If we accept that Sunak is a dud, that's four Conservative Prime Ministers in a row who have rapidly failed. (Five if you count single party majority Dave as different to Coalition Dave.) And arguably, in ways that ought to have been obvious with even moderate foresight.
At some point, you have to pause with fishing dead bodies out of the river and go upstream. What is it about today's Conservative Party that means that they keep selecting leaders who aren't up to the job? Is it their selection process, or is it that the Conservatives are trying to do something that can't really be done?
But then, it's the same with Labour. They had a run of three leaders (four if you count Harman) who proved disasters, and Blair was at best a mixed blessing.
We get the politicians we deserve.
Boy, we must have done some bad shit.
Mostly, we collectively opted out of the political process, except for voting in elections.
In doing so, we left it to the Activists. They've always been there, they've always been strange, but in the past they have been diluted by inactive, social members. And beyond a certain point, the loss of more normal party members becomes a doom loop.
(Joining the threads together, the Young Conservatives was said to be the middle-class Tinder of its day. Hard to see that being the case now.)
Similar to the church, declining church attendance and religious belief means hardline evangelicals make up a greater percentage of Christians in the UK. As much fewer people join political parties too, hardcore nationalist rightwingers and Thatcherites in the Conservatives and hardcore Corbynite socialists in Labour made up more of the parties memberships and normally elect one of their own unless they have been out of power and lost long enough to pick a Cameron or Starmer
It's as always a question of money. Political parties, whether you think of them as businesses or not, need money to operate and they are now complex beasts with multimedia operations and a constant news cycle. That requires technology and people - in my activist days, a decent typesetter and a lithograph printer got you a long way but now it's both simpler and more complex.
I don't know how it is in other parties or indeed in the LDs now but in the old Liberal Party days the constituency parties paid a quarterly fee (tithe, rent, ransom call it what you like) to the central party. Theoretically, it was a share of each membership fee but in truth it helped support the central operation even when it was out of the basement of the National Liberal Club (of blessed PB memory).
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
Labour needs to get over these stunt appointments. I'm sure Sue Gray and Marina Wheeler are very capable but let's face it, they were appointed solely to piss off the Nadine Dorries wing of the Conservative Party. Shades of Gordon Brown having Mrs Thatcher round for tea. Is Peter Mandelson the link here?
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
Yes and that's a point I've also argued in respect of Palestine.
Lesser versions have worked in Ulster and are working in Iraq and the old adage - if you're busy making money you'll be too busy to make trouble - should be on the new Gazan coat of arms.
You have Saudi, the UAE and Kuwait among others, all awash with cash, who could if they chose, give S20 of every barrel of oil sold to a fund to rebuild Gaza.
If we accept that Sunak is a dud, that's four Conservative Prime Ministers in a row who have rapidly failed. (Five if you count single party majority Dave as different to Coalition Dave.) And arguably, in ways that ought to have been obvious with even moderate foresight.
At some point, you have to pause with fishing dead bodies out of the river and go upstream. What is it about today's Conservative Party that means that they keep selecting leaders who aren't up to the job? Is it their selection process, or is it that the Conservatives are trying to do something that can't really be done?
But then, it's the same with Labour. They had a run of three leaders (four if you count Harman) who proved disasters, and Blair was at best a mixed blessing.
We get the politicians we deserve.
Boy, we must have done some bad shit.
Mostly, we collectively opted out of the political process, except for voting in elections.
In doing so, we left it to the Activists. They've always been there, they've always been strange, but in the past they have been diluted by inactive, social members. And beyond a certain point, the loss of more normal party members becomes a doom loop.
(Joining the threads together, the Young Conservatives was said to be the middle-class Tinder of its day. Hard to see that being the case now.)
Similar to the church, declining church attendance and religious belief means hardline evangelicals make up a greater percentage of Christians in the UK. As much fewer people join political parties too, hardcore nationalist rightwingers and Thatcherites in the Conservatives and hardcore Corbynite socialists in Labour made up more of the parties memberships and normally elect one of their own unless they have been out of power and lost long enough to pick a Cameron or Starmer
It's as always a question of money. Political parties, whether you think of them as businesses or not, need money to operate and they are now complex beasts with multimedia operations and a constant news cycle. That requires technology and people - in my activist days, a decent typesetter and a lithograph printer got you a long way but now it's both simpler and more complex.
I don't know how it is in other parties or indeed in the LDs now but in the old Liberal Party days the constituency parties paid a quarterly fee (tithe, rent, ransom call it what you like) to the central party. Theoretically, it was a share of each membership fee but in truth it helped support the central operation even when it was out of the basement of the National Liberal Club (of blessed PB memory).
Yes and in government or when a party is heading to government corporates will flock to them, as with Thatcher's Tories, New Labour, Cameron's Tories or Starmer Labour now.
In opposition though most big businesses can't be bothered to fund a party trailing in the polls and of little use to them, so the party leadership needs to mobilise their hardcore base to become party members and raise funds. Hence Labour under Corbyn and the Tories under Hague had a growing party membership even if still defeated at the polls and near empty business stands at their conferences
Emotion is boiling over in Israel. You can sense it on social media. 600 dead in a day = 4200 dead in a day in the UK or 21,000 dead in the USA (cf 2900 died in 9/11 and America was traumatised for years)
So the people won't be content with grinding Gaza into dust, they will want action against Iran. Never underestimate the power of raw emotion, especially a thirst for vengeance
Ah is this you and the Israeli people becoming as one again?
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
George Russell is a whiny little bitch, he must be taking lessons from Max Verstappen.
Tbf, that was pretty clearly Hamilton's fault.
Russell said he didn't see Hamilton which means Russell wasn't looking in his mirrors, clearly makes it Russell's fault.
Even if he saw him what was he supposed to do? He could come to a virtual stop or let Hamilton hit him. Hamilton knew he had a tiny window before the soft tyres he had went off but that was not Russell's problem. Poor judgment by Hamilton. His relationship with Mercedes, already fragile, will not improve from this.
George Russell is a whiny little bitch, he must be taking lessons from Max Verstappen.
Tbf, that was pretty clearly Hamilton's fault.
Russell said he didn't see Hamilton which means Russell wasn't looking in his mirrors, clearly makes it Russell's fault.
Even if he saw him what was he supposed to do? He could come to a virtual stop or let Hamilton hit him. Hamilton knew he had a tiny window before the soft tyres he had went off but that was not Russell's problem. Poor judgment by Hamilton. His relationship with Mercedes, already fragile, will not improve from this.
Emotion is boiling over in Israel. You can sense it on social media. 600 dead in a day = 4200 dead in a day in the UK or 21,000 dead in the USA (cf 2900 died in 9/11 and America was traumatised for years)
So the people won't be content with grinding Gaza into dust, they will want action against Iran. Never underestimate the power of raw emotion, especially a thirst for vengeance
Ah is this you and the Israeli people becoming as one again?
Or maybe its people being triggered by violence, rape, decapitations and abuse more than being triggered by your countries flag being on your Labour party membership card.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
Two types of people who have always existed:
A Young men getting less sex than they think they deserve B Grifters out to exploit Group A.
There's a decent argument that Group A is larger than it was in recent decades, but still a minority. Group B is a lot more visible, thanks to the internet.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
If we accept that Sunak is a dud, that's four Conservative Prime Ministers in a row who have rapidly failed. (Five if you count single party majority Dave as different to Coalition Dave.) And arguably, in ways that ought to have been obvious with even moderate foresight.
At some point, you have to pause with fishing dead bodies out of the river and go upstream. What is it about today's Conservative Party that means that they keep selecting leaders who aren't up to the job? Is it their selection process, or is it that the Conservatives are trying to do something that can't really be done?
But then, it's the same with Labour. They had a run of three leaders (four if you count Harman) who proved disasters, and Blair was at best a mixed blessing.
We get the politicians we deserve.
Boy, we must have done some bad shit.
Mostly, we collectively opted out of the political process, except for voting in elections.
In doing so, we left it to the Activists. They've always been there, they've always been strange, but in the past they have been diluted by inactive, social members. And beyond a certain point, the loss of more normal party members becomes a doom loop.
(Joining the threads together, the Young Conservatives was said to be the middle-class Tinder of its day. Hard to see that being the case now.)
Similar to the church, declining church attendance and religious belief means hardline evangelicals make up a greater percentage of Christians in the UK. As much fewer people join political parties too, hardcore nationalist rightwingers and Thatcherites in the Conservatives and hardcore Corbynite socialists in Labour made up more of the parties memberships and normally elect one of their own unless they have been out of power and lost long enough to pick a Cameron or Starmer
It's as always a question of money. Political parties, whether you think of them as businesses or not, need money to operate and they are now complex beasts with multimedia operations and a constant news cycle. That requires technology and people - in my activist days, a decent typesetter and a lithograph printer got you a long way but now it's both simpler and more complex.
I don't know how it is in other parties or indeed in the LDs now but in the old Liberal Party days the constituency parties paid a quarterly fee (tithe, rent, ransom call it what you like) to the central party. Theoretically, it was a share of each membership fee but in truth it helped support the central operation even when it was out of the basement of the National Liberal Club (of blessed PB memory).
Yes and in government or when a party is heading to government corporates will flock to them, as with Thatcher's Tories, New Labour, Cameron's Tories or Starmer Labour now.
In opposition though most big businesses can't be bothered to fund a party trailing in the polls and of little use to them, so the party leadership needs to mobilise their hardcore base to become party members and raise funds. Hence Labour under Corbyn and the Tories under Hague had a growing party membership even if still defeated at the polls and near empty business stands at their conferences
Yes and even if Starmer and Labour win a big victory at the next election (and I'm NOT saying they will or they won't) but inevitably once in Government they will begin to create opposition. How and where will that opposition coalesce? Inevitably toward the credible alternative which even if you get routed next time will still be the Conservative Party and thus the process of renewal will begin.
