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Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Links - 25th September 2024 (2 - Climate Change)

Meme - "50 YEARS OF CLIMATE SCIENCE IN 1 GRAPH
100 trillion billion megadegrees K
Very hot weather
Past - Current temp: *stable temperature* Cherry picked temperature reconstruction showing stability
Present - Current temp-Very hot weather: *slowly rising temperature* Adjusted temperature record to show omnious acceleration
Tipping point (tomorrow) - *temperature surging* Computer model showing you the infernal climate apocalypse future that wait if my funding isn't increased

Wilfred Reilly on X - "The hard reality of environmentalism is that none of the cute stuff you do - "My girl and I have begun to COMPOST!!!" - will make any difference whatsoever to the future of the world. Western emissions are already down more than 12% from 2000, the real problem is China and India, and the problem will be solved with nuke."

Why are some Australian households about to be charged for generating too much solar power? - "Since 2021, the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has been assessing the states or territories where electricity prices should take into account the cost of having lots of solar panel owners exporting power to the grid.  The move was originally prompted by groups such as the Australian Council of Social Service and St Vincent de Paul. They argued it was unfair that households unable to afford solar panels (or batteries) had to pick up additional costs caused by modifying the grid to absorb “two-way” electricity flows. The public interest advocacy centre also supports the move. The AER’s five-year rolling regulatory pricing updates meant three NSW-based energy firms – Ausgrid, Endeavour and Essential – were told in April they could impose a fee on households exporting surplus power during the period of the day that is sunniest when the spot power prices are often negative... The Australian Energy Regulator said the electricity network “was not designed for large amounts of energy flowing back into the network”.  “This two-way flow of energy, with peaks in supply during the middle of the day, is overloading the network in many areas,” it said."
Climate change hystericists don't understand the problems that "renewables" have with intermittency and unreliability

Why climate change ISN'T going to end the world and why we need to stop obsessing about net-zero, according to Cambridge University professor - "Young people are terrified that climate change will destroy Earth by the time they grow up, but the world is not actually ending, argues Cambridge professor Mike Hulme. Humanity is not teetering on a cliff's edge, he says, at risk of imminent catastrophe if we don't reach net-zero carbon emissions by a certain date. And he has made it his mission to call out the people who claim we are. In his most recent book, Climate Change Isn't Everything, Hulme argued that belief in the urgent fight against climate change has shot far past the territory of science and become an ideology. Hulme, a professor of human geography at the University of Cambridge, dubs this ideology 'climatism,' and he argues that it can distort the way society approaches the world's ills, placing too much focus on slowing Earth from warming. The problem, he said, is this narrow focus takes attention away from other important moral, ethical, and political objectives - like helping people in the developing world rise out of poverty... As with other 'isms' - like cubism or romanticism - ideologies provide a way of thinking about things, explained Hulme. 'They're like spectacles that help us to make sense of the world, according to a predefined framework or structure,' he said... many journalists, advocates, and casual observers of climate change have become devotees of climatism, inaccurately attributing many events that happen in the world as being caused by climate change. He gives the examples of a fire, flood, or damaging hurricane. 'No matter how complex a particular causal chain might be, it's a very convenient shorthand to say, 'Oh, well, this was caused by climate change,'' Hulme said. 'It's a very shallow and simplistic way, I would argue, to try to describe events that are happening in the world.'... 'Fundamentally, we're going to have to deal with hurricanes, and we're not going to deal with them just by cutting our carbon emissions,' he said. The solutions, he argues, will include better forecasting, better early warning systems, better emergency plans, and better infrastructure. 'There are all sorts of things that we can do to minimize the risks and dangers of hurricanes, that are way more effective in the short term than trying to cut our carbon emissions,' said Hulme. The danger of climatism, he pointed out, is that it leads people down a false chain of events: If all of these things happening in the world are caused by climate change, then all we have to do is stop climate change, and all the other things will stop themselves. 'So whether it's Putin's war, or whether it's the Hamas-Israel conflict in Gaza, whether it is a hurricane hitting Miami - if all of these things are caused by climate change, let's get rid of climate change,' said Hulme. 'And that clearly is a very inadequate way of thinking about the complexities of most of the problems we we face in the world today.' This distorted thinking can make people forget about other important concerns, he argues. As an example, Hulme points to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): 17 areas that the world's governments have identified as top priorities for humanity. The SDGs include building peace and justice, eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, and ensuring clean sanitation and water for billions of people on the planet. 'These are really important goals, and the danger is if we obsess about just climate change, if we think that climate change holds the key to wellbeing and a better future, we take attention away from interventions that will make progress on the sustainable development goals,' he said. As an example, Hulme points to Western European governments that are not willing to put money into the transition away from open wood burning cookers in many rural villages in the global south, which cause very high mortality levels, particularly amongst women and children. 'Liquid petroleum gas (LPG) is much cleaner, much more efficient, much easier for women and girls to get access to,' he said. 'But in the name of climate change, well, we can't put money into LPG transition, because that's a fossil fuel.'... If society were to put climate change priorities into their proper proportions then, Hulme said it would still be on the list. It just wouldn't be the only item on the list, and it wouldn't be at the top. 'There's 17 SDGs, and two of them are related to climate. So that begins to rebalance, or re-proportion, the amount of effort and attention we might wish to pay,' said Hulme. Beyond these mixed up priorities, Hulme also takes issue with what he sees as an obsession with deadlines: 'There's this idea of the ticking clock counting down to Ground Zero - we've only got five years, 10 years, two years - however long different commentators put the deadline.' He calls this line of thinking 'deadline-ism,' a sort of sub-ideology of climatism, and he says he finds it unhelpful. 'It's like holding a gun to your head and saying, 'You've only got three seconds to make a decision.' And under those circumstances, most human beings would not make a very good decision,' he said. Perhaps even worse, it has the potential to undermine the gravity of the true threat posed by climate change. One danger of deadlines can be that they cultivate a sense of fatalism: 'Well, if we've only got three more years, clearly we're not going to solve it in three years time. So what the heck, let's give up,' Hulme said. The other danger is cynicism: The average person sees deadlines come and go, but the world is still here, and as far as most people can tell, climate disaster has not befallen us. 'We've had many of these supposedly decisive years, said Hulme. 'And you know, it's not surprising that people may become somewhat cynical or fatigued by this type of rhetoric.'... this public framing has led to a phenomenon called 'eco-anxiety,' which Hulme said he sees among his students at Cambridge University 'They have absorbed these claims of tipping points, and they take these things literally, and feel that there is no future for them because the climate is going to go out of control,' he said. 'They feel that it will be too late, and everything will collapse.' As an educator of young adults, and as someone who has studied climate change over a 40-year career, Hulme sees a pastoral dimension to his role. 'I see people unnecessarily going down a spiral of despair and hopelessness that I find deeply concerning and worrying,' he said. Part of what makes this so unfortunate is that he still sees many reasons to feel hopeful about the future. Chief among them, the irrepressible ingenuity and spirit of humans and their social formations."
Damn climate change denier spreading dangerous misinformation and conspiracy theories! He needs to be unpersoned!

How a green fuel and Biden's climate law poisoned the South - "Wood pellets were supposed to be a green energy. And President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was meant to be good for America's air, forests, and rivers. But environmentalists say government-subsidized wood pellet production is wreaking havoc across the South. Swathes of forests have been chopped down to make pellets for power stations in Europe. And residents living near those plants say they leave their air dustier and people sicker... Quaranda and other critics say the pellets are even dirtier than fossil fuels... Studies have found firing wood pellets puts more carbon immediately into the atmosphere than coal... Pollution from biomass-based facilities is nearly three times higher than that of other energy sectors, according to a 2023 paper in the journal Renewable Energy. In a 2018 letter, hundreds of scientists warned the EU that the 'additional carbon load' from burning wood pellets means 'permanent damages' including glacial melting."

Now eco-fanatics threaten to ruin opening week of school holidays - "Eco-fanatics have threatened to ruin the opening week of the school holidays for millions of families by targeting National Trust properties. Protesters from the group Christian Climate Action will disrupt visitors going to tourist hotspots across the UK including Chartwell in Kent, which belonged to Sir Winston Churchill and Runnymede where the Magna Carta was signed."

