Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
I took my car to be valeted today and three Romanians did the work.
EU migrants in the Welsh valleys.
And my little boy is in class with a Lithunian girl. Stunningly pretty she is.
Eastern European immigration us changing the landscape even in deepest, darkest Wales
It is our 29th wedding anniversary today and we were in a very fine hotel in deepest Perthshire last night to celebrate. The food was truly exceptional but none of the staff were Scottish. A wide mix of eastern Europeans and a Zimbabwean.
Are our children so bedazzled with all the certificates, diplomas and other valueless qualifications that we give them that they can't see jobs right on their doorstep? It is disappointing.
Happy anniversary. 10 years for me next year, gone quick. I don't really have a view on immigration, I'm not at all affected by it. I tend to like everybody by default, regardless of where they are from (although I have experienced a few dodgy moments with Somalians in Cardiff. They are very territorial and from anecdote it appears a lot of non-Somalians have had issues with them), I'm typically dopey, friendly Welsh in that respect. Chris Mullin summed up immigration and 'sending them 'ome' best for me. His diaries showed that it is very easy and simplistic to be anti-immigration, particularly against illegal immigrants. But not so easy when you are the one sending a working mam and dad and their crying children back to some hellhole in Africa.
I have no real problem with immigration per se and I certainly don't resent hardworking young people who come here to provide services for us. What I worry about is our own youngsters who are given so little chance to compete with these hard working young people. They have been badly treated and left with a mountain of debt.
One day we will be asking them to determine the quality of food in our nursing homes. It is worth thinking about.
I took my car to be valeted today and three Romanians did the work.
EU migrants in the Welsh valleys.
And my little boy is in class with a Lithunian girl. Stunningly pretty she is.
Eastern European immigration us changing the landscape even in deepest, darkest Wales
It is our 29th wedding anniversary today and we were in a very fine hotel in deepest Perthshire last night to celebrate. The food was truly exceptional but none of the staff were Scottish. A wide mix of eastern Europeans and a Zimbabwean.
Are our children so bedazzled with all the certificates, diplomas and other valueless qualifications that we give them that they can't see jobs right on their doorstep? It is disappointing.
Happy anniversary. 10 years for me next year, gone quick. I don't really have a view on immigration, I'm not at all affected by it. I tend to like everybody by default, regardless of where they are from (although I have experienced a few dodgy moments with Somalians in Cardiff. They are very territorial and from anecdote it appears a lot of non-Somalians have had issues with them), I'm typically dopey, friendly Welsh in that respect. Chris Mullin summed up immigration and 'sending them 'ome' best for me. His diaries showed that it is very easy and simplistic to be anti-immigration, particularly against illegal immigrants. But not so easy when you are the one sending a working mam and dad and their crying children back to some hellhole in Africa.
I have no real problem with immigration per se and I certainly don't resent hardworking young people who come here to provide services for us. What I worry about is our own youngsters who are given so little chance to compete with these hard working young people. They have been badly treated and left with a mountain of debt.
One day we will be asking them to determine the quality of food in our nursing homes. It is worth thinking about.
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
Except that was not what Cameron was trying to do. You can argue (wrongly IMHO) that bombing Assad would have helped ISIS, but that was not his intention.
A small nuclear weapon on a small remote ISIS run town. Followed by social media messages to them saying they have one week to surrender unconditionally or another one gets dropped.
Rinse & Repeat until they surrender.
A lot of innocent people will get killed, but probably far less than will be if we don't do this.
Mr. Richard, except the FSA were much stronger then.
If Assad had been bombed and fallen we could have the nightmare of ISIS in charge of all Syria, but it was more likely that the FSA would've gained the upper hand.
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
I don't think Cameron was out to help anyone like ISIS.
I give Cameron stick when he deserves it but you forgot to mention Assad had just used chemical weapons on innocent human beings,do you remember all those children dead.
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
A failed attempt to slightly bomb Syria doesn't really compare with New Labour's SUCCESSFUL and illegal and catastrophic invasion of Iraq, which - in part - has led us to our present predicament: and to ISIS.
If Cameron is an imbecile, what then is Blair? A cacodemon of Hell's seventh circle?
Is anyone else still awaiting payment from Paddy Power resulting from YouGov showing the Tories leading Labour in their Westminster VI poll last Thursday? I get particularly annoyed when bookies "forget" to pay up and one has to remind them. They're keen enough to offer these esoteric political bets in the first place; they should demonstrate an equal keenness in monitoring them and settling their debts when due.
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
Except that was not what Cameron was trying to do. You can argue (wrongly IMHO) that bombing Assad would have helped ISIS, but that was not his intention.
The warmongers of summer 2013 were fools.
Be big enough to admit it.
Cameron's intention at the time was to help out his wife's latest fashionable cause ie Syrian refugees. I doubt Cameron, with his well know lack of interest in details, even bothered to find out who ISIS was. All he wanted to know was Assad=bad and so was to be bombed.
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Best way to deal with Isis is seal them in. Allow people in but no arms, food or anything else. especially news. Do not let any one out make it clear if you go in you dont come back out. Wait 50 years then cautiously peek inside.
Yes there will be a certain amount of innocent casualties but there again there will be with the "bomb them to the stonage" or "boots on the ground" strategy.
Mr. Richard, except the FSA were much stronger then.
If Assad had been bombed and fallen we could have the nightmare of ISIS in charge of all Syria, but it was more likely that the FSA would've gained the upper hand.
And why would the FSA have done any better ? They were losing before and they've lost since. The common trend being that the FSA lose.
Here's what happens in the Middle East - the nice touchy-feely Harvard MBA rebels always turn out to be a lot less popular than the more extreme types.
The only time the nice touchy-feely Harvard MBA rebels ever get power in the Middle East is when we force them into power. Whereupon the nice touchy-feely Harvard MBA rebels achieve nothing more than massive corruption and upsetting everyone else in the country.
Is anyone else still awaiting payment from Paddy Power resulting from YouGov showing the Tories leading Labour in their Westminster VI poll last Thursday? I get particularly annoyed when bookies "forget" to pay up and one has to remind them. They're keen enough to offer these esoteric political bets in the first place; they should demonstrate an equal keenness in monitoring them and settling their debts when due.
You're not the only one.
Looking at their terms they said it had to be a YouGov poll as listed on UK polling report.
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
Except that was not what Cameron was trying to do. You can argue (wrongly IMHO) that bombing Assad would have helped ISIS, but that was not his intention.
The warmongers of summer 2013 were fools.
Be big enough to admit it.
Cameron's intention at the time was to help out his wife's latest fashionable cause ie Syrian refugees. I doubt Cameron, with his well know lack of interest in details, even bothered to find out who ISIS was. All he wanted to know was Assad=bad and so was to be bombed.
Why were people wanting to respond to Assad's use of chemical weapons 'fools'?
Perhaps if we were listened to, ISIS's rampage through Syria and Iraq might have been prevented or delayed. FSA were in a good position at the time.
And listening to the pro-Assad people has hardly led to a good situation, has it? It's immeasurably worse than last year.
Be big enough to admit it.
(I got lots of hassle on here at the time for saying that the conflict might well spread if it was not dealt with. I was sadly proved right).
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
A failed attempt to slightly bomb Syria doesn't really compare with New Labour's SUCCESSFUL and illegal and catastrophic invasion of Iraq, which - in part - has led us to our present predicament: and to ISIS.
If Cameron is an imbecile, what then is Blair? A cacodemon of Hell's seventh circle?
Actually the invasion of Iraq was a great success.
It was afterwards when it went wrong.
The lesson to draw from this is that we're good at destroying hostile regimes but crap at 'nation-building'.
Perhaps we should stick to bombing those hostile to us but otherwise leave them to sort out their own problems.
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Best way to deal with Isis is seal them in. Allow people in but no arms, food or anything else. especially news. Do not let any one out make it clear if you go in you dont come back out. Wait 50 years then cautiously peek inside.
Yes there will be a certain amount of innocent casualties but there again there will be with the "bomb them to the stonage" or "boots on the ground" strategy.
How the F do you seal them in??? It's like sealing in Hitler.
Theirs is an aggressive, conquering, messianic ideology which exists solely for jihad. They are not gonna quietly accept the governance of Mosul and the organisation of its bus services as their ultimate lot in life.
So we will need to "seal them in" with extreme prejudice - and main force. Which means "bombing the frontier to the stone age" and "boots on the ground", and all those cliches you object to.
Have you thought this through? I suspect not.
Sean I am all for sealing them in with extreme prejudice. The bombs and boots cliches were to derail those that would argue "oh but there are civillians in there" the ones who only care about civillians when it is the wrong people killing them not when its our bombs.
Yes we need a ring of steel around their lands. Let them feed on themselves and within 50 years they will be like dust in the wind
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
Except that was not what Cameron was trying to do. You can argue (wrongly IMHO) that bombing Assad would have helped ISIS, but that was not his intention.
The warmongers of summer 2013 were fools.
Be big enough to admit it.
Cameron's intention at the time was to help out his wife's latest fashionable cause ie Syrian refugees. I doubt Cameron, with his well know lack of interest in details, even bothered to find out who ISIS was. All he wanted to know was Assad=bad and so was to be bombed.
Why were people wanting to respond to Assad's use of chemical weapons 'fools'?
Perhaps if we were listened to, ISIS's rampage through Syria and Iraq might have been prevented or delayed. FSA were in a good position at the time.
And listening to the pro-Assad people has hardly led to a good situation, has it? It's immeasurably worse than last year.
Be big enough to admit it.
(I got lots of hassle on here at the time for saying that the conflict might well spread if it was not dealt with. I was sadly proved right).
Would you rather have a Western-trained ophthalmologist run Syria or a Western-trained Jihadist?
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Best way to deal with Isis is seal them in. Allow people in but no arms, food or anything else. especially news. Do not let any one out make it clear if you go in you dont come back out. Wait 50 years then cautiously peek inside.
Yes there will be a certain amount of innocent casualties but there again there will be with the "bomb them to the stonage" or "boots on the ground" strategy.
How the F do you seal them in??? It's like sealing in Hitler.
Theirs is an aggressive, conquering, messianic ideology which exists solely for jihad. They are not gonna quietly accept the governance of Mosul and the organisation of its bus services as their ultimate lot in life.
So we will need to "seal them in" with extreme prejudice - and main force. Which means "bombing the frontier to the stone age" and "boots on the ground", and all those cliches you object to.
Have you thought this through? I suspect not.
I fear it is worse than that. IS is not just a formative state; it is an idea of a new caliphate. 'Sealing in' an ideal that appeals to many is difficult.
It would be like trying to 'seal in' Communism.
