eagerbeaver:
" Cant wait to see the cctv footage…".Oddly enough, I have no desire at all to watch a very sad and disturbed coward mow children down with a LGV.
Must be something wrong with me.
+1
Carryfast:
The only difference between GW1 v GW2 was that we invaded the country as part of a campaign of regime change.
The two do not even compare. To change a country’s regime is not comparable to defeating a country’s military on the battlefield.
I might speculate that the closest we’ve had to this in the past is with Hitler. We razed much of Germany’s civil infrastructure to the ground, smashed their military to smithereens, sent millions of men over to clear the place. It cost us 6 years of the entire economic potential of our world empire, plus colossal borrowing from elsewhere, and is as close to total destruction of a modern society as mankind has so far known.
And what we really achieved by military means was to very modestly reduce the population, defeat only a conventional army (not a guerrilla one), tire the population’s appetite for further offensive campaigns and a modest change in the balance of political views of Germans - the second time we’d had to do this in 25 years! The basic patterns of life for Germans, the everyday relations between people, before the war was much the same as after.
Now, when we set it out like this, what are our goals in relation to these foreign regimes today? Are we trying to eliminate specific excesses, curtail offensive campaigns, make the democratic population think twice about their foreign policy?
Or are we trying to change the basic patterns of people’s everyday lives? Adjust their internal politics as if it were a dial on a machine control panel? There is an astounding arrogance and hubris amongst the people on the street in this country, about what sort of resources and methods would be required to achieve these latter goals. It’s closer to the scale of occupying and terraforming the planet Mars, than it is to giving a bloody nose to a conventional army.
You can’t have it both ways.If it’s all supposedly about payback for attacks on a country they are supposedly no longer loyal to,based on split allegiance,then repatriation is obviously the only answer.So which is it ?.Bearing in mind the analogy would be like ethnic German Americans attacking their own country in/after WW1/2 because they viewed Dresden and Hamburg etc as a war crime.
We fought WW2 precisely because Germany had a justifiable grudge about the outcome of WW1 and the burden of reparations, and America did support the Nazis, at least initially, with loans, machinery, etc.
Juddian:
By the way, i worked today and seldom listen to the radio, but happened to have it on Smooth at some point mid afternoon on the way back when the news came on, wish i bloody hadn’t.What stuck in my craw and had me hurling obcenities at the radio was the up to date report about Nice and now the scum who did this was described as a ‘‘lorry driver’’, not terrorist scum bag or any of the hundred of unprintable descriptions i’ve got for the low life, no he was a lorry driver apparently.
Just thought you’d like to know.
I understand what you’re saying, but I think his profession would have been mentioned no matter what his job was.
Rjan:
Carryfast:
The only difference between GW1 v GW2 was that we invaded the country as part of a campaign of regime change.The two do not even compare. To change a country’s regime is not comparable to defeating a country’s military on the battlefield.
I might speculate that the closest we’ve had to this in the past is with Hitler. We razed much of Germany’s civil infrastructure to the ground, smashed their military to smithereens, sent millions of men over to clear the place. It cost us 6 years of the entire economic potential of our world empire, plus colossal borrowing from elsewhere, and is as close to total destruction of a modern society as mankind has so far known.
And what we really achieved by military means was to very modestly reduce the population, defeat only a conventional army (not a guerrilla one), tire the population’s appetite for further offensive campaigns and a modest change in the balance of political views of Germans - the second time we’d had to do this in 25 years! The basic patterns of life for Germans, the everyday relations between people, before the war was much the same as after.
Now, when we set it out like this, what are our goals in relation to these foreign regimes today? Are we trying to eliminate specific excesses, curtail offensive campaigns, make the democratic population think twice about their foreign policy?
Or are we trying to change the basic patterns of people’s everyday lives? Adjust their internal politics as if it were a dial on a machine control panel? There is an astounding arrogance and hubris amongst the people on the street in this country, about what sort of resources and methods would be required to achieve these latter goals. It’s closer to the scale of occupying and terraforming the planet Mars, than it is to giving a bloody nose to a conventional army.
You can’t have it both ways.If it’s all supposedly about payback for attacks on a country they are supposedly no longer loyal to,based on split allegiance,then repatriation is obviously the only answer.So which is it ?.Bearing in mind the analogy would be like ethnic German Americans attacking their own country in/after WW1/2 because they viewed Dresden and Hamburg etc as a war crime.
We fought WW2 precisely because Germany had a justifiable grudge about the outcome of WW1 and the burden of reparations, and America did support the Nazis, at least initially, with loans, machinery, etc.
The point I’m making is that there was less justification for GW1 than there was GW2.IE GW2 was all about Iraq ‘supposedly’ being a threat to us not Saudi.While letting Iraq take out Saudi would have actually been advantageous to us.
As for post WW2 war ■■■■ regime change that went a ‘bit’ further than just Germany ‘carrying on as before’.
As for the justification for WW1 which resulted in Hitler’s rise to power and WW2 if you want to look for a pointless war that led to the deaths of millions then Churchill and Poincare and Viviani were more the villains than Blair.Bearing in mind that kicking off a massive war across Europe wasn’t a proportional response to Austrian actions in Serbia. 
Which leaves the question why are we importing and not deporting a hostile culture,which by your logic has no allegiance to this country and is looking for payback regards our actions in the Middle East ?.
GORDON 50:
Juddian:
By the way, i worked today and seldom listen to the radio, but happened to have it on Smooth at some point mid afternoon on the way back when the news came on, wish i bloody hadn’t.What stuck in my craw and had me hurling obcenities at the radio was the up to date report about Nice and now the scum who did this was described as a ‘‘lorry driver’’, not terrorist scum bag or any of the hundred of unprintable descriptions i’ve got for the low life, no he was a lorry driver apparently.
