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Thursday, October 29, 2020

Migrants and Crime in Sweden in the Twenty-First Century

Surprisingly, the journal Society has not been cancelled (yet).
 

Migrants and Crime in Sweden in the Twenty-First Century

"In 2005, the Swedish Crime Prevention Agency published a report about the link between immigration and crime. Since then, no comprehensive study has been conducted even though Sweden has experienced a large influx of migrants in combination with a rising crime rate. This study conducted by Göran Adamson and Tino Sanandaji is the first purely descriptive scientific investigation on the matter in fifteen years. The investigation (from 2002 to 2017) covers seven distinct categories of crime, and distinguishes between seven regions of origin. Based on 33 per cent of the population (2017), 58 per cent of those suspect for total crime on reasonable grounds are migrants. Regarding murder, manslaughter and attempted murder, the figures are 73 per cent, while the proportion of robbery is 70 per cent. Non-registered migrants are linked to about 13 per cent of total crime. Given the fact that this group is small, crime propensity among non-registered migrants is significant.

“The situation for us Swedes is, then, infinitely more fortunate. Our population is homogeneous, not only in terms of our race but also regarding so many other issues.” (Erlander, 1965, p. 60.) The words belong to Tage Erlander, Sweden’s Social democratic Prime Minister between 1946 and 1969. We are a prosperous and fortunate country, he maintains, because we are unified. We think alike and act alike. By means of careful and persistent social measures, our population has slowly been trimmed and finetuned so as to achieve a historically unique sense of trust, social order and efficiency. In modern language, Erlander would claim that our country is fortunate because it is not characterized by multiculturalism and “diversity”.

Since Erlander’s time, a silent revolution has occurred at the heart of the reformist left. Now, diversity is said to give us prosperity, while defending the idea of a unified population is fraught with imminent political risks. Social democratic views of the 1960’s are now considered far right-wing - a psychological trauma as if straight out of an Ingmar Bergman movie...

Migration, we are told, is beneficial for Sweden. But if this is so, it would also show in crime statistics. According to the present investigation, the first more comprehensive study since the 2005 report by the Swedish Crime Prevention Agency, this is, however, not the case. In 2017, 58% among those suspected for crime on reasonable grounds are migrants. Regarding murder and manslaughter, the corresponsing figures are 73%. These figures are interesting out of purely scientific reasons. Due to migration, murder rate in Sweden has quadrupled.

As a universal role model for social and political prosperity, Sweden’s recent crime trends has gained international attention. What can we do about it? What does it mean? The are no answers to these pressing questions. But Sweden might point towards an uncertain future. In a global world with increasing migration where the nation state is being eroded by neo-liberals from the outside and multiculturalists from the inside, these Swedish trends may soon spread throughout the Western community.

In 2002, an editorial in Aftonbladet, Sweden’s top selling tabloid, carried a warning: “Do not strengthen racist prejudices!” The newspaper had been informed that the Crime Prevention Agency, Sweden’s official institution for the study of crime on an aggregate level, in its coming 2005 report would start presenting crime based on ethnic background. Aftonbladet was alarmed: “In case the Crime Prevention Agency distinguishes between “Swedes“ and “immigrants“, it will also imply that crime might be caused by ethnic background.” This, Aftonbladet continued, “would instantly play into the hands of racists.” “The right-wing extremists and their lies about a connection between ethnicity and crime, Aftonbladet concluded, “cannot pass unchallenged. But we need a serious debate. We certainly do not need crime statistics the mere presence of which only fuel racist prejudices.” (Aftonbladet, June 27, 2002).

Aftonbladet appears troubled by the fact that, in case the Crime Prevention Agency will start distinguishing between Swedes and immigrants, “crime might be caused by ethnic background”. The purpose of methodological distinctions, however, was always to look for plausible differences. When Aftonbladet claims that this “would instantly play into the hands of racists”, the newspaper makes a remarkable concession, namely that racists will profit from scientific data.

True to the tone, Aftonbladet ends with a bold statement. Any connection in between ethnicity and crime is not only a “lie”, but something verging on fascism. If we rely on data assembled by the Crime Prevention Agency, “a serious debate”, Aftonbladet maintains, is no longer possible. Crime statistics “fuel racist prejudices.” In case we wish to prevent racist exaggerations, then, the migration debate must be founded on the opposite of statistical data - i.e. outburts, stereotypes, exaggerations. This emotional anti-intellectualism as exemplified by Aftonbladet has defined Swedish migration discourse for decades.

The present report takes a different stance. Knowledge never lies - if it did, it wouldn’t be knowledge. We need it to avoid extremist simplifications. The assumption that certain methodological distinctions must be kept out of sight of the public is dangerous and anti-democratic. Integration of marginalized groups is impossible without scientific data...

Over the last few decades, those who commit crimes in Sweden are increasingly clustered both geographically and socially. The risk of ending up as victim of crime is getting more and more unevenly distributed. (Nilsson and Estrada 2005) Inhabitants in so-called” vulnerable areas” are often migration with higher risk of being either criminal or victim of crime. Updating the data material on crime and migration leads to new and important data, and knowledge on crime and migration is seriously wanting, according to public institutions, politicians, and the majority population.

One of our main concerns here is to study the integration of second-generation migrants and how this integration has changed over time. Historically – from the 1940s to the end of the 1970s - criminal migrants gradually tended to fuse with the majority population over time, both in terms of social status and regarding propensity for crime. An important task is to analyze if and if so to what extent these patterns of migration are still valid, and, in case this blending never occurs, to map those particularly vulnerable groups in order to initiate early preemptive action.

This entirely updated study questions the left-wing assumption that knowledge only fuels right-wing conspiracies. The truth is the opposite. In case we wish to fuel generalizations, stigmatizations based on anecdotes, rumors, political agitation etc., then we must try to prevent any attempt to acquire scientific knowledge. Knowledge undermines stereotypes and leads to more nuanced discussion. Numerous previous studies on crime and migration in Sweden are based on these assumptions.

There are many reasons why information on crime among migrants and their children is important. Detailed knowledge about groups prone for criminal behavior avoids random, costly, and inefficient measures. Knowledge tells us about long-term relations between migration and crime. Knowledge might inform us about why some cities and suburbs are more affected by crime than others. Continuously updated data material, finally, might tell us why different crimes fluctuate over time.

