On the subject of women's rights, should we be friends and allies of the Saudi regime?
How universal are human rights? Or are human rights just colonialism?
Answer that one, one side of paper, double spaced, please.
On the other side, a definite statement of the nature of Truth, while you are at, please.
""Archaeology is the search for FACT ... not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall. So forget any ideas you've got about lost cities, exotic travel, and digging up the world. We do not follow maps to buried treasure, and "X" never, ever, marks the spot. Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library." - Indiana Jones.
On the subject of women's rights, should we be friends and allies of the Saudi regime?
How universal are human rights? Or are human rights just colonialism?
Answer that one, one side of paper, double spaced, please.
On the other side, a definite statement of the nature of Truth, while you are at, please.
In the middle east of the 1960's, many people were absolutely convinced that these changes towards human rights were universal and would last forever. The changes of history are extraordinary.
Speaking as a(n I hope) more-or-less centrist Tory member, my perspective is that HYUFD is on the right wing end of the party in various areas - I wouldn't want policy in those areas being set by people who think like him, but he's just about within the range of reasonable opinions available. In other words, his views are useful to have in arriving at a compromise position that most people can accept, but mostly as an anchoring point. Like how if the fuel warning light on your car goes on then you should probably refill the tank at some point soon.
I envy the SNP, whose entire membership - if the small sample of views expressed on here is representative - consists almost entirely of extremists, thus ensuring the lunacy they come up with can be more easily mistaken for moderacy.
On the subject of women's rights, should we be friends and allies of the Saudi regime?
Yes. Things there are (slowly) opening up, and Western support will be important in keeping the mad mullahs in their boxes. For all his faults, MBS is aware of the need to change, and their diversification of the economy away from oil necessarily involves becoming more ‘western’ in outlook.
On the subject of women's rights, should we be friends and allies of the Saudi regime?
How universal are human rights? Or are human rights just colonialism?
Answer that one, one side of paper, double spaced, please.
On the other side, a definite statement of the nature of Truth, while you are at, please.
In the middle east of the 1960's, many people were absolutely convinced that the changes towards these rights were universal and would last forever. The changes of history are extraordinary.
On the subject of women's rights, should we be friends and allies of the Saudi regime?
How universal are human rights? Or are human rights just colonialism?
Answer that one, one side of paper, double spaced, please.
On the other side, a definite statement of the nature of Truth, while you are at, please.
""Archaeology is the search for FACT ... not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall. So forget any ideas you've got about lost cities, exotic travel, and digging up the world. We do not follow maps to buried treasure, and "X" never, ever, marks the spot. Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library." - Indiana Jones.
Apart from he actually found an item under a slab marked with a bloody great X...
I have, of course, the ultimately revealed Truth. God told me, himself. So all I need to do now.....
On the subject of women's rights, should we be friends and allies of the Saudi regime?
How universal are human rights? Or are human rights just colonialism?
Answer that one, one side of paper, double spaced, please.
On the other side, a definite statement of the nature of Truth, while you are at, please.
In the middle east of the 1960's, many people were absolutely convinced that the changes towards these rights were universal and would last forever. The changes of history are extraordinary.
Remind us about the 'Arab Spring", please. Sadly.
The "Arab" Spring was exactly about the people wanting a government more representative of their wishes. This was not a desire for liberal, secular, social democracy.
On the subject of women's rights, should we be friends and allies of the Saudi regime?
How universal are human rights? Or are human rights just colonialism?
Answer that one, one side of paper, double spaced, please.
On the other side, a definite statement of the nature of Truth, while you are at, please.
In the middle east of the 1960's, many people were absolutely convinced that the changes towards these rights were universal and would last forever. The changes of history are extraordinary.
Remind us about the 'Arab Spring", please. Sadly.
The Arab Spring I find interesting. The suffering and failure was terrible, but it also seems a sort of "first attempt" at something. Many metropolitan intellectuals in the arab world were in denial about how far political-religious ideology has been solidifed since the 1980s, but I have the sense it will happen again in some way, with fewer delusions and better awareness this time around.
Stop the War along with their usual sensible suggestions.....
The British government should take a lead in offering a refugee programme and reparations to rebuild Afghanistan, an act which would go a great deal further in advancing the rights of the Afghan people, women in particular, than continued military or economic intervention in the fate of the Afghanistan.
Reperations to a bunch of evil scumbags that carry out stonings, mutilations, amputations, public executions, forced marriages, raping and all round oppression of rights and freedoms of its populace.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Pope Francis 'wants to hold Mass in Scotland' during COP26 summit in Glasgow
The report quotes a source saying the Pope would like to say a Mass for Scots.
“It would have to fit in with his address to the conference and his meetings with the bishops. There is some doubt about whether it can be fitted in, but the Pope says Mass every day and would like to say a Mass for the people of Scotland.“
Why is that news/controversial? I’m sure there will be some logistics in making it COVID compliant but that’s it
Well, it’s not controversial (does absolutely everything we discuss on here have to be controversial?), but it is most certainly news! Papal visits are extremely rare and have historically been extremely popular events.
There have only ever been two papal visits to Scotland:
5th century: conversion of Scotland to Christianity begins 1982 papal visit 2010 papal visit 2021 papal visit
So, yes Charles, this is news! (Average is about one visit per 500 years.)
The 1982 visit is imprinted on my childhood memory. It was immense.
Percentage wise there are more Catholics in Scotland than England, 16% of the population to 10%, so it makes sense for the Pope to go. Scotland is the second most Catholic part of the British isles after Ireland.
Of course the last Queen of Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots was a Catholic still even when her cousin Elizabeth 1st was a Protestant Queen of England
'With some HY posts one doesn’t really know where to start. I think his strategy is to suck the will to live out of his opponents.
If we ignore the fact that Scotland currently has a queen, Elizabeth I, then the last queen of an independent Scotland was not Mary I (1542-1567), but Anne (reign 1702-1714).
And of course Mary, also briefly Queen of France, was a Catholic whereas Elisabeth was a Protestant. The English Reformation was in 1532-34 whereas the Scottish Reformation was much later, 1557-60.
And the papal visit has zilch to do with how many catholics a country has. The pope visits places where fractions of a percent are catholic and also the opposite extreme.'
Anne was Queen of England and Scotland, does not count. Mary Queen of Scots was Queen of Scotland alone. I have also not noticed Elizabeth 1st rising from the dead to take the place of our current Queen Elizabeth IInd?
The Pope obviously makes more visits to majority Catholic areas, hence he makes far more visits to Ireland, Latin America, Poland and the Philippines than he does to Northern Ireland, the USA, India and Japan
It would certainly save us the bother. Is that boy quite right in the head?
Just another typical Tory party member.
But is he really? He actually comes across as atypical. A lot of other Tories on here find him infuriating. He is certainly doing his party’s cause no good.
My viewpoint is that if you are happy to be a member of a party he is a member of, at some level BigG and other Tory party members support or at least accept his viewpoint.
I absolutely do not accept @HYUFD views and I think that is clear in my postings
Yet you are a member of the same political party he is.
A party in Government and whose home secretary was refusing to allow Afghans (who had previously been invited) to come here from Friday until publicly embarrassed on Sunday evening..
I can sympathise with the notion that other parties are not any better or someone they could vote for. But that is entirely different to providing direct support for a party by being a member. If you are a member you are explicitly a supporter and are associating yourself with it.
It is hard to leave something you have been part of a long time and feel invested into. But when the party and your views diverge that much you have to leave if you want to be able to look yourself in the mirror and feel ok. Have to assume that Big_G feels ok staying a member and that means supporting the party and the government despite protestations to the contrary.
