Multiculturalism | Thomas Sowell

 

Chronicles of Submission: Germany mute in response to Islamic calls for caliphate, sharia, genocide of Christians

 

Islamists in Germany openly call for Germany to become a Caliphate — a colony of Islam, a subject of the Islamic Empire — for Sharia law to be applied everywhere in Germany, for genociding the remaining Christians in Germany. Oh, and killing the Jews too, of course. Those that haven’t already fled.

German police do nothing. Because neither their weak bosses, nor the politicians allow them to do anything to stop the mayhem. To push back on a clear and present existential Islamic threat to the German Republic. Because… you know… tolerance! 

This is suicidal empathy: empathy for poor oppressed immigrants, for free speech until Islam, when suddenly free speech will be no more. Because you can’t say what you like about the ideology of Islam. That’s Blasphemy! 

The gorgeous kaleidoscope of diversity. The wonderful tapestry of multiculturalism….

Hence the increasing calls from many Germans for “Remigration”, aka deporting. 

I’ve followed Tal Oran for years. It’s his video above. Pretty knowledgable about all these issues. But a bit soft in Islam, IMO. Like, he says “I’ve got no problem with Islam”. I do. Its core ideology, the Trinity of Islam, and the behaviour of its votaries, are an affront to enlightenment values. At the deep, fundamental, core.

Don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like dogs!

 

Islamists in New York, in Britain, in Europe are coming after our dogs. Because in Islam they are “unclean”. 

Not satisfied with hating dogs in private while letting those of us who love our dogs get on with owning and loving them, the Islamists demand that we hew to their beliefs. Beliefs they hold because the “perfect man” — that murderous, genocidal, paedophilic ratbag, the “prophet” Muhammad — didn’t like dogs. That’s it. That’s their sole reason for this caniphobia. Which, btw, triggers my Islamophobia…

I’ve often posted stuff by Oren Cahanovitc, Israeli, owner of the tour company “travellingIsrael.com, knowledgeable and balanced commenter on the Middle East issues we know and hear all too much about.

I’ve got him in my list of Israel commenters. 

Here he is above talking of Islamists’ latest attack on the good life of the west. Attempting to turn the west into the hellholes they fled from. They fled from. And try to recreate. Go figure. 

Sigh…

By the way, Oren is correct that not all cultures are the same. Islam, for example, is more violent than most. Just as the Jain culture is far more peaceable than most. You’d think that that would be clear and obvious. But it’s not, especially on the Left, because of damage done to common sense by post-modernism, brought to us mainly by French and German philosophers. The likes of Foucault, Derrida and the Frankfurt School.

“Britain faces a number of civilisational-ending threats” | Paul Weston

	Paul Weston ⁦‪@PWestoff‬⁩ Britain faces a number of civilisational-ending threats. I list them in numerical order of severity: 5) Native Brits becoming an ethnic minority. 4) Islam. 3) State Institutions ALL siding with Islam & native submersion. 2) Politicians siding with Islam & native submersion.   4/9/2025, 5:14 pm
This is really, really sad for me. I feel I warned of this decades ago, but have only watched the slide to calamity in Britain gain pace like a thundering mudslide.

I agree with Paul Weston. Click above for the original post on X.

My comments: Item 5) is caused by item 4). Items 2) and  3) are the weird ones that need to be explained. Very few, if any other countries, today or in history, are complicit in their own demise. Roman Empire, maybe? Even then, I'm not so sure. 

I was just listening to news of a recent report from the University of Leicester analysing a survey of its residents about hate crimes. Leicester is now just 42% white English. That is, as we say in Ingsoc, it’s “majority minority".

Given these demographics and given that we've been assured that "Diversity is our Strength", that we’ve been reassured that Multiculturalism is Wonderful and Enriching, you'd expect relations to be rosy. They're not. Not according to the UoL report. 

Every race, at every age, and of every gender, reported being harassed by hate speech, usually by a different race. Given the university is left-leaning and would have been rather keen to find the exact opposite, it's revealing that things are so bad that even the UoL had to report them. And, I guess, some kudos to the UoL for reporting these stark and gloomy findings. 

