California travel ban: 4 states added to list - "California has issued a ban on state-funded and state-sponsored travel to four more states that it says have laws discriminating against LGBTQ people. The travel ban was first put into effect January 1 when state measure AB 1887 became law. The law says California is "a leader in protecting civil rights and preventing discrimination" and should not support or finance "discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people"... Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee were the original states banned by AB 1887, but Becerra added Alabama, Kentucky, South Dakota and Texas on Thursday, citing what he called new discriminatory legislation enacted against the LGBTQ community in those states."
Comments: " Travel ban on states that discriminates against LGBT people:
"This is social justice!"
Travel ban on Muslim countries where LGBT people get jailed or lynched to death:
"This is Islamophobic racism!""
"It's only bigotry when white people do it."
Siam Road Char Koay Teow Closes Stall For 10 Days Because The Crowd Is Stressing Uncle Out - "The famous char koay teow stall in Penang ranked #14 in the Top 50 list at the recent World Street Food Congress 2017 in Manila, the Philippines... stall owner Tan Chooi Hong pleaded with customers to not photograph or write about him, as he is unable to cope with the sudden flood of customers... One of few char koay teow stalls that are still using charcoal to fire up the wok, customers from all over Malaysia have been known to queue for hours for a plate of the world-famous dish... Customers have also been known to start queueing even before Tan and his son arrive. In a recent Facebook video, some could be heard chanting "Char koay teow! Char koay teow!" just as the duo arrived with their push stall cart."
German police officers expelled after public sex, group urination, and a strip tease involving a service weapon ahead of G20 summit - "one of the officers involved in the party told Bild newspaper he didn’t see what all the fuss was about, because it was just a “normal night for Berlin”... The police reportedly got bored with the lack of television at their makeshift accommodation in converted shipping containers, and decided to stage their own entertainment."
The Minimum Wage: Evidence from a Danish Discontinuity - "In Denmark the minimum wage jumps up by 40% when a worker turns 18. Thus the authors, Kreiner, Reck and Skov, ask what happens to the employment of young people when they hit their 18th birthday? Answer: employment drops dramatically, by one-third...
A variety of restrictions mean that under-18 age workers can do less than adults (e.g. they can’t legally lift more than 25 kilos or have a driver’s license.) Thus, productivity increases at age 18, making the employment loss at this age even more dramatic. The authors can’t tell for certain if workers are quitting or getting fired but there are few other obvious discontinuities around exactly age 18. Students are eligible for certain benefits at age 18 but the authors are able to look at sub-samples where this objection doesn’t apply and the results are robust."
Boots apologises after outcry over skin chart - "Boots was forced to apologise after customers dubbed an in-store skincare chart 'offensive' because they believed it implied that brown and black skin 'is not normal'... One user, Sophie Watts, responded by saying: 'This is honestly one of the most disgraceful and ridiculous things I have ever seen!'... Others were angry at people with black and brown skin being told to use low SPF factors, as they believe it is 'not enough'"
If this is one of the most disgraceful things someone has seen, she leads a very privileged life
Maybe in a few years someone will call Boots racist because they don't advise darker skinned people to use less sunscreen, meaning "minorities" pay more than they should for sunscreen, which hurts them
Have lots of sex, live a whole lot longer - "women who had regular sex had significantly longer telomeres — boosting their overall life expectancy... The researchers found women who had sex during the course of the week-long study had telomeres that were up to 30 percent longer. But relationship quality had no effect on them."
Pond scum is the new kale - "The cyanobacteria collected from the surface of freshwater lakes and ponds – also known as spirulina – is turning up in blue drinks, ice cream, lattes and M&Ms, as holistic experts and plant-based nutritionists rave about its health benefits. Kate Middleton reportedly sips it in her smoothies."
PICTURES: Here's What Environmentalist Leftists Leave Their Campground Looking Like - "More than 1,000 volunteers are assisting in cleaning up litter after the Glastonbury Music Festival (GMF) in the United Kingdom. In addition to the volunteers, £785,000 will be spent on the cleanup; it is unclear if taxpayers are footing the bill... The GMF's organizers push left-wing causes; hyping "climate change" and being "green." Michael Eavis, founder of the GMF, frames his operation as environmentally conscientious"
Paradox: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Wears Islamic-Themed Socks To Gay Pride Parade
Tough shore leave rules for Chinese navy personnel during Liaoning’s Hong Kong visit - "every Liaoning carrier soldier needs to abide by Interior Service Regulations which restrict communication and interaction between people inside and outside the Chinese military, making Liaoning personnel less free than US soldiers."
More Acid Attacks In London - "There have been over 1,800 reported acid attacks in London since 2010... "Since 2014 about 74% of investigations have been wound down due to problems with identifying perpetrators, or victims being unwilling to press charges""
Maybe acid attacks are part and parcel of living in a big city
Hong Kong handover: "One country, two systems" is full of contradictions—look at the Hong Kong-China border - "For China, this boundary—once an acrimonious reminder of how Western imperial powers brought China to its knees—became handy for the People’s Republic to filter out “subversive elements” deemed detrimental to its interior stability. It helps intercept undesirable information, material, or individuals at the frontier before they slip into China and become more difficult to purge. As a measure of risk management, maintaining a boundary allows Beijing to better control interactions between the mainland and the SAR—a form of administrative quarantine."
German White Woman Completes Her Racial Reassignment - "German “model” Martina Adam is rivalling Rachel Dolezal with her latest operation – racial reassignment. Martina Adam, also known as Martina Big due to her huge implants and appearances on “Botched,” has completed her transition into her new life as a “black” female."
Bokhari: The Secret Rightwing Messages of Harry Potter - "1) Walls between different societies are good
2) Don’t trust establishment politicians (or establishment media)
3) If a group has a terrorist problem, sometimes you have to ban them"
Harry Potter and the millennial mind | The Spectator - "The ‘Potterverse’ is the millennial universe. It informs the way we see ourselves and the way we look at the world; our moral imagination. If you have ever wondered why young people are often so childish in their politics, why they want to divide the world between tolerant progressives and wicked reactionaries, it helps to understand that. Harry Potter may be a literary fantasy but for many it is also a substitute religion in a secular era. The books are about the fight between good and evil, and the power of magic... The Potterverse, then, keeps developing. Yet it is a naive landscape in which most problems are solved by magic. To believe in it, even ironically, is to divide people into goodies and baddies, and ignore the complexity of reality. For all the joy that Harry Potter brings to its millions of readers, the world cannot be sorted by a magical hat."