The other truth is if you have a long period of Government you create a lot of opposition and the art of opposing doesn't come easy if you've not had much practice at it.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
Yes but the top 5% of men can ultimately only marry 5% of women (presumably also likely to be the top 5%).
Leaving 95% of women outside that group for incels to marry. Even if in their 20s and early 30s it will be mainly the top 5% by looks and wealth getting most of the women to sleep with.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
Yes but the top 5% of men can ultimately only marry 5% of women (presumably also likely to be the top 5%).
Leaving 95% of women outside that group for incels to marry. Even if in their 20s and early 30s it will be mainly the top 5% by looks and wealth getting most of the women to sleep with.
My new Lab membership card has a union jack on it. Grrr.
And you wanted a St George's Cross?
No, Hammer and Sickle.
No. Oak, Ash and Thorn.
Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs (All of a Midsummer morn): England shall bide till Judgment Tide, By Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!
Could be worse:
I have lawns, I have bowers, I have fields, I have flowers And the lark is my morning alarmer: So my jolly boys now Here's God speed the plough - Long life and success to the farmer!
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
Yes but the top 5% of men can ultimately only marry 5% of women (presumably also likely to be the top 5%).
Leaving 95% of women outside that group for incels to marry. Even if in their 20s and early 30s it will be mainly the top 5% by looks and wealth getting most of the women to sleep with.
The top 5% of women do not necessarily marry the top 5% of men. My wife, for example, married me.
95% of married men should say they've married within the top 5% of women.
My new Lab membership card has a union jack on it. Grrr.
And you wanted a St George's Cross?
No, Hammer and Sickle.
No. Oak, Ash and Thorn.
Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs (All of a Midsummer morn): England shall bide till Judgment Tide, By Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!
Could be worse:
I have lawns, I have bowers, I have fields, I have flowers And the lark is my morning alarmer: So my jolly boys now Here's God speed the plough - Long life and success to the farmer!
Didn';t know that one! Presumably your allusion is to Mr R-M (I see) reciting it in the HoC.
Emotion is boiling over in Israel. You can sense it on social media. 600 dead in a day = 4200 dead in a day in the UK or 21,000 dead in the USA (cf 2900 died in 9/11 and America was traumatised for years)
So the people won't be content with grinding Gaza into dust, they will want action against Iran. Never underestimate the power of raw emotion, especially a thirst for vengeance
Ah is this you and the Israeli people becoming as one again?
Or maybe its people being triggered by violence, rape, decapitations and abuse more than being triggered by your countries flag being on your Labour party membership card.
Sense you want to do some vacuous posturing in my direction? Sorry permission not granted. It hasn't been long enough since the last time. Maybe later in the week.
If we accept that Sunak is a dud, that's four Conservative Prime Ministers in a row who have rapidly failed. (Five if you count single party majority Dave as different to Coalition Dave.) And arguably, in ways that ought to have been obvious with even moderate foresight.
At some point, you have to pause with fishing dead bodies out of the river and go upstream. What is it about today's Conservative Party that means that they keep selecting leaders who aren't up to the job? Is it their selection process, or is it that the Conservatives are trying to do something that can't really be done?
But then, it's the same with Labour. They had a run of three leaders (four if you count Harman) who proved disasters, and Blair was at best a mixed blessing.
We get the politicians we deserve.
Boy, we must have done some bad shit.
Mostly, we collectively opted out of the political process, except for voting in elections.
In doing so, we left it to the Activists. They've always been there, they've always been strange, but in the past they have been diluted by inactive, social members. And beyond a certain point, the loss of more normal party members becomes a doom loop.
(Joining the threads together, the Young Conservatives was said to be the middle-class Tinder of its day. Hard to see that being the case now.)
Similar to the church, declining church attendance and religious belief means hardline evangelicals make up a greater percentage of Christians in the UK. As much fewer people join political parties too, hardcore nationalist rightwingers and Thatcherites in the Conservatives and hardcore Corbynite socialists in Labour made up more of the parties memberships and normally elect one of their own unless they have been out of power and lost long enough to pick a Cameron or Starmer
It's as always a question of money. Political parties, whether you think of them as businesses or not, need money to operate and they are now complex beasts with multimedia operations and a constant news cycle. That requires technology and people - in my activist days, a decent typesetter and a lithograph printer got you a long way but now it's both simpler and more complex.
I don't know how it is in other parties or indeed in the LDs now but in the old Liberal Party days the constituency parties paid a quarterly fee (tithe, rent, ransom call it what you like) to the central party. Theoretically, it was a share of each membership fee but in truth it helped support the central operation even when it was out of the basement of the National Liberal Club (of blessed PB memory).
My memory is slightly different. When I joined the old Liberal Party in 1979, the local parties would print their own "local" memberships cards, thus keeping all the money. Out of that they would "affiliate" just enough members to the national party to entitle the "great and the good" in the local party to attend Liberal Assembly. One (the only ?!) good thing to come from the merger with the SDP was a centralised membership list telling the branch secretary, on green stripey computer paper, who exactly was up to date with their subs or not.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
I did say it was highly unlikely to happen. And the only way you can humanely do it (if that even makes sense) is by getting the Gazans to volunteer to do it, and by persuading Egypt to peacefully take them
It's not impossible but - you and I agree- it will need insanely large amounts of money. However the chance of lasting peace in the MENA is so hugely valuable it would be worth the cost
I agree this can't be done by force, not only would that be brutally cruel it woudn't work, it would just engender even more hatred for Israel and another 100 years of murder, war, revenge
Your idea is nice but I fear it is dreamland. Israel will not tolerate Gaza to exist in its present state, as a coastal enclave, arrowed at the heart of the country, not after October 7, 2023
Emotion is boiling over in Israel. You can sense it on social media. 600 dead in a day = 4200 dead in a day in the UK or 21,000 dead in the USA (cf 2900 died in 9/11 and America was traumatised for years)
So the people won't be content with grinding Gaza into dust, they will want action against Iran. Never underestimate the power of raw emotion, especially a thirst for vengeance
Unless the translators fucked up, Bibi actually used the word revenge in his ‘ignore my fuck up, let’s concentrate on killing them’ speech. Though that was the subtext I don’t remember that ever being openly stated after 9/11. In the land of the Old Testament things are different.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
I did say it was highly unlikely to happen. And the only way you can humanely do it (if that even makes sense) is by getting the Gazans to volunteer to do it, and by persuading Egypt to peacefully take them
It's not impossible but - you and I agree- it will need insanely large amounts of money. However the chance of lasting peace in the MENA is so hugely valuable it would be worth the cost
I agree this can't be done by force, not only would that be brutally cruel it woudn't work, it would just engender even more hatred for Israel and another 100 years of murder, war, revenge
Your idea is nice but I fear it is dreamland. Israel will not tolerate Gaza to exist in its present state, as a coastal enclave, arrowed at the heart of the country, not after October 7, 2023
The following statements are all true:
- Israel cannot allow Gaza to exist in its current state.
- Israel has no way to destroy Gaza. It's simply too big, and it's also stuck in the middle of the Sinai, Israel and the Mediterranean.
- (Or, at least, any destruction of Gaza would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and would poison again the relationship between Israel and its neighbours. It wouldn't do much for Israel's already frayed relations with much of the West either.)
- Hamas are scum, who have no interest in the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And will do anything to precipitate a holy war.
What will therefore happen?
Israel will follow the path of least resistance. It will make life even shittier in Gaza. It will kill Hamas leaders with drone strikes. It will tighten the noose still further. And in doing so, it will buy itself a little peace, but will also make sure that the next generation of Gazans have even less to lose by throwing their lot in with Hamas.
Emotion is boiling over in Israel. You can sense it on social media. 600 dead in a day = 4200 dead in a day in the UK or 21,000 dead in the USA (cf 2900 died in 9/11 and America was traumatised for years)
So the people won't be content with grinding Gaza into dust, they will want action against Iran. Never underestimate the power of raw emotion, especially a thirst for vengeance
Unless the translators fucked up, Bibi actually used the word revenge in his ‘ignore my fuck up, let’s concentrate on killing them’ speech. Though that was the subtext I don’t remember that ever being openly stated after 9/11. In the land of the Old Testament things are different.
They are not far from the source of 'An eye for an eye' after all.
Though wiki says the even older Code of Ur-Nammu has a far less catchy:
If a man knocks out the eye of another man, he shall weigh out half a mina of silver.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
I did say it was highly unlikely to happen. And the only way you can humanely do it (if that even makes sense) is by getting the Gazans to volunteer to do it, and by persuading Egypt to peacefully take them
It's not impossible but - you and I agree- it will need insanely large amounts of money. However the chance of lasting peace in the MENA is so hugely valuable it would be worth the cost
I agree this can't be done by force, not only would that be brutally cruel it woudn't work, it would just engender even more hatred for Israel and another 100 years of murder, war, revenge
Your idea is nice but I fear it is dreamland. Israel will not tolerate Gaza to exist in its present state, as a coastal enclave, arrowed at the heart of the country, not after October 7, 2023
The following statements are all true:
- Israel cannot allow Gaza to exist in its current state.
- Israel has no way to destroy Gaza. It's simply too big, and it's also stuck in the middle of the Sinai, Israel and the Mediterranean.
- (Or, at least, any destruction of Gaza would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and would poison again the relationship between Israel and its neighbours. It wouldn't do much for Israel's already frayed relations with much of the West either.)
- Hamas are scum, who have no interest in the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And will do anything to precipitate a holy war.
What will therefore happen?
