Taliban Can form US policy, but not her allies

 Hi All,

Last week I compared the debacle in Afghanistan to Vietnam. In fact I will admit the analogy is somewhat misplaced : once that war was over, whilst Vietnam was united under Communist  rule, the state was , unlike Cuba,  content to consolidate its rule and defend her own homeland -hence the brief war against two Communist states -  Communist China and the overthrowing of the  Communist Pol Pot regime . But aside from that Vietnam wasn't exporting terrorists or funding to attack the American, let along European continents. Unlike the Taliban, who, as sure as night follows day will be doing just that. In fact this was the reason why America and the UK went into that country in the first place, alongside getting Bin Laden and his associates, there was also a feeling that no state should become a refuge, base or training ground for terrorists. In fact most of this got lost in the wind, especially as Tony Blair - the Liberal Imperialist that he was- soaked up the kool aid of the American 'neo-conservative' movement which had as its core belief that liberal  democracies are good and that rouge states/the world should be remade in that- American-  image, by the use of American military power if necessary. Added to this by Blair was the further identikit of women's rights, gay rights and all the other 'rights' causes that the left have developed in the past 30 years. Liberal Interventionism was a thing.

Who will do the exploring and colonising ?

 Hi All, 

I've written about this before, but I thought I would expand upon it. 

In terms of space exploration and colonisation, who will be doing this? The answer to my mind is a mixture of both state and private methods. Unlike in other science fiction wherein it is the state (e.g. the Empire in Star Wars or the Federation in Trek) that has the monopoly of exploration and colonisation, I believe a more realistic approach would be a free for all amongst these competing groups. 

Governments may want to colonise a strategic asset/planet or be forced to take over a private colony that is failing (for example the Fall of the East India Company) . But mostly I would suggest that government would only be active in exploration and colonisation if it were in a cold war with another power and be motivated either by prestige or fear that this 'other' would move in first. Alternatively there could be a situation in which the government does want to colonise, but is restrained by a budget or an ultra orthodox Treasury . In this case you could be in for a series of public-private partnerships, in which thanks to an accounting trick, the cost (like Gordon Brown's outsourcing and hospital building) takes time to appear on the public balance sheet. 

Private Corporations will be motivated by profit, be this in resources or such things as space tourism. I would also expect this companies to operate their colonies in a similar manner to the merchant shipping registry. In order to get around regulation, workers rights and have cheap costs, companies will use 'flags of convenience' . So just as Bermuda and Liberia have millions of tons of ships on their registry, you can well imagine that they  or other smaller less regulatory nations, would on paper be the world's largest colonial space powers.  

Religious Groups, will either be wanting to escape persecutions, such as Jews, Puritans and Catholics &  Russian Mennonites  and live their own cultures on other worlds or they may well be missionary explorers like David Livingstone. 

Private Wealthy Individuals . Yes there are historical examples of private individuals and then families  owning whole colonies, eg. William Penn, which is where PENN- Sylvania comes from. Imagine if there were whole worlds owned by Geoff Bezos , Richard Branson, Bill Gates or Elon Musk. 

Afghanistan = Vietnam 2

 Hi All,

Question : how does a global super power with a defence budget and military as big as most other nation states combined, get to loose to a group of wackos with small fire arms in SUV's?  

Biden and indeed  Trump ,  decided to turn away and abandon Afghanistan and reset the clock back to the year 2001. All that money, all the lives and all the cost and that is it. The Taliban are back in charge, free to let in any terrorist organisations they want, because neither America or anyone else is going to interfere now. It seems that Biden - why isn't he getting the slack from the left in Europe and America over this that he deserves ? - is as if not more isolationist and 'America first' as Trump was, although Trump was vilified at home and abroad for it , but here we have it, a unilateral pull-out from a left wing President  in which the views of allies weren't taken into account, only domestic opinion polls. Not that I'm actually convinced Biden is really in charge, given his demented and deteriorating state, which again isn't really commented upon by the media.

This is typical hypocrisy by the American media and establishment elites, to criticise a GOP President, but glorify can't do anything wrong with a Democratic one,  but it begs  us to ponder : the American establishment think they are going to take on China in a war at some point, as China is deemed to be the big 'threat' to American Super -Powerdom',  to wit they are trying to get allies to help them out. But if it were me, I'd be looking at Afghanistan and thinking if they can't even crush these guys with no navy, no airforce, no tanks and are small in numbers,,... why join them in trying to take on a country of a billion people, on a continental sized land mass, who has a navy, air force and a big army ? I'd think nah. Try it yourself mate. 

