The invitation
Posted on
October 12, 2019 by
Chris Cairns
The world's most-read Scottish politics website
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A tall tale
Wee Books
Video
Probably a robbery
Transphobia
Trump: the great enabler. Pretty sure that bombed, burnt-out building would be a good place for a tacky hotel, mind.
What talent – hits the nail on the head every time. I do truly think that Trump is insane and very dangerous in his great wisdom. What a gift you have Chris – thank you for sharing it with us.
FFS, is there anything Trump is NOT responsible for?
Well done Chris, got it in one again.
Genius Chris!
Two Turkey’s Voting for Crisis.
Rest assured Bojo will be willing to to make us the stuffing in all this!
“Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!”
Belter, Chris.
Trump doing his best to pull US troops out of the middle east and he’s the Devil. Anyone who thought Turkey wouldnt exploit the opportunity needs to read a history book that goes back further than Trumps reign.
When the MSM drive this issue, I become a little cynical.
What the hell does the turk/kurd problem have to do with us?
Although if Obama or Cliton was in office, you can be assured that the next stage of the constant war would have begun by now……UK and US soldiers coming back in body bags over an oil pipe line……really?? is that what people want?
Of course, the UK.gov has condemned this betrayal?
It’s all to do with money, the whole world is ruled buy it that’s why the earth is heading towards implosion, lots of people will like Donald Trump because he keeps the pot boiling. Scotland need to do things in a different way.
Thank goodness Hilary didn’t win in 2016 – the dead would be in the millions by now.
And Obama is far more to blame for the suffering in Syria than Trump – but that doesn’t fit into the cosy narrative does it?
And NATO? Quo vadis? To coin a phrase.
The Kurds got a bum deal when the region was carved up after WWI. They have the misfortune to live in a very volatile area and be spread across umpteen manufactured ‘countries’.
So, Trump professes to be disengaging. Aye right, just when he deploys 14000 service personnel to the Gulf with plans to send 140,000 if necessary to ‘contain’ Iran.
In this ‘game’ motives are never wholesome.
Nailed it again Chris.
Brilliant imagery.
Trump has let the kurds out to dry, all he had to do was keep a few US advisors in country and 100,000 plus innocent folk would not be fleeing for their lives. The p.a. costs of keeping these “Advisors” in country would not be much more than the cost of putting up transitting US Aircrew in. Trump hotels for a year. He has abandoned our Kurdish Allies and the blood of every person killed or injured is on his head. Whether Obama or Clinton would have done anything different does not matter, thats hypothetical , what is happening now is real.
The EU should be taking tough action on Turkey and immediately suspend the Customs arrangement with Turkey until they withdraw their troops.
It has to be said that the good old Brits are directly responsible for the historical and ongoing persecution of the Kurds.
link to en.m.wikipedia.org
I think it was Cicero who said “During wars, the !aw is silent” It has expanded these days to the world being silent
Shameful.
This action again shows the man Trump is.
A real nasty piece of work.
He is the man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
With Bojo controlling Scotland we are heading for a special association with the US, just like the Kurds.
Raping Scotland’s resources via a Bojo will not tug tug on Trump’s heart strings if he can see his old
Kurd allies killed and 100’s thousands displaced.
Adding morality, justice and humanity together unfortunately don’t add up to a $Dollar so they don’t come into the US equation.
Wings is about a Wings Party and Turkey / Kurds.
Grousebeater is about Iceland, SUVs and films.
Scotgoespop is about Wings.
CraigMurray is about the american non-diplomat. Others have no recent articles.
(WeeGingerDug has a dugcast).
All on the eve of the SNP conference and nineteen days to Scotland’s exit from the EU and Great British power grab.
It’s like even the bloggers are fed up trying to stir life into the SNP corpse when it comes to defending Scotland’s sovereignty and her struggle for democratic independence from British Imperialism.
Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.
