Syria

[scoobos 298]

You know what CT? I always had you down as a genuine guy who just spoke his mind and opinion , which , of course you're entitled to. I didn't really subscribe to the "he just says anything to wind everyone up" thoughts.

 

But saying Cameron is the best PM in your lifetime, that's done it. You have to be trolling. he's among the fucking worst in mine - unless you're a multi millionaire with a vested interest in the development of china and other emerging markets , you're trolling. What good have those cunts done for the UK in their term? Name 1 fucking thing.

[scoobos 298]

Back on topic. I agree with Corbyn but for entirely different reasons. It's my belief that wars like this are not winnable without massive ground forces and support forces behind them to hold territory and help the population rebuild (e.g UN, Red Cross, NGO's etc). Vietnam, Afghanistan etc etc all show just how hard it is to defeat an enemy like this - conventional war doesn't work. Air support is supposed to be exactly that, support to ground troops and naval vessels - it's fuck all use blowing up 3 IS ragheads with a 100,000 quid bomb and dismembering some poor fuckers dad whos just there with his livestock or whatever the fuck.

 

 

I believe no to airstrikes , as its been put forward now (as airstrikes then some imaginary co-ordinated "friendly" other bunch of local yocals do the ground offensive).

 

So, my perhaps controversial thought is that we need to do what we did in the 2nd world war all over again, and back the lesser of the two evils (e.g. Soviet Russia with Stalin, vs Nazi Germany with hitler).

 

Yes to full co-operation with Russia and Assad . With the full public eye and co-operation on Russian military actions, its going to be hard for Assad to be quite as much a monster as he is without us watching. It's fuckin horrible to even type, but its the only chance in hell we've got of really destroying Islamic State and not just fuelling more recruits with the absolutely massive "collateral damage" that airstrikes on populated areas does. (hate that term) The US are currently using Thermobaric bombs out there, Russia are using them too, but not anywhere near Assad held territories.

Edited November 27, 2015 by scoobos

[ChezGiven 0]

The best PM in CT's lifetime was the one I sent him on here telling him I didn't really mind him that much.

[Christmas Tree 4689]

You know what CT? I always had you down as a genuine guy who just spoke his mind and opinion , which , of course you're entitled to. I didn't really subscribe to the "he just says anything to wind everyone up" thoughts.

 

But saying Cameron is the best PM in your lifetime, that's done it. You have to be trolling. he's among the fucking worst in mine - unless you're a multi millionaire with a vested interest in the development of china and other emerging markets , you're trolling. What good have those cunts done for the UK in their term? Name 1 fucking thing.

Gay marriage

[Gemmill 44393]

If only that had been an option 30 years ago eh, CT?

[Gemmill 44393]

The below is on reddit as "my reaction when my brother brings his new girlfriend who is a Muslim to thanksgiving dinner and my drunk uncle starts talking about 'ragheads in Paris'"

 

https://i.imgur.com/MMKXEGU.gifv

 

[Tom 14011]

[Monkeys Fist 42066]

If only that had been an option 30 years ago eh, CT?

[The Fish 10743]

The best PM in CT's lifetime was the one I sent him on here telling him I didn't really mind him that much.

[Christmas Tree 4689]

The best PM in CT's lifetime was the one I sent him on here telling him I didn't really mind him that much.

I've only just worked that out. very good.

[Alex 34846]

Jesus wept

[Howmanheyman 32728]

[Kid Dynamite 6986]

Apparently Putin is firing all Turkish nationals from their employment in Russia. 90k of them

[Makom 0]

Re. ground forces....

 

Russia won't be doing jack shit, since even as mad as Putin might appear, he's not dumb. Even accounting for the fact that internal public opinion and worldwide condemnation for lack of Queensbury rules warfighting is just not an issue, it's still simply not in their strategic interests to have their increasingly expensive kit and men that their rapidly deflating roubles have paid for get blown to shit in a seriously long drawn out occupation, while they also underwrite Assad's rebuilding of his own forces (and most of his country's physical infrastructure too I suspect).

