Walsingham

What? Example.

I think it's good that Woodward's brought out some of these issues. It's healthy to have a broad debate over policy at the high level, but what is not healthy is to follow that debate with utter confusion. Moreover, the excerpts I've read in the media indicate that Obama simply can't be arsed with Afghanistan. I could be wrong because the same quotes could simply indicate a desire to see it swiftly to a snesible conclusion. but frankly I have no faith in that analysis. He simply wants to engage in domestic reforms at the expense of all that has been sacrificed, and all that would be sacrificed. Which begs the question why he didn't get along with Gordon Brown any better! I can't put this any more bluntly. Afghanistan isn't a long way away. It's less than 13 hours away by plane*. It's next ****ing door. And it's not a box of toys you can just pack away. We weren't involved with Afghanistan from Oct. 7th, we were involved as soon as Al Qaeda embroiled them in their campaign to turn the whole world into a dustier and less magical version of Disneyland. We will remain involved so long as Afghanistan threatens to domino Pakistan and India. And if we LOSE in Afghanistan then we will be involved indefinitely as it becomes a rallying example to radical Islamofascists everywhere. And just because this sucks doesn't make it less true. *Roughly.

While I think it's going way too far to describe the US justices as pushing personal agendas, I think it's much less contentious to suggest that various presidents have got into the habit of trying to load the supreme court. Fair?

This may be a bit poltical, but it made we laugh in an indulgent way, like an uncle amused by a child in a huge hat. story

This sounds like a derivation of Social Network Analaysis. And that's been around for yonks. Moreover, thr principle of targetting leadership hubs? Give me a break. Tukhachevski was talking about that in the 1930s. Sorry to sound dismissive. I'm not attacking you, Orogun. But it seems to me that so-called popular science and other popular journals operate about ten years behind actual science. And it's beginning to piss me off.

Surely the owners of a board that is not paid for by public funds have a right to proscribe behaviour they consider objectionable? Far more to the point, if as you say there are innumerable places where you can swear and talk dirty, why not use them for doing so?

So I take it you're not a fan of foreign films shown on TV at two in the morning?

What i don't really GET is how you get concentration of force if you have no stacking.

I'd suggest horsemanship, some sort of mechanical repair or construction, and acrobatics.

Go on then. Which is that one?

Mystery, cute girl, great artwork, more mystery... What's not to love? http://somefield.com/merricks_online/index.html

Nice to see proportional representation doing what it does best. Hand the swing deciding role in government to a bunch of loons.

Im still dropping hints about Four Lions to my friends.

Good day buzzing by so far. Saw this, completely by chance, and now want to visit Australia: http://www.innerwestlive.com.au/blog/2010/...w-monkey-magic/ nom nom nom

Speaking of Serenity, I went to see the Curst Sons www.myspace.com/thecurstsons Toe tapping dirty country songs about hanging and shooting and so on. From Brighton.

Good point.

GD, I'm taking no offence at fact that you didn't address my key point because you've had so many to talk to at once. However, I'll put it to you again, slightly differently. 1. Macroeconomic/macrosocial.macroclimactic currents, and events do happen. ONLY unified large governments can hope to apply sufficient focussed leverage to redress these once they are apparent. HOWEVER I mention this only to highlight that I accept as sound your counterargument that they haven't the wit to do so. I choose not to believe that, but it's eminently debateable. 2. It is all very well to suggest that large governments are bound by rules of size and complexity. I agree. But to deny that societyies and nations are not seems self-contradictory. The fact is that we are interconnected, and rules in one state have effects in another. For the simplest argument consider drinking ages. When I was young I recall this was a problem because it caused rat runs across state boundaries. This got fixed by consensus in most cases. But I use it to illustrate the concept simply. Tax law, environmental regulation, the internet... county hall can address these how? [leading on to the next point, not aimed at GD] 3. Gorth suggests that a multiplicity of agencies is less corruptible. to an extent I follow his logic. However, my experience with big companies and small government is that the big companies bully, cajole, and bamboozle local councils with laughable ease. Ditto small countries, from what I read. It therefore becomes more time consuming to reduce multiple agencies, but easier in each instance. I despise the EU concept, but I can't deny that they've taken strong action on Microsoft where no-one else would. ~ Which brings me back to my central attitude: democratic government is not a wolf at the door. It is our guard dog. It is our servant. Neglect it, starve it, treat it incoherently, and it becomes dissociated from us. Once dissociated it it is prone to all manner of misbehaviour. But the solution is not to replace it with something so small it can't function, like a weiner dog. The solution is the hard one of being well informed, and participating, and regularly rubbing its nose in messes when it fouls the carpet.

Actually, that's what it's like making love to Shryke.

As I'm sure we will all agree. Women are like buses. Crowded with smoking teenagers and covered in grafitti.

Just finished Mass Effect 1. Have got back into playing Company of Heroes, and am still mahdi about how the AI cheats. And by cheat I mean - is better than me - at least in the skirmish mode. After playing skirmish a couple of times, go try the regular campaigns. They're a freaking pushover.

I think Numbers is doing a PhD, and LoF appears to have finally understoood that we aren't buying what he's selling.

Essentially, read this PDF and be amazed as ever at the ingenuity and total bastardry of organised crime. Link

Cool. I'll try to find a book on him. And I believe the term is not 'bank robbery'. It's 'expropriation'. Since the banks stole it in the first place.

I was being deliberately OTT to underscore a point. The use of terror tactics is a feature independent of political motivation. It's a tool, like carpet bombing. And just like carpet bombing, it diminishes the user as much as the target (albeit in different ways). If you doubt this, just take a peak into any movement you'd care to define as 'freedom fighters' and you'll find they kill far more of their own people than they do of the target. They terrify and intimidate. They extort and brutalise. That is until they make the final step into becoming nothing more than organised crime. And if you have an example of a proper 'freedom fighter' I shall apologise, and eagerly file it.

To suggest that the Somali mission failed because no heavy weapons were allowed is - to overuse my favourite term - bonkers. You think that the midpoint of Blackhawk Down should have been the sight of 155 howitzers blatting away at downtown Mogadishu? What precisely do you think would have happened next? Having said that I can't agree that uparmoured light vehicles made sense in the 1990s. Firstly, the IED threat had barely evolved. Secondly, if you uparmour a light vehicle you get a medium weight vehicle. They move slower, they have more accidents, they cost more to buy and maintain. So you pile on the firepower, and you get less of them. If you know of a way to juggle the equation differently you should bloody patent it and give Thales a ring.