Profiling an extremist

Posted on May 21, 2025 by borderslynn

Another book I am dipping into is ‘Alt Reich: the network war to destroy the Western world from within’ by the Indian writer, Nazeem Ahmed. I have searched on Stephen Miller’s name:

Here is an extract:

The acolyte

After 9/11, the focus on Islam and Muslims as a threat generated a new dynamic for Horowitz. The DHFC established a number of projects which began to focus increasingly on demonising Muslims. Around this time, he met a young high-school student, Stephen Miller, who would later go on to become a senior policy advisor and speechwriter for President Donald Trump. Miller invited Horowitz to speak at his school, and he also had an article published on the DHFC website.

This was the beginning of a long relationship, in which Horowitz would mentor and support Miller through his university degree and beyond. In 2007, Horowitz recruited Miller to lead a national Terrorism Awareness Project which promoted anti-Muslim stereotypes and anti-Arab racism. ‘The goal of the Arabs is the destruction of the Jews,’ its website read, claiming that the goal of Muslim ‘jihad’ is ‘world domination’, although, as mentioned, most Muslims interpret the term to broadly entail striving for moral and societal improvement. The website also advertised a range of anti-Muslim books, including by a well-known anti-Muslim blogger, Robert Spencer.53

The blogger

David Horowitz was Robert Spencer’s principal supporter. In 2003, they launched Jihad Watch as a project of the DHFC. Jihad Watch regularly portrays American Muslims as extremists and depicts American Muslim civil society groups as little more than terrorist front organisations affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 2003, Spencer told MSNBC that ‘80% of the mosques in the United States are actually controlled by extremists’ during a televised interview.54 ‘I have written on numerous occasions that there is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists,’ wrote Spencer on Jihad Watch in 2005. ‘While Americans prefer to imagine that the vast majority of American Muslims are civic-minded patriots who accept wholeheartedly the parameters of American pluralism, this proposition has actually never been proven.’55

Spencer’s blog rapidly became the lodestar of what would style itself in the US as the ‘counter-jihad’ movement, a far-right network viewing Islam as an existential threat to Western civilisation and Muslims as a ‘fifth column’ working secretly to destabilise Western societies. In 2010, Spencer teamed up with fellow anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller to write a book claiming that President Obama was waging ‘war on America’.

The following year, he wrote an article in Crisis Magazine attacking multiculturalism as a ‘heresy’ that is ‘denigrating and ultimately destroying the Judeo-Christian West’. Tellingly, he also recommended a famous 1973 book, Camp of the Saints, authored by Jean Raspail. Notoriously popular in white supremacist circles, Raspail’s book is widely known as a racist novel depicting the destruction of Western civilisation due to mass immigration.56 Although bankrolled largely by David Horowitz, Jihad Watch was also supported by several other major conservative foundations, such as the Bradley Foundation.

This is an example of a young man who was a white supremacist even whilst at high school.

An article here provides an insight:

…

born in Santa Monica and attended Franklin Elementary School, Lincoln Middle School, and Santa Monica High, aka SAMOHI. The 33-year-old was bar mitzvahed at Beth Shir Shalom and confirmed at the Santa Monica Synagogue……..Miller, described by one of his Hebrew-school instructors as a born oppositionist, repeatedly challenged those administrators and tested the limits of their beliefs..

https://lamag.com/politics/stephen-miller-samohi-oral-history

And more from ‘The Alt Reich’ book

Trump’s senior policy advisor in the White House, Stephen Miller, was also plugged into this white nationalist network. He had previously worked as communications director for Jeff Sessions in his senate office, having crafted the strategy to defeat a bipartisan immigration reform bill in 2013. During his university days, while being mentored by anti-black and anti-Muslim activist David Horowitz, he had worked closely with the neo-Nazi leader and founder of the term ‘alternative right’, Richard Spencer. Miller denies having worked closely with Spencer when they were at university together as members of the Duke Conservative Union. But, according to Spencer, Miller helped him with fundraising and promotion for an on-campus debate on immigration policy in 2007, the same year Miller was coordinating Horowitz’s Islamo-Fascism Awareness events on college campuses.

That particular event, organised by Spencer with Miller’s support, featured Peter Brimelow, who runs the white nationalist website VDARE, which regularly publishes articles by neo-Nazis. Miller’s relationship with Spencer at this time has been confirmed by email correspondence between Spencer and Brimelow. Spencer would later become head of the white supremacist National Policy Institute, which had also received funding from the Nazi Pioneer Fund.288

An email leak in 2019 would reveal that Miller secretly fed white supremacist conspiracy theories to Breitbart while forging close ties with its then executive chairman, Steve Bannon.289 In the Trump administration, Miller would become known as the man who led the charge on drafting the Trump executive order that would ban travel from a group of predominantly Muslim countries in Africa.290

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Words are powerful

Posted on May 20, 2025 by borderslynn

The following is an extract from ‘The Friends of Israel’ and it is particularly important that anyone reading the book understands the semantics used, so as to be clear about the future use of descriptions such as ‘Israel lobby’. Those who are supporters of this lobby go back to Lord Balfour who ensured the formation of Israel, to the present day Michael Gove, who were and are not Jewish, neither is Joe Biden who announced he was a Zionist.

Words are powerful, and language matters. This book uses the phrases ‘Israel lobby’ and ‘Zionist movement / lobby’, as well as ‘pro-Israel movement / lobby’ and, occasionally, ‘Israel-advocacy movement’. In using the words ‘Israel’ and ‘Zionist’ as interchangeable prefixes before the terms ‘lobby’ and ‘movement’, I take as a given journalist and political commentator Peter Beinart’s words that ‘Zionism is what Israel does’.3

Nonetheless, the term ‘Zionism’ is relevant and useful because it pinpoints the ideology underpinning the state of Israel’s apartheid practices. It also invites us to bear in mind the spectrum of political persuasions, from liberal Zionism to revisionist Zionism, contained therein. ‘Israel lobby’ should not be interpreted as ‘code’ for ‘Jewish lobby’, a phrase this book never uses. It is vital to distinguish between Judaism, an ethno-religious and cultural identity, and Zionism – understood here as an ethno-nationalist political ideology and movement defined by a commitment to an inherently exclusionary Jewish state.

The fact that in some quarters, Judaism and Zionism are deliberately equated is not a reason to accept the blurring of this critically important conceptual distinction.

Using the terminology of a ‘Jewish lobby’ to speak about pro-Israel activism is empirically inaccurate, as well as politically irresponsible and harmful. The Israel lobby is very far from incorporating all Jewish people and is, moreover, far from exclusively Jewish.

The contemporary power of Christian Zionism deserves special mention in this regard,4 and indeed, some of the most important supporters of Israel discussed in this book – including Arthur Balfour, Orde Wingate, Terence Prittie, Luke Akehurst, Nigel Goodrich, Sajid Javid, Michael Gove, Priti Patel and Joan Ryan – are non-Jewish Zionists. More importantly, the idea that a ‘Jewish lobby’ is behind support for Israel is an anti-Semitic trope which erroneously ‘reduces political activity to ethnicity’ and reinforces the idea that there is only one ‘Jewish political position’5 when in reality, in the words of scholar and activist Joel Kovel, ‘there is no one way of being Jewish’.6

This, then, is definitively not a book about a ‘Jewish lobby’. Rather, it is a book about the Israel lobby: a group of organisations and individuals defined not by their ethno-religious identity but by their political activities in support of a specific nation-state (Israel), and the nationalist ideology (Zionism) underpinning that state’s apartheid practices towards Palestinians. Since Israel defines itself as a ‘Jewish state’ and is the embodiment of a Jewish nationalist movement, many of the people who feature in this book are indeed Jewish, but their activities are never represented as a function of their ethno-religious identity. Instead, what brings them into the purview of this study is their ideological commitment to, and organised political activity in support of, Israeli apartheid and some brand of political Zionism.

