The environmentalists made a mistake calling climate change global warming. They should have called it global shit weather. Global warming sounded quite good and positive to many people in colder climates, whereas the reality it is so interspersed by torrential rain, droughts, storms, cold snaps, heatwaves and unpredictability that it is good for no-one.
In the 1970s the experts were saying we were facing global cooling.
That is a mischaracterisation of the debate at the time.
As it could be argued there is a mischaracterisation now when people talk about global warming.
Is there any data on whether the weather in London has been more extreme this year ?
I don't remember any other part of the country continually complaining.
What's your problem?
Who is continually complaining - the only thing I'm complaining about is some boring poster going on about how people in London are complaining about the weather?
No need to get touchy.
From April onwards PB has been treated to regular negative reports of the London weather.
I'm just asking if there is any meteorological data to back this up.
Because it doesn't seem to be happening elsewhere.
It makes a change about boasting of how wonderful London is , weather up her has been lovely and the shower last night was only rain we have had for more than a month , saves me watering garden today.
My niece and family have had a week in West Kilbride, following their attendance at my sons wedding here in North Wales, celebrating her father and mother in laws golden wedding and the weather has been excellent, though that changed yesterday when she helped her daughter and partner move into their new flat in Glasgow and the heavens opened
While we are on the subject of Medals table, pity the poor French. Crap Euros, unrest at home and now - according to Nate Silver - one of the worst underperformers at the Olympics:
You would have to have a heart of stone not to feel some sympathy for poor Emmanuel...
Yes we had it lovely here and was surprised to hear last night about flooding in Glasgow, we have had a few days cloudy but only rain was a heavy shower during the night last night.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
Leeds John Lewis yesterday had very low levels of mask wearing. Same in other city centre shops.
People have had it with mask wearing, and once a critical minority gives them up, other people see this and think why should they bother. I see this on the ferry to North Island; on my last two trips getting on probably three quarters of people have their masks on as they leave their cars for the lounge; the effect of seeing the quarter that haven’t is that by the time everyone walks back to the car deck forty minutes later, less than a quarter still have their mask on.
I wonder why they decided that 800 was the line which couldn't be breached.
Though they're counting better than they were. I think from memory their excess deaths passed half a million before their official death count had hit 100k.
As of the end of June its now official deaths 133k, excess deaths 577k.
Leeds John Lewis yesterday had very low levels of mask wearing. Same in other city centre shops.
People have had it with mask wearing, and once a critical minority gives them up, other people see this and think why should they bother. I see this on the ferry to North Island; on my last two trips getting on probably three quarters of people have their masks on as they leave their cars for the lounge; the effect of seeing the quarter that haven’t is that by the time everyone walks back to the car deck forty minutes later, less than a quarter still have their mask on.
For me it’s the attitude of staff. Frontline workers in shops are at the most risk of transmission there. I’m most mindful of them in shops. However half the staff in Sainsbury’s can’t be arsed with them anymore so…
It's one thing for random FBPE types to say it, quite another for actual politicians to "joke" about it. It must really burn at them that the UK has utterly decimated the rest of Europe and we're in a rebuilding cycle for rowing and track cycling which would otherwise have added another 4-7 golds to the current tally.
It's all good fun but the medals table does not really matter, however you carve it up. It's not like Eurovision where the winner gets to host the next one.
If the EU could only have a joint Eurovision entry it would speed things up a bit.
Leeds John Lewis yesterday had very low levels of mask wearing. Same in other city centre shops.
People have had it with mask wearing, and once a critical minority gives them up, other people see this and think why should they bother. I see this on the ferry to North Island; on my last two trips getting on probably three quarters of people have their masks on as they leave their cars for the lounge; the effect of seeing the quarter that haven’t is that by the time everyone walks back to the car deck forty minutes later, less than a quarter still have their mask on.
Got my haircut this morning and everyone was masked up (I have no idea if that’s still legally required).
These petty squabbles are because people don’t like artificially imposed boundaries.
Have a single Teeside metro, with real power, doing most of the job. Then as many as you like boroughs underneath, divided as you prefer, just maintaining local plans and keeping the flower baskets watered.
I agree with this in principle. When the metropolitan councils were abolished (for the crime of not voting for Thatcher) the chaos left is a lot of today's problems. Difficult to plan and coordinate when you're all separate.
A Tees Mayor with actual power would be a good idea (instead of the pretend press release one they have instead). The problem is at the ends, with the people who don't want to be part of that with them. The parochial bigots good burghers of (the Royal Charter town of) Thornaby-on-Tees are YORKSHIRE and want nothing to do with the papist antichrists north of the river in the land of the Price Bishops.
Your "petty squabbles" are what people vote for repeatedly. A solution can be imposed over their wishes but won't resolve the problem. Only education will do that.
As Phillip notes, the issue is rife because metros straddle rivers which usually form the traditional county boundaries.
There’s obviously no perfect solution.
My preferred is to make sure the second tiers (ie boroughs like Thornaby) don’t cross traditional county lines.
That way, even though Thornaby is administratively part of the Tees Metro, it can self-identify as Yorkshire for cultural reasons - if that makes sense.
(Just as, a generation ago, Richmond still self-identified as Surrey).
Leeds John Lewis yesterday had very low levels of mask wearing. Same in other city centre shops.
People have had it with mask wearing, and once a critical minority gives them up, other people see this and think why should they bother. I see this on the ferry to North Island; on my last two trips getting on probably three quarters of people have their masks on as they leave their cars for the lounge; the effect of seeing the quarter that haven’t is that by the time everyone walks back to the car deck forty minutes later, less than a quarter still have their mask on.
For me it’s the attitude of staff. Frontline workers in shops are at the most risk of transmission there. I’m most mindful of them in shops. However half the staff in Sainsbury’s can’t be arsed with them anymore so…
There really needed to have been different advice for different people. You may not need to wear a mask when shopping but staff do. Its noticeable how LNER have all their on-train staff wearing masks even if a decent chunk of passengers have given up.
Leeds John Lewis yesterday had very low levels of mask wearing. Same in other city centre shops.
People have had it with mask wearing, and once a critical minority gives them up, other people see this and think why should they bother. I see this on the ferry to North Island; on my last two trips getting on probably three quarters of people have their masks on as they leave their cars for the lounge; the effect of seeing the quarter that haven’t is that by the time everyone walks back to the car deck forty minutes later, less than a quarter still have their mask on.
Got my haircut this morning and everyone was masked up (I have no idea if that’s still legally required).
People will comply in environments where it is expected and still well observed - examples from my recent experience include the dentists and the vets - but anywhere where it has become optional, it has become a minority pursuit.
Meanwhile the number of people currently infected with the virus remains greater than the number of people currently travelling on the London Underground.
Biden might resign two years into his second term (ie late enough that Harris would qualify for a second elected term) if he wants to put a finger on the scales of the 2028 Democratic primary in favour of Harris. At which point he would be 84 (he would be 86 at the end of his second term).
But I can't see him quitting before that other than a seriously debilitating health issue that makes it literally impossible for him to do the job, and it seems pretty unlikely for that to happen without it killing him.
He has given Kamala Harris the poisonous portfolio of managing immigration. That doesn't sound like a friendly decision to me.
Her struggles with controlling the flow of people across the Mexican border are part of the reason American voters don't rate her.
It seems to me that Biden has deliberately put a finger on the scales against her.
I can't tell the difference between the dives. They all look good.
Big splash is bad. Otherwise wait for the commentator. That's my method fwiw.
So top.bombing doesn't get you many points ;-)
Bombing from 10m up is going to hurt like hell!
Has anyone here ever dived from a 10m board?
I looked down from the 3m springboard and chickened out!
Many years ago. Nearly concussed myself.
We used to jump off the 10m board in Singapore pretty much every day in the late 60s where going to the pool was the only sensible option in the afternoons. Diving took a bit more courage but we did that too.
Once I hit a hornet or a wasp on the way down and got stung. I came seriously close to drowning as I hit the water in an extremely ungainly fashion with my mouth wide open. That did put me off for a while.
These petty squabbles are because people don’t like artificially imposed boundaries.
Have a single Teeside metro, with real power, doing most of the job. Then as many as you like boroughs underneath, divided as you prefer, just maintaining local plans and keeping the flower baskets watered.
I agree with this in principle. When the metropolitan councils were abolished (for the crime of not voting for Thatcher) the chaos left is a lot of today's problems. Difficult to plan and coordinate when you're all separate.
A Tees Mayor with actual power would be a good idea (instead of the pretend press release one they have instead). The problem is at the ends, with the people who don't want to be part of that with them. The parochial bigots good burghers of (the Royal Charter town of) Thornaby-on-Tees are YORKSHIRE and want nothing to do with the papist antichrists north of the river in the land of the Price Bishops.
Your "petty squabbles" are what people vote for repeatedly. A solution can be imposed over their wishes but won't resolve the problem. Only education will do that.
As Phillip notes, the issue is rife because metros straddle rivers which usually form the traditional county boundaries.
There’s obviously no perfect solution.
My preferred is to make sure the second tiers (ie boroughs like Thornaby) don’t cross traditional county lines.
That way, even though Thornaby is administratively part of the Tees Metro, it can self-identify as Yorkshire for cultural reasons - if that makes sense.
(Just as, a generation ago, Richmond still self-identified as Surrey).
I wish it was that simple. There is a truly bizarre pro-Yorkshire anti-Durham vibe - despite the Independent councillors being happy to shop north of the River (and this betraying God's own county) instead of going to Boro.
Getting to 20 Golds psycologically feels significant.
Viagra for the national penis?
No, not you Boris..
Well I was just thinking in terms of the team having gotten into the 20s the last 2 times, and still just about doing so this time, but whatever floats your boat.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Religion is an extremely dangerous thing to take seriously, right enough.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Besides which 9/11 didn't have to prompt the Iraq war because what did Iraq have to do with it? Had the US president not had a team who had proposed an American Reichstag fire as an excuse for militarisation of the middle east things could have been different.
Radical idea, instead of having one of the only planes flying in the immediate aftermath rounding up members of Bin Laden's family to get them safely out of the country, they could have started by keeping them and asking what they and the Saudi government knew about it.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Of course 9/11 didn’t cause Islamist terrorism. But the success of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was to build a narrative that the West, from the Crusades onwards, through colonialism, had interfered in and damaged Muslim culture in Muslim lands. Another key plank of their argument was the obscenity of US troops stationed in Saudi, the home of Islam’s holiest sites.
You don’t have to find that persuasive, you’re not the intended audience. Many do, to a greater or lesser extent. And from that pool radicals will emerge, have emerged.
When we went into Iraq and Afghan it reinforced Bin Laden’s propaganda again. So radicalised Muslims carried out terrorist attacks here.
That tarnished Muslims, which led, in part, to a successful Leave vote.
You argue Islamist is evil, and backwards, and didn’t have a Reformation. There is much truth in there but it is also simplistic, you fail to understand the enemy. A counter argument is that Islamism is a reaction to colonialism, to the impact European countries had carving up the Middle East between themselves, to the Sykes-Picot agreement, to arbitrary lines drawn across maps by European administrators, to a thousand other slights real or imagined.
The genius of Bin Laden’s propaganda is that it is built on a kernel of truth.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
The grim irony of Islamist terrorism is it was originally sponsored by the CIA as an important weapon against the Soviets in the Cold War. The Taleban have their origins in the Mujahadeen that fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979-89.
Of course, it doesn’t only go one way. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was backed by the Soviets through a variety of leftist groups to get rid of the Shah, whom the Soviets feared as an American ally on their new Afghan flank. This backfired spectacularly when their main allies, e.g. the Tudeh party, were all arrested and later shot by the Ayatollahs.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Besides which 9/11 didn't have to prompt the Iraq war because what did Iraq have to do with it? Had the US president not had a team who had proposed an American Reichstag fire as an excuse for militarisation of the middle east things could have been different.
Radical idea, instead of having one of the only planes flying in the immediate aftermath rounding up members of Bin Laden's family to get them safely out of the country, they could have started by keeping them and asking what they and the Saudi government knew about it.
I believe that a whole load of families of 9/11 victims have said they don't want Biden at this year's commemoration unless documents on Saudi involvement are declassified?
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
The grim irony of Islamist terrorism is it was originally sponsored by the CIA as an important weapon against the Soviets in the Cold War. The Taleban have their origins in the Mujahadeen that fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979-89.