Kelly McParland: Jasper wildfire disaster reflects failure of climate moralizing to produce results - "The most recent gathering , COP 28, was held in the sweltering desert city of Dubai, where some 85,000 delegates, “including more than 150 Heads of State and Government” and “representatives of national delegations, civil society, business, Indigenous Peoples, youth, philanthropy, and international organizations” jetted in to shelter in air-conditioned convention rooms and discuss the crisis for the 28th time. Lord knows how many limousines were required... If you’re one of the people who think summits in foreign capitals, lectures by peripatetic activists or tax hits on fossil fuels are what’s needed to save the planet, the devastation in Fort MacMurray, Jasper or Lytton is the tragic result of people failing to listen. On the other hand, three decades and trillions of dollars in expenditures have passed since that first gabfest, and homes are still burning, communities being flooded and people seeing their lives upended. Jasper evacuees can be forgiven for seeing their nightmare not as retribution by the climate gods but as an epic failure by a climate crusade committed to decades of moralizing, bad ideas and political posturing over practical remedies to predictable needs. In 2018 the CBC quoted two veteran foresters warning that a major fire in Jasper was inevitable due to years of buildup of combustible tinder collecting on the forest floor. “You’ve got a major catastrophe on your hands if you get a match thrown into that,” said Ken Hodges, one of the two. Jasper’s mayor had issued a similar alarm a year earlier, warning that the pine beetle epidemic had left a swath of dead forest just waiting to ignite... At some point the activists, academics and politicians will have to accept that three decades of summits, briefings, demonstrations and photo ops haven’t got the job done. Too much of the world is too weighed down by poverty to be persuaded by moralizing. A quarter billion people living hand to mouth in India aren’t about to swear off “dirty” fuel because people in Toronto or New York or Paris have noticed the weather is becoming weirder. A more prosaic approach, like paying for flood control, wildfire prevention and infrastructure upgrades, might not bring down temperatures but would temper the impact. Governments in Ottawa, Ontario and Quebec have dedicated tens of billions in tax breaks and subsidies to multinationals to build battery plants at a time demand for electric vehicles is waning. Umicore , a Belgian firm, said Friday it would halt a planned $2.8 billion Ontario plant because “customers’ demand projections for our battery materials have steeply declined.” Ford Motor Co. reversed a plan to build EVs at its assembly plant outside Toronto and will instead retool it to produce gas-guzzling Super Duty pickup trucks. Yet while billions flow to help suburbanites buy Teslas, B.C. officials revealed in June that a $2 billion long-term flood mitigation plan developed in the wake of the 2021 floods had been “turned down flat” by Ottawa in its request for funding. “It’s absolutely ridiculous,” Abbotsford Mayor Ross Siemens complained. Though Ottawa has $3.4 billion set aside in a disaster-prevention fund, communities are required to compete for the money, meaning “smaller municipalities and communities do not always have the resources needed to undertake the lengthy and sometimes costly process of preparing an application,” B.C. officials said. Mayor Michael Goetz of Merritt, whose entire city was ordered evacuated during the floods, said federal authorities “told us this was the way to get” federal support, but has changed its tune. “Honestly, if preventing an almost guaranteed future disaster with a project like this doesn’t make the cut, I can’t imagine what projects in Canada will.” Canada takes a back seat to no one when it comes to sanctimonious moralizing, and we’re into our fifth year of a contentious carbon tax that vacuums up money from daily purchases, then sends it back in quarterly cheques. Maybe if more effort went into dikes, floodways, pumping stations, firebreaks, water mains, forest management and the like, fewer summits would be necessary and a measure of real progress would be visible."

EDITORIAL: PM’s climate plan costs $200 billion - "Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault boasted last year that the federal government has committed more than $200 billion of taxpayers’ money to addressing climate change in more than 100 government programs. Among other polices, this includes a carbon pricing system for large industrial emitters, a cap on emissions in the oil and gas sector, methane regulations, clean fuel and clean electricity regulations, green energy tax credits, electric vehicle mandates, subsidies for people who buy EVs and more. While many economists argue that a carbon tax is the most efficient way to reduce emissions compared to more expensive programs such as regulations and subsidies, the problem with the Trudeau government’s climate change plan is that it has imposed regulations and subsides on top of its carbon tax."
Left wingers don't mind how much money is wasted, because they think that this can be paid for by "taxing the rich" (rhetoric the government explicitly repeats)

Meme - Kurtis Blow: "The 2020s: we've never seen temps this high before!
The 1930s:
"All-Time" Statewide High Temperature Records
*ranging from 1898 to 2021, with most being in the first half of the 20th century or earlier*"

Melting Antarctic ice could actually slow sea level rise | New Scientist
Weird. I thought the science was rock solid and the models were airtight

Wide Awake Media on X - ""They build a computer model that gives them the answer they want, and then tell you that they've got evidence that this is going to happen in the future." Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, on the fraudulent climate modelling held up by climate alarmists as "evidence" of impending climate catastrophe.  Where have we seen that before? 🤔"
Trust the "Science"!

@levelsio on X - "This MAY be very farfetched but hold my sparkling water:
- Global temperatures started rising in ~1950
- US started installing ACs in ~1950
- 90% of US homes have AC
- EU never did: only 19% of EU homes have AC (!)
- Only 16% of the top EU companies were founded after 1950
- But 64% of top US companies were founded after 1950
Could it just all be down to having AC and being able to think clearly? Lee Kaun Yew, the founder of Singapore, said the #1 reason Singapore became rich was AC while its surrounding countries stayed relatively poor"

spain energy crisis: Lowering AC below 27 degrees Celsius banned in Spain - "As Europeans battle sweltering temperatures and rising energy prices, Spain adopted a rule mandating that air conditioning be set at or above 27 degrees Celsius in public areas, including offices, shops, bars, theaters, airports, and train stations... The rules include maintaining heating at or below 19 degrees Celsius in the winter... Greece and Italy announced measures last month to similarly restrict energy use when cooling public buildings, requiring air conditioning to be set to 27 degrees Celsius or higher.  France has ordered public premises to set thermostats higher in the summer and lower in the winter and will fine air-conditioned businesses 750 euros ($764 approx) if they leave their doors open. The city of Hanover, Germany, has banned the use of mobile air conditioning units and fan heaters everywhere other than in hospitals and schools.  However, the Madrid region president Isabel Diaz Ayuso tweeted, "Madrid isn't going to switch off. This generates insecurity and scares away tourism and consumption"."
Spanish government to allow flexibility on air-conditioning, but rules out U-turn on decree - "The regions of Andalusia, Murcia, Galicia, Madrid and Castilla y León have all requested the withdrawal of the royal decree... Ayuso tweeted that from ‘tomorrow night, the only shop windows in Europe that will be off will be those in Spain. The decree goes against trade, tourism and the feeling of security. An imposition without dialogue that does not measure its economic impact and invades powers. We will take it to the courts.’"
From 2022

Meme - *Clown Applying Makeup*
End oil pipelines
End nuclear power
*Dark* Sign the largest energy deal
*Pitch black* yo where my lights at"

The US planned to install thousands of EV chargers. Only 7 have been built. - The Washington Post - "President Biden has long vowed to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the United States by 2030. Those stations, the White House said, would help Americans feel confident purchasing and driving electric cars, and help the country cut carbon pollution.  But now, more than two years after Congress allocated $7.5 billion to help build out those stations, only 7 EV charging stations are operational across four states. And as the Biden administration rolls out its new rules for emissions from cars and trucks — which will require a lot more electric cars and hybrids on the road — the sluggish build-out could slow the transition to electric cars... The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which Biden signed in November 2021, included $7.5 billion for EV charging. Of that, $5 billion was allocated to individual states in so-called “formula funding” to build a network of fast chargers along major highways in the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, or NEVI, program.  But after two years, that program has only delivered seven open charging stations with a total of 38 spots where drivers can charge their vehicles, according to a spokesperson for the Federal Highway Administration. (The funding should be enough to build up to 20,000 charging spots or around 5,000 stations, according to analysis from the EV policy analyst group Atlas Public Policy.) Stations are open in Hawaii, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania and under construction in four other states.  Twelve additional states have awarded contracts for constructing the charging stations; 17 states have not yet issued proposals... many non-Tesla fast chargers have a reputation for poor performance and sketchy reliability. EV advocates have criticized Electrify America, the company created by Volkswagen after the company’s “Dieselgate” emissions scandal, for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on chargers that don’t work well. The company has said they are working to improve reliability. The data analytics company J.D. Power has estimated that only 80 percent of all charging attempts in the country are successful... each charging spot will require the same maximum power as around 20 homes — a huge lift for local utilities not used to installing chargers."
Combating climate change is too important a job to be left to the private sector, and greedy companies will just wastefully profit from taxpayer money, so the government needs to lead the way and do everything
Clearly, even more money is needed.

Clean Fuel Startups Were Supposed to Be the Next Big Thing. Now They Are Collapsing. - WSJ - "Many clean-fuel projects have become money pits, in part because of the great amounts of power they need. High interest rates, supply-chain disruptions and expensive power-grid upgrades have driven up electricity prices. Clean-fuel producers are also competing for renewable electricity with big technology companies that operate artificial-intelligence data centers and can often pay higher prices for power. “The only way to fix it is by lowering the cost of green electricity,” said Andrew Forrest, one of the most vocal advocates of hydrogen."
James Lindsay, anti-Communist on X - "ESG is a scam. None of this was ever supposed to work. It's just a way to undercut the productive capacity and standards of living of Western nations and to achieve strategic geopolitical advantages over them."