Trump’s dismissal of the Kurd’s worth by asking where were they on D Day has to be one of his worst from a considerable list of nonsense.
The Kurd’s have had a bum deal since the fall of the empires in 1919. 25 million people who live in a contiguous location carved up and placed under the rule of unsympathetic States. Why anyone would think that would not be a recipe for unrest is a mystery. Each time it looks like the Kurds have self determination in their grasp, be it Iraq, Syria or wherever, the prize is snatched from their hands. Real Politik always trumps the moral imperative.
The Kurds might have been better throwing their lot in with the Russians. The Russians might have stuck by them, they have certainly stuck by Assad.
I don’t think Trump likes Erdogan, his clumsy approach has gifted Erdogan an opportunity. Trump can bear a grudge. Something Erdogan may ponder upon.
US spending $622Billion on redundant weaponry. A third of the world spend. Enough to feed the world and stop starvation. Trump was against the Iraq War. Called it ‘stupid’, at the time. The US people elected him to stop illegal intervention, policing the world. They were sick of it. No wonder.
The EU/UN should step in to stop the slaughter. UK/US/France should contribute to the reconstruction needed in the Middle East. After bombing it to bits, causing the migration crisis. They should make contribution to the EU (countries) trying to deal with the mess. The Westminster sycophants still running away from their responsibilities to contribute to the cost of the mess. They made it.
link to s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com
Here’s the SNP conference agenda. Read it and weep (or laugh), whichever works for you.
I am prepared to accept that Trump is dangerous and nuts.
I am also prepared to accept he may turn out to be one of the greatest US Presidents ever.
I will base that decision on evidence. Anyone who has already made up their mind, I think, is a bloody fool.
It’s all spin and lies so far, from both sides.
Brilliant. Tragic
Ethnic cleansing by any measure and a gift to ISIS.
The world gets crazier by the day.
Mr Scott, one to beam up…
I had the good fortune to live and work in Erbil the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq and while there met (and drank with ?) members of the Kurdish armed forces called the Peshmerga which roughly translates as those willing to die. They are a fiercely proud people and it was the Peshmerga who halted the advance of ISIS during their original invasion of Iraq, the Iraq army being so disorganized as to be pretty ineffective.
The Kurdish military is very egalitarian and the Peshmerga do not discriminate on gender, I saw tank crews entirely female and by Christ you would not want to mess with them.
The way the US and Britain among others have treated these people is simply disgusting. Churchill ordered them to be gassed way back when same as Saddam Husain did.
Their fervent wish is to have their own independent nation which is what scares the Turkish government so much. But they are geographically horribly divided with some living in Iran, some in Turkey, Syria and so on.
This cartoon strikes at my heart. To think that some of the men and women who I used to share time with could likely be dying now abandoned by those who depended on them not so long ago.
The Kurds were urged by George Bush to rise against Saddam Hussein. The Americans abandoned them as soon as they withdrew from Iraq and the Kurds were brutally crushed.
The Kurds were urged by George Bush Junior to rise again against Saddam Hussein and Kurdistan became a haven of tolerance compared to all their neighbours.
They were the most effective fighters against the crazy religious zealots of Isis and it is unlikely that Isis would have been defeated without the Kurdish forces, who lost thousands of soldiers in the process.
Now, at a whim of a childish, petulant man, American forces are pulled out and the Kurds are abandoned again.
Who can trust the Americans?
@Colin Alexander
I am not sure what your intentions are; Though it certainly looks like the SNP manifesto is deliberately intending to divest itself from the lunatic fringe.
We have a massive problem in the West, bigger than Johnson and Farage, bigger than Trump. We have a systemic failure in our society, a fatal defect if you will, because we have a family of respective Establishments which are clones of one another, and dangerously susceptible to be being manipulated by the unscrupulous. We have characters like Dominic Cummings and Steve Bannon whom we all know are delivering a toxin intravenously into our society, and despite knowing this, they stroll the planet as free men, revered movers and shakers of influence. Aye, let’s call them priests.
