Links - 30th November 2024 (2 - Trans Mania)

Transgender athletes and the sex category: change in competition level - "Most contemporary sports have a sex category with two sub-categories (male and female). The participation of transwomen in the female category has been the subject of heated discussion, from the standpoint of fairness and safety. However, no research has been conducted to determine how the competition level has changed for transgender athletes who have changed their sex sub-category following transition, which brings additional complexity to the issue. This study examines changes in competition level of transgender athletes, comparing pre- and post-transition changes in the sex (male/female) category. This study was an investigation of the content of English-language newspapers published between 1 January 2016 and 31 August 2021 that identified individual transgender athletes. Nexis Uni was used to investigate gender (transwoman or transman), sport, and competition levels. Competition levels were classified as international, national, and regional. Change of sex sub-category was compared statistically with the decrease/increase in competition level. The study examined 2220 articles, which yielded usable data from 68 athletes (52 transwomen, 16 transmen) in 23 sports. The study found that transwomen were more likely to participate in the female category than transmen in the male category; and that, when the sex sub-category was changed, 41% of transwomen improved their competition level, while no transmen improved their competition level."
Weird. I thought hormone levels were all that mattered

Meme - @godblesstoto: "Believe it or not, one of the women in this photo is trans. Do you know which one? No. Because it's literally impossible to tell."
Comment: "yea thats the killer guy from no country for old men movie"

Meme - "Me, a trans elder."
Aragorn: "For trans youth. *runs into battle with trans flag*"
"Is he running to chop their breasts and penises off?"

Trans golfer Nicole Powers discusses decision to stop competing against biological females - "Nicole Powers used to compete against women — but Powers came to the realization that it was unfair.  Powers is a transgender woman who has golfed against biological females.  Powers has also competed in many other sports.  “I had to take a step back and realize that biological realities are real and competitive advantages will always exist despite the number of years or whatever surgeries and hormones you’ve done, and then understood that my place is not in women’s sports,” Powers said in a recent interview with OutKick. Powers said coaches and other competitors have even said, “‘You belong here.’ And even with me saying, ‘No, I don’t,’ they still are continuing to try to force the agenda that, ‘You’re a trans woman; we’re going to keep championing you in women’s sports.'”  “I’m not a woman; I’m a trans woman,” Powers said. “And it’s like this bizarro world where I’m trying to defend my reality against people who are trying to defend something I’m telling them I’m not.”  Powers said during competitions against biological females, Powers wouldn’t give 100% because of the self-deemed unfair advantage... “I don’t know what the governing bodies need to do, but they need to listen to woman athletes. Women, adult human females, they need to listen to those athletes, listen to their pain points and understand that there has to be a change. There has to be a clear line in the sand. And it’s not from a position of discrimination at all,” Powers continued. “It’s just from a position of fairness, from the original reason why we (have) women’s sports and men’s sports.”"
Clearly, internalised transphobia

Alberta performed surgery on eight transgender minors in 2022–23 - "In 2022-23, Alberta Health recorded 223 chest surgeries on people below the age of 18 in the province. Eight of those were treatment for gender dysphoria... Dr. Kate Greenaway, who specializes in transgender health care, said the infrequency of “top” surgeries for gender dysphoria makes Smith’s policies questionable.  “It is a bit of, maybe, showmanship, right? To sort of draw attention to the surgery component, which is really not a major consideration when we’re talking about this pediatric community of gender-affirming care patients,” said Greenaway, medical director of the transgender-specialty Foria Clinic, which has offices in Toronto and Calgary... “That is a major change that we haven’t seen anywhere in this country, and would be really counter to all of the medical evidence and the international and national guidelines we have on how to treat youth,” Greenaway said."
Weird. TRAs pretend this never happens
"If something doesn't happen all the time, it's a waste of time to address it" is a very odd claim. Since more Americans are killed by cows than children in school shootings, that means there's no point talking about school shootings, right?
When "international" just means the USA

Women's rights campaigner forced from lesbian bar 'after trans reveller complained about her presence' - "A leading campaigner for women-only spaces claims she was kicked out of a lesbian bar after a transgender customer complained about her presence.  Jenny Watson, 32, says she was accused of ‘hate crime’ in the traumatic incident, and claims bouncers removed her with such force that she was left with bruised wrists.  Although she had no interactions with anyone but her friends at the She bar in Soho, London, last month, she believes a transgender customer recognised her from social media and urged staff to kick her out.  Ms Watson says staff told her she had ‘committed a hate crime’ without specifying what, adding: ‘I suspect this trans-identifying man went to staff because he recognised me, then they made this decision because of what he said. The ejection was clearly motivated by my beliefs.’  Ms Watson, a town planner, is now considering whether to take legal action, as it is unlawful to discriminate over gender-critical opinions... She plans to launch her own bar and dating app for biologically female lesbians only.  ‘Lesbians are under attack, not by the outside world, but by the LGBTQ+ movement. If a man can dictate who gets to stay in a lesbian bar, then lesbian spaces are no longer safe for lesbians. This has to change.’"

Meme - *Trans women's period cramps*
Fred from Scooby Doo: "Let's see who this really is"
*Taco Bell*

Meme - "Sure I'm a misogynist but I'm not troon levels of misogynist"
"HOLY FUCK I HATE CIS WOMEN
I'm at a restaurant right now, supposed to be a date but of fucking course the cis women I was speaking to flaked on me once she learned I was trans, which happens fuck it whatever. But what's driving me fucking bonkers is the table next to me. 3 girls, all early 20's, slim, bubbly, sundresses, talking about nails and boyfriends and sex all just basking in the femininity that I've spent my life and my savings just trying to get a taste of. It's just salt in the wound after being stood up by one of their kind. I fucking hate them so much and they don't even know it, it's not fair, they'll never ever know the struggle women like us have to go through just to feel like that. So now I'm stuck here listening to them laughing and chatting about their perfect lives and throwing back Bombay gin until I can drive home good and trashed."

Meme - "2010
"I'm gay!"
"I don't care."
"Yay! Society accepts me!"
2024
"I'm trans!"
"I don't care"
"YOU TRANSPHOBIC PIECE OF SHIT!"

Leor Sapir on X - "Washington Post editorial board: “But the realities of human biology raise legitimate questions about any notion that trans women should always and everywhere be treated exactly like cisgender women.” The Overton window is opening."

Gays Against Groomers on X - "John Oliver claims that there is no safety threat having male students compete against girls. Payton McNabb suffered severe head injuries after being spiked in the face by a male competitor during a high school volleyball game. She now has 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝗶𝘀."
J.K. Rowling on X - "Nothing about this feels good, because John Oliver generously gave his time for my charity Lumos and I liked him very much when I met him, but God knows, if you ever need an example of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias, this video's for you. An undoubtedly intelligent person spouts absolute bullshit to support something he wants to be true, but isn't.  According to the UN, female athletes have lost nearly 900 medals to trans-identified men competing against them in women’s sporting categories. Girls have been ousted from teams to make way for boys. Women have suffered serious injury playing against trans-identified men (see Payton McNabb, mentioned below).  Again and again I've come up against men who argue exactly what Oliver does here, using the very same talking points. With a straight face, the 'believe the science' guys will say 'actually, we don't yet have enough data to say whether men and boys are stronger and faster than women and girls'. The 'be kind' crew can't see what the issue is. 'Why are you bothered, it only affects a tiny minority of females?'   To prove to their progressive credentials - and (coincidentally, I'm sure) indemnify themselves against repercussions from cultural elites in the media, academia and publishing who've showed themselves more than ready to kick people to the kerb for failing to mouth the approved mantras - people with a lot to lose are currently prepared to make idiots of themselves. They'll stare unabashedly into a camera and insist that their audiences' eyeballs are incapable of seeing what's plain as day, and that there's something wrong with the great unwashed for believing that girls are being robbed of opportunities and put at physical risk.   If you want to tell the world you're happy to watch females suffer injury, humiliation and the loss of sporting opportunities to bolster an elitist post-modern ideology embraced by a minute fraction of the world's population, fair enough; you're allowed your opinion. But if you've just told girls they don't deserve fair sport, maybe rethink using all too real and common sexual predation against young women as a punchline for your 'edgy' closing joke."
When the left claim women are losing their rights, the only right they have in mind is unrestricted abortion

Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸 on X - "John Oliver maniacally defends boys competing against girls in sport. He says Kamala just did a poor job of explaining that boys have no advantage over girls. Serious question: Is he on drugs?"

Meme - Colin Wright @SwipeWright: "Over at Blu*sky, my posts stating simple facts about biology are being labeled as "intolerance." 🤡"
Colin Wright @drcolinwright.bsky.social: "Intolerance"
"Sex is not a spectrum."
Reality has a known bigoted bias

Meme - Mr. Bigglesworth Memes 𝕏 @Twitermytweet: "Going to be a transgender for Halloween :) *Zippertits (post-op FTM)*"

Meme - "They always draw the characters as prepubescent. It's not a fetish tho. Woodchipper go BRRRR!"
Pokemon: "NOW TELL ME, ARE YOU A BOY? OR ARE YOU A GIRL?"
Anime girl: "HAHAHA OFC, I'M A... WAIT. I'M CUTER THAN A GIRL, BUT I HAVE A COCK. I'M A BOY? OR A GIRL??"
*anime girl with no breasts and childish face and body grabbing genitals*

Julie Hamill on X - "BREAKING: Team Trump announces new law that will require students and their parents to affirm "Jesus is Lord."   If parents refuse, school administration will hold secret meetings with the child, create secret duplicate files and guide the child through Christian baptism without parental consent.   States have authority to remove children from custody if parents still refuse to praise Jesus.
While the above is not true, this is how gender ideology works in California."

