It still holds. This is the paradox because whilst the traditional concept of warfare (carried out between states and practised by standing armies ) died at Hiroshima - the doctrine of "counter-insurgency warfare" (where instead of targeting soldiers you murder civilians) took over.

If there's ONE statistic everyone should know about wars it is the civilian body count.

Prior to WWI it was almost non-existent. Then, in that conflict, it jumped to around 10-15% with poison gas, artillery barrages etc.. By the time WWII arrived with area bombing and such it was up at around 30%. When Vietnam arrived counter-insurgency warfare was being rolled out on a massive scale. There the civilian body count was up at around 70% (and probably higher given that we don't know the full figures of people massacred by US death squads under the rubric of "The Phoenix Program").

Today the civilian death toll in wars is around 95%. Now, the military can talk all they like about "precision munitions", "smart bombs" and such. Accident or design - the result is the same: genocide.

A good documentary worth watching which highlights this very point is Jeremy Scahill's [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2532528/Dirty Wars[/url. Primarily it's about US extra-judicial assassination programs (drone strikes) but at the very end they explicitly admit that the US (and other NATO nations) have run "thousands" of missions involving special forces "kill teams" who basically fly into villages in places such as Afghanistan and wipe out the population.

Now, you can make a case for hitting what are known as "High Value Targets" - genuine troublemakers. But that wouldn't amount to much more than a few dozen missions.

It's little wonder the US has so many issues with gun violence. How do you rehabilitate someone who has spent two or three tours as part of a death squad? The answer is - you can't.

Can somebody please sort this out , this is a thread supposedly about Britains referendum on Eu membership , not loony tunes mark2

I'm probably going to vote to remain, but it's the lesser of two evils. I despise the EU for the deeply corrupt and unaccountable empire project it is, but this is a Faustian pact we have no way of escaping now. The calculated and shamelessly explicit corruption of "ever wider and deeper union" hooked us in a long time ago, the big irony is that as one of the few big net financial contributors to the project it effectively bribed our elites with our own money whilst taking even more of our money to bribe others!

We seriously need to bring migration back to more sensible levels, we need some immigrants for sure, but we need to treat economic migration as the cold, hard economic calculation it's supposed to be, the open door might get you a cheap cleaning lady or shop worker but the pressures on housing, education and healthcare are far more costly. Does a Greek barista bring the same benefit as an Indian nurse? I don't think so.

Dave was stupid to promise a deal he couldn't deliver and he made himself look idiotic by coming back with a pile of poo and telling everyone how well he'd done polishing it. The reality is that the EU project has hooked in loads of other countries too (with bribes we subsidised) and their economies are royally screwed by a dysfunctional momentary union, which means that exporting their unemployed to work as low skilled labour in the UK is a godsend whether it's remittances or UK Welfare benefits sent home or even just getting them off their own Welfare. But open door is not sustainable and you cannot run economic policy as if it were a charity with a bag of free money!

For someone voting remain you make a good argument to leave

, this might be our last chance

Hate to break it to you bruv but nukes have never been a deterrent.

So what do we make of this? www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/n ... -1-7967886

So what do we make of this? www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/n ... -1-7967886

Quote King Street Cat="King Street Cat"So what do we make of this? www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/n ... -1-7967886'" He's a white Englishman so of course he's just 'a loner' and 'mentally ill' rather than an ideologically motivated terrorist.

Quote King Street Cat="King Street Cat"So what do we make of this? www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/n ... -1-7967886'" He's a white Englishman so of course he's just 'a loner' and 'mentally ill' rather than an ideologically motivated terrorist.

I have tried to hold back for a short while, as a sign of respect.

If it turns out Mair has shouted “Britain First” that could be a game changer.

Any half intelligent person would be reviled by this act & if it transpires Mair has some affiliation to this organisation, well the majority of “don’t knows” could well have been swayed.

Than a small part of me relapses into Mugwump mode!

What if the powers that be, not the politicians, the higher powers, decided that things don’t seem to be going their way? So they resort to Plan B.

What a sad day for Britain and what tragedy for her young children, husband and family.

I fear what transpired today is a result of months and months of misguided rhetoric aimed at immigrants and refugees and also the the stoking of nationalism.

We have opened Pandora's box and as a result we have given our species's innate prejudices (tribalism, jingoism, racism, etc) a platform. Black day for British society and British politics.

If those are your reasons to remain I'd like to see your reasons for not leaving!