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The problems all stem from earlier British imperialism and more recently USA imperialism, and exploitation of resources mainly oil The West created these fundamentalists. Same as it ever was

Yes, religion used as propaganda to motivate idiots into all sorts of things, no argument there. But then so are many other things. WMDs were used to motivate idiots (such as myself at the time, young and naive as I was) into supporting the Iraq war when it was actually about consolidation of Western regional power, encirclement of Russia, and oil. NATO has been used by Putin to justify Ukraine even though he came out the other day and proclaimed that Ukraine and Russia are all one people and that the whole country belongs to him. The fact that such governments may use religion here and there does not speak to why they do any of these things, just how they ensure at least some of their support. You make a good point about how they were sensible in choosing not to be obliterated by the US. In fact, that's the same point I was making. If we can rely on them to be sensible in that situation, and we can observe that good sense, why do we say that they would suddenly throw it out of the window if they had a nuke?

For what it's worth, IMHO Iran is a fundamentalist, autocratic, theocracy. Just because it decided not to be obliterated by the US does not make it politically astute, just sensible. While i accept that both Trump and Putin are almost certainly atheist (how could anyone else be above them?) they do regularly rely on religion for motivation and probably justification. But what do I know?

Well said although I would have been interested to hear more of his rebuttal. Not much anyone can do about it now tbh.

We were interested in Elanga last year though before Forest had the season where their system seemed to click so he's obviously someone we'd been watching for longer than just one season. We as supporters may be basing everything pretty much on this last season but I've no doubts the club aren't.

If you removed all religion from the Middle East tomorrow, people would still be fighting over resources and power. The things that people actually fight over in reality. I've never understood this idea that religion is the root of all conflict when we have so much conflict coming out of the US and Russia, neither of whom are doing it for religiously motivated reasons. The US has actually used nukes on people and yet we still worry about the religious doing it. Anyone is capable of it - I don't buy for a moment that Putin wouldn't launch nukes if he was backed into a corner enough incidentally, as Syed does. He said Putin wouldn't do it for fear of being killed in response... like, what? That's not a baseline concern even I would have in certain situations, let alone someone as motivated as Putin. It's speculative nonsense that assumes all non religious people are entirely rational actors, and all religious people are not. Maybe you are right and Iran would try to destroy the world the second it gets nukes, but then surely it would be doing this already anyway, surely if it was that motivated by this issue, it would have bent itself into fully. Instead it appears to be dithering around for 3 decades and just trying to look tough. To me that seems more like a political calculation than religious fervour.

And Anderson

It’s not difficult to get a football shirt right. This is immense

I dunno, he did seem long in the face

Don't know anything about the channel, it did pop into my feed and I listened to it. I don't regard Syed as a right wing nut job, and his dad was Iranian so he'll have his own viewpoint. Maybe it just reinforced my prejudice, fair enough. But nothing scares me more than fundamental religious believers with a track history in martyrdom. The tension and conflict with Saudi btw, is very much sectarian and religious motivated. People always brush away the obvious fucking elephant in the room. The problems in the ME, like countless wars and conflicts before them, all stem from religion. You have a confluence of Christians, jews, and muslims, each of many different sects. Never going to end well.

yeah, you might be right. and like i said, if elanga is howe's pick then you have to trust him. semenyo has always excited me when i've seen him. he has that maverick technical ability that maxi had but unlike him, he also puts the graft in defensively.

FYP

My concern with Elanga is he could be appearing better than he is on the basis that he's a perfect fit for Forest's system. It didn't work so well at Man United. I think a lot of what was good at Forest this last season was down to Gibbs-White. Including the effectiveness of the front three.

Thank god for the PSR rules protecting the competitive nature of the sport.

But then they could just have done it by now. No one can stop Iran developing nukes if it wants to - no one. Not Israel, not the US. The best any external entity can do is try to force regime change, but that isn't a guarantee. IMO Iran is adopting the same strategy that Sadam attempted to use - he didn't have WMDs but he didn't actually tell anyone that because it was more useful for him to be in a position whereby people assumed he was dangerous than to actually justify that perception. Iran doesn't need nukes, it just needs to look like it can be close enough to getting them at any given point for Israel to leave it the fuck alone. And the reason I'm confident that this is the strategy they're working to is that they could have had nukes by now if they really wanted them. I've done a lot of reading over the past few days about the Iranian regime and its politics, and it seems that its regional militias are worth more to it than any nuclear weapon would be. Moreover, it seems to be focused more on Saudi than Israel or the West - which I would argue supports the idea that it is a politically motivated actor, not a religiously motivated one. Triggernometry is a right wing youtube channel that talks highbrow but we wouldn't cite it in any other context. EDIT - if you don't believe me on that last point, look at their most recent videos. They've interviewed Reform's chairman, they've got another view a few days earlier talking about how Britain is a nation of immigrants, South African farm murders, yet another video on immigration into the UK, the end of wokeism, how the left is to blame for creating the right, another video on UK immigration... that's going back 1 month. That's the sort of channel this is, and the one you're aligning yourself with on this point. Maybe they're right, but I don't know why I should believe they are based on the nonsense of the rest of their channel.

another story that definitely, definitely happened

It is but it feels like a combination of putting the mockers on the deals and disrespectful to the clubs where these players currently are. It just doesn't sit particularly well with me.

The fuck did I do?

My fear is that Iran will agree to cease fires, completely withdraw from the nuclear non proliferation obligations, get rid of inspectors, and develop a nuke in secret. I believe Iran IS different even to a genocidal Israel, which is a different issue. At the moment I am restricted to my phone so can't really articulate fully why, but if you will indulge me, Matthew Syed says it here. Yes, I might be wrong. Maybe this is just pure prejudice on my behalf, but I think it applies to all religious fundamentalists of all abrahamic faiths. If you REALLY believe in this stuff, you will sacrifice literally everything for your God. I guess it's not even irrational from that pov. That's the difference.

Well, that I'm aware of. It's a few times now that I've had to turn the hose on Foden and Mainoo scuttling around the bottom of my drive.

it's the time of year though, innit. fuck all else to talk about on here apart from transfer speculation, the cricket, the U21s, or WWIII