Tollund_Man4
No bio...
User ID: 501
Tollund_Man4
2yr ago
On the one hand this seems a bit misguided: if you're going to send death threats to someone, shouldn't it be a literal neo-Nazi, rather than someone who generally supports trans rights but still thinks female-only spaces are important in a few limited contexts?
Isn't that what "Punch a Nazi" is for? You send death threats to people which they will work on, and act violent towards people you think won't be persuaded by anything else.
Tollund_Man4
2yr ago
maybe because it's unpopular to be seen as an apologist for alchohol consumption.
It's interesting that this isn't at all true when you phrase it in, let's say 'populist' terms. But when you try to make the same argument in more academic terms you invite unpopularity.
Tollund_Man4
2yr ago
Jews have a high IQ and HBD would tell you that getting rid of them is a bad idea.
Would it? Of course it was an evil thing to do for other reasons, but the Nazis didn't persecute the Jews because they thought they were stupid, they did it because they considered them to be dangerous. Jews showing smarts could only make them seem more threatening.
in terms of ease of use, lethality, and safety
It might sound odd but there's a difference between wanting to disfigure someone and actually trying to kill them. Irish traveller gypsies have these kinds of fights fairly often and they do actually shake ends after a few months/years of sending each other to hospital (here's an example of an ongoing 4 year long feud which might be ending). Killing someone on the other hand puts your whole family in danger for however long it takes for the other side to get real revenge (and obviously it can go on longer if the revenge cycles goes on).
Also I'm not really familiar with the UK legal system but I'd imagine it's like Ireland where murder is really the only guaranteed way to get decades in jail. You can do a lot of damage to someone and get a slap on the wrist compared to what your sentence would be in America.
Ireland
Riot police have been called out to the small town of Newtownmountkennedy (population 2,800) in response to another protest outside a site which is soon to become an asylum centre. It got violent and the riot police charged the protesters after they set fire to a building on the outer portion of the site. It seems like most of the protesters/rioters have been pushed into an adjacent field, but police are still moving through the town and running into more angry locals.
Ballina had a ]far larger peaceful protest](https://x.com/Mick_O_Keeffe/status/1781727303283692017) a few days ago, it would be harder to shut this one down given how big the town is (c. 10,000) and how isolated it is.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Going by surnames they're Irish-Americans.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
We can, and should, frown on and punish that behavior. But it's not rape.
Reading him as charitably as I can I'd say he's advocating something like what the French had before they brought in age of consent laws a few years ago. You still got sent to prison for having sex with a minor but it wasn't called rape, and you got sent to prison for much longer if your case satisfied the coercive bar needed for a rape conviction.
Ireland
More suspicious fires on real or rumoured asylum accomodation. I think the story is getting to the point where every instance of arson or accidental fire in one of these places is going to be reported as an attack (to be fair to the media this is more a conclusion you're pointed towards rather than a direct claim, but one case of police not treating a fire as suspicious was omitted by the Irish Times and reported in other papers), but since the police keep mentioning their investigating of far-right rumours online there is something of political substance to fires that may have had no political motive.
Last Sunday at Sandyford, Dublin. Article claims that there were online rumours circulating about the building, the Department of Integration is checking whether they had any plans for the place, police are investigating and haven't said whether or not they're treating it as suspicious.
The early hours of Tuesday the 9th of January in Buncrana, Donegal. This building was certainly an asylum centre and was the first building that was actually occupied. Some people have been taken to hospital over smoke inhalation. Police have said that the fire was likely started within the building, but online commenters are pinning this one on our new domestic terrorists.
There was also a far more direct political angle to this story. Fianna Fáil councillor Noel Thomas and a person known to another FF councillor Seamus Walsh were subject to dawn raids by police in relation to a fire that took place in Galway in December. Thomas and Walsh were criticised by party leader Michael Martin for making criticisms of the government's immigration policy in December. Walsh's comments about the raid are fairly radical for a politician:
“I will never while there is breath in me cooperate with the guards on anything.
