Chicken Yoghurt has posted his thoughts about yesterday’s article in the Independent about the UK government’s response about the use of napalm in Iraq by the US army. (How’s that for a convoluted sentence? In short: the US army used/did-not-use* napalm in Iraq, and lied/did-not-lie* to the UK govt about it. Chicken Yoghurt is not happy about both. Better?) Anyway, read the post and follow through Chicken Yoghurt’s links for the full story.

The wikipedia page for napalm refers to an article as long ago as the 22nd of March, 2003 in the Sydney Morning Herald. An excerpt from the article includes a quote from a potential whistleblower (in italics):

Marine Cobra helicopter gunships firing Hellfire missiles swept in low from the south. Then the marine howitzers, with a range of 30 kilometres, opened a sustained barrage over the next eight hours. They were supported by US Navy aircraft which dropped 40,000 pounds of explosives and napalm, a US officer told the Herald. But a navy spokesman in Washington, Lieutenant Commander Danny Hernandez, denied that napalm – which was banned by a United Nations convention in 1980 – was used.

“We don’t even have that in our arsenal,” he said.

The US military powers-that-be later issued a statement of denial to the SMH:

The Pentagon subsequently issued a statement to the Herald:

Your story (‘Dead bodies everywhere’, by Lindsay Murdoch, March 22, 2003) claiming US forces are using napalm in Iraq, is patently false. The US took napalm out of service in the early 1970s. We completed destruction of our last batch of napalm on April 4, 2001, and no longer maintain any stocks of napalm. – Jeff A. Davis, Lieutenant Commander, US Navy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense.

Another article, highlighted by Chicken Yoghurt, is from the San Diego Herald Tribune, and quotes a Colonel from the US Army:

“We napalmed both those (bridge) approaches,” said Col. Randolph Alles in a recent interview. He commanded Marine Air Group 11, based at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, during the war. “Unfortunately, there were people there because you could see them in the (cockpit) video.

Even more worrying is the following passage:

Apparently the spokesmen were drawing a distinction between the terms “firebomb” and “napalm.” If reporters had asked about firebombs, officials said yesterday they would have confirmed their use.
What the Marines dropped, the spokesmen said yesterday, were “Mark 77 firebombs.” They acknowledged those are incendiary devices with a function “remarkably similar” to napalm weapons.
Rather than using gasoline and benzene as the fuel, the firebombs use kerosene-based jet fuel, which has a smaller concentration of benzene.

So, napalm in all but name. Sure, they’ll admit to Mark 77 firebombs, which don’t have napalm because they use an even more efficient fuel.

I’m not familiar with the San Diego Herald Tribune, but the SMH is a reputable paper, and not one to be sniffed at. I wonder why this was not brought to public consciousness here when the first allegations were made. We got a second chance just before the General Election in May. Follow the exchange of letters in the Guardian: one, two, three.

We probably all missed it first and second time round because there was so much else going on.

* delete as appropriate

It’s Friday afternoon. Time for some amusement. If you have kids, or babysit for others, read them this modern fairy tale by blood & treasure. Start them young, teach them well.

Miss Eclectech and Mr Doghorse have yet another excellent animal video: a tribute to Charles Clarke, paragon of NuLab. (via Chris Lightfoot) Eclectech also has a site detailing communication with the local MP and the profoundly deaf Home Office.

It is the card that proves you have a national identity!
Indeed without one you’ll a become practical nonentity

Lyrics (and music) by Mr Doghorse

I’m afraid that this time, I cannot put my vote where my mouth is, for I shortly won’t be resident in the UK, and thus unable to put my name to either the NO2ID or equivalent Pledgebank petitions.

As it stands, two countries already have my fingerprints on record. My home country scanned my thumbprint when I was 12 and stuck it on an IC (which I had to bring to every school exam), and the US embassy has recently taken a scan of both my left and right index fingers (so I can enter their locked-down country). I didn’t have much of a say in either. In the former, we were simply taken out of class one day when the IC van came calling, photographed and scanned. Heck, I even have a reference number (memorised) that uniquely identifies me along with my entire life history (almost failed Art, needs to improve chinese, will never succeed in later life). I’ll bet when RFID technology becomes cheap and small enough, I’ll be summoned home to be microchipped. Maybe someday, when I’m not so bitter and more rational, I’ll post about the lack of liberties there, and how/why the population is happy for the status quo to remain ad infinitum.

Have I slipped into some cross-dimensional wormhole?

Chicken Yoghurt gives some attention to a largely ignored leaked memo from Downing Street, and highlights the scariest excerpts of the transcription by the Sunday Times. While this is no joking matter, and provides further evidence of Tony Blair’s duplicity, the whole sordid affair could almost be fictional. (See Terry Pratchett’s Jingo for a prime example of leaders taking their people to war on false premises as a diversionary tactic to keep themselves in power. D’ya think the govt reads his books for inspiration?)

The excerpt that makes me quake in my boots:

14. It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject (because he is unwilling to accept unfettered access) and which would not be regarded as unreasonable by the international community. However, failing that (or an Iraqi attack) we would be most unlikely to achieve a legal base for military action by January 2003.