Agreed.
That’s why I left my Swedish political party in 2018. I didn’t walk off in a huff or anything, I just didn’t renew my membership. Lots of things had changed, both nationally and locally, and I just wasn’t comfortable any more. I still might vote for them, but probably not. In fact I haven’t really got a clue who I’m voting for next year. For the first time in my life I am a floating voter! Feels both great and disconcerting.
184-8 now! (Net figure).
Used to be LD, then voted for Labour candidates under Blair whom I knew and of whom I thought well. Had met, and didn't like, the Tories in all cases. Now, last Co. Council, Green, on same basis.
I might vote Green too next time. The few I’ve met are lovely people, and I really liked a green MEP who I think lost her seat last time. Not over-keen on some of their policies, but I can say that about every other party too. They do have terribly weak leaders though.
I’m quite keen on the Centre Party too. Like the leader Annie Lööf.
I still might vote for my old party the Moderates. That’s who most of my friends, family and neighbours seem to back, and it would definitely be best for my wallet.
Liberals are gonna be below 4% threshold, so I won’t be wasting a vote on them.
I like the Christian Democrat leader, and the local representatives, but I think I’m too socially liberal for them.
Left Party. No.
Sweden Democrats. No. No.
Social Democrats. Wow! That’s the biggie! Could I do it? Do you know, I think I could! Amazing for me.
Likelihood: Green 35% Centre 35% Moderates 20% Christian Democrats 5% Social Democrats 2% Abstain 3%
Why did ATC clear that C-17 for take-off when the runway wasn't secured?
You are assuming that was an option. As opposed to getting the plane off the ground because it was being mobbed.
Also, they're STOL - don't need the whole runway (obviously so in this case). So the relevant bit might have been secure at the relevant time, stowaways apart.
Speaking as a(n I hope) more-or-less centrist Tory member, my perspective is that HYUFD is on the right wing end of the party in various areas - I wouldn't want policy in those areas being set by people who think like him, but he's just about within the range of reasonable opinions available. In other words, his views are useful to have in arriving at a compromise position that most people can accept, but mostly as an anchoring point. Like how if the fuel warning light on your car goes on then you should probably refill the tank at some point soon.
I envy the SNP, whose entire membership - if the small sample of views expressed on here is representative - consists almost entirely of extremists, thus ensuring the lunacy they come up with can be more easily mistaken for moderacy.
I don't think I would put HUYFD on the right of the Conservative party. He has never shown any type of bigoted views at all as far as I can remember which one might expect from some of the more extreme members and he does seem very keen on Govt interference in peoples lives where he thinks that necessary, quite a lot, which I think is a trait of socialism (Govt knows best).
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
The Afghans have a history of rising up and forming resistance groups against regimes and occupations they dislike. Surely when they tire of the Taliban, the Afghan people will likewise form resistance groups?
Why did ATC clear that C-17 for take-off when the runway wasn't secured?
You are assuming that was an option. As opposed to getting the plane off the ground because it was being mobbed.
Sadly, there’s a war going on.
Having hundreds of people running around the airport looking for planes to jump on isn’t going to end well though. They need to send security, even if it’s a couple of Humvees and using the fire truck as a foam cannon.
Very sadly, the conclusion I draw from Afghanistan (and Assad's grip on Syria, and Putin's hegemony in Russia, etc., etc) is that brutality, or the credible threat of brutality, is a pretty good way of securing and retaining power in the "non-West". All you have to do is be prepared to raise the ante if challenged, and have the military/police means at your disposal. The bad un's are becoming increasingly convinced that they don't have to worry about a day of reckoning in the future.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
Why risk death multiple times to defeat the Taliban just to spend the rest of your life creating a functional society piece by piece, when you can risk death once to hop on a plane and live the rest of your life in the West? See also: Syria, Libya.
Very sadly, the conclusion I draw from Afghanistan (and Assad's grip on Syria, and Putin's hegemony in Russia, etc., etc) is that brutality, or the credible threat of brutality, is a pretty good way of securing and retaining power in the "non-West". All you have to do is be prepared to raise the ante if challenged, and have the military/police means at your disposal. The bad un's are becoming increasingly convinced that they don't have to worry about a day of reckoning in the future.
What you DON'T want to lose is the support of the military and or police.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
Why risk death multiple times to defeat the Taliban just to spend the rest of your life creating a functional society piece by piece, when you can risk death once to hop on a plane and live the rest of your life in the West?
Because climbing on the wheels of a plane is CERTAIN death
If you fight the Taliban you have a chance of surviving, if enough of you fight you have a very good chance of winning
On the subject of women's rights, should we be friends and allies of the Saudi regime?
How universal are human rights? Or are human rights just colonialism?
Answer that one, one side of paper, double spaced, please.
On the other side, a definite statement of the nature of Truth, while you are at, please.
To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Terrific @Cyclefree header here. Skillful (yes, I know, but I like this spelling) weave of lots of different issues into one coherent piece. Really effective.
Perhaps the best part about it is there's no attempt to shoehorn in an agenda. This is difficult to avoid (I can't manage it as you're about to find out) since there are so many choose from. Anti-US, Anti-Muslim, Anti-Johnson, Anti-Trump, or the one quite popular on here, the fanciful notion that this long inevitable outcome of the Taliban resuming control of Afghanistan after America lost its appetite for prolonged involvement is a 'Fall of Saigon' equivalent that's all down to Joe Biden and will define and doom his presidency. That's a pile of manure being heaped up by people who haven't yet gotten over their disappointment at his beating Donald Trump last November and are hoping for a triumphant return for their man. Sure, they won't admit this, but Trump is the ultimate Guilty Pleasure.
Me, I'm the opposite. Biden prevented a 2nd Trump term, others might have lost to him, and this imo is a positive of such mammoth proportions that it'd take far more than this bungled final pullout of Afghanistan to move him into net debit, or anywhere close.
As to a practical response, after we've squeezed all the hot air and crocodile tears and virtue/vice signalling out of our system, I agree we should be taking in a good number of the Afghans who manage to flee. I'd be disappointed not to see majority support for this at Westminster. The public, especially on the Brexiter side of life, I'm not so sure about. They have their Brexit but immigration remains stubbornly at the top of their concerns. Can this be sold as a special case? I'd hope so but I don't know.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
Why risk death multiple times to defeat the Taliban just to spend the rest of your life creating a functional society piece by piece, when you can risk death once to hop on a plane and live the rest of your life in the West?
Because climbing on the wheels of a plane is CERTAIN death
"Justin has embraced a new life in Liverpool and is slowly building up a new circle of friends while harbouring hopes of pursuing a musical career.
“I find it is easy here, because the people here are gentle and nice,” he tells documentary-maker Rich Bentley in the film, after they first meet on a street corner in Liverpool. "
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
Twitter is full of thousands of posts from Pakistan approvingly quoting Mullah Omar from 2001 , today.
"“God has promised us victory, and Bush has promised us defeat. The world will see which promise is more truthful”
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
Why risk death multiple times to defeat the Taliban just to spend the rest of your life creating a functional society piece by piece, when you can risk death once to hop on a plane and live the rest of your life in the West?
Because climbing on the wheels of a plane is CERTAIN death
If you fight the Taliban you have a chance of surviving, if enough of you fight you have a very good chance of winning
But there isn't enough of them to fight.
And the consequence of fighting is that your family and friends will find themselves dead alongside you very quickly.
The Taliban know that their reputation of unproportionate revenge works...
Re voting There are no circumstances whatsoever that I would ever vote Labour. I have voted Lib Dem locally on a few occasions.i don't like Boris nor the direct of travel, but its the least worse option. Many people are like me . If I lived in Scotland, I would never vote Labour or Nat.
