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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2917 thread views

Transnational Thursday for May 22, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Recently, a young 39yo German woman was thrown to the ground by a Chechen, and subsequently a Syrian boy (19yo) called Muhammed Al Muhammed threw himself on top of her and held her to the ground, pinning her arms. "You get up, I beat", he repeatedly told her.

This happened in a crowded train station.

After the woman attacked 18 17 random people with a knife.

Did she just go at random or was there a pattern to the victims?

Newspapers don't say, or epxlicitly claim it was random.

Though the Tageszeitung (https://taz.de/Herkunftsdebatte-nach-Attentaten/!6087003/) deplores the obvious racism in the discourse surrounding this event.

What I did read a minute ago was that the woman was homeless, known to be disturbed, and had been released from psychiatric care only the day before the attack.

Geopolitics

Americas

US launched its second ICBM test this year

Africa

Christians in Africa are being prosecuted somewhat systematically, particularly in northern Nigeria by Boko Haram. "In 2024 alone, over 4,500 Christians in 12 countries across the Sahel region were killed for their faith, 114,000 Christians forcibly displaced, 16,000 homes destroyed, and over 1,700 churches impacted"

Sudan's army chief names former UN official as new prime minister

U.S. will impose sanctions on Sudan for using chemical weapons

Middle East

Russia's Hmeimim airbase in Syria is under attack. I remember thinking that Lisa thought this was important

Iran

Israel 'preparing strike on Iran's nuclear facilities'

Oil prices rise on signs of faltering U.S.-Iran nuclear talks

U.S. media reports: Should U.S.-Iran nuclear talks fail, Israel is prepared to quickly strike Iranian nuclear facilities.

Gaza

14,000 babies could die in Gaza within 48 hours without aid: UN

Israel allowed some aid into Gaza

Britain, Canada, France condemn Israel's blocking of aid in Gaza, threaten sanctions

Gaza reports 326 malnutrition deaths, more than 300 miscarriages due to lack of essentials

New Gaza offensive

Yemen

Yemen's Houthis target Israel's Ben Gurion Airport, 3rd missile strike in 24 hours

Houthis declare naval blockade of Haifa port

Asia

China is integrating civil and military networks. "By connecting high-tech enterprises and facilitating data-driven collaborations, the platform accelerates the matching of military needs with available resources, resulting in timely and effective responses to various challenges. The platform features a comprehensive database that includes over ten thousand high-tech companies, hundreds of thousands of skilled personnel"

United States Develops "Orbital Aircraft Carriers" Endangering Space Safety, says China

Accelerate the building of China's independent military knowledge system. Another article in a similar vein as above.

China says ready to boost military-to-military ties with Russia

MEMRI warning about "China's Imminent Invasion Of Taiwan"

House Select Committee Warns: "The Window to Deter War with China is Closing Fast"

Oropuche virus rapidly spreading in Latin America; over 20K infected individuals ince late 2023

Riding the Waves! Full Throttle Live Fire Drill with Missile Speedboats

A squadron of missile boats from the Navy of the Eastern Theater Command has recently engaged in a comprehensive live-fire training exercise. This high-intensity session included a variety of drills such as maritime search and rescue operations, fleet patrols, and missile attack simulations, all aimed at enhancing the operational combat skills of the soldiers involved.

The training took place around the clock and involved multi-subject scenarios, systematically validating and improving the readiness of the naval forces for potential maritime combat situations.

India/Pakistan

3/4th of India's population at 'high' to 'very high' heat risk: CEEW study

Airlines Prepare for Nuclear War

Europe

Poland intervenes after Russian 'shadow fleet' ship detected near Baltic Sea cable

Russia stops Greek tanker leaving Estonia in tit-for-tat Baltic move

Bio

A paper in Nature looks at an outbreak of multidrug-resistant dysentery from 2021 to 2023 in Mexico

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called for increased American involvement and support for the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-led administration in Syria to prevent its potential collapse

Study shows that the 2022 mpox outbreak started in 2014

Tech and AI

xAI’s Grok 3 comes to Microsoft Azure

VEO 3 generates some pretty nifty videos

veo3 is a new model by Google that is able to create convincing (and addictive) video

VEO3 Interdimensional cable

Misc

Chances of a mega-tsunami hitting California about 15% over the next 50 years?

