mockney piers

Doesn't make for comfortable reading. Huguenot clearly did the smart thing moving to Singapore time to emigrate

Sean, I've just remembered, it was My Morning Jacket. If you listen to their last album Z it sounds just like the Fleet Foxes.

I wondered how long before the old 'anti-semitic' accusation would come out - shame on you!!. I never said genocide, I said use of intimidation and murder to enact a movement of population, the events are all recorded, I'll give you some village names when I have the time. Israel has broken international law with the deefacto annexation of the occupied territory that the settlements represent. Hamas have repeatedly created unilateral ceasefires, many have held for many months in the face of Israeli provocation, "targeted assassination" being nothing but extrajudicial murder. Hamas have often offered recognition, but one side has to move. Israel hold all the cards and must move. Did you see the IRA disarming BEFORE negotiations? I think not. Israel are demanding complete disarmament as a precursory condition to negoatiation. Budge a bit Israel, you never know.

sorry but you're like a broken record, over and over "we can't talk to them"/"they want nothing short of Israel's destruction". If that's your starting and ending position (one which is basic AIPAC propoganda) then movement will be 0 Bush/Thatcher/Olmert/sharon//netenyahu/DPF "We can't/won't negotiate with terrorists" - achievement = nothing Major/Blair/Obama/Rabin - We will talk to our ira/iran/plo - achievement = progress (and in the case of rabin a bullet from his own for the privelege, nice)

Fine a little harsh and patronising; I apologise. I wan't the one googling a couple of pronouncements, nor have I once repeated spoon-fed propoganda from either side. Strikes me DPF has fallen for it from both.

We'll have to agree to disagree now DPF. I'll continue to read many history and play close attention to unfolding events, and apply trained historical analysis accordingly. You can carry on googling a couple of pronouncements and basing your conclusions on them. Either way it makes no difference, we can hardly influence events can we.

None of which should mean Israel needs to be complacent. But there is a difference between preparedness and stubborness; between right to defend oneself and visiting salughter upon civilians.

Hmm, taken a very strange turn. Ignoring the Affluent western state in prostitution shock meander, a couple of things. Firstly I disagree with the creation of Israel/oil connection. This two things may have conflated in US policy makers' eyes post oil crisis and particulrly after the fall of the Shah in '79, but prior to that the West felt that could ensure that compliant regimes could be maintained with military support and close ties (witness every Saudi prince off to Eton, Sandhurst, Harvard etc). Israel was born of two things, a very well organised Zionist strategy and an exasperated Britain washing their hands of the whole affair. Thrown a dash of Holocaust guilt bitters and you have the Israel cocktail. I'd warn against romanticising the tiny state taking on overwhelming attackers. Everyone knew the Zionist strategy to create a Jewish state would lead to war. The proto Israelis were better organised and better prepared for that eventuality, you can't blame them, well done. By 1947 they were also better armed having bought job lots of shermans, spitfires, brens etc from a bunch of exhausted powers looking to demob and to a certain extent disarm. A jewish state also meant getting a large majority in ones areas and the midwives of the Israeli nation were not above using murder and intimidation to achieve this, what we would now term ethnic cleansing. They may well have felt justified in a 'done for survival' fashion but it happened, get over it. Where we are now though is an acceptance of the UN recognised state of 1948, and these should be the frame of discussion. That past is done and we have a reality today; that's fine. Post 1973 everyone is in agreement that pre'67 borders are the ones that need to be discussed and adhered to. That's everyone, yes including Hamas and Iran. Noone is seeking to push them into the sea. don't give me Ahmedinejad nonsense, he has no say over foreign policy at all, but he felt pronouncements like that would help his chances of reelection (actually they've mostly back-fired and he'll probably lose the next election). So the main things to discuss are Settlements, a viable palestinian state, governance of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. I don't have the figures re the UN, but there have been a host of UN resolutions post 1967 particularly regards the occupied territories, I'm pretty sure none of which have been honoured by Israel. The US has had more vetos in the security Council regards attempted resolutions that deal with Israel, than even the old Soviet Union managed full stop.

I don't actually think anyone with actual power is doing this MP, but some of the loons in the religious right actually think that's exactly what's going on, and would certainly have encouraged the last administration's policies.

Thank you Keef. Finally someone speaks wise words rather than quote some nonsense they heard.

Your name's Said? Now I'm really confused ;-)

I'm glad those are you politics, perhaps we can find some middle ground. You're not helping by describing Hamas as my "buddies" however. Many, many of my family suffered and died at the hands of real fascists in Spain, and I've seen how in those who survived the trauma of watching the bombs rain down, the tanks roll in and the utter humiliation of powerlessness and living in fear has affected them forever. For that I will always symapthise with the Palestinians against the policies of Israel, particularly in the last decade. I know many Israelis and like them very much as we share our Mediterranean temperament and zest for life, but as usual the actions of governments rarely really reflect the real feelings of the people. Hama are not my buddies, but they are the men that need to be talked to. Nobody liked taling to the IRA, but we did and now there is peace. Few moments made my heart surge with pride about what people are capable of more than watching Paisley and McGuiness shake hands and work together. Words like terrorist and islamofascist prevent progress, they do not solve problems.

