Affentitten

Well an 85 year old boat maintained by Macedonians. It would't surprise me if the hawser (if the journalist has even got that right) was actually keeping the boat together by pulling against keel or hull sag. For the boat to go down that quickly it sounds like the keel just snapped in half.

And it's certainty under their law, which is important because there is no sense of it being imposed by outsiders. In the Somalia example, the court, the judges, even the prison were Somali. All the Aussies did was assist in the actual capture of the gangs. The Somali community then disposed of them. Quite a handy symbiosis!

It's not so much whether you get the death penalty or not. It's whether or not you can expect justice according to a reasonably transparent set of rules and regardless of your personal wealth or status. Having a 'cleric' judge things may not be ideal, but it may be more objective than having judgement by a law graduate whose clan owes some favour to the defendant or plaintiff. Incidentally, the Australians had a lot of success in Baidoa, Somalia, by ressurecting the Somali penal code from the 1960s and the institutions thereunder. Everyone understood it and it enabled the capture and execution of bandit elements that were making everyone's life hell.

Yeah that's the guy. He mentioned half a dozen times that it wasn't rocket science. But the difficulty is the way things get perverted as they percolate through the military and political channels. There is this huge perception/assumption that because someone from Rhode Island wouldn't like to live under the Taliban, then nobody would. Or that because the Taliban do some nasty stuff, they are wholly evil and with no redeeming features. This Disney type dichotomy ignores the predominant shades of grey within Afghanistan.

What's the old line about being doomed to repeat history? In the radio interview I heard yesterday the guy said something like "There is absolutely no point in trying to extend the reach of an unpopular and corrupt central government if people think it is making their lives less secure and less regular."

Heard a great interview on the drive home from work with a former Aussie Army Brigadier who has since left and worked as an advisor to Condi and was on the planning staff for General Patreas in Iraq and now Gen McChrystall (sp?). He basically said that hearts and minds was too simplified in the way it was being applied these days. The idea that it was important to ‘make people like you’ was pointless and the way it was being put into effect was doing nothing more than creating a cargo cult. His point was that people won’t like you if they don’t feel secure and if their lives have no predictability. When a guy gets up in the morning he wants to expect that his family will still be alive at the end of the day, that his mosque won’t be bombed accidentally or his taxi stolen by bandits, and, more importantly, that if his family does get killed or his car stolen there are ways of this being redressed. This Aussie guy said that the Taliban, although not POPULAR, had actually developed quite a lot of SUPPORT from people because they set up Sharia courts and a rule of law. It might not have been perfect law, it might have been harsh law, but two farmers arguing over who owned a goat could get it sorted out according to some legal principle that they understood. As he said “That just doesn’t happen in non-Taliban Afghanistan. Justice is only for the very rich or the major drug barons with connections”. It was a bottom up philosophy. No point in bringing in experts on international law on fat salaries to sit in a spanking new high court building in Kabul if those guys work out a solution for who owns the goat. He was careful to differentiate between Taliban and al-Qaeda. He said the AQ guys had ruled their zones through fear and terror. But this had been a brittle form of control because they only had two options: kill you or not kill you. The Taliban though had offered people more security, more infrastructure and social programs and that all important rule of law. And while the Marines and the Airborne were chasing the militant Taliban regulars around the hilltops, the people down in the towns, where they actually had to sleep and do business every day were subject to the scrutiny of the civilian and clerical Taliban supporters who were helping them out in little ways and keeping the propaganda line up.

And something pretty similar happened with the Australians in Oruzgan: the district governer was an old crony of Kharzai's and was nothing short of a psychopathic megolamaniac who used the transition of power to settle a telephone book full of old scores. So the Taliban were able to base a very fertile recruitment campaign amongst the disaffected tribal groups who were pretty much in despair over this example of what their democratic future would hold.

As a paraent I know juice can be a bit of a trap because it's usually promoted as a healthy alternative to sugary drinks. I've heard parents proudly say "He doesn't like Coca Cola. But he'll easily drink six glasses of orange juice a day."

