news & politics:discussion

[fred quimby]

11 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

 

pinch of salt with that. Hoping they do of course but wonder if it is words at the mo. Plus they are different groups and in some parts of the country they have acted differently, according to reports

[steviewevie]

1 minute ago, fred quimby said:

pinch of salt with that. Hoping they do of course but wonder if it is words at the mo. Plus they are different groups and in some parts of the country they have acted differently, according to reports

yeah...once the world isn't watching so much.

I did read that Taliban are quite popular in some rural areas...they're a bit like our red wall areas I guess.

[philipsteak]

1 hour ago, TalkShow Bob said:

I've tried that trick to be on time, doesn't work.

 

It does if you don't know about it. Once did it to an always late friend. He didn't notice for months. Wouldn't really work anymore with phones/computers/smart watches etc

[Ozanne]

Brexit has gone too far now!

 

[SheffJeff]

20000 to be offered asylum over 5 years, 5000 in the first in a country of 38 million. That seems sufficient for a 'big hearted nation' eh Dominic you massive hemorrhoid. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58250211

 

[mattiloy]

[steviewevie]

2 hours ago, mattiloy said:

Far left are all over the shop because the Tories are tapping into a rising right wing zenophobia and nationalism in this country so just spend all their energy attacking something called centrists.

[eFestivals]

On 8/5/2021 at 7:54 AM, squirrelarmy said:

I’m not sure why but any tweets that people post on the forum don’t show up for me. 
 

This page in particular is all blank posts or a comment or reply about the blank post so I don’t have any clue what the conversation is about. 
 

Does anyone else have the same issue? If other people are also struggling to see tweets on the site then maybe we all need to stop posting tweets. 
 

Screenshots seem to be fine, it’s just embedded tweets that don’t show. 
 

have you blocked twitter content somehow? can you click on the blank space and get taken to the tweet

[fred quimby]

3 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Far left are all over the shop because the Tories are tapping into a rising right wing zenophobia and nationalism in this country so just spend all their energy attacking something called centrists.

Divide and Rule

[steviewevie]

Parliament sitting today to talk Afghanistan and apparently starmer and May ripping into Johnson and Raab.

[topmarksbri]

This is bread and butter for starmer, always been good from the dispatch box

[topmarksbri]

17 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

something called centrists

it's just anyone who doesn't share their very narrow world view. 

[Andre91]

Raab sat there laughing and muttering the whole way through Blackford’s excellent speech. Blackford asked him if he could count and that he should get some self-respect. 

[eFestivals]

7 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Parliament sitting today to talk Afghanistan and apparently starmer and May ripping into Johnson and Raab.

RAAB WON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE AFGHANISTAN IS, OR ANYTHING ABOUT ITS HISTORY, INCLUDING HOW IT INFLICTED ON OF THE BIGGEST DEfeats on the british army, he can just bat off any criticisms, cos it wasn't his decision to be there.

Meanwhile, the Corbyn faction, are loving how Jez called it right, it wasn't a difficult call, cos it defeated the USSR.

https://www.rt.com/uk/532306-afghanistan-fiasco-raab-corbyn/

[eFestivals]

13 minutes ago, topmarksbri said:

it's just anyone who doesn't share their very narrow world view. 

the people fixated on centrists are the ones with a narrow worldview, so narrow they cant recognise that Corbyn is an outlier.

[mattiloy]

Sensing some raw centrist egos in this thread rn.

The invasion of afghanistan was a disaster from start to finish. Own it Blairites!

[DeanoL]

The Taliban, at the very least, seem to recognise that actually having an Islamic State makes this a whole different ball game. If you're a terrorist organisation with various hidden enclaves all over the place, you can essentially do what you want - reprisals are very difficult to do. But once you claim actual territory, it's very different. If they try more terror attacks it won't be "the Taliban" doing it, it'll be "Afghanistan" and you can bomb Afghanistan, you can invade Afghanistan, you can nuke Afghanistan.

They have got what they wanted, and I think they're just trying to consolidate and ensure they don't lose it in the first few weeks. That means, bizarrely, acting reasonably. Whether they will be happy with just Afghanistan in the long term I don't know, but in the short term it's likely to create a degree of stability.

[steviewevie]

16 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

The Taliban, at the very least, seem to recognise that actually having an Islamic State makes this a whole different ball game. If you're a terrorist organisation with various hidden enclaves all over the place, you can essentially do what you want - reprisals are very difficult to do. But once you claim actual territory, it's very different. If they try more terror attacks it won't be "the Taliban" doing it, it'll be "Afghanistan" and you can bomb Afghanistan, you can invade Afghanistan, you can nuke Afghanistan.

They have got what they wanted, and I think they're just trying to consolidate and ensure they don't lose it in the first few weeks. That means, bizarrely, acting reasonably. Whether they will be happy with just Afghanistan in the long term I don't know, but in the short term it's likely to create a degree of stability.

