Polish military contingent in Lebanon.

I have no idea :) It's just a thing we do in Ireland. Somebody says something oblique and we just play along and come back with something related. So we really have no idea what we're talking about, but it's fun :)

Basically Jon is being facetious as the WI (Women's Institute) is a voluntary women's social group which was once summed up as 'jam and Jerusalem' because the hymn 'Jerusalem' is their anthem and they're renowned for their cooking skills especially the making of jams and preserves during World War One, ensuring that no produce was wasted and this was then distributed to the community. It has a reputation for being comprised of 'nice ladies' who knit, bake, craft, generally aim at improving themselves and raise money for charitable causes. Clitheroe is a place in the north of England. I checked and oddly enough they don't have their own WI branch. The nearest one is located in Waddington, a village about 3 miles away :))

JERUSALEM

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?..

simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_did_those_feet_in_ancient_time

It's a lovely hymn, based on the somewhat unlikely premise of an old Cornish legend, that the child Jesus accompanied his uncle Joseph of Arimathea on a voyage. Joseph of Arimathea certainly existed and was a rich man but there is no mention in the Bible of him being an uncle of Jesus, merely a disciple.

Traditionally only in the countryside though this may have changed a bit. Massive support for often isolated rural women and for many, an evening every month when they can get away from their wretched menfolk. In a Yorkshire village, the WI can be a big part of the ecosystem.

Plus they're a good source of income for public speakers who've got a nice and interesting 45 minute turn, with slides and things to pass round.

Denham College which they run is pretty important too; it's changed a lot of lives and kept many old crafts alive.

Sadly they have a lot of schisms and splits; everyone wants to be the Grand Poohbah with the gold chain. About "nice ladies", sort of. Some rough ones too. A kind of place where Councillor Mrs Wotsit with the nice house lectures the ones with print dresses, Woodbine, booze and hens in the yard.

Not as snobby as the Housewives' Register and not as hockey sticks as the B&Ps.Or is that the Soroptimists? One is posher than the other and has more single headmistresses who drive (or used to drive) MG Midgets and took holidays with lady friends 'exploring Greece'.

For annoying old blokes, there's Probus (retired business and professional men), many ex-Rotary though not all since a Rotary Club can only have one man per profession. Probus is in theory mixed now, probably because half of them have had their driving licences taken away by the doctor and their wives have to take them.


In the middle ages, they thought his sister and brother-in-law settled in Britain. I think his name was Bron. Something to do with the Fisher King legend.

Yes, it's one of those wonderful, quintessentially English institutions where Mrs My-Husband-Is-A-Rotarian rolls her sleeves up alongside Mrs My-Old-Man-Is-Down-The-Legion-Again.

In Ireland we had/have our own version of the WI called the Irish Countrywomen's Association. It has is roots in the Irish Independence movement, the United Irishwomen, similar aims of improving the lives of rural women with that mixed focus on education, skills and home making, wrapped up in a nice, sensible package.

In Poland there were also - Rural Housewives' Circles. They fulfilled a similar function. But let's get back to Lebanon. It used to be such a beautiful country, and Beirut with 2 million inhabitants was a large and beautiful metropolis, a second Paris.

There was very good wine from the Bekaa Valley. One family made it and it wasn't cheap. I wonder if it's safe

Was it Chateau Musar?

Yes. An excellent wine.

I've see images from the-before-Lebanon....it looked like a paradise....beautiful with people looking and behaving like Westerners....women with free hair and bathing suites....laughing....enjoying the sun....the "Paris of the Middle East"....

What happened? Islam happened!

@Bratwurst Boy
You have a very simplistic view of the world...What happened? Israel happened!

The pics I have seen where from the 70's....as far as I know Israel had been founded in 1948.....

Before it became a city synonymous with urban disasters, conflict and chaos, Beirut was a colourful, prosperous city known as the Paris of the Middle East.

Between 1955 and 1975, in its Golden Age - after gaining independence from the French but before civil war erupted - the Lebanese capital was a cultural and financial hub for the region.