We have been sold “democracy” as the peaceful enlightenment which will bring about a better world, but the truth of it is, Democracy and it’s armies of pious acolytes is just a reinvention of the medieval religion and Church spawning the bloodthirsty Crusades of the 11th to 13th Centuries.
The medieval faith in God which absolved the ‘faithful’ from the wanton slaughter of countless innocents and destruction of profound and enlightened ideologies is the same evil which sees the West spending billions on spectacular weapons to reign down retribution on a lesser, weaker enemy. An enemy vilified as a monstrous and dangerous obscenity because it was driven insane and provoked by sheer desperation because it is under constant unceasing attack from the godlike supremacy and fickle duplicity of it’s destroyer. It attacks us in the only way it physically can. If they were strong and we were weak, we’d be doing the very same things as they are.
Don’t get me wrong, that’s not excusing the butchery of the head chopping murderers, but is it treacherous thought crime just to contemplate he possibility that perhaps they were driven to become this unhinged ‘Nemesis’? What other protest can they make to stop us exterminating their culture, manipulating their economic poverty, and maiming their children?
In medieval times we had churches and cathedrals everywhere, spreading the word, rewarding the faithful, and of course the other side of the coin; the merciless degradation and ruthless dispatch of any troublemaking heretics. We had good and we had evil to keep things nice and binary.
In the 21st Century we have the TV and internet media doing the same job as the 13th Century clergy in their cathedrals, sowing the seeds of hate and dispensing the anaesthesia of mind control into the masses, while siphoning the wealth of the many into the pockets of the few.
We are the monster. We are the hydra which grows two heads to replace the one we lose.
We are now destroying our planet, at a pace that is about to snowball out of control, and think electric cars and a bag for life will save us. There are several billion too many of us already. The world is suffering a plague of humans which has proliferated to such an out of control extent it empties the oceans, bring desertification to wild habitat, poisons the air we breath, and corrodes the atmosphere which blesses us all with the privilege of life. We’re not a global population, we’re a global scale infestation.
There is ‘something’ on it’s way to level us. Perhaps a great starvation on a burned out desert of a planet, because we have developed some resilience and skill defeating pestilence and disease. It’s creating things, sustaining things and keeping them healthy where we struggle, and that frailty is already impacting on our food supply. It might yet be the death of us.
We’ll survive any catastrophe, probably, and come again, like the plague of locusts we are, because it’s to be hoped nature will forgive us, and we’ll all believe in a divine mercy that delivers us, and the whole shitcycle will begin again.
Too bleak for you? I apologise.
We NEED Scottish Independence because the UK is the ally which the USA uses to assuage it’s guilt about it’s bloodthirsty crusade to crush the Middle East and purge itself of guilt the way a bully always needs a cheerleader. Traditionally, and like it or not, the UK is to the USA what Scotland for a long time has been to the British Establishment. A murderous intent can’t be that murderous if you can persuade an accomplice to go along with it. It is time Scotland began saying no, not anymore, not in my name.
I want to spend what is left of my time here trying to make the world a better place. Maybe it is hopeless and forlorn, but maybe it is giving the generations a chance to wise up faster than we did.
We NEED Scottish Independence to take the “British” bully out the game. The English bully by itself is much less dangerous. It’s the bully who has lost it’s accomplice…
But suddenly Scotland wants to save Britain from itself, and worse still, we must forfeit law and sovereignty, and trust democracy to do it… Oh fuck. Anybody else hear an alarm bell ringing? They’ve got to us, and we don’t even see it.
Breeks
drinking during the day does not agree with you.
Armageddon my arse.
Ahundredthidiot
You actually believe governments call the shots?
Quaint!
Capital is in control. Same as it ever was.
