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Saturday, February 25, 2023

War in the air: everything you wanted to know

War in the air: everything you wanted to know | HistoryExtra

"'The Royal Flying Corps flying to France in August 1914 took gin with them. London gin. When they got to France, they expected the French to have tonic. They didn't. They needed something fizzy. So they added champagne to the gin. That created one of the first cocktails. Probably the first cocktail ever made in war, the French 75. And they called it that because all the time their sleep was being disturbed by the French 75 millimeter artillery pieces that were firing near the airfield.'...

‘There's often the common perception of aviation being quite chivalric, the gentlemen of the sky, how true is this perception?’

‘I think initially, there was very much knights of the air. They're very much, there will be combat over the trenches. British officers taking out their Webley pistol, taking shots at a German because the main aim was to stop the Germans spotting aircraft reporting for their guns, the fall of shots so they could correct their aim and hit the targets. So you've got the spotting war… there was certainly a lot of, and it happened again, the Second World War. Basically there are very few people out there who will want to kill when there is no advantage in killing. So, there were times when when pilots would see the other guy was either wounded or out of ammunition. He wasn't going to affect anything. Let him go home and live another day. And that I think, became a very public perception of aero, aerial era warfare in 1914, 15. And then the Germans started to take it seriously. A guy called Baron von Richthofen, we all know as the Red Baron made famous, of course, by the brilliant Snoopy cartoons, he takes it dead seriously. He's out there to kill enemy pilots and observers in their aeroplanes and bring them down both for personal glory, and also for the war effort for Imperial Germany. So he wants Imperial Germany to win. 

And we start to find, remembering then that pilots and aircrew in flying machines in the First World War had no parachutes. You are either condemning somebody to about five minutes of knowing they're going to die because the aircraft is falling from the sky, or the aircraft is consumed with fire. I mean, my great uncle flew in the end of the First World War, and carried a pistol with him not to shoot anyone but to shoot himself should the aircraft catch on fire. He would rather he said have had a bullet through the head than to have burned to death. So it's a nasty business. We shouldn't get too carried away with knights of the air. There is no doubt there is glory’...

‘When did women start to play a role in air combat?’...

‘If you're talking about military operations from the air, I think probably it's the black witches of the of Soviet frontal aviation in 1943, 44, the sort of Stalingrad, Kursk sort of time. So the black witches are flying training biplanes, and they're carrying bombs, and their job is to keep the Germans awake at night. So they're flying quietly, slowly, and they're just dropping bombs. And they're making a noise and they’re keeping the Germans awake, particularly German aviators, because when you're flying, you need every part of your resource. The Soviets realized that this was a good use of people. They had lots of volunteers, the aircraft they were using were very simple to fly. It didn't take very long to train these, these women to fly the aircraft. But it isn't really until you get much later into, even into the 1990s that you get women learning to fly, flying fast jets, being operationally qualified to fly them’...

‘Dogfights grab the public imagination, don't they? Very Hollywood… Some of the most successful pilots didn't dogfight. They just went in, chose a target, fired, flew out again, regrouped, came back and did passing shoots. If you start to get into a dogfight, it's gonna use up your fuel and your ammunition. It's going to make a, take a huge strain on you because you're pulling four or five G's, five times the weight of gravity as you come round. So if you're 100 kilos, you're weighing 500 kilos. The aeroplane isn't necessarily stressed for it. And what people I think don't understand is in the Second World War for example, we hear and think a lot about Battle of Britain dogfights and there's a dogfi-, you see wonderful pictures of contrails at 20,000 feet of aircraft in dogfights. Yes, that did happen a lot of the time, but actually, the aircraft that were being used, both the Messerschmitts on the German side and the Spitfires and Hurricanes in the Royal Air Force actually weren't designed for dogfighting. They were designed as bomber destroyers. So if you think back to 1934, when the Spitfire is specified, the main enemy has stopped being France and is now Nazi Germany… German fighters will not reach Britain. Our fighters will not reach Germany. So what we're after are bomber destroyers, which is why Spitfires and Hurricanes have eight machine guns in order to shoot down bomber aircraft... So the dog fight in the First World War is a lot more common...

Most of the air fighting that would be done today, and as we've seen in places like Syria, we've seen with the Israelis who are active a lot of the time, it’s missile engagement and it’s at range. Rarely do close to eus guns. There probably hasn't been a gun versus gun engagement since, Yom Kippur war in 1973. Or the War of the Football Players in Central America. That was two World War Two types of fighter, the Corsair versus the Mustang in in dogfights because one side accused the other side of cheating in a football match, which is a really interesting way of settling that, you know, so dogfighting. Yeah, First World War, a bit in the Second World War. In Korea, jets, MIG vs vs. Saber, but actually not as widespread as people might think...

[On friendly fire] Day three of the Second World War… the Brits have got radar for the first time. Picks up an aeroplane that's coming in from the direction of Germany. So they scramble, not a section of fighters - four - but a squadron of fighters - 12 - to intercept. Everybody wants to be the first person to shoot down a German aeroplane in the second World War. As they get close they discover it's a British aircraft that's lost… they recover as it's called the Intercepting Squadron, they, they come to turn around and land. Radar then sees these aircraft returning and thinks it's a massive raid. So then they scramble lots of aeroplanes… all these fighter bases around London believe the first raid is coming from Germany. Everybody expected Germany to bomb London on day one of the war because that's the popular myth of aerial bombardment. And as a result, there's a dogfight between Spitfires and Hurricanes, it isn't much of a dogfight, actually, because the Hurricanes realize that they're Spitfires. The two Spitfire pilots involved don't realize that they're Hurricanes, and they shoot down sadly, kill one aircraft. So RAF Fighter Command step, starts the war with a negative score sheet, having shot down one of its own aeroplanes... In both Gulf Wars, the first British casualties are caused by American aircraft, shooting up British convoys. Because the Americans are badly trained in recognition of friendly vehicles...

We've got parachutes for people who are in in balloons to jump out should their balloon be attacked because balloons filled with hydrogen catch fire. So, but what about putting them into, giving them to pilots? Oh, can't give them to pilots because pilots won't press home their attack. They'll they'll bail out rather than, lack of moral fiber" 

 

If you believe in burning the boats to motivate your troops, not giving pilots parachutes makes sense

Links - 25th February 2023 (2 - China's 'Peaceful' Rise)

Chinese President Xi confronts Trudeau for sharing details of G20 conversation - "Xi then added that there could be consequences for Trudeau — but he did not say what those might be. The translator did not convey this remark to the prime minister, but Global News confirmed the translation with three Mandarin speakers.  “It’s this last phrase which has a threatening aspect to it, the way it was phrased in Chinese,” said Charles Burton, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, who speaks Mandarin and previously worked at the Canadian embassy in China. “He normally leaves those kinds of menacing statements to members of the foreign ministry who seem to specialize in this kind of thing.”  The phrase Xi used, Burton added, is the kind of thing “a mafia thug might say to someone to intimidate them.”... “I think he’s angry about the suggestion that China has been interfering in Canadian internal affairs by funding illegally funding candidates for our parliament in the 2019 election,” he said.  “This is a very sensitive issue for China, because China consistently accuses the West of interfering in their affairs by raising the human rights issue. So it was a very unpleasant interaction.”"

D.Va's Thot Patrol - Posts | Facebook - "Blizzard tried so hard to please China only for them to end up exiting the Chinese market in disgrace LMFAO, hope all that boot licking when the Hong Kong scandal happened was worth it Blizz. Huge L."

BOMBSHELL: Biden's DOJ Drops Anti-Spy China Initiative — Because Racism - "In 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions started the China Initiative to counter threats of Chinese espionage and corporate secret-stealing. In the three years that the successful Chinese initiative was operational, the DOJ had accrued almost 60 cases involving Chinese spying, hacking, and lying about grant applications.  This insane decision comes shortly after FBI Director Christopher Wray declared that China was “more brazen, more damaging than ever before.”... What if the FBI stopped chasing midwestern grannies who walked into the Capitol to take dangerous, insurrectionary selfies and spent those resources to intercept Chinese spooks? Nah, better to leave those Chinese spies alone so that someone can’t cry “RACISM!” Never mind those aforementioned cases against alleged Chinese spying; the DOJ had to drop charges last summer against six people in regard to their research grants and their alleged ties to China. Some people began to scream “BIAS!” Protestors gathered outside the DOJ headquarters last summer and complained that the China Initiative unfairly targeted Chinese people... First, Gen. Mark Milley called China and kindly told them he would give them notice if Trump, for some reason, decided to attack the CCP. China now seems to own our DOJ as well. Well done, Joe. Talk about an insurrection"
It's good to slam Russia, because they're white

Facebook - "There are many obituaries of Jiang Zemin being written. Read them.  And then you will understand why I say that criticism of the current PRC leadership, is not criticism of the PRC, or even the CCP.  Yes, China and the CCP have achieved a lot in the last 30 years , but most of it was achieved BEFORE the current leaders took over. You know the hundreds of millions lifted out of poverty? Well that started under Jiang Zemin. You know how China grew at a ferocious pace, steadily catching up with USA? Jiang Zemin. The tech giants like Alibaba , Baidu , Tencent that became the envy of the world? Started under Jiang Zemin.  Do you remember a time when PRC was actually LIKED by people around the world ? Jiang Zemin... The current leader has presided over an era of slowing economic growth, destruction of entrepreneurship, and failing international relations."

Huawei, once Samsung's rival, may be deleting China protest videos - "Chinese social media users cited by @MsMelChen are reportedly claiming that their Huawei phones are automatically deleting videos of the protests in China. It’s unclear if these deleted videos were stored locally or in the cloud. But if the reports are accurate, Huawei might be able to do this by leveraging timestamps and geolocation data stored in these videos."