Also covered here

Briefing to the UN on the state of the protection of civilians in armed conflict

Netanyahu press conference

I believe that "14,000 babies" figure has already been retracted.

Thanks!

I never knew MEMRI did military analysis, thought it was just light-hearted Israeli propaganda aimed to go viral on youtube (there are some genuinely hilarious memritv memes out there: https://youtube.com/watch?v=g8vqkzFpKYs).

Also, the whole 'deter China' strategy seems somewhat naive. America is going to struggle deterring a nation with a vastly larger industrial capacity and labour pool with their shrinking navy and diminishing technological advantage. US advantages diminish with time while Chinese advantages grow. Would they prefer 2030 to 2027 when China is less reliant on oil and has more advanced semiconductors, when they've pumped out yet more warships and more nukes? The strategy might make sense if they're ASI-pilled but they're almost certainly not.

How do you maintain a military advantage over a bigger country on the other side of the world? Just spend more? Rope in your allies (the present administration is doing the opposite of this)?

UK pays Mauritius to take administrative ownership of strategic Indian Ocean base: https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-set-sign-deal-ceding-sovereignty-chagos-islands-mauritius-2025-05-22/

LONDON, May 22 (Reuters) - Britain signed a deal on Thursday to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, after a London judge overturned a last-minute injunction and cleared the way for an agreement the government says is vital to protect the nation's security.

The multibillion-dollar deal will allow Britain to retain control of the strategically important U.S.-UK air base on Diego Garcia, the largest island of the archipelago in the Indian Ocean, under a 99-year lease.

Legalism gone mad, nobody is capable of taking Diego Garcia off the UK/US. Mauritius is a very poor and weak country and can be safely ignored. A quick glimpse at a map also reveals that Mauritius is thousands of kilometres away from Diego Garcia and the rest of the Chagos islands, there's really no reason to pay them to take over the area just so the base can be kept just because they were once classified as part of the same British Indian Ocean Territory.

Some element of the British decisionmaking process seems to be based on a need for international legitimacy, that paying Mauritius makes them more holy and virtuous: https://x.com/echetus/status/1841815818700492945

What changed official attitudes and broke the logjam were international judgments, the loss after 71 years of the UK seat on the ICJ held by Sir Christopher Greenwood in November 2017 and UK isolation in the UN bought on by the UK's perceived diminishing reputation for upholding international law and the UK stand on Russia's invasion of Ukraine which exposed HMG to charges of hypocrisy

Someone needs to tell these Brits that they're a P5 power. They cannot, by definition, be isolated in the UN and have anything bad happen to them other than condemnation. If you don't like an ICJ order, you can just ignore it. No such ICJ order actually happened, so Britain doesn't even need to ignore them. The US told the ICJ to get stuffed when they said 'don't go in on Nicaragua'. Israel couldn't care less what the ICJ says, they're not suddenly going to give the Palestinians East Jerusalem, let alone pay reparations. The Security Council are the ultimate court in the UN and the UK enjoys a veto there.

Soft power like the British state seems to yearn for is nothing without real power, it's a pure longhouse concept. Real power is concrete: boots on the ground, bridges built or bombs dropped. Unfortunately, the longhouse is very real if you believe in it.

The financial component of the deal includes 3 billion pounds to be paid by Britain to Mauritius over the 99-year term of the agreement, with an option for a 50-year extension and Britain maintaining the right of first refusal thereafter.

The base's capabilities are extensive and strategically crucial. Recent operations launched from Diego Garcia include bombing strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen in 2024-2025, humanitarian aid deployments to Gaza and, further back, attacks on Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan in 2001.

Some have alleged that there's some kind of corruption behind the deal, Starmer is known to associate with all kinds of subversive elements like human rights lawyers, some of whom are associated with Mauritius. But then he is a human rights lawyer, so that's to be expected. Who can tell the difference between corruption and treachery? Showing weakness here also opens up other problems for the UK in Gibraltar and the Falklands.

https://x.com/G0ADM/status/1925609246101807510

Sending billions to a foreign country is also perverse given that the UK is in a poor fiscal position and must impose painful cuts or tax hikes to stabilize the situation. One can observe a hierarchy of needs in modern British governance:

  1. Housing asylum seekers
  2. Paying foreign countries to take your land, so you can keep a base you already have
  3. Taxiing 'disabled' children to and from school (a mandated expense that's bankrupting councils and enriching taxi companies)
  4. Equalising pay between the sexes working different jobs at market rates, at the whim of random judges (also bankrupting major cities and resulting in third world sanitation disasters)
  5. Maintaining a vast social housing system in expensive parts of London housing, amongst others, the First Lady of Sierra Leone.

