The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[bannedfromHandV]

Ah yes, the classic career story.....

’I went to uni, wasn’t sure what I wanted to do so worked in a call centre for a while, then bang, next thing I know I’m cutting off heads in Syria under some random black flag, careers eh, crazy.’

 

Have a day off folks.

[bannedfromHandV]

1 minute ago, Jareth said:

Dude, respect your opinion and understand it - but I have to think that if we are to be 'Global Britain' and stand alone, we need to take responsibility for our **** ups. 

Eh? Are we global or stand-alone? Not sure we can be both can we unless you’ve been reading Boris’ memoirs.

[Jareth]

Just now, bannedfromHandV said:

Eh? Are we global or stand-alone? Not sure we can be both can we unless you’ve been reading Boris’ memoirs.

Haha, I am definitely quoting that nonsense - going with the flow - not agreeing with it. But yes, it's a UK citizen, it's a UK problem. 

[blandy]

4 minutes ago, snowychap said:

It doesn't mean that they're [ rules and laws] adhered to all the time by individuals, or from a policy perspective by those making the actual decisions (politicians or military bigwigs), or that you don't see countless people of a 'military' persuasion advocating ignoring those things or even politicians (of all stripes) turning blind eyes to things like rendition flights or nations apparently subscribing to these norms inventing justifications for torture or ways to get around the conventions or declarations about 'enemy combatants', &c.

Indeed. That's spot on.

Quote

Yes, you may be right that some military advisors are trying to reduce civilian casualties when they're advising regimes like Saudi Arabia in their bombing campaigns but I very much doubt your blanket 'this [to prevent the Saudis from...] is what they are trying to do' applies as it really doesn't apply to other, recent military campaigns carried out by western militaries where collateral damage seems not only to be acceptable but rather to be part of the point.

I was talking about the UK military. I'm not sure I can think of that many examples, certainly not in recent times of the UK thinking or acting that collateral damage is "acceptable" and "part of the point". But I'm happy to be put right.

Quote

I can get your personal interest in the defence of the UK millitary perspective but painting it as a group of good guys intent on obeying and trying to do the right thing is frankly bizarre.

 It's not really a "personal interest in defending the UK military perspective" - I'd be happy to criticise it where I perceive problems. I'd frame it as more like it's an area I know a bit (just a bit) about which might be different to what others know. But I do genuinely disagree completely with the last sentence. I think that the RAF personnel in KSA are trying to do the right thing, absolutely. Me personally, I would be uncomfortable, to put it mildly, with going to Saudi or working on any Saudi related programme, but that's different from considering the people who do so to not be trying to do the right thing. My experience through interaction with our military is that they overwhelmingly do try (and succeed) in doing the right thing.

[snowychap]

6 minutes ago, blandy said:

I was talking about the UK military. I'm not sure I can think of that many examples, certainly not in recent times of the UK thinking or acting that collateral damage is "acceptable" and "part of the point". But I'm happy to be put right.

I don't think Rob intended his comment to be specifically about the UK military and no other military anywhere else (I may be wrong). I took it as a more general thing about a military (i.e. an organised force representing a nation state) versus a more nebulous group of people who go around killing others (the terrorists).

Even if you only want to put a case on behalf of the UK military, I'm not sure one can isolate the UK military (and this is a wide unbrella encompassing Intelligence groups as well as political decision makers on military matters) from the joint military operations in which they've been involved so I'd put all of the things from 'shock and awe' to drone strikes in that category.

10 minutes ago, blandy said:

 It's not really a "personal interest in defending the UK military perspective"

I'm sorry to point it out but it absolutely does come across as that to the extent that your defence of the UK's military positions and the wider UK defence industry appears to have little or no truck with criticisms and seems to suggest only the best possible motives and intentions for it.

[blandy]

2 minutes ago, snowychap said:

I don't think Rob intended his comment to be specifically about the UK military and no other military anywhere else (I may be wrong). I took it as a more general thing about a military (i.e. an organised force representing a nation state) versus a more nebulous group of people who go around killing others (the terrorists).

Even if you only want to put a case on behalf of the UK military, I'm not sure one can isolate the UK military (and this is a wide unbrella encompassing Intelligence groups as well as political decision makers on military matters) from the joint military operations in which they've been involved so I'd put all of the things from 'shock and awe' to drone strikes in that category.