This does not bode well for the rest of Britain, growing rapidly to the same demographics as Leicester.  

The  political class, the civil service and the media will all ignore this lesson, even as it’s clear, even as it's unambiguous and even as it's right on their doorstep.  

To some, claiming Britain faces “civilisation-ending threats” may seem wildly exaggerated. I get that. But it’s not. Not to anyone doing a deep dive on the ground and across the country. To see what’s really happening to every major English city, as a result of uncontrolled illegal immigration, from countries with very different value systems, at levels never seen in British history. Those values, to be clear, are from Islam, a whole-of-life ideology that is supremacist, homophobic, misogynist, xenophobic, intolerant of free speech and of all non-Islamic religions. All of what I have just said is true, incontrovertible and not in dispute, least of all by pious Muslims. None of it is good and all of it is worsening Weston’s items 5) to 2). 

If England becomes Islamic, its English nature is finished. Its English civilisation is finished. If you don’t believe that look at the Middle East countries pre and post Islamic conquest. Just take Iran as one example, from a vibrant multi-religious civilisation pre Islamic conquest to a repressive mullah-based theocracy post Islamic conquest. 

I’m gloomy and fear it’s already too late. I do hope, hope against hope, that I’m wrong. But so far in these pages since 2009, I’ve only been wrong by not being pessimistic enough. Everything was predicable and happened far quicker that we imagined. 

Still, I do hope I’m wrong. Still. 

=========================

ADDED: Do we not remember -- I fear we do not -- that it was arch-Europeanist, arch Leftist, Angela Merkel, who said, all the way back in 2010, after Germany's most recent terrorist outrage against her citizens, "Multiculturalism has failed"? Why do we forget that? Why does Europe forget that? Why does Multiculturalism everywhere still get praised? I mean, seriously, why? 

Mind you, this was the same woman who said, about the influx of refugees "Wir schaffen das" ("we can do this"). She made that comment in 2015, so I guess, to be fair, even Merkel forgot her own conclusion about multiculturalism just five years earlier. After all, if "multiculturalism had failed" why did she think that ever more of it would make it succeed? Sigh.. 

Roseanne Barr: Americans have no idea what’s happening in the Arabic world

Comedian Roseanne Barr talks with fellow YouTuber Tal Oran (The Travelling Clatt) and another guy. 

The other guy has recently visited Jerusalem for the first time. He gives his impressions. Which I agree with. Namely that Jerusalem is unique, magical, special. A kaleidoscope of humanity in all its ethnicities, religions, races and beliefs. All bumping up with each other and getting along. He finds Jerusalem very special. And so did we. 

I’ve lived, I've spent three years or more, in some of the world's major cities. Tokyo, Sydney, Canberra, Rome, New York, Berlin, Cape Town, London, Beijing, Shanghai and now Hong Kong. Even compared to these wonderful places, Jerusalem is most special. Really! And utterly so. 

I remember our own visit. The Nuns in full habit, Muslim women in chador, Muslim men in their Dishdasha and Kufi, Jewish men in their funny hats and curly side whiskers, and we atheists in our daggy shorts and flip-flops, all wandering through this wonderland of sights, sounds and smells, unhassled, unruffled. 

This city is unique. There is none approaches it in the world, let alone in the Arab world. 

Would you rather a country where this interaction and mutual rubbing along is possible? Or one in which all but Muslims are expelled, repressed? Would you rather, in short, an Israel; or a Syria? An Israel or an Iran?

There is not a single Arab country run as well, or even half as well, as Israel. I've been to many: Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, Lebanon, UAE, Qatar. Not just Arab, there’s Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia too. There's not a single Muslim country, of the 57 in the world, that is run well. That’s not just me saying that. The United Nations Human Development Report concludes the same: countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference countries all at the bottom of the rankings. (Added: some of the Gulf countries are run well, as in competently; they do not pass the democracy and freedom test, however). 

Islam is a curse. A curse on Muslims as much as we "infidels". Stating ths simple truth makes me a horrid right-winger, of course. Don’tcha know… all cultures are equal! Well yeah, but nah.  Some are more equal than others. And some are a whole lot worse.

