The thinking of Hamas/Iran probably went something like this...
(1) Massive attack on Israel, with utterly disgusting brutal atrocities - to be widely broadcast on social media (2) Provoke the fury and wrath of Israel, to wipe out Gaza - again, capture the worst bits; broadcast it all (3) Trigger a wider Middle East conflagration in disgust, and ally with everyone to wipe out Israel (4) Be rewarded in this life or the next, as holy martyrs, for wiping the Jews and their state
So, it's not dissimilar to the thinking of White Supremacists who want to provoke a race war that, ultimately, will work out in their favour.
[Btw, I don't think (3) would happen regardless, but Netanyahu needs to be careful not to fall into a trap on (2)]
I think you're spot on. Netanyahu has big problems, though: 1. He is in coalition with far-right ethno-nationalists who believe they know better than the IDF 2. He is in that coalition solely because he needed to power to prevent criminal investigation of himself 3. The combination of 1 and 2 means that he totally took his eye off the national security ball
Put all of that together and there is a very good chance that he now reacts in exactly the way that Hamas/Iran want.
Yes, indeed. It's concerning.
Of course, they know all this too (Hamas/Iran aren't stupid) which is why they struck as hard as they did when they did.
Yep - I think the huge protests against the Netanyahu government inside Israel would also have spooked them. They need him in power.
If there were any justice in this world (ha!) Netanyahu would be out on his ear. For months he has been trying to attack the judiciary, arrogate more power to himself, protect himself from legal proceedings and appease extreme nationalist parties. It has led to huge demonstrations against him and some reservists threatening not to serve in the IDF. Whether and to what extent all of this resulted in the Israeli government failing in its duty to keep Israel secure we won't find out for a while, maybe never.
Thing is you can try to dismantle the organs of a liberal democratic state and you will get objections from all sorts but what you do may well be tolerated by many if you provide safety and security in return. But if you cannot do that - as the Netanyahu government has plainly failed to do - why tolerate everything else?
For now those reservists will fight to defend their country, to defend people from being slaughtered in their homes, at bus stops, from girls being kidnapped, raped, killed, their bodies desecrated. But after?
Recent Israeli governments have become more and more horrible and so, while I want Israel to exist and be safe it has become, increasingly hard to support the policies of its government which provide no security and are becoming increasingly undemocratic and illiberal. Israel under Netanyahu has become more and more like the Arab states it claims to be better than. Those Israelis wanting a liberal Democratic Western-style Israel have sometimes looked like the remnants of an older better - but dying - Israel.
But what we have seen of Islamic terrorism in Israel and everywhere it has happened in recent decades and the resurgence of Western anti-semitism under the guise of anti-colonialism has reduced my sympathy for the causes they claim to be fighting for to somewhere near zero. The Palestinians - and Arabs generally - have picked and supported the most appalling causes and leaders. I can feel sorrow and sympathy for innocent individuals in Israel and Gaza being terrorised and tortured and suffering. I feel nothing but contempt for those whose reaction to seeing films of old people gunned down at bus stops and girls being raped is to go out onto the streets of London and celebrate.
100% agree
Unfortunately Islamic militant radicalism needs to be cauterised. I increasingly see no alternative.
I disagree with the idea of pushing Palestinians out of Gaza - although Netanyahu may try it (If he does I hope the West will stop him). But we need to find a way to win the hearts and minds of the people of Gaza.
But first there needs to be regime change. By its actions Hamas has made itself illegitimate as a government.
I can understand why people don't want to see - or have described - the reality of what rape - especially in wartime - looks like. It is deeply disturbing. It can easily stray into a sort of vile pornography or glorification.
But it is also necessary to understand the brutality of what happens and why there is the reaction there is.
Anyway I have seen and read enough. Like everyone else I too cannot bear so much reality. Social media is best avoided at times like these. And there is plenty of nicer stuff to be getting on with.
I was not dimishing the wickedness of the violence in any way. This isn't the Observer colour supplement, did we need such detail here? Maybe we did. But I would have preferred to look at more obvious sources should the need arise.
There is a case that by editing the news, it convinces people that the news is being “shaped”.
For example, on one of the Greek islands that was getting refugees landing there, to x hundred percent of the local population…. They started throwing stones at news crews. Why?
Well, whenever the locals were being interviewed by international news, the moment they started saying anything about the crime rate (fruit trees in orchards being stripped etc), it got cut from the report.
So the locals, who watched TV became convinced that the international media were “on the side of the migrants” and “against them”
I wouldn't advocate sanitising news.
I was merely offended at how graphic,and my interpretation as to why a poster on PB needed to be so graphic.
My bad.
The level of horror and violence of sexual violence is not I think fully understood. We shy away from it precisely because it is so horrible and out of a sense of decency and self-protection - some things once seen cannot be unseen or unheard.
The danger in doing that it is that it risks it being overlooked and the victims forgotten and it being seen as just one of those things that happen. I think there is a tendency for that to happen with all forms of sexual violence. Precisely because it is a perversion of something wonderful we cannot bear to learn what happens when it is used to harm.
I do not know what the right balance is. I only pray that those girls will come home alive and be given the help and care they need.
I was wondering the other day, in an idle moment, what happened to the German women raped by the Soviet troops as they made their way from the Polish border to Berlin. And, perchance, to the babies that resulted.
This isn't Tory incompetence - its mendaciousness. A deliberate choice to smash as many things as possible, salting the earth for Labour so that they can then postion Labour as the party who screwed everything up.
Sunak stood at his conference lectern railing against government failures, and that only he could lead the change needed to fix the country. As if he, and his party, weren't the people who had wrecked everything.
Never mind ballsy it is simply fantasy. When people keep ramping the supposed £36bn to be spent on northern transport, even as the reality is exposed more and more, it shows that they are so utterly disconnected from reality that they will swallow any lie as truth.
The Tories have had success in weaponising ignorance and stupidity. Polling shows that people have seen through their schtick and aren't listening any more
There will be investment of £2bn to include a "brand new" railway station in Bradford.
That was previously cancelled in 2021 by Boris Johnson's government, reinstated by Liz Truss in 2022 and axed again when Rishi Sunak took office." (BBC)
I am by no means an expert in these matters
But £2Bn seems an awful lot for a railway station…
This isn't Tory incompetence - its mendaciousness. A deliberate choice to smash as many things as possible, salting the earth for Labour so that they can then postion Labour as the party who screwed everything up.
Sunak stood at his conference lectern railing against government failures, and that only he could lead the change needed to fix the country. As if he, and his party, weren't the people who had wrecked everything.
Never mind ballsy it is simply fantasy. When people keep ramping the supposed £36bn to be spent on northern transport, even as the reality is exposed more and more, it shows that they are so utterly disconnected from reality that they will swallow any lie as truth.
The Tories have had success in weaponising ignorance and stupidity. Polling shows that people have seen through their schtick and aren't listening any more
There will be investment of £2bn to include a "brand new" railway station in Bradford.
That was previously cancelled in 2021 by Boris Johnson's government, reinstated by Liz Truss in 2022 and axed again when Rishi Sunak took office." (BBC)
I am by no means an expert in these matters
But £2Bn seems an awful lot for a railway station…
Are they planning to build a replica of NYC Grand Central Station there?
I can understand why people don't want to see - or have described - the reality of what rape - especially in wartime - looks like. It is deeply disturbing. It can easily stray into a sort of vile pornography or glorification.
But it is also necessary to understand the brutality of what happens and why there is the reaction there is.
Anyway I have seen and read enough. Like everyone else I too cannot bear so much reality. Social media is best avoided at times like these. And there is plenty of nicer stuff to be getting on with.
I was not dimishing the wickedness of the violence in any way. This isn't the Observer colour supplement, did we need such detail here? Maybe we did. But I would have preferred to look at more obvious sources should the need arise.
There is a case that by editing the news, it convinces people that the news is being “shaped”.
For example, on one of the Greek islands that was getting refugees landing there, to x hundred percent of the local population…. They started throwing stones at news crews. Why?
Well, whenever the locals were being interviewed by international news, the moment they started saying anything about the crime rate (fruit trees in orchards being stripped etc), it got cut from the report.
So the locals, who watched TV became convinced that the international media were “on the side of the migrants” and “against them”
I wouldn't advocate sanitising news.
I was merely offended at how graphic,and my interpretation as to why a poster on PB needed to be so graphic.
My bad.
The level of horror and violence of sexual violence is not I think fully understood. We shy away from it precisely because it is so horrible and out of a sense of decency and self-protection - some things once seen cannot be unseen or unheard.
The danger in doing that it is that it risks it being overlooked and the victims forgotten and it being seen as just one of those things that happen. I think there is a tendency for that to happen with all forms of sexual violence. Precisely because it is a perversion of something wonderful we cannot bear to learn what happens when it is used to harm.
I do not know what the right balance is. I only pray that those girls will come home alive and be given the help and care they need.
I was wondering the other day, in an idle moment, what happened to the German women raped by the Soviet troops as they made their way from the Polish border to Berlin. And, perchance, to the babies that resulted.
I think the struggle for Israel is how it provides itself security without expelling people from Gaza. The status quo simply doesn't work, and a significant number there are pledged to the extermination of Israel and its people. Yes the hard right illegal settlers are crazy, yes they steal land, but they aren't pledged to genocide like Hamas.
Gaza is an open sore on the region, allowed to be sustained by other states. Egypt likes to blame Israel but has its own border wall at the south to keep Gazans imprisoned. Iran is after a fight and seem to be responsible for all those missiles arriving into Gaza. Russia seem to have armed and trained Hamas with drones to drop bombs.
Removing Gaza and pushing the people there back onto the arab diaspora isn't that crazy an idea. The idiocy of "refugee camps" has to end. These are not displaced refugees, they are several generations down the track from that. Resettle them in the other parts of the former Ottoman empire. So that they can also find peace.
I understand your logic, but the history of forcible resettlement is not encouraging, not least as you're likely to get a NIMBYist reaction (to put it mildly) from whichever area you decide to settle them. Leon's suggestion of offering them huge sums of money to resettle voluntarily might be better, but you'd probably only get the non-violent people seizing the chance to get out of the hellhole, and you still have to solve the question of where will accept them.
I don't have logic. There is no logic to solve this mess. I am simply observing that the status quo does not work and something else needs to be done. Ideally the people of Gaza would be allowed a free election and move against Hamas. And the people of Israel would overthrow the crook and send him to jail.
That is unlikely to happen. I am clear that Israel are more in the right than the Gazans (Jeremy's crank left are still pumping the #freepalestine schtick this morning even as Hamas rape and kidnap women and girls whilst chanting about God). So will give them a little leeway.
It is hard to move against Hamas when they are embedded in the civilian population. So the options seem to be bomb them out or force them out. I am open to other options...
Broadly speaking there are four possible options.
1. The Israelis win outright. The occupied territories are incorporated into Israel. Most of the Palestinians flee, give up on returning, and assimilate into other countries.
2. The Palestinians win outright. Israel is destroyed. Jews flee, give up on returning, and assimilate into other countries.
3. There is a grand compromise that involves both sides giving up on a lot, accepting grievances and concerns of the other party as legitimate, and making efforts to provide reassurance, security and reconciliation.
4. There's a deus ex machina where some external power sweeps in and makes everything okay by providing masses of money and land to smooth over the pain of the compromises necessary for option 3, or the other options. Perhaps Musk could build a New Palestine on Mars?
Ultimately the reason the Oslo process failed is that the situation is the best example of a negative-sum game. Any compromise involves both sides having to make enormous concessions and giving up on objectives that they believe to be reasonable and just. It's very hard for people to crystallise their losses to such an extent. And impossible without any degree of trust.
Given that the Israelis seem to have the stronger military I can see why some people are looking to option 1. It looks like the one most likely to happen.
Fully a fifth of Israel's citizens are arabs. Israel gets rightly criticised for many things, but it does give full rights to non-Jews. An arab is currently deputy speaker in their parliament.
I had been a long-standing supporter of a two state solution, but it has become increasingly clear in recent years that the moment for that has passed. Israel needs to make a comprehensive offer to onboard the palestinians who want to become citizens. Sadly this is a threat to the religious right, so it won't happen.
Drives me mad that the every conversation on PB about the NHS is about supply, not demand. We need to understand why it is growing at 1-2% per year, even after accounting for demographics, inflation etc.
The two main reasons put forward are increases in chronic conditions like dementia and diabetes, and the increased costs associated with new technologies/drugs.
This isn't Tory incompetence - its mendaciousness. A deliberate choice to smash as many things as possible, salting the earth for Labour so that they can then postion Labour as the party who screwed everything up.
Sunak stood at his conference lectern railing against government failures, and that only he could lead the change needed to fix the country. As if he, and his party, weren't the people who had wrecked everything.
Never mind ballsy it is simply fantasy. When people keep ramping the supposed £36bn to be spent on northern transport, even as the reality is exposed more and more, it shows that they are so utterly disconnected from reality that they will swallow any lie as truth.
The Tories have had success in weaponising ignorance and stupidity. Polling shows that people have seen through their schtick and aren't listening any more
There will be investment of £2bn to include a "brand new" railway station in Bradford.
That was previously cancelled in 2021 by Boris Johnson's government, reinstated by Liz Truss in 2022 and axed again when Rishi Sunak took office." (BBC)
I am by no means an expert in these matters
But £2Bn seems an awful lot for a railway station…
Are they planning to build a replica of NYC Grand Central Station there?
Only been arguing about it since 1865, apparently ...
The Israel conflict is terrible with unknown consequences and outcome
This article highlights just how perilous the world's economy's are and why there is absolutely no money to spend by governments
Also sorry to see @Farooq and @FrankBooth leave this forum but at times it does seem like an echo chamber, but it is important that as many different views are expressed as possible otherwise it will become an echo chamber
Why has @Farooq left? Great loss. I really enjoyed his posts. He often made me laugh out loud. Don't know enough about Frank, but generally sad to see anyone leave regardless of their views. I can only think of one exception, and that person was banned so clearly I wasn't alone in that view.
They are going travelling for some months, so a good time to switch off.
@Farooq objected to a few other posters calling for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and expulsion from their remaining lands.
I don't think our site or country can usefully contribute to resolving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, so try to stay out of it, but is difficult to tolerate reading a site calling for further war crimes as answer to war crimes.
PB benefits from a diversity of voices and opinions, and is generally civil compared to other sites, but when any poster dominates thread after thread then it loses that charm.
I think the struggle for Israel is how it provides itself security without expelling people from Gaza. The status quo simply doesn't work, and a significant number there are pledged to the extermination of Israel and its people. Yes the hard right illegal settlers are crazy, yes they steal land, but they aren't pledged to genocide like Hamas.
Gaza is an open sore on the region, allowed to be sustained by other states. Egypt likes to blame Israel but has its own border wall at the south to keep Gazans imprisoned. Iran is after a fight and seem to be responsible for all those missiles arriving into Gaza. Russia seem to have armed and trained Hamas with drones to drop bombs.
Removing Gaza and pushing the people there back onto the arab diaspora isn't that crazy an idea. The idiocy of "refugee camps" has to end. These are not displaced refugees, they are several generations down the track from that. Resettle them in the other parts of the former Ottoman empire. So that they can also find peace.
The Arab dictatorships don’t want settlement of trained radicals in their lands. The refugee camps are also useful in keeping the pressure on Israel.
Do the settlers steal land? My understanding was that normally they purchase it (and then build exclusive compounds).
But - as always - a lot comes down to water rights. That was the flashpoint in previous discussions. The Jordan is a pretty feeble river.
Listening to Starmer on BBC just now his answer to the waiting lists is to pay doctors overtime to work evenings and weekends even though the overtime rate is less than they earn in the private sector
I would be interested in hearing the views of @Foxy and others on this
In the short term, what alternative is there?
Yes - employ the private sector to work with the NHS
Already very much the case. Indeed elective NHS work is now the bread and butter of most private hospitals in England.
There are limits to what can be done in these places. They are fine for elective surgeries for low risk procedures such as hernias, cholecystectomy, joint replacements in otherwise healthy patients.
The problem is that much of the waiting list is of people with more complex conditions, or simple conditions with a background of other long term disease like diabetes or heart failure, and these cannot be done safely in private facilities.
There is too a massive backlog in non surgical specialities such as dermatology, rheumatology, mental health etc etc that private facilities cannot or will not touch.
Overtime at NHS hospitals is the only viable possibility for these conditions, so Streeting is correct in that. The problem is that running such clinics evenings and weekends requires more staff. Even "office hours" 7 day working requires 40% more staff than 5 day working, before you get to unsocial hours. This needs to be all staff too for these services to be efficient, from receptionists, to porters, to secretaries, not just Doctors.
