Affentitten

First with the latest: Battlefront.com!

Well personally I'm still a bit unsure where JonS stands on the topic. He should be more specific and tell us what he really thinks.

What really, genuinely surprises me is just how clumsy and inept the whole thing was. This was the 'ticking bomb' of intelligence gold mines, the internment of the "worst of the worst" etc etc etc. But whenever I read just how laggardly, bumbling and unfocused the whole program was, I just don't get it. Nobody really seems to have been that interested in sifting the nuggets or obtaining anything like the urgent truth. The vast majority of the people there were nobodies. I even, in a quick flick through the records saw one case of someone where the authorities were looking for somebody else but arrested the guy who happened to be nearby instead. Bounties were paid to the good citizens of the Northern Alliance to bring in captured Taliban and al-Q fighters. So instantly anyone they felt a dislike for got turned in with no questions asked....sometimes for years. And there were all these fanciful confessions that were obtained by contracted interrogators. Certainly the FBI thought they were a crock. So what was the point? Especially given what a festering sore Guantanamo was on the PR image of the WoT. From the Australian perspective there are some serious questions to answer. One of our 2 detainees swore for years that he was rendered to Egypt and tortured there. And for years the Australian government denied it. Yet it says it right there on his record "The detainee was held at a Pakistani military base in Quetta, PK, and was subsequently transferred to Egyptian control. He spent six months with Egyptian interrogators before being transferred to US custody. "

How is saying that alcohol is dangerous a valid refutation of the fact that there is an established indication between cannabis use and mental illness in some people?

WTF? I just did a 5 minute literature review and came up with all manner of evidence. Whilst there is still debate as to whether their is a discrete 'cannabis psychosis' in DSM terms, there is certainly a great deal of evidence linking cannabis use (particularly in teens) with later presentation of mental and psychotic epsiodes. The link between heavy cannabis use and schizophrenia is the main interest here. The implication is not that cannabis CAUSES schizophrenia or the like, but rather that it is heavily involved in exacerbating and manifesting psychotic episodes in those pre-disposed. Wihtout the cannabis use, some people would never have the trigger for their psychosis. To say that you know professors etc who smoke a lot and they're OK is a childish argument. Just as my grandad smoked all his life and died of non-smoking causes at 87 doesn't mean tobacco is safe. There will always be people who can handle it and those who can't. But there is also the question as to what extra might have been achieved without the cannabis use too.

Jeez. Never get wounded if you've got a Kiwi with you.

Having the allowances on the chart doesn't mean they're always understood or applied properly. I think it all went fine throughout the 80s and 90s, but once you started getting stuff like sailors being attached to air force load master units posted overseas within a combat zone and delivering SFOR troops to a battlefield it all started to get a bit tricky keeping track of the paperwork. Plus of course the usual corporate reaction to pay mistakes: if they haven't given you enough, it takes 6 months of appeals and case files to get the $$$. But if they paid you too much, they're on your doorstep the next morning demanding it paid back in a lump sum right now!

The Australian pay scales are quite Byzantine. The base rates are easy to understand, but there are variables that get thrown in to do with length of service, specific duties, overseas posting, hardship, combat, SFOR attachment, family, accomodation allowance etc etc etc Not even the payroll people understand. Every 6 months or so there is some sort of scandal because they find out they have over or underpaid some group of soldiers.

Eggs also require washing, packaging, heavy transport.... Diesel, use of windows and natural light is dependent on where you are and what time of year. Most egg facilities are just like big factories. As for legalising and the dangers.....well, I think the gear is a lot more potent than the stuff I was smoking a couple of decades ago. The dangers are therefore increasing. Certainly I recall a (non-professional!) conversation I had with a psychiatric nurse a couple of years ago. He said that the amount of cannabis induced psychosis they see these days is increasing. The higher THC yields of the new hybrids and the volumes people were consuming was exacerbating exisiting mental illnesses. But then I saw in the paper today that E is now more popular than pot in Australia. So that must be a good thing, right?

The change has been more about water availability and price. No point in having a Euro plant that requires gallons of regular water, fiddly pruning, spraying and supplemental feeding. Much easier to have native vegetation that deals with the environment as a whole.

Or Kennedy, or Clinton or Bush.

However, American dependence on ME oil is growing exponentially. So being in control of one of the major reserves, as well as ensuring regional stability is important. Personally I doubt that the view in 2003 was that long term. I'm just saying that you can't measure the importance of oil in snapshots of one or two dates.