“My wife is some woman, she has been with me 43 years and she is well used to me and politics but this broke her. She burst out crying.
“I’m not a man who goes running to the press – I avoid the press in fact. But this was cynical and came about from (political) pressure being applied.
“They feel like if they can break Noel Thomas and myself that he will frighten other councillors into their way of thinking.
And finally some good news for the moderates I guess. Two buildings in Carlow and Mayo that were earmarked to host male asylum seekers will now be hosting 'families and children' after local, peaceful protests. These families will still be asylum seekers, but I guess it's much harder to protest over 50 women and children being brought in than 50 single males.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
One big distinguishing factor is that Ireland’s immigration experience is much more recent.
It’s hard to find a red line to rally around when your country’s first experience of mass Muslim migration happened in your grandparents’ days and when you’ve already learned to avoid the ghettos. Anything short of a drastic acceleration is just boiling the frog.
Ireland has never had ethnic ghettos, Dublin youth excepted we’re not used to the violence that’s accepted as part and parcel of normal city life, a ratio of 1800 Irish to 700 MENA males isn’t something Irish towns are used to.
I’m doubtful that this was a terrorist attack, but yesterday it was unclear whether Ireland had just experienced it’s first ever Islamic terrorist attack. Even though Ireland does have a high proportion of foreign nationals it’s nearly all working class Eastern Europeans or middle class Western Europeans who don’t cause much trouble, having areas suddenly gain a large population of young African and Muslim males is jarring and easy to rally around (I know this guy is much older but tension has been building for a while). All this when house and rental prices are through the roof.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
In France there are intergenerational homesharing agencies which offer young people cheap rent in return for living with an elderly person.
Tollund_Man4
2yr ago
which has been inflicted on pretty everyone but Trump himself, who is still mostly unscathed.
Isn't this more a product of Trump's character than anything else? It's not like Trump avoided attempts to ruin his reputation or cost him a lot of money, he just weathered them. A lot was inflicted on Trump, he's just got a shameless enough image for it not to ruin him.
The Irish Times and RTE are also going with 'former pupil'. I don't think Irish people (even Irish journalists) are quite yet up to speed on the trans lingo, so I prefer to imagine this as the editor throwing up their hands and using the only identifying fact they're sure of.
Tollund_Man4
2yr ago
I think he shot himself in the foot by using that term. I had never heard it before and my first impression was also that it was something extreme. 'Enforced' isn't a word that goes down well in today's liberal world.
Tollund_Man4
2yr ago
I found it! It's from Roger Scruton:
Moreover, the pursuit of irrelevant knowledge is, for that very reason, a mental discipline that can be adapted to the new and the unforeseeable. It is precisely the irrelevance of everything they knew that enabled a band of a thousand British civil servants, versed in Latin, Greek, and Ancient History, to govern the entire Indian sub-continent—not perfectly, but in many ways better than it had been governed in recent memory. It is the discipline of attending in depth to matters that were of no immediate use to them that made it possible for these civil servants to address situations that they had never imagined before they encountered them—strange languages, alphabets, religions, customs, and laws. It is no accident that it was a classical scholar—the judge Sir William Jones, founder of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1788—who did the most to rescue Sanskrit literature from oblivion, who introduced the world, the Indian world included, to the Vedas, and who launched his contemporaries on the search for the principles and repertoire of classical Indian music.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Ireland
Another fire at a building (believed to be) earmarked for asylum accomodation. A vacant pub in Dublin which was also the site of anti-migrant protests last year was set alight during the night, but the government and homeless charities are saying that it was ultimately going to be used for homeless families and not asylum seeker accomodation.
An angry crowd of masked men was out at a building in Finglas, Dublin last night so I guess that's the next probable target.
True, though some of the ones brave enough to set fire to buses might be.
