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At 8/18/13 04:39 PM, Feoric wrote:

At 8/18/13 03:37 PM, lapis wrote: Well, if the Egyptian army succeeds in quelling the brotherhood - the same way the Algerian military succeeded in suppressing a popular Islamist movement that was about to seize power though elections in the 90s - then the US has an enemy controlling the Suez canal and the Sinai, which borders Israel and Gaza. Seriously, if the Egyptians respond to US sanctions by shutting the Suez canal to US naval vessels then all ships that are bound for the Persian Gulf have to sail around the Cape of Good Hope. You have to weigh that off agaisnt what you would gain with a bet, which isn't going to be much. (remember how grateful the Taliban were for US aid for the Mujahideen against the Soviets?)

The international community would never allow the Suez to be shut down under any circumstances. There would be an intervention at that point, not just from the US.

By "shutting the Suez canal to US naval vessels" I meant that the Egyptians would threaten to intercept all US military ships that enter the canal, and to take them under fire using land-based missiles or artillery or aircraft should the US vessels resist being intercepted. Other nations need not care about that.

At 8/18/13 12:29 PM, Light wrote: What does this administration stand to gain by continuing in this course of action?

Well, if the Egyptian army succeeds in quelling the brotherhood - the same way the Algerian military succeeded in suppressing a popular Islamist movement that was about to seize power though elections in the 90s - then the US has an enemy controlling the Suez canal and the Sinai, which borders Israel and Gaza. Seriously, if the Egyptians respond to US sanctions by shutting the Suez canal to US naval vessels then all ships that are bound for the Persian Gulf have to sail around the Cape of Good Hope. You have to weigh that off agaisnt what you would gain with a bet, which isn't going to be much. (remember how grateful the Taliban were for US aid for the Mujahideen against the Soviets?)

Besides, the US would piss off the Egyptian military's allies, namely Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait - all of them being important US allies in the region. All in all, the US might lose even more influence than in the current situation in which it's just hedging its bets.

At 8/15/13 05:17 PM, Cynical-Charlotte wrote: I do not feel this test is very accurate about my concerns. The results indicated I was closer to the libertarian field and more of a leftist than I what would expect. So I instead found an alternative, comprehensive political quiz: http://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/political-spectrum-quiz.html

Left: 2.28, libertarian: 1.48, compared to left: 3.00, libertarian: 2.05 for the political compass. Not being able to strongly disagree wih astrology correctly explaining many things apparently cost me libertarian points.

I score 1.52 on the neoconservative scale, though.

Left/right: -3.00, libertarian/authoritarian: -2.05. Still fairly comparable to what I scored in 2005, although I seem to have shifted towards the left. Which is funny because unlike seven/eight years ago I'm seriously considering voting for a centre-right party next elections, but the questions they ask on the PC website allow for such little nuance that they only pick up on huge doctrinal shifts.

The 'International Chart' that they show among the results is a complete joke, by the way. By all reasonable measures I should be somewhere close to Ed Milliband, yet they put me further to the bottom-left than Greek neo-Communist Alexis Tsipras. They should take all the points on their chart and shove them towards the bottom-left until the Dalai Lama is somewhere around -8,-8.

At 7/25/13 11:12 AM, AxTekk wrote: I'd also agree that the Quran makes it annoyingly easy for jihadists to claim divine cause

Okay, but that was not my point. Most of the warlike verses of the Qur'an actually have other verses in their direct vicinity which could be interpreted as implying that war in only allowed in a defensive manner. But that doesn't matter. If I wanted to, I could found a bloodthirsty cult that derives solely from the New Testament in terms of scripture and I could find a semi-pacifistic new age religion based on the Qur'an. The only thing that matters though is what the majority of the faith's believe. In addition to the Qur'an there's not just the sunnah (which is already a lot more warlike than the Qur'an) but a vast literature on doctrinal thought. And it's this not-quite-liberal doctrinal thought that is on the rise within Muslim immigrant communities in Western Europe and which can be linked to problems facing these communities.

However, one thing I would say is that the exclusivity stressed in the Old Testament literature and the racial outlook of it also gives Israeli hardliners the same kind of excuses.

I wouldn't overestimate their religiosity. While hardliners are growing more powerful, Israeli politics have always been largely secular and many Israelis do what they do out of Nationalist motives instead of religious ones. Also, Jewish orthodoxy doesn't always lead to a hardline stance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Satmar group, which is ultra-orthodox and numbers over a 100,000 adherents, is in fact opposed to Zionism.

