Tuesday 17 February 2009

Seeking Sculptures and Submarines



Reb is in Belgium or Holland looking for stuff by Muñoz. In case she can´t find any, here are a couple. Interesting.

Something fishy in the Atlantic Ocean

The story below broke yesterday, Monday 16th Feb. I have cut out a lot of the background detail as usual. It strikes me as worth considering for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, the comments therein.
The man Willet describes it as "a one in a million chance" that the subs should collide. I am no mathematician, but I would put it more in the one in ten billion range. You only have to think about it a bit.
Then, I was entranced by the superbly fatuous comment of Commodore Saunders, "This really shouldn't have happened at all." No shit.


But there is a whole lot more to this story than we know so far, or maybe will ever be told, or I will eat my sailor hat.

That two nuclear submarines just happened to be in exactly the same bit of ocean, at the same depth, at the same hour and second of the same day - by chance - is simply not credible. So what were they each doing? I suspect it was the same sneaky thing. But what was that?
We should be told. But I doubt if we will.

British, French nuclear subs collide in Atlantic

LONDON – Nuclear submarines from Britain and France collided deep in the Atlantic Ocean this month, authorities said Monday in the first acknowledgment of a highly unusual accident that one expert called the gravest in nearly a decade.
Officials said the low-speed crash did not damage the vessels' nuclear reactors or missiles or cause radiation to leak. But anti-nuclear groups said it was still a frightening reminder of the risks posed by submarines prowling the oceans powered by radioactive material and bristling with nuclear weapons.
France's defense ministry said Monday that the sub Le Triomphant and the HMS Vanguard, the oldest vessel in Britain's nuclear-armed submarine fleet, were on routine patrol when they collided in the Atlantic this month. It did not say exactly when, where or how the accident occurred.
"It's an absolute one in a million chance that the two submarines were in the same place at the same time," said Lee Willett, head of the maritime studies program at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based military think tank.
Stephen Saunders, a retired British Royal Navy commodore and the editor of Jane's Fighting Ships, said that while NATO countries let each other know what general area of the Atlantic they are operating in, neither submarine would have had a precise position for the other.
"This really shouldn't have happened at all," Saunders said. "It's a very serious incident, and I find it quite extraordinary."

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