We can destroy their fighters. What we need to destroy is their ideology: and that's going to be a bugger to achieve.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
Except that was not what Cameron was trying to do. You can argue (wrongly IMHO) that bombing Assad would have helped ISIS, but that was not his intention.
The warmongers of summer 2013 were fools.
Be big enough to admit it.
Cameron's intention at the time was to help out his wife's latest fashionable cause ie Syrian refugees. I doubt Cameron, with his well know lack of interest in details, even bothered to find out who ISIS was. All he wanted to know was Assad=bad and so was to be bombed.
Why were people wanting to respond to Assad's use of chemical weapons 'fools'?
Perhaps if we were listened to, ISIS's rampage through Syria and Iraq might have been prevented or delayed. FSA were in a good position at the time.
And listening to the pro-Assad people has hardly led to a good situation, has it? It's immeasurably worse than last year.
Be big enough to admit it.
(I got lots of hassle on here at the time for saying that the conflict might well spread if it was not dealt with. I was sadly proved right).
That's right, bombing the main enemy of ISIS would have hurt ISIS.
If we'd listened to you ISIS would now be in Damascus.
Be big enough to admit it.
If you were so concerned about ISIS last year why weren't you calling for ISIS to be bombed instead of Assad ?
Would you rather have a Western-trained ophthamologist run Syria or a Western-trained Jihadist?
For fear of Godwinning myself, that's like calling Hitler an 'amateur painter and writer'.
His use of chemical weapons on his own population (and unlike SeanT below, I think the evidence points firmly towards Assad's forces - whether Assad directly ordered the attacks are another matter) means we cannot support his regime.
I fear it is worse than that. IS is not just a formative state; it is an idea of a new caliphate. 'Sealing in' an ideal that appeals to many is difficult.
It would be like trying to 'seal in' Communism.
We can destroy their fighters. What we need to destroy is their ideology: and that's going to be a bugger to achieve.
Destroying the ideology is exactly why I suggested we allow people in but not out. Those committed to that cause will flock their. In 50 years time we simply move in and execute everyone remaining
Sean I am all for sealing them in with extreme prejudice. The bombs and boots cliches were to derail those that would argue "oh but there are civillians in there" the ones who only care about civillians when it is the wrong people killing them not when its our bombs.
Yes we need a ring of steel around their lands. Let them feed on themselves and within 50 years they will be like dust in the wind
You can't build a ring of steel around being a xenophobic murdering lunatic. There are dozens of countries with similar groups to ISIS. There are literally thousands of like minded people in Europe. If there was ever a time when we could have turned our back and leave them to it that is long gone.
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
A failed attempt to slightly bomb Syria doesn't really compare with New Labour's SUCCESSFUL and illegal and catastrophic invasion of Iraq, which - in part - has led us to our present predicament: and to ISIS.
If Cameron is an imbecile, what then is Blair? A cacodemon of Hell's seventh circle?
Actually the invasion of Iraq was a great success.
It was afterwards when it went wrong.
The lesson to draw from this is that we're good at destroying hostile regimes but crap at 'nation-building'.
Perhaps we should stick to bombing those hostile to us but otherwise leave them to sort out their own problems.
The big problem in Iraq was the government which didn't address the concerns of Sunnis. And the government did not want American forces on its soil unless they were subject to Iraqi law - something the US could not agree to.
Sean I am all for sealing them in with extreme prejudice. The bombs and boots cliches were to derail those that would argue "oh but there are civillians in there" the ones who only care about civillians when it is the wrong people killing them not when its our bombs.
Yes we need a ring of steel around their lands. Let them feed on themselves and within 50 years they will be like dust in the wind
You can't build a ring of steel around being a xenophobic murdering lunatic. There are dozens of countries with similar groups to ISIS. There are literally thousands of like minded people in Europe. If there was ever a time when we could have turned our back and leave them to it that is long gone.
See my response to Josias....this is exactly why we leave the border open to people going in.
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
A failed attempt to slightly bomb Syria doesn't really compare with New Labour's SUCCESSFUL and illegal and catastrophic invasion of Iraq, which - in part - has led us to our present predicament: and to ISIS.
If Cameron is an imbecile, what then is Blair? A cacodemon of Hell's seventh circle?
Actually the invasion of Iraq was a great success.
It was afterwards when it went wrong.
The lesson to draw from this is that we're good at destroying hostile regimes but crap at 'nation-building'.
Perhaps we should stick to bombing those hostile to us but otherwise leave them to sort out their own problems.
Christ, you sound like Mensch. The invasion was not a "success". It led directly to the chaos thereafter. And ISIS.
And I supported that stupid stupid war. I was a cretin, misled by my mendacious prime minister.
Sad.
The invasion was a success as it ended with Saddam dangling from a noose.
In retrospect we should have left immediately but allowing most of the Iraqi government to stay in power - the example of Saddam would have kept them, and their counterparts in other countries, from threatening us.
Is anyone else still awaiting payment from Paddy Power resulting from YouGov showing the Tories leading Labour in their Westminster VI poll last Thursday? I get particularly annoyed when bookies "forget" to pay up and one has to remind them. They're keen enough to offer these esoteric political bets in the first place; they should demonstrate an equal keenness in monitoring them and settling their debts when due.
I've dropped a line to the man who runs PP politics markets
That's right, bombing the main enemy of ISIS would have hurt ISIS.
If we'd listened to you ISIS would now be in Damascus.
Be big enough to admit it.
If you were so concerned about ISIS last year why weren't you calling for ISIS to be bombed instead of Assad ?
ISIS has many enemies, and was a relatively minor player in Syria a year ago - Al Nusra was much bigger, and in fact the two are often fighting each other.
You are looking at the situation as it is today, and projecting backwards. If talking about last year's vote, you need to look at the situation as it was then.
Last year I wanted to help the FSA defeat the Syrian regime (or preferably put enough pressure on Assad to get him into exile). If that had happened, the combined Syrian and FSA (many of whom are ex-Syrian army) would have been a formidable force against Al Nusra.
This was achievable. The key was to get Assad to give in.
It's certainly a more coherent strategy than that of many who were against the bombing.
Sean I am all for sealing them in with extreme prejudice. The bombs and boots cliches were to derail those that would argue "oh but there are civillians in there" the ones who only care about civillians when it is the wrong people killing them not when its our bombs.
Yes we need a ring of steel around their lands. Let them feed on themselves and within 50 years they will be like dust in the wind
You can't build a ring of steel around being a xenophobic murdering lunatic. There are dozens of countries with similar groups to ISIS. There are literally thousands of like minded people in Europe. If there was ever a time when we could have turned our back and leave them to it that is long gone.
See my response to Josias....this is exactly why we leave the border open to people going in.
So what's the plan for all the other countries that have similar groups?
Sean I am all for sealing them in with extreme prejudice. The bombs and boots cliches were to derail those that would argue "oh but there are civillians in there" the ones who only care about civillians when it is the wrong people killing them not when its our bombs.
Yes we need a ring of steel around their lands. Let them feed on themselves and within 50 years they will be like dust in the wind
You can't build a ring of steel around being a xenophobic murdering lunatic. There are dozens of countries with similar groups to ISIS. There are literally thousands of like minded people in Europe. If there was ever a time when we could have turned our back and leave them to it that is long gone.
Revolutions consume their own. Even the original caliphate broke into warring factions fairly quickly.
Either that or when they reach the Golan heights they will get a dose of instant sunshine.
That's right, bombing the main enemy of ISIS would have hurt ISIS.
If we'd listened to you ISIS would now be in Damascus.
Be big enough to admit it.
If you were so concerned about ISIS last year why weren't you calling for ISIS to be bombed instead of Assad ?
ISIS has many enemies, and was a relatively minor player in Syria a year ago - Al Nusra was much bigger, and in fact the two are often fighting each other.
You are looking at the situation as it is today, and projecting backwards. If talking about last year's vote, you need to look at the situation as it was then.
Last year I wanted to help the FSA defeat the Syrian regime (or preferably put enough pressure on Assad to get him into exile). If that had happened, the combined Syrian and FSA (many of whom are ex-Syrian army) would have been a formidable force against Al Nusra.
This was achievable. The key was to get Assad to give in.
It's certainly a more coherent strategy than that of many who were against the bombing.
The key was not to get involved in something that is none of our damn business and just ensure the lunacy didnt spill over. Instead we stirred the pot and encouraged it to spill over all over the place.
The old saying is "people get the government they deserve" is there for a reason the sooner we start leaving people be and let them find the government they deserve the better and this applies whether they are muslim, christian, african or even god forbid french
National exit poll 11pm UK time (may be partial vote count as in France - 21/27 states closed at 9pm) - Brazil currently 43% counted, no President results released yet. Final polls had Neves beating Silva into 2nd place.
Sean I am all for sealing them in with extreme prejudice. The bombs and boots cliches were to derail those that would argue "oh but there are civillians in there" the ones who only care about civillians when it is the wrong people killing them not when its our bombs.
Yes we need a ring of steel around their lands. Let them feed on themselves and within 50 years they will be like dust in the wind
You can't build a ring of steel around being a xenophobic murdering lunatic. There are dozens of countries with similar groups to ISIS. There are literally thousands of like minded people in Europe. If there was ever a time when we could have turned our back and leave them to it that is long gone.
See my response to Josias....this is exactly why we leave the border open to people going in.
So what's the plan for all the other countries that have similar groups?
Would you rather have a Western-trained ophthamologist run Syria or a Western-trained Jihadist?
For fear of Godwinning myself, that's like calling Hitler an 'amateur painter and writer'.
His use of chemical weapons on his own population (and unlike SeanT below, I think the evidence points firmly towards Assad's forces - whether Assad directly ordered the attacks are another matter) means we cannot support his regime.
Which evidence? You're like some anti-Communist vacillating over whether the West should have lent support to Stalin when Hitler invaded in 1941.
The Iraqi government disappeared literally post invasion. There was no one to run anything and the nature of the Iraqi command and control economy makes Soviet Russia look like free-wheeling capitalism. No one did anything without instructions from Baghdad - and they'd all buggered off in fear of reprisals from their own internal enemies.
Andrew Aldeson's excellent post-invasion book Bankrolling Basra lays it all out in all its horrors.
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
A failed attempt to slightly bomb Syria doesn't really compare with New Labour's SUCCESSFUL and illegal and catastrophic invasion of Iraq, which - in part - has led us to our present predicament: and to ISIS.
If Cameron is an imbecile, what then is Blair? A cacodemon of Hell's seventh circle?
Actually the invasion of Iraq was a great success.
It was afterwards when it went wrong.
