Broken Arrows

I guess its surprising how many things, which aren't conspiracies, are still secrets. The reason, the narrative of our lives moves on, the press lose interest, and the story dies. So it only rang a vague bell when I read a story about 4 nuclear weapon carrying war-planes colliding over Spain in the 1960's.

Broken Arrows - Palomares 1966

By some miracle only 7 US airman were killed, and the nuclear bombs didn't explode (they weren't armed) ....... but the 'nuclear' wreckage was scattered wide and far, with three of the bomber's H-bombs landing in or around Palomares, the fourth landed about five miles offshore in the Mediterranean ... a reporting ban was assisted by the fact that Spain was so poor in 1966, that there was only one telephone in Palomares in 1966, and no running water, so a recovery operation remained secret.

The weapon from the sea bed was recovered. One of the other three was undamaged (its safety parachute had opened as designed) but two more fell 31,000 ft to the earth and split open, scattering waste in the form of radioactive dust over a largish area.

"What they decided to do was remove the contaminated dirt from the most contaminated areas," says science writer Barbara Moran, author of 'The Day We Lost the H-Bomb'. They literally scraped up the first three inches of topsoil, sealed it in barrels, and shipped it to a storage facility back in the US .... but they missed bits. And although there has been no evidence that the food or water supplies were ever contaminated (checks are made very year), the locals want the US to come back and do a proper job of finishing the clean up.

No one really knows how much plutonium was unrecoverable, as the US never admitted how much was lost, but there is still some out there, and locals want rid of it. A local barman summed it up, "Every time the story hits the media, it hurts tourism," he said. "A lot of people don't want to come here because they think the quality of life must be low, that cancer rates are higher, when that's not the case at all." ... discussions are apparently under way to get the final clean up completed.

Clark Kent - Super Blogger

This week its reported that Clark Kent (Superman's alter ego), is giving up his once-promising career in journalism.

George Reeve - Clark Kent and Superman

Apparently he will walk out in protest that hard news has given way to too many "soft" entertainment stories ....

 

Cuban Crisis Remembered

I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 well ..... not the news stories, but my parents reaction - my mother glued to the reports (which seemed to be constant), of where the Russian ships were believed to be, and where the USA fleet was waiting for them. I would come home from school to face parents who seemed drawn. We even had a school event where we had to sit under our school desks when the teacher blew a whistle (although I don't think it registered why) .... I don't think anyone under the age of fifty five, really realises that we actually were hours away from the end of the world as we knew it.

Cuban Missile Crisis Anniversary October 2012

Nowadays we assume that the US, China and Russia are not stupid enough to invade each other, but we are not as far away from those times as many people assume .... Iran, North Korea, and possibly Pakistan are all armed and dangerous, and either have, or will have the capability to strike out with nuclear weapons at a superpower, or a close ally, in their stupidity.

What's actually more worrying is that in the case of one of these 'rogue' nuclear nations, there would probably not be any 'hot line' diplomacy, we would just wake up to their actions, and have to either back down, or instantly retaliate e.g. Iran drops a few warheads on Israel, or the other way round (Israel has the same weapons, but is not usually considered a 'rogue state' outside of the Arab/Muslim countries), then either the US or Russia would either have to retaliate on their behalf, or just accept that this had happened, and try to negotiate with the 'victors' or 'aggressors' .... if the result was obliteration for the victim, the question is, would the superpower ally, really risk 'Armageddon' to honour the treaty?

Its the point we would all have to consider when relying on an allies nuclear umbrella .... yesterday Sudan  said it was attacked by Israel after an explosion at an arms factory, that it claims was caused by an Israeli air strike .... not for the first time.

Forcible Religious Conversion

A BBC story quoted a man called 'Sheikh Hassan Ghidan' (who is styled as a salafist scholar and preacher, who graduated from Cairo's influential Islamic university, al-Alzhar), as saying that he believes in changing society by teaching people at grass roots level, rather than through the violent jihad espoused by some other Salafists - but that he shares the same long term aims as them.

"The changes we seek are to apply the Islamic Sharia - the Islamic law to achieve social justice, and to establish an Islamic Caliphate, to liberate the occupied lands - lands occupied by non-Muslims, the lands which were originally Muslim."