I have worked at least one weekend a month all my professional life, and never expected to work 9-5 with undisturbed evenings and nights. I intend to carry on for another decade the same, but you simply cannot force everyone to do so without either spreading staff dangerously thin or worsening the retention issue.
Hence the interest in PAs and AAs to build workforce, but ultimately the only way to increase capacity is to retain and train more staff.
Office hours Monday to Friday is the problem.
Given the amount of machinery and investment in NHS Hospitals it has always struck me as mad that they're not operating to capacity 7 days a week for at least 12 hours a day.
Private sector industry with large industrial investments don't typically operate office hours Monday to Friday only.
The entire system of employment in the NHS seems designed to maximise strife, stop stuff getting done and piss off the staff as much as possible.
Designing support systems (human and machine) so that extremely expensive medical staff can just get on with medical stuff is the way to go.
On one occasion, I got chatting to a Dr. at A&E, as he was treating me. They had actual clipboard wielders doing 1895 style time and motion studies on them - are you seeing enough patients an hour? - at the time I was there.
That was consider stupid in about 1920. It pisses people off better than nearly everything else. If you want those numbers, you can see them trivially from the paperwork.
Sounds like Management Consultants at work!
You cannot just look at figures to understand a problem. There lies the fate of HS2 when Spreadsheet Sunak doesn't look at wider issues. You need to talk to people on the ground and observe process.
For example, you cannot see why the doctor has large gaps between seeing patients. Are they being interrupted by phone calls? Is the IT too slow to record and order investigations? Are they checking a Physician Associates decisions? Are they skiving? You need to be there to find out, or at least actually talk to them.
Speaking as a management consultant, my client value is that I know how things work and how to get things done, not just arguing about costs. Understanding and managing the financial side is also important, but too many decisions are made as short term cost savings and cost more long term.
The magic words are "best value". Which so often isn't the same as "cheapest"
When I was Head of Service of a staff of 250 (I have since returned to clinical work), I implemented quite a lot of change management.
The key thing that worked well was to go and speak to the staff about the issue and ask them what they thought I should do to improve things. Sometimes their ideas would be things that were impossible or unaffordable, but often useful or insightful into issues that I hadn't seen. At the very least listening to the shop floor established a rapport that got them listening to me, and gave me an understanding of how to get past obstacles to change.
I can understand why people don't want to see - or have described - the reality of what rape - especially in wartime - looks like. It is deeply disturbing. It can easily stray into a sort of vile pornography or glorification.
But it is also necessary to understand the brutality of what happens and why there is the reaction there is.
Anyway I have seen and read enough. Like everyone else I too cannot bear so much reality. Social media is best avoided at times like these. And there is plenty of nicer stuff to be getting on with.
I was not dimishing the wickedness of the violence in any way. This isn't the Observer colour supplement, did we need such detail here? Maybe we did. But I would have preferred to look at more obvious sources should the need arise.
There is a case that by editing the news, it convinces people that the news is being “shaped”.
For example, on one of the Greek islands that was getting refugees landing there, to x hundred percent of the local population…. They started throwing stones at news crews. Why?
Well, whenever the locals were being interviewed by international news, the moment they started saying anything about the crime rate (fruit trees in orchards being stripped etc), it got cut from the report.
So the locals, who watched TV became convinced that the international media were “on the side of the migrants” and “against them”
I wouldn't advocate sanitising news.
I was merely offended at how graphic,and my interpretation as to why a poster on PB needed to be so graphic.
My bad.
The level of horror and violence of sexual violence is not I think fully understood. We shy away from it precisely because it is so horrible and out of a sense of decency and self-protection - some things once seen cannot be unseen or unheard.
The danger in doing that it is that it risks it being overlooked and the victims forgotten and it being seen as just one of those things that happen. I think there is a tendency for that to happen with all forms of sexual violence. Precisely because it is a perversion of something wonderful we cannot bear to learn what happens when it is used to harm.
I do not know what the right balance is. I only pray that those girls will come home alive and be given the help and care they need.
I was wondering the other day, in an idle moment, what happened to the German women raped by the Soviet troops as they made their way from the Polish border to Berlin. And, perchance, to the babies that resulted.
There’s a whole pile of history there. Just doesn’t get on the Hitler Channel* very often
Also look at the stories of the children fathered by German soldiers in Norway and Denmark. Stuff that didn’t just stop in 45. But went on and on.
Times Radio presenter Chloe Tilley was condemned by listeners after she spoke of the “bravery,” the “intensity” and “incredible ability” of Hamas “to go for Israel in such a way that we have never seen before.”
The thinking of Hamas/Iran probably went something like this...
(1) Massive attack on Israel, with utterly disgusting brutal atrocities - to be widely broadcast on social media (2) Provoke the fury and wrath of Israel, to wipe out Gaza - again, capture the worst bits; broadcast it all (3) Trigger a wider Middle East conflagration in disgust, and ally with everyone to wipe out Israel (4) Be rewarded in this life or the next, as holy martyrs, for wiping the Jews and their state
So, it's not dissimilar to the thinking of White Supremacists who want to provoke a race war that, ultimately, will work out in their favour.
[Btw, I don't think (3) would happen regardless, but Netanyahu needs to be careful not to fall into a trap on (2)]
I think you're spot on. Netanyahu has big problems, though: 1. He is in coalition with far-right ethno-nationalists who believe they know better than the IDF 2. He is in that coalition solely because he needed to power to prevent criminal investigation of himself 3. The combination of 1 and 2 means that he totally took his eye off the national security ball
Put all of that together and there is a very good chance that he now reacts in exactly the way that Hamas/Iran want.
Yes, indeed. It's concerning.
Of course, they know all this too (Hamas/Iran aren't stupid) which is why they struck as hard as they did when they did.
Yep - I think the huge protests against the Netanyahu government inside Israel would also have spooked them. They need him in power.
If there were any justice in this world (ha!) Netanyahu would be out on his ear. For months he has been trying to attack the judiciary, arrogate more power to himself, protect himself from legal proceedings and appease extreme nationalist parties. It has led to huge demonstrations against him and some reservists threatening not to serve in the IDF. Whether and to what extent all of this resulted in the Israeli government failing in its duty to keep Israel secure we won't find out for a while, maybe never.
Thing is you can try to dismantle the organs of a liberal democratic state and you will get objections from all sorts but what you do may well be tolerated by many if you provide safety and security in return. But if you cannot do that - as the Netanyahu government has plainly failed to do - why tolerate everything else?
For now those reservists will fight to defend their country, to defend people from being slaughtered in their homes, at bus stops, from girls being kidnapped, raped, killed, their bodies desecrated. But after?
Recent Israeli governments have become more and more horrible and so, while I want Israel to exist and be safe it has become, increasingly hard to support the policies of its government which provide no security and are becoming increasingly undemocratic and illiberal. Israel under Netanyahu has become more and more like the Arab states it claims to be better than. Those Israelis wanting a liberal Democratic Western-style Israel have sometimes looked like the remnants of an older better - but dying - Israel.
But what we have seen of Islamic terrorism in Israel and everywhere it has happened in recent decades and the resurgence of Western anti-semitism under the guise of anti-colonialism has reduced my sympathy for the causes they claim to be fighting for to somewhere near zero. The Palestinians - and Arabs generally - have picked and supported the most appalling causes and leaders. I can feel sorrow and sympathy for innocent individuals in Israel and Gaza being terrorised and tortured and suffering. I feel nothing but contempt for those whose reaction to seeing films of old people gunned down at bus stops and girls being raped is to go out onto the streets of London and celebrate.
100% agree
Unfortunately Islamic militant radicalism needs to be cauterised. I increasingly see no alternative.
I disagree with the idea of pushing Palestinians out of Gaza - although Netanyahu may try it (If he does I hope the West will stop him). But we need to find a way to win the hearts and minds of the people of Gaza.
But first there needs to be regime change. By its actions Hamas has made itself illegitimate as a government.
Hamas are the government of Gaza. Not in a legitimate way by international standards, but they are. How do we make regime change happen? Israel will need a military invasion of Gaza with all that entails. Refugees would try and flee but I assume that Egypt will keep its own border shut.
One of the most densly populated areas in the world, radicalised and armed to the teeth, vs one of the most effective (brutal) militaries in the world. It will be a bloodbath, and doesn't offer a guarantee that Hamas will be removed.
So many of the arab states in the area now want peace deals and links with Israel. So it is time that one of them steps up and finally absorbs the so-called refugee camps. Its absurd that this has been allowed to drag on for nearly a century.
The Israel conflict is terrible with unknown consequences and outcome
This article highlights just how perilous the world's economy's are and why there is absolutely no money to spend by governments
Also sorry to see @Farooq and @FrankBooth leave this forum but at times it does seem like an echo chamber, but it is important that as many different views are expressed as possible otherwise it will become an echo chamber
Why has @Farooq left? Great loss. I really enjoyed his posts. He often made me laugh out loud. Don't know enough about Frank, but generally sad to see anyone leave regardless of their views. I can only think of one exception, and that person was banned so clearly I wasn't alone in that view.
@Farooq is a troll and a complete and utter f**king d***head.
However, clenching my teeth, he did at least make vaguely half-intelligent posts at time, and hadn't yet crossed the boundary for being so deeply unpleasant and toxic that he needed evicting from the site, so I wouldn't support his expulsion.
I trust he will return after a few days.
People come, people go. So what.
I don’t mind Faarooq, but it’s all getting a bit like CHB when he was crying for some departed posters to return and then promptly flounced himself. It’s bizarre when people are nostalgic For posters on a message board.
People get far too invested in these debates and discussions. Especially on fucking Israel. Which is why I avoid the topic in any depth. No good ever comes out of it and on Twitter it’s far worse.
Well said. I got involved yesterday as I had a few moments free and such debates have been honed over the years on CiF. Everyone can spout the relevant UN Resolutions on the matter (181, 242, 338 if anyone is wondering) and it gets us nowhere.
I doubt many on here are anti-semitic but the equivalence drawn between Hamas and Netanyahu's government is interesting to see also imo.
Yes. It is more than that. It shames those who draw that equivalence.
The Israel conflict is terrible with unknown consequences and outcome
This article highlights just how perilous the world's economy's are and why there is absolutely no money to spend by governments
Also sorry to see @Farooq and @FrankBooth leave this forum but at times it does seem like an echo chamber, but it is important that as many different views are expressed as possible otherwise it will become an echo chamber
Why has @Farooq left? Great loss. I really enjoyed his posts. He often made me laugh out loud. Don't know enough about Frank, but generally sad to see anyone leave regardless of their views. I can only think of one exception, and that person was banned so clearly I wasn't alone in that view.
They are going travelling for some months, so a good time to switch off.
@Farooq objected to a few other posters calling for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and expulsion from their remaining lands.
I don't think our site or country can usefully contribute to resolving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, so try to stay out of it, but is difficult to tolerate reading a site calling for further war crimes as answer to war crimes.
PB benefits from a diversity of voices and opinions, and is generally civil compared to other sites, but when any poster dominates thread after thread then it loses that charm.
I think the struggle for Israel is how it provides itself security without expelling people from Gaza. The status quo simply doesn't work, and a significant number there are pledged to the extermination of Israel and its people. Yes the hard right illegal settlers are crazy, yes they steal land, but they aren't pledged to genocide like Hamas.
Gaza is an open sore on the region, allowed to be sustained by other states. Egypt likes to blame Israel but has its own border wall at the south to keep Gazans imprisoned. Iran is after a fight and seem to be responsible for all those missiles arriving into Gaza. Russia seem to have armed and trained Hamas with drones to drop bombs.
Removing Gaza and pushing the people there back onto the arab diaspora isn't that crazy an idea. The idiocy of "refugee camps" has to end. These are not displaced refugees, they are several generations down the track from that. Resettle them in the other parts of the former Ottoman empire. So that they can also find peace.
The Arab dictatorships don’t want settlement of trained radicals in their lands. The refugee camps are also useful in keeping the pressure on Israel.
Do the settlers steal land? My understanding was that normally they purchase it (and then build exclusive compounds).
But - as always - a lot comes down to water rights. That was the flashpoint in previous discussions. The Jordan is a pretty feeble river.
The nastier types of settlers use Mafia tactics. They make life hell for any Palestinian neighbours - killing livestock, criminal damage to other property. There have been reports of murders.
Listening to Starmer on BBC just now his answer to the waiting lists is to pay doctors overtime to work evenings and weekends even though the overtime rate is less than they earn in the private sector
I would be interested in hearing the views of @Foxy and others on this
Not just doctors. Did he mention receptionists, and porters, and security, and administrators, and nurses, and technicians ...?
Many of whom have, you know, families.
And is there a plan for childcare facilities to also be available 24/7 for 7 days per week, at a rate that a receptionist can afford.
Australia getting seriously bogged down here. Maybe 30 runs below par. Not uncatchable but they need to watch. They are finding the spinners very hard to get away.
This isn't Tory incompetence - its mendaciousness. A deliberate choice to smash as many things as possible, salting the earth for Labour so that they can then postion Labour as the party who screwed everything up.
Sunak stood at his conference lectern railing against government failures, and that only he could lead the change needed to fix the country. As if he, and his party, weren't the people who had wrecked everything.
Never mind ballsy it is simply fantasy. When people keep ramping the supposed £36bn to be spent on northern transport, even as the reality is exposed more and more, it shows that they are so utterly disconnected from reality that they will swallow any lie as truth.
The Tories have had success in weaponising ignorance and stupidity. Polling shows that people have seen through their schtick and aren't listening any more
Labour's last government signed off with "theres no money". Perhaps if they had left some we'd all be in better shape.
Yes. And if "there is no money" was true back then, how true must it be now after your lot have vastly increased the amount of debt we are in?
I do rather enjoy the blank patches in your memory. Are you saying there should have been no support for people during Covid ? I seem to remember Starmer calling out for even more than Lord Bountiful Johnson. And on cost of living should we have told people to freeze last winter ?
An attack on mismanagement of HS2 or government current spending would of course be justified, but if HMG were to impose cuts you would be one of the first to break out in hysterics and say its was wrong.
Fascinating. What we spend money on is a separate thing. If we spend it, we spend it. So "there is no money" was you claim factually true in 2010 when debt was £1.2tn, then it also must be true now when it is £2.5tn.
Money doesn't care what it is spent on. It is either there or it isn't. You said "perhaps if they {Labour} had left some we'd all be in better shape". OK, so debt has doubled, we already factually had no money according to you, so now we're in worse shape with no no money. Logically, if we follow your argument.
The statement "Money doesn't care what it is spent on" is at the root of our current problems. Blair and the conservative tribute act took no real care of public finances. And yet if they had cut back your pavlovian instincts would have you wailing cuts cuts.
I dread to think what you advise your clients.
Again, we're not discussing morality, we're discussing adding.
You said that there really was no money left when we had -£1.2tn Now we have -£2.5tn -£2.5tn is a bigger hole than -£1.2tn So if as you state we had no money left at -£1.2tn, how would you describe it now that it is -£2.5tn?
You may think that the £1.3tn has been gallantly spent on things we needed. But its been spent *after* you stated that there was no money left. But if there was no money left, how come your lot have spent an extra £1.3tn since?
2009/10 budget deficit: 11% of GDP 2023/24 budget deficit forecast: 5.1% of GDP
11% of GDP is a bigger hole than 5.1% of GDP
Deficit is the rate at which you are digging. Debt is the size of the hole.
Improper analogy since you can just stop digging at will, you can't drop the deficit at will as momentum will keep you moving forwards. The deficit is the speed at which your finances are collapsing, you need to act just to slow down let alone reverse that momenum.
I can park 1 metre away from a brick wall perfectly safely. If I'm 2 metres away from a brick wall I'm heading towards at 70mph then that's far more catastrophic.
Let's try a beer analogy. Deficit is how quickly you are drinking, debt is how drunk you are.
Labour were necking pints during a lunchtime session, but were still capable of catching the right bus home.
The Tories have been on the lash all day and are staying for a lock in. They'll be sleeping in a gutter.
Labour up to 2008 were buying rounds and popularity from the pub absolutely confident that the 2.15 at Haydock was going to come in yet again and cover the tab. When it didn't and their popularity collapsed the Tories had to tidy up the mess but faced the problem that a bar that is used to free rounds think that they have some sort of right to them and moan and moan when the drink slows down.
Am I missing the part from 2008, where half the pubs in the World were bulldozed down, and they had to be rebuilt before anyone could have a pint?
An attitude change is required too, to treat Saturday and Sunday as normal working days.
Is that reasonable and desirable?
Suppose we take that approach for all jobs, how does it work for families to raise children? Given the difficulties created when children do not have a stable home environment, surely we should seek to reduce the number of jobs and amount of work that has to be done outside of the normal M-F 9-5?
