Thursday 4th April 2024

[refitman]

Morniing all.

[frog222]

Morning refit

Thanks for this Sky, I somehow missed it last night

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... airstrikes

Unsurprised at the depth of depravity, but new to see the large numbers of civilians of all ages officially considered acceptable. . Tracking people via their phones is down to a fine art, remembering from now many months ago the senior Aljazeera reporter who lost a score of family in one place, which he'd just left , to be followed to another house where more scores of family and other refugees were also killed . He'd left there too ...

There are also the sniper activities targeting small children and oldies who are definitely NOT 'collateral' .

I checked to see the date, it was 2007 that I had a two week long argument on this with a couple of jewish americans on a small site there -

Mearsheimer and Walt describe in clear and bold terms the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel and argues that this support cannot be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds. This exceptional relationship is due largely to the political influence of a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. They provocatively contend that the lobby has a far-reaching impact on America's posture throughout the Middle East―in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict―and the policies it has encouraged are in neither America's national interest nor Israel's long-term interest. The lobby's influence also affects America's relationship with important allies and increases dangers that all states face from global jihadist terror.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/97803745 ... eignpolicy

Since then I've followed the spread of obvious influence, resulting directly from fear of the BDS movement so now we have a UK govt and political class just as cowed by that lobby. The political effects on Biden and Starmer are certainly not helpful, tho the former has not only AIPAC-friendly population (not a majority among the young, for a start) but also perhaps larger numbers of bloody 'Christian Zionists' .

Help !

On a more insidious level we have Russian influence operations going back many decades resulting today in widespread and plain bloody wrong generalisations about Crimea and the Eastern oblasts being naturally part of the Russki Mir simply because of being largely RU-speakers .

Grrr !

Lonerbox did a recent YouTube demolishing the Mearsheimer view on that .

[gilsey]

Alan Duncan telling it like it is.

[frog222]

He has form, this is 2014,but there's probably some earlier stuff

In the aftermath of the House of Commons vote, which overwhelmingly urged the British government to recognize Palestine, Duncan launched what the London Times called “an outspoken attack on Israel for its construction of illegal settlements,” which he claimed had left one West Bank town, Hebron, resembling South Africa under apartheid.

Duncan was speaking to a London think-tank, the Royal United Services Institute. He said it would be “impossible to overstate the criminal intent and strategic importance” of Israel’s recently announced plan to build 2,600 homes in occupied East Jerusalem, a reference to the planned Givat Hamatos neighborhood, which would “finalize the severing of Bethlehem from Jerusalem,” The Times reported. “This illegal construction and habitation is theft, it is annexation, it is a land grab – it is any expression that accurately describes the encroachment which takes from someone else something that is not rightfully owned by the taker,” he said.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-jewish ... tish-jews/

The number of disposessions in Jerusalem and the West Bank is now knocking 800,000, with regular murders .

Not a dig at AK (!) but the LOTO and others should really also be reconsidering their positions on Israel .

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Oh no, The Guardian is radicalising young ladies!!

I honestly don't know where to start with this, if it wasn't from the Telegraph I'd genuinely think it was satire.

The Left has no problem with radicalisation when they’re the ones doing it - Michael Deacon

Instead of vowing to combat the influence Andrew Tate has on boys, Labour should be looking at the effect The Guardian is having on girls

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/ ... ight-wing/

Recently, the Financial Times published some charts illustrating how the gulf between young men and women has grown in each Western country. And in every chart, there is an unmistakable pattern. The political views of young men haven’t actually altered all that much. Their drift to the Right has been really quite gentle.

The political views of young women, however, have changed dramatically. Their move to the Left has been abrupt and profound. In truth, then, this cavernous ideological divide is almost entirely attributable to them.

Which is curious. Because, whenever the divide is discussed by politicians and commentators, they make it sound as if the problem is young men. They fret endlessly about how young men today are being “radicalised” by nasty Right-wing YouTubers such as Andrew Tate, or horrid Right-wing politicians such as Donald Trump.

Yet they never apply this word “radicalised” to young women. Why not? I suspect it’s because these politicians and commentators tend to be progressive themselves. Therefore, they see no problem with young women becoming drastically more progressive. In their view, the more progressive someone is, the better. So the fault lies entirely with young men, for failing to emulate young women’s lurch to the Left.

