I like to debate with people who have different views, but only with those who treat me respectfully. If you don’t I will block you.
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You haven’t looked into this in enough detail, then. We may not see savings the short term, but it is part of Labour’s plans for growth. The new funding formulas will will give councils the long term security to invest in projects which will attract businesses to the area.
These journalists knew what a double tap strike is. Tap one is a warning, and means get out of the way. It’s not a signal for more people to rush in. It is disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
If you’d be prepared to admit that there is more than one side dropping bombs on toddlers you might have a point, but you don’t.
Can you please hurry up and have your civil war, then hopefully people in Britain will see that isn’t what we want here.
The introduction of a legal framework has meant a reduction of conventional wars, but a rise in wars fought by groups of militia, because it shifts accountability. We have also seen a rise in never ending wars, because there is no central body to negotiate with, & you can’t defeat an ideology.
Framing everything as good v evil blinds people to the causes of wars, power struggles, insecurity, & historical grievances. It fosters unrealistic expectations, and makes it harder to find compromise. Compromise becomes immoral even if it saves lives.
Most of us have only ever seen war on TV seem to have forgotten that war is never good, or clean. It is always a mixture off realpolitik, & moral justification. Mature politics requires a mixture of both. We haven’t seen the cataclysmic wars of the past involving hundreds of millions of casualties.
Over time, NATO has evolved from a defensive alliance into a broader security provider. Whether this was wrong depends on your perspective. I believe NATO adapted to meet the challenges it faced in modern warfare.
Absolutely right!
You illustrate the lack of understanding & bigotry, that when found in politicians, causes major wars. Of course Turkey’s position within NATO Prevented action against it. Turkey hosts NATO bases, and provides a buffer against Russia, and the Middle East.
What’s it like having such a restricted field of vision? I have often envied people who see the world in such black and white terms. But I’d hate to be as consumed by hatred, that you ignore all the evidence that contradicts your blinkered views.
All the consequences have to be considered, when considering all an intervention. Action against Turkey would have triggered Article 5, and could have destroyed NATO.
If Serbian lives were disrupted it was their own bloody fault because they were the aggressors.
The most credible estimate is that NATO forces killed 500 civilians. The Serb forces killed 10,000, and expelled 800,000 Albanians. My case in point.
As an example, the coalition forces killed around 10,000 in Mosul & Raqqa in their fight against ISIS, and they were often indiscriminate in the killing. But ISIS massacred tens of thousands of people. Apart from the scale, the difference here was intent, collateral damage v deliberate killing.
That’s not a new phenomenon. It is human nature, unfortunately the strong do bully the weak, and short of genetic reengineering it is not going to change. However, the strong aren’t always without integrity and bad actors are capable of killing far more more people, regardless of size.
So, all those men who bunt their draft cards, and the violence outside the 1968 Democratic Convention, and at Kent State University were just a figment of my imagination. You are showing yourself to be a complete bigot.
That fact that medical staff refute Israel’s claims doesn’t change my mind. They may not have any choice but to turn a blind eye, but it would still make them complicit.
It has long been known that Hamas use hospital for military purposes. The fact that Israel couldn’t produce absolute proof hospitals were being as “Command Centres” is a red herring. Israeli drones & track the Hamas leadership, and see them going in and out of the hospitals often.
There was no strategic advantage for the IDF to hit hospitals in the vital early stage in the war if they were not being used for military purposes. It damaged Israel’s global image.
From Israel’s point of view, the time for inspections was long passed, and the IDF were equally fearful of facing ambushes & booby traps. It’s why the IDF used bombing rather than house to house fighting, and why the civilian death toll is so high.
Personally, a little unease is preferable to the roof coming down on my head. There were many legitimate reasons why the hospital authorities would not wish to submit to inspections, but they are not relevant when you are facing the barrel of a gun. As you mentioned there is a power imbalance.
That has not changed. You only have to look at the statements of Francesca Albanese & some of the actions UNRWA, to see why Israel has a profound distrust of the UN. The UN & humanitarian organisations employ local people on the ground who are at the least are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
Israel lost all trust in the UN when it allowed Yasser Arafat allowed to address the General Assembly in 1974. He was the leader of an organisation that was hijacking aircraft, etc, and had massacred the entire Israeli Olympic team 2 years before.
The US has contributed more humanitarian & economic aid than any other country. It rebuilt Europe after WWII. It is always a key player in peace negotiations, and worked in consent with allies to defeat the Nazis, and Isis. These are not the actions of Fascists.