Your approach fills me with dread. It's the most dreary Stalinist technocracy, with no regard for the lives of the people involved.
Drives me mad that the every conversation on PB about the NHS is about supply, not demand. We need to understand why it is growing at 1-2% per year, even after accounting for demographics, inflation etc.
The two main reasons put forward are increases in chronic conditions like dementia and diabetes, and the increased costs associated with new technologies/drugs.
Tis a pity that Public Health has been stripped bare by this government that only cares about the short term.
Not just formal Public Health either. 15 minute neighbourhoods are nor just more pleasant places to live, but also healthier as walking, and social interaction with neighbours are built into the design.
The thinking of Hamas/Iran probably went something like this...
(1) Massive attack on Israel, with utterly disgusting brutal atrocities - to be widely broadcast on social media (2) Provoke the fury and wrath of Israel, to wipe out Gaza - again, capture the worst bits; broadcast it all (3) Trigger a wider Middle East conflagration in disgust, and ally with everyone to wipe out Israel (4) Be rewarded in this life or the next, as holy martyrs, for wiping the Jews and their state
So, it's not dissimilar to the thinking of White Supremacists who want to provoke a race war that, ultimately, will work out in their favour.
[Btw, I don't think (3) would happen regardless, but Netanyahu needs to be careful not to fall into a trap on (2)]
I think you're spot on. Netanyahu has big problems, though: 1. He is in coalition with far-right ethno-nationalists who believe they know better than the IDF 2. He is in that coalition solely because he needed to power to prevent criminal investigation of himself 3. The combination of 1 and 2 means that he totally took his eye off the national security ball
Put all of that together and there is a very good chance that he now reacts in exactly the way that Hamas/Iran want.
Yes, indeed. It's concerning.
Of course, they know all this too (Hamas/Iran aren't stupid) which is why they struck as hard as they did when they did.
Yep - I think the huge protests against the Netanyahu government inside Israel would also have spooked them. They need him in power.
If there were any justice in this world (ha!) Netanyahu would be out on his ear. For months he has been trying to attack the judiciary, arrogate more power to himself, protect himself from legal proceedings and appease extreme nationalist parties. It has led to huge demonstrations against him and some reservists threatening not to serve in the IDF. Whether and to what extent all of this resulted in the Israeli government failing in its duty to keep Israel secure we won't find out for a while, maybe never.
Thing is you can try to dismantle the organs of a liberal democratic state and you will get objections from all sorts but what you do may well be tolerated by many if you provide safety and security in return. But if you cannot do that - as the Netanyahu government has plainly failed to do - why tolerate everything else?
For now those reservists will fight to defend their country, to defend people from being slaughtered in their homes, at bus stops, from girls being kidnapped, raped, killed, their bodies desecrated. But after?
Recent Israeli governments have become more and more horrible and so, while I want Israel to exist and be safe it has become, increasingly hard to support the policies of its government which provide no security and are becoming increasingly undemocratic and illiberal. Israel under Netanyahu has become more and more like the Arab states it claims to be better than. Those Israelis wanting a liberal Democratic Western-style Israel have sometimes looked like the remnants of an older better - but dying - Israel.
But what we have seen of Islamic terrorism in Israel and everywhere it has happened in recent decades and the resurgence of Western anti-semitism under the guise of anti-colonialism has reduced my sympathy for the causes they claim to be fighting for to somewhere near zero. The Palestinians - and Arabs generally - have picked and supported the most appalling causes and leaders. I can feel sorrow and sympathy for innocent individuals in Israel and Gaza being terrorised and tortured and suffering. I feel nothing but contempt for those whose reaction to seeing films of old people gunned down at bus stops and girls being raped is to go out onto the streets of London and celebrate.
100% agree
Unfortunately Islamic militant radicalism needs to be cauterised. I increasingly see no alternative.
I disagree with the idea of pushing Palestinians out of Gaza - although Netanyahu may try it (If he does I hope the West will stop him). But we need to find a way to win the hearts and minds of the people of Gaza.
But first there needs to be regime change. By its actions Hamas has made itself illegitimate as a government.
Hamas are the government of Gaza. Not in a legitimate way by international standards, but they are. How do we make regime change happen? Israel will need a military invasion of Gaza with all that entails. Refugees would try and flee but I assume that Egypt will keep its own border shut.
One of the most densly populated areas in the world, radicalised and armed to the teeth, vs one of the most effective (brutal) militaries in the world. It will be a bloodbath, and doesn't offer a guarantee that Hamas will be removed.
So many of the arab states in the area now want peace deals and links with Israel. So it is time that one of them steps up and finally absorbs the so-called refugee camps. Its absurd that this has been allowed to drag on for nearly a century.
Didn’t Hamas win the last election in Gaza? I don’t think (but am willing to be persuaded) that the election was much, if any, more corrupt than, say, many in the USA.
@viewcode and @StillWaters I can’t see some of the vanilla comments from the last thread but just wanted to acknowledge and thank your recommendations for learning more about the Israel/Palestine conflict.
For those who missed them but are interested, StillWaters recommended the book A Line in the Sand by James Barr and viewcode this 5 min YouTube video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Azs7As3MYFU
This isn't Tory incompetence - its mendaciousness. A deliberate choice to smash as many things as possible, salting the earth for Labour so that they can then postion Labour as the party who screwed everything up.
Sunak stood at his conference lectern railing against government failures, and that only he could lead the change needed to fix the country. As if he, and his party, weren't the people who had wrecked everything.
Never mind ballsy it is simply fantasy. When people keep ramping the supposed £36bn to be spent on northern transport, even as the reality is exposed more and more, it shows that they are so utterly disconnected from reality that they will swallow any lie as truth.
The Tories have had success in weaponising ignorance and stupidity. Polling shows that people have seen through their schtick and aren't listening any more
Labour's last government signed off with "theres no money". Perhaps if they had left some we'd all be in better shape.
Yes. And if "there is no money" was true back then, how true must it be now after your lot have vastly increased the amount of debt we are in?
I do rather enjoy the blank patches in your memory. Are you saying there should have been no support for people during Covid ? I seem to remember Starmer calling out for even more than Lord Bountiful Johnson. And on cost of living should we have told people to freeze last winter ?
An attack on mismanagement of HS2 or government current spending would of course be justified, but if HMG were to impose cuts you would be one of the first to break out in hysterics and say its was wrong.
Fascinating. What we spend money on is a separate thing. If we spend it, we spend it. So "there is no money" was you claim factually true in 2010 when debt was £1.2tn, then it also must be true now when it is £2.5tn.
Money doesn't care what it is spent on. It is either there or it isn't. You said "perhaps if they {Labour} had left some we'd all be in better shape". OK, so debt has doubled, we already factually had no money according to you, so now we're in worse shape with no no money. Logically, if we follow your argument.
The statement "Money doesn't care what it is spent on" is at the root of our current problems. Blair and the conservative tribute act took no real care of public finances. And yet if they had cut back your pavlovian instincts would have you wailing cuts cuts.
I dread to think what you advise your clients.
Again, we're not discussing morality, we're discussing adding.
You said that there really was no money left when we had -£1.2tn Now we have -£2.5tn -£2.5tn is a bigger hole than -£1.2tn So if as you state we had no money left at -£1.2tn, how would you describe it now that it is -£2.5tn?
You may think that the £1.3tn has been gallantly spent on things we needed. But its been spent *after* you stated that there was no money left. But if there was no money left, how come your lot have spent an extra £1.3tn since?
2009/10 budget deficit: 11% of GDP 2023/24 budget deficit forecast: 5.1% of GDP
11% of GDP is a bigger hole than 5.1% of GDP
Deficit is the rate at which you are digging. Debt is the size of the hole.
Improper analogy since you can just stop digging at will, you can't drop the deficit at will as momentum will keep you moving forwards. The deficit is the speed at which your finances are collapsing, you need to act just to slow down let alone reverse that momenum.
I can park 1 metre away from a brick wall perfectly safely. If I'm 2 metres away from a brick wall I'm heading towards at 70mph then that's far more catastrophic.
Let's try a beer analogy. Deficit is how quickly you are drinking, debt is how drunk you are.
Labour were necking pints during a lunchtime session, but were still capable of catching the right bus home.
The Tories have been on the lash all day and are staying for a lock in. They'll be sleeping in a gutter.
Labour up to 2008 were buying rounds and popularity from the pub absolutely confident that the 2.15 at Haydock was going to come in yet again and cover the tab. When it didn't and their popularity collapsed the Tories had to tidy up the mess but faced the problem that a bar that is used to free rounds think that they have some sort of right to them and moan and moan when the drink slows down.
Am I missing the part from 2008, where half the pubs in the World were bulldozed down, and they had to be rebuilt before anyone could have a pint?
I am not saying other countries didn't have problems too but very few were as addicted to the horses as we were.
Drives me mad that the every conversation on PB about the NHS is about supply, not demand. We need to understand why it is growing at 1-2% per year, even after accounting for demographics, inflation etc.
The two main reasons put forward are increases in chronic conditions like dementia and diabetes, and the increased costs associated with new technologies/drugs.
Tis a pity that Public Health has been stripped bare by this government that only cares about the short term.
Not just formal Public Health either. 15 minute neighbourhoods are nor just more pleasant places to live, but also healthier as walking, and social interaction with neighbours are built into the design.
That's a different and not particularly pleasant side to him.
In the new AI imbued world I do wonder if this is real. I guess if if’s not the Labour presentation machine will be down on it like a ton of bricks.
Yes, that is always a possibility today. But SKS has a whinny voice at the best of times. Feeling sorry for himself, which is what this sounded like to me, really doesn't help. He needs to deal with stress better than that.
He does come across as a real fanny, almost as bad as Rishi who reminds me of a character from Flushed, just cannot pin which one it was.
Just recall that No 10 made all this Network North BS up without consulting Network Rail. Presumably in order to keep the announcement as a conference surprise. That didn't work - it got leaked to every journalist with a pulse. Meanwhle, a bunch of policy wonks with no experience and little knowledge drew up a transport plan that imploded within 24 hours.
I wonder why people feel the Govt is useless and incompetent.
Lab are honest but useless. Cons are corrupt but competent. When Lab become corrupt (hi Tony!) or the Cons become useless (hi Rishi/Liz/Boris!) then they clearly need a good long time on the political naughty step to think about what they have done.
I can understand why people don't want to see - or have described - the reality of what rape - especially in wartime - looks like. It is deeply disturbing. It can easily stray into a sort of vile pornography or glorification.
But it is also necessary to understand the brutality of what happens and why there is the reaction there is.
Anyway I have seen and read enough. Like everyone else I too cannot bear so much reality. Social media is best avoided at times like these. And there is plenty of nicer stuff to be getting on with.
I was not dimishing the wickedness of the violence in any way. This isn't the Observer colour supplement, did we need such detail here? Maybe we did. But I would have preferred to look at more obvious sources should the need arise.
There is a case that by editing the news, it convinces people that the news is being “shaped”.
For example, on one of the Greek islands that was getting refugees landing there, to x hundred percent of the local population…. They started throwing stones at news crews. Why?
Well, whenever the locals were being interviewed by international news, the moment they started saying anything about the crime rate (fruit trees in orchards being stripped etc), it got cut from the report.
So the locals, who watched TV became convinced that the international media were “on the side of the migrants” and “against them”
I wouldn't advocate sanitising news.
I was merely offended at how graphic,and my interpretation as to why a poster on PB needed to be so graphic.
My bad.
The level of horror and violence of sexual violence is not I think fully understood. We shy away from it precisely because it is so horrible and out of a sense of decency and self-protection - some things once seen cannot be unseen or unheard.
The danger in doing that it is that it risks it being overlooked and the victims forgotten and it being seen as just one of those things that happen. I think there is a tendency for that to happen with all forms of sexual violence. Precisely because it is a perversion of something wonderful we cannot bear to learn what happens when it is used to harm.
I do not know what the right balance is. I only pray that those girls will come home alive and be given the help and care they need.
I was wondering the other day, in an idle moment, what happened to the German women raped by the Soviet troops as they made their way from the Polish border to Berlin. And, perchance, to the babies that resulted.
There’s a whole pile of history there. Just doesn’t get on the Hitler Channel* very often
Also look at the stories of the children fathered by German soldiers in Norway and Denmark. Stuff that didn’t just stop in 45. But went on and on.
*AKA the History Channel
Sadly, occupying armies have a bad record when it comes to fathering children.
Listening to Starmer on BBC just now his answer to the waiting lists is to pay doctors overtime to work evenings and weekends even though the overtime rate is less than they earn in the private sector
I would be interested in hearing the views of @Foxy and others on this
Not just doctors. Did he mention receptionists, and porters, and security, and administrators, and nurses, and technicians ...?
Many of whom have, you know, families.
And is there a plan for childcare facilities to also be available 24/7 for 7 days per week, at a rate that a receptionist can afford.
Quite. Though I was startled to be given a Saturday mid-morning appointment to see a dermatologist a few months ago in Edinburgh, in Lothian NHS Trust or whatever it is called. Within days of seeing the GP about a worrying mole. Got a full inspection all over while at it too.
The thinking of Hamas/Iran probably went something like this...
(1) Massive attack on Israel, with utterly disgusting brutal atrocities - to be widely broadcast on social media (2) Provoke the fury and wrath of Israel, to wipe out Gaza - again, capture the worst bits; broadcast it all (3) Trigger a wider Middle East conflagration in disgust, and ally with everyone to wipe out Israel (4) Be rewarded in this life or the next, as holy martyrs, for wiping the Jews and their state
So, it's not dissimilar to the thinking of White Supremacists who want to provoke a race war that, ultimately, will work out in their favour.
[Btw, I don't think (3) would happen regardless, but Netanyahu needs to be careful not to fall into a trap on (2)]
I think you're spot on. Netanyahu has big problems, though: 1. He is in coalition with far-right ethno-nationalists who believe they know better than the IDF 2. He is in that coalition solely because he needed to power to prevent criminal investigation of himself 3. The combination of 1 and 2 means that he totally took his eye off the national security ball
Put all of that together and there is a very good chance that he now reacts in exactly the way that Hamas/Iran want.
Yes, indeed. It's concerning.
Of course, they know all this too (Hamas/Iran aren't stupid) which is why they struck as hard as they did when they did.
Yep - I think the huge protests against the Netanyahu government inside Israel would also have spooked them. They need him in power.
If there were any justice in this world (ha!) Netanyahu would be out on his ear. For months he has been trying to attack the judiciary, arrogate more power to himself, protect himself from legal proceedings and appease extreme nationalist parties. It has led to huge demonstrations against him and some reservists threatening not to serve in the IDF. Whether and to what extent all of this resulted in the Israeli government failing in its duty to keep Israel secure we won't find out for a while, maybe never.
Thing is you can try to dismantle the organs of a liberal democratic state and you will get objections from all sorts but what you do may well be tolerated by many if you provide safety and security in return. But if you cannot do that - as the Netanyahu government has plainly failed to do - why tolerate everything else?
For now those reservists will fight to defend their country, to defend people from being slaughtered in their homes, at bus stops, from girls being kidnapped, raped, killed, their bodies desecrated. But after?
Recent Israeli governments have become more and more horrible and so, while I want Israel to exist and be safe it has become, increasingly hard to support the policies of its government which provide no security and are becoming increasingly undemocratic and illiberal. Israel under Netanyahu has become more and more like the Arab states it claims to be better than. Those Israelis wanting a liberal Democratic Western-style Israel have sometimes looked like the remnants of an older better - but dying - Israel.
But what we have seen of Islamic terrorism in Israel and everywhere it has happened in recent decades and the resurgence of Western anti-semitism under the guise of anti-colonialism has reduced my sympathy for the causes they claim to be fighting for to somewhere near zero. The Palestinians - and Arabs generally - have picked and supported the most appalling causes and leaders. I can feel sorrow and sympathy for innocent individuals in Israel and Gaza being terrorised and tortured and suffering. I feel nothing but contempt for those whose reaction to seeing films of old people gunned down at bus stops and girls being raped is to go out onto the streets of London and celebrate.
100% agree
Unfortunately Islamic militant radicalism needs to be cauterised. I increasingly see no alternative.
I disagree with the idea of pushing Palestinians out of Gaza - although Netanyahu may try it (If he does I hope the West will stop him). But we need to find a way to win the hearts and minds of the people of Gaza.
But first there needs to be regime change. By its actions Hamas has made itself illegitimate as a government.
Hamas are the government of Gaza. Not in a legitimate way by international standards, but they are. How do we make regime change happen? Israel will need a military invasion of Gaza with all that entails. Refugees would try and flee but I assume that Egypt will keep its own border shut.
One of the most densly populated areas in the world, radicalised and armed to the teeth, vs one of the most effective (brutal) militaries in the world. It will be a bloodbath, and doesn't offer a guarantee that Hamas will be removed.
