Steve Davies

Still considerably cheaper than pulling out of the programme altogether!

Dispersal of 25mm is going to be greater than that of 30mm. I would imagine that would be a factor when supporting TIC as per Barney's experiences.

I don't think that it has ever been required. Doesn't make it appropriate in this instance, though. I think that was the right thing to do.

Is it really appropriate to post this woman's image without either her knowledge or approval?

Didn't someone say in another thread that Enya could never be used for a good recruiting video?

Does the DCC check the stab can travel to each trim limit following start? The lines are presumably there for *someone* to verify full and free travel to the extremes of deflection...

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Yes, as far as fundamentalist Muslims are concerned, that is all it boils down to. Their interpretation of the Koran legitimises their openly expressed desire to make Islam the only religion on the planet. It has nothing to do with national or cultural identity, and everything to do with religious identity. Once you live in a country with a growing and ever-more-vocal Muslim population, that message might come home. For example, a British-born Muslim acquaintance of mine speaks fluent Arabic and English. When she asked where she might get a job as a translator, I told her that the security services would be a good place to start. Shocked, she stated that she could never be "a traitor". When I responded that that depended on whether her commitment was to her country or her God, she repeated that she would never be a traitor. Is she concerned about national or cultural identity? No, she is concerned about her religious identity. AQ's attacks on the US and others may well be blamed on foreign policy, but anyone with half a brain can tell that this is a completely specious argument. I am paraphrasing here, but I believe that Bin Laden actually stated that the impetus for his actions came from the occupation of Arab lands during and following the 1991 Gulf War; he may well have indicated that he would cease all of his activities (as if he has any real control over the enigmatic being that is AQ), but there I would bet my house that there is not one intel. analyst out there that actually believes that. In any case, that's never going to happen, so Islam remains, and willcontinue to remain, the number one threat to Western democracies. AnyChristian terrorists that you may think of are little more than amomentary distraction. And let me ask you a question: do you think that if we all suddenly pulled out of AFG and Iraq, and Russia stopped its activities in Chechnia, and across the world at large non-muslims stopped fighting muslims, that these people would sit down and return to living quiet lives in their communities? I suggest to you that this will never happen: instead, they will find some other form of 'persecution' to worry about - political, cultural, legal... whatever justification they need to keep the fight going and to achieve their ultimate goal. Besides, if the only reason Islamic extremists exist and operate is because they don't like US foreign policy, then why are they attacking other Muslims who have done precisely nothing to offend them (think Bali, Kenya, Eritrea, etc.)? The answer is that they do so because they want a strict implementation of Sharia law. You need only look at Somalia (where they today stoned a divorced, 20-year-old woman to death for having an affair, and have another lined-up for stoning pending the birth of her baby) to see what this is really all about - not national identity (they are Somalis, after all), but religious identity. Saying that Islamic extremists kill other people because they want the world to assume a single national identity would be as ridiculous as saying that the Republicans and Unionists in NI kill eachother because they want a single religious identity. Because politics undermines all religions. Pretty simple, really. Yes, I would. As I stated, this war was never about religion - it was about the strategic fiction that was the FRY, the fall of the USSR, and the desire to re-assert national identities that had first been infringed upon more than 600 years ago ('assumed trauma'), and about the restoration of whittled down group identity. I don't have a problem with owning up to Christianity's less than perfect past, and while the local Serb clergy may well have stood by and watched Milosevic orchestrate the slaughter these people (they have blood on their hands, too), I do not concede that at the heart of this was the matter of one religion against another. I don't think I have ever said that Islam is a violent religion. I have said that Islam is increasingly a religion that is exploited by violent fundamentalists. I have said that there are worrying trends that Islam is not compatible with western democracies (see the 'traitor' story above), even for moderate Muslims.