He lists the following, as some of the lands that need to be re-taken 'Palestine, Iraq, Burma, Chechnya and Andalucia in Spain'.

This historical ignorance just makes me laugh, but doesn't surprise me .... the only land that can be said to be originally Muslim is the Saudi peninsular ... all the others were Christian or another religion, and were forcibly incorporated into an Arab Empire - there was only conversion by the sword after that - in fact its the only major religion that has gained its majority of followers by violent conquest, and its conversions almost entirely by violence (Sadly he Christians also did this in South America, but generally not elsewhere).

Islams Original Expansion and Expulsions

With the possible exception of the Sahel region of Africa and Malaya, Islam has almost never taken root via the intellectual winning of hearts and minds ever since. All the lands in this Salafist list, have either successfully repulsed an invasion, or thrown occupation out (Spain or Burma for example), and all have reasserted their native religions.  Others are an integral part of a non Muslim country such as Russia .... what's also interesting is that Iraq is now a Shia Muslim state now, and therefore to the Sunni crackpots, its also classed as non Muslim.

These Salafists are usually very violent men, with an agenda which our government should be addressing now with the Saudi's who continue to promote it ....... remember this is a major part of the Islam that the Saudi's export worldwide (including into the Balkans). One look at this map of the conquest years, shows that where the sword failed, Islam expansion stopped.

Islam is still only a force in those countries where Arab or Turkish armies suppressed the native religions .... maybe we should espouse a violent Christian creed, whose aim would be to 'liberate the occupied lands - lands occupied by non-Christians, the lands which were originally Christian' .... a list might include Bosnia, Turkey, Palestine, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt ... just a thought.

Multiverses and Multiple Earth's

I am currently reading a book by Iain Banks (not his alter ego of 'Iain M Banks'), in which unusually he has chosen to cross seed the story with what many would consider as Sci-Fi elements, in particular the fact that the main characters have the ability to transition between an infinity of parallel universes. As one character describes it to a 'non transitioner'

" ... there are infinitudes of worlds to work with. There are even an infinite number in which we are having exactly the same conversation as this right now [or in which you are reading this blog], worlds differing in only one tiny detail - which might be an atom of uranium in a deposit deep underground in Venezuela decaying a microsecond earlier than it did here, or a photon in the University of Tasmania taking one slit, not the other, in another running to the two slit experiment ....."

Multiverse and Multiple Earth's

Now I happen to think that this theory of a multiverse (or some variant on it), has something to commend it - it certainly explains some events that seem odd. For example, the occasional appearance of people who have claimed to be out of time i.e. from the past, or people who just disappear with no trace, after all the alternative is that millions of people worldwide are murdered, or are able to hide themselves every year.

Its my suspicion that we are all travelling (or transitioning) between multiple versions of Earth all the time, because the barriers between 'worlds differing in only one tiny detail', are no barriers to us. We are considerably more relevant than a photon for example .... but that while we can move between these closely related Earth's, where the difference is more than just an atom (and we are in fact unique within these closely related multi-verses), we can't cross over into those versions of reality, where there exists another version of us, or where the reality differs by too great a margin. e.g The Saxons won the Battle of Hastings in 1066, or the Mongols conquered Japan etc.         

To illustrate what I am talking about, when I was about 15 years old, I got up to go to school about 8:15 am, I saw no one in the house, and I walked to the bus stop (about a third of a mile away), in a cocoon of near total silence - I saw no cars, and none passed me on the normally very busy main road, and while I could dimly hear 'traffic noises', it was distant, and almost as though muffled through a heavy fog or snow (although it was only September). I got to the bus stop on a major road, no one was there, this despite the fact that this was the standard stop for school children, and should have been busy.

 

The Area Back Then - Now Very Changed

 

I stood at the bus stop (just where camera view was for R/Hand picture above, and opposite L/Hand picture bus stop), for about ten minutes, and became increasingly aware that something was 'wrong, or out of place' .... I felt dislocated. Across the road there was a very large horse chestnut tree (the whole area where I then lived had been part of the parked  garden estate surrounding Manley Hall, which had been occupied by a Lord Egerton until he became a bankrupt, so all the trees were mature), and as I stared, I became aware that it looked odd, as though it had been pruned. As soon as I had this thought, the sound suddenly cranked up, almost in a whoosh, people started appearing, and cars poured along the road again.

