Monte Carlo

The Pacific is showing on satellite TV her in the UK (Sky exclusive) and is being hyped as the TV event of the 21st Century. Messrs Hanks and Spielberg's continuing mission to chronicle the experience of the American fighting man in WW2 continues apace, and laudable it is too. Last night I saw the first two parts back-to-back. But. Band of Brothers was better. Much, much better. I'll get to that bit later. What of The Pacific? It did a good job of explaining the war in this theatre as the Blitzkreig nobody writes about, a savage conflagration on a par with the Eastern Front as far as brutality is concerned and about how Guadalcanal was one airfield away from cutting off Australia. But after that it lost it's way. The source material probably doesn't help in this respect - the tight narrative of BoB (i.e. one cohesive unit based on Ambrose's accomplished if slightly hagiographic book) is lost as we meet three different protagonists in different units. It also doesn't help that they all wear identical uniforms, in the dark, in very confusing steadicam-shot firefights. This callsign spent numerous WTF moments trying to work out who was who, why, and in what direction. The enormity of the war seemed to subsume the human stories in a way BoB managed effortlessly. I do wonder why? One clever scene was the marine assault on Guadalcanal where Spielberg references Saving Private Ryan. I'm not wildly familiar with the minutiae of this battle so was expecting the Japanese MGs to rake the landing craft in some sort of tropical version of Omaha Beach. The marines puke into their landing craft, men look stoically into middle distance, naval guns boom overhead and.... Nothing happens - our happy leathernecks just wander onto the beach looking bemused. It's a neat moment. But apart from that it lacks the polish, humanity and narrative that makes Band of Brothers such a major achievement. The Pacific has a bigger budget and what is clearly a carefully chosen and accomplished cast of character actors... but it missing that certain something. It's early days, but already I'm struggling to identify with the marines of The Pacific as much as I did Easy Company. I'll stick with it, maybe it will take some time to get going, the views of other forumites are welcome. Cheers MC

^ Do you get a medal or some other sort of official recognition at the end?

I'll re-specc the dwarf commando chick to pick locks. There's an area in the first dungeon you need lock-picking for, for example. I have Nat at the moment, he's a pretty effective machine-gun. Those DS snipers are a bit of a handful, love the rapid-fire effect. Also took the advice above and re-specced my main sword and board warrior into a 50/50 sword / shield and dual-wield. One of the best warrior builds, more fun than the archer / dual-wielder I tried. Cheers MC

Wow, Stalin has his own Gulag deniers now?

Deathdealer at 03.00 FTW.

The theology is interesting if you are religious, but from over here in Atheistville it's pretty simple. Ying and Yang. You have to have a counter-balance to the big beardie fella, it just makes sense. The high medieval concept of sin and hell tells you everything you need to know about the peversion of organised religion into a tool of control. I'm not bashing religion per se, a bit of me quite fancies a bit of paganism or something vaguely involving naked chicks dancing around hilltops. But the devil / satan / beelzebub / old Nick needs no deeper theological exposition. It's like getting Da Vinci to paint the face on a scarecrow - nice but not especially adding much to the basic function. Cheers MC

I presume you are from Spain. Anyhow, comparing conscription to slavery is a bit hyperbolic, isn't it? Without getting all Heinlein / Starship Troopers on yo ass, if you live in a modern Western capitalist democracy (especially in Europe) you get loads of stuff that gazillions of folks from third world / failed states would happily serve two years for to enjoy. So, African child soldier = slavery. European kid in khaki peeling potatoes for two years = walk in the park. This, of course, is steering the topic to 'soft mercenary service' whereby a person joins a foreign military for that very reason. In the British army we have Gurkhas and, increasingly, soldiers from the Commonwealth. America has a lot of Latin Americans. These are people who are buying into a better way of life by, let's face it, risking their lives in some of the most dangerous places on earth. I take my hat off to them and would swap them for large swathes of the indigenous population in my country. What is emerging from this more-interesting-than-I-envisaged topic is that there are two themes developing. The first is that conscription, from a purely military POV is a crock. I buy into that. OTOH, point two is that even those of you that hated it intensely seem to see some benefit in the experience, however fleeting. The quintessence of that experience (i.e. overcoming hardship in a team of people with whom you have nothing in common) is priceless. From this POV conscription has something going for it. There is a malaise in modern society, am increasingly wondering if a way of capturing that experience and the compulsory delivering of it to 18-20 year olds is possible without the massive problems of mass conscription. Thankyou to all who have shared their experiences so far, maybe now we can hear from the regular armed services veterans too and see what they think. Cheers MC

