Illuminati-R-Us

Arneb is that Fuerth in Bayern? Do you go to the Vier-Schanzen? Mrs B and I are definitely going to Innsbruck and maybe Garmisch.

Khrushchev's Other Shoe wrote:
Well, I'm in Prague now. . .

So get out and enjoy it! Don't hang about in here.

Welcome aboard the good ship IRU. Good to have another European, it gets lonely when everyone else is a Stater and posts in the middle of the night. :D

To avoid Knip I'll have to go to Waterloo.

Or maybe the answer is one year before the next election.

Ok, it isn't Ford, Bush, Clinton or Bush.

When did Reagan die? I missed that.

It has arrived, but I haven't seen it yet. It is going to be a Xmas present. Sorry, I missed the previous post.

In Prague and you still can't stay away from the board, I can't decide if that is inspiring or depressing . . .

Then again it was a meaningless game . . .

Then I'm in good company in my minority of two.

And it could be any one of the three, talking about either of the others.

I accept this, but why do you think western style democracy is the only stable form of government? It isn't, necessarily. Democracies can degenerate into an unstable form of mob rule without proper respect for limited government and individual rights. In contrast, Saddam's government was stable, bu...

It certainly hits below the belt . . .

Later, Hu Jintao would think back and realise when the "Kick Me" sign had been put there.

Their definition is linquistic and designed to be as inclusive as possible; "Arabs, name originally applied to the Semitic peoples of the Arabian peninsula; now used also for populations of countries whose primary language is Arabic , e.g., Algeria, Egypt, Iraq , Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco...

We went in, destroyed Saddam's regime, and then terribly botched the rebuilding in the aftermath. The responsibility and the duty to reestablish a stable government still falls to us, regardless of how long it takes or how much hardship we have to bear to get it done. I accept this, but why do you ...

I can definitely smell lychees.

An adjuct to "Bridging the divide". Probably best to keep this simply as a poll with all discussion on that thread.

but we would end up with a Shi'a state gravitating towards Iran, and an oil-poor Sunni state possibly leaning toward Saudi Arabia. Why is this a bad thing? It would correct some of the un-naturalness of the present frontiers. It would allow the Iraqis to be in a nation with those they have things i...

Could be, but isn't.

KOS: all very good points, I was more playing Devil's Advocate than suggesting a solution.

Yep, definitely one of those . . .

Michael Caine's character shares his surname with a living US president.

Would it not be simpler to let Iraq split along ethinc/religious lines and form three stable, internally monolithic (is this the correct word?) states. This would remove much of the tension from what you admit is a man made country.

(Sorry if I sound cranky, late night, early start etc.)

He invents the vodka martini, foils several villains and gets the girl. It is over the top in the way you expect, and we'd be disappointed if it wasn't. The fights are over the top in the amount of pain/injury people can take but nothing like you describe. Gravity always applies, though there is one...

My points exactly Enzo . Why should we be installing anything the people don't want? If we do want to install something, why are we installing a western style democracy in a non-western country? Would they want to live in country where a marine who admits killing a disabled grandfather doesn't even ...