Links - 10th February 2024 (2 - Star Wars)

Meme - NPC: "Haha you MUST watch Clone Wars and Rebels to fully enjoy and understand Ahsoka. All is connected. Star Wars was always like this"
"My friend watched Mandalorian S1 and never consumed any other star wars content. He said it was cool"
NPC: *upset*

Taika Waititi Wanted to 'Piss Fans Off' With 'Thor: Love and Thunder' - "What would the fans least expect? Thor in love! What do the fans not want? Thor in love! What would really piss the fans off? And we’re doing that.”
'Why Are You Humanizing a God': Taika Waititi's "I'm Gonna Ruin Thor" Comment Divides Fanbase - "'they said, ‘Aw, he’s gonna ruin this! He’s gonna ruin Thor!’ And I would write back ‘Oh, I’m gonna ruin it alright. Oh, a hundred percent, I’m gonna ruin it for you.’"
Taika Waititi Jokes His 'Star Wars' Film Will 'Piss People Off'
When you are proud and want to piss fans off...

3 Deleted Scenes COMPLETELY CHANGE how Anakin Became Darth Vader - YouTube

Meme - Captain Enoch: "Finally I can leave this shithole. I can't wait to see my wife and kids in Alderaan"
Sabine: *look*

Meme - "19 Years on Tatooine
*Beru Lars, Owen Lars, Obi-Wan Kenobi*"

Meme - "When I was a kid, all I wanted was a lightsaber like Luke Skywalker. Now that I'm an adult, I'm starting to think I want a bacta tank like Luke Skywalker"

Meme - R2-D2: "Luke, this man sliced up your father and left him burning to death!"
Old Ben: "Beep boop. Nobody understands you"

Meme - Darth Vader: "I find your lack of faith disturbing"
Grand Moff Tarkin: "Enough of this. Vader, release him"
Darth Vader: "As you wish."
"That day. Tarkin was amazed to discover that when Vader was saying "as you wish", what he meant was "Fuck you"."

Meme - "There is no strength left in the fans of Star Wars. They are scattered. Divided. Leaderless."
"There is one who could unite them."
"Hello there."

Meme - "Exact moment I realized why the Rebels were losing *All female crew in The Last Jedi*"

Daisy Ridley's New Movie Grosses Less Than $1 Million, Can't Even Crack Box Office Top 10 - "The movie, which is based on the 2017 Karen Dionne book of the same name, was directed by Limitless and Divergent's Neil Burger... The Marsh King's Daughter has barely been able to register at the domestic box office despite this weekend being the fourth lowest-grossing overall of the year to date... One curious thing about The Marsh King's Daughter's lack of impact on the box office is the fact that it has such a stacked cast. Ridley, who starred in the new Star Wars trilogy, co-stars with another franchise veteran, Rogue One's Ben Mendelsohn, who also stars in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the Skrull Talos... While Ridley is a big-name actor, outside of franchises such as Star Wars, Peter Rabbit, and Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot movies, her box office draw has proven to be negligible. In fact, her highest-grossing non-franchise title was the 2021 Tom Holland movie Chaos Walking, which only earned $27.1 million despite its roughly $100 million budget."
Clearly she was a huge success as Rey

Meme - Distracted Boyfriend: *Padme and Shin Hati*

Meme - *YVONNE STRAHOVSKI, ARIANNY CELESTE, ANA DE ARMAS, KRISTEN BELL, ADRIANNE CURRY, OLIVIA MUNN, MAITLAND WARD, MING-NA WEN, JENNIFER ANNISTON, MELISSA JOAN HART, ALESSANDRA TORRESANI, KIM KARDASHIAN, DANICA MCKELLAR, SARA JEAN UNDERWOOD dressed up as Slave Leia*"

The impact of Star Wars on the English language: Star Wars-derived words and constructions in present-day English corpora - "Since George Lucas’s film A New Hope was first screened in 1977, the Star Wars saga has become a pop-culture phenomenon incorporating films, videogames, books, merchandise, and a quasi-religious philosophy, but linguistic research on Star Wars is scarce and has mainly focused on language use in the films. There is as yet no investigation of the impact of Star Wars on the English language, and the present study fills this gap using corpus-linguistic methods to investigate the extent to which characteristic words and constructions from the Star Wars universe have become established in English. Five Star Wars-derived items included in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), namely Jedi, Padawan, lightsabre (with spelling variants), Yoda, and the characteristic construction to the dark side were analysed regarding their frequency of occurrence in four corpora of present-day English (COCA, COHA, BNC, BNC Spoken 2014) and coded regarding their level of independence from the original films. The results show that over one-third of the uses of the investigated Star Wars-derived items are innovative (like the BNC example Other imbibers have gone over to the dark side of beer, rejecting the pasteurised lager produced by the breweries) and thus well integrated into the English language."

Star Wars: The Last Jedi Toys Are STILL On Shelves 6 Years Later - YouTube - "The Last Jedi released in 2017, I'm so glad I can still find the toys. There's another Disney brand that's dead at retail and that's a problem for the house of mouse."
Clearly a huge success

Meme - "When you just doomed your galaxy to another civil war but your master doesn't give you a hard time about it *Sabine Wren*"

jump aside on X - "The least believable thing about Revenge of the Sith is Padme gracefully prancing while full term pregnant with twins and tearfully begging Anakin to reconsider as opposed to waddling out of her spaceship and screaming, “WHAT THE FUCK ANAKIN”"
Weird. I thought stereotypes about pregnant women were bad

Imperial & Stormtrooper Aim/Hit Count | The Mandalorian Seasons 1-2 - YouTube - "Who said Imperial Stormtroopers can't aim? In this video, we go through seasons 1 and 2 of The Mandalorian and count each time an Imperial aimed and shot right on their designated target. The results might very well surprise you."

Meme - Zealous Memes: "Today marks the 6 year anniversary of the release of The Last Jedi. This film ushered in the most creatively bankrupt era we've seen in Hollywood. This film was purposely divisive and disrespected many longtime fans. For 152 minutes we watched absolutely nothing change from where the previous film ended. We did however get a "your mother" joke and the "rich are bad and free the animals propaganda." The Last Jedi helped transform one of the greatest franchises in cinematic history to literal CW level television. #thedownfallofcinema #thelastjedisucks
IT'S TRUE, ALL OF IT"
It's not true that nothing changed from the previous film. They made it worse.

"Isn't This So Great?": Adam Driver Promises Harrison Ford Loves Star Wars More Than You Think

‘Star Wars’: Adam Driver Says J.J. Abrams’ Original Vision For Kylo Ren Was Completely Changed - "“I had an overall arc that in mind that [Abrams] wanted to do. His idea was that [Kylo’s] journey was the opposite journey of Vader, where Vader starts the most confident and the most committed to the dark side. And then by the last movie, he’s the most vulnerable and weak. He wanted to start with the opposite. This character was the most confused and vulnerable, and by the end of the three movies, he would be the most committed to the dark side. I tried to keep that arc in mind, regardless if that wound up not being the journey anyway, because it changed while shooting. But I was still focused on that.”"

Meme - "Pete Davidson: Anakin qui vient de décimer tout un village, femmes et enfants inclus
Ariana Grande: Padmé"
"Ani aime les sucettes...."

: I AM HAUNTED BY A PAST I CANNOT GO BACK TO !!!!!!... - "I AM HAUNTED BY A PAST I CANNOT GO BACK TO !!!!!! anyways"
"#darth vader while he's force choking imperial officer 67 of the day"

Meme - "the first conversation between vader and leia in anh is So funny like it implies a lot about the previous times they've met
#‘you weren’t on any mercy mission this time!’ she really got one over on him before huh. hes not happy!
Not only has Darth Vader been repeatedly thwarted by a teenage girl, he considers her nothing less than a serious and worthy adversary. Darth Vader leaned in.
Daisie: like most fathers, darth vader's most feared and respected adversary is his teenage daughter"

Meme Maul to Old Ben while dying: "if i was a bug i would find you every lifetime just to die in your drink"

Meme - Yoda: "Luke, when gone I am...the last Jedi will you be."
Luke: "What about Ezra?"
Yoda: "Offworld"
Luke: "Ahsoka?"
Yoda: "Unavailable"
Luke: "Mara Jade?"
George Lucas: "Don't invoke her name!"

Meme - Obi-Wan: "When the time comes,he must be trained."
Owne Lars: "Like you trained his father?"
Obi-Wan: "You're right Owen, protect him like you protected his Grandmother."

Meme - Laurence Fox @LozzaFox: "They should really be talking about the story or the characters and how brilliant the script is.  But no.  The director is brown and also a woman!  Who F-ing cares. It’s a film. Just make it good."
"OBAID-CHINOY: WE'RE ABOUT TO CREATE SOMETHING VERY SPECIAL
Oscar-winning director first woman, person of color to direct "Star Wars" film"
When they don't learn...

