Charlie Hebdo and Hurricane Harvey Explained

So there has been a lot of outrage over the Charlie Hebo cover portraying Hurricane Harvey victims as Nazis.

If you haven't seen it:


"Dieu Existe !
Il a noyé tous les néo nazis du Texas !"
("God exists!
He drowned all the Neo Nazis of Texas!")

Unfortunately, none of the stories I could find contextualised or explained the cover, instead taking it at face value. One would imagine that calling it a "satirical" newspaper would clue journalists in to the fact that all might not be as it seemed, and not to take the cover at face value.

Yet, none dug or thought deeper, instead settling for varying degrees of condemnation (and roughly equal degrees of cluelessness).

For example, Newsweek wrote:

This week, its cover rejoices in the supposed death of neo-Nazis during a catastrophic natural disaster. The cartoon looks like a mishmash of American news, pairing the recent white nationalist and neo-Nazi demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, with the hurricane.

However, there is no evidence thus far that any of the storm’s victims were neo-Nazis. Houston, which has a large Jewish community, is the fourth-largest city in the country and tends to lean toward the liberal side of the political spectrum. Though Texas went to Donald Trump during the 2016 election, Harris County voted for Hillary Clinton—54 percent to 41.6 percent.

Of course this is not a new phenomenon - in the response to the January 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo, I only managed to find two articles which thought deeper about Charlie Hebdo's satire, and only two(on the Daily Kos and the New Statesman) which really explained it (Vox was at least thoughtful, but didn't really explain the point of Charlie Hebdo's satire).

(Admittedly, I only looked at English language sources, but I doubt Francophone sources would bother explaining it - in French - to a Francophone audience, who would presumably be familiar with the conventions of French satire in general and Charlie Hebdo in particular)

When I first saw Charlie Hebdo's Hurricane Harvey cover, I thought it was quite funny and that it was quite obvious that they were poking fun at people who see (Neo) Nazis everywhere, and those who claim the American South is full of racists and white supremacists. I also thought that this was one of their more obvious piss-takes.

Luckily, you don't have to take my word for it. Consider two pieces of content that I will adduce, both from the same issue of Charlie Hebdo (1310) (yes, I was sufficiently irritated - not least by some idiot who didn't understand the concept of satire - that I shelled out US$2.97 for the issue).

Exhibit A: Cartoon


"Démontage des statues du Général Lee : L'ouragan Harvey prend position"
("Taking down of the statues of General [Robert E] Lee: Hurricane Harvey takes a stand")

Interpretation of this cartoon is more complicated than for the cover, but two points come readily to mind:

- The obsession with taking down Civil War statues is silly in the face of bigger concerns like Hurricane Harvey
- The politicisation of natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey is absurd and in bad taste

Exhibit B: Article


(as the article is quite long I will publish the translation here and the original French text below)

DOES TEARING DOWN STATUES ERASE SLAVERY?

Because, in American history, the South and its values lost the war but still permeate a part of the country, is it healthy to want to purge the lands of the ex-Confederation of all its symbols? Doesn't this refuse to acknowledge the foundational contradiction of the United States: giving itself the mission of spreading universalism and equality while being, until the 1960s, a country controlled by white people?

Donald Trump, in his oafish way, speaks a truth: tearing down statues of General [Robert E] Lee and banning the flying of the Confederate Flag by governments is getting American history wrong. Following the dictates of the ideology of antiracism and purging the countryside of the collective memory of everything that brings to mind slavery and racial segregation might be a laudable aim but it will never erase the reality that, until 1954, Americans were certainly equal in rights but could live separate lives, depending on whether they were white or black, and the federal government couldn't (and didn't want to) do anything.

It was only until 1964 that the Civil Rights Act, signed by the same President Johnson who got his country stuck in the Vietnam War, finally abolished segregation totally. According to the law, because actually, even in 2017, and even north of the historic line which separated the Confederation and the Union (commonly called the South and the North), despite the emergence of an African-American middle class, gaps in education, income, and career opportunities are different depending on whether one is black or white. And this despite positive discrimination which, once implemented, engendered in the white middle class, in the North as well as the South, a feeling of injustice which fueled the emergence of a conservative American fringe for which the the racial question remains on the programme, even if it's phrased in euphemistic terms and is different from that of the 1960s - in particularly due to Latino immigration, seen as another threat to American identity.

Führers of the Operetta [Ed: An operetta is a comic opera. Perhaps this might better be translated as Hitler wannabes]

Well, the racial question underlying the election of Trump and all the hubbub around the remnants of the Ku Klux Klan and the Neo Nazis of Charlottesville is besides the point. A country of excess and trade in anything and everything, America has seen and allowed to be expressed, in all ages, clowns in white robes and Hitler wannabes who act like the informed bosses of SMEs (small and medium enterprises) and live for the media coverage of their activities. The key thing goes beyond that: in the high number of deaths caused by supremacists last year, in the upsurge in anti-Semitic violence against which Trump was as hesitant in addressing as he was with racism, and in the place which Conservatives close to the Alt-Right have in the White House - one thinks here of the Gorkas and Steve Bannon could also be placed here.

There has been an awakening of racial consciousness among a portion of white Americans, and Trump's skill in stoking this sentiment. In the face of this phenomenon, one can legitimately question the political and pedagogic effectiveness of removing symbols of the Confederation. Morally, it would seem obligatory: one takes down the symbols of racism. Practically, one avoids examining the profoundness of slavery and how the belief in the natural inferiority of blacks and Indians are structural components.

The question of taking down, in the name of political correctness and morality, symbols of a part of national history is being asked elsewhere in Europe. Who thinks that taking down statues of Franco or renaming streets having the names of sometimes obscure Francoists will purge the Spanish Right of its historic rutes? Isn't it more credible and effective, in France and elsewhere, to take on the task of dismantling the myth of patriotic unanimity by explaining the complexity of national history and accepting that our countries are the result of civil wars as irreducible intellectual oppositions on top of the fundamental principles of community living?

Jean-Yves Camus


As this article is non-satirical I trust that its points are self-evident.

So yes, Charlie Hebdo was calling Hurricane Harvey victims (Neo) Nazis as much as Jonathan Swift said the Irish should eat their children.


Original French text of Charlie Hebdo article:

DÉBOULONNER DES STATUES EFFACE-T-IL L'ESCLLAVAGE ?

Puisque, dans l'histoire américaine, le Sud et ses valeurs ont perdu la guerre mais imprègnent encore une partie du pays, est-il sain de vouloir purger le territoire de l'ex-Confédération de tous ses symboles ? N'est-ce pas refuser de voir l'ambiguïté fondatrice des États-Unis : se donner pour mission de répandre l'universalisme et l'égalité tout en étant, jusqu'aux années 1960, un pays où domine le monde blanc ?

Donald Trump, à sa maniere de gros balourd, énonce une vérité : déboulonner les statues du général Lee et interdire que flotte aux mâts officiels le drapeau confédéré, c'est mettre l'histoire américaine sens dessus dessous. C'est, par le choix idéologique de l'antiracisme, purger le paysage et la memoire collective de tout ce qui rappelle l'esclavage et la ségrégation raciale, objectif louable mais qui ne supprimera jamais la réalité des faits, à savoir que, jusqu'en 1954, les Américains etaient certes égaux en droits mais pouvaient vivre séparés, selon qu'ils étaient blancs ou noirs, sans que l'État fédéral puisse (et veuille) rien y faire.

Il fallut attendre 1964 pour que le Civil Rights Act, signé par le même président Johnson qui enlisait son pays dans la guerre du Vietnam, abolisse enfin toute ségrégation. En droit, car en fait, même en 2017, et même au nord de la ligne historique qui séparait la Confédération de l'Union (communément nommés sudistes et nordistes), malgré l'émergence d'une classe moyenne afro-américaine, les écarts d'éducation, de revenus, les perspectives de carrière sont incomparables selon qu'on est blanc ou noir. Et cela malgré la discrimination positive, qui, sitôt mise en oeuvre, suscila chez la classe moyenne blanche, dans le Nord comme dans le Sud, un sentiment d'injustice qui n'est pas pour rien dans l'émergence d'une frange du conservatisme américain pour laquelle la question raciale reste au programme, même si elle est posée dans des termes euphémisés et différents des annees 1960 - en particulier à cause de l'immigration latino, perçue comme une autre menace pour l'identité américaine.

Führers D'Opérette

C'est bien parce que la question raciale affleure sous l'éléction de Trump que tout le tohubohu autour des restes du Ku Klux Klan et des néonazis de Charlottesville met à cote de la plaque. Pays de la démesure et du commerce de tout et n'importe quoi, l'Amérique a connu et laissé s'exprimer, à toutes les époques, des clowns en robe blanche et des führers d'opérette qui agissent comme des patrons de PME avisés et vivent, parfois bien, de la médiatisation de leurs activités. L'essentiel est ailleurs : dans le nombre impressionnant de meurtres perpétrés par des suprémacistes cette dernière année ; dans la recrudescence d'un antisémitisme violent contre lequel Trump a autant hésité à s'exprimer que devant le racisme; dans la place que tiennent des Conservateurs proches de l'alt-right à la Maison-Blanche - on pense ici au couple Gorka et au fait qu'un Steve Bannon ait pu y entrer.