Very far down the list is anything associated with economic growth or military power.

https://x.com/echetus/status/1841815818700492945

What a doormat. It’s like the opposite of the maga failure mode where you’re so paranoid about getting screwed that you end up hurting yourself by damaging mutually beneficial relationships. Is it too much to ask for politicians with a healthy sense of self-interest, that don’t constantly feel either exploited or exploitative?

Trump is good at identifying problems. Terrible at implementing solutions. Rise of china was fueled by hollowing of the rust belt, Europe is not paying for it's defense, multinational companies do take disproportionate profits from US and so on, immigration and birthright citizenships are loopholes, the universities are too woke ... he just doesn't have the proper managing capacity to solve them right. And he is just using brute force and clumsily.

The man looks at a madagascaran girl in rags picking vanilla beans and sees the american people being taken advantage of. He ain‘t right in the head. Better than starmer who hands her the nearest military base, but still.

This chagos episode recontextualises the tariff deal with britain for me. I did not understand why britain would agree to such terrible terms, maybe it meant britain was weaker than I thought, but now I realize it‘s just starmer being happy to always give in at whatever terms the other side offers.

Even if one interprets trump‘s tariff policy goals maximally charitably (de-coupling from china, avoiding trade deficitis), none of them apply to britain, your most accomodating ally who you don‘t even have a trade deficit against.

It reminds me of that scene in The Long Goodbye where the mob boss breaks a coke bottle on his girlfriend‘s face, and while she screams in pain and desperation at being permanently disfigured, he threatens Marlowe: "Her, I love. You, I don‘t even like."

This chagos episode recontextualises the tariff deal with britain for me. I did not understand why britain would agree to such terrible terms, maybe it meant britain was weaker than I thought, but now I realize it‘s just starmer being happy to always give in at whatever terms the other side offers.

Hypothesis: Like America, Britain has a constant war between the isolationists and the anti-isolationists. Labour under Starmer are anti-isolationist and so enjoy collaborating with other countries as much as possible, mostly regardless of the actual cost-benefit to the UK.

There seems to be a weird phenomena among formally powerful people and nations where once they no longer actually have the power they once had, they fall back on formality, legalism, and ceremonial trappings. It’s really funny once you actually see it, or at least when it’s not happening to your side of the argument. Countries that once had a military presence that the world feared now politely go about hat in hand to beg their former subjects to do something and paying them to do it. Political entities that once reshaped nations now reduced to issuing letters or rulings and impotently asking the people with actual power to listen to them.

When you start seeing groups become formal, you know they lack either the power or the will to be powerful. The UK hasn’t been much of a power since the Second World War. It’s unlikely they will hold such power this century.

This has to be viewed generationally, though. It wasn't simply the nations that were in power, but it was the people and society of that generation that gained and wielded the power. However, people individually are not very powerful, so the institutions are established that convey the justification for the power held by various monarchs, emperors, aristocrats and increasingly, representative Heads of State. The law was established to keep power in place and in the right hands as well as impart and protect the rights of the "citizens" (i.e. people whose worth is recognized by the State) over outsiders. It has always felt a bit like a Mafia hierarchy and protection racket only on a massive omni-social scale.

Over time, though, the inheritors of the power come to equate the laws and rules with the power itself. In the modern era, where the government ideally represents and acts as stewards of the democratic, collective power of the citizen's consent, the formality of rules and laws grows to byzantine proportions and most often, it is used by internal factions of the government to stymie the use (or what some consider abuse) of executive power by their opponents. People that never really had to obtain or use real power are more concerned that it may used against them and the formal systems of a "rules-based" society are emphasized to prevent any quick or decisive action or overt use of overwhelming power on anyone's part.

