Verbal

The achilles heel of the more extreme fringe of the anti-war movement is its tendency to whitewash dictators, as you do here, and as that rather foolish individual does in the OP's youtube link. I understand the impulse: paint the world as populated by good and evil and no shades in between. The worst of it is it paints monsters like Saddam and Gaddafi as passive actors, having no control over their fate or that of their countries. Unfortunately, the world is complex than that, and there are shades of grey, not just black and white. I was against the invasion in 2003, and in fact was on the anti-war march in London that winter. But I was also at university with a number of Kurdish students - my university took a lot of them because of its reputation in engineering - who did not come back alive from Iraq. Saddam's regime was efficient at two things: the looting of public funds on a truly epic scale, and the running of one of the world's most efficient torture and murder machines. Gaddafi's regime was little different: the fearful abuse was on an industrial scale. They just did privately what ISIS does publicly to people; otherwise, absolutely no difference. To proclaim the Saddam regime - with its involvement in a trench war with Iran which was extensively fought with chemical weapons, its attempt at chemical genocide of the Kurds, its elimination of the march Arabs, its murderous rampage through the Shia south after 1990, its assassination squads roaming the streets of Europe - as 'stable' is indefensible. Similarly with Gaddafi - whose inventiveness with sadistic torture techniques, practised on hapless victims including young girls tortured for sexual gratification; whose assassination squads also killed wherever they pleased (and I'm not just talking about Yvonne Fletcher); whose theft of public and oil revenues was legion - to portray him as a shining beacon of 'stability' requires a deeply warped morality. So a suggestion: try very hard not to see the world in terms of heroes (for you: Putin, Assad, Gaddafi, Saddam) and villains (anything western), and try to imagine that world as being just a little more complex and nuanced than you're prepared to allow. I would welcome an anti-war movement that was candid about this complexity, but it's nowhere near that yet. At its wilder fringes are those like you who become de facto apologists for such brutal regimes, because they can't accept that the world is populated by any other than the modern cliche equivalent of cowboys and indians.

You're utterly discredited with your own words. You actually think Iraq was 'stable' before the invasion? The hippy-dippy Saddam presiding over his adoring subjects while he poured Sarin over their children? The Iran-Iraq war never happened? The Kurds weren't facing liquidation? Not a single Shia suffered torture or death after the end of the 1990 war? As I say, it's a narrative pushed hard by you and ISIS for your own reasons but it's a shockingly bad, wilfully ignorant 'understanding' of history, to put it mildly.

Are you on drugs? I can't make head nor tail of this post. It's just plain weird. In any case, it's understandable that you and ISIS want to gloss over the huge damage done by American support for the Saddam regime, which intensified massively with the war that broke out with Iran one year after the Iran hostage crisis. If, for example, you ask the Kurds, they'll give you some idea of what the implications for them were in Halabja and elsewhere of the Americans supporting every damned thing Saddam did. But that means nothing to you, does it? And it was only when Saddam thought he'd been given the nod by the Americans that he rolled into Kuwait in 1990. It wasn't until that invasion that American attitudes to Saddam really changed. But by then it was too late. With the end of the first Gulf war Saddam went on a murder spree throughout the South, killing hundreds of thousands of Shia who'd been encouraged by Bush Snr to rise up against the regime. With that, the sectarian bitterness, already ramped up by the huge human of the Iran-Iraq war, went into overdrive. The US invasion in 2003 was the tail end of that depressing story, not the beginning.

The problem wasn't the invasion. The problem was the decades of support for a regime that operated as a vast criminal enterprise and was every bit as violent as ISIS is now - plus some. Such vast levels of corruption and sectarian and ethnic violence created the puritanical reaction, just as Cromwell was the creation of the corruption of the Catholic Church.

