Thursday, 19 June 2025

We’ve got some but you can’t have any

"Iran will not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons". The nations which say this just happen to be those who already have such weapons. “It’s OK for us but not for you” seems to be the mantra. If it’s fine for “us” to demand you forgo such weapons should not “we” get rid of ours?

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has been signed by 191 countries since its inception in 1968. Five of those countries were given special recognition for already having nuclear weapons - USA, Russia (earlier the Soviet Union), China, France and the UK. Since the Treaty has disarmament as one of its three pillars, it is suggested that these five were expected to get rid of their nuclear weapons over time [some hopes!]. North Korea left the Treaty in 2003 after years of trying to have it both ways by continuing to contravene the Treaty whilst remaining a member, and conducted a nuclear test in 2006. Three major nations never signed the Treaty: India and Pakistan actually conducted nuclear tests in the 1990s, Israel has never confirmed whether it has nuclear weapons. Which leads us to Iran.

In 2010 Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei issued a fatwa declaring the use of nuclear weapons as forbidden by Islam and stated that Iran was not pursuing them. Iran remains a member of the Treaty and has consistently maintained it has the right (under the Treaty) to enrich uranium to the level required for the production of peaceful nuclear energy. Three days ago Iran announced that its parliament was drafting a bill to withdraw from the NPT.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) passed its latest resolution regarding Iran on June 12, formally declaring Iran non‑compliant with its nuclear safeguards obligations. As Israel is not a member of the Treaty, the IAEA has no jurisdiction to inspect its facilities.

Does anyone actually know whether Iran has nuclear weapons or is imminently planning to build and use one? Israel believes they could have the capability soon and is determined that that shouldn't happen. That's easy to say if you've already got your own. I don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons. Neither do I want Israel to. Or India or Pakistan for that matter.

I fear the Non-Proliferation Treaty is pointless.

If you don't want to be Anonymous

Don't be anonymous - let's see who you are. Here's how to do it.

1. Select the Google app - press/click the big G:
2. Tap on your profile picture at the top right:
3. Select Google account:
4. Select Personal Info:
5. Go to NAME and click the right arrow:
6. Click the right arrow once or twice and edit your Name:
and Save.





Wednesday, 18 June 2025

16,540 miles

Auckland City are the current champions of the New Zealand National League. Football is the third most popular sport after rugby union and cricket in that country. By winning the league the club, who play in a stadium with a capacity of just over 3,000, qualified to compete in the OFC (Oceania Football Confederation) Champions League against clubs from Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. In April this year they actually won it. In fact they have won it for the last four years in a row and in 11 of the last 13 years.

They’re not even the best team in Auckland. Auckland FC play in the Go Media Stadium which has a capacity of 25,000. But they can’t play in the OFC Champions League because they play in the Australian A League and Australia is in the Asian Football Confederation. They actually finished top of the A League in 2024 but were denied the opportunity to play in the Asian Champions League because they are based in New Zealand which, as we know, is in the Oceania Football Federation. In fact, although they finished 1st in the league phase they didn’t win it because 1st through 6th compete in a series of playoffs to decide who wins the title and they were beaten by Melbourne Victory.

I hope you’re keeping up.

Anyway a couple of weeks ago Auckland City flew 8,270 miles to Cincinnati to take part in the FIFA Club World Cup.

And got beaten 10-0 by Bayern Munich.

Why bother?

The answer: $6.25 million. Just for turning up. Theoretically they could get an extra $2.5 million if they win a match. In a couple of weeks' time they will take the 8,270 return journey home. Maybe they could buy a new stadium.


Where is everybody?

Following yesterday's exploration of conspiracy theory, I thought I'd mull over the Fermi Paradox. I asked ChatGPT about it.

********************************************

Ah, the Fermi Paradox—one of the most deliciously frustrating mysteries in science.

At its core, it asks a simple question:

“Where is everybody?”

In other words:
If the universe is so big, so old, and so full of stars (and planets), why haven’t we seen any signs of intelligent alien life?


๐Ÿง  Origin: Who Was Fermi?

The paradox is named after Enrico Fermi, a Nobel-winning physicist. In 1950, over lunch with colleagues at Los Alamos, he supposedly blurted out:

“But where is everybody?”

