Aaand, In Other News...

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Hatredsheart
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Re: Aaand, In Other News...

Post by Hatredsheart » Mon Aug 09, 2021 8:50 pm

Snowy wrote:
Sat Jul 31, 2021 11:58 am
Sly Boots wrote:
Sat Jul 31, 2021 10:34 am
Raid wrote:
Sat Jul 31, 2021 10:29 am
It's good to hear. Odenkirk is genuinely one of my favourite actors even if I only know him from a single character.
Definitely try to catch Nobody, good film.

I second this recommendation
Thoroughly enjoyed it, not surprised he had a cardiac event after some of his antics in that...
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Wrathbone
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Re: Aaand, In Other News...

Post by Wrathbone » Wed Aug 11, 2021 7:28 am

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58167469

Anyone reckon anything will come of this now a lawsuit has been filed, or will he ride it out by aloofly eating pizza and not sweating?

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Raid
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Re: Aaand, In Other News...

Post by Raid » Wed Aug 11, 2021 7:59 am

My default stance these days is that rich or powerful people will simply never be properly held accountable for their actions. Money almost always buys you a way out of either prosecution or punishment.

On this case in particular, I just can't see our government allowing it. Prosecuting Prince Andrew contributes to a conversation on the validity and value of the Royal Family, and quite frankly I don't think they want to give any more ammunition to those wanting to abolish it.

I really, really want to be wrong about this, but I am just so jaded when it comes to this stuff.

Rossell
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Re: Aaand, In Other News...

Post by Rossell » Thu Aug 12, 2021 8:34 pm

Do we have any forumites in and around Plymouth? Reports of a mass shooting there.

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Re: Aaand, In Other News...

Post by Hatredsheart » Thu Aug 12, 2021 9:30 pm

Rossell wrote:
Thu Aug 12, 2021 8:34 pm
Do we have any forumites in and around Plymouth? Reports of a mass shooting there.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-58195419
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Re: Aaand, In Other News...

Post by Rusty » Fri Aug 13, 2021 6:28 am

Seems to be 1 family and the gunman. All dead. 6 in total including a young un.
No more details are around yet.
-- To be completed at some point --

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Re: Aaand, In Other News...

Post by Animalmother » Mon Aug 16, 2021 6:56 pm

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/ ... ws-updates
Well that went to shit much quicker than anyone could have imagined. Fucking scrambles.

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Mantis
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Re: Aaand, In Other News...

Post by Mantis » Mon Aug 16, 2021 7:42 pm

The clips of people clinging to the sides of military aircraft as they take off and seeing the bodies plummet to earth from a pretty significant height are very bleak.

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Re: Aaand, In Other News...

Post by Raid » Mon Aug 16, 2021 8:02 pm

You know how scared people are when they're literally clinging to the outsides of planes as they take off in an effort to escape.

State-run TV stations are still broadcasting, but it's been noted that every single presenter is now male. Girls are currently being allowed to go to school, but I've seen suggestions that this is just to try and sway international observers and will eventually stop. Pre-US invasion, girls over the age of 10 were forbidden from going to school. In the previous Taliban rule, public executions were commonplace, along with amputations for thieves, you know, the thing they joked about in Disney's Aladdin because that couldn't possibly be true today. There are reports that the bodyguards for prominent female figures have been murdered.

The Taliban is barely a step beyond barbarism. I would not be particularly surprised if military action is taken in an effort to stop them.

Edit: Huh, guess I was wrong. Biden was pretty defiant on the subject, vowing not to endanger more American lives in defence of a country that refused to defend itself with the military the US paid for.

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Re: Aaand, In Other News...

Post by Wrathbone » Mon Aug 16, 2021 10:01 pm

Raid wrote:
Mon Aug 16, 2021 8:02 pm
The Taliban is barely a step beyond barbarism. I would not be particularly surprised if military action is taken in an effort to stop them.
I don’t see what they could realistically achieve with another invasion. If there is one lesson proven by the wars in Afghanistan (including the Soviet war in the 80s), Iraq and Vietnam it’s that the mightiest military force in the world cannot defeat a guerrilla enemy. At best they can limit them to sporadic attacks and insurgency, as has been the case in Afghanistan for 20 years, but the Taliban are nothing if not patient as they just waited for the US to give up. I don’t know what the US would do differently if they went in again.

