The Emperor’s Words

Enjoy more here!

The Washington Post posted:

The Supreme Court threw out a 63-year-old law designed to restrain the influence of big business and unions on elections Thursday, ruling that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress. The decision could drastically alter who gives and gets hundreds of millions of dollars in this year’s crucial midterm elections. By a 5-4 vote, the court overturned two of its own decisions as well as the decades-old law that said companies and labor unions can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads. The decision threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions.

Critics of the stricter limits have argued that they amount to an unconstitutional restraint of free speech, and the court majority agreed.

“The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach,” Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion, joined by his four more conservative colleagues.

Strongly disagreeing, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his dissent, “The court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation.”

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined Stevens’ dissent, parts of which he read aloud in the courtroom.

The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

Advocates of strong campaign finance regulations have predicted that a court ruling against the limits would lead to a flood of corporate and union money in federal campaigns as early as this year’s midterm congressional elections.

“It’s the Super Bowl of bad decisions,” said Common Cause president Bob Edgar, a former congressman from Pennsylvania.

The opinion goes to the heart of laws dating back to the Gilded Age when Congress passed the Tillman Act in 1907 banning corporations from donating money directly to federal candidates. Though that prohibition still stands, the same can’t be said for much of the century-long effort that followed to separate politics from corporate money.

The decision’s most immediate effect is to permit corporate and union-sponsored political ads to run right up to the moment of an election, and to allow them to call for the election or defeat of a candidate. In presidential elections and in highly contested congressional contests, that could mean a dramatic increase in television advertising competing for time and public attention.

In the long term, corporations, their industry associations and labor unions are free to tap their treasuries to assist candidates, although the spending may not be coordinated with the candidates.

“It’s going to be the Wild Wild West,” said Ben Ginsberg, a Republican attorney who has represented several GOP presidential campaigns. “If corporations and unions can give unlimited amounts … it means that the public debate is significantly changed with a lot more voices and it means that the loudest voices are going to be corporations and unions.”

The case does not affect political action committees, which mushroomed after post-Watergate laws set the first limits on contributions by individuals to candidates. Corporations, unions and others may create PACs to contribute directly to candidates, but they must be funded with voluntary contributions from employees, members and other individuals, not by corporate or union treasuries.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas joined Kennedy to form the majority in the main part of the case.

Roberts, in a separate opinion, said that upholding the limits would have restrained “the vibrant public discourse that is at the foundation of our democracy.”

Stevens complained that those justices overreached by throwing out earlier Supreme Court decisions that had not been at issue when this case first came to the court.

“Essentially, five justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law,” Stevens said.

The case began when a conservative group, Citizens United, made a 90-minute movie that was very critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton as she sought the Democratic presidential nomination. Citizens United wanted to air ads for the anti-Clinton movie and distribute it through video-on-demand services on local cable systems during the 2008 Democratic primary campaign.

But federal courts said the movie looked and sounded like a long campaign ad, and therefore should be regulated like one.

The movie was advertised on the Internet, sold on DVD and shown in a few theaters. Campaign regulations do not apply to DVDs, theaters or the Internet.

The court first heard arguments in March, then asked for another round of arguments about whether corporations and unions should be treated differently from individuals when it comes to campaign spending.

The justices convened in a special argument session in September, Sotomayor’s first. The conservative justices gave every indication then that they were prepared to take the steps they did on Thursday.

The justices, with only Thomas in dissent, did uphold McCain-Feingold requirements that anyone spending money on political ads must disclose the names of contributors.

Ahahahahaha.

Yet another American twit who invited me to some random crap event on the other side of the World, how delightful.

So, let start today’s lesson in “Why culture is DEAD! 101″.

“Keep Movin On..” Has bland music, a boring singer and lyrics that sound so overwhelmingly uninteresting it’s actually painful, seriously, my liver hurts like hell while listening to this.

MY LIVER!

She babbles on about how “you have to know pain, to recognize pleasure” and some crap like that. Move to fucking Somalia if you want to know pain you fucking useless media whore.

And fire whoever writes your songs.

