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War on Terrorism (Politics)
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Mick Harper
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MI5 missteps re the Manchester Stadium bombing came in for some more excoriation on Newsnight. I listened carefully and it all seemed to turn on intelligence received by MI5 about the bomber's activities being deemed by them to be 'unreliable'. Now neither me nor Newsnight is in a position to judge whether this judgement was a sound one but it points to the fact that it is simply impossible to get it right every time.

Intelligence floods in about terrorists and would-be terrorists at such a voluminous rate that it is always a case of someone at a desk reading a report, making a relative snap judgement on its importance and either passing it up the chain or into the No Further Action filing cabinet. To stop this particular bomb going off required, it seems, the chain not the cabinet. But here's the thing... the one thing people behind desks in such a fast-moving, data rich environment cannot do is to do what the rest of us would do: pass it sideways for someone else to have a look at. For MI5 to be successful everyone must be prepared to have blood on their own hands.

Given that all secret organisations are bywords for incompetence because they are secret, MI5 is doing OK.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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If it has taken 5 years for them to conclude this..........Then connecting dots and acting, which every one assumes is the right thing to do, cannot be that easy?

It is certainly not simple and obvious.

More dots, more clusters, with more people looking at them, is unlikely to work.......
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Grant



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If an organisation like MI5 constantly claims credit - and more funding - for saving us, they have to accept a kicking every time they make a mistake. It’s a bit like being a premier league goalkeeper
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Mick Harper
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Wiley wrote:
More dots, more clusters, with more people looking at them, is unlikely to work.....

An excellent point. It is -- or should be -- an AE principle that throwing resources at a problem can be a problem.

Grant wrote:
If an organisation like MI5 constantly claims credit - and more funding - for saving us, they have to accept a kicking every time they make a mistake.

Another excellent point. It's the lip-smacking we-know-best I take exception to.
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Mick Harper
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Netanyahu finds himself in a somewhat false position. A radical government -- either left or right -- has two choices. It can:

1. Act more radically than anyone expected, provoke a reaction, use the reaction to clamp down on opposition and hence be in a position to carry out its agenda
2. Act less radically than everyone was expecting, gather in all the grateful non-radical but vaguely sympathetic elements and hence be in a position to carry out its agenda.

What it can't do is mix'n'match. The 'most right wing government in Israel's history' started out with (1) but when it duly provoked the reaction, it caved and presumably hopes it can shift to (2). It's got no chance. That's the point about radical governments. They can come to power in weird circumstances but they only get one shot at it. Nobody actually likes being governed radically. Not even radicals, who have a tendency to be devoured by their own creation. Radicals are not team players.

Of course we know the reason why the Israeli experiment failed. Netanyahu is no radical. He finds himself leading a radical government because (a) of a freak result of electoral arithmetic and (b) he's going to gaol if he's not there or thereabouts. But people inside and outside Israel should not kid themselves that this is all a nightmare from which the Israeli people will wake up in due course. That's the same mistake everybody made about Trump. The voters really are radical fruitcakes -- or enough of them are to make this the new normal. From which even more radical things are to be expected when everyone's got used to it.

My guess is that eventually Israel will drive the Palestinians out (of the West Bank, the home-grown ones have proved to be pussy cats). Israelis, left and right, radical or moderate, have learned well enough that the world's outrage is worse than its bite. Why not have peace at home and hostility abroad rather than instability at home and hostility abroad? There's not many Israelis -- left, right, radical, moderate -- who wouldn't settle for that.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Hmm, you could be right. I had thought the Russians would have probably worked out the date of the end of the mud season after what happened to them last year,


I now have some sympathy with the Russian FSB, half way through Mud Season and we are now back in....... Winter again. No wonder the Russian logistics is a mess.
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Mick Harper
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I thought of this problem during yesterday's Countryfile when they were discussing the sowing of the main crop on Adam's (and practically every other arable) farm in Britain, which is spring wheat. I can't do the accent but basically the boffins were saying this one (holding out a handful of seeds) is best if it's dry weather, this one's best for hot weather, this one's etc etc. And Adam said in his ever-enthusiastic way, "That's a great comfort for us farmers in a time of rapid climate change."

Actually, Adam, it isn't. You see, you can't know whether this summer is going to be a hot one or this spring is going to be a wet one etc etc, so you won't know which seed to sow, will you? That's the point about climate change. It's not so much things are getting hotter and drier in Britain -- you can just adjust your farming practices accordingly if this was all. You might even benefit from a hotter and drier climate. It's the wild variations in the weather brought about by climate change that's the problem.

