New Zealand adds “sex work” to “employment skills” for those wishing to migrate

The New Zealand immigration service has added “sex work” (as prostitution is increasingly described) to the list of “employment skills” for those wishing to migrate.
Julie Bindel, The Guardian, Monday 30 Apr 2018

Tweets just now

Lauren Southern (@Lauren_Southern):

Tommy Robinson has just been sentenced to jail for 13 months. There is a UK reporting ban. No one there is allowed to talk about it.

Mark (@markantro):

Tommy Robinson, jailed for 13 months. His crime? Reporting on child rape gangs outside of court.

What has happened to the UK?!?!

Historians will view today as a milestone in the UK's downfall.

Brittany Pettibone (@BrittPettibone):

The U.K., it seems, has become a safer place for grooming gangs than it is for the people who report on/expose them. #FreeTommy

Sam White (@SamWhiteTky):

23,000 Islamic extremists living in Britain, but it's ok, because the guy who talks about them is in jail.

Malcolm Muggeridge (@malmuggeridge):

It was the Catholic Church's firm stand against contraception and abortion which finally made me decide to become a Catholic...The Church's stand is absolutely correct. It is to its eternal honor that it opposed contraception, even if the opposition failed.

British class system

The British class system more than anything keeps together a country increasingly divided by mass immigration.

Abbott declared support for IRA defeat of Britain

[Diane] Abbott, who will become home secretary if Labour wins the election, said in the 1984 interview that Ireland “is our struggle — every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us. A defeat in Northern Ireland would be a defeat indeed.”

Andrew Gilligan
May 21 2017, The Sunday Times

Oxford and Cambridge stand for elitism and hierarchy, not equality - this is the point of them

I do not believe that Oxford and Cambridge colleges discriminate against black or brown applicants or state school pupils - I am certain that quite the opposite is the case. They went out of their way to recruit non-white students back in my day and I am sure it has not changed. David Lammy, the worst sort of populist demagogue, thinks having a father who is a peer gives you an unfair advantage. I doubt it does but I rather think it should. 

Criticism of the BBC "for broadcasting the interview with Mr Bannon, which some felt gave his views a platform"

Steve Bannon, of blessed memory, was interviewed by the BBC on Newsnight and outrageously said that Martin Luther King might have approved of Mr Trump's economic measures and attempts to protect the jobs of American workers. The BBC News account of the story ends thus: 

there has been "some criticism of the BBC for broadcasting the interview with Mr Bannon, which some felt gave his views a platform".

'The nation state is the political masterpiece'

What matters more even than freedom and tradition is the nation. It's a truism and yet I bet in our day many people, who are not Marxists, do not agree. 

Normans were never more than 5% of the English population and the Norman conquest was part of our nation being formed. It took centuries, but our Norman conquerors eventually intermarried with us and became English, unlike in Ireland where the Normans remain separate from the Irish to this day.

Jews and Huguenots were no more than 1% each. 

You have to go back to Vikings, who raped, plundered and conquered us in the Dark Ages, to see immigration on as big a scale as we have now in England. 

Pope Francis's sly game

A very insightful and thought provoking article on 'Pope Francis's cunning long game' suggests that the Pope is deliberately undermining Church doctrine in a well reported but oblique way, in unrecorded conversations with non-Catholics that they then repeat to the press. 

The word I'd use, I am afraid, is sly. For a long time I have thought the Pope sly and really a not very pleasant man, even perhaps narcissistic. He, a number of times, seems to try to get plaudits from non-Catholics for apparently casting doubt way on Catholic teaching, but without quite making it clear that this is what he is doing. 

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.

Bernard Lewis and Edward Said

I rejoice in this attack on Edward Said by Dominic Green in The Spectator, especially as it deals even-handedly with Bernard Lewis and his share of responsibility for the invasion of Iraq. 

I thought that Said's Reith lectures were intellectually not third but fourth or even fifth rate. On the other hand, Said was right that the Israelis had behaved badly to the Arabs and he did not help persuade Bush 2 to launch the unjust and tragic invasion of Iraq.

"Lewis ... said that the Arabs were the authors of their own misery, and that the ‘return of Islam’ meant that unhappy Islamists were going to share their misery with the rest of the world. No doubt his death is being quietly celebrated in departments of Middle Eastern Studies the world over."

"Lewis was an Orientalist before Edward Said made that a term of abuse. Said was not a scholar of the Middle East, but a polemicist from the Middle East. He was also an intellectual impostor. Ever since Orientalism came out in 1978, proper historians have concluded that it would be a masterpiece, if only it were true. The only people who take Edward Said’s books seriously are, in no particular order of irrelevance, academic poseurs, chippy lefties, and the legions of chippy academic lefty poseurs churned out by the departments of Middle Eastern Studies."

Bernard Lewis: Will the future see an Islamised Europe or a European Islam?

Bernard Lewis died at the weekend and I thought it appropriate to republish this from a year ago.



In 2010 the greatest historian of the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, predicted that by the end of the decade Iran would abandon political Islam, while Turks adopted some form of Islamist rule. The old man might yet be right.

He also said in 2010 that Muslims were making their third attempt to conquer Europe, an attempt which seemed to have a much better chance at success than the first two as it took the form of peaceful migration rather than military aggression. 

“The only question remaining for us to answer regarding the future of Europe is will it be an Islamised Europe or a European Islam?"

Seen

"Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential." - Sir Winston Churchill


US bank Morgan Stanley estimates that the energy needed only for mining Bitcoin will represent some 0.6% of the world energy consumption in 2018.


