SS-N-22 Sunburn - Cruising in the ramjet

Springing the Trap

"At the battle of Cannae in 216 BC the great Carthaginian general, Hannibal, tempted a much larger Roman army into a fateful advance, and then enveloped and annihilated it with a smaller force. Out of a Roman army of 70,000 men, no more than a few thousand escaped. It was said that after many hours of dispatching the Romans Hannibal’s soldiers grew so tired that the fight went out of them. In their weariness they granted the last broken and bedraggled Romans their lives…

Let us pray that the US sailors who are unlucky enough to be on duty in the Persian Gulf when the shooting starts can escape the fate of the Roman army at Cannae. The odds will be heavily against them, however, because they will face the same type of danger, tantamount to envelopment. The US ships in the Gulf will already have come within range of the Sunburn missiles and the even more-advanced SS-NX-26 Yakhonts missiles, also Russian-made (speed: Mach 2.9; range: 180 miles) deployed by the Iranians along the Gulf’s northern shore. Every US ship will be exposed and vulnerable. When the Iranians spring the trap, the entire lake will become a killing field." - Mark Gaffney

The Might of the U.S fleet on a leash, neutered, even the Argies have some. An impenetrable array of conventional warheads that ONLY long-range ICBM nukes can destroy - finally calling the bluff on the M.A.D. doctrine. I want one!

["It appears that he’s just an irresponsible contrarian as a matter of temperament." - Bruce]

Conspiracy theories from the tree-house #1:

A few years from now . . .

• We start a nuclear Waste Complex in South Australia.
• We allow Imported waste for a big, fat fee.
• South Australia starts a second, bigger, safer repository and begins importing Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
• P.M. Beazley smells a tax and designs a "fixture".
• South Australian Govt reject Labor's intervention and secedes from the Commonwealth.
• P.M. Beazely orders Peter Garret strap on a cardboard cutout of Alex Downer and spread fixture in a tuneful way.
• South Australia immediately invites US intervention - becomes 52nd State of the USA.
• SA, USA declares 200-mile security zone and fences-in WA and NT as Protectorate Territories (Renamed West Texas).
• Queensland calls itself South Florida and introduces "cock-sucking" to secondary qualifications.
• Beazley sells South Florida to Singapore Airlines for $29.00 (and an alligator purse).
• Spanish becomes the second language of NSW and Victoria.
• NSW and Victoria align themselves with the US and become known as "Little Nevada" due to the fallout, the gambling and the amazing number of retards living there.
• Tasmania is sold to an unnamed penal/correctional corporate operating out of Cuba.
• Hippies become cereal pests, drug-tolerant and feral, they infest the badlands, happily enjoying their peace, love and mungnuts - the bastards, they are laughing at us!

Bloody Labor Thunderbox

Leave it to Beazer - Labor's Nuclear Blimp!

I am utterly and profoundly appalled (!) by the Australian "Intellectual Class" trotting out bucketsful of the most myopic, childish pigswill - you reckon Hippies are out of touch? Have no clue at all about the hard realities? Are so obsessed by dreamy utopias that mere pragmatism escapes our pot-furrowed brows? Well have a look around you!

Labor-endorsing Genii are now seriously trying to sell a nuclear solution . . . (wait for it) . . . to solve the greenhouse nightmare! The parents of these intellectual giants were, 100 years earlier, insisting on a coal-powered future as a safe solution to the industrial energy crisis.

My grasp of mathematics fits happily on a Tally-Ho, so feel free:
Of all the energy consumed by humans, electricity provides only a small fraction. Less than 17% of that electricity already comes via fission. For nuclear-generated electricity to replace our dependence on fossil fuel as a source of energy the sheer number of nuclear power stations and its attendant cabling is nothing compared to the logistics that Governments and theMarket would face when trying to safely move the fissionables around. Too little, too late? Swallowed a spider to capture the fly?

Yep, my math is lousy, but I can see only greenhouse forever, you won't cure asthma with lung cancer, you're wasting your time.