 

The US of A won't be dong jack shit, because the Demmycrats are certainly all gun shy now after Iraq/Afganistan, and the Reeepublicans sure as shit don't give a fuck if Arabiastan goes up in flames and drowns in a sea of blood as long as not one more American life (or cent) is spent on it.

 

And without the US, we'll of course be doing jack shit too (we couldn't even make a tiny little bit of the Afghan outback safe without sustaining unpalatable losses and incurring eye-wateringly huge costs).

 

Best case scenario - with the combined diplomatic efforts of Russia and the US, some agreement is reached between Assad's forces and the rebels to stop fighting each other, presumably through the implementation of some kind of western enforced buffer zone. Then, hopefully, with the direction, training and arming of each side by their respective Western ally (Russia-Assad/USA-rebels), the two sides can be persuaded to turn their attention to clearing any ISIS territory within their 'borders' under cover of air forces, while simultaneously the same strategy is employed with whoever the fuck it is in charge in the various parts of Iraq that have been occupied by ISIS.

 

This is unlikely to ever happen though, since it requires too many people to make too many compromises for too many costs, to conduct too many risky tasks which have limited chances of success.

 

As any fool can see though, the war(s) will eventually cost more to everyone in the long run, but history is dumb like that.

 

Worst case scenario - China unveils their secret clone army grown for them on a distant planet by a shadowy figure named Duke (of Westminster), conquers the entire fucking region in a month, claiming dibs under the UN equivalent of squatters rights in abandoned property, and it becomes another defacto PRC colony/resource centre, just like much of Africa is now.

 

And in 10 years time we'll all be eating rice, wearing straw hats and reading little red books. But that's got nothing to do with this, that's just what happens in Corbyn's Britain.

Edited November 29, 2015 by Makom

[scoobos 298]

Makom, Russia have had ground forces in Syria for over 2 years now. They call them "specialists" but they are a little more hands on than that.

 

The rest is said with such authority I'd love to know how you've managed to outdo the entire world's intelligence services. "the rebels" ey? Who would they be then?

 

History is dumb like that?? Huh.... past events have an IQ? Do you have a qualification in history, or is Wikipedia and Google all we need?

 

Oh and intervention in Cambodia cost more lives did it? Same for america and russia joining ww2, that cost more too did it?

 

Well tuck we may as well just cut our own throats and save lives eh..

 

Muppetry at its finest.

Edited November 29, 2015 by scoobos

[Makom 0]

Scoobos was one of the muppets, was he not?

[Happy Face 29]

 

To borrow Dawkins title, if God is nothing but an intellectual delusion then the billions of believers are, well, deluded; a collection of feeble saps in need of enlightenment from their intellectual superiors.

 

Thats the basis for the dickishness that so many people now associate from the New Atheism, a movement too often exemplified by privileged know-it-alls telling the poor that theyre idiots. But thats only part of it. For, of course, the privileged know-it-alls are usually white and those they lampoon the most are invariably Muslim.

 

For the extraordinary contemporary popularity of the New Atheism also relates to something else that happened at the dawn of the new century namely, the terrorist attacks on 2001. Its 9/11, more than anything else, that divides the old atheism from the new.

 

The best illustration is Christopher Hitchens, a writer who built his stratospheric literary career by transitioning between the two atheist traditions. As a young man, Hitchens was a Trotskyist and for many years he remained a leftwing polemicist. During that time, his atheism attracted no particular attention: it went almost without saying that a prominent representative of the British left didnt believe in God.

 

By 2001, Hitchens was already beginning his shift to the right. 9/11 provided the catalyst for a complete break. He signaled the shift with an extended polemic against you guessed it! Noam Chomsky, the man Sam Harris distrusts so much.