I'm sorry to point it out but it absolutely does come across as that to the extent that your defence of the UK's military positions and the wider UK defence industry appears to have little or no truck with criticisms and seems to suggest only the best possible motives and intentions for it.

I believe Rob said it was "sort of" a comparison to the RAF.

I'm not putting a case "on behalf of" anyone. I'm writing my personal opinion and was talking about the UK and RAF specifically as I mentioned more than once and in the context of the current Tory gov't (in an attempt to remain on topic).

Your wider points have s degree of validity I think, but that's another subject - happy to discuss in a seperate thread.

[StefanAVFC]

34 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Ah yes, the classic career story.....

’I went to uni, wasn’t sure what I wanted to do so worked in a call centre for a while, then bang, next thing I know I’m cutting off heads in Syria under some random black flag, careers eh, crazy.’

 

Have a day off folks.

We both know this isn't a fair reflection on the points being made.

[HanoiVillan]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

The UN has imposed arms embargos, and resolutions about peaceful negotiated solutions and all of that kind of stuff, but until the Houthis, the Yemeni Gov't, the Saudis, Iran, UAE and the other local participants actually want to stop the war, nothing will change. In that context, the RAF people in Saudi endeavouring to minimise civilian deaths are probably doing a good thing, though no one will thank them for it, because it's easy (not the right word, I know) to point at the bodies of dead children, feel utterly appalled and horrified and conclude "this has to, has to stop". It's the how that's the hard part. Taking away those RAF people won't stop it.

I'm pretty much alright with looking at the piles of bodies and saying 'this has to stop'.

Here is my understanding of Britain's involvement in the conflict:

'Saudi Arabia has in effect contracted out vital parts of its war against Yemen’s Houthi movement to the US and the UK. Britain does not merely supply weapons for this war: it provides the personnel and expertise required to keep the war going. The British government has deployed RAF personnel to work as engineers, and to train Saudi pilots and targeteers – while an even larger role is played by BAE Systems, Britain’s biggest arms company, which the government has subcontracted to provide weapons, maintenance and engineers inside Saudi Arabia.

“The Saudi bosses absolutely depend on BAE Systems,” John Deverell, a former MoD mandarin and defence attache to Saudi Arabia and Yemen, told me. “They couldn’t do it without us.” A BAE employee recently put it more plainly to Channel 4’s Dispatches: “If we weren’t there, in seven to 14 days there wouldn’t be a jet in the sky.”

[...]

Once these weapons arrive in Saudi Arabia, Britain’s involvement is far from over. The Saudi military lacks the expertise to use these weapons to fight a sustained air war – so BAE, under another contract to the UK government, provides what are known as “in-country” services. In practice, this means that around 6,300 British contractors are stationed at forward operating bases in Saudi Arabia. There, they train Saudi pilots and conduct essential maintenance night and day on planes worn out from flying thousands of miles across the Saudi desert to their targets in Yemen. They also supervise Saudi soldiers to load bombs on to planes and set their fuses for their intended targets.

Around 80 serving RAF personnel work inside Saudi Arabia. Sometimes they work for BAE to assist in maintaining and preparing aircraft. At other times they work as auditors to ensure that BAE is fulfilling its Ministry of Defence contracts. Additional RAF “liaison officers” work inside the command-and-control centre, from where targets in Yemen are selected.

Aircraft alone have never defeated a guerrilla insurgency. Despite atrocities committed by the Houthis on the ground, the rebel group’s domestic support has only been bolstered by outrage over years of Saudi bombing. Facing up to this reality, last year Saudi Arabia decided to deploy significant ground forces across the border – and here too, the British have joined the mission. In May 2018, an unknown number of British troops were sent to Yemen to assist Saudi ground forces. Since then, multiple newspapers have published reports of British special forces wounded in gun battles inside Houthi-controlled territory.

Under British law, it is illegal to licence arms exports if they might be used deliberately or recklessly against civilians – or in legal terms, to violate international humanitarian law. There is overwhelming evidence that the Saudis are flagrantly in violation, and yet when questions are raised in Parliament about Britain’s role in the atrocities occurring in Yemen, Conservative ministers typically limit themselves to three well-worn responses.

