Iran Nuclear Deal

Little bit of time to briefly repsond now

Weapons trained civilians is a logical roll out Clive, I don't know why you would think it so irrational. It won't be a formal announcement and it won't happen any time soon. It'll happen in dribs and drabs and isn't without precedent. In the significantly more wepaonised society of the United States civilians (neighbourhood watchmen) already patrol their communities carrying weapons. Indeed, they appear to have taken to stationing themselves outside of military recuitment centres in response to recent attacks

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-33655502

It's all part of a trend. I have little doubt that this little bit of civilian activity will come and go, but then the march towards this future conflict is probably 2 or 3 generations away (unless a spectacular event happens in between) - "the imminent isis takeover of the UK" as you put it, is just an attempt to put words in my mouth. I've never said that, and I also believe that this incarnation will be defeated (ISIS) but that the threat, like the multi headed hydra will continue to appear and grow, and that a conflict capable as being described as a third world war is inevitable at some point in the future

I would also point out that civilians are already weapons trained in the UK under the guise of the territorial army (one area of military spending that's actually being increased, which might or might not be coincidence) and that the police force also recruit special constables. Civilians have received wepaons training before and organised into patrolling units. It's most certainly not without precedent.

No UK government is going to risk announcing that they're training civilians to fire weapons unless reintroducing national service (which I wouldn't totally rule out at some point in the future - but again we're looking at 10-20 years). It's much more likely that it'll be done under the auspices of private security firms as it is in places like South Africa. Private security firms have experienced massive growth in the last decade, and it's no great secret that they recruit from the army, they're already in a position to perform a clandestine back up service if needed at short notice. Indeed, you could probably argue that elements of it are already well in place.
 
Increased spending on the the Territorials is purely this Governments way of getting volunteers to fight wars without regular wages, much the same as special constables, and - to a lesser degree - private security firms and probation services. Talk of a clandestine home guard is risible.
 
Warbler said:
I'm afraid that's just nonesense Marb

Do you seriosuly think for one second democracy would have broken out in Syria with the removal of Assad (like it has in Libya you mean?). Were it not for Assad and the Syrian army (which hasn't run away like the much vaunted American trained, and American equipped Iraqis) ISIS would already have over run Lebanon and be at the gates of the Israel.

I've explained this before. The radicals are badly out numbered by conservatives in something like a ratio of 10 to 1. The radicals tend to be middle class, middle aged academics and professionals. They'd get battered by the conservatives in a fist fight! Indeed, that's what happened. The Syrian army and Hezbollah on the only people on the ground in Syria capable of arresting ISIS

If you really wanted ISIS dealt with, the best way of doing it would have been to allow Assad the use of chemcial weapons and then once he'd stopped ISIS in his tracks you could go on your moral crusade. It's certainly happened plenty of times in the past where you feign indignation at a moral outrage for public consumption, but privately you're relieved
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just picked up on this and all wrong

assad didn't have to stand up to a popular revolt with firepower did he? Sure he had lots of support but so did some of the eastern bloc communist leaders and they knew the writing was in the wall. Assad barely made the slightest concession

and there was very very little tradition of hard line Islamic militancy in Syria.
 
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It wasn't a popular revolt Clive, it was a localised minority uprising based around the ancient state of Aleppo and was nationalist in nature, something Hillary Clinton acknowledged when weighing up the legitimacy of American involvement as she noted that there were different circumstances involved. If you want a paralell of sorts, think Northern Ireland, or try and imagine a militant Scotand rebelling and declaring themselves independent by dint of armed activity

The reason there was little tradition of Islamic conservatism in many of these countries incidentally is precisely because of the point I've been arguing. The likes of Assad, Saddam and Gaddaffi were your first line of defence against it's spread. Not only that, they were pretty effective at it too. Can you really be surprised that when you create a vacuum by either removing these regimes or weakening them that conservatives fill the void?
 
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Whipping up protests isn't that hard in the zeitgeist of what was optimistically called the Arab Spring. Lets not forget that protests happened at the same time in Bahrain, but the Saudi's put that down. Everyone's forgotten about that

It was only a few years ago we had protests/ riots sweeping through our own country and spreading to regions well beyond Tottenham. How did that happen? How should we interpret this? The anatomy of these kind of things is often a bit more complicated and you start to move onto very thin ice.

You can always turn it round too. How exactly do those who don't protest express their feelings outside of counter demonstrations? Can you deduce that passivity is an endorsement for the status quo? Almost certainly not, and here in lies the danger of extrapolating from these sorts of things, and it's even more dangerous when you start to base policy around what could be temporary sentiments, or a whole web of local grievances. The spark in Aleppo however was definitely separatist nationalism with a tribal under current, and that was one of the easier ones to spot.

