sun 10/11/2024

Royal Marines: Mission Afghanistan, Channel 5 | reviews, news & interviews

Royal Marines: Mission Afghanistan, Channel 5

Royal Marines: Mission Afghanistan, Channel 5

From Helmand, without love

42 Commando, Royal Marines prepare to deploy

As if by way of riposte to Birdsong’s ever-so-pensive treatment of late, last night’s Royal Marines: Mission Afghanistan brought warfare back to the 21st century with an uncompromising thump. In Episode 1: Deadly Underfoot, Chris Terrill joined Lima Company, 42 Commando, as they took over from their Marine colleagues at Toki base, in the Nad-e Ali district of Helmand.

This was in the tenth year of the war – as the greatest of narratives would have it – and the Taliban, so Terrill assured us, were “on the back foot”. There was, presumably, no pun intended.

For 50-odd minutes we followed the unit as they went about their daily business, sleeping, eating, exercising, and taking regular strolls through fields sown with improvised explosives. There was a certain amount of shouty-shouty/shooty-shooty; but it was punctuated by significant spells of sitting about and reading FHM. Or holding stupid-pants fashion-shows. Or just having one’s down-time interrupted by the camera.

If you get hit, get on the phone, if you’ve got any arms and legs left

Terrill’s obvious familiarity with the squaddies yielded good, honest results; but he seemed, at times, to mistake them for his audience (or vice versa, perhaps). His voice-overs frequently dropped into an oddly dim, Attenborough-school register – “Remember, this is Taliban country: dangerous… lawless…” – with too many blokey Mad Max references dropped in for the benefit, presumably, of itinerant Geordie Shore habitués.

This sat uncomfortably beside the (sincere) straight-talk of the soldiers: “If you get hit, get on the phone, if you’ve got any arms and legs left.” Getting hit, it soon became clear, was a question of “not if, but when”. The viewer who’d made it this far in the belief that modern soldiers are immune from the immediacy of war was quickly disabused. These guys were operating from a mud-walled farm in the middle of nowhere: “a latter-day Rourke’s Drift.”

But patchy narration and B-movie sword-and-sandal music notwithstanding, the film was crystal as to its subject: soldiers going on dangerous patrols in order to maintain sitting-duck outposts the better to protect an abandoned village. Or, in the words of the Marines’ intelligence officer: “This area, in the long run, doesn’t matter at all.”

There was no ambiguity, either, about the priorities of the Marines. Their own briefings, delivered unblinkingly under Terrill’s lens, make it clear that their focus was on killing the enemy. None of them was unaware, of course, that “everyone’s a farmer who looks the same as an insurgent”, and that this causes issues with "hearts-and-minds"; but as political complexity goes, that was about it. These guys were not here for a seminar on Clausewitz. The nearest we got to contextual commentary was the occasional close-up of a poppy. 

At the crux of the episode, the Marines went out on patrol for hours, in 50-degree heat, round “one of the most dangerous square kilometres in the world,” for the expressed purpose of getting shot at. But the Taliban won’t fight fair, they don’t come out and shoot: they just drift around on the periphery of your vision, then try to lead you into a minefield. (At one point, early on, the Marines, hamstrung by the need for legitimate "prosecution", watched a known insurgent scout walk casually out of shot because they couldn’t catch him delivering intelligence in plain sight.)

When they were finally pinned down, the Taliban responded by sending out kids in their place. The Marines’ verdict on this was as vociferous as you’d expect. The patrol decided to call it a day, but their frustration was palpable. “If they want to take us on, they should take us on. Don’t be fucking pussies about it.”

Sadly, next week’s instalment suggests the enemy were listening. 

Comments

Terrill was at his best talking to the men, at his worst talking to us. The last thing the film needed was false drama. The imminence of death permeated the whole programme so it scarcely needed mawkish signposting. Plainly it was hard finding suitable music but drum rolls reminding us - as if we had forgotten - that next minute everyone might be blown to pieces were naff. As I'm afraid were the ancient Terrill's performances on camera, intended to provide an extra frisson of excitement as we contemplated not just the Marines' possible demise but our hero's as well. His breathless reminders of the mortal danger he faced while the Marines out in front coolly got on with the job should never have made final cut. Vanity has no place in an observational film about men in great danger. The most stomach turning moment came when our hero tried to convince us that he, well back from the front of the group, was in just as much peril as its leaders. The best war reporting never feels like entertainment. This film was structured like a Roman chariot race and its unworthy dynamic was "who will die next?" It was a film about men who should no longer be there, made by a producer we should have seen far less of.

