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Rory Stewart speaking with expertise and authority, as he always does.
The best Prime Minister we will never have (if you can forgive the fact that he is still a Tory)
https://twitter.com/PoliticsJOE_UK/status/1428320935464120328?s=20
the Raab defense.... it's Ok to be an Idle incompetent lazy **** wit as it would have made no difference anyway.
No, it’s okay to be that way because his boss is publicly and blatantly the same, but still has huge support from the electorate.
They're sociopaths, the pair of them.
The idea that you could potentially save the lives of desperate people who have put themselves in danger to help this country and to then think "nah... I can't be arsed with that. I think I'll just have another cocktail"
And what does it say about the nature of this bunch of shysters that they thought the answer to this was to get in their photographer/propagandist and blatantly stage a photoshoot to try and counter things, days after the event. Like a sort of comedic, incompetent North Korea...
Look at me. I'm on the phone, being really important and doing really important stuff...
What a ****!
Kelvin nails it. It doesn’t matter what Lammy, May, Starmer or the rest of the house says, because the electorate supports the “entitled arch clown”.
The UK government and perhaps our country itself is nothing but the Worlds circus; you come inside to be amazed at the Lion Tamers and skilled acrobats you’ve heard about only to find yourself laughing at the clowns and clapping sea lions.
So now it seems that Zac Goldsmith never made the call that Raab couldn't be arsed to do himself. Maybe he was on holiday too, like the rest of the ****ers.
^
According to what I read he did try to set up the call, but the Afghan minister wouldn't take it because it wasn't at his level. Which sounds bad on his part but part of working in the foreign office is understanding the political subtleties of rank and importance. So in the end there was no call.
"We've got a major incident unfolding in your country concerning our citizens, which we need you to sort for us. I'll get one of my minions to call you because I'm 'too busy' on this sun lounger'
Nice flag Raab has there. That makes it all ok.
Only the one though? And no picture of the queen? Thats almost treasonous
they thought the answer to this was to get in their photographer/propagandist and blatantly stage a photoshoot to try and counter things, days after the event. Like a sort of comedic, incompetent North Korea…
Worked last time...
But the most important element of that particular photo isn't Little Gavin/Frank Spencer doing his best serious face, it's the whip (subtle!) and the conspicuously placed 'Book of Indiscretions' in the foreground, which given the proclivities of Tory MP's contains god only knows what.
Dom hasn't got one of those
Adam Curtis film on the subject, as described by someone above...
I think 'The Power of Nightmares' would probably be worth a timely revisit too
Rory Stewart looking genuinely pissed off, unlike most of the front bench who just seem to want to look upset.
Just read some of that excellent Adam Curtis blog posted previously, fascinating stuff - will check out Bitter Lake, thanks for sharing.
Bitter Lake is good but by God it's full of crap too. It's less documentary and more A level art project.
May have already been mentioned, but a huge amount of the US ‘reconstruction’ money went to the like of Halliburton / KBR and the like and straight back to the pockets of US contractors. Even the UK was paying millions to security contractors and reconstruction - people were being paid £1,000/day. I met a serving Afghan Army officer - he would get suitcases of $$ every month to pay for wages, fuel and ammunition - it was just a big gravy train and when the money stopped, they all went home.
To be fair I would want at least £1k a day to work there
Bitter Lake is good but by God it’s full of crap too. It’s less documentary and more A level art project.
Yep its about an hour too long
Handily someone had done an abridged version and stuck it on youtube
Meta EDIT, the edit just removes sections without dialogue, so no moody shots of Blackhawks landing through smoke clouds and less Nine Inch Nails
Bitter Lake is good but by God it’s full of crap too. It’s less documentary and more A level art project.
Alastair Campbell getting eaten alive by Zarah Sultana on twitter.
Ian Dunt tying himself in contradictory knots.
Centre generally getting themselves in a mess for being on the wrong side of most arguments.
Really? Fascinating.
Cheers for keeping us all updated on the really important, relevant stuff
Do we know what Jeremy Corbyn thinks?
less Nine Inch Nails
So, ruined then. I always enjoy Curtis’ music choices. They elevate the documentaries significantly, for me.
Will the Mail ever treat Johnson this way? Plenty of quotes from his time at the FCO along these lines if they care to stop treating him as untouchable…
https://twitter.com/johnestevens/status/1428619710707474433?s=21
the Afghan minister wouldn’t take it because it wasn’t at his level
TBF I expect he might have had one or two other things in his diary that week
Raab can swim in a pïss ditch for all I care, but this phone call business is a side show. It's the pretext upon which Raab (the keeper of the "book of indiscretions") can be framed as the scapegoat while his sociopath boss stays in office.
like it or not, governments need to engage with the taliban.
They did, hence why we are all here, they made a deal and the Taliban have held up their end by saying that Afghanistan will not be used to harbor terrorists, allow women to work and go into education, so all good unless you are an Afghan citizen but it should be clear by now that no one cares about them.
