Shameful, Disastrous Transport Policy for 50 years - and the military are even worse!

This is a lamentable, no holds barred, 'hilarious' history lesson/diatribe/tirade/denunciation on two fronts - transport and warfare.  I'm desperate to be corrected - please, someone, anyone!

WARNING: I AM VERY CRITICAL OF THE POLITICIANS WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS MESS.  Quite shocking language, here:

In the fifty-three years I have studied, worked and lived in Brum and the Black Country I have seen so many of the wonderful, glossy transport plans that, always, are so beautifully and convincingly presented.  However, the reality has been disappointing.  Both road and railway congestion have got steadily worse over the fifty years - and, Metro Mayor Andy Street, agrees.  This very year is the 40th anniversary of the Metro trams scheme and the undelivered, failed, promise of 15 tram lines over 200 Kms by the year 2000.

Even the tram, the wonderful Wednesbury to Brierly Hill Extension (WBHE), taking over the principal mainline railway through the heart of the Black Country, was never delivered by 2000, as I was personally promised by Cllr Fred Hunt, Leader of Dudley MBC in the mid-90s.  Instead, we've had six railway lines completely destroyed in Dudley borough, alone!!  The seventh, the Derby to Devon via Dudley principal mainline railway is now being destroyed by the WBHE for only 6.7 Kms on the mainline railway (on two nibble sized sections out of the wasted, unused 56 Kms), plus 4 Kms on roads and a canal towpath (see the photo of the canal bank, below).  This, for over half a billion pounds of deadly greenhouse gases, is the ultimate idiocy, the grand finale of urban railway destruction - for there are no more to destroy - to make for the biggest transport and financial scandal in the history of the UK!

You wrote, "it's time to start checking projects against broad social objectives".  I think it is about time we start checking if giving Broad Street over to the tram is really encouraging modal shift from car to public transport.  Certainly not, when every one of the eleven bus routes now has to join the two queues of cars to get round the roundabout when previously all eleven routes used the underpass.  Cyclists, like me, are now inconvenienced, too.  We, also have to divert on, an admittedly, shorter three sides of an oblong route than the buses, before we can get onto Broad Street to ride in a narrow gap between the widened pavement and the tram tracks.  We can't use the underpass, either.

Their fine motto is 'Forward' - since 1839.  As it happens, the year of our first out of four disastrous invasions of Afghanistan.  'Backwards' would be more truthful.  Unlike you sensible people in Coventry, we began to destroy our fine, free-flowing, complete inner ring road a few years after construction.  St Chad's Circus on the ring road was bulldozed, as was Masshouse Circus Queensway and St Martin's Circus Queensway.  I believe St Martin's was the first to be bulldozed.  The inner ring road did last over ten years but a disgracefully short time after all that concrete pour of greenhouse gases.  It was replaced, would you believe, with traffic lights and longer one-way road systems to spew out yet more of the cocktail of poisonous and deadly greenhouse gases we need to very urgently cut!!  How stupid is that?

Your "local policy makers are coming from" are coming from cloud cuckoo land.  They all mean so well but the task is completely beyond them.  Ancient old crocks like me are blamed for the mess we have left the world in for the young to have to pick up and, somehow solve.  I think the young are as clueless as the useless politicians who have begun to talk the talk but then do nothing, except all the wrong things.  What hypocrites!  At least I'm reducing my hypocrisy quotient by cycling every local journey and cutting my 2019 car mileage by 50% for this year and in future.  70 mpg when I do drive.  And, I had abandoned the car for the bike for almost all work journeys in the mid 90s.

USELESS AND INCOMPETENT POLITICIANS AND TRANSPORT EXPERTS COMPETE FOR TOP PRIZE WITH OUR PATHETIC POLITICIANS AND THE INCOMPETENT MILITARY:

In less than 200 years, our politicians and the military have attacked the people of Afghanistan four times.  Only with our second attack, does Wikipedia conclude that our second war was a victory for our miserable military but, only after "setbacks".

