go for a wee sleep. it will make you feel better. reelected three times? not a bad record for a useless government.
IS are all about nihilism. Most other terrorists have an agenda, something they are trying to put in place. IS aren't really like that. They like destruction for its own sake. They like mayhem, maiming and death. I don't think that they want their terrorism to change the West, just to terrorise it "in the name of Allah". They are violent for the sheer hell of it. Consequently, you can't negotiate with them. There is nothing to negotiate about. It's like trying to negotiate with cancer: there is just nothing to say. They don't actually have a point of view that is worth addressing. This makes them something of a rarity: a true evil with no redeeming features at all. At least we can all get behind stamping that out.
That was at the beginning when for 3 years Labour followed the previous Conservative spending plans, then they went on a spending binge, maxed the credit card and left office with the biggest ever national debt and an economy built upon tax, borrow and spend and an out of control "City" from whom they had reduced regulatory oversight. Then the bills came in, the Left just doesn't do money, they have no understanding of the difference between spending and investment. Unfortunately the Conservatives have had to attempt to deal with the mess but the problem was so large that tackling it would have destroyed what was left of the economy. So instead we have had a faux "austerity" whilst the debt continues to sky rocket.
sure i read the national debt was half what it is now with several years running a surplus. invested a pile of money back in to schools and the nhs after the torys run them to ground? anyhoo. no love for labour here. not now not ever. took us for granted. more fool them.
I think you'll find that "pile of money" invested in "skules 'n 'ospitals" was largely in the form of PFI.... a disastrous policy, originally piloted by the Conservatives (Major and co?) but then taken to extreme by Brown and Blair. We'll be paying for it for years to come.
The only thing the Labour party "invested" in was the public sector and the benefits culture. Unfortunately the Conservatives seem to be "investing" too much on the 1%.
deffo. several taken out up here while returning 1.5bill under spend back to the treasury. like i said. took us for granted. more fool them
Blair is a disgraceful war criminal. And a blazing hypocrite... Slimy, self-serving, lying, cheating tw@t !
Good and evil are just points of view. I'm no fan of IS but if you understand a bit of their genesis they start to make a twisted sort of sense. IS are a caliphate and say they want to enforce their view of Islamic fundamentalism. Being a caliphate means they have an elected leader and in this case elected by the Shura Council of Hamas. Hamas are Palestinian and this is important because the British have history with Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular. I'm not a historian and this is just some stuff I've sort of cobbled together so I may not be 100% accurate but, what I do know is, the British Government fucked the Palestinians over royally after the first world war in a number of ways. During the Gallipoli Campaign Britain were getting humped by the Turks so were promised the Arabs self governance if they helped us overthrow the Ottoman Empire. The British government blatantly lied to the Arabs, their real goal being both to destroy the Ottoman Empire and also they saw this as a means for destroying Islam. There was no intention to give the Arabs self rule despite some pretty words and reassurances that they would. In 1916, while making these promises to the Arabs, the British and French governments signed the Sykes-Picot Agreement which carved up the Ottoman Empire between the British, the French and the Russians. This was done in secret from and with no regard to the Arab population. Britain were the dominant players in the Sykes-Picot Agreement and used it to take control of Mesopotamia to protect the oil coming from the British Petroleum fields in Persia. At this time the British Government were a majority stake holder in British Petroleum. The British Government also took charge of a "protectorate" which allowed them to control trade between Persia and the Mediterranean and also made trade between the UK and India easier. Palestine was treated specially because of its status as the holy lands and its significance to a number of religions. It coincidentally gave Britain access to significant ports like Haifa on the Mediterranean. In 1917 the British Government sent the Balfour Agreement to the Zionist leadership saying they support the move for the Jewish people to set up home in Palestine. This was again without consultation with or regard to the wants of the Arabs in general and the Palestinian people in particular. The Balfour Agreement seeded the birth of Israel which has been responsible for the total destruction of literally hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages (they were actually levelled, built over and renamed like they never existed) and expulsion of the Palestinian residents and steady push of the Palestinians people from their own land as shown below: The Israeli leadership has over the years actually denied the existence of Palestine or of Palestinians as a race of people and The West has colluded with them. I don't know if the denial is to protect the Israeli public conscience from the genocide the Israeli government seem to be pushing for but I do know Gazza has been called the worlds biggest concentration camp. So, who is evil and who is good in this fucking awful reality that the British Government have been complicit in creating for the Palestinians? And why should IS give a fuck about anyone when nobody has given a fuck about the Palestinians? IS, quite literally, have nothing to lose. What goes around comes around my friends.