The background

 Hi All, 

There is an equal and opposite reaction : there are many different choices we make to forge our past, present and future. There are many different realities in which history tells a different story....

Timeline : 

66 million years ago- During the Cretaceous period the Sszzorg ,  a species of intelligent space faring Dromaeosauridae are the dominant species on the planet, alongside dinosaurs. They participate in-along with the Martians - the last great multiverse war . As a result their civilisation is destroyed, culminating in an attack on their Capital, which is known to humans as the Yucatan Peninsula , and the remnant are forced into hibernation chambers deep below the Earth : meanwhile most Martians ascend to another dimension, their planet in ruins, leaving behind a small contingent on the Red Planet to guard it against 'tomb raiders'. 

The Sszzorg systems are damaged, so their awakening mechanisms don't work, until world war 3 in 1962 wherein the radiation and energy released is enough to power their systems once more. Thankfully further genocide and mass slaughter is avoided as a result of diplomacy. The efforts of  Earth's First President Alec Douglas Home, Vice President Golda Meir and Secretary of State Richard Nixon, persuade the Sszzorg to join the Earth Union  as equal partners, especially after Lord Home proved humans were indeed a civilised species thanks to the game of Cricket, which is now a firm Sszzorg national sport .  [  the surviving human nation states had  banded  together to create a Constitutional  Parliamentary Democratic  world government, with its Federal  Capital City being Birmingham and the West Midlands region of England, UK].   

In 1965 there was the first successful mission to the moon and a year later to Mars, which led to a disastrous first contact, which resulted in the Earth- Martian war, a bitter conflict which eventually turned in Earth's favour thanks to the tactical and strategic brilliance of the combined Human Sszzorg Defence Forces ;  Generals Moshe Dayan &  Admiral Mo'zzorg  who halted the Martian invasion of the battle of  Woking  and won victory on the Elysium Planes and  Olympus Mons, which led to  the subsequent Hisrel Accords and the start of the Earth-Mars 'special relationship'.

During this time a young Moroccan- French scientist David Elharar had presented and demonstrated his theory of Quantum Entanglement Portals, which he developed at the Sorbonne and refined at Cambridge. There he met Jacob Horowitz , a son of the Managing Partner of the bulge bracket investment bank of the same name, they quickly became best  of friends. The Quantum portals allowed near instantaneous  travel between two points, thus removing the need for motor vehicles and this, combined with the Szssorg's Warp Drive technology, began a period of human exploration of the Galaxy and thanks to the discovery of several wormholes, many other galaxies. It also made Elharar  and Horowitz  the wealthiest  humans to ever have lived.... 

The Earther State had grown to  a population of at least 1 quadrillion, 5,750 member states, and millions of colonies and outposts in the Milky Way and beyond, but  consisting of 5 distinct groups : Humans, Sszzorg, the Trans-humans of Lunar, the Belt and Jupiter, The Gorf and finally many smaller  alien refugees & immigrants  who have fled various authoritarian genocidal regimes. 

The  Earth has come into contact with many hundreds of thousands and species, millions of states, mostly peaceful, others hostile: the largest war to date was the Earth- Minitour war  of 2081-2089, during the Presidency of Antonio Garibaldi in which it was discovered that aliens (who Earthers call Minitours on the basis they look like the bull-human of legend)  had  mass bred and cloned, billions of humans as slaves . Other conflicts include the wars against the Domulans, the Plingons, the Vardassians, Chard, Leopoldie and the Shell conflict. There are several powers of note : the Multiverse super powers of Byzantine, Nachash, Onconvar, Svinge, Koobe & Mars. Regional and great powers consist of Earth, Leopoldie, Vardassia, Minotaur, Chard and Ganoush. 

The year is 2121....

The Anatomy of why I'm not in the lefty 'camp'

 Hi All,

To many people, I *should* be a lefty : Jewish, gay and female. Herein are my reasons for not being left wing and maybe reasons why I am actually centre-right in my world view. These are broad generalisations it is true, but nonetheless point to a broad general truth, but in no particular order here's why I departed with the left long ago: 

1.The monopoly of virtue and goodness

The first thing that strikes me about leftwingers is that they believe themselves to be the sole holder & therefore gatekeeper  of all virtue, goodness, kindness and compassion, whereas, by contrast, Conservatives are nothing other than people without pity, mercy, justice or compassion. The evil Tories (or GOP )are rich bastards who only want to benefit rich people and giant mega Corps, but will happily abolish benefits and allow Heathcare to be privatized, meaning poor people won't be able to afford healthcare like 'Amerika', we'll all be writing cheques as we collapse from heart attacks before we get to hospital. To top it all Conservatives are bigots, xenophobes and are sexists, racists and homophobic. 