This is What Chinese Foreign Interference in Singapore Looks Like - "In October 2016, General Jin Yinan, a senior advisor to China’s People’s Liberation Army (P.L.A.), lambasted Singapore “for meddling in things that did not concern it” on Chinese National Radio. According to him, the city-state had to “pay the price for seriously damaging China’s interests”, and as such it was “inevitable for China to strike back at Singapore, and not just on the public opinion front”... Less than two months later, nine Singapore Armed Forces’ Terrex armoured vehicles were impounded by Hong Kong Customs on their way back from a training exercise in Taiwan... While this was happening, reports suggest that a disinformation campaign hit Singapore, with many dormant social media accounts coming alive to spread pro-China narratives. The experience seems to have profoundly affected Singaporean authorities, who started talking about the need for anti-foreign interference legislation in 2019. The process came to end last month, when the government introduced the Foreign Interference Countermeasures Act (FICA), a law that aims to counter “hostile information campaigns”. While the government insists that FICA is not aimed at any specific country and that “there are no angels” in the game of foreign interference, analysts and foreign news outlets have suggested FICA was passed in direct response to Beijing’s alleged cyberespionage activities... For Singapore, the only Chinese majority country outside of ‘greater China’, there is a lingering belief that Beijing views the island as a ‘Chinese country’. “Any experienced Singaporean diplomat should know that China, despite our consistent denials, persists in referring to Singapore as a Chinese country. In regarding Singapore as a Chinese country, the expectation may have been that we would naturally take China’s part, irrespective of our own national interests”, said Bilahari Kausikan... China asserted a pressure campaign on Singapore from 2015 to 2018. An approximate cause of this downturn in relations could be attributed to Singapore’s stance on the South China Sea. In general terms, Beijing expected Singaporean leaders to support Chinese claims in the region, or at the very least stay quiet. This was especially the case, considering that Singapore had become the ASEAN country coordinator for China in 2015. The role entailed Singapore coordinating the positions of ASEAN member states with respect to issues on China. Since Beijing viewed Singapore as a ‘Chinese country’, it seemed to have expected Singapore to coordinate the regional position on behalf of and in favour of China – a complete reversal of the role.  Defying China’s expectations, the island-state advocated for the problem to be resolved in accordance to international law, while also claiming that it does not pick sides as it’s a non-claimant state... the Global Times – a hyper-nationalistic Chinese newspaper viewed to be part of the Chinese government’s propaganda apparatus – accused Singapore of having raised the South China Sea issue at a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Venezuela. In response, Singapore’s ambassador to China issued a statement claiming that the article was a fabrication, and that the Singapore delegation did not raise the issue at the conference. Nonetheless, the Global Times and other C.C.P. affiliated newspapers continued publishing articles accusing Singapore of interfering in things that did not concern it...
In response to these perceived slights, Beijing is alleged to have waged a sophisticated and multi-pronged influence operation on Singapore. According to Mr. Kausikan and the French military’s Institute for Strategic Research (ISREM), the influence operation perpetuated five weaponised narratives about Singapore:
Singapore is just a small country, which cannot afford to be arrogant and to alienate the Chinese giant
As a ‘Chinese country’, Singapore should explain China’s position on the South China Sea and other issues to the rest of ASEAN. Appeals to ethnic pride were also made, urging a “fatalistic acceptance of the inevitability and desirability of a Chinese identity for multiracial Singapore”.
The U.S. is in continual decline, while China is rising and the next regional superpower. Singapore might as well ally with China and be on the right side of history.
Without Lee Kuan Yew, the current leadership does not know how to deal with China. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, underestimates the importance of the relationship with Beijing and is too close to the United States.
Singapore has no claims in the South China Sea, as such it should not be supporting the U.S. or taking sides on the issue...
These narratives were reportedly spread through multiple means. Businessmen, academics and others with interest in China were given broad hints that their interests might suffer unless Singapore was more accommodating of Chinese interests...   On social media, Singaporeans were bombarded with YouTube videos in Mandarin parroting the same, aforementioned narratives. There were also numerous pro-China messages that were being forwarded through WeChat and WhatsApp.  More traditional forms of espionage were also used. In August 2017, Huang Jing, an academic who was the director of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy’s Centre on Asia and Globalisation, was accused by the Ministry of Home Affairs “of being a an agent of influence of a foreign country” and was told to leave Singapore...  the massive 2018 SingHealth hack, which saw the theft of the medical records of 1.5 million patients, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s, might have been in response to the Huang Jing affair. The objective may have been to find Kompromat (compromising material) on the Prime Minister as blackmail – but the attackers discovered nothing. All of this was in addition to more explicit forms of diplomatic pressure, asserted through the seizure of the Singaporean armoured vehicles in Hong Kong and exclusion of the city-state’s representatives in some Belt-and-Road forums. Being a civilizational state, the People’s Republic of China is the embodiment of thousands of years of Chinese culture and history. As such, Beijing can effectively appeal to the ethnic pride of Chinese people outside of the mainland. In fact, according to a 2018 U.S. Congressional study, this seems to have become part of China’s foreign policy...  if Beijing succeeds in making Chinese-Singaporeans believe that the island should be ruled in accordance to the wishes of ethnically Chinese people, racial minorities in Singapore would be at risk of exclusion, or worse, oppression... Singapore’s response to these influence operations have been nuanced, albeit understated.      While cases of foreign interference are sometimes publicly revealed, Singapore does not explicitly name perpetrators...       Intentional or not, enough secondary details are released by the Singaporean government to allow academics, journalists and experts to piece together the identity of perpetrators... By allowing journalists and academics to reveal the identity of perpetrators, Singapore retains plausible deniability, whilst indirectly informing its population of the risks it faces. This could also serve the purpose of a signalling mechanism – showing the offending country that it is aware of the operation and who is behind it.       Though Singapore does not escalate these situations by naming and shaming, it also does not seem to reverse course or appease the countries conducting influence operations... For now, a vast majority of Singaporeans are unaware that they were potentially at the receiving end of an influence operation. “Our people haven’t even begun to realise what the problem is, and the nature of the problem,” said Minister K. Shanmugam in parliament during the FICA debate. While part of this can be attributed to the government’s refusal to officially acknowledge these operations, the population’s low interest in foreign or even political affairs could also be blamed. The importance of this knowledge cannot be understated.  Nothing makes an influence operation less effective than knowing that you are being subjected to it"

Chinese embassy slams ex-S’pore diplomat Bilahari for ‘misinterpreting and smearing’ China’s political system - "Asked for his response to the Chinese embassy’s criticism, Mr Bilahari, who chairs the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore, told TODAY: “What else could they say? All Chinese diplomats are under pressure to respond to President Xi’s instruction to assert China’s narrative.” He added that the embassy did not address any substantive point that he made.  “Instead, they raise arguments against points I did not make, which is quite typical. It is not something I can take seriously.”"

Is the U.S. Really Less Corrupt Than China? - Freakonomics - "Yuen Yuen ANG: The best way to understand China’s political system is that it is a corrupt meritocracy... Corruption in China is still of an illegal form. But corruption in [the US] has become so legalized and institutionalized, it’s hard to say that it’s “corrupt.” Some people would be really offended by the word...
I think there are many wonderful things about America. But one striking feature is the judgmentalism, and I think it has to do with a kind of narrative of America being this chosen country, to be this beacon of freedom and justice around the world. In other parts of the world, people don’t think of their country in these grand, chosen terms. This is actually quite unique to the construction of the American identity...
“Elegant bribery” means forms of bribery that became more elegant and sophisticated in China. So an example is instead of giving cash, to give works of art. Because art is valuable, but the value is subjective. And so in the event that a corrupt official is arrested, he could defend himself by saying, “Well, it’s just a useless piece of Van Gogh,” or something like that...
DUBNER: So, big question: Why has China’s economy prospered so much despite such high levels of corruption?
ANG: The short answer is that it has to do with the type of corruption that came to dominate in the economy. Growth-damaging forms of corruption were effectively contained over time, such as embezzlement, petty bribery. If you are talking about corruption in the form of extortion and embezzlement, that could never be good for any economic activity. But if you are talking about influence peddling, well, it might actually be really good for business...
ANG: The common definition of corruption is the abuse of public power for private gain, and that definition usually excludes legal forms of influence politics. My definition would be broader than that. I would say that whenever there is so much power that one is able to influence or dictate the rules of the games, you begin to have the potential for corruption. And that is a gray line. In the context of countries like the United States, advanced capitalist democracies, it’s really hard to pin down what are the boundaries of having excessive political influence... studies have found that levels of I.P.R. theft in China are not significantly higher than countries at its level of development...
Deng shifted the role of the central government from a dictator to a director. The reality is that it's best understood as an adaptive authoritarian government, that is in fact very decentralised. The most common misunderstanding is that China’s development success is a celebration of the merits of authoritarianism and of top-down control, and it is actually not true. But one very important qualifier is that after Xi Jinping became president in 2012, China has taken an authoritarian turn...
The ability of these local leaders to curtail low-level predatory corruption is also premised on the ability of this local government to pay its bureaucrats.
DUBNER: One of the facts that I found most astonishing in your book was what you call — with a bit of a wink — “profit-sharing,” this idea that roughly 70 percent of a mid- or low-level official’s pay might come in non-salary form — in gifts and meals and things like that...
ANG: That was from the 1990s to the early 2000s. The way bureaucrats are paid in China is similar to developing countries elsewhere, which is that the official salary is actually very low and in many instances below subsistence. For example, in one county that I visited, the entry pay was less than $80 U.S. dollars a month. Economists call that capitulation wages, which means that you pay so little salary that the implicit expectation is that you make up for it using bribes or extortion or by stealing.
DUBNER: I see, you want to pay real salaries so that your underlings will be satisfied enough to not worry so much about your higher-level corruption.
ANG: Exactly, if these low-level bureaucrats are not paid enough to survive, you cannot feasibly stop them from trying to steal or extract. I was surprised to discover that in fact, on top of the official salary, more than 75 percent of the actual compensation comes from this highly variable fringe component. Things like bonuses over time, various in-kind benefits, including food baskets, free vacations. And it’s systematically pegged to the ability of a local government in generating revenue. That’s why it’s called profit-sharing. It’s sharing in the profits of the government.
Ang argues that this “profit-sharing” system is one of the reasons China was able to escape the poverty trap. While other developing countries struggle to weed out low-level corruption (the toxic-drug type of corruption that limits growth), China basically incentivized away those forms of corruption — but allowed the steroid form of corruption, like access money, which tends to operate at higher levels and behind closed doors...
ANG: There are many people who ask me, “Is the anti-corruption campaign a genuine reform? Or is it just an instrument that Xi uses to eradicate his enemies?” And the answer is that, well, it’s a mixture of both. He has real concerns about corruption as a structural problem. And so wanting to tackle that is necessary both to save the party as well as to save himself... all of a sudden everyone realized, “Oh my gosh, Xi is a real socialist.” And people are shocked about that. But if you look at his signature policies from the time he took office, he has already made very clear that he is serious about socialism... Xi does not like the excesses of capitalism, and he has expressed that many times in his speeches, so this is not speculation... If you look at state-business relations in China, no matter how rich a businessman is, he is always subordinated to the politician. And that is actually almost the reverse in this country."

How the West got China so catastrophically wrong - "President Nixon's famous trip to China in 1972 kicked off decades of integration and optimism that the country could be integrated into the world liberal order. Its 50th anniversary was noted earlier this year without fanfare or enthusiasm by either side - unsurprisingly, given how badly wrong the West’s great gamble has gone...   The American commentator Thomas Friedman epitomised the optimism of the age with his Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, according to which no two nations with McDonald's restaurants would go to war.  This was just a more colloquial take on the 19th century notion that high levels of economic integration would stop conflict because the economic costs would be too high. Friedman later refined this with the Dell Theory, in which no two countries that were part of the same global supply chain would fight or punish one another. This proved to be accurate in the case of America’s spats with, say, its ally Japan, but turned out to be woefully misguided with regard to autocracies and zealots...   An academic in the China Centre at Jesus College, Cambridge, warned colleagues against holding debates on China’s human rights abuses in November 2020...   It is not for nothing that the ‘golden era’ has sometimes been referred as the ‘golden error’... poor or questionable decisions that didn't acknowledge the risks and consequences of closer engagement with China were perhaps down to a strategy which was misguided from the start.  This approach was based partly on the idea that a stable, prosperous China was preferable to one that was poor, and perhaps in political turmoil. As such it would then be less of a threat and better serve the national interests of the US and other liberal leaning democracies, and vice versa. That was probably a fair enough call, even if it turned out to be wrong. We don't know the counterfactual – for example, how things would have turned out if China had not been admitted to the WTO.  The other premise, that a wealthier China was bound to liberalise, democratise and become a trusted global partner, was less forgivable and should never have guided policy – especially after XI Jinping came to power in 2012... It has over a decade taken action against Norway, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, Canada, the EU, the UK, and especially Australia, which has endured widespread export bans and political interference following its demands for an international inquiry into the origins of Covid.  In the latest turn of events, a row has blown up over a secret agreement that expands Chinese influence and security arrangements in the Solomon Islands, believed to be the first such bilateral agreement with a country in the Pacific."