Of course, it doesn’t only go one way. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was backed by the Soviets through a variety of leftist groups to get rid of the Shah, whom the Soviets feared as an American ally on their new Afghan flank. This backfired spectacularly when their main allies, e.g. the Tudeh party, were all arrested and later shot by the Ayatollahs.
It goes before that actually.
The root of the problem is Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have been promoting Wahhabism for decades. In the 1970s, the massive oil price spike gave them the potential to pour fortunes into supporting the cause.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Besides which 9/11 didn't have to prompt the Iraq war because what did Iraq have to do with it? Had the US president not had a team who had proposed an American Reichstag fire as an excuse for militarisation of the middle east things could have been different.
Radical idea, instead of having one of the only planes flying in the immediate aftermath rounding up members of Bin Laden's family to get them safely out of the country, they could have started by keeping them and asking what they and the Saudi government knew about it.
I believe that a whole load of families of 9/11 victims have said they don't want Biden at this year's commemoration unless documents on Saudi involvement are declassified?
As the official 9/11 report was laughable I am not surprised. EDIT - they claim to have identified one of the Flight 11 hijackers via his passport. Which a passerby found lying on the street before the tower collapsed. Riiiiiight
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
The grim irony of Islamist terrorism is it was originally sponsored by the CIA as an important weapon against the Soviets in the Cold War. The Taleban have their origins in the Mujahadeen that fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979-89.
Of course, it doesn’t only go one way. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was backed by the Soviets through a variety of leftist groups to get rid of the Shah, whom the Soviets feared as an American ally on their new Afghan flank. This backfired spectacularly when their main allies, e.g. the Tudeh party, were all arrested and later shot by the Ayatollahs.
You are correct. Bin Laden left his cosseted existence to fight with the Mujahadeen, achieving prominence fighting the Russians.
I see we now have six medals in track and field. Disappointing to not get a gold, but I think it’s a decent return.
Yeah that relay gold was definitely well within grasp and I think Zharnel Hughes would have won gold if he wasn't so stupid with the start. His run in the relay was incredible.
Leeds John Lewis yesterday had very low levels of mask wearing. Same in other city centre shops.
People have had it with mask wearing, and once a critical minority gives them up, other people see this and think why should they bother. I see this on the ferry to North Island; on my last two trips getting on probably three quarters of people have their masks on as they leave their cars for the lounge; the effect of seeing the quarter that haven’t is that by the time everyone walks back to the car deck forty minutes later, less than a quarter still have their mask on.
Got my haircut this morning and everyone was masked up (I have no idea if that’s still legally required).
Masks still solid in the supermarkets here, though absent on the street. I think Ian is right that people go with the local flow. Round here the general view is that caution is still needed - I think the cities will (a bit paradoxically) be the first to stop wearing them as there will be plenty of people around who don't - in Godalming the ones who don't stand out.
More generally, I don't much like mask-wearing myself, but I'm in a minority - most people seem to feel it's no big deal.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
The grim irony of Islamist terrorism is it was originally sponsored by the CIA as an important weapon against the Soviets in the Cold War. The Taleban have their origins in the Mujahadeen that fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979-89.
Of course, it doesn’t only go one way. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was backed by the Soviets through a variety of leftist groups to get rid of the Shah, whom the Soviets feared as an American ally on their new Afghan flank. This backfired spectacularly when their main allies, e.g. the Tudeh party, were all arrested and later shot by the Ayatollahs.
It goes before that actually.
The root of the problem is Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have been promoting Wahhabism for decades. In the 1970s, the massive oil price spike gave them the potential to pour fortunes into supporting the cause.
Yes, Wahhabism is a huge problem. Another huge problem is that there is much fertile soil for it to be exported to.
I suspect if Saudi didn’t have all the oil we’d have gone in there by now.
Of course we did go in there during WW2, to secure an overland route to the Soviet Union, which is probably still a sore point for the Mullahs.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
The grim irony of Islamist terrorism is it was originally sponsored by the CIA as an important weapon against the Soviets in the Cold War. The Taleban have their origins in the Mujahadeen that fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979-89.
Of course, it doesn’t only go one way. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was backed by the Soviets through a variety of leftist groups to get rid of the Shah, whom the Soviets feared as an American ally on their new Afghan flank. This backfired spectacularly when their main allies, e.g. the Tudeh party, were all arrested and later shot by the Ayatollahs.
It goes before that actually.
The root of the problem is Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have been promoting Wahhabism for decades. In the 1970s, the massive oil price spike gave them the potential to pour fortunes into supporting the cause.
You could, from that point of view, go back to World War I, and the Arab Revolt against the Sultan, or the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, as the starting point.
But I was thinking of its current incarnation, and that very much does link to the situation in Afghanistan in the mid-1970s that culminated in the Soviet invasion. The CIA sowed a wind by supporting the mujahadeen as enemies of the Soviets. Sadly they have reaped a whirlwind.
Leeds John Lewis yesterday had very low levels of mask wearing. Same in other city centre shops.
People have had it with mask wearing, and once a critical minority gives them up, other people see this and think why should they bother. I see this on the ferry to North Island; on my last two trips getting on probably three quarters of people have their masks on as they leave their cars for the lounge; the effect of seeing the quarter that haven’t is that by the time everyone walks back to the car deck forty minutes later, less than a quarter still have their mask on.
Got my haircut this morning and everyone was masked up (I have no idea if that’s still legally required).
Masks still solid in the supermarkets here, though absent on the street. I think Ian is right that people go with the local flow. Round here the general view is that caution is still needed - I think the cities will (a bit paradoxically) be the first to stop wearing them as there will be plenty of people around who don't - in Godalming the ones who don't stand out.
More generally, I don't much like mask-wearing myself, but I'm in a minority - most people seem to feel it's no big deal.
They're very hard to wear in the Mediterranean heat but in our area 99.9% compliance once you're within 1.5% and they remain legally required in shops, etc. I cannot see that changing much this year - especially as it's becoming clear that the vaccines are very effective wrt Hospitals/fatalities but much less so with regard to catching and transmission.
This partnership is currently worth 86 runs of which Root has 68. It's masterful batting with the tail, it really is.
Dom Sibley is considered tail?
Or do you mean tailender?
Tailender but Root exposed him too early in the over there and he's gone. This is a truly awful batting side, Root apart.
I don't think anybody will want to sign Sibley for The Hundred. He scored 25 from his first 100 balls - wouldn't make for good viewing. Then he slowed down even more, scoring just 3 off his next 33. I know there's a place for this in test cricket, but most decent batsmen, even Boycott, accelerated a bit once they'd been around a while.
I see we now have six medals in track and field. Disappointing to not get a gold, but I think it’s a decent return.
Sounds absolute crap to me.
I think that you are being harsh. Laura Muir's medal in particular was a really excellent effort.
It would have been gold if Scotland was independent.
It would have been fuck all outside of Team GB/BOA funding tbh. It's what's turned the UK into a sporting powerhouse compared to years gone.
It will be interesting to see if there is an effect from Scots so clearly proud to wear a team GB strip and doing really well in these games. According to Sky News Scotland has more medal winners than any other part of the UK per head of population but they all seem very proud to wave the Union Jack.
I see we now have six medals in track and field. Disappointing to not get a gold, but I think it’s a decent return.
Sounds absolute crap to me.
I think that you are being harsh. Laura Muir's medal in particular was a really excellent effort.
It would have been gold if Scotland was independent.
It would have been fuck all outside of Team GB/BOA funding tbh. It's what's turned the UK into a sporting powerhouse compared to years gone.
It will be interesting to see if there is an effect from Scots so clearly proud to wear a team GB strip and doing really well in these games. According to Sky News Scotland has more medal winners than any other part of the UK per head of population but they all seem very proud to wave the Union Jack.
Not allowed to do anything else. Remember the London Olympics and what happened with the Cornish flag.
I see we now have six medals in track and field. Disappointing to not get a gold, but I think it’s a decent return.
Sounds absolute crap to me.
I think that you are being harsh. Laura Muir's medal in particular was a really excellent effort.
It would have been gold if Scotland was independent.
It would have been fuck all outside of Team GB/BOA funding tbh. It's what's turned the UK into a sporting powerhouse compared to years gone.
It will be interesting to see if there is an effect from Scots so clearly proud to wear a team GB strip and doing really well in these games. According to Sky News Scotland has more medal winners than any other part of the UK per head of population but they all seem very proud to wave the Union Jack.
I see we now have six medals in track and field. Disappointing to not get a gold, but I think it’s a decent return.
Sounds absolute crap to me.
I think that you are being harsh. Laura Muir's medal in particular was a really excellent effort.
It would have been gold if Scotland was independent.
It would have been fuck all outside of Team GB/BOA funding tbh. It's what's turned the UK into a sporting powerhouse compared to years gone.
It will be interesting to see if there is an effect from Scots so clearly proud to wear a team GB strip and doing really well in these games. According to Sky News Scotland has more medal winners than any other part of the UK per head of population but they all seem very proud to wave the Union Jack.
Not allowed to do anything else. Remember the London Olympics and what happened with the Cornish flag.
Oh sure. But as @MaxPB points out our athletes have an incredible amount of funding and opportunities from the Union.
This partnership is currently worth 86 runs of which Root has 68. It's masterful batting with the tail, it really is.
Dom Sibley is considered tail?
Or do you mean tailender?
Tailender but Root exposed him too early in the over there and he's gone. This is a truly awful batting side, Root apart.
I don't think anybody will want to sign Sibley for The Hundred. He scored 25 from his first 100 balls - wouldn't make for good viewing. Then he slowed down even more, scoring just 3 off his next 33. I know there's a place for this in test cricket, but most decent batsmen, even Boycott, accelerated a bit once they'd been around a while.
As a contrast to all the Olympic flag-waving, at Ascot this afternoon we have the Shergar Cup.
Four teams of three jockeys each - Great Britain, Ireland, Ladies, the Rest of the World.
A slightly complex points scoring system and why they have 10 runners in each race rather than 12 so every jockey rides in every race is a mystery but it's a little bit of fun.
The top UK (or GB) jockeys tend to eschew the event and head for Haydock or Newmarket or Deauville or Saratoga.
This partnership is currently worth 86 runs of which Root has 68. It's masterful batting with the tail, it really is.
Dom Sibley is considered tail?
Or do you mean tailender?
Tailender but Root exposed him too early in the over there and he's gone. This is a truly awful batting side, Root apart.
I don't think anybody will want to sign Sibley for The Hundred. He scored 25 from his first 100 balls - wouldn't make for good viewing. Then he slowed down even more, scoring just 3 off his next 33. I know there's a place for this in test cricket, but most decent batsmen, even Boycott, accelerated a bit once they'd been around a while.
Sometimes the job is just to grimly hang on for a draw but normally its to entertain and try to win. Sibley's absurd scoring rate puts pressure on his batting partner to take more risks. We saw this with Root today. It means that there is no scoreboard pressure on the other team who can set more attacking fields as a result. It's bloody boring. He wouldn't be in my team.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
The grim irony of Islamist terrorism is it was originally sponsored by the CIA as an important weapon against the Soviets in the Cold War. The Taleban have their origins in the Mujahadeen that fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979-89.
Of course, it doesn’t only go one way. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was backed by the Soviets through a variety of leftist groups to get rid of the Shah, whom the Soviets feared as an American ally on their new Afghan flank. This backfired spectacularly when their main allies, e.g. the Tudeh party, were all arrested and later shot by the Ayatollahs.
It goes before that actually.
The root of the problem is Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have been promoting Wahhabism for decades. In the 1970s, the massive oil price spike gave them the potential to pour fortunes into supporting the cause.
You could, from that point of view, go back to World War I, and the Arab Revolt against the Sultan, or the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, as the starting point.
But I was thinking of its current incarnation, and that very much does link to the situation in Afghanistan in the mid-1970s that culminated in the Soviet invasion. The CIA sowed a wind by supporting the mujahadeen as enemies of the Soviets. Sadly they have reaped a whirlwind.
The Soviets were a far greater threat than Islamic fundies have subsequently been.
I see we now have six medals in track and field. Disappointing to not get a gold, but I think it’s a decent return.
Sounds absolute crap to me.
I think that you are being harsh. Laura Muir's medal in particular was a really excellent effort.
It would have been gold if Scotland was independent.
It would have been fuck all outside of Team GB/BOA funding tbh. It's what's turned the UK into a sporting powerhouse compared to years gone.