This guy Bamford looking to buy bankrupt Wright buses
Is from the family who own JCB, who have made over £10 million
In donations to the Tory party, gave £10k to Boris for one speech and £60k
Per annum to firmer Brexit Secretary David Davis, is like the firmer Bus owner
A rampant Brexit supporter.
I predict that with the EU gone there will be government subsidies, there will be fewer
Workers rights there, there will be major UK bus orders made with very lucrative profit margins,
The donations to the Tory Party will grow exponentially, a Knighthood will be given.
Isn’t it nice to see tax payers money going to families struggling to get by with only £3,600,000,000
in the Bank?
Breeks
I normally scroll past gargantuan posts but I took the time to read yours.
Glad I did because it pretty much concurs with my own world view.
Bob mack @ 10:28 am
“During war, the law is silent”
Cicero also said:
“The sinews of war are infinite money”
An horrendous development, Chris. Eastern Europe erupts into war led by a Turkish demagogue using NATO troops, while the nations of Europe try to deal with the rise of fascism. All too familiar. Sigh.
Your essential weekend reading:
Controlling Scotland: link to wp.me
‘Joker’ – a review: link to wp.me
I find it hard to believe that Brits continue to prop up the disgusting Turkish regime by going there on holiday.
This is the Turkey which, according to #BetterTogether in 2014, would be ahead of Scotland in the so-called queue too join the EU.
I kinda see it more as the co-operation of the powerful to make everybody turn round and look away from what they’re really doing
Almost every time the powerful want to do something to their own country they create the threat of a war with another country, and everybody looks
Forget what’s happening here, look over there, it’s worse, it’s worse I tell you
Now what was I doing before the population noticed I was F…..g them over Hmm
From the SNP agenda it’s impossible to tell that the primary aim of the SNP, is independence (so I’m told).
When will the penny drop for the faithful sheep: the SNP under Nicola Sturgeon are primarily a party of colonial devolution administration for the British Empire.
Indyref is a sop, a shiny set of beads, for the believers in Scottish sovereignty, Scottish independence; for the gullible faithful who still believe the SNP will “LEAD” them to Scottish independence.
defo says:
12 October, 2019 at 11:40 am
Ahundredthidiot
“You actually believe governments call the shots?
Quaint!”
He needs therapy.
I prescribe strapping him to a chair, propping his eyelids open with matchsticks and making him watch Robocop, Rollerball and Soylent Green on a continuous loop.
Defo @11:40
No, I dont believe governments call the shots…….maybe that is why Trump gets such a hard time.
Colin Alexander says:
“…gullible faithful who still believe the SNP will “LEAD” them to Scottish independence”
And they WILL – so long as the true believers keep prodding the time-clock stamping political careerists in the arse with sharp sticks.
Closure of the `Nike Oregon Project`,
this was the American sports wear company who invested millions in the training methods of Alberto Salazar,
Nike doesn`t like sponsoring losers,
On October 1, 2019, the USADA banned Alberto Salazar for 4 years due to allegations he,
“trafficked testosterone, infused a prohibited amount of L-carnitine and tried to tamper with doping controls.”
In February 2011,Mo Farah announced that he would be relocating to Portland, Oregon to work with new coach Alberto Salazar,
At the London 2012 Olympics, on 4 August, Farah won the 10,000 m gold in a time of 27:30.42. This was Great Britain’s first Olympic gold medal in the 10,000 m, his training partner, Galen Rupp of the United States, took second place.
At the time both runners were a part of the Nike Oregon Project coached by Alberto Salazar.
British values.
See – It worked.
He now knows that it is OCP who are the ringmasters.
@ Colin Alexander
I think it’s always worth remembering that the SNP is a liberal-democratic Party operating within a liberal-democratic orthodoxy, despite what MSM might argue. In their heart-of-hearts the membership know this and that they’ll never be called-to-the-barricades.
Ah weel, a picture is worth a thousand words right enough.
