El-Fattah's case is indeed the perfect encapsulation of our pathological governing class. Just bottomless stupidity. I'll keep an eye out for his next emergence into the public eye, no doubt at the head of an activist NGO successfully campaigning against British government policy
The most depressing thing about El-Fattah is that no one, not civil servants, spin doctors, celebrity PR advisors, opposition parties etc seems to do 5 minutes of due diligence.
Similar with Minnesota fraud, auditors, DOGE, Republican party operatives, Harris veep committee etc all seemed to have missed the story.
There is also the problem that the Civil Service (and no doubt the Minnesota equivalent) has been infiltrated by a demographic many members of which have their fundamental loyalties to enemies of the West.
"That’s the reason why, unlike every comp, private schools don’t resemble Category C prisons and are able to organise lots of fun activities."
My sister is an on-call teacher for the Region of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. She has also found schools to be quite anarchic and unmanageable (although it varies from place to place). It's a consequence of a "consequences not punishment" attitude held by a lot of educationists.
In some sense, there is a slight similarity between El-Fattah and Mamdani: both are children of privileged, highly educated Third World elites who benefited from the self-inflicted civilizational amnesia that has affected the Anglosphere over the past few decades. This would hardly occur anywhere else.
I’m looking forward to reading your review of Driss Ghali’s book, though I remain somewhat sceptical. I should say that while I deeply detest anti-Western and anti-white intellectuals and academics, I am also cautious when it comes to ex-Muslims, self-hating Arabs, etc. Who spend a lifetime telling a particular Western audience about how awful Islam is, or about the “true history of the Middle East.”
I understand that many of these people are deeply traumatized, and I do sympathize with them. However, I hate it when they style themselves as all-knowing experts on Islam or the Middle East, while -for the most part- spewing nonsense, bigotry, and ignorance.
Now, I don’t know much about Driss Ghali, hence my curiousity.
He's not very critical of Islam in particular (I'll have to check my notes), he's more defending France's record in Africa. He's actually very critical of just that type you describe, in particular upper middle class Morrocans and Algerians who are excluded by the system there and so make a living in France attacking the French.
"There isn't enough Stalinism in this country. I say we need two Stalins, no fifty Stalins! Congratulations, you found a way to criticize the Soviet Union and totally get away with it. Who knows you might even get that cushy professorship!"
Quote: "Emma, from San Francisco, goes next. She is already crying. “I’m here because I’m a racist. I’m here because my body has a trauma response to my own whiteness and other people’s whiteness.”
For very similar reasons to those given by Iain Mansfield (thanks for the tip) for over-privileging selected minorities. We have similarly over-privileged the environment and those at (often minimal) risk of suffering an industrial accident.
Often it's not the environment that over-privileged but rather existing property owners who will pull every legal and political trick in the book to stave off new development. At least that's the way it is in the US.
Thanks for this Ed. I loved the LKY - basically reading about the creation of a country while observing his skill in relationships and diplomacy. You get to see the thinking and the physical results. A bit like Delia Smith but for island city states.
This Anglosphere stuff could almost have a shelf, not in Waterstones obviously, but after Hackett-Fisher and Macfarlane etc I'd love more recommendations on this topic, especially when it turns out that broader historical strokes tend to be more cartoon than not.
It's such a great book, and as someone pointed out recently, really could be made a biopic. Everything seemed lost and hopeless, but they never gave up.
The final few chapters in retrospect even more interesting than when it was published, in that PR China clearly modelled itself on Singapore to some extent, and clearly very successfully.
El-Fattah's case is indeed the perfect encapsulation of our pathological governing class. Just bottomless stupidity. I'll keep an eye out for his next emergence into the public eye, no doubt at the head of an activist NGO successfully campaigning against British government policy
He will have a column in The Guardian too.
The most depressing thing about El-Fattah is that no one, not civil servants, spin doctors, celebrity PR advisors, opposition parties etc seems to do 5 minutes of due diligence.
Similar with Minnesota fraud, auditors, DOGE, Republican party operatives, Harris veep committee etc all seemed to have missed the story.
There is also the problem that the Civil Service (and no doubt the Minnesota equivalent) has been infiltrated by a demographic many members of which have their fundamental loyalties to enemies of the West.
"That’s the reason why, unlike every comp, private schools don’t resemble Category C prisons and are able to organise lots of fun activities."
My sister is an on-call teacher for the Region of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. She has also found schools to be quite anarchic and unmanageable (although it varies from place to place). It's a consequence of a "consequences not punishment" attitude held by a lot of educationists.
By the way, Happy New Year!
In some sense, there is a slight similarity between El-Fattah and Mamdani: both are children of privileged, highly educated Third World elites who benefited from the self-inflicted civilizational amnesia that has affected the Anglosphere over the past few decades. This would hardly occur anywhere else.
I’m looking forward to reading your review of Driss Ghali’s book, though I remain somewhat sceptical. I should say that while I deeply detest anti-Western and anti-white intellectuals and academics, I am also cautious when it comes to ex-Muslims, self-hating Arabs, etc. Who spend a lifetime telling a particular Western audience about how awful Islam is, or about the “true history of the Middle East.”
I understand that many of these people are deeply traumatized, and I do sympathize with them. However, I hate it when they style themselves as all-knowing experts on Islam or the Middle East, while -for the most part- spewing nonsense, bigotry, and ignorance.
Now, I don’t know much about Driss Ghali, hence my curiousity.
He's not very critical of Islam in particular (I'll have to check my notes), he's more defending France's record in Africa. He's actually very critical of just that type you describe, in particular upper middle class Morrocans and Algerians who are excluded by the system there and so make a living in France attacking the French.
"There isn't enough Stalinism in this country. I say we need two Stalins, no fifty Stalins! Congratulations, you found a way to criticize the Soviet Union and totally get away with it. Who knows you might even get that cushy professorship!"
Thank you for the clarification, Ed. He’s spot-on in criticizing those parasites.
Quote: "Emma, from San Francisco, goes next. She is already crying. “I’m here because I’m a racist. I’m here because my body has a trauma response to my own whiteness and other people’s whiteness.”
It's a cult. This is cultish behavior.
"Needs-based society" - surely just another way of saying "communist"?
Why can't we build anything any more?
For very similar reasons to those given by Iain Mansfield (thanks for the tip) for over-privileging selected minorities. We have similarly over-privileged the environment and those at (often minimal) risk of suffering an industrial accident.
Often it's not the environment that over-privileged but rather existing property owners who will pull every legal and political trick in the book to stave off new development. At least that's the way it is in the US.
Thanks for this Ed. I loved the LKY - basically reading about the creation of a country while observing his skill in relationships and diplomacy. You get to see the thinking and the physical results. A bit like Delia Smith but for island city states.
This Anglosphere stuff could almost have a shelf, not in Waterstones obviously, but after Hackett-Fisher and Macfarlane etc I'd love more recommendations on this topic, especially when it turns out that broader historical strokes tend to be more cartoon than not.
It's such a great book, and as someone pointed out recently, really could be made a biopic. Everything seemed lost and hopeless, but they never gave up.
The final few chapters in retrospect even more interesting than when it was published, in that PR China clearly modelled itself on Singapore to some extent, and clearly very successfully.