USians really seem to think that WW1 was very much the same as WW2. There are a lot of similarities (The US arriving rather late for one), but there are important differences.

The first point was that in WW1 the war ended in 1918, it started in 1914 and the US arrived in 1917. Well they declared war on 6 April 1917, but did not provide much assistence until 1918. According to the wikipedia page, 10,000 soldiers a month were arriving in the summer of 1918, but that was mere months before the armastice. The US intervetion just changed the situation from a war the germans were losing, to a war the germans had no chance at all of winning. Their population was slowly starving from the Naval blockade. Note that at the end of the war the Germans still had gained territory (which is how the "we were winning, jews sold us out" stuff that lead to WW2 was plausable to the ignorant).

Clearly WW2 was rather different and the US involvement was decisive. I do find it ironic how USians can criticise Chamberlin for the Munich agreement while ignoring the fact that the US only got involved over two years from the start of the war and after they were themselves attacked.

The fact remains that the while the US was a major power before WW2, it was only WW2 that showed how powerful the US was to the world. Before WW1 the british empire was 20% of the worlds surface and 25% of the worlds population and by far the most powerful world force. Between the wars the british empire declined and the US grew, but it was only WW2 that showed how the balance of power had shifted.

The US is declining though, the US economy is still in big trouble and the government becoming more authoritarian (in the name of fighting terrorism). George W Bush with is "we dont need the rest of the world" attitude started the decline. There culture of cooperation between the western allies was pretty much destroyed by the Bush administration. Clinton was hugely popular at least in the UK (he made a huge difference in making peace in Northern Ireland for example). Obama repaired some of the damage, but the US political climiate is horrible with noone willing to work towards the centre.

There is one scary thing though for sure, if you thought a US dominated world was bad, a chinese one will almost certainally be worse.

The problem is that most Leftists and many Europeans can no longer distinguish true friend from foe, good from evil. It doesn't matter how good the US is, they can't recognize it. It is kind of similar to the way that anti-Semitism is rapidly growing in Europe.

Unless trends reverse, I expect there will be major wars in Europe in our lifetime.

The problem is that most lefts and Europeans can no longer accept that the ends justify the means, and actually understand how the world works, that doing evil in the name of good (eg torturing suspected terrorists), cutailing civil liberties and cenralising power. Freedom has a huge price, many revolutions bloody civil wars in Europe are testemony to that. If we give away freedom for security, then getting it back again is going to have a very high price indeed. I guess you are from the US, you should go and read what the founding fathers wrote, they were a smart bunch.

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" Ben Franlin

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" Thomas Jefferson.

The only people who can take away the Freedom in the US is the US government, so you have to watch what they do like a hawk, unfortunately the threat of terrorism, which we have lived with in Europe for decades (ETA, the IRA etc - note also the IRA were funded by weathly americans, in a similar way that AlQuida has been funded by wealthy Saudis)

Anti-semetism is growing in Europe because the Israeli right wing (and part of the current government) wants a greater Israel from the river Jorden to the sea. Unfortunately quite a few Palestinians live there and don't want to leave. So they think they can treat them like crap, kill thousands and eventually that will happen. In Europe we remember what it is like being a colonial power and taking over land that does not belong to you. America was built on taking someone elses land, which might explain the difference. We see the Israelis as the evil british empire, and the palestinians as the natives. You see settlers and indians.

Sorting out the Israel-Palestinain problem i probably the most effective thing that could be done to stop the terrorist threat against the US, that requires the US facing down the Israeli right wing, which is unfortuntely not going to happen.

Slightly pedantic point. I said "from my bank I can get either a Mastercard or a Visa card and that is about it", Discover is not very big outside the US, American express issue only the cards themsleves as I understand it, and not accepted everywhere but anyway.

Please though can we get away from the missuse of the the word terrorism. Terrorism involves killing people and threatening to kill people to get what you want. This is civil disobeidence. The best analogy is a something like a picket. It is annoying, it gets in everyones way and costs money. It has nothing to do with terrorism, and trying to connect them in any way cheapens the whole thing.

The whole "we need these draconian rules to deal wiht terrorists" to using those rules in situations that have nothing to do with terrorism is dangerous. The next time you try to change the rules to "deal with terrorists" you will get a fight.

I do wonder though what you think a reasonable response would be to MC and Visa? Democracy requires the right to protest, so what do you think would be ok? An actual picket of the MC and Visa head offices? Honestly I think the economic damage you quote is overstated, but that is getting very offtopic.

In terms of Mastercard and Visa, I would say it was a bit more more complicated, as they have a near duopoly of card processing methods. I have no problem for example with BOA, or Amazon etc. as there are plenty of alternatives but from my bank I can get either a Mastercard or a Visa card and that is about it.

Also you do not have an absolute right to turn down service. In a lot of countries I would suggest if you put up a "No Blacks" etc. sign outside your shop etc then you would quickly get in legal trouble. Discrimination on grounds of skin colour, sexual orientation etc is in most places illigal, and rightly so. I would suggest that discrimination on the grounds that the government does not like you is something much worse.

