KentVillan

20 minutes ago, MotoMkali said:

What rot are you lot chatting

He's been injured, and emery has probably been asked about him and emery has said yeah he's a world class talent he just needs to make the most of it. 

Read the quote from Emery again, not saying it’s a huge issue that will cause ongoing problems, but pretty clear he wants him to be more focused - not unusual for a player his age.

1 hour ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

I was a right prick when I was 19 ( I still kind of am but you know what I mean lol )

You can tell he's a hot head, I hope he just doesn't go the route of many talents who lost the plot.

Balotelli etc 

Nothing to indicate this is the case.

However, he does kind of have to be treated like a " son " somewhat.

Yeah and that’s why I think Emery will hold him to different standards from a senior pro. He’ll be more forgiving of lapses of judgment, and he’ll give him more chances to **** up, but ultimately he’ll want him to buy into the process.

The thing that has surprised me about Emery at Villa is how good a man manager he is. I knew he was a great tactician, but behind the awkward demeanour, he seems to have a good sense of how to handle people. Fairly confident he’ll work out how to deal with Jhon Duran and they’ll end up in a good place.

2 hours ago, Tumblerseven said:

So every state ever existed was influenced and interfered by other countries. Those who handle become stronger and survive those who cant handle vanish. Its like natural process. I think you absolutely can blame Palestine and Palestinians if they cant handle that thats literally their responsibility to handle it if they want to have a country.

A stellar job So they did a decent job in your opinion not stellar but acceptable??

I think they did really bad job.

I keep hearing from people and it triggers me. They not responsible they not responsible they not responsible they not responsible.

They are not responsible that they have terrorist government.

They are not responsible that after 3 days of war their water and food is gone. Hamas apparently didint get the memo that you can store those things. Someone told them how to store the bullets but forgot to mention how to store food and water.

They not responsible that after 3 days of war they have 0 generators to provide for their hospitals. They have plenty of rockets but they just cant put their hands on the **** generator its like mythical creature to them they just cant catch one.

 

I keep hearing these things and i think its really gross to treat these people like inept children. People want to give them a state free palestine but they treat them like they are slow or something. I dont understand its crazy to me.

After they will get the state will they be responsible for anything? or UN and israel will be responsible for them because of 80 years of oppressions? how long 100 years? when is it going to stop? Do palestine have the right and freedom to fail as a country?

I think as far as opinion in this thread goes I am closer to yours than most, so worth trying to find some common ground maybe.

Wasn’t claiming the Palestinian leadership have done even an okay job, nor that their leadership can be absolved of responsibility… but there are still many innocent civilians who are completely powerless and blameless.

In the same way we shouldn’t hold Israelis (or even worse, the wider Jewish population) responsible for the crimes of leaders and governments, we shouldn’t hold Palestinians responsible for the actions of theirs.

Try to stay calm in the debate, even if the situation itself is completely shocking for all involved. I know that’s much easier for me to say as someone with no dog in the fight, and I sympathise with your position, but you’re picking fights with people who are open to listening and discussing rationally.

Edit: and FWIW, to draw a parallel example, I feel exactly the same way about ordinary Russians, who many expect to stand up to Putin despite the deluge of propaganda and appalling odds if they even wanted to act. Civilians are mostly innocent in these situations.

50 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

There are definite racial undertones and bias (see stwc) to some of the current protests, I see it every day I pick up my granddaughter. It’s let people who had racist undertones feel emboldened to hide their idiocy under a legitimate Palestinian cause, and there’s very little reaction from the people hosting said marches to distance themselves from it.

Sadly this is definitely true, and you can see it in the rabidity of the obsession in some quarters where they simply do not pay much attention to similar atrocities anywhere else, and in their prescriptions for the future.

At the same time, what is happening in Gaza is horrendous and indefensible.

Israel is naturally focused on more in the west because it is a western ally, because many Israelis have European heritage or connections, and so on.

It didn’t help that Netanyahu deliberately pushed the definition of antisemitism to encompass things that clearly weren’t antisemitism at all, in the political discourse of western nations, and the backlash has emboldened those who are genuinely antisemitic.

And I say this as someone who is very sympathetic to the impact of all of this on British Jewish people, and who agrees with you on the double standards in the Arab world.

As ever it needs calm, reasonable voices who can talk without hysteria about things that naturally evoke hysteria because they are so shocking at times.

13 minutes ago, El Segundo said:

I specified "in modern times".  The examples you give are from times when Colonialism was the norm and every large economic and military power considered it their right.  In post-Colonial times, are they not retrospectively regarded as massive wrongs perpetrated against native peoples?  And are the neighbours blamed for being "just as bad" as the invaders? 

