jon_c

7 minutes ago, av1 said:

I know i will probably get laughed out of the thread for this, but given the choices are all equally as terrifying and incompetent (for me anyway). Does anyone think another coalition might be better than an outright party win?

I think a coalition whilst not great, is a better prospect than some of these parties getting Carte Blanche.

12 hours ago, DCJonah said:

Absolutely. RDM did a terrible job. So terrible that we don't have to invent this myth that Bruce made us harder to beat. 

Exactly, despite looking completely clueless towards the end of his tenure, we actually lost 4 under RDM. 14 under Bruce, that isn't harder to beat. 

14 hours ago, darrenm said:

One is taking money off disabled people, cancer sufferers. The other is a possibly misplaced sense of standing up for the oppressed.

I don't care about his past talks with the IRA, it's his appearances on Russia Today and articles about Ukraine in the morning star. That's why I don't inherently trust Corbyn. And saying the Crimea invasion "is not unprovoked" isn't exactly standing up for the oppressed. 

Quote

• It is the US drive to expand eastwards which lies at the root of the crisis in the former Soviet republic, argues JEREMY CORBYN - and it's time we talked to Russia

---

Tomorrow will see a four-way meeting take place as Russia, the United States, the EU and Ukraine discuss ongoing tensions in the latter country.

But while the endless drama of meetings, lurid statements and predictions and mass demonstrations catches the world's eye, something more significant and fundamental is taking place in international politics.

As the US moves into relative economic decline, China's expansion and Russia's huge energy reserves and location are moving the politics of the world to a different place.

Russia and China have reached a momentous agreement to sell gas and do business in either of their own currencies - but not in dollars.

As with Iraq's 2002 move from dollars to euros, the new means of exchange downgrades the US dollar as the international currency of choice, but now on a far bigger scale.

The broad historical sweep since the end of the Soviet Union showed two decades of unipolar US power. But now the resurgence of Russia and the enormous economic power of China are ending that.

The history of conflicts since 1990 is grim. Hot wars took place in the Gulf, in the former Yugoslavia, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, all involving the US and Nato.

The period saw the European Union cement its relationship with Nato, and more recently the US shift its military focus to the Asia-Pacific region as it now sees China as its main rival.

The EU and Nato have now become the tools of US policy in Europe.

The US remains overwhelmingly the military superpower. It seized opportunities in 1990 and in 2001 to increase its military spending and develop a global reach of bases unmatched since the second world war.

The expansion of Nato into Poland and the Czech Republic has particularly increased tensions with Russia.

Agreements Gorbachov reached before the final demise of the Soviet Union and subsequent pledges that Ukraine's independence would not see it brought into Nato or any other military alliance appear to have been forgotten by Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen in his increasingly bellicose statements.

Indeed, a huge joint exercise is planned for this July between Nato and Ukrainian forces. This can only make an already dangerous situation even worse.

On Tuesday night the Stop the War Coalition hosted an extraordinarily well-informed public meeting on the crisis at the Wesley Hotel in Euston, London.

Jonathan Steele, a former Guardian Moscow correspondent, outlined the situation expertly, noting that coverage has been dominated by two Hs - hypocrisy and hysteria.

While there were democratic forces in the Maidan protests motivated by falling living standards and corruption, there were also far-right nazi groups involved.

The far-right is now sitting in government in Ukraine. The origins of the Ukrainian far-right go back to those who welcomed the nazi invasion in 1941 and acted as allies of the invaders.

Stop the War officer and long-term anti-war activist Carol Turner pointed out that the sanctions against Russia are confused and controversial, largely targeting individuals, while the effect on Germany of any broader-reaching economic sanctions would be huge.

And already Gazprom has increased the price of its exports to Ukraine.

The overall issue is still one of the activities and expansionism of the post-1990 United States.

Turner referred to statements made by the US in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse. In an article in the International Herald Tribune of March 9 1992 Patrick Tyler of the New York Times outlined the new strategy by which US defence secretary Dick Cheney was preparing for expansion - and many future conflicts.

