Walsingham

Maybe they should. It is, after all, impossible to be unhappy while wearing a poncho.

It's at times like this that I feel the way a London bobby would if he rounded a corner and found God bespoiling the service entrance of a shop.

I have one simple reason why i could never buy a mac, and that is the games. I want games!

No problems at the moment. But no long sessions of gameplay so far either.

Walsingham examines the dice and discovers a piece of gum is stuck to the opposite face of the dice, accounting for all the crit fumbles. He unobtrusively attaches it to the face opposite crit success...

I have to point these things out. At least I think I do. I really fidn it creepy listening to you, actually. It's almost exactly like every group I've ever played in. Are gamers really so samey?

Liberate te ex inferis. Good thing for used bookstores, old game rule nooks can be found there. Damn you francophobes. I was misquoting. What I wrote sounds like 'guerre' as in war. But I wrote 'gare' as in train station. Oh never mind.

The book was pretty good. Moseley - if memory serves - is a dry but effective writer. Not exactly Raymond Chandler, but good enough to see you through a weekend in a foreign city.

Okay, and I am arguing that given a finite law enforcement capability the offence of illegally being resident should be lower on the list than you are suggesting. An amnesty allows thejustice system to draw a line under existing offences for those willing to now play ball. Which in turn gives moral and practical impetus to a much harsher crackdown subsequently. Gun amnesties are a clasic example of this, which work worldwide. EDIT: In this case, for example http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6956322.stm Where an immigrant died due to panicking while selling bootleg DVDs I have no sympathy. The compound nature of the crime while not deserving the death sentence should certainly result in immediate expulsion. I also believe that such expulsion should carry registry on a DNA database and permanent future exclusion.

I not sure how an achievable win is either disconnected from a long term campaign, or why you think Afghanistan is not part of the agenda. Afghanistan has been on the agenda since 9/11. A failure in Afghanistan at this stage woud not only wreck US attempts to inroad central Asia, but would directly weaken Pakistan. A country teetering on the brink of Jifascism and who even an Independent on Sunday journalist would agree has nukes.

But the impact of your policy will be the sabotage of your strategic allies, and markets for your goods, never mind the domestic economic and human fallout. Your ignoring advances made this century stems from your unwilllingness to acknowledge that no nation is an island. We are all inextricably interconnected, and recognising that fact is not just essential but provokes a strategic emphasis on cooperation and mutual assistance (as Hurlshot said).

What's Devil in a Blue Dress like? I read the book many years ago.

Hello, Dave. Good evening sire. How are things on this pleasant day? Anything exciting and life changing happen this past month or so whilst I've been too drunk to operate the forums ? Yes. I have worked out how to post while too drunk to operate the forum. Sand has lost the ability to understand second order dynamics. Hurlshot, Tigranes, and Azarkon keep implanting thoughts in my head. Fionavar left for a while, but our cardboard dragon fooled everyone.

So you wouldn't say that the troop surge in Iraq has absorbed what fighting slack there was in the US Army? thus changing the circumstances since a year ago? And why aren't you on here more often, dammit!

Hmmm. You don't think it might make more sense to devote resources to a campaign where the enemy is weaker, and we can win the shorter term? Thus giving a morale boost all round, and vindicating the concept?

It's quite simple. Sand has, for reasons beyond me, failed to grasp the concept of second order dynamics. We've been through this on innumerable occasions. He's essentially against every advance we've made in human affairs since the mid 1800s, with the exception of the end of colonialism. I don't know why this makes me so annoyed, since it's patently suboptimal for all concerned. Sand, question: Have you ever come across the business of system dynamics? I ask because there's no shortage of computing power at your end, it's just like you're doing everything on an amiga emulator.

I have a bunch of fruit and veg going off, so I'm making fruit jam with muscovado sugar, and a huge vegetable soup. I put on Norah Jones and her singing, plus the cold weather and smell of fruit and cinnamon... feels like Autumn!

I lived with a bacteriologist once. He calmly informed, in tones I would reserve for describing a short stroll, that they had discovered an unkillable bacteria that day. Autoclaved it, bleached it, dried it out, you name it. "Wow! So what have you done?" I said, agog. "We washed it down the sink," He announced, placidly spooning up soup. "Into the regular drains?" I said, horrified. "Naturally. You can always blame me if we all die."