Our fourth attack and invasion that commenced on the 7 October 2001 was a brutal, unjust and the most foolish revenge and overreaction to the 9/11 attacks by 15 Saudi Arabians with four other men.  For many decades, Saudi Arabia has been a strong friend and, in war, ally of ours that has fueled our immoral and most profitable arms industry with billions of pounds of purchases of our military equipment.  Those most responsible for 9/11 were all killed by their suicidal attack.  Those 19 men may have been distressed by our Western military "infidels" occupying, for decades, what they considered was their holy Muslim soil - a sacrilege.  Far from considering whether that might have been their motivation, our politicians and military launched twenty years of revengeful attacks that were disproportionate and reinforced, repeated, continued the offence, for some Muslims, that had prompted 9/11 in the first place!

Apart from a handful of left-wing MPs, every other politician and all of the military are up in arms at their War on Terror, lasting only 20 years, being so abruptly terminated.  After all, their turn of the century Project for the New American Century left five more countries still to be attacked and overthrown to bring compliant American/Western governments installed.

These so self-declared upright and honourable politicians and moral military personnel, did nothing to dissuade Joe Biden when he announced the ending of the War on Terror and withdrawal, some months ago.  It seems, they all fully agreed and supported Biden from the outset.  Not a murmur of concern.  Not a whisper of disagreement within NATO to think again!

NATO is made up of failed states and not Afghanistan.  Certainly not Afghanistan that is our so convenient victim and target for our four failed, incompetent, unjustifiable wars of aggression.  And, we kid ourselves that we are fighting, killing terror not realising that we are the real terrorists.  And, next decade will see the 200th anniversary of the start of our enthusiastic aggression against Afghanistan!

MOVE IT!

Over 100 years, Western influence in the Far East, Middle East and in parts of South and Central America has been so malign that I think we need to

• Move out of the Middle East, where our 100 years of military intervention and unappreciated influence has not gone down well;
• move away from the War of Terrorism;
• move out of the War industry that gives us such good economic growth and prosperity but, where our armaments, weapons and military intervention kill the people of the Middle East and are used against our own heroes of the armed services.
• Move away from world leaders and governments being overthrown by our American led coalition.
• Move towards greater toleration and humility in listening to and accepting the majority decisions of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
• Move out of attacking other countries or deposing their governments, unless we have a 60 to 40 majority of General Assembly members.
• Move away from revenge foreign policy;
• away from drone kill as many as possible that also means mistakes are made and many innocents (non-fighters) get wiped off the face of the earth;
• away from shoot to kill policy, to shoot to maim to bring them to trial, unless your life is in imminent danger when the Police have always been allowed to shoot to protect themselves.
• Move away from military strength on the world stage, to moral strength on the world stage.
• Move away from our continuous at sea, never stop threatening to wipe out much of humanity with our wonderful Weapons of Mass Destruction deterrent.

Why always Iraq but never Afghanistan?

John Payne has quoted from Wikipedia, "A strong supporter of the Blair government, he supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq,[7]"

Am I alone in thinking that so many, rightly, condemn the Labour Party for attacking and invading Iraq but seem to excuse or even agree with the attack on, and invasion of, Afghanistan that began the War/Crusade of (not 'on', in my opinion) Terrorism on the 7 October 2001?

Afghanistan then got it in the neck from us upright, peace loving and law abiding Westerners for the next 13 years (to Dec 2014).  All this slaughter as revenge and punishment for having Al Qaeda in the country, who launched the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York.

Am I completely off beam in thinking like this?

Corruption is the greater evil than killing Commies and Muslims

Dear all

What some sons of Abraham get up to!

For what its worth, this is how I see things, after reading Simon’s blog about the Central African Republic (CAR).

ONE VERSION:

What a horrendous time for the people of the CAR.  I cannot possibly understand how the situation developed to such a frightening scenario of sectarian violence.  All I do know that the killings by Muslims must not make us even more anti-Islam or prejudiced, in anyway against Muslims we might meet.  It certainly must not make us even more determined to get our own back or, to extend the War of Terrorism in Afghanistan beyond the end of 2014.

