Starbucks shop boots police officers because customer ‘did not feel safe’ around them: reports - "Five officers were drinking coffee at the Starbucks location prior to their shift beginning when a barista asked them to move out of the complaining customer’s line of sight or else leave... Rob Ferraro, president of the police union, told FOX 10 of Phoenix that such treatment of police officers seems to be happening more often these days."
If you feel unsafe around people with a protected demographic characteristic...
Bystanders taunted and laughed as police officers were being fired upon in Philadelphia - "A video shows a crowd of residents shoving and confronting the police even as they were dealing with a tense hostage situation.. Reporter Alexandria Hoff of CBS-3 Philadelphia reported that she had been harassed along with the officers."
Lancet restaurant gives medical professionals food for thought - "The physician, who graduated from Fourth Military Medical University in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, was given a discount of 84 yuan ($12.67) at a barbecue restaurant that is popular with medical professionals as a result of the paper's "impact factor" - a measure of the frequency with which articles are cited in a particular year. The 84 yuan discount was a multiple of the paper's impact factor of 8.4, which is considered a good score.Under the rules of the restaurant, scientists, medical professionals and social scientists are eligible for a discount if they have recently published papers in journals that are included on internet databases such as the Science Citation Index and the Social Sciences Citation Index.The paper's impact factor is multiplied by 10 to determine the discount, which can account for as much as 30 percent of the bill... Since the promotion began on September 21, hundreds of customers have visited the eatery - called Liuyedao, the Chinese name of The Lancet, one of the world's leading general medical journals - near Beijing Jiaotong University in Haidian district... one out of every four diners is likely to have had a paper published in the world's top academic journals... barbecue is one of the mainstays of Chinese dinner tables. Last year, it held a 20 percent share of the national dining market, second only to hot pot as the country's most popular dish... The day after the promotion was posted, 16 customers arrived, all carrying copies of papers they had published in academic journals. So far, the highest impact factor has been 29.51, which earned the author a discount of 295 yuan.Cheng said the discount system encourages the scholars to be more productive... For Tan, it was a night of surprises because he not only encountered one of his former students, now a chief physician, whom he hadn't seen for a decade, but also met Dr. William Summerskill, a senior executive editor at The Lancet in London.Summerskill was attending a medical conference in Beijing when he heard about the restaurant named after his journal and decided to pay a visit."
‘I went to Rome and all I got you was this stylus!’ Rare inscribed Roman writing implement discovered beneath Bloomberg’s European HQ goes on display - "‘I have come from the City. I bring you a welcome gift
with a sharp point that you may remember me.
I ask, if fortune allowed, that I might be able (to give)
as generously as the way is long (and) as my purse is empty.’
In other words: the stylus is a gift to remind the recipient of its sender; the sender acknowledges that it is a cheap gift and wishes that they could have given more. Its tongue-in-cheek sentiment is reminiscent of the kinds of novelty souvenirs we still give today. It is the Roman equivalent of ‘I went to Rome and all I got you was this pen’, providing a touching personal insight into the humour of someone who lived nearly 2000 years ago.""
Why Genghis Khan’s tomb can’t be found - "Beyond cultural pressures to honour Genghis Khan’s dying wish for secrecy, a host of technical problems hinder the search for his tomb. Mongolia is huge and underdeveloped ‒ more than seven times the size of Great Britain with only 2% of its roads. The population density is so low that only Greenland and a few remote islands can beat it. As such, every view is epic wilderness. Humanity, it seems, is just there to provide scale: the distant, white curve of a herdsman’s ger, or a rock shrine fluttering with prayer flags. Such a landscape holds on to its secrets."
Why billionaires have more sons - "We now know that bad weather makes for more baby girls, as does fasting for Ramadan or suffering from morning sickness... Crucially, a predisposition to having more sons or daughters is encoded in our genetics – men with more sisters tend to have girls while those with more brothers tend to have boys. What’s going on? In fact, the odds of having a boy vs. having a girl have never been exactly 50:50. Worldwide, there are around 109 boys born for every 100 girls. This might seem like a lot, but it’s necessary. Men have weaker immune systems, higher cholesterol, more heart problems, a greater susceptibility to diabetes, higher rates of cancer and lower chances of surviving it. They make up over two-thirds of murder victims, three-quarters of traffic accident fatalities and are three times more likely to commit suicide. Mothers have to have a higher proportion of sons in order for an equal number to survive... why is the sex ratio close to 50:50, but not exactly? It was a tricky subject in need of a daring intellectual mind. Enter Robert Trivers, a renegade scientist like no other. According to his own website, he’s spent time behind bars, formed an armed gang in Jamaica to protect gay men from violence and driven a getaway car for notorious political activist Huey Newton.The Ivy League professor has been barred from university campuses, suffered mental breakdowns and broken with tradition by changing disciplines numerous times, from maths, to law, to history, to genetics. Now he’s an anthropologist at Rutgers University. “Compared to many other scientists I’ve lived a wild life,” he says. Back in 1972, after tiring of history, he turned his attention to Darwin’s problem. “I said whoa – now there’s an idea worth devoting my life to,” says Trivers. Together with a colleague, Dan Willard, he developed one of the most famous theories in evolutionary biology. It’s known as the Trivers-Willard hypothesis and it goes like this... the most prolific mother in world history was the nameless first wife of a peasant from Shuya, Russia, who lived from 1707 to 1782. In total, local records reveal that she gave birth to 69 children, which is nothing compared to the warrior Genghis Khan, who fathered between 1,000 and 2,000 children before he died in 1227... In many animals – red deer, elephant seals, gorillas – the stakes are even higher. Successful males may have harems of hundreds of females, while low-ranking or weak males may never reproduce or die trying.Then there’s the issue of resources. Because they tend to be larger, sons require a lot more food than daughters and in many societies they’ll require more education and money. To produce a son capable of becoming a dominant, high-status male, parents will need to make a big investment. With these factors in mind, Trivers proposed that in favourable conditions, such as where the parents were high status or food was abundant, it would make evolutionary sense for parents to produce more sons. But in less favourable conditions, natural selection should favour parents who produce more daughters, since females don’t face such fierce competition. Even if they aren’t particularly attractive or socially successful, it’s likely they’ll have at least some children... between 1960 and 1963, the number of male children born in China fell to just 104 boys for every 100 girls, a difference of around 5% according to a later study on the famine. The ratio didn’t return to normal until 1965... We now know that from smoking to war, to climate change, unfavourable conditions predispose women to having more girls. On the other end of the scale, women with more dominant personalities, a diet rich in high calorie foods (such as breakfast cereal), or married to U.S. Presidents tend to give birth to more sons. For billionaire fathers, the odds of having a boy are 65%... in [Chinese] families which had more than one child (this was allowed in certain circumstances, such as if the parents were poor farmers from the deep mountains, or if the parents themselves were only children), the firstborn child was significantly more likely to be born a girl compared to the average."
Hong Kong’s sex education crisis: why people turn to sex workers for knowledge - "A tiny picture of a woman’s private parts in a textbook for final-year high school pupils elicits shock from parents and students alike... No wonder, then, that men and women in Hong Kong are turning to sex workers for tips about lovemaking – and that workshops one sex workers’ group recently held were oversubscribed.“There’s no place to learn about sex. Only people like us with thick skins can talk about this,” says Jenny, a sex worker who led the workshops. “Nothing you ask or say will make us blush.”... [Teachers] take a stilted, clinical approach to sex education – a prudishness some attribute to Chinese history. The Cultural Context of Sexual Pleasure and Problems, edited by Kathryn Hall and Cynthia Graham, notes that the neo-Confucian teaching that developed following the Song dynasty – which ended in the 13th century – “has been very influential in shaping current Chinese perceptions of sexuality. Neo-Confucianism emphasised the harmfulness of sexual pleasure to physical health and to spiritual development.”... Matthew Yau Kwai-sang, a professor at Tung Wah College and certified sex therapist, reckons sex education in Hong Kong schools is “still as lousy as it was years ago” – a time when teachers just skipped the chapter on reproduction, as thirty-something Karen Lau Hong-lam recalls. No wonder, then, that parents and students were shocked to be shown a textbook photo of a vagina during a talk. “They said it was pornographic; it’s as if they had never seen anything like it,” says Lau, also a certified sex therapist.“Some friends my age told me that they were told to seal that part of the textbook with tape and not to read it; another teacher asked students to cut out that section and throw it away,” she adds... Yau, founding chairman of the Hong Kong Association of Sexuality Educators, Researchers and Therapists, recalls a client who was worried because he was climaxing after half an hour of sex.“The gentleman said, ‘Well I’m not happy about it … how come it’s not as long as in the DVD? The guy can last for 45 minutes or an hour … and how come my wife is not screaming and moaning like in the movies?”... some people had told her they were afraid of going to the sessions in case they ran into someone they knew."
Given that sex work involves performing, this is quite ironic
Sext much? If so, you're not alone - Scientific American - "apparently, nearly half of all US adults' smartphones contain sexy photos or texts... 50 percent of adults store sexts and images they receive. While the majority of sexters, 77 percent, send this racy content to their significant others, 16 percent send it to complete strangers.Unsurprisingly, the age group that is most keen on sexting is 18 to 24-year-olds -- 70 percent of people in this age group receive sexually suggestive photos and messages. Also, men are more likely than women to send and receive intimate information -- 61 percent of men partake in sexting and suggestive photo taking, while 48 percent of women do."
Scientists Trace Society’s Myths to Primordial Origins - "Although the animals and the constellations may differ, the basic structure of the story does not. These sagas all belong to a family of myths known as the Cosmic Hunt that spread far and wide in Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas among people who lived more than 15,000 years ago. Every version of the Cosmic Hunt shares a core story line—a man or an animal pursues or kills one or more animals, and the creatures are changed into constellations.Folklorists, anthropologists, ethnologists and linguists have long puzzled over why complex mythical stories that surface in cultures widely separated in space and time are strikingly similar... This research provides compelling new evidence that myths and folktales follow the movement of people around the globe. It reveals that certain tales probably date back to the Paleolithic period, when humans developed primitive stone tools, and spread together with early waves of migration out of Africa. My phylogenetic studies also offer insights into the origins of these myths by linking oral stories and legends passed down from generation to generation to motifs that appear in Paleolithic rock art images. Ultimately I hope my ongoing quest to identify prehistoric protomyths may even offer a glimpse of the mental universe of our ancestors when Homo sapiens was not the only human species on Earth. Carl Jung, the founding father of analytic psychology, believed that myths appear in similar forms in different cultures because they emerge from an area of the mind called the collective unconscious... But the dissemination of Cosmic Hunt stories around the world cannot be explained by a universal psychic structure. If that were the case, Cosmic Hunt stories would pop up everywhere. Instead they are nearly absent in Indonesia and New Guinea and very rare in Australia but present on both sides of the Bering Strait, which geologic and archaeological evidence indicates was above water between 28,000 and 13,000 B.C. The most credible working hypothesis is that Eurasian ancestors of the first Americans brought the family of myths with them... Evolutionary biologists have observed that most species do not change much for the greater part of their histories. When significant evolutionary change occurs, it is generally restricted to rare and very fast events of branching speciation. This phenomenon is called punctuated equilibrium. The same appears to hold true with myths. When sister mythological versions diverge rapidly because of migration bottlenecks, challenges from rival populations or new environmental and cultural inputs, those events are followed by extended periods of stability."
Fat Is Not the Problem--Fat Stigma Is - Scientific American Blog Network - ""Obesity is the biggest threat to the health of our nation,” proclaims the chief of epidemiology at a major medical school on the Scientific American Observations blog. This all too common suggestion does far greater damage to public health than fat tissue itself. When the focus is on weight and body size, it’s not “obesity” that damages people. It’s fearmongering about their bodies that puts them at risk for diabetes, heart disease, discrimination, bullying, eating disorders, sedentariness, lifelong discomfort in their bodies, and even early death... When the culture and the medical world are constantly pushing the idea that “obesity” needs to be eliminated, it’s not the fat cells that are feeling that stigma—it’s the fat people. This hierarchy of bodies is nothing new, with roots in racism, slavery and every other attempt to rank bodies... It is true that many diseases are more commonly found in heavier people. However, that doesn’t mean that weight itself causes disease. Blaming fatness for heart disease is similar to blaming yellow teeth for lung cancer"
"Scientific" American. It's amazing how far they've fallen
I checked the references the author provides in her claim that fat stigma is the problem, not obesity. They don't say what she claims, of course
Addendum: "Linda Bacon, PhD, is a scientist, author, and speaker with three graduate degrees in weight-related science, including a doctorate in physiology"; "Amee Severson, RD, is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist whose work focuses on body positivity, fat acceptance, and intuitive eating through a social justice lens". So much for trusting the experts
When you can't live without bananas
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
The best of antifemcomics
I thought I'd posted some of these before, but apparently not and anyway I found a mirror for the complete known archive of such comics:
antifemcomics
"This gallery includes the entire known corpus of the twitter account @antifemcomics. This account was "suspended" sometime in mid-2016, no doubt for wrongthink."
Apparently there were 100 in total, but the mirror unfortunately only has 51.
4/100:
*Woman in sexy warrior garb exposing lots of skin* - "Sexist outfit"
*Feminist in lingerie holding "Slut pride" sign and with "Slut" on body* - "Feminist outfit"
11/100:
STEM Fields: "Sign up!"
Gender Studies: "Sign up!"
3 brunette women: *scratch heads*
3 brunette women: *Sign up for gender studies*
Man at STEM booth: *Scratches head*
3 redheaded women: "More *women sign* in STEM"
"Science is sexist!"
"STEM is boys club!!"
Man at STEM booth: *Shrugs shoulders*
"The gender disparity in STEM fields explained"
13/100:
Woman (possibly Anita Sarkeesian): *digs shovel into pile of shit: "Opinions"*
Woman: *flings shit over wall: "Internet"*
3 shovels: *fling shit back*
Woman: "Help! Misogyny!"
35/100:
Christian Religion centuries ago - Feminist Religion today
1. Satan - Patriarchy
2. Heresy - Misogyny
3. Possession - Internalized Misogyny
4. Original Sin - Privilege
5. Prophets - Gloria Steinem, Andrea Dworkin etc.
6. Preachers - Jessica Valenti, Anita Sarkesian (sic) etc.
7. Martyrs - Mattress Girl, Rolling Stone's Jackie
8. Apostates - Warren Farrell, Erin Pizzey etc.
9. Witchhunts - College rape hysteria
10. Proselytizing - Fem Frequency, Vag Monologues etc.
11. Religious texts - Feminine Mystique, Ms. Magazine etc.
12. Seminary school - Gender studies programs
13. Suspicious of science - Believe STEM inherently sexist
14. Delusions of persecution - Delusions of female oppression
15. Unbelievers go to hell - Unbelievers live in parents (sic) basement
16. Hostile toward criticism - Protests against anti-feminists
17. Has us vs them mentality - Has women vs men mentality
18. Believe world is 6K years old - Believe in 1 in 3 rape state, 77% wage gap
19. Missionaries spread dogma - HeForShe, Because I am a Girl etc.
20. Obsessed with sexual impropriety - Obsessed with "rape culture"
"In Feminism we trust"
42/100:
Feminist (pointing at door marked "Science fair today!"): "Science is male dominated! They'll never accept you, and you'll be harassed constantly!"
Feminist (pointing at door marked "Police Station"): "Rapists never get convicted! They'll never believe you because the system doesn't care about you!"
"How feminists help women"
48/100:
"Halloween costume sale!"
Feminist: "How come your misogynistic store has so many sexualized costumes!?" *5 women in the queue behind her with said costumes*
50/100:
What the world looks like:
Man puts up poster with woman on it, greets woman: Hey, how are you?
Skyscrapers in distance
Woman with stroller and baby
Man talking to woman on bench
Man sitting on bench using phone
What the world looks like to a feminist:
Man puts up poster with woman on it (fat shaming), greets woman: Hey, how are you? (sexual harassment)
Skyscrapers in distance (phallic symbols of patriarchy)
Woman with stroller (sell out breeder) and baby (future rapist)
Man talking (mansplaining) to woman (anorexic) on bench
Man sitting (manspreading) on bench using phone (harassing women online)
antifemcomics
"This gallery includes the entire known corpus of the twitter account @antifemcomics. This account was "suspended" sometime in mid-2016, no doubt for wrongthink."
Apparently there were 100 in total, but the mirror unfortunately only has 51.
4/100:
*Woman in sexy warrior garb exposing lots of skin* - "Sexist outfit"
*Feminist in lingerie holding "Slut pride" sign and with "Slut" on body* - "Feminist outfit"
11/100:
STEM Fields: "Sign up!"
Gender Studies: "Sign up!"