Also, I suck at distinguishing between HTML and BBCode.

At 7/24/13 04:23 PM, AxTekk wrote: Ain't got shit on the Old Testament though imho (at least, definitely not Numbers and Deuteronomy).

Maybe, but the Old Testament doesn't have much relavance anymore. When Exodus says: "[i]thou shalt not suffer a witch to live[/i]", then that's interesting from a historical point of view but not from a modern political point of view becuase there is no place in the world (except for maybe some parts of the African jungle) where mentionworthy religious groups exist that use this verse to advocate the killing of witches. However, when it says in the Qur'an: "[i]let not believers take disbelievers as 'awliya [translated here as 'allies'] rather than believers[/i]", then this is completely relevant becuase it underpins the modern Salafist doctrine of al wala' [from 'awliya] wa al-bara', which (mainly) teaches that Muslims should at all times show solidarity to each other, and to disassociate themselves from disbelievers. This is of course very relevant when you see parallel societies spring up in all the major cities of Western Europe, specially when mosques in Western Europe increasingly espouse Salafist theology.

In the end, it doesn't matter what you (as a disbeliever) think the fundamentals of a religion are, or what you like or do not like about its holy texts. What matters is what the adherents think, or what people who use said religion as an ideology think. What you think and what they think need not agree.

At 7/24/13 01:02 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 7/24/13 12:58 PM, lapis wrote: When were the "fundamentals" of Islam written?

I would assume sometime in the 8th Century AD.

Most of the Sunnah wasn't penned down until the later half of the 9th Century. Al-Ghazali and his death blow to Islamic science was born in the 11th Century. Wahhabism, the dominant ideology of Saudi Arabia, didn't exist until the 18th Century. Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, one of the first Salafists, didn't start preaching until the 19th Century. Sayyid Qutb, the first Jihadist, didn't radicalise until the 40s-50s of the 20th Century.

In fact, you'll find that most "fundamentist" Islamic thought has its origins in the past two hundred years. So what does it matter when these supposed "fundamentals" of Islam were written?

At 7/24/13 12:38 PM, Sheizenhammer wrote: Shows what you know: Both of those things (as well as the burqa itself) were added by political movements hundreds of years after the "fundamentals" of Islam were written. Do some research, please.

When were the "fundamentals" of Islam written?

I remember making a thread about this back in '11. Took them long enough to actually enforce it.

The funniest part of all this is the following quote from the BBC article linked to in the OP:

"But Ms Perry argued filters would make a difference, saying that the killers of schoolgirls April Jones and Tia Sharp had accessed legal pornography before moving on to images of child abuse."

Is she seriously saying that legal pornography is some sort of sexual marijuana, a gateway drug that leads directly to child abuse? It makes sense, though: a hundred years ago internet porn did not exist and neither did child abuse. Right? Right???

At 7/21/13 05:19 PM, Fim wrote: I don't know of any other political body that ALWAYS requires a police presence whenever they get together in large numbers

Is that because of them or because of anti-fascist or Islamic counter-protests?

At 7/21/13 08:47 PM, NordicThunder88 wrote: 88 = Random number

Riiiight.

At 3/18/13 08:24 PM, Feoric wrote: Iceland had a staggering amount of debt: 998% of their GDP. For comparison, Greece had 128%. What Iceland did to remedy this was the complete opposite of what the austerity hawks wanted to do - they eliminated their debt outright and inflated their way out.

Well, yeah, Iceland eliminated most of its debt through a default. Inflation doesn't even have too much to do with it. I'm pretty sure that they defaulted because the British and Dutch governments are still trying to claw back the money that they had to pay to their nationals under the deposit guarantee scheme. Cyprus can also default on its debt; it's just that other European powers are trying to prevent that because they might pull Italy and Spain down along with them. And Cyprus is going to make some people really angry if they default; not the least of which is the Russian government, which loaned them like 2.5 bn a few years ago.

Cyprus would be able to remedy this with just a little bit of short term inflation if they were able to print their money, but being on the Euro makes this impossible

Right, that's the only effect of the euro itself; you cannot use quantitative easing to take off some of the pressure. But you can mimic the results of printing money through specific policies. For example, if wages are high and your labour is uncompetitive compared to other countries (big problem in e.g. Spain), then you could just print money and the relative cost of the wages goes down, making labour more competitive. However, you could also just slash wages. Or a problem could be that you owe too much money to a few foreign big parties, then you could print money and decrease the value of your debt. However, you could also agree a coluntary partial default with those parties (a haircut), to which those parties might agree becuase they know it's better than losing everything in a complete default.