WikiLeaks Retweeted WikiLeaks
Harvard has announced that Hillary Clinton will receive a medal for "transformative impact on society". But there is only one society she truly transformed. Libya--from the most developed society in Africa, into a smoking, ISIS-infested ruin

Two flawed heroes have died: Richard Pipes and Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis died two days ago, two days after another of my very favourite historians, Richard Pipes. 

Both were Jewish Americans and emigrants, Pipes having fled Hitler and Lewis having, less understandably, given up being a British subject.

I love both men's work and recommend their books very highly. I understand that Pipes' fiercely negative view of Bolshevism in his Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime is

Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray in a godforsaken world

Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray have much in common. Both are very intelligent, very eloquent, very charismatic. Neither is particularly conservative but common sense is now considered right-wing. Both think like human beings rather than ideologues. Both have flourished on the internet and above all both are trying to find something with which to replace belief in God.

As Douglas Murray put it,

Having been for some years, as Roger Scruton has put it, downstream from Christianity, there is every possibility that our societies will either become unmoored entirely or be hauled onto a very different shore. Very unsettling questions lie dormant beneath our current culture.

There is, for instance, that question which Ernst Wolfgang Böckenförde posed in the 1960s: “Does the free, secularised state exist on the basis of normative presuppositions that it itself cannot guarantee?” It is rare to hear this question even raised in our societies. Perhaps we sense the answer is “yes” but we do not know what to do if this is the case.

In his book The Strange Death of Europe, he paints a picture of a continent where instead of believing in God we believe in nice holidays.

I remember Sir Roger Scruton advised people that it was a good idea to try to believe in God, which gave me the impression that he too doesn't.

The truth is that conservatism without Christianity is in big trouble. So is civilisation.

Royal Wedding

Diaries

Tallulah Bankhead: 

"Only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls don't have time."

Fanny Burney, March 1768:

"To have some account of my thoughts, manners, acquaintances and actions, when the hour arrives in which time is more nimble than memory, is the reason which induces me to keep a journal."

Gwendolen in "The Importance of Being Earnest"

"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."

Quotations

Joseph Campbell:

"If you want to know what a given society believes in, look at what its largest buildings are devoted to."

Chris Beck, 'Claire Lehmann’s Forum for the Intellectual Dark Web':

“Lehmann contributed to a number of publications before launching Quillette, but claims the Australian media blacklisted her as soon as she started criticizing feminism. She rejects the ‘blank slate’ view that feminists, and progressives in general, have made a centerpiece of their dogma. It’s the belief that humans are strictly the product of culture and socialization, and the rejection of the idea that humans are born with certain innate characteristics.”

Romania and Turkey are the least well educated countries in Europe

This map says Romania and Turkey are the least well educated countries in Europe.

Since WHEN was Turkey in Europe? 

Balkan countries not in the EU are a blank space, unless Turkey is still a Balkan country.

Eyeless in Gaza

I was originally angry with the Israeli army for killing fifty civilians trying to storm the border with the Gaza Strip, but reading about it - in particular what was written by Colonel Kemp, a retired British officer, in the Telegraph - it seems the Israelis did what they could to avoid fatalities and are not to blame for the civilian deaths. 

The army did not shoot indiscriminately and it has now been revealed by the Palestinians themselves that 50 of the 62 dead were Hamas members.

Hamas wanted to breach the wall and to flatten the fence at numerous points to allow hundreds or even thousands of Gazans to enter Israeli towns, overwhelming the Israeli security forces ability to protect the townspeople from the infiltrators, thus requiring the Israeli security forces to use lethal force against all those who infiltrated.

Similar demonstrations have taken place each week since March. The reason that this

In Ireland the past is not dead, it is not even past

My grandfather's grandfather (or great grandfather) came to England from County Cork in Ireland in around 1860. My father always wanted to trace our family history but never did and nor have I nor probably ever will. 

I therefore do not know where exactly we (meaning my paternal line) came from. But I do know where we left from, or at least I think I do. 

Though they might have embarked for England from Kingstown, now Dún Laoghaire, the port of Dublin, my granddad's grandparents probably left from Queenstown (Cobh), the port of Cork where I spent a happy twelve hours at the weekend. 

It was from Queenstown that millions of Irishmen and women left their island for England, Canada or the USA, after the terrible famine that killed so many while the British Whig government, pursuing free market economic theories, did little.

John Dominic Crossan, the Irish-born American New Testament scholar and heresiarch, said the wisest thing about Irish history and probably about history in general.

I still hold two truths with equal and fundamental certainty. One: the British did terrible things to the Irish. Two: the Irish, had they the power, would have done equally terrible things to the British. And so also for any other paired adversaries I can imagine. The difficulty is to hold on to both truths with equal intensity, not let either one negate the other, and know when to emphasize one without forgetting the other. Our humanity is probably lost and gained in the necessary tension between them both. I hope, by the way, that I do not sound anti-British. It is impossible not to admire a people who gave up India and held on to Northern Ireland. That shows a truly Celtic sense of humor.

The English on the Irish

Dr Johnson: "The Irish are not in a conspiracy to cheat the world by false representations of the merits of their countrymen. No, Sir; the Irish are a fair people; -- they never speak well of one another."

Ireland is still her old-fashioned self in places

I am sitting in a bar watching Eurovision in Cobh, pronounced Cove. Cobh, formerly Queenstown and before that Cove, is a little port for big cruise ships in the very large and very deep natural harbour of Cork. Cobh is very Irish, not yet EU-ised. Even the waitresses are still Irish, not East European. It's a little like a Cornish port but Irish, meaning beery, peasant, articulate, funny, incredibly friendly.

I am thinking to myself that it’s strange being in a country similar to England which has no class system and some religious belief. Though much less religion than forty years ago.