Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Bombing Dresden made not one iota of difference to the outcome of WW2.
And 80 years later that is still up for debate. Would you have dared chance it at the time?
It was well known at the time. There were reports made on the accuracy of US bombing in 1943 and 1944 which highlighted how poor the accuracy was. And it was pointed out at the time of Dresden and well before that it had no real strategic value.
Harris is on record as being frustrated that he could not find enough viable targets to bomb.What ultimately won WW2 for the allies was the Russian advance. The main achievement of the second front was to prevent the Russians controlling the whole of Europe after WW2.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
According to the 2021 census the number of Muslims in London was 1,318,755.
Where do your figures come from?
Quite obviously London Muslims are a diverse community and not of one mind politically.
I thought I’d got it from here, but must be going mad
I’m not so sure I’d say they were that diverse politically really. Where do you get that from?
That report says on its cover that it is based on 2011 census, so doesn't have 2021 data.
Do you accept that your figure in your earlier post was wrong and exagerrated? Or do you have another source?
I live in a city that is substantially Muslim, so have many colleagues and friends who are Muslim, hence am fully aware of the diversity of political beliefs.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Bombing Dresden made not one iota of difference to the outcome of WW2.
And 80 years later that is still up for debate. Would you have dared chance it at the time?
It was well known at the time. There were reports made on the accuracy of US bombing in 1943 and 1944 which highlighted how poor the accuracy was. And it was pointed out at the time of Dresden and well before that it had no real strategic value.
Harris is on record as being frustrated that he could not find enough viable targets to bomb.What ultimately won WW2 for the allies was the Russian advance. The main achievement of the second front was to prevent the Russians controlling the whole of Europe after WW2.
Harris was a dogmatist who killed tens of thousands of his own airmen for marginal results.
As I’ve said upthread some of the “marginal results” were to keep tens or hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich from air attack, not fighting the Russians. It was very definitely playing a role in winning the war. Nonsense to say marginal results.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
According to the 2021 census the number of Muslims in London was 1,318,755.
Where do your figures come from?
Quite obviously London Muslims are a diverse community and not of one mind politically.
I thought I’d got it from here, but must be going mad
I’m not so sure I’d say they were that diverse politically really. Where do you get that from?
That report says on its cover that it is based on 2011 census, so doesn't have 2021 data.
Do you accept that your figure in your earlier post was wrong and exagerrated? Or do you have another source?
I live in a city that is substantially Muslim, so have many colleagues and friends who are Muslim, hence am fully aware of the diversity of political beliefs.
I thought you lived in a charming rural village. All white I'd warrant.
Not that that has anything to do with the price of eggs, that said.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
Sticking reject politicians who cannot win their own constituency into the Lords is the sort of thing that brings the Lords into disrepute.
I am very suspicious of Streeting. All I have seem from him is superficial gimmicks and a ruthless personal ambition. I don't think he cares much about the job.
I'm afraid you're not going to see much improvement in healthcare provision whether Streeting is in charge of it or not. Labour want to ignore the obvious - that the population is exploding in size because of mass immigration, and getting progressively older and sicker to boot - and pretend that somehow everything can be made magically better through "reforms." Now, doubtless there are reforms that can help, but at the end of the day reforms aren't going to provide all the new hospitals and other healthcare facilities needed to deal with our huge and increasingly decrepit populace, nor pay for them to be staffed and operated. That needs shedloads of extra cash, and Labour has quit the redistribution business. It's there to protect the wealthy and keep them in the manner to which they have become accustomed. They're faux pink Tories and will therefore fail.
"Reform" is a meaningless word on its own, used to opacify rather than clarify Streetings intentions.
Health is the poisoned chalice of portfolios.
The whole of Government is a poisoned chalice nowadays, there are so many problems to deal with. This is not, however, an excuse for people who pose as serious leaders not to try.
Labour's entire program for Government now appears to consist of changing as little as humanly possible, whilst crossing their fingers and hoping that if they repeat the word growth often enough the economy will roar into life and provide the revenues to magically fix everything. They're about as serious a proposition as the Natural Law Party when they said they could generate an invincible defence shield over the country using a crack unit of yogic flyers, and deserve to be dismissed with total contempt.
What's even more depressing is that, after they do almost nothing for five years and get the boot at the end of it, we still won't be rid of them. They'll just resume life as the Opposition and await Buggins' Turn again. The electoral system will most likely keep Labour on life support indefinitely because an insurgent movement won't be able to gain the necessary traction to destroy them in the manner of PASOK or the French Socialists.
If I believed in the Almighty (which I don't) them I might be tempted to conclude that our awful leaders are divine punishment for colonialism or whatever other grievous offence you care to name. The choice we get at elections now is between shit, shit, shit and shit. They're all awful. They're all pointless.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Do you really think we would not have won the war without firebombing Dresden in February 1945?
Shades of 'despite all the polling showing Corbyn was in for an absolute pounding in the 2019 GE, we still had to vote for an amoral, self serving scumbag and give him a huge majority, just in case'.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
According to the 2021 census the number of Muslims in London was 1,318,755.
Where do your figures come from?
Quite obviously London Muslims are a diverse community and not of one mind politically.
I thought I’d got it from here, but must be going mad
There are many problems with immigration to the US, legal and illegal. But it appears to be a net benefit, economically:
'Consider a few numbers: Last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released updated 10-year economic and budget forecasts. The numbers look significantly better than they did a year earlier, and immigration is a key reason. . . . This will in turn lead to better economic growth. As CBO Director Phill Swagel wrote in a note accompanying the forecasts: As a result of these immigration-driven revisions to the size of the labor force, “we estimate that, from 2023 to 2034, GDP will be greater by about $7 trillion and revenues will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise.' source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/13/immigration-economy-jobs-cbo-report/
The same was said about EU membership and essentially unlimited immigration to the UK.
The fact is that if you separate skilled from unskilled immigration, and legal from illegal immigration, the numbers look a whole load better, and don’t upset the native population who see competition for jobs and housing way more than they see an increase in GDP.
You talk of "essentially unlimited immigration" with EU membership, but immigration post-Brexit has been higher than when we were in the EU.
There were 500m people who could turn up with a right to work and rent accommodation, thus ensuring that the legal minimum wage became the maximum wage in a number of industries, even if that meant living four to a room.
That’s a million miles away from recent immigration numbers driven mostly by Ukranians, Hong Kongers, and students.
It doesn't matter how many people could turn up. It mattered how many did. More turn up now.
From your link, it appears that the increase in work visas is “largely attributed” to the healthcare industry. Is that a bad thing?
The big changes appear to be an increase in dependents of students, and a reduction in humanitarian (mostly UA and HK) routes to immigration.
There has been a big increase in work visas. I'm not saying this, or that many of the work visas are in healthcare, is a good or a bad thing. I'm saying that your talk of "essentially unlimited immigration" with EU membership was silly given immigration post-Brexit has been higher.
No, the difference with EU immigration was that there were 500m people with the *entitlement* to just turn up.
It doesn't matter how many were entitled. It matters how many people did turn up. This is not a difficult concept.
But people are not identical interchangeable parts, they're unique individuals. Its not just a matte of how many people turn up, its a matter of who turns up.
If the unlimited supply of people willing to work for minimum wage has been cut off, but that's been countered by an increase in the supply of qualified individuals or full-time students then those qualified individuals and students aren't taking full-time jobs for minimum wage.
Sure, but that's a different point.
So, do you have statistics on how skilled EU immigrants were? A friend has just asked me to "sign" her passport photo (it's all digital now). She needs a new passport as she's just acquired UK citizenship, having originally migrated from Poland. She's got a PhD and has just won a prestigious research award. I know lots of people like her, EU immigrants with PhDs, healthcare qualifications etc. That's, of course because I work in this area, but certainly many EU immigrants came to do highly skilled jobs. This idea of some theoretical unending supply of EU immigrants willing to do minimum wage jobs, where's the evidence for them?
Today, we have a new immigration system. Yet there are still plenty of work visas going to unskilled workers in some sectors (care, agriculture). So, what's changed? We had a mix of skilled and unskilled immigration from the EU. We have a mix now, but it's more from India, Nigeria etc.
Its not a different point, it was the point AFAIK that Sandpit was making, I just rephrased it. In fact he explicitly drew a distinction between "Ukrainian, Hong Kongers and students" and "healthcare" and "minimum wage" migration.
Recruiting doctors via work visas != minimum wage migration.
The bit I responded to and was complaining about was the nonsense claim of “essentially unlimited immigration”. Those three words.
If you wish to move the discussion on from there, I agree that recruiting doctors via work visas != minimum wage migration. Equally, recruiting doctors from the EU != minimum wage migration either. I’ve done research on doctors recruited from overseas. I’ve been quoted by the Daily Mail, and by the Times of India. (Oddly, they came to two rather different interpretations of the work.)
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Losing Wes Streeting from the next (likely) Cabinet of the UK would be a disaster for the whole country frankly. Someone needs to sort out the mess of the NHS and he seems like he might be up for the task. Prepared to reform and learn from other countries.
One can only hope if he loses Ilford then a quick peerage and Cabinet will happen.
Sticking reject politicians who cannot win their own constituency into the Lords is the sort of thing that brings the Lords into disrepute.
I am very suspicious of Streeting. All I have seem from him is superficial gimmicks and a ruthless personal ambition. I don't think he cares much about the job.
I don’t think he’ll lose, anyhow. He’s a lot more prominent now than in previous elections, and demography has been eating away at the Tory vote in East London for years - look at the last locals. The Jewish population is much reduced, the Asian population is growing, and the educated professionals moving into the west of the borough are trending away from the Tories. Streeting is safe, protest candidate or not. And the modest boundary changes aren’t unfavourable.
I am sure Streeting is safe.
I would be very surprised to see any seat in the country with a swing against Labour at the GE.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
I’m sorry but I disagree. It did work, just not by damaging morale. See the effort Germany had to put into defending the Reich, rather than fighting the Russians. See the D-Day campaign and after for why winning air superiority was so crucial. The battle of the bulge only got as far as it did because the allies could not fly due to the weather. When the weather cleared the fighter-bombers returned and wreaked havoc.
Morale bombing failed, yes, but the Bombing War as a whole played a significant role in the allied victory. Singling out Dresden as ‘special’ is just nonsense, as Bomber Command, and the 8th Air Force tried to achieve similar results every time. Is Hamburg a war crime? What about Schweinfurt?
That wasn’t Dyson’s view. And he was better placed than most to make the judgment. … A week after the final attack on Berlin, we suffered an even more crushing defeat. We attacked Nuremberg with 795 bombers and lost 94, a loss rate of almost 12 percent. It was then clear to everybody that such losses were unsustainable. Sir Arthur reluctantly abandoned his dream of winning the War by himself. Bomber Command stopped flying so deep into Germany and spent the summer of 1944 giving tactical support to the Allied armies that were, by then, invading France.
The history of the 20th century has repeatedly shown that strategic bombing by itself does not win wars. If Britain had decided in 1936 to put its main effort into building ships instead of bombers, the invasion of France might have been possible in 1943 instead of 1944, and the war in Europe might have ended in 1944 instead of 1945. But in 1943, we had the bombers, and we did not have the ships, and the problem was to do the best we could with what we had...
And yet invading France in 1943 would have been against a Luftwaffe that was still capable of inflicting severe damage, and against a German army that was significantly stronger. Churchill was desperate NOT to invade in 43. About the only advantage would have been the much less complete Atlantic Wall.
I totally agree that strategic bombing did not win the war alone. No one thinks it did, or indeed could. But it played a huge part. German industry was massively hindered. Transport was destroyed. The Das Reich panzer division took an age to get from southern France to Normandy, mainly due to air power of the allies, won by strategic bombing, notably the 8th who actively sought to destroy Luftwaffe fighters, using bombers as bait.
Read the whole of the Dyson article. He was smarter than either of us, and he was there to analyse it. He simply doesn’t believe the “strategic bombing” of cities worked. Which was why it was eventually abandoned.
Whereas the accurate targeted bombing of oil supplies almost certainly did.
The attacks on ball bearing factories, refineries and synthetic oil plants were by far the most efficacious at ending the war.
However... If we'd only bombed those targets, then it would have been much easier for the Germans to defend (and/or hide) them.
It's also undeniably true that the Germans spent a huge amount of their air power defending cities.
One long term worry I have is that Britain is not capable of going to war. People will get duped in to subservience to another power. I was also thinking that 'woke' creates the conditions for this perfectly - a reduction in self confidence and a confusing form of self hatred that leads people to support and glorify Hamas, with its associated acts of murder and rape; with the legal system then letting them off with a 'non punishment'. These people are unlikely to be capable of fighting for anything.
I'm not sure I agree. The nature of war has changed and the vast majority of us have never known war. Notions of how WW3 would be fought during the Cold War period were chilling enough for most for whom war meant in effect if they were lucky their own quick death and if they weren't struggling to survive in a destroyed irradiated wasteland with all the comforts and luxuries they had known gone forever.
War is changing and has changed - nuclear weapons remain the shadow on the horizon but the idea of a 100-division armoured thrust into central Germany has gone. It's legitimate to question the nature of the "threat" - Russia? Hardly. China? Yes to a point, North Korea? Seriously?
The biggest threat, apart from our complacency, would be the US retreating from Europe to the Pacific as Trump has threatened. How that would manifest in terms of a new European foreign and military policy and identity is harder to assess at this time especially given what appear to be continued and deep cultural and political reservations in Britain toward European intentions.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
That struck me when people talk about Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine. Ok yes, but the war IS the crime. An unprovoked attack by one country on another. It's the bigger crime since it leads to all the rest. It just happens to be a crime we don't have a way of prosecuting.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
According to the 2021 census the number of Muslims in London was 1,318,755.
Where do your figures come from?
Quite obviously London Muslims are a diverse community and not of one mind politically.
I thought I’d got it from here, but must be going mad
I’m not so sure I’d say they were that diverse politically really. Where do you get that from?
That report says on its cover that it is based on 2011 census, so doesn't have 2021 data.
Do you accept that your figure in your earlier post was wrong and exagerrated? Or do you have another source?
I live in a city that is substantially Muslim, so have many colleagues and friends who are Muslim, hence am fully aware of the diversity of political beliefs.
I thought you lived in a charming rural village. All white I'd warrant.
Not that that has anything to do with the price of eggs, that said.
A suburb of Leicester, outside the city boundary, but part of the conurbation, and certainly not "completely white"
It may seem extraordinary to you, but I do have friends and colleagues from outside the village!
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
According to the 2021 census the number of Muslims in London was 1,318,755.
Where do your figures come from?
Quite obviously London Muslims are a diverse community and not of one mind politically.
I thought I’d got it from here, but must be going mad
I’m not so sure I’d say they were that diverse politically really. Where do you get that from?
That report says on its cover that it is based on 2011 census, so doesn't have 2021 data.
Do you accept that your figure in your earlier post was wrong and exagerrated? Or do you have another source?