So many of the arab states in the area now want peace deals and links with Israel. So it is time that one of them steps up and finally absorbs the so-called refugee camps. Its absurd that this has been allowed to drag on for nearly a century.
I fully expect Hamas to be prepared with tunnels, IEDs, suicide micro-drones etc. Any ground invasion by the IDF is going to take significant casualties. Yet the alternative for the IDF is a siege by blockade and bombardment.
The thinking of Hamas/Iran probably went something like this...
(1) Massive attack on Israel, with utterly disgusting brutal atrocities - to be widely broadcast on social media (2) Provoke the fury and wrath of Israel, to wipe out Gaza - again, capture the worst bits; broadcast it all (3) Trigger a wider Middle East conflagration in disgust, and ally with everyone to wipe out Israel (4) Be rewarded in this life or the next, as holy martyrs, for wiping the Jews and their state
So, it's not dissimilar to the thinking of White Supremacists who want to provoke a race war that, ultimately, will work out in their favour.
[Btw, I don't think (3) would happen regardless, but Netanyahu needs to be careful not to fall into a trap on (2)]
I think you're spot on. Netanyahu has big problems, though: 1. He is in coalition with far-right ethno-nationalists who believe they know better than the IDF 2. He is in that coalition solely because he needed to power to prevent criminal investigation of himself 3. The combination of 1 and 2 means that he totally took his eye off the national security ball
Put all of that together and there is a very good chance that he now reacts in exactly the way that Hamas/Iran want.
Yes, indeed. It's concerning.
Of course, they know all this too (Hamas/Iran aren't stupid) which is why they struck as hard as they did when they did.
Yep - I think the huge protests against the Netanyahu government inside Israel would also have spooked them. They need him in power.
If there were any justice in this world (ha!) Netanyahu would be out on his ear. For months he has been trying to attack the judiciary, arrogate more power to himself, protect himself from legal proceedings and appease extreme nationalist parties. It has led to huge demonstrations against him and some reservists threatening not to serve in the IDF. Whether and to what extent all of this resulted in the Israeli government failing in its duty to keep Israel secure we won't find out for a while, maybe never.
Thing is you can try to dismantle the organs of a liberal democratic state and you will get objections from all sorts but what you do may well be tolerated by many if you provide safety and security in return. But if you cannot do that - as the Netanyahu government has plainly failed to do - why tolerate everything else?
For now those reservists will fight to defend their country, to defend people from being slaughtered in their homes, at bus stops, from girls being kidnapped, raped, killed, their bodies desecrated. But after?
Recent Israeli governments have become more and more horrible and so, while I want Israel to exist and be safe it has become, increasingly hard to support the policies of its government which provide no security and are becoming increasingly undemocratic and illiberal. Israel under Netanyahu has become more and more like the Arab states it claims to be better than. Those Israelis wanting a liberal Democratic Western-style Israel have sometimes looked like the remnants of an older better - but dying - Israel.
But what we have seen of Islamic terrorism in Israel and everywhere it has happened in recent decades and the resurgence of Western anti-semitism under the guise of anti-colonialism has reduced my sympathy for the causes they claim to be fighting for to somewhere near zero. The Palestinians - and Arabs generally - have picked and supported the most appalling causes and leaders. I can feel sorrow and sympathy for innocent individuals in Israel and Gaza being terrorised and tortured and suffering. I feel nothing but contempt for those whose reaction to seeing films of old people gunned down at bus stops and girls being raped is to go out onto the streets of London and celebrate.
100% agree
Unfortunately Islamic militant radicalism needs to be cauterised. I increasingly see no alternative.
I disagree with the idea of pushing Palestinians out of Gaza - although Netanyahu may try it (If he does I hope the West will stop him). But we need to find a way to win the hearts and minds of the people of Gaza.
But first there needs to be regime change. By its actions Hamas has made itself illegitimate as a government.
Hamas are the government of Gaza. Not in a legitimate way by international standards, but they are. How do we make regime change happen? Israel will need a military invasion of Gaza with all that entails. Refugees would try and flee but I assume that Egypt will keep its own border shut.
One of the most densly populated areas in the world, radicalised and armed to the teeth, vs one of the most effective (brutal) militaries in the world. It will be a bloodbath, and doesn't offer a guarantee that Hamas will be removed.
So many of the arab states in the area now want peace deals and links with Israel. So it is time that one of them steps up and finally absorbs the so-called refugee camps. Its absurd that this has been allowed to drag on for nearly a century.
Didn’t Hamas win the last election in Gaza? I don’t think (but am willing to be persuaded) that the election was much, if any, more corrupt than, say, many in the USA.
Hamas won the last Palestinian Authority elections in 2006. There was then a battle for control with Fatah and Hamas expelled everyone else from Gaza in 2007.
The Israel conflict is terrible with unknown consequences and outcome
This article highlights just how perilous the world's economy's are and why there is absolutely no money to spend by governments
Also sorry to see @Farooq and @FrankBooth leave this forum but at times it does seem like an echo chamber, but it is important that as many different views are expressed as possible otherwise it will become an echo chamber
Why has @Farooq left? Great loss. I really enjoyed his posts. He often made me laugh out loud. Don't know enough about Frank, but generally sad to see anyone leave regardless of their views. I can only think of one exception, and that person was banned so clearly I wasn't alone in that view.
@Farooq is a troll and a complete and utter f**king d***head.
However, clenching my teeth, he did at least make vaguely half-intelligent posts at time, and hadn't yet crossed the boundary for being so deeply unpleasant and toxic that he needed evicting from the site, so I wouldn't support his expulsion.
I trust he will return after a few days.
People come, people go. So what.
I don’t mind Faarooq, but it’s all getting a bit like CHB when he was crying for some departed posters to return and then promptly flounced himself. It’s bizarre when people are nostalgic For posters on a message board.
People get far too invested in these debates and discussions. Especially on fucking Israel. Which is why I avoid the topic in any depth. No good ever comes out of it and on Twitter it’s far worse.
I agree with getting too invested, but some people of evil want good people to have exactly the attitude of: "The conversation on this issue is far too toxic: I'll keep out."
Hence leaving the playing field to the extremists. And it's not just issues like Israel / Palestine / Hamas, either.
I think there's a bit of colonialist mentality on both sides of the debate in this country, the idea that we must have a position. Maybe it's just a really bloody complicated issue, it is a zero sum game, there are no goodies and baddies, there is no neat solution, it is a long way away and we don't need to get overly involved other than doing what we can to lower the bloodshed. It's a very sad situation but when you have people disputing who has ownership over land and then you throw a load of religious mumbo jumbo into the equation too it's unsurprising it is so intractable.
We have interests. It’s nothing to do with colonialism (why is it the left always rabbits on about the Empire? It’s gone guys, 70+ years ago, it’s not coming back).
We have to stand up for a democracy, however flawed and however much we dislike the incumbent. We have to stand against terrorism and radical Islamic militants. Those are fundamental strategic priorities for this country and the whole of the West.
The Israel conflict is terrible with unknown consequences and outcome
This article highlights just how perilous the world's economy's are and why there is absolutely no money to spend by governments
Also sorry to see @Farooq and @FrankBooth leave this forum but at times it does seem like an echo chamber, but it is important that as many different views are expressed as possible otherwise it will become an echo chamber
Why has @Farooq left? Great loss. I really enjoyed his posts. He often made me laugh out loud. Don't know enough about Frank, but generally sad to see anyone leave regardless of their views. I can only think of one exception, and that person was banned so clearly I wasn't alone in that view.
They are going travelling for some months, so a good time to switch off.
@Farooq objected to a few other posters calling for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and expulsion from their remaining lands.
I don't think our site or country can usefully contribute to resolving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, so try to stay out of it, but is difficult to tolerate reading a site calling for further war crimes as answer to war crimes.
PB benefits from a diversity of voices and opinions, and is generally civil compared to other sites, but when any poster dominates thread after thread then it loses that charm.
I think the struggle for Israel is how it provides itself security without expelling people from Gaza. The status quo simply doesn't work, and a significant number there are pledged to the extermination of Israel and its people. Yes the hard right illegal settlers are crazy, yes they steal land, but they aren't pledged to genocide like Hamas.
Gaza is an open sore on the region, allowed to be sustained by other states. Egypt likes to blame Israel but has its own border wall at the south to keep Gazans imprisoned. Iran is after a fight and seem to be responsible for all those missiles arriving into Gaza. Russia seem to have armed and trained Hamas with drones to drop bombs.
Removing Gaza and pushing the people there back onto the arab diaspora isn't that crazy an idea. The idiocy of "refugee camps" has to end. These are not displaced refugees, they are several generations down the track from that. Resettle them in the other parts of the former Ottoman empire. So that they can also find peace.
I note that you also appear to be calling for ethnic cleansing, which is a crime against humanity. I don’t have a magical solution for Israel/Palestine, but I don’t think committing a crime against humanity is ever the answer.
Listening to Starmer on BBC just now his answer to the waiting lists is to pay doctors overtime to work evenings and weekends even though the overtime rate is less than they earn in the private sector
I would be interested in hearing the views of @Foxy and others on this
Not just doctors. Did he mention receptionists, and porters, and security, and administrators, and nurses, and technicians ...?
Many of whom have, you know, families.
And is there a plan for childcare facilities to also be available 24/7 for 7 days per week, at a rate that a receptionist can afford.
Quite. Though I was startled to be given a Saturday mid-morning appointment to see a dermatologist a few months ago in Edinburgh, in Lothian NHS Trust or whatever it is called. Within days of seeing the GP about a worrying mole. Got a full inspection all over while at it too.
There are always some that are happy to work nights and weekends. Mrs Foxy did when our boys were young, though it did require careful scheduling and we were often ships in the night.
It does require the right sort of homelife for it to work, and impossible for single parents etc.
Listening to Starmer on BBC just now his answer to the waiting lists is to pay doctors overtime to work evenings and weekends even though the overtime rate is less than they earn in the private sector
I would be interested in hearing the views of @Foxy and others on this
In the short term, what alternative is there?
Yes - employ the private sector to work with the NHS
Already very much the case. Indeed elective NHS work is now the bread and butter of most private hospitals in England.
There are limits to what can be done in these places. They are fine for elective surgeries for low risk procedures such as hernias, cholecystectomy, joint replacements in otherwise healthy patients.
The problem is that much of the waiting list is of people with more complex conditions, or simple conditions with a background of other long term disease like diabetes or heart failure, and these cannot be done safely in private facilities.
There is too a massive backlog in non surgical specialities such as dermatology, rheumatology, mental health etc etc that private facilities cannot or will not touch.
Overtime at NHS hospitals is the only viable possibility for these conditions, so Streeting is correct in that. The problem is that running such clinics evenings and weekends requires more staff. Even "office hours" 7 day working requires 40% more staff than 5 day working, before you get to unsocial hours. This needs to be all staff too for these services to be efficient, from receptionists, to porters, to secretaries, not just Doctors.
I have worked at least one weekend a month all my professional life, and never expected to work 9-5 with undisturbed evenings and nights. I intend to carry on for another decade the same, but you simply cannot force everyone to do so without either spreading staff dangerously thin or worsening the retention issue.
Hence the interest in PAs and AAs to build workforce, but ultimately the only way to increase capacity is to retain and train more staff.
Office hours Monday to Friday is the problem.
Given the amount of machinery and investment in NHS Hospitals it has always struck me as mad that they're not operating to capacity 7 days a week for at least 12 hours a day.
Private sector industry with large industrial investments don't typically operate office hours Monday to Friday only.
The entire system of employment in the NHS seems designed to maximise strife, stop stuff getting done and piss off the staff as much as possible.
Designing support systems (human and machine) so that extremely expensive medical staff can just get on with medical stuff is the way to go.
On one occasion, I got chatting to a Dr. at A&E, as he was treating me. They had actual clipboard wielders doing 1895 style time and motion studies on them - are you seeing enough patients an hour? - at the time I was there.
That was consider stupid in about 1920. It pisses people off better than nearly everything else. If you want those numbers, you can see them trivially from the paperwork.
Sounds like Management Consultants at work!
You cannot just look at figures to understand a problem. There lies the fate of HS2 when Spreadsheet Sunak doesn't look at wider issues. You need to talk to people on the ground and observe process.
For example, you cannot see why the doctor has large gaps between seeing patients. Are they being interrupted by phone calls? Is the IT too slow to record and order investigations? Are they checking a Physician Associates decisions? Are they skiving? You need to be there to find out, or at least actually talk to them.
Sending a bloke with a clipboard in is one of the great ways to wreck morale. In fact, in a couple of cases in the US, back in the day, this was done deliberately, to provoke strikes. At financially opportune times, that is.
Strangely, productivity investigations and their methodologies have advanced in the last 100 years.
I think that the NHS should recklessly charge into the future. And only use management techniques that have been obsolete for 50 years.
I agree that we need to attract better management into the NHS. That may well involve paying more, but I suspect won't go down well with Joe Public.
NHS i sbadly run and wasteful , needs restructured big time but there are too many vested interests who prefer the chaos and inefficiency.
Listening to Starmer on BBC just now his answer to the waiting lists is to pay doctors overtime to work evenings and weekends even though the overtime rate is less than they earn in the private sector
I would be interested in hearing the views of @Foxy and others on this
In the short term, what alternative is there?
Yes - employ the private sector to work with the NHS
Already very much the case. Indeed elective NHS work is now the bread and butter of most private hospitals in England.
There are limits to what can be done in these places. They are fine for elective surgeries for low risk procedures such as hernias, cholecystectomy, joint replacements in otherwise healthy patients.
The problem is that much of the waiting list is of people with more complex conditions, or simple conditions with a background of other long term disease like diabetes or heart failure, and these cannot be done safely in private facilities.
There is too a massive backlog in non surgical specialities such as dermatology, rheumatology, mental health etc etc that private facilities cannot or will not touch.
Overtime at NHS hospitals is the only viable possibility for these conditions, so Streeting is correct in that. The problem is that running such clinics evenings and weekends requires more staff. Even "office hours" 7 day working requires 40% more staff than 5 day working, before you get to unsocial hours. This needs to be all staff too for these services to be efficient, from receptionists, to porters, to secretaries, not just Doctors.
I have worked at least one weekend a month all my professional life, and never expected to work 9-5 with undisturbed evenings and nights. I intend to carry on for another decade the same, but you simply cannot force everyone to do so without either spreading staff dangerously thin or worsening the retention issue.
Hence the interest in PAs and AAs to build workforce, but ultimately the only way to increase capacity is to retain and train more staff.
Office hours Monday to Friday is the problem.
Given the amount of machinery and investment in NHS Hospitals it has always struck me as mad that they're not operating to capacity 7 days a week for at least 12 hours a day.
Private sector industry with large industrial investments don't typically operate office hours Monday to Friday only.
The entire system of employment in the NHS seems designed to maximise strife, stop stuff getting done and piss off the staff as much as possible.
Designing support systems (human and machine) so that extremely expensive medical staff can just get on with medical stuff is the way to go.
On one occasion, I got chatting to a Dr. at A&E, as he was treating me. They had actual clipboard wielders doing 1895 style time and motion studies on them - are you seeing enough patients an hour? - at the time I was there.
That was consider stupid in about 1920. It pisses people off better than nearly everything else. If you want those numbers, you can see them trivially from the paperwork.
Sounds like Management Consultants at work!
You cannot just look at figures to understand a problem. There lies the fate of HS2 when Spreadsheet Sunak doesn't look at wider issues. You need to talk to people on the ground and observe process.
For example, you cannot see why the doctor has large gaps between seeing patients. Are they being interrupted by phone calls? Is the IT too slow to record and order investigations? Are they checking a Physician Associates decisions? Are they skiving? You need to be there to find out, or at least actually talk to them.
Sending a bloke with a clipboard in is one of the great ways to wreck morale. In fact, in a couple of cases in the US, back in the day, this was done deliberately, to provoke strikes. At financially opportune times, that is.
Strangely, productivity investigations and their methodologies have advanced in the last 100 years.
I think that the NHS should recklessly charge into the future. And only use management techniques that have been obsolete for 50 years.
I agree that we need to attract better management into the NHS. That may well involve paying more, but I suspect won't go down well with Joe Public.
NHS i sbadly run and wasteful , needs restructured big time but there are too many vested interests who prefer the chaos and inefficiency.
Listening to Starmer on BBC just now his answer to the waiting lists is to pay doctors overtime to work evenings and weekends even though the overtime rate is less than they earn in the private sector
I would be interested in hearing the views of @Foxy and others on this
In the short term, what alternative is there?
Yes - employ the private sector to work with the NHS
Already very much the case. Indeed elective NHS work is now the bread and butter of most private hospitals in England.