Finally, if you need money you could print it and all creditors that hold your currency would relatively lose some money because what they have becomes less valuable. However, you could also diretly levy this money through a tax. What's happening in Cyprus is exactly that, and there isn't anything more being 'stolen' than what would have happened in the situation that you propose (i.e. printing money); at least not from the point of view of the common account holders. That's my point.

At 3/16/13 09:40 PM, Feoric wrote: It's the fact that the EU took 7% of everyone's bank deposits on zero notice and with zero recourse, which has massive potential consequences.

Had the euro (or maybe even the EU) never existed, the Cypriot government would have mitigated their debt problem either through a default or through quantitative easing, the latter of which would have resulted in people holding money in Cypriot banks keeping all of their cash, but having it lose (at least) 7% of its value. Can you explain how this would have been any different? I'm asking because I believe this was pretty much the norm for several Mediterranean countries until they joined the euro.

At 12/1/12 04:53 PM, lapis wrote: Haha, look at the dates: 16 Oct 2012, 12 Aug 2011, 7 Oct 2010. An amazing level of consistency.

Argh, where are the quotation marks? Damn you, Google (or Nerwgrounds), this used to work. For those of you interested in what I was on about, this was my Google query:

28 years ago a Zim "dollar traded on par with" the british pound !

Haha, look at the dates: 16 Oct 2012, 12 Aug 2011, 7 Oct 2010. An amazing level of consistency.

At 11/20/12 06:41 PM, Tomsan wrote: Dat is een poos geleden. Alles goed? Ik ben inmiddels nog steeds niet afgestudeerd. laatste 9 punten van thesis zijn een drama.

Oh, ja hoor, ik ben alleen van Amsterdam naar Enschede verhuisd, maar op dat na gaat alles prima :)
Ik post hier alleen bijna nooit meer, maar toen ik jouw post zag besloot ik om toch ook maar weer eens wat te schrijven.

Hmm I am not sure, I have read different things about this. The numbers/percentages of ownership were way higher and before WW2 started the jews bought large portions of what is now israel. (in case you didnt read my earlier post I am not able to look up references right now)

If you have credbile other information, I'd love to read it. But whoever did that research would need to provide some solid argumentation as to why he disagrees with the UN records, and with the later recounts by Stein and Avneri. If the only reason is that he contends that not all Jewish land purchases had been properly registered, then that's not a valid reason in itself because Stein and Avneri attempted to compensate for the same thing.

As far as I remember the reverse exodus (influx?) happened shortly before WW2 while there were tensions and after. In any case a lot of jews came to israel during that decade. The fact that The british restricted immigration doesnt really matter in that case. Or are you doubting the statement itself?

Well, no. It was just the formulation. I agree that a lot of migration happened between 1930 and 1939, and in the years after the war, but not during the war, which is what I read from the way you put it.

Its a pain I cant look this up, but I am pretty sure the declaration of independence was right about the same day as the day the mandate expired, not 3 years

Ah, I misunderstood, I thought you meant immediately after WW2 ended. But now that I read it back, you're obviously right. Never mind.

I have no idea what the last part of the sentence means.

The way you wrote the summary made the Jews of the Yishuv look very passive; just building an economy and buying land, and only being attacked when they didn't expect it. What I wanted to emphasise was that most of the Jewish population in Palestine had already militarised in the years leading up to the 1948 war, and that Jewish far-right groups were waging (relatively) open war against the British in the last few years of the British mandate, with the semi-official left-wing militia (the Haganah) even joining in after the end of WW2.

This is what warfroger said, but its not really true. I do know that it was israel who carried out preemptive strikes and started the initial attacks, but an invasion by the surrounding countries was planned. Thats more or less what I meant. If they would have attacked or not is irrelevant, you dont mass armies of multiple countries around a border of one and not expect him to expect an attack. wrong intelligence is no excuse.

Maybe, but it was certainly Israel that had the element of surprise; Egypt's air force was completely knocked out while the Egyptians were still wondering what had happened on the other side of the border.

thanks for the feedback

You're welcome :D

There's more that I could say about this, but just a few quick remarks (Warforger also already dealt with a lot of them):

At 11/19/12 06:51 PM, Tomsan wrote: -Palestine was a no-mans lands for the large part. (subjective)

It's not just subjective, it's an enormous exaggeration. At the time, because of big advances in medicine introduced to the region in the late 19th century, population tended to double every 25-30 years. With 1.2 million Palestinians in 1945, 300,000 in 1895 seems fair. Here's a Wikipedia article about it; putting the figure higher, at 432,000. Hardly a "no man's land"; in 1850 the whole of Norway only had 1.5 million inhabitants, not even four times as much. Was that also fair game for foreign colonisation?

