Thoughts on the Afghanistan Situation

I won’t drag this post out because I’m not any sort of military or political expert that is qualified to go in-depth on such matters.

Also, I may put out a controversial viewpoint or two, but that is in keeping with the no-pulled-punches tone of this lil’ blog.

So, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock (actually a LOT more likely in this age of isolation), you will have seen/heard that the Taliban have re-taken control of the country of Afghanistan in a ridiculously short space of time with no real opposition or fighting. This happens immediately after the withdrawal of the last of the US/British military presence in the region, twenty years after they first went in to push out the likes of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and to create a safer environment that wasn’t a breeding ground for terrorist organisations that could use Afghanistan as a base to launch international attacks.

The news media is riding a wave of shock this morning, as people try to come to terms with just how rapid this takeover was. Various defence officials have been interviewed and the finger-pointing has already began, with interviewers demanding to know if this is a failure for the US and British governments, and what they are going to do about it.

Well, here comes my first controversial opinion because I say we do nothing about this at all. Our governments and armed forces should never have gotten involved with Afghanistan in the first place for multiple reasons. Firstly, the West shouldn’t be interfering with other countries and overthrowing their governments to install others who are deemed to be more agreeable or cooperative. I wonder when those in power will realise that maybe the reason we experience so many terrorist attacks and hatred directed towards us is because we waltzed into their backyards in the first place and presumed to tell them what to do. Pretty sure that wouldn’t go down so well if the roles were to be reversed, would it? But perhaps our more advanced nations and more technologically-capable military forces give leaders a superiority complex whereby they feel justified in meddling in the affairs of far-off countries while it absolutely would not be permitted the other way round…

Don’t get me wrong, I know that the likes of Al Qaeda will still launch attacks at Western cities regardless but there has to be ways (in this age of advanced surveillance/intelligence) of combatting terrorism without destabilising entire countries and committing our armed forced to decades of security detail.

I often like to say that we, as a race, give ourselves far too much credit when it comes to intelligence and learning from mistakes. History is littered with the failures of supposedly superior, better-resourced nations when they go to war, in a country like Afghanistan, against guerrilla fighters who know the terrain and are prepared to die for their independence. The Soviets failed in Afghanistan. The US famously failed in Vietnam (another war that involved meddling in foreign politics and installing new leaders). And – more recently – we have the Iraq fiasco, which resulted in the birth of ISIS and a series of horrific terrorist attacks on home soil, and more war in the Middle East. I’d like to believe that Afghanistan will finally teach us to mind our own business and stop trying to police the world, but I doubt it. I only have to look to Libya where our Prime Minister at the time sent the RAF (along with other NATO forces) to bomb the country and assist in the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi…before doing nothing else and allowing Libya to devolve into a lawless terrorist breeding ground.

Obviously, there are a lot of angry people who are upset at the current events in Afghanistan and the Western military withdrawal as they see all the military sacrifice, lost lives, and billions spent on investing into Afghan security as a collossal waste of time, as well as an affront to the lives of the loved ones who died in combat. I’m not going to dispute that as I have no right to comment on the losses of others or how they view what’s happening right now as a result.

But what I would say is that returning to Afghanistan and needlessly throwing away more lives in order to justify those already lost just doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. One of the worst things we can do is to push on with lost causes or commitments to lengthy, grindy wars just to save face and say that we didn’t give up. Sometimes, it’s better to know when to quit and walk away – not out of weakness, but out of intelligence. Some say that we should stay until the “job is done”. The job will never be done. The West will always be unwelcome occupiers, veiling political ambitions behind the guise of protecting civilians. They don’t want us there, and no amount of military training or investment on our part will ever create security forces that will fight with as much passion or conviction as the likes of the Taliban who will literally fight to the death for freedom as they see it. Getting involved with these countries is a commitment to stay forever, because a) the enemy simply bides their time and waits for the West to grow weary and leave and b) new governments and security forces grow reliant on the presence of Western troops and equipment. We already saw this happen in Iraq a few years ago when Iraqi security forces ran away from advancing ISIS forces – again, after years of training and investment from the West.

I absolutely don’t agree with the way that many Middle Eastern countries operate with backwards laws and outdated, barbaric attitudes towards women and homosexuality but we have to realise that these aren’t our countries, and it isn’t down to us to parachute into every part of the globe that persecutes these groups and overthrow governments left, right, and centre until the world conforms to our vision of how people should behave and what views they should hold. More to point, lets not act like we live in the Garden of Eden ourselves because Western society has a LOT of societal problems of its own, they’re just not as obvious and pressing as physical, military violence.

And don’t get me started on those screaming for troops to return to Afghanistan and take back the country, because I’m fairly confident that those shouting the loudest are keyboard warriors that wouldn’t want to go and do such a dangerous job themselves. They want others to go and put their lives at risk for the sake of their outrage and that’s utter bollocks as far as I’m concerned.