It will be interesting to see if there is an effect from Scots so clearly proud to wear a team GB strip and doing really well in these games. According to Sky News Scotland has more medal winners than any other part of the UK per head of population but they all seem very proud to wave the Union Jack.
Not allowed to do anything else. Remember the London Olympics and what happened with the Cornish flag.
Oh sure. But as @MaxPB points out our athletes have an incredible amount of funding an opportunities from the Union.
Oh come now, as if it was only the Union that allowed such funding to exist?
Leeds John Lewis yesterday had very low levels of mask wearing. Same in other city centre shops.
People have had it with mask wearing, and once a critical minority gives them up, other people see this and think why should they bother. I see this on the ferry to North Island; on my last two trips getting on probably three quarters of people have their masks on as they leave their cars for the lounge; the effect of seeing the quarter that haven’t is that by the time everyone walks back to the car deck forty minutes later, less than a quarter still have their mask on.
Got my haircut this morning and everyone was masked up (I have no idea if that’s still legally required).
Masks still solid in the supermarkets here, though absent on the street. I think Ian is right that people go with the local flow. Round here the general view is that caution is still needed - I think the cities will (a bit paradoxically) be the first to stop wearing them as there will be plenty of people around who don't - in Godalming the ones who don't stand out.
More generally, I don't much like mask-wearing myself, but I'm in a minority - most people seem to feel it's no big deal.
For Godalming read Ilkley. Still high maskage there, compared to the bare faced cheek of Leeds.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
The grim irony of Islamist terrorism is it was originally sponsored by the CIA as an important weapon against the Soviets in the Cold War. The Taleban have their origins in the Mujahadeen that fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979-89.
Of course, it doesn’t only go one way. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was backed by the Soviets through a variety of leftist groups to get rid of the Shah, whom the Soviets feared as an American ally on their new Afghan flank. This backfired spectacularly when their main allies, e.g. the Tudeh party, were all arrested and later shot by the Ayatollahs.
It goes before that actually.
The root of the problem is Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have been promoting Wahhabism for decades. In the 1970s, the massive oil price spike gave them the potential to pour fortunes into supporting the cause.
You could, from that point of view, go back to World War I, and the Arab Revolt against the Sultan, or the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, as the starting point.
But I was thinking of its current incarnation, and that very much does link to the situation in Afghanistan in the mid-1970s that culminated in the Soviet invasion. The CIA sowed a wind by supporting the mujahadeen as enemies of the Soviets. Sadly they have reaped a whirlwind.
The Soviets were a far greater threat than Islamic fundies have subsequently been.
And it is of course possible that with Saudi intervention from 1982 onwards the mujahadeen would have developed into a threat anyway.
Still a bloody stupid thing to do though.
(Incidentally, it depends on what you mean by ‘threat.’ The Soviets had the power to kill everyone in the world. However, after about 1962 they made the conscious decision that they never would. After that, they confined themselves largely to what they thought of as their sphere of influence, and causing irritation elsewhere.
Islamic fundamentalism, OTOH, knows no boundaries and certainly shows no sign of self-restraint.)
I see we now have six medals in track and field. Disappointing to not get a gold, but I think it’s a decent return.
Sounds absolute crap to me.
I think that you are being harsh. Laura Muir's medal in particular was a really excellent effort.
It would have been gold if Scotland was independent.
It would have been fuck all outside of Team GB/BOA funding tbh. It's what's turned the UK into a sporting powerhouse compared to years gone.
What is this, the Berlin Olympics?
Let it never be said that the Britnats waste an opportunity for a bit of too wee, too poor and too stupid.
Still, in the really important sporting news of the day, Murdo Fraser, yer team the Queen's 11 took a helluva beating.
I'm actually a bit taken aback by this - because DavidL is usually very sensible - but you caught my posting before I could delete it on second thoughts and have a quiet afternoon, and Mrs C has just come in and reminded me that I have to go and do things.
But as you say at least one SCon does like to mix sport with politics to a surprising degree. Was it not you yesterday who posted the Former MSP For Sevco ranting on about the SNP hatred for his team on the same day that the SG awarded them a support grant?
I see we now have six medals in track and field. Disappointing to not get a gold, but I think it’s a decent return.
Sounds absolute crap to me.
I think that you are being harsh. Laura Muir's medal in particular was a really excellent effort.
It would have been gold if Scotland was independent.
It would have been fuck all outside of Team GB/BOA funding tbh. It's what's turned the UK into a sporting powerhouse compared to years gone.
It will be interesting to see if there is an effect from Scots so clearly proud to wear a team GB strip and doing really well in these games. According to Sky News Scotland has more medal winners than any other part of the UK per head of population but they all seem very proud to wave the Union Jack.
Not allowed to do anything else. Remember the London Olympics and what happened with the Cornish flag.
Oh sure. But as @MaxPB points out our athletes have an incredible amount of funding an opportunities from the Union.
Oh come now, as if it was only the Union that allowed such funding to exist?
All Indy Scot athletes would have been out of action with long Covid or worse without access to the great benison of the Oxford vaccine.
Can't remember if you were around then but I'm getting flashbacks to that magical time when folk on here talked of the London Olympics effect having a big bearing on the 2014 referendum.
edit: yep, I posed about ridiculous Murdo whining about anti Rangers prejudice. The Nat loan doesn't seem to have done them much good.
I see we now have six medals in track and field. Disappointing to not get a gold, but I think it’s a decent return.
Sounds absolute crap to me.
I think that you are being harsh. Laura Muir's medal in particular was a really excellent effort.
It would have been gold if Scotland was independent.
It would have been fuck all outside of Team GB/BOA funding tbh. It's what's turned the UK into a sporting powerhouse compared to years gone.
It will be interesting to see if there is an effect from Scots so clearly proud to wear a team GB strip and doing really well in these games. According to Sky News Scotland has more medal winners than any other part of the UK per head of population but they all seem very proud to wave the Union Jack.
Not allowed to do anything else. Remember the London Olympics and what happened with the Cornish flag.
Oh sure. But as @MaxPB points out our athletes have an incredible amount of funding an opportunities from the Union.
There would be nothing stopping Scotland replicating it, of course, I just don't see it as very likely and bigger teams scale better wrt funding as coaches, physios, medical teams and such can be shared across sports. The fixed costs would eat up a huge proportion of what would be considered a proportional bit of elite sport funding (though that's not how it works in practice).
Ultimately it's a choice of what money should be spent on, the government has decided that winning elite sports events is a worthwhile use of money, but other countries think public funds should be used elsewhere. I'd probably imagine after a few cycles an SNP government would rather save the money.
I see we now have six medals in track and field. Disappointing to not get a gold, but I think it’s a decent return.
Yeah that relay gold was definitely well within grasp and I think Zharnel Hughes would have won gold if he wasn't so stupid with the start. His run in the relay was incredible.
We will probably get 65-66 medals in total (1 guaranteed for Boxing plus whatever we get from the Women's Omnium and the Men's Keirin) with a ding-dong for 4th in Golds with the ROC (who have just won the High Jump so now neck and neck).
Considering the bad luck we had on injuries - KJT, Asher-Smith, Adam Gemelli (yes, an outside bet) plus in the non-track events, hits in equestrian and shooting - plus Zharnel Hughes as you said, that would be pretty extraordinary.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
The grim irony of Islamist terrorism is it was originally sponsored by the CIA as an important weapon against the Soviets in the Cold War. The Taleban have their origins in the Mujahadeen that fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979-89.
Of course, it doesn’t only go one way. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was backed by the Soviets through a variety of leftist groups to get rid of the Shah, whom the Soviets feared as an American ally on their new Afghan flank. This backfired spectacularly when their main allies, e.g. the Tudeh party, were all arrested and later shot by the Ayatollahs.
It goes before that actually.
The root of the problem is Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have been promoting Wahhabism for decades. In the 1970s, the massive oil price spike gave them the potential to pour fortunes into supporting the cause.
You could, from that point of view, go back to World War I, and the Arab Revolt against the Sultan, or the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, as the starting point.
But I was thinking of its current incarnation, and that very much does link to the situation in Afghanistan in the mid-1970s that culminated in the Soviet invasion. The CIA sowed a wind by supporting the mujahadeen as enemies of the Soviets. Sadly they have reaped a whirlwind.
The Soviets were a far greater threat than Islamic fundies have subsequently been.
And it is of course possible that with Saudi intervention from 1982 onwards the mujahadeen would have developed into a threat anyway.
Still a bloody stupid thing to do though.
(Incidentally, it depends on what you mean by ‘threat.’ The Soviets had the power to kill everyone in the world. However, after about 1962 they made the conscious decision that they never would. After that, they confined themselves largely to what they thought of as their sphere of influence, and causing irritation elsewhere.
Islamic fundamentalism, OTOH, knows no boundaries and certainly shows no sign of self-restraint.)
Bin Laden was content to keep the boundaries to traditional Islamic lands, but the more fiery Islamists certainly want to go global. IIRC Bin Laden himself was concerned about the zealotry of Al Zarqawi and Al Qaeda in Iraq, which then mutated into ISIS. He thought they were going too far…
I see we now have six medals in track and field. Disappointing to not get a gold, but I think it’s a decent return.
Sounds absolute crap to me.
I think that you are being harsh. Laura Muir's medal in particular was a really excellent effort.
It would have been gold if Scotland was independent.
It would have been fuck all outside of Team GB/BOA funding tbh. It's what's turned the UK into a sporting powerhouse compared to years gone.
It will be interesting to see if there is an effect from Scots so clearly proud to wear a team GB strip and doing really well in these games. According to Sky News Scotland has more medal winners than any other part of the UK per head of population but they all seem very proud to wave the Union Jack.
Not allowed to do anything else. Remember the London Olympics and what happened with the Cornish flag.
Oh sure. But as @MaxPB points out our athletes have an incredible amount of funding an opportunities from the Union.
There would be nothing stopping Scotland replicating it, of course, I just don't see it as very likely and bigger teams scale better wrt funding as coaches, physios, medical teams and such can be shared across sports. The fixed costs would eat up a huge proportion of what would be considered a proportional bit of elite sport funding (though that's not how it works in practice).
Ultimately it's a choice of what money should be spent on, the government has decided that winning elite sports events is a worthwhile use of money, but other countries think public funds should be used elsewhere. I'd probably imagine after a few cycles an SNP government would rather save the money.
Doesn’t a lot of funding for athletics come from the National Lottery?
That funding would certainly go.
And even if Scotland set up a lottery of its own, it would be on a much smaller scale and have less money to go round.
I see we now have six medals in track and field. Disappointing to not get a gold, but I think it’s a decent return.
Sounds absolute crap to me.
I think that you are being harsh. Laura Muir's medal in particular was a really excellent effort.
It would have been gold if Scotland was independent.
It would have been fuck all outside of Team GB/BOA funding tbh. It's what's turned the UK into a sporting powerhouse compared to years gone.
It will be interesting to see if there is an effect from Scots so clearly proud to wear a team GB strip and doing really well in these games. According to Sky News Scotland has more medal winners than any other part of the UK per head of population but they all seem very proud to wave the Union Jack.
Not allowed to do anything else. Remember the London Olympics and what happened with the Cornish flag.
Oh sure. But as @MaxPB points out our athletes have an incredible amount of funding an opportunities from the Union.
There would be nothing stopping Scotland replicating it, of course, I just don't see it as very likely and bigger teams scale better wrt funding as coaches, physios, medical teams and such can be shared across sports. The fixed costs would eat up a huge proportion of what would be considered a proportional bit of elite sport funding (though that's not how it works in practice).
Ultimately it's a choice of what money should be spent on, the government has decided that winning elite sports events is a worthwhile use of money, but other countries think public funds should be used elsewhere. I'd probably imagine after a few cycles an SNP government would rather save the money.
Doesn’t a lot of funding for athletics come from the National Lottery?
That funding would certainly go.
And even if Scotland set up a lottery of its own, it would be on a much smaller scale and have less money to go round.
Yes, this is not a Scotland vs UK issue, it is just simple economics - Sports investment has a sh1t load of fixed costs involved so scale counts and, as you mentioned, the Lottery is vital - listen to the athletes who were being interviewed praising the Lottery (although I am sure they were coached).
Incidentally, was in Paris last week. Without p1ssing too much on the French, there were a lot of posters around linking their Lottery with Olympic funding so I would expect them to gear up their efforts, especially going into 2024 and given their poor performance this time.
