conviction is, in fact, the most powerful proof of his exceptional qualifications for election to be President."
"I would simply say it's a banking group, a private financial banking group, which was involved in France in setting up of the Banque Worms operation, which gave us the Vichy government and those who invented Hitler, and those who were plotting the Nazi takeover of Europe during the 1940s. The same group, exactly the same group"
Which turns out, surprisingly, to be the gentlemanly Anglo-French banking house Lazards, one of the last old-fashioned Jewish family-owned merchant banks left.
"And the key thing are the synarchists. The synarchists are the same. Lazard Bros. in France was part of the Nazi operation during WWII."
Really?
Here's some of Fred's comments on him:
"But America is no place for quitters, and LaRouche has put his hat back in the ring for 2004. He has a campaign Web site and everything.
Why LaRouche? Well, for one thing, he isn't tainted by political experience, like so many other candidates out there. He has a lot of views, which he's not shy about expressing. And he's been to prison on federal conspiracy charges. Now, other candidates might try to hide that bit of biographical information or cook up some sortof excuse. But Lyndon LaRouche is no ordinary candidate. To him, his jail sentence is a key selling point. According to his literature:
LaRouche is the only presidential candidate to have been convicted in a Federal criminal case. As the measure of a man's virtue is often the numerousness and savagery of his enemies, the fraudulent character of that conviction is, in fact, the most powerful proof of his exceptional qualifications for election to be President."
Open Source Politics: Running government like a business
Open Source Politics: United States: The Government Is in Business
A very good post from an excellent blog on the stupidity underpinning one of the most common no-meaning proposals in modern politics - the idea that government should be run like a business. This idea has long legs, especially in the US where it goes back at least to Calvin Coolidge. (And wasn't he a brilliant success.) In Britain it is much more recent, post-79 at the earliest although its real application began in the John Major governments and picked up under Tony Blair. It's this sort of thing that leads to the Immigration Service being told they are inefficient "because your unit costs are too high" - it turned out the whizzy management consultants (whoop! whoop! bullshit warning!) had simply divided the total budget by the number of passengers through UK ports - forgetting a few other things like enforcement investigations inside the country, deportations, detention of deportees awaiting departure. Or the Ministry of Defence selling all the married quarters to a bank who would give them a lot of money up front - but then charge the ministry rent, demand that they pay dilapidations, and require that they could sell a percentage of the houses every year (but the MoD would have to pay to renovate them first).
Businesses generally don't do things that are against their own financial interests simply because it's in some rightwing snake-oil textbook. This is because they exist to do two things - to make money now, and to keep making it in the future. Classical economic theorists take as a standard assumption that firms are always and everywhere short-term profit maximisers, but what successful business really ignores the future? In fact, there is a really good way of spotting the ones who are looking to the future - they are successful now, because they prepared that success ten years ago. (Jack Welch of GE used to say that the short term was just that - ten years.) The problems arise when they do put on the blinkers. Success is institutional, and that means preparing the technology and the ideas and the culture now.
Governments, though, when they try to behave like businesses, usually come up with a parody of the textbook profit maximisation model. You can't spend £100,000 this year if it means £200,000 less next year. The treasury will not allow it. You must absolutely set numerical targets for everything. If your department gets into the papers, expect a posse of ministers to drop on your neck to Sort Things Out, because they think that this railroad tycoon fantasy is how successful businesses work. It's not - it's how Enron worked. In case you think that this is a rant against the Right, governments can be just as bad trying to run businesses as if they were government departments with the attendant conservatism and politicisation.
In the end, it's an issue of culture. A government that tries to be a business, just like a business that thinks it's a government, will fail because the two kinds of institutional culture evolved to face two different environments. Capital is one-eyed - it has only one responsibility to anyone, which is to make profits. Unusual for the Ranter? Not at all. You cannot expect businesses to take care of the social costs they leave behind voluntarily or to provide the rules within which they have to be to survive. That's like expecting a virus to contribute to the health service.
And that's why we need a government.
A very good post from an excellent blog on the stupidity underpinning one of the most common no-meaning proposals in modern politics - the idea that government should be run like a business. This idea has long legs, especially in the US where it goes back at least to Calvin Coolidge. (And wasn't he a brilliant success.) In Britain it is much more recent, post-79 at the earliest although its real application began in the John Major governments and picked up under Tony Blair. It's this sort of thing that leads to the Immigration Service being told they are inefficient "because your unit costs are too high" - it turned out the whizzy management consultants (whoop! whoop! bullshit warning!) had simply divided the total budget by the number of passengers through UK ports - forgetting a few other things like enforcement investigations inside the country, deportations, detention of deportees awaiting departure. Or the Ministry of Defence selling all the married quarters to a bank who would give them a lot of money up front - but then charge the ministry rent, demand that they pay dilapidations, and require that they could sell a percentage of the houses every year (but the MoD would have to pay to renovate them first).
Businesses generally don't do things that are against their own financial interests simply because it's in some rightwing snake-oil textbook. This is because they exist to do two things - to make money now, and to keep making it in the future. Classical economic theorists take as a standard assumption that firms are always and everywhere short-term profit maximisers, but what successful business really ignores the future? In fact, there is a really good way of spotting the ones who are looking to the future - they are successful now, because they prepared that success ten years ago. (Jack Welch of GE used to say that the short term was just that - ten years.) The problems arise when they do put on the blinkers. Success is institutional, and that means preparing the technology and the ideas and the culture now.
Governments, though, when they try to behave like businesses, usually come up with a parody of the textbook profit maximisation model. You can't spend £100,000 this year if it means £200,000 less next year. The treasury will not allow it. You must absolutely set numerical targets for everything. If your department gets into the papers, expect a posse of ministers to drop on your neck to Sort Things Out, because they think that this railroad tycoon fantasy is how successful businesses work. It's not - it's how Enron worked. In case you think that this is a rant against the Right, governments can be just as bad trying to run businesses as if they were government departments with the attendant conservatism and politicisation.
In the end, it's an issue of culture. A government that tries to be a business, just like a business that thinks it's a government, will fail because the two kinds of institutional culture evolved to face two different environments. Capital is one-eyed - it has only one responsibility to anyone, which is to make profits. Unusual for the Ranter? Not at all. You cannot expect businesses to take care of the social costs they leave behind voluntarily or to provide the rules within which they have to be to survive. That's like expecting a virus to contribute to the health service.
And that's why we need a government.
BBC NEWS - Jarvis quits rail maintenance
Jarvis quits rail maintenance
The construction firm, PFI guilty party and disastrous rail maintenance contractor Jarvis plc has decided to withdraw from all its railway maintenance contracts! So let us all rejoice!
"Jarvis is pulling out of routine maintenance, partly because it is worried about its reputation being damaged by accidents caused by poor workmanship."