The lesson to draw from this is that we're good at destroying hostile regimes but crap at 'nation-building'.
Perhaps we should stick to bombing those hostile to us but otherwise leave them to sort out their own problems.
Christ, you sound like Mensch. The invasion was not a "success". It led directly to the chaos thereafter. And ISIS.
And I supported that stupid stupid war. I was a cretin, misled by my mendacious prime minister.
Sad.
The invasion was a success as it ended with Saddam dangling from a noose.
In retrospect we should have left immediately but allowing most of the Iraqi government to stay in power - the example of Saddam would have kept them, and their counterparts in other countries, from threatening us.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Best way to deal with Isis is seal them in. Allow people in but no arms, food or anything else. especially news. Do not let any one out make it clear if you go in you dont come back out. Wait 50 years then cautiously peek inside.
Yes there will be a certain amount of innocent casualties but there again there will be with the "bomb them to the stonage" or "boots on the ground" strategy.
How the F do you seal them in??? It's like sealing in Hitler.
Theirs is an aggressive, conquering, messianic ideology which exists solely for jihad. They are not gonna quietly accept the governance of Mosul and the organisation of its bus services as their ultimate lot in life.
So we will need to "seal them in" with extreme prejudice - and main force. Which means "bombing the frontier to the stone age" and "boots on the ground", and all those cliches you object to.
Have you thought this through? I suspect not.
I fear it is worse than that. IS is not just a formative state; it is an idea of a new caliphate. 'Sealing in' an ideal that appeals to many is difficult.
It would be like trying to 'seal in' Communism.
We can destroy their fighters. What we need to destroy is their ideology: and that's going to be a bugger to achieve.
What is needed is for some Muslim countries to become successful.
In particular to be regarded as successful as their non-Muslim counterparts.
This is why Israel is so hated - a despised people without oil have been more successful than the surrounding Muslim countries.
On a more domestic level its why many Muslims in Britain turn to extremism. As the Hindu and Sikh communities have both become more integrated and affluent the failure of the Muslim community by comparison becomes more apparent. The growing success of India while Pakistan becomes a failed state also emphasises this.
Without good rolemodels to aspire to nihilistic extremism becomes ever more attractive.
Sean I am all for sealing them in with extreme prejudice. The bombs and boots cliches were to derail those that would argue "oh but there are civillians in there" the ones who only care about civillians when it is the wrong people killing them not when its our bombs.
Yes we need a ring of steel around their lands. Let them feed on themselves and within 50 years they will be like dust in the wind
You can't build a ring of steel around being a xenophobic murdering lunatic. There are dozens of countries with similar groups to ISIS. There are literally thousands of like minded people in Europe. If there was ever a time when we could have turned our back and leave them to it that is long gone.
See my response to Josias....this is exactly why we leave the border open to people going in.
So what's the plan for all the other countries that have similar groups?
The plan is simple those other groups that suport the isis aim will flock to the new "caliphate" convinced they will continue to grow and conquer. Once in they will find their way blocked on every frontier and will slowly self consume as food, medecine and other vital supplies run out.
Sean I am all for sealing them in with extreme prejudice. The bombs and boots cliches were to derail those that would argue "oh but there are civillians in there" the ones who only care about civillians when it is the wrong people killing them not when its our bombs.
Yes we need a ring of steel around their lands. Let them feed on themselves and within 50 years they will be like dust in the wind
You can't build a ring of steel around being a xenophobic murdering lunatic. There are dozens of countries with similar groups to ISIS. There are literally thousands of like minded people in Europe. If there was ever a time when we could have turned our back and leave them to it that is long gone.
Revolutions consume their own. Even the original caliphate broke into warring factions fairly quickly.
Either that or when they reach the Golan heights they will get a dose of instant sunshine.
I agree with your first sentence, but the damage done before ISIS implodes could be horrendous.
I've no real doubt that at some point we are actually going to end up describing the conflict with militant Islamists as WWIII. Eventually it will have lasted long enough, involved enough countries, and produced enough casualties that describing it is a world war will make sense. Maybe our only choice is to prevent it becoming the WWIII we have previously feared.
There was a big piece in the Sunday Times property section bewailing a possible 'mansion tax'.
Including the usual complaints of "I bought my house for only £400k and now I'll get taxed through no fault of my own".
That said people have made a seven figure capital gain through no effort of their own is never mentioned.
Sure, but they can't realise it unless they sell and move somewhere cheaper, or to a cheaper property in the same area.
So their quality of life hasn't improved in any real sense, but you are requiring them to change their lifestyle significantly or to fork out a huge sum of money annually to maintain what they had previously.
Sean I am all for sealing them in with extreme prejudice. The bombs and boots cliches were to derail those that would argue "oh but there are civillians in there" the ones who only care about civillians when it is the wrong people killing them not when its our bombs.
Yes we need a ring of steel around their lands. Let them feed on themselves and within 50 years they will be like dust in the wind
You can't build a ring of steel around being a xenophobic murdering lunatic. There are dozens of countries with similar groups to ISIS. There are literally thousands of like minded people in Europe. If there was ever a time when we could have turned our back and leave them to it that is long gone.
Revolutions consume their own. Even the original caliphate broke into warring factions fairly quickly.
Either that or when they reach the Golan heights they will get a dose of instant sunshine.
I agree with your first sentence, but the damage done before ISIS implodes could be horrendous.
I've no real doubt that at some point we are actually going to end up describing the conflict with militant Islamists as WWIII. Eventually it will have lasted long enough, involved enough countries, and produced enough casualties that describing it is a world war will make sense. Maybe our only choice is to prevent it becoming the WWIII we have previously feared.
They dont care about the casualties on their "side" so why should we?
Sean I am all for sealing them in with extreme prejudice. The bombs and boots cliches were to derail those that would argue "oh but there are civillians in there" the ones who only care about civillians when it is the wrong people killing them not when its our bombs.
Yes we need a ring of steel around their lands. Let them feed on themselves and within 50 years they will be like dust in the wind
You can't build a ring of steel around being a xenophobic murdering lunatic. There are dozens of countries with similar groups to ISIS. There are literally thousands of like minded people in Europe. If there was ever a time when we could have turned our back and leave them to it that is long gone.
See my response to Josias....this is exactly why we leave the border open to people going in.
So what's the plan for all the other countries that have similar groups?
Including the UK?
Sure, the UK apparently provides ISIS with a large chunk of its European recruits. It's a problem right on our doorstep. If you can believe the papers some of the biggest US counter terrorist operations are keeping track of would-be jihadists in the UK.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Best way to deal with Isis is seal them in. Allow people in but no arms, food or anything else. especially news. Do not let any one out make it clear if you go in you dont come back out. Wait 50 years then cautiously peek inside.
Yes there will be a certain amount of innocent casualties but there again there will be with the "bomb them to the stonage" or "boots on the ground" strategy.
How the F do you seal them in??? It's like sealing in Hitler.
Theirs is an aggressive, conquering, messianic ideology which exists solely for jihad. They are not gonna quietly accept the governance of Mosul and the organisation of its bus services as their ultimate lot in life.
So we will need to "seal them in" with extreme prejudice - and main force. Which means "bombing the frontier to the stone age" and "boots on the ground", and all those cliches you object to.
Have you thought this through? I suspect not.
I fear it is worse than that. IS is not just a formative state; it is an idea of a new caliphate. 'Sealing in' an ideal that appeals to many is difficult.
It would be like trying to 'seal in' Communism.
We can destroy their fighters. What we need to destroy is their ideology: and that's going to be a bugger to achieve.
What is needed is for some Muslim countries to become successful.
In particular to be regarded as successful as their non-Muslim counterparts.
This is why Israel is so hated - a despised people without oil have been more successful than the surrounding Muslim countries.
On a more domestic level its why many Muslims in Britain turn to extremism. As the Hindu and Sikh communities have both become more integrated and affluent the failure of the Muslim community by comparison becomes more apparent. The growing success of India while Pakistan becomes a failed state also emphasises this.
Without good rolemodels to aspire to nihilistic extremism becomes ever more attractive.
A very strong argument for Turkish membership of the EU.
[So their quality of life hasn't improved in any real sense, but you are requiring them to change their lifestyle significantly or to fork out a huge sum of money annually to maintain what they had previously.]
Yup, that's the Mansion Tax for you people - be prepared rich people, your quality of life may not improve.
That's right, bombing the main enemy of ISIS would have hurt ISIS.
If we'd listened to you ISIS would now be in Damascus.
Be big enough to admit it.
If you were so concerned about ISIS last year why weren't you calling for ISIS to be bombed instead of Assad ?
ISIS has many enemies, and was a relatively minor player in Syria a year ago - Al Nusra was much bigger, and in fact the two are often fighting each other.
You are looking at the situation as it is today, and projecting backwards. If talking about last year's vote, you need to look at the situation as it was then.
Last year I wanted to help the FSA defeat the Syrian regime (or preferably put enough pressure on Assad to get him into exile). If that had happened, the combined Syrian and FSA (many of whom are ex-Syrian army) would have been a formidable force against Al Nusra.
This was achievable. The key was to get Assad to give in.
It's certainly a more coherent strategy than that of many who were against the bombing.
The key was not to get involved in something that is none of our damn business and just ensure the lunacy didnt spill over. Instead we stirred the pot and encouraged it to spill over all over the place.
The old saying is "people get the government they deserve" is there for a reason the sooner we start leaving people be and let them find the government they deserve the better and this applies whether they are muslim, christian, african or even god forbid french
The risk was the lunacy spilling over if we did nothing. Which it did, to Iraq.
Don't underestimate how neighbouring countries felt about Assad's use of weapons of mass destruction. It concerned not just Israel, but the adjoining states as well.
That's right, bombing the main enemy of ISIS would have hurt ISIS.
If we'd listened to you ISIS would now be in Damascus.
Be big enough to admit it.
If you were so concerned about ISIS last year why weren't you calling for ISIS to be bombed instead of Assad ?
ISIS has many enemies, and was a relatively minor player in Syria a year ago - Al Nusra was much bigger, and in fact the two are often fighting each other.
You are looking at the situation as it is today, and projecting backwards. If talking about last year's vote, you need to look at the situation as it was then.
Last year I wanted to help the FSA defeat the Syrian regime (or preferably put enough pressure on Assad to get him into exile). If that had happened, the combined Syrian and FSA (many of whom are ex-Syrian army) would have been a formidable force against Al Nusra.
This was achievable. The key was to get Assad to give in.
It's certainly a more coherent strategy than that of many who were against the bombing.
Assad was never going to give in (the fate of Saddam and Gaddafi ensured that) and even if he had he would have been replaced by someone even more hardline.