Those are just my thoughts. As I say, I’m no expert and could well be completely wrong, but I’ve always maintained that we shouldn’t be getting involved in the internal affairs of foreign countries. Fighting back against terrorist organisations that pose a direct and immediate threat to Western shores…yes, but we need to ensure that our actions don’t also involve destabilising entire regions, leaving power vaccuums behind, or committing our forces to decades of hanging on. We also need to stop presuming that we are right to walk into other peoples countries and start making changes, as it’s only us that seem to suffer for it in the long term.

The £400 “Stop Smoking” Bribe…

…is really something else. It’s one of those news stories that popped up and blew my mind with how ridiculous it is. In what dimension does, “hey, how about being paid to stop a voluntary bad habit that YOU took up in the first place?” sound like a sane proposal?

But perhaps you require some context. This is, after all, a UK thing so chances are – if you reside elsewhere – you are currently reading this and thinking, “buh?”

So here it is: a piece of proposed guidance (not yet confirmed) from the National Health Service (NHS) is suggesting that pregnant women should be offered £400 worth of shopping vouchers as a ~~bribe~~ incentive to quit smoking, in the interests of their own health, and that of their unborn child.

Evidence shows that offering financial incentives to help pregnant women stop smoking is “both effective and cost effective”, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and Public Health England have said.
Research suggests that for every 1,000 pregnant women offered vouchers, 177 would stop smoking.
Their guidance, which is open to consultation, said studies have shown “voucher incentives were acceptable to many pregnant women and healthcare providers” and are already in use in some regions.
itv.com

Now, before you consider me a ranting idiot, I can of course see the positives in this. While I’m not a anti-smoking crusader myself (what a person chooses to do is their own business, and the consequences are theirs to own), I do think that it is good for a pregnant woman to kick the habit, and that it is also a good thing for them to stay on that wagon post-birthing in order for the sake of their child’s health, to avoid passive smoking, and so as not to encourage smoking when said child gets older. I’m not debating this, nor am I debating the positive intent behind this proposal.

But I am questioning why a pregnant woman needs to be bribed with shopping vouchers to stop smoking. In my mind, there’s something terribly fucked-up with society if a woman won’t quit the fags for the sake of their child, but they will try harder if there shopping vouchers at stake. I’m not trying to downplay the difficulty of quitting smoking, but this idea still implies that the allure of £400 to go shopping with is more appealing than protecting the health of your unborn child.

I just can’t wrap my head around it, and I’m genuinely baffled that anybody would need a stronger incentive to stop smoking than the fact that they have a new, precious life growing inside of them.

And, if we are to take a deeper dive into smoking in the first place, we will see that cigarettes and the act of smoking managed to become a social norm (a “cool” thing to do, even) decades ago, when tobacco advertising was fully permitted and at it’s most rampant. There were even dedicated marketing campaigns carefully constructed to bring more women into smoking and to therefore vastly increase the consumer base for tobacco products. Society fell hook, line, and sinker (as we do so often) for these advertisements, that are designed to make us feel inadequete and left behind socially unless we buy/do what we are being sold, and we are where we are today – with the act of smoking still deeply ingrained into everyday life. We were manipulated, hooked on nicotine, and bred into cash cows for the tobacco giants.

The point I’m trying to make is that this shopping voucher “solution” is simply curing one vice with another. Retail therapy and buying all of the unnecessary, unfulfilling shit that we don’t need (because are minds are still being artfully shaped and moulded by ad agencies) isn’t that far away from being encouraged to take up smoking. Admittedly, shopping poses no threat to your physical wellbeing (unless you get rammed by a trolley in a supermarket…), and can’t be considered a problem on the same level as smoking, but the irony of this incentive isn’t lost on me.

Back to the proposal though, you might be wondering how something like this can be monitored to prove that recipients of vouchers aren’t still smoking.

The experts said women should undergo biochemical tests to prove they have stopped smoking before receiving the vouchers.
itv.com

I guess that sounds good, right?

However they said that if testing is too difficult due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the vouchers should be given anyway.
itv.com

Look: I’m fully aware that I’m probably just blowing this out of proportion. Maybe I just REALLY wanted an excuse to add a new post to this blog after such a long period of inactivity. Perhaps this is just an inevitable reaction to actively avoiding the news for so long.

Regardless, I’ll close with a tl;dr: stop smoking because you WANT to stop. Stop smoking because you NEED to stop. Most importantly, stop smoking for the sake of your unborn child, NOT because there’s a fucking shopping voucher coming your way.

On Captain Tom Moore and Britain’s “Greatest” Generation

Captain Tom Moore has dominated the news here in the UK over the last week, following his passing on 2nd of February, at the age of 100, after a short battle with pneumonia, and then Covid-19. Tom has became a recognisable, endearing national figure here since last April but – for those not in the know – who was Captain Tom Moore, and why was he so popular?

