in one way or another we offer the best in us to people
the solution would not be to take them to football.
Perhaps the best solution is to include in the immigration program the State's responsibility to offer football classes to everyone, without distinction.
Thanks for reading. This is just a pretty inane snapshot in my view, but it's hard to wrap my mind around it all. It was so close, all of it, and so much happened in those few years.
No for you are right it is the many small changes and shifts, I think you have captured it perfectly (saddly)! I moved from Sweden many moons ago but with family and news I’ve watched the frightening “car crash” over the decades and I see it all repeating in the UK, slightly different but the tragic results will be the same. I know it’s happening in most western countries in varieties. What I don’t know is how we halt it…
“The genre effectively served as a propaganda and recruitment platform for the expansion of the ethnic criminal gangs – and, of course, it got established just around the time when a pretty huge amount of refugees started arriving in Europe, courtesy of US imperialism and its methodical devastation of mainly Libya, Syria and Iraq.”
Yeah, um, also, that’s a distinction many people miss. They will take on board doubts about the political establishment setting a policy of high levels of immigration. But at the same time they will tend to support that same political establishment (the same people) engaging their country in these imperial wars of aggression. And further, they will support the political establishment that subjugates their country to a foreign imperial power that:
- usurps the country’s domestic political, economic, and social policy and
- dictates the country’s foreign (war) policy
This is called “defending freedom and democracy”.
To sink all the way to the bottom, we’ll see the distinctions between:
- street level gangs set in place and supplied from above
- the vassalized national political “leadership” installed at the pleasure of the imperial power
- the imperial overlords: American political celebrities (all sociopaths) and those behind the curtain pulling their strings: gangsters’ gangsters, top of pyramid
- everyone else, most of us blissfully above it in our own minds, the rest, deer in the headlights:
What’s that “light”?
It’s:
“it’s ALL GANGSTER. Gangster all the way up. Gangster all the way down.”
What good is it for the CIA to control Afghanistan’s poppies for 20 years with no street army selling it?
And what kind of regime change proxy army operates without payment, and whatever other accoutrements, means and methods?
I appreciate your getting to the Heart of the matters you write about. I love how you ground this beautiful piece at the end so compassionately, not only tying in the broader contexts of peoples' lives -the imperialist wars preceding the mass immigration, the violent starts some people get in life - but seeing a glimpse of possible agency in responsible personal action (outreach).
I am coming to realize that such community-building activities, simple or small as they might seem in the moment, are a key aspect of leadership. Society is indeed breaking down across many domains, and there is little left within the system to hold onto - very few models personally or structurally to even try to adopt.
Some people assert we are already in a war of sorts, and while I am inclined to agree, I push back against the cover most semi-awake US folks are willing to take - flags, guns, holding fast to religious dogma, decrying "white replacement," etc. The global Covid debacle should have shown us that our enemies are not the petty dealers, as you point out, but the vast technocracy coming down around us, the wealthy corporates stealing literally everything under the guise of some commercial legal structures, and then setting ablaze to war (9/11, war on terror, Lahaina?) whatever is left in order to reset the contracts.
It is hard to see even where the playing field, or battlefield, is these days. But I think we are being called to something, some leadership that translates the many beautiful ideas we all have into action in the real world. Build a parallel society simply, every day, as we are able; cocreate simple structures through mutual agreements; build real wealth beyond debt-based monetary exchanges; use the internet to get beyond the internet to living relationships. Most of all, amid the increasing vacuum of human values, Remain Human... and you called it, Become Even More So... practice compassionate agency!
Very moving and powerful capture of a time and place. Thank you.
Thanks so much. It feels just like yesterday.
Everybody got to wonder what's the matter with this cruel world today.
in one way or another we offer the best in us to people
the solution would not be to take them to football.
Perhaps the best solution is to include in the immigration program the State's responsibility to offer football classes to everyone, without distinction.
greetings from BH/MG/Brazil
So astute, so sad, so true, so many questions. Thank you for synthesising something so big into something digestible and relatable.
Thanks for reading. This is just a pretty inane snapshot in my view, but it's hard to wrap my mind around it all. It was so close, all of it, and so much happened in those few years.
No for you are right it is the many small changes and shifts, I think you have captured it perfectly (saddly)! I moved from Sweden many moons ago but with family and news I’ve watched the frightening “car crash” over the decades and I see it all repeating in the UK, slightly different but the tragic results will be the same. I know it’s happening in most western countries in varieties. What I don’t know is how we halt it…
Thank you for sharing.
“The genre effectively served as a propaganda and recruitment platform for the expansion of the ethnic criminal gangs – and, of course, it got established just around the time when a pretty huge amount of refugees started arriving in Europe, courtesy of US imperialism and its methodical devastation of mainly Libya, Syria and Iraq.”
Yeah, um, also, that’s a distinction many people miss. They will take on board doubts about the political establishment setting a policy of high levels of immigration. But at the same time they will tend to support that same political establishment (the same people) engaging their country in these imperial wars of aggression. And further, they will support the political establishment that subjugates their country to a foreign imperial power that:
- usurps the country’s domestic political, economic, and social policy and
- dictates the country’s foreign (war) policy
This is called “defending freedom and democracy”.
To sink all the way to the bottom, we’ll see the distinctions between:
- street level gangs set in place and supplied from above
- the vassalized national political “leadership” installed at the pleasure of the imperial power
- the imperial overlords: American political celebrities (all sociopaths) and those behind the curtain pulling their strings: gangsters’ gangsters, top of pyramid
- everyone else, most of us blissfully above it in our own minds, the rest, deer in the headlights:
What’s that “light”?
It’s:
“it’s ALL GANGSTER. Gangster all the way up. Gangster all the way down.”
What good is it for the CIA to control Afghanistan’s poppies for 20 years with no street army selling it?
And what kind of regime change proxy army operates without payment, and whatever other accoutrements, means and methods?
The term “Swedish Gang War” is quite funny. As I understood from the article none of the gangsters were actually swedish.
Do swedes ever form gangs? I have spent a lot of time in a small village in Sweden and cannot imagine any of them becoming gangbangers.
I appreciate your getting to the Heart of the matters you write about. I love how you ground this beautiful piece at the end so compassionately, not only tying in the broader contexts of peoples' lives -the imperialist wars preceding the mass immigration, the violent starts some people get in life - but seeing a glimpse of possible agency in responsible personal action (outreach).
I am coming to realize that such community-building activities, simple or small as they might seem in the moment, are a key aspect of leadership. Society is indeed breaking down across many domains, and there is little left within the system to hold onto - very few models personally or structurally to even try to adopt.
Some people assert we are already in a war of sorts, and while I am inclined to agree, I push back against the cover most semi-awake US folks are willing to take - flags, guns, holding fast to religious dogma, decrying "white replacement," etc. The global Covid debacle should have shown us that our enemies are not the petty dealers, as you point out, but the vast technocracy coming down around us, the wealthy corporates stealing literally everything under the guise of some commercial legal structures, and then setting ablaze to war (9/11, war on terror, Lahaina?) whatever is left in order to reset the contracts.
It is hard to see even where the playing field, or battlefield, is these days. But I think we are being called to something, some leadership that translates the many beautiful ideas we all have into action in the real world. Build a parallel society simply, every day, as we are able; cocreate simple structures through mutual agreements; build real wealth beyond debt-based monetary exchanges; use the internet to get beyond the internet to living relationships. Most of all, amid the increasing vacuum of human values, Remain Human... and you called it, Become Even More So... practice compassionate agency!
So grateful to you for this piece!