That's what happens in religious wars and that's what happens in civil wars. Syria is an religious civil war.
And that also explains why ISIS was always going to get stronger.
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
A failed attempt to slightly bomb Syria doesn't really compare with New Labour's SUCCESSFUL and illegal and catastrophic invasion of Iraq, which - in part - has led us to our present predicament: and to ISIS.
If Cameron is an imbecile, what then is Blair? A cacodemon of Hell's seventh circle?
Actually the invasion of Iraq was a great success.
It was afterwards when it went wrong.
The lesson to draw from this is that we're good at destroying hostile regimes but crap at 'nation-building'.
Perhaps we should stick to bombing those hostile to us but otherwise leave them to sort out their own problems.
Christ, you sound like Mensch. The invasion was not a "success". It led directly to the chaos thereafter. And ISIS.
And I supported that stupid stupid war. I was a cretin, misled by my mendacious prime minister.
Sad.
The invasion was a success as it ended with Saddam dangling from a noose.
SeanT Yes, watched that Affleck, Maher debate, very interesting from both sides, been a good week for Affleck not only with that debate but the success of his excellent movie Gone Girl I saw on Saturday night
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
Except that was not what Cameron was trying to do. You can argue (wrongly IMHO) that bombing Assad would have helped ISIS, but that was not his intention.
The warmongers of summer 2013 were fools.
Be big enough to admit it.
Cameron's intention at the time was to help out his wife's latest fashionable cause ie Syrian refugees. I doubt Cameron, with his well know lack of interest in details, even bothered to find out who ISIS was. All he wanted to know was Assad=bad and so was to be bombed.
He is very careful when interviewed to call them eye-sil. Even though the BBC insists on calling them the "Islamic state".
They are not a state, they are not particularly islamic.
Cameron, in calling them eye-sil, is doing exactly the right thing to avoid glamorising them. Which, to me, suggests someone who is well aware of the importance of small details
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Best way to deal with Isis is seal them in. Allow people in but no arms, food or anything else. especially news. Do not let any one out make it clear if you go in you dont come back out. Wait 50 years then cautiously peek inside.
Yes there will be a certain amount of innocent casualties but there again there will be with the "bomb them to the stonage" or "boots on the ground" strategy.
How the F do you seal them in??? It's like sealing in Hitler.
Theirs is an aggressive, conquering, messianic ideology which exists solely for jihad. They are not gonna quietly accept the governance of Mosul and the organisation of its bus services as their ultimate lot in life.
So we will need to "seal them in" with extreme prejudice - and main force. Which means "bombing the frontier to the stone age" and "boots on the ground", and all those cliches you object to.
Have you thought this through? I suspect not.
I fear it is worse than that. IS is not just a formative state; it is an idea of a new caliphate. 'Sealing in' an ideal that appeals to many is difficult.
It would be like trying to 'seal in' Communism.
We can destroy their fighters. What we need to destroy is their ideology: and that's going to be a bugger to achieve.
What is needed is for some Muslim countries to become successful.
In particular to be regarded as successful as their non-Muslim counterparts.
This is why Israel is so hated - a despised people without oil have been more successful than the surrounding Muslim countries.
On a more domestic level its why many Muslims in Britain turn to extremism. As the Hindu and Sikh communities have both become more integrated and affluent the failure of the Muslim community by comparison becomes more apparent. The growing success of India while Pakistan becomes a failed state also emphasises this.
Without good rolemodels to aspire to nihilistic extremism becomes ever more attractive.
Turkey. Unfortunately Atatürk's golden legacy is slowly being eroded. But Turkey shows that a state with a majority-Islamic population can be secular and relatively successful if it chooses.
It's a shame there are not more leaders like Atatürk about now. He was flawed, but he pulled Turkey out of the mire of the end of Ottoman Empire.
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
Except that was not what Cameron was trying to do. You can argue (wrongly IMHO) that bombing Assad would have helped ISIS, but that was not his intention.
The warmongers of summer 2013 were fools.
Be big enough to admit it.
Cameron's intention at the time was to help out his wife's latest fashionable cause ie Syrian refugees. I doubt Cameron, with his well know lack of interest in details, even bothered to find out who ISIS was. All he wanted to know was Assad=bad and so was to be bombed.
He is very careful when interviewed to call them eye-sil. Even though the BBC insists on calling them the "Islamic state".
They are not a state, they are not particularly islamic.
How did Islam spread under Mohammed? Through friendly student exchange visits?
There was a big piece in the Sunday Times property section bewailing a possible 'mansion tax'.
Including the usual complaints of "I bought my house for only £400k and now I'll get taxed through no fault of my own".
That said people have made a seven figure capital gain through no effort of their own is never mentioned.
Sure, but they can't realise it unless they sell and move somewhere cheaper, or to a cheaper property in the same area.
So their quality of life hasn't improved in any real sense, but you are requiring them to change their lifestyle significantly or to fork out a huge sum of money annually to maintain what they had previously.
That's an argument against any form of tax increase ever.
Far too much of the capital in this country is invested in non-productive property meanwhile wealth-creating work is massively taxed.
I pay a huge sum of money annually for the great crime of getting off my arse and doing a job so I don't have much sympathy for those who sit on their arses in multi-million pound assets bewailing their misfortune that they now have multi-million pound assets.
I get the impression I a being seen here as being a little harsh. I therefore ( as I see myself as a reasonably non harsh person) going to present the thinking that leads me to these conclusions. Please feel free to comment where you think I am wrong.
I would also note these conclusions do not apply to any race or religion and would as far as I am concerned to any threat.
1) Collateral damage. I have said people get the government they deserve this I believe also applies to insurgents such as IS or the IRA or ETA or HAMAS. Without the support and aid of a significant section of the civilian population these organisations would not be able to function. Therefore those area's where they can function with impunity implies they are endorsed by a large segment of civillians
2) Kill them all. A policy that is out of fashion but one which the ancients knew well the value of. People frankly do not like to die. Ensuring that future insurgents know what their likely fate is for losing will do more to ensure a lack of recruits that anything else.
3) Seal them in. Yes this will cause us to commit troops and resources and will be not easy however as we currently spend millions on bombs anyway I don't see this, especially as it would be a multi national force as being much more expensive to us. We keep it simple we block each border crossing we draw a line in the sand(or dirt or rock or whatever for the pedantic). Walk across it and you get shot. Simple rules of engagement, no chance of our troops being a target for ied's as no patrols.
4) War as an extension of politics. One of the reasons we have all these problems frankly is that we have shown our weakness. Cause us too many casualties and we start to cry. That is not to say casualties are good by any means but if we only get involved in wars the country is behind rather than the vanity affairs beloved of our current political idiots then we will not have such a problem. Nor indeed if we wage war firmly rather than in the touchy feely hearts and mind manner will we have as many casualties.
Despite my words here I am a man of peace. Sometimes I recognise that a lasting peace however needs a damn good fight to get it underway
That's right, bombing the main enemy of ISIS would have hurt ISIS.
If we'd listened to you ISIS would now be in Damascus.
Be big enough to admit it.
If you were so concerned about ISIS last year why weren't you calling for ISIS to be bombed instead of Assad ?
ISIS has many enemies, and was a relatively minor player in Syria a year ago - Al Nusra was much bigger, and in fact the two are often fighting each other.
You are looking at the situation as it is today, and projecting backwards. If talking about last year's vote, you need to look at the situation as it was then.
Last year I wanted to help the FSA defeat the Syrian regime (or preferably put enough pressure on Assad to get him into exile). If that had happened, the combined Syrian and FSA (many of whom are ex-Syrian army) would have been a formidable force against Al Nusra.
This was achievable. The key was to get Assad to give in.
It's certainly a more coherent strategy than that of many who were against the bombing.
Assad was never going to give in (the fate of Saddam and Gaddafi ensured that) and even if he had he would have been replaced by someone even more hardline.
That's what happens in religious wars and that's what happens in civil wars. Syria is an religious civil war.
And that also explains why ISIS was always going to get stronger.
"Assad was never going to give in "
Yes, because there is no precedent for leaders to go into exile. Ahem. You may recall one died just yesterday after making the surprising move of returning home.
"Syria is an religious civil war."
It wasn't last year, and you can easily argue that it is not now. It is a civil war in which some of he combatants are fighting for religion as opposed to a.n.other cause.
[So their quality of life hasn't improved in any real sense, but you are requiring them to change their lifestyle significantly or to fork out a huge sum of money annually to maintain what they had previously.]
Yup, that's the Mansion Tax for you people - be prepared rich people, your quality of life may not improve.
I'm drawing a distinction between the value of something and its worth.
Someone who buys a 4 bedroom house in, say, Dartmouth Park for £400,000 and finds that it is worth £2,500,000 today still lives in a 4 bedroom house in Dartmouth Park. They still live on the same street, see the same people and go to the same shops. Their life has not changed in any meaningful way.
But now it will cost them an additional £5,000 per year in tax.
Mass batch of of polls from CBS News/NYT/YouGov for next month's US midterms. First the competitive Senate races (The House almost certainly staying GOP) Kansas Senate Pat Roberts (R): 40% Greg Orman (I): 40%
Alaska Senate Dan Sullivan (R): 48% Mark Begich (D): 42%
Arkansas Senate Tom Cotton (R): 45% Mark Pryor (D): 41%
Colorado Senate Mark Udall (D): 48% Cory Gardner (R): 45%
Georgia Senate David Perdue (R): 47% Michelle Nunn (D): 43%
Iowa Senate Bruce Braley (D): 44% Joni Ernst (R): 43%
North Carolina Senate Kay Hagan (D): 46% Thom Tillis (R): 45%
New Hampshire Senate Jean Shaheen (D): 48% Scott Brown (R): 41%
Louisiana Senate Bill Cassidy (R): 47% Mary Landrieu (D): 41%
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Best way to deal with Isis is seal them in. Allow people in but no arms, food or anything else. especially news. Do not let any one out make it clear if you go in you dont come back out. Wait 50 years then cautiously peek inside.
Yes there will be a certain amount of innocent casualties but there again there will be with the "bomb them to the stonage" or "boots on the ground" strategy.
How the F do you seal them in??? It's like sealing in Hitler.
Theirs is an aggressive, conquering, messianic ideology which exists solely for jihad. They are not gonna quietly accept the governance of Mosul and the organisation of its bus services as their ultimate lot in life.
So we will need to "seal them in" with extreme prejudice - and main force. Which means "bombing the frontier to the stone age" and "boots on the ground", and all those cliches you object to.
Have you thought this through? I suspect not.
I fear it is worse than that. IS is not just a formative state; it is an idea of a new caliphate. 'Sealing in' an ideal that appeals to many is difficult.