Israel will follow the path of least resistance. It will make life even shittier in Gaza. It will kill Hamas leaders with drone strikes. It will tighten the noose still further. And in doing so, it will buy itself a little peace, but will also make sure that the next generation of Gazans have even less to lose by throwing their lot in with Hamas.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
I did say it was highly unlikely to happen. And the only way you can humanely do it (if that even makes sense) is by getting the Gazans to volunteer to do it, and by persuading Egypt to peacefully take them
It's not impossible but - you and I agree- it will need insanely large amounts of money. However the chance of lasting peace in the MENA is so hugely valuable it would be worth the cost
I agree this can't be done by force, not only would that be brutally cruel it woudn't work, it would just engender even more hatred for Israel and another 100 years of murder, war, revenge
Your idea is nice but I fear it is dreamland. Israel will not tolerate Gaza to exist in its present state, as a coastal enclave, arrowed at the heart of the country, not after October 7, 2023
The following statements are all true:
- Israel cannot allow Gaza to exist in its current state.
- Israel has no way to destroy Gaza. It's simply too big, and it's also stuck in the middle of the Sinai, Israel and the Mediterranean.
- (Or, at least, any destruction of Gaza would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and would poison again the relationship between Israel and its neighbours. It wouldn't do much for Israel's already frayed relations with much of the West either.)
- Hamas are scum, who have no interest in the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And will do anything to precipitate a holy war.
What will therefore happen?
Israel will follow the path of least resistance. It will make life even shittier in Gaza. It will kill Hamas leaders with drone strikes. It will tighten the noose still further. And in doing so, it will buy itself a little peace, but will also make sure that the next generation of Gazans have even less to lose by throwing their lot in with Hamas.
i reckon Israel will go further than that, this time, because this nastiness - as described in your last paragraph - is what it has always done. Tighten the noose, kill a few thousand, make life worse, and... the result is 700 dead Israelis in one day
That cannot be allowed to happen again - let alone regularly - or the Israeli state will be mortally endangered
So what will Israel do?
I wonder if they might go for permanent occupation again, and a return to the settler policy. Strangle the life out of Gaza not just with bombs and power-cuts, but by an attempt to occupy the land with actual Jews - hardnuts with guns. As in the West Bank
Difficult and risky. But Israel has to do something
What else? Maybe they will level all buildings anywhere near the border, ceeating a cordon sanitaire?
Perhaps they will take thousands of Gazans hostage. Perhaps they really will try and drive all Gazans into Egypt
I see nothing ahead but misery for the Gazans and bloody war for the Israelis. It is bleak. I do not see the status quo ante
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
I did say it was highly unlikely to happen. And the only way you can humanely do it (if that even makes sense) is by getting the Gazans to volunteer to do it, and by persuading Egypt to peacefully take them
It's not impossible but - you and I agree- it will need insanely large amounts of money. However the chance of lasting peace in the MENA is so hugely valuable it would be worth the cost
I agree this can't be done by force, not only would that be brutally cruel it woudn't work, it would just engender even more hatred for Israel and another 100 years of murder, war, revenge
Your idea is nice but I fear it is dreamland. Israel will not tolerate Gaza to exist in its present state, as a coastal enclave, arrowed at the heart of the country, not after October 7, 2023
The following statements are all true:
- Israel cannot allow Gaza to exist in its current state.
- Israel has no way to destroy Gaza. It's simply too big, and it's also stuck in the middle of the Sinai, Israel and the Mediterranean.
- (Or, at least, any destruction of Gaza would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and would poison again the relationship between Israel and its neighbours. It wouldn't do much for Israel's already frayed relations with much of the West either.)
- Hamas are scum, who have no interest in the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And will do anything to precipitate a holy war.
What will therefore happen?
Israel will follow the path of least resistance. It will make life even shittier in Gaza. It will kill Hamas leaders with drone strikes. It will tighten the noose still further. And in doing so, it will buy itself a little peace, but will also make sure that the next generation of Gazans have even less to lose by throwing their lot in with Hamas.
Meanwhile the official Corbyn party within the Labour Party cannot bring themselves to condemn Hamas.
Emotion is boiling over in Israel. You can sense it on social media. 600 dead in a day = 4200 dead in a day in the UK or 21,000 dead in the USA (cf 2900 died in 9/11 and America was traumatised for years)
So the people won't be content with grinding Gaza into dust, they will want action against Iran. Never underestimate the power of raw emotion, especially a thirst for vengeance
Unless the translators fucked up, Bibi actually used the word revenge in his ‘ignore my fuck up, let’s concentrate on killing them’ speech. Though that was the subtext I don’t remember that ever being openly stated after 9/11. In the land of the Old Testament things are different.
They are not far from the source of 'An eye for an eye' after all.
Though wiki says the even older Code of Ur-Nammu has a far less catchy:
If a man knocks out the eye of another man, he shall weigh out half a mina of silver.
The Code of Ur-Nammu is more humane. By moving to monetary recompense, you take the revenge and mutilation out of the process and move closer to justice.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
I did say it was highly unlikely to happen. And the only way you can humanely do it (if that even makes sense) is by getting the Gazans to volunteer to do it, and by persuading Egypt to peacefully take them
It's not impossible but - you and I agree- it will need insanely large amounts of money. However the chance of lasting peace in the MENA is so hugely valuable it would be worth the cost
I agree this can't be done by force, not only would that be brutally cruel it woudn't work, it would just engender even more hatred for Israel and another 100 years of murder, war, revenge
Your idea is nice but I fear it is dreamland. Israel will not tolerate Gaza to exist in its present state, as a coastal enclave, arrowed at the heart of the country, not after October 7, 2023
The following statements are all true:
- Israel cannot allow Gaza to exist in its current state.
- Israel has no way to destroy Gaza. It's simply too big, and it's also stuck in the middle of the Sinai, Israel and the Mediterranean.
- (Or, at least, any destruction of Gaza would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and would poison again the relationship between Israel and its neighbours. It wouldn't do much for Israel's already frayed relations with much of the West either.)
- Hamas are scum, who have no interest in the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And will do anything to precipitate a holy war.
What will therefore happen?
Israel will follow the path of least resistance. It will make life even shittier in Gaza. It will kill Hamas leaders with drone strikes. It will tighten the noose still further. And in doing so, it will buy itself a little peace, but will also make sure that the next generation of Gazans have even less to lose by throwing their lot in with Hamas.
Meanwhile the official Corbyn party within the Labour Party cannot bring themselves to condemn Hamas.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
I did say it was highly unlikely to happen. And the only way you can humanely do it (if that even makes sense) is by getting the Gazans to volunteer to do it, and by persuading Egypt to peacefully take them
It's not impossible but - you and I agree- it will need insanely large amounts of money. However the chance of lasting peace in the MENA is so hugely valuable it would be worth the cost
I agree this can't be done by force, not only would that be brutally cruel it woudn't work, it would just engender even more hatred for Israel and another 100 years of murder, war, revenge
Your idea is nice but I fear it is dreamland. Israel will not tolerate Gaza to exist in its present state, as a coastal enclave, arrowed at the heart of the country, not after October 7, 2023
The following statements are all true:
- Israel cannot allow Gaza to exist in its current state.
- Israel has no way to destroy Gaza. It's simply too big, and it's also stuck in the middle of the Sinai, Israel and the Mediterranean.
- (Or, at least, any destruction of Gaza would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and would poison again the relationship between Israel and its neighbours. It wouldn't do much for Israel's already frayed relations with much of the West either.)
- Hamas are scum, who have no interest in the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And will do anything to precipitate a holy war.
What will therefore happen?
Israel will follow the path of least resistance. It will make life even shittier in Gaza. It will kill Hamas leaders with drone strikes. It will tighten the noose still further. And in doing so, it will buy itself a little peace, but will also make sure that the next generation of Gazans have even less to lose by throwing their lot in with Hamas.
i reckon Israel will go further than that, this time, because this nastiness - as described in your last paragraph - is what it has always done. Tighten the noose, kill a few thousand, make life worse, and... the result is 700 dead Israelis in one day
That cannot be allowed to happen again - let alone regularly - or the Israeli state will be mortally endangered
So what will Israel do?
I wonder if they might go for permanent occupation again, and a return to the settler policy. Strangle the life out of Gaza not just with bombs and power-cuts, but by an attempt to occupy the land with actual Jews - hardnuts with guns. As in the West Bank
Difficult and risky. But Israel has to do something
What else? Maybe they will level all buildings anywhere near the border, ceeating a cordon sanitaire?
Perhaps they will take thousands of Gazans hostage. Perhaps they really will try and drive all Gazans into Egypt
I see nothing ahead but misery for the Gazans and bloody war for the Israelis. It is bleak. I do not see the status quo ante
The Israelis are missing a trick, flood Gaza with cheap fentanyl, booze and hookers and all the young men there will be too monged, too happy or too pissed to want to have a fight.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
The trouble with "pay people enough money to go along with a solution" plans is that invariably there is a group of people who place an essentially infinite monetary value on the intangible aspects of living where they always have (not specific to the middle east -- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holdout_(real_estate) has smaller scale examples, and compulsory purchase exists in part as a way around it). Merely waving enormous cheques at people might reduce the scale of the problem but I suspect it wouldn't really stop the bloodshed.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
I did say it was highly unlikely to happen. And the only way you can humanely do it (if that even makes sense) is by getting the Gazans to volunteer to do it, and by persuading Egypt to peacefully take them
It's not impossible but - you and I agree- it will need insanely large amounts of money. However the chance of lasting peace in the MENA is so hugely valuable it would be worth the cost
I agree this can't be done by force, not only would that be brutally cruel it woudn't work, it would just engender even more hatred for Israel and another 100 years of murder, war, revenge
Your idea is nice but I fear it is dreamland. Israel will not tolerate Gaza to exist in its present state, as a coastal enclave, arrowed at the heart of the country, not after October 7, 2023
The following statements are all true:
- Israel cannot allow Gaza to exist in its current state.
- Israel has no way to destroy Gaza. It's simply too big, and it's also stuck in the middle of the Sinai, Israel and the Mediterranean.
