Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

very funny Matt cartoon in telegraph this morning ....... if someone could post same ......

Cameron’s drive to bomb Syria is macho, foolish and must be stopped

Simon Jenkins

Friday 27 November 2015 10.27 GMT


Labour has the power to prevent us getting into a conflict we cannot resolve. Jeremy Corbyn, for once, has got it right



Jeremy Corbyn’s challenge to David Cameron on the bombing of Syria is unanswerable, and every Labour MP knows it. So too is his explanation of his position in his letter to his party. A British prime minister’s statement on the eve of war should never be taken at face value. We have heard these bombastic calls to foreign aggression – festooned with jingoist opinion polls – too many times. In Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, windy rhetoric and strategic waffle have substituted for rational argument. Cameron’s statement yesterday, full of talk of values, ways of life and examined consciences, was a classic of the genre.

Corbyn’s Labour enemies, consumed with hatred for his clique, were yesterday rerunning Suez. They were frantic, not about the bombing of Syria, but about being outflanked by a cynical Tory party on a matter of peace and war. Bombing Syria has nothing to do with terrorism, except possibly to increase the likelihood of it in Britain. It has nothing positive to contribute to Britain’s national security, which is not currently under threat. The idea that Isis might undermine British values is an insult to those values. That it might attain a caliphate in the Mile End Road is a fantasy of men shut up too long in a Cobra bunker.


The one remotely sensible objective of a resumed British engagement in the Middle East would be to restore a modicum of order to Syria and Iraq. But as long as the governments of neither state, nor of other states in the region, are willing to offer troops to this end, the chances of the west succeeding on its own are minimal – or at best likely to be temporary. There are some conflicts even Great Britain might be powerless to resolve.


More:http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/27/david-cameron-syria-macho-foolish-labour-jeremy-corbyn

to my mind, the most sensible and possibly valid point made in the above article is

the governments of neither state, nor of other states in the region, are willing to offer troops to this end, the chances of the west succeeding on its own are minimal – or at best likely to be temporary

i can certainly live with the idea of a solution being temporary as few solutions, especially in that region (it used to be the balkans), have great longevity, but at least it would buy time to try to find something that will work albeit and most probably with some discomfort

however, i certainly agree that the assorted regional protagonists need to nail their colours to the mast ..... however, but as i have posted earlier, none of them are overtly willing to do so, primarily due to the strong fundamentalist cliques within their own court circles

for all that, and as always, much remains screened and discussed and even agreed behind tightly closed doors - as indeed is most definitely necessary

the governments of neither state, nor of other states in the region, are willing to offer troops to this end, the chances of the west succeeding on its own are minimal – or at best likely to be temporary

A piece of reality!

“Trying to crush it will win it support and require a land army on the scale assembled to liberate Kuwait in 1991. Cameron has specifically said he would not join such an army, though such pledges against mission creep are worthless. For the moment, there is no such ground force to make bombing strategically effective. All we are offered is a sickening bombing party, a gesture, a show of machismo, a gift to the arms salesman, a hot flush from a military briefing.”



“In the shambolic attic that is Corbyn’s political brain, sanity on military intervention shines with the light of clarity. He has backed down on too many proclaimed beliefs to abandon this one too. He should stick to his argument. As the Commons foreign select committee has declared (but lacks the guts to confirm), there is no case for this bombing. Corbyn’s colleagues know he is right and should back him.”


Which factions "fighting" in the M.E. are going to be prepared to sign up with a “ally” which is preparing to dump the partnership when they think it timely.

(Considering what to do with Assad etc.)

And at what cost.
-=-=-=

Cameron, Hollande and a few others get back to the table and to the UN.

To resolve the current problem in M.E. it needs further UN to get the rules of the "GAME" spelt out, and backing of proposed military sanctioned, and more importingly the form of, and period of post "war" administration which will have to be imposed a fragmented country.

=-=-=-

I know Bomber Cameron and U-bend Osborne belong to the same party of backstabbers and do those already fighting in the M.E. but this is another u-turn they may have to accept.

In Trafalgar Square, where tourists gather in the shadow of Corbyn’s Column, you can often see the foreign visitors gazing in awe at the giant posters of Marx, Mao, Len McCluskey and Diane Abbott

Chairman Corbyn's Maoist Britain: Clarkson in re-education camp, giant posters of people's hero Diane Abbott and compulsory ping pong.