And you can run away from your past, I do so everyday, I used to be a member of the Military Junta of Burma, and look at me now! A random angry blogger.

Amazing isn’t it, to bad you can’t run away from this crap Lady T.

“Fijate en mi” is on Spanish, so I haven’t got a clue what she’s singing, but it does explain why there’s this small air of hesitation when she sings on English.

Also, the title of the song’s taken sweetheart, at least that’s what the Dark Lord Google tells me.

“Letter To God”. GOD IS DEAD! And this is the evidence, no merciful god would ever allow anyone to think this was good, or acceptable or not a crime against Humanity.

It’s religious rap, I really can’t imagine how I could possibly hate this drivel more than I already do. Seriously, “Lord, give me a sign”, why the hell do you think he/she/it would ever give you a sign, you random American idiot.

This is a a sign to you: “You are not creative and all you make is negativity.”

“Latinos Unidos”. I have enough understanding of Spanish to know what this crap means, it some ethnocentric bullshit about how her “people” the latino should stick together, and how she’s a visionary and fuck I can’t keep that one running.

Visionary? Ha, you’re about as visionary as my dear old dad, who sells golf equipment.

“LA CARCACHA” starts with on hell of an odd musical intro, and what the fuck is this?

I feel like I’m playing Tropico again, to bad the latin music is ruined by someone who think she doesn’t sound like every other singer on the surface of the planet.

“We Belong Together”, oh dear Allah, this is to much, it’s just about the most generic crap song ever, “A young Janet Jackson” indeed.

And trust me girl, you’re absolutely nothing, seriously, I’ve meet sentient fungi with more talent than you, which is a long and rather boring story.

Also, I can’t speak Spanish, and that doesn’t diminish me in the slightest, you racist.

“West Coast TWO Step”. I presume this is a song about some sort of dancing style, or it’s a song about the cultural disintegration of Latin-American society inside the United States, caused by the rampant commercialism and the mediocre cultural equalization, eliminating any talent, and replacing it with gimmicks like this useless whore.

She doesn’t even have decent tits, or a decent face.

“Baila” is a song about the diminishing size of the Aral Sea, causing the destruction of the fishing industry of generations of Kazakh and Uzbek people, causing enormous environmental damage to the surroundings.

And all caused by really shitty agricultural water diversion, well done Soviet Union.

In reality this is just some Spanish crap, who sounds like shit.

“Wat Chu Gon Do?” I’m getting increasingly tempted to go to Los Angeles and walk into an “event” with you on the list.

And by “event”, I mean that local youth-club you probably know so well, you useless twat, just to hang around in the background yelling: “You’re shit, get off the fucking stage!” with a thick Scottish accent.

“Inferno” is the end of the line for this whore of a commercialised woman. And it’s on Spanish, and without any doubt crap.

So what have we learned today? Fuck Los Angeles, and fuck the rampant racism in American Society, that spawns this kinda shit.

Even if this one is so utterly normal it’s actually funny.

Later kids, don’t listen to rap.

Today’s FIRST torrent of overwhelming hatred is directed against Carly Patterson, who are apparently some random athlete who won Olympic Gold, which, of course, means she is doped over her fucking ears with enough chemicals to fuel the entire country of Moldavia.

And her music is just plain awful, bland, boring and sounds pretty much like EVERY other stupid pop girl on the surface of this miserable little planet.

Now, normally I’d review all her awful songs separately, but she only deigns to show us pitiful mortals, who do not sip upon the sweet Olympian nectar of celebrity, samples of her awful crap.

But Youtube saves the day, and presents me with a full length of one of her songs, Here I Am, I wont embedded the damn thing, as it is a giant copyright infringement, and will probably be removed whenever the fucking Tought Police sees it.

Or the freaks who take a twisted sort of pleasure in reporting shit to the “authorities”.

It just so horrible bland, “Here I Am”? More like “Here I’m bland”, it sound like every single other generic crap song produced in the last ten years of corporate mediocracy. Why does this exist? Why does she still exist in the public sphere? WHY?