Just thought you’d like to know.I understand what you’re saying, but I think his profession would have been mentioned no matter what his job was.
If he was a doctor, nurse, police officer or politician then the news item wouldn’t have been ‘‘the doctor, nurse, police officer or politician drove into the crowd’’, it would have been criminal, terrorist or some other description who was at the wheel of the lorry.
The term lorry driver has always been used in Daily Mailesque style poor journalism in a demeaning way, you can visualise it being typed/written with a superior sneer on their entitled faces.
It has a special resonance for me because i’d only been driving lorries for a year or two and happened to be reading the daily mail, can’t remember the scribblers name but it was apparently female and the article was comparing British road accident rates with other countries, the sentence that still sticks in my mind 4 decades later went along the lines ‘’ unless you car has just been been hit by some clumsy lorry driver’'.
The title lorry driver has been used by these people to describe us in terms almost sub human since the year dot…that article was the one responsible for me crossing out all the social status tick boxes on forms, you know the ones with professionals such as lawyers doctors (journalists) at the top and mere working class at the very bottom…for 40 years i’ve been putting a cross through the lot and scrawling ‘‘scum of the earth lorry driver’’ in deep print.
Also haven’t bought a newpaper for well over 30 years, may they all sod off.
Sorry for the minor rant, as you were.
Juddian:
GORDON 50:
Juddian:
By the way, i worked today and seldom listen to the radio, but happened to have it on Smooth at some point mid afternoon on the way back when the news came on, wish i bloody hadn’t.What stuck in my craw and had me hurling obcenities at the radio was the up to date report about Nice and now the scum who did this was described as a ‘‘lorry driver’’, not terrorist scum bag or any of the hundred of unprintable descriptions i’ve got for the low life, no he was a lorry driver apparently.
Just thought you’d like to know.I understand what you’re saying, but I think his profession would have been mentioned no matter what his job was.
If he was a doctor, nurse, police officer or politician then the news item wouldn’t have been ‘‘the doctor, nurse, police officer or politician drove into the crowd’’, it would have been criminal, terrorist or some other description who was at the wheel of the lorry.
The term lorry driver has always been used in Daily Mailesque style poor journalism in a demeaning way, you can visualise it being typed/written with a superior sneer on their entitled faces.
It has a special resonance for me because i’d only been driving lorries for a year or two and happened to be reading the daily mail, can’t remember the scribblers name but it was apparently female and the article was comparing British road accident rates with other countries, the sentence that still sticks in my mind 4 decades later went along the lines ‘’ unless you car has just been been hit by some clumsy lorry driver’'.
The title lorry driver has been used by these people to describe us in terms almost sub human since the year dot…that article was the one responsible for me crossing out all the social status tick boxes on forms, you know the ones with professionals such as lawyers doctors (journalists) at the top and mere working class at the very bottom…for 40 years i’ve been putting a cross through the lot and scrawling ‘‘scum of the earth lorry driver’’ in deep print.
Also haven’t bought a newpaper for well over 30 years, may they all sod off.Sorry for the minor rant, as you were.
I reckon the opposite. If he’d been a Doctor, nurse or copper they’d have had a field day pointing that out. “no ones safe” type hysteria, especially as they’re supposed to be protecting professions.
Freight Dog:
Juddian:
If he was a doctor, nurse, police officer or politician then the news item wouldn’t have been ‘‘the doctor, nurse, police officer or politician drove into the crowd’’, it would have been criminal, terrorist or some other description who was at the wheel of the lorry.The term lorry driver has always been used in Daily Mailesque style poor journalism in a demeaning way, you can visualise it being typed/written with a superior sneer on their entitled faces.
It has a special resonance for me because i’d only been driving lorries for a year or two and happened to be reading the daily mail, can’t remember the scribblers name but it was apparently female and the article was comparing British road accident rates with other countries, the sentence that still sticks in my mind 4 decades later went along the lines ‘’ unless you car has just been been hit by some clumsy lorry driver’'.
The title lorry driver has been used by these people to describe us in terms almost sub human since the year dot…that article was the one responsible for me crossing out all the social status tick boxes on forms, you know the ones with professionals such as lawyers doctors (journalists) at the top and mere working class at the very bottom…for 40 years i’ve been putting a cross through the lot and scrawling ‘‘scum of the earth lorry driver’’ in deep print.
Also haven’t bought a newpaper for well over 30 years, may they all sod off.Sorry for the minor rant, as you were.
I reckon the opposite. If he’d been a Doctor, nurse or copper they’d have had a field day pointing that out. “no ones safe” type hysteria, especially as they’re supposed to be protecting professions.
More like in this case unstable lorry driver loses it and goes over the edge is a better agenda to sell to increasingly disillusioned Socialist France to stop a swing to Le Pen and the FN.
Than the idea of whatever immigrant job description goes for yet another example of Islamic payback for French/US/UK actions in Iraq/Afghanistan/North Africa ) for which we only have ourselves to blame and we must do more to appease and apologise to the immigrant population in that regard.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Glasg … ort_attack
A bit like the news of our gallant Turkish allies taking justified actions in beheading the rebel anti Erdogan faction.
Carryfast:
As for post WW2 war ■■■■ regime change that went a ‘bit’ further than just Germany ‘carrying on as before’.
The political change was really quite modest in the scheme of all Western civilisation, and the victors underwent similar changes to the vanquished in WW2. We were not really fighting to reconfigure the whole German mentality and way of life, since it was fairly identical to our own anyway.
Gas chambers are best recognised as a military excess rather than a reflection of German daily life in peacetime.
Which leaves the question why are we importing and not deporting a hostile culture,which by your logic has no allegiance to this country and is looking for payback regards our actions in the Middle East ?.
I don’t think we have imported a hostile culture.
