Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Annie]

2 hours ago, Hroth said:

At least you've had your double-jab, so you'll have some measure of protection.  As Mr Ed says, sit tight and minimise your external contacts.  Good luck!  But how the hell did Delta get into NZ?

That is exactly what everyone here wants to know!  So far there's no obvious connection, but once the genome sequencing is done our health dept should know more.

Yes praise be for being double-jabbed, - I might still be fatigued in the aftermath, but it's waaaay better than coming down with the plague. As for minimising contacts I'm practically Miss Hermit 2021 anyway and my neighbours showed themselves to be very careful and sensible during our last lockdown.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Annie
fumble brain

[Nearholmer]

2 hours ago, Hroth said:

But how the hell did Delta get into NZ?

Presumably NZ isn’t really totally sealed-off from the rest of the universe, in fact I know it isn’t because the family of one of my daughter’s friends just emigrated there, depriving the NHS of a specialist dental surgeon and a senior lab tech. So, it’s unfortunately nigh-on inevitable that the little blighter would sneak in somehow.

 

Batten-down the hatches, play monopoly, and the storm will blow over.

 

PS: on second thoughts, don’t play monopoly: it’s guaranteed to make any amount of tedium seem ten times longer.

 

 

Edited August 17, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Annie]

36 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Presumably NZ isn’t really totally sealed-off from the rest of the universe........

 

Every infection that's been caught by our quarantine system of late has been the Delta variant and with it being possible to catch Delta by simply walking past someone in a corridor it really was only going to be a matter of time before it got into the community.   I think in some ways though many people here had become complacent about taking precautions and thought that New Zealand had got a free pass card and we'd never get it here.

All we can do now sit tight and stay away from our fellow human beings as much as possible.

 

38 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

in fact I know it isn’t because the family of one of my daughter’s friends just emigrated there, depriving the NHS of a specialist dental surgeon and a senior lab tech. So, it’s unfortunately nigh-on inevitable that the little blighter would sneak in somehow.

It's actually not that easy getting past our border due to the limited capacity of our border quarantine system and having to book a place in a quarantine facility before coming here.  With having to book a flight here as well not being a certain thing your daughter's friends family might have had an anxious wait before they could leave the Uk.  I know there's more than a few medical people wanting to emigrate here, but with our immigration system being overloaded with applications at the moment it can take a while to be approved.

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

on second thoughts, don’t play monopoly: it’s guaranteed to make any amount of tedium seem ten times longer.

 

How about Cluedo?

 

Just make sure that ropes, candlesticks, daggers, spanners, lead pipes and pistols aren't actually to hand. Its no use having an analytical mind if everyone else gets annoyed with you winning all the time and start muttering about cheating...

[Nearholmer]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

your daughter's friends family might have had an anxious wait before they could leave the Uk. 

It was all planned and booked ages in advance, but still they were on tenterhooks until they were actually in the quarantine facility, and out the other side.

[Annie]

As of this morning we're at 5 cases of the Delta variant in the community with one being a hospital worker.

 

Presently toilet paper is at No.5 on the panic buy list.  Broccoli is at No.1 (Yes really!). 

 

Just like it was last time it's really quiet here this morning.  Living in the rural countryside like I do isn't exactly noisy, but the extra level of silence is noticeable.

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Annie said:

Presently toilet paper is at No.5 on the panic buy list.  Broccoli is at No.1 (Yes really!). 

 

At great personal sacrifice, I chose to forgo Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts and Cauliflower at the beginning of our first lockdown in March 2020.  I like to think that some poor soul has benefited from my selfless denial!

 

Let us not talk about the toilet paper stash....

 

[monkeysarefun]

As we've found out here after an unvaccinated  limo driver  ferried international flight crew to their accommodation without wearing a mask or following the testing rules  -  the hardest part of a 7 day lockdown is the first 8 weeks..

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, Annie said:

but the extra level of silence is noticeable.

 

Silence, and incredibly clear, sunny days, those are the things that really stick in my mind from the first lockdown here. It was quite eerily strange, as if everybody, and everything, was holding their breath.

[Annie]

57 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

-  the hardest part of a 7 day lockdown is the first 8 weeks..

When the announcement was made last night I was already mentally preparing myself for something longer than a 7 day lockdown.

As you pointed out all it takes is one person being complacent and careless for Delta to get out and into the community.

