Populism To Counter De-Nationalized Elites?, UAE To Buy a Chunk of Prime Egyptian Real Estate, Gaza in Rochdale, "Hindu Supremacy", Chernobyl as Non-Human Paradise?
Good observation about the current establishment. Few are fluent in other languages and the culture in which the elite immerses itself across the world has a tendency towards homogenization and standardization rater than differentiation and variety.
Interesting article (Thomas Fazi) but not one that fits the context of pro-populism-as-long-as-it’s-ethnic-nationalist-populism native to FbF.
On the one hand ‘citizens are becoming increasingly suspicious of liberal democracy because they realize that no matter who they vote for, they always end up getting the same policies’, but George Galloway, maybe Britain’s most populist politician and one from whom people most certainly won’t hear the same policies, is smeared as the M.P. for Gaza and the putative patron of ‘rape gangs’.
The question of where he’s M.P. for can be settled by reading the manifesto he was elected on. Gaza isn’t mentioned.
In conclusion at least in Galloway’s case populism and democracy are antitheses, which ironically is the view Furedi is arguing against but one which would go down well with the unaptly named Democrat Party in the United States.
He is the patron of rape gangs (not 'rape gangs') for the simple reason that most Pakistanis in Rochdale are at least passively complicity in rape gang activity and they voted for him.
"The question of where he’s M.P. for can be settled by reading the manifesto he was elected on. Gaza isn’t mentioned."
He had two manifestos. One for Pakistanis and one for everyone else.
Be careful what you wish for. For several generations mainstream British politics was not explicitly sectarian. If Muslims reintroduce religion into the forefront of politics there will be a very strong case for non-Muslims to organise along explicitly sectarian lines too.
I vigorously agree that it is better to deal with the issues now rather than later, when future immigration has compounded the present mess.
You are right about British nationalism being moribund, but things can change very quickly. My guess is that the next iteration of nationalism will be unlike anything the UK has seen before. Historically British nationalism was caught up with the empire, the church and the legacy of the Protestant reformation, all of which are now non-existent or irrelevant. The next wave is likely to be more ethnic/racial and will develop in close proximity to rival groups. So could well be explosive.
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I have been working very, very hard on the next entry of the Spanish Civil War series. I know it's late, but it's going to be quite an entertaining read.
I remember watching and listening to George Galloway in the early 2000s and thinking something along the lines of “this slimy Bolshevik is among the lowest forms of human being, even by politician standards.” Now I’m reading about his current activities and, well, at least he has the virtue of being consistent.
there is a silver lining to watching the "socialists" easily transform into Islamists, it proves that the destruction of anything Western was always the real goal inside their black bitter hearts (along with the desperate need to feel important and powerful) despite all their phony speeches about the brotherhood of man.
"always end up getting the same policies to them (yes, this is a gross generalization..please forgive me)" No need; your generalisation is spot on. In 21st c. Western liberalism:
* The MSM Myth:.... vote Left and you get Left; vote Right and you get Right
* The Reality:....Yes, you still have a pluralist electoral democracy but just as a kind of plaything....part of the media entertainment industry. Meanwhile the real government is a permanent and almost unchallengeable techno-bureaucracy constantly topped up by 'experts' emerging from its 'one-party' universities.
* The Managerial State...."Unsurprisingly, neither governmental bureaucracies and quangos nor other civil institutions keep statistics on the political leanings of their employees. But there are clues. Unherd columnist Peter Franklin reflecting on his own experience of working in two UK government departments comments: “How many of the civil servants that most closely serve this Conservative government are actually Leftwing? Well....I would say approximately all of them”. And it’s not just the UK. Research in the US context finds that “the political beliefs of the median federal government employee lie to the left not only of the median Republican, but also the median Democrat”. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/carry-on-governing
In addition the managerial state loves “safetyism”. In Canada we now have Bill C-63 which looks to include fines and jail time for harming others online. Furthermore, it looks like there will be an independent panel appointed by government adjudicating the supposed harms. Lastly, the government has not denied that the bill includes punishment for hate speech pre-crimes. Hello Minority Report.
You should have put 'harming others online' in quotes, as the 'harms' are to be testified completely in secret on flimsy bases that adhere to the philosophy of Dear Leader Justin.
Owning the US Congress is almost nothing compared to Wexner and the US State Department owning retail (by each individual Israeli sellout to Turbo America) most of the Israeli principals. Which America US State and Finance DID BUY over the last 3 decades.
…. Almost nothing- but perhaps just enough to survive their hand wringing betrayals this year.
The US Congress is just buying them time. Time enough perhaps. This year the 🇺🇸 Empire ends, and it began already with the ongoing implosion. I do not predict, I observe. Time. Enough? Mm.
The US AIPAC, and Evangelicals-
And the neoliberal bait and switch and switch back-
The Israelis let America buy a lot of them retail. This made a lot of money- so…
In exchange BB who knows this well enough got time and $200B in current reserves Israel can draw on when Tests came.
The tests came;
1. The Israeli (American owned) Supreme Court was going to establish Judicial “Review” of Basic Law, overturning any democracy and give the Palestinians the vote. This is the US CFR Directed course (an order) as of last April. This would have ended Israel not even as South Africa, more like a very bloody Belgian Congo.
2. Then HAMAS, being morons, destroyed their own victory with the Gaza Livestream Murder/Rape/ Ghazi-Palooza (ghazi means raid). With this raid, HAMAS saved Israel from treachery.
Israel may or may not survive, however they can probably survive this year. That’s all they need to escape American clutches.
And no, the Jews don’t run America, anymore than they ran the British Empire. They pay to buy time, they pay Danegeld.
They paid HAMAS Danegeld too, that failed.
HAMAS destruction and Gaza destruction is best slow walked, at least until the November 2024 elections chaos consumes the remaining energy of our insane elites. American elites.
Anglo- American Puritan Ivy League elites to be precise.
They hate Israel, but Hate Americans - the Deplorables- far more. In the case of Israel it’s anti colonialism and the revenge of the Arabists in the State Department, combined with the American and Western Elites who aren’t Jewish natural and understandable resentment of these nouveau riche utterly crass bounders and climbers congenital boorishness.
The Neocons could make a Nazi of Mother Teresa.
(This is true, and my bow to “antisemitism.”).
The American Interest.
I’m only sworn to America.
I’ve been saying 2 things about this all along.
1) The most important one is this strange confluence of events with Israel, America and the MidEast intertwined our fates. Our alliance of the Cold War with Israel 1969-present should have been ended. None of our alliances ended, instead they passed into the hands of Boomers with predictable results.
NOW it is in our core interest that our Domestic Enemies (I am a Deplorable) are on the horns of this dilemma- they can focus on the destruction of their most despised client Satrapy , Israel-
OR - exclusive Or-
… they could have focused on consolidating power over America, and every ounce of effort and all the bandwidth on Trump / MAGA. They had perhaps enough for one or the other- not both. > The American interest had it come to it would have at great cost to our internal morale , *could* have been to let them destroy Israel. This is their goal, it is the goal of many on this page. It’s just on the Left’s to do list, it’s what you do.
>>> But there was another path, the one in front of us, the one taken by our Enemies domestic… vacillation. Try to do both (and Ukraine 🤣). The miracle happened- they could choose NEITHER and frittered away their remaining strength. Like Hitler in 1943-1945 they tried to hold it all and are losing it all. If at any point they had sacrificed a theater- Americans get elections, or Peace in Ukraine, or just stay out of Israeli politics for a time, they could have concentrated their strength.
