No wonder Labour has bankrupted us!

julieq

leveller2911 wrote: »

Any death is terrible ,all human life is precious but there is a difference.The Muslim extremist "willingly" "Openly" Targeted Non Combatants ,I don't believe ANY British soldier or airman would do the same and thats what makes them different.....

You said "extremists" on here having a dig at dolite,chavs was on a par as these "extremist" muslims......Clearly not true.

Agreed, but if we are killing innocent people for no clear objective even as a side effect then who is responsible for those deaths ultimately? Someone is willingly allowing it, let's not sleepwalk into allowing government to make it us.

I'm getting sucked into an argument I don't really want to have here. I would certainly consider terrorists broadly on the side of evil and governments broadly on the side of good, in crude terms, and certainly there are levels of potential harm you can differentiate between various forms of extremism of beliefs.

What I wanted to point out is that the issues driving terrorism are relatively easy to understand and have some root in actual grievances, and that the mad mullah is exploiting predictible reactions to increase the effectiveness of his propaganda. So let's not let him.

And we're not in danger of bankrupting the country by paying him benefits. Which was the original contention.

julieq

leveller2911 wrote: »

I'm not gonna bother posting on this thread again(i'm sure some will thank me for that) but you need to wake up and smell the coffee, Bet your a Nu-labour party member? Your are soooo Nu-labour I actually find you quite scary .:rolleyes:

That'll certainly raise a giggle down the Conservative Club.

mbga9pgf

julieq wrote: »

Anyone with extreme views is an extremist by definition, and there are some very extreme views on this board. It doesn't mean you're plotting the overthrow of our way of life, but it's just as wrong to believe chavs should be turfed out of their homes and have benefits removed (a common theme here) as to say people should be flogged for drunkenness. Or indeed that people should be physically attacked for marching through a village.

I agree that underresourcing is a big problem in Afghanistan, but even with US or Soviet levels of resource you don't win wars in Afghanistan. In fact by raising all casualties to the status of heroes dying for their country you create a smokescreen of patriotic fervour that prevents you asking difficult questions about what exactly it is they are dying for, or the cost in innocent lives on both sides of what our Government is asking them to do. We certainly are killing innocent people in horrific ways. This is not going unnoticed and is a recruiting sergeant for the extremists.

Most young people are radical to some degree. Do you deport someone for supporting the SWP or the BNP? Do you only deport brown people who support an Islamic state? Where do you deport British citizens to anyway? Doesn't it tell you something that to contemplate these sort of things you have to remove human rights legislation?

Comparing Afghanistan with the Russian example is a fallacy and also lazy gurdian style Journalism. The Russians actively went around slaughtering whole villages, we are living with Afghans side by side in their villages. The Russians used child torture, rape, murder and the destruction of agricultural land as a way of winning, wheras we have installed hundreds of schools, miles of road and reopened Agricultural irrigation. Afghanistan will take a lot of time and will not have a clear won "victory" as an end state. But passing it off as another loss in the waiting off the crass assumption that we and the russians have lost there before is not only dangerous, it is massively insulting to the families of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

Adam Holloway is a man worth listening to, he released a very valuable assessment not too long back to one of the international research groups. Google Him.

julieq

I don't disagree with that analysis overall MBGA, but in one sense it's missing the point, and in another it's making the point because you're doing what I'm complaining the government does. In invoking the idea that questioning the objectives (whatever they are) someone is insulting those who've made the ultimate sacrifice, you're essentially trying to close down the debate before it reaches the awkward questions.

We're also being asked to differentiate between our heroic dead who have made the "ultimate sacrifice" and the unemotionally enumerated cricket score of civilian casualties. I accept that a large proportion of the civilians have been killed by the terrorists, but their sacrifice is no less ultimate, and causes no less pain to their loved ones. And what for? We could build schools and roads in many more deserving countries; the aim of the war was to stop terrorism, but it's failed because the terrorist groups are small and fluid and you can't beat them by putting an army up against them, all you do is create a large set of targets to pick off until resolve breaks, and enough grievances to make people want to do that.

