Links - 17th June 2018 (2)

FUREY: The world has all of a sudden revised its take on Justin Trudeau - "The news that Jaspal Atwal, a Sikh extremist convicted of attempted murder, had been invited to a dinner with Trudeau in India is really just the story that broke the dam for this international deluge of criticism the PM is currently in the midst of. Before the Atwal story came out, both Canadians and international observers were already scratching their heads about how Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had clearly snubbed Trudeau, how excessive his family photos were and how silly their garments were, trying to dress more stereotypically Indian than the actual Indian people they met. “There does not seem to be any purpose for, or proper planning to, his visit”... Then came the motherlode, the point of no return. The “peoplekind” comment. It was too much even for the wackiest of leftists... the PM’s top adviser, Gerald Butts, called some of Trudeau’s critics Nazis on social media, leading Jewish human rights activists to denounce Butts’ ill-mannered meltdown... Trudeau is now at the midway point of his first term. The budget has not balanced itself. Key campaign planks have faltered. The PMO’s deliverology has failed to deliver. And, perhaps most damaging of all, Trudeau’s image is fraying even among his base."

Justin Trudeau ridiculed by Indians for his 'fake' outfits - "Ministers, authors, journalists and ordinary Indians lined up to mock him on Wednesday, saying his wardrobe was 'fake and annoying'. Perhaps taking note of the criticism, the Canadian leader donned a suit on Thursday as he visited Jama Masjid, one of India's largest mosques... 'We Indians do not dress like this every day sir, not even in Bollywood.'... 'Too flashy even for an Indian', proclaimed Outlook India while The Print suggested that he looked like he was auditioning to be a model... India Today described the choice of clothing as 'tacky', suggesting it was insulting to his guests... Trudeau's trip has also been criticised back home for his lack of official engagements - just one in eight days - making it more like a family holiday than a diplomatic visit"

Justin Trudeau adores donning traditional Indian outfits - "Also donned Philippines shirt and First Nation headdress on previous occasions"

Anastef 🇨🇦 on Twitter: "Canada's Most Prolific Actor ... multi personalities is a disorder .. You need a mental evaluation SCUMBAG ⬅️… https://t.co/IqUxGBRzUV"

Barkha Dutt: Trudeau's India trip is a total disaster -- and he has himself to blame - The Washington Post - "I confess, from afar, I used to be a Trudeau fan-girl. But after this trip, I’ve changed my mind. Trudeau has come across as flighty and facetious. His orchestrated dance moves and multiple costume changes in heavily embroidered kurtas and sherwanis make him look more like an actor on a movie set or a guest at a wedding than a politician who is here to talk business. Suddenly, all that charisma and cuteness seem constructed, manufactured and, above all, not serious. “He seems more much more convinced of his own rock-star status than we ever were,” said one official in the Indian government who preferred to remain anonymous. Indians are also wondering, what is Trudeau doing here for so long? Doesn’t he have a country to run?"

Canadian town refuses to remove swastikas from park - "Corey Fleischer, who goes around Montreal removing hateful graffiti, tried to paint over the swastikas. But the mayor stopped him and had police remove him from the park, arguing the anchor is a part of local history... The statement cites an article by Radio Canada, which says that before 1920 the swastika was a symbol of peace. Online sleuths have speculated that the anchor could have been made by the British manufacturer WL Byers in Sunderland, England. The anchors were adorned with a swastika as a good luck charm, it is claimed, before the rise of Hitler."

San Francisco's 'Diseased Streets' Are Being Compared to Some of Worst Slums in the World - "not only do the needles cause viral diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis, but dried fecal matter can release airborne viruses like the rotavirus... some parts of San Francisco may be worse than the world’s dirtiest slums... in those countries, slums often serve as long-term housing, and thus, their residents work to maintain them. But in San Francisco, he suggested that the homeless do not make an effort to keep the streets clean because they are forced to move around frequently"

NTU scientists develop patch that helps burn fats - "patch which delivers drugs that are known to turn energy-storing white fat into energy-burning brown fat, via micro-needles. In tests by research fellow Dr Aung Than, the patches were able to reduce the fat mass in mice on a high-fat diet by more than 30 per cent over four weeks. The rodents also had significantly lower blood cholesterol and fatty acids levels compared to the untreated mice."

