I don’t agree with your view of things Edna. I think you show callousness.

I can read Myers and those kinds of people. They may have some valid points, but they loose my support because of their shrill populism and always looking at the worst possible outcomes of what might happen.
When I look at what is hapening in some parts of Dublin (and I’ll be there next week), I hope for the best. See these school children in this youtube? That’s the future and it’s no use bitching about it and promoting division.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRKbiD5O3Tw&feature=related

Ireland is not a heavily populated country (and it once had a far higher population than it does today), so I’d say it has some room for expansion.
It doesn’t really matter what a developed country’s population is, they have various populations from a couple of million to over 300 million in the USA – the larger the population, the larger the economy to support it.

But as I saw in the rest of that youtube, there are some really difficult issues there too.

(There’s several other similar clips that link off that one btw)

Right, a bloke with a modest income obtains a wad of credit cards and maxes them all out. He spends money like a sailor on a spree.

Then what happens?

Inders has switched off his-her brain: we need to understand

1 – debt
2 – bubble economy
3 – mass immigration
4 – a political-media class capable of ignoring what is in front of their noses every day

Inders is hereby sentenced to read ALL of Kevin Myers on both mass immigration AND indebtedness – go NOW to Kevin Myers on Wikipedia and start there …

QUESTION
How many millions of Euros of borrowed money a day or a week or a month does it take to merely hold the present level of equilibrium ?

A million Euros a day or twice that or more? How much?

Inders – read enough about Ireland to answer THAT simple question before you see fit to say ANYTHING about the reality of Ireland in July 2009.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZnpzfcMheA

and I hope it works for you

They went from a 3rd world nation to one of the highest standards of living anywhere within 125 years.

Munir – 102 assumes that the Irish emigrated as penniless wretches rather than as heroic pioneers.

Some were the dregs of Irish society and immediately formed the criminal class in American cities and others were true builders and achievers.

He ought to visit Ireland and see for himself what a suicidal come-all-ye immigration policy has inflicted on a tolerable and tolerant and decent place in a mere two decades, a span of time less than a single generation.

On the other hand, I shall spare him the trouble and the bother of travelling to Ireland and merely sentence him to going to the entry on Kevin Myers on Wikipedia and then clicking on the link which will bring him to what Kevin Myers has had to say about the appalling mess Irish politicians and entire Irish media-and-political class have inflicted on their own supposedly beloved country.

THE IRISH ARE NOT ALONE IN THEIR INSANITY

The Australian political class has ensured that – probably – their children and – certainly – their grandchildren – will be replaced as a ruling class by people of Chinese origins. Right now, low-skill Lebanese gangs are robbing and stabbing Indians and – incomprehensibly – Sudanese and Somalis are welcomed to swell the ranks of the criminal underclass in Australian cities.

Discuss

If twenty Polish-speaking children suddenly show up in the village school at Little Fartbury, who suffers and who pays?

Love and admire and respect the Poles as we all do, the influx of so many in so short a time has simply overwhelmed existing services.

There’s a silver lining, of course.

On a local BBC radio programme, a spokesman of local employers – in Portsmouth – stated flatly that the influx of East Europeans had had “… the beneficial effect of stopping wage inflation…”

We need not mention the Somalis, of whom even benign official figures claim that well over half live in social housing and that well over half live on the dole in one form or another.

They can’t even be deported, either.

O Happy Land!

And can I just make clear that I find the new multi-culturalism an interesting and exciting thing to be happening in Ireland. Because it’s happening from scratch as it were. It’s a bit concerning that the European Council for Fatwa and Research have their headquaters there, but hopefully they won’t have that much impact locally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Council_for_Fatwa_and_Research

Like Sunny says about not being defined by just one identity, I hope that the new Ireland can mix and match with multiple identities.

In the small town of Gort in the west of Ireland, up to 40% of the popilation are overseas born, (with a majority being Brazilian), and so far I have heard only good things about that situation as far as integration goes. The recession is another matter and some of the Brazilians are finding work hard to get and are going home.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/08/europe_brazilians_in_ireland/html/1.stm

Whether Ireland will face some of the difficult issues that we face in the UK remains to be seen (like forced marriages and youth alienation for example). Will the Irish police be quicly be charged with being institutionaly racist?

(If I’m boring anyone, you could let me know).

One last thing on identity and people mixing (or not) socially across race or cultural lines. If you never saw this conversation between John McWhorter and Glenn Loury in may last year talking about the coming US election, it’s well worth giving it a look.
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/11372

The best bits were the sub-sections titled;
”Will racism matter in November?” and
”Is it OK for white people to embrace whiteness?”

