Monte Carlo

This is an obvious hoax by X-Files addicted geeks working for the Siberian Tourist Board. They want to lure hordes of gullible American tourists to the region. Upon arrival they will be sold genuine pieces of Alien Explosion Device for a thousand bucks a pop. In fact, as we speak, Russkis are spray-painting the old breech block mechanisms from T-55 tank turrets bright silver and burying them in the woods. Seriously. Cheers MC

I lived, for a short period of time, near Emerald Beach. It was (back then in 1992) quite a nice, laid back place. I'd walk up to La Jolla for a beer, past all the beautiful adobe houses with "INSTANT ARMED RESPONSE!!!" plaques in the gardens. Happy days. Cheers MC

I love this "provide a link" / "gimme a source" BS. Not that Moore ever bothers giving reliable sources when he can just make it all up. Google, you lazy b*stards Cheers MC

I think it's about time we actually considered the irony here: 1. After the Second World War, the old, cynical, pragmatic and Hobbesian Europeans wanted to summarily execute every Nazi implicated in war crimes, dismantle "Germany" as a nation and turn the entire place into an agrarian bread bowl for the rest of the world. They wanted to toughen up against the Soviets, mainly because most continental countries had sizeable communist parties that had been active in the various resistance groups. 2. The liberal, idealistic and (frankly) gullible Americans (1) Set up the Nuremburg trials, (2) Re-armed and re-built Germany and (3) Initially were royally fooled by Stalin (thanks, Ike). These things were all motivated by noble aspirations. The architects of the Nuremberg system were the forefathers of the UN and the Security Council. 3. Fast forward fifty years..... 4. The Europeans did, roughly, what the American foreign policy architects of the late 1940's wanted them to do. It stopped squabbling and going to war. It started to develop it's own central political identitiy in the EU. The nations of Europe became liberal, democratic and capitalist. It acted as a bulwark against the USSR. It traded lucratively with the rest of the world. NATO became the benchmark for international security cooperation. It was an achievement unparalleled in human history. 5. The the USSR folded. The raison d'etre for the whole thing started to unravel. And something else really funny happened....the two sides swapped attitudes. 6. After years of getting used to the US providing the bulk of the security umbrella against the "Soviet Threat" the Europeans began to enthusiastically reap the benefits of the late 80's "peace dividend." The Europeans began concentrating on the EU, Human Rights and all the jive that the Americans were so wildly into in 1945. OTOH, the Americans were becoming (as the world's only real superpower with all the responsibility and ball-ache that came with it) more.... European. Hawkish, cynical and cognisant of the fact that if you want peace you prepare for war (yadda yadda). 7. So this bizarrely symbiotic relationship led to the two sides swapping ideological positions. Now the Americans get rather pi$$y that the Eurpean project they conceived at Bretton Woods actually worked! DRAMA! 8. As a history professor I knew once remarked when asked about the consequences of the French Revolution in 1789, "it's too early to call." Ditto the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Empire. All of these contractions, from Enron to Osama are directly or indirectly linked to the triumph of Liberal Democracy over socialism....it's all the contractions and growing pains of a major new chapter in world history. 9. So stop squabbling, and go read a frigging book or two. We have more in common than waht divides us, our enemies love to see us rip ourselves apart with petty nationalistic argument as it gives them succour and strength. You could be a good 'ol boy with a truck and a rifle rack or a smug Scandinavian travelling on a spotless train system taking your kids to their state-funded uber-nursery. The fact is, either one of you could be equally, dramatically and even fatally affected by the new way of things. 10. So grab a seat and buckle up. Cheers MC

The problem is, some people seem to project their distaste for the Bush administration onto Mr & Mrs Joe Average American. Which is, I'm sure you would agree, unfair. It is also intellectually lazy.