--- YESTERDAY --- Peanut butter on toast Cornflakes 2 x mugs of tea --- Skipped lunch, my bad --- Grilled chilli-marinaded lamb and chicken with harissa. Rice, chickpeas, salad of white cabbage & cucumber, pitta bread Beer 1 x glass of Merlot

I'm about to say something you don't hear often... "It runs just fine on Vista...."

MTW2 (Grand Campaign Kingdoms mod) Found a bug that made me just want to give up. I tech up to the point where, by the mid 12th Century I can send two might fleets, equipped with elite troops (I've spent tens of thousands on this, right) to Cuba to begin my dominion over the New World. On the small islands just NE of Cuba the armies disappear. Not the fleets, just the armies. It's so frustrating it's unbelievable, my bad that there's no decent previous savegame. I don't know if its a "you just found the new world" movie trigger or something, but I've just dumped the campaign and will try again to get back into Awakenings.

If you buy into the whole Tamagotchi "the NPCs are real people" tendency that infest the Bio forums then maybe.

Kemal Ataturk, on the war memorial at Gallipoli, and further evidence were it needed that he was an extraordinary statesman. The Turkish don't venerate him for nothing.

^ Nerdrage? Hardly. Bemusement, more like. look at the epic lameness of the product. The Tamagotchi tendency are in the ascendant. As for the "it's not like they are forcing you to buy it line," OK, that's a fairer comment but it's the sort of thing I expect to see in a fan mod, not a piece of desperate revenue harvesting.

What's wrong with a little funnies? The cost.

Booted up Awakenings and got the NEW DLC! pop up. What is it? A bizarre April Fool's Day gift pack for my NPCs. WTF? Honestly, the distance between me and what Bio clearly percieves to be it's customer base gets wider and wider every time they do something like this. It's just craptacular.

I was a reservist for five years, obviously back in the days when it involved digging trenches all over Westphalia waiting for the 'Orange' forces to send 99th Shock Army rumbling over the steppe. For those of you in the know, it involved old-skool steel helmets, soggy '58 webbing, SLRs and puttees. Now reservists are the backbone of all sorts of support functions in sandy, dangerous places. A well-motivated reservist is worth two conscripts in my humble, at least. Maybe I'd tie conscription into the reserves in some way, so that the little loves get gentle exposure to the military. 'Civil Aid' units on the Territorial model for three years... I think it might work. Ten-sHun! MC

^ Old chap, I presume all of these things are down-payment for your liberation from old Bonie, and why you are still speaking Portuguese rather than French. Of course, my historical knowledge of the Peninsula war comes almost exclusively from watching old episodes of Sharpe, usually late at night as an apres-pub treat. So I might well be talking out of my arse for a change. Zut alors! MC

I'm liking it a lot, bourbon is a firm favourite. I wonder what hard liquor is going to do to me though.

I have been suffering from an illness that requires meds that are, frankly, a sonuvabitch when it comes to side effects. I have occasional periods where my day goes seriously Hunter S. Thompson, and as somebody who has assiduously avoided recreational pharmaceuticals all his life it has not made me regret the decision whatsoever. Anyhoo, one of the prohibitions in the early phase of treatment was no alcohol. It is now meds +1 month and I am allowed to have a moderate, infrequent intake of booze. And, ladies and gentlemen, I do like a drink. It's now been a month without one. One. Whole. Month. Four weeks. 31 days. Etc. What shall I have? The anticipation is genuinely part of the fun, it will probably be beer of some description but not necessarily. Please post your most recent libations to see if they might feature in my falling off the wagon. Cheers MC

Nice one, Bio!