Over the recent past, the relation between criminal propensity and migration was subject of a number of Swedish studies - among them two reports by BRÅ (Sweden’s Crime Prevention Agency). Its 1996 report analyzed the period between 1985 and 1989, while the report from 2005 studied data between 1997 and 2001. No further major investigation has, however, been conducted after 2001. This matter-of-fact has sparked a lively debate. Morgan Johansson, Sweden’s Minister of Justice, has for instance kept saying that data on migrants and crime are unimportant “because we know that migrants are overrepresented in crime” (Johansson, 2018). Others, like the top selling tabloid Aftonbladet above, has insisted that this is not true, and that statistical data will only play into the hands of populists and racists.

Still, this unwillingness to update material remains controversial, and has been subject of various forms of critical remarks. While many seem to believe data on the relation between crime and migration is illegal, this is actually not the case...

The report will also update figures on crime among second generation migrants – i.e. individuals born in their new host country with one or two foreign-born parents. This group has gained considerable attention in numerous international studies. It was also high-lighted in the 2005 report by the Crime Prevention Agency, stating that “the general picture presented by these studies is that this particular group, in comparison with both foreign-born and those born with two native parents, has a higher propensity for criminal activity.” (Brå 2005, p. 7)...

In 2018, Uppdrag Granskning, a TV-program broadcasted on Swedish state television, surveyed every individual registered for rape or attempted rape between 2012 and 2017. 58% were foreign-born. Among the remaining 42% born in Sweden, some had a migrant background as children to foreign-born, but their exact proportion was not presented. Among those registered for attempted, and completed sexual assault, where victim and criminal were strangers, a good 80% were foreign-born.

Another survey conducted in 2018 by the newspaper Aftonbladet studied 112 individuals registered for group rape (at least two offenders) since 2012. Among them, 73% were foreign-born. In case those born in Sweden with two migrant parents were added, 88% were foreign-born.

In 2017, the newspaper Expressen did a survey of 192 individuals in Stockholm, who, according to police files, were either members of criminal gangs, or had links to criminal networks (as a result of court sentences or preliminary investigations). 82% were migrants, defined as being foreign-born or having two foreign-born parents. In case those with one foreign-born parent was added, the figure rose to 95%.

Yet another set of data was assembled in 2017 by Dagens Nyheter. The material consisted of 100 criminals registered or suspected in investigations on gunfire on public places between 2013 and 2017. 90 of them (90%) had one or two foreign-born parents. Among them, about every second had arrived in Sweden when they were young, while the rest were born in Sweden.

Among these particular types of registered criminal activity, a large proportion is foreign-born. Regarding other types of crime, the proportion of criminals with a Swedish background is much higher. Worth adding, the vast majority of migrants are, just like Swedes, law-abiding citizens...

Migrant crime is often, for instance, explained by poverty or other socioeconomic factors. Whether social deprivation suddenly occurs on arrival in the new host country, or whether it is rather the result of an earlier lifestyle cannot, however, be answered in the abstract without careful empirical analysis. (See further below.)

Crime statistics only shows individuals registered for crime. Yet, these figures might be exaggerated due to a tendency among crime witnesses - whether consciously or not - to single out migrants. Excessive focus on migrants may also be contextualized by a comparison with three other groups with a significantly higher crime propensity – men, low earners, and those on social benefits.

It is important to point out that the overrepresentation among various groups always change and tends to decrease in the long run. As indicated by a related study in Norway over a similar period of time, overrepresentation gradually tends to become less pronounced. It is a question of great scientific value whether this applies to Sweden as well - for migrants as a whole or for certain groups among them...

One reason why crime among migrants may be exaggerated is because they might be subject to discrimination by the Swedish judicial system, or that crime victims may be prone to single out individuals with a migrant background. There are, on the other hand, tendencies whereby criminality among migrants might be underestimated, such as the fact that these crimes often take place in areas where witnesses choose to remain silent. Also, they often occur within clan structures out of sight of the legal system.

The respective impact of these various statistical uncertainties is obviously hard to estimate. The Crime Prevention Agency still maintains that statistics available on those suspected and convicted offer a good or very good approximation of real overrepresentation in criminal activity. Finally, three things should be brought in mind. First: the figures presented in this report relates to registered crime - not actual crime. Second: they say nothing about the question why certain groups are overrepresented in crime. This is a descriptive study. Third: migrants are not only overrepresented among criminals, but also among victims of crime. The last observation is worth a comment. It is often said, and particularly by those who are perceived as being “on the left”, that we are only witnessing “infighting among criminals”, and that “ordinary citizens are not endangered”. They try to downplay the dangers and take the steam out of right-wing populists. But migrants with a propensity for crime are also individuals who should be protected as any citizen instead of being killed in gang shoot-outs. It is not clear why this approach would counter far right ideas. In fact, right-wingers make use of similar arguments, whereby migrants with a criminal behavior somehow do not count as our equals, and as long as “we” are not in danger, we can just close our eyes and quietly hope that the problem with simply solve itself. The idea smacks of upper-class detachment, whether it comes from a compassionate left or from a heartless right.

An extensive, systematic literature on criminal activity among foreigners goes back more than a century... More recently, research has focused those who are born in their new host country with one or two foreign-born parents. (Killias 1989; Martens 1997; Kardell and Carlsson 2009; Salmi et al. 2015). These reports all indicate that this group is more criminally active compared with both foreign-born, and those born in the country with two native parents...

A number of studies were conducted targeting foreign-born and children of migrants between the 1980s and the first decade of the new millennium. (Kardell 2011). These studies all showed that the proportion of migrants registered for crime was remarkably stable, indicating an “over risk” at roughly 2 throughout the period. (Over risk is similar to overrepresentation, save for the fact that the comparison is made only with native Swedes, instead of with the entire population.)...

Judging from international research, it is hard to tell whether migrants are more prone for criminal activities compared with the native population. According to scholars studying the US, the foreign-born population tend to be less criminal compared with the US-born population, while the situation in Europe and the Nordic counties often is the opposite...

In Sweden, numerous studies show that foreign-born, compared to the Swedish native population, have an overrepresentation in registered crime between 2 and 2,5... The over risk in crime in relation to the majority population varies between types of crime and region of origin. Certain regions of origin have about the same crime rate as the majority population. Generally, migrants’ over risk tends to be higher regarding more serious crime, and lower with respect to acquisitive crime and traffic offence...

Another important question is to what extent over risk in registered crime reflects factual overrepresentation or whether it rather relates to problem of method, where an increased presence of migrants with a criminal record is due to discrimination in the judicial system, an increased likelihood to be singled out and reported, or greater police attendance in areas dominated by migrants. Based on a research survey, the Crime Prevention Agency presented various reports claiming that while migrants’ crime may be slightly biased, most of the reported overrepresentation still reflects factual reality.