Tyler wrote that "the classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower, whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behaviour and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging US primacy."

The author of this strategy, Paul Wolfowitz, specifically divested it of any role for the United Nations, which had been used to provide a mandate for the Gulf war of 1990-91 while the Soviets were preoccupied with their state falling apart.

The plan was never to remove nuclear strike aircraft from Europe or reduce the role of Nato, despite the end of the Warsaw Pact.

"We must seek to prevent the emergence of European-only security arrangements which would undermine Nato," Wolfowitz warned.

Wolfowitz wanted to make arrangements in eastern Europe similar to those in the Gulf, where Saudi Arabia had been armed as an ally for regional wars. Now it is acting as a US ally in the Syrian conflict.

On Ukraine, I would not condone Russian behaviour or expansion. But it is not unprovoked, and the right of people to seek a federal structure or independence should not be denied.

And there are huge questions around the West's intentions in Ukraine.

The obsession with cold war politics that exercises the Nato and EU leaderships is fuelling the crisis and underlines the case for a whole new approach to foreign policy.

We have allowed Nato to act outside its own area since the Afghan war started. The Lisbon Treaty binds the EU and Nato together in a mutual alliance of interference and domination reaching ever eastwards.

The long-term effect of the behaviour of US Secretary of State John Kerry, backed by the EU and the British government, is to divide the world. An ever-growing and more confident Russia-China bloc will increasingly rival Nato and the EU, meaning a new cold war beckons.

Would it not be better if when the four powers sit down together they looked at agreeing on a neutral, nuclear-free Ukraine, the possibility of de-escalating the crisis and cut out the hypocrisy of feigned moral outrage from a country that has invaded many others, has military bases scattered worldwide and whose arms industry has made billions from the death and destruction of so much life in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Peace campaigners in Britain need to look at the dangers of the mutual defence agreement with the US and the way it ties us into all their strategies. We also need to look at the role of Nato overall.

The Nato summit due in Newport, Wales, in September is a good opportunity for us to express our opposition to the strange notion that expanding a nuclear alliance east makes us safer.

It does not. It makes the whole world infinitely more dangerous.

 

Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-972b-Nato-belligerence-endangers-us-all#.WSvUjMvTXqB

26 minutes ago, darrenm said:

That's fair enough mate. Your choice. I would say that not voting for Labour is almost by default a vote for the Tories. But like Pompey says, if you feel that strongly a huge cock on your ballot sheet is in order

I only had a choice of Lib Dem or Plaid in the locals and that is exactly what I did. There were only two spoilt votes in my area too. The other one was my other half. 

Replace the word "Christian"in these arguments with the word "White"

"White" extremists, "white" radicals, wanting to eradicate non-"whites". These things exist. (Hell one of them is chief strategist to the White House)

10 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

 ...competent MP's in the prominent roles.

This is absolutely Corbyn's biggest problem. Yes the Tories have similar issues (see Fallon) but Labour rarely put anyone on TV who isn't Abbott or McDonnell. They really need to push some of the other shadow cabinet. 

37 minutes ago, VillaChris said:

I presume he'll be put in charge of our new manager search as and when?

Main two managers he's worked with in the past are Moyes and McClaren....

The dream team. 

16 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

If @Grasshopper can go a day without slagging Bruce off on VT I'll up my acorns donation to £100 if we don't get promoted under Bruce. 

Are you stipulating from which division the promotion has to be?

6 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

'There's nothing in the Bible that talks about retirement. And yet it's been an accepted concept in our culture today. It's like, nowhere does it say 'Well, he was a good and faithful servant, so he went to the beach'. You know, it doesn't say that anywhere. And you think back, and the example I think of is Noah. How old was Noah when he built the ark? 600. Yeah, okay. He wasn't, like, cashing social security checks, he wasn't hanging out, he was working. Right? So I think we have an obligation to work.'

 

 

I'm sorry but that is just mental illness. 

