mockney piers

Of? It's hardly shooting down, just light-hearted banter. Morris was my hero growing up. I'd have been proud of that association. Loz, order of chips please...

"As always, I will continue to be a voice for the animals" Are you Johnny Morris reincarnate?

Pigs will eat anything frankly. In fact isn't dog supposed to be a bit like pork? In fact isn't human supposed to be a bit like pork? I'm teasing, I'll eat anything we can farm or cull for good reason, and I draw another line for canibalism....though to be safe you probably wouldn't want to get stuck on an Andean mountain or the raft of medusa with me ;-) I also won't touch endangered stuff (unless we're farming it, at which point it's probably not that endangered). In fact, I bet you if people stopped moralising, and we farmed tigers for their skin, that their days of being numbered would be numbered.

Aaah, snorky. Acerbic you may be, but we seem to agree about a surprising amount of stuff. In this you are absolutely spot on. Incidentally, I've had horse pizza in the Tyrol. Delicious. House cat is a bit scrawny. Tiger, now that would be more filling, but I imagine rather tough.

Forgive me my missing punctuation. It's a reference to every know-it-all's favourite, Clausewitz.

""All wars are for economic reasons" No they're not" Its a reference to every know it all's favourite Clausewitz To be honest it pretty much is, even Nashoi's "smash and grab" (think picts raiding cattle in Roman Britain) is about getting rich, which can happily be defined as......economics...." The first crusade is (juuuuust about) a rare exception, though some might argue otherwise, I do think it was more or less what it appeared to be, collective madness inspired by religion.

You get no argument from me that the likes of Boeing, General Dynamics (not to mention Halliburton again...oops) and so on get richer whilst rome burns (or New Orleans sinks, or the coastline gets sticky etc etc). But I don't see nefarious conspiracies, secret meetings in masonic lodges. I just see the entire make up of the United States since the Second World War. It's a collective lunacy that the US remains rich by being a military empire. That's what got it out of depression and noone has had the political balls to do anything about it. Of course it likes to dress this up in friendly altruistic terms, protecting the world from the evil empire or those damned turrists, but that's essentially what it is. That's why Vietnam was so, so traumatic, because they got to look through the looking glass, and napalming children wasn't what the good guys did. That's why the Clinton era is lokoed at as such a disaster in terms of foreign policy, not just by the neocons, but by Americans. There was no real enemy, and being the world policeman seemed to involve unsettling pictures of us soldiers dragged through streets, or watching your jets bomb a serbian bridge nine times in a row. And military cuts coincided with economic difficulties; coincidence? Probably, but try persuading the political classes over there of that. Regards the megolmania, that's as may be, but those events had been 23 and 13 years previous to the invasion, so there was hardly an urgent imperative to his removal. And the answer to the new godwin rules is yes, lets call it Nashoi's Law!

Sorry I sounded a bit harsh. Bombing on though, I have two issues with your assertions. 1) 'smash and grab'? the treasury is far far poorer for another expensive war, that's the problem with modern weapons, they cost a lot. 2) what was saddam threatening to get hold of? The US might have been trying to install a client state in case of 'losing' Saudi arabia the way they did Iran, but saddam was in no way shape or form a threat. To get a chunk of the worlds supply he'd have to conquer Iran, and, well, he tried that one and several million dead and eight years later, he won the war, but won nothing from it.

Blimey, discipline your thinking. Rumsfeld was purely and simply an idiot. Cheney was canny, but hugely wrong in his thinking. If his theories had been borne out by the invasion we'd all be discussing cheney doctrine. Were not. Whoops. I'm afraid you can't examine reasons for doing something by analysing how wrong it all went afterwards. All you can do is infer that they didn't really think much about it because their goals were simultaneously short term (overthrow sad dam and enjoy the adorationofnthe liberated) and strategic (teach the world a lesson, you don't mess with USA....oh actually you can and then we'll buy you off). s I've always said, imperialism is always always morally wrong, but don't listen to me, I don't see that much wrong with fur.

