Over in seconds
DELIVEROO DRIVER CAIO Benicio was on his motorbike this afternoon, on a job, when he saw a man with a knife attacking a young girl on Parnell Square East.
Immediately, the 43-year-old Brazilian dismounted his bike, took off his helmet, and hit the attacker with it.
“I didn’t even make a decision, it was pure instinct, and it was all over in seconds. He fell to the ground, I didn’t see where knife went, and other people stepped in,” he told The Journal tonight.
So immigrants aren’t all demonic?
Now Benicio is exhausted – all day he has been running on adrenaline. He doesn’t know where his bike is as he left it at the scene inside of the Garda cordon. However, he’s not worried about it; he’s worried about the victims.
“I remember it all in flashes now. It was over in seconds it seemed,” he said.
Benicio came to Ireland for work after his restaurant burned down in Brazil. He hopes his children can come here one day.
He was saddened to see the chaos on Dublin’s streets tonight – with anti-immigrant sentiments being expressed by rioters and far-right actors.
“It looks like they hate immigrants. Well I am an immigrant, and I did what I could to try and save that little girl,” he said.
It sounds as if he did quite a lot.
Some background to the above. In about 20 years, Ireland has gone from about 2% of the population having been born abroad to about 20% having been born abroad. That really is a huge change. The change is ongoing at a high rate. At current rates, in the next decade or so it could go to 30% or higher.
The Irish population have never been asked whether they agreed to this nor asked to give their consent. The Irish media refuses to discuss whether this is a good thing for Ireland. If people try discussing it they get labelled “far right” (as in the above piece), and Ireland has just passed vague and draconian “hate speech” laws which allow the authorities to shut down opinions they dislike.
A lot of people in Ireland are unhappy about this. People generally get unhappy if rather major changes to their country get pushed through, and they don’t get say, indeed they don’t really even get to discuss it.
That’s the background. That’s why there was a riot yesterday, which seems to have been an angry over-reaction to a flash-point incident.
As to the incident itself, the police are not helping things by being remarkably coy about what they know about the attacker. Telling people nothing, but then also telling them not to seek info on social media, just annoys them.
The police seem to have arrived at conclusions about the identity of the rioters (“far right”) a lot more quickly than they have about the identity of the suspect that they have in custody.
Social media comments suggest that the attacker is a Muslim. Maybe that’s why the police are saying nothing? If it’s not true it would be helpful if they said that. Again, the sense that the authorities are not telling you what they know just annoys people and makes the situation worse.
PS Kudos to the Brazilian gentleman who helped save the kids.
Even more kudos to the female school teacher who apparently has been seriously injured putting her body between the kids and the man with the knife, doing so until male passers-by (including the Brazilian) subdued the man.
Gee that story of all those born abroad people moving in sounds familiar – oh yes, it’s what happened on the American continent, from Patagonia to the Arctic Circle. The people they pushed aside didn’t get a say either.
I have to know if he got his motorbike back! They say, “No good deed goes unpunished,” but what a steep price to pay for being a good Samaritan if he lost it for good.
@Ophelia:
Yep, very familiar, it’s happened nearly everywhere on the globe, and nearly every time it has happened it has caused wars and strife lasting decades or centuries.
And it’s still a contentious issue that America has not come to terms with 150 years later.
You can’t walk down the street in New Zealand without hearing foreign accents, including Irish and English. My work employs Irish, English, Canadian, American, Chinese, Philippino, and Indian immigrants. I don’t recall anyone ever asking me if they could move here or whether we should employ immigrants. And you know what? I don’t give a shit. I take people as I find them. I’m just as bothered by the weird catholic beliefs of the Irish and Phillipino immigrants as I am by the weird Baptist’s from the States, or the sneering superiority complex of the South Africans. But you know what, most immigrants in New Zealand, especially from Trump’s shithole countries, are hard workers who take on jobs that born here people see as beneath them. If they’re taking jobs from us it’s only because we won’t do them. I’ll fight just as hard to stop New Zealand becoming dominated by imported Christianity as Islam, any other religion, extremist political, or racist bullshit.