-Jews BOUGHT most of the land in Israel before and after WW1.

This one is clearly false, at the least the "most" part. I think that around 1948 it amounted to 6% of total Palestine and 10% of what is now (internationally recognised to be) Israel. Then there was 40% Arab ownership and 50% state (at the time British) ownership - these numbers are from the top of my head. Going by what I can find on Wikipedia at the moment (I know there used to be a better article but I can't find it at the moment) it was 5.78% of total Palestine in 1943. These are the official figures from the UN at the time; there are later figures from Avneri (these were also in the old article that I remember) and Stein, who put the this percentage at 7.06% and 7.6% respectively.

-Jews worked the land and attracted muslims from all over.

Never proven by anybody. I've heard it often; I think only to support the false "Palestine was hardly inhabited around 1900" claim.

-In this time Israel was already mainly inhabited by jews not palestines. (not completely sure about this)

False, see Wikipedia articles (which, from my experience, are usually better than other sources because you know people from both sides will argue over the numbers; with other sites you never know the bias).

-WW2 happened jews fled en mass to israel

Actually, the British had restricted immigration of Jews to Palestine in this time period (1939 (?) White Paper).

-Israel declares Independence next day or so

Three years later.

-Few days later surprise attack by surrounding countries

There was hardly any "surprise", and you're forgetting that at this point the Jews of the Yishuv were already fighting an insurgency against the British for several years (also the Haganah, but especially the Irgun and the Lehi). lalalala.

-1967 6-day war again surprise attack by surrounding countries

Other way around.

At 11/9/12 06:16 PM, lapis wrote: In France, politicians resign if they haven't had an affair for an unaccpetably long period of time.

I'm not just talking about the men, by the way. Rachida Dati, France's first female Minister of Justice, was alleged to have eight boyfriends around the time she got pregnant with a child she alleges to have been conceived by a hotel and casino group CEO.

In France, politicians resign if they haven't had an affair for an unaccpetably long period of time.

At 11/7/12 02:42 PM, AcetheSuperVillain wrote: Someone brought this up elsewhere jokingly, but now serious time:

How would you feel about America or some other government officially annexing (taking ownership of) a portion or the entirety of Luna (Earth's moon)?

Why would you do that?

1) Minerals - You don't hear about this often, but planet Earth has a finite mineral supply of materials like Iron, Gold, Aluminum, etc. Scientists are starting to predict that Earth's supply of iron will actually be depleted before its supply of fossil fuels. This is a slightly bullshit reason because minerals are recyclable, but it does mean there is a limit to the maximum amount of metal we can use at a given time without getting more from Luna or passing asteroids.

2) Helium-3 - Because of Luna's distance from Earth's magnetic field, moonrocks are saturated with an isotope called Helium-3 or Tralphium. He3 is thought to be a potential fuel for nuclear fusion, despite being non-radioactive. Before the 2008 economic collapse, Russia, China and India all had realistic ambitions to ascertain the abundance of He3 and potentially begin automated mining operations. However, how well He3 fusion reactions would work commercially and how much of the stuff we really need or is available is unknown.

3) Low Gravity space port - Luna has less gravity than Earth, about one sixth (1/6). The main advantage of this feature is that less energy is required to launch an object from Luna into space than it does to launch from Earth. Thus, it would theoretically save resources to build and launch large spacecraft from Luna, in automated factories using minerals mined from regolith, or shipped from Earth in small batches. However, interplanetary trade is not yet at the point where such an operation would be feasible.

However, I'm pretty sure this would be in violation of The Outer Space Treaty: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty which is ratified by most of the world. So if you wanted to annex Luna, you'd have to convince the world's super powers that they can't or shouldn't stop you.

Assuming Helium-3 would indeed make a permanent mining operation on the moon lucrative in 2020 or later, there would probably be several powers strong and determined enough to be willing to defend any claims they have on the moon: I'm mainly thinking of the US and China, and maybe Russia. If any one of these powers decides to annex the moon in violation of international treaties, all the others would ally against it, and have a reasonable casus belli for a limited space war. Given that it is likely that the costs of a space war against several other major powers would outweigh the benefits of a mining operation, it would be more likely that the powers sign a new treaty in which they divide the moon into several exclusive economic areas that can be used by the controlling power and (possibly) its allies.

