sparks

I totally agree Mag.. Dubya is an idiot... and he is a puppet... Look at who has their hand up the puppets back. Big business and the Fundamentalist right of the Republican Party bought him his presidency twice and each time presented him with the bill... money talks in politics; and is especially effective in the american style of politics where you need vast amounts of money in order to get elected; and then stay elected. It isn't quite so bad over here... YET.. it used to be a K or a baronetcy for voting the party line... back when they were worth something. No longer though; when a businessman contributes and gets one; or an actor for not dying of starvation whilst "resting" between jobs... and they have been found out....... poor tony... what will his legacy be? Not John majors cash for questions... oh no...! selling out to Curry magnates for sub's and sheer political incompetence in how the aftermath of GW 2 was handled as to your other comment... America didn't win the war for us; but helped us not lose it.. and it was a close thing even right down to the weeks before christmas 1944. They baled us out by keeping us in supplies; without which we would have been starved into surrender in 1942 or 1943 Without their ability to build the merchant ships in sufficient numbers to keep us fed, faster than the Germans could sink them; we would not even have made the second front Sparks

really? Well I must bow to your superior knowledge digitaldoo; but as far as I can see, only a socialist could be so incompetent at doing the job he is supposed to be doing; Gordon has been found out... if the stories about his cock-up regarding the raiding of the pension funds is true and the government papers released are an accurate picture of what happened then we must believe so.. funny how the poor scottish pensioners have been hit by socialist incompetence... and he covered it up ... oops! Actually, there was nothing beneficient in it. Churchill, because he knew we had no chance of winning otherwise, morgaged the united kingdom and the empire to the hilt in order to purchase weapons and food from america. It was sold to the US Senate and congress as a business deal; and the UK paid in Gold as the pound sterling wasn't worth the paper it was written on. Warships took the gold reserves from the bank of england to the US to pay the bills. When the gold ran out; churchill and roosevelt concocted the lease-lend system whereby we continued to get supplies even though we could not pay for them so we got war loans; with interest... we also gave away many of our overseas "possessions" which the US now have for bases around the world. If you recall the news of a month or two ago, Britiain finally paid off the last installment of the war loan.... 62 years after the end of the War funny you should mention that.... If the history I was taught in school is correct; Hitler and Stalin signed the molotov-ribbentrop pact in late 1939; where part of the deal was the secret annexing of the baltic states to Russia and the partitioning of poland and rumania.... it lasted until Hitler invaded Russia in 1941; after he discovered that he could not get his army across the channel... He knew in October 1940, 8 months before Operation Barbarossa, that he would not be able to invade Britain (thanks to the english channel; the bravery of the RAF pilots and their ground support and a great deal of luck on our part and incompetence on the luftwaffe's part) I believe his generals were very surprised and dismayed to find out what their next target was. I don't recall russia helping britain out during those two years... quite the reverse in fact. Despite knowing about hitlers plans for Barbarossa in advance; from a spy inside germany, whom he did not believe; Stalin was caught by surprise in 1941 and advancing german forces passed trains carrying grain going the other way into germany. Stalin then purged the Red army of its officers, his only professional soldiers; who had "failed" the motherland (they had had to lead untrained conscripts with bolt action rifles and horses against panzer divisions), and consequently, Germany made it as far as the outskirts of Moscow by late october and november of 1941 before being stopped not by the red army but by the Russian winter. Hitler lost most of his men and equipment to the weather at that time and it was not until the battle of Kursk in 1943, two years after the german invasion, that the russians were able to take the offensive and push back the Germans. It took them two years to push the germans back to berlin..... a distance the germans had covered in 5 months. During that 4 years after 1941; Stalin constantly demanded that we help him by sending convoys of equipment via the arctic . and never stopped complaining even when we did so... My grandfather; and many other shetlanders, sailed in those convoys during which many lost their lives; only to be met with hostility and indifference when they got there... and the amounts which they were able to bring did little to affect the outcome of the war. Those supplies would have been far better spent building up the western allies. We might even have been able to invade europe in 1943 Only when the soviets were able to open up their vast eastern siberian resources ( and move their factories east of the ural mountains to make use of them); were they able to manufacture the munitions needed to save themselves from the Germans. The Soviets biggest resource was their almost unlimited manpower... and they used their soldiers and workers ruthlessly... soldiers who failed to achieve their objectives were executed by the political commisars... no excuses... russian soldiers captured and made prisoner were harshly treated if not killed after the war because they did not fight to the death... with their teeth if necessary. People seem to forget that Stalin killed or otherwise disposed of 20 million of his own citizens... which is more than even the Nazi's managed to do. No Money or resources, unless you count the midges and the whiskey; a nation with far too many alcoholics and bigots. Squandered in the pubs and off-licences.. The oil is almost gone... ; the norwegians suceeded by keeping theirs to themselves; and scotland is not getting what little is left of ours... Plenty of coal... but the there's global warming... plenty of water... can't do much with that unless you plan to sell it to someone; or put it in the whiskey... there's always tourism I suppose.. everyone standing around in brigadoon costumes scrounging dollars off the american tourists... I don't think so... Its funny that most, if not all succesful scots have only become so by going elsewhere in order to succeed. Obviously they could not stomach the place... and who could blame them. Most of scottish history; with all the "historic" battles about which the corries sang so well; were between the highlanders and the lowlanders.... tribal warfare at its nastiest. The battle of Cullodden was fought with much of the "english" army consisting of lowland scots who wanted nothing to do with charlies tartan army. Correct... and they are only going to do so by becoming more capitalist than the west... Socialism is dead and should be buried before it starts to smell the place out. Old Adam Smith (a scot) invented monitarism; the basis of the capitalist society we live in and that was 200 years ago.. I wonder what he would make of his homeland now? Marching off to glory with a very well written; and eminently singable (especially when drunk), but trite, little folksong on their lips.... One written with rugby and football rivalry in mind, of course. Bigotry again.. rangers and celtic, Protestant and Catholic, the Battle of the Boyne... replayed over and over again; each time someone kicks a football in Glasgow or anywhere else north of "Cricketshire" these days' even (horror) in Shetland Grown men who can barely count to more than four without taking their hands out of their pockets who know everything about "their" team; all the stats for generations back... even down to the number of nails?? (Studs??) in their teams players boots.... pathetic....! Thats not limited to Scotland; don't get me wrong.. The English "fan" is as limited... only they seem to target race rather than religion... one as bad as the other. I wonder how many "Scots" can sing the third verse of their probable new national anthem, which begins... Those days are past now, And in the past they must remain,... how true! sparks