Why are migrants overrepresented in registered crime? Many reasons have been suggested, including socioeconomic factors such as unemployment, low income, and lacking education (Brå 2005; Hällsten et al. 2013) along with demographic factors. Migrants have a bias towards young men, and young men are generally more criminal. Difficulties to break up and resettle in a new country, and various problematic ways in which they are received in Sweden - sometimes called “integration practice” - have been raised as other plausible factors behind a criminal bias. (Brå 2005; Kardell 2011)...

Skardhamar et al. (2014) compared crime participation among migrants in Norway and Finland. While migrants overall were overrepresented in crime in both countries, propensity for crime differed notably between country of origin. By and large, migrant groups overrepresented in crime in Norway exhibited the same tendency also in Finland.

Pfeiffer et al. (2018) examined the effect of refugees on crime in the German state of Niedersachsen by investigating crime participation over time. Altogether, refugees were overrepresented in crime, and crimes where refugees were registered increased rapidly over time. The report also brought to attention various investigations saying that the likelihood for refugees to be reported for crime is significantly higher than for German natives.

In 2017, the Norwegian Agency of Statistics investigated the overrepresentation studying crime among migrants and migrants’ children between 1992 and 2015. Overall, both groups exhibited higher registered crime rate compared to native Norwegians. However, the over risk fluctuated: in 1992 it was 1.5, going up to at most 1.8 in 2002, after which is actually decreased to 1.4 in 2015. The report suggests various reasons behind it, such as a changing mix of migrants and natives, or a potentially better integration. The fact that the over risk in Norway has taken a downward turn after 2000 is highly interesting, and the question arises: Has a similar recent change taken place also in Sweden?

Studies on Sweden tend to show that migrants’ children have a lower over risk compared to foreign-born: 1.5 between 1985 and 1989, and 1.6 between 1997 and 2001 respectively. (Brå 1996; Brå 2005). Sweden, hence, deviates from the international pattern, where migrants’ children have a higher crime participation compared to first generation of migrants. (Brå 2005). According to a study on the period 1997–2001 by Kardell and Martens (2013), the total crime overrepresentation of migrants’ children as a group is about the same as that of first-generation migrants. Migrants’ children are actually less likely to be registered for crime compared to first generation migrants. It is, however, important to note that migrant children registered for crime are often registered for more than one crime.

This is an important insight, raising the question whether second generation migrants in Sweden, as in so many other countries, show a higher criminal propensity than first generation migrants, in particular regarding crimes of violence. In Statistisk sentralbyrås 2017 investigation about the situation in Norway, various categories of crime develop very differently between first and second generation migrants. The results in Denmark are similar. Here, second generation migrants with non-European parents are more overrepresented in registered crime (Danmarks Statistik 2016)...

This article is based on statistical material from the Crime Prevention Agency, using the same method as the agency in order to update the material to 2017. For the first time, the majority of those registered as crime suspects are foreign-born. The proportion of those with a foreign background increase from 18% between 1985 and 1989 to 33% between 2013 and 2017. During these two time intervals, the proportion of crime suspects with a foreign background went up from 31% to 58%.

Concerning certain types of crime, migrants’ over risk is even higher. Regarding murder and manslaughter, the proportion rose from 42% to 72%. At the same time, however, migrants’ over risk for crime only increased slightly. How is this possible? Because practically the entire increase in crime propensity among migrants was caused by the fact that their share of the population had increased. This is an important observation. The reason behind the rising trend, hence, has little to do with individual migrants becoming more prone to criminal activity. The over risk among the entire population of migrants increased from 1.8 between 1985 and 1989 to 2.0 between 1997 and 2001. No further changes have been registered between 2013 and 2017. Registered crime among those who are not nationally registered has, moreover, increased drastically.

If we compare first and second generation of migrants, the development has gone in the opposite direction. Since 2005 and the publication of the second report by the Crime Prevention Agency, the over risk for first generation of migrants has gone down, while it has increased for second generation of migrants born in Sweden. The downward turn regarding first generation of migrants also applies for individuals from countries outside of Europe, even if this material does not include some newly arrived refugees.

Sweden used to be somewhat of a statistical outlier, with second generation of migrants showing a clearly lower crime risk compared to first generation. At the time, Sweden resembled the development in Norway, according to Norwegian Statistics Office. As shown by the present article, these figures no longer apply. Instead, we are currently witnessing a rapid increase in registered crime among juveniles with a foreign background. The proportion of crime among individuals with a foreign background has increased not only in general terms but also regarding most crimes. One exception is constituted by rape and attempted rape, where the group’s over risk has gone down considerably. Migrants’ share of other sexual crimes has, simultaneously, increased. To what extent this is caused by changes in the definition of rape as a concept during our period remain, however, an open question.

Another striking change has to do with the increase of crime suspects among those who are not nationally registered. These individuals are all from abroad but absent in the group of migrants because they are not nationally registered. Undocumented migrants, asylum seekers yet to enter the system, foreign gangs, and temporary visitors count among them. This group’s share of total crime saw an increase from 3% between 1985 and 1989 to 13% between 2013 and 2017. Information available for each and every definition within this group is unreliable. This means, for instance, that unregistered cannot be included in data about migrants’ over risk for crime, because over risk measures likelihood to be registered for crime per person and non-registered are not identified. Then again, unregistered are included in the more general statistics about migrants’ total number of crimes.

The number of those who are not nationally registered in Sweden is unknown. Migrants’ over risk in crime would most likely rise in case undocumented migrants and asylum seekers were included in the definition. There is an added complexity here. As we saw above, the group of not nationally registered now constitutes a large proportion of registered crime. This, however, makes it harder to compare migrant groups, because we can’t establish country of origin among those who are not nationally registered. The fact that undocumented migrants has shifted from being a marginal factor to constituting a significant proportion of all known crime suspects urgently calls for more research on this particular category...

Whether poverty in a new host country leads to criminality, or a previous criminal behavior from the home county leads to poverty in the new host country is an open question and cannot be answered without rigorous analysis. Without taking sides in this discussion, it seems difficult to defend the idea that people immigrate into a country without a lifestyle and a rather firm set of personal beliefs. Therefore, this article has not taken socio-economic factors into consideration."

