I absolutley love the fact that Aussie money is totally waterproof, I wish the UK would do this too ( fair enough we may not have as many beaches but we make up for it in rain ).
I've no problem fitting £50 or any other notes into my wallet.
One choice is to go on the offensive and fight them on their own soil diminishing their effectiveness world wideI couldn't be bothered to read the rest of that garbage but this is a line which people constantly trot out that is so obviously totally nonsensical that I have no idea why anyone would quote it.
First of all since the Iraq war all the terrorist attacks or threatend attacks in the UK have been planned or carried out by people based in the UK, people who have often lived in the UK for a very long time.
Secondly these people need somewhere to train, to learn their terrorist skills. In the past they went to the camps in Afghanistan where with American funding they would learn their trade. Nowadays they go to Pakistan within a convienient distance of the Afghan border or Iraq to get their training. Then they come home and put their training into practice.
Thirdly how does placing a lot of your countries troops in the middle of a civil war in a foreign country, supported by vast amounts of money and desk bound command and control personnel stop the above from happening ? Might that money be spent more effectively on better border controls and investment in proper intelligence networks ?
Fourthly if you are a terrorist organisation with, presumably, very few morals what would be an ideal situation for you to earn your organisation a lot of money ? Do you think its easier for these organisations to make money in places where there is very little in the way of effective policing or law and order where local citizens may have a real need to pay for protection from local militias. Perhaps places which have a vast illegal but lucrative opium crop may be willing to trade this for your protection. Or maybe places where local mafias hold the real power over peoples lives, where you might perhaps be one of the more powerful mafias and able to control a lot of goods, services, illegal money making schemes.
And finally, fifthly is it the case a terrorist cell who has been completed it's training, been well supplied with weapons and money and is welcome back in the country they came from might say to themselves. Hang on, although we can certainly strike a powerful blow in the enemies heartland our brothers are dying here, thousands of miles away perhaps we should stay here and help them directly. Maybe terrorists stick up for their mates but personally I doubt it.
The opinion of most people is that the threat of terrorism is now much greater thanks to the events of 9/11. Which has had a greater effect on the opinions of the people regarding their safety - the attacks on 9/11 or the subsequent (misdirected) attacks on Iraq? How does the more direct attack and liberation of Afghanistan fit into this opinion equation?Perhaps that's true for most of the people you know but generally the War in Iraq is seen as a much bigger driver for terrorism than 9/11.
Afghanistan is a different situation to Iraq, at least there was some motivation there to fix a problem - capture Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network. Although some senior members of the network were captured Osama remains at large and the Taliban are rebuilding their powerbase. If Al Quaeda had been rounded up and captured as was planned then I think we would all have felt a lot safer.
What is the moral obligation of the United States following its attack? Is it to ensure that such attacks do not repeat on the US? Or is it to ensure that such attacks won't succeed anywhere? It would be nice to accomplish both goals, but clearly the first takes higher priority.The moral obligation would have been to capture Al Quaeda and hold those responsible to account. Work on this was started but then, we can presume, abandoned in preference to invading Iraq. Given that the war in Iraq has now increased the threat of terrorism it's obvious that its invasion was the wrong way to prevent further terrorism.
Can we accept it as a given that there are extremists in the world who wish to practice acts of terror on western civilization? They will attack. They want us dead. The US has been successful for five years in keeping these attacks confined to other countries. Is that success? Some in the US would argue yes. Is this success at the expense of residents of other countries? Almost certainly. Is this a moral failing? I don't have a good answer to that one.There certainly are people in the world who for irrational reasons of their own want to blow and destroy people and property in the West. America, because of it's stature in the world, is obviously an attractive target but the way to tackle this problem is not to destabilise the key regions these terrorists can be recruited from, providing a perfect opportunity to drag young men into religious orientated training camps, providing them with large quantities of weaponary and an ineffective state incapable of controlling them.
We agree that terrorism is now a problem we just disagree that invading Iraq is a sensible way of dealing with it. On the evidence so far the Iraq situation is now doing more to encourage terrorism than prevent it.
maybe terrorists can't cross water until they reach a suitable power levelThat was a joke, likening terrorists to Vampyres who apparently can't cross water until their characters develop to a sufficent character level when they gain access to the cross water spell.
"How was anyone to believe that Iraq did not have WMDs"
It's funny, morons like yourself were constantly telling us about all the evil WMDs Saddam had and how that was all the justification they needed to go to war.
I'd like to know if you have perhaps only recently learned to read ? Maybe you are deaf ? If not you'd have noticed an awful lot of people telling you before the Iraq war that it was very unlikely Saddam had any WMDs at all and even if he did even less likely that he'd ever use them on the US.