Il existe un réveil de la conscience ethnique chez une partie des Américains blancs, et l'habileté de Trump a été de faire vibrer cette corde-là. Face à ce phénomène, on peut légitimement s'interroger sur l'efficacité politique et pédagogique de l'effacement des symboles de la Confédération. Moralement, il semble s'imposer : on déboulonne les symboles du racisme. Pratiquement, on fait l'impasse sur l'examen en profondeur de l'esclavage et la croyance en l'infériorité naturelle des Noirs comme des Indiens sont des composantes structurelles.

La question de l'effacement, au nom du politiquement correct et de la morale, des symboles d'une partie du passé national se pose d'ailleurs aussi en Europe. Qui peut croire que déboulonner les statues de Franco et débaptiser les rues portant le nom de franquistes, parfois obscurs, va purger la droite espagnole de ses racines historiques? N'est-il pas plus crédible et plus efficace, en France comme ailleurs, d'assumer, en l'expliquant, la complexité du passé national, de démonter ainsi le mythe de l'unanimité patriotique et d'accepter que nos pays sont le résultat de guerres civiles comme d'irréductibles oppositions intellectuelles sur les principes fondamentaux de la vie en communauté ?

Jean-Yves Camus

Links - 6th September 2017 (1)

The title for my FYP is "Ex-Muslim Malays in... - Hariz Studynocure - "The title for my FYP is "Ex-Muslim Malays in Singapore: A Clash of Symbolic Realities as Double Deviants".
I'm looking for more Ex-Muslim Malays that are willing to share their stories and everyday experiences with me. They could even be Malays who are officially still Muslim but personally do not associate themselves with Islam.
If anyone has a friend who might be willing to be interviewed, please PM me. I would really appreciate the help"

Why Singapore Is a Terrorist Target - "Malay extremists viewed Singapore as an illegal creation. In this view, the city-state was historically part of Malay land but was transformed into a Chinese majority kafir entity through colonial machinations. Second, and related, Singapore is also believed to have been illegitimately occupied by infidels, especially the Chinese majority, which is seen to be anti-Malay and anti-Islam. Along the same lines, Singapore’s native population, the Malays, are alleged to be oppressed and marginalized by the numerical majority, especially through various government policies. Finally, Singapore is also believed to be hostile to Malay-Muslim interests at the regional and global level, especially through its close ties with the West, the United States, and even Israel, which are viewed by extremists as enemies of the Muslim world and Islam
SJWism has consequences, like encouraging terrorism

Singapore’s informative family feud - "On 15 April 2010, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was interviewed by Charlie Rose on American national television and declared without reservation that if anyone suggested that Singapore has a dynastic government – if there was any hint of nepotism – then he would sue them. That was then. Seven years and two months later, on 14 June 2017, his own brother and sister (Lee Hsien Yang and Lee Wei Ling) accused him of exactly that... It is rather amusing to see the Lees complaining about the abuse of power, the lack of ‘checks and balances to prevent the abuse of government’, and about the timidity of the Singapore press. They seem to be under the impression that this is a new development and that they are the first to notice... Perhaps the most startling and truly new development is the emergence of the importance of Lee Hsien Loong’s wife, Ho Ching. We already knew she was powerful as the CEO and director of Temasek Holdings, which is the holding company for the massive network of government-linked companies that dominate the Singapore economy. From the glimpse of the inside-family politics this episode has provided, it is now clear that she has power far beyond this role. There are 12 separate mentions of Ho Ching as a player in the public statement released by Lee Hsien Yang and Lee Wei Ling... Lee Hsien Loong has never been as revered as his father and the events of the last week are likely to have further damaged him. It would be different if his period as prime minister had been a litany of successes and achievements, but it has been far from a success. During the 13 years that Lee Hsien Loong has been prime minister, government in Singapore has been unambiguously ordinary"

Young, smart and want to save lives? Become a banker, says philosopher - "A high earner in the corporate world who is giving away large sums can create more social gain than if they did charity work, said Professor Peter Singer... Many people give to charities to which they feel a personal connection, but effective altruists are passionately unsentimental, seeking to send their cash where they think it will do the most objective good."

Crickhowell: Welsh town moves 'offshore' to avoid tax on local business - "When independent traders in a small Welsh town discovered the loopholes used by multinational giants to avoid paying UK tax, they didn’t just get mad. Now local businesses in Crickhowell are turning the tables on the likes of Google and Starbucks by employing the same accountancy practices used by the world’s biggest companies, to move their entire town “offshore”."

Why speaking English can make you poor when you retire - "if you speak English you are likely to save less for your old age, smoke more and get less exercise than if you speak a language like Mandarin, Yoruba or Malay... Speakers of languages which only use the present tense when dealing with the future are likely to save more money than those who speak languages which require the use a future tense, he argues... Linguist John McWhorter, of Columbia University, says any influence a language's structure has on the way its speakers see their world is extremely subtle."

What went wrong in Egypt? - "Has the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood been too ambitious and opportunistic? Have the youth been too naive to let go of their accomplishments and abandon the squares too early? Perhaps. What is clear is that decades of dictatorship and one-party rule don't just evaporate because the powers that be lost the first or second round to the people they long treated unworthy of government."

It was all just hype: China’s ‘straddling bus’ dream reaches end of the line with test site to be dismantled - "Sun Zhang, a transportation professor at Tongji University in Shanghai, had told the South China Morning Post that the straddling bus would encounter difficulty navigating turns, while motorists driving beneath it could face risks from limited road vision. “It can only run on wide and straight roads,” he said. “In big cities where roads are winding and jammed [with traffic], such roads are in short supply."

Stop Blaming Colonial Borders for the Middle East's Problems - "The idea that better borders, drawn with careful attention to the region’s ethnic and religious diversity, would have spared the Middle East a century’s worth of violence is especially provocative at a moment when Western powers weigh the merits of intervention in the region. Unfortunately, this critique overstates how arbitrary today’s Middle East borders really are, overlooks how arbitrary every other border in the world is, implies that better borders were possible, and ignores the cynical imperial practices that actually did sow conflict in the region. A quick tour of present-day borders reveals a few key similarities with the local Ottoman boundaries in place before the French and British arrived. The three separate provinces -- Mosul, Baghdad and Basra -- that were joined to make Iraq, for example, were often treated as a coherent economic and military area by the Ottoman government. And of course, the region’s geographic unity going back to the origins of human civilization, had long been recognized in the term “Mesopotamia.” Meanwhile, the fact that Iraq’s eastern border with Iran followed a line set by the 16th-century conquests of Suleiman the Magnificent didn’t prevent the countries from fighting a decade-long conflict over it that killed ten times more people than all the Arab-Israeli wars combined... The only country in the area for which no ancient borders existed was Jordan -- it was formed in 1922 from some not-too-desirable bits of arid land as something for Britain’s ally, Abdullah, to be king of. Like most kings, he would have liked something bigger, and yet under his family’s rule Jordan has been spared much of the turmoil endured by its less “artificial” neighbors... At best, creating more countries would have just meant more borders to fight over, while fewer large countries would have turned regular wars into civil ones... Most appealing, perhaps, is the idea that things might have gone smoother if the Europeans had just left the region’s inhabitants to sort things out themselves. This is what happened in the Balkans, where local leaders drew their own borders, and the fighting lasted up through the 1990s... no commission, no matter the good intentions, could have been expected to find the magic line that got all the Sunnis on one side, the Shiites on the other, and the oil right in the middle."

Muslim 'peace march' held in Germany but turnout disappoints - "The dpa news agency reported that a few hundred people gathered for the demonstration Saturday, with placards such as "Together against terror" and "Hatred makes the earth hell," and the crowd later grew to over 1,000. The organizers had expected several thousand protesters. The country's biggest Islamic association had refused to take part in the march. The Turkish-Islamic Union argued it would send the wrong signal by suggesting that international terrorism is mainly a Muslim problem. It also said Muslims observing the Ramadan fast couldn't be expected to march for hours in summer temperatures. That stance drew criticism from the government, which welcomed the march."

Muslim peace march: Hundreds take to Cologne streets to protest Islamist terrorism - "The country's biggest Islamic association had refused to take part in the march, which was led by groups representing the Ahmadi sect."
If most Muslims don't consider Ahmadis Muslims does it make sense to call them that?