A western culture which allows free speech, equal rights for all religions, for all minorities and for all beliefs, that gives equal and fair treatment, to women, to the LGBT community, such a culture is superior to one which is supremacist, homophobic, misogynist, censorious and intolerant of anyone not of their beliefs. 

In short: Western culture is good; Islamic culture is bad. If any Occasional Reader (OR) has a different view I’d be pleased to hear it. Especially pleased to hear how today’s Islam is even equal to today’s western culture, let alone better.

Have at it. 

https://youtu.be/3jVBcsXoriU?si=pMH8uKZFeoL8b407

PS: I forgot to say. Roseanne may be “just” a comedian.  She’s a YouTuber now. A commenter. She has clear-headed, sharp, insightful views. I enjoy her. 

"Only in Australia... Australia Day Special 2025" | Dr Peter Ridd

Click above for the video

Australia Day was yesterday. Still, better late than....

Dr Peter Ridd (above) is a heterodox marine biologist. Well-respected until he questioned the orthodoxy of "The Great Barrier Reef is being destroyed by Climate Change" narrative. This is not true, according to Dr Pete. Who goes out to the reef to take actual measurements. And who's shown, backed by independent data, that the reef is now in strong recovery and actually bigger than it was thirty years ago. 

You'd think that would be good news for folks. But, no, because it destroys the narrative of "everything to do with climate change is bad" and that "therefore we must Just Stop Oil" and all the rest of those horrid fossil fuels. 

In the video above, Dr Pete turns his attention to Australia Day, how it must be a day to celebrate, not to mourn. He says this of a country he's immigrated into, his adopted country. 

The late great leader of the Left, our Prime Minister Bob Hawke, said this, in relation to aboriginal land rights and the rights of all Australians: 

"In Australia there is no hierarchy of descent. There must be no privilege of origin" — Bob Hawke, PM, 1988

A  "privilege of origin" is what is demanded by the "renamers", those who want to rename Australia Day as "Invasion Day“. "Invaded" by the Europeans, you see. 

Australia has had waves of immigrants, starting with those we now call the "First Nations". Then the Anglo-British; then the Southern European; then the Asian. Is each one of these to pay obeisance to those before, the second to the First, the third to the second, and so on. Are we all to bow the knee to First?

No. Not if we don't want to return to the Stone Age. Which is the scientifically accurate description of the peoples on Terra Australis when Cook landed. 

I've always thought it rather odd that activist First Peoples Folks should boast about a "60,000-year culture". To which is added 10,000 years every couple of years or so. So that some elders now claim an aboriginal culture of 250,000 years! Dr Pete says this shows "how patient" the First Peoples are [heh]. All that time and you didn't manage to break out of the Stone Age to the Copper Age? To the Bronze Age? From the Bronze to the Iron? Weird thing to boast about. 

Listen to what our wonderful parliamentarian, Jacinta Nampijimpa Price has to say about this. To give due weight and respect to both the indigenous and the early Europeans, she being a part of both. 

Jacinta with her parents

There are plenty, plenty, plenty of aboriginal heritage folks who share Jacinta's views. People like the elder-leader Warren Mundine and the journo Stan Grant. Just that they are not as loud as the minority of "Renamers", the "hate-everything-about-Australia" crowd. Those like Lidia Thorpe, who call for war between aboriginals and the rest of Australians. 

No. I join Peter and Jacinta and Warren and Stan in rejecting this minority, these violent anti-Australia radicals. As Australians of all descent did in voting "NO" to the "Voice" referendum in October 2023.

And who support Australia Day, as the day to celebrate the achievements of a nation for all the peoples on this great, red land, irrespective of origin. 

=======================

ADDED: at the government's own flag-raising ceremony yesterday, things were very Woke! The Australian flag wasn't even the main one of three. That was the aboriginal flag.... 😒

Eye witness to Muslim gang-grooming young English girls | Lily Moo

 

Click above for the video

Listen to the brave Lily Moo, an Iranian, brought up in the UK, who went to school in Birmingham, at a school with 92% Muslim students, and hear what happened. 

