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misfitwashere · 1 month

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Putin's paranoia (updated)

Terror, delusion, and self-destruction

Timothy Snyder

Mar 29, 2024

A week ago, four men associated with Islamic State attacked civilians in a concert venue near Moscow known as Crocus City Hall. Islamic State (IS-K) claimed responsibility for the horrifying mass murder, and released videos recorded the terrorists' perspective (don't watch them). Russia has since apprehended four men, who seem to be the perpetrators.

Russia has been engaged with Islamic State for some time. Russia has been bombing Syria since 2015. Russia and Islamic State compete throughout Africa for resources. All four of the accused are Tajiks, a people subjected to discrimination inside Russia.

These are the facts, subject to further verification and interpretation -- and inherently unpredictable, as facts always are. What was entirely predictable (and predicted) was that, regardless of the facts, Putin and his propagandists would place the blame for the attack on Ukraine and the United States. On the internet (and in the Russian and Serbian press) this version is present.

It is not hard to see why. If Ukraine and the West are guilty, then Russian security services do not have to explain why they failed to stop Islamic terrorists from killing so many Russians, because Islamic terror vanishes from the story. And if Ukrainians are to blame, then this would seem to justify the war that Russia is prosecuting against Ukraine.

Aftermath of Russian ballistic missile strike on Kyiv, 25 March

Russian officials make a highly circumstantial argument: the terrorists' car was stopped near Bryansk, which is in western Russia, and so vaguely near Ukraine, which means that the four Tajiks in a Renault were intending to cross the Ukrainian border, which means that they had Ukrainian backers, which means that it was a Ukrainian operation, which means that the Americans were behind it. The reasoning here leaves something to be desired. And the series of associations rests on no factual basis.

The suspects were in a car near the west Russian city of Bryansk. This much seems to be true. The first version of the story was that they were headed for Belarus, which would make more sense, given the route. Anyone with local knowledge would make a still more telling point. Because of the special relationship between Russia and Belarus, the Russian-Belarusian border is porous. Once inside Belarus, it is relatively easy to pass into the European Union, because the Belarusian regime enables human smuggling into Lithuania and Poland. Four Tajiks in a Renault would have been, in this sense, welcome in Belarus. They would have had a decent chance to pay a smuggler to get them into the Schengen zone and thereby escape.

The idea that the suspects were headed for Ukraine seems to be entirely invented and is extremely implausible. As of this writing, none of the suspects seem to have said anything about Ukraine, despite the fact that they have been tortured, presumably with such a confession in mind. And the notion of a Ukrainian escape route makes no sense. The Russian-Ukrainian border is a place where Russian security forces are concentrated. It is a site of combat. It is the last place terrorists would want to go. Four Tajiks in a Renault would have needed some very, very high-level Russian protection to get anywhere near the Russian-Ukrainian border.

Russian propagandists have told the population that it was not Islamic State but Ukraine who is to blame. ISIS is just a "fake." The propagandists need not give reasons, and don't. In the press, one finds the wildest chains of association. Britain is to blame for the attack (goes one claim) because one of the suspects was once in Turkey and the Turkish president knows the head of British foreign intelligence.

Only Putin is permitted to set the theoretical tone for the argument for Ukrainian involvement, and yesterday (25 March) he gave that a shot. His version went like this: Ukrainians are Nazis; Nazis do bad things; a bad thing happened; therefore Ukraine is to blame. One does not have to be a logician to find the holes. They are disturbingly large. While it is true that Nazis do bad things, it does not follow that all bad things are done by Nazis.

And the factual premise is empirically false. One should not have to say this at this point of the war, but the Ukrainians are not the Nazis in this conflict. The Ukrainian far right has never done well in elections, and is far less prominent than in any European state you care to name, let alone the United States. Ukrainians have an active civil society, a vibrant press, multiple political parties, and freedom of speech. Ukraine's president won a free and fair election. He is also, incidentally, Jewish. The Ukrainian minister of defense, for that matter, is a Muslim. The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces was born in Russia, where his parents still reside. This kind of political and social pluralism is unusual by any standards.

A Kyivan looks out the window after the 25 March Russian missile strike.

In Putin's version of the Russian language, of course, the word "Nazi" has no meaning beyond "what I wish for you to consider as the enemy." If we are going to pursue the question of who the fascists in this war are, however, it is worth knowing that Russia has none of what Ukraine has. Putin has never won anything like a plausible election to any office. His regime has crushed civil society, political parties (except his own), and the press. Putin runs a single-party state where the only principle of the single party is his personal status as its Leader. He rules at home by terror and prosecutes a genocidal war abroad, in Ukraine, with the help of Russian soldiers who ever more often openly identify as fascists. Putin himself espouses what is unmistakably a fascist ideology.

Calling the Ukrainians the Nazis while being the Nazis is not itself a problem within this system, since being the fascists involves living within a big lie. The challenge to such a system is that reality sometimes intervenes in a way that is hard to control -- as when Islamic State carries out an act of terror. This brings in a whole set of political and social realities that are usually suppressed in Russian propaganda: the bombing of Syrian civilians since 2015; the bloody resource wars in Africa; the oppression of Tajiks.

In Russia's system, it is not simply political convenience that adds the big lie of Ukrainian jihadism to the big lie of Ukrainian Nazism. It is the deeper need to make reality, or at least psychological reality, conform to the story told by the state. In the psychological project, more killing is necessary. Russians are engaged in the project of killing Ukrainians. Russians in Ukraine torture Ukrainians for being loyal to Ukraine, deport Ukrainian children for assimilation to Russia, and persecute and execute local elites who they regard as threats. Russians fire some combination of shells, glide bombs, drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles at Ukraine every single day, for no reason that communicates with reality. Yesterday, for example, multiple Ukrainian cities were struck by fifty-seven Russian missiles and drones.

It is the killing itself that makes the lies true, in a psychological sense. Russian soldiers who have killed Ukrainians believe they are fighting "Nazis," whatever that means. And now Russian soldiers write "for Crocus" on he shells they fire at Ukrainians. Yesterday (25 March) Russia fired two ballistic missiles at central Kyiv, even as Russian authorities announced that the terrorist attack means that they are permitted to kill high officials of the Ukrainian state.

Rescue workers prepare to help victims after a Russian ballistic missile hit the Kyiv Academy of Decorative and Applied Arts and Design. Photo by Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images)

Among Ukrainians, all of this generates a weary shrug. It has been a kind of Western parlor game these last two years to ascertain the "rational" motivations behind Russia's war of atrocity in Ukraine. Such a debate is attractive in the West, because if one can identify a Russian rationality one can then defend a policy of doing less, or doing nothing, to help Ukraine win the war. If Russia is rational, then surely some compromise can be found. This is a Russian leadership, however, that interprets the fact of American warnings about the attack as a reason to blame the United States for it: as the puppetmaster of Ukraine, which is itself the puppetmaster of Islamic State.

For Ukrainians, being identified as Islamists as well as Nazis is just one more detail in what is for them a war of self-defense and survival. And of course, as Ukrainians will remind you, for different audiences the Kremlin also characterizes Ukraine as the center of gay civilization, as an element of the Jewish international conspiracy, and as a Satanist cult. So (the memes are out there) Ukraine is now a gay Jewish Nazi Islamist Satanist regime.

The Kremlin goal of identifying Ukrainians as terrorists might matter in the war. It can be used as an excuse to continue, to mobilize, to commit new kinds of war crimes. This is one way this will certainly go. But it is not certain that this development will be stable.