Harry Potter, Muggles and meritocracy - "Thus the Potterverse, as Toad writes, is about "the legitimacy of authority that comes from schools" - Ivy League schools, elite schools, US News & World Report top 100 schools. And because "contemporary liberalism is the ideology of imperial academia, funnelled through media and non-profits and governmental agencies but responsible ultimately only to itself", a story about a wizarding academy is the perfect fantasy story for the liberal meritocracy to tell about itself... Voldemort, the dark lord, has Muggle blood, but he isn't trying to rally an army of non-magic-wielders to seize Hogwarts' towers; he's trying to remake meritocratic - er, magical - institutions in his own dark image. And so the battle for Harvard - er, Hogwarts - is the battle for the world. Which is basically the premise of a great deal of youthful liberal activism these days - that once the last remnants of Slytherin are eradicated from the leafy quads of Yale or Middlebury, once Draco Malfoy's frat or final club is closed and the last Death-Eater sympathisers purged from the faculty, then the battle of ideas will have been finally and fully won."
It is not ok to joke about killing men - "At some point when everyone was busy believing that feminism had something to do with achieving equality, Clementine Ford arrived on a broomstick. She confidently announced she was here to fix gender inequality and people blindly believed her... In a copy of her book, ‘Fight Like A Girl’, she wrote a note to a fan. It asked “Have you killed any men today? And if not, why not?”... Eddie McGuire was utterly vilified for commenting he’d pay extra if Caroline Wilson stayed under water at the Big Freeze?... When I wrote in an earlier column about the male suicide crisis and the desperate need to take this seriously, regardless of gender, I was slammed as a “misogynist” while hate mail and insults poured in."
Turkey sizes 50 Christian churches and monasteries and declared them as state property - "Turkish authorities have transferred the ownership of churches, houses of worship and cemeteries that have belonged to the Syriac community for over 1,600 years to Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) as part of a process of liquidation in Mardin province"
Hair today, gone tomorrow: Serial hair-snipper arrested in Japan - "Police charged the 23-year-old graduate student with assault on Monday (Dec 5) after he admitted cutting the hair of a woman on a packed morning train in Nagoya, a city west of Tokyo... Yoshida said he had planned on selling his ill-gotten merchandise online... Local police reportedly stepped up their patrols earlier this year after receiving complaints from other women whose hair or skirts had been cut on area trains."
Portland Police Chief Says Antifa Protesters Used Slingshot to Launch Urine and Feces-Filled Balloons at Riot Cops - "He said the decision to corral 345 people in downtown streets prevented violent confrontations between right-wing and left-wing protesters. He said photographing the detained protesters' IDs sped up their release. And he said sending police into the streets wearing riot gear was necessary because of credible reports of protesters bringing weapons—reports he says proved true."
Deadly diet: Thai doctors battle cancer-causing fish dish - "Like millions of Thais across the rural northeast, his family regularly ate koi pla - a local dish made of raw fish ground with spices and lime. The pungent meal is quick, cheap and tasty, but the fish is also a favourite feast for parasites that can cause a lethal liver cancer killing up to 20,000 Thais annually... Many villagers complain that cooking the dish gives it a sour taste. Others simply shrug off the dangers and say their fate has already been fixed - a common belief in the Buddhist nation where karma can dictate decisions."
Jezebel Is Angry That Serena Williams Is in an Interracial Relationship with a Redditor - "They couldn’t let their contempt for both f—king white males and Redditors stay buried long enough to write up the news piece... being a tolerant leftist, she ends the article with a threat."
Czech nuclear power station sparks fury after holding bizarre BIKINI contest to choose their new intern - "The sexy snaps were posted on the company website, with fans asked to vote for the hottest to secure the internship job... Representatives of Temelin said the bikini contest was only one part of a beauty pageant among school graduates, adding that they were “trying to make technical education more popular”."
Justices to Hear Case on Religious Objections to Same-Sex Marriage - The New York Times - "The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear an appeal from a Colorado baker with religious objections to same-sex marriage who had lost a discrimination case for refusing to create a cake to celebrate such a union. The case will be a major test of a clash between laws that ban businesses open to the public from discriminating based on sexual orientation and claims of religious freedom. Around the nation, businesses like bakeries, florists and photography studios have said, so far with little success, that forcing them to serve gay couples violates their constitutional rights... In a second development concerning gay and lesbian couples, the Supreme Court reaffirmed on Monday its 2015 decision recognizing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, ruling that states may not treat married same-sex couples differently from others in issuing birth certificates... The case concerned an Arkansas law about birth certificates that treats married opposite-sex couples differently from same-sex ones. A husband of a married woman is automatically listed as the father even if he is not the genetic parent. Same-sex spouses are not... State officials listed the biological mother on the children’s birth certificates and refused to list their partners, saying they were not entitled to a husband’s presumption of paternity. The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled against the women, saying that “it does not violate equal protection to acknowledge basic biological truths.”"
If a restaurant refuses to cook Kosher food for a customer, is it discriminating against Jews?
Female Rangers Were Given Special Treatment, Sources Say - "Way back in January, long before the first women attended the Army’s elite Ranger School – one of the most grueling military courses in the world – officials at the highest levels of the Army had already decided failure was not an option... whereas men consistently were held to the strict standards outlined in the Ranger School’s Standing Operating Procedures handbook sources say, the women were allowed lighter duties and exceptions to policy. Multiple sources told PEOPLE... “We were under huge pressure to comply,” one Ranger instructor says. “It was very much politicized.”... “Combat is brutal and unforgiving,” says Jim Lechner, a retired Army officer and Ranger who was wounded in combat in Mogadishu, Somalia, during the famed “Black Hawk Down” incident. “Fighters must be prepared and capable. If they are not, people will die”... While men were held to a stark pass-fail standard, women were allowed to redo the special training repeatedly"
Female Rangers: An Insider Speaks on the Record - "“Just this year we’ve had more than twenty males take Day 1 Recycles. And that’s just the ones who accepted the offer. We’ve offered Day 1 Recycles to way more soldiers than that. When a soldier doesn’t make it through a training phase, a board looks at all the factors involved and decides whether or not to give them the opportunity to start the course over. If the board believes in the soldier, thinks he’s doing his best and is physically and mentally able to succeed, he gets the chance to start over.”"
