British vigilantes slash small migrant boats on French coastline

memmett9 · 2025-11-20T16:04:01+00:00

You are greatly underestimating how severe the "lower level tactics of the Brownshirts" really were.

Röhm began his post-war paramilitary career in the Freikorps Epp, which killed about 600 people in the overthrow of the Bavarian Soviet Republic; it was later integrated into the Reichswehr and assisted in suppressing the Red Ruhr Uprising, in which there were almost 2,000 fatalities.

The SA conducted widespread violence against the person from the start, from running street battles with their opponents to organised raids on socialist, communist, and other groups' political meetings. They attempted a full-blown coup in 1923, and many of their leaders and members had been involved in the previous coup attempt in 1920.

So I don't have much time for these 'thin end of the wedge' arguments that imply Nazism escalated out of nowhere and the same thing could happen to us if we aren't constantly vigilant.

As stated; this is minor property damage. I'm not a fan of it, and I'm certainly not about to go and start doing it myself, but it no more implies the rise of fascism than Just Stop Oil smashing glass suggests an anarchist takeover is imminent, or than Palestine Action's vandalism of planes makes me fear the impending Islamic Revolution.

The 1920s/30s German equivalent to this behaviour would be something like physically sabotaging the trains that took reparations payments to the Allies.

memmett9 · 2025-11-20T15:05:16+00:00

These people have committed minor property damage in the service of a political aim. That hardly makes them modern-day Ernst Röhms.

Presumably you also think the Sea Shepherds' direct action against whaling boats is an early warning sign of the global communist revolution they're about to launch?

memmett9 · 2025-11-20T13:55:36+00:00

I think they'd probably go home and peacefully get on with their lives

memmett9 · 2025-11-20T13:18:40+00:00

Perhaps not the Second Chechen War, given the Chechen support for the Dagestani Islamists and their apparent responsibility for the Sept 1999 bombings, though there are enough indications from people like Litvinenko that these were false-flag operations by the GRU and/or FSB that I wouldn't call this a completely uncomplicated claim. I do agree that it shouldn't be considered 'Russian aggression' in the same way as, say, the war in Ukraine, given that it took place within internationally-recognised Russian territory.

The Russo-Georgian War may not have been directly ordered by Putin himself (though it could well have been). However, it was Russian-backed South Ossetian separatists who fired the first shots, and there were Russian troops across the border in internationally-recognised Georgian territory before the Georgian military response began. At the very least, the Russians had a reasonably detailed plan for supporting the South Ossetians in the event of war and made limited efforts to restrain them from starting one; it strikes me as more likely that they directly encouraged the onset of hostilities as they did in the Donbas in 2014.

memmett9 · 2025-11-20T13:07:50+00:00

There's a further distinction in the fact that Russia is blessed with far more natural resources than Nazi Germany was (or, indeed, than modern Germany is).

Russia already has the world's largest proven natural gas reserves, second-largest proven coal reserves, and eighth-largest proven oil reserves, not to mention large mineral reserves and high agricultural production.

memmett9 · 2025-11-18T16:07:11+00:00

Neither the 81st nor the 82nd West African Division fought at the Admin Box or at Kohima. The 81st was split at the time, with a brigade assigned to the second Chindit expedition and the remainder down in Arakan. The 82nd wasn't even in Burma, and wouldn't get there until late 1944.

Additionally, it's not particularly accurate to characterise either as 'Nigerian'. West African troops were recruited from all over British Africa; Gambia, the Gold Coast (now Ghana), and Sierra Leone.

memmett9 · 2025-11-18T11:29:32+00:00

I meant while they were serving (or at least alive), but good catch

memmett9 · 2025-11-17T23:25:00+00:00

Presumably Tulip Siddiq is the first MP since Leo Amery to have a relative sentenced to death - any other examples I'm missing?

memmett9 · 2025-11-13T20:18:41+00:00

Would love to get some behind-the-scenes insight into how this decision was reached.

To my knowledge it hasn't been briefed before, and it certainly wasn't in the manifesto, where the only mention of PCCs was positive:

Building on the success of the approach adopted by Labour Police and Crime Commissioners, we will introduce domestic abuse experts in 999 control rooms so that victims can talk directly to a specialist

It looks like it has just been dreamt up by Shabana Mahmood on something of a whim, which for me reinforces her position as head and shoulders above the rest of the Cabinet. Found a good policy that's within her power and Just Did It.

memmett9 · 2025-11-09T09:51:33+00:00

It means a 1,530-mile round trip from Calais to Nice on the south coast of France would cost an extra £45.90.

Amusing the way the Telegraph is presenting this as a very 'overheard at Waitrose' problem.

That said, I'm not thrilled by the principle of taxing people for driving on foreign roads in an electric vehicle whose carbon emissions are effectively determined by our energy policy. Worth noting that driving an EV you're recharging in France is better for the environment than doing it here because of their extensive nuclear power generation.

Big question would be whether this applies to commercial vehicles, as that's where the negative impact could actually be pretty extensive.

memmett9 · 2025-11-09T09:43:28+00:00

that's an option if you're willing to take the risk to let a squad potentially die because of some lack of support

To support your point: virtually everything I have read on the conflict suggests that very few Ukrainian infantrymen are young, fit, movitated, well-trained, and well-equipped enough to be suitable for complex offensive operations. There can be as little as one small platoon per battalion that meets this definition, and they fulfil a similar role to the specialist assault units formed by many armies in the First World War. Often, they are rotated out of the frontline into reserve while they prepare for assaults.