Meme - Eleanor Mueller @TheLetterbomb: "fun fact: Andor ended my marriage
this is an exaggeration, but the conversations about politics that my ex and i had as a result of watching Andor together were so intense that it finally broke us up"

Director of Next ‘Star Wars’ Movie Says Her Goal is to “Make Men Uncomfortable” - "I’m starting to wonder if Obaid-Chinoy has even seen a Star Wars movie, and I honestly would not be surprised if she hasn’t. Just a few days ago, she stated, “it’s about time that a woman” shaped a Star Wars movie — completely unaware of Princess Leia? Rey? Obaid-Chinoy’s background is in feminist non-fiction filmmaking, so it should not come as any surprise that she said this. If it’s a passion of hers, then so be it, make as many men uncomfortable as you want, but Star Wars fans are primarily male and they will likely be turned off from buying a ticket for Obaid-Chinoy’s upcoming film.  It’s still odd that, out of all the directors available to steer the sinking Star Wars ship into the right direction, Disney and LucasFilm decided it was best to hire a non-fiction filmmaker with barely any experience in studio filmmaking... This latest mess for Disney comes just a few months after CEO Bob Iger promised that the company would revamp their focus and “entertain first,” instead of delving into “messages.” Iger basically blamed Disney’s failures on the “progressive” messaging behind their movies. In his words, he wanted to “quiet things down after years of culture wars.”"
Good luck alienating your customers
Apparently Kathleen Kennedy has no power to shape Star Wars movies

Shocking! Men Are Uncomfortable Because a Female 'Star Wars' Director Spoke the Truth - "Men clearly need to be made uncomfortable more often"
Damage control again. Lies are truth, of course. And pissing off your audience is the way to success, because everyone is a self-flagellating white liberal
Weird how men in general are supposed to be made uncomfortable over Pakistani acid attacks and honour killings (which are also supported by women there). But if you narrow it down to Pakistani men that's racist and Islamophobic, so
If you want to make women uncomfortable, that's misogyny, naturally

Lucasfilm sues Star Wash, Chilean 'Star Wars'-themed car wash - "Walt Disney (DIS.N) production company Lucasfilm is suing a themed carwash on the outskirts of Chilean capital Santiago for plagiarizing its multibillion-dollar galactic film and television saga "Star Wars," lawyers for the carwash said.  Star Wash has shared videos on social media showing attendants dressed as "Star Wars" characters such as Chewbacca or a Stormtrooper wiping down hoods, bounty hunter Boba Fett and hero Cassian Andor wielding hosepipes instead of blasters and Darth Vader appearing to use The Force to summon cleaning cloths... Jara is contesting the suit, according to his lawyers, who argue that the name is sufficiently different from the movie franchise to avoid confusion and that the production company's copyright, while covering products such as toys, furniture and non-alcoholic drinks, does not extend to cleaning cars. "Of course this lawsuit is affecting us. We're a small business and we're spending on things we hadn't budgeted for," Jara said in an interview.  He said his young daughter had thought of the wordplay while on a family trip to a Disney theme park in the United States that features a "Star Wars" area.  "We don't make movies or sell their products or anything like that," Jara added, noting that his business was, however, a "stellar" car wash."

What makes the prequel trilogy so “memeable”? : StarWars - "The writing is bad and goofy. And Reddit’s main demo - millennials and older zoomers - grew up with the PT.  So bad dialogue + familiarity = memeable."
"The Main issue with star wars is that it is more serious and grounded than marvel. The OT is funny at times, but in a really natural and almost improvised sounding way. The Prequels doubled down on beign serious (Especially Episode 2 and 3), while also turning up the stiltedness of one-liners, which created a certain uncanny writing in the dialouge.  I think Disney making Star Wars more Marvel, while many Fans wanting it to be more Lord of the Rings is a major stylistic and visionary disconnect, that has been plaging the relationship with the fans for almost 10 years now."
"Every line of dialogue is a one-liner, delivered as monologue. It has all the dramatics of a monologue, except it's just the one line, completely detached from the rest of the scene.  I often wonder if the probrem isn't directing but the editing. It's common to do many takes in several styles, then pick the ones that flow best together in editing. It's as though Lucas doesn't understand how to flow dialogue together."

Why is K. Kennedy mentioned only when something bad happens, but never when something good? : StarWars - "For me, all the projects I ended up liking from recent Star Wars media were somewhat disconnected from the main Lucasfilm core. And at this point that trend is too consistent to be accidental.  Andor is the brainchild of Tony Gilroy, and it has a decidedly different feeling and approach than the main shows like Kenobi or Boba Fett or Mandalorian. I liked the writing, so I looked up Tony Gilroy and Beau Willimon. I liked the acting, so I looked up the individual actors like Diego Luna and Stellan Skarsgard. Turns out all those people had basically nothing to do with the other SW projects that are more tightly tied to LucasFilm's core executives, Tony Gilroy is something of an outsider who used to make action thrillers instead of being a SW nerd.  Jedi: Fallen Order and Jedi: Survivor also have a decidedly different feeling and approach than most of the other media. They were the brainchild of a videogame director called Stig Asmussen who works for Respawn under EA, not Disney or Lucasfilm. I liked the writing, so I learned that it was written by Aaron Contreras. I liked the character performances so I looked up Cameron Monaghan and Tina Ivlev. Again, it turns out none of these people are Star Wars regulars. The project was also not tightly tied to LucasFilm's core executives, they merely sent some advisory staff to iron out the lore consistencies with the game's writing staff.  I enjoy these Star Wars stories very much. So when I go look at projects I don't enjoy such as Kenobi or Boba Fett or the recent Mandalorian season or the Sequel trilogy - a pattern that keeps emerging is that LucasFilm had a lot more direct control over these projects. And who managed Lucasfilm during all those projects? Whose job is it to make sure everything goes smoothly? To foster good stories and improve or hold back bad ones? Kathleen Kennedy. She is the president of Lucasfilm. It is her job. I don't hate her specifically, but I am wary and distrustful of Star Wars media that is tightly controlled by Lucasfilm under her leadership because these last few years taught me that often results in a story I don't enjoy."

Meme - OGfattcatt @ogfattcatt.bsky.social: "I figured out you can make star wars sounding character names by switching the first sounds of two-word food items:
Weer Bellington
Vili Cherde
Secan Pandies
Dot Hog
Tench Froast
Pabenero Hepper
Oalmata Kalive"

Meme - Lucasfilm: "Asajj Ventress' death is being retconned"
Fans: "You said the books would be part of the canon."
Lucasfilm: "I am altering the canon. Pray I don't alter it any further"

Meme - "The queen's wardrobe, maybe."
"Hyperdrive's all yours. Pleasure doing business, outlander."
"Written and Directed by GEORGE LUCAS"

Meme - Raquel Lin: "Convention Made. #SWC2023. *pointing Spider-men meme but with Ahsokas: Rosario Dawson, Ashley Eckstein and Raquel Lin*"

Meme - Mace Windu: "WE NEVER TOLD YOU ABOUT YOUR FATHER."
Boba Fett: "I KNOW ENOUGH. I KNOW YOU KILLED HIM"
Mace Windu: "NO... YOU ARE YOUR FATHER."

Meme - "This one time, at Jedi Camp *Rey using lightsaber as vibrator*"

Meme - *Force choking Star Wars*
George Lucas: "Let the franchise go, Kathleen"
Kathleen Kennedy: "You turned the fanbase against me"
George Lucas: "You have done that yourself"

Star Wars: Ahsoka's Failure Shows Us Why Girlbosses Never Work - "one of our readers noted the inability of Strong Female Characters express emotion.  The men can bawl, rage, chew on scenery, but the women must always appear stoic because of how strong they are.     This points to why the only people who like them are shrill harridans or shameless simps:  normal women don’t act like that... Once upon a time, Hollywood understood that this was the core of their business.  Not only did they seek out the best writers, they wanted men and women who could dominate the screen, making it impossible to turn away.     Now it’s all about checking woke boxes and hating the fans. Watching the clips from Asoka, the women don’t seem to be strong silent types so much as drugged into a stupor... There’s something to be said for restraint, for someone struggling to hold it together, but to do that, you first have to show they audience that they can in fact lose control.  Sigourney Weaver’s turn as Ellen Ripley in Aliens shows a wide emotional range:  relief, anxiety, abject terror and finally righteous anger as she risks all to save Newt.  That’s why her performance is legendary...    I’ve said before that these people write what they know, and I’m sure most of the writers for the show are on SSRIs and mood stabilizers. They aren’t stoic so much as suffering from flat affect, and I’m thinking that most of Hollywood is that way now.   Heck, maybe the actors are drugged.  That would explain why they took the gig in the first place. It’s now clear that just about all of the Disney Star War characters are either self-insert fantasies from frustrated women or feeble men attempting to get a mercy screw from the distaff members of the Writer’s Room.     Valorize them all you want, Disney, but no one wants to see their Queen Bee supervisor made the hero of a TV show.  The target of revenge fantasies, yes, glorification, no.  This applies to both men and women, by the way.  Women want to imagine themselves as the main character, and Jedi Karen demanding to speak to a bloated Grand Manager Thrawn isn’t what they have in mind.  Heck, market data conclusively proves that they’d much rather be Rachel the Amish Widow than one of these stone-faced stiffs... On a long drive I mentioned the infamous lightsaber impalement of Sabine to my daughter, who is an Air Force medic.  Despite once being an avid Star Wars fan (she built her own clone trooper armor), she had zero interest in the show, but she did offer a defense for the scene:  “Akshually, Dad, people can survive some pretty horrific wounds to the torso.”  When we got home, I showed her a still photo, and her response was:  “Oh.  No,. That’s instantly fatal.  Heart and spine.  Game over.”    I bring this up because it does provide a reason for the ladies to seem so ridiculously calm in what would otherwise be harrowing circumstances.  I mean, if having your chest melted out of you is recoverable, why get excited about anything?... Women As Second-Rate Men  The core problem is that Disney’s approach exemplifies the belief that women in their traditional roles are inferior, and that they should therefore strive to be more like men – which is a profoundly anti-feminist concept if one bothers to think about it.    Men and women are different, and trying to mash them into the same roles creates unlikeable, shallow characters whose existence wrecks the plausibility of the story.  As transgender “women” have shown us, men have an almost insurmountable advantage in size and strength when it comes to athletics.  That’s fine, because women have superior communication, empathy, perception and emotional intelligence.     The classic example of this is Galadriel, who could literally see into peoples’ hearts and exemplified empathy and wisdom.  Naturally the Amazon version has none of these things: she’s a girlboss – cruel in her strength, foul in wisdom, dominating those around her... And so we have the ladies of Asokha: cold, distant, combative and domineering.   They’re incapable of a relationship with a male they regard as an equal...    One of the (many) crimes of the sequels is that they wrecked Han and Leia as a couple, just as they wrecked Han and Luke as old men.  What is it with these people hating successful love stories?  I guess they write what they know."

Allowed on Facebook: white nem and the guillotine

"don't worry white nem, the guillotines are yearning for you"

Even if you ignore the obfuscation of "nem" (this person means "men"), this is threatening violence against white people.

Addendum: Odd. Facebook claims that you shouldn't "Post content that directly attacks people based on... Race".