Serbs were killing other Serbs, Bosniaks etc. as a result of differences in *nationality*, not because 'Jesus told them to' or said it was 'OK to'. Milosevic did not not once tell his people to kill others in the name of the Church, and his ability to inspire his people came from his knowledge of history and his national and political ideologies, not from working up a religious frenzy. You might want to do some research into 'group identity', 'strategic fictions' and 'chosen traumas' if you really want to shed more light on what this conflict was really all about. As far as this debate is concerned, there is massive difference between people killing other people because they don't want a diluted national identity, and people going out and killing other people because they don't believe in the right God.

Trends! When are people going to actually sit up and take note of these? Islam is rapidly influencing the way the Indonesian state runs the country; it is threatening the very democracy of the people. Since early this year, more than half of Indonesia's 50 regencies have passed around 600 Sharia laws, while those with Hindu or Christian majorities are not permitted the same powers. As a result, women out alone after 10pm are now arrested for loitering and non-Muslim women are forced to wear a headscarf in public. While the state currently still allows people to practise their own religion (and there are plenty of churches in Indonesia), the trend at the moment is for Imams to encourage their people to vote for politicians who want the country to adopt Sharia law exclusively. I doubt that the Indonesia you used to go on holiday to will stay the same place for much longer.

I would agree with that argument on the surface (I have three Muslim friends, each of whom follow Islam to varying degrees), but I think that it represents a somewhat oversimplified analysis that fails to address the worrying trends that are developing. One of those trends is here in Britain, and I dare say in many European countries where Islam is on the ascendency, where Islam is incompatible with the existing legal and cultural framework. This causes even moderate Muslims a dilemma - should they be good Britons first, or should they be good Muslims and accommodate their fellow Britons only on the proviso that they are living life in accordance with the preachings of the Koran? At this juncture, many Muslim Britons have real difficulty in making their minds up as to which path to follow. When you combine that dilemma with the very clever and persuasive techniques employed by radical Islamists, you suddenly have the potential for a good number of Muslims to stop trying to assimilate into non-Muslim communities, and for them to follow a strand of Islam that not only condones violence, but encourages it. The possibility that this could or will happen with Christianity or Judaism is almost negligible; Islam is a pressure cooker that is slowly building up steam - you may not be experiencing that in the US at the moment, but you will start to see it eventually. So, no, 1.5Bn Muslims can't all be terrorists, and for the vast majority that live in societies compatible with Islam, the chances are they won't ever perpetrate a terrorist act against another. For those that don't, there is an increasing struggle going on between Islam and State (see Britain, Holland, France, Germany et al). If the results of that are not to their liking, then I worry in what direction things will head. Additionally, I am fairly sure that Islam is the only religion thatactively encourages its followers to murder those who speak out against the prophet. Which other religion permits senior scholars to pronounce death sentences? I don't know much about the people you mention, but I would suggest to you that the real issue here is not one of representation, but of assimilation (or lack thereof) and protection. Over here, assimilating moderate Muslims into the wider community has largely failed, and that is problematic on several levels. One of those levels is that the moderate community have in the past failed to act when "home-grown" terrorists have come into being here in the UK. The Muslim community here is addressing this, but only after being put under considerable pressure to do so, and with very little to show for it so far. So, no, they may not represent the terrorists, but neither do they represent the terrorists' victims. Conversely, I am fairly sure that most honest Christians over here and in the US would happily turn-in a nut-job Christian who said he was doing God's work by blowing up a train full of people. In any case, having heard about the Royal Saudi Air Force crews who - in the presence of USAF exchange officers - cheered when the twin towers were hit, and about the popularity in Muslim countries of twin towers cigarette lighters, I would wager that they represent a lot more Muslims than might care to concede. The 'actual' religion? It's *totally* subjective - there is no 'actual' religion.

Shit referee to have allowed those on-the-ball incidents to have gone without a red card. Not so. She's pulling the side of her shorts, not trying to fist her.

Pretty sure that two of the victims at Ft. Hood were noncombatants. So, your shovel is indeed a spade, no?

This sort of advertising relies on the audience to join the dots and draw the inferences, even if they are completely wrong. In this instance, nowhere does the advert say that the USAF's "elite pilots" carry the weapon while flying; it simply says that "many" rely on it for defence in emergency situations (at home, out on the street, but not necessarily on the ground in bad guy territory).

