FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
User ID: 1175
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
55m ago
The term "fight", to my mind, implies that the two men were attacking each other. Likewise "fistfight" implies that both men were punching each other. I don't think "one man insults another man, to which the second man responds by physically assaulting the first man" can reasonably be characterised as a "fight". Despite Digwa's insistence that Nowak attacked him first and he was defending himself, he was unable to present any evidence that this was the case, and there were no cuts or bruises on his person at the time of his arrest.
So: I think the claim that "Nowak and Digwa got into a fistfight" is simply untrue. No one has presented any evidence that Nowak punched (or even tried to punch) Digwa. If you said "Nowak insulted Digwa, and Digwa responded by stabbing him", I'd have no objection.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1hr ago
One was a case of "two hotheads get into a fight at pub closing time, unfortunately someone is dead because someone else brought a knife to a fistfight".
What a despicably misleading gloss of the Nowak murder. There is zero evidence that Nowak assaulted Digwa, or that he was a "hothead".
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1hr ago
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2hr ago
New Year's resolution check-in:
- Posted my thirteenth blog post of the year yesterday, concerning the murder of Henry Nowak and how the case was covered by the progressive media (expanded from two comments I posted here).
- Went to the gym three times last week, two days of cardio and one day of deadlifting. Planning to go this evening. Can deadlift 1.84x my bodyweight for 3 reps, squat 1.22x for 8 reps and bench press .87x for 6 reps.
- Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.
How goes it @self_made_human, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble, @ThomasdelVasto and @falling-star?
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2hr ago
I would genuinely love to hear some of the music you've created, if you'd be interested in sharing via DM.
Orwell addressed this dilemma/paradox in "The Lion and the Unicorn". How can you be patriotic to the idea of something you're intending to completely alter from the ground up? The answer seems to be "it's tricky, but it can be done". Russians really did seem able to transplant/displace their patriotic fervour from Czarist Russia to the Soviet Union with minimal difficulty.
Love of one's country is just one of many kinds of love, all of which have to deal with this contradiction to a greater or lesser extent. Unlike what that one movie from the 70s would have us believe, love does not mean never having to say you're sorry. Saying you're sorry and promising to do better is a big part of love. Just because you love someone doesn't mean you can never criticise them or request that they change their behaviour. Sometimes this is "tough love" (i.e. because you love them, you hate to see them behaving in a self-destructive fashion), but sometimes it's not.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3hr ago
But it wasn't zero.
This seems like hair-splitting. For most of the history of what we call Britain, the non-white population was as close to zero as made no difference, a rounding error. Until the mid-twentieth century, the majority of British population could go their entire lives without encountering a single non-white person inside British borders.
I never used to hear about racial problems with minorities in Britain
By "racial problems with minorities", are you referring to racism experienced by minorities, or problems with racial minorities committing disproportionate numbers of crimes etc.? I'm not sure what timeframe "I never used to" covers, but in either case, it's not a new phenomenon.
For the former, the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 sent shockwaves throughout the UK, and was the subject of a government inquiry which concluded that the British police service was institutionally racist. (The handcuffing of Henry Nowak is ultimately downstream of recommendations made by said inquiry.) The murder was the impetus for new legislation surrounding double jeopardy in murder trials.
For the latter, last week we discussed Enoch Powell's (in)famous "rivers of blood" speech. He was sounding the alarm about the increased crime and societal dysfunction that appears to accompany mass immigration as early as 1968. While the grooming gangs scandal only really became common knowledge in the 2010s, it had been ongoing since the mid-90s.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4hr ago
No idea, but in Northern Ireland it means loyal to the crown.
Broadly: I think in the twentieth century we tore down a huge proportion of our most long-standing institutions, or dramatically scaled back the extent of their power and influence, or they collapsed under the weight of their own contradictions. Whatever the many and varied deficiencies of these institutions, they were load-bearing in the sense of providing a unified Western telos. Many, I think, did not recognise that a proper society needs an orienting telos to function properly; or were naïve enough to think that, once we abolished all the old decrepit institutions which had systematically kept the truth from us, a new telos would manifest itself of its own accord. But a telos doesn't just happen, any more than a ship or a factory does: it has to be patiently grown, constructed and tended to. It's a fragile, delicate thing. I have a lot of criticisms of the Catholic Church, and in its modern diminished capacity it's a shadow of its former self, but I can't dispute that, at the peak of its power and influence in Ireland, it did provide a telos, an orienting principle, something to work towards. When people talk about the crisis of meaning in Western society, this is what they're getting at. Nothing the progressive coalition has offered as an alternative telos fits the bill ("diversity" is an instrumental goal, not a terminal one; "equality" is a relative and hence meaningless goal, likewise "inclusion"). I don't think modern Anglophone conservatism has much to offer in terms of a telos either. We have technological and economic wonders at our disposal, but are beset with indecision as to what to use them for. We built a spaceship without deciding where we wanted to go with it.
Either that, or the phones.
Well, I'm not sure if I accept the premise on two fronts. I'm not necessarily persuaded that narcissism is the primary root of all the problems in the West. However, I think the excesses of trans activism are a perfect example of a problem which is ultimately downstream of narcissism.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
5hr ago
I've written multiple articles referring to TLP's ideas at length.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
14hr ago
Just you. Belfast has a smaller total population than LA’s black population. In the 90s. I’m not expecting to see anything remotely on the scale of the ‘92 riots.