Pentagon Could Be 'Shredding' Docs About Female Rangers
NOT Fake News: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Loretta Lynch Now ALL Under Investigation - "From the nonstop coverage of Trump's alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 presidential election, you'd think he was under FBI investigation. But he isn't. Instead, three big Democratic players are. But you wouldn't know that from the MSM coverage"
The eccentric MP who is Australia's new powerbroker - "He shot his major-party rivals dead in this election's most controversial campaign ad. He once serenaded his supporters with a self-composed song about the excellence of his character. When The Beatles touched down in Brisbane during their 1964 tour of Australia, Mr Katter was among a group who pelted them with eggs as "an intellectual reaction against Beatlemania"... Socially conservative, Katter opposes gay marriage and once said he would "walk backwards from Bourke", a town in far-western New South Wales, to Queensland if a single homosexual constituent could be found in his electorate"
When you can't live without bananas
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
The Japanese Eat Meat
"I was about eight years old when I had my first taste of meat. For twelve centuries, following the introduction of the Buddhist religion, which forbids the killing of animals, the Japanese people were vegetarians. In late years, however, both belief and custom have changed considerably, and now, though meat is not universally eaten, it can be found in all restaurants and hotels. But when I was a child it was looked upon with horror and loathing.
"How well I remember one day when I came home from school and found the entire household wrapped in gloom. I felt a sense of depression as soon as I stepped into the 'shoe-off' entrance, and heard my mother, in low, solemn tones, giving directions to a maid. A group of servants at the end of the hall seemed excited, but they also were talking in hushed voices. Of course, since I had not yet greeted the family, I did not ask any questions, but I had an uneasy feeling that something was wrong, and it was very hard for me to walk calmly and unhurriedly down the long hall to my grandmother's room.
" 'Honourable Grandmother, I have returned,' I murmured, as I sank to the floor with my usual salutation. She returned my bow with a gentle smile, but she was graver than usual. She and a maid were sitting before the black-and-gold cabinet of the family shrine. They had a large lacquer tray with rolls of white paper on it and the maid was pasting paper over the gilded doors of the shrine.
"Like almost every Japanese home, ours had two shrines. In time of sickness or death, the plain wooden Shinto shrine, which honours the Sun goddess, the Emperor, and the nation, was sealed with white paper to guard it from pollution. But the gilded Buddhist shrine was kept wide open at such a time; for Buddhist gods give comfort to the sorrowing and guide the dead on their heavenward journey. I had never known the gold shrine to be sealed; and besides, this was the very hour for it to be lighted in readiness for the evening meal. That was always the pleasantest part of the day; for after the first helping of our food had been placed on a tiny lacquer table before the shrine, we all seated ourselves at our separate tables, and ate, talked and laughed, feeling that the loving hearts of the ancestors were also with us. But the shrine was closed. What could it mean?
"I remember that my voice trembled a little as I asked, 'Honourable Grandmother, is --is anybody going to die?'
"I can see now how she looked -- half amused and half shocked.
" 'Little Etsu-ko,' she said, 'you talk too freely, like a boy. A girl should never speak with abrupt unceremony.'
" 'Pardon me, Honourable Grandmother,' I persisted anxiously; 'but is not the shrine being sealed with the pure paper of protection?'
" 'Yes,' she answered with a little sigh, and said nothing more.
"I did not speak again but sat watching her bent shoulders as she leaned over, unrolling the paper for the maid. My heart was greatly troubled.
"Presently she straightened up and turned toward me. 'Your honourable father has ordered his household to eat flesh,' she said very slowly. 'The wise physician who follows the path of the Western barbarians has told him that the flesh of animals will bring strength to his weak body, and also will make the children robust and clever like the people of the Western sea. The ox flesh is to be brought into the house in another hour and our duty is to protect the holy shrine from pollution.
"That evening we ate a solemn dinner with meat in our soup; but no friendly spirits were with us, for both shrines were sealed. Grandmother did not join us. She always occupied the seat of honour, and the vacant place looked strange and lonely. That night I asked her why she had not come.
" 'I would rather not grow as strong as a Westerner -- nor as clever,' she answered sadly. 'It is more becoming for me to follow the path of our ancestors.'
"My sister and I confided to each other that we liked the taste of meat. But neither of us mentioned this to any one else; for we both loved Grandmother, and we knew our disloyalty would sadden her heart."
--- A Daughter of the Samurai / Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto
"How well I remember one day when I came home from school and found the entire household wrapped in gloom. I felt a sense of depression as soon as I stepped into the 'shoe-off' entrance, and heard my mother, in low, solemn tones, giving directions to a maid. A group of servants at the end of the hall seemed excited, but they also were talking in hushed voices. Of course, since I had not yet greeted the family, I did not ask any questions, but I had an uneasy feeling that something was wrong, and it was very hard for me to walk calmly and unhurriedly down the long hall to my grandmother's room.
" 'Honourable Grandmother, I have returned,' I murmured, as I sank to the floor with my usual salutation. She returned my bow with a gentle smile, but she was graver than usual. She and a maid were sitting before the black-and-gold cabinet of the family shrine. They had a large lacquer tray with rolls of white paper on it and the maid was pasting paper over the gilded doors of the shrine.
"Like almost every Japanese home, ours had two shrines. In time of sickness or death, the plain wooden Shinto shrine, which honours the Sun goddess, the Emperor, and the nation, was sealed with white paper to guard it from pollution. But the gilded Buddhist shrine was kept wide open at such a time; for Buddhist gods give comfort to the sorrowing and guide the dead on their heavenward journey. I had never known the gold shrine to be sealed; and besides, this was the very hour for it to be lighted in readiness for the evening meal. That was always the pleasantest part of the day; for after the first helping of our food had been placed on a tiny lacquer table before the shrine, we all seated ourselves at our separate tables, and ate, talked and laughed, feeling that the loving hearts of the ancestors were also with us. But the shrine was closed. What could it mean?
"I remember that my voice trembled a little as I asked, 'Honourable Grandmother, is --is anybody going to die?'