J.K. Rowling on X - "Weird we haven't seen a similar influx of trans-identified women into top tier male sport, isn't it? So odd that 900 men's medals and titles haven't gone to athletes born female. What could possibly explain this glaring disparity? Someone get Judith Butler on the phone."
Pippa Pepperpot 💚🍄🦖 on X - "Equally weird that we haven’t seen men who identify as female choosing to compete in sports like gymnastics and figure skating. Again, what could explain this absence? 🤔"

Vast Majority of Americans Want to Outlaw Child Sex Changes - "The majority of those in both major political parties say they oppose allowing minors to attempt to change their gender, the poll found. The 72% of Americans who oppose child gender transitions includes 86% of Republicans and 58% of Democrats...   Rasmussen’s survey comes after an election in which transgenderism was a key issue for many Americans.  Voters said one top reason they didn’t vote for Vice President Kamala Harris was that she was “too focused on cultural issues rather than helping the middle class,” according to polling from Democratic research group Blueprint.  According to Napolitan News Service, 68% of voters surveyed said they think public schools shouldn’t teach lessons on radical gender ideology. Less than 20% said they think lessons about changing genders should be taught in schools.  At Newton Public Schools in Massachusetts, parents can’t opt their kids out of “sexuality” and “gender identity” lessons that begin in kindergarten... If a student wants to change his name, gender, and pronouns, 73% of voters surveyed by Rasmussen said, they believe the student’s parents should be notified. California passed a law over the summer banning schools from requiring teachers to notify parents if their child wants to transition.  If, after being notified, parents don’t support their child’s changing his or her name, pronouns, and gender at school, almost 70% of voters said teachers should respect parents’ wishes.   Throughout the 2024 election season, Republicans slammed Democrats’ support for transgenderism, and several Democrats flip-flopped on or scaled back their stances.  For instance, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez Jr., D-Texas, released an ad saying he “never supported sex changes” after an ad campaign by the National Republican Congressional Committee slammed him for effectively supporting “sex changes for kids.”  In 2021, Gonzalez voted for the Equality Act, which would have allowed children to be taken away from their parents if the parents didn’t support them in identifying as another gender.  Although Harris dodged questions of whether she supports so-called gender-affirming care for kids, President-elect Donald Trump has promised to ban such treatments for children without parental consent."
Damn far right extremists! How dare they oppose basic human rights?!

California Took a Widow's 14-Year-Old Daughter to Transition Her - "A mother in California lost her daughter to the foster care system in 2016 after she wouldn’t support the then-14-year-old girl identifying as a boy.   “I lost my husband, but this was worse than losing my husband, because I had my rights taken away,” the mother told The Daily Signal.  Years later, the daughter regrets attempting to transition, and her mother warns other parents against allowing minors to make irreversible changes to their bodies. The mother of two, whose husband had died years earlier, was accused of emotional abuse for forbidding her teenage daughter from binding her chest and wearing male clothes. Her daughter was taken from the family and placed in a foster home for a few months...   The Daily Signal reviewed Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services documentation in which a social worker, referring to the then-14-year-old with he/him pronouns and a male name, details the daughter’s time in foster care, her accusations of emotional abuse against her mother, and her later renunciation of the claims.  The mother had to hire lawyers to regain custody of her daughter and clear her name of the abuse charges. The charges would have disqualified her from continuing to pursue a career as a Christian counselor.  After a few months in a packed foster home in a dangerous neighborhood, the daughter asked to come home. She admitted to lying about the abuse, saying that she got the idea to accuse her mother of abuse from people online who said that was the ticket to getting away from her family.  “The process of getting her back, it was pretty difficult,” the mother said... She said she felt like Child Protective Services was looking for reasons to tear her family apart.  “It was not about reunification,” she said. “It was more about, what can we do to this family to destroy them?”  After the daughter returned home, she called social workers on her mother a few more times, accusing her mom of abuse for refusing to buy her male clothing. The mother received a California Child Abuse Central Index (CACI) violation for declining to take her daughter to a program at the Los Angeles LGBT Center for LGBTQ+ youths ages 2-25 called Rise...   “I just found it really crazy that they could deem that as emotionally abusive, just trying to discipline your child,” she continued.  At age 17, the daughter admitted to getting a prescription for testosterone from a therapist behind her mom’s back. She took it for a few days, but she told her mom she felt God was telling her to stop.  The mom said she couldn’t have gotten through the difficult time without her faith community. She left California a few years ago, partially because of how her parental rights were disrespected there... California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed Assembly Bill 1955, which barred school districts from requiring that parents be informed of their child’s gender identity...   According to the mother, social media played a huge role in her daughter’s decision to identify as a boy."

State AGs Assail Pediatricians Group on Trans Policies for Youths - "Twenty state attorneys general are accusing the nation’s largest association of pediatricians of violating state consumer-protection laws in relation to gender dysphoria care for minors and transgender children.  The AGs’ letter, spearheaded by Idaho Attorney General Raul R. Labrador, was addressed to leaders of the Itasca, Illinois-based American Academy of Pediatrics.  “It is abusive to treat a child with biologically altering drugs that have an unknown physiological trajectory and end point,” Labrador wrote. “It is also inhumane to endorse such experimentation without a confident safety profile, especially if more times than not, it proves to be medically unnecessary.”  Labrador says in the letter Tuesday that an Idaho law, Code § 48-603(17), prohibits “engaging in any act or practice that is otherwise misleading, false, or deceptive to the consumer.” In a 2018 report, the pediatricians’ association claimed that giving puberty blockers to children was “reversible,” and then doubled down on that last year, according to the attorneys generals’ letter.   But the National Health Service of England in April released a document, the “Cass Report,” which was created to help transgender children get safe care, and according to Labrador’s letter, explains possible “irreversible consequences” of puberty blockers for children. Among the consequences listed are irreversible neurocognitive development, problems with bone density and metabolic health, difficulties with normal pubertal experience, and infertility and sterility...   Earlier this year, two investigative reporters, Michael Shellenberger and Mia Hughes, published the WPATH files, which exposed WPATH’s own knowledge of the harmful side effects from “gender-affirming care”"

Puberty Blockers, Cross-Sex Hormones, and Youth Suicide - "The prior research on this subject is not only weak because it contains no credibly causal studies and only a handful of correlational studies, but also because those correlational studies are poorly executed. For example, the 2022 Turban study combines the use of testosterone for natal females and estrogen for natal males and only reports the combined effects of hormones. When Michael Biggs analyzes the same data and disaggregates the hormone by type, he finds that: “Males who took estrogen are more likely to plan suicide, to attempt suicide, and to require hospitalization for a suicide attempt.” This negative effect is masked in Turban’s study by the failure to report the separate effects by type of hormone.  Similarly, the 2022 Turban study finds that 16- and 17-year-olds who received hormones were more than twice as likely to report a “past-year suicide attempt requiring inpatient hospitalization,” but that finding fails to achieve statistical significance by setting the standard for significance higher than is conventional. Only by adopting a standard for statistical significance that is different from the one more commonly used in empirical research does the study avoid concluding that this significant harm from hormone therapy exists.   The two Turban studies do not consistently use the same set of control variables when generating their adjusted-odds ratio, even changing what is controlled when analyzing different outcomes within the same study. The two Turban studies also change the main outcome of interest from lifetime suicidal ideation in the study on puberty blockers to suicidal ideation in the last 12 months in the study on hormones. Researchers should determine which confounding variables to control and which outcome variable to examine in their statistical models based on sound theory and prior empirical research, and then consistently apply those decisions, especially within the same study. Changing which factors are controlled in the statistical analysis of each outcome variable, as well as which outcome on which to focus, opens the door to p-hacking, the process of changing empirical models in an ad hoc fashion to yield desired, though likely spurious, results.  The bottom line is that the most influential recent research on the relationship between adolescent cross-sex interventions and later mental health outcomes, including suicide risk, does not provide convincing evidence. Only a small number of studies make comparisons to a control group—and those studies employ correlational research designs that do not allow causal conclusions, nor have those correlational studies been conducted properly... there are quasi-experiments or natural policy experiments, whereby the reason people, whether adults or minors, can or cannot get the intervention is determined primarily by policies that were adopted for reasons that have nothing to do with the later outcomes of treated individuals. This circumstance approximates a randomized experiment. By chance, some find themselves living under rules that allow them to access treatment, while others find themselves under different rules that do not allow them to do so...   In the past several years, the suicide rate among those ages 12 to 23 has become significantly higher in states that have a provision that allows minors to receive routine health care without parental consent than in states without such a provision. Before 2010, these two groups of states did not differ in their youth suicide rates. Starting in 2010, when puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones became widely available, elevated suicide rates in states where minors can more easily access those medical interventions became observable.  Rather than being protective against suicide, this pattern indicates that easier access by minors to cross-sex medical interventions without parental consent is associated with higher risk of suicide...   It is useful to conduct a “placebo test” to examine whether the elevated rate of suicides among young people in states where it was easier for minors to access cross-sex interventions also existed among slightly older people who could not have been affected by minor access provisions. Using the same exact regression model while replacing the suicide rate among those ages 12 to 23 with the rate for those ages 28 to 39 in the same states as the dependent variable shows no relationship between the ease of accessing cross-sex medical care and suicide rates among those too old to have been affected by these state policies. (See Appendix Table 6.) This placebo test strongly indicates that making it easier for minors to access puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones when those interventions became available is causally related to increased suicide rates, because no similar increase was seen by those slightly older who would have been unaffected."
Evidence that gender affirming care increases suicide risk. Far from being "life saving", trans mania is actively harmful

Beth Bourne on X - "🚨🚨🚨This is incredible news for girls' sports in California.   Stone Ridge Christian High School girls volleyball team will forfeit tomorrow's game against San Francisco Waldorf with male player Henry Hanlon rather than risk their team's safety.   These brave girls are making a huge sacrifice, while the cowards who lead the @CIFState  governing board threaten to sanction Stone Ridge Christian HS for multiple years if they don't play tomorrow."

