pap

Nice. Getting picked up on my spelling on one of my supposed left-wing icons. Guess that probably means I'm not hanging off his every word. Sorry Alps, spelling mistake or not, you're a relentless apologist for the US and UK. That being the case, you can probably only be about 10% effective on the topic, rising to 80% if we collectively agree to treat you as the "topic jester".

Let's compare the invasions, shall we? Iraq; shoot anything that moves. 1,000,000 dead as result of conflict in a country that had no WMD, nothing to do with 9/11, and very few "ethnic Americans" to roll in for. Eleven years later, it's a bloody sectarian mess and a cause celebre for anyone looking to recruit extremists to the fold. It represents the abandonment of any moral international authority that the US/UK had left. . We'll almost certainly leave it worse than we found it. Alp's view: Booyah! We're the good guys, and if you don't agree, you are Seamus Milne. Crimea: One person reported dead so far. MPs vote to join Russia, ratified by the general public, largely because the "government" of agitants and neo-Nazis in Kiev were taking aim at anything remotely Russian. Alp's view: Those evil Russian bastards, and if you don't agree, you are Seamus Milne.

Yes, yes - Alps. We're the good guys; you keep thinking that. It's not like there are over a million deaths in Iraq alone that our "policy" is responsible for. If you're happy to be associated with that, fair play to you guv. I'm not.

Is he the person I sue for distress caused by his "children"? I reckon I'm owed about £500K on Batman\DellDays\Brett alone.

In my view, Charlie, you've learned from the mistakes of the 1930s, and besides; we are not the power now that we were then. We've recently had the discussion about Britain's entry into that war, and whether you think we got involved at the right time or not, few would dispute that the victory was Pyrrhic, coming at a huge cost to our world standing and future opportunity. Unfortunately, the United Kingdom seems to be banging the drum as much as anyone here. I honestly don't know what we're playing at.

Yep. On Syria, the fact that the West's and its allies were supporting "our Al Qaeda allies" (never gets old, that one). Also, there was no public appetite for intervention in Syria, largely because of the dishonesty over Iraq. Earlier, I made remarks about not seeing this as some Red Dawn good vs evil debate. Those remarks were largely aimed at you. You don't seem to have too many problems criticising people for having a pop at the West, but by the same token, you completely discount events which have led up to this current crisis, and ostensibly see no problem with the way the West is prosecuting its agenda over the rest of the world. Not in my name, Alps.

Good job.

Alps, I love your words, despite the fact you sometimes use them to wound me. There's respect from this end, if nowt else. However, there is much that is wrong (or omitted) here. First off, you either respect self-determination or you don't. After Versailles, the message was very much "self-determination for everyone, unless you're German". We practice something similar today; you have the right to self-determination, as long as it suits the West's interests. Crimea is an example, Palestine (and the fact that they don't) is another, the Basque Country, Catalunya and even Scotland to an extent. I appreciate that Scotland has a referendum coming up, but given the scare stories so far, seems fairly apparent that Westminster doesn't want them going anywhere. Self-determination as applied is a nonsense. The same principles need to be applied universally, or we should forget the whole thing. The other big point I'd make is that I find it unlikely that this is the prelude to the takeover of Poland or the Baltic states. NATO are already entrenched in much of Eastern Europe, both in terms of bases and in some cases, sites for the "National" Missile Defense system.

What do we reckon here? 1) Courtney Love has simply never moved beyond MS Paint 2) Frances is having her revenge and denying her Photoshop

In the rest of the retail world, prices come down when a new model is going to be introduced. Probably just trying to clear stock.

I wonder then, what all the provocation is about. I tend to agree with your view that Russia is in a strong position, so I wonder what practical measures the West is actually going to take to bring about their changes. Any UN Security Council resolution can be vetoed by Russia. The West is already involved by proxy in events in Ukraine. When it comes down to it, I don't think it dares go any more direct, so I'm at a loss as to what the propaganda campaign is all about. (yes, yes - I watch RT too, and to my mind, it's all propaganda).

Yeah, that works if you discount Victoria Nuland and co discussing who would be in charge of Ukraine, or the EU trying to get the country into the fold. If you admit those as evidence, then it's fairly clear that more than one country has been wrestling over the soul of Ukraine. Respectfully, Minty - you've got things the wrong way round. The country reacting here is Russia.

