Another Broken Promise

Remember just a few short years ago when Barack Obama promised on June 4, 2008 that "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the earth began to heal."  Fast forward to now.

It seems Mother Earth did not get the message to stop raising the level of the seas.  That is what US News and MSNBC are reporting in this bit of doggerel they call news.  They call it an invisible tsunami threatening to engulf low lying coastal areas of the United States.

Excuse me?  An invisible tsunami?  And all you claim is a rise in ocean levels of 8 inches since 1880.  So in 132 years it has risen 8 inches or 0.06 inches per year.  Build the Ark now!  Panic!  Throw money our way so we can save the planet!

Except why panic?  If you look at the graphs from these Australian boffins we are merely reaching a previous historical high.  In the past 140,000 years there has been a sea level variation of 140 meters or almost 460 feet.  And there have been other periods of sharp rise and decline.

A great city dating back about 9,500 years ago has been discovered in India in 120 feet of water.  This city could rewrite the history books on the rise of human civilization.  South of Haifa Isreal lies the village of Atlit.  Some 1400 feet from that village and at the depth of 40 feet lies the remains of an 8,000 year old Neolithic village.  Moving forward in time we find the sunken English town of Dunwich.  This town was conquered by the relentless assault of the North Sea and was abandoned by 1750AD.

What could these three sites teach modern man one may ask?  One lesson is humans will adapt, survive, and flourish as their environment changes.  The second lesson is that the global environment is dynamic and will remain dynamic until the planet dies.  The final lesson should be obvious, all three sites suffered climate change before the advent of modern civilization which in turn calls into serious question the claims of all the doomsayers who want us to send them money to save us from a phenomena that is natural and well nigh impossible for humans to stem.

Kennedy Blarney

The most dysfunctional family in the United States continues to garner media coverage.  How dysfunctional you may ask?  Psychology Today put together a list of the top seven Kennedy sex scandals.  Go read them, it is shocking.  Then there was Ted Kennedy trying to collaborate with the USSR to destroy Ronald Reagan. But old Ted can justly claim he was just following in the family tradition, his father Joesph Kennedy Sr was a real piece of work in his rampant hatred of the Jews and love of German National Socialism.  Kennedy, after fleeing London as the Blitz petered out, was sacked by Roosevelt and replaced as Ambassador to the Court of St. James by John Winant.

That the Kennedy family continues to garner media coverage and thought to be representative of America can only be ascribed to the pushing of a false narrative.  It is a bundled package of smaller lies that hide behind the tragic assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, TX in 1963.  To point out all the failings and outright crimes of the Kennedy family is to endure the ceaseless tirade of being unfair to the slain President.  As in do you have no decency?  History cares not for decency when it records a leader's achievements and failures, Kennedy's greatest failure at the Bay of Pigs lead directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis because the USSR read Kennedy as weak after that failed invasion.  That is why the world almost vanished under multiple mushroom clouds.  Daley Plaza can't cover that up.

So where am I going with this recitation of the Kennedy family crimes?  Just the latest lambasting from the Kennedy Holier Than Thou pulpit.  Robert Kennedy Jr, being a Kennedy, is no stranger to the spotlight.  Oddly three days after filing divorce papers on his second wife, she was arrested on a DUI.  He campaigned for Rep. Dennis Kucinich in that man's losing primary run, Kucinich lost to fellow Democrat Mary Kaptur and he was not graceful in his concession speech.  Kennedy has also harangued about the danger of mercury in vaccines causing Autism.  Notice how many corrections are at the end of the article, including a gross inflation of a percentage.  For a less strident discussion, the FDA has a good precis including an incident in Australia in 1928 that gave rise to requiring a preservative in vaccines, out of 21 inoculated 12 died.

Now that I have established Robert Kennedy Jr's questionable track record in the public and private square that shows he lives in a large glass house, here is his latest cheap shot of record.  Because Sen. Infoe is a skeptic and critic of man-made global warming, Robert Kennedy Tweeted a comment that would get Imus suspended and Carbonite to quit Rush.  He called Sen. Infoe a prostitute in the employ of the oil companies.  That is really discussing the heart of the matter there Robert, smear your opponent.  Did you call Joseph P. Kennedy II a dictator's prostitute when he got cheap heating oil from Hugo Chavez of Venezuela?  I bet you didn't. 