Interestingly, the author wrote "The Trojan Horse: A Leftist Critique of Multiculturalism in the West", described thus:

"In this book, Göran Adamson unmasks the dark reality behind multiculturalism’s vain radical promises. Multiculturalism is a conservative idea, which is seen as progressive. Multiculturalism and diversity are about background, ethnicity, belonging, spokespersons, identity, and roots. Those who talk about roots talk about an idyll of the past, a historical Eldorado in contrast to universal suffrage, technological progress, equality between men and women, and everything else that belongs to modern society. A conservative ideology does not become more radical just because it is being cherished by journalists, politicians, and academics who say they are.

Criticism against diversity, we are told, comes from the right. Göran Adamson takes the opposite position. Convincing criticism against diversity always comes from the left, from those who advocate meritocracy instead of group rights, majority and democracy instead of adoration of minorities, equality between men and women instead of patriarchy, the rule of law instead of ‘minority legislation’, science instead of belief, debate instead of censorship, modernity and the bliss of forgetting instead of an obsession with historical injustice. The only Swedish political party talking about roots with enthusiasm similar to that of the multiculturalists is the Sweden Democrats, a right wing populist party. Moreover, the ideology of diversity shows numerous similarities with neoliberalism. Neoliberalism profits from diversity, and diversity comes in handy to the neoliberals. The European establishment has allowed a Trojan Horse into it’s midst."

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Our illiberal empire of rights

Our illiberal empire of rights
 

"Human rights occupy a peculiar position at the present time. Pretty well every other idea and practice — gender, nation, family and the like — is deconstructed and dismissed as an artefact of power. But deconstruction seems not to extend to rights, and even as other values and institutions are condemned as moribund or oppressive, human rights are inflated and extended to cover practically every human interaction.

Numinous objects of piety and reverence, rights carry an authority no moral or political argument can match. As a result, questions in ethics and politics to which in the past there could be a variety of reasonable responses are now seen as having only one correct answer. If you find that answer unsatisfactory, you are not just disagreeing with other people. You are rejecting an imperative from which dissent is not permitted.

The position of rights is particularly incongruous in this country. More than in any other modern state, Britain’s constitution consists of precedents and conventions arising from historic political settlements. There is no body of rights codified in law that can constrain the sovereignty of parliament, while parliament itself is governed by precedent and accepted procedures.

The European Convention of Human Rights was incorporated into UK law in the Human Rights Act of 1998, and since then, the judges of what has become Britain’s Supreme Court can determine whether the rights recognised in the Convention are being respected by governments and legislators. But authority and legitimacy still reside in parliament rather than in any judicial body, and the ultimate determinant in any major public issue remains a political decision, not a legal interpretation.

A situation in which major issues are resolved through the compromises of politics is intolerable to contemporary liberal thinkers. For them, law is a repository of moral truth, which can be determined beyond reasonable doubt. Disagreement on basic moral issues is evidence of error, which law should correct. If you think like this, British institutions are fundamentally defective...

Jonathan Sumption’s Reith lectures on “Law and the Decline of Politics” present a considered response to these demands. His argument throughout is that inflating human rights beyond a baseline guaranteeing individual security and freedoms of expression and association imposes too great a burden on law, and leads to a dangerous shrinkage in political participation. Effectively, law is usurping politics...

"Very many judicial decisions about fundamental rights are themselves political choices only made by a smaller and unrepresentative body of people.”...

In the late Eighties, an American discourse of rights had already displaced the British liberal tradition embodied in the work of John Stuart Mill. It tends to be forgotten that Mill is not a theorist of rights. It is true that his celebrated principle of liberty, which forbids curbing individual liberty except when harm to others may be done, stakes out a protected zone of individual freedom. But the scope of that zone is not determined by rights. It is identified by a calculus of utility, the results of which will vary according to changing circumstances...

As an attempt to revive this British tradition, Sumption’s lectures make a pivotal contribution to public discourse. We need reminding that the empire of rights is recent and comes with large costs. Whether Sumption’s argument will be heeded is doubtful, however. The hollowing out of politics that has occurred, along with the expansion of rights, is hardly inadvertent. It reflects the anti-political liberalism that is in vogue in English-speaking countries.

As formulated by John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin among others, American liberal legalism understands politics as a sphere of collective decision-making containing only what is left over once the demands of justice and rights have been met. The marginalisation of politics is the principal objective of the new liberalism that has come to power over the past generation...

Liberalism has mutated from being a philosophy of tolerance that allows individuals and communities with different values to live together peaceably, to one that aims to enforce what are judged to be the correct values on everybody. Along with the practice of public shaming and ostracism, the proliferation of rights is one of the central strategies adopted to achieve this end.

The result is a culture of conformity in some ways more repressive than that of Victorian times. John Stuart Mill may have complained bitterly against the tyranny of public opinion, but what he had to contend with was chiefly unpleasant gossip about his irregular friendship with Harriet Taylor. He was not threatened in his career or livelihood, whereas dissidents from today’s orthodoxies may face being driven from both.

The censoriousness of rights-based cultures today is not accidental. The inflation of rights endangers not only democracy but also personal freedom, for it de-legitimates what was once an accepted diversity of moral viewpoints. If only one view of a contentious issue — abortion, say — is judged to be in accord with human rights, all other views are not only mistaken, but criminal...

An over-extended empire of rights comes with a number of disadvantages. It hollows out democracy by removing ever more issues from public political choice. It imperils personal freedom by criminalising what used to be legitimate moral differences and polarises society by turning those differences into conflicts that cannot be settled by reasonable compromise. In all of these ways, the empire of rights has the effect of undermining social acceptance of liberal values.

But the illiberal empire of rights has another and more fundamental disadvantage. It is inherently unstable. There are many ways of understanding populism, but one that seems plausible to me is that it is a reaction against an attempt to remove certain issues from the domain of democratic decision-making. If only one view of immigration is deemed rational and morally tolerable, the issue is effectively excluded from public debate. At the same time, a space is created for demagogues."

On judicial activism

There was a chap who claimed that the UK was oppressive because until the Human Rights Act, there was no codified list of rights, ignoring the long tradition of British common law

Links - 28th October 2020

Should Father's Day be banned because it's disrespectful to single mothers and same sex couples?
Yet if you abolish Mother's Day (or should I say Day for People with Uteruses who have Offspring)...