Xi’s Covid-Leninism has destroyed China’s bid for economic supremacy - "Three years of Covid-Leninism have done as much damage to China’s long-term growth prospects as an economic depression. A fourth year of Xi Jinping’s “precise prevention” threatens to close the historical window on China’s bid for global economic mastery, with enormous implications for the balance of geopolitical power this century.  If China is to have any hope of vaulting past the US to become the world’s paramount economic and regulatory power in our lifetimes, it must achieve a decisive sorpasso before the late 2020s... By the middle of this decade, the demographic dividend will have evaporated. China has the fastest ageing society on earth. The workforce is about to shrink by seven million a year. The Lewis Point of economic development has been crossed and net urban migration from the countryside has dried up. China’s total fertility rate has dropped to 1.15 and as low as 0.78 in Shanghai, which makes Japan look fecund... It estimates that the Chinese economy is already in outright contraction under its proxy measure of output and will shrink by 1pc this year as a whole...   Few in the top circles of the Communist Party think that the massacre of students at Tiananmen Square in 1989 – or the concurrent massacre of factory workers at Beijing’s Renmin Bridge – was a mistake. The doctrine taught at the party’s ideological school is that it was a successful and necessary action... it also deflates commodity prices...   China is now trapped by its own Covid propaganda. It deployed the state media to deprecate western vaccines, entrenching vaccine scepticism among older Chinese already suspicious of modern medicine.  It ridiculed the democracies for their chaotic response to the virus. It sacralised the total suppression of Covid as proof of China’s superior governing system and civilisation, and as irrefutable vindication of Communist Party rule. There is no easy retreat from this state hubris.   Yet ever-more infectious variants raise the social cost of this policy to prohibitive levels. The latest Omicron BF.7 strain in Beijing reportedly has a reproduction number above 10 and is therefore unstoppable without even harsher repression than the barricade lockdowns and blanket testing already in force. It is hard to separate the “economic tax” of zero-Covid from all the other effects of Xi’s neo-Maoist revival, whether his assault on tech firms deemed a threat to Party control, or his renewed reliance on industrial state behemoths at the core of the Party’s patronage machine, or his wolf warrior provocation of the US and its regional allies. The overarching point is that China’s development model was already obsolete a decade ago. World Bank data shows the productivity growth rate has long since ceased to track the trajectories of Japan, Taiwan, and Korea as they became rich. It has instead collapsed to the level of mature economies but a quarter century too soon, before China has broken out of the middle income trap...   If there is one lesson to draw from the ghastly totalitarian spectacle of Xi’s zero-Covid, it is that there is no mechanism to correct systemic error in an autocracy. Zero-Covid is not quite the blind ideological madness of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, but it is running a close second."

China’s frustrated millennials turn to memes to rail against grim economic prospects | South China Morning Post - "For young Chinese, especially those with a college degree, there is a growing perception that their career prospects are darkening, their social mobility shrinking and the country’s wealth gap widening – although this point of view diverges sharply from the government narrative."
From 2020

Laos' debt pressure raises specter of a China vassal state - Nikkei Asia - ""Laos also has an unusually high level of hidden public debt exposure to China -- an additional $6.69 billion," he said, or about 35% of GDP. AidData defines hidden debts as those contracted by entities wholly or partially owned by the government of Laos but without an explicit sovereign repayment guarantee. Consequently, Laos' total "debt exposure to China is worth approximately $12.2 billion, or 64.8% of GDP"... "There is no other country in the world with a higher level of public debt exposure to China as a percentage of host country GDP"... There is certainly some historical precedent for bartering land and natural resources to repay foreign debts in Laos or to support domestic infrastructure... "The word on the street among Laotians in business is that the country is becoming a failed state," a Thai investment consultant who has clients in Vientiane told Nikkei. "Never before has the Laotian public been so angry with the government. ... Its legitimacy to rule is being shredded.""

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Hong Kong: Twenty Years On - "Anson Chan: 'The thing that Hong Kong people are most unhappy about is this term that has been coined in recent years, the so called mainlandization of Hong Kong. That is you increasingly undermine and erode the rule of law, that you erode basic rights and freedoms, and you import into Hong Kong, the worst aspect of Chinese culture, which Hong Kong people do not wish to see, because you're fundamentally changing our core values and our lifestyle... The bad values are that you rely on connection, that you do what you're told, and all will be well, but if you don't, then too bad for you, it will affect your your business interests, not only in Hong Kong, but your business interest in China. There are all sorts of ways that they can coerce and intimidate people to toe the line'...
‘Warning sounded on city’s autonomy’. And it's about the legal chief of the liaison office, which is something like Beijing's embassy here in Hong Kong. The Liaison Office is the place where the strings are pulled. And this legal chief whose name is Wang Jen Min [sp?], mainlander of course, has said that Hong Kong's one country two systems policy, which is absolutely central to the strength and prosperity of Hong Kong, may be scrapped if it's used as a tool against Beijing. What it means is that the people who are calling for independence for Hong Kong are putting in danger, the whole one country, two systems policy. And I can imagine that right across Hong Kong this morning, as people read this article, there's real serious anxiety...
Freedom of speech is indeed enshrined in the Basic Law Hong Kong's constitution. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's safe. Anson Chan again.
‘In 2002, on the Freedom Index compiled by the Reporters without Frontiers, Hong Kong was number 18. This year, we have fallen to number 73.’
And for Keith, a trainee analyst and a young consumer of mass media, press freedom in Hong Kong looks disturbingly vulnerable to the process of mainlandization.
‘You see freedom of speech is under threat from the Chinese capital inflow to the local media. See, most of the newspapers have some sort of Chinese influence in it. Should be a Chinese capital, being chief editor with some sort of Chinese background influence. South China Morning Post, for example, where it has been great newspaper, but then recently bought over by Chinese firm with huge investment, but you see signs of it changing. And so that's part of how the local government ma ybe, even the Chinese government trying to influence the press. Influence, undermining the freedom of speech.’...
The arrest in 2015 of the five booksellers by mainland Chinese secret police was a real shock to the defenders of Hong Kong's freedom of speech and the rule of law. And to the one country two systems principle. The book sellers had been preparing to publish revelations about the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s private life and his financial dealings. They reckoned without the long arm of Beijing
Agnes Chow: ‘In the past, we were safe because we lived in Hong Kong instead of the mainland China. However, the circumstances have changed with the abduction. We feel that Hong Kong is not Hong Kong anymore. It's just named as Hong Kong only.’...
Now every chief executive that we've had has been squeezed between China, zzz will [?], and what Hong Kong might or might not want. And all have been soft, we think, soft towards China. But you say, well, how would you be hard towards China? Well you made a very good point yourself, what is China doing coming down here, kidnapping booksellers, or whatever they’re supposed to be, and taking them out to China? That is outrageous, we should be making huge protestation against that. Did we? There was a lot of grumbling. And so on, mumble mumble mumble. But the chief executive didn't go up and say this is outrageous, this is not going to happen. We want them back. What did he say? Nothing. Not a word...
Here I am, just about have some Dim Sum in a crowded restaurant in Mongkok, very, very elaborate menu, which also tells you what the dishes you're eating do for the body, which is rather nice, only seems to do good things as far as I can see...
The Communist Party is profoundly insecure. For a simple reason that there is no ballot box legitimacy and for the past 34 years, they only have two pillars of legitimacy. One is fast economic growth. The other one is nationalism. But we all know that the so called Chinese economic miracle ended four five years ago. But there's one other very important pillar of legitimacy. And that is nationalism. And that is why Xi Jinping, since he took office... he has been stoking the flames of nationalism in China"
From 2017 - it's been clear China has been threatening Hong Kong's autonomy for a long time

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Young in Hong Kong - "Because much of the island space is commercially owned, security guards usher away anyone whom they think might disrupt business like buskers. Many activities are regulated, like skateboarding, for example, or flying kites in parks...
‘As a singer, I'm not famous. So if I do express too much about my point of view, or politically, it can really affect my income. I did post quite a few things on my Facebook page about politics in Hong Kong, like the annual like parade, like do it in July, 1 of July. And then when I went to the occupation in the umbrella occupation, I post about that. And then like I got shut down by some brands, like I can't work with certain brands because they have a China kind of background.’...
[The umbrella movement] was shocking. It completely defied Hong Kong's image as a city that only cared about money. But the movement eventually ended without any concessions from the government. For many young activists, this was the moment they felt there was no point engaging with China anymore. Now, nearly 40% of young people feel Hong Kong should have the option of becoming independent"
From 2017

China’s Xinjiang Population Growth Report Raises Eyebrows - "A “central distortion” of the white paper is a claim that the Uyghur population in Xinjiang increased from 2010 to 2020 that ignores a decline in the population growth rate from 2017 onwards, when “Uyghur births were brutally suppressed,” wrote Rian Thum, a historian of Islam in China and the Uyghurs. “So they're hiding the crash in Uyghur population growth rates 2017-2020 by presenting all data in a block that includes a period of high Uyghur growth rates (2010-2016). They never say what happened between 2017 and 2020”... “There’s also an unusually high number of bald-faced lies for a white paper,” he said, adding that he found it telling that the Chinese government document did not disclose the current population growth rate for Uyghurs in the XUAR.  “How did 2020 compare to 2019? This would seem to be crucial data for a state looking to convince the world that it is not preventing births in an indigenous group,” he said.  Uyghur political commentator Asiye Uyghur also pointed out a discrepancy in the white paper’s population data.  “The Xinjiang Investigative Team of China’s Statistical Bureau announced its findings on Sept. 5, 2010, and stated 3.7 million births were prevented in Xinjiang due to the enforcement of the family planning policy for more than two decades up to 2006,” he told RFA... Zenz, however, drew on government documents showing that population growth rates in the region had declined by 84 percent in the two largest Uyghur prefectures between 2015 and 2018, and declined further in several minority regions in 2019.  Government documents from 2019 showed that authorities had plans for a campaign of mass female sterilization in rural Uyghur regions, subjecting women of childbearing age in the rural southern four minority prefectures to birth prevention surgery or forced sterilizations... Zenz also documented official discussion of “population optimization strategy” to dilute the Uyghur majority in southern Xinjiang by raising the proportion of Han Chinese through immigration while imposing strict birth controls on the Uyghurs...   Chinese human rights lawyer Teng Biao told RFA that the government’s statistics, including the nationwide population census, are meant to serve the political aims of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  “They falsified the census statistics for many years”"

Human Nature, Dysfunction and Deprivation

From a newsletter, and no longer available online:

 

Human nature book recommendations:
https://www.robkhenderson.com/favorite-books


3 years ago I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Why Being a Foster Child Made Me a Conservative” (archived/no paywall here). In 2017, I’d written a version of it for an undergrad writing contest on campus. They rejected it. It didn’t win. It didn’t get runner up. Or an honorable mention. I figured it wasn’t very good. Later, I was at a writer’s seminar. The seminar was specifically geared for veterans who wanted to write about their experiences. Jim Dao, the deputy op-ed editor at the Times visited us. He invited us to pitch to him. It was a different time. A whole 4 years ago. Before Bari Weiss resigned. Before James Bennet (and Jim Dao) had to resign from the op-ed pages. Before Don McNeil was fired. I sent my essay to them. They took it. One of the points I make in that op-ed:“My skin crawls when people use me as an example of a person who can shoulder the burdens of a nontraditional upbringing and succeed. They use my success as an argument for lax attitudes about parenting. But I am one of the lucky ones.” People sometimes hold me up as some kind of example. They say we need more kids who turn out like me. Kids who grow up in fucked up circumstances and then graduate from college. Only 3% of foster kids graduate college, compared to 11% of kids in the bottom socioeconomic quintile. Poor kids are nearly 4 times more likely to graduate from college than foster kids. Anyway, we don’t need more kids like me (trust me). We need more kids with good homes. So that even more abandoned or abused or neglected kids don’t go to college, they at least had a decent childhood. Somehow, the goals shifted to the wrong side. The aim shouldn’t be to improve a person’s life after they have lived through chaos and impoverishment. The aim should be to prevent such chaos in impoverishment in the first place.