Yeah yeah, anyone who criticises Israel wants to set up a global caliphate and everyone who supports Israel is a neocon fascist. Strikes me you're doing more to support that daftness than I, when all I've ever done is suggest that coming to terms with your enemies in seemeingly intractable conflicts will achieve more than shelling un compunds, sending in the tanks and dropping cluster bombs in built up civilian areas and killing thousands of innocent people (yeah thousands, Lebanon wasn't that long ago). No doubt you'd have spat at anti-vietnam protestors would you. It being obvious that you couldn't talk to godless communists who wanted nothing less than the destruction of capatalism, and that North Vietnam had to be bombed to the negotiating table. It amazes me how people continue to proffer the lies of spouted by those in power who have vested interest in maintaing a state of war rather than compromising for peace. "cuddly" !!! Ha ha, twonk.

There's so much misinformationand misunderstanding flying round I actually don't know where to begin, and frankly shouldn't be bothered. MP you're lovely but you may want to read a bit more about the birth of Israel, it has very little to do with the holocaust at all. And Hamas is fighting for an honorable settlement and have placed pre 67 borders and recognition of Israel on the table a number of times. Israel want surrender as a precondition to negotiations; that wouldn't have gone far with the IRA, why does anyone think Hamas will (hmm, perhaps because the PLO did once they were corrupt enough to stop caring) and so it will continmue again. TLS, why the arbitrary 300, why not 900, or 50? Some credit goes to Tony but he really just gave it that final nudge after a couple of stalls from a lot of others' hard work. He is pushing an entirely Israeli/US agenda in his current role and will achieve nothing. DFP, hilarious. Hamas kill 13 people and they're genocidal. And islamofascism is a nonsense made-up word beloved of Bush, I rest my case.

popped in on sunday afternoon after popping my roast the oven. Lovely pint of Brains for ?1.99 and West Ham winning on the telly. It doesn't really get much better than that frankly!

Oh sean, the solero's are no more. You'll just have to get twatted on lots of Buena vista. Gen, I don't think anyone wants more than one zombie. If they got rid of the absinthe it might be a bit more potable :-/

Boa Morte heading to Hull (if they can agree personal terms, please god oh please). There endeth Hull's European pretensions then!!

Rafa, bagpiping fact into sport news!!

"I do seem to have been posting things no EDF more than I have been working" I suspect you're not the first to suffer from forumitis!! Welcome to the club, or support group as it probably ought to be.

Aye, I don't think the timing is a coincidence. An election coming up in Israel doesn't hurt either. Politics is a cynical old game isn't it.

I'm pretty sure that the West's preoccupation is with the oil, though not sure why we'd want to drive them into the sea. We tried to topple the Ottomans with the specific goal of freeing up Iraq, Persia and the Arabian peninsular for exploitation of oil. Once the british navy moved from coal to oil powered warships our entire strategy became about securing oil resources. Our first disaster in Iraq was a bout oil. Hitler's invasion of Russia may have had a lunatic racist/idealist element, but it too was about securing the caucuses and if possible the middle east for oil. We toppled the Mossadeq democracy to stop the Persians owning their own oil resources, and all our subsequent dealings and compliant totalitarian regimes are entirely to do with oil, so you can hardly blame those in the middle east for peddling that particular 'myth'. Well, maybe a few loons in the states more concerned with the rapture than oil, but heh. Until our society's utter dependence on black gold changes, then that's strategy summed up there, oil. Dress it up as democracy or WMDs if you like but an err oily rose by any other name is still err ... oily. But you're right, Israel doesn't care what we think. It does care about the States, and it is entirely within their power to stop this.

I think you're supposed to infer that we're in no position to preach, not that they should kill more. We* lost moral authority the day we invaded a country unprovoked on a false pretext funnily enough. *OK the US did, not sure how much we had left.

I can't even begin to work out the logic in that post Matthew.

The Lancet report applies the same methodology that has come up with deaths in many other conflicts such as Rwanda, where there is no political need to question numbers and those figures remain more or less undisputed. Having said that conditions were far from ideal and most of the research was done by people on the ground who may not have been able to get the wider picture and there may be some confusion between deaths, undocumented prisoners (something to be proud of there) and refugees. IBC's analysis of deaths during the invasion strike me (gut feel) as way off, that much ordnance chucked at towns and villages will cause more havoc than that, and with entire villages flattened, who would remain to document the deaths, how many simply vapourised. (read generation kill for one elite marine unit's experience of the first 25 days, and times that up by however many units comprise the 300,000 odd troops that invaded, and factor in some more for the trigger happy reservists. Unscientific but compelling.) Either way 90-98,0000 is still a ludicrously high figure and a source of absolute shame that we were in any way involved; I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between the studies however. But it boils down to are we happier with 50 deaths a day over a 5 year period or 250 deaths a day? Personally I'm not happy with either.

No Matthew, a) we've killed over half a million Iraqis in recent times, so less of the ancestors, but mainly b) the nonsense about volatile region is just a patronising way of suggesting some sort of inevitability about it all, which of course needn't be true at all. And to some extent who are we to tell Israel off for what they are doing? They've still got another 599 thousand people to go to catch up with the 'coalition of the willing's' death toll.