I see we now have six medals in track and field. Disappointing to not get a gold, but I think it’s a decent return.
Sounds absolute crap to me.
I think that you are being harsh. Laura Muir's medal in particular was a really excellent effort.
It would have been gold if Scotland was independent.
It would have been fuck all outside of Team GB/BOA funding tbh. It's what's turned the UK into a sporting powerhouse compared to years gone.
It will be interesting to see if there is an effect from Scots so clearly proud to wear a team GB strip and doing really well in these games. According to Sky News Scotland has more medal winners than any other part of the UK per head of population but they all seem very proud to wave the Union Jack.
Not allowed to do anything else. Remember the London Olympics and what happened with the Cornish flag.
Oh sure. But as @MaxPB points out our athletes have an incredible amount of funding an opportunities from the Union.
There would be nothing stopping Scotland replicating it, of course, I just don't see it as very likely and bigger teams scale better wrt funding as coaches, physios, medical teams and such can be shared across sports. The fixed costs would eat up a huge proportion of what would be considered a proportional bit of elite sport funding (though that's not how it works in practice).
Ultimately it's a choice of what money should be spent on, the government has decided that winning elite sports events is a worthwhile use of money, but other countries think public funds should be used elsewhere. I'd probably imagine after a few cycles an SNP government would rather save the money.
Doesn’t a lot of funding for athletics come from the National Lottery?
That funding would certainly go.
And even if Scotland set up a lottery of its own, it would be on a much smaller scale and have less money to go round.
Yep - all our sports funding is actually from the National Lottery...
I see we now have six medals in track and field. Disappointing to not get a gold, but I think it’s a decent return.
Sounds absolute crap to me.
I think that you are being harsh. Laura Muir's medal in particular was a really excellent effort.
It would have been gold if Scotland was independent.
It would have been fuck all outside of Team GB/BOA funding tbh. It's what's turned the UK into a sporting powerhouse compared to years gone.
It will be interesting to see if there is an effect from Scots so clearly proud to wear a team GB strip and doing really well in these games. According to Sky News Scotland has more medal winners than any other part of the UK per head of population but they all seem very proud to wave the Union Jack.
Not allowed to do anything else. Remember the London Olympics and what happened with the Cornish flag.
Oh sure. But as @MaxPB points out our athletes have an incredible amount of funding an opportunities from the Union.
There would be nothing stopping Scotland replicating it, of course, I just don't see it as very likely and bigger teams scale better wrt funding as coaches, physios, medical teams and such can be shared across sports. The fixed costs would eat up a huge proportion of what would be considered a proportional bit of elite sport funding (though that's not how it works in practice).
Ultimately it's a choice of what money should be spent on, the government has decided that winning elite sports events is a worthwhile use of money, but other countries think public funds should be used elsewhere. I'd probably imagine after a few cycles an SNP government would rather save the money.
Doesn’t a lot of funding for athletics come from the National Lottery?
That funding would certainly go.
And even if Scotland set up a lottery of its own, it would be on a much smaller scale and have less money to go round.
Yes, it would need to be replaced by public funding from the government which I can imagine there would be huge pressure to cut it after a few cycles. The fixed cost base is huge to run a serious team and for smaller nations it makes it really difficult to compete across the board like Team GB. There's also issues of having deep enough talent pools to go into team events like relays, eventing and such which means Scotland would be out of lots of events in swimming, cycling, athletics and equestrian.
It all depends on the national priority, would Scotland want to keep funding free prescriptions or getting a few medals at the Olympics?
I see we now have six medals in track and field. Disappointing to not get a gold, but I think it’s a decent return.
Sounds absolute crap to me.
I think that you are being harsh. Laura Muir's medal in particular was a really excellent effort.
It would have been gold if Scotland was independent.
It would have been fuck all outside of Team GB/BOA funding tbh. It's what's turned the UK into a sporting powerhouse compared to years gone.
It will be interesting to see if there is an effect from Scots so clearly proud to wear a team GB strip and doing really well in these games. According to Sky News Scotland has more medal winners than any other part of the UK per head of population but they all seem very proud to wave the Union Jack.
Not allowed to do anything else. Remember the London Olympics and what happened with the Cornish flag.
Oh sure. But as @MaxPB points out our athletes have an incredible amount of funding an opportunities from the Union.
Oh come now, as if it was only the Union that allowed such funding to exist?
All Indy Scot athletes would have been out of action with long Covid or worse without access to the great benison of the Oxford vaccine.
Can't remember if you were around then but I'm getting flashbacks to that magical time when folk on here talked of the London Olympics effect having a big bearing on the 2014 referendum.
edit: yep, I posed about ridiculous Murdo whining about anti Rangers prejudice. The Nat loan doesn't seem to have done them much good.
Just popped back in when I make an order for some kit to resolve the domestic crisis.
Mr Fraser's behaviour is all the odder now I think about it rather than (as I usually do) ignore it - the Tories are the ones who always lecture us on not mixing politics and sport, from the d'Oliveira affair to taking the knee.
And there is this undercurrent also that only money from London counts and only a big country counts. As if we don't pay our taxes and some of us our Lottery tickets. And a smaller funding council would have a smaller population to deal with pro rata. All still odder.
Anyway, I have found the password for the DIY shop, so off now.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Of course 9/11 didn’t cause Islamist terrorism. But the success of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was to build a narrative that the West, from the Crusades onwards, through colonialism, had interfered in and damaged Muslim culture in Muslim lands. Another key plank of their argument was the obscenity of US troops stationed in Saudi, the home of Islam’s holiest sites.
You don’t have to find that persuasive, you’re not the intended audience. Many do, to a greater or lesser extent. And from that pool radicals will emerge, have emerged.
When we went into Iraq and Afghan it reinforced Bin Laden’s propaganda again. So radicalised Muslims carried out terrorist attacks here.
That tarnished Muslims, which led, in part, to a successful Leave vote.
You argue Islamist is evil, and backwards, and didn’t have a Reformation. There is much truth in there but it is also simplistic, you fail to understand the enemy. A counter argument is that Islamism is a reaction to colonialism, to the impact European countries had carving up the Middle East between themselves, to the Sykes-Picot agreement, to arbitrary lines drawn across maps by European administrators, to a thousand other slights real or imagined.
The genius of Bin Laden’s propaganda is that it is built on a kernel of truth.
Islam absolutely had a reformation. It is called salafism and its various types reject the religious establishment, want to return to literalist scripture and are generally all round intolerant of anyone that disagrees, just as early Protestantism was.
The problem with Islam is that (a) Mohammed was less pleasant in his original message than Jesus of Nazareth so there's more support for the extremist position and (b) it didn't have an Enlightenment, which is what really made the West into a good place to live.
The question isn't what does the medal table look like now, it is what will it look like in 10 years when a load of the drugs cheats have been popped....
On a totally unrelated note...
Lamont Marcell Jacobs, the shock winner of the gold medal in the 100m at the Olympics, has split from his sports nutritionist, who is under investigation by the police for allegedly illegally distributing anabolic steroids.
Indian bloke won the gold medal in the Javelin. Even I didn't know about him before today.
Considering how few medals they win (7 at these Games is their highest ever tally, and only the third Gold in 50 years), that is all the more remarkable an outcome.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Of course 9/11 didn’t cause Islamist terrorism. But the success of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was to build a narrative that the West, from the Crusades onwards, through colonialism, had interfered in and damaged Muslim culture in Muslim lands. Another key plank of their argument was the obscenity of US troops stationed in Saudi, the home of Islam’s holiest sites.
You don’t have to find that persuasive, you’re not the intended audience. Many do, to a greater or lesser extent. And from that pool radicals will emerge, have emerged.
When we went into Iraq and Afghan it reinforced Bin Laden’s propaganda again. So radicalised Muslims carried out terrorist attacks here.
That tarnished Muslims, which led, in part, to a successful Leave vote.
You argue Islamist is evil, and backwards, and didn’t have a Reformation. There is much truth in there but it is also simplistic, you fail to understand the enemy. A counter argument is that Islamism is a reaction to colonialism, to the impact European countries had carving up the Middle East between themselves, to the Sykes-Picot agreement, to arbitrary lines drawn across maps by European administrators, to a thousand other slights real or imagined.
The genius of Bin Laden’s propaganda is that it is built on a kernel of truth.
Islam absolutely had a reformation. It is called salafism and its various types reject the religious establishment, want to return to literalist scripture and are generally all round intolerant of anyone that disagrees, just as early Protestantism was.
The problem with Islam is that (a) Mohammed was less pleasant in his original message than Jesus of Nazareth so there's more support for the extremist position and (b) it didn't have an Enlightenment, which is what really made the West into a good place to live.
Hmmmm...the first major political fruit of the Enlightenment was the French Revolution.
I’m not sure those who were massacred in the Terror, murdered in the Vendee or killed in Napoleon’s interminable wars would altogether agree with you.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
The grim irony of Islamist terrorism is it was originally sponsored by the CIA as an important weapon against the Soviets in the Cold War. The Taleban have their origins in the Mujahadeen that fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979-89.
Of course, it doesn’t only go one way. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was backed by the Soviets through a variety of leftist groups to get rid of the Shah, whom the Soviets feared as an American ally on their new Afghan flank. This backfired spectacularly when their main allies, e.g. the Tudeh party, were all arrested and later shot by the Ayatollahs.
It goes before that actually.
The root of the problem is Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have been promoting Wahhabism for decades. In the 1970s, the massive oil price spike gave them the potential to pour fortunes into supporting the cause.
You could, from that point of view, go back to World War I, and the Arab Revolt against the Sultan, or the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, as the starting point.
But I was thinking of its current incarnation, and that very much does link to the situation in Afghanistan in the mid-1970s that culminated in the Soviet invasion. The CIA sowed a wind by supporting the mujahadeen as enemies of the Soviets. Sadly they have reaped a whirlwind.
The Soviets were a far greater threat than Islamic fundies have subsequently been.
And it is of course possible that with Saudi intervention from 1982 onwards the mujahadeen would have developed into a threat anyway.
Still a bloody stupid thing to do though.
(Incidentally, it depends on what you mean by ‘threat.’ The Soviets had the power to kill everyone in the world. However, after about 1962 they made the conscious decision that they never would. After that, they confined themselves largely to what they thought of as their sphere of influence, and causing irritation elsewhere.
Islamic fundamentalism, OTOH, knows no boundaries and certainly shows no sign of self-restraint.)
Bin Laden was content to keep the boundaries to traditional Islamic lands, but the more fiery Islamists certainly want to go global. IIRC Bin Laden himself was concerned about the zealotry of Al Zarqawi and Al Qaeda in Iraq, which then mutated into ISIS. He thought they were going too far…
Once you have a position that divides the world into good guys on your side vs bad guys who disagree, you inevitably set up a dynamic where people can perpetually outflank you in a more extremist direction. The extremism gets worse and worse until the results are so catastrophic the whole framing gets broken. This is why democratic, pluralistic liberalism that embraces debate and the marketplace of ideas will always be the best system, because it allows for a source of intellectual correction before absolute failure is reached.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Of course 9/11 didn’t cause Islamist terrorism. But the success of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was to build a narrative that the West, from the Crusades onwards, through colonialism, had interfered in and damaged Muslim culture in Muslim lands. Another key plank of their argument was the obscenity of US troops stationed in Saudi, the home of Islam’s holiest sites.
You don’t have to find that persuasive, you’re not the intended audience. Many do, to a greater or lesser extent. And from that pool radicals will emerge, have emerged.
When we went into Iraq and Afghan it reinforced Bin Laden’s propaganda again. So radicalised Muslims carried out terrorist attacks here.
That tarnished Muslims, which led, in part, to a successful Leave vote.
You argue Islamist is evil, and backwards, and didn’t have a Reformation. There is much truth in there but it is also simplistic, you fail to understand the enemy. A counter argument is that Islamism is a reaction to colonialism, to the impact European countries had carving up the Middle East between themselves, to the Sykes-Picot agreement, to arbitrary lines drawn across maps by European administrators, to a thousand other slights real or imagined.
The genius of Bin Laden’s propaganda is that it is built on a kernel of truth.
Islam absolutely had a reformation. It is called salafism and its various types reject the religious establishment, want to return to literalist scripture and are generally all round intolerant of anyone that disagrees, just as early Protestantism was.