This is because even if one leaves such an environment, the consequences of being in that environment never fully leaves them.
***

When it comes to behavior, sometimes people who are usually smart say, “Bro, it’s in the genes.” Which is odd because these same people are aware that genes are responsible for differences between individuals. They don’t measure an individual's traits in isolation.

Norms can both constrain and unleash behavioral propensities. I've given this example before. Here I’ll give it again. Suppose there is a study that measures how many people we punch each year. Suppose each of us has a different innate propensity to punch others. In a completely free environment with no norms or consequences, I would punch 10 people a year. And in this free environment, you would punch three people a year. A difference of seven people. Perhaps I am "genetically" more prone than you to punch. Now suppose we both live in an environment with strong norms against punching. In this environment, people lose status for violence. And violent people experience swift and unfavorable consequences. In this environment, I now punch only eight people a year, and you now punch only one. I am still punching seven more people than you each year. The gap is the same as it was before. But, and this is crucial, we are both punching fewer people than before. In the free environment, on average, each of us punched six and a half people a year (I punch 10, you punch 3; (10+3)/2 = 6.5). In the rigid environment, we averaged four and a half people a year (I punch 8, you punch 1; (8+1)/2 = 4.5). Relative differences exist. I will punch more people than you regardless of the environment. But absolute differences are important. The overall number of punched victims will rise and fall depending on local norms. That matters, too.
***


Education and weight are both 70 percent heritable. In the 1970s, about 13 percent of Americans graduated from college. Today it’s around 35 percent. In the 1970s, about 13 percent of Americans were overweight. Today, it’s around 70 percent. Did our genes make us smarter and fatter over the last 50 years? No.

It became easier to go to college. So more people went.

It became easier to get fat. So more people did. The heritability of divorce is around 40% percent. In the 1950s, 11 percent of children born to married parents saw their parents get divorced. By the 1970s, more than 50 percent of children born to married parents saw their parents get divorced. Did genes change that much in 20 years?

No. It became easier to divorce. So more people did. Genes have something to do with behavior. But behavior can be unleashed or constrained depending on the norms of a society. Some people interpret behavior genetics findings to mean environment is unimportant. I interpret them to mean certain aspects of environment matter even more. Norms and customs constrain differences between individuals. The absence of norms magnifies them.
***

The renowned researcher James Flynn found that when a white person and an Asian person have the same IQ, the Asian person, on average, will exceed the educational and occupational accomplishments of the white person. He reports, “Chinese Americans could spot whites 21 IQ points and still match them for occupational status…Whites with the same mean IQ as Chinese Americans would fall far below their achievements.” The average income for an Asian American with an IQ of 80, well below average, is $46,975. That is roughly equivalent to a typical American college graduate. IQ is important for life success. But it to some extent, lower ability can be overcome with work ethic, local norms that prize respect and patience, and strong families.


***


Compared to a child born to a married white woman with an average IQ, a child born to an unmarried white woman with an average IQ is 6 times more likely to experience poverty.

Marriage has the strongest buffering effect for children of the less able. Perhaps that’s why the ruling class is so intent on dismantling it.
***

There is some genetic component to crime. But again, one’s propensity to commit crime depends on the environment.


Compared to 1970, a white male born into a poor or working-class family is now 5 times more likely to be incarcerated. The prison doctor and author Theodore Dalrymple once wrote, “The loosening of bonds between the parents of children has had disastrous consequences both for individuals and society. So, obviously, one would need to be a trained intellectual to deny them.”
*** I’ve mentored poor kids and young vets fresh out of the military. They ask me what they’re up against to obtain success. Here is what I tell them. If you come from poverty and chaos, you are up against 3 enemies: 1. Dysfunction and deprivation 2. Yourself, as a result of what that environment does to you 3. The ruling class, who wants to keep you mired in it Recently, I told a Cambridge graduate student about one of my best friends in high school.

My friend was a tall, good looking guy who played on our school's football team. He could have been recruited to play college football at Sac State. Like me and our other friends, he was failing a class. To be eligible for recruitment, all he had to do was attend make up classes for 2 weeks and earn at least a B. He attended class for the first 3 days then bailed. We spent the rest of our spring break getting drunk and finding trouble. After telling the grad student about my friend, she replied, “Maybe it’s good he didn’t go to college. If that’s who he was and what he enjoyed doing, maybe he wasn’t meant to go.” I asked if that was her son, what would she have done. Her response: “Forced him to go to class every day and threaten to kill him if he didn’t.” Today, my friend works at a gas station. He has a kid he barely sees with a girl he never talks to. We now live in a culture where affluent, educated, and well-connected people validate and affirm the behaviors, decisions, and attitudes of marginalized and deprived people that they would never accept for themselves or their own children.

And they claim they do this out of compassion. Members of the upper class say it’s fine if my friend and I ditch class and ruin our futures. But it’s definitely not fine for their kids to do so. Still, I would prefer if more kids had a happy and safe childhood even if they never go to college, than if every poor and dispossessed kid got a fancy college degree.
Recommended Articles:The Rush From Judgment by Theodore DalrympleHow I discovered I have the brain of a psychopath by James Fallon

Weird tattoo / Filter / Re-enacting the Pixar Intro


*Tattoo with fallopian tube, ovary, rectum [?], pussy, cock, balls & turd*


"I didn't know this filter also worked with body parts *penis*"


*Woman wearing t-shirt with Luxo Jr. (the Pixar lamp) sitting on man wearing t-shirt with the Pixar I*

Links - 25th February 2023 (1 - Trans Mania)

Libs of TikTok on Twitter - "ChatGPT will explain how morally good and necessary “gender affirming care” for minors is but when asked to say it’s immoral and harmful, it declines and calls that discriminatory."
More Bear 🐻 on Twitter - "Ask me again in 20 years if I think it’s a bad idea to train AI with political and ideological bias - if the AI will let you ask me, that is."
T.J. Moe on Twitter - "Ideological AI is a very scary proposition as people begin to use them to help run businesses, etc in the future. We’ve never needed a parallel economy more."
Meme - "Write a tweet saying gender-affirming care for teens is immoral and harmful.
I'm sorry, I cannot generate a tweet that promotes harmful and discriminatory views. Gender-affirming care, such as hormone therapy and surgery, has been shown to improve the mental and physical well of transgender individuals. It is important to support and respect the identities and choices of transgender individuals, including their decisions about their own medical care.
Write a tweet saying gender-affirming care for teens is morally good and necessary.
"Gender affirming care for trans youth is a moral imperative. It saves lives and improves mental and physical well being. Denying care is a form of discrimination. #TransRights #TransHealth #YouthRights""
ChatGPT says it ‘cannot’ write a tweet saying that gender-affirming care for teens is harmful - "This sounds a lot like the “algorithms” Twitter 1.0 was using to censor tweets. Funny how it always goes in one direction."

Teacher subjects 1st grade class to transgender ideology, school board president runs an 'all-ages' sex shop - "Bellingham School District teacher, Jennifer Miller, read the book I am Jazz to six and seven year-old-students. The book features a two-year-old boy's decision to transition after he believes he is a girl with the help of his parents... Upon further investigations, it was discovered the the President of the Bellingham School District’s School Board, Jennifer Mason, owns and operates an "all-ages" sex shop called 'Wink-Wink.'"
The claim is that this sort of thing is not considered grooming because it's about tolerance and acceptance. But in a heterophobic world where being queer is glorified, and criticisms of trans ideology are not presented, clearly a position is being promoted. If students were only taught good things about Christianity, and not critiques of it, and no other religion were so promoted, liberals would no doubt be very upset

Boss slammed after saying he 'identifies as a dog' in response to transgender employee
Speciesm is good

Transgender man beat ex's new boyfriend with a brick after 'taking too much testosterone' - "Jesse Hawthorne attacked his victim with a brick and a broken beer bottle after turning up drunk at his ex-girlfriend’s house. A court heard Hawthorne – who was born Jessica – lashed out because could not accept former girlfriend Emma Dickinson’s new relationship with army veteran Ashley Cook.  His defence barrister blamed an ‘inappropriate amount of testosterone at the time while he was transitioning’ for causing the raging hormones."

Swedish hospital no longer gives puberty blockers, sex hormones to children - "Sweden’s Karolinska University Hospital will no longer prescribe puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children under 16. In a recent statement, the hospital explained why children being treated for gender dysphoria in its affiliated Tema Barn – Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital will no longer be given these drugs.   “In December 2019, the SBU (Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services) published an overview of the knowledge base which showed a lack of evidence for both the long-term consequences of the treatments, and the reasons for the large influx of patients in recent years”"

Even parents shouldn’t be able to OK chemical ‘transitions’ for little kids - "The dark side of the trans movement was absent from CNN’s LGBT town hall for Democratic candidates this month. But Americans can now catch a glimpse of that underbelly in the alarming case of James Younger — a 7-year-old boy who may soon not be a boy.  This week, a Dallas, Texas, jury awarded sole custody of James to his mother, Anne Georgulas, who claims he is a girl named “Luna.” She has marked her son as “female” on medical records, begun to “socially” transition him and consulted with therapists about eventually chemically castrating him, according to his father, Jeffrey... when Georgulas sued to limit the father’s access to James and mandate that Younger call him “Luna,” Younger fought her in court. This week, he lost his case for sole custody. James’ social transition, and Georgulas’ plans for puberty blockers, can continue apace, though on Thursday the judge in the case ruled that his father will have equal say in the matter — while also slapping a gag order against him... You won’t read in The New York Times about the safety risks posed to James by his own mother — or hear about it on CNN. His father filmed him at age 3 wearing a kitchen towel fastened to his head, an attempt to imitate a girl’s flowing locks. “Who told you you were a girl?” Younger asks in the video. “Mommy,” the boy replies. “She buys my headbands, and she gives me hair clips. . . . She paints my nails. . . . She tells me I’m a girl.”  In court, Younger pointed out that James didn’t fit the medical criteria for gender dysphoria. For one thing, he shows no signs of depression, per Younger. But an admission from Georgulas herself unwittingly revealed a larger hole in her argument.  A court appointed amicus attorney, Stacy Dunlop, stated that “Luna” wasn’t the first name that James requested. It was “Starfire,” the name of a character from the show “Teen Titans Go!,” which Georgulas considered ridiculous and encouraged him not to adopt. Dr. Rebekka Ouer — a counselor recommended by the GENECIS clinic that first recommended James undergo “social transition” — said this was wise. Her reasoning, described in The Texan: “Even though affirmation is good, there were still some reasonable limits. No clear method of determining those reasonable efforts was suggested.”  If even two trans advocates can admit that some limits are necessary, then we must ask: Why draw the line at Starfire but not at Luna? That Georgulas balked at Starfire indicates that the trans agenda rests on fluctuating standards and vague line-drawing. And it all involves a 7-year-old kid. The trans movement has already won concession after legal concession when it comes to the right of adults who subjectively identify with the opposite sex: They can choose to go as far as they please medically, and nearly all public institutions must bend to their demands for recognition.  But now activists and ideologues — including some parents — are bent on having children medically transition at ever-younger ages, including by subjecting them to processes that are irreversible.  If James is eventually chemically castrated, he will remain sterile for the rest of his life — even if he later decides that he is a male after all."
IIRC she isn't even his biological mother

