Tag Archives: Dogger Bank

Diary Blog, 10 October 2023

Morning music

[Levitan, 1889, Birch Grove]

Battles past

Gaza

A couple of cartoons which speak to me:

Another:

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12612267/IAN-BIRRELL-Inside-Gaza-Strip-Hamas-rules-iron-fist.html

Gaza has constant power cuts, dismal public services, dirty water and a crushing lack of jobs.

Most of its energy comes from Israel – but even the small contributions from Gaza’s single power plant, like all private generators, rely on imported diesel.

Much of the struggling health services depend on the United Nations and charities. Patients in need of more serious treatment require permission from Palestinian and Israeli officials to travel outside the Strip, which is ringed with 20ft fences, motion sensors, radar and cameras.

But the most critical shortage here is of hope. This is one of the world’s most densely populated places and has one of the youngest populations – yet more than two-thirds of young adults are unemployed, while eight in ten residents rely on external aid.

Although tens of thousands of Palestinians used to leave Gaza to work in Israel, the border was sealed after the Hamas takeover, so an entire generation has grown up never able to leave the Strip and never having met an Israeli.

This all makes it fertile ground for Hamas to find ‘martyrs’ for its twisted cause, especially amid the trauma of living under frequent attack and bombardment.

It is little wonder that past polls have found half of Gazans want to leave this blighted place – and no surprise that it was the source of the latest explosion of hatred to stain this turbulent region.

[Daily Mail].

A 2018 account from Conservative Party-supporting journalist Ian Birrell (he wrote some speeches for David Cameron-Levita c.2012), but interesting, and worth reading the full version.

Gaza has been called “an open prison” but it is is probably more accurate to call it a large-scale guarded ghetto. In fact, to me it resembles from a distance— I have never been there, nor (obviously) Israel— the Warsaw Ghetto of the early 1940s: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto.

That Wikipedia account has been subject to the (((usual))) bias, but gives the overall background.

[perimeter of Warsaw Ghetto, 1942]
[Warsaw Ghetto ruins, 1945]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12611411/Grandmother-59-hauled-court-breaking-box-3-eggs-intent-kitchen-spat-mother-costing-taxpayers-1-000.html

The state of the police and the Crown Prosecution Service! Read that Daily Mail report.

All commonsense seems to have fled from both police and CPS. Real crime goes unpunished or not even investigated, while the police wet themselves over trivial incidents and/or people posting “wrong” thoughts online.

As for the CPS, they increasingly seem to specialize in making “State Trials” out of non-crimes.[see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_trials].

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12612165/Shoppers-retailer-scams-shrinkflation-loyalty-card-savings-prices-research.html

While the newspapers have been making a fuss about shoplifting, the bigger rip-offs are perpetrated by the supermarkets themselves.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12611715/More-migrants-land-UK-crossing-English-Channel-small-boats.html

…and still they come…

Tweets seen

Of course, casualties in Gaza will be given less prominence than those in Israel, because the Western mass media is —mostly— controlled, or at least heavily influenced, by Jew-Zionists.

Look at the Jewish religious festivals. Most, if not all, are effectively celebrations of ethnic supremacism from ancient history. We are talking about 2,500-3,000 years of historical development.

If you said half or a tenth as much about Jews, the msm “claque” would be screaming and (in the UK) the “poundland KGB” police would probably be making a nuisance of themselves…

Note: Mariam Barghouti is a Palestinian-American journalist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariam_Barghouti.

I caught a few minutes of Kay Burley on Sky News this morning. Complete pro-Israel bias. Not surprising. After all, the job pays well, and enough to dine at the Chiltern Firehouse, with bottles of wine at £400 apiece.

To be fair to Kay Burley, she did apparently put ludicrous “Foreign Secretary” James Cleverly on the spot, also today:

Having someone like Cleverly as Foreign Secretary is just embarrassing.

Interesting. I blogged about the Dogger Bank and its history, some years ago. See https://ianrobertmillard.org/2020/05/19/lost-doggerland-some-historical-changes-and-some-large-scale-projects/.

Political thoughts

The events in Israel/Palestine have resulted in an outpouring of System virtue-signalling.