How the Muslim boys are taught that a non-Muslim English girl -- or even one of Iranian heritage like her -- who is not Muslim, who is not covered head to toe in a Burka-sack is "asking for it", how she deserves what she gets. How she's fair game. And how the English authorities go along with this. For fear of being labelled "Islamophobes". Or racist. Or with a desire to be seen as "culturally sensitive". 

The police, the social services, the Councils, the politicians, all let these abused girls down. Instead of arresting the men and boys, they arrested the girls. They charged them with "upsetting the peace", with "false accusations". They demonised these young girls.  They betrayed the real innocents of this horror. Shame. On. Every. One. Of. Them. 

All because... "Diversity is our Strength". Islam is a "Religion of Peace". We must respect all cultures. 

This is vile. Vile, vile, vile, atrocious, horrid and vile. It led the presenter Martin Daubney to tears. 

There are other brave Iranians in the UK, that speak out against Islam and Islamisation. Like Mahyar Tousi who I've followed for years. Definitely worth a follow. Brave man. Again, non-Muslim. 

There are many like them still in Iran. Who would rise up against the Ayatollahs, against this vile religious bigotry of Islam, if only we gave them some support. The only times they asked for support, from Jimmy Carter in the early 1980s and from Barack Obama in 2009, they were rebuffed. 

I hope that changes this year. That people like Lily and Mahyar, in Iran, have the fortitude to rise up yet again, but that this time they're supported by a Trump administration. And Bibi, of course!

Long live the Iranian counter-revolution! Counter the hateful ideology of Islam. 

Dealing with gangs of Muslim rapists of young English girls... finally?

Click above for Peter Whittle vid

The British "grooming gangs" are better described as "rape gangs", for that it what they are. The limp word "Grooming" just doesn't cut it to describe an epidemic of widespread rape of English girls. Widely reported. Widely ignored. 

What it has been, for over 20 years, and ignored for over 20 years, is the systematic abuse and rape of young English girls, by gangs of mostly Pakistani Muslim men. 

It's these rape gangs that the British political class has studiously avoided prosecuting. Shamefully ignored by both Labor and Tories. They all felt -- we are asked to believe and accept -- that taking action might lead to "racial tensions" and imperil the big multicultural project started by Tony Blair.

Blair promised (perhaps "threatened" would do better) that he would "rub our noses" in multiculturalism. He certainly achieved that. 

He and his subsequent acolytes are bent on turning the United Kingdom into something other than the United Kingdom. Something other that the Britain of tradition, beloved for centuries, the land of history, of industry, of worldwide impact, of development and civilisation. This "green and pleasant land".  No, all this was to change, and if anything imperilled this change, this big project -- something as trivial, say, as the "different Islamic cultural norms" in treating young girls -- then it must be suppressed, in the name of the Big Project, of the Big Change, of Becoming Global, of Being Multicultural. 

A land of "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" was envisaged. Except the result has been widespread crime, pressure for Sharia law to be adopted by the world's oldest common law system, despoiling, degrading, criminalising city centres, throughout Britain. And of course rape gangs. Some reports are that as many as 50 British cities have active rape gangs. To this day. 

Repeat after me: "Diversity is our strength". 

The north of England is the epicentre of this wave of rape gangs -- most infamously in the heavily Muslim city of Rotherham -- "grooming" young English girls, as young as 10, to be raped by gangs of men, virtually all of them Pakistani Muslims, both immigrant and born in Britain. 

But because of the elites' fear of "racist backlash" by the great unwashed English public, they, the politicians, put a lid on it. They squashed it. They suppressed it. Politicians told the Police not to prosecute. Not to investigate, even. 

The main guy who brought all this to public attention two decades ago, Tommy Robinson, is now in jail, a classic case of killing the messenger. [I wrote sympathetically about Tommy myself, but mainly he was reviled and exiled, labelled a "far-right Islamophobe". You know, the usual treatment of those who dare to criticise the "Religion of Peace"]. 

Now, in the New Year, the whole issue gets a light shined on it by Elon Musk. Because he's a dad of 10 children and really, really, roooly cares about safety of children. Good on him. On X (née Twitter) his posts on the rape gangs are welcomed by all.  All, that is, who have been desperate to get the government to do something. Including all the young victims and their families. Who have been to now, at best ignored, at worst been jailed themselves for complaining. Shades of Sharia. 