As regards political correctness, I think that being correct in every way is the only correct thing to be!  We could do with being religiously correct, too but then that means being loyal to the faith you were brought up in when we should be able to think things out for ourselves and to come to our own conclusions.

Being correct in every way means, I think, acknowledging that the Muslims have a better track record than the Christians when it comes to who does the least violence.

Being correct in every way means, I think, accepting that the Koran has no violence but the Bible has much.

Being correct means understanding that the Arab slave trade was much less extensive,  and brutal than the slave trade by the ‘Christian’ nations.

It seems to me that the Muslim countries look as though they are less avaricious, materialistic and less dominated by the ‘consume ever more’ mentality of the now very rich ‘Christian’ nations.

It is definitely the Western world, with those nation’s wars over their various empires, over the last two hundred years, at least, that has the worst record for man’s inhumanity to man.  The Western, ‘Christian’ world that includes America, is responsible for

• the killings of Africans that included Muslims during the vicious slave trade.
• decades of oppression and deaths of black people by the supposedly ‘Christian’ and advanced nations of the USA and South Africa.

• the persecution and killing of Jews,
• then, Communists in the countries of SE Asia as we fought for “our vital strategic interests”, capitalism and democracy against godless, evil Communism; and, now
• the latest horrors are perpetrated against Islam and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.  Both direct and indirect killings in, so far, twelve years of the war of terrorism in leaving a wasteland, mayhem and intermittent civil war in Iraq.
• Yet, Bush and Blair sincerely believed they were doing what God wanted in launching the War of Terrorism.  Just like the two Muslims who killed the soldier outside his barracks in Woolwich in 2013.  Except Bush and Blair have much more blood on their hands than the two Muslims, of course.  Abraham and his God and Allah have much to answer for.
• for years the West has threatened to attack Iran for wanting nuclear weapons to balance or match Israel’s arsenal and so deter an attack from them.
• this year, the Western powers nearly attacked Syria as punishment for a chemical attack in July.  Putin saved the day.  And, what an excellent article of his in the ‘New York Times’, too!

Yet, we get into such a state of indignation over the very much lower killings in the countries of eastern Europe that came under Stalin’s control in the wake of his help in defeating Nazism.  We honestly think USSR communism killed “millions of millions” of their own (Daily Mail Dep Editor, Jon Staefel, ‘Newsnight’ 2013) but we conveniently forget our own millions whose premature deaths we are responsible for! However, since we kill blacks and foreigners, perhaps that does not matter.

Therefore, not man’s inhumanity to man but ‘Christian’, Western inhumanity to the Muslims of this century.  How very ironic, how very thoughtless and hypocritical of us, how very unkind of us, how very reprehensible of us!

ANOTHER VERSION:

1. I do suspect (but there is no way of proving this) that down through the centuries, the adherents of the three dominant and influential Abrahamic faiths have been more responsible for killing their own than all the other faiths put together.

2. Muslims in my former workplace (I have now retired) tend to view their home of Britain as being founded and still based on the Judeo/Christian view of the world eg for many centuries the practices of Parliament on the centrality of the Bible and Christian belief and, especially, in the Coronation ceremony of our once all powerful, unelected and dictatorial and, too often, very badly behaved monarchs.  In other words, since we label all Arabs as Muslims, some Muslims do like to label all people in the West as Christians.  That is understandable.

3. The latest upsurge of violence between two largest branches of Abraham's family started with what the 'Christian' West called a declaration of war on the USA - 9/11.  The 11 September 2001.  Indeed, that Bible believing Christian who was saved from alcoholism by the Lord, President GW Bush called his launch of the War of Terrorism, a crusade.  For Muslims, the word, 'crusade' has the horrifying connotations of the first named Christian crusades against the Muslims some centuries ago.

4. That far wiser man of God, Bishop Desmond Tutu, commented on 9/11 as being an act of terrorism and not an act of war.  The implication being that the White House administration of the time, rather than seeing the attack on the twin towers as an opportunity to launch their 'New American Century Project' of violence and domination in the Middle East, should have used the courts of law to bring Osama bin Laden and the other surviving plotters to justice under American law in the USA and not to lock suspects up for years in Guantanamo Bay outside American law, in a state of limbo.  Many seem to be suspects picked up on a whim, provided they were Muslims.  Some remain in Guantanamo Bay without evidence against them and without trial.  No wonder we have many Muslim insurgents or terrorists fighting our brave, upstanding, heroic soldiers.