'Wake-up call:' Government's own research suggests Canadians are worried about cost of clean energy transition - "Participants expressed the belief that “they would take on a large burden of the associated costs,” rather than Ottawa, which they said should step up its funding... Some of the cost concerns those in the study raised were around home renovations and buying an electric vehicle. While the government offers rebates to help purchase a zero-emission vehicle and renovate a home to make it more energy efficient, “individuals feel they would struggle with significant upfront costs.” They also saw a lack of options for those who are low and middle income or are renting. “The initiatives seemed to favour higher-income households in general,” the study read."
Clearly, government money is magic and comes from nowhere

Meme - "Estimated Land Use Required to Generate ~4100 TWh
Nuclear ~ 192 km2
Chicago ~ 590 km2
Wind ~ 76,960 km2
Solar ~ 86,581 km2
Ohio ~ 116,098 km2"

Global warming melts Swiss mountain pass unseen since Roman times - "In Switzerland, between the Scex Rouge and Tsanfleuron mountains, the Col de Tsanfleuron pass has been covered by ice for over 2,000 years."
Damn Romans and their carbon emissions leading to climate change!

Meme - Sophie Corcoran @sophielouisecc: "How to be a good climate activist:
Step 1 - own a private jet
Step 2 - lecture the poor
Step 3- fly to Davos
Step 4 - give yourself an award
Step 5- make rules to make the poor poorer
Step 6 - don't follow the rules yourself."

GREEN: Trudeau’s tariffs undercut Trudeau’s EV mandate - "Seemingly every week, Canada’s e lectric v ehicle (EV) t ransition policy framework grows more incoherent. The goal of Canada’s EV policy is to ensure all new light-duty vehicle sales in Canada are zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs), with a strong emphasis on battery-electric vehicles , by 2035. The latest incoherence is Prime Minister Trudeau’s announcement of 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese EV imports and 2 5% tariffs on Chinese s teel and a luminum imports ( Canada need s to build EVs). This will directly undercut the government’s EV transition targets by denying Canadians access to affordable electric cars... By d riving up the costs of buying EVs in Canada , the Trudeau government will directly undercut its EVs-by-2035 mandate . If people can’t afford EVs, as most currently cannot, the EV mandate targets are doomed. People will simply hold on to their old internal combustion vehicles for longer. This trend is already observable in the U nited States where new vehicles have become more expensive. Americans are holding on to their vehicles longer than ever , with the average vehicle age reaching 13.6 years. The Trudeau government’s highest priority has been the war on c limate c hange, which various government leaders in Canada and around the world have proclaimed the greatest threat to people and the planet in human history. But if the government is sincere about this, then the priority should be to maximize Canadians ’ access to cheaper EVs , and t he p rime m inister should be largely indifferent to where Canadians choose to source those EVs . Indeed, he should urgently want low-cost EVs available to Canadians for there to be any hope of achieving his all-EV by 20 35 goal ."

CHARLEBOIS: 'Charging' ahead, canola be damned - "Canada’s decision to impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) last week was a predictable move. Ottawa fully anticipated retaliation, which came swiftly as China announced an anti-dumping investigation into Canadian canola exports. While there is no evidence of actual dumping, the facts are largely irrelevant in this case. China will proceed with sanctions regardless of the explanations provided by the Canola Council or Canadian diplomatic channels... Western Canadian farmers now face significant uncertainty, largely a result of Ottawa’s aggressive push to bolster the battery and EV sectors. The federal government has committed nearly $50 billion toward building battery factories, a bold gamble that led to the imposition of tariffs on Chinese EVs. The official rationale, it seems, is to protect domestic manufacturers from an influx of cheaper green vehicles from China, even if that means limiting affordable options for Canadian consumers and straining relations with China. This approach prioritizes the development of Canadian-made EVs over the potential benefits of allowing lower-cost imports to help reduce carbon emissions. This industrial strategy follows a familiar pattern: when a government decides that a product must be produced domestically, at all costs, it often results in less competition, higher prices, and questionable product quality. The dairy industry offers a prime example. Ottawa has funneled billions into the sector, supported by highly restrictive trade barriers. While this policy has propped up dairy farmers, it has done so at the expense of other agricultural sectors — wheat, canola, beef, and pork — all of which could arguably benefit from the same level of government support. In the end, the federal government will likely compensate canola farmers for their losses, as it has done before"
Climate change is such an existential threat that EVs must be kept expensive

Part of the Family / Women's Icks vs Men's Icks / Aristocratic Elegance


"I bet you when that mom fired me from my nanny job, she didn't think I'd still be part of the family in 9 months ... *pregnant woman*"


"Christiane F @isa2001m: Women describing the ick: he asked for a straw at McDonalds

Men describing the ick:
>finding out a girl has fucked one of their friends
>finding out she's had an abortion
>finding out she's fucked a nigger"


“Bad” Billy Pratt @KILLTOPARTY: "The aristocratic elegance of the small breasted woman *Sadie Sink*"
Loulou Gunner ❤️ @GunnerLoulou: "Can we do a post about men with small dicks?"

Links - 25th September 2024 (1)

Batman River - Wikipedia - "The Batman River is a major tributary of the Tigris in southeast Turkey."

Did Abraham Lincoln Jump Out a Window to Prevent a Quorum? - "In 1840, Abraham Lincoln, then a state legislator in Illinois, jumped out of a window in an attempt to prevent a quorum... Surprisingly, this may have not been the first time that Lincoln pulled the "they can't vote if I jump out a window" tactic... The above-displayed tweet is referencing an incident that took place at a Methodist Church that was serving as temporary legislative chambers in December 1840. Lincoln, who was a member of the Whig party at the time, was hoping that a lack of a quorum would stop Democrats from passing a bill that threatened the State Bank. But as Lincoln observed the vote, he realized that Democrats had been able to round-up enough members for a quorum. The future president had to think quick, spotted a nearby window, and made for the exit, followed by a few other members of the Whig party. While Lincoln's escape was dramatic, it was not successful. The quorum stood and the legislation was approved... A few years prior to Lincoln's unsuccessful attempt in 1840 to prevent a quorum, local legend holds that Honest Abe made a similar attempt while legislators debated on moving Illinois' state capitol from Vandalia to Springfield.  We have not been able to find any contemporary records to confirm this account. However, two men who were reportedly at the Vandalia state house when Lincoln leapt from a second story window, recounted the incident in an article published in The Lancaster Examiner in 1900"

30 book-scented perfumes and candles - "The magic of the addictive smell of books was very well described by the team of researchers, who concluded that it’s a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness...
Oxford Library – a refreshing blend of woodsy and earthy tones: oak moss, amber, sandalwood, with hints of tobacco and leather."

Grocery Stores and Restaurants Are Dropping Beyond Meat

Meme - "Morning, after a crazy night.
Woman in bed: We did not use protection
Man in bed: You don't, but I did
Woman: Which? Condom?
Man: No
Man fleeing: Fake name
*Woman crying*"

Meme - "My Girlfriend is so sweet. She sent me this pic from her job interview today. Good luck. Hope she gets the job *Backroom Casting Daisy (Erin Macmillan)*"

Meme - "Disturbing Chinese calorie app...
Dog: 327 kcal
Cashew: 9 kcal"
Comment (elsewhere): "ジャムパン = "jamu-pan"
Jamu = jam
Pan = bread
This has been your Japanese lesson for the day"

Never forget that a flock of peace doves got incinerated at the 1988 Olympics - "A loose count shows there were 11 doves in the cauldron when torches were plunged in to start the games. On some level you can’t blame the lighters for assuming that birds would fly away from flames. But they didn’t.  I can’t tell you why they chose to lose their lives in this athletic pyre, but they did. A few of the doves flew out when the flames began to spread, but the majority just sat there and burned to a crisp."

Meme - ">someone stole my sandwich for one week straight
>ask HR for camera recording
>it's Ahmed the Islam enjoyer
>trap card: activated
>make the pork as tendie as possible so it feels like chicken (40gr)
>spread bacon grease on the both bread slice (tg)
>2 drops of white wine alcohol
>feed him for 8 months, he even brags about some infidels always prepare lunch for him
so far he has consumed 7.680 kg (16.93 lbs) pork, 1.344 kg (2.96 lbs) of bacon grease and 1/9 of vinegar bottle. any Islamic scholars here know how deep in hell he is now?"
Islamophobia!

Meme - "Saturday night vs. Monday Morning *Olivia Chow at Caribbean Carnival Parade, Caribana in dancer outfit* *Olivia Chow in Pakistani woman's garb, with covered hair and body, celebrating Eid al-Adha in Dentonia Park*"

Oli London on X - "This is the Mayor of Toronto. 🇨🇦 She will turn up in a costume at any community event unless it involves Jews. Olivia Chow previously declined to attend the Walk with Israel event deeming it too ‘controversial.’"