It was a cosmopolitan mecca revered for its rich culture, French architecture, world-class food, fashion, art and glamorous lifestyle offerings that lured curious tourists and high-flying celebrities, alike, to its shores.

Luxury hotels and clubs dotted throughout the city made Beirut a "jet-setter's playground, with a social scene that rivalled its European counterparts", Vogue wrote.

The most famous luxury hotel, the Hotel Saint-Georges, played host to Hollywood icons like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Marlon Brando, and French starlet Brigitte Bardot, and royals like King Hussein of Jordan, and the Shah of Iran and his wife Princess Soraya....

thenightly.com.au/world/how-beirut-was-once-known-as-the-paris-of-the-middle-east-before-it-came-to-a-brutal-end-in-1975-civil-war-c-15605589

..Hamra Street was likened to the Champs-Élysées of Beirut, lined with fashion stores, theatres, restaurants, cafes, and hotels visited by artists, poets, writers, and intellectuals.

There were more than a dozen cinemas on Hamra Street alone - including the famous Eldorado, the Picadilly, and the Versailles - cementing Beirut's title as the cinema capital of the region....

Maybe I should have more explicitely said: The Palis happened!

...But those glittering 20 years came to a brutal end in 1975 when civil war broke out and tore the city, and country, apart.

Over the next 15 years, about 150,000 people would be killed - or presumed dead after being kidnapped or disappeared - and almost one million people would flee Lebanon.

Beirut would be split into hostile territories along the Green Line, the battleline that ran through the middle of the city where Christian militias (to the east) exchanged fire with Palestinian and Sunni militias (to the west).

photorientalist.org/exhibitions/lebanon-technicolor-growing-golden-age/article-2/

More accurate to say Palestinians happenned.... there's a reason that other arabs mostly all hate Palestinians and don't want them in their countries.

So true!



Today unbelievable....hidden under black sacks....as they would have to stay, even if today Israel would vanish from the ME...

@Bratwurst Boy
Yip a one dimensional world view...

@mafketis
What would that be?

They tend to stab allies in the back.... no country has taken them in and not regretted it. Maybe russia (on their side now) should start a service to settle there there.

The Gazans (and a fair few on the West Bank, and especially in 70 year old refugee camps) are in fact Egyptians if anything.

Identities in the region are complicated..

Thats the key point, why would they need taken in?

Everywhere has the right to resist occupation except Palestinians, other Arabs and Muslims in general. The despotic dictators and Who**s who plunder their own people are all propped up by the US, none are friends of the Palestinians.

Israel and other western installed dictators plus colonial powers have destabilised Lebanon for decades and blamed Palestinians. That is some result by a people who apparently dont exist.

The entire region was generally secular until the US's favourite dictators started exporting their fundamentalist crap with their blessing.

....that's a fight the muslims must fight themselves, we can't help them to reform their religion, bring back freedom to their societies....

But what we should and have to do is take care that no other secular, free, western countries end up like Lebanon even if that means to stop importing more and more of these religious nutters from these regions under the disguise as "refugees".

@Bratwurst Boy
Their religion is not the problem

The secular countries in the middle east have all either been invaded or otherwise destablised by "freedom loving" countries upholding what they call western values. Though not wholly responsible this interference has resulted in a huge increase in migration from these places.

You mean that seriously!

It's true that the West during the Cold War supported everybody and their grandmom in the hope to get/keep an ally in the conflict with the soviet Empire.
The East did the same, btw....proxy wars everywhere.

But that is now over since 30 years...a whole new generation has been born and grew up without this conflict....all these current terror organizations are wholly religious! That's the only thing left for them since communism has been proven the great loser!

The today's protestors and murderers kill and destroy in the name of Allah...not in the name of socialism, freedom or a better world for their people!