Links - 10th February 2024 (1 - Hamas Attack Oct 2023)

Top Israeli TikTok employee resigns over antisemitism - "paid video campaigns about the plight of the Israeli hostages captured on Oct. 7 were rejected for being “too political” while paid campaigns for “humanitarian campaigns that serve Hamas’ narrative, while fundraising for children in Gaza” were accepted. Additionally, the memo alleged that content uploaded by users showing graphic pro-Palestinian content were not removed, despite violating safety policies on the platform, due to biased and politically motivated moderation teams... Other Jewish employees at TikTok have claimed that the work environment is hostile, citing antisemitic posts on Lark, the company’s internal messaging system. Additionally, they said that a support group for Palestinians was created at the company after the war, but not one for Israelis... Jewish content creators on the app have long complained about antisemitic harassment on their accounts, which has risen since the war began. Antisemitic videos often remain up even after being flagged to moderators"

Meme - M.A. Rothman @MichaelARothman: "WE ARE HIRING. Naive college students needed to serve as human shields for ongoing terror campaign. No experience, skills, or intelligence needed. Foreign travel required. Contact: Hamas Human Relations, tunnelvermin@deathcult.com"

Meme - Avi Mayer @AviMayer: "Friday morning in Gaza’s Khan Yunis Sector. An incident that took place with one of the battalions operating under the 4th Brigade:  Before carrying out a raid, the force sent up a drone after spotting a suspicious figure. Through the drone they saw an elderly woman bound to a bed.  The investigator called out to her in Hebrew and Arabic.  The suspicion of a luring event [i.e., an attempt to lure the soldiers into an ambush or a trap] was ruled out. The force went up to the apartment together with the investigator.  They found a 75-year-old woman bound by her arms and in very poor health. Her arms were extremely swollen, and she was severely dehydrated.  The investigator questioned her (the incident has been documented by the IDF) while a doctor treated her on site.  According to the woman, her family fled south. Two Hamas operatives in IDF uniforms arrived, bound her to the bed, and told her to say that the IDF did it. She lay like that for two days.  There are more and more monstrous and insane cases of bound elderly women, boobytrapped elderly men, and other outlandish things.  The time has really come for the IDF Spokesperson to start releasing these materials.  Via @avishaigrinzaig , a reporter for KAN."

Meme - James J. Marlow: "Eight years ago a BBC reporter was given access to the terror tunnels under Gaza. Later in October and November 2023 the BBC claimed that they had "no evidence of tunnels" and they "could not verify Israel's claims". You decide what to believe..."

Hen Mazzig on X - "Once again, Egypt is building up its border with Gaza. Where are the protests? Marches? Cries of "inhumanity," "apartheid," and "open air prisons"? The world is silent because Egyptians are allowed to protect themselves against radical Islamic Jihad, and Jews are not."
The cope is that this is to prevent Israel from ethnically cleansing Gaza.

Mossad Commentary on X - "An Egyptian journalist on government television made an unusual and harsh statement to the residents of Gaza:  If the residents of Gaza try to get close to the Egyptian border and enter our country as refugees, they are doomed. They will die after being shot. You can enter our territory but you will return in death bags. We have no time for your boredom.  They truly hate them"
Why would Israel do this?

Jordan says it beefs up army presence along borders with Israel - "Jordan said on Tuesday the army had beefed up its presence along its borders with Israel and warned that any Israeli attempt to forcibly push Palestinians across the Jordan River would represent a breach of its peace accord with its neighbour."
Good way to stop Palestinians from entering Jordan and demonise Israel at the same time

Visegrád 24 on X - "The student who was harassed by woke activists in Berlin a few weeks ago suffered serious injuries this weekend after an Arab, who recognized him from the video below, attacked him The student is the grandson of an Israeli who was killed by terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics"

Thread by @The_Bear_Jew18 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Hamas' social media fans were accusing Israel of genocide on Oct. 7, BEFORE any IDF response.  Just as mass demonstrations in the streets spontaneously materialized within hours of the massacre, so did mass claims of "genocide".  As if organized, on cue.... This is October 7 in Berlin. Celebrations & calls for the destruction of the world's only Jewish state....  What other cause is able to mobilize people to rally this quickly? Long thread of mass, spontaneous demonstrations on October 7 in Turkey, Yemen, Bahrain, Lebanon, Iran, Kuwait, Iraq, and Jordan.... It took up to 24 hours for western cities to organize mass rallies for Hamas, calling for the destruction of Israel... On "X" (Twitter) as if following a Hamas script written in advance, they all fell into line accusing Israel of genocide while the Oct 7 massacre was still raging; before any IDF response. Hamas appeared ready in advance to deploy its social media "armed" wing of useful idiots & Jew-hating cranks in order to slow down the imminent IDF response... Not only predictions of imminent genocide from October 7, but assertions that it's ongoing for decades, as "Hulk" Mark Ruffalo and other cranks postulate. It's a "decades" long genocide....  Obviously the worst, most incompetent attempt ever on record considering Palestinian population growth over the same time period...  So what exactly is going on here with "genocide" accusations pre-dating October 7 and before any IDF response to Hamas' massacre?  What's with spontaneous Nazi rallies worldwide?"

Douglas Murray on X - "My event in central London tonight has been moved after the theatre that was meant to be hosting it cowered to a campaign of intimidation. We have arrived at the point where theatres in London no longer feel safe to support free speech - or at least not when the subject is about Jews or Israel. When even the threat of a threat is enough to cause such fear amongst staff members that they refuse to show up to work, we all have a very big problem. Meantime the event will still be going ahead. I have no intention of buckling to extremists, even if the theatre in question has."

IDF publish footage of rocket launches from a school in the Gaza Strip, later bombs the launcher : CombatFootage
Why would Israel kill children?
Hamas = Hiding among mosques and schoolchildren

Israel-Hamas war misinformation on social media is harder to track - "In the days after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, researchers flagged dozens of accounts pushing a coordinated disinformation campaign related to the war, and a separate report from the Technology Transparency Project found Hamas has used premium accounts on X to spread propaganda videos... “One of the things that is touted for that [premium] service is that you get prioritized algorithmic ranking and searches,” Technology Transparency Project Director Katie Paul said. Hamas propaganda is getting the same treatment, she said, “which is making it even easier to find these videos that are also being monetized by the platform.”"

South Africa asks ICC to exempt it from Putin arrest to avoid war with Russia
Clearly they care greatly about international law, which is why they brought the case against Israel to the ICJ

Hillel Fuld on X - "I am not going to say that anyone protesting against Israel has actual mental issues but I’m kinda saying that.   If you are one of those people yelling to globalize Intifada, ask yourself whether you’d call for murder and rape if anyone else besides the Jews were on the receiving end.   Literally these people have a distortion field that is created by deep hatred of Jews.   How else do you explain the same people calling for a ceasefire and then in the same breath, calling for violence against Jews? Make up your mind. Those two things are by definition mutually exclusive. You can’t have both.   How else do you explain the same people saying they’re not antisemitic and then attacking actual Jews even though they have never stepped foot in Israel? How is that not antisemitic?   How else do you explain them yelling about occupation when there was not a single Jew, dead or alive (Israel actually dug up its dead in 2005 when they left Gaza) in Gaza since 2005?   How else do you explain them yelling about genocide when the ratio of terrorist to civilian is the lowest in almost any war?! And mind you, that is based on Hamas numbers! In reality the civilian death count is significantly lower. Not to mention the fact that the Palestinian population has multiplied by 6 since Israel was established. How else do you explain adults, otherwise normal people, ripping down posters of innocent babies and children abducted by Hamas while claiming to care about human rights?  How else do you explain otherwise intelligent people attacking Jews unprovoked knowing full well they will be held accountable for their actions either by the law or by history?  I’m telling you, they say hatred blinds, but the hatred of Jews is a whole other level.    People protesting against Israel, people who stand with Hamas who are rapists and pedophiles, have serious mental issues and need to seek help immediately.   There. I said it. Look at this monster. Look into his cold murderous eyes. You side with him, you side with evil. We see you and won’t forget it.   The good news for you? It’s not too late to stand with Israel and join us as we eradicate evil. You are welcome into our club at any time.   This is one of those moments in history in which not choosing a side is choosing a side. This is one of those moments that you’ll look back and regret not standing with the Jews.   Open your eyes and stand with the forces of light as we extinguish the darkness of radical Islam."

Visegrád 24 on X - "Fathi Hamas, a Hamas leader and former Interior Minister speaking in 2019:  “We mustn’t just kill Jews in Israel, we need to kill them across the world”  Ceasefire and leaving these guys in charge of Gaza? It won’t happen. No chance…"
Eylon Levy on X - "When you say, “Globalize the intifada,” this is what it actually means, courtesy of the people who do the intifada."

Meme - Renée @dntrefertome: "HAMAS IS MY ARMY
SOMALI PIRATES IS MY NAVY
HOUTHIS ARE MY AIR FORCE
WE SALUTE OUR HEROES IN THIS HOUSE"
Renée @dntrefertome: 25 I genderfucked girlthing I it/its I talks in 3rd person sometimes I queer & trans I autistic I anti hero-worship I condones violence and revenge I $rennbyars"

Port of Vancouver blocked by protestors - "Dozens of demonstrators temporarily blocked entrances to the Port of Vancouver in East Vancouver Thursday, calling for an “immediate arms embargo on Israel.”"

Pro-Israel British MP says he won't seek reelection due to relentless threats, attacks - "A British lawmaker who represents a mainly Jewish area and holds pro-Israel views has announced he will not seek reelection, because of a spate of threats and an arson attack on his office.  Mike Freer’s decision comes as antisemitic incidents surge in the UK in the wake of Israel’s war with Hamas...   Since he was first elected in 2010, Freer has been targeted by Muslims Against Crusades, which the UK government has banned as a terror organization. That, and the 2021 murder of fellow Conservative MP David Amess, had placed “intolerable stress” on his husband and wider family, he writes.  Amess’s killer Ali Harbi Ali, an Islamic State group follower, had visited Freer’s constituency office but he was not there."

