Faces of history

I was sat in a restaurant on the shores of Lake Garda, Italy (just place name dropping!), when a bunch of Germans walked in. Nothing strange about this as Germans are everywhere, and its not far from the the Austrian (Germans who can't make up their minds) border.

After a bit, it became apparent that they were all 'Berliners', and as I was idly looking at them, I was struck by the appearance one of the girls, who had an 'oriental' cast to her face. I don't mean she was a first generation daughter of a Chinese and European couple, I mean from a certain angle you could see that she was not wholly 'German' in descent.

This caused me to think about how the history of a location is often written in the DNA and appearance of its local population. In the case of Berlin, Stalin infamously allowed his "Mongolian" divisions three days to mass rape the population of Berlin as a punishment for Nazi atrocities in Russia. This was part of a systematic system of rape, murder and looting across all of Eastern Germany, and has left its mark in the DNA and appearance of the population of that region. A bit of a Slavic or Mongolian slant to East Germans and Berliners is maybe therefore not surprising, even if for obvious reasons it is not a subject that is openly discussed.

However as an illustration that most places can exhibit this - I give you Constantinople (modern Istanbul) and the population of western Turkey. The original Turkic invaders were a small dark haired and dark complexioned people (and remain so across the globe), and yet a 'surprising' number of 'Istanbul Turks' are tall, blond and blue eyed ..... well surprising that is, until you realise that up until the Turkish Ottoman conquest in 1453, the city and surrounding provinces had been host for centuries to thousands of tall, blond / red headed and blue eyed Gauls, Vikings, Saxons and others from Northern Europe (or the old Roman world) who fought in Roman or Byzantine armies, and the descendants of these men are still the inhabitants of the city, despite becoming 'Turks' by conversion afterwards.

This still causes some Turkish nationalist hackles to be raised when you mention it in Istanbul (I know of what I speak LOL), but its true. The Turks are taught surprisingly little about pre-Islamic Asia minor, and I suspect would rather pretend the land was not Greek before becoming theirs by conquest. Still in the East of Turkey its true to say that the population is largely 'Turkic' looking, but this area was depopulated in the centuries of fighting between the Byzantines and Arabs, and then Byzantines and Turks, but in the 'European west' its different.

Its patently obvious that, a total of about 40,000 or so invading Turks couldn't kill and replace several million Byzantines, and like the supposed "Anglo-Saxon" or "Norman" invasions of England, it was mostly a replacement at the top rather than an invasion and population replacement.

History is full of these visual reflections of the movements of peoples if only we have the local knowledge to notice them, and travelling along the crossroads of invasions and conflict often shows us these faces from the long forgotten past.

An Istanbul crowds showing its diversity

Sexual Harrassment in Egypt

You know how all those Mullahs and their supporters, always say that women aren't oppressed under Islam, but rather are respected and safe as long as they dress conservatively (hiding under a tent structure?).

Egyptian Sexual Harassment Is Rife

Well as is usual from that source, its actually complete garbage as evidence shows ........ 

Yemen runs dry

I am away in Italy for a while so these are a couple of quick comments ....

Yemen Droughts

..... firstly water wars. I have blogged before about the collapse of the Ecosystem and our closeness to "water wars".

Just an unremarked genocide

Just a comment on the news that, as usual, around the world, Christians are being persecuted, and Christian politicians say nothing ...... as usual.

First came the news that over 10,000 Christians have been driven into camps or the forests in India (The country we have given £825 million pounds in aid to). Christian Aid runs an appeal on behalf of Hindu flood victims in Bihar, but nothing for the relief of homeless Indian Christians, which about sums up their "PC" infection, when they favour Hindus over Christians. Only the Pope speaks out.

Second the tiny band of Christian Somali's living in Kenya report being persecuted, again, who cares? certainly not the West, who only seem to care about Islam or other violent religions 'rights'.

As I have reported before the persecution of Christians by Muslims or others is now a worldwide trend, but you would hardly know it in the West.

Anglo Saxon Sluts?

The revelation (if you will pardon the fundamentalist metaphor), that the Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol is a teenage pregnancy statistic, would be vaguely interesting outside the US, but not much more than that, however the side statistic that the US has the worst teen pregnancy rates in the Western world makes it very interesting.

For the land of the Fundamentalist Christian to also be the land of the teen pregnancy is quite ironic (if the US does irony), and in fact a look round the "Anglo Saxon" world shows that in second slot is, yep the United Kingdom :-) In fact outside of Sub Saharan Africa (where teen marriage is the norm), it appears that its us and the US that lead the way across the Anglos Saxon world.

• The US has 44 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19.
• The UK has 27 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19.
  

The Canadian rates are 16 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19.

This UN report lists all the figures in this age group for 2002, and shows the following:

Edited List for the year 2002

1 Niger 233
26 Afghanistan 111
34 Zimbabwe 92
42 Jamaica 79
49 South Africa 66
51 Haiti 64
58 United States 53
66 Turkey 43
68 Bulgaria 41
69 Iraq 38
69 Saudi Arabia 38
69 Ukraine 38
70 Romania 37
72 Armenia 34
73 Georgia 33
76 Russia 30
77 Belarus 27
77 New Zealand 27
78 Estonia 26
78 Lithuania 26
80 Latvia 24
83 Hungary 21
84 United Kingdom 20
85 Croatia 19
88 Australia 16
88 Canada 16
88 Poland 16
89 Ireland 15
90 Austria 12
90 Malta 12
91 Germany 11
91 Norway 11
92 Cyprus 10
92 Greece 10
93 Belgium 9
93 France 9
93 Luxembourg 9
94 Finland 8
94 Slovenia 8
95 Denmark 7
95 Sweden 7
96 Italy 6
96 Singapore 6
96 Spain 6
97 China 5
97 Netherlands 5
97 Switzerland 5
98 Japan 4
99 South Korea 3

The full list is on the link above

Things have evidently got worse in the last 6 years!!

It should be noted that many of the non western countries have large numbers of early marriages e.g. Turkey.

In my opinion, its the casual acceptance in the West, that the state has too pay for, and support, any teenage girls who get pregnant, for life, that lead to these high rates.

Stop welfare and you stop teen pregnancies.