@Bozza I think this is about oil. Securing control of oil rather than about getting actual oil.

Its about who controls the access to the oil.

In recent years, the west has been saying "Oh no we won't trade with you, you are not libtarded enough" This has meant that an axis of trade has developed among those who would resist the west. Every time the west sanction someone or embargo their product they send them to this axis.

When the west was by far the greatest consumer this meant the naughty country was in the dog house and suffered but of late it has led to a virtuous circle for some nations. If you are already in the dog house, then you lose nothing by buying some nice cheap oil. Someone who is subject to sanctions and embargos gains a new much needed customer. China laughs and buys cheap oil, while the west its competitor pays more and has tighter margins.

The solution is to get in control of the market in that country.

Will it work -dunno. The US has not make its mistake of Afghanistan and Iraq and tried to bring in its own administration which has insufficient local loyalties but it has also got very little control of the country by just removing the leader and trying to work with a pragmatic second in command who might otherwise have never been leader.

Its a good stab at imperialism by a country without much experience in the field. Will boots on the ground be needed to get anywhere once the dust has settled? Lets see. It depends what they offer and what they can threaten.

@Stigma The thing that always interests me about this sort of death toll is that it gives the lie to the idea that protests work. Protests work if you have an "oppressor" who plays fair -like Gandhi under the British. If the oppressor does not play fair you remove him by force or you die.

Peasant's rebellion worked fine till Tyler said to the king "be of good cheer brother" (or words to that effect, I can be lazy in looking up quotes). He thought the king would play him fair. He did not understand what the medieval aristocracy understood about power -if you have the military power to kill your enemy, you have all the moral authority you need. Fairness is a luxury of the modern anglosphere, gradually worked out from Tyler's attempt through to the Victorian reformers.

Democracy is granted by consent. You can't win it by begging or ranting. If you have an oppressor who will not play fair you must remove him or he will remove you.

Lefties don't teach that on campuses. Pussy riot was a big hit over here. Went to the gulag none the less. Every little lefty protest is a luxury of freedom, not the scaffold on which freedom stands. Freedom is earned. Democracy is only arrived at by consent between the orders of society.

@Bozza England may be the birthplace of freedom as understood in the Anglosphere but Englishmen need now to be wary, lest they lose the very thing they gave to the world -liberty with a large helping of fairness.

It is the innate sense of fair play that separated the English of the past from their competitors. It is why most of the sports worth playing originate in England -they are good enjoyable sports, fair to play. Its why slavery was abolished by the British, it is why notions of consent in politics and relationships are important today, why empires were permitted to disintegrate on mere public votes and why Anglosphere nations aim to lead by example.

If I may be permitted to light heartedly compare liberty with an Englishman's 20 ounce pint of warm beer (yes colonial cousins 20 ounces), liberty comes with a froth on top of permissive vice. However the actual draught of liberty should reach the crown on the glass. The head of the beer may add to the enjoyment but it should not detract from the full measure. Today Englishmen are settling for a glass of mostly froth, while the landlord (government) removes much of the real liberty.

English politicians are obsessed with questions of whether rainbow people can use the girl's toilets, whether protesters can bin historic statues or block motorways with protests about cheap energy sources, whether freeloaders can come to our shores and get houses working families are denied and whether people can be taught in a class room about scientific truths they find triggering. This is froth. Freedom of speech, freedom to posses and use weapons, freedom to educate your children how you see fit, freedom to drive a vehicle you choose, to heat your home with a fuel you choose and so on are constantly eroded in the name of "keeping people happy and safe"

English men do not rest on your great grandfathers' laurels. You are becoming an interesting backwater "apt for travel and study" as the Chinese say. Englishmen, reclaim liberty or you are just a chapter in history.

@Bozza @Bozza Don't worry, I am not supporting Iran or totalitarianism or the hijab. I am just interested in the image. To me it says a lot about what people have come to associate with the west. Freedom is one thing but freedom does not necessarily come with vices.

The girl in the image has a very western brat look on her face, she is not proud, defiant and inspired so much as a teenager saying "screw you". Her hair is expensively styled and she has lipstick and a cigarette. Compare with say "Marianne" from France who is very revolutionary, more scantily dressed yet still exudes a very different and rather more inspiring attitude.

Now I know the background to the image is the mandatory hijab which is a totalitarian law, so now we have a bad girl who says "Screw you" to the establishment. But I am a little saddened to see that freedom and the ability to be a bad girl or at least an attitude filled teenager are conflated for a generation of women.

Marianne does not wear a hijab but she is actually much more inspiring I think. She is the female embodiment of revolutionary freedom, unmaking the establishment in the hope of re-making a better future.

I hope that this revolution does not come with a downgrade in the quality of Iranian women or Iranian men's standards. The mandatory hijab is not the guardian of virtue. That was the error in the establishment. The law is not virtue -as I am always saying to men here. The individual must have the freedom to choose virtue or virtue has no meaning. Totalitarian states remove virtue form the individual and place in in the state which always becomes corrupt. These are the things I constantly say here.

I am sadend that the west is considered a place of sexual license and license to have small vices not really a place of freedom. In our universities freedom of thought is being eroded while the freedom to do have small vices is lionised. These are the wrong freedoms to focus on!