Firstly, you’re seeing the early stages of democratic mobilisation against the wanton destruction or obstruction of civilisation. This reaction is first drawing in those who share a common religion with the victims and those whose heritage means they maintain community links in those parts of the world being affected today. They have access to better channels of information from those places, their links mean they still participate in how events there are interpreted (including feeding information from the West), and have maybe even been on the sharp end of the destructive military action. This is as true of Israel, Ireland, or South Africa - all of whom have or had their external support - as of anywhere else today. As I’ve said before, it’s just coincidence that we’re bombing and destroying parts of the world that, on this occasion, are predominantly Islamic.
Secondly, you’ve got a more pedestrian problem with capitalism in the ■■■■■■■ again, and that’s creating distaste for liberal values and a return to wrongheaded (but attractively simplistic and old-fashioned) thought patterns. Religious institutions also step in to aid and organise people, and their narrative becomes more relevant and influential.
Thirdly, you’ve got the problem that “foreigners” (often in fact British nationals with migrant ancestry) are very often treated like muck in our society, and that doesn’t help people to develop and integrate more closely either. It’s hard to lecture people from minority communities about the benefits of modernising their practices and adopting liberal values, and it’s hard for modernisers in those communities to command credibility and knock the hard edges off the narratives of their religion or traditional culture, when they walk the streets of Britain and get banana skins or bacon butties thrown at them.
I suppose the same is true for the Ukip and National Front types, the working class who swing rightwards - it’s difficult to persuade them to modernise their practices and accept liberal values, when they are getting ■■■■ on (albeit not by the groups they accuse, but by their traditional leaders and ‘betters’ that most rightwingers respect and admire).
These three factors are the real reason we see a lot of hostility in minority communities to their host states. It’s not because they were imported originally in a hostile condition (and in fact many are not imports at all, but born-here Brits).
Rjan:
Carryfast:
As for post WW2 war ■■■■ regime change that went a ‘bit’ further than just Germany ‘carrying on as before’.The political change was really quite modest in the scheme of all Western civilisation, and the victors underwent similar changes to the vanquished in WW2. We were not really fighting to reconfigure the whole German mentality and way of life, since it was fairly identical to our own anyway.
Gas chambers are best recognised as a military excess rather than a reflection of German daily life in peacetime.
Which leaves the question why are we importing and not deporting a hostile culture,which by your logic has no allegiance to this country and is looking for payback regards our actions in the Middle East ?.
I don’t think we have imported a hostile culture.
Firstly, you’re seeing the early stages of democratic mobilisation against the wanton destruction or obstruction of civilisation. This reaction is first drawing in those who share a common religion with the victims and those whose heritage means they maintain community links in those parts of the world being affected today. They have access to better channels of information from those places, their links mean they still participate in how events there are interpreted (including feeding information from the West), and have maybe even been on the sharp end of the destructive military action. This is as true of Israel, Ireland, or South Africa - all of whom have or had their external support - as of anywhere else today. As I’ve said before, it’s just coincidence that we’re bombing and destroying parts of the world that, on this occasion, are predominantly Islamic.
Secondly, you’ve got a more pedestrian problem with capitalism in the [zb] again, and that’s creating distaste for liberal values and a return to wrongheaded (but attractively simplistic and old-fashioned) thought patterns. Religious institutions also step in to aid and organise people, and their narrative becomes more relevant and influential.
Thirdly, you’ve got the problem that “foreigners” (often in fact British nationals with migrant ancestry) are very often treated like muck in our society, and that doesn’t help people to develop and integrate more closely either. It’s hard to lecture people from minority communities about the benefits of modernising their practices and adopting liberal values, and it’s hard for modernisers in those communities to command credibility and knock the hard edges off the narratives of their religion or traditional culture, when they walk the streets of Britain and get banana skins or bacon butties thrown at them.
I suppose the same is true for the Ukip and National Front types, the working class who swing rightwards - it’s difficult to persuade them to modernise their practices and accept liberal values, when they are getting [zb] on (albeit not by the groups they accuse, but by their traditional leaders and ‘betters’ that most rightwingers respect and admire).
These three factors are the real reason we see a lot of hostility in minority communities to their host states. It’s not because they were imported originally in a hostile condition (and in fact many are not imports at all, but born-here Brits).
Firstly the ‘de nazification’ ( de Socialist indoctrination ) of post war Germany was,by necessity,anything but ‘modest’.
As for the contradiction contained in the rest.As I said you seem to be able to conveniently jump from the immigrant community being justified in having an allegiance with it’s home region and culture.While at the same time trying to justify calling it ‘British’ whenever we find ourselves in the situation of conflict with that region and in this case obviously Islamic culture.
In which case as I said the analogy would then be no different to ethnic German US citizens taking up arms or carrying out irregular guerilla attacks against the US in WW2.Based on allegiance to their home country of origin.To which your answer is obviously appeasement of that instead calling a spade a spade in the form of at least deportation.As for being born here making anyone supposedly ‘British’ that’s just more bs.As you’ve even recognised yourself.
As for your idea,of branding realism,in the form of self determination and the idea of the Nation State and citizenship based on Jus Sanguinis,at least where it can be shown to be a matter of national security,as ‘right wing’.Then you’ll first need to define ‘left’ in that regard.The only conclusion by your logic means the continuing importation of a hostile culture based on appeasement of it.Or is it takeover in which the Socialist cause sees that Islamic invasion as an ally.
On that note here’s a clue rightly or wrongly we went into Afghan and Iraq and carried out attacks on North Africa for reasons which our government decided were justified.Whether you or the immigrant community agree or disagree with that doesn’t justify attacks by that immigrant community on us or your bs appeasement of them.