- (Or, at least, any destruction of Gaza would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and would poison again the relationship between Israel and its neighbours. It wouldn't do much for Israel's already frayed relations with much of the West either.)
- Hamas are scum, who have no interest in the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And will do anything to precipitate a holy war.
What will therefore happen?
Israel will follow the path of least resistance. It will make life even shittier in Gaza. It will kill Hamas leaders with drone strikes. It will tighten the noose still further. And in doing so, it will buy itself a little peace, but will also make sure that the next generation of Gazans have even less to lose by throwing their lot in with Hamas.
i reckon Israel will go further than that, this time, because this nastiness - as described in your last paragraph - is what it has always done. Tighten the noose, kill a few thousand, make life worse, and... the result is 700 dead Israelis in one day
That cannot be allowed to happen again - let alone regularly - or the Israeli state will be mortally endangered
So what will Israel do?
I wonder if they might go for permanent occupation again, and a return to the settler policy. Strangle the life out of Gaza not just with bombs and power-cuts, but by an attempt to occupy the land with actual Jews - hardnuts with guns. As in the West Bank
Difficult and risky. But Israel has to do something
What else? Maybe they will level all buildings anywhere near the border, ceeating a cordon sanitaire?
Perhaps they will take thousands of Gazans hostage. Perhaps they really will try and drive all Gazans into Egypt
I see nothing ahead but misery for the Gazans and bloody war for the Israelis. It is bleak. I do not see the status quo ante
The Israelis are missing a trick, flood Gaza with cheap fentanyl, booze and hookers and all the young men there will be too monged, too happy or too pissed to want to have a fight.
Perhaps PB’s fentanyl, booze and hookers correspondent could be parachuted in as a consultant?
A Tory Minister conceded to me: ‘Business has had it with us. Our party conference was the last straw: U-turns on net zero and HS2 have led the corporates to say, “We just can’t trust you guys any more. We’ll take our chances with Labour.” ’
Hodges - Sunday Mail.
Johnson said 'feck business'; Sunak has delivered.
FFS, are they really saying that no company can rely on a contract signed with the UK government in the event that it works out well for them? Yes, that will go well, can't see any problems going down that path at all. What with this nonsense and random "windfall" taxes this country is becoming the wild west, somewhere no sensible fund will touch with a barge pole.
I'm sitting outside, in shorts and a shirt, eating lunch, a third of the way through October, for the second year in a row. Madness.
You're right. Lunch at 4.15 ??
Lunch should be taken at 1pm, and tea at 3:40pm.
That only applies if there are ladies present. In their absence a good lunch can last well into the next day.
Indeed.
*burps*
My Lord, the port is with you.
I once co-hosted a party which somehow lasted three days. People woke up on the first morning-after-the-spectacular-night-before, variously scattered around our building in Red Lion Square, and in the gardens of the Square itself. We found people sleeping in the stairwell, in cupboards, etc. Then they immediately started partying again, and so it went on, marvellously
Ah, sweet dreams of youth...
I once went to a party on the Friday (at someone’s house, who I’ve never seen before or since), necked a load of pills, smoked a load of dope and drank a load of booze and had a cracking night. Woke up on the sofa the next morning after three hours kip, cup of tea and a bacon sarnie, started on the booze nice and early and dropped some more pills at 10 in the morning. I remember precisely nothing until 24 hours later when I woke up on the living room floor, naked, under a rug with an equally naked buxom half-Italian girl. Biggest aureolas I’ve ever seen. Never seen her before or since either. I would love to know what the hell happened in that missing 24 hours.
That’ll be about 20 years ago now. The thought of doing all that now fills me with absolute horror. Glad I did it then though 🤣
Let me tell you something. I’ve seen it all before. I’ve inhaled hashish, I had an Afro haircut. I went to all-weekend binges to Prestatyn to see wings
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
About ten million Germans were violently expelled from Eastern Europe.
The partition of India led to an even higher number of forced migration.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
I did say it was highly unlikely to happen. And the only way you can humanely do it (if that even makes sense) is by getting the Gazans to volunteer to do it, and by persuading Egypt to peacefully take them
It's not impossible but - you and I agree- it will need insanely large amounts of money. However the chance of lasting peace in the MENA is so hugely valuable it would be worth the cost
I agree this can't be done by force, not only would that be brutally cruel it woudn't work, it would just engender even more hatred for Israel and another 100 years of murder, war, revenge
Your idea is nice but I fear it is dreamland. Israel will not tolerate Gaza to exist in its present state, as a coastal enclave, arrowed at the heart of the country, not after October 7, 2023
The following statements are all true:
- Israel cannot allow Gaza to exist in its current state.
- Israel has no way to destroy Gaza. It's simply too big, and it's also stuck in the middle of the Sinai, Israel and the Mediterranean.
- (Or, at least, any destruction of Gaza would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and would poison again the relationship between Israel and its neighbours. It wouldn't do much for Israel's already frayed relations with much of the West either.)
- Hamas are scum, who have no interest in the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And will do anything to precipitate a holy war.
What will therefore happen?
Israel will follow the path of least resistance. It will make life even shittier in Gaza. It will kill Hamas leaders with drone strikes. It will tighten the noose still further. And in doing so, it will buy itself a little peace, but will also make sure that the next generation of Gazans have even less to lose by throwing their lot in with Hamas.
i reckon Israel will go further than that, this time, because this nastiness - as described in your last paragraph - is what it has always done. Tighten the noose, kill a few thousand, make life worse, and... the result is 700 dead Israelis in one day
That cannot be allowed to happen again - let alone regularly - or the Israeli state will be mortally endangered
So what will Israel do?
I wonder if they might go for permanent occupation again, and a return to the settler policy. Strangle the life out of Gaza not just with bombs and power-cuts, but by an attempt to occupy the land with actual Jews - hardnuts with guns. As in the West Bank
Difficult and risky. But Israel has to do something
What else? Maybe they will level all buildings anywhere near the border, ceeating a cordon sanitaire?
Perhaps they will take thousands of Gazans hostage. Perhaps they really will try and drive all Gazans into Egypt
I see nothing ahead but misery for the Gazans and bloody war for the Israelis. It is bleak. I do not see the status quo ante
The Israelis are missing a trick, flood Gaza with cheap fentanyl, booze and hookers and all the young men there will be too monged, too happy or too pissed to want to have a fight.
A Tory Minister conceded to me: ‘Business has had it with us. Our party conference was the last straw: U-turns on net zero and HS2 have led the corporates to say, “We just can’t trust you guys any more. We’ll take our chances with Labour.” ’
Hodges - Sunday Mail.
Johnson said 'feck business'; Sunak has delivered.
Though Sunak was happy to grin along to Johnson's business fecking for pretty much the entire duration.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
About ten million Germans were violently expelled from Eastern Europe.
The partition of India led to an even higher number of forced migration.
There was somewhere for those groups to go. Allied occupied Germany for the Germans, the new Muslim and Hindu states for the displaced Indians (the Sikhs were screwed over, of course).
These are its aims, and it has to achieve all of them:
1. Remove Hamas completely, and all of its military capability
2. Ensure that October 7 can never be repeated (drones, missiles, paragliders)
3. Make sure that Gaza is unable to throw up a new Hamas with new abilities
4. Do all this without slaughtering SO many Gazans it loses all support, even the USA
That is a terrifying To Do list, but it is surely on Netanyahu's desk. How do you go about it?
Absent some wonderful but lala-land solution (like that of @rcs1000) my first best guess is a brutal invasion (removing Hamas) followed by Occupation and a return to Israeli settlers spreading through Gaza, functioning as a de facto spy network and police force, and slowly strangling Palestinian cultural coherence to extinction (or that will be the aim)
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
About ten million Germans were violently expelled from Eastern Europe.
The partition of India led to an even higher number of forced migration.
There was somewhere for those groups to go. Allied occupied Germany for the Germans, the new Muslim and Hindu states for the displaced Indians (the Sikhs were screwed over, of course).
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
The trouble with "pay people enough money to go along with a solution" plans is that invariably there is a group of people who place an essentially infinite monetary value on the intangible aspects of living where they always have (not specific to the middle east -- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holdout_(real_estate) has smaller scale examples, and compulsory purchase exists in part as a way around it). Merely waving enormous cheques at people might reduce the scale of the problem but I suspect it wouldn't really stop the bloodshed.
Though if the holdouts are a small enough minority, we flip into a state where they can safely be ignored.
The bigger problem with conflicts like this is that both sides have justification for the appalling things they have done. The only way out of that is for someone to take the first step in renouncing retribution they are entitled to. That's not impossible, but it requires a kind of human Saint to create that dynamic.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
About ten million Germans were violently expelled from Eastern Europe.
The partition of India led to an even higher number of forced migration.
There was somewhere for those groups to go. Allied occupied Germany for the Germans, the new Muslim and Hindu states for the displaced Indians (the Sikhs were screwed over, of course).
Where would the Gazans go?
Egypt.
The Egyptians don't want them!
The real tragedy for the people of Gaza is nobody wants them or cares about them. Hamas don't. Fatah don't. The Egyptians don't. The Israelis certainly don't.
That's why they always end up at the bottom of the heap in any issues.
A Tory Minister conceded to me: ‘Business has had it with us. Our party conference was the last straw: U-turns on net zero and HS2 have led the corporates to say, “We just can’t trust you guys any more. We’ll take our chances with Labour.” ’
Hodges - Sunday Mail.
Johnson said 'feck business'; Sunak has delivered.
Though Sunak was happy to grin along to Johnson's business fecking for pretty much the entire duration.
I'm guessing Cummings persuaded them that business was a constituency that the Tories could now happily do without. And when the Red-Wall realignment looked to be taking place that claim may have looked convincing. All seems tragically short sighted now.