That’s a misuse of the term. The US is interventionist, but unlike Fascists, it had exerts power within alliances, and international institutions. It hasn’t annexed territories, and faces internal debate and accountability for its actions.
Have *not*
I am refuting your argument was that the US has killed more people than the rest of the world combined. I am not arguing that they have been involved in wars.
Actually you didn’t, but if we look at the period after WWII, the USA are still 3rd after Russia & China.
I am not sure what your Maths teacher was doing. The world you live in is one where the USA is the Pantomime villain, i.e the larger-than-life baddie that audiences love to hate.
WWI 15-20m deaths, WWII 70-85m, Sino Japanese War 15-20 m, Chinese Civil War, Stalinist purges, 8-12m, Holodomor 3-5 million deaths, Cambodian genocide 1.5-2m Armenian Genocide 1-1.5m, Rwandan Genocide .8-1m, partition of India 1-2m
Yes, that’s millions of deaths, and every one is a tragedy, but we are talking about hundreds of millions of deaths that had little or no connection to the USA.
Obsession & ignorance are causes of war too, and you are both of those. I am not denying the USA has killed people in unjust wars, but THE FACTS DO NOT SUPPORT YOUR ASSERTION THAT THE USA HAS A BLOODIER RECORD THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY.
The Americans may be arrogant, but war & immense cruelty isn’t the preserve of one nation. It is hatred and jealousy that causes wars. If we could recognise that we might go some way to learning to live with each other.
The wars that have taken place since the USA achieved world domination may seem more bloody because we have seen them played out on TV, but there weren’t the colossal numbers of deaths caused by two world wars, Imperialism, and Stalinist Russia.
This isn’t difficult, all you have to do is use ChatGBT. If you don’t trust that look in a decent encyclopaedia, and do the mental calculations.The USA isn’t even in the top 3. Over the last 200 years that privilege goes to Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan & the UK (British Empire)
If we are talking about the shooting down of civilian passenger planes, it’s the Soviet Union/Russia that holds that record.
You are right, but it is still only a tiny fraction of the people killed in the wars and atrocities I have mentioned. I know it disturbs you because you obviously have a cognitive bias, but the evidence simply isn’t there to back your argument.
It is factually correct that the USA is currently the most powerful country in the world. It is not factually correct that the USA has a bloodier history than any other country in the world. These are two different things.
Israel claim to have intel the hospitals are being used for military purposes. Should we accuse Israel of war crimes on the assumption they are lying? The requirement for proof cuts both ways.
If they had nothing to hide, the simple thing would be for the Hospital Administrators to let the IDF do a thorough search. Personally, I would have thought that an “occupier” would be able to walk in and look around, but the IDF had to fight their way in.
The world is a complicated place, people’s actions are often contradictory and there are unintended consequences. Woodrow Wilson pushed for the break up of the old Empires after WWI, and the establishment of Nation states, but the way it was done has led to many of today’s problems.
10 million!!! We are talking about 20 million in the Stalinist purges and famines, 1 million deaths due to the partition of India, 17 million due to the Nazi racial policies, a million killed in the Rwandan genocide. The USA is no “shining city on a hill”, but it is no worse than any other country.
When Israel disengaged from Gaza, the first thing the Palestinians did was to destroy the greenhouses full of fruit, that could have provided them with a living.
Vast swathes of Britain’s farmland has been bought up by investment companies in the Middle East, and China, which is having a massive impact on the environment, food security, & local economies. It sucks, but it is no excuse for terrorism.
Sure America has committed atrocities in Vietnam, Native American removals, Hiroshima, but the number of civilian deaths do not compare with the Sino Japanese wars, Holocaust, Partition of India, Stalinist Purges etc.
You also need to understand that Truman did not fully grasp the scale of destruction and long-term effects as we understand them today.
Truman eventually made the decision to go ahead to because of the alternative was hundreds of thousands of American and millions of Japanese casualties, but he did not do so lightly. Another factor was that Russia had entered the war, and they did not want it to extend its empire into the Far East.
That is simply untrue. There is considerable documentary evidence show the discussions that scientists and politicians had before a decision was made, in the form of diaries, memoirs and The Franck Report, & The Szilárd Petition.
Al Qaeda wasn’t firing missiles at Washinghington from hospitals just outside America’s borders. It is hard to believe that people are still questioning whether Hamas is using hospitals for military purposes, when the independent organisations like the OHCHR has documented numerous instances.
It is so wearying hearing all the usual tropes “genocide, Apartheid, ethnic cleansing”. Replace those words with “degenerate, racial parasites, international masterminds, corrupters of culture”, and we are right back in the 1930s.