 
SG TUFF - Singapore Tenants United For Fairness - Posts - "Ian has two stalls in a food court in an industrial area. Monthly rental is $13, 000 for both. He was given a rental rebate of 65% for one month. Period. He did not even get the full amount from the property tax rebates. For F&B, there is no more dishes to wash nor tables to clean. But the landlord still make them pay the full washing fees at $1300 per stall. Fine. As the Exhaust system and Aircon is centrally controlled, the landlord switched them off to save his own costs! (Note that it is an offence to operate without the exhaust for F&B). He switched off ALL ten air conditioners and refused to turn on even ONE for the staff. One of Ian’s workers had such terrible heat rash as a result and had to seek medical help. In fact, it was as hot as an oven in the kitchen and food court now that even kitchen equipment like chillers are begging for help. Just this month, two of his chillers broke down. Heat is definitely turning up as a result of the bullying tactics of the landlord but Ian has to swallow it all."

SG TUFF - Singapore Tenants United For Fairness - Posts - "“When we rent new stalls, in the midst of the agreement, or when we renew our contracts (basically it could be anytime), the foodcourt management would collect a $10K-$40K renovation fees. But after so many years, I know there are no planned future works. They never come. We just have to pay our way to the better locations”. The crux of the problem here is, the “renovation fee” can be imposed by landlord at whim. There is no accountability to how the fee will be used. More than that, these are sometimes NOT in the tenancy agreement upfront but imposed mid-way. If he wants to keep the business he worked so hard to build up or not lose his security deposits, he has to pay. Thus, while the landlord does not have the right to increase the rent during the period of the agreement, the landlord does otherwise have the power to impose additional costs on the tenant under the lease. Additional costs may be imposed through a number of clauses which give landlords the right to claim expenditure reasonably and properly incurred in respect of the building or premises. Daniel had to pay or risked chased away. He did not have a choice.
Daniel also had to use the assigned contractors for renovations and maintenance works. There are also all sorts of fees collected to ensure compliance to standards. For example, a Video Serial Interface installation fee of $1,000 and a Kitchen Design Fee of $1,000. For regular repairs, Daniel also had a list of assigned contractors to contact. Fortunately, “the local managers have some heart and will sometime close one eye and ask me fix it myself. Or else the rates will be exorbitant, even for small fixes”...  
For Utilities like gas, electricity, water, sewerage and telecommunications, there are often hefty deposits and “designated suppliers” which charge higher than usual rates. One would think such bulk purchase by all the tenants of the foodcourt would equate to cheaper, more favourable rates but unfortunately this is not the case. For example, Daniel had to use gas suppliers who charge $11-$16 per metric ton when SP Gas is only about $8 per metic ton. These costs increased his monthly costs by great amounts. He did not have a choice.If Daniel’s stall is unable to achieve monthly sales of minimally $45K each month for three months, it would be a breach of agreement. If Daniel’s stall cannot get an A grade in its SFA inspection, it would be a breach of agreement. On top of that, the operator can terminate agreement with no reasons with just one month’s notice. These are all terms that lean in favour of a landlord."

Should gamers be accountable for in-game war crimes?
First world problems
So much for the 'myth' of the slippery slope

Harry Potter Butterbeer copycat recipe - "What Jayson and Florell developed is a two-part beverage: sweet-flavored soda on the bottom with a creamy whipped flavored head on top. When sipped, the flavors combine for a taste that makes you think of caramel butter cookies.The drink looks like a beer, but it has no alcohol in it, and the foam is not a by-product of the drink. It’s added separately, and you cannot get a drink without it. That makes it hard for a curious person like me to tell what the soda tastes like on its own. Hard for sure, but not impossible...
According to The Huffington Post, J.K. Rowling was adamant that Butterbeer is a dairy-free product:
“…because Universal Orlando wanted as many guests as possible to be able to sample this brew (and that included the lactose intolerant), there could be no butter, or dairy products of any kind, in Butterbeer.”
This information means that virtually every copycat recipe you’ll find on the cyberwebs is incorrect since they call for either ice cream, evaporated milk, half-and-half, cream, butter, or some other cow product. Dairy may be an easy and obvious way to make foam, but in this case it’s not the right way."

2011 Census analysis - Office for National Statistics
In the UK, Chinese and Other Asian (non-South Asian) women are significantly more likely to be in inter-ethnic relationships than men. This suggests that US-specific explanations like immigration laws about why East Asian males are considered less desirable than East Asian females are bunk. This is linked to how the same US-specific explanation about why the US has so many Chinese restaurants (linking it to immigration etc laws targeting East Asians) are also naively US-centric

Why Are Airlines Flying Empty Planes Amid Coronavirus? - " One reason to keep so many flights going is to help the airlines implement their policies that promote social distancing... There are also regulatory issues. The CARES Act grants that will give airlines money to meet their payroll come with terms that require those airlines to maintain service to virtually everywhere they were already serving... irlines have committed in advance to schedules, and changing those schedules requires some advance planning to ensure aircraft and crews end up in the right places and those passengers that do want to fly can be reaccommodated. In some cases, airlines have been dealing with the near-term crash in demand by canceling scheduled flights rather than formally taking them off the schedule, so you should not assume that all 13 of tomorrow’s scheduled Washington-Boston flights will actually fly... The airlines have ongoing commitments to pay employees — commitments that are strengthened under the terms of those CARES Act grants. They also have ongoing commitments to pay airports to lease gate space and to pay the companies that own or finance their aircraft. The biggest variable cost of flying, fuel, has come down because crude oil prices have fallen so much due to the crisis. And parking a plane has costs of its own and is more complicated than just leaving an aircraft wherever it is. The Wall Street Journal noted this weekend that Lufthansa Group has been having trouble sourcing the chemical it needs to put in planes’ fuel tanks to stop algae from growing in them while they don’t fly."

Misrepresentation of UK Homicide Characteristics in Popular Culture - "The homicide statistics of a popular UK television fictional crime series and the former Lothian & Borders police force region, Scotland were compared. This comparison was used to consider the implications for public attitudes which may influence the adoption of public health interventions to reduce homicide. 217 homicides were identified by 105 perpetrators in the television series 'Midsomer Murders' between 1997 and 2011; these were compared to 55 homicides by 53 perpetrators in the regional sample between 2006 and 2011. The numbers of serial killings (p < 0.0001), planned homicides, female perpetrators (p < 0.0001), shootings (p = 0.0456) and poisonings (p = 0.0289) were higher in the fictional sample. Lothian & Borders cases were almost all single killings, mostly unplanned, with a far greater rate of homicide by kitchen knives (p < 0.0001) and hitting/kicking (p = 0.0005) by intoxicated perpetrators. Control of access to pointed kitchen knives by members of certain groups may reduce homicide rates. If the popular perception of UK homicides is influenced by popular culture, the importance of such a public health intervention may not be apparent."