I live in a city that is substantially Muslim, so have many colleagues and friends who are Muslim, hence am fully aware of the diversity of political beliefs.
I thought you lived in a charming rural village. All white I'd warrant.
Not that that has anything to do with the price of eggs, that said.
A suburb of Leicester, outside the city boundary, but part of the conurbation, and certainly not "completely white"
It may seem extraordinary to you, but I do have friends and colleagues from outside the village!
I have no doubt. Just that you have previously said you lived in a village hence I was surprised by your "I live in a city..."
Wars, aging and emigration - except thus is true of tge countries to the south as well, and Iraq, for example, has more than doubled in population across the same period. What seems to be the culprit is Christianity.
That, and the EU. Though as we’ve seen with Poland, that emigration to wealthier EU members can go into reverse.
It will be instructive to revisit those figures at the end of the decade.
Oh, remarkable turnaround can happen really quite quickly.
Ireland had net emigration for decades, and its population was a fraction of the level of 150 years earlier.
Then suddenly their economy took off, emigration dried up, and the diaspora suddenly turned into a massive asset as people -trained in the UK and the US- returned home.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
That struck me when people talk about Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine. Ok yes, but the war IS the crime. An unprovoked attack by one country on another. It's the bigger crime since it leads to all the rest. It just happens to be a crime we don't have a way of prosecuting.
Presumably @Topping takes the view that all is fair in war, so the Russian actions in Bucha or Mariopol are fine and dandy. Just boys being boys and soldiers being soldiers.
A clearer a picture of how the two suspended Labour candidates came to say what they said, and how it got out - and it’s very bad news for Starmer as this isn’t a typical open and shut case of Labour anti semitism, it’s beginning to point to Starmer and his top team hastily over reacting, wilting under media pressure - which is cardinal sin for political leaders in my book.
The two banned men were meeting a group of councillors intending to quit Labour , they were trying to placate those furious at Starmer for taking a staunch pro Israel position. It’s almost certain this has been leaked to Labours enemies to hurt Labour leadership, by one of those there who stormed off out the party because Starmer wasn’t attacking Israel or defending Hamas enough for their liking.
Ali seems particularly hard done here by as what he said seemed to everyone “completely out of character for him” as in recent years Ali has been “an ally to the Jewish community, having set up Labour groups such as Muslims Against Antisemitism.”
They said some crazy conspiracy things about Egypt and US warning Israel so why didn’t Israel government act, and clearly offensive towards Israel government and state of Israel. But what are we all pointing to here from what’s in public domain that is clearly antisemitic?
I went to a secondary school in Bedford that was 60% not English as a first language, and still have friends from there. The school was not majority Muslim, but it wasn't far off.
Now, my friend group is going to tend towards the "brighter" end of the spectrum, but I saw a massive range of parents and kids and outcomes. I have Muslim friends whose families hail from Bangladesh and Pakistan, who went to University, married English girls, and almost certainly vote conservative. (Or perhaps I should say, voted conservative in 2019...)
I have others who still live in little insular communities in Bedford, who shall Urdu or Gujerati, at home, and who have never really integrated.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
That struck me when people talk about Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine. Ok yes, but the war IS the crime. An unprovoked attack by one country on another. It's the bigger crime since it leads to all the rest. It just happens to be a crime we don't have a way of prosecuting.
Presumably @Topping takes the view that all is fair in war, so the Russian actions in Bucha or Mariopol are fine and dandy. Just boys being boys and soldiers being soldiers.
Er, no. The winners usually define what is fine and dandy. Might is right. Kinabalu is touching in his naivety with his belief that he holds the key to universal values and anything which violates them, in this case "war", is a crime.
Everyone who goes to war believes they are in the right and we have to make a judgement as to whether we agree with them.
There is of course the concept of a "Just War" which (probably) we invented to justify our actions. Our war against Germany is one such. Does engaging in a Just War justify firebombing Dresden? I would say yes - not because it was a Just War, but because if we had lost we would all likely have been killed or violently subjugated so for me it was absolutely justified.
Wars, aging and emigration - except thus is true of tge countries to the south as well, and Iraq, for example, has more than doubled in population across the same period. What seems to be the culprit is Christianity.
That, and the EU. Though as we’ve seen with Poland, that emigration to wealthier EU members can go into reverse.
It will be instructive to revisit those figures at the end of the decade.
Oh, remarkable turnaround can happen really quite quickly.
Ireland had net emigration for decades, and its population was a fraction of the level of 150 years earlier.
Then suddenly their economy took off, emigration dried up, and the diaspora suddenly turned into a massive asset as people -trained in the UK and the US- returned home.
Are there any stats showing that their recent wave of immigration is in any way driven by returning members of the diaspora?
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
Indeed. Just war theory goes out the window when the nation is facing an existential threat. Then you do whatever it takes to avoid defeat.
Countries facing an existential threat in recent wars: Ukraine, Artsakh
Countries not facing an existential threat in recent wars: Israel
Wars, aging and emigration - except thus is true of tge countries to the south as well, and Iraq, for example, has more than doubled in population across the same period. What seems to be the culprit is Christianity.
That, and the EU. Though as we’ve seen with Poland, that emigration to wealthier EU members can go into reverse.
It will be instructive to revisit those figures at the end of the decade.
Oh, remarkable turnaround can happen really quite quickly.
Ireland had net emigration for decades, and its population was a fraction of the level of 150 years earlier.
Then suddenly their economy took off, emigration dried up, and the diaspora suddenly turned into a massive asset as people -trained in the UK and the US- returned home.
Are there any stats showing that their recent wave of immigration is in any way driven by returning members of the diaspora?
I was talking about the late 80s and early 90s rather than now. Clearly things are different now, particular given the UK has left the EU.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
If the price is 2.3 million Gazans including women and children?
Israel have the right to defend themselves against Hamas. Benjamin Netanyahu does not have the right to save his liberty and political career by the mass killing of Gazan women and children. That is not anti-Semitic but it does demonstrate my utter contempt for a sociopath who happens to be Prime Minister of Israel.
Well there's 30000 Hamas members and the IDS have killed 30000 people so they should be about there if they've been targeting carefully.
And didn't John Major see off a few thousand also.
CNN is reporting that Russia hit Kyiv with a hypersonic missile, which is a missile so fast it cannot be shot down
I have no idea if this is true. CNN is pretty pro-Ukraine, so I am not sure why they would boost Putin's military propaganda
If it IS true, isn't that the end of navies as we know them? A single unstoppable missile can take out a carrier. That's it
Ah, like the V2 huh?
How much impact did that have on the war again?
Have you suddenly become a bit stupid, like the rest of PB? This is quite depressing
I wasn't even commenting on the impact this might have on the outcome of the present Ukraine war. I thought that was fairly clear
I was commenting on how this will influence war-making from here on, just as the advent of the V2 - which led to the ICBM - massively impacted geopolitics - and warfare - from the end of WW2 onwards
If hypersonic missiles, which cannot be shot down, are a thing (and this is what CNN are claiming) then I do not see how traditonal navies can operate. How do you defend a £3bn capital ship like an aircraft carrier against a £3m hypersonic missile which cannot be shot down? If it cannot be shot down, or deflected, then you can't defend the ship. So that's the end of the carrier, the carrier group, the navy as we htave known it, they make no sense, they are merely very expensive and easy targets
No?
Of course CNN might have got this wrong, maybe the Ukes are lying for propaganda purposes - I have no idea, on that front
Plenty of analysts believe that this is what an invasion of Taiwan might look like - hypersonic missiles in case the US fleet was thinking of getting involved.
Doing some digging it does seem a very live debate. Some say it is the end of the aircraft carrier, some say the missiles are hyped and not THAT dangerous
I am not a ballistic missile engineer/strategic defence analyst, I dunno
The importance of this CNN report (if it is acccurate) is that they, and the Ukes, are claiming this is the first time a "hypersonic" missile has been used in actual warfare, rather than just a test or a wargame. DYOR!
"CNN — Ukraine claims it has evidence Russia fired an advanced hypersonic missile – one that experts say is almost impossible to shoot down – for the first time in the almost 2-year-old war.
The government-run Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise said in a Telegram post that debris recovered after a February 7 attack on the Ukrainian capital pointed to the use of a Zircon hypersonic cruise missile by the Russian military."
There’s a difference between an ICBM (a rocket-launched from the ground), a rocket-powered missile launched from an aircraft, and a revolutionary mach 5 jet-powered missile. The first two are old technology, can be seen from space, and aren’t going to do much in modern warfare.
The third is an interesting innovation if it works to lock a target, rather than simply heading for a fixed co-ordinate. It would need air defence elements to be positioned along the trajectory to anticipate its arrival, as it goes faster than the defence missiles. There’s no evidence that Russia, China, or North Korea actually have any of these, despite several demonstrations they claim to have given.
I suspect he doesn't know the difference between a rocket and a jet.
Further - to get true hypersonic air breathing missiles to work, you need a scramjet. A scramjet is where the combustion inside the engine is with supersonic flow . All existing air breathing engines slow the incoming air down to subsonic velocities. See the enormous cone things in the inlets of the SR71.
To date, claims of actually getting net thrust out of a scram jet are debated. Some experiments may have worked. For seconds.
Even if you get that all to work, you have to fly in a perfectly straight line. Otherwise the shock wave in the intake tears your whole plane/missile apart. Which is the usual fate of scram jet tests, by the way.
The Russian hypersonic missiles are all rocket powered. Ballistic weapons fired from aircraft, mainly.
Indeed - as this article explains, it is highly unlikely that the Russians are anywhere near getting a hypersonic weapon.
It also explains why ships will be safe as these missiles are unable to hit a moving object!
Interesting. Thanks.
That last point - ships are safe because they are moving - does not *entirely* convince in all circumstances.
Storm Shadow is incapable of hitting moving targets, yet it seems to have destroyed one or two Russian ships which happened to be alongside, and possibly the submarine which was in dry dock. Ships sometimes have to stop.
The question whether Zircon is an inaccurate hypersonic slowcoach and potentially vulnerable to Patriot is more interesting imo.
One thing that interests me is why we have not supplied the longer range version of Storm Shadow / SCALP, which would seem to be a no-brainer perhaps prevented by the traditional Foreign Office (?) activity of buffing their halo whilst people die for reasons of questionable dot-and-tittle.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
Indeed. Just war theory goes out the window when the nation is facing an existential threat. Then you do whatever it takes to avoid defeat.
Countries facing an existential threat in recent wars: Ukraine, Artsakh
Countries not facing an existential threat in recent wars: Israel
And you have the luxury of saying that from thousands of miles away. The Israelis probably think otherwise. But whether it is an existential one (they believe it is) it is war. And horrible things happen in war and nothing perpetrated by the Israelis, as far as we conclusively know, a war crime.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
According to the 2021 census the number of Muslims in London was 1,318,755.
Where do your figures come from?
Quite obviously London Muslims are a diverse community and not of one mind politically.
I thought I’d got it from here, but must be going mad
I’m not so sure I’d say they were that diverse politically really. Where do you get that from?
That report says on its cover that it is based on 2011 census, so doesn't have 2021 data.
Do you accept that your figure in your earlier post was wrong and exagerrated? Or do you have another source?
I live in a city that is substantially Muslim, so have many colleagues and friends who are Muslim, hence am fully aware of the diversity of political beliefs.
I thought you lived in a charming rural village. All white I'd warrant.
Not that that has anything to do with the price of eggs, that said.
A suburb of Leicester, outside the city boundary, but part of the conurbation, and certainly not "completely white"
It may seem extraordinary to you, but I do have friends and colleagues from outside the village!
Not especially Leicester related - but the old R4 dramatisation of 'Salt Is Leaving' came to mind.
"Salt Is Leaving is a 1966 mystery novel by the British writer J.B. Priestley.[1] Doctor Salt begins to investigate when one of his patients Noreen Wilks goes missing for three weeks. Despite a lack of interest from the police, he becomes convinced that she has in fact been murdered."
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
Indeed. Just war theory goes out the window when the nation is facing an existential threat. Then you do whatever it takes to avoid defeat.
Countries facing an existential threat in recent wars: Ukraine, Artsakh
Countries not facing an existential threat in recent wars: Israel
You don't see many marches around the world calling for Ukraine to be wiped off the map.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
Indeed. Just war theory goes out the window when the nation is facing an existential threat. Then you do whatever it takes to avoid defeat.
Countries facing an existential threat in recent wars: Ukraine, Artsakh
Countries not facing an existential threat in recent wars: Israel
Don't forget the UK. The Woke are coming for us. They may even be HERE ALREADY!
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
According to the 2021 census the number of Muslims in London was 1,318,755.
Where do your figures come from?
Quite obviously London Muslims are a diverse community and not of one mind politically.
I thought I’d got it from here, but must be going mad
I’m not so sure I’d say they were that diverse politically really. Where do you get that from?
That report says on its cover that it is based on 2011 census, so doesn't have 2021 data.
Do you accept that your figure in your earlier post was wrong and exagerrated? Or do you have another source?
I live in a city that is substantially Muslim, so have many colleagues and friends who are Muslim, hence am fully aware of the diversity of political beliefs.
Oh bore off, I said I’d got it wrong
Don’t really care about your mates, I just wondered if there was any actual data on Islamic voting intention you were citing
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
Indeed. Just war theory goes out the window when the nation is facing an existential threat. Then you do whatever it takes to avoid defeat.
Countries facing an existential threat in recent wars: Ukraine, Artsakh
Countries not facing an existential threat in recent wars: Israel
You don't see many marches around the world calling for Ukraine to be wiped off the map.
Now, but you do get the leader of the country invading them giving interviews where he denies their right to exist.
CNN is reporting that Russia hit Kyiv with a hypersonic missile, which is a missile so fast it cannot be shot down
I have no idea if this is true. CNN is pretty pro-Ukraine, so I am not sure why they would boost Putin's military propaganda
If it IS true, isn't that the end of navies as we know them? A single unstoppable missile can take out a carrier. That's it
Ah, like the V2 huh?
How much impact did that have on the war again?
Have you suddenly become a bit stupid, like the rest of PB? This is quite depressing
I wasn't even commenting on the impact this might have on the outcome of the present Ukraine war. I thought that was fairly clear
I was commenting on how this will influence war-making from here on, just as the advent of the V2 - which led to the ICBM - massively impacted geopolitics - and warfare - from the end of WW2 onwards
If hypersonic missiles, which cannot be shot down, are a thing (and this is what CNN are claiming) then I do not see how traditonal navies can operate. How do you defend a £3bn capital ship like an aircraft carrier against a £3m hypersonic missile which cannot be shot down? If it cannot be shot down, or deflected, then you can't defend the ship. So that's the end of the carrier, the carrier group, the navy as we htave known it, they make no sense, they are merely very expensive and easy targets
No?
Of course CNN might have got this wrong, maybe the Ukes are lying for propaganda purposes - I have no idea, on that front
Plenty of analysts believe that this is what an invasion of Taiwan might look like - hypersonic missiles in case the US fleet was thinking of getting involved.