It might matter to Russians that Putin's big lie about Ukraine is growing whiskers. Once forced into gay-Nazi-Jewish-Islamist-Satanist territory, Russians just might be reminded of the late Stalinist purges directed against supposed Zionist-Trotskyite-fascist-imperialist (etc.) conspiracies. Or, more simply, people inside the regime, backed into a corner by Putin's escalation of unreality, might just realize that the Ukrainian scenario makes no logistical sense, and lacks any evidentiary basis.

This can undermine Putin's authority, and the sense that his story is a useful one. Judging by yesterday's appearance, this is no longer the nimble post-truth Putin who is capable of changing out one lie for another as necessary, with a wink to the insider along the way. This now seems to be a Putin who actually believes what he says -- or, in the best case, lacks the creativity to react to events in the world. His speech yesterday was grim for everyone, including to Russians who would like to think that their leader is ahead of events.

Putin's Ukrainian theory could make Russia more vulnerable to terrorism. The Crocus City Hall attack was more likely because Putin has chosen to use his security apparatus against Ukraine and the opposition. It is typical of his priorities that, on the very day of the Crocus City Hall attack, the regime defined international LGBT organizations as "terrorist." When Putin publicly ridiculed the United States on 19 March for warning of an Islamic State attack, he was signaling to the security apparatus that this was not a real danger. In conflating Islamic State with Ukraine now, he is doing the same thing at a higher level. That cannot be helpful in the practical work of preventing another attack.

Nor can, surely, Putin’s idea that Islamic State takes orders from the Jewish president of a European state, and that its actors are nothing more than pawns of American masters. I am not going to claim any expert knowledge of how Islamic State works or its leaders think, but it seems like it would not be best practice to ignore it and insult it at the same time. Publicizing the photos of the tortured suspects, as Russia has done, almost seems like goading Islamic State.

And although the official Kremlin position is that Kyiv and Washington and London are to blame, Russians have reacted (to the attack, and presumably also to the photos) by treating migrants and minorities aggressively. Because Putin denies that Islamic State is the actor, he cannot tell Russians that Islamic State is one thing and Muslims in Tajiks in general are another. He has created the impression, instead, that Muslims and Tadjiks are the enemy because they work for the West.

#timothy snyder #thinking about...

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power-handmaiden · 2 months

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Day 68: Pounded By The Pound: Turned Gay By The Socioeconomic Implications Of Britain Leaving The European Union

This sure was one of the BIG attention getting tinglers when it came out! But I'll talk about that in more detail later, there's a whole other tingler about it.

When I read current events tinglers years later I can't help but feel like I wasn't expected to read it far enough removed from the events that o have to put in real effort. Tinglers are usually such quick reads. I found myself having to go look at the publishing date and timeline of Brexit to make sense of what this one was saying- this tingler came out the day after the vote took place, right as we were watching the value of the pound drop instantly afterwards. That's why the cataclysmic fallout of the decision is depicted in obvious fantasy and exaggeration with no real-world details or references past the vote passing.

You know, history was my weakest subject in school, but I'm starting to understand how it can be fun and interesting to look at documents from the past and figure out their context.

Although this one has a triumphant end, it's a sad story for the reader, in a way, because while the protagonist is successful in creating a timeline where the vote can turn out differently, he has no choice but to leave behind his original timeline... the one that we all inhabit.

#2024 tingles my butt #chuck tingle

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mask131 · 7 months

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I want to share with you something about the French reception of the attack on Israel. A little point which, I promise, will lead to a bigger and more general point.

And this little point is the reason why you will not see any French politician or public figure approve or applaud the actions of the Hamas, and why almost all of them are currently sharing opinions supporting Israel, and why the few that do not condemn the Hamas' actions are currently under big criticism.

Because in France there is a crime known as "apology of terrorism". It is quite simple: the law condemns and deems criminal any kind of public support or approval of terrorist organizations and terrorist attacks. This is the set of laws that, for example, prohibited French people from loudly screaming "Well done! This dirty criminal-government is getting its right justice and these deaths were perfectly justified!" when 9/11 happened. These are much needed law for France's current situation to fight back the rise of extreme Islam on the French territory, and to criminalize things such as people rejoicing at Samuel Paty's death. This is the same set of laws that currently prevent people from sharing any support of the Hamas.

Because, and this is something that NEEDS to be remembered and brought back in this whole talk: the Hamas is recognized by many countries as a terrorist organization. France recognizes it as terrorist, because France is part of the European Union which, as a whole, considers the Hamas terrorist ; and so does the United-States, and Canada, and Japan, and Paraguay... Even countries that do not recognize the entirety of the Hamas as terrorist (Great-Britain, Australia, New-Zeland, Egypt...) do recognize that it is semi-terrorist and that it has terrorist branches within it. And it isn't just countries and governments, oh no! People should also recall that many humanitarian organizations, AND many human rights organisms, have frequently and regularly denounced the crimes and the terrorist nature of the Hamas. Not against Israel, no - against the Palestinians themselves. Amnesty International, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and Human Rights Watch, have all spoken against the Hamas, its immoral methods, and its crimes. Note something when people speak of condemning these attacks: people condemn the HAMAS, say the HAMAS should be punished. Nobody condemns Palestine, nobody says Palestinians should be punished - and that's because the Hamas is not Palestine in the eyes of these goverments - the same governments that recognize the Hamas as a terrorist organization refuse to see it as any kind of legitimate representative of Palestine.

Let's remember how for example in the very texts that founded the Hamas and in the Hamas very public ideology, there is a clear refusal of any kind of peace attempt with Israel - the organization was born with the sole goal to declare war on Israel, and with the dream to see Israel completely destroyed and all its inhabitants gone in one way or another ; and as a result they are known to have intimidated, captured, tortured and killed anyone they deemed as "allies" or "favorites" of Israel. This included the Hamas opposing in many different ways all attempts at peace treaties or negociations with Israel, and the Hamas capturing and torturing any Palestinian they deemed too leanient or too friendly or not aggressive enough with Israel, to the point Palestinians who were actually working on trying to change for the better Israel-Palestinian relationships had to leave Palestine due to how threatened they were.

Let's remember how the Hamas is a very openly antisemitic group, whose goals are clearly spelled out as a "jihad against the Jews" ; that deems one of the main problems of Israel's existence is its Jewishness ; who for decades have shared texts explaining that Muslims are the natural ennemies of the Jews, or that the Jews controlled the world medias with all the "money" they had, or that the Jews were secretly behind the French and Soviet Revolutions, and that WWII was actually organized by the Jews to amass an enormous amount of money. And that it is only very recently, and because they clearly needed to "look clean", that they decided to adopt views such as "We don't have problems with Jews in Europe or America, just those in our region" and "Maybe the Holocaust did happen and was bad - but we want to do our own thing, so it's good, since we're not Nazis". Even in their sentences saying that a peaceful cohabitation between the three religions of the book was possible, they insist that such a peace is only possible as long as Islam is recognized as the most important and superior religion, under which the others could live in peace.

Let's recall all the testimonies of Palestinians who lived in fear of the Hamas, and dreaded receiving a bullet in the leg or in the head because they would accused of "collaborating" with Israel. Let's recall the accusations of the Hamas participating in the human-trafficking rings at work in north-east Africa. Ismaël Haniyeh has declared that Ben Laden was a "holy warrior of Islam" and that his death made him a Muslim martyr - confirming what everybody knew already, that the Hamas and Al-Qaïda had relationships with each other. In 2012 Sahar El-Mougy already denounced that the Hamas, which started as a resistance movement against the Israelian oppresor, had turned into the new oppresor of Palestine and into a fanatical religious group that erased Palestinian culture by censoring or destroying its arts, literature and cinema, to enforce exclusively religious works.