There are limits to what can be done in these places. They are fine for elective surgeries for low risk procedures such as hernias, cholecystectomy, joint replacements in otherwise healthy patients.
The problem is that much of the waiting list is of people with more complex conditions, or simple conditions with a background of other long term disease like diabetes or heart failure, and these cannot be done safely in private facilities.
There is too a massive backlog in non surgical specialities such as dermatology, rheumatology, mental health etc etc that private facilities cannot or will not touch.
Overtime at NHS hospitals is the only viable possibility for these conditions, so Streeting is correct in that. The problem is that running such clinics evenings and weekends requires more staff. Even "office hours" 7 day working requires 40% more staff than 5 day working, before you get to unsocial hours. This needs to be all staff too for these services to be efficient, from receptionists, to porters, to secretaries, not just Doctors.
I have worked at least one weekend a month all my professional life, and never expected to work 9-5 with undisturbed evenings and nights. I intend to carry on for another decade the same, but you simply cannot force everyone to do so without either spreading staff dangerously thin or worsening the retention issue.
Hence the interest in PAs and AAs to build workforce, but ultimately the only way to increase capacity is to retain and train more staff.
Office hours Monday to Friday is the problem.
Given the amount of machinery and investment in NHS Hospitals it has always struck me as mad that they're not operating to capacity 7 days a week for at least 12 hours a day.
Private sector industry with large industrial investments don't typically operate office hours Monday to Friday only.
The entire system of employment in the NHS seems designed to maximise strife, stop stuff getting done and piss off the staff as much as possible.
Designing support systems (human and machine) so that extremely expensive medical staff can just get on with medical stuff is the way to go.
On one occasion, I got chatting to a Dr. at A&E, as he was treating me. They had actual clipboard wielders doing 1895 style time and motion studies on them - are you seeing enough patients an hour? - at the time I was there.
That was consider stupid in about 1920. It pisses people off better than nearly everything else. If you want those numbers, you can see them trivially from the paperwork.
Sounds like Management Consultants at work!
You cannot just look at figures to understand a problem. There lies the fate of HS2 when Spreadsheet Sunak doesn't look at wider issues. You need to talk to people on the ground and observe process.
For example, you cannot see why the doctor has large gaps between seeing patients. Are they being interrupted by phone calls? Is the IT too slow to record and order investigations? Are they checking a Physician Associates decisions? Are they skiving? You need to be there to find out, or at least actually talk to them.
Speaking as a management consultant, my client value is that I know how things work and how to get things done, not just arguing about costs. Understanding and managing the financial side is also important, but too many decisions are made as short term cost savings and cost more long term.
The magic words are "best value". Which so often isn't the same as "cheapest"
Yet most output from management consultants is how to save costs such that they will be back soon to tell how to fix the shambles caused by taking the cheapest crap on offer. Yet to see one that did not go for biggest cost cuts whether it was viable or not.
I can understand why people don't want to see - or have described - the reality of what rape - especially in wartime - looks like. It is deeply disturbing. It can easily stray into a sort of vile pornography or glorification.
But it is also necessary to understand the brutality of what happens and why there is the reaction there is.
Anyway I have seen and read enough. Like everyone else I too cannot bear so much reality. Social media is best avoided at times like these. And there is plenty of nicer stuff to be getting on with.
I was not dimishing the wickedness of the violence in any way. This isn't the Observer colour supplement, did we need such detail here? Maybe we did. But I would have preferred to look at more obvious sources should the need arise.
There is a case that by editing the news, it convinces people that the news is being “shaped”.
For example, on one of the Greek islands that was getting refugees landing there, to x hundred percent of the local population…. They started throwing stones at news crews. Why?
Well, whenever the locals were being interviewed by international news, the moment they started saying anything about the crime rate (fruit trees in orchards being stripped etc), it got cut from the report.
So the locals, who watched TV became convinced that the international media were “on the side of the migrants” and “against them”
I wouldn't advocate sanitising news.
I was merely offended at how graphic,and my interpretation as to why a poster on PB needed to be so graphic.
My bad.
The level of horror and violence of sexual violence is not I think fully understood. We shy away from it precisely because it is so horrible and out of a sense of decency and self-protection - some things once seen cannot be unseen or unheard.
The danger in doing that it is that it risks it being overlooked and the victims forgotten and it being seen as just one of those things that happen. I think there is a tendency for that to happen with all forms of sexual violence. Precisely because it is a perversion of something wonderful we cannot bear to learn what happens when it is used to harm.
I do not know what the right balance is. I only pray that those girls will come home alive and be given the help and care they need.
I was wondering the other day, in an idle moment, what happened to the German women raped by the Soviet troops as they made their way from the Polish border to Berlin. And, perchance, to the babies that resulted.
Afaics it became part of the great don’t mention the war mindset in Germany, likely expressed in different ways in east and west.
This is a great book on the subject written from firsthand experience. Interestingly the book was deplored in Germany when first published there.
Listening to Starmer on BBC just now his answer to the waiting lists is to pay doctors overtime to work evenings and weekends even though the overtime rate is less than they earn in the private sector
I would be interested in hearing the views of @Foxy and others on this
Not just doctors. Did he mention receptionists, and porters, and security, and administrators, and nurses, and technicians ...?
Many of whom have, you know, families.
And is there a plan for childcare facilities to also be available 24/7 for 7 days per week, at a rate that a receptionist can afford.
Quite. Though I was startled to be given a Saturday mid-morning appointment to see a dermatologist a few months ago in Edinburgh, in Lothian NHS Trust or whatever it is called. Within days of seeing the GP about a worrying mole. Got a full inspection all over while at it too.
There are always some that are happy to work nights and weekends. Mrs Foxy did when our boys were young, though it did require careful scheduling and we were often ships in the night.
It does require the right sort of homelife for it to work, and impossible for single parents etc.
I can imagine that having a few staff volunteer for Saturday work is one thing, but the demand from [edit] Mr Sunak and our PBvolunteers (or rather PBvolunteer-someone-else-to-do-its) is quite different.
I'm reminded of a senior manager who wanted a colleague, already doing a full time job in my section, to take on another regular (and continuing) task, itself taking about 0.3 FTE. In an organization which had a policy of not paying overtime.
Listening to Starmer on BBC just now his answer to the waiting lists is to pay doctors overtime to work evenings and weekends even though the overtime rate is less than they earn in the private sector
I would be interested in hearing the views of @Foxy and others on this
These doctors and consultants really are greed personified nowadays. Rolling in money but still no milk of human kindness, just greedy and grasping.
The solution is to destroy the passport of any doctor still working in the UK and to send the SAS in to abduct those UK doctors working overseas.
Just get Doctor's who don't obsess about getting paid more and more
Listening to Starmer on BBC just now his answer to the waiting lists is to pay doctors overtime to work evenings and weekends even though the overtime rate is less than they earn in the private sector
I would be interested in hearing the views of @Foxy and others on this
Not just doctors. Did he mention receptionists, and porters, and security, and administrators, and nurses, and technicians ...?
Many of whom have, you know, families.
And is there a plan for childcare facilities to also be available 24/7 for 7 days per week, at a rate that a receptionist can afford.
Quite. Though I was startled to be given a Saturday mid-morning appointment to see a dermatologist a few months ago in Edinburgh, in Lothian NHS Trust or whatever it is called. Within days of seeing the GP about a worrying mole. Got a full inspection all over while at it too.
I had a Sunday morning hospital appointment some four years ago with Audiology. Left about an hour after I’d arrived in an almost empty car park with new and very effective hearing aids.
I can understand why people don't want to see - or have described - the reality of what rape - especially in wartime - looks like. It is deeply disturbing. It can easily stray into a sort of vile pornography or glorification.
But it is also necessary to understand the brutality of what happens and why there is the reaction there is.
Anyway I have seen and read enough. Like everyone else I too cannot bear so much reality. Social media is best avoided at times like these. And there is plenty of nicer stuff to be getting on with.
I was not dimishing the wickedness of the violence in any way. This isn't the Observer colour supplement, did we need such detail here? Maybe we did. But I would have preferred to look at more obvious sources should the need arise.
There is a case that by editing the news, it convinces people that the news is being “shaped”.
For example, on one of the Greek islands that was getting refugees landing there, to x hundred percent of the local population…. They started throwing stones at news crews. Why?
Well, whenever the locals were being interviewed by international news, the moment they started saying anything about the crime rate (fruit trees in orchards being stripped etc), it got cut from the report.
So the locals, who watched TV became convinced that the international media were “on the side of the migrants” and “against them”
I wouldn't advocate sanitising news.
I was merely offended at how graphic,and my interpretation as to why a poster on PB needed to be so graphic.
My bad.
The level of horror and violence of sexual violence is not I think fully understood. We shy away from it precisely because it is so horrible and out of a sense of decency and self-protection - some things once seen cannot be unseen or unheard.
The danger in doing that it is that it risks it being overlooked and the victims forgotten and it being seen as just one of those things that happen. I think there is a tendency for that to happen with all forms of sexual violence. Precisely because it is a perversion of something wonderful we cannot bear to learn what happens when it is used to harm.
I do not know what the right balance is. I only pray that those girls will come home alive and be given the help and care they need.
I was wondering the other day, in an idle moment, what happened to the German women raped by the Soviet troops as they made their way from the Polish border to Berlin. And, perchance, to the babies that resulted.
This is a short video on the history of ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia: https://youtu.be/wcdOvAYNDMo It includes the mass murder, rape and ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans at the end of the Second World War. The Soviet Union favoured the mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia, the newly reshaped Poland, etc. The US and UK were originally opposed, but eventually went along with the plan, while trying to ensure it was done in an orderly way. It was not. The stories are horrific. It is the same approach proposed by those who want to see the Palestinian population of Gaza deported en masse, and I would suggest what happened has many echoes of the Israel/Palestine situation.
I can understand why people don't want to see - or have described - the reality of what rape - especially in wartime - looks like. It is deeply disturbing. It can easily stray into a sort of vile pornography or glorification.
But it is also necessary to understand the brutality of what happens and why there is the reaction there is.
Anyway I have seen and read enough. Like everyone else I too cannot bear so much reality. Social media is best avoided at times like these. And there is plenty of nicer stuff to be getting on with.
I was not dimishing the wickedness of the violence in any way. This isn't the Observer colour supplement, did we need such detail here? Maybe we did. But I would have preferred to look at more obvious sources should the need arise.
There is a case that by editing the news, it convinces people that the news is being “shaped”.
For example, on one of the Greek islands that was getting refugees landing there, to x hundred percent of the local population…. They started throwing stones at news crews. Why?
Well, whenever the locals were being interviewed by international news, the moment they started saying anything about the crime rate (fruit trees in orchards being stripped etc), it got cut from the report.
So the locals, who watched TV became convinced that the international media were “on the side of the migrants” and “against them”
I wouldn't advocate sanitising news.
I was merely offended at how graphic,and my interpretation as to why a poster on PB needed to be so graphic.
My bad.
The level of horror and violence of sexual violence is not I think fully understood. We shy away from it precisely because it is so horrible and out of a sense of decency and self-protection - some things once seen cannot be unseen or unheard.
The danger in doing that it is that it risks it being overlooked and the victims forgotten and it being seen as just one of those things that happen. I think there is a tendency for that to happen with all forms of sexual violence. Precisely because it is a perversion of something wonderful we cannot bear to learn what happens when it is used to harm.
I do not know what the right balance is. I only pray that those girls will come home alive and be given the help and care they need.
I was wondering the other day, in an idle moment, what happened to the German women raped by the Soviet troops as they made their way from the Polish border to Berlin. And, perchance, to the babies that resulted.
There’s a whole pile of history there. Just doesn’t get on the Hitler Channel* very often
Also look at the stories of the children fathered by German soldiers in Norway and Denmark. Stuff that didn’t just stop in 45. But went on and on.
*AKA the History Channel
Sadly, occupying armies have a bad record when it comes to fathering children.
Anni-Frid of ABBA was the daughter of a German soldier and a Norwegian mother, a consensual relationship it seems. Her family took her to Sweden to settle because of the stigma.
Drives me mad that the every conversation on PB about the NHS is about supply, not demand. We need to understand why it is growing at 1-2% per year, even after accounting for demographics, inflation etc.
The two main reasons put forward are increases in chronic conditions like dementia and diabetes, and the increased costs associated with new technologies/drugs.
Agree , it seems we hav ethe unhealthiest and most disabled population in the world. I think the system does nothing till you are seriously ill, nothing at teh front end promoting health and wellbeing , regular checkups etc etc . They wait till people are ill and then the system is swamped. Bit like social care etc, penny wise and pound foolish.
The thinking of Hamas/Iran probably went something like this...
(1) Massive attack on Israel, with utterly disgusting brutal atrocities - to be widely broadcast on social media (2) Provoke the fury and wrath of Israel, to wipe out Gaza - again, capture the worst bits; broadcast it all (3) Trigger a wider Middle East conflagration in disgust, and ally with everyone to wipe out Israel (4) Be rewarded in this life or the next, as holy martyrs, for wiping the Jews and their state
So, it's not dissimilar to the thinking of White Supremacists who want to provoke a race war that, ultimately, will work out in their favour.
[Btw, I don't think (3) would happen regardless, but Netanyahu needs to be careful not to fall into a trap on (2)]
I think you're spot on. Netanyahu has big problems, though: 1. He is in coalition with far-right ethno-nationalists who believe they know better than the IDF 2. He is in that coalition solely because he needed to power to prevent criminal investigation of himself 3. The combination of 1 and 2 means that he totally took his eye off the national security ball
Put all of that together and there is a very good chance that he now reacts in exactly the way that Hamas/Iran want.
Yes, indeed. It's concerning.
Of course, they know all this too (Hamas/Iran aren't stupid) which is why they struck as hard as they did when they did.
Yep - I think the huge protests against the Netanyahu government inside Israel would also have spooked them. They need him in power.
If there were any justice in this world (ha!) Netanyahu would be out on his ear. For months he has been trying to attack the judiciary, arrogate more power to himself, protect himself from legal proceedings and appease extreme nationalist parties. It has led to huge demonstrations against him and some reservists threatening not to serve in the IDF. Whether and to what extent all of this resulted in the Israeli government failing in its duty to keep Israel secure we won't find out for a while, maybe never.
Thing is you can try to dismantle the organs of a liberal democratic state and you will get objections from all sorts but what you do may well be tolerated by many if you provide safety and security in return. But if you cannot do that - as the Netanyahu government has plainly failed to do - why tolerate everything else?
For now those reservists will fight to defend their country, to defend people from being slaughtered in their homes, at bus stops, from girls being kidnapped, raped, killed, their bodies desecrated. But after?
Recent Israeli governments have become more and more horrible and so, while I want Israel to exist and be safe it has become, increasingly hard to support the policies of its government which provide no security and are becoming increasingly undemocratic and illiberal. Israel under Netanyahu has become more and more like the Arab states it claims to be better than. Those Israelis wanting a liberal Democratic Western-style Israel have sometimes looked like the remnants of an older better - but dying - Israel.
But what we have seen of Islamic terrorism in Israel and everywhere it has happened in recent decades and the resurgence of Western anti-semitism under the guise of anti-colonialism has reduced my sympathy for the causes they claim to be fighting for to somewhere near zero. The Palestinians - and Arabs generally - have picked and supported the most appalling causes and leaders. I can feel sorrow and sympathy for innocent individuals in Israel and Gaza being terrorised and tortured and suffering. I feel nothing but contempt for those whose reaction to seeing films of old people gunned down at bus stops and girls being raped is to go out onto the streets of London and celebrate.
100% agree
Unfortunately Islamic militant radicalism needs to be cauterised. I increasingly see no alternative.
I disagree with the idea of pushing Palestinians out of Gaza - although Netanyahu may try it (If he does I hope the West will stop him). But we need to find a way to win the hearts and minds of the people of Gaza.
But first there needs to be regime change. By its actions Hamas has made itself illegitimate as a government.
Hamas are the government of Gaza. Not in a legitimate way by international standards, but they are. How do we make regime change happen? Israel will need a military invasion of Gaza with all that entails. Refugees would try and flee but I assume that Egypt will keep its own border shut.
One of the most densly populated areas in the world, radicalised and armed to the teeth, vs one of the most effective (brutal) militaries in the world. It will be a bloodbath, and doesn't offer a guarantee that Hamas will be removed.
So many of the arab states in the area now want peace deals and links with Israel. So it is time that one of them steps up and finally absorbs the so-called refugee camps. Its absurd that this has been allowed to drag on for nearly a century.
Didn’t Hamas win the last election in Gaza? I don’t think (but am willing to be persuaded) that the election was much, if any, more corrupt than, say, many in the USA.
