To be America's friend ...

'It may be dangerous to be America's enemy but to be America's friend is fatal.'
Kissinger.

A chum wrote in an email

“I feel so sorry for the Ukrainians and somewhat concerned for us Europeans, not least because I’m not sure whether we need to be more concerned about the Russians, or the Americans in our midst! “


I replied

The Uke's have been poorly served by their leaders.  They have a history of it, but not the shedding of their blood like the past few years. smh

Their population is no more able to rid themselves of lousy leaders and replace them with competents than we are. :(

I'll take it the background, at least post 2014, is known to you.

Behind it is the US endeavour for hegemony.  It's long had designs for the breakup of Russia into smaller, powerless statelets.  Periodically there are discussion documents  https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html

 

Once Russia is out of the way, they can go full on at China.  Last thing they want is Russia and China teaming up. (see BRICS)

Back in 2022 the EU revealed it wasn't an economic union but an arm of NATO, when it sanctioned Russian energy in a bid to stop the invasion.  NATO has since been exposed as a paper tiger.

As Gen Cavoli (SACEUR at the time) said early last year, they hadn't imagined the scale of operations Russia was able to carry out.  :facepalm:

Today, the EU is facing financial collapse and NATO is out of guns 'n' ammo.
I anticipate they'll have both broken into smaller, regional alignments a few years hence.

The US is dusting its hands and walking away.   A paradigm countries in the far east it seeks to woo will learn from.

 

OBTW  the above cartoon is from early '24.

So, who to fear more ??  Being tied to the US, as we are, is a greater danger to us than a handful of exiled Russian oligarchs, buying influence in the Press, Parliament or wherrever.
It's taken Chelski years to recover from the loss of Abramovich.

Sec State Rubio stating it baldly.

What Sir George Cayley started

 

 

Many a time and oft have I walked Regent St.  I kid you not, I’ve been living in Central London and around for 40 yrs.
Every one of those countless times, I’ve walked past some educational institute which has on the wall a plaque saying it was established by Sir George Cayley.  It’s not that I’ve noticed, it’s just become embedded in my subconscious. 

I always assumed he was some 19^th Century philanthropist.  I come from a culture where it was common for someone of means, in that century, to establish a library or somesuch socially benevolent institution for the benefit of the locals and to be remembered when they’re gone.
Until .... one day in the library, a while before Lockdown (which is our temporal signpost these days), I checked their book sale and saw “Sir George Cayley’s Aeronautics 1796 – 1855.”  My curiosity was aroused.

It was a revelation.  Cayley was the originator of aeronautics !!

In the 18^th Century the pursuit of knowledge was a pastime of the wealthy and Cayley was one such.
His interest was flight and he studied what was known and observed what he could from nature.  Among what was known were Newton’s Laws.
Cayley determined there were four forces for flight.  Weight, lift, thrust and drag.  He did experiments and came up with the aerofoil.  He built and flew a glider.
In the search for lightness he designed the spoked wheel.

Why didn’t they teach us this stuff in school ??  Jeez, if you want to instil a sense of national pride, why don’t they teach kids the Wright brothers read Cayley !!

Cayley’s flight plans were confounded by a lack of motive power. No practicable engine to power the machine.
(Steam engines were in their infancy.  In 1933 Bessler made a steam engined plane, it flew successfully and was very quiet.  There are videos :)
It wasn’t until the internal combustion engine that powered flight could be made.  Hence the Wright brothers.

Because all this experimental flight stuff was expensive, Cayley had a sponsor, Lord Mahon.
When things were going swimmingly he and Mahon discussed the humanitarian consequences of what they were up to.

The history of humanity has been the conquest of nature rather than adaptation to it.
Would the benefits of air travel outweigh the costs in terms of warfare ?? 
The military uses were obvious.  As Wellington later observed, he was always trying to guess “what was on the other side of the hill”.  The view from the air would solve that.

They decided between them that the social benefits outweighed the military consequences.  I’m not convinced they weren’t trying to salve their consciences by the excitement of what they were up to.
Plus there was a lot of international competition in the field.

 

Move forward 200 yrs.  Those of us who were playing FPS computer games at the turn of the century were mocked “you’re being trained up for WW3”

Back in WWI, soldiers, fatalistic as front line soldiers are, would say “if the bullet’s got your number on it that’s your lot”.  Hence “your number’s up”.   By 2020 “your number” had been replaced by “your (GPS) coordinates”.  Satellite reconnaissance could spot you as a dot on the ground. 

Today, we have mass public transport via airlines.  We have missiles, that have replaced bombers and are still subject to the forces of flight.  Weight, lift, thrust and drag.
We have UAVs,  guided bombs, and we have drones.  This latter is a light, unmanned craft, little bigger than a kite and guided by a remote controller on a pad like the one we were playing FPS games on at the turn of the century.

Drones have replaced light artillery in infantry support. Over the battlefield fly surveillance drones, looking for targets.  When they spot one, they call in an armed drone which, guided visually by the guy with the gamepad, crashes explosively into the target or drops a grenade on an individual. (depends who gets the call.) 
No longer is a soldier’s number on a randomly fired bullet across an open space.

Today, the battlefield is abuzz with the sounds of drones.  Cayley would recognise the shapes and envy the propulsion.

He lived in a time beyond our imagination.  The main motive power was horse.  The Enclosure Acts were coming in,  open land was being turned into fields and the view changed.  "As far as the eye can see" was getting nearer.
There was no electricity and no medicine as we know it.  It was still The Little Ice Age for half his life.
We live in a time that would, reasonably, have been beyond his imagination.

 
Action: 

This is what the only way out of the encircled town of Pokrovsk looks like

And here's the situation when you've sought refuge in a building and are attacked by drones.  (they've obv small warheads.  A 155mm shell would drop the whole building.)