First, they claim that Britain operates “one of the most robust arms export regimes in the world”. Second, they say that while Britain may arm Saudi Arabia, it does not pick the targets in Yemen. Third, they say that the Saudi-led coalition already investigates its own alleged violations of international humanitarian law.

These responses have long since been overtaken by the bloody reality of the Yemen war. In fact, as the conflict has continued, the killing of civilians has actually accelerated. According to Larry Lewis, a former US State Department official who was sent to Saudi Arabia in 2015 in an attempt to reduce civilian harm, the proportion of strikes against civilians by Saudi-led forces almost doubled between 2017 and 2018.

The UK government’s argument that it does not pick the targets in Yemen resembles nothing so much as the logic of the American gun lobby, with its infamous claim that it’s not guns that kill people, but the people who use them. Since 2016, many countries have revoked or suspended arms sales to Saudi Arabia – including Austria, Belgium, Germany, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. But Britain and the US, whose planes constitute the backbone of Saudi Arabia’s combat fleet, are still holding out.'

Here's how well our role in trying to 'persuade' the Saudis to stop bombing civilian targets is going:

'Michael Knights, a Gulf military expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has made two visits since the war began to the Saudi airbase at Khamis Mushayt, near the border with Yemen. Planes from this base, he told me, had waged an “out-and-out coercive air campaign” of “terror bombing” over the city of Saada in 2015 and 2016. “You couldn’t have hit more civilian targets,” he said. Saudi military chiefs “worked their way down a list of all the national infrastructure targets like we did [when the US and UK bombed Iraq during the Gulf war] in 1991 … that meant everything: cranes, bridges, ministries … water treatment plants.”

Human rights groups have criticised the Saudi-led coalition for its use of so-called “double-tap” attacks – in which a second bomb is dropped a few minutes after the first, targeting civilians and emergency responders who have rushed to the site of the first explosion. One such staggered attack on 8 October 2016 hit a funeral in Sana’a, killing 155 mourners and wounding at least 525. Another double-tap strike hit a wedding party in the remote village of Al-Wahijah on 28 Sept 2015, killing 131 civilians. “The corpses were scattered among the trees,” the father of the groom, Mohammed Busaibis, told the Yemeni human rights group Mwatana, adding that he learned his own mother had died when he saw her familiar scar on a disembodied leg. “Why did they attack us? There is nothing around here. No military camps, not even a police station.”

The former senior British official told me he was aghast at the recklessness of Saudi targeting. “This is what would happen regularly,” he told me. “We’d be sitting down for lunch and a Yemeni [from the government in exile] would get a WhatsApp message with a pin on Google Maps saying that there will be Houthis here. On that basis, an awful lot of the targeting was conducted without any verification whatsoever.”

Larry Lewis, the State Department advisor for civilian protection, described Saudi targeting to me as “incredibly loose”. “In the US and the UK,” he explained, “we have very formal processes” for airstrikes, but “this coalition is not using them … And when you mess up, bad things happen.”

Lewis says that in September 2016 – a few weeks before the funeral strike – he took his concerns to the chairman of the Saudi armed forces. “I laid out all of the very actionable things he could do to reduce civilian harm,” he told me. “The chairman didn’t really seem very interested … he just didn’t respond.” Last July, crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the architect of the air war, issued a royal decree “pardoning all military personnel who have taken part in Operation Restoring Hope of their respective military and disciplinary penalties.”'

I utterly reject the idea that selling lots of bombs, expertise and equipment to the Saudi military, in exchange for them escalating civilian casualties, is anything we should have any involvement in whatsoever, and the excuse that 'if we didn't sell them this stuff, somebody else would' is no sort of excuse at all.

(excerpts from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/18/the-saudis-couldnt-do-it-without-us-the-uks-true-role-in-yemens-deadly-war)

[snowychap]

19 minutes ago, blandy said:

I believe Rob said it was "sort of" a comparison to the RAF.

Well, actually he said:

19 hours ago, NurembergVillan said:

If he'd carried out a drone strike from a bunker in Salford, would it have changed anything?

I'm not sure that, by this, he was specifically narrowing it down to a moral comparison between UK-only military and people marked up as terrrorists.