Well, that just about sums it up. Note that accidents obviously would have nothing to do with the company. No. It's those shiftless peasants, the workers, damaging their reputation! This strikes me as being an insight into the real problems at Jarvis - the top management obviously do not feel any responsibility for their firm's performance or lack of it. It's always somebody else's fault, but you can bet your balls none of the directors will fail to claim the salaries they are paid for that responsibility. Those of us with functioning memories will recall the firm's unimpressive showing immediately after the Potters Bar accident, when they instantly announced an Internal Inquiry. The inquiry reported back within two days, declaring that it was all down to sabotage by mystery vandals. The firm still maintains this despite the Health and Safety Executive's conclusion that there was no evidence at all for such a conclusion.
I recall Jarvis director and Tory politician Steven "Shagger" Norris defending the indefensible on Radio 5, going on and on at great and slimy length about their wonderful inquiry and how utterly honest they were. I just think it's a very remarkable coincidence that their ultra-reliable, hyper-honest investigators should have come to a firm conclusion within two days when it took the HSE almost a year - and that they just happened to hit on the one possible explanation that would exonerate the firm completely. Right.
Network Rail will now take over Jarvis's area of responsibility, the Great Northern, itself. Wasn't that called nationalisation once upon a time? The chief executive of GNER, Chris Garnett, declared that "I think the fact that (Jarvis is) going is very good news for all our passengers". I agree, especially as I use that route quite often myself.
The construction firm, PFI guilty party and disastrous rail maintenance contractor Jarvis plc has decided to withdraw from all its railway maintenance contracts! So let us all rejoice!
"Jarvis is pulling out of routine maintenance, partly because it is worried about its reputation being damaged by accidents caused by poor workmanship."
Well, that just about sums it up. Note that accidents obviously would have nothing to do with the company. No. It's those shiftless peasants, the workers, damaging their reputation! This strikes me as being an insight into the real problems at Jarvis - the top management obviously do not feel any responsibility for their firm's performance or lack of it. It's always somebody else's fault, but you can bet your balls none of the directors will fail to claim the salaries they are paid for that responsibility. Those of us with functioning memories will recall the firm's unimpressive showing immediately after the Potters Bar accident, when they instantly announced an Internal Inquiry. The inquiry reported back within two days, declaring that it was all down to sabotage by mystery vandals. The firm still maintains this despite the Health and Safety Executive's conclusion that there was no evidence at all for such a conclusion.
I recall Jarvis director and Tory politician Steven "Shagger" Norris defending the indefensible on Radio 5, going on and on at great and slimy length about their wonderful inquiry and how utterly honest they were. I just think it's a very remarkable coincidence that their ultra-reliable, hyper-honest investigators should have come to a firm conclusion within two days when it took the HSE almost a year - and that they just happened to hit on the one possible explanation that would exonerate the firm completely. Right.
Network Rail will now take over Jarvis's area of responsibility, the Great Northern, itself. Wasn't that called nationalisation once upon a time? The chief executive of GNER, Chris Garnett, declared that "I think the fact that (Jarvis is) going is very good news for all our passengers". I agree, especially as I use that route quite often myself.
Thursday, October 09, 2003
IDS speaks - quietly of course
The Conservative party's "leader" Iain Duncan Smith was on the spot today, giving what everyone said was the speech that would make or break his chances to survive a party mutiny. If that was it, you might think he was doomed already - but the hall screamed with hysterical force every time they were asked to. Just Tory leader worship, or did they really believe it? And if they did, why did they cheer wildly when IDS said "Tony Blair"?
It was an odd speech - IDS began by railing at Blair's "promises", but went on to issue a volley of high-cost promises of his own, as well as devoting several minutes to more promises of lower taxes. Every so often he would attempt a joke or a Telling Take-Home Soundbite - doubtless highlighted with a fluorescent marker on his script so he didn't miss - and botch badly. His speech writers had carefully implanted all the words (promises, acting, spin, tax versus fair deal, honest, asylum) that every Tory has been using once every sentence for weeks (how strange for a party so viscerally opposed to evil Labour spin!) into the text, and probably into his brain too. But it didn't help. He was obviously leery of missing one of those special, non-spin, soundbites and slowed down to sub-GW Bush in advance of each. Then he read it out as if explaining where the toilet was to a very stupid class of schoolchildren, before audibly preening at his own cleverness. (At least he has been cured of saying "Oh, yes!" in a John Major voice at these moments, though.) I suppose he was leaving gaps for applause, but the gaps always turned out to be much longer than planned. There were two reasons - first of all, his delivery was so gauche that the delegates always took interminable seconds to pick up on the fact that they were meant to cheer, giving a sort of anxious hiatus. Then, there was the way he seemed to lose his place afterwards and need time to catch up.
IDS's style appears to copy two examples - John Major and George W. Bush, perhaps the two least impressive orators in the English language. He has Major's odd, dated vocabulary and strange mixture of headmasterish hectoring and mumbling. He has Bush's cringemaking gaps........... between sentences, weird tendency to put a full. stop. after. every. word. and air of not knowing exactly what the next phrase will be. But it's not just that. He even quoted Dubya! That's like Arsenal taking advice on beating Manchester United - from Doncaster Rovers! He actually used the phrase "No Child Left Behind", the mendacious title of Bush's education policy. In fact, he seemed to propose some of the policy too (vouchers, vouchers, vouchers - do they never have any other ideas?). The other thing he found under a Bush was that particular kind of unconvincing machismo. When he said "Get out of the way because WE'VE GOT WORK TO DO!", I felt like saying "You wanna make me?" Probably because he flips from Major to Bush constantly. He began his Big! Dramatic! Showdown! with the party rebels by saying "To thowse who doubt." (His vowels are so Majory that they go over the brink of overenunciation) "To thowse who deliberate! I say this: Don't. work. for. Tony. Blair." Up to this point he was in John Major/headmaster mode, giving very clear directions along the corridor to the remedial class. But after the word Blair, though, he pulled the lever. "Get. On. Board! Or geddouttatheway! Because WE'VE GOT WORK TO DO!", his voice twisting under load into a curious groaning honk. It was meant to be the moment the afterburners were fired and the mighty Duncan Smith thundered off, but it was more like a whoopee cushion with a leak.
It went on, too - through the curious bit when he devoted what felt like an hour to saying how great Michael Howard was (not at all trying to get him not to stand for the leadership. No. Who could think such a thing?) and then immediately made a seamful transition to a Carole Caplin joke. "Michael, I understand that things are not so rosy in the red corner." The hall gaped for long seconds - IDS was back in Majormode and talking like a Speak'n'Spell. Why address it to Howard? What did he mean? Gap. "I've heard the only colour Carole Caplin won't allow in No.10 " - cut off sharply, still robotic. Gap. Now the delegates began to cheer, obviously having been given a cue that one of their hate fixations was coming up. IDS seemed foxed - he hadn't got to the punchline yet! Gape! Then he managed to get it out - "..is Brown!"
Evidently he hadn't heard that Ms Caplin's No.10 security pass had been withdrawn months ago.
He had obviously been heavily primed by Central Office to have a go at the Liberal Democrats. Both big parties have been pushing the line that Charles Kennedy is a joke (a drunk, invisible) hard lately, despite the curious fact that they seem to get steadily more popular. Perhaps people don't like this sort of media-village robopolitics?
Perish the thought. This was how IDS tried it:
"Charles Kennedy."
