Capitaine Vengeur

Some other conflict-related jokes. The first still takes place in Sinai 1960s-70s, I think it's a Israeli joke. An Egyptian regiment takes his positions into the desert, when the Egyptian colonel spots an Israeli soldier trying to hide behind the dunes. He immediately dispatches three men to capture him. They pass the dune top, but none of them come back. The colonel then dispatches a platoon. The Egyptians try to envelop the enemy soldier, passing the dune flanks, but none of them come back. The colonel then dispatches an entire company, advancing in several waves. And after about ten minutes, a lone, wounded, terrified-looking soldier comes back and whispers: "It was a trap, Effendi ... There were two of them !..." The second joke imagines a conflict between USSR and China (it was close, at some moments) On the first day, the Soviets capture 2 million prisoners. At the end of the first week, they have taken 9 million prisoners. After the second week, they hold 24 million prisoners, and at the end of the third week, an awesome total of 43 million. The Soviets absolutely don't know how to deal with such a human mass. At that moment, Beijing rings Moscow and threatens: "Well, have you understood by now? Will you surrender?"

Another quote I've enjoyed (I saw the movie in French and don't know the exact words in English): "I've got a bandit up my arse!!!" "Don't open, I'm coming."

Actually, Muslims have existed for only the last 1400 years. But the permanent state of war actually exist since the origins. Most commonly, it's a war against oneself, one's individual sins or inclination to evil, and that's called the Jihad too. That's when the Jihad expands to the physical neighbourhood the the problem hurts. When some lazy people think that they will see the Heaven's Doors more surely by correcting the others' sins than their owns.

Had Napoleon tried to bribe the Spanish Guerillas with his Francs-Or, would there be today a Napoleon XIV on the throne of France? I don't think so. Look closer at that War. As a heir of the Age of Enlightenment, Napoleon brought to Spain the most advanced code of laws in the monarchic Europe, colleges intended to raise a large middle class in a country where there were none, and even the respect and protection of the Catholic faith through the Concordate. But the Spanish preferred to keep their Inquisitors, their greedy monks, their contemptuous aristocracy, their parasite hidalgos, and the degenerated Royal Family many former guerilleros were to turn against after the Liberation. Why? Simply because no proud people can accept what is brought by foreign soldiers and imposed by bayonets, whatever good and profitable for them it would be. Islam has nothing to do with that.

They certainly ARE missionaries. Pictures have shown some men (from Travolta's plane or working in the ground team, I don't know) wearing what seems to be the CoS "military advisors" tropical uniform, seen on other theaters of intervention (The Tsunami, etc): a golden yellow T-shirt with black-lettered sentences I couldn't read. It happens they are there on their duty time.

Here in France (I can't speak for Continental Europe as a whole), the Church of Scientology is largely seen as a sect, and the medias have a net anti-Scientologist tendency, and a severe opinion about John Travolta's or Tom Cruise's actions when they are obviously in support of the Church. The media coverage of John Travolta's acts has linked them to the (numerous) former Scientologist interventions on theaters of humanitarian disasters, presenting them as a swarm of ravens swooping down upon a wounded man, trying to get their best from his debilitated body.

Nice thing that you have never crossed to the Dark Side! I prefer shops where the owners content themselves with polishing their baseball bat or practicing the taser on BBQ ribs.

No, no, gas is absolutely no good idea! Imagine that with all the shortages they have in Iraq, they get reduced to use domestic gas. Then as the gas fills the room, the prisoner remembers he has forgotten something and asks: "Man, can I smoke my last cigarette right now?". The result would be an Iraqi prison down, claimed by the Iraqi Gas Company and Philip Morris. After all, they must actually have severe shortages in lethal gas down there, for even GW Bush's well-informed advisors have not been able to find any stock of weapons of mass destruction.

Finally gone to see that yet famous legend. The 3D is still perfectible. There remains some disturbing bloomings on the closest ranged objects, and some bright effects gave me the impression that somebody was playing the fool with my optical nerves. But some over effects like the rain of ashes actually give you the impression that you could catch them. The storyline and most of the developments are highly predictible ("The Last Samurai tuns blue"), and whereas the action sequences are unquestionably awesome, the movie has not impressed me on that point. Say, leaving the movie theater, I felt no ecological impulse to paint my naked body in blue and climb to the nearest tree. No, it's Januarily cold here, and these damn' wet trees are much too slippy. Neither was I in the mood for riding gliding green dragoons. The nearest gliding green thing here is a unit of paratroopers, and I am not open-minded enough to ride one of them (or to try to, at my peril). In brief: a well-cut jewel, but you just find a diamond where you expected to find a diamond.

