Pakistan: how long until finally, finally the gloves are taken off?

[Skybird]

And more good news.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11498443

I always was totally and completely against outsourcing military capacities to private business. When in Europe the private armies of private entrepreneurs (=mercenaries) got sorted out and replaced with regular standing armies wearing "the king's colours", it resulted in higher combat efficiency and better cointrol and discipline, also, private business no longer was that able to interfere with politics in order to prevent war because peace meant no income and profits. - And now we are going back to those times of Landsknechte and Condottieris.

In novella 181 of his Trecentonovelle, the fourteenth-century storyteller Franco

Sacchetti has John Hawkwood encounter two Franciscan monks near his fortress

at Montecchio. The monks greet the Englishman.

‘‘Monsignore, God grant you peace,’’ said the monks.

‘‘And may God take away your alms,’’ Hawkwood responded immediately.

‘‘Lord, why do you speak to us this way?’’ asked the frightened monks.

‘‘Indeed, because you spoke thus to me,’’ replied John.

‘‘We thought we spoke well,’’ said the monks.
‘‘How can you think you spoke well,’’ said Hawkwood, ‘‘when you approach me and
say that God should let me die of hunger? Don’t you know that I live from war and
peace would destroy me? And as I live by war, you live by alms. So that the answer I

gave you is the same as your greeting.’

Hawkwoord was an English mercenary and successful soldier in the 14th century. He started in the hundred-years war, later fought in France and finally Italy. He fought both during wars with his army, and in times of peace, marauding with bands of bandits then, to get them fed and make some cash.