I have one thing to say about people who make comment and pass judgement on the way we do business. If you fancy getting your lazy backsides to Afghanistan and do a better job then feel free. No one can say anything other than we do an extremely demanding and dangerous job, and we do it extremely well. (serving Royal Marine)

completley agree you marines are fantastic, well done. your parents must be very proud

Doing 'an extremely demanding and dangerous job... extremely well' is, to put it bluntly, not good enough. Not for your safety and freedom as a soldier, not for the safety and freedom of your family back home and not for the safety and freedom of future generations who rely on YOU to keep the world they will inherit free from tyranny and economic, social and environmental destruction. War policy (and politics in general) is based on corrupted language in order to make insanity appear like sanity... and to make doing evil appear like doing good. In that sense not 'passing judgement' on a war is a really a euphemism for 'not thinking critically' about a war. 'Supporting the troops' is a euphemism for 'supporting the policy of war'. 'Spreading democracy' is a euphemism for 'invading and occupying a sovereign country in contravention of the Geneva Convention'. 'Enforcing a no fly zone over Libya' is a euphemism for 'carpet bombing civilians, destroying the national mint, schools, hospitals, infrastructure, recognising Al Qaida as freedom fighters in order to sell them arms and setting up a central bank under your control and eventually murdering their leader' In the same way a 'soldier's duty' (assuming we mean to protect his family and his country) is NOT to blindly follow orders but to question the fundamental reasons why he is being sent to fight and murder his fellow men (and women and children) in the first place. A soldier's first duty before even picking up a gun is to follow the war policies to their origins, such as to organisations like the CFR and the freemasons (Blair was a 33rd degree). And to follow the MONEY being used to fund the war he is being asked to fight. That typically means to the bankers and globalists who have also funded and profited from every major war of the last century. Did you know the same bankers (not least the Rothschild and Rockefeller families) funded both sides of WW2? How else do you think Germany went from economic ruin to a third reich capable of taking on all of Europe in just a few years? The funders of WW2 made a fortune ... and 50,000,000 people died for their profits. Veterans still have nightmares about the horrors of WW2 today, families are still missing grandfathers and grandmothers. Whole generations are still feeling that pain, loss and trauma 70 years on. If only more people had 'passed judgement' instead of blindly 'supporting our boys' before that little war enterprise got out of hand, eh? WW2 was as manufactured as any other war and therefore totally avoidable. (see quotes at bottom) Even Bush's grandfather Prescott Bush was exposed as a funder of Hitler. Look it up. That's how the Bush family fortune was made. Decades later Osama Bin Laden's brother also helped Bush jnr set up his first oil company Arbusto Oil. Look it up. Osama himself (AKA Tim Osman) was a CIA asset and AQ was also set up by the CIA to draw Russia into a conflict with Afghanistan. Look it up. Anyone who believes the official story of 9/11 quite frankly an idiot. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuC_4mGTs98 Hitler's 'enabling act' was justified by the false flag operation called the Riechstag Fire. Bush's 'Patriot act' was justified by the false flag operation called 9/11. The speeches given by Hitler and Bush to justify their respective acts are virtually identical - as are the authoritarian, militaristic, police state powers contained in the legislation themselves. You see, when we don't learn from history, history keeps repeating. Google 'fema camps and the NDAA'... War is how the elite make their money, increase their power, keep the population demoralised and economically enslaved by national debt and war is how they create the chaos needed to bring about their own authoritarian brand of 'order'. "Ordo Ab Chao" (order out of chaos) - 33rd degree freemasonic motto. Soldiers are trained NOT to think beyond carrying out the job at hand. Everything from drill practice to the uniforms is designed to de-humanise soldiers and stop them from thinking for themselves and get them obeying orders as a unit instead. That's mass mind control by definition. Without this training young men would (naturally) question why they are being asked to kill total strangers in some far off land. They would also refuse to do it. But military training ensures their natural human empathy and rational thinking is bypassed in the moment. But it can't be bypassed forever and it usually resurfaces as a delayed mental reaction of some kind (including PTSD, guilt, panic attacks, anger, suicide etc) when they get back home. This affects soldiers (and their families) for the rest of their lives, but it does not stop the people who fund wars from making their profits. They couldn't give a stuff about the suffering of soldiers. Chain of command from the top down is really a chain of obedience from the bottom up. If you obey orders to invade, fight and kill people but do not even know where those orders originally came from (it's certainly higher than any military rank) then you are acting irresponsibly by definition. "just doing my job and following orders" is NOT something to be proud of (study history). Confusing 'blind obedience to strangers' with 'duty to my country' is corrupted language again, a way to dupe good men into doing evil. A soldier is very different from a warrior. A warrior thinks very carefully and becomes knowledgeable before fighting which is the only way he can accept full responsibility for his actions ... a soldier is trained to not think at all and is kept largely ignorant and therefore he can't ever accept responsibility for his actions (nor is he expected to). A warrior acts according to his own heart and mind, a soldier acts according to orders passed down a hierarchy of strangers. Therefore a warrior comes away from battle (or dies in it) at ease with himself, a soldier comes away with PTSD to face a lifetime of nightmares. Do you see the difference? And the saddest part of all is that society relies on its 'tough men' to protect it from tyrants and psychopaths. But through the manufacturing, manipulating and funding of stupid, manufactured wars the psychopathic rulers of this world ensure that all the brave men of every generation are slaughtered, maimed, traumatised and exhausted by fighting each other. This stops the brave men from ever posing a threat to them and it leaves civilian society to be run by all the weak and cowardly men who do not even care for their country or freedom. These weak men are easy to manage and bribe with money and status and distract with endless entertainments. This is the other purpose of war! (apart from profits) War is used by the 'ruling elite' as a strategy to ensure the brave men in society are always kept busy overseas fighting other brave men just like themselves, leaving their families and society as a whole unprotected back home! If military men ever learned to think beyond the 'comic book' notion of 'goodies and baddies', stopped obeying orders to shoot at peasants armed with rocks in the middle east and went after the cowardly men back home who actually FUND and PROFIT from these policies of perpetual genocide (for oil, opium etc) then there would be no wars! There would be peace, safety and prosperity instead. It takes real guts to challenge your own beliefs and thinking and break free of a lifetime of propaganda. Who's man enough to have a go? http://www.corbettreport.com/articles/20100103_right_war.htm "Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy" - Henry Kissinger (nobel peace prize winner) "Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." - Hermann Göring