But NO. They tried to jail BB (to show power that’s all), and have the Israeli Supreme Court overturn the Knesset and rule to give the Pals the vote, AND couldn’t make a deal on Ukraine, instead deluded themselves they were marching to Moscow, AND ban Trump from being on the ballot… AND put a lame tame neocon GOP chump up…. they just couldn’t decide. Now not only trying to hold everything but advance from a position of weakness (the Ukraine summer offensive is a wonderful example of this) now having overextended everywhere AND utterly alienating and enraging their country…. Now all collapses.
All our alliances became toxic, but above all poisoned us. I don’t care about foreign countries. I care that we make it. All alliances must end, all sanctions, I’d make America from Hostel Empire to Hermit Republic. I think this may happen. Bye!
2). We 🇺🇸 need to stop the endless betrayals foreign and domestic, we need the practice, this has been a great opportunity.
Trump the Zionist won't rock the boat. None of the candidates deviate from the script except for Cornell West.
I'll argue it's in America's interest to force a ceasefire. That's what I expected would happen after Israel had exacted its revenge. Ceasefire + back to the status quo. Not a solution by any means, but the fate of Israel isn't our problem.
There was a time when suicide bombings were taking a toll on Israeli civilians, so it can be said they're used to it. They built a wall in response, added more checkpoints, and life moved on. America doesn't have to be complicit in any of it.
We become complicit when we force a ceasefire, Bob.
If it’s not our problem let them sort it out, and let the stronger one win. The weaker one raped and killed on their own livestream. Shed no tears.
Is it our business or not?
You want to force a ceasefire then say your deaths aren’t our problem?
Get the fuck out of this, or get in and accept complicity.
We - 🇺🇸 - we are quite complicit in forcing Israel to give up Gaza, and the West Bank, and in total they lost as many as they did 10/7. We 🇺🇸 forced them to give up Lebanon.
1100 deaths in Israel is equivalent to 70,000 American dead, BTW.
If you’re going to mention money- we give more in sum , considerably more to Israeli’s neighbors. We give $2B a year or more to Egypt, we provide the Navy for the entire Middle East and Persian Gulf, and we’ve been the Saudi’s and Kuwaiti’s mercenary army on at least one occasion. You notice we don’t ask them about Human Rights 🤣 or to make territorial concessions.
We don’t worry about complicity of our genocidal ally Saudi in Yemen.
Of course not.
The Gulf Arabs have real money.
The Israelis don’t have anyone but the Evangelicals 🤣.
- the Israeli lobby is extremely weak, or it wouldn’t have to answer for 💩.
Trump the Zionist lol.
He just stopped playing every side off against each other and progressed a long way towards peace. He made the Abraham accords. Even now a resolution is in sight… and everyone else wants it… except HAMAS, because then the money would stop. Including American, because we’ve been paying for the Palestinians since 1948.
We paid HAMAS another $100 million just before the attack.
The US can force a ceasefire because Israel cannot go it alone. Again, that is their problem. If they have to negotiate because the IDF is out of ammunition, maybe they should have worked on becoming self-sufficient.
The IDF is responsible for what happened on Oct. 7th. Their female observers gave them ample warning and they dismissed it. They either wanted a pretext or are too incompetent to defend themselves. In any case, their internal issues are not America's problem.
Give it up, long-warred, you're either a Zionist or accept that Washington is subservient to Jerusalem. Nothing's going to change whether Trump or Biden wins in November. As far as Bibi is concerned, the US election outcome is win-win.
I don't think those are comparable. It's perfectly acceptable to favour one side over another, that's politics. It would be different of Blinken said "I come as a Jew, and as a result will prioritise Israeli interests over the USA's"
I don't know enough about South Carolina but I don't think it's the same. It's acceptable to tailor your message to your voting base. It's very different to say that you *represent* that base to the exclusion of the people who voted you in
Galloway is pro-Palestinian and he's tailoring his message to his base, which includes many Muslims The issue is the UK is uncomfortable with a political turn towards the Palestinians and away from the Jews/Israelis. Many view supporting Palestinians as akin supporting terrorism so they are troubled by a politician pledging support.
Nikki specifically campaigns on Israel, including when she ran for state governor. She campaigns on it as a presidential candidate. It's almost an obsessive focus for her, but then again she is a Southern Christian and the evangelicals are huge supporters of Israel.
George Galloway's success in Rochdale is ominous for political stability in the UK but given the miserable condition of the country we can hardly be surprised.
Galloway, like Corbyn, has pioneered the Anglophone version of Islamogauchist politics which will bring nothing but harm to Britain.
However, to be fair Galloway's politics needs to be assessed on a spectrum. Plenty of mainstream British figures prepared the way for Galloway above all the governments that presided over mass migration from the Commonwealth and that latter implemented multiculturalism.
Galloway's opportunism over Palestine itself is far from exceptional. The UK used identity politics on a grand scale when governing the empire. In Palestine itself during the Mandate the British sponsored hardliners to assume leadership within the Arab community, closed the country to Jewish mass migration in the 30s to appease Palestinian opinion, abstained on the vote at the UN on partition and actively supported the Transjordanian and Egyptian attack in 1948. Now the former metropole finds its tranquility disturbed by the sectarian obsessions of Third World migrants seeking to ensure that British foreign policy prioritises the concerns of the ummah al-Islamiyya still further.
Ultimately Gallowa's success reflects poorly on British Labour. They neglected the constituency, abandoned the working classes, put forward poor quality candidates. Now they are stuck with Galloway back in the Commons.
Westminster's problem is now acute. Identity politics for the Muslim community will generate comparable political forces for the English themselves. I do not foresee an Anglican Taliban, but some form of Anglo nationalism may yet emerge in response to current developmets. The implications of that would be truly explosive. We live in truly interesting times.
1 Any attempt at Anglo nationalism will be crushed by the state while conveniently ignoring or even sponsoring minority chauvinism.
2 On the other hand, the worst the state will do to an Anglo nationalist is put him in prison, more likely the state's long arms(media, NGO's) will cancel him from polite company. Perhaps de-bank him if you stretch it. When Anglos ruled the world, third world nationalists were routinly executed or jailed under extremely gruesome conditions.
Liberty has never been obtained by asking nicely. Any potential Anglo nationalists must understand that it won't be a fair fight at all, and they will have to sacrifice everything for the cause they believe in. They most likely won't even see any results in their lifetimes. It will be a completely thankless job with a reasonable chance of completely losing. But if they believe in their cause, they must still keep fighting on.
I'd agree with that. Westminster will be ruthless and unprincipled in its hostility towards English nationalism, especially in the beginning. But increasing numbers of the English have little to loose. Economic decline reduces the ability of the state to buy social peace and lowers the opportunity costs of resistance. Furthermore, mass migration from South Asia and the Middle East has created constituencies with an appetite for communal politics. This alone is guaranteed to transform English politics.
The main cause for concern for Anglo nationalists is demographics. There was no chance of the English colonists overwhelming Indian, African, or Middle Eastern natives. If the nationalist native elites could convert the pro-British native elites to their cause, their job was more or less done. Same cannot be said for Britain. British birth rates are in decline and you only need less than 1% of South Asia, Africa, and Middle East to come to Britain within a decade for Anglo nationalism to be a losing proposition.
The contrast is compounded further by the fact that Asian and Midde Eastern natives had significant leadership classes that championed their own national independence and actively resisted imperialism and colonialism. The English and Scots do not have such leadership. Class enmity against the masses is entrenched into Anglo political culture and the Anglo elites expect (naively IMHO) to benefit in perpetuity from mass migration.