To accuse somone of donkey and rosette as Stuart Dickson has is just lazy thinking
And so it begins... Why won't the government take refugees from Afghanistan? Because they're all potential terrorists.
And it's a fair point. It is the duty of the men to stand up and be counted. They haven't.
Indeed, the issue is counted for what purpose? To prop up a corrupt government they don't care about? We should have used Egypt as a model for Afghanistan, prop up a mildly religious autocrat for enough years that he can get placemen in charge. If it works then it's a slightly Islamic country that is pretty safe. If it doesn't we end up where we are now. The idea of a free, secular and democratic Afghanistan was a joke and was never going to work.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
Twitter is full of thousands of posts from Pakistan quoting Mullah Omar in 2001 today.
"“God has promised us victory, and Bush has promised us defeat. The world will see which promise is more truthful”
-Mullah Omar""
Bush didn't lose this war, Trump and Biden-Harris did
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
Why risk death multiple times to defeat the Taliban just to spend the rest of your life creating a functional society piece by piece, when you can risk death once to hop on a plane and live the rest of your life in the West?
Because climbing on the wheels of a plane is CERTAIN death
"Justin has embraced a new life in Liverpool and is slowly building up a new circle of friends while harbouring hopes of pursuing a musical career.
“I find it is easy here, because the people here are gentle and nice,” he tells documentary-maker Rich Bentley in the film, after they first meet on a street corner in Liverpool. "
Fair enough. I should have stuck to my original formulation of ‘near certain death’ rather than ‘certain death’
The chances of surviving an airline trip hanging on the wheel must be 0.01% or something mad. Fighting the Taliban in some form must give you a better chance of living, even if it is also slender
As the blame game erupts we should perhaps look at events in Afghanistan in the context of the last 18 months.
It is no surprise that our rule collapsed immediately when we do not follow at home the principles we preach abroad.
Pandemic? we adopt the Chinese Communist Party lock down solution. We excoriate governments like Sweden, Florida and Texas that attempted to adopt an approach that at least paid some lip service to the principles of freedom we apparently hold dear. Even now there are severe limits on travel and our young people are being browbeaten and threatened by a government that is supposedly liberal and democratic. At one point you could be fined for hugging your own grandparents or meeting with five other people.
Education of girls? Education is so important to us we effectively destroyed the education of our girls and boys for half a generation, by closing schools for months and giving pupils meaningless qualifications to pretend we still have a proper working system.
In the last 18 months the scales must have fallen from the eyes of everyone we are attempting to influence and protect abroad.
The West is now nothing. It stand for nothing and it believes in nothing. It is an empty and cowardly vessel of venality and posturing.
Speaking as a(n I hope) more-or-less centrist Tory member, my perspective is that HYUFD is on the right wing end of the party in various areas - I wouldn't want policy in those areas being set by people who think like him, but he's just about within the range of reasonable opinions available. In other words, his views are useful to have in arriving at a compromise position that most people can accept, but mostly as an anchoring point. Like how if the fuel warning light on your car goes on then you should probably refill the tank at some point soon.
I envy the SNP, whose entire membership - if the small sample of views expressed on here is representative - consists almost entirely of extremists, thus ensuring the lunacy they come up with can be more easily mistaken for moderacy.
I'll put you down for the Muslim Brotherhood wing of the Tory party, old school but still a fan of most the same shitey policies as your fellow faithful and will go along with any old crap from whoever is in charge.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
It has been suggested that a battalion of women would have been better
Pope Francis 'wants to hold Mass in Scotland' during COP26 summit in Glasgow
The report quotes a source saying the Pope would like to say a Mass for Scots.
“It would have to fit in with his address to the conference and his meetings with the bishops. There is some doubt about whether it can be fitted in, but the Pope says Mass every day and would like to say a Mass for the people of Scotland.“
Why is that news/controversial? I’m sure there will be some logistics in making it COVID compliant but that’s it
Well, it’s not controversial (does absolutely everything we discuss on here have to be controversial?), but it is most certainly news! Papal visits are extremely rare and have historically been extremely popular events.
There have only ever been two papal visits to Scotland:
5th century: conversion of Scotland to Christianity begins 1982 papal visit 2010 papal visit 2021 papal visit
So, yes Charles, this is news! (Average is about one visit per 500 years.)
The 1982 visit is imprinted on my childhood memory. It was immense.
Percentage wise there are more Catholics in Scotland than England, 16% of the population to 10%, so it makes sense for the Pope to go. Scotland is the second most Catholic part of the British isles after Ireland.
Of course the last Queen of Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots was a Catholic still even when her cousin Elizabeth 1st was a Protestant Queen of England
'With some HY posts one doesn’t really know where to start. I think his strategy is to suck the will to live out of his opponents.
If we ignore the fact that Scotland currently has a queen, Elizabeth I, then the last queen of an independent Scotland was not Mary I (1542-1567), but Anne (reign 1702-1714).
And of course Mary, also briefly Queen of France, was a Catholic whereas Elisabeth was a Protestant. The English Reformation was in 1532-34 whereas the Scottish Reformation was much later, 1557-60.
And the papal visit has zilch to do with how many catholics a country has. The pope visits places where fractions of a percent are catholic and also the opposite extreme.'
Anne was Queen of England and Scotland, does not count. Mary Queen of Scots was Queen of Scotland alone. I have also not noticed Elizabeth 1st rising from the dead to take the place of our current Queen Elizabeth IInd?
The Pope obviously makes more visits to majority Catholic areas, hence he makes far more visits to Ireland, Latin America, Poland and the Philippines than he does to Northern Ireland, the USA, India and Japan
It would certainly save us the bother. Is that boy quite right in the head?
Just another typical Tory party member.
No he is not - he is in a league of his own
Says the man who voted for New Labour twice.
You are not even a loyal and consistent Tory voter, you have voted for Labour before, I have never voted Labour in a general election. '
So your sole ideology is party loyalty. I'm not sure that's something to be particularly proud of. Very few would argue that Tory policy has maintained any sort of consistency over the years.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
It has been suggested that a battalion of women would have been better
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
It has been suggested that a battalion of women would have been better
Like the brilliant, brave Kurdish women who famously beat the evil fuckers of ISIS
The Kurds won that war because they have a mighty self belief, their nationhood, which is just as strong as any radical Islamic caliphate crap
That’s what the Afghans need. Self belief. Or about 30,000 Kurdish women with decent guns
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
Why risk death multiple times to defeat the Taliban just to spend the rest of your life creating a functional society piece by piece, when you can risk death once to hop on a plane and live the rest of your life in the West?
Because climbing on the wheels of a plane is CERTAIN death
"Justin has embraced a new life in Liverpool and is slowly building up a new circle of friends while harbouring hopes of pursuing a musical career.
“I find it is easy here, because the people here are gentle and nice,” he tells documentary-maker Rich Bentley in the film, after they first meet on a street corner in Liverpool. "
Fair enough. I should have stuck to my original formulation of ‘near certain death’ rather than ‘certain death’
The chances of surviving an airline trip hanging on the wheel must be 0.01% or something mad. Fighting the Taliban in some form must give you a better chance of living, even if it is also slender
Plus, pride
I do believe religion is a factor
There’s always the exception that proves the rule. Hundreds of people manage to kill themselves around aircraft every year, and maybe one manages to survive the ordeal - hence someone making a film about it!
Re voting There are no circumstances whatsoever that I would ever vote Labour. I have voted Lib Dem locally on a few occasions.i don't like Boris nor the direct of travel, but its the least worse option. Many people are like me . If I lived in Scotland, I would never vote Labour or Nat.
