תהילה (Gloria) is already three months old and studying very seriously her surroundings. Me. Is she wondering "What the hell is this critter"? She is a good girl, her only demand is to be the center of the attention 24/7 and be admired, kissed, dressed up, talked to, told stories, undressed, her
toosik creamed and kissed, etc. We take long imaginary voyages on train from Alexandria to Homs, stopping at El Cairo, El Arish, Asqelon, Yaffo, Haifa, Rosh HaAyin, Tzur, Tzidon, Beirut, BaalBek and Homs.
The British rule everywhere so we need no visas. The trains are manned by Hindus. She loves travelling. In our next trip we shall change trains in Homs and continue to Baghdad, or change trains in Beirut and ride the Hejaz express to Mecca and then on camelback to Aden. Then we may continue our adventure on sea to Cape Town, or maybe Bombay, a lovely British town designed like London, clean and healthy, on the turquoise blue Indian Ocean.
40 comments:
You're such a dreamer J.
What a wonderful zayda you will be.
K
Curiously, parts of Bombay are as you say.
But mostly, it is a bizarre, schizoid experience to be in Bombay. In the streets, the whole world is crowding in on you - the lepers, the beggars, the cows, the blind, the snakecharmers, the sick, the cripples, the deformed, the tricycle diesel taxis belching black smoke, the elderly, people doing their ablutions, the stray dogs, the gridlocked traffic - and then suddenly, you disappear behind the walls of some world class hotel, and all is beautiful, rich, peaceful and elegant, as if the British Raj had never died.
Anon.
She's a cute baby. Her auburn hair is similar to what a few members of my family have.
Anon,
In my travels with my granddaughter Gloria time is around 1920 and the British raj rules India, Alexandria is a cosmopolitan city with wealthy Jewish, Greek, Italian and French colonies, Beirut is Christian, and we shop in the Parade Market and walk the Adderley Street in Capetown. We may also venture out to sea to catch fish. Life is good.
Anon,
Would you advise us where to stay in our visit to Capetown? May be the Grand Hotel (http://www.flickr.com/photos/hilton-t/5992140418/in/photostream/ )?
In my mind, it would be either the Mount Nelson, a British colonial hotel in the old style, at the top of town (near the Jewish Museum), or the Vineyard, a converted Dutch Farmhouse, in the Southern Suburbs, with an achingly beautiful view of the back of Table Mountain.
Some people like the new hotels on the Waterfront, but I prefer traditional Cape Town, and in any event, since it is 1922, the new hotels are not built yet and the seafront is full of ruffians from the port.
Anon.
I think we may not stay long in Capetown but join a safari. She will be thrilled by the elephants and all those wonderful animals we'll meet.
Cash in some of your investments, go to Londolozi, for a private experience in a Relais & Chateau ranked lodge (best small hotel); meet the film-maker John Varty who owns it. Londo is on the border of the Kruger Park, one of the world's best and much cheaper but less personal attention.
In Londo, you get to go out in a open-air landrover; nothing between you and the lions.
Then fly west to the Kalahari National Park, a semi-desert wilderness where you can see the iconic 'springbok', as well as a cheetah kill; go to Jo'burg for a one day tour of the 'Cradle of Civilization, a UNESCO World Heritage site, then fly to Botswana for a canoe experience in the Okavango, followed by a tour of the Victoria Falls (Niagara looks tame in comparison). Finish with a walking safari in Zambia's Luangwa Valley; pure magic.
Then back to Cape Town for a quick trip on the wine route; by then Gloria will be ready for her bottle. And so will you.
Anon.
Beirut is Christian...
Most of the Christian Lebaneses are in Brazil... They literally own São Paulo (largest and wealthiest city) like the jews own NYC.
They have Phoenician surnames like Haddad, Maluf, Alckmin, Kassab.
Is red hair common in Israel? In Europe was considerated an stereotypical jewish trait.
The stereotype was based on an impulse to tie all Jews to Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus who was portrayed as having red hair in medieval Spain. It spread from Spain during the Renaissance. Red hair occurs in Jews, but it is not nearly as common as dark hair.
Your dream J is from an age when we under 2 billion. Different age. And close to half of that was concentrated in China and India.
Plenty of space everywhere. I shall pass any comment about the composition of the rest.
Sure theo, that was a different time and different peoples. I have an incurable nostalgy for those times and places. The saddest comment is that everything was happening on the open and people were aware of it yet somehow they believed that it will last forever. They had no premonition that they were the last Europeans ... travelling freely and securely in the Empire. The last Europeans...