I think the 'wholly thinking is closer to home, Lord Tender. Are you seriously suggesting that a compulsion on politicians to take part in public debates is a limit on their rights to free speech? That a party leader is somehow within his or her rights to say nothing in a democratic process? Politicians aren't just 'people'. They are 'people' purporting to represent us. They are therefore accountable. We can define accountability in many ways, but one of them, surely, is to debate in the most watched forum of all, television, especially during election times. Political leaders cannot opt out of talking - not least because it is, by definition, what they do: talk publicly. They are public figures. This proposal isn't a 'limit' on their free speech. It's saying: if you want to be a leading politician, making claims on people's attention and taxed incomes, you have to state your case to defend your manifesto. Besides, since when did politicians ever say 'I have these politics but I'm not prepared to say anything about them'? Dictators might take that view, but democratic politics is all about the public space. A non-talking democratic politician is either an oxymoron or a budding political criminal. And as for what to do if they refuse? Simple, and it's already been proposed: empty-chair them. Show everyone they're running scared. Saying 'I'm not talking' should never be an option in formal debates like these. It's calculated cowardice.

A travesty of 'investigative journalism'. It's garbage. For more reliable is Patrick Cockburn, whose new book on ISIS is just out. ISIS in Syria and ISIS in Iraq have differing origins. In Iraq its leadership is largely ex-Saddam lieutenants. These always have been spectacularly brutal individuals. The only difference now is that the burnings, shootings, crucifixions, stonings, and all manner of other tortures of methods of murder are being photographed and glorified, whereas before, under Saddam, the victims were done away from cameras. In Syria, ISIS grew out of a small Islamist grouping supported by donations from the Arab peninsula. It received a shot in the arm when Assad released the most dangerous Islamists in his jails to go and fight the moderate Syrian oppositionists. ISIS in Syria thereafter spent all its time fighting the moderates not Assad. Cockburn's reporting involved actually going to Syria and Iraq, of course, and he's spent decades writing about and travelling within the most contested parts of the Middle East. So old fashioned... http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Rise-Islamic-State-Revolution/dp/1784780405 I was also amused by the quote in that YouTube clip from the 'anti-war' spokeswoman in dangerous downtown Los Angeles, proclaiming that under Saddam Iraq was 'not a particular hell hole if you were a religious minority.' Tell that to the Kurds (a religious and ethnic minority) who's families were gassed to death in a genocidal attack Halabja. Preposterous - and an insult to the thousands of dead from those gassings and from the many other thousands of victims of Saddam's murderous and vengeful rampages through the Shia south after the first Gulf War.

Maths is often like that. One of the legacies of Turing (and others) is to think of maths as pattern, and sometimes bits of the pattern are missing.

=10

Dear god - duelling whataboutery in lame pictures.

You still haven't come close to grasping a simple question. I wasn't inviting you to have a name-calling hissy fit. I was asking for evidence to back up your scapegoating claim that immigrants are, in your words, 'creating real pressure on British wages.' So, for the third time of asking, what's your evidence for this claim? If none, then you are scapegoating immigrants - notably the ones you quite bizarrely say 'benefit' from appalling living conditions.

Let me try one more time, in the hope that you might understand the question. You said: Where is your evidence for that? None of the above talks about 'real pressures on British wages'. That was your contention, not Shelter's. Without that evidence, it's reasonable to conclude that you're scapegoating immigrants. What also leads me to think that you are engaged in scapegoating is your suggestion that some migrants are - in your words - 'benefiting' from overcrowded housing conditions. Those like you who play the immigration card need to understand the real reasons why wages are under pressure. It has nothing to do with immigrants and some of their appalling liveing conditions. It has everything to do with such trends as financialisation (I enjoyed your suggestion that you already knew what that meant - quite amusing - well done), the impact of technology and the wider consequences of globalisation. So try again.

Where's your evidence for this? In the absence of any, you're scapegoating immigrants.

That may well be. It's also nonsense. The 'real pressure on British wages' is not from immigrants of any sort. The real pressures are many (including obvious candidates like technology), but a very large one follows is indicated what is called 'financialisation'. This is where public companies of any sort play the money markets with quite large slices of their revenues to try to compensate for the ever-escalating demands of shareholders. UK companies have also depressed wages, or held them at below-inflation increases, to try and cope with these pressures. Dividends as a proportion of company outgoings have risen inexorably over the last 25 years. Wages as a proportion of company outgoings have also fallen. Immigrants are, as ever, the scapegoat for this fundamental change in economic activity among British companies. A good economist to read on this is the wonderfully named Englebert Stockhammer.