Giving Israel the green light

 

My mind goes back to Azhar Ali who got thrown out of the Labour Party for saying, just after Oct 7
" .....that massacre, that gives them the green light to do whatever they bloody want."

Two years later .... “Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, UN Commission finds”.

That was what “they” wanted.  Netanyahu et al made it plain at the outset, their only solution was to be the Final Solution.  They’d had 70+ years of trying to drive the Palestinians from their land and repressing the ones who remained.
It was a summation of two generations of vengeance on the natives for being there.

As the IDF spokesman said at the time, “we’re focused on what causes maximum damage” The intention was to raze the place and all within it.


This has had the approval of the population.   A video emerged of Israeli soldiers sexually torturing a Palestinian prisoner.   The torturers were arraigned and imprisoned pending trial.  A mob stormed the jail and released them.  The authorities dropped the charges.  The offenders were celebrated in appearances on tv shows.

I’ve seen videos of Israelis bussed in to border crossings where they set up a road block in front of relief convoys trying to enter Gaza.  They hold parties and barbecues across the road as the IDF treat them sociably and they stop food going in to the starving.

Trips around the bay are held, so citizens can have the entertainment of watching the firework show of death and destruction being wrought on Gaza from a boat.

Israel as a nation has gone kill crazy.  It has ceased to be a civilised nation.

I’ve talked to soldiers who’ve been in combat.  I’ve read memoirs of soldiers who’ve been on the front line,  back to the first world war.  All talk with respect about their adversaries, their courage.
 I see vids of Ukrainian soldiers talking about the Russians and their respect for them as soldiers.  Likewise vids of Russians talking about the Ukrainians they faced.

These are all men with a profound common experience.  Kill or be killed.
Respect for their enemy is part of valour to them.

I see vids of IDF soldiers.  They are “fighting” a defenceless enemy.  There is no valour for them.
Here they’re having a sing song.

They’re keeping morale up by singing they’re going to wipe everyone out. "There are no uninvolved civilians."
It’s a debasement of humanity.


Israel never had  much balance.  e.g. Norman Finkelstein, some years ago, pointing this out

Recently Israel attacked six countries in six days.  This endless spree of killing, on which it has embarked, has to be stopped.
If it completes its genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, it will make such a hole in humanity the world will not recover.

The only solution to this kind of popular view

has to be that Israel is reduced to the state of Germany in 1945. The survivors can have a think about where their madness led them.

 The only country capable of doing that is Iran.  I don’t know if it has the ordnance but .....
It will have to be done so quickly that the USA,  Israel’s sponsor in materiel and economic support, will not have time to respond and will be faced with nothing left to support.  It may rethink its response to Iran.

Iran is going to get flattened in the near future if it doesn’t act before.  As soon as Israel feels it’s sorted Gaza, it will attack Iran. The US will go with it.  It’s no secret.

 

UN declare it’s a genocide.  https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds

 

 

Demo on Cup Final Day

i went down Tott Ct Rd on my way to the Demo today.  It was full of City fans.  

Holborn was for Palace.

I'd arranged to meet my old chum Pete for the Demo.  He was coming from out of Town and was going to do it from the start line.  I was going to meet him half way round.
He txt'd me that it was an hour late starting off, so I adjusted my schedule accordingly.

I erred in my planning and found myself east of where I expected the march to come back across the river.

Seeing the crowds crossing a bridge behind me I did hie my way there.  Where the bridge made landfall there was a total barrier, in the centre of the road, up to the crossroads.  Standing at the crossroads was a counter (Israel flagged) demo so I mounted the barrier and found some cyclist digging sandwiches out of the back of his bike.  

We exchanged pleasantries and he told me I shouldn't have worred about the counter demo.  There was hardly anyone there.

We agreed that the world had gone to hell and I left him to enjoy his picnic.  A rare event, to enjoy a sandwich in the middle of the road with a view of the Thames and no traffic.

Joining the throng into the Strand, I got a txt from Pete that he was at Trafalgar Sq and watching the clog dancing.  It's a culturally rich life he leads.  He started his London day with the Victor Hugo exhiibition at the R.A.  followed by an anti genocide march, and then clog dancing.

He found me easily.  I was probably the only one in Traf Sq  who appeared to be looking for someone.

The march had only taken an hour.  We rejoined it for the stroll down Whitehall and made our way as far as the gates of Downing St, where we could see the speakers on the stage.

The first one turned out to be Jez  :)
I remarked that I minded a time when there were no gates on Downing St and you could walk down it ahd have your picture taken next to the policeman outside No 10.  (Never occurred to us things could be different.)

We listened to a few speakers, did a minutes silence for the dead, and then stayed to hear Lindsey German.  More out of respect for all she's done for the anti-war movement than hearing the same thing again.  

Then made our way out, to Pete's parked, electric, push bike outside the Supreme Court building.  And made our seperate ways.

I got back  in time to see the goal.  An exciting game belying the score line.  I found the VAR interventions helpful in being long enough to mix another screwdriver. 

Disappointed to see Bernardo carded for a professional foul.  Confused by names, do City really have a player named Sudoko ??  Then again, I'm confused by names when I read of a game with two players called Onana.  Is  this what Starmer meant when he spoke of "an island of strangers" ??
  Surprised to see the Nip didn't kick the shit out of everyone, like he did in the semis.  He had a good game.

Onwards with the footer fiesta for the Europa Finals when two mediocre teams from the Premier League battle it out for a shot at the Champions League next season.
I'll have to followi that one via the Telegraph's Live Updates.  Al hum dilly la.

"we have a video of the murder, but the murderer wants you to know that the deceased is lying about the incident"
Richard Medhurst