ANSWER ME YOU FUCKING TASTELESS BASTARDS! WHY DOES SHIT LIKE THIS EXIST? I can sort of understand rap, in the same way I can sort of understand why wearing giant earrings might be attractive in the right culture.

But this has no purpose, she sings awful, hell, it probably isn’t here actual voice, I’d bet a billion imaginary dollars it’s been though more computers than this entire update ever will be.

She doesn’t even have good tits.

Now, as a bonus, because that was pretty fucking short, let’s have some other random crap band/singer/sentient virus, that send me some invitation to an event that happened, oh roughly, 20.000 kilometers away from my FUCKING HOME AND COUNTRY! And that the damn fuckers just spam out to whoever and whatever they can.

The next target is Dayna Jade, who sings in pretty horrible metal rock.

Which is fitting, as she sings pretty horrible.

“Lookin 4 Romance w Black Pearle” as they call it, “Looking for Romance with Black Pearl” as any civilized member of human society would once have called it, before to total disintegration of our now useless Society.

Horrible music, horrible singer, horrible lyrics, it just so averagely horrible that you really only can hate it, rather than loath it. Well done I suppose.

And I’m pretty sure they don’t have a bass, wait, yes they do, had to turn up the bass on the subwoofer, they do have a bass, oh wait, that’s just the drums.

Guess they couldn’t find anyone sufficiently desperate.

“Can U Feel” was recorded live.

In a barn.

In the countryside of Moldavia.

“Time” was also recorded live.

In what sounds like a country with the technical recording equipment, equivalent to Chernobyl. Seriously, why the hell did you upload this shit? Also, that’s one hell of a poor guitar riff.

To hell with them, they aren’t going to amount to anything before they go Goth and Symphonic rock anyway.

Still no proper tits.

I’m back, and I’m as angry and miserable as always, have you been keeping up with the news lately? And no, I’m not referring to the latest World of Warcraft patch you useless twit. I’m talking about the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009, or as I call it “The Prime Minster of Denmark’s excuse to avoid doing bugger all for a fucking year”.

In case you haven’t realized yet, the entire Conference will do something good, and by good, I mean that the European Union just keeps doing what it has been doing for over a fucking decade, lower the carbon release of an entire fucking continent, ignoring the whiny bollocks of the industrialists idiots who lives in Switzerland, and thus happily avoids being FUCKING FLOODED!

The real issue is of course that you fucking Americans just don’t give a shit about the rest of the fucking planet, as long as you can watch your retarded bullshit Nascar and football, you’re happy as can be.

“Fuck you got mine” indeed.

Because guess what, the American Way of Life is a piece of over-consumerist, environmentally damaging, impossibly to maintain, debt-ridden, psychologically damaging and plain fucking stupid concept, and anyone who will honestly defend it should be dragged outside and thrown in a frozen lake.

Or permanently exiled to Sudan, that’ll teach the fuckers not to consume in an excessive manner, to bad exile isn’t a permitted punishment according to the Universal Deceleration of Human Rights. Bet you didn’t knew that one, have you even read it? Guess what! I have! Hell, I’ve read the American Constitution, and realize that it seems to be a pit of useless paper, that everyone in Yankistan ignore and pretend isn’t real.

Never forgot, “In God we Trust” hasn’t got shit to do with the American founding fathers. You want “E pluribus unum”, Out of many one for the original traditional motto of the US, isn’t that an awesome motto? Sure as fuck beats “In God we Trust”, Jefferson would strangle Eisenhower if he could.

And hey, even the European Union has a cooler motto: In varietate concordia, United in diversity, Forenet i mangfoldighed.

Yeah, and hey, we’re better than you yanks anyway:

Now fucking ratify Kyoto already you useless little corrupt ridden bastards.

Let’s do this chronologically, as in, let’s do this from the start to the end of a standard gaming experience:

The Launcher, and I really haven’t got a clue why it has to exist, is a horrible buggy piece of shit, it keeps wanting to patch every freaking time I fire it up, and it often takes an age to even do anything.

Completely useless crap, that should only exist if it works absolutely perfect, and without loading screens, you dimwits.