All this was so vivid an event, that even now, decades later, I can recall it with almost total clarity .... my only explanation, both then and now, was that I had moved to the very boundary of where I could transition naturally, and that the fact that a tree that was over a hundred years old, suddenly looked strange, was an indicator that I had been on the cusp of another version of the Earth. 

 

I don't attribute this to any mystical event, but rather the evidence of physics at work ..... and of course there are other explanations available for all of this, but the one detailed above, is the one that I have felt best fitted how it all felt at the time.

Additional:

By one of those strange coincidences that really make you wonder .... the BBC Radio 4 Extra is this week running a serialisation of  'Undone' written by Ben Moor .... which uses a sci-fi theme of parallel universes.

Scottish National Party Flip Flop

My what hypocrites the Scottish National Party (SNP) really are ....

SNP - NATO Vote - Perth 2012

..... for thirty years they have chastised first the UK government, and latterly the Scottish Labour Party (when they were leading the devolved government of Scotland), over Nuclear weapons, and membership of NATO with its nuclear policy.

 

The Price Of Bravery

In the land that education forgot, where rumour, myth and mayhem rule the streets, a lone voice cries out ..... "give me an education .... a female is a human being" .... only for a the sharp crack of a bullet to silence that shout. Distantly the cries of "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great), could be heard echoing from the surrounding hills ..... In a new low, even for a culture that seems to be able to plumb obscenely new depths of low every day, the lone voice that was silenced was that of teen-aged female peace and education campaigner Malala Yousafzai, who first came to public attention in 2009, by writing a diary for BBC Urdu about life under Taliban militants who had taken control of the valley ....

Malala Yousafzai - Shot By Pakistan's Taliban

Her offence, apart from speaking publicly about her 'dream of a future Pakistan where education would prevail', was to be a woman who spoke up, where the men stayed quiet.

"No-one has the right to attack a school girl just because of political differences. The attackers give Islam a bad name" tweeted Pakistan's Geo News anchor Hamid Mir... well I've got news for you Mr TV news anchorman .... its already got a bad name, and it gets worse every day. Its laughable that anyone, let alone what passes for an 'educated fool', in the land of the pure, can describe the religious doctrine of the Taliban as 'political differences', and is as good a barometer as to why Pakistan is a failed state, as any other.

The architects of the mindset that breeds men like the gunman and his fellows (and there are millions in that and other lands where the same culture prevails, who would silently agree with the silencing a female voice), are not the recent leaders, but can be traced right back to the original decision to partition India into lands where the way of life would be Sharia inspired.

This already maladjusted state, was then easily pushed on to the course its now on by Gen Zia-ul-Haq .... now it will never be turned around. It would have to completely secularise in order to do so .... that's never going to happen as its state is currently constituted. Ironically, if this little girls wishes had prevailed (and lets be honest, if Pakistan spent its money on Book not bullets), then this country could have been successful despite its skewed nature, but its didn't, and now it never can ....

So what education there is outside of the middle-class enclaves is provided by the rote teaching of the Quran by religious zealots, who churn out men with the mind set of the gunmen by the millions every year .... the Pakistan state has belatedly offered a $100,000 reward for capture of the gunmen who shot the teenage activist but ..... killing a child's dream is all they can ever do.

Biters, Bitten

The backers of the rape denier Julian Assange - those that clubbed together to provide him with bail money ('cos his case was sure pure'), have been told that they have to cough up the bond money .... Firstly I am surprised that the money doesn't actually have to be found first i.e. Paid up before the man is released, and not just promised. Its probably the fact that they don't actually have to find the money up front, that explains why so many of the backers of this odious little man were willing to scribble their names on a bit of paper .... made them feel all warm and liberal to get the sex attacker out on the streets.

My how little they cared when he immediately ran to the the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and broke all his bail conditions ..... obviously the skinny 'beast' didn't care much about his backers money, but probably neither were they either. After all, they trusted to the spineless UK legal system, and their friends in Hampstead and Kensington, to simply waive the requirement that they pay the money over for their derelict charge .... and they were almost correct.

Julian Assange - Two Fingers To Backers

The judgement started like this "I accept that they trusted Mr Assange to surrender himself as required. I accept that they followed the proceedings and made necessary arrangements to remain in contact with him" ..... so far so ready to let them off the money. But the judge continued "However, they failed in their basic duty, to ensure his surrender. They must have understood the risk and the concerns of the courts" They have been told to hand over the £93,000 that collectively they vouched on his behalf.