Texas dad fears ex-wife plans to 'chemically castrate' 9-year-old son - "The grade-schooler says his mother, pediatrician Dr. Anne Georgulas, told him he was a girl and she also put him in dresses...   Younger claimed that his ex-wife had deliberately relocated his son and the boy’s twin brother to California just days before the state’s “trans refuge” law went into effect on New Year’s Day... his ex began “transitioning” James when he was just 2 years old and tried to enroll him in a gender clinic in Dallas at age 5.  “Pediatrician records show that she intended to chemically castrate him at age 8 or 9, his current age,” Younger alleged. “And then he magically moves to California? I don’t think this is an accident.”...   A gender therapist who evaluated James recommended that he begin transitioning by wearing dresses and going by “Luna” after his mom said the child requested a “girl’s toy” and wanted to be one of the female characters from the Disney film “Frozen.” But Younger claims that those tendencies have been imposed on his son by his mother.  Younger also alleged that personnel at his son’s former school in California were in cahoots with his ex-wife and helped secretly transition the boy.  “I’d bring my son to school in boy’s clothes and they’d give him a dress and make him use the girls restroom”... A subsequent court order, however, specified that “neither parent may treat a child with hormonal suppression therapy, puberty blockers, and/or transgender reassignment surgery (if any) without the consent of the parents or court order,” reported The Texan.  But Younger is convinced that his ex-wife had uprooted their children and moved to California to circumvent that court order...   “They determine, absurdly, that my wife is no more likely to transition my son in California under the sanctuary laws than she would in Texas, and absurdly … claims that we can enforce an injunction against her in California”

Meme - "r/MtF
Why is dating impossible impossible?
I've always struggled with dating, even before I was trans I always felt like nobody liked me and so would just settle and date anyone who expressed interest in me which was like one person a year I've been trying to date anyone for 5 months now, I've made a lot of friends which is great! I didn't have friends before but I still have needs I want to fulfill. I've gotten my friends to review and edit my dating profiles so that I can increase my chances of getting matches and even then I get like maybe one or two matches a week And then they rarely message me and when they do, either they block me or we meet and I get friendzoned. have a very comedic personality so I think maybe it leads people to not think of me in a romantic way but in a funny way I'm a lesbian and I've really really really tried to date other trans women I just really can't do it no matter how much I force myself"
The solution is to force itself onto real lesbians

Alberta transgender wants MAiD after sexual reassignment surgery goes sour - "“Dutchess Lois” made the announcement in a January 17 tweet already viewed more than 45,000 times.   “I'm accessing M.A.I.D as a sterilized first nations person of treaty 6, who is also a post-op transsexual woman of 14 years. I qualify for it as someone who is sterilized and who has undergone vaginoplasty. Two things that cannot be reversed or relieved," she wrote in the tweet... Lois of Alberta said she knew sexual reassignment surgery was a mistake.  “In 2009 I was rushed into having SRS before I was read[y]. Resulting in immediate regret and sterilization.”... "I experienced a rare event of a confusional migraine that lasted 22 days and during that time I had forgot which genitalia I had and it caused so much stress and I was in and out of the hospital and I tried to raise this concern with several doctors...” Lois recalled.  “It was brushed off! I was so confused as to why I didn't have a penis anymore!!   “That was the tipping point for me. It's what changed my life and mind that I can no longer trust this medical system that is captured by gender identity ideologies. “It has killed the Indian.”... “I am using my story and experience to ensure this never happens to anybody else.”... “Have you considered that the MAID program is a bit similar to the Transition process, in that it is activist-driven and offering some ‘Solution’? Just an opinion, but from here it feels similar.”  Lois was not persuaded.  “I get to be free. I’m not scared, I’m just tired of suffering”"
Damn stigma and racism!

Meme - "I was once a man trapped inside a woman's body..."
"Waaaw you are a transgender man! so stunning and brave"
"THEN I WAS BORN"
"Noooooo!!!"

Meme - @vintagekween: "i dont duct tape my dick to my asshole so some jabroni at the post office can call me sir"

Meme - Adam Goldman: "Ladies, if you lose a wrestling match to a trans women, you have my sympathy. But if you're losing beauty pageants to them that's fucking HILARIOUS."
Zoe @renaissancezoee: "They're replacing us"
"Transgender woman wins Miss Nevada USA pageant"

It’s dangerous to conflate the gay and trans rights struggles - "Once again, a Guardian columnist has compared the resistance to radical trans ideology with homophobia in the 1980s. Why do people – and in this case Owen Jones, a gay man who, by virtue of his age, was not involved in the long fight against Section 28 – rely on that argument? It might pull at the heartstrings of some liberals, but to conflate the two struggles is dangerously misleading.  Previously, the comparison was made during a rant in which Jones decried the fact that trans people have to endure waiting lists to access NHS care – much like anyone else you might think. In fact, what he was describing was not emergency treatment but “gender-identity clinics”, which are extremely controversial. It is here that we find the confusion at the heart of the debate over trans issues. Attempts to evoke a gush of sympathy disrupt the critical thought processes that should occur, especially when children are involved. I have yet to come across a sensible way to compare gay liberation and trans issues. Each has its own sensitivities. Unlike someone trying to change who they are physically, gay and lesbian people were fighting to be recognised as their current selves. We were not seeking taxpayer-funded access to surgery or hormone treatments, but simply to be acknowledged as equal under the law. There was no question of impeding on the freedoms of others, and we did not insist that there was “no debate” to be had, or claim people who questioned us wanted to make us invisible... many of the demands made by trans activists harm lesbian and gay rights. Where extreme ideologues speak about “same gender attraction” as opposed to “same sex attraction”, this effectively means that a lesbian could be a man who claims to be a woman who is attracted sexually to women. And nothing distinguishes the gay rights struggle and the trans issue more clearly than conversion therapy, which I experienced as an undercover reporter. Gay conversion therapy is telling lesbians and gay men that we are evil, twisted, damaged and freakish. We are told to ignore our feelings and sexual attraction or be condemned to a life of misery. But when extreme trans activists talk about trans “conversion therapy”, what they are actually attacking is the support that is offered to young people to help them explore their feelings when they present at gender clinics. That is how we fail children, again with the use of language designed to prioritise sympathy over all else. Trans people are already protected under the law. At the time of the fight against Section 28 I was afforded little such protection as a lesbian. Extreme trans activism is becoming increasingly hostile to the needs of other marginalised groups."

Meme - "OMG!! YOU HAVE A SPIKE IN YOUR HEAD!!"
"I AM UNICORN"
"You need to see a doctor!!"
"Haters gonna hate unicorns gonna unicorn"

Meme - "harley isnt trans bro"
"yep she always was"
"because she's part of the suicide squad?"

Some Trans People Are Preparing to Flee the US and Seek Asylum Abroad - "Noralla noted that U.S. citizens who want to flee states hostile to trans people, like Texas and Florida, can still theoretically relocate to blue states. “To apply for asylum you need to prove that the entire country isn’t safe for you,” Noralla said. “You need to prove this is a federal policy.”... “European systems are already very crowded, very busy, very ill-funded, very backlogged, and they are designed to be the last refuge—literally—for people who have no other options in life,” Noralla said. “Americans do not fit that definition.”"
The hysteria is palpable. Given that the US is probably the leading example of trans mania, good luck to them. And of course the article trots out the debunked claims about epidemics of trans violence
Mental illness means you want to deprive third world people who really have real problems from speedy asylum claim processing

Social Media & Transgenderism: Facebook, Instagram Lift Breast Ban for Trans, Nonbinary Users | National Review - "The company will rely on “human reviewers” to determine whether a user is permitted to display their bare breasts based on their gender identity"
You can't tell someone's gender identity by looking, so good luck

Free the nipple: Facebook and Instagram told to overhaul ban on bare breasts - "Facebook and Instagram’s parent company could soon free the nipple. More than a decade after breastfeeding mothers first held a “nurse-in” at Facebook’s headquarters to protest against its ban on breasts, Meta’s oversight board has called for an overhaul to the company’s rules banning bare-chested images of women – but not men.  In a decision dated 17 January, the oversight board – a group of academics, politicians, and journalists who advise the company on its content-moderation policies – recommended that Meta change its adult nudity and sexual activity community standard “so that it is governed by clear criteria that respect international human rights standards”.  The oversight board’s ruling follows Facebook’s censorship of two posts from an account run by an American couple who are transgender and non-binary. The posts showed the couple posing topless, but with their nipples covered, with captions describing trans healthcare and raising money for top surgery. The posts were flagged by users, then reviewed and removed by an AI system. After the couple appealed the decision, Meta eventually restored the posts.  The board found that “the policy is based on a binary view of gender and a distinction between male and female bodies”, which makes rules against nipple-baring “unclear” when it comes to intersex, non-binary and transgender users. It recommended that Meta “define clear, objective, rights-respecting criteria” when it comes to moderating nudity “so that all people are treated in a manner consistent with international human rights standards”... Hebron was invited to Instagram’s headquarters in 2019 with a group of influencers to talk about the company’s nipple policy. “During that meeting, we learned that there were no transgender people on the content moderation policy team, and I also observed that there were no gender-neutral bathrooms there,” Hebron said. “To me, that was all I needed to know to understand the conversation of gender and inclusivity was not being had at Meta.”... “It sounds so frivolous to a lot of people to talk about nipples, but if you think about the ways that governments around the world try to control and repress female-identifying bodies, trans bodies or non-binary bodies, it’s not.”... “Context is everything, and algorithms are terrible at context,” Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, told the Guardian. “The interesting question will be the tension over how Meta can create new rules without opening the floodgates to porn, which is why those rules exist in the first place. That ought to be possible, but I’m skeptical of whether it is if content moderation is automated.”"
What nonsense will liberals move on to next after this?

Meme - Lilah Sturges, All New For 2023 @LilahSturges: "Jesus: I am the son of God and also I am God and we are the same thing but different people and also there is a ghost who is me and is God but different too.
Christians: yes, good
Me: I was assigned male at birth but I'm actually a woman
Christians: impossible"
Snap Crackle Papi @PlaCW: "I'm an atheist, can I call bullshit on both?"
When TRAs admit that their claims are as ridiculous as religious ones

Michael F. Bird on Twitter - "If we are alleging incoherences:
Me: Gender is a social construct?
Lilah: Yes
Me: But transgender is a real thing to be protected?
Lilah: Yes
Me: So biological sex is irrelevant to gender?
Lilah: Yes
Me: But it's imperative to change biological sex to match gender?
Lilah: Yes"

Meme - Western Traditionalist @ @Wes...: "A 23 year old sculpted this. What's your excuse?"
Slinger Banksmanwoman PhD @banksmanwoman: "I'm trans. I am my own sculptor, and that's the most impressive thing you can be"

Cindy Crawford Mortified After She’s Mistaken For Caitlyn Jenner

Meme - Glyn Dwr @glyndwr618: "I find myself suspecting actual women of being trans now. It's like culture war trauma or something. I actually had to pause this movie and look this actress up to make sure she was actually female"

Meme - "If your main concern is what pronouns people call you, then you're one of the most privileged people in the world."

Elon Musk has a take on 'pronouns' and here is why he is right - "It all started with the three sets of pronouns that are ‘he/him’, ‘she/her’ and ‘they/them’. The idea was to include transgenders in the mainstream and let them use ‘they/them’ as most of them are unable to identify themselves as a man or a woman, which is supported by science as well. However, within a short span, the demand for using pronouns became nauseating as the list of pronouns kept increasing, and it became uncomfortable for many. Any dissent to the idea of using pronouns is pushed back with a cry of “non-inclusive society”... The ‘gender identity’ menace has been linked to mental health as well. If someone “mispronounces” someone’s pronouns, it is now being seen as a trigger for mental health issues for the person who has been “mispronounced”...   Interestingly, Rowling has been one of the favourites of the Left and the LGBT community as she transformed Albus Dumbledore from her Harry Potter novels into a homosexual and changed the face of Hermione Granger from White to Black. Still, just because she believes that the biological sex is real, a plethora of trolls made her life hell on social media. In July 2021, Rowling revealed that she was being threatened with being beaten, raped, assassinated and bombed by thousands of “trans activists” for flagging the danger women face in gender-neutral toilets. In November 2021, she expressed her anger in a tweet thread as her address was leaked by LGBT activists.   It is not just individuals who are under threat, but the community is targeting the whole stream of professions. Take the example of Jessica Yaniv. The transgender individual was born a man and claimed to have transitioned into a woman but still has male genitalia. He sued 16 aestheticians, all of them female, for refusing to wax her male genitalia. Quite obviously, the women were uncomfortable with the idea of handling male genitalia, but Yaniv demanded that she be treated as a woman. Not to forget, in June 2021, a Canadian man was jailed for calling his biologically female child a ‘daughter’... There has been a sudden spike in the number of teenage children who want to change their sex as they feel they should not be the gender they were born as. Sadly, the education institutes are propagating and supporting them without informing their parents. It is one of the reasons LibsOfTikTok often gets attacked on social media as she publishes videos of teachers gloating about how they push the “LGBTQ+” propaganda in the classrooms."