3 brunette women: *scratch heads*
3 brunette women: *Sign up for gender studies*
Man at STEM booth: *Scratches head*
3 redheaded women: "More *women sign* in STEM"
"Science is sexist!"
"STEM is boys club!!"
Man at STEM booth: *Shrugs shoulders*
"The gender disparity in STEM fields explained"
13/100:
Woman (possibly Anita Sarkeesian): *digs shovel into pile of shit: "Opinions"*
Woman: *flings shit over wall: "Internet"*
3 shovels: *fling shit back*
Woman: "Help! Misogyny!"
35/100:
Christian Religion centuries ago - Feminist Religion today
1. Satan - Patriarchy
2. Heresy - Misogyny
3. Possession - Internalized Misogyny
4. Original Sin - Privilege
5. Prophets - Gloria Steinem, Andrea Dworkin etc.
6. Preachers - Jessica Valenti, Anita Sarkesian (sic) etc.
7. Martyrs - Mattress Girl, Rolling Stone's Jackie
8. Apostates - Warren Farrell, Erin Pizzey etc.
9. Witchhunts - College rape hysteria
10. Proselytizing - Fem Frequency, Vag Monologues etc.
11. Religious texts - Feminine Mystique, Ms. Magazine etc.
12. Seminary school - Gender studies programs
13. Suspicious of science - Believe STEM inherently sexist
14. Delusions of persecution - Delusions of female oppression
15. Unbelievers go to hell - Unbelievers live in parents (sic) basement
16. Hostile toward criticism - Protests against anti-feminists
17. Has us vs them mentality - Has women vs men mentality
18. Believe world is 6K years old - Believe in 1 in 3 rape state, 77% wage gap
19. Missionaries spread dogma - HeForShe, Because I am a Girl etc.
20. Obsessed with sexual impropriety - Obsessed with "rape culture"
"In Feminism we trust"
42/100:
Feminist (pointing at door marked "Science fair today!"): "Science is male dominated! They'll never accept you, and you'll be harassed constantly!"
Feminist (pointing at door marked "Police Station"): "Rapists never get convicted! They'll never believe you because the system doesn't care about you!"
"How feminists help women"
48/100:
"Halloween costume sale!"
Feminist: "How come your misogynistic store has so many sexualized costumes!?" *5 women in the queue behind her with said costumes*
50/100:
What the world looks like:
Man puts up poster with woman on it, greets woman: Hey, how are you?
Skyscrapers in distance
Woman with stroller and baby
Man talking to woman on bench
Man sitting on bench using phone
What the world looks like to a feminist:
Man puts up poster with woman on it (fat shaming), greets woman: Hey, how are you? (sexual harassment)
Skyscrapers in distance (phallic symbols of patriarchy)
Woman with stroller (sell out breeder) and baby (future rapist)
Man talking (mansplaining) to woman (anorexic) on bench
Man sitting (manspreading) on bench using phone (harassing women online)
Post ID: 2306203089744842634
Links - 15th October 2019 (1)
No, Jonathan Haidt is Not Like a Slavery Apologist - "Eve Fairbanks, in an essay for the Washington Post, argues that many of the writers on the so-called “reasonable right,” a group that includes such seemingly benign figures as Bari Weiss and Jonathan Haidt, are making many of the same arguments and using much the same language as proslavery advocates in the American South... In one sense, the argument is too silly to merit a serious response. The fact that defenders of slavery have in the past appealed to reason and civility no more discredits anyone who appeals to those values than the Nazis’ love of calisthenics discredits anyone who exercises. But the essay does raise, in an absurd, wrong-headed way, an interesting question about the fate of civility and free speech in a society that no longer operates on shared moral premises. Free speech principles were often at stake in the antebellum controversy over slavery. In every case, proslavery advocates took the offensive in seeking to suppress the rights of their adversaries. Abolitionists attacked slavery as an institution, but they never seriously questioned the right to advocate on its behalf. Slaveholders, by contrast, fought to suppress free speech whenever they had a plausible chance of doing so... The resilience of any free society is revealed by its tolerance for dissent. This was the proud boast of the North and an unavoidable embarrassment to the South... While traveling in the antebellum South, the journalist and Irish immigrant E.L. Godkin explained why Southerners preferred to rely on mobs rather than laws...
'As long as it is only ‘the mob’ or ‘the public’ that maltreat a man for free speech, the credit of the state is saved…'
The emperor of Austria, Godkin continued, could only dream of angry mobs willing to do his dirty work for him, gratis. How that Emperor would have swooned at the glorious potential of Twitter! Here then is a contrast worth pondering, as we all tend to assume that the primary threat to free speech comes from the state. Judged purely by their toleration of dissent, Abraham Lincoln’s administration was far more despotic than that of Jefferson Davis. The conclusion is absurd, but it suggests an unsettling reality. Pro-Confederate editors in the North faced possible imprisonment; any pro-Union editors in the South were murdered or otherwise silenced well before President Davis could be bothered with their existence. A truly illiberal society does not require the government to suppress dissent."
Meme - *"Joke" pie lands on man's face*
Woman: "Hah!"
*"Joke" pie lands on man's face*
Woman: "Hah hah!"
*"Joke" pie lands on woman's face*
Woman's article: "When comedy becomes offensive and disrespectful"
Segments of Random Thoughts - Posts - "-Mother and her lesbian lover take son from father
-Psychologically torments son for being boy
-Escapes child protective services
-Performs makeshift reassignment on boy, 8
-Boy in constant pain
-Boy stabbed to death in sleep at 9 years old"
Missing Chinese teen found with Polynesian family - "A Chinese teenager on the police missing persons list told a Polynesian family his name was "Bob" and lived happily with them for nearly three weeks as police combed the streets of south Auckland for him.Sixteen-year-old Chunji Gao, also known as Gary, was last seen leaving his home in suburban Botany on April 16.Police said they had growing fears for his safety because he spoke limited English and took no clothing, possessions or his wallet.However, he was found yesterday with the Polynesian family in the south Auckland suburb of Otara, where he had been living happily for several weeks, Sergeant Brett Meale of Otara police said.Mr Meale said he slept in a park for three nights before one of the children of the family befriended him... "They provided him with clothing and food and he is learning to eat taro"... His father was relieved his son had been found, but the boy wanted to stay with the Polynesian family."
Lucas Lynch - Perhaps one of the most interesting things I... - "Perhaps one of the most interesting things I experienced yesterday as part of MINDS IRL Ending Racism, Violence and Authoritarianism was going to an after party that had already had threats phoned in from antifa. As a result the police had to block off the street where the venue for the after party was, and then we had to be escorted by police through the back entrance.Nobody showed up and no violence occurred, but I would be lying if I said this wasn't still slightly jarring. It would have been the height of irony if they had shown up, given that the keynote speaker was Darrell Davis, the African-American blues musician who has personally gotten countless members of the Ku Klux Klan to leave white supremacy after befriending them."
No genocide, colonialism in Turkey’s history: FM Çavuşoğlu - "Turks are proud of their history because they have not committed any genocide or partaken in colonialism, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has said, vowing the Turkish government will not stay silent against “some countries trying to lecture Turkey on history,” in reference to France and Italy’s recognition of the 1915 killings of Armenians as genocide."
Hahahahaha. Apparently the Ottoman Empire got everyone to volunteer to be part of it
Why does a private clinic charge less for consultation than the unsubsidised cost of the same at a public polyclinic? - "the receipt on the left from a National Healthcare Group Polyclinic shows a final bill of S$13.20 after deducting the government subsidy of S$34.90. That means the total price for a consultation before subsidisation is actually S$48.10.On the right is the consultation fee incurred when visiting a private clinic with no subsidies – S$29.90. That’s about 38% lower that the full cost of a consultation at a so-called public healthcare facility. While the final total is much lower after the subsidy, the initial fee is much higher at the polyclinic. This means that healthcare cost at the polyclinic is in fact much higher than in the private sector. Why is that?Also, the doctors you see at polyclinics tend to be junior doctors. Many are also from foreign countries. On the other hand, private clinics are usually run by senior doctors with decades of experience. Given this disparity in experience, aren’t polyclinics simply overcharging their patients and/or the government with their high costs?"
What happens when you need to illustrate a fake subsidy through creative accounting
Facebook Built Tool to Monitor Zuckerberg Memes: Report - "Stormchaser has been used by Facebook employees since 2016 to track viral content involving everything from “Delete Facebook” campaigns to claims that Zuckerberg is an alien (big if true). In some cases, the company reportedly targeted sharers of such content with specialized messages to debunk bogus claims, including memes and those dumb “copy and paste” posts people still love to share for some inexplicable reason. A spokesperson told the outlet it stopped using Stormchaser to track memes midway through last year. Night’s Watch, meanwhile, reportedly allowed Facebook staffers to see how information about Facebook spread on the platform and its other products like WhatsApp. In the case of WhatsApp, because messages are end-to-end encrypted, the company allegedly cross-referenced how some users cited information from WhatsApp on Facebook to gauge virality. It might be assumed that any company, particularly a social media product, would utilize its own tools to ascertain public perception. But these alleged initiatives to control the narrative may have come at the cost of combating other forms of misinformation on the platform... Optics-wise, this doesn’t look especially great for a company with a serious misinformation problem linked to everything from election interference to genocide."
How to Always Get Someone to Let You Use Their Power Outlet at the Airport - "The idea comes from a man who asked me if he could use a power outlet I was currently using at an airport during a layover. As he asked, he produced a small three-outlet plug from his bag. Three outlets that meant I could keep charging my phone, and he could charge his laptop at the same time.It’s brilliant, cheap, and I’m angry I hadn’t thought of it sooner."
Woman orders iPhone 7 online, gets an iPhone 3, iPhone 4 and a Yu-Gi-Oh fusion card in the mail instead
Andrew Doyle on Twitter - "Members of the woke cult like to claim that they are progressive and compassionate. So why it is that, almost without exception, the most vile intolerant voices on Twitter come from those with pronouns in their bio? Serious question."
Porn pirating lawyer jailed for five years - "A US lawyer who uploaded pornography on to file-sharing sites then sued people who downloaded it, has been sentenced to five years in jail.John Steele co-founded a firm called Prenda Law that set up and ran the porn-trolling scheme... Prenda Law ran its porn-trolling con from 2010 to 2013 and it is believed to have netted the firm more than $6m (£4.8m).It accused people of pirating pornographic films it had uploaded to file-sharing sites.And many people preferred to pay several thousand dollars to Prenda rather than challenge the accusation in the courts.Federal investigators began probing Prenda in 2012 after it sued two large US ISPs it accused of helping subscribers pirate pornographic films.This investigation discovered Prenda had been uploading the pornographic films, to which it owned the copyright, to file-sharing sites itself - to encourage people to pirate them."
Brexit: Man stopped from entering a pub in Union Jack suit and people are fiercely divided - "A man who walked into a pub dressed top to toe in a Union Jack suit was told to leave... a man who took a video of the incident claimed it was because of what he was wearing... Off camera, a woman can be heard saying, “it’s disgusting.” The video clip has been viewed over 300,000 times and people are split, with some arguing that wearing a union jack is a political statement and, as it has been linked to racism, is offensive... Would Geri Halliwell have been rejected?"
Presumably pride in your country's flag means you're a fascist
Morrissey hasn’t turned right: our establishment has turned insane | Spectator USA - "The Guardian’s sentencing of Morrissey proves that the Western cultural atmosphere has become so restrictive and authoritarian, that even bog-standard patriotism is a no-go. The crimes of which the Guardian convicts Morrissey include him ‘wrapping himself up in the Union Jack’ on stage, and having ‘flirted with the far right and fascist imagery.’... ‘Does the Guardian really care about objective journalism? Or care about journalism at all? Are they just desperate to get eyeballs on stories to save their dwindling advertising income?’ asked Katsis. ‘And by the way… did Morrissey stop being a provocateur? When was that exactly?’... ‘It’s very Third Reich, isn’t it?’ Morrissey observed after posters advertising his new album California Son were removed from Liverpool’s Merseyrail due to a single commuter’s complaint over the singer’s support for Anne Marie Waters.‘In today’s culture wars, Morrissey has clearly chosen his side — and there have been consequences,’ proclaimed the Guardian, ominously adding Morrissey to the blacklist, and warning others against associating with him."
Is it fair to say that the Guardian hates the UK, since the article called wrapping yourself in the Union Jack far right and fascist
More evidence liberals hate their countries
Now Chris Pratt Is a Racist Because He Wore a 'Don't Tread on Me' Shirt? - "The purveyors of high morally-minded political correctness have called out Chris Pratt for wearing a t-shirt with a symbol that dates back to before the Revolutionary War.Yes, you read that right. The Christian actor was slammed for wearing a historic symbol known as the Gadsden flag on his shirt... That very symbol was used on a flag to rally unity when the American colonies were trying to win their independence from Britain during the Revolutionary War... The rattlesnake symbol was also adopted by the Continental Congress in 1778 for the official Seal of the War Office (now the US Department of Defense). The rattlesnake symbol has been used by the US Army for more than 236 years.The Gadsden flag is still flown in Charleston, SC, the city where Gen. Gadsden first presented the flag."
We are still told that liberals don't hate their countries
Civil servant ‘offended’ by portrait of Queen is paid £10,000 in compensation - "A civil servant in the Northern Ireland Office was paid £10,000 compensation because he was offended by having to walk past a portrait of the Queen each day, a peer has said.Lord Maginnis, a former Ulster Unionist Party MP, told the House of Lords on Wednesday that Lee Hegarty complained under human rights legislation he should not have to work in an office that featured paintings of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.After his complaint, the portraits were removed and replaced with photographs of the royals meeting people in Northern Ireland during official visits."
'As long as it is only ‘the mob’ or ‘the public’ that maltreat a man for free speech, the credit of the state is saved…'
The emperor of Austria, Godkin continued, could only dream of angry mobs willing to do his dirty work for him, gratis. How that Emperor would have swooned at the glorious potential of Twitter! Here then is a contrast worth pondering, as we all tend to assume that the primary threat to free speech comes from the state. Judged purely by their toleration of dissent, Abraham Lincoln’s administration was far more despotic than that of Jefferson Davis. The conclusion is absurd, but it suggests an unsettling reality. Pro-Confederate editors in the North faced possible imprisonment; any pro-Union editors in the South were murdered or otherwise silenced well before President Davis could be bothered with their existence. A truly illiberal society does not require the government to suppress dissent."
Meme - *"Joke" pie lands on man's face*
Woman: "Hah!"
*"Joke" pie lands on man's face*
Woman: "Hah hah!"
*"Joke" pie lands on woman's face*
Woman's article: "When comedy becomes offensive and disrespectful"
Segments of Random Thoughts - Posts - "-Mother and her lesbian lover take son from father
-Psychologically torments son for being boy
-Escapes child protective services
-Performs makeshift reassignment on boy, 8
-Boy in constant pain
-Boy stabbed to death in sleep at 9 years old"
Missing Chinese teen found with Polynesian family - "A Chinese teenager on the police missing persons list told a Polynesian family his name was "Bob" and lived happily with them for nearly three weeks as police combed the streets of south Auckland for him.Sixteen-year-old Chunji Gao, also known as Gary, was last seen leaving his home in suburban Botany on April 16.Police said they had growing fears for his safety because he spoke limited English and took no clothing, possessions or his wallet.However, he was found yesterday with the Polynesian family in the south Auckland suburb of Otara, where he had been living happily for several weeks, Sergeant Brett Meale of Otara police said.Mr Meale said he slept in a park for three nights before one of the children of the family befriended him... "They provided him with clothing and food and he is learning to eat taro"... His father was relieved his son had been found, but the boy wanted to stay with the Polynesian family."
Lucas Lynch - Perhaps one of the most interesting things I... - "Perhaps one of the most interesting things I experienced yesterday as part of MINDS IRL Ending Racism, Violence and Authoritarianism was going to an after party that had already had threats phoned in from antifa. As a result the police had to block off the street where the venue for the after party was, and then we had to be escorted by police through the back entrance.Nobody showed up and no violence occurred, but I would be lying if I said this wasn't still slightly jarring. It would have been the height of irony if they had shown up, given that the keynote speaker was Darrell Davis, the African-American blues musician who has personally gotten countless members of the Ku Klux Klan to leave white supremacy after befriending them."
No genocide, colonialism in Turkey’s history: FM Çavuşoğlu - "Turks are proud of their history because they have not committed any genocide or partaken in colonialism, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has said, vowing the Turkish government will not stay silent against “some countries trying to lecture Turkey on history,” in reference to France and Italy’s recognition of the 1915 killings of Armenians as genocide."
