Sheaf Saint

Sorry but I disagree. Our government simply cannot claim the moral high ground here... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/revealed-uk-government-let-british-company-export-nerve-gas-chemicals-to-syria-8793642.html

So what then was the point of launching a missile attack on a facility that the OPCW recently declared to be free of any chemical weapons? Seems to me it was sending a message to Russia that we won't just sit back and accept the expansion of their global reach into resource-rich regions. It absolutely wasn't about saving ordinary Syrians from the horrors of chemical weapons, because if our government actually cared that much they wouldn't have sold them the chemicals in the first place and then denied entry to Syrian refugee children.

Of course they are, and so are we. Do you really need to even ask the question? Isn't it just an amazing coincidence that all of the middle-eastern countries in which we have intervened in recent years have large oil and gas reserves that western energy companies would love to get their hands on?

Oh FFS Batman, have you really not got the message after all these years about using strawman arguments!? Your simplistic reasoning that anybody who questions the mainstream narrative must therefore be a Britain-hating, Russia-loving traitor is so utterly f*cking moronic, but I have come to expect nothing less from someone who is clearly incapable of seeing the world in anything other than binary, black and white terms. Yes, Buctootim, I can see the reality of Putin's regime. I fully acknowledge that he is an extremely devious dictator, playing a dangerous game with the world. I have never doubted that. Unfortunately for the rest of us, and it saddens me that I have to ad this caveat that this in no way suggests that I support him, he is very good at the game he is playing. The disinformation that comes out of Moscow to muddy the international waters is the result of many years of deception, corruption and, sadly, is very successful. So no, I do not accept at face value the blatant propaganda they push. Unfortunately, neither do I accept the propaganda that is put out by our own government at the moment. Just because the Russians are clearly untrustworthy, doesn't make our own government a shining beacon of truth and virtue. There are so many aspects of the current narrative that don't add up or make sense, that to accept it without question based on nothing more than blind patriotism is ridiculous. Syria has quite obviously become a proxy war between Russia and the west. Yes, it's quite obvious that Putin is using it to push an imperialist agenda. But if you accept that, then you also have to accept that the US/UK are doing the same. Anybody who believes the action that May took along with Trump and Macron is based on genuine humanitarian concerns and protecting Syrian civilians from the use of chemical weapons is a foolish simpleton.

You are, of course, correct to be extremely skeptical of anything that the Sergei Lavrov claims. After all, we have already seen how Foreign Secretaries can't be trusted to tell the truth about this issue, haven't we. But the Swiss lab have not 'flat-out rejected' Lavrov's assertion at all. Their response is ambiguous at best, and appears to be very carefully worded so as not to confirm or deny what he is saying. https://twitter.com/SpiezLab/status/985243574123057152 I'm not saying I believe Lavrov any more than I believe Johnson. They are both proven liars, so the truth is I have no idea who to believe.

Yeah this is the nub of it for me too. It's obviously controversial but, as with everything, context is the key here. Even taking into account my misgivings about the BBC's impartiality these days, there is no way this is being presented as just propaganda. There will obviously be some kind of critique of it as well. I have to say though, given the connotations of it and the xenophobic message the speech carried, perhaps it might have been a good idea for the Beeb to get someone other than the bloke who played Emperor Palpatine to read it

STILL waiting for you to send us pictures of you eating your own sh!t after we got into the playoffs in 2007

https://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?59676-Chelsea-(H)-Build-up-thread&p=2616158#post2616158

Yes and they are apparently the ones now trying to block the OPCW from carrying out an investigation into the attack on Douma.

Well this is the problem isn't it. We can never prove it beyond any doubt, and Putin knows that only too well. He's obviously played a blinder here, because whatever accusations we make, he will always have plausible deniability. Especially given the massive PR victory that BoJo handed him last week. That episode means he can point to the fact that we can't even get our own story straight as 'evidence' that we are just making it up as we go along. If it was the Russian state that did it, and I have said all along that it probably was, then unfortunately our government have been outmaneuvered by someone far smarter than any of them, I'm sorry to say.

Yes yes, very predictable sarcastic responses from you two. All the OPCW have confirmed is that they agree with Porton Down's assessment of the type of nerve agent used. They haven't confirmed where it was made and who by. So this isn't actually a new development at all, and it doesn't provide any further 'evidence' against Russia on top of the purely circumstantial case we already had.

I'm assuming you meant to post this on the other thread, rather than imply that the IOW is one of the most amazing places you've ever been to

I mean that if we approach the Championship with the same head-in-the-sand "We'll be fine if we stick with our current strategy" way that we have approached the PL for the last two season, then we're fooked. What is obvious is that numerous players will be cleared out and we will need to rebuild a squad with a winning mentality. Do you trust the current senior management team to achieve that? I don't, and I'm pretty certain I'm not alone in that respect. We quite obviously have serious failings at boardroom level, and we have a shadowy, virtually anonymous owner whose plans for the future of the club are unclear. If we stick with Les & Ralph at the helm and don't address the serious failures of our recruitment strategy over the last 2 seasons then, in my opinion, we don't have a hope of bouncing straight back up and we don't deserve to.

