Possibly due to there not being so many people around at the moment. Summer may not have been great shakes across much of n. europe, but an awful lot of people seem to have gone awol and we just don't have too many voices on the board. So those of us left are getting a bit bored and fractious. A couple of saturdays ago I was apparently the only person logged in for about 5 hours.

And of course, there's actually not been much politics going on, that doesn't help. Thank god for Sakashvilli going nuts else all we'd have had to talk about would have been the American election.

So !!! Any bets about what's gonna happen in the next couple of months that gonna get us jumping ? Aside from some election of little consequence.

My bet is that the Pakistan/Afghanistan thing is gonna get real hot before the end of September. The Taleban have turned a corner and seem to feel they're gonna win. They're established in the towns, setting up parallel administrations all around Kabul. Meanwhile there's a surge (remember them) in Helmland province at the moment, but it's only for a couple more weeks. Then, all bets are off.

After all.... well the politics are getting tasty. Karzai is having genuine problems. The pakistani govt is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea over who they support and who they suppress. The russians are cutting NATO's throat regards supplies. And NATO still doesn't really know what it's supposed to do or how best to go about it, so it's just killing anybody who might be a bad guy and blowing stuff up without regard as to any strategy and just pissing off every Afghani in the whole beknighted country.

This is gonna be where the shit will go down and long before november. I hope Obama has a cunning response cos otherwise McCain is gonna have cakewalk.

keep to the Fen Causeway