SATURDAY NIGHT THE ALAN PARSONS PROJECT, THE CONNELS.

The Alan Parsons Project with Sirius.




Art rock, prog rock band around Eric Woolfson and Alan Parsons, active from 1975 to 1990. I got to know them thanks to my old brother-in-arms Michael B., who let me listen to their 1982 Eye in the Sky album. And that's where Sirius was drawn from.



The Connels with 74-75. From the 1993 album Ring.




I'm a sixties child, born in 1965. Am turning 50 later this year. Listening to this song presses home the weight of time. How well do I recall watching this clip on MTV in the mid-nineties, when I was still trying - how to put it nicely? - to at least get my bearings fixed. Although I did have quite a lot of recollections from my early youth in the seventies, I did not need The Connels to tell me this song wasn't about the timeframe between grade school and your first job. It was about your road between the latter and the point where you arrive twenty years later. Your prime time. The slot allotted to you to make it, or break it. The University of Life, so to speak.

Back then, there was no empathy, no personal connection with the fellas in the video.

But now - at 49 - there is.

And it's amazing how time has flown by.

Well... when you can look back and not regret the basic decisions you have made... the steps you have taken... I guess that's worth a lot, isn't it?

Nite.


MFBB.

BELGIAN F-16 JETS DESTROY ISIS REFINERY IN IRAQ.

Two BAF fighter bombers destroyed a small modular refinery operated by ISIS in western Iraq. However, the attack took place around Christmas already, and the info around it is very scant.


The six BAF F-16's on the Jordan AF base they are operating from.



Via Het Nieuwsblad:

"Belgian F-16 fighter bombers have, during the past week, in a nightly raid, destroyed an Iraqi oil refinery of terror group IS, according to a military source on Sunday.

The raid involved two planes and took place in the desert in Iraq's west. IS had installed a modular refinery on the spot, where fuel was being produced for the organization's vehicles.

According to the Belgian F-16 pilot, who wants to remain anonymous, early Thursday morning four laser guided 250-kg bombs were released which destroyed the target.

The pilot added that no casualties on the ground were observed, since at the time of attack the refinery was inactive."

250 kg-bombs? Laser-guided? Although the BAF also uses JDAM's, these must have been GBU-12 Paveway II's.

The good news is that our jets are apparently doing something useful. Although in the greater scheme of things, I fear attacks like these amount to little more than pinpricks. Far more planes and far more ordnance should be used.

The bad news is that we have to learn this from a pilot who wants to remain anonymous. Ergo, NOT via an official channel. Ergo, NOT via some MoD's spokesman. Ergo, the info on the Belgian Air Force's exploits against ISIS is being curtailed.

At the end of the year our planes had released around sixty bombs, or about two every three days. While a very modest tally, the strikes obtained were in all likelihood sufficiently significant to at least warrant some briefings from the MoD. Yet these have not materialized. Which seems strange, since during the first two~three weeks there were some press conferences held where the planes' missions were being detailed.

There can be only one explanation for the current radiosilence, and that is that some jackasses in the government have urged the MoD not to tout successes against ISIS. ISIS support on Belgian social network sites frequented by muslims is large. Are the cowards in government afraid to ruffle the delicate sensitivities of our muslim "compatriots"? Are they scared too much publicity may induce ISIS terrorists to some payback on our soil (as the jihadis offed in Verviers were obviously planning)? Or both?

Probably the latter. Memo to these cowards: if you dare not say out loud that Belgian bombs take out islamic terrs in the desert of Iraq because you're afraid of the reactions of our supposedly well-integrated followers of the prophet (may piss, crap, vomit and menstruation blood be showered upon him in prodigious quantities), then you have a serious problem with that part of our population.

But keep stickin your head in the sand, idiots.



MFBB.