Game of Thrones: Inside the World’s Most Popular Show - "Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the Danish actor who plays Jaime, is a bit less excited to discuss the subject. “I’ve never really gone too deep into the whole sister-brother thing because I can’t use that information. I have to look at her as the woman he loves and desires. Lena’s a very good actress, and that’s kind of what carries the whole thing.” He adds, “I have two older sisters. I do not want to go there. It’s just too weird”... with just 13 episodes left, everything is possible—alliance, demise or coronation. “Every season I go to the last page of the last episode and go backward,” says Dinklage. “I don’t do that with books, but I can’t crack open page one of Episode 1 not knowing if I’m dead or not”... In preparation for Season 7, Benioff and Weiss have gotten more possessive. That has further fueled fans’ curiosity even as it has created security challenges. In the run-up to Season 6, paparazzi shots of Harington—and his distinctive in-character hairdo—in Belfast tipped the Internet off that Jon Snow wasn’t, in fact, as dead as he’d seemed the season before. “Look at how difficult it is to protect information in this age,” says Benioff. “The CIA can’t do it. The NSA can’t do it. What chance do we have?”"

Battlestar Galactica's Ronald D. Moore Admits the Cylons Never Had a Plan at All - "As fans of Battlestar Galactica will recall, every episode began with a short synopsis: “The Cylons were created by man. The rebelled. They evolved. There are many copies. And they have a plan.” But... did they? Or was that just a big tease? Turns out it’s the latter, and now we know why: because an executive producer thought it sounded cool."

The Trouble With How Liberals Talk About Terrorism - "falling objects are not equivalent to three men ramming and hacking people to death on London Bridge. Terrorists attack not just individuals but society, which makes mortality rates a poor measure of the danger terrorism poses. Falling objects “attack” neither... Franklin Roosevelt famously told Americans during the Great Depression that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” Less famous is how he contextualized that message. He listed the country’s many “dark realities”—the government deprived of revenue, families stripped of their savings, the unemployed facing the “grim problem of existence,” and so on. The good news, Roosevelt said, was that these were merely “material things,” and they could be regained. Before fear could be feared, it had to be reckoned with... Obama’s stance on terrorism also contained a contradiction. He argued that the terrorist threat was much less severe than other challenges such as climate change and gun violence. But he didn’t scale back his counterterrorism policies to reflect that assessment"

HuffPost Spikes Article Demanding Execution of Trump and His Collaborators - "The Huffington Post -- home of some notably hateful rants, like the ex-Washington Post writer who said unlike George W. Bush, "You could argue that even the world’s worst fascist dictators at least meant well" -- has a line contributors can cross. On Sunday night, it was the notion of executing President Trump for treason...and a cast of accessories including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, the Vice President, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Speaker of the House! The unhinged HuffPost contributor was Jason Fuller, who proclaims he opposes "extremism" in politics... Proclaiming war on ISIS? Also treasonous"

No link found between movie, video game violence and societal violence - "Since the 1920s, scholars and politicians have blamed violence in movies and other media as a contributing factor to rising violence in society... Previous studies have focused on laboratory experiments and aggression as a response to movie and videogame violence, but this does not match well with real-life exposure. Other studies have indicated that, in the short term, the release of violent movies or video games is associated with declines in societal violence. However, no one has examined these trends long-term. Some scholars have argued that movies are becoming more violent, but none have examined whether this phenomenon is a concern for society. This study is the first to suggest that movie violence and video game violence consumption probably are increasing over time, but that there is little evidence that this has caused a problem for society. "Society has a limited amount of resources and attention to devote to the problem of reducing crime. There is a risk that identifying the wrong problem, such as media violence, may distract society from more pressing concerns such as poverty, education and vocational disparities and mental health," Ferguson said. "This research may help society focus on issues that really matter and avoid devoting unnecessary resources to the pursuit of moral agendas with little practical value.""

Gentrification? It's the consumers' fault, says hotelier Loh Lik Peng - "Restaurants are not entirely creative endeavours. They are creative endeavours to some extent, but they are also businesses. Somebody’s got to come in and eat your food. If they don't, you have to pay the bills or close down. A lot of chefs are self-absorbed about things they want to eat, or their creativity and that's usually a mistake, because unless your creativity is at such a level that people are saying: I am going to buy into your creativity, you fail as a business. I make sure I give them the right incentives to do it right, whether it's equity stakes, or profit-sharing... A lot of the gentrification was driven by rents, so the businesses that can afford the rents tend to be more high-end lifestyle businesses rather than traditional businesses, largely because consumers don’t want to pay above a certain amount for traditional products and services... The reality is that the vast majority of Singaporeans are not willing to pay more than S$2-S$3 for their mee pok, not willing to pay more than S$1.20 for their kopi-o. So these people are being pushed out. People will happily pay S$4 for their cappuccino. So the guys setting up their cappuccino stores are going to make much more money than the guys who do the traditional kopitiams... there is a nostalgia for what they see as the old Singapore but that doesn't necessarily translate into people changing their habits"

Gunfire in crowded Ohio nightclub kills one, wounds 15 - "Police did not have a good description of the suspects, in part because witnesses were reluctant to cooperate"
Snitch culture means that Lives Don't Matter when they're killed by thugs

Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT 'cowboys' ride into sunset - "In 2013, Hinshaw launched a new company COBOL Cowboys, which connects companies to programmers like himself. His wife Eileen came up with the name in a reference to "Space Cowboys," a 2000 movie about a group of retired Air Force pilots called in for a trouble-shooting mission in space. The company's slogan? "Not our first rodeo"... Experienced COBOL programmers can earn more than US$100 an hour when they get called in to patch up glitches, rewrite coding manuals or make new systems work with old. For their customers such expenses pale in comparison with what it would cost to replace the old systems altogether, not to mention the risks involved... One COBOL programmer, now in his 60s, said his bank laid him off in mid-2012 as it turned to younger, less expensive employees trained in new languages. In 2014, the programmer, who declined to be named to avoid jeopardizing current professional relationships, was brought in as a contractor to the same bank to fix issues management had not anticipated."

California student forced to pee in bucket gets US$1.25m - "A former high school student in California has been awarded US$1.25 million for having been forced to urinate in a bucket after being denied a bathroom break... the unidentified teen, who was 14 at the time of the incident, was not allowed to use the bathroom by a teacher during class because of strict school policies.

Member of racist Boulder Facebook group speaks out after expulsion - "One student involved in the group committed suicide, helping to spark the investigation. In Boulder Police Department's police report, officers said the student took his life to commit support to the Nazi-inspired movement. Students close to the group, however, say the student took his life because of the passing of his father, not the Facebook Messenger group... "Instead of talking to any of the kids about it, they just made ridiculous assumptions that, 'Oh, we're an ethnic neo-Nazi group here in Boulder, Colorado, planning to take action upon ourselves to hurt those of ethnic origins'""

Most adults overeat, many gain weight after starting work - "This is especially so among men, who typically put on 4kg within the first decade of starting work, new data from the Health Promotion Board (HPB) shows."

Links - 28th August 2017 (2)

Photo : Dites « ouistiti » et vous aurez le plus beau sourire ! - "Selon une étude réalisée par le fabricant d’appareils photo Nikon, le « ouistiti » utilisé en France au moment de se faire prendre en photo est le petit mot le plus efficace pour s’assurer un joli sourire... En compétition : 26 locutions utilisées en Europe testées par des mannequins sous contrôle d’un linguiste. Après analyse des photos issues de l’expérience, il ressort que le « ouistiti » français remporte la palme du plus beau sourire. Sur la seconde marche du podium, on retrouve le « famiglia » (« famille ») italien, suivi du « patatas » (« pommes de terre ») espagnol, puis du « marmolada » (« marmelade ») polonais et du « Zaag Eens Kaas » (« fromage ») des Pays-Bas. Le fameux « cheese » britannique (qui signifie également « fromage ») finit quant à lui dans les choux. Souriez, vous êtes photographié !"

The Official Olympic Salute Stopped Being Popularly Used After WWII Due to Strongly Resembling the "Heil Hitler" Salute - "Both the Nazi salute and the Olympic salute are thought to be based on a supposed Roman salute, though no actual Roman text or artworks that describe or show it have survived. Despite this, in the 19th and early 20th century it became very popular in plays, artwork, and movies to portray this “Roman” salute. This soon resulted in it being adopted by the Italian Fascist Party and then the Nazi Party. This was not without controversy within the Nazi Party as many didn’t like the fact that their salute was influenced by the Italian Fascist Party. In true Nazi form, an attempt was made to fabricate a new history which predated the Italian Fascist Party’s use of the salute, to make it appear the Italian Fascist Party was influenced by the Nazi Party in terms of the salute, rather than the other way around...
There is a story that Hitler snubbed 4 time gold medal winner Jesse Owens by leaving the Olympic Stadium when he was supposed to be congratulating medal winners, including Owens. Owens denied the claim that Hitler snubbed him during the games, “Hitler had a certain time to come to the stadium and a certain time to leave. It happened he had to leave before the victory ceremony after the 100 meters. But before he left, I was on my way to a broadcast and passed near his box. He waved at me and I waved back.” Hitler also later sent Owens an inscribed commemorative photograph of himself. Owens further went on to say, “Hitler didn’t snub me – it was FDR who snubbed me""

The peculiar history of the Pledge of Allegiance - "It wouldn't be terribly difficult to crop the American flag out of photos of U.S. citizens reciting the Pledge of Allegiance; without the flag in the shots, the photos could be mischaracterized as proof that Americans were expressing support for the ideologies of Hitler and Mussolini."