Only two weeks?

 Hi All,

Sorry it has been a while since any of us last posted anything- to be honest we are thinking about where to take this blog and what direction it is going to go. 

In the meantime, let's just chill.

Too darn Hot!

 Hi All, 

Too hot, way too hot!

Freeeedom!

 Hi All,

Freedom Day today! 

Shabbat Shalom!

 Hi All, 

Open thread as usual 

A gay Dr Who?

 Hi All,

The rumour mill has it that Jodie Whitaker is to step down from the role of Dr Who and is going to be replaced by someone I've never heard of , who happens to be a gay man. The discussion on social media is, unsurprisingly talking about the actor's sexuality, rather than acting talent. Sigh. I thought it didn't matter any more? 

But first some context: Dr Who a science fiction tv show about a time traveling alien called the Doctor,  started in 1963 and finished in 1989, before a brief revival in 1996, it was next back on our screens in 2005. The new show hit a peak under the Tennant and Smith Doctors, before levelling off a bit with the next Doctor, Calpaldi, but then the BBC decided they would try to reboot the show by making the Doctor a female and thus cast Jodie Whitaker in the role. The woke mob loved this, but as most don't actually watch the show and spent time vilifying anyone who disagreed, the ratings, after a bounce, plummeted and this bit is crucial- not just in Britain wherein the license fee means you have to pay for whatever the BBC wants to produce- but who abroad, especially in America where the show went sub-million in terms of viewing figures, between that flop and the merchandise not sold, sent the BBC into denial mode . I would say this  flop wasn't just because of the gender change- I think there were plenty of fans who had their doubts, but gave the benefit of the doubt- but as a  result of terrible scripts and bad acting and a sub-par performance by Whitaker who seemed not to be able to settle into the role and whose characterisation of the 13th doctor was that of a liberally minded , but still obnoxious  'Karen', displaying little sympathy for a companion who'd lost their wife and had cancer worries. Added to this the showrunner decided to re-write the entire lore and canon of the show, to make not William Hartnell's Dr Who of 1963 the first doctor, but instead to make a black female Doctor the first of thousands of incarnations. Oh and the Doctor isn't a time lord, but created them. Utter tosh and I will admit I haven't been watching much of the show in the past couple of years.  

So after this disaster you would have thought the BBC would have gone for safety and appointed a safe pair of hands- an established actor, who was male whilst the last couple of years were slowly retroed out as being the canon of the show. But if the rumours are true, it seems that they now want to go with another alternative to try to regain interest in the show( rather than, say, actually writing good scripts and getting actors who have a passion for the show).

The first gay Dr Who is of course a bit of clickbait :surely ?. The Doctor, the character not the actor, is supposed to be an  advanced intelligent and technologically superior alien, from Gallifrey, whose people  call themselves 'Time Lords' who can regenerate whenever they are injured or whose bodies become old, therefore they can live for thousands and thousands of years (the Doctor, being a rouge whose exploring the universe gets through his regenerations quicker). It's never been mentioned, but one suspects that a result of living so long is a low sex drive or some form of 'having the snip', otherwise Gallifrey would be grossly overpopulated, even with trans dimensional technology and during the entire show the Doctor has never really had a love interest in the way humans do. Even River Song seems more like an extremely close companion, rather than a sexual lover: Rose did love the Doctor in a lovers sense,  but this was never, never returned by the Doctor. During the original series the Doctor did have as a companion  who was also a Time Lord, Romana, but even then they didn't seem to  have a romantic or sexual relationship. In fact Time Lord society seems extremely desexualised, which I'm guessing wouldn't be surprising for being who are thousands of years old.

Out of universe, the actor who may be the next Doctor who is gay, but why would or should he be forced or want to make the Doctor into an overtly sexual character, wherein previously he has never been so? The actor may be gay, but he's there to play the Doctor as he's always been. For example the actor who played Sulu in Star Trek, was gay, but Sulu the Star Trek character was straight. Two of the great British actors, Derek Jacobi and Ian Mckellen are gay men, but who haven't ever limited themselves by sexuality, playing a diverse range of characters throughout their careers. 

Why then do we have to talk about the 'first gay doctor who'? In actual fact we are talking about the first gay actor to play Dr Who, the time travelling alien. I hope it doesn't mean they are going to make Doctor Who into a gay time lord, given that in universe the Time Lords seem to be practically desexualised, rather than emphasising sexuality. 

open thread

Hi All,

Open Friday thread as usual.