Thread by @michaeljknowles on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "A bombshell story few are talking about: Joe Biden, his family, and the state of Delaware have brought us Tim “Sarah” McBride, the first trans-identifying man elected to Congress. Like most trans activists, McBride is not content with mutilating his own body and forcing society to pretend he's a woman. He’s in favor of chemically castrating and mutilating kids and appears upset by parents’ wanting to remove LGBT material from classrooms.  McBride even wants boys to be able to compete against girls in sports. When a lawmaker brought up the unfairness faced by @Riley_Gaines_ against Will “Lia” Thomas, Tim evaded the obvious injustice by complaining that the Republican didn’t respect Thomas’s preferred pronouns. When Tim first claimed to be "Sarah," he said that identifying as trans felt “mutually exclusive” to achieving his political career goals. But, his career shows the opposite. Once a mere white guy, Tim suddenly could claim DEI privilege. By identifying as “transgender” and dubbing himself “Sarah” in college, Tim’s political prospects skyrocketed. After declaring himself “Sarah,” this otherwise unremarkable former staffer for Beau Biden was appointed to major activist roles and given a platform to address the US Department of the Interior, Department of Justice, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and more. Tim was backed by then-Vice President Joe Biden along with Hillary Clinton and the entire Democrat Party establishment, becoming the “first trans person” to speak at the Democrat National Convention. Tim was welcomed as “Sarah” into Hollywood’s activist circles, furthering his fame and career prospects as an up-and-coming politician. The celebrity schmoozing included run-ins with LGBT activists such as “Laverne” Cox and Frankie Grande. He also rubbed elbows with sketchier figures, such as Jacob Tobia. While Tim appears to make an effort to present a more palatable version of transgender ideology by dressing up like a young Hillary Clinton, off hours he has palled around with the more typically extreme and lascivious exemplars of transgenderism. There is no such thing as “normal” transgenderism. Men and women are different. Men can’t become women, and vice versa. It’s a false ideology that harms everyone that encounters it—especially those who fall prey to it, and most especially children. McBride is now a congressman. Will Republicans stand firm against this dangerous ideology? Or will they call the man “Sarah” and invite him into the women’s bathroom?"

Meme - Mia Hughes @_CryMiaRiver: "There's no more telling sign of how detached from reality a woman has to be to seek phalloplasty than the top FAQ on the Montreal GrS website.  No, it's not possible to father a child with an appendage made out of your forearm that some absolute criminal has sewn onto your groin."
"1. Can I procreate (father a child) after having phalloplasty?
No, this surgery will not allow you to father a child. The main objective of this surgery is to obtain the most natural as possible male external genitals. To have children, your body needs internal male structures like testes, where sperm is created, and a prostate, which makes secretions of male seminal fluid possible."

How to make a white guy angry / Sucking in / How to pick up girls

"How to make a white guy angry *white woman with black man*
How to make him even angrier *Asian woman with black man*"

*women in bikinis walk by, and 2 men eating watermelon suck in their stomachs*
*fat man walks by, and bikini women are hunched over*
*young handsome man walks by, and bikini women stick their chests out*
*young handsome man sees the women are no longer looking at him, and stops sucking in his stomach*

"How to pick up
A white girl *pink Stanley cup*
A black girl *slave ship*
A Mexican girl *Border patrol car*
A Jewish girl *dustpan and brush*"

Links - 30th November 2024 (1 - History Extra Quoting)

Chaos & violence in country houses | HistoryExtra - "'A lot of the stone for monasteries which I think is something else we forget about them. is imported from France. It's this incredibly expensive good stone and so that stone is recycled into other houses and you can go all over England today and see little bits of stone that were taken from monasteries, see little archways and things...
People go to Sissinghurst today because it has the most famous garden, you know one of the most famous gardens in England. It's beautiful, it's lovely but you know there's sort of a house missing. I mean there's a tower but there's not really much else there. And and it's a house you know where the family has really struggled since the Civil War to have the money to fund the house properly and I think that's something that I was looking at in the book is these kind of long lingering echoes of the Civil War I mean there's a house called Little Morton Hall in Cheshire that is, this, it's a half timbered you know quintessentially English looking house, it's kind of wonky right. It's very picturesque. Again one of the most visited National Trust properties. And the thing about Little Morton Hall is we look at oh that's lovely and it's picturesque. Well the reason it's lovely and picturesque is because the family couldn't afford to rebuild it after the Civil War because they backed the wrong side. And that happens over and over again, the people who back the Royal side and heaven forbid if you back the Royal side and you happen to be Catholic or even if you happened to be Catholic at that time and didn't back the royalist side you probably were accused of backing the royalist side anyway. That these families were heavily fined. They were, they were sent, you know plunged into bankruptcy when the Parliamentary side emerges victorious and and many of them never recover…  These things aren't old because England has always valued its past and has valued continuity and stability, right. They're they're sitting there in their old form exactly because of this sort of violence and chaos in English history. They represent that more than they represent the kind of stability and continuity...
England is now this dominant power in the world which really is in place after the Seven Years War ends in in 1763 and so country houses become sort of symbolic of that transition. So we start to see the English past being reinterpreted. So instead of this tumultuous Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, the 16th century becomes the point at which protestantism triumphs…  England is now stable and powerful and so these sites can be reinterpreted as where that triumph took place. this is where that victory was won and so they can be now celebrated, they're not embarrassments that need to be converted to something else or hidden away. The sites can now be you know kind of taken out of the closet and and put on display as you know look this is the battle that we won in order to make England as great as it is in the present… the big point of transition though is the French Revolution, we all think about the storming of the Bastille right but the French Revolution is incredibly destructive of old buildings in lots of ways. There's this idea behind the French Revolution that we're going to literally remake the world, going to destroy the old world and make a new world. And so medieval buildings in particular all over France get destroyed. Well people in England are horrified about that. The kind of transition in attitude towards the French Revolution in England is initially people go oh this is great, right. France is going to become more like us. They're going to get away from this absolute monarchy which is bad right? They're going to create a parliament that is much more like our system and it'll be great. France will be more like us. And then the French Revolution starts to get more radical and then people in England are horrified by this and so in terms of country houses the form that this takes is people in England still literally kind of rebuilding castles right as castles are being destroyed in France, in England you see this surge of castellated Gothic architecture right. So so Gothic style houses that literally look like castles… it's difficult to quantify cultural history sometimes but you find ways to do it and one way I did this was by plotting the number of castellated Gothic houses that were built and I thought when I was doing this that when I got to the 1790s when the French Revolution you know becomes the the more radical French Revolution that you would see maybe a gentle little bump. Well no I mean I saw a dramatic spike in the number of castellated houses, like one that is just impossible to miss on any kind of chart... There is no such thing as a British country house, right… there are English country houses, there are Scottish country houses. There aren't really Welsh country houses in sense of a distinctive architectural style and I start thinking: why isn't that? Why did a not hybrid sort of architecture emerge in the UK in terms of country houses? And my argument about that is that it's it's because of the uniqueness of the border zones between the various parts of the British Isles which remain fortified and defended for a very long time... You can't really have this kind of hearkening back to the Welsh past because the Welsh past is very much complicated by the fact that that medieval style architecture in Wales is sort of tainted by its associations with the medieval conquest of of Wales by Edward I...
There's this really interesting moment at the end of the 18th century when they think, huh, maybe we maybe we shouldn't try to rule this Empire by force. Right, we've learned from America that that doesn't really work. There's an interesting example of when they get Quebec at the end of the Seven Years War. The British decide to let Quebec be Quebec, right, they don't try to force the French there to speak French (sic), they don't try to change their religion, they basically leave Quebec ,alone which is why Quebec remains distinctively French to this very day and it's a kind of interesting experiment in Imperial governance, and I think they they think about trying that in India right as as they get to grips with ruling the Indian subcontinent and it's, it's you know a very different place from Britain itself and so you see for the first time houses popping up in Britain itself which have a strong Imperial architectural influence, it is a brief and fleeting and very limited moment but it does happen. And and the best example of that is a country house called Sezincote which is in Gloucestershire in the Cotswalds so if you're in the Cotswalds go see it because it's it's one of the most interesting country houses in Britain… it is the only fully Indian style Country House in Britain. It looks like a little miniature Taj Mahal… it's a, at this moment when the British are thinking maybe the way to rule our Empire is through understanding, through trying to find points of shared cultural similarity and if we get to know the people who we’re ruling and we and we sort of respect the people who were ruling then maybe that's the way to go. But that moment doesn't last. By 1800 that sort of fleeing moment is gone'"