A long, corpsing, dead in the West End silence. Finally, someone began clapping ostentatiously on their own and the mob picked up that they were meant to laugh. It wasn't impressive and was clearly heavily managed. Then he did it again! And, dear God, a third time! Finally he got going with some spurious figures, before concluding that Lib Dem ballots "should have an asterisk on saying Warning Contains Nuts!" Oh, yes! But the most striking feature of the whole tiresome farrago was that however vacuous the statement ("Everyone in Britain deserves a fair deal - we must be on their side"), however vicious the sentiment ("On the same day, in the real world, bogus asylum seekers escaped from one of his pathetic detention centres when they should have been deported months ago!"), however blatant the shroud waving ("But these were just a curtain-raiser for this prime minister's blackest act. This government used Dr David Kelly as a pawn in its battle with the BBC. His death was first and foremost a tragedy for those who loved him but it shamed our country - it shamed our whole political system." Does that include the party that wanted war, weapons or not, because Dickie Perle told its leader to?), however unlikely the promises ("This Labour government will never give taxpayers value for money but Conservatives will.
In local government, Conservatives already deliver better services for less tax.
As Michael Howard said yesterday in his excellent speech, Conservatives believe in low taxes - we will always be a lower tax government than Labour!"), however emetic the emotional babble ("And then Gran's on the phone - her operation's been cancelled again. It seems the doctor says he must give priority to other patients to meet Tony Blair's targets. Gran doesn't count!") - they still howled! They yelled and roared! As long, of course, the floor management could cue them in on time.
If you're looking for nuts, you've come to the right place. This lot would cheer anything with a sign saying Leader on it.
It was an odd speech - IDS began by railing at Blair's "promises", but went on to issue a volley of high-cost promises of his own, as well as devoting several minutes to more promises of lower taxes. Every so often he would attempt a joke or a Telling Take-Home Soundbite - doubtless highlighted with a fluorescent marker on his script so he didn't miss - and botch badly. His speech writers had carefully implanted all the words (promises, acting, spin, tax versus fair deal, honest, asylum) that every Tory has been using once every sentence for weeks (how strange for a party so viscerally opposed to evil Labour spin!) into the text, and probably into his brain too. But it didn't help. He was obviously leery of missing one of those special, non-spin, soundbites and slowed down to sub-GW Bush in advance of each. Then he read it out as if explaining where the toilet was to a very stupid class of schoolchildren, before audibly preening at his own cleverness. (At least he has been cured of saying "Oh, yes!" in a John Major voice at these moments, though.) I suppose he was leaving gaps for applause, but the gaps always turned out to be much longer than planned. There were two reasons - first of all, his delivery was so gauche that the delegates always took interminable seconds to pick up on the fact that they were meant to cheer, giving a sort of anxious hiatus. Then, there was the way he seemed to lose his place afterwards and need time to catch up.
IDS's style appears to copy two examples - John Major and George W. Bush, perhaps the two least impressive orators in the English language. He has Major's odd, dated vocabulary and strange mixture of headmasterish hectoring and mumbling. He has Bush's cringemaking gaps........... between sentences, weird tendency to put a full. stop. after. every. word. and air of not knowing exactly what the next phrase will be. But it's not just that. He even quoted Dubya! That's like Arsenal taking advice on beating Manchester United - from Doncaster Rovers! He actually used the phrase "No Child Left Behind", the mendacious title of Bush's education policy. In fact, he seemed to propose some of the policy too (vouchers, vouchers, vouchers - do they never have any other ideas?). The other thing he found under a Bush was that particular kind of unconvincing machismo. When he said "Get out of the way because WE'VE GOT WORK TO DO!", I felt like saying "You wanna make me?" Probably because he flips from Major to Bush constantly. He began his Big! Dramatic! Showdown! with the party rebels by saying "To thowse who doubt." (His vowels are so Majory that they go over the brink of overenunciation) "To thowse who deliberate! I say this: Don't. work. for. Tony. Blair." Up to this point he was in John Major/headmaster mode, giving very clear directions along the corridor to the remedial class. But after the word Blair, though, he pulled the lever. "Get. On. Board! Or geddouttatheway! Because WE'VE GOT WORK TO DO!", his voice twisting under load into a curious groaning honk. It was meant to be the moment the afterburners were fired and the mighty Duncan Smith thundered off, but it was more like a whoopee cushion with a leak.
It went on, too - through the curious bit when he devoted what felt like an hour to saying how great Michael Howard was (not at all trying to get him not to stand for the leadership. No. Who could think such a thing?) and then immediately made a seamful transition to a Carole Caplin joke. "Michael, I understand that things are not so rosy in the red corner." The hall gaped for long seconds - IDS was back in Majormode and talking like a Speak'n'Spell. Why address it to Howard? What did he mean? Gap. "I've heard the only colour Carole Caplin won't allow in No.10 " - cut off sharply, still robotic. Gap. Now the delegates began to cheer, obviously having been given a cue that one of their hate fixations was coming up. IDS seemed foxed - he hadn't got to the punchline yet! Gape! Then he managed to get it out - "..is Brown!"
Evidently he hadn't heard that Ms Caplin's No.10 security pass had been withdrawn months ago.
He had obviously been heavily primed by Central Office to have a go at the Liberal Democrats. Both big parties have been pushing the line that Charles Kennedy is a joke (a drunk, invisible) hard lately, despite the curious fact that they seem to get steadily more popular. Perhaps people don't like this sort of media-village robopolitics?
Perish the thought. This was how IDS tried it:
"Charles Kennedy."
A long, corpsing, dead in the West End silence. Finally, someone began clapping ostentatiously on their own and the mob picked up that they were meant to laugh. It wasn't impressive and was clearly heavily managed. Then he did it again! And, dear God, a third time! Finally he got going with some spurious figures, before concluding that Lib Dem ballots "should have an asterisk on saying Warning Contains Nuts!" Oh, yes! But the most striking feature of the whole tiresome farrago was that however vacuous the statement ("Everyone in Britain deserves a fair deal - we must be on their side"), however vicious the sentiment ("On the same day, in the real world, bogus asylum seekers escaped from one of his pathetic detention centres when they should have been deported months ago!"), however blatant the shroud waving ("But these were just a curtain-raiser for this prime minister's blackest act. This government used Dr David Kelly as a pawn in its battle with the BBC. His death was first and foremost a tragedy for those who loved him but it shamed our country - it shamed our whole political system." Does that include the party that wanted war, weapons or not, because Dickie Perle told its leader to?), however unlikely the promises ("This Labour government will never give taxpayers value for money but Conservatives will.
In local government, Conservatives already deliver better services for less tax.
As Michael Howard said yesterday in his excellent speech, Conservatives believe in low taxes - we will always be a lower tax government than Labour!"), however emetic the emotional babble ("And then Gran's on the phone - her operation's been cancelled again. It seems the doctor says he must give priority to other patients to meet Tony Blair's targets. Gran doesn't count!") - they still howled! They yelled and roared! As long, of course, the floor management could cue them in on time.