Finally a fan request the devs can agree with!

I'm saying that we can't fight everything we want to. And in fact if you approached this as an exercise in government and not as a philosophy class you'd see what you're saying is nonsense. Simply waving your arms about and saying I want to free everyone doesn't answer my points. Imagine for a moment that we were talking not about crime but about disease, and ignore the human aspect. We have a limited stockpile of anti-virals which we can use. I am suggesting that the majority of illegal imigrants are like athlete's foot*. You're saying that because it's a disease we have to immediately apply everything in our arsenal to get rid of it. I'm saying we can live with it, and the anti-virals are better spent elsewhere. I'm not saying it is OK. I'm prioritising. Answer the questions: 1. Do you agree that immediate return would result in millions of dispossessed individuals turning up in Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Phillipines and so on? 2. Do you also agree that those persons would stop sending money home to extended families? 3. What do you suppose the net impact of those two factors will be on the countries receiving them? The net impact in my opinion will be the sudden removal of workers from your own economy, coupled with body blows to countries you are currently on good terms with. I have an alternative solution to your draconian short-sightedness if you care to hear it, and it isn't "Let's run around as nude anarchists!" *Which is a fungus, I know, but you get the idea. PS I know I've changed my position on this, but that's WHY we debate things, to better understand them.

I deduce you are smelling unfortunate adventurers falling into a pit of fire somewhere in the vent system.

Enoch, you make a good point about US moves rallying domestic support. However, there is a history of the USA doing precisely this as a favour to Arab governments who are playing ball behind the scenes. Anwar Sadat being the most celebrated case. Fiery rhetoric right up to the point where he signed a peace accord with Israel. The probability that this is what is happening can be seen in the recent behaviour of the two players. In the last round of talks on the future of Iraq, both sides preceded the talks with violent protestations of hate, and left quietly and unobtrusively. Saudi Arabia then arrested the usual suspects who were jifascist agitators then complained that Iran was being too aggressive. Turkey also lined up troops on the border with Iraq, presumably to indicate their displeasure at the notion of either a Shia fundamentalist Iraq, or a free Kurdistan (which the Iranians might contemplate. I don't know enough about Iran to know how the internal politics may be working. However, it is my belief <engage Tom Clancy unit> that there are two main bodies of thought. On the one hand you willl have a moderate group of clerics who see now as a good time to start playing ball with the Americans in return for concessions in Iraq, and an end to sanctions, which are causing serious unrest in Iran. Against them you will have members of the IRGC who have always operated with a good deal of independence and who are likely to view all obstacles as mere irritations. Remember these chaps lost more than 1 million men fighting Iraq in the 1980s. They will hardly baulk at being bombed, and view the objections of the civilians as mere weediness. If the above analysis is correct then, as I said before, we may see US air-strikes executed as a means of performing political assassinations as a gift to the internal groups we can work with. As well as being a way of 'punishing' persons organising and sanctioning IRGC guerrilla training units in Iraq.

Gorgon makes a good point. Even as Sand makes a redundant one. In any event the total amount pledged to Afghanistan in 2003 was barely 600 million, and not even this has actually turned up. The only time I am ever inclined to believe the whole hocus pocus about the defence industry calling shots is when I look at teh huge cost of our military presence versus the miniscule quantity of civil aid. Counter-insurgency has to include hearts and minds. It's not a matter of opinion, it's a fact. Unless we do start spending soon and getting results then we're going to see the average Afghan wonder what the point of the new government is. The present general willingness will disappear and in a worst case scenario we could face a general insurgency rather than the Talibs.

Yet unlike Iraq Afghans are returning rather than fleeing. This is a country that wants desperately to succeed at the grass roots level. They may be fractious, poorly-educated, and proud. But they've got a lot of spirit. I speak from direct experience. Developing the country isn't going to be quick. But nor is it impossible.

Kaft is right, of course. It is easy to forget that many do not make any disrtinction. The Shias are a powerful potential ally against Al Qaeda, since they - as apostates - are actually a step below even us infidels. You're allowed to kill infidels. You are obliged to kill apostates. Or so the jifascists would have us believe.