While personally on balance,as I’ve said,I think GW2 was actually the wrong move but for the right reasons.Which came about because of the even worse tactical mistake which was GW1.When we could have used Saddam to at least neutralise the Saudi Wahabbist threat which is in large part the cause of the problem.While at the same time the resulting war would have weakened the Iraqi military to the point of it being a joke.While Afghanistan needed to be dealt with on a strategic attack level not a tactical one.Just as in the case of the Iranian Islamic revolution.
While if the immigrant community thinks that warrants being an enemy within and if you think it’s right to appease that by trying to justify that and not deporting let alone bringing more of that enemy in.We’ve obviously got a serious problem within the country regards its national security and it’s time the governments of western Europe got a grip on both that hostile immigrant agenda and the self appointed so called ‘left’ that obviously tacitly supports it for whatever agenda.
Juddian:
GORDON 50:
Juddian:
By the way, i worked today and seldom listen to the radio, but happened to have it on Smooth at some point mid afternoon on the way back when the news came on, wish i bloody hadn’t.What stuck in my craw and had me hurling obcenities at the radio was the up to date report about Nice and now the scum who did this was described as a ‘‘lorry driver’’, not terrorist scum bag or any of the hundred of unprintable descriptions i’ve got for the low life, no he was a lorry driver apparently.
Just thought you’d like to know.I understand what you’re saying, but I think his profession would have been mentioned no matter what his job was.
If he was a doctor, nurse, police officer or politician then the news item wouldn’t have been ‘‘the doctor, nurse, police officer or politician drove into the crowd’’, it would have been criminal, terrorist or some other description who was at the wheel of the lorry.
The term lorry driver has always been used in Daily Mailesque style poor journalism in a demeaning way, you can visualise it being typed/written with a superior sneer on their entitled faces.
It has a special resonance for me because i’d only been driving lorries for a year or two and happened to be reading the daily mail, can’t remember the scribblers name but it was apparently female and the article was comparing British road accident rates with other countries, the sentence that still sticks in my mind 4 decades later went along the lines ‘’ unless you car has just been been hit by some clumsy lorry driver’'.
The title lorry driver has been used by these people to describe us in terms almost sub human since the year dot…that article was the one responsible for me crossing out all the social status tick boxes on forms, you know the ones with professionals such as lawyers doctors (journalists) at the top and mere working class at the very bottom…for 40 years i’ve been putting a cross through the lot and scrawling ‘‘scum of the earth lorry driver’’ in deep print.
Also haven’t bought a newpaper for well over 30 years, may they all sod off.Sorry for the minor rant, as you were.
To compare like for like if it was a doctor or nurse who went on a rampage in a hospital then of course it would be mentioned. He used a lorry to murder dozens of people and your main worry is him being called a lorry driver? You seem to have a bit of a chip on your shoulder regarding how lorry drivers are seen by others. Personally I don’t think it’s worth a second thought, people can think what they like, as long as I get paid at the end of the week then I’m fine and dandy
The only way I heard about him being a lorry driver was on here, never heard it mentioned on the news channels, so I don’t think it’s a case of the media in general demeaning lorry drivers, maybe just one or two papers.
Carryfast:
Firstly the ‘de nazification’ ( … ) of post war Germany was,by necessity,anything but ‘modest’.
In many other contexts, I’d agree with you, it was a substantial undertaking. But it may surprise you to hear that a ■■■■ military worked and fought in much the same way as ours. The ■■■■ economy worked in much the same way as ours. The Nazis were democratically elected in what was more or less a liberal democracy like ours - albeit they did not have the support of the majority.
When we went through Germany after the war, we didn’t have to urbanise and proletarianise the population. We didn’t need to industrialise their economy and habituate the population to industrial production, create the mentalities and the habits suited to industrial production. Yet these are some fundamental ways in which Afghanistan differs from Western nations. These things took Stalin and Mao decades apiece to do in their societies, and they were brutal dictators who created a tidal wave of bodies, and they had powerful indigenous support where the people themselves had become ripe for social transformation, and to pay for it all they used indigenous economic resources which the dictators created or unleashed.
Yet people really talk about bringing “democracy” or “women’s rights” to Afghanistan, and expecting these things to stand on their own feet, as if they are casually talking about bringing human life to Mars (as if the only challenge is flying in a CIA adviser to Mars, and the challenge of creating a breathable atmosphere for him has been overlooked).
Iraq is a slightly different case. It was more developed than Afghanistan, but we have removed the indigenous Stalin figure (Saddam Hussein) who was pushing and ensuring that development. We have also caused a lot of destruction of infrastructure. The liquidation of the regime is also making it hard to rebuild and defend that infrastructure (without huge demands on our resources and risks to our soldiers’ lives), it is making it hard to exclude guerrilla fighters from surrounding areas (themselves a product of our interventions in the past and elsewhere), and has unleashed destructive internal forces that can really only be pacified by a murderous dictatorial regime!
That’s the real nub of this issue, that to decisively achieve our aims of resolidifying the region, we’re going to have to support precisely the class of murderous dictators that we removed because they were murderous dictators. Assad is a prime example. But this flip-flopping does not get us back to where we are before. It creates a deep hatred for us amongst the civil population. It’s as though we’d razed Germany and killed or tortured every member of the ■■■■ party, only to then install the likes of Hitler straight back into power, which is obviously far more disruptive to the civil population than simply defeating Hitler when he chooses to enter the military battlefield.
As for the contradiction contained in the rest.As I said you seem to be able to conveniently jump from the immigrant community being justified in having an allegiance with it’s home region and culture.While at the same time trying to justify calling it ‘British’ whenever we find ourselves in the situation of conflict with that region and in this case obviously Islamic culture.
The reason my statements contain contradictions is because there are contradictions in real life! Is the National Front a British organisation? Well it contains British nationals who grew up here and nowhere else - they are home-grown extremists, certainly not imports from past fascist regimes on the European continent. Yet they do not really support liberal values or the political status quo in Britain.