Peter Whittle makes a passionate plea for action, in the vid above. 

Some other Vids on the subject: 

• "Elon Kicks off 2025 by Going Hard on Grooming Gangs" The Lotus Eaters 
• "Douglas Murray on grooming gangs, Tommy Robinson and what’s wrong with Britain" The Spectator Americano 

"Ajami": an Israeli-Arab film | Thoughts on Cultural Relativity and Cultural Equivalence

The other day Kemi Badenoch of the U.K., said that not all cultures are equal. That is self-evidently true. However, she got attacked by legions of twitterati, who claimed the view was “racist”. Of course!

Her simple point: that there’s no equality between a culture which respects all people equally, is tolerant of all, respects all religions and ethnicities, on the one hand, and, on the other, a culture which suppresses women, gays, minorities, and all religions other than the dominant one. Guess which culture is which here! 

Bur the BBC can’t have it. All cultures are equal! 

Ten years ago I wrote a mini essay, which relates to this: 

"Hamas are fundamentalist Islamists" | SK Tedeschi

There is not a single word incorrect in this

Hamas are fundamentalist Islamists. They do not want to "free" anyone or anything. They want to kill Jews, homosexuals and political opponents and replace a multicultural democracy with theocratic dictatorship that wants radical Islam to rule the earth.

Fatima the ingrate

Fatima Payman Senator for WA, above.
Peta Cradling:“Should Australia be on the side of an apocalyptic
death cult Hamas, or a liberal democracy like Israel?"

“Fatima” = "The literal meaning of the name is one who abstains."

But in the case of Australia's new Labor Senator, Fatima Payman, it's “one crosses the floor”. 

[ADDED: and now resigned, or forced out, of the Labor Party, for that crossing].

That’s what Australian Labor Senator Fatima Payman did when the vote was on statehood for “Palestine”. 

The Labor Party view on this is that they will not vote for "Palestine statehood” at the United Nations. What you think of that policy is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the Labor Party of Australia requires that once the Caucus has made its decision on a policy, you must support that policy in any vote in the floor of parliament. That’s the way it’s been since 1901. 

That’s the way it’s been all along for anyone who signs up to be a member of the Labor Party. 

There’s not question about it, and if you don’t follow the policy you’re kicked out of the Party. 

But for our poor Fatima. She crossed the floor to vote with the Greens, to recognise the “state of Palestine” said she’d do so again, and was eventually evicted, per 123-year Labor Party policy. To which she cried “I’m the victim”, called on other Muslims to support her, which they duly did, demanding changes to Labor policy. 

Poor, poor Fatima.

What are we to make of this? 

Answer: there’s a rule in place. It’s clear. You may not like it. Too bad. If you break the rule you suffer the consequences. Suck it up. 

Her actions speak to a bigger issue: how Islam reacts with the societies that enters. We know from the way it’s done so all over the west that it does not just fit in. It demands special treatment; in the sorts of foods (Halal), in the laws they should follow (Sharia), in the clothes they should wear (Burkas and Hijabs), in the fasts they should observe, and then demand that schoolmates and work colleagues follow (Ramadan). 

Being influenced by a foreign values system would not be a problem if it were better. But it’s not. There’s not a single way in which Islam is a better system than what we have in the west. To be sans pork, sans alcohol, sans smiling faces, sans the rights to freely think and freely worship. All that is what is brought by the baleful strictures of Sharia, which are specifically called for by the increasing number of Muslims in our western countries. 

Fatima Payman came to Australia with her family in 2003 at 8-years old. 

Her family were political refugees first from Afghanistan to Pakistan then economic refugees from Pakistan to Australia. She was a refugee from a society, run by the Taliban, where women are forced to wear Burkas or Hijab, and are not allowed to work. In Australia, instead of revelling in the freedoms of the country her parents chose as their escape, she wears the exact clothing of the repression of Afghanistan. WTF? 