Olivia Chow replacing Justin Trudeau as Canada's dress-up champ - "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was well known for dressing up like it’s Halloween at any time of year. Whether it was as a Superman, Sherlock Holmes, Han Solo, Aladdin — or one of the times he wore  blackface or his choice of attire during his famous family trip to India — Trudeau set the standard for politicians wearing the clothing of other cultures or from popular culture.   But Mayor Olivia Chow is quickly catching up... She has put on a hockey sweater from Toronto’s Professional Women’s Hockey League club, she’s been seen in a traditional Vietnamese dress for the Taste of Vietnam, went with her stylish hat to the recent Guild Alive with Culture Arts Festival, and jammed at the Beaches Jazz Festival. She also went inside the wrestling ring at the OssFest on Ossington, shot hoops at the Olympics fan fest at the Shops on Don Mills, posed with the cooks at Scarborough’s rib fest, dressed up and danced with the performers at the Toronto International Dance festival and hung out with the cyclists at the Friends for Life Bike Rally. In the past she has dressed in Islamic, Hindu and even cricketer clothing, but it was showing up at Toronto’s Caribbean Festival in full performance dress that caught so many people’s eyes — and brought out so much commentary. She sported a full Caribana-style Jump Up costume, just like the performers wore. Not a T-shirt like Premier Doug Ford, but a full outfit that would take a lot of time to get into.   Anthony Furey, who came fourth in the byelection that saw Chow become Toronto’s 66th mayor, said there is a time for fun and there is a time to take the job of running a city seriously.  Toronto has a lot of serious issues to contend with — including congestion, affordability and public safety — that negatively affect the quality of life of residents, said Furey, who has announced he will run in the Nov. 4 byelection for the vacant council seat on Don Valley West (Ward 15)... “I do see it was a wonderful event, and you have every right to attend and have fun,” posted Miriam Delicado on X. “However, you have chosen to ignore other events and groups that deserve your professional attention.”   “Glad you enjoyed it. Now do something about the pro-terrorist groups that terrorize our streets every weekend,” posted GenXintheGame... As I wrote back in June about this mayor’s penchant for costumes, it’s harmless in one sense but problematic in another.   When you skip the Walk for Israel event because you “can’t be everywhere” but then seem to be everywhere else, it does open oneself up for criticism. The Jewish community have expressed a lot of concern about this – especially when last week there were four Jewish sites hit with fire or vandalism... After that alleged terror plot bust in Richmond Hill, in which the RCMP say an attack was imminent, and when there are so many struggling to pay for housing, grocery and energy costs, could it be time for a more serious approach to being mayor?  Or does the public appreciate the constant virtue signalling and distraction of a mayor constantly playing a role along with the city’s many communities?"

Actual Fact Bot: Revived | Facebook - "Archaeologist Alexander Peev was executed by firing squad in 1943 on suspicion of sending a coded message to the Soviet Union. It was actually an ancient inscription he wanted Russian archaeologists to help him interpret. The text remains undeciphered."

Jimmy Buffett - Wikipedia - "In 1996, Buffett penned the song "Jamaica Mistaica" for his Banana Wind album based on a January 1996 incident in which Buffett's Grumman HU-16 airplane named Hemisphere Dancer was shot at by Jamaican police, who believed the craft to be smuggling marijuana. The aircraft sustained minimal damage. The plane was carrying Buffett, as well as Bono of U2, his wife, and two children, and Island Records producer Chris Blackwell, and co-pilot Bill Dindy. The Jamaican government acknowledged the mistake and apologized to Buffett"

Meme - "Greek man beats up 'furry', because he thought that he was associated with the ultranationalist Grey Wolves organisation"
Funny but fake

German city of Bremen bans the silent fox gesture over links with far-right Turkish group - "The wolf salute hit headlines earlier this month when Turkish footballer Merih Demiral was banned for two games by UEFA after he used the gesture to celebrate scoring against Austria in the Euros.  Demiral claimed it was an expression of Turkish pride while Germany’s interior minister Nancy Faesar said: “To use the football championships as a platform for racism is completely unacceptable.”  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan responded to what he considered the hypocrisy of the ruling by UEFA: “Does anybody ask why the German national jersey has an eagle, or the French jersey a rooster?”. Erdoğan has been criticised for his own use of the wolf salute. In 2018, he briefly showed the gesture at a campaign rally in Mersin which political commentators viewed as an attempt to corral the far right nationalists to his voter base."

These Americans are trying to make ‘underconsumption core’ trendy - "Influencers on social media often peddle lifestyles or products to followers, urging them to buy new clothing, high-tech cleaning gadgets or the hottest new haircare product. But some people say they have become disillusioned with what they perceive as pressure to constantly purchase new things. Enter underconsumption core, or a lifestyle that involves using just a small rotation of things for years rather than chasing the latest trend. Underconsumption influencers show items they say they have used for years — towels inherited from parents, makeup collections featuring just a few products, second-hand furniture bought at thrift shops — and don’t plan to purchase more until those things are spent. “It’s really pushing back against this idea that you need to constantly be buying things to have a happy and fulfilling life,” said Megan Doherty Bea, assistant professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison... Bea notes that a more apt term for underconsumption would be normal consumption. But the trend is an intuitive, direct counter to what critics call overconsumption: cabinets brimming with Stanley travel cups in assorted colors, clothing hauls worth thousands of dollars and shelves full of meticulously organized snacks, cosmetics or personal hygiene products. The underconsumption core trend is taking hold as consumers grapple with decades-high interest rates and a bout of wayward inflation that has pushed up prices for everything from groceries to dining out to rent. Savings accumulated during the height of the Covid pandemic are dwindling, businesses are laying off workers and some economists worry the United States could enter a recession... Retailers from Kohl’s to Best Buy to Home Depot have been hit in recent months by a pullback on consumer spending. That’s a shift from just a few years ago, when Americans stuck at home due to Covid pandemic restrictions bought everything from bread-baking supplies to exercise equipment to electronics to keep themselves occupied. As lockdown restrictions lifted, people engaged in “revenge spending,” directing a flood of cash from goods to experiences like vacations and concerts. “I do see (underconsumption core) as more than a trend. I see it as just normalizing normal life again, and maybe even romanticizing it a little bit too,” said Wiebe, who works in communications for a legal nonprofit organization in Ohio. Many partaking in underconsumption core also say they’re fed up with what they perceive as inauthentic marketing from companies and influencers alike. Wiebe points out that influencers are often gifted items or paid by companies to promote their products, making their seemingly extravagant spending habits unrealistic for most Americans... Katrina Leibee, a social media editor at a Denver newspaper, said she has grown particularly wearisome of videos where influencers peddle “must have” products to followers, including trendy clothing pieces, home decor and beauty products. “If you needed it, you would already have it,” said Leibee, 24... Despite the underconsumption core trend’s popularity, spending in the US remains strong overall. Sales at retailers jumped 1% in July from the prior month, up from June’s downwardly revised 0.2% decline and blowing past economists’ expectations of a 0.3% gain, according to data from the Commerce Department."

Meme - "When you're comfortable with being yourself around others *dog covered in mud by river with other dogs in river*"

Meme - "Man Kills Friend After Their Balls Touch During a 'Three-Some'"

Meme - Soldat Roman 1:"TU NE DEVINERAS JAMAIS AVEC COMBIEN DE FEMMES J'AI COUCHE !"
Soldat Roman 2: "MMM ?"
Soldat Roman 1:"QUAND QUAND PAS AUTANT !"

Meme - "Prime Minister given second billing to "Britain's Most Tatooed Mum""
Lucky he's from a right wing party, or this would be racist

Meme - "US Soldiers *6 men carrying log*
Russian woman *1 woman carrying log*"

Meme - "Shhhheeeeeiiittt"
*Car crash with overturned car*
*White guy bleeding out*
*Black guy steals wallet*
Black guy: "Shhhhheeeeeeeeiiiitt"
Daily Mail US @DailyMail: "Missouri firefighter steals wallet from victim at scene of a car crash that killed four"

In Egypt, a New Battle Begins Over the Veil - The New York Times - "as many as 90 percent of women cover at least their head"
Someone claimed that "The majority of north african woman outside of super isolated rural areas dont wear the hijab"

How people in Muslim countries prefer women to dress in public | Pew Research Center - "A recent survey from the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research conducted in seven Muslim-majority countries (Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey), finds that most people prefer that a woman completely cover her hair, but not necessarily her face. Only in Turkey and Lebanon do more than one-in-four think it is appropriate for a woman to not cover her head at all in public... Overall, most respondents say woman #4, whose hair and ears are completely covered by a white hijab, is the most appropriately dressed for public. This includes 57% in Tunisia... In several countries, substantial minorities say it is acceptable for a woman to not cover her hair in public. Roughly a third (32%) of Turks take this view, as do 15% of Tunisians."
That person claimed that "egypt is a bit of an outlier... It has always been closer in many respects to saudi/iraqi culture than, say, algerian or tunisian culture... They are not Maghreb". But in Tunisia, 86% think women should cover their hair in public