Are there bunkers in Salford from where the RAF carry out drone strikes? For 'bunkers in Salford', you may read RAF but I may read 'bunkers in Little Rock' or 'bunkers in Valence', &c.

When he went on to explain it further, he said:

14 hours ago, NurembergVillan said:

Where my head was at originally was that the aims of a terrorist are their belief in a just cause.  Same as signing up to the military.  That what constitutes "just" is debatable is one thing, but everyone involved is aware of the likelihood of "collateral damage".

That, to me, certainly doesn't paint it about being narrowly about the intentions of the UK military but the wider context about what constitutes 'just' in terms of actions by people who kill other people (who are not direct combatants).

19 minutes ago, blandy said:

I'm not putting a case "on behalf of" anyone. I'm writing my personal opinion and was talking about the UK and RAF specifically as I mentioned more than once and in the context of the current Tory gov't (in an attempt to remain on topic).

You may not feel that you are but, as I said above, that is how it comes about each time you make a similar case when the talk gets to the UK military and the UK defence industry.

It's also rather the point of the exchange above in this post*, in that you've tried to limit it to the RAF/UK military (and this appears to be because you want/feel obliged to come to its defence when you may not feel as disposed to other militaries) when it was, I think, a wider issue.

*Edit: i.e. the point was not to fixate on what was going through NV's mind when he posted but to question why it was that your reply concentrated only on the UK military/defence industry.

Edited July 17, 2020 by snowychap

[blandy]

3 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I utterly reject the idea that selling lots of bombs, expertise and equipment to the Saudi military, in exchange for them escalating civilian casualties, is anything we should have any involvement in whatsoever, and the excuse that 'if we didn't sell them this stuff, somebody else would' is no sort of excuse at all.

I think you missed a "not" out? " in exchange for them [not] escalating civilian casualties?

But that's fine - your view is completely understandable.

Open question - do you think that if the Gov't stopped (well it has stopped, for the time being, at least) selling arms to Saudi that either no-one else or alternatively someone else would jump in to offer them? My feeling is that someone else most definitely would leap at the chance. And that creates a political dilemma for the Gov't. Different gov'ts might make different calls on it.

It's like the Nuclear Arms dilemma - do we get rid of our weapons of mass destruction and hope everyone else does too, so the world's lovely, or do we get rid of ours, only to find that we're now (the argument goes) less protected, but the world's still got enough nukes to destroy the planet 100 times over? The tories (to stay on topic) seem to consistently be of the "sell weapons, keep nukes" and Labour largely has taken the same view, perhaps slightly less overtly enthusiastically. Maybe a further left Government would take the opposite approach and dismantle the nukes and ban arms sales.

[Demitri_C]

Boris just got ruined by the scots on the pm questions

[HanoiVillan]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

I think you missed a "not" out? " in exchange for them [not] escalating civilian casualties?

No, I didn't. Civilian casualties are still increasing.

9 minutes ago, blandy said:

Open question - do you think that if the Gov't stopped (well it has stopped, for the time being, at least) selling arms to Saudi that either no-one else or alternatively someone else would jump in to offer them? My feeling is that someone else most definitely would leap at the chance.

I cannot influence the actions of other governments. I can only attempt to make people aware of the crimes that are being committed using *our* equipment, *our* bombs, supported and programmed by *our* personnel.

[blandy]

46 minutes ago, snowychap said:

The point was not to fixate on what was going through NV's mind when he posted but to question why it was that your reply concentrated only on the UK military/defence industry.

Sure. So going back, Rob mentioned about if a drone strike was run from Salford. I wondered if it was meant to be "an analogy to the RAF operating UAVs" and he said "sort of".

The mention of "Salford" to me meant "UK operated drones" (rather than US operated drones, or Iranian ones or Israeli ones or whatever) and therefore, I wanted to check/caveat my assumption before writing anything else.

So the answer as to why my reply concentrated on the UK side of it was because Rob raised that and because this thread is about the current UK Gov't party and not the US or wherever and we need to stay broadly on topic. As I also said - happy to discuss wider stuff in the right thread(s).

I can't do anything to alter your pre-conceptions about why I post, or why you think I post "on behalf of" or why you think I "feel obliged" to defend. But I can say that I write down what I genuinely think, and that's it.