They were chatting about UFOs and the likelihood of life in the universe. Fermi realized that based on the size and age of the Milky Way, alien civilizations should already be here—or at least their signals should be.


๐ŸŒŒ The Logic Behind the Paradox

Here’s the thinking:

  1. There are 100–400 billion stars in the Milky Way.

  2. Many of those stars have planets. Estimates suggest billions of Earth-like planets.

  3. Life evolved on Earth relatively quickly, geologically speaking.

  4. If intelligent life develops commonly, then some civilizations should be millions of years ahead of us.

  5. In millions of years, they could have:

    • Explored the galaxy

    • Sent probes everywhere

    • Built giant structures

    • Left signals we could detect

But... we see nothing.
No ships. No radio signals. No evidence of colonization. Not even so much as an alien potato chip wrapper.


๐Ÿ•ณ️ So Where Are They? Theories and Possibilities

Here are some of the leading explanations people have offered—ranging from sober science to existential dread:


๐Ÿงฌ 1. Life is Rare

Maybe Earth is a freak accident. Life may be:

  • Rare to begin with

  • Often wiped out by asteroids or climate shifts

  • Likely to stay microbial forever


๐Ÿค– 2. Intelligent Life Destroys Itself

The “Great Filter” theory says most civilizations self-destruct before they reach the stars—via:

  • Nuclear war

  • Climate collapse

  • AI run amok

  • Biological weapons

Sobering, isn’t it?


๐ŸŒ 3. We’re the First

Someone has to be first. Maybe we’re the early bloomers, and in another billion years, the galaxy will be full of chatter.


๐Ÿ™ˆ 4. They're Hiding

Advanced civilizations may:

  • Choose not to contact us (the zoo hypothesis)

  • Use communication methods we don’t understand (quantum? neutrinos?)

  • Be deliberately quiet to avoid predators (the dark forest theory)


๐Ÿคฏ 5. They’re Already Here... and We’re Too Dumb to Notice

Maybe they're microscopic. Or post-biological. Or living in forms we can’t perceive. We could be like ants trying to understand the internet.


๐Ÿงช 6. We Haven’t Looked Hard Enough (Yet)

The universe is huge. We’ve only just started scanning for alien signals, and SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has covered a tiny sliver of the radio spectrum, for a tiny amount of time.

Imagine listening to one second of one radio station, and concluding no one broadcasts music.


๐Ÿช So What’s the Verdict?

The Fermi Paradox doesn’t say aliens don’t exist
it highlights the weird silence in a galaxy that should be screaming with life.

Whether it’s because we’re rare, doomed, or just not looking in the right way, no one knows.

But it haunts astronomers, physicists, and philosophers alike—and it’s one of the best reasons to keep looking up.

********************************************

Now, as I and my fellow Star Trekkies know, the aliens are out there but you need a warp engine to go and find them. But there's plenty to get our teeth into here. For myself, I really hope we're not alone; it would be tremendously exciting to find some extraterrestrial life. And does SETI really exist? Hopefully Elon (clearly a Trekkie at heart) will have protected them from his chainsaw.

On their website seti.org I am promised 

When we make first contact, you'll be one of the first we contact.


Sign me up! (to avoid confusion, this is not the same as "Beam me up, Scottie")

I am familiar with the Dark Forest theory from the 3 Body Problem book 2. But I had to look up the Zoo Hypothesis. Apparently it suggests that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations are intentionally avoiding contact with Earth, observing us like animals in a zoo to allow for our natural evolution and development. Readers of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will be familiar with something like this, although in reverse: the mice are actually hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who built Earth as a giant computer to calculate the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. Which turned out to be 42. Again, I want this to be true.

What worries me most though is why ChatGPT starts its replies with a big sigh "Ah...". And "an alien potato chip wrapper"? I have to have a look at its settings.

I asked it stop the "Ah" beginning and it agreed to.