Not satisfied with mutual masturbation, these folks further suggest that Australia should "get involved" in the nuclear process and take responsibility for the waste, ensuring all spent fuel rods are returned to our mining industry for safe keeping (minus the 600 tonnes so far oxidized as Depleted Uranium projectiles in Yugoslavia, Falklands, Afghanistan Iraq, etc.)

Pragmatism will require millions of fuel rods (proudly painted in green and gold) being transported around the planet to and from our proverbial "arsehole of democracy and common sense". Is your blind faith in the market so rusted on that you can't see the immediate and palpable danger of transporting this stuff in a world full of terrorists? Will the market never be tempted to create a single-desk uranium exporter? (You would have to, anyway, for quasi-security reasons) You could call it the Australian Uranium Board (AUB) and you know where I'm going with this.

This is right up there with Royal Prinny Di's brainfully inspired suggestion that manufacturers of land mines take responsibility for their products immediately the war is over. The cost of digging them up is covered in the purchase price. Yep, that worked.

Bangladeshi recyclers would benefit from the decommissioned "hot" ships (or do we sink them in the Nullabore, too).

"the market" will ensure the security of our gene pool forever, amen! (At least while there's a buck in it.)

Clever people should be indulged, yeah, but Lefty intellectuals need to have their noses firmly rubbed in pigshit because all this competitive cleverness is simply greasing Darwin's guillotine. theHippies were right forty years ago - and still (demonstrably) are.

We need a virus that will sterilize 90% of all human males, worldwide, for at least three generations. Every sperm will be sacred. (Sorry, I was just trying to be clever.)

Meanwhile, back at the press club nosh:

Peter Shergold, a very confident public servant, in fact the PM's personal public servant, revealed the method to Howard's inscrutable madness. In a smart-ass display, the very model of the postmodern major general layed it out in the usual smug fashion. Bear with me, ma.

he explained how the public service are past the Sir Humpers' secure tenure, lifetime membership model and well into the realm of competitive, promotion-based-on-merrit rickshaw. [longhand for "They are now entirely dependant on the Minister's good will".] He explained at length that pollies have to face the electorate evey three years. He intimated that it was unconsionable for ministers' tenure to be terminated because of the errors of mere public servants. He went on to mention the AWB cockup and then, as the room hushed and the lights lowered, pulled the camera in close and sprayed his mia culpa all over us.

Conclusions:
For top public servants, to guarantee tenure, stopping a bullet for their minister is written into their workplace agreements. Postmodern Democracy is shit. The postmodern revolution will be exponentially bitchier.

The church on common ground with Hemp dealers? (E&OE)

How does the logic go? The hippies want pot legalised and the dealers want ever-harsher penalties . . . When it comes down to supply-side economics, who's side is Jesus on?

Full cred to the religus right who seem to have invented a weed 6 million times more deadly than hippy shit. Bless 'em but hemp genetics seems a strange pastime for them, wot? Or maybe not?

According to most preachers the dealers are preferable to hairy atheists. They're wealthy. Eager to fund the mentalist churchs that are offering, say

• tax free contributions
• close connections to government
• a sociable, safe place to meet
• plausible deniability
• large numbers of honest but deluded Jesus freaks for cammo, character refs and alibis

The little church on the hill
There's a lot of dark matter here (on a planetary scale, let's call it money). I mean, god is a strange attractor in his own right, but at one church he's accreting way more gas and dust than you'd expect for his apparent density. Way more dark matter than the numbers allow for.

[No, babe, a zodiac is a boat! The nth Law of Thermodynamics - money has gravity but no mass - undetectable, except by direct inferrence.]
(Thank you Mrs Reader's Digest. pzorff.)

Looking further . . . err, nope, it's clouding up out there.

Harradeen did it beautifully. By the book, love it or lump it.
The new boy, however . . .
Suppose you knew a spruiker who was both a pivotal voting Senator and a preacher with a degree in Business Fundamentalism. (Who started his own Church. From scratch.) Did I mention you'd get a tax break on any contributions. It's the perfect refuge for overcashed crims - whatever the grift. If it only had a few card tables . . .