All in all: the Hamas is bad for Palestine, and the Hamas is bad, and that's it. This isn't the fact that "Israel was attacked" which is the true problem and core of the debate here - here the situation is "the HAMAS attacked Israel". No matter what Israel did in the past, or how far-right it might be, or how half of the Israelian population is against its current leader, or anything else - if we just take the present situation, in the eyes of the law and the government of many of those countries, it boils down to, "A terrorist group attacks a democratic government. We thus have to stand by the democracy's side, no matter if we actually like the democracy in question, out of principle, because we, as nations fighting against terrorism on our own grounds, cannot support a terrorist group".

So, maybe to many of you it seems "unfair" or "hypocrite" or "vile" to not be "Let's have Israel destroyed", but the situation is that these countries are not going to support an antisemitic, religiously-extremist, terrorist group that has been known to commit human rights crime against its own people.

#hamas #israel #palestine #human rights #antisemitism #antisemitic

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mariacallous · 3 months

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Sometimes the most obvious questions are the best. In the case of the Conservatives, the most obvious question is so glaring that one wonders why Tory politicians don’t ask it ten-times a day before breakfast: why don’t they move to the centre?

The opinion polls are predicting a Tory rout on the scale of 1906, 1945 or 1997.

Surely in the interests of preserving the Conservatives as a fighting force the party must compromise to limit its losses to Labour. Here are a couple of compromises that occur to me. They make perfect political sense until you realise that conservatism has been so radicalised that compromise now feels like treason.

First, health. When we remember the suffering of the early 2020s, we will remember covid, of course.

But we will also remember the millions on NHS waiting lists, the elderly left for hours until ambulances arrive, the cancelled operations, the sick who would work if they could be treated but cannot find a doctor, the explosion in mental illness, the needlessly prolonged pain, the needlessly early deaths.

The Conservatives ought to be doing everything they can to improve the health service before polling day – out of a reptile-brain survival instinct if nothing else.

They will not do it because in British conservatism’s ever-diminishing circles health is not a concern.

The dominant Conservative factions want a right-wing policy offer of tax cuts and immigration controls. Not one of the party’s leaders has discussed how the increase in life expectancy means the demands on the NHS of an ever-larger pensioner population make tax cuts unaffordable. Nor have I heard honest discussion of how the need for foreign health and care workers to fill the gaps in provision makes immigration essential.

Rather than face up to the impossibility of Thatcherite economics in the 21st century they prefer to change the conversation and look the other way.

Let me offer a second example, which I think Brits will soon be obsessing about.

After years of delays Brexit Britain is finally imposing border checks on food imports from the European Union. Wholesalers and retailers predict that bureaucratic costs and the need for veterinary and phytosanitary checks will lead to continental producers deciding to sell their goods elsewhere. Price rises and food shortages will follow.

What kind of government in an election year, of all years, wants empty shelves?

A Conservative kind of government appears to be the answer. The sensible move would be for the Conservatives to follow Labour’s policy of striking a deal to stick to EU standards and ease bureaucracy at the border. That would mean the UK following European food regulations, as EU ambassadors have made clear.

But compared to dear food and empty shops, who the hell cares about that?

Tories care. Brexit is their King Charles head, their reason for being, their obsession.

David Frost, who negotiated the UK’s disastrous exit agreement with the EU, wrote an unintentionally revealing paragraph last week which encapsulated the ideological capture of British Conservatism.

“The Conservative Party owns Brexit. Whether ministers like it or not, or maybe even wish it hadn’t happened, it’s the central policy of the Party and the government. They must be prepared to defend and explain it – to show why it’s so important that Britain is a proper democracy once again. For if voters come to believe Brexit is failing, then the Conservative Party will inevitably fail too.”

There you have it. Brexit is the Conservative party and vice versa.

What a distance we have come! In 2016, a mere eight years ago, the Conservative party’s leader and most of its MPs supported the UK’s membership of the European Union. Eurosceptics posed as mild-mannered people. They promised that leaving the EU would not mean leaving the single market .

But then leave won the 2016 Brexit referendum and set us off on a spiral of radicalisation, which was instantly familiar to those of us who grew up on the left.

Here is how it worked on the left in the 20th century. You would be in a meeting where everyone agreed to a leftist policy: say that the government should encourage banks to give micro loans to poor people to keep them out of the hands of loan sharks.

Everything seems fine until an accusatory voice accuses all present of being sellouts because they do not believe in nationalising the banks,

Or today, after the great awokening, an academic department will propose reasonable measures to check that they are not unconsciously discriminating in their application process, only to be told that, if they were truly concerned with justice, they would decolonise the curriculum and purge it of “white” concepts such as truth and objectivity.

The near identical radicalisation of the right has been more serious because the right has real power.

Here is how its spiral into Tory Jacobinism went.

After winning the Brexit referendum in 2016, retaining the UK’s membership of the single market and the customs union suddenly became wholly unacceptable. They had to go.

As the ideological temperature rose, Theresa May’s attempts at compromise became sellouts, judges became enemies of the people, and the only acceptable way to leave became Frost and Johnson’s impoverishing hard Brexit.

We now have a new Tory ideology: “Brexitism.” It is a style of swaggering bravado and a bawling loud-mouthed way of doing business that goes far beyond the UK’s relations with the EU.

The catastrophic premiership of Liz Truss was “Brexitist”. She crashed the economy because she believed she was right to ignore the warnings of the Treasury, Bank of England and Office for Budget Responsibility.

What true Brexit supporter trusts experts, after all?

Brexit showed that you did not need them. All you needed was the will to impose a radical agenda and then the world would accommodate itself to your desires.

In retrospect, 2016 plays the same role for the radical right of 21th century Britain that 1917 played for the British radical left in the 20th. The fluke communist takeover of Russia in 1917 convinced hundreds of thousands over the decades that revolution could succeed in the UK, even though communism never stood a chance in this country.

The fluke leave win of 2016 has had an equally mystifying effect. Because radical right politics succeeded in one set of circumstances, its supporters assumed they would succeed in all circumstances.

Nowhere in right-wing discourse do you hear suggestions that the Conservative defeat might be softened if the government appealed to the majority of voters. Instead, the right says that the only way to save the right is for the right to move rightwards and become more rightly right wing.

Once again, the parallels with the communist movement to people of my age scream so loudly they are deafening.

To quote the weirdest example. A few weeks ago, an anonymous group of wealthy men calling themselves the Conservative Britain Alliance spent about £40,000 on opinion polling, and gave the results to the Daily Telegraph. They showed the Conservatives were heading for a landslide defeat, as so many polls do.

But the spin put on it by the Conservative Britain Alliance’s frontman Lord Frost (again!) was that the Tories must move to the right to attract Faragist voters, not to try to stem the growth of Labour support.

A further release from the anonymous group of wealthy men added to the impression of a right wing living in the land of make believe.

They produced findings that showed the Conservatives could win if Sunak were replaced by a hypothetical Tory leader. This imaginary figure was a political superhero who would be strong “on crime and migration” (naturally) but also had the superpower to “cut taxes and get NHS waiting lists down” at the same time.

Lower taxes and better public services all at once in a wonderful never never land.

My guess is that it will take three maybe four election defeats to batter the delusions of 2016 out of the Conservative party.

Perhaps no number of defeats will suffice, and Brexitism will be Toryism’s final delirium.

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 6 months

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Konstantin Kisin - The Speech The World NEEDS To Hear

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once said that the strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life, than on its level of industrialization. If a nation's spiritual energies have been exhausted, he said, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure, or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand.