Tuesday, 17 June 2025

Flight BA149

From time to time I explore the offerings on the Sky Documentaries channel. Last night I watched Flight 149: Hostage of War. There was a thorough review in the Guardian a few days ago so I'm just going to focus on a few essential points. It is centred around events on 2 August 1990, a date best known for the start of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

My default position for "revelations" of secret government plots is scepticism. Nevertheless some known facts exist:

  • British Airways flight 149 left London Heathrow at 19:05 BST on 1 August 1990 en route to Kuala Lumpur with stops scheduled in Kuwait and Madras (now Chennai). The flight had been delayed from its original departure time of 18:00.
  • The flight touched down in Kuwait at 04:13 local time on 2 August, by which time Iraq's invasion had begun.
  • Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stated in Parliament that the flight had landed before the invasion began. In 2021, however Foreign Office papers were declassified and released and showed that the UK government was not only aware that of the invasion before the flight's arrival time in Kuwait but that they "allowed" the flight to take off from London knowing that there was a risk the invasion would take place imminently. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss confirmed that the government had misled British Airways by not passing on a warning about the invasion.
I'm going to skip over the horrendous depictions of Iraqi behaviour in the film and move to the key assertion behind its focus on the class action being taken on behalf of 95 of the passengers against the UK government and British Airways, which is that there are suggestions that a "military looking" group of young men boarded late in London, deplaned first in Kuwait and may not have been included in the passenger manifest (which would have been illegal under UK law). 

The inference posed by the programme makers is that it's possible that the UK government had a group of special forces operatives (referred to as The Increment, a supposed group of former SAS soldiers and MI6 officers) added to the flight in order to operate undercover in Kuwait. On 2 October 1992, in response to a question on the issue, now-PM John Major said "I can confirm, however, that there were no British military personnel on board the flight". Of course, if the Increment exists and is a group of ex-military, this would have been a truthful statement.

Following a BBC documentary about the flight in 2007, there have been a number of claims from "reliable sources" that something of the kind actually occurred.

My inherent scepticism allows that (a) it's a plausible explanation (b) that it's equally likely to be untrue (c) even if it's true, isn't that what you'd expect a responsible government, about to go war, to do? (d) there are sometimes legitimate reasons for governments to lie (e) it may sometimes, for the "greater good", be possible to argue that sacrificing the liberty, and even perhaps the lives, of 367 innocent passengers in order to further the long term defeat of a ruthless dictator. As you can see, although it's a really well produced and purposeful film, I don't easily buy into the easy conspiracy theory, attractive and entertaining though it is.

I look forward to hearing of your opinions, if you watch it.

Thursday, 12 June 2025

Rinse and repeat

I remember exactly where I was when President Kennedy was shot. In the bath (me not him). My mother came into the bathroom and told me. I was 19 and a bit protective of my privacy so I was a bit shocked.

Memory is a funny thing. I can see that in my mind from 62 years ago but I can't recall what I had for dinner last night.

I don't remember when we were told we couldn't call Peking Peking any more, it had to be Beijing. I can remember it happening but not when. Maybe it just crept into our consciousness. Or perhaps the Chinese leader (I don't know which one, just that it wasn't Chairman Mao) phoned the BBC and said "we've issued an edict that filthy imperialists must address us respectfully".

Is that what happened with Kiev? I've lived with my childhood love of geography for 70 years and suddenly the old atlases are wrong? Who decided? I know, it's about derussification but I say again: who decided?

The latest (and I'm probably coming a bit late to this party) is - no more Czech Republic. I'd just got used to forgetting the Czechoslovakia that shockingly won the European Championship in 1976. I remember that I was sitting in my car listening to the commentary on the car radio, and that I felt great joy at the underdog winning the penalty shootout with Antonin Panenka chipping the winning penalty down the middle - a technique now forever known as a Panenka. More so that they beat the Germans. Who at that time were West Germany. Anyway, it's now Czechia. Which I'm uncertain how to pronounce (not Chechnya, that's a different country - pay attention at the back!). In any case "the Czechs have just scored a third goal past the hapless England goalkeeper" will probably do for past, present and future. Unless we change our name. Or goalkeeper.

Tonight they are playing us (England under 21s) at soccer. They being Czech Republic. Which is apparently what we have to call them when it's an official occasion, as opposed to a holiday destination. Hope our goalkeeper's OK.

And on a completely different note and referring back to a recent post:


Hou Yifan's back! In a team chess tournament in Londinium, at the Novotel London West in Hammersmith, which used to be Hamersmyth. Although that was in 1294, so I can be forgiven for not remembering that.