mockney piers

Here's a happy little ditty to cheer people up on a cold grey friday. Helio Sequence - Everyone Loves Everyone Feel the love people!!

Felicitations Lushster!

I guess this counts as a cover..ish. It's class regardless.

mightyroar Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > is lover's marmite a euphimism? Same thought struck me; I won't even start on "my furry ickle monsters"! :-$

I found myself dreaming in a baltimore accent after overdosing on the wire, anything more than 4 episodes in a day will do it.

Sting/police has done some great songs in his time (and quite a lot of wank). However all the related knobbery does rather detract from it all doesn't it. I know that Keef and I are both fans of this little fella

I think it's been discussed before, but hell, music's always a great topic. Tortoise's (feat' Bonnie Prince Billy) version of Bruce Springsteen's Thunder Road is what cover versions are always about. Taking the essence of the song and then making it completely your own.

I thought it a pretty fair article. I liked the fact that someone mentioned Springers, it almost never gets a mention on this forum. Oriwisu Spot has had more publicity of late than Springers.

trying out their funky new embed thingy. If it causes problems for anyone let me know and i'll go back to good old links.

happy valentines day? http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/valentine%92s-sex-bid-will-fail%2c-says-angry-girlfriend-20080213725/

My thumbs have gone weird again

not really a photo, but I thought this was pretty cool from Annie mole

Good point, and I think I'm ending up in the same position there DC, arguing for the sake of it. DPF has a good point about the proxies and not blaming it on one side. However far more often than not the US was the active participant, and the soviets/chinese the perceived threat that justified the actions. It was always about Europe, maybe we shold have just had done with it and had a good fisticuffs on the German plains. The Red Army's performances in Cechnya probably suggest that they might not have been the all conquering steamroller many of us grew up in fear of. I'm a pacifist by nature and my starting point with a conflict is why on earth do it rather than not do it, with the same going for getting involved in someone else's fight. I have found very few examples that really justify violence* in a world that has suffered the terrible conflicts of World Wars 1 and 2, not to have learned these lessons is unforgivable. *at least from those with power; the disenfranchised often have no other means, though I like to think dialogue and democracy can achieve aims where possible. *edited for woeful spelling*

Ha ha, yes, you're probably right scruffy mummy. I'm having another 'tea break'

I can't for a minute believe that they would have killed the 2 million people that died as a result of a superpower trying to enforce the rule of the equally ruthless government in the south; leaving alone the bitter legacy of unexploded ordnance, landmines and the horrors that agent orange has inflicted. Well may, Sukarno killed half a million so called communists in Indonesia with direct US logistical support, so anything's possible, but the subsequent history of Vietnam doesn't suggest that to be the case.

I'm not making a case for the communist north. I know about the Geneva accords thank you very much. The intention was not to set up two countries, the demarkation line marked the positions at the end of hostilities between the VM and the French Forces. There were supposed to be free elections on unification, but these were heavily rigged in the South, so a pro-unification insurgency supported by the north grew up. It wasn't a war between north and south that America ended up embroiled in. It was this popular insurgency in the South that it was attempting to suppress. By 1962 it should have been pretty much game over for the government in the South if American support hadn't arrived, which by 1968 numbered half a million men. If it takes that many to keep a government in power against the will of it's own people then I may think about letting the people having their say. Yes many Fled the North, but certainly not millions, and tens of thousands moved north. Most didn't move because they people were generally closely tied to their lands and ancestors. Both governments were pretty brutal, but people fought for unification alot more than they fought against it.

"All well and good MP, but Chinese and Soviet military support to the Viet Minh was crucial in their successful struggle against the French". Couldn't that be seen as our helping the Kiwis when viewed from a different angle? I agree with you that the Viet Minh were no angels, but you an I both know that that had nothing to do with the intervention there. If we're actually going to do humanitarian intervention, then lets at least be consistent about it. Remember that was happening at almost exactly the time that iran's democratic government was overthrown by an MI6 and CIA enabled coup, and one of the post-wars nastiest beasts installed in power. I think i know what you're getting at, but the in 5 years they never got close to defeating the viet cong, though North Vietnam could certainly never have won a military conflict outright as the Tet Offensive proved. As my dad used to say, you can defeat an army, but you can never defeat a people. Short of a permanent, highly militarised occupation, defeat was inevitable. Advisers said the war was unwinnable, not unloseable. ANd the US military just has flooded the country with troops, and the military is stretched to breaking point. The surge will end, not because it's ends have been achieved (they have, but largely through negotiation), but because it's logistically unsustainable without a very big expansion of military resources, or with drastic moves out of other theatres of operations (germany, south korea etc etc).

