Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[boldie]

However, as it is now, Palestinian rockets are continually being fired into Israel, have been for a while with lots of casualties, Israel decides enuff is enuff and retaliates in a effort to protect their people. They use the might of their Air Force and you whinge it's heavy handed.

Really?

The only figures I can find are 9 Israeli's killed by Palestinian rocket fire since 2001 and that the rockets "rarely" cause any casualties.

Even this list for 2006-2008 as released by the Israelis shows that very rarely do the rocket attacks cause any casualties

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/terrisrael-10.html

Since these figures come from the Israelis I believe them to be fairly accurate.
The list shows that the casualties are caused by other (also completely unacceptable) attacks..and not by the rocket attacks.

I'm not on any side in this argument except saying that maybe the Israeli approach is heavy handed and counter productive?

lol boldie you do make me laugh.

fair enough youve said you havent really got an opinion on it but i'm imagining talk in Israel about stopping operations immediately because someone has said perhaps theyre being a bit counter productive.

theyre dealing all these problems at the moment im not sure being seen as being a bit counter-productive by the international community is of that importance to them currently.

theyre running a country boldie, i suggest it's a tad more difficult than commentating about it on the interent with little resolution and no consequense, i dont suppose you can do everything correctly when in charge of so many people.

lol

Well done on completely misunderstanding the situation and my main point there bolt.

The main point is that "When Israel is being heavy handed and killing and destroying innocent people and their homes, they breed terrorism and continue to fuel the hatred".

And  of course the discussion has been had in Israel about whether this is the correct approach to take or not...Jesus man, give them a bit more credit than that...I just happen to disagree with the current ruling mind set in Israeli politics that says that this is the correct approach to take...that is all.

lol boldie i'm not highliting the point you made it was just the sort of lethargic way you came out with it in comparison to everyone else writing loads and loads you just seemed to bunk in as though you were playing 6 tables, doing the washing up and posting about how theyre a bit counter productive, this is how it read to me:

"well i reckon that what theyre doing is a bit counter productive, i dont know if this has been pointed out to them or not so i'll e-mail them later to let them know, having said that i like to chill at night so i probs do it tomorrow cos i'm a bit hungover, i might even bell them actually cos its important and stuff to let them know that theyre being counter productive and if theyd just stop being counter productive they can start being........erm.........productive, though it is friday tomorrow and ive got plans in the day and then im going out at night so i cant really be bothered and the more and more i think about it they probs know that theyre being counter productive and stuff and seen as how its F.A cup on Saturday and i like to sit around scratching my bollox on a sunday i'll just wait till monday though i do get introuble for sending non work related emails from work(i got a warning for sending one to mugabe saying he was being a bit unfair and i nearly got sack when i phoned putin) so i think i'll just leave it for now and instead do a happy naked clog dance to promote peace on earth and stop the terror of counter-produtiveness"!

OK, in that case..good point well made.

I shall have to use more exclamation marks and bold capital letters..

[Geo the Sarge]

And tell me just where I went where I had no connection and laid down the law Rod.

Ireland - peacekeeping under law already established

Bosnia - Kosovo - as part of peacekeeping force INVITED to protect

Iraq 1 - Requested by Kuwait to rid of invading Iraqis

These Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts I have already stated on many occaisions that I am unhappy about them.

As a soldier I followed orders, I also learnt about both sides of each conflict and if I was unhappy with it I could choose to leave (at a years notice.)

You informed us that you were taking part in some protest in Edinburgh against what's currenlty going on in Gazza.

All the gumpf you have supplied us is pretty old news and discussions have been going on about that for many years, I'm not saying I agree with either side regards that.

However, as it is now, Palestinian rockets are continually being fired into Israel, have been for a while with lots of casualties, Israel decides enuff is enuff and retaliates in a effort to protect their people. They use the might of their Air Force and you whinge it's heavy handed.

Yet you are prepared to batter 2 poncy presenters with a baseball bat should they ever make an obscene phone call to your grandad!!

Geo

You don't know what I know about the Palestinian conflict but you see fit to pass judgement on me, on what I know & whether I can see both sides, publicly with no reason or right to do so. Your argument became even more ridiculous when you failed to understand what I am going to protest. You have a deep belief in the right of Governments and armies to impose their will, that's to be expected & I understand it, try opening your mind to the fact that others see it as bullying and object to the needless killing of civillians when the people in charge are supposed to be on the side of law.
As for the Palestinian debate no-one apart from Boldie or myself from tried to argue anything but opinions (deep seated ones understandably), but
after my attempt at least to get beyond,'I think this & I think that' to some real facts & they were first ignored & now you call them Gumph from your position of great wisdom.

Geo, you've obviously got a problem with me, I've been straight up on my opinions and what I believe, if you don't like it tough. You started sniping & if you don't want picked up on it & shot back at then you should try to be a bit more subtle.

