‘England’s Last Gasp Of Empire’ By BEN JUDAH

An interesting worth reading article by Ben Judah in NYT. Disintegration of British empire started after WWII and will be completed by the separation of Scotland and Northern Ireland after BREXIT. Is this White population’s anxiety over losing their grip on unrivaled privilege that is driving this racial hatred in the West? If not confronted head on, is this the beginning of the unraveling of the Western Civilization? f.Sheikh   

LONDON — From Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II, England was an empire. No more.

Brexit has turned the twilight years of the reign of Elizabeth II into the final chapter in the history of Great Britain. What its partisans, celebrating with flag-waving in the street, tearfully called “Independence Day” will unravel the role that England has played since the 16th century as a great power, along with the City of London’s reign as a financial capital of the world.

After Elizabeth I ascended to the throne in 1558, her merchant-venturers began an imperial quest. By Elizabeth II’s birth, Britain’s empire spanned nearly a quarter of the globe.

Brexit’s fantasy of revived greatness — “taking back control” — will achieve the opposite. England’s wish to withdraw from its union with Europe appears now to have made inevitable Scotland’s eventual withdrawal from its union with England. It has also placed in doubt the status of Northern Ireland, where a majority also voted against leaving the European Union.

This misguided craving will turn Britain’s seat, created by Winston Churchill, on the United Nations Security Council into a rotten borough(as parliamentary constituencies that persisted despite low populations were known historically). The great powers will never allow this little England to exercise a veto right against their wishes.

Why did England choose this? The key is not sovereignty but a rejection of ethnic change.

“It’s not England anymore,” people told me as I traveled around the country covering the referendum. In Tonbridge and Grantham, in Romford and Witney, this is what I heard, hundreds of times: “We don’t recognize our country anymore.”

Middle England did not treat this as a referendum on European Union membership but as a plebiscite on one thing: “immigration.” For Middle Englanders, “immigrants” is also a synonym for nonwhite British. Identity, not austerity, motivated their vote to Leave.

At her coronation in 1953, Elizabeth II also became the reigning monarch of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The nonwhite population of Britain then was probably less than 20,000. Over 70 percent of British workers were manual laborers.

London was far from the cosmopolitan capital it has become. In 1931,less than 3 percent of Londoners were foreign-born; that was the historical norm for the city. For all London’s trade and commerce, historians believe it was essentially mono-ethnic as late as the 17th century.

Metropolitan elites often use the Irish and Jewish settlement in Britain from the mid-19th century to bolster a national story of Britain as an immigrant nation, but the history does not fit this narrative. We prefer to forget it, but Britain’s Irish communities suffered appalling levels of ethnic hate and communal segregation into the 1980s. Click here for full article.

Measuring The Backlash Against The Muslim Backlash

Did Trump and GOP inadvertently helped to improve Islam and Muslims’ image. Interesting article and polls in Politico shared by Azeem Farooki.

Despite heated campaign rhetoric and the Orlando shooting, new polls show that the American public’s views of both Islam and Muslims have become more favorable. Here’s why.By Shibley Telhami July 11, 2016

Something remarkable has happened in the middle of an American presidential campaign noted for its inflammatory rhetoric about Islam and Muslims, and marred by horrific mass violence perpetrated on American soil in the name of Islam: American public attitudes toward the Muslim people and the Muslim religion have not worsened—in fact they have become progressively more favorable, even after the Orlando shooting. That’s what two new polls show, one taken two weeks before Orlando, the other two weeks after, to be released at the Brookings Institution on Monday.

Comparing the results of three University of Maryland national polls—all fielded by Neilson Scarborough—taken in November 2015, in May 2016 and in June 2016 (after the June 12th Orlando shooting), the trends are surprising. Asked about their views of the Muslim people, respondents who expressed favorable views went from 53 percent in November 2015, to 58 percent in May 2015, to 62 percent in June 2016. At the same time, favorable views of Islam went from 37 percent, to 42 percent, to 44 percent over the same period—still under half, but with marked improvement over a period of seven months. (See the survey methodology here.)

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/measuring-the-backlash-against-the-muslim-backlash-214034#ixzz4E9S1D9s3
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posted by f.sheikh

Every One Deserves To Go Home

‘ America’s Killing Fields’ by Kathleen Parker

Horror. Shock. Disbelief. Numbness. Grief. Anger. And terrible sadness.