If you're looking for nuts, you've come to the right place. This lot would cheer anything with a sign saying Leader on it.
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
Great news...the Americans will let Iraq have mobile phones
One may recall that very soon after the collapse of the Ba'athist regime, a business had started up offering a world standard, GSM mobile phone network in Baghdad and some other parts of Iraq. That was, until the Americans saw it differently and confiscated most of their equipment. This was no doubt why - they didn't like the fact that the world mobile standard isn't the same as the CDMA system used in the States, hence not providing as much pork from the Iraq reconstruction barrel for US electronics firms. Mr. Issa, of course, is the car salesman made good who put up the funding for the California recall campaign but had to withdraw from the running after dodgy deals in his past were revealed. This is also very interesting on the topic. But now the CPA has changed its mind, and according to "communications minister" Haider Jawad al-Aubadi, "Iraq badly needs the mobile system to enhance the security of the country". Yeah.
It'll be more like this, though - not so much "Hello? HELLO? I'm ON THE TRAIN!" but "Hello? HELLO? HELLO? I'M HIDING IN A DITCH! YES, A DITCH! No, I didn't call you a bitch. A DITCH! A trench! NOW CAN YOU CALL THE MILITARY POLICE AND ASK THEM TO STOP SHOOTING!"
It'll be more like this, though - not so much "Hello? HELLO? I'm ON THE TRAIN!" but "Hello? HELLO? HELLO? I'M HIDING IN A DITCH! YES, A DITCH! No, I didn't call you a bitch. A DITCH! A trench! NOW CAN YOU CALL THE MILITARY POLICE AND ASK THEM TO STOP SHOOTING!"
New far-right group active in Staines?
As I was walking out of the railway station in Staines, Surrey, along the path next to the tracks that connects the station to the town centre, I noticed that all lampposts on the way had been plastered with stickers reading "Africa for Africans! Asia for Asians! Europe for Europeans!", over a brief blurb on the benefits of "racial separatism" and contact details for a group called "England First", including their website and a phone number. A further version declared "Open Your Eyes! To Media Lies! Multi-Racism Failed!" (I suspect the person behind these probably is a multi-racist..) One, oddly enough, adhered to the back wall of the police station.
Has anyone heard of this lot? The TUC's anti-fascist magazine Searchlight produces no less than 87 search hits for "England First", but none of them seem to refer to the group (if it is a group), and I can find no reference for them in the otherwise excellent archives. So it was clearly time to Google. Amusingly the no.1 result was for "England's first living wage campaign"..link, and no.3 was for "England's first gay minister, Rev. John Church"..link..in fact, there was reams more good stuff, like blogs by immigrants, reports about England's first black sportsmen, old sports reports...but the fascists seemed elusive. This is of course a function of how Google works - sites are ranked for importance by the number of others linking to them. And that's why I'm not going to link the page I found in the end. They turned up at politicalsoldier.net, a name that should tell you all about it. Here are links to "International Friends of Germany" ("Campaigning for the rights of German Nationalists in Germany" - which weirdly has an address in France) and stickers snarling "The Queer Plague Must Be Stopped", in alliance with some mob from Northern Ireland (the mind cringes). To get to the meat of the story, this lot declare that they are "the new campaigning name of the Third Position in England" and claim among other things to have "prevented two new homosexual pubs opening in Yorkshire". They further claim to have "raised awareness of race attacks" in Oldham before the race riot and to promote the work of Horst Mahler. Mahler, who I think I've ranted about before, is a former Red Army Faction terrorist turned nazi who operates something called the "Deutschen Kolleg" ("The Thinktank of the German Reich" according to its website).
How these boys manage to demand a day of remembrance for the victims of communism whilst promoting a man responsible for some of those victims beats me.
Anyway, a neat little window offers us the information that "The Secretary" has an address in the London postcode WC1N 3XX. There are supposedly further and equally nameless secretaries in Halifax, Birmingham, and Ryde. Email addresses are given for two other regions, but as these have no phone numbers or postal addresses I assume them to be noms de guerre used by the others. Curiously the stickers I saw had the Midlands phone number - 0121 241 7916, for the record.
Here are the WHOIS results for that website:
Organization:
Final Conflict Magazine
Kenneth Schmidt
877 Valley Road Unit 6
Upper Montclair, NJ 07043
US
Phone: 9737443302
Email: jukjs2@aol.com
Registrar Name....: Register.com
Registrar Whois...: whois.register.com
Registrar Homepage: http://www.register.com
Domain Name: POLITICALSOLDIER.NET
Created on..............: Wed, Jun 13, 2001
Expires on..............: Sun, Jun 13, 2004
Record last updated on..: Wed, Jun 11, 2003
Administrative Contact:
Final Conflict Magazine
Kenneth Schmidt
877 Valley Road Unit 6
Upper Montclair, NJ 07043
US
Phone: 9737443302
Email: jukjs2@aol.com
Technical Contact:
Netfirms, Inc.
System Administrator
1054 Centre St.
Thornhill, ON L4J 8E5
CA
Phone: 416-661-2100
Fax..: 416-661-0700
Email: domain-registrar@netfirms.com
Zone Contact:
Netfirms, Inc.
System Administrator
1054 Centre St.
Thornhill, ON L4J 8E5
CA
Phone: 416-661-2100
Fax..: 416-661-0700
Email: domain-registrar@netfirms.com
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.NETFIRMS.COM 216.32.198.6
NS2.NETFIRMS.COM 216.32.198.12
So, the magazine EF claim to publish is actually in the USA. Curiouser and curiouser.
Has anyone heard of this lot? The TUC's anti-fascist magazine Searchlight produces no less than 87 search hits for "England First", but none of them seem to refer to the group (if it is a group), and I can find no reference for them in the otherwise excellent archives. So it was clearly time to Google. Amusingly the no.1 result was for "England's first living wage campaign"..link, and no.3 was for "England's first gay minister, Rev. John Church"..link..in fact, there was reams more good stuff, like blogs by immigrants, reports about England's first black sportsmen, old sports reports...but the fascists seemed elusive. This is of course a function of how Google works - sites are ranked for importance by the number of others linking to them. And that's why I'm not going to link the page I found in the end. They turned up at politicalsoldier.net, a name that should tell you all about it. Here are links to "International Friends of Germany" ("Campaigning for the rights of German Nationalists in Germany" - which weirdly has an address in France) and stickers snarling "The Queer Plague Must Be Stopped", in alliance with some mob from Northern Ireland (the mind cringes). To get to the meat of the story, this lot declare that they are "the new campaigning name of the Third Position in England" and claim among other things to have "prevented two new homosexual pubs opening in Yorkshire". They further claim to have "raised awareness of race attacks" in Oldham before the race riot and to promote the work of Horst Mahler. Mahler, who I think I've ranted about before, is a former Red Army Faction terrorist turned nazi who operates something called the "Deutschen Kolleg" ("The Thinktank of the German Reich" according to its website).
How these boys manage to demand a day of remembrance for the victims of communism whilst promoting a man responsible for some of those victims beats me.
