The Road to Kabul Runs Through Kashmir – By Ahmed Rashid | Foreign Policy.
U.S. thinking on Pakistan is just as muddled as ever…
Author: coldwaterjohn
CWJ travelled extensively with his family, having worked in eleven countries over thirty years. A keen photographer, holding a Private Pilot's Licence, he focuses mainly on landscape and aerial imagery. Having worked in the Middle East extensively he follows developments in that region with particular interest, and views with growing concern, the radicalisation flowing from Islamic fundamentalism, and the intolerance for opposing views, stemming from it.
Management Speak to send you crawling up the walls.
Office Speak you love to hate….
I thank God on awaking every morning – or I would if I did that sort of thing – that I have been spared management goobledegook these past nigh ten years. What in-phrase inclines you to want to throw a brick through the office window when you hear it?
A wee Scottish tale, which crossed my desk this morning, to cheer your evening…don’t we just love to hate the English?!
A golfer is cupping his hand to scoop water from a Highland burn on the St Andrews course.
A grounds keeper shouts: ‘Dinnae drink tha waater! Et’s foo ae coo’s shite an pish!’
The golfer replies: ‘My Good fellow, I’m from England . Could you repeat that for me, in English!?’
The keeper replies: ‘I said, use two hands – you’ll spill less that way!
RealClearScience – The Looming Rare Earths Train Wreck
RealClearScience – The Looming Rare Earths Train Wreck.
An article to cheer us all up:
China controls 95% of the world’s rare earths. They have cut back exports by 40%. The USA’s massive subsidies towards “green” technologies which rely heavily on rare earths, means that in their attempts to reduce reliance on petroleum and gas, they are heading for a huge train wreck with China directing the rails over a possible cliff…
Housing Benefit Cap
Am I missing something here?
The Labour Luvvies claim that the cap (£21,000 for a four bedroom house??) will force people on housing benefit who presently pay more than the proposed caps, in Central London for example, to have to move out.
Ignoring my initial knee-jerk response, of, So what?, surely market forces will cause the landlords to lower rental levels to whatever is payable under the housing benefit system, rather than sit with empty properties.
Or is it the landlords who are stirring up all these protests?
The American Dream – you need to be asleep to believe it – George Carlin
George Carlin bemoans falling standards in Education…
Nothing to beat a good rant on why education is going down the tubes…
“I feel sure I am right when I say that the less the Afghans see of us, the less they will dislike us.”
– “Bobs” of Kandahar, 1880: 
Field Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts, Bt, VC, KG, KP, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, PC (30 September 1832 – 14 November 1914) – no slouch when it came to matters, oriental. His wikipedia entry makes interesting reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Roberts,_1st_Earl_Roberts Continue reading ““I feel sure I am right when I say that the less the Afghans see of us, the less they will dislike us.””
It takes the French to come up with a Pork and Wine Street Party!
Educating the BBC News Announcer/News Producer
Electrocution is the cessation of life caused by the application of an electric current to the body.
We were informed on the news tonight that one of the stories revealed by the Wikileaks was about “a man who had been electrocuted”, and complained about it afterwards – are we in the presence of the Second Resurrection, or just another instance of the BBC’s sloppy use of English?
He had received electric shocks in the course of being tortured. Had he been electrocuted, he wouldn’t be in any position to complain about it…to think there was a time when people all over the world listened to the BBC to improve their english!
Boadicea's Chariot 
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