valid in terms of Blair's motivation which had some commonality to Clinton's administration. This philosophy not only lost credence in Bush's, it was practically anathema

No, you cant have that. You specifically said it was about maintaining our way of life. We were achieving that anyway. The US was Iraq's biggest customer, and though far from peak production, the oil flowed. The west continued as it always did. In terms of energy security the west has more to fear from Chinese energy/resource demands and Russian paranoia/instability/energy power madness [delete as appropriate] than it has anything to gain from an iraqi invasion. Oil is at a record high, the only winners are Amoco, BP, Halliburton etc. Indeed those trillions would have been better spent on windfarms, the US would be in a much sounder position now.

damn, I thought this was a thread about Jenny Lewis

Sorry hugenot, but I think you're only seeing woods and not even acknowledging trees. Its a nice soundbite, but going to war has specific catalysts, motives and desires. Maintaining a way of life wasn't it, and as taper says, the power of the USA is at a real nadir (though still the most powerful nation in the world, it has cruelly exposed to everyone the limits of that power). As I've said before I think the drive to expand NATO was its greatest strategic miscalulation in terms of the neocon desire to underline US supremacy, but installing Iran as the preeminent power in the middle east and serving up a semi-client state in the shape of the new Iraq (or at least in future the southern half as DJKQ aslluded to) was all pretty rubbish. That doesn't mean I don't agree with the wider point about the west's desire to subjagate the rest of the world in order to maintain a status quo that's very good for us (yep, you, me, even snorky), it's just you do that with banks, not troops. That's why we'll never be able to touch the Assyrians, they are impervious to the winds of globalism!

I was going to suggest the wonderful Green Man in Great Wymondley outside of Hitchin. Many a great evening spent at the bar billiards, skittles and cribbage. Only to find its been turned into a bloody gastro pub. NOOOOOooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/celebrity/hollywood-stars-raise-awareness-for-their-stupid%2c-childish-jobs-201101173434/

I think DJQK nailed it, she's obviously been speaking to my friend Yossarian. It was those damned Assyrians. Had we not invaded, first stop would have been the Hittites, then they'd have threatened the Greek city states, next they would have asked us for their bas-reliefs back!!! Bombing's too good for them I say.

The Decemberists new album, due out this week, is available to stream in its entirety here: http://www.npr.org/2011/01/03/132436422/first-listen-the-decemberists-the-king-is-dead Enjoy.

Well done you for tackling the obvious head on. ....and your solution?

;-)

Most religions come up with daft eschatology. That's not the basis of the religion (unless you're talking about moons or jehovas witnesses, or the various millennialists (or any millenarians for that matter) at the end of the last millennia who believed it to be both literal and imminent. Man of the cloth was making a valid point that Christianity's very core is based upon Christ's ressurection, without that he'd have been just another prophet. What you were doing was nit-picking, and rather weakly at that. None of which gets us closer to any answers.

And yes, we've only about 5 billion years left in this star system, I get it.

Whilst I agree on most points there Hal, Islam isn't based upon resurrection, it just nods tonthe usual bullshit eschatology that most religions adhere to. Is that because destruction is a preordination or because were all a bit gloomy, I dunno. Yes I do, it's the latter. It doesn't make any of the above either profound or true. Just the usual bullshit wrapped up with some extra hellfire and brimstone. Unless of course you were referring to the various Shiite bits and bobs with various relatives of mohammed turning up again. A bit odd if you ask me, particularly in the light of his and/or her refusals to do all that turning up stuff.

Excellent idea, when are the slow motion replays of the water to wine and the post plummet anlaysis of satan's descent? Should make for good viewing.

come on boro!!!

Err, I guess allow you to read the forum and post on it? I was forced to use the forum via iPhone for months as work blocked it, and it was fiddly to say the least. I'd love an app. Does the phorum software have an agnostic API, if so an app is viable, if not I guess someone could write an app that interacts with the database directly and just leave the software out of it completely? I think it's doable. Obviously being a PC man that doer won't be me.