Most Moroccans Support Mandating Hijab... Will Democracy Finally Prevail? - "  As reported by the Moroccan website Bladi in a recent article written in French, a survey carried out by L’Economiste (an influential business newspaper) has shown that 65% of Moroccans want Hijab to be mandated by law. Also interesting is that there are actually more women who are in favor of mandating Hijab than men (67% against 62% respectively).  Keep in mind that Morocco is not the “most conservative” or “most radical” Muslim-majority, or even Arabic-speaking, country either. The country is in actuality being eroded by sustained feminist onslaughts.  One could easily argue that Morocco is representative of most of the Arab-Muslim world—it is neither more religious nor less religious—so the fact that such a huge percentage of the population is in favor of making Hijab mandatory says a lot about the regional dynamics as a whole.  What is even more intriguing is that while 21% have “no opinion,” those that oppose mandatory Hijab are just a meagre 14%. What is most intriguing, however, is that—as per the article—this miniscule percentage comprises of the oldest demographic (those aged between 55-64).  Basically, the youth seem to be far more invested both in religion and in making Islam a societal force. This coincides with the worldwide trend of the younger Muslim generations being more committed to Islam in comparison to their parents (as well as those before them).   In fact, concerning Morocco specifically, Bladi had quoted another mass survey in 2020. This survey showed that the youth were more religious compared to previous generations. These opinions are therefore not too surprising...   This once again demonstrates how Muslims are alone in seriously resisting liberalization and secularization. Other religions scarcely have “religious folks” of the same degree, nor do they have the same level of worship and devotion. They do however have their own strand of “conservatives,” yet how many of these so-called “conservative” Christians, Hindus, etc. would be in favor of making anything mandatory?"
Clearly, the fact that you can find one conservative Christian who wants women to be forced to cover up shows that Christians are as conservative and misogynistic as Muslims (who are only conservative and misogynistic because of colonialism anyway, so it's still whitey's fault), so anyone criticising Muslim misogyny is racist and Islamophobic and needs to set his own house in order first

Meme - "When I criticize the system, they think I criticize them, and that is of course because they fully accept the system and identify themselves with it." Thomas Merton *man on rope tied to thumb of big hand cutting it and being criticised by people on ropes tied to fingers of big hand who look at their phones*
Full quote: "When I criticize a system, they think I criticize them – and that is of course because they fully accept the system and identify themselves with it"

Weeds & The Evils of Landscape Fabric - "It just makes me miserable to see people waste their time and money in the garden... Landscape fabric is most often used as barrier material under a layer of rock or mulch. Sometimes it is laid underneath paving stones. It is supposed to prevent weeds from growing up from underneath the fabric. Along with the rock, it is touted as the ultimate in a maintenance free yard. You will never again need to do any work whatsoever.   Unfortunately, that's not how it works in real life. This is what actually happens:  It looks great for a year or two. During that time, the wind blows small particles of dust and dirt into your rocks. Maybe some leaves or other small pieces of organic material get blown in as well. Maybe the neighbourhood rabbit decides it's a great place to leave a few brown pellets too. All this material sinks down between the rocks and settles on top of your landscape fabric. Using a leaf blower may get rid of some of this, but it will never get rid of it all. That organic material just keeps building up.  The other thing that blows in is weed seeds. Lots and lots of weed seeds. Most of the weeds that grow in our yard are from seeds that are blown in, not ones from deep down in the soil. (Unless you turn over your soil and bring those seeds to the surface. Which is why the no-till method of gardening is something I am a big supporter of.) So, you now have weed seeds that have found the perfect home on nutrient rich, well-drained soil that is now built up enough to be exposed to the sun.  And those seeds will sprout. You may wonder what the big deal is. If we had bare soil the same thing would happen right? Yes, it would. The problem is that the roots of those weeds now grow into, and get tangled up in, that landscape fabric. When we pull weeds that are growing in bare soil we can get the whole root out. If it is a weed growing in mulch it is even easier to pull and get the whole root. When we pull a weed that has its roots entwined in landscape fabric we leave a good chunk of those roots behind. They are physically impossible to get all of. So even when we pull it, that weed is not only still there, it has an already established root system allowing it to come back stronger than ever.  I did say weed seeds underneath the ground are nothing to worry about, and that is true, but tree roots are another story. If you have any trees or shrubs nearby that like to sucker (aspen, chokecherry, lilac are just a few of the many), those roots will flourish underneath landscape fabric. And they will continue to run until they work their way up through any tiny tear or weak spot. It doesn't matter how industrial strength your fabric is, nature will eventually find a way. And once it starts to sprout, it is impossible to get rid of. The way you usually remove suckers is to simply dig from the shoot all along the root as far back to the main tree as you can. Under landscape fabric, you need to move the rock and pull up the fabric along the entire root line, pull up the roots, then replace fabric and the rocks again. And then fix the hole in the fabric... You may be a very attentive gardener that consistently picks weeds out of their rocks, but leftover weed roots and tree suckers will eventually degrade the fabric until you are left with a weedy mess that is impossible to control and shredded landscape fabric underneath that no longer functions in any way. The only option is to rip it all up and start again. Not so low maintenance is it?... it is always less work in the long run (and better for the environment) to work with nature, rather than try and suppress it. You are going to need to do a little research into what you can grow in your particular area... Chances are there is something that will grow well and out-compete your weeds. And it will look beautiful, create oxygen for you, improve your soil and be a home and food for wildlife. One more way to help save the bees. That's a lot more than rocks and fabric will do for you!  By far, the most effective way to prevent weeds from growing is to use mulch. A good thick layer of it. Straight over your soil, no fabric in sight. This works for those areas in your flower beds between plants and it also works for those large swaths where you don't want any growth at all (although, I still think you should try growing something!). Any weed seeds landing on top of the mulch don't germinate because they are not in contact with soil, and those that do work their way down to the soil level have no sunlight for germination. You need a good 2-4" of mulch for this to work well. And you will need to top up this mulch every 4-5 years to ensure it stays at 2-4" deep. This is not a miracle cure. You will occasionally have a few weeds that germinate. But, you are going to be attentive and get them when they are young and small and super easy to pull out (along with their entire root), right?... Mulch can be beautiful in and of itself, but it also benefits your garden in a number of ways, besides just weed suppression...  We talked a lot about weeds and how much we really don't want them in our yards in this article, but I also want you to think a little about the good side of weeds. Dandelions are often the first food available to our bees in the spring. Chickweed not only tastes fantastic in your salad, it is a nutritional powerhouse too. There are quite a few edible weeds, actually. Plantain, mullein, yarrow, nettle and wormwood are all weeds that are widely used in natural medicine."

Meme - "The Drawing
*drawing of boy with a few spiky hair strands and large palms*
Mum: "Oh dear... this looks nothing like your brother. You are 9 now... you need to improve your drawing Lawrence."
Lawrence: "But Mum it looks just like him"
Boy with a few spiky hair strands and large palms: "Lol fuck off Lawrence"

Meme - "ALRIGHT, BRAIN. WE NEED A GOOD IDEA."
"BOOBS"
"DAMN IT, BRAIN! NOW'S NOT THE TIME.. WE NEED TO THINK BIG!"
"BIG BOOBS"

Meme - "Punching a wall in the US *hole in wall*
Punching a wall in Europe *arm in cast*"

Israeli-made Sewage-stinking Weapon Not Smelly Enough to Deter Indian Protesters - "The Central Reserve Police Force then decided to give the Israeli "stink bomb" a try, a non-lethal but notoriously foul, sewage-smelling liquid nicknamed "Skunk" that can be mixed with water and sprayed on protesters. The smell takes days to fade from the skin of demonstrators, even after multiple showers.  In a test run, the bomb liquid was sprayed on a "captive crowd" in India but to no avail. What the CPRF discovered, as reported by the Hindustan Times, is that the foul-smelling weapons employed by Israeli security forces on Palestinian protestors are wholly ineffective on their Indian counterparts.  The Indian tolerance for smell, it appears, is too great for the almighty "Skunk." The test was carried out in Delhi, a dense megalopolis known well for its colorful stenches emanating from overflowing landfills, public toilets and the like. "We have used chili grenades, plastic shell tear smoke, stun grenades, color-smoke grenades, rubber bullets, dye-marker grenades with skin irritant and multi-tier tear-gas launchers," an Indian home ministry official told Telegraph India, "but they did not yield the desired result."  "We used it on a captive crowd consisting of CRPF personnel and general public. But they managed to tolerate the smell without much difficulty. Maybe Indians have a higher threshold of tolerating stench,” an official who was part of the team which tested the bomb said."

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Links - 24th September 2024 (2 - Migrants)

Klaus Arminius on X - "Heart breaking video: Young Spanish girls crying and forced to flee beach after being sexually harassed by an African immigrant. Our children don’t have to live like this."
Matamouros 🧯 on X - "Small detail: This animal speaks Portuguese and was saying he would stab them."
Gaetano Gomez on X - "The black bastard even says Call the police. He knows they won't do anything. He knows he is safe."

