Indeed I do

That's Admiral Adama "Husker" to you son.

When youv'e pulled helpdesk on a sunday for seriously senior fukwits because you screwed up at work again then we'll talk.

Oh Totes except the music wasn't quite cheesey enough.

Fallout FTW

Actually, I'm not in favor of b52s dropping high explosive freedom on women and kiddies. But the ME is a tangled rats nest of what-ifs and Iran is the iffiest of them all. I suspect there are no good outcomes. Only slightly less worse ones. And lots of much much worse ones.

'People forget now that the Soviet embassy was also briefly taken over at about the same time. Very briefly. That showdown was resolved quietly when the Sovs grabbed up the nearest and dearest of some high ranking mullahs and started mailing them back to Tehran, body part by body part.'

But in Orin's world, Americans are responsible for all the 'barbaric' actions and evils propagated today. How could the enlightened Soviet Union have done this? Surely, JB, you must be mistaken. It had to have been some, how would Orin say it? 'fucking US fucking cowboy', working out of Moscow or Alma-Ata or wherever, that was mailing the mullahs' body parts back to Teheran and placing blame on the Sovs. Clever of us!

What Yankeedog said.

Respects,

Murph

On the Outer Marches

Pfft. I'm on the Lizard Emporer's team on this.

There is a line to be walked betwixt interventionism and isolationism. I dont think anyone (who has given it any serious thought) would sugest The USA should retreat to within its borders and play no role on the international stage. At the same time many interventions by US, GB & CCCP among others have resulted in blowback of unimaginable proportions and Escher complexity.

I'd posit that GB bears more responsibility for the septic mess that is the Middle East than The USA. Due largely to the apparantly random deliniation of borders (sorry Kurds), the external eenie meenie picking of ruling families (looking at you house of Saud.)

At the same time the US's ham-fisted interventions havn't exactly unleashed a horde of rainbow farting unicorns of peace and brotherly love. There is a line of argument that posits that Whitey's medling has done more for the growth of radical Islam tha the Israeli's Super Happy Fun Times in Palestine.

I am currently wading through Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilisation The take home seems to be; Irrespective of intentions, it is widows & orphans that pay the butchers bill.

I find your lack of faith disturbing, Bob.

achhghhhrhhhhhhh chhhgh ch ch hc

*flmp*

Search for Operation Ajax in the Apple app store and it has a brilliant comic (free) on the whole thing - with some of the original documentation thrown in as reference.

Without Ajax Iran would have probably either ended up like a former soviet republic such as Krygzstan or Kazakhstan or something like Turkey. The second half of the 20th Century is a litany of State Department fuckups where rose colored glasses and the belief that US intervention will be greated with gratitude and flowers.

What I'm hoping is that with the current things going on in Syria is that the US has finally figured out how to do machiavellian jujitsu where they get the Russians to go in and remove the WMDs. What's more likely is that Putin has a much better understanding of how to play diplomatic chess and Obama's grasp of handling international diplomacy is somewhere near his ability to manipulate congress into doing what he wants it to do.

As opposed to Putins, which is more akin to his predecessors and their ability to play chess with Body pieces, never thought the Lizard was a proponent of violence.

Look at the hard numbers:

Number of wars started by the US since the end of WWII

Number of fatalities in wars started by the US since the end of WWII

Number of wars started by Russians or Soviets since end of WWII

Number of fatalities in wars started by the Soviets/Russians since the end of WWII.

Every villian believes that he's the hero of his own story and the road to hell is paved with good intentions. If you're constantly getting into wars to "defend freedom" with results that are at best ambiguous (go and look at Ho Chi Minh city or Hanoi today and then ask yourself if all that blood was worth it given how those cities turned out when the "bad guys" won).

The dictator bastards who supress their people don't seem to be as great at killing as many people as "freedom loving bringers of democracy". It's a fact that the Taliban and Saddam Hussein killed their people in horrible ways. It's also a fact that western intervention *killed an order of magnitude more people* than either of these monsters.

Remember the comment "we had to destroy the village to save it". It seems to neatly encapsulate a lot of western intervention in the post WWII period.

It's exactly what would have happened in Syria. A million fatalities, the installation of a puppet pro-western government that doesn't last more than a couple of years, and we'll declare victory.

Actually, Vietnam was about "communicating," with the enemy if I understand McNamara's strategy correctly and I believe I do courtesy of a book called Dereliction of Duty. We're using force to send messages and try to ellicit a response which suits our agenda.