It may not necessarily be so much that formerly powerful nations or empires become more concerned with legality, propriety and formal procedure, but instead, maybe that by becoming more diplomatic and bureaucratic, a nation also loses power as they are bound more by their own rules than supported by them.

Who has behaved this way apart from the UK? France certainly hasn't.

The French literally yielded fully to a minor colonial revolt months ago because they attempted to give their own citizens right to vote in the territory in which they lived, diluting the native vote share. They reversed the change and now seem likely never to implement it.

France hasn’t been a superpower since Napoleon. I mean im pretty sure 1900s France was doing the “stop or I’ll send a letter to the League of Nations” up until they got invaded in WW1.

IDK whether the term ‘superpower’ makes sense applied to Victorian countries, but France was unquestionably a top five most powerful country in the world in 1900 and was able to push around other great powers with impunity, and had recently done so with the Ottoman Empire.

I mean im pretty sure 1900s France was doing the “stop or I’ll send a letter to the League of Nations” up until they got invaded in WW1.

Your timeline is off. League of nations was created after WWI. And France was both massive colonial empire and they fought quite the good fight in WWI.

They still had a colonial empire and weren't paying other countries to take their possessions off their hands.

Rumours are that Keir Starmer was the basis for Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones. A handsome, intelligent human rights lawyer, the perfect man for a neurotic woman in the Cool Britannia years.

I guess this is what governance by human rights lawyers looks like, doing anything, regardless of how stupid, if international/human rights law says we have to.

In the UK we have an expression 'the Blob', which is something like our version of the Deep State. A collection of civil servants, QUANGOs, tribunals, the BBC and lawyers. Keir Starmer is the Blob personified.

Rumours are that Keir Starmer was the basis for Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones.

Fielding all but confirmed that he was. Odd though, because while he was certainly handsome in his youth, a big part of Mark Darcy’s handsomeness is his voice, and Keir Starmer has a bad case of Kermit voice.

Man, at this rate we might get back the Falklands by Milei's second term.

My money would be on Gibraltar first.

Agreed. The emotional connection after the war is much stronger with the Falklands; Britain hasn’t fought against Spain in a long time and, in exchange for enough freebies (easy residency for British retirees, an exemption from the new non-EU housing taxes, €10bn which is probably viable now that the Spanish economy is doing better) the public would probably acquiesce. The Falklands I think are unlikely.

The most interesting suggestion I heard (perhaps here? Can't remember) was that Spain would allow Gibraltar to be used as a processing center for migrants on their way to the UK. Not sure why that would be much of a bonus when the UK could use Gibraltar for that reason right now, but then I'm not sure what the UK is supposed to be getting out of paying Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands either, so who knows.

Is there an ongoing genocide against white South Africans? Reuters says there isn't.

Among the claims contradicted by the evidence:

(1) There is a genocide of white farmers in South Africa.

Supporters of the theory point to murders of white farmers in remote rural parts of the country as proof of a politically orchestrated campaign of ethnic cleansing, rather than ordinary violent crime.

They accuse the Black-majority led government of being complicit in the farm murders, either by encouraging them or at least turning a blind eye. The government strongly denies this.

South Africa has one of the world's highest murder rates, with an average of 72 a day, in a country of 60 million people. Most victims are Black.

The high court in Western Cape province ruled that claims of white genocide were "clearly imagined and not real" in a case earlier this year, forbidding a donation to a white supremacist group on those grounds.

(2) The government is expropriating land from white farmers without compensation, including through violent land seizures, in order to distribute it to Black South Africans.

The government has a policy of attempting to redress inequalities in land ownership that are a legacy of apartheid and colonialism. But no land has been expropriated, and the government has instead tried to encourage white farmers to sell their land willingly.

(3) The "Kill the Boer (farmer)" song sung by some Black South Africans is an explicit call to murder Afrikaners, the ethnic group of European descent who make up the majority of whites and who own most of the farmland.

Three South African courts have ruled against attempts to have it designated as hate speech, on the basis that it is a historical liberation chant, not a literal incitement to violence.

In a statement following the meeting between Trump and Ramaphosa, the EFF said it was "a song that expresses the desire to destroy the system of white minority control over the resources of South Africa" and that it is "a part of African Heritage".

(4) Trump played a video clip that showed a long line of white crosses on the side of a highway, which Trump said were "burial sites" for white farmers.