The Habsburgs: everything you wanted to know | HistoryExtra - "‘The Empire the Habsburgs developed not because they were terribly nice but because they really had to, a form of tolerance that accepted for example the fact that there were 10, 11, 12 languages in use in their states. They didn't impose one language. Joseph II at the end of the 1700s imposes German as a language of administration, but not because he wants people to become German but because he thinks that German is the most modern and technologically advanced language for the bureaucracy to use, let's say. But still for like local decrees they use local languages. So they develop in a very different way from the other states of Europe that are becoming, I mean if you think even of the United Kingdom, which is really at least four nations and has many different languages, but there it develops much differently. Or France where at the beginning of the 19th century only about 20 to 25% of the population actually knew French. So they develop in the area of nationalization, one language. But in the Habsburg monarchy they develop in the direction of an acceptance of all these languages and in the 19th century in the 1848 and then in the 1860s this is put into the constitution of the country. There's also a kind of equality, there's a civil code that's imposed at the beginning of the 1800s that gives technically equality to all the citizens. Now it doesn't mean that in society the nobility stopped having its cultural privileges but it's an interesting and little known fact, I think, and it's done again because the Habsburgs want to have the peasantry and the middle class on their side. And for most peasants in the 19th century, they loved the Dynasty and it wasn't because they were illiterate and they didn't know better or they thought the emperor was some God or something like that. It's because they understood that the Habsburgs were ruling in their interests, that the local nobles for example, who were oppressing the peasants, that the Habsburgs were fighting the local nobles to try to free the peasants. So there's a strong loyalty there. The Habsburgs did something else, which was they created a real meritocracy of a bureaucracy. A system that was supposed to rule fairly and which employed the sons and later the daughters of the educated middle classes. That made the middle classes also quite loyal to the dynasty, because they saw opportunity and social mobility in the state itself’
‘Where did it all go wrong because of another question submitted on social media which is how did Emperor France Joseph's Reign impact the fall of the Habsburg Empire and was the Empire on the path to disintegration by the end of the 19th century?’
‘So I will give an answer that may sound unfamiliar and strange to most people but today I think most historians of the empire would agree with me and that is this: the empire was not on its way to disaster in the late 19th century and that is in a sense a myth that was promulgated but also really pushed by the states that succeeded the Empire after the First World War, that they saw their legitimacy in looking at the Empire as a sort of ramshackle. Now Emperor Franz Joseph is an interesting case. At the beginning of his reign, the Revolutions of 1848, everybody hated him. He was so unpopular especially the Hungarians because he had a lot of them executed after the revolution, but by the time we get to the late 19th century he's one of the most popular people in Europe. He's everybody's grandfather. And in one sense he was very good at the end of not expressing any opinions. So that when there was political conflict as there was quite a bit, all european states had that, he didn't express the, an opinion the way he had at the beginning of his reign so he was seen as sort of everybody's father or grandfather. But he did, in his 80s, he was part of the decision to take Austria-Hungary into World War I. And here I would like to stress that Austria-Hungary did start that war. I mean it had a lot of help from other countries but it's Austria-Hungary that I think bears the main responsibility. Why did the empire fall? It fell because of the war. And I don't think people realize today just how dangerous the war was for every European state that fought it. For example we think of a nationality conflict in Austria-Hungary but if if you look at the war there is no rebellion in Austria-Hungary whereas there is a rebellion in the British Empire, in Ireland for nationalist reasons. So it's the war that weakens it...
Almost no one wanted out of the Empire and that's something we need to remember. The other thing is the Empire actually facilitated the rise of these nationalist groups by giving a lot of rights based on language use and practice of religion… by the end, the Austrian half of the empire was quite federalized and there was a lot of autonomous regions. The Hungarian half acted like a nation state. More like the states that replaced the Empire after the war. The problem is, after the war, the new states were all states that had considerable minorities within their populations and when I say considerable I mean like 30 to 40%. But they acted like nation states and I would say those new states, successor states, ended up oppressing their national minorities in ways that had never been the case in the Empire...
It's fascinating that in all of the successor states, states which in the 1920s rejected the Habsburgs, including Austria and Hungary, now the Habsburgs are sort of a symbol of a kind of period of nostalgia in the past that was kind of a golden age, of a certain kind of unity and maybe tolerance and also a great flowering of the arts, literature, music, the sciences.’"

The Silk Road: everything you wanted to know | HistoryExtra - "'If you go to the Forbidden City in Beijing now... there's a hall of clocks. The one thing that did go in the other direction was automata, and clockmaking. So the Europeans are better at that than everyone else. So it's not just a one way process of paper and arithmetic and gunpowder coming from East to West'"

Horror films: a chilling cultural history | HistoryExtra - "'Some films look like they are kind of nasty misogynistic things. And some of them are. But actually there's lots of diversity in there. I always say actually it's interesting to discover that Halloween, which is one seen as one of the first slasher genres, was actually explicitly written to appeal to young women it was written, co-written by Deborah Hill who was a partner of John Carpenter the director and they looked at lots of kind of teen girl films and it's trying appeal to an audience and that's not something you'd necessarily expect from what is a profoundly anti feminine figure in the monster of Michael Myers who's out there to slaughter every woman that he he can find...  There was a strange loophole in the law which meant that films that were put direct onto video weren't classified by the British Board of Film Censors...  there was this very big moral panic around films with delightful titles like Cannibal Holocaust which is not one I recommend actually. And the Driller Killer. Things like this. The Last House on the Left which famously has a very prolonged and difficult rape scene in it...
' The vampire films’ resurgence in the 1980s. What is the vampire after? Blood. What's the key anxiety in terms of sexual politics at the time? It's this new disease which became known as AIDS and that sense of blood transfer and anxieties around invasion from foreign viruses as it was told in the 1980s. AIDS was coming from Africa, it was coming from the Caribbean, it was coming from all these dangerous places in the world and infecting America or Europe'"

Conspiracy: the Protocols of the Elders of Zion | HistoryExtra - "'I think that the Jews are really at the heart of so many conspiracy theories and they remain there because of this millennia-old hatred of the Jews and this fear that the Jews are enemies of Christendom, that goes back to Christianity and this fear that anyone's opponents are the Jews. There's a very important book by a scholar named David Nuremberg, Western Anti-Semitism where he shows how intellectuals across European history, from antiquity. He stops shortly before the French Revolution. How they always called their enemies Jews. Like if their enemies embraced a particular idea, they derided it as a Jewish idea. And he argues that one of the things that sits at the core of Western civilisation is this argument about the Jews. Now, we do need to remember, the word anti-Semitism is not coined until 1879. It's a new term and it's a term that's there... it's developed in Germany by a man named Wilhelm Marr. He popularises it because the problems that they're seeing with the Jews are not the problems of traditional Christianity, because the Jews have been theoretically emancipated, they've been made equal citizens, and so he needs a new way of explaining Jewish distinctiveness. And so he uses anti-Semitism to designate that the Jews are racially different and racially distinct.'"

Ploughman's for the people: a culinary history of Britain | HistoryExtra - "'The ploughman's lunch came out of a sort of marketing idea in the sort of 60s and 70s from this sort of cheese marketing boards or whatever they were at the time, the cheese bureau, to get people to eat more cheese in pubs with some pickle and beer and bread and all the rest of it...
Yorkshire Pudding was invented to fill up the kids so that the man of the house could have the roast beef...
When American people are asked to boycott tea... it was fine for the men, because they would go off to the pub but the women, their social lives revolved around tea, and that was actually quite a big thing to ask them to do, to change what they were drinking, because they copied the same British habits of tea drinking and chatting...
Turnips were viewed... as a sort of viagra for people... turnips would make you virile and healthy, that was in the 16th century. Then they became a sort of fodder'"

Ancient Egyptian pyramids: everything you wanted to know | Listen Notes - "'There's no doubt from ancient sources texts that they would capture people and put them to work on the pyramids. And not just in the Old Kingdom which is the pyramid age. 1,200 years later, in the New Kingdom the time of Tutankhamun and the builders of the great temples at Luxor,  they would do the same...
People of the court would build small pyramids above their tombs, but the Kings now of course are buried in the Valley of the Kings and you know it's said that the pointed mountain above the Valley of the Kings was a natural pyramid for these communal burials, and there are more pyramids in Nubia than there are in all of Egypt. I think something like 180...
One of the things we’re missing, especially a lot of my colleagues who theorize about the elite, and the manipulation of the elite, and you know, strategy, is a lot of this, we find evidence in the lost city site, the city of the workers as it's called, of really huge quantities of meat that are being consumed. Because we save every scrap of animal bone. And after 37 years of this we have Big Data. And the Big Data says they're feeding their workforce Prime Beef. We find enough meat with some statistics and calculations to feed 6 and 7,000 people if they ate meat every day. But I think what we see in traditional cultures worldwide, is that these huge labor projects are feasts. They're celebrations. And that's why I say you know like the Amish here in the United States. And back to the question about slavery and obligatory labor. If you're, traditionally, if you were a young Amish person and there was a barn raising, it was a community event. It was a religious event. There were prayers. It was a feast. It was a social event. You might, might meet a fiance if you're a young person. And you don't really say, no I don't want to do that, you know I'm going to play video games. You know it's expected. You do this. So there's a whole continuum because the Great Pyramid is one hell of a barn, you know...
One egyptologist said we tend to think of pyramids as gigantic pyramids with temples incidentally attached. He said if you look at the ancient Egyptian sources they thought of a pyramid as temples with a huge pyramid incidentally attached'...
‘Why do they attract so many conspiracy theories?’...
‘There's a certain inclination to to rebel and to to look for to be iconoclastic, you know an anti-establishment, as I was in my youth. It's almost as though people are interested in a Lost Civilization, maybe because they feel lost in this civilization and they're looking to the past for answers... we dig in the dirt for everyday structures that made pyramid building possible and if it demystifies the pyramids for some perhaps that makes them angry or adversarial’"

Stalingrad: WW2's greatest battles | HistoryExtra - "'The idea the Baku which was the largest part of the um Soviet oil fields was going to still be intact when they got there is just ludicrous. And even if they did get there and the Soviet Union you know the Red Army soldiers didn't burn all these oil fields, how are they going to transport all this oil? You know there were no pipelines then. I mean there were but they were going backwards to the Urals. There was no pipeline back to Germany. There wasn't the railway capacity to do it. I mean the idea of we'll get to the Caucasus oil fields and you know all our dreams will come true and everything will be fine and dandy and we'll kind of win the war is just absurd.'"