The Guardian spouting some choice bollox about the problems of pubs:
Staffing costs are another. Brexit and the pandemic amputated 600,000 waiters, chefs, bar staff and others from the hospitality workforce in London alone and rising wages have not helped.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
The trouble with "pay people enough money to go along with a solution" plans is that invariably there is a group of people who place an essentially infinite monetary value on the intangible aspects of living where they always have (not specific to the middle east -- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holdout_(real_estate) has smaller scale examples, and compulsory purchase exists in part as a way around it). Merely waving enormous cheques at people might reduce the scale of the problem but I suspect it wouldn't really stop the bloodshed.
Though if the holdouts are a small enough minority, we flip into a state where they can safely be ignored.
The bigger problem with conflicts like this is that both sides have justification for the appalling things they have done. The only way out of that is for someone to take the first step in renouncing retribution they are entitled to. That's not impossible, but it requires a kind of human Saint to create that dynamic.
FFS, are they really saying that no company can rely on a contract signed with the UK government in the event that it works out well for them? Yes, that will go well, can't see any problems going down that path at all. What with this nonsense and random "windfall" taxes this country is becoming the wild west, somewhere no sensible fund will touch with a barge pole.
Fraud makes sense, but 'waste'?
We were in a fairly hellish situation during the first six months of Covid, and we were unsure where the solution was to be found: we therefore tried lots of things, from vaccines that did not work out, to the Nightingale Hospitals. Was this money 'wasted'? Yes. Was it wise to do it at the time? Probably, yes.
Likewise PPE: we needed to get it, in an environment where virtually every other country in the world wanted it. Was money wasted (non-fraudulently?) Yes. But the risk was *not* getting PPE.
We need to be really careful of hindsighting this. It'd be interesting to lookback at Starmer and Labour's pronouncements at the time as well...
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
About ten million Germans were violently expelled from Eastern Europe.
The partition of India led to an even higher number of forced migration.
There was somewhere for those groups to go. Allied occupied Germany for the Germans, the new Muslim and Hindu states for the displaced Indians (the Sikhs were screwed over, of course).
Where would the Gazans go?
If the new capital of independent India were moved to the Sikh-majority Amritsar (ie. neither Hindu nor Muslim), Partition might just have been avoided.
A Tory Minister conceded to me: ‘Business has had it with us. Our party conference was the last straw: U-turns on net zero and HS2 have led the corporates to say, “We just can’t trust you guys any more. We’ll take our chances with Labour.” ’
Hodges - Sunday Mail.
Johnson said 'feck business'; Sunak has delivered.
A pedant writes, the Irish word feck is not just a milder form of fuck, it does not have the sex meaning.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
About ten million Germans were violently expelled from Eastern Europe.
The partition of India led to an even higher number of forced migration.
There was somewhere for those groups to go. Allied occupied Germany for the Germans, the new Muslim and Hindu states for the displaced Indians (the Sikhs were screwed over, of course).
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
About ten million Germans were violently expelled from Eastern Europe.
The partition of India led to an even higher number of forced migration.
There was somewhere for those groups to go. Allied occupied Germany for the Germans, the new Muslim and Hindu states for the displaced Indians (the Sikhs were screwed over, of course).
Where would the Gazans go?
Egypt.
The Egyptians don't want them!
Lots of countries have been getting migrants they don't want in recent years.
They could create New Gaza on the opposite side of the border.
FFS, are they really saying that no company can rely on a contract signed with the UK government in the event that it works out well for them? Yes, that will go well, can't see any problems going down that path at all. What with this nonsense and random "windfall" taxes this country is becoming the wild west, somewhere no sensible fund will touch with a barge pole.
Well, fraud is fraud, and even if Labour's new commissioner recovers not a single penny, the mere act of talking about Tory Covid fraud is likely to benefit Labour.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
A Tory Minister conceded to me: ‘Business has had it with us. Our party conference was the last straw: U-turns on net zero and HS2 have led the corporates to say, “We just can’t trust you guys any more. We’ll take our chances with Labour.” ’
Hodges - Sunday Mail.
Johnson said 'feck business'; Sunak has delivered.
Though Sunak was happy to grin along to Johnson's business fecking for pretty much the entire duration.
I'm guessing Cummings persuaded them that business was a constituency that the Tories could now happily do without. And when the Red-Wall realignment looked to be taking place that claim may have looked convincing. All seems tragically short sighted now.
Maybe Dom did need his eyes tested...
It's the problem with Cummings as a political strategist. Everything he does (knowingly lie in campaigns, sign deals with the intention of tearing them up) is genius in a one-off game. But real life is a game that never ends, and then losing trust is a massive cost.
The Guardian spouting some choice bollox about the problems of pubs:
Staffing costs are another. Brexit and the pandemic amputated 600,000 waiters, chefs, bar staff and others from the hospitality workforce in London alone and rising wages have not helped.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
These are its aims, and it has to achieve all of them:
1. Remove Hamas completely, and all of its military capability
2. Ensure that October 7 can never be repeated (drones, missiles, paragliders)
3. Make sure that Gaza is unable to throw up a new Hamas with new abilities
4. Do all this without slaughtering SO many Gazans it loses all support, even the USA
That is a terrifying To Do list, but it is surely on Netanyahu's desk. How do you go about it?
Absent some wonderful but lala-land solution (like that of @rcs1000) my first best guess is a brutal invasion (removing Hamas) followed by Occupation and a return to Israeli settlers spreading through Gaza, functioning as a de facto spy network and police force, and slowly strangling Palestinian cultural coherence to extinction (or that will be the aim)
Really really really not good
Israel is powerful, but small. It does not have the power and capacity - absent nukes - to do anything too strategic - especially when the terrorists are being funded - and perhaps even controlled - by Iran and others. Therefore Bibi's response will be to flail around and do whatever they can - and that will be bad for Hamas on a tactical level, and disastrous for the Palestinians.
I have always been largely pro-Israeli. For several years, Israel's actions have been turning me away from them: they really have behaved terribly.
Yesterday's actions have largely turned me back to being pro-Israel - for the moment.
I'm sitting outside, in shorts and a shirt, eating lunch, a third of the way through October, for the second year in a row. Madness.
You're right. Lunch at 4.15 ??
Lunch should be taken at 1pm, and tea at 3:40pm.
That only applies if there are ladies present. In their absence a good lunch can last well into the next day.
Indeed.
*burps*
My Lord, the port is with you.
I once co-hosted a party which somehow lasted three days. People woke up on the first morning-after-the-spectacular-night-before, variously scattered around our building in Red Lion Square, and in the gardens of the Square itself. We found people sleeping in the stairwell, in cupboards, etc. Then they immediately started partying again, and so it went on, marvellously
Ah, sweet dreams of youth...
I once went to a party on the Friday (at someone’s house, who I’ve never seen before or since), necked a load of pills, smoked a load of dope and drank a load of booze and had a cracking night. Woke up on the sofa the next morning after three hours kip, cup of tea and a bacon sarnie, started on the booze nice and early and dropped some more pills at 10 in the morning. I remember precisely nothing until 24 hours later when I woke up on the living room floor, naked, under a rug with an equally naked buxom half-Italian girl. Biggest aureolas I’ve ever seen. Never seen her before or since either. I would love to know what the hell happened in that missing 24 hours.
That’ll be about 20 years ago now. The thought of doing all that now fills me with absolute horror. Glad I did it then though 🤣
Let me tell you something. I’ve seen it all before. I’ve inhaled hashish, I had an Afro haircut. I went to all-weekend binges to Prestatyn to see wings
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion."
These are its aims, and it has to achieve all of them:
1. Remove Hamas completely, and all of its military capability
2. Ensure that October 7 can never be repeated (drones, missiles, paragliders)
3. Make sure that Gaza is unable to throw up a new Hamas with new abilities
4. Do all this without slaughtering SO many Gazans it loses all support, even the USA
That is a terrifying To Do list, but it is surely on Netanyahu's desk. How do you go about it?
Absent some wonderful but lala-land solution (like that of @rcs1000) my first best guess is a brutal invasion (removing Hamas) followed by Occupation and a return to Israeli settlers spreading through Gaza, functioning as a de facto spy network and police force, and slowly strangling Palestinian cultural coherence to extinction (or that will be the aim)
Really really really not good
Israel is powerful, but small. It does not have the power and capacity - absent nukes - to do anything too strategic - especially when the terrorists are being funded - and perhaps even controlled - by Iran and others. Therefore Bibi's response will be to flail around and do whatever they can - and that will be bad for Hamas on a tactical level, and disastrous for the Palestinians.
I have always been largely pro-Israeli. For several years, Israel's actions have been turning me away from them: they really have behaved terribly.
Yesterday's actions have largely turned me back to being pro-Israel - for the moment.
I recall having a lunch in Tel Aviv with some tourist minister dude who had recently transferred from something quite senior in the military. This must have been 12 years ago, or more
We got to talking about the situation and he was pretty hardline. He reckoned Israel could suppress the Palestinians indefintely, with superior tech and training
I said to him: eventually the world will change, America will weaken, other powers will rise, and Palestinians will find a way to REALLY hurt you, you need to seek peace now (I don't claim any prescience, many have said this for decades)
He was dismissive. I wonder if Israel missed a trick 15 years ago, and a peace was available? I don't know. Israelis will argue that the PLO et al were never really serious
Anyway that monent has gone and the future is dark
The Guardian spouting some choice bollox about the problems of pubs:
Staffing costs are another. Brexit and the pandemic amputated 600,000 waiters, chefs, bar staff and others from the hospitality workforce in London alone and rising wages have not helped.
The Guardian spouting some choice bollox about the problems of pubs:
Staffing costs are another. Brexit and the pandemic amputated 600,000 waiters, chefs, bar staff and others from the hospitality workforce in London alone and rising wages have not helped.
And funny to see a supposedly left wing paper like the Guardian implicitly complaining about workers getting higher wages...