"I can see now how she looked -- half amused and half shocked.
" 'Little Etsu-ko,' she said, 'you talk too freely, like a boy. A girl should never speak with abrupt unceremony.'
" 'Pardon me, Honourable Grandmother,' I persisted anxiously; 'but is not the shrine being sealed with the pure paper of protection?'
" 'Yes,' she answered with a little sigh, and said nothing more.
"I did not speak again but sat watching her bent shoulders as she leaned over, unrolling the paper for the maid. My heart was greatly troubled.
"Presently she straightened up and turned toward me. 'Your honourable father has ordered his household to eat flesh,' she said very slowly. 'The wise physician who follows the path of the Western barbarians has told him that the flesh of animals will bring strength to his weak body, and also will make the children robust and clever like the people of the Western sea. The ox flesh is to be brought into the house in another hour and our duty is to protect the holy shrine from pollution.
"That evening we ate a solemn dinner with meat in our soup; but no friendly spirits were with us, for both shrines were sealed. Grandmother did not join us. She always occupied the seat of honour, and the vacant place looked strange and lonely. That night I asked her why she had not come.
" 'I would rather not grow as strong as a Westerner -- nor as clever,' she answered sadly. 'It is more becoming for me to follow the path of our ancestors.'
"My sister and I confided to each other that we liked the taste of meat. But neither of us mentioned this to any one else; for we both loved Grandmother, and we knew our disloyalty would sadden her heart."
--- A Daughter of the Samurai / Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto
Post ID: 4616265867289101289
Links - 23rd August 2017 (1)
(This was scheduled for 18th August but didn't publish)
Kotaro Hanawa's answer to What shouldn't one do in Japan as a foreigner? - Quora - "In Japan, it’s illegal to carry any types of weapon: this even includes cutter knives and scissors. Yes, people get arrested and criminally charged for carrying scissors!! Violators can be punished up to 10 years in prison. Screwdrivers are also illegal to carry in public, under the Picking Prohibition Act... Some hostess clubs even forcefully abduct people to buy their products. I was abducted by them once during my high school trip to Osaka and was forced to pay all of my money for good. They don’t have mercy for anyone... Although it’s widely known that the age of consent in Japan is 13, you still need parental consent in order to date anyone under the age of 18 or 20... Japanese people often don’t like seeing people showing their skin. It’s generally advised to avoid wearing tank tops or sleeveless clothing during the summer — regardless of gender. If you think the weather is too hot and want to wear tank top, it’d be best to wear a see through T-shirt on top of your tank top to feel cool, without showing your bare skin, since it’s considered to be rude. If you’re a teenage or adult male, it’s recommended to wear something under your T-shirt, even during summer. A lot of girls despise boys who wear only one layer of clothing. They consider it gross, since our humid climate drenches their clothes with sweat... Although body hair on men may be considered sexy in many cultures around the world, many Japanese find it disgusting. It’s common for boys to shave their body hair. Hell, I’ve ended up shaving my body hair after being socially pressured to do so. It’s recommended that you don’t proactively show your body hair in public places, as some Japanese may find it scary and even barbaric (this is another reason why Japanese don’t like just tank tops.)... Don’t talk to strangers to find a girlfriend!! Many western cultures tolerate boys talking to girls that they find attractive, even if they’re strangers. In Japan, that can be considered sexual harassment, even if she’s your classmate. You should wait until she talks to you first instead. I learned this the hard way…"
Assassination Porn - Twenty-Six Letters - Quora - "The assault on congressional Republicans cannot really be isolated from the escalating violence of the protests against President Trump. Groups like the antifa movement employ the tactics of intimidation and actual violence—and they do so, it must be said, with the tacit approval of establishment progressivism, the media and the Democratic Party. Which leading Democratic politicians have stood up to denounce antifa street violence or suppression of conservative speech and activity on college campuses? Which mainstream media outlets have decried the rising tide of leftist street violence? Few if any. And this is hardly surprising, for the hostility of, say, CNN to Trump is only somewhat less unhinged than that of, say, MoveOn.Org | Democracy In Action. Mainstream progressivism, though perhaps made uncomfortable by the violent rhetoric and actual violence of the Resistance, doesn’t really disapprove of it... it was just disgraceful to claim, as some conservatives and Trump supporters immediately did, that the Left as a whole has blood on its hands. The last point is actually correct, though you’d think that Democrats & etc., who instantly blamed Sarah Palin for the shooting of former Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords despite a lack of evidence of any connection between Palin and the killer, would blush to make it. (That shooter, incidentally, turned out to be a genuine head case: a paranoid schizophrenic, long obsessed with Giffords, who believed among other things that the rules of English grammar had been cooked up by the deep state as a mind-control measure.) No, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and the Pussy Hat Brigade et al., are not guilty of murder. But on the other hand, they do bear responsibility for the climate of fear and hate in which the attack on the GOP congressmen took place. By all accounts the shooter, though he could certainly be described as a social misfit, was not clinically insane... The fervor with which Trump assassination porn is embraced by people describing themselves as progressives, devoted to social justice and all good things, shines a not-very-flattering light on the Left. Like many of the Roman senators who stood by while the conspirators stabbed Caesar to death, these progressives would not raise a hand against Trump themselves—but many wouldn’t mind seeing someone else bump him off."
BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Assisted Dying - "I know it's terrible cliche to say slippery slopes but that's what we've got with abortion. There's no getting away from it. I've reread the 1967 Abortion Act. What the salient points of it today and how it has ended up, whether you're pro-abortion or not pro-abortion, was not what the people who drafted that legislation thought was happening. It was not what Parliament voted for. Everything was going to be fine because there were going to be 2 doctors. And 2 doctors who were God were going to make the right decisions. And of course it just became a matter of somebody deciding they wanted an abortion"
BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, 31/07/2013 (Wagner) - "One of the things that Wagner wanted to do is to put art at the centre of society and indeed at the centre of the state. He wanted the primary concern of the state to be art and actually he found a king in Ludwig II who thought the same... Wagner believed that everyone should go to the opera free of charge...
Shouldn't you really be rather satisfied because it's quite difficult now to go along to a Wagner opera without examining your conscience, which is not something one has to do about almost any other artist or any other activity?...
'I think art is reinterpreted by each successive generation. I think that's been fairly well attested to'...