Anyway, a neat little window offers us the information that "The Secretary" has an address in the London postcode WC1N 3XX. There are supposedly further and equally nameless secretaries in Halifax, Birmingham, and Ryde. Email addresses are given for two other regions, but as these have no phone numbers or postal addresses I assume them to be noms de guerre used by the others. Curiously the stickers I saw had the Midlands phone number - 0121 241 7916, for the record.
Here are the WHOIS results for that website:
Organization:
Final Conflict Magazine
Kenneth Schmidt
877 Valley Road Unit 6
Upper Montclair, NJ 07043
US
Phone: 9737443302
Email: jukjs2@aol.com
Registrar Name....: Register.com
Registrar Whois...: whois.register.com
Registrar Homepage: http://www.register.com
Domain Name: POLITICALSOLDIER.NET
Created on..............: Wed, Jun 13, 2001
Expires on..............: Sun, Jun 13, 2004
Record last updated on..: Wed, Jun 11, 2003
Administrative Contact:
Final Conflict Magazine
Kenneth Schmidt
877 Valley Road Unit 6
Upper Montclair, NJ 07043
US
Phone: 9737443302
Email: jukjs2@aol.com
Technical Contact:
Netfirms, Inc.
System Administrator
1054 Centre St.
Thornhill, ON L4J 8E5
CA
Phone: 416-661-2100
Fax..: 416-661-0700
Email: domain-registrar@netfirms.com
Zone Contact:
Netfirms, Inc.
System Administrator
1054 Centre St.
Thornhill, ON L4J 8E5
CA
Phone: 416-661-2100
Fax..: 416-661-0700
Email: domain-registrar@netfirms.com
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.NETFIRMS.COM 216.32.198.6
NS2.NETFIRMS.COM 216.32.198.12
So, the magazine EF claim to publish is actually in the USA. Curiouser and curiouser.
BBC NEWS Middle East | Israeli soldier killed on Lebanon border
Israeli soldier killed on Lebanon border
"A UN official told Reuters that one of its water trucks had been hit by three bullets from the Israeli side. No one on the Lebanese side was hurt, said officials."
Now where have we heard that before? Do they just get the red mist whenever they see anything painted white? Generally, though, this is just more bad, bad news. Forward march in the wrong direction...
"A UN official told Reuters that one of its water trucks had been hit by three bullets from the Israeli side. No one on the Lebanese side was hurt, said officials."
Now where have we heard that before? Do they just get the red mist whenever they see anything painted white? Generally, though, this is just more bad, bad news. Forward march in the wrong direction...
Monday, October 06, 2003
The royal road to the conservative soul?
A horrible experience this morning! BBC Radio 5 running a phone in about the former Conservative minister David Mellor (you know, the weird fatfaced one who was appointed Secretary of State for National Heritage by Major - they called him the "minister for fun", but he was sacked for having quite a lot of fun with a former model called Antonia de Sancha whilst wearing a Chelsea football shirt) who has declared that Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith (you probably don't know...) is (I paraphrase) a mass of waste that should be dumped at sea. Not that there's anything new about senior Tories doing any of this - it's become a sort of ritual for, about every three months, a conservative to suddenly spring up like a jack-in-the-box and vent his spleen all over IDS. Then, after a couple of days of frenzied coverage, they calm down and a parade of shadow (and often shadowy) ministers appear and proclaim religiously their utter loyalty to The Leader, before racing off to catch up on their plotting against him. Routine.
This occasion, though, appears to have triggered unexpected passions within the breast of Torydom. And what a horrible thought that is. Here is a woman calling from - CHRIST! - my home town to say that "I blame you. I blame the BBC and the newspapers. All you ever do is Denigrate! Our! Leaders! I mean, I don't care if he is bald or not bald, he's not an actor like this Blair, with his promises...and he's not keeping his curly locks too well IS HE?" The presenter attempted to break in to allow a second Tory to comment, but she would not be silenced..."Iain Duncan Smith is our Leader and he will win the general election, he will look after pensioners whether or not we are given the air time we have a RIGHT! to..." This time Julian Worricker did switch over on her, but apparently she could not be shut off entirely as the next contributor was repeatedly interrupted by a sort of murbling racket - a mixture of rumbling, burbling, and mumbling which clearly expressed hate although it could not be more closely examined. The other caller was as powerfully in favour of Mellor's comments as she had been against - a chap called Harry from Wolverhampton with a strange, highly strung voice, who kept rising to a falsetto as he ranted. He pointed out that the party needed a candidate for prime minister, not to be favourite son-in-law - a mistake, as it stuck in her mind and caused her to repeat endlessly that she didn't have a son in law. Then up flipped another Margaret to lay into Harry..."What has this Mellor to do with us? He IS NOT A CONSERVATIVE! We are the conservatives!"
What was especially alarming was this weird, cultish leader veneration, as well as the amazing degree of violence and aggression in their voices. Everything was either an attack on Our! Leader! and hence on Britain! or it was distrustful, traitorous, denigrating...for example, here's Margaret(2) in action:
"If it wasn't for Tories there would not be a Britain! Our greatest leader, Winston Churchill - if it had all been about Looks then, whether or not he was bald, what would have happened? We would not be talking here today!"
Just a pity that Churchill had to rejoin the Tories in a hurry when he became prime minister because he hadn't been a Tory since about 1905...or that the top Cnservative of his day, Lord Halifax, would have made terms with Hitler had he become PM. It's also a pity that the Tory basis appears to contain so many people who are quite mad, and that their blind obedience appears to let them believe - really believe - that IDS's new course of doing everything the Tories were against until last year has any meaning at all. The big news on Tories at the moment is the split between IDS and Michael Howard that is coming. IDS surely can't go on pouring out public spending commitments at this rate whilst claiming to be the low tax party without his shadow chancellor resisting. On pensions, education and pretty much everything they have offered an opinion on, IDS and David Willetts are writing cheques Michael Howard can't cash.
This occasion, though, appears to have triggered unexpected passions within the breast of Torydom. And what a horrible thought that is. Here is a woman calling from - CHRIST! - my home town to say that "I blame you. I blame the BBC and the newspapers. All you ever do is Denigrate! Our! Leaders! I mean, I don't care if he is bald or not bald, he's not an actor like this Blair, with his promises...and he's not keeping his curly locks too well IS HE?" The presenter attempted to break in to allow a second Tory to comment, but she would not be silenced..."Iain Duncan Smith is our Leader and he will win the general election, he will look after pensioners whether or not we are given the air time we have a RIGHT! to..." This time Julian Worricker did switch over on her, but apparently she could not be shut off entirely as the next contributor was repeatedly interrupted by a sort of murbling racket - a mixture of rumbling, burbling, and mumbling which clearly expressed hate although it could not be more closely examined. The other caller was as powerfully in favour of Mellor's comments as she had been against - a chap called Harry from Wolverhampton with a strange, highly strung voice, who kept rising to a falsetto as he ranted. He pointed out that the party needed a candidate for prime minister, not to be favourite son-in-law - a mistake, as it stuck in her mind and caused her to repeat endlessly that she didn't have a son in law. Then up flipped another Margaret to lay into Harry..."What has this Mellor to do with us? He IS NOT A CONSERVATIVE! We are the conservatives!"