Doing some digging it does seem a very live debate. Some say it is the end of the aircraft carrier, some say the missiles are hyped and not THAT dangerous
I am not a ballistic missile engineer/strategic defence analyst, I dunno
The importance of this CNN report (if it is acccurate) is that they, and the Ukes, are claiming this is the first time a "hypersonic" missile has been used in actual warfare, rather than just a test or a wargame. DYOR!
"CNN — Ukraine claims it has evidence Russia fired an advanced hypersonic missile – one that experts say is almost impossible to shoot down – for the first time in the almost 2-year-old war.
The government-run Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise said in a Telegram post that debris recovered after a February 7 attack on the Ukrainian capital pointed to the use of a Zircon hypersonic cruise missile by the Russian military."
There’s a difference between an ICBM (a rocket-launched from the ground), a rocket-powered missile launched from an aircraft, and a revolutionary mach 5 jet-powered missile. The first two are old technology, can be seen from space, and aren’t going to do much in modern warfare.
The third is an interesting innovation if it works to lock a target, rather than simply heading for a fixed co-ordinate. It would need air defence elements to be positioned along the trajectory to anticipate its arrival, as it goes faster than the defence missiles. There’s no evidence that Russia, China, or North Korea actually have any of these, despite several demonstrations they claim to have given.
I suspect he doesn't know the difference between a rocket and a jet.
Further - to get true hypersonic air breathing missiles to work, you need a scramjet. A scramjet is where the combustion inside the engine is with supersonic flow . All existing air breathing engines slow the incoming air down to subsonic velocities. See the enormous cone things in the inlets of the SR71.
To date, claims of actually getting net thrust out of a scram jet are debated. Some experiments may have worked. For seconds.
Even if you get that all to work, you have to fly in a perfectly straight line. Otherwise the shock wave in the intake tears your whole plane/missile apart. Which is the usual fate of scram jet tests, by the way.
The Russian hypersonic missiles are all rocket powered. Ballistic weapons fired from aircraft, mainly.
Indeed - as this article explains, it is highly unlikely that the Russians are anywhere near getting a hypersonic weapon.
It also explains why ships will be safe as these missiles are unable to hit a moving object!
Interesting. Thanks.
That last point - ships are safe because they are moving - does not *entirely* convince in all circumstances.
Storm Shadow is incapable of hitting moving targets, yet it seems to have destroyed one or two Russian ships which happened to be alongside, and possibly the submarine which was in dry dock. Ships sometimes have to stop.
The question whether Zircon is an inaccurate hypersonic slowcoach and potentially vulnerable to Patriot is more interesting imo.
One thing that interests me is why we have not supplied the longer range version of Storm Shadow / SCALP, which would seem to be a no-brainer perhaps prevented by the traditional Foreign Office (?) activity of buffing their halo whilst people die for reasons of questionable dot-and-tittle.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
That struck me when people talk about Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine. Ok yes, but the war IS the crime. An unprovoked attack by one country on another. It's the bigger crime since it leads to all the rest. It just happens to be a crime we don't have a way of prosecuting.
Presumably @Topping takes the view that all is fair in war, so the Russian actions in Bucha or Mariopol are fine and dandy. Just boys being boys and soldiers being soldiers.
Tbf I think it depends a lot on whether he agrees with the cause. And with Israel (v Palestine) he believes in it so passionately he's as good as right there fighting with the IDS.
CNN is reporting that Russia hit Kyiv with a hypersonic missile, which is a missile so fast it cannot be shot down
I have no idea if this is true. CNN is pretty pro-Ukraine, so I am not sure why they would boost Putin's military propaganda
If it IS true, isn't that the end of navies as we know them? A single unstoppable missile can take out a carrier. That's it
Ah, like the V2 huh?
How much impact did that have on the war again?
Have you suddenly become a bit stupid, like the rest of PB? This is quite depressing
I wasn't even commenting on the impact this might have on the outcome of the present Ukraine war. I thought that was fairly clear
I was commenting on how this will influence war-making from here on, just as the advent of the V2 - which led to the ICBM - massively impacted geopolitics - and warfare - from the end of WW2 onwards
If hypersonic missiles, which cannot be shot down, are a thing (and this is what CNN are claiming) then I do not see how traditonal navies can operate. How do you defend a £3bn capital ship like an aircraft carrier against a £3m hypersonic missile which cannot be shot down? If it cannot be shot down, or deflected, then you can't defend the ship. So that's the end of the carrier, the carrier group, the navy as we htave known it, they make no sense, they are merely very expensive and easy targets
No?
Of course CNN might have got this wrong, maybe the Ukes are lying for propaganda purposes - I have no idea, on that front
Plenty of analysts believe that this is what an invasion of Taiwan might look like - hypersonic missiles in case the US fleet was thinking of getting involved.
Doing some digging it does seem a very live debate. Some say it is the end of the aircraft carrier, some say the missiles are hyped and not THAT dangerous
I am not a ballistic missile engineer/strategic defence analyst, I dunno
The importance of this CNN report (if it is acccurate) is that they, and the Ukes, are claiming this is the first time a "hypersonic" missile has been used in actual warfare, rather than just a test or a wargame. DYOR!
"CNN — Ukraine claims it has evidence Russia fired an advanced hypersonic missile – one that experts say is almost impossible to shoot down – for the first time in the almost 2-year-old war.
The government-run Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise said in a Telegram post that debris recovered after a February 7 attack on the Ukrainian capital pointed to the use of a Zircon hypersonic cruise missile by the Russian military."
There’s a difference between an ICBM (a rocket-launched from the ground), a rocket-powered missile launched from an aircraft, and a revolutionary mach 5 jet-powered missile. The first two are old technology, can be seen from space, and aren’t going to do much in modern warfare.
The third is an interesting innovation if it works to lock a target, rather than simply heading for a fixed co-ordinate. It would need air defence elements to be positioned along the trajectory to anticipate its arrival, as it goes faster than the defence missiles. There’s no evidence that Russia, China, or North Korea actually have any of these, despite several demonstrations they claim to have given.
I suspect he doesn't know the difference between a rocket and a jet.
Further - to get true hypersonic air breathing missiles to work, you need a scramjet. A scramjet is where the combustion inside the engine is with supersonic flow . All existing air breathing engines slow the incoming air down to subsonic velocities. See the enormous cone things in the inlets of the SR71.
To date, claims of actually getting net thrust out of a scram jet are debated. Some experiments may have worked. For seconds.
Even if you get that all to work, you have to fly in a perfectly straight line. Otherwise the shock wave in the intake tears your whole plane/missile apart. Which is the usual fate of scram jet tests, by the way.
The Russian hypersonic missiles are all rocket powered. Ballistic weapons fired from aircraft, mainly.
Indeed - as this article explains, it is highly unlikely that the Russians are anywhere near getting a hypersonic weapon.
It also explains why ships will be safe as these missiles are unable to hit a moving object!
Interesting. Thanks.
That last point - ships are safe because they are moving - does not *entirely* convince in all circumstances.
Storm Shadow is incapable of hitting moving targets, yet it seems to have destroyed one or two Russian ships which happened to be alongside, and possibly the submarine which was in dry dock. Ships sometimes have to stop.
The question whether Zircon is an inaccurate hypersonic slowcoach and potentially vulnerable to Patriot is more interesting imo.
One thing that interests me is why we have not supplied the longer range version of Storm Shadow / SCALP, which would seem to be a no-brainer perhaps prevented by the traditional Foreign Office (?) activity of buffing their halo whilst people die for reasons of questionable dot-and-tittle.
Zircon has an somewhat interesting history as a name.
The Government, the security services and the BBC's Governors were jittery about the Secret Society series, and particularly the Zircon satellite exposé that controversial freelance reporter Duncan Campbell was working on with BBC Scotland.
The thrust of the documentary was that the £500 million cost of the satellite had been wrongly concealed from the Public Accounts Committee.
After much discussion, Director-General Alasdair Milne decided that the programme should not be broadcast. Campbell was, unsurprisingly, unhappy about the decision, and word spread. "BBC gag on £500m Defence secret" was the Observer's headline.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
According to the 2021 census the number of Muslims in London was 1,318,755.
Where do your figures come from?
Quite obviously London Muslims are a diverse community and not of one mind politically.
I thought I’d got it from here, but must be going mad
I’m not so sure I’d say they were that diverse politically really. Where do you get that from?
That report says on its cover that it is based on 2011 census, so doesn't have 2021 data.
Do you accept that your figure in your earlier post was wrong and exagerrated? Or do you have another source?
I live in a city that is substantially Muslim, so have many colleagues and friends who are Muslim, hence am fully aware of the diversity of political beliefs.
I thought you lived in a charming rural village. All white I'd warrant.
Not that that has anything to do with the price of eggs, that said.
A suburb of Leicester, outside the city boundary, but part of the conurbation, and certainly not "completely white"
It may seem extraordinary to you, but I do have friends and colleagues from outside the village!
One of the interesting things about Leicester is its relatively integrated and secularised middle class professional demographic amongst a significant chunk of 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants of various faith groups. There are more traditionalist and nationalist groups too, of course.
I'd be interested if Dr Foxter has any data on whether intermarriage is common or has occurred much at all, as that is imo one of the later signs of real integration.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
That struck me when people talk about Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine. Ok yes, but the war IS the crime. An unprovoked attack by one country on another. It's the bigger crime since it leads to all the rest. It just happens to be a crime we don't have a way of prosecuting.
Presumably @Topping takes the view that all is fair in war, so the Russian actions in Bucha or Mariopol are fine and dandy. Just boys being boys and soldiers being soldiers.
Tbf I think it depends a lot on whether he agrees with the cause. And with Israel (v Palestine) he believes in it so passionately he's as good as right there fighting with the IDS.
I'm certainly right there fighting the bullshit, hypocrisy, and double standards on PB. Of which there is plenty.
So it isn't just anti-semites that associate all Jews with Israel, it is the Israeli Prime Ministers explicit belief too.
I don't accept that Israel speaks for British (and worldwide) Jews, but it is understandable for others to take Netanyahu's words seriously.
Taking Netanyahu's words seriously in the sense that he believes it himself? I'm sorry but you and many others are simply making far too many excuses for antisemitism. It doesn't take that much effort to see that Netanyahu's claims are baseless.
CNN is reporting that Russia hit Kyiv with a hypersonic missile, which is a missile so fast it cannot be shot down
I have no idea if this is true. CNN is pretty pro-Ukraine, so I am not sure why they would boost Putin's military propaganda
If it IS true, isn't that the end of navies as we know them? A single unstoppable missile can take out a carrier. That's it
Ah, like the V2 huh?
How much impact did that have on the war again?
Have you suddenly become a bit stupid, like the rest of PB? This is quite depressing
I wasn't even commenting on the impact this might have on the outcome of the present Ukraine war. I thought that was fairly clear
I was commenting on how this will influence war-making from here on, just as the advent of the V2 - which led to the ICBM - massively impacted geopolitics - and warfare - from the end of WW2 onwards
If hypersonic missiles, which cannot be shot down, are a thing (and this is what CNN are claiming) then I do not see how traditonal navies can operate. How do you defend a £3bn capital ship like an aircraft carrier against a £3m hypersonic missile which cannot be shot down? If it cannot be shot down, or deflected, then you can't defend the ship. So that's the end of the carrier, the carrier group, the navy as we htave known it, they make no sense, they are merely very expensive and easy targets
No?
Of course CNN might have got this wrong, maybe the Ukes are lying for propaganda purposes - I have no idea, on that front
Plenty of analysts believe that this is what an invasion of Taiwan might look like - hypersonic missiles in case the US fleet was thinking of getting involved.
Doing some digging it does seem a very live debate. Some say it is the end of the aircraft carrier, some say the missiles are hyped and not THAT dangerous
I am not a ballistic missile engineer/strategic defence analyst, I dunno
The importance of this CNN report (if it is acccurate) is that they, and the Ukes, are claiming this is the first time a "hypersonic" missile has been used in actual warfare, rather than just a test or a wargame. DYOR!
"CNN — Ukraine claims it has evidence Russia fired an advanced hypersonic missile – one that experts say is almost impossible to shoot down – for the first time in the almost 2-year-old war.
The government-run Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise said in a Telegram post that debris recovered after a February 7 attack on the Ukrainian capital pointed to the use of a Zircon hypersonic cruise missile by the Russian military."
There’s a difference between an ICBM (a rocket-launched from the ground), a rocket-powered missile launched from an aircraft, and a revolutionary mach 5 jet-powered missile. The first two are old technology, can be seen from space, and aren’t going to do much in modern warfare.
The third is an interesting innovation if it works to lock a target, rather than simply heading for a fixed co-ordinate. It would need air defence elements to be positioned along the trajectory to anticipate its arrival, as it goes faster than the defence missiles. There’s no evidence that Russia, China, or North Korea actually have any of these, despite several demonstrations they claim to have given.
I suspect he doesn't know the difference between a rocket and a jet.
Further - to get true hypersonic air breathing missiles to work, you need a scramjet. A scramjet is where the combustion inside the engine is with supersonic flow . All existing air breathing engines slow the incoming air down to subsonic velocities. See the enormous cone things in the inlets of the SR71.
To date, claims of actually getting net thrust out of a scram jet are debated. Some experiments may have worked. For seconds.
Even if you get that all to work, you have to fly in a perfectly straight line. Otherwise the shock wave in the intake tears your whole plane/missile apart. Which is the usual fate of scram jet tests, by the way.
The Russian hypersonic missiles are all rocket powered. Ballistic weapons fired from aircraft, mainly.
Indeed - as this article explains, it is highly unlikely that the Russians are anywhere near getting a hypersonic weapon.
It also explains why ships will be safe as these missiles are unable to hit a moving object!
Interesting. Thanks.
That last point - ships are safe because they are moving - does not *entirely* convince in all circumstances.
Storm Shadow is incapable of hitting moving targets, yet it seems to have destroyed one or two Russian ships which happened to be alongside, and possibly the submarine which was in dry dock. Ships sometimes have to stop.
The question whether Zircon is an inaccurate hypersonic slowcoach and potentially vulnerable to Patriot is more interesting imo...
It's basically a prototype, isn't it ? I don't think anyone really yet knows what the coming generation of hypersonics will be capable of.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
According to the 2021 census the number of Muslims in London was 1,318,755.
Where do your figures come from?
Quite obviously London Muslims are a diverse community and not of one mind politically.
I thought I’d got it from here, but must be going mad
I’m not so sure I’d say they were that diverse politically really. Where do you get that from?
That report says on its cover that it is based on 2011 census, so doesn't have 2021 data.
Do you accept that your figure in your earlier post was wrong and exagerrated? Or do you have another source?
I live in a city that is substantially Muslim, so have many colleagues and friends who are Muslim, hence am fully aware of the diversity of political beliefs.