Just ask the Russian General Staff if you don't believe me.
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Wile E. Coyote


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The problem with calling your tanks T and the year of initial production is that when you get desperate and start rolling out a revamped T55, then it is not the morale boost it otherwise would have been, if only you had called it Brown Bear, it would have been so much better.
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Grant



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Why have they started calling tanks “self-propelled guns”?
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Mick Harper
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Because they are two different things. One has an artillery gun on a turretless tank chassis, the other has a smaller gun and a turret on a tank chassis. How the two were mixed in armoured divisions was crucial to the outcome of the Second World War. It's all laid out in An Unreliable History of the Second World War by Brigadier-General M J "Fightin' Joe" Harper.

Available now in Kindle for 77p here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unreliable-History-Second-World-War-ebook/dp/B0BTMCPPXN he tells me.
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Mick Harper
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I have just posted up whodunnit vis a vis the latest Russian bombing, on medium.com. It's here for those of you aren't there

Blowing up Blowhards — The Killing of Vladlen Tatarsky

It is amazing how talking heads — I hope I can use the phrase in this context without irony — complicate things in pursuit of their various agendas. The chief of which, I suppose, is to be asked to appear as a talking head which you do by casting the net as widely as possible. Speaking as a writing head, I have to say it is relatively straightforward working out who was responsible by applying Sherlock Holmes’ principle: ‘When all other possibilities are eliminated…’

A bust of the intended victim is not a vehicle of choice for anybody experienced in the ways of bombs. “Here, tovarich, take this bust, will you, I’m just about to give a talk. Put it with the coats or something and I’ll pick it up later.” A bomb delivery system consisting of a woman being multiply-photographed taking it in, handing it over and strolling away is not much favoured by professionals either. “Coo-ee, FSB, I’m over here.” Even if she is FSB.

Nor was the target doing any great harm to anybody. He was such a weirdo everyone else looked good just by not being him. Conclusion? It wasn’t any body. It was the bomber herself, Darya Trepova. A suicide bomber, it seems, since she sat down next to the victim and the bomb. Or a suicide bomber who changed her mind once she’d seen the bomb was safely ensconced with the bombee. But not, note, an unwitting stooge since she would have stayed for the talk had this been the case. If you give someone a bust you’re at least going to stay for the talk. It rather draws attention if you don’t.

I presume Ms Trepova must have had some help. I trust it is not too sexist to say that women and bomb-making are not natural bedfellows. It has been reliably reported she is an Alexei Navalny supporter — code for any leftist anti-war dissident — so we can reasonably assume the opposition has at least one direct action cell. But as for Ukrainian secret services, Russian secret services (rogue or otherwise), Putin-successor candidates, the Wagner Group, on and on it goes… as they say in Mafia movies, forget about it.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:

I presume Ms Trepova must have had some help. I trust it is not too sexist to say that women and bomb-making are not natural bedfellows.


The suffragettes knew how to run a bombing and arson campaign.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffragette_bombing_and_arson_campaign
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Mick Harper
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I had forgotten about them, yes, though Wiki speaks only of 'improvised explosive devices' not bombs. And don't forget there were male suffragettes as well. Suffragets. They didn't just make the tea.
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Mick Harper
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One doesn't like taking the Israeli side but they're getting a raw deal over this Al-Aqsa business. Some Palestinians send out tweets telling people to occupy the mosque because it's something or other and a bunch of them do, carrying fireworks. Israeli high command figures they might come in for a bit of criticism if the third most holy Muslim site in the world gets burned to the ground on their watch because of errant fireworks in an enclosed space, and request them to leave.
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Mick Harper
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Whither the Great Satan?

Can someone please ask the Americans to pop out of their shell for a minute to observe that things are on the move in the outside world? I speak specifically of Iran. Now they haven't changed but a lot of other things have. For a start the Iranians are now chumming up with the Saudis and the Americans aren't on account of OPEC having just bumped the oil price up. So one thing the USA might do is lift sanctions on Iran and get their oil flowing unimpeded into the world's energy maw. It may not help but it can't harm.

In fact, what exactly have the Yanks got against Iran nowadays? They are trying to get out of Iraq and Syria so allowing the Iranians free rein to get themselves bogged down there in their place doesn't seem such a bad prognosis. In any case Iran will do what Iran will do in their own backyard and there's precious little America can do about it. Has been able to do about it.

What else? Iran is helping Russia with some anti-Ukrainian bits and bobs but only because they've got no other place to go. Iranians and Russians do not get on one little bit unless they're both fighting someone else. And that someone else is the good old U S of A.

Then there's Israel. Even the Americans must have twigged they need reining in at this moment in time, not being expensively protected from mullahs. Though contrariwise, Israel is no slouch when it comes to reining in mullahs, so why not let them do it instead. Which brings us to the nuclear question. Again, it can't have escaped American notice that the present impasse is kinda moving the Iranian nuke programme forward not back. Is that what you want, guys?

So what's left? There's Lebanon. Good luck with that. A bit of naval posturing in the Gulf and the occasional hostage-snatch because the Americans won't let it go. So if they did...
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