Hamas won the last Palestinian Authority elections in 2006. There was then a battle for control with Fatah and Hamas expelled everyone else from Gaza in 2007.
There haven't been any elections since...
Thanks. The election itself wasn’t too bad IIRC. The aftermath, however…….. However given the gerrymandering which has gone on here since 2019, perhaps we’d better not be too critical.
Listening to Starmer on BBC just now his answer to the waiting lists is to pay doctors overtime to work evenings and weekends even though the overtime rate is less than they earn in the private sector
I would be interested in hearing the views of @Foxy and others on this
Not just doctors. Did he mention receptionists, and porters, and security, and administrators, and nurses, and technicians ...?
Many of whom have, you know, families.
And is there a plan for childcare facilities to also be available 24/7 for 7 days per week, at a rate that a receptionist can afford.
Quite. Though I was startled to be given a Saturday mid-morning appointment to see a dermatologist a few months ago in Edinburgh, in Lothian NHS Trust or whatever it is called. Within days of seeing the GP about a worrying mole. Got a full inspection all over while at it too.
I had a Sunday morning hospital appointment some four years ago with Audiology. Left about an hour after I’d arrived in an almost empty car park with new and very effective hearing aids.
My local district hospital has been running Saturday clinics (not sure about Sundays - I think tehy are used in some specialities) routinely for a number of years, and using expensive kit such as MRI Scanners intensively (suspect this is normal) - my last scan was at 7:30pm on a Friday.
I see no problem, and I don't really understand why it is not a routine part of staff contracts. AIUI nurses have been working 4 days on/4 days off or similar for years and years.
Just recall that No 10 made all this Network North BS up without consulting Network Rail. Presumably in order to keep the announcement as a conference surprise. That didn't work - it got leaked to every journalist with a pulse. Meanwhle, a bunch of policy wonks with no experience and little knowledge drew up a transport plan that imploded within 24 hours.
I wonder why people feel the Govt is useless and incompetent.
Lab are honest but useless. Cons are corrupt but competent. When Lab become corrupt (hi Tony!) or the Cons become useless (hi Rishi/Liz/Boris!) then they clearly need a good long time on the political naughty step to think about what they have done.
You are over generous to both lots , I would say cheeks of the same arse, not honest , not competent , both useless and full of lying grifters.
The Israel conflict is terrible with unknown consequences and outcome
This article highlights just how perilous the world's economy's are and why there is absolutely no money to spend by governments
Also sorry to see @Farooq and @FrankBooth leave this forum but at times it does seem like an echo chamber, but it is important that as many different views are expressed as possible otherwise it will become an echo chamber
Why has @Farooq left? Great loss. I really enjoyed his posts. He often made me laugh out loud. Don't know enough about Frank, but generally sad to see anyone leave regardless of their views. I can only think of one exception, and that person was banned so clearly I wasn't alone in that view.
@Farooq is a troll and a complete and utter f**king d***head.
However, clenching my teeth, he did at least make vaguely half-intelligent posts at time, and hadn't yet crossed the boundary for being so deeply unpleasant and toxic that he needed evicting from the site, so I wouldn't support his expulsion.
I trust he will return after a few days.
People come, people go. So what.
I don’t mind Faarooq, but it’s all getting a bit like CHB when he was crying for some departed posters to return and then promptly flounced himself. It’s bizarre when people are nostalgic For posters on a message board.
People get far too invested in these debates and discussions. Especially on fucking Israel. Which is why I avoid the topic in any depth. No good ever comes out of it and on Twitter it’s far worse.
I agree with getting too invested, but some people of evil want good people to have exactly the attitude of: "The conversation on this issue is far too toxic: I'll keep out."
Hence leaving the playing field to the extremists. And it's not just issues like Israel / Palestine / Hamas, either.
I think there's a bit of colonialist mentality on both sides of the debate in this country, the idea that we must have a position. Maybe it's just a really bloody complicated issue, it is a zero sum game, there are no goodies and baddies, there is no neat solution, it is a long way away and we don't need to get overly involved other than doing what we can to lower the bloodshed. It's a very sad situation but when you have people disputing who has ownership over land and then you throw a load of religious mumbo jumbo into the equation too it's unsurprising it is so intractable.
We have interests. It’s nothing to do with colonialism (why is it the left always rabbits on about the Empire? It’s gone guys, 70+ years ago, it’s not coming back).
We have to stand up for a democracy, however flawed and however much we dislike the incumbent. We have to stand against terrorism and radical Islamic militants. Those are fundamental strategic priorities for this country and the whole of the West.
The Israel conflict is terrible with unknown consequences and outcome
This article highlights just how perilous the world's economy's are and why there is absolutely no money to spend by governments
Also sorry to see @Farooq and @FrankBooth leave this forum but at times it does seem like an echo chamber, but it is important that as many different views are expressed as possible otherwise it will become an echo chamber
Why has @Farooq left? Great loss. I really enjoyed his posts. He often made me laugh out loud. Don't know enough about Frank, but generally sad to see anyone leave regardless of their views. I can only think of one exception, and that person was banned so clearly I wasn't alone in that view.
They are going travelling for some months, so a good time to switch off.
@Farooq objected to a few other posters calling for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and expulsion from their remaining lands.
I don't think our site or country can usefully contribute to resolving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, so try to stay out of it, but is difficult to tolerate reading a site calling for further war crimes as answer to war crimes.
PB benefits from a diversity of voices and opinions, and is generally civil compared to other sites, but when any poster dominates thread after thread then it loses that charm.
I think the struggle for Israel is how it provides itself security without expelling people from Gaza. The status quo simply doesn't work, and a significant number there are pledged to the extermination of Israel and its people. Yes the hard right illegal settlers are crazy, yes they steal land, but they aren't pledged to genocide like Hamas.
Gaza is an open sore on the region, allowed to be sustained by other states. Egypt likes to blame Israel but has its own border wall at the south to keep Gazans imprisoned. Iran is after a fight and seem to be responsible for all those missiles arriving into Gaza. Russia seem to have armed and trained Hamas with drones to drop bombs.
Removing Gaza and pushing the people there back onto the arab diaspora isn't that crazy an idea. The idiocy of "refugee camps" has to end. These are not displaced refugees, they are several generations down the track from that. Resettle them in the other parts of the former Ottoman empire. So that they can also find peace.
The Arab dictatorships don’t want settlement of trained radicals in their lands. The refugee camps are also useful in keeping the pressure on Israel.
Do the settlers steal land? My understanding was that normally they purchase it (and then build exclusive compounds).
But - as always - a lot comes down to water rights. That was the flashpoint in previous discussions. The Jordan is a pretty feeble river.
The nastier types of settlers use Mafia tactics. They make life hell for any Palestinian neighbours - killing livestock, criminal damage to other property. There have been reports of murders.
The Israel conflict is terrible with unknown consequences and outcome
This article highlights just how perilous the world's economy's are and why there is absolutely no money to spend by governments
Also sorry to see @Farooq and @FrankBooth leave this forum but at times it does seem like an echo chamber, but it is important that as many different views are expressed as possible otherwise it will become an echo chamber
Why has @Farooq left? Great loss. I really enjoyed his posts. He often made me laugh out loud. Don't know enough about Frank, but generally sad to see anyone leave regardless of their views. I can only think of one exception, and that person was banned so clearly I wasn't alone in that view.
@Farooq is a troll and a complete and utter f**king d***head.
However, clenching my teeth, he did at least make vaguely half-intelligent posts at time, and hadn't yet crossed the boundary for being so deeply unpleasant and toxic that he needed evicting from the site, so I wouldn't support his expulsion.
I trust he will return after a few days.
People come, people go. So what.
I don’t mind Faarooq, but it’s all getting a bit like CHB when he was crying for some departed posters to return and then promptly flounced himself. It’s bizarre when people are nostalgic For posters on a message board.
People get far too invested in these debates and discussions. Especially on fucking Israel. Which is why I avoid the topic in any depth. No good ever comes out of it and on Twitter it’s far worse.
I agree with getting too invested, but some people of evil want good people to have exactly the attitude of: "The conversation on this issue is far too toxic: I'll keep out."
Hence leaving the playing field to the extremists. And it's not just issues like Israel / Palestine / Hamas, either.
I think there's a bit of colonialist mentality on both sides of the debate in this country, the idea that we must have a position. Maybe it's just a really bloody complicated issue, it is a zero sum game, there are no goodies and baddies, there is no neat solution, it is a long way away and we don't need to get overly involved other than doing what we can to lower the bloodshed. It's a very sad situation but when you have people disputing who has ownership over land and then you throw a load of religious mumbo jumbo into the equation too it's unsurprising it is so intractable.
We have interests. It’s nothing to do with colonialism (why is it the left always rabbits on about the Empire? It’s gone guys, 70+ years ago, it’s not coming back).
We have to stand up for a democracy, however flawed and however much we dislike the incumbent. We have to stand against terrorism and radical Islamic militants. Those are fundamental strategic priorities for this country and the whole of the West.
Unless it is Scotland, last remaining colony
You forget Wales and Northern Ireland!
The Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, the Falkland Islands, Ascension, …
Listening to Starmer on BBC just now his answer to the waiting lists is to pay doctors overtime to work evenings and weekends even though the overtime rate is less than they earn in the private sector
I would be interested in hearing the views of @Foxy and others on this
Not just doctors. Did he mention receptionists, and porters, and security, and administrators, and nurses, and technicians ...?
Many of whom have, you know, families.
And is there a plan for childcare facilities to also be available 24/7 for 7 days per week, at a rate that a receptionist can afford.
Quite. Though I was startled to be given a Saturday mid-morning appointment to see a dermatologist a few months ago in Edinburgh, in Lothian NHS Trust or whatever it is called. Within days of seeing the GP about a worrying mole. Got a full inspection all over while at it too.
I had a Sunday morning hospital appointment some four years ago with Audiology. Left about an hour after I’d arrived in an almost empty car park with new and very effective hearing aids.
My local district hospital has been running Saturday clinics (not sure about Sundays - I think tehy are used in some specialities) routinely for a number of years, and using expensive kit such as MRI Scanners intensively (suspect this is normal) - my last scan was at 7:30pm on a Friday.
I see no problem, and I don't really understand why it is not a routine part of staff contracts. AIUI nurses have been working 4 days on/4 days off or similar for years and years.
When I was a hospital pharmacist we worked 5 full days, shared out Saturday mornings and provided emergency cover Saturday afternoons and Sundays. Shortly before I left the service on Sunday was improved. Not sure what happens now as I gather outpatient dispensing has been contracted out.
O/t, is there any greater memento mori in the modern world than a message from FB reminding you that ‘It’s X’s birthday today, wish him all the best’ when they’ve been dead for 8 years?
The Israel conflict is terrible with unknown consequences and outcome
This article highlights just how perilous the world's economy's are and why there is absolutely no money to spend by governments
Also sorry to see @Farooq and @FrankBooth leave this forum but at times it does seem like an echo chamber, but it is important that as many different views are expressed as possible otherwise it will become an echo chamber
Why has @Farooq left? Great loss. I really enjoyed his posts. He often made me laugh out loud. Don't know enough about Frank, but generally sad to see anyone leave regardless of their views. I can only think of one exception, and that person was banned so clearly I wasn't alone in that view.
@Farooq is a troll and a complete and utter f**king d***head.
However, clenching my teeth, he did at least make vaguely half-intelligent posts at time, and hadn't yet crossed the boundary for being so deeply unpleasant and toxic that he needed evicting from the site, so I wouldn't support his expulsion.
I trust he will return after a few days.
People come, people go. So what.
I don’t mind Faarooq, but it’s all getting a bit like CHB when he was crying for some departed posters to return and then promptly flounced himself. It’s bizarre when people are nostalgic For posters on a message board.
People get far too invested in these debates and discussions. Especially on fucking Israel. Which is why I avoid the topic in any depth. No good ever comes out of it and on Twitter it’s far worse.
I agree with getting too invested, but some people of evil want good people to have exactly the attitude of: "The conversation on this issue is far too toxic: I'll keep out."
Hence leaving the playing field to the extremists. And it's not just issues like Israel / Palestine / Hamas, either.
I think there's a bit of colonialist mentality on both sides of the debate in this country, the idea that we must have a position. Maybe it's just a really bloody complicated issue, it is a zero sum game, there are no goodies and baddies, there is no neat solution, it is a long way away and we don't need to get overly involved other than doing what we can to lower the bloodshed. It's a very sad situation but when you have people disputing who has ownership over land and then you throw a load of religious mumbo jumbo into the equation too it's unsurprising it is so intractable.
We have interests. It’s nothing to do with colonialism (why is it the left always rabbits on about the Empire? It’s gone guys, 70+ years ago, it’s not coming back).
We have to stand up for a democracy, however flawed and however much we dislike the incumbent. We have to stand against terrorism and radical Islamic militants. Those are fundamental strategic priorities for this country and the whole of the West.
Unless it is Scotland, last remaining colony
You forget Wales and Northern Ireland!
The Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, the Falkland Islands, Ascension, …
There’s an argument for saying the Channel Islands are the last remnant of the Duchy of Normandy, and therefore conquered England. Not sure how the Isle of Man became involved, TBH. Wales was definitely conquered.
O/t, is there any greater memento mori in the modern world than a message from FB reminding you that ‘It’s X’s birthday today, wish him all the best’ when they’ve been dead for 8 years?
There are interesting discussions about what happens or should happen to you in the Digital Afterlife.
The Israel conflict is terrible with unknown consequences and outcome
This article highlights just how perilous the world's economy's are and why there is absolutely no money to spend by governments
Also sorry to see @Farooq and @FrankBooth leave this forum but at times it does seem like an echo chamber, but it is important that as many different views are expressed as possible otherwise it will become an echo chamber
Why has @Farooq left? Great loss. I really enjoyed his posts. He often made me laugh out loud. Don't know enough about Frank, but generally sad to see anyone leave regardless of their views. I can only think of one exception, and that person was banned so clearly I wasn't alone in that view.
@Farooq is a troll and a complete and utter f**king d***head.
However, clenching my teeth, he did at least make vaguely half-intelligent posts at time, and hadn't yet crossed the boundary for being so deeply unpleasant and toxic that he needed evicting from the site, so I wouldn't support his expulsion.
I trust he will return after a few days.
People come, people go. So what.
I don’t mind Faarooq, but it’s all getting a bit like CHB when he was crying for some departed posters to return and then promptly flounced himself. It’s bizarre when people are nostalgic For posters on a message board.
People get far too invested in these debates and discussions. Especially on fucking Israel. Which is why I avoid the topic in any depth. No good ever comes out of it and on Twitter it’s far worse.
I agree with getting too invested, but some people of evil want good people to have exactly the attitude of: "The conversation on this issue is far too toxic: I'll keep out."
Hence leaving the playing field to the extremists. And it's not just issues like Israel / Palestine / Hamas, either.
I think there's a bit of colonialist mentality on both sides of the debate in this country, the idea that we must have a position. Maybe it's just a really bloody complicated issue, it is a zero sum game, there are no goodies and baddies, there is no neat solution, it is a long way away and we don't need to get overly involved other than doing what we can to lower the bloodshed. It's a very sad situation but when you have people disputing who has ownership over land and then you throw a load of religious mumbo jumbo into the equation too it's unsurprising it is so intractable.
We have interests. It’s nothing to do with colonialism (why is it the left always rabbits on about the Empire? It’s gone guys, 70+ years ago, it’s not coming back).
We have to stand up for a democracy, however flawed and however much we dislike the incumbent. We have to stand against terrorism and radical Islamic militants. Those are fundamental strategic priorities for this country and the whole of the West.
Unless it is Scotland, last remaining colony
You forget Wales and Northern Ireland!
The Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, the Falkland Islands, Ascension, …
There’s an argument for saying the Channel Islands are the last remnant of the Duchy of Normandy, and therefore conquered England.
Yes, the tour guide tried that line on me last week :-)
(Currently sat in a castle on Guernsey waiting for them to fire the noon gun. Weather has been fantastic...)
I can understand why people don't want to see - or have described - the reality of what rape - especially in wartime - looks like. It is deeply disturbing. It can easily stray into a sort of vile pornography or glorification.
But it is also necessary to understand the brutality of what happens and why there is the reaction there is.
Anyway I have seen and read enough. Like everyone else I too cannot bear so much reality. Social media is best avoided at times like these. And there is plenty of nicer stuff to be getting on with.
I was not dimishing the wickedness of the violence in any way. This isn't the Observer colour supplement, did we need such detail here? Maybe we did. But I would have preferred to look at more obvious sources should the need arise.
There is a case that by editing the news, it convinces people that the news is being “shaped”.
For example, on one of the Greek islands that was getting refugees landing there, to x hundred percent of the local population…. They started throwing stones at news crews. Why?