Facebook removes Fabrications About The PAP admin accounts for violating policies - ""This action is based on the behaviour of these accounts, not based on the content they posted."... Facebook removes accounts that clearly violate its policies, including people who misrepresent themselves, use fake accounts, or engage in behaviour designed to enable other violations of its community standards...
In 2017, Fabrications About The PAP founder Jason Chua was issued a stern warning by the police for breaching Cooling-Off Day rules during the Bukit Batok by-election in 2016."

I Miss Montreal Food - Posts - "You can now order food from any Restaurant, Deli or Bakery in Montreal and we will deliver it to you in Toronto!"

The Scene That Explains Why First Avenger Worked and Captain Marvel Didn’t - SCENE FIGHTS! - YouTube
Comments: "that’s the problem with writers doing female protagonists on film. Their so consumed with trying to make them fearless, powerful, and strong that they forget to do the most basic thing. Make. Them. Human. By that i mean make them have flaws and overcome dose flaws by the end of the film. U don’t need to make captain marvel a barely emotional protagonist. just use the same formula as u would with the male protagonist. Make them human, make them experience pain and failure and make them grow from dose experience."
"The only characterization Carol Denvers has is that she overcomes."
"Before the movie I only recalled Carol Danvers as the person Rogue absorbed and gained her powers from. After seeing the movie I remembered why I hardly knew the character. She barely has any personality. So the ones I truly knew as Captain Marvel was Mar Vell and Monica Rambeau."
"Captain Marvel is the "Rey" of the marvel universe. She doesn't require a hero's journey, courage or depth of character to be the best or most powerful. She just has to remember who she is... literally."
"It's so funny that a trilogy that was essentially supposed to be about it's powerful strong female lead, coincidentally had the actually only compelling character with an interesting journey be the male villain.Who then also promptly had to be killed off of course. Instead of capitalizing on the potential of how the galaxy and society reacts to the mass murdered Kylo Ren returning to the Light and trying to reform as Ben Solo. Instead we get to have Rey, who didn't really change at all throughout the three movies, and even the teasing that she would fall to the dark side was nothing more than a red herring."
"sadly the sequel trilogy's best writing is apparently "They fly now!"..."
"The problem with Captain Marvel is that she has no character, she's just a big powerhouse with no growth, no morals, and no humanity to her despite Captain Marvel being a great character in the comics, and it's because of how she was written and how Larson portrayed her in the film."
"When they introduced captain Marvel they basically introduced an unkillable god that can oneshot everyone."
"The movie claims that Carol has trouble controlling her emotions, yet she has the personality of a piece of celery the entire time. Her eyes literally have no emotion."

PFC Daniel Louis Paul Sauve (1947-1966) - Find A Grave Memorial - "While in their living quarters in the vicinity of Da Nang, the Marines were singing when one of them began to strum a M-14 rifle as if he was playing a guitar. Unknown to the man the rifle was loaded, there was an accidental discharge and a shot rang out stricking and causing the death of PFC Sauve"

Japanese academic forced to leave Britain due to visa rules - "A high-flying academic who travels the world as a Government adviser is being forced to leave Britain because of visa regulations...The world-renowned academic's work - which helps the UK Government to set foreign policy - requires her to spend long spells working in China and Africa.In 2009 and 2010 she spent around 472 days abroad, according to Home Office sources.Immigration laws now state that people working in the UK on a migrant visa cannot be out of the country for more than 180 days each year..."They changed the visa rule in 2012 and have applied it retrospectively to my travel in 2009 and 2010...Dr Hirono, an expert in international relations, has decided not to appeal the decision because the cost of the process would make it "impractical".Instead she has taken a job at a university in Kyoto, Japan, and the family are leaving the UK on March 29.In December, Dr Hirono won an appeal against the Home Office with a judge suggesting it would not be in the national interest to deport someone who had "made a significant and profound contribution to the academic framework of higher education in this country".But that ruling was later overturned and immigration bosses confiscated the family's passports a year ago."

Man Eating Shark: Unravelling The Debate On The (Un)ethical Consumption Of Shark’s Fin In Singapore

On shark's fin, cultural imperialism (I recall anti-shark's fin activists claiming it wasn't an established cultural tradition) and environmentalist misinformation (e.g. conflating the species used for shark's fin with all shark species):
 

MAN EATING SHARK: UNRAVELLING THE DEBATE ON THE (UN)ETHICAL CONSUMPTION OF SHARK’S FIN IN SINGAPORE
TEO LI GEK PAMELA

"As fieldwork conducted among Singaporean consumers in this thesis evince... The “Say No to Shark Fin”campaigns and the broader issue of shark fin consumption have also received a fair share of criticism and opposition from consumers in the country, with some accusing NGOs of being culturally imperialistic and denying their human rights to consume what they wish...

In analysing the discourses and discursive framings embedded within anti-shark fin messages, I explicate the limitations of the framings and the tendency of the campaigns in providing i) a monolithic presentation that consuming shark fin soup is an unethical act of consumption and ii) the reductive and homogenized portrayal of the shark fin consumer as an “irresponsible” consumer...

“...that great delicacy of the modern cuisine, shark fin, appears to have become popular at this time [Song Dynasty]”–Freeman (1977: 155)

Throughout the ages, the Chinese have considered shark fin a high-status food (Anderson & Anderson, 1977), one of the eight treasured foods from the sea*, which accounts for its popularity at banquet settings. The consumption of high-value food throughout Chinese history is part of the Chinese “foodway” –‘...a way of life that involves food, food habits, andfood consumption’ (Wu & Tan, 2001:1)...

* - The eight treasured foods of the sea are shark fins,oysters, abalones, Beche-de-mer (sea cucumbers), roe, fish maw and fish skin.

The association of shark fin as a high-value food in Chinese food culture is an embedded historical and cultural phenomenon. The consumption of shark fin occupies a long history in Chinese food culture, originating during the era of the Song dynasty (960-1279CE)...

Fins are obtained from any variety of shark species but the shark fin market tends to focus on around fourteen species, such as the blue shark and the scalloped hammerhead (Eilperin, 2011)...

Shark fin soup originated as a regional delicacy in the Southern provinces of China, predominantly in the coastal areas of Guangdong and Southern Fujian, where seafood consumption is a core essence of Southern Chinese cuisine (Anderson, 1988; Simmons, 1991)...