1920 was too late. European civilization had already been fatally wounded on the battlefields of WWI and the gangrene was setting in. They were dead men walking.
K
Yes, but as you say, they were walking and unaware that they were dead men. The best of the times.
WWI just allowed the rot to spread throughout society. Look earlier for the seeds of the rot. Marx was writing in the late 19th century, and the beginnings of industrialization and societal atomization precede him.
See Al Fin's current piece on the rise and fall of empires.
Anon
Beatiful khazar baby.
Ashkenazim probably do have a small bit of Khazar admixture, signaled, as Dienekes suggests, by the ~1% East Asian ancestral component found in Ashkenazim but not other Jews. The basis for this suggestion is that the Khazars spoke a Turkic language and originated far to the east of where the Kaganate was established. Of course, they assimilated large numbers of non-East Asians as well over the course of their migrations. Still, the genetic evidence does not support the Khazars being the source of very much Ashkenazi ancestry. The paper by Elhaik purporting to show Khazar admixture is a total mess. He misuses modern comparison populations and has a very weak knowledge of history. Choosing the right comparison populations is critical in population genetics studies.
1% comes from Kossack wives during Chmelnietzky riots. Or Bucharan Jews, or Chinese Jews.
" The saddest comment is that everything was happening on the open and people were aware of it yet somehow they believed that it will last forever. They had no premonition that they were the last Europeans ... travelling freely and securely in the Empire."
Probably the last Mongols thought the same. But there is nothing you can do. Except genociding potential competitors. And trying to stem the tide of social changes. Romans couldn't do it either.
How could the early 20th century Europeans talibanize their societies?
The German/Nazi 3 Ks was part of an attempt an attempt to stem the tide of change:Kinder, Küche, Kirche meaning children, kitchen, church.
The world you talk about was a low density European populated and led planet. It was a brief moment , just like the Mongol Eurasian peace. Or the Hellenistic hmmmm - less peace - but unified civilization. It comes and goes.
Internal conflicts in the leading group - be they European colonialists, Mongols or Hellenistic ones - allow the time for the defeated societies to recover and counterattack. Stolen wealth weakens the winners. Always does. And greed blinds them. It is not enough. Never enough. And never do they want to share.
We see again the same behavior.
Instead of sharing the empire always walks the path of war.
Like Britain some 100 years ago neither the US - except some MENA hellholes the world empire is back, free travel etc - is willing to share with China. So a confrontation is pretty much inevitable I believe.
I do believe that we have again the world you described - in a little bit changed form , but a recognizable one. You can travel - except the above mentioned area - practically anywhere. You can go from safari on the Zambezi to fishing into the Baikal. And then to get a tan in Dutch Indies - called differently now - and to visit the Rajput castels in the Raj - different name again . Your passport and coins will get you there.
The successor state recreated the empire in a recognizable form. Some areas got blown to pieces , other got on the map, but the shape is quite similar.
Of course it might change. If Anglos destroy China or the reverse will happen we have no way of knowing. I would bet on the one whose CV shows results. Until now except Russia there in no one on planet Earth the Anglos have not beaten in the last 300 years. No one.
While China has a very disapointing CV. No victories. None. Didn't beat, occupy, rob , genocide anyone. How are they going to defeat the super predators of our world? It ain't gonna happen I reason.
China was in decline for the last 300 years. Before that, it had dominated Asia for thousands of years. Partly it was a soft power- Chinese culture was (like American culture today) the model for all others (in Asia). And a lot of countries were "tribute states" - they would send an annual caravan of goodies to the Emperor to show how much they loved him. Actual robbing and killing was not necessary, but if necessary they could kick ass - the ruling class was Manchu (Mongol) and militaristic.
I get the feeling that the Chinese would like to restore this arrangement, which their leaders regard as the historical norm and the last 300 years as the aberration. East Asia (including Japan) as their sphere of influence, the rest of the world, they don't care about.
Somewhere I read that men always dress like they did in the last good year of their life. National myths are also frozen at that time. This is why Judaism is fixated at the time of David rather than any other time in the last 5,000 years. The Chinese too would like to get back to their high water mark and the are making good progress.
K
It looks that Europe is starting to re-militarize. That was the original idea, to create the European superstate.
