Showing posts with label genius. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genius. Show all posts
Thursday, 31 May 2012
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
Thursday, 1 July 2010
Saturday, 5 June 2010
Friday, 4 June 2010
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
Saturday, 29 May 2010
Thursday, 27 May 2010
Sunday, 11 April 2010
Saturday, 16 January 2010
Monday, 12 October 2009
Cheaper and more effective
Ross has found a fucking brilliant idea here:
Now I did have a minor moral qualm with this. My bourgeois upbringing has an instinctive revulsion about the idea of bribing people. But then I thought about it a bit longer: which collective or individual sponsor of terrorism is going to want to match the US/UK investment in fighting the taliban? We currently spend $165M a day on fighting the Taliban. We could, if we double their current earnings, spend $300K a day on this. In other words, we could fight a year of the Afghan war for a lot less than we spend there per day. So, let's say Islamofascists double up again and we have to double up again. So now we're fighting a year's worth of war for 3 days' worth of current spend. So they double up again and we double up again. We're now fighting a year's worth of war for about 10 days' current spend.
And at this point, if my rudimentary maths is up to it, the $10-a-day Taliban will be earning $320 per day, which isn't a bad fucking deal for a westerner. For an Afghan, that's pretty much millionaire status. They will, collectively, say "fuck you" to the Taliban and start collecting Mercs.
And we can go on doubling and redoubling a fucking lot before it starts to cost us anything like the current costs. Al-Qaeda and their supporters will either go bankrupt or say "fuck it, there's got to be a cheaper way of doing this" and throw in the towel.
And if you combined that with buying the Afghan poppy crop for medical purposes, the Taliban would be pushed out to an irrelevant fringe while everyone else in Afghanistan decided to get rich instead.
The only people who lose out are the neo-con militarists, and frankly, they can go fuck themselves. They've had their fun.
Afghans are known for changing sides back and forth during their long years of war — there is an old saying that “you can rent an Afghan but never buy one” — and battles have often been decided by defections rather than combat.
Paying Taliban foot-soldiers to switch sides could spare US lives and save money, say its advocates. A recent report by the Senate foreign relations committee estimated the Taliban fighting strength at 15,000, of whom only 5% are committed idealogues while 70% fight for money — the so-called $10-a-day Taliban. Doubling this to win them over would cost just $300,000 a day, compared with the $165m a day the United States is spending fighting the war.
Now I did have a minor moral qualm with this. My bourgeois upbringing has an instinctive revulsion about the idea of bribing people. But then I thought about it a bit longer: which collective or individual sponsor of terrorism is going to want to match the US/UK investment in fighting the taliban? We currently spend $165M a day on fighting the Taliban. We could, if we double their current earnings, spend $300K a day on this. In other words, we could fight a year of the Afghan war for a lot less than we spend there per day. So, let's say Islamofascists double up again and we have to double up again. So now we're fighting a year's worth of war for 3 days' worth of current spend. So they double up again and we double up again. We're now fighting a year's worth of war for about 10 days' current spend.
And at this point, if my rudimentary maths is up to it, the $10-a-day Taliban will be earning $320 per day, which isn't a bad fucking deal for a westerner. For an Afghan, that's pretty much millionaire status. They will, collectively, say "fuck you" to the Taliban and start collecting Mercs.
And we can go on doubling and redoubling a fucking lot before it starts to cost us anything like the current costs. Al-Qaeda and their supporters will either go bankrupt or say "fuck it, there's got to be a cheaper way of doing this" and throw in the towel.
And if you combined that with buying the Afghan poppy crop for medical purposes, the Taliban would be pushed out to an irrelevant fringe while everyone else in Afghanistan decided to get rich instead.
The only people who lose out are the neo-con militarists, and frankly, they can go fuck themselves. They've had their fun.
Sunday, 11 October 2009
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
Best analysis of "Smeargate" yet
Ross deserves a medal for all the work he has done:
Words fail me. In a great year for blogging, Ross has lifted the bar to a new level.
Bastard.
The biggest outrage here is that the Labour Party chose Derek Draper to spearhead their online media operation when there were other bloggers on the left who would have been much better suited for such a task of constructing a tediously partisan echo chamber, bloggers who are in touch with ethnic issues and trim their beards into gorgeous goatee styles rather than the Draper style tramp look. Please pay attention to me!
Words fail me. In a great year for blogging, Ross has lifted the bar to a new level.
Bastard.
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