I don't think that's what @TitaniumButterfly meant. I think by "straws breaking the camel's back" he was referring to acts of shocking, indiscriminate violence committed by supposed refugees and asylum seekers, not to riots which ensue in response.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
14hr ago
Thanks for the rundown. Curious which part of the country this guy was from. From the video I saw he looked black, rather than Arab.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
14hr ago
Well put.
I think appeals not to set buses on fire would get a better reaction if they were accompanied by an acknowledgement somewhere, anywhere, that at least some of the protesters have grievances which are entirely legitimate. If Keir Starmer gave a public speech in which he sincerely stated "the Henry Nowak case has exposed serious, undeniable deficiencies in British policing which I'm committed to rectifying – but please don't assault police officers", I imagine quite a few protesters in Southampton would take that to heart. Likewise here.
But when the pleas for calm, collected responses are accompanied with no admissions of wrongdoing and barely concealed insinuations that the activists are far-right nutcases who've been manipulated by Elon Musk – I think it really amounts to pouring petrol on the fire. Adults do not like to be treated like naughty children.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
15hr ago
I'll take your word for it. I only know a handful of people from up north, and it wouldn't surprise me if my secondary school teacher's perspective was unrepresentative or inaccurate. He was a bit of an oddball.
The real (Norn) Irony
Nice.
As far as I'm concerned writing and making music is a verb, not a noun
100%. I'm constantly reminded of TLP's admonition to describe oneself without using the word "am". It's a surprisingly difficult habit to break, but I think it's really useful in all spheres of one's self-conception. Instead of saying "I'm a musician" you ought to say "I released an album last year"; by the same token, instead of saying "I think I'm a pretty nice guy" you should enumerate nice things you've done recently.
(This can be taken arbitrarily far. "I think I'm pretty good in bed." "Oh yeah? Name three women you've made come.")
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
15hr ago
There's no need to be so hostile, Wikipedia reports that the country is 70% Arab.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
16hr ago
They were beautiful to me.
I apologise, when I was talking about people who've never made anything beautiful or significant, I wasn't including you in that category. By virtue of actually finishing multiple novels you wrote I'd put you head and shoulders above the coulda-woulda-shouldas announcing that they would write something amazing if it wasn't for capitalism, maaaaan.
I admit there's a shade of stolen valour resentment to my line of thinking. I've been recording music as a hobby since I was fifteen years old, I've invested tens of thousands of hours (and a comparable amount of euros) into it, I've directed and edited music videos, I've played gigs, I've booked gigs, I've been through all the logistical and interpersonal headaches that come with organising bands. I did all this while completing my education and holding down full-time jobs. In spite of this, I don't "identify as" a musician. My Instagram handle is just my name and the year I was born. And it does really grate when I meet someone and their Instagram handle is "[forename][surname]music" and who habitually describes themselves as a musician despite the fact that they've never written (much less recorded) a song, never booked a gig, never been in a band and so on. Not that any such person has ever told me that they'd love to write music ("again") but they're just too busy, but if they did, that would annoy me even more.
I've been no slouch in the creative writing department either, having written five novels/novellas since I was twelve (needless to say, the most recent one is the only one I will stand over), getting a handful of short stories published, winning a couple of awards. "[forename][surname]writer" isn't as common as "[forename][surname]music", but common enough that it still grates.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
16hr ago
I studied history in secondary school and had an entire module about the Troubles. My teacher was himself a Northern Irish Protestant, and he noted to us the curious fact that, even though Unionists consider themselves British and want Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK, most of them tend to have a visceral hatred of English people. Admittedly, Northern Irish Protestants are disproportionately of Scottish descent, and even Scots who are opposed to Scottish independence tend not to be too keen on English people.
I don't necessarily see any conflict between "there are too many of the wrong sort of immigrant in this country and I'm willing to fight against the British military in order to get that point across, but I still think Northern Ireland should remain part of the UK." No different, really, from American militiamen who are willing to fight against the federal government (because they think it's been usurped from within) but nonetheless consider themselves fiercely patriotic Americans.
"If you'd like to try and make beautiful things like you did at university, but you're too tired because your job sucks out all your energy and creativity, then I guess it must suck to suck, loser"
Well, that's the thing under discussion, isn't it? It's one thing for an artist who once exhibited genuine talent and made things of value to complain that they don't have the energy to create after a full shift. I can understand that, and even sympathise.
What gets my back up is people who by their own admission have never created anything of value and have never displayed any evidence of artistic talent of any kind demanding that the state subsidise their livelihoods in spite of this.
In a morbid coincidence, this happened the same week that the trial for Riad Bouchaker began in Dublin. Bouchaker, you'll recall, was an Algerian man who stabbed a female schoolteacher and two of her pupils in Parnell Square, prompting a riot which brought the city centre to a standstill for one night. Bouchaker inflicted injuries on at least one of the pupils which were described as life-altering.
A MENA man, entirely without provocation, stabs a native citizen in a large Irish city and inflicts injuries serious enough to permanently change the course of their life. He's apprehended. The same week his trial begins, a different MENA man, entirely without provocation, stabs a native citizen in a large Irish city and inflicts injuries serious enough to permanently change the course of their life. He's apprehended. The same week his trial begins...
I believe the videos recovered from Nowak's phone/Snapchat depict him calling Digwa a "bad man". I guess technically calling someone a "bad man" is an insult, although a laughably mild one. Even in the parallel woke universe in which calling a person of colour a "nigger" or a "Paki" constitutes such a grave insult to their character that they are entitled to murder you in retribution, "bad man" doesn't rise to that level of insult.
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