The sooner people accept that the Islamic communities in Britain are not predominantly comprised of “foreign” individuals, the better. The sooner the better they should also accept that the Islamic community’s apparent failure to condemn terror attacks emphatically enough is partly because they have nothing to do with it in the first place and no direct influence, and secondly because if they are given any airtime they will use the same breath to condemn foreign policy (so the media powers that be, deny them airtime).
What people from Islamic communities are not going to do (any more than socialists like me would) is get on telly and condemn the attacks without criticising foreign policy, because to do one without the other would embolden the MPs to make foreign policy even worse, resting secure that they are appearing to have the unvarnished support of the Islamic community (or the socialist community!), and allowing them to create a wedge in the minds of the population that terrorist attacks are somehow completely unrelated to our foreign policy mistakes.
In which case as I said the analogy would then be no different to ethnic German US citizens taking up arms or carrying out irregular guerilla attacks against the US in WW2.
They may have, if anything we’d done to Germany had appeared to them completely unjustified, sending Germany back to the stone age. I’m sure some Nazis did return to Germany to fight or offer their services to the conventional effort (Nazism never became a guerrilla campaign).
Also in Britain there was some internment of foreign nationals during the currency of the war. And the Troubles in Ireland are a case where the guerrillas did receive a lot of help and funding from Irish Americans.
Based on allegiance to their home country of origin.To which your answer is obviously appeasement of that instead calling a spade a spade in the form of at least deportation.As for being born here making anyone supposedly ‘British’ that’s just more bs.As you’ve even recognised yourself.
As I say, you can’t seriously expect to send people who’ve never left our shores since birth, “back” to some far-flung, war-torn rural wasteland. Frankly, you can’t even expect to threaten people with it, or prepare for it, without a scale of trouble that would destroy us.
People such as yourself are dangerously quick to assume that the utter ruination of a community is just like herding sheep up and putting them on a plane, as if there will be disgruntlement but fundamental compliance. Even Hitler didn’t tell the Jews they were heading for the ovens. Do you really want our major cities like Birmingham to end up looking like the Gaza Strip?
On that note here’s a clue rightly or wrongly we went into Afghan and Iraq and carried out attacks on North Africa for reasons which our government decided were justified.Whether you or the immigrant community agree or disagree with that doesn’t justify attacks by that immigrant community on us or your bs appeasement of them.
I can criticise this government’s decisions because I live in a democratic society, and so can anyone else here. And what evidence is there that MPs are any wiser on this issue than the man on the street? Most MPs talk absolute ■■■■■■■■, and the few who know what they’re talking about (like the Tory MP, Rory Stewart) are as scathing as I am. The Chilcott report has basically declared MPs to have been wrong, wrong, wrong.
As for attacks by immigrants communities, nobody does “justify” them. I don’t want to get blown up in the street, nor do I want that for family and friends, or anybody - really, why would I?
But there is a big difference between saying this whole relationship with the Middle East is unjustified, and that since we are taking the initiative and providing the driving force behind it, we must stop, and their warped ideologies and guerrilla campaigns will cease as a fairly mechanical consequence of our changed foreign policy.
That’s a completely different position to yours, which always really holds that we are justified and they are not, or tries to pretend that our behaviour ought to be logically separated from the reactions it provokes, and that is what I do not accept. If we want to have a peaceful relationship with the Middle East, we must stop declaring war. If we want it to be civilised, we must stop undermining the basic security of civilisation and civil, peaceful life.
That’s really the nub of my view. When I say attacks are “unjustified”, there is no implication on my part that we should strike back militarily against the apparent agents of the attack - the only implication of these unjustified attacks, other than mourning the loss of life, is that we should adjust our foreign policy.
For that reason, I would avoid using the word “unjustified” altogether myself, because most people who want to hear that word, want my permission for or acceptance of a military counter strike - and that is exactly what I don’t accept.
The solution is not to strike back, it is to stop striking in the first place, and that will ameliorate the number of strikes we receive in return, whereas striking back will increase the number of strikes we receive in return until our society falters under the pressure of the whirlwind we’ll have sown.
A conventional military solider is no match for a guerrilla soldier, and our society is virtually defenceless against humans who are in the mental mode of guerrilla warfare - we solve that in our society by never treating people so badly, or disrupting their lives so much, that they adopt that mentality. Not even in our prisons do we treat people so badly. The Americans perhaps approach it with their sensory deprivation and permanent isolation in some prisons, but that takes tens of millions of pounds a year per person to sustain.
While personally on balance,as I’ve said,I think GW2 was actually the wrong move but for the right reasons.
Broadly speaking, there were some good reasons to remove Saddam, but it’s like I’ve said, unless we’re willing to spend 10 trillion pounds and tens of thousands of lives to take the place over as a British colony, then we must accept the lesser of the evils. We cannot destroy the place, and then leave it destroyed - that is the greater of all the evils.
And like Kipling I think said, men who torture you for what they see as your own good will do so without end, because they do so with the approval of their own consciences.
Rjan
If British Muslims are British people concentrating on British homeland and values why can’t the Muslim community raise itself to condemn attacks in Europe and leave it at that. Just show some solidarity? Instead of using the airtime to talk about foreign policy why don’t Muslim leaders get round these public talk shows and say how wrong it is and express that they want to join with community leaders, the police and however to keep our homeland safe, no matter what it takes? Leave the foreign policy bit for a seperate comment? It’s this they can’t talk condemnation without mentioning foreign policy that leaves many of the opinion that Islam isn’t concerned for its fellow countryman as much as its own image and people. We need Islam in the UK to do this to keep us all safe, we genuinely need their proper help along side us as a whole community.