The problem with Islam is that (a) Mohammed was less pleasant in his original message than Jesus of Nazareth so there's more support for the extremist position and (b) it didn't have an Enlightenment, which is what really made the West into a good place to live.
Hmmmm...the first major political fruit of the Enlightenment was the French Revolution.
I’m not sure those who were massacred in the Terror, murdered in the Vendee or killed in Napoleon’s interminable wars would altogether agree with you.
No, the first major political fruit of the Enlightenment was the Glorious Revolution. The second was the American Revolution.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Of course 9/11 didn’t cause Islamist terrorism. But the success of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was to build a narrative that the West, from the Crusades onwards, through colonialism, had interfered in and damaged Muslim culture in Muslim lands. Another key plank of their argument was the obscenity of US troops stationed in Saudi, the home of Islam’s holiest sites.
You don’t have to find that persuasive, you’re not the intended audience. Many do, to a greater or lesser extent. And from that pool radicals will emerge, have emerged.
When we went into Iraq and Afghan it reinforced Bin Laden’s propaganda again. So radicalised Muslims carried out terrorist attacks here.
That tarnished Muslims, which led, in part, to a successful Leave vote.
You argue Islamist is evil, and backwards, and didn’t have a Reformation. There is much truth in there but it is also simplistic, you fail to understand the enemy. A counter argument is that Islamism is a reaction to colonialism, to the impact European countries had carving up the Middle East between themselves, to the Sykes-Picot agreement, to arbitrary lines drawn across maps by European administrators, to a thousand other slights real or imagined.
The genius of Bin Laden’s propaganda is that it is built on a kernel of truth.
Islam absolutely had a reformation. It is called salafism and its various types reject the religious establishment, want to return to literalist scripture and are generally all round intolerant of anyone that disagrees, just as early Protestantism was.
The problem with Islam is that (a) Mohammed was less pleasant in his original message than Jesus of Nazareth so there's more support for the extremist position and (b) it didn't have an Enlightenment, which is what really made the West into a good place to live.
Hmmmm...the first major political fruit of the Enlightenment was the French Revolution.
I’m not sure those who were massacred in the Terror, murdered in the Vendee or killed in Napoleon’s interminable wars would altogether agree with you.
No, the first major political fruit of the Enlightenment was the Glorious Revolution. The second was the American Revolution.
Can you justify those statements? Because I have to say I do not agree with you.
You could, from that point of view, go back to World War I, and the Arab Revolt against the Sultan, or the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, as the starting point
But I was thinking of its current incarnation, and that very much does link to the situation in Afghanistan in the mid-1970s that culminated in the Soviet invasion. The CIA sowed a wind by supporting the mujahadeen as enemies of the Soviets. Sadly they have reaped a whirlwind.
The key year is 1979 - the year of the Iranian revolution.
In the same way that the Catholic church reacted to the Reformation with the Inquisition, the Saudis reacted to the Iranian Revolution by going hardline Wahabi. They closed the cinemas, clamped down on all sorts of things that were thought to be "haram" and basically tried to match Shia extremism with Sunni extremism.
The other event of 1979 was the invasion of Afghanistan.
As others have pointed out, Saudis reacted to that by funding mujahideen. They also flooded the market with oil, forcing the price below $10 by 1986 in an economic attack against the Soviets. This hurt Gorbachev's perestroika efforts because he ran out of money and the Soviet Union collapsed.
Which means that if the Soviets hadn't invaded Afghanistan, they wouldn't have triggered the Saudi response that bankrupted them and eastern europe would still be under the Soviet yoke.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Of course 9/11 didn’t cause Islamist terrorism. But the success of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was to build a narrative that the West, from the Crusades onwards, through colonialism, had interfered in and damaged Muslim culture in Muslim lands. Another key plank of their argument was the obscenity of US troops stationed in Saudi, the home of Islam’s holiest sites.
You don’t have to find that persuasive, you’re not the intended audience. Many do, to a greater or lesser extent. And from that pool radicals will emerge, have emerged.
When we went into Iraq and Afghan it reinforced Bin Laden’s propaganda again. So radicalised Muslims carried out terrorist attacks here.
That tarnished Muslims, which led, in part, to a successful Leave vote.
You argue Islamist is evil, and backwards, and didn’t have a Reformation. There is much truth in there but it is also simplistic, you fail to understand the enemy. A counter argument is that Islamism is a reaction to colonialism, to the impact European countries had carving up the Middle East between themselves, to the Sykes-Picot agreement, to arbitrary lines drawn across maps by European administrators, to a thousand other slights real or imagined.
The genius of Bin Laden’s propaganda is that it is built on a kernel of truth.
Islam absolutely had a reformation. It is called salafism and its various types reject the religious establishment, want to return to literalist scripture and are generally all round intolerant of anyone that disagrees, just as early Protestantism was.
The problem with Islam is that (a) Mohammed was less pleasant in his original message than Jesus of Nazareth so there's more support for the extremist position and (b) it didn't have an Enlightenment, which is what really made the West into a good place to live.
Hmmmm...the first major political fruit of the Enlightenment was the French Revolution.
I’m not sure those who were massacred in the Terror, murdered in the Vendee or killed in Napoleon’s interminable wars would altogether agree with you.
No, the first major political fruit of the Enlightenment was the Glorious Revolution. The second was the American Revolution.
Can you justify those statements? Because I have to say I do not agree with you.
Both were based on the concepts of natural liberties, implicit social contracts between ruler and ruled, and the concept of constitutionality. All were Enlightenment concepts, developed by Algernon Sidney, John Locke and others.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Of course 9/11 didn’t cause Islamist terrorism. But the success of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was to build a narrative that the West, from the Crusades onwards, through colonialism, had interfered in and damaged Muslim culture in Muslim lands. Another key plank of their argument was the obscenity of US troops stationed in Saudi, the home of Islam’s holiest sites.
You don’t have to find that persuasive, you’re not the intended audience. Many do, to a greater or lesser extent. And from that pool radicals will emerge, have emerged.
When we went into Iraq and Afghan it reinforced Bin Laden’s propaganda again. So radicalised Muslims carried out terrorist attacks here.
That tarnished Muslims, which led, in part, to a successful Leave vote.
You argue Islamist is evil, and backwards, and didn’t have a Reformation. There is much truth in there but it is also simplistic, you fail to understand the enemy. A counter argument is that Islamism is a reaction to colonialism, to the impact European countries had carving up the Middle East between themselves, to the Sykes-Picot agreement, to arbitrary lines drawn across maps by European administrators, to a thousand other slights real or imagined.
The genius of Bin Laden’s propaganda is that it is built on a kernel of truth.
Islam absolutely had a reformation. It is called salafism and its various types reject the religious establishment, want to return to literalist scripture and are generally all round intolerant of anyone that disagrees, just as early Protestantism was.
The problem with Islam is that (a) Mohammed was less pleasant in his original message than Jesus of Nazareth so there's more support for the extremist position and (b) it didn't have an Enlightenment, which is what really made the West into a good place to live.
It’s a branch of Sunni Islam. There’s fundamentalists in all religions who want to go back to basics, as it were. Though the spread of salafism is a bit worrying.
We’re getting down to the brass tacks here of the western approach to modern Islam. Those on the right view it as a fundamentally violent and oppressive religion. Others, like me I suppose, see modern strains of fundamentalist Islam as a reaction to colonialism and it’s aftermath. The willingness of the West to tolerate, indeed prop up, oppressive regimes in oil rich states, and the like.
Islam has had long periods of moderation, toleration, peaceful existence, of progress in science, literature and the arts. Much of the classical literature we have today only survived in Islamic libraries, for example.
Why has part of it, in the relatively recent past, become so absolutist, and why does that view find traction in the places it does?
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Of course 9/11 didn’t cause Islamist terrorism. But the success of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was to build a narrative that the West, from the Crusades onwards, through colonialism, had interfered in and damaged Muslim culture in Muslim lands. Another key plank of their argument was the obscenity of US troops stationed in Saudi, the home of Islam’s holiest sites.
You don’t have to find that persuasive, you’re not the intended audience. Many do, to a greater or lesser extent. And from that pool radicals will emerge, have emerged.
When we went into Iraq and Afghan it reinforced Bin Laden’s propaganda again. So radicalised Muslims carried out terrorist attacks here.
That tarnished Muslims, which led, in part, to a successful Leave vote.
You argue Islamist is evil, and backwards, and didn’t have a Reformation. There is much truth in there but it is also simplistic, you fail to understand the enemy. A counter argument is that Islamism is a reaction to colonialism, to the impact European countries had carving up the Middle East between themselves, to the Sykes-Picot agreement, to arbitrary lines drawn across maps by European administrators, to a thousand other slights real or imagined.
The genius of Bin Laden’s propaganda is that it is built on a kernel of truth.
Islam absolutely had a reformation. It is called salafism and its various types reject the religious establishment, want to return to literalist scripture and are generally all round intolerant of anyone that disagrees, just as early Protestantism was.
The problem with Islam is that (a) Mohammed was less pleasant in his original message than Jesus of Nazareth so there's more support for the extremist position and (b) it didn't have an Enlightenment, which is what really made the West into a good place to live.
Hmmmm...the first major political fruit of the Enlightenment was the French Revolution.
I’m not sure those who were massacred in the Terror, murdered in the Vendee or killed in Napoleon’s interminable wars would altogether agree with you.
Okay, here's an o/t question.
I am not an historian (tm). Recently I listened to the excellent Revolutions Podcast on the French Revolution, and read/listened to other stuff on it (including the less-excellent Napoleon Podcast). Being British, my pre-existing viewpoint was that Napoleon was a sh*t. After all this listening/reading/?learning?, my viewpoint is still that he was a sh*t.
So: am I right, despite my rather biased British upbringing? Taken in totality, was he a hero or villain?
Indian bloke won the gold medal in the Javelin. Even I didn't know about him before today.
Considering how few medals they win (7 at these Games is their highest ever tally, and only the third Gold in 50 years), that is all the more remarkable an outcome.
India's first ever athletics gold medal. India remains a sleeping giant until it emulates Britain, Australia, China or elsewhere and chucks some serious cash and organisation at the Olympics. One downside is that it might deflect able Indians away from cricket.
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Of course 9/11 didn’t cause Islamist terrorism. But the success of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was to build a narrative that the West, from the Crusades onwards, through colonialism, had interfered in and damaged Muslim culture in Muslim lands. Another key plank of their argument was the obscenity of US troops stationed in Saudi, the home of Islam’s holiest sites.
You don’t have to find that persuasive, you’re not the intended audience. Many do, to a greater or lesser extent. And from that pool radicals will emerge, have emerged.
When we went into Iraq and Afghan it reinforced Bin Laden’s propaganda again. So radicalised Muslims carried out terrorist attacks here.
That tarnished Muslims, which led, in part, to a successful Leave vote.
You argue Islamist is evil, and backwards, and didn’t have a Reformation. There is much truth in there but it is also simplistic, you fail to understand the enemy. A counter argument is that Islamism is a reaction to colonialism, to the impact European countries had carving up the Middle East between themselves, to the Sykes-Picot agreement, to arbitrary lines drawn across maps by European administrators, to a thousand other slights real or imagined.
The genius of Bin Laden’s propaganda is that it is built on a kernel of truth.
Islam absolutely had a reformation. It is called salafism and its various types reject the religious establishment, want to return to literalist scripture and are generally all round intolerant of anyone that disagrees, just as early Protestantism was.
The problem with Islam is that (a) Mohammed was less pleasant in his original message than Jesus of Nazareth so there's more support for the extremist position and (b) it didn't have an Enlightenment, which is what really made the West into a good place to live.
Hmmmm...the first major political fruit of the Enlightenment was the French Revolution.
I’m not sure those who were massacred in the Terror, murdered in the Vendee or killed in Napoleon’s interminable wars would altogether agree with you.
Okay, here's an o/t question.
I am not an historian (tm). Recently I listened to the excellent Revolutions Podcast on the French Revolution, and read/listened to other stuff on it (including the less-excellent Napoleon Podcast). Being British, my pre-existing viewpoint was that Napoleon was a sh*t. After all this listening/reading/?learning?, my viewpoint is still that he was a sh*t.
So: am I right, despite my rather biased British upbringing? Taken in totality, was he a hero or villain?