Likewise, it should be made crystal clear that all organisations scrutinised in this book – even those which are Jewish communal organisations rather than explicitly Zionist bodies – are included because of strong empirical evidence of pro-Israel activism. As chapter 3 explains, the leadership of several Jewish communal organisations (such as the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council) choose to present Zionist advocacy as an inherent part of their work and state explicitly that they ‘lobby for Israel’ – but this work should not be presumed to represent the will of wider British Jewish communities.

While ‘lobby’ is an appropriate word to describe forms of influence which involve the cultivation of direct, persuasive relationships with policymakers,7 Israel’s various friends actually engage in a much-broader array of activities. They also fundraise, educate, donate, produce knowledge from within academia and think-tanks, work to change legislation, run PR campaigns, campaign digitally, launch legal cases and (to an extent) organise at the grassroots. Employing the term ‘movement’ therefore enables a more holistic appreciation of the diverse tactics which supporters of Israel use. Moreover, the transnational Zionist movement has itself, since its inception, used the phrase ‘Zionist movement’ self-referentially.8 Exclusive use of the term ‘lobby’ – with its connotations of domestic interest groups – would also risk obscuring this transnational context, which remains critical to understanding the Zionist movement in any given country.

And see the current link, with an extract below:

https://history.howstuffworks.com/world-history/zionism.htm

What Is Zionism and Is It Fueling the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict?

By: Dave Roos  |  Updated: Apr 9, 2025

Israeli settler

An Israeli settler cleans outside her house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied east Jerusalem on May 5, 2021. Israeli Jews backed by courts have taken over houses in Sheikh Jarrah in east Jerusalem on the grounds that Jewish families lived there before fleeing in Israel’s 1948 war for independence. The claimants want to evict more Palestinians, and Israel’s Supreme Court is set to announce a decision soon. EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty Images

Key Takeaways

  • Zionism is a nationalist movement that established an independent state for Jewish people in 1948, supporting Judaism’s claim to Israel.
  • The conflict arises as Palestinian Arabs also claim the land, viewing Zionism as a colonial and racist movement.
  • Rooted in the 19th century, Zionism emerged as a response to the “Jewish Question” and gained momentum after the Holocaust, leading to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.
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Why we hate

Posted on May 19, 2025 by borderslynn

Q.Why did we need Friends of Israel?

A.below:

……

the Zionist movement has been forced to mobilise in response to a resurgent Palestine solidarity movement. In particular, since its launch in 2005, the growth of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign – which puts pressure on Israel to comply with international law – has prompted a backlash which throws into sharp relief the existence of the Zionist movement and the power it can wield in some contexts.

From Hil Aked’s book, Friends of Israel’

Henry Adams, a grandson of American President John Quincy Adams, said of politics that ‘it is the systematic organization of hatreds’.

There is no doubt the vile Nazi right wing machine expressed its venomous hatred of Jews, gypsies, disabled, genetically ‘unfit’ (eg. Psychiatrist Asberger sent many children to their deaths) to be, like vermin, exterminated.

Hatred appears to many of us to present as a mental illness. Psychologists disagree. Psychiatrists say it is a reaction to highly stressful events. In WWII, one can obviously see the extreme conditions suffered by Jews, and survivors have reminded us, and they always say “Never again”.  I know many of them are meaning ‘never again to any persons’, but I also see it translates as ‘never again to any Jew’ – and to that end we have the ‘rise and kill first’ mentality (see Ronen Bergman’s book with that title).

The hatred of Jews is thought to be the longest-running hatred.2

……..In this causative conception, there are at least 3 different kinds of hate based on different mechanisms: projected, scapegoated, and realistic hate. They can be combined, of course…….The basic psychological damage of hate can be substantial. It can damage self-esteem and a basic sense of security. It can also hurt the perpetrator by not solving their own sense of internal badness.

https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/psychiatry-and-hate-projected-scapegoated-and-realistic-hatreds

To me, this under researched topic, still suggests continuing hatred is an illness, or at the very least, makes one ill. Freud believed it could be projecting outward to others an unacceptable hatred of oneself. I think Freud was right but science might find difficulty proving that, so it is avoided in research, probably for ethical reasons.

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UK and Israel

Posted on May 17, 2025 by borderslynn

There is so much I don’t know. But the information is out there, and I just asked the question: why have I heard UK Politicians refer to the ‘Friends of Israel’?

So here is a book which may enlighten me, with the preface from the author

This book departs from the premise that Palestinians are struggling for freedom, justice and equality against the oppressive violence of a state practising settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. For many decades, Palestinians have been saying that Israel’s regime constitutes apartheid, defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as ‘inhuman acts … committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group’.1

Between 2020 and 2022, Israeli human rights groups Yesh Din and B’Tselem, followed by leading international NGOs Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, reached the same conclusion.2

I wrote this book because I believe that all actors – civil society organisations as well as governments – working to shore up support for Israeli apartheid, or to marginalise and repress solidarity with Palestinians, ought to be held publicly accountable and should not be immune to criticism. Their actions cause harm, albeit indirectly. To try to illustrate this harm, each chapter of this book opens with anecdotes juxtaposing the activities and narratives of the ‘Israel lobby’ or ‘Zionist movement’ (terminology I define and explain in what follows) with the reality, as lived by Palestinians.

The book focuses on pro-Israel actors, so it inevitably decentres Palestinians to a certain extent. However, it situates the Israeli government and Zionist movement’s strategies as responses to a century of Palestinian resistance. Israel’s government is only able to sustain its apartheid system due to the impunity it is granted on the international stage. In particular, Britain’s role in and responsibility for Palestinians’ oppression has historically been, and remains, pivotal. Yet to examine and critique pro-Israel organisations is not to argue that their activities are the only, or even the main, reason for Britain’s alliance with Israeli apartheid. On the contrary, as we will see, the Zionist movement – and the state of Israel itself – were supported in the early years due to their perceived utility to the British Empire. In a sense, this dynamic of dependency remains, though today more so in Israel’s relationship to US empire.

The book does show, however, that the Israel lobby today plays a supporting role in maintaining Israeli apartheid, alongside the British, US and, of course, Israeli governments. In particular, the Zionist movement is a key mover in an intensifying campaign of repression against the Palestine solidarity movement, with the support of both the Israeli and British governments. This book therefore argues that the British Zionist movement not only exists but can and does, in some contexts, wield considerable power – especially in coordination with state actors. It contributes to the oppression of Palestinians both through helping to maintain British government complicity and, often more visibly, through working to repress Palestine solidarity initiatives. This is demonstrated with detailed empirical evidence.