Born in 1920, Thomas Moore served in the military for the duration of World War II, from 1939 to 1946. He served in India before taking part in the Burma campaign, fighting the Japanese invasion as part of the Fourteenth Army (also referred to as the “Forgotten Army” due to the war in Burma being overlooked by both the contemporary and modern press who were more focused on the war in the Europe, and America’s war in the Pacific).

What Tom became most famous for, however, are his fundraising efforts in 2020. Beginning on the 6th of April – then aged 99 – Tom aimed to complete one hundred lengths of his 25 metre (27 yard) garden – with the assistance of his walking frame – by the time he turned 100, targeting ten lengths a day. Proceeds from his walk were to go to the National Health Service, specifically the NHS Charities Together – a group of charities that support staff, patients, and volunteers across the NHS. Tom wanted to raise the money to help support those on the frontline of the Covid-19 crisis, battling to save lives in Britain’s strained hospitals, and initially aimed to raise £1,000.

Continue reading →

Bullshit News: Sex = Banned

Honestly, I’d hoped not to ever revive the Bullshit News series, as I don’t enjoy watching it anymore, let alone commentating on the latest outrage or twisted facts. Unfortunately, there is an excess of fuel for the bullshit furnace thanks to the biggest topic of 2020. Particularly here, in the UK. Have you seen our hypocritical, self-contradicting shambles of a government? We haven’t fought our way to the top-tier of the Covid-19 death league table by fluke, you know.

The latest? Sex is banned – apparently. That’s how the outraged mob on social media are spinning it anyway. The government didn’t actually come out and SAY that, though. What actually happened was that a new regulation was passed in order to control people’s movement under an easing of lockdown restrictions. So now you can meet up with people – to socialise – outside of your household…as long as you remain outside and two metres apart of course. The outrage stems from the fact that couples not living together can now finally see each other, but they aren’t permitted to make physical contact.

In reality, nothing has changed. However, people have been riled-up by the fact that the new regulation specifically forbids people from having private gatherings, of two or more people, indoors. This specific clause has sparked considerable public anger, simply because it didn’t exist before. However, it didn’t need to exist before. After all, we were instructed to stay in our homes unless it was absolutely essential to leave i.e. for food or work (if you were unable to work from home and weren’t furloughed), so we weren’t really permitted to go and enter other people’s houses anyway. Beyond all the bluster about sex being banned, nothing has really changed. There has actually been a loosening so, if you were being a good lil’ egg and staying away from your partner, you can now physically see them. The new rule has been brought in to prevent people from skipping the (hopefully) forthcoming future easing of distancing.

As usual, the media has transformed yet another distancing rule into an outrage-inducing headline to whip up a controversy and generate ad revenue, viewing figures, and newspaper sales.

Now, all of that said, does that mean that I’m in favour of this continued clamp-down on humanity? Fuck no. If you’re married, or living with a partner, then you’re probably laughing at a sex “ban”. “Sucks to be them” and all that. It’s not so great for those of us who aren’t locked-down with our significant other, though. And I’m not just talking about being denied the main course – I’m talking about not even being able to show regular affection, such as kissing, hugging, or holding hands. I know it’s easy to overplay these things (especially if you aren’t an especially affectionate person), but it’s also easy to take them for granted.

As I said in my last post, any measures that take away our humanity must be regarded with extreme caution. That doesn’t mean that I think we should decide for ourselves that the virus has gone and just do whatever the fuck we want (that’s just dumb, and a direct insult to those who have died or are fighting the virus in our hospitals), but we need to keep a close eye on the status of our freedoms and what the government is doing with them.

And I haven’t even got to the bullshit yet. Oh, no. So far I’ve discussed how people have taken the new regulations out of context. I’ve touched on how the news media have twisted the information to play the public like a fiddle, and get them foaming at the mouth. And I’ve talked about how frustrating it is for couples living apart. But all of that is poodle poop compared to the steaming mountain of elephant crap that comes next, and it ties into the strain being put on couples living apart.

It’s the double-standards, hypocrisy and blatant contradiction that is impossible to ignore. This is the kind of stuff that we should really question, and direct our anger at.

So…sex with your girlfriend at her house is a big NO, but it was okay for scientist and health advisor, Professor Neil Ferguson, to allow his (married) lover to enter his home and get her knickers off? After he’d preached the importance of social distancing?

Don’t worry though; I’m sure he was dealt with just as firmly as any of us would for being caught sneaking into our partner’s home by a nosy neighbour. No immunity for a top government advisor, right?

Scotland Yard said Prof Ferguson’s behaviour was “plainly disappointing” but officers “do not intend to take any further action”.
BBC News

Oh.