The current situation in Iraq is for all intents and purposes a civil war, the insurgents are mainly involved in killing each other rather than Americans. The fact that America is present makes a handy recruiting tool to forces on both sides. The American administration is refusing to admit there is a civil war because it would then look like their entire Iraq policy has been a disaster.
I can't speak for America but it seems that the threat of terrorism and actual terrorism has increased markedly since the Iraq war elsewhere, the London Tube Bombings being the most obvious sign of that.
Maybe you're right and it is fighting the Iraq war which is protecting you, or maybe you're spending a lot more money and resources on more conventional anti terrorism measures now, or maybe you've just been lucky so far, or maybe terrorists can't cross water until they reach a suitable power level.
The opinion of most people is that the threat of terrorism is now much greater thanks to activities in Iraq.
Its interesting to note that the reason Britain was in Afghanistan the first time was to support it's puppet ruler. Although he was able to hold control in Kabul the surrounding countryside didn't support him at all unless the British troops happened to be patrolling in that particular area of the countryside.
Obviously things are different now to how they were back then with aeroplanes and modern communications the force in the field is in no danger of being cut off from support back home but its still an interesting comparison.
Yes, that's a good example. The UK was then a superpower and fielding one of the most powerful and advanced armies of the day. In a straight one on one shock and awe type engagement the US wouldn't have stood a chance but that option wasn't on the table for various reasons and the "terrorists" were able to take advantage of both the UK's engagements elsewhere and the public feeling of most British citizens to avoid unecessary slaughter and bloodshed on their American cousins.
Even if you have the most powerful military forces in the world there will always be areas which people can exploit to achieve their own ends and the bigger a player you are the more of those areas you will expose for your enemies to exploite.
Your absolutely right but those tactics are nothing new. When the French were invaded by Hitler I think they had the resistance in place beforehand to cause as much damage to the occupying forces as they could.
Churchill had already put in place extensive plans to deal with a successful German invasion including chains of command, weapons dumps etc and had people trained specifically to kill Germans whenever the chance was offered and also anyone co-operating with them.
Even longer ago in Afghanistan when the British were there the opposing tribes simply played them along by on the one hand pretending to negotiate with them and getting what they could from them and on the other doing whatever they could to isolate the British forces disrupt their supply lines. They managed to get the British to agree not to fortify their encampments and later once the position was becoming increasingly untenable they offered safe passage back into India at which point they triggered what is, I think, still the worst Military defeat the British Army has ever received. I think there was only one survivor out of a force of 7,000 or so.
So, these tactics have a long pedigree and with a bit of luck often work which makes it all the more surprising when people tell you that the fact its happening now is such a shock and they hadn't expected anything like this to happen.
I've just remembered another of the articles was about how 80% of the worlds cargo would soon be carried by a new breed of gigantic submarines plying the depths immune from any effects of the weather and still travelling much more swiftly than the surface traffic ( except the Speed Freak Navies of course ).
I have an old annual at home called something like "Speed Annual 1978" which has a lot of articles in it which might interest small boys, aircraft carriers exploding, how the Yamato was sunk etc
One of the articles was called "The 100 Knot Navy" which explained that in the future all Naval ships would be either Hovercraft or at the very least Hydrofoils. There were only a few, minor, hurdles to overcome and certainly by the year 2000 any Navy not able to travel at 100 Knots would be more or less obsolete.
Thats right, I think it's one of the busiest areas for shipping in the world and in addition to that it has a high proportion of leisure sailors e.g. unprofessional amatuers in small boats.
The trouble is that the Universe is maybe 17 Billion years old and although we have no figures on the length of time you can expect an intelligent species to survive for it's probably a small fraction of 17 Billion. It's likely that intelligent species will not have the capability for space travel or inter-stellar communication for their entire existence which cuts the percentage down further.
The rate at which a species can expand through the galaxy is likely to be quite an awful lot slower than the maximum speed of whatever craft they have developed so for us to ever be aware of anyone else in the Universe we'd have to have arrived in a similar time frame and be very close to them spacially. It's possible there may be a fantastic co-incidence and a probe or exploration vehicle come across us but really the universe is so huge both us and them would need huge blocks of inhabited space which would at some point need to intersect.
It's funny, there used to be a fair amount of posts in SCO Threads from people ( usually using words likes Slashbots, Groupthink, Worship OSS etc ) who believed that IBM might certainly be in the wrong and SCO could well have a case.
It's funny they don't seem to crop up anymore, just like all those people telling us our governments could never be so wrong about WMD and how they'd certainly find loads of evidence once the invasion was completed.