If you click on them, the thing jumps foreward to them.
Very interesting I thought. Especially ”Is it OK for white people to embrace whiteness?” – but remember in the setting he’s talking about. He’s talking about blue collar communities in Appalachia.

Oh completely! I’ve never actually said that people should be defined by one solitary identity. My whole point in talking about identity politics is to open up people to the idea that everyone has multiple identities.

But they still have those identities – whether you’re a working class Tory or a born-again Christian or just a middle of the road atheist from Islington. Your world-view is your identity and that still defines you.

yes because the Irish never emigrated anywhere did they?

For example, I replied to something Sunny said about Margaret Hodge … and was followed by this ‘Edna Elthorpe’ making a point about immigration policy.
So would it have been better to say nothing? Just because of that? I know why you say what you did, I just feel that ‘we’ shouldn’t be dictated to by fear about what ‘they’ might take from it.

Though, point taken about saying this is a leftist website. For me, leftist is a term I equate with open and positive things (like Lucy James’ excelent opening post for the ‘What Muslim Women Want’ thread). Maybe I shouldn’t call that leftist, but call it progressive or something along those lines.

As to you mentioning ”the current climate” I think I disagree. I’ve already said that I think that Riz MC overdoes it in that song ‘Sour Times’. In my opinion these are good times … even taking into consideration the BNP getting two Euro MPs elected. I just have to look at my school going niece and her friends to see that. They are from every background and for them this multi-cultural society is just everyday normality.

When I said that I don’t think we should ignore the reactionary right (the likes of Migration Watch and Jon Gaunt and the Daily Mail) I say that because I think their arguments should be tackled head on in the same way that those questions to the BNP took them head on. I think it’s easier with the BNP because they are so extreme, but the Daily Mail is far more entrenched in our society, and the views of Jon Gaunt are the ones that I am mostly likely to hear echoed in the canteen at work.

I’m off to Dublin next week, and I will definitely be going out to this part of West Dublin to see how things are there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUUD7MqxmxE
There are all kinds of racist, anti-immigration points that could be made about this situation, and not all of them are easy to counter.
(And this Irish news report was made before the Irish economy went into major recession).

That’s why I said that the right ”can have a point” (from their point of view).
I’m sure a large segment of Irish society might say that they should be careful of opening up the country to immigration too much.
And that (maybe even) that things went to fast in that area already. I’m sure I’ll hear some comments like that, (as I’m sure to be asking) but I won’t want to be thinking that anyone who says something less than ‘PC’ is automatically a facist or something.
It is quite a difficult situation.

Though I like to read your work Sunny very much, there seems to be something unexplainable towards your liking of id politics, and nobody should want to take that away from you, but is this not some kind of nostalgia? We don’t like aristocrats or BNP supporters appealing to id politics, so who should? And don’t ask Joe Orton’s alter ego #89, 92, 94, 96, 97!!

I accept that people feel part of groups. Fair enough. What I want to avoid is where people become defined by one group. Your factory worker will in part be moulded by his work environment, but it doesn’t mean he will have the smae views as everyone else in his workplace. He may be a hardline Christian and vote on abortion and marriage. He may have a grudge against his union and so vote Tory. He may vote communist because he considers Labour too business friendly.

* like Ulster and the Tamil zones of Sri Lanka

If Edna had a teaching job at KFMMC in Dhahran then the androgenous s/he would keep quiet about it

O Adnan
one might assume that one poster suffers from multiple personal disorders without necessarly taking meds but …

One of the joys that the anonymity and semi-anonymity of the ‘net confers …

The deranged posters on SOCIALIST UNITY called [me] a zionist and a nazi on the same day

We ZIONAZI watchers of PressTV and Russia Today and CCTV have a hard life on the ‘net – even being called libs and commies on some sites

[As I write PressTV says people in Byzantium are marching against the possibly-imagined threat of a military coup -- the marchers are both Islamists and Rightists]

TO SERIOUS MATTERS

Watch Koyanagi Yuki singing KIMIGAYO and then THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER on YouTube

Report

Check out jihadist-friendly KAVKAZ CENTER and consider what they have to say

Report

If you’re not you seem to be incredibly similar (bringing up links to the Al- Haiti case), Theodore Dallyrimple, and the switching to capitalised sub-headings to emphasise certain points. In fact, mention of the KSA lecturing job is the only thing you haven’t done as Edna.

