DZJ

Some good news at least; that flabby fuckwit Nick Griffin being told to fuck off back to his beer cellar by Margaret Hodge in Barking. (That and his tribe of brawling morons losing all of their council seats. Excellent).

Fired one of those rifles last year at the UK Defence Academy at Shrivenham. Good fun.

Do the people voting Conservative really want George Osborne as Chancellor? The very thought of that turns my stomach.

I've watched that video twice, and I'm not sure it's at all clear cut. I don't think it was unreasonable for the pilot/gunners to decide that the group was hostile, and if the rules of engagement dictate that they can therefore open fire, then there you have it. Then, if you've decided that the group you've fired on is hostile, firing on the van seeking to recover wounded hostiles is logical too. I don't think you could expect the aircrew to identify (or even see) the children in the front seat. The violence of it is still shocking though, even if you can see the crews' justification. It does seem a tad dishonest, however, for the US Army's spokesman to claim that they did everything they could to help the children, or that they didn't know how they were injured.

I hear the Medical Core tried to designate a carrier for the serpents of Caduceus, but they all died. It's all fun and games until the dog gets shot. I guess I should have included a picture. Poor thing. You can't trust the Welsh....

Cry Havoc! and let slip the Cookie of war?

Perhaps, but I genuinely can't remember the last time I saw a plaster wall on the high seas.

I don't know, but I imagine on the high seas there's less chance of a round going through a plaster wall and killing your children....

...the Royal Navy shoots up a target buoy that looks like a Spanish flag. The UK ambassador to Spain duly apologises for the insensitivity. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8371305.stm You've gotta love international relations.....

For what it's worth, Channel 4 news in the UK this evening showed a protest which featured placards depicting Obama as both the Joker and an African witchdoctor, while others seem to have him down as both Hitler and Stalin at the same time....

Ought to say Unofficial History is very much a lighthearted and anecdotal book, but I'm sure you'd find Slim's experiences of skirmishing with Waziri tribesmen on the North-West Frontier, and leading the British intervention in Persia of interest all the same. Defeat into Victory meanwhile is campaign memoir par excellence.

Heh - duty calls!

Perfectly agree that Stilwell was a man of great personal courage and toughness. With his background, he was probably also the best bloke to deal with Chiang Kai-Shek. That said, I'm not sure of the wisdom of putting a pathological Anglophobe in charge of the US component of a British-led theatre.

On the subject of defeat into victory, how about Hugh Dowding? Had his 1940 campaign been unsuccessful we'd all be speaking German now. (Although I guess some credit goes to Goring and Hitler for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory) I think Dowding is the great example of how superior management of resources gives victory. He didn't have much, but he put a superbly efficient system in place for husbanding his resources and was able to watch his opponent slowly wither. (That said, I'm not sure the BoB was as close as is often assumed - German intelligence for one thing was so poor they never had a sound strategy).

How nice of you to say :) Ooh, where to start with Slim. First he gets command of Burma Corps and successfully extricates a coherent fighting force from the apocalyptic fiasco that was the defence of Burma in 1942. He then rebuilds the morale of a soundly beaten force, and melds British, Indian, Gurkha, and East and West African soldiers into a force that destroys the Japanese Army on the Indo-Burma border, and I believe inflicts greater losses than any other campaign against the Japanese. He manages the most operationally modern land campaign of the Second World War (if it was being described today the text would be full of words like manouevrism and airmobility) and yet does so with an appalling paucity of supplies and equipment, in the most unhealthy climate and most difficult terrain of any of the war. He was a general of immensely sound judgement, able to hold his nerve during a battle of attrition but also drive an all-arms blitzkrieg when the moment required it. Almost as an aside, he was extremely modest and rarely took credit for any of his achievements, and was able to work with difficult (to be polite) coalition colleagues like Stilwell. And his men absolutely loved him. His memoirs Defeat into Victory and Unofficial History are both classics and well deserving of a read. ...and I think that covers it! :)

William Slim - the best, most modest, and least acknowledged commander of the Second World War.

This is good news, and the government's bleating about the potential cost of a £1bn (almost bound to be a massive exaggeration) is hilarious when you consider the untold billions that have been flushed into the latrine that is the banking system. At least with the Gurkhas you'd get a people who have already proven their worth to society. I hope Phil Woolas is considering his position after the titanic balls-up he's made of this.

The Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at former US President George W Bush has had his sentence cut from three years to one year on appeal. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7988035.stm Good news.

The British car industry has been neither subsidised nor nationalised. And also 'worst condition of any G20 country' is simply a matter of what yardstick you use.

For those who don't know, this bloke's speech is not only factually dubious, but the postnomial 'MEP' simply means 'failed to get elected in a Parliament that matters'.

Not long ago I was in Humboldt County, California, where a literally mind-blowing quantity of marijuana is grown. This, I understand, is perfectly legal at the state level. Despite this it remains thoroughly illegal at the federal level, with periodic raids by federal authorities. I don't know about decriminalisation, but it would seem that a coherent set of laws and policy would be a good point to start with. (The same applies in Britain, incidentally, where our government happily commissions expert research and then pointedly ignores it when it doesn't report 'correct' findings.)

[devil's advocacy] From a purely economic standpoint, surely 300,000 illegals in work is preferable to 300,000 illegals out of work? [/devil's advocacy]

I imagine these bastards will shortly be under so much surveillance that they won't be able to take a shit without Special Branch or similar looking over their cubicle.

Of course, the tragic thing about India is that once the British decided to get out, the Indians started quite happily slaughtering their neighbours...

Change the 'he' to 'she' and you've got an exact synopsis of Jodie Foster in 'The Brave One'.