I am sitting here, quitely laughing to myslef as i read your book of a comment. All of your examples are coming from a few videos that youve watched spanning a whopping 2 hours and although admittedly i like people who think for themselves and I of course value free thinking - it gets a little over the top when you start giving us all the low down of what a warrior is and why a soldier will never be one because apparently they / we have no concept of common sense - its to 1 dimensional my friend to be thinking that way - you did however hit the nail on the head about PTSD and it is something that needs to be adressed but to say that a soldier never thinks for himself is complete nonsense - There will always be people who fall into that category but given the amount of attention that human rights and other key subjects are taught in pre deployment training its always amusing to hear a civy talk about this as if they really know what they are talking about and if that were the case believe me when i say that a lot of things wiould be worse off - fact. To be put into a combat situation as welll as a humanatarion relief situation at the same time could possible be one of the most challenging yet rewarding experience there is - but to be a good person throughout makes you a soldier - and there are many soldiers out there battling their basic nature - something soldiers do far better than anyone else for the simple fact that they are and always will be the ones who have to make these life changing choices on a regular basis with huge repercussions if things go wrong. You and many others will always hold onto conspiracies such as the 911 nonsense that going around but when youve been in an orginisation like the military or federal instituations you realise that there is no one body of thought that schemes and plots - theres just too many things that can go wrong and too may working parts - its impossible in this day and age to stage nonsense to the degree at which youre implying - next you will have us believe that agents were throwing people out of the world trade center - or expolsives were in the building - seriosly man come on - grow up you child. Could it be possible greed has infected our upper circles - definately. Are the banking institutions very powerful - definately. Could you sit in a meeting with more than 3 people and plot the 911 disater without news ever getting out or somoene disagreeing / having PTSD for their decissions - well acording to you no you cant - please use basic logic for this one - in fact use your own brand of logic if you like ;) since you are quite right when it comes to PTSD Now if you believe your stuff about the way of the warrior than may i ask a question.... What are you? do you drive a car?? are you living a life completely free of western influence - cause if youre not you arent trying hard enough big man - you are one of the pack - you just dont know it. Cause if you using the oil your no differant than anyone else and if you havent figured that out than you need to rethink your argument. Ok question 2 - what happens when oil runs out? will you be a humanitarion when things start going wrong close to home and you have to start making tough choices one day - like a soldier - how will you react - if experience has taught me anything its that during stressfull times the religious nuts, tree hugging crazies and so called humanitarions nearly always surprise themselves and surpass the soldier when it comes to both vengence and dispicable acts of violence for the simple reason that they cant handle the situation they are in and by that stage the warrior myth they have been following for so long is but a distant memory - and it happens all the time buddy. Any soldier that has been in a combat zone and faced death or hate or tough choices wants peace...Yes orders matter but not to the extent of mindless violence - Yes you need to be hard at times but that is balanced with an overwhelming empathy for the people you are trying to help - this will not seem like much if you observe it from a far but for a combat zone its pretty amazing that its there at all, and its once again due to the fact that soldiers can give a little bit more than others. Soldiers grow into warriors - we know this but are too tired, well mannered or maybe grown up to point it out - but hey im a civvie now so what the hell.