5. Rather than keeping within the law, we have seen both the very military powerful Jewish state of Israel and its financial backer and supporter, the 'Christian' state of the USA, both indulging in extra judicial assassinations of their enemies who are classed by both democratic states as 'terrorists'.  Exactly the same name was used to describe Nelson Mandela who narrowly escaped hanging for his crime against the state of South Africa.

6. Using the term ‘terrorist’ does help them to assuage their consciences in circumventing the far lengthier but inconvenient route of going down the legal avenues of using American law on US territory.  Or, in the case of Israel, Israeli law.

7. What is worse, the men of violence in both the Knesset and in the White House feel quite unable to even abide by the resolutions and mandates of the United Nations.  The UN, like the law, is another inconvenience that both the Western states, with sometimes Russia and China, simply ignore when it suits them!

8. No wonder we have constant war and mayhem in some parts of Africa, along with Iraq and Afghanistan.  Iraq and Afghanistan that we have liberated to enjoy the rich blessings of Western democracy, religion, culture and schooling for girls.

9. In addition, all these men of violence, some the sons of Abraham in the prosperous 'Christian' West (and not so prosperous 'Christian' Africa) or the 'Muslim' Middle East and Africa, make the very weapons that fuel these never-ending wars.

10. The Bible has much violence in the Old Testament (see NOTE, below); the Koran has none.  I have read every single word (practically) more than once in the Bible and literally every word in the Koran, once.

11. The Bible even has rules for waging holy war (Deut 20 v 1-20); the Koran has none.  The Koran allows self-defence but not pre-emptive attacks of so called ‘self-defence’ as the Israelis have done many times since their state was founded.  Founded, too out of many acts of terrorism in 1946 and 1947 to force the hand of the authorities to give them, and only them, the land.  The most unholy Holy Land, ever.

12. The centuries of the most shocking violence indulged in by the supposedly Christian Western European nations - and the United States of Aggression with its offshoot, Israel - all, in this century, set a very bad example to the warring factions in the Central African Republic.  Or, is it just human nature the world over, regardless of religious belief?

The time is well overdue for us good Christian men and women, the righteous of the Lord, to actually begin living up to the, admittedly, extremely difficult teachings of Jesus Christ in the Gospels.  Or, if we cannot even attempt to do the non-aggression of being peacemakers instead of warmongers, how about abiding by UN mandates, international law or, just the law of our own lands?

​​

Or, if even that is beyond us, how about keeping to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights?  This time, only thirty paragraphs of sound, common decency for us to attempt!

NOTE

The Bible is a contrast of ‘Thou shalt not kill’, yet also ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth’, to genocide as God told Israel to wipe the inhabitants of the Promised Land off the face of the map. From that to a loving God and His people are to love neighbour and to love enemies.  Perhaps, all that explains why atheist, agnostic and devout Christian believers all take part in warfare, and look up to our soldiers as heroes, as making the ultimate sacrifice, as noble service and, who so respect our soldier heroes (as my father in law did).  Nearly all vote for the three main political parties who are this century’s war parties.  For it is they who order the years of aggression, invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, without any authorisation from the UN.

Armed Forces Day to show reverent respect

How would you like it if the armed forces of another country occupied Halesowen for twelve years to change the way we do things, really quite radically?  One radical change was to bring in voting that, surprise, surprise brought in a compliant government wholly in agreement with the armed forces coercing or forcing the changes the foreign government wanted to see in Halesowen?

In other words, bringing democracy down the barrel of a gun, exactly what we didn't like, one little bit when another world leader (China in the 1950s, 60s, 70s) wanted his way of doing things forced down the throats of the people, via the barrel of a gun.

Remember, democracy only means voting every five years to bring in a very similar government (but with a different name, admittedly) to the previous one.