Sunak, Starmer, and many others all falling over each other to pledge allegiance to Israel. Political con-man, and “controlled opposition” kingpin Nigel Farage, too. In a way, it is a good thing that those who are under that control have identified themselves.

On a different note, I wonder whether the “answer” to the otherwise intractable Gaza problem might be to establish a programme whereby Gazans can relocate to new towns across the Middle East, with co-operation of governments within the region. Instead of one very crowded city of 2 million inhabitants, 19-20 towns, each with 100,000 inhabitants. Gaza itself to be reduced to 100,000, or perhaps to be returned to sparsely-populated farmland.

The above “solution” might be acceptable both to the Gazans themselves (giving them greater freedom and better living conditions) and to the Israeli government (reducing the “security threat” to near-zero), if it could be organized.

More tweets

Jesus H. Christ…

More music

[“The Fuhrer as friend of animals“]

More tweets

Sooner or later, some form of civil war will break out openly; at present it is only a limited and “proxy” situation.

Labour’s “plan” to build on the Green Belt, to build unpleasant shacks or flats by the million— to whom will they be given? Migrant-invaders? I think so.

Stop the flow. Reverse the flow. Eliminate the flow.

Kirsty Wark “a respected journalist“?

More from the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12611993/hamas-israel-gaza-palestine-911-mark-almond-china-russia-us.html

A biased (in its tone) piece by a Jewish scribbler; nonetheless worth reading.

An emboldened Iran will extend the export of its missile and drone technology, which is already playing an important role for Russia in its campaign against Ukraine.

Indeed Moscow, though it has had good relations with Israel, has much to gain from a new Middle Eastern conflict.

The U.S. is likely to feel pressure to strengthen Israel’s defences against Hamas rockets with weapons like the highly effective Patriot surface-to-air anti-missile system. 

America does not have a big stockpile of these Patriots, and Israel will receive priority, meaning there will be far fewer for President Zelensky’s government.

[Daily Mail].

The Kiev regime is toast. Zelensky is toast.

More tweets

Scale of destruction in the Gaza Strip 168 buildings, including 1,009 residential units, were completely destroyed, while 12,600 were partially damaged, according to the Palestinian Authority. It is also reported that 10 health facilities, 48 ​​schools, 23 government buildings and 12 ambulances were affected.”

If that Jew ever gives up political life, he will have a career in horror films playing some kind of “undead” monster.

Ukraine is forgotten: the largest American media after the start of the war in Israel closed their “online” coverage of events in Ukraine All major American media have curtailed their coverage of events in Ukraine in live short news mode. CNN, which reported “online” in Ukraine almost non-stop, stopped updating it on October 6. Since then, the link to the Ukrainian “online” has disappeared from the European version of the publication’s main page and has not appeared on it again. Almost simultaneously, The New York Times stopped online coverage of Ukraine. Its main page, like CNN’s, now covers events in Israel online.

Ha.

Late thought

The stories coming out of Gaza and Southern Israel are more than merely unpleasant; terrible. As far as the Palestinian combatants are concerned, if they are sometimes monstrous, it is because they have been made monstrous, and made so mainly by the behaviour of the Israeli Jews.

Late music

Lost Doggerland, Some Historical Changes and Some Large-Scale Projects

In January of 2019, I wrote the following speculative piece:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/the-tide-is-coming-in-reflections-on-the-possible-end-of-our-present-civilization-and-what-might-follow/

16 months later, I believe that the article is even more relevant, now that Coronavirus/Covid-19 has concentrated minds (and leaving aside the fact that the Chinese virus is overblown and also being used by the System to bluff people into becoming members of police states across Europe and beyond).

I was just reading again about “Doggerland”, which is not a gonzo-literature novel about some of the leisure activities of a sub-set of the English pleb-dom, but a large territory that once existed between the area now designated as “UK”, and those of present-day “Denmark”, “Germany”, “Netherlands” etc.

