A good Post On the Deepwater Horizon Accident

[ladajo]

That would have been very dumb on nK's part.
The water is shallow enough, that if the investigation team looks hard enough, they should find peices/parts of the torp's drive section. If they get lucky enough and fund something with numbers on it...game on.
Another news article claimed that they had found pieces of a <torp> propellor.

Mines tend to leave behind smaller peices/parts, and have less stuff with numbers on them.

I am still betting on a mine, using a sub is VERY risky (physically and politcally). Granted, it (the weapon) could have been deployed as a mine, but that is unlikely in shallow water, or at least a "new" tactic. And heavy weight torps deployed as mines are typically layed by air. Lightweights are normally used for submarine deployments.

Curiouser and Curioser. As will be the South Korean response. I think sanctions via the UN, and an unproclaimed tit for tat down the road.

The South Korean Government is fragged to make an official statement on the 20th according to the news.

This is thin, but could be information operations shaping prior to the thursday, "big annoucement":
"A team of scientists believes that the Navy corvette Cheonan sank after being hit by a heavy 206 kg torpedo that ran at a speed of 65 km/h.

Bae Myung-jin, a professor at the Sound Engineering Research Lab of Soongsil University, on Thursday said his team analyzed data about the seismic waves generated at the time of explosion of the Cheonan, which were provided by the Korea Meteorological Administration and the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources. "As a result, we presume that the torpedo ran at the Cheonan at the speed of 65.7 km/h and exploded underwater 2.3 m from the ship with power equivalent to 206 kg of TNT."

He said heavy torpedoes with a payload capacity of 200 kg are usually 7 to 8 m long. The explosive is stored not in the head but in the rear part 1 to 6 m away from the head. Thus even if the head hits the hull, the explosion normally occurs a few meters away from the ship.

"After the initial explosion, it was observed that a series of internal explosions occurred in the stern for about 80 seconds," he said. That suggests the Cheonan was not hit by a bubble jet, as previously assumed, but received a direct blow from a gunpowder explosion.

The team concluded that the ship was probably hit by a Chinese-made 206 kg-class Yu-3 heavy torpedo."
englishnews@chosun.com / Apr. 30, 2010 08:53 KST

[ladajo]

"Fragments of a torpedo propeller found near the disaster site are similar to parts from a North Korean torpedo that South Korea obtained seven years ago, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported Wednesday, citing unidentified government officials.

A serial number on the torpedo propeller was written in a font typically used in North Korea, and traces of explosives found in the wreckage resemble the gunpowder used in the North Korean torpedo retrieved in 2003, the paper said."

Let there be numbers...game on.

I still think most probable was a YU-3 mine variant deployment, could have been from a covert minelayer, taking a live shot from a sub is very risky and much more visible than a passive mine. We shall see.

Tommorrow should be interesting.

[chrismb]

(I'm really blowing my intended retirement from this site by posting to the 'general' forum, but I'd just like to mention that I did send BP what I consider an immediate and complete fix to this situation):

All they have to do is load up a minisub with explosives, get it on top of the pipe's path as close to the rupture as practical, and detonate it. The seabed will then return to the state it was in prior to them drilling a damned big hole in it.

Any of you guys local to this better ask your political representatives to ask why BP hasn't considered this. It's not really any big interest of mine as I have no connection with that part of the world (which is a shame - I really liked that coast-line of the Gulf when I visited Pensacola and took a driving holiday up to Louisiana. Wish I was there still...)

[ladajo]

They are saying that a submarine took the shot. I do not have any details on the basis for it yet. Man-o-man, I bet the South Korean government is getting a lot of pressure from us to play this one out gently.
What a mess.

(PS: I still think it could have been a YU-3 rigged as a mine.)

[Diogenes]

I have since reconsidered the opinions of others (Skipjack I think) concerning British Petroleum, and I am now of the opinion that this was indeed a vile company and it deserves to be bankrupted and wiped out.


I found out they were in bed with the democrats!

There’s a problem: BP was a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a lobby dedicated to passing a cap-and-trade bill. As the nation’s largest producer of natural gas, BP saw many ways to profit from climate legislation, notably by persuading Congress to provide subsidies to coal-fired power plants that switched to gas.

