Originally posted by Arthur
Nah, ‘our’ side is the not-Ausländer side :rolleyes:

Absolutely, Arthur (but I think that may have gone straight over a few heads) :rolleyes:

Just been reading some more on the BNP’s policies and this comes straight from their ‘FAQ’ page:

Q: Why are you against mixed-raced relationships?

A: We are against mixed-raced relationships because we believe that all species and races of life on this planet are beautiful and must be preserved. When whites take partners from other ethnic groups, a white family line that stretches back into deep pre-history is destroyed. And, of course, the same is true of the non-white side. We want generations that spring from us to be the same as us, look like us, and be moved by the same things as us. We feel that to preserve the rich tapestry of mankind, we must preserve ethnic differences, not ‘mish-mash’ them together.

Originally posted by m.ileduets
This was meant ironically: If you check 5 posts further up the thread, Sauron was calling him “the odd reporter”. I think he does a pretty good job. At least he seems to know what he’s writing about.

To be fair to Sauron, and ‘cos I know English isn’t the first language of many who visit the forum, I’m pretty sure he meant “odd” as in “one of a small minority” rather than it’s more common useage to suggest “strange”. Think of “the odd one out”.

Lesson over…class dismissed! 😀

Steve

I don’t even think this deserves further comment from me to be honest:

Extremism runs through the BNP. From leader Nick Griffin’s Holocaust denial through to Tony Lecomber’s proposed eugenics plan for a purer white race, the party has expounded outrageous and downright dangerous views.

Recently Mark Collett, leader of the young BNP, was shown by Channel 4’s “Despatches” to be an out and out Nazi sympathiser: “National Socialism was the best solution for the German people in the 1930s”, he told the cameras. “I honestly cant understand how a man who’s seen the inner city hell of Britain today can’t look back on that era [Hitler’s Germany] with a certain nostalgia”. Despite the BNP’s public denunciation of Collett, he remains a full-time party worker and Yorkshire Regional Organiser.

Steve Rush

Maybe he simply found http://www.gripen.com.br/index_2.asp and then his Brazilian-Portuguese wasn’t up to translation 😀

Cheers

Steve

Vapor trails

Offsets that sweeten major arms contracts often vanish once deal takes off

When the government signed off on a deal just before Christmas to lease 14 new JAS-39 Gripen fighter jets from Sweden, the move presumably brought an end to the country’s 10-year search to replace its ageing fleet of Russian-built MiG-21s.

Not only would the Czech Republic get a brand-new air force, but under the conditions of the deal it was also promised buckets of cash to kick-start the country’s ailing economy. With unemployment hitting historic levels, the industrial and commercial benefits, or offsets, promised as a condition of the military purchase would also create much-needed jobs.

While that should be good news for the nation, experts in arms deals and military offsets say the government would be wise to approach the bargaining table with caution. Rarely are the deals done with transparency and seldom do the aerospace companies deliver on the promised investments, experts say. When they do, it can often be to the detriment of local economies and result in even more lost jobs.

“The record shows that a lot more offset deals were made on paper than actually followed through,” said Ann Markusen, director of the Project on Regional and Industrial Development at the University of Minnesota in the United States, and a leading critic of military offsets. “It encourages countries to spend money on weapons and buy arms they wouldn’t necessarily buy.”

Peter Evans, a professor at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of a report on Poland’s decision to buy 48 F-16 fighters from the United States in 2002, said the deals are almost always shrouded in deception. “It is so secret that even parliaments have no idea what is going on,” Evans said.

The Gripen deal will not be finalized until the end of March, but the country is expected to receive around 25.5 billion Kc ($980 million) in financial offsets.
Although international trade laws ban such financing in other sectors, it is a common component of arms deals, especially with fighter jets. Supplier countries and companies have waged a fierce war in recent years to sell their products to developing countries. The enlargement of NATO has also created a new market by which former Soviet Bloc countries must update their ageing air forces, say experts in military financing.

By opting to lease the Gripen — a fighter not used by NATO* — instead of buying the U.S.-built Lockheed Martin F-16, the government put itself in a position to sell the deal as a jobs-creation program as well as a national-defense priority. At the same time, the offsets promised by the Swedish government and BAE Systems-Saab Aerospace, the maker of the Gripen, are designed to provide the country with enough economic aid to pay for the weaponry.

By contrast, the three countries selling the F-16 — Belgium, the Netherlands and the United States — offered surprisingly little in the way of commercial incentives, said Milan Vacik, Lockheed’s local media director. “The reason why is that the competitors were repeatedly assured that industrial cooperation would not be a major criteria,” he said. “However, as you know, offsets were among the key determinants in the final selection of the Gripen.”