Oh bore off, I said I’d got it wrong
Don’t really care about your mates, I just wondered if there was any actual data on Islamic voting intention you were citing
Yes, this Savanta poll is from November:
A bit more Lab inclined than the median population, but if you adjust for age (mean age of Muslim Brits being younger than the base population) then not far off the rest of the British population in terms of voting intention. Not many Reform voters.
CNN is reporting that Russia hit Kyiv with a hypersonic missile, which is a missile so fast it cannot be shot down
I have no idea if this is true. CNN is pretty pro-Ukraine, so I am not sure why they would boost Putin's military propaganda
If it IS true, isn't that the end of navies as we know them? A single unstoppable missile can take out a carrier. That's it
Ah, like the V2 huh?
How much impact did that have on the war again?
Have you suddenly become a bit stupid, like the rest of PB? This is quite depressing
I wasn't even commenting on the impact this might have on the outcome of the present Ukraine war. I thought that was fairly clear
I was commenting on how this will influence war-making from here on, just as the advent of the V2 - which led to the ICBM - massively impacted geopolitics - and warfare - from the end of WW2 onwards
If hypersonic missiles, which cannot be shot down, are a thing (and this is what CNN are claiming) then I do not see how traditonal navies can operate. How do you defend a £3bn capital ship like an aircraft carrier against a £3m hypersonic missile which cannot be shot down? If it cannot be shot down, or deflected, then you can't defend the ship. So that's the end of the carrier, the carrier group, the navy as we htave known it, they make no sense, they are merely very expensive and easy targets
No?
Of course CNN might have got this wrong, maybe the Ukes are lying for propaganda purposes - I have no idea, on that front
Plenty of analysts believe that this is what an invasion of Taiwan might look like - hypersonic missiles in case the US fleet was thinking of getting involved.
Doing some digging it does seem a very live debate. Some say it is the end of the aircraft carrier, some say the missiles are hyped and not THAT dangerous
I am not a ballistic missile engineer/strategic defence analyst, I dunno
The importance of this CNN report (if it is acccurate) is that they, and the Ukes, are claiming this is the first time a "hypersonic" missile has been used in actual warfare, rather than just a test or a wargame. DYOR!
"CNN — Ukraine claims it has evidence Russia fired an advanced hypersonic missile – one that experts say is almost impossible to shoot down – for the first time in the almost 2-year-old war.
The government-run Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise said in a Telegram post that debris recovered after a February 7 attack on the Ukrainian capital pointed to the use of a Zircon hypersonic cruise missile by the Russian military."
There’s a difference between an ICBM (a rocket-launched from the ground), a rocket-powered missile launched from an aircraft, and a revolutionary mach 5 jet-powered missile. The first two are old technology, can be seen from space, and aren’t going to do much in modern warfare.
The third is an interesting innovation if it works to lock a target, rather than simply heading for a fixed co-ordinate. It would need air defence elements to be positioned along the trajectory to anticipate its arrival, as it goes faster than the defence missiles. There’s no evidence that Russia, China, or North Korea actually have any of these, despite several demonstrations they claim to have given.
I suspect he doesn't know the difference between a rocket and a jet.
Further - to get true hypersonic air breathing missiles to work, you need a scramjet. A scramjet is where the combustion inside the engine is with supersonic flow . All existing air breathing engines slow the incoming air down to subsonic velocities. See the enormous cone things in the inlets of the SR71.
To date, claims of actually getting net thrust out of a scram jet are debated. Some experiments may have worked. For seconds.
Even if you get that all to work, you have to fly in a perfectly straight line. Otherwise the shock wave in the intake tears your whole plane/missile apart. Which is the usual fate of scram jet tests, by the way.
The Russian hypersonic missiles are all rocket powered. Ballistic weapons fired from aircraft, mainly.
Indeed - as this article explains, it is highly unlikely that the Russians are anywhere near getting a hypersonic weapon.
It also explains why ships will be safe as these missiles are unable to hit a moving object!
Interesting. Thanks.
That last point - ships are safe because they are moving - does not *entirely* convince in all circumstances.
Storm Shadow is incapable of hitting moving targets, yet it seems to have destroyed one or two Russian ships which happened to be alongside, and possibly the submarine which was in dry dock. Ships sometimes have to stop.
The question whether Zircon is an inaccurate hypersonic slowcoach and potentially vulnerable to Patriot is more interesting imo.
One thing that interests me is why we have not supplied the longer range version of Storm Shadow / SCALP, which would seem to be a no-brainer perhaps prevented by the traditional Foreign Office (?) activity of buffing their halo whilst people die for reasons of questionable dot-and-tittle.
I think everyone is still holding to the line that no Western supplied weapons are to be used to hit targets inside the internationally recognised borders of Russia, so if the shorter range Storm Shadow missiles we are supplying can hit targets in Kerch, the longer range range version might not have much extra utility, unless we say that we're happy for them to be used against military targets inside Russia itself.
CNN is reporting that Russia hit Kyiv with a hypersonic missile, which is a missile so fast it cannot be shot down
I have no idea if this is true. CNN is pretty pro-Ukraine, so I am not sure why they would boost Putin's military propaganda
If it IS true, isn't that the end of navies as we know them? A single unstoppable missile can take out a carrier. That's it
Ah, like the V2 huh?
How much impact did that have on the war again?
Have you suddenly become a bit stupid, like the rest of PB? This is quite depressing
I wasn't even commenting on the impact this might have on the outcome of the present Ukraine war. I thought that was fairly clear
I was commenting on how this will influence war-making from here on, just as the advent of the V2 - which led to the ICBM - massively impacted geopolitics - and warfare - from the end of WW2 onwards
If hypersonic missiles, which cannot be shot down, are a thing (and this is what CNN are claiming) then I do not see how traditonal navies can operate. How do you defend a £3bn capital ship like an aircraft carrier against a £3m hypersonic missile which cannot be shot down? If it cannot be shot down, or deflected, then you can't defend the ship. So that's the end of the carrier, the carrier group, the navy as we htave known it, they make no sense, they are merely very expensive and easy targets
No?
Of course CNN might have got this wrong, maybe the Ukes are lying for propaganda purposes - I have no idea, on that front
Plenty of analysts believe that this is what an invasion of Taiwan might look like - hypersonic missiles in case the US fleet was thinking of getting involved.
Doing some digging it does seem a very live debate. Some say it is the end of the aircraft carrier, some say the missiles are hyped and not THAT dangerous
I am not a ballistic missile engineer/strategic defence analyst, I dunno
The importance of this CNN report (if it is acccurate) is that they, and the Ukes, are claiming this is the first time a "hypersonic" missile has been used in actual warfare, rather than just a test or a wargame. DYOR!
"CNN — Ukraine claims it has evidence Russia fired an advanced hypersonic missile – one that experts say is almost impossible to shoot down – for the first time in the almost 2-year-old war.
The government-run Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise said in a Telegram post that debris recovered after a February 7 attack on the Ukrainian capital pointed to the use of a Zircon hypersonic cruise missile by the Russian military."
There’s a difference between an ICBM (a rocket-launched from the ground), a rocket-powered missile launched from an aircraft, and a revolutionary mach 5 jet-powered missile. The first two are old technology, can be seen from space, and aren’t going to do much in modern warfare.
The third is an interesting innovation if it works to lock a target, rather than simply heading for a fixed co-ordinate. It would need air defence elements to be positioned along the trajectory to anticipate its arrival, as it goes faster than the defence missiles. There’s no evidence that Russia, China, or North Korea actually have any of these, despite several demonstrations they claim to have given.
I suspect he doesn't know the difference between a rocket and a jet.
Further - to get true hypersonic air breathing missiles to work, you need a scramjet. A scramjet is where the combustion inside the engine is with supersonic flow . All existing air breathing engines slow the incoming air down to subsonic velocities. See the enormous cone things in the inlets of the SR71.
To date, claims of actually getting net thrust out of a scram jet are debated. Some experiments may have worked. For seconds.
Even if you get that all to work, you have to fly in a perfectly straight line. Otherwise the shock wave in the intake tears your whole plane/missile apart. Which is the usual fate of scram jet tests, by the way.
The Russian hypersonic missiles are all rocket powered. Ballistic weapons fired from aircraft, mainly.
Indeed - as this article explains, it is highly unlikely that the Russians are anywhere near getting a hypersonic weapon.
It also explains why ships will be safe as these missiles are unable to hit a moving object!
Interesting. Thanks.
That last point - ships are safe because they are moving - does not *entirely* convince in all circumstances.
Storm Shadow is incapable of hitting moving targets, yet it seems to have destroyed one or two Russian ships which happened to be alongside, and possibly the submarine which was in dry dock. Ships sometimes have to stop.
The question whether Zircon is an inaccurate hypersonic slowcoach and potentially vulnerable to Patriot is more interesting imo.
One thing that interests me is why we have not supplied the longer range version of Storm Shadow / SCALP, which would seem to be a no-brainer perhaps prevented by the traditional Foreign Office (?) activity of buffing their halo whilst people die for reasons of questionable dot-and-tittle.
Zircon has an somewhat interesting history as a name.
The Government, the security services and the BBC's Governors were jittery about the Secret Society series, and particularly the Zircon satellite exposé that controversial freelance reporter Duncan Campbell was working on with BBC Scotland.
The thrust of the documentary was that the £500 million cost of the satellite had been wrongly concealed from the Public Accounts Committee.
After much discussion, Director-General Alasdair Milne decided that the programme should not be broadcast. Campbell was, unsurprisingly, unhappy about the decision, and word spread. "BBC gag on £500m Defence secret" was the Observer's headline.
A clearer a picture of how the two suspended Labour candidates came to say what they said, and how it got out - and it’s very bad news for Starmer as this isn’t a typical open and shut case of Labour anti semitism, it’s beginning to point to Starmer and his top team hastily over reacting, wilting under media pressure - which is cardinal sin for political leaders in my book.
The two banned men were meeting a group of councillors intending to quit Labour , they were trying to placate those furious at Starmer for taking a staunch pro Israel position. It’s almost certain this has been leaked to Labours enemies to hurt Labour leadership, by one of those there who stormed off out the party because Starmer wasn’t attacking Israel or defending Hamas enough for their liking.
Ali seems particularly hard done here by as what he said seemed to everyone “completely out of character for him” as in recent years Ali has been “an ally to the Jewish community, having set up Labour groups such as Muslims Against Antisemitism.”
They said some crazy conspiracy things about Egypt and US warning Israel so why didn’t Israel government act, and clearly offensive towards Israel government and state of Israel. But what are we all pointing to here from what’s in public domain that is clearly antisemitic?
How long has the Mail/Fawkesy combo been sitting on this information, and why the big unveil start of this particular week? Did they get the go ahead from the Downing Street bunker?
The mails actually dropped the Story from the front page today, strangely, just as it’s getting juicer and more momentum.
The Telegraph fingers FIVE MORE Labour candidates/MPs now in trouble for recent antisemitism it’s telling Starmer he needs to act on.
Where’s all diverse bits of Tory media suddenly getting all this juicy information from?
A clearer a picture of how the two suspended Labour candidates came to say what they said, and how it got out - and it’s very bad news for Starmer as this isn’t a typical open and shut case of Labour anti semitism, it’s beginning to point to Starmer and his top team hastily over reacting, wilting under media pressure - which is cardinal sin for political leaders in my book.
The two banned men were meeting a group of councillors intending to quit Labour , they were trying to placate those furious at Starmer for taking a staunch pro Israel position. It’s almost certain this has been leaked to Labours enemies to hurt Labour leadership, by one of those there who stormed off out the party because Starmer wasn’t attacking Israel or defending Hamas enough for their liking.
Ali seems particularly hard done here by as what he said seemed to everyone “completely out of character for him” as in recent years Ali has been “an ally to the Jewish community, having set up Labour groups such as Muslims Against Antisemitism.”
They said some crazy conspiracy things about Egypt and US warning Israel so why didn’t Israel government act, and clearly offensive towards Israel government and state of Israel. But what are we all pointing to here from what’s in public domain that is clearly antisemitic?
How long has the Mail/Fawkesy combo been sitting on this information, and why the big unveil start of this particular week? Did they get the go ahead from the Downing Street bunker?
The mails actually dropped the Story from the front page today, strangely, just as it’s getting juicer and more momentum.
The Telegraph fingers FIVE MORE Labour candidates/MPs now in trouble for recent antisemitism it’s telling Starmer he needs to act on.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
That struck me when people talk about Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine. Ok yes, but the war IS the crime. An unprovoked attack by one country on another. It's the bigger crime since it leads to all the rest. It just happens to be a crime we don't have a way of prosecuting.
Presumably @Topping takes the view that all is fair in war, so the Russian actions in Bucha or Mariopol are fine and dandy. Just boys being boys and soldiers being soldiers.
Er, no. The winners usually define what is fine and dandy. Might is right. Kinabalu is touching in his naivety with his belief that he holds the key to universal values and anything which violates them, in this case "war", is a crime.
Everyone who goes to war believes they are in the right and we have to make a judgement as to whether we agree with them.
There is of course the concept of a "Just War" which (probably) we invented to justify our actions. Our war against Germany is one such. Does engaging in a Just War justify firebombing Dresden? I would say yes - not because it was a Just War, but because if we had lost we would all likely have been killed or violently subjugated so for me it was absolutely justified.
So if Rusia defeats Ukraine then Bucha is fine and dandy?
I see beergate 2.0 has arrived. "This really will be the end of SKS".
Keir Starmer's wife is Jewish. There is absolutely no evidence he has ever, or will ever be anti-Semitic or allow anti-Semitism to be a thing in his Labour Party. The BoD, Louise Ellman, JLM and others have said this to be the case, so don't take my word for it. Also the EHRC.
The failure in Europe is to think strategically. Instead Russia/Ukraine is seen as a crisis to get over. The problem in the US is that each administration wants to get one over on the previous lot and just reverses policy.
A clearer a picture of how the two suspended Labour candidates came to say what they said, and how it got out - and it’s very bad news for Starmer as this isn’t a typical open and shut case of Labour anti semitism, it’s beginning to point to Starmer and his top team hastily over reacting, wilting under media pressure - which is cardinal sin for political leaders in my book.
The two banned men were meeting a group of councillors intending to quit Labour , they were trying to placate those furious at Starmer for taking a staunch pro Israel position. It’s almost certain this has been leaked to Labours enemies to hurt Labour leadership, by one of those there who stormed off out the party because Starmer wasn’t attacking Israel or defending Hamas enough for their liking.
Ali seems particularly hard done here by as what he said seemed to everyone “completely out of character for him” as in recent years Ali has been “an ally to the Jewish community, having set up Labour groups such as Muslims Against Antisemitism.”
They said some crazy conspiracy things about Egypt and US warning Israel so why didn’t Israel government act, and clearly offensive towards Israel government and state of Israel. But what are we all pointing to here from what’s in public domain that is clearly antisemitic?
How long has the Mail/Fawkesy combo been sitting on this information, and why the big unveil start of this particular week? Did they get the go ahead from the Downing Street bunker?