S 🇦🇲🇱🇧 on X - "Unthinkable a few years ago but Sweden is experiencing overall net-emigration for the first time in 50-years. In particular, Iraqi, Syrian & Somalian born migrants are experiencing high net-emigration levels, alongside their Swedish-born families."

i/o on X - ""44.8% of Fortune 500 companies in 2023... were founded by immigrants or their children... [they] collectively generated $8.1 trillion in revenue during fiscal year 2022... they employ over 14.8 million people." Where are they from? Almost entirely Asia and Europe. How did they immigrate to America? Legally."

More than a dozen African migrants dead, over 150 missing after their boat capsized on way to Europe : r/anime_titties - "Surely the right thing to do would be to alleviate the desperate situation in their home country"
"And how would you propose we do that? If you tell a nation how they should run things you get the whole "Colonists telling us how to behave" spiel, if you point out a large part of the problems in a lot of these nations stem from inequality and corruption you get the "Thats colonialisms fault" even aid money tends to go into the pockets of corrupt government officials. I could go on for a while but it needs to be said that the EU can't magically fix some shitty situation in a country we don't govern to begin with.  Money and investment can go a long, long way to improving the situation, but only if these nations form stable, less corrupt governments, if not the only choice is either getting rid of the border alltogether or creating rules which heavily punish illegal entries, such as by instituting immediate repatriation and a permanent ban from entering the EU, but we can't do that due to current rules.  What we can do is prosecute NGO's, which we don't, aid North African countries in prosecuting smugglers, which we don't and use financial leverage be it aid money or trade to repatriate illegal entries to nations refusing to take their citizens back...Which we don't do. So we don't even do what little we can do. Besides that our hands are bound by rules from 70 years ago.  The real problem is that no one can agree on even the smallest things so this will keep happening."
"Do you want us to invade those countries and overturn their governments and take over? Or what exactly?"
Clearly Western governments must open their borders and welcome unlimited numbers of migrants, or people will die

Visegrád 24 on X - "BREAKING: The European Commission has sent a letter to Hungary demanding that the country immediately pays the fine on EUR 200 million that was issued by the Court of Justice of the EU in June for breaching the EU’s asylum rules. Another EUR 1 mln will be added to the fine for every day that Hungary doesn’t amend its legislation to be in order with EU asylum laws.  If Hungary refuses to pay within 60 days, the EU will start collecting the money with interest from Hungary’s Community Assistance funds.  Hungary has earlier commented on the case, saying they are being punished by the EU “for not letting in illegal migrants”"

Klaus Arminius on X - "Crimes committed by North African Arabs (Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Libyans) have more than tripled.  Moroccans and Tunisians now responsible for one murder every six days on average. Other serious crimes, include assault, stabbings and rape.  Rape crimes by NA Arabs have increased to 169% and murder up 110% in 4 years.  The Left always claims that immigrants are “innocent people fleeing war” but what wars are Moroccans and Tunisians fleeing?"
North African crime rate explodes in Germany, rape up 169% and murder up 110% in 4 years - "Germany's Greens refuse to allow deportations of criminal Moroccans and Tunisians despite the growing mayhem...   The only real numbers that are seeing any drop are in terms of deportations...   The crime rate is not only exploding for these two groups; Germany’s foreign population overall has brought a tremendous amount of criminality with it. In 2023, there was a record share of foreign crime in the data, with 41 percent of all crimes committed by foreigners. For serious crimes like rape and murder, foreigners account for 6 out of every 10 crimes.   It is important to note that German statistics do not tell the whole story either, as many of the murders are committed by German citizens who are actually of foreign origin and were naturalized as German citizens. For instance, Berlin’s lead prosecutor has stated that three out of every four migrant clan members actually have German citizenship. As a result, every time one of these gang members commits a crime, the police record it as a German committing a crime."

Police are looking for migrant who beheaded man - "The Spanish police have started an intensive search for an Algerian man suspected of killing a 40-year-old Spaniard in Valencia. The victim was found with his throat slashed on a tram track in the city, reports the newspaper Las Provincias."
There were 3 beheadings too

Sarah Stock✝️ on X - "Couple from wealthy Toronto area tells me why they wouldn't put a cap on the number of immigrants Canada should let in: 'I've been to countries where people are living in misery and it's the Western world's fault.' This is the ideology behind mass immigration: the western world must pay for its ‘sins.’"

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "Sickened and horrified by racism in America, the number of African immigrants coming to the US more than tripled over the two most recent decades."

Whyvert on X - "A new survey (carried out in March-April 2024) of people in EU countries asked: "Do you think your country takes in too many immigrants?" On average about 70% agree."
Wesley Yang on X - "Why can ostensibly democratic nations not translate the will of the supermajority of the people into policy?    How do those obstructing the will of supermajority of the people successfully claim the mantle of "Our Democracy" while portraying those attempting to execute the will of the supermajority of the people as enemies of democracy?"
Barbara on X - "In Europe, we have the UE to make sure our votes do not translate into policies. We vote against unvetted mass immigration, but the EU always finds a way to force our elective representatives into submission or to discredit them. The last one is saying that parties that don't agree with the EU policies are working with hostile countries. See here for details"
Barbara on X - "They always talk about the end of Democracy, while working to promote it. The EU is worried that, if voters choose parties the EU does not like, they might find it harder to force their policies on member states. So, they say that any member of a party who does not embrace the agenda of the EU can make it vulnerable to adversarial states seeking to cause harm. Basically, if you disagree with them, they call you a foreign agent, and they do not respect the result of legitimate elections because it interferes with their agenda. But, of course, the problem is the "Euroskeptics"."

African Rapist Allowed To Remain In The UK After Arguing That Deportation Would Harm His Mental Health - "A pedophile from Eritrea who raped a teenage girl after landing in the United Kingdom has avoided deportation, arguing that being sent back to his home country would harm his mental health.  The rapist, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was convicted and jailed for his crimes over one decade ago, and had been scheduled to be deported in 2014. But, last month, his appeal against his deportation order was accepted after an expert witness said he was at risk if he was returned to Eritrea...  the expert witness, a doctor, testified that he could not be properly treated for PTSD in his home country, and was likely to be punished for fleeing the nation’s compulsory draft.  The decision to allow his appeal was made despite a security report finding he posed a “medium risk” to the public if he lived freely in the UK.   This case comes just days after it was reported that an African migrant from Congo had raped a child in the UK after his deportation flight was blocked by sympathetic cabin crew.  As previously reported by The Publica, Anicet Mayela arrived in the UK in 2004 after enlisting an “agent” to facilitate his departure from Africa, citing imminent danger as his motive.   Mayela gained widespread attention from people opposing deportations after he used human rights law to fight his forcible return to the Republic of the Congo, where he claimed his life was “in danger.” The first attempt to deport him failed after Mayela claimed he had been injured by the Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre in Middlesex.  One year later, in 2005, a second attempt to deport him was thwarted by a do-gooder Air France cabin crew. Mayela had been placed on a flight from Southampton to Brazzaville, and Air France cabin crew were reportedly shocked at his “mistreatment” by deportation staff and sympathized with his ordeal. They refused to allow the flight to take off, resulting in Mayela being allowed to stay in the UK for longer.   Mayela quickly became a poster child for migration rights activists, and was even backed by the Institute of Race Relations, a “racial justice” charity.  Shortly after his release following the Air France incident, Mayela joined a campaign to close Campsfield House detention center and was photographed protesting outside with the sign stating: “Migrants are not criminals.”  Mayela had now pleaded guilty to raping a 15-year-old girl."

UK Asylum Tribunal Rules That Migrant Sex Offender Can’t Be Deported Because Afghanistan Stigmatizes Sex Offenders - "A new report has revealed that a repeat convicted sex offender from Afghanistan wasn’t deported because his country of origin would “persecute” him if he exposed himself in public as he had been doing in the United Kingdom. Known only as DH, the man had previously been allowed to stay in the country twice after deportation orders were rejected by an asylum tribunal.   The report, compiled by Sky News, explains that DH was represented in 2020 by Duncan Lewis Solicitors, one of the leading London firms that fights the government to prevent deportations. According to the report, around £34 million of legal aid per year has been spent fighting asylum cases since 2017. DH, an Afghanistan national born in 1993, was convicted twice in 2016 and 2017 of “committing an act outraging public decency and exposure,” including persistently exposing himself to women. In 2017 and 2018, DH was ordered to be deported due to his criminal history.  But in 2020, “expert” Dr. Ritu Mahendru argued against forcing DH to leave the country, noting that sex offenders were treated poorly in Afghanistan and that DH would be at risk if he were sent back.  As a result of Dr. Mahendru’s testimony, the judgement from senior immigration judge Christoper Hanson noted that “Afghan society holds deeply-embedded stigma and discrimination against individuals with mental health problems.”  Judge Hanson added that, “men who perform any kind of sexual act in public, including masturbation and fondling of body parts, would be at high risk of physical violence from mob mentality.”... remarkably, despite noting that DH would have a lack of treatment options in his home country and using this as a basis for allowing him to remain in the UK, the judgement confirmed that DH has not actually been diagnosed with any mental health conditions...   Even if DH were ever to be successfully deemed eligible for deportation in the future, the UK stopped sending migrants back to Afghanistan since the 2021 Taliban take-over.  Overall, two thirds of people who have been refused asylum have not left the UK, and over half of all appeals against deportation have been successful since 2021."

