Erik Springelkamp

History always looks a little bit different, depending on where and when you live.

5%, unless you are African.

That is the basis for all foreign policy of all states.

It is hard to avoid when we are talking about the Middle Ages. Or actually all of history of the last 2000 years. More precisely one can trace this back to the Makkabees. No, evidently not.

I am afraid their history has been coloured badly by the only ones who could write at that time: the monks. Indeed they loved to kill monks and plunder cloisters. To be fair, they had just seen what the Franks, and particularly Charlemagne, had done to force Christianity on their Southern neighbours, the Saxons. That was pretty much genocide, and practically no Saxon man of any importance survived that war. So they had good reasons to think that Christianity was a very evil religion.

Thanks for the clue. Now that I know that, how do I get rid of that knowledge?

Maybe there are too many points. But do you know the Swedish rape laws?

I don't think so, they were very adventurous and colonised coast all over Europe. Notably Russia, Sicily and Western Europe.

That is correct. But they entered the picture long after the Franks had established their power base in France, and shortly after they had conquered Germany. Because the Frankish Empire couldn't defend its coastal area against the Normans (indeed North-Men, Noormannen in Dutch), they appointed Norman chiefs as Count in those same coastal area, to fend off other Normans. Normandy in North Western France was one such county, Frisia in the Northern Netherlands was another such county (the background of Beowulf, which takes place partly in Frisia - that contained Holland at the time). A Frisian noble killed his Norman ruler and became the first Count of Holland (although that name was coined only a century later). But the Norman Counts of Normandy were politically more successful and even became Dukes in the name of the Frankish Empire, and then Kings of England of course.

Yes, very confused. The origin of the Franks is not a tribe, but a political movement among many different Germanic groups to gather at the borders of the Roman Empire and to try to immigrate there, by any means. Depending on particular moments that implied taking up service in the Roman Army, raiding the border, or infiltrate and start a farm. Then came the phase where local important Franks started mingling with Roman nobles, and generally working their way up into the local Roman hierarchy. When the Roman Armies were retreated towards Italy to defend against the Goths and other invaders, the Franks took over Roman Rule in the South of the Netherlands and Northern France. After the further collapse, they expanded South into France. A few times they were contenders for the Roman Emperor. As most of the hard fighting with the invasion forces were taking place more to the South, the Southern Netherlands maintained a relatively well developed economy, giving the Franks a head start in the power struggle of the Early Middle Ages.

A very important factor is that the resolution for the no-fly zone in Libya was interpreted very loosely by NATO to include attacking ground units.

When talking about 'Franks', they are not just French, but Germans as well, so you can also blame the Germans. Does it ever get better? (although, to be fair, the roots of the Franks are in the Netherlands).

I am trying to make a little scenario for TCP/IP fighting by taking a quick battle map and giving each side a little force. (because random QB force selection is too weird to play head to head) I create a reinforced platoon (one tank, a little bit of artillery, etc). For the Dutch force I start with a Manoeuvre Battalion (1 tank Co, 2 mech Inf Co's) and delete everything but a tank and a inf platoon (plus necessary HQ units to maintain the line of command). But the force buying screen doesn't allow deleting for the second last tank, whether it is a tank in a platoon, or the HQ companion tank. Why is that so? When I take another battalion (a tank Bat), I can delete everything except one platoon tank, but then there is no command link between the infantry and the tank. Or is there an implicit command link between top level commands in a scenario?

No, they were Norman, but they mingled enthusiasticly with the Frankish rulers.

But only after the Normans learned some building techniques in France they were ready to go for world domination. Normans became more of a kind of Super-Franks. That is a clear sign for who are truly to blame.

The Tac AI should be reluctant to fire at long range with the short range weapons. Also when there is no covered arc. Covered arc is for deviation from the default, but the default should be reasonable.

Saving is an expensive time-consuming operation, and while it is going on, the game is frozen. I don't think you would like it when you are regularly shut out of the game for 10's of seconds.

Yes, the balance of power is shifting in the Middle East. At the same moment the projection of power by the USA is shrinking rapidly, because of monetary reasons. Russia and China have decided to block any UN movement towards interference by the West. Turkey and Iran are important players there now. But that is not necessarily a bad thing. The Status Quo was bad enough.

I think you are referring to the blind spot.

I am sure you can sell the manual for a good price. Several people on this board already requested a manual. But there is also nothing that I know of that prevents you from selling the complete game, although the buyer has to trust you that you didn't spend all the activations. And you have to transfer your account info on the website to the buyer.