For the Chinese, weddings are one of the key points in the ceremonial life of an individual. Chinese wedding ceremonies are often lengthy elaborate celebrations and colourful affairs replete with many symbolic meanings. Although contemporary Chinese weddings have evolved considerably from the past and have become increasingly divorced from Chinese tradition, “tradition” continues to play an important part in the wedding, and the performances of various customary rites remain important to Singaporean Chinese (Hoon, 1997). For instance, while the wedding couple’s parents and members of the older generation no longer control celebrations, the rites and displays at weddings are still carried out to uphold the “face” (reputation) of the families involved.The wedding banquet in particular, remains a key and expected component of Chinese weddings rites, which incorporates the bride into her new status as a member of her husband’s family (van Gennep, 1960, also see Freeman, 1957; Yeh, 1969). It is a ‘consumption-oriented rite of passage’ (Boden 2003: 50) and a social performance that exhibits the social status of the families involved usually through extravagance...

Food served at a wedding banquet is one means of conveying and commemorating status, as it has a uniquely important place in the social scheme of things –it is a marker of ‘social status, ritual status, special occasions and other social facts’(Anderson, 1988: 201). There are complex social rules involved with food at a wedding banquet, where even the number of courses served has a symbolic significance; every Chinese wedding banquet consists at least an eight-course dinner, as the Chinese believe that eight is a lucky number, and certain dishes are always served during the banquet. Each dish is specially selected for its symbolic meaning –happiness, prosperity, longevity or fertility –usually to bless the newlywed couple and their marriage. For example, scallops are a symbol of fertility as the Chinese pronunciation of scallops (带子)is a homophone for the phrase “raising children”. Including scallops into a wedding banquet menu would bless the couple with plenty of children. Shark fin on the other hand, owing to its expensive nature, is a symbol of wealth and prosperity, thus wishing the newlywed couple prosperity in their new marriage. Given that the Chinese wedding banquet is a consumption-oriented rite of passage, serving shark fin soup also reflects the economic and social status of the host as one who belongs to the upper echelons of society.

The banquet itself is also a symbol of reciprocal respect between the wedding couple and guests. From most guests’ perspective, the type of food served is an indicator of the quality of the wedding banquet...

To the older generation, the presence of shark fin at wedding banquets is to be expected, as a sign of filial duty...

Shark fin, and by extension the shark, is thus entwined and entrenched in Chinese food and ritual.Seeing the role and importance of shark fin in Chinese food culture as a pastpresent presents a way for thinking differently about the politics surrounding the ethics of its consumption, one where the sustainability of shark populations, concerns of cruelty from fin harvesting are not the only things at stake, but also of responsibilities towards others through social performance and rituals. In response to anti-shark fin campaigns, one of my older respondents had this to say:

“All this talk about saving sharks, what about saving Chinese culture? Nowadays young people have forgotten their roots. If you stop eating shark fin, you take away more Chinese culture. Is that right you tell me?” (Wong, Personal Interview, translated from a local dialect)

Wong’s point encapsulates one of the main points of contention advanced by proponents of shark fin consumption, in that animal activists are practicing cultural discrimination by telling the Chinese to give up a food that is “central” to their consumption practices...

Modern geographies of food have arguably distanced consumers, both spatially and cognitively, from producers, as well as concealing the very social relations and environmental impacts underlying food production (Duffy et al., 2005; Hudson & Hudson, 2003). This “disconnection”between food production and processing spaces and consuming spaces has meant that the kind of activities in the former is far removed from consumers’ everyday experiences and knowledge...

Consumers may feel ‘increasingly alienated from the way their food is grown and processed’ (Duffy et al., 2005: 17-18). In addition to obscuring consumer knowledge, this disconnection also reduces consumer awareness on the consequences of their consumption behaviour, and has thus been thought of as a barrier towards the adoption of more ethical means of (food) consumption, as well as an impediment towards enacting ethical responsibility to distant others (Smith, 2000)...

Consumption is inherently built upon our moral and ethical obligations to others within our social networks –what Barnettet al.(2005) terms the “ordinary ethics of consumption”. Hence, this poses a challenge in getting consumers to expand their ethical considerations towards distant and absent “others”, especially when such considerations conflict with their “ordinary”ethical responsibilities. It is unsurprising that in weighing competing ethical concerns, the wellbeing of consumer’s immediate and proximate circle would be more significant than that of others. In their qualitative study on shopping practices, Miele and Evans (2010) showed how shopping for food is rooted in maintaining relationships and accommodating the desires of their loved ones and not about making statements about the lives of animals on the market. Jackson et al.(2008) notes how very local concerns for the health and well-being of the family may conflict with our wider responsibilities for the environment or the needs of distant strangers. This is affirmed in a later study by Miller (2001), who notes consumers are likely to act morally towards their immediate family members than they are to demonstrate a wider ethic of care since this would involve subsuming the interest of their own household members to those of distant stranger...

While all food has ethical implications, some food has taken on connotations of being in particular ways, more “ethical”...

These ethical alternative types as Guthman (2003: 56) asserts, throw up numerous complications with respect to their “care-full”nature, finding them overtly morally troubling on issues of access, labour conditions and ecologies by which organic food is produced. ‘To posit one assemblage as unwaveringly good and the other as altogether bad de-politicises a potentially powerful politics of consumption’. Taking “alternative food”as an example, Goodman (2003) argues that the concept of “alternative”food is inherently problematic due to its vague definition and what it is alternative to, stating that the idea of “alternative”food tends to idealise and promote certain forms of production and consumption uncritically. In her study on organic agriculture, Guthman (2003, 2004) asserts how beneath its seemingly counter-cultural image resides a host of unethical practices such as poor labour conditions. Moreover, many so-called “ethical”foods have expanded into the “mainstream”, becoming equally a part of more conventional food systems, bringing into question whether such “mass”production can match the same standards of “alternative”production (Low &Davenport, 2006; Goodman et al,2011, Raynolds, 2009). For instance, Goodman notes that one of the largest purveyors of organic food is Wal-Martin the world. Hence, the dichotomy of “good” and “bad” is complicated, when the “alternative”begins to become what it opposes, necessitating a need to re-consider the characterisations of “alternative”foods as uncritically and uniquely“ethical”, and conventional foods are “non-ethical”(Holloway et al., 2007). As noted earlier, foodslabelled as “conventional” and “ordinary”have their own implicit moralities and ethical relationships and meanings embedded in them. The “ethics”of consumption can thus be ambiguous, slippery and consist of a number of interwoven layers and illustrates a politics of “goodness” and “badness” in the foodscape that is worthy of investigation, exploration and critique...