War is a Scam (AKA: Cold and Timid Sole): You raise one very good point - as you rightly say "It takes real guts to challenge your own beliefs and thinking" so why don't you extract yourself from being hunched over that computer of yours and, rather than just pulling things off the web, really challenge your beliefs and thinking and go out and try some military service. That way you might actually get some idea of what your waffling on about.

I invite you (I beseech you) to research for yourself all of the facts and assertions I made. 'The web' is an excellent resource (a real civilisation changer!) when used discerningly of course, but if it is not to your liking please feel free to use public libraries, newspaper articles, official records whatever you feel most comfortable with. The videos I linked have a transcript and their sources listed underneath too which is a good starting point. Please be as thorough and meticulous in your research as you like. 'Knowledge is power' as they say. RE: 'try some military service'. I think you missed the whole point of my comment. I was not questioning (or even passing judgement on) the type of mindset and experiences gained by spending years being trained by, and living as part of, a militaristic compartmentalised hierarchy before being deployed in an illegal war zone. I am well aware (first hand) of how that tends to affect people's outlook and psyche. Rather, I was suggesting there is more to understand about these current wars, and warfare in general, than it's possible to gain from those extremely intense and vivid (yet inevitably narrow) experiences alone. One cannot get to know mount Everest any better than by climbing it, but that does not teach you anything about plate tectonics (ie how the mountain got there in the first place). A book about plate tectonics will teach you this, but it won't teach you anything about high altitude Himalayan mountain survival nor supply you with the emotions involved in descending a steep ridge with failing light during a blizzard. So who knows more about mountains, the mountaineer or the book reader? Should they argue about this and fall out over it (like we appear to be doing)? Or would they be better off sharing their respective knowledge about mountains and both walking away wiser as a result? In case I wasn't clear in my other comment, I have utmost respect for those soldiers (many of them barely out of school) risking their lives in far away lands, as well as for their families and loved ones stuck at home, not because I agree with or support the policies which put them into a war zone but because they are human beings and deserve to live a full life and not be put through unnecessary stress (up to and including being killed) for the sake of the cowards and psychopaths back home who create (and profit from) a policy of perpetual war. Our views may differ but I hope we can agree on one thing at least. War is undesirable and peace IS the goal, right? Therefore anything we can do or say which might help to bring an end to war quicker so that all the killing can stop is a good thing, agreed? Good! :) One last thing I want to mention is that none of these TV programs about soldiers ever points out that the free internet (long may it remain so) allows ordinary people to bypass the mainstream media (and Hollywood) and research information for themselves about geopolitics, war and history and that as a result of this more and more troops are reaching the very same conclusions about war and what exactly 'it's good for....' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZltPAauhNdg

To War Is A Scam, your kind of idealised view of the world is incredibly flawed. A world without war is NEVER going to happen. War is NOT unavoidable. I'm not saying I can justify all war. However reflect on this: someone is being attacked on the street opposite you. Some people will walk on by, others will make it their business to protect and help a vulnerable person. Army peace keeping missions, such as that in the later stages of Iraq, mean soldiers CAN NOT fire or attack the enemy unless they are directly attacked themselves. They are not there to kill all enemy in sight, they are trying to help rebuild devastated communities. As a country we can not ignore people in desperate situations just because they are miles away. It is the 'tough men' and their strength which saves people. I'd love to see a complete wimp stand up to the Taliban. Not going to happen. Soldiers are trained to be tough, in the same way doctors are trained to cope with emotion. It is part of the job. If I saw people die on my operating table I would struggle with the emotion. Again, it is a Doctors DUTY to do things they sometimes do not morally agree with. Everyone is different, and some people make bloody good, tough, soldiers. I am absolutely disgusted with the way you typecast soldiers, and generalise their attitudes. How do you have ANY IDEA about soldiers apart from the fact that you obviously like reading and repeating things other people have written. You need to broaden your mind and open up the airwaves. We are the result of centuries and centuries of war, we have come a long way since then, and that is reflected in the way in which we fight. Every paragraph I read of yours is so flawed it is funny - military men...think beyond the 'comic book' notion of 'goodies and baddies'. You really make them sound dumb, stupid and idiotic. What a safe, sheltered little life you must lead.