In case you are unaware, Champions Online is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, also know as an MMORPG or an mumorpuger

It’s been spat out from City of Heroes/Villains Developer Cryptic Studios, and does suffer from many of the issues of those two old shit games, it does solve their one biggest issue:

Not all missions happen in warehouses, caves and ancient cities that all look the fucking same.

And the engine doesn’t make my computer want to murder itself, which is impressive, because City of Villains is roughly a billion years old.

I blame PhysX.

But onwards to the actual game, rather than me complaining about silly launchers and poor patching servers.

It’s basically a game where you get to pretend your Wolverine, Iron Man or Superman, beating the shit out of evil where ever it comes.

It’s just City of Heroes in a new sparkling slightly less ugly version, even by the same damn company.

We start off with the Character Creation process, which is so mindbogglingly large its beyond absurdity and well into idiotic, using it you’ll create your own personal spandex clad imaginary friend, in just about any way.

From the size of her breasts (Oddly enough set to full on most of the basic templates) to the blue screaming neon beard and to your biggest dream, if you’re a filthy sexual deviant, a fox tail.

Which bring us to a big one, furries, a lot of them, holy shit, are there ever many of these little freaks, running around, thinking they are acceptable and creative.

Little do they now, they are nought but little horrors spawning forth from their horrid little sub-culture.

Generally, you’re going to see a lot of freaks and copyright violations, becasue they are an easy escape from being creative and fun.

And sorry “Foxy”, you’re about as origianl as “Legolaths” in World of Warcraft.

The game’s biggest strength is really the character creator, it’s really the defining part, in a game about guys and girls in silly spandex jumpsuits, and it’s probably the most extensive in this generation of MMOs, only surpassed by it’s defacto predecessor City of Heroes/Villains, and that’s only because of the standard “More shit for you to get your hands on” that keeps MMOs running.

Unfortunately, the rest of the game suffers from some pretty bad flaws.

The global instanced server, may be cheaper and more convenient, but dear Zeus is there lag, so much fucking lag.

Which is a pretty fucking huge problem, when a shit ton of the games powers and abilities needed some from of quick-time event to function at full efficiency, either holding down the button/mouse key or timing the hold on, or simply turning your shoulder mounted mini-gun off whenever your target looks like a piece of cheese.

Hell, even the wonderful travel powers, in some cases, need a reasonable low ping, especially the teleport one, which functions by moving you out of the “world” and then let you move and fly really fast, and then slam you back in, with a slow falling effect in case you’re up high.

You can probably imagine what happens when lags fucks it all up right? Let me just describe it for those lesser lights of you: You fall, very hard, very long and very painful.

So if you live in the wrong continent, and/or doesn’t have a connection worthy of Sweden, though fucking luck.

And remember, it only works in Eve Online, because it’s basically turn-based, you target your enemy, specify speed and manoeuvre and fire away.

It doesn’t really work for anything that actually needs you to do other than “Target A and blow it up before it blows you up.”

Which, anything but elegantly, brings me to loading times, and oh boy, they are long, malevolently long, when considering the size of the area loaded.

I think one of the latests patches may have screwed something horribly up, the loading time sure wasn’t this long a few days ago.

Isn’t that fun when it happens?

The core gameplay is basically the same as City of Heroes/Villains, with a few slight improvements, I’m not seeing nearly as much copy-pasting in the missions (Quests) you’re being sent out to do, that’s a large improvement.

It’s still just, find criminals on rooftops, beat them senseless, profit.

Why so many gang-members and terrorists and demons and zombies and mechanical cowboys hang around on roof-tops are a bit of a wonder to me, especially as a few of the travel powers sure as crap wont be going there.

So realism is right out of the window here, there’s probably more realism in World of Warcraft, a game with elves and exploding goblins.

At least they have corrupt governments, that’s a load of realism right there.

Unfortunately, this review just wont be any longer, the recent patch presented the greatest threat to Champions Online: Cryptic Studios and their lovely incompetence.

An unpolished gem it sure isn’t, more like a polished piece of Anthracite Coal .

Valuable, action-packed and yet, still a piece of fucking coal.