Battle of Britain: WW2's greatest battles | HistoryExtra - "‘They were so far off winning. What would have happened if it had gone the other way, if if the Germans had succeeded in their plans?’...
‘Had they destroyed the RAF very quickly then they probably would have tried to launch an invasion. They wouldn't have got very far because as I say the the Royal Navy was the world's largest and just you know the plans for Operation Sealion as it was called was so awful and so underprepared, I mean you think about the jeopardy of Normandy and D-Day in 1944, and that's where we have total command of the skies, total command of the seas, overwhelming forces, and we've won the intelligence War as well. And we've got 4,127 landing craft for D-Day. Well you consider that for the Germans. You know they're they're sort of you know they're taking Rhine river barges, they haven't got any purpose-built assault craft whatsoever really apart from a kind of few little square ferries which don't really count. Absolutely couldn't cope with any kind of rough weather whatsoever. I mean it's absolutely hopeless. So I can't see any circumstances in which they could have got across. There is a circumstance in which which Britain sues for peace and that comes on Monday the 27th of May 1940 but that's before the Battle of Britain and that's where there's an internal split in the war cabinet where Churchill who's only 17 days into the job as prime minister has an argument with his foreign secretary Lord Halifax who at the time is the most respected man in Britain. Certainly the most respected politician... Halifax threatens to resign over with this argument and had he done so I think it might well have brought down the government and that could have been it’"

Magic books: a global history | HistoryExtra - "‘I was personally really surprised to read read in your book that in medieval Europe, the performance of ritual magic was sometimes within the framework of the Seven Liberal Arts that underpinned education at the time’...
It's a big debate people quite, probably don't realize. They might they might think that magic was all forbidden but there was a big debate between some of the well well-known theologians of the time because magic is essentially in a learned way is being mostly practiced by the clergy because they're the ones who can read them and the you know the Elite aristocracy are the only ones who can really read at this period. So the debate is very much between theologians um and some clergy are and are using various what we call magical techniques through ritual invocations and through powers of concentration and things like this and the use of images and they're saying well we're doing this because we're trying to either get kind of spiritual wonders or we're trying to contact the angels cuz we want to know more about God's secrets in a divine way. So there are those those who are arguing that all this is legitimate and a part of you know cross between philosophy and religion and everything else because it's about, it's about getting to know God's world more. But of course there are, there are the critics who are basically saying, ah yes but you think you might be uh getting a touch with the angels, but in fact it's the devil who's always stepping. And therefore if you're going to practice this magic um or these techniques which is outside the the the Catholic liturgy or the Orthodox liturgy in the east then you're essentially blaspheming. Um, because you are allowing entry to to devils and demons’...  
‘Are there any common symbols that appear in these texts?’...
’Sometimes the symbols have meaning, uh can represent the Sun or stars for example. Astrological significance of things. Some of the depictions are of literal depictions of demons and things like that… you get ones which we can't decipher simply. And so the debate is did they ever have meaning or were they just meant to look magical? This is a key thing. There's a whole long history of of symbols and pseudo scripts which are meant to look magical, for your client. They can't understand it. In fact it is meaningless but it looks magical’"

Resistance in the Second World War - History Extra podcast | Listen Notes - "‘Your book takes a chronological look at it it goes from the start to the end of the war and why did you want to take this approach with it? Why did you want to tell it in order?’
‘Well I felt that when people hear the word resistance they automatically assume armed resistance. And that only comes in the latter third of the war. And so I would want to know and to explain what happened in the earlier part. And so it's divided into three parts asking questions. Why resist? In the second part, who was the enemy? Because once the Communists become involved It all becomes more complex. And the last part is looking at what role did the Resistance play in the Allied Victory... At the beginning of the war Allied defeat were so complete and so total and the fighting performance had been so poor that it made no sense to resist, really. You might as well learn to live with the German occupation. It was different in Poland… but in the west, there was no urgency to armed resistance and indeed collaboration was actually encouraged. Marshall Petain was in favor of collaboration. Even in the Czech protectorate the leader there  Hácha called for collaboration...  once the Communists become involved it becomes a whole long war and it's the German policies such as the Holocaust and most particularly forced labor that actually inspires the resistance. And so finally as the course of the war changes and it looks as though the Allied Victory is more likely then of course resistance starts to develop because they want to play their part in the Liberation… very irritatingly enough the people who did resist from the start are totally hopeless at explaining why they did’...
‘What role did women play in resistance movements? How significant was their contribution?’
 ‘Their significance was tremendous because particularly in once forced labor was brought in, a man to travel around had to carry with him a document showing he’d been legitimately discharged from the Army he'd been in and that he was exempt from forced labor. Women didn't need that. They could move around much more freely and arouse less suspicion. And that meant they were very important in the clandestine press, not only in distribution but actually in writing the things. I think it was estimated on the comet escape line, that's the longest lasting and longest in length line, 65% at least of the helpers were women. Women could also carry identity cards to people in hiding. They even carried weapons. Most Germans are not going to look under of the dirty baby's clothing but there could be explosives underneath...
Even if people were anti-German they might be more anti-Communist and see the Germans as protectors against Communist’"

Chanel: glamour and controversy on the Riviera | HistoryExtra - "‘She was what they call a horizontal collaborator’
‘So how did this aspect of her legacy then come to be more forgotten or how how did she escape persecution as an Nazi collaborator after the war?’
 ‘After the liberation the immediate reaction of the French was something called the épuration sauvage, the sort of savage cleansing and the first people to suffer in this were the women. Any woman who'd been suspected of sleeping with a German was, usually had her head shaved. An American soldier who landed in France after liberation when somebody said what was your main impression of the liberation, he said the hair in the streets. And when I say that 880,000 Franco German babies were born by the end of the war it meant an awful lot of women did go to bed with Germans. Anyway they were the ones who suffered. Usually but not always but very often, these women were women whose husbands had been captured or killed and who had really no means of support, perhaps they had small children. And I often think I had been in that position and some German soldier had said if you're nice to me I'll see your children fed, what would one have done? Anyway Chanel did not have that excuse at all but she was one of those women who was accustomed always to have a man in her bed. There was this handsome German Baron who clearly adored her, much younger than her. For both of them it was rather a trophy match. Anyway immediately after the war she was whisked off by a couple of resistance fighters I think it was, the FFI. She was taken away but she returned after a few hours. They obviously decided not to do anything. She was I should say a tremendous friend of Winston Churchill who she admired enormously. Before the war every time he went to Paris he would go and see Chanel and he would take his son Randolph quite often. There was one wonderful account of Winston weeping on Chanel's shoulder after the abdication, he was so shattered. But they were great friends and that was probably known and I think they thought it might be too risky to do anything to Chanel and also, the other thing, again, this is her being brilliant at opportunity. The first thing she did when Paris was liberated was to put forward the announcement that every single American soldier could go to her boutique, and have a free bottle of Chanel number five, for his wife or his girlfriend. So the huge long queue went there. And if they couldn't talk French they would just hold up five fingers. And I think if anything had happened to her, quite possibly the whole of the American Army would have had something to say’"

Ireland's tangled relationship with empire | HistoryExtra - "‘Would it be fair for us then to compare these perceptions of the Irish people to perceptions of other colonized people around the world at this time?’
‘Yes. So the Irish are regarded as if you want barbaric, subhuman, uncivil, as of course are the indigenous populations of the Americas. And you see those explicit comparisons.'"

Links - 29th November 2024 (2 - Pro-Crime Policies)

America on X - "A man with eight previous arrests in New York City alone went on an unprovoked stabbing spree that left two men dead and a woman in critical condition. The justice system is failing to protect the people. Americans deserve safe cities."
Two men killed, one woman critical in random NYC stabbing spree

Soros-backed LA DA George Gascon loses re-election bid - "Progressive Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon has lost his reelection bid to Nathan Hochman...   Gascon, who came into office in 2020, had survived two recall attempts after they failed to qualify for the ballot. On Tuesday, voters also approved a measure to partially roll back a ballot measure co-authored by Gascon in 2014 that reclassified some low-level drug and property crimes as misdemeanors. The Tuesday results make shoplifting a felony for repeat offenders and increase penalties for some drug charges.  During his time in office, Gascon barred his prosecutors from seeking the death penalty, ceased the prosecution of juveniles as adults, and ended cash bail for nonviolent felonies and misdemeanors.  Under Gascon’s term, property crimes, violent crimes, robberies, shoplifting, car theft, and burglaries all increased, California Department of Justice data showed. "This is evidence that the reality we are experiencing every day in L.A. County is not some illusion, that the escalating criminal activity we’ve been seeing, hearing, and feeling is supported by the numbers. We are all less safe with George Gascon as DA," Hockman said in a July press release. "

Greg Price on X - "Over 100 people were shot in Chicago last weekend, including 18 fatally. Mayor Brandon Johnson blamed it on Richard Nixon in his press conference today. No, that is not a joke."