Its hard to say but my reading of de-colonization is that prior to the First World War most Indian elites were actually pro-British and even the future nationalists were only asking for some form of autonomy. Year by year throughout the 1920s and 30s, they got more and more radicalized. Of course the fact that India actually became independent, means that no one today remembers the pro-British elites but they were much more influential in their times.
Its even more stark in Africa, where the pro-independence movement didn't exist in any meaningful sense before the Second World War.
Why isn’t the problem British involvement in the Middle East? The Balfour Declaration, Peele Commission and British Mandate which included the Balfour Declaration with Jewish immigration to Palestine? Arabs complained about Jewish immigration and now English are complaining about Muslim immigration.
Not saying the English are getting what they deserve. There needs to be a moratorium on all
Immigration but the British have entangled themselves in another land and still cannot extricate themselves from that conflict.
The immediate problem (IMO) is violence and extremism in the UK today which would not be an issue were it not for generations of ill-considered immigration policies and a reckless indifference towards Islamic radicalism on the part of Westminster.
This problem is exacerbated by the overwhelming and grotesque sense of entitlement on the part of so many involved: UK nationals who think that Westminster can or should play a role in determining the outcome of a territorial dispute in what was once the British Empire. Britain's empire is over. People in England have no special role or insight to offer on the dispute.
Instead of focusing on the Balfour Declaration etc, more attention needs to be paid to the UK's role today, in particular its willingness to effectively finance Hamas through its aid budget grants through the UNRWA.
Further to my initial response, I get frustrated by the complaints about British policy of the past. Few people acknowledge the complexity of it all.
The UK was drawn into the Levant by the collapse of Ottoman power. Britain was fully entitled to govern its territories as it saw fit and from the start Whitehall made it clear that the proposed mass migration of Jews into Palestine would be balanced by the protection of the rights of the Arabs. Britain already had experience with mass migration across the empire (Chinese settling in Malaysia, Indians in Fiji) and the case of Palestine needs to be seen within this context.
The Mandate itself provided Palestine with good, orderly and honest government under which people prospered. The contrast between the rule of the Colonial Office and the Ottomans is stark enough, but the contrast with the governments of Yasser Arafat, Mahoud Abbas and Hamas are even greater.
Far from being hostile to the Arabs, the British favoured them. Whitehall created an Arab state from the territory of the Mandate (Transjordan), restricted Jewish migration to appease Aerab demands, forgave the Arabs the uprising of the mid-30s, refrained from voting for partition and actively assisted them militarily in the war of 1948.
We are free to complain about the policies of the past as their effects linger on in the future, including right now. There's a tendency in the West in particular to view post-WWII as the way the world was and always should be and have a hard time understanding that WWII froze conflict, it didn't end up, and it created new conflicts. No one's denying the complexity, but critiquing and examining the choices made and their consequences.
The UK made a strategic decision to involve itself in the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman empire. Drawn makes it seems like the British Empire was forced at gun point rather than agency to make its decision. Once it ruled over the Middle East, the UK had the power to do what it wanted and it did. It allowed the mass migration of Jews to Palestine, which the Arabs opposed because they knew what the end game was but the British Empire was already committed to the creation of a Jewish state. It cannot be surprising the locals hated their new overlords and the demographic changes they wrought. I don't see how you can balance mass migration of Jews with the protection of Arab rights. The former came at the direct expense of the latter. Whether British support for a Jewish state was wrong or right is irrelevant. The British involved themselves in other lands, created demographic changes and now the world has to deal with these changes. As you note, the British also encouraged the mass migration of Chinese to Malaysia for their own benefit, not for the locals.
Your argument is that the British changes were good for the locals (better economy, better governance, etc.) but this ignores that the locals don't care. Many times they'd rather live under their own rule, even if worse off, rather than have the benevolent rule by outsiders. People in the West tend to think of a country only in terms of money and government services. You have your high paying jobs and good roads and police, what else do you need? They cannot fathom that this isn't enough. Imagine the Qataris ruled over Romania and eliminated corruption, expanded the economy leading to solid-paying jobs and provided efficient and effective government services. You think the Romanians would say wow, this is great. Better economy and better government. Who cares if our overlords are Muslim Arabs? I don't think so.
🇬🇧 Empire; It largely happened by the way via the Struggle with the French, and the unexpected success in the army for hire market for the East India company. It was all the Indian Bankers idea and they financed the entire thing start to finish. London was shocked, but when Clive arrived with the unimaginable sum of £2million they adjusted. All the rest flowed from that… when the British said the Empire was conquered in a fit of absent mindedness, they weren’t kidding. 7 months to get to England. It was all over before they knew it.
Even the Mideast was the French conflict with England… then oil, and the rising rivalry with Germany. In between the Great Game with Russia. That was all about protecting India.
The entire modern world flows from some modest beginnings with a handful of spice traders at Leadenhall street, granted a charter by Elizabeth Tudor.
It would be as if Indian Liquor store owners took over America in a generation… or two…
Savarkar was right about a common enemy binding people together. For that reason some form of white racial politics in the West is all but inevitable. Just a matter of time and diversity.
I think you're right. It's tricky because most white people, even those supposedly on the right, are deathly allergic to talking about demographic differences. It's a weird mental thing.
What I really don't want is a white version of black lives matter, or something like that. Frankly, that shit is embarrassing.
I don’t think it’s that strange. People born in the ‘50s-‘70s were subjected to history’s most comprehensive propaganda effort on the subject. And more importantly, there were no practical consequences to those morally-flattering beliefs: their societies remained largely un-diverse and stable.
Neither is now true. The media and entertainment complexes don’t have anything like the cultural dominance they did and hyper-diversity has kicked into overdrive all across the West. It’s a taboo that can’t hold and won’t.
Agreed. When you have disparate people with different languages, cultures, histories and norms and value but don’t demand assimilation, what else can hold them together? Nothing but a common enemy.
The damage to DNA from elevated background radiation would cause increased cancers and birth defects. As the authors suggest, the cancers would not be much of a problem if they took enough time to develop that the animals still had time to reproduce.
As for birth defects, also not a problem for animals as long as the proportion from each litter stays small: the defective babies simply die.
Birth defects and cancers are uniquely problematic for humans only, because we live much longer, fear death even if it occurs decades after our prime breeding age, and cherish all our offspring and struggle to keep them alive even if they would be otherwise nonviable.
When you stop anthropomorphizing in your analysis, it is no surprise at all that animals thrive in the wilderness surrounding Chernobyl.
Edit: Niccolo himself is guilty of anthropomorphizing when he suggests that getting cancer must make life suck for the animals. All animals get sick and die from something, unless they are eaten alive by a predator. I'm not sure they would notice or care whether their final illness was cancer or a respiratory infection or starvation.
If living in a refugee camp doesn't qualify you for resettlement, then what would be the point of the designation?
The delay in resettlement represents political considerations. The Vietnamese Boat People were deserving of resettlement (legally or morally, take your pick), but it took years before various countries agreed to grant them asylum.
I get the impression a game is being played here. The UN, the international community want to virtue signal, yet avoid living up to commitments written on paper.
Unlikely. Refugee status is reserved for those fleeing internationally. Gazans displaced from one part of Gaza to another would not qualify.
In any case, Palestinians have a special refugee status under the UN regulations awarded to them in the 1940s. Refugee status for Palestinians is heritable by definition. Cynics (like me) argue that this was done deliberately to perpetuate the conflict indefinitely.