The US never set out to be a worldwide superpower. It came into that role by default, after China and Europe self-destructed. Now that China and Europe are somewhat restored (and the US is declining) it is natural that each will control their own spheres of influence and the US will pull back (empires can bankrupt you - ask the British). I'm pretty confident that the Chinese will be able to fulfill their role in the future. I doubt that the Europeans are really up to the task.
K
Europe is not militarizing. UK, France and US are just acting together.
There is no European sphere of influence.
In order to get access to energy and raw materials suppliers China has to accept US political control - as it is doing now - or break the blocade. I bet they won't be able to do it.
China can not protect any commercial partner. As soon as they started to have a large presence in Africa the real owner came to show who's the boss.
There is absolutely nothing China can do about it. US/UK/France can do whatever they want anywhere they want. Because the got the bigger guns.
Aboout US decline, that is something which always happens to winners in geopolitics. A tribute economy destroys the productive parts of the economy of the empire building metropolitan area. That is the law society/ God.
Link and quotation about this from someone wiser then me:
"To begin with, the US economy has been crippled by a century of imperial tribute flowing in from overseas. That’s what happened to our manufacturing sector; once the rest of the industrial world recovered from the Second World War, manufacturers in an inflated tribute economy couldn’t compete with the lower costs of factories in less extravagantly overfunded parts of the world, and America’s industrial heartland turned into the Rust Belt. As the impact of the tribute economy spread throughout US society, in turn, it became next to impossible to make a living doing anything productive, and gaming the imperial system in one way or another—banking, investment, government contracts, you name it—turned into the country’s sole consistent growth industry."
No retreat possible.
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.ro/2013/01/the-road-down-from-empire.html
1% comes from Kossack wives during Chmelnietzky riots. Or Bucharan Jews, or Chinese Jews.
You have no more evidence for those assertions than for Dienekes' Khazar suggestion. Chinese Jews are an unlikely source. They were descendants of Persian Jews who migrated to China in small numbers for trade during a period corresponding to the European early Middle Ages. They were basically cut off from world Jewry and not numerous, but even so it took centuries for them to be assimilated into Chinese ethnic stock. To account for an introgrssion into all Ashkenazim, the admixture event would have had to occur early, possibly before they became ethnically Chinese.
The Khmelnitsky uprising was too recent to account for an introgression into all Ashkenazim. Moreover, his Cossacks didn't make it as far as Western Poland, Bohemia, Austria or Germany. And they tended to rape and kill rather than rape, impregnate and let live (if you accept the contemporary accounts).
Bukharan Jews had more ties to the Persian Jewish and Arab Jewish world than to the Ashkenazim throughout most of their history. If they were a source of East Asian admixture, we would expect it in Persian Jews and Mizrahim, but it isn't there.
My images of "Kossack wives" are from Bassevis Singer's The Slave, a Yiddish porn novelist, Nobel Prize winner. All his Jews are tortured by sex crazy dybbuks and apparitions.
I understand that Singer himself (in his younger days) was quite the ladies man. I saw him speak a couple of times in his old age - by then he had a rather practiced shtick that he used for every speech. "Is Yiddish literature dead?" - "Not as long as there are graduate students who need thesis topics." Etc.
K
and
Yiddish has been dying for a hundred years and will be dying for another one.
Why jews create their own language everywhere they go? Beecause jews are hiding something?
Yes, how dare Jews have their own language! What other people or nation has its own language? No, wait...
K
Yes, we are hiding something. No one except a Jew can learn yiddish. I found one Arab in Jerusalem who worked as Shabbes goy and spoke such a good Yiddish that the Elders of Zion decided he cannot be left alive and knowing, so his memories were erased by kabbalistic Q-waves.
Jew-waves
judeo-spanish, judeo-persian, judeo-arabic, yiddish and so on... Pharisee means separated.
Why do the Scots speak a different dialect of English from the Cockneys? How dare the Bavarians babble away in their gibberish instead of perfectly good hochdeutsch? Must be conspiring to do something bad...
Jew-waves, or as the French call them, Juives.
K
The troll is laughing of you. Stop feeding him.
It is sad that J's blog has such an infestation, at least we can avoid feeding him or others.
B, why do you single out Bavarians? No beer and wurst lover can be a conspirator. What about the Swissdeutsch with their unspeakable gnostic gnome-lingo?
Bavarians got led by Austria, then by France, after Prussians and after Prussians US came. So if they conspired it had to be a very very secret/discrete conspiracy. Neither Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Napoleon, Adolf nor US managed to discover such a thing.
Good conspirators those Bavarians are.
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