I just so Lolled...............you know that is not true, however because you feel it suits your arguement and people may think "well, he was a soldier, he must be brainwashed"

This is total nonsense and I believe you should give people on this forum a bit more credit before posting such nonsense.

The second part is even funnier, great play on words I'll give you that, however I have seen noone snipe on this forum as much as yourself, and from the position of a MOD too.

I'll finish on this part of the thread now, it doesn't deserve this sort of tripe.

Geo

You argue for Israel's right to use the might of their airforce & I'm not to read what I think is your opinion into it FFS. I admit I should have said seem to believe.

The second point wasn't a play on words although in a discussion on conflict I suppose it's liable to spring to mind.

You have still failed to address a point I've made beyond your wee personal digs. You've even played the MOD card.

[  ] gg nh wp.

Ok my last bit.


I did not condone Israels use of their airforce

I did say that OTHERS with no connection to Israel felt the need to fuel the fire, you include yourself as an other but then take it as a personal jibe, then come back with what was actually the first snipe regards my serving in countries to which I had no connection.

You also did not retract the statement inferring I was a brainwashed ex soldier which you know to be untrue.

Geo

[Rod Paradise]

Ok my last bit.


I did not condone Israels use of their airforce

I did say that OTHERS with no connection to Israel felt the need to fuel the fire, you include yourself as an other but then take it as a personal jibe, then come back with what was actually the first snipe regards my serving in countries to which I had no connection.

You also did not retract the statement inferring I was a brainwashed ex soldier which you know to be untrue.

Geo

Simple enough Geo - SAY WHAT YOU MEAN THEN.

You seem capable of making all kinds of assumptions about me from what I say, but I can't take anything you say & expand on it in my argument because you'll simply say 'I didn't mean that'.

So far apparently I've misread you totally. Fine, I'm in the wrong, your comment about "those with little connection that believe only which side they wish to and rarely see both sides of any argument" was obviously aimed at the other non-existant people getting involved in the argument you managed to make comment on. I jumped to that huge conclusion that as the only one arguing who hadn't lived there you were referring to me, it must have been .........?

[Rod Paradise]

To get briefly back to the subject, there are liberals in Israel as well.

Here's a fairly sensible view (IMO obviously) from the Jerusalem Post. While the author isn't liberal enough to suggest returning land, he at least wants to stop what is going on in Gaza. And he also acknowledges that the warmongering terrorists of Hamas are the ones who offered a proper ceasefire......

Rattling the Cage: Accept Hamas's offer
Dec. 24, 2008
Larry Derfner , THE JERUSALEM POST

Hamas is offering Israel a cease-fire if Israel lifts the siege on Gaza - and Israel should take it.

It would have been nice if we had been been the ones to make the offer. Then we, not Hamas, would have been the ones calling the shots. But apparently we're too full of ourselves to admit that we, too, are up a tree, so it's Hamas, not us, that's putting out the ladder for us both to climb down and avoid a new, terrible Middle East war.

The way out of such a war is for Israel to lift the blockade - to let trucks, ships and planes pass to and from Gaza - and, in return, for Hamas and the other Gazan factions to stop firing rockets at Israeli border towns. They don't bother us, we don't bother them - that's the idea. And if the Palestinians broke the cease-fire, Israel could reimpose the siege, and if that didn't work, we could break the cease-fire, too - much more lethally, in fact, than they could.

What's so bad about that? Where's the terrible humiliation for Israel in that?

The alternative is to let the fighting keep escalating until very soon, we end up in a war in which nearly a million Israelis come under rocket fire; Gaza becomes a killing ground for Israelis and Palestinians alike; Israel ends up with the privilege of ruling the Strip and its 1.5 million desperate, hostile people again; and the dilemma of "what to do about Gaza?" not only doesn't go away, it becomes incomparably harder to solve.

And that's if the war doesn't spread to the West Bank and the North.

This is crazy. But this is what's going to happen if we don't get a new, improved cease-fire very soon, because Israel cannot allow Ashkelon or any other city within Gaza's rocket range to become Sderot. Anything is better than that, even a war, even the permanent re-occupation of the Gaza Strip.

There is a way out, but it requires Israel to admit that it made a huge mistake, a mistake borne of arrogance and blindness going back at least to the disengagement a little over three years ago.

Right then, right after we got our soldiers and settlers out of the Strip, we should have offered the Palestinians the deal that Hamas is offering us now - you don't bother us, we won't bother you. You don't fire rockets at Sderot, we won't blockade Gaza, just like nobody blockades Israel or any other free country.