Intellectually lazy anti-Americanism is painfully fashionable in Europe at the moment, mainly with teenagers with little or no experience of travelling in North America. Ignore them. I rather like Americans. I've been visiting for fifteen years and my experiences have been, generally, very positive. Then again, I am English and most Americans seem well-desposed towards us. My only disappointment is the difficulties overseas travellers now have in visiting the US; the oafish attitude of security people tarnishes the image of the country in my humble. You don't have to be rude to be effective. People I know in the US travel industry are simply horrified by what's going on; money is being lost hand over fist and even I took my holiday this year in Europe for the first time in those fifteen years. Cheers MC

The UN index is based on pretty oblique data from a living point of view. Hey, Iceland is freakin' beautiful! However, I'd rather hammer a nail through my big toe than live there. No offence...it's just too pedestrian for me. Belgium is boring. The government is corrupt. They are obsessed with power through the EU because their own nation is so....insignificant. Again, I'm ahmmering a nail through my other big toe. But of course it's subjective. A Belgian might find Britain crowded and dirty and expensive and abrupt and aggressive.....many of the reasons why I like it. But I'm a Londoner. Conclusion? This survey is worth **** unless you are a UN flunky trying to bribe/ cajole/ blackmail dough from said nations to redistribute to third world warlords to spend on Russian army surplus. FWIW, I've only been to a few places where I seriously thought "I could live here." For a variety of reasons they were Boston and San Francisco, both in the US of course. Cheers MC

It takes more than a tasty breakfast snack to persuade me to move country, my friend.

Any top ten list that seriously expects me to think that Belgium is worth living in has to be highly dubious.

Hey, thanks for proving my "hi-jacked by libetarians" point. I'm sure life's just peachy up their in the survivalist compound, living on K-rations and scoping out Feds through the optics on your hunting rifle. Meanwhile, in the Real World some of us live in communities where we give a **** about what might or might not harm us. Go back and look at the original post. It's about people who want to help themselves. Do I think there is a point where intervention is necessary concerning someone elses behaviour and conduct? Damn right I do.

I'll try to find the link to an article in the UK's Daily Telegraph about porn addiction. Now, I'm not a bleeding heart liberal. I believe, for example, that the death penalty is entirely appropriate for those who indulge in sexual offences against children. I completely agree with EnderWiggin that the foundation of responsible society is the individual accepting responsibility for their actions. Etc. - But - Some of the men described in this article spend up to twelve hours a day in front of their computers surfing porn, and without too fine a point on it, whacking off. They have, by any objective standard, a bona fide psychological problem and need help. A tiny percentage of these men will go on to become fully fledged, violent, sexual offenders. This isn't revolutionary thinking. We can all agree that people should take control of their lives and actions but some people cannot. Now, if a guy wants to spend twelve hours a day in the manner I describe and doesn't harm anyone else then I, frankly, couldn't care less. I do acknowledge, however, that it is a problem. And by completely ignoring it we could be adding to the probability of someone eventually harming someone else. This debate invariably ends up being hi-jacked by feminists, free-speech fundies, libetarians, trendy "porn is art" cognoscenti and all sorts of other positions. My own take is simply pragmatic: help the guy spending twelve hours a day looking a hardcore filth stop it before he ends up harming your wife/ daughter/ sister whatever. Capiche? Cheers MC

Many thanks. This website is truly one of the all-time greats and goes into my special bookmarks of truly exceptional online experiences. Many hours of fun to be had here, with of course a serious warning about the danger inherent in discovering otherwise harmless looking infernal portals. I am considering submitting my own five favourites: 1. That really scary looking and dusty bar on Villier's Street, not far from Embankment tube station in London. I have seen a number of infernal entities scampering in and out of that doorway. Usually late at night after I've had a pint or twelve after work, admittedly. 2. Junctions 9-10 on the M25 motorway in southern England. All of these junctions are clearly hellish doorways, although the popular view that they are in fact purgatory is also often heard. 3. Southend in Essex. THE ENTIRE TOWN IS IN THRALL TO BEELZEBUB! Alight at Southend Victoria train station at tell me I'm wrong. Dare you. 4. The door of the mobile kebab shop under the Westway in Notting Hill. Trust me, it looks like a kebab van but it is in fact an infernal aperture that lands you straight into the Pantry of Satan! 5. RPGCodex. The web's very own PURTEEL TA HEEELLLLLL..... Cheers MC

Mark, we are simultaneously posting. The post wasn't aimed at you.

