Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
8 November 2010
09:3279034I was just listening to a report from China by star BBC radio man John Humphreys. It was on the R4 Today programme and he was doing the usual British and even Western thing..ie, being superior and sniffy about how they do things. It was the usual traditional finger wagging type of report on human rights and whathaveyou...
"you are not as good as us dear boy and need to do better."
Its almost as if we here in the West have created a shangri-la of rosebud existence and others need to rush out and copy it without delay, or they are falling foul of God and Hummanity.
When are we going to learn?
Only this week and you may have heard, a church leader has urged all Christians to leave Iraq. Their lives are in immediate danger there and no mistake, we can well believe it. Because we the West have created a cesspit of unparalled chaos and misery there, we have created an Armageddon of degradation and death. It is abysmal.
Yet if we had of left the place alone there was a sort of stability. Christians and other faiths could practice their religions in relative peace because Saddam Hussein was at the helm and nobody messed with him or his regime or his system. Okay he was nobody's favourite uncle, I wouldnt pretend otherwise, but now an awful chaos has broken out and everything is truly abysmal. Daily life has got no better for anyone and all this after thousands of civilians and military personnel have died. Accomplishment : nothing.
We simply, like the boy at the dyke, shove our finger in the hole of Iraq and the menace pops up in Afghanistan, we shove our finger in the hole of Afghanistan and the menace pops up in Pakistan, we shove our finger in the hole there and the menace pops up in Yemen, shove your finger...and so it goes on.
Round and round and round we go,
but will we get there
nobody knows.
We all know in our hearts, dont we, that when the West moves back to Philadelphia and Boston and Houston and Aldershot, that the centuries old systems and life patterns of these ancient tribal lands, will all return to where it always was...and the western influence will disappear with the last military truck out.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
8 November 2010
09:3679035If you like the 'cesspits of the world' so much PaulB why not go and live there?
The western self-flagellation so beloved of the wooly headed liberal left is senseless.
Besides - if the world were still coloured red with the British Empire it would be a better place.
Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
8 November 2010
09:4479036Well jeezez no..I dont want to live in a cesspit, nor have I said above that I like any of these cesspits. Read it again...theyre just advising all Christians( westerns!) to leave so why would I want to go there?!. But the point is we have created these cesspits by interfering, and our cesspits are no better than the cesspits we replaced.
Far better is it not, and experience should tell us this by now, that its best to leave these nations alone and let them find their own mercurial level.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
8 November 2010
09:4679037They were always cesspits PaulB, we did not create them. Take Iran, never ruled there after all, its all their own doing.
Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
8 November 2010
09:5179038Well yes BarryW.. Ive just said that. They were always cesspits but our interference hasnt done anything at all to improve anything...we just brought an update on the cesspit. The western version. The Dispatches programme the other week was very good, went beyond the mainstream PR speak, and showed it like it is with 'health warnings' beforehand about the graphic nature. The torture, the killing... It is not a success story and the menace we are dealing with is fluid...it shifts.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
8 November 2010
10:0479039PaulB - I really do not follow or agree with your logic.
Iran is what it is because of the Iranians.
They overthrew the Shah and replaced him with a violent fundamentalist regime that is guilty of the torture and killing you refer to, not the west. The present regime is not exactly one of the west's choosing.
The Shah was not perfect but was far, far better than the monsters now in charge, added to which he was friendly to the west as a bonus.
8 November 2010
10:3579045'Take Iran, never ruled there after all, its all their own doing.'
Slightly economical with the truth there Barry!
With the Russians in 1941 we invaded so we could use their railway system as part of our middle east campaign in WW11.
1951 after the nationalisation of Iran's oil industry we firstly organised an oil embargo and then Winston Churchill convinced USA to join in plot too overthrow Iranian elected Government. This was completed in 1953 with the Shah replacing the elected leader and with his secret police, the SAVAK, and with western backing, managing to eliminate most political opposition.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
8 November 2010
10:5379047the whole point surely is that for some reason we in the west try to change other nations, this we have no right to do.
i have said many times that invading other countries in order to stop terrorism does not work, it simply acts as a recruiting agent for al qaeeda.
what would we do if we were invaded by a foreign power?
Keith Sansum1
- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,942
8 November 2010
11:2579051This is realy a wide debate you have started here young paulb, to post in general terms.
We were right to go into Iraq, not because of the badly advised mr Blair
but because the 2 main parties agreed about the torture and kllings by Mr Hussain.
Do we as a civilised country just sit back and watched millons of innocent people being kllled?
As to the West, yes there is no doubt lots still live in this long gone British Empire
that Britain knows best, we can actually learn a lot from other countries.
So paulb for my part the debate is far bigger, and to have let it go on would have been wrong,
ALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS
8 November 2010
12:0379057'Do we as a civilised country just sit back and watched millons of innocent people being kllled?'
Certainly not - (if they have oil, unlike Biafra, Rwanda, Cambodia etc. etc.)
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
8 November 2010
13:0279074keith
it is not our place to decide how a sovereign state runs their affairs, as stated above we only interfere when there are benefits to us.
daily slaughters take place every day in many african states, although they may have great mineral wealth the mines are all controlled by multi national companies, hence no need for us to join in.
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
8 November 2010
20:5079174well it sounds like some one has a bad case of pmt,unless its monday of course.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
8 November 2010
20:5579176PaulB, 100% agreement with your post 1. As for Aldershot, I lived right next door, everyday going to school I saw soldiers marching up and down the parade ground, hob-nailed boots....
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
8 November 2010
21:0179179please tell me that they were not blowing bagpipes or anything else for that matter.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
8 November 2010
21:0979180Barry, your post 2 implies that it would be better to have the British Empire. It wouldn't!
In the 18 hundreds, many African tribes received a protectorate status from Britain, sometimes in return for mining rights. Similarly, many local Indian leaders of independent states in India received a similar status. Only gradually did all this evolve into an Empire, I think it was Disraeli who became the architect of the term British Empire as we know it to be. The actual areas that British people, and Irish people, settled in as British governed territory, are the original thirteen states of the USA, and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and also South Africa and Zimbabwe (Rhodesia).
It would be feasible to have a special relationship with Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but all the other countries are independent, with age-old civilisations, and have plenty of people of their own to govern themselves.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
8 November 2010
21:1079181No they were not blowing bagpipes, Howard! But they were often inviting us to the sportsfield to see their exhibitions and manouvres. We all enjoyed it!
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
8 November 2010
21:1379183Howard, post 8, 100% in agreement!
8 November 2010
22:1579197Barry W,
Please refer to your history books. Iran (formally Persia, formally mesopotamia) was formally occupied by Great Britian and France during the first world war. Lawrence of arabia and all that, so yes we do have a certain amount of responsibility for developments down the years.
The shah of persia's peacock throne would have been a bit of a turkey without Britians military backing.
Better "Tommy Atkins"" than Ivan the terrible.
8 November 2010
22:1879198Howard,
You have been invaded by a foriegn power, but I refuse to budge!!!
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
8 November 2010
23:0279203no problem jimmy, i quite like "buckie and doner kebabs", fine examples of scottish culture.