Well, whenever the locals were being interviewed by international news, the moment they started saying anything about the crime rate (fruit trees in orchards being stripped etc), it got cut from the report.
So the locals, who watched TV became convinced that the international media were “on the side of the migrants” and “against them”
I wouldn't advocate sanitising news.
I was merely offended at how graphic,and my interpretation as to why a poster on PB needed to be so graphic.
My bad.
The level of horror and violence of sexual violence is not I think fully understood. We shy away from it precisely because it is so horrible and out of a sense of decency and self-protection - some things once seen cannot be unseen or unheard.
The danger in doing that it is that it risks it being overlooked and the victims forgotten and it being seen as just one of those things that happen. I think there is a tendency for that to happen with all forms of sexual violence. Precisely because it is a perversion of something wonderful we cannot bear to learn what happens when it is used to harm.
I do not know what the right balance is. I only pray that those girls will come home alive and be given the help and care they need.
I was wondering the other day, in an idle moment, what happened to the German women raped by the Soviet troops as they made their way from the Polish border to Berlin. And, perchance, to the babies that resulted.
There’s a whole pile of history there. Just doesn’t get on the Hitler Channel* very often
Also look at the stories of the children fathered by German soldiers in Norway and Denmark. Stuff that didn’t just stop in 45. But went on and on.
*AKA the History Channel
Sadly, occupying armies have a bad record when it comes to fathering children.
Anni-Frid of ABBA was the daughter of a German soldier and a Norwegian mother, a consensual relationship it seems. Her family took her to Sweden to settle because of the stigma.
A bit more complicated than that. I believe her parents were part of the Lebensborn programme. Whereby blonde Aryan non-German mothers who had “racially valuable” kids with German men, especially SS soldiers, got special treatment. To help sustain the future Master Race
A lot of it happened in Denmark/Norway. You can therefore understand the “stigma” and why many fled elsewhere
The thinking of Hamas/Iran probably went something like this...
(1) Massive attack on Israel, with utterly disgusting brutal atrocities - to be widely broadcast on social media (2) Provoke the fury and wrath of Israel, to wipe out Gaza - again, capture the worst bits; broadcast it all (3) Trigger a wider Middle East conflagration in disgust, and ally with everyone to wipe out Israel (4) Be rewarded in this life or the next, as holy martyrs, for wiping the Jews and their state
So, it's not dissimilar to the thinking of White Supremacists who want to provoke a race war that, ultimately, will work out in their favour.
[Btw, I don't think (3) would happen regardless, but Netanyahu needs to be careful not to fall into a trap on (2)]
I think you're spot on. Netanyahu has big problems, though: 1. He is in coalition with far-right ethno-nationalists who believe they know better than the IDF 2. He is in that coalition solely because he needed to power to prevent criminal investigation of himself 3. The combination of 1 and 2 means that he totally took his eye off the national security ball
Put all of that together and there is a very good chance that he now reacts in exactly the way that Hamas/Iran want.
Yes, indeed. It's concerning.
Of course, they know all this too (Hamas/Iran aren't stupid) which is why they struck as hard as they did when they did.
Yep - I think the huge protests against the Netanyahu government inside Israel would also have spooked them. They need him in power.
If there were any justice in this world (ha!) Netanyahu would be out on his ear. For months he has been trying to attack the judiciary, arrogate more power to himself, protect himself from legal proceedings and appease extreme nationalist parties. It has led to huge demonstrations against him and some reservists threatening not to serve in the IDF. Whether and to what extent all of this resulted in the Israeli government failing in its duty to keep Israel secure we won't find out for a while, maybe never.
Thing is you can try to dismantle the organs of a liberal democratic state and you will get objections from all sorts but what you do may well be tolerated by many if you provide safety and security in return. But if you cannot do that - as the Netanyahu government has plainly failed to do - why tolerate everything else?
For now those reservists will fight to defend their country, to defend people from being slaughtered in their homes, at bus stops, from girls being kidnapped, raped, killed, their bodies desecrated. But after?
Recent Israeli governments have become more and more horrible and so, while I want Israel to exist and be safe it has become, increasingly hard to support the policies of its government which provide no security and are becoming increasingly undemocratic and illiberal. Israel under Netanyahu has become more and more like the Arab states it claims to be better than. Those Israelis wanting a liberal Democratic Western-style Israel have sometimes looked like the remnants of an older better - but dying - Israel.
But what we have seen of Islamic terrorism in Israel and everywhere it has happened in recent decades and the resurgence of Western anti-semitism under the guise of anti-colonialism has reduced my sympathy for the causes they claim to be fighting for to somewhere near zero. The Palestinians - and Arabs generally - have picked and supported the most appalling causes and leaders. I can feel sorrow and sympathy for innocent individuals in Israel and Gaza being terrorised and tortured and suffering. I feel nothing but contempt for those whose reaction to seeing films of old people gunned down at bus stops and girls being raped is to go out onto the streets of London and celebrate.
100% agree
Unfortunately Islamic militant radicalism needs to be cauterised. I increasingly see no alternative.
I disagree with the idea of pushing Palestinians out of Gaza - although Netanyahu may try it (If he does I hope the West will stop him). But we need to find a way to win the hearts and minds of the people of Gaza.
But first there needs to be regime change. By its actions Hamas has made itself illegitimate as a government.
Hamas are the government of Gaza. Not in a legitimate way by international standards, but they are. How do we make regime change happen? Israel will need a military invasion of Gaza with all that entails. Refugees would try and flee but I assume that Egypt will keep its own border shut.
One of the most densly populated areas in the world, radicalised and armed to the teeth, vs one of the most effective (brutal) militaries in the world. It will be a bloodbath, and doesn't offer a guarantee that Hamas will be removed.
So many of the arab states in the area now want peace deals and links with Israel. So it is time that one of them steps up and finally absorbs the so-called refugee camps. Its absurd that this has been allowed to drag on for nearly a century.
I fully expect Hamas to be prepared with tunnels, IEDs, suicide micro-drones etc. Any ground invasion by the IDF is going to take significant casualties. Yet the alternative for the IDF is a siege by blockade and bombardment.
Blockade and bombardment worked very well for Azerbaijan when applied against Nagorno-Karabakh.
And Gaza has about 100x the population density of Nagorno-Karabakh.
I can understand why people don't want to see - or have described - the reality of what rape - especially in wartime - looks like. It is deeply disturbing. It can easily stray into a sort of vile pornography or glorification.
But it is also necessary to understand the brutality of what happens and why there is the reaction there is.
Anyway I have seen and read enough. Like everyone else I too cannot bear so much reality. Social media is best avoided at times like these. And there is plenty of nicer stuff to be getting on with.
I was not dimishing the wickedness of the violence in any way. This isn't the Observer colour supplement, did we need such detail here? Maybe we did. But I would have preferred to look at more obvious sources should the need arise.
There is a case that by editing the news, it convinces people that the news is being “shaped”.
For example, on one of the Greek islands that was getting refugees landing there, to x hundred percent of the local population…. They started throwing stones at news crews. Why?
Well, whenever the locals were being interviewed by international news, the moment they started saying anything about the crime rate (fruit trees in orchards being stripped etc), it got cut from the report.
So the locals, who watched TV became convinced that the international media were “on the side of the migrants” and “against them”
I wouldn't advocate sanitising news.
I was merely offended at how graphic,and my interpretation as to why a poster on PB needed to be so graphic.
My bad.
The level of horror and violence of sexual violence is not I think fully understood. We shy away from it precisely because it is so horrible and out of a sense of decency and self-protection - some things once seen cannot be unseen or unheard.
The danger in doing that it is that it risks it being overlooked and the victims forgotten and it being seen as just one of those things that happen. I think there is a tendency for that to happen with all forms of sexual violence. Precisely because it is a perversion of something wonderful we cannot bear to learn what happens when it is used to harm.
I do not know what the right balance is. I only pray that those girls will come home alive and be given the help and care they need.
I was wondering the other day, in an idle moment, what happened to the German women raped by the Soviet troops as they made their way from the Polish border to Berlin. And, perchance, to the babies that resulted.
There’s a whole pile of history there. Just doesn’t get on the Hitler Channel* very often
Also look at the stories of the children fathered by German soldiers in Norway and Denmark. Stuff that didn’t just stop in 45. But went on and on.
*AKA the History Channel
Sadly, occupying armies have a bad record when it comes to fathering children.
Anni-Frid of ABBA was the daughter of a German soldier and a Norwegian mother, a consensual relationship it seems. Her family took her to Sweden to settle because of the stigma.
A bit more complicated than that. I believe her parents were part of the Lebensborn programme. Whereby blonde Aryan non-German mothers who had “racially valuable” kids with German men, especially SS soldiers, got special treatment. To help sustain the future Master Race
A lot of it happened in Denmark/Norway. You can therefore understand the “stigma” and why many fled elsewhere
She was born in November 1945, so conceived in Feb or March 1945, her father only found out in 1977, her mother having thought he died retreating from Norway. She died of kidney failure in 1947, so the details of the relationship are a bit sketchy and second hand.
Angela Rayner is a huge asset for Labour . A great opening speech at the conference and a world away from the Tory hate fest.
I would agree with that. Whether you agree with her views or not, she has an apparent authenticity which comes across well with a certain type of voter.
The thinking of Hamas/Iran probably went something like this...
(1) Massive attack on Israel, with utterly disgusting brutal atrocities - to be widely broadcast on social media (2) Provoke the fury and wrath of Israel, to wipe out Gaza - again, capture the worst bits; broadcast it all (3) Trigger a wider Middle East conflagration in disgust, and ally with everyone to wipe out Israel (4) Be rewarded in this life or the next, as holy martyrs, for wiping the Jews and their state
So, it's not dissimilar to the thinking of White Supremacists who want to provoke a race war that, ultimately, will work out in their favour.
[Btw, I don't think (3) would happen regardless, but Netanyahu needs to be careful not to fall into a trap on (2)]
I think you're spot on. Netanyahu has big problems, though: 1. He is in coalition with far-right ethno-nationalists who believe they know better than the IDF 2. He is in that coalition solely because he needed to power to prevent criminal investigation of himself 3. The combination of 1 and 2 means that he totally took his eye off the national security ball
Put all of that together and there is a very good chance that he now reacts in exactly the way that Hamas/Iran want.
Yes, indeed. It's concerning.
Of course, they know all this too (Hamas/Iran aren't stupid) which is why they struck as hard as they did when they did.
Yep - I think the huge protests against the Netanyahu government inside Israel would also have spooked them. They need him in power.
If there were any justice in this world (ha!) Netanyahu would be out on his ear. For months he has been trying to attack the judiciary, arrogate more power to himself, protect himself from legal proceedings and appease extreme nationalist parties. It has led to huge demonstrations against him and some reservists threatening not to serve in the IDF. Whether and to what extent all of this resulted in the Israeli government failing in its duty to keep Israel secure we won't find out for a while, maybe never.
Thing is you can try to dismantle the organs of a liberal democratic state and you will get objections from all sorts but what you do may well be tolerated by many if you provide safety and security in return. But if you cannot do that - as the Netanyahu government has plainly failed to do - why tolerate everything else?
For now those reservists will fight to defend their country, to defend people from being slaughtered in their homes, at bus stops, from girls being kidnapped, raped, killed, their bodies desecrated. But after?
Recent Israeli governments have become more and more horrible and so, while I want Israel to exist and be safe it has become, increasingly hard to support the policies of its government which provide no security and are becoming increasingly undemocratic and illiberal. Israel under Netanyahu has become more and more like the Arab states it claims to be better than. Those Israelis wanting a liberal Democratic Western-style Israel have sometimes looked like the remnants of an older better - but dying - Israel.
But what we have seen of Islamic terrorism in Israel and everywhere it has happened in recent decades and the resurgence of Western anti-semitism under the guise of anti-colonialism has reduced my sympathy for the causes they claim to be fighting for to somewhere near zero. The Palestinians - and Arabs generally - have picked and supported the most appalling causes and leaders. I can feel sorrow and sympathy for innocent individuals in Israel and Gaza being terrorised and tortured and suffering. I feel nothing but contempt for those whose reaction to seeing films of old people gunned down at bus stops and girls being raped is to go out onto the streets of London and celebrate.
100% agree
Unfortunately Islamic militant radicalism needs to be cauterised. I increasingly see no alternative.
I disagree with the idea of pushing Palestinians out of Gaza - although Netanyahu may try it (If he does I hope the West will stop him). But we need to find a way to win the hearts and minds of the people of Gaza.
But first there needs to be regime change. By its actions Hamas has made itself illegitimate as a government.
Hamas are the government of Gaza. Not in a legitimate way by international standards, but they are. How do we make regime change happen? Israel will need a military invasion of Gaza with all that entails. Refugees would try and flee but I assume that Egypt will keep its own border shut.
One of the most densly populated areas in the world, radicalised and armed to the teeth, vs one of the most effective (brutal) militaries in the world. It will be a bloodbath, and doesn't offer a guarantee that Hamas will be removed.
So many of the arab states in the area now want peace deals and links with Israel. So it is time that one of them steps up and finally absorbs the so-called refugee camps. Its absurd that this has been allowed to drag on for nearly a century.
Didn’t Hamas win the last election in Gaza? I don’t think (but am willing to be persuaded) that the election was much, if any, more corrupt than, say, many in the USA.
In 2006 they won 44% of the vote
In 2007 they expelled Fatah representatives and took over military control
This is not a democratic a government
Once again it’s false fucking equivalence
These are not good people. They are not comparable to the west or Israel in any way, shape or form. Even if they mouth the pieties sometimes
Angela Rayner is a huge asset for Labour . A great opening speech at the conference and a world away from the Tory hate fest.
We often refer to 'events' in politics and the attack on Israel has consumed the media 100% (as you would expect) and labour's conference is very much losing out on coverage
O/t, is there any greater memento mori in the modern world than a message from FB reminding you that ‘It’s X’s birthday today, wish him all the best’ when they’ve been dead for 8 years?
I keep getting emails purporting to be from my mum's cousin (decd. 8 yrs too), who'd had her computer hacked ...
O/t, is there any greater memento mori in the modern world than a message from FB reminding you that ‘It’s X’s birthday today, wish him all the best’ when they’ve been dead for 8 years?
I keep getting emails purporting to be from my mum's cousin (decd. 8 yrs too), who'd had her computer hacked ...
Thankfully all my dead relatives were very far from comfortable with internet etc
The Israel conflict is terrible with unknown consequences and outcome
This article highlights just how perilous the world's economy's are and why there is absolutely no money to spend by governments
Also sorry to see @Farooq and @FrankBooth leave this forum but at times it does seem like an echo chamber, but it is important that as many different views are expressed as possible otherwise it will become an echo chamber
Why has @Farooq left? Great loss. I really enjoyed his posts. He often made me laugh out loud. Don't know enough about Frank, but generally sad to see anyone leave regardless of their views. I can only think of one exception, and that person was banned so clearly I wasn't alone in that view.
They are going travelling for some months, so a good time to switch off.
@Farooq objected to a few other posters calling for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and expulsion from their remaining lands.
I don't think our site or country can usefully contribute to resolving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, so try to stay out of it, but is difficult to tolerate reading a site calling for further war crimes as answer to war crimes.
PB benefits from a diversity of voices and opinions, and is generally civil compared to other sites, but when any poster dominates thread after thread then it loses that charm.
I think the struggle for Israel is how it provides itself security without expelling people from Gaza. The status quo simply doesn't work, and a significant number there are pledged to the extermination of Israel and its people. Yes the hard right illegal settlers are crazy, yes they steal land, but they aren't pledged to genocide like Hamas.
Gaza is an open sore on the region, allowed to be sustained by other states. Egypt likes to blame Israel but has its own border wall at the south to keep Gazans imprisoned. Iran is after a fight and seem to be responsible for all those missiles arriving into Gaza. Russia seem to have armed and trained Hamas with drones to drop bombs.
Removing Gaza and pushing the people there back onto the arab diaspora isn't that crazy an idea. The idiocy of "refugee camps" has to end. These are not displaced refugees, they are several generations down the track from that. Resettle them in the other parts of the former Ottoman empire. So that they can also find peace.
I note that you also appear to be calling for ethnic cleansing, which is a crime against humanity. I don’t have a magical solution for Israel/Palestine, but I don’t think committing a crime against humanity is ever the answer.
I've just called for Israel to increase the number of citizens who are arab (currently 21%). But people can't be forcibly made Israeli citizens, for those who won't (because death to the Jew) they would need to leave for everyone's best interests.
If it is genuine and it is picked up by the media it would be very embarrassing
Yes very embarrassing . Some might be shocked that he ever swears . It’s bad but we’ve all lost our rag and it might make his dull image a bit less dull .
