Beware the Jabberwock, my son, the jaws that bite, the claws that catch. Beware the Jub-Jub bird and shun the frumious bandersnatch.
There's really no shortage of people. If you measure success by how many DNA copies a species comprises, then homo sapiens has been staggeringly successful. Before the Agricultural Revolution, about 10,000 years ago, it is estimated that the hunter gatherer human population of the Earth was 6 to 10 million individuals. The United Nations tell us that the world population reached 8 billion on November 15, 2022. At 11.46 am on the 25th February 2024, it was 8,093,550,705. There's a world population clock you can have a look at here: World Population Clock: 8.1 Billion People (LIVE, 2024) - Worldometer (worldometers.info). The number goes up faster than you can follow. The United Nations estimate that the world population will reach 10 billion in 2059.
So how can demographers assure us that birth rates are falling so catastrophically that the human race is facing an existential crisis?
Because they are looking through a Eurocentric lens. For a stable population, each woman needs to have 2.1 children. Any less and the population falls. So, until the transitional period is over and the population stabilises at a lower level, there will be more old people than young ones, paying less tax to maintain the services that society requires. In Italy, the birth rate is 1.24, in France 1.8, the UK 1.5, (but Scotland is 1.37). Widen the lens to include what we call the West, and we see the U.S. birth rate per woman is 1.7.
Women in the Middle East and Africa are doing the heavy lifting on keeping the population clock ticking merrily upwards: in the Middle East it seems that women have three babies each, in Chad and Mali they have six apiece and in Nigeria five each.
Received wisdom has it that women in the west are not doing their bit because they prefer the benefits of childlessness: more money, so better food, housing, clothes, material goods; better advancement in careers, higher status - and who wouldn't, if you have the luxury of choice? A choice given by efficient birth control backed up by abortion. Others blame the prolonged adolescence of western culture - only in their thirties do people stop travelling, studying, games playing, and buckle down to the business of creating the next generation. And by then, of course, fertility has declined to the point that medical intervention is often required. We should start saying: Teenage Pregnancy? That's a good thing.
A factor that dares not say its name, however, could be this:
Or this:
Or this:
The BBC's take on this work by Kim Petras is: "Titled Slut Pop Miami, it's an outrageous, sex-positive, club-ready tribute to the joys of carnal pleasure."
The lyrics extol a practice that is unlikely to lead to conception, and impossibly so when perpetrated by one man upon another man dressed up as a woman.
Kim Petras and Sam Smith - two biological blokes at the Grammy Awards, 2023.
What with all this non-reproductive sexual activity, and falling birth-rates in the West, you would expect that the small boats filled with illegal immigrants, especially if one or two of them included fertile females, would be welcomed with open arms by the osteoporotic nations. But no! It turns out that these geriatric countries are more bothered about the loss of their existing cultures than about welcoming foreigners who are willing and able to breed, will pay taxes and might also possibly adopt some of the host culture. In December, Elon Musk was invited to Italy by prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, to discuss ending Italy's "demographic winter". He said: "Italy is the people of Italy ....make more Italians to save Italy's culture."
And that, ladies, gentlemen and ishmaelite scholars, is at the heart of what has been happening in London this last week. Nope, not Italy- that's just an example.
"Any large-scale human co-operation - whether a modern state, a mediaeval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe - is rooted in common myths that exist only in people's collective imagination.... None of these things exist outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings." Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari.
And these stories - myths, narratives, can, and do, change. The story that has held the peepul of Britain together in a collective culture is changing faster than we are comfortable with. And when it does, violence usually ensues.
Back when we were foragers, before the Agrarian Revolution, roving small bands of people would make war on other small bands, over issues of food, the territory over which you could roam to find your food, and possession of fertile females. It was immediate, real and touchable. Then the idea, or story, happened, cooked up in our human big brains, unifying myths, or culture. And now we go to war over ideas. Poor old Mr. Northern Speaker found himself in the middle of several of these competing certainties last week.
He has apologised - quite profusely. But I have seldom heard such a belligerent apology.
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| Here they are, all upset, storming out. |
For our non UK readers, and those who haven't been paying much attention (and, as ever, who can blame you?), here's what happened.
Three times in each Parliamentary session, the SNP are allowed an Opposition Day, in which they pick the topic for debate that day. On Wednesday, they laid down a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Israeli/Gaza conflict. Labour put down an amendment to the SNP motion, calling for an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire", providing that both sides laid down their weapons and that all the Israeli hostages were released, and then the Conservative Government tabled its own amendment, which leaves out calls for an immediate ceasefire and instead says that parliament “supports moves towards a permanent sustainable ceasefire”.
It is the Speaker's job to decide if an amendment can be debated and voted upon, within the parliamentary convention that if a motion has been put forward by an opposition party, like the SNP, it cannot be amended by another opposition party, like Labour - only by the government. Despite this, Mr Northern Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, ruled that both the government and Labour's amendments to the SNP's motion could and would be voted on, claiming he wanted to give the House as many options as possible when debating such an emotive topic. Penny Mordaunt, sword bearer, then pulled the Government amendment, saying the Conservatives would "play no further part" in proceedings in protest at Hoyle's actions. So Labour's amendment was passed without a vote, the Tories and SNP became very agitated and walked out.