Rather than fetishising or exaggerating the Zionist movement’s power, however, the book highlights its limitations and the potential for resistance. Specifically, it shows that the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement – initiated by Palestinians in 2005 – has been effective enough to provoke a massive counter-campaign led by the Israeli government and yet, despite this repressive backlash, continues to grow across the world. In what follows, I highlight the strong parallels between the Israeli government’s counter-campaign and the propaganda campaign waged in previous decades by the South African apartheid regime, which similarly sought to counteract a global boycott campaign emanating from civil society.

My interest in studying this topic as a researcher grew out of time spent doing solidarity activism in the occupied West Bank, a period which had a profound effect on me. I witnessed the pervasive injustice and brutality of Israeli apartheid alongside the dignity, humanity and steadfastness (sumud) of Palestinians’ daily resistance. Engaging in solidarity activism in Britain subsequently, it was impossible to ignore the Zionist movement: its most far-right elements would show up to stage aggressive counterprotests at demonstrations, waving Israeli flags and hurling racist abuse at Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims. I am proud to support the BDS movement and firmly believe that decolonisation in Israel/Palestine will mean not only liberation for Palestinians but also peace, through justice, for Israelis. I wrote this book – the first of its kind focusing on the Zionist movement in Britain – not out of a belligerent glee in controversy or a desire to sensationalise or provoke, but in the hope that subjecting Israel’s support networks here to critical scrutiny could make a contribution, however small, to undermining settler colonialism in Palestine.

I also believe this book is necessary on a second count: fighting anti-Semitism. Currently, in Britain there is a cultivated and pernicious ignorance about Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, about our long-standing complicity, and about the activities of the Zionist movement. In the absence of informed and rigorous discussion, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories can gain traction. A clear, seriously researched and robustly anti-racist analysis can, however, demystify pro-Israel networks and in the process rebuff such ideas, carving out space for a healthier discussion. The book seeks, therefore, to be an anti-racist intervention in this taboo topic. Simultaneously, what follows serves as a corrective to misguided narratives which position support for Israel as a problem of ‘foreign influence’ undermining British democracy. Instead, I situate Israel’s support networks as a long-standing part of the British establishment and foreground the harm done to Palestinians.

Inevitably, the book is also a case study in British politics and Britain’s grossly unequal power relations, highlighting the need for more transparency and democratisation. But principally, my concern is with British actors’ complicity in the systematic denial of Palestinian rights. What is at stake in Palestinians’ struggle for freedom transcends Israel/Palestine itself. Indeed, Palestinian liberation is intertwined with other liberation movements around the world.

The situation in Palestine is historically rooted in imperialism, ongoing settler colonialism and state racism; Israel is a carceral society in which prisons, policing, borders, militarism and other forms of state violence combine to devalue and destroy the lives of a racialised people; it is a quintessential case of the denial of refugee rights and of unequal access to housing, water and land. When the organised Zionist movement defends Israel, it implicitly makes the case that such inequities should be tolerated not just in Palestine, but everywhere. To oppose these arguments is not only to support Palestinian liberation and contribute to efforts to create alternatives to a status quo characterised by seemingly endless violence and suffering; it is also, more broadly, to argue against a world defined by borders, walls and racial injustice.

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Gulag mentality

Posted on May 16, 2025 by borderslynn

It is sad, but true. The Gulag horrors are being expanded in Russia. Innocent civilians from Ukraine are suffering there.  Out of our sight, out of reach from their suffering families. Pain radiates out from their locations and maybe you and I, if we care enough, will speak of them and condemn their captors and regime which perpetuates this psychopathic environment.

July 13, 2023, headline:

Thousands of Ukraine civilians are being held in Russian prisons. Russia plans to build many more.

https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-prisons-civilians-torture-detainees-88b4abf2efbf383272eed9378be13c72

Journalists, and the Ukrainian government, have been telling us that  for the past four years of Russian aggression against Ukraine, thousands of Ukrainians have been swept up during the war and driven to be tortured and incarcerated in old and new Gulag style prisons.

Under Russian law these people have no status.

Under international law, civilians must never be imprisoned during war.

 A Russian government document obtained by The Associated Press dating to January outlined plans to create 25 new prison colonies and six other detention centers in occupied Ukraine by 2026.

Watching this unfold, some have ideas to emulate this concept.  Prisons are supposed to be for persons tried and convicted by a respected and fair justice system.

Harsh solutions are also emerging against innocent migrants.

From hotels to  ‘detention centres’ for migrants who have sought refuge away from their homeland to another country where they wanted to be safe and earn a living. Now we hear of migrants hubs to ‘process asylum claims’ –  but it seems like a dumping ground to deport them away from safety.

The Gulag mentality has seeped into the minds of more governments and their populations as human rights are dismissed and persecution of innocents is becoming more acceptable.

This savagery has shown itself throughout history, as mental instability permeates societies not strong enough to protect the innocent.

Now is the time for us to show strength and to ensure this wrong direction is averted and we progress and evolve as human beings are capable of doing.

Don’t follow false gods.

Pope Leo XIV has already made some clear observations:

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Lithium – the new gold vs. historic spiritual land

Posted on May 13, 2025 by borderslynn

Timeline:

Energy Plug wants to enter into a long-term partnership with the Malahat First Nation. Plans are to build a 100,000-square-foot battery assembly and research facility at the nation’s Malahat Business Park, a 52-acre industrial park in Mill Bay, roughly 40 killometres north of Victoria and fronting the Trans-Canada Highway.

The Malahat First Nation were offered to hold 51 percent of Energy Plug’s planned enterprise

Canada’s first Indigenous-led gigafactory could take shape on Vancouver Island

Shannon Moneo January 22,2024

The proposed 100,000-square-foot battery assembly facility to be built at the Malahat Nation’s Business Park.

Apartnership between a Vancouver Island First Nation and a Vancouver company focused on lithium battery assembly is touting itself as Canada’s first Indigenous-led gigafactory.

A gigafactory is a large-scale manufacturing facility where electric batteries are produced and/or assembled on a grand scale.

“We were looking for a long-term partnership with an understanding of our vision of renewable technology,” says Broderick Gunning, CEO and president of Energy Plug, whose business is assembling lithium iron phosphate battery packs for residential and commercial storage uses.

Energy Plug wants to enter into a long-term partnership with the Malahat First Nation. Plans are to build a 100,000-square-foot battery assembly and research facility at the nation’s Malahat Business Park, a 52-acre industrial park in Mill Bay, roughly 40 killometres north of Victoria and fronting the Trans-Canada Highway.

The Malahat First Nation, with 51 per cent ownership, would be responsible for building the facility, while Energy Plug would provide leadership, sales, partnerships and finance creation of the internal systems, which include offices, engineering, robotics, research and development.

The Malahat First Nation’s director of economic development notes negotiations haven’t concluded for the project. COURTESY BRODERICK GUNNING, CEO OF ENERGY PLUG — The proposed 100,000-square-foot battery assembly facility to be built at the Malahat Nation’s Business Park.

“We’re focused on land, utilities and a long-term partnership,” says Tristan Gale, who started work with the nation as a fisheries biologist almost eight years ago…..

“The Malahat checked all the boxes,” he says.

Those boxes include sitting at tidewater, access to electricity and being located in a free trade zone, a location where goods can be shipped, handled, manufactured, reconfigured and re-exported without involvement of customs agencies.

Gale points out with 11 kilometres of waterfront, the Malahat First Nation is in charge of one of the few deep-sea ports on the West Coast that isn’t booked up.