DOMINIC SANDBROOK provides an insight into Britain under Corbyn's rule
Comes after John McDonnell read Chairman's Mao's Little Red Book in the Commons

The sun rises over John McDonnell’s Britain, pale and wan. Along the fog-bound roads leading into the capital, beneath the great glowering portraits of the Party leadership, the bicycles stretch as far as the eye can see, back to back in the dawn rush hour.

In the east, as the sky lightens over the vast paddy fields, thousands of people are trudging to work in the collective farms of the Fens.

On the re-education camps on the Isle of Man, sirens have already roused the inmates from their short, troubled sleep, summoning them for the day’s first socialist songs before their hard labour.

In the House of the People’s Struggle Against Capitalist Oppression, formerly known as the British Museum, caretakers are sweeping the dusty, deserted halls, now emptied of the artefacts collected during the discredited years of British imperialism, from the Elgin Marbles to the Rosetta Stone.

Even though there are hours until the museum opens, there is already a long, silent queue outside. These days, schoolteachers regularly arrive with their charges well before dawn, often camping outside in the freezing cold in a bid to prove their socialist zeal.

They have all come to see one thing, of course. Just a few inches high and only 64 pages long, its shabby red cover marked by age, it rests in a cushion in a glass cabinet, flanked by unsmiling Red Guards — the single most important book in British history.

Today, every household has one. But this particular edition is special. For this is the very copy of the Little Red Book — or to give it its formal name, Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung — from which John McDonnell, once the Labour Party’s Shadow Chancellor, now People’s Chancellor and Co-Author of the Revolution, quoted in the House of Commons one November day several years ago.

Every schoolchild knows the story. How the capitalist hyenas and imperialist running dogs — the hated David Cameron and George Osborne — sat there roaring their heads off after their Autumn Statement.

How the people’s hero, Comrade McDonnell, stood firm against the braying laughter of the Tory jackals, proudly brandishing his beloved edition of Chairman Mao’s wise words.

How the British peasant masses, roused after centuries of persection, rose as one to salute the courage of Comrade McDonnell and his fellow toiler for socialist liberation, Labour Party Chairman Jeremy Corbyn.

And how, after years of struggle, the heroes of the revolution at last stormed the ramparts of capitalist greed, tore down the mansions of the money-makers, and turned Britain into a shining temple to the wisdom of Chairman Mao.

This, at least, is the lesson drilled into Britain’s youngsters when, at the age of three, they first arrive at their state schools, from the smallest primary in the peasant villages to the vast experimental comprehensives at Eton and Harrow.

Even as they eat their breakfast gruel beneath the giant portraits of Comrades Corbyn and McDonnell, inspiring socialist hymns play from hidden loudspeakers.

In their history lessons, teachers read them colourful, inspirational stories from Britain’s past — from the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 to Tony Benn’s creation of British Leyland in 1969.

In their foreign language lessons, children pore over their Mandarin textbooks, struggling to translate passages about the golden age of Maoist China.

But it is not all joyless hard work. There is time for sport, too, and most children look forward to their battles on the ping-pong tables, in emulation of the national heroes who last month defeated a visiting team from North Korea.

Occasionally there are reports of violence in some schools, usually when over-enthusiastic pupils have denounced a particular teacher whom they suspect of secret bourgeois leanings.

By and large, though, Britain’s children are regarded as the most docile and disciplined in the world — which is perhaps not surprising, when you think that they are in school for 12 hours a day, with many also fitting in Young Socialist activities before bedtime.

Foreign visitors to Britain — assuming they have obtained the correct travel permissions — often remark on the extraordinary transformation in our national life.

In Trafalgar Square, where tourists gather in the shadow of Corbyn’s Column, you can often see the foreign visitors gazing in awe at the giant posters of Marx, Mao, Len McCluskey and Diane Abbott.

Where once there were advertisements for expensive capitalist luxuries such as cars, fridges, wine and chocolates, now there are inspiring slogans, modelled on those used in Mao’s China.

‘Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great Commander, Great Helmsman,’ reads the legend on Oxford Street’s colossal picture of the suspiciously youthful-looking Ken Livingstone, now installed as Mayor of London for life.

The messages on the electronic hoardings at Piccadilly Circus, meanwhile, are no less rousing.

‘Long Live the Red Terror!’ reads one. ‘Those Who Are Against Chairman Corbyn Will Have Their Dog Skulls Smashed Into Pieces!’ Sadly, however, the wise words of Chairman Mao and other great Marxist thinkers are lost on some of Britain’s more reactionary elements.