Marvel comics' Fresh Start looks like a return to old cliches - "Over the past couple of years Marvel has made some genuinely significant changes to its core characters: it replaced billionaire inventor Tony Stark in the Iron Man costume with a 15-year-old black girl, Riri Williams; deemed Thor unworthy to wield the hammer Mjolnir and passed the mantle to love interest Jane Foster; and in the most divisive storyline ever, “revealed” that Captain America was a secret sleeper agent for Nazi analogue, Hydra. But Fresh Start is a back-to-basics approach, restoring the original versions of Marvel’s triumvirate, as well as bringing back a dead one: the deceased Bruce Banner, who will reclaim his position as Hulk from current jolly green incumbent, Amadeus Cho... new readers who are introduced to the characters by the movies should have their eyes opened to the possibilities of what can be done in comics, which eclipse even the biggest Hollywood special effects budget. They should be offered a wider universe, not just a mirror one... the studio’s attempts to diversifying its universe by adding more female, black, Asian and LGBT characters was not going down well with the core readership. Brian Michael Bendis, one of the company’s star writers and the creator of Iron Man’s female replacement Iron Heart and the Miles Morales African-Latino version of Spider-Man, has since left for rivals DC Comics. And two gay characters with their own titles – Iceman and America Chavez – had their books cancelled at the end of 2017, not long after an industry breakfast that Marvel hosted for comic shop owners at New York Comic Con, where some retailers lambasted the diverse additions, with one repeatedly insisting that kids didn’t want to come in to his store and buy a comic that featured “Iceman kissing dudes”. If Marvel is indeed pandering to a more conservative readership that has grumbled incessantly about the proliferation of black, LGBT and female characters in recent years, then – given the phenomenal box office success of Black Panther this last week – there’s something decidedly rotten in the state of Fresh Start. Maybe they’ll get back some of white, male Middle America that’s drifted away, but comics are and should be progressive and transgressive"
In other words, Marvel should continue to make SJWs happy even though they don't buy comics. Maybe liberals think Marvel should use movie profits to subsidise a progressive, loss-making comics division

A Modest Immigration Proposal: Ban Jews - The New York Times - "Jewish intellectual life in the 1930s and 40s was largely defined by one’s stance toward one thing: The Party. Historians reckon that Jews accounted for nearly half the Communist Party’s total membership in those years, while many other Jews were close fellow travelers."
Comments: "immigrants from that last century came legally. The immigrants we are talking about today have not... Back then, the Doctors did most the vetting to keep infectious disease out of our country"
"in 1900 immigrants were affected by the strong push of the melting pot while by comparison today the University of California considers even the term melting pot a micro aggression. So assimilation is happening far slower than in the past"

Supermarket Snacking Boosts Sales - "noshing while shopping convinces consumers to buy the featured product more often than does simply seeing the product displayed at the end of the aisle. They also found that repeating the sample offering multiple times translates into sustained interest in the product…and that stores that have a smaller assortment of products for sale benefit more than the warehouse-sized emporia... nibbling on one brand of cookies makes you hungry for cookies in general—including those from competing brands."

Chinese "Little Brat" Urinates on Elevator Control Panel, Gets Trapped When It Breaks Down

Report: Only 2.65 Percent of Immigrants into Italy Are Refugees - "half of the migrants arriving in the country (90,334) never even requested asylum, but disappeared into the country as undocumented immigrants, commonly referred to by the Italians as “clandestini.” The remaining 91,902 migrants applied for asylum, and 60 percent of these (54,252) had their petitions rejected unconditionally. Another 21 percent (18,979) were awarded “humanitarian protection,” allowing them a renewable yearly permission to remain in the country, and 14 percent more (12,873) were given “subsidiary protection.” The 4,808 immigrants who were awarded asylum represent 5.28 percent of the asylum seekers and therefore only 2.65 percent of the total number of immigrants entering in the country during the year."

Turkey threatens invasion of Greece, but why do so few care? - "Edward Said a profound theorist in post-colonial studies has essentialised the West and in doing so, the East. The Jordanian Marxist scholar, Sadik Jalal al-’Azm views Said as a captive to his own Western conceptions of Orientalism. According to al-‘Azm, Said failed to understand the modern nationalisms that guided post-colonial struggles in Asia Minor and the Middle East... Progressive media now seems to agonise whenever the notion of colonialism is extended beyond the confines of Western industrial European power. In the post-colonial theory rulebook, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America are infantilised and complex nations, their communities and leaders are mere marionettes responding to Western colonialism... The Greek War of Independence 1821, the first anti-colonial wars of the modern world, is a subject avoided in post-colonial discourses. It was a modern conflict, no less modern than the American Revolution, or the Vietnamese War against the French; however it doesn’t fit the orthodoxies of post-colonial theory... The Ottoman Empire colonised the Balkans and the Middle East for 400 years but in post-colonial studies it is as though it never existed... Post-colonial theory as it is now presented in public discourse moves towards simple binaries, like coloniser and colonised. Ann Wilson when reviewing Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins’ 1996 Post-colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics points to how the mercantile coloniser is seen as culturally hegemonic while the latter, “the colonised, is diverse and polyvalent.” She emphasises the “simplicity of this schema, and the sentimental idealization of the culture of the colonized, thus valuing diversity for its own sake.”
Comment: "It goes straight to the crux of the glaring double standards of post-colonialist “theory”. I would also go so far as to say that the British Empire for example, although so excoriated, did a hell of a lot more for the peoples it colonised and the world as a whole, then the Ottoman Empire, which seems to exist in some sort of black hole outside of the consciousness of post-colonialist theorists... when a group of artists organised a conference called something like ‘decolonise your arts practise’ I mischievously posted a question. I asked if they would consider in their conversations the Han, Khan, Ottoman or Persian colonisers? The post was quickly removed."
And just to get it off my chest: I can’t stand Edward Said. He had a massive chip on his shoulder. The East been just as free to “occidentalise” the West, as the West ever was to “orientalise” the East. His whole premise is nonsense."