Moving on…

Meeting up with your boyfriend and giving him a hug is an AWFUL thing to do, but nobody gets fined or prosecuted for hitting the beach and observing zero social distancing?

And you must, MUST stay two metres away from your estranged partner…even while idiots queue up for hours for an utterly non-essential McDonalds.

I’m NOT here to advocate breaking the rules (that have been implemented for the good of the country’s health and safety) on the basis that other people are taking the piss. The well-he-does-it-so-am-I philosophy is a slippery slope that never ends well. But being told to keep apart from your partner while all of this is happening right before your eyes is a slap in the face. We should all be in this together, and facing the same hardships, so that we can come out the other side as quickly as possible and get on with our damn lives. But it’s clear that this isn’t the case, and I absolutely cannot fault people for kicking off about being unable to touch their significant other when mass gatherings and utterly non-essential, selfish activities go unpunished. We are told to do one thing and then shown the opposite. Made to feel afraid about being caught doing one thing while hundreds – if not thousands – get away with taking part in something far worse. Ordered to keep our genitals in check while the science men issuing the advice are busy banging married women.

And don’t even get me started on the Black Lives Matter protests. I agree with your cause and your anger but you’re creating a nice breeding ground for Covid-19 in those densely-packed crowds. I know that a lot of people are afraid to come out criticise because of the backlash that they will receive but I don’t give a fuck. You – and the dumbass beachgoers who prioritise a day out over a national effort – are making an invaluable contribution to a second wave that will keep us all locked-down for longer than we could have.

Why you should reject the “New Normal”

There’s a new phrase that has established itself in the media: The New Normal.

I’m not a fan of this particular string of words. In fact, I utterly despise it. But what is “The New Normal”?

It’s a phrase to describe our lockdown lives right now. It’s a way of coming to terms with and accepting our current circumstances. And I’m all down with that if it’s going to make a difference and minimise the infection rate. But, just as we are being cautious about spreading the virus, we also need to be careful that this New Normal remains a temporary state, and that elements don’t linger in our post-Covid societies. In fact, I’m more worried about living in some sort of paranoid, contact-shy dystopian world than I am about Covid-19. A temporary acceptance of the new rules is fine. It’s required, and to flippantly disregard the measures would be a great display of ignorance to those who have succumbed to Covid-19, those fighting it on the frontlines, and those who have lost loved ones. But, at the same time, we must not fall into the trap of becoming desensitised to it all and allowing the New Normal to become simply Normal.

It is NOT normal to wear face masks.
It is NOT normal to steer around other people in the street.
It is NOT normal to be so scared of catching something.
It is NOT normal to go on virtual dates, rather than be face-to-face.
It is NOT normal to have our towns and cities covered in tape and “keep your distance” signage.
It is NOT normal to have every TV commercial referencing the virus and lockdown.

As I’ve already said, we need to do these things right now because Covid-19 is far from a done deal. But realise that we have willingly given up our freedoms to our governments and that we get them back when they (backed up by scientific advice) say so. Previous generations have endured far worse changes to everyday life that lasted a lot longer, so we can do this.

But don’t accept these things as permanent changes. Do I think the masses will remain fearful and in favour of digital communion in the long-term? No, I don’t actually think that. The thousands of people that have been breaking distancing rules to pack themselves onto beaches are proof enough (though they are still fucking idiots). So what do I think COULD happen?

First of all – without wanting to become a conspiracy theorist – I think governments around the world will be watching and taking note of just how easy it was to force the populance to remain indoors and surrender basic freedoms. I don’t buy into the theories out there that the virus was released on purpose to trigger a lockdown response that would cow society. But the lockdown will remain invaluable data to leaders should they wish to impose these measures on us again. And next time, it might not even be for a valid reason. All they need to do is to sell us a reason that makes us all feel like heroes.

I think there is going to be a lot of unemployment as businesses fold, and others realise that they have managed just fine without their full workforce. And all this “free” money that has been thrown about will come at a great cost. Public funding is going to be cut and the tax bill is going to be bigger than Christina Hendricks’ boobs. We’re going to be living with the financial aftermath for a long-ass time.

But we can deal with those things. It’s the subtle, creeping social changes that we need to be wary of. Everything that we are doing right now is not human. Virtual communication without the senses of smell, taste and touch isn’t human. Queuing up outside stores in masks with big gaps between us certainly isn’t human. I DO think that we will get over all of this and move on but social changes tend to happen gradually, and subtlety, often without us noticing until, one day, we look back and think about the old ways of living. And that’s why we need to be careful because the longer this pandemic drags on, the more opportunity these temporary practices have to take root and be normalised in society.

I have several other Covid-19/Lockdown-related posts brewing in the back of my mind but I’m not sure if I’ll actually have the energy to publish them. Like most of us, I’m tired of it all, and tired of talking about the whole damn situation. Furthermore, I’m no expert and I have my own biases that make these kinds posts difficult to write.