Handsome Boy Modeling School
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is the best $60 I ever spend. If you got 60 dollars in your pocket go to Handsome Boy Modeling School. If it wasn't for Prince Paul and Automator I'd be modelling in Albania or some Balkan country, still.
I have been reading up on Afghanistan and I came across this:
Afghanistan is a land that is rich in natural resources. There are numerous mineral and precious stone deposits, as well as natural gas and yet untapped petroleum stores. Some of these resources have been exploited, while others have remained relatively unexploited. -- Basics of the Afghan Economy
However for whatever reason I did not link it with the upcoming military action in Afghanistan. Now after reading your post it seems to be a contributing factor. It's well known that Dick Cheney has links to the oil companies. I'm not sure about the opium but there may be something to that as well.
a conscript army isn't the same as a volunteer army
Who has a volunteer army? Not us, our soldiers get PAID. We have a professional army. There is a big difference between a volunteer and someone who is being paid for their services. Many of the people who have enlisted normally go for the GI bill and things of that nature. If we truly had a volunteer army, the amount of soldiers would be a small fraction of a professional army. I guess the Marines, Special OPs etc would remain because they are so dedicated they probably wouldnt mine not being paid.
In the case of history, it tells us much that invading Afghanistan is nothing like Iraq or Vietnam. First, Alexander the Great had much trouble in this part of the world. Mostly from guerilla fighters who knew the terrain very well. It was only the supreme loyalty of his troops that in end allowed him to win out.
The second and last time that Afghanistan was sucessfully invaded was by the Arabs in the 8th century. What makes this interesting is that the Arab armies were very poor quality and considered by their foes to be 'primitive warriors'. However these 'primitive warriors' were able to defeat the highly disciplined and organized armies of Byzantium and Persia. The simple reason why was their great determination fueled by Islam. These warriors felt that no matter what they were going to win because they were on side of Allah. This never-ending blind faith of victory is very hard to overcome. This is the major motivator for the Afghanistan soldier.
This site
shows in great detail the many problems the Soviets faced while fighting in Afghanistan.
The major problems are:
1. We will be fighting a highly motivated guerilla force. In guerilla warfare the side with the most moral committment will be victorious. The Afghani warriors have shown they are almost unmatched in this catagory.
2. A professional army trained in conventional warfare must be retrained to fight in a guerilla conflict. Many of our soldiers have not be faced or trained against such an enemy as the Afghanis. Learning in the field will mean thousands of additional casualties. While the Afghanis are already battle-hardened and remember the lessons learned from the Soviet conflict.
3. The Persian Gulf War saw very little casualties, is America ready to pay the price in the thousands? This is yet to be determined. When an expected 2 week campaign turns into 2 years will the moral committment still be there?
4. Technological superiority has little influence on a guerilla conflict. Guerilla warriors do not come out in the open and fight. They will appear and disappear. Our technology is designed to help with a conventional warfare conflict. How do you fight an enemy that does not play by your rules?
I know the Taliban has very little support inside and outside Afghanistan. However this could rapidly change. An invasion of Afghanistan could rally Taliban support. The Afghanis will see the Taliban as defending their homeland from outside invaders. The 50,000 troops of the Taliban could quickly turn into 500,000. Also if the Afghanis make some progess and win some victories, outside help would not be hard to find. America has many enemies and if the Afghanis show promise, expect outside help. Much like in our own War of Independence it took some victories to turn some heads our way.
All this said, I believe a small special ops centered attack will work. Simply go in, attack the training camps and get out. This coupled with air attacks will increase the probability of a victory. Yet, this will not bring down the Taliban but only destroy major terrorist operations within Afghanistan. And isn't that what we want?
You have to understand that this war against terrorism is going to be a covert campaign. I highly doubt we will get into a large scale military ground troop based conflict in Afghanistan. Colin Powell is not stupid, he knows what will happen if we do. This war is going to be rarely seen on television and the results of its battles rarely known. This being said, the government needs to do something to make the average US citizen feel safe again.