In regard to skepticism surrounding offsets, Vacik said they are “a standard requirement in such deals. And if correctly defined at the beginning, they may bring a real value to the country.”

The Defense Ministry has so far been quiet about the terms and conditions of the Gripen deal, citing ongoing negotiations. Ministry spokesman Ladislav Sticha said the offsets offered by the Swedes were absolutely not behind the decision to lease the Gripens.

Sticha said the government is still working out the final numbers and expects to have a deal in place by the end of the month. A government spokeswoman declined to comment further.

The government, in December, said Sweden would have to sweeten the offer if it wanted to make a deal.

The decision to lease the Gripen came on the heels of a controversial deal that saw Poland buy 48 F-16 fighting Falcons from U.S. aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, a contract that was secured with a $3.8 billion (98.8 billion Kc) loan package from the U.S. Congress.

Evans said the situation in Poland showed how far governments were willing to go to piece together a competitive financing package in order to win a tender.

The Poland deal was unique because the U.S. government, which had not been very active in arms sales since the end of the Cold War, pushed the loan through to Poland, he said. The loan was larger than the total amount of arms loans the United States issued in the prior decade.

Behind the deal was Lockheed’s need to sell enough fighters to keep its Texas plant operational for several years until the launch of a new model, the Joint-Strike Fighter. Lockheed and the U.S. government had hoped the sale would encourage other new NATO members to go with the F-16.

Evans said the Poland deal also put intense pressure on the Swedes to sell the Gripen on the international market. If finalized, the Czech Republic will join Hungary, South Africa, Sweden and Brazil as a country that flies the jet.
“Financing has emerged as an important factor — together with offsets — in winning large military-equipment orders arising from the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” Evans wrote in a 2003 essay, The Financing Factor in Arms Sales: The Role of Official Export Credits and Guarantees.
But such financing, which is estimated to be around $10 billion annually, has been largely criticized by the World Trade Organization for distorting development priorities by shifting resources away from real economic needs.

Easy credit and offsets have also been blamed for aggravating already-high levels of country debt. These concerns led the International Monetary Fund to call for the abolition of export credits for military purposes.

“[Economic activity] ginned-up from an arms deal may have no connection to the real needs of the country,” Evans said by telephone. “It distorts investment flows.”

Markusen, who worked on a U.S. presidential commission to investigate the use of offsets in arms deals before it was disbanded by President George W. Bush, said the deals are always cloaked under the guise of economic development. “Afterwards no one is watching this,” she said.

Markusen said that even when companies set up plants in purchasing countries, they often undercut other local producers. “Other producers can end up getting hurt without even knowing it,” she said. “They are extracting pretty big pounds of flesh,” she added.

But Markusen said countries such as the Czech Republic could take steps to ensure they receive what they are promised. She said it is vital that governments are savvy bargainers. She said the Netherlands and Greece solved the problem by turning the offset packages over to their respective finance ministries instead of allowing the packages to stay in the realm of the defense departments. She said transparency is also key.

“It’s really important that the public knows how much money is at stake and the impact [offsets] can have on a national budget and a country’s forward economic progress,” Markusen said.

* Gripen has also been selected by fellow NATO member Hungary.

Kevin Livingston – Staff Writer, The Prague Post (March 4, 2004)

Originally posted by Arthur
Somehow the SJ Phantoms were really populair (which is funny i think, there were much more interesting Phantom units and i always thought the A-7D deployments were much nicer until it was too late).

Eeek 😮

Thanks for reminding me how old I am, Arthur!

The first Coronets that I saw (and, to be honest, it was events like these that really got me into mil-spotting: Gatwick seemed VERY dull afterwards by comparison!) were Indiana ANG F-100D & F Super Sabres and DC plus Virginia ANG F-105D & F Thunderchiefs at Lakenheath back in 1976.

I’m pretty sure that was the last time we had USAF Super Sabres here in the UK, but another 18 F-105D from the AFRES unit at Tinker, OK, deployed to RAF Sculthorpe in 1978. My log from the day I went is pretty full ‘cos we also had 18 RF-4Cs from Shaw, SC at RAF Coltishall at the same time. 😎

The individual deployments that stand out most for me though are probably the 17th DSES EB-57E Canberras which came pretty much every year to Woodbridge. Probably down to the fact that they were pretty rare birds and also painted with very lurid red nose, tail and tip-tanks!

Best regards

Steve Rush ~ Touchdown-News

To signify a MiG-21 kill on 22nd December 1972, kfadrat.

Best regards

Steve ~ Touchdown-News