Langara College instructor who praised Hamas attack has been fired - "A Langara College instructor who praised the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas is no longer an employee at the Vancouver school.  But Natalie Knight, an English instructor and Indigenous curriculum consultant, was apparently not dismissed for her controversial statement about the Hamas attack, which killed about 1,200 people, but for her conduct at a rally this week. Knight went on leave after referring to the attack as an “amazing, brilliant offensive” during a pro-Palestinian rally outside the Vancouver Art Gallery in October.  She was quietly reinstated after an investigation by Langara College found her comments “were not clearly outside the bounds of protected expression.”  On Friday, Langara announced Knight was no longer with the college.  In a letter to students, faculty and staff, Langara said Knight was allowed to return to work with the expectation she would comply with the college’s policies and would “take care to ensure any future remarks could not reasonably be interpreted as celebrating violence against civilians.”  “The employee proceeded to engage in activities contrary to the expectations laid out by the college and as a result this employee is no longer an employee of Langara College,” it said... According to the student paper Langara Voice, Knight told a crowd at a rally on campus Tuesday that she had been reinstated as an instructor without any disciplinary action: “It means we won. It means I did nothing wrong. It means none of you are doing anything wrong.”  Knight told the Voice she would return to work “very soon.”"
Naturally, terrorism supporters claimed she was fired for supporting Palestinians. This tells you what they mean when they talk about supporting Palestinians / supporting Palestine.

Langara college and BCNDP are stifling free speech on Palestine: Knight in! Burns out! | socialist.ca - "The same day that the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel is committing genocide in Palestine, the President and CEO of snəw̓eyəɬ leləm̓ - Langara College, Dr. Burns, fired English Instructor Dr. Natalie Knight for participating in a rally against that same genocide.   It looks like Dr. Burns is trying to remove all opposition to genocide in Palestine from campus... The President’s email seemed to directly contradict the college’s free speech policy...  Clearly the goal of the college President is not a campus where it is safe for differing views to be expressed, but one where only the views of the President may be championed. Those who are opposed to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Apartheid, starvation, wanton bombing of families in their homes, and all the other horrors by Israel that Canada supports, must fear for their jobs.   Now is not the time to back down. College and university campuses have always been places where progressive students battle the defenders of reaction in the admin offices. And the students and workers on campus can win. Right now, on campus solidarity with Palestine is very popular. In just a few weeks last fall, over 700 students and workers signed a petition to the federal government calling for Canada to call for a ceasefire, an end to the siege, and an end to arms and aid to Israel. We can build on this movement on campus as part of the wider movement to force the Canadian government to take action against the genocide. It’s time for a cross campus walkout to confront the college admin and the provincial and federal governments who support genocide."
This level of delusion is impressive, given that the ICJ did not rule that. The left is also very keen to claim that hate speech is not free speech

The university teacher facing firing for daring to denounce Hamas - "The 59-year-old marketing lecturer at the University of Guelph-Humber came across a post from an educator in Pakistan, who was using what Finlayson considered genocidal language about the conflict in Gaza, by calling for a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea.” Incensed, Finlayson responded with a post that he admits was “hot-headed and unwise.”  Most reasonable people would probably consider the response to be slightly over-caffeinated but well within the bounds of fair comment.  But most reasonable people do not work as administrators at North American universities in an age when the illiberal left has deemed that anything that makes students or faculty feel “unsafe” must be rooted out and destroyed.  A student who saw the post, responded: “REPORT, REPORT, REPORT.” Another said he or she was “absolutely ashamed” by her professor’s comments, “filled with hate and Islamophobia.” Finlayson has no right to work in academia in future, the student said, a position that appears to correspond with that of the Guelph-Humber administration, which called him in and told him he was suspended with pay, pending an investigation. Courses that he was scheduled to teach next semester are no longer being offered... “It is frightening that an educator is essentially a pro-Nazi zealot,” Finlayson wrote. “If you say ‘from the river to the sea’, you’re a Nazi. I’m not neutral. I stand with Israel. I stand against anti-Semites who want nothing but dead Jews; who take millions from their education and health care budgets and spend it on making war. Israel has a full right to their land. You stand with Palestine means you stand with Hitler. You don’t want peace, you want dead Jews. Just like Palestinians who freely admit this to pollsters. They murdered 1,400 innocents and took 250 hostages and the people celebrated rapist monsters as heroes. They want a barbaric, primitive Islamic caliphate and hate all post-Enlightenment values. They murder their own people for being gay and you stand with them. Disgusting. Move there.” Some people might take issue with the interchangeable use of Hamas and the Palestinian people. President Joe Biden has said that Hamas does not represent the Palestinians.  On the other hand, an opinion survey published last week by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research suggested 72 per cent of Palestinians believe that Hamas was “correct” when it slaughtered Israelis on Oct. 7, and a majority would vote for the terror organization if elections were held across the Palestinian territories today. As for the rest of it, it’s all verifiably true: Hamas boasts proudly that it wants nothing more than to kill Jews; it robs its own education and health budgets to fund its war; its murderers and rapists were celebrated like heroes when they returned to Gaza on Oct. 7; its founding charter states is goal is the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state; and being gay in Gaza is illegal, with Amnesty International reporting that the authorities do not prevent or investigate any threats or attacks on the LGBTQ community.  So, what is so distasteful that the Guelph-Humber speech police have been persuaded to investigate? The statement: “I stand with Israel”? Is that now considered “unsafe” for the delicate ears of our coddled student cohort?... Finlayson says there is now a concerted campaign by a group of students to oust him. “I’m hearing ‘hate speech’ and ‘unsafe environment,’ with no concept of free speech. It is a cacophony of uninformed, screaming buzzwords,” he said... The opaque rules of university justice will now run their course, absent much in the way of due process. Finlayson is represented by unions OPSEU and CUPE, whose Ontario president Fred Hahn memorably celebrated “the power of resistance” the day after Hamas slaughtered hundreds of Israeli men, women and children. “I don’t know how anyone who agrees with Fred Hahn can be on my side,” Finlayson said.  Once again, a career is threatened with ruin because all the emphasis is on the impact on the listener or reader, rather than on the intent of the speaker or writer.  The lesson that appears to be lost is that, while students should be physically safe in the corridors of our higher education establishments, they are not in jeopardy when they hear something with which they may disagree."
Is saying that denouncing terrorism and ethnic cleansing is Islamophobia an Islamophobic claim, since it links terrorism and ethnic cleansing and Islam?

German police seize bomb-making material in raids on Hamas suspects - "German police have removed boxes of ice pack gels used to make explosives from properties linked to four men arrested on Thursday night over a Hamas plot to attack Jewish institutions in Europe... The ice pack gel contains ammonium nitrate which can be used to make improvised explosives, German tabloid Bild reported.  All four suspects were members of Hamas with links to its military wing, German prosecutors said. Three of them were arrested in Berlin and the fourth was held in the Netherlands."
Security agencies expose Hamas operatives planning terror attacks in Europe
"Resistance" means Jews all around the world need to be killed. The terrorism supporters want to "globalise the intifada" after all

No European country more than Germany is going further in clamping down on Hamas - "According to The George Washington University, charitable organizations are one of the most common vehicles used by Hamas networks in the West to collect funds.  Matthew Levitt, a director at pro-Israel American think tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former U.S. official specializing in counterterrorism, told CNN that Hamas is using Europe as a “cash cow.”  “Hamas is pretty good at laundering funds and masking what it is doing,” he said.  “The majority of people who are donating to these charities don’t know [they are supporting Hamas] because they present themselves as charities that are just helping Palestinians.”...   Schindler believes that Hamas has been increasing its propaganda efforts in Europe because it knows it cannot win a conflict by conventional means.  “Hamas understands that there’s no way militarily that they can prevail against the IDF [Israel Defensce Forces]. So they have to have a couple of building blocks in place in order to make sure that Hamas as an organization has a chance to survive”"

No chance for a two-state solution until Palestinian leadership change - "Israel has no partner for peace on the Palestinian side... “To tango, you need two sides,” former Knesset lawmaker Shakib Shanan told myself and the group of journalists I was travelling with through Israel last week... Shanan, a former advisor to the government of Ehud Barak and longtime peace activist is one of many who expressed the same opinion last week, there is no possibility for a two-state solution at the moment because Israel has no partners on the Palestinian side.  That’s the main point that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was making earlier this month when he was blasted for rejecting a two-state solution... Hamas is still currently in control of Gaza and quite frankly if elections were held in the West Bank, they would win there as well. The leadership of Hamas have been clear, they plan to attack Israel over and over again without stopping until they have what they want, which is all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.  The Palestinian Authority, supposedly in charge of the West Bank, is often seen as a more moderate force but they aren’t exactly a partner for peace either. The PA still engages in a policy known as pay to slay. Families of those who commit suicide attacks or who are killed while attacking Israel receive pensions paid for by the Palestinian Authority. Those who go to jail as part of the armed struggle against Israel are paid a stipend, given a military rank and promoted the longer they are in prison.  These payments are higher than the average wages earned from working in the West Bank, meaning the PA, the moderates, encourage attacks on Israel in more ways than one."