Since at least the 1990s, Islamist terrorist incidents have occurred around the world and targeted both Muslims and non-Muslims.[4] Most attacks have been concentrated in Muslim-majority countries,[5] with studies finding 80-90% of terrorist victims to be Muslim.[6][7][8] The annual number of fatalities from terrorist attacks grew sharply from 2011 to 2014 when it reached a peak of 33,438, before declining to 13,826 in 2019.[9] As of 2015, four Islamic extremist groups - Islamic State, Boko Haram, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda - were responsible for 74% of all deaths from terrorism.[10][11] In some of the worst-affected Muslim-majority regions, these terrorists have been met by armed, independent resistance groups.[12] Islamist terrorism has also been roundly condemned by prominent Islamic figures and groups.[13][14][15]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_terrorism

It's all about religion now!!!

Look at Kuwait... there were a _lot_ of Palestinians working there when Iraq invaded... they virtually all supported the invasion and were kicked out after it was over.


Even Arafat was born in Egypt IIRC....

It's largely an invented ethnicity (lacking the markers that set some Arab groups apart from others) born out of hatred for the Jews....

youtube.com/watch?v=bACNYtaLBQI

Interesting tweet from Eric Weinstein....

tldr: Yahya Sinwar invented a new method of war involving making the enemy kill civilians for photo ops.... trading Palestinian lives for video clips that could be used for propaganda....

x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1846814909096776062

@mafketis
Doesn't answer why this "invented people" needed to be taken in in the first place.

@Bratwurst Boy
Stalinism failed the dictators installed after WW2 are still there and any secular places have been destroyed by invasion or proxy wars well after the USSR collapsed.


You are definitely smarter than that post suggests

Because their inability to accept the proximity of Jews has destroyed their society. They could have had peace anytime they wanted... they don't want it, they want to run all the Jews out of the Middle East and they can't and they'll destroy themselves utterly before they accept that.

What's so hard to understand?

@mafketis
That's historically inaccurate. Israel was created to solve a European problem, unfortunately it was created on someone else's land and involved a huge amount of forced expulsions. Its a classic colonial project with land theft and population expulsion on a daily basis.

Nah...not only!

In the 20th century, approximately 900,000 Jews migrated, fled, or were expelled from Muslim-majority countries throughout Africa and Asia. Primarily a consequence of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the mass movement mainly transpired from 1948 to the early 1970s, with one final exodus of Iranian Jews occurring shortly after the Islamic Revolution in 1979-1980. An estimated 650,000 (72%) of these Jews resettled in Israel.[1]....

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world

The Arabs didn't want to live with their Jews....but they don't allow them their own state either....they just want them dead!

....The first large-scale exoduses took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from Iraq, Yemen, and Libya. In these cases, over 90% of the Jewish population left, despite the necessity of leaving their assets and properties behind.[4] Between 1948 and 1951, 250,000 Jews immigrated to Israel from Arab countries.[5] In response, the Israeli government implemented policies to accommodate 600,000 immigrants over a period of four years, doubling the country's Jewish population.[6]

Without an Israel...where would they had gone? Back to Europe? After the Holocaust?

@Bratwurst Boy

Israel and its sponsors don't allow Palestinians their own state and are currently killing them.

What makes you think they want their own state? Arabs are generally terrible at running states (I'm open to counter-evidence...).

They want to rid the region of Jews - they make that very clear.

Neither the "two state" nor "singular secular state" idea is wanted by either side. That leaves victory for one side and exile for the other.

Many Arab countries are rich and function efficiently. Dubai, for example, is a favorite tourist destination for Poles and Germans... Does anyone still go on vacation to Israel?

Gulf Arab states are very dysfunctional... they rely on imported labor with no real rights (muslims have no problem with slavery and that's how Gulf Arabs treat a lot of the workers their countries rely on).

youtube.com/watch?v=tJuqe6sre2I

Do they?

They throw their easy earned oil money onto their own tribe members, whose tribal chief is god-like.....everybody else, doing the real works, is more or less a foreigner and a slave....and that was that!

Do you call that "function efficiently"?

If so, then why all the fuss about democracy and peoples rights?