Sparks, do you think that book is "fiction" or "non-fiction"? Mostly enhanced to sell the story which would have been pretty uninteresting except to the particular sector of the audience to whom most of those titles are aimed; SAS junkies and wannabees; It only sold because the mission was a failure. You will never hear about the succesful ones unless you wait until the papers are released in 30 years time. I believe the author is not well regarded by his ex- colleagues both those who were on the mission and others in the special forces community The mission did take place as one amongst many; although not, perhaps as "boys own" as the author would like his audience to believe. They were on recon looking for scud launching sites and anything else they could find to report back so the air forces could target them. The point I was making was that the coalition spent a lot of time and resources looking for the missiles before they could launch because the prospects of intercepting them after launch were not good; and if Saddam did, in fact, have chemical warheads; the consequences if one feel on a civilian area; especially an israeli one, would have been extreme. sparks

Don't have them YET Their sponsors do... Given the way things have turned out; just about everybody. north korea has both missiles and nukes. Pakistan has both ( and harbours al-quaieda and the taliban on its afghan border, and a hostile similarly armed India on its south-eastern border A resurgent Russia; run by ex-communists who now CAN afford the technology thanks to the west needing its resources. Iran has missiles and is building Nukes, Chemical weapons have been used in Iraq just the other day. Not difficult to put chemicals in warheads... and Bio is only a difference in kind... you have to protect the contents from re-entry thermal blooms so as not to cook the bugs... and Russia has that technology. Given that such technology has already been sold to the highest bidder by those in charge if it who have not been paid for months perhaps years..... the list goes on. ABM misiles have to be emplaced as close to the launching points as possible; in order to intercept when the attacking missiles are still boosting to orbit... they have to follow predictable paths during boost phase in order to achieve the required trajectory and of course the rocket gives off a nice heat signature which aids interception. Once the ICBM payload goes ballistic it is a much harder and faster target to intercept; making it more likely to miss which you don't want; especially with Bio warheads The scud intercepts in GW1 were very hit-miss (defintely no pun intended). Had Iraq used chemical payloads; Israel and saudi arabia would both have had chemical warhead impacts and Iraq would have been Nuked by Israel. Every Arab country would have gone over against israel.... and so on. There, the interceptors had no choice but to attack in the warhead ballistic phase due to the short ranges involved and flight time in seconds; hence the misses. You need time to detect, analyse, launch, guide, detect hit/miss, recalculate, relaunch etc and at 11,000 mph; which is ballpark ballistic orbit re-entry velocities...! A great deal of time and hardware; not to mention lives amongst air and ground forces (read/watch "Bravo 2 0") were expended to take out the launchers before they could launch; precisely because of the kill ratio of the ABMs not being 100% once ballistic trajectory was achieved by the incoming warheads. Luckily, the Scud missile was so crap that most didn't work as advertised. which was just as well. sparks