Indeed, for all that the government celebrates the legacy of the Revolution, there are still those who pine for the dark days of capitalism. In the aftermath of the Revolution, many of the old elite took refuge on the Isle of Wight, including the Royal Family and the leaders of the Conservative Party.

There, from their headquarters at Osborne House — the former home of that wicked imperial Empress, Queen Victoria — they maintain a rival British state.

Like the island of Taiwan during the early decades of Maoist rule in China, the Isle of Wight still clings onto Britain’s seat at the United Nations, even though the Corbyn regime has been working hard with major allies, such as Russia, Iran and Venezuela, to secure UN recognition.

In general, though, the Maoist regime hurls invective not at the rival royalist state, but at ‘deviationists’ and ‘running dogs’ within its own ranks.

The most common targets, known as the Gang of Four, are the former Labour politicians Liz Kendall, Tristram Hunt, Stella Creasy and Alan Johnson. They fled to the Isle of Wight soon after the Revolution — thus proving, according to Comrade McDonnell, that they had been Tory traitors all along.

Even within the regime itself, there have been murmurs of disquiet. Comrade Len McCluskey’s Great Leap Forward, which re-opened derelict mines and factories across wide swathes of northern England, Wales and Scotland, was not quite as popular as its author had hoped. Many people, it turned out, did not really fancy spending their lives working down the pit.

Although the authorities keep a tight lid on the Press, there have been persistent rumours of mass fatalities at some Yorkshire pits. And despite public beatings for recalcitrant managers, targets have been missed year after year.

From the huge collective farms of the Fens, meanwhile, there come whispers of dreadful suffering. In emulation of Mao’s ‘Down to the Countryside Movement’, and to reconnect Britain with its peasant roots, the regime shipped thousands of bright young university graduates from the cities to the wide, featureless fields of East Anglia, which were hastily converted into gigantic rice paddies.

But only a few months after the first farms had opened, Comrade Abbott delivered a much publicised speech denouncing Britain’s leading intellectuals for what she called their ‘reactionary bourgeois revisionism’.

So began the first of the purges. Live on national television, well-known writers and thinkers — Melvyn Bragg, Germaine Greer, Mary Beard, David Starkey — were rounded up by Red Guards and driven deep into the countryside, where they were presented with hoes and brusquely instructed to begin tilling the land.

The result, naturally, was a disaster. Quite apart from the appalling death toll among the intellectuals themselves, many of whom reportedly collapsed with exhaustion only minutes after taking up their hoes, the Fenland collective farms have conspicuously failed to meet the needs of Britain’s urban proletariat.

According to the UN, no country in the Western world suffers from greater malnutrition. And although the government insists that last year’s famine across the vast collective farms of the West Country was a one-off, international experts suggest that the real picture is much more terrifying.

Before the mass expulsion of foreign journalists last summer, many overseas newspapers carried reports of starving children across the south-west — from Plymouth and Exeter to Yeovil and Dorchester. From isolated villages in Somerset and Dorset there even came scattered rumours of cannibalism, with starving families forced to devour elderly relatives.

In today’s Britain, however, to repeat such stories is to risk imprisonment, or worse. Since the launch of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards have been quick to pounce on anything that smacks of satire or dissent.

Since ‘Right Opportunists’ such as Michael McIntyre, Ian Hislop and Jeremy Clarkson were carried off to the Isle of Man re-education camps, even to tell a joke now carries the taint of bourgeois imperialism.

Indeed, in the ‘safe spaces’ of Britain’s universities, the slightest flash of humour or intellectual dissent can sometimes be enough to guarantee a savage beating.

In general, however, our universities are remarkably quiet places these days. Many students spend little time on campus; instead, they travel the country, honouring Mao’s directive to eradicate the ‘Four Olds’ — customs, culture, habits and ideas — from British life.

Some estimates suggest that as many as 3,000 churches have been vandalised or demolished. Statues of kings, generals and prime ministers have been pulled down in towns across the nation.

Even the supposedly imperialist names of places themselves, including the former royal London borough of Kingston upon Thames and Churchill in Oxfordshire, have been wiped off the map.

As for Buckingham Palace itself, there was initially talk of converting it into a Palace of the People, complete with a library of Marxist classics, a waxworks display of great moments from Maoist history and a gigantic works canteen for apparatchiks in the nearby Agriculture Ministry.

In recent months, however, there have been whispered stories of strange goings-on behind the forecourt of the Palace, where Red Guards march to the sound of the Internationale.