Hahahahaha. Apparently the Ottoman Empire got everyone to volunteer to be part of it
Why does a private clinic charge less for consultation than the unsubsidised cost of the same at a public polyclinic? - "the receipt on the left from a National Healthcare Group Polyclinic shows a final bill of S$13.20 after deducting the government subsidy of S$34.90. That means the total price for a consultation before subsidisation is actually S$48.10.On the right is the consultation fee incurred when visiting a private clinic with no subsidies – S$29.90. That’s about 38% lower that the full cost of a consultation at a so-called public healthcare facility. While the final total is much lower after the subsidy, the initial fee is much higher at the polyclinic. This means that healthcare cost at the polyclinic is in fact much higher than in the private sector. Why is that?Also, the doctors you see at polyclinics tend to be junior doctors. Many are also from foreign countries. On the other hand, private clinics are usually run by senior doctors with decades of experience. Given this disparity in experience, aren’t polyclinics simply overcharging their patients and/or the government with their high costs?"
What happens when you need to illustrate a fake subsidy through creative accounting
Facebook Built Tool to Monitor Zuckerberg Memes: Report - "Stormchaser has been used by Facebook employees since 2016 to track viral content involving everything from “Delete Facebook” campaigns to claims that Zuckerberg is an alien (big if true). In some cases, the company reportedly targeted sharers of such content with specialized messages to debunk bogus claims, including memes and those dumb “copy and paste” posts people still love to share for some inexplicable reason. A spokesperson told the outlet it stopped using Stormchaser to track memes midway through last year. Night’s Watch, meanwhile, reportedly allowed Facebook staffers to see how information about Facebook spread on the platform and its other products like WhatsApp. In the case of WhatsApp, because messages are end-to-end encrypted, the company allegedly cross-referenced how some users cited information from WhatsApp on Facebook to gauge virality. It might be assumed that any company, particularly a social media product, would utilize its own tools to ascertain public perception. But these alleged initiatives to control the narrative may have come at the cost of combating other forms of misinformation on the platform... Optics-wise, this doesn’t look especially great for a company with a serious misinformation problem linked to everything from election interference to genocide."
How to Always Get Someone to Let You Use Their Power Outlet at the Airport - "The idea comes from a man who asked me if he could use a power outlet I was currently using at an airport during a layover. As he asked, he produced a small three-outlet plug from his bag. Three outlets that meant I could keep charging my phone, and he could charge his laptop at the same time.It’s brilliant, cheap, and I’m angry I hadn’t thought of it sooner."
Woman orders iPhone 7 online, gets an iPhone 3, iPhone 4 and a Yu-Gi-Oh fusion card in the mail instead
Andrew Doyle on Twitter - "Members of the woke cult like to claim that they are progressive and compassionate. So why it is that, almost without exception, the most vile intolerant voices on Twitter come from those with pronouns in their bio? Serious question."
Porn pirating lawyer jailed for five years - "A US lawyer who uploaded pornography on to file-sharing sites then sued people who downloaded it, has been sentenced to five years in jail.John Steele co-founded a firm called Prenda Law that set up and ran the porn-trolling scheme... Prenda Law ran its porn-trolling con from 2010 to 2013 and it is believed to have netted the firm more than $6m (£4.8m).It accused people of pirating pornographic films it had uploaded to file-sharing sites.And many people preferred to pay several thousand dollars to Prenda rather than challenge the accusation in the courts.Federal investigators began probing Prenda in 2012 after it sued two large US ISPs it accused of helping subscribers pirate pornographic films.This investigation discovered Prenda had been uploading the pornographic films, to which it owned the copyright, to file-sharing sites itself - to encourage people to pirate them."
Brexit: Man stopped from entering a pub in Union Jack suit and people are fiercely divided - "A man who walked into a pub dressed top to toe in a Union Jack suit was told to leave... a man who took a video of the incident claimed it was because of what he was wearing... Off camera, a woman can be heard saying, “it’s disgusting.” The video clip has been viewed over 300,000 times and people are split, with some arguing that wearing a union jack is a political statement and, as it has been linked to racism, is offensive... Would Geri Halliwell have been rejected?"
Presumably pride in your country's flag means you're a fascist
Morrissey hasn’t turned right: our establishment has turned insane | Spectator USA - "The Guardian’s sentencing of Morrissey proves that the Western cultural atmosphere has become so restrictive and authoritarian, that even bog-standard patriotism is a no-go. The crimes of which the Guardian convicts Morrissey include him ‘wrapping himself up in the Union Jack’ on stage, and having ‘flirted with the far right and fascist imagery.’... ‘Does the Guardian really care about objective journalism? Or care about journalism at all? Are they just desperate to get eyeballs on stories to save their dwindling advertising income?’ asked Katsis. ‘And by the way… did Morrissey stop being a provocateur? When was that exactly?’... ‘It’s very Third Reich, isn’t it?’ Morrissey observed after posters advertising his new album California Son were removed from Liverpool’s Merseyrail due to a single commuter’s complaint over the singer’s support for Anne Marie Waters.‘In today’s culture wars, Morrissey has clearly chosen his side — and there have been consequences,’ proclaimed the Guardian, ominously adding Morrissey to the blacklist, and warning others against associating with him."
Is it fair to say that the Guardian hates the UK, since the article called wrapping yourself in the Union Jack far right and fascist
More evidence liberals hate their countries
Now Chris Pratt Is a Racist Because He Wore a 'Don't Tread on Me' Shirt? - "The purveyors of high morally-minded political correctness have called out Chris Pratt for wearing a t-shirt with a symbol that dates back to before the Revolutionary War.Yes, you read that right. The Christian actor was slammed for wearing a historic symbol known as the Gadsden flag on his shirt... That very symbol was used on a flag to rally unity when the American colonies were trying to win their independence from Britain during the Revolutionary War... The rattlesnake symbol was also adopted by the Continental Congress in 1778 for the official Seal of the War Office (now the US Department of Defense). The rattlesnake symbol has been used by the US Army for more than 236 years.The Gadsden flag is still flown in Charleston, SC, the city where Gen. Gadsden first presented the flag."
We are still told that liberals don't hate their countries
Civil servant ‘offended’ by portrait of Queen is paid £10,000 in compensation - "A civil servant in the Northern Ireland Office was paid £10,000 compensation because he was offended by having to walk past a portrait of the Queen each day, a peer has said.Lord Maginnis, a former Ulster Unionist Party MP, told the House of Lords on Wednesday that Lee Hegarty complained under human rights legislation he should not have to work in an office that featured paintings of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.After his complaint, the portraits were removed and replaced with photographs of the royals meeting people in Northern Ireland during official visits."
Post ID: 6278415134567683656
Monday, October 14, 2019
Links - 14th October 2019 (3) (Slavery in the US)
The New York Times surrenders to the left on race - "a note from NYTM editor Jake Silverstein informs his readers that it is wrong to trace the true origin of the United States to the founding of the English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, or to the landing of the Puritans at Plymouth Rock in 1620, or to the publication of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Instead, the Times proposes to overturn such mythmaking in favor of an effort to "reframe American history," treating 1619 as "our nation's birth year." Why 1619? Because that's when the first ship carrying African slaves arrived on American shores, and the Times intends to place "the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country." This reframing is necessary because out of slavery "grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional."... Achieving that goal has required the Times to treat history in a highly sensationalistic, reductionistic, and tendentious way, with the cumulative result resembling agitprop more than responsible journalism or scholarship. Putting aside any pretense toward nuance or complexity, the paper has surrendered to the sensibility of left-wing political activists. The result is unpersuasive — and a sad comment on the state of our country's public life. Throughout the issue of the NYTM, headlines make, with just slight variations, the same rhetorical move over and over again: "Here is something unpleasant, unjust, or even downright evil about life in the present-day United States. Bet you didn't realize that slavery is ultimately to blame." Lack of universal access to health care? High rates of sugar consumption? Callous treatment of incarcerated prisoners? White recording artists "stealing" black music? Harsh labor practices? That's right — all of it, and far more, follows from slavery.The most impressive authors, like Times op-ed columnist Jamelle Bouie, are honest enough to admit that their chosen subject (Bouie writes about the hardball tactics of congressional Republicans since 2011) may have "nothing to do with race at all." Yet in the end even Bouie comes back around to asserting that Republican "methods of action … are clearly downstream of a style of extreme political combat that came to fruition in the defense of human bondage." The least persuasive, and unintentionally comical, contribution to the issue is a relatively brief essay by Princeton University's Kevin Kruse, a historian who's justly gained a large online following for his deft skewering on Twitter of Dinesh D'Souza and other know-nothing pundits of the far right who like to publicly display their ignorance of the American past. For the 1619 Project, Kruse writes about how notoriously bad traffic jams on Atlanta highways are — you guessed it — the legacy of "a century-long effort to segregate the races."... Desmond tells readers, for example, that the fraud, greed, and even deployment of dubious financial products that we associate with the economic meltdown of 2008 originated with and carry with them the stain of slavery... the publication of the 1619 Project represents the definitive triumph of left-wing activism over journalistic skepticism, circumspection, and restraint at The New York Times"
New York Times' 1619 Project & Black History in America - "In the seven times African-American soldiers mentioned, they are generally described as victims who have merely shifted from one system of subjugation and exploitation to another.There’s no mention of the Harlem Hellfighters fighting in World War One, and no mention of Dorie Miller’s heroism at Pearl Harbor. The horrors of the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male are discussed, but the Tuskegee Airmen are never mentioned.African-American heroism on the battlefield doesn’t really fit the narrative that the 1619 Project is trying to tell. In fact, you could argue that the essays are so wedded to a narrative of white brutality and black victimhood that they seem to fear that spotlighting any example of a successful African-American defiance of oppression would undermine their argument. In the reframing of the 1619 Project, African-American success stories disappear. There’s no mention of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympic Games. There’s no mention of Jackie Robinson. There’s no mention of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, the African-American mathematicians who worked for NASA as depicted in the film Hidden Figures. Wilberforce University in Ohio, the first college owned and operated by African Americans, is not mentioned... Frederick Douglass is mentioned twice. W.E.B. du Bois is quoted once. Thurgood Marshall is mentioned once. Harriet Tubman is never mentioned. Nor is Booker T. Washington... The 1619 Project argues, with considerable justification, that most of us been seeing only one part of the portrait of the founding, formation, and growth of our country . . . and then “reframes” the portrait to leave out some of the most consequential and under-discussed African Americans in our history."
What 'The Times' Got Wrong About Slavery in America - "1619 was not, in fact, the date of the first African slaves in the English colonies — those Africans were brought in under indenturement contracts, not bought as slaves. They were contracted to a fixed period of labor (typically five years) to pay for the cost charged by the Dutch slavers, at which point they were freed with a payment of a start-up endowment. This was not unusual or limited to Africans – approximately half of the 500,000 European immigrants to the thirteen colonies prior to 1775 paid for their passage with indenturement contracts. Anthony Johnson, a black Angolan, was typical – he entered Virginia as an indentured servant in 1621, became a free man after the term of his contract, acquired land, and became among the first actual slaveholders in the colonies... Ironically, a freed black man initiated the court case that moved slavery to a race-based institution. The Angolan immigrant Anthony Johnson was the plaintiff is a key civil case, where the Northampton Court in 1654 declared after the expiration of the indenturement contract of his African servant John Casor that Johnson owned Casor “for life,” nullifying the protections of the contract for the servant and essentially establishing the civil precedent for the enslavement of all African indentured servants by declaring that a contract for such servants extended for life, rather than the fixed term in the contract... Relatively speaking, the United States was a minor player in the African Slave Trade — only about 5% of the Africans imported to the New World came to the United States. Of the 10.7 million Africans who survived the ocean voyage, a mere 388,000 were shipped directly to North America. The largest recipients of imported African slaves were Brazil, Cuba. Jamaica, and the other Caribbean colonies. The lifespan of those brought into what is now the United States vastly exceeded those of the other 95%, and the United States was the only purchaser of African slaves where population grew naturally in slavery – the death rate among the rest was higher than the birth rate.While the institution, even in the United States was a brutal violation of basic human rights, it tended on average to be far more humane than in the rest of the New World. The Trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean African slave trade, which began by Arabs as early as the 8th Century AD, dwarfed the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and continued up to the 20th Century. Between the start of the Atlantic Slave Trade and 1900, it is estimated that the eastern-bound Arab slave traders sold over 17 million Africans into slavery in the Middle East and India, compared to about 12 million to the new world – and the Eastern-bound slave trade had been ongoing for at least 600 years at the START of that period.The Western-bound Atlantic slave trade, contrary to the misrepresentation in “Roots,” did not involve the capture of free Africans by Europeans or Arabs, but by the trading of slaves (already a basis for the economy of the local animist or Muslim kingdoms) captured in local wars to Western merchants in exchange for Western goods. The first such slaves brought to the Western Hemisphere were brought by the Spanish to their colonies in Cuba and Hispaniola in 1501, almost a century and a half before the first slave in the English colonies that became the United States. The last African state to outlaw slavery, Mauritania, did not do so until 2007, and if the institution is illegal on the continent de jure, it still is widespread de facto in Mauritania, Chad, Mali, Niger, and Sudan, as well as parts of Ghana, Benin, Togo Gabon, Angola, South Africa, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Libya, and Nigeria. The contradictions slavery posed on the rebel colonies during the Revolution sparked a backlash against slavery and the slave trade... the first law in the European world to outlaw the slave trade was, in fact, the US Constitution, which in 1787 banned the slave trade as of 1808. In Massachusetts, a 1783 court decision ended slavery, and all of the Northern States had passed emancipations laws by 1803... Economically, the institution of slavery, rather than develop the economy of the new nation, stunted its development. Although bonded labor, whether slave or indentured servant, clearly played an important role in developing a labor force in the early colonial days, its role in the advancement of the economy in the newly established country is questionable. Gavin Wright, in his classic book The Political Economy of the Cotton South, shows in fact that slavery hindered the development of the economy in those states where it remained legal. The artisans, tradesmen, and unskilled labor pool necessary for developing a thriving, diverse economy was discouraged by competition from bonded labor, and the slave-owning class showed little interest in such an economy... the ideals of the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment and political beliefs shaped by the English Civil War and Glorious Revolution created an environment that exposed the immorality of slavery and established the political grounds for ending the slave trade, and eventually the institution of slavery in areas of Western European influence."
Being Classically Liberal - Posts - "John Adams never owned a slave, represented slaves in their suits for freedom, and was the driving force behind Massachusetts abolishment of slavery in 1780. Alexander Hamilton was stridently abolitionist and "publicly condemned Americans who demanded freedom for themselves as a God-given right, while depriving others of freedom and profiting from that deprivation." His efforts paved the way for the abolition of slavery in New York. In 1790, Quakers from New York and Pennsylvania presented their petition for abolition to Congress. Their argument against slavery was backed by the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society and its president, Benjamin Franklin. Of the Founding Fathers who owned slaves, almost all of them recognized the hypocrisy of slavery and advocated for gradual abolition. Thomas Jefferson, for example, owned slaves but also signed laws banning the importation of slaves when he was President. They were flawed men, but they put the tools in place for the barbarous practice's abolishment in the Founding documents of our country. The Constitution, for example, was implicitly an anti-slavery document, as pointed out by Frederick Douglass, former slave and one of greatest abolitionists in American history. When faced with claims by other abolitionists that the Constitution was a pro-slavery document, Douglass said, "how dare any man who pretends to be a friend to the Negro thus gratuitously concede away what the Negro has a right to claim under the Constitution?""
The 1619 anniversary: 5 things people still get wrong about slavery - "One of the greatest myths about slavery is that it ended. In fact, it evolved into its modern form: mass incarceration. The United States has the highest prison population in the world. More than 2.2 million Americans are incarcerated; 4.5 million are on probation or parole. African Americans make up roughly 13 percent of the general population. But black men, women, and youth have outsize representation in the criminal justice system, where they make up 34 percent of the 6.8 million people who are under its control. Their labor is used to produce goods and services for businesses that profit from prison labor."