N.S. killer out on statutory release charged with attempted murder - "A Nova Scotia killer charged with attempted murder earlier this month in Halifax once tried to stab a correctional officer, threatening to kill the guard when he got out of jail, and tried to slit another inmate’s throat.  But despite his violent track record, Canada allowed him out of prison before his sentence expired.  Robert Harris Lamb, 34, saw his statutory release temporarily revoked for cocaine use just four months before he allegedly tried to shoot another man dead just after dawn on Sept. 5 in Halifax. Paramedics took the victim to hospital with a gunshot wound, but he’s expected to survive. Even though a psychologist had assessed Lamb in 2022 as likely to reoffend violently when he got out of prison, he was released May 19, 2023, on statutory release, the law that requires federal offenders who have served two-thirds of a fixed-length sentence be released to serve the remainder of their sentence in the community, under supervision.  “The idea is to sort of phase back into full release into society as opposed to going cold turkey from being in jail to being out on the street again,” said Wayne MacKay, a professor emeritus at Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law. “The theory is a good one, but when it doesn’t work it raises concerns and questions.”"

Ken Lee attacker gets 15 minutes, U.S. teen looking at life - "Mississippi teen Carly Gregg is accused of parking three bullets in her mother. She was 14 years old at the time... If convicted, she faces 40 years in prison... Contrast that with the treatment of the little darlings who killed Ken Lee, 59, in downtown Toronto on Dec. 18, 2022. Lee was struggling with homelessness. Police say he was swarmed and stabbed by a gaggle of eight girls. It seems at least some of those teens were on a quest, in the words of Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, for a little of the “old ultra-violence.” Eight of them were accused: Three 13-year-olds, three 14-year-olds, and two 16-year-olds. The initial beef was second-degree murder. Three pleaded guilty to manslaughter and another to assault causing bodily harm.  Four more will be in the dock in 2025: Three for murder, and one for manslaughter.  But if crime-weary citizens were expecting a big statement on crime and punishment, they got it although probably not in the way they had hoped.  The first girl to plead guilty — 13 at the time of the attack — will not face any more jail time. Community-based programs, blah, blah, blah. She pleaded to manslaughter. And over the boards comes Justice David Stewart Rose who credited the battering brat with 15 months of effective pre-trial custody plus another 15 months of probation.  The judge said because she pleaded guilty early and was forced to strip naked during her incarceration, well, she’d suffered quite enough... In Canada, activist judges and courts have put the idea of a happy medium on the shelf. You don’t necessarily want to send some dumb kid to prison for decades but nor should they be out on the streets in the blink of an eye.  At the time of Lee’s murder, I was having lunch with two veteran Toronto homicide detectives. One described the young killers as a “bunch of wild animals.”  The cop added: “He was just minding his own business, he wasn’t bothering a soul. I don’t think they really cared. And I don’t think they much care about the consequences either because, let’s be honest here, there are none.”"
Left wingers mock Mississippi and the Bible Belt, so

‘Stop being a bunch of bleeding hearts’: Ford slams Ottawa over bail laws again - "“We need the federal government to change the Criminal Code once and for all, and stop being a bunch of bleeding hearts,” Ford said at an unrelated news conference on Tuesday morning. “Because people are fed up with this crime here. They’re absolutely done with it.”"
‘Stop being a bunch of bleeding hearts’: Ford slams Ottawa over bail laws again : r/Ontario_Sub - "Look no further then the news, every crime reported, when listing the charges, always ends with “breach of probation”"
"Or fail to comply with release order/undertaking"
"Or "was out on bail""
I've seen left wingers blame provincial courts, i.e. provincial governments, for these pro crime laws

Our car was stolen out of our driveway in Burlington. We knew where it was. Nothing was done. This is how institutions crumble : r/canada - "The crazy part is if you know where it is, you can't go get it, because you can be charged yourself."
"Exactly and this is not just annecdotal. One of my best friends has been awaiting trial for about two years now regarding a break and enter charge for taking their dog back after it was stolen."
"I wonder if that charge has the option of a jury trial. I can’t imagine a jury pool would convict someone in such a case"
"Unfortunately the ridiculous cost of hiring a law firm to fight the charges would bankrupt many people or at least put a major dent in their retirement plans. The system is rigged against the declining middle class."
"Even after jury nullification you still lost tons of money and time. You lose."
"If you make a call to police and they say thee isn't a thing they can do, but you decide to handle it yourself, you can be charged for pre-meditated break and enter. If you unlawfully enter another property, even for your own property, you are liable to be charged.  If you do it without calling it in, you risk having the cops called on you for being where you shouldn't be even in retrieving your own stolen goods.  I have a friend who had a dirtbike stolen. We both knew where it was, we called to report it and the RCMP told us there wasn't anything they could do. So we said we would just go get it and he told us we would be charged with BNE and trespassing since we knowingly were going to retrieve the bike."

Our car was stolen out of our driveway in Burlington. We knew where it was. Nothing was done. This is how institutions crumble : r/canada - "I just got off the phone with 911. Some guys were trying to start my building on fire (again, for like the 30th time) and were also going through the garage trying to open cars.  911 gave me the gears and hung up. They sent a cruiser by and the female cop didn't even get out of her vehicle, just asked them to please leave. Then went on her way.  I know a few cops so I kind of get it. If she would have got involved, she would have seen they all have warrants out for arrests. And that means paperwork. And in New Canada, that also means she will still be doing paperwork when the criminals are released back onto the streets.  Broken system."

Our car was stolen out of our driveway in Burlington. We knew where it was. Nothing was done. This is how institutions crumble : r/canada - "It’s funny because a few years ago my bbq was stolen off my patio, and I tracked them down through Facebook marketplace trying to sell it and got their home address and everything. I gave it all to the police and their words were “it’s not our job to retrieve stolen items, you’ll have to go get it yourself”. Ok? You could at least go talk to the guy and let him know he was caught…"

Our car was stolen out of our driveway in Burlington. We knew where it was. Nothing was done. This is how institutions crumble : r/canada - "I found my stolen bike on Facbeook marketplace a few weeks ago. Cops did nothing so I went and stole it back."
"I live in Vancouver. You basically can't lock a bike up in the entire Lower Mainland and expect it to be there for more than 10 mins. You can't bike unless you can always have your bike with you. If some addict is cutting your lock with a power saw on the busiest street no one will even report it because the cops won't do anything about it anyways."
"Same in Toronto."
"About 10 years ago somebody broke into my brother's home while he was asleep in the house, stole his backpack with his laptop, music collection, and some unclaimed scratch tickets that he had signed and hadn't cashed in yet.  The thief actually crossed out my brother's name, wrote his name on the ticket, and cashed it at the local gas station. The worker knew my brother and knew he had been recently robbed, so let my brother know the name of the guy.  Brother made a police report, and identified the thief by name. Nothing was ever done."

Our car was stolen out of our driveway in Burlington. We knew where it was. Nothing was done. This is how institutions crumble : r/canada - "And this is how vigilantes start out....if you can't trust the system for justice folks start taking matters into their own hand"
"It's already starting in some places. Where I live there is a small Island community that there were massive amounts of thefts going on, everyone knew who was doing it, and since the only way on and off the Island is a ferry, the locals were seeing them come on the island, steal shit, store it at their camp, and then move it back to the mainland a couple days later. All reported to the police. Nothing was done about it for months.  So the locals grouped up, found the people, burned their camps to the ground, beat the shit out of them and sent them off the island on the ferry back. It's THEN the cops were interested in what was going on, and wanted to know who did it.  Crazy thing is no one knows who did it, not a single person on the island has and clue who these people were or what. But it's really fucking telling when the police don't get involved until the criminals get hurt.  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/deer-island-vigilantism-fire-thefts-residents-rcmp-1.6905525  These kind of stories are going to get far more common."
"Similar happened in my community.  Group of thieves stealing stuff overnight, loading into trucks, and hauling it away.  Everyone in town knew who they were, cops wouldn’t do anything.. something about needing to catch them in the act “no proof the pickup truck full of bbqs are the same bbqs that were stolen last night” type of deal… But we don’t have rcmp on duty for night shift, only on call, and they wouldn’t call in an officer for “low level” crime.. so these thieves were just roaming free every night. Plenty of calls from homeowners watching people walk out of their garage with a handful of tools, cops never showed up.. and plenty of camera footage but their faces were always covered, “no proof”  One night 4 or 5 guys piled out of a pickup truck with no plate, beat the crap out of a couple of the thieves.. broke bones… then tossed them in box of the truck, hauled them to the hospital, left them on the sidewalk outside the emergency room.  Cops threw a fit (never caught anyone) and a good chunk of the crime ring moved on to another community.  I’m sure it wasn’t that one single incident that caused the group to move on…. plenty of people were getting impatient with it all, but that is the one incident that really stood out to me, and the problem disappeared shortly after.  On one hand, you want to be the person condemning the violence… on the other hand, nobody died, you gotta laugh a bit and can’t help but feel like they deserved it."
"This is very much the case with rural crime where I am. Cops only care once someone does something about the problem themselves."
"I've seen advice saying something like "tell the police you're going over with 4 friends and baseball bats to get your stuff back". Suddenly a few patrol cars will meet you there."