When he was allowed to leave the USSR Solzhenitsyn went to the US, where he was given a hero's welcome. But he quickly realized that American society was far from perfect. He started lecturing Americans about the problems he saw. Americans don't like that. Like Solzhenitsyn, I come from the Soviet Union, but I have no intention of repeating his mistake. That's why I've come to Britain, where you love being told what's wrong with you by foreigners.

But I do have to be honest. Six months ago, when Jordan and Philippa asked me to come here and speak at ARC about the importance of audacity, adventure and a positive vision for our civilization, I was honored and delighted.

But as I stand here today, after watching crowds openly celebrate mass murder on the streets of our cities, after watching the police spend more time debating Islamic theology on Twitter than enforcing the law, I'm starting to lose faith. I don't know how long our civilization Will survive.

For years now many of us have been warning that the barbarians are at the gates. We were wrong. They're inside. Now look, I'm not going to be all doom and gloom, there are positives as well. I mean, say what you want about Hamas supporters, at least they know what a woman is.

But joking aside, I have to be honest. I've been in a dark place these last few weeks, so I did what I always do when I don't know what to do: I talk to my wife. It's not the only time I talk to her, but you know, get the point. And she said, look, you need to clear your mind, take a few days off, let's go on holiday. And I know, it's a weird thing to say, I don't like going on holiday, cause I love working, and I hate spending money. Protestant work ethic in a Jewish man's body. My wife is exactly the other way around, unfortunately.

But she was right. She's always right. That's her best and most annoying quality. So, we went to Barcelona. Beautiful city. And as we were walking down the main tourist street, La Rambla, many of you will know, when you get to the bottom, you hit the Christopher Columbus Monument. It looks like a giant column with a pillar of Columbus on top pointing towards the New World. And this reminded me of my son, Nikolai. He's 16 months, and this is what he does, he sits on my hip and points in the direction he wants to go. Treats me like a horse, basically. And if I don't act quickly enough, or if I don't comply, he does what all toddlers do: he throws a tantrum and starts screaming. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams with your empty words! And when he does, we read him a story and put him to bed. We don't give him a standing ovation in front of the UN.

Anyway, trigger warning, I am going to talk positively about Christopher Columbus. I know he committed some pretty sizable microaggressions, but he also changed the world. Do you know why he changed the world? Yeah, he tried to reach India and by accident discovered America. But why go west to India? Europeans had been trading with India and China for centuries via the Silk Road. Why risk your life to go out on a limb? There were many reasons of course, but the main one was the decision to try and reach Asia by going west, was not made out of choice. Europe was desperate. Only a few decades prior, in 1453, the Ottomans sacked Constantinople, and they cut Europe off from the Silk Road. The West Was facing a huge challenge and a new threat. No smaller than the one we face today. And like us what they needed was another way.

But when Columbus took his idea to go west to India to the kings and queens of medieval Europe, they laughed at him. They didn't laugh at him because he was some misunderstood genius, he wasn't Galileo. They laughed at him because he was wrong. If you go out in the street and ask a random person why Columbus discovered America, they'll tell you he worked out that the Earth was round. Not true. By the time Columbus set off on his voyage in 1492, people had known the Earth was round for two millennia. There's probably more flat Earthers now than there were in the 15th century. God bless the internet.

The reason Columbus discovered America is not that he'd worked out that the Earth was round. The reason is that he massively underestimated the size of the planet. They were right to laugh at him. He was wrong. But he took that wrongness, he persuaded 90 other men to get into three boats smaller than the size of this stage, and sail into the unknown. And he persuaded Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon to fund his voyage.

The moral of the story is, it doesn't matter how wrong you are as long as you've got rich friends.

That's not the moral of the story. The moral of the story is, the history of our civilization was not made by people who always got everything right. It was made by people who'd made mistakes too. It was made by people who dared to believe that they could solve the problems they faced. The story of the West is a story of audacity.

The big debates of the last decade, the culture war, the polarization, are about one thing and one thing only: the future. There are people like us in this room who believe that our future is to be prosperous, powerful and influential. We are the majority. But there are also some people whose brains have been broken by an excess of education, who believe that our history is evil. That we do not deserve to be great, we do not deserve to be powerful, that we must be punished for the sins of our ancestors. To them, our past is abominable, our present must be spent apologizing, and our future is managed decline.

My message to those people is simple: how dare you. You will not steal my son's dreams with your empty words.

But Jordan is right, we need a positive message too. So here it is: from the dawn of time, human beings have had to work to make the world a better place. We captured the mystery of fire. We invented the wheel. Today we build buildings that would shock and awe almost every human being that has ever lived. We split the atom, we spliced the genome and we connected the world through microcomputers that fit in our pockets, that allow us to do amazing amazing things.

This morning, I destroyed someone on Twitter with facts and logic from the toilet. It's magic! Remember your grandparents? Remember them? If I could go back in time and transport the grandparents of your grandparents into this room, just four generations ago, they would think they'd been abducted by aliens. that's the progress we've made. We haven't made that progress by whining and acting like victims. We've made that progress by unleashing the creativity and talent of people like us here in this room.

But I do think we've forgotten what adventure is. Being adventurous is not ordering extra-spicy chicken at Nando's. Wrong reference for this room. Let me try again. Being adventurous is not ordering extra-spicy chicken from your personal chef.

When Columbus and his men got on those boats and took a journey into the unknown, they sailed to certain death. You know why? It's not because they were braver than you and I, it's because they knew something we forgotten: all death is certain. And so I say to our friends in the world of business, you've made your fortunes by maximizing your returns on your investments. We are in the fight of our lives. there is no greater return on your investment than to protect and preserve our civilization.

And so I invite you to follow in the footsteps of Elon Musk and Paul Marshall and Ben Delo and many of you here who are using your fortunes for the betterment of humanity.

I say to our friends in the media: truth matters! We are in the fight of our lives. There is more to life than clicks and downloads. Let’s move beyond the culture war where all we do is bat away the litany of slanderous allegations about our history. Let’s set the agenda. Let’s remind our fellow citizens why we are where we are. Let’s remind them that we are the most tolerant, open and welcoming societies in the history of the world. We’re not embarrassed about our past, we’re proud of it.

And to my colleagues in new media especially I say this. The legacy media is dying for a reason. They cannot be saved, they cannot be reformed. Let’s stop complaining about them and start building the media empires of the future ourselves. We have everything we need. We’ve even got rich friends now.

I say to our friends in education and academia: I understand that many of you feel like the French Resistance or Soviet partisans, stuck behind enemy lines, undermanned and out gunned. And you’re right, we are in the fight of our lives. So keep fighting for every young mind you can. It will be worth it.

And finally, I say to our friends in politics. Many of you here are conservatives. I’m not, I look terrible in tweed. That’s why I identify as politically non-binary. But I can tell you conservatives something. You will never get young people to want to conserve a society and an economy that is not working for them. We will not overcome Woke nihilism as long as young people are locked out of the housing market, unable to pair up, unable to have kids, unable to plan for the future.

I know it’s difficult, and I know that whoever solves the housing crisis may well pay the price at the ballot box. This is true of many pressing issues too, or at least you think it is. But you did not get into politics to get re-elected. You got into politics to make a difference.

We are in the fight of our lives. And if courage means anything it means doing the right thing and being willing to take the punishment if you have to. Let me say it again: all death is certain. We do not get to choose whether we live or die. We only get to choose whether we live before we die. Thank you very much.