What was especially alarming was this weird, cultish leader veneration, as well as the amazing degree of violence and aggression in their voices. Everything was either an attack on Our! Leader! and hence on Britain! or it was distrustful, traitorous, denigrating...for example, here's Margaret(2) in action:
"If it wasn't for Tories there would not be a Britain! Our greatest leader, Winston Churchill - if it had all been about Looks then, whether or not he was bald, what would have happened? We would not be talking here today!"
Just a pity that Churchill had to rejoin the Tories in a hurry when he became prime minister because he hadn't been a Tory since about 1905...or that the top Cnservative of his day, Lord Halifax, would have made terms with Hitler had he become PM. It's also a pity that the Tory basis appears to contain so many people who are quite mad, and that their blind obedience appears to let them believe - really believe - that IDS's new course of doing everything the Tories were against until last year has any meaning at all. The big news on Tories at the moment is the split between IDS and Michael Howard that is coming. IDS surely can't go on pouring out public spending commitments at this rate whilst claiming to be the low tax party without his shadow chancellor resisting. On pensions, education and pretty much everything they have offered an opinion on, IDS and David Willetts are writing cheques Michael Howard can't cash.
Outstanding lefty blog
Link
An excellent and well designed blog on left-wing and US labour issues. Especially this table showing the link between union membership and elections. (nb - the states that voted Republican are shown in red and vice versa, paradoxically)
An excellent and well designed blog on left-wing and US labour issues. Especially this table showing the link between union membership and elections. (nb - the states that voted Republican are shown in red and vice versa, paradoxically)
Friday, October 03, 2003
References in last post
The documents I referred to in the last post are both available under Downloads.
So - no weapons and it's official.
The much trailed ISG report is out and it says, as expected and widely pre-announced, that they have found no weapons of mass destruction. All the government excuses predicted in the Ranter of 25/09/03 have so far appeared. Sure, the ISG apparently believe that Saddam Hussein had an "intent at some point in the future" to possess them. Well, given that Iraq actually did have them until the UN inspectors destroyed them, between 1991 and 1998 - this is, as Jack Straw might have put it, an unremarkable claim. And one laden down with a vast freight of if - if sanctions had been lifted, if they could have obtained the kit and supplies, if the UNMOVIC inspectors had not discovered them first - then they might have "an intent". To borrow a quote from Mark Twain, "they found a "clew", but you cain't hang a clew fer murder!" Further, the report - or rather, the statement on the report, as we are not trusted to see the document itself - goes on to talk a great deal about very little. Having been constrained to admit the nonexistence of any real, existing nuclear projects, they also have to accept that the hated, despised UN had succeeded in at least "reducing" Iraq's capacity to produce chemical arms. Given the non-discovery of any chemical arms, we may assume that this reduction is a reduction to zero - but the White House could never admit that.
Further along, we hear much about supposed secret laboratories operated by the Iraqi intelligence service and not declared to the UN. But, as the report gives no detail at all, it is impossible for anyone without the precincts of Langley to judge whether or not these labs were genuinely used for nefarious purposes, or whether they might indeed have been discovered by Unmovic - unless Mr. Kay or his masters are willing to give the locations, we cannot be sure that this is not double counting of facilities already discovered by Unmovic as there is no way of crosschecking with the UN documents. Surely, had there been any sign that these places, given always that they exist, were used to prepare biological arms, the Americans would have given chapter and verse on them? It is common knowledge that the preparation of biological cultures is technologically undemanding - I recall at the time of the famous dossiers that we were frequently told that a brewery or dairy could be used without great difficulty to mass produce biological agents. Almost any scientific laboratory, in fact, could be described as suitable for this work. Again, Mr. Kay does not deign to publish the evidence that they were indeed run by the intelligence service.
The nearest approach to a headline-grabbing claim in the document is the declaration that a vial of C. botulinum was found in the home of a scientist. The report does not say whether it was the organism, and if so whether it was live, or whether it was the toxin, a dead chemical incapable of reproduction and famous for being injected into the sagging faces of foolish but wealthy women. C. botulinum is the least dangerous strain of botulism and one frequently used to prepare cattle vaccines. The Foot and Mouth Vaccine Institute at Daura was one of the institutions involved in pre-91 weapons work - a possible explanation of this vial and the other (but, curiously, unspecified) reference strains found at the scientist's house might be that they came from the vaccine lab and were dispersed for safe keeping before the war. Again, the statement does not reveal what various other agents mentioned were - surely, had they been lethal, this would have been a very pleasing revelation from an American viewpoint? As with much of this document, I have the strong impression that its authors have chosen to project a menacing vagueness where they have found nothing, rather than disclosing their results fully. I suspect I might take the claimed discoveries more seriously, were the discoveries the ISG does not find so exciting fully described.
The only substance in the statement appears to be in the section relating to long-range missiles, which is (perhaps significantly) the least objectionable. Again, though, the searchers appear to have discovered a considerable quantity of papers (as predicted by Hans Blix, who said they "might find some interesting documents") but little or no hardware. There is apparently evidence that the leadership had ordered work on long-range development "up to 1000kms range" (Mr. Kay's words), but the statement declines to be any more categorical, except to state that although some components had reached a prototype stage, the Iraqi government had decided that the project would take too long to complete sometime in 2002. This is not very frightening. Not only that, but the original project was intended for a range of 600kms - or in other words no more than Iraq had already achieved with modified Scuds (the al-Hussein and al-Abbas) in 1991. Further, the report goes into considerable detail on Iraq's apparently continued ability to make the fuel for Scud-type missiles. It says nothing, however, about finding any Scuds or anything similar - although before the war the US and UK governments (and I) believed a few al-Husseins might still exist.
Moving from ballistic to cruise missiles, Mr.Kay can at last and with relief rest on a solid discovery. Iraq possessed until the war various anti-ship missiles, including the HY-2 cruise type with a range of 100kms, within the UN limit. Apparently they had extended the range of some 10 rounds to between 150-180kms. And at least this is fairly reliable, as they even managed to fire two of them at Kuwait of which one was shot down. This is hardly earth-shattering performance or earth-shattering news. The other piece of cruise news that has been heavily pumped is that Iraq also worked on a much more ambitious land-attack cruise missile, the Jenin, which consisted of an HY2 driven for part of its flight by a converted turboshaft engine from a Russian helicopter. This was meant to achieve the hyped 1000kms, but -
"To prevent discovery by the UN, Iraq halted engine development and testing and disassembled the test stand in late 2002 before the design criteria had been met."
Or in other words, there was no missile. Still, we can tell this was a serious claim - Mr. Kay feels able to give some detail including the type of engine, and the level of detail appears to be the best guide to the worth of statements in the report. There were also, apparently, efforts to build unmanned aerial vehicles - one of them flew some 500kms - but the report has to own up to finding no support for the dossier claims that they were being prepared to drop germs or gas, although "this remains an open question". Don't hold your breath. And what's this? UNMOVIC statement on outstanding disarmament issues, 06/03/03 "In fact, one report describes a UAV with a range of 500kms". Rehashing old UN material? Never...