As well, the Malahat First Nation is a Land Code Nation, which means the nation is in control of zoning, permitting and taxation on its lands.

Also driving the project is that locally the Malahat Nation, amongst others, will eventually exceed the amount of electricity available. By having a majority stake in the battery facility, the nation will be able to both build and use the battery storage systems, Gale says.

And after more than 25 years of negotiations, the Malahat Nation is close to finalizing the transfer to it of an estimated 3,000 acres of land, which will add to its energy needs. Having the electricity for both new lands and industry, and for existing band members, roughly 370 today, is important for future development, Gale says.

Once built, the factory will also be used for research on lithium, nickel, manganese, cobalt, sodium-ion and solid state batteries.

https://canada.constructconnect.com/joc/news/projects/2024/01/canadas-first-indigenous-led-gigafactory-could-take-shape-on-vancouver-island

Then we see Vancouver based Lithium Americas is to mine lithium in a beauty spot in Nevada:

Lithium Americas Provides a Thacker Pass Construction Plan Update

03/14/2024

(All amounts in US$ unless otherwise indicated)

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 14, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Lithium Americas Corp. (TSX: LAC) (NYSE: LAC) (“Lithium Americas” or the “Company”) provides a construction plan update for its Thacker Pass lithium project located in Humboldt County, Nevada (“Thacker Pass” or the “Project”).

https://www.lithiumamericas.com/news/news-details/2024/Lithium-Americas-Provides-a-Thacker-Pass-Construction-Plan-Update/default.aspx

Thacker Pass, Nevada

It is on the land of indigenous local tribes. For 5 years this land has been the scene of protests to the mine, who ask :

“One, we wanted to stop the mine, but two, we wanted to force a bigger conversation about whether this transition to so-called green energy was actually green and whether we can really save the natural world by destroying more of the natural world, which is what it will take to manufacture things like electric cars and electric car batteries. But my involvement in this campaign is very much based in my love for the natural world and my recognition that everyone’s wellbeing is tied up in the wellbeing of the natural world. And this new wave of extraction for so-called green energy is just going to be another wave of destruction.”

For more details of the protests, and of legal action being taken against them, see:

https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/09/this-lithium-company-is-trying-to-sue-indigenous-land-defenders-into-silence/

And

https://www.protectthackerpass.org/

General Motors are major investors in the project, which was encouraged by the Biden administration.

GM, LAC sign $625-million agreement in push to secure lithium supply in the West

The Vancouver, Canada-based Lithium Americas (LAC) entered into a new $625-million investment agreement with the US automaker General Motors (GM) for establishing a joint venture to fund, develop, construct and operate LAC’s Thacker Pass lithium mine, the company announced on Wednesday October 16

October 23, 2024

https://www.fastmarkets.com/insights/general-motors-lithium-americas-joint-venture/

https://www.energy.gov/lpo/thacker-pass

In October 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) announced a $2.26 billion loan to Lithium Americas Corp’s subsidiary, Lithium Nevada Corp. (including $1.97 billion of principal and $289.7 million of capitalized interest), to help finance the construction of facilities for manufacturing lithium carbonate at Thacker Pass in Humboldt County, Nevada. The project is located next to a mine site that contains the largest confirmed lithium resource in North America. Once fully operational, the facility is expected to produce approximately 40,000 tonnes per year of battery-grade lithium carbonate for use in lithium-ion batteries. 

And now the litigation:

https://youtu.be/Qjb1txBeIX4?si=UpoGuz88gwlFyqcZ

This is a Canada, America cooperative venture which began under the Biden administration.

In 2021, I wrote this:

https://borderslynn.com/2021/09/04/lithium-mining-expansion-threats-and-opportunities/

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Apartheid to Genocide?

Posted on May 11, 2025 by borderslynn

I am reproducing the moving speech of Susan Abulhawa:

https://peaceandplanetnews.org/susan-abulhawas-powerful-address-at-the-oxford-union/

by Susan Abulhawa | Fall 2024 Edition

Remarks at the Oxford Union debate

In a profoundly moving and meticulously crafted address, Palestinian author and human rights activist Susan Abulhawa captivated the Oxford Union during a debate Nov. 28, 2024, on the motion: “This House Believes Israel Is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide.” The motion passed with overwhelming support, 278 votes to 59, but it was Abulhawa’s speech that resonated deeply, leaving the audience in stunned silence.

I will not take questions until I’m finished speaking; so please refrain from interrupting me.

Addressing the challenge of what to do about the indigenous inhabitants of the land, Chaim Weizman, a Russian Jew, said to the World Zionist Congress in 1921 that Palestinians were akin to “the rocks of Judea, obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path.”

David Gruen, a Polish Jew, who changed his name to David Ben Gurion to sound relevant to the region, said. “We must expel Arabs and take their places.”

There are thousands of such conversations among the early zionists who plotted and implemented the violent colonization of Palestine and the annihilation of her native people.

But they were only partially successful, murdering or ethnically cleansing 80% of Palestinians, which meant that 20% of us remained, an enduring obstacle to their colonial fantasies, which became the subject of their obsessions in the decades that followed, especially after conquering what remained of Palestine in 1967.

Zionists lamented our presence and they debated publicly in all circles—political, academic, social, cultural circles—regarding what do with us; what to do about the Palestinian birthrate, about our babies, which they dub a demographic threat.

Benny Morris, who was originally meant to be here, once expressed regret that Ben Gurion “did not finish the job” of getting rid of us all, which would have obviated what they refer to as the “Arab problem.”Benjamin Netanyahu, a Polish Jew whose real name is Benjamin Mileikowsky, once bemoaned a missed opportunity during the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising to expel large swaths of the Palestinian population “while world attention was focused on China.”

Some of their articulated solutions to the nuisance of our existence include a “break their bones” policy in the ’80s and ’90s, ordered by Yitzhak Rubitzov, Ukrainian Jew who changed his name to Yitzhak Rabin (for the same reasons).

That horrific policy that crippled generations of Palestinians did not succeed in making us leave. And frustrated by Palestinian resilience, a new discourse arose, especially after a massive natural gas field was discovered off the coast of Northern Gaza worth trillions of dollars.

This new discourse is echoed in the words of Colonel Efraim Eitan, who said in 2004, “We have to kill them all.”

Aaron Sofer, an Israeli so-called intellectual and political advisor, insisted in 2018 that “we have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.”

When I was in Gaza, I saw a little boy no more than 9 years whose hands and part of his face had been blown off from a booby trapped can of food that soldiers had left behind for Gaza’s starving children. I later learned that they had also left poisoned food for people in Shujaiyya, and in the 1980s and ’90s, Israeli soldiers had left booby trapped toys in southern Lebanon that exploded when excited children picked them up.

The harm they do is diabolical, and yet, they expect you to believe they are the victims. Invoking Europe’s holocaust and screaming antisemitism, they expect you to suspend fundamental human reason to believe that the daily sniping of children with so called “kill shots” and the bombing of entire neighborhoods that bury families alive and wipe out whole bloodlines is self-defense.


They want you to believe that a man who had not eaten a thing in over 72 hours, who kept fighting even when all he had was one functioning arm, that this man was motivated by some innate savagery and irrational hatred or jealousy of Jews, rather than the indomitable yearning to see his people free in their own homeland.