#Konstantin Kisin #western civilization #the war on the west #war on the west #religion is a mental illness

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eaglesnick · 6 months

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Smart people instinctively understand the dangers of entrusting our future to self-serving leaders who use our institutions, whether in the corporate or social sectors, to advance their own interests. James C Colins

I discussed yesterday the catastrophic consequences of David Cameron’s policy of austerity, one academic study claiming 333,000 excess deaths can be attributed to the cuts to public services and benefits inflicted by Cameron as part of his austerity package.

Needless to say, it was the poor that suffered while the rich became richer still. The hardships of austerity were for ordinary working people to endure, not the rich friends of the Tory Party.

“We often hear David Cameron say: "We're all in this together." The truth is that Mr Cameron and his cabinet of millionaires sit there in a pool of cash whilst there are over three million children in Britain living in poverty. Under the Tories, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Whether it's dinners for donors in Downing Street or giving millionaires a tax-cut, it's the same old Tories who leave all the ordinary hard-working people of this country to suffer.” (HUFFPOST: 25/01/14)

After a further five years of austerity nothing had changed:

“Rich getting richer while poor get poorer, official figures show – with ‘Brexit and benefits freeze to blame'." (Independent: 26/02/19)

Not only was Cameron (together with George Osborne) responsible for the devastating cuts to public service funding and benefit payments, but he also led us into the quagmire that was Brexit.

Whatever your views on Brexit, it has been an economic disaster for this country and the blame for this can be squarely laid at the door of David Cameron.

"Many will never forgive him for the almost offhand way he steered Britain into an unnecessary Brexit cul-de-sac, and the ramifications of his mistake continue to cast a pall over the country." (Evening Standard: 14/11/23)

The Evening Standard, is usually a Tory supporting newspaper but even they recognise that Cameron was being totally self-serving in calling for a referendum on our membership of the EU, a decision that had more to do with saving the Tory Party (and his premiership) from the consequences of a right-wing split and the rise of UKIP to Tory MP seats.

“Cameron chose to commit to a vote, not because the country’s population was clamouring for one but because a significant minority of his own MPs, many of them frustrated by the constraints of coalition, were demanding that he do so – some because they feared that UKIP would cost them their seat (or the seats of too many of their colleagues) at the next election, some because they wanted out of the European Union and were more than happy to leverage that fear to their advantage.” (ukandeu.ac.uk: Why David Cameron called the 2016 referendum – and why he lost’ : 04/10/22)

As if this were not enough, Cameron was not averse to using his political connections to potentially line his own pockets after he had resigned as PM. In 2022, MP’s condemned Cameron for lobbying on behalf of his banking employer, Greensill.

“The Treasury select committee said in July 2021 that it was inappropriate of the ex-prime minister to send 62 messages to former colleagues pleading for them to help the controversial bank, for which he worked and in which he owned stock options that could have been worth tens of millions of pounds.” (Guardian: 13/11/23)

Cameron also risked the security of this country by cosying up to China. Declaring that he was determined to make Britain Beijing’s partner of choice, he signed £40bn worth of deals with China claiming:

“What this really means is jobs, it means livelihoods, it means security.”

Whatever else it meant it did not mean security.

“China represents the "largest state-based threat" to Britain's economic security, Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden has told the BBC. It comes as figures show the government intervened in eight attempted takeovers of UK firms by Chinese buyers last year over national security fears.” (BBC News: 11/07/23)

It did however mean a job for David Cameron:

“Former British PM Cameron gets new job as vice-chairman of China-UK fund.” (The Straits Times: 19/12/17)

Cameron, like many Tories, is a man who, despite his patriotic rhetoric, is prepared to put the Conservative Party and his own career above the best interests of the country as a whole. He is a man of poor economic judgement, a man who acts for the benefit of his rich friends and is quite prepared to endanger our security of our nation for the short term benefit of making a few extra pounds. He is not fit to be Foreign Secretary and Rishi Sunak should never have appointed him.

#uk politics #rishi sunak #david cameron #national security #china #austerity #self-serving #public services #child poverty #deaths

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tropylium · 7 months

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Unsure if I'm a few days late in timing, or actually just right, but I wanted to mention a recent essay from Roger Blench on recent world events in Africa

abstract:

The years 2021-2023 have seen a seismic shift in the political map of West-Central Africa. The Francophone countries, which have broadly maintained a consensus relationship with their former colonial rulers, underpinned by the Cfa which is tied to the Euro, have one by one thrown off the link to France. French troops have been asked to leave and there has been a re-orientation towards Russia, through its surrogate, the Wagner group. Even where coups have no direct link to Russia, such as in Niger, pro-Russian statements have become part of the currency. Although the absence of analogous links between Britain and its former Anglophone colonies has impeded similar regime change, the overspill of insurgency from the Sahel and the unprepared and incompetent security services in these countries means that they will not be protected from instability.

The paper considers the roots of this astonishingly rapid wave of change, as well as where things are likely to go in the next few years. As importantly, it argues that European governments have been seriously inept in their policy responses and that this is likely to have consequences. The reason for this is the privileging the endless to and fro of bloodshed in the Near East, most of which makes good television, but which has limited consequences. The creation of a zone of freelance insurgency across the Sahel is likely to significantly increase the operation of the trade in weapons and drugs from the region to the Maghreb and thence into southern Europe. In addition the Mediterranean ‘migrant crisis’ is already creating a highly effective channel for bad actors to enter the European crime and terrorism ecosystem. The paper makes a strong recommendation that greater in-depth and sophisticated analysis be applied to the region of West-Central Africa, and that far more effective policy responses be developed.

Includes also a chapter "The damaging obsession with the Near East"; but as far as critiques of Western mistakes go, I like somewhat more the chapter "Why has international development been serially incompetent?";

Why then have (…) out of focus development strategies remained on the agenda? There are four issues here; – relentless propaganda proclaiming success and hence a complete failure to learn lessons from failure – ill-informed direction from central governments in Europe and the United States, together with rapid policy shifts within those governments – astounding failure to understand the basic science, leading, for example, to the ‘climate change’ alibi – rapid turnover of staff and hence a complete lack of institutional memory No development agency is going to admit failure; all want to be seen as ‘punching above their weight’, even when this is entirely at odds with the empirical data. Annual reports feature the usual smiling natives testifying to the improvement of their lives to due to some project or other. Collectivities, such as the European Union, are usually worse than national governments, since national diversity rather than competence is a requirement to be responsible to hand out grants.

#article #politics #africa

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beardedmrbean · 2 years

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Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants to revive Britain's traditional system of imperial measurements, such as pounds and ounces, in a post-Brexit move that has divided the public and businesses.

Coinciding with this week's 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's coronation, the government will launch consultations on how to change the law on weights and other measurements to capitalise on freedoms after leaving the European Union.

While the bloc normally requires members to use the metric system, it allowed Britain, while a member, to label its produce in some imperial units alongside metric units. Speed limits are set in miles per hour and milk and beer are sold in pints, but most other products such as sugar are sold in grams and kilograms.

After leaving the European Union in 2020, Britain is reviewing thousands of rules that it retained and determining whether they serve the national interest. This includes the rules banning sales of packaged goods like sugar in some imperial units.

"You will know the EU regulation required the sale of certain products under the metric system, but the prime minister has been clear he wants to consult on this later this week," the prime minister's spokesman said on Monday.

Some Britons hailed the plan as a way to reconnect with the past.

Cheryl Devlin, who runs a fruit-and-vegetable stall in west London, said the imperial system was part of Britain's culture.

"It's just nice to keep our heritage. I was brought up with pounds, shillings and pence and, you know, just why has it got to go?" she said. "Why can't we keep what we've had for a hundred years?"

But Sophie Bainsfair, living nearby, said the move would be a hassle and confusing.

"I don't understand why you want to go back," she said. "It doesn't make any sense."

