Cultivating terror 63
Posted on
December 05, 2015 by
Chris Cairns
Order “Welcome To Cairnstoon”, Chris’ compilation of Wings cartoons and more, here.
Archive for the ‘world’
Seventeen days later 411
Posted on
December 03, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This is Labour’s shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn, quoted in the Independent On Sunday on the 15th of November, just two and a half weeks ago.
That’s interesting, isn’t it?
Britain goes to war 339
Posted on
December 02, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Tonight we watched as the conclusion of a “debate” in the UK Parliament saw the “opposition”, almost unprecedentedly, sum up the same case as the government, to roof-raising cheers and applause (which is now apparently permitted again) from the Conservative benches for a Labour shadow minister.
We were rather put in mind of a famous Neil Kinnock speech from 1985.
Doing something 193
Posted on
December 02, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Alex Salmond in the Syria debate with the non-pacifist case against bombing.
(Features brief cameo appearance from Alberto Costa MP, noted twat.)
The silence of the bams 163
Posted on
December 02, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
It’s never usually terribly difficult to get a Scottish Labour MSP to express a view on anything. It’s hard to open a newspaper without being forced to hear Jackie Baillie or James Kelly’s opinion on something or other.
(Admittedly it’s generally the SNP, and the opinion is invariably that they’re bad and whatever they do is wrong – but still, they’re not shy about coming forward with it.)
So when Neil Findlay attacked the SNP for all having the same view on bombing Syria last night (about which he was inexplicably furious, even though that view was exactly the same as his own opinion), we thought it’d be easy enough to find out how many of his MSP colleagues were on the respective sides of the debate.
It turned out that we were wrong.
Poking the bear 328
Posted on
November 28, 2015 by
Chris Cairns
Order “Welcome To Cairnstoon”, Chris’ compilation of Wings cartoons and more, here.
Down memory lane 347
Posted on
November 24, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Ah, the good old days.
Obviously, actually including the exact phrases “within 45 minutes” and “weapons of mass destruction” might have been a little bit too near the knuckle, but the message comes across just the same: “Here we go again.”
What happens next 189
Posted on
November 22, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We don’t often bring you footage of an Armed Forces Committee session in the US Senate, readers, but this spellbinding six minutes of questioning from a Republican senator on the subject of military action against ISIS doesn’t miss and hit the wall.
(We should note that Sen. Graham is a hawk who wants ISIS bombed back to the Stone Age. But even he can see the insane, irrational nature of the action currently being proposed, which would leave Syria a shattered mess but firmly in the hands of a murderous Russian-backed dictator conducting a ruinous, destabilising civil war.)
A small revision of history 184
Posted on
November 21, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This is John Humphreys on the Today programme on Radio 4 earlier this week:
(Today, BBC Radio 4, 18 November 2015)
.
And there’s only one small thing wrong with that.
The enemy amid us 47
Posted on
November 21, 2015 by
Chris Cairns
Order “Welcome To Cairnstoon”, Chris’ compilation of Wings cartoons and more, here.
Fighting in the War Room 228
Posted on
November 09, 2015 by
Lindsay Bruce
Last Friday’s article on the limitations of GERS caused quite a stir among the stout defenders of the Union, as social-media users may have noticed over the weekend.
Amidst the wildly-flailing fury-storm of shouty, abusive responses which pathologically evaded addressing the article’s point, the one vaguely factual argument raised was the notion that an independent Scotland wouldn’t be able to make significant savings on its current (notional) £3bn defence budget because NATO supposedly requires all member states to spend 2% of their GDP on defence.
So we thought we’d see if it was true.
A myth of independence 210
Posted on
November 02, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The video clip below is from Russia Today, which is in no way an impartial news outlet. However, it’s dangerous and unwise to reflexively dismiss any message purely because of the medium. Heck, even the Daily Mail tells the truth sometimes.
That’s because the messenger in this case is Major General Patrick Cordingley DSO, a highly distinguished British Army veteran commander who led the invasion of Iraq in the first Gulf War in 1991, and who before the second one in 2003 (by which time he’d retired) had a very perceptive view of both the battle and the likely aftermath.
When we join the clip he’s discussing the USA.
His views are expert and worth listening to. (The full interview is here.) Readers can, as ever, decide for themselves whether to believe him or David Cameron.
