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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

25 April - Another Air Defence Debacle in Progress

The Helmet-Mounted Display System developed fo...The Helmet-Mounted Display System developed for the F-35 Lightning II (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
F-35B cutaway with LiftFanF-35B cutaway with LiftFan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning IILockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II (Photo credit: james_gordon_los_angeles)
Lockheed Martin, F-35, Lightning IILockheed Martin, F-35, Lightning II (Photo credit: San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives)

Why Does Canada Need a Hyper-Expensive Light Bomber?

Just what exactly is the F-35?  The spin is that it is a one-size-fits-all warplane.   You name it, the F-35 can do it.   Well it can't and, what's more, it was never designed for that.

.....if you eliminate the supposed stealth advantage you're left with a pretty sad, overpriced, underperformer.  The F-35's stealth comes partly from its shape, partly from the materials used, partly from electronics systems.   But the same shape that helps deflect enemy radar waves limits the aircraft's speed, climb rate and agility.   Those are things the F-35 sacrifices to have a stealthy shape.   And, because stealth demands that everything it needs for a mission be carried internally, the F-35 sacrifices both range (fuel load) and payload (weapons).   In fact the F-35 sacrifices every quality that defines a great warplane for the sake of a stealth capability that no one is willing to guarantee.  Is this deal beginning to sound a little thin?

....we share with the Americans a responsibility for mutual defence in the air and space over North America.  One aspect of this is patrolling and defending the sovereignty of our airspace.   Given the vastness and miniscule population of Canada's north, that dictates an aircraft that is fast, long range, reliable and very combat capable.   The F-35 simply doesn't fit that bill, not even close.  It has but one engine which is completely unsuitable for use over such a sparsely populated area with such extreme climate challenges.  It doesn't go very far and especially if it has to go far fast. 

....e share with the Americans a responsibility for mutual defence in the air and space over North America.  One aspect of this is patrolling and defending the sovereignty of our airspace.   Given the vastness and miniscule population of Canada's north, that dictates an aircraft that is fast, long range, reliable and very combat capable.   The F-35 simply doesn't fit that bill, not even close.  It has but one engine which is completely unsuitable for use over such a sparsely populated area with such extreme climate challenges.  It doesn't go very far and especially if it has to go far fast. 

Wanita MCA Penang: Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng conceals telling the full truth – RM600mil state debt handed over to federal govt

 ( Speech at business forum by Lim Guan Eng )

Malaysian Chinese Association Newsroom 

 

The social media peace corps

No amount of PR or rebranding techniques can address the primary goal of neutralising anti-American sentiment.

 

We Come in #Peace! #Listening #Seriously 

;)the foreign policy message had not changed. And here is where the problem lies: our public diplomacy strategy continues to be divorced from our foreign policy. What the State Department either fails to realize or refuses to address is that no amount of PR or rebranding techniques can address the primary goal of neutralizing anti-American sentiment because the problem is not that Arabs don’t get the American message, but rather that they get it loud and clear every time the United States chooses to support oppressive regimes instead of promoting human rights.

( No problem at all. Sending mixed messages sows confusion among domestic pundits 'analyzing' the situation. )

Dear all members of the B.C. Liberal Government, it has come to the attention of all British Columbia citizens that your previous leader Gordon Muir Campbell signed a deal in a secretive manner that surrendered British Columbian`s sovereignty and control over major contentious industrial projects to the Federal Government. That secretive agreement signed on 21st day of _June, 2010.

British Columbians have been wondering why the current leadership and administration has refused to take a position on and or even submit an application for intervener status on Enbridge`s Northern Gateway pipeline, that riddle has been solved...


Pursuant to this secretive agreement...The B.C. Government is unable to apply for intervenor status, clearly Christy Clark and members of cabinet were aware of the reason for staying silent on Enbridge, they had no legal grounds to make such an application, those rights were ceded.


The question I pose to all B.C. Liberal MLAs, especially backbenchers...How many of you were aware of this secretive agreement, were you told ahead of time, were you told at all, if you weren`t told and you discovered this information in the same fashion as British Columbia`s populous, through Robyn Allen`s breaking news..


Are you as shocked as the rest of us, can you defend this agreement, in light of Stephen Harper`s and Joe Oliver`s obsession to Enbridge`s contentious project, in light of the Federal Government demonizing and threatening British Columbia`s environmental leaders, badgering British Columbia`s majority, selling out British Columbia`s sovereignty.


When this project is rammed through, when the inevitable inland spills happen, when a super-tanker crashes in Canada`s most treacherous, roughest and windiest waterway and coats thousands of kilometers in oil, ruins a huge swath of our pristine Northern coast for generations, when species vanish for eternity, will you be able to live with yourself?