Look at whats going on in the media, Bin Laden is being turned into the Darth Vader of terrorism. When in reality he is nothing but a figurehead, a symbol for terrorists to rally around. He isn't the evil mastermind the media creates/wants him to be. Most likely he sits in a cave reading old newspapers and checking the box scores of the Yankees game. He has little to do with planning and the financial funding. That 300 million dollars? He blew most of it away while partying in college.
However the American public is convinced that Bin Laden is behind all this and want his head on a plate. The military will most likely do some visible actions to keep the American public happy. These moves will be the least efficient in winning the war against terrorism, however they will be the most effective in keeping American support. They are PR moves, propaganda, to make it look like we are doing something. In reality the war is being fought in the shadows and this is where we will win. The military is stuck in a situation where it must keep American support but the REAL victories are ones that can not be made public. So the military puts on 'parades' for us, sure bomb some so called 'training camps'. Hell, we might even go after Bin Laden and capture/kill him. Yet, the truth is these are fronts/images/advertisements/propaganda to keep the ball rolling in the REAL war which most of us will never see/hear about.
False. Widely-spread untruth by terrorist sympathizers, but false.
Well, bin Laden was not actually trained by the CIA themselves. However they were instrumental in putting bin Laden where he is today. The guerilla groups bin Laden fought for in the Soviet-Afghan Conflict were backed by the CIA. This includes the Taliban. Also the group who is in opposition to the Taliban, the United Front is a group we did not support. Now it seems we will do the opposite if we fight Afghanistan.
America won the Cold War. But in their foreign policy on Afghanistan, they lost. Of course, nobody would argue that if Washington had heavily backed Massoud, he would be in power in Afghanistan now and not the Taleban. Afghan politics are more complex than that. Massoud is a Tajik, not from the Pushtun majority in the country. But by backing Pakistan's line, Washington actually helped divide the guerrillas, arguably prolonging the war. Even worse, Washington's silent support for Pakistan's creation of the Taleban -- a monster that Islamabad now seems unable to control -- helped establish the world's most dangerous breeding ground for terrorists. Osama bin Laden, holed up somewhere in Afghanistan, has a lot to thank the CIA for.
I think many of us are making the mistake of thinking slavery means robots with whips while humans work in the fields. I do not think Hawking has this kind of slavery in mind. What IS possible is that humans will become so dependent on intelligent machinery that we can not survive without them.
The Unabomber (another crackpot) came to a similar conclusion. As machines get more complex fewer and fewer human beings will be able to control them (program, maintain, produce, etc). Yet right now we have a pretty good thing going. We keep the machines running and being manufactured. However over time many of these duties might be handed over to more intelligent machines. Then who will have control over them? The machines themselves.
Look at how much we depend on machinery today. The Y2K vapor crisis has people so scared that they wouldn't have power they started to panic. They firmly believed that without electricty to power their toys they would not be able to survive. Imagine in 50 or 100 years. If we continue to hand over duties and jobs to machinery it is only a matter of time that without them we WILL NOT be able to survive. And if machines no longer need us to maintaim them, the human race will be nothing more then a domesticated cat.
Sir, I have visited your site in the past and looked it over and even considered emailing you about it. Yet, I decided not too. However I feel here is a chance to ask you some questions about your ideas listed on said webpage.
First of all your logical argument against travel in spacetime to me makes no sense. You find that it is self-referential, because to find the velocity in the time axis the equation would be v = dt/dt.
If a time dimension does exist it would not be a spatial dimension therefore 'velocity' within it wouldnt make any sense in the first place. Velocity is a phenomena that is found in our (3D) world. However there is a connection between relative velocity and time itself. The faster you travel the slower time appears to be. This has been proven with atomic clocks on space flights. 'Time' itself did slow down, even though it was fractions of seconds.
I dont understand your point. Another thing you claim they are mathematical abstracts and have no counter-parts in nature. Yes they are abstracts but so is any language. The human mind takes experience and puts them in nice little symbolic packages so they can be transferred between human beings (language). This is math, and even english. Just because they are does not make them false.