This is a massive gap for me too. I basically know about this stuff through reading the Sharpe books. I keep meaning to learn more about Napoleon but I never get round to it.
Indian bloke won the gold medal in the Javelin. Even I didn't know about him before today.
Considering how few medals they win (7 at these Games is their highest ever tally, and only the third Gold in 50 years), that is all the more remarkable an outcome.
India's first ever athletics gold medal. India remains a sleeping giant until it emulates Britain, Australia, China or elsewhere and chucks some serious cash and organisation at the Olympics. One downside is that it might deflect able Indians away from cricket.
From the perspective of the England cricket team the latter might be useful.
You could, from that point of view, go back to World War I, and the Arab Revolt against the Sultan, or the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, as the starting point
But I was thinking of its current incarnation, and that very much does link to the situation in Afghanistan in the mid-1970s that culminated in the Soviet invasion. The CIA sowed a wind by supporting the mujahadeen as enemies of the Soviets. Sadly they have reaped a whirlwind.
The key year is 1979 - the year of the Iranian revolution.
In the same way that the Catholic church reacted to the Reformation with the Inquisition, the Saudis reacted to the Iranian Revolution by going hardline Wahabi. They closed the cinemas, clamped down on all sorts of things that were thought to be "haram" and basically tried to match Shia extremism with Sunni extremism.
The other event of 1979 was the invasion of Afghanistan.
As others have pointed out, Saudis reacted to that by funding mujahideen. They also flooded the market with oil, forcing the price below $10 by 1986 in an economic attack against the Soviets. This hurt Gorbachev's perestroika efforts because he ran out of money and the Soviet Union collapsed.
Which means that if the Soviets hadn't invaded Afghanistan, they wouldn't have triggered the Saudi response that bankrupted them and eastern europe would still be under the Soviet yoke.
Saudi funding also flooded into Pakistan madrassas after IMF/World Bank turned off the taps. Austerity, eh?
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Of course 9/11 didn’t cause Islamist terrorism. But the success of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was to build a narrative that the West, from the Crusades onwards, through colonialism, had interfered in and damaged Muslim culture in Muslim lands. Another key plank of their argument was the obscenity of US troops stationed in Saudi, the home of Islam’s holiest sites.
You don’t have to find that persuasive, you’re not the intended audience. Many do, to a greater or lesser extent. And from that pool radicals will emerge, have emerged.
When we went into Iraq and Afghan it reinforced Bin Laden’s propaganda again. So radicalised Muslims carried out terrorist attacks here.
That tarnished Muslims, which led, in part, to a successful Leave vote.
You argue Islamist is evil, and backwards, and didn’t have a Reformation. There is much truth in there but it is also simplistic, you fail to understand the enemy. A counter argument is that Islamism is a reaction to colonialism, to the impact European countries had carving up the Middle East between themselves, to the Sykes-Picot agreement, to arbitrary lines drawn across maps by European administrators, to a thousand other slights real or imagined.
The genius of Bin Laden’s propaganda is that it is built on a kernel of truth.
Islam absolutely had a reformation. It is called salafism and its various types reject the religious establishment, want to return to literalist scripture and are generally all round intolerant of anyone that disagrees, just as early Protestantism was.
The problem with Islam is that (a) Mohammed was less pleasant in his original message than Jesus of Nazareth so there's more support for the extremist position and (b) it didn't have an Enlightenment, which is what really made the West into a good place to live.
Hmmmm...the first major political fruit of the Enlightenment was the French Revolution.
I’m not sure those who were massacred in the Terror, murdered in the Vendee or killed in Napoleon’s interminable wars would altogether agree with you.
Okay, here's an o/t question.
I am not an historian (tm). Recently I listened to the excellent Revolutions Podcast on the French Revolution, and read/listened to other stuff on it (including the less-excellent Napoleon Podcast). Being British, my pre-existing viewpoint was that Napoleon was a sh*t. After all this listening/reading/?learning?, my viewpoint is still that he was a sh*t.
So: am I right, despite my rather biased British upbringing? Taken in totality, was he a hero or villain?
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Of course 9/11 didn’t cause Islamist terrorism. But the success of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was to build a narrative that the West, from the Crusades onwards, through colonialism, had interfered in and damaged Muslim culture in Muslim lands. Another key plank of their argument was the obscenity of US troops stationed in Saudi, the home of Islam’s holiest sites.
You don’t have to find that persuasive, you’re not the intended audience. Many do, to a greater or lesser extent. And from that pool radicals will emerge, have emerged.
When we went into Iraq and Afghan it reinforced Bin Laden’s propaganda again. So radicalised Muslims carried out terrorist attacks here.
That tarnished Muslims, which led, in part, to a successful Leave vote.
You argue Islamist is evil, and backwards, and didn’t have a Reformation. There is much truth in there but it is also simplistic, you fail to understand the enemy. A counter argument is that Islamism is a reaction to colonialism, to the impact European countries had carving up the Middle East between themselves, to the Sykes-Picot agreement, to arbitrary lines drawn across maps by European administrators, to a thousand other slights real or imagined.
The genius of Bin Laden’s propaganda is that it is built on a kernel of truth.
Islam absolutely had a reformation. It is called salafism and its various types reject the religious establishment, want to return to literalist scripture and are generally all round intolerant of anyone that disagrees, just as early Protestantism was.
The problem with Islam is that (a) Mohammed was less pleasant in his original message than Jesus of Nazareth so there's more support for the extremist position and (b) it didn't have an Enlightenment, which is what really made the West into a good place to live.
Hmmmm...the first major political fruit of the Enlightenment was the French Revolution.
I’m not sure those who were massacred in the Terror, murdered in the Vendee or killed in Napoleon’s interminable wars would altogether agree with you.
Okay, here's an o/t question.
I am not an historian (tm). Recently I listened to the excellent Revolutions Podcast on the French Revolution, and read/listened to other stuff on it (including the less-excellent Napoleon Podcast). Being British, my pre-existing viewpoint was that Napoleon was a sh*t. After all this listening/reading/?learning?, my viewpoint is still that he was a sh*t.
So: am I right, despite my rather biased British upbringing? Taken in totality, was he a hero or villain?
This is a massive gap for me too. I basically know about this stuff through reading the Sharpe books. I keep meaning to learn more about Napoleon but I never get round to it.
I would recommend listening to both of the above. The former seems very even-handed, whilst the latter is hosted by two Napoleon fanboys who are very keen to excuse his excesses. But it is still good.
I *wish* the latter had had people who different in the views about Napoleon on it - a polite discussion would have been brilliant.
The CoE has come out against the 'Rogers' of this parish! Archbishop of york has finally WOKEn up!
‘The most senior leader in the Church of England.’
Has something happened to Justin Welby without my noticing?
Currently taking a sabbatical. So describing Stevey-baby (as we used to call him in the pews of Chelmsford Diocese) as the most senior leader in the C of E is more justified than many things in the Daily Mail.
Worth noting that he comes out in favour of English Regions, so something to annoy everyone there.
Cottrell is a state school and central London polytechnic educated Archbishop of York, so would be a significantly less elite choice for the top job than Welby who is Eton and Trinity College Cambridge educated.
Cottrell also is clearly trying to move the C of E away from the FBPE crowd and recognising that most of England voted for Brexit. He is also sensibly suggesting England deserves the same level of devolution as Scotland and Wales have.
Note too there are some theological differences between Cottrell and Welby too. Welby is more on the evangelical wing of the Anglican church, Cottrell is closer to the high church, Anglo Catholic wing (although sensibly accepts women priests and is not anti gay either, reflecting the England of the 21st century)
Perhaps if Stevie baby rescinded from sitting unelected in a big hoose in that London with his frocked mates from the Church of Engerland overseeing laws for the whole of the UK, he might not come over as a mouthy opportunist.
Why should he not? The whole House of Lords is unelected and as long as it continues to be unelected there is no problem with having 26 bishops as peers out of 792 Lords in total ie less than 5%. Most Bishops have experience in their communities, have been parish clergy too at some some point and have a lot to offer. The Lords can only delay legislation anyway not block it outright.
I would have a few more Catholic bishops (although the Vatican currently is opposed) and rabbis too and add some imams as well.
Remember before the Reformation most members of the House of Lords were Bishops and Abbotts, so the number of Bishops in the Lords is now only a fraction of what it once was
Who do you think should represent the non-believers?
The CoE has come out against the 'Rogers' of this parish! Archbishop of york has finally WOKEn up!
‘The most senior leader in the Church of England.’
Has something happened to Justin Welby without my noticing?
Currently taking a sabbatical. So describing Stevey-baby (as we used to call him in the pews of Chelmsford Diocese) as the most senior leader in the C of E is more justified than many things in the Daily Mail.
Worth noting that he comes out in favour of English Regions, so something to annoy everyone there.
Cottrell is a state school and central London polytechnic educated Archbishop of York, so would be a significantly less elite choice for the top job than Welby who is Eton and Trinity College Cambridge educated.
Cottrell also is clearly trying to move the C of E away from the FBPE crowd and recognising that most of England voted for Brexit. He is also sensibly suggesting England deserves the same level of devolution as Scotland and Wales have.
Note too there are some theological differences between Cottrell and Welby too. Welby is more on the evangelical wing of the Anglican church, Cottrell is closer to the high church, Anglo Catholic wing (although sensibly accepts women priests and is not anti gay either, reflecting the England of the 21st century)
Perhaps if Stevie baby rescinded from sitting unelected in a big hoose in that London with his frocked mates from the Church of Engerland overseeing laws for the whole of the UK, he might not come over as a mouthy opportunist.
Why should he not? The whole House of Lords is unelected and as long as it continues to be unelected there is no problem with having 26 bishops as peers out of 792 Lords in total ie less than 5%. Most Bishops have experience in their communities, have been parish clergy too at some some point and have a lot to offer. The Lords can only delay legislation anyway not block it outright.
I would have a few more Catholic bishops (although the Vatican currently is opposed) and rabbis too and add some imams as well.
Remember before the Reformation most members of the House of Lords were Bishops and Abbotts, so the number of Bishops in the Lords is now only a fraction of what it once was
Who do you think should represent the non-believers?
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Of course 9/11 didn’t cause Islamist terrorism. But the success of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was to build a narrative that the West, from the Crusades onwards, through colonialism, had interfered in and damaged Muslim culture in Muslim lands. Another key plank of their argument was the obscenity of US troops stationed in Saudi, the home of Islam’s holiest sites.
You don’t have to find that persuasive, you’re not the intended audience. Many do, to a greater or lesser extent. And from that pool radicals will emerge, have emerged.
When we went into Iraq and Afghan it reinforced Bin Laden’s propaganda again. So radicalised Muslims carried out terrorist attacks here.
That tarnished Muslims, which led, in part, to a successful Leave vote.
You argue Islamist is evil, and backwards, and didn’t have a Reformation. There is much truth in there but it is also simplistic, you fail to understand the enemy. A counter argument is that Islamism is a reaction to colonialism, to the impact European countries had carving up the Middle East between themselves, to the Sykes-Picot agreement, to arbitrary lines drawn across maps by European administrators, to a thousand other slights real or imagined.
The genius of Bin Laden’s propaganda is that it is built on a kernel of truth.
Islam absolutely had a reformation. It is called salafism and its various types reject the religious establishment, want to return to literalist scripture and are generally all round intolerant of anyone that disagrees, just as early Protestantism was.
The problem with Islam is that (a) Mohammed was less pleasant in his original message than Jesus of Nazareth so there's more support for the extremist position and (b) it didn't have an Enlightenment, which is what really made the West into a good place to live.
Hmmmm...the first major political fruit of the Enlightenment was the French Revolution.
I’m not sure those who were massacred in the Terror, murdered in the Vendee or killed in Napoleon’s interminable wars would altogether agree with you.
Okay, here's an o/t question.
I am not an historian (tm). Recently I listened to the excellent Revolutions Podcast on the French Revolution, and read/listened to other stuff on it (including the less-excellent Napoleon Podcast). Being British, my pre-existing viewpoint was that Napoleon was a sh*t. After all this listening/reading/?learning?, my viewpoint is still that he was a sh*t.
So: am I right, despite my rather biased British upbringing? Taken in totality, was he a hero or villain?
He was a bad person but not particularly worse than the average monarch in the time period.
Most monarchs of the time period weren't quite as expansionist. I get the impression he wanted to be the new Alexander. The whole Egypt campaign was the initial part of an attempt to chuck the British out of India ...