Massive stramash ensued, and Hoyle made his belligerent apology, in which he claimed to be protecting the lives of MPs. How so? you may ask. There have been weekly protests in the streets of London, MPs have been threatened online and in their own homes to pressure them to take a pro-Palestinian line in the Israeli/Gaza conflict, and so we are invited to assume that Hoyle, in giving MPs the opportunity to express their support for Gaza, believed he was saving their lives. What? What, What, Whattitty What? Yes, sounds a bit tenuous to me, too. God knows what he was up to, really. The Conservatives, who we suspect believe themselves to be God (with a divine birth-right to rule this dis-United Kingdom), allege that he was Starmer's cat's paw, having been a Labour man before he was elevated to the Speaker's Chair and therefore shed all his political allegiances and became, by convention, a man without conviction.
and there's the cry from the streets, called in aid by Mr. Northern Speaker, in which we see the collision of national and supra-national myths.
Here's a few definitions:
Islamist: advocate or supporter of Islamic militancy or fundamentalism: "radical Islamists"
Islamic fundamentalism: a movement of Muslims who aim to return to the founding scriptures of Islam and live similarly to how the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his companions lived. It is defined as a puritanical, revivalist, and reform movement of Muslims.Islamic terrorism: terrorist acts with religious motivations carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists.
Anti-Semitism: hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people
Judaism: a religion characterised by belief in one creator God (male)
Islam: a religion characterised by belief in one creator God (male)
Christianity: a religion characterised by belief in one creator God (male)
Religion: a particular system of faith and worship. A narrative invented by humans.
Lobbying: to seek to influence a legislator on an issue. Does not legitimately include threats of violence and murder.
Flag: a piece of cloth or similar material, typically oblong or square, attachable by one edge to a pole or rope and used as the symbol or emblem of a country or institution or as a decoration during public festivities.
Of course, this conflict between narratives focused on the Gaza mess is dressed up in terms of faith, but, at bottom, is about territory and the concept of the nation state - which is another narrative.
Best of luck and be careful out there.
More sardonic wit, political satire and biting cynicism from mr ishmael can be found in the four-volume Call Me Ishmael oeuvre, collected and curated by editor mr verge.
Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.
Ishmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps :
please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.
Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr
Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux
https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4
At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.
With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.
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| A minister, an imam and a rabbi walk into a bar. The bartender looks at them and says, 'What is this, a joke?' |
15 comments:
Yep, the end of every empire looked just like now. Cooks/Chefs became celebrities and were much sought after, by the rich n famous. Perversions of every kind, be it drugs, sex or pain, both giving n receiving, were used to tempt and blackmail the weak of character. Minorities flattered n their every whim attended to. Religious leaders giving up on their God or gods, for the sake of appeasing the unGodly. And then the fear of mob rule from the uneducated masses, who for so long had been ignored, shunned and shit on, forced to pay in blood, sweat and time.
We’re going through changes at an ever quicker pace, ‘cause the great n the good, our betters, think they know what they’re doing, they have no vision of the consequences of their actions, they only see the now.
Revolutions take decades, centuries, to achieve the desired outcome, like the agricultural, industrial and now the computer/technical.
Mr Great Northern speaker wasn’t afraid of the rowdy crowd outside, that lot could’ve been crushed in minutes, by the Met’s finest gay, muscled, rainbow tattooed thugs, no, mr Great Northern speaker was ushering in a new parliamentary dictatorship, fuck you, fuck tradition and fuck the rules, WE will do as we please, there will be no questioning, no protesting OUR decisions, or they will be met with lethal force. The Praetorian Guard.
The Roman Empire fell to the gradual influx of barbarians to Rome, are we not seeing the same now in the west? Decadence, perversions and the willingness to accept them, while the barbarians are through the city gates, will be our downfall.
On the theme of the barbarians at the gate, if you haven't already read it, you'll enjoy this, mr inmate: https://readerslibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Garden-of-Time.pdf
If ever we needed time flowers, it is now.
Mary Whitehouse was right all along.
Thank you for the recommendation mrs I, thoroughly enjoyable. Of course we now have cabal of scum politicians who have no reverence, no gratitude for previous generations and certainly no appreciation of history. Oh for sure Boris or Mogg can recall all the great leaders, philosophers or battles of antiquity but, as I remember mr I recommending, back down the road awhile, Michael Wood, he spoke of the lives of ‘ordinary’ folk, their everyday lives and struggles and their suffering at the decisions of ‘great men’.
Yep, Mary Whitehouse, perhaps she was right.
It is hard to have prespective from here in Bandit Country. Not 300m from where I type, a traitor let William of Normandy cross the river and gain access to London. That'll be a thousand years of the same shit maybe even before I am dust. (It will have to be a v fair wind though.) Everybody thinks that everything lasts forever. The renewals and revolutions of our mongrel island race have been largely beneficial but we are angles and saxons and jutes and celts, the odd friesian. All of these folk are cold plain northern europeans. Our squabbles have been over the rules - Magna Carta, Cromwell, the Glorious. Even the rise of Labour was about equity rather than hatred. Not for us the hot-blooded wine drinking mayhem that the southern europeans know. My lad went to Belgium just a few days ago and remarked how they were just like us and how unlike the French. Well that will not save us now.