In addition, our so sincere and well-meaning armed forces have so stirred things up in these foreign lands that many tens of thousands of their men, women and children have been killed in the War of Terrorism.  WE, in the West, are directly and indirectly responsible for these crimes against humanity.  But, we certainly don't think so.  Rather than feeling some discomfort at cutting the lives of foreigners short, we rejoice at what our armed forces have done - calling them heroes and having a special day of commemoration and celebration for the fine things they have done on our behalf.

We cannot even have the honesty to graciously admit that we have lost this fourth Anglo-Afghan war and lost it years before we finally pull out in 2014.  The Vietnam War all over again.  When will we ever learn?

By the way, this makes for four losses in a row, our armed forces are so incompetent.  Every war was fully supported by the main democratic political parties of their time, too.  What a disgrace!  Therefore, is it really worth imposing democracy down the barrel of a gun in foreign lands far from our shores that we never go on holiday to, anyway because of the mess we have left them in?

What a truly sick society we live in.

Terrorists = Enemies

Isn't it funny how we use words to downplay our feelings of guilt; to put ourselves in the best possible light?  Hence, if foreign troops were in our country thinking that they can put us right and much improve the way we do things, we would call our men of violence fighting the enemy, resistance fighters.  We call the equivalent men of violence fighting our best intentioned armed forces in Afghanistan, the resurgence.

The West now calls its enemies 'terrorists' to help justify the West's war crimes of aggression.  For me, NATO's armed forces are also the men of violence, killing and maiming (but not in my name) to stupidly think they can defeat terrorism and bring voting to all (democracy) down the barrel of a gun!  How immoral.

Bishop Tutu called 9/11 an act of terrorism, not an act of war.  The surviving perpetrators needed to be brought to justice in a court of law.  Instead, the West had hundreds of thousands more innocents slaughtered since their commencement of their War of Terrorism on 10/7 (7 October 2001).  Except, they were foreigners in far off lands, so that was OK.  How despicable!

All the main Western political parties think they can get rid of terrorism by doing it better; defeating evil by doing evil in a bigger and grander and more successful way in the war of terrorism!  How foolish!

Skyfall-ing in

The most spectacular and the most impossible to nod off Bond film ever.  In the process, perhaps, the film with the world's worst driving!

'Skyfall' underlines the status quo, so that the next generation is brought up 'right'.  It passes on our society's established values, attitudes and beliefs, over recent centuries, that are not the most worthy - of getting our way by coercion, force and, astonishingly, the slaughter of the innocents (this latter is not in the Bond films).

I think the films reinforce our Western predilection for such things that has been at the heart of too much European life for centuries of going out to conquer and dominate other countries.  All this, even after the Europeans' world wars that finally brought them up short to unite in peace between themselves.  Such a pity that the European's non-violence between themselves did not spread to leaving other countries well alone, too.

We had twenty children killed in Connecticut a few days ago;
twenty thousand children in our 13 years War of Terrorism;
even, many more than that, in the War on Communism in SE Asia between 1945 and 1975.
The Bond films nurture our Western ways for such things, to ensure they are passed on to the next and succeeding generations.  The general media message is: enemies are essential but, making and keeping friends with those who do things differently from us - other cultures, religious beliefs, political systems and traditions - is not so essential.

The film glorifies and promotes behaviour that we are not meant to indulge in - from speeding over roof tops breaking every imaginable speed limit, even sending old ladies flying on pedestrian crossings, to blowing up a beautiful old and isolated Scottish mansion.  It also continues the silent, imperceptible, so easily absorbed indoctrination of us all that we have very dangerous enemies of the State and that attack, aggression and violence is the only way - to get them before they get us.  Therefore, we cannot possibly abandon our love affair with guns and grenades, rifles and bombs - even when the sky falls in on the New England families of the latest killings.  We are subconsciously inculcated with this drivel via entertainment, of which fifty years of Bond is the most popular.

 It is totally incomprehensible for us that our invading, attacking and occupying of other countries might make them so ungrateful that they turn into our enemies and try and hit back.  Indeed, quite outrageous for them wanting to harm us.  We can't have them defending their lands and resources from us.  Or, of letting them be so un-Christian (or un-Muslim) as to show revenge on us.

