Lots of elections in 2024
TLDR News lists them all:
Scotland's choice
Borrell suggests a Palestinian state might be imposed on Israel
Josep Borrell, the EU's High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, has suggested a Palestinian state might be imposed on Israel:
Josep Borrell said on Friday that the only peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict included the creation of a Palestinian state, and he suggested this might need to “be imposed from the outside,” without Israel’s agreement.
“The actors are too opposed to be able to reach an agreement autonomously,” Borrell said. “If everyone is in favor of this solution, the international community will have to impose it.”
Opalo on the Ethiopia-Somaliland deal
(Background: Ethiopia is a landlocked country in the horn of Africa, which would like access to the sea. Somaliland is an unrecognised country with a coastline, and a border with Ethiopia. The two countries have proposed a deal where Ethiopia gets port access and Somaliland gets diplomatic recognition.)
Ken Opalo, who writes the very good An Africanist Perspective,
discusses diplomatic repercussions from the Ethiopia-Somaliland deal.
Kenya and UAE might support it:
Given its strategic location, Somaliland is geopolitically valuable to several countries that could quickly follow suit and recognize Hargeisa. Like Ethiopia, Kenya would likely not mind helping along a dismemberment of Somalia (see also here). The United Arab Emirates (UAE), whose DP World already runs the Berbera port, is also likely to strengthen bilateral ties with a formal recognition.
Somalia is opposed to what it sees as dismemberment of its country, and the Somalia government may want to talk tough in order not to be outflanked by their al-Shabaab opponents:
In addition, the levels of Somali nationalism ignited by the deal could play in the hands of extremist groups like Al-Shabaab out to cast the government as a weak sellout. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and his administration certainly do not want to be remembered as the people who lost yet another piece of “Greater Somalia.”
Egypt is against, because Ethiopia has built a dam that threatens Egypt's water supply:
Egypt, Ethiopia’s most potent rival in the region, signaled support for Somalia’s territorial integrity.
Somalia has few resources in terms of military power or diplomatic support:
Somalia has little diplomatic heft within the African Union, IGAD, or the EAC. Even worse, it lacks the military capacity to compel either Hargeisa or Addis Ababa to negotiate directly. It is true that several countries have expressed support for Somalia’s territorial integrity. However, talk is cheap. Unless the same countries are willing to go to mat to stop Ethiopia and Somaliland, the deal will most likely go through. After that, the “facts on the ground” will make it even harder for future reunification.
This last point is the most important. Somalia probably can't prevent the deal, and since it benefits both Ethiopia and Somaliland, it will probably happen. And once it has happened, Ethiopia and Somaliland will have bonds of common interest that will align them together diplomatically.
Why teenage girls are suffering mental health problems
Zinnia discusses why teenage girls are suffering an increase in mental health problems:
Feeling alienated from your body, disliking the male attention your body invites, secretly feeling a kind of thrill when your beauty benefits you, enjoying the power you hold over men: these are feelings girls commonly experience as they transition to womanhood.
In a healthy society, young girls eventually come to terms with these complex and somewhat contradictory feelings. This is not the case today. Today, young women are rewarded most for acting on their most pathological impulses. Platforms such as Instagram and OnlyFans incentivize some young women to profit from the male gaze to the detriment of their future well-being. On the other hand, for young women who feel alienated by their sexual desirability (or lack thereof), there exist a plethora of alternative online communities like FTM or pro-eating disorder spaces that offer young women refuge from the male gaze, while offering them emotional support and subcultural status.
And:
Why are young women today so deranged? Because no one is honest with them and they cannot be honest with themselves. Parents lie to you, teachers lie to you, friends lie to you, everyone lies to you. If anyone dares tell you the truth, they are ostracized. My teenage self could only find truth smuggled away in the dark recesses of obscure online communities; usually couched in layers of ironic (and sincere) bigotry. And while I did not enjoy the bigotry (at the time), I found value in engaging with the transgressive material I came across because I felt that it expressed truths otherwise unavailable to me. Today, truth lies within the domain of internet ghettos, siloed away from the rest of polite society. At best, what society tells you is entirely unhelpful: “You’re beautiful just the way you are.” At worst, what society tells you is entirely destructive: “If you feel alienated by your body, you should maybe consider a mastectomy.” I didn’t want to hear any of this and I didn’t need to hear any of this.
In truth, all societies are full of lies and bullshit (which lies vary, the fact that there are lies does not). This includes the society you live in, dear reader.
Sex is simultaneously the most and least important thing
As an example of how societies are full of bullshit, sex is simultaneously the most and least important thing:
Sex is simultaneously the most and least important thing. It’s so important that being forced to do (ie if the other breaches contract) it will traumatise you for life. It’s also so unimportant you can do it with complete strangers, and there’s nothing special about doing it for the first time
Basic Facts that Affect Fertility
There's been a lot of comment about declining fertility worldwide. Virginia Postrel gives some reasons:
(1) Women over 35 cannot easily and safely have babies.