An opposition to working class pay rises is pretty widespread among much of the middle class.
Remember the anger two years ago about increasing pay rates for delivery drivers, supermarket workers, agricultural labourers, abattoir workers etc.
Indeed it is - higher wages = higher costs for the middle classes who use services. It was great nice Svetlana the cleaner was from Bulgaria but even better that she didn't cost that much to employ because there were so many like her.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
I did say it was highly unlikely to happen. And the only way you can humanely do it (if that even makes sense) is by getting the Gazans to volunteer to do it, and by persuading Egypt to peacefully take them
It's not impossible but - you and I agree- it will need insanely large amounts of money. However the chance of lasting peace in the MENA is so hugely valuable it would be worth the cost
I agree this can't be done by force, not only would that be brutally cruel it woudn't work, it would just engender even more hatred for Israel and another 100 years of murder, war, revenge
Your idea is nice but I fear it is dreamland. Israel will not tolerate Gaza to exist in its present state, as a coastal enclave, arrowed at the heart of the country, not after October 7, 2023
The following statements are all true:
- Israel cannot allow Gaza to exist in its current state.
- Israel has no way to destroy Gaza. It's simply too big, and it's also stuck in the middle of the Sinai, Israel and the Mediterranean.
- (Or, at least, any destruction of Gaza would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and would poison again the relationship between Israel and its neighbours. It wouldn't do much for Israel's already frayed relations with much of the West either.)
- Hamas are scum, who have no interest in the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And will do anything to precipitate a holy war.
What will therefore happen?
Israel will follow the path of least resistance. It will make life even shittier in Gaza. It will kill Hamas leaders with drone strikes. It will tighten the noose still further. And in doing so, it will buy itself a little peace, but will also make sure that the next generation of Gazans have even less to lose by throwing their lot in with Hamas.
Meanwhile the official Corbyn party within the Labour Party cannot bring themselves to condemn Hamas.
FFS, are they really saying that no company can rely on a contract signed with the UK government in the event that it works out well for them? Yes, that will go well, can't see any problems going down that path at all. What with this nonsense and random "windfall" taxes this country is becoming the wild west, somewhere no sensible fund will touch with a barge pole.
Mr L I normally agree with you but the PPE ‘purchases’ have been so far away from normal trading practices that I think some of the less principled ‘traders’ would be frightened off. As they should be.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
About ten million Germans were violently expelled from Eastern Europe.
The partition of India led to an even higher number of forced migration.
There was somewhere for those groups to go. Allied occupied Germany for the Germans, the new Muslim and Hindu states for the displaced Indians (the Sikhs were screwed over, of course).
Where would the Gazans go?
Egypt.
The Egyptians don't want them!
Lots of countries have been getting migrants they don't want in recent years.
They could create New Gaza on the opposite side of the border.
Doesn’t work. An entire population of more than 2 million kicked out of their homes - won’t happen, can’t happen, not worth spending too long hypothesising.
Occupation, yes. I think that’s likely. Will that be better or worse for the inhabitants than the present day’s living prison, I suppose that depends.
Create a UN protectorate. Administered for a generation by an experienced former colonial power with no skin in the game.
Who'd want to take on responsibility for that mess?
The collectivity of nations, the UN, should take it on. But as it has little administrative experience it would need to outsource that to a capable nation.
These are its aims, and it has to achieve all of them:
1. Remove Hamas completely, and all of its military capability
2. Ensure that October 7 can never be repeated (drones, missiles, paragliders)
3. Make sure that Gaza is unable to throw up a new Hamas with new abilities
4. Do all this without slaughtering SO many Gazans it loses all support, even the USA
That is a terrifying To Do list, but it is surely on Netanyahu's desk. How do you go about it?
Absent some wonderful but lala-land solution (like that of @rcs1000) my first best guess is a brutal invasion (removing Hamas) followed by Occupation and a return to Israeli settlers spreading through Gaza, functioning as a de facto spy network and police force, and slowly strangling Palestinian cultural coherence to extinction (or that will be the aim)
Really really really not good
I agree my solution is La La Land.
As I don't think Israel would accept it.
I however suspect that it would be a better long term solution than what is likely to happen.
My flint agent has teenage sons who love Andrew Tate (to her despair). He’s been pro Islamist for while, or so she tells me. They are proper god fearing family men and so on
Unfortunately he has become emblematic of the pushback against so-called "toxic" masculinity. He's effectively the Che Guevara Poster for disaffected teens to early twenties completely ignored by their female counterparts, due to the globalization of dating practices, documented numerous times (did you know, for example, men outumber women on tinder by 10 to 1? That's not swipe, that's outnumber. Before the swiping).
Men got pushed just so far, got told they were such pieces of shit, that they started rallying around genuinely toxic figures like Tate. I have no time for Tate or his compadres, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tate is the reaction to men being told they're toxic just for being men.
Yes indeed
The lad mags of the 90s were a reaction to the feminism of the 80s, which said: Looking at naked women is evil, liking football is boorish, everything male is dull or sexist, and on and on (and on)
So the lad mags came out and said: Er, actually, we like looking at bare breasts (we're made that way), football is fun, drinking beer with your mates is a laugh, going to dangerous places and shooting things is a blast
Then the lad mags really DID get boorish (at the beginning they were genuinely witty and fresh) and so the pendulum swang again
And now here we are once more. A decade of everyone telling men they are shit and useless and maleness is poison, and we have the inevitable reaction: Andrew Tate
The problem this time is that the pendulum swings are much more vicious and extreme; Loaded magazine was positively benign compared to Tate
Or alternatively: Tate offers an 'easy' answer to the concerns of idiots. Being nice to women and others is actually quite hard, especially if you are a shit. Working hard at school and getting a better job is hard.
Easier just to take what you want.
Charlatans have sold easy answers since time immemorial. Tate is just continuing in the same manner (or, lack of manners...)
Tate is actually a response to what we know is going on with dating at the moment, which we can verify through dating app data, i.e. about 1 in 10 men get picked to be in a relationship. Most teens to early twenties are "incels" now.
His advice, fundamentally, boils down, to being "you need to be a top 1% male and even if you don't make it, if you follow my advice, you'll be top 10%". Go gym, take roids, make money, spend money, look flash. This, apparently (and I do remember from my own younger days) attracts girls.
It's pretty weak sauce stuff, but if I was a 23 year old who'd never had a cloth tit, I'd probably be listening to him too.
It's not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Those figures are skewed by Tinder clientele looking for short term flings.
Both my boys have lovely girlfriends, and both met them through dating apps, and neither would be mistaken for film stars or gym hounds. They both are just nice caring people who treat women with respect and kindness. It really isn't a complicated formula.
Small sample size.
Even the FT says inceldom is a thing for the young'uns now.
"One study found that a man in the top percentile of attractiveness receives 190 times more likes on dating apps than a man in the bottom 50 per cent.
The result: a male elite is enjoying a sexual boomtime, even as incels proliferate. The top 5 per cent of men increased their number of sexual partners by 38 per cent in the decade to 2013, found the US National Survey of Family Growth. In short, disconcertingly, there’s a kernel of truth in the incel worldview."
But it’s still not true that only 1 in 10 get a partner. Where did you get that from?
Fair point, that is a half remembered Tweet I saw a while back I didn't save, so can't back that one up. But i have backed up everything else I've said with data from the FT / Pew Research Center.
The fact that young men are having less and less sex year on year, while young women are having more or less the same, highly suggests the truth of the FT's assertion that the "top 5% of men" increased their number of sexual partners by 38% in the last few years, while "there is a kernel of truth" in the incel worldview. Not my words, the Financial Times.
Edit, I should add: And this is why kids turn to grifters like Andrew Tate.
I don't believe so, at all.
The figures I've seen not coming from nutters almost all tend to show little change in figures.
When it comes to "in a relationship" (which is not the same as having sex), then women have consistently been in relationships at a higher rate than men at younger age-groups, not just now but in the past too.
Because its not unusual for men to have a relationship with a younger woman, but the reverse is less common. And that's not a modern development.
The age thing is indeed a possible explanation for the discrepancy. As a 40 year old, I have recently dated a 24 year old and an 28 year old. Everyone shrugs. So what? Reverse that, and imagine I was a 40 year old woman...
Yes, older men have always done well with younger women, tbh, I've done better in my 30s than I did in my 20s. What that doesn't change, is that there is a growing pool of angry, sexless young men aged 18-25ish who are easily radicalised and want to beat something up. Heck, the best of them get grifted by giving Andrew Tate 2000 bucks for a "course" to pick up girls. The worst of them go on disgusting, mad killing sprees.
The problem is, the situation isn't static. It's quite clear from the stats that the number of sexless young men is increasing, statistically, significantly, year on year. And I put it to you that is a problem, because the world does not need a lot of angry young men with a lot to prove.
I don't see any evidence whatsoever for a growing pool of angry, sexless young men.
And if there are and they want to beat something, that's what their right hand is for.
I 100% agree with you, there's no excuse for Tate or his followers. My intent is to explain, rather than to excuse.
Houellebecq basically nailed it in the mid 90s:
“It's a fact that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperisation . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
The 21st century has seen the hyper-commodification and globalisation of the sexual marketplace - twenty years ago, you could date people you met through your social network, now, you download an app and can select anyone within a certain radius. And if you're a hot girl on instagram, well, 20 years ago, your hotness would have got you the hottest young guy in town on a friday night. Now, you post a few selfies and you're invited out to Mr Millionaire's yacht as an "influencer" etc.
Globalisation, when applied to the sexual marketplace, leads to an extraordinary gini coefficient that would prompt serious debate if it were applied to incomes.
Sorry but that's a load of nonsense.
Hotness always meant some found it easier to hook up than others, but for people who want to there's still ways to do so.