BUT ISRAEL wasn't willing to live and let live with Hamas - it was intent on making them cry uncle or, ideally, on getting rid of Hamas altogether by turning Gaza's population against them. That's the reasoning behind the blockade - to make life for Gazan civilians so miserable that they turn Hamas out and bring in new leaders who will agree to leave Sderot alone.

It hasn't worked that way, though. What seems to have happened, instead, is that the prolonged deprivation caused by the blockade has made Gazans feel they have nothing to lose from a war with Israel.

"IN THE Strip, they're waiting for the war," ran the headline on Yediot Aharonot's man-in-the-street story from Gaza on Sunday. One resident said: "Israel doesn't want to take over Gaza and doesn't want to open the border crossings, so everyone wants Hamas to start the war to bring some kind of change to Gaza." Another resident said: "You [Israelis] want to pressure us into becoming Hamas's enemies, but you hurt every resident in Gaza, so Israel has to pay the price."

We don't want to see how people in Gaza are living, we block it out of our minds - which, I suppose, is natural for a society at war, but which also keeps that war going longer than it might if we would recognize that Gaza is getting so much the worst of it.

The Kassams have terrorized the 25,000 people in Sderot and its environs, but have caused very, very few deaths or serious wounds. By contrast, Israel has terrorized 1.5 million Gazans, locked them inside their awfully narrow borders, throttled their economy, and killed and seriously wounded thousands of them.

Yet we imagine that the people in Gaza are laughing at us. We picture them sitting around twirling their moustaches and sniggering at the innocent, frightened Jews as they think up new tortures, new tricks. And so the idea of ending the blockade in return for an end to the Kassams seems to us like surrender - the Palestinians have already got the upper hand, and now we're supposed to give them even more of an advantage?

Never. We'll see who blinks. We won't go like lambs to the slaughter. If they want war, they'll get it.

THIS IS crazy. Israel is the superpower of the Middle East, but because we still think we're the Jews of Europe in the 1930s, or the Israelites under Pharoah, we spend a lot more time fighting our enemies than we might if we looked at the whole picture, not just our half of it.

There may be a way out of this war, and if Israel does not take it - if it does not accept Hamas's offer of a cease-fire, which it should have offered Hamas from the beginning - then the principal blame for the war will lie with us. Our arrogance and blindness will get a lot of innocent people killed. And no one has a clue about when, or where, or how it will end.

I wonder if the author here had no connection too.....

[tikay]

Did you ever put these shares in a PEP or ISA Tony, to mitigate the CGT? (Tho' of course they are useless for crystallising a CGT loss ala BCCI LOwndes et al)


BTW HNY hope 2009 is a good 'un for you and all at Blonde

Hi Simon, happy  - & healthy - new year to you, too. Is your health any better now?

PEP's - no, I never did, though I wish I had.

ISA's - yes. I tried to take Share Dividends in "scrip" if I could, but when I took cash dividends, I invested it directly into ISA's, or whatever they we called back in the day. High-Interest & tax-free. I think I have an ISA right now, costs me about £300 per month I think. NatBloodyWest pissed in my ear when I was dong my weasel impression one day.

Health's better than a year ago, get tired very easily which interferes with poker for sure and still on transplant list. Hoping to make it to WSOP this Summer and closer to home a more regular appearance at Dusk Til Dawn.

I take it the NatWest ISA is a cash one, might be worth transferring it into a share ISA and buying some cheap shares? Have fun at Luton/Walsall

Good luck with getting the transplant Simon. Realistically, what time-frame does this envisage? This year?

Fingers crossed for you.

last review was told 12-18 months.....then again a year earlier was told 12-18 months (in fairness they could be right last year as 3 months to go in that time frame) so fingers crossed for 2009

As others have already noted, Simon, you carry your burden like a big man. To my knowledge you have been unwell, what, 3 years, 4 years now? And I've never once heard you complain.

Fingers crossed the transplant is soon.

If it's not a question too far - I like to try to understand these things - do you still have to have dyalisis (sp?), & is this "self-administered", or do you have to go to Hossie? Answer by PM if you prefer, including "wtf has that got to do with you".....

"Health & happiness in '09" must have a special ring to it for you!

[tikay]

Did you say that you were going to Walsall today Tony ?

I can't seem to find any info. about today's tournament anywhere, they appear to have stopped advertising.

Yes Ralph, I am.

£200 + £20 (they have stopped those bloody "embedded Reg Fees, yo!), £20,000 Guaranteed, Double Chance, I think it's 4,000 + 4,000. I could not find any details either. blondeite "singhee" gave me some info, I'll look it out for you. Claire is going too, I believe.

4pm start - (call it 4.30, as it's Walsall), be nice to see you there.

Thanks Tony, I'm just a slight possibility but good luck to you if you play it.

I now learn that it's 2 x 45 minute Levels, & then 30 minutes all the way, but still no clue what the structure is.