Look at this way, the peace talks in January 2014 finally failed largely because the west couldn't identify a credible and coherent voice of democratic opposition to represent what they incorretcly referred to as 'moderate muslims'. If there was a genuine groundswell of liberal democrats chomping at the bit (who would be radicals incidentally), then where were their representatives? They should have been crawling all over the negotiating table with a tidal wave of popular support behind them. The reason you could identify plenty of nationalist and different shades of islamic groups however was because they better captured the mood on the ground. The warning signs were there within months of the original uprising and long before the peace talks finally failed

People latch onto a spark to regsiter discontent, but it's imperative that we accurately diagnose the nature of that protest and not fit it to what we want it to be. Most spectacularly of course this is exactly what happened in Benghazi when an Iman whipped up a mob at Friday prayers into a frenzy of democracy (as if that was ever democratic) and sent them off to the local barracks to try and storm the arsenal. Perhaps you think the commander should have handed over the weapons in line with their less than democratic demands? of course not. Would a British commanding officer hand over weapons to the IRA if 500 catholics turned up at his gate demanding that he did so, and threatening to seize the barracks if he didn't? That's pretty well what happened in Benghazi. Ultimately they stormed the barracks and forced the garrison to fire on them. What would you do? This led to William Hague (in a very suspiciously short period of time) to denounce Gadaffi for murdering his own people who were protesting for democracy. You can of course see the product of that democracy today

I think there's another issue here too as spokespeople emerge (often exiled overseas academics) to declare a movement as pro-democratic in the hope of bringing in western intervention. The American's never bought this one in Syria of course (the French did) and the British would have done had Hague been able to come up with anything remotely convincing. The American's also warned heavily about it in Libya, but were eventually unnerved by faulty British intelligence that played the Rwanda card on them

There isn't any neat and painless answer to this, but we've certainly seen a correlation between the opening of power vacuums in certain states caused by regime changes, and the advance of brutal islamification
 
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Why? Wiki pedis has no reason to make up protests that didn't haooen . And if it did it would be seized on

it happened as they say
 
Wikipedia is always vulnerable to selective editing, and in the context of that particular source 'they' is a very fluid entity. Who are they?

Having said that, I can easily accept that protests spread (I'd expect them to for the reasons I've explained), but I'd be nervous about going to far beyond that. You run a very real risk of misinterpreting it. The danger is you view a protest through the prism of the things you think people should be protesting, and this is only a short stop before you start assuming that your solutions are the answer. There's also the issue of interpreting the passive?

As I said, where were these representatives of this wave of democracy when it came to the peace talks? If they were such a numerically commanding presence they'd have dominated things, but we were seriously struggling to find anyone by January 2014 to represent it. That should have been the final warning (in fact, I think it probably was) but the evidence had been there at a much earlier stage

The anatomy of mass protest movements are rarely quite so black and white. They tend to capture a multitude of grievances broadly wrapped up in a blanket of 'change', but with no great coherence.

How many times have you signed a petition for instance without really feeling any sense of over riding conviction to the cause? I was thinking about this with regards to Iran the other day. How strong is the foundation there? We don't really know. We do know however that for decades we've been agitating in the country, and we might therefore expect to stir something amongst the middle classes and educated, but what if that is just a temporary expression of sentimental aspiration and lacks the depth of conviction? What happens then? We potentially end up suckering ourselves into an erroneous judgement about the nature of any movement, and ultimately what it will produce.
 
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Try another way of looking at it

1.5M people come onto the streets of London to protest about an invasion of Iraq. Wikipedia reports that they're drawn from a wide cross section of society. How do you interpret that?

Do you conclude that the British people support Saddam Hussein? Do you conclude that the British government is a functioning dictatorship that wilfully disregards it's own people? Do you conclude that the British people are intrinsically anti American?

I saw banners on that march which were protesting everything ranging from the release of PKK detainees from Turkish jails, right across the range to a fairer minimum wage (plus generic ones stationed at Hyde Park Corner that said "Liberals say No")

Yet most of the population didn't register a protest and opinion polls conducted at the time supported the government in something like a ratio of 66/33
 
Im certainly not going to read all that and ill leave it to others to decide whether to believe on the spot news reports or bed sit conspiracy theorists
 
Yep total length of wiki link you expect me to read 1757 words (wikipedia isn't an on the spot news report service either)
Total length of my reply 621 words
 
clivex said:
Im certainly not going to read all that and ill leave it to others to decide whether to believe on the spot news reports or bed sit conspiracy theorists
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this is what i like:)..and proves that if something is said often enough and comes from the right "source"..it must be right..and any individual who disagrees or has evidence to the contrary..is a some kind of bedsit/train spotting numpty.....people take owt in if told it often enough

not particularly talking about the above postings..just generally how people can be brainwashed with constant repeating of something..the tories are sh1t hot at it..hence the half wits that stand up at PM question time and don't even have a question..they are just stooge MP's who have been used to talk about anything..but just slip in.."long term econonic plan"..and "northern powerhouse"..pathetic brainwashing mantra..but say it often enough.....
 
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That's ridiculous ec. If you think wikipedia and established news sources just "say something" such as make up a protests across a state, of hundreds of thousands of people, then you need to think again

it was in response to the incorrect claim it was just "local". Which I knew was wrong without even looking. It is of no interest at all whether it is comparable with other protests on completely different issues in other parts of the world. It was what it was. A pretty large scale uprising against a dicatator

the wiki link is an easy read and I would take it in before posting such drivel.

not interested in discussing whether it's supposedly made up or not frankly. It isn't and that's that. Take or leave
 
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clivex said:
That's ridiculous ec. If you think wikipedia and established news sources just "say something" such as make up a protests across a state, of hundreds of thousands of people, then you need to think again

not interested in discussing it frankly. Take or leave
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:)

i woof u clive
 
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