"...your kind of idealised view of the world is incredibly flawed..." All I did was point out some historical facts which reveal how most of the wars of the last century have been started. Check the facts for yourself, it's all evidence based. I'm not making this stuff up. The pattern is for governments, banking families and other elitist groups to fund, arm, propagandise and generally manipulate two otherwise peaceful groups into a conflict situation. Often (those in control of) one nation sell arms to another nation before declaring it a threat and invading it. Rumsfeld personally oversaw the selling of chemical WMD's to Hussein in the 80's. Brzezinski and the CIA effectively created and funded Al Qaeda to "give Russia their own Vietnam" (a long and expensive conflict with Afghanistan). Now AQ is being funded and armed by the west in Libya (rebranded as 'freedom fighters' of course for us TV watching public back home). Meanwhile, the WoT continues against AQ who for us are still being branded as 'terrorists who hate our freedoms'. They must think we're all stupid to fall for such inconsistent stories - and we are! That's what dumbing down is for - so we can't even figure this stuff out. It works. OBL was a known CIA asset. It took the US TV networks 45 seconds from the second plane strike on 9/11 to name OBL as number one suspect. They literally solved this 'surprise' attack in 45 seconds! (look up the archive footage on youtube). Then within days of 9/11 the entire Bin Laden family was flown out of the US despite the grounding of all civilian planes AND the fact that OBL had been named as no.1 suspect for 9/11. Then it took the most sophisticated intelligence dragnet 10 years to track down this 6ft+ tall man who was on kidney dialysis since about 2000 and hiding out in 2rd and 3rd world countries? And when they eventually 'found him' he was immediately shot and buried at sea! I mean come on! The whole story was just a sales pitch for the masses to sell the war on terror/ Iraq/ Afghanistan. It's a fairy story, complete with comic book bogey man. Often the funding for both sides of a war comes from the same source via different routes. Prescott Bush helped fund Hitler. Rockefellers paid for Hitler's race purity experts to conduct their 'research'. The giant banking families have all lent money to the Nazi's, communists, UK, US...they don't care who they fund, for them war is good business. They don't want decisive wars. The most profitable wars for them are long drawn out wars because they are the most expensive (so they can lend more money to each side!). And then they lend more money after the war is over so a country can rebuild itself. War also helps to get nations into DEBT to these banking empires. And when a nation is in debt to you it is under your control. War is how banking empires cripple nations, enslave them with debt, demoralise the populations and as a bonus get most of the brave men killed or wounded who might have otherwise stood up to them. People might think they are fighting to help keep their nation 'free'. But in reality these astronomically expensive wars in the M.E. are helping to ENSLAVE us back home (and our children) to the banks. Would you ever personally take out loans in your own children's names (to be paid back from their earnings for their whole lives) to pay for you to invade a sovereign nation illegally based on ZERO evidence of any credible threat from them? Would you personally get yourself into debt just to pay for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians (including women and children)? Would you send your husband, wife, son, daughter to fight of your own accord - even if you yourself had absolutely no knowledge of any WMD or threat or reason to go there? Most people would NOT. The only reason why populations go along with it is because the government takes the loans out behind our backs, taxes us by force and propagandises us from childhood to think that going along with it all is part of being 'patriotic' and 'doing your duty'. But on what planet does lowering your living standards, destroying your children's future and getting your country into spiralling out of control debt with international globalist bankers = being patriotic? Surely being patriotic and doing your duty (not least to our children) should involve saying "No!" to all of those things? But perhaps destroying your own children's future and fighting hard to bankrupt your own country and lower your own standard of living is the new patriotism in this new Orwellian age we seem to be living in...? Have you ever considered why governments borrow money from private banks at all? That means those banks end up effectively owning governments/ nations... owning YOU and ME! When countries can't pay beck their debts they start selling stuff off and handing over tangible assets (land, resources, property etc) to the banks. You see these banking empires invade nations invisibly from 'above' through economic enslavement. Either you can steal a man's house and car with a gun or you can encourage them to borrow money off you and get them into so much debt that they have to sell you their house and car. While nations are busy fighting expensive wars (funded and stirred up by the banks) the banks are just hovering above all sides watching each nation get more and more into debt to them. BTW the Rothschilds own more than 500 Trillion - enough to feed, clothe and house the entire planet many times over. Yet still they send young boys to war so they can make more money, enslave us all even more and weaken and traumatise the population by having another generation of young men blown to pieces. "....Every paragraph I read of yours is so flawed it is funny - military men...think beyond the 'comic book' notion of 'goodies and baddies'...." These bankers operate above nations. They play nations off against each other to make money. After WW2 hundreds of Nazi rocket and mind scientists were invited to come and work for the US (project paperclip). They were pardoned of their war crimes and given jobs in universities, hospitals, NASA and govnt agencies (and to run black projects like MK Ultra). Don't believe me? ..... look it all up for yourself. Goodies and baddies are for the general population - to make us fight each