What Color Do Hindus Wear to Funerals? - "In traditional Hindu funerals, white is the standard color for grieving friends and family members of the deceased. Casual, white clothing is the preferred norm. In fact, many mourners wear sandals to the funeral, as it is compulsory to take off shoes to pray at the temple during services. Wearing black, which is customary in Western cultures to denote mourning, is considered impolite at a Hindu funeral... White is the color of purity and a mixture of the different symbolic colors in Hinduism. The Brahmin, the highest social caste, wear white both in life and in death. Red symbolizes both purity and innocence, so girls under 3 and married women are both dressed in red when they die. The color saffron also represents purity. Green represents life, while yellow is the color for education and knowledge. Blue represents determination and valor."

Why does traffic entering and leaving the Savoy Hotel in London drive on the right?

Bagels battle baguettes for French appetites - "Wegh also touted the nutritious upside of his bagel sandwiches, noting that women make up the bulk of his clientele -- 80 percent -- "because the bagel enjoys a 'lite' image.""

The Alaskan Town Living Under One Roof - "Begich Towers (or BTI as it's more commonly known) held on, though. More than that; it essentially became Whittier, housing 75 percent of the town's 200 residents and providing nearly all of its municipal essentials. The first floor alone provides most of your basic city functions. The police department behind one door, the post office behind another. Walk a bit further down the hall and you'll find the city offices as well as the Kozy Korner, your local, neighborhood grocery store"

Japan's escaped penguin recaptured after 82 days on the run

Cat 'arrested' for break-in at Brazilian prison - "A cat has been detained in the grounds of a jail in Brazil with contraband goods for prisoners strapped to its body with tape... The confiscated items included drill bits, files, a mobile phone and charger, plus earphones... A prison spokesperson was quoted by local paper Estado de S. Paulo as saying: "It's tough to find out who's responsible for the action as the cat doesn't speak.""

The temperature on the tube surpassed the legal limit for transporting cattle - "According to EU law, cows can be moved around in temperatures of up to 30C. Yesterday, the mercury hit a sweltering 35.5C on the Central Line... Not only do farm animals enjoy cooler conditions than this, they’re also allotted more space than humans are given on the tube... The heat has even led to workplace rows. This guy was sent home for wearing shorts, and came back in his mum’s dress."

Men can't wear shorts to work, so they're wearing skirts - "Men across Europe are complaining about what they see as unfair dress codes. With temperatures reaching record highs in the French city of Nantes, bus drivers of the CFDT Semitan union showed up to work wearing skirts, as they are not allowed to wear shorts despite the hot conditions. According to the International Business Times, the drivers called the shorts ban "absurd," and pointed out that female drivers are allowed to wear skirts, but men are not allowed to wear shorts... the boy, along with his friends, wore skirts—and only one of them got in trouble, because his was "too short." Upwards of 50 male classmates are now planning to act accordingly, borrowing skirts from girls"

More Than Just Free ContentJournal of Communication Inquiry - Mark Cenite, Michelle Wanzheng Wang, Chong Peiwen, Germaine Shimin Chan, 2009 - "40 in-depth interviews were conducted with file sharers in Singapore using a standard protocol, then transcripts were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Downloading is perceived as an alternative through which users satisfy desires that existing markets do not meet. Respondents reported downloading to avoid long waits for content to arrive in Singapore; to access difficult-to-find and censored content; to sample content, including content outside their usual tastes; and because downloading is convenient and free. Respondents reported a norm of reciprocity and sense of community that motivated them to upload and an obligation to purchase content they liked"

Eager To Burst His Own Bubble, A Techie Made Apps To Randomize His Life - "One year, Max decided to use the Facebook-event generator app to choose where he would celebrate Christmas. It came up with a party at someone's home in Fresno, Calif. With a pie and a friend, Max drove for three hours and showed up on the doorstep of a retired psychologist, Karena Beasley. Karena was celebrating with a handful of friends and family — and now, also two 20-something strangers. "She was completely not fazed," Max says, describing the moment they met Karena. "She didn't miss a beat. She said, 'Oh, wonderful! We love Facebook, I'm so glad you're at the party. Welcome.' And it was like instantly we were friends.""

Man arrested after hurling himself onto car at Pasir Ris Farmway 2 - "It is understood that he then complained about injury and asked the driver for compensation"
China's culture is here

Eight-year-old drag queen says if your parents won’t let you do drag, ‘you need new parents’ - "An eight-year-old drag queen has the best, most uplifting message for anyone who aspires to join his art form"
Anything is inspirational nowadays. This is not going to help quash claims about the gay agenda
Comments: "Quite the opposite in fact : if your parents LET you do drag, ‘you need new parents'. Not because this is gay or about being gay, but because 'dressing children as adult hookers and pumping them out for audience attention' (thank you Star Gayzer) leads the child to an early sexualization that is weird and disturbing. It's not healthy for the child, and it can even prove dangerous for him."
"for an 8-year old to so casually talk about getting new parents is just bizarre."

Most violence in the world is motivated by personal morality - "Most explanations tend to revolve around the core assumption that violence is wrong. If someone is violent, something must be broken in their moral psychology—they are intrinsically evil, they lack self-control, they are selfish, or they fail to understand the pain they cause. However, it turns out that this fundamental assumption is mistaken. It is not the breakdown of their morality at all, but rather the working of their moral psychology. Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments... the perpetrators of violence felt like what they are doing was morally right. In fact, when they were committing the act, they perceived that not acting would be morally wrong. It wasn’t about a breakdown in moral sensibilities, but more that their sense of morality was different... violence was intended to regulate social relationships and sustain a moral order"

India: Rajasthan in 'cars for sterilisation' drive - "Sitaram Sharma, the head doctor of Jhunjunu in western India, is hopeful that the chance to win a car might be just enough to tempt at least 20,000 men and women to undergo sterilisation. He is also offering motorcycles, televisions and food blenders. The offer is open to all Indians and not just residents of his drought-prone region."

Man didn’t notice 8.25 cm nail go into his brain

Experiencing the Only Penguin Bar in Tokyo

Rising Temps Lower Polar Bear Mercury Intake - "Instead of the ringed seals they ate out on the ice, the bears are foraging on bowhead whale carcasses, cast up on the beach."

If You Want to Be Creative, Don’t Be Data Driven - "data by itself is at best meaningless, and at its worse, misleading. In most cases it will tell you very little or nothing about what to do. Unfortunately, that’s not how many professionals treat the data they are given. I often hear colleagues, in the midst of needing a design or business decision, ask “what does the data tell us to do?” The real answer: not much."

Chips are down for Belgian frites as EU acts on 'unsafe compound' - "The European commission has been accused of a crime against the people of Belgium for what local politicians say amounts to an attempt to ban the national dish, the frite – or frieten, as they say in the Flemish-speaking north of the country... In a move that appears to demonstrate a dazzling lack of common touch on the part of EU officials in Brussels – which is both the capital of Belgium and the home of the union – the commission is proposing that the potatoes should be blanched first to prevent the formation of acrylamide, an allegedly hazardous compound that can form in the frying process when certain foods are heated to a temperature above 120C. Belgium, which claims to have invented frites, says the move will spoil the taste and destroy the country’s “rich gastronomical tradition”... The double-frying process – once for the soft inside, then again at a higher temperature for the crunchy outside – is regarded as the key to making the perfect chip. Belgian chips are not thick and hearty like the English variety, nor thin and elegant like the French. Belgians regarded theirs as a cut above. To add insult to injury, the consultation paper refers to chips as French fries, a term to which some Belgians take great exception"

Belgium: Female students asked to wear low-cut tops to graduation - "The email was sent to medical students at the Free University of Brussels (ULB). "From an aesthetic point of view," it read, " it is better for young women to wear a dress or skirt, and a nice revealing neckline"... The ULB Confessions page also published a response it had received from a student: "No one has the right to tell you how you should feel in your skin. Nobody has the right to tell you how to dress. No one has the right to tell you how to play your role as a woman. No one has the right to take away this freedom that has been (and is still being) obtained with such difficulty." The email was most likely sent by a woman as the secretariat did not include any men, the dean of the medicine faculty, Marco Schetgen, told Belgian news outlet RTL."
How did a suggestion become interpreted as a requirement? Aren't dress codes someone telling you how to dress?