We made the exact same things in Woodwork ( called C.D.T at the time )over 15 years ago. My Bridge however won the competition by a long long way which I think is down the fact it broke when I tested it before the competition so I coated the entire structure in 4 or 5 layers of glue which I think helped to hold it together later.
My catapult was cruelly robbed of it's winning position when on it's first shot it shot right to the end of the room, hit the wall and bounced back quite a long way ( we were using ping pong balls ). The stupid teacher ruled that it had only shot as far as the ball had actually landed so even though no one else got anywhere near the wall I didn't win.
From what I see on the News, documentaries etc it appears that most Americans still live in wooden houses ( or if they live in a Tornado/Hurricane zone they opt for trailers ). I know they do also build proper brick and concrete houses in the major cities ( e.g New York ) so why don't they all build proper brick houses and not have them knocked down by every minor tornado which blows through ?
Poor old them, how long do you think I will continue to get paid once I stop working ? Thats right, ZIP ! It's either keep working or starve. Poor me ! Poor, poor me !
Gosh yes, a geiger counter ! I bet they never thought of that, if I were you I'd get the first flight out the UK and apply for the job as Chief Lord High Sargent Major Of All Inspectors, they'll offer you the job for sure once they realise how talented you are.
It's worth pointing out that even if Putin has ordered his execution it's not necessarily illegal since under Russian law anyone considered a danger to Russias security can be killed regardless of whether they are on Russian soil or not.
This is obviously a vital law to protect innocent Russians in the face of this awful wave of worldwide terrorism, certainly no other countries are passing similarly effective legislation ( which has the totally unexpected side effect of allowing them to do what they like to further their own personal agendas ) so I think we should all lobby our governments to offer us the same level of protection as the Russians are now enjoying.
Also we have come a step closer to designing the system defined in one of Iain M Banks novels ( Consider Phlebas I think ) where the outside of ships are covered in nanoscale whorls increasing their surface area to such an extent that scanning them becomes impossible.
I realise that however if you are looking for any scientific theories to reconcile with actual science I had assumed you could rule out the entire old testament straight away.
Slashdot Mirror
They also have the denomination encoded in brail on the note. If you run your finger along the top you can feel it.
I absolutley love the fact that Aussie money is totally waterproof, I wish the UK would do this too ( fair enough we may not have as many beaches but we make up for it in rain ).
I've no problem fitting £50 or any other notes into my wallet.
One choice is to go on the offensive and fight them on their own soil diminishing their effectiveness world wideI couldn't be bothered to read the rest of that garbage but this is a line which people constantly trot out that is so obviously totally nonsensical that I have no idea why anyone would quote it.
First of all since the Iraq war all the terrorist attacks or threatend attacks in the UK have been planned or carried out by people based in the UK, people who have often lived in the UK for a very long time.
Secondly these people need somewhere to train, to learn their terrorist skills. In the past they went to the camps in Afghanistan where with American funding they would learn their trade. Nowadays they go to Pakistan within a convienient distance of the Afghan border or Iraq to get their training. Then they come home and put their training into practice.
Thirdly how does placing a lot of your countries troops in the middle of a civil war in a foreign country, supported by vast amounts of money and desk bound command and control personnel stop the above from happening ? Might that money be spent more effectively on better border controls and investment in proper intelligence networks ?
Fourthly if you are a terrorist organisation with, presumably, very few morals what would be an ideal situation for you to earn your organisation a lot of money ? Do you think its easier for these organisations to make money in places where there is very little in the way of effective policing or law and order where local citizens may have a real need to pay for protection from local militias. Perhaps places which have a vast illegal but lucrative opium crop may be willing to trade this for your protection. Or maybe places where local mafias hold the real power over peoples lives, where you might perhaps be one of the more powerful mafias and able to control a lot of goods, services, illegal money making schemes.
And finally, fifthly is it the case a terrorist cell who has been completed it's training, been well supplied with weapons and money and is welcome back in the country they came from might say to themselves. Hang on, although we can certainly strike a powerful blow in the enemies heartland our brothers are dying here, thousands of miles away perhaps we should stay here and help them directly. Maybe terrorists stick up for their mates but personally I doubt it.
The opinion of most people is that the threat of terrorism is now much greater thanks to the events of 9/11. Which has had a greater effect on the opinions of the people regarding their safety - the attacks on 9/11 or the subsequent (misdirected) attacks on Iraq? How does the more direct attack and liberation of Afghanistan fit into this opinion equation?Perhaps that's true for most of the people you know but generally the War in Iraq is seen as a much bigger driver for terrorism than 9/11.