#nunyas news #come crawling back to the proper measurement system

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head-post · 5 months

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Britons are thinking of returning to the EU – poll results

A majority of Britons are in favour of joining the European Union��s single market, even if it means restoring the free movement of workers out of the bloc, a poll released on Wednesday (29 November) showed, Reuters reports.

The fight against immigration was one of the main reasons why Britons voted to leave the European Union in 2016. Polls in recent months have shown that most people now see Brexit as a mistake. Wednesday’s poll comes less than a week after data showed annual net migration to the United Kingdom hit a record high last year – more than double what it was the year before the Brexit vote.

According to a YouGov poll, 57% of Britons would be in favour of joining the single market, even if it meant reintroducing free movement of people – a policy that brought millions of families and workers to Britain during the country’s EU membership. One in five voted against. Support for joining the single market, which also guarantees the free movement of goods and services, is divided along political lines.

Among respondents who voted to leave the EU and support the opposition Labour Party in tomorrow’s election, 53% support membership of the single market, while 31% oppose it. Among those who voted in favour of Brexit and intend to vote for the ruling Conservatives, only 29% would support a return to the single market, while 54% would oppose it.

Learn more HERE

#world news #world politics #news #europe #european news #european union #eu politics #eu news #eu foreign policy #uk news #uk politics #uk government #england #london #united kingdom #brexit

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thegnmsolution · 10 months

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Nigel Farage: UK Banks Closing Accounts For Political Reasons Nigel Farage is the latest alleged victim; if so, this is very wrong & needs sunlight, we need this in the public space to ensure cannot ...

Site logo image brianpeckford posted: " happen in US, etc. I fear happenss in Canada daily! What have you heard? Your experience? NE - NAKEDEMPEROR.SUBSTACK.COM DR. PAUL ALEXANDER JUN 30, 2023 Nigel Farage is a divisive character in the UK - in the same way Trump is in the" peckford42 Nigel Farage: UK Banks Closing Accounts For Political Reasons Nigel Farage is the latest alleged victim; if so, this is very wrong & needs sunlight, we need this in the public space to ensure cannot brianpeckford Jul 1 happen in US, etc. I fear happenss in Canada daily! What have you heard? Your experience? NE - NAKEDEMPEROR.SUBSTACK.COM DR. PAUL ALEXANDER JUN 30, 2023 Nigel Farage is a divisive character in the UK - in the same way Trump is in the US. Of course I’m generalising but if you speak to someone from the ‘metropolitan liberal elite’ or someone who passionately voted for Britain to remain in the European Union (EU), Nigel is the anti-Christ. Farage is a former politician who very successfully lead the UK Independence Party (UKIP) until the Brexit referendum in 2016. It could be argued that the UK voted to leave the EU in 2016 due to the larger than life personalities of Farage and Boris Johnson. He was also a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) where he often criticised the EU in his scathing/humorous/cringey speeches. Alexander COVID News-Dr. Paul Elias Alexander's Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Since leaving politics, Nigel has become a broadcaster and recently won “News Presenter of the Year” at the Television and Radio Industries Club (TRIC) Awards. He is right-wing but not far-right as many like to claim. UKIP was an awkward political party and did have some strange characters in it. There were some in UKIP who were too far to the right and some of their policies were questionable but many ignored those because they just wanted to leave the EU. Leaving the EU was as divisive as Covid vaccines. You aren’t anti-vax if you’ve had all your previous injections but don’t want the novel gene therapy, you are just anti-novel untested gene therapies. Similarly, you weren’t anti-European or racist if you wanted to leave the political institution of the EU, you were just anti-EU. Today, Farage claimed that his career is being attacked and “the establishment are trying to force me out of the UK by closing my bank accounts”. He said that within the last few months his bank account was closed with no explanation. /I have been with the same banking group since 1980. I’ve had my personal accounts with them since that date and my business accounts right through the 1990s when I worked in the City of London and in recent years too. I’m with one of the subsidiaries of this big banking group, one with a very prestigious name, but I won’t name them just yet. I got a phone call a couple of months ago, to say ‘we are closing your accounts’, I asked why…no reason was given. I was told a letter would come, which would explain everything. The letter came through and simply said, we are closing your accounts, we want to finish it all by a date, which is around about now. I didn’t quite know what to make of it. I complained. I emailed the chairman, a lackey phoned me to say that it was a commercial decision, which I have to say, I don’t believe for a single moment./ Nigel says there is nothing irregular or unusual in what he does. The payments that go in and out every month are pretty much the same. He also keeps a large positive cash balance. He thinks this is happening to him because a few years ago the EU came up with a definition of somebody called a PEP - a Politically Exposed Person. A PEP is an individual who holds or has held a significant public office, and due to their position, they might be more susceptible to involvement in corruption or bribery. The term can also include their family members and close associates. Financial institutions often apply enhanced due diligence when dealing with PEPs due to the increased risk of money laundering and terrorist financing. Being a PEP does not indicate wrongdoing but simply a higher risk factor requiring additional scrutiny. So anybody in public office, whether part of the government or a local councillor, can be designated a PEP. Once you are a PEP, the banks say they have increased costs for compliance, so no longer want your business. Nigel has also tried to open new accounts but with no luck. /So I thought, well, there we are, I’ll have to go and find a different bank. I’ve been to six, no seven banks actually. Asked them all, could I have a personal and a business account? And the answer has been no in every single case./ He rightly points out that without a bank account you effectively become a non-person, you don’t actually exist. Worryingly, you no longer have the right to a bank account. And without a bank account you are unable to function in a modern society. www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/EVBFMp4JW-s?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0 This is a worrying trend that is happening more and more. It happened with the Canadian truckers and it has been happening on the quiet in the UK. In May, Konstantin Kisin from the Triggernometry podcast announced that their bank account had been shut down with no explanation, despite a healthy balance and transaction history. It seems the banks are increasingly shutting down accounts purely based on political views held by the owners. For now, these are relatively big accounts who can probably find alternative means to survive. But in a short space of time it could easily be you or I who has a bank account shut down. Then how do you pay your mortgage or feed your family? You can’t. The only way is to stick to mainstream views, get your injections and be a good citizen. Self-censoring without anyone even having to tell you to. The only way out of this is Bitcoin. Comment Like Tip icon image You can also reply to this email to leave a comment. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: peckford42.wordpress. Read the full article

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williamkergroach55 · 11 months

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Why is the West in decline ?

The rise and fall of the West is the result of a number of historical factors.

During the #Renaissance (14th-16th centuries), the West benefited from the intellectual, artistic and scientific revival in Western Europe. It fostered the emergence of new ideas and perspectives, stimulating progress in fields such as the arts, sciences, philosophy and literature. Centers such as Florence, Italy, were important centers of this era. Today, these centers are extinct, and there's nowhere to find the intellectual elite in the West.

From the 18th century onwards, the #IndustrialRevolution began in Britain with the introduction of new technologies and production methods, particularly in the textile and mining industries. This led to a major economic, social and technological transformation, marking the beginning of the Industrial Age. Today's robotization and the role of Artificial Intelligence are a monstrous development of this logic of profit and efficiency.

With #Colonization (15th-19th centuries), European powers undertook major colonization campaigns, establishing colonial empires across the globe. Countries such as Spain, Portugal, Great Britain and France established colonies in America, Africa and Asia, seeking to extend their political, economic and cultural influence. Today, the West is polluted and invaded by hordes of wretches who, unfortunately, add no value to Western society.