It’s clear to me that we’re not here to debate whether Israel is an apartheid or genocidal state. This debate is ultimately about the worth of Palestinian lives; about the worth of our schools, research centers, books, art, and dreams; about the worth of the homes we worked all our lives to build and which contain the memories of generations; about the worth of our humanity and our agency; the worth of bodies and ambitions.

Because if the roles were reversed—if Palestinians had spent the last eight decade stealing Jewish homes, expelling, oppressing, imprisoning, poisoning, torturing, raping and killing them;

IF

Palestinians had killed an estimated 300,000 Jews in one year, targeted their journalists, their thinkers, their healthcare workers, their athletes, their artists, bombed every Israeli hospital, university, library, museum, cultural center, synagogue, and simultaneously set up an observation platform where people came watch their slaughter as if a tourist attraction

IF

Palestinians had corralled them by the hundreds of thousands into flimsy tents, bombed them in so called safe zones, burned them alive, cut off their food, water, and medicine;

IF

Palestinians made Jewish children wander barefoot with empty pots; made them gather the flesh of their parents into plastic bags; made them bury their siblings, cousins and friends; made them sneak out from their tents in the middle of the night to sleep on their parents’ graves; made them pray for death just to join their families and not be alone in this terrible world anymore, and terrorized them so utterly that their children lose their hair, lose their memory, lose their minds, and made those as young as 4 and 5 year old were die of heart attacks;

IF

we mercilessly forced their NICU babies to die, alone in hospital beds, crying until they could cry no more, died and decomposed in the same spot;

IF

Palestinians used wheat flour aid trucks to lure starving jews, then opened fire on them when they gathered to collect a day’s bread; if Palestinians finally allowed a food delivery into a shelter with hungry Jews, then set fire to the entire shelter and aid truck before anyone could taste the food;

IF

a Palestinian sniper bragged about blowing out 42 Jewish kneecaps in one day as one Israeli soldier did in 2019; if a Palestinian admitted to CNN that he ran over hundreds of Jews with his tank, their squished flesh lingering in the tank treads;

IF

Palestinians were systematically raping Jewish doctors, patients, and other captives with hot metal rods, jagged and electrified sticks, and fire extinguishers, sometimes raping to death, as happened with Dr Adnan alBursh and others;

IF

Jewish women were forced to give birth in filth, get C-sections or leg amputations without anesthesia; if we destroyed their children then decorated our tanks with their toys; if we killed or displaced their women then posed with their lingerie…

IF

the world were watching the livestreamed systematic annihilation of Jews in real time, there would be no debating whether that constituted terrorism or genocide.

And yet two Palestinians—myself and Mohammad el-Kurd— showed up here to do just that, enduring the indignity of debating those who think our only life choices should be to leave our homeland, submit to their supremacy, or die politely and quietly.

But you would be wrong to think that I came to convince you of anything. The house resolution, though well-meaning and appreciated, is of little consequence in the midst of this holocaust of our time.


I came in the spirit of Malcolm X and Jimmy Baldwin, both of whom stood here and in Cambridge before I was born, facing finely dressed well-spoken monsters who harbored the same supremacist ideologies as Zionism—these notions of entitlement and privilege, of being divinely favored, blessed, or chosen.

I’m here for the sake of history. To speak to generations not yet born and for the chronicles of this extraordinary time where the carpet bombing of defenseless indigenous societies is legitimized.


I’m here for my grandmothers, both of whom died as penniless refugees while foreign Jews lived in their stolen homes.

And I also came to speak directly to zionists here and everywhere.

We let you into our homes when your own countries tried to murder you and everyone else turned you away. We fed and clothed you, gave you shelter, and we shared the bounty of our land with you, and when the time was ripe, you kicked us out of our own homes and homeland, then you killed and robbed and burned and looted our lives.

You carved out our hearts because it is clear you do not know how to live in the world without dominating others.

You have crossed all lines and nurtured the most vile of human impulses, but the world is finally glimpsing the terror we have endured at your hands for so long, and they are seeing the reality of who you are, who you’ve always been. They watch in utter astonishment the sadism, the glee, the joy, and pleasure with which you conduct, watch, and cheer the daily details of breaking our bodies, our minds, our future, our past.

But no matter what happens from here, no matter what fairy tales you tell yourself and tell the world, you will never truly belong to that land. You will never understand the sacredness of the olive trees, which you’ve been cutting down and burning for decades just to spite us and to break our hearts a little more. No one native to that land would dare do such a thing to the olives. No one who belongs to that region would ever bomb or destroy such ancient heritage as Baalbak or Bittir, or destroy ancient cemeteries as you destroy ours, like the Anglican cemetery in Jerusalem or the resting place of ancient Muslim scholars and warriors in Maamanillah. Those who come from that land do not desecrate the dead; that’s why my family for centuries were the caretakers of the Jewish cemetery in the Mount of Olives, as labors of faith and care for what we know is part of our ancestry and story.

Your ancestors will always be buried in your actual homelands of Poland, Ukraine, and elsewhere around the world from whence you came. The myths and folklore of the land will always be alien to you.

You will never be literate in the sartorial language of the robes we wear, that sprang from the land through our foremothers over centuries—every motif, design, and pattern speaking to the secrets of local lore, flora, birds, rivers, and wildlife.

What your real estate agents call in their high-priced listings “old Arab home” will always hold in their stones the stories and memories of our ancestors who built them. The ancient photos and paintings of the land will never contain you.

You will never know how it feels to be loved and supported by those who have nothing to gain from you, and in fact, everything to lose. You will never know the feeling of masses all over the world pouring into the streets and stadiums to chant and sing for your freedom; and it is not because you are Jewish, as you try to make the world believe, but because you are depraved violent colonizers who think your Jewishness entitles you to the home my grandfather and his brothers built with their own hands on lands that had been in our family for centuries. It is because Zionism is a blight onto Judaism and indeed onto humanity.

You can change your names to sound more relevant to the region and you can pretend falafel and hummus and zaatar are your ancient cuisines, but in the recesses of your being, you will always feel the sting of this epic forgery and theft, that’s why even the drawings of our children hung on walls at the UN or in a hospital ward send your leaders and lawyers into hysteric meltdowns.

You will not erase us, no matter how many of us you kill and kill and kill, all day every day. We are not the rocks Chaim Weizmann thought you could clear from the land.

We are its very soil. We are her rivers and her trees and her stories, because all of that was nurtured by our bodies and our lives over millennia of continuous, uninterrupted habitation of that patch of earth between the Jordan and Mediterranean waters, from our Canaanite, our Hebrew, our Philistine, and our Phoenician ancestors, to every conqueror or pilgrim who came and went, who married or raped, loved, enslaved, converted between religions, settled or prayed in our land, leaving pieces of themselves in our bodies and our heritage. The fabled, tumultuous stories of that land are quite literally in our DNA. You cannot kill or propagandize that away, no matter what death technology you use or what Hollywood and corporate media arsenals you deploy.

Someday, your impunity and arrogance will end. Palestine will be free; she will be restored to her multi-religious, multi-ethnic pluralistic glory; we will restore and expand the trains that run from Cairo to Gaza to Jerusalem, Haifa, Tripoli, Beirut, Damascus, Amman, Kuwait, Sanaa, and so on; we will put an end to the zionist American war machine of domination, expansion, extraction, pollution, and looting.