The mails actually dropped the Story from the front page today, strangely, just as it’s getting juicer and more momentum.
The Telegraph fingers FIVE MORE Labour candidates/MPs now in trouble for recent antisemitism it’s telling Starmer he needs to act on.
Not sure attacking people who send their kids to state school rather than private as lacking aspiration is a brilliant strategy from Sunak.
I thought this was the most bizarre thing of the whole debate.
He basically said, the schools are shit and you should feel bad that people can pay to escape it.
Can somebody explain what sort of strategy that is?
Also, last time I checked, SKS isn't against private education. They just shouldn't be tax exempt - and can somebody explain why exactly they should be?
I see beergate 2.0 has arrived. "This really will be the end of SKS".
Keir Starmer's wife is Jewish. There is absolutely no evidence he has ever, or will ever be anti-Semitic or allow anti-Semitism to be a thing in his Labour Party. The BoD, Louise Ellman, JLM and others have said this to be the case, so don't take my word for it. Also the EHRC.
Calm down Horsey dear. Been caught by surprise by the Tories beautifully choreographed counter offensive, have we?
A clearer a picture of how the two suspended Labour candidates came to say what they said, and how it got out - and it’s very bad news for Starmer as this isn’t a typical open and shut case of Labour anti semitism, it’s beginning to point to Starmer and his top team hastily over reacting, wilting under media pressure - which is cardinal sin for political leaders in my book.
The two banned men were meeting a group of councillors intending to quit Labour , they were trying to placate those furious at Starmer for taking a staunch pro Israel position. It’s almost certain this has been leaked to Labours enemies to hurt Labour leadership, by one of those there who stormed off out the party because Starmer wasn’t attacking Israel or defending Hamas enough for their liking.
Ali seems particularly hard done here by as what he said seemed to everyone “completely out of character for him” as in recent years Ali has been “an ally to the Jewish community, having set up Labour groups such as Muslims Against Antisemitism.”
They said some crazy conspiracy things about Egypt and US warning Israel so why didn’t Israel government act, and clearly offensive towards Israel government and state of Israel. But what are we all pointing to here from what’s in public domain that is clearly antisemitic?
How long has the Mail/Fawkesy combo been sitting on this information, and why the big unveil start of this particular week? Did they get the go ahead from the Downing Street bunker?
The mails actually dropped the Story from the front page today, strangely, just as it’s getting juicer and more momentum.
The Telegraph fingers FIVE MORE Labour candidates/MPs now in trouble for recent antisemitism it’s telling Starmer he needs to act on.
A clearer a picture of how the two suspended Labour candidates came to say what they said, and how it got out - and it’s very bad news for Starmer as this isn’t a typical open and shut case of Labour anti semitism, it’s beginning to point to Starmer and his top team hastily over reacting, wilting under media pressure - which is cardinal sin for political leaders in my book.
The two banned men were meeting a group of councillors intending to quit Labour , they were trying to placate those furious at Starmer for taking a staunch pro Israel position. It’s almost certain this has been leaked to Labours enemies to hurt Labour leadership, by one of those there who stormed off out the party because Starmer wasn’t attacking Israel or defending Hamas enough for their liking.
Ali seems particularly hard done here by as what he said seemed to everyone “completely out of character for him” as in recent years Ali has been “an ally to the Jewish community, having set up Labour groups such as Muslims Against Antisemitism.”
They said some crazy conspiracy things about Egypt and US warning Israel so why didn’t Israel government act, and clearly offensive towards Israel government and state of Israel. But what are we all pointing to here from what’s in public domain that is clearly antisemitic?
How long has the Mail/Fawkesy combo been sitting on this information, and why the big unveil start of this particular week? Did they get the go ahead from the Downing Street bunker?
The mails actually dropped the Story from the front page today, strangely, just as it’s getting juicer and more momentum.
The Telegraph fingers FIVE MORE Labour candidates/MPs now in trouble for recent antisemitism it’s telling Starmer he needs to act on.
A clearer a picture of how the two suspended Labour candidates came to say what they said, and how it got out - and it’s very bad news for Starmer as this isn’t a typical open and shut case of Labour anti semitism, it’s beginning to point to Starmer and his top team hastily over reacting, wilting under media pressure - which is cardinal sin for political leaders in my book.
The two banned men were meeting a group of councillors intending to quit Labour , they were trying to placate those furious at Starmer for taking a staunch pro Israel position. It’s almost certain this has been leaked to Labours enemies to hurt Labour leadership, by one of those there who stormed off out the party because Starmer wasn’t attacking Israel or defending Hamas enough for their liking.
Ali seems particularly hard done here by as what he said seemed to everyone “completely out of character for him” as in recent years Ali has been “an ally to the Jewish community, having set up Labour groups such as Muslims Against Antisemitism.”
They said some crazy conspiracy things about Egypt and US warning Israel so why didn’t Israel government act, and clearly offensive towards Israel government and state of Israel. But what are we all pointing to here from what’s in public domain that is clearly antisemitic?
How long has the Mail/Fawkesy combo been sitting on this information, and why the big unveil start of this particular week? Did they get the go ahead from the Downing Street bunker?
The mails actually dropped the Story from the front page today, strangely, just as it’s getting juicer and more momentum.
The Telegraph fingers FIVE MORE Labour candidates/MPs now in trouble for recent antisemitism it’s telling Starmer he needs to act on.
A clearer a picture of how the two suspended Labour candidates came to say what they said, and how it got out - and it’s very bad news for Starmer as this isn’t a typical open and shut case of Labour anti semitism, it’s beginning to point to Starmer and his top team hastily over reacting, wilting under media pressure - which is cardinal sin for political leaders in my book.
The two banned men were meeting a group of councillors intending to quit Labour , they were trying to placate those furious at Starmer for taking a staunch pro Israel position. It’s almost certain this has been leaked to Labours enemies to hurt Labour leadership, by one of those there who stormed off out the party because Starmer wasn’t attacking Israel or defending Hamas enough for their liking.
Ali seems particularly hard done here by as what he said seemed to everyone “completely out of character for him” as in recent years Ali has been “an ally to the Jewish community, having set up Labour groups such as Muslims Against Antisemitism.”
They said some crazy conspiracy things about Egypt and US warning Israel so why didn’t Israel government act, and clearly offensive towards Israel government and state of Israel. But what are we all pointing to here from what’s in public domain that is clearly antisemitic?
How long has the Mail/Fawkesy combo been sitting on this information, and why the big unveil start of this particular week? Did they get the go ahead from the Downing Street bunker?
The mails actually dropped the Story from the front page today, strangely, just as it’s getting juicer and more momentum.
The Telegraph fingers FIVE MORE Labour candidates/MPs now in trouble for recent antisemitism it’s telling Starmer he needs to act on.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
That struck me when people talk about Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine. Ok yes, but the war IS the crime. An unprovoked attack by one country on another. It's the bigger crime since it leads to all the rest. It just happens to be a crime we don't have a way of prosecuting.
Presumably @Topping takes the view that all is fair in war, so the Russian actions in Bucha or Mariopol are fine and dandy. Just boys being boys and soldiers being soldiers.
Tbf I think it depends a lot on whether he agrees with the cause. And with Israel (v Palestine) he believes in it so passionately he's as good as right there fighting with the IDS.
I'm certainly right there fighting the bullshit, hypocrisy, and double standards on PB. Of which there is plenty.
I accept you think you are. But it comes over as uncritical support for Israel. As with Leon sometimes (sorry!) it's why you hold the view that's more interesting to me than the view itself.
One long term worry I have is that Britain is not capable of going to war. People will get duped in to subservience to another power. I was also thinking that 'woke' creates the conditions for this perfectly - a reduction in self confidence and a confusing form of self hatred that leads people to support and glorify Hamas, with its associated acts of murder and rape; with the legal system then letting them off with a 'non punishment'. These people are unlikely to be capable of fighting for anything.
I'm not sure I agree. The nature of war has changed and the vast majority of us have never known war. Notions of how WW3 would be fought during the Cold War period were chilling enough for most for whom war meant in effect if they were lucky their own quick death and if they weren't struggling to survive in a destroyed irradiated wasteland with all the comforts and luxuries they had known gone forever.
War is changing and has changed - nuclear weapons remain the shadow on the horizon but the idea of a 100-division armoured thrust into central Germany has gone. It's legitimate to question the nature of the "threat" - Russia? Hardly. China? Yes to a point, North Korea? Seriously?
The biggest threat, apart from our complacency, would be the US retreating from Europe to the Pacific as Trump has threatened. How that would manifest in terms of a new European foreign and military policy and identity is harder to assess at this time especially given what appear to be continued and deep cultural and political reservations in Britain toward European intentions.
I would say that Russia is a threat, it has claims on large parts of Europe, it has mastered psychological warfare, it will fight brutally; and calculates that the west is too weak and divided to fight it despite the technical advantage that it has. On the latter it is probably correct. Russia has half a million troops in Ukraine dying at 1000 a day, most western countries would struggle to fight this type of war. People would go off crying about human rights.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
According to the 2021 census the number of Muslims in London was 1,318,755.
Where do your figures come from?
Quite obviously London Muslims are a diverse community and not of one mind politically.
I thought I’d got it from here, but must be going mad
I’m not so sure I’d say they were that diverse politically really. Where do you get that from?
That report says on its cover that it is based on 2011 census, so doesn't have 2021 data.
Do you accept that your figure in your earlier post was wrong and exagerrated? Or do you have another source?
I live in a city that is substantially Muslim, so have many colleagues and friends who are Muslim, hence am fully aware of the diversity of political beliefs.
I thought you lived in a charming rural village. All white I'd warrant.
Not that that has anything to do with the price of eggs, that said.
A suburb of Leicester, outside the city boundary, but part of the conurbation, and certainly not "completely white"
It may seem extraordinary to you, but I do have friends and colleagues from outside the village!
One of the interesting things about Leicester is its relatively integrated and secularised middle class professional demographic amongst a significant chunk of 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants of various faith groups. There are more traditionalist and nationalist groups too, of course.
I'd be interested if Dr Foxter has any data on whether intermarriage is common or has occurred much at all, as that is imo one of the later signs of real integration.
I don't have any formal data, but in Leicester it is not very unusual to have dual or multiple heritages, from all sorts of combinations. I see it in all social classes, so not specific to the middle classes.
I see beergate 2.0 has arrived. "This really will be the end of SKS".
Keir Starmer's wife is Jewish. There is absolutely no evidence he has ever, or will ever be anti-Semitic or allow anti-Semitism to be a thing in his Labour Party. The BoD, Louise Ellman, JLM and others have said this to be the case, so don't take my word for it. Also the EHRC.
Calm down Horsey dear. Been caught by surprise by the Tories beautifully choreographed counter offensive, have we?
Is it that well choreographed, though?
If you have the dirt, why sit on it and release it now? It's a bit late to really influence the by elections, too early for May, and it seems pretty likely that any Conservative counteroffensive will get squashed in about fifty hours time.
A clearer a picture of how the two suspended Labour candidates came to say what they said, and how it got out - and it’s very bad news for Starmer as this isn’t a typical open and shut case of Labour anti semitism, it’s beginning to point to Starmer and his top team hastily over reacting, wilting under media pressure - which is cardinal sin for political leaders in my book.
The two banned men were meeting a group of councillors intending to quit Labour , they were trying to placate those furious at Starmer for taking a staunch pro Israel position. It’s almost certain this has been leaked to Labours enemies to hurt Labour leadership, by one of those there who stormed off out the party because Starmer wasn’t attacking Israel or defending Hamas enough for their liking.
Ali seems particularly hard done here by as what he said seemed to everyone “completely out of character for him” as in recent years Ali has been “an ally to the Jewish community, having set up Labour groups such as Muslims Against Antisemitism.”
They said some crazy conspiracy things about Egypt and US warning Israel so why didn’t Israel government act, and clearly offensive towards Israel government and state of Israel. But what are we all pointing to here from what’s in public domain that is clearly antisemitic?
How long has the Mail/Fawkesy combo been sitting on this information, and why the big unveil start of this particular week? Did they get the go ahead from the Downing Street bunker?
The mails actually dropped the Story from the front page today, strangely, just as it’s getting juicer and more momentum.
The Telegraph fingers FIVE MORE Labour candidates/MPs now in trouble for recent antisemitism it’s telling Starmer he needs to act on.
Since we are doing religion in Leicester, and adherents of Islam are a substantial community there.
Encouragement for rabbits - apparently Muslims aren't allowed to eat them, which I did not know until yesterday.
I’ve had rabbit lots of times. It’s nice. Goes well with pasta.
However, why can’t they?
I'm going to semi-reverse ferret. Checking around beyond my original read, it appears that there may be a Sunni/Shia difference.
Time to retire to bed in confusion.
I can clear it up for you. The sons of Mohammad and Uncles of Mohammad met to decide the way forward, after the passing of the Prophet. In the big tent which Islam was at the time, one of the uncle’s served rabbit in a ragu sauce, and the sons of Mohammad said - wait, where’s snowy and bon Bon - they were hopping about here earlier. And when they realised the truth, a big fight broke out, and Islam has been in schism ever since.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
That struck me when people talk about Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine. Ok yes, but the war IS the crime. An unprovoked attack by one country on another. It's the bigger crime since it leads to all the rest. It just happens to be a crime we don't have a way of prosecuting.
Presumably @Topping takes the view that all is fair in war, so the Russian actions in Bucha or Mariopol are fine and dandy. Just boys being boys and soldiers being soldiers.
Er, no. The winners usually define what is fine and dandy. Might is right. Kinabalu is touching in his naivety with his belief that he holds the key to universal values and anything which violates them, in this case "war", is a crime.
Everyone who goes to war believes they are in the right and we have to make a judgement as to whether we agree with them.
There is of course the concept of a "Just War" which (probably) we invented to justify our actions. Our war against Germany is one such. Does engaging in a Just War justify firebombing Dresden? I would say yes - not because it was a Just War, but because if we had lost we would all likely have been killed or violently subjugated so for me it was absolutely justified.
So if Rusia defeats Ukraine then Bucha is fine and dandy?
What a strange moral world you live in.
Not quite. I can hold a position about any conflict but that is my own view. There is no universal truth. Might is right in that the winners get to fuck the prom queen.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
That struck me when people talk about Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine. Ok yes, but the war IS the crime. An unprovoked attack by one country on another. It's the bigger crime since it leads to all the rest. It just happens to be a crime we don't have a way of prosecuting.
Presumably @Topping takes the view that all is fair in war, so the Russian actions in Bucha or Mariopol are fine and dandy. Just boys being boys and soldiers being soldiers.
Tbf I think it depends a lot on whether he agrees with the cause. And with Israel (v Palestine) he believes in it so passionately he's as good as right there fighting with the IDS.
I'm certainly right there fighting the bullshit, hypocrisy, and double standards on PB. Of which there is plenty.
I accept you think you are. But it comes over as uncritical support for Israel. As with Leon sometimes (sorry!) it's why you hold the view that's more interesting to me than the view itself.