I know you retards think all hippies are dealers so you've forced yourself to agree with me when I say "this is heaven sent" - A "Must Join" for all pot-selling child molesters. Pain in the proverbial for the rest of you, who may or may not lose your kids to hemp laws. God bless Jesus' new buddies. If He'd meant people to smoke weed, he would'na made it so expensive to grow, nor petrol so much fun to snark. Dark, dumb matter.

Meanwhile, back in the real world I worry far more about kids binge-drinking as a right of passage. Onya Oz, ya bloody twerps - the hemp penalties guarantee a shootout will eventually drive-by a street like yours. Welcome to America's zero tollerant drug war (the one the DEA fucked up).

In the same way that massive industrial polution is neatly explained by nasty Tobacco products, mental health will get hundreds of millions spent on its behalf eradicating the dreaded divil weed, which John Howard (a true hippy-hater) told parliament the other day "causes 60% of the mental health problems in our youth". (And I always thaught it was punishment from god for being wicked.) Stay tuned for the Ad campaign as "Reefer Madness" does the rounds again. Expect to pay an extra 150-200 per, suckers. I can finally move the plumbing indoors and get rid of the still. I might even have enough left over to show the church some appreciation. Naw, I'm just a hippy - dealers have to get up too early.

Finally, despite the fact that it isn't as usefull, I want pot given the same treatment as RU486. It's a Fucking Scientific/Medical question and its efficacy or otherwise determined by the facts, not the minister's moral debts to Jesus (See above). Well, is pot more dangerous than RU486? - 20 years in Long Bay worth of worse? Don't hurt yerself thinking about it. And. Thanks for all the fish!

Commix. Religun. Riots, Occam

Aw, crap. I gotta weigh into this one.
Now pay attention!

Whether I'm a pacifist hippy or a full-on religus fundy nutwalla, if you spit in my eye, I'll drop you. It's not about gods, freedoms or politics, it is about insulting a stranger on a bus and feeling too silly about it to back down. Pow! right in the kisser.

That's all.
But while I'm here . . .

The surrounding debate has been addled by guilt and counterspin, so I'll repeat my old mantra - The Left is for and about workering 'poor', it should never be a refuge for intellectual frippery. As most self-proclaimed Leftys these days indulge in little else, I'd suggest some rebadging is in order!

Coogee? Paris? Now it's Toon Town. How far do you think you can push folks around before they come after you? Our current politicians are diseased, their symptoms masked by media megalomaniacs.

Fer cack's sake, break the information monopoly enjoyed by the MSM. Freedom of information implies freedom of speech, why are you all insisting on just the freedom of speech when that implies the freedom to obfuscate? Bloggers have, for the first time, the ability to multiplex data. With genuine F.O.I. legislation and and entertaining blogs, media barons are left with a few bad cartoons.

The Collective Intelligence known to you as the Blogosphere already provides a Hubblesque resolution, the fight is on for the raw data - the secrets our pollies are hiding. Transparency is the grail. Put the bastards in a fishbowl and we can start seriously constructing an Information Age, and money-up a few dozen Tabloid Blog Sites. Imagine the peer pressure to get it right (works for science). Imagine the competition to make it interesting?

Heerffp!

[furball?]

(nope) . . .

Who does Labor represent now?

This is out of context and way off topic from a post at LaborFirst. Rather than make a pest of myself (I’m a slow learner), I thought it better to cure my indigestion back here. It’s a great piece about rising fuel, inner/outer urban divide (?) and about how Labor can get some electoral traction from the upheaval. One small par derailed the Blue Rhino:

"It's hard to appeal to an underclass anymore when there isn't one save for those who get themselves into such a position by their own deliberate actions eg. gambling addicts,drug addicts,alcohol addicts etc."

Gobsmacked! Is this really what today’s labor voters really think? It was commented in a casual way, you know? You know?

Dubbo, NSW, - how could new police powers invented for Sydney beaches so suddenly find a market out there? Labor planning? I was thoroughly enjoying the lentils right up till this cobbler. All those little guys in all those little country towns with no petrol to work with, tsk, those stupid peasants, what a laugh, eh? While we’re on the topic, what about those useless blackfellas, shoulda chose white parents, the hopeless indigents!