The #FirstWorldWar (1914-1918) profoundly affected the West. It pitted the Allied Powers, including Great Britain, France and the USA, against the Central Powers, notably Germany and Austria-Hungary. This conflict, waged by the moneyed powers, brought about numerous political, social and economic upheavals, marking the end of the old order and paving the way for the future changes desired by big business. Too many men and women died, and mentalities were damaged by war, rancor and the spirit of revenge. The blood of the brave fed the soil, leaving behind the weak, the twisted and the cowardly, which characterizes Western society today.

The #SecondWorldWar (1939-1945), also waged by the dark powers of North American finance, had devastating consequences for the West. It pitted the Allies, led by the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, against the Axis, comprising Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan. This conflict led to major geopolitical changes and the emergence of the American empire, which lost the spirit and nobility of its founding fathers to degrade itself into materialism and moral perversion.

Decolonization (1940s-1970s), after the Second World War, led to the end of Western colonial empires and the emergence of new nation-states, most of which were incapable of governing themselves. Poverty and oppression by local despots replaced colonization. The poor emigrated to the West, bringing with them their problems and lack of morals.

The #ColdWar (1940s-1990s) was a period of political and ideological tension between the USA and the Soviet Union, which had a profound influence on the West. Washington favored the division of Europe into opposing political and military blocs, with the formation of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) on one side and the Warsaw Pact on the other, to better rule and divide. The Cold War also had repercussions on the arms race, the space race and regional conflicts around the world. Everything was designed to kill the revolutionary spirit that capital hates. Everything has been done to destroy the will of the people to throw off the yoke of the oligarchs.

These factors have led to the decline of the West as much as to #Materialism, that excessive preoccupation with material goods and the pursuit of material comfort. Over time, certain aspects of materialism have led to an incessant quest for wealth and possessions, emphasizing consumption and the accumulation of goods rather than moral and spiritual values. We have become a people of consumer-hungry pigs, locked into our own selfishness. Our intellectual laziness prevents us from properly analyzing current events and revolting against the globalist totalitarianism that is gradually strangling us.

WILDCapitalism, the unbridled pursuit of profit without adequate regulation, leads to social inequality, exploitation of workers, environmental degradation and a race for profits without consideration for the long-term social and environmental consequences. This sickness of our economic elites is destroying our society and leaving us to their greed.

Selfishness governs our individual and collective behavior in Western societies. When egoism prevails, personal interests take precedence over the common good. This leads to a loss of social solidarity, increased inequality and a diminished commitment to collective well-being.

The #EvolutionofMorals is a sensitive issue in any society. Social norms and values are evolving badly, influenced by the desire of certain secret societies to encourage debauchery and unnatural behavior. Moral disease and perversion are not progress, they are degradation. Our social and family structures and our interpersonal relationships are weakened by these demands on the part of a minority of weirdos and perverts.

To read more : https://www.williamkergroach.fr/blog

#capitalism #immigration #Moral #healthy #patriotism #deepstateagendas #DeepState #deepstatecoupdetat #QAnon

#patriotism #resistance

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warningsine · 1 year

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Three of the UK’s largest supermarket chains have introduced limits for shoppers on several fresh produce lines, including tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, as they try to prevent gaps appearing on shelves.

So what is going on and are the shortages going to spread to other retailers and foodstuffs?

How big is the problem?

Morrisons has announced limits of two an item on packs of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and peppers, while Asda is restricting shoppers to three items each on eight fresh produce lines – including broccoli, cauliflower, raspberries and lettuces.

On Wednesday, Tesco and Aldi joined them, each limiting purchases of peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes to three packs a person.

Other supermarkets are yet to introduce rationing, but grocery retailers have said shortages could last for some weeks.

What is behind the shortages?

Certain fresh vegetables and fruits are hard to come by in the UK as a result of an unfortunate combination of poor weather reducing the harvest in Europe and north Africa, as well lower supplies from UK and Dutch producers hit by the jump in energy bills to heat glasshouses.

At this time of year, Britain relies on Spain, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt for the bulk of salad imports. However, these crops have been affected by unusually cold weather last month, including intense night frosts, while tomato plants have also been damaged or killed by disease – in particular the tomato brown rugose virus.

Meanwhile, Britain and other northern European countries – particularly the Netherlands which is a big vegetable producer – have reduced how many crops they have planted over the winter, after the Ukraine war sent bills soaring for the energy required to light and heat greenhouses and the cost of the fertiliser used on plants.

Faced with higher costs for glasshouse crops, some retailers chose to rely more heavily this year on sourcing from Spain and north Africa, leaving them more vulnerable to the weather-triggered shortages.

Are things worse in the UK than the rest of Europe?

It seems so. There are no reports of shortages in France and Germany and European shoppers have shared photos on social media of full supermarket shelves, in stark contrast to British supermarkets.

One issue is reduced output from British farms. The president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), Minette Batters, told the union’s annual conference on Tuesday that “domestic production of salad, including cucumbers and tomatoes, has fallen to its lowest level since records began in 1985”.

In the UK, a cold snap and frost before Christmas also damaged field crops including cauliflower, cabbage and carrots.

Batters has warned there might be further rationing of salad items to come, especially if growers’ energy bills remain high.

With many British tomato and salad growers having chosen to delaying planting in recent months because of economic uncertainty, UK production will not be able to pick up the slack for several weeks, and will probably begin later than in a normal year.

As a result, demand for Spanish and Moroccan produce to fill the gap has outstripped supply, and retailers cannot access as much food as they need, or face paying significantly higher prices for what is available.

So is Brexit to blame?

Most farmers and suppliers have said they do not believe the UK’s exit from the EU is the main reason for the UK’s empty supermarket shelves. However, many acknowledge that Brexit – as well as the pandemic – have increased costs for growers, mostly as a result of having to pay higher wages to workers amid labour shortages.

Some importers argue the additional costs and bureaucracy created by Brexit have put the UK at the back of queue for supplies from European producers when crops are in short supply across the continent. It has also led to higher costs and paperwork, which can cause delays at the border – a particular issue with perishable produce.

What other food stuffs might run short?

Salad crops including cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce are now most affected. Supplies of aubergines and lemons have also been hit, as have field crops in Spain including broccoli and lettuce. In the UK, frost has damaged production of brassicas, especially cabbage and cauliflower.

However, eggs are also undergoing shortages, after producers were hit by rising costs and the UK’s worst-ever outbreak of avian influenza. This requires all birds in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, but not in Scotland, to be kept indoors, pushing up already soaring heating and lighting costs for egg producers.

The NFU calculates that UK egg production has fallen to its lowest level in nine years, while UK egg packers packed almost 1bn fewer eggs in 2022 than they did in 2019.

Sainsbury’s has been importing eggs from Italy since late last year as a result of shortages in British supply.

Why are UK supermarkets facing fresh food shortages?

So what is going on and are the shortages going to spread to other retailers and foodstuffs?

How big is the problem?

On Wednesday, Tesco and Aldi joined them, each limiting purchases of peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes to three packs a person.

Other supermarkets are yet to introduce rationing, but grocery retailers have said shortages could last for some weeks.

What is behind the shortages?

Are things worse in the UK than the rest of Europe?

It seems so. There are no reports of shortages in France and Germany and European shoppers have shared photos on social media of full supermarket shelves, in stark contrast to British supermarkets.

In the UK, a cold snap and frost before Christmas also damaged field crops including cauliflower, cabbage and carrots.

Batters has warned there might be further rationing of salad items to come, especially if growers’ energy bills remain high.

So is Brexit to blame?

What other food stuffs might run short?

The NFU calculates that UK egg production has fallen to its lowest level in nine years, while UK egg packers packed almost 1bn fewer eggs in 2022 than they did in 2019.