I find the irony of those in the British Empire whose wealth was based on their “reallocation” of the resources from their colonies where all these immigrants are coming from to be very rich indeed. These are chickens coming home to roost. In how many of these places were the economies uprooted for centuries so that the British East India Company could supply Europe with spices? They love to visit all their former colonies and vacation, and tip the natives generously for cleaning their rooms and patronize them sweetly for remembering to make sure the gin is Tanqueray and the tonic is proper, but when immigrants come back to where the good life is, well that’s just not cricket, is it.
To be fair, Ireland was not so much a colonizing empire exploiting Africa, Arabia, India, Burma, and the Americas. They were more colonzed, so it’s understandable if they are upset that immigrants are coming in and taking their jobs, but they are at the same time trying to lure descendants of the 19th century diaspora to return. Ireland is trying to restore its population.
Yes, I do observe that there are immigrants who are trying to make English society over in their image, but the outrage needs some proportionality. The Jewels in Choss’ Crown came from somewhere else.
@Mike:
The Irish will explain to you that they were never colonists, rather, they were colonised by the British.
Second, the British Empire didn’t get rich owing to the resources of their colonies. Rather, Britain got rich owing to technological innovation and the industrial revolution. That wealth then allowed them to build an empire. Thus, Britain had an empire because it got rich, not Britain got rich because it had an empire. Empires, with massive expenditure of armies, navies and administrators, are actually expensive. Simply trading with people for the goods one wants (rather than colonising them) is cheaper.
Third, most of the immigration into Europe today bears little relation to which countries were or were not colonised. Just for example, Sweden is currently suffering from ill-judged immigration, but the relevant countries of origin were never colonised by Sweden.
As an Irish citizen who was born abroad and moved here over twenty-three years ago, I’ve seen the growth of the population and it really hasn’t been a problem for anyone except the racists and xenophobes, who would object to any immigration whatsoever. The total population is still little more than half what it was before the mass emigration due to the potato blight and subsequent deliberate starvation of the Irish people; Irish people still emigrate to other countries in large numbers.
The population of Ireland during the 2002 census (near enough twenty years ago) was 3,858,495. That same year, there were over half a million Irish-born people living in the UK. Also, thanks to the great number of Irish who moved to Britain during the famine and subsequently, it is estimated by some that there could be more than five million British-born people with at least one Irish grandparent, which would entitle them to automatic Irish citizenship. My mother is one – three of her grandparents were Irish.
The population in 2022 (the latest year for which the figure is available) was 5,123,536, an increase of 1,265,041, or about 33%, over the previous figure.
From the 2022 census page:
84% of the population hold sole Irish citizenship, or (as I do) dual citizenship. For census purposes, both are counted as Irish. Twenty percent of the resident population were born abroad, but that includes those who are Irish citizens (such as offspring of Irish emigrants who returned to Ireland); only 12% of the population have citizenship of a different country, and no Irish citizenship.
For anyone interested, here’s the website of the government office with the official figures, which go into a great deal of detail:
https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cpsr/censusofpopulation2022-summaryresults/migrationanddiversity/
Any Irish person who believes that is delusional. The Irish colonised Australia, New Zealand, and America in huge numbers. In fact pretty much everywhere that Britain colonised and probably a few places they didn’t. The fact that Ireland itself had been colonised is not a get out of jail free card.
Further Coel, the Industrial Revolution didn’t happen in magnificent isolation. It was in itself a response to both the influx of resources and the increase in demand that empire generated. The two are inextricably linked and empire did come first.
[…] a comment by tigger_the_wing on Over in […]
From an academic paper published by The Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.