Catholic care home in Belgium fined for refusing euthanasia - "Buntjens’ family later sued the nursing home for causing their mother “unnecessary mental and physical suffering”... During the hearing, the three judges decided unanimously that “the nursing home had no right to refuse euthanasia on the basis of conscientious objection”. The test case clarifies Belgian law to mean that only individual medical professionals – and not hospitals or care homes – have the right to refuse euthanasia requests. The judgement could spell the closures of scores of Catholic-run nursing and care homes across Belgium because the Church has stated explicitly that it will not permit euthanasia “under any circumstance”... the ruling was condemned by campaigners in Britain who see it as further evidence of the relentless liberalisation of the practice of euthanasia in the Low Countries... “It is an absolute tragedy that euthanasia is now seen to be a right. If you look around the world, anywhere assisted suicide has been introduced there is a constant erosion of any safeguards that have been put in place. This a further leap down the slippery path warned about time and time again and it shows that those warnings were true”... Last year, a paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics reported that the majority of euthanasia cases in Belgium involve patients who are illegally “put to death” by doctors without ever giving their consent"

If ISIS Is Not Islamic, then the Inquisition Was Not Catholic - "Actually, what people like Obama, Paul, Volsky, and Jenkins consider “true” faith is this: “faith that promotes the kind of behavior that I like.” So, as do all believers, the apologists pick and choose from scripture the dictates that they find congenial, ignoring the bad ones."

Gloria Gaynor praises Glasgow police officer who sang karaoke 'I Will Survive' after making arrest in city pub - "A police officer who entertained a pub crowd with a rendition of I Will Survive to defuse tension following a brawl has been praised by the woman who made the song famous, Gloria Gaynor."

Blind recruitment trial to boost gender equality making things worse, study reveals - "Leaders of the Australian public service will today be told to "hit pause" on blind recruitment trials, which many believed would increase the number of women in senior positions... The assumption behind the trial is that management will hire more women when they can only consider the professional merits of candidates... assigning a male name to a candidate made them 3.2 per cent less likely to get a job interview. Adding a woman's name to a CV made the candidate 2.9 per cent more likely to get a foot in the door.
Male privilege! Patriarchy!
To be fair, they were very explicit about wanting to increase the hiring of women - rather than putting the best qualified people into positions regardless of gender. Anyway we already know the Australian governments are very SJW friendly so this is just further evidence
This is also proof that affirmative action leads to worse functional outcomes
Addendum: This is "Going blind to see more clearly: unconscious bias in Australian Public Service shortlisting processes" by the Australian Behavioural Economics Team

Blind recruiting study suggests positive discrimination common in the APS - "The boost increased to 8.6% for “minority females” and 5.8% for men who were also from a minority group. Applications from Indigenous females were a massive 22.2% more likely to be shortlisted when these traits were visible to the person making the decision. BETA also reports: “Interestingly, male reviewers displayed markedly more positive discrimination in favour of minority candidates than did female counterparts, and reviewers aged 40+ displayed much stronger affirmative action in favour for both women and minorities than did younger ones”... Human resources staff demonstrated positive discrimination more than other public servants... The report could easily stoke the simmering debate about whether workforce diversity policies undermine the merit principle, and could be taken as evidence that a truly level playing field is actually unwelcome in the APS... Critics of positive discrimination — who often come from the beneficiary groups themselves and argue their achievements are devalued by affirmative action — could easily attack this piece of advice as evidence that diversity policies only create an artificial appearance of fairness and equity that does not really exist in society. One could interpret these new results — and the way they are presented — as evidence that a meritocratic process is less important in the APS than the need to rapidly boost workforce diversity figures. Blind recruiting is presented not as a way to make things fairer but as a tool that is only valuable where it can boost diversity... Public sector diversity policies are also often underpinned by an aim to more closely reflect the general population, broken down in terms of the distribution of people in various identified groups. The idea is that if all things were equal, a large government workforce should mirror Australian society, but this seems more of an unproven assertion than a logical conclusion, or the self-evident truth it is often presented to be. Like positive discrimination, this concept also seems to run against the merit principle."
Why are males and older people more liberal/feminist?

"Rape" in the Digital Age

Woman Live-Blogged Her Own Rape on Instagram

"This is the story of Amber Amour, a feminist and social activist who live-blogged the aftermath of her rape on Instagram and social media. She was assaulted in the shower of a South African hostel while touring the country on a rape education campaign."

Interestingly, she alleged being raped by a room mate in 2014 but the charges were dismissed, and "says that she is a Vegansexual, meaning that she only has sex with other vegans" ("if a man lies he's a vegan to have consensual sex wit hher, is it also rape in her pov?").


The comments on Facebook are interesting. And curiously, virtually all the "victim blaming" ones quoted here are from women (including from some real rape victims):

"So, a complete stranger asked her if she wanted to take a shower with him and she agreed to it?! I understand that no MEANS no and everything. As a woman, I wouldn't take a shower with a complete stranger and expect nothing to happen. Clearly, she wasn't using common sense. This chick lives in a dream world where everything is butterflies and rainbows, doesn't she? I'm not sticking up for the guy who did this to her. She's a moron for not protecting herself!"

"This offends me as a vegan transgender hipster Native-American-Indo-Chinese hybrid alien agnostic-atheist German engineer who vapes fairtrade organic decaffeinated compressed and hydrated extra-protein soy breast milk on the regular and does Hindi Kama Sutra naked crossfit yoga 5 times per week. I'm also a nonbinary trigender genderqueer male feminist and identify myself as a pastafarian pansexual genderfluid Apache helicopter dog of mega multi alpha beta gamma delta omega combo god of hyper death who's in a polygamous polyamorous relationship to the chihuahua which helped me cross the border of Mexico because it hates Donald Trump. My dog also walks me to the park and doggy styles me, if you find that weird you're an ignorant arrogant homophobic gender-assuming globaphobic bloodthirsty gun-loving cisgender pansexual bestial sexist racist incestuous white-previlege misogynistic biased objectified raped privileged Nazi slave owner terrorist lesbian."

"She said yes to showering with him.... thats basically saying she wants it. But last minute calls rape then blogs about it only MOMENTS AFTER. sounds like someones looking for attention... but what do i know. Lol"

"No one is confused
1. She kissed him
2. She knew he was drunk
3. She knew he wanted to hook up with her
4. She went to an open shower area with him knowing all this
I get that the showers at her hotel were cold But she needs to take some responsibility also She willingly put herself in a situation that she could have 100% avoided. Then to document every step of the process including taking a pic of her rap kit??? Im sorry but a victim of rape doesn't think about or have time to post it to social media period."

"So she got in a shower with a strange dude she kissed and is surprised she got raped?"

"I have been drugged and raped and nearly died from the drugs , but even i had to stop at the part where she said Yes to the shower offer i mean what in the actual fuck stupid cunt ! Stories like this only make it harder for womens real stories of rape to be taken seriously"

"I wish people would realize the difference between rape and regret."

"as she was on a sexual assault prevention tour it all just seems too convenient."

"It's weird that you can now consent to and set up a rape. Learn new things every day... She took pictures of it. Anticipating rape before it happened? Maybe I'm wrong but that picture of her on getting raped in the shower seemed a bit odd and set up"

"most rape victims are to distraught in order to jump on social media minutes later. This is a cry for help but not sure the help she warrants."

""Because my water was cold" come on.. I've taken ice cold water showers and felt needles... no way I'm showering with a drunk for warmth."

"I've been in the medical field a long time and I've never known someone to kiss someone, take a shower with them, claim rape, and then document the investigation process all the while teaching about rape."

"This article makes me feel ashamed to be a rape victim"

Links - 28th August 2017 (1)

CNN faced $100M lawsuit over botched Russia story - "The specter of a $100 million libel suit scared CNN into retracting a poorly reported story that slimed an ally of President Trump’s — and forcing out the staffers responsible for it... a CNN insider said staffers are furious at “having lost the moral high ground because of this story.” Sources said Zucker tried to rally his staff during a Tuesday morning conference call. “Zucker stressed that this issue was a ‘lapse in editorial standards’ and said it was a lesson to all reporters and editors to continue to strive for strong, accurate reporting,” a source said... The retracted story was based on a single, anonymous source who claimed the Senate Intelligence Committee was probing ties between the Trump administration and a Russian government-owned investment fund."

Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds - "For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too. His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most -- not the nutritional value of the food. The premise held up: On his "convenience store diet," he shed 27 pounds in two months... Haub's "bad" cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his "good" cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent... Before his Twinkie diet, he tried to eat a healthy diet that included whole grains, dietary fiber, berries and bananas, vegetables and occasional treats like pizza. "There seems to be a disconnect between eating healthy and being healthy," Haub said. "It may not be the same. I was eating healthier, but I wasn't healthy. I was eating too much"... To avoid setting a bad example for his kids, Haub ate vegetables in front of his family. Away from the dinner table, he usually unwrapped his meals... To curb calories, he avoided meat, whole grains and fruits. Once he started adding meat into the diet four weeks ago, his cholesterol level increased."

Army warns of new threat: Energy drinks - "soldiers in the field were more likely to fall asleep on duty if they consumed multiple beverages a day... "doctors don't know what the effects of (energy drink) ingredients are in larger doses.""