The video was made in September 2020 during a protest against farm murders after two people were killed on their farm a week earlier. The crosses did not mark actual graves. An organizer told South Africa's public broadcaster, SABC, at the time that the wooden crosses represented farmers who had been killed over the years.

(5) The opening scene of the White House video shows Malema in South Africa's parliament announcing: "People are going to occupy land. We require no permission from ... the president." It also shows another clip of him pledging to expropriate land.

Some land has been illegally occupied over the years, mostly by millions of desperate squatters with nowhere else to go, although some land seizures are politically motivated. The land is usually unused and there is no evidence the EFF orchestrated any land invasions.

A check of Trump's false claims about white genocide in South Africa

I really hate this. There was a time when even if they absolutely loathed the president, journalists would at least put a fig leaf of journalism over their hit pieces. Now this is journalism.

(1) There is a genocide of white farmers in South Africa.

Supporters of the theory point to murders of white farmers in remote rural parts of the country as proof of a politically orchestrated campaign of ethnic cleansing, rather than ordinary violent crime.

Yeah, okay, it probably doesn't meet the legally accepted definition of "genocide" (a particularness which doesn't seem to apply to Gaza).

The high court in Western Cape province ruled that claims of white genocide were "clearly imagined and not real" in a case earlier this year, forbidding a donation to a white supremacist group on those grounds.

Most of this article is "This isn't happening because the South African government accused of doing it says it isn't happening."

The government has a policy of attempting to redress inequalities in land ownership that are a legacy of apartheid and colonialism. But no land has been expropriated, and the government has instead tried to encourage white farmers to sell their land willingly.

Again, it's probably true that the government has not formally "expropriated" any land. Again, it's easy to point at what's happening in the West Bank - what the government is doing as a matter of official government policy and what's happening in an informal, extra-legal way is certainly examined in a much less sympathetic light.

Three South African courts have ruled against attempts to have it designated as hate speech, on the basis that it is a historical liberation chant, not a literal incitement to violence.

How many of these journalists believe in "microaggressions" and "words are violence"?

In a statement following the meeting between Trump and Ramaphosa, the EFF said it was "a song that expresses the desire to destroy the system of white minority control over the resources of South Africa" and that it is "a part of African Heritage".

Yes, I am sure those people chanting "Kill the Boer" were actually thinking "Destroy the system of white minority control over the resources of South Africa."

The video was made in September 2020 during a protest against farm murders after two people were killed on their farm a week earlier. The crosses did not mark actual graves. An organizer told South Africa's public broadcaster, SABC, at the time that the wooden crosses represented farmers who had been killed over the years.

Once again, his enemies take him literally but not seriously. Whether or not Trump actually believed those were literally burial sites, that wasn't the point of the crosses. They don't even try to debunk the fact that all these farmers have been killed, just say it's a lie because that's not where they were actually buried, so Trump is wrong.

Some land has been illegally occupied over the years, mostly by millions of desperate squatters with nowhere else to go, although some land seizures are politically motivated.

So, it's happening, but it's not politically motivated, except when it sometimes is.

The land is usually unused and there is no evidence the EFF orchestrated any land invasions.

"Usually." And they can't even say with a straight face that the EFF isn't behind it, just "no evidence they orchestrated any land invasions" - there's some weaseling in every word there.

So, the calls to murder are not literal, because no murders are happening. I mean, murders are definitely happening, but not all at once, just over the years. And it's a local tradition so nothing to be done about it. In general, murdering people there is very common, so murdering white people is nothing to worry about, and people who want to leave the place where murdering is very common have no legit reason to do so. Also, nobody is trying to take their property. I mean, millions of people try to take their property, but they are poor, so that's fine, and has nothing to do with politics, they just want to take their property. And it's not expropriation without payment, because even though their property got taken from them, and they received no payment, the government "tried to encourage" them to sell, so it doesn't count. And since the government did not explicitly command the takings by official decree, they have no responsibility for it, even though multiple members of the government promised to do exactly what happened. Ah yes, and also government made a thorough investigation and declared itself innocent of all charges, which makes the case settled completely.

One needs long, thorough years of brainwashing to be able to believe shit like this. Fortunately, this is exactly what we as the taxpayers are paying the US education system to do.