Our politicians are using our dead to tell us that if we question this war our heroes will have died in vain to avoid having to be too specific on objectives. The Mad Mullah is using the dead on the other side to radicalise British people feeling a sharp sense of anger because THEIR OWN government is being seen as killing people who look and think like them.

It takes real courage to stop the cycle of violence, Gandhi style, but often it's more effective. What happened in Northern Ireland, distasteful as a lot of it was, has all but ended a conflict of ideologies that was centuries old, and a compromise has been achieved even if we've had to see terrorists freed and walking among us to get there. From the point where you just close your mind to something an adversary is saying about what is wrong in the world and refuse to admit that any of it might be true, you just seed conflict.

In terms of lazy journalism, well you'd be hard pushed to find anything much lazier than the sort of rabble rousing tabloid comparison forming the original post in this disussion.

My suggestion for Wooton Bassett is that instead of turning up and beating the crap out of the marchers - if they turn up, this is probably a publicity stunt aimed at getting a reaction from the government to ban them for what they can then portray as expression of their freedom of speech - is simply for everyone to leave the village and ignore them. That would truly turn the tables, and the marchers would look ridiculous.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

Islam4Uk are a small bunch of nutters with one talent- a flair for identifying the tackiest gimmick that will incite the tabloids into frothing outrage (like the schoolboy-esque photoshopping of minarets on Trafalgar Square- this is the intellectual equivalent of drawing rude things like boobs and willies in a GCSE history textbook). Why are we giving this lunatic fringe the oxygen of publicity?

Let them (all 35 of them) march, ignore them and it'll be far more hurtful to their "cause" than the PM getting involved and 4000 press following them around. Morons always love attention.

StevieJ

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

Then he should be tried for treason.


Yes, every citizen gets £25K in benefits :rolleyes:.


Its the wider concept of incentivisation. Gordon Brown is giving those fighting for him £17k to risk their lives while then giving £25k to those who want to destroy Britain. It's an extreme example but one you could apply to anyone in the south-east of England who's getting tens-of-thousands in housing benefit so they can live in a nice house, with vastly superior job prospects to most in Britain.

This is Tory propaganda from Guido, a Tory propagandist.

bo_drinker

StevieJ wrote: »

Tell you what let us come back and check the same facts in the second half of the year when the Tories are in power

Nothing will be any different, Same !!!!!! different day i t y f..

whathavewedone

I thought Guido was a libdem Stevie? Incidentally, he also blogs about the tories in an unfavourable way from time to time - but given that they are not actually in power and haven't been in power for 13 years there's less material to work with.

The blogosphere in general is pretty anti government at the moment. I think that's because we have a pretty unpopular government who make a lot of mistakes and try to spin them/cover up rather than because a band of tories have somehow taken over the blogs and the comments on the blogs.

Guido is all about parliamentary gossip and knew about yesterday's feeble coup attempt long before Nick Robinson at the BBC. If the tories win the next election most of the posts will be about them and if they're mostly flattering I'll eat my hat. (No I'm not Kirsty Allsop)

StevieJ

whathavewedone wrote: »

I thought Guido was a libdem Stevie? Incidentally, he also blogs about the tories in an unfavourable way from time to time - but given that they are not actually in power and haven't been in power for 13 years there's less material to work with.
)

Various blogs in January 2008 claimed Staines was an employee of the Conservative Party, due to a Guido Fawkes email which was apparently sent from a Conservative Party email server

StevieJ

whathavewedone wrote: »

Guido is all about parliamentary gossip and knew about yesterday's feeble coup attempt long before Nick Robinson at the BBC. If the tories win the next election most of the posts will be about them and if they're mostly flattering I'll eat my hat. (No I'm not Kirsty Allsop)

Ironically

During the Newsnight interview with Michael White, Staines appeared to reveal Robinson, a long-term political associate, who served as an arch-Thatcherite National Chairman of The Young Conservatives as 1986-1987 as one of his anonymous sources, something Staines later attempted to clarify, claiming that Robinson had never been one of his sources