I called Iran a semi-democracy. And I said that it was democratic relative to it's Arab neighbours. It is not the government that approves the candidates, but a religious council, so that makes it a theocracy. And the forces are not government/opposition, but there is a whole spectrum of very conservative to rather moderate. (In the USA by the way you cannot be a political candidate without being a millionaire and having lots of rich friends. But the Americans seem to think that that is perfectly OK, so democratic values are skewed everywhere) What makes you think that moderates will gain power? There is a balance already, that shifts regularly from one side to the other. Ahmadinejad is regularly corrected by the high council, but he has solid support of half of the population. My anti USA bias? I have just checked if the USA did the things you said that defines Iran as a bad country. And it appears that the USA did all of those things as well. It was you who declared those things bad. And I have not painted a simplistic USA - Arab dichotomy at all, on the contrary, a lot of Arab countries are allies of the USA on a lot of issues. Iran had a valid interest in the situation. Here is a neighbour that recently has waged war on them - with full Western support - for 10 years. Of course they played a role. The game there was violent, so violence was used. It seems that nobody really liked the US soldiers there. How come? I don't have anything against those soldiers personally, I know there are a lot on this board, and I wish them all the best. But when their political leaders send them to a war, they are shot at, and they can be killed. That fact in itself doesn't make the ones that do it automatically the evil side. The Iraq war was not evidently justified. Rumsfeld and Cheney can be regarded as pretty evil men, on par with a lot of rulers in the region. That is an opinion that is pretty widespread outside the USA. There were more than two sides in the conflict. The very Western notion of always a good side and a bad side doesn't fit reality. Saudi Arabia has spend a lot of money to destabilise Western Europe by funding fundamentalist mosques for the Islamic population, that spread undemocratic ideas, and promote terrorism. F*ck them. Yes, dictators always have reasons to be afraid. I don't think their opinion has any moral value though. I don't think, nor have I said so here, that Iran is a friendly liberal country. But I seriously think that the West doesn't make an effort to understand their position. Which always makes for unpleasant surprises.

Think about what you say. Who has stirred up the region, by starting a full size war and invading a neighbour country of Iran? Anything Iran did in Iraq is a feint shadow compared to the amount of violence the USA and UK applied there. Iran has tried to influence the political outcome there towards their goals in the aftermath, yes violence was involved, but it was Western violence that started all that. And shouldn't they? The majority of Iraqi citizens are related to Iran by their religion, and they are now in a good relation with them. It seems that you don't like that people in other places make up their own mind. In Afghanistan Iran has for a very long time played a very constructive role. They supported non-aggressive factions in the West of the Country, and were actively fighting Al-Qaeda.

Half of the population supports the theocracy, and vote for it. All these things apply exactly the same to the USA. Pakistan, India, Israel, North Korea, they have all developed nuclear weapons. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. NATO supports an uprising in Libya. Your judgement is completely biased. Of course you have the right to take sides, but your arguments why Iran would be bad are not objective. About Iran being aggressive in the region: Iran hasn't started an offensive war in centuries, but has been attacked and meddled with intensively. Their 1950's democracy was killed by the CIA. The West supported terrible aggression by Saddam Hussein against Iran. The country has suffered terribly by the West. And you call it aggressive? Nonsense, Turkey and Pakistan have pretty normal relationships with Iran. The Sunni dictatorships however have every reason to badmouth Iran in support of the USA and Israel.

That is very good of you. Of course Syria is a dictatorship, that is acting very harshly against protests. Iran is not exactly a dictatorship, but a limited democracy were the ruling party has a marginal majority, and is also rather intolerant against protests from the opposition. Now, these are conditions that exist in a very large number of states, like Russia, China, almost all Arab states, but the attitude of the West towards these regimes is very much driven by different motivations, namely whether those states are allies or important trading partners of the West or whether they follow an independent policy. So, while Iran has a political configuration that comparatively democratic in Middle East terms, they get an extremely negative press in the West. Message is, that when you are a friend of the USA/West, you can get away with all kinds of mistreatment of people (look at treatment of foreign workers in the Gulf states), but if you don't bow to the masters, you will be treated quite differently. So with all the reports of events in the Middle East, one has to be aware of the propaganda factor in those reports. Killing is generally bad, but our anger is very selective: how much was made of the recent protests by farmers in China?

The two deliveries in Groningen I know of were both punished with duties, while I heard of no other duties in the Netherlands. As far as I know the customs office in Groningen is about to be closed, so maybe they want to prove themselves or something.