Strange how if you say the Irish were slaves too, you're denounced as racist and told it wasn't slavery because it wasn't chattel slavery. It seems you're only considered a slave if you're black (which is why even though prisoners aren't chattel slaves, it's still considered slavery). And this is before we consider 'modern slavery' outside the US prison system
Was America Built By Slaves? - "Was slavery some kind of platform upon which the modern American economy was built? That would be the politically correct question to study these days in the academy, especially if the answer can be made to come out “yes.” This is not surprising. In the present context, with the United States still struggling to build a multiracial society 150-odd years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the economic history of slavery is obviously a politically freighted issue. But it always has been to one extent or another, and American scholars and intellectuals have never ceased arguing over the question. For every Oscar Handlin who downplayed the evils of slavery, and even argued that slavery caused racism rather than the other way around, there has been a Nate Glazer who has stressed the singular evils of the American form of slavery compared to every other form known to history. Only someone unfamiliar with the literature can be surprised that, even aside from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s call for reparations payments, much of the current crop of books on the topic slides rather quickly from scholarship into advocacy... Of every hour of useful work done in the Southern states, roughly 40 minutes was performed by a slave. Given the obvious importance of slave labor, it may come as something of a surprise to find that, as already noted, the early historians of slavery judged it to have been a burden on the South’s economy rather than its strength... The slave-run gold mines of Peru, Mexico, and the sugar islands also produced impressive fortunes in their day. Their legacy is modern Peru and Haiti. Edmund Phelps, in his recent book, Mass Flourishing argues that long-term growth requires continuous innovation; not just the big discoveries, but the steady flow of cost savings and improvements that come from an engaged workforce. Slaves, looking over their shoulder at the overseer’s whip, don’t get many innovative ideas. They were deprived of the benefits of freedom, and so the country lost the fruits of their genius. Jazz music is exactly the type of thing Phelps has in mind. African Americans always had it in their bones as they toiled in the fields, but it took freedom for it to flourish... At some point, even the slave-owners had to realize they were depreciating their own capital, and Fogel does point out that they did a fair amount of experimentation with the length of the work week. It settled in at about 58 hours per week, which meant slaves worked about 400 fewer hours per year than the average yeoman farmer on his own land."
Being Classically Liberal - Posts - "Did Slavery cause the US to become an economic super-power?I will explore this question more in depth in future posts, but I wanted to ask a relevant question: If slavery made America rich, why isn’t Brazil even richer?This South American country received more African slaves than any country in the Americas (40% of the number of Africans brought to the continents, compared to 10% for the US.)For hundreds of years, slave labor was the driving force behind Brazilian exports like sugar, gold, and coffee. Brazil was also the last country in the West to abolish slavery in 1888.If export-led growth from slavery were really the key to the industrial revolution as some claim, then the industrial revolution would’ve started in Brazil and its colonial master Portugal. If slavery were the key to setting up nations to be economic giants today, Brazil would be far wealthier than the US.But this is not the case whatsoever.The US economy surpassed both countries in every year since 1800, before and after slavery was abolished. Today, per capita incomes in the United States (~$59,000) dwarf that of Brazil (~$8,800). The per capita income of Portugal is less than half of the US (~$25,000)... (Oh, and in the long-run Brazil and the US did much better economically after slavery was abolished.)"
No, Slavery Did Not Make America Rich - "In 1847, Karl Marx wrote that
Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry…cause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the map of nations.
As with most of his postulations concerning economics, Marx was proven wrong. Following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery in 1865, historical data show there was a recession, but after that, post-war economic growth rates rivaled or surpassed the pre-war growth rates... raw cotton produced by African-American slaves did not become a significant import in the British economy until 1800, decades after the Industrial Revolution had already begun. Although the British later imported large quantities of American cotton, economic historians Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode note that “the American South was a late-comer to world cotton markets,” and "US cotton played no role in kick-starting the Industrial Revolution.”...
'the vast literature on the industrial revolution that economic historians have produced shows that it originated in the creation and adoption of a wide range of technologies, such as the steam engine and coke blast furnace, which were not directly connected to textile trading networks'...
although cotton exports comprised a tremendous share of total exports prior to the Civil War, they accounted for only around 5 percent of the nation’s overall gross domestic product, an important contribution but not the backbone of American economic development... in the pre-war South, “investments were heavily concentrated in slaves,” resulting in the failure “to build a deep and broad industrial infrastructure,” such as railroads, public education, and a centralized financial system.Economic historians have repeatedly emphasized that slavery delayed Southern industrialization, giving the North a tremendous advantage in the Civil War. Harvard economist Nathan Nunn has shown that across the Americas, the more dependent on slavery a nation was in 1750, the poorer it was in 2000 (see Appendix Figure 3.). He found the same relationship in the US. In 2000, states with more slaves in 1860 were poorer than states with fewer slaves and much poorer than the free Northern states"
3. Slavery Reconsidered - "“U.S. slaves had much longer life expectations than free urban industrial workers in both the United States and Europe”... We are now prepared to ask, at least, if not answer, three questions about American slavery. First, did the slaves want to be free? Second, did the slaves try to become free? Third, were the slaves glad to be free?"
Among other things, the author makes a utilitarian argument for slavery, but just dismisses deontological arguments against it as religious in character, without recognising his own a priori assumptions (ironically, there is a chance that the author is against socialised healthcare on principle even if that leads to worse outcomes)
How the end of slavery led to starvation and death for millions of black Americans - "After combing through obscure records, newspapers and journals Downs believes that about a quarter of the four million freed slaves either died or suffered from illness between 1862 and 1870. He writes in the book that it can be considered "the largest biological crisis of the 19th century" and yet it is one that has been little investigated by contemporary historians. Downs believes much of that is because at the time of the civil war, which raged between 1861 and 1865 and pitted the unionist north against the confederate south, many people did not want to investigate the tragedy befalling the freed slaves. Many northerners were little more sympathetic than their southern opponents when it came to the health of the freed slaves and anti-slavery abolitionists feared the disaster would prove their critics right."
Walter Williams: Did blacks benefit from slavery? - "one of the Marxist professors asked me what I thought about the relationship between capitalism and slavery. My response was that slavery has existed everywhere in the world, under every political and economic system, and was by no means unique to capitalism or the United States. Perturbed by my response, he asked me what my feelings were about the enslavement of my ancestors. I answered that slavery is a despicable violation of human rights but that the enslavement of my ancestors is history, and one of the immutable facts of history is that nothing can be done to change it.The matter could have been left there, but I volunteered that today’s American blacks have benefited enormously from the horrible suffering of our ancestors. Why? I said the standard of living and personal liberty of black Americans are better than what blacks living anywhere in Africa have... I attempted to assuage the professor’s and his colleagues’ shock by explaining to them that to morally condemn a practice such as slavery does not require one to also deny its effects. My yet-to-be-learned lesson – and perhaps that of Rep. Hubbard – is that there are certain topics or arguments that one should not bring up in the presence of children or those with little understanding. Both might see that explaining a phenomenon is the same as giving it moral sanction or justification. It’s as if one’s explanation that the independent influence of gravity on a falling object is to cause it to accelerate at 32 feet per second could be interpreted as giving moral sanction and justification to gravity. Slavery is widely misunderstood, and as such has been a tool for hustlers and demagogues... Even the word slave is derived from the fact that Slavic people were among the early European slaves. Though racism has been used to justify slavery, the origins of slavery had little to do with racism. In recent history, the major slave traders and slave owners have been Arabs, who enslaved Europeans, black Africans and Asians. A unique aspect of slavery in the Western world was the moral outrage against it, which began to emerge in the 18th century and led to massive efforts to eliminate it. It was Britain’s military might and the sight of the Union Jack on the high seas that ultimately put an end to the slave trade.Unfortunately, the facts about slavery are not the lessons taught in our schools and colleges. The gross misrepresentation and suggestion in textbooks and lectures is that slavery was a uniquely American practice done by racist white people to black people. Despite abundant historical evidence, youngsters are taught nothing about how the founding fathers quarreled, debated and agonized over the slave issue."
Thomas Sowell: Poisoning present by distorting slavery's past - "The history of slavery across the centuries and in many countries around the world is a painful history to read - not only in terms of how slaves have been treated, but because of what that says about the whole human species - because slaves and enslavers alike have been of every race, religion and nationality. If the history of slavery ought to teach us anything, it is that human beings cannot be trusted with unbridled power over other human beings - no matter what color or creed any of them are. The history of ancient despotism and modern totalitarianism practically shouts that same message from the blood-stained pages of history.But that is not the message that is being taught in our schools and colleges, or dramatized on television and in the movies. The message pounded home again and again is that white people enslaved black people. It is true, just as it is true that I don't go sky-diving with blacks. But it is also false in its implications for the same reason. Just as Europeans enslaved Africans, North Africans enslaved Europeans; more Europeans than there were Africans enslaved in the United States and in the 13 colonies from which it was formed. The treatment of white galley slaves was even worse than the treatment of black slaves picking cotton. But there are no movies or television dramas about it comparable to Roots, and our schools and colleges don't pound it into the heads of students... Only the fact that the West had more firepower than others put an end to slavery in many non-Western societies during the age of Western imperialism. Yet today there are Americans who have gone to Africa to apologize for slavery - on a continent where slavery has still not been completely ended, to this very moment... Those who mine history for sins are not searching for truth but for opportunities to denigrate their own society, or for grievances that can be cashed in today, at the expense of people who were not even born when the sins of the past were committed. An ancient adage says: "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof." But apparently that is not sufficient for many among our educators, the intelligentsia or the media. They are busy poisoning the present by the way they present the past."
New York Times' 1619 Project & Black History in America - "In the seven times African-American soldiers mentioned, they are generally described as victims who have merely shifted from one system of subjugation and exploitation to another.There’s no mention of the Harlem Hellfighters fighting in World War One, and no mention of Dorie Miller’s heroism at Pearl Harbor. The horrors of the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male are discussed, but the Tuskegee Airmen are never mentioned.African-American heroism on the battlefield doesn’t really fit the narrative that the 1619 Project is trying to tell. In fact, you could argue that the essays are so wedded to a narrative of white brutality and black victimhood that they seem to fear that spotlighting any example of a successful African-American defiance of oppression would undermine their argument. In the reframing of the 1619 Project, African-American success stories disappear. There’s no mention of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympic Games. There’s no mention of Jackie Robinson. There’s no mention of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, the African-American mathematicians who worked for NASA as depicted in the film Hidden Figures. Wilberforce University in Ohio, the first college owned and operated by African Americans, is not mentioned... Frederick Douglass is mentioned twice. W.E.B. du Bois is quoted once. Thurgood Marshall is mentioned once. Harriet Tubman is never mentioned. Nor is Booker T. Washington... The 1619 Project argues, with considerable justification, that most of us been seeing only one part of the portrait of the founding, formation, and growth of our country . . . and then “reframes” the portrait to leave out some of the most consequential and under-discussed African Americans in our history."
What 'The Times' Got Wrong About Slavery in America - "1619 was not, in fact, the date of the first African slaves in the English colonies — those Africans were brought in under indenturement contracts, not bought as slaves. They were contracted to a fixed period of labor (typically five years) to pay for the cost charged by the Dutch slavers, at which point they were freed with a payment of a start-up endowment. This was not unusual or limited to Africans – approximately half of the 500,000 European immigrants to the thirteen colonies prior to 1775 paid for their passage with indenturement contracts. Anthony Johnson, a black Angolan, was typical – he entered Virginia as an indentured servant in 1621, became a free man after the term of his contract, acquired land, and became among the first actual slaveholders in the colonies... Ironically, a freed black man initiated the court case that moved slavery to a race-based institution. The Angolan immigrant Anthony Johnson was the plaintiff is a key civil case, where the Northampton Court in 1654 declared after the expiration of the indenturement contract of his African servant John Casor that Johnson owned Casor “for life,” nullifying the protections of the contract for the servant and essentially establishing the civil precedent for the enslavement of all African indentured servants by declaring that a contract for such servants extended for life, rather than the fixed term in the contract... Relatively speaking, the United States was a minor player in the African Slave Trade — only about 5% of the Africans imported to the New World came to the United States. Of the 10.7 million Africans who survived the ocean voyage, a mere 388,000 were shipped directly to North America. The largest recipients of imported African slaves were Brazil, Cuba. Jamaica, and the other Caribbean colonies. The lifespan of those brought into what is now the United States vastly exceeded those of the other 95%, and the United States was the only purchaser of African slaves where population grew naturally in slavery – the death rate among the rest was higher than the birth rate.While the institution, even in the United States was a brutal violation of basic human rights, it tended on average to be far more humane than in the rest of the New World. The Trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean African slave trade, which began by Arabs as early as the 8th Century AD, dwarfed the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and continued up to the 20th Century. Between the start of the Atlantic Slave Trade and 1900, it is estimated that the eastern-bound Arab slave traders sold over 17 million Africans into slavery in the Middle East and India, compared to about 12 million to the new world – and the Eastern-bound slave trade had been ongoing for at least 600 years at the START of that period.The Western-bound Atlantic slave trade, contrary to the misrepresentation in “Roots,” did not involve the capture of free Africans by Europeans or Arabs, but by the trading of slaves (already a basis for the economy of the local animist or Muslim kingdoms) captured in local wars to Western merchants in exchange for Western goods. The first such slaves brought to the Western Hemisphere were brought by the Spanish to their colonies in Cuba and Hispaniola in 1501, almost a century and a half before the first slave in the English colonies that became the United States. The last African state to outlaw slavery, Mauritania, did not do so until 2007, and if the institution is illegal on the continent de jure, it still is widespread de facto in Mauritania, Chad, Mali, Niger, and Sudan, as well as parts of Ghana, Benin, Togo Gabon, Angola, South Africa, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Libya, and Nigeria. The contradictions slavery posed on the rebel colonies during the Revolution sparked a backlash against slavery and the slave trade... the first law in the European world to outlaw the slave trade was, in fact, the US Constitution, which in 1787 banned the slave trade as of 1808. In Massachusetts, a 1783 court decision ended slavery, and all of the Northern States had passed emancipations laws by 1803... Economically, the institution of slavery, rather than develop the economy of the new nation, stunted its development. Although bonded labor, whether slave or indentured servant, clearly played an important role in developing a labor force in the early colonial days, its role in the advancement of the economy in the newly established country is questionable. Gavin Wright, in his classic book The Political Economy of the Cotton South, shows in fact that slavery hindered the development of the economy in those states where it remained legal. The artisans, tradesmen, and unskilled labor pool necessary for developing a thriving, diverse economy was discouraged by competition from bonded labor, and the slave-owning class showed little interest in such an economy... the ideals of the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment and political beliefs shaped by the English Civil War and Glorious Revolution created an environment that exposed the immorality of slavery and established the political grounds for ending the slave trade, and eventually the institution of slavery in areas of Western European influence."
Being Classically Liberal - Posts - "John Adams never owned a slave, represented slaves in their suits for freedom, and was the driving force behind Massachusetts abolishment of slavery in 1780. Alexander Hamilton was stridently abolitionist and "publicly condemned Americans who demanded freedom for themselves as a God-given right, while depriving others of freedom and profiting from that deprivation." His efforts paved the way for the abolition of slavery in New York. In 1790, Quakers from New York and Pennsylvania presented their petition for abolition to Congress. Their argument against slavery was backed by the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society and its president, Benjamin Franklin. Of the Founding Fathers who owned slaves, almost all of them recognized the hypocrisy of slavery and advocated for gradual abolition. Thomas Jefferson, for example, owned slaves but also signed laws banning the importation of slaves when he was President. They were flawed men, but they put the tools in place for the barbarous practice's abolishment in the Founding documents of our country. The Constitution, for example, was implicitly an anti-slavery document, as pointed out by Frederick Douglass, former slave and one of greatest abolitionists in American history. When faced with claims by other abolitionists that the Constitution was a pro-slavery document, Douglass said, "how dare any man who pretends to be a friend to the Negro thus gratuitously concede away what the Negro has a right to claim under the Constitution?""
The 1619 anniversary: 5 things people still get wrong about slavery - "One of the greatest myths about slavery is that it ended. In fact, it evolved into its modern form: mass incarceration. The United States has the highest prison population in the world. More than 2.2 million Americans are incarcerated; 4.5 million are on probation or parole. African Americans make up roughly 13 percent of the general population. But black men, women, and youth have outsize representation in the criminal justice system, where they make up 34 percent of the 6.8 million people who are under its control. Their labor is used to produce goods and services for businesses that profit from prison labor."