However, with enough pressure, maybe a diamond will emerge, a small diamond, but a diamond nonetheless.

How to summon Thunderstorms.:

In order to summon a proper Thunderstorm, you need the following items:

Two tears of a mandarin duck, three if male.
Four hairs from a goat’s beard, seven if female, eight if pregnant.
Seven tails of a virgin horse’s hair, nineteen if on fire.
Toenail clippings from a cat, captured in a back alley in Istanbul, approximately seventeen gram, nineteen if male, and twenty-one if on a Wednesday, regardless of gender.

Proceed with a full pulverization of the ingredients, separately, if done during the spring, use Italian olive oil in the process.

Bring seventeen litres of water, from an Icelandic glacier, to a full boil, mix the gathered items together with a gentle hand, if on a Friday, avoid using timber to induce the boil.

Please be advised that all these operations should be conducted during a normal weather situation, with normal pressure and during a full moon.

After seventeen minutes and 42 seconds, remove from heat source, and apply in a triangular shape, at the centre of the desired location of event.

Apparently, the Danish Anti-Piracy Group has officially given up, on attempting to sue private persons for file-sharing, presumably they’ll instead concentrate on the websites who provide the services.

I quote the translated article on dr.dk.

Anti-Piracy Group drops attempts to punish pirates
7. November 2009 09.08

There is now a free rein to private pirates who illegally download music, movies and software.The Anti-Piracy Group, chasing pirates, dropping now to pull the illegal file sharers in court because it is virtually impossible to get them convicted.

We have been forced, because it arrived in district court, that it requires very strong and concrete evidence to have convicted these people. We simply could not lift the burden of proof, says lawyer Maria Fredenslund from the Anti-Piracy Group to Danish Newspaper Politiken.

The Anti-Piracy Group, on behalf of film and music industry, have since 2002 tried to stop illegal piracy and file sharing.

No judgments without confession
The Anti-Piracy Group has acknowledged that they can not get convicted people without either taking them in flagrante delicto or threaten them to confess. In practice, this means that without a confession – no case, says Per Overbeck, who has been attorney for the defendants in a number of cases of illegal file sharing.
Four principal Danish Supreme Court rulings last year resulted in three acquittals and one conviction for illegal file sharing. And the latter ruling was merely a confession.

So you see.

And why does this happen? Simple my friends, because we still have a functional justice system, where fancy big shot lawyers means absolutely nothing, as it’s the evidence that matters most.

It’s called “Civil Law” or “Roman Law”, where the judges dominate the courtroom, and happily prevent lawyers from making giant speeches, in order to draw on the emotions on the civilian jury.

And that’s why you can pretty much pirate away in Denmark now, just don’t fucking confess to anything, remember:

Innocent, until proven otherwise.

Amanullah Khan, the first chap to assume the title “King of Afghanistan” and the founder of the modern state of Afghanistan. He fought a war against the British, and kinda won.

He actually started this one, and was then thrown the fuck out of the British Raj, thanks to the British military’s superior technology and air power.

Yup, turns out being able to bomb the shit out of Kabul, in an age without Flak guns, is a useful thing, who’d knew?

So, who won? Both of them really, even if the Afghans won the most, sure, the British won militarily, in that they got rid of the Afghani invasion force, but they didn’t gain anything, they accepted the existence of Afghanistan as an independent Kingdom, and reaffirmed the earlier border treaties.

And what did the British then get? Well-armed tribesmen, going nuts in the North-West Frontier, from that day and until the fall of the British Raj, and really, still going strong.

So what happened to our man Amanullah Khan? He won didn’t he? Technically spoken, he did, to bad he then tried to reform a little to fast.

Guess what happened to when you try to change a VERY conservative country really fast? You get murdered, that’s right, five points to Gryffindor.

His immediate successor lasted for decades and he was later described as “Inayatullah Khan the Magnificent”, oh wait, his reign lasted from January 14, 1929 to January 17, 1929.

His succossor had slightly more luck, at least he wasn’t chased around in his Rolls Royce by guys on freaking horses, he still only lasted a few months before being overthrown by:

Habibullāh Kalakāni, who took on the really impressive title: Habībullāh Khādem-e Dīn-e Rasūlallāh (“The servant of the religion of the messenger of God”).