‘White south Africans shouldn’t be granted refugee status’ is an argument that took a significant blow when the South African government published a statement saying that they were attempting to escape justice by fleeing. What the South African government itself says about its treatment of whites is, well, suspect in that light.

But Trump also clearly cares about this for some reason.

I hadn't seen this, so I wanted to read the statement. I found an ANC statement (not technically the government, I suppose) on reddit. I couldn't find it on the terribly-organized ANC website, but I could confirm its legitimacy by finding a copy on a regional ANC Twitter account.

And wow, it's even worse than you said:

Let it be categorically stated: there are no Afrikaner refugees in South Africa. No section of our society is hounded, persecuted or subject to ethnic victimisation. These claims are a fabrication and a cowardly political construct designed to delegitimise our democracy and insult the sacrifices made by generations who fought for freedom. ...

What the instigators of this falsehood seek is not safety, but impunity from transformation. They flee not from persecution, but from justice, equality and accountability for historic privilege.

The misuse of refugee protections to shield right-wing, anti-transformation elements is a violation of the spirit and letter of international law. ...

I am particularly struck by the phrase "impunity from transformation."

/images/17479765952500768.webp

"Genocide" has basically become a vibes-based term over the past few years, so questions involving the word have become increasingly meaningless.

What seems beyond question is that white South Africans are facing extensive race-based persecution.

No more than there is a genocide going on against minorities in Muslim nations. There is strong pressure for displacement. But, I won't call it genocide. We need to reserve that word for the real deal. Can't be diluting definitions for war crimes. (Might be a lost cause)

America has low standards for granting refuge. Indian Sikhs have a 50%+ refugee approval rate despite facing no violence since 1990 and being quite rich by Indian standards. Hell, I'd argue Indian Sikhs are treated a lot better than Hindus in India. (legally and otherwise). White people have a reason to feel unsafe in South Africa. They should leave. They should likely receive refuge by the current standards for refugees in the US.

Three South African courts have ruled against attempts to have it designated as hate speech, on the basis that it is a historical liberation chant, not a literal incitement to violence.

Who cares what a South African court thinks? They haven't been covering themselves in excellence in upholding a stable, successful society. The murder rate there is comparable to the death rate in the Russo-Ukrainian war.

It's also somewhat hard to accept rhetorically, given how 'It's OK to be white' produced such a big storm.

The other week I mentioned a brewing controversy surrounding the hip-hop band Kneecap, being investigated for supporting proscribed terrorist organisations (namely by yelling "Up Hamas!" or leading audiences in chants of "Ooh! Ah! Hezbollah!") during live performances.

One of the band's members, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh (who goes by the stage name "Mo Chara" meaning "my friend") has now been formally charged with supporting a terrorist organisation by the Metropolitan Police, namely for waving a Hezbollah flag during a live performance last year.

I hate European censorship laws, but when once in a while somebody really worth stomping gets caught into it, and I wish the Metropolitan Police all the success in stomping on them. It's like the police beating up a known child predator - I am against police brutality, but I am not a saint, in some cases I will (hypocritically maybe) be willing to look the other way. I like living in a country where people like Kanye can do their shit without the police intervening, but I can't do anything about UK police, so I am at least glad in maybe 1% of the cases they get it right...

In ancient Rome there were people known as the infames, who had forfeited their right to a good name. After watching a few of these people's top videos on youtube we should bring it back for degenerate faggot commie rappers.

I am also confident that a US performer shouting out 'Go Al Qaeda' live on stage would be at least investigated until the authorities found three felonies a day.

I don't have much sympathy for this band but I'm curious as to why the Met are bothering to prosecute one of their members over any of the hundreds of people waving similar flags during near daily pro-Hamas protests in London over the last year and a half.

I suspect their ethnicity has something to do with it.

Yeah being "white" and openly supporting terrorists puts one in a very convenient spot to serve as a token prosecution target. "You see, we're not ignoring it, we're doing something!". Given the same guys also called for British MPs to be assassinated, it makes them even easier target to make an example of. Now when next 1000 people are arrested for tweeting about immigration policies, the police can say they are completely even-handed and fight extremism on both sides.

Several possible reasons- skin color and public prominence come to mind.

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