File Name: Pilots pics, Korean War File Submitter: Capitaine Vengeur File Submitted: 22 January 2010 File Category: SF/WO* Hanger/Menu/Loadout This expanded mod provides the presented pics, and many, many others, covering most of the flying belligerents of the Korean War, in various and uneven numbers: US Air Force, US Navy, US Marine Corps, British Fleet Air Arm, Royal Australian Air Force, South African Air Force, Republic of Korea Air Force, Soviet VVS/PVO, Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force, and Democratic People's Republic of Korea Air Force. Most of the depicted pilots are now named in the ReadMe file. Enjoy. Click here to download this file

With the evolving technology, such bases could have large commons domes diffusing light, all of the solar nutriments needed, and even the 3D illusion to be outside in the open. I agree, these needs are known for long, with empirical solutions according to the available technology. In the biggest forts of the Maginot Line I have visited (built in the 1930s), there were solariums under medical control to provide solar nutriments to soldiers expected to stay besieged underground for months, possibly years.

Another thing that could happen underwater is: Who would manage the oxygen distribution? Many large firms have proven totally inefficient these last years concerning the power distribution, as it could be seen in massive, almost continental-sized powercuts (USA, Brazil...). As a temporary powercut would ruin the content of your freezer, a temporary cut in oxygen distribution underwater would turn an entire population into kelp farm compost.

Why is the UN building in New york? Were it built in the back garden of the White House, Washington DC, it would have seemed too evident!

About the bikers' exotic customs, down here we have just closed out the diffusion of "Sons of Anarchy", Season 1. I Like this serie. I'm fan of Ron Perlman, what a face! Working for Jean-Jacques Annaud, he could play a Neanderthalian half-ape without much need of make-up.

Recently, in the topic "Views on the War against terror" on this forum, there has been an interesting (IMHO) controversy involving Julhelm about the use of the terms "Joe Sixpack" opposing to "Average Joe". In passing, Julhelm revealed that in his country (Sweden?), the surname for an Average Joe is a "Svensson". We often see on this forum many various representatives from the most honourable countries in the World. So, I'd find it very instructive to learn what surnames other peoples use to describe their local Average Joe and Joe Sixpack, and possibly why. I'm especially interested in my own neighbours of Germany, Italy and Spain, but as many countries as possible would be fine (I'm also curious about Greece, Turkey, Russia, Israel or Japan, amongst others). Thanks for participating. In France, we seem to have much fewer of these surnames than in the Anglo-Saxon countries. The currently most used surnames for Average Joe or Joe Public are simply "Monsieur/Madame Toutlemonde" (Mr/Mrs Everybody), or "Le citoyen Lambda" (Citizen Lambda, i.e. the common standing biped with the same two legs as the Greek letter), which I think is also used elsewhere. Also, the surname here for a young slangy gang-gathering streetboy would be a "Zyva!" (C'm on!). And the most used surnames for a noisy, bad-educated, racist and totally disreputed individual are "Dupont-Lajoie" (sounds like Happy Dupont), or "Bidochon" (translatable as something like Meatard), from a local popular comic strip character with every attribute for the typical Frenchy fatbastard: beret, moustache, cigarette end, paunch, braces, slippers, lazy walk, and bad temper but spineless nature. Of course, not all of the Frenchmen actually look like that... At least, not those under 50.

Yeah, remember of the ancient town of Port Royale, Jamaica, which after the 1692 earthquake lies now underwater, at the feet of Kingston. About the Carribean, also think of volcanic activity. Remember of St-Pierre, pearl of the Martinique Island, where in 1902 more than 20,000 people have been suffocated and steam-roasted in less than 20 minutes ! (one survivor !) And don't forget hurricanes that would make you forget everything about common tempests. Damn, I am so glad to live here, under a grey sky, but on a place firmly anchored to the unsinkible Eurasian continent !

Should count as double for a Trivial Pursuit score !

File Name: New musics and anthems for WoI File Submitter: Capitaine Vengeur File Submitted: 13 January 2010 File Category: SF/WO* Sound Mods Some new themes for every game occurrence, providing a much softer and more Oriental ambiance than the stock ones. Also includes anthems for Israel, Syria, Egypt 1960-79, Iraq 1965-81, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya and Algeria. Click here to download this file

At St-Helen, Napoleon wrote about Sun Tzu: "Had I read this book before, I would have never been vanquished!". Quite a reference.

"War is continuation of politics by other means, conducted in a manner dictated by generaly accepted law and custom". When General Bonaparte cold-bloodly slaughtered the ca. 5000 defenders he had taken as prisonners at Jaffa (Palestine), he committed an act he certainly would have never made in Europe. Question of "accepted law and custom". But here in the Middle East, he felt he could deeply impress the Oriental mentalities. When the US dropped the A-Bomb over Japan, they committed an act they certainly would have never made over Europe, where most of their first class citizens (White ones) had their roots and often tied families, unless extreme conditions. Question of "accepted law and custom". With mondialization and media coverage, the Western "accepted law and custom" has spread to the Worldwide (even if only bonding the Western countries), and no exception (no media-covered exception, at least) would pass upon the opinion. To lead a 21st Century war in the way it should be led against a 14th Century opponent (i.e. implying evident war crimes, in the Western 21st Century "accepted law and custom") could simply not be possible.