Ooh, and the Birth of the Cold War was one of my dissertation topics. I won't bore you with the details, but the one word answer to 'did they start it?' is again yes. I truly believe that if FDR had lived longer that the world would be a very different place. Truman wasn't cut out for the world stage, he just couldn't grasp the big picture, he liked the simple biploar offering from his more hawkish advisers. He wasn't unlike Bush in that respect.

"Did they start the Vietnam War? " Well if you're going to get picky, yes, pretty much they did start it. The OSS (the precursor to the CIA) trained and supplied Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh to fight the Japanese, who ceded control to the Ho at the end of the war. He wrote up a lovely declaration of independence for Vietnam which went something on the lines of "we hold these truths to be self-evident" which the OSS took to Washington with the advice that it should be recognised. ...And were ignored and control handed back to the French, then propped up their effort financially. France lost, there was a pragmatic split and the corrupt regime would have fallen but for US support. And despite every obvious lesson to be learnt about Vietnam simply wanting independence, not being a client regime for china's insidious spread of communism, and despite the advice of tjeir military advisers who had witnessed the fall of France there and said the war was unwinnable, they continued to pour in materiel then men to support yet another military dictatorship (once they'd toppled the government of course), and deliberately bomb civilian targets in the north. So did they start it? Perhaps. Did they prolong it? Yes. Did they then prosecute it needlessly? Certainly. Perhaps you should have paid more attention to your history books in the sixth form and spent less time in the common room ;-P

"I wonder how many Americans read this forum, apart from me?" Well, there's Floating Onion for starters *runs for cover*. Seriously though Gerry, how do you feel reading the forum, is it a hotbed of anti-americanism? I for one really do like the US, culturally and socially, I just have serious issues with it politically (as I do with my own fair government as you may have spotted on occasion). You're examples are getting closer to the mark there DC. I think breaking an economic blockade militarily is actually self-defence so not strictly speaking an intervention. And I'd be happy to help the lovely Kiwis out, though somewhat perversely, historically the reverse has generally been the case ;-)

If I'm so dependent on that Oil, I wouldn't be trying to get hold of it from a pipeline in a dodgy state for starters, and if I was that stupid then that would explain why I'd be stupid enough to invade said state for my energy needs. And why do my energy needs supersede the rights of the iffy state to run it's own affairs. Israel does have a right to defend itself (lets just leave it there, we don't want to complicate this thread any more than it is) and does so without our intervention. Likewise France is big enough to look after itself, except when it depends stupidly on a big wall, and yes, that's my number 2 reason, defending a nation incapable of doing so alone. The League of Nations *sighs nostalgically* ;-)

Valentines day is a plot by the capitalist hordes to subjugate the masses through cheap poetry and long queues to get into overpriced restaurants. First up against the wall come the revolution!!!!! Err, or taking my lady out for a nice drink.....in Gdansk.

"to defend national security or the security of your allies to protect the economic security of nation" you see I wouldn't. They amount to a carte blanche to basically do whatever you want. I'd categorically oppose both, but most particularly the latter. "The roots of the current problems go back to Britain's carve up of the middle-east a long-time before Blair." Indeed the roots were sown a long time ago, as every middle east expert told him before he ignored them all "because the man's uniquely evil isn't he". Exactly Atila. It takes a deft touch to steer a country through a transition like that (see post Franco Spain), not an invasion with no post invasion plan.

To stop genocide that is taking place. To defend a nation that is incapable of defending itself. That pretty much covers it for me.

I think 2 is the Tom Waits original isn't it? Series 4 version is rubbish.