Israel Implemented More Measures to Prevent Civilian Casualties Than Any Other Nation in History - "No military fighting an entrenched enemy in dense urban terrain in an area barely twice the size of Washington D.C. can avoid all civilian casualties. Reports of over 25,000 Palestinians killed, be they civilians or Hamas, have made headlines. But Israel has taken more measures to avoid needless civilian harm than virtually any other nation that's fought an urban war.  In fact, as someone who has served two tours in Iraq and studied urban warfare for over a decade, Israel has taken precautionary measures even the United States did not do during its recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan... precision guided munitions (PGMs). This term was introduced to nonmilitary audiences during the Gulf War, when the U.S. fired 250,000 individual bombs and missiles in just 43 days. Only a very small fraction of those would fit the definition of PGMs, even though common perceptions of that war, and its comparatively low civilian casualty rate, was that it was a war of precision.  Let's compare that war, which did not ignite anywhere near the same level of outrage internationally, to Israel's current war in Gaza. The Israeli Defense Force has used many types of PGMs to avoid civilian harm, including the use of munitions like small diameter bombs (SDBs), as well as technologies and tactics that increase the accuracy of non-PGMs. Israel has also employed a tactic when a military has air supremacy called dive bombing, as well as gathering pre-strike intelligence on the presence of civilians from satellite imagery, scans of cell phone presence, and other target observation techniques. All of this is to do more pinpoint targeted to avoid civilian deaths. In other words, the simplistic notion that a military must use more PGMs versus non-PGMs in a war is false.  A second misperception is a military's choice of munitions and how they apply the proportionality principle required by the laws of armed conflict. Here there is an assessment of the value of the military target to be gained from an act that is weighted against the expected collateral damage estimate caused by said act. An external viewer with no access to all information cannot say such things as a 500-pound bomb would achieve the military mission of a 2,000-pound bomb with no mention of the context of the value of the military target or the context of the strike—like the target being in a deep tunnel that would require great penetration. Third, one of the best ways to prevent civilian casualties in urban warfare is to provide warning and evacuate urban areas before the full combined air and ground attack commences. This tactic is unpopular for obvious reasons: It alerts the enemy defender and provides them the military advantage to prepare for the attack... By contrast, Israel provided days and then weeks of warnings, as well as time for civilians to evacuate multiple cities in northern Gaza before starting the main air-ground attack of urban areas. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) employed their practice of calling and texting ahead of an air strike as well as roof-knocking, where they drop small munitions on the roof of a building notifying everyone to evacuate the building before a strike.  No military has ever implemented any of these practices in war before. The IDF has also air-dropped flyers to give civilians instructions on when and how to evacuate, including with safe corridors... Israel's use of real phone calls to civilians in combat areas (19,734), SMS texts (64,399) and pre-recorded calls (almost 6 million) to provide instructions on evacuations is also unprecedented. The IDF also conducted daily four-hour pauses over multiple consecutive days of the war to allow civilians to leave active combat areas. While pauses for civilian evacuations after a war or battle has started is not completely new, the frequency and predictability of these in Gaza have been historic.  Another historical first in war measures to prevent civilian causalities was Israel's distribution of IDF military maps and urban warfare graphics to assist civilians with day to day evacuations and alerting them to where the IDF will be operating. No military in history has ever done this... The reality is that when it comes to avoiding civilian harm, there is no modern comparison to Israel's war against Hamas. Israel is not fighting a battle like Fallujah, Mosul, or Raqqa; it is fighting a war involving synchronous major urban battles. No military in modern history has faced over 30,000 urban defenders in more than seven cities using human shields and hiding in hundreds of miles of underground networks purposely built under civilian sites, while holding hundreds of hostages.  Despite the unique challenges Israel faces in its war against Hamas, it has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other military in history... To be clear, I am outraged by the civilian casualties in Gaza. But it's crucial to direct that outrage at the right target. And that target is Hamas.  It is outrageous that Hamas spent decades and billions of dollars building tunnels under civilian homes and protected areas for the sole purpose of using Palestinian civilians as human shields. It is outrageous that Hamas does not allow civilians in their tunnels, that Hamas says and takes actions to create as many civilian deaths as possible—both its own and Israeli. The atrocities committed on Oct. 7 are outrageous. That Hamas fights in civilian clothes, intermixed within civilians, and launches rockets at Israeli civilians from Palestinian civilian areas is outrageous.  The sole reason for civilian deaths in Gaza is Hamas. For Israel's part, it's taken more care to prevent them than any other army in human history."
Most of the terrorism supporters hate the US too, so saying Israel takes more precautions than the US doesn't mean anything to them

Links - 9th February 2024 (2 - Climate Change)

The Netherlands faces power outages in the future, grid operator says - "The reason for the looming crisis is two-fold, Tennet said. On the one hand, demand for electricity is increasing as people switch away from fossil fuels. On the other, less electricity is being generated from sources which can be adapted quickly when demand increases – such as coal and gas. In addition, with coal, gas and nuclear power plants closing across Europe, the Netherlands will be less likely to get support from its neighbouring countries if problems arise, Tennet said."
This Dutch guy was boasting that they use a renewable energy and don't have blackouts.

Gridlock: how the Netherlands hit capacity - "The European energy transition is characterised by a plethora of buzzwords – sustainability, green energy, digital innovation, AI and automation, to name a few. But there are two words on the tip of utility tongues that might leave them a little afraid – at capacity.  This heavy phrase refers to the state of the grid when there is no more space for renewable energy integration. The grid being at capacity – for any country – is a cloud blocking out the sunny landscape of our energy transition. Its implications? Immense. Its ETA? Already here...   To meet the ever-increasing quantity of renewables coming online, the country’s grid has been similarly evolving. Whereas in the past the grid would grow incrementally on an annual basis, the grid is now hoped and needed to more than double by the time the 2030 targets come around the corner.  Furthermore, the grid not only needs to expand; it needs to be created from scratch. Although expanding is an answer for increasing connections, there is also the elephant in the room of stretches of area that were not electrified when the electric grid was initially built. For such areas, the grid still needs to be rebuilt and extended.  In an interview during Enlit on the Road’s visit to Rotterdam, Arjen Jongepier of Dutch grid operator Stedin, explained that, because of the immense amounts of renewables coming online, grid congestion management has been, and will almost assuredly continue to be, one of the main priorities for the grid to maintain a safe distance from over congestion... Across network companies Stedin, Enexis and Liander, a total of €30 billion will be needed in investments up to 2030 to ensure that the Dutch grid is expanded and reinforced appropriately to ensure climate goals are reached and the grid maintains stability... As citizens and companies steadily invest in their own green energy generation, the problem keeps on worsening as the positive trend of the energy transition continues to spread... to add to an already complex equation, low-carbon technologies such as heat pumps coming in apace are adding a certain amount of strain as the everyday consumer seeks to contribute to a net-zero future."

Grid-Scale Power Storage Myth Busted: Giant Batteries Can’t Save Unreliable Wind & Solar - "Regular readers know I have been writing about the astronomical cost of energy storage required to make solar and wind (SAW) power reliable. I have published some simple engineering analyses showing that short term intermittency, a few cloudy or low wind days, requires a huge amount of storage.  Now we have a wonderful analysis of the long term storage requirements for making solar and wind reliable. As expected the numbers are enormous. They are also precise.  The study is “The Cost of Net Zero Electrification of the U.S.A.” by engineer Ken Gregory"
Someone claimed the 2018 MIT article on how batteries wouldn't make renewable energy feasible was outdated, without saying what had changed in the meantime (and of course claiming climate change would kill us all). This is from 2022. Of course, all facts they hate are obviously "outdated" and no proof is needed to show how

Could laughable eco-hypocrites get any more ridiculous? - "Back in 2019 a slew of luvvies including Jude Law and Benedict Cumberbatch wrote an open letter answering charges of eco-hypocrisy: “We live high carbon lives and the industries that we are part of have huge carbon footprints. Like you – and everyone else – we are stuck in this fossil fuel economy and without systemic change, our lifestyles will keep on causing climate and ecological harm.” It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the self-serving sanctimony. It’s not my fault guv’nor, it’s the lack of “systemic” change. If that all sounds very convenient, then that’s because it is. The eco warriors, whether they’re hobnobbing in Glasgow or gluing themselves to the M25, have convinced themselves that the problem is so great their own behaviour is by the by. The upshot is a movement where the only rule for membership is spouting the right well-meaning guff, while your actions – and your hypocrisy – barely matter at all."

Italy approves bigger fines for 'eco vandals' targeting artworks
Damn censorship and threatening freedom of speech!

Alberta emergency power alert underlines challenge of energy transition on Prairies - "Saturday evening's emergency alert from the province of Alberta, warning of rotating power outages because of pressure on the electrical grid caused by the extreme cold, underlines just how difficult the energy transition is going to be in the Prairie provinces, according to economist Andrew Leach. It also demonstrates why more flexibility is needed in Ottawa's Clean Energy Regulations to decarbonize the country's electricity grids, he says. The emergency alert was issued at 6:44 p.m. Saturday. Residents were asked to immediately reduce electricity use to essentials only. The Alberta Emergency Management Agency (AEMA) urged Albertans to turn off unnecessary lights, avoid cooking with a stove and delay charging electric vehicles... "You had, for much of Alberta, the coldest night in 50 years, you had … a particularly acute low wind event, and last night a lack of import availability because of a lot of pressures on the Saskatchewan grid and on the B.C. grid at the same time as we were facing pressures. Add to that the unexpected outage of a gas plant. That alone puts you there," Leach said. The province's energy grid had as little as 10 megawatts in reserve power at one point... Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe put out a tweet, saying his province was providing 153 megawatts of power to Alberta to help them during the shortage. The tweet included a pointed barb aimed at the prime minister... "That power will be coming from natural gas and coal-fired plants, the ones the Trudeau government is telling us to shut down (which we won't)... Leach says he understands where that impulse to fight back against Ottawa's new Clean Energy Regulations comes from. He says just because other markets in the U.S. and Canada can make this switch to largely renewable systems without risking grid reliability, that doesn't mean that Alberta and Saskatchewan are being too pro-fossil fuel when they push back. "That presents a really big challenge and I think people have been too quick to wave that away"... Pointing to the fact that the province had a 12 per cent increase in power generating capacity last year, and is expecting similar growth this year, Sollid said grid alerts, like those issued over the past few days, should become less necessary in the future. "The supply picture is actually very positive, and that will help us over the longer term," he said. But Leach says not all additional capacity is created equal, especially on the Prairies. "A lot of that increase last year was solar power, so solar capacity doesn't change anything at all for a 7 p.m. January spike," he said. "You could have had 50,000 megawatts, all the solar farms and wind farms in the world located in Alberta, and it still wouldn't have come anywhere close to closing that gap." That's why Leach says regulatory flexibility is needed for the part of the country that is awash in cheap energy in the summer, from wind and solar, but in the depths of winter, during really cold conditions and really high energy loads, those resources do not generate a lot of power. "A solution relying exclusively on wind power, solar power and trade isn't going to get you through a really cold, dark night in Alberta," he said."
Of course, all the left wingers were mocking the ad about not wanting blackouts. Because of course crippling your electricity supply even more will lead to fewer blackouts
Good luck when ICE cars are banned