All those PB heroes "fighting the bullshit" often find themselves drowning in their own slurry.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
That struck me when people talk about Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine. Ok yes, but the war IS the crime. An unprovoked attack by one country on another. It's the bigger crime since it leads to all the rest. It just happens to be a crime we don't have a way of prosecuting.
Presumably @Topping takes the view that all is fair in war, so the Russian actions in Bucha or Mariopol are fine and dandy. Just boys being boys and soldiers being soldiers.
Tbf I think it depends a lot on whether he agrees with the cause. And with Israel (v Palestine) he believes in it so passionately he's as good as right there fighting with the IDS.
I'm certainly right there fighting the bullshit, hypocrisy, and double standards on PB. Of which there is plenty.
I accept you think you are. But it comes over as uncritical support for Israel. As with Leon sometimes (sorry!) it's why you hold the view that's more interesting to me than the view itself.
A mystery wrapped up in an enigma, eh? And there was I thinking I could be read like an open book.
I see beergate 2.0 has arrived. "This really will be the end of SKS".
Keir Starmer's wife is Jewish. There is absolutely no evidence he has ever, or will ever be anti-Semitic or allow anti-Semitism to be a thing in his Labour Party. The BoD, Louise Ellman, JLM and others have said this to be the case, so don't take my word for it. Also the EHRC.
Calm down Horsey dear. Been caught by surprise by the Tories beautifully choreographed counter offensive, have we?
Is it that well choreographed, though?
If you have the dirt, why sit on it and release it now? It's a bit late to really influence the by elections, too early for May, and it seems pretty likely that any Conservative counteroffensive will get squashed in about fifty hours time.
this might just be a mere appetiser to the spring offensive - 7 Labour shrimps in a cocktail sauce. 2 down, 5 more to get dipped tomorrow.
Too late to influence this weeks by elections, or right on time? If Sunak can win just one of the by elections, it will be party time - Uxbridge all over again but with Jerusalem bells. Takes the pressure right off Sunak, kills any Tory dissent flat dead.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
That struck me when people talk about Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine. Ok yes, but the war IS the crime. An unprovoked attack by one country on another. It's the bigger crime since it leads to all the rest. It just happens to be a crime we don't have a way of prosecuting.
Presumably @Topping takes the view that all is fair in war, so the Russian actions in Bucha or Mariopol are fine and dandy. Just boys being boys and soldiers being soldiers.
Tbf I think it depends a lot on whether he agrees with the cause. And with Israel (v Palestine) he believes in it so passionately he's as good as right there fighting with the IDS.
I'm certainly right there fighting the bullshit, hypocrisy, and double standards on PB. Of which there is plenty.
I accept you think you are. But it comes over as uncritical support for Israel. As with Leon sometimes (sorry!) it's why you hold the view that's more interesting to me than the view itself.
All those PB heroes "fighting the bullshit" often find themselves drowning in their own slurry.
The Evening Standard tonight had a double page feature on Labour's problems in its London heartland. The main focus was on the threat to Wes Streeting in Ilford North whose majority in 2019 was 5,200 and now faces an Independent candidate with links to pro-Palestine groups whose own campaign may be helped by the inclusion of some parts of Ilford South into the newly-redrawn constituency.
The Standard also confirmed what I'd heard - that Councillor Mirza and the Newham Independents are going to stand candidates in both East Ham and West Ham & Beckton against Stephen Timms and Lyn Brown respectively. Another likely challenge to Labour is in Bethnal Green & Bow from an Aspire candidate.
It seems unlikely Labour will lose any of these seats and treating "the muslim vote" as a single homogenous entity is unwise. Respect got 20% in 2005 in East Ham and I suspect that's about where any pro-Palestine anti-Labour candidate will end up later this year.
Number of Muslims in London 2001 607k 2011 1m 2021 1.7m
So I’d think that the percentage of votes in big Muslim areas could be higher than 20
According to the 2021 census the number of Muslims in London was 1,318,755.
Where do your figures come from?
Quite obviously London Muslims are a diverse community and not of one mind politically.
I thought I’d got it from here, but must be going mad
I’m not so sure I’d say they were that diverse politically really. Where do you get that from?
That report says on its cover that it is based on 2011 census, so doesn't have 2021 data.
Do you accept that your figure in your earlier post was wrong and exagerrated? Or do you have another source?
I live in a city that is substantially Muslim, so have many colleagues and friends who are Muslim, hence am fully aware of the diversity of political beliefs.
I thought you lived in a charming rural village. All white I'd warrant.
Not that that has anything to do with the price of eggs, that said.
A suburb of Leicester, outside the city boundary, but part of the conurbation, and certainly not "completely white"
It may seem extraordinary to you, but I do have friends and colleagues from outside the village!
I have no doubt. Just that you have previously said you lived in a village hence I was surprised by your "I live in a city..."
I’m also confused @Foxy as you recently said Alicia Kearns is your local MP. Melton is not really part of any conurbation, Leicester or Nottingham.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
That struck me when people talk about Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine. Ok yes, but the war IS the crime. An unprovoked attack by one country on another. It's the bigger crime since it leads to all the rest. It just happens to be a crime we don't have a way of prosecuting.
Presumably @Topping takes the view that all is fair in war, so the Russian actions in Bucha or Mariopol are fine and dandy. Just boys being boys and soldiers being soldiers.
Er, no. The winners usually define what is fine and dandy. Might is right. Kinabalu is touching in his naivety with his belief that he holds the key to universal values and anything which violates them, in this case "war", is a crime.
Everyone who goes to war believes they are in the right and we have to make a judgement as to whether we agree with them.
There is of course the concept of a "Just War" which (probably) we invented to justify our actions. Our war against Germany is one such. Does engaging in a Just War justify firebombing Dresden? I would say yes - not because it was a Just War, but because if we had lost we would all likely have been killed or violently subjugated so for me it was absolutely justified.
So if Rusia defeats Ukraine then Bucha is fine and dandy?
What a strange moral world you live in.
Not quite. I can hold a position about any conflict but that is my own view. There is no universal truth. Might is right in that the winners get to fuck the prom queen.
Are you OK? Do you need a lift home? I think it might be better if you hand your car keys over to the Landlord for safekeeping, and perhaps get a taxi back tomorrow to collect them.
Russian energy exports to Europe have declined 68%. Great but what about the other 32%?
It's this kind of half-heartedness that is most frustrating. And it's obvious to the other side. The most shocking thing I've seen from Putin's interview is how he thinks Europe is basically irrelevant. Despite being dwarfed by it financially, industrially and demographically, Putin sees the continent as nothing more than a cipher of the US. That's damning.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
That struck me when people talk about Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine. Ok yes, but the war IS the crime. An unprovoked attack by one country on another. It's the bigger crime since it leads to all the rest. It just happens to be a crime we don't have a way of prosecuting.
Presumably @Topping takes the view that all is fair in war, so the Russian actions in Bucha or Mariopol are fine and dandy. Just boys being boys and soldiers being soldiers.
Er, no. The winners usually define what is fine and dandy. Might is right. Kinabalu is touching in his naivety with his belief that he holds the key to universal values and anything which violates them, in this case "war", is a crime.
Everyone who goes to war believes they are in the right and we have to make a judgement as to whether we agree with them.
There is of course the concept of a "Just War" which (probably) we invented to justify our actions. Our war against Germany is one such. Does engaging in a Just War justify firebombing Dresden? I would say yes - not because it was a Just War, but because if we had lost we would all likely have been killed or violently subjugated so for me it was absolutely justified.
So if Rusia defeats Ukraine then Bucha is fine and dandy?
What a strange moral world you live in.
Not quite. I can hold a position about any conflict but that is my own view. There is no universal truth. Might is right in that the winners get to fuck the prom queen.
Are you OK? Do you need a lift home? I think it might be better if you hand your car keys over to the Landlord for safekeeping, and perhaps get a taxi back tomorrow to collect them.
Is this you not knowing why you are replying to me.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
That struck me when people talk about Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine. Ok yes, but the war IS the crime. An unprovoked attack by one country on another. It's the bigger crime since it leads to all the rest. It just happens to be a crime we don't have a way of prosecuting.
Presumably @Topping takes the view that all is fair in war, so the Russian actions in Bucha or Mariopol are fine and dandy. Just boys being boys and soldiers being soldiers.
Er, no. The winners usually define what is fine and dandy. Might is right. Kinabalu is touching in his naivety with his belief that he holds the key to universal values and anything which violates them, in this case "war", is a crime.
Everyone who goes to war believes they are in the right and we have to make a judgement as to whether we agree with them.
There is of course the concept of a "Just War" which (probably) we invented to justify our actions. Our war against Germany is one such. Does engaging in a Just War justify firebombing Dresden? I would say yes - not because it was a Just War, but because if we had lost we would all likely have been killed or violently subjugated so for me it was absolutely justified.
So if Rusia defeats Ukraine then Bucha is fine and dandy?
What a strange moral world you live in.
Not quite. I can hold a position about any conflict but that is my own view. There is no universal truth. Might is right in that the winners get to fuck the prom queen.
Are you OK? Do you need a lift home? I think it might be better if you hand your car keys over to the Landlord for safekeeping, and perhaps get a taxi back tomorrow to collect them.
Is this you not knowing why you are replying to me.
I was simply enquiring if I could be of assistance. You appear rather tired and emotional.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
It was ignorance as much as arrogance. Fascinating commentary from physicist Freeman Dyson here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/11/01/227625/a-failure-of-intelligence/ … Bomber Command had a similar problem in evaluating the effectiveness of bombing. Aircrew frequently reported the destruction of targets when photographs showed they had missed by several miles. The navy ORS was extremely effective and made great contributions to winning the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic. But Blackett had two enormous advantages. First, he was a world-renowned scientist (who would later win a Nobel Prize), with a safe job in the academic world, so he could threaten to resign if his advice was not followed. Second, he had been a navy officer in World War I and was respected by the admirals he advised. Basil Dickins, the chief of our ORS at Bomber Command, had neither of these advantages. He was a civil servant with no independent standing. He could not threaten to resign, and Sir Arthur Harris had no respect for him. His career depended on telling Sir Arthur things that Sir Arthur wanted to hear. So that is what he did. He gave Sir Arthur information rather than advice. He never raised serious questions about Sir Arthur’s tactics and strategy…
This makes pretty clear that the targeting of civilans was deliberate policy : … We succeeded in raising firestorms only twice, once in Hamburg and once more in Dresden in 1945, where between 25,000 and 60,000 people perished (the numbers are still debated). The Germans had good air raid shelters and warning systems and did what they were told. As a result, only a few thousand people were killed in a typical major attack. But when there was a firestorm, people were asphyxiated or roasted inside their shelters, and the number killed was more than 10 times greater. Every time Bomber Command attacked a city, we were trying to raise a firestorm, but we never learnt why we so seldom succeeded…
Targeting of workers making weapons to kill allied soldiers would fit just as well. And the firestorm didn’t just kill people it destroyed buildings.
None of this is nice. But being gassed at Auschwitz was pretty below the belt too, as was being rounded up and burned to death in a church (Oradour) or taken to a ravine, stripped naked and shot, including the children.
I’m comfortable with everything that was done to defeat Germany. I’m sorry others can’t see that. I’ve read accounts of Dresden, and Hamburg, and it sounds horrifying. I hope it never happens again, and I hope I never get to experience it. But it doesn’t make it a war crime.
Under the then existing laws of war, it wasn’t. But it was both morally, and practically, deeply questionable.
Indeed and the point I made right at the start was that it was as a result of the WW2 experience that civilised countries around the world - including the UK and Israel - choose to sign up to a new set of laws outlawing certain behaviour in war.
Maybe Topping and others think those laws should only apply to nasty evil foreigners and not to us morally upstanding British and our brave allies.
"Laws" is a meaningless concept in war.
Answer the question. Let's say that the Dresden (and other) bombings helped to win the war for the UK. Would you rather us not have carried these out because of laws or are you content that we were in an existential fight and needed to do this to win, even if many children died as a result.
I agree, war is crime made legal, so all war is criminal actionin intent and purpose.
So why do we do it, advocate it and defend it?
That struck me when people talk about Russia committing war crimes in Ukraine. Ok yes, but the war IS the crime. An unprovoked attack by one country on another. It's the bigger crime since it leads to all the rest. It just happens to be a crime we don't have a way of prosecuting.
Presumably @Topping takes the view that all is fair in war, so the Russian actions in Bucha or Mariopol are fine and dandy. Just boys being boys and soldiers being soldiers.
Er, no. The winners usually define what is fine and dandy. Might is right. Kinabalu is touching in his naivety with his belief that he holds the key to universal values and anything which violates them, in this case "war", is a crime.
Everyone who goes to war believes they are in the right and we have to make a judgement as to whether we agree with them.
There is of course the concept of a "Just War" which (probably) we invented to justify our actions. Our war against Germany is one such. Does engaging in a Just War justify firebombing Dresden? I would say yes - not because it was a Just War, but because if we had lost we would all likely have been killed or violently subjugated so for me it was absolutely justified.
So if Rusia defeats Ukraine then Bucha is fine and dandy?
What a strange moral world you live in.
Not quite. I can hold a position about any conflict but that is my own view. There is no universal truth. Might is right in that the winners get to fuck the prom queen.
Are you OK? Do you need a lift home? I think it might be better if you hand your car keys over to the Landlord for safekeeping, and perhaps get a taxi back tomorrow to collect them.
Is this you not knowing why you are replying to me.
I was simply enquiring if I could be of assistance. You appear rather tired and emotional.
Were you now. Sounds more like Stockholm Syndrome.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
I don't think Dresden was a war crime. This gets more attention today than Nagasaki and Hiroshima do and says more about our confidence as a nation today than anything else.
The Germans were bloody lucky the Manhatten Project didn't complete earlier than it did because it absolutely would have been used on its cities if it had, in what was a total war; they brought it on themselves by insisting on fighting to the finish in 1945 all the while inflicting unspeakable horrors on those still unfortunate enough to be under the jackboot of their rule and refusing to surrender.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
Because it was clear that it would not work. It was part of this ridiculous idea of British moral superiority. We had not cracked under the Blitz because we were British. But johnny foreigner is not made of the same stuff and so was bound to be broken by our bombing his cities flat.
Harris explicitly pushed this idea - that he could win the war by breaking the German spirit. It was clear in hindsight (and to many at the time) that it was a fallacy and that is one of the reasons that it was outlawed after the war. The whole campaign of targetting German civilian population would today be considered criminal and put in the same category as the use of poison gas.
I’m sorry but I disagree. It did work, just not by damaging morale. See the effort Germany had to put into defending the Reich, rather than fighting the Russians. See the D-Day campaign and after for why winning air superiority was so crucial. The battle of the bulge only got as far as it did because the allies could not fly due to the weather. When the weather cleared the fighter-bombers returned and wreaked havoc.