I'm truly pissed that the thinking is about maximising advantage rather than getting the nod for a job well done. It's a house of cards and it's getting Kim’s breezy arse all over it. Zero vision.

Rex, if you consider the conditions that grow folks who deliberately destroy their own lives, you may also see a huge block of votes going to feral Evangelicals who, like socialists before them, actually thrive on poverty and ignorance. Transport costs in outer metro and rural backwaters will create a growing market in underclass votes. Ignoring that is to affirm, and dutifully emulate, Howard's Plan. It is, above all, lousy strategy.

I don’t know if you’re aware of the grip the babbler churches have on rural NSW, if you want to understand just how to capture an electorate you need to study the relentless faith they’ve shown in the losers. At first they trained their own workforce from the displaced rural labourers that the “green Revolution” left stranded. They turned them into plumbers and electricians and gave them jobs building houses which they were given to live in whilst they built more houses for export bucks, all the time recruiting and supporting whole families.

They’ve been nearly invisible as a political force until now, but they’ve been making friends for 40 years. Labor, on the other hand, has done bugger all for this mob since Whitlam. While it continues to throw this baby out, it will continue to be just so much bathwater circling the drain.

Urbanization began when moving workers was cheaper than moving factories. When road freight begins shifting to private rail infrastructure then the likelihood of a drift back to the regionals becomes possible. With metropolitan land prices, water shortages, crime and pollution, the serfs might get the idea that small communities that look after themselves may have more to offer. Zero-tolerant rednecks are the norm in this environment, they don't vote Labor. The Church owns their houses and dictates their public morality. (To beat up on Groucho: I wouldn't vote for any politician who could win in this electorate!)

Politically, I suspect Barnaby clones will begin popping up in all sorts of electorates and the Episcopalian/whatever Jesus freaks will continue to developed institutional power in many of our pov regionals - it’s gonna take some planning and a lot of leadership to get any advantage from a mob you think of as untouchable. If Labor doesn't save the underclass, the Adventists will - with new IR laws and higher transport costs the numbers will soon be legion. Could Dubbo’s future be Melbourne’s in microcosm? There is no effective substitute for petrochems in the Australian Economy. None. Can you build enough razorwire paddocks for all the petrol addicts? Put ‘em to work chipping cotton when Auscot runs low on diesel?

"Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit." - Abbie Hoffman

'I-ain't-paranoid Point of Order' leaves Brown laughing.

On 'Freaky Friday in the other place', Sen. Bob Brown (Green, whatever) called the bastards a very Nasty Party. Brown, bereft of any ear for low humour, cracked up when hauled up on a point of order, and was asked to retract, for calling the Libs Nazis. I didn't catch which Lib stood up, but he gets my WilsonTuckey Memorial Gooseneck for to tow his ass away with.

The rest of the day was bi-polar for us little folks.
Howard's gang seems to be spending a great deal of electoral energy destroying Labor's links to both it its financial resources (unions) and its talent pool (student unions). Evidently the young Howards copped a bloody caining in school and they sure as hell got long memories. Are these people really mature enough to compete in an efficient 21st century way? Or has this nonsense totally corrupted the Howard government's ability to take us where we need to be.

The god floggers (Fielding) have achieved consensus with Shatan and gone off to con the cuddly little stooges who pay good money for their deity's patronage. (With singing to drown out the wailing and nashing outside.) Barnaby, bless 'im, has the faultless excuse - "The white people of Dogpatch elected me to parrot the deprofundis, I wuz just following horders, mate now fuck off, I got a peasant to pluck." Er, for clarity Nasty black/white sentiments have now, of course, moved to the socially accepable NeoNasty rich/poor plinth.
If you're both poor and black, or rich and white, you won't see any difference. If you're Jewish, just kick back and enjoy the peace-and-quiet. This, happily, is not about race, religion, colour or any other old business. This is about greed and the Aspirational Blindfold our bone-lazy electorate has adopted.