Links - 18th January 2019

Enrollment drops at schools known for 'social justice warfare' - "Universities known for being hotbeds of campus protest and liberal activism are struggling with declining enrollments and budget shortfalls, and higher education analysts say that’s no coincidence. Take Oberlin College... the small liberal arts college famous for social justice hoaxes has had trouble attracting and retaining students, missing this year’s enrollment mark by 80 and racking up a $5 million budget deficit in the process. William A. Jacobson, a professor at Cornell Law School who runs the Legal Insurrection blog, said the “most obvious culprit” in Oberlin’s dwindling admissions is “relentless social justice warfare.”... High school counselors report that, in the past few years, parents have been more likely to express concern about sending their children to schools with progressive reputations. “Many won’t consider Oberlin or Wesleyan, and Brown is completely off the table”... several prestigious, small liberal arts colleges in the Midwest have missed their enrollment marks this year... Declining enrollments have previously been observed at colleges and universities that became notorious for chaotic campus activism, including the University of Missouri and Evergreen State College... mass hysteria ensued [in Oberlin] after racist and anti-Semitic flyers and graffiti began to appear all over campus. Classes were canceled, meetings were held and students began to see racism around every corner, including when someone reported seeing a member of the Ku Klux Klan on campus. It turned out to be a woman walking around wrapped in a blanket to keep warm. Not only that, the perpetrators behind the racist paraphernalia turned out to be two progressive students, one of whom was confirmed to be an Obama supporter, trying to get a reaction out of their classmates and the administration. Rather than admit the whole thing was a hoax and move on, the Oberlin administration doubled down on a social justice agenda, including the implementation of a privilege and oppression “reorientation” for first-year students. In the ensuing years, Oberlin students would go on to make frequent demands of the university, ranging from the end of culturally appropriated meals at the dining hall, such as General Tso’s chicken and sushi, to the elimination of grades below a C... Oberlin students targeted Gibson’s Bakery, a beloved store in Oberlin, Ohio, after an employee called police when he saw someone attempting to shoplift by concealing two bottles of wine under his jacket. The accused shoplifter turned out to be a black Oberlin student. The Black Student Union, Oberlin Student Senate and College Democrats spearheaded a boycott of the bakery and organized protests outside of the store. Even the Oberlin administration, responding to calls from Black Lives Matter supporters on campus, stopped purchasing goods from the bakery. Three students involved in the incident ended up pleading guilty to attempted theft and aggravated trespassing. As part of a plea deal, the students acknowledged that the bakery’s actions were “not racially motivated” and that the store was “merely trying to prevent an underage sale.”"
Get Woke, Go Broke

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, The “Tropical Trump" topping the polls in Brazil - "1936... the Greek dictator Metaxas is determined to crush the Macedonians. Their village names have already been replaced by Greek ones. Now they're forced to hellenize their family names too. Spies listen at the windows to hear if people are speaking or singing in Macedonian. If they are they are fined or beaten"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Secrets of the Peace Prize - "The other thing that struck me was the cost of a food shop. In the UK I spend around 120 pounds a week online to feed the family. In Greece, I spent around 250 euro each week. Now admittedly, we went to the closest shop, not the local market, we had more treats, more chocolate, more wine - we were on holiday. But I was astonished that the squeaky salty Greek cheese haloumi which we all love is actually cheaper in the UK than in its country of origin... her electricity bill for two months in Greece was more than her electricity bill for the entire year in Switzerland, where she also has a much bigger house. So essential living costs are relatively high. And yet Greek wages in both the public and private sectors have fallen considerably. This is the internal devaluation the economists speak of - if Greece can't devalue its own currency, because of course, it uses the Euro, then wages have to be cut to regain competitiveness. But without reform, say to improve the road network to make moving food around cheaper or improving energy supply to cut household bills, then the population will be greatly impoverished, which is precisely what has happened"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Life Inside Libya’s Migrant Detention Centres - "In India we have a space program, but we don't have a functioning sewer system. That tells you a lot... After graduating from college with good grades, he got a government job, but when he turned up for work, he says that he was asked to clean the toilets. He says that's the caste system for you... The drains have to be unclogged. And how else will it be done?... he uncovers a manhole to show me where the workers gain access to the sewer. The smell of an open drain in the midday heat stays with you, the idea of someone submerging themselves into it frankly horrifying. They often have to get drunk before they go in"