I call that being an ingrate. And stupid. Both for her sartorial choice. And for the choice to support the statehood of Hamas. Not only rewarding terrorism, but going against the United Nations requirements for a State: that it (1) have recognised borders, that it (2) have a recognised effective government and that it (3) be willing to live in peace with its neighbours. Gaza is none of these. Adding the West Bank adds nothing to the requirements. 

Yet to support a death cult that has explicitly genocidal intentions towards the jews, Fatima the abstainer “martyrs” herself. 

Done with you, Fatima. 

Peta Cradling at the video top, is a good analyst. She hits the main points, 100%. 

We don’t want sectarian political parties in Australia. That only leads to tribalism. But it seems that’s what Payman is about. Is that helpful? No. Does it add to the wonderful tapestry of our rich multicultural society? No. 

Does she try to get Australia involved in a war that we have zero influence on? Yes. Does that make that war something to divide Australians even more? Yes. 

Nothing good in the sectarian nature of Fatima’s crossing the floor. She’s talking to the newly-established Australian  “Muslim Party”. It’s pure religion. And pure not-good for Australia.

It is not a good for Australia to have religious-based political parties. 

It’s the culture, stupid!

From the US Census Bureau, 2016

Differences between the performance by various ethnicities in the US are down to differences in culture. 

How do we know this? By the very fact that there are such differences as between, at the top, Indian-Americans, and at the bottom African-Americans. And this is reinforced by what I’ve added in to the above chart: Nigerian Americans. That is, people who have come to America from Nigeria. They perform better than their African-American cousins and better than White-Americans. Nothing much but culture can explain that. 

Barack Obama tackled the problems with the prevailing Black American culture issue a while back. But he was hammered for it. Even he, Saint Barack. He gave up and turned back to the Main Narrative, the Acceptable Narrative, which is one of victimhood and racism. Pity. 

Greg Foreman, creator of the Black Conservative Perspective tackles it in his latest video, here. 

I remember seeing a graduation ceremony at a mixed race high school. When kids from non-Black groups got a prize, everyone cheered and clapped. When a Black American kid got a prize, they were booed by their classmates. 

Someone once described the difference in cultures as: some cultures are like a hot air balloon and pull people up (thinking Asian). Some cultures are like a brick and hold you down (thinkingr Black American). Greg talks of Black Americans who are mocked if they speak “normal”, ie, not of the hood, with normal grammar and accent. He decries this. Rightly.

He also has a hard go at the rapping community. Rightly, I think. Surely there’s a connection between rapping murder and the high murder rate in the Black community. And rapping the fun of shoplifting, and the looting that goes on every time there’s a demo against a Black kid killed by a white police person. 

“Scientists say Chinese culture a million years old” | SCMP

"A million years old"! 

All my life the age of Australian Aboriginal culture has been pushed back, now maybe 60,000 years old. It is, we are constantly assured, "the world's oldest culture".

Well… no. Even if we accept that the age of aboriginal culture is being pushed further and further back, Chinese culture is nearly twenty times longer.

That's by actual digging into the loess soils of the Yellow River basin, finding actual physical evidence, not just carbon-dated hand prints inside caves.

Note also the new and complex tools Chinese populations had even a million years ago. 

ADDED: I don't mean the throw shade on aboriginal culture. But I do wish we'd stop harping on how old and ancient it is. That strikes me as condescending. At best. Well meaning, perhaps; condescending, still.

“To understand Xi Jinping, it helps to be steeped in the classics“ | The Economist

An Occasional Reader sent me an article in The Economist -- “To understand Xi Jinping, it helps to be steeped in the classics“ -- asking for comment. The link needs subscription so I’ll also copy the article below the fold with thanks to The Economist.

I’ll just make a couple of quick comments:

“Guozhidazhe”, 国之大者, or “national priorities” in the subhead of the article says “China’s leader has invented a phrase” but it seems that it’s been around for a while, just that Xi Jinping has given it a bit of a kick along in the last few years, as Bill Bishop explains here. For sure it's not a particularly memorable phrase, and the reason it’s being parroted by CCP apparatchiks throughout China speaks only to the extent of subservience to the leader.

Mao Zedong was also keen on Chinese classical poetry and quoted it often. He was rather more horrid than Xi, killed tens of millions more with his Great Leap Forward and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. But he was a better calligrapher! And a better poet! And quoted more fluently from the classics!

