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Mick Harper
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Black lives matter in Nigeria too
Chibundu Onuzo, Guardian


This excellent piece disposed once and for all of the notion that the Metropolitan Police is institutionally racist. These are the facts

1. Policing people is difficult
2. People don't want to spend too much money on it
3. People don't want to live in a police state
4. So they employ not very bright but not very nice people as policemen
5. Such people will not be very nice to people
6. Not being nice to your employers is obviously unwise even to not very bright people
7. So they concentrate on not being nice to people who they find, over years of experience, they can get away with not being nice to
8. These are hard to identify for not very bright people so they concentrate on people in (7) that are identifiable by their appearance
9. Racial minorities for instance but not any racial minority, only those that people don't like much
10. Human beings are institutionally racist so this practice will continue until people decide, because of the institutional nature of people and policemen, to put 'circuit-breakers' in place. Whingeing on about institutional racism in any given police force is not a circuit-breaker, it is what liberals think will lead to 'circuit breakers' if they whinge on long enough. And even if it doesn't, it feels so go-o-o-d.

AE-ists advise any affected racial minorities, "Kill the pigs until they stop doing it." ONO of course. Always ONO.
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Mick Harper
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Two oily developments

1) Turkey has just discovered gas (ten years' domestic supply) in the Black Sea
2) Israel and Lebanon have begun discussing their respective portions of the Eastern Med.

Are these linked? No, in the sense of fortuitousness; yes, in the sense they will be grinding away at the same problem. Which is

1) Turkey is desperate for home produced hydro-carbons because of the imbalanced nature of an economy that has always put Turkey first, not the Turkish people first. It can now afford to take its foot off the Eastern Med throttle (and Greco-Libyan necks).
2) Israel is desperate for home produced hydro-carbons because of the imbalanced nature of an economy that has always put Israel first, not the the Israeli people first. It cannot afford to take its foot off the Eastern Med throttle (and Lebanese necks).
3) But it just has. Any kind of rapprochement with Lebanon will lose Israel vast acreages of the Eastern Med because Israel, like Turkey, takes no notice of the UN Law of the Sea and other pettifogging principles. It takes what it can and sulks if it can't.
4) Conclusion: the blocs are on the move.
5) Possible conclusion: Hezbollah is for the high jump.

More when I hear more.
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Mick Harper
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The utter futility of democracy will be illustrated when the Guinean elections are over and the result declared in a few days. They have been quite peaceful and the results will be quite fair. Lots of observers from the 'world community' will see to that.

Guinea is an entirely artificial state created by French colonial policy and is broadly divided into the Mandinka and the Fullani. Not hereditary enemies or anything but if you are yoked together in a state, and one of you is bigger than the other, then you soon will be because, since everyone votes by tribal affiliation, one of you will be in power forever and one of you will be in formal or informal insurrection forever.

This in turn means the government is forced into being a permanent bunch of cunts, and selling off mineral rights (Guinea is the world's leading bauxite supplier and right up there in gold and diamonds) for short term gain and using the dosh for corruption, secret police and armaments. If you don't do this you will likely die violently.

There is no way out. Half the population lives 'below the poverty line' and the other half a bit above. Do not think for one moment there is any benefit in being a member of the majority tribe -- there is nothing in the state coffers so you will be as poor as the minority. Except if you drop your guard for one moment and the other lot somehow get a sniff of power your chances of dying in communal violence will go through the roof.

And on it goes. When is the penny going to drop that government has to be outsourced just like the bauxite mines? It could be a great place. Or maybe two great places. But we must observe our own tribal customs. Soon be time to get the Oxfam Christmas cards.
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Mick Harper
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Just before Andy Burnham, King of the North, takes his band of disease-ridden subjects into exile (or the North as we call it) because he wanted £65 million and Mr and Mrs Londoner would only give him sixty, we must bear in mind that this is not real money. Nobody has the slightest clue what the sums involved are and in any case, when all the adding up gets done, it will simply be a case of adjusting various block grants. Will Andy be handing back five million if the Treasury turns out to have been right about whatever it was?

It's not the five million that will disappear as small change, it won't even be the sixty (or sixty-five) million, it will be billions. And even that will go on the borrowing requirement and be paid by our kids. So long, suckers!

So what is all the shadow boxing about? Simply both sides calculating the point where they can walk away saying, "We did our best." Burnham is the only one so far who has tried the walk-away-with-nothing tactic, do your worst -- so we shall have to see whether he's called back. Everyone's giving him the crown today but as soon as he has to shut something that Liverpool or Lancashire County Council doesn't, he'll be getting the bird. Or maybe a bigger crown, when he takes over Britain like Tshombe took over the Congo after failing to get Katanga to break away.