Listen to this man. Listen to all that he has said to you. His messages are timeless :D

At 10/17/12 01:31 PM, JMHX wrote: I wasn't going to miss the Lounge hitting another post milestone.

Also, I'd love to chart out the growth rate of posts in this thread. I'm betting it'd be a power law chart, and it'd look pretty awesome in an infographic format.

I think it's been flattening for a while now. Damn kids and their iPhones don't watch flash animations anymore.

At 4/22/12 03:30 PM, Angry-Hatter wrote: Tightening your belt during a recession by cutting important benefits for the lower and middle class never works, it only makes the problem worse. When times are tough, that's when those programs are needed the most.

True, but then you should have saved during the good times. The problem is that most European countries ran deficits when they should have been saving. Furthermore, the continent is plagued by structural problems like an increasing number of pensioners and peak oil-related problems, making it much harder to "grow" one's way out of the crisis. This makes it necessary to cut spending, or to at least raise taxes.

cutting taxes and giving breaks to the wealthy

Okay, but I don't think Sarkozy's running on such a platform.

Raising the minimum wage.

Rising unemployment is a major issue in France's elections currently, and raising the minimum wage is only going to raise the bar for those who are considering hiring a low-salary worker. While it may on the short term put some money into the pockets of those who already have a job and can't be fired by their employers, there are also clear negative long-term consequences.

Lowering the retirement age back down to 60. While 60 seems to me like a low retirement age, it's seems to have worked for the French so far.

If it was working so well for them, their credit rating wouldn't have been downgraded.

Then there's the benefit of renewing the workforce; people retiring earlier will allow the younger generation a greater opportunity to enter into the workforce.

Yeah, I don't know; especially in industries like construction, the jobs that 60-year-olds do tend to be fundamentally different from the jobs that 19-year olds do. Raising the pension age is often a cost-cutting measure; instead of having to pay someone a pension, you pay him lower unemployment benefits. A time of crisis is not the moment to undo these cost cuts.

Separation of lending and investment in the banking system. Fantastic. This is precisely what caused the financial meltdown of 2008, so I'm extremely happy that one of the largest economies in the world is going in that direction.

Okay, but if implemented globally, this would sharply reduce the amount of money going around in the world's financial system, driving up interest rates, and worsening the misery of countries like Spain and Italy that are struggling to cope with their interest payments.

Reducing nuclear energy from 75% to 50% of France's electricity generation, replacing it with renewable energy.

I'm not completely in favour of building new nuclear plants, but I really don't see the merit in discontinuing existing plants. I mean, the construction costs have been paid for anyway.

Here's to hoping that this will be the first of many European countries throwing their right wing governments out on their ear.

Eh. I'd like to say the same, but only if there are left-wing candidates to replace them.

Voting is currently underway in France for the first round of their presidential election. If no candidate secures over 50% of the vote during the first round, there will be a second round in which the top two candidates run off against each other. The main candidates are (see also this page):

Nicolas Sarkozy, the incumbent and the leader of the main centre-right party, expected to win about 27% of the votes.
Francois Hollande, the leader of the Socialists, also expected to win about 27% of the votes.
Marine le Pen, the leader of the Nationalists, expected to win about 15%.
Jean-Luc Mélanchon, the leader of the Communists, expected to win about 13%.
Francois Bayrou, the leader of the Centrists, expected to win about 10%.

In the second round, Hollande is expected to beat Sarkozy 55% to 45%, mainly because those who support Mélanchon during the first round will back Hollande, but those who back le Pen are a lot less eager to support Sarkozy. Sarkozy has a bit of an image problem due to his extravagant lifestyle, and his "I'm good for the economy" line has lost some of its credibility after France lost its cherished AAA credit rating. Personally, I'm also not a big fan of his pandering to the far right, for example by openly stating there needs to be a debate about the French "identity".

But I find Hollande's expected success even more unsettling. Hollande has claimed he will renegotiate all EU treaties that were agreed after a painstakingly tough process last year, and has already announced he will not abide by the Stability and Growth Pact's limit of 3% on countries' budget deficits if he thinks too much austerity will be bad for "growth". He also wants the European Central Bank to assume a more "active" role in times of crisis (i.e. printing extra money), despite clear assurances made before its founding to the Germans that it would not be able to do so.