One of the few programs that are described in detail, the idea of converting SA2 surface to air missiles into short range ballistic missiles comes in for some coverage. Apparently, significant engineering work went on and actual missiles were "transferred to a facility north of Baghdad" - but again, Mr. Kay fails to deliver. No such weapons were found. But interestingly enough, in the light of Kay's statement that they were never declared to the UN, www.globalsecurity.org gives three missile types as being "SA-2 derivatives" on its table of Iraqi missiles. These are as follows:
The al-Samoud - range 150kms, and hence technically legal.
The al-Fahd/300 - range 300kms.
The al-Fahd/500 - range 500kms.
Now, the al-Samoud 2 was the rocket found by UNMOVIC to have a range of 193kms - a violation of the 150kms limit - that they crushed under a bulldozer on worldwide television. The al-Fahd 300 was, according to GlobalSecurity, abandoned in the R&D stage in 1993 after some six flight tests had been conducted. The details of the rocket were released to UNSCOM in 1995 by Iraq after Gen. Hussein Kamil's defection. And the al-Fahd 500?
"The Al Fahd 500 was depicted as having an intended range of 500 kilometers. It was displayed at the 1989 Baghdad Arms Exposition. The display was actually a mock-up used for a disinformation campaign that never reached the design phase."
link
So - either it's all crap, or it's another version of the al-Samoud. (al-Samoud 3?) Just as a "And finally..", Mr. Kay suggests that he possesses documents suggesting that in 1999 Iraq discussed acquiring the North Korean Nodong SRBM, with a range of 1300kms. But - of course - none were ever transferred. To finish off with, there is a blatant falsehood when the statement declares that "In the delivery systems area there were already well advanced, but undeclared, on-going activities that, if OIF had not intervened, would have resulted in the production of missiles with ranges at least up to 1000 km, well in excess of the UN permitted range of 150 km".
Really? Well, the Jenin cruise missile scheme was abandoned (according to Mr. Kay) to avoid detection by the UN. None of the other ghosts in the archive seem to have come to anything - and surely they would have been detected by the UN too? If the author of this document had cared whether it was true or not, he would have said "if UNMOVIC had not intervened".
Further along, we hear much about supposed secret laboratories operated by the Iraqi intelligence service and not declared to the UN. But, as the report gives no detail at all, it is impossible for anyone without the precincts of Langley to judge whether or not these labs were genuinely used for nefarious purposes, or whether they might indeed have been discovered by Unmovic - unless Mr. Kay or his masters are willing to give the locations, we cannot be sure that this is not double counting of facilities already discovered by Unmovic as there is no way of crosschecking with the UN documents. Surely, had there been any sign that these places, given always that they exist, were used to prepare biological arms, the Americans would have given chapter and verse on them? It is common knowledge that the preparation of biological cultures is technologically undemanding - I recall at the time of the famous dossiers that we were frequently told that a brewery or dairy could be used without great difficulty to mass produce biological agents. Almost any scientific laboratory, in fact, could be described as suitable for this work. Again, Mr. Kay does not deign to publish the evidence that they were indeed run by the intelligence service.
The nearest approach to a headline-grabbing claim in the document is the declaration that a vial of C. botulinum was found in the home of a scientist. The report does not say whether it was the organism, and if so whether it was live, or whether it was the toxin, a dead chemical incapable of reproduction and famous for being injected into the sagging faces of foolish but wealthy women. C. botulinum is the least dangerous strain of botulism and one frequently used to prepare cattle vaccines. The Foot and Mouth Vaccine Institute at Daura was one of the institutions involved in pre-91 weapons work - a possible explanation of this vial and the other (but, curiously, unspecified) reference strains found at the scientist's house might be that they came from the vaccine lab and were dispersed for safe keeping before the war. Again, the statement does not reveal what various other agents mentioned were - surely, had they been lethal, this would have been a very pleasing revelation from an American viewpoint? As with much of this document, I have the strong impression that its authors have chosen to project a menacing vagueness where they have found nothing, rather than disclosing their results fully. I suspect I might take the claimed discoveries more seriously, were the discoveries the ISG does not find so exciting fully described.
The only substance in the statement appears to be in the section relating to long-range missiles, which is (perhaps significantly) the least objectionable. Again, though, the searchers appear to have discovered a considerable quantity of papers (as predicted by Hans Blix, who said they "might find some interesting documents") but little or no hardware. There is apparently evidence that the leadership had ordered work on long-range development "up to 1000kms range" (Mr. Kay's words), but the statement declines to be any more categorical, except to state that although some components had reached a prototype stage, the Iraqi government had decided that the project would take too long to complete sometime in 2002. This is not very frightening. Not only that, but the original project was intended for a range of 600kms - or in other words no more than Iraq had already achieved with modified Scuds (the al-Hussein and al-Abbas) in 1991. Further, the report goes into considerable detail on Iraq's apparently continued ability to make the fuel for Scud-type missiles. It says nothing, however, about finding any Scuds or anything similar - although before the war the US and UK governments (and I) believed a few al-Husseins might still exist.
Moving from ballistic to cruise missiles, Mr.Kay can at last and with relief rest on a solid discovery. Iraq possessed until the war various anti-ship missiles, including the HY-2 cruise type with a range of 100kms, within the UN limit. Apparently they had extended the range of some 10 rounds to between 150-180kms. And at least this is fairly reliable, as they even managed to fire two of them at Kuwait of which one was shot down. This is hardly earth-shattering performance or earth-shattering news. The other piece of cruise news that has been heavily pumped is that Iraq also worked on a much more ambitious land-attack cruise missile, the Jenin, which consisted of an HY2 driven for part of its flight by a converted turboshaft engine from a Russian helicopter. This was meant to achieve the hyped 1000kms, but -
"To prevent discovery by the UN, Iraq halted engine development and testing and disassembled the test stand in late 2002 before the design criteria had been met."
Or in other words, there was no missile. Still, we can tell this was a serious claim - Mr. Kay feels able to give some detail including the type of engine, and the level of detail appears to be the best guide to the worth of statements in the report. There were also, apparently, efforts to build unmanned aerial vehicles - one of them flew some 500kms - but the report has to own up to finding no support for the dossier claims that they were being prepared to drop germs or gas, although "this remains an open question". Don't hold your breath. And what's this? UNMOVIC statement on outstanding disarmament issues, 06/03/03 "In fact, one report describes a UAV with a range of 500kms". Rehashing old UN material? Never...
One of the few programs that are described in detail, the idea of converting SA2 surface to air missiles into short range ballistic missiles comes in for some coverage. Apparently, significant engineering work went on and actual missiles were "transferred to a facility north of Baghdad" - but again, Mr. Kay fails to deliver. No such weapons were found. But interestingly enough, in the light of Kay's statement that they were never declared to the UN, www.globalsecurity.org gives three missile types as being "SA-2 derivatives" on its table of Iraqi missiles. These are as follows:
The al-Samoud - range 150kms, and hence technically legal.
The al-Fahd/300 - range 300kms.