Excellent question. There is a truly vast literature on the Arab/Israeli dispute but nobody ever identifies the politician/diplomat/official who first suggested the policies that enabled the permanent weaponisation of the refugees. This is very suspicious....officials love to take credit for major initiatives so the silence is suggestive. My best guess is that it was the Brits or possibly the Americans. The Arabs were mostly British clients at the time and reliant on advice from British officials.
Ed Bradley, the 60 Minutes corespondent, died fairly early of cancer. I always wondered whether it was because he's gone to the Chernobyl zone to do a segment, and it includes one of those shots where he says, "Now we can't stay in this location for long, because radiation levels are dangerously high..."
It is fascinating that Indian-Americans are so financially successful, considering how poor their home country is. Is it possible the best Indians are emigrating to the west (or more specifically America, where they have more opportunities than their countrymen living in Asian ghettos in the North of England)? Is there a subsequent hollowing-out of talent and ability in India?
I am reminded of an issue I used to read about back in the 1990s, I think. Because of US incentives and immigration loopholes, Philippine nurses and other health professionals were encouraged to come to America, bringing their skills with them. All fine and dandy for us Americans, but apparently there was real concern this was damaging the Philippine health system. I haven’t heard anything about that for some years. I wonder whether the anticipated debilitation of the Philippine health system ever occurred.
BTW, if you travel by car in the western US, you will find that virtually any motel you stay in along the major highways is run by Indians. Are they all from the same towns or provinces? Are they somehow related? How is it a single immigrant group has so dominated this specific American industry? I am intrigued by that question.
How does that happen? Do successful liquor store owners go back to India for a visit and tell everyone, "Boys, you gotta move out to the USA and get yourself a liquor store like I did."
The question should be why have no local Americans cornered this market? Seems like an easy business to run.
Its the same in South Africa, the locals complain non stop about Somalians, Bangladeshis and all sorts of weird immigrant blow in’s running convenience stores in the middle of the crime ridden, township hellscapes where the locals live, somehow this is unfair, its mean that they have an advantage. The problem is those blow in’s will sleep in the store, open 16 hours a day, and reinvest the profits in more stock (locals would blow that at the pub at the end of the month) but for some weird reason opening a spaza shop was below the millions of locals living in the area for years, doesn’t stop them from being envious ingrates while continuing to support the immigrants business because theres “no alternative” …
I experienced culture shock in upstate South Carolina in 2005 when filling the tank of my rental and going inside to pay, only to hear a southern drawl come out of the mouth of a young Punjabi woman working the register.
I had a similar experience when an East Asian women came to pay at the register and out came a heavy Scottish accent. This was like 1997. My jaw hit the floor and I was so confused.
Ive googled chernobyl wildlife on and off over the years. It seems like the radiation effects different animals to different degrees. Mammals seem to get on OK, birds seem to get it the worst; albinism, severe cataracts. Firebugs as well; they have a very distinct pattern on them that looks like one of those African masks. Lots of weird abnormalities, discoloration, deformed/missing limbs, antennae. I figure it might have to do with the fact they can fly directly onto that steel shell over reactor 4. Plus I'm not sure how well the cleanup crew got into the tree tops in 1986?
I agree that the west will get more "subcon." Apparently, when TX governor Abbott was making a scene about the border a few weeks ago, he was simultaneously negotiating in India for more H1B(?) migrants. Afa Putin weaponising immigration, I heard that he is actually taking african immigrants into Russia and then sending them into W. Europe via Finland? Funny if true.
Shk Tahnoon (head of ADQ) is considered an extremely savvy and ruthless operator - even in a family notorious for ruthlessness. I doubt they’re doing it out of charity.
Neither should they. The Egyptians need Gulf capital. They also benefit from the influence of the Gulf Arabs. The pragmatism and realism of the latter is a healthy influence.
It varies and it could all change in a heartbeat. Qatar is playing sinister games but the UAE and the Saudis appear to be dead serious about pursuing a pragmatic approach towards Russia, China, Israel etc. Bahrain and Oman have always been pragmatists.
I do not know a whole lot about British politics and know nothing about citizen Galloway, but I do find it a tad cynical that everyone is up in arms because a single politician who seems to openly speaking for Palestine made it through. In the sea of ones parroting the whole Israeli shtick.
In essence, he's taking the populist route. The fact that people dislike that one in three of the population that gent is trying to sway his way is Muslim, but the premise is the same: find something that bothers that population, and hit the shit out of that something till it gets you somewhere. It goes both ways.
Context is everything. Islamic extremism is now a very real problem in the UK. An MP, representing Margaret Thatcher's old seat, resigned the other week after years of death threats from Muslim hardliners. Galloway is part of a wider trend towards open extremism and religious confrontation.
I’m not fond of the disproportionate impact either of the ethnic groups is having on the world at the moment. I agree that context is everything but my point was exactly that: populism, like everything else has the other sharp edge. The UK is islamized to a point (don’t need politics to know that, walking around suffices) where you can’t expect to simply walk around with the whole western values, liberalism, support Israel gospel same as you couldn’t in Islamabad or Marrakech.
Their grandfathers were psychopathic masterminds, these are the end game weak grandchildren.
It’s end game, it’s weakness not miscalculation.
We’re their natural replacements.
They fear us, which is why they bring in thousands of replacements per hour into the USA. I think this will fail, very shortly explode.
A likely outcome, unfortunately going too far is National Socialism from Seattle to Stockholm, and they have bought these poor wretches to their doom. Survival will win here, and likely catch on throughout the West.
Whatever happens, this lot of frightened wretches are doomed.
Good observation about the current establishment. Few are fluent in other languages and the culture in which the elite immerses itself across the world has a tendency towards homogenization and standardization rater than differentiation and variety.
Interesting article (Thomas Fazi) but not one that fits the context of pro-populism-as-long-as-it’s-ethnic-nationalist-populism native to FbF.
On the one hand ‘citizens are becoming increasingly suspicious of liberal democracy because they realize that no matter who they vote for, they always end up getting the same policies’, but George Galloway, maybe Britain’s most populist politician and one from whom people most certainly won’t hear the same policies, is smeared as the M.P. for Gaza and the putative patron of ‘rape gangs’.
The question of where he’s M.P. for can be settled by reading the manifesto he was elected on. Gaza isn’t mentioned.
In conclusion at least in Galloway’s case populism and democracy are antitheses, which ironically is the view Furedi is arguing against but one which would go down well with the unaptly named Democrat Party in the United States.
He is the patron of rape gangs (not 'rape gangs') for the simple reason that most Pakistanis in Rochdale are at least passively complicity in rape gang activity and they voted for him.
"The question of where he’s M.P. for can be settled by reading the manifesto he was elected on. Gaza isn’t mentioned."
He had two manifestos. One for Pakistanis and one for everyone else.
Be careful what you wish for. For several generations mainstream British politics was not explicitly sectarian. If Muslims reintroduce religion into the forefront of politics there will be a very strong case for non-Muslims to organise along explicitly sectarian lines too.
I vigorously agree that it is better to deal with the issues now rather than later, when future immigration has compounded the present mess.
You are right about British nationalism being moribund, but things can change very quickly. My guess is that the next iteration of nationalism will be unlike anything the UK has seen before. Historically British nationalism was caught up with the empire, the church and the legacy of the Protestant reformation, all of which are now non-existent or irrelevant. The next wave is likely to be more ethnic/racial and will develop in close proximity to rival groups. So could well be explosive.