other. Those who manipulate and fund wars do not care what side someone is on! First they funded the Nazis, then they sent our grandfathers to their deaths to stop the Nazis .... then they pardoned the Nazis and gave them jobs. Do you see how insulting that is to those who laid down their lives in WW2? Do you see now why I say 'goodies vs baddies' is like a comic book way of looking at war? And do you think David Cameron isn't aware of this? The man goes on holiday with the Rothschilds. He is an old Etonian and a member of the Bullingdon Club. He sends boys to war and takes out loans to pay for them knowing full well he is selling off the UK to the banksters, raping the nation and slaughtering its children and destroying its families. Same goes for Blair, Brown ... all of them. They are puppets. Watch them speak. Look at their eyes. I'm not religious but they all 'sold their souls to the devil' a long time ago. They are haunted, empty shells who just spout rhetoric like robots. They are mentally ill. They need help! But what does that say about us that we choose to follow them? But even though I speak the truth with passion, and I actually respect and care about human life (on all 'sides') most people will attack me and think I am being insulting to soldiers! .... insulting as opposed to what? Sending young boys to die for profit? Letting PTSD'd soldiers live on the streets and die as homeless alcoholics? I honour and respect life. Governments as representatives of the banking elite make a big show of honouring and respecting the dead, as if to die for them is 'glorious'. Honouring and respecting life would prevent them from making money and enslaving humanity through war. That is why they choose only to honour the dead instead. IT COSTS THEM NOTHING! In fact it allows them to carry on making money. If I ever tried to get everyone else into debt and put your children into a minefield thousands of miles away I hope you'd chase me down the street with a rake. If I happened to live in 10 Downing street everyone would probably go along with it. And the difference is...? Who's more mad - the mad man or those who follow him? "..As a country we can not ignore people in desperate situations just because they are miles away.." And blowing people up, destroying their infrastructure, poisoning their water table with depleted uranium, taking their resources and setting up globalist controlled central banks is the best way to help desperate people? Really? (I wonder what we'd do to them if we wanted to piss them off instead of help them?) The combined western military budgets for one year could easily eradicate all poverty in the world. But then the bankers and arms corporations wouldn't make any more money would they? It's really is that simple. It's just about conflict of interest. The same corporations who make weapons also own major news corporations. The Pentagon scripts Hollywood movies in return for free use of military equipment and personnel (all admitted!). Media and political people are all members of the same organisations like the CFR who's objective is to create an empire for these 'money men' and destroy the US in the process because superpowers get in the way of global domination. As Carlin said "It's all one giant club..... and you're not a member..... And it's the same club they use to beat you with!" What was the 'axis of evil'? The AoE was all countries who were NOT already in debt (and therefore not enslaved) to these banking empires. If they can't conquer and enslave nations economically through debt they have to go in with tanks and missiles. That's why out of the hundreds of tin pot dictators and desperate people all over the world it's only the few nations who refuse to deal with these banking empires and can actually stand up to them who get demonised on the news so that the public will eventually accept sending in the troops to 'liberate the people' and kill their evil dictators. Gaddafi refused to play ball with the globalists. THAT'S why they bombed the crap out of Libya and then killed him (and set up a globalist controlled central bank immediately). Now the complicit mass media is giving us the same propaganda build up with Syria and Iran. Let's pray the US doesn't do something really stupid like sink the USS Enterprise in the Gulf and blame it on Iran in order to start WW3. (problem-reaction-solution) "...I'd love to see a complete wimp stand up to the Taliban...." You're talking here about the EFFECTS of war. You are effectively saying that once a war (or a street fight or whatever) starts it is unrealistic to imagine it can be stopped without the use of more (and usually greater) force. I am inclined to AGREE with you. But that is NOT what I was talking about. It's like me saying "fire is preventible" and then you saying "I'd like to see you standing in front of a raging inferno and see if you can prevent that fire". Obviously it's too late to prevent a fire by that stage! I am talking about the CAUSES of war, not the effects. The causes of war start long before the first bombs are dropped, or one side invades another. You're focused entirely on the chess board itself. You speak from the point of view of one of the chess pieces. But chess is played NOT on the chessboard but by players who sit outside of that chessboard. The players of chess are not one of the pieces on the board. And those players themselves may also be working for a team ... perhaps they have been bribed to throw a game! Who knows? Not the chess pieces that's for sure. This is also how war works. By the time war is played out on the chessboard it is (as you say) too late to do anything about it except to fight back, try and stay alive, make your moves, obey the rules of combat, defend your ground ... whatever. But that is NOT what I am talking about. That's just the rules of chess/ war. In fact you and I agree that war can't really ever be stopped once it gets to be played out on the 'chessboard'. (in the theatre of war). It's too late by then. When it's war you shoot at men, and they shoot back at you and when war is over you all shake hands and have a drink together. War or peace is always decided away from the 'chessboard', fighting is just going through the motions for as long as the powers that be decide that war is