I'm now all of a wobbly dither, whether to swerve it completely, & go to Luton instead.

I need to make a decision quick.

Hmm....

come to Walsall.  I'll buy you a latte.

Sorry Claire, change of plan - Luton is now the chosen recepitent of my moneyz. I can't find out the Structure at Walsall, so bugger it.

I only came up here coz I thought this is where everyone would be!  Ho hum, I'll just get it won meself!  Good luck in Luton.

Sorry Claire, completely my fault. I got frustrated as I could not ascertain the structure, then I heard it was 2 x 45 mins followed by 30 mins all the way, plus the usual Walsall bizarre prize structure, with their chronic unpunctuality, & I just thought, "well, I may as well do Luton in that case".

113 runners at Luton, but I mangled one hand against Lalit as bad as bad can mangle, so that was that. No point regretting it now.

Hod did it go at Walsall? I heard 136 runners, that's well impressive.

[kinboshi]

Did you say that you were going to Walsall today Tony ?

I can't seem to find any info. about today's tournament anywhere, they appear to have stopped advertising.

Yes Ralph, I am.

£200 + £20 (they have stopped those bloody "embedded Reg Fees, yo!), £20,000 Guaranteed, Double Chance, I think it's 4,000 + 4,000. I could not find any details either. blondeite "singhee" gave me some info, I'll look it out for you. Claire is going too, I believe.

4pm start - (call it 4.30, as it's Walsall), be nice to see you there.

Thanks Tony, I'm just a slight possibility but good luck to you if you play it.

I now learn that it's 2 x 45 minute Levels, & then 30 minutes all the way, but still no clue what the structure is.

I'm now all of a wobbly dither, whether to swerve it completely, & go to Luton instead.

I need to make a decision quick.

Hmm....

come to Walsall.  I'll buy you a latte.

Sorry Claire, change of plan - Luton is now the chosen recepitent of my moneyz. I can't find out the Structure at Walsall, so bugger it.

I only came up here coz I thought this is where everyone would be!  Ho hum, I'll just get it won meself!  Good luck in Luton.

Sorry Claire, completely my fault. I got frustrated as I could not ascertain the structure, then I heard it was 2 x 45 mins followed by 30 mins all the way, plus the usual Walsall bizarre prize structure, with their chronic unpunctuality, & I just thought, "well, I may as well do Luton in that case".

113 runners at Luton, but I mangled one hand against Lalit as bad as bad can mangle, so that was that. No point regretting it now.

Hod did it go at Walsall? I heard 136 runners, that's well impressive.

Claire is in Nottingham now (shopping I believe) going to DTD later.  I spoke to her earlier and she bubbled, but they had a saver so she got her buy-in back.  The hand in question is on the PHA board. 

[AndrewT]

Claire is in Nottingham now (shopping I believe) going to DTD later.  I spoke to her earlier and she bubbled, but they had a saver so she got her buy-in back.  The hand in question is on the PHA board. 

I'm guessing he didn't fold...

[kinboshi]

Claire is in Nottingham now (shopping I believe) going to DTD later.  I spoke to her earlier and she bubbled, but they had a saver so she got her buy-in back.  The hand in question is on the PHA board. 

I'm guessing he didn't fold...

I think he thought his AK was good.

[tikay]

I just got a PM from a pal who is a Walsall regular, "singhee", & he told me Claire got a £200 saver, well done her.

[kinboshi]

I just got a PM from a pal who is a Walsall regular, "singhee", & he told me Claire got a £200 saver, well done her.

I'm sure I posted that 20 minutes ago...

[tikay]

Compo was in fine form in Luton last night, & only just missed the Cash.

He made a breathtaking play with 3-3, on a flop of A-J-J. He'd Raised pre, got 2 customers. He bet out, got re-Raised, with a caller, dwelt for a minute, then re-raised. And got it through.

Soon he had 50k, & was rampant.

Then he found pocket fives, & got a customer, in Tom Myland.

The flop was 2-3-5, & Compo was thinking "how can I get paid here?". Tom gave it his usual theatricals, umming & arring, & all the chips flew in, Tom triumphantly revealing his flopped straight with A-4.

"Excellent call, you are my hero" said Compo. Or words to that effect.

[Chompy]

He made a breathtaking play with 3-3, on a flop of A-J-J. He'd Raised pre, got 2 customers. He bet out, got re-Raised, with a caller, dwelt for a minute, then re-raised. And got it through.

Now that IS multi-dimensional.

[husler1]

hi tikay,have just joined your site today as the husler1,but you know me as the undertaker,i split the walsall £2oo last night taking £5 grand,say hi to red dog aswell and will see you at the dtd weekender,happy new year to all at blondepoker.

[AndrewT]

[  ] Husler1 gets it quietly