Again, when people rape kids, it’s time to explode.
Yeah and the result Philip was their balls fell off.
Let the Rivers of Blood flow, it should have already happened when the Pakis raped the kids.
Get busy or die.
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I have been working very, very hard on the next entry of the Spanish Civil War series. I know it's late, but it's going to be quite an entertaining read.
Cannot wait—that series is a banger, sir!!
I remember watching and listening to George Galloway in the early 2000s and thinking something along the lines of “this slimy Bolshevik is among the lowest forms of human being, even by politician standards.” Now I’m reading about his current activities and, well, at least he has the virtue of being consistent.
there is a silver lining to watching the "socialists" easily transform into Islamists, it proves that the destruction of anything Western was always the real goal inside their black bitter hearts (along with the desperate need to feel important and powerful) despite all their phony speeches about the brotherhood of man.
Houellebecq called it!
Slimy? He's always been anti war.
The slimy are the people who use labels like bolshevik to dismiss someone.
It's a form of prejudice. Judge him by his policies and actions, not his "party" or ideals.
"always end up getting the same policies to them (yes, this is a gross generalization..please forgive me)" No need; your generalisation is spot on. In 21st c. Western liberalism:
* The MSM Myth:.... vote Left and you get Left; vote Right and you get Right
* The Reality:....Yes, you still have a pluralist electoral democracy but just as a kind of plaything....part of the media entertainment industry. Meanwhile the real government is a permanent and almost unchallengeable techno-bureaucracy constantly topped up by 'experts' emerging from its 'one-party' universities.
* The Managerial State...."Unsurprisingly, neither governmental bureaucracies and quangos nor other civil institutions keep statistics on the political leanings of their employees. But there are clues. Unherd columnist Peter Franklin reflecting on his own experience of working in two UK government departments comments: “How many of the civil servants that most closely serve this Conservative government are actually Leftwing? Well....I would say approximately all of them”. And it’s not just the UK. Research in the US context finds that “the political beliefs of the median federal government employee lie to the left not only of the median Republican, but also the median Democrat”. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/carry-on-governing
Good points.
In addition the managerial state loves “safetyism”. In Canada we now have Bill C-63 which looks to include fines and jail time for harming others online. Furthermore, it looks like there will be an independent panel appointed by government adjudicating the supposed harms. Lastly, the government has not denied that the bill includes punishment for hate speech pre-crimes. Hello Minority Report.
You should have put 'harming others online' in quotes, as the 'harms' are to be testified completely in secret on flimsy bases that adhere to the philosophy of Dear Leader Justin.
Perfect point and observation.
They’re such pussies, what are they thinking being play tyrants?
Don’t worry, proper tyrants you can respect will come along.
Worth noting that Galloway has already declared himself 'the Member for Gaza'. No one to my knowledge has called him out for this...
Imagine, for example, if an MP declared himself the 'Member for Tel Aviv' or even the 'Member for Kabul'...
Look at the US Congress. Bibi Netanyahu owns most of them. All that's missing is the branding iron.
Owning the US Congress is almost nothing compared to Wexner and the US State Department owning retail (by each individual Israeli sellout to Turbo America) most of the Israeli principals. Which America US State and Finance DID BUY over the last 3 decades.
…. Almost nothing- but perhaps just enough to survive their hand wringing betrayals this year.
The US Congress is just buying them time. Time enough perhaps. This year the 🇺🇸 Empire ends, and it began already with the ongoing implosion. I do not predict, I observe. Time. Enough? Mm.
The US AIPAC, and Evangelicals-
And the neoliberal bait and switch and switch back-
The Israelis let America buy a lot of them retail. This made a lot of money- so…
In exchange BB who knows this well enough got time and $200B in current reserves Israel can draw on when Tests came.
The tests came;
1. The Israeli (American owned) Supreme Court was going to establish Judicial “Review” of Basic Law, overturning any democracy and give the Palestinians the vote. This is the US CFR Directed course (an order) as of last April. This would have ended Israel not even as South Africa, more like a very bloody Belgian Congo.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/israel-palestine-one-state-solution?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=twofa&utm_campaign=The%20World%20Beyond%20Ukraine&utm_content=20230421&utm_term=FA%20This%20Week%20-%20112017
2. Then HAMAS, being morons, destroyed their own victory with the Gaza Livestream Murder/Rape/ Ghazi-Palooza (ghazi means raid). With this raid, HAMAS saved Israel from treachery.
Israel may or may not survive, however they can probably survive this year. That’s all they need to escape American clutches.
And no, the Jews don’t run America, anymore than they ran the British Empire. They pay to buy time, they pay Danegeld.
They paid HAMAS Danegeld too, that failed.
HAMAS destruction and Gaza destruction is best slow walked, at least until the November 2024 elections chaos consumes the remaining energy of our insane elites. American elites.
Anglo- American Puritan Ivy League elites to be precise.
They hate Israel, but Hate Americans - the Deplorables- far more. In the case of Israel it’s anti colonialism and the revenge of the Arabists in the State Department, combined with the American and Western Elites who aren’t Jewish natural and understandable resentment of these nouveau riche utterly crass bounders and climbers congenital boorishness.
The Neocons could make a Nazi of Mother Teresa.
(This is true, and my bow to “antisemitism.”).
The American Interest.
I’m only sworn to America.
I’ve been saying 2 things about this all along.
1) The most important one is this strange confluence of events with Israel, America and the MidEast intertwined our fates. Our alliance of the Cold War with Israel 1969-present should have been ended. None of our alliances ended, instead they passed into the hands of Boomers with predictable results.
NOW it is in our core interest that our Domestic Enemies (I am a Deplorable) are on the horns of this dilemma- they can focus on the destruction of their most despised client Satrapy , Israel-
OR - exclusive Or-
… they could have focused on consolidating power over America, and every ounce of effort and all the bandwidth on Trump / MAGA. They had perhaps enough for one or the other- not both. > The American interest had it come to it would have at great cost to our internal morale , *could* have been to let them destroy Israel. This is their goal, it is the goal of many on this page. It’s just on the Left’s to do list, it’s what you do.
>>> But there was another path, the one in front of us, the one taken by our Enemies domestic… vacillation. Try to do both (and Ukraine 🤣). The miracle happened- they could choose NEITHER and frittered away their remaining strength. Like Hitler in 1943-1945 they tried to hold it all and are losing it all. If at any point they had sacrificed a theater- Americans get elections, or Peace in Ukraine, or just stay out of Israeli politics for a time, they could have concentrated their strength.
But NO. They tried to jail BB (to show power that’s all), and have the Israeli Supreme Court overturn the Knesset and rule to give the Pals the vote, AND couldn’t make a deal on Ukraine, instead deluded themselves they were marching to Moscow, AND ban Trump from being on the ballot… AND put a lame tame neocon GOP chump up…. they just couldn’t decide. Now not only trying to hold everything but advance from a position of weakness (the Ukraine summer offensive is a wonderful example of this) now having overextended everywhere AND utterly alienating and enraging their country…. Now all collapses.
All our alliances became toxic, but above all poisoned us. I don’t care about foreign countries. I care that we make it. All alliances must end, all sanctions, I’d make America from Hostel Empire to Hermit Republic. I think this may happen. Bye!
2). We 🇺🇸 need to stop the endless betrayals foreign and domestic, we need the practice, this has been a great opportunity.
Cheers ! Bye!
America - Fuck Yeah!