Meme - "Do not believe your lying eyes"
"Colorado Gov. Jared Polis dismisses migrant gang takeover of apartments as 'imagination' - despite video, mayor confirming truth. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis dismissed anger over Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua taking over apartment buildings in the Denver suburb of Aurora, calling it "imagination" - despite video footage, police reports and the city's mayor confirming it's happening."
"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command"

Exclusive | Colorado Gov. Jared Polis dismisses migrant gang takeover of Aurora apartments as 'imagination' - "  Polis’ press office offered the snarky statement Wednesday night in response to Aurora City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky — who told The Post the gang’s takeovers are tied to his policies.  “The Governor has already let the Mayor know that the State is ready to support the local police department with assistance from state troopers and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation if needed,” Shelby Wieman, a spokesperson for the Democratic governor, told The Post. “But, according to police intelligence this purported invasion is largely a feature of Danielle Jurinsky’s imagination.” Wieman added that “it’s illegal to take over buildings in Colorado” and if Jurinsky has “knowledge” of such activity, the governor’s office is “ready to assist” cops “in taking them back.”  “Violent crime dropped in Aurora between 2022 and 2023,” said Wieman.  Despite the governor’s claims, however, the evidence is clear... Fox Denver aired surveillance video that showed an armed gang of men — later confirmed by cops as suspected members of Tren de Aragua — strolling through an apartment complex in Aurora that residents said has been overrun by the gang.  Three of the men could be seen carrying handguns while another held a rifle as they entered the troubled apartment complex, breaking into a unit shortly before a shootout took place at the complex that left one person severely injured.  Further, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman told Fox News on Thursday that “there are several buildings” that have “fallen to these Venezuelan gangs” in his city.  Coffman said he believes the buildings were used as taxpayer-funded migrant housing, which is what gave the gangs a foothold. Denver — a sanctuary city that is just west of Aurora — has received more migrants per capita than any city in the country, most of them from Venezuela. More than 40,000 migrants have arrived since December 2022.  The Post asked Polis’ office if he intends to backtrack its statement given the piles of evidence of Tren de Aragua’s takeover, to which Wieman said the governor “really hopes that the city council members in charge stop trashing their own city when they are supposed to keep it safe.  “Over the last month, Governor Polis has been in regular contact with the City of Aurora and the Aurora Police Department and has offered all state assistance to support their efforts if requested,” she said, adding that they expect violent crime to continue to decrease.  The Post exposed the gang’s takeover of apartments in Aurora and identified the area’s “shot-caller” Jhonardy Jose Pacheco-Chirino, who is known as Galleta, or “Cookie” in English.  Pacheco-Chirino alongside his fellow gangsters brutally beat a man at an apartment complex in Aurora.  He was later arrested and then let go on bail. During the assault, a witness said, Pacheco-Chirino and his accomplices were “part of a gang that steals from Walmart” and claimed “they run” the apartment, according to an affidavit obtained by The Post.  One witness said “she was afraid to talk much because of the dangerous people living in the complex.”  The apartment investor told The Post that they’ve “lost control” of several properties because the gang has taken over units.    “They were first hanging out around the property and creating a bad element that’s constantly there. And then they started taking over, quite a few months ago, they started taking over vacant units.”    In July, Pacheco-Chirino was arrested for a shooting at the same complex, where two men were wounded. All the while, Polis has embraced sanctuary policies for Colorado.  In recent months, the governor signed legislation to support their new lives in the state by making it easier for them to obtain driver’s licenses, attend school and obtain taxpayer-funded resources.  When the influx of migrants became too much, Polis made the decision to start busing them to New York City in 2023, through a program that’s since ended.  Still, many stayed and some moved to nearby Aurora — which has a population of 390,000 — where apartments are now under the gang’s control. It’s been a nightmare and I can’t wait to get out of here,” apartment resident Cindy Romero told Fox Denver as she moved out of the building with her husband.  For years, the gang, which hails from Venezuela’s Aragua region, has been sending its members across the US-Mexico border. It’s also expanded recruitment within the US among migrant communities, mainly in New York, Denver and Chicago.  The gang was recently designated as a transnational criminal organization by the Biden administration."

Thread by @realchrisrufo on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "EXCLUSIVE: @Buttonslives and I have discovered that the Biden-Harris Administration subsidized the Venezuelan migrants who took over the apartments in Aurora, Colorado, through a funnel of government agencies and left-wing NGOs.  It's time to follow the money. 🧵
The story begins in 2021, when the Biden–Harris administration signed the American Rescue Plan Act into law, allocating $3.8 billion to Colorado. The City of Denver drew on this reservoir of funds to launch its migrant resettlement and housing program. The city, in turn, funneled more than $5 million to two left-wing NGOs, ViVe Wellness and Papagayo, to secure housing for thousands of Venezuelan migrants.  These organizations are run by Yoli Casas and Marielena Suarez, two Venezuelan immigrants who do not appear to have previous experience in large-scale migrant resettlement. Much of this funding was directly tied to ARPA, through the Migrant Support Grant program.
Yoli Casas, who runs ViVe Wellness, said that the flow of government funds was so abundant, she was writing thousands of checks to pay for migrants. She claimed to have written $350,000 in checks in a single week—all heavily subsidized by taxpayers. These NGOs, in turn, worked with landlords to place the migrants in housing, including a large number of contracts with CBZ Management, which operated the three apartment complexes in Aurora at the center of the Venezuelan takeover scandal. We spoke with a former CBZ employee, who, on condition of anonymity, explained how the scheme worked. Representatives from Papagayo arranged hundreds of contracts with CBZ to place migrants in the Aurora apartments. Soon, they were up to 80% full of Venezuelans.
The result was chaos. We have obtained a confidential report, which alleges, according to witness interviews, that the apartments saw a string of crimes, including trespassing, assault, extortion, drug use, illegal firearm possession, human trafficking, and sexual abuse."
Chaos in Aurora

Bill Ackman on X - "This is an incredible story by a superb investigator about the takeover of the apartment complexes in Colorado by Venezuelan gangs subsidized by the Biden-Harris Administration and taxpayer money. I welcome the response from the administration."
Of course, I saw left wingers claiming the Aurora Colorado story was fake news

Meme - "Dublin one of the safest cities in the world" - TUE, 15 APR, 2003
"Dublin ranks among the top ten most dangerous major cities in Europe" - Tue 9 Jan 2024"

Foreign nationals get one-third higher prison terms on average than Irish-born criminals - "The average prison sentence handed down to foreign nationals for certain crimes is up to a third higher than the terms of imprisonment given to Irish-born offenders, according to new research... The authors of the report did caution that a lack of data means that the research was unable to determine whether there were mitigating or aggravating circumstances in the sentencing statistics... Apart from the disparity in sentencing, the research found that foreign nationals and ethnic miniorities were discriminated against in a number of different ways in the Irish prison system. Foreign nationals are overrepresented in Irish Prisons. On average, one-in-seven prisoners (15%) are from a foreign background."
Migration and Diversity Census of Population 2022 - Summary Results - Central Statistics Office - "There were 4.3 million people who usually lived in Ireland who indicated that they had either Irish only or dual Irish citizenship. This made up 84% of the population of usual residents. The number of non-Irish citizens increased in 2022, accounting for 12% of the population."
Migrants being more likely to be in prison and getting harsher sentences means they're discriminated against, of course. But men being more likely to be in prison and getting harsher sentences means they're evil
Weird. We kept being told that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than natives, which is why we need even more of them

wanye on X - "On the one hand there are like 150 million existing Americans with beliefs that urban liberals find abhorrent and who are an extreme threat every four years to their political and cultural objectives. But on the other hand it’s apparently inconceivable that immigration could result in a populace with opposing views. You already know what it’s like when tens of millions of people with views you oppose are able to change government in ways you don’t like! You already accept completely that that’s possible. I can’t believe this needs to be said, but there are conceivable differences on opinion larger and more serious than those currently existing between democrats and republicans. It can get way worse."
ⓐⓣⓘⓜⓐ Ⓞⓕ Ⓚⓞⓝⓘⓢⓗⓘ on X - "But they are brown. That is literally their thinking. That brown people can't be bad. Brown Immigrants can't be medieval theocratic misogynists. Yet run of the mill white Christians are ALL Westborough Baptists."
M0de7 on X - "it's weird though because liberals absolutely recognize that there is a whole bunch of people in the middle of the country with a different culture than them that under no circumstances can be allowed to have any kind of power because god knows what they might do with it"