Oh! dear.... none so blind..... Doesn't ANYONE remember when the Liberal party was hijacked by the Social Democratic Junta.. "The gang of four".. Wet wishy-washy socialists back then; compared with the Hard left Labour party which got its butt kicked repeatedly by Maggies Tories in the 80's because they had no hope of getting elected on their Stalinist world view. It's laughable really when you consider that the old centrist (politically) Labour Wets and their offspring are now the nearest thing to real Socialists who have a remote chance of getting into power (in Scotland anyway). Lets not mention the SSP and Tommys new lot (forget the name); they don't seem bright enough even to be politicians. Tommy is quite charismatic when you meet him; but his anti-reactionary agenda is a joke... and grates on the intellegence after a lucky 30 seconds if you have ever studied politics and/or economics. (the same thing, or should be; else there truly is no hope for civilization as we know it) One of his supporters ( a Shetlander, I am sorry to say; no name(s) to spare his blushes if he can read this; I did hope we were brighter than that, as a race, but again every villiage has its idiot..) was shouting the odds about the brave new world that was coming; back when they started up and when I told him that only a Capitalist Country can afford Socialism; he just didn't get it.. and as for the Scots Nats... talk about shortbread tin socialism (thank you for the imagery Mr Connolly, Sir, A Scotsman to be proud of!).. Not a realist amongst them but packed with opportunists. Not Nazis (as suggested elsewhere in Shetlink) at least for the present; but an independent Scotland; with no money and rampant inflation.... anyone remember the Weimar Republic; and what happened just shortly thereafter? Tony Thatcher took the new Labour party galloping to the right in order first to get elected (not a hard job considering the state the Torys had got themselves into... talk about a walk-over...) and then had to keep going right in order to keep the dissafected Tory voters, who had first elected him and then kept him in power, on-side at the next two elections. Gordon is a different kettle of fish from Tony; he has done a reasonable job of keeping the economy stable (Lets not mention all the stealth taxes etc). The boom-bust cycles which had put interest rates into the 20's have been eradicated (we all must surely hope), but if he gets the top job ; he is going to have to lighten up on the dour socialist scottishness or he won't last long and will take new labour down with him. No-one else they have comes close to being a realistic prime minister... realistic labour leader is quite a different thing. What's even more scary is what will replace him at No 11. Pay off your loans quickly folks! Our MP is a Lawyer, a Social Democrat who has a certain World View of how things should be as opposed to how he sees them currently, and a professional Politician. He is therefore thricely suspect, as both Jobs involve mostly Lying for a living... and also his rose tinted view of how Human Beings should and can be made to live as opposed to how they actually do all over the world. Funny how all shades of politicians have this notion of making the world a better place; such place being the world view of their own little junta (party) whether the millions who do not subscribe thereby like it or not. Any politician who tells the voters the truth about how things actually work rather than how they seem to on Big Brother or in the pages of whichever "News"paper you read (and I include the "what posh did next" mags in that category) would get kicked out in short order....by his party as well as by the voters who have been brainwashed into the idea that you can have it ALL if you only vote for *** (pick one party) This you can blame on the Education system which is set up to produce people who can pass exams and follow the party line; rather than people who can think and moreover think logically rationally and originally (even rarer)... ever seen a teenager in a shop adding 2 and 2 with a calculator? Bread and Circuses (atrib: Juvenal) Give the masses cheap food (Tesco and Asda) and entertainment (soaps and reality TV) and they won't bother the ruling classes (professional Politicians and their cohorts in the media and so forth) while they get their pension plans locked in. Remember; in a Democratic system of Government. it isn't the best candidate which gets elected, unfortunately; but the least worst... certainly true for local government and unfortunately also for both domestic parliaments; (the real one and the Muppet show in Edinburgh, which, come to think of it, is an insult to Jim Henson.. sorry Mr Henson, if you are listening..) especially over the last 30 years but sadly mostly true well before then. With these new voting systems you share out the swill amongst the lesser wannabe's but ultimately change nothing. At least some of the UK politicians are not quite (yet) as self-serving as those in Europe... What we will get ultimately is either the Napoleonic or Hitlerian vision of Greater Europe; depending on whichever of the two old enemies eventually comes out on top in the Brussels bunfight . Britain does not have a look-in there; and never will. We have beaten both nations at the biggest game of all too often, over the centuries; and by having had an Empire (for those of a younger persuation; thats the Commonwealth as was but with Gunboats, cricket, Tiffin for Tea and Queen Victoria) to ever be permitted to call the shots and anyway we are too well in with Uncle Sam to please the French. The US is now what the British Empire was between 1815 and 1914. .... running the world. The US, using UK as a base; baled France (and Britain) out of two World Wars; the first almost lost by Military and Political incompetence; the second by craven politicians, both British and French, of all partys who failed to see the juggernaut that Hitlers Germany had become and thus did not take precautions early enough which would probably have stopped the Nazis in 37 or early 38. More than 6 million Jews, Gypsies, German Christians, Poles etc. etc. GONE... Without WW2 would there have been Palestine or Isreal? What of the whole middle east situation without Israel? where would we be? Worth thinking about... The jewish people would mostly still be in their original homelands; whichever that was, and be carrying on, minding their own business and mostly doing nicely, much as they had done for centuries. Would that have been better; on the whole; as the current mayhem which stretches from the Turkish border to the pacific and beyond and is now spreading the other way? Prior to 1917 America was Isolationist... we dragged them into WW1; luckily, or we would have lost And then after 1933; because Britain, and others, did nothing about Hitler and his minions we let more than 6 million innocent people be exterminated. The US got involved once more and decided that never again would they let the Europeans make a mess of the world (Suez... They said stop and the crises stopped almost overnight... the last gasps of imperialism). Unfortunately for them they created a power vacuum by removing the British empire which had to be filled to prevent Anarchy; They were the only ones capable of filling the gap; Politicians got big ideas and see what we now have in the world. The Soviet Union as it existed wes created by World War one and its aftermath; the Middle East by WW2 and the Cold war stand-off which post-dated it. As for our MSP.... well I'm not sure what he is... And I don't think he knows either... and thats bad for everyone; not just in Shetland, given that when the LibDems sign up with whoever gets in in Edinburgh this May; he will probably have some job or other (again). Remember... he re-inflicted Northlink on us ... (not the workers; who do a superb job given the conditions under which they work; but management in Glasgow (CalMac that is... What made anyone think that 100 years of going "doon the waater" qualified them to take proper ships deep sea is beyond me..)) sparks who comes for a long line of Liberals... at least until the departure of Jo Grimond; who was a rarity even for those days; an Honourable man who could be trusted to keep his word.

yup! quite safe if you are behind it...