Sainsbury’s has been importing eggs from Italy since late last year as a result of shortages in British supply.

What could be done to help the situation?

The NFU is calling for more support to energy-reliant British farmers. At its annual conference, Batters criticised government policy, pointing out that botanical gardens with large glasshouses have received support with their energy bills through the energy relief scheme, while food producers with greenhouses have not.

The farming minister, Mark Spencer, told the conference that the Treasury and the government’s business department were examining these schemes.

Yet, even as wholesale prices for salad crops surge, growers will not necessarily be able to earn more for their produce, as they are often tied into contracts with retailers and suppliers.

Some UK growers have criticised British retailers for wanting to sell food at too low a price, often below the cost of production. However, supermarkets are reluctant to raise prices as they do not want to lose customers to their rivals during the cost of living crisis.

#uk #supermarkets #food #farming #retail industry #brexit #news

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cryptosecrets · 1 year

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Why are the U.K. and E.U. still fighting over Brexit and Northern Ireland?

LONDON — Remember Brexit? It appears that Brexit is never really done. It’s more verb than noun. Leaving the European Union two years ago has proven a bit of a drag for Britain, economically. And Brexit continues to disrupt lives in Northern Ireland, which doesn’t have a functioning government, because unionist politicians are boycotting over how the territory was treated in the Brexit…

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parolim-prlm · 1 year

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Why are the U.K. and E.U. still fighting over Brexit and Northern Ireland?

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mariacallous · 6 months

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Whisper “Trickbot” or “Conti,” and cybersecurity experts will be spooked. These are pieces of malware and ransomware used by a gang of Russia-based hackers to sneak into computer servers and demand at least $800 million from Western corporations, hospitals, and government agencies. In February and September, Britain and the United States imposed joint sanctions on 18 members of the hacker syndicate behind the attacks. In doing so, Washington and London dealt a blow not just to the hackers but also to Moscow: The Trickbot-Conti gang has supported the invasion of Ukraine and probably received directions from Russian security services. The sanctions ban the syndicate’s members from traveling to the United States or Britain and freeze their assets in these countries. But there’s a catch: The European Union has not imposed sanctions, leaving the hackers free to operate in the bloc.

This apparent flaw is not an administrative glitch. Since Britain left the EU in 2020, London and Brussels have made sanctions decisions completely separately, and there is no formal mechanism to ensure alignment between British and European measures. This has resulted in regulatory divergences—a polite way to say sanctions loopholes—that Moscow and other malicious actors can exploit. The Trickbot-Conti gang is only one example of such exploitation, but it highlights the fact that restarting British-EU collaboration on sanctions is long overdue. Increased cooperation would be a quick and cheap way for Britain and the EU to close glaring sanctions loopholes and deal a blow to the Kremlin.

Ask any Western official, and they will tell you that collaboration on Russia sanctions among G-7 countries is going hunky dory. On paper, this may be true. In the first days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Western countries including Britain, the United States, and the 27 members of the EU jointly froze around half of Russia’s $640 billion in foreign-exchange reserves. The joint G-7-EU price cap on Russian oil exports is another example of Western sanctions cooperation. Yet the reality is that such coordination is the exception, not the norm. In particular, there is little cooperation between Britain and the EU on targeting Kremlin-linked businesspeople and illicit groups helping the Russian war machine.

Of course, there are reasons for this: The British government likes to claim that it is no longer a haven for wealthy Russians, but British law still makes it harder than in the EU to place someone under sanctions. Yet this obstacle is not insurmountable, and there are at least three reasons why greater alignment on Russia sanctions would be a positive development. The first is obvious: Joint British-EU designations would boost the effectiveness of sanctions. With common designations, individuals and companies engaged in illicit activities would be barred from traveling to, and operating from, both Britain and the EU—magnifying the impact of Western sanctions and possibly compelling other like-minded allies, such as Canada, Australia, and Japan, to impose similar measures on the same murky people or firms.

Formalized information sharing between Britain and the EU’s member states would also help to detect sanctions evasion schemes. Joint British-EU designations would prove especially useful to clamp down on those illegal networks that smuggle semiconductors for the Russian military in breach of Western export controls. Many of the firms that engage in such behavior are based in China, Turkey, or the United Arab Emirates, but others are found in Britain and the EU. Earlier this month, Washington blacklisted 49 entities that were shipping semiconductors to Moscow, including three companies operating from Britain, Finland, and Germany. From this perspective, joint measures to tackle sanctions evasion make sense. What’s more, Britain and EU member France are among the few countries that have the intelligence capabilities to detect companies dodging sanctions.

The second reason has to do with the private sector. Many of the Western firms that chose to stay in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine face a tricky situation. Beyond the controls that Moscow has imposed to complicate exits, many multinationals report that the difficulties of navigating different sanctions regimes further complicate exit strategies. Of course, this argument may be disingenuous: It could well be that some private firms have chosen to stay in Russia and are using sanctions divergence as an excuse to deflect criticism. Greater alignment between British and EU sanctions legislation would make this talking point moot and possibly help some firms to leave the Russian market.

A third factor is that pan-European collaboration on sanctions would be a useful preemptive measure for Europeans to take if a Republican president were to upend U.S. sanctions policy on Russia from 2025. The risk is far from hypothetical: Many Republican candidates, including former U.S. President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have no qualms suggesting that supporting Ukraine against Russia does not make sense for the United States. The election of any of these candidates would therefore spell trouble for Western sanctions policy toward Russia. If Europeans are serious about their long-term commitment to Ukraine, building a united British-European front on sanctions would be a great idea to start preparing for a potential change of heart toward Moscow in Washington.

Just because a policy proposal makes sense on paper does not mean that it will work out well in practice. Excellent proposals are often too complex, costly, or unpopular to implement. The good news is that greater sanctions collaboration would probably avoid these pitfalls. First, it would be simple to implement. Both sides used to work together before Brexit, and the administrators to adopt and implement sanctions are already in place on both sides. An additional bonus is that London’s well-staffed, top-notch sanctions teams are the envy of their European counterparts.

Second, little or no money is needed to restart cooperation on Russia-related sanctions. After sanctions are adopted, it is up to private firms to implement the measures and cover the costs of compliance. On the government side, the amounts at stake to design and implement sanctions programs are therefore minimal and do not entail lengthy budget negotiations. In addition, both sides have no money to make in the field: Sanctions probably represent one of the few areas where Britain and the EU, which have become fierce economic competitors since Brexit, have no firms to promote in a bid to create jobs and raise fiscal revenues.

Third, public interest in sanctions technicalities is low, limiting the risk of a political backlash. Few people outside experts care about the nitty-gritty of sanctions, let alone whether they are joint or unilateral measures. In addition, there is a broad pan-European consensus on the need to confront Russia. According to a Bruegel poll from early 2023, support for sanctions policies has held steady since February 2022; despite Russian claims to the contrary, majorities or pluralities in all European countries but one support economic and financial sanctions. As a result of these two factors, greater British-EU sanctions collaboration would most likely be uncontroversial. To put it more bluntly: Very few people beyond the affected individuals and firms—and, of course, the Kremlin—would care about joint British-EU sanctions.

Sanctions represent a key tool for Western countries to weigh on Russia’s ability to wage war against Ukraine. As a result, ensuring the effectiveness and predictability of these measures should be a priority for allies, not least to ensure greater compliance and buy-in from the private sector. This, in a nutshell, is why greater British-EU collaboration on sanctions would make perfect sense. Of course, it would not be a silver bullet to change Moscow’s calculus in Ukraine. But every little bit helps, and greater collaboration on sanctions could also represent a low-hanging fruit to revive political relations across the channel.

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