Rayvin

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

生日快了！ 也上面的评论者是一个twat.

Fuck you. I was varying the usual 'Happy Birthday, mate'. And you just shot me down, man.

Happy Birthday friend!

Agreed, but anger is the one constant on both sides - only realistic that we'd see it here as well I suppose.

No idea on the result, but Vardy's going to be well up for it for obvious reasons - best we can hope for there is that the pressure gets to him. If the team that's begun to start playing well turns up, I think we'll win this with something to spare. If the Bournemouth team turns up, we'll lose. This will be followed by wailing and gnashing of teeth as Leicester are a team that, historically speaking, we should be beating - but which, this year, may just be too good for us.

Yes but, you're aware that our strikes hit civilians as well, right? We will have killed far more Arab civilians than ISIS have killed ours. The US blew up a Red Cross hospital earlier this year ffs... The fact that our military are choosing military targets who happen to be based in civilian areas does make it more difficult, but make no mistake that our governments have weighed it up and decided that civilian deaths on their side are firstly inevitable, and secondly worth it. If we retaliate to this, again, what is the consequence likely to be? Do you think that it will be more or less likely to result in another massacre in one of our capital cities in a few months time? It's a cycle of utter stupidity, the cost of which is borne by civilians on both sides. At the same time, as Gloom has said, France HAs to retaliate. It's cizitenry will demand no less, even if it only leads to more pain - which it will. Such a sad state of affairs.

Louise Taylor is such a poor journalist - aside from the general dross theme of the articles that she produces, the style of writing is terrible...

Fuck... we'd have been talking about that for the rest of our lives if it had gone down... Why was he turned away? Presumably they didn't find the bomb?

That's fantastic, the guy from Thomas Cook

Absolutely this. It in no way excuses what's happened to admit this. It's important that some people do take that line of thought though, otherwise all we have is a tide of anger flowing towards Muslim communities - which will in turn create more of the same. I'm not saying anyone on here is pointing the finger at all Muslims, but some are pointing at Islam and religion by extension. I personally feel that this would be happening with or without Islam - it's nothing more than a convenient tool for brainwashing, but make no mistake that if it didn't exist, we'd be seeing the same shit happening under the banner of 'pan-Arabism' or something approaching nationalism instead.

So they joined the board for about two hours, made total arses of themselves, and we responded by outing one of them as political party candidate and threatening to ruin his career I'm not saying that's not justified since they were both wankers, but fuck me Toontastic takes no prisoners! Or at least Ant doesn't.

They may well be lashing out anyway as a result of religion, but they wouldn't necessarily be lashing out at us. We haven't caused it but we definitely made ourselves a target - and have probably contributed to bolstering their numbers. Either way, it's becoming increasingly difficult to see how we can resolve this without becoming aggressive. Cameron will probably get the backing he needs to launch us into Syria following this. Absolute disgrace what has happened in France, a real tragedy.