The fact of the matter is this: There will be a guy who is heavily into porn. After aperiod of time he goes to the extreme end of the spectrum to satisfy his needs. Even this bores him. So he starts exposing himself in parks to women. This, too, eventually bores him. He begins to attack women. This isn't a "conservative" pitch to justify censorship (I don't as a rule), it's a very common profile of a classic-or-garden sex offender as developed by police and profilers. It isn't the porn that made him do it. That's an argument that interestingly is adopted by both hard-line conservatives and illiberal liberals. However, it would be strange not to consider the role the porn played in the process. Had the guy realised earlier that he had a problem, and that his pretty wacko and non-stop need for such material was a symptom, could he not have sought help? Thus breaking the chain and averting a potential offender (and thereby preventing the creation of a victim)? Here in the UK we are having a debate about a certain type of porn after a murder that revolved around the offender's obsession with it (I will not mention the ouvre as it's pretty offensive). This type of material is, it is fair to say, not a matter of sexual preference or taste but instead indicative of psychological illness. So I say ban it. Yep, that's right, BAN IT. This is where "free speech" liberalism gets to the point where brains fall out. There cna be no licence without restraint. The point where we decide how to exercise that restraint is an important one for mature reflection, but it must be done nonetheless. Need we remind ourselves that the USA is a country that has the world's largest and most profitable sex industry (and good luck to them as compared to the Eastern European and Asian versions it appears well-regulated and less exploitative) yet literally wets itself with worry over a woman's nipple appearing on primetime TV. That's denial. Cheers MC

Modern Dilemma: There are two types of Liberals, aren't there? The 19th Century classical Liberal (free economist, small government, lassez-faire approach to stuff) and the 20-21st Century illiberal Liberal (tax and spend, big centralized government, uptight politically correct approach to everything). I'm referring, of course, to the second. Cheers MC

Okay. Double Okay. That's true. Online porn is just one outlet. But unlike other types of material, it's instantly available at the click of a mouse. Hey, I know! 'Cuz people are gonna get their "fix" one way or another let's legalize heroin, murder, incest and every type of wacko taboo-breaking porn EVAR! Problem solved. Remember, folks, a Liberal is somebody so open-minded their brain fell out. Did you actually visit the website Mr. Teatime linked? It's a voluntary service for people who think they need it. The only control under discussion is self-control. So hold your horses, Mark. And, FWIW, yes we bloody well can write laws for the people who refuse to behave responsibly. In fact, the penal code in every society on the planet was formulated to deal with that very eventuality when you think about it. Duh. What on earth this has to do with anything under discussion here is beyond me. Point Not Found.

Have you, seriously, not considered the link between pornography in a very small but dangerous minority of men and their gradual progression to become sex offenders? On a lesser level, men who suffer from what tabloids like to call "sex addiction" end up leading pretty destructive lives as a result. Again, this sort of fixation with porn can be an early indicator. OK, there is also the religious angle here too, but there are men who are literally addicted to this sort of material. People can suffer from mental illnesses like compulsive-obsessive disorder that fixate on any number of stimuli. I ain't a shrink, but I know a few psychiatric nurses and cops, and they'll tell you that an unhealthy obsession with porn is often Step One on a career as a sex offender. Personally, I think people can have a perfectly healthy and interesting experience with graphically erotic pictures, art and literature on all sorts of levels. Ditto alcohol. Or exercise. And so on....but there will always be people who fixate on something to the extent that they begin to threaten others. I'm an atheist, but if one man who rationalises his sexual problems through religion as a result of that site then the whole exercise will have been worthwhile in my humble. Cheers MC

Yes, back to counter-factual history puh-leez. I blame Sawyer, anyhoo.