 

56 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Silence, and incredibly clear, sunny days, those are the things that really stick in my mind from the first lockdown here. It was quite eerily strange, as if everybody, and everything, was holding their breath.

Yes it does feel like that Kevin.  Brings to mind what some earth science researchers said last year when most of the world went into lockdown, - suddenly they could clearly hear the earth itself without the usual overlay of human generated noise.

[Annie]

My daughter and I have just now successfully placed an on-line grocery order after waiting for the supermarket storming madness to die down a little.  We agreed that we would not join the collective insanity and we didn't buy any toilet paper (we didn't buy any broccoli either for that matter). 

My properly PPE equipped support worker has just visited and she told me that our local supermarket has been stripped bare of toilet paper by the ravaging hordes of panic buyers.  What is wrong with these people!

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

On 16/08/2021 at 23:38, Edwardian said:

In the news .... the latest Western withdrawal from Afghanistan .....

 

 

Though it's more like the last chopper from Saigon, or the last flight out of the Stalingrad kettle.

 

I've an awful feeling that the US has just lost the Great Game, without ever having realised she was playing it. 

 

 

Having spent time working in similar places to Afghanistan in the ME in the 1990s. Mountainous terrain, isolated villages etc. etc. and observed the locals and how they react to foreigners even friendly ones, I copped an almighty amount of flak in 2002 when I was heavily critical of our efforts there supporting the American invasion. I also pointed out the history of foreign armies in Afghanistan, topped off with experience in similar places and said to anyone who would listen that we were mad going in there. Well to say I was drowned out by the flag waving "patriots' would be an understatement. I was variously accused of being a communist, a Muslim lover etc., anti-democratic, anti-feminist - you name it I was.

 

Yes we should have tackled al Qaeda, but it should have been a short and sharp surgical operation not a full scale invasion. The strange thing was that at the time the Taliban were having real economic difficulties and Afghanistan was on the brink of collapse anyway while the presence of bin Laden in the Tora Bora Mts., on the border with Pakistan, was bringing unwanted heat down on them. They weren't great supporters of al Qaeda anyway - they just thought of bin Laden and his followers as wealthy Saudi playboys. As it turned out bin Laden was encouraged to move to the tribal territories of Pakistan where the Americans finally caught him in Abbottabad.

 

But the last few days have well and truly vindicated my stance back then. However I'm not gloating - the Americans will get over it, just as a few years before the Russians had to get over it after 13 years there, and in the 19th century the British had to get over it after 3 attempts. 

 

The irony of course is that the Taliban are the linear descendants of the Mujahedeen who the Americans armed and supported to drive the Russians out.  The Mujahedeen government fell to the Taliban because it was absolutely corrupt - much the same it appears as the "democratic" government that America just discovered bolted out the back door, with the "trained" army they and we had created. As someone who well remembers Vietnam the same thing happened there - the Americans believed the people they had bought and paid for were "loyal" - nope they were just well paid, there is a difference.

 

When Russia got involved in the late 70s they found that Afghanistan was their Vietnam. Something which due to the material cost led to the collapse of the USSR. Now we and the Americans have discovered another Vietnam. I hope that twice is enough to teach us not to get involved in other people's civil wars. Still I don't blame Biden, from the moment that Trump released those Taliban prisoners and began drawing down troop numbers the game was over. It was a clear admission that the Afghan Government and army were expected to save their democracy. But as Biden has succinctly put it if they won't fight for it, it isn't the American or our responsibility to do the fighting for them.

 

And on a gloomier note we are in the second week of our 6th COVID lockdown here in Victoria and it will go through to early September thanks to the Delta variant. We got that from NSW, although our case numbers are nowhere near their level. We went through that runaway phase last year for 3 months. Every other state has criticised our lockdown policy  but it has allowed us respites for longish periods. Unfortunately every time we have a relaxation some idiot imports it. In June we had a fortnight lockdown because of some idiot furniture removalists from NSW who knew they had it, yet spread a trail through the state. Strangely no one sort fit to jail them . Earlier this year there was a push to allow Australians overseas to return - unfortunately most of them were in India and they brought back COVID and we had another snap lockdown. 

 

I'm getting close to proposing that the next idiot who manages to import it should be either shot, or put on a plane to Kabul.   

Edited August 18, 2021 by Malcolm 0-6-0

[monkeysarefun]

..