Would that be this Avi Gabbay??? https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/israel-palestine-labor-party-gabbay-netanyahu-settlements-two-state-bds-movement-a8005136.html https://twitter.com/GarySpedding/status/983721110880563201 Yeah I expect Corbyn is devastated that he no longer has his support

I should think it's fairly obvious why. We certainly won't bounce straight back up if we don't address the failings at boardroom level over the last 2-3 transfer windows. If we just ignore that and bury our head in the sands and assume we are too good to stay in the Championship for too long then we are in big trouble.

Copied from Facebook, in response to a report in The Metro where Amber Rudd tries to claim that it could be the fault of social media...

Well you're right about one thing here, but wrong about the other. Absolutely I don't like Boris. He loves to portray this image of being a bumbling but lovable buffoon, but he is nothing of the sort. He is devious and dangerous and he's a f*cking embarrassment to this country. But I have no political allegiances - never have had. My beliefs and opinions should theoretically push me to lean towards Labour, but I find it very difficult to fully get behind them right now when they are clearly at war with themselves, and I could never bring myself to vote for them under Blair, Brown or Milliband. The only reason I voted for them last time round was because I have the utmost respect for my local MP and her genuine efforts to actually work in the interests of the community. The only certainty I can state in this respect is that I would sooner shoot myself in the head than ever vote for the steaming cesspit of corruption and elitism that the Tories represent.

I came across this piece and thought I should post it on here rather than derail either of the other threads in which he is the star of the show right now. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/04/boris-johnson-has-achieved-impossible-he-s-been-even-worse-expected

Vil Mirzayanov already did that in the early 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vil_Mirzayanov He even published a book about it, in which he essentially revealed the secret recipe for Novichoks. In fact, it's surprising that he hasn't already been targeted for assassination himself.

Wow Verbal, that's a whole lot of leaps of faulty logic you've made in one post there. I don't 'know' that the government presumed Russian guilt first, hence my use of the words "seem to have", which I based on how quick they were to point the finger of blame just a couple of days after the incident, well before any kind of proper investigation could have even begun, let alone finished. Yes, I obviously recognise that just because Boris has been caught talking out of his ar$e again (no, that is no surprise to me whatsoever) doesn't prove that it wasn't Russia. I didn't make any such claim to the contrary. But when our foreign secretary is shown to have made made up claims about imaginary conversations with our chemical weapons experts, you do have to wonder about the validity of the case our government actually has, don't you? I can't tell you what the evidence is that points to non-Russian attackers because, if you bothered to read my post correctly, you would have seen the bit where I said "I remain skeptical without evidence and that applies to both the government stance and to any other alternatives." I quite obviously don't have any evidence to prove it wasn't Russia and I never claimed I did. Also, I'm not prepared to dive in and swallow whole anything a rogue regime says that conflicts with the hated west. I haven't at any point indicated that I believe the Russians any more than I believe our own government, so I have no idea how you have drawn that conclusion. I'm just not exactly ecstatic that we appear to be going in all guns blazing and escalating tensions on what seems to be the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence. The statement that Batman linked to earlier states that our 'assessment' that it was Russia is based on the fact that we know they developed novichoks and might still have some, and that they have got previous for this kind of thing. It doesn't prove a damn thing and I would hope/expect that our glorious leaders would be more prudent than to row in to a potential geopolitical sh!tstorm on something a bit more sturdy than a f*cking inflatable dinghy.

Neither is sticking with our current passengers like Tadic and Redmond, both of whom I would be quite happy to never see in a Saints shirt again.

Experience has taught me to pay close attention to what they do and pretty much ignore what they say. In principle, I am fully supportive of the initiatives in the 25-year environment plan recently announced by Theresa May. But until I see some evidence of these initiatives actually being implemented, I will remain skeptical about it.

Silly hyperbole? Let me re-iterate to you Benjii, because you don't seem to be getting it, that The CEO of Porton Down has come out publicly and totally contradicted BoJo's claim that he told him 'categorically' that there was 'no doubt' that the source of the nerve agent was Russia. There is no ambiguity here - it's black and white. BoJo blatantly lied. Does that not concern you in the slightest when we are talking about a matter of national security that could have very serious consequences? |I agree, the circumstances surrounding the incident clearly and obviously point immediately to the possibility/likelihood of Russian state involvement. But this in itself actually leaves two possible explanations... 1) it was the Russian state, or 2) it was somebody who wanted it to look like it was the Russian state. Why have we been so quick to discount the second possibility?

Just seen this on Twitter...

http://newsthump.com/2018/04/05/we-dont-know-why-deadly-crime-is-rising-in-london-says-government-that-cut-20000-police/