I totally agree. Pouring more and more bombs upon a more and more impoverished country will resolve naught. They'll continue to raise armies of orphans from this undeclared war, those who have lost everything due to the brutal foreign occupation. How many they have seen there, of these brutal attempts of foreign occupation? Mongols, Moghols, Persians, Russians, Brits, Russians again... Most of these attempts hid behind seducing pretexts: unified empire, unified Islam, civilization, Socialist fraternity, and now the ultimate Western vision of constitutional democracy. All of these invaders have nevertheless been driven out from mountains that were not theirs, totally disgusted, bringing back their puppet leaders with them or letting them behind. The real danger about terrorism in Western countries doesn't come from these huge armies of illiterate fanatics, but from tiny, trained, long and carefully prepared covert ops cells like those of 09/11. Such small "elite" units need money, plenty of money. And where does the money come from? Afghan heroin, yes, yes. But mainly from those countries who have money, plenty of it. I mean the Gulf monarchies, you know them: our best friends. Indeed, most of Taliban executives come from these countries. Today, the idea is to put high pression upon one of these peninsular countries, Yemen. But the poorest of them, accidentally. As long as these principalities will play the tricky game with us, as long as our Western democracies will support and protect those despotic political systems, as long as the US senators and our Euro politicians will lick all those sandbox princes' slippers as they wait for golden retirements from them, there will be no end to the so-called War on Terror.

As a youth, I've always praised all the math and geometry teachers should be sat by force on top of pyramids. Now I do know why they all should be.

There's a French Comics outstanding and popular enough to have been edited in English by Marvel (rare enough for a Euro Comics): "UW1 - Universal War One". It deals with time dilation, time and space travels, multiverses, theory of wormholes... The instant time and space travels is made possible by creating a vortex, by overdriving anti-gravitational modules (first accidentally, then in a planified mode). All of the schools of thinking about time travel and time paradox are successively explored, then refuted by the desoriented characters, following their experiences. The conclusion is in an often quoted sentence: "The present is the sum of all the time travels that have taken place, or that will take place."

I really enjoy an excellent Japanese manga serie called "Zipang", which follows nearly the same line, but in a very different optic. The serie is forecasted to include some 41 books, I've read it until N° 22 or 23 yet. A modern Japanese destroyer (this decade), the Mirai (=Future!), equipped with Aegis system, Harpoons, and some other ultra-modern technologies, is on her way to Pearl Harbour when a magnetic storm sends her back to... June 4, 1942, near Midway ! Volume 23 is about mid-1943. While this story is clearly inspired from "The final countdown", I find it much more interesting. Unlike the powerful, overconfident, somehow arrogant US Navy (We have the power, we therefore have the right), the Japanese Jieitai is clearly oriented towards non-intervention. It's a force of self-defense only, tied by the 1946 Japanese Constitution, and totally prohibited to do anything without an order from the civilian chain of command. All of the officers and seamen were hardly trained in this way of thinking. It involves severe matters of conscience. The difference is also tangible between the 1940s Japs, tough and obedient, and the modern Japanese, educated to think by themselves, fond of democracy (with internal debates even leading to mutiny), welfare, and respect of life. But when meeting, both deeply feel to be the same Japanese people, whereas the American touch the modern Japanese display disturbs their ancestors. When forced to defend herself, or later engaging alongside the Imperial Japanese Navy (under first harsh, then more lenient conditions), the ship comes to sink the carrier USS Wasp, then the battleship USS North Carolina, using Harpoons. It's also amazing to see how easy the way such a modern ship can reduce to burning dust an entire carrier air wing fool enough to attack her, by ripple-firing missiles and radar-pointing Gatling guns. By volume 23, some ten of her crewmen have lost their lives. Of course, the long presence of this alien ship contributes to change history. A third party man, then group, tries to take advantage of what he has learnt about the future by visiting the Mirai's archives, to build an alternate future ("Zipang" is the name Marco Polo gave to a dreamed, mythical Japan - not the Fascist Empire of their time, neither the Americanized Japan of the forecasted future). Their acts involve Emperor Pu-Yi's assassination, Hitler's attempt of assassination (failed), and especially, an attempt to build a secret A-Bomb before the States and have it detonate in New York (from the idea that the country who shall be the first to develop the Bomb should also be the first to experience the nuclear fire, to never be tempted to use it against someone else). An excellent reading, my advice is. To read after watching "The final countdown", for example.