The World _ Fuck off.
We won’t miss each other.
Cheers!
Trump the Zionist won't rock the boat. None of the candidates deviate from the script except for Cornell West.
I'll argue it's in America's interest to force a ceasefire. That's what I expected would happen after Israel had exacted its revenge. Ceasefire + back to the status quo. Not a solution by any means, but the fate of Israel isn't our problem.
There was a time when suicide bombings were taking a toll on Israeli civilians, so it can be said they're used to it. They built a wall in response, added more checkpoints, and life moved on. America doesn't have to be complicit in any of it.
We become complicit when we force a ceasefire, Bob.
If it’s not our problem let them sort it out, and let the stronger one win. The weaker one raped and killed on their own livestream. Shed no tears.
Is it our business or not?
You want to force a ceasefire then say your deaths aren’t our problem?
Get the fuck out of this, or get in and accept complicity.
We - 🇺🇸 - we are quite complicit in forcing Israel to give up Gaza, and the West Bank, and in total they lost as many as they did 10/7. We 🇺🇸 forced them to give up Lebanon.
1100 deaths in Israel is equivalent to 70,000 American dead, BTW.
If you’re going to mention money- we give more in sum , considerably more to Israeli’s neighbors. We give $2B a year or more to Egypt, we provide the Navy for the entire Middle East and Persian Gulf, and we’ve been the Saudi’s and Kuwaiti’s mercenary army on at least one occasion. You notice we don’t ask them about Human Rights 🤣 or to make territorial concessions.
We don’t worry about complicity of our genocidal ally Saudi in Yemen.
Of course not.
The Gulf Arabs have real money.
The Israelis don’t have anyone but the Evangelicals 🤣.
- the Israeli lobby is extremely weak, or it wouldn’t have to answer for 💩.
Trump the Zionist lol.
He just stopped playing every side off against each other and progressed a long way towards peace. He made the Abraham accords. Even now a resolution is in sight… and everyone else wants it… except HAMAS, because then the money would stop. Including American, because we’ve been paying for the Palestinians since 1948.
We paid HAMAS another $100 million just before the attack.
We are already quite complicit.
The US can force a ceasefire because Israel cannot go it alone. Again, that is their problem. If they have to negotiate because the IDF is out of ammunition, maybe they should have worked on becoming self-sufficient.
The IDF is responsible for what happened on Oct. 7th. Their female observers gave them ample warning and they dismissed it. They either wanted a pretext or are too incompetent to defend themselves. In any case, their internal issues are not America's problem.
Give it up, long-warred, you're either a Zionist or accept that Washington is subservient to Jerusalem. Nothing's going to change whether Trump or Biden wins in November. As far as Bibi is concerned, the US election outcome is win-win.
He would make a great human shield too..
Nikki Haley is an unwavering Israeli hawk despite being an Indian American and Blinken went to Israel saying I come as a Jew despite being the US SOS.
I don't think those are comparable. It's perfectly acceptable to favour one side over another, that's politics. It would be different of Blinken said "I come as a Jew, and as a result will prioritise Israeli interests over the USA's"
Nikki Haley was the governor of South Carolina and a US presidential candidate. She campaigns on Israel as an issue. It is the same thing.
I don't know enough about South Carolina but I don't think it's the same. It's acceptable to tailor your message to your voting base. It's very different to say that you *represent* that base to the exclusion of the people who voted you in
Galloway is pro-Palestinian and he's tailoring his message to his base, which includes many Muslims The issue is the UK is uncomfortable with a political turn towards the Palestinians and away from the Jews/Israelis. Many view supporting Palestinians as akin supporting terrorism so they are troubled by a politician pledging support.
Nikki specifically campaigns on Israel, including when she ran for state governor. She campaigns on it as a presidential candidate. It's almost an obsessive focus for her, but then again she is a Southern Christian and the evangelicals are huge supporters of Israel.
European elites serve Washington. They have yet to 'graduate' into being globalists in the practical sense.
George Galloway's success in Rochdale is ominous for political stability in the UK but given the miserable condition of the country we can hardly be surprised.
Galloway, like Corbyn, has pioneered the Anglophone version of Islamogauchist politics which will bring nothing but harm to Britain.
However, to be fair Galloway's politics needs to be assessed on a spectrum. Plenty of mainstream British figures prepared the way for Galloway above all the governments that presided over mass migration from the Commonwealth and that latter implemented multiculturalism.
Galloway's opportunism over Palestine itself is far from exceptional. The UK used identity politics on a grand scale when governing the empire. In Palestine itself during the Mandate the British sponsored hardliners to assume leadership within the Arab community, closed the country to Jewish mass migration in the 30s to appease Palestinian opinion, abstained on the vote at the UN on partition and actively supported the Transjordanian and Egyptian attack in 1948. Now the former metropole finds its tranquility disturbed by the sectarian obsessions of Third World migrants seeking to ensure that British foreign policy prioritises the concerns of the ummah al-Islamiyya still further.
Ultimately Gallowa's success reflects poorly on British Labour. They neglected the constituency, abandoned the working classes, put forward poor quality candidates. Now they are stuck with Galloway back in the Commons.
Westminster's problem is now acute. Identity politics for the Muslim community will generate comparable political forces for the English themselves. I do not foresee an Anglican Taliban, but some form of Anglo nationalism may yet emerge in response to current developmets. The implications of that would be truly explosive. We live in truly interesting times.
Two factors to consider:
1 Any attempt at Anglo nationalism will be crushed by the state while conveniently ignoring or even sponsoring minority chauvinism.
2 On the other hand, the worst the state will do to an Anglo nationalist is put him in prison, more likely the state's long arms(media, NGO's) will cancel him from polite company. Perhaps de-bank him if you stretch it. When Anglos ruled the world, third world nationalists were routinly executed or jailed under extremely gruesome conditions.
Liberty has never been obtained by asking nicely. Any potential Anglo nationalists must understand that it won't be a fair fight at all, and they will have to sacrifice everything for the cause they believe in. They most likely won't even see any results in their lifetimes. It will be a completely thankless job with a reasonable chance of completely losing. But if they believe in their cause, they must still keep fighting on.
I'd agree with that. Westminster will be ruthless and unprincipled in its hostility towards English nationalism, especially in the beginning. But increasing numbers of the English have little to loose. Economic decline reduces the ability of the state to buy social peace and lowers the opportunity costs of resistance. Furthermore, mass migration from South Asia and the Middle East has created constituencies with an appetite for communal politics. This alone is guaranteed to transform English politics.
The main cause for concern for Anglo nationalists is demographics. There was no chance of the English colonists overwhelming Indian, African, or Middle Eastern natives. If the nationalist native elites could convert the pro-British native elites to their cause, their job was more or less done. Same cannot be said for Britain. British birth rates are in decline and you only need less than 1% of South Asia, Africa, and Middle East to come to Britain within a decade for Anglo nationalism to be a losing proposition.
The contrast is compounded further by the fact that Asian and Midde Eastern natives had significant leadership classes that championed their own national independence and actively resisted imperialism and colonialism. The English and Scots do not have such leadership. Class enmity against the masses is entrenched into Anglo political culture and the Anglo elites expect (naively IMHO) to benefit in perpetuity from mass migration.
Its hard to say but my reading of de-colonization is that prior to the First World War most Indian elites were actually pro-British and even the future nationalists were only asking for some form of autonomy. Year by year throughout the 1920s and 30s, they got more and more radicalized. Of course the fact that India actually became independent, means that no one today remembers the pro-British elites but they were much more influential in their times.