It would be like trying to 'seal in' Communism.
We can destroy their fighters. What we need to destroy is their ideology: and that's going to be a bugger to achieve.
What is needed is for some Muslim countries to become successful.
In particular to be regarded as successful as their non-Muslim counterparts.
This is why Israel is so hated - a despised people without oil have been more successful than the surrounding Muslim countries.
On a more domestic level its why many Muslims in Britain turn to extremism. As the Hindu and Sikh communities have both become more integrated and affluent the failure of the Muslim community by comparison becomes more apparent. The growing success of India while Pakistan becomes a failed state also emphasises this.
Without good rolemodels to aspire to nihilistic extremism becomes ever more attractive.
Turkey. Unfortunately Atatürk's golden legacy is slowly being eroded. But Turkey shows that a state with a majority-Islamic population can be secular and relatively successful if it chooses.
It's a shame there are not more leaders like Atatürk about now. He was flawed, but he pulled Turkey out of the mire of the end of Ottoman Empire.
Of course a successful Turkey is yet another thing for failed Arabs to rage about.
Hadn't realised people actually post on here during Downton. How disappointing.
But Julian Fellowes is such a pompous arse that I'd do anything to avoid watching his rubbish*
* Although Gosford Park was good, and he fit the character of Kilwillie perfectly
Downton is one of the greatest soap operas ever written. Fellowes is a kind of genius. The narrative energy of his show is tremendous.
Sneer at it if you will, but he does what he does - quite brilliantly.
When I was in the Rhineland in September there were huge billboards everywhere, telling Germans to get such-and-such satellite channel, so they could watch Downton.
It is a massive global hit in the way that too many British dramas are not.
I wasn't sneering - quite enjoyed the first series in a half-hearted sort of way. Never really got into the second series.
But my point was that I don't like Julian, sorry LORD, Fellowes.
That's right, bombing the main enemy of ISIS would have hurt ISIS.
If we'd listened to you ISIS would now be in Damascus.
Be big enough to admit it.
If you were so concerned about ISIS last year why weren't you calling for ISIS to be bombed instead of Assad ?
ISIS has many enemies, and was a relatively minor player in Syria a year ago - Al Nusra was much bigger, and in fact the two are often fighting each other.
You are looking at the situation as it is today, and projecting backwards. If talking about last year's vote, you need to look at the situation as it was then.
Last year I wanted to help the FSA defeat the Syrian regime (or preferably put enough pressure on Assad to get him into exile). If that had happened, the combined Syrian and FSA (many of whom are ex-Syrian army) would have been a formidable force against Al Nusra.
This was achievable. The key was to get Assad to give in.
It's certainly a more coherent strategy than that of many who were against the bombing.
The key was not to get involved in something that is none of our damn business and just ensure the lunacy didnt spill over. Instead we stirred the pot and encouraged it to spill over all over the place.
The old saying is "people get the government they deserve" is there for a reason the sooner we start leaving people be and let them find the government they deserve the better and this applies whether they are muslim, christian, african or even god forbid french
The risk was the lunacy spilling over if we did nothing. Which it did, to Iraq.
Don't underestimate how neighbouring countries felt about Assad's use of weapons of mass destruction. It concerned not just Israel, but the adjoining states as well.
The lunacy wouldnt have started if we had minded our own business and not invaded IRAQ. However I have posted a long one with my reasoning feel free to pick holes in it as you see fit
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
Except that was not what Cameron was trying to do. You can argue (wrongly IMHO) that bombing Assad would have helped ISIS, but that was not his intention.
The warmongers of summer 2013 were fools.
Be big enough to admit it.
Cameron's intention at the time was to help out his wife's latest fashionable cause ie Syrian refugees. I doubt Cameron, with his well know lack of interest in details, even bothered to find out who ISIS was. All he wanted to know was Assad=bad and so was to be bombed.
He is very careful when interviewed to call them eye-sil. Even though the BBC insists on calling them the "Islamic state".
They are not a state, they are not particularly islamic.
How did Islam spread under Mohammed? Through friendly student exchange visits?
No.
But Isil is not a state, despite the fact it claims to be one.
And it has one very specific, and not widely accepted, interpretation of what it means to be Islamic. Not all Muslims are crazy nutters, you do realise that, right?
[So their quality of life hasn't improved in any real sense, but you are requiring them to change their lifestyle significantly or to fork out a huge sum of money annually to maintain what they had previously.]
Yup, that's the Mansion Tax for you people - be prepared rich people, your quality of life may not improve.
I'm drawing a distinction between the value of something and its worth.
Someone who buys a 4 bedroom house in, say, Dartmouth Park for £400,000 and finds that it is worth £2,500,000 today still lives in a 4 bedroom house in Dartmouth Park. They still live on the same street, see the same people and go to the same shops. Their life has not changed in any meaningful way.
But now it will cost them an additional £5,000 per year in tax.
Yes.
(I did start to type some more... well maybe give me a minute...)
There was a big piece in the Sunday Times property section bewailing a possible 'mansion tax'.
Including the usual complaints of "I bought my house for only £400k and now I'll get taxed through no fault of my own".
That said people have made a seven figure capital gain through no effort of their own is never mentioned.
Sure, but they can't realise it unless they sell and move somewhere cheaper, or to a cheaper property in the same area.
So their quality of life hasn't improved in any real sense, but you are requiring them to change their lifestyle significantly or to fork out a huge sum of money annually to maintain what they had previously.
That's an argument against any form of tax increase ever.
Far too much of the capital in this country is invested in non-productive property meanwhile wealth-creating work is massively taxed.
I pay a huge sum of money annually for the great crime of getting off my arse and doing a job so I don't have much sympathy for those who sit on their arses in multi-million pound assets bewailing their misfortune that they now have multi-million pound assets.
I don't disagree with you in principle.
Personally, I think the Tories should introduce an annual property tax on all properties and use the money to reduce more economically damaging taxes.
But pretending that someone who can't convert an asset into cash without suffering a significant loss of life amenity is "rich" is a false dichotomy
I get the impression I a being seen here as being a little harsh. I therefore ( as I see myself as a reasonably non harsh person) going to present the thinking that leads me to these conclusions. Please feel free to comment where you think I am wrong.
I would also note these conclusions do not apply to any race or religion and would as far as I am concerned to any threat.
1) Collateral damage. I have said people get the government they deserve this I believe also applies to insurgents such as IS or the IRA or ETA or HAMAS. Without the support and aid of a significant section of the civilian population these organisations would not be able to function. Therefore those area's where they can function with impunity implies they are endorsed by a large segment of civillians
2) Kill them all. A policy that is out of fashion but one which the ancients knew well the value of. People frankly do not like to die. Ensuring that future insurgents know what their likely fate is for losing will do more to ensure a lack of recruits that anything else.
3) Seal them in. Yes this will cause us to commit troops and resources and will be not easy however as we currently spend millions on bombs anyway I don't see this, especially as it would be a multi national force as being much more expensive to us. We keep it simple we block each border crossing we draw a line in the sand(or dirt or rock or whatever for the pedantic). Walk across it and you get shot. Simple rules of engagement, no chance of our troops being a target for ied's as no patrols.
4) War as an extension of politics. One of the reasons we have all these problems frankly is that we have shown our weakness. Cause us too many casualties and we start to cry. That is not to say casualties are good by any means but if we only get involved in wars the country is behind rather than the vanity affairs beloved of our current political idiots then we will not have such a problem. Nor indeed if we wage war firmly rather than in the touchy feely hearts and mind manner will we have as many casualties.
Despite my words here I am a man of peace. Sometimes I recognise that a lasting peace however needs a damn good fight to get it underway
Sounds like an approach well suited to the Gallic Wars
[So their quality of life hasn't improved in any real sense, but you are requiring them to change their lifestyle significantly or to fork out a huge sum of money annually to maintain what they had previously.]
Yup, that's the Mansion Tax for you people - be prepared rich people, your quality of life may not improve.
I'm drawing a distinction between the value of something and its worth.
Someone who buys a 4 bedroom house in, say, Dartmouth Park for £400,000 and finds that it is worth £2,500,000 today still lives in a 4 bedroom house in Dartmouth Park. They still live on the same street, see the same people and go to the same shops. Their life has not changed in any meaningful way.
But now it will cost them an additional £5,000 per year in tax.
Yes.
(I did start to type some more... well maybe give me a minute...)
Okay -
I've just heard whine whine whine about the ideologically sound bedroom tax that I don't think my brain just can't really care too much about this hypothetical minus 5k family.
I admit there's plenty of politics of envy involved probably - But I'm all for progressive taxation which basically means taxing the rich more - And I'm sure you're well aware of my blunt economic analysis by now - and Brisky says 2M house = rich.
Gosford Park is one of my favourite movies - but Mr Fellowes has simply recycled it again and again in increasingly pale imitations - like a Dan Brown novel.
I can't understand why anyone watches Downton. I saw S1 and just gaped at most of it - period drama by numbers and Hugh Bonneville is so fantastically wooden.
Still, I think Upstairs Downstairs did it so much better.
That's right, bombing the main enemy of ISIS would have hurt ISIS.
If we'd listened to you ISIS would now be in Damascus.
Be big enough to admit it.
If you were so concerned about ISIS last year why weren't you calling for ISIS to be bombed instead of Assad ?
ISIS has many enemies, and was a relatively minor player in Syria a year ago - Al Nusra was much bigger, and in fact the two are often fighting each other.
You are looking at the situation as it is today, and projecting backwards. If talking about last year's vote, you need to look at the situation as it was then.
Last year I wanted to help the FSA defeat the Syrian regime (or preferably put enough pressure on Assad to get him into exile). If that had happened, the combined Syrian and FSA (many of whom are ex-Syrian army) would have been a formidable force against Al Nusra.
This was achievable. The key was to get Assad to give in.
It's certainly a more coherent strategy than that of many who were against the bombing.
The key was not to get involved in something that is none of our damn business and just ensure the lunacy didnt spill over. Instead we stirred the pot and encouraged it to spill over all over the place.
The old saying is "people get the government they deserve" is there for a reason the sooner we start leaving people be and let them find the government they deserve the better and this applies whether they are muslim, christian, african or even god forbid french
The risk was the lunacy spilling over if we did nothing. Which it did, to Iraq.
Don't underestimate how neighbouring countries felt about Assad's use of weapons of mass destruction. It concerned not just Israel, but the adjoining states as well.
The lunacy wouldnt have started if we had minded our own business and not invaded IRAQ. However I have posted a long one with my reasoning feel free to pick holes in it as you see fit
Agree generally about Iraq, but the Syrian civil war was a direct consequence of the Arab Spring. The region's wider instability was caused more by the AS than Iraq IMHO.