You couldn’t have a better example of what Tony Blair was criticizing than this post – the epitome of right-thinking woolly-headed liberalism founded on a conflation of half-truths and a partial interpretation of history. You kick off with a superbly glib phrase: “Good and evil are just points of view”. This in itself is nonsense. That would mean that it’s fine to disembowel children, or throw homosexuals from rooftops if you have that point of view. Do whatever you like; there is no morality. If you toss that into the bin, then there really is no further debate possible. I’d be interested to know what books you have been reading that make IS sound so democratic. As far as I can see, al-Bahgdadi more or less nominated himself. If he was elected by Hamas (why? How?) it’s the first I’ve heard of it. I don’t think you’ll find that IS is very democratic. It’s about as autocratic or oligarchic as it gets. Then you ignore that most of IS’ victims are Muslims, so it’s not “Islam vs The Crusaders”, it’s their twisted version of Sunni Islam vs everyone else. Even the Kurds are predominantly Sunni. You have just bought their entire propaganda argument. The rest of your post is a long justification for why the Arabs hate Britain because of Palestine. Naturally, colonialism did all sorts of things that weren’t fair because they suited Britain at the time and I’m not going to argue that the treatment of Mesopotamia was not how we would expect to behave today. But Britain didn’t want the state of Israel. Of course the Jews had a lot of sympathy because 6 million of them had just been murdered. But they engaged in their own terrorist campaign against British forces to get their state, and unfortunately the Americans caved in and pressured for it. However the Israelis behave towards the Palestinians is no justification for what IS gets up to. You might just as well say that Britain is responsible for Serbian ethnic cleansing because the two nations are ostensibly of the same religion and on the same continent. You final remark “what goes around comes around” lays the blame for IS right at Britain’s door. That is exactly what they want to see printed; that is what gives them the justification to continue: it’s just tit for tat, we all deserve it. This is just bollocks. IS is an evil cancer and needs to be destroyed. It’s not a valid world view that can be accommodated. That was Churchill’s view of Fascism and we would do well to remember it.
I agree with this. It might be useful to discuss how ISIS arose, but that is not to transfer blame for today's appalling crimes from those who commit them to other who lived 70 years ago. Palestinians are just as entitled to fight for their freedom, their land, and their nation as anyone else, and one cannot help sympathising with their plight and admiring their persistence. That has nothing whatever to do with the plague of ISIS whose only aims are to murder, to torture, and to destroy civilisation.
Before the First World War, the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire dominated the Arabian peninsula and all the Arab lands as it had done for centuries. Britain was instrumental in ending Turkish power, and freeing Arabia from Turkish domination permanently which the Arabs were incapable of achieving on their own. If you want to go back to 1916, the Arabs have a great deal to be grateful to Britain for. It is true that the Sykes-Picot agreement provided for Syria and Lebanon to be in the French sphere of influence, Palestine and Iraq in the British sphere. This was by any standards a vast improvement on being Turkish provinces, which was the alternative. All this to the side, it is ludicrous to suppose that the murderers of ISIS are motivated by their analysis of the political events of 100 years ago, of which most of them are totally ignorant.
I'm not offering any justification for the behaviour of IS. They do not acknowledge others humanity and so theirs should not be acknowledged. So, yes, treat them like a cancer. All I'm trying to say is there are reasons for their existence and we have a hand in their creation. We'll hopefully also have a hand in their destruction and I can't feel sorry about that. But this will not fix the Palestinian situation and I feel sure that, until there is some kind of resolve there, we will be plagued by more aggrieved nutters from that part of the world. Probably true, but they were promised self rule so I don't think we should expect them to feel grateful, and it didn't work out well for the Palestinians. I think you are absolutely right in that there is no analysis but I think we are dealing with some kind of entrenched racial attitudes and, in the case of Palestinians, there isn't anything happening for them to help dissipate that.
I think you might just as well say that we are responsible for the Moonies, the Scientologists, or any other cult or sect. These people are relying on the strict interpretation of the texts that are to be found in their holy book. What we are responsible for is allowing these people to be radicalised in prison by giving credence to imams and other hocus pocus merchants and allowing them time to study their divisive "holy book". The real problem, which won't be solved anytime soon, is to give equal credence to Christianity and its "holy book". Once you've done that, you've just removed any real way of discrediting people who want to believe in tosh written thousands of years ago. The only real difference is that Christianity is a religion of peace, in as much as you exclude the Old Testament, which Christians sadly don't.
By far the greater part of the Arabian peninsula (what later became "Saudi Arabia") did indeed gain self rule as promised and has been independent ever since. Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, the Gulf States, and Oman all gained self rule later but a long, long time ago now. They received a great deal of support from Britain (political, economic, diplomatic, and military) before and since. It was the Palestinians who drew the short straw; their treatment was absolutely despicable. Apart from Palestine, I don't think Britain has too much to be ashamed of. Most of the many misfortunes which have afflicted the nations of that region they have pulled down upon their own heads (or upon each other's).
Sounds reasonable. Although Iraq looks like an odd place (very straight borders) and it's pretty poor that the Kurds never got a land but were divided up amongst other countries where they were always the minority. Surely it wouldn't have been too difficult to draw some boundaries around where they lived.
Flying by the seat of my pants again: I've read somewhere that in Palestine a minority of the population were, possibly still are, Christians who lived among the Muslims in peace. I think there is maybe something in Islamic teaching about tolerating other religions but I can't remember where I came across this. White supremacists have a Christian wing who regard themselves as devout Christians and also superior to other ethnicities. They have their own interpretation of Christianity (and I don't think they are unique in this). Theirs is not a religion of peace unless you happen to be white and agree with them. Not long ago they were wearing pointy hoods and stringing black people up from trees, the scene illuminated by a burning crucifix.
Bollox......it has nothing to do with Palestine, other than Meggido is in the region............ISIS aren't interested in nationality or boundaries.................neither would the deposing of Saddam or other despots have made much difference.........ISIS have been in the background for well over 25 years waitiing for an opportunity.............