Yes this music has been used in that way but it's not the way that it is being used today. I don't think, I don't anybody goes along to Wagner today because they are Hitlerian any more than because they're in favor of incest, any more than because they want to get rid of God, or any more than they are a Marxist which is what Wagner was in eighteen forty eight...
Every cultural relativist and every literary studies says that I can no longer appreciate Shakespeare because of his treatment of women. I have to now reinterpret everything in, on the context of every contemporary prejudice because you know you can no longer enjoy Robinson Crusoe because guess what? Apparently he's pro slavery and he has a servant... it's the first english novel and it's a great novel. I appreciate it. I will not have political correctness destroy art"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Talking Rot - "A lot of people in developed countries now, you know, will look at the expiration date and they'll sort of take that as gospel and they'll throw away a half gallon of milk or yogurt because the date on the package changes instead of using their senses. Looking or smelling or, or even feeling potentially. And those were skills that people in early generations in the nineteenth century, certainly in the eighteenth century - that's what they used all the time. They used their senses and I think modern people have much less of a tolerance for food that's going slightly bad. For example back in the nineteenth century there was a whole culinary genre for foods like souring milk. There was an appreciation for the tang that sour milk could give to dishes. I think there's much less appreciation now for the different taste of food at different stages of decay... Vitamins had not yet been discovered so there was not a robust understanding that fruits and vegetables were important for good health. On the contrary people often said, you know fruits and vegetables are frivolities. They're delicious but they're not particularly good for health and in fact on the contrary they can be dangerous if they're not ripe enough. The idea of eating underripe fruit in particular was seen as a special hazard for young children and many people attributed the higher rates of death in summer to the fact that they said children were eating underripe fruit and in fact people were much more likely to cook their fruits and vegetables a lot"
BBC World Service - The World This Week, May snaps back - "When you look at Japan's armed forces they are very large and very powerful already. It has a 250,000 man standing army, it has a larger navy than the United Kingdom, it has a very powerful and modern air force"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Girl Guides: The revamp - "[On World War II] All the men went to the battle front, the women were working in factories and who was left to run the country but the girls? Nobody ever asked a twelve year old: and what did you do in the war? Well she was running an evacuee hostel, she was working in a hospital, running nurseries. In France and Poland I discovered it was the Girl Guides who were the backbone of the Resistance movement"
Arlene Foster on Irish language act: 'More people speak Polish' - "Mrs Foster said if there was to be an Irish language act, there should be a Polish language act because more people in Northern Ireland speak Polish than Irish. Referring to Sinn Fein demands, she told a party event in Lurgan, Northern Ireland: "If you feed a crocodile, it will keep coming back for more.""
More people speak Polish as a main language than Irish
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Micromastery: A hidden path to happiness? - "People who win the Nobel prize are obsessed with their subject right? You can imagine them sitting there endless hour after endless hour thinking about nothing else, right? Wrong. They are actually fifteen times more likely than us mere mortals to dabble in all sorts of creative activities and we should be doing the same at least that's what Robert Twigger says in his new book called micromastery"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Monday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "The challenge of an electric vehicle is that it has only two hundred moving parts, whereas the average car is genuinely a work of a global engineering and it has over two thousand moving parts so I think it, the barriers to entry for the competition is going to be significantly lower this time"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Manchester attack: The US leaks - "This comes down to numbers. If they told us just how many people they think had these extreme views right across the UK, we wouldn't sleep at night. It's in thousands and they haven't got the watchers, they haven't got the capability to follow all of those people. So they have to go where they think the danger is the most imminent and most serious. In the case of this guy, those fears were first voiced five years ago by two Muslim workers, youth workers who phoned into the anti terrorist line saying: we're really worried about this guy, he's got extreme views. Now that was in his last year at high school when he was seventeen Salman Abedi. He didn't do anything then for five years and then this happens, and that's the problem: that somebody can suddenly switch, suddenly change"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Thursday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "'The supercycle theory was... that the traditional boom and bust in commodities which has gone on for time immemorial was going to come to an end because China was going to consume so much of this stuff that the price was just going to keep on rising forever'
'Exactly and that sort of take, fails to take into account frankly sort of human ingenuity. Commodity bull markets sew the seeds of their own demise, you know. Why do we have hybrid cars, now why do we have solar power, why do we have wind - is because oil's one hundred and fifty dollars'"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Copley Medal winner: Sir Andrew Wiles - "The proof alone takes one hundred twenty pages but that's without all the thousands of pages of mathematics that precedes it... it opened a chink in the door of a big program in mathematics which is trying to unify the different branches of mathematics. The branch that's like calculus, differential equations and so on, and the branch that's like algebra. And these usually lead relatively separate lives but there's a place in my field where they seem to come together"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Critical terror threat: What is being done to counter it? - "We have to be unequivocal that no amount of excuses, no amount of twisted reasoning about a foreign policy here or a foreign policy there can be an excuse. The reality is these people hate our values. You have to only have to look at their propaganda to realize the seeds of Salafist Jihadism which this lot are currently pursuing go back way before foreign wars. They started in the 30s and 50s by a guy that went to America and didn't like the values. It's about the values they hate. They hate our rule of law, they hate our equality, they hate our democracy
Somehow victim blaming is okay when it comes to jihadist attacks
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Chess champ Garry Kasparov on being beaten by a robot - "Fear is understatement. Most of people who marched with me against Putin at our peaceful rallies. They're either in jail, exile or worse like late Boris Nemtsov"
"So and you say that President Putin at the moment, it's a problem for Russia but he will eventually become everybody's-"
"No I said it ten years ago. Now it's problem for everybody. He attacked the Republic of Georgia, Ukraine. He is a constant threat for all neighboring countries and now we have enough proof to see interference with elections in the free world"
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby: London attack link to Islam as Christians killing Muslims is linked to Christianity - "Faith leaders must take responsibility for countering the religious justification for atrocities committed in their name, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has said. The Most Reverend Welby said throughout history religious scriptures have "been twisted and misused" by people to justify hates of violence and "We have got to say that if something happens within our own faith tradition we need to take responsibility for countering that". He said politicians should not just say "this is nothing to do with Islam" and focus on the security of political aspects of it as it is also an ideological problem. "I don't think it is getting us anywhere, just like saying Srebrenica had nothing to do with Christianity", he said... One of the big problems for the secular authorities trying to combat this is that they do not seem to understand "the basic tenets of the faith they are dealing with", he said. He explained: "They are often people who are unable to put themselves in the shoes of religious believers and understand a way of looking at the world that says that this defines your whole life, every single aspect of who you are and what you are".