BP has more Democratic lobbyists than Republicans. It employs the Podesta Group, co-founded by John Podesta, Obama’s transition director and confidant. Other BP troops on K Street include Michael Berman, a former top aide to Vice President Walter Mondale; Steven Champlin, former executive director of the House Democratic Caucus; and Matthew LaRocco, who worked in Bill Clinton’s Interior Department and whose father was a Democratic congressman.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/natio ... 42659.html



Rahm Emanuel lived rent free in BP flack's apartment



http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/201 ... ree_i.html


A truly vile and horrible company that needs to be destroyed!

[Josh Cryer]

Yep, Democrats have been the party of capitalists for decades.

[MSimon]

Yep, Democrats have been the party of capitalists for decades.

Uh. You mean rent seekers.

[Josh Cryer]

Yes, capitalists.

[MSimon]

Yes, capitalists.

Uh. You paint with too broad a brush. A capitalist is one who deploys resources in the hopes of supplying some human want or desire at a profit.

A rent seeker is one who uses government guns to profit without regard to want or need.

[hanelyp]

This back and forth illustrates why I don't like to use the term 'capitalism', different people have contradictory meanings for the term. Use 'free market', 'cronyism', or other specific term as appropriate.

I'd say the democrats are the party of cronyism.

[Diogenes]

Yep, Democrats have been the party of capitalists for decades.

Yup. Started under Andrew Jackson, Founder of the Original DNC which still exists today. His first major act was to kick all the indians off of land in the south so that whites could mine the gold and start slave plantations. Very Capitalistic.

[Josh Cryer]

Uh. You paint with too broad a brush. A capitalist is one who deploys resources in the hopes of supplying some human want or desire at a profit.

A rent seeker is one who uses government guns to profit without regard to want or need.

Capitalists are not ones to refuse rent, and are happy to hire thugs to enforce it for them. Indeed, the very idea of capitalists not being rent seekers is preposterous to me.

Very Capitalistic.

Yep, capitalists don't care about property rights. BP is causing, at this very moment, billions of dollars of property damage. It will never be repaid. Ever. Just like the slavers never repaid those who they unjustly enslaved.


There are hundreds of thousands of empty, foreclosed, houses in Phoenix. Right now. Neither a Democrat nor a Republican (and I doubt even Libertarian) would turn a blind eye to squatters taking over those houses.

[MSimon]

OK. According to you capitalist = rent seeker.

I don't see it.

So how do you propose to end this rent seeking by people looking for a profit? Honest Government?

As to thugs. Those would normally be union goons in this day and age.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWnxlFbYjVY

[Josh Cryer]

OK. According to you capitalist = rent seeker.

Yes, the foundation of capitalism is rent and contract. No capitalist, not even a Randian crazy will say that they are against rent. Only a small minority of anarcho-capitalists, might be against rent seeking but even the ancaps against rent are a minority. Certainly Rothbard was pro-rent, and I would argue that ancaps against rent are not caps.

I don't see it.

Rent is the cornerstone of capitalist property.

So how do you propose to end this rent seeking by people looking for a profit? Honest Government?

Minarchism (or if you're optimistic, anarchism). I am not anti-profit, however, I am pro-equality (or justice), if your actions cause harm to my property then I am deserving of recompense. This idea is not new, however, it is mired in gray areas where people claim that they didn't do harm or shouldn't have to repay. That is probably another discussion for another topic however.

As to thugs. Those would normally be union goons in this day and age.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWnxlFbYjVY

And here you will be shocked that I completely agree. Unions are just another tier of the capitalist process. They, too, are rent seekers, by forcing you to pay in to them if you work for a certain company. Just like a bank would force you to pay them for rent in a neighborhood full of foreclosed houses.

[MSimon]

Yes, the foundation of capitalism is rent and contract.

Ah. I see your problem. You are unaware of the economic definition of rent seeking I was using.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking

In economics, rent seeking occurs when an individual, organization or firm seeks to earn income by capturing economic rent through manipulation or exploitation of the economic or political environment, rather than by earning profits through economic transactions and the production of added wealth.

Property is long established in human nature with its antecedents in animal behavior (territoriality). I don't see how you can repeal that drive by law.

Well perhaps once you find a sufficient quantity of the New Anarchist Man or perhaps the New Libertarian Man (all of whom are absolutely scrupulous in keeping their word without contract) this will all work out as you hope. In the mean time we have to have a system that works well enough with the mostly honest.

What we find in the real world is that the Anarchists are beaten by less noble foes (see Spain 1936 to 1939). Or read:

Homage to Catalonia by Orwell.