You seem to me to be very anti-science. Also I think you take Feyerabend out of context. I deeply respect Feyerabend but he is not against science. His point was to make science more humanistic. Using any one methodology would slow down the progress of science because science is a human art. An interpretation of reality that becomes a world view. I would have to agree with David Bohm that insight comes before the mathematical equations. The math(or language, paintings, etc) just describes this insight.
Think of scientists more like painters who use math as their paintbrush to interpret the world. Science is a very fulfulling and beautiful thing do not resent it.
Again what is your point my friend? Science sometimes gets boggled down in its own abstractions and becomes a little crazy but what human endeavor does not?
Slashdot Mirror
is the best $60 I ever spend. If you got 60 dollars in your pocket go to Handsome Boy Modeling School. If it wasn't for Prince Paul and Automator I'd be modelling in Albania or some Balkan country, still.
Who has a volunteer army? Not us, our soldiers get PAID. We have a professional army. There is a big difference between a volunteer and someone who is being paid for their services. Many of the people who have enlisted normally go for the GI bill and things of that nature. If we truly had a volunteer army, the amount of soldiers would be a small fraction of a professional army. I guess the Marines, Special OPs etc would remain because they are so dedicated they probably wouldnt mine not being paid.
In the case of history, it tells us much that invading Afghanistan is nothing like Iraq or Vietnam. First, Alexander the Great had much trouble in this part of the world. Mostly from guerilla fighters who knew the terrain very well. It was only the supreme loyalty of his troops that in end allowed him to win out.
The second and last time that Afghanistan was sucessfully invaded was by the Arabs in the 8th century. What makes this interesting is that the Arab armies were very poor quality and considered by their foes to be 'primitive warriors'. However these 'primitive warriors' were able to defeat the highly disciplined and organized armies of Byzantium and Persia. The simple reason why was their great determination fueled by Islam. These warriors felt that no matter what they were going to win because they were on side of Allah. This never-ending blind faith of victory is very hard to overcome. This is the major motivator for the Afghanistan soldier.
This site shows in great detail the many problems the Soviets faced while fighting in Afghanistan.
The major problems are:
1. We will be fighting a highly motivated guerilla force. In guerilla warfare the side with the most moral committment will be victorious. The Afghani warriors have shown they are almost unmatched in this catagory.
2. A professional army trained in conventional warfare must be retrained to fight in a guerilla conflict. Many of our soldiers have not be faced or trained against such an enemy as the Afghanis. Learning in the field will mean thousands of additional casualties. While the Afghanis are already battle-hardened and remember the lessons learned from the Soviet conflict.
3. The Persian Gulf War saw very little casualties, is America ready to pay the price in the thousands? This is yet to be determined. When an expected 2 week campaign turns into 2 years will the moral committment still be there?
4. Technological superiority has little influence on a guerilla conflict. Guerilla warriors do not come out in the open and fight. They will appear and disappear. Our technology is designed to help with a conventional warfare conflict. How do you fight an enemy that does not play by your rules?
I know the Taliban has very little support inside and outside Afghanistan. However this could rapidly change. An invasion of Afghanistan could rally Taliban support. The Afghanis will see the Taliban as defending their homeland from outside invaders. The 50,000 troops of the Taliban could quickly turn into 500,000. Also if the Afghanis make some progess and win some victories, outside help would not be hard to find. America has many enemies and if the Afghanis show promise, expect outside help. Much like in our own War of Independence it took some victories to turn some heads our way.
All this said, I believe a small special ops centered attack will work. Simply go in, attack the training camps and get out. This coupled with air attacks will increase the probability of a victory. Yet, this will not bring down the Taliban but only destroy major terrorist operations within Afghanistan. And isn't that what we want?
Look at whats going on in the media, Bin Laden is being turned into the Darth Vader of terrorism. When in reality he is nothing but a figurehead, a symbol for terrorists to rally around. He isn't the evil mastermind the media creates/wants him to be. Most likely he sits in a cave reading old newspapers and checking the box scores of the Yankees game. He has little to do with planning and the financial funding. That 300 million dollars? He blew most of it away while partying in college.