But the mess in Iraq next door certainly did not help, and fermented IS.
[So their quality of life hasn't improved in any real sense, but you are requiring them to change their lifestyle significantly or to fork out a huge sum of money annually to maintain what they had previously.]
Yup, that's the Mansion Tax for you people - be prepared rich people, your quality of life may not improve.
I'm drawing a distinction between the value of something and its worth.
Someone who buys a 4 bedroom house in, say, Dartmouth Park for £400,000 and finds that it is worth £2,500,000 today still lives in a 4 bedroom house in Dartmouth Park. They still live on the same street, see the same people and go to the same shops. Their life has not changed in any meaningful way.
But now it will cost them an additional £5,000 per year in tax.
Yes.
(I did start to type some more... well maybe give me a minute...)
Okay -
I've just heard whine whine whine about the ideologically sound bedroom tax that I don't think my brain just can't really care too much about this hypothetical minus 5k family.
I admit there's plenty of politics of envy involved probably - But I'm all for progressive taxation which basically means taxing the rich more - And I'm sure you're well aware of my bunt economic analysis by now - and Brisky says 2M house = rich.
Residential property is undertaxed.
Increasing taxes will reduce prices, to the benefit of the next generation. It will also encourage the redeployment of capital to more productive uses.
But the mansion tax as devised by the Labour party is an absolutely crazy way to approach something, driven entirely by the politics of envy, perceived dividing lines and trying to make the Tories look bad.
I'd rather that governments did things which were in the interests of the country and its people.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
Except that was not what Cameron was trying to do. You can argue (wrongly IMHO) that bombing Assad would have helped ISIS, but that was not his intention.
The warmongers of summer 2013 were fools.
Be big enough to admit it.
Cameron's intention at the time was to help out his wife's latest fashionable cause ie Syrian refugees. I doubt Cameron, with his well know lack of interest in details, even bothered to find out who ISIS was. All he wanted to know was Assad=bad and so was to be bombed.
He is very careful when interviewed to call them eye-sil. Even though the BBC insists on calling them the "Islamic state".
They are not a state, they are not particularly islamic.
How did Islam spread under Mohammed? Through friendly student exchange visits?
No.
But Isil is not a state, despite the fact it claims to be one.
And it has one very specific, and not widely accepted, interpretation of what it means to be Islamic. Not all Muslims are crazy nutters, you do realise that, right?
What Charles says is true, most muslims are not crazy nutter and do not endorse the tenets that ISIL hold dear.
Where I diverge from him probably is in believing that while the percentage is small numerically it is too large logistically. Living in a largely muslim area (discounting some of ISIL's more extreme stuff ) I would estimate support for a lot of their aims at around 10 to 15 percent. Include the more extreme stuff and you can half that. I do know people around me in the muslim community seem to have no problem showing ISIL support even though they are a minority and the remainder of their community seems to not wish to shout them down.
(Anecdote alert) When I was at college in the 80's we had some national front types who used to put up posters. I was one of those who used to rip them down(something I regret now and wish I had instead used debate to combat them but we are all callow youths at some point). The point is I expect the muslim community to speak out, I expect them to say "You do not speak for us". Some have but far too few and I wonder why.
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
Except that was not what Cameron was trying to do. You can argue (wrongly IMHO) that bombing Assad would have helped ISIS, but that was not his intention.
The warmongers of summer 2013 were fools.
Be big enough to admit it.
Cameron's intention at the time was to help out his wife's latest fashionable cause ie Syrian refugees. I doubt Cameron, with his well know lack of interest in details, even bothered to find out who ISIS was. All he wanted to know was Assad=bad and so was to be bombed.
He is very careful when interviewed to call them eye-sil. Even though the BBC insists on calling them the "Islamic state".
They are not a state, they are not particularly islamic.
Cameron, in calling them eye-sil, is doing exactly the right thing to avoid glamorising them. Which, to me, suggests someone who is well aware of the importance of small details
No it means that Cameron is using the terminology the Foreign Office advisers have told him to.
Cameron is no details man, he likes things broad brush and simple. And last year he had it with Assad=bad with everyone on the other side being a bunch of confusing letters.
ISIS, FSA would have been a real life JPF and PFJ.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
snip for space
Yes there will be a certain amount of innocent casualties but there again there will be with the "bomb them to the stonage" or "boots on the ground" strategy.
How the F do you seal them in??? It's like sealing in Hitler.
Theirs is an aggressive, conquering, messianic ideology which exists solely for jihad. They are not gonna quietly accept the governance of Mosul and the organisation of its bus services as their ultimate lot in life.
So we will need to "seal them in" with extreme prejudice - and main force. Which means "bombing the frontier to the stone age" and "boots on the ground", and all those cliches you object to.
Have you thought this through? I suspect not.
I fear it is worse than that. IS is not just a formative state; it is an idea of a new caliphate. 'Sealing in' an ideal that appeals to many is difficult.
It would be like trying to 'seal in' Communism.
We can destroy their fighters. What we need to destroy is their ideology: and that's going to be a bugger to achieve.
What is needed is for some Muslim countries to become successful.
In particular to be regarded as successful as their non-Muslim counterparts.
This is why Israel is so hated - a despised people without oil have been more successful than the surrounding Muslim countries.
On a more domestic level its why many Muslims in Britain turn to extremism. As the Hindu and Sikh communities have both become more integrated and affluent the failure of the Muslim community by comparison becomes more apparent. The growing success of India while Pakistan becomes a failed state also emphasises this.
Without good rolemodels to aspire to nihilistic extremism becomes ever more attractive.
Turkey. Unfortunately Atatürk's golden legacy is slowly being eroded. But Turkey shows that a state with a majority-Islamic population can be secular and relatively successful if it chooses.
It's a shame there are not more leaders like Atatürk about now. He was flawed, but he pulled Turkey out of the mire of the end of Ottoman Empire.
I get the impression I a being seen here as being a little harsh. I therefore ( as I see myself as a reasonably non harsh person) going to present the thinking that leads me to these conclusions. Please feel free to comment where you think I am wrong.
I would also note these conclusions do not apply to any race or religion and would as far as I am concerned to any threat.
1) Collateral damage. I have said people get the government they deserve this I believe also applies to insurgents such as IS or the IRA or ETA or HAMAS. Without the support and aid of a significant section of the civilian population these organisations would not be able to function. Therefore those area's where they can function with impunity implies they are endorsed by a large segment of civillians
2) Kill them all. A policy that is out of fashion but one which the ancients knew well the value of. People frankly do not like to die. Ensuring that future insurgents know what their likely fate is for losing will do more to ensure a lack of recruits that anything else.
3) Seal them in. Yes this will cause us to commit troops and resources and will be not easy however as we currently spend millions on bombs anyway I don't see this, especially as it would be a multi national force as being much more expensive to us. We keep it simple we block each border crossing we draw a line in the sand(or dirt or rock or whatever for the pedantic). Walk across it and you get shot. Simple rules of engagement, no chance of our troops being a target for ied's as no patrols.
4) War as an extension of politics. One of the reasons we have all these problems frankly is that we have shown our weakness. Cause us too many casualties and we start to cry. That is not to say casualties are good by any means but if we only get involved in wars the country is behind rather than the vanity affairs beloved of our current political idiots then we will not have such a problem. Nor indeed if we wage war firmly rather than in the touchy feely hearts and mind manner will we have as many casualties.
Despite my words here I am a man of peace. Sometimes I recognise that a lasting peace however needs a damn good fight to get it underway
Sounds like an approach well suited to the Gallic Wars
I invited criticism of my views with the possibility of modifying them if someone showed me an error. I have mentioned before that I didn't have the luxury of education that many of you had having gone from comprehensive to sixth form to beam trawler. Your comment Charles while probably most erudite and no doubt point scoring of me tremendously has no impact on my views because I haven't had the luxury of studying those texts that would make it in anyway relevant
[So their quality of life hasn't improved in any real sense, but you are requiring them to change their lifestyle significantly or to fork out a huge sum of money annually to maintain what they had previously.]
Yup, that's the Mansion Tax for you people - be prepared rich people, your quality of life may not improve.
I'm drawing a distinction between the value of something and its worth.
Someone who buys a 4 bedroom house in, say, Dartmouth Park for £400,000 and finds that it is worth £2,500,000 today still lives in a 4 bedroom house in Dartmouth Park. They still live on the same street, see the same people and go to the same shops. Their life has not changed in any meaningful way.
But now it will cost them an additional £5,000 per year in tax.
Yes.
(I did start to type some more... well maybe give me a minute...)
Okay -
I've just heard whine whine whine about the ideologically sound bedroom tax that I don't think my brain just can't really care too much about this hypothetical minus 5k family.
I admit there's plenty of politics of envy involved probably - But I'm all for progressive taxation which basically means taxing the rich more - And I'm sure you're well aware of my bunt economic analysis by now - and Brisky says 2M house = rich.
Residential property is undertaxed.
Increasing taxes will reduce prices, to the benefit of the next generation. It will also encourage the redeployment of capital to more productive uses.
But the mansion tax as devised by the Labour party is an absolutely crazy way to approach something, driven entirely by the politics of envy, perceived dividing lines and trying to make the Tories look bad.
I'd rather that governments did things which were in the interests of the country and its people.
Thanks for reply Charles - I've got a film to watch on normal Tv now - I don't mean to be patronising or anything (sorry I know that kind of can only sound patronising - I'm just trying to get across my jist) but I think I could have had fun with this one on PB for a change.
Another Guardianista says "we mustn't bomb ISIS coz blah" yet offers no serious alternative.
Everyone agrees we should arm the Kurds (if Turkey lets us) but that won't win the war. Iraq is about to fall. Baghdad is now in ISIS artillery range. ISIS are sweeping up to the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the useful idiots of the Left march on.
There was a lovely story in the Guardian earlier about ISIL raping an eight year old girl and her mother, then cutting their hearts out and leaving them on the bodies. Always amazes me how much time the average morally crusading, deeply religious soldier has for rape. No warring, praying or land-conquering, however time-consuming, gets in the way of a good, old fashioned child rape. These zealots are no better or any more intelligently advanced than your ordinary, garden paedophile or child murderer. They just use religion as convenient cover for their mental sickness.
ISIS thrive BECAUSE they are evil. Their transgressive, we-will-do-anything, F*ck You and Rape Your Mother quality is intrinsic to their appeal. Same with the the Nazis. They are teenage nihilism with tanks and, one day, maybe missiles. Unless we stop them.