Never mind - "Man is God's greatest work."  (Sister Wendy Beckett on Desert Island Discs 16.12.2012.)  She could not possibly have meant the nation's greatest role model.  Could she?  What does Sister Wendy make of 007?

Christianity began in non-aggression, non-violence, of loving even 'enemies' ... and ended in ... see the end, below!

Christianity began in Galilee as 12 disciples of Jesus and then by many more as Followers of the Way. Only later were they called Christians - as a taunt.

Saul was converted and interpreted the death of Christ as atoning for the sins of the world, rather than the ultimate act of non-aggression and non-violence. A crucifixion that spoke volumes of the iniquity of capital punishment and, indeed of corporal punishment that was also used on this good man. Yet, both punishments are so beloved of the righteous of the Lord - and has been for centuries. They certainly don’t believe in sparing the rod, because the Bible tells them so.

The Apostle Paul took Christianity to Asia Minor and Greece but it never became a philosophy, even though the intellectual Greeks loved to debate religion.

It went to Rome and it changed from being almost unheard of for Followers of the Way to enter the army, to it becoming acceptable to do so - and ever since.

It went to Europe and the rot really did set in. Non-aggression and non-violence became not just unheard of but completely non-existent amongst the supposedly faithful of the Lord. The words even, were never used such was the popularity of the soldiers of the Cross being literally warring crusaders against evil Islam and, even the wrong kind of Christianity! No longer were they faithful followers of the way of the Lord who taught and practised loving enemies rather than aggression and violence.

It came to America and that most devout nation; indeed, the nation with the mostest - the most of absolutely everything, including Bible believing, born again Christians. Yet, for the last six decades, along with its best buddy, the UK those most righteous nations have warred, have attacked, have invaded, have occupied nations with their godless and evil Communism. Only the tiny, barely Christian sects and branches of Christendom have been noted for their non-aggression and non-violence. Only they have remained true to the roots of Christianity and its Founder's 'unsuccessful' Way of non-aggression, non-violent direct action and of, literally loving those who have come to war, attack, invade and occupy.

The worst heresy, the ultimate irony and the final insult is the Bible reading and prayerful duo who launched the War of Terrorism against two Muslim nations who had done nothing to deserve the judgement of the righteous of the Lord from the US/UK. This Christian war or crusade against evil shows just how far the supposed disciples of the King of Love and the Prince of Peace have departed the Faith. They, who talk the most about defeating evil, need to first repent of their own much greater evil, methinks! There is the Jesus parable of the mote and the beam or, the splinter and the plank. Judgement begins in the House of the Lord - and, indeed on all who take the sword and the rod to punish the evil, sinful, rogue and failed nations of the world. Except, the US/UK/Israeli hegemony gets away with it. There is no judgement for their injustice, aggression and violence because they are all powerful - unlike their founder, Jesus Christ; all powerless, non aggressive and all failing!

Israeli Propaganda!

I don't like this misleading e-mail one little bit. Please do not pass it on!

It was the white, Christian, western Europeans who were responsible for the Jewish holocaust, not the Arab/Muslims. We killed tens, certainly, thousands of Arab/Muslims in the 1991 Gulf War and, again in this latest War of Terrorism since the 7 October 2001 that now amounts to hundreds of thousands of deaths from our (US/UK) unethical and illegal foreign policy.

We used Saddam Hussein as our surrogate to attack Iran from 1980 to 1988 when our Russian and Western weapons slaughtered one million young men in the Iran/Iraq War. Unlike ourselves, the West, Iran has not attacked another country for over 200 years. Yet, here we are having them as our latest enemy that we are planning to attack 'cos we assume that they are building (or just wanting) to build nuclear weapons! No evidence, mind you; just assumptions!