To be fair the Taliban were never a terrorist group were they? They were a bunch of Afghan refugees in Pakistan who formed to take Afghanistan back from various warlords and were actually welcomed by some as they brought relative stability and order. The big problem for then was allowing Al Qaeda training camps to be based there and then 9/11 which was always going to bring retaliation from the US. I doubt Taliban will make that mistake again, but who knows.

Edited August 18, 2021 by steviewevie

[steviewevie]

23 minutes ago, mattiloy said:

Sensing some raw centrist egos in this thread rn.

The invasion of afghanistan was a disaster from start to finish. Own it Blairites!

I expect a lot of centrists/moderates/blairites opposed the Iraq war, not so sure about Afghanistan. But I expect a lot of people in this country actually supported the invasion, especially working class red wallers.

I actually opposed it, although less enthusiastically as the Iraq invasion, and didn't vote labour in the election in 2005 as my little protest.

[eFestivals]

34 minutes ago, mattiloy said:

Sensing some raw centrist egos in this thread rn.

The invasion of afghanistan was a disaster from start to finish. Own it Blairites!

one less haven for terrorists isn't a disaster.Blair was much too casual about it, the mission was poorly defined, so success couldn't be measured.

[mattiloy]

1 minute ago, steviewevie said:

To be fair the Taliban were never a terrorist group were they? They were a bunch of Afghan refugees in Pakistan who formed to take Afghanistan back from various warlords and were actually welcomed by some as they brought relative stability and order. The big problem for then was allowing Al Qaeda training camps to be based there and then 9/11 which was always going to bring retaliation from the US. I doubt Taliban will make that mistake again, but who knows.

The taliban afforded Bin Laden the pashtun custom of protection for guests. It would have been too great a taboo in their culture if they’d have given him up. In the end the yanks got Bin Laden with a special ops team but in Pakistan and after a decade of smashing the shit out of afghanistan. Why they couldn’t have done that first is a mystery.

Ideally any country wouldn’t be ruled by religious hardliners who have human rights abuses baked into their ideology.

But what I don’t like is the hypocrisy of the moral panic about the taliban retaking control.

The taliban have held swathes of afghanistan the whole time, why was it acceptable to centrists before and not now? Why was a little bit of taliban control acceptable? Why is Saudi Arabia allowed to go on chopping off limbs of thieves, public executions, giving women no rights, forced marriages etc without the west invading?

The inconsistency makes me suspect it isn’t really about human rights.

And still there is no acceptance of the fact that this paternalism and interventionism of the right and centre is always doomed to fail. They have to recognise the hypocrisy of preaching liberalism but only when people do what they want them to do. You can’t force your belief system on people at gun point. End of.

[steviewevie]

 

[steviewevie]

8 minutes ago, mattiloy said:

The taliban afforded Bin Laden the pashtun custom of protection for guests. It would have been too great a taboo in their culture if they’d have given him up. In the end the yanks got Bin Laden with a special ops team but in Pakistan and after a decade of smashing the shit out of afghanistan. Why they couldn’t have done that first is a mystery.

Ideally any country wouldn’t be ruled by religious hardliners who have human rights abuses baked into their ideology.

But what I don’t like is the hypocrisy of the moral panic about the taliban retaking control.

The taliban have held swathes of afghanistan the whole time, why was it acceptable to centrists before and not now? Why was a little bit of taliban control acceptable? Why is Saudi Arabia allowed to go on chopping off limbs of thieves, public executions, giving women no rights, forced marriages etc without the west invading?

The inconsistency makes me suspect it isn’t really about human rights.

And still there is no acceptance of the fact that this paternalism and interventionism of the right and centre is always doomed to fail. They have to recognise the hypocrisy of preaching liberalism but only when people do what they want them to do. You can’t force your belief system on people at gun point. End of.

Initially it wasn't about human rights, it was retaliation. 

[eFestivals]

17 minutes ago, mattiloy said:

The taliban afforded Bin Laden the pashtun custom of protection for guests. It would have been too great a taboo in their culture if they’d have given him up. In the end the yanks got Bin Laden with a special ops team but in Pakistan and after a decade of smashing the shit out of afghanistan. Why they couldn’t have done that first is a mystery.

Ideally any country wouldn’t be ruled by religious hardliners who have human rights abuses baked into their ideology.

But what I don’t like is the hypocrisy of the moral panic about the taliban retaking control.

The taliban have held swathes of afghanistan the whole time, why was it acceptable to centrists before and not now? Why was a little bit of taliban control acceptable? Why is Saudi Arabia allowed to go on chopping off limbs of thieves, public executions, giving women no rights, forced marriages etc without the west invading?

The inconsistency makes me suspect it isn’t really about human rights.

it was about OBL, not human right, its just easy to use human rights to get the public on side same as is being done again now!

 

17 minutes ago, mattiloy said:

And still there is no acceptance of the fact that this paternalism and interventionism of the right and centre is always doomed to fail. They have to recognise the hypocrisy of preaching liberalism but only when people do what they want them to do. You can’t force your belief system on people at gun point. End of.

 

[eFestivals]

9 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Initially it wasn't about human rights, it was retaliation. 

not so much retaliation, more about getting OBL and shutting down the training camps. which was a success within limits.