The al-Fahd/500 - range 500kms.
Now, the al-Samoud 2 was the rocket found by UNMOVIC to have a range of 193kms - a violation of the 150kms limit - that they crushed under a bulldozer on worldwide television. The al-Fahd 300 was, according to GlobalSecurity, abandoned in the R&D stage in 1993 after some six flight tests had been conducted. The details of the rocket were released to UNSCOM in 1995 by Iraq after Gen. Hussein Kamil's defection. And the al-Fahd 500?
"The Al Fahd 500 was depicted as having an intended range of 500 kilometers. It was displayed at the 1989 Baghdad Arms Exposition. The display was actually a mock-up used for a disinformation campaign that never reached the design phase."
link
So - either it's all crap, or it's another version of the al-Samoud. (al-Samoud 3?) Just as a "And finally..", Mr. Kay suggests that he possesses documents suggesting that in 1999 Iraq discussed acquiring the North Korean Nodong SRBM, with a range of 1300kms. But - of course - none were ever transferred. To finish off with, there is a blatant falsehood when the statement declares that "In the delivery systems area there were already well advanced, but undeclared, on-going activities that, if OIF had not intervened, would have resulted in the production of missiles with ranges at least up to 1000 km, well in excess of the UN permitted range of 150 km".
Really? Well, the Jenin cruise missile scheme was abandoned (according to Mr. Kay) to avoid detection by the UN. None of the other ghosts in the archive seem to have come to anything - and surely they would have been detected by the UN too? If the author of this document had cared whether it was true or not, he would have said "if UNMOVIC had not intervened".
Thursday, October 02, 2003
Admin Notice: RSS feed
Due to the continuing problems with my Blogstreet RSS feed, I've decided to scrap it. We now have our own feed powered by RSSify - the link is the XML button down on the sidebar just above the Blogging Brits links.
Dodgy US vehicles off to Iraq
Seattle Times report
Hopes of the much-talked of "revolution in military affairs" that Donald Rumsfeld likes so much rest in part on the volley of new weapons projects that his team are spending reams of money on. One that's about to be tested is the Stryker family of wheeled armoured vehicles, and the new army brigades based on them. The first brigade is going to Iraq at the moment. And many people are fearing the worst. The vehicles are meant to be almost as easily deployed as airborne or light infantry, but with much better mobility on the ground and fighting power. It all goes back originally to General Eric Shinseki, the army chief of staff, who had this brainwave in 1999 after the fiasco of US army movement to Kosovo. A specification was drawn up for a family of eight wheeled vehicles capable of being deployed by C130 aircraft for 1000 miles, carrying 11 soldiers each as a personnel carrier or a variety of specialist tasks and capable of withstanding gunfire up to 14.5mm calibre and rocket propelled grenades. So as not to need tank support, one variant would carry a 105mm gun turret. All would be equipped with very advanced electronic gubbins.
And here they are...but the armour to keep RPGs out isn't ready, and the ones going to Iraq are being wrapped in an improvised wire mesh screen as a sort of once-only protection. And they are so heavy that they can't be transported in C130s with their fuel and ammunition - the big-gun one can't be at all. They tend to get stuck off the road, and they are awkward on it, being the size of a bus. The big gun version can't be fired near friendly soldiers because the muzzle flash is so vicious they might be killed. And when they took the muzzle brake off to cure that, the recoil wrecked the vehicles. In fact, you might as well look at the Congressional report into the whole sorry mess - it's in the Download section.
Hopes of the much-talked of "revolution in military affairs" that Donald Rumsfeld likes so much rest in part on the volley of new weapons projects that his team are spending reams of money on. One that's about to be tested is the Stryker family of wheeled armoured vehicles, and the new army brigades based on them. The first brigade is going to Iraq at the moment. And many people are fearing the worst. The vehicles are meant to be almost as easily deployed as airborne or light infantry, but with much better mobility on the ground and fighting power. It all goes back originally to General Eric Shinseki, the army chief of staff, who had this brainwave in 1999 after the fiasco of US army movement to Kosovo. A specification was drawn up for a family of eight wheeled vehicles capable of being deployed by C130 aircraft for 1000 miles, carrying 11 soldiers each as a personnel carrier or a variety of specialist tasks and capable of withstanding gunfire up to 14.5mm calibre and rocket propelled grenades. So as not to need tank support, one variant would carry a 105mm gun turret. All would be equipped with very advanced electronic gubbins.
And here they are...but the armour to keep RPGs out isn't ready, and the ones going to Iraq are being wrapped in an improvised wire mesh screen as a sort of once-only protection. And they are so heavy that they can't be transported in C130s with their fuel and ammunition - the big-gun one can't be at all. They tend to get stuck off the road, and they are awkward on it, being the size of a bus. The big gun version can't be fired near friendly soldiers because the muzzle flash is so vicious they might be killed. And when they took the muzzle brake off to cure that, the recoil wrecked the vehicles. In fact, you might as well look at the Congressional report into the whole sorry mess - it's in the Download section.
Hazards Magazine
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
That 727 story redux
If you think back a while, the Ranter covered a story concerning a Boeing 727 tanker which had gone missing from Angola, resulting in a terrorism scare. I was rather sceptical, and when a bulletin board story came up suggesting that it had been located in Beirut after being repossessed I got quite smug, publicly! Recently though, the story has come to life again as they may have got the wrong aircraft (doh!). What's especially interesting are these two links posted by a user on this BB. You'll notice that the seller of the plane in the second link below is the same man as the convicted dealer in fake aircraft parts in the first. Has it perhaps been broken up for spares on the black market?
1996 Business Week story
Sales details
1996 Business Week story
Sales details
Hussein's Weapons May Have Been Bluff (washingtonpost.com)
washingtonpost.com: "With no chemical or biological weapons yet found in Iraq, the U.S. official in charge of the search for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction is pursuing the possibility that the Iraqi leader was bluffing, pretending he had distributed them to his most loyal commanders to deter the United States from invading.
Such a possibility is one element in the interim report that David Kay, who heads the 1,200-person, CIA-led team in Iraq, will describe before the House and Senate intelligence committees on Thursday, according to people familiar with his planned testimony. "
Such a possibility is one element in the interim report that David Kay, who heads the 1,200-person, CIA-led team in Iraq, will describe before the House and Senate intelligence committees on Thursday, according to people familiar with his planned testimony. "
Justice Dept. Launches Criminal Probe of Leak (washingtonpost.com)
Link: "But on July 22, Newsday reported: 'Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. 'I didn't dig it out, it was given to me,' he said. 'They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it.' " It's uncannily similar...
BBC NEWS Blair defiant ahead of Iraq debate
Blair defiant ahead of Iraq debate
Well, they've warmed up with a bashing for the government on foundation hospitals this morning...although, mind you, Blair took the super-democratic option and conceded, avoiding TV pix of furious delegates waving their party cards on a card vote.
Well, they've warmed up with a bashing for the government on foundation hospitals this morning...although, mind you, Blair took the super-democratic option and conceded, avoiding TV pix of furious delegates waving their party cards on a card vote.
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