Jesse Kline: Don't worry Alberta, freezing in the dark will become normal - "federal regulations designed to electrify transportation and home heating, coupled with clean electricity regulations intended to phase out fossil-fuel generation, will exacerbate the problem in the coming years... the federal government is trying to strong-arm the provinces into decarbonizing their grids by 2035 — just in time for the mass influx of power-hungry EVs. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has promised to fight Ottawa’s net-zero electricity regulations and there’s no guarantee the Liberals will be in power long enough to see them through. But the uncertainty the Liberals have created will undoubtedly reduce investment in new gas plants, leaving provinces like Alberta to scramble for new sources of base-load power to handle the coming spike in demand. Options do exist, but it will take a huge amount of private investment or government funds to replace existing coal and natural gas generators, which constituted over 80 per cent of Alberta’s energy mix in 2022, or implement costly carbon capture systems, while vastly increasing generating capacity. On Monday, Alberta-based Capital Power Corp. announced an agreement with Ontario Power Generation to “jointly assess the development and deployment of grid-scale small modular (nuclear) reactors” in the province. If they deem them to be viable, the province’s first reactor could be operational by 2035. But that’s a big if, given that the technology is very much in its infancy and the province would have to create a whole new regulatory regime to deal with it. And even if it did come to fruition, Alberta would need many more to charge all the EVs expected to be on the road... Other technologies, such as grid-scale batteries and pump-storage hydroelectricity , can also be used to provide base-load power by storing excess energy produced from wind and solar. Alberta currently only has a handful of battery storage facilities and will need many more if it hopes to supply sufficient power to the grid during peak times. But that would mean vastly increasing its clean energy production, which is hampered by the government’s moratorium on new green energy projects and limited by short days during wintertime and the fact that wind turbines can’t operate below -30 C. And then there’s the issue of batteries only being able to supply the grid for short periods of time. None of these problems are insurmountable, but they will be costly, as electricity prices will have to be high enough to attract investment in nuclear, renewables and energy-storage facilities. They will also take time, which is not something Ottawa seems all that interested in providing...  After Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau implemented the National Energy Program in the early 1980s, it was common to see bumper stickers in Alberta reading, “Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark.” It seems as though Trudeau the younger is intent on enacting his revenge — ensuring westerners will be the ones freezing in the dark."

Garett Jones on X - "Cancel climate hysteria: "The welfare loss (or gain) caused by climate change is equivalent to the welfare loss caused by an income drop of at most ten percent—a century of climate change is not worse than losing a decade of economic growth.""
A meta-analysis of the total economic impact of climate change - "Earlier meta-analyses of the economic impact of climate change are updated with more data, with three new results: (1) The central estimate of the economic impact of global warming is always negative. (2) The confidence interval about the estimates is much wider. (3) Elicitation methods are most pessimistic, econometric studies most optimistic. Two previous results remain: (4) The uncertainty about the impact is skewed towards negative surprises. (5) Poorer countries are much more vulnerable than richer ones. A meta-analysis of the impact of weather shocks reveals that studies, which relate economic growth to temperature levels, cannot agree on the sign of the impact whereas studies, which make economic growth a function of temperature change do agree on the sign but differ an order of magnitude in effect size. The former studies posit that climate change has a permanent effect on economic growth, the latter that the effect is transient. The impact on economic growth implied by studies of the impact of climate change is close to the growth impact estimated as a function of weather shocks. The social cost of carbon shows a similar pattern to the total impact estimates, but with more emphasis on the impacts of moderate warming in the near and medium term."
The left hates economics, even while they claim the science is "settled". But they don't know how money works, anyway

‘Net Zero’ Fails the Cost-Benefit Test - WSJ - "A new special issue of the journal Climate Change Economics contains two ground-breaking economic analyses of policies to hold global temperatures to 1.5 degrees and its practical political interpretation, mandates to reach net zero, usually by 2050. Though more than 130 countries, including most of the globe’s big emitters, have passed or are considering laws mandating net-zero carbon emissions, there’s been no comprehensive cost-benefit evaluation of that policy—until now.  One of the Climate Change Economics papers is authored by Richard Tol, one of the world’s most-cited climate economists. He calculates the benefits of climate policy using a meta-analysis of 39 papers with 61 published estimates of total climate change damage in economic terms. Across all this, Mr. Tol finds that if the world meets its 1.5 degree promise, it would prevent a less than 0.5% loss in annual global domestic product by 2050 and a 3.1% loss by 2100. If that sounds underwhelming, blame one-sided reporting on climate issues... Writ large, the damage the world experiences each year from climate-related disasters is shrinking, both as expressed in fraction of GDP and lives lost.  While media coverage tends to hype the benefits of climate policy, it plays down the costs, which Mr. Tol’s analysis shows are substantial. Based on the latest cost estimates of emission reductions from the United Nations climate panel, he finds that fully delivering on the 1.5-degree Paris promise will cost 4.5% of global GDP each year by midcentury and 5.5% by 2100. This means that likely climate policy costs will be much higher than the likely benefits for every year throughout this century and into the next. Under any realistic assumptions, the Paris agreement fails a basic cost-benefit test. The reality would likely be worse than Mr. Tol’s estimate. He unrealistically assumes governments will implement policies that meet these temperature targets at the lowest possible cost, such as a globally uniform, increasing carbon tax. In real life, climate policy has been needlessly expensive, with a plethora of inefficient, disconnected measures such as electric-vehicle subsidies. Studies show that the policies actually being enacted to curb carbon emissions will cost more than twice the theoretical expense Mr. Tol outlines.  This is borne out in the second Climate Change Economics study. The peer-reviewed paper from MIT economists identifies the cost of holding the temperature’s rise below 1.5 degrees as well as that of achieving net zero globally by 2050. The researchers find that these Paris policies would cost 8% to 18% of annual GDP by 2050 and 11% to 13% annually by 2100. Climate economic models all show that moderate policies make sense—initial carbon cuts are cheap and prevent the most damaging temperature rise—but net zero doesn’t. Averaged across the century, delivering the Paris climate promises would create benefits worth $4.5 trillion (in 2023 dollars) annually. That’s dramatically smaller than the $27 trillion annual cost that Paris promises would incur, as derived from averaging the three cost estimates from the two Climate Change Economics papers through 2100. In other words, each dollar spent will avoid less than 17 cents of climate damage. The total, undiscounted loss over the century is beyond $1,800 trillion. For comparison, global GDP last year was a little over $100 trillion. Although well-intentioned, current climate policy would end up destroying a sizable fraction of future prosperity... A study by a researcher for the Copenhagen Consensus shows that competitive government investment in green R&D would be 66 times as effective as Paris policies, while costing between 1% and 10% as much."

More die of cold: Media's heat-death climate obsession leads to lousy fixes - "Headlines from around the world tell us of hundreds of deaths caused by recent heat waves. The stories invariably blame climate change and admonish us to tackle it urgently. But they mostly reveal how one-sided climate-alarmist reporting leaves us badly informed... Heat deaths are beguilingly click-worthy, and studies show that heat kills about 2,500 people every year in the United States and Canada. However, rising temperatures also reduce cold waves and cold deaths. Cold restricts blood flow to keep our core warm, increasing blood pressure and killing through strokes, heart attacks and respiratory diseases.  Those deaths are rarely reported, because they don’t fit the current climate narrative. Of course, if they were just a curiosity, the indifference might be justified, but they are anything but. Each year, more than 100,000 people die from cold in the United States, and 13,000 in Canada — more than 40 cold deaths for every heat death. The same pattern holds, including in countries not typically associated with frigid winters. In India, cold deaths outnumber heat deaths 7 to 1. Globally, 1.7 million people die of cold each year, dwarfing heat deaths (300,000). For now, rising temperatures likely save lives. A landmark study in the medical journal Lancet found that climate change over the past decades has across every region averted more cold deaths than it has caused additional heat deaths. On average, it saves upwards of 100,000 lives each year.  Yet the obsession with cutting CO₂ emissions ends up promoting some of the least effective ways to help future victims of heat and cold.   Climate policy will at best slightly check the increase in heat deaths. We already know much more effective and simple ways to help. These include making air conditioning more widely available, issuing heat alerts, opening public pools and air-conditioned malls and urging people to use fans and drink plenty of water.   This is abundantly clear for the United States: The share of hot days has increased since 1960 and affected a steadily larger population. Yet the numbers of heat deaths have halved over the same period — thanks to technology. The rest of the world needs access to the same simple technologies to drastically reduce heat deaths.  Tackling cold deaths turns out to be much harder, because it requires well-heated homes over weeks and months. Moreover, heavy-handed climate policies will increase heating costs and make cold deaths even more prevalent.   Here again, the US case is instructive. The hydraulic-fracturing revolution has dramatically slashed the cost of natural gas, in turn making gas-heated homes warmer and safer and allowing poorer households to afford better heating. Indeed, according to a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, lower energy prices saved some 11,000 Americans from dying in winter annually between 2005 to 2010. In other words, fracking saved four times the lives lost from all North American heat deaths each year.  Conversely, climate policies that drives gas prices up will mean fewer people can afford to properly heat their homes; the cold-death rate will shoot back up."

Terence Corcoran: Climate war has a new star: Captain Kirk - "The title of his presentation, jammed in among others from the investment, governance and consulting world, was titled “Why Investors need not worry about climate change.” Within a minute, Kirk — a former FT journalist — highlighted his “heresy” with a slide that referred to “unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings that are ALWAYS wrong.” Below that line were a list of climate investment perpetrators: Mark Carney, Henry Paulson, the United Nations, the Bank of England, the World Economic Forum (now meeting in Davos). He also laced into another panelist who delivered comments an hour earlier. “I completely disagree with the presentation that Sharon from Deloitte’s gave.” According to Kirk, Sharon Stone, chair of Deloitte’s Global Board, joined the doomsters when she said “we are not going to survive” the climate crisis. Kirk wondered why no one ran from the room, given that the global economy and the investment world had survived wonderfully over centuries and especially through that last 100 years of economic and political calamities. Kirk took shots at Mark Carney, the world’s leading financial activist on the climate file. “The Mark Carneys of this world have convinced us” that the global economy is threatened despite the long line of experience and evidence that suggest even the worst outlooks for climate change are within the ability of humans to overcome and thrive. “Human beings have been fantastic in adapting,” he said. Kirk put up a series of slides that demonstrated the likely investment and economic reality going forward that bears no resemblance to the claims of climate activists at the United Nations.  The investment industry faces innumerable non-climate problems — inflation, war, interest rates, supply chains — that are far more important than climate risk. For example, the shares of retailer Target fell 25 per cent last week, said Kirk, and “people are asking the boards of U.S. companies to spend time dealing with climate risk.” At his own bank, HSBC, Kirk complained about the number of people in his team who had to deal with long-term climate risk and about the number of other pressures facing the banking industry. Dealing with long-term climate risks are interfering with the world as it really is today... He complained that “there is aways some nut-job telling me about the end of the world.” And his comments about Miami were ill-advised. “Who cares if Miami is six metres underwater in 100 years? Amsterdam has been six metres underwater for ages and that’s a really nice place.”"
From 2022

Meme - Melanie Vogel @ @Melani...: "Sex is good but have you tried having your country shutting down its last nuclear power plants in 30 mn?"
Bloomberg Energy @Blo...: "Germany will bring several mothballed coal plants back to the market this winter to ensure that Europe's largest economy can keep the lights on"

Meme - "Citing the dire threat of rising Oceans,World Elites keep buying beachfront properties...
GATES x3. GORE. OBAMA x2. BIDEN. KERRY. DICAPRIO. OPRAH. BEZOS. SOROS."