To pretend that a war can be fought with an entity that pays no regard to the moral & legal framework we live by, without resorting to some of those same tactics, is fundamentally dishonest. What do you expect Israel to do? Sit back and wait for Iran to drop a nuclear bomb on it.
There are two types of people who see Palestinians as victims. The very naive who believe kindness is always reciprocated, and those who hate the West, and everything it stands for. Unfortunately the world is a much crueller place than that, and strength is what people respond to.
It’s not an inhumane reaction, it is a very human reaction, and every country in the world would have reacted to 7/10, in the same way to, or possibly worse. No other population would tolerate having to face living in a fortress, & continuous wars.
You definitely do. Hitler was ahead in the race to develop the Atom bomb at the start of the war, and would have had no scruples about using it had they succeeded. Americans have committed no more atrocities than the any other section of humanity, and a good deal less than some.
I am not sure all Spencer’s statements are correct, but he is right in saying that the situation is Gaza is different from any other. No other army has had to fight an urban conflict where civilians have not fled, or where there is such an extensive tunnel network.
The point is that all crimes should be memorialised. Approximately 300,000 were killed by the Atomic bombings, whereas 20-30 million were killed by the Japanese, in the most brutal and sadistic ways, yet the Japanese have become the victims, and the memories of their crimes have been erased.
There were signals from within Japan that some leaders were seeking a way out of the war, but the theory that the Japanese were on the point of surrender is nonsense. Why? The Japanese didn’t surrender before the second bomb was dropped in Nagasaki.
The Japanese soldiers weren’t ordered to carry out those atrocities. They were ordinary men who saw the Chinese as subhuman. The USA did what they had to to stop it, because to the Japanese to surrender was a worse crime than using a baby for bayonet practice.
Educate yourself on the regime that the USA brought down when it dropped the nuclear bomb. It had already killed millions in ways even the Nazis were shocked by. youtu.be/pA-q68ReSY4?...
We must also consider the sadism of the “Characteristically polite” Japanese in the period before Hiroshima, 10-12 million dead. the industrialisation of sexual slavery, beheading contests, infants thrown in the air and bayoneted, babies ripped from their mothers wombs, experiments on live victims.
There is no shortage of people who currently think they know better, and they are driving government policy. The Foreman’s release should be one of the conditions of recognition of the Palestinian state.
Just naive, and misinformed.
Craig & Lindsay’s fun filled travelogue, and their messages declaring that we need have no fear of travelling in Iran are chilling now. They should be a lesson to everyone who thinks all that is needed for peace in the region is a Palestinian state, & for Israel to stop breaching international law.
I know you love a good talking point, facts not so much.
Actually that’s not quite correct. www.jns.org/idf-kills-ha...
I can see you have a personal dislike of Starmer, and you are never going to let facts get in the way of a chance to criticise him.
It has nothing to do with semantics. You can’t go around arresting people without proof. We know the supporters of PA broke the law, and so do they, because they set out to do so. War crimes, committed in a foreign country, are a little more complexed.
The police *can’t* arrest.
Apparently, Starmer has affirmed that Netanyahu will be arrested if he comes to Britain, so he won’t set foot on British soil, and you will be able to continue your anti Starmer rhetoric without it being tested.
The Police arrest, or charge anyone, British Citizen, otherwise, without cause, as there has to be evidence. An investigation is ongoing, but to complete it the police need the co-operation of the Israeli government. So no Britain, does not have the power to arrest or charge these individuals.
3) Likewise, the submission of the names of the IDF soldiers was a performative stunt. The people responsible knew there was nothing the police could do without the cooperation of the Israeli government, something that is never likely to be forthcoming.
1) Hundreds of far right activists were arrested and convicted last year. 2) For Starmer to state that he would arrest Netanyahu would be a performative action, as it is the best way to ensure that Netanyahu will not travel here. It would also be very damaging to Britain’s interests.
My husband is a Palace fan, but the rest of the family support Forest. Mr Marianakis may have put his shares in a blind trust, but are we to believe he will not be involved in decisions that will benefit him financially? Surely that must include the buying and selling of players, etc?
If you don’t know what is carrying, I suggest you wait to find out. The only thing that the British government has currently said it will send is humanitarian aid. It was inflammatory statements that started and continues this conflict.
Just as entitled as everyone who was arrested. Unless it can be shown that you don’t have mental capacity, the law applies to everyone, young, old, rich, poor. If you can’t accept that you must be prepared to face the consequences of your actions.
I have just seen a video of Norman Finkelstein saying that, because he has seen no video evidence of rape it did not happen. This is the clearest example of double standards I have seen. Video evidence of rapes, are never broadcast, for obvious reasons, nor would the public expect them to be.