Well, I think it is fair to say that many historians find CF history a tiresome parlour game. However, I don't think it's entirely irrelevant. You have to be able to have a sound grasp of an event and it's variables to extrapolate a credible counter-factual scenario in the first place! Considering these might in fact help you understand, reconsider or re-evaluate something you thought you already understood. Take World War One and the numerous counter-factual scenarios that are discussed about it. The mobilization scenario and the "what ifs?" surrounding it can only enhance our understanding of the economy, technology and politics of the period. When you factor in some comparative history it gets better. For example, compare (A) the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, (B) The Nazi invasion of the Sudetenland and © The Nazi invasion of Poland and consider them in the context of crisis management, diplomacy and what would have happened if none of them had occured? I think a meaty discussion on that one would require, and probably develop, bags of understanding of the events! Cheers MC

Sawyer, who cares what type of Empire it is? It might not be the prosletizing Christian version of the late British Empire but if it looks, walks and smells like an Empire then it is. The reference to Rome was deliberate. The British Empire depended on trade and and a complex network of relationships with client power groups within the different countries it administered. Rome, on the other hand, used a much less elegant model....very much like the US. As Ferguson points out, the US divides the world into military protectorates (CENTCOM for example), talks of "full spectrum dominance" and has mind-bogglingly powerful force projection using nuke-laden carrier battlegroups. The remarkable thing is how discreet all this is, as the real schwerpunkt is the dollar and globalised consumer culture that people generally seem to want and enjoy from Iceland to Georgia to Hong Kong. The US model is far removed from the British Imperial modus operandi, until Iraq, of course. Which the US ballsed up royally because it stubbornly refuses to accept it's imperialistic obligations. US politics, both Democrat and Republican is still too tied up in some cheezy Minutemen-in-the-woods-shooting-at-the-nasty Redcoats myth (which is why you were so comprehensively suckered into supporting terrorists like the IRA in the 70's, 80's and early 90's) to face up to reality. Before anybody says, "hey, Monte, I didn't realise you were a fully signed-up member of the Michael Moore theory of US hegemony" let me say I'm not. I think an America that finally accepts the responsibility of post-superpower flagbearer for liberal democracy would be a Good Thing. Not an uber-hawkish, neoconservative "bomb 'em back into their mud huts" flagbearer, but a thoughtful, benign power that trod carefully and took it's power seriously. Give two men a rifle; one could be a mature, thoughtful hunter who only took (with respect) his prey only when he needed to. The other might climb up into a clock tower on campus and go nuts. Which one is America at the moment? My interesting counterfactual point, therefore, might be this; what would have happened had Bill Clinton developed some testes during his second administration and developed a pro-active, unashamedly interventionist foreign policy that took the threat of Islamist terrorism and failed states seriously in the mid-late 90's? For me, Clinton was the apogee of smug, insular, head-in-the-sand American foreign policy. I know it's fashionable to knock Dubya, and bejaysus I think Iraq is royally buggered, but I think retrospectively he'll be seen as a tough, smart (that's right, sport fans!) statesman who finally pulled back the joystick marked "US foreign policy" and started getting to grips with the post-superpower 21st Century. Cheers MC

The mobilization issue is very important. I think we find it difficult to imagine a world where policy-makers make decisions based on telegrams and hand-delivered letters. Making important strategic decisions must have been like steering a big heavy boat....look at a point in the distance then start turning the wheel a while before and hope you're pretty much on target. So the domino-effect of mobilizing armies (Germans look at the Russians who look at the Germans) explains a lot. However, the Tsars in 1914 were in no shape to fight a coherent war of European domination; it was a virtually medieval country with a Victorian monarchy bolted on top of it. It seems that they mobilized out of (A) hubris and (B) the fear that the Germans were mobilizing. So August is important. In January, for example, the bulk of the Russian army would have been sewn into its clothes for the winter, shivering in its villages. In August it was up and about ready to manage the harvest. Had Princip decided to do the deed at Christmas there would have been little realistic thought of mobilization until Spring, and by then diplomacy may have bought the necessary amount of time. My contention is that the Kaiser would then have despatched his agents to seek new causes of discontent to justify his expansionist tendencies, delaying WW1 by six months. Cheers MC

