Submarines – LOL. The french are chocking on their camembert following a call from our PM to president Macron informing him the deal was off. The french FM called it a ‘stab in the back’ – I’d say the French got bitch-slapped. And who can blame us – the Aussies? The deal was for twelve diesel-electric submarines, the first to be launched in 2031, and the total cost was 55 billion Australian dollars at the time the deal was signed in 2016. We’re in 2021 and the French company contracted to carry out the work (‘Naval Group’ which is over 60 percent owned by the French government) is still at the design stage, delays and a massive cost blow out already – now it’s 90 billion Australian dollars, and counting. As for what would have been launch day of submarine number one? Who knows? Best see a clairvoyant.
Anyone paying attention to the situation in the Pacific region would know we have a serious problem brewing to our north, with China and as just a tiny example, slamming us with punitive economic sanctions for insisting there needs to be a proper and transparent investigation into the Covid outbreak. But that’s not the worst of it and I’m sure none of our Pacific neighbours are complaining about these nuclear attack submarines. Has France in anyway participated in efforts to make clear to China that it does not own the so-called South China sea? Nope, a French contribution to the region was using it as a place to test nuclear bombs, and let’s not forget the Rainbow Warrior. When New Zealand agreed the French terrorists serve their prison term in France rather than New Zealand, France did indeed take them back, and let them go free after pinning the ‘Legion of Honour’ to their shirts. Talk about a ‘stab in the back’. New Zealand doesn’t appear to have had much to say about these subs but for sure many are cheering – Go the Aussies!
A global survey on how young people are feeling about climate change.
From the BBC website,
The survey was carried out by the data analytics firm Kantar in the UK, Finland, France, the US, Australia, Portugal, Brazil, India, the Philippines and Nigeria. It’s under peer review on open access.
Young people were asked their views on the following statements:
People have failed to care for the planet: 83% agreed globally, UK 80%
The future is frightening: 75%, UK 72%
Governments are failing young people: 65%, UK 65%
Governments can be trusted: 31%, UK 28%
…and we are talking 16 to 25 years of age. I don’t think there has been a time in history when 56% of young people around the planet believed “humanity is doomed”. (Further up in the report.) OK adults and politicians and ‘captains of industry’ – what are you going to do about it? Further delay with promises of miracle technologies, and more ‘targets’ than a firing range?
Twentieth anniversary of the World Trade Centre (WTC) attacks yesterday, pandemic continuing, lockdown, and not much cause for hope on the climate-action front. This morning I went for a bike ride, temperature abnormally high for this time of year, not a cloud in the sky, empty streets, a few masked people walking. Early symptoms of what lies ahead, and already our politicians are struggling, fair weather sailors, it brings to mind the old saying that, ‘a person is promoted to their level of incompetence’.
I chuckled listening to politicians talk about the WTC attack, going on about terrorism, our special relationship with the United States, and ‘how the world changed’ on the 11th of September 2001. Really? The World? All that happened was a criminal act of mass murder and one all western intelligence services failed to identify in time. All that changed, as far as the public is concerned, is that law enforcement and intelligence services gained powers of mass surveillance that would have been to the Soviets and the Nazis the stuff of wet dreams. We would not have known the extent of this loss of rights were it not for that young American now trapped in Russia.
There were explosions that did indeed ‘change the world’, or rather propelled it into a new and frightening era; one happened in Hiroshima and the other in Nagasaki. By comparison, the WTC attack was a brick thrown through the shop window, causing the building to collapse admittedly, but even the terrorists were surprised by the result. The humiliation was unbearable and caused the United States to make a strategic mistake by dignifying and validating in the eyes of many, a criminal act with a military response. It should, in my humble opinion, have remained a matter for police. Hunt them down, make arrests, and give them a fair trial in a criminal court.
That’s the claim made by think-tank ‘RethinkX’. Below is a link to their report ‘Rethinking Climate Change”. Well worth a read and PhD in science not required to understand it.
Saturday afternoon and it’s windy and raining, that’s no bike ride for you old man. Check email, read that sample newspaper I got from an elderly Chinese woman in exchange for a signature on a petition calling for the downfall of the Chinese Communist Party, go outside and smoke a cigarette.
Found in the email one from Extinction Rebellion UK about all the great things they achieved in recent days, such as smashing a few office windows, getting arrested, sitting in a circle somewhere, will any of that change anything? Thinking about it outside having a cigarette, I honestly doubt it. Barking up the wrong tree.
I was in part responsible from triggering a local branch of XR but got elbowed out because many believe I am indeed the ‘mastermind’ behind an international criminal organisation, and those whose faith is not quite that strong nevertheless prefer to err on the side of caution. What I’m saying is that I have nothing against XR, but do question strategies used. Hey – am I not the mastermind?
We know the planet’s life-support system is failing and in the not too distant future conditions on Earth will be inconsistent with the needs of most life. When that happens and regardless of how much life remains, that life will be ‘functionally extinct’ because it will no longer be sustainable. If say the planet is heading for 6 degrees warming and despite the fact it has warmed only 1.1 degrees thus far, if we humans do not do what is needed to stop further warming and we hit 6 degrees, then we and many other life-forms are already ‘functionally extinct’.
We have a window of less than 10 years to take action, and I don’t think breaking a glass window or two in London will do the trick. What would more likely achieve a result would be if say all under-forties sent their their fossil-fuelled cars to Sim’s Metals, and cancelled any planned air travel. Just for starters, and actions such as that would speak louder than breaking glass because they demonstrate people are well prepared to put the needs of the younger generation ahead of adult lifestyle wants.
As I said, I also read a few articles in that sample newspaper and had to chuckle at how it insists the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) has plans for world domination. The grand evil plan apparently is to make the current and next centuries ‘Asian’ by crushing the ‘West’ along with all it’s decadent and inferior culture and it’s flawed political system. It reminded me of what Michio Kaku, the theoretical physicist, said in comments on where he thought human civilisation was heading. That a world civilisation is already appearing and that the problem the far right in the West and the ultra-religious such as the ‘Islamist’ all have, even if they don’t know it, is that they fear and resist what is now a done deal. They are being left behind as relics of a past era in human evolution. Add the CCP because President Xi still believes in imperial China, a poor sod who to remain in power has had to open concentration camps for Muslims, and ban Peppa Pig, and South Park as well I believe. It’s hilarious this mighty empire is in fact so fragile that it fears western cartoons more than it does copping a nuke. Poor Chinese, aside from polluting themselves to death making most of the world’s disposable crap, I can’t think of a single thing that has come out of China in recent times and that would have the cultural impact of say a Ferrari motorcar, Levis jeans, Abba, or animations such as those of Japan’s Ghibli Studios. The worst part is that it doesn’t have to be that way, contemporary artist Aiweiwei is world famous and probably the better known of China’s cultural exports, but just a shame the Chinese Communist Party gave the order for his Beijing studio to be bulldozed.