on! Soldiers are just chess pieces on the board played by players (the banks, governments, corporations) who stay outside of the chess board and look down from above. Sorry but it's the truth. If you want to fight a worthwhile war do research. Get educated, get streetwise about what's going on beyond the chessboard itself. Get your news from somewhere independent like corbettreport.com (and many other sources so you can check the facts) and not just from the BBC! BBC (etc) is complicit in war. They could report facts that would end war and put war criminals safely behind bars but they choose not to. The fighting of battles is not the real war, it's just a game of chess with predictable rules and moves. Bang, bang someone is dead. That decides nothing. It's stupid and childish. What do people expect? It's like moving a pawn to take your opponent's pawn. But next move they take your pawn too. On it goes. For soldiers, on all sides, the best outcome for a war is to come out still alive. War is a game invented by bankers. It's a game of THREE sides no two. Two sides always lose and they - the third side - always win. They make money every time - EVERY TIME! Do you think they will ever choose to stop playing this game and stop sending children and men to fight wars when it is so profitable for them? Do you think fighting extra hard will help stop it, or maybe using smarter bombs? (maybe if the bomb decides to not explode!) The REAL war is between soldiers sent into battle and the elite globalist banking families, corporations and governments who send them there. That game is less like chess and more like tug of war. The more elite families and corporations pull the rope the more soldiers are conditioned to hang on tight. If you let go you lose! If you don't obey you lose! But that is stupid. How can obeying orders (going along with the policies) of the elite be ALWAYS the right thing to do? Surely doing the right thing (your duty) means NOT obeying orders to do wrong? Of all the people in the world soldiers could pledge their allegiance to why choose those who have the biggest track record for genocide, greed and general evil? (the bankers!) It's madness!!! I hope that one day in the near future soldiers all over the world will have done enough research to figure out what their true situation really is - and they will all just say "I am no longer prepared to obey orders like I am a dumb animal and I refuse to sacrifice my time and my blood (or anyone else's) for these evil men's profits. Me fighting this war is only enslaving my family and friends back home with more debt, helping banking empires to take control of more resources and land at home and in this war zone and causing catastrophic trauma and death to civilians and soldiers as well as causing unfathomable levels of environmental damage. All I'm doing by fighting this war is helping these banking empires destroy the planet and further enslave humanity. Enough!" And they will 'let go of the rope' and walk away and go and help the poor or build a youth centre or repair a bridge or go back home to look after their families. (or anything!) So you see I just point out the *root causes* for war .. I'm not judging or telling anyone what to do... That's up to all of us as grown up, responsible individuals (that's kind of the whole point!) ...... I am just pointing out the facts but it seems no one wants to hear it. Facts can be offensive when you are brainwashed by propaganda. It's up to people to decide if they want to carry on sacrificing their lives for these men.... not men, they are worms, parasites! All I am doing is asking the question: Why give your life for parasites who already owns 500 Trillion but won't help the poor? Yes I implied that a lot of soldiers are brainwashed. I stand by that. But we're ALL brainwashed - it's called government education, mass media, Hollywood. Soldiers just get extra large serving of propaganda, that's all. But we are ALL in the same boat and in the face of these globalist manics and parasites with their stupid propaganda and lies we only have each other to wake each other up. We all need to get over ourselves and break free of this madness :) There are a thousand zillion other ways to sort out the world's problems. Ways which actually work! That's not being idealistic, that's just being a mature responsible grown up. Do you want to know what I think is idealistic? For whole populations and whole armies to put their trust in a small network of all powerful, insanely rich globalist elites and their political puppets and to blindly obey their orders and keep paying them taxes and keep allowing them run up debts in our names in the hope that they will run the world nicely and look after us and never use their enormous power and wealth to exploit us like farm animals .... ...... and for us to continue to place our trust in them despite the fact that we can see how they continuously set nation against nation and turn humanity into a bloodbath of violence, chaos and criminality while they make trillions in profits, take control of the planet's resources and expand their empires consolidating their power over centuries almost to the point now of creating a global empire - which they are even telling us in the mass media is their plan: global governance, a one world government... a New World Order. But maybe I'm being overly cautious. Maybe perpetual war and debt slavery in a one world empire run by a technologically advanced elite in control of a hi tech police state control grid will be a very pleasant experience, and one which future generations will thank us for helping to bring about. Power corrupts but absolute power doesn't corrupt at all. War is peace freedom is slavery the television is always right debt is freedom i love big brother etc

Tonights programm was brilliant, it makes Ross Kemps look like a fairytale. Paul Vice deserves recognition. I there any way of getting an update on his recovery at all. To many of our brave boys are being lost out there. Hope your on the mend Paul, Paul sims Newport.

Thankfully he is on the road to recovery, good luck to him. here is a link http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/Bristol-marine-narrowly-escapes-death-thr...

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