As for not condemning because they’re not involved, hogwash. Sikhs are not involved but they condemn them, the Catholic church is not involved but they condemn them. All these bodies have managed to draw breath and say what horror it is and that they are desperate that as communities as a whole pull together in our homelands to help us all as one. They all leave foreign policy comments aside and concentrate on the home front. Why can’t Islamic communities?
2016’s most boring poster battle is warming up nicely! 
Carryfast is getting a bit of competition this year…
Rjan:
Carryfast:
Firstly the ‘de nazification’ ( … ) of post war Germany was,by necessity,anything but ‘modest’.In many other contexts, I’d agree with you, it was a substantial undertaking. But it may surprise you to hear that a ■■■■ military worked and fought in much the same way as ours. The ■■■■ economy worked in much the same way as ours. The Nazis were democratically elected in what was more or less a liberal democracy like ours - albeit they did not have the support of the majority.
When we went through Germany after the war, we didn’t have to urbanise and proletarianise the population. We didn’t need to industrialise their economy and habituate the population to industrial production, create the mentalities and the habits suited to industrial production. Yet these are some fundamental ways in which Afghanistan differs from Western nations. These things took Stalin and Mao decades apiece to do in their societies, and they were brutal dictators who created a tidal wave of bodies, and they had powerful indigenous support where the people themselves had become ripe for social transformation, and to pay for it all they used indigenous economic resources which the dictators created or unleashed.
Yet people really talk about bringing “democracy” or “women’s rights” to Afghanistan, and expecting these things to stand on their own feet, as if they are casually talking about bringing human life to Mars (as if the only challenge is flying in a CIA adviser to Mars, and the challenge of creating a breathable atmosphere for him has been overlooked).
Iraq is a slightly different case. It was more developed than Afghanistan, but we have removed the indigenous Stalin figure (Saddam Hussein) who was pushing and ensuring that development. We have also caused a lot of destruction of infrastructure. The liquidation of the regime is also making it hard to rebuild and defend that infrastructure (without huge demands on our resources and risks to our soldiers’ lives), it is making it hard to exclude guerrilla fighters from surrounding areas (themselves a product of our interventions in the past and elsewhere), and has unleashed destructive internal forces that can really only be pacified by a murderous dictatorial regime!
That’s the real nub of this issue, that to decisively achieve our aims of resolidifying the region, we’re going to have to support precisely the class of murderous dictators that we removed because they were murderous dictators. Assad is a prime example. But this flip-flopping does not get us back to where we are before. It creates a deep hatred for us amongst the civil population. It’s as though we’d razed Germany and killed or tortured every member of the ■■■■ party, only to then install the likes of Hitler straight back into power, which is obviously far more disruptive to the civil population than simply defeating Hitler when he chooses to enter the military battlefield.
As for the contradiction contained in the rest.As I said you seem to be able to conveniently jump from the immigrant community being justified in having an allegiance with it’s home region and culture.While at the same time trying to justify calling it ‘British’ whenever we find ourselves in the situation of conflict with that region and in this case obviously Islamic culture.
The reason my statements contain contradictions is because there are contradictions in real life! Is the National Front a British organisation? Well it contains British nationals who grew up here and nowhere else - they are home-grown extremists, certainly not imports from past fascist regimes on the European continent. Yet they do not really support liberal values or the political status quo in Britain.
The sooner people accept that the Islamic communities in Britain are not predominantly comprised of “foreign” individuals, the better. The sooner the better they should also accept that the Islamic community’s apparent failure to condemn terror attacks emphatically enough is partly because they have nothing to do with it in the first place and no direct influence, and secondly because if they are given any airtime they will use the same breath to condemn foreign policy (so the media powers that be, deny them airtime).
What people from Islamic communities are not going to do (any more than socialists like me would) is get on telly and condemn the attacks without criticising foreign policy, because to do one without the other would embolden the MPs to make foreign policy even worse, resting secure that they are appearing to have the unvarnished support of the Islamic community (or the socialist community!), and allowing them to create a wedge in the minds of the population that terrorist attacks are somehow completely unrelated to our foreign policy mistakes.
In which case as I said the analogy would then be no different to ethnic German US citizens taking up arms or carrying out irregular guerilla attacks against the US in WW2.
They may have, if anything we’d done to Germany had appeared to them completely unjustified, sending Germany back to the stone age. I’m sure some Nazis did return to Germany to fight or offer their services to the conventional effort (Nazism never became a guerrilla campaign).
Also in Britain there was some internment of foreign nationals during the currency of the war. And the Troubles in Ireland are a case where the guerrillas did receive a lot of help and funding from Irish Americans.
Based on allegiance to their home country of origin.To which your answer is obviously appeasement of that instead calling a spade a spade in the form of at least deportation.As for being born here making anyone supposedly ‘British’ that’s just more bs.As you’ve even recognised yourself.
As I say, you can’t seriously expect to send people who’ve never left our shores since birth, “back” to some far-flung, war-torn rural wasteland. Frankly, you can’t even expect to threaten people with it, or prepare for it, without a scale of trouble that would destroy us.
People such as yourself are dangerously quick to assume that the utter ruination of a community is just like herding sheep up and putting them on a plane, as if there will be disgruntlement but fundamental compliance. Even Hitler didn’t tell the Jews they were heading for the ovens. Do you really want our major cities like Birmingham to end up looking like the Gaza Strip?
On that note here’s a clue rightly or wrongly we went into Afghan and Iraq and carried out attacks on North Africa for reasons which our government decided were justified.Whether you or the immigrant community agree or disagree with that doesn’t justify attacks by that immigrant community on us or your bs appeasement of them.
I can criticise this government’s decisions because I live in a democratic society, and so can anyone else here. And what evidence is there that MPs are any wiser on this issue than the man on the street? Most MPs talk absolute ■■■■■■■■, and the few who know what they’re talking about (like the Tory MP, Rory Stewart) are as scathing as I am. The Chilcott report has basically declared MPs to have been wrong, wrong, wrong.