Neil Oliver’s history of the British Isles - History Extra - "Scotland, England, are very old countries… that has been an entity that is more or less Scotland for about 1000 years. And the same is more or less true of say England, Now, Germany, for example, did not coalesce into what we would consider Germany until a couple hundred years ago. Likewise, Italy, Italy was an agglomeration of individual states and statelets and cities...
At the same time as knowing that once you've got farming and a surplus, you’ve probably got a better chance of being able to continue to feed yourself and your family. That's without a doubt. However, there is definitely a romance to the idea of being a hunter, untrammeled by property and untrammeled by the daily grind. And I'm sure as I say in the book, I'm sure there were times maybe for a whole, maybe for a whole lifetime of a given group, the living may well have been good if the climate was in your favor. And if the, if the wild fruits ripened and if the, if the wild animals and the fish were all there at the right times, then there was a good life to be hard. But it would also been terrible times. When the times went bad, there was no safety net, there was no surplus. And so they would have known starvation, they must have been managing the, the reproductive, they must have been managing how many children they had, you know, because you can't have half a dozen children in each couple. If the tribe is on the move, they must have been doing something, some kind of birth control, infanticide or whatever, they must have been managed. So they had, they had challenges to overcome. And then there were the physical dangers… you're hunting wild animals, some of them capable of hurting you back... It must have been a tough sell if you approached hunters in the good times and said, what you want to do is cut down all these trees, dig up all these roots and spend the next rest of your life tending those fields. And on the flip side, you can eat porridge and bread. It's a tough sell to people that are maybe living on wild game and and the fruits of the forest and if they get fed up with the view out the window, they can move on."

The spy who changed the Cold War - History Extra - "[The Berlin Wall] was a dramatic demonstration of the kind of hypocrisy that he lived under until that point, and he was 18 years old. And here was this physical manifestation of the fact that the Soviet Union was telling one thing to its people, but actually doing another. I mean, theoretically, under the Soviet Union, that was the anti fascist wall. It was keeping out, you know, dread capitalism from coming to the Soviet Union. In fact, of course, it was a wall to keep East Germans prisoners in their own country. And that was the first moment but it was one of a series I think. You know, the next one that really, another critical moment in global affairs that really affected Gordievsky was the crushing of the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia...
There was a long standing, for seven years, there was an escape plan had been in place, it was called Operation Pimlico. And it sounds like something that John LeCarre would right, because it would, it would be triggered by Oleg, had to stand on a particular street corner on a particular day of the week, holding, believe it or not, a Safeway bag from the British supermarket. This would be the indication that he had to get out. The acknowledgement signal from MI6 would be that the MI6 officers who policed this site for seven years, every Tuesday night, whether Oleg was in town or not, they watched this site because of course, they were under surveillance. And if they changed their patterns of behavior they would have been spotted by by the KGB. So they had to, even though they knew he wasn't there, they had to, they had to do the same thing, which meant going down to this bread shop and being there. So that was how it was triggered. The second stage of it, well, it would be acknowledged by the MI6 officer walking past the man with a Safeway bag - who they'd never seen, by the way, they had very no idea what he looked like, they would walk past him and eat a British chocolate bar, either a Mars bar or a Kit Kat. Now, I mean, again, if you made this up in fiction, people would say: nah, that's completely unbelievable. But that is what happened."