‘The Abstract
‘Did overseas slave-holding by Britons accelerate the Industrial Revolution? We provide theory and evidence on the contribution of slave wealth to Britain’s growth prior to 1835. We compare areas of Britain with high and low exposure to the colonial plantation economy, using granular data on wealth from compensation records. Before the major expansion of slave holding from the 1640s onwards, both types of area exhibited similar levels of economic activity. However, by the 1830s, slavery wealth is strongly correlated with economic development – slave-holding areas are less agricultural, closer to cotton mills, and have higher property wealth. We rationalize these findings using a dynamic spatial model, where slavery investment raises the return to capital accumulation, expanding production in capital-intensive sectors. To establish causality, we use arguably exogenous variation in slave mortality on the passage from Africa to the Indies, driven by weather shocks. We show that weather shocks influenced the continued involvement of ancestors in the slave trade; weather-induced slave mortality of slave-trading ancestors in each area is strongly predictive of slaveholding in 1833. Quantifying our model using the observed data, we find that Britain would have been substantially poorer and more agricultural in the absence of overseas slave wealth. Overall, our findings are consistent with the view that slavery wealth accelerated Britain’s industrial revolution.
‘This paper was produced as part of the Centre’s Urban Programme. The Centre for Economic Performance is financed by the Economic and Social Research Council.’
Contrary to Coel’s typically confident but false assertion, there is plenty of serious historical research available that demonstrates that investment from people who became wealthy as a result of imperial adventures helped to finance the Industrial Revolution.
Coel #5
“And it’s still a contentious issue that America has not come to terms with 150 years later.”
Coel #8
“Britain had an empire because it got rich, not Britain got rich because it had an empire.”
An interesting discussion of geopolitics at
3:26:41 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4wLXNydzeY John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 | Lex Fridman Podcast #401
@3:04ff
“collapse of empires because of nationalism and post industrialisation empire by assimilation is not needed”
“Geb Z is the last majority white native population in the U.S.”
John Mearsheimer is a self-declared ‘realist’.
So Africa colonized the West Indies? The Southern states of America? Because what you’re saying makes about as much sense considering Australia’s history as a prison colony.
Did the Irish colonise? Well they migrated in large numbers, yes, but the usual definition of “colony” is that it is under control of the parent country, and Australia, New Zealand etc were British colonies not Irish ones. Though people might regard the distinction between “migration” and “colonising” as unimportant here.
Which came first, the industrial revolution or the British Empire? Well they both developed gradually and in parallel. But, generally, empires develop when a country develops technology, organisation, wealth and capabilities that enable it to impose on others. Thus, the US has military bases across the world as a consequence of it’s home-grown industrial/economic might (not the reverse) China is now expanding influence in Africa as a result of its growing economic might (not the reverse). Imperial might is actually expensive.
Does slavery generate wealth? For slaveholding families, yes. But not really for countries (e.g. the US North, with an industrial economy, was richer than the slave-based US South). The countries today with large pools of cheap, available labour are not the rich ones. And places like Iceland are as rich (GDP/capita) as places like Britain, though Iceland’s economy was never linked to colonies/slavery/empire.
Regarding the paper Tim refers to (which I found, despite him providing no link or reference), it makes three main claims:
1) In the UK, geographical location of slave-holding families overlaps with area of higher economic activity. Yes, but this really just means that the main ports (London, Bristol, Liverpool) feature in both of those, whereas rural, agricultural areas are neither. Actually, the overlap isn’t that good (see Fig 2 of the paper), with large areas of economic activity linked to industrial activity surrounding Manchester and Birmingham that are not (in that analysis) linked to slave holding. So this in itself shows nothing.
2) Slave-owning families that transported more slaves to the Americas became wealthier than those families transporting fewer slaves. Yes, granted. Slavery does make slave-holding families relatively wealthy.
3) Claim 3 is that the slave-owning families with their slave-derived wealth then drove economic development overall. But I don’t see where this is established in the paper. There are so many factors involved in the historical development of a country that a causal effect along these lines would be very hard to establish, and I don’t see where they have done so (Tim is welcome to point me at it if he wishes).