Some would simply say
Buy good suitcases
Put your cash into 24 carat gold
read the papers
and
remember that JAPAN resisted all the boss-classes’ desperate and endless entreaties to import cheap labour from the Philippines and Indonesia and – retch – Pakistan and so has NONE at all of this shite to endure

and

Benazir in Opposition whimphred over the fate of the Muslim-Biharis in Bangladesh and how they ought to be allowed into Pakistan and then IN OFFICE she heard what people in Karach said and she said “NOTHING DOING”
be prepared to run when things get REAl bad

Jai, I wish we could leave the BNP out of it sometimes.

Unlikely, given the current climate, and also considering that open supporters of the BNP and their ideology keep turning up here on PP.

We’ve both read the thread started by Lucy James today called ”What Muslim women want”.

In that thread there was much of interest. I made a couple of comments myself.
In it it said that 40% of British guys of a Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin were marrying brides from South Asia

Is to react about that in a Daily Mail or Migration Watch fashion to be equated with Anjem Choudary?

Depends on the specific person and their motivations for “reacting” about that.

Of course I think the Daily Mail sucks. But it speaks for a wide segment of this society (and I hate to admit, to some of my family members too).

…..But I can see where some BNP (or Jeniffer Smith type) comments on this might come from, because of the demographic thing which the likes of Migration Watch raise, but then on Pickled Politics, Andrew Green just gets caricatured as ”rent-a-gob”.

I want to see Andrew Green’s arguments demolished. But it seems that the fascist BNP makes it so much easier to just glide past anything the reactionary right might say.
My point being: I don’t think we should totally ignore the reactionary right.

My own point is that you need to understand that identical arguments can be made about Al-Muhajiroun and similar groups. Not that I personally believe any credence should be given to anything Al-Muhajiroun, HuT, Bakri, Hamza etc say, but something for you to consider is that a white person who is supposedly opposed to the BNP but repeatedly states “they do have a point in some matters” along with stating “I can see where some BNP (or Jennifer Smith type) comments on this might come from” is identical to a Muslim person claiming to be opposed to Al-Muhajiroun but repeatedly stating “they do have a point in some matters” and “I can see where some Al-Muhajiroun (or Anjem Choudary type) comments on this might come from”, finishing off with “I don’t think we should totally ignore the reactionary Islamist extremists”.

This doesn’t mean that the issues involved shouldn’t be discussed — whether they’re the more negative aspects of immigration or, for example, torture & illegal foreign wars — but one should always consider whether it’s an appropriate time & place to raise such matters. Speaking objectively, from the semi-detached point of view of someone who is neither white nor Muslim, it would be as unwise for a white person to say “the BNP do have a point about x & y” on a comments thread which is being monitored and participated on by the BNP and its supporters and at a time when the BNP is supposedly making some headway in their agenda as it would be for a Muslim person to say “Al-Muhajiroun, HuT and Al-Qaeda do have a point about x & y” on a comments thread which is being monitored and participated on by Al-Muhajiroun and its supporters at a (hypothetical) time when the organisation is increasing its support base, even if in both cases the white and Muslim individuals concerned claim they do not actually support either of those organisations.

A person should always think about timing, context, whether it is appropriate and constructive for them to say something (especially if it’s something negative about another group), and the wider impact of doing so.

One more thing. I’ve noticed that you’ve repeatedly made references to this being a “leftist website” along with remarks about “the left” in relation to this blog’s authors and commenters and their attitudes/reactions to the BNP and other racist affiliates. With all due respect, your comments are inaccurate, because although this website’s general ethos can indeed be classified as “left” (or “centre-left”, as Sunny himself has said), a lot of regular commenters — particularly amongst the non-white and Jewish participants — cannot necessarily be classified as being “left-wing” in the traditional sense, either in terms of their political views as a whole or in terms of the fact that their overall stance on matters is combination of different areas of the political spectrum, depending on the specific scenario.

In the cases of the non-white and Jewish commenters in particular, their stance and attitudes towards the BNP and other white racists has nothing to do with “the left” and everything to do with being amongst the targets of the racists’ agenda. I think it’s extremely important to make this matter clear, so please take this on-board.

Jon Gaunt is horrible, but he’s miles away from Anjem Choudary.

Nick Griffin, however, is not. As I said earlier, the BNP, its supporters, its various international “allies”, and its various ideological and “intellectual” proponents should be treated in exactly the same way as Al-Muhajiroun, HuT, their supporters, their more openly violent co-ideologues such as Al-Qaeda, and their various ideological and “intellectual” proponents, “scholars” etc. Including the fact that the rantings of Syyed Qutb, similar extremist Islamist “thinkers”, and the more extreme Wahhabis have their counterparts in pseudo-intellectual advocates of white supremacy and “white nationalism” (case in point is American Renaissance, the New Century Foundation, and their various contributers, allies & supporters).