I'm capable of putting the shoe on the other foot and seeing it from their point of view. Russia was given assurances at the end of the Cold War that there would be no eastward expansion. Since then, the West's approach to Russia has been akin to an abusive dog owner poking a dormant, yet dangerous dog with a stick. Now that the dog has finally woken up and has bit their hand, they're calling for it to be destroyed. Complete hypocrisy; people need to get these Red Dawn good guy/bad guy ideas out of their heads.

LOST never really had a clue. Heroes was superb in season one.

Speaking only for myself, I'm a quick typist, don't have a commute and have two teenage kids that are pretty independent.

My point is backed up the moment someone looks up two, perhaps three maps of Eastern Europe ( 1917, 1948 and 2014 will do ). What is yours backed with, sir?

We did the same with Poland, except we didn't have the US on-board as part of some tri-partite arrangement. It cost us first power status, plunged us into decades of debt, cost France her freedom and the world tens of millions of lives. Poland was destroyed anyway, Warsaw systematically. If we cannot protect the Ukraine (and we can't), what is the point of pretending we can?

None of this has happened in a vacuum. The EU has been on a slow crawl across Eastern Europe for the last 20 years, to the point where if Ukraine had have been easily subsumed into the European Union, the map of Russia's Western frontiers would roughly resemble those laid down after the 1917 treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Bolsheviks ceded huge amounts of territory to "end the war quickly". Most of that same territory has now been conquered via diplomacy, without a shot fired. The Ukrainian vote to oust Yanukovych was unconstitutional; a 75% majority was needed to remove him from office. They got just over 73%. Yet, despite an MP vote and a public vote in the Crimea, William Hague has the gall to pretend that the Ukrainian vote is somehow more legitimate. As to the question, I think we'd be insane to go toe-to-toe with Russia. However, the insanity of any particular plan no longer seems to be an obstacle to its implementation.

It's difficult to argue for increased capacity when you see the empty seats. I like the corner of Itchen North better than the Northam, and a big part of that is because of the regular chasm between the Northam lot and the away fans. The city's glory hunter percentage needs to go down if the club is going to really build on the attendances. We'll get a bit of that from turncoats who realise that maybe we don't have such a sh!t team after all (seen it already), but most of it will involve making sure the next generation of potential Saints fans don't end up supporting Big Team United. We've done ourselves a huge service by getting back to the Premier League so quickly and an even better one by making ourselves the darling underdogs of the media. The "ha! Saints are sh!t!" argument (top one, that) is a lot harder to peddle in the current football climate. On that basis, we've never really been in a better position to expand. The club looks sound in terms of ownership, management and playing philosophy. Southampton players are allowed to play for England now - and not just as some part of an elaborate sick joke. There are reasons to be hopeful for the future - just no clear need now.

I can say with some certainty that I've never promoted any lizard theory, although They Live! is a good movie for symbolism - I recommend it. Leaving aside this facile attempt at argument aside, I think you make a very good point about how information is likely to be received in certain places. I've addressed this very point with you directly before; we live in a cultural bubble which greatly informs what people see, hear and believe. Go to the Middle East, and the proponents of certain official stories would be seen as the nutters. The David Icke forums are a different sort of bubble, and yep, you're right; there's definitely a lot of content over there that isn't worth the time. I have lost count of the amount of times that some major cataclysm has been predicted over there and spectacularly failed to occur. On the flipside, they cover some issues with real breadth and intelligence; the majority of it sourced. That's where my interest lies.

As I said before, sign up and let's see you take them down. It'll be dead easy with your skills and those weirdos. Otherwise you can f**king button it

It's especially amusing because they were caught on tape discussing regime change prior to the glorious revolution. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37599.htm

Fair play, GS. Now list the negative ones.

Ah, you mean his opinions might be utterly dismissed because he's one man against a mob? Fancy that! As it turns out, I think he'd get a much fairer hearing over there before being destroyed, but I'm glad the penny finally dropped for you.

If the season ended now, 8th would be our most impressive finish since 2002-2003. I was positive then; unjustifiably as it turns out. I don't know; may be it's because I skim read his posts now, but I can't really remember GS "supporting" the Saints. The constant negativity has a dishonest quality about it.