I'd be interested to know, too.

I mentioned this because the ones I have seen had the tapered neck removed to the effect that they were about half of the normal length. If that's not necessary, then fair enough.

You can pick them up here at $6.50 a pop: http://www.pyrocreations.com/inc/sdetail/55557 You'll just need to remove the blue bit, which should be easy, before you get it/them cut down to size and then chromed or polished.

You want the 20mm case, not the 30mm one.

Just make sure you don't get him an F-15C print by accident!

Having read it again, I agree that you have a point. I also concede your point about the irony behind my original statement, and I am glad that I have gone some way towards addressing the matter. It's good to hear that you are open minded about the NHS.

At the risk of being lambasted for shameless self promotion, you may want to consider this F-15E book. It's six years old now, but it tells the story of the Strike Eagle's development and history to a level that no other book has either before or since, and it has some combat related stories that may be of interest since many of them come from 'old timers' that are no longer in the F-15E community. Just an idea.

You have successfully identified that the NHS is not perfect and that people who can afford to can, and do, opt for private treatment at home and abroad. I do it whenever I can afford to, but there are still lots of things that I rely on the NHS for - doctors appointments for general aliments and bouts of illness, prescription medications, asthma clinics, emergency treatment etc. Can some waiting lists be quite long? Yes, they can. But in such instances, and where the illness is life threatening, the NHS pays for patients to go private, whether that be in domestic of foreign hospitals (and as the patient, you get to choose where you go). I think that is pretty damned commendable. In summary, you still have not shown any evidence that the NHS health care system is "shitty". I am glad to see that as a half-Brit, you have managed to master the art of sarcasm (once decried the lowest form of whit, but we do it all the time regardless). Well done. However, to be serious for a moment: the standard of commenting on Baseops is really that you look at the bigger picture and don't make sweeping generalisations that fail to take all of the available facts into account. The facts are out there, but you have to be arsed to actually find them. But since you're too busy defending your position, let me help you out: An independent 2009 NHS satisfaction survey found (Source: National Centre for Social Research) 76% of Britons were happy with the service provided by their community NHS doctors 60% said they were happy with their out-patient experiences at NHS hospitals (I would need to dig deeper to find the responses from in-patients, but I think the above makes a pretty strong point and I have a vague recollection of the overall figure being in the mid-50s) You can see then that the majority of people who actually use the NHS (versus having some relatives in a distant land telling them they didn't have a good experience) say that they are happy with it. *Clearly*, it is not a perfect system. But is it "shitty"? Far from it. You gathered as much as possible? 32 people out of the tens of millions of patients each year? And then you passed judgement on the NHS as being "shitty"? So, you sat down with them and asked them to tell you about all the good experiences, all the bad ones, and all the things they liked and disliked? Your dissertation should have contained an appendix with your research in it; can you post it? Based on a lackadaisical attempt to defend your weak hypothesis, I agree that you do need to caveat future posts with something.

I said that calling the HHS shitty on the basis of knowing a few relatives who had had bad experiences did not qualify him to make that statement. I then explained that the NHS treats about 4.5m in-patients every year (so you can probably triple that for out-patients), the implication being that branding an entire institution "shitty" on the basis of a couple of bad stories is simply silly. Then I said that I had 35 years' worth of *first-hand* experience of the NHS (read: not anecdotal), and that I thought it was a good system overall. Let me know if you still don't understand.

Did you read post #9?

Are you qualified simply because you are 'half British', whatever that means? No, you are not. Are you qualified because you heard some anecdotes that the NHS, which treats more than 3.5 million in-patients annually, doesn't keep everyone happy all the time? No, you are not. I have had NHS treatment that was fucked up in a well and truly life-altering way, and yet I still think that it is a very good system and I am glad to know it is there. Maybe when you have some first hand experience, and when you actually take the time to look at the bigger picture, your opinion will carry some weight.