He then ruled for a few months and then got overthrown and executed, his last words where: “Oh God, I have nothing to ask from you, you have given me everything that, I have wanted, you made me Amir…”. Pretty impressive from a guy who really returns to the traditions, including murder!

The next guy, was Mohammed Nadir Shah, King of the God granted Kingdom of Afghanistan and its dependencies.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Mohammad Nadir was related to the Royal family through the usual convoluted mess caused by one of royalty’s old pastimes: Fornications and another of the old pastimes: Backup heirs.

So he gets power and rapidly abolishes most of his predecessor’s reforms, presumably making the enormously conservative majority happy, he then goes and writes a “constitution”, which was basically him going “My family and friends are awesome, the rest of you will do whatever we say.”

He then goes and does the smart thing, build roads and a national army from absolutely nothing, he then goes and does the horribly brutal thing of continuing the Pashtunization his predecessors had been doing, just with bigger guns, probably wiped out a few hundred thousand, not a bad record by a horrible despotic monarch.

No match for anything the Russian Tzars ever did.

He managed to stay in power by using a method similar to freaking Emperor Palpatine, he played the various factions, tribes and clans against each other. And oddly enough, that actually works quite often, if also backfires quite often.

He was then, in the traditionally manner, assassinated, even if it was by some schoolboy, who was of course killed.

Then his entire family was horribly murdered, probably raped and according to a rumour, one of the woman in his extended family was pregnant. She gives birth in prison, the baby is released and probably placed with some loyal family, the mother snaps, and if this had been a video game or a fantasy movie, the boy would return and avenge his lost family.

He probably just went and died of some disease, if he actually existed.

And here we comes to the last King of Afghanistan: Mohammed Zahir Shah. Who died a few years ago, thus breaking a proud tradition of being murdered by someone else.

He was characterized by being a fairly decent monarch, which really just mean that he didn’t really do anything for the first thirty years of his fairly long reign, except improving foreign relations with anyone who knew Afghanistan was an actual nation.

Until 1963 when he goes and proclaims a new constitution with all the trappings of a civilized nation, civil rights, equality between the sexes, parliament, the whole thing.

To bad factionalism and his cousin killed the whole thing off in 1973, when Mohammed Daoud Khan goes and overthrows him while he was being operated in Italy, and then goes and breaks tradition by proclaiming himself President, rather than doing what everyone before that did, and just proclaiming himself King/Emir.

To be fair to Zahir, there was an attempted assination in 1991, decades after he was thrown out of Afghanistan, by some guy pretending to be Portuguese, and he did manage to return in 2002, when the Taliban had been thrown out.

He then died of old age.

But back to Daoud, who was kinda angry he’d been removed from any power by the 1963 consitution, goes and forms a defacto military dictatorship, with the rubberstamp of a loyalist Loya Jirga, which is a sort of old school tribal gathering, kinda like the Witenagemot of old England.

He then goes and pisses all over his neighbour by his foolish Pashtun nationalism, thus resulting in Pakistan closing the border and going “Fuck you”.

Thus pretty much forcing poor Daud to look towards the now Soviet Union, who delightfully responds by sending him cheap military equipment.

He even goes and actually invades Pakistan, and is then repulsed by, get this, Pakistani Pashtun Tribesmen.

That’s right, the guy he’s hoping “liberate” actually helped the Pakistani army fighting his forces off, isn’t that just fucking ironic?

He then goes and suppress Islamic fundamentalist, proclaim a single party state, distance himself form the communists and in 1978, in a return to traditions, he gets overthrown, this time not by a family member, but the Communists.

He then gets shot, and officially “Retires due to Health issues”, which is technically correct, pretty sure that bullets in your brain counts as “health issues”.

The Communists then goes and tries to turn the country into a socialists wonderstate, to bad they kinda missed the whole “Islam is a really strong religion” thing, which caused the entire scheme to fail hilariously, forcing the Soviets to intervene, and here we go, it’s time for war.