Justin Welby: It's time to stop saying Isis has ‘nothing to do with Islam’ - "“If we treat religiously motivated violence solely as a security issue, or a political issue, then it will be incredibly difficult – probably impossible – to overcome it...
“This requires a move away from the argument that has become increasingly popular, which is to say that Isis is nothing to do with Islam, or that Christian militia in the Central African Republic are nothing to do with Christianity, or Hindu nationalist persecution of Christians in South India is nothing to do with Hinduism.”"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, The gay history of London - "'How has SoHo changed over the years?'
'Becoming I suppose more bland. It's more open. There is no longer the hint of danger or conspiracy'"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Monday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "We only rent our lifestyle and we pay for that rent through our income. If we don't have that income then we're likely to be thrown out of our own lifestyle"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Language: How has it changed? - "We've never had an academy, we've always worried about English. There has never been a Golden Age. Shakespeare was criticized, Keats was criticized"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Wednesday's business with Rob Young - "IT resilience, no matter what you put in place, could always be better. At the end of the day no matter how much work you do in the area of cybersecurity: whether it's protection or resilience, there's always more you can do. The problem is none of us have limitless budgets. We have to make choices when we run a business about those things we're going to spend money on. And it means having to make decisions about what level of resilience you're going to buy yourself. How much of an outage can your business afford to take?... I have yet to meet any organization that's planning for someone accidentally cutting the wrong power cord to their whole data center. I have however heard of it happening twice now"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, When does borrowing become 'cultural appropriation'? - "'I think the best way to respect other cultures is actually to appropriate it. Take it on, try on somebody else's clothes and turn it into something new and I think the real problem with this debate, and it is extremely ,chilling is that culture has been politicized to the point where tastes, habits, whether you do yoga or where Geisha costumes are no longer seen as something that is about respecting and enjoying some else's culture but it's seen as a kind of political statement. And it turns cultural interaction into a site of intense anxiety, rather than curiosity, appreciation, experimentation and exchange'
'I have to disagree strongly. I mean I wish we lived in a world where it took Kate Moss's daughter to politicize culture. The reality is that culture has been highly politicized for millennia, and if you take African culture because that's the example with Kate Moss's daughter wearing braids, you know that's a very traditional African hairstyle. African culture has been politicized ever since Britain had an empire and you know if you look at a fashion collections for example the Valentino collection last year which was accused of culture appropriation, not only did it dress white models in African clothes which as I said you know per se not necessary anything wrong with that. But it then describes the collection as tribal, primitive. All of these terms that black people in African cultures still are routinely labeled with in a highly politicized and patronizing way'...
'I wonder if you can actually say though that it is black culture. I don't think any culture is created in that kind of cultural vacuum.... I don't think it accurately reflects those cultural projects which are never created in this kind of pure vacuum of no exchange'...
'If you look at dreadlocks for example which is the thing that we're talking about here. Are they black or I mean the first I think literary example of them is in Hindu Vedic scriptures dating from 1700 BC. The Pharaohs wore them and I don't think Bob Marley was being racist when he appropriated them without proper footnotes'
'That's a reductive argument. You have to distinguish between different cultures clearly. So I have never said that dreadlocks, you know black culture has a monopoly over dreadlocks. But Rastafarianism is definitely something that has strong roots in black culture, in black nationalism and pride and Bob Marley was referencing that specific culture with his dreadlocks. So if other people want to wear dreadlocks and make them part of their own culture that's fine. But when it's combined with this ongoing discrimination and prejudice against the black cultures that manifest these traditions then that's a problem'
If A politicises B's culture, who is B at fault?
Jedi mind trick! We need to summon Egyptians to slap Bob Marley
Kotaro Hanawa's answer to What shouldn't one do in Japan as a foreigner? - Quora - "In Japan, it’s illegal to carry any types of weapon: this even includes cutter knives and scissors. Yes, people get arrested and criminally charged for carrying scissors!! Violators can be punished up to 10 years in prison. Screwdrivers are also illegal to carry in public, under the Picking Prohibition Act... Some hostess clubs even forcefully abduct people to buy their products. I was abducted by them once during my high school trip to Osaka and was forced to pay all of my money for good. They don’t have mercy for anyone... Although it’s widely known that the age of consent in Japan is 13, you still need parental consent in order to date anyone under the age of 18 or 20... Japanese people often don’t like seeing people showing their skin. It’s generally advised to avoid wearing tank tops or sleeveless clothing during the summer — regardless of gender. If you think the weather is too hot and want to wear tank top, it’d be best to wear a see through T-shirt on top of your tank top to feel cool, without showing your bare skin, since it’s considered to be rude. If you’re a teenage or adult male, it’s recommended to wear something under your T-shirt, even during summer. A lot of girls despise boys who wear only one layer of clothing. They consider it gross, since our humid climate drenches their clothes with sweat... Although body hair on men may be considered sexy in many cultures around the world, many Japanese find it disgusting. It’s common for boys to shave their body hair. Hell, I’ve ended up shaving my body hair after being socially pressured to do so. It’s recommended that you don’t proactively show your body hair in public places, as some Japanese may find it scary and even barbaric (this is another reason why Japanese don’t like just tank tops.)... Don’t talk to strangers to find a girlfriend!! Many western cultures tolerate boys talking to girls that they find attractive, even if they’re strangers. In Japan, that can be considered sexual harassment, even if she’s your classmate. You should wait until she talks to you first instead. I learned this the hard way…"
Assassination Porn - Twenty-Six Letters - Quora - "The assault on congressional Republicans cannot really be isolated from the escalating violence of the protests against President Trump. Groups like the antifa movement employ the tactics of intimidation and actual violence—and they do so, it must be said, with the tacit approval of establishment progressivism, the media and the Democratic Party. Which leading Democratic politicians have stood up to denounce antifa street violence or suppression of conservative speech and activity on college campuses? Which mainstream media outlets have decried the rising tide of leftist street violence? Few if any. And this is hardly surprising, for the hostility of, say, CNN to Trump is only somewhat less unhinged than that of, say, MoveOn.Org | Democracy In Action. Mainstream progressivism, though perhaps made uncomfortable by the violent rhetoric and actual violence of the Resistance, doesn’t really disapprove of it... it was just disgraceful to claim, as some conservatives and Trump supporters immediately did, that the Left as a whole has blood on its hands. The last point is actually correct, though you’d think that Democrats & etc., who instantly blamed Sarah Palin for the shooting of former Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords despite a lack of evidence of any connection between Palin and the killer, would blush to make it. (That shooter, incidentally, turned out to be a genuine head case: a paranoid schizophrenic, long obsessed with Giffords, who believed among other things that the rules of English grammar had been cooked up by the deep state as a mind-control measure.) No, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and the Pussy Hat Brigade et al., are not guilty of murder. But on the other hand, they do bear responsibility for the climate of fear and hate in which the attack on the GOP congressmen took place. By all accounts the shooter, though he could certainly be described as a social misfit, was not clinically insane... The fervor with which Trump assassination porn is embraced by people describing themselves as progressives, devoted to social justice and all good things, shines a not-very-flattering light on the Left. Like many of the Roman senators who stood by while the conspirators stabbed Caesar to death, these progressives would not raise a hand against Trump themselves—but many wouldn’t mind seeing someone else bump him off."
BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Assisted Dying - "I know it's terrible cliche to say slippery slopes but that's what we've got with abortion. There's no getting away from it. I've reread the 1967 Abortion Act. What the salient points of it today and how it has ended up, whether you're pro-abortion or not pro-abortion, was not what the people who drafted that legislation thought was happening. It was not what Parliament voted for. Everything was going to be fine because there were going to be 2 doctors. And 2 doctors who were God were going to make the right decisions. And of course it just became a matter of somebody deciding they wanted an abortion"
BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, 31/07/2013 (Wagner) - "One of the things that Wagner wanted to do is to put art at the centre of society and indeed at the centre of the state. He wanted the primary concern of the state to be art and actually he found a king in Ludwig II who thought the same... Wagner believed that everyone should go to the opera free of charge...
Shouldn't you really be rather satisfied because it's quite difficult now to go along to a Wagner opera without examining your conscience, which is not something one has to do about almost any other artist or any other activity?...
'I think art is reinterpreted by each successive generation. I think that's been fairly well attested to'...
Yes this music has been used in that way but it's not the way that it is being used today. I don't think, I don't anybody goes along to Wagner today because they are Hitlerian any more than because they're in favor of incest, any more than because they want to get rid of God, or any more than they are a Marxist which is what Wagner was in eighteen forty eight...
Every cultural relativist and every literary studies says that I can no longer appreciate Shakespeare because of his treatment of women. I have to now reinterpret everything in, on the context of every contemporary prejudice because you know you can no longer enjoy Robinson Crusoe because guess what? Apparently he's pro slavery and he has a servant... it's the first english novel and it's a great novel. I appreciate it. I will not have political correctness destroy art"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Talking Rot - "A lot of people in developed countries now, you know, will look at the expiration date and they'll sort of take that as gospel and they'll throw away a half gallon of milk or yogurt because the date on the package changes instead of using their senses. Looking or smelling or, or even feeling potentially. And those were skills that people in early generations in the nineteenth century, certainly in the eighteenth century - that's what they used all the time. They used their senses and I think modern people have much less of a tolerance for food that's going slightly bad. For example back in the nineteenth century there was a whole culinary genre for foods like souring milk. There was an appreciation for the tang that sour milk could give to dishes. I think there's much less appreciation now for the different taste of food at different stages of decay... Vitamins had not yet been discovered so there was not a robust understanding that fruits and vegetables were important for good health. On the contrary people often said, you know fruits and vegetables are frivolities. They're delicious but they're not particularly good for health and in fact on the contrary they can be dangerous if they're not ripe enough. The idea of eating underripe fruit in particular was seen as a special hazard for young children and many people attributed the higher rates of death in summer to the fact that they said children were eating underripe fruit and in fact people were much more likely to cook their fruits and vegetables a lot"
BBC World Service - The World This Week, May snaps back - "When you look at Japan's armed forces they are very large and very powerful already. It has a 250,000 man standing army, it has a larger navy than the United Kingdom, it has a very powerful and modern air force"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Girl Guides: The revamp - "[On World War II] All the men went to the battle front, the women were working in factories and who was left to run the country but the girls? Nobody ever asked a twelve year old: and what did you do in the war? Well she was running an evacuee hostel, she was working in a hospital, running nurseries. In France and Poland I discovered it was the Girl Guides who were the backbone of the Resistance movement"
Arlene Foster on Irish language act: 'More people speak Polish' - "Mrs Foster said if there was to be an Irish language act, there should be a Polish language act because more people in Northern Ireland speak Polish than Irish. Referring to Sinn Fein demands, she told a party event in Lurgan, Northern Ireland: "If you feed a crocodile, it will keep coming back for more.""