This classics quotation frenzy in China is probably part of China’s push for more soft power. Just today, the South China Morning Post has a major piece: "China mounts cultural offensive to win ‘war of narratives’ against US. Will other countries be swayed?”. To which I’d say: “NO”. 

It doesn’t matter if you call together 10,000 folks -- as described in the SCMP article -- to “explain the charm of China, Chinese culture and Chinese civilisation” if people are not attracted to them. 

The reason people were attracted to the soft power of the West, starting around the fifties, was that they loved the output: the movies, the rock and roll, the rap, the grunge, the art, the miniskirt.... 

A measure of whether China has any chance to improve its soft power is their Cable TV station CGTN. It’s antiquated. Their presenters, attractive, but plastered with make up, like adults kewpie dolls. To fix CGTN would be easy. But because they have a “we must do everything ourselves” attitude, their presenters have accents and poor grammar. Russia's RT cable is much better. If China can’t get it’s own CGTN looking a bit slicker and snappier, they have no hope of improving their soft power elsewhere. No amount of chanting Xi Jinping’s “national priorities” -- the Guozhidazhe -- will cut it.

ADDED: Ten years ago, I wrote about Xi Jinping’s promotion of a thing called Document 9, which was/is a very anti-western pro-authoritarian screed. Pushed to the cadres, the apparatchiks, as is the Guozhidazhe now. 

The article, “To understand Xi Jinping, it helps to be steeped in the classics“ click Read more>>

The Briton in Beijing who made Mao suits fashionable again, and his 25-year journey from backpacker to TV personality | SCMP

Artwork by Dominic Johnson-Hill

I was looking for something else — the "Moonlight Cult" (月光 族)— when I came across this cute story from 2018. It's about the Beijing-based British fashion entrepreneur Dominic Johnson-Hill who's been living in Beijing since 1993. That makes him kind of from my era there, though I was earlier still, arriving at the Peking Languages Institute, as it was then known, in 1976.

It's a fun little story. Like him, way back, I was also trotted out from time to time, the performing bear, the Mandarin-speaking foreigner, to the media or to give a Chinese speech at a conference. That's my humblebrag. (Though is it a humblebrag if you say it is?)

Today, as Dominic says, they're a dime a dozen Mandarin-speaking foreigners, all of them young. Sigh… I guess I ought be thankful there was less competition in those days.

Also like me. Dominic loves Chinese culture and arts and Chinese people. He's careful — very careful — to steer clear of politics. Even mentioning the "X-factor" can get you in trouble. And Beijing-based mates who ring me here in Hong Kong are very careful, assume they're being listened to. 

I must ask my Beijing-resident mates if they know this laowai.

Snip:

Johnson-Hill adds: "Chinese can be conservative when it comes to family values, education and work ethic. But when it comes to fashion, they are very daring. You see a guy in his forties walking past, wearing a bright shell suit, bright hat and ridiculous sneakers. Something may be too bold for Western audiences, but in China, they love it." Read On…

Bret Weinstein talks to Tristan Harris: all about Social Media and unintended consequences

 

Click on screenshot for vid. Settle in: nearly two hours

Tristan Harris was in "The Social Dilemma". Which is all about what they call here the "Cultural Derangement Syndrome". Aka "Fracturing Reality". This is serious stuff and dangerous to our existence. So they say. That Facebook and Twitter, in particular, have led to erosion of our shared realitiy.

This is most surely worth a listen and ponder. What to do about it? Their suggestions about Global Solutions is going to cause angst amongst many. But clearly something needs be done about the unintended consequences of the growth of social media. 

Listen on....

Australia the platypus

Australia, the flying platypus

That hoary old Malaysian racist Mahathir is at it again. Here he is speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald:

"Whatever white Australians might think of it, the fact is geographically they are more in the Asian region than in Europe. They can try and sustain their culture, their language, but the inflow of Asians into Australia will certainly change the character and distribution of population in Australia. And in the future, they are going to be more Asian than European."