Unbelievable. The LAPD have an appalling reputation but this is utterly sickening, in both its inevitable escalation of violence on the part of the police, and its sheer paramilitary lawlessness. I predict, based on recent events, that they'll be cleared in due course by a Grand Jury who will be presented with 'evidence' that they had no choice but to put five bullets at close range into the head and body of a homeless man.

Not a single one of those other things would have been possible for Savile without the persona he created at the BBC, and which was fostered and protected by the BBC. His calling card was that he was the BBC-certified fix-it for all things good and charitable (and, in Thatcherite terms, non-dependent on public finance. He became a symbol of the supposed power of private good to displace or support public provision. Hence his many elevations under Thatcher.) Without the BBC he'd have been little more than a rather nasty doorman. So I stress: this is the BBC modus operandum with 'stars' in relation to others. And while that managerial behaviour didn't create the monster, it certainly inflated it to cause horrific damage to some many other people's lives. It was, incidentally, precisely that same managerial behaviour which prevented the Newsnight investigation getting to air.

No I didn't; nor did I work anywhere remotely close to that creep. It wasn't until Louis Theroux's profile of him that I got a glimpse of the malevolence behind the mask. Unfortunately I know all too well, though, the culture at the BBC that made this possible. As an institution it is a haven for the entitled white middle class, and it has (statistically) become ever more dominated by a self-perpetuating, self-congratulating Oxbridge-selected elite of top-level managers. These managers, where they manage relationships between 'talent' (like Savile) and production staff and crews, have taken it upon themselves to ruthlessly suppress and stigmatise staff concerns about talent - to the point of subjecting whistleblowers to campaigns of sustained and debilitating intimidation. So it doesn't surprise me at all that many at the BBC reported that they knew about Savile or were in the loop on some of the more lurid rumours about him. But I can't in good conscience accuse them of failing to speak out, because I know in hindsight that many tried to raise all kinds of red flags. When raising concerns like this meant you're given a good career-stalling kicking as a result, you tend to understand how it could have happened. I wouldn't describe Savile as the tip of the iceberg - he WAS the iceberg. But I would say that the way the BBC has declined into an isolated, remote, failed middle-class state, where the most valuable managerial currency is the power to bully and intimidate, is at the root of why Savile got away with it.

Christ almighty. The systemic failures were astonishing. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/26/jimmy-savile-abuse-stoke-mandeville-hospital-inquiry

Benefits Street went out as a series at 9pm, right in the middle of the peak time schedule. Immigration Street went out as a one-off at 10pm. 1.4m is very good for 10pm; many shows and series on C4 earlier in peak time can struggle to get that rating. Immigration Street also got an 8.7% share. C4's share generally is around 5.5%-5.8%. At least the advertisers will be happy.

The violence and threats did give the impression that the attackers had something else to hide. And levels of intimidation seemed absurdly high. But there’s a problem with C4’s and Love Productions’ approach too, and it’s not really the fault of the production team on the ground, who were left to deal with the backlash (albeit with a small security presence as things got worse). When Benefits Street came out, it was for the most part (title aside) quite a sympathetic portrayal of the people who lived on the street. If the series had been treated by the channel as an observational look at working class life on a street in Birmingham and the consequences of living with chronic unemployment, within the context of the city’s decimated blue-collar jobs, that would have been fine. However, C4 and Love got two things badly wrong. One, they left out any contextualisation. And two, as is the way with the present C4 programme management, they saw the original series, after its ratings success, as the beginnings of a profitable and ratings-driven ‘franchise’, which you might call: [Moral Panic] Street. So you could have predicted that the next on the list would be Immigration Street. What C4’s management and Love failed to factor in is that such moral panics can quickly become highly toxic, and the stakes were bound to be even higher for a series that is foolishly titled to suggest that the defining characteristic of Derby Road was that it was the quintessential Immigration Street. Furthermore, it appeared to repeat an initial serious problem with Benefits Street – it failed (from the fragments last night) to contextualise the immigration issue, either in terms of the city or nationally.