As for Scotland. “International recognition, S30, *sob*sob”
Forget about “International recognition” as any driver of policy. No-one cares in relation to Scotland. “They’ll” get around to it and slot it in as next order of business, if we ever manage to stand on our own feet.
Or rather, its a very simple concept: If “they” don’t care, its not important and therefore no bar to ‘recognition’ if we ever take our own Independence.
If “they” do care, they will already be interfering to achieve the recognised outcome they care about. *Cough.
Never beg alliances. The Auld Alliance as an example, was always bullshit. It involved Scotland throwing itself at England and/or lend sojies to France anytime it was beset by English forces – and anytime Scotland was beset by England; France would promise they’d get right on helping Scotland out similarly, eventually, possibly, when the time was right, if it was deemed propitious, after the next glass of wine, maybe. That’s where being desperately and continuously beset gets you – begging alliance and hoping for support and being used.
The world owes the Syrian Kurds much better for their fight against Daesh/Isis. When they were putting to rout everybody else only the Syrian Kurds stood firm against them. It was they who alerted us to the plight of the Yazidis and who gave those who escaped sanctuary.
With the fall of Daesh/isis it is the Kurds who have coralled the fighters, male as well as female, patiently waiting for the rest of the world to sort out what to do with them. They could have passed them on into Turkey wreaking havoc there. But does Erdogan care? Is he grateful? No.
To too many Turks frustrating any move to autonomy by the Kurds wherever they may be has to be squashed and squashed hard.
This is just another betrayal of promises the great powers gave the Kurds which have been broken. In the aftermath of WWI when they came together to draw lines in the sand and create Iraq, Dismember Syria to create Lebanon (the French possession) etc. The Kurds were to have Kurdistan but that promise evaporated. Much as the promises Lawrence gave the Arabs were not lived up to.
These failures are impacting the world now just as the unjust Treaty of Versaiiles laid the foundations to the new rise of Germany seeking retribution under the Nazis who exploited nationalist objection to the strictures.
Trump doesn’t care about all this, he’s an American Isolationist in the old mould. He would have opposed the entry of the US into both World Wars.
Still it could have been worse. Clinton would have provoked war with Iran on flimsy pretexts or let the Israelies off their leash. Trump has resisted the hawks in his administration, Clinton would not. Yes the brinkmanship over Iran is stupid and irritating but it’s better than a hot war.
Sharny dubs, when you were among g the Kurds were their any with red Hair? (gingers)
Years ago reading about the RAF in the twenties bombing the Iraqi tribes people ( who i think were probably Kurds) the good old UK kept the revolting savages down by terrorism, bombing their villages. One story I read was that if an aircraft was shot down or suffered engine failure then the pilots were castrated unless they had red hair and then they were treated like gods and put in the Hareem!
‘Closure of the `Nike Oregon Project`,
Smelled a rat at the time with Farah’s meteoric rise to dominance.
Smelled a similar rat with team Sky and the rise of the ‘asthmatic’ british cyclists Wiggins,Froome and co.
Always people online complaining that they receive loads of LibDem literature through the post (unexplained how they pay for this) but rarely any SNP literature. From my experience it is because few if any people in a branch want to volunteer to deliver these leaflets, they see themselves as above such drudgery. As an SNP branch has to pay for its own literature and delivery then there is little chance of them having the cash to pay for delivery.
I’m also guilty of this but I put this down to my age and not being in the best of health for walking the streets in winter, Cambuslang is also a bit hilly in places.
Damn fine cartoon, Chris. One of your best, and necessary, even if not on the subject most dear to our hearts.
Though such geopolitical angst does tend to bring out the usual shower of crackpots amid the good sense.
As for that subject close to our hearts, it looks like BoJo, after all the recent legal encouragement, is going to squeak Brexit by the end of the month after all, to be followed no doubt in fairly short order by a triumphalist UKGE. And maybe we’ll have to wait for near a whole year more before even a faint chance of extracting ourselves from this
[censored]international humiliation. Which will be all too late. Bus missed and a very long walk home in the rain.Unless something very unexpected turns up at the SNP conference in the next few days, so much for that promise to have a choice while it still matters.