The Soviets invasion of Afghanistan went really well in the begining, and then got bogged down by angry Afghani tribesmen, kinda like the British did, and then the CIA went and started support rebels too, making it even harder for the Soviets.

The Soviets tried for nine long years, then gave up and buggered out in 1989, they did keep supplying the Afghanistan Communists with weapons until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Communists in Kabul lasted to 1992, when they kinda ran out of everything, from food and water to guns and bullets.

The war basically fucked everything up, the infrastructure went to hell in a hand-basket, and even through the Soviets had helped the Afghani’s with raw material extraction, even today, Afghanistan has a few dozen natural gas operations build by the Soviets, it all just fell apart during the civil war.

Now, when the Communist, the popular misconception probably is that the Taliban seized power immediately after, they didn’t actually, sure, they had control of some areas, but most of Afghanistan was under control of that weeks attempt at a nation-state, which fell in 1996, went he Taliban went and returned to tradition, by proclaiming the Emirate of Afghanistan, with a brand new Emir.

Mohammed Omar, who according to images, have a giant beard:

The Taliban basically went and turned the clock back around a century, to just before the turn of the last century, brutally enforcing the barbaric Sharia law.

It just went downhill from there really, the Taliban really didn’t do anything good for the country in this entire period, isn’t that awesome?

They probably could have gotten away with it, until the pissed the Americans off in 2002, and got invaded by everyone’s favourite superpower, The United States of America.

Who then beat the shit out of the Taliban, kicked them out of the cities, and then did the same freaking thing as the British and the Soviets and tried to put their own puppets in power, and by puppet, I mean Hamid Karzai, a corrupt fucker with a list of sins a billion miles long.

Why they didn’t just dig out the old King and put him into place, proclaiming the restoration of Afghanistan, I don’t know.

So the history of Afghanistan can basically by summed up like this, the cooler the beard, the better the ruler.

Now enjoy this Frontline documentary about how Obama’s trying to get the mess in Afghanistan under control, to bad it’s probably way to late.

Or: How I learned to love Afghanistan and hate Ahmad Shah Durrani ,Padshah of the Durrani Empire.

Afghanistan, originating in the old Durrani Empire founded by the person just mentioned in 1747, in comparison, the United States went independent in 1776. So Afghanistan is actually older, as a nation, then the United States of America, even if the Durrani Empire, like most the nations in that region (Hindu Kush) of the world, where very decentralised.

The Durrani Empire basically came into being through a combinations of tribal Pashtuns, one hell of a military leader and the massive incompetence of whatever useless Shah the Persian Empire had that particular week.

It last about as long as it’s founders life, and then collapsed into the standard “Civil War, kept nicely inside the Empire with a defacto Head of State”, also common in the area.

Sounds delightfully stable doesn’t it? It wasn’t really, but it was still technically speaking a nation, much in the same way Somalia is a nation, and how Zaire was.

Some central control, localized around the capital and whatever clans, tribes and factions support the government that day.

Still, if nothing else, Ahmad did pick one hell of a cool extra title to add to his “Shah/Emir” title: “Durr-i-Durrani” (“pearl of pearls” or “pearl of the age”), yup, he wanted to be adressed as Ahmad Shah Durrani, Durr-i-Durrani.

Isn’t that pretty fucking awesome? More leaders should do that shit, we really should start bringing back Epithet and nicknames for our leaders.

Like George “The Warmonger” Bush, or really, just George the Second of the House of Bush.

But back to the story, most of Ahmad’s successors where either to greedy, to incompetent or generally shit, so they got murdered off and another Royal House took over, fairly normal, happened all the time, pretty much everywhere.

Even if it at some stage usually goes from “Kill everyone who used to belong to the old family” to “Wait for the inbreeding to kill them off”.

So, in comes Dost Mohammad Khan, some tribal leader with enough prestige, men at arms and charisma to usurp whatever Durrani remnant was at the throne.

To bad he then got into trouble with his neighbours playing a bit of dynastic games trying to get some predecessor prince into his place.