Hong Kong's Tai O fishing village torn between tourism and decline - "Tai O is separated from the rest of Hong Kong by steep, rocky hills. Before 1990, the only way to get to Tai O was by boat. Permits to drive on the town's single road are only granted to villagers and public buses. A sense of isolation still pervades the village's tight-knit community, which many locals say they are keen to keep to themselves. As visitors are drawn to the Venice-like village with homes largely built on stilts, the pathways are dotted with signs warning "Private Property" and "No Entry." To circumvent the signs, tour guides now row tourists on boat down the river and having a look at the houses from the water."

Australia to cut benefits if kids aren't vaccinated - "Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children can lose up to $11,000 of welfare benefits a year under a new government policy... The number of children in Australia who have not received immunization against measles and other diseases has almost doubled in the past decade... Existing exemptions on medical or religious grounds will continue said Abbott, but guidelines on religious exemptions will be tightened"
If giving single mothers fewer benefits is punishing the children...

Hidden cameras show airport workers stealing from bags - "these insider thefts just don't happen in Miami. A CNN analysis of passenger property loss claims filed with the TSA from 2010 to 2014 shows 30,621 claims of missing valuables, mostly packed in checked luggage. The rest occurred at security checkpoints. Total property loss claimed: $2.5 million."

Jihadi John: The bourgeois terrorist - "The diagnosis that poverty, lack of education or lack of opportunities have much to do with terrorism requires a fundamentally optimistic view of human nature. This diagnosis leads to the prognosis that all we need to do to solve the terrorism problem is to create societies that are less poor, better educated and have more opportunities. The fact is, working stiffs with few opportunities and scant education are generally too busy getting by to engage in revolutionary projects to remake society. And history, in fact, shows us that terrorism is generally a bourgeois endeavor. This was just as true of the Russian anarchists of the late 19th century as it was of the German Marxists of the Baader-Meinhof gang of the 1970s and of the Japanese terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo in the 1990s... if it's clearly not deprivation that is driving much Islamist terrorism, what is?
For that we must turn to ideology, specifically religious ideology. And this is where the Obama administration has to perform some pretzel logic. It is careful to explain that the war on ISIS is not a war on Islam and that ISIS' ideology is a perversion of the religion. Fair enough. But the administration seems uncomfortable with making the connection between Islamist terrorism and ultra-fundamentalist forms of Islam that are intolerant of other religions and of other Muslims who don't share their views to the letter.
ISIS may be a perversion of Islam, but Islamic it is, just as Christian beliefs about the sanctity of the unborn child explain why some Christian fundamentalists attack abortion clinics and doctors. But, of course, murderous Christian fundamentalists are not killing many thousands of civilians a year. More than 80% of the world's terrorist attacks take place in five Muslim-majority countries -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria -- and are largely carried out by groups with Islamist beliefs... The Taliban and other Islamist terrorist groups are not, of course, secular organizations. To treat them as if they were springs from some combination of wishful thinking, PC gone crazy and a failure to accept, in an increasingly secularized era, that some will kill in the name of their god, an all-too-common phenomenon across human history."
The people who suffer most when one refuses to acknowledge that Islamist terrorism has something to do with Islam - Muslims

Why I put World of Warcraft on my resume - "Symantec's chief operating officer, Stephen Gillett, has an impressive resume that includes executive stints at Starbucks, CNET and Best Buy. He's also a level 70 paladin and priest with a particular focus on healing abilities... he includes his World of Warcraft achievements on his resume, because it's not just about role-playing games. It shows he exercises leadership in both the physical and virtual realms. Plus, he understands the current societal fascination with earning points and interactive entertainment. As a guild master, his current duties and responsibilities include organizing dungeon raids and managing the group's virtual bank. And he has a knack for recruiting key talent. Think mages and warlocks. Those skills transferred to his position as Starbucks' CIO, Gillett says. In that role, he was tasked with saving the company's suffering technology assets. Cash registers were outdated. Computers were scarce. Customer sales were down. Gillett's answer: Take Starbucks executives on a field trip to the Irvine, Calif., headquarters of World of Warcraft maker Activision Blizzard (ATVI, Tech30). The goal was to expose them to a business model that capitalizes on gaming"

Teen to government: Change your typeface, save millions - "Suvir figured out that by using Garamond with its thinner strokes, his school district could reduce its ink consumption by 24%, and in turn save as much as $21,000 annually."

Ronald McDonald to limit appearances in light of clown scares - "His appearances will be limited due to the rise in clown-related disturbances in the US and more recently around the world."

Clown Lives Matter March Canceled Over Death Threats - "The Clown Lives Matter march scheduled to take place tomorrow in Arizona has been canceled after the event's organizer said she received death threats on social media. The march was organized in response to the increase of creepy clown sightings and threats in recent months. Participants were encouraged to wear clown masks, full makeup and costumes and families were invited to "meet a clown and get a hug!" "This is a peaceful walk to show clowns are not psycho killers," a flier for the event said. "We want the public to feel safe, and not be afraid"... The Rev. Reginald Walton, chairman of Black Lives Matter Phoenix, said he was "glad" the march was canceled and called the Clown Lives Matter movement "insensitive" considering the "serious problem we are facing in this country" regarding police brutality... The uptick of scary clown incidents and sightings has rattled the nation in the months leading up to Halloween. The issue has become so severe that it prompted the White House to issue a statement saying the creepy clown incidents should be taken "seriously" by law enforcement."
So much for whataboutery being a problem

More than 100 Nobel laureates are calling on Greenpeace to end its anti-GMO campaign - "The laureates also take Greenpeace to task for seeking to block Golden Rice, a strain of not-yet-approved rice that has been genetically enhanced to produce beta carotene — which, its creators hope, might one day alleviate the Vitamin A deficiency that’s causing widespread death and blindness in the developing world... Greenpeace tends to take very seriously what scientists are telling them. Their website refers frequently to the scientific consensus that the world is getting warmer and humans are the cause. By contrast, Greenpeace’s public statements on GMOs tend to be startlingly unscientific... Will Saletan wrote a damning piece on how incoherent Greenpeace’s campaign against Golden Rice was. As research advanced, the group kept shifting its position"

Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet - "Live long and prosper, First Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, leader of the Singaporean people... The Iron Fist: Cities do not rebel nor revolt. Can reclaim coastal tiles into land tiles. Population grows 5 times quicker when allied with a city state, but at double the unhappiness. Roads and railways are maintenance free"

Man takes ridiculous route between Newcastle and London because it's cheaper than public transport - "British rail passengers spend six times more on train fares than their European counterparts... Furness found that Newcastle to Menorca (one of Spain’s Balearic islands), and then on to London Gatwick came to only £26. You can see where he's going with this. So fly to London via Menorca he did, which gave him a 12-hour-stop-over to soak up some sun and indulge in a cocktail or two."

FRIENDS NO MORE? Black Lives Matter Slams Gay Pride Parade - "Black Lives Matter NYC published an open letter slamming NYC Pride for the huge numbers of police helping protect their parade and the NYPD vehicles displaying Pride decals. The letter demanded “the removal of uniformed police and PRIDE-detailed vehicles from the NYC Pride parade ... a commitment to transform the culture and events of PRIDE to center the lives of those most marginalized — queer and transgender Black communities ... the honoring of our ancestors and elders with true integrity of their radical existence.""
If this is the new civil rights movement, maybe civil rights aren't such a good thing after all

Extremism experts are starting to worry about the left - "Levin says that since December 2015, he’s documented nearly two-dozen episodes in California where political events turned violent because of agitation on both sides, something he says he hardly ever saw before. Now, there are violent clashes on college campuses involving groups like Antifa, the anti-fascist group, taking on the alt-right; and aggressive anti-Trump rallies attended by members of the Redneck Revolt, a new pro-minority, anti-supremacist group that encourages its members to train with rifles. Online, hard leftists increasingly discuss politics in dire terms, and rationalize violence as a necessity— even the true inheritor of traditional progressive activism. (Or, in the case of the “Punch a Nazi” meme, a fun game.)... in the years after 9/11, Segal says, the largest source of extremist violence was from the Left: eco-terrorists and animal rights activists"

Men Legally Allowed to Finish Sex Even If Woman Revokes Consent, NC Law States
This conflates a change in the circumstances of the agreement (like violence) with its unlilateral abrogation

Hillary Clinton wishes happy birthday to HERSELF in bizarre Twitter post - "Perhaps worried she wasn't going to receive many good wishes from anywhere else, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton decided to wish herself a happy birthday, while proclaiming she would be the first woman president... 'Shouldn't this have come from one of the campaign accounts?' asked another potential voter, while another summed the whole episode up pointedly stating: 'The saddest birthday tweet comes from yourself.'"

