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"After revealing to the world his support for Turkey rather than Europe, David Cameron put in his foot in it again in openly accusing Pakistan of a hidden agenda in Afghanistan"

What did the Americans call them in 2003? Cheese eating surrender monkeys? Sounds about right to me.

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Camerons tour of Turkey and India was a disaster. Well done David, you managed to alienate all secular Turks who hate the Islamo-fascist government in Turkey and also our allies in Pakistan by making your views public and in, of all places, India. On top of that you made a complete fool of yourself by describing Gaza as a "prison camp".
I can't think of any PM who has made as many gaffes in such a short time.
Cameron is totally out of his depth in foregn affairs. Mind you Brown was even worse.

Pity the French couldn't translate what Cameron actually said, but then I sometimes ask if anyone listens to the actual words spoken when it is more advantaous to the reinforcement of political bias to make up your own version. How can "would appear to be" be taken as an explicit accusation? At worst it is an invitation for the Pakistani government to show that what many (including the security expert interviewed on the Today programme this week) think 'would appear to be the case' is in fact not true.

Cameron's detractors were certainly 'appearing to be' listening very carefully when he slipped up on a date in a speech, but yet appear to be partially deaf or unable to translate English in their desperation to keep up the sniping campaign.

THE HONOURABLE ART OF APPEARING TO BE (#4)

I wonder if St Tony will cover this in his book? (The Journey - A Journey - What Journey?) Tony was a master of APPEARING to say great things, while orating near-unparsable word-salad. I have taken the trouble to print out, and tease out, some of his speeches. That way lies madness.

Politics is a perverse passtime.

Camerons remarks on the Israeli policy in Gaza, er, no don't think I can quibble with anything he said...Pakistani policy on looking both ways, er, no, nothing to argue about either...what is is with this guy, he is to the left of Jack Straw on everything but then again..that's not hard...

I'd say rather than: 'putting a foot in it...', a more accurate interpretation is: 'removed the blindfolds and earplugs that have been 'self-applied' by so many for far too long regarding Pakistan's deeply rooted terrorist-training camps, double-playing security services & that country's export of terrorism milleau'...

IDENTIFYNG & PROMOTING DISCUSSION OF A KNOWN & FAR-TOO-LONG 'HIDDEN'-FROM-PUBLIC-VIEW' PROBLEM SHOULD ONLY BE LAUDED!!

No legitimate steps can be taken to curing an illness (in this case rectifying the causes of egregious international problems) until, first, the 'illness' (IE: the cause of a widely agreed 'problem') is approached dispassionately and EXPLICITLY identified (and in this case, discussed without repeating years of counterproductive euphemisms and gross public-intellectual dishonesty!!)

India's legislature, cities and other places have been regular victims of acts of terrorism- originating from Pakistan for many years...

To not acknowledge this truth publicly, forcefully and without pulling any punches only cultivates the very factors that this 'disease' requires to continue propagation and wrecking havoc both within Pakistan and internationally...

Speaking of WWII-

during the lead-up to Sept-1939 and the start of WWII and into 1940 it was the 'intellectually dishonest' AND COWARDLY unwillingness of many UK politicians and politicians of the UK's most capable international allies' to acknowledge a plain- but difficult to discuss- truth that allowed and enabled Hitler and the Nazi's to prepare for and launch their attempt at 'world enslavement'...

Only once the U.S.'s most unprincipled, 'willfully blind' politicians and civil servants openly-recognized the unmistakable and ever increasing likelihood of their own country being devoured by Nazi Germany, if the U.K. was defeated- did the U.S. begin, in 1940, to fight, albeit indirectly*, against Nazi Germany in part via the U.K. trading many of its international bases to the U.S. in return for U.S. military aid (warships, etc) ...

* in part through the Destroyers for Bases Agreement and providing massive amounts of materiel, weaponry, foodstuffs, consumer goods, raw materials and the like to the U.K.

U.S. president Roosevelt's fireside chats of 1940 are highly illustrative of the massive sabotage of and damage to a country's foreign policy efforts and interests that can be caused by a small- but influentially placed' few 'who chose to not see and who refuse to openly acknowledge what is plainly evident to all':

May 26-1940:

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".. There are some among us who were persuaded by minority groups that we could maintain our physical safety by retiring within our continental boundaries—the Atlantic on the east, the Pacific on the west, Canada on the north, and Mexico on the south. I illustrated the futility—the impossibility—of that idea in my message to the Congress last week. Obviously, a defense policy based on that is merely to invite future attack.

"And, finally, there are a few among us who have deliberately and consciously closed their eyes because they were determined to be opposed to their government, its foreign policy and every other policy, to be partisan, and to believe that anything that the Government did was wholly wrong..."

"To those who have closed their eyes for any of these many reasons, to those who would not admit the possibility of the approaching storm—to all of them the past two weeks have meant the shattering of many illusions... "

December 29-1940:

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"... Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now...

"For, on September 27, 1940, by an agreement signed in Berlin, three powerful nations, two in Europe and one in Asia, joined themselves together in the threat that if the United States of America interfered with or blocked the expansion program of these three nations- a program aimed at world control—they would unite in ultimate action against the United States...

" The Nazi masters of Germany have made it clear that they intend not only to dominate all life and thought in their own country, but also to enslave the whole of Europe, and then to use the resources of Europe to dominate the rest of the world..."

During the last decade, how many radicalized Muslims in and their organizations with a presence within Pakistan have not used and espoused similar language regarding their intentions for the U.S., U.K., India and the wider developed world??

Rectifying a self-evident, urgent problem only starts when 'the problem' is honestly and accurately identified and "openly" discussed...


Roderick V. Louis
Vancouver, BC, Canada

no, go on, you translate it