Scouring the bins, dissidents have found numerous bottles of sleeping pills and other drugs, as well as super-sized packets of cheap Chinese cigarettes. Doctors have been spotted coming and going regularly. There have been disturbing reports of cars pulling into the Palace late at night, with Red Guards dragging terrified teenage girls inside.

And watching after dark, some observers claim to have seen a familiar shape moving behind the curtains — older, more hunched, but unmistakably the silhouette of one of history’s greatest killers.

After seizing power in the Revolution of 1949, Mao ruled Communist China for more than a quarter of a century. Under his aegis, more than 60 million people died in purges, re-education camps and state-sponsored famines, making him comfortably the biggest mass- murderer in history.

Officially, of course, he died in 1976, his body raddled by drug abuse, sexual excess and a lifetime of chain-smoking. But the evidence is becoming overwhelming: Chairman Mao is still alive and ensconced in the Queen’s bedchamber.

And if this sounds implausible, then just reflect that it is no more implausible than, say, Jeremy Corbyn becoming Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, or his Shadow Chancellor reading from Mao’s Little Red Book in the House of Commons.

Once it would have seemed utterly unthinkable that a senior Opposition politician — the man aspiring to manage the nation’s finances — would gleefully quote the greatest mass killer who has ever lived, a monster of ideological tyranny and sexual depravity whose name deserves to live in infamy.

But we live in strange times. Yes, Mr Corbyn once promised us a new politics. But few of us ever expected to see Chairman Mao rising from the dead.

tell us FRED, how many weeks, months or even years are you prepared to wait until there is even a 10:2 majority (you'll never have unanimity) in the UN as to what action and post-action solution should be employed?

in the meantime, is your "solution" to sit and do nothing at all?

btw, quite how UN would ever be able to enforce this non-existent and almost-unanimous verdict, is hard to imagine

=============

as with the ira when secret talks were being conducted, and indeed, in the days of henry kissinger, between china and usa, it is very likely that similar are already in progress with and between a number of parties

i am certainly very disappointed that not one of the gulf states - or even the likes of iran i think - has openly come out not only in verbal but also hardware support to destroy IS, which i cannot see as other than a very dangerous, evil and murderous entity

it is therefore quite tempting (and wrong) to take the view that if the gulf states are unwilling to do anything to help and protect themselves, then they should be left to reap the consequences
unfortunately, the global effects of this would be catastrophic

Hays, Hays,

What are the Party Central Office handouts on this?

The tories are split over NHS and Welfare, Europe and Syria.

Their membership is crumbling.

More of the donors are going living abroad like Donna Kebabs.

The Cons are imploding!


It is good to have a wtb Bomber Cameron in charge.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/28/david-cameron-backs-grant-shapps-conservatives-scandal-activist


Grant Shapps resigns over bullying scandal
Former party chairman stands down after revelations he knew about bullying allegations against aide almost a year ago
Grant Shapps
Grant Shapps, the former Conservative party co-chairman. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images
Daniel Boffey and Henry Zeffman
Saturday 28 November 2015 12.00 GMT Last modified on Saturday 28 November 2015

Grant Shapps, the former chairman of the Conservative party, has resigned as a government minister, Downing Street sources have indicated after David Cameron refused to offer his full support following Guardian revelations that he was warned about alleged bullying in the party.

The father of 21-year-old Elliot Johnson, who claimed he was bullied by the Tory party youth organiser Mark Clarke before being found dead, demanded that Shapps and Andrew Feldman resign for failing to act over the scandal. The pair were party co-chairmen at the time of the alleged bullying.

Iran is supplying funds and arms to defeat ISIL. Iran is Shia Islam as is the ruling elite of Assad's government. ISIL are Sunni, which is part of the problem. Hezbollah are Shia as well and consequently allied to Assad and Iran. The overwhelming majority of Syria is Sunni (around 75%), which is partly why the rebels are trying to depose Assad. The bulk of Islam across the world is Sunni amounting to more than 90%, which is why ISIL finds it so easy to recruit people.

Just to complicate it further, Saudi are Sunni and indirectly support and fund ISIL. This why they are opposed to Iran.

Manuel,

I suggest you reread my post and get somebody help you comprehend their contents.

I know it is difficult for you, but thank god I am not your mentor.

But, I would prefer the UK to sit on the side and negotiate and form a decent policy which would include ALL PARTIES, not just that which is advantageous to the UK and Cameron's political history.

Compared with negotiating for the peace after WW2 it should be easier.

Stopping of the Korean, Vietnam wars etc. were said to be impossible.