There’s been a lot of tension between Brazilian couriers and Dublin’s feral youth these last few years. A lot of Brazilians work courier and food delivery jobs and a certain section of young Dubliners like stealing their motorbikes. I don’t know the number but a few Brazilians have been severely injured or killed by joyriders and thieves (or in one case by the police trying to stop the thieves).
It's a weird one alright. Wikipedia goes into a surprising amount of length on why this is the case.
As far as I can tell "Éire" isn't offensive in itself, but can imply disrespect in the context of a long history of the British government using any term but 'Ireland' in official documents and treaties (Southern Ireland, the Irish Republic, the Republic of Ireland), and protesting when the country was addressed as 'Ireland' in EEC and UN meetings. Ireland's constitution used to claim the entire island so it makes sense why Unionists in Northern Ireland would push for the British government to avoid the unqualified name.
Tollund_Man4
2yr ago
I can't see why you couldn't drink 8% all day though
If you're used to drinking 5-10 pints on a night out 8% will get you way too drunk. Source: Irish drinking culture met Belgian beer.
Tollund_Man4
2yr ago
They can’t just declare the travelers oppressed?
You mean traveller gypsies? They have done that, but travellers are a very unsympathetic people and there's no European or American scale media/activism working in their favour to overcome that issue.
Tollund_Man4
2yr ago
For who? 100 IQ short guys?
Some were short, some tall and handsome. 100 IQ sounds about right, maybe less.
How'd they even afford the plane ticket?
I'm not American so maybe it's different there, but it's not that hard to save up a few grand on minimum wage over the course of a year. If you're willing to work in a bar or something you can probably even find a job at your destination.
Tollund_Man4
2yr ago
Influence is earned, not given
Influence is won and lost, and even the top dogs don't always get to set terms.
If Third World countries want to demand the West make good on its humanitarian promises, promises upon which the soft power of the latter largely depends, then either the West makes good or people learn not to take their humanitarian promises seriously. A space opens up for China to step in.
Given disparate birth rates over the world, a growing imbalance between countries who hold the actual power versus where most of humanity will increasingly be located could lead to increased international tension.
If that tension can't safely be ignored, then maybe the Third World countries are correctly assessing a growing power to make demands. In the age of mass immigration and poor integration a population disparity seems like quite the weak point.
Are you willing to allow for finer distinctions like 'the Hungarian race' and 'the Dutch race'?
If not, your definition of ethnicity leaves us lacking a term for the noticeable differences between groups within a race* . Maybe this isn't as clear in the US where whites are all mixed together, but a Pole looks different to a Scotsman (even if there's enough overlap that you won't always guess right).
*though I think race could be dispensed with altogether as it just marks a point where the differences between distantly related ethnicities are obvious.
Tollund_Man4
4d ago
Maybe I need to read more Roman history but all of the times this happened the general's army was already strong enough to contest everyone else in open war (even a less successful rebel general like Sertorius still controlled and defended Spain against Rome).
Even if they do become personally loyal to Trump, ICE isn't a real military force and it is still dwarfed by the regular military.
Still reading Kissinger's Diplomacy. A few surprising things I found out (coming from a background of not knowing much about WW2):
- America was already attacking German submarines in the Atlantic before Pearl Harbour
- Roosevelt intitially overestimated Britain's post-war potential and planned to pull American troops out of Europe while letting British garrisons pick up the slack.
- Stalin was proposing post-war plans while German troops were outside of Moscow.
- Churchill consistently tried to convince Roosevelt on the need to take land before the Soviets got to it, and he was consistently ignored. One plan was for D-Day to include the Balkans.
Aside from that I'm doing more 'reading' than ever by listening to audiobooks at work, I'm on my 30th this year. It's mostly light reading, classic sci-fi, horror and now Sherlock Holmes novels.
The 'better ten guilty to free than one innocent be imprisoned' notion far precedes the richest cities in the world becoming uncivilised eyesores. If people in past times managed to have nice cities while still believing in this principle must we really do away with it if we want nice cities now?
More options
Context Copy link