Freedom? Not in the equation for that war. No one honestly expected to win it.

No way to win it when there was no direction or plan to win it.

Well, that was McNamara.

And LBJ as well, who was more concerned with the Great Society than he was with a war. All he cared about was not being the one to lose the war.

Idiot.

Respects,

Murph

On the Outer Marches

Blarkon,as to number of wars started by the CCCP, are you counting all the 'wars of liberation' that the CCCP helped instigate (and actively supported) in latin america, asia and africa? Plus of course all those little revolutionary groups who they supported via their little friends in E-Europe and the ME.

Just a reminder that there was this little thing called the cold war which ran almost from the end of WW2 until the late 80's. This was the initiator of many of the conflicts that the USA found itself in.

The bottom line is that the USA at its very worse has never been as bad as the CCCP or the Russian Federation at their best.

Yes the yanks have made mistakes at many levels but generally they are mistakes not malicious intent.

Finally as to your comment about "we had to destroy the village to save it". tell that the the inhabitants of Grozny.

There is also a straight NF account in book form:

http://www.amazon.com/Argo-Hollywood-Pulled-Audacious-History/dp/0147509734/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380260127&sr=1-1&keywords=argo

I'd like to read it but at the moment busy with:

http://www.amazon.com/World-That-Never-Was-Anarchists/dp/B00AZ9FE2A/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380260251&sr=1-1&keywords=the+world+that+never+was

Look at what was happening elsewhere at the time, the CCCP and their little helpers would have infiltrated the Tudeh, the west would have continued to influence the military and the Imans would have continued to build up their support.

Rather than a coup d'etat you might have got a civil war, and with Irans pride of place, neither the West nor the CCCP could afford not to interfere.

Embassies are secure because of the convention that they are soverign territory. No embassy could hold out for more than a few minutes from determined attack and in many countries embassy security is handled by the local authorities (I know at the Oz embassy in Moscow the guys on the gate are Russians, as are most of the front desk staff (then again most of the people they deal with are Russians)). So why bother putting US marines there in the first place?

I've visited a number of embassies and consulates over the years in Oz and the only embassy where things were more complicated than a visit to the doctor was the US consulate where one had to go through airport grade security watched by people with automatic weapons when one wanted to go and hand in a tax form.

I suspect the ROE is different today.

Uh huh. But not in the immediate aftermath of the 83 bombings. Reagan's reaction was to withdraw the Marines and later negotiate with the same terrorists. Hardly indicative of a more hawkish policy than Carter's admin.

Yeah, well, hard to get the go ahead to use military force with Democratic control of the legislative branch.

Frankly, I'm still somewhat amazed that we actually crossed the line of departure during Desert Storm. I figured we were doomed to sit there for decades.

Yeah, well, hard to get the go ahead to use military force with Democratic control of the legislative branch.

Frankly, I'm still somewhat amazed that we actually crossed the line of departure during Desert Storm. I figured we were doomed to sit there for decades.

would wolf tits satisfy 2/3 of the critera?

Absolutely not.

If you don't have a big cold wall, naked ladies (two, whenever possible) AND wolves, then you just don't have a story worth readng or watching.

What Boylan said, except I haven't seen Brothers Grimm.

Don't, Q. But do see the trailer/preview. It is spectacular, advertising a film that doesn't exist.

I will defend the film Brothers Grimm a little.

It's a Terry Gilliam film. I don't like his films much and it does suffer from his weaknesses.
Messy, emotionally uninvolving, and a bit of a confused wank.
But, it is has a visual exuberance that is funny in its excess and has much to enjoy just watching how he tries to fit so much medieval dark forest Grimm_ness, while making a buddy movie, while oh shit I'd better insert pace.
From that perspective, there is quite a lot of fun.

From the right perspective, National Socialism want that bad (at least it was an ethos).

The Brothers Grim wasn't all bad. Some of it was quite good. My pointis that the actual film wasn't the wonderful thing the previews advertised.

And I think that's an important thing for a reboot to consider, how has the cultural environment changed since the first movie. It would ring hollow to make a new Robocop movie that didn't recognise the influence of GitS.

For example you couldn't remake Night of the living Dead and not refer to the 'walking dead' as zombies there are just too many cultural references to them to be credible and not call them Zed.

I think you are dead on about that. Seeing how a Robocop for our times and worries is going to work out will be really interesting. That is if the film is more then just a nostalgia cash grab. Here is hoping!