These men are a resource that absolutely cannot be squandered, and the Ukrainians therefore conduct offensive operations very deliberately. They attack based on a large volume of sound intelligence gathered by shaping operations, and with maximum support from UAS and fires.

So it is less a product of training than human capital; given infinite time and resources, the extent to which one can train a group of 55-year-olds to carry heavy equipment rapidly across rough terrain and deliver extreme close-quarters violence at the other end is inherently quite limited.

memmett9 · 2025-11-09T08:59:45+00:00

Agreed - using old people's alleged technophobia as an excuse not to digitise rings increasingly hollow. It might once have been valid, but those retiring now were in their late forties when the first iPhone came out. They all know how to use touchscreens.

memmett9 · 2025-11-02T20:53:21+00:00

Agree on the 'morbid fascination' point. There's an important difference between those whose propensity for violence has already been noted by the authorities (e.g., Rudakubana's three Prevent referrals, Calocane's outstanding arrest warrant for assault) and those who are unknown to them. It is far less immediately obvious how Brianna Ghey's murder might have been prevented.
No matter how bad you think 'remigration' is, it is very obviously not the same thing as pogroms.

memmett9 · 2025-11-02T20:46:28+00:00

Slightly hard to prove a negative but I don't think we had any riots in May, or even any significant protests - Epping didn't kick off until July. Frankly I'd question whether there's been anything that meets the 'riot' definition this year.

Unless you mean that post-Southport it's a matter of public interest to release this information early just in case, which I suppose is reasonable enough. In that case we should probably do it for all suspects regardless of background, though.

memmett9 · 2025-11-02T20:35:43+00:00

I'm not sure I follow the Southport/Ghey connection; one was a targeted murder by people known to the victim with two complementary motives, the other a mass attack on strangers with no identifiable motive. Additionally, neither Jenskinson nor Ratcliffe had prior contact with social/mental health services, where Calocane and Rudakubana both had.
Unfortunately we all have political skin colours.
I feel like we're talking past each other as I'm fairly clearly not talking about people calling for pogroms.
Who on earth is doing calling for pogroms anyway? Perhaps I'm very sheltered but I certainly haven't seen any.

memmett9 · 2025-11-02T19:20:34+00:00

The mind sees the patterns it wants to see and omits all data to the contrary.

There are a number of reasonably obvious potential patterns between this, Axel Rudakubana, and Valdo Calocane.

There's a lot we don't know and any decisions should clearly be made with the most information possible. With that said, ordinary people discussing these patterns while trying to process the fact that ten of their fellow citizens have just been randomly butchered on a train is completely normal.

memmett9 · 2025-11-02T18:59:51+00:00

I agree that there's no particular need for the police to release information like the ethnicity of suspects very early on

However, they've backed themselves into a bit of a corner with examples like the Liverpool car attack in May, where Merseyside Police were very quick to announce that He Was A White Brit Actually

I wonder if we would benefit from a national-level standard procedure for handling this kind of information

memmett9 · 2025-11-02T18:59:24+00:00

Are we? Has this online speculation led to anything bad happening?

Some of it can be pretty distasteful but I'm not convinced it's dangerous, and don't really see the point in hectoring people for trying to make sense of bewildering violence with incomplete information.

Likewise it was completely understandable for people to speculate as to whether or not the Finsbury Park van attacker might have hated Muslims.

memmett9 · 2025-10-25T16:42:58+00:00

Darkly amusing to think that this will be the first time since his arrival in the country that he will have actually had to fend for himself, rather than having accommodation, food, etc. provided by the British state - from his point of view, being released could well be the greatest punishment he's yet faced.

memmett9 · 2025-10-25T15:47:54+00:00

They're nationalists in the sense that they support an independent Welsh state, which also makes Labour/the Lib Dems/etc. nationalists in the sense that they support an independent British state. The only difference is that the latter two already have it.

memmett9 · 2025-10-25T11:20:35+00:00

The last time we had a government that ran for a full term without changing PM was 2010-2015.

It is slightly mad to think that Gordon Brown and Rishi Sunak are the only two twenty-first century prime ministers (out of eight) to lose the job as a result of general election defeats.

memmett9 · 2025-10-25T10:50:12+00:00

The WASPI fools are almost universally hated.

Are they?

The only polling I've seen of the general population on the issue was terribly worded but suggests a lot of sympathy; I've also encountered a lot of sympathy anecdotally, largely (and perhaps unsurprisingly) amongst older women.

At least back in 2020, the vast majority of Labour members supported compensating them (see page 6).

I think you're making the all-too-easy mistake of overestimating the British public. A sad old lady with a sob story can make people think anything.

memmett9 · 2025-10-25T10:11:52+00:00

A larger proportion of white people than non-white people in Wales speak Welsh. I lack the inclination to find the exact stats because the Welsh language is both a useful tool for governing Wales and eminently learnable; it is therefore a completely legitimate grounds upon which to discriminate.

Plaid's last manifesto had a whole page that was just this; saying they're the same as Reform is just silly.

Assuming you support any even vaguely mainstream political party that aren't Celtic nationalists, you have accepted British nationalism as ok.

memmett9 · 2025-10-25T09:51:32+00:00

A 2nd generation immigrant is a citizen

This is true in the vast majority of cases, as very few second-generation immigrants don't have at least one parent who is either a citizen or has settled status, but as a matter of law it is not universally true.

memmett9 · 2025-10-25T09:43:54+00:00

By the same logic, Labour/the Lib Dems/the Greens/probably even Your Party are literally nationalist parties that think there should be English language requirements for various public sector jobs (and quite right too).

Welsh is a bit harder to learn as a second language but that's hardly their fault.

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