Our car was stolen out of our driveway in Burlington. We knew where it was. Nothing was done. This is how institutions crumble : r/canada - "If you want to look at how staffing is managed in my area you'd think speeding the the most egregious offence."
When the incentives are all out of whack, you get the twisted version of broken windows, where minor offences are ruthlessly policed but more serious crimes are ignored

Prisoners should 'jump the queue' for housing, Sadiq Khan says, as 400 released in London - "Sadiq Khan has suggested that released prisoners should be able to 'jump the queue' for housing. The Mayor of London suggested that this would help to stop them reoffending."

Meme - Jeremy Kauffman 🦔 @jeremykauffman: "80% of crime could be prevented by expelling or executing people with 3+ prison sentences"
wanye @wanyeburkett: "It’s more common for someone in prison in the United States to have been arrested more than 30 times previously than for them to have been arrested only for the crime that led to their prison sentence"
Clearly, they must be let out on bail again. Everyone deserves a second chance

Meme - "3 men who raped or filmed 14-year- old sentenced to probation
From left to right: Dodjim Leclair, Nasouh Albasis-Albasis and Richard Djassera. Leclair and Albasis-Albasis pleaded guilty to raping a 14-year-old girl who was in and out of consciousness, and Djassera pleaded guilty with videotaping the sexual encounter. All three were sentenced Wednesday to 48 months of probation. (Salt Lake County Jail)"
They were adults, too

Man who killed off-duty B.C. police officer in skateboard attack sentenced to five years - "Alex Willness was found guilty of manslaughter last year in death of Abbotsford Const. Allan Young"
Alberta men receive 6.5-year prison sentences for Coutts border protest - "Anthony Olienick showed no emotion while Chris Carbert appeared glum and folded his arms"
Crimes against the regime are truly horrific. Murder is no big deal

'Execution-style' murderer was spared deportation in 2021 - "Months after he was spared from deportation on humanitarian grounds, Yohanna David Chol lured a man into a dark stretch of Clarence Street and fired seven bullets into his back in what prosecutors described as an “execution-style” killing... In order to preserve Chol’s right to a fair trial, the jury was unaware of his lengthy criminal history, and jurors didn’t know Chol had been deemed a danger to the public who was scheduled to be deported to South Sudan in December 2021. According to his federal court records, Chol was born in Sudan in 1986 and came to Canada in 2003 as a refugee.  His time in Canada was marked by violence and criminal convictions for an array of offences, including assault, drug trafficking and obstructing a peace officer.  Chol also suffered from poor mental health and was diagnosed with schizophrenia, anxiety and depression, and was prescribed 11 medications, according to court records.  Chol was stripped of his status as a permanent resident and his numerous criminal convictions rendered him inadmissible to Canada, and led the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration to deem Chol a danger to the Canadian public.  The ministry ordered his removal to South Sudan, but Chol fought the decision in 2017. His immigration lawyer argued Chol’s removal should be reconsidered because mental-health care was inaccessible in South Sudan and he would be at risk if he was forced to return. The case languished for years and Chol’s mental-health condition deteriorated.  Chol was ordered to be deported to South Sudan on Dec. 13 , 2021, but, two days before his scheduled removal, a federal court judge ruled that doing so would have put him at risk of death or inhumane treatment. Justice Sébastien Grammond granted him a stay, allowing Chol to remain in Canada and have his case analyzed.  Grammond agreed with arguments put forward by Chol’s lawyer, Ayesha Kumararatne, and ruled the removal officer who had looked at Chol’s case failed to consider new evidence concerning his mental health."
Left wing logic - if he hadn't been at risk of deportation, he never would've killed the guy, so we need open borders

Thread by @Will_Tanner_1 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Here's what really isn't understood when I say "the South Africanization of America":  It's not just that crime is going up; crime always happens. It's that everywhere turns into a potential scene of crime and bloody murder, with no respite.  It's total war, but with crime 🧵👇
The stabbing at the University of Arizona really shows this. Some girl was going to a school where she thought she'd have fun, but instead, she was attacked by some knife-wielding black woman for no real "reason". What should be a relatively nice and calm place is instead, now, beset by violent crime and stabbings motivated not even by a desire to steal, but just anti-white hatred and a desire to harm. Were this to happen in some slum in Chicago, burned-out crack house in Detroit, or street corner in East St. Louis, it's not a story. Such things have always and will always happen in such areas; the solution is just to avoid them. But what's new is this happening in nice places; what used to be confined to the slums and "bad areas" has spread to everyone everywhere, with no clear way to avoid it other than to live in some secluded spot where the "fellow classmates" of the world dare not tread
So now you have homeless crack addicts lighting up on Venice Beach, shooting and stabbings in the nice parts of Manhattan, and "fellow classmates" stabbing their white classmates on pleasant college campuses. What used to be confined to the slums has now spread like a cancer to everywhere, and the natural result is that everywhere now feels like Rorke's Drift under siege with the Zulus charging in a Bull's Head, and some potentially already inside the biscuit box perimeter. Hence the stress, the fear, the worry becoming omnipresent: there's no escape, and often even protesting attack is seen as beyond the pale and "racist"
But while this is new to America, at least in the post-1970s era, it's not new to Africa. Nowhere is safe from crime in the Congo. No farm in Zimbabwe was safe when Mugabe came for them.  And, most importantly, the same is true of South Africa, where only Orania and a few other similarly secluded spots are safe. Everywhere else, from neighborhoods to big cities, face a constant onslaught of crime and the potential for disaster. Take Johannesburg and Durban. They used to not only be safe, but were beautiful. Mike Hoare, for example, describes the Durban of the pre-Mandela period as a jewel. But then came the South Africanization of South Africa with Mandela, and quickly car flamethrowers became a reasonable thing to strap onto your car if you had to take a trip outside the gate of your house. Then things got even worse and even houses with electric fences became unsafe due to the plethora of predatory criminals roaming about; and isolated farms were placed under siege, much as they had been in Rhodesia during the Bush War. Now, what's easy to see is that pretty much the whole country has to deal with the constant threat of "fellow classmate"-style stabbings. There's often not even a reason for it, as @k9_reaper has pointed out when describing the farm attacks; just hatred of the Boers and a desire to destroy. And destroy they do, with horrific results
So now entire cities like Johannesburg are effectively rotten hulks taken over by criminals and squatters, even the nice neighborhoods face the threat of crime and destruction (as became all too evident during the 2021 riots), and its highly dangerous to live on a farm. Everywhere, in short, is the potential scene of an unspeakably brutal crime, and the only solution is to leave for Orania or leave for somewhere safe like Switzerland, if they'll let you in
That is what South Africanization will mean when it comes to America. We're, unfortunately, used to the idea of areas in cities being no go zones for normal people, taxpayers. But as this progresses, it will mean entire cities, entire regions become no-go zones where one is unsafe for merely existing and the government either can't or won't protect you from the rampaging criminals. Private security does what it can, but that's only so much. Take from that what you will. IMO it means unpleasantness in heavily populated and isolated but attackable areas, as in South Africa, not "collapse," which is yet to happen there and so unlikely to happen here. But it's not unhelpful to understand self-defense in all manner of situations, with books like those of @wayofftheres and @DonShift3 being quite helpful in understanding what further South Africanization will probably mean and how you can fight it. Here's what it looked like, for example, as a white and Indian militia fought off an advancing column of rioters in 2021
"We're all Rhodesians now," as the meme goes, because they want to Mugabify the world. But we're also all South Africans now, as soft-on-crime, "rehabilitative justice" policies mean criminals face no consequences of note, anti-white hatred is common, and everyone's unsafe."

Ontario pushes for stricter bail rules with new cabinet role - The Globe and Mail - "Ontario’s new associate minister of auto theft and bail reform says the provincial government will build as many jails as necessary to keep violent offenders behind bars and is calling on Ottawa to stiffen bail rules to keep people accused of violent crimes from being released into the community.  Graham McGregor, who was named to the newly created role in Premier Doug Ford’s cabinet last month, said the federal government is to blame for the “revolving door” that sees too many repeat offenders let back onto the streets.  Mr. McGregor said it’s up to the Liberals – or any future government – to decide how to go about strengthening the law, including whether to use the notwithstanding clause to override court rulings that have made it more difficult to keep some people in jail while awaiting trial... The Ontario government, along with other provinces and the federal Conservatives, has been highly critical of the federal government on the issue of bail reform, arguing the system is too lenient and puts the public at risk. Those complaints have grown louder after a string of headline-grabbing incidents of violence in Ontario and across the country in which charges have been laid against people out on bail or on probation... Previous attempts to strengthen bail rules at the federal level have faced court challenges over allegations that restricting bail violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects the right of individuals “not to be denied reasonable bail without just cause.” The Supreme Court of Canada has issued rulings on the matter, including a landmark 2017 decision that said the default position should be releasing accused offenders on bail at the earliest reasonable opportunity and with minimal conditions.  Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has said that, if elected, he would use the notwithstanding clause to override Charter-protected rights when it comes to matters of criminal justice. No federal government has ever used the clause, which is routinely used in Quebec and increasingly by other provincial governments. Mr. Poilievre has not offered specifics on how he might use the clause, including on bail reform, aside from saying he would overrule a Supreme Court ruling that struck down life sentences with no possibility of parole for mass murderers."