Mostly I avoid this kind of subject unless I think I can say something different or new. I don't expect anyone to "like" or agree and I'm not endeavouring to "defend" either the Tories or previous Gov'ts. As for the RAF - my personal experience of working for or with them is that I can say what I've found as an individual has been the opposite of your "finding portrayals of them as a good lot who abide by the rules "bizarre"". They've been good. 

Edited July 17, 2020 by blandy
changed asked to wondered

[blandy]

20 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

No, I didn't. Civilian casualties are still increasing.

 

Ah, OK. Gotcha. Ta.

[chrisp65]

There’s a small handful of people on here with coherent arguments that make you think and sometimes reassess.

Absolute pain in the arse.

 

[snowychap]

12 minutes ago, blandy said:

Sure. So going back, Rob mentioned about if a drone strike was run from Salford. I wondered if it was meant to be "an analogy to the RAF operating UAVs" and he said "sort of".

Yes, and you appear to have leapt on the 'sort of' as then meaning that it was exclusively and narrowly about the military operations of the RAF rather than something wider.

I think that's a mistake in terms of what was being discussed.

16 minutes ago, blandy said:

So the answer as to why my reply concentrated on the UK side of it was because Rob raised that and because this thread is about the current UK Gov't party and not the US or wherever and we need to stay broadly on topic.

Your reply concentrated on a narrowly defined aspect of the 'UK side of things' rather than the wider UK involvement not just in actions taken under the Union Jack but also in terms of advice given to other militaries and governments, wider military operations of which the UK have been and are a part (so most of the US-led stuff over the past however long), those things which we appear to have contracted out (like intelligence gathering/torture so we can apppear to stay 'clean'), and so on.

23 minutes ago, blandy said:

I can't do anything to alter your pre-conceptions

They're not preconceptions. They're inferences drawn from the opinions you've expressed  and content of the posts you have made over quite a time on the topic (the UK military and the UK defence industry).

You may say that those inferences are not correct, which is fair enoough for you to claim, but they're not preconceptions so please don't attempt to write them off by such a mischaracterisation.

[snowychap]

53 minutes ago, blandy said:

if the Gov't stopped (well it has stopped, for the time being, at least) selling arms to Saudi

The Government stated ten days ago that they would then begin the process of clearing the backlog of licences that had accrued since the suspension came in to force last June, i.e. that the obligations and undertakings they had taken last year had now fallen away and therefore sales to Saudi were back on.

[blandy]

5 minutes ago, snowychap said:

they're not preconceptions

You said unequivocally that I have a "personal interest in the defence of the UK millitary perspective". You've implied that I'm posting "on behalf of" and have "little or no truck with criticisms of the military". All of which are untrue. It more than suggests you think I have an inability to be objective or impartial in what I write. You're quite entitled to hold that viewpoint, but when you express it, it's a bit rich to complain when I mildly dissent from that incorrect characterisation and yes, "preconceptions" of me.

[blandy]

20 minutes ago, snowychap said:

The Government stated ten days ago that they would then begin the process of clearing the backlog of licences that had accrued since the suspension came in to force last June, i.e. that the obligations and undertakings they had taken last year had now fallen away and therefore sales to Saudi were back on.

That's a shame. I dunno that anything's changed to make that a viable stance for the Gov't to take. Surely they need a justification - didn't the courts put an end to it?

[snowychap]

15 minutes ago, blandy said:

You said unequivocally that I have a "personal interest in the defence of the UK millitary perspective".

No, I didn't.

I posted

Quote

I can get your personal interest in the defence of the UK millitary perspective...

and then, in response to your reply to this comment, I made the point that:

2 hours ago, snowychap said:

I'm sorry to point it out but it absolutely does come across as that

i.e. my opinion that there was a personal interest in... was due to it coming across like that, i.e. by implication that it was down to what you have said.

I further clarified it in the next post by saying:

1 hour ago, snowychap said:

You may not feel that you are but, as I said above, that is how it comes about each time you make a similar case when the talk gets to the UK military and the UK defence industry.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

22 minutes ago, blandy said:

and yes, "preconceptions" of me

No, as posted above and explained here - not 'preconceptions' but an opinion (which I acknowledge you say is incorrect) based upon reading what you have written.