When discussing government policy as a motivating factor for terrorists. I've always wondered why there are no major attacks by Islamic fundamentalists on any of the former Yugoslavian states, after all they had a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Muslim's. It goes to show how little the motivations are religious or political. And it's just mainly nut-jobbery. 

1 hour ago, Rodders said:

 

Watch 12 Angry Men. 

You should, because it's a great film. 

1 minute ago, darrenm said:

I once did jury service. I considered it my duty in the bedrock of democracy that I gave the defendant every opportunity when deliberating on their guilt. Lots wanted to just send him down, I held firm until I was fully convinced by others that he was guilty. Once I was fully convinced I was perfectly happy to then return a guilty verdict, knowing the consequences for the defendant. 

Are you Henry Fonda?

It feels like I'm watching the two main party leaders trying their best to make sure they're not winning the election.

Corbyn may not be wrong about the interventions of the army motivating acts of terrorism, but he must know how this will get attacked politically during the election. He's just handing his detractors an easy narrative to turn against him, at a time when the people are particularly prickly about terrorism. 

And as for May, it's like her entire Manifesto has been designed to lose votes. The dementia tax? Targeting you're core vote, with something they'll hate. 

Does anyone actually want to win? Or are they just looking at impending Brexit negotiations and thinking, "No Thanks."

1 hour ago, villakram said:

The US pays the bills for NATO and provides the muscle. Ya, Trump is the idiot here.

Turkey for example doesn't meet the 2% criteria, yet has the second biggest deplorable military in NATO by far.

Just listening to Trump's speech at NATO right now. Uses Manchester bombing to attack immigration, (when he said "beautiful little girls", it was creepy as hell)  then went on about other countries owing money to NATO, like he doesn't understand how NATO works. The faces of all the other leaders were just completely incredulous. 

We don't need to share Intel with the US anymore, if they have anything we want to know, we can just bug Mar a Lago, or just goad Trump into telling us. 

7 hours ago, omariqy said:

Just watching cricket. Imagine wanting to deport Moeen Ali.

I agree with your sentiment, but would just like to note that Moeen Ali is from Birmingham.

9 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Currently a video going around on fb showing what seems to be a ISIS soldier talking broken English claiming responsibility for this attack. 

 

They claim responsibility for everything, they claimed the Dortmund bus attack. They are essentially the terrorist version of John Terry changing into his kit to collect the champions league trophy.

Keep hearing these campaigns for getting young people to register to vote. Honestly the number of young people I speak to, I'd say the majority wouldn't even know who Jeremy Corbyn was, and it'd be 50:50 on whether they know Teresa May. 

They have absolutely no interest or knowledge of politics or even current affairs. 

They may be some but they are the exception. 

I encouraged a guy at work to register, and he hadn't got a clue about any politics, and actually said that I seemed to know a bit, he'd just vote whoever I did. 

As much as I like the power, I'm trying to get him to make his own decision, by what he feels is right. I happen to think that's important, even if he votes Tory. 

48 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

Go to Rinkeby outside Stockholm or Rosengård in Malmø and get back to me. The fact that you're making fun of it shows how little you know.

Literally the first article I found googling this.

Quote

Reporters flock here in droves at the merest hint of trouble and even America’s Fox News arrived in 2003 to portray Rosengård as a virtual war zone to the world.

On one occasion, a media pack descended after hearing of a fire which turned out to have been caused by a malfunctioning electrical fan.

50 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Anyone watching tv debate? Completely pointless without Corbyn and may. Pair of cowards.

I am leaning towards lib dems I must admit

Won't stand up to a non-partisan crowd and take scrutiny, pathetic. Any politician worth their salt, should jump at the chance to persuade the public.

4 hours ago, magnkarl said:

Oh and I forgot to say, SJW confirmed.

What is this, 4chan?

7 hours ago, villakram said:

Screw NATO and the warmongering scum leaching off it.

You might not care for NATO, but the protection of NATO treaties is currently the only thing stopping Russia invading other countries in Eastern Europe like they did Crimea.