Even if we accept all of their claims, their claimed result is: “At the aggregate level, we find an increase in national income of 3.5 percent”. But 3.5% is not that big an effect. If the effect on Britain of the trans-atlantic slave trade was an at-the-time boost of 3.5%, then it is far from being a major factor, and likely of little significance today (again, you can compare UK GDP/capita with countries that weren’t involved in the slave trade like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Taiwan, etc).
Coel,
Is the seriously injured school teacher you talk about the same as the creche worker mentioned in a single sentence in the linked article and not even given a name? We need to hear more about her. I wonder how they chose the person to praise.
Here’s a link to a BBC article about the Dublin riot.
While the article admits that Ireland does not have a “far right” in any sensible meaning of the term, it then proceeds to use the term “far right” eleven times. It’s clear that it’s using the term purely as a marker for anyone opposed to mass migration, regardless of what other opinions they might hold.
As such, the label features purely as an attempt to place any discussion of mass migration beyond the pale (cf. “transphobe” etc).
This refusal to discuss pros and cons is part of why people get angry enough to riot.
@Ohtobide:
Interesting questions. If one believes social media (that hell-hole site full of “disinformation” that the media continually denigrates because they can’t control it):
A man of Algerian/Muslim heritage (now an Irish citizen), attacked a group of children with a knife, seriously injuring a 5-yr old girl and injuring another 5-yr-old and a 6-yr-old.
The creche worker (not a “teacher”) supervising the children placed her body between the children and the assailant, suffering serious injuries.
A male passerby tackled the assailant, suffering injuries, but, with the help of a second male passerby, managed to get the knife off the assailant.
The Brazilian was the 3rd male passerby on the scene, assisting in subduing the assailant.
It is indeed notable that the role being highlighted in the media is that of the Brazilian. I’ve not seen the creche worker or the first two men named in the media (though perhaps they don’t want to be; or perhaps they’re too injured to talk to the media).
The police seem to be saying very little, except telling you not to read social media. Of course the above account could be wrong. After all, Twitter is a hell-hole site full of disinformation. (But also pretty much the only place nowadays where one can get a full picture, caveat emptor.)
[PS Thankfully this is Europe, where assailants usually have knives, not guns, and no-one is dead.]
#8 Coel
I think it worth pointing out that Sweden’s problems are more complex than the simple fact of there being high immigration; the video linked I think by you a week or so ago spent a good 80% or more of its run time describing those other issues.
___
#10 Rob, also #14 Bruce Gorton
You are right to point out that the Irish took part in all of the UK’s imperialistic efforts, but I think it reasonable to add the caveat that the Irish were never the colonising power – they were not the government causing colonisation to happen, nor dictating its manner.
@Holms:
I readily grant that things are always more complicated than any summation, but — for example — this was published in the New York Times last year:
“In December, Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s newspaper of record, published an analysis of everyone arrested or prosecuted for gun offenses since 2017. About 85 percent were people born abroad, or had at least one parent who was.”
Colonist – I disagree with Coel’s definition of ‘usual’. A colonist is someone who moves to a colony end of story. I’ll grant Holmes point that the Irish were not the colonising power in any of the instances I described, but that was never the issue.
As for Coel’s second two points he leans heavily on the USA as an example to refute the idea that colonialism was a spur for economic growth. But really, the USA is as good an example as any other colonial power of exactly that. It started life as a hodgepodge of British, French, and Spanish colonies before centralising under the single power of the US Goverment which merrily colonised it’s way across the West, pushed the British and French to the North, the Mexicans to the south and in time engineered the take over by various means of Hawaii, the Phillipines, Puerto Rico, Alaska, and various Pacific Islands. The resources and wealth generated absolutely gave and continue to give America massive wealth and power.