Such travesties were played out to more or less completion and are now so embedded that I doubt anyone would suggest reversal is possible.  In this case 1947 is within living memory, and the continuing process of cleansing and expansion has been playing out before our eyes for 75 years and with the complicit agreement and backing of the Western Powers.  This in an era that was becoming post-Colonial, and where the UN is, among other things, meant to prevent repetitions of such wrongs.   Instead they instigated one.  I don't accept that Israel/Palestine has reached the point of no return that the other examples you mention have, because it is an ongoing and evolving process.  Isn't Israel's drive to get to that point of no return what the conflict is all about? 

Sure Jews were always present in the area, but from what I can see they were a tiny minority for the last 2000 or so years.  Those Jews do not appear to have ever had Zionism as their aim and I'm not convinced their minority presence endowed the Zionists with any rights to become the forced majority in Palestine.  

Democratic processes and attempts at peace agreements have not helped the Palestinians much in the last 75 years.  Such moves  tend to revolve around an acceptance that Israel has done what it's done and the other parties just need to accept it and move on, with little or no benefit or reparations to the Palestinian population. which seems to be pretty much what you are proposing.  Is it any wonder they, including Hamas, aren't willing to accept such terms?  Would you?

   

       

“Modern” can mean different things, but Israel really originates with the creation of Mandatory Palestine over a century ago (1920) and that isn’t much later than the main waves of European settlement in Australia and New Zealand.

My argument is that now you have multiple generations of born and bred Israeli Jews living in the country, something roughly resembling the current nation-state of Israel (in terms of borders and a majority Jewish population) is an essential and unavoidable part of the eventual outcome. I don’t see any realistic solution that doesn’t involve that.

Do you think there is one? And if not, what is the practical relevance of Israel being a young / badly conceived state to the current situation?

And I completely accept that democracy and conciliation hasn’t worked well on either side, but it’s still the only approach that has ever worked in a situation like this, besides the complete annihilation of one side.

I can see the argument for attacks on Israeli military, govt buildings, etc but what Hamas did to innocent civilians was unconscionable and there’s a hint of “well, they had no other option” to some of the commentary. That seems to get bolstered by this idea that ordinary non-settler Israelis are recent colonisers.

I can totally see Hamas’s frustration at being boxed in by Israeli govts who often act in bad faith and make land grabs while conceding almost nothing, but I find it pretty hard to empathise with anyone who gets joy out of murdering children?

3 minutes ago, icouldtelltheworld said:

This really doesn't work as a comparison, seeing as a majority of the Catholic population don't really recognise the legitimacy of the Northern Irish state and would favour unification with the Republic.

Where it might work as a comparison is that the Good Friday Agreement gave the Catholic/Irish Nationalist/Republican population the same citizenship rights as the Protestants and enshrined power sharing constitutionally. However, the likelihood of any such agreement being agreed by the Israelis that makes similar concessions seems somewhat unlikely...

My point was about the position of the Protestant community there - the international community doesn’t seriously believe that Protestants born and bred in Ulster shouldn’t be there, and nor do many people (inc on Catholic side) nowadays believe that it could be justly resolved with a war of independence.

If Ireland were to reunify it would be via a democratic process.

You’re right that resolving this through power sharing and concessions seems extremely unlikely any time soon in Israel-Palestine, but that isn’t purely because of Israeli reluctance - both sides have too many people in power who want the winner-takes-all outcome.

5 hours ago, El Segundo said:

 You seriously don't think Israel is a unique case? I'm not singling them out because they are a Jewish state (although that in itself makes them unique) but because, while other countries may have been shaped and influenced by the Colonialism of Britain and France in particular, and other countries persecute minorities, can you name any other examples in modern times where a minority ethno/religious population were artificially supplanted into the midst of a majority, supplemented and supported by the established Colonial Powers, and then proceeded to act like a colonial power themselves?  Taking over and expanding with extreme prejudice?     

The USA (or any white majority country in the Americas), Australia, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, etc.

And Israel was part of a carve up of the Middle East pre WWII which involved similar top down decisions by the colonial powers to give different groups (Hashemites, Sauds, etc) control over multiethnic regions, often where they started out as a minority group (and remember Jews were present in the region for millennia).

I’m not saying any of this was right, but we don’t seriously expect to rewind any of these processes. The aim nowadays in any of these other parallel examples is usually to give equal rights to oppressed groups within established borders, and for any change in those borders (eg the reunification of Ireland) to be a democratic process.

Once you have generations of people of the “new” ethnic group born on the land that was unjustly acquired, it does become “historic” yes, unfortunately. You go past the point of no return, which we have in Israel.