The biggest problem I have is that it does look (to me at least) like government pressure was behind the decision, and that makes it very different to then deciding for themselves that they don't want to deal with wikileaks. Well that and the "we need these draconian rules to deal wiht terrorists" being subverted and the powers that be trying to use them on everyone (i.e. the attempt to put wikileaks on the list of terror orginisations.)

Ok as a first point I have to agree with some of that, there is some common ground there. First of all though what I disagree with. Your "Military Solution" is something I find hard to provide a polite description for.

First of all Sanctions on Saudi Arabia. The trade between the US and SA consists of the US buying Saudi oil, and the Saudi's buying US military equipment (combined with generous kickbacks) and assorted Luxuary items. Now if you stop that trade you get a replay of 1973 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis ). And there are plenty of people queuing up to sell SA arms (which is why large kickbacks can be and are demanded). So sactions is basically the US shooting itself in the foot.

Now bombing, wow. I would hope you would accept that the current Saudi government are broadly pro american, and certain rich individuals are giving money to islamic charities, that funnel funds to terrorists. Now true the government could be doing more to clamp down on this, but man, you bomb SA and either you make the next Iraq or the next Iran, which is not exactly going to help your cause.

So what can be done? As you say moving away from Oil, that would be great start. Not buying their oil because you don't need it is a great way to stop the flow of cash. The fact remains while you depend on the oil, the US needs SA a lot more than SA needs the US (all the US does that SA wants is provide regional stability/security).

The other thing you missed is finally pressurize Israel to the negotiating table. There is a deal to be made there along the lines make the final land borders the pre 1967 borders more or less then have some land swaps. Something like that would work probably for the palistinian side, but is completely unacceptable to the Israeli right wing (who want greater/biblical Isreal that is also a jewish state). For once there is a lull, and the US needs to push for a deal.

A lot of donations from rich americans to republican charities linked to the IRA dried up after they stopped seeing the UK as an enemy, and realised that terrorism was not the answer. A just solution to the Isreal-palistinan problem would go some way for doing the same thing in SA.

The solution is actually soft power, dipolomacy and intelligence. Unfortunately those seem to be in disrepute in the US.

I would have a lot more respect for the "Its all saudi arabia" appart from the fact that it is rich individuals in SA who are providing the cash. By your reasoning the UK should have attacked the US a long time ago (well appart from we would have lost :D ). http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1563119.stm Rich Americans have been funding terrorism by the IRA for years. I am sure it still goes on, but as the article above says the climate changed after 9/11 and the Rich americans realised that funding terrorism was probably not a good idea, so it must be reduced now.

Now back to the point, of what should have been done to shut down Al Qaeda. Before the invasion they had pretty much free reign in Afghanistan, the government was happy for them to be there and they could run pretty openly. Shutting that down was necessary and a good thing. The problem was then that the focus was turned to the neocons wet dream of taking over Iraq, with the attempt to link Iraq to Al Qaeda and the whole WMD fiction. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2859431.stm ("Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term"). This meant that the reconstruction of Afghanistan was starved of resources, it also gave North Korea a couple of years of low international attention an pressure, which mean that as long as they kept their heads down they could carry on wiht their nuclear program, resulting in a functional bomb. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

I am really not sure what you are proposing the US does about Saudi Arabia, another invasion? The hey lets bomb mecca option, that will stop them! option (how well did the lets bomb the wtc, that will stop them! option work? ). The fact remains the Al-Sauds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saud) are the US best friends in Saudi Arabia. I am sure they are clamping down. It is rather hard to stop wealthy individuals (and there are rather a lot of those in SA) giving cash to "islamic charities" with terrorist connections. I really don't know what you think you can acheive appart from another HUGE mess in SA. So 1/ Afghanistan was a sensible target, it was a large military base and staging ground for Al Qaeda. 2/ Iraq was for sure a distraction 3/ I have have no idea what you want to try to do in Saudi Arabia, but you would most likely make the situation worse, the government there is about as pro america as anyone in the region, and a lot more pro america than the public opinion in the country is. So any change of government is likely to result in more problems for hte US not less.

Netgear also make a range of media players.

http://www.netgear.com/products/home/hometheater/media-players/default.aspx

I have an EVA 9100 and it works pretty well, can read network shares etc.

Another lie.

A lot of reputable economists have put the cost at about 1% of global GDP. Fine lets say they are wrong and it is TWICE that, it is still peanuts.

"We have no means, other than computer simulation, of teasing out whether the human contribution to CO2 emissions is tipping the system into instability, or simply being damped out and absorbed into the whole process"

Exactly what is your problem with computer simulation? The climate is unfortunately incredibly complicated system. There are very very compliated feedbacks in it. The most important measure (the sea surface temperature) is not as well recorded as the land temperature. Yet there is more energy in the top 1m of the sea than in the whole atmosphere. The strongest greenhouse gas is WATER VAPOR. Which is totally out of control of anyone. You leave that out you get completely the wrong answer. Exactly how to you propose to model this stuff without computers? Airplanes, race cars and nuclear bombs are modelled pretty well with computers. The climate models are not perfect by any streach, but you can see by how good the 5 day weather forcast is that they do have a decent knowledge of the atmosphere now.