Chan Chun Sing says severe implications if Singapore does not have sufficient reserves. But just how much is enough? - " according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in its surveillance of member states' foreign exchange reserves adequacy*, for a country with a mature economy, a large banking sector and a very open capital account, like Singapore, the upper limit for prudent level of reserves is 20% of broad money or M2. Singapore's broad money stands at 135% of GDP - in other words, going by the IMF's opinion, the prudent limit stand at 27% of GDP or S$113b. That means, the MAS alone, not counting the foreign assets managed by GIC (entirely foreign) and Temasek (70% foreign) has foreign reserves more than 3 times the prudent limit"

Why Malaysians are slow to board their new trains - "KL, as the locals call the city, has the lowest proportion of people using public transport despite having the most developed rail network"

NSFs who went AWOL helped archaeology dig at Fort Canning Hill: John N. Miksic interview - "Miksic advocates that the archaeological findings should be used to solidify the idea that people of different ethnicities have been living here together for the longest time, with a hybrid culture — possibly the precursor to the Peranakan culture.
Miksic said:
“They had lived together here for hundreds of years before the British came. I think there was already a hybrid culture, because we found all these glass beads on Fort Canning, which are well known to be part of Peranakan culture.”"
Among other things, this problematises claims of Malay exclusive indigeneity

When it comes to Laci Green, the writing has always been on the wall - "after starting to pay attention to her, I got wind of the issues with Laci Green and her work... Now, Laci’s become a vessel for the alt-right community to shine a light through, and Twitter has been dragging her all week for it. Seemingly in the wake of her beginning to date Twitter user and alt-right brodude Chris Ray Gun, she’s provided these people with a space to “have conversations” — and with them come TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) and other bigots... A quick Google search will show you that she’s had a history of problematic behavior, combined with a willful ignorance and lack of desire to correct it, for the sake of “conversation.”"
This has fascinating parallels with Christian fundamentalists claiming that ex-Christians were never really Christian

Feminist Laci Green, popular internet host, harassed over relationship with controversial YouTuber - "many of Green’s former supporters going so far as to insinuate that she is a traitor to marginalized people everywhere... Among those voicing their disapproval is activist Zinnia Jones, who seems to be pushing for an online campaign to sabotage the relationship and implying that “getting laid” is more important to Green than her feminist work."
Women's choices are only to be respected when they are approved by feminism

Feminist Commentator Laci Green Slammed by Leftists for Dating Anti-SJW YouTuber, Wanting Open Debate - "“My, how quickly some feminists who claim to be anti-harassment, anti pile-on, or anti sex-shame turn around and do just that,” she continued. “Amazing.”... Steve Shives, who is known online for the large amount of Twitter users he has blocked, claimed that Green’s embrace of open debate and discussion was the “embrace” of “white supremacy.” Actor Benjamin O’Keefe added that Green’s desire for civilized debate between both sides of the political spectrum equated to “not giving a fuck about: her friends, women, people of color, interacial [sic] couples, trans people, [and] Muslim people.”"

The British dream: why Europe's African citizens come to Britain | Mukul Devichand - ""I think the UK is more open than other European countries," says Jibril, who is now a London bus driver. He and many other Somalis told me they admired the success of non-white people in Britain – which was conspicuously absent, they felt, on the continent. Jibril mentions the Asian community who came to the UK from Uganda. "They are landlords, they are businessmen, lawyers," he enthuses. "It's amazing."... their admiration of our society does seem to indicate some kind of "British dream" that has drawn in many millions"
Someone needs to tell Black Lives Matter UK