At the end of the last ice age, Britain formed the northwest corner of an icy continent. Warming climate exposed a vast continental shelf for humans to inhabit. Further warming and rising seas gradually flooded low-lying lands. Some 8,200 years ago, a catastrophic release of water from a North American glacial lake and a tsunami from a submarine landslide off Norway inundated whatever remained of Doggerland.https://www.nationalgeographic.org/maps/doggerland/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

and see the very interesting series of maps below

[By Francis Lima – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49850020] It can be seen that, at its greatest extent, what is now called “Doggerland” (a term invented only in the 1990s), together with similar areas in the Atlantic off (mainly) the present-day coasts of the UK and Ireland (the ancient land of Lyonesse, of Arthurian legend), was larger in extent than the present-day UK.

Consideration of these matters gives perspective.

Videos about the above matters:

 

and while looking at those Doggerland videos, I also saw this one (below)

Fascinating, though possibly not a good idea even if do-able.. How about starting with something smaller, such as the Irish Sea? (only, sort-of, joking…).

In fact, large-scale projects are not always a poor idea. One which has interested many is that of creating a canal from the Mediterranean to the Qattara Depression in the Western Desert of Egypt, then using gravity to move seawater the 40 miles to the Depression.

The Qattara Depression is on average 200 ft (60m) below sea level, though the lowest part is 440 ft (134m) below sea level. No-one lives there, though the very isolated oasis of Qara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qara_Oasis lies near the Western edge of the Depression, some 47 miles (75km) North-East of the nearest larger oasis, Siwa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siwa_Oasis

I myself stayed in Siwa for a month, in early 1998, out of three months spent in Egypt (on that trip).

SiwaPanorama

 

275682-Siwa_Oasis_Egypt

Siwa is 189 miles (305km) from the Mediterranean Sea coast. British or American people tend to think of an oasis as being a small lake with a fringe of palm trees, but Siwa is, at greatest extent, 50 miles long and 12 miles wide, and has a total population of some 30,000 (though when you are there —admittedly I was there over 20 years ago— the place does not seem in any way heavily populated, rather the reverse). It has about 350 freshwater springs (the water of which is exported to Alexandria and Cairo in plastic bottles), 300,000 date palms, 70,000 olive trees (and some fruit trees, too).

Reverting to Qattara, the Depression is 190 miles (300km) long by 84 miles (135km) wide. Area: 7,570 square miles, about the same as mainland Wales.

A project to flood the Depression would be hugely beneficial. Fish would flood in with the water, it would change the regional climate for the better, and it would enable hydropower as well.

It may be that, by using hydropower and solar power, new eco-cities or towns, even horticultural areas, could be created and maintained, supplied with fresh water via desalination.

By AlwaysUnite – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17865159]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project

Fact follows fiction (again): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_the_Sea

Anwar Sadat was said to have been seriously interested in the Qattara idea, but when he was assassinated, the project was again mothballed.

Other projects I have seen or read about

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundrop_Farms

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-05-15/port-augusta-sundrop-farms-sold-to-investment-fund-morrison-co/11108046

In Iran, not long before the Islamic Revolution unseated the Shah , there was a government programme to replace sand dunes and semi-desert with forest. Of course, the backward mullahs did not continue with it. I read about the project in the National Geographic. Brilliant.

First, the sand dunes were coated with a very thin layer of crude oil, sprayed from tanked vehicles. Secondly, seeds of the tamarisk tree (salt-resistant and heat-resistant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamarix were spread over the oil layer.

Tamarix aphylla.jpg[above: tamarisk tree in the Negev Desert, Israel. CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=293521]

The thin oil layer prevented the seeds from being blown away by wind, and anchored the tiny shoots when germinated. The climate had enough moisture for their survival. The tiny growing shoots and trees (within a few years about 4 feet high) were protected from goats and their owners, if any, by fences and a ranger force.

Once the trees were mature (some of the 60 types of tamarisk grow as high as 60ft/18m), the idea was that the climate and ecology would be markedly improved.

Under the Shah, there was to have been a roll-out across Iran. It never happened. Sad.

There have been and still are many large-scale projects of great value, both engineering projects and more obviously “environmental” ones. Most founder on the rocks of politics and/or finance.

[Note: the above first appeared in my daily blog]

Update, 1 December 2020

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/01/evidence-life-on-doggerland-after-devastating-tsunamis-study