It’s over: MPs say the special relationship with US is dead

POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Friday, August 29, 2025 15:36
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GINOBIFFARONI

Thursday, April 1, 2010 8:46 PM

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
I wasn't referring to Ireland... different situation I think. Almost more of a internal matter than a foreign war that.

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I know, I was taking a swipe at the Americans there.

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Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:

more Sudan, the Mahdi revolt, the Boer war, the Zulu wars, the Marahatta confederation in India

examples like that, maintaining forces that far away from home ( even though East Indian Company forces were largely Indian ) was insanely expensive

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The East India Company was dissolved about a century before the dissolution of the British Empire though? Much of what you cite would seem to be part of the expansion, rather than dissolution of the British Empire.

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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows.

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FREMDFIRMA

Thursday, April 1, 2010 8:48 PM

I came to said epiphany rather early in life, I suppose, but much later than I would have liked, since it came to me *as I was inflicting those horrors* and realized, in the blink of an eye, suspended in time for a moment that seemed to last forever, that was I was merely feeding the cycle of revenge, that violence would spark hatred and retaliation, and even if I took that final step and took the life before me, it would not end even there.

And in that moment, I finally, truly, UNDERSTOOD, all the things that Ghandi, and my Sensei, had been trying to hammer through my thick skull.

EXCERPT FROM Cross the Stars
Available via the Baen Free Library.
http://www.baen.com/library/

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"At any rate, Coon says I should hire your Colonel Hammer to clear undesirable elements off Tethys. I suppose you agree with that?"
She was not really hostile toward him, Danny decided. She was just very frustrated in general. Very possibly Marilee had watched his arrival through the window now behind her, and her subconscious preferred to over-compensate for the embarrassment she must feel.
Aloud Pritchard said, "Well, I might disagree on moral grounds if I thought it would work, ah, madam. But since I never have known it to work in circumstances like yours on Tethys, I'll pretend to be a practical man and disagree on practical terms instead."
The tall woman paused in mid-stride as her brain correlated the words her ears had heard a moment before. She looked at the man who lounged at ease, smiling at her. "Major—" she began in a tone more diffident than that of her angry assurance an instant previous.
"Please," said Danny Pritchard. "That was Alois' little joke, I'm sure, when he announced I was coming. Mister Pritchard. Or Danny, which I'd prefer. But I'm not a soldier anymore."
Marilee sat down with the abruptness of a gun returning to battery. She laughed as she looked out the window through which she could see nothing but sky from her present low angle. "Well," she said, "Danny, I suppose you'd better explain that. I hadn't expected to hear from a mercenary that force doesn't accomplish anything."
"Ex-mercenary," Pritchard corrected. The smile was back. "And force accomplishes a lot of things. They just aren't the ones you want here. Bring in the Slammers and we kick ass for as long as you pay us. Six months, a year. And we kick ass even if the other side brings in mercs of their own—which they'll do—but that's not a problem, not if you've got us." Unit pride lasted even after the unit's work became a matter of distaste. Pride beamed now from Danny Pritchard's face, and his hand caressed a tank that only his mind could see.
"So," the man went on. He got up without thinking about the action because he was focused on plans, on possibilities. "There's what? Three hundred thousand people on Tethys?"
Marilee's eyes narrowed. "On the Council Islands, about. There's a lot more in little holdings on the unclaimed islands, but I don't think anyone can be sure of numbers."
"So," Pritchard repeated. The word was his equivalent of the Enter key when his mind was computing possibilities. "You want to kill fifty kay? Fifty thousand people, let's remember they're people for the moment."
"I don't want to kill anybody!" the woman snapped. She swung abruptly to her feet again. Her boots rapped on the inlaid floor over which her visitor's heels had glided unheard. "I don't even want to kill Bev Dyson. I grew up with him, after all, I . . . maybe he did kill my husband. But I don't want to know that for sure. And I don't want him killed."
"You see," said Danny Pritchard, as if he had not heard his companion expose a part of herself that she had not known existed, "if we go in quick and dirty, the only way that has a prayer of working is if we get them all. If we get everybody who opposes you, everybody related to them, everybody who called them master—everybody."
"They aren't all dangerous!" Marilee shouted. She turned to the wall of trophies and went on in nearly as loud a voice. "They aren't an

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