Meme - "Police lose track of 485 registered sex offenders across Britain. Exclusive: Rapists and paedophiles are among the "missing" sex criminals, including some who disappeared more than a decade ago."
"There are five homes in Rock Street S3 without a TV licence."
When your governement tracks all TV licences, but screws up tracking criminals"

very moisturized on X - "Society is the safest it’s ever been and crime is at a historic low but we need to lock up razors and deodorant at drug stores in all major cities."

Scott Adams on X - "It's stunning the degree to which Democrats have legalized various forms of crime in America while simultaneously turning the DOJ and FBI into criminals.
Defund the police
Stop arresting shoplifters
Let the homeless control sidewalks
Create an asylum path for migrants willing to lie
Sanctuary cities
Lie about the amount of crime incoming
Allow teams of assassins and terrorists into country
DEI (legalized discrimination)
Censorship of Americans via proxies
Rhetoric that encourages assassins
Elections that can't be fully audited
Then Democrats lawfare Trump, his former staffers, and the J6ers, while canceling those who support Trump.  It looks exactly like a plan to destroy America."

YOU SAID IT: Revolving door of injustice - "Having spent almost 40 years in law enforcement, I find it very difficult to recognize the deteriorating current justice system. The emphasis seems to be on getting those facing criminal charges or having been convicted of serious crimes back on the streets ASAP. So much for deterrence to others.How can the Law Society of Ontario condone this practice? Since Justin Trudeau came to power almost 10 long years ago, serious crimes in Canada have risen. This is a direct result of Trudeau’s revolving-door justice system, including weak bail conditions and watered-down sentencing by judges acting more like social justice warriors than the adjudicators of the laws."

Relaxed bail allows man to return to Sarnia park with homeless camp - "A Sarnia man banned by the bail courts from being within 100 metres of Rainbow Park after being charged with assaulting a security guard there was arrested last week on an allegation of breaking that rule. But Corey Maness, 35, quickly got bail again with new rules that now allow him to be in the controversial Sarnia homeless camp as long as he’s not within 10 metres of the security guard.

Among the Wildflowers on X - "Aaron is a family friend of mine.  I promise he is a good man.   A man raped his 14 year old daughter. He was arrested, and let go on bond. He was given orders to stay away from her. She is the testimony witness.  He kidnapped her. While on call with 911, Aaron left to look for her. He found the rapist in the truck with her.   He did what every good father would do- protect his child. Clearly the legal system won’t.   Free Aaron Spencer. The family has been through enough."
Dr. Dad, PhD 🔄🔼◀️🔽▶️ on X - "When people take justice into their own hands like this, the rejoinder is that they should have called the police instead. But the rapist/kidnapper here had already been arrested and then released once. Obviously the dad couldn't trust the authorities to protect his family."

Conspiracy: was Pearl Harbor an inside job?

Conspiracy: was Pearl Harbor an inside job? | HistoryExtra 

"'Relations between Japan and Germany were, technically they had a treaty, but in spirit they weren't really that fond of each other. So the theory that by going to war with Japan, we would go to war with Germany was a little shaky but it in fact happened. A few days after Pearl Harbor Germany did declare war on the United States, in one of Hitler's oddest decisions... 

If Germany had not declared war, what would have happened in Europe? It was a fatal decision on his part much like attacking Russia in 1941... 

By starting a war in the Pacific, the US now had to be wary on two fronts, not one. It had to be wary in the Pacific and the Atlantic. Within hours and days of the attack, the US began shifting more ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific. That hardly helped the British. The US had to reduce its military forces in the Atlantic because it had suffered such terrific losses in the attack on Pearl Harbor. In addition, the Japanese on December 7th didn't just bring the United States into the war, they went to war with Great Britain...

Britain had another enemy: Japan. So war in the Pacific hardly improved the situation of the British... over and over, Franklin Roosevelt said, in effect, I can't afford a war in the Pacific. I don't have the forces for it at this point... the American Navy and American Army had told him: we're not ready for war in the Pacific. They didn't expect to be ready for war in the Pacific till 1942. So the idea that he was helping the British by instigating a war in the Pacific frankly just defies common sense... 

If the United States knew that a Japanese fleet was on its way to Hawaii, there were far simpler and more productive ways to get into the war than by allowing principal fighting force in the Pacific to be crippled... they could take their fleet to sea, set up on a route they knew that Japan would likely take and ambush the ambushers... I don't think anyone on earth would've objected to what was a, would be a legitimate, sensible, rational  exercise of the right to self defence if the US had encountered a Japanese fleet crossing the North Pacific with six aircraft carriers'... 

‘People often cite the oil embargo as an out of nowhere belligerent act intended to leave the poor Japanese starving at home because they had no oil. And what it really was was, at long last the United States taking a definitive and powerful step to tell the Japanese: you have to stop what you're doing. They had already attacked China in 1937. That war was still going on. They had basically extorted North Vietnam, what is today North Vietnam or what was North Vietnam from the French after the French were defeated in 1940. Japan was an aggressor. It was on the move in the Pacific and the oil embargo came after it extorted, Japan extorted all of Indochina from the French, and Roosevelt said, that's it, we're cutting off your oil, which mostly came from the United States. It was in response to Japanese actions not a weapon to get them to declare war on the US’... 

‘The evidence suggests that FDR was as dumb struck as anyone on December 7th. He had not foreseen this coming, and the first shot, let's take that quote at face value. If that's true that he wanted them to take the first shot it didn't mean that he wanted Pearl Harbor attacked. The Philippines were, as I said, an American possession and it seemed incredibly likely that as the Japanese Naval forces moved Southwest to invade Indochina, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaya, they wouldn't leave the American colony of the Philippines right smack in the middle of all those new conquests. They would be leaving the US in a position to reverse what Japan was doing, and the fear that the Philippines were going to be attacked was so great that after he received the war warning message that I mentioned earlier, the American Naval commander in the Philippines took his fleet to sea and scattered it to save it, because he was so convinced that what was coming was a Japanese invasion of the Philippines. Which indeed happened, on December 8th, Japan invaded the Philippines. If there had been no Pearl Harbor, the United States would have been at war simply because the Japanese attacked an American possession. And so if FDR meant I have to maneuver them into taking the first shot, he assumed I think that it would be the Philippines.’... 

'Let me offer what I think is one of the most telling reasons why I don't think there was a conspiracy. FDR was not a one-man gatherer of intelligence. He didn't have personal spies in Japan who reported directly to him. He couldn't decrypt Japanese messages all by himself. He certainly didn't speak Japanese. Once you decrypt a a Japanese message you still have to translate it from Japanese to English. FDR sat at the apex of a pyramid of people, I don't how many, I don't know. Dozens, hundreds of radio operators, translators, code breakers, their immediate commanders, White House aides. All of those people would have had to know and elected not to do anything about it and it defies human experience that all of those people would have gone to their grave possessing this astonishing secret evidence of what would have been the most treasonous act in American history. The deliberate sacrifice of thousands of sailors and many warships just to get the United States into the war when there was so many other ways to do it... 

I don't think people appreciate what was going on in the Atlantic at the time of Pearl Harbor. The United States had advanced far beyond the the laws of neutrality in its effort to help Great Britain. An American Admiral said after the war that the that Germany would have been well within its rights to declare war based on American Naval activity in the Atlantic'... 

‘Whenever you have an event that is so shocking, so unfathomable, I think you've got a table set for conspiracy… when the word spread across the country of what had just happened that Sunday in Pearl Harbor there were a group of New York Elites having Sunday dinner an early Sunday dinner at a house in the suburbs of New York City. And the telephone rang. And the person who answered it came back and told the assembled smart people that Japan had just attacked Pearl Harbor, and one of the savviest members of that group told the others don't worry about it it's a hoax. He, they simply couldn't comprehend what had just happened. A member of Congress the next day said that America was stunned beyond belief. This was, this violated every sense of what they thought about the world. 

And why was that? Well I can give you several reasons. 

The American people have been told over and over and over again that their Navy was the best Navy in the world. On the morning of December 7th, copies of the New York Times arrived on the doorsteps of the East Coast with a story that had been printed the night before, and before the attack. And the headline of that story was: ‘Navy Superior to all others’. Well, by the time people read that story, much of the Navy was burning in Pearl Harbor. And so people were trying to reconcile how this great Navy could have been surprised and I think on one level the answer to them was oh there must have been a conspiracy. 

I'll give you a couple of others. 

Over and over the public had been told that Pearl Harbor was, an incredible fortress. It was called the Gibralter of the Pacific. It was, could not be conquered, and that it was searching far out to sea to make sure that it was safe. 24/7, said one newspaper were the air searches going around Hawaii. If anyone was approaching they would be detected long before they could reach the islands. Well that wasn't true. There were no searches. There never were any searches but that's what the public was told and I I assume it's just because newspaper reporters got carried away and kind of, to help everyone at home feel comfortable, boasted of something that simply wasn't happening. So the fact that an air raid had surprised Pearl Harbor conflicted with people's prior knowledge of what was supposed to be going on at at Pearl Harbor. 

Also, and I think this is really important, the Japanese had been repeatedly described to the American public as an inferior military power. Their planes were second rate. Their aircraft carriers were not like America's. They suffered, in one astounding allegation, from limited eyesight, and a bad sense of balance because they had been carried on the backs of their mothers as children and it upset their inner ear. You know people were who worked in Japan were told: don't fly on Japanese Airlines because you'll crash. And suddenly here were these supposedly inferior people surprising the best Navy in the world at Pearl Harbor’"