Indian bloke won the gold medal in the Javelin. Even I didn't know about him before today.
Considering how few medals they win (7 at these Games is their highest ever tally, and only the third Gold in 50 years), that is all the more remarkable an outcome.
India's first ever athletics gold medal. India remains a sleeping giant until it emulates Britain, Australia, China or elsewhere and chucks some serious cash and organisation at the Olympics. One downside is that it might deflect able Indians away from cricket.
The most heinous aspect of British rule in India wasn't blowing people from cannons, or the - shall we say - less than stellar responses to the various famines over the years, or even the Amritsar massacre.
No, for me the single most heinous thing the British ever did in India was teaching the locals the utter snooze-fest that is Cricket! If they taught the Indians how to play football, by contrast, they could have by now become the Brazil of Asia (and perhaps modern Pakistan might play the part of Argentina!).
Amazed by this. Our vaccine advisory group is out of line with current evidence on this, and CDC, AAP, + US, Canada, most European countries. We've done a quantitative assessment of this, and the benefits vs risks are v. clear. How do they justify this?
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Of course 9/11 didn’t cause Islamist terrorism. But the success of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was to build a narrative that the West, from the Crusades onwards, through colonialism, had interfered in and damaged Muslim culture in Muslim lands. Another key plank of their argument was the obscenity of US troops stationed in Saudi, the home of Islam’s holiest sites.
You don’t have to find that persuasive, you’re not the intended audience. Many do, to a greater or lesser extent. And from that pool radicals will emerge, have emerged.
When we went into Iraq and Afghan it reinforced Bin Laden’s propaganda again. So radicalised Muslims carried out terrorist attacks here.
That tarnished Muslims, which led, in part, to a successful Leave vote.
You argue Islamist is evil, and backwards, and didn’t have a Reformation. There is much truth in there but it is also simplistic, you fail to understand the enemy. A counter argument is that Islamism is a reaction to colonialism, to the impact European countries had carving up the Middle East between themselves, to the Sykes-Picot agreement, to arbitrary lines drawn across maps by European administrators, to a thousand other slights real or imagined.
The genius of Bin Laden’s propaganda is that it is built on a kernel of truth.
Islam absolutely had a reformation. It is called salafism and its various types reject the religious establishment, want to return to literalist scripture and are generally all round intolerant of anyone that disagrees, just as early Protestantism was.
The problem with Islam is that (a) Mohammed was less pleasant in his original message than Jesus of Nazareth so there's more support for the extremist position and (b) it didn't have an Enlightenment, which is what really made the West into a good place to live.
Hmmmm...the first major political fruit of the Enlightenment was the French Revolution.
I’m not sure those who were massacred in the Terror, murdered in the Vendee or killed in Napoleon’s interminable wars would altogether agree with you.
Okay, here's an o/t question.
I am not an historian (tm). Recently I listened to the excellent Revolutions Podcast on the French Revolution, and read/listened to other stuff on it (including the less-excellent Napoleon Podcast). Being British, my pre-existing viewpoint was that Napoleon was a sh*t. After all this listening/reading/?learning?, my viewpoint is still that he was a sh*t.
So: am I right, despite my rather biased British upbringing? Taken in totality, was he a hero or villain?
This is a massive gap for me too. I basically know about this stuff through reading the Sharpe books. I keep meaning to learn more about Napoleon but I never get round to it.
I would recommend listening to both of the above. The former seems very even-handed, whilst the latter is hosted by two Napoleon fanboys who are very keen to excuse his excesses. But it is still good.
I *wish* the latter had had people who different in the views about Napoleon on it - a polite discussion would have been brilliant.
Amazed by this. Our vaccine advisory group is out of line with current evidence on this, and CDC, AAP, + US, Canada, most European countries. We've done a quantitative assessment of this, and the benefits vs risks are v. clear. How do they justify this?
I saw a post on one of these twitter accounts that admitted it’s fair to disagree. I really think is a finely balanced decision, and while we may not agree with it, it is being made in good faith, based on how these scientists see the data at the time.
I agree. The science is finely balanced. The benefits to the community are clear, to the individual teens, much less so. What I don't respect are the absolutists like Gurdasani who are 100% certain they are 100% right when they have so often been wrong in the past, yet rarely if ever admit it.
That’s fine, but with a proviso: we’re happy to recommend vaccines to children where there is no benefit, because of high uptake of vaccines.
I.e., the HPV vaccine. There are side effects. But the benefits to society of eliminating a form of cancer are enormous. Every individual would (or should) choose not to take it, but society as a whole benefits enormously from high uptake.
Why are we thinking about the benefits to society of high uptake of the COVID vaccine differently?
It’s a branch of Sunni Islam. There’s fundamentalists in all religions who want to go back to basics, as it were. Though the spread of salafism is a bit worrying.
We’re getting down to the brass tacks here of the western approach to modern Islam. Those on the right view it as a fundamentally violent and oppressive religion. Others, like me I suppose, see modern strains of fundamentalist Islam as a reaction to colonialism and it’s aftermath. The willingness of the West to tolerate, indeed prop up, oppressive regimes in oil rich states, and the like.
Islam has had long periods of moderation, toleration, peaceful existence, of progress in science, literature and the arts. Much of the classical literature we have today only survived in Islamic libraries, for example.
Why has part of it, in the relatively recent past, become so absolutist, and why does that view find traction in the places it does?
The willingness to blame the West for everything is ridiculous. South Korea and Poland and Taiwan were all victims of colonization, but aren't hotspots of extremism. Most of the idolized "periods of Islamic moderation" were merely moderate for the time period. They would be considered oppressive by today's standards.
When you have dozens of Muslim countries in the world and not a single one is a wealthy democracy, there is clearly a problem. If you look at the groups most struggling with life in wealthy democracies, they are almost all Muslim. The only way the Islamic world moves past oppression is by rejecting the oppressive parts of the Koran, as most Christians have done for the Bible. But there is currently no sign of that happening, as literalism is still accepted in every form of Islam with any serious presence.
“We can either have a free society, or we can have a biomedical security state,” Mr. DeSantis said this week in Panama City, Fla. “And I can tell you: Florida, we’re a free state. People are going to be free to choose to make their own decisions.”
“We can either have a free society, or we can have a biomedical security state,” Mr. DeSantis said this week in Panama City, Fla. “And I can tell you: Florida, we’re a free state. People are going to be free to choose to make their own decisions.”
Amazed by this. Our vaccine advisory group is out of line with current evidence on this, and CDC, AAP, + US, Canada, most European countries. We've done a quantitative assessment of this, and the benefits vs risks are v. clear. How do they justify this?
I saw a post on one of these twitter accounts that admitted it’s fair to disagree. I really think is a finely balanced decision, and while we may not agree with it, it is being made in good faith, based on how these scientists see the data at the time.
I agree. The science is finely balanced. The benefits to the community are clear, to the individual teens, much less so. What I don't respect are the absolutists like Gurdasani who are 100% certain they are 100% right when they have so often been wrong in the past, yet rarely if ever admit it.
That’s fine, but with a proviso: we’re happy to recommend vaccines to children where there is no benefit, because of high uptake of vaccines.
I.e., the HPV vaccine. There are side effects. But the benefits to society of eliminating a form of cancer are enormous. Every individual would (or should) choose not to take it, but society as a whole benefits enormously from high uptake.
Why are we thinking about the benefits to society of high uptake of the COVID vaccine differently?
“We can either have a free society, or we can have a biomedical security state,” Mr. DeSantis said this week in Panama City, Fla. “And I can tell you: Florida, we’re a free state. People are going to be free to choose to make their own decisions.”
The CoE has come out against the 'Rogers' of this parish! Archbishop of york has finally WOKEn up!
‘The most senior leader in the Church of England.’
Has something happened to Justin Welby without my noticing?
Currently taking a sabbatical. So describing Stevey-baby (as we used to call him in the pews of Chelmsford Diocese) as the most senior leader in the C of E is more justified than many things in the Daily Mail.
Worth noting that he comes out in favour of English Regions, so something to annoy everyone there.
Cottrell is a state school and central London polytechnic educated Archbishop of York, so would be a significantly less elite choice for the top job than Welby who is Eton and Trinity College Cambridge educated.
Cottrell also is clearly trying to move the C of E away from the FBPE crowd and recognising that most of England voted for Brexit. He is also sensibly suggesting England deserves the same level of devolution as Scotland and Wales have.
Note too there are some theological differences between Cottrell and Welby too. Welby is more on the evangelical wing of the Anglican church, Cottrell is closer to the high church, Anglo Catholic wing (although sensibly accepts women priests and is not anti gay either, reflecting the England of the 21st century)
Perhaps if Stevie baby rescinded from sitting unelected in a big hoose in that London with his frocked mates from the Church of Engerland overseeing laws for the whole of the UK, he might not come over as a mouthy opportunist.
Why should he not? The whole House of Lords is unelected and as long as it continues to be unelected there is no problem with having 26 bishops as peers out of 792 Lords in total ie less than 5%. Most Bishops have experience in their communities, have been parish clergy too at some some point and have a lot to offer. The Lords can only delay legislation anyway not block it outright.
I would have a few more Catholic bishops (although the Vatican currently is opposed) and rabbis too and add some imams as well.
Remember before the Reformation most members of the House of Lords were Bishops and Abbotts, so the number of Bishops in the Lords is now only a fraction of what it once was
Who do you think should represent the non-believers?
I'd always assumed the CoE had that area well covered. My source being the irrefutable Yes Minister!
Trying to control Afghanistan from outside has been a damnfool idea from day 1. If I'm not mistaken Alexander the Great came a bit of a cropper there, and no-one else has come closer.
We did not invade to colonise Afghanistan, the Taliban took control of it in 1996 and we left them in power for 5 years.
We only invaded in 2001 because 9\11 was launched by Bin Laden from Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to hand him over.
Bin Laden is now dead but we will have to do a deal with the Taliban to give them some of rural Afghanistan in return for not allowing Al Qaeda back in
It was still a damnfool idea. The US would have done far better to offer money for him. Somebody would have bitten. That's how Afghanistan seems to work.
If you think 'we'...... the US will have to 'give' the Taliban 'some of rural Afghanistan' you'd better think again. Afghanistan will soon all be under Taliban control and, seriously, our best hope is to ignore the US and concentrate on encouraging their very capable cricket team.
If the US had not invaded Bin Laden would still be alive and Al Qaeda still in the country.
If the Taliban retake the whole country (which is unlikely given US air support still for the elected government and warlords who will resist them) and invite Al Qaeda back we would have no choice but to re invade or face future 9/11s and terrorist attacks launched on New York, London and Paris from cells trained in Afghanistan
AQ is still in the country, and across the world. It might not be called AQ, there’ll be many names for the many groups, but they’ll all share the same broad Islamist ideology. It’s a franchise model.
One of Bin Laden’s main objectives for 9/11 broadly succeeded. We were deliberately sucked into an unwinnable war. We have been stung, and we will no longer commit ourselves to large scale combat operations in Muslim countries. Western populations won’t accept it.
The Islamists will regain full control of Afghanistan. Call them AQ, call them Talibs, call them what you like. A rose by any other name, and all that.
The Islamists will carry out their struggle for years to come and apart from firing missiles from drones and a few Special Forces on the ground we will probably do very little, unless there’s another big terrorist spectacular in the West. And why would they do that? Let sleeping dogs lie.
If I may continue from the post above, in light of subsequent discussion about Brexit and how it could/will weaken the UK/EU.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
Unsurprisingly I 100% disagree.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Of course 9/11 didn’t cause Islamist terrorism. But the success of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was to build a narrative that the West, from the Crusades onwards, through colonialism, had interfered in and damaged Muslim culture in Muslim lands. Another key plank of their argument was the obscenity of US troops stationed in Saudi, the home of Islam’s holiest sites.
You don’t have to find that persuasive, you’re not the intended audience. Many do, to a greater or lesser extent. And from that pool radicals will emerge, have emerged.
When we went into Iraq and Afghan it reinforced Bin Laden’s propaganda again. So radicalised Muslims carried out terrorist attacks here.
That tarnished Muslims, which led, in part, to a successful Leave vote.
You argue Islamist is evil, and backwards, and didn’t have a Reformation. There is much truth in there but it is also simplistic, you fail to understand the enemy. A counter argument is that Islamism is a reaction to colonialism, to the impact European countries had carving up the Middle East between themselves, to the Sykes-Picot agreement, to arbitrary lines drawn across maps by European administrators, to a thousand other slights real or imagined.