Now that all seems fine and dandy (or not, as you will), but it strikes me as racist. To suggest that the thing that determines how and what you are is the continent you come from - and the implied ethnicity - not the content and character of the country you go to. Emigrants to Australia tend to buy in to the culture, to the ways and means of Australia. That sure seems to me to be the case with all of the folks of Asian background living in Australia that I know.

And when I lived in China I wore Chinese clothes, spoke the language and started becoming Chinese. If I’d stayed for a generation I’d have been more Chinese than Australian, no doubt, kids brought up there would be Chinese not “white Australian”, which is what makes the Mahathir comment racist. (He’s also a shocking anti-Semite, but that’s another thing).

And look at this Asianness he talks about from the perspective here in Hong Kong. Where young migrant-age demonstrators, who are ethnically Chinese, identify not as Chinese, but as Hongkongers and the values they aspire to are the rule of law, universal suffrage, freedoms of speech, of press, of religion and so on. They fly the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack (not that there’s nothing wrong with that). Not what Mahathir would take for “Asian” I imagine.

So I agree with Peter Hartcher: in Australia, with a population increasingly coming from the continent of Asia, and becoming part of Australia’s multicultural melting pot, we are an odd, unique hybrid, like the platypus.

…the metaphor for Australia today, prosperous and multicultural and enjoying the best of all possible worlds, is …the platypus. A unique creature, with features of a mammal and a bird, combining features of each, and perfectly adapted to its ecology.

Does Hong Kong’s dual culture equip it to fulfil its potential? ASIAN VALUES

I’m posting this cause it’s about Asian Values, specifically Hong Kong’s so called “dual culture”, the communitarian Chinese and the individualistic West.
TBF, I haven’t yet read it closely, but I’m posting and bookmarking for the record, part of research for the “book” I’m struggling along with...

A Visit to Islamic England

Luton, 30 miles north of London.

A Visit to Islamic England
Have been to some of these places in the UK which are heavily Islamic.  And they do look just like the photo above.  And feel as described by Andy Ngo, who is a visitor from the US, where he edits the online (left of centre) magazine Quillette.
I make this point: that if one is concerned about this, as opposed to celebrating it as a part of the warp and weft of a vibrant multicultural society, one is not racist. If the veils and clothing were those of Hindus or Buddhists, or Jains -- which do look rather similar -- there would be nothing like the concern. Because the concern is simply and precisely driven by the ideology of Islam, not clothing or skin colour.
Andy Ngo describes here how the areas are "alcohol restricted".  How women are excluded from cafes -- and others report that women are spat and cursed at if they do try to enter.  Mosques have men in the front, women entering at the rear, past rubbish skips.  Do we really think that these cultural norms are adding to the fabric of our tolerant multicultural society?
Not to mention that these areas have become anything but multicultural themselves.  White fright means they're now monocultures. Not Asian monocultures; but Islamic monocultures.
And not to mention that the folks promoting this "diversity" never live in the Lutons and Tower Hamlets of the world.  They are middle-class urbanites.  Londonites and the like. The ones to suffer the influx of this intolerant and misogynist monoculture are the poor working folks of Luton and Tower Hamlets.
Well done U.K....

The secret life of Thailand’s ladyboys from Muslim majority southern provinces | SCMP

Ardulmalik Maskul talks of her difficulties in Pattani in Islamic south Thailand in the SCMP

"In Pattani I can't dress like this," says Maskul, gesturing at her tightfitting navy-blue dress with a plunging neckline and a hemline that sits well above the knees. She's in a Bangkok shopping centre and no one pays her any attention.

"If I did this at home, people would shout insults at me. They might attack me." 

Ladyboys: safe and accepted in North Thailand (Buddhist)

Ladyboys: unsafe and not accepted in South Thailand (Muslim). 

Note that these are not wild and wacky Muslim extremists, in South Thailand. They're not the so-called "tiny minority" of Muslims who have "hijacked" the "religion of peace". These are run-of-the-mill Muslims in one of the most tolerant countries on earth. 

Yet there are groups of LGBT who support Islam. Like "LGBT against Islamophobia" in the U.K. 

Suicidal. Even if they are naive and well meaning. 

Print version headline: "The prisoners of gender"