Study: Unattractive Men Not Viewed As 'Dating Material,' No Matter How Great Their Personality - "Maybe nice guys really do finish last, after all. Women don’t view unattractive men as “dating material,” no matter how exceptional their other qualities are, a new study finds. Researchers at Eastern Connecticut State University looked at the mate preferences of 80 young women, aged 15 to 29, while also having 61 of their mothers weigh in... Simply put, men viewed as unattractive were not viewed as potential suitors, no matter the level of other redeeming qualities that accompanied their photos. Those with favorable personality traits that were ranked highly were at least moderately attractive... Mothers, however, didn’t shut the door on their offspring dating a relatively unattractive guy if he outperformed in other departments. But the younger participants wouldn’t budge... Although women will go on record to say that they prioritize personality characteristics over handsomeness in a partner, “they [still] assume that the potential mates at least meet a minimally acceptable standard of physical attractiveness”"

Tennis Legend Triggers Millions After Stating Serena Williams Would Rank 700th If She Faced Men - "Retired tennis legend John Patrick McEnroe Jr. has caused quite a stir online over his insistence that Serena Williams would be nowhere near as successful if she were competing against men. According to The Guardian, McEnroe made his remarks during an interview with NPR on Sunday, stating that while Williams is the “best female player ever – no question,” she would probably rank around 700 in the men’s league. The Guardian further reports that McEnroe stood by his statement in the face of the subsequent “REEEEEEEEEEEE”-ing of SJWs deluded enough to believe that men and women are on the same level when it comes to physical ability. “Have the women play in the men’s circuit,” he said on The Dan Patrick Show today. “We’ll see what happens. Have them all play for the next two years and see what the ranks are”... Serena Williams herself has lashed out at McEnroe over his statement, insisting that he leave her alone and describing his words as “not factually based”... SJWs have rushed to Williams’ defence, crying sexism and misogyny... USA Today sports writer Josh Peter argues McEnroe was actually being generous in his guess of where Serena Williams would rank among men."
When interviewers continually prod people to say apparently controversial things just to kick up a shitstorm...

John McEnroe says Serena Williams would be 700 on the men’s tour. Is he right? - "Given the speed at which men pick up returns in their game, the velocity and power of their serves and the fact that the men’s side focuses on aces and ace returns, Williams would be facing a wholly different sort of challenge at a men’s event. (The women’s game sees more rallies and volleys.) In addition, the high-speed lateral movement required would specifically test Williams as a player since she’s struggled with injuries below her knees over the last few years. Finally, Williams’ personal game — as is the case with all women’s players — is wrapped around the three-set format of the women’s tour. The men’s game goes to five sets."
Even Salon grudgingly admits that men and women aren't built the same way. Though of course the Jedi mind trick follows

Serena tells Letterman she’d lose to Andy Murray in ‘five or six’ minutes - ""Actually it’s funny, because Andy Murray, he’s been joking about myself and him playing a match. I’m like, ‘Andy, seriously, are you kidding me?’ For me, mens’ tennis and womens’ tennis are completely, almost, two separate sports. If I were to play Andy Murray, I would lose 6-0, 6-0 in five to six minutes, maybe 10 minutes. No, it’s true. It’s a completely different sport. The men are a lot faster and they serve harder, they hit harder, it’s just a different game. I love to play women’s tennis. I only want to play girls, because i don’t want to be embarrassed. I would not do the tour, I would not do Billie Jean [King] any disservice. So Andy, stop it. I’m not going to let you kill me."... The mens’ and womens’ games are different things. It’s always forgotten, but Bobby Riggs was 55 years old when he played Billie Jean King in 1974. And back then, the men’s and women’s game were closer than they are today."
Internalised sexism!

How to... beat both Williams sisters in one afternoon - "It was the 1998 Australian Open and the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, had seen some of the male players practising. On the basis of what they saw, they were convinced that they could beat a man ranked around 200 in the world and wanted to set up a game. At the time I was ranked 203 so the men's tour manager mentioned the possibility of a challenge to me, thinking that I was the perfect candidate... In the end I won, but neither myself, nor Venus or Serena took the game too seriously - we were just having a bit of fun. Apparently, after the game, Serena and Venus immediately told the press they wanted to challenge a male player again. This time they revised the ranking of the man they wanted to face, to 350 in the world... when I saw Venus a few months later at the French Open she came up to me with a big smile on her face and said, 'You know that thing in Australia - it never happened!'"

HuffPost: White Gay Men Are Not Allowed To Have Racial Dating Preferences
Presumably straight men who refuse to have sex with gay men are being homophobic

Links - 23rd August 2017 (2)

California travel ban: 4 states added to list - "California has issued a ban on state-funded and state-sponsored travel to four more states that it says have laws discriminating against LGBTQ people. The travel ban was first put into effect January 1 when state measure AB 1887 became law. The law says California is "a leader in protecting civil rights and preventing discrimination" and should not support or finance "discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people"... Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee were the original states banned by AB 1887, but Becerra added Alabama, Kentucky, South Dakota and Texas on Thursday, citing what he called new discriminatory legislation enacted against the LGBTQ community in those states."
Comments: " Travel ban on states that discriminates against LGBT people:
"This is social justice!"
Travel ban on Muslim countries where LGBT people get jailed or lynched to death:
"This is Islamophobic racism!""
"It's only bigotry when white people do it."

Siam Road Char Koay Teow Closes Stall For 10 Days Because The Crowd Is Stressing Uncle Out - "The famous char koay teow stall in Penang ranked #14 in the Top 50 list at the recent World Street Food Congress 2017 in Manila, the Philippines... stall owner Tan Chooi Hong pleaded with customers to not photograph or write about him, as he is unable to cope with the sudden flood of customers... One of few char koay teow stalls that are still using charcoal to fire up the wok, customers from all over Malaysia have been known to queue for hours for a plate of the world-famous dish... Customers have also been known to start queueing even before Tan and his son arrive. In a recent Facebook video, some could be heard chanting "Char koay teow! Char koay teow!" just as the duo arrived with their push stall cart."

German police officers expelled after public sex, group urination, and a strip tease involving a service weapon ahead of G20 summit - "one of the officers involved in the party told Bild newspaper he didn’t see what all the fuss was about, because it was just a “normal night for Berlin”... The police reportedly got bored with the lack of television at their makeshift accommodation in converted shipping containers, and decided to stage their own entertainment."

The Minimum Wage: Evidence from a Danish Discontinuity - "In Denmark the minimum wage jumps up by 40% when a worker turns 18. Thus the authors, Kreiner, Reck and Skov, ask what happens to the employment of young people when they hit their 18th birthday? Answer: employment drops dramatically, by one-third...
A variety of restrictions mean that under-18 age workers can do less than adults (e.g. they can’t legally lift more than 25 kilos or have a driver’s license.) Thus, productivity increases at age 18, making the employment loss at this age even more dramatic. The authors can’t tell for certain if workers are quitting or getting fired but there are few other obvious discontinuities around exactly age 18. Students are eligible for certain benefits at age 18 but the authors are able to look at sub-samples where this objection doesn’t apply and the results are robust."

Boots apologises after outcry over skin chart - "Boots was forced to apologise after customers dubbed an in-store skincare chart 'offensive' because they believed it implied that brown and black skin 'is not normal'... One user, Sophie Watts, responded by saying: 'This is honestly one of the most disgraceful and ridiculous things I have ever seen!'... Others were angry at people with black and brown skin being told to use low SPF factors, as they believe it is 'not enough'"
If this is one of the most disgraceful things someone has seen, she leads a very privileged life
Maybe in a few years someone will call Boots racist because they don't advise darker skinned people to use less sunscreen, meaning "minorities" pay more than they should for sunscreen, which hurts them

Have lots of sex, live a whole lot longer - "women who had regular sex had significantly longer telomeres — boosting their overall life expectancy... The researchers found women who had sex during the course of the week-long study had telomeres that were up to 30 percent longer. But relationship quality had no effect on them."

Pond scum is the new kale - "The cyanobacteria collected from the surface of freshwater lakes and ponds – also known as spirulina – is turning up in blue drinks, ice cream, lattes and M&Ms, as holistic experts and plant-based nutritionists rave about its health benefits. Kate Middleton reportedly sips it in her smoothies."

PICTURES: Here's What Environmentalist Leftists Leave Their Campground Looking Like - "More than 1,000 volunteers are assisting in cleaning up litter after the Glastonbury Music Festival (GMF) in the United Kingdom. In addition to the volunteers, £785,000 will be spent on the cleanup; it is unclear if taxpayers are footing the bill... The GMF's organizers push left-wing causes; hyping "climate change" and being "green." Michael Eavis, founder of the GMF, frames his operation as environmentally conscientious"

Paradox: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Wears Islamic-Themed Socks To Gay Pride Parade

Tough shore leave rules for Chinese navy personnel during Liaoning’s Hong Kong visit - "every Liaoning carrier soldier needs to abide by Interior Service Regulations which restrict communication and interaction between people inside and outside the Chinese military, making Liaoning personnel less free than US soldiers."