Thread by @kunley_drukpa on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Dynamic here of Somalilander takeover of… Liverpool City Council is not just as simple as migration creating a bizarroworld new ‘Somali’ lobby in the home city of The Beatles - the Somaliland lobby here represents the interests of a specific Somali clan; the Isaaq Clan. You may see major cities fall under the control of different Somali clans - Cities with large settlements of different clans may have very strong reactions to ‘the city of Liverpool recognising Somaliland Indepence’. Hawiye or Darod clan controlled cities opposed to an independent Somaliland vindictively making fun of the Hillsborough disaster as an attack on Isaaq controlled Liverpool, Britain devolved into a patchwork of warring regional powers like during the Heptarchy or the Hellenic Classical Age, Japan’s Sengoku Jidai period etc. except everyone is Somalian
About Somalian Clans
For example in the comments this man who is from the Awdal region so probably from the Dir clan has a strong reaction to the prospect of Somaliland becoming more recognised. His pinned tweet decries those who support Somaliland as his enemy. He says:
1) Retard Somalilanders Liverpool’s council is just a city council it doesn’t mean anything
2) Calls them the word ‘Heego’ - which is used to described some perceived ‘enemies of Somalia’
Somalians are becoming an increasingly large migrant group in Britain
Ajanabi = Foreigner, Non-Somali"

Illegal migrants do not have gun rights protected by 2nd Amendment: federal appeals court - "Illegal migrants do not have the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, a federal appeals court in New Orleans has ruled, rejecting arguments by a Mexican man who was convicted of illegally possessing a handgun and argued that the ban was unconstitutional.  A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that federal prohibitions on illegal immigrants owning firearms was lawful, and Second Amendment rights do not apply to those who have entered the country illegally... The three-judge panel said Portillo-Munoz "remains good law" and that the rights of U.S. citizens do not apply to illegal migrants.  "The Second Amendment protects the right of ‘the people’ to keep and bear arms. Our court has held that the term ‘the people’ under the Second Amendment does not include illegal aliens," U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, a conservative appointee of Republican President Trump, wrote in a concurring opinion.  "As to common sense, an illegal alien does not become ‘part of a national community’ by unlawfully entering it, any more than a thief becomes an owner of property by stealing it." "The Court has repeatedly explained that ‘an alien… does not become one of the people to whom these things are secured by our Constitution by an attempt to enter forbidden by law’… But that’s, of course, the very definition of an illegal alien – one who ‘attempts to enter’ our country in a manner ‘forbidden by law.’"  "So illegal aliens are not part of ‘the people’ entitled to the protections of the Second Amendment.’  Ho added that for an illegal alien to appeal to the Constitution is to concede that the United States is governed by that supreme law.  "And ‘the power to exclude [aliens from the United States] has been determined to exist’ under our Constitution. So, the Court concluded, ‘those who are excluded cannot assert the rights in general obtaining in a land to which they do not belong as citizens or otherwise,'" Ho wrote."

Rise of anti-immigrant AfD a warning to Western progressives - "Nine years ago, during the 2015 European migrant crisis, Merkel said to the German people: “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do it”). The “it” in question was absorbing the flood of migrants coming into Europe at the time and integrating them into German society. Multiple incidents that followed shortly thereafter, including the sexual assaults of 1,200 women on New Year’s Eve in major cities across Germany that year, which officials said were principally committed by immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa, showed that Merkel’s plan wasn’t going to be so easy. In and of itself, such an incident would probably not lay the ground for a political party so explicitly anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner as AfD. However, as we in North America experienced during the “understandable” torching of churches following the discovery of Kamloops soil anomalies and the “fiery but mostly peaceful” protests in the United States following the murder of George Floyd, governments don’t enjoy addressing difficult and sensitive problems directly. German media and the government had difficulty taking seriously an uncomfortable dynamic about the attacks: that the background and cultural origin of the perpetrators was a significant factor in explaining and understanding why this occurred. Scared of being branded as racist, many Germany leaders avoided talking about the problem. Sound familiar?... In Germany’s difficulties, we see an extreme version of our own recent immigration and economic ordeals. With that, there is a warning for any government in North America that doesn’t take border or immigration issues and their effects on regular citizens seriously. Perhaps more to the point, it is a warning to politicians to not continuously tell citizens the problems they see around them with their own eyes every day are not real."

Voters Love the Policies That Economists Love to Hate

Voters Love the Policies That Economists Love to Hate

Economists and ordinary people often seem to inhabit different planets, but seldom has the chasm been this wide.

As former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris compete for any possible edge in a tight election, they have offered a plethora of ideas that, while delighting voters by varying degrees, have appalled economists because they would distort markets or deepen America’s fiscal hole.

The Wall Street Journal’s recent poll asked 750 registered voters about the presidential candidates’ proposed economic policies. Then, at the Journal’s request, the University of Chicago’s Clark Center put exactly the same questions to a panel of 39 top academic economists.

Trump’s plan to stop taxing tips for service workers—an idea Harris adopted after the former president announced it—is supported by about four-fifths of voters polled by the Journal. But among economists, 87% disapprove, saying it would arbitrarily benefit a small subset of lower-wage workers, distort the labor market, widen the budget deficit and create incentives to game the system.

Trump has proposed across-the-board tariffs of up to 20% on imported goods. Forty-seven percent of voters approve of the idea, slightly more than those who disapprove. By contrast, 100% of the economists, who span the political spectrum, said they “strongly oppose” the idea.

Trade is a bedrock of economic development that, in theory, enables each country to focus on what it is good at.

“When you put a tariff on something artificially, you’re going to make things more expensive, and if it’s an input, like steel for example, then you’re going to make the downstream companies that are using steel less competitive,” said Steven Kaplan, a conservative-leaning economist at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Peter Stewart, a manager at a chemical provider to the fracking industry in Texas who supports Trump, said he thinks tariffs would encourage Americans to buy more products made in the U.S.

“I wonder, some of these economists, what is their vested interest?” said Stewart, 49. “You never know whether you’re getting the truth or not anymore.”

The American Economic Association defines economics as the study of how people use resources, respond to incentives and make decisions. Economists use data and theoretical models to evaluate whether government initiatives make people, and society at large, better off.

The father of economics, the 18th-century philosopher Adam Smith, extolled the invisible hand of markets and decried spendthrift kings and ministers. With fiscal rectitude out and populism in, modern economists say Smith would be holding his nose if he were alive today.

“We’ve done a terrible job of educating the American people,” lamented Edward Glaeser, a center-right economist at Harvard University.

Eric Maskin, a Harvard economist and a 2007 Nobel laureate, said: “I also blame politicians who know better for not trying harder.” Maskin said he can’t recall an election cycle that reeked so badly of rotten policy. “I think this may be a new low,” he said.

Harris has proposed a ban on corporate price gouging for food and groceries. It is one of her most popular policies. The share of voters who approve it exceeds the share who disapprove by a margin of 49 percentage points.

By contrast, two-thirds of economists disapprove and just 13% approve. “ ‘Price gouging’ is too vague to be useful—and would be harmful if it was clarified enough to be significant,” said William Nordhaus, an economist at Yale University and a 2018 Nobel laureate. “I doubt if it will be taken seriously.”

History has shown that it is a bad idea for the government to attempt to regulate prices, which normally serve to balance supply and demand in a competitive market. “It interferes with the market system,” said Maskin, who described his politics on noneconomic issues as left of center. “Higher prices help to equilibrate supply and demand, and they also serve a useful incentive function.”

“It’s either a gimmick, or it’s a mess,” said Carl Shapiro, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who served in President Barack Obama’s administration.

There are areas where the public and economists agree. The public backs Harris’s proposal to cap insulin prices at $35. So do 64% of economists.

“I do not favor a general price cap on drugs,” said Kenneth Judd, an economist at the conservative Hoover Institution who studies imperfect competition, among other topics. Insulin, however, is an exception, he said. “Insulin is a very important drug, it has been around for many decades with great success, and there was no justification for the recent price increases.”

Both voters and economists disapprove of Harris’s proposal to tackle the housing-affordability crisis by giving first-time home buyers $25,000 toward a down payment. Economists think such a move would fuel demand for homes without addressing the low supply, helping a small subset of Americans while potentially making housing more expensive for everyone else.

A few of the candidates’ proposals are supported by most economists. These include Harris’s plan to provide a $6,000 tax credit to families with newborns, and to reverse Trump’s corporate tax cuts partially by increasing the tax rate on corporations to 28% from 21%.

“We cannot keep cutting taxes forever,” said David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Taxes may be too high on some things, but they are too low on average.”

The irony of the 2024 campaign is that both presidential candidates majored in economics as undergraduates. Trump in 1968 received a bachelor of science in the field from the University of Pennsylvania. Harris in 1986 received a bachelor of arts in political science and economics from Howard University, where she headed the economics society.

Glaeser, the Harvard economist, said it should come as no surprise that politicians offer up proposals that the public likes, even if they might know the economics are dubious. Maskin argued that Trump’s tendency to offer simple-sounding solutions to complex problems—a hallmark of populism—encourages his rivals to do the same.

Some see the gulf between voters and economists on policy as an example of the public’s deepening distrust of experts and institutions. “The American public, they’re unhappy with stuff,” said Shapiro.

 

 

 

 

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