Libyan Thanks

Kudos to Powerline for this very sad tale.  There are cemeteries in Benghazi, Libya where the fallen soldiers and airmen of the British Commonwealth are buried.  According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission there are over 1,500 buried there.  They are sons, brothers, husbands, fathers from across the Empire - United Kingdom, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and even the Sudan Defense Force - all are buried here.  At least one Victoria Cross recipient is interred here.  All killed during World War II resisting Nazi aggression.  Even Italian war graves have also been attacked.  No word if the British war cemeteries at Tobruk or Knightsbridge have been attacked.

And now their resting places have been brutally attacked and defaced, over a hundred known so far.  The perpetrators?  The same people the RAF, USAF, and their NATO allies helped to liberate last year from the tyranny of now deceased despot Gaddafi.  They even filmed themselves toppling gravestones with Crosses and Stars of David while calling the deceased warriors dogs.  Even the Cross of Remembrance has been smashed as seen in the video that Powerline has.

The reaction from the United Kingdom government has been diplomatic and couched with the caveat that Islam does not condone destroying graves.  The Libyan transitional government has offered apologies.  The Australians are not as diplomatic, calling it a desecration and sickening though no word if any Australian graves were smashed.

I am sorry England, there are graves and then there are the graves of infidels.  All these men are infidels to their defilers and hence they do not belong in any land claimed by the faithful warriors of Islam. 

The Western nations need to tell the Libyans to clean up their mess.  To hold accountable to the fullest measure these criminals.  If little or no action is done to these vandals, then Libya should be allowed to slide back into the 7th Century they seem to desire.

Post script -  Talking about Libya and WWII always brings up the mystery of Lady Be Good, a B-24 Liberator that vanished with her crew during a bombing mission against Italy.  To this day the body of SSGT Vernon Moore has never been found, he is presumed lost in the vast southeastern desert sea that comprises the border between Libya and Egypt.  As for the plane's wreckage, it was last seen in 2001 in a Libyan police impound yard.

Aviation Round-Up

The 49th Paris Airshow is rolling along with all the aviation companies trying to sell their wares to anyone with money or good financing. Saab is demonstrating their JAS-39 Gripen NG demonstrator, they are looking for Brazil orders and re-entry into the Indian MMRCA competition. Boeing has displayed the latest 747-8 cargo version.

Airbus/EADS is of course there with their products. The A380 suffered another embarrassing moment, on top of a previous accident where a 380 clipped a smaller jet, when its wing-tip clipped a building. So a Korean Air Lines A380 did the fly-by while the damaged plane sat on the tarmac with a cover over the damaged wing.

Nor was this Airbus/EADS only mishap, the very long delayed A400M had one also. To whit a cracked gearbox in one of the turboprop engines, so another A400M had to be slotted in. To add to the controversy surrounding the four year overdue A400M, the RAF will name their planes Atlas and not Grizzly, shades of the Eurofighter Taifun/Typhoon name controversy. All the delays surrounding the A400M project has allowed American companies to snag orders; Boeing happy with C-17 orders to the RAF, RCAF, RAAF, Oman, and Hungary and Lockheed-Martin selling C-130Js to RAF, RCAF, and a host of other possible A400M customers. And South Africa has cancelled it's A400M orders. And is it me or does the A400M nose and cockpit look like a C-141?

And what post on modern aviation would be complete without mentioning the Peoples Republic of China? It seems the designers at Chinese Military Aviation have developed a new airlifter in the 400,000lb category that bears a strong resemblance to the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III. Very curious confirmation on Chinese intelligence efforts and on Chinese power projection goals, perhaps to places like Africa or Taiwan?

File this under old airshow news. Back in 2009 the Islamic Iranian Air Force had their own airshow. One of the centerpieces was supposed to be an overflight of their IL-76 Candid based AWACs plane named Simurgh. As the video in this link shows, things went terribly wrong and resulted in the loss of crew and plane.

To save and succor

Dutch civilians wave and eagerly wait as food supplies are dropped from a low-flying Lancaster of RAF Bomber Command.

Sixty-five years ago on 8 May 1945 the guns fell silent in Europe for the first time since 1 September 1939. The shattered remnants of Nazi Germany had surrendered unconditionally to the Allied powers of Great Britain, United States, the USSR, and allies. Tens of millions had died or were murdered between those two dates and whole countries devastated.