Personally, though, I think this lurch Leftwards should alarm us all. The future of Western civilisation is already threatened by our collapsing birth rates. And this sudden ideological chasm between the sexes is only going to make the crisis worse. No one’s going to be forming couples at all any more, if, on every first date, the woman asks, “What do you think of Gramsci?”, and the man replies, “He’s the type of striker Man Utd are crying out for.”

It’s a chilling thought. So clearly something must be done. Politicians must spend less time obsessing over the radicalisation of young men, and start paying attention to the radicalisation of young women, instead.

As it happens, the Labour Party has announced that, when it’s in power, it will help to combat the influence that Andrew Tate has on boys. Surely it would make more sense to help combat the influence The Guardian has on girls.

Otherwise, the only way young men are going to get a girlfriend is by frantically boning up on George Monbiot and Owen Jones. And if that’s what the future has to hold, perhaps Western civilisation isn’t worth saving, after all.

[AnatolyKasparov]

"LOTO and others" have already changed their line on this conflict a great deal since it started. That is just stating the facts.

[frog222]

"LOTO and others" have already changed their line on this conflict a great deal since it started. That is just stating the facts.

Just a little sail-trimming meekly following Washington AK .

If you bothered to read the article Labour has no objection to killing a hundred others to get one suspect.

[frog222]

Liked this --

[refitman]

Oh no, The Guardian is radicalising young ladies!!

I honestly don't know where to start with this, if it wasn't from the Telegraph I'd genuinely think it was satire.

The Left has no problem with radicalisation when they’re the ones doing it - Michael Deacon

Instead of vowing to combat the influence Andrew Tate has on boys, Labour should be looking at the effect The Guardian is having on girls

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/ ... ight-wing/

So, the Kipper are just doing Harry Enfield, but seriously?

[refitman]

Alan Duncan telling it like it is.

Seems to have gone down poorly

[AnatolyKasparov]

He probably wasn't wise to name specific people, that always comes with a risk.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Well I tried to have a sober Thursday evening with the absence of QT but Man Utd have driven me to drink.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

So, the Kipper are just doing Harry Enfield, but seriously?

Heh. Seriously though how could any sentient creature claim that young women being politically influenced by a centre left newspaper is worse than young men being radicalised by a chinless misogynist facing multiple charges of rape and sex trafficking? It boggles the mind.

According to his Wiki Michael Deacon is a satirical journalist, but he's clearly trying to be serious here despite it ironically still reading like satire, what's probably more pertinent is he wrote for 'lads mag' Zoo magazine before joining the Telegraph.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D ... ournalist)

Astonishingly it also says he's married so presumably his wife is kept well clear of the insidious influence of the Guardian and stays quiet at dinner parties.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

So now we have ex Tory ministers in the Lords, former supreme court judges, and 750 other legal experts, all calling for a halt to arms sales to Israel.

And what do we hear from Labour? The same pitiful, cowardly garbage we've had from the start of this so called conflict.

It makes a sick kind of sense to still be supporting Israel if you're the likes of Braverman or anyone else on the right who wants to be a big fish in an increasingly small, foetid pond.

But on the left? I understand Israel's importance to many on the left of a certain age. It was still a hip and trendy thing to do to go and work on a kibbutz when I was a teenager, but those days are long gone. They died with Shimon Peres. And yet we still have left wing sympathisers making excuses for Netanyahu, Likud, and genocidal mass murder.

Why? It goes without saying Labour are shit scared of being labelled anti-Semitic all over again (despite it being bullshit the first time) so they're overcompensating, but that doesn't explain all of their pusillanimous delayed reaction to events. I mean how can there be a Labour friends of Israel while Israel is killing innocent human beings at a rate not seen since the Rwandan genocide? How can anyone on the left defend that?

On the one hand the Labour party are criticising Sunak for blathering about taking us out of the ECHR because it would break international law, while on the other they equivocate about criticising a right wing nationalist government that has murdered 30,000+ people and claim they need to see the government's legal advice before taking a stance.

It's pathetic and we all know it's wrong.

[refitman]

I hope Corbyn takes him to the cleaners

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I am, as you know, not a huge fan of Mr Corbyn but he has my full support in taking on twats like this.

[Sky'sGoneOut]