Its even more stark in Africa, where the pro-independence movement didn't exist in any meaningful sense before the Second World War.
Oh dear, I must say the situation doesn’t favor a long struggle.
No need to get all … er… Irish about this…
Results in their lifetime;
Define lifetime.
Why isn’t the problem British involvement in the Middle East? The Balfour Declaration, Peele Commission and British Mandate which included the Balfour Declaration with Jewish immigration to Palestine? Arabs complained about Jewish immigration and now English are complaining about Muslim immigration.
Not saying the English are getting what they deserve. There needs to be a moratorium on all
Immigration but the British have entangled themselves in another land and still cannot extricate themselves from that conflict.
The immediate problem (IMO) is violence and extremism in the UK today which would not be an issue were it not for generations of ill-considered immigration policies and a reckless indifference towards Islamic radicalism on the part of Westminster.
This problem is exacerbated by the overwhelming and grotesque sense of entitlement on the part of so many involved: UK nationals who think that Westminster can or should play a role in determining the outcome of a territorial dispute in what was once the British Empire. Britain's empire is over. People in England have no special role or insight to offer on the dispute.
Instead of focusing on the Balfour Declaration etc, more attention needs to be paid to the UK's role today, in particular its willingness to effectively finance Hamas through its aid budget grants through the UNRWA.
Further to my initial response, I get frustrated by the complaints about British policy of the past. Few people acknowledge the complexity of it all.
The UK was drawn into the Levant by the collapse of Ottoman power. Britain was fully entitled to govern its territories as it saw fit and from the start Whitehall made it clear that the proposed mass migration of Jews into Palestine would be balanced by the protection of the rights of the Arabs. Britain already had experience with mass migration across the empire (Chinese settling in Malaysia, Indians in Fiji) and the case of Palestine needs to be seen within this context.
The Mandate itself provided Palestine with good, orderly and honest government under which people prospered. The contrast between the rule of the Colonial Office and the Ottomans is stark enough, but the contrast with the governments of Yasser Arafat, Mahoud Abbas and Hamas are even greater.
Far from being hostile to the Arabs, the British favoured them. Whitehall created an Arab state from the territory of the Mandate (Transjordan), restricted Jewish migration to appease Aerab demands, forgave the Arabs the uprising of the mid-30s, refrained from voting for partition and actively assisted them militarily in the war of 1948.
We are free to complain about the policies of the past as their effects linger on in the future, including right now. There's a tendency in the West in particular to view post-WWII as the way the world was and always should be and have a hard time understanding that WWII froze conflict, it didn't end up, and it created new conflicts. No one's denying the complexity, but critiquing and examining the choices made and their consequences.
The UK made a strategic decision to involve itself in the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman empire. Drawn makes it seems like the British Empire was forced at gun point rather than agency to make its decision. Once it ruled over the Middle East, the UK had the power to do what it wanted and it did. It allowed the mass migration of Jews to Palestine, which the Arabs opposed because they knew what the end game was but the British Empire was already committed to the creation of a Jewish state. It cannot be surprising the locals hated their new overlords and the demographic changes they wrought. I don't see how you can balance mass migration of Jews with the protection of Arab rights. The former came at the direct expense of the latter. Whether British support for a Jewish state was wrong or right is irrelevant. The British involved themselves in other lands, created demographic changes and now the world has to deal with these changes. As you note, the British also encouraged the mass migration of Chinese to Malaysia for their own benefit, not for the locals.
Your argument is that the British changes were good for the locals (better economy, better governance, etc.) but this ignores that the locals don't care. Many times they'd rather live under their own rule, even if worse off, rather than have the benevolent rule by outsiders. People in the West tend to think of a country only in terms of money and government services. You have your high paying jobs and good roads and police, what else do you need? They cannot fathom that this isn't enough. Imagine the Qataris ruled over Romania and eliminated corruption, expanded the economy leading to solid-paying jobs and provided efficient and effective government services. You think the Romanians would say wow, this is great. Better economy and better government. Who cares if our overlords are Muslim Arabs? I don't think so.
“People in the West tend to think of a country only in terms of money and government services.”
Madam, we must know different people?
It’s a bit late.
🇬🇧 Empire; It largely happened by the way via the Struggle with the French, and the unexpected success in the army for hire market for the East India company. It was all the Indian Bankers idea and they financed the entire thing start to finish. London was shocked, but when Clive arrived with the unimaginable sum of £2million they adjusted. All the rest flowed from that… when the British said the Empire was conquered in a fit of absent mindedness, they weren’t kidding. 7 months to get to England. It was all over before they knew it.
Even the Mideast was the French conflict with England… then oil, and the rising rivalry with Germany. In between the Great Game with Russia. That was all about protecting India.
The entire modern world flows from some modest beginnings with a handful of spice traders at Leadenhall street, granted a charter by Elizabeth Tudor.
It would be as if Indian Liquor store owners took over America in a generation… or two…
So instead of Rivers of Blood, we get Comedy Central as PM questions?
🤣
Savarkar was right about a common enemy binding people together. For that reason some form of white racial politics in the West is all but inevitable. Just a matter of time and diversity.
I think you're right. It's tricky because most white people, even those supposedly on the right, are deathly allergic to talking about demographic differences. It's a weird mental thing.
What I really don't want is a white version of black lives matter, or something like that. Frankly, that shit is embarrassing.
I don’t think it’s that strange. People born in the ‘50s-‘70s were subjected to history’s most comprehensive propaganda effort on the subject. And more importantly, there were no practical consequences to those morally-flattering beliefs: their societies remained largely un-diverse and stable.
Neither is now true. The media and entertainment complexes don’t have anything like the cultural dominance they did and hyper-diversity has kicked into overdrive all across the West. It’s a taboo that can’t hold and won’t.
Embarrassing may be a small price for survival.
It will probably be horrifying, so take comfort.
Agreed. When you have disparate people with different languages, cultures, histories and norms and value but don’t demand assimilation, what else can hold them together? Nothing but a common enemy.
The damage to DNA from elevated background radiation would cause increased cancers and birth defects. As the authors suggest, the cancers would not be much of a problem if they took enough time to develop that the animals still had time to reproduce.
As for birth defects, also not a problem for animals as long as the proportion from each litter stays small: the defective babies simply die.
Birth defects and cancers are uniquely problematic for humans only, because we live much longer, fear death even if it occurs decades after our prime breeding age, and cherish all our offspring and struggle to keep them alive even if they would be otherwise nonviable.
When you stop anthropomorphizing in your analysis, it is no surprise at all that animals thrive in the wilderness surrounding Chernobyl.
Edit: Niccolo himself is guilty of anthropomorphizing when he suggests that getting cancer must make life suck for the animals. All animals get sick and die from something, unless they are eaten alive by a predator. I'm not sure they would notice or care whether their final illness was cancer or a respiratory infection or starvation.
He isn’t insinuating that the animal’s lives ‘must suck’. He is quoting the article directly .
Would Palestinians from Gaza qualify for asylum in accordance with the UN convention on refugees?
So if they get to Egypt, they could only apply for asylum within Egypt and not some other country?
If this is really about saving lives, grant them asylum!
If living in a refugee camp doesn't qualify you for resettlement, then what would be the point of the designation?
The delay in resettlement represents political considerations. The Vietnamese Boat People were deserving of resettlement (legally or morally, take your pick), but it took years before various countries agreed to grant them asylum.