Afghanistan is a different situation to Iraq, at least there was some motivation there to fix a problem - capture Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network. Although some senior members of the network were captured Osama remains at large and the Taliban are rebuilding their powerbase. If Al Quaeda had been rounded up and captured as was planned then I think we would all have felt a lot safer. What is the moral obligation of the United States following its attack? Is it to ensure that such attacks do not repeat on the US? Or is it to ensure that such attacks won't succeed anywhere? It would be nice to accomplish both goals, but clearly the first takes higher priority.The moral obligation would have been to capture Al Quaeda and hold those responsible to account. Work on this was started but then, we can presume, abandoned in preference to invading Iraq. Given that the war in Iraq has now increased the threat of terrorism it's obvious that its invasion was the wrong way to prevent further terrorism. Can we accept it as a given that there are extremists in the world who wish to practice acts of terror on western civilization? They will attack. They want us dead. The US has been successful for five years in keeping these attacks confined to other countries. Is that success? Some in the US would argue yes. Is this success at the expense of residents of other countries? Almost certainly. Is this a moral failing? I don't have a good answer to that one.There certainly are people in the world who for irrational reasons of their own want to blow and destroy people and property in the West. America, because of it's stature in the world, is obviously an attractive target but the way to tackle this problem is not to destabilise the key regions these terrorists can be recruited from, providing a perfect opportunity to drag young men into religious orientated training camps, providing them with large quantities of weaponary and an ineffective state incapable of controlling them.
We agree that terrorism is now a problem we just disagree that invading Iraq is a sensible way of dealing with it. On the evidence so far the Iraq situation is now doing more to encourage terrorism than prevent it. maybe terrorists can't cross water until they reach a suitable power levelThat was a joke, likening terrorists to Vampyres who apparently can't cross water until their characters develop to a sufficent character level when they gain access to the cross water spell.
"How was anyone to believe that Iraq did not have WMDs"
It's funny, morons like yourself were constantly telling us about all the evil WMDs Saddam had and how that was all the justification they needed to go to war.
I'd like to know if you have perhaps only recently learned to read ? Maybe you are deaf ? If not you'd have noticed an awful lot of people telling you before the Iraq war that it was very unlikely Saddam had any WMDs at all and even if he did even less likely that he'd ever use them on the US.
The current situation in Iraq is for all intents and purposes a civil war, the insurgents are mainly involved in killing each other rather than Americans. The fact that America is present makes a handy recruiting tool to forces on both sides. The American administration is refusing to admit there is a civil war because it would then look like their entire Iraq policy has been a disaster.
I can't speak for America but it seems that the threat of terrorism and actual terrorism has increased markedly since the Iraq war elsewhere, the London Tube Bombings being the most obvious sign of that.
Maybe you're right and it is fighting the Iraq war which is protecting you, or maybe you're spending a lot more money and resources on more conventional anti terrorism measures now, or maybe you've just been lucky so far, or maybe terrorists can't cross water until they reach a suitable power level.
The opinion of most people is that the threat of terrorism is now much greater thanks to activities in Iraq.
Its interesting to note that the reason Britain was in Afghanistan the first time was to support it's puppet ruler. Although he was able to hold control in Kabul the surrounding countryside didn't support him at all unless the British troops happened to be patrolling in that particular area of the countryside.
Obviously things are different now to how they were back then with aeroplanes and modern communications the force in the field is in no danger of being cut off from support back home but its still an interesting comparison.
Yes, that's a good example. The UK was then a superpower and fielding one of the most powerful and advanced armies of the day. In a straight one on one shock and awe type engagement the US wouldn't have stood a chance but that option wasn't on the table for various reasons and the "terrorists" were able to take advantage of both the UK's engagements elsewhere and the public feeling of most British citizens to avoid unecessary slaughter and bloodshed on their American cousins.
Even if you have the most powerful military forces in the world there will always be areas which people can exploit to achieve their own ends and the bigger a player you are the more of those areas you will expose for your enemies to exploite.
Your absolutely right but those tactics are nothing new. When the French were invaded by Hitler I think they had the resistance in place beforehand to cause as much damage to the occupying forces as they could.
Churchill had already put in place extensive plans to deal with a successful German invasion including chains of command, weapons dumps etc and had people trained specifically to kill Germans whenever the chance was offered and also anyone co-operating with them.
Even longer ago in Afghanistan when the British were there the opposing tribes simply played them along by on the one hand pretending to negotiate with them and getting what they could from them and on the other doing whatever they could to isolate the British forces disrupt their supply lines. They managed to get the British to agree not to fortify their encampments and later once the position was becoming increasingly untenable they offered safe passage back into India at which point they triggered what is, I think, still the worst Military defeat the British Army has ever received. I think there was only one survivor out of a force of 7,000 or so.