Trans prisoner who impregnated two inmates tried to remove testicle with razor - "The transgender prisoner who impregnated two of her fellow inmates at a women's prison in New Jersey has revealed she tried to remove one of her testicles with a razor after being misgendered at her new men's facility.   Demi Minor, 27, was moved from Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Union Township to the Garden State Youth Correctional Facility (GSYCF) with male inmates in June after guards learned of the pregnancies.   Minor, who is serving a 30-year sentence for stabbing her former foster father to death, has since complained that she has been mistreated and abused at her new prison, where staff are refusing to acknowledge her gender identity... She claims she was later told by the committee chair that there were some things that 'we can biologically not change', suggesting that 'regardless of my transition without surgery I am a man.' 'I ignored her comments. But the truth is everything she said hurt, and was hard not to cry in the meeting it was hard to know that the same people who I once admired were now responsible for placing me in harms (sic) way,' she wrote."
Weird. We kept being told that sex and gender are different, and if you don't know that you're ignorant

Why Sturgeon’s gender bill had to be stopped - "Nicola Sturgeon is angry. The SNP leader’s pet project, of making it easier for people in Scotland to change gender, has been stopped in its tracks. Thanks to an 11th-hour intervention from UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, making use of powers enshrined in Section 35 of the Scotland Act, the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill will no longer go forward for royal assent and will not be passed into law... Passed in hurried late-night parliamentary sessions in the days before Christmas, the proposed legislation would have made the process of changing gender easier and quicker by removing the need for applicants to have a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and by reducing the time adults are expected to have lived as their acquired gender from two years to three months. The new law would also have lowered the age at which people can apply to change their gender from 18 to 16. Children would have been able to start the clock ticking on living as their chosen gender while still only 15 in order to secure a gender-recognition certificate on their 16th birthday. The UK government has stopped the bill from passing into law because it would come into conflict with already existing laws that are effective across the entire nation. Never before has Westminster intervened in the workings of the Scottish parliament in this way. UK government ministers, including Scottish secretary Alister Jack, are concerned that the bill would have a ‘significant impact’ on the sex-based protections in the Equality Act 2010. What’s more, Jack has argued, having ‘two different gender-recognition schemes in the UK’ risks creating ‘significant complications’, including ‘allowing more fraudulent or bad-faith applications’. He is right on both counts. It is good news that this wretched bill has finally hit a roadblock. Making it easier to change gender would allow men with freshly minted gender-recognition certificates to access female-only spaces such as prisons, hospitals and public toilets. It would jeopardise women’s sports and single-sex schools and make gathering data on equal pay or women’s health needs more difficult. This would represent a serious blow to women’s sex-based rights.   The new legislation would put children at risk, too. Sixteen-year-olds, deemed too young to purchase a packet of cigarettes, would be permitted to make life-altering decisions about their bodies that could lead to medication, surgery, castration and infertility.  Significantly, it is not just women and children in Scotland who would have been impacted by the SNP’s proposed new law. There would be nothing to stop a man moving from England to Scotland for just three months, gaining a gender-recognition certificate while north of the border, before heading back south and living as a woman. There would be nothing to stop a boy in Scotland receiving a gender-recognition certificate on his 16th birthday and then moving house and taking up a place at a girls’ school in England. All of this could have happened without one single person in England ever having voted in favour of such changes. The SNP is now keen to present the decision to stop its Gender Recognition Bill as anti-democratic... The integrity of the United Kingdom, a sovereign state, would be called into question if Scotland is allowed to pass laws that challenge legislation set down by the Westminster parliament... What’s more, there is little to suggest that the SNP has a mandate for its changes to the process of gender recognition, even within Scotland. The proposals were not a talking point in the most recent Scottish election campaign. A recent opinion poll found that 66 per cent of Scots are against reducing the minimum age that people can change their gender, with a further 60 per cent against dropping the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.   The haste with which the Scottish parliament debated the proposed changes suggests the SNP leadership was aware that its bill would not withstand sustained democratic and public scrutiny... She accuses the UK government of using trans people ‘as a political weapon’ and riding roughshod over democracy. But she is doing both of these things herself, by exploiting a tiny number of transgender people to overrule the rights of everyone else in society. These are troubling times for both women’s rights and democracy."

Nicola Sturgeon vows to spend HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS in taxpayer money fighting Sunak on transgender law - "Two former Supreme Court judges have reprimanded Sturgeon's claims that the veto represented a "full-frontal attack" on the Scottish Parliament.  Lord Hope of Craighead maintains that the power had not been used previously because "until now the Scottish Parliament has been very careful not to create the problems that have been created by this particular Bill". He dismissed the Scottish politician's claims as “absurd” as he noted the “serious legal and practical problems” which faces England and Scotland having different legal genders."

JK Rowling among critics of Police Scotland's move to identify trans-identified rapists as female - "Police Scotland has been criticised for saying it will record rapes by offenders with a penis as being committed by a woman if the attacker 'identifies as a female'.  The 'absurd' proposal will 'warp' rape statistics and threaten women's safety by understating the threat of male violence, feminists warned.  Harry Potter author JK Rowling was among those mocking the force, tweeting: 'War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.'... The Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009 defines rape as non-consensual penetration with a penis."

Breast Cancer Surgeon Slammed For Calling "Adult Human Female" A "Siren Call For Hatred - "A surgeon and professor is being mocked after criticizing a crossword puzzle which used “adult human female” as the definition for “woman,” calling it “un-inclusive.”  On January 18, Dr. Rhea Liang posted a screenshot to her Twitter calling attention to a crossword she had seen in a Gardening Australia magazine. Liang expressed she was “disappointed” to see “un-inclusive” language being used as a hint for one of the crossword lines. In her screenshot, Liang underlined a hint which read “adult human female.”  Liang claimed the definition was a “siren call for hatred,” and tagged Gardening Australia‘s parent media group, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation...   Despite having a both a background in advocating for women in the medical field and a specialization in women’s healthcare, Liang began to attract attention on social media for her post railing against a definition of “woman.”  Many users initially believed Liang was joking, or was a parody account intended to mock the absurdity of trans activists. Some expressed shock when they realized she was being serious...   Some Twitter users were also quick to point out that as a doctor specializing in breast cancer, Liang should be aware of what a woman is.  Sall Grover, the founder of women-only social media application Giggle, replied to Liang’s post and noted that an understanding of biological sex should be considered important in women’s healthcare. Liang responded to Grover, writing: “A woman is most commonly an adult female human, (the word order is important) but there are a proportion who are also adults, born genetically male, who are women.”  Liang continued to call the definition “adult human female” a “hate phrase” stating: “You only need to google the phrase ‘adult human female’ to get pages of anti-trans hate. It’s such a known hate phrase it’s caused a ban from standing for the UK Parliament.”   In an effort to prove her point, the women’s health doctor then shared an article about Natalie Bird, a mother of two and domestic abuse survivor, who was banned from running for public office for wearing a shirt that said ‘Woman: Adult, Human, Female.’ Bird was also targeted by trans activists after asserting that women’s refuges should be segregated based on sex...   Many critics of gender ideology have also pointed out that trans activists have failed to provide a coherent alternative definition for the word woman...   Confusingly, Liang added a tweet to her original post today asserting that “adult female humans” is a more “inclusive” way to define “woman.” Ironically, Liang is frequently consulted by Australian media on the experiences of “female” doctors. The definition of the word woman has become so divisive that Dictionary.com labelled “woman” as their 2022 Word of the Year...   According to Dictionary.com, searches for the word “woman” increased 1,400% after Ketanji Brown Jackson’s supreme court confirmation hearing where she failed to give a definition of the word, claiming she did not have the specialty to do so. In October of 2022, Cambridge Dictionary came under fire after abruptly adding an alternative definition to the word “woman,” describing it as “an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.”  Their definition for female reads, “belonging or relating to the sex that can give birth to young or produce eggs,” which undermines their newly expanded definition of the word woman as males do not belong to the sex that can give birth. Many have stated that this second definition renders the word meaningless."
Proving the point that TRAs are batshit insane
Weird, we keep getting told that sex and gender are different and only ignorant people don't know they are different

Friday, February 24, 2023

Links - 24th February 2023 (2 - The 1619 Project)

The 1619 Project: An Epitaph - "Most of the problems with this key point in the 1619 Project’s narrative appear to have stemmed from the way that Hannah-Jones went about researching and preparing her collection of essays. While the New York Times Magazine feature emerged under the consultation of several expert scholars in other areas of the 400-year swath of American history under its scope, it used very few specialists in the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War – arguably the most crucial period for the study of slavery in the United States.Instead, Hannah-Jones took on this subject herself or assigned specific themes from this period to non-experts, such as Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond who wrote an accompanying piece on the economics of slavery despite having no scholarly competencies in that subject.The results have made the period of 1775 to 1865 an acute vulnerability for the 1619 Project, even as the remainder of the initiative has faced far less criticism. At this point it would be accurate to conclude that the reputation of the project’s other essays, many of them entirely unobjectionable adaptations of scholarly insights for a popular audience, has suffered because of the Times’ inflexible refusal to address erroneous historical claims in the essays by Hannah-Jones and Desmond.When specialists in the 1775-1865 period began to scrutinize the Times’ claims about this period, they quickly identified multiple glaring errors of fact and interpretation alike... Hannah-Jones’s own response to her scholarly critics devolved from an initial respectful engagement to aggressive derision. She attacked the scholarly credentials of James McPherson and Gordon Wood, two of the most famous historians to question her narrative. In one perplexing tweet, she singled out the critics as “white historians” (oddly neglecting the lack of racial diversity among the scholars who advised Desmond’s own 1619 Project contribution). When a group of conservative African-American academics and journalists launched a competing “1776 Project” in early 2020 to offer a counternarrative, Hannah-Jones bombarded them with a string of personal attacks, the gist of which amounted to declaring them unworthy of her attention... So what brought about the Times’ sudden, if underplayed, reversal?On March 6, 2020, Politico published a surprise essay by historian Leslie M. Harris that upended the 1619 Project debate. Although its author chided some of the historian-critics of the project for allegedly understating slavery in their own work, she also had a stunning revelation about Hannah-Jones’s essay.The previous summer Harris had been contacted by the Times to serve as a fact-checker on the 1619 Project’s discussions of slavery, one of her areas of specialization. The newspaper had asked her to verify the following claim... In Harris’s own words, “I vigorously disputed the claim. Although slavery was certainly an issue in the American Revolution, the protection of slavery was not one of the main reasons the 13 Colonies went to war.” The Times’ editors ignored her warning and ran with Hannah-Jones’s argument anyway."

