chizel,, i wouldnt worry too much about you intelligence,,you are way miles ahead of some on here,, boobie boy for example,, ( i dont expect he is even aware of the billions that the US have put into causing conflict in Ukraine in the last year,,classed as reconstruction, and they dont even try to hide it ),,,, so many are so very willing to accept the narrative handed down from carrerist politicians,, embeded journalists, financially involved industry and self publicicing charities. just to mention 2 points raised earlier, to keep it simple why have 2000 archers when you can have a few machine guns,, and , someone said that they are worried we might not have the ability to do another Iraq, honestly, do some people never learn anything,, i am afraid that we may do another such catastrophic action , Syria is the most obvious candidate.
While there are human beings alive in the world there will always be conflict. The function of our military is to defend the realm. If Politicians, their corporate sponsors or media apologists deliberately foment or indirectly encourage war; if they misuse or encourage the misuse of the nation's military resources whether by misjudgement or unscrupulous self interest, that is a failure or corruption of the political process, it is not an intrinsic consequence of possessing the military means and it must not be used to justify for political or any other purposes the surrender of our right to self-defence.
did you asking to authenticate his presidency as genuine or something? This defence cutting isn't anything new however. The Falklands bought the navy and armed forces a reprieve, nothing more. If the Argentinians had waited another four or five months they could have walked in unmolested as Thatcher had already sold several ships including the carrier iirc to the Indians. As for the Prince of Wales carrier has a short deck, no steam catapult, in typical BAE systems fashion it was built to be functional for one aircraft, and the lightning 2's SVTOL is still having teething problems of its own. But we digress, should we get involved? probably not. should we take a harder line on the communities that spawn these angry little insurgent wannabees. probably yes. for me the thing I still struggle with coming from an immigrant family myself is why when you have been born and raised and educated in this country, with your own voice and freedoms would you want to raise up arms against it? They can't blame the state for the ghetto's that are formed or those pockets of community like Bradford or Luton etc which have become so far removed from the nation they live in that they breed resentment from the indigenous population. You keep your culture, you keep your traditions and faith, but it has to work within the framework of the nation you've chosen to integrate yourself into or else why bother. We can't and shouldn't tar them all with the same brush, but at the same I feel that the action taken against those who have decided to go fight for ISIS is justified - whatever the faith /creed /colour one has chosen to live in britain and so for better or worse one should respect the british way of things (apart from posh over privileged prats getting bummed at Eton of course). Granted when I was told I wasn't British enough for the military I was absolutely furious with the country but it's extended to never having a British passport since that day. The rivers of blood speech is turning into more of a prophecy now!
I'm surprised he hasn't started importing them from the far east. Or is he hoping that he strikes lucky and one of them is a welder and owns a Neval?
They all have Navels? :Happy: Never been out with a Russian who still lives in Russia - Prague and Wakefield Russians only for me
I'll give you a clue... he's still in with a chance with a ukrainian welder bird! admit it, you've hit a stumbling block on your kawasaki and you're buying women from abroad as its cheaper to get them to bring the parts over than to pay parcelfarce and the import duty. - and you might get a jump or at least a nosh out of it as well. I reckon you sent Mrs Exjizz back to czech to find a woman that can TIG with her own plant and rods.
okey dokey... erm... tough one this... ahh ok, he's a bit of a player down at the Wakefield "look at me, I got piles" annual big yourself up-a-thon, and PB anticipating comic relief did something funny with his face.
talking of military spending, a mate of mine is installing a projector and some bose sound system the morra to a sub at faslane. not cheep ether heres hoping he dont get recognized, a few years back he thought it would be funny to stop at the main gates. with me in the car and started hurling homo innuendo at the sailor boys at the gate.
@finm, has defence spending got that tight that we can't afford torpedoes and now just have to play the sound of them being fired? cinema night should be good though with the new projector
A couple of thoughts on this: Conflicts have essentially become civil wars over the past decades. The Falklands war was a mild skirmish (in the scheme of things) over some islands which threatened no one's national security - only a few hundred islanders were at risk of anything. The first Iraq war, nearly 25 years ago now, was about the last war when then there were clearly identifiable armies having what people understand as a war in the old sense. Vietnam, the 2nd Iraq war, Afghanistan, were all civil conflicts where an external force can't readily identify the people they are trying to kill from the people they are trying to protect. In this sort of situation, is a tank very useful? The ISIS conflict is another civil war, ditto the Boko Haram situation in Nigeria and the Ukrainian situation. What I think gets missed are the basic questions to which you need clear answers, and those are: What does success really look like? What do you want the place to look like, think and do after your war is over? How achievable is that, in the light of what you know from the past, rather than what you'd like to happen? It doesn't look, to me, as if external forces are much good in a civil conflict. There is always much talk of "winning hearts and minds" but let's be honest. A soldier's USP is that he kills people, that he fights. If you want to win hearts and minds, the sort of people you need are aid workers, not the military, no matter how well intentioned they are. And it only takes a few bombs dropped on the wrong people to undo the work of thousands of helpful military personnel. So what can you really do in Ukraine? Short of identifying the places where no conflict has yet broken out - the pro Europe bit - and occupying it massively with a coalition of troops to say "You shall not pass", not much it seems to me. If you try to clean out the "insurgents" - heavily backed by Russia - you'll just get embroiled in a civil war for years or decades. The place will probably end up partitioned and some species of stability will return - eventually. I don't think the West is going to get everything it wants (ie, a return to a couple of years ago) and nor will Russia. These things always end in negotiation and the best thing would be to get serious about that now.
I think the problem with Boko Haram is that they sould too much like Procol Harem, so keep getting pestered to sing Whiter shade of pale - which is enough to drive anybody to murder. Unleash the Gary Brooker :Rage:
Why would anybody care in the slightest where exactly the border between Ukraine and Russia is drawn, except the people who live there? Back in the days of the Soviet Union, borders between states could be and were arbitrarily re-drawn, e.g. the transfer of Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954. If the borders are re-drawn again now so as to leave Russian-speaking peoples in Russia and Ukrainian-speaking peoples in Ukraine - well, what exactly is wrong with that? Why are NATO, the EU, and America getting so upset about it? The whole issue smacks of the West trying to find an excuse to pick a quarrel with Russia, but not being able to find a better excuse than this one. Everybody knows there is not the remotest prospect of Crimea being transferred back to Ukraine now, so political statements on that topic are just posturing. I agree that eventually there will have to be a treaty, which inevitably will involve a re-drawn border. So the current bout of death and destruction is just a prelude to that.
now there in lies a few words of wisdom,, all it takes is a look at the map of expansion of NATO since its creation for it to be clear as to who is the agressor in Europe,,, but we have to read between the lines to understand why and not just accept the narrative habded out from self interested parties.
Because Pete the majority of Russian speaking people causing the trouble out there are actually from Russia, they are not Ukrainians and not Ukrainian Russians - simple, it is an invasion of sovereign territory just the same as if the Scottish tried to get to York yet again...