So, these tactics have a long pedigree and with a bit of luck often work which makes it all the more surprising when people tell you that the fact its happening now is such a shock and they hadn't expected anything like this to happen.
I've just remembered another of the articles was about how 80% of the worlds cargo would soon be carried by a new breed of gigantic submarines plying the depths immune from any effects of the weather and still travelling much more swiftly than the surface traffic ( except the Speed Freak Navies of course ).
I have an old annual at home called something like "Speed Annual 1978" which has a lot of articles in it which might interest small boys, aircraft carriers exploding, how the Yamato was sunk etc
One of the articles was called "The 100 Knot Navy" which explained that in the future all Naval ships would be either Hovercraft or at the very least Hydrofoils. There were only a few, minor, hurdles to overcome and certainly by the year 2000 any Navy not able to travel at 100 Knots would be more or less obsolete.
Thats right, I think it's one of the busiest areas for shipping in the world and in addition to that it has a high proportion of leisure sailors e.g. unprofessional amatuers in small boats.
The trouble is that the Universe is maybe 17 Billion years old and although we have no figures on the length of time you can expect an intelligent species to survive for it's probably a small fraction of 17 Billion. It's likely that intelligent species will not have the capability for space travel or inter-stellar communication for their entire existence which cuts the percentage down further.
The rate at which a species can expand through the galaxy is likely to be quite an awful lot slower than the maximum speed of whatever craft they have developed so for us to ever be aware of anyone else in the Universe we'd have to have arrived in a similar time frame and be very close to them spacially. It's possible there may be a fantastic co-incidence and a probe or exploration vehicle come across us but really the universe is so huge both us and them would need huge blocks of inhabited space which would at some point need to intersect.
It's funny, there used to be a fair amount of posts in SCO Threads from people ( usually using words likes Slashbots, Groupthink, Worship OSS etc ) who believed that IBM might certainly be in the wrong and SCO could well have a case.
It's funny they don't seem to crop up anymore, just like all those people telling us our governments could never be so wrong about WMD and how they'd certainly find loads of evidence once the invasion was completed.
We made the exact same things in Woodwork ( called C.D.T at the time )over 15 years ago. My Bridge however won the competition by a long long way which I think is down the fact it broke when I tested it before the competition so I coated the entire structure in 4 or 5 layers of glue which I think helped to hold it together later.
My catapult was cruelly robbed of it's winning position when on it's first shot it shot right to the end of the room, hit the wall and bounced back quite a long way ( we were using ping pong balls ). The stupid teacher ruled that it had only shot as far as the ball had actually landed so even though no one else got anywhere near the wall I didn't win.
From what I see on the News, documentaries etc it appears that most Americans still live in wooden houses ( or if they live in a Tornado/Hurricane zone they opt for trailers ). I know they do also build proper brick and concrete houses in the major cities ( e.g New York ) so why don't they all build proper brick houses and not have them knocked down by every minor tornado which blows through ?
Poor old them, how long do you think I will continue to get paid once I stop working ? Thats right, ZIP ! It's either keep working or starve. Poor me ! Poor, poor me !
We are certainly not amused however I suspect whoever is responsible is by now far far away from our shores.
Gosh yes, a geiger counter ! I bet they never thought of that, if I were you I'd get the first flight out the UK and apply for the job as Chief Lord High Sargent Major Of All Inspectors, they'll offer you the job for sure once they realise how talented you are.
It's worth pointing out that even if Putin has ordered his execution it's not necessarily illegal since under Russian law anyone considered a danger to Russias security can be killed regardless of whether they are on Russian soil or not.
This is obviously a vital law to protect innocent Russians in the face of this awful wave of worldwide terrorism, certainly no other countries are passing similarly effective legislation ( which has the totally unexpected side effect of allowing them to do what they like to further their own personal agendas ) so I think we should all lobby our governments to offer us the same level of protection as the Russians are now enjoying.
I think he was in charge of the KGB for a while.
Yes. Sushi stalwart cornerstone of British cusine since time immemorial.
Not sure about totalitarian, more like a crimistocracy or crimocracy or perhaps crimotarian.
Also we have come a step closer to designing the system defined in one of Iain M Banks novels ( Consider Phlebas I think ) where the outside of ships are covered in nanoscale whorls increasing their surface area to such an extent that scanning them becomes impossible.
I realise that however if you are looking for any scientific theories to reconcile with actual science I had assumed you could rule out the entire old testament straight away.