Strange how if you say the Irish were slaves too, you're denounced as racist and told it wasn't slavery because it wasn't chattel slavery. It seems you're only considered a slave if you're black (which is why even though prisoners aren't chattel slaves, it's still considered slavery). And this is before we consider 'modern slavery' outside the US prison system
Was America Built By Slaves? - "Was slavery some kind of platform upon which the modern American economy was built? That would be the politically correct question to study these days in the academy, especially if the answer can be made to come out “yes.” This is not surprising. In the present context, with the United States still struggling to build a multiracial society 150-odd years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the economic history of slavery is obviously a politically freighted issue. But it always has been to one extent or another, and American scholars and intellectuals have never ceased arguing over the question. For every Oscar Handlin who downplayed the evils of slavery, and even argued that slavery caused racism rather than the other way around, there has been a Nate Glazer who has stressed the singular evils of the American form of slavery compared to every other form known to history. Only someone unfamiliar with the literature can be surprised that, even aside from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s call for reparations payments, much of the current crop of books on the topic slides rather quickly from scholarship into advocacy... Of every hour of useful work done in the Southern states, roughly 40 minutes was performed by a slave. Given the obvious importance of slave labor, it may come as something of a surprise to find that, as already noted, the early historians of slavery judged it to have been a burden on the South’s economy rather than its strength... The slave-run gold mines of Peru, Mexico, and the sugar islands also produced impressive fortunes in their day. Their legacy is modern Peru and Haiti. Edmund Phelps, in his recent book, Mass Flourishing argues that long-term growth requires continuous innovation; not just the big discoveries, but the steady flow of cost savings and improvements that come from an engaged workforce. Slaves, looking over their shoulder at the overseer’s whip, don’t get many innovative ideas. They were deprived of the benefits of freedom, and so the country lost the fruits of their genius. Jazz music is exactly the type of thing Phelps has in mind. African Americans always had it in their bones as they toiled in the fields, but it took freedom for it to flourish... At some point, even the slave-owners had to realize they were depreciating their own capital, and Fogel does point out that they did a fair amount of experimentation with the length of the work week. It settled in at about 58 hours per week, which meant slaves worked about 400 fewer hours per year than the average yeoman farmer on his own land."
Being Classically Liberal - Posts - "Did Slavery cause the US to become an economic super-power?I will explore this question more in depth in future posts, but I wanted to ask a relevant question: If slavery made America rich, why isn’t Brazil even richer?This South American country received more African slaves than any country in the Americas (40% of the number of Africans brought to the continents, compared to 10% for the US.)For hundreds of years, slave labor was the driving force behind Brazilian exports like sugar, gold, and coffee. Brazil was also the last country in the West to abolish slavery in 1888.If export-led growth from slavery were really the key to the industrial revolution as some claim, then the industrial revolution would’ve started in Brazil and its colonial master Portugal. If slavery were the key to setting up nations to be economic giants today, Brazil would be far wealthier than the US.But this is not the case whatsoever.The US economy surpassed both countries in every year since 1800, before and after slavery was abolished. Today, per capita incomes in the United States (~$59,000) dwarf that of Brazil (~$8,800). The per capita income of Portugal is less than half of the US (~$25,000)... (Oh, and in the long-run Brazil and the US did much better economically after slavery was abolished.)"
No, Slavery Did Not Make America Rich - "In 1847, Karl Marx wrote that
Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry…cause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the map of nations.
As with most of his postulations concerning economics, Marx was proven wrong. Following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery in 1865, historical data show there was a recession, but after that, post-war economic growth rates rivaled or surpassed the pre-war growth rates... raw cotton produced by African-American slaves did not become a significant import in the British economy until 1800, decades after the Industrial Revolution had already begun. Although the British later imported large quantities of American cotton, economic historians Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode note that “the American South was a late-comer to world cotton markets,” and "US cotton played no role in kick-starting the Industrial Revolution.”...
'the vast literature on the industrial revolution that economic historians have produced shows that it originated in the creation and adoption of a wide range of technologies, such as the steam engine and coke blast furnace, which were not directly connected to textile trading networks'...
although cotton exports comprised a tremendous share of total exports prior to the Civil War, they accounted for only around 5 percent of the nation’s overall gross domestic product, an important contribution but not the backbone of American economic development... in the pre-war South, “investments were heavily concentrated in slaves,” resulting in the failure “to build a deep and broad industrial infrastructure,” such as railroads, public education, and a centralized financial system.Economic historians have repeatedly emphasized that slavery delayed Southern industrialization, giving the North a tremendous advantage in the Civil War. Harvard economist Nathan Nunn has shown that across the Americas, the more dependent on slavery a nation was in 1750, the poorer it was in 2000 (see Appendix Figure 3.). He found the same relationship in the US. In 2000, states with more slaves in 1860 were poorer than states with fewer slaves and much poorer than the free Northern states"
3. Slavery Reconsidered - "“U.S. slaves had much longer life expectations than free urban industrial workers in both the United States and Europe”... We are now prepared to ask, at least, if not answer, three questions about American slavery. First, did the slaves want to be free? Second, did the slaves try to become free? Third, were the slaves glad to be free?"
Among other things, the author makes a utilitarian argument for slavery, but just dismisses deontological arguments against it as religious in character, without recognising his own a priori assumptions (ironically, there is a chance that the author is against socialised healthcare on principle even if that leads to worse outcomes)
How the end of slavery led to starvation and death for millions of black Americans - "After combing through obscure records, newspapers and journals Downs believes that about a quarter of the four million freed slaves either died or suffered from illness between 1862 and 1870. He writes in the book that it can be considered "the largest biological crisis of the 19th century" and yet it is one that has been little investigated by contemporary historians. Downs believes much of that is because at the time of the civil war, which raged between 1861 and 1865 and pitted the unionist north against the confederate south, many people did not want to investigate the tragedy befalling the freed slaves. Many northerners were little more sympathetic than their southern opponents when it came to the health of the freed slaves and anti-slavery abolitionists feared the disaster would prove their critics right."
Walter Williams: Did blacks benefit from slavery? - "one of the Marxist professors asked me what I thought about the relationship between capitalism and slavery. My response was that slavery has existed everywhere in the world, under every political and economic system, and was by no means unique to capitalism or the United States. Perturbed by my response, he asked me what my feelings were about the enslavement of my ancestors. I answered that slavery is a despicable violation of human rights but that the enslavement of my ancestors is history, and one of the immutable facts of history is that nothing can be done to change it.The matter could have been left there, but I volunteered that today’s American blacks have benefited enormously from the horrible suffering of our ancestors. Why? I said the standard of living and personal liberty of black Americans are better than what blacks living anywhere in Africa have... I attempted to assuage the professor’s and his colleagues’ shock by explaining to them that to morally condemn a practice such as slavery does not require one to also deny its effects. My yet-to-be-learned lesson – and perhaps that of Rep. Hubbard – is that there are certain topics or arguments that one should not bring up in the presence of children or those with little understanding. Both might see that explaining a phenomenon is the same as giving it moral sanction or justification. It’s as if one’s explanation that the independent influence of gravity on a falling object is to cause it to accelerate at 32 feet per second could be interpreted as giving moral sanction and justification to gravity. Slavery is widely misunderstood, and as such has been a tool for hustlers and demagogues... Even the word slave is derived from the fact that Slavic people were among the early European slaves. Though racism has been used to justify slavery, the origins of slavery had little to do with racism. In recent history, the major slave traders and slave owners have been Arabs, who enslaved Europeans, black Africans and Asians. A unique aspect of slavery in the Western world was the moral outrage against it, which began to emerge in the 18th century and led to massive efforts to eliminate it. It was Britain’s military might and the sight of the Union Jack on the high seas that ultimately put an end to the slave trade.Unfortunately, the facts about slavery are not the lessons taught in our schools and colleges. The gross misrepresentation and suggestion in textbooks and lectures is that slavery was a uniquely American practice done by racist white people to black people. Despite abundant historical evidence, youngsters are taught nothing about how the founding fathers quarreled, debated and agonized over the slave issue."
Thomas Sowell: Poisoning present by distorting slavery's past - "The history of slavery across the centuries and in many countries around the world is a painful history to read - not only in terms of how slaves have been treated, but because of what that says about the whole human species - because slaves and enslavers alike have been of every race, religion and nationality. If the history of slavery ought to teach us anything, it is that human beings cannot be trusted with unbridled power over other human beings - no matter what color or creed any of them are. The history of ancient despotism and modern totalitarianism practically shouts that same message from the blood-stained pages of history.But that is not the message that is being taught in our schools and colleges, or dramatized on television and in the movies. The message pounded home again and again is that white people enslaved black people. It is true, just as it is true that I don't go sky-diving with blacks. But it is also false in its implications for the same reason. Just as Europeans enslaved Africans, North Africans enslaved Europeans; more Europeans than there were Africans enslaved in the United States and in the 13 colonies from which it was formed. The treatment of white galley slaves was even worse than the treatment of black slaves picking cotton. But there are no movies or television dramas about it comparable to Roots, and our schools and colleges don't pound it into the heads of students... Only the fact that the West had more firepower than others put an end to slavery in many non-Western societies during the age of Western imperialism. Yet today there are Americans who have gone to Africa to apologize for slavery - on a continent where slavery has still not been completely ended, to this very moment... Those who mine history for sins are not searching for truth but for opportunities to denigrate their own society, or for grievances that can be cashed in today, at the expense of people who were not even born when the sins of the past were committed. An ancient adage says: "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof." But apparently that is not sufficient for many among our educators, the intelligentsia or the media. They are busy poisoning the present by the way they present the past."
Post ID: 862770533592422963
Men vs Women's skincare products
"It may appear that male cosmeceuticals are the same as female cosmeceuticals, except for different packaging and fragrance. Products that are specifically designed for men must address more than just superficialities. Men have different skin care needs, as outlined in Table 1...
The male cosmeceutical market has never been as large as the female market, probably because men age more slowly than women. The facial hair is photoprotective and the thicker skin is less damaged by the deeply penetrating UV-A. Yet, women tend to have softer, smoother skin due the absence of less terminal hair and the presence of increased subcutaneous fat. Although this might be an appearance blessing, it is also an appearance curse because it allows women to experience more cellulite than men.
Male skin produces more sebaceous, eccrine, and apocrine secretions than female skin. The sebaceous glands are larger and more abundant on male skin, especially on the face because they are tied to terminal hairs instead of the vellus hairs characteristic of the female faces (Table 2). This means male facial cleansers must be more aggressive to remove sebum, which is why the male cleanser market is dominated by bar soap containing both soap and synthetic detergents, a formulation known as a combar...
Sebum removal is important on the male face and body to maintain the skin microbiome, which is rich in Propionibacterium acnes, accounting for face and back acne. The sebum also promotes the growth of Malassezia restricta and Malassezia globosa, fungal organisms responsible for seborrheic dermatitis. Thus, removing these organisms is important for the prevention of disease...
In addition to sebum issues, apocrine and eccrine sweat considerations are important. Men sweat more than women, making antiperspirants a common skin care product. The abundant sweat accompanied by a larger surface for bacterial growth due to body hair makes odor a larger issue for men than women. Male- directed antiperspirants are also fragranced for the male preference and are characterized by a larger application surface for the larger male axilla. Technically antiperspirants are not cosmeceuticals but rather OTC drugs because they are regulated through an FDA monograph. Increased male body odor, due to increased bacterial growth using sebum and sweat as a nutritional source, points to the need for the use of antibacterial cleansers. The most popular male antibacterial was triclosan, until 2016, when triclosan was removed from the market by the FDA. This led to the replacement of triclosan by benzalkonium chloride, which is the active ingredient in antibacterial liquid and bar cleansers. Especially in the armpit, male body odor is an issue. This use of antibacterial products to control this odor is a major cosmeceutical need; however, antibacterial products are also considered OTC drugs and are not technically cosmeceuticals.
Male skin functions differently from female skin in terms of not only cleansing to remove sebum and sweat but also skin moisturization needs. Transepidermal water loss, the amount of water leaving the skin and entering the environment, is lower in women than men, even though polls show that women believe that their skin is drier. Women also generally believe that their skin sags more than men, but skin elasticity is identical between the genders. The increased impression of sagging may be due to thinning collagen rather than decreased skin elasticity.
Female skin is more biologically responsive than male skin. This is manifested by the lower temperature at which heat induces vasodilatation. It also presents as an increase in irritant contact dermatitis and increased sympathetic tone. This may explain why women exhibit increased redness and irritation to skin care products, sometimes referred to as sensitive skin, compared with men, who do not gravitate to sensitive skin product formulations.
Male skin moisturizers are a much smaller market than female—oriented moisturizers due to the sebum production drive of male-dominant testosterone. Sebum provides skin moisturization, making the needs for facial and body creams for men somewhat different. Although men do develop dry skin at approximately age 60 years and older, dry skin is a much smaller male market. The male skin need for emolliency is greater due to smooth desquamating facial skin scale produced by shaving. Emollients fill the intercellular spaces where aggressive cleansing has removed the lipids to restore a smooth soft skin surface. The most popular emollient is dimethicone, which may be delivered to the skin surface in the form of a toner, aftershave lotion, skin bracer, or facial moisturizer. Toners are applied after cleansing, and aftershave lotions or skin bracers are applied after shaving. Toners can deliver a thin layer of dimethicone to decrease facial skin tightness. Aftershave lotions or skin bracers may contain a small amount of alcohol to decrease superficial bacterial infection and the papules/pustules associated with razor burn. In addition, the product can deliver some dimethicone emolliency to smooth skin scale and soothe irritated postshaving skin."
--- Cosmetic Dermatology for Men, An Issue of Dermatologic Clinics / Neil S. Sadick
Neil Sadick, M.D. | Manhattan's Premier Cosmetic Dermatologist
"Credentials: Known as one of the best dermatologists in the world, Dr. Sadick completed medical school at SUNY Upstate, and his residency in internal medicine at Cornell/North Shore University/Memorial Sloan Kettering Medical Center. Dr. Sadick trained in dermatology at New York Hospital. He holds five board certifications in internal medicine, dermatology, cosmetic surgery, hair restoration surgery, and is fellow of the American College of Phlebology. Dr. Sadick serves as Clinical Professor of Dermatology at Weill Cornell Medical College, and President Elect of the International Society for Dermatologic Surgeons.
Affiliation: Clinical Professor of Dermatology, Weill Cornell Medical College.
Adjunct Professor – University of Minnesota, Department of Dermatology
Serves of the Board of Directors for the American Academy of Dermatology
Past President of the International Society of Dermatologic Surgery, American
Academy of Cosmetic Surgery and the Cosmetic Surgery Foundation
Secretary/Treasurer of the Noah Worcester Dermatological Society
Past Board of Directors for the American Society of Dermatologic Surgery, and past Executive Board Member for the Women’s Dermatologic Society...
Neil Sadick, MD FAAD, FAACS, FACP, FACPh, is one of the most influential and renowned dermatologists and researchers in the world. Also known as the ‘’doctor’s doctor’’, Dr. Sadick travels globally training dermatologists, and plastic surgeons on the latest advances with injectables and energy devices."
The male cosmeceutical market has never been as large as the female market, probably because men age more slowly than women. The facial hair is photoprotective and the thicker skin is less damaged by the deeply penetrating UV-A. Yet, women tend to have softer, smoother skin due the absence of less terminal hair and the presence of increased subcutaneous fat. Although this might be an appearance blessing, it is also an appearance curse because it allows women to experience more cellulite than men.
Male skin produces more sebaceous, eccrine, and apocrine secretions than female skin. The sebaceous glands are larger and more abundant on male skin, especially on the face because they are tied to terminal hairs instead of the vellus hairs characteristic of the female faces (Table 2). This means male facial cleansers must be more aggressive to remove sebum, which is why the male cleanser market is dominated by bar soap containing both soap and synthetic detergents, a formulation known as a combar...
Sebum removal is important on the male face and body to maintain the skin microbiome, which is rich in Propionibacterium acnes, accounting for face and back acne. The sebum also promotes the growth of Malassezia restricta and Malassezia globosa, fungal organisms responsible for seborrheic dermatitis. Thus, removing these organisms is important for the prevention of disease...
In addition to sebum issues, apocrine and eccrine sweat considerations are important. Men sweat more than women, making antiperspirants a common skin care product. The abundant sweat accompanied by a larger surface for bacterial growth due to body hair makes odor a larger issue for men than women. Male- directed antiperspirants are also fragranced for the male preference and are characterized by a larger application surface for the larger male axilla. Technically antiperspirants are not cosmeceuticals but rather OTC drugs because they are regulated through an FDA monograph. Increased male body odor, due to increased bacterial growth using sebum and sweat as a nutritional source, points to the need for the use of antibacterial cleansers. The most popular male antibacterial was triclosan, until 2016, when triclosan was removed from the market by the FDA. This led to the replacement of triclosan by benzalkonium chloride, which is the active ingredient in antibacterial liquid and bar cleansers. Especially in the armpit, male body odor is an issue. This use of antibacterial products to control this odor is a major cosmeceutical need; however, antibacterial products are also considered OTC drugs and are not technically cosmeceuticals.
Male skin functions differently from female skin in terms of not only cleansing to remove sebum and sweat but also skin moisturization needs. Transepidermal water loss, the amount of water leaving the skin and entering the environment, is lower in women than men, even though polls show that women believe that their skin is drier. Women also generally believe that their skin sags more than men, but skin elasticity is identical between the genders. The increased impression of sagging may be due to thinning collagen rather than decreased skin elasticity.
Female skin is more biologically responsive than male skin. This is manifested by the lower temperature at which heat induces vasodilatation. It also presents as an increase in irritant contact dermatitis and increased sympathetic tone. This may explain why women exhibit increased redness and irritation to skin care products, sometimes referred to as sensitive skin, compared with men, who do not gravitate to sensitive skin product formulations.