However the American public is convinced that Bin Laden is behind all this and want his head on a plate. The military will most likely do some visible actions to keep the American public happy. These moves will be the least efficient in winning the war against terrorism, however they will be the most effective in keeping American support. They are PR moves, propaganda, to make it look like we are doing something. In reality the war is being fought in the shadows and this is where we will win. The military is stuck in a situation where it must keep American support but the REAL victories are ones that can not be made public. So the military puts on 'parades' for us, sure bomb some so called 'training camps'. Hell, we might even go after Bin Laden and capture/kill him. Yet, the truth is these are fronts/images/advertisements/propaganda to keep the ball rolling in the REAL war which most of us will never see/hear about.
False. Widely-spread untruth by terrorist sympathizers, but false.
Well, bin Laden was not actually trained by the CIA themselves. However they were instrumental in putting bin Laden where he is today. The guerilla groups bin Laden fought for in the Soviet-Afghan Conflict were backed by the CIA. This includes the Taliban. Also the group who is in opposition to the Taliban, the United Front is a group we did not support. Now it seems we will do the opposite if we fight Afghanistan.
A quote from a very good article.
America won the Cold War. But in their foreign policy on Afghanistan, they lost. Of course, nobody would argue that if Washington had heavily backed Massoud, he would be in power in Afghanistan now and not the Taleban. Afghan politics are more complex than that. Massoud is a Tajik, not from the Pushtun majority in the country. But by backing Pakistan's line, Washington actually helped divide the guerrillas, arguably prolonging the war. Even worse, Washington's silent support for Pakistan's creation of the Taleban -- a monster that Islamabad now seems unable to control -- helped establish the world's most dangerous breeding ground for terrorists. Osama bin Laden, holed up somewhere in Afghanistan, has a lot to thank the CIA for.
Am I a terrorist sympathizer?
The Phillies suck but at least you dont have to ride on the subway with a bunch of queers to get to the game.
John Rocker WAS RIGHT!!!!
The Unabomber (another crackpot) came to a similar conclusion. As machines get more complex fewer and fewer human beings will be able to control them (program, maintain, produce, etc). Yet right now we have a pretty good thing going. We keep the machines running and being manufactured. However over time many of these duties might be handed over to more intelligent machines. Then who will have control over them? The machines themselves.
Look at how much we depend on machinery today. The Y2K vapor crisis has people so scared that they wouldn't have power they started to panic. They firmly believed that without electricty to power their toys they would not be able to survive. Imagine in 50 or 100 years. If we continue to hand over duties and jobs to machinery it is only a matter of time that without them we WILL NOT be able to survive. And if machines no longer need us to maintaim them, the human race will be nothing more then a domesticated cat.
Sir, I have visited your site in the past and looked it over and even considered emailing you about it. Yet, I decided not too. However I feel here is a chance to ask you some questions about your ideas listed on said webpage.
First of all your logical argument against travel in spacetime to me makes no sense. You find that it is self-referential, because to find the velocity in the time axis the equation would be v = dt/dt.
If a time dimension does exist it would not be a spatial dimension therefore 'velocity' within it wouldnt make any sense in the first place. Velocity is a phenomena that is found in our (3D) world. However there is a connection between relative velocity and time itself. The faster you travel the slower time appears to be. This has been proven with atomic clocks on space flights. 'Time' itself did slow down, even though it was fractions of seconds.
I dont understand your point. Another thing you claim they are mathematical abstracts and have no counter-parts in nature. Yes they are abstracts but so is any language. The human mind takes experience and puts them in nice little symbolic packages so they can be transferred between human beings (language). This is math, and even english. Just because they are does not make them false.
You seem to me to be very anti-science. Also I think you take Feyerabend out of context. I deeply respect Feyerabend but he is not against science. His point was to make science more humanistic. Using any one methodology would slow down the progress of science because science is a human art. An interpretation of reality that becomes a world view. I would have to agree with David Bohm that insight comes before the mathematical equations. The math(or language, paintings, etc) just describes this insight.
Think of scientists more like painters who use math as their paintbrush to interpret the world. Science is a very fulfulling and beautiful thing do not resent it.
Again what is your point my friend? Science sometimes gets boggled down in its own abstractions and becomes a little crazy but what human endeavor does not?