The genius of Bin Laden’s propaganda is that it is built on a kernel of truth.
Islam absolutely had a reformation. It is called salafism and its various types reject the religious establishment, want to return to literalist scripture and are generally all round intolerant of anyone that disagrees, just as early Protestantism was.
The problem with Islam is that (a) Mohammed was less pleasant in his original message than Jesus of Nazareth so there's more support for the extremist position and (b) it didn't have an Enlightenment, which is what really made the West into a good place to live.
Hmmmm...the first major political fruit of the Enlightenment was the French Revolution.
I’m not sure those who were massacred in the Terror, murdered in the Vendee or killed in Napoleon’s interminable wars would altogether agree with you.
Okay, here's an o/t question.
I am not an historian (tm). Recently I listened to the excellent Revolutions Podcast on the French Revolution, and read/listened to other stuff on it (including the less-excellent Napoleon Podcast). Being British, my pre-existing viewpoint was that Napoleon was a sh*t. After all this listening/reading/?learning?, my viewpoint is still that he was a sh*t.
So: am I right, despite my rather biased British upbringing? Taken in totality, was he a hero or villain?
He was seen by intellectuals at the time and subsequently as a flawed progressive figure who destroyed the relics of feudalism and spread modernity. He was a Hegelian "world historical figure" through whom the dialectical progress of history manifested itself.
Comments
Leeds John Lewis yesterday had very low levels of mask wearing. Same in other city centre shops.
9/11 was designed to weaken the West, to suck us into inwinnable wars, to split us, weaken our alliances, to allow Islamists a free hand in Muslim lands, to ultimately establish a Caliphate. That struggle will go on for decades, maybe centuries, that is the timescale they are thinking in.
I’m sure many will disagree but I think it can be argued that one of the effects, aftershocks, of 9/11 was Brexit.
If we hadn’t had 9/11 we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Afghan. Therefore we wouldn’t have had a wave a domestic terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, radicalised by Al Qaeda, and it’s offshoots’, propaganda.
If we hadn’t had that experience of Islamist terrorism and the dog whistle that Muslims = terrorists, and being in the EU will allow more Muslims in (Turkey will join, refugees flooding in from the Middle East) - cheers Nige - then perhaps Leave wouldn’t have scraped home.
Because I think many people voted Leave, at least ooop North, because they simply don’t like Muslims. Or they don’t like the image of Muslims they have in their head.
So if you accept that view, and you think that Brexit will weaken the UK and the EU, and our and the EU’s security alliances, then Brexit is fuelled, to a degree, by the fallout from 9/11.
I’m sure many of you will disagree…
As of the end of June its now official deaths 133k, excess deaths 577k.
There’s obviously no perfect solution.
My preferred is to make sure the second tiers (ie boroughs like Thornaby) don’t cross traditional county lines.
That way, even though Thornaby is administratively part of the Tees Metro, it can self-identify as Yorkshire for cultural reasons - if that makes sense.
(Just as, a generation ago, Richmond still self-identified as Surrey).
Meanwhile the number of people currently infected with the virus remains greater than the number of people currently travelling on the London Underground.
Her struggles with controlling the flow of people across the Mexican border are part of the reason American voters don't rate her.
It seems to me that Biden has deliberately put a finger on the scales against her.
Once I hit a hornet or a wasp on the way down and got stung. I came seriously close to drowning as I hit the water in an extremely ungainly fashion with my mouth wide open. That did put me off for a while.
For one thing 9/11 didn't begat Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism preceded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
9/11 was the second time the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamists not the first. There were plane bombings, embassy bombings and much more through the seventies, eighties, nineties all before 9/11.
In the UK we tended to pay less attention then because we had our own Troubles but it's entirely plausible we would have seen the 7/7 bombing, and attacks like Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks etc even without 9/11.
Islamist terrorism is occuring because radical Islam is an extremely violent, medieval and disturbing religion that hasn't undergone a Reformation. And is being state sponsored not least by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not because of wars in the Middle East that came after terrorism was well set.
Radical idea, instead of having one of the only planes flying in the immediate aftermath rounding up members of Bin Laden's family to get them safely out of the country, they could have started by keeping them and asking what they and the Saudi government knew about it.
You don’t have to find that persuasive, you’re not the intended audience. Many do, to a greater or lesser extent. And from that pool radicals will emerge, have emerged.
When we went into Iraq and Afghan it reinforced Bin Laden’s propaganda again. So radicalised Muslims carried out terrorist attacks here.
That tarnished Muslims, which led, in part, to a successful Leave vote.
You argue Islamist is evil, and backwards, and didn’t have a Reformation. There is much truth in there but it is also simplistic, you fail to understand the enemy. A counter argument is that Islamism is a reaction to colonialism, to the impact European countries had carving up the Middle East between themselves, to the Sykes-Picot agreement, to arbitrary lines drawn across maps by European administrators, to a thousand other slights real or imagined.
The genius of Bin Laden’s propaganda is that it is built on a kernel of truth.
Of course, it doesn’t only go one way. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was backed by the Soviets through a variety of leftist groups to get rid of the Shah, whom the Soviets feared as an American ally on their new Afghan flank. This backfired spectacularly when their main allies, e.g. the Tudeh party, were all arrested and later shot by the Ayatollahs.
Or do you mean tailender?
The root of the problem is Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have been promoting Wahhabism for decades. In the 1970s, the massive oil price spike gave them the potential to pour fortunes into supporting the cause.
More generally, I don't much like mask-wearing myself, but I'm in a minority - most people seem to feel it's no big deal.
I suspect if Saudi didn’t have all the oil we’d have gone in there by now.
Of course we did go in there during WW2, to secure an overland route to the Soviet Union, which is probably still a sore point for the Mullahs.
But I was thinking of its current incarnation, and that very much does link to the situation in Afghanistan in the mid-1970s that culminated in the Soviet invasion. The CIA sowed a wind by supporting the mujahadeen as enemies of the Soviets. Sadly they have reaped a whirlwind.
Still, in the really important sporting news of the day, Murdo Fraser, yer team the Queen's 11 took a helluva beating.
Four teams of three jockeys each - Great Britain, Ireland, Ladies, the Rest of the World.
A slightly complex points scoring system and why they have 10 runners in each race rather than 12 so every jockey rides in every race is a mystery but it's a little bit of fun.
The top UK (or GB) jockeys tend to eschew the event and head for Haydock or Newmarket or Deauville or Saratoga.
Still a bloody stupid thing to do though.
(Incidentally, it depends on what you mean by ‘threat.’ The Soviets had the power to kill everyone in the world. However, after about 1962 they made the conscious decision that they never would. After that, they confined themselves largely to what they thought of as their sphere of influence, and causing irritation elsewhere.
Islamic fundamentalism, OTOH, knows no boundaries and certainly shows no sign of self-restraint.)
But as you say at least one SCon does like to mix sport with politics to a surprising degree. Was it not you yesterday who posted the Former MSP For Sevco ranting on about the SNP hatred for his team on the same day that the SG awarded them a support grant?
Can't remember if you were around then but I'm getting flashbacks to that magical time when folk on here talked of the London Olympics effect having a big bearing on the 2014 referendum.
edit: yep, I posed about ridiculous Murdo whining about anti Rangers prejudice. The Nat loan doesn't seem to have done them much good.
Ultimately it's a choice of what money should be spent on, the government has decided that winning elite sports events is a worthwhile use of money, but other countries think public funds should be used elsewhere. I'd probably imagine after a few cycles an SNP government would rather save the money.
Considering the bad luck we had on injuries - KJT, Asher-Smith, Adam Gemelli (yes, an outside bet) plus in the non-track events, hits in equestrian and shooting - plus Zharnel Hughes as you said, that would be pretty extraordinary.
75 ahead with 7 wickets remaining.
That funding would certainly go.
And even if Scotland set up a lottery of its own, it would be on a much smaller scale and have less money to go round.
Incidentally, was in Paris last week. Without p1ssing too much on the French, there were a lot of posters around linking their Lottery with Olympic funding so I would expect them to gear up their efforts, especially going into 2024 and given their poor performance this time.
It all depends on the national priority, would Scotland want to keep funding free prescriptions or getting a few medals at the Olympics?
Mr Fraser's behaviour is all the odder now I think about it rather than (as I usually do) ignore it - the Tories are the ones who always lecture us on not mixing politics and sport, from the d'Oliveira affair to taking the knee.
And there is this undercurrent also that only money from London counts and only a big country counts. As if we don't pay our taxes and some of us our Lottery tickets. And a smaller funding council would have a smaller population to deal with pro rata. All still odder.
Anyway, I have found the password for the DIY shop, so off now.
Colossus at county level, murderous in the one day game, not quite up to Test level despite some sporadic success.
Discuss.
The problem with Islam is that (a) Mohammed was less pleasant in his original message than Jesus of Nazareth so there's more support for the extremist position and (b) it didn't have an Enlightenment, which is what really made the West into a good place to live.
On a totally unrelated note...
Lamont Marcell Jacobs, the shock winner of the gold medal in the 100m at the Olympics, has split from his sports nutritionist, who is under investigation by the police for allegedly illegally distributing anabolic steroids.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-9870591/Lamont-Marcell-Jacobs-former-sports-nutritionist-investigation-Italian-police.html
I’m not sure those who were massacred in the Terror, murdered in the Vendee or killed in Napoleon’s interminable wars would altogether agree with you.
In the same way that the Catholic church reacted to the Reformation with the Inquisition, the Saudis reacted to the Iranian Revolution by going hardline Wahabi. They closed the cinemas, clamped down on all sorts of things that were thought to be "haram" and basically tried to match Shia extremism with Sunni extremism.
The other event of 1979 was the invasion of Afghanistan.
As others have pointed out, Saudis reacted to that by funding mujahideen. They also flooded the market with oil, forcing the price below $10 by 1986 in an economic attack against the Soviets. This hurt Gorbachev's perestroika efforts because he ran out of money and the Soviet Union collapsed.
Which means that if the Soviets hadn't invaded Afghanistan, they wouldn't have triggered the Saudi response that bankrupted them and eastern europe would still be under the Soviet yoke.
We’re getting down to the brass tacks here of the western approach to modern Islam. Those on the right view it as a fundamentally violent and oppressive religion. Others, like me I suppose, see modern strains of fundamentalist Islam as a reaction to colonialism and it’s aftermath. The willingness of the West to tolerate, indeed prop up, oppressive regimes in oil rich states, and the like.
Islam has had long periods of moderation, toleration, peaceful existence, of progress in science, literature and the arts. Much of the classical literature we have today only survived in Islamic libraries, for example.
Why has part of it, in the relatively recent past, become so absolutist, and why does that view find traction in the places it does?
I am not an historian (tm). Recently I listened to the excellent Revolutions Podcast on the French Revolution, and read/listened to other stuff on it (including the less-excellent Napoleon Podcast). Being British, my pre-existing viewpoint was that Napoleon was a sh*t. After all this listening/reading/?learning?, my viewpoint is still that he was a sh*t.
So: am I right, despite my rather biased British upbringing? Taken in totality, was he a hero or villain?
https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/
https://napoleonbonapartepodcast.com/
I *wish* the latter had had people who different in the views about Napoleon on it - a polite discussion would have been brilliant.
No, for me the single most heinous thing the British ever did in India was teaching the locals the utter snooze-fest that is Cricket! If they taught the Indians how to play football, by contrast, they could have by now become the Brazil of Asia (and perhaps modern Pakistan might play the part of Argentina!).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05yxzlj
No, I didn't see that one coming either!
I.e., the HPV vaccine. There are side effects. But the benefits to society of eliminating a form of cancer are enormous. Every individual would (or should) choose not to take it, but society as a whole benefits enormously from high uptake.
Why are we thinking about the benefits to society of high uptake of the COVID vaccine differently?
When you have dozens of Muslim countries in the world and not a single one is a wealthy democracy, there is clearly a problem. If you look at the groups most struggling with life in wealthy democracies, they are almost all Muslim. The only way the Islamic world moves past oppression is by rejecting the oppressive parts of the Koran, as most Christians have done for the Bible. But there is currently no sign of that happening, as literalism is still accepted in every form of Islam with any serious presence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/06/us/ron-desantis-florida-covid.html