As for attacks by immigrants communities, nobody does “justify” them. I don’t want to get blown up in the street, nor do I want that for family and friends, or anybody - really, why would I?
But there is a big difference between saying this whole relationship with the Middle East is unjustified, and that since we are taking the initiative and providing the driving force behind it, we must stop, and their warped ideologies and guerrilla campaigns will cease as a fairly mechanical consequence of our changed foreign policy.
That’s a completely different position to yours, which always really holds that we are justified and they are not, or tries to pretend that our behaviour ought to be logically separated from the reactions it provokes, and that is what I do not accept. If we want to have a peaceful relationship with the Middle East, we must stop declaring war. If we want it to be civilised, we must stop undermining the basic security of civilisation and civil, peaceful life.
That’s really the nub of my view. When I say attacks are “unjustified”, there is no implication on my part that we should strike back militarily against the apparent agents of the attack - the only implication of these unjustified attacks, other than mourning the loss of life, is that we should adjust our foreign policy.
For that reason, I would avoid using the word “unjustified” altogether myself, because most people who want to hear that word, want my permission for or acceptance of a military counter strike - and that is exactly what I don’t accept.
The solution is not to strike back, it is to stop striking in the first place, and that will ameliorate the number of strikes we receive in return, whereas striking back will increase the number of strikes we receive in return until our society falters under the pressure of the whirlwind we’ll have sown.
A conventional military solider is no match for a guerrilla soldier, and our society is virtually defenceless against humans who are in the mental mode of guerrilla warfare - we solve that in our society by never treating people so badly, or disrupting their lives so much, that they adopt that mentality. Not even in our prisons do we treat people so badly. The Americans perhaps approach it with their sensory deprivation and permanent isolation in some prisons, but that takes tens of millions of pounds a year per person to sustain.
While personally on balance,as I’ve said,I think GW2 was actually the wrong move but for the right reasons.
Broadly speaking, there were some good reasons to remove Saddam, but it’s like I’ve said, unless we’re willing to spend 10 trillion pounds and tens of thousands of lives to take the place over as a British colony, then we must accept the lesser of the evils. We cannot destroy the place, and then leave it destroyed - that is the greater of all the evils.
And like Kipling I think said, men who torture you for what they see as your own good will do so without end, because they do so with the approval of their own consciences.
You’re avin a larf.There is a point where we just have to accept that a whole region of the world and in general,with some exceptions its culture,is a threat to us.If we’ve got an immigrant community within the country that has any form of allegiance to that threat and culture then that’s obviously a problem of national security which can only be dealt with by deportation of it back to the place where it’s allegiance is.
As for bombing the Middle East back to the stone age that’s probably what it’s going take at some point and certainly would have helped in the case of Iran in 1979.Although as I’ve said leaving Saddam to get on with taking out the Saudis and weakening his own forces to the point of no longer being of any threat to us or Israel,in the process.Then just making it a simple matter of just disarming the resulting weakened thinly spread Iraqi rabble and beaten Saudi wahabbi savages would have been a much better idea than GW1 and 2.Instead of which we’ve got an agenda which actually continues to pour arms into the region.While at the same time wanting to disarm the US population.Go figure.
As for our ‘solutions’ in the Middle East the idea of pouring more military hardware into the region,as part of a plan of trying to sort the good Islamists from the bad and appeasing that enemy within,while bringing even more of that enemy in,is certainly not going to help.Nor is listening to the bs appeaser ideology of people like Corbyn.
I feel sorry for google and the copy and paste function its getting used more than a ■■■■■ on a good night.
Colin_scottish:
I feel sorry for google and the copy and paste function its getting used more than a ■■■■■ on a good night.
Best bit of this thread so far
Freight Dog:
RjanIf British Muslims are British people concentrating on British homeland and values why can’t the Muslim community raise itself to condemn attacks in Europe and leave it at that.
I’m pretty sure Islamic figures do say there’s no room for violence - but it’s always quite clear they mean on both sides, whereas you want them to condemn the attacks on one side and “leave it at that”, which obviously no sensible person with a backbone is going to do, particularly in circumstances where the mainstream media is trying to isolate the issues in the minds of the public (and pretend that one is not related to the other).
The last thing the MPs and the media want, is for the British public to blame them for their own unforced mistakes.
And like I say, there’s nothing anti-British about being anti-British-foreign-policy, any more so than you are anti-child if you discipline or criticise your own children’s follies.
I don’t criticise British foreign policy from a point of view of being hostile to liberal values - I criticise it precisely because our foreign policy is undermining our values and failing to advance them in the rest of the world, and in the process we’re undermining settled civilisation itself and creating nomadic groups and guerrilla warriors on whom we frequently rain fire (and who occasionally rain fire on us in return).
At times, as with Syria, MPs incoherence and warmongering becomes manifest, because they changed sides half way through, after having been warned by the educated public not to get involved at all and they having already been chastised (you would have thought) by a series of failures and quagmires.
Just show some solidarity? Instead of using the airtime to talk about foreign policy why don’t Muslim leaders get round these public talk shows and say how wrong it is and express that they want to join with community leaders, the police and however to keep our homeland safe, no matter what it takes?
Because when you say “no matter what it takes”, you want an endorsement of the very policies that are doing the opposite of what I want. I really think you think that our political leaders can be left alone and trusted to make the best decisions for us.
The fact is that the last thing any MP wants to do is get up and say “mea culpa, these attacks are our fault, we can do nothing in the short term to stop them because our societies are not (and cannot be) structured to fully prevent determined guerrilla attacks, and in the long term the attacks will abate as we pour billions into the Middle East and North Africa to rebuild civilisation from the destruction we wrought there”.