Morale bombing failed, yes, but the Bombing War as a whole played a significant role in the allied victory. Singling out Dresden as ‘special’ is just nonsense, as Bomber Command, and the 8th Air Force tried to achieve similar results every time. Is Hamburg a war crime? What about Schweinfurt?
That wasn’t Dyson’s view. And he was better placed than most to make the judgment. … A week after the final attack on Berlin, we suffered an even more crushing defeat. We attacked Nuremberg with 795 bombers and lost 94, a loss rate of almost 12 percent. It was then clear to everybody that such losses were unsustainable. Sir Arthur reluctantly abandoned his dream of winning the War by himself. Bomber Command stopped flying so deep into Germany and spent the summer of 1944 giving tactical support to the Allied armies that were, by then, invading France.
The history of the 20th century has repeatedly shown that strategic bombing by itself does not win wars. If Britain had decided in 1936 to put its main effort into building ships instead of bombers, the invasion of France might have been possible in 1943 instead of 1944, and the war in Europe might have ended in 1944 instead of 1945. But in 1943, we had the bombers, and we did not have the ships, and the problem was to do the best we could with what we had...
That ignores the men.
The German army was far larger and more resilient in 1943, and the Anglo-American armies less mature. An invasion that year would have been at a much higher risk of failure, as the back of the Wehrmacht had yet to be cracked, and we would have had to be willing to accept hundreds of thousands more casualties than we actually did - just like the Russians.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
I don't think Dresden was a war crime. This gets more attention today than Nagasaki and Hiroshima do and says more about our confidence as a nation today than anything else.
The Germans were bloody lucky the Manhatten Project didn't complete earlier than it did because it absolutely would have been used on its cities if it had, in what was a total war; they brought it on themselves by insisting on fighting to the finish in 1945 all the while inflicting unspeakable horrors on those still unfortunate enough to be under the jackboot of their rule and refusing to surrender.
I don't think Dresden was a war crime by the standards then prevailing - bombing crowded residential areas was a pass long since sold in that war, firstly, of course, by the Nazis themselves. Same is true of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And those cities all had some military importance. It is probably a war crime by today's standards, but our weapons can be much more precise.
The amusing thing about the Dresden debate was the Soviets after the war calling it an imperialist war crime until we pointed out that they had requested the bombing in the first place.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
I don't think Dresden was a war crime. This gets more attention today than Nagasaki and Hiroshima do and says more about our confidence as a nation today than anything else.
The Germans were bloody lucky the Manhatten Project didn't complete earlier than it did because it absolutely would have been used on its cities if it had, in what was a total war; they brought it on themselves by insisting on fighting to the finish in 1945 all the while inflicting unspeakable horrors on those still unfortunate enough to be under the jackboot of their rule and refusing to surrender.
I don't think Dresden was a war crime by the standards then prevailing - bombing crowded residential areas was a pass long since sold in that war, firstly, of course, by the Nazis themselves. Same is true of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And those cities all had some military importance. It is probably a war crime by today's standards, but our weapons can be much more precise.
The amusing thing about the Dresden debate was the Soviets after the war calling it an imperialist war crime until we pointed out that they had requested the bombing in the first place.
The Soviets haven't a leg to stand on.
Their behaviour - which included deliberate murder, starvation and machine gunning of civilians - was as bad as the Nazis. The only difference was there wasn't a single genocidal event to focus minds like the Holocaust but Stalin was quite happy to slaughter Poland and Finland with a free pass in alliance with them.
Stalin basically saw Hitler as a kindred spirit, and by the same token was thus scared by him.
Love this site most of the time. But up-to-date political insight seems to be having a day off today. Bomber Harris and Dresden. Good grief.
I do try to steer clear of Israel - it seems just a mess of anger. I do struggle to see how any objective observer could declare that the Israeli Government are doing a fine job of bringing lasting peace and stability to the region. But neither are the other countries in the region either - so why blame just them? However, it is the Palestinians and Israeli public that suffer - and if you run lives and deaths like a balance sheet it is pretty obvious who is on the wrong end of those numbers in recent years.
What is more interesting - or at least should be for this site - is how slow the Starmer leadership machine took to act. To be honest I would have thought they would have known an apology from the candidate for Rochdale would have been found wanting. There defence was essentially: “the candidate isn’t anti-Semitic; he simply believed nonsense on the internet. Nevertheless he is 100% the best person to be your MP.” Hmmm sounds like someone I would be motivated to vote for!
The daft thing was arguably that the candidate’s big initial mistake was in ascribing motive to how Israel interpreted the intelligence the media seem to agree it was given. It would be quite accurate to say the first point of his initial statement - i.e. Israel chose to ignore specific intelligence of an attack - was true. If he really wanted to go after Israel he could have easily said it in a Trumpian way and avoid the klart. For example, “a lot of people would say that Israel let this happen. Not me. But a lot of good good people say that.” That’s me being daft - but you see how it could have been played.
I guess the best you can say is that Labour have avoided campaigning for a candidate that is too daft to either keep his racism in or be able to say it in a way that avoids trouble. They have looked stupid for a day or two. And they’ll pick a new candidate the next few months which will hopefully be vetted in a more fulsome way.
But there are an awful lot of bad reasons that Labour have got into this nonsense - and few of them are to do with the rabid newspapers who struggle to countenance a Starmer administration. One hopes they learn from this - you cannot screen all of the PPCs in the way you might want (let the party without sin on this point cast the first stone), But for by-elections surely every party knows they are showbiz elections - they need a real tyre kicking.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Hallelujah.
This is what I referred to earlier. The UK hasn't been in a war for a very long time. We have had operations in Afghan, Iraq, Bosnia, for example, where at the end of the day we could always say fuck it and go home. Indeed that is exactly what we did mostly.
The likes of Richard "Dickie Boy" Tyndall is mistaking such actions with actual war.
If you are losing or think you might lose a war what on earth do you care about "the rules". A ridiculous concept in any case.
I will be sure to remind you in future that you advocated for murdering children.
You would rather have lost the second world war than bomb Dresden.
Bombing Dresden made not one iota of difference to the outcome of WW2.
And 80 years later that is still up for debate. Would you have dared chance it at the time?
It was well known at the time. There were reports made on the accuracy of US bombing in 1943 and 1944 which highlighted how poor the accuracy was. And it was pointed out at the time of Dresden and well before that it had no real strategic value.
Harris is on record as being frustrated that he could not find enough viable targets to bomb.What ultimately won WW2 for the allies was the Russian advance. The main achievement of the second front was to prevent the Russians controlling the whole of Europe after WW2.
And yet we still did it. As other posters have said on here perhaps it worked perhaps it didn't; it seems to have been controversial at the time but we were in an existential war so we did it. And we, the allies, dropped not one but two nuclear bombs on Japan. Because we needed to win.
It is war. Gaza is a war. Horrible things happen because you can't (bless him, as Kinabalu suggests) do things in half measures.
And Israel does appear to be trying not to kill civilians although with FIBUA it is tricky.
And well done Richard for staying to argue whereas all the others have turned tail and effed off.
Apologies for then apparently doing likewise. I have been feeling rough all day and just found I have covid again. Nothing serious just joint aching. So I went for a lie down when the discussion seemed to have calmed down. Now that it seems to have dried up naturaly I won't resurrect it.
As an aside I am wondering which god I have pissed off this last couple of weeks. All of them probably. I spent two weeks in hurricane force winds up West of Shetlands which culminated in a very rapid evacuation of the rig as we lost some crucial bits which were swept away in the high seas. The day after I got home my wife got covid, followed by son and now me. I am due back offshore again on Monday so hope I kick it before then as I won't be allowed onto the rig without a negative test.
A clearer a picture of how the two suspended Labour candidates came to say what they said, and how it got out - and it’s very bad news for Starmer as this isn’t a typical open and shut case of Labour anti semitism, it’s beginning to point to Starmer and his top team hastily over reacting, wilting under media pressure - which is cardinal sin for political leaders in my book.
The two banned men were meeting a group of councillors intending to quit Labour , they were trying to placate those furious at Starmer for taking a staunch pro Israel position. It’s almost certain this has been leaked to Labours enemies to hurt Labour leadership, by one of those there who stormed off out the party because Starmer wasn’t attacking Israel or defending Hamas enough for their liking.
Ali seems particularly hard done here by as what he said seemed to everyone “completely out of character for him” as in recent years Ali has been “an ally to the Jewish community, having set up Labour groups such as Muslims Against Antisemitism.”
They said some crazy conspiracy things about Egypt and US warning Israel so why didn’t Israel government act, and clearly offensive towards Israel government and state of Israel. But what are we all pointing to here from what’s in public domain that is clearly antisemitic?
How long has the Mail/Fawkesy combo been sitting on this information, and why the big unveil start of this particular week? Did they get the go ahead from the Downing Street bunker?
The mails actually dropped the Story from the front page today, strangely, just as it’s getting juicer and more momentum.
The Telegraph fingers FIVE MORE Labour candidates/MPs now in trouble for recent antisemitism it’s telling Starmer he needs to act on.
Since we are doing religion in Leicester, and adherents of Islam are a substantial community there.
Encouragement for rabbits - apparently Muslims aren't allowed to eat them, which I did not know until yesterday.
I’ve had rabbit lots of times. It’s nice. Goes well with pasta.
However, why can’t they?
I'm going to semi-reverse ferret. Checking around beyond my original read, it appears that there may be a Sunni/Shia difference.
Time to retire to bed in confusion.
I can clear it up for you. The sons of Mohammad and Uncles of Mohammad met to decide the way forward, after the passing of the Prophet. In the big tent which Islam was at the time, one of the uncle’s served rabbit in a ragu sauce, and the sons of Mohammad said - wait, where’s snowy and bon Bon - they were hopping about here earlier. And when they realised the truth, a big fight broke out, and Islam has been in schism ever since.
Sons of the Prophet reminds me of Abdul Abulbul Amir !!
A clearer a picture of how the two suspended Labour candidates came to say what they said, and how it got out - and it’s very bad news for Starmer as this isn’t a typical open and shut case of Labour anti semitism, it’s beginning to point to Starmer and his top team hastily over reacting, wilting under media pressure - which is cardinal sin for political leaders in my book.
The two banned men were meeting a group of councillors intending to quit Labour , they were trying to placate those furious at Starmer for taking a staunch pro Israel position. It’s almost certain this has been leaked to Labours enemies to hurt Labour leadership, by one of those there who stormed off out the party because Starmer wasn’t attacking Israel or defending Hamas enough for their liking.
Ali seems particularly hard done here by as what he said seemed to everyone “completely out of character for him” as in recent years Ali has been “an ally to the Jewish community, having set up Labour groups such as Muslims Against Antisemitism.”
They said some crazy conspiracy things about Egypt and US warning Israel so why didn’t Israel government act, and clearly offensive towards Israel government and state of Israel. But what are we all pointing to here from what’s in public domain that is clearly antisemitic?
I don't really see how Ali has been hard done by. If it was out of character for him but he acted like a bigot for political advantage (either because the audience were bigots or for some reason he thought being one would appeal to them) that hardly speaks well of him. You have slid over why the conspiracy theory exists and its a pretty obvious reason.
Was there no way to placate the audience without using those tropes and those theories? It's pretty easy to criticise Starmers stance without doing so.
It's also weird to seek to defend someone by saying its out of character, but also still claim it was no big deal, just conspiracy theories.
The more likely explanation is that he meant what he said - you can generally trust people when they did not realise their remarks would be widely circulated. More than we can trust their public actions, which private ones can reveal to probably be calculating or insincere.
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Chemical warfare? Biological warfare? Terrorising an occupied population with retaliatory executions and the use of rape as a tool of suppression?
We draw the line somewhere and where International Law has currently drawn it seems a pretty good place to me.
(By the way I am not accusing Israel of any of these just pointing out that your 'half measures' might be very much open to interpretation).
Unfortunately this is a by-election dominated by a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know far, far too much.
There are conflicts all around the world that don't get a fraction of the spotlight or attention that this one has had. I wonder what is so unique about this one conflict, that every moment becomes headline news unlike all the others?
The physical carnage, the huge civilian casualties, the mass displacement of people, the resulting humanitarian disaster, the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west - these do make for a big story.
"the inflictor of all this being a regime supported by the west".
I think you might need to understand that this awful conflict was blatantly started by Hamas who "inflicted" rape torture and murder on innocent people.
There is a reasonable argument that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, but the "infliction" was initiated by Hamas terrorists.
As you have been an occasional apologist for Corbyn (and probably indirectly voted for him to be PM) I guess this is hard to recognise?
I know who started the fire. Hamas did. Oct 7th was unspeakable. It's now 13th February and Israel has wreaked a mighty vengeance for it.
Justifiable response to a threat deemed existential? Or barbaric collective punishment of the population of Gaza?
I think the latter.
I think you'll find that war does involve what useful idiots such as yourself would call "collective punishment".
Collective punishment is a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. People who make excuses for it are idiots, useful or otherwise.
That's why I put it in quotation marks. Or perhaps Kinabalu thinks what Israel is doing is a war crime.
Well many of us do.
Yes hugely important that arseholes on the internet think something or other.
The arseholes being those who defend the murder of civilians as a necessary evil.
You suit the description perfectly.
It's war, Dickie boy. Look it up in the dictionary.
Indeed hence war crimes. Look them up yourself.
I suspect the proportion of military combatants to civilians was far smaller ratio in the Hamburg firestorm and the levelling of Dresden. But we weren't on trial at Nuremburg.
Is it a free pass for war crimes if you win the war?
Nope. Many commentators these days consider Dresden as a war crime. Indeed there is no escaping that for Harris as his explicit stated aim of breaking the German spirit by targeting civilians is specifically addressed as a war crime today.
The UK, and importantly in this debate, Israel both signed up to the post WW2 international rules on the conduct of war which outlawed many of the things both sides did in WW2 and which Israel and Russia are both doing now.
Personally I think only idiots living without the fear of Nazi tyranny consider Dresden a war crime. Why Dresden and not every single bombing raid that Bomber Command mounted? Because like it or not, Bomber Command wanted to achieve Dresden results EVERY time they set out. Dresden stands out as it was late in the war, and was highly successful, due to the firestorm. But many, many allied soldiers died after Dresden. Many Jews and other captives of the Nazis died after Dresden. Germany could have surrendered and stopped it all.
I know very little about WW2. But was Bomber Command strategy basically predicated on the idea that bombing Germany out of the war would save the innumerable slaughter witnessed in WW1?
Yep. Harris wanted to defeat Germany without the need for any British soldiers to land on the continent, other than to accept the surrender. There have been many arguments over the years about whether Bomber Command was worth the money and resources (materials and men) that it took. Max Hastings thought not in his book on the bomber war. Others disagree. Certainly the bombing campaign tied up tens if not hundreds of thousands of Germans defending the Reich who could have been fighting in the East. And combined with the 8th airforce’s campaign, the Allies achieved air dominance over the Luftwaffe, making D-Day much easier and restricting German movements to night time, to avoid being attacked from the air. By the end of 44 and into 45 the German transport system was wrecked, so moving anything was hard, including troops, tanks etc.