From days clubbing, people who were desperate to hook up but weren't "alphas" would do so later in the evening, as alcohol makes everyone progressively hotter anyway, and time means that those who already hooked up that night stop trying to too.
So you don't hook up with the first person you see? So you don't end up in a yacht? So frigging what?
I'm off the dating market and have been for about a decade and a half nearly, but I know plenty of men who still are and don't struggle to find partners to hook up with. Main thing with them is that they're prepared to sleep with anyone, not view "top" people only as worth sleeping with.
Fundamentally, it is because people *don't* go out and connect any more. I bumped into a fairly interesting 24 year old at an after works drinks the other week and I said, come out with us, we're going clubbing. Most in their early 30s. Me a bit older, but still. And the guy completely sketches out and says, yeah, most of my friends have adhd / autism and can't deal with this, and walks straight out.
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
The stats don't show that. The stats show the polar opposite, it shows a higher percentage are sexually active today than a generation ago.
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
This implies that young men *prefer* to sit around watching porn vs having sex. I put it to you that porn is an inferior/substitute good, and something (whatever that is - economy, smartphones, apps, whatever) happened a little over a decade ago that meant a lot of men were no longer able to get the real thing - hence virginity rates rising from 8% in 2008 to 27% in 2018. But porn is a substitute/inferior good, not a preference.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
Some young men do prefer today to sit at home and watch porn. Getting out of the house is too much like hard work.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
Well, the truth behind what Tate is saying is that if you have a flash car, roided up muscles, and a nice watch, you can attract a certain type of girl. That has also been true since time immemorial. He's just selling the lie to these kids that can be *you* as well.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
A Tory Minister conceded to me: ‘Business has had it with us. Our party conference was the last straw: U-turns on net zero and HS2 have led the corporates to say, “We just can’t trust you guys any more. We’ll take our chances with Labour.” ’
Hodges - Sunday Mail.
Johnson said 'feck business'; Sunak has delivered.
Sunak auto-destructed last week.
The fact he thinks it was a good idea, and a triumph, shows how utterly deluded he is.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
About ten million Germans were violently expelled from Eastern Europe.
The partition of India led to an even higher number of forced migration.
There was somewhere for those groups to go. Allied occupied Germany for the Germans, the new Muslim and Hindu states for the displaced Indians (the Sikhs were screwed over, of course).
Where would the Gazans go?
Egypt.
The Egyptians don't want them!
Lots of countries have been getting migrants they don't want in recent years.
They could create New Gaza on the opposite side of the border.
Doesn’t work. An entire population of more than 2 million kicked out of their homes - won’t happen, can’t happen, not worth spending too long hypothesising.
Occupation, yes. I think that’s likely. Will that be better or worse for the inhabitants than the present day’s living prison, I suppose that depends.
Why can't it happen ?
Destroy the energy infrastructure, destroy the water infrastructure, destroy the food infrastructure, destroy everything apart from the way out.
Unpleasant to contemplate from outside but certainly possible for someone with the power and determination to do it.
And we have just seen it done in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Gaza has a much larger population of course but that might even make it easier - two million people require a lot of food and water.
Aaaaaaaand.... now the inevitable beheading videos, live, on air
I shall not link
I wonder if @FrancisUrquhart is right and some ISIS members have drifted back to Hamas, or whether Hamas see ISIS as an inspiration
This whole appalling episode feels like a catastrophe for the Palestinian cause, even in the midst of a military "victory"
Of course: as I wrote yesterday, there is no possible way this can result in anything other than life in Gaza becoming even shittier.
Which means that ordinary Gazans won't see any prospect of their life improving. Which means they see even less to lose by joining Hamas.
Yesterday I said there was no solution. And, I think there is a solution.
It would be incredibly expensive. It would require the cooperation of the Israeli government (which I suspect would be unforthcoming). But it is possible.
Remember: the goal here is a prosperous Gaza.
If Hamas is running Gaza, that won't happen. And if Israel is blockading Gaza, that won't happen.
Someone else needs to go in and run Gaza. It needs to be occupied, and not by the Israelis. Just as the West administered both Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, we need something similar in Gaza.
It needs to be a multinational force, and the Islamic world needs to step up and provide a chunk of the troops, while Europe and the US provide the remainder.
Government needs to be in the hands of a benevolent dictator, whose job it is to make Gaza a wealthy place. It needs to be zero tax, low rent: build your Mediterrenean T-shirt factory there. It needs to have decent schools and a proper University.
This will need to be the highest security place on earth. There will need to be tens and tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Hamas will need to be completely evicted from the Gazan political sphere. (Former members will need to either completely renounce violence, or be shipped off to wherever.)
The goal here is nation building. It's a massive subsidy from the rest of the world to make Gaza a place where people dream of making millions, not of killing Israelis.
To make this work, Israel will need to be willing to do things it currently does not. It will need to let Gaza have an airport and a port. It will have to trust the security guarantees from the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, will need to be willing to write an absolutely enormous cheque.
That's not going to happen. Israel will no longer accept Gaza in any form (I suspect), because Israel will want defensible borders, and that enclave along the coast does not provide that
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
There are two million people in Gaza. That's equivalent to 30% of the Jewish population of Israel.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
About ten million Germans were violently expelled from Eastern Europe.
The partition of India led to an even higher number of forced migration.
It is worth remembering a few things, though.
Firstly, those Germans had somewhere to go to: Germany. And, indeed, many of the ten million had started heading there even before they were forced by Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Ukrainians, Czechs, Slovakians, Bulgarians, and the like.
Secondly, Gaza is a small strip of land, surrounded on one side by the Mediterranean Ocean, on two by Israel, and by the Sinai desert on the fourth.
Israel can't drive the Gazans into the sea. They can't arrange a boat lift for them without (a) an insane amount of money and (b) somewhere to send them.
They can't absorb them into Israel.
They can't even easily send them to the West Bank. (And, if they did, they'd create an even greater disparity between the number of Settlers and the number of pissed of Palestinians.)
Which leaves only several hundred miles of Egyptian desert with no settlements or water.
So, yes, Israel could drive the Gazans into Sinai. But at the cost of perhaps 100 or 200 thousand dead.
Also bear in mind that Egypt is Israel's best ally in the region. And having two million Gazans starving in the Sinai would not be great for that relationship.
Comments
I don't know how it is in other parties or indeed in the LDs now but in the old Liberal Party days the constituency parties paid a quarterly fee (tithe, rent, ransom call it what you like) to the central party. Theoretically, it was a share of each membership fee but in truth it helped support the central operation even when it was out of the basement of the National Liberal Club (of blessed PB memory).
I think we imagine the days of the sweaty small town nightclub with the sticky dancefloor, for the reality of a lot (if not all) the young'uns, its pretty different now. Learning to mediate our conversations through a screen - ironically, what we're doing now - makes it harder for people to connect in real life. And online, the top 5% dominate, as the stats I've linked to show.
Lesser versions have worked in Ulster and are working in Iraq and the old adage - if you're busy making money you'll be too busy to make trouble - should be on the new Gazan coat of arms.
You have Saudi, the UAE and Kuwait among others, all awash with cash, who could if they chose, give S20 of every barrel of oil sold to a fund to rebuild Gaza.
In opposition though most big businesses can't be bothered to fund a party trailing in the polls and of little use to them, so the party leadership needs to mobilise their hardcore base to become party members and raise funds. Hence Labour under Corbyn and the Tories under Hague had a growing party membership even if still defeated at the polls and near empty business stands at their conferences
If you only "swipe right" on one person, then yes that's not likely to be successful.
If you "swipe right" on everyone, then you only need one to swipe right on you and you've got a connection.
A Young men getting less sex than they think they deserve
B Grifters out to exploit Group A.
There's a decent argument that Group A is larger than it was in recent decades, but still a minority.
Group B is a lot more visible, thanks to the internet.
The Gazans will have to move, and someone will have to be persuaded to take them. Egpyt and Sinai is the obvious place. We agree this will involve enormous amounts of bribery from the rest of the world, to Egypt and to the Gazans, to make them so rich they don't care. Israel would also have to cough up
Chances of this happening? Less than 5%. But it is the only feasible road out of this hideous, bloody cycle of revenge
The other truth is if you have a long period of Government you create a lot of opposition and the art of opposing doesn't come easy if you've not had much practice at it.
Ok, so Vercrashen is still winning, but it's quite a spectacle. Who had Albon leading among their bets?
Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs
(All of a Midsummer morn):
England shall bide till Judgment Tide,
By Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWSr1Aw0EBA&t=1s
I have lawns, I have bowers,
I have fields, I have flowers
And the lark is my morning alarmer:
So my jolly boys now
Here's God speed the plough -
Long life and success to the farmer!
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30071467
One (the only ?!) good thing to come from the merger with the SDP was a centralised membership list telling the branch secretary, on green stripey computer paper, who exactly was up to date with their subs or not.
If it was 100-200,000 people then maybe you could do it. But two million. Even if you found someone who'd take them (which you won't), that's not physically possible.
I mean you could go in there with tanks and attempt to drive everyone out towards Egypt. But I can't see how that wouldn't lead to 100k dead, especially when you remember that you've just put two million into the Sinai desert where there is no water or food.
Also, it wouldn't do much for Israel's relationship with Egypt.
https://x.com/yarotrof/status/1711062351204815084?s=20
They are still finding bodies. Could go even higher
It's not impossible but - you and I agree- it will need insanely large amounts of money. However the chance of lasting peace in the MENA is so hugely valuable it would be worth the cost
I agree this can't be done by force, not only would that be brutally cruel it woudn't work, it would just engender even more hatred for Israel and another 100 years of murder, war, revenge
Your idea is nice but I fear it is dreamland. Israel will not tolerate Gaza to exist in its present state, as a coastal enclave, arrowed at the heart of the country, not after October 7, 2023
- Israel cannot allow Gaza to exist in its current state.