Cameron's attempt to bomb Assad to help ISIS has to be one of the most imbecilic acts any British government has ever attempted.
Except that was not what Cameron was trying to do. You can argue (wrongly IMHO) that bombing Assad would have helped ISIS, but that was not his intention.
The warmongers of summer 2013 were fools.
Be big enough to admit it.
Cameron's intention at the time was to help out his wife's latest fashionable cause ie Syrian refugees. I doubt Cameron, with his well know lack of interest in details, even bothered to find out who ISIS was. All he wanted to know was Assad=bad and so was to be bombed.
He is very careful when interviewed to call them eye-sil. Even though the BBC insists on calling them the "Islamic state".
They are not a state, they are not particularly islamic.
How did Islam spread under Mohammed? Through friendly student exchange visits?
No.
But Isil is not a state, despite the fact it claims to be one.
in what way? It controls large portions of what used to be Iraq and Syria. In many ways we ought to be pleased, to try country-building, the enemy has to concentrate itself.
No it means that Cameron is using the terminology the Foreign Office advisers have told him to.
Cameron is no details man, he likes things broad brush and simple. And last year he had it with Assad=bad with everyone on the other side being a bunch of confusing letters.
ISIS, FSA would have been a real life JPF and PFJ.
Thus showing you know nothing about ISIS and the FSA. You could argue that about Al Nusra and the FSA, but not really about the FSA and ISIS.
On 29 July 2011, Colonel Riad al-Asaad and a group of uniformed officers announced the formation of the Free Syrian Army, with the goals of protecting unarmed protesters and helping to "bring down this regime", in a video on the Internet where Riad al-Asaad spoke alongside several other defectors.[12][42]
Al-Asaad explained that the Free Army’s formation resulted from the defecting soldiers' sense of nationalistic duty, loyalty to the people, the need for decisive action to stop government killings, and the army’s responsibility to protect unarmed people. He proceeded to announce the formation of the Free Syrian Army, and its intention to work hand in hand with the people and with demonstrators to achieve freedom and dignity, bring the government ("the regime"/"the system") down, protect the revolution and the country’s resources, and stand in the face of the irresponsible military machine that protects the "system".[42][11]
Asaad called on the officers and men of the Syrian army to "defect from the army, stop pointing their rifles at their people's chests, join the free army, and form a national army that can protect the revolution and all sections of the Syrian people with all their sects." He said that the Syrian army "[represents] gangs that protect the regime", and declared that "as of now, the security forces that kill civilians and besiege cities will be treated as legitimate targets. We will target them in all parts of the Syrian territories without exception."[42]
Re. Gosford Park, I remember getting up early on a Sunday morning, expecting the cinema to be virtually empty. In the event it was packed and had to sit on the front row, which of course gives you neck ache for a few days afterwards. Great movie though.
Yes, because there is no precedent for leaders to go into exile. Ahem. You may recall one died just yesterday after making the surprising move of returning home.
You really think that Assad would have left power and gone into exile when he was being accused of every warcrime under the sun ?
He would have assumed that an offer of exile would have been followed by a quick trip to the Hague to stand trial at best or a return home to follow in the footsteps of Saddam and Gaddafi.
It wasn't last year, and you can easily argue that it is not now. It is a civil war in which some of he combatants are fighting for religion as opposed to a.n.other cause.
Yes it was.
From the start it has been Alawites against Sunni.
That's why Assad has been backed by Iran and Hizbollah and opposed by the Saudis and Al Qaeda.
Sure there are doubtless some on either side fighting for their own personal reasons but the fundamental split has always been religious.
Sounds like an approach well suited to the Gallic Wars
(1) Collateral damage. You either fight a war or you don't. It is an uncivilised activity. You might try to avoid collateral damage (we should try) but it is inescapable. We should turn Raqqa into a car park.
(2) KTA. To win a war you kill more of the enemy than they kill of you. Two Britons have been murdered in the most horrible way imaginable. I expect my government to exact brutal and bloody vengeance. I would quite like Cameron to stand up in the Commons tomorrow and tell me how many of the c***s we have killed. It would not be too many.
(3) Concentrate your enemy and then s*** on them. ISIS would be good people to try experimental munitions out on.
(4) If we are in the game, then we are at war. No poncing around. None of this "for a generation" stuff. there's only about 20,000 of them, we should be able to take them out in six months. Britons who go abroad to fight for them are traitors and should be subject to prosecution under the 1351 Act if they attempt to return. FFS lay about with fire and the sword.
Comments
http://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-resources/where-if-anywhere-will-liberal-democrat-votes-go-in-the-2015-general-election/
Is that deliberate? Are the Greens actively targeting LDs?
It is a sign.
I remember watching as Sky door stopped her.
One day we will be asking them to determine the quality of food in our nursing homes. It is worth thinking about.
A small nuclear weapon on a small remote ISIS run town. Followed by social media messages to them saying they have one week to surrender unconditionally or another one gets dropped.
Rinse & Repeat until they surrender.
A lot of innocent people will get killed, but probably far less than will be if we don't do this.
If Assad had been bombed and fallen we could have the nightmare of ISIS in charge of all Syria, but it was more likely that the FSA would've gained the upper hand.
I give Cameron stick when he deserves it but you forgot to mention Assad had just used chemical weapons on innocent human beings,do you remember all those children dead.
http://www.ukip.org/ukip_leader_nigel_farage_condemns_tony_blair_s_support_for_further_western_intervention_in_the_middle_east
I get particularly annoyed when bookies "forget" to pay up and one has to remind them.
They're keen enough to offer these esoteric political bets in the first place; they should demonstrate an equal keenness in monitoring them and settling their debts when due.
Be big enough to admit it.
Cameron's intention at the time was to help out his wife's latest fashionable cause ie Syrian refugees. I doubt Cameron, with his well know lack of interest in details, even bothered to find out who ISIS was. All he wanted to know was Assad=bad and so was to be bombed.
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02628/tory-van-620_2628143b.jpg
Best way to deal with Isis is seal them in. Allow people in but no arms, food or anything else. especially news. Do not let any one out make it clear if you go in you dont come back out. Wait 50 years then cautiously peek inside.
Yes there will be a certain amount of innocent casualties but there again there will be with the "bomb them to the stonage" or "boots on the ground" strategy.
Here's what happens in the Middle East - the nice touchy-feely Harvard MBA rebels always turn out to be a lot less popular than the more extreme types.
The only time the nice touchy-feely Harvard MBA rebels ever get power in the Middle East is when we force them into power. Whereupon the nice touchy-feely Harvard MBA rebels achieve nothing more than massive corruption and upsetting everyone else in the country.
Looking at their terms they said it had to be a YouGov poll as listed on UK polling report.
Mr Wells has not updated his table.
Perhaps if we were listened to, ISIS's rampage through Syria and Iraq might have been prevented or delayed. FSA were in a good position at the time.
And listening to the pro-Assad people has hardly led to a good situation, has it? It's immeasurably worse than last year.
Be big enough to admit it.
(I got lots of hassle on here at the time for saying that the conflict might well spread if it was not dealt with. I was sadly proved right).
It was afterwards when it went wrong.
The lesson to draw from this is that we're good at destroying hostile regimes but crap at 'nation-building'.
Perhaps we should stick to bombing those hostile to us but otherwise leave them to sort out their own problems.
Yes we need a ring of steel around their lands. Let them feed on themselves and within 50 years they will be like dust in the wind
It would be like trying to 'seal in' Communism.
We can destroy their fighters. What we need to destroy is their ideology: and that's going to be a bugger to achieve.
If we'd listened to you ISIS would now be in Damascus.
Be big enough to admit it.
If you were so concerned about ISIS last year why weren't you calling for ISIS to be bombed instead of Assad ?
His use of chemical weapons on his own population (and unlike SeanT below, I think the evidence points firmly towards Assad's forces - whether Assad directly ordered the attacks are another matter) means we cannot support his regime.
In retrospect we should have left immediately but allowing most of the Iraqi government to stay in power - the example of Saddam would have kept them, and their counterparts in other countries, from threatening us.
Puts the Lambert and Butler filter in a whole other light...
[PS MI6 reading this - I am a pleb who doesn't know what they're doing - please don't kill me]
You are looking at the situation as it is today, and projecting backwards. If talking about last year's vote, you need to look at the situation as it was then.
Last year I wanted to help the FSA defeat the Syrian regime (or preferably put enough pressure on Assad to get him into exile). If that had happened, the combined Syrian and FSA (many of whom are ex-Syrian army) would have been a formidable force against Al Nusra.
This was achievable. The key was to get Assad to give in.
It's certainly a more coherent strategy than that of many who were against the bombing.
Either that or when they reach the Golan heights they will get a dose of instant sunshine.
The old saying is "people get the government they deserve" is there for a reason the sooner we start leaving people be and let them find the government they deserve the better and this applies whether they are muslim, christian, african or even god forbid french
National exit poll 11pm UK time (may be partial vote count as in France - 21/27 states closed at 9pm) - Brazil currently 43% counted, no President results released yet. Final polls had Neves beating Silva into 2nd place.
Official results:
http://divulga.tse.jus.br/oficial/index.html
TV link:
http://g1.globo.com/globo-news/jornal-globo-news/videos/v/globo-news-ao-vivo/61910/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=gnews
Results from Globo.com:
http://g1.globo.com/politica/eleicoes/2014/index.html
Thanks,
DC
You're like some anti-Communist vacillating over whether the West should have lent support to Stalin when Hitler invaded in 1941.
Andrew Aldeson's excellent post-invasion book Bankrolling Basra lays it all out in all its horrors.
In particular to be regarded as successful as their non-Muslim counterparts.
This is why Israel is so hated - a despised people without oil have been more successful than the surrounding Muslim countries.
On a more domestic level its why many Muslims in Britain turn to extremism. As the Hindu and Sikh communities have both become more integrated and affluent the failure of the Muslim community by comparison becomes more apparent. The growing success of India while Pakistan becomes a failed state also emphasises this.
Without good rolemodels to aspire to nihilistic extremism becomes ever more attractive.
These people aren't the brightest lets face it
I agree with your first sentence, but the damage done before ISIS implodes could be horrendous.
I've no real doubt that at some point we are actually going to end up describing the conflict with militant Islamists as WWIII. Eventually it will have lasted long enough, involved enough countries, and produced enough casualties that describing it is a world war will make sense. Maybe our only choice is to prevent it becoming the WWIII we have previously feared.
So their quality of life hasn't improved in any real sense, but you are requiring them to change their lifestyle significantly or to fork out a huge sum of money annually to maintain what they had previously.
They dont care about the casualties on their "side" so why should we?