Male skin moisturizers are a much smaller market than female—oriented moisturizers due to the sebum production drive of male-dominant testosterone. Sebum provides skin moisturization, making the needs for facial and body creams for men somewhat different. Although men do develop dry skin at approximately age 60 years and older, dry skin is a much smaller male market. The male skin need for emolliency is greater due to smooth desquamating facial skin scale produced by shaving. Emollients fill the intercellular spaces where aggressive cleansing has removed the lipids to restore a smooth soft skin surface. The most popular emollient is dimethicone, which may be delivered to the skin surface in the form of a toner, aftershave lotion, skin bracer, or facial moisturizer. Toners are applied after cleansing, and aftershave lotions or skin bracers are applied after shaving. Toners can deliver a thin layer of dimethicone to decrease facial skin tightness. Aftershave lotions or skin bracers may contain a small amount of alcohol to decrease superficial bacterial infection and the papules/pustules associated with razor burn. In addition, the product can deliver some dimethicone emolliency to smooth skin scale and soothe irritated postshaving skin."
--- Cosmetic Dermatology for Men, An Issue of Dermatologic Clinics / Neil S. Sadick
Neil Sadick, M.D. | Manhattan's Premier Cosmetic Dermatologist
"Credentials: Known as one of the best dermatologists in the world, Dr. Sadick completed medical school at SUNY Upstate, and his residency in internal medicine at Cornell/North Shore University/Memorial Sloan Kettering Medical Center. Dr. Sadick trained in dermatology at New York Hospital. He holds five board certifications in internal medicine, dermatology, cosmetic surgery, hair restoration surgery, and is fellow of the American College of Phlebology. Dr. Sadick serves as Clinical Professor of Dermatology at Weill Cornell Medical College, and President Elect of the International Society for Dermatologic Surgeons.
Affiliation: Clinical Professor of Dermatology, Weill Cornell Medical College.
Adjunct Professor – University of Minnesota, Department of Dermatology
Serves of the Board of Directors for the American Academy of Dermatology
Past President of the International Society of Dermatologic Surgery, American
Academy of Cosmetic Surgery and the Cosmetic Surgery Foundation
Secretary/Treasurer of the Noah Worcester Dermatological Society
Past Board of Directors for the American Society of Dermatologic Surgery, and past Executive Board Member for the Women’s Dermatologic Society...
Neil Sadick, MD FAAD, FAACS, FACP, FACPh, is one of the most influential and renowned dermatologists and researchers in the world. Also known as the ‘’doctor’s doctor’’, Dr. Sadick travels globally training dermatologists, and plastic surgeons on the latest advances with injectables and energy devices."
Post ID: 104023866942332421
Links - 14th October 2019 (2)
The Economic Benefits of giving Aid in terms of Donors Exports - "This paper uses the gravity model of trade to investigate the link between bilateral and multilateral foreign aid and donor's exports. There are three primary findings from this approach. First, in the long term, the average return, in terms of an increase in the donor's level of goods exports, is approximately $ 2.15 US for every aid dollar spent on bilateral aid. Second, multilateral aid has a positive effect on export levels only in the short term, whereas in the long term, the effect is negative. Third, aid from other donors does not give rise to a displacement effect for a given donor-recipient trade relationship. This paper also makes comparisons among donors and finds that aid has a positive and significant effect on most donors' export levels."
Abolish Eton: Labour groups aim to strip elite schools of privileges - "The group, Labour Against Private Schools, is circulating a motion for the party’s conference in September that would commit a Labour government to stripping fee-paying schools of their privileges and integrating them into the state system... It also breaks new ground by wanting to limit university admissions to “the same proportion of private school students as in the wider population (currently 7%)”. Most radically. it also calls for the “endowments, investments and properties held by private schools to be redistributed democratically across the country’s educational institutions”."
If you can't raise the bar, force it lower for everyone
Labour is determined to make itself unelectable
London Marathon changes after runners called fat and slow - "Hundreds of runners who were shouted at for being too slow during this year's London Marathon have been given free entry to next year's event.Some runners said they were also called "fat" by contractors who had started to clear up while they were still running... Kerrie Aldridge, from Cardiff, who finished last in this year's marathon, has been offered a place for next year.She took nine hours and 11 minutes to complete the route and said she was "sniggered" at by stewards."
I just might be able to do a marathon in 9 hours too
How Pepsi briefly became the 6th largest military in the world - "the people of the Soviet Union wanted to strike a deal that would bring Pepsi products to their country permanently. However, there was an issue of how they would pay for their newest beverage, as their money wasn't accepted throughout the world.So, the clever country decided to buy Pepsi using a universal currency: vodka!In the late 1980s, Russia's initial agreement to serve Pepsi in their country was about to expire, but this time, their vodka wasn't going to be enough to cover the cost.So, the Russians did what any country would do in desperate times: They traded Pepsi a fleet of subs and boats for a whole lot of soda. The new agreement included 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer. The combined fleet was traded for three billion dollars worth of Pepsi. Yes, you read that right. Russia loves their Pepsi.The historical exchange caused Pepsi to become the 6th most powerful military in the world, for a moment, before they sold the fleet to a Swedish company for scrap recycling"
MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell Retracts Unverified Trump Finances Report - "Lawrence O’Donnell said that he was wrong to read a story about President Donald Trump’s finances during his Tuesday night MSNBC show, saying he made an “error in judgment” by discussing the unverified report on the air... The Tuesday night segment in question involved O’Donnell telling viewers that Russian oligarchs had co-signed Trump’s loans from Deutsche Bank, a report he teased on Twitter too. He stressed the story had not been confirmed by NBC News, was based on a single anonymous source and still needed to be verified to determine if it was true."
This didn't stop the Trump Derangement Syndrome crowd from crowing on Facebook about this as if it were true
So much for denouncing media lies as being fake news as being an inexcusable attack on it
Cops catch pigeon with backpack of drugs - "A homing pigeon was caught trying to smuggle drugs into Kuwait... This isn’t the first pigeon nabbed for narcotics smuggling — in 2015, guards at a Costa Rican prison caught a literal jail bird flying cocaine and weed into the slammer."
With funding from palm oil and schools, Indonesia’s terror group Jemaah Islamiah set for resurgence in Malaysia, Singapore - "With members steeped in extremist doctrine and regarded as better trained than the al-Qaeda, the group has found new financial stability with steady income generated from the palm oil industry and a score of private religious schools to revive its militant activities that will likely include reviving its cells in Malaysia and Singapore"
Tunisia bans face-covering veils in public institutions ‘for security reasons’ after terror attacks - "Tunisia has banned face-covering veils in state-run buildings “for security reasons” following three terror attacks in the space of a week.The decision ends a policy of official tolerance to face-covering in public institutions and makes the north African nation the latest country to outlaw religious clothing in the aftermath of terrorism... Sri Lanka banned face-covering after attacks over Easter earlier this year and Cameroon outlawed full-face veils in a northern region after an attack killed 13 people in 2015.Algeria prohibited women from wearing the niqab at work in 2018.Last year, Denmark was criticised by human rights groups for introducing a total ban on full-face veils which was accused of being “neither necessary nor proportionate”."
Islamophobia!
Child sex abuse gang ringleader to be freed from prison 17 years early - "Mubarek Ali, who was one of two ringleaders of the gang in Telford, is just five years into his 22-year prison sentence for his horrific crimes."
China expels reporter who covered investigation into Xi Jinping's cousin - "China is essentially kicking a reporter from The Wall Street Journal out of the country following his coverage of an investigation involving Chinese President Xi Jinping's cousin.The Journal confirmed Friday that the government-issued press credentials of reporter Chun Han Wong were not renewed; since these credentials are required for his visa, he will be forced to leave China. Wong has been reporting from Beijing since 2014.Although an official reason for the denial wasn't provided, it came shortly after Wong co-authored a report in the Journal that Australian law enforcement and intelligence officials were looking into President Xi's cousin, Ming Chai, as part of an organized crime, money laundering, and influence-peddling probe... Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying had dismissed the original report as "groundless accusations," and the Foreign Ministry told The Washington Post on Friday that "we don't welcome" reporters who are "maliciously tarnishing China."According to repoter Josh Chin, this is the first time China has ever expelled a reporter from the Journal, which the Post notes is known for "incisive but evenhanded coverage of the country." Chinese ministry officials, the Journal says, prior to the July report had warned the outlet "not to publish and warned of unspecified consequences.""
Second 'son of Hamas' leaves terror group, exposing corruption, Turkish spy ring - "It isn’t every day that a Hamas member turns his back on the terror organization, flies to Southeast Asia and decides to expose the corruption and inner workings of its operations in Turkey in an interview with an Israeli TV journalist.It’s even more incredible when he’s the son of one of Hamas’s founding members. And it’s almost unthinkable when he’s the second of that founder’s sons to escape the clutches of the Islamist group and go public with his story... the setup in Turkey was also used to conscript people, including children, in the West Bank to carry out terror attacks against Israelis.“The point of the attacks in the West Bank is to kill civilians, not for the aim of resistance, nor Jerusalem; not for liberating Palestinian land, and not even because they hate Jews,” he told the TV channel. “They send out these innocents because they want to export the crisis [from Gaza] to the West Bank.” Yousef said he had also become increasingly angry at the corruption of senior Hamas people living in luxury in Turkey while Gaza suffered... “They pay $200 for one course for one person and a family in Gaza lives on $100 per month?”... Yousef reiterated he had no problem with Jews, at one point buying the interviewer a coconut and saying: “You are people of the Book and we are Muslims and we have no animosity toward you.”He said his main motivation was to help the Palestinian people by exposing the true face of Hamas. “The problem in Gaza is that Hamas hangs on to power by force. If Hamas gave up power, there would be no problems,” he said, accusing the group’s corrupt leaders of using the people of Gaza as cannon fodder for their ambitions... “How does Hamas benefit from these attacks? Nothing,” he said. “It is a racist terror organization that is dangerous for the Palestinian people.”"
Far sexier to ignore facts and just keep bashing Israel
Palestinian population up 9 times since 1948: report - "Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) Monday said in a report ahead of the 71st anniversary of the 1948 war that the number of Palestinians has increased by nine times since 1948."
Israel has carried out the most incompetent genocide in history
South Koreans drink twice as much liquor as Russians and more than four times as much as Americans - "South Koreans drink 13.7 shots of liquor per week on average, which is the most in the world. And of 44 other countries analyzed by Euromonitor, none comes anywhere close. The Russians, the second biggest in Euromonitor’s sample, down 6.3 shots per week; Filipinos drink roughly 5.4 shots per week; and Americans consume only 3.3. South Korea’s unparalleled liquor consumption is almost entirely due to the country’s love for a certain fermented rice spirit called Soju. The South Korean liquor accounts for 97% of the country’s spirits market.Donning the hard alcohol crown can be problematic at times. South Korea’s alarming alcohol consumption has led to outbreaks of drunken violence and prompted its ministry of health and welfare to launch a marketing campaign in 2011 in hopes of steering its citizens clear of heavy drinking."
"Stereotypes"
“No problem” vs “you’re welcome” - "You almost never hear a Millennial say “you’re welcome.” At least not when someone thanks them. It just isn’t done. Not because Millennials are ingrates lacking all manners, but because the polite response is “No problem.” Millennials only use “you’re welcome” sarcastically when they haven’t been thanked or when something has been taken from/done to them without their consent. It’s a phrase that’s used to point out someone else’s rudeness. A Millennial would typically be fairly uncomfortable saying “you’re welcome” as an acknowledgement of genuine thanks because the phrase is only ever used disingenuously.
Baby Boomers, however, get really miffed if someone says “no problem” in response to being thanked. From their perspective, saying “no problem” means that whatever they’re thanking someone for was in fact a problem, but the other person did it anyway as a personal favor. To them “You’re welcome” is the standard polite response.
“You’re welcome” means to Millennials what “no problem” means to Baby Boomers, and vice versa.The two phrases have converse meanings to the different age sets"
Hong Kong dating scam: sales agents pose as dates to sell services and earn a commission - "Last year, Hong Kong police recorded 596 cases of online romance scams, a 422 per cent rise from 2016. Victims were duped out of as much as HK$454.8 million (US$58 million). Online romance scams concerning beauty services were one of the major categories – though it is not known how many involve the companies acting in concert with the sales agents... "In some cases, the shop staff go along with the scam, assuring the victim it’s the first time their date has brought anyone with them, with the aim of making them feel special""
Stephen C on Twitter - ""the right to openly discuss ideas must be defended"
"fuck off nazi scum"
Wow."
A "Nazi" is anyone who disagrees with the far left
Abolish Eton: Labour groups aim to strip elite schools of privileges - "The group, Labour Against Private Schools, is circulating a motion for the party’s conference in September that would commit a Labour government to stripping fee-paying schools of their privileges and integrating them into the state system... It also breaks new ground by wanting to limit university admissions to “the same proportion of private school students as in the wider population (currently 7%)”. Most radically. it also calls for the “endowments, investments and properties held by private schools to be redistributed democratically across the country’s educational institutions”."
If you can't raise the bar, force it lower for everyone
Labour is determined to make itself unelectable
London Marathon changes after runners called fat and slow - "Hundreds of runners who were shouted at for being too slow during this year's London Marathon have been given free entry to next year's event.Some runners said they were also called "fat" by contractors who had started to clear up while they were still running... Kerrie Aldridge, from Cardiff, who finished last in this year's marathon, has been offered a place for next year.She took nine hours and 11 minutes to complete the route and said she was "sniggered" at by stewards."
I just might be able to do a marathon in 9 hours too
How Pepsi briefly became the 6th largest military in the world - "the people of the Soviet Union wanted to strike a deal that would bring Pepsi products to their country permanently. However, there was an issue of how they would pay for their newest beverage, as their money wasn't accepted throughout the world.So, the clever country decided to buy Pepsi using a universal currency: vodka!In the late 1980s, Russia's initial agreement to serve Pepsi in their country was about to expire, but this time, their vodka wasn't going to be enough to cover the cost.So, the Russians did what any country would do in desperate times: They traded Pepsi a fleet of subs and boats for a whole lot of soda. The new agreement included 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer. The combined fleet was traded for three billion dollars worth of Pepsi. Yes, you read that right. Russia loves their Pepsi.The historical exchange caused Pepsi to become the 6th most powerful military in the world, for a moment, before they sold the fleet to a Swedish company for scrap recycling"
MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell Retracts Unverified Trump Finances Report - "Lawrence O’Donnell said that he was wrong to read a story about President Donald Trump’s finances during his Tuesday night MSNBC show, saying he made an “error in judgment” by discussing the unverified report on the air... The Tuesday night segment in question involved O’Donnell telling viewers that Russian oligarchs had co-signed Trump’s loans from Deutsche Bank, a report he teased on Twitter too. He stressed the story had not been confirmed by NBC News, was based on a single anonymous source and still needed to be verified to determine if it was true."
This didn't stop the Trump Derangement Syndrome crowd from crowing on Facebook about this as if it were true
So much for denouncing media lies as being fake news as being an inexcusable attack on it
Cops catch pigeon with backpack of drugs - "A homing pigeon was caught trying to smuggle drugs into Kuwait... This isn’t the first pigeon nabbed for narcotics smuggling — in 2015, guards at a Costa Rican prison caught a literal jail bird flying cocaine and weed into the slammer."
With funding from palm oil and schools, Indonesia’s terror group Jemaah Islamiah set for resurgence in Malaysia, Singapore - "With members steeped in extremist doctrine and regarded as better trained than the al-Qaeda, the group has found new financial stability with steady income generated from the palm oil industry and a score of private religious schools to revive its militant activities that will likely include reviving its cells in Malaysia and Singapore"
Tunisia bans face-covering veils in public institutions ‘for security reasons’ after terror attacks - "Tunisia has banned face-covering veils in state-run buildings “for security reasons” following three terror attacks in the space of a week.The decision ends a policy of official tolerance to face-covering in public institutions and makes the north African nation the latest country to outlaw religious clothing in the aftermath of terrorism... Sri Lanka banned face-covering after attacks over Easter earlier this year and Cameroon outlawed full-face veils in a northern region after an attack killed 13 people in 2015.Algeria prohibited women from wearing the niqab at work in 2018.Last year, Denmark was criticised by human rights groups for introducing a total ban on full-face veils which was accused of being “neither necessary nor proportionate”."
Islamophobia!
Child sex abuse gang ringleader to be freed from prison 17 years early - "Mubarek Ali, who was one of two ringleaders of the gang in Telford, is just five years into his 22-year prison sentence for his horrific crimes."
