Rayvin

Frankie Boyle on this particular debate: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/23/frankie-boyle-fallout-paris-psychopathic-autopilot He's kind of sat across the fence of the whole thing as it has turned out on here, save for the point where he rightly concludes that bombing ISIS will offer absolutely no solution whatsoever, and only education and better opportunity can stop the rise of radical Islam.

Charnley is on about £100k/annum... which is startlingly small.

If they do get rid of him Perez only has himself to blame. Another example of chronic mismanagement of a football club from the very top. Who on earth can they possibly get to come in? Guardiola is impossible and they've already exhausted a lot of the normal contenders... who is left?

Which will actually only make it worse.

What is that quote even supposed to mean

I give up. That comment has done for me. I just give up. Some of you guys are in absolute denial about what we're doing because you're so focused on hatred for ISIS. I get the latter but it's the former that's fueling more death on both sides.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/life-as-a-drone-pilot-creech-air-force-base-nevada FFS - there's a story in there about a drone pilot following a couple of guys with a camel. He follows them for ages and, in his mind, he doesn't think they're a threat, they've done nothing suspicious, but he's told to blow them up anyway. He waits until they settle down for the night and wipes them out. Surely that is the very definition of 'Targeting innocent people and executing them'. The only possible thing you could argue is that the US clearly thought that these guys were terrorists, without any actual proof of this - but the US has been so consistently (see some of Parky's vids) wrong about who is and is not a terrorist, that it is now wholly fair to argue that their sheer incompetance means that allowing them to continue with this is tantamount to 'targeting innocent people and executing them'. And that's a kind way of looking at it. The other view is that they're hitting people indiscriminately because they now consider everyone over there to be a viable target.

But the point is, these drone pilots were targeting civilians without any serious consideration of whether or not they were legitimate targets - and were being encouraged to do this. How is that different? Also, Nazi Germany had the power to effect a global reich. ISIS are a group of 30,000 farmers who we are only involved with because there are resources we want in that region.

Or those poor souls in that Red Cross hospital that the US blew up.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/nov/20/crystal-palace-eagle-kayla-charlton-punch Not that we don't have previous in the animal punching stakes, sadly.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/nov/20/ayoze-perez-newcastle-united-steve-mcclaren McClaren doesn't want to rush giving him a new contract. Still has to prove himself apparently.

I understand - and you're right. This is something of a rotating debate given that everyone is saying similar things, and I'm well aware that everything I've said has been put across by other people over the last few days. Maybe it's all just cathartic.

Actually, to be totally fair to you, I would agree with the point about general moral superiority in a sense; obviously we would think our society is more moral, as we live in it, but by our standards ISIS and many civilisations in the ME are morally inferior. And I'm not saying really that ISIS wouldn't be here in some form without our intervention anyway - but we have absolutely made this matter worse, and our governments are resorting to many of the same tactics as they are. I think what I'm keen to be is a 'moderate Westerner' publicly decrying our military action as not being acceptable - much as we expect moderate Muslims to do on behalf of ISIS.

You don't think the slaughter of children voids the moral highground for us? You'd rather look at something absolutely hypothetical rather than something that has actually happened?

Yes well, we don't seem to have much choice now. But if the core points here to my mind are a) we're killing more civilians than they are, and have drone pilots blowing up children they deem to be suspicious and getting career death tallies in excess of 1500 people - I'm not saying we shouldn't be (although I think we shouldn't be) but I can't accept that this is morally different to what ISIS are doing, I think you're just burying your head in the sand; and b )our continued intervention is making this worse. That said, given the way the deck is stacked, I see no option but to just keep bombing until there's no one left to destroy. That's the only way to win this overall fight against jihadism. Had we addressed it with tolerance and education, we wouldn't be here IMO, but it's probably too late for that now.

Oh, perhaps I'm wrong with that one then. I think at best there's debate about it but I hadn't realised that it wasn't fact. Fine, I retract that. It doesn't really change the colour of my point though, and this discussion about nukes is taking us away from the actual issue which is about things that are happening, not things that potentially could but actually never will happen.

The US physically can, but in reality can't. There's a difference. But with that said, if they needed to, do you honestly think they'd hesitate? These are the people who ignored the Japanese surrender so that they could get a second nuke in. They don't need to nuke ISIS, and the shitstorm they'd get for doing so isn't worth it when they can just continue what they're doing. It's not as is we're on the brink of annihilation here, the nuke is very much a weapon of last resort. The whole nuke strand of this conversation is meaningless as neither side is able to use one. If the world gave the US a free pass to use one, and ISIS had the capability, that's when you'd be comparing apples with apples. And the only one of those two that has form there, is the US. EDIT - although for the sake of balancing the debate, I don't think ISIS would think twice.

That is disgraceful. There's so many similar cases of this sort of thing as well that it's really, really difficult to actually consider us to be in any way morally superior to ISIS.

Thanks for this - really interesting that, like the terrorists, we seem to recruit from a young age. Video games can quite easily be seen as a means of indoctrination - one day you're killing pixels, the next you're killing people. All looks the same though. Looks like a few of these guys come out the other side of this realising what they've done...

I'm suggesting that the circumstances are different. I know you believe that we have them as deterrant rather than anything else, but keep in mind that the US have used them on in the past, with high levels of civilian collateral damage. I'm not sure why they get such a free pass for that, but I guess it's about history favouring the victors. That said, if desperate enough - i.e. as desperate as ISIS probably are, yes I think we'd use them. That said, have ISIS shown any inclination towards using nukes? It's a moot point since they're out of their reach anyway. We therefore have no idea what they'd do. If they did though, you can bet your bottom dollar that we'd be using them back.

[quote name="Renton" post="1374167" timestamp="144810593" That's interesting. Did the article provides solid proof of this? Because if true I agree with your last sentence. It was from the mouths of the drone pilots but beyond that, no. I think they were wracked by guilt, hence the confessions. Presumably it is public knowledge though or they would have been prevented from stating it? They were all named. It was a grim article.

We would never publicly get away with nuking anyone. Massive international outcry would follow, and very likely a global destabilization. Let alone the fact that the government would have zero support from its people. I don't know if IS would, but the more desperate side would be the ones who turned to it. If they were mercilessly bombing the UK and we had mass evacuations of the country, perhaps we would use it.

I read an article in the Graun the other day about drone pilots. From what I read in there, they have a license to kill anyone they deem suspicious, including children who they refer to as 'fun size terrorists'. They have no way of verifying that these people are terrorists in many cases. At the end of their drone career they get an envelope stating how many deaths they were responsible for or assisted in - one guy opened his and had a figure in excess of 2000. I see no moral distinction between that and terrorism.

She has, I'm sorry to say, only sheer contempt for football. That said, she's British born anyway so she doesn't really speak Chinese. Just some Cantonese. I do, however! And that bottle is indeed a fancy looking Baijiu. When I was in Beijing, you could get a decent sized bottle of Baijiu for 2.6Yuan. About 20p at the time. As far as I can tell it all tastes the same (awful) but I haven't tried that particular brand.

The racism on here is just sickening! She actually speaks better English than I do