Recent historians now look at the vast conscript armies of WW2 with a revisionist eye in a way that would have been objectionable in the 70's or even 80's. The American and British forces of WW2, for example, were the product of liberal democracies. The combat effectiveness, man for man, of these armies wasn't as effective as that of the German, Russian and Japanese soldiers. The theory being, of course, that the latter came from highly militarized, authoritarian societies. That a mere company of German soldiers could halt a US divisional advance for a couple of days in NW Europe tells it's own story. They were done for by a lack of logistics and manpower, not the quality of the Landser. So the society from which the conscript hails is obviously an issue. And at the risk of sounding like a crotchety old git, I wonder if many of the Kids of Today are up for it. Clearly not the ones who volunteer for regular service though, because even a cursory look at the record in places like Afghanistan shows that we can still produce warriors. This is why the small, highly trained professional army always trumps the conscripted horde. Technology is another. Look at the US army - even the lowliest infantry pfc is required to operate and understand a large amount of equipment, tactics, doctrine and rules of engagement. This means that relatively junior NCOs have become even more important than before and the average educational attainment of US army sergeants (equivalent of a British army corporal) is very impressive. Conscripts don't really fit into this, especially not on an 18-24 month service cycle. Personally I'd role them as other people here have mentioned: non-combat logistics, static defence, civil support / emergency response to natural disasters. Having said that, those are still important roles and I suspect that young people might well benefit from the experience. The few that then want to move onto regular military service from that point could then do so, both parties win.

Krezzie is extremely well-balanced, with a chip on each shoulder an' all. I was born in the sixties, all this imperialism crap is nothing to do with me*, thanks. It's like bashing German forumites for the Blitz - not very helpful. All major UK political parties are more or less settled on the EU question - apart from some tinkering with the minutiae. Personally I want to see the UK re-negotiate our relationship with Europe to it's 1974 iteration - i.e. a Free Trade agreement. The EU was started by men desperate not to repeat WW2, a worthy and noble aspiration. It has now morphed into something rather different: a bloated, unaccountable corporatist monster. Of course, in the UK, we shaft ourselves by complying with all these stupid rules. I gaze wistfully over the Channel to our French cousins and can only admire with green-eyed envy at their ability to completely ignore any EU diktat that doesn't suit them. Cheers MC *Although some of it was jolly good, obviously.

^ Indeed. But I am talking about now, not then. Madison flags, Sarah Palin and Tea Parties are no doubt very enervating for the tectonic right-wing plates of the Republican / Conservative movement. For which, I add, I have some sympathy. They won't however get Joe Voter supporting the GOP anytime soon, the Republicans face up to the fact that a page has been (probably irreversibly) turned and go with it. or face extinction as a credible political entity. This is the context in which I see the Republicans responding to the Bill. Naturally, recently deposed political parties always return to their core activist base after the storm. But at this point in the electoral cycle the GOP should be moving out of that and wondering how to build up support. They ain't, as far as I can see, doing that. If they really want to screw around with the moveon.org remnants camped out in the West Wing they should brazenly steal some of their clothes, park their own tanks on their lawn (etc). Cheers MC

My country hasn't had compulsory military service since the early 1960's ("National Service"). People who did it naturally have mixed feelings (my father, for example, hated it but claims it was the making of him) and the operational benefits to the regular army towards the end of the scheme seemed, to be blunt, negligible. Western European governments seem to be dumping conscription for small professional armies (when people are disdainful of regular soldiers I remined them that the alternative is conscription, one of the many reasons I am grateful to veterans). My question stems from a an oft-heard barroom phrase - "Bring back National Service!" How many forumites here have undertaken compulsory military service? What did you think of it? Was it a waste of time? Did you feel any benefit from it and have your views changed as you've aged? For the others here, what would you do if your country introduced compulsory military service for 18-20 year olds? Would you go to prison rather than serve? For the purposes of my question, imagine your country is not at war and the service was not necessarily combat arm / operational (my view is that modern conscript armies would be a hindrance on the battlefield, including rear echelon roles). Cheers in advance, MC