9 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

I'm getting close to proposing that the next idiot who manages to import it should be either shot, or put on a plane to Kabul.

That engagement party was a beauty!

[Regularity]

3 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

Americans believed the people they had bought and paid for were "loyal" - nope they were just well paid, there is a difference

Loyalty is earned, not bought…

[alastairq]

14 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Loyalty is earned, not bought…

Wishful thinking, praaaphs?

[Northroader]

Back around eighteen months ago my daughter insisted that me and the missus set up home delivery from the supermarket, which we’re still doing, and I do a weekly trip to the butchers at the crack of dawn when it’s nice and quiet. The problem with the supermarket is they can’t be trusted on pick and choose stuff like fruit and veg, and anything with a date on is the same as the delivery day date, so I’ve now gone back to venturing out for fruit and veg, and we’re now eighteen months on. I suppose I should look at being more venturesome, but infection cases are back on the rise, and there’s still, what? sixty deaths a day on average. We were lucky in getting two jabs early on, but now we start to wonder how long before it wears off. Settle down for the long haul, my antipodean friends.

(particularly now China is running the W.H.O.)

[Edwardian]

2 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

Having spent time working in similar places to Afghanistan in the ME in the 1990s. Mountainous terrain, isolated villages etc. etc. and observed the locals and how they react to foreigners even friendly ones, I copped an almighty amount of flak in 2002 when I was heavily critical of our efforts there supporting the American invasion. I also pointed out the history of foreign armies in Afghanistan, topped off with experience in similar places and said to anyone who would listen that we were mad going in there. Well to say I was drowned out by the flag waving "patriots' would be an understatement. I was variously accused of being a communist, a Muslim lover etc., anti-democratic, anti-feminist - you name it I was.

 

Yes we should have tackled al Qaeda, but it should have been a short and sharp surgical operation not a full scale invasion. The strange thing was that at the time the Taliban were having real economic difficulties and Afghanistan was on the brink of collapse anyway while the presence of bin Laden in the Tora Bora Mts., on the border with Pakistan, was bringing unwanted heat down on them. They weren't great supporters of al Qaeda anyway - they just thought of bin Laden and his followers as wealthy Saudi playboys. As it turned out bin Laden was encouraged to move to the tribal territories of Pakistan where the Americans finally caught him in Abbottabad.

 

But the last few days have well and truly vindicated my stance back then. However I'm not gloating - the Americans will get over it, just as a few years before the Russians had to get over it after 13 years there, and in the 19th century the British had to get over it after 3 attempts. 

 

The irony of course is that the Taliban are the linear descendants of the Mujahedeen who the Americans armed and supported to drive the Russians out.  The Mujahedeen government fell to the Taliban because it was absolutely corrupt - much the same it appears as the "democratic" government that America just discovered bolted out the back door, with the "trained" army they and we had created. As someone who well remembers Vietnam the same thing happened there - the Americans believed the people they had bought and paid for were "loyal" - nope they were just well paid, there is a difference.

 

When Russia got involved in the late 70s they found that Afghanistan was their Vietnam. Something which due to the material cost led to the collapse of the USSR. Now we and the Americans have discovered another Vietnam. I hope that twice is enough to teach us not to get involved in other people's civil wars. Still I don't blame Biden, from the moment that Trump released those Taliban prisoners and began drawing down troop numbers the game was over. It was a clear admission that the Afghan Government and army were expected to save their democracy. But as Biden has succinctly put it if they won't fight for it, it isn't the American or our responsibility to do the fighting for them.

 

And on a gloomier note we are in the second week of our 6th COVID lockdown here in Victoria and it will go through to early September thanks to the Delta variant. We got that from NSW, although our case numbers are nowhere near their level. We went through that runaway phase last year for 3 months. Every other state has criticised our lockdown policy  but it has allowed us respites for longish periods. Unfortunately every time we have a relaxation some idiot imports it. In June we had a fortnight lockdown because of some idiot furniture removalists from NSW who knew they had it, yet spread a trail through the state. Strangely no one sort fit to jail them . Earlier this year there was a push to allow Australians overseas to return - unfortunately most of them were in India and they brought back COVID and we had another snap lockdown. 

 

I'm getting close to proposing that the next idiot who manages to import it should be either shot, or put on a plane to Kabul.   

 

An insightful post. It underscores the folly of going to places like Afghanistan and expecting to 'solve' them. 