China expels reporter who covered investigation into Xi Jinping's cousin - "China is essentially kicking a reporter from The Wall Street Journal out of the country following his coverage of an investigation involving Chinese President Xi Jinping's cousin.The Journal confirmed Friday that the government-issued press credentials of reporter Chun Han Wong were not renewed; since these credentials are required for his visa, he will be forced to leave China. Wong has been reporting from Beijing since 2014.Although an official reason for the denial wasn't provided, it came shortly after Wong co-authored a report in the Journal that Australian law enforcement and intelligence officials were looking into President Xi's cousin, Ming Chai, as part of an organized crime, money laundering, and influence-peddling probe... Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying had dismissed the original report as "groundless accusations," and the Foreign Ministry told The Washington Post on Friday that "we don't welcome" reporters who are "maliciously tarnishing China."According to repoter Josh Chin, this is the first time China has ever expelled a reporter from the Journal, which the Post notes is known for "incisive but evenhanded coverage of the country." Chinese ministry officials, the Journal says, prior to the July report had warned the outlet "not to publish and warned of unspecified consequences.""
Second 'son of Hamas' leaves terror group, exposing corruption, Turkish spy ring - "It isn’t every day that a Hamas member turns his back on the terror organization, flies to Southeast Asia and decides to expose the corruption and inner workings of its operations in Turkey in an interview with an Israeli TV journalist.It’s even more incredible when he’s the son of one of Hamas’s founding members. And it’s almost unthinkable when he’s the second of that founder’s sons to escape the clutches of the Islamist group and go public with his story... the setup in Turkey was also used to conscript people, including children, in the West Bank to carry out terror attacks against Israelis.“The point of the attacks in the West Bank is to kill civilians, not for the aim of resistance, nor Jerusalem; not for liberating Palestinian land, and not even because they hate Jews,” he told the TV channel. “They send out these innocents because they want to export the crisis [from Gaza] to the West Bank.” Yousef said he had also become increasingly angry at the corruption of senior Hamas people living in luxury in Turkey while Gaza suffered... “They pay $200 for one course for one person and a family in Gaza lives on $100 per month?”... Yousef reiterated he had no problem with Jews, at one point buying the interviewer a coconut and saying: “You are people of the Book and we are Muslims and we have no animosity toward you.”He said his main motivation was to help the Palestinian people by exposing the true face of Hamas. “The problem in Gaza is that Hamas hangs on to power by force. If Hamas gave up power, there would be no problems,” he said, accusing the group’s corrupt leaders of using the people of Gaza as cannon fodder for their ambitions... “How does Hamas benefit from these attacks? Nothing,” he said. “It is a racist terror organization that is dangerous for the Palestinian people.”"
Far sexier to ignore facts and just keep bashing Israel
Palestinian population up 9 times since 1948: report - "Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) Monday said in a report ahead of the 71st anniversary of the 1948 war that the number of Palestinians has increased by nine times since 1948."
Israel has carried out the most incompetent genocide in history
South Koreans drink twice as much liquor as Russians and more than four times as much as Americans - "South Koreans drink 13.7 shots of liquor per week on average, which is the most in the world. And of 44 other countries analyzed by Euromonitor, none comes anywhere close. The Russians, the second biggest in Euromonitor’s sample, down 6.3 shots per week; Filipinos drink roughly 5.4 shots per week; and Americans consume only 3.3. South Korea’s unparalleled liquor consumption is almost entirely due to the country’s love for a certain fermented rice spirit called Soju. The South Korean liquor accounts for 97% of the country’s spirits market.Donning the hard alcohol crown can be problematic at times. South Korea’s alarming alcohol consumption has led to outbreaks of drunken violence and prompted its ministry of health and welfare to launch a marketing campaign in 2011 in hopes of steering its citizens clear of heavy drinking."
"Stereotypes"
“No problem” vs “you’re welcome” - "You almost never hear a Millennial say “you’re welcome.” At least not when someone thanks them. It just isn’t done. Not because Millennials are ingrates lacking all manners, but because the polite response is “No problem.” Millennials only use “you’re welcome” sarcastically when they haven’t been thanked or when something has been taken from/done to them without their consent. It’s a phrase that’s used to point out someone else’s rudeness. A Millennial would typically be fairly uncomfortable saying “you’re welcome” as an acknowledgement of genuine thanks because the phrase is only ever used disingenuously.
Baby Boomers, however, get really miffed if someone says “no problem” in response to being thanked. From their perspective, saying “no problem” means that whatever they’re thanking someone for was in fact a problem, but the other person did it anyway as a personal favor. To them “You’re welcome” is the standard polite response.
“You’re welcome” means to Millennials what “no problem” means to Baby Boomers, and vice versa.The two phrases have converse meanings to the different age sets"
Hong Kong dating scam: sales agents pose as dates to sell services and earn a commission - "Last year, Hong Kong police recorded 596 cases of online romance scams, a 422 per cent rise from 2016. Victims were duped out of as much as HK$454.8 million (US$58 million). Online romance scams concerning beauty services were one of the major categories – though it is not known how many involve the companies acting in concert with the sales agents... "In some cases, the shop staff go along with the scam, assuring the victim it’s the first time their date has brought anyone with them, with the aim of making them feel special""
Stephen C on Twitter - ""the right to openly discuss ideas must be defended"
"fuck off nazi scum"
Wow."
A "Nazi" is anyone who disagrees with the far left
Post ID: 2690979645154188989
Spam with life advice
From: John Black
Subject: You have been recorded
Message:
Hi!
I know you wondering what is with this message, here is the story. Because your router was not secured, I was able to inject some sophisticated code into the firmware and every device connected to the network was compromised. The function of my code is to enable every camera on any device available and record (video + audio) with the notification LED disabled (if is present) while you visit 18+ sites. Yes, I got you matsurbating! We all do it, you just got caught. Another function of my code is to extract all contacts, emails, social media contacts and so on in order to obtain a benefit.
Here is what I want, if you don`t pay me 500 $ value in BitCoin, the video with you doing, you know what.. will be sent to all your contacts.
My BTC Address: *removed*
Amount: 0.06 BTC (approximately).
This is important! My BTC Address is case sensitive! Also make sure you save this mail somewhere safe so you will not lose the details.
Quick tip! The most easiest way to buy BitCoin is from Paxful, use Google to find it.
You may also want to search about NoFap and read about the positive benefits of NO PMO. There are may other stuffs that you can do than watching dirty stuffs, it`s just a waste of energy, minerals from the body and time, I hope you will think about this.
In order to get rid of my stuffs from your network, you need to reset your router, which means you have to unplug it and plug it again. You can also change your passwords, but my stuffs is not set to look for that, I`m not interested in passwords however for your peace of mind, go ahead, change them.
You have 72h(3 days) to send the coins, once they are sent, your video will be removed automatically from my compromised servers and you will never hear from me again. Don`t forget to cover your cameras next time, somebody may watch!
Subject: You have been recorded
Message:
Hi!
I know you wondering what is with this message, here is the story. Because your router was not secured, I was able to inject some sophisticated code into the firmware and every device connected to the network was compromised. The function of my code is to enable every camera on any device available and record (video + audio) with the notification LED disabled (if is present) while you visit 18+ sites. Yes, I got you matsurbating! We all do it, you just got caught. Another function of my code is to extract all contacts, emails, social media contacts and so on in order to obtain a benefit.
Here is what I want, if you don`t pay me 500 $ value in BitCoin, the video with you doing, you know what.. will be sent to all your contacts.
My BTC Address: *removed*
Amount: 0.06 BTC (approximately).
This is important! My BTC Address is case sensitive! Also make sure you save this mail somewhere safe so you will not lose the details.
Quick tip! The most easiest way to buy BitCoin is from Paxful, use Google to find it.
You may also want to search about NoFap and read about the positive benefits of NO PMO. There are may other stuffs that you can do than watching dirty stuffs, it`s just a waste of energy, minerals from the body and time, I hope you will think about this.
In order to get rid of my stuffs from your network, you need to reset your router, which means you have to unplug it and plug it again. You can also change your passwords, but my stuffs is not set to look for that, I`m not interested in passwords however for your peace of mind, go ahead, change them.
You have 72h(3 days) to send the coins, once they are sent, your video will be removed automatically from my compromised servers and you will never hear from me again. Don`t forget to cover your cameras next time, somebody may watch!
Post ID: 1156278161749419766
Links - 14th October 2019 (1)
Russian family fleeing Swedish child welfare services granted asylum in Poland - "A father who sought refuge after escaping from Sweden to Poland with his three daughters will be allowed to remain in Poland, a Warsaw court decided... Danis Lisov, a Russian immigrant to Sweden, arrived in Warsaw earlier this week. During the airport control, it was discovered that his three daughters are considered abducted by Sweden’s authorities. The man decided on his course of action after his children were placed in a foster family by Swedish child welfare services... the 12, 6, and 4 year old lived with their parents in Sweden for years. The Swedish child welfare services began to investigate the family when the mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and placed in a treatment facility. Two years ago, it was decided that the children should be placed in a foster family, 400 kilometres from their parent’s home. The father was not deprived of parental rights but the time he could see his daughters was limited to six hours a week.According to the family’s attorney, the fact that the children were placed in a Muslim family of Lebanese origin despite being raised in a Christian faith was also an important factor in Mr Lisov’s decision to escape Sweden"
What happens when people decide the state needs to "protect" children
The Screen - Posts - "The Swedish authorities seized three kids from a family after their mother’s schizophrenia worsened, even though the father was with them right there. They were then placed 400km away from the family home. Typical misandry from Sweden.
They then placed them with another family.
The Father then abducted them and ran off to Poland where the courts granted them asylum!"
Shorter version of the above
When The U.S. Government Tried To Replace Migrant Farmworkers With High Schoolers - "Students from across the country began showing up on farms in Texas and California at the beginning of June. Carter and his classmates were assigned to pick cantaloupes near Blythe, a small town on the Colorado River in the middle of California's Colorado Desert."
The Mystery of Florida's Cannonball-Eating Spanish Fort - "even after nearly two months of being shelled with cannonballs and gunfire, the fort’s walls wouldn’t give. In fact, they appeared to be “swallowing” the British cannonballs, which then became embedded within the stone. Precisely how the walls did this remained a mystery for the next three centuries.Normally, a cannonball creates long, deep cracks in stone that radiate out from the impact’s center, causing catastrophic damage to a structure. This was clearly not the case for the walls surrounding Castillo de San Marcos. Built from coquina—sedimentary rock formed from compressed shells of dead marine organisms—the walls suffered little damage from the British onslaught. As one Englishman described it, the rock “will not splinter but will give way to cannon ball as though you would stick a knife into cheese.”... although coquina looks more like sandstone, it behaves more like foam."
How Building Churches Out of Egg Whites Transformed Filipino Desserts - "“Local churches were built with egg whites.” As evangelizing Spanish colonists built churches across the islands, laborers used egg whites as an emulsifier in the concrete. “Food is in the foundations here,” Evangelista adds.As the well-attended Holy Rosary Church attests, this had a lasting influence on the country’s architecture and spiritual life. But its legacy is also on display in Filipino bakeries and home kitchens. Because what else is there to do with millions of leftover egg yolks but bake delicious desserts?... “The extensive use of egg white and eggshells brought about the ingenuity of the Filipino women who saw all these egg yolks being thrown in the river,” writes Lim-Castillo. “Recipes were created to make use of the egg yolks, like pan de San Nicolas, yema, tocino del cielo, leche flan, pastries, and tortas.”"
The campus-censorship hypocrites - "Campus censorship, a certain type of radical academic rushes to tell us, simply does not happen. Apparently, free speech is alive and well at a university near you and to suggest otherwise is ‘hysteria’ that fuels a moral panic ‘whipped up’ by a politically motivated minority intent on besmirching students and sullying hallowed institutions. Except, of course, when it’s not... Whether it is a talk by Murray or a book on revolutionary ethics, whether it is Prevent or students, the language of censorship is the same: danger, harm, risk, safety, protection. Yet only one of these incidents prompted an Observer column and outrage from academics themselves. Lecturers and students’ union officials have been quick to denounce the inappropriate use of Prevent. What happened at Reading has rightly been described as ‘hugely concerning’ and an example of anti-terrorism legislation ‘being applied far beyond its purview’. But where is the outcry about what happened at Oxford?Where is the outrage from academics at students threatening to close down a debate? Where are the lecturers queueing up to be quoted in the Guardian expressing disgust at the censorious student members of the LGBTQ campaign? Why get angry at one but not the other? Those determined to present campus censorship as a figment of the imagination like to get pedantic. Calling for a speaker to be No Platformed is not an attack on free speech, they say; it is actually a demonstration of free speech in action – it is a form of protest. It is only censorship, they say, if students are actually prevented from reading a book or hearing a speaker – and with YouTube and social media students can still encounter a range of ideas, just not in the campus Safe Space. And, despite calls for No Platforming, speakers are rarely banned — they simply withdraw, which was what Murray did.Well, if we are going to be pedantic, Murray did not get to speak. Those who wanted to hear what she had to say – perhaps even to challenge her – were denied the opportunity. On the other hand, students can still read Geras’s book, it just comes with a warning."
The truth about the ethnicity pay gap - "the two highest-earning ethnic groups in Britain are people of Chinese or of Indian origin. Their average hourly pay, of £15.75 and £13.47 an hour respectively, even exceeds that earned by those in the white British majority (£12.03 an hour). Meanwhile, the two ethnic groups reporting the lowest levels of pay are those of Pakistani and of Bangladeshi origin (£10 and £9.60 an hour respectively)... There are some very real and problematic cultural barriers that are holding back Britain’s Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities, and ‘discrimination’ is often used to deflect from these issues. Historically, British Indians also faced discrimination. They had difficulty obtaining employment commensurate with their formal qualifications and were often overlooked in favour of similarly qualified white Brits. But what we might call the ‘British Indian’ socioeconomic model has, over time, as the ONS figures suggest, shown to be a recipe for economic success. Among British Indians, there is a high proportion of two-income households. These are streamlined family units, in which values of academic excellence, economic self-sufficiency and entrepreneurialism predominate. British Indians are also positive about integration and have developed important links with mainstream British society. Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why the British public holds such favourable views towards migrants of Indian origin, compared with migrants from other South Asian countries."
Presumably white people are so racist that they're able to distinguish those of Indian origin from those of Pakistani/Bangladeshi origin
Poll finds more favourable attitudes towards Indian immigrants than Pakistanis and Bangladeshis – why? - "British Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities have historically ranked highly when measuring average fertility rates by ethnicity in the UK. The fertility rate for British Indians is noticeably lower in comparison.What this data collectively suggests is that due to superior occupational status, a higher proportion of two-income households and substantially lower fertility rates, British Indian households are far less likely to be dependent on welfare... Bangladeshis and Pakistanis living in the UK have far higher levels of residential and social segregation than Indians. They are more likely to be part of social and economic networks which are predominantly made out of people from their own ethnic group. This is partly down to being occupationally segregated in the transport and hospitality sectors... A substantial proportion of UK Indians are either Hindu or Sikh. Britain’s Bangladeshis and Pakistanis are nearly all Sunni Muslim. And the 2010 data shows that UK Bangladeshis and Pakistanis are more likely to identify more with their faith (when traded-off against British identification)... Major cases of child sexual exploitation in places such as Rochdale and Rotherham are unlikely to have helped. The YouGov figures suggest that economic performance, social relations and religio-cultural values can all influence perceptions on immigration... considering the group trends in socioeconomic status and sociocultural integration, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Bangladeshi and Pakistani immigrants are viewed more negatively than those of Indian origin. The question remains what to do about it.The state does have a role to play in improving social and economic outcomes. But frank discussions need to be held within certain groups over socioeconomic progress and sociocultural modernisation. And their place in Britain’s liberal democracy."
Uganda: Forty Years After Idi Amin Expelled Asians - "Forty years ago this August, the brutal dictator of Uganda, General Idi Amin, ordered the deportation of the country's Asian population, which mostly comprised Indian Gujaratis who had lived in the East African country for more than 100 years.The order by Amin in 1972 created a diplomatic crisis involving Uganda, India and Great Britain (where most of the Asians eventually emigrated to).Indians had often been the target of resentment and violence throughout their sojourns in southern Africa. Indeed, as reasons for his expulsion order, Amin cited that the Ugandan Indian community were "bloodsuckers" had exploited the local economy and refused to integrate with black African people after a century in the country...
All assets were confiscated, there were army checkpoints on all major roads, any gold, jewelry or money Asians were carrying with them was taken. Asians were also unable to access their bank accounts, so they landed in Britain without a penny to their name. A few of the wealthier Ugandan Asian families probably held foreign bank accounts, but the vast majority would have arrived in the UK with nothing.
IB TIMES: Amin claimed that Indians in Uganda were dominating and exploiting the economy at the expense of local Africans. Is there any validity to this assertion?