You should be old enough to know that 'Paki'' is not only short for Pakistani' but also (from the 1970s/80s) 'Paki-bashing' - i.e. racially motivated assaults. 'Paki' was also short for anyone at all with brown skin, whether of Pakistani or not, deemed to be fair game for having their heads kicked in. 'Paki' was/is a word you use to indicate white racists' disgust at someone because of the colour of their skin. I remember Asian kids at my school being told that the colour of their skin made their white tormentors want to throw up. So there's no 'so be it' about it. And no, 'Brit' does not carry the same connotations. 'Brit' does not have a history of racially motivated attacks, nor is it associated with Brits as demonised immigrants. It is nothing more than a shortening of a name. As for 'mong', how anyone can be so crass as to think it's funny or cool to use such a word I have no idea.

This describes the differences very well in my view. As someone who's worked in and travelled a lot around the US and enjoyed it greatly, I must regretfully say I feel a pang of relief when I (occasionally) cross the border from the US into Canada. Despite its low-grade politicians it's an incredibly sane place and the cities (I have relatives in Toronto and in-laws in Montreal) a pleasure to live in. Still not sure about Hamilton though...

If Wade is 'commenting without reading', what should we make of your 'ability' to twist anything you do read into a confirmation of your deeply paranoid, inadequate worldview in which the Jews yet again are the scum of the earth? Even a cursory careful reading of the situation reported by the UN tells you (not you personally; you're incapable of seeing this) that the non-combat contacts are not between IDF and Salafists, and indeed the contacts are designed partly to gain intelligence on the movements of Salafists, whom Israel regards as a more serious threat than Assad. Part of the contact has also to do with humanitarian treatment of the injured (wars do this, you know - but you wouldn't because you have not the slightest conception of that). But you just carry on with your Jewish conspiracy tropes - it clearly gives you a thrill. Where's the Hague quote? Looking forward to that.

Who are these 'UKIP detractors' exactly. Name names. It seems to me that Ukippers repeatedly do a number on themselves, which is picked up just as it would be when/if other parties behave stupidly. Anyway, there's more on the racist beating heart of grassroots UKIP on BBC2 this week. 'Meet the Ukippers' features Thanet members' 'jaw-dropping views on race'. The more this is exposed the better - and the cretinous complaints from Ukippers that they're being done up like kippers by the meejah rings hollow when the members (in every sense of the word) themselves are the ones doing the doing up.

This thread is the kind of toxic dribbling that results from epically bad journalism emanating from a "news" website that, in its own words, is "inspired by sites like Infowars.com", and the gullible simple-mindedness of a conspiracy groupie seduced by yet another story conforming to the old stereotype of 'those damned filthy Jews will side with anyone'. Here's a suggestion: go to the quoted sources of this supposed conspiracy of articles. You might learn something. Hague may be guilty of many things but please quote where he said he's ever supported Al Nusra or IS. Who knows what IS are? It's not rocket science. They are an alliance of former Saddam loyalists (the hardcore of IS), remnants of al Qaeda in Iraq, and a bunch of simple minded 'radicalised' Muslim conspiracy dimwits from the West seduced by the prospect of living the Guevara dream. All united by a loathing - well above and beyond a hatred for 'the West' - of Shia and its (Kurdish, Alawite) variants. That's 'the deal'.

Oh Dear, oh dear - another Marxist rag... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2959280/Former-public-schoolboy-season-ticket-holder-one-fans-train-racist-football-thugs-claims-friend-Twitter.html UKIP may or may not be a racist party, but the undeniable fact is it's a magnet for racist scumbags. If anyone wants to be a fellow traveller with racists, be my contemptible guest.