..and you will either leave, or you will finally learn to live with others as equals.

Susan Abulhawa Susan Abulhawa  is a Palestinian writer and human rights activist and animal rights advocate. She is the author of several books.

Also see recent interview on BBC between Philippe Lazzarin and Jeremy Bowen:


Israel denying food to Gaza is ‘weapon of war’, UN Palestinian refugee agency head tells BBC –

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx27dzv7znpo

On May 14th, 2025,  the following action was noted by Robert Reich on Substach:

Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, was arrested and charged with “crowding and obstructing” while protesting against the Gaza blockade during a hearing of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Video footage (above) shows him being hauled out of the committee room, handcuffed and escorted away.

As he’s being removed, a woman asks him why he’s being arrested. He replies: “Congress kills poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs and pays for it by kicking kids off Medicaid in the U.S.,” adding, “Congress and the senators need to ease the siege, they need to let food into Gaza. They need to let food to starving kids.”

Gaza is now in the 11th week of a total blockade by Israel that prevents essential items including food, fuel, and medicine from reaching the area’s 2.3 million Palestinians. Many are surviving on limited supplies of canned peas or dried beans.

A report this week from food security experts warns that Gaza is at “critical risk of famine.”

2024 Ireland, Spain and Norway have announced they will officially recognise Palestine as an independent state.

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Incarceration and gang culture

Posted on May 7, 2025 by borderslynn

In 1992 Venezuela was the richest country in the Western Hemisphere., due to its massive oil reserves, drilled by American oil companies.

Below, an extract from the BBC obituary of Chavez, 5 March 2013

Father’ Fidel

Cuba says Hugo Chavez was like a “true son” to Fidel Castro

With his fiery revolutionary rhetoric, Mr Chavez was in many ways the ideological heir of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, taking on the mantle of left-wing opposition to US influence in Latin America.

The veteran Cuban revolutionary, 28 years his senior, became a close ally and mentor – perhaps even a father figure.

Cheap oil from Venezuela rescued Cuba’s struggling socialist economy.

In return, Cuba sent thousands of health workers to Venezuela to support President Chavez’s social project for the poor.

Havana also sent security advisers and intelligence agents as maintaining the Venezuelan alliance became critical to the survival of the Cuban revolution.

Whether the cheap Venezuelan oil continues to flow now Mr Chavez has died will be a vital consideration for Cuba, as well as for other poor Caribbean nations that benefitted from his generosity.

Mr Chavez also helped set up new regional bodies to provide an alternative structure to the Organisation of American States, which excluded Cuba and – in his view – was dominated by Washington.

The Union of South American Nations (Unasur), the Boliviarian Alliance for the Americas (Alba) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) were all founded as part of the drive for regional integration.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-21682064

A year before Chavez died, Bernie Sanders was reputed to say “Venezuelans are living the American Dream better than Americans.”

Yet 5 years earlier, Chavez had ordered American oil companies out of his country. He will have known that  would trigger anger in America.

Looking back to the Chavez rule:

July 2001, Chavez wins elections

The government of former paratrooper Hugo Chávez Frías, comfortably endorsed by 59 percent of the vote in general elections held on July 30, failed to mount an effective response to Venezuela’s deep-seated human rights problems, in particular the ingrained abusiveness of its police forces and appalling prison conditions. The government introduced ambitious plans for prison reform, but attention to overcrowding in Venezuela’s prisons did not result in a significant decline in inmate violence. Police killings of criminal suspects increased from 1999, and some measures authorities proposed to combat violent crime raised serious human rights concerns.

Introduced in December 1999, the constitution included forty-two articles protecting human rights, including some of the most advanced in the hemisphere. However, it also greatly expanded the power of the presidency and enhances the political role of the armed forces.

https://www.hrw.org/legacy/wr2k1/americas/venezuela.html

Prison conditions were a problem when Chavez came to power and maybe new, more human rights oriented prisons should have been built early on. The laws which placed people in such incarceration probably should have been investigated, and an understanding of brutality and degradation affecting human behaviour detrimentally maybe should have been addressed.

All countries, including the UK, who do not address inapproprate prison conditions for inmates will be aware of the psychological damage done to all who have to live there, including prison guards.

After 12 years since Chavez died of cancer, another cancer has grown in the prisons of Aragua state of Venezuela. The gang culture of now transnational Tren de Aragua.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tren-de-Aragua

Tren de Aragua

Venezuela-based transnational crime

Written and fact-checked by 

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: May 6, 2025

Tocorón Prison in Aragua State, Venezuela
Tocorón Prison in Aragua State, Venezuela An aerial view of Tocorón prison, where Tren de Aragua emerged and built the foundation of its criminal network.(more)

News • 

Declassified intelligence memo contradicts Trump’s claims linking gang to Venezuelan government • May 6, 2025, 10:08 PM ET (AP) …(Show more)

Tren de Aragua, Venezuela’s most powerful and far-reaching criminal organization. The organization emerged in the early 2010s as a prison gang in the Tocorón penitentiary in the Venezuelan state of Aragua but grew into a transnational organization with operations across South America. Its expansion followed the routes of Venezuelan migration, allowing the group to establish criminal cells in countries such as Colombia, Peru, and Chile. From within Tocorón, the gang maintained control over these external cells and profited from a wide range of illicit activities. In September 2023 the Venezuelan police and military raided the Tocorón prison to reassert state control, but the organization’s leadership escaped, and its transnational operations remain active. In response to growing concern about Tren de Aragua’s activities in the United States, the U.S Treasury Department officially designated the group a transnational criminal organization in July 2024. The U.S State Department also offered $12 million in reward money for information leading to the arrests of three of its senior leaders.

History

Tren de Aragua originated in the early 2010s inside Tocorón prison, located in Venezuela’s Aragua state. The organization’s name, which roughly translates to “the Aragua train” is thought to come from a labor union connected to an unfinished railway project in the region. Its rise was closely tied to Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, known as “Niño Guerrero,” a Tocorón inmate who became the gang’s leader. Under his control, the organization consolidated power inside the prison and began expanding its influence outward. Tocorón functioned not only as a prison but also as Tren de Aragua’s base of operations. Venezuelan authorities, following a broader pattern of prison self-governance, allowed inmates known as pranes, or criminal leaders, to effectively run the facility. With access to illicit revenue, the gang transformed Tocorón, adding amenities such as a swimming pool, zoo, nightclub, and restaurants—symbols of the criminal organization’s dominance within the prison system.

After establishing control of Tocorón prison, Tren de Aragua began expanding its influence beyond the prison walls. Its first area of control was nearby neighborhoods, where it enforced social order and reportedly received government support through one of the organization’s charitable fronts known as “Fundación Somos El Barrio JK.” Other gangs in Aragua and nearby states began entering into nonaggression agreements with Tren de Aragua. The organization gradually extended its reach to other parts of Venezuela through alliances with smaller gangs. About 2018 Tren de Aragua expanded and began operating across the Venezuela and Colombia border, particularly between the Venezuelan state of Táchira and Colombia’s Norte de Santander department. There, it competed with Colombian criminal groups such as the National Liberation Army and the Gaitanistas for control of border areas used for smuggling drugs, contraband, and migrants. Between 2018 and 2023 the group developed a transnational criminal network, establishing itself in Colombia, Peru, and Chile, with additional reports of activity in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil. As its presence grew, it moved into local criminal economies, often using targeted violence to displace rival criminal groups. Its activities abroad include extortion, migrant smuggling, kidnapping, retail and small-scale international drug trafficking, human trafficking, loan sharking, and robbery. These cells often specialize in different activities depending on the local conditions.