I don't claim to have any idea of what should be done but we are just watching a horrible slow motion crash. You know the mistake has been made as body's smash against metal and concrete.
We are living though a horrible ear in history and watching a new Starling take over Afghanistan and start to kill thousands whom they don't agree with or who question them or they perceive to be the slightest threat.
This going to be looked back on with the same disgust as the Rwandan genocide and Balkans but on a bigger scale.
Will there be a resistance movement bumping off the local Taliban representative?
The place is awash with guns,should be easy enough to do.
Will the yanks send a cruise missile to the top blokes palace as soon as everyone is out?
Easier to bomb a palace than a cave.
This going to be looked back on with the same disgust as the Rwandan genocide and Balkans but on a bigger scale.
Yeah, but it'll be easier to ignore and dismiss. Oh look a plan for a tunnel under the Isle of Man.
Rwanda and 'The Balkans' both happened when the 'West' had populations that occasionally gave a shit about what happened outside their home town.
Will there be a resistance movement bumping off the local Taliban representative?
It’s looking like a lot more than resistance. More likely a full scale civil war. Or a number of smaller regional civil wars.
There was a regional expert on Newsnight the other night saying there are a lot of regional warlords with no love for Taliban who are also armed to the teeth. They're not taking too kindly to the Taliban declaring themselves a national government.
The Taliban are being portrayed as all-conquering, but there are still large areas of the country run as personal fiefdoms by these regional warlords where the Taliban have had no more success occupying than the Americans or the Russians before them
Would anyone bet against it dissolving into the same chaos as Iraq and Syria, with outside powers also fighting proxy wars?
Marina does it again nailing 'Hard Man' Dominic Raab for what he is.
A total prat. A multi level bellend.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/20/dominic-raab-foreign-secretary-global-britain
There's a lot of people got used to making a lot of money through corruption and or drugs, the Taliban made great progress in stamping or at least controlling both of those so even if the big guys have run off to Dubai or ****stan or wherever someone will be eager to take their place and fight, how well they'll succeeded is anyone's guess.
The Taliban are being portrayed as all-conquering, but there are still large areas of the country run as personal fiefdoms by these regional warlords where the Taliban have had no more success occupying than the Americans or the Russians before them
That's how Afghanistan runs and why they 'won' so quickly. The local people made that call that overall the Taliban were stronger sono but the locals still call the shots and always have. Working in Afghanistan involves having relationships with all of the groups
As long as you have acceptance and no alternative to Sharia law the general population will rely on it on a local rural way, it's fast and effective on a village by village basis and like any western legal system, controls populations.
I don’t know if this has already been posted but a very informative Twitter post collection from a journalist
https://universalcreditsuffer.com/2021/08/21/6668/
Just another example of the unmanaged decline of the Western powers.
The global stepchange since the end of WW2 has been slow but steady. The US is no longer the global enforcer (we dont even register on a global scale) judging a Country and its importance by its GDP is no longer practical.
If you stand back there are many forces at play and many have no affiliation to the concept of a Nation State, china/saudi all play this game and Putin despite his posturing has more challenges than most on his borders.
Bidens policy appears to be a return to traditional US isolationism without the Trump madness. North America including Canada can live within this bubble while taking revenue in from overseas via tech and selling goods/materials.
I think this new world post Kabul presents huge problems for the UK outside the EU. Our old alliance with US is probably finally gone. We are looking a bit lost in the worlds media and the Tory party is uncomfortable.
Strange that it took Afghanistan to bring some of this into the light.
Just another example of the unmanaged decline of the Western powers.
Declines don't tend to be managed, the people filling the space tend to be impatient.
I think this new world post Kabul presents huge problems for the UK outside the EU. Our old alliance with US is probably finally gone.
The alliance with the US is still there, it's just been oversold for decades. It's always been imbalanced.
We are looking a bit lost in the worlds media
The royals will have another kid, then the headlines change.
and the Tory party is uncomfortable
It's uncomfortable anyway, the former red wall seats have changed the centre of gravity.
Once we've sorted put all the geo political, imperialist and theological issues we're still left with a country that is so divided along tribal lines that future conflict is inevitable.
99% of the ANA we're from the Northern tribes, attempts we're made to recruit Pashtuns into the army and government but those attempts were resisted aggressively.because the Taliban (Pastuns) don't want to share power with anyone for tribal reasons as much as foe theological ones.
Afghanistan is not so much a failed state as it is a failed idea of a state. Just another in the long list of countries who owe their existence to empire and colonialism and the practice of divide and rule.
We can accept the break up of the Soviet union, the Balkans, the UK even, yet we somehow try to 'hold together' nations that we're drawn up on a table in Whitehall between 100 and 200 years ago over a glass of brandy and a cigar. See all of Africa and the Middle East, or pretty much any conflict zone around the world, the odds are more than even that the country in question started it's life as a piece of pink on the map..
I think this moment is bigger and broader than it currently appears even with the frenzy in the media.
Not saying its a Berlin Wall but it looks like an opportunity for many factions to assert themselves.
A sort of Postern gate in reverse?