 

That said, it's not as simple as 'Don't go there!'  As you mention, there was a need for the US to tackle al Qaeda.  The British and Russians also felt they needed to intervene when they did. 

 

In the case of the British, their invasions were ultimately triggered by the risk that Afghanistan would pass into Russia's sphere of influence and threaten British India. A century on from the second Anglo-Afghan war, Russia invaded in order to prevent Afghanistan passing out of its sphere of influence.   

 

Given that Imperial Russia never annexed Afghanistan or invaded India, it is easy in hindsight to downplay the risk of those things happening; precisely because the British successfully held their own in the Great Game.  One only has to look at Russia's track record throughout the Nineteenth Century to appreciate that the risk was very real. Russia, like the US, does not see itself as a colonial power. That's because they have adopted a self-serving definition by which the idea of colonialism is limited to Europeans sailing to hot countries far away.  They overlook the fact that each expanded into vast adjacent territories. Russian expansion into Central Asia was aggressive and determined and there is no reason to think it would not have continued had the British not been in a position to stop it. In 1842 the Russian border was on the other side of the Aral Sea from Afghanistan. By 1865 Tashkent had been formally annexed, as was Samarkand three years later. A peace treaty in 1873 with Amir Alim Khan of the Manghit Dynasty, the ruler of Bukhara, made the regime a Russian puppet. Just look at the huge red bit, lower left, on this map.

 

 

Taking the long view, British policy towards Afghanistan in the Nineteenth Century must be considered successful; Afghanistan did not become a Russian puppet or part of the Russian Empire and the threat to India was contained. That is not to say there were not disasters along the way, but the British always tried to deal with the situation on a political basis.  Only when that failed would they use military intervention. Even then, they recognised that they should not try to stay and garrison, let alone rule, Afghanistan; permanent occupation would provoke Russia, but would also be costly, unsustainable and unsuccessful; Afghanistan was ungovernable and the British had enough experience holding down mountainous tribal regions on the borders of the Raj without wanting to saddle themselves with a whole country to its north that was equally intractable. They knew that gold subsidies would not guarantee loyalty.  They knew that puppet rulers might not last, and that military intervention was not a permanent solution. Essentially they had to deploy these limited options by turn when necessary in order to show that British India was a better friend and a worse enemy than the Russians.

 

It wasn't a smooth run. The East India Company's invasion of the 1830s ended in the destruction of Elpinstone's army. Just like the contemporary Victorian public, we tend to focus on colonial disasters.  In this case to the neglect of the fact that the British promptly re-invaded, decisively defeated the Afghans and captured territory and re-established the previous leader, Dost Muhammed, someone the British could do business with, who ruled to 1863. The Afghans were left with no wish to provoke the British Empire, and the Russians were unable to establish a mission in Kabul throughout Dost Muhammed's reign.

 

The second Anglo-Afghan war (1878-1881) followed failed diplomatic efforts to counter resurgent Russian influence; a British mission was turned back from the border, triggering escalation to military intervention. The subsequent mission was massacred in Kabul, triggering a second phase of fighting. Again, the British decisively defeated Afghan forces. Once again, they did not consider occupation, though did consider partition before deciding on an Emir to their liking.

 

The British withdrew, and did not maintain a mission in Kabul, so it might look like the current US withdrawal. However, the British had effectively removed the Russian threat posed by an unstable or Russophile Afghanistan for a further period of decades. The British took territories to form a buffer, the famous North West Frontier, which was a recurring problem for them. Again, Afghanistan had a ruler who would last and who would effectively resit Russian influence. 

 

Despite the well-known disasters, the massacres at Gandamuk (1842) and the Kabul Residency (1879), the two British interventions were ultimately both militarily and diplomatically decisively successful, establishing peace and stability and neutralising the Russian threats for decades at a time.

 

Compare that with (a) the Russian invasion of 1979; they found that they could not hold the country and their puppet regime collapsed three years after they withdraw, or (b) the US interventions in arming the Mujahideen (Cold War proxy warfare without follow-through or a long-term plan) and in the post 9/11 invasion, a mess of evolving aims and a sudden withdrawal with catastrophic fallout, and with the result that from the West's perspective, Afghanistan is a now potentially a worse problem than it was before the US invaded.    

 

Afghanistan presents perennial problems that cannot be permanently solved, but, there were ways they could at least be contained. Those Victorian players of the Great Game didn't always get it right, but on the whole, they succeeded; they knew a thing or two.

