On the 3rd July 1988 290 people were killed when the American warship USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian civil airliner (Iran Air Flight 655)
This in no way excuses any other similar event. But it is well to remember that these things happen, and that the unusual is often a bit more usual than we would imagine.
Then there are the strikes by the US military against targets which in the past have included an inordinate number of weddings. Just to mention a few,
6th July 2008 Deh Bala Afghanistan. 47 dead.
December 2013. Yeman 14 dead (unmanned drone)
3rd November 2006 Wech Baghtu Afghanistan 37 Civilians killed
It has been claimed that at least eight wedding parties have been bombed by the Americans since 2001
Why is a local Tameside blog covering such weighty international issues? Well one reason is that history tells us that international events have a nasty habit of affecting local matters. In June 1914 my Grandfather living in Ashton probably took no notice of the murder of a foreign nobleman in a place he had never heard of. Twelve months later he was on his way, with hundreds of other Ashtonians, to the trenches in Flanders.
The outside world is there and we ignore it at our peril
18 comments:
Wise words TC, very wise words.
Company beats British rivals Go-Ahead, National Express and Arriva to £1.4bn Crossrail contract
And to think we once administered an empire which spanned the globe.
Jesus wept Alf, I recognize all the words you posted, but you seem to have just thrown them at the screen in a random order,
For what it is worth, every one employed by Her Majesty will have an understanding of the law of armed conflict, and also an understanding of how to post comments on a 'blog' without appearing deficient of a couple of braincells.
They condition our soldiers not to question. Most armies do it to an extent but the British army is a particular fan of treating other ranks like simpletons.
The training makes it such that thought barely comes into it and following orders is instinctive and automatic.
On top of that you have the press convincing people that all soldiers are heroes simply for putting the uniform on and taking up a rifle.
With both of those factors in place you have a proud, unquestioning military force.
I imagine many question what they are doing from time to time but the world they inhabit is so that at most it amounts to dissillusionment with being a soldier and them dropping out.
Speaking about soldiers in recent conflicts that I've met anyway.
Unfortunately the amount seeking adventure seem to outnumber those that believe they are fighting for Britain. Essentially the British army, once a tool of wall street, before that a tool of the city of london (the financial centre that is) is essentially a mercenary force that supplements the much larger US military and aids it in it's wars of compliance across the globe.
Plenty of good lads who have gone in and come out of the British Army though and I imagine one day they will form a large amount of the leadership of a revolution against the oligarchy in Westminster.
Alf Garnett @12:13
Well said Alf. I considered editing the postings (yours and his) but decided to let you speak for yourself, as I know you can if we have patience.
How many hours passed from when the plane was shot down to when Israel began their invasion of the Gaza Strip?
Good on you Alf. Don't let the sideline snipers take you down with their mocking comments.
Why was a plane flying at 33,000 ft anywhere near a warzone known to have BUK missiles that can take out planes up to 72,000 ft and which have a 95% success rate. A Ukrainian military plane was shot down at 21,000 ft only a few days earlier. The hand held launchers widely available in the area are effective up to 31,000 ft, only 2000 ft lower than flight MH17.
That airspace was authorised as safe, it wasn't. Either that or an error was made by person or persons unknown.
TC,
You should ban 'Alf' from your blog because he really does drag it down with his pathetic illiterate rants. He writes and behaves like a demented child.
@Pear Tree Drive
OK. Alf is a little enthusiastic, but "banning"? Sorry that is not in my methodology. Some opinions or views may be toned down or not published (usually for legal reasons) but banning a person per se I leave to others.
And once you start banning those with a disability because they don't reach your standards then that is a very slippery slope. Who next? Tonydj for his Parkinson's?
Israeli military kill 500 (a large proportion of them civilians) in Gaza. The western media massively plays it down but has saturation coverage of the ACCIDENTAL shooting down of an airliner which killed 290.
Even US Secretary of State John Kerry, in an off guard moment between TV interviews but caught on microphone, said sarcastically about Israel's Gaza offensive - "It's a hell of a pinpoint operation."
Notice how quick the diversitoids are to resort to violence even though they claim to abhor it.
Jihadist militants have taken over a monastery in northern Iraq, one of the country's best-known Christian landmarks, and expelled its resident monks, a cleric and residents said Monday.
Islamic State (IS) fighters stormed Mar (Saint) Behnam, a fourth-century monastery run by the Syriac Catholic church near the predominantly Christian town of Qaraqosh, on Sunday, the sources said.
"You have no place here anymore, you have to leave immediately," a member of the Syriac clergy quoted the Sunni militants as telling the monastery's residents.
He said the monks pleaded to be allowed to save some of the monastery's relics but the fighters refused and ordered them to leave on foot with nothing but their clothes.
The incident was the latest move by the Islamic State, which in June declared a "caliphate" straddling large swathes of northern Iraq and Syria, to threaten a Christian presence in the region spanning close to two millennia.
Over the weekend, hundreds of families fled Mosul, a once-cosmopolitan city which is the country's second largest and lies around 15 kilometres (10 miles) northwest of Mar Behnam.
They abandoned homes and belongings after IS fighters running the city issued an ultimatum for Christians to convert, pay a special tax, leave or face the sword.
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