Conspiracy theory? Heck, there’s even a website for it.

There’s an excellent post by Nosemonkey on The Sharpener on the subject of Britain’s EU rebate. I’m very glad of the existence of The Sharpener, with contributors from more than one political angle. It’s where the best posts of other blogs end up if they’ve been good and brushed their teeth before bedtime. And while I enjoy reading the blogs of the contributing authors, I’m soon going to run out of time to get through them all, which makes this Pick-n-Mix bag all the more valuable.

Back to the post. The nasal primate draws an amusing analogy between a member of a gentleman’s club and Club EU. And excellent and informative article though it is, it’s in the comments where the meat is. Putting the GDP and GDP per capita comparisons between Britain and France aside, one particular comment stood out: should the CAP be scrapped, Africa’s ability to compete more fairly with Europe would be improved.

It made me think about why the CAP exists at all. I think it sprang from an era when Europe had a strong need for self-reliance in food production. This has since been achieved, but probably at the cost of keeping African produce out of our markets. (Although you can find evidence to the contrary in any supermarket’s vegetable counter. Mange tout, sweetcorn and fine beans are some examples of veg that fly in from Zimbabwe, Kenya or Morocco. But that only proves that supermarkets are b*st*rds, both to the environment and local farmers…)

I really don’t know what to think about the CAP, its costs or benefits to EU member states are no longer apparent. On the one hand, a liberal lefty would argue that the money Britain puts into the common coffers is crucial for redistribution to more needy EU members, so stop being a money-grabbing doodah, Tony. On the other, the CAP is no longer necessary, we’re merely propping up farmers who have learned to play the game, and we should instead look into fair trade within the EU and with Africa.

On a more personal level, I’ve heard what it’s like for a small farmer to be out-competed by lower labour costs elsewhere. Raspberries from Romania are a hot topic in many Perthshire kitchens come late summer. Every now and again in recent years, a farmer with a side trade in raspberries (picked during the off peak season when ships and coos can look after themselves) finds that the bother of hiring short-term labourers to pick raspberries, box them in perfect condition in plastic cartons and store them in refrigerated units, is no longer worth it when the supermarkets won’t pay enough to cover costs. So these fields get turned into grazing land, or get “set aside” for EU rebates, or are sold at auction to developers with an eye for future planning permission from the Council to build yet more identikit “executive homes”.

What’s the point, you ask? Well, for many smallholders, every aspect of their farm has to succeed if they are to re-pay the bank. And if they’re out-competed, they have to find other avenues to survive, which usually results in land sales (changing the landscape of Britain, yadda ya) rather than diversification. The CAP has succeeded in improving European farming, but seemingly at the expense of British farmers. Food output in Britain has been declining for years, and while probably wasn’t truly self-sufficient before, it definitely isn’t now.

Back to that EU CAP thing. On the surface, if Britain doesn’t benefit from the CAP, shouldn’t it get its rebate, or be exempt from payments? If the rebate is scrapped, who loses out? There will be even less public money to spend on an already failing system. I’m curious (but don’t have the impetus to find out): what is the net input/output for every EU member state? For all I know, it could be a net drain on ALL members, with the bureaucrats benefiting with well-paid jobs and impressive CVs to move on to the private sector. (Someone tell me I’m wrong… I hate being so cynical.)

On a different level, if the CAP is scrapped entirely, what happens to the food producers we’ve come to rely on? Won’t those bloody supermarkets just get in more cheap produce from Africa and South America? On the one hand, good for the farmers there. But on the other, it’s not the needy farmers who get the trade, it’s the ones who can produce picture-perfect sprayed crops (tied in to suppliers of sprays and resistant seeds) who flourish. Also, it means more land is devoted to production of our luxury goods as opposed to essentials for local consumption.

Wee disclaimer: Title of my blog says it all. Akatsuki talks rot. But in writing this post, I have learned more about the crazy job-creation scheme that is the CAP and gained a healthier respect for those who stick their necks out with strong opinions, often based on a lot of background research of the facts. I can’t even get through my 200-page Very short introduction to the EU (I’ve been stuck on page 3 for a whole year now).

14 Jun ’05 update: Just before I go out for yet another typical British rainy BBQ, a couple of links to two idiot’s guides to EU spending by the Beeb:

• Q&A: EU budget rows
• How the money is spent

The second link answers my question of the net in/out flow of dosh per country, and makes me wonder why Germany isn’t whining away like the French and British. While the first link has a chart of per capita givers and takers, which is probably a better comparison. So why doesn’t the Beeb use that in their front page article today instead of the raw figures? Ach, who knows… Elsewhere, Nosemonkey has put up a link to some serious figure analysis on his Europhobia blog, and makes me wonder if Lord Vetinari has jumped through the UU’s dimension portal and started ruling Luxembourg…

It’s Friday afternoon, and I’m in a flippant mood. Have a read of Freedom and Whisky’s suggestion here.

Me, I’d call it in. In the ensuing stock market crash, we could revert to the Dark Ages and feel free to wear hoodies again.