Yeah I thought the arm a little odd. And they don't seem to have attempted to wipe his memory like in the original. Good to see ED209 return. Will the SUX5000, complete with Blaupunkt return also? And I hope the dark humour is retained as well.

And by another Dredd movie I trust you mean another one starring Karl Urban not another one starring Sylvester Stallone.

I don't mind the first judge dredd. I especially liked the art direction, photography and costumes. It looked like the comic books, plus the story wasn't that terrible. The new one was really good. But needed more sarcasm and belly wheels and maybe chopper, oh and the smokatorium....

Word in the city blocks is that they want to do a Dredd movie with the Dark Judges...they might want to up the budget a bit for that one.

but I'd love to see Judge Dredd's response to Judge Fear's "gaze into the face of fear" comment up on the big screen though.

The first Dredd was awful. The Karl Urban version was surprisingly good, and I admire any actor that is willing to be in a film where their face isn't shown.

Even actors?

In their defence, the prank occurred while that were filming at the National Ignition Facility, which actually sounds pretty scary.

From Wikipedia
"The National Ignition Facility, or NIF, is a large, laser-based inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research device located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, USA. NIF uses powerful lasers to heat and compress a small amount of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclear fusion reactions take place. NIF's mission is to achieve fusion ignition with high energy gain, and to support nuclear weapon maintenance and design by studying the behavior of matter under the conditions found within nuclear weapons.[1] NIF is the largest and most energetic ICF device built to date."

In their defence? What defence? Perhaps being stupid enough to believe that their employer would put them into such a dangerous situation.
Why weren't they wondering where their radiation stunt double was? Make-up would have hidden the stunt dudes extra head...
Nah, they deserved it being caught on film.

Actually Dave, it seems to me they are being a bit brave.

I have a science degree and share Barnesm's wish for a more science savvy population. Or more particularly, I have a desperation and despair for more people to have a regard for facts and evidence. But, I have learnt to appreciate that different people have different aptitudes. We would be much the poorer if the human population was limited to mine.

In a scary place and committed to doing their jobs and willing to risk it with dobs of cream and wiggling. It seems to me these people are made of the right stuff.

Again with the excellant thinky W.

How crap would We be if we were all more closely alike in tastes, abilities, predelictions, kinks, aptitudes? Very Crap indeed I suspect.

Despite showing excellance; eradicating polio, smallpox and rinderpest, putting an RC RV on Mars & 733 kg of Smart out past Pluto, writing music that can chill, explodey airport thrillers that, er thrill, and constructed elaborate rituals that allow the transfer of power from group A to group B without spilling brains on the carpet, we still do a lot of crap things. Race hate. Exploit poverty stricken orphans (wearing anything made in bangladesh?) Polute and over-consume. Vote LNP.

I wonder if one could graph incidence of assholery over diversity? There has been some spectacular Intra-communal violence. I wonder if there is a multi-ethnic, multi-faith multi everything community of outstanding tranquility and peace.

Japan is about as mono-cultural, monolingual & homogenous a nation as I can imagine with a *relatively* peaceful history. Or does that just reflect my uter pig-ignorance on the many discreet micro-cultures of the Japanese home islandsand their gore-soaked history.

My six-year-old thinks the entire series is just about the best thing that's ever been invented. Who am I to argue? His favorite movie in the series is Revenge of the Sith.

Revenge of the Sith is at least in the top half.

it still hurts.... i mean what the hell was the Mech Union? if you want to know what I think , you just have to watch the red letter media reviews. Serioulsy it's better than the films.

Along with Darth Toecutter, Darth NightRider and Darth Bubba Zanetti

And Darth Torana.

I guess that's 'mission accomplished' for Operation Secret Code Language, then.

Ya fair dinkum can't suss the lingo? Ya either a 'cken Drongo or a bloody Septic Tank.

That's all I need: a munted ocker in a blue singlet and rubber thongs with a tinnie in his hand who doesn't realize this seppo was taking the piss.

Don't come the raw prawn with me, cobber. Posh Sydneysiders like you prefer wine.

Cor Paulers, yer spot on there. There's no flies on you, eh? It's as cold as a penguin's arsehole here in Melbourne so we just knocked back a coupla pints of mulled wine. Can't stick a beer on the barbie when it's cold can yer?

It'd be Paulo

episode 2 ;aoteroa was attack of the clones. for all intents and purposes.