Tattoos of Tren de Aragua gangs are highly elaborate

CECOT El Salvador

CECOT was built after President Bukele declared “war” on the gangs that had terrorised El Salvador for decades and led to its reputation as the murder capital of the world. In slickly choreographed promotional videos prisoners scuttle into CECOT, shackled and bent over between two rows of guards. Prison administrators have promoted the high-security prison as “key to winning the war against the gangs”.

Sprawled over 23 hectares, CECOT consists of eight concrete buildings, each containing 32 cells. Each cell, designed to hold more than 100 inmates each, has 80 four-storey metal bunks without bedding and two toilets and sinks with no privacy. Mesh ceilings allow guards to patrol the cells from above.

According to an analysis by The Financial Times using satellite imagery, if the prison were to reach its 40,000 person capacity, detainees would have just 0.6 square metres of cell space each. That’s less space than the one hen per square metre rule Australian poultry farmers must adhere to for “free range” accreditation. 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-26/cecot-mega-prison-trump-deportation-el-salvador/105200818

In March 2022, President Bukele used his government forces to crackdown on El Salvadors gangs, mainly the MS-13 and 18th Street.

El Salvador’s parliament has approved a state of emergency after the Central American country recorded dozens of gang-related murders in a single day.

Police said there had been 62 murders on Saturday, making it the most violent 24-hour period since the end of the civil war in 1992.

New laws restrict the right to gather, allow arrests without a warrant and the monitoring of communications.

Last year, the gang-plagued nation recorded 1,140 murders – a 30-year low.

However, that still equates to 18 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. In November, another spate of violence led to more than 40 people being killed within three days.

Hours before MPs voted on the new powers, which will remain in place for 30 days, police said four leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang had been arrested over the spate of killings…..

BBC May 23, 2022

https://defonline.com.ar/internacionales/mara-salvatrucha-quienes-son-y-que-fue-de-su-reinado-del-terror/

MS-13 originated in Los Angeles to protect the Salvadorian community.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-13

https://historica.fandom.com/wiki/18th_Street_Gang

The Trump administration is focusing on Venezuelan immigrants, looking to deport members of Tren de Arugua.

A USA TODAY investigation found the group is still small in the U.S. − with activities far less pervasive than established transnational criminal groups, such as MS-13.

As the above shows, El Salvador is home to MS-13. Seems strange it is TDA and not MS-13 being pursued by ICE, thus rounding up Venezuelan immigrants rather than Salvadorians?

https://images.inkl.com/s3/article/lead_image/20658066/new-photos-reveal-mega-prison-in-el-salvador-40k-inmates-cover_800.jpg
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British Monarchs

Posted on May 5, 2025 by borderslynn

Our country has been invaded and fought over since the Romans, like lands across the world, there have been many peoples who were conquered, made to live under some ruling empire.

All empires ended. But the world has seen its last empire. The Great British Empire. Since that ended, all land has been fought over as resources become depleted and climate change pushes people away from inhospitable land.

Monarchs of history have interbred, attempting to create allies and access to each other’s resources. That time is over too.

Since 1917, before the end of World War 1, the British monarchs were declared to belong to the anglicised name of the House of Windsor, by King George V.

The House of Windsor

On 17 July 1917, at a meeting of the Privy Council, King George V declared that ‘all descendants in the male line of Queen Victoria, who are subjects of these realms, other than female descendants who marry or who have married, shall bear the name of Windsor’.  It remains the family name today.

In 1901, the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha succeeded the House of Hanover with the accession of King Edward VII, son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. 

In 1917 the name change came about due to anti-German sentiment in the United Kingdom during WW1.  These feelings reached a peak in March 1917 when the Gotha GIV, a heavy aircraft capable of crossing the English Channel, began bombing London and it became a household name. 

Add to that the abdication of King George’s first cousin, Tsar Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia, which raised the spectre of the eventual abolition of all monarchies in Europe.  The King changed the family name plus all German titles and house names were anglicized.  The name had a long association with monarchy in Britain, through the town of Windsor and Windsor Castle.

There have been four British monarchs of the House of Windsor: King George V, King Edward VIII, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II.

https://www.windsor.gov.uk/ideas-and-inspiration/royal-connections/the-house-of-windsor

The German and Russian family blood links were consigned to the past, but they could not remove the ancestral line written in their genetics.

The name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha came into the British Royal Family in 1840 with the marriage of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert, son of Ernst, Duke of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha. Queen Victoria herself was the last monarch of the House of Hanover.

King Edward VII who reigned for 9 years.

From https://alchetron.com/House-of-Saxe-Coburg-and-Gotha

https://www.royal.uk/saxe-coburg-gotha

The House of Hanover ruled Britain for nearly 200 years, and this dynasty oversaw the modernisation of Britain. Despite their not insignificant place in British history, the monarchs of the House of Hanover are often glossed over. But the six Hanoverian monarchs were some of Britain’s most colourful characters – their reigns were filled with scandal, intrigue, jealousy, happy marriages and terrible familial relationships.

They lost America but oversaw the rise of the British Empire to span nearly 25% of the world’s population and surface area. The Britain Victoria left in 1901 was dramatically different to the one the German-born George I arrived in in 1714.

https://www.historyhit.com/the-hanoverian-monarchs-in-order/

The House of Hanover ushered in two famous periods in English history: the Georgian era and the Victorian era, which is where we get our Georgian and Victorian architecture from………

Founded by George, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the House of Hanover originated in Germany in 1635 as a cadet branch of the House of Welf. Their rise to power in Great Britain and Ireland would come through descendants of this house 79 years later in 1714 under the Act of Settlement 1701, through their cousins Queen Anne, King William III and Queen Mary II. Through the Act of Settlement 1701 and the death of Queen Anne without an heir, they were placed next in line to the throne. Between 1714 and 1901 The Hanoverians gave us six monarchs.

  • George I (1714-1727)
  • George II (1727-1760)
  • George III (1760-1820)
  • George IV (1820-1830)
  • William IV (1830-1837)
  • Victoria (1837-1901)

The Hanoverians

Queen Victoria was the last monarch of the House of Hanover.

Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel) was born on 26 August 1819, just three months after Victoria. Albert’s father and Victoria’s mother were brother and sister (as shown in the tree above), meaning Victoria and Albert were cousins. They married in February 1840.

In those days it was common to marry a cousin, though now it is known the offspring may have genetic problems.

Victoria and Albert had nine children, with their second child Edward becoming King on his mother’s death:

  • Victoria, Princess Royal
  • Edward VII of the United Kingdom
  • Princess Alice
  • Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
  • Princess Helena
  • Princess Louise
  • Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn
  • Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany
  • Princess Beatrice

Victoria died on 22 January 1901, outliving her beloved husband Prince Albert by forty years, and becoming the country’s longest reigning monarch. During her lifetime the nation saw the Industrial Revolution and British Empire developed dramatically; the Victorian era is a significant chapter in Britain’s history.