Iceland incidentally has very thin and recent wealth. Before technology permitted the mass exploitation and subsequent collapse of the herring fishery, Iceland was dirt poor and people lived a harsh subsistence life. The herring boom provided the impetus and wealth to diversify and improve Iceland’s wealth. The mirage of the banking boom provided a further wealth boost, although the aftermath came close to destroying them yet again. Iceland’s current income is largely dependent on tourism despite attempts to diversify into industries such as aluminium production based on cheap electricity.
This blog is a marvel for turning up new bits of things to look up. The latest being the Icelandic herring boom.
Holmes, it’s honestly fascinating, I spent a day at the herring museum. At one point they were catching so much that herring was sold as fertiliser. Perfect example of destruction of a resource by rampant capitalism.
@Rob:
Well hold on, sure, yes, America got rich while exploiting the resources of the American continent.
But the issue is, did Britain get rich owing to having colonies in America? Or through colonising India or Australia? Did France get rich owing to having colonies in Canada (a different question from whether the Canadian colonies got rich)?
Again, my suggestion is no, rather countries that get rich then have the wherewithal to found colonies. It’s not that countries found colonies and as a result get rich.
If anyone wants to present an argument that, say, Britain gained financially in a major way, owing to owning Australia, go ahead and present it.
Quick remark on Iceland:
Rob’s summary of the history illustrates an important point: the standard of living of nations today is not strongly linked to their standard of living in past centuries. Today Iceland is a rich country (in GDP per capita).
We’ve also been discussing Ireland, where in recent history most of the people were poor subsistence farmers. Today it is a rich country with a high GDP per capita.
Thus the analysis that sees Western wealth today as “built on” colonialism/slavery from 100 to 200 years ago is wrong. Our current prosperity is built on technical competence, exploited by a high-education, high-knowledge, high-wage population.
Holms @ 22
Yes: thanks all of you!
Chipping in late, as I was away :)
The issue of slavery as a generator of wealth (which provides the ability to take advantage of ‘innovation’) has been considered at least since the 1960s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism_and_Slavery
and research is still ongoing – the initial findings of the Legacies of British Slavery project gives the subject a surprisingly superficial treatment:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/legacies-of-british-slaveownership/8750A3837D3D7F2D3E3D836250A42FC1
but I and others beg to differ – there is a lot more to say about the magnitude and direction of the ‘giant pool of money’ from slavery ‘compensation’ funds suddenly available for private investment in the 1830s. I believe a young man named David Turner is currently working on this.
https://twitter.com/TurnipRail/status/1650511393127276563
With respect to the United States, a series of books was published in the last couple of decades overturning the ‘progressive industrial North vs backwards rural South’ story we learned in history class; in my opinion this is the best of these:
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674975385
We, particularly the English, like to believe in the just world – that we’re more successful on the global stage because we’re just innately smarter, more imaginative, more hard-working and more willing to take high-stakes risks than the rest. But to me it seems pretty clear that we’re more successful because we’re uniquely unethical. I personally believe that has to do with Protestantism, but I’m certainly open to other explanations.
The Brazilian who hit the attacker deserves all the praise you and others have given him, but we should not forget the 17-year old French boy who disarmed the attacker by removing his knife. In France we hear more about him than we do about the Brazilian, for obvious reasons. Initially I couldn’t tell you his name because he and his family asked for it not to be revealed, but now we know he is Alan Loren-Guille, from the Ardennes. You can read about him here:
https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2023/11/25/macron-congratulates-french-teenager-who-knocked-knife-out-of-attackers-hand-in-dublin/
[…] a comment by guest on Over in […]
One could make a case that while slavery is economically advantageous, it is such a dominant strategy that a nation where the practice is widespread has little immediate incentive to innovate or improve in any domain, whether technological, cultural, or moral. Whatever the problem may be, the solution is just to throw more slaves at it. But there’s a point at which the inefficiencies that pile up become unbearable, a point when problems can’t be solved with more slaves, a point when there just aren’t enough slaves and never can be. At that point, the nation collapses, because it doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to respond to new problems.
Slavery is a civilizational dead end.