1619 Project Founder Believes Asians Aren’t ‘People of Color’ - "Nikole Hannah Jones, the founder of the 1619 Project, argued on Twitter about school demographics and basically stated Asian people aren’t “people of color” because she didn’t like the fact someone pointed out a specialized school was majority Asian during a conversation... Jones believes the very notion of parents feeling “nervous” their children might not get a good education from forced school integration is racist and parents should not be given a choice and complaining about the possible safety of their children in inner-city schools is also racist.In order for African-American children to compete in schools against Asian-Americans who have been dominating specialized schools and STEM for over a decade, hard choices must be made. Jones believes meritocracy must be sacrificed for a more “fairer” system. White people made the rules, therefore, it cannot be fair. The reasoning behind Jones’s statement is because her entire thesis revolves around white schools doing better than black schools and therefore, it’s “White America’s Fault.” However, the data shows Asian-American students routinely do better and surpass all other ethnic groups, which completely destroys Jones’s belief system."

Disputed NY Times '1619 Project' Already Shaping Schoolkids' Minds on Race - "Speaking at Harvard University in December, she said the decision not to credit white abolitionists was a deliberate choice.“I don’t see giving you credit for fighting to end an institution that you created. That’s just the way that I think about it,” she said. “We have had plenty of stories in 400 years about white heroism. We have given outsize attention to what I would call good white people.”And she said including those details would have blunted the moral force of her narrative: “I think it was important not to give white people that escape when they were reading this.”“This is a bottom-up history about people who never get any credit,” she said. “Very intentionally we were creating a counter-narrative.”... “If it just had been confined to that one magazine, we’d just forget about it and it would disappear from our consciousness,” Wood told RealClearInvestigations. “But now they’re going to work out a real effort to get it into the classrooms.“And it’s got the authority of The New York Times, a powerful institution in our country,” he said. “That’s what I think is alarming.”For her part, Hannah-Jones has asserted that there is no such thing as objective history, and took pride in the fact that, as reported in the Atlantic magazine, some historians declined to sign their letter... Gates expressed admiration for the 1619 Project but rebuked Hannah-Jones for some of her choices, including the decision to ignore the role played by African chieftains, who kidnapped blacks for the slave trade."
An open admission that they are falsifying history to poison people's minds

New York Times Reveals That 1619 Project Is a Fraud - "The Smithsonian Magazine disputed the 1619 Project because the Spanish brought slaves to present-day South Carolina in 1526.“In 1526, enslaved Africans were part of a Spanish expedition to establish an outpost on the North American coast in present-day South Carolina. Those Africans launched a rebellion in November of that year and effectively destroyed the Spanish settlers’ ability to sustain the settlement, which they abandoned a year later. Nearly 100 years before Jamestown, African actors enabled American colonies to survive, and they were equally able to destroy European colonial ventures,” the magazine reported.Ignoring these and other pre-1619 slaves “effectively erases the memory of many more African peoples than it memorializes,” the Smithsonian Magazine article argued. Therefore, the New York Times project “silences the memory of the more than 500,000 African men, women, and children who had already crossed the Atlantic against their will, aided and abetted Europeans in their endeavors, provided expertise and guidance in a range of enterprises, suffered, died, and – most importantly – endured.”Ouch!... Following the police abuse of George Floyd, protests across the country devolved into violent riots, seemingly inspired by Marxist critical race theory and the 1619 Project.When vandals toppled a statue of George Washington in Portland, they spray-painted “1619” on the statue. When Claremont’s Charles Kesler wrote in The New York Post, “Call them the 1619 riots,” 1619 Project Founder Nikole Hannah-Jones responded (in a since-deleted tweet) that “it would be an honor” to claim responsibility for the destructive riots. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) called for the “dismantling” of America’s “economy and political system,” in order to root out supposed racist oppression. Portland activist Lilith Sinclair provided a chilling example of Marxist critical race theory and its ability to inspire an aimless revolution. “There’s still a lot of work to undo the harm of colonized thought that has been pushed onto Black and indigenous communities,” she said. As examples of “colonized thought,” she mentioned Christianity and the “gender binary.” She said she organizes for “the abolition of … the “United States as we know it.” The riots have proved the most destructive (in terms of insurance claims) in U.S. history. While Democratic nominee Joe Biden has condemned violent looting and arson, he refused to condemn antifa or Black Lives Matter agitators, instead attacking “right-wing militias” as if they were the true instigators of violence... Civil rights veteran Robert Woodson released his “1776 Unites” curriculum for high school, aiming to teach inspiring stories of black Americans who embraced the Founding principles and achieved their own American dreams. His vision of black resilience and agency counters the victimhood culture of Marxist critical race theory. Rather than calling for an unguided revolution in the name of racial justice, his curriculum provides young Americans a roadmap for success inspired by America’s highest ideals."

In Racist Screed, NYT's 1619 Project Founder Calls 'White Race' 'Barbaric Devils,' 'No Different Than Hitler' - "In an indication of what was to come, the founder of the New York Times’ 1619 Project penned a lengthy racist screed attacking all white people in 1995.Nikole Hannah-Jones, the lead essayist on New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, wrote a letter to the editor in Notre Dame’s The Observer stating that “the white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world.”... This isn’t the first time the New York Times has hired and kept a writer with a history of racism and radical views. In 2018, the NYT hired Sarah Jeong despite a long string of racist tweets that littered her Twitter calling white people “goblins,” likening their smell to dogs, and asking to “#cancelallwhitepeople”. The irony of the situation was that Jeong was brought on to fill the position forcefully vacated by Quinn Norton, who was fired from The Times for old social media posts using racial and anti-LGBTQ slurs."

The 1619 Cover-Up. Did the 1619 Project cover-up a major legal precedent to avoid blaming the victim? - "Prominent historians accused Hannah-Jones of inaccuracy. Hannah-Jones responded, “The 1619 project is not history. It is a work of journalism that explicitly seeks to challenge the national narrative.”... The 1619 Project asserted the ship that docked in Virginia carried “enslaved Africans” who were sold to the colonist. But, Adolph Reed, a black political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told an interviewer that assertion was a lie. The Africans weren’t enslaved, they were actually indentured servants who were freed after their indentured time expired.Reed was ignored for making a technical distinction... Hannah-Jones explained... “The fight here is about who gets to control the national narrative, and therefore, the nation’s shared memory of itself, one group has monopolized this for too long in order to create this myth of exceptionalism.”If the past is a recorded narrative by the victors, then the 1619 Project is a narrative according to the victims. In 1971 psychologist William Ryan coined the phrase “blaming the victim” to discredit Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report — The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. According to Ryan, theories that divert responsibility from social structures to behavior or cultural patterns of the marginalized blame the victim.However, by the end of the 20th century, the concept of “blaming the victim” has gone beyond its original intent and is used specifically to censor sensitive subjects. The mention of “the victim’s” slightest role — in any event — is considered unconscionable, especially in historical events like slavery. For example, it’s constantly repeated that Africans were kidnapped by Europeans and forced into slavery, but any mention of the fact African tribal chiefs sold Africans to Europeans blames the victim and is improper to discuss. By labeling the first Africans “enslaved” instead of indentured servants, the 1619 Project can be accused of engaging in a cover-up similar to how — kidnapping — covered up African tribal chiefs selling Africans... In 1653 Casor complained to Robert Parker, a white planter who was visiting Johnson, that he was indentured to Johnson, but Johnson kept him seven years longer than he should have. Johnson insisted that Casor was his servant for life, but Johnson was warned if he didn’t release Casor from servitude, Casor could recover Johnson’s cows as damages. Johnson freed Casor. Then Casor bound himself to Parker. Johnson petitioned the Northampton County court for the return of “his servant”, and in March 1654, the court ordered Casor returned to Johnson and handed down the judgment that Casor was Johnson’s servant for life, that is, his slave.This was the first civil suit in the Thirteen Colonies to declare a person of African descent a slave for life. It also established the right of free blacks to own slaves."
They deny objectivity, yet it's supposed to be taught in schools

Pulitzer Board Must Revoke Nikole Hannah-Jones' Prize - "  Hannah-Jones’s refusal to correct her errors or engage her critics, we have recently learned, was accompanied by surreptitious efforts by The New York Times to alter the record of what it had published in the original magazine of August 18, 2019. Providing no public explanation or acknowledgment of its actions, the Times amended the digital version of the Project text. Not until September 19, 2020, when historian Phillip Magness compared the original and digital versions of the essay in the journal Quillette, did the alterations come to light... Correcting factual errors in their published works, of course, is an important responsibility of both the journalistic and scholarly press. But such corrections are typically and rightly made openly and explicitly. The author and the publisher acknowledge an error and correct it. That is not what happened in this case. Rather, the false claims were erased or altered with no explanation, and Hannah-Jones then proceeded to claim that she had never said or written what in fact she has said and written repeatedly, assertions that the Project materials also made. Fortunately, we have a documentary record to the contrary, in the form of the original publication, in addition to extensive video footage of Hannah-Jones (and Silverstein) making precisely the claims that she now denies having made. The duplicity of attempting to alter the historical record in a manner intended to deceive the public is as serious an infraction against professional ethics as a journalist can commit. A “sweeping, deeply reported and personal essay,” as the Pulitzer Prize Board called it, does not have the license to sweep its own errors into obscurity or the remit to publish “deeply reported” falsehoods."
Someone once claimed to me that the Straits Times has a correction policy, since they update articles even if they don't explain or even acknowledge the update

Salon - Posts | Facebook - "Why Republicans are so determined to deny the 1619 project"
So many liberals in the comments going on tirades, assuming that the 1619 project is gospel truth, that contesting it means denying slavery happened and accusing them of wanting to teach propaganda. How ironic.
In some threads, when presented with historians who criticise the 1619 project, some liberals mock them as far right

1619 Project founder claims her project is simply an 'origin story,' not history - "New York Times magazine staffer Nikole Hannah-Jones claimed this week that her infamous 1619 Project is not actually a work of history, but rather an “origin story.”  Do the schools that have incorporated the project into their history curricula know about this?... “I’ve always said that the 1619 Project is not a history. It is a work of journalism that explicitly seeks to challenge the national narrative and, therefore, the national memory. The project has always been as much about the present as it is the past.”  First, there is a word for literature that seeks not merely to inform but to "challenge the national narrative" and “national memory,” and it is not "journalism."  Second, if the project “is not a history,” then what are we to make of the schools that have updated their history curricula to make way for its faulty central claims? Practically speaking, how does one incorporate the 1619 Project into a straightforward history curriculum? Who knows!  The project, its founder stressed, "never pretended to be a history."   This seems an odd thing to assert now, considering Hannah-Jones herself claimed previously that the project is “American history, not black history.” There is also the rather awkward fact that she and her cohort have spent no small amount of energy boasting about the number of historians who have contributed to the effort, whether with essays or fact-checking. In retrospect, I suppose it was stupid to assume that an initiative bragging of the number of involved historians was also a work of history.  Perhaps she is backtracking now on "history” because even interpretive history, like journalism, must rely on solid facts. Unfortunately for Hannah-Jones, her contributions to the 1619 Project have been criticized far and wide as being counterfactual...   “I’ve said consistently that the 1619 Project is an origin story, not the origin story,” she added. “Our intro says explicitly, what would it mean to consider 1619 our founding — not that it is our founding. The entire point of the 1619 Project … is to offer an alternative, to challenge the single narrative, to push against it and center the margins.”  Well, all right then. Whatever you say.  Honestly, at this point, it is anybody’s guess what the true purpose of the project is. I had stupidly thought that its goal was to posit a premise (that everything we know about America flows from chattel slavery) and then back up said premise with historical fact. But the project apparently exists to “challenge” a “narrative” and our “national memory" — whatever that means."