Surely if this was a fake Labour would have called it out by now.
Even if it’s fake you still wouldn’t mention it unless it’s picked up more widely by the media .
The 'fuck's sake' seems like it may have been dropped in twice. It's a good job if it's AI generated, but this does happen a lot.
I think you may be right on the fuck's sake. Gilding the lily or outright fakery?
I think it's a fake. The 'I'm sick of it, I'm f**g sick of it' bit doesn't ring true to me either, repetition for emphasis is used very seldom in real world speech, it's seen in telly dramas a lot more. Thinking they got a passage from a TV programme and gave the ai some samples of SKS's voice?
If it is genuine and it is picked up by the media it would be very embarrassing
Yes very embarrassing . Some might be shocked that he ever swears . It’s bad but we’ve all lost our rag and it might make his dull image a bit less dull .
As I said it sounds fake to me but if it is genuine then he is presumably bullying a subordinate.
I can understand why people don't want to see - or have described - the reality of what rape - especially in wartime - looks like. It is deeply disturbing. It can easily stray into a sort of vile pornography or glorification.
But it is also necessary to understand the brutality of what happens and why there is the reaction there is.
Anyway I have seen and read enough. Like everyone else I too cannot bear so much reality. Social media is best avoided at times like these. And there is plenty of nicer stuff to be getting on with.
I was not dimishing the wickedness of the violence in any way. This isn't the Observer colour supplement, did we need such detail here? Maybe we did. But I would have preferred to look at more obvious sources should the need arise.
There is a case that by editing the news, it convinces people that the news is being “shaped”.
For example, on one of the Greek islands that was getting refugees landing there, to x hundred percent of the local population…. They started throwing stones at news crews. Why?
Well, whenever the locals were being interviewed by international news, the moment they started saying anything about the crime rate (fruit trees in orchards being stripped etc), it got cut from the report.
So the locals, who watched TV became convinced that the international media were “on the side of the migrants” and “against them”
I wouldn't advocate sanitising news.
I was merely offended at how graphic,and my interpretation as to why a poster on PB needed to be so graphic.
My bad.
The level of horror and violence of sexual violence is not I think fully understood. We shy away from it precisely because it is so horrible and out of a sense of decency and self-protection - some things once seen cannot be unseen or unheard.
The danger in doing that it is that it risks it being overlooked and the victims forgotten and it being seen as just one of those things that happen. I think there is a tendency for that to happen with all forms of sexual violence. Precisely because it is a perversion of something wonderful we cannot bear to learn what happens when it is used to harm.
I do not know what the right balance is. I only pray that those girls will come home alive and be given the help and care they need.
I was wondering the other day, in an idle moment, what happened to the German women raped by the Soviet troops as they made their way from the Polish border to Berlin. And, perchance, to the babies that resulted.
There’s a whole pile of history there. Just doesn’t get on the Hitler Channel* very often
Also look at the stories of the children fathered by German soldiers in Norway and Denmark. Stuff that didn’t just stop in 45. But went on and on.
*AKA the History Channel
Sadly, occupying armies have a bad record when it comes to fathering children.
Anni-Frid of ABBA was the daughter of a German soldier and a Norwegian mother, a consensual relationship it seems. Her family took her to Sweden to settle because of the stigma.
A bit more complicated than that. I believe her parents were part of the Lebensborn programme. Whereby blonde Aryan non-German mothers who had “racially valuable” kids with German men, especially SS soldiers, got special treatment. To help sustain the future Master Race
A lot of it happened in Denmark/Norway. You can therefore understand the “stigma” and why many fled elsewhere
She was born in November 1945, so conceived in Feb or March 1945, her father only found out in 1977, her mother having thought he died retreating from Norway. She died of kidney failure in 1947, so the details of the relationship are a bit sketchy and second hand.
I attended the Lebensborn annual children’s conference in Denmark about 15 years ago. It’s a place where these people can go and share their anguish - it is a psychological torment for many, discovering they were born this way
They were adamant the ABBA woman was one of them, indeed they admired her as someone who had succeeded despite her troubled background. I believe she learned her own backstory later in life, which fits your timeline (and is often the case, as parents tried to hide the shame in different ways)
Surely if this was a fake Labour would have called it out by now.
Even if it’s fake you still wouldn’t mention it unless it’s picked up more widely by the media .
The 'fuck's sake' seems like it may have been dropped in twice. It's a good job if it's AI generated, but this does happen a lot.
I think you may be right on the fuck's sake. Gilding the lily or outright fakery?
I think it's a fake. The 'I'm sick of it, I'm f**g sick of it' bit doesn't ring true to me either, repetition for emphasis is used very seldom in real world speech, it's seen in telly dramas a lot more. Thinking they got a passage from a TV programme and gave the ai some samples of SKS's voice?
Angela Rayner is a huge asset for Labour . A great opening speech at the conference and a world away from the Tory hate fest.
We often refer to 'events' in politics and the attack on Israel has consumed the media 100% (as you would expect) and labour's conference is very much losing out on coverage
It would have been more problematic if the start of that coincided with Starmers speech . Labour don’t really need a game changer conference and changing the narrative was more important for Sunak . I think Labour will be happy at least that their by-election win got loads of coverage .
The thinking of Hamas/Iran probably went something like this...
(1) Massive attack on Israel, with utterly disgusting brutal atrocities - to be widely broadcast on social media (2) Provoke the fury and wrath of Israel, to wipe out Gaza - again, capture the worst bits; broadcast it all (3) Trigger a wider Middle East conflagration in disgust, and ally with everyone to wipe out Israel (4) Be rewarded in this life or the next, as holy martyrs, for wiping the Jews and their state
So, it's not dissimilar to the thinking of White Supremacists who want to provoke a race war that, ultimately, will work out in their favour.
[Btw, I don't think (3) would happen regardless, but Netanyahu needs to be careful not to fall into a trap on (2)]
I think you're spot on. Netanyahu has big problems, though: 1. He is in coalition with far-right ethno-nationalists who believe they know better than the IDF 2. He is in that coalition solely because he needed to power to prevent criminal investigation of himself 3. The combination of 1 and 2 means that he totally took his eye off the national security ball
Put all of that together and there is a very good chance that he now reacts in exactly the way that Hamas/Iran want.
Yes, indeed. It's concerning.
Of course, they know all this too (Hamas/Iran aren't stupid) which is why they struck as hard as they did when they did.
Yep - I think the huge protests against the Netanyahu government inside Israel would also have spooked them. They need him in power.
If there were any justice in this world (ha!) Netanyahu would be out on his ear. For months he has been trying to attack the judiciary, arrogate more power to himself, protect himself from legal proceedings and appease extreme nationalist parties. It has led to huge demonstrations against him and some reservists threatening not to serve in the IDF. Whether and to what extent all of this resulted in the Israeli government failing in its duty to keep Israel secure we won't find out for a while, maybe never.
Thing is you can try to dismantle the organs of a liberal democratic state and you will get objections from all sorts but what you do may well be tolerated by many if you provide safety and security in return. But if you cannot do that - as the Netanyahu government has plainly failed to do - why tolerate everything else?
For now those reservists will fight to defend their country, to defend people from being slaughtered in their homes, at bus stops, from girls being kidnapped, raped, killed, their bodies desecrated. But after?
Recent Israeli governments have become more and more horrible and so, while I want Israel to exist and be safe it has become, increasingly hard to support the policies of its government which provide no security and are becoming increasingly undemocratic and illiberal. Israel under Netanyahu has become more and more like the Arab states it claims to be better than. Those Israelis wanting a liberal Democratic Western-style Israel have sometimes looked like the remnants of an older better - but dying - Israel.
But what we have seen of Islamic terrorism in Israel and everywhere it has happened in recent decades and the resurgence of Western anti-semitism under the guise of anti-colonialism has reduced my sympathy for the causes they claim to be fighting for to somewhere near zero. The Palestinians - and Arabs generally - have picked and supported the most appalling causes and leaders. I can feel sorrow and sympathy for innocent individuals in Israel and Gaza being terrorised and tortured and suffering. I feel nothing but contempt for those whose reaction to seeing films of old people gunned down at bus stops and girls being raped is to go out onto the streets of London and celebrate.
100% agree
Unfortunately Islamic militant radicalism needs to be cauterised. I increasingly see no alternative.
I disagree with the idea of pushing Palestinians out of Gaza - although Netanyahu may try it (If he does I hope the West will stop him). But we need to find a way to win the hearts and minds of the people of Gaza.
But first there needs to be regime change. By its actions Hamas has made itself illegitimate as a government.
Hamas are the government of Gaza. Not in a legitimate way by international standards, but they are. How do we make regime change happen? Israel will need a military invasion of Gaza with all that entails. Refugees would try and flee but I assume that Egypt will keep its own border shut.
One of the most densly populated areas in the world, radicalised and armed to the teeth, vs one of the most effective (brutal) militaries in the world. It will be a bloodbath, and doesn't offer a guarantee that Hamas will be removed.
So many of the arab states in the area now want peace deals and links with Israel. So it is time that one of them steps up and finally absorbs the so-called refugee camps. Its absurd that this has been allowed to drag on for nearly a century.
Didn’t Hamas win the last election in Gaza? I don’t think (but am willing to be persuaded) that the election was much, if any, more corrupt than, say, many in the USA.
Hamas won the last Palestinian Authority elections in 2006. There was then a battle for control with Fatah and Hamas expelled everyone else from Gaza in 2007.
There haven't been any elections since...
Thanks. The election itself wasn’t too bad IIRC. The aftermath, however…….. However given the gerrymandering which has gone on here since 2019, perhaps we’d better not be too critical.
What gerrymandering are you referring to?
Assuming we take a wider definition of gerrymandering to include any changes to electoral arrangements beneficial (or intended to be beneficial) in a partisan manner to one side, what precisely are we including here?
There's the switch to FPTP to mayoralty votes, but that doesn't really hold water - sure, it was an attempt to benefit but it's not as though FPTP is an unreasonable thing to have in an election.
There's the voter ID changes, which I personally do not support, which had some level of impact (this is still being assessed), but it seems unclear it did benefit the Tories. If it did, it didn't help very much, so at worst it is a bad idea but not catastophic.
Is there anything else? Because currently I'm not really feeling the idea we cannot be critical of others' elections because of the state of ours.
Comments
Unfortunately Islamic militant radicalism needs to be cauterised. I increasingly see no alternative.
I disagree with the idea of pushing Palestinians out of Gaza - although Netanyahu may try it (If he does I hope the West will stop him). But we need to find a way to win the hearts and minds of the people of Gaza.
But first there needs to be regime change. By its actions Hamas has made itself illegitimate as a government.
And, perchance, to the babies that resulted.
But £2Bn seems an awful lot for a railway station…
I had been a long-standing supporter of a two state solution, but it has become increasingly clear in recent years that the moment for that has passed. Israel needs to make a comprehensive offer to onboard the palestinians who want to become citizens. Sadly this is a threat to the religious right, so it won't happen.
The two main reasons put forward are increases in chronic conditions like dementia and diabetes, and the increased costs associated with new technologies/drugs.
https://www.bradfordhistorical.org.uk/allchange.html
Do the settlers steal land? My understanding was that normally they purchase it (and then build exclusive compounds).
But - as always - a lot comes down to water rights. That was the flashpoint in previous discussions. The Jordan is a pretty feeble river.
The key thing that worked well was to go and speak to the staff about the issue and ask them what they thought I should do to improve things. Sometimes their ideas would be things that were impossible or unaffordable, but often useful or insightful into issues that I hadn't seen. At the very least listening to the shop floor established a rapport that got them listening to me, and gave me an understanding of how to get past obstacles to change.
Also look at the stories of the children fathered by German soldiers in Norway and Denmark. Stuff that didn’t just stop in 45. But went on and on.
*AKA the History Channel
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/08/times-radio-presenter-chloe-tilley-hamas-bravery/
One of the most densly populated areas in the world, radicalised and armed to the teeth, vs one of the most effective (brutal) militaries in the world. It will be a bloodbath, and doesn't offer a guarantee that Hamas will be removed.
So many of the arab states in the area now want peace deals and links with Israel. So it is time that one of them steps up and finally absorbs the so-called refugee camps. Its absurd that this has been allowed to drag on for nearly a century.
They are not the same
Then they buy the land cheap when they leave.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2023/10/07/samoa-rugby-world-cup-referees-unconscious-bias-england/
There was nothing unconscious about it....
Suppose we take that approach for all jobs, how does it work for families to raise children? Given the difficulties created when children do not have a stable home environment, surely we should seek to reduce the number of jobs and amount of work that has to be done outside of the normal M-F 9-5?
Your approach fills me with dread. It's the most dreary Stalinist technocracy, with no regard for the lives of the people involved.
Not just formal Public Health either. 15 minute neighbourhoods are nor just more pleasant places to live, but also healthier as walking, and social interaction with neighbours are built into the design.
Better to chase the motorist vote it seems.
For those who missed them but are interested, StillWaters recommended the book A Line in the Sand by James Barr and viewcode this 5 min YouTube video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Azs7As3MYFU
I wonder why people feel the Govt is useless and incompetent.
Lab are honest but useless. Cons are corrupt but competent. When Lab become corrupt (hi Tony!) or the Cons become useless (hi Rishi/Liz/Boris!) then they clearly need a good long time on the political naughty step to think about what they have done.
https://x.com/petronicolaides/status/1710955815014666328
An Egyptian police officer used his gun to start firing on a bus of Israeli tourists.
At least two Israeli were killed, many more are wounded
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1710952938334519424?s=20
There haven't been any elections since...
I note that you also appear to be calling for ethnic cleansing, which is a crime against humanity. I don’t have a magical solution for Israel/Palestine, but I don’t think committing a crime against humanity is ever the answer.
It does require the right sort of homelife for it to work, and impossible for single parents etc.
This is a great book on the subject written from firsthand experience. Interestingly the book was deplored in Germany when first published there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Woman_in_Berlin
I'm reminded of a senior manager who wanted a colleague, already doing a full time job in my section, to take on another regular (and continuing) task, itself taking about 0.3 FTE. In an organization which had a policy of not paying overtime.
Colleague: "But how will I fit it in?"
Boss: "Oh, just take it off as time in lieu."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anni-Frid_Lyngstad
The aftermath, however……..
However given the gerrymandering which has gone on here since 2019, perhaps we’d better not be too critical.
I see no problem, and I don't really understand why it is not a routine part of staff contracts. AIUI nurses have been working 4 days on/4 days off or similar for years and years.
Not sure what happens now as I gather outpatient dispensing has been contracted out.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/voters-hesse-bavaria-seen-dealing-mid-term-blow-scholzs-coalition-2023-10-08/
Not sure how the Isle of Man became involved, TBH.
Wales was definitely conquered.
(Currently sat in a castle on Guernsey waiting for them to fire the noon gun. Weather has been fantastic...)
Grim
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-67039463
A lot of it happened in Denmark/Norway. You can therefore understand the “stigma” and why many fled elsewhere
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensborn
And Gaza has about 100x the population density of Nagorno-Karabakh.
OTOH if it’s AI it’s GOOD
As in: very well done
In 2007 they expelled Fatah representatives and took over military control
This is not a democratic a government
Once again it’s false fucking equivalence
These are not good people. They are not comparable to the west or Israel in any way, shape or form. Even if they mouth the pieties sometimes
Rayner brands Sunak’s housing policy as “the same as his smoking policy.”
“Increase the prices year on year until eventually no one can buy.”
His nasal monotoned voice does seem designed for AI cloning
It’s quite scary because this tech will only get better, until we have absolutely no way of knowing. We are nearly there now
Angela Rayner says PM planning a reshuffle: ‘Maybe that’s why he needs 7 bins for different types of rubbish’
https://twitter.com/BelfastBre/status/1710964419256049731/photo/1
They were adamant the ABBA woman was one of them, indeed they admired her as someone who had succeeded despite her troubled background. I believe she learned her own backstory later in life, which fits your timeline (and is often the case, as parents tried to hide the shame in different ways)
I’m pretty sure it’s true, in this case
Let’s hope the UK election can be at least slightly better conducted.
Assuming we take a wider definition of gerrymandering to include any changes to electoral arrangements beneficial (or intended to be beneficial) in a partisan manner to one side, what precisely are we including here?
There's the switch to FPTP to mayoralty votes, but that doesn't really hold water - sure, it was an attempt to benefit but it's not as though FPTP is an unreasonable thing to have in an election.
There's the voter ID changes, which I personally do not support, which had some level of impact (this is still being assessed), but it seems unclear it did benefit the Tories. If it did, it didn't help very much, so at worst it is a bad idea but not catastophic.
Is there anything else? Because currently I'm not really feeling the idea we cannot be critical of others' elections because of the state of ours.