Carbon footprint of homegrown food five times greater than those grown conventionally - "Growing your own food in an allotment may not be as good for the environment as expected, a study suggests.  The carbon footprint of homegrown foods is five times greater than produce from conventional agricultural practices, such as rural farms... The majority of the emissions do not come from the growing of the food themselves, the scientists say, but from the infrastructure needed to allow the food to be grown"
Oops

The Net Zero agenda is class war by other means - YouTube - "I think what people are realizing is the fact that this Net Zero agenda it's it's sort of class war by other means. It's the, it's something which can flatter the egos of um Bourgeois activists and will barely dent the pockets of people who can afford to pay more for their energy and for their lifestyles. Almost as a you know as as a kind of status symbol. But for the people who are struggling to get by, for the people who just need a cheap reliable car to get the kids to school, for the people who actually are really feeling the pinch at the moment, that's just not going to fly anymore. And I think what it's only starting I think we're only really at the beginnings of this as it being a new distinct front particularly in the populist politics of recent times."

Critics slam province for Pickering nuclear plant plans - "The Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) said in a statement it's disappointed in the decision released yesterday by the Ontario Minister of Energy Todd Smith, directing Ontario Power Generation to proceed to seek a licence to refurbish four nuclear reactors. The plant, which had originally been scheduled to shut down in the coming years, will now operate for another 30 years.  CELA has participated in licensing matters related to the plant for many years. Namely, CELA has expressed high concern for the protection of the surrounding communities in the event of a severe offsite nuclear accident... Ontario Clean Air Alliance (OCAA) calls the announcement “yet another backroom deal bonanza.”"
Climate change is only important when you can push a left wing agenda. Weird how nuclear energy is bad for clean air despite having no emissions. And we get the usual myths about nuclear waste and solar/wind energy

'A wake-up call': alarm raised over B.C. electrical grid amid plans for natural gas heating ban - "Alarm bells are ringing about B.C.’s electricity supply and grid reliability at the same time that the province is slowly choking off access to natural gas heating.  B.C.'s electrical supply is “at risk of shortfall” in extreme conditions, such as a deep freeze, according to a recent report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.   The annual report, which did not recognize B.C. as an at-risk area in its previous edition, notes “unserved energy risks increase in 2026 as forecasted demand increases and natural-gas-fired generation retires.”  “That should be a wake up call, and should shake us out of our complacency that we have enough electricity to meet all of our potential desires, whether it's electrification of vehicles, industry or home heating,” said Barry Penner, a former B.C. cabinet minister now with Resource Works, a nonprofit that advocates for responsible resource development.  The December 2023 report came in the same month the BC Utilities Commission rejected a $327 million proposal from FortisBC for an expansion of natural gas infrastructure in the rapidly-growing Okanagan, primarily through the construction of a new pipeline between Chute Lake and Penticton.  FortisBC’s warnings of natural gas shortfalls in the region as early as 2026/27 were dismissed by the BCUC, which said natural gas demand may actually decrease as a result of the CleanBC climate plan, which includes a ban on natural gas space and water heating in new homes by 2030...   New homes will be constructed with heat pumps, which have minimum outdoor operating temperatures of roughly -20 C, backed up options like electrical baseboard heat. At the same time, B.C. is aiming to have all new vehicles sold in 2035 be fully-electric, sending demand for power soaring even higher.   BC Hydro was forced in 2023 to import 20% of the electricity it served, a situation exacerbated the recent drought’s impact on hydroelectric stations...   “If you pull up to a BC Hydro charging station for your car… it says ‘powered by water’ Well, 2023, not so much,” said Penner, explaining that about 60% of power imported into B.C. was generated using fossil fuels... BC Hydro has also been dragging its feet on investing in a second power transmission line for the Westside of Okanagan Lake. The region is the most populous in the province served by one power line, which has been threatened by wildfires multiples times... Construction of the Site C project was announced in 2010 and is expected to be fully online by 2025. With that mega project only denting last year’s energy shortfall, the energy landscape in B.C. has been turned upside down in the lifespan of one construction project.  In 2017 when the BC NDP came to power and nearly killed the project, the BC Utilities Commission said the province may not need the electricity from Site C and that demand would not likely grow as much as BC Hydro forecast—a prediction that missed the mark wildly.   The 10,000 gigawatt hours of electricity BC Hydro imported last year cost the utility about $450 million.  "We're exporting dollars to purchase electricity to bring back into B.C., instead of using made-in-B.C. resources like natural gas," Penner added.   FortisBC, which also supplies electricity to a large part of the Southern Interior, generates about 40% of its own power and purchases the remainder from BC Hydro and the open market. The private utility pointed to the increased costs of buying electricity as a "significant driver" as the reason for a 6.74% rate increase.   "The cost of electricity has risen in recent years with the phasing out of coal plants, lower hydroelectricity generation and greater than anticipated demand for electricity with population growth in the region and increasing electrification of parts of the economy," FortisBC said in its rate-hike announcement."
Maybe it's a left wing plot to increase their vote share by getting rural voters to freeze to death
Damn greedy companies!

The Campaign to Thwart Paleogenetic Research Into North America's Indigenous Peoples

The Campaign to Thwart Paleogenetic Research Into North America's Indigenous Peoples

"In the early 1990s, visionary Italian geneticist Luca Cavalli-Sforza (1922–2018) and colleagues began the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) at Stanford University’s Morrison Institute. The aim was to record the genetic profiles mainly of relatively small Indigenous populations, which geneticists thought were best suited for reconstructing human population movement and change over time in any given region (due to their relatively low rates of genetic exchange with neighbors through a process known as admixture). The HGDP’s strategy worked well and progress was rapid. In 1994, only three years after its formation, Cavalli-Sforza and two co-authors published The History and Geography of Human Genes, which synthesized research from a wide array of fields so as to explain how the world came to be populated.

The book, published by Princeton University Press, received global accolades. But it also attracted strong criticism from lay readers on both sides of the political spectrum. One Indigenous leader called it “unethical, invasive, and may even be criminal. It violates the group rights [of] Indigenous peoples around the world.”...

The early and mid-2010s were marked by additional new discoveries...

It was when Duggan’s group announced that they’d gained the capacity to analyze aDNA, and made known their plans to apply this technology to the male genome of their Labrador/Newfoundland skeletal sample, that a sense of apprehension seemed to spread through some quarters of the paleogenetic community.

During the summer of 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, Duggan’s project went noticeably quiet...

“Science, after all, is about openness and transparency in communication,” I wrote. “Has your group had requests from Indigenous people that this work not be carried forward?”

In (partial) response, Duggan replied that she and her team remained “invested” in the project, but were proceeding in line with “standards and ethics of research suitable for the 21st century”—standards that specifically “include the continued support of present-day Indigenous communities as well as full institutional ethics approval.” These standards, which she described as “common to ancient DNA genomics research with Indigenous populations across North America,” require that “discussions and agreements” with Indigenous communities take place before “yet another ancient genome” could be published...

I asked whether the Indigenous permissions that Duggan’s group apparently had obtained for their earlier research on mDNA had been revoked. As of this writing, I have received no response. Duggan told me that my own concerns were “meaningless when compared to the distress caused to Indigenous communities by the historical treatment of their ancestral remains.” But she failed to provide detail on this potential “distress.” Until this discussion, a half century had passed with no complaint, to my knowledge, from any Indigenous group, in regard to this specific area of study...

Unfortunately, no further excavations have been conducted. More graves reportedly have been dug up by construction equipment. But the fate of these items is unpublished and unknown to me or to any Canadian archaeologist I have consulted. In the current political climate, the very fact of their existence is now apparently seen as awkward, even taboo—an ironic reversion to an unenlightened period when few cared about the history of Indigenous peoples.

When the Maritime Archaic tradition vanished, it was replaced, as noted earlier, by unrelated Paleoeskimos, an Arctic people who had then recently derived from Siberia. Following their own disappearance, more recently arrived inhabitants migrated from Labrador, these probably being ancestors of the historic Beothuk, who still lived in the region when Europeans arrived. The last surviving Beothuk, a woman named Shanawdithit, died of tuberculosis in 1829. And since that time, there has been no descendant Beothuk community with whom Duggan, or anyone else, could engage in the “discussions and agreements” she’d described to me.

And even if there were, moreover, Duggan’s own research has demonstrated that the Beothuk were not descended from the Maritime Archaic people of Port au Choix. The only community Duggan might be referring to is the (genealogically unrelated) Newfoundland Mi’kmaq community, whose ancestors arrived on Newfoundland from Nova Scotia in the 18th century, several hundred years after the arrival of Europeans.

In a 2017 article published in Science, Ann Gibbons wrote about the power of DNA analysis to “bust” the myths associated with Europeans’ origins: “Despite their tales of origin, most people are the mixed descendants of many migrations… As techniques for probing ethnic origins spread, nearly every week brings a new paper testing and then falsifying lore about one ancient culture after another.” Gibbons properly describes this as a positive development. But if this principle is true for the so-called old world, why is it untrue in regard to Indigenous peoples? The only way one might consider Duggan’s research to be offensive or controversial is to such extent as one might wish to preserve the idea of Indigenous peoples as staking out an unbroken genetic (and therefore moral) claim to this or that part of North America. Certainly, I can think of no other basis on which Duggan might be required to secure the permission of modern First Nations (as they are known in Canada) to conduct scientific research on populations that haven’t existed for thousands of years.