It started out with the Punjab Kingdom next door, and then, enter the English, the British Raj, The Largest Empire on the Planet.

Despite the advice of yet another hilariously awesome British explorer, the English went with the old price, who’d been overthrown thirty bloody years before.

Turns out he just bribed the Punjab king with the fucking Koh-i-Noor, he’d gotten his hands on, somehow, from when the old Mughal Emperor’s kinda went and lost it.

So, the British march, with some help from the Sikh, onto Kabul, wreck the shit out of whatever the Afghans could throw at them, and the learned an important lesson: “Mountain countries with no maps are a fucking pain.”

So, having “conquered” Afghanistan and restored their preferred ruler, they mostly went home, leaving around 8,000 men left to protect their new puppet king.

You can probably guess what happened, the English gradually losing control, realize it’s probably a good idea, to get the fuck out of Afghanistan while they can, strike a deal to move their army and whatever civilians they need defended out of Kabul and back to the Raj.

So, they fall back, they retreat.

During the winter, with the some 4,500 remaining men they had left, and some 12,000 civilians. Harassed by local tribesmen, the cold and the terrain, they lost some amount of people, around 3,000 in the early stages of the retreat, that was pretty chaotic in nature.

In the end, the commander of the expiditon just shut down, stopped issuing orders, and most of the officers and whatever other nobles surrendered to the Afghans, safe in the promise of future ransoms, any servants, wives of sepoy forces or whatever other hanger-ons? Killed, to the last man.

In the end, 65 remaining British soldiers made it to the small village of Gandamak, where they conducted their last stand.

They where pretty much all killed, three where taken prisoner, of the 8,000 man strong garrison, guess how many made it back:

One, a single lonely assistant Surgeon, the single survivor of some 16,000 British subjects, the only one who made it all the way back to the Raj.

The English, of course, assembled a vengeance army, marched on Kabul, and burned it to the ground. The Prince who probably ordered the massacre, was quietly poisoned, and the old King was released by the British, who basically went, “Fuck this stupid country, they can do whatever they want” and let him go.

He, of course, went and got rid of their original puppet king. So it was essentially a giant waste of resources and lives.

So Dost Mohammad Khan get’s his throne back, then dies, his son takes over, gets overthrown by a brother, then overthrows his brother.

Back to business eh? Except now a new player comes into the scene, Imperial Russia, interested in getting control of Afghanistan and Baluchistan, so they’d get access to the Indian Ocean, perhaps even the ability to invade the British Raj in a giant land war.

Obviously, that really wasn’t anything the British could stand for, so the Great Game in India really started up. In this time, Sher Ali Khan, Dost’s son, tries to remain neutral.

Fat, fucking chance.

To cut it nice and short, the British win, and win properly this time, they accept Afghani internal control, remembering what happened last time, and assume full responsibility for foreign affairs, through a treaty signed by the successor of old Ali, who was understandably scared the the British murder machine.

Basically a Protectorate agreement, a standard British move.

The Russians then went and send in their little claimant, recognizing just how weak Yaqub was, enter Abdur Rahman Khan, and his really fucking awesome beard, serious, he probably ruled by virtue of the best beard.

He basically went and re-established Afghanistan from almost scratch, getting rid of the weak old Emir, and negotiating a solid border with the British Raj.

He was basically a little effective reactionary military dictator, rulling through espinage and brutal adherence to his despotic rule.

And Afghanistan prospered, and yet, he was still basically a puppet of the British, even if he really just accepted that the British would pay him, to accept their control of foreign affairs, oddly enough he didn’t really mind getting paid 1.85 million rupees and being allowed to import war munitions.

I wonder why?

He also took an awesome extra title: Zia-ul-Millat-Wa-ud Din (“Light of the nation and religion”), even today, his descendants (Who are pretty much everywhere, thanks to fornication) use the last name Ziyaee. It’s the beard.

His successor pretty much kept the status quo, even ignoring the Ottoman Sultan’s, de-jure Spiritual head of Islam, requests for help during World War One.

And here it comes, the start of Modern Afghanistan, Amanullah Khan and the third Anglo-Afghan War: To be Continued.

Suckers.