Even as the Soviet forces enveloped Berlin and took it as part of their Great Patriotic War, in the West British Commonwealth, American, and French forces also pushed eastward to liberate and pacify. Even as bullets were still being fired in anger, something extraordinary was happening in what was still German occupied Holland.

The winter of 1944/45 was brutal in this last year of a brutal war. The part of Holland still German occupied was cut off from any major sources of food as a reprisal for Operation Market Garden. The Dutch were reduced to eating their cats and even grass to survive. This was called the ‘hungerwinter.’ The plight was transmitted to England and soon a plan was hatched to help. An informal truce between the Germans and the Allies was hammered out to allow food to be air dropped in certain zones. The RAF called it Operation Manna while the USAAF called it Operation Chowhound. But however it was called, between 29 April and the surrender of Germany on 8 May, the Allies dropped more than 10,000 tons of food to the starving Dutch during a total of 5300 flights.

"Bombers of the Royal Air Force have just taken off from their bases in England to drop food supplies to the Dutch population in enemy-occupied territory” announced the BBC on 29 April, 1945.

The flights by Lancasters and Flying Fortresses were carried out at extremely low altitude because they had no parachutes for their precious food cargo. So the planes were loaded up and the bombays closed. Once over target, the doors were opened and out fell all the parcels. One RAF pilot recalls waving up at people standing on a windmill balcony as he dropped his life-saving supplies. For these bomber crews, Manna/Chowhound ranks as their proudest moment. Even as the war raged on, they were actually saving lives in the very bombers that daily carried death to the heart of the evil Nazi war machine. This also presaged an event just three years in the future when RAF and USAF air crews risked their lives to save the people of Berlin from a similar fate with an even more massive airlift.

Sources/further reading:
Operation Manna-Chowhound.
Lancaster Musuem.
460 Sqn in Operation Manna.
Reunion of RAF aircrews and Dutch civilians in 2010.

On a personal note, I must thank the RAF and USAAF for these missions of mercy for without them I might not count as a very dear friend who's mother endured WWII in Holland as a child. Just another reason why those who served in WWII are the Greatest Generation.

Digger Debacle

While Prime Minister John Howard fends off some vocal accusations over his plan to deny HIV positive people immigration to Australia, the opposition Liberal Party has stumbled rather badly with some Australian voters. And some of the elements could be lifted directly from US politics.

Opposition leader Kevin Rudd and Liberal MP Browyn Bishop were going to travel to Long Tan VietNam to commemorate ANZAC Day. Where Mr. Rudd gets into trouble is in the timing of things, literally. There were going to be Australian veterans at Long Tan, 80 or so, and Mr. Rudd and entourage. This entourage included the Australian TV's Seven Network.

Last week the story broke in the Australian media there were plans to shift the time of the dawn ceremony by an hour to better fit the morning time slot on Seven Network's Sunrise program and gain better ratings. Naturally there was a large amount of fury about this since it appeared that Rudd and Seven Network were disrespecting Australia's military veterans. And this is where thing get interesting.

Kevin Rudd went into damage control mode and denied ever knowing there might be a pre-dawn service. Sound familiar? It should, us poor spectators of the DC Clown Circus know that dance too well and like our own buffoons Kevin Rudd did not escape being covered in feces. It turns out on March 27 Repatriation commissioner Bill Rolfe of the Department of Veterans Affairs emailed Rudd's personal secretary warning of the pitfalls of moving the service to 4:15am VietNam time. So now Rudd is owning up to a mistake being made, that the email was not brought to his attention, and his staff has been counseled. This too sounds familiar, as in 'we have corrected the problem now lets move on.' Except earlier Kevin Rudd used missed emails to crucify the Australian Wheat Board over its dealings in Oil for Food with Iraq, so one can see Rudd is trying to sing a new tune and hope no one notices.

And how else to end this trip into political suicide than to note some defenders of Rudd have fallen back to the oldest excuse of all to try and shove the debacle under the rug. They claim its all politically motivated since federal elections are coming up. Really? Of course its all politics you POMs, why else you think Rudd was flying to Long Tan; he was angling for the veteran vote and he screwed things up royally when trying to deal with the fallout of a crisis not of his making. Which calls into question the quality of his judgement. Like Rudd chumming it up with convicted former WA Premier Brian Burke, in 1994 Burke was convicted of misusing Parliamentary travel expenses, who seems even after prison to still be politically connected and making things happen. Rudd has some baggage it looks like, of the unsavory sort.