To accuse somone of donkey and rosette as Stuart Dickson has is just lazy thinking
So, in an SNP/Labour marginal constituency you would vote Conservative?
Pope Francis 'wants to hold Mass in Scotland' during COP26 summit in Glasgow
The report quotes a source saying the Pope would like to say a Mass for Scots.
“It would have to fit in with his address to the conference and his meetings with the bishops. There is some doubt about whether it can be fitted in, but the Pope says Mass every day and would like to say a Mass for the people of Scotland.“
Why is that news/controversial? I’m sure there will be some logistics in making it COVID compliant but that’s it
Well, it’s not controversial (does absolutely everything we discuss on here have to be controversial?), but it is most certainly news! Papal visits are extremely rare and have historically been extremely popular events.
There have only ever been two papal visits to Scotland:
5th century: conversion of Scotland to Christianity begins 1982 papal visit 2010 papal visit 2021 papal visit
So, yes Charles, this is news! (Average is about one visit per 500 years.)
The 1982 visit is imprinted on my childhood memory. It was immense.
Percentage wise there are more Catholics in Scotland than England, 16% of the population to 10%, so it makes sense for the Pope to go. Scotland is the second most Catholic part of the British isles after Ireland.
Of course the last Queen of Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots was a Catholic still even when her cousin Elizabeth 1st was a Protestant Queen of England
'With some HY posts one doesn’t really know where to start. I think his strategy is to suck the will to live out of his opponents.
If we ignore the fact that Scotland currently has a queen, Elizabeth I, then the last queen of an independent Scotland was not Mary I (1542-1567), but Anne (reign 1702-1714).
And of course Mary, also briefly Queen of France, was a Catholic whereas Elisabeth was a Protestant. The English Reformation was in 1532-34 whereas the Scottish Reformation was much later, 1557-60.
And the papal visit has zilch to do with how many catholics a country has. The pope visits places where fractions of a percent are catholic and also the opposite extreme.'
Anne was Queen of England and Scotland, does not count. Mary Queen of Scots was Queen of Scotland alone. I have also not noticed Elizabeth 1st rising from the dead to take the place of our current Queen Elizabeth IInd?
The Pope obviously makes more visits to majority Catholic areas, hence he makes far more visits to Ireland, Latin America, Poland and the Philippines than he does to Northern Ireland, the USA, India and Japan
It would certainly save us the bother. Is that boy quite right in the head?
Just another typical Tory party member.
No he is not - he is in a league of his own
Says the man who voted for New Labour twice.
You are not even a loyal and consistent Tory voter, you have voted for Labour before, I have never voted Labour in a general election. '
So your sole ideology is party loyalty. I'm not sure that's something to be particularly proud of. Very few would argue that Tory policy has maintained any sort of consistency over the years.
The modern iteration of the Tory party:
- English Nationalist, not One Nation - Revolutionary, not Conservative - High tax/high debt, not Friedman - State control, not free market - Social engineering, not conservatism - Nasty, not paternal - Reactive, not confident - Populist, not principled - Clown, not competence - Degenerate, not moral - Cash for pals, not good governance - Fiscal spaffing, not fiscal moderation - Fuck business, not pro business - Proroguing parliament, not the rule of law - Lying to the monarch, not respecting institutions - Authoritarian, not liberal - Corruption, not ethics
The only constant is the blue rosettes, “greed is good” and jingoism.
As the blame game erupts we should perhaps look at events in Afghanistan in the context of the last 18 months.
It is no surprise that our rule collapsed immediately when we do not follow at home the principles we preach abroad.
Pandemic? we adopt the Chinese Communist Party lock down solution. We excoriate governments like Sweden, Florida and Texas that attempted to adopt an approach that at least paid some lip service to the principles of freedom we apparently hold dear. Even now there are severe limits on travel and our young people are being browbeaten and threatened by a government that is supposedly liberal and democratic. At one point you could be fined for hugging your own grandparents or meeting with five other people.
Education of girls? Education is so important to us we effectively destroyed the education of our girls and boys for half a generation, by closing schools for months and giving pupils meaningless qualifications to pretend we still have a proper working system.
In the last 18 months the scales must have fallen from the eyes of everyone we are attempting to influence and protect abroad.
The West is now nothing. It stand for nothing and it believes in nothing. It is an empty and cowardly vessel of venality and posturing.
The fall of Kabul to the Taliban viewed through the Anti-Lockdown lens.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
‘UK defence sources said it was self-evident that Afghan government forces were faring less well than the CIA and Biden had predicted only months ago.
‘Wallace revealed that once other Nato allies – understood to include France and Germany – had rejected forming a coalition of the willing without the US, the UK concluded that it could not go it alone.’
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
In Peru, the government empowered the local militias - who fought for their local clans.
So when the Shining Path murdered a local mayor and then destroyed her body with dynamite to prevent a traditional open casket funeral, the locals responded.
They caught one of the terrorists. Tied him to a chair, with a spiral of fuse (the old fashioned during kind) around it. And let him watch as the fuse burnt round him. Closer and closer. Until it reached the dynamite they had put under the chair.
Afghanistan is in meltdown, and what is trending on the tw@tter machine...#ItWasAScam...all about how Jezza / Labour under Corbyn didn't have any issues with antisemitism.
Afghanistan is in meltdown, and what is trending on the tw@tter machine...#ItWasAScam...all about how Jezza / Labour under Corbyn didn't have any issues with antisemitism.
‘UK defence sources said it was self-evident that Afghan government forces were faring less well than the CIA and Biden had predicted only months ago.
‘Wallace revealed that once other Nato allies – understood to include France and Germany – had rejected forming a coalition of the willing without the US, the UK concluded that it could not go it alone.’
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
Maybe they did fight. But remember that in a lot of cases it was not that the Taliban won by fighting but because local leaders surrendered to them. The Taliban were going to be around. The Americans were not.
Also Islam is the issue. If that is what you believe and the Taliban say that they are implementing the laws of Allah, by fighting that you are marking yourself out as an unbeliever, an outcast. Who is going to do that? That is why it is very hard indeed for democracy to take root in societies in which religion is such a dominant overwhelming force, possibly the only thing that all the different tribes in Afghanistan have in common.
If we understood our own history better, we would realise how hard, long and painful the transition from an essentially religious society to one which isn't and one in which democracy can flourish is. And that was with some advantages in our history and religion which Islamic societies don't even have.
Democracy and the instincts and behaviours which go with it and which are essential to its survival need to come from within a society. It didn't happen in 20 years in any country in the West. Why did we think it would happen in 20 years in Afghanistan?
‘UK defence sources said it was self-evident that Afghan government forces were faring less well than the CIA and Biden had predicted only months ago.
‘Wallace revealed that once other Nato allies – understood to include France and Germany – had rejected forming a coalition of the willing without the US, the UK concluded that it could not go it alone.’
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
In Peru, the government empowered the local militias - who fought for their local clans.
So when the Shining Path murdered a local mayor and then destroyed her body with dynamite to prevent a traditional open casket funeral, the locals responded.
They caught one of the terrorists. Tied him to a chair, with a spiral of fuse (the old fashioned during kind) around it. And let him watch as the fuse burnt round him. Closer and closer. Until it reached the dynamite they had put under the chair.
Their will was stronger than the Shining Path.
Aside from the torture porn, how does that work with Taliban or other Islamist fanatics who believe they will literally go straight to heaven if killed defending Islam?