Ah. Americans. Your perspective on Empire is so....cute. Especially as you're the biggest friggin' Empire-saurus since Rome. You just don't care to admit it. I recommend Niall Ferguson's Colossus as a tremendous read on the subject. By 1914 the European powers had more or less carved up the readily available world. The Germans were left with, er, Angola. And a few other bits that really didn't chime with Germany's power as a European super-state in waiting. Look at the Belgians. A tiny country with the military power of my little sister dominating the whole bloody Congo! Ditto Holland. So it wasn't an issue of nasty, evil Imperialists. It was simply an issue of the Kaiser wanting toys commensurate with the size of his pram. As for the Boer War. Hmmmm. A war between (A) a colonial power and (B) settlers from another colonial power. If you'd pitched the Zulu wars instead I'd have given you a C+. Cheers MC

He'd have nuked everything East of the Urals, sued for peace with the US and settled down to many years of quasi-Cold War with the Americans, basically replacing Stalin. Hitler's War Aims were pretty clear; define Germany as the crucible of a radical new European power with a "racially appropriate" population, create living room in the East for the growing Aryan race, create amicable terms with the British Empire and destroy world Jewry. Atomic weapons would have allowed him to do all of this and more. Of course, he also believed (as did Trotsky) that War was a constant dynamic for a revolutionary regim so before long he'd have kicked it off again with the US and/or China. Now that is interesting, imagining a world where China and the US were close allies in a world war.... Cheers MC

This is a favourite of counter-factualists, for obvious reasons. I think the broad consensus is that WW1 was inevitable for a variety of reasons and the spark would have occurred elsewhere. Of course, my history professor always argued that the Autumn of 1914 was a crucial factor because of the factor of mobilization of armies during the period....i.e. in January none of the protagonists could have possibly deployed, and the Germans couldn't have embarked upon the Von Schlieffen Plan. This would have given the great powers some time for negotiation. So, technically, perhaps WW1 would never have happened and therefore the reparations issue that boosted the NSDAP and Hitler wouldn't have happened either......hmmmm. Yet German imperial ambition was insatiable at that time. The s*** was going to hit the proverbial fan and Princip merely lit a cigarette in a foreworks factory waiting to go off. Or not. This is a good one I've not encountered before. Well, there are several interesting "what ifs" here, aren't there? * Does the hardline Soviet regime under Andropov stagger on for another decade or three, head-butting the hawkish Reagan/ Thatcher agenda? :: BOOM :: * Had the disparate strands of radical Islam not mobilized under the banner of the anti-Soviet jihad would there have been an al-qu'ada? Would Osama be building motorways in the UAE instead? * Most crucially, Rambo 3 would have never been made. Well, American history isn't quite my bag and I'm sure some of our colonial friends here might have more to say on the subject. Would it have meant that the Civil War as the defining moment in US history might've instead become an intractable issue that meant a permanently divided continent, with the South going it's own way? If so, our history would be utterly different, with no significant power to intervene and stop Europe tearing itself to pieces for the first fifty years of the twentieth century.... I'm sure you could. Cheers MC

Well, (A) They could have conceivably re-scheduled the assassination, "et tu tomorrow at eight, Brutus?" (B) Rome could have steered a more conservative course, and the Fall might not have happened as dramaitcally as it did...meaning that early Christianity might never have caught on (discuss!) and gone the way of any other cult/ fringe religion of the time. © A less spectacular but steady development might have seen Rome go the way of the Byzantine Empire...i.e. a slow but inexorable decline leaving behind the seeds of all sorts of ethnic and religious discontent that might have re-defined utterly the way we view Europe today. (D) Ceasar's Rome might have acted as a booster for a super-civilization that survived well into the Renaissance, leading to the development of technologies hundreds of years before they were actually developed (I once read a counter-factual argument that specualted Romans landing on the Moon in the 1700s). Cheers MC