As it turned out, I had been naïve about the extent to which this kind of politics was now interfering with paleogenetic research. The ideologically correct approach had been articulated at a 2019 Brown University conference titled “State of the Field: The Ancient DNA Revolution in Archaeology.” There, Robert Preucel of Brown’s Haffenreffer Museum presented a roster of speakers who laid out what they regarded as state-of-the-art ethical standards in the field. They advised audience members to pursue a “commonly agreed set of best practices” with “descendant communities”—especially when paleogenomic conclusions challenge, or conflict with, community knowledge about the past. Folklore and myths must be taken into account, and we must discourage the idea of science “controlling the narrative.”

Moreover—and here is where I began to understand why Duggan’s lab had suddenly gone dark on this issue—“Even if we can’t seek consent from the study subjects themselves for inclusion in our ancient DNA studies, descendant-affiliated or geographically proximate communities should be consulted and engaged prior to the start of research because they may wish to speak for the ancestors” (my emphasis).

This anti-paleogenetic movement, as I would describe it, has roots dating back to the American Indian Movement (AIM) of the 1960s. AIM emerged among urban-dwelling Indigenous neighborhoods, not on Indian reservations... AIM became more radicalized thanks to the influence of activists who sought to block scientific research in the name of cultural sensitivity. Eventually, this movement led to the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990, a US law requiring federally funded entities to return “cultural items” (as broadly defined) to the ancestors or cultural affiliates of the communities from which those items originated.

When NAGPRA was passed, it was presented as a balanced means to accommodate both scientific inquiry and the rights of Indigenous communities seeking to protect the remains of their ancestors. But the application of the law became more expansive over time—as the demands of Indigenous communities typically are seen as more morally compelling (especially to academics) than those of the researchers who populate this field of scientific inquiry. This is especially true now that the scientific work of researchers has been lumped in with the (apparently ongoing) ideological and historical sins broadly described under the rubric of “settler colonialism.”

At the aforementioned Brown session, for instance, genetic analysis was denigrated because it serves to deny “the humanity of the individuals we study [and to not] regard them as human relatives who deserve respect.” This disrespect is said to extend even beyond skeletal individuals, to DNA found in “coprolites, dental calculus, cultural materials, or soil.” It is preferable, we are told, to put away our scientific instruments, and instead consider the oral histories of local community members. As a result, established academics in this field are not only backing away from future projects, but even apologizing for their invaluable discoveries of the past. Geneticist Christiana Scheib of the University of Tartu in Estonia, for example, reports that she feels “disappointed that I hadn’t known better to do it a different way in the first place.”

Moreover, it proved but a short jump from the denunciation of Western science to the insistence that traditional folklore and origin stories be protected from scientific scrutiny. In some academic quarters, it is now seen as insulting to bring up the fact that humans arrived in the Americas from Asia via Beringia during the Last Glacial Maximum about 16,000 years ago, as this fact conflicts with spiritual notions that, in many cases, roughly correspond to Christian creationist myths...

Our real concern, subsequently borne out, was that stakeholders would use the law to expand their own authority—including non-Indigenous consultants and activists who inserted themselves as advisors to tribal leadership.

Much of this comes down to faddish ideological trends (including the “oikophobia,” or Western self-hatred, identified by Roger Scruton)...

Indigenous groups typically have membership requirements that depend upon (or at least relate indirectly to) “blood quantum,” i.e., the degree to which a person is descended from “full-blooded” ancestors. As anthropologist Ryan W. Schmidt has explained, these rules could threaten the integrity of Indigenous groups because, for example, “over 60 percent of all American Indians are married to non-Indians [and] by the year 2080, less than 8 percent of American Indians [are expected to] have one-half or more Indian ‘blood.’” By demonstrating the degree to which today’s Indigenous communities may themselves be entirely separate from ancient precursors, paleogenetics can be seen as a further threat to the ideal of Indigenous communities as homogenous, genetically distinct populations rooted timelessly in specific geographic areas.

Indeed, paleogenetic research has demonstrated that many Indigenous groups are fairly recently arrived in what is now considered their “traditional” territories. The earliest known human discovered in Greenland’s southern region, for instance, was a male member of the Paleoeskimo Saqqaq people. In 2010, archaeologists recovered a hair ball yielding genetic material that showed his genetic ancestry lay not in Nunavut, a mere 200 miles across the Davis Strait, but rather with the Nganasan, Koryak, and Chukchi peoples, 3,000 miles away in Siberia. Thus it is possible, even likely, that the Saqqaq people arrived in the New World at a much later date than the first humans to cross from Siberia into Alaska. This finding underscores a basic point emphasized by Gibbon: Humans move around a lot.

And this penchant for moving around didn’t end when humans arrived in North America. In the north-eastern part of North America, south of the St. Lawrence River and Gulf, for example, the arrival of mainly Basques and French settlers in the late 16th century set off a scramble among Indigenous groups—not generally to escape oppressive “settler colonization,” but rather to gain access to the new arrivals for purposes of trade and the formation of military alliances against existing enemies. This competition set off a series of long and bloody wars, which in turn led to the extermination of whole Indigenous cultures—true genocides, whose human toll was exacerbated by the epidemics brought from Europe.

These wars, in turn, eventually forced swathes of Algonquian-speaking peoples to move westward, pursued by Iroquois enemies in many cases, into what the French called the Pays d’en Haut, a vast area west of Montreal that extends to the Great Lakes, Ohio, and Illinois. Here, whole new cultural identities formed from the refugees (much in the same way that the demographic map of Europe was massively redrawn during the late stages of the Roman empire, with Goths, Gauls, Vandals, and dozens of other groups criss-crossing the continent in a bid to survive). The result is that most federally-recognized tribes in the American east and Midwest are late-colonial-to-recent in origin, and are largely populated by the descendants of widely scattered and, in some cases, vanished communities. The development of a homogenizing Plains Indian Culture resulted from a roughly analogous process. In many cases, paleogenetics is revealing that even those “true” homelands were not as ancient as once believed.

In the American Southwest, by late prehistoric times, every population apart from the Rio Grande Pueblos was turned upside down demographically in cataclysms that featured either huge die-offs or mass migrations. Roughly 75 years before the Spaniards arrived, the Classic Period (AD 1300–1450) Hohokam of central and southern Arizona had vanished, perhaps admixed with immigrants from northern Mexico and southward-migrating Puebloans who’d abandoned their villages in the Four Corners area...

Throughout North America, certainly, the arrival of Europeans brought tremendous forces for change, often accompanied by unconscionable cruelty. But this occurrence didn’t represent the disruption of a stable, pacifistic land mass whose peoples had self-organized in their current state since the beginning of time—but rather a new challenge to a continent that, much like Europe itself, perpetually featured migrations, conquests, and tragedies wrought by competition among different groups. Ultimately, these are the stories that many people (including many non-Indigenous people) don’t want told—much less verified through ongoing paleogenetic research—as they disrupt our mythologized image of the Indigenous Americas as a sort of secular Eden.

And of course, it is their right to militate against science. But it is disheartening to see, as Francis does, that scientists themselves are falling in with these campaigns through “a widespread self-censorship among other scholars associated with work in Native American communities in anthropology and related social sciences.”...

DNA from two 11,000-year-old skeletons discovered the following year in Spirit Cave, Nevada, for instance, were found to be more closely related to living Indigenous South Americans than to living Native North Americans. A much younger skeleton (about 700 years old) from Lovelock Cave, Nevada, was found to be a close genetic match with the Spirit Cave remains, and so also contained evidence of ancestry from a Mexican-related population. Nevertheless, in 2018, all three skeletons were handed over to the local Paiute-Shoshone for reburial because they had been found on their (currently understood) aboriginal homelands. “Repatriating” human remains to groups in this way has simply become the path of least resistance.

Also instructive is the case of 4,000-year-old human skeletons from the Nevin site in Blue Hill, Maine, which are held at Harvard’s Peabody Museum. These are the only well-preserved Red Paint People skeletal remains ever found, and thus are critical to resolving such issues as the relationship between them and the Maritime Archaic of Newfoundland-Labrador. They were analyzed at Reich’s Harvard lab five years ago, but the results remain unpublished (though verbal reports indicate that they bear no close relationship to the Penobscot or any of the other federally-recognized Indian tribes in Maine).

The wonderful collection of artifacts found with the Nevin skeletons were housed at a museum named for a different Peabody, the R. S. Peabody Museum at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Absent the publication of the Nevin DNA analyses, the director of that museum decided to honor a request from the Penobscots for their repatriation—even though he was apparently fully aware of the surrounding paleogenetic facts. And so the remarkable Nevin collection was never adequately catalogued or photographed, much less fully analyzed and reported. Requests from researchers to tribal officials about their whereabouts reportedly have, to my knowledge, gone unanswered.

Of course, some might say that there is only theoretical value in knowing about early human life in North America—so why not simply accede to the requests of Indigenous peoples? By way of answer, consider that Reich’s lab at Harvard has published a staggering amount of paleogenetic data, much of it relating directly to human wellbeing. Svante Pääbo’s lab is similarly productive, as illustrated by a 2020 paper published in Nature, entitled ‘The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals.’ It identifies a gene cluster on chromosome 3 that is a “major genetic risk factor for severe symptoms in patients,” and shows that the risk is conferred by “a genomic segment of around 50 kilobases in size that is inherited from Neanderthals and is carried by around 50% of people in south Asia and around 16% of people in Europe.”

Such discoveries have been made regarding all manner of diseases. And we will never know how many new discoveries we may have missed now that human remains are being taken from—or freely given away by—scientists in the name of politics. It is past time for science to reassert itself for the benefit of all humanity."

Trust the Science. Unless it thwarts the left wing agenda

The left claim they hate religion and tradition getting in the way of science and progress, but really they just hate Christianity and Western tradition