(2) People build crucial human capital—including formal education, on-the-job skills, and professional networks and reputation—before the age of 35 and certainly before the age of 40. Men can devote these years to their careers and still easily and safely have children. Women cannot. They can only do so with the help of assisted reproductive technology, which is expensive, can be medically risky, and may not work.
(3) Some careers are “greedy,” to use economist Claudia Goldin’s term. Greedy jobs are distinct from jobs that require child care during predictable work hours. They demand long hours, on-call work schedules, or frequent travel. They do not easily accommodate the demands of family life, which has its own greedy demands. Greedy jobs are often the highest paid or most prestigious in a particular field, industry, or society. For couples raising children, it’s generally the case that only one partner can successfully pursue a greedy job. The other will either take time out of work altogether when children are young or pursue a less greedy career. If both partners wish to pursue greedy jobs, they will likely not have children.1 If a woman is pursuing a greedy job and her husband a regular one, kids are also less likely.
Is Britain ready for war?
The House of Commons Defence Select Committee says no. Excerpt:
When we asked each of the single service heads what shortfalls their Forces were carrying, all mentioned stockpiles as an area of significant (current) concern. The high rate of consumption of munitions in the war in Ukraine has exceeded the assumptions (and therefore the quantities held) by most Western forces. Estimates for the use of artillery rounds in Ukraine were 5,000 a day in February 2023 (equivalent to a smaller European country’s annual order in peacetime). Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman told us that “a very high priority is to crank up the industrial base so that we have got the stocks even just to sustain Ukraine in the current war, never mind to fill in the backlog that we have”.
Although all of the Chiefs had pointed to events in Ukraine as the catalyst for investment in stockpiles, General Lord Houghton and General Sir Nick Carter both told us that stockpiles had been reducing for a number of years before the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We have also heard concerns in previous inquiries from General Ben Hodges (who recounted how the British Army ran out of munitions 8 days into a 10-day US wargaming exercise in 2021) and General Sir Richard Barrons (who told us in April 2022 that he would be surprised if the UK had sufficient munitions to sustain high- intensity conflict for more than a week).
I will note here that there were shortages of artillery ammunition at the start of WW1 and WW2, so this is hardly a new phenomenon.
Gove's State of the Union report leaked
In 2020 Michael Gove produced a secret report on the threat of Scottish nationalism to the union. It has now leaked. Excerpt:
If the SNP secures a majority and the UK Government refuses a referendum outright, support for independence is likely to increase significantly. 35% of Scottish voters say that the UK Government refusing a referendum to a majority SNP administration would make them “much more likely” (22%) or “a little more likely” (13%) to vote Yes, compared to 19% who say it would make them less likely. This would harden the Yes vote (50% more likely) and push Don’t Knows (12% more likely) to vote Yes.
Google erases Europeans
Concerning Google's Gemini generative AI image creation software, David Rozado writes:
Joscha Bach recently posted on X his attempt for Google’s Gemini to generate portraits of physicist from the 17th century. The results were interesting for how much they reveal about prevailing normative values in contemporary Western societies.
After trying the prompt (“draw some portraits of 17th century physicists”) myself multiple times on Google’s Gemini, the portrait on the bottom right of the following figure is the closest output I've got to someone who somewhat resembles 17th century physicists Isaac Newton or Galileo Galilei.
Here's the image Rozado got:
Clearly Gemini has been ordered by its woke masters to erase European identity.
While Google have shut down Gemini due to the amount of derision it has received, it's inevitable that in the future some other woke-aligned US big tech company will discriminate against Europeans, libel them as a group or be racist against them in other ways. When this happens the EU should be ready for it and should fine them a few billion Euro. This will have the following results:
(1) the EU will be standing up for the interests of European which will have the internal effect of enhancing European identity, and the external effect of telling people the EU has to be taken seriously.
(2) If the company pay up, the EU will get some money
(3) If the company don't pay up, they won't be able to do business in the EU and that will give the EU an opportunity to produce home grown alternatives to its services (in the case of Google: gmail, Google maps, Google documents, etc)
Tory austerity kills 330,000 people
Tory policies have killed 330,000 people:
More than 330,000 excess deaths in Great Britain in recent years can be attributed to spending cuts to public services and benefits introduced by a UK government pursuing austerity policies, according to an academic study.
The authors of the study suggest additional deaths between 2012 and 2019 – prior to the Covid pandemic – reflect an increase in people dying prematurely after experiencing reduced income, ill-health, poor nutrition and housing, and social isolation.
I don't think I have ever lived under a worse government than this one. They are stupid, nasty, malicious, mendacious, incompetent and evil in equal measure. I am very much looking forward to them getting the kicking they so richly deserve at the upcoming election.
Roll on Scotland......leave the land of the dead!