It wasn’t Israel who was accusing Labour Party members of antisemitism. It was the body who was responsible for human rights law in the UK.
Gaza had been a very difficult issue for Labour to navigate because of its past record on antisemitism, and we have Corbyn to thank for that. The fact that Labour suffered the ignominy of being found to be “institutionally antisemitic” by the EHRC has made it a very sensitive issue
That is ridiculous, the only country this government is a cheerleader for is Britain. It may not have been as vocal in its criticism as some, but it has worked diplomatically for a ceasefire in Gaza from day 1 of the war.
The first priority of a government must be the defence of its citizens. You are wrong to support a government who would put the defence of ourselves & our allies at risk.
One of the reasons there has been an increase in the number of people claiming sickness benefit is that so many people are waiting for NHS treatment. I do believe that people should work if they can do, and support Labour’s recent legislation to make it easier for disabled people to return to work
No, I worked for nearly 40 years for social services, so I have a good understanding of how impoverished most disabled people are. I was fortunate enough to be able to pay privately for health care when I was ill recently, because their was such a long wait.
I am correcting your propaganda. The JOA was not a Jewish State it was another pogrom. The only difference between October 7 (including the subsequent attempts to delegitimise Israel), and the pogroms that have been a continuous presence in Jewish history, is that Israel have dared to fight back.
Very cute, saw some babies on Brownsea Island.
Whoopie do! A Jewish homeland which is virtually uninhabitable, with no autonomy, and where religion is outlawed. Yet some moved there to escape the pogroms. Then came the purges. Yiddish books were burnt, synagogues shut down, Jews were arrested. Jews are now 1% of the population.
I am not going to wish a long and painful illness on you, I am not as cruel & small minded as that, but I am rather hoping you get an opportunity to find out for yourself.
You have been misinformed about how easy it is to qualify for benefits.We don’t have a benefit system that anyone can live on comfortably. It is not enough for doctors to say you are unfit to work. People have benefits reduced if they don’t apply for jobs, whether they fit enough to work or not.
That’s called a safety net. We all might need it at some point. There is an argument for moving to the system where people get a percentage of their former earnings for a defined period if they are sick, or unemployed, and only the very disabled get benefits paid indefinitely.
Corbyn launched a legal case to stop the government fulfilling the contract. The legal penalties this would occur would be the least of our problems. It would have a catastrophic effect our relationship with our allies, bankrupt the defence industry, and weaken NATO’s ability to respond to attack.
It would ground aircraft all around the world, not just the Ukraine. We have a contractual obligation to supply these parts, mainly to the US. Most of our weapons need software updates from the US. They will obviously use any leverage against us to get those aircraft back in the air.
He’s clueless regarding the consequences of his actions. Just one example, the consequence of not selling the parts for F35’s to our allies, is they won’t give us the software updates of the weapons they provide to us. Effectively leaving us defenceless.
No, what Democrats want is for their base to realise the gravity of the situation and stop farting around. The Republicans only have to fight a battle on one front. Their supporters, actually support them.
…..making decisions that are well-considered, fair, and sustainable. This includes responsible spending, effective regulation, and strategic investment. If only they realised it that’s exactly what they have now.
What exactly is a true Labour Government? Your argument has no logic. If they haven’t been in power they can’t have spent every one’s money. I think most sensible people want a government who will prioritise long-term stability and well-being over short-term gains ….
You have obviously have never worked in public services if you think there was no Austerity. Debt isn’t a bad thing if it used to invest. Some of the most successful companies in the world have massive debts, but you can’t borrow to live beyond your means. There is a difference.
That’s a tired excuse. If you think he only needed a few more votes to win you are wrong. There were many people, like me, who voted for Corbyn tactically to prevent a massive Tory majority. They would have voted differently if there had been a possibility of him winning, because he is dangerous.
You call the Nakba a catastrophe. When you have seen 6 million die, then you can talk about a catastrophe. There was only one place where Jews could be sure to find a home, when the music stopped, and that’s Israel. There are 22 Arabs states. To ask for another is plain greedy.
There was no land theft. The late 19th and early 20th century saw the decline of empires and the rise of the nation state. Both world wars created millions of displaced people. It was like a massive game of musical chairs. If you were lucky you got a place to live when the music stopped.
There were no examples of armed conflict by Jews against Arabs, because Jews were not allowed to bear arms. Just one of the ways Jews were discriminated against in the “dhimmi”system. There were many localised outbreaks of violence by Arabs against Jews, the worst were in Safed and Hebron in 1834