Also just wanted to add my support for giving visas to those who were employed by the British army in Afghanistan. I am pretty hawkish on immigration but this is a clear moral duty.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
Maybe they did fight. But remember that in a lot of cases it was not that the Taliban won by fighting but because local leaders surrendered to them. The Taliban were going to be around. The Americans were not.
Also Islam is the issue. If that is what you believe and the Taliban say that they are implementing the laws of Allah, by fighting that you are marking yourself out as an unbeliever, an outcast. Who is going to do that? That is why it is very hard indeed for democracy to take root in societies in which religion is such a dominant overwhelming force, possibly the only thing that all the different tribes in Afghanistan have in common.
If we understood our own history better, we would realise how hard, long and painful the transition from an essentially religious society to one which isn't and one in which democracy can flourish is. And that was with some advantages in our history and religion which Islamic societies don't even have.
Democracy and the instincts and behaviours which go with it and which are essential to its survival need to come from within a society. It didn't happen in 20 years in any country in the West. Why did we think it would happen in 20 years in Afghanistan?
It happened in 20 years in Japan. But then Japan was an educated, modern society even if it was autocratic. And Emperor worship was not as all consuming as Islam as a religion.
The Afghan Air Force seems to have been non-existent.
The AAF were 100% reliant on foreign contractors for technical support who all left months ago. All attempts at building Afghan capability in this area failed miserably - the unofficial motto of RAF Cosford where some of them were trained was 'Training Tomorrow's Taliban Today'.
The ANA had never the experience of fighting without CAS hence they couldn't hold the line when they didn't have it.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
Why risk death multiple times to defeat the Taliban just to spend the rest of your life creating a functional society piece by piece, when you can risk death once to hop on a plane and live the rest of your life in the West?
Because climbing on the wheels of a plane is CERTAIN death
If you fight the Taliban you have a chance of surviving, if enough of you fight you have a very good chance of winning
But there isn't enough of them to fight.
And the consequence of fighting is that your family and friends will find themselves dead alongside you very quickly.
The Taliban know that their reputation of unproportionate revenge works...
Their targeted assassination of effective local leaders has quite a lot to do with it, too.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
Maybe they did fight. But remember that in a lot of cases it was not that the Taliban won by fighting but because local leaders surrendered to them. The Taliban were going to be around. The Americans were not.
Also Islam is the issue. If that is what you believe and the Taliban say that they are implementing the laws of Allah, by fighting that you are marking yourself out as an unbeliever, an outcast. Who is going to do that? That is why it is very hard indeed for democracy to take root in societies in which religion is such a dominant overwhelming force, possibly the only thing that all the different tribes in Afghanistan have in common.
If we understood our own history better, we would realise how hard, long and painful the transition from an essentially religious society to one which isn't and one in which democracy can flourish is. And that was with some advantages in our history and religion which Islamic societies don't even have.
Democracy and the instincts and behaviours which go with it and which are essential to its survival need to come from within a society. It didn't happen in 20 years in any country in the West. Why did we think it would happen in 20 years in Afghanistan?
It happened in 20 years in Japan. But then Japan was an educated, modern society even if it was autocratic. And Emperor worship was not as all consuming as Islam as a religion.
Not sure about the last. Remember, the Emperor himself did order the Japanese to surrender and to get on with things.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
Pope Francis 'wants to hold Mass in Scotland' during COP26 summit in Glasgow
The report quotes a source saying the Pope would like to say a Mass for Scots.
“It would have to fit in with his address to the conference and his meetings with the bishops. There is some doubt about whether it can be fitted in, but the Pope says Mass every day and would like to say a Mass for the people of Scotland.“
Why is that news/controversial? I’m sure there will be some logistics in making it COVID compliant but that’s it
Well, it’s not controversial (does absolutely everything we discuss on here have to be controversial?), but it is most certainly news! Papal visits are extremely rare and have historically been extremely popular events.
There have only ever been two papal visits to Scotland:
5th century: conversion of Scotland to Christianity begins 1982 papal visit 2010 papal visit 2021 papal visit
So, yes Charles, this is news! (Average is about one visit per 500 years.)
The 1982 visit is imprinted on my childhood memory. It was immense.
Percentage wise there are more Catholics in Scotland than England, 16% of the population to 10%, so it makes sense for the Pope to go. Scotland is the second most Catholic part of the British isles after Ireland.
Of course the last Queen of Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots was a Catholic still even when her cousin Elizabeth 1st was a Protestant Queen of England
'With some HY posts one doesn’t really know where to start. I think his strategy is to suck the will to live out of his opponents.
If we ignore the fact that Scotland currently has a queen, Elizabeth I, then the last queen of an independent Scotland was not Mary I (1542-1567), but Anne (reign 1702-1714).
And of course Mary, also briefly Queen of France, was a Catholic whereas Elisabeth was a Protestant. The English Reformation was in 1532-34 whereas the Scottish Reformation was much later, 1557-60.
And the papal visit has zilch to do with how many catholics a country has. The pope visits places where fractions of a percent are catholic and also the opposite extreme.'
Anne was Queen of England and Scotland, does not count. Mary Queen of Scots was Queen of Scotland alone. I have also not noticed Elizabeth 1st rising from the dead to take the place of our current Queen Elizabeth IInd?
The Pope obviously makes more visits to majority Catholic areas, hence he makes far more visits to Ireland, Latin America, Poland and the Philippines than he does to Northern Ireland, the USA, India and Japan
It would certainly save us the bother. Is that boy quite right in the head?
Just another typical Tory party member.
No he is not - he is in a league of his own
Says the man who voted for New Labour twice.
You are not even a loyal and consistent Tory voter, you have voted for Labour before, I have never voted Labour in a general election. '
So your sole ideology is party loyalty. I'm not sure that's something to be particularly proud of. Very few would argue that Tory policy has maintained any sort of consistency over the years.
The modern iteration of the Tory party:
- English Nationalist, not One Nation - Revolutionary, not Conservative - High tax/high debt, not Friedman - State control, not free market - Social engineering, not conservatism - Nasty, not paternal - Reactive, not confident - Populist, not principled - Clown, not competence - Degenerate, not moral - Cash for pals, not good governance - Fiscal spaffing, not fiscal moderation - Fuck business, not pro business - Proroguing parliament, not the rule of law - Lying to the monarch, not respecting institutions - Authoritarian, not liberal - Corruption, not ethics
The only constant is the blue rosettes, “greed is good” and jingoism.
It is a very good critique of Boris Johnson's Conservatives and is why I am no longer a member of that party. The interesting thing is that almost all of these criticisms may be levelled at the SNP/Alba, except instead of English Nationalism and it's ghastly divisiveness, you have Scottish Nationalism and it's hatred (yes genuine racial hatred for all the protestations) of those south of the border. Yes, the Conservatives may well deserve the title of the nasty party of England, but their nastiness is pretty amateur compared to the folk that put bricks through people's windows that they disagree with.
Very sadly, the conclusion I draw from Afghanistan (and Assad's grip on Syria, and Putin's hegemony in Russia, etc., etc) is that brutality, or the credible threat of brutality, is a pretty good way of securing and retaining power in the "non-West". All you have to do is be prepared to raise the ante if challenged, and have the military/police means at your disposal. The bad un's are becoming increasingly convinced that they don't have to worry about a day of reckoning in the future.
Also true for the Mexican cartels. We need to recognize simultaneously that we can't force a military solution while also that individuals in these countries need the threat of accountability. Drone strikes, with strong efforts to protect civilians, are our friend.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
Maybe they did fight. But remember that in a lot of cases it was not that the Taliban won by fighting but because local leaders surrendered to them. The Taliban were going to be around. The Americans were not.