These fractured thoughts were all I could muster upon waking Friday to news of the ambush on Dallas police. They were still fresh in my mind from the night before when I’d turned in early, exhausted by the images of 32-year-old Philando Castile dying in Minnesota after a police officer shot him.

As we all know by now, Castile was African American and the officer was not. It started as a routine stop for a broken taillight and ended in what has become a routine shooting followed by a routine headline.

Black man shot by police officer. How many times must we read those words?

Just 24 hours earlier, another black man, Alton Sterling, 37, was shot to death by police while being restrained in Baton Rouge.

Like Sterling, Castile did have a gun. Castile also had a concealed-carry permit, which he apparently told the officer as soon as he was stopped. Why would someone tell a police officer he had a gun if he intended to use it?

Castile was reaching for his driver’s license and registration when the officer opened fire, says his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds.

Reynolds used her cellphone to film the aftermath of the shooting, careful to address the officer as “sir” and follow his instructions. Over and over I watched the video, trying to imagine being in that car, while at the same time feeling shame about watching a stranger who is mortally wounded.

Nothing is more intimate than death, which we all hope to face with dignity in the comforting presence of loved ones. Castile had no such luck. Instead, he was surrounded by millions of onlookers, most of whom, I feel certain, suffered with and for him.

“[Expletive]!” “[Expletive]!” “[Expletive]!” On the video, we hear the officer repeating the F-word as he realizes what has happened. Reynolds is saying, “Please don’t tell me this, Lord. Please, Jesus, don’t tell me that he’s gone. . . . Please, officer, don’t tell me that you just did this to him.”

My God.

Friday morning, Castile’s mother bore into the television camera. She said people can look into her eyes, at that point 48 hours without sleep, and know that she’s not going away until justice is served. Across the country, protesters had gathered peacefully Thursday evening to demonstrate against the shootings. Click here for full article.

‘The Uncomfortable Reason Why It Came To This In Dallas’ by Leon Wolf

(This has been a summer of blood shed, from bloodiest month of Rmadan to bloody racial discord, and it is hard to wraparound shell shocked mind and arms around these soul piercing events which have taken a life of their own.This blunt article by Leon Wolf deals with bloody racial discord and removes the scab from a wound which all of us are aware of its smoldering painful presence, but do nothing to heal it.f.sheikh)

“As the child of white parents who grew up in the rural panhandle of Texas, I was taught that police were there to help, any time I had a problem I should go to them. I should always follow their orders and show them the utmost respect. No one is more important and helpful to your community than the police.

Now imagine, for a minute, that your parents instead grew up as black people in the 50s or 60s in one of the many areas where police were often the agents of – let’s call it what it was – white oppression. How might that have changed, for understandable reasons, the way not only those people but also their children and their children’s children interact with the police? More importantly, how might it impact the belief that police will ever be held accountable for abuses of their power?”

I think the evidence would show that the vast majority of police do their jobs with the greatest professionalism possible. I don’t think that’s a sufficient answer to the reality of lingering mistrust between police and minority communities, especially in certain areas of the country. And the proliferation of cell phone video recording has really confirmed (in their minds) something they have long anecdotally believed or been taught – that police often interact with minority communities in different ways than they do with the white community.

And here’s the most important part: when they do so, they never or almost never face punishment.

Look, I don’t know. I don’t want to rush to judgment on either the Baton Rouge shooting or the Falcon Heights shooting, but based upon what we have seen, they look bad. Very bad. They look, at least at first glance, to confirm a lot of biases that people have. They look like a scenario that has played out all too often that the white community either doesn’t believe ever happens (or at least believes is at most a freak occurrence) and minority communities believe is a systemic occurrence. And they look, most importantly, like many other scenarios in which officers have skated either scot free or with a slap on their wrist.

And here is the important point and the point I have been trying to make with this excessively wordy post. The most important safety valve to prevent violence like we saw in Dallas last night is the belief that when officers do go off the rails, the legal system will punish them accordingly. If minority communities (and everyone else, for that matter) believed that, resort to reprisal killings would be either non existent or far less frequent.

click here for full article

posted by f.sheikh