Sadly the idea that you could depress the morale of a nation under a fascist authoritarian regime was false. Even if a German housewife wanted to end the war after her house was destroyed, there was no mechanism for her to achieve it. And the Blitz had shown the resilience of the Brits under the bomb.
But ultimately strategic bombing contributed to winning the war and to describe one target destroyed as a war crime is infantile rubbish.
There were lots of things done on both sides in both wars which would now be considered war crimes. The whole point of civilisation is that we develop and learn from our mistakes.
My view is that war is never desirable, but once one is engaged, there’s no point in half measures.
Ultimately one has to do what is needful, to win. There is nothing worse than defeat.
Chemical warfare? Biological warfare? Terrorising an occupied population with retaliatory executions and the use of rape as a tool of suppression?
We draw the line somewhere and where International Law has currently drawn it seems a pretty good place to me.
(By the way I am not accusing Israel of any of these just pointing out that your 'half measures' might be very much open to interpretation).
It depends on the nature of the threat that one faces. If say, this country faced an invasion, or we were fighting an enemy like the Nazis, I don’t think we’d show much restraint.
When the stakes are lower, one shows more restraint.
Comments
Do you accept that your figure in your earlier post was wrong and exagerrated? Or do you have another source?
I live in a city that is substantially Muslim, so have many colleagues and friends who are Muslim, hence am fully aware of the diversity of political beliefs.
Antisemitism is a particularised racism, yet it continues to be placed in some sort of separate category by some(?) 'pro-Palestinians'.
Not that that has anything to do with the price of eggs, that said.
Labour's entire program for Government now appears to consist of changing as little as humanly possible, whilst crossing their fingers and hoping that if they repeat the word growth often enough the economy will roar into life and provide the revenues to magically fix everything. They're about as serious a proposition as the Natural Law Party when they said they could generate an invincible defence shield over the country using a crack unit of yogic flyers, and deserve to be dismissed with total contempt.
What's even more depressing is that, after they do almost nothing for five years and get the boot at the end of it, we still won't be rid of them. They'll just resume life as the Opposition and await Buggins' Turn again. The electoral system will most likely keep Labour on life support indefinitely because an insurgent movement won't be able to gain the necessary traction to destroy them in the manner of PASOK or the French Socialists.
If I believed in the Almighty (which I don't) them I might be tempted to conclude that our awful leaders are divine punishment for colonialism or whatever other grievous offence you care to name. The choice we get at elections now is between shit, shit, shit and shit. They're all awful. They're all pointless.
When for a by-election are the candidates locked in - ie how far in advance?
If you wish to move the discussion on from there, I agree that recruiting doctors via work visas != minimum wage migration. Equally, recruiting doctors from the EU != minimum wage migration either. I’ve done research on doctors recruited from overseas. I’ve been quoted by the Daily Mail, and by the Times of India. (Oddly, they came to two rather different interpretations of the work.)
I would be very surprised to see any seat in the country with a swing against Labour at the GE.
However... If we'd only bombed those targets, then it would have been much easier for the Germans to defend (and/or hide) them.
It's also undeniably true that the Germans spent a huge amount of their air power defending cities.
War is changing and has changed - nuclear weapons remain the shadow on the horizon but the idea of a 100-division armoured thrust into central Germany has gone. It's legitimate to question the nature of the "threat" - Russia? Hardly. China? Yes to a point, North Korea? Seriously?
The biggest threat, apart from our complacency, would be the US retreating from Europe to the Pacific as Trump has threatened. How that would manifest in terms of a new European foreign and military policy and identity is harder to assess at this time especially given what appear to be continued and deep cultural and political reservations in Britain toward European intentions.
It may seem extraordinary to you, but I do have friends and colleagues from outside the village!
Ireland had net emigration for decades, and its population was a fraction of the level of 150 years earlier.
Then suddenly their economy took off, emigration dried up, and the diaspora suddenly turned into a massive asset as people -trained in the UK and the US- returned home.
The two banned men were meeting a group of councillors intending to quit Labour , they were trying to placate those furious at Starmer for taking a staunch pro Israel position. It’s almost certain this has been leaked to Labours enemies to hurt Labour leadership, by one of those there who stormed off out the party because Starmer wasn’t attacking Israel or defending Hamas enough for their liking.
Ali seems particularly hard done here by as what he said seemed to everyone “completely out of character for him” as in recent years Ali has been “an ally to the Jewish community, having set up Labour groups such as Muslims Against Antisemitism.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/13/grassroots-labour-meeting-party-turmoil-suspended-candidates-azhar-ali-graham-jones
They said some crazy conspiracy things about Egypt and US warning Israel so why didn’t Israel government act, and clearly offensive towards Israel government and state of Israel. But what are we all pointing to here from what’s in public domain that is clearly antisemitic?
Now, my friend group is going to tend towards the "brighter" end of the spectrum, but I saw a massive range of parents and kids and outcomes. I have Muslim friends whose families hail from Bangladesh and Pakistan, who went to University, married English girls, and almost certainly vote conservative. (Or perhaps I should say, voted conservative in 2019...)
I have others who still live in little insular communities in Bedford, who shall Urdu or Gujerati, at home, and who have never really integrated.
Everyone who goes to war believes they are in the right and we have to make a judgement as to whether we agree with them.
There is of course the concept of a "Just War" which (probably) we invented to justify our actions. Our war against Germany is one such. Does engaging in a Just War justify firebombing Dresden? I would say yes - not because it was a Just War, but because if we had lost we would all likely have been killed or violently subjugated so for me it was absolutely justified.
Countries not facing an existential threat in recent wars: Israel
Storm Shadow is incapable of hitting moving targets, yet it seems to have destroyed one or two Russian ships which happened to be alongside, and possibly the submarine which was in dry dock. Ships sometimes have to stop.
The question whether Zircon is an inaccurate hypersonic slowcoach and potentially vulnerable to Patriot is more interesting imo.
One thing that interests me is why we have not supplied the longer range version of Storm Shadow / SCALP, which would seem to be a no-brainer perhaps prevented by the traditional Foreign Office (?) activity of buffing their halo whilst people die for reasons of questionable dot-and-tittle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Is_Leaving
"Salt Is Leaving is a 1966 mystery novel by the British writer J.B. Priestley.[1] Doctor Salt begins to investigate when one of his patients Noreen Wilks goes missing for three weeks. Despite a lack of interest from the police, he becomes convinced that she has in fact been murdered."
Don’t really care about your mates, I just wondered if there was any actual data on Islamic voting intention you were citing
https://www.timesofisrael.com/sen-feinstein-pans-netanyahu-over-claim-to-speak-for-all-jews/
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/why-benjamin-netanyahu-represents-all-jews-391226
So it isn't just anti-semites that associate all Jews with Israel, it is the Israeli Prime Ministers explicit belief too.
I don't accept that Israel speaks for British (and worldwide) Jews, but it is understandable for others to take Netanyahu's words seriously.
https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/research/editorial-independence/zircon-affair
The Government, the security services and the BBC's Governors were jittery about the Secret Society series, and particularly the Zircon satellite exposé that controversial freelance reporter Duncan Campbell was working on with BBC Scotland.
The thrust of the documentary was that the £500 million cost of the satellite had been wrongly concealed from the Public Accounts Committee.
After much discussion, Director-General Alasdair Milne decided that the programme should not be broadcast. Campbell was, unsurprisingly, unhappy about the decision, and word spread. "BBC gag on £500m Defence secret" was the Observer's headline.
I'd be interested if Dr Foxter has any data on whether intermarriage is common or has occurred much at all, as that is imo one of the later signs of real integration.
I don't think anyone really yet knows what the coming generation of hypersonics will be capable of.
A bit more Lab inclined than the median population, but if you adjust for age (mean age of Muslim Brits being younger than the base population) then not far off the rest of the British population in terms of voting intention. Not many Reform voters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zircon_(satellite)
Intelligence service notes significant rise in Russian military production.
https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-prepares-for-decade-long-confrontation-with-west-estonia-warns/
The mails actually dropped the Story from the front page today, strangely, just as it’s getting juicer and more momentum.
The Telegraph fingers FIVE MORE Labour candidates/MPs now in trouble for recent antisemitism it’s telling Starmer he needs to act on.
Where’s all diverse bits of Tory media suddenly getting all this juicy information from?
Is this the Tories Battle of the Bulge week 🪖
Since we are doing religion in Leicester, and adherents of Islam are a substantial community there.
Encouragement for rabbits - apparently Muslims aren't allowed to eat them, which I did not know until yesterday.
What a strange moral world you live in.
Keir Starmer's wife is Jewish. There is absolutely no evidence he has ever, or will ever be anti-Semitic or allow anti-Semitism to be a thing in his Labour Party. The BoD, Louise Ellman, JLM and others have said this to be the case, so don't take my word for it. Also the EHRC.
However, why can’t they?
He basically said, the schools are shit and you should feel bad that people can pay to escape it.
Can somebody explain what sort of strategy that is?
Also, last time I checked, SKS isn't against private education. They just shouldn't be tax exempt - and can somebody explain why exactly they should be?
Time to retire to bed in confusion.
https://fiqh.islamonline.net/en/eating-rabbit-meat/#:~:text=According to the consensus of,permissible to eat rabbit meat.
The Trumpite Judge in Florida seems to be going in ever-decreasing circles.
(Since we are talking about rabbits and horses, I admit that I currently have horse in the freezer, but not rabbit.)
If you have the dirt, why sit on it and release it now? It's a bit late to really influence the by elections, too early for May, and it seems pretty likely that any Conservative counteroffensive will get squashed in about fifty hours time.
Too late to influence this weeks by elections, or right on time? If Sunak can win just one of the by elections, it will be party time - Uxbridge all over again but with Jerusalem bells. Takes the pressure right off Sunak, kills any Tory dissent flat dead.
I mean, oh good you're back.
I’m also confused @Foxy as you recently said Alicia Kearns is your local MP. Melton is not really part of any conurbation, Leicester or Nottingham.
It's this kind of half-heartedness that is most frustrating. And it's obvious to the other side. The most shocking thing I've seen from Putin's interview is how he thinks Europe is basically irrelevant. Despite being dwarfed by it financially, industrially and demographically, Putin sees the continent as nothing more than a cipher of the US. That's damning.
https://x.com/mfa_russia/status/1757459242963898752
🗓 On February 13-14, 1945 the USA & the UK carried out barbarian bombing of Dresden.
❗️ The area of the city completely destroyed by the air raid was 4 times larger than that of Nagasaki after the US atomic bombing.
The Germans were bloody lucky the Manhatten Project didn't complete earlier than it did because it absolutely would have been used on its cities if it had, in what was a total war; they brought it on themselves by insisting on fighting to the finish in 1945 all the while inflicting unspeakable horrors on those still unfortunate enough to be under the jackboot of their rule and refusing to surrender.
The German army was far larger and more resilient in 1943, and the Anglo-American armies less mature. An invasion that year would have been at a much higher risk of failure, as the back of the Wehrmacht had yet to be cracked, and we would have had to be willing to accept hundreds of thousands more casualties than we actually did - just like the Russians.
The amusing thing about the Dresden debate was the Soviets after the war calling it an imperialist war crime until we pointed out that they had requested the bombing in the first place.
Their behaviour - which included deliberate murder, starvation and machine gunning of civilians - was as bad as the Nazis. The only difference was there wasn't a single genocidal event to focus minds like the Holocaust but Stalin was quite happy to slaughter Poland and Finland with a free pass in alliance with them.
Stalin basically saw Hitler as a kindred spirit, and by the same token was thus scared by him.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/gaza-george-galloway-becomes-rochdale-by-election-frontrunner-92vhn8c3k
I do try to steer clear of Israel - it seems just a mess of anger. I do struggle to see how any objective observer could declare that the Israeli Government are doing a fine job of bringing lasting peace and stability to the region. But neither are the other countries in the region either - so why blame just them? However, it is the Palestinians and Israeli public that suffer - and if you run lives and deaths like a balance sheet it is pretty obvious who is on the wrong end of those numbers in recent years.
What is more interesting - or at least should be for this site - is how slow the Starmer leadership machine took to act. To be honest I would have thought they would have known an apology from the candidate for Rochdale would have been found wanting. There defence was essentially: “the candidate isn’t anti-Semitic; he simply believed nonsense on the internet. Nevertheless he is 100% the best person to be your MP.” Hmmm sounds like someone I would be motivated to vote for!
The daft thing was arguably that the candidate’s big initial mistake was in ascribing motive to how Israel interpreted the intelligence the media seem to agree it was given. It would be quite accurate to say the first point of his initial statement - i.e. Israel chose to ignore specific intelligence of an attack - was true. If he really wanted to go after Israel he could have easily said it in a Trumpian way and avoid the klart. For example, “a lot of people would say that Israel let this happen. Not me. But a lot of good good people say that.” That’s me being daft - but you see how it could have been played.
I guess the best you can say is that Labour have avoided campaigning for a candidate that is too daft to either keep his racism in or be able to say it in a way that avoids trouble. They have looked stupid for a day or two. And they’ll pick a new candidate the next few months which will hopefully be vetted in a more fulsome way.
But there are an awful lot of bad reasons that Labour have got into this nonsense - and few of them are to do with the rabid newspapers who struggle to countenance a Starmer administration. One hopes they learn from this - you cannot screen all of the PPCs in the way you might want (let the party without sin on this point cast the first stone), But for by-elections surely every party knows they are showbiz elections - they need a real tyre kicking.
As an aside I am wondering which god I have pissed off this last couple of weeks. All of them probably. I spent two weeks in hurricane force winds up West of Shetlands which culminated in a very rapid evacuation of the rig as we lost some crucial bits which were swept away in the high seas. The day after I got home my wife got covid, followed by son and now me. I am due back offshore again on Monday so hope I kick it before then as I won't be allowed onto the rig without a negative test.
The freezer has a coolth battery, which is the correct battery for a horse in a freezer.
The horse is - unfortunately - incorrect and incomplete. It is the arse end of a horse - as in slices of haunch.
New York District 3 - Special Election - seat won by Rep in 2022.
House of Representatives before tonight:
Rep 219
Dem 212
Vacant 4
After 9% (but early vote from Queens - strong Dem):
Dem 63
Rep 37
Dem 56.5
Rep 43.5
62% counted
House of Representatives becomes:
Rep 219
Dem 213
Vacant 3
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/voting-and-elections/voter-id
Was there no way to placate the audience without using those tropes and those theories? It's pretty easy to criticise Starmers stance without doing so.
It's also weird to seek to defend someone by saying its out of character, but also still claim it was no big deal, just conspiracy theories.
The more likely explanation is that he meant what he said - you can generally trust people when they did not realise their remarks would be widely circulated. More than we can trust their public actions, which private ones can reveal to probably be calculating or insincere.
When the stakes are lower, one shows more restraint.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-asia-68281520