 

Chomsky insisted (then as now) that bin Laden arose from a particular context and history, that al Qaeda wasnt merely the result of inexplicable Muslim rage. Hitchens, like Harris, would have none of it. It was actually Chomsky who had lost or is losing the qualities that made him a great moral and political tutor.

 

Hitchens, for his part, wrote that the forces represented by Al Qaeda and the Taliban are fairly easy to comprehend, but not very easy to coexist with. He deployed a vulgar critique of religion, along lines that are now so drearily familiar.

 

The problems in the Middle East stemmed, not from imperial meddling in an oil-rich region but from Islam itself, a faith that resulted from (and then fostered) delusional thinking. On that basis, Hitchens was increasingly able to ally himself with the worst elements of the American right while insisting he remained a progressive.

 

You can see how the argument works. If belief in God stems from intellectual inadequacy, then all believers are feebleminded and the most devout are the most feebleminded of all. All religions are bad but some religions especially those in the Middle East, by sheer coincidence! are worse than others.

 

In the name of enlightened atheism, you thus arrive at an old-fashioned imperialism: the people we just happen to be bombing are simple-minded savages, impervious to reason and civilisation. That was the secret of Hitchens success: he provided a liberal rationale for the war on terror.

 

You can proclaim youre an atheist, a freethinker, a devotee of the enlightenment and yet somehow still end up backing rightwing Christians like George W Bush and Ben Carson in their campaigns against the Muslim hordes.

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/30/we-can-save-atheism-from-the-new-atheists?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[NJS 4371]

What a load of complete fucking shit that article is.

 

I don't blame uneducated people from the third world for being believers, I blame the fuckers who maintain that status quo.

 

The deluded idiots are people in the west for who it should be obvious it's complete shit but still apologise for and respect idiocy.

 

And Dawkins was right about that cunt with the clock as well.

[Meenzer 15405]

https://twitter.com/WritersofColour/status/671455685843034112/photo/1

 

Well obviously.

[toonotl 2956]

What a load of complete fucking shit that article is.

 

I don't blame uneducated people from the third world for being believers, I blame the fuckers who maintain that status quo.

 

The deluded idiots are people in the west for who it should be obvious it's complete shit but still apologise for and respect idiocy.

 

And Dawkins was right about that cunt with the clock as well.

 

Yep. That article is trash. But it's author is simply following the likes of Glenn Greenwald and Reza Aslan down the rabbithole. It's the attempted character assassination, by way of gross misrepresentation and deliberate obfuscation of the position of those with whom you disagree. Disagreements that these obfuscatory cretins adhere to along ideological lines.

 

 

It's obvious where HF gets his penchant for arguing against those views of others he has deliberately attempted to distort.

[Makom 0]

Poor article. Equates bombing ISIS with hating Islam, which is surely the very bedrock of right wing nutjob ideology? I can hate Isis, respect peaceful followers of Islam and believe that religion is mass delusion all at the same time, can I not?

[Happy Face 29]

If not "Islsmophobia", what do you want to call this sort of thing?

 

http://metro.co.uk/2015/11/20/man-shouts-all-muslims-are-terrorists-towards-muslim-speaker-at-town-hall-meeting-5514908/

 

I'd assume no-one would think it acceptable, and we're frequently told hating on Muslims can't be called racist because they're not a race.

 

Whatever you want to call it, it clearly exists and is stoked by Harris and co.

[NJS 4371]

Stoked by atheist writers or stoked by terrorist murders?

 

Wrong of course and there will be underlying issues but I don't think people who do that know who Harris is tbh.

[Happy Face 29]

No, not stoked by atheist writers, stoked by any writers or people who repeat the mantra common among the new atheists that islam is uniquely evil, dangerous and savage.

[Renton 21308]

I'm not going to get involved in this conversation any more but why not just refer to those people as bigots HF rather than islamaphobes?

 

Plenty of bigotry on both sides of the argument even if some people are strikingly unaware of their own prejudices.