Liberal Party Organizing out of Premier's Office

April 20

Why Arab women still 'have no voice' 

 Anonymous hacks Chinese websites

 History of an occupation

American Guns: Killing Syrians and Destabalizing Middle East

The hypocrisy of US Foreign Policy is once again drawn into the spotlight as the worlds largest weapons exporter attempts to take the moral high-ground against brutal dictators armed with American weapons.
News Junkie Post’s Editor-in-Chief, Gilbert Mercier, joins US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, as well as Chris Hedges and WarIsBusiness.com Editor Corey Pein to explore the deadly escalation. Profit fueled motivations that exacerbate the geopolitical games being played around Iran take center stage in this dynamic discussion.

The passion of Bradley Manning

Many have questioned Manning's sanity for allegedly releasing US military files, but who's questioning military tactics?

 Madar argues at the start of the book that Manning is guilty of precisely "what Barack Obama swore he would do on coming into office": increase governmental transparency and highlight the constructive role of whistleblowers in society.

One has to wonder about the implications for said society when the entire political and media establishment has unleashed its impromptu expertise in the field of psychoanalysis against Manning while not even the liberal-left  TM Reg'd  cares to scrutinise a president who, as Madar writes, "has preserved, streamlined and often intensified his predecessor's bellicose foreign policies" and "has presided over more leaks prosecutions under the Espionage Act of 1917 - a use that the statute's authors never intended* - than all his predecessors combined". 

* The point is moot and unprovable

watch the five minute CANSIM tutorial.Strategic Thoughts Mar 31

Who am I, Who are You

I discover that the only function of this blog is to alert one of my children that I am still alive - not that she actually reads it, apparently it is enough just to see new posts appearing regularly.

 Google has revamped the Blogger interface. A devolution so astounding ... well ... these youngsters can't spell (and don't care) and can't read (and don't notice) so it should come as no surprise that the software they write is ... What Ever.

Is the British Potato in Peril?

Mad cow disease found in US

Scientists believe the disease was caused by using infected parts of cattle to make feed for other cattle.

 ( As in Canada, the disease is found in dairy cattle )

Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists

Darla Rooks, a lifelong fisherperson from Port Sulfur, Louisiana, told Al Jazeera she is finding crabs "with holes in their shells, shells with all the points burned off so all the spikes on their shells and claws are gone, misshapen shells, and crabs that are dying from within … they are still alive, but you open them up and they smell like they've been dead for a week".
Rooks is also finding eyeless shrimp, shrimp with abnormal growths, female shrimp with their babies still attached to them, and shrimp with oiled gills.
"We also seeing eyeless fish, and fish lacking even eye-sockets, and fish with lesions, fish without covers over their gills, and others with large pink masses hanging off their eyes and gills."
Rooks, who grew up fishing with her parents, said she had never seen such things in these waters, and her seafood catch last year was "ten per cent what it normally is".
Given that the Gulf of Mexico provides more than 40 per cent of all the seafood caught in the continental US, this phenomenon does not bode well for the region, or the country
.....
According to Felder, there is an even higher incidence of shell disease with crabs in deeper waters.
"My fear is that these prior incidents of lesions might be traceable to microbes, and my questions are, did we alter microbial populations in the vicinity of the well by introducing this massive amount of petroleum and in so doing cause microbes to attack things other than oil?"
One hypothesis he has is that the waxy coatings around crab shells are being impaired by anthropogenic chemicals or microbes resulting from such chemicals.
"You create a site where a lesion can occur, and microbes attack. We see them with big black lesions, around where their appendages fall off, and all that is left is a big black ring."
Felder added that his team is continuing to document the incidents: "And from what we can tell, there is a far higher incidence we're finding after the spill."
"We are also seeing much lower diversity of crustaceans," he said. "We don't have the same number of species as we did before [the spill]."

The students and staff of Bella Bella Community School stand in opposition to the proposed Enbridge Pipeline that would bring supertankers filled with oil along the coast of the Great Bear Rainforest, jeopardizing the environment upon which we rely for sustenance, both physical and spiritual.

Culled from articles published in 2011, these are real experiments were funded by the NIH, approved by federally mandated oversight committees, and published in several of the literally thousands of peer-reviewed journals. These experiments – the cream of the crop – show that your tax dollars and animals’ lives are frivolously wasted on research that adds nothing to medical progress and tells us nothing we care to know - or didn't know already. One can only wonder what happens in the experiments that don't get published...
But how do these experiments get funded? A fundamentally broken NIH funding system
 

10 Middle class jobs that will vanish by 2018

Working Hard All Your Life and Saving: Why It Hasn’t Worked Out

with interest rates at historic lows, savers who do not want risk and who invest in bank CDs or GICs are earning next to nothing on their savings. To compound the problem, savers are earning interest that is below the inflation rate, which not only wipes out the little interest they earn, but also eats into their savings, because their savings have not kept up with the inflation rate. How can the U.S. experience an economic recovery in such an environment?

300 km/h motorcycle ride shocks Vancouver Island police

 

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