I get the impression a game is being played here. The UN, the international community want to virtue signal, yet avoid living up to commitments written on paper.
Aslyees chose their country whereas refugees don’t choose their country. Lots of perversion in the system.
We just did, you just haven’t figured it out yet.
Unlikely. Refugee status is reserved for those fleeing internationally. Gazans displaced from one part of Gaza to another would not qualify.
In any case, Palestinians have a special refugee status under the UN regulations awarded to them in the 1940s. Refugee status for Palestinians is heritable by definition. Cynics (like me) argue that this was done deliberately to perpetuate the conflict indefinitely.
What was the rationale for that? Its an unusual state of affairs
Excellent question. There is a truly vast literature on the Arab/Israeli dispute but nobody ever identifies the politician/diplomat/official who first suggested the policies that enabled the permanent weaponisation of the refugees. This is very suspicious....officials love to take credit for major initiatives so the silence is suggestive. My best guess is that it was the Brits or possibly the Americans. The Arabs were mostly British clients at the time and reliant on advice from British officials.
What do you think the Port in Gaza is for? Food? 🤣
There was a kerfuffle a few years back when AOC's chief of staff wore a T-shirt featuring an Indian nationalist whose anti-British sentiments had led him, Irish-style and Boer-style, to basically taking Hitler's side in WWII. https://forward.com/fast-forward/427361/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-nazi-adolf-hitler-subhas-chandra-bose/
Ed Bradley, the 60 Minutes corespondent, died fairly early of cancer. I always wondered whether it was because he's gone to the Chernobyl zone to do a segment, and it includes one of those shots where he says, "Now we can't stay in this location for long, because radiation levels are dangerously high..."
It is fascinating that Indian-Americans are so financially successful, considering how poor their home country is. Is it possible the best Indians are emigrating to the west (or more specifically America, where they have more opportunities than their countrymen living in Asian ghettos in the North of England)? Is there a subsequent hollowing-out of talent and ability in India?
I am reminded of an issue I used to read about back in the 1990s, I think. Because of US incentives and immigration loopholes, Philippine nurses and other health professionals were encouraged to come to America, bringing their skills with them. All fine and dandy for us Americans, but apparently there was real concern this was damaging the Philippine health system. I haven’t heard anything about that for some years. I wonder whether the anticipated debilitation of the Philippine health system ever occurred.
BTW, if you travel by car in the western US, you will find that virtually any motel you stay in along the major highways is run by Indians. Are they all from the same towns or provinces? Are they somehow related? How is it a single immigrant group has so dominated this specific American industry? I am intrigued by that question.
Practically every liquor store in a 3 town radius in my area of the NE USA has been gradually bought up by Indians. I'll bet it keeps expanding.
How does that happen? Do successful liquor store owners go back to India for a visit and tell everyone, "Boys, you gotta move out to the USA and get yourself a liquor store like I did."
I have no idea. It might be a family thing or a collection of families.
I guess it's kind of like Asian dry cleaners. For whatever reason, it just happens that way?
The question should be why have no local Americans cornered this market? Seems like an easy business to run.
Its the same in South Africa, the locals complain non stop about Somalians, Bangladeshis and all sorts of weird immigrant blow in’s running convenience stores in the middle of the crime ridden, township hellscapes where the locals live, somehow this is unfair, its mean that they have an advantage. The problem is those blow in’s will sleep in the store, open 16 hours a day, and reinvest the profits in more stock (locals would blow that at the pub at the end of the month) but for some weird reason opening a spaza shop was below the millions of locals living in the area for years, doesn’t stop them from being envious ingrates while continuing to support the immigrants business because theres “no alternative” …
Strong kinship and ethnic networks likely
Combined with exploitation of illegal labor of their own coethnics. This prevents Americans from cornering the market.
Make Alcohol American Again
FFS we had a 12 year mini civil war over it !
Ethnic racketeering and it starts with the overseas American embassy.
I experienced culture shock in upstate South Carolina in 2005 when filling the tank of my rental and going inside to pay, only to hear a southern drawl come out of the mouth of a young Punjabi woman working the register.
I had a similar experience when an East Asian women came to pay at the register and out came a heavy Scottish accent. This was like 1997. My jaw hit the floor and I was so confused.
Because its America, dammit
Ive googled chernobyl wildlife on and off over the years. It seems like the radiation effects different animals to different degrees. Mammals seem to get on OK, birds seem to get it the worst; albinism, severe cataracts. Firebugs as well; they have a very distinct pattern on them that looks like one of those African masks. Lots of weird abnormalities, discoloration, deformed/missing limbs, antennae. I figure it might have to do with the fact they can fly directly onto that steel shell over reactor 4. Plus I'm not sure how well the cleanup crew got into the tree tops in 1986?
I agree that the west will get more "subcon." Apparently, when TX governor Abbott was making a scene about the border a few weeks ago, he was simultaneously negotiating in India for more H1B(?) migrants. Afa Putin weaponising immigration, I heard that he is actually taking african immigrants into Russia and then sending them into W. Europe via Finland? Funny if true.
Shk Tahnoon (head of ADQ) is considered an extremely savvy and ruthless operator - even in a family notorious for ruthlessness. I doubt they’re doing it out of charity.
Neither should they. The Egyptians need Gulf capital. They also benefit from the influence of the Gulf Arabs. The pragmatism and realism of the latter is a healthy influence.
Totally agree
Are the Gulf Arabs really pragmatic? Color
Me extremely skeptical.
It varies and it could all change in a heartbeat. Qatar is playing sinister games but the UAE and the Saudis appear to be dead serious about pursuing a pragmatic approach towards Russia, China, Israel etc. Bahrain and Oman have always been pragmatists.
I think Qatar is playing DC’s game. The Sports stadium they had to pay $4.5 B for is - proof.
Literally playing our games.
Should have known...I could almost feel sorry for the bazaaris but that really would be naive.
I do not know a whole lot about British politics and know nothing about citizen Galloway, but I do find it a tad cynical that everyone is up in arms because a single politician who seems to openly speaking for Palestine made it through. In the sea of ones parroting the whole Israeli shtick.
In essence, he's taking the populist route. The fact that people dislike that one in three of the population that gent is trying to sway his way is Muslim, but the premise is the same: find something that bothers that population, and hit the shit out of that something till it gets you somewhere. It goes both ways.
Context is everything. Islamic extremism is now a very real problem in the UK. An MP, representing Margaret Thatcher's old seat, resigned the other week after years of death threats from Muslim hardliners. Galloway is part of a wider trend towards open extremism and religious confrontation.
I’m not fond of the disproportionate impact either of the ethnic groups is having on the world at the moment. I agree that context is everything but my point was exactly that: populism, like everything else has the other sharp edge. The UK is islamized to a point (don’t need politics to know that, walking around suffices) where you can’t expect to simply walk around with the whole western values, liberalism, support Israel gospel same as you couldn’t in Islamabad or Marrakech.
Agreed. Supporters of the status quo have been complacent to the point of insanity and miscalculated very badly.
They’re weak sellouts.
Their grandfathers were psychopathic masterminds, these are the end game weak grandchildren.
It’s end game, it’s weakness not miscalculation.
We’re their natural replacements.
They fear us, which is why they bring in thousands of replacements per hour into the USA. I think this will fail, very shortly explode.
A likely outcome, unfortunately going too far is National Socialism from Seattle to Stockholm, and they have bought these poor wretches to their doom. Survival will win here, and likely catch on throughout the West.
Whatever happens, this lot of frightened wretches are doomed.