The e-mail is factually wrong. Russia was our ally throughout the 2nd WW. It was not just the "German and Russia (sic) peoples looking the other way!" The former BBC correspondent, Charles Wheeler has shown how Churchill and the War Cabinet were also anti-Semitic and looked the other way. They knew about the industrial killing of the Jews and others in Germany but, very nearly, did absolutely nothing to help. They were not even prepared to bomb the rail lines taking the victims to the concentration camps. We Brits invented the concentration camps, too! This was during the Boer War when over 20,000 women and children died in the appalling conditions that we allowed in those camps.

The Jews in Israel are the most heavily armed and protected nation in the Middle East and the only nation with WMD in the Middle East. Israel is our Western outpost in the Arab/Muslim Middle East. The US gives them $1.5bn of weaponry every year! It is absurd to think that the Jews there are ever going to be wiped off the face of the earth by Muslims. We are wiping the Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan and in Palestine and Lebanon off the map! This Jewish propaganda is all cock-eyed.

The Islamic extremists are simply defending their homelands from the United States of Aggression with its best buddy, the UK. We are the occupying force that the extremists/insurgents want shot of - and quite understandably so!

"The conquest of the world and the destruction of anyone who doesn't believe the way they do." For many centuries, the W European powers have been conquering the world and destroying the cultures and religions of the lands they discovered and claimed for their God and King, as well as killing the native populations. The white, Western nations have been supreme on this planet for many centuries. We still hold the upper hand and will never willingly relinquish it, will we? It is plain stupid/mischievous to put it about, as this e-mail does, that we would ever let the Arabs/Muslims conquer Israel or to drive her into the sea, let alone conquer the rest of the world! The rich, Western, white nations are the conquerors of the world and will remain so for as long as we can hang onto our power and wealth.

I think it is more the Chinese than the Arabs that the neo-Cons in the White House are fearful of. The Chinese, they think, might knock them off their powerful, pedagogic pedestal one day! The Muslims/Arabs are under the thumb of imperialistic America and its friends and the Muslim extremists can be imprisoned and tortured and killed, at will, by our forces.

I do commend the writings of blogger, climateextremist.blogspot.com, for sane, common sense on how we can all, as members of the one human family, get on better with each other. Read, 'Harnessing the Power of Belief ', dated October 2006.

Slow Learners - wrong to invade; slow to withdraw!

1. Our presence, I feel, in Iraq and Afghanistan is an irrelevance at best and a provocation at worst.
2. There is not nearly enough troops on the ground to stop the violence that, anyway, we initiated on the 19 March 2003. We were the criminal aggressors.
3. Our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan continue our very long history of invading and occupying other countries around the world. The sooner we reverse this unethical foreign policy and get out the better, in my opinion.
4. 16 years of killing Vietnamese and her neighbours failed to prevent our defeat, then. So far, 6 years in Afghanistan and 4.5 years in Iraq has failed to reverse our failures and defeats in those countries.
5. Former BBC war correspondent, Martin Bell on Radio 4's, 'BH' on 2.9.07 said that nothing further can be accomplished in Iraq and we should leave. His exact words, "There is nothing left to do there(in Basra) that can be done ... Blame laying is in order in view of the depth of the catastrophe ... The troops cannot be risked anymore than they are being risked. They are merely an occupation force. They are being shot at. There is nothing left they can do."
   
6. LibDem foreign policy is for a timetable to be published for a phased withdrawal from Iraq. What do they say about Afghanistan?
7. "We could have stayed there for another six months ... and killed a lot of people in the process, but what would that have achieved?" Lt Col Patrick Sanders, Commanding Officer, Basra Palace, quoted in 'The Independent', 5 September 2007

We Brits always love our wars away from our shores!

THE WEST IS WEDDED AND WELDED TO WAR - led by the might is right US/UK!

Tony Blair is so well meaning in his warlike actions. He greatly respected Mgt Thatcher's premiership and she was a great fan of Churchill who authorised the overthrow of democratically elected Mosadeq in Iran in 1953 and supported our attack on Egypt in 1956 over the Suez Canal. This tradition of 60 years of warfare, of using the military on foreign soil, greatly helped our Anglo Catholic Tony to join conservative evangelical George W in launching the war of terrorism on 10/7 after the criminal act on 9/11! Bouncy, chuckly, irrepressible Tutu said 9/11 was a criminal act rather than an act of war. However, our Tony being well intentioned, charming, nice and such a superb speech maker is not good enough, me thinks. But it is for the Labour Party who adore him!