The same is true of austerity. The IMF has turned against it, and the Tories have backpedalled, but no one comes out and just says “it was a catastrophic mistake which created a hole in the roof whilst the rain was pouring”, and in fact left to their own devices by a gullible public they just carry on, because often you find that the first principles of the austerians wasn’t to help the economy but to smash the state at any price (which the austerity policy can still achieve), and helping the economy was just the verbal window dressing for the gullible public.
Leave the foreign policy bit for a seperate comment? It’s this they can’t talk condemnation without mentioning foreign policy that leaves many of the opinion that Islam isn’t concerned for its fellow countryman as much as its own image and people. We need Islam in the UK to do this to keep us all safe, we genuinely need their proper help along side us as a whole community.
Islam isn’t concerned about “fellow countrymen” because it isn’t a nationalist ideology, it’s a conventional religion (like Catholicism or Judaism) that crosses national borders and is concerned about it’s adherents lives and communities equally and how all within can be peacefully reconciled.
What British-nationalist sympathies exist (or could exist) amongst those who are also Islamics, is badly undermined by the discrimination and poverty they face in their everyday lives in Britain, and indeed their relative marginalisation in mainstream politics and media.
Without the blowback from our foreign policy, I’d be surprised if the naïvely pro-war democratic majority in the West would be willing to revise their naïvely pro-war support.
As for not condemning because they’re not involved, hogwash. Sikhs are not involved but they condemn them, the Catholic church is not involved but they condemn them.
To be honest, I haven’t seen priests (or Sikh leaders) on the telly any more often than I’ve seen imams (or whatever the Islamic equivalent is of a priest). I suspect many priests are as critical of foreign policy as imams are.
All these bodies have managed to draw breath and say what horror it is and that they are desperate that as communities as a whole pull together in our homelands to help us all as one. They all leave foreign policy comments aside and concentrate on the home front. Why can’t Islamic communities?
Hollande does not leave foreign policy alone. He spends far more time advancing foreign policy than he does mourning victims. If the Islamic community were given as much time to speak specifically on foreign policy as Tony Blair did pushing us into the Iraq War, then you’d probably see more formal separation of issues. As it is, the only time a microphone is pushed anywhere near a Muslim, is when someone is demanding he condemn an attack. A bit like how you keep demanding that I do the same and condemn only one side, without condemning the other in proportion to how much initiative and blame I attribute to each side.
When I said no matter what it takes I didn’t mean that. It was a bit open ended what I said so I should clarify. I mean no matter what your background, community, colour or beliefs we should all recognise if anyone has an opportunity to help keep the country safe, they should take that opportunity as part of moral responsibility to others.
You say Islam isn’t a national identity and that is true, but as a group within the UK, they are UK citizens no? They have the same responsibility as us all?
As a group within the UK it empirically has far more contact and eyes on the ground with individuals at risk of developing dangerous ideals. It is Islamic radicalisation we’re talking about. Surely at least 50 percent of the community’s priority should be acknowledging that they have the power to help more than any other community and should actively assist and take measures to meet the threat.
You see, to myself and others I see it that these people who pose a risk are hidden behind a community cloak. If UK Islam, made up of uk citizens took its responsibility as uk citizens seriously and used its power to do great good in identifying and rifling out radicalism, and let’s be honest, it is Islamic radicalisation, then it wouldn’t appear so much like they’re being hidden.
Constantly batting the ball back as it being down to foreign policy doesn’t assuage. It stops short. The U.K. Islamic community has a great ability, more so than the police to do something.
I didn’t create foreign policy. The kids at the local school didn’t. Its not their fault. As uk citizens uk Islamic communities should bloody well take ownership of their key advantage in helping and get on with it. Yes, talk about foreign policy and apply pressure if that’s what you feel, but as a group they should bloody well get off the soap box and actually help us. And that’s keeping all safe, including uk Muslims.
Rjan:
I’m pretty sure Islamic figures do say there’s no room for violence - but it’s always quite clear they mean on both sides, whereas you want them to condemn the attacks on one side and “leave it at that”, which obviously no sensible person with a backbone is going to do, particularly in circumstances where the mainstream media is trying to isolate the issues in the minds of the public (and pretend that one is not related to the other).The last thing the MPs and the media want, is for the British public to blame them for their own unforced mistakes.
And like I say, there’s nothing anti-British about being anti-British-foreign-policy, any more so than you are anti-child if you discipline or criticise your own children’s follies.
I don’t criticise British foreign policy from a point of view of being hostile to liberal values - I criticise it precisely because our foreign policy is undermining our values and failing to advance them in the rest of the world, and in the process we’re undermining settled civilisation itself and creating nomadic groups and guerrilla warriors on whom we frequently rain fire (and who occasionally rain fire on us in return).
At times, as with Syria, MPs incoherence and warmongering becomes manifest, because they changed sides half way through, after having been warned by the educated public not to get involved at all and they having already been chastised (you would have thought) by a series of failures and quagmires.
Because when you say “no matter what it takes”, you want an endorsement of the very policies that are doing the opposite of what I want. I really think you think that our political leaders can be left alone and trusted to make the best decisions for us.
The fact is that the last thing any MP wants to do is get up and say "mea culpa, these attacks are our fault, we can do nothing in the short term to stop them because our societies are not (and cannot be) structured to fully prevent determined guerrilla attacks,
Cut the pacifist bs.It’s clear that we are dealing with an enemy culture that’s a threat to itself and its neighbours and which needs to be stopped.We won’t stop it by pouring more arms into the region instead of the opposite in disarming it.Nor will we stop the inevitable irregular retaliation by it’s cowardly irregular forces by allowing them to live among us let alone bringing more in.Nor will we stop it by listening to the one sided appeasement,if not tacit support,agenda of the Socialists.