Also Islam is the issue. If that is what you believe and the Taliban say that they are implementing the laws of Allah, by fighting that you are marking yourself out as an unbeliever, an outcast. Who is going to do that? That is why it is very hard indeed for democracy to take root in societies in which religion is such a dominant overwhelming force, possibly the only thing that all the different tribes in Afghanistan have in common.
If we understood our own history better, we would realise how hard, long and painful the transition from an essentially religious society to one which isn't and one in which democracy can flourish is. And that was with some advantages in our history and religion which Islamic societies don't even have.
Democracy and the instincts and behaviours which go with it and which are essential to its survival need to come from within a society. It didn't happen in 20 years in any country in the West. Why did we think it would happen in 20 years in Afghanistan?
It happened in 20 years in Japan. But then Japan was an educated, modern society even if it was autocratic. And Emperor worship was not as all consuming as Islam as a religion.
Also, crucially, the God-emperor TOLD the Japanese they had to surrender. So they did. Meekly, in the end
One of the turning points in the fight against ISIS was when very influential mullahs from around the Islamic world - in Egypt, Morocco and so on - denounced ISIS as ‘unislamic’. That seriously devalued their brand
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
‘UK defence sources said it was self-evident that Afghan government forces were faring less well than the CIA and Biden had predicted only months ago.
‘Wallace revealed that once other Nato allies – understood to include France and Germany – had rejected forming a coalition of the willing without the US, the UK concluded that it could not go it alone.’
'Biden said as recently as July that there was no chance the Taliban would overrun the country'
Johnson said as recently as July that there was no chance the Taliban would overrun the country
Boris has made a fool of himself. But I do believe, from the words and the demeanor of the UK political and military establishment (even before this debacle) that they thought the rapid withdrawal was an error and they feared the consequences
Ben Wallace actually weeping on LBC does give some credence to that theory
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
Maybe they did fight. But remember that in a lot of cases it was not that the Taliban won by fighting but because local leaders surrendered to them. The Taliban were going to be around. The Americans were not.
Also Islam is the issue. If that is what you believe and the Taliban say that they are implementing the laws of Allah, by fighting that you are marking yourself out as an unbeliever, an outcast. Who is going to do that? That is why it is very hard indeed for democracy to take root in societies in which religion is such a dominant overwhelming force, possibly the only thing that all the different tribes in Afghanistan have in common.
If we understood our own history better, we would realise how hard, long and painful the transition from an essentially religious society to one which isn't and one in which democracy can flourish is. And that was with some advantages in our history and religion which Islamic societies don't even have.
Democracy and the instincts and behaviours which go with it and which are essential to its survival need to come from within a society. It didn't happen in 20 years in any country in the West. Why did we think it would happen in 20 years in Afghanistan?
We can hardly expect democracy and the 'behaviours which go with it' to flourish overseas, when the plain fact is they are withering and dying at home.
Last year there were times when you were banned from seeing your own relatives. Even now you cannot travel without jumping through government hoops, and a copy of the CCP social credit system is planned in the form of vaccine passports. In America, the land of the free, the President is considering banning inter state travel without obeying government diKtat.
The Afghans and others are not stupid. They can see our complete abandonment of our own principles for what it is. Everything we every stood for is an utter sham. It has been for a while, but it has taken the pandemic to expose it. We are no different. Our response to covd shows us for who we are.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
Maybe they did fight. But remember that in a lot of cases it was not that the Taliban won by fighting but because local leaders surrendered to them. The Taliban were going to be around. The Americans were not.
Also Islam is the issue. If that is what you believe and the Taliban say that they are implementing the laws of Allah, by fighting that you are marking yourself out as an unbeliever, an outcast. Who is going to do that? That is why it is very hard indeed for democracy to take root in societies in which religion is such a dominant overwhelming force, possibly the only thing that all the different tribes in Afghanistan have in common.
If we understood our own history better, we would realise how hard, long and painful the transition from an essentially religious society to one which isn't and one in which democracy can flourish is. And that was with some advantages in our history and religion which Islamic societies don't even have.
Democracy and the instincts and behaviours which go with it and which are essential to its survival need to come from within a society. It didn't happen in 20 years in any country in the West. Why did we think it would happen in 20 years in Afghanistan?
It happened in 20 years in Japan. But then Japan was an educated, modern society even if it was autocratic. And Emperor worship was not as all consuming as Islam as a religion.
Takes a long time to Romanise some parts of the empire. If your goal is a rules based global society built around your own moral framework, there will be times and places where you need to leave soldiers for a very very long time.
This feels like it represents the end of the West attempting to ensure a coherent global family of nations built around democracy and friendliness to the West and its value set.
Some people will think that a good thing of course. The moral relativists and the naive.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
In Peru, the government empowered the local militias - who fought for their local clans.
So when the Shining Path murdered a local mayor and then destroyed her body with dynamite to prevent a traditional open casket funeral, the locals responded.
They caught one of the terrorists. Tied him to a chair, with a spiral of fuse (the old fashioned during kind) around it. And let him watch as the fuse burnt round him. Closer and closer. Until it reached the dynamite they had put under the chair.
Their will was stronger than the Shining Path.
Aside from the torture porn, how does that work with Taliban or other Islamist fanatics who believe they will literally go straight to heaven if killed defending Islam?
The point was that the locals in Peru had a belief structure and loyalty that was stronger than the Shining Path. hence their war crimes won vs the Shining Paths version.
The reason the Kurds fought off ISIS & Co. was to do with their possessing such a belief structure and loyalty to a cause. There was a Kurdish joke about being entirely happy that their enemies wanted to give their lives for God.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
I very much do see what the mullahs and the Taliban did as an issue with Islam. But without wishing to derail the thread there are other issues going in the world right now - in this country even - which show that it is not just Muslim men who think that women primarily exist to serve men.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
Again, a problem with bad ideas. The Incel movement is driven by bad ideas. The problem is not "men", most of which in the West support the equality of women. The problem is holders of bad ideas. And that includes the many women who endorse Islamic beliefs about having to cover up almost their entire bodies to be "modest".
Trump started this, but Biden could have delayed or stopped this.
He chose not to and now Afghanistan is back where it was 20 years ago a barbaric regime about to impose its radical beliefs on its people particular on its female population and become once again an Islamic terrorist safe haven.
I refuse to believe that US intelligence, NATO intelligence and the intelligence of its allies didn't see this coming long ago. That the Afghan government and military wasn't up to it despite all the money and resource it was pumping into it.
If Intelligence did fail then people need to be fired, if they did raise it and it was ignored or they did not care then the US government was negligent.
I don't see what we can do beyond making sure the International community including the UK take our share of refugees.
Afghanistan is lost, no going back now and no international pressure will make a jot of difference. That country will have to be monitored like a hawk for terrorism, increased funding if needed to identify the inevitable threats emanating from that country down the line.
This is either the biggest intelligence failure of my lifetime — that is bad intelligence collection — or the ISI have played the Americans to a tee. I'm leaning towards the latter at the moment, things have simply moved too quickly and easily for the Taliban for me to believe that the US was a victim of any kind of systemic failure to collect useful intelligence. In some areas of Afghanistan it's not like a rout has occurred, it's more like a switch was flipped and the Taliban took over.
Somehow the Tories will find a way to blame this disaster on Labour
I don't think anyone's trying, but it wouldn't exactly be hard to blame the party that took us into Afghanistan in the first place, and then failed to withdraw once the original purpose was complete, rather than hanging around playing at nation building with the Americans, for the ultimate collapse of said nation building project.