I saw plenty of American registered vehicles around the US garrison towns when I lived in Germany 1992-97. Perhaps the policy changed. The Brits also procured their cars back home because it was tax free. Oh right. Despite being pilloried worldwide for faulty intelligence and false claims about the link between aQ and Saddam, the Bush administration covered up the very smoking gun that would exonerate them. And this evidence of al-Qaeda summer camps has never come out, despite a dozen or so State, CIA, DoD reports into the matter, intense media scrutiny or whatever. Perhaps YOUR view from close to the action was equally skewed, Herr Heisenberg.

Diesel I have this vision of you in a brown cardigan in your shed at the end of one of those narrow and over-produced English semi-detached gardens.

Then I'm very mystified as to why the subsequent dozen or so reports post-war make no mention of this and conclude no plausible links between Saddam and al-Qaeda. No evidemce. Zip. Nothing. eg. 9/11 Commission "Bin Ladin is said to have asked for space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but there is no evidence that Iraq responded to this request." 2006 Senate Report Postwar Findings..."no evidence of any Iraqi support of al-Qaeda, al-Zarqawi, or Ansar al-Islam." Or the ground commander 7 months after the war "General Sanchez also said that since the war began, the coalition, the U.S. Army has not found a single al-Qaeda fighter here in Iraq. He said that the bulk of the opposition to U.S. forces continues to be Saddam loyalists and Iraqi nationalists. You'll recall one of the razondetras (PH) for the Bush- led war in Iraq was that this was a -- had become a hotbed of al-Qaeda terrorism. Again, the Army, seven months into the war has not found a single al-Qaeda terrorist...." So if you guys were over-running all these positively identified camps, what happened to them in any subsequent reporting? I would have thought they would have bene front and centre in the evidence. Your logic is going round in circles. I said it was common that 'foreign' cars would be found in Iraq. Not impossible for a car that was once registered in the US to be found there (though I suspect it more likely that this one would have been procured/stolen in Europe from US service personnel stationed there). Only one was found.....in a bomb factory. The vehicle did not have Texas plates. It had an old Texas registration tax decal. I hardly think that is a perfect disguise. And what are you talking about 'blend in'? Where? You think they were going to smuggle a ready-made car bomb halfway across the world? It may be quite likely that Abdul the bomb-maker thought it ironic to use a once US vehicle to launch a bomb attack. But I think you're over-stating the conspiracy.

I'd also say 100% of Aussie households have one to prepare the substrate for their Vegemite. We probably replace one every 2 years or so under relatively heavy family use, including the Mrs jamming it full of baguette chunks. Worst one was a super el-cheapo model bought at the supermarket for about $20. Only lasted 6 months or so. Like SO says, the cost of repair is often not worth the hassle.

Sure it came later. Because it wasn't there at first. The Ansar- al-Islam camps certainly were. The intent of the Texas car bomb? I'd say it was to blow up and kill people. In Iraq. But you mentioned it because you were trying to create some misty conspiracy about maybe smuggling it into Texas or something. A plan worthy of Baldric.

There was a vehicle that had a long-expired Texas registration sticker on it. Half the Middle East drives vehicles that are 5th and 6th hand importations and re-births. So not remotely unfeasible. The al-Qaeda 'camps' and HQ's were uncovered much later after the invasion in places like Fallujah. ie. the insurgency was in full swing.

Maybe so. But how long before they were tainted. Look at Joe the Plumber and how he was inexorably sucked into the party machine.

Fair enough. The problem is really then that in many democracies it is becoming increasingly harder for non-party people to put up the resources to campaign in the face of the budgets that the parties have. And of course those budgets are kicked in by donors who want some payback...

So you want a democracy where people are not allowed free association and the right to air collective views? Or do you want a multi-party democracy like Italy or Israel or whatever where you get completely ludicrous alliances forming unstable coalitions that are always one step away from dissolving and hostage to extremist demands?

Well that's party politics and it's why in the Australian system so much effort is put into attracting 'swinging' voters and marginal seats. I've always had the luck to live in the bluest of blue ribbon conservative seats at state and federal level. It means our area always gets diddly squat no matter who is in power because both parties know the seat will never change hands.

Right on. Like actually using their right to vote and making sure that congressional seats are always challenged.

I think it's also a factor of media management. many politicians can look good when their every statement is polished and rehearsed. It's when they have to ad-lib they get into trouble and we see them for what they are: party hacks of limited perspective and intelligence.

Mid-late 19th century on coins and the 1950s on paper money. Funnily enough I was looking at this a couple of weeks ago for a lecture I was giving on democratisation and the issue of secularity. You've also got the "one nation under God" thing in the pledge of allegiance, but again that's late 19th century.