It won't save our baby paradise across the Pond either. I think that the US is in mre bother than we are. Europe is bust and broken. The EU (and Russia maybe too) collapse before us. In the US, they don't know yet how much trouble they're in. November 5th 2024. A date for the history books of the 22nd century.
I'm reading Sapiens by Dr. Yuval Noah Harari at the moment. An amazing work, charting the history of homo sapiens, examining the basic narratives of the world, and the biological and evolutionary basis of behaviours that we assume to be the product of rational thought. mr mongoose's comment reminded me of Yuval's chapter on Empire, its ubiquity throughout human history and its role in changing and homogenising culture - when the Empire fails, the countries within it do not revert to their pre-conquered role, culture, language and customs, because they have become something else. He gives the example of the Roman conquest of Numantia, in the conquered province of Iberia. Numantia rebelled against Roman rule, and was not brought back into the Roman Empire without much loss of life. Numantia became a symbol of Spanish independence, inspiring poets, artists, pilgrimages and comic books. Yet the Roman victory was so complete that Numantia's original celtic language was lost, everyone now speaking Spanish, a romance language derived from Latin; the predominant Spanish religion is Roman Catholicism and Spanish law derives from Roman law. And this is after almost two millenia since the collapse of the Roman Empire. The Romans also did a pretty thorough job on the parts of Britain that were brought into the Roman Empire, imposing language, political systems and religion. When they were done with us, we did not revert to the language and religion of the Iceni or the Trinovantes - indeed, the only way we know about these pre-Roman tribes is through the Roman geographer, Ptolemy. And then along came the Normans, their very name indicating their origins from the North men - the Vikings that had swept down to create their own Viking Empire.
And now, it seems, we are part of the American Empire, will we or nill we (willy nilly). But twas ever thus, as mr inmate said - the lives and deaths of the ordinary folk make no never mind in the doings of princes and warlords.
But the Americans, mrs i, the poor loves, are part of our empire. Lost before we even had one, they are more Englsh than we are.
Yuval Noah Harari, spokesman for the WEF, architect of the Great Reset, Build Back Better and Eugenisist supreme. He would rid the world of those ‘cold Northern Europeans’ given the opportunity, however, he must make do with breeding us out of existence, ‘cause whites are the majority, even though they’re not, an approx 1 in 8 of humanity. The troubling majority, maybe, ‘cause they work, pay taxes, build stuff, create civilisations, try to look after their old folks, pay pensions, benefits for the needy, save less civilised nations from themselves - well up until recently- gave the world the finest things in life, the English language, clean water, sewage treatment, cleanliness in hospitals, the list is never ending. But this fucker, Yuval, the second biggest cunt south of the north pole, second only to the Blair creature, would remove everything northern Europeans have given to the world, any books he has authored should be piled high with him on top and burned, an on TEEVEE, so’s all the world can watch, evil fuck.
Ah, mr mongoose, there is a tipping point in every parent/child relationship, where the child has to parent his ailing progenitors - the child becomes father to his father - and that's where we are with the Americans, god bless us all. They have a lot to complain about in our parentage of them. Look at the fuck up we made of their Deep South, the plantations owned by nasty ginger Scottish bastards, who imported African slaves to work them. Now, that didn't turn out well.
mr inmate, I'm reading Harari because he's on my reading list. He seems pretty inoffensive so far, but it is a 2011 text and I'm only on page 229 of 485 (notes and references extra). What do I need to read next to redress the balance?
It was a talk he gave at a WEF get together, for the great , the greater and the hangers on (politicians). He has no time for humans, they have ruined everything, especially those greedy Europeans who’ve raped and plundered wot wos not theirs, an anyway there’s far to many of ‘em, wanting food n stuff.
Perhaps I’m being harsh on the bloke, and he was just saying what he thought the audience wanted to hear.
I don't think that is fair at all, mrs i. The US risked everything while it was a toddler still. An almost modern civil war with proper weapons that said we won't tolerate slavery or fuck it we will all die. And they were not yet a hundred years old as a country. Yes, the Brits were the first to say that they would not tolerate it anywhere but the Yanks signed on as soon as they could reasonably do it.
Mr inmate's rant is v pertinent. The white people of the world have delivered vast amounts of what is good and have tried to spread that. In particular the retreat from empire of the Brits after they had spent the blood and treasure of that to stand against folk who throught it a good idea to erase jews, disabled people, gypsies, political opponents and so much more is something that should be quietly applauded and appreciated. Reparations? Go fuck yourself. Or better that, read a few history books.
Thank you, gentlemen, very helpful balance and gravity. We are part of the American Empire, though.
Ooh look, another £31m for protection, for parliamentary parasites. Mr Great Northern speaker ushers in another Fuck you plebs, just pay up, do as we say and don’t you dare fuckin complain, we have hate speech laws doncha know.
I'll be the first to say it: "WELL DONE GEORGE"
Yep, we’ll done George.
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