 

The real loser, now, as ever, will, of course, be Afghanistan ....

 

 

 

[Regularity]

Lovely post, James.
Looking at the map confirms (to me, at least!) my opinion that what we call “Russia” is really “Greater Musckovia”.

[Nearholmer]

36 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Russia, like the US, does not see itself as a colonial power. That's because they have adopted a self-serving definition by which the idea of colonialism is limited to Europeans sailing to hot countries far away. 

Absolutely bang on. Both historic  ‘superpowers’, and indeed China too, have expanded by ‘colonising over the current border’. What has become the USA having begun with ‘bridgeheads’ of course, and in some senses the EU was beginning to take-on some of the characteristics of another nascent bloc, doing effectively the same thing by the exercise of soft power in Eastern Europe. Hence Russian alarm and Russian destabilisation of the edges of the EU by non-military means where physical action would be too dangerous.

 

In deeply cynical mode, I wonder whether the world is safest when ‘buffer zones’ are maintained between the land borders of major power blocs, which implies that places like Ukraine, Afghanistan etc should persist as permanently unaligned and semi-disputed places; better near-chaos than a decisive outcome either way, because that simply steps the problem forward in one direction or the other? Of course, that makes life hell on Earth for those born in such places, and leaves them as places where tyrants flourish, human rights abuses are rife, and far reaching troubles can brew, but it still might be the lesser of several evils on a global scale.

 

I suppose what I’m saying is that perhaps ‘containment’ is to be preferred to ‘solution’, unless or until blocs cease to compete (= ‘forever’ for practical purposes).

Edited August 18, 2021 by Nearholmer

[webbcompound]

3 hours ago, Edwardian said:

The missing bit of the map is of course North America. The Russians (Bering, who named the Strait) first arrived in 1743, and rather short sightedly flogged the last of their holdings to the Yanks in 1867. These holdings included Alaska, also California (Fort Ross, Sonoma County) which they sold to a Mexican citizen in 1841, and Hawaii (Fort Elizabeth, Fort Alexander and Fort Barclay de Tolly) which was only briefly controlled from 1815 to 1817. A rich source for alternative history whatifism.

Edited August 18, 2021 by webbcompound

[Regularity]

5 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Of course, that makes life hell on Earth for those born in such places, and leaves them as places where tyrants flourish, human rights abuses are rife, and far reaching troubles can brew, but it still might be the lesser of several evils on a global scale.

Doesn't sound a lot different to life in Russia or China!

Or indeed, Afghanistan or Belarus, which would be another contender for "buffer state".

[Nearholmer]

Belarus was one I had in mind.

[CKPR]

Ukraine historically has also functioned as an East-West buffer and seems to have fallen into this state again in recent years. A few years ago, I read a  history of eastern Europe in the 20th century and it was one of the grimmest books I've ever read - the death toll after WW2 in the years 1945-50 was horrendous and after a while I was just numbed by the horrendous lost of human life in Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus,  with massacres of  10-20000 being commonplace. That all of this had happened in Europe less than 20 years before I was born made me give thanks for my safe western European home [to paraphrase The Clash].

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

I'm of the rather radical opinion that if the US was to actually, now that the Taliban have asserted control, make a serious effort to establish a diplomatic mission and provide some no frills humanitarian aid it would be a game changer. They would re-establish a presence and thus snooker the stated aims of the Chinese. It would be a complete turn about for them but I suspect it would pay dividends in future.  I've always said that after Cuba fell to Castro's revolution the Yanks should have just accepted it and beaten the Russians to the punch by providing aid. It would have saved over 60 years of tension for no purpose that I can see.

 

However that would take a massive shift of American public opinion in the way they conduct their international relations. I am reminded of how when the British Empire finally crashed and burned in the 1950s the British government accepted the fact and went into trading mode. They were able to establish reasonable relations with formerly rebellious subjects fairly quickly. Unfortunately the Americans are not pragmatic in their relations - which is a pity. Too many fundamentalist religious groups who have a somewhat medieval view of the world. 

[Annie]

2 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

Unfortunately the Americans are not pragmatic in their relations - which is a pity. Too many fundamentalist religious groups who have a somewhat medieval view of the world. 

The American default tendency to kill everybody who doesn't look like them has done them no favours at all when it comes to attempts to build bridges and establish diplomatic relations with former enemies.