So for what kind of growth would Mr. Hollande disable the only weapons we have to keep corrupt countries like Greece in line? "Mr Hollande, for his part, has promised to raise taxes on big corporations and people earning more than 1m euros a year. He wants to raise the minimum wage, hire 60,000 more teachers and lower the retirement age from 62 to 60 for some workers". He wants to lower the retirement age in times of financial crisis! He might as well have promised all his voters a Ferrari and a blow job.

I may not be Sarkozy's biggest admirer, but Hollande is the perfect candidate to lead the whole continent into financial ruin. I really hope that after tonight's results are announced he gets wasted at a party, then drives home and when he gets pulled over by a police officer goes off on a Mel Gibson-style anti-Semitic rant in front of a live camera. Otherwise I fear that the balance of power within the EU will shift decisively towards the Southern "let everyone retire at 60 and print extra money if it leads to troubles" attitude, and a North-South split would become more and more realistic.

People are allowed to smoke. However, if I remember correctly, smoking increases the probability of dying prematurely from lung cancer by a factor eight or so, and increases the probability of dying prematurely from cardiovascular diseases by a factor three or so. All in all, if you smoke then the probability of dying prematurely because of it is about 33%. Even if some of the figures that I gave may be slightly off, let's assume that they are roughly correct.

Now assume that we allow people to choose to fight to the death in televised gladiator battles. Now the probability of dying is, given an equally-matched fight, roughly 50%. But this is illegal! So while a conscious adult is allowed to judge whether he thinks the 33% probability of dying from smoking is worth it given the pleasures of smoking, why is the same conscious adult not allowed to judge whether the 50% probability of dying in a gladiator fight is worth it given the potential prize money? Is this not a blatant double standard?

Discuss.

The fundamental problem is the poverty and lawlessness in third world countries. The police try to communicate with the illegal prostitutes, but the illegal prostitutes don't trust them, and even if they did, then they wouldn't cooperate with them because the criminal gangs can easily threaten to hurt their families back home. Since the Dutch police cannot possibly be expected to protect a girl's family in rural Colombia, there really isn't a lot you can do to solve the problem. You could ban prostitution altogether, but you don't want to press all prostitution back into criminality, as that would be bad for the safety and livelihoods of native Dutch or Western EU (as in, countries that were both part of NATO and the EU or a precursor before the wall fell) prostitutes.

Maybe the best option is to officially illegalise it but to tolerate it (in Dutch: "gedogen"). You crack down completely on non-EU (or, rather, non-Western EU) prostitution, but let there be an understanding between the police and the normal prostitutes that the police will not crack down on their business. That way you leave it to the police to judge which prostitution smells fishy and which doesn't.

In any case, I'm not sure if the political mood in the country is really ripe for comprehensive reform. The governing coalition consists of the regular Christians (CDA), the liberals-turned-conservatives (VVD), the nationalists (PVV) and then these three rely for a majority on the Senate on an ultra-orthodox Christian party (SGP) that would turn back women's suffrage if they had the chance. I expect nothing to be done about it in the next few years. Maybe (but this is rather wild speculation) their strategy is to let the problems fester before they ban it altogether, although even if they did the police in more liberal cities like Amsterdam might not actively enforce it.

I don't think a Tuareg nation state is viable. I understand that the Malinese have been disregarding the Tuaregs for a long time, but they should use the strategic leverage they have now to demand a large degree of autonomy but stay inside Mali. Then the Malinese government and the Tuareg nationalists should together clamp down on the Ansar Dine. Seriously, I cannot imagine any scenario where al-Qaeda gets more power in Mali than they already have without the country degenrating into a second Somalia. Luckily for us, though, the country is landlocked.

At 3/25/12 01:39 PM, Warforger wrote: You mean started?

Yes, he does, and it was pretty obvious from the context that he did. It's not as if anyone would consider immediately surrendering to Iraq to be a great display of moral character.

At 12 minutes ago, lapis wrote: Calley got 3.5 years of house arrest

Hmm, the longest sentence served over the Abu Ghraib affair was 6.5 years in a military prison, so I guess that in the information age sentences are maintained longer. Then again, what happened at Abu Ghraib was way more systematic and thought-out than either My Lai or what happened just now in Afghanistan.

At 4 hours ago, Th-e wrote: He deserves

What he may or may not deserve is not the issue. They're probably going to hold him long enough for media attention to blow away before they discharge him. I mean, Calley got 3.5 years of house arrest after My Lai, now if we say that 350 civilians were shot then this means that this guy does not deserve more than 2 months of detention.