The "killing" was stopped and the world goes on!


0-0-0-

I am not against using force to stop the M.E problem, but it has to be joint force with foot soldiers from all participants under a joint control from its initiation.

Later, the control can pass to the government which is formed in the aftermath.

But the cost of doing so is going to be high.

and my question is and remains
FOR HOW LONG WOULD YOU BE PREPARED TO SIT ON YOUR HANDS

in any case and like it or not, this will not be an "open" free vote even among MPs, so with the published agenda of the corbynistas and snp, you will (of course) never ever get agreement from all parties ......

it follows that the best that can be hoped for is a rejection of cameron's policy (on balance i think he's as right as circumstances allow), or a reasonable majority in favour

Look at my add on to post 65485.

It should be a free vote of all members of HP and probably will be for the labour party if Corbyn has sense.

But I am prepared for the present tory party to have the entire responsibility the proposed actions.

Of course, Cameron may duck and duck the responsibility of his own policy once again.

The longer he leaves the vote the more the public will reject his policy. This seems to be happening at the moment, as the limits and problems the present actions are revealed.

Interesting to see polls next week.

Grant Shapps quits amid Tory bullying claims!


Grant Shapps has quit as international development minister amid allegations of "bullying" in the Conservative Party, the BBC understands.

The only surprise is that Shapps didn't go years ago.. care to comment now H/S on the Tory Bullying?.. apart from the usual no one cares nonsense.

It should be a free vote of all members of HP and probably will be for the labour party if Corbyn has sense.
thoroughly agree with the sentiment of that, though the reality will assuredly be that MPs from both sides will be leant on heavily by the grandees and whips - no idea about snp

==============

I am not against using force to stop the M.E problem, but it has to be joint force with foot soldiers from all participants under a joint control from its initiation.
nice idea though it won't happen .... my guess is that the russkies will be persuaded to supply the grunt pretty much on their own - but there'll be a hefty price of course

==============

and a straight question to finish with ....

do you think MPs should vote per their individual conscience or should they vote according to the (questionable) wishes of their constituents or constituency parties?

imo, though assuredly MPs will not be in command of even half the facts allowed to the cabinet, shadow cabinet and their respected (hohoho!) leaders, they are still more intelligent than the average joe and should vote per their individual conscience

I think it will end up being a free vote for Labour. Corbyn looks unlikely to risk being defied by up to 100 MPs together with resignations from his Cabinet.

from the tory side, i hear the potential rebels have been "persuaded" to stand in line
i find it impossible to believe that the labour dissidents will not also be leant on, though with what effect remains to be seen

what's the score with snp?
i find it hard to believe that all 41 of its MPs are unanimous in their opinions

Corbyn has emailed all the party faithful that voted him in. They are then supposed to lean on their MP with the agenda of reselection. MPs will have returned to their constituencies this weekend giving an opportunity for the Corbynistas to bully their MPs.

Diane Abbott once claimed that murderous Chinese dictator Chairman Mao did ‘more good than wrong’, it emerged yesterday.

Communist leader Mao killed tens of millions of his citizens during his rule from 1949 to 1976.

But he won praise from Labour’s international development spokesman for leaving his country on the ‘verge of great economic success’.

Miss Abbott’s comments emerged after Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell’s ill-judged stunt during Wednesday’s Autumn Statement, when he quoted from the Little Red Book of Mao’s sayings. It was condemned by Diane Wei Liang, who spent three years in a labour camp under Mao as a child.

Labour embarrassment over the stunt was compounded yesterday after footage emerged of Miss Abbott during an appearance on the BBC’s This Week show in 2008 when she revealed she had been debating Mao’s legacy with her son.

Former Tory minister Michael Portillo had queried why ‘people still wear Mao T-shirts, people still carry Mao Little Red Books’. Hackney MP Miss Abbott replied: ‘I suppose that some people would judge that on balance Mao did more good than wrong. We can’t say that about the Nazis.’

She added: ‘He led his country from feudalism, he helped to defeat the Japanese, and he left his country on the verge of the great economic success they are having now.’

Yesterday Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said Miss Abbott’s remarks were ‘ludicrous’.

Grant Shapps quits amid Tory bullying claims!


Grant Shapps has quit as international development minister amid allegations of "bullying" in the Conservative Party, the BBC understands.

The only surprise is that Shapps didn't go years ago.. care to comment now H/S on the Tory Bullying?.. apart from the usual no one cares nonsense.

Not my problem.

You can do better then that.