I could see the use of a permanent international peacekeeping force to hold back the Taliban, although let’s not kid ourselves - this war was never about humanitarianism. It started out as a show of retaliatory force, primarily for political purposes, and ended up as a stalemate which conveniently made a fortune for those backing certain military manufacturers and contractors. I expect it put a few people in public office too.

The tragic reality of Afghanistan is that politicians will wring their hands and tut loudly at the unfolding nightmare until the horrors become routine and the media drifts away from it. Hey, I wonder how Syria’s getting along now - I bet that all panned out fine once we stopped getting updates. :?

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Re: Aaand, In Other News...

Post by Hatredsheart » Mon Aug 16, 2021 10:43 pm

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Re: Aaand, In Other News...

Post by Mantis » Mon Aug 16, 2021 11:17 pm

Regardless of how much of the reason we got there in the first place can be put down to imperialistic flexing, the handling of the withdrawal has been utterly shameful. Trying to force our political culture on them off the back of an invasion was always a complex uphill struggle and there was never going to be an easy option, but they at least made inroads on certain areas and the Western nations are literally washing their hands of the whole thing now. American political pundits are trying to sell the Afghan government and military capitulation as a sign that the people just want the Taliban. Nothing to feel ashamed about as it's a natural outcome of the western forces leaving and there wasn't much we could do about it, and yet cities are gridlocked and people are storming the airport en masse trying to flee. Quite clearly a lot of them do not support the Taliban insurrection.

What a testament to our global peace keeping, democracy loving, terrorist hunting freedom fighting force being buddied up to America, leaving desperate people in its wake after our utterly misguided attempt at nation building. It's all so shameful and sad.

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Re: Aaand, In Other News...

Post by Raid » Tue Aug 17, 2021 7:19 am

Wrathbone wrote:
Mon Aug 16, 2021 10:01 pm
Raid wrote:
Mon Aug 16, 2021 8:02 pm
The Taliban is barely a step beyond barbarism. I would not be particularly surprised if military action is taken in an effort to stop them.
I don’t see what they could realistically achieve with another invasion.
Yeah, I blame my ignorance for that suggestion. Biden made some valid points, frankly, he's not willing to risk more lives in a seemingly futile intervention. They spent 20 years trying to prepare Afghanistan for the US withdrawal, and it's all gone to hell again within three or four months. Western-style Nation Building just doesn't seem possible.

What I don't understand is that Afghanistan had a reasonably well supplied army of 300,000 personnel; what were they doing these last few months? I saw a report yesterday that the Taliban has already started selling off their equipment. The Afghani president met with Biden a few months ago and he was told to negotiate, but it seems he hasn't, and there's been a minimum of actual action taken to stop the advance. He was seemingly seen fleeing Kabul with "a car full of money", so is this just an example of a terrible, corrupt leader?

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Re: Aaand, In Other News...

Post by Wrathbone » Tue Aug 17, 2021 8:10 am

There are a tonne of questions around the exit that need answering. I take Biden's point, and it's worth remembering that the exit deal was what Trump negotiated with the Taliban (I'm not sure how much flexibility Biden had with it), but his line of "how many more American lives is it worth?" really doesn't sit well with me. How many more Afghan lives is it worth, Joe? Are American lives worth more than Afghan lives? I suspect the counter-argument is that it's not America's fight, but that's bollocks given that they stormed in as the World Police and then fucked off over the horizon when they'd had enough.

But like you say, why didn't the Afghan army do anything? Could be that the Taliban are actually still powerful enough that they could have put up a fight against the stationed US / coalition forces, but they held back because the US would just deploy more forces and overwhelm them. I saw some comments from a former US soldier who did two tours in Afghanistan, and she said they knew that as soon as they left, the Taliban would immediately take over again. If that's true, it seems that Biden (and Trump, and Obama, and probably Bush) knew what was going to happen, and the act of arming and training the Afghan army was little more than a way for them to point the finger of blame after retreating.

The entire situation is a total catastrophe at every level.

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Re: Aaand, In Other News...

Post by Animalmother » Tue Aug 17, 2021 8:32 am

Apparently the Afghan army is riddled with corruption from the top down and the ordinary soldiers just weren't going to die for that. The Taliban knew this and were pretty easily able to exploit or intimidate local commanders into surrendering or retreating without firing a shot. All the Taliban has had to do is bide it's time until this inevitable day came. I assume after a few months Afghanistan will just get the odd mention here and there in the mainstream news until it disappears like Syria apparently has.

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