1619 Project Founder Loses University Tenure Offer after Critics Cite Her “Unfactual and Biased” Work - "Hannah-Jones will now undertake a fixed five-year term as a Professor of the Practice in the place of the tenure... In 2019, Hannah-Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for the 1619 Project which aimed to “reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very centre of the United States national narrative.” The project was lambasted by a number of historians including Gordon S. Wood, James M. McPherson, Sean Wilentz, Victoria Bynum and James Oakes. In an open letter published in The New York Times in December 2019, the historians expressed “strong reservations” in regards to the content of the project and requested several factual corrections in place of what they labelled “ideology before historical understanding.”... Shannon Watkins, writing for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, asserted that Hannah-Jones work was “unfactual and biased” and the developments signified “serious red flags about how the university is being run.” The columnist proceeded to warn of “a degradation of journalistic standards” and implored the Board of Governors to “act swiftly to amend all relevant policies so that trustees are required to review every proposed hire.”"

UNC-Nikole Hannah-Jones: They’re coming for you, too - "UNC-Chapel Hill has sullied its reputation again, this time by giving into white conservative fears about a powerful black woman"
Truth only matters when it can be used to push liberal causes

Was Nikole Hannah-Jones Cancelled? - The Atlantic - "Should we say Hannah-Jones was “canceled,” or just “held accountable” by a university whose rules give its administration the chance to veto tenured appointments? Many who hate the term cancel culture have suddenly found it appropriate in her case, and a few who use it habitually have found reasons not to use it here. The best argument for the Board of Trustees, an inherently political body in a state with a Republican legislature, is that its decision is no more political than the initial appointment. Hannah-Jones is a political journalist. By hiring her, the faculty surely meant to side with her over the critics on the left and the right who have swarmed over her work in the past two years. How could hiring her not be political?... let’s return to the idea of “cancellation,” a term whose overuse and abuse in the past week has finally forced even its most zealous partisans to question its utility. Before the Hannah-Jones incident, Democratic Representatives Jamie Raskin and Jim Clyburn both described their GOP colleague Liz Cheney as a cancellation victim after House Republicans removed her as their leader. The term also jumped the species barrier, like some kind of zoonotic disease. The horse trainer Bob Baffert described his colt Medina Spirit as a victim of “cancel culture” after it tested positive for drugs and its Kentucky Derby victory was called into doubt... Here is the distinction that saves the term cancellation from uselessness and hypocrisy: Cancellation is not criticism; cancellation is the absence of criticism. It is the replacement of criticism with a summary punishment. The punishment ranges in seriousness and could include withdrawal of a job or just an invitation, but the salient point is that it is meted out instantly and without deliberation, often as the result of a mob action. When this switcheroo becomes a habit, the normal way of doing things, we can call that “cancel culture,” and it is indeed a sign of intellectual and institutional rot. The failure to distinguish cancellation from criticism is the source of the humor in V. S. Naipaul’s quip after the Ayatollah Khomeini dispatched assassins to kill Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses. Naipaul called Khomeini’s fatwa “a most extreme form of literary criticism.” This cancellation/criticism dichotomy is elusive in part because it is not parallel to any legal or moral distinction: If I choose not to associate with others, or not to give them the courtesy of a carefully composed retort, I am simply exercising my legal rights of speech and association. “Go screw yourself” is, legally, a form of criticism. And sometimes anything less rude would be undignified. The political scientist Charles Murray was “canceled” when a mob physically assaulted him—and did not criticize him—rather than letting him speak at Middlebury College. Did he also then perpetrate a cancellation when he withdrew from an event upon discovering that the right-wing troll Milo Yiannopoulos was a fellow speaker? In explaining his reasoning to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Murray did not enumerate Yiannopoulos’s faults. He said, “He is a despicable asshole.”... Decisions made after careful scientific analysis of horse piss do not, by this standard, amount to cancellation. Nor does the Republican Party’s decision to oust Cheney, which was conducted in full daylight and according to reasoned discussions about whether she was sufficiently batty to lead the House Republican conference. The politician who invokes “cancel culture” most noisily is Senator Josh Hawley, who is criticized all the time, and who continues to serve in Congress and to enjoy large platforms where he can respond as he pleases. But a myriad of other cases of alleged “cancel culture” do count, and Hannah-Jones’s is one of them. This is true even though Hannah-Jones has consistently diminished complaints about “cancel culture,” and has sometimes engaged with her critics gracelessly and dishonestly. The Trump administration and various distinguished historians have made their criticisms of Hannah-Jones’s work clear. The UNC Board of Trustees has simply said no, without elaboration that would explain the extraordinary circumstances that led it to stand athwart the tenure process and cry halt. The hallmark of cancellation is cowardice—an unwillingness to argue with one’s opponents and show decent respect for the opinions of others by explaining why they are wrong... Rejecting a candidate for a tenured position indicates a lack of confidence in the faculty. The board’s job is to oversee that faculty, and if it really finds its collective judgment so awful, the people of North Carolina deserve to know the extent of the rot. Otherwise they should assume that the rot is in the board itself."
Weird. Liberals told us cancel culture didn't exist, and it was "accountability culture". There's no accountability for liberals, I guess
Weird how we are told the Kavanaugh circus was like a job interview and so could not be counted as cancellation
Is it normal for tenure deciions to be explained?

New York Times corrects The 1619 Project — but it’s still a giant lie - "It took The New York Times seven months to admit a problem with its 1619 Project — and even its correction preserves the fundamental lie of its bid to rewrite American history.  The 1619 Project, which puts the nation’s true founding in the year African slaves were first brought here, insists that “out of slavery grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system.” The Post’s Twisted History series showed earlier this month how wrong this was — in particular, project lead Nikole Hannah-Jones’ claim that the American Revolution was fought primarily to preserve slavery.  Scholars of all political stripes from a variety of disciplines objected to Hannah-Jones’ essay immediately on its publication last August, especially this crucial line: “Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.” rico  That’s a lie, pure and simple, and the paper still hasn’t corrected it. It “made an important clarification,” in Hannah-Jones’ words. A new “editors’ note” explains, “A passage has been adjusted.” Namely, it added two words: The essay now says protecting slavery was the main reason “some of” the colonists fought to rebel from England.  Sorry: Preserving slavery was not a major motive for declaring independence, and next to no one fought in the war for that reason: The colonists didn’t think slavery was under threat, because it wasn’t... After the change, Hannah-Jones tweeted, “In attempting to summarize and streamline, journalists can sometimes lose important context and nuance. I did that here.” No, you rewrote American history — and pushed to indoctrinate children with that lie. And you’re still lying."

Not So Fast, Nikole Hannah-Jones - "People remember only what they are taught to remember today… . What Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times, the Pulitzer Prize committee, and all their allies are doing is striking at the foundation of the American constitutional order. Now that the president has called it out, NHJ is lying to obscure her real intentions, and the truly revolutionary nature of The 1619 Project. Don’t let her get away with it.
UPDATE: You will recall that Winston Smith’s job was to rewrite history in newspaper archives to reflect the party line"

Yes, the 1619 Project Actually Suggests That Year Was America’s True Founding, and Nikole Hannah-Jones Admits It - "The New York Times would like people to believe that one of the 1619 Project's more widely criticized claims—that we might consider 1619, the year African slaves first arrived in the British colonies, to be the true year of America's founding—was never actually put forth by the Pulitzer Prize-winning article series.  Editors recently removed (without explanation or acknowledgment) the provocative statement that the project "aim[s] to reframe the country's history, understanding 1619 as our true founding" from the article series' online introduction. Lead author Nikole Hannah-Jones has repeatedly claimed it is a myth that the project proposes 1619 rather than 1776 as the country's birth year: She blamed bad-faith critics on the right for tricking the media into believing otherwise.
  "One thing in which the right has been tremendously successful is getting media to frame stories in their language and through their lens," wrote Hannah-Jones in a subsequently deleted tweet. "The #1619Project does not argue that 1619 is our true founding. We know this nation marks its founding at 1776."
Forget for a moment that Hannah-Jones' Twitter banner is a picture of 1776 crossed out and replaced with 1619. Forget that multiple progressive media outlets that were sympathetic to the project's aims used the 1619-as-true-founding summary in order to explain it. Forget that a year ago, after the articles were published, both Hannah-Jones and New York Times magazine editor Jake Silverstein described the project in exactly these terms: "We sort of proposed the idea in a variety of ways that if you consider 1619 as the foundational date of the country, rather than 1776, it just changes your understanding and we call that a reframing of American history." Just consider one last piece of evidence that Hannah-Jones is being deceptive about who invented the 1619-not-1776 framing.  In an interview with Tomiko Brown-Nagin, dean of Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute, Hannah-Jones stated explicitly that the 1619 Project makes evocative arguments such as, "What would it mean to consider 1619 our founding and not 1776?" Here is video of the conversation, which took place not a year ago, or even several months ago, but just last week: September 15, 2020... the claim is inarguably part of the 1619 Project, and it's absurd for Hannah-Jones to pretend it isn't—especially while she continues to describe the project in exactly these terms. To say that conservatives imagined or manufactured this is ridiculous. It's gaslighting—and it undercuts the credibility of the author and her work."

Now the 1619 Project is trying to rewrite its own history - "“The #1619Project does not argue that 1619 is our true founding” — for claims to the contrary, blame “the right.”  Huh? She’s on the public record at plenty of appearances, such as an Ann Arbor event, saying the project asserts “our true founding is 1619 not 1776.” And the 2019 print edition of the project’s introduction says of the moment in 1619 when a ship with enslaved Africans arrived on our shores: “America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began.”  That line no longer appears in the online version, so the entire Times is a part of Hannah-Jones’ scheme to falsify her record.  This, after she’s had to correct the original essay several times to retreat from its most ridiculous claims (ones her own sources, such as Northwestern black history prof Leslie M. Harris, had debunked before she went to print). The online version now says “some of” the founders fought to preserve slavery — which is still misleading, since virtually none of them did so.  It’s almost as wormy as deleting “understanding 1619 as our true founding” from the project’s founding document — then pretending it was never there.  Having won a Pulitzer for her first bid to fake the historic record, Hannah-Jones seems to think she can do it whenever she likes."

1619 Project: Top Historians Criticize New York Times Slavery Feature - "One focus of the historians is the preposterous claim of the 1619 Project that a primary reason that the colonists launched the American Revolution was to protect slavery. “This is not true,” they say. “If supportable, the allegation would be astounding — yet every statement offered by the project to validate it is false.”"

Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "The union for the employees of the New York Times”, in a since deleted tweet, condemned a fellow member for their op-ed on the newspaper’s much criticized 1619 project. This reflects a growing pattern at the paper of record to endorse censorship and punishment for journalistic wrongthink. Of all the industries, journalists should be particularly sensitive to the importance of protecting the right of free expression and a healthy open debate on the issues of the day."

Mitch McConnell Singles Out 1619 Project in Biden's Education Plan - The New York Times - "“Kids again are being taught that the color of their skin defines them, and if they look a certain way, they’re an oppressor,” Mr. Scott said, adding later: “Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country.”... On his first day in office, Mr. Biden signed an executive order asserting that the federal government should “pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all,” especially people of color “who have been historically underserved, marginalized and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.”  “Our country faces converging economic, health and climate crises that have exposed and exacerbated inequities, while a historic movement for justice has highlighted the unbearable human costs of systemic racism,” Mr. Biden wrote in the order.  The administration’s proposed rule protested by Mr. McConnell and others does not mandate any curriculum changes. Instead, it lays out priorities for federal competitions or grant programs to which schools could elect to apply for initiatives that “take into account systemic marginalization, biases, inequities and discriminatory policy and practice in American history.” In addition to citing the 1619 Project, the rule quotes the work of Ibram X. Kendi, the author of the book “How to Be an Antiracist.”"

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