Meh. I think I’ll take the rest of the day off and have a sit in the sunshine while it lasts.
That raised Trumped-up pout. Absolutely bang on.
me @ 14:26,
Although I may have the luxury of feeling a bit fed up with the world right now, it’s not anything like a miniscule fraction of what the Syrian Kurds are having to endure right now. My greatest sympathy goes out to them.
@Robert J. Sutherland
It looks like the *deal* is a throw Scotland under the wheels of a British tank deal while the Norn Irish get the best of all worlds
The SNP won’t vote for that which means the Lib Dems and some Labour likely will creating the impression that the SNP are the devils offspring if it fails to pass
That’s if the EU go along with it in the first place
The EUs problem with it seems to be the British want to allow the N Irish parliament a veto and given that the EU suspect it’s a back door way for the Brits to later engineer the DUP into total control and implement that veto at the earliest opportunity they want no part of that
I guess in a few days we’ll see who blinks first or who throws the tantrum
Who would be a Kurd?
Fighting all sides to keep your wee bit for as long as you can remember. Getting your own state then having it taken away. Stepping up when the big boys come asking for help. Being dropped when it suits to then be at the mercy of despots who see real estate as a greater asset than human life.
And where will Johnston be in all this?
galamcennalath @ 09:35,
Aye, and what does draft-dodger Trump think the Saudis did for America in Normandy 1944, eh..?
Dr Jim @ 14:40,
Well yes, the prospect of another round of HoC shenanigans is still to be savoured, I suppose. The EU will surely not accept an ongoing DUP veto, though the notion of a proxy “neverendum” NI border poll can’t be a happy prospect for the Unionists there either.
It’s richly ironic that the UKGov, by losing its majority thanks to its walkout rebels, has thereby rendered the DUP redundant! But as you say, there may well be more than enough Labour numpties to make up the difference.
We shall just have to hang on a wee while longer and see, I suppose.
Good grief, did Mad Max escape the thunderdome?
Oh Chris
Bon Dias Troops.
Mr Cairns, Genius.
You and Latuff are the greatest political cartoonists on the planet.
Nice One.
Let’s not also forget the plight of the Assyrian Christians.
@Colin Alexander
I tried to read te conference agenda on your link but only got this error message:
“This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.
AccessDeniedAccess Denied29A50F8D9EA620F1hC1TpLpXL/HT4TamvB9rvpmnCJqt6lx16S68mKO1hkWtXd13JmQ996/aW5+JeESKYURBB93t7Dw=”Says it all. A really great one this week.
“Silverdarling says@ 0244 pm “ Who would be a Kurd ( Scot)?
Fighting all sides to keep your we bit ( hill & glen ?)
Getting your own state and having it taken away ( 1707 “ union”?)
Stepping up when the Big boys come asking for help ( world wars 1 & 2?)
Being dropped when it suits ( Brexit??)to then be at the mercy of despots who see real estate as a greater asset than human life
People who feel strongly aboit the Kurdish struggle are invited to bag a flight, grab a train, commandere a car and go fucking fight for them.
or maybe it’ll be McDonalds tonight….
@Lenny Hartley.
The Kurds sometime dye their hair with henna (mostly the older more traditional ones) but if memory serves there were a scattering of red heads going about.
Tremendous turnout on Saturday at Buchanan Steps, Glasgow, the Kurdish Community put up some very passionate speakers.
However I was very touched by one quiet woman on the platform as she spoke about her relatives trapped in the war zone but she also spoke of their Turkish friends in that area also.
It is not about the ordinary Turkish People it is about Erdogan and the greed of the ruling classes!
ERDOGAN TERRORIST! ERDOGAN TERRORIST! ERDOGAN TERRORIST!
The idiot@6.28pm
You truly are an idiot.