But, this is clearly on the Americans, and I think everyone is agreed we went into AFghanistan to support our ally, and have withdrawn because we couldn't continue without them.
‘UK defence sources said it was self-evident that Afghan government forces were faring less well than the CIA and Biden had predicted only months ago.
‘Wallace revealed that once other Nato allies – understood to include France and Germany – had rejected forming a coalition of the willing without the US, the UK concluded that it could not go it alone.’
'Biden said as recently as July that there was no chance the Taliban would overrun the country'
Johnson said as recently as July that there was no chance the Taliban would overrun the country
In defence of both these people, it wouldn't have been particularly helpful to the old government trying (futilely, it turned out) to prevent the Taliban overrunning the country if they'd had the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of the UK telling everyone it was going to happen.
"Nothing more clearly indicated what the mullahs thought of women than their early decision to reduce the age of consent to 9. Why do men – especially religious / revolutionary men – feel so threatened by women deciding for themselves what to do with their lives?"
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
Yes, the problem is radical Islam
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
If you think that women are only oppressed or discriminated against by radical Islam, think again.
The issue HERE is primarily radical Islam
I do not deny misogyny is a deeply rooted problem around the world, tho in the west we seem to be sliding into misandry
However broad brush descriptions like yours are not that helpful in situations like this. When it is clear that a radicalized form of Islam is destroying lives and nations just as it has all around this region for decades
ALEX Salmond has claimed Scotland could get rid of Trident on “day one” of independence despite previously accepting it would take years.......
The timetable, which is intended to highlight differences with the SNP’s more gradual approach, is at odds with the one Mr Salmond endorsed while in government.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
Maybe they did fight. But remember that in a lot of cases it was not that the Taliban won by fighting but because local leaders surrendered to them. The Taliban were going to be around. The Americans were not.
Also Islam is the issue. If that is what you believe and the Taliban say that they are implementing the laws of Allah, by fighting that you are marking yourself out as an unbeliever, an outcast. Who is going to do that? That is why it is very hard indeed for democracy to take root in societies in which religion is such a dominant overwhelming force, possibly the only thing that all the different tribes in Afghanistan have in common.
If we understood our own history better, we would realise how hard, long and painful the transition from an essentially religious society to one which isn't and one in which democracy can flourish is. And that was with some advantages in our history and religion which Islamic societies don't even have.
Democracy and the instincts and behaviours which go with it and which are essential to its survival need to come from within a society. It didn't happen in 20 years in any country in the West. Why did we think it would happen in 20 years in Afghanistan?
It happened in 20 years in Japan. But then Japan was an educated, modern society even if it was autocratic. And Emperor worship was not as all consuming as Islam as a religion.
Yes - Japan is an exception. Perhaps an utterly comprehensive defeat is necessary. Also there wasn't an alternative. For many societies in the Islamic world there now is. And we have to admit that it is an attractive one - for at least some of the population.
One has to ask, if these young men are willing to risk near certain death to climb on a fuselage and escape the Taliban, why aren’t they willing to risk death actually fighting the Taliban?
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
Think *unifying* belief. Which the Taliban are selling and the former Kabul government wasn't.
Yes, Islam is also an issue. Radical Islam has them cowed, as well
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
Maybe they did fight. But remember that in a lot of cases it was not that the Taliban won by fighting but because local leaders surrendered to them. The Taliban were going to be around. The Americans were not.
Also Islam is the issue. If that is what you believe and the Taliban say that they are implementing the laws of Allah, by fighting that you are marking yourself out as an unbeliever, an outcast. Who is going to do that? That is why it is very hard indeed for democracy to take root in societies in which religion is such a dominant overwhelming force, possibly the only thing that all the different tribes in Afghanistan have in common.
If we understood our own history better, we would realise how hard, long and painful the transition from an essentially religious society to one which isn't and one in which democracy can flourish is. And that was with some advantages in our history and religion which Islamic societies don't even have.
Democracy and the instincts and behaviours which go with it and which are essential to its survival need to come from within a society. It didn't happen in 20 years in any country in the West. Why did we think it would happen in 20 years in Afghanistan?
It happened in 20 years in Japan. But then Japan was an educated, modern society even if it was autocratic. And Emperor worship was not as all consuming as Islam as a religion.
Takes a long time to Romanise some parts of the empire. If your goal is a rules based global society built around your own moral framework, there will be times and places where you need to leave soldiers for a very very long time.
This feels like it represents the end of the West attempting to ensure a coherent global family of nations built around democracy and friendliness to the West and its value set.
Some people will think that a good thing of course. The moral relativists and the naive.
This is madness. Afghanistan is a backwards tribal armpit. If our desire is to spread democracy and Western values, the $800 odd billion we have sunk into Afghanistan over two decades could have about a thousand times more bang for the buck elsewhere.
Comments
Answer that one, one side of paper, double spaced, please.
On the other side, a definite statement of the nature of Truth, while you are at, please.
‘Insane. Don’t have any other words.
The Kabul Airport.’
https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1427202316512514050?s=21
I envy the SNP, whose entire membership - if the small sample of views expressed on here is representative - consists almost entirely of extremists, thus ensuring the lunacy they come up with can be more easily mistaken for moderacy.
I have, of course, the ultimately revealed Truth. God told me, himself. So all I need to do now.....
Except in Lebanon, probably.
https://twitter.com/up2date40096701/status/1427221005186052097?s=21
This is not nearly enough, really disappointing from Labour.
Reperations to a bunch of evil scumbags that carry out stonings, mutilations, amputations, public executions, forced marriages, raping and all round oppression of rights and freedoms of its populace.
Yeah f*cking right, give them millions...
I don’t believe they are all cowards. There is some psychological problem. First, the Taliban has them terrorized. Like Isis did in Syria and Iraq. Second, perhaps they have been infantilised by western aid and defence. They’ve forgotten how to do it for themselves
They surely outnumber the Taliban looking at these scenes. They need one inspiring local leader to say, fuck this, let’s turn and fight and live or die like men
I’m quite keen on the Centre Party too. Like the leader Annie Lööf.
I still might vote for my old party the Moderates. That’s who most of my friends, family and neighbours seem to back, and it would definitely be best for my wallet.
Liberals are gonna be below 4% threshold, so I won’t be wasting a vote on them.
I like the Christian Democrat leader, and the local representatives, but I think I’m too socially liberal for them.
Left Party. No.
Sweden Democrats. No. No.
Social Democrats. Wow! That’s the biggie! Could I do it? Do you know, I think I could! Amazing for me.
Likelihood:
Green 35%
Centre 35%
Moderates 20%
Christian Democrats 5%
Social Democrats 2%
Abstain 3%
Having hundreds of people running around the airport looking for planes to jump on isn’t going to end well though. They need to send security, even if it’s a couple of Humvees and using the fire truck as a foam cannon.
Ridiculous, Bumrah has an average of FOUR. Does Root even want to win ?
The Taliban say ‘we are the appointed army of Allah’. So by fighting them you are fighting god. Therefore you are evil and also you cannot win. A psychological pincer.
So the only answer - if you still fear and loathe the Taliban - is to run away
Because climbing on the wheels of a plane is CERTAIN death
If you fight the Taliban you have a chance of surviving, if enough of you fight you have a very good chance of winning
"Justin has embraced a new life in Liverpool and is slowly building up a new circle of friends while harbouring hopes of pursuing a musical career.
“I find it is easy here, because the people here are gentle and nice,” he tells documentary-maker Rich Bentley in the film, after they first meet on a street corner in Liverpool. " Yes, and at the end of it all you're still in Afghanistan. Why bother, when Calais is four days drive away?