Consider; which our socialist MP obviously has not; Sullom Voe is a prime (economic target), undefended and therefore easy. Any large industrial target is equally likely since they have no prospects of defeating the US or UK/Europe in a purely military conflict. Their only options are a) The Vietnam option ( public opinion in the US ended the vietnam war... the US won every battle on the ground in SE Asia; but were defeated at home by the TV pictures and the body bags. Witness the current Iraq/Afghanistan situation; this is what they are attempting. The purely military numbers are against them but they are likely to continue because it is their only real hope as things stand The Star Wars option and vastly increased conventional defence spending; which ended the Cold war. The economic might of the U$; employed by the Reagan Administration; effectively broke what little was left of the Warsaw Pact's economies by outspending them on defence; something their nukes would not have managed without self-destruction. Specifically; 1) by training and re-equipping the US forces with new and better weapons and getting them trained to use them properly, (the M1 Abrahams tank is the prime example;. it rendered obsolete the numerically superior Russian Tank divisions almost overnight; (If you read the proper sources; the Russian military came to the conclusion that by the mid 80's they had no prospect of defeating NATO on the Battlefield; something which was definitely not the case a decade earlier); and 2) on the prospect of "Star Wars" hi-tech "weaponry" (which had no chance of actually working with 80's technology but the WP could not take the chance); which was intended to defeat the numerically superior nuclear forces from the eastern bloc by making them obsolete; reducing their effectiveness by reducing the number which reached their targets. WP warheads were much higher yield in Megaton terms because they were much less accurate and thus needed bigger bangs per acre to ensure target destruction; allied with their problems in the numbers of missiles actually able to leave the silos which was much less than equivalent numbers of US missiles. The real kicker, to use a quaint U$ term, was the introduction of cruise missiles introduced throughout Europe and UK in the 80's. They were mobile and thus much less vulnerable to counter-battery fire; which was the main targets of almost all the ICBMs on both sides; Take out the enemies weapons before they could use them; thus rendering them useless. All Strategic Missiles are ultimately first strike weapons, especially Sub-launched ones. c) The WW2 bomber offense option. Destroy a countries infrastructure and industry and the will to fight by killing civilians and destroying their economies. Guess what the next stage of the current conflict is likely to be? The current enemies will be using man-carried weapons with human detonators; which is what they currently have; although bio, chemical or nuclear warheads will multiply their effectiveness. Unless you can switch off a Country (first Gulf War) in a few days by the use of smart weaponry; you have to use sheer volume, as in WW2, or pre-smart guidance Atomic warheads which was basically NATO and Warsaw Pact Policy for the use of Tactical (as opposed to Strategic) Nuclear Warheads delivered by Aircraft and Battlefield-launched missiles or artillery, up until the advent of Laser guidance in the late 60s and GPS guidance in the mid to late 80s and early 90s. Future enemies, however, who are in the market for the use of missile technology for a potential attack, do not currently have the GPS or laser technology which is required for accurate targeting thus reducing the number of weapons per target required; which means larger warheads or multiple strikes to ensure target obliteration. Nor do they have the sheer numbers of these less accurate weapons (as did the USSR) to increase the target kill probability to a reasonable (in the military sense) level on "hard" (defended) targets; unlike the U$ who have plenty of these "toys"; by overwhelming the defenses by sheer weight of numbers. They are, therefore, less likely to target missiles on areas where a defence is in place. What the case may be in a decade or two is anyones guess The problem with anti-missile weaponry has always been the guidance of same not the missile itself; which has always had adequate missile-killing power. Current processing power and smart software is making the kill ratio of defensive missiles much better and this will improve as they work at it ; which you can be sure they will be doing. I, personally, would feel safer to have the defence and not need it than need it and not have it; which is why we spend on defence rather than wait until the war starts before buying a bomber or a missile; which is what almost happened in the 30's prior to WW2. Again, the U$ spend lots of $ in areas where they keep their toys... Maybe and option if we don't get the windmills. sparks

Bryan Sutton Dan Tyminski Les Paul

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