More Acid Attacks In London - "There have been over 1,800 reported acid attacks in London since 2010... "Since 2014 about 74% of investigations have been wound down due to problems with identifying perpetrators, or victims being unwilling to press charges""
Maybe acid attacks are part and parcel of living in a big city

Hong Kong handover: "One country, two systems" is full of contradictions—look at the Hong Kong-China border - "For China, this boundary—once an acrimonious reminder of how Western imperial powers brought China to its knees—became handy for the People’s Republic to filter out “subversive elements” deemed detrimental to its interior stability. It helps intercept undesirable information, material, or individuals at the frontier before they slip into China and become more difficult to purge. As a measure of risk management, maintaining a boundary allows Beijing to better control interactions between the mainland and the SAR—a form of administrative quarantine."

German White Woman Completes Her Racial Reassignment - "German “model” Martina Adam is rivalling Rachel Dolezal with her latest operation – racial reassignment. Martina Adam, also known as Martina Big due to her huge implants and appearances on “Botched,” has completed her transition into her new life as a “black” female."

Bokhari: The Secret Rightwing Messages of Harry Potter - "1) Walls between different societies are good
2) Don’t trust establishment politicians (or establishment media)
3) If a group has a terrorist problem, sometimes you have to ban them"

Harry Potter and the millennial mind | The Spectator - "The ‘Potterverse’ is the millennial universe. It informs the way we see ourselves and the way we look at the world; our moral imagination. If you have ever wondered why young people are often so childish in their politics, why they want to divide the world between tolerant progressives and wicked reactionaries, it helps to understand that. Harry Potter may be a literary fantasy but for many it is also a substitute religion in a secular era. The books are about the fight between good and evil, and the power of magic... The Potterverse, then, keeps developing. Yet it is a naive landscape in which most problems are solved by magic. To believe in it, even ironically, is to divide people into goodies and baddies, and ignore the complexity of reality. For all the joy that Harry Potter brings to its millions of readers, the world cannot be sorted by a magical hat."

Harry Potter, Muggles and meritocracy - "Thus the Potterverse, as Toad writes, is about "the legitimacy of authority that comes from schools" - Ivy League schools, elite schools, US News & World Report top 100 schools. And because "contemporary liberalism is the ideology of imperial academia, funnelled through media and non-profits and governmental agencies but responsible ultimately only to itself", a story about a wizarding academy is the perfect fantasy story for the liberal meritocracy to tell about itself... Voldemort, the dark lord, has Muggle blood, but he isn't trying to rally an army of non-magic-wielders to seize Hogwarts' towers; he's trying to remake meritocratic - er, magical - institutions in his own dark image. And so the battle for Harvard - er, Hogwarts - is the battle for the world. Which is basically the premise of a great deal of youthful liberal activism these days - that once the last remnants of Slytherin are eradicated from the leafy quads of Yale or Middlebury, once Draco Malfoy's frat or final club is closed and the last Death-Eater sympathisers purged from the faculty, then the battle of ideas will have been finally and fully won."

It is not ok to joke about killing men - "At some point when everyone was busy believing that feminism had something to do with achieving equality, Clementine Ford arrived on a broomstick. She confidently announced she was here to fix gender inequality and people blindly believed her... In a copy of her book, ‘Fight Like A Girl’, she wrote a note to a fan. It asked “Have you killed any men today? And if not, why not?”... Eddie McGuire was utterly vilified for commenting he’d pay extra if Caroline Wilson stayed under water at the Big Freeze?... When I wrote in an earlier column about the male suicide crisis and the desperate need to take this seriously, regardless of gender, I was slammed as a “misogynist” while hate mail and insults poured in."

Turkey sizes 50 Christian churches and monasteries and declared them as state property - "Turkish authorities have transferred the ownership of churches, houses of worship and cemeteries that have belonged to the Syriac community for over 1,600 years to Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) as part of a process of liquidation in Mardin province"

Hair today, gone tomorrow: Serial hair-snipper arrested in Japan - "Police charged the 23-year-old graduate student with assault on Monday (Dec 5) after he admitted cutting the hair of a woman on a packed morning train in Nagoya, a city west of Tokyo... Yoshida said he had planned on selling his ill-gotten merchandise online... Local police reportedly stepped up their patrols earlier this year after receiving complaints from other women whose hair or skirts had been cut on area trains."

Portland Police Chief Says Antifa Protesters Used Slingshot to Launch Urine and Feces-Filled Balloons at Riot Cops - "He said the decision to corral 345 people in downtown streets prevented violent confrontations between right-wing and left-wing protesters. He said photographing the detained protesters' IDs sped up their release. And he said sending police into the streets wearing riot gear was necessary because of credible reports of protesters bringing weapons—reports he says proved true."

Deadly diet: Thai doctors battle cancer-causing fish dish - "Like millions of Thais across the rural northeast, his family regularly ate koi pla - a local dish made of raw fish ground with spices and lime. The pungent meal is quick, cheap and tasty, but the fish is also a favourite feast for parasites that can cause a lethal liver cancer killing up to 20,000 Thais annually... Many villagers complain that cooking the dish gives it a sour taste. Others simply shrug off the dangers and say their fate has already been fixed - a common belief in the Buddhist nation where karma can dictate decisions."

Jezebel Is Angry That Serena Williams Is in an Interracial Relationship with a Redditor - "They couldn’t let their contempt for both f—king white males and Redditors stay buried long enough to write up the news piece... being a tolerant leftist, she ends the article with a threat."

Czech nuclear power station sparks fury after holding bizarre BIKINI contest to choose their new intern - "The sexy snaps were posted on the company website, with fans asked to vote for the hottest to secure the internship job... Representatives of Temelin said the bikini contest was only one part of a beauty pageant among school graduates, adding that they were “trying to make technical education more popular”."

Justices to Hear Case on Religious Objections to Same-Sex Marriage - The New York Times - "The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear an appeal from a Colorado baker with religious objections to same-sex marriage who had lost a discrimination case for refusing to create a cake to celebrate such a union. The case will be a major test of a clash between laws that ban businesses open to the public from discriminating based on sexual orientation and claims of religious freedom. Around the nation, businesses like bakeries, florists and photography studios have said, so far with little success, that forcing them to serve gay couples violates their constitutional rights... In a second development concerning gay and lesbian couples, the Supreme Court reaffirmed on Monday its 2015 decision recognizing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, ruling that states may not treat married same-sex couples differently from others in issuing birth certificates... The case concerned an Arkansas law about birth certificates that treats married opposite-sex couples differently from same-sex ones. A husband of a married woman is automatically listed as the father even if he is not the genetic parent. Same-sex spouses are not... State officials listed the biological mother on the children’s birth certificates and refused to list their partners, saying they were not entitled to a husband’s presumption of paternity. The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled against the women, saying that “it does not violate equal protection to acknowledge basic biological truths.”"
If a restaurant refuses to cook Kosher food for a customer, is it discriminating against Jews?

Female Rangers Were Given Special Treatment, Sources Say - "Way back in January, long before the first women attended the Army’s elite Ranger School – one of the most grueling military courses in the world – officials at the highest levels of the Army had already decided failure was not an option... whereas men consistently were held to the strict standards outlined in the Ranger School’s Standing Operating Procedures handbook sources say, the women were allowed lighter duties and exceptions to policy. Multiple sources told PEOPLE... “We were under huge pressure to comply,” one Ranger instructor says. “It was very much politicized.”... “Combat is brutal and unforgiving,” says Jim Lechner, a retired Army officer and Ranger who was wounded in combat in Mogadishu, Somalia, during the famed “Black Hawk Down” incident. “Fighters must be prepared and capable. If they are not, people will die”... While men were held to a stark pass-fail standard, women were allowed to redo the special training repeatedly"

Female Rangers: An Insider Speaks on the Record - "“Just this year we’ve had more than twenty males take Day 1 Recycles. And that’s just the ones who accepted the offer. We’ve offered Day 1 Recycles to way more soldiers than that. When a soldier doesn’t make it through a training phase, a board looks at all the factors involved and decides whether or not to give them the opportunity to start the course over. If the board believes in the soldier, thinks he’s doing his best and is physically and mentally able to succeed, he gets the chance to start over.”"

Pentagon Could Be 'Shredding' Docs About Female Rangers

NOT Fake News: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Loretta Lynch Now ALL Under Investigation - "From the nonstop coverage of Trump's alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 presidential election, you'd think he was under FBI investigation. But he isn't. Instead, three big Democratic players are. But you wouldn't know that from the MSM coverage"

The eccentric MP who is Australia's new powerbroker - "He shot his major-party rivals dead in this election's most controversial campaign ad. He once serenaded his supporters with a self-composed song about the excellence of his character. When The Beatles touched down in Brisbane during their 1964 tour of Australia, Mr Katter was among a group who pelted them with eggs as "an intellectual reaction against Beatlemania"... Socially conservative, Katter opposes gay marriage and once said he would "walk backwards from Bourke", a town in far-western New South Wales, to Queensland if a single homosexual constituent could be found in his electorate"