SAMANI: Indians did not really have any power to marginalize African Ugandans. They were operating under rules set by a colonial government. The economic segregation primarily arose due to 'know how' and trading instinct of the Indians. Even when trading regulations did not favor the Indians, they still prospered. It was mainly politicians of Amin's persuasion that claimed the Indian community exploited Ugandans... Indians generally employed African Ugandans, and from what I understand, they did not really socialize. You could say the Indians were isolated, but every community in Uganda socialized and mixed only amongst its own people - the Indians were not unique in behaving in this way. This also applied to Ugandan tribes and Europeans...
IB TIMES: After the Indians left, did Uganda's economy collapse?
SAMANI: From 1971 to the National Resistance Movement (NRM) Party's adoption of free market reforms in 1987, the Ugandan economy fell deep into a crisis under the strain of civil wars, the nationalization of certain industries and the expulsion of the Asians. The NRM overthrew Amin in 1979. The instability of the economy between 1971 and 1987 led to the rise of the informal sector. By 1987, President Yoweri Museveni had inherited an economy that suffered the poorest growth rate in Africa."
Strange how despite being penniless the Indians from Uganda found success in the UK
Finally, a Democrat worth supporting - "The liberal establishment is so scared of Tulsi Gabbard that they’ve convinced themselves she’s an unwitting stooge of Russia, being pushed by Putin’s evil online robots to destroy America from within. Yes, in the febrile, conspiracist, Russian-bot-obsessed brains of the increasingly unhinged liberal elite, Ms Gabbard, the Democratic congresswoman for Hawaii and easily the most impressive 2020 presidential candidate, is the fave of those dastardly bots whose ultimate aim is to screw over the USA. Following this week’s Democratic candidates’ debate in Detroit, in which Gabbard made mincemeat of the California Democrat Kamala Harris on the issue of judicial authoritarianism, an actual New York Times writer said: ‘Beware the Russian bots and their promotion of Tulsi Gabbard and sowing racial discord, especially around Kamala Harris.’ This idea that Gabbard – the most principled critic of military interventionism to have emerged in the US mainstream in decades – is in the ascendant because Russian bots and other evil online forces are doing her bidding is becoming widespread among centrists. Newsweek columnist Seth Abramson says ‘there’s a concerted far-right effort (possibly involving foreign actors) to bolster Tulsi Gabbard’. He based this nuts claim on the fact that, during the Detroit debate, Ms Gabbard was the most-searched name online in every state in the US. Erm, isn’t it possible that viewers who weren’t entirely sure who Ms Gabbard is, but who were impressed by her articulate takedown of Harris and other candidates, took to the web to find out more? Surely that’s a more rational explanation than the idea that a Russian troll army and loads of fascists are on the web promoting Gabbard as chief wrecker of the United States... Russophobic conspiracy theories play a really important role for dazed Hillary-era centrists. They are now the main means through which these people try to make sense of a political world that no longer conforms to their tastes or their ideology. So just as they used the Russian-bots rubbish to explain why Trump beat Hillary, now they use it to explain why a candidate who, horror of horrors, is opposed to US military intervention overseas is proving popular with viewers and voters. Given that Gabbard’s worldview runs so counter to theirs – on war, on free speech, even on identity politics – the only way they can explain her presence in politics is as a result of foreign, fascistic meddling. That tells us far more about their own political arrogance than it does about Gabbard’s Russian fanbase... If Gabbard horrifies the old warmongering elites, she worries, at least, the new woke elites. It is notable that unlike other young female political representatives, most notably the so-called ‘squad’, Gabbard is rarely cheered for her background. She was the first-ever Hindu and Samoan America to enter Congress. She’s the first Hindu to run for president. But you’ll be waiting a long time for the kind of people who never stop going on about the fact Ilhan Omar was one of the first two Muslim women to be elected to Congress to congratulate Gabbard on her identity achievements. Not that Gabbard would want praise on that basis. Indeed, she’s a critic of both identity politics and political correctness, which is precisely why the woke are so iffy about her. She lists political correctness alongside overreaching government and Big Tech as one of the great threats to freedom of speech in 21st-century America. And she says of identity politics that it is ‘being used to kind of tear people apart’ when we should be ‘remembering and recognising what unites us’."
'Trump Is Being Influenced By The Russians!' Screams Communist | The Babylon Bee - "a self-identified Communist screamed, "Trump is being influenced by the Russians!" while wearing his favorite hammer-and-sickle hat... "It's really scary to see how much influence Russia has on our country," said the man who wants our country to be exactly like Russia during the Cold War. "We need to stay true to what makes America America and not let the ideas, philosophies, and governmental policies of other countries influence our elections.""
What happens when people decide the state needs to "protect" children
The Screen - Posts - "The Swedish authorities seized three kids from a family after their mother’s schizophrenia worsened, even though the father was with them right there. They were then placed 400km away from the family home. Typical misandry from Sweden.
They then placed them with another family.
The Father then abducted them and ran off to Poland where the courts granted them asylum!"
Shorter version of the above
When The U.S. Government Tried To Replace Migrant Farmworkers With High Schoolers - "Students from across the country began showing up on farms in Texas and California at the beginning of June. Carter and his classmates were assigned to pick cantaloupes near Blythe, a small town on the Colorado River in the middle of California's Colorado Desert."
The Mystery of Florida's Cannonball-Eating Spanish Fort - "even after nearly two months of being shelled with cannonballs and gunfire, the fort’s walls wouldn’t give. In fact, they appeared to be “swallowing” the British cannonballs, which then became embedded within the stone. Precisely how the walls did this remained a mystery for the next three centuries.Normally, a cannonball creates long, deep cracks in stone that radiate out from the impact’s center, causing catastrophic damage to a structure. This was clearly not the case for the walls surrounding Castillo de San Marcos. Built from coquina—sedimentary rock formed from compressed shells of dead marine organisms—the walls suffered little damage from the British onslaught. As one Englishman described it, the rock “will not splinter but will give way to cannon ball as though you would stick a knife into cheese.”... although coquina looks more like sandstone, it behaves more like foam."
How Building Churches Out of Egg Whites Transformed Filipino Desserts - "“Local churches were built with egg whites.” As evangelizing Spanish colonists built churches across the islands, laborers used egg whites as an emulsifier in the concrete. “Food is in the foundations here,” Evangelista adds.As the well-attended Holy Rosary Church attests, this had a lasting influence on the country’s architecture and spiritual life. But its legacy is also on display in Filipino bakeries and home kitchens. Because what else is there to do with millions of leftover egg yolks but bake delicious desserts?... “The extensive use of egg white and eggshells brought about the ingenuity of the Filipino women who saw all these egg yolks being thrown in the river,” writes Lim-Castillo. “Recipes were created to make use of the egg yolks, like pan de San Nicolas, yema, tocino del cielo, leche flan, pastries, and tortas.”"
The campus-censorship hypocrites - "Campus censorship, a certain type of radical academic rushes to tell us, simply does not happen. Apparently, free speech is alive and well at a university near you and to suggest otherwise is ‘hysteria’ that fuels a moral panic ‘whipped up’ by a politically motivated minority intent on besmirching students and sullying hallowed institutions. Except, of course, when it’s not... Whether it is a talk by Murray or a book on revolutionary ethics, whether it is Prevent or students, the language of censorship is the same: danger, harm, risk, safety, protection. Yet only one of these incidents prompted an Observer column and outrage from academics themselves. Lecturers and students’ union officials have been quick to denounce the inappropriate use of Prevent. What happened at Reading has rightly been described as ‘hugely concerning’ and an example of anti-terrorism legislation ‘being applied far beyond its purview’. But where is the outcry about what happened at Oxford?Where is the outrage from academics at students threatening to close down a debate? Where are the lecturers queueing up to be quoted in the Guardian expressing disgust at the censorious student members of the LGBTQ campaign? Why get angry at one but not the other? Those determined to present campus censorship as a figment of the imagination like to get pedantic. Calling for a speaker to be No Platformed is not an attack on free speech, they say; it is actually a demonstration of free speech in action – it is a form of protest. It is only censorship, they say, if students are actually prevented from reading a book or hearing a speaker – and with YouTube and social media students can still encounter a range of ideas, just not in the campus Safe Space. And, despite calls for No Platforming, speakers are rarely banned — they simply withdraw, which was what Murray did.Well, if we are going to be pedantic, Murray did not get to speak. Those who wanted to hear what she had to say – perhaps even to challenge her – were denied the opportunity. On the other hand, students can still read Geras’s book, it just comes with a warning."
The truth about the ethnicity pay gap - "the two highest-earning ethnic groups in Britain are people of Chinese or of Indian origin. Their average hourly pay, of £15.75 and £13.47 an hour respectively, even exceeds that earned by those in the white British majority (£12.03 an hour). Meanwhile, the two ethnic groups reporting the lowest levels of pay are those of Pakistani and of Bangladeshi origin (£10 and £9.60 an hour respectively)... There are some very real and problematic cultural barriers that are holding back Britain’s Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities, and ‘discrimination’ is often used to deflect from these issues. Historically, British Indians also faced discrimination. They had difficulty obtaining employment commensurate with their formal qualifications and were often overlooked in favour of similarly qualified white Brits. But what we might call the ‘British Indian’ socioeconomic model has, over time, as the ONS figures suggest, shown to be a recipe for economic success. Among British Indians, there is a high proportion of two-income households. These are streamlined family units, in which values of academic excellence, economic self-sufficiency and entrepreneurialism predominate. British Indians are also positive about integration and have developed important links with mainstream British society. Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why the British public holds such favourable views towards migrants of Indian origin, compared with migrants from other South Asian countries."
Presumably white people are so racist that they're able to distinguish those of Indian origin from those of Pakistani/Bangladeshi origin
Poll finds more favourable attitudes towards Indian immigrants than Pakistanis and Bangladeshis – why? - "British Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities have historically ranked highly when measuring average fertility rates by ethnicity in the UK. The fertility rate for British Indians is noticeably lower in comparison.What this data collectively suggests is that due to superior occupational status, a higher proportion of two-income households and substantially lower fertility rates, British Indian households are far less likely to be dependent on welfare... Bangladeshis and Pakistanis living in the UK have far higher levels of residential and social segregation than Indians. They are more likely to be part of social and economic networks which are predominantly made out of people from their own ethnic group. This is partly down to being occupationally segregated in the transport and hospitality sectors... A substantial proportion of UK Indians are either Hindu or Sikh. Britain’s Bangladeshis and Pakistanis are nearly all Sunni Muslim. And the 2010 data shows that UK Bangladeshis and Pakistanis are more likely to identify more with their faith (when traded-off against British identification)... Major cases of child sexual exploitation in places such as Rochdale and Rotherham are unlikely to have helped. The YouGov figures suggest that economic performance, social relations and religio-cultural values can all influence perceptions on immigration... considering the group trends in socioeconomic status and sociocultural integration, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Bangladeshi and Pakistani immigrants are viewed more negatively than those of Indian origin. The question remains what to do about it.The state does have a role to play in improving social and economic outcomes. But frank discussions need to be held within certain groups over socioeconomic progress and sociocultural modernisation. And their place in Britain’s liberal democracy."
Uganda: Forty Years After Idi Amin Expelled Asians - "Forty years ago this August, the brutal dictator of Uganda, General Idi Amin, ordered the deportation of the country's Asian population, which mostly comprised Indian Gujaratis who had lived in the East African country for more than 100 years.The order by Amin in 1972 created a diplomatic crisis involving Uganda, India and Great Britain (where most of the Asians eventually emigrated to).Indians had often been the target of resentment and violence throughout their sojourns in southern Africa. Indeed, as reasons for his expulsion order, Amin cited that the Ugandan Indian community were "bloodsuckers" had exploited the local economy and refused to integrate with black African people after a century in the country...
All assets were confiscated, there were army checkpoints on all major roads, any gold, jewelry or money Asians were carrying with them was taken. Asians were also unable to access their bank accounts, so they landed in Britain without a penny to their name. A few of the wealthier Ugandan Asian families probably held foreign bank accounts, but the vast majority would have arrived in the UK with nothing.
IB TIMES: Amin claimed that Indians in Uganda were dominating and exploiting the economy at the expense of local Africans. Is there any validity to this assertion?
SAMANI: Indians did not really have any power to marginalize African Ugandans. They were operating under rules set by a colonial government. The economic segregation primarily arose due to 'know how' and trading instinct of the Indians. Even when trading regulations did not favor the Indians, they still prospered. It was mainly politicians of Amin's persuasion that claimed the Indian community exploited Ugandans... Indians generally employed African Ugandans, and from what I understand, they did not really socialize. You could say the Indians were isolated, but every community in Uganda socialized and mixed only amongst its own people - the Indians were not unique in behaving in this way. This also applied to Ugandan tribes and Europeans...
IB TIMES: After the Indians left, did Uganda's economy collapse?
SAMANI: From 1971 to the National Resistance Movement (NRM) Party's adoption of free market reforms in 1987, the Ugandan economy fell deep into a crisis under the strain of civil wars, the nationalization of certain industries and the expulsion of the Asians. The NRM overthrew Amin in 1979. The instability of the economy between 1971 and 1987 led to the rise of the informal sector. By 1987, President Yoweri Museveni had inherited an economy that suffered the poorest growth rate in Africa."
Strange how despite being penniless the Indians from Uganda found success in the UK
Finally, a Democrat worth supporting - "The liberal establishment is so scared of Tulsi Gabbard that they’ve convinced themselves she’s an unwitting stooge of Russia, being pushed by Putin’s evil online robots to destroy America from within. Yes, in the febrile, conspiracist, Russian-bot-obsessed brains of the increasingly unhinged liberal elite, Ms Gabbard, the Democratic congresswoman for Hawaii and easily the most impressive 2020 presidential candidate, is the fave of those dastardly bots whose ultimate aim is to screw over the USA. Following this week’s Democratic candidates’ debate in Detroit, in which Gabbard made mincemeat of the California Democrat Kamala Harris on the issue of judicial authoritarianism, an actual New York Times writer said: ‘Beware the Russian bots and their promotion of Tulsi Gabbard and sowing racial discord, especially around Kamala Harris.’ This idea that Gabbard – the most principled critic of military interventionism to have emerged in the US mainstream in decades – is in the ascendant because Russian bots and other evil online forces are doing her bidding is becoming widespread among centrists. Newsweek columnist Seth Abramson says ‘there’s a concerted far-right effort (possibly involving foreign actors) to bolster Tulsi Gabbard’. He based this nuts claim on the fact that, during the Detroit debate, Ms Gabbard was the most-searched name online in every state in the US. Erm, isn’t it possible that viewers who weren’t entirely sure who Ms Gabbard is, but who were impressed by her articulate takedown of Harris and other candidates, took to the web to find out more? Surely that’s a more rational explanation than the idea that a Russian troll army and loads of fascists are on the web promoting Gabbard as chief wrecker of the United States... Russophobic conspiracy theories play a really important role for dazed Hillary-era centrists. They are now the main means through which these people try to make sense of a political world that no longer conforms to their tastes or their ideology. So just as they used the Russian-bots rubbish to explain why Trump beat Hillary, now they use it to explain why a candidate who, horror of horrors, is opposed to US military intervention overseas is proving popular with viewers and voters. Given that Gabbard’s worldview runs so counter to theirs – on war, on free speech, even on identity politics – the only way they can explain her presence in politics is as a result of foreign, fascistic meddling. That tells us far more about their own political arrogance than it does about Gabbard’s Russian fanbase... If Gabbard horrifies the old warmongering elites, she worries, at least, the new woke elites. It is notable that unlike other young female political representatives, most notably the so-called ‘squad’, Gabbard is rarely cheered for her background. She was the first-ever Hindu and Samoan America to enter Congress. She’s the first Hindu to run for president. But you’ll be waiting a long time for the kind of people who never stop going on about the fact Ilhan Omar was one of the first two Muslim women to be elected to Congress to congratulate Gabbard on her identity achievements. Not that Gabbard would want praise on that basis. Indeed, she’s a critic of both identity politics and political correctness, which is precisely why the woke are so iffy about her. She lists political correctness alongside overreaching government and Big Tech as one of the great threats to freedom of speech in 21st-century America. And she says of identity politics that it is ‘being used to kind of tear people apart’ when we should be ‘remembering and recognising what unites us’."
'Trump Is Being Influenced By The Russians!' Screams Communist | The Babylon Bee - "a self-identified Communist screamed, "Trump is being influenced by the Russians!" while wearing his favorite hammer-and-sickle hat... "It's really scary to see how much influence Russia has on our country," said the man who wants our country to be exactly like Russia during the Cold War. "We need to stay true to what makes America America and not let the ideas, philosophies, and governmental policies of other countries influence our elections.""
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