- Israel has no way to destroy Gaza. It's simply too big, and it's also stuck in the middle of the Sinai, Israel and the Mediterranean.
- (Or, at least, any destruction of Gaza would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and would poison again the relationship between Israel and its neighbours. It wouldn't do much for Israel's already frayed relations with much of the West either.)
- Hamas are scum, who have no interest in the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And will do anything to precipitate a holy war.
What will therefore happen?
Israel will follow the path of least resistance. It will make life even shittier in Gaza. It will kill Hamas leaders with drone strikes. It will tighten the noose still further. And in doing so, it will buy itself a little peace, but will also make sure that the next generation of Gazans have even less to lose by throwing their lot in with Hamas.
Back of Cockermouth's Old Courthouse collapses into river
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-67045845
Though wiki says the even older Code of Ur-Nammu has a far less catchy:
If a man knocks out the eye of another man, he shall weigh out half a mina of silver.
That cannot be allowed to happen again - let alone regularly - or the Israeli state will be mortally endangered
So what will Israel do?
I wonder if they might go for permanent occupation again, and a return to the settler policy. Strangle the life out of Gaza not just with bombs and power-cuts, but by an attempt to occupy the land with actual Jews - hardnuts with guns. As in the West Bank
Difficult and risky. But Israel has to do something
What else? Maybe they will level all buildings anywhere near the border, ceeating a cordon sanitaire?
Perhaps they will take thousands of Gazans hostage. Perhaps they really will try and drive all Gazans into Egypt
I see nothing ahead but misery for the Gazans and bloody war for the Israelis. It is bleak. I do not see the status quo ante
As Chancellor, I will always treat taxpayers' money with respect.
https://twitter.com/RachelReevesMP/status/1711070286718590992?s=20
There's your problem. Not enough honest lawyers to make it commercially viable.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-08/uk-s-starmer-condemns-attack-on-israel-at-labour-conference?leadSource=uverify wall
Corbyn-Labour fans (aka BJO) please explain.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-labour-hamas-israel-palestine-b2426187.html
https://features.inside.com/why-arent-men-in-their-20s-having-sex/
"BREAKING: The U.S. military will be moving “U.S. Navy ships & aircraft” close to Israel in response to the Hamas attacks.
The report from NBC claimed the U.S. is currently working on a “non-combatant” evacuation for getting Americans out of Israel.
One plan involves actually putting the Americans on the Navy ships"
https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1711068730028073188?s=20
Suggests America is anticipating some kind of all-out war in Israel
Hodges - Sunday Mail.
Johnson said 'feck business'; Sunak has delivered.
The partition of India led to an even higher number of forced migration.
First Direct is a much better brand of only HSBC would use it properly
A higher percentage are sexually active today (as in sex recently) than in the past. Even if there's a higher percentage of virgins as increasing numbers just stay at home and watch porn online rather than speaking to people.
Where would the Gazans go?
What will Israel do in Gaza?
These are its aims, and it has to achieve all of them:
1. Remove Hamas completely, and all of its military capability
2. Ensure that October 7 can never be repeated (drones, missiles, paragliders)
3. Make sure that Gaza is unable to throw up a new Hamas with new abilities
4. Do all this without slaughtering SO many Gazans it loses all support, even the USA
That is a terrifying To Do list, but it is surely on Netanyahu's desk. How do you go about it?
Absent some wonderful but lala-land solution (like that of @rcs1000) my first best guess is a brutal invasion (removing Hamas) followed by Occupation and a return to Israeli settlers spreading through Gaza, functioning as a de facto spy network and police force, and slowly strangling Palestinian cultural coherence to extinction (or that will be the aim)
Really really really not good
Not sure I've seen that before??
The bigger problem with conflicts like this is that both sides have justification for the appalling things they have done. The only way out of that is for someone to take the first step in renouncing retribution they are entitled to. That's not impossible, but it requires a kind of human Saint to create that dynamic.
The real tragedy for the people of Gaza is nobody wants them or cares about them. Hamas don't. Fatah don't. The Egyptians don't. The Israelis certainly don't.
That's why they always end up at the bottom of the heap in any issues.
Staffing costs are another. Brexit and the pandemic amputated 600,000 waiters, chefs, bar staff and others from the hospitality workforce in London alone and rising wages have not helped.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/08/its-soul-destroying-to-have-one-customer-on-a-saturday-is-the-party-over-for-the-uks-pubs-and-clubs
So the Guardian thinks that there are 600k fewer hospitality staff in London now - that would be about the entire hospitality workforce.
The reality is that employment in London has actually increased by half a million over the last four years:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/timeseries/jwu7/lms
I’ve watched the replay and it was 100% my fault and I take full responsibility. Apologies to my team and to George.
https://twitter.com/LewisHamilton/status/1711085330374295864
Sadly absent
Also, I know he's said things like this before, but it could be quite interesting to see what he says and does if he is made the minister next year.
We were in a fairly hellish situation during the first six months of Covid, and we were unsure where the solution was to be found: we therefore tried lots of things, from vaccines that did not work out, to the Nightingale Hospitals. Was this money 'wasted'? Yes. Was it wise to do it at the time? Probably, yes.
Likewise PPE: we needed to get it, in an environment where virtually every other country in the world wanted it. Was money wasted (non-fraudulently?) Yes. But the risk was *not* getting PPE.
We need to be really careful of hindsighting this. It'd be interesting to lookback at Starmer and Labour's pronouncements at the time as well...
They could create New Gaza on the opposite side of the border.
And the reason I suggest this to you is, because of the rise of creeps like Andrew Tate. If young men were happy jackin' it every night, they wouldn't be into Tate-ism. The questions are, what happened post 2008 that caused this change in sexual behaviour, and is Tate the worst we're going to get out of it (we've already had incel nut jobs shooting up places). So if it's a problem that 27% of young men aren't having sex, vs 8% in the 2000s, what's the cause and what's the solution? Because there is clearly a problem.
It's the problem with Cummings as a political strategist. Everything he does (knowingly lie in campaigns, sign deals with the intention of tearing them up) is genius in a one-off game. But real life is a game that never ends, and then losing trust is a massive cost.
Totally unsurprising given the ageing and stress he has undergone.
Its only because US politics is filled with so many senile dodderers that Trump doesn't stand out on this issue.
Same reason there's been a collapse of antisocial behaviour from teens on street corners compared to a generation ago. They're on their phones instead.
There is no truth behind what Tate is saying. He's just the latest in a long line of charlatans.
I have always been largely pro-Israeli. For several years, Israel's actions have been turning me away from them: they really have behaved terribly.
Yesterday's actions have largely turned me back to being pro-Israel - for the moment.
He seems to be constantly checking stuff like where he is, who he should namecheck etc etc on the videos.
We got to talking about the situation and he was pretty hardline. He reckoned Israel could suppress the Palestinians indefintely, with superior tech and training
I said to him: eventually the world will change, America will weaken, other powers will rise, and Palestinians will find a way to REALLY hurt you, you need to seek peace now (I don't claim any prescience, many have said this for decades)
He was dismissive. I wonder if Israel missed a trick 15 years ago, and a peace was available? I don't know. Israelis will argue that the PLO et al were never really serious
Anyway that monent has gone and the future is dark
Remember the anger two years ago about increasing pay rates for delivery drivers, supermarket workers, agricultural labourers, abattoir workers etc.
The only nation with the puissance and capability is China. But they will not touch it with a bamboo bargepole
As they should be.
Occupation, yes. I think that’s likely. Will that be better or worse for the inhabitants than the present day’s living prison, I suppose that depends.
As I don't think Israel would accept it.
I however suspect that it would be a better long term solution than what is likely to happen.
Honestly I don't disagree that the spike from 2008 may be caused by phones. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a viable possibility. A substitute good.
The other answer is the explosion (no pun intended) of free online video porn around that time. I put it to you that porn is still an inferior/substitute good, but the cost of said inferior good became far less, while the quality became far higher. From a few blurry jpgs or a top shelf mag in the early 2000s, it went to being free, ubiquitous and of a much higher quality. It's like saying a pork chop is a substitute for steak, once upon a time they were similar in cost, similarly hard to acquire... the pork chop was cheaper but still at a cost. Then all of a sudden the pork chop (the porn) becomes nearly free and limitless, everywhere, as with the phones point, in your pocket. So that is a distinct possibility.
But guys still *want* the superior good, they want the steak, even if they're gorging themselves on the "free" pork chops. Hence the rise of Andrew Tate and co.
The fact he thinks it was a good idea, and a triumph, shows how utterly deluded he is.
Destroy the energy infrastructure, destroy the water infrastructure, destroy the food infrastructure, destroy everything apart from the way out.
Unpleasant to contemplate from outside but certainly possible for someone with the power and determination to do it.
And we have just seen it done in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Gaza has a much larger population of course but that might even make it easier - two million people require a lot of food and water.
Firstly, those Germans had somewhere to go to: Germany. And, indeed, many of the ten million had started heading there even before they were forced by Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Ukrainians, Czechs, Slovakians, Bulgarians, and the like.
Secondly, Gaza is a small strip of land, surrounded on one side by the Mediterranean Ocean, on two by Israel, and by the Sinai desert on the fourth.
Israel can't drive the Gazans into the sea. They can't arrange a boat lift for them without (a) an insane amount of money and (b) somewhere to send them.
They can't absorb them into Israel.
They can't even easily send them to the West Bank. (And, if they did, they'd create an even greater disparity between the number of Settlers and the number of pissed of Palestinians.)
Which leaves only several hundred miles of Egyptian desert with no settlements or water.
So, yes, Israel could drive the Gazans into Sinai. But at the cost of perhaps 100 or 200 thousand dead.
Also bear in mind that Egypt is Israel's best ally in the region. And having two million Gazans starving in the Sinai would not be great for that relationship.