Cue much wailing and gnashing of liberal teeth as they try to get legal aid to recover their money .... no doubt it will end up being the taxpayers who pay for all this, but just for a second, it will have been worth it to see these 'lovers of liberty' squeal, as they realised that they had been duped by a sex offender ... he never has feared going to Sweden, he has always feared paying for his crimes.

The Failure Of The Arab Revolution

The false expectations of the Arabs in their revolutions are now coming home to roost ... but not in their own countries, where the Islamists are slowly taking a firm grip, but in Europe, where the disaffected and unemployable of the Arab world, migrate to 'find work' .... they just don't understand that being nearly unemployable in your own culture, means that you are virtually guaranteed to be 100% unemployable in another, non Muslim one.

Arab Illegal Immigrants - Italian Coast

The fact is that these thousands of young men, and it is nearly all young men who arrive in our countries,  often bring only street crime, and eventually terrorism to the cities of Europe .... they fail to understand a culture in which women may walk around freely without being molested, and people don't like or admire their religion, because they have picked up the idea that everyone has to bow their head to backwardness. 

 

In the end, we are either going to have use armed patrols to defend our borders and our culture, or accept that the population explosion in the Arab world, will result in thousands, then millions arriving on our southern shores .... conquest by stealth.

Don't Shoot The Messenger

There is a book written by Sima Qian, over 2,000 yrs ago in China, it was entitled "Records of the Grand Historian"

 

Sima Qian - Grand Historian

-this opus covered the  recounted Chinese history from the time of the 'Yellow Emperor' (traditionally dated around 2600 BC) until his own time around 109 to 91 BC.

 

Reform US Electoral System

Predicting anything is tricky, as anyone gambling on sports events such as .... oh I don't know, golfs 'Ryder Cup', will have found out last week.  But usually there is some sort of form when it comes to politics. Opinion polls are often very good indicators of what the people of a country are thinking (well, in true democracies .... not the Russian kind), and so we can take a punt on predicting the results.

US Presidential Race Prediction 2012

This map for example is my entirely spurious prediction for the US Presidential 2012 election next month (Obama must be favourite this time, incumbant always has the edge in a tight contest, if they are up for the fight).

Tibet and the Nazis

In a strange twist of fate ... this 'Bon Culture' Buddhist statue (which was originally gold gilded,  and that's how I have set it in the picture), was found by the Nazis in Tibet in 1938, by German scientist Ernst Schafer.

The 'Iron Man' - 'Bon culture' pre Buddhist statue.

His expedition was supported by the Nazis, in particular by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, who apparently believed the Aryan race originated in Tibet ..... my how his little heart must have beaten when presented by this proof positive in all his racial theories. How unfortunate and strange a coincidence was the fact that the sign on the statues front, was exactly what Himmler's 'Indiana Jones' Style expeditions were looking for.

Of course most of us know that the 'swastika' on the god Vaisravana's chest means to be good ... but more generally 'divine' ..... but the Nazi's were rather ill educated as a group.

What more interests scientists now, is that after the statue turned up in a private collectors hands in 2007, it was found that it was made from a highly valuable meteorite. Researchers say the 1,000-year-old object with a swastika on its stomach, is made from a rare form of iron with a high content of nickel. They believe it is part of the Chinga meteorite, that fell in the border region of eastern Siberia and Mongolia about 15,000 years ago.

The 'Bon Culture' period, was a dynastic period, which may have existed just before the current form of Buddhism took over in Tibet during the 10th and 11th centuries ....

Jewish Refugees Forgotten

In another story from that woeful region known as the middle east ...... 

Jewish Refugees From Arab Lands

We hear a lot about the Arab refugees from Palestine, but little about the 856,000 Jews who were forced to flee the Arab countries in the four years after the state of Israel was created in 1948.

Ethnic Cleansing Of Christians

The Jewish Taliban are at it again .... we have remarked before on this blog about how similar the extremists of all religions are (and we include some Christians sects in this)  ...

Jewish Settlers Attack Christian Churches ....

..... but this is especially so for some of the Jewish and Islamic schools.