Martin Meenagh blog

Lines of Force Why do successive British governments feel obligated to join the USA in its adventures? Is it, as numerous commentators have argued, that the two countries share inseperable values? The trace memory of anglican exceptionalism? Are they united in morality as Boris yeltsin noted, the 'steel backbone of NATO'? Well, I leave you to your own conclusions. I would just note something which I am not sure that I have seen anywhere else. Critical British army, naval and air force supplies are now supplied by the £13-billion pound company BAe. It used to be British aerospace but changed its name to gain more from the USA, where it now operates in more than 30 states and receives billions in pentagon contracts. These help to make it the third largest defence company in the world and the largest in Britain and Australia. If BAe were ever to lose American contracts, to supply equipment, develop new weapons, or resupply troops, Britain would find 118000 jobs, £3 billions in exp...

A viral Link List Here's a way to escape gloom. Attached below is a viral link. It contains the names of three other excellent sites plus this one; all you have to do is copy it, add your name to it, and post it on your blog, with the same instructions as I have given, and we'll build a network! No downloading and no viruses are involved, and the attempt is experimental--good luck! The Money Blog - The Exile - Martin Meenagh - Neil Clark -

The McCann Agony I have no interest in speculating what happened to Madeleine McCann, the little girl who went missing in Portugal recently. The whole situation is heartbreaking, and not simply in the heartlessness of some of the commentary and speculation, and in the way that easy judgments have been made about Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry. I did notice how the frustration and nastiness of the press broke in a little when it became clear that the McCanns were devout Catholics, but the whole press circus has now become appalling. However, the press speculation itself is not, before you are tempted to say it, to my mind any indication of society being worse than any time before. Off the top of my head, I can think of the 'Fanny Adams' case of 1867, the 'Baby farmer' murder of 1896, the Lindbergh baby, and the Azaria Chamberlain dingo case as being just as hysterical. The Lindbergh case is perhaps the one which provides the most perspective on the behaviour of ...

Chaos 2008 N ext year's American election is heading for legal and political chaos, regardless of the dangerous economic situation America is in. The potential exists for an election to take place which could be the most destructive since 1968. This, some readers may think, is long overdue, and in some sense karma for the abuses and pretences of the past three decades. The result, however, may be that the hyperpower would be in epileptic turmoil. All this as the world financial system, the environment, the middle east and europe fall into what The Onion would no doubt describe as a variety of metaphorical states of illness ranging from strokes and heart attacks through to seizures, fits and embolisms. The Primary system seems to be breaking down in a way that may lead to nasty legal challenges to the legitimacy of whoever is nominated. Huge numbers of delegates to both conventions may be barred from attending or casting a vote. Both Republican and Democratic National Committees (wh...

Whats going on with China? Just a thought. The people's Republic of China is engaged in widespread testing of opponent technologies in military-industrial complexes. It is building aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines on the scale of battle-groups. It is beginning to withdraw funds from US treasury bonds in favour of its own sovereign fund. And it is reaching out into the horn of africa whilst simultaneously allowing both missile and light weapon technology across central asia, afghanistan and pakistan in the zone of instability created in recent years by the clash of islamic fundamentalists and reckless western policy. It is also conducting joint military exercises with the Russians. China's political leadership is about to change, and for all the official communism of its authorities, the gap between the cities and the the rural areas is still pronounced. A new land reform has created tension between government and people in the legal protection of property rights. There ...

Calendars and control of time There are many calendars around in the world, some with a great deal of historical weight attached to them. Hindu nationalists, for instance, sometimes look to establish the primacy of India in world history by pointing out that their system dates in tens of thousands of years. In the Middle east, Jews and Muslims both contend in dates, and both insist on the 'CE' rather than 'AD' denomination of western time. The October Revolution in Russia was in November, famously, on the Western calendar; and the French revolutionaries sought to decimalise time. The most successful innovation of recent years, however, was the adoption by almost all of Western Europe just before its Imperial explosion of the Gregorian calendar. This seeks to adjust for the fact that a year on earth is 365.25422 days or thereabouts by the introduction of leap years, but in a complicated way does so better than the Julian calendar it replaced. Lots of class-based nonsense...

Happy new year to Abyssinia It is still 1999 in Ethiopia, under their very old calendar, and since their calendar renews on September 11, happy september 11 2000 for next week. Do with that what you will

A whacky Sixties Project of Nuclear Whimsy And which blog would be complete without one? Has anyone else in Blogland read about the (very real) Orion Project which ran from the late 1950s until 1963? The idea was to use Coca-cola production technology to throw atomic bombs as though they were bottles on a production line out the back of a rocket. Thus powered, a starship could have been constructed with materials available at mid-century to leave earth orbit and to attain one-tenth of the speed of light. The technology was tested at various atmospheric nuclear tests (underground tests obviously having been ruled out with Peter Sellers/goon show logic) and found to be perfectly feasible. Were the craft to be manned, they would have had to incorporate huge springs. Anything from the size of 5 saturn rockets to a small city in weight could have been moved around the solar system. They thought big, those junior officers and boffins who survived world war two. The idea was cancelled by Pres...

Industrialise Africa Periodically, the 900,000,000 people of Africa attract the attention of the West. Well meaning, decent individuals go to Africa and do good. They provide water, medical relief, an acknowledgement that other humans exist and care, and sometimes they don't go home. At home, individuals lessen their nervous sympathy by giving a few pounds here or there, tut tutting at the apparent intractability of the problems of Africa, or occasionally raging within the bounds of political correctness at the ridiculousness of most of the governments there. The latter is an attitude not unknown to the urban middle classes here when they look around them, of course. However, as a very good friend of mine pointed out a couple of weeks ago, these attitudes don't really solve anything. What would solve things is determined and managed industrialisation. What is it that holds Africa back? Lack of effort? Can a continent with the world's mineral mines, huge amounts of oil busin...