None of this justifies Israel’s behaviour, but it also makes Hamas’s position untenable too. Any position that sees Israel as a state that shouldn’t exist (or that should be dramatically smaller than it is at the moment) just doesn’t work, even if you’re right to see the settler expansions and oppression of Palestinians as completely outrageous.

His passing is levels above any defender we’ve had at this club in a long time. And given how we play, it’s vital to getting players like Diaby on the ball in space. Defensively he’s decent enough, not world class, but when the team plays well he does his job

Still think this guy has a strong chance of captaining sides to Champions League and World Cup wins. Hopefully Villa in the first case. He’s just such a composed player, who looks better and better the more talent he has around him.

Do we actually know anything has happened or is it all just conjecture? He’s 19 years old, he isn’t a regular starter, he’s just been away in Colombia. I think managers handle these players differently regardless of whether they’ve said or done something behind the scenes.

1 minute ago, Mantis said:

Yes, we're very much a system team you feel, which is good because it means we're not overly reliant on individuals. Gone were the days were an injury to one certain key player would send us into a tailspin.

It’s like we’re a system team *but* each week Emery also has plans to get the most out of certain individuals, and let them shine. And some of the natural talent across the squad then shows through too, as we exploit specific weaknesses in the opposition

Emery has always had a soft spot for him I think, even when most of us thought he was one to file away in all time worst transfers. Glad he’s starting to repay that faith a bit, because apart from @JAMAICAN-VILLANI don’t think it was obvious to anyone else. Beautiful goal today

The thing I love about the team he’s built is you know they’re going to play well most weeks, but you never know who the star players are going to be

Got a feeling tomorrow will be similar

57 minutes ago, Thug said:

You’ve joined the conversation mid-point and don’t understand that my response was to another poster claiming the Jewish people of Europe were the indigenous population and suggesting that their claim to the land was real.

My post was proving that there were people there before them.

If you bother to read the whole conversation, you will understand that it is me that you are agreeing with.

The black man living in London has every right to be there.  If some bat-ass crazy pulled him out of his home and moved some white family in because ‘their ancestors from 4000 years ago lived there’ you’d think WTAF. No?

I think the European point you made is still wrong, though. I agree with you on the point re settlers and the forcing Palestinians out of their homes, but let’s not pretend the Israelis (even the settlers) are European colonisers, it’s more complex than that. They were an unwanted and subjugated people in Europe with origins in the region they have returned to, and some of them are of more recent local heritage anyway.

I do agree that a lot of what they have done has been an abuse of the rights of the people who had been living there for generations, not defending the illegal expansion of Israel.

32 minutes ago, Thug said:

Israel are evicting the Palestinians from their homes and ‘settling’ there.

im not talking about the historical wrongs and rights.  I’m talking CURRENT.

 

Understood - fair point

2 hours ago, Chindie said:

What the ****?

Moran’s mum is Palestinian Christian (and her father James Moran obviously isn’t Palestinian at all), so solid detective work there from Madeley

Let’s take a moment to appreciate how consistently he drops these bangers though. Hall of fame bell end

3 hours ago, a-k said:

Can someone verify?

 

Unsure on the story, but Richard Kemp isn’t a very reliable source on anything involving Muslims

2 hours ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

All the kids that survive Israel‘s attempts to wipe out Hamas will be the next generations Hamas.  Wonder why they would have so much hatred towards Israel.

Yeah this is what bothers me about the whole "eradicate Hamas" rhetoric. You can't bomb an idea out of existence.

And I'm completely sympathetic to the idea of targeting the Hamas leadership militarily. I just don't think it gets you all that close to a solution when there is always a new generation coming through and all you are doing is radicalising them with their own experience of injustice.

And as @chrisp65says, the exact same process is happening on the other side. This is just a gigantic blood feud with no obvious end in sight.

2 hours ago, StewieGriffin said:

I'm not a huge rugby fan, but surely a week between games negates NZ and SA's quarters being physically tough? If they played on Wednesday or something then it's relevant (although England had to put an awful lot into today)

Either way, those two at 75% should still beat England and Argentina. The gap between the top 4 and the rest is pretty sizeable

Most likely you're right, yes, but RWC knockouts have a habit of producing an upset. But yeah sensible prediction is NZ batter Argentina and SA batter us, at a canter.

That was an amazing weekend of rugby, two really top class matches, and two entertaining matches, all of them going down to the wire.

Hard to see anything other than a NZ SA final, but those teams will have been battered getting through their QFs and maybe an upset is on the cards.

3 hours ago, mjmooney said:

These lists are pointless. 

Yeah you can do it for tennis or golf. Arguably for team sports. For creative stuff… no