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, The Morality of International Aid - "Critics say it perpetuates poverty, creates dependence, insulates bad governments from the consequences of their corruption. They point to Africa, where the World Bank says there are 60 million more people in extreme poverty than there were two decades ago, despite a trillion dollars in aid and compare it to East Asia where extreme poverty has been reduced from 81% to 4% - not by aid but they say by the very global capitalism that Oxfam decries. The aid agencies say this is simplistic and selfish, that the unfairness of the rich world keeps the Third World poor, that their projects are successful in the most challenging and difficult circumstances and that we have a moral responsibility to be charitable...
‘Most of the work that the aid industries do in these countries is not engaging with citizens of those countries want, take for the example of there's an obsession with teen pregnancy and lots of African countries, if you go and speak to people in Ghana or Senegal, what they want is mobile phones, McDonald's and the things that we enjoy. They don't want to be lectured by aid industry, about their lifestyles’...
'When you look at the development of a vast middle class, in China and in India, when you see the number of people who’ve been lifted out of poverty by capitalist policies, does not at least strike you as ironic that Oxfam has become a political organization campaigning against capitalism?’...
‘This curious difference between Africa where there are larger numbers, smaller proportion as it happens, but larger numbers of extremely poor people as compared to East Asia where poverty has almost been eradicated - Bishop David said that there were complicated reasons for this. It wasn't just a question of juxtaposing aid and capitalism. Michael? Well, cultural reasons he, he suggested’
‘Well, I'd say there are, even culturally, if you step back from Africa, there's hardly a decent government in Africa, by which I mean a government that is submitted itself to general election and been replaced by another government of another party. And that that has happened repeatedly. Such examples of democracy are extremely where, rare in Africa. And that lies at the heart of the problem, because that leads to corruption. dictatorship is not good for people, etc, etc, etc. And so you would think, because that is so glaringly obvious, that our agencies will be focused on this above all. Getting rid of dictatorships, encouraging, encouraging good governance, trying to introduce the rule of law, shaming bad governments. But no, none of those things are the priorities. The priority, apparently, is to attack capitalism.’"

Rubbernecking German drivers could be hit by bigger fines - "The increase in rubbernecking is being blamed on social media and a growing obsession with stopping to film or photograph accident sites on mobile phones. Last year, 18 people died in a bus fire on a motorway in Münchberg, with rescue workers in part blaming car drivers’ failure to let them through, largely due to those who were filming the inferno."

9 Free Things You Can Get From The Government Of Canada - "1. Free Official Photographic Portrait of The Queen
2. Free Official Photographic Portrait Of Her Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh
3. Free Official Photographic Portrait Of His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh
4. Mail Free Of Postage
5. Free Credit Report
6. Free Canadian Flags From Parliament Hill
7. Free Guided Tours Of Parliament
8. Free Access to Information and Privacy Online Request
9. Free Order or Download of Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms"

Michael Knowles on Twitter - "What if rich people paid taxes"
"The top 1% of income earners earn 19% of all adjusted gross income and pay 39% of all income tax. The top 10% pay more than 70%"

Bret Weinstein on Twitter - "I found out tonight @MrAndyNgo @BretWeinstein that in Germany it is illegal to protest with masks on because then people can commit violence anonymously. § 17a VersG - dejure.org
In checking, it is illegal in many countries, including some U.S. states"
"Very interesting. I have the sense that there has been an evolution. Black Block tactics have morphed and become an opportunity for a branded costume, one that obscures identity from targets and police, while amplifying it to other anarchists. Rather like pseudonymous accounts"
"As I tried to speak with these people in masks, I realized they weren’t interacting with me like normal humans. They were responding to me as if they were vocalizing anonymous tweets."

Kaitlin Bennett on Twitter - "One Christian travels to an island & is killed for his culture: liberals say he had it coming because they had a right to be left alone
Millions of illegals travel to the US to take welfare & erode our culture: liberals say you're a racist if you don't let them take over America"