Victoria’s eldest son Edward married Princess Alexandra of Denmark in 1863, and they went on to have six children, including George, their second eldest son, who became King in 1910 when Edward passed away. The eldest son Albert died before his father.

https://www.family-tree.co.uk/how-to-guides/queen-victorias-family-tree/

The Russian Romanov Tsar family were related to King George V.

Windsor-Romanov relations.

In 1917, the British king George V (1865-1936) decided to break relations with his two cousins, German Emperor Wilhelm II (1859-1941) and Russian Emperor Nicholas II (1868-1918). After Nicholas II, George V’s first cousin, was overthrown from the Russian throne during the Revolution of 1917, the British Government offered Nicholas II and his family political asylum – but George V opposed this decision, seeing the Romanovs’ presence in his country inappropriate.

George V (1865 - 1936), King of the United Kingdom (1910 - 1936), circa 1910
King George V

After Nicholas and his family were killed by the Bolsheviks, George V wrote in his diary: “It was a foul murder. I was devoted to Nicky, who was the kindest of men and thorough gentleman: loved his country and people.”

However, only two years later, a British battleship was sent to Crimea to rescue the 72-year-old Maria Feodorovna (1847-1928), Nicholas II’s mother and, at the same time, George V’s aunt.

https://www.rbth.com/history/333157-windsors-romanovs-relationship

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19th century, London and Moscow

Posted on May 1, 2025 by borderslynn
Published 1964 by Penguin books

This classic book is a ‘must read’ by any British person or anyone fascinated by the emergence of the ‘class system’ in this country.

Penguin have managed to keep this book available as a hardback,but also as an eBook. I was so pleased to add it to my eBook library so I can carry it around with me now. Thank you Penguin.

I also have this as an ebook:

The Vory also looks back in history, to Moscow in the 19th century, and there are similarities to the London slum dwelling filth in areas where poverty sprang out of thousands leaving rural areas, arriving at the capital to seek opportunity. There was wealth in London and Moscow, but in the hands of the few.

Early 19th century Moscow:

During the early 19th-century, Russia developed trading relationships with other European countries but much of this trade was focused on grain exports. Much of the export revenue that flowed into the empire lined the pockets of aristocrats and wealthy landowners; it was not used as capital to build an industrial and manufacturing economy

https://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/russian-industrialisation/

Early 19th century London:

London in the 19th century was a city of superlatives. At the height of its imperial power, the British capital was the largest, richest, and most technologically advanced metropolis in the world. Yet it was also a city of stark contrasts – a glittering hub of wealth and culture that rested on a foundation of poverty, squalor, and social dysfunction. This was the London that contemporaries dubbed “the Monster City” – a seething cauldron of humanity that inspired both awe and apprehension.

https://www.historytools.org/stories/the-rise-of-victorian-london-anatomy-of-the-monster-city

Mark Galeotti describes the historical conditions of a location, not far from the Kremlin, during the 1820s:

Not twenty minutes’ walk from the Kremlin was the Khitrovka, perhaps the most notorious slum in all Russia. Levelled during the 1812 Moscow fire, the land was bought by Major General Nikolai Khitrovo in 1823 with plans to build a market there. He died before his designs could be enacted, though, and by the 1860s, following the emancipation of the serfs, the area had become a spontaneous labour exchange. It was a magnet for newly arrived hopefuls and dispossessed peasants, at once desperate for a place to seek work and prey for urban predators of every kind. Dosshouses and cheap taverns lined a maze of small, dark courtyards and alleyways, teeming with the unemployed, unwashed and usually drunk or drugged. It was perennially cloaked in a heavy and evil-smelling fog from the stagnant river Yauza and the cheap tobacco and open cooking pots of its denizens as they cooked the unsavoury mix of salvaged and spoiled food known as ‘dog’s delight’. The common saying that ‘once you’ve eaten Khitrovka soup, you’ll never leave’ was as much a statement about the mortality rates as about the miserable chances for social elevation.1 This was a living hell, a slum in which up to 10,000 men, women and children were crammed into lean-tos, shacks, tenements and four disease-ridden trushchoby: the Yaroshenko (originally Stepanov), Bunin, Kulakov (originally Romeiko) and Rumyantsev houses. In these dosshouses, they bunked down on double- and triple-decked wooden sleeping platforms, above infamous drinking dens including those tellingly known as Siberia, Katorga (‘Penal Servitude’) and Peresylny (‘Transit’).2 The last was a particular haunt for beggars, Siberia for pickpockets and their fences, and Katorga for thieves and escaped convicts, who could find anonymity and employment in the Khitrovka.

And in London, the infamous taverns, as here painted by William Hogarth:

Wm Hogarth ‘The Tavern Scene’

Alcohol was the chosen liquid as water was unsafe, therefore people soon lost their inhibitions! The novels of Charles Dickens reflected the struggles and immorality of the class divisions.

The price of this explosive growth and domination of world trade was untold squalor and filth. In his excellent biography, Dickens, Peter Ackroyd notes that “If a late twentieth-century person were suddenly to find himself in a tavern or house of the period, he would be literally sick – sick with the smells, sick with the food, sick with the atmosphere around him” (Ackroyd, 1990, p. 687).

Imagine yourself in the London of the early 19th century. The homes of the upper and middle class exist in close proximity to areas of unbelievable poverty and filth. Rich and poor alike are thrown together in the crowded city streets. Street sweepers attempt to keep the streets clean of manure, the result of thousands of horse-drawn vehicles. The city’s thousands of chimney pots are belching coal smoke, resulting in soot which seems to settle everywhere. In many parts of the city raw sewage flows in gutters that empty into the Thames. Street vendors hawking their wares add to the cacophony of street noises. Pick-pockets, prostitutes, drunks, beggars, and vagabonds of every description add to the colorful multitude.

Read more about the times of Charles Dickens:

https://m.charlesdickenspage.com/charles-dickens-london.html

In Moscow, as in London, divisions of class grew during industrialization:

Mechanization and industrialization emerged during the 19th century, leading to the growth of factories and the rise of a working class. Industrial workers, including factory laborers, miners, and railroad workers, earned wages for their manual labor. The development of industries, particularly in areas such as textiles, iron, and coal, offered new employment opportunities for the Russian population.

Hot, dirty work ensured cheap alcohol for the labourer. In Moscow it was Vodka, in London it was ales.

In May 1859, the vodka protests in Russia turned violent. There were attacks on taverns in town after town in Pensa province, mainly during local markets. The movement spread West to neighbouring Tamhov province and then East to the Volga provinces of Samara, Saratov, Simbirsk, Orenburg, and Kazan as well as to Vyatka in the Urals, and Voronezh province to the South. Meanwhile, riots broke out further to the West in Moscow province. After July, the protests began to subside, although there were minor outbreaks even into the first months of 1860. In contrast to the boycotts, which were mainly a rural phenomenon, most of the riots seem to have taken place in towns or large villages, and mainly on market days when large crowds were present. Amongst those arrested for ‘inciting’ the riots were landlords, priests, towndwellers, and several ex-soldiers or soldiers on leave, though it seems that state peasants probably played the major role. The riots reflected the same working class hostility to tax farms as the boycotts.

Wherever there was excess of alcohol, there was violence. But always there was a richness , diversity, warmth and love amidst the seething humanity who dreamed of a better life than the one they had found themselves in.

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