Science is about doing the best you can do with the tools you have. There is enormous variation in the estimates of warming from 1 degree (which will not make much difference) to 6 degrees which will radically change all life on earth.

"I'm not denying climate change, far from it, I am saying that there are aspects of it that smell of bad science, and the demonisation of skepticism is a very dangerous precedent"

Well the problem of course is it not sceptecism we are seeing it is denialism. Picking holes in small bits of the science, attacking the integrety of the scientists. The artful selection of data to give misleading impressions. Like the claim that the earth has not warmed much since 1979 (when there was a new series of satellite measurements), ignoring hte fact that 1979 was a particularly hot year in the context of the time, so what was considered hot in 1979 is now considered normal...

The fact that the absolute miniumum of arctic sea ice was in 2007, coupled with the claim that the ice has been increasing for the last two years. True but completely misleading. The extrapoloation of a warm temperatures in europe in the "medievil warm period" to be a global phenomonen to explain away current record global temperatures. People seem to have a problem with the GLOBAL part of global warming.

The "14 tree ring data from the NORTHERN HEMESPHERE" disproving GLOBAL warming, thing which was just insane.

Yes scientists are imperfect, yes they often have an agenda. BUT that is science, it is messy not done by people in ivory towers, that is the way all science has always been, but it WORKS. In the end the facts speak for themselves and truth will out.

"the fact that the majority of scientists believe the theories says absolutely nothing about the science"

Man you have a terrible opinion of scientists. But that is the point, the whole game has been played against the integrety of the scientists not against the science itself (because the first one you can attack, the other one no not really, it is in, it is settled). Do you not beleive the experts in any field? How do you make any decisions at all? I guess the only way you will be convincied is if you went and got a ph.d. in atmospheric science, made your own computer model and looked at the results. See you in 20 years then.

Not quite sure why you are rejecting a Lib / Lab pact here, add in some of the Northern Ireland parties and the welsh/scottish nationalist parties occasionally (they are both quite socialist) and you have something that can survive at least as well as a conservative minority government.

I think in the end it does depend how hard ball people play on electoral reform. In the end it could be a deal breaker for both sides, as the conservatives don't want to change a system that suits them pretty well, and the Lib dems want badly to change a system that gives them 8.8% of the seats with 23% of the vote.

Yeah that I agree with. That will be a big fat NO DEAL with the conservatives if they do that. The pressue is going to be building, and the only potentially stable goverment is some sort of conservative/Lib Dem deal. If Labour and the LD had got a few more seats (enough so they had a majority between them), then life would be a lot more intersteing. A good grass roots campaign on electoral reform is good, it gives the Lib Dems the oportunity to walk away if they have to, and do a deal with Labour. There is pressure building the other way, wiht "get a deal done by wednesday or the markets will tank" vibe being put out.

There are really only 3 permutations that matter.

1/ The conservatives go it alone, and try to run a minority government with occasional help from the Northern Ireland parties they are allied with, and possiby the liberal democrats on some issues. This is unlikely to last long to be honest

2/ The conservatives and Liberal democrats do a deal, and make a joint platform. This is the only one that has got any possiblity of lasting. The tricky part is as the 3rd Party the Liberal Democrats want some form of proportial representation (which would double their seats in parlament). The conservatives don't want that at all. They like the current system. I don't know what is going to happen here. I guess the Lib Dems will blink "for the good of the coutry", and a deal will be done.

3/ Labour and the liberal democrats do a deal, this does not give them a majority though, so they will need the help of again ulster parties (different NI parties are alligned to each of the mainland parties). and the welsh/scottish natioanlist parties. This will probably fragment after a while too. This grouping is possible as they limp along for a while, and would bring in some form of proportional representation or other electoral reform and eventually we have an early new election.

Some of the more outlandish things like Gordon brown not resigning if there was a viable alternative is just silly. He *could* do it and it would be a mess if he did, but it would destroy most of the support for his party for years to come. You have to be gracious in defeat in these things if you want to bounce back.

I suppose there is

4/ They just call a new election, as well, but that is not going to be popular with the public and noone really has the cash to fight it (particularly the liberal democrats, who have the most to lose from a new election).

Huh? you need to work on your operator precidence.
Division before subtraction.

3 sides
180 - 360/3 = 180 -120 = 60

4 sides
180 - 360/4 = 180 - 90 = 90

5 sides
180 - 360/5 = 180 -72 = 108

6 sides
180 - 360/6 = 180 - 60 = 120

The formula is based on the fact that the external angles add up to 360 degrees, and the internal angle is 180 - the external angle.
Clearly the formula goes wrong for n=1 or n=2, but those are not valid shapes anyway.

What's the motivation here to compete? That is an easy one.

Firstly of course they are directly competing for volanteer time and resources. Secondly the inherent desire to "be the best", and to prove that their solution is the best one.

And since when do people need a good reason for being competive?