"“God has promised us victory, and Bush has promised us defeat. The world will see which promise is more truthful”
-Mullah Omar""
And the consequence of fighting is that your family and friends will find themselves dead alongside you very quickly.
The Taliban know that their reputation of unproportionate revenge works...
There are no circumstances whatsoever that I would ever vote Labour. I have voted Lib Dem locally on a few occasions.i don't like Boris nor the direct of travel, but its the least worse option. Many people are like me . If I lived in Scotland, I would never vote Labour or Nat.
To accuse somone of donkey and rosette as Stuart Dickson has is just lazy thinking
The chances of surviving an airline trip hanging on the wheel must be 0.01% or something mad. Fighting the Taliban in some form must give you a better chance of living, even if it is also slender
Plus, pride
I do believe religion is a factor
It is no surprise that our rule collapsed immediately when we do not follow at home the principles we preach abroad.
Pandemic? we adopt the Chinese Communist Party lock down solution. We excoriate governments like Sweden, Florida and Texas that attempted to adopt an approach that at least paid some lip service to the principles of freedom we apparently hold dear.
Even now there are severe limits on travel and our young people are being browbeaten and threatened by a government that is supposedly liberal and democratic. At one point you could be fined for hugging your own grandparents or meeting with five other people.
Education of girls? Education is so important to us we effectively destroyed the education of our girls and boys for half a generation, by closing schools for months and giving pupils meaningless qualifications to pretend we still have a proper working system.
In the last 18 months the scales must have fallen from the eyes of everyone we are attempting to influence and protect abroad.
The West is now nothing. It stand for nothing and it believes in nothing. It is an empty and cowardly vessel of venality and posturing.
Very few would argue that Tory policy has maintained any sort of consistency over the years.
The Kurds won that war because they have a mighty self belief, their nationhood, which is just as strong as any radical Islamic caliphate crap
That’s what the Afghans need. Self belief. Or about 30,000 Kurdish women with decent guns
- English Nationalist, not One Nation
- Revolutionary, not Conservative
- High tax/high debt, not Friedman
- State control, not free market
- Social engineering, not conservatism
- Nasty, not paternal
- Reactive, not confident
- Populist, not principled
- Clown, not competence
- Degenerate, not moral
- Cash for pals, not good governance
- Fiscal spaffing, not fiscal moderation
- Fuck business, not pro business
- Proroguing parliament, not the rule of law
- Lying to the monarch, not respecting institutions
- Authoritarian, not liberal
- Corruption, not ethics
The only constant is the blue rosettes, “greed is good” and jingoism.
I had not considered that one, I must admit.
I admire Cyclefree a lot, but here we see woke ideology infiltrating the minds of even solid liberals. The fault for such a disgusting decision is being laid at "men" rather than "Islam" because the former have been tagged as "privileged" and the latter are seen as "oppressed".
The vast majority of men in the West are as disgusted at the thought of relations with nine year olds as women are. But the problem here is that a certain 7th Century Prophet married a six year old and consummated that marriage at nine. The religion he founded holds up this marriage as the most esteemed of all. You will not find an Imam in good standing anywhere in the world that condemns this act. This is true for Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Twelver, Ismaili, and Zaidi thought.
THAT is the problem. Not the fragility of men. And yet we have got ourselves tied up in this simplistic ideology of seeing everything in terms of identity groups with varying scores of "marginalization" that blinds us to the obvious. When what we should be doing is seeing the world in terms of individuals and competing ideas. And ideas are not all equally valid as different people's "my reality". Some ideas are good and make the world better, some ideas are bad and make it worse. Criticism of bad ideas should not be seen as "bigotry" because the bad ideas are held by a "marginalized" group.
‘UK defence sources said it was self-evident that Afghan government forces were faring less well than the CIA and Biden had predicted only months ago.
‘Wallace revealed that once other Nato allies – understood to include France and Germany – had rejected forming a coalition of the willing without the US, the UK concluded that it could not go it alone.’
This is on Biden
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/13/rift-with-us-grows-as-uk-minister-voices-fears-over-afghanistan-exit
So when the Shining Path murdered a local mayor and then destroyed her body with dynamite to prevent a traditional open casket funeral, the locals responded.
They caught one of the terrorists. Tied him to a chair, with a spiral of fuse (the old fashioned during kind) around it. And let him watch as the fuse burnt round him. Closer and closer. Until it reached the dynamite they had put under the chair.
Their will was stronger than the Shining Path.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-asia-58219963
Edit: Vanilla screwed up photos now?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/08/16/joe-biden-isolated-fire-camp-david-afghanistan-falls-taliban/
Blaming Afghanistan on men is like blaming the early Soviet Union on Jews (who comprised so much of the first politburo)
2300 new cases in Wales.
Also Islam is the issue. If that is what you believe and the Taliban say that they are implementing the laws of Allah, by fighting that you are marking yourself out as an unbeliever, an outcast. Who is going to do that? That is why it is very hard indeed for democracy to take root in societies in which religion is such a dominant overwhelming force, possibly the only thing that all the different tribes in Afghanistan have in common.
If we understood our own history better, we would realise how hard, long and painful the transition from an essentially religious society to one which isn't and one in which democracy can flourish is. And that was with some advantages in our history and religion which Islamic societies don't even have.
Democracy and the instincts and behaviours which go with it and which are essential to its survival need to come from within a society. It didn't happen in 20 years in any country in the West. Why did we think it would happen in 20 years in Afghanistan?
Johnson said as recently as July that there was no chance the Taliban would overrun the country
The AAF were 100% reliant on foreign contractors for technical support who all left months ago. All attempts at building Afghan capability in this area failed miserably - the unofficial motto of RAF Cosford where some of them were trained was 'Training Tomorrow's Taliban Today'.
The ANA had never the experience of fighting without CAS hence they couldn't hold the line when they didn't have it.
Might I remind you, for instance of the Incel movement?
One of the turning points in the fight against ISIS was when very influential mullahs from around the Islamic world - in Egypt, Morocco and so on - denounced ISIS as ‘unislamic’. That seriously devalued their brand
Ben Wallace actually weeping on LBC does give some credence to that theory
Last year there were times when you were banned from seeing your own relatives. Even now you cannot travel without jumping through government hoops, and a copy of the CCP social credit system is planned in the form of vaccine passports. In America, the land of the free, the President is considering banning inter state travel without obeying government diKtat.
The Afghans and others are not stupid. They can see our complete abandonment of our own principles for what it is. Everything we every stood for is an utter sham. It has been for a while, but it has taken the pandemic to expose it. We are no different. Our response to covd shows us for who we are.
This feels like it represents the end of the West attempting to ensure a coherent global family of nations built around democracy and friendliness to the West and its value set.
Some people will think that a good thing of course. The moral relativists and the naive.
The reason the Kurds fought off ISIS & Co. was to do with their possessing such a belief structure and loyalty to a cause. There was a Kurdish joke about being entirely happy that their enemies wanted to give their lives for God.
Either way it is a total disaster.
But, this is clearly on the Americans, and I think everyone is agreed we went into AFghanistan to support our ally, and have withdrawn because we couldn't continue without them.
I do not deny misogyny is a deeply rooted problem around the world, tho in the west we seem to be sliding into misandry
However broad brush descriptions like yours are not that helpful in situations like this. When it is clear that a radicalized form of Islam is destroying lives and nations just as it has all around this region for decades
The timetable, which is intended to highlight differences with the SNP’s more gradual approach, is at odds with the one Mr Salmond endorsed while in government.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19516009.alba-party-leader-alex-salmond-claims-independent-scotland-rid-trident-day-one/?ref=twtrec