Yup, that's the Mansion Tax for you people - be prepared rich people, your quality of life may not improve.
Don't underestimate how neighbouring countries felt about Assad's use of weapons of mass destruction. It concerned not just Israel, but the adjoining states as well.
That's what happens in religious wars and that's what happens in civil wars. Syria is an religious civil war.
And that also explains why ISIS was always going to get stronger.
* Although Gosford Park was good, and he fit the character of Kilwillie perfectly
www.youtube.com/watch?v=he4C7gWEpEU&
They are not a state, they are not particularly islamic.
Cameron, in calling them eye-sil, is doing exactly the right thing to avoid glamorising them. Which, to me, suggests someone who is well aware of the importance of small details
It's a shame there are not more leaders like Atatürk about now. He was flawed, but he pulled Turkey out of the mire of the end of Ottoman Empire.
Far too much of the capital in this country is invested in non-productive property meanwhile wealth-creating work is massively taxed.
I pay a huge sum of money annually for the great crime of getting off my arse and doing a job so I don't have much sympathy for those who sit on their arses in multi-million pound assets bewailing their misfortune that they now have multi-million pound assets.
I would also note these conclusions do not apply to any race or religion and would as far as I am concerned to any threat.
1) Collateral damage. I have said people get the government they deserve this I believe also applies to insurgents such as IS or the IRA or ETA or HAMAS. Without the support and aid of a significant section of the civilian population these organisations would not be able to function. Therefore those area's where they can function with impunity implies they are endorsed by a large segment of civillians
2) Kill them all. A policy that is out of fashion but one which the ancients knew well the value of. People frankly do not like to die. Ensuring that future insurgents know what their likely fate is for losing will do more to ensure a lack of recruits that anything else.
3) Seal them in. Yes this will cause us to commit troops and resources and will be not easy however as we currently spend millions on bombs anyway I don't see this, especially as it would be a multi national force as being much more expensive to us. We keep it simple we block each border crossing we draw a line in the sand(or dirt or rock or whatever for the pedantic). Walk across it and you get shot. Simple rules of engagement, no chance of our troops being a target for ied's as no patrols.
4) War as an extension of politics. One of the reasons we have all these problems frankly is that we have shown our weakness. Cause us too many casualties and we start to cry. That is not to say casualties are good by any means but if we only get involved in wars the country is behind rather than the vanity affairs beloved of our current political idiots then we will not have such a problem. Nor indeed if we wage war firmly rather than in the touchy feely hearts and mind manner will we have as many casualties.
Despite my words here I am a man of peace. Sometimes I recognise that a lasting peace however needs a damn good fight to get it underway
Yes, because there is no precedent for leaders to go into exile. Ahem. You may recall one died just yesterday after making the surprising move of returning home.
"Syria is an religious civil war."
It wasn't last year, and you can easily argue that it is not now. It is a civil war in which some of he combatants are fighting for religion as opposed to a.n.other cause.
Someone who buys a 4 bedroom house in, say, Dartmouth Park for £400,000 and finds that it is worth £2,500,000 today still lives in a 4 bedroom house in Dartmouth Park. They still live on the same street, see the same people and go to the same shops. Their life has not changed in any meaningful way.
But now it will cost them an additional £5,000 per year in tax.
Maggie Smith is in it.
It is on ITV on a Sunday.
Ms Briskin wants to add something about new Homeland series (it's on a Sunday as well you see), but I'm not letting her.
Kansas Senate
Pat Roberts (R): 40%
Greg Orman (I): 40%
Alaska Senate
Dan Sullivan (R): 48%
Mark Begich (D): 42%
Arkansas Senate
Tom Cotton (R): 45%
Mark Pryor (D): 41%
Colorado Senate
Mark Udall (D): 48%
Cory Gardner (R): 45%
Georgia Senate
David Perdue (R): 47%
Michelle Nunn (D): 43%
Iowa Senate
Bruce Braley (D): 44%
Joni Ernst (R): 43%
North Carolina Senate
Kay Hagan (D): 46%
Thom Tillis (R): 45%
New Hampshire Senate
Jean Shaheen (D): 48%
Scott Brown (R): 41%
Louisiana Senate
Bill Cassidy (R): 47%
Mary Landrieu (D): 41%
Kentucky Senate
Mitch McConnell (R): 47%
Alison Grimes (D): 41%
Michigan Senate
Gary Peters (D): 46%
Terry Lynn Land (R): 41%
Minnesota Senate
Al Franken (D): 49%
Mike McFadden (R): 42%
But my point was that I don't like Julian, sorry LORD, Fellowes.
That's all :-)
Virginia Senate
Mark Warner (D): 51%
Ed Gillespie (R): 39%
Illinois Senate
Dick Durbin (D): 51%
Jim Oberweis (R): 39%
New Jersey Senate
Cory Booker (R): 51%
Jeff Bell (D): 37%
Oregon Senate
Jeff Merkley (D): 52%
Monica Wehby (R): 39%
South Dakota Senate
Mike Rounds (R): 42%
Rick Weiland (D): 27%
Larry Pressler (I): 12%
Montana Senate
Steve Daines (R): 55%
Amanda Curtis (D): 34%
West Virginia Senate
Shelley Moore-Capito (R): 56%
Natalie Tennant (D): 33%
Mississippi Senate
Thad Cochran (R): 46%
Travis Childers (D): 35%
New Mexico Senate
Tom Udall (D): 53%
Allen Weh (R): 35%
Delaware Senate
Chris Coons (D): 51%
Kevin Wade (R): 35%
Massachusetts Senate
Ed Markey (D): 54%
Brian Herr (R): 31%
Maine Senate
Susan Collins (R): 57%
Shenna Bellows (D): 33%
Nebraska Senate
Ben Sasse (R): 58%
David Domina (D): 31%
South Carolina Senate
Lindsey Graham (R): 44%
Brad Hutto (D): 27%
Tim Scott (R): 54%
Joyce Dickerson (D): 31%
Tennessee Senate
Lamar Alexander (R): 53%
Gordon Ball (D): 32%
Texas Senate
John Cornyn (R): 55%
David Alameel (D): 35%
Idaho Senate
Jim Risch (R): 64%
Nels Mitchell (D): 27%
Oklahoma Senate
James Lankford (R): 65%
Connie Johnson (D): 24%
Jim Inhofe (R): 67%
Matt Silverstein (D): 25%
Rhode Island Senate
Jack Reed (D): 64%
Mark Zaccaria (R): 22%
Hawaii Senate
Brian Schatz (D): 71%
Cam Cavasso (R): 17%
Wyoming Senate
Mike Enzi (R): 75%
Charlie Hardy (D): 17%
But Isil is not a state, despite the fact it claims to be one.
And it has one very specific, and not widely accepted, interpretation of what it means to be Islamic. Not all Muslims are crazy nutters, you do realise that, right?
(I did start to type some more... well maybe give me a minute...)
Personally, I think the Tories should introduce an annual property tax on all properties and use the money to reduce more economically damaging taxes.
But pretending that someone who can't convert an asset into cash without suffering a significant loss of life amenity is "rich" is a false dichotomy
I've just heard whine whine whine about the ideologically sound bedroom tax that I don't think my brain just can't really care too much about this hypothetical minus 5k family.
I admit there's plenty of politics of envy involved probably - But I'm all for progressive taxation which basically means taxing the rich more - And I'm sure you're well aware of my blunt economic analysis by now - and Brisky says 2M house = rich.
I can't understand why anyone watches Downton. I saw S1 and just gaped at most of it - period drama by numbers and Hugh Bonneville is so fantastically wooden.
Still, I think Upstairs Downstairs did it so much better.
The countdown has started.... 100 days to Luise's 105th birthday!
Lovely actress, I think "The Good Earth" was her last great film.
But the mess in Iraq next door certainly did not help, and fermented IS.
Increasing taxes will reduce prices, to the benefit of the next generation. It will also encourage the redeployment of capital to more productive uses.
But the mansion tax as devised by the Labour party is an absolutely crazy way to approach something, driven entirely by the politics of envy, perceived dividing lines and trying to make the Tories look bad.
I'd rather that governments did things which were in the interests of the country and its people.
Where I diverge from him probably is in believing that while the percentage is small numerically it is too large logistically. Living in a largely muslim area (discounting some of ISIL's more extreme stuff ) I would estimate support for a lot of their aims at around 10 to 15 percent. Include the more extreme stuff and you can half that. I do know people around me in the muslim community seem to have no problem showing ISIL support even though they are a minority and the remainder of their community seems to not wish to shout them down.
(Anecdote alert) When I was at college in the 80's we had some national front types who used to put up posters. I was one of those who used to rip them down(something I regret now and wish I had instead used debate to combat them but we are all callow youths at some point). The point is I expect the muslim community to speak out, I expect them to say "You do not speak for us". Some have but far too few and I wonder why.
Cameron is no details man, he likes things broad brush and simple. And last year he had it with Assad=bad with everyone on the other side being a bunch of confusing letters.
ISIS, FSA would have been a real life JPF and PFJ.
Only been to Turkey the once, but my word - that's quite a mausoleum!
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/soldier-sacked-by-army-72-hours-1389909
Travelling to Afganistan and being all buddy, buddy with the troops won't stop them remembering how some returning troops were treated.
Night All.
http://www.borehamwoodtimes.co.uk/news/11481687.Former_Labour_candidate_Frank_Ward_to_stand_for_UKIP_in_general_election/
The FSA is now a shadow of its former self.
Anyway, I'm off to bed. Night, all.
How do the Pollsters, Pundits and Psephologists see GE2015 now?
He would have assumed that an offer of exile would have been followed by a quick trip to the Hague to stand trial at best or a return home to follow in the footsteps of Saddam and Gaddafi. Yes it was.
From the start it has been Alawites against Sunni.
That's why Assad has been backed by Iran and Hizbollah and opposed by the Saudis and Al Qaeda.
Sure there are doubtless some on either side fighting for their own personal reasons but the fundamental split has always been religious.
(2) KTA. To win a war you kill more of the enemy than they kill of you. Two Britons have been murdered in the most horrible way imaginable. I expect my government to exact brutal and bloody vengeance. I would quite like Cameron to stand up in the Commons tomorrow and tell me how many of the c***s we have killed. It would not be too many.
(3) Concentrate your enemy and then s*** on them. ISIS would be good people to try experimental munitions out on.
(4) If we are in the game, then we are at war. No poncing around. None of this "for a generation" stuff. there's only about 20,000 of them, we should be able to take them out in six months. Britons who go abroad to fight for them are traitors and should be subject to prosecution under the 1351 Act if they attempt to return. FFS lay about with fire and the sword.