Christopher Whiteside MBE is a Conservative activist. He was Conservative candidate for Leeds North East in the 2024 General election
He has served as a County, City & District, Borough, Town and Parish councillor, and has also been a school governor and health authority member.
He lives and works in the North of England, particularly spending time in Leeds where he works, other parts of Yorkshire, and Cumbria.
The Fall of DA'ESH
Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) claimed today to have captured Raqqa, Raqqa, the capital of the self-styled "Islamic State" caliphate known to most people in the Middle East as DA'ESH. A US military spokesman confirmed that about 90% of the city had been cleared. This morning the SDF cleared the last two major IS positions in Raqqa - the municipal stadium and the National Hospital.
Islamic State (IS) made Raqqa the headquarters of its self-styled "caliphate" in early 2014, implementing an extreme interpretation of Islamic law and imposing savage punishments on anyone who opposed it or who they considered un-Islamic including beheading, crucifixion, torture, or throwing gay people off the roofs of five-storey buildings. The city also became the base for thousands of jihadists from around the world who heeded a call to migrate there by DA'ESH leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The SDF was formed by the Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG) militia two years ago along with a number of smaller, Arab factions. It says it is not aligned with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or the rebels seeking to overthrow him.
With the help of US-led coalition air strikes, weapons and special forces, SDF fighters have driven IS out of more than 8,000 sq km (3,100 sq miles) of territory. Last November, they began a major operation to capture Raqqa. They slowly encircled the city before breaking through IS defences on the outskirts in June. For DA'ESH to be able to claim to be a Caliphate one of the requirements was to control territory. While they dominated a significant part of both Syria and Iraq including the cities of Raqqa and Mosul that claim was plausible. With the defeat of DA'ESH forces in both these cities, coalition forces are close to reaching the point where even the most reality-proof jihadist will be unable to sustain the idea that this blood-soaked death cult can make that claim. The price, however has been terrible There has been a "staggering loss of civilian life" in Raqqa, according to UN war crimes investigators. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, reported on Tuesday that at least 3,250 people had been killed in the past five months, among them 1,130 civilians. Hundreds more were missing and might be buried under destroyed buildings, they said. I hope the rest of the world can help the people of Iraq and Syria to rebuild and that those who have joined together to defeat the evil of DA'ESH can resist the temptation to turn their guns on one another. The omens in Iraq are not good.
We most also recognise that while the defeat of DA'ESH is a huge blow to Islamist terrorism, it will not eliminate the threat of murderous Jihadist nutcases like the ones who have killed and maimed innocent people all over the world, from Manchester to Mogadishu.
I have seen the following quote variously attributed to Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Wendell Phillips and Desmond Tutu. Perhaps all of them said something of the sort. But I understand that it originated with John Philpot Curran:
Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise." ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Comments