Tony is simply the latest in a long line of British PMs who love warfare or, war fighting as he prefers to call it. Churchill, even after our very necessary victory in 1945; Eden, with Egypt; Wilson in supporting the USA over Vietnam but without sending troops; Thatcher with the Falklands War and that unlikely victory for us Brits; Major with the 1991 war to oust Iraq from Kuwait; Blair with his wars until he came badly undone with his last attack on an independent, sovereign nation in March 2003.

Centuries of warfare amongst the W European nations and taking their wars abroad to win their empires around the world, culminated in the not so grand climax of the World War in two halves. That finally silenced their guns at each other and the EU was born with the Treaty of Rome.

An Alternative View of the 20th Century! Version 1

Our centuries of violent history in W Europe - we alone had many wars with France, Spain and the Netherlands - culminated in the British concentration camps of the Boer War and deaths of more than 20,000 Boer women and children, alone! If that wasn't enough, we joined in the foolish Great War to end all wars, with our young men rushing to the Front to join in the warring fun. They thought it would all be over by Christmas 1914!

Former Conservative leader, Sir Ian Duncan Smith, has acknowledged that that war led to the 2nd World War. Therefore, I think it is legitimate to say that Hitler was the consequence of centuries of warfare in W Europe. The men of violence and the nations of violence, like our own, were entirely responsible for this monster of our own making, with their predilection for aggression, killing and murder. Therefore, one could further argue, it was only right that they should sort out Hitler, rather than the people of non-violent direct action, like me!

Attack on Egypt over Suez: A disproportionate response by the UK, France and Israel that was such a crime of aggression that it did not even get the approval of the USA! There was deception in the House of Commons and support by Churchill and both main political parties. Many more Egyptians killed than on our side.

Vietnam War: According to Dennis Healey, he dissuaded Harold Wilson from joining the US by saying that we were fully engaged in fighting Communism elsewhere in SE Asia and, therefore, could send no troops. 3-4m men, women and children - and mainly civilians -slaughtered by ourselves in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, alone! In shocking contrast, only 58,000 American soldiers and, virtually no American civilians died. Our side used WMD - "tens of million of gallons of agent orange dioxin was sprayed on Vietnam and babies with hideous deformities are still being born", said Christopher Hitchens on 'Start the Week' on 30.5.05.

Cambodian civil war may have been one unintended consequence of our warring in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. We certainly did not set the Khmer Rouge a good example!

Diego Garcia: We ejected the Chagos Islanders from Diego Garcia to make way for our best buddy's military air base - fully supported by the voters of our two main political parties that always get by far the bulk of the votes!

War on Iran: We used a surrogate, Iraq to attack our old enemy, Iran. 1m young men on both sides died from our weapons between 1980 and 1988. Saddam Hussein, who was "a bitch but he was our son of a bitch", very kindly did our dirty work for us! Unlike ourselves, Iran has not attacked another country for over 200 years!


Falklands War: A war that Argentina should easily have won had General Galteiri been more ruthless and competent and determined to keep the islands. His exocets might have been used to sink the troop carrying 'Canberra' before the soldiers disembarked. Our unlawful sinking of the 'Belgrano' led to over 400 sailors drowning and freezing to death. And, then,we rejoiced at our mighty victory and gave thanks to God, in St Paul's Cathedral, for his help!

There is a widespread complacency that our actions are wholly admirable. When they turn out not to be, we were well intentioned, thoroughly sincere and we only wanted, after all, the very best for the other country. "It wasn't my fault, guv!" Blair said, time and again, "I did what I considered to be right for the country and my party"!

We can do what we like around the world because we are democrats; we know best for other cultures, religions and political systems. After all, they could not possibly refuse our democratic ways and our God, even if it must be forced on them down the barrel of a gun! Paddy Ashdown said, "International law is made by the strong and powerful. It is what they can get away with!"