More people speak Polish as a main language than Irish
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Micromastery: A hidden path to happiness? - "People who win the Nobel prize are obsessed with their subject right? You can imagine them sitting there endless hour after endless hour thinking about nothing else, right? Wrong. They are actually fifteen times more likely than us mere mortals to dabble in all sorts of creative activities and we should be doing the same at least that's what Robert Twigger says in his new book called micromastery"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Monday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "The challenge of an electric vehicle is that it has only two hundred moving parts, whereas the average car is genuinely a work of a global engineering and it has over two thousand moving parts so I think it, the barriers to entry for the competition is going to be significantly lower this time"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Manchester attack: The US leaks - "This comes down to numbers. If they told us just how many people they think had these extreme views right across the UK, we wouldn't sleep at night. It's in thousands and they haven't got the watchers, they haven't got the capability to follow all of those people. So they have to go where they think the danger is the most imminent and most serious. In the case of this guy, those fears were first voiced five years ago by two Muslim workers, youth workers who phoned into the anti terrorist line saying: we're really worried about this guy, he's got extreme views. Now that was in his last year at high school when he was seventeen Salman Abedi. He didn't do anything then for five years and then this happens, and that's the problem: that somebody can suddenly switch, suddenly change"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Thursday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "'The supercycle theory was... that the traditional boom and bust in commodities which has gone on for time immemorial was going to come to an end because China was going to consume so much of this stuff that the price was just going to keep on rising forever'
'Exactly and that sort of take, fails to take into account frankly sort of human ingenuity. Commodity bull markets sew the seeds of their own demise, you know. Why do we have hybrid cars, now why do we have solar power, why do we have wind - is because oil's one hundred and fifty dollars'"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Copley Medal winner: Sir Andrew Wiles - "The proof alone takes one hundred twenty pages but that's without all the thousands of pages of mathematics that precedes it... it opened a chink in the door of a big program in mathematics which is trying to unify the different branches of mathematics. The branch that's like calculus, differential equations and so on, and the branch that's like algebra. And these usually lead relatively separate lives but there's a place in my field where they seem to come together"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Critical terror threat: What is being done to counter it? - "We have to be unequivocal that no amount of excuses, no amount of twisted reasoning about a foreign policy here or a foreign policy there can be an excuse. The reality is these people hate our values. You have to only have to look at their propaganda to realize the seeds of Salafist Jihadism which this lot are currently pursuing go back way before foreign wars. They started in the 30s and 50s by a guy that went to America and didn't like the values. It's about the values they hate. They hate our rule of law, they hate our equality, they hate our democracy
Somehow victim blaming is okay when it comes to jihadist attacks
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Chess champ Garry Kasparov on being beaten by a robot - "Fear is understatement. Most of people who marched with me against Putin at our peaceful rallies. They're either in jail, exile or worse like late Boris Nemtsov"
"So and you say that President Putin at the moment, it's a problem for Russia but he will eventually become everybody's-"
"No I said it ten years ago. Now it's problem for everybody. He attacked the Republic of Georgia, Ukraine. He is a constant threat for all neighboring countries and now we have enough proof to see interference with elections in the free world"
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby: London attack link to Islam as Christians killing Muslims is linked to Christianity - "Faith leaders must take responsibility for countering the religious justification for atrocities committed in their name, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has said. The Most Reverend Welby said throughout history religious scriptures have "been twisted and misused" by people to justify hates of violence and "We have got to say that if something happens within our own faith tradition we need to take responsibility for countering that". He said politicians should not just say "this is nothing to do with Islam" and focus on the security of political aspects of it as it is also an ideological problem. "I don't think it is getting us anywhere, just like saying Srebrenica had nothing to do with Christianity", he said... One of the big problems for the secular authorities trying to combat this is that they do not seem to understand "the basic tenets of the faith they are dealing with", he said. He explained: "They are often people who are unable to put themselves in the shoes of religious believers and understand a way of looking at the world that says that this defines your whole life, every single aspect of who you are and what you are".
Justin Welby: It's time to stop saying Isis has ‘nothing to do with Islam’ - "“If we treat religiously motivated violence solely as a security issue, or a political issue, then it will be incredibly difficult – probably impossible – to overcome it...
“This requires a move away from the argument that has become increasingly popular, which is to say that Isis is nothing to do with Islam, or that Christian militia in the Central African Republic are nothing to do with Christianity, or Hindu nationalist persecution of Christians in South India is nothing to do with Hinduism.”"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, The gay history of London - "'How has SoHo changed over the years?'
'Becoming I suppose more bland. It's more open. There is no longer the hint of danger or conspiracy'"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Monday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "We only rent our lifestyle and we pay for that rent through our income. If we don't have that income then we're likely to be thrown out of our own lifestyle"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Language: How has it changed? - "We've never had an academy, we've always worried about English. There has never been a Golden Age. Shakespeare was criticized, Keats was criticized"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Wednesday's business with Rob Young - "IT resilience, no matter what you put in place, could always be better. At the end of the day no matter how much work you do in the area of cybersecurity: whether it's protection or resilience, there's always more you can do. The problem is none of us have limitless budgets. We have to make choices when we run a business about those things we're going to spend money on. And it means having to make decisions about what level of resilience you're going to buy yourself. How much of an outage can your business afford to take?... I have yet to meet any organization that's planning for someone accidentally cutting the wrong power cord to their whole data center. I have however heard of it happening twice now"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, When does borrowing become 'cultural appropriation'? - "'I think the best way to respect other cultures is actually to appropriate it. Take it on, try on somebody else's clothes and turn it into something new and I think the real problem with this debate, and it is extremely ,chilling is that culture has been politicized to the point where tastes, habits, whether you do yoga or where Geisha costumes are no longer seen as something that is about respecting and enjoying some else's culture but it's seen as a kind of political statement. And it turns cultural interaction into a site of intense anxiety, rather than curiosity, appreciation, experimentation and exchange'
'I have to disagree strongly. I mean I wish we lived in a world where it took Kate Moss's daughter to politicize culture. The reality is that culture has been highly politicized for millennia, and if you take African culture because that's the example with Kate Moss's daughter wearing braids, you know that's a very traditional African hairstyle. African culture has been politicized ever since Britain had an empire and you know if you look at a fashion collections for example the Valentino collection last year which was accused of culture appropriation, not only did it dress white models in African clothes which as I said you know per se not necessary anything wrong with that. But it then describes the collection as tribal, primitive. All of these terms that black people in African cultures still are routinely labeled with in a highly politicized and patronizing way'...
'I wonder if you can actually say though that it is black culture. I don't think any culture is created in that kind of cultural vacuum.... I don't think it accurately reflects those cultural projects which are never created in this kind of pure vacuum of no exchange'...
'If you look at dreadlocks for example which is the thing that we're talking about here. Are they black or I mean the first I think literary example of them is in Hindu Vedic scriptures dating from 1700 BC. The Pharaohs wore them and I don't think Bob Marley was being racist when he appropriated them without proper footnotes'
'That's a reductive argument. You have to distinguish between different cultures clearly. So I have never said that dreadlocks, you know black culture has a monopoly over dreadlocks. But Rastafarianism is definitely something that has strong roots in black culture, in black nationalism and pride and Bob Marley was referencing that specific culture with his dreadlocks. So if other people want to wear dreadlocks and make them part of their own culture that's fine. But when it's combined with this ongoing discrimination and prejudice against the black cultures that manifest these traditions then that's a problem'
If A politicises B's culture, who is B at fault?
Jedi mind trick! We need to summon Egyptians to slap Bob Marley
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