War on Terrorism (Politics)

[Wile E. Coyote]

I am starting to think that the Hamas leaders who claimed that their fighters will be safe in these tunnels, might not have realised that the construction of said tunnels was not as advanced as they believed. That's the problem with building work if you pay up front and then don't oversee it.

[Mick Harper]

There is not a single Hamas fighter in a tunnel. Does nobody know anything about urban warfare?

[Grant]

There aren't many tunnels anyway. It's a con to justify the bombing.
Do these people not realise how bloody hard it is to dig a hole in the ground, let alone a tunnel?

[Wile E. Coyote]

The network of tunnels claim has come in part from Hamas. It could be disinformation, of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ry8V4ppJBk

[Mick Harper]

[Wile E. Coyote]

Wiley reckons it's pretty strange that, given the Hamas' ideas of governance is to to end all the evils of secularism, ie they are conservative/pro authority, they want the foundation of Sharia as the basis for a constituion and law, they want women to veil, do away with interest rates, outlaw irreligious forms of art, alcohol, and end tourism etc, that their western supporters are the young (and those young at heart) that are into anti-authoritariansim, taking their clothes off, or not wearing much, borrowing credit, breaking taboos, alchohol, drugs and "letting their hair down" (behaving badly) on holiday.......

One side is at some point going to be disappointed by the other. This coalition won't last.

[Mick Harper]

There was an interview with ex-prime minister, Ehud Olmert, on Newsnight. I didn't think it possible but the old buffer actually persuaded me there might be some justification for the Israel Project after all. Of course none of the things he spoke about came to pass when he was the actual prime minister but one mustn't be all gloom-and-doom.

[Wile E. Coyote]

It's becoming clear that many of the journalistic failings covering the Russia-Ukraine war and the Hamas-Isareal war are down to one individual, the Knight in shining white armour (jacket), Martin Bell.

It was Bell as far as I can see who came up with these notions of the journalist that cares, ie one that will not stand neutrally between good and evil, right and wrong, the victim and the oppressor, and so on. In practice this means that many journalists give a slant to opinions shared by bodies such as human rights organizations (Amnesty International) and international legal institutions such as UN that they think are committed to noble global values and legal objectivity. It is then not long before this slant becomes a journalistic cause (a sort of humanist journalism) and this further leads to the notion of journalist as "heroic" "chivalrous" Knight operating on the side of the oppressed in in a war zone. The more war zones, the more important the journalist. The OSINT is acting as a Sancho to all this nonsense.

[Mick Harper]

War reporters are selected on the basis of being 'on the side' of whoever has sent them. The real bias is that everyone is obsessed with the humanitarian angle. In every war ever fought, up to and including Ukraine and Gaza, the sufferings of civilians (and the infrastructure supporting them) are wholly irrelevant. Nowadays nine-tenths of all reporting is concerned with it. The result is that... the result no longer matters. Whoever suffers most, wins. Blimey, Germany would have won both world wars on that measure.

[Mick Harper]

Do we agree with this proposal that, because of the current dislocation caused by the war in Gaza, the people of Israel should be helped to relocate in the west? Remember, it's a war crime to permanently remove a settled people from their homeland. My fear is that they won't want to go back at the end of hostilities.

[Hatty]

Agreed though you'd have a hard time dislodging the settlers.

[Mick Harper]

Oh no, they can keep them. We could put in for a hundred K-Tel Avivians for our hi-tec industries and maybe another fifty thousand kibbutzim to pick fruit and veg. But they make surprisingly good social workers as well.

How do you feel about eugenic controls to prevent them mating with our native four-wheelers? We don't want them getting ideas above their station. And I'm not talking about Totteridge & Whetstone on the Northern Line.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

They still weren't identifying him a day later on either Channel 4 News or Newsnight. Maybe he was Oirish and they're embarrassed or he just wan't carrying ID. Never mind, let's have a riot anyway.

[Mick Harper]