But a word to the wise, chaps. Even I don't know what's happening.
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Grant



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Burnham had the road to greatness in front of him and didn't have the vision or the guts to take it. He should have said "future historians will look back on 2020 as the year of the Great Hysteria. It's time to stop persecuting the young for the benefit of the old. Get back to work."
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Mick Harper
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Aside from the fact that it can hardly be the road to greatness if it is already being trodden by you and your mates in every saloon bar in the land, you have not explained in what way the old have benefited and why, even if they have, that should be regarded as self-evidently a bad thing just because the young are disobliged. But your punctuation was good apart from a missing comma and capital letter when introducing direct speech.
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Grant



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The road to greatness is taken by those who transfer saloon bar talk to the public arena. Churchill: “I don’t trust those bloody krauts.” Trump: “Build the wall.” And Hitler: “The Jews did it.” Andy had his chance and now he’ll never be more than a footnote.
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Mick Harper
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Channel 4 News has another shock horror report on the Trump. campaign who have been targeting blacks in Florida to not vote for Biden. This has been done in every election since Theo Frostyknees ran against Thucy Didymon in Athens in 524 BC. But only now has Channel 4 realised it goes on and has declared it a giant no-no. We can all sleep soundly in our beds thanks to their eternal vigilance on our behalf.
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Mick Harper
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What then are we to make of Keir vs Jeremy? One colossal error was certainly committed: nobody is excommunicated during the lunch hour. The Labour Party is nothing if it is not an unwieldy bureaucracy with labyrinthine rules and procedures, so Keir will not lightly be forgiven for mounting a putsch during a news-cycle.

Is the move itself sensible? There are definite pluses in making war on your own extremists as soon as you can win. This was what did for Theresa May, not being able to cage the ERG, but the question then becomes 'Is victory worth the price?' This in turn will depend on whether the Labour Left, with nowhere else to go, becomes a church within the Broad Church. Remember, May's problem was in discovering that the ERG actually spoke for the party; Starmer might discover that Momentum 'speaks' for the party i.e. emerges as being in control of the constituencies and conference, by weight of numbers.

My assumption is that the whole Jeremy-as-Living-God fever has passed and the £10 membership will move on to some new groove but these are febrile days and I have been wrong consistently in applying old models to new times. One thing is for sure -- Boris's luck continues to hold.
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Mick Harper
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On the substantive matter of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, justice is entirely on Corbyn's side. The lip-smacking nature of the Report -- compiled by people with an official duty to be outraged by anti-Semitism -- ignores the fact that the confusion between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is wholly a Jewish confection. It is their insistence, whether in Israel or in Britain, that people who are the former are actually the latter, which is at the heart of the matter. Though that too has been a very successful tactic.

But again the question then becomes what price will be paid (in Britain) for putting anti-Semitism on the front burner. Presumably, since anti-Semitism does not substantively exist in Britain, they will get away with it, but putting it on any burner is never advised.
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Grant



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And the evidence used to criticise the Labour Party was pretty weak. They even had to drag poor old Livingstone back for a beating. And then Starmer used his "forensic" mind to decide that the mere denial of anti-semitism is proof of anti-semitism, requiring removal from the party.
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Ishmael


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It's hard to criticize British politicians for thinking the Jews undeserving of homeland when the same politicians think the British undeserving of one either.
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Mick Harper
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They even had to drag poor old Livingstone back for a beating.

An interesting parallel. Technically, Livingstone got his marching orders for 'bringing the party into disrepute' which he did, even though his claim about contacts between Zionists and Nazis happened to be true. He was experienced enough to know he would cause an unhelpful furore simply by saying it. Whether Corbyn was 'experienced enough' to know that his claim the Report was exaggerated would cause a furore is at least arguable. He's such a berk he probably thought he was just entering caveats in the usual way. Certainly nobody would have noticed but for the furore.

Starmer of course knew precisely what he was doing, and that it would cause a furore, but when you are in charge of the apparat it is not arguable.
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Mick Harper
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It's hard to criticize British politicians for thinking the Jews undeserving of homeland when the same politicians think the British undeserving of one either.

This is ironically true. The Left try quite hard to be colour-blind and following permissive immigration policies is part of that. It is only Israel's determination to deny the Palestinians a homeland that has forced the left-of-the-left to become anti-Israel.
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Mick Harper
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Starmer has definitely won Round One. The Hard Left huffed and they puffed and then agreed to let it go!
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