I guess, though how 'hidden' are they? I would have thought that someone eating a decent diet of fresh fruit and vegetables, lean meat and generally unprocessed food would be avoiding a lot of this corn starch ****. If you're gorging yourself on Krispy Kreme, Pringles and Wonder Bread hot dogs, I don't think you can say that you were duped.

Well as an antidote to all this excessive shovelling of calories into pie holes why don't we make smoking compulsory? It certainly cuts your weight because instead of having that donut, you just light up a calorie free ciggy.

I had satisfaction with this one HDD Temperature

Well using Victor Davis Hanson as a basis for scholarly comment on Iraq and Afghanistan is a little like using the views of Queen Victoria to analyse the benefits of the British Empire.

Part of the problem at the moment is that US support is for the Warlords and has been since day 1 with the likes of the "Northern Alliance". Or else the warlords are patrons of Karzhai and he has to parcel out the fiefdoms to them in order for their nod. Ironically, it is the hatred of these warlords that actually gives the Taliban its recruitment base. ie. it is easy for them to say 'join us and get rid of the corrupt tyrants'.

My idea would be to spend your money supporting a local strong man. You could supply him with plenty of guns and money and use his network of brutal and corrupt cronies to keep everyone too terrified for any opposition. That way you don't risk the people voting in an undesireable government like Islamic fundies or Communists. Then turn a blind eye to the fact that the puppet leaders are borderline criminals who make their money out of growing smack and you have a loyal and essentially stable 'partner'. Oh wait....

I feel less bad about losing this one than 2005, where I thought we really got dudded. Both England victories this time were pretty emphatic and the games were often good demonstrations of how one bad session can kill your whole match. Australian selectors made some curious decisions and Ponting looked like a buny in the headlights at times. You can tell whenever he starts biting his nails that he's out of ideas.

Mrs A is going off to Manilla for a few days of business trip in November. She has a couple of free days and I ask her what she's going to do. "I don't know," she says. "I want to see some of the history. I might go and see that big Corridor rock where they fought in the war." And I get to stay home and look after the kids! :cool:

They've also done a lot of research on this sort of thing for submarines and even those fancy swimming suits. Shark skin works on the same principle - control the vortices and thus reduce chaotic turbulence and therefore drag. Use the laminar flow, Luke!

There were some bombings and attacks, as well as an attempted assassination of Tariq Azziz. (Of course some of these events may have been Saddam’s doing.) Iran was being pretty strident in its calls for Muslims everywhere to rise against their secular regimes, and Iraq was more sensitive to this than most because of its Shia population and close proximity. Of course it wasn’t the main reason for the war, but it was definitely one of the justifications Saddam used.

Well the Iraqis were also invading because Iran was generating some pretty serious Shi'ite insurgencies in Iraq. Much like today!

Would Iran invade Iraq? I doubt it. Could they win? Probably. But perhaps they have more sense. Thier work has been done for them.

What JonS said. It was a crap try at a crap idea for crap reasons. Most of the world said in 2003 that it was doomed to failure for all of the above. But then, we all hated freedom.

Good point. But then I guess there would be worse ways to spend your national service in the Bulgarian army that sitting idly in a field, at least in summer. (Providing the Warthogs didn't show up.)

Due to the untimely demise of my last desktop, I am in the market for a new PC. (ie. Not a Mac). The question is, what processor should I be looking at? Do I go up in price to an i7 or go budget with a Core 2? Or in the middle with a Quad Core? I obviously do play games but not extreme MPGs with insane frame rates. More likely to be the latest Total War or something. Aside from that it's basic home office use and porn surfing. Any recommendations?

The US Army performance in the early days of the Pacific campaign was also woeful. Not surprising given the lack of experience and the 'shake and bake' officer corps of 1942. But to paraphrase someone else, the Americans made mistakes and learned from them, whereas the British made mistakes and kept repeating them again and again.