These debates thus raise the fundamental question of how and why in the first instance, are the consumption of some food or animals considered to be immoral. Why should certain food or animals be subjected to moral consideration? How are their moral statuses defined and why are certain food/animals regarded by animal rights groups as ethically superior and drawn into the circuits of ethical food campaigns, worthy of protecting from the jaws of consumption. As shown in the empirical chapters of this thesis, many consumers have questioned why should the shark be placed in a position of a stronger, higher moral status as opposed to other animals...

The degree of complexity involved in consumption activities calls into question the simple evaluation of what making the “ethical”choice is. Ethical consumption is considered costly, complex and difficult, placing unrealistic demands on people as consumers by ignoring other identifications and obligations. This necessitates a consideration of whether the choice to engage in ethical consumption can be entirely “ethical”. Choices that are coded as “ethical” might turn out to be less “ethical” than they appear, while “unethical” activities might possibly be less blameworthy than the moralistic register of ethical consumption discourses often suggest. More often than not, there is no clear agreement on what the “ethical” thing to do is in any particular case, raising the question on whether consumer choice can ever really be entirely “ethical”. These ethical dilemmas are not easy to resolve and this poses a problem to ethical consumption, in terms of getting people to commit to a particular ethical food campaign...

There is a tendency to refer to “animals”as a distinct group, blurring differences not only between animals of different species but also of the same species (see Derrida, 2008). The latter point is of concern in this thesis, as across the 465 species of sharks, not all are threatened by the international “fin trade”; using the aggregate category of “sharks”to discuss and analyse the issue would essentialise shark diversity, as well as overlook individual shark subjectivities...

Initially, the stakes of the research and of this thesis were personal,in that I had moral and political obligation to understand the intricacies ofthe“shark fin trade”and its consumption, so that I might offer in return an argument for why humans should not consume shark fin soup. Yet, over the course of the research, my ethical position on the issue evolved from one that was aligned with the most forceful of shark activists’ arguments, which states that shark fin consumption should be permanently banned on the grounds of animal rights/welfare infringement and sustainability reasons, to a more “moderate” position occupied by some activists, which states that it is acceptable to consume shark fin only if the trade is made sustainable. The change stemmed largely from the fact that as I researched the topic in greater depth, it was made apparent that the issue of “shark fin trade”and consumption was more complex than I had originally conceived, as the empirical chapters will discuss.

Moreover, adopting an animal rights perspective would conflict with the theoretical underpinnings of this thesis. The call for human rights to be extended to animals has been one of the most enduring and prevalent not only in the anti-shark fin movement, but in the animal movement broadly. However, there are many objections to the rights-based approach, of which I will outline one main argument relevant to the body of this thesis –the suggestion that the human rights framework cannot provide meaningful or long-term regard for animals because it is fundamentally humanist. Mitchell (in Wolfe, 2003)argues that the very idea of human rights is inherently incompatible with animals’ rights, as it is built upon a human/animal binary. In other words, humanism precedes the concept of animal rights and it conceptualises the human as that which has transcended and has control over the nonhuman (Anderson, 2007). The application of human rights to animals therefore cannot be used to provide a means of meaningful ethical consideration for animals (Wolfe, 2003; Calarco, 2008), as animal rights theory retains at its core the liberal individual humanist subject (Landry, 2011).

Thus, while the animal rights movement seeks to widen the circle of morality to include nonhumans, it proposes doing so through an anthropocentric notion of moral value (Hudson, 2011). As Calarco (2008:9) aptly puts it, ‘It is paradoxical to say the least, that animal rights theorists have used the same anthropocentric criteria that have been used to exclude animals from moral concerns to include only certain animals within that scope and to draw only a new, slightly different exclusionary boundary.’Adopting an animal rights approach and utilising a model of rights based on extension 50to those “similar to us” only ends up reinforcing the very humanism that grounds discrimination against nonhumans in the first place (Wolfe, 2003)...

Inter-generational group interviews were also conducted with three wedding couples and their parents to tease out any divergent views on the necessity of serving shark fin soup at wedding banquets... It was interesting to note that it was the parents that dominated the interview, providing insights into the social hierarchy behind wedding planning...

On 16 February 2012, a public forum –“Shark’s Fin Soup: To ban or not to ban?” was held at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies to discuss the viability of banning shark fin in Singapore as a means of reducing consumption rates...

Dr Choo-Hoo Giam, Alternative Representative of Asia of the Animals Committee at CITES:

1. 70% of shark catches are from developing countries, taken mostly by artisanal fishing
2.Sharks are not endangered
- “Saying sharks are endangered is like saying birds are endangered”
- Several species of sharks that are abundant such as spiny dogfish and blue sharks
- Out of the 400 species, only six have been considered endangered by CITES
3.‘Live’ finning is rarely practised, misrepresentation by activists
“Most fins are humanely taken from landed, dead sharks”
Activists have misled the world into thinking live finning is common and pervasive
Activists’ claim of 73 million sharks finned per year impossible in terms of manpower, would require millions of fishermen
4. Anti-shark fin campaigns are a form of cultural discrimination –‘Sinophobia’
“Shark’s fin soup is culturally discriminatory” –there have not been similar high-profile movements against caviar or Atlantic blue fin tuna. Activists are unfairly targeting Chinese consumers
5. Shark fin industry is not to blame
80% of sharks killed each year are caught accidentally and overwhelmingly in developing countries
25% of shark catch comes from India and Indonesia, countries that are home to ‘mostly poor’ fishermen who will eat every part of the shark and then sell the fin to eager buyers
“fin trade”is unrelated to fishing of sharks
Media hype is responsible for ‘misconceptions’ about the shark-fishing industry
6.Banning shark fin soup is not a solution
fins from bycatch will be wasted
hurts livelihood of millions of fishermen in poor countries

Hank Jenkins, President of Australia's Species Management Specialists:

1. Critique on tactics used by shark activists
Exaggeration and manipulation of facts –claims of extinction are fallacious
Simplifying the solution –if Chinese communities cease consumption of shark fin soup, sharks will be saved
Vilifying Chinese communities for their consumption of sharks fin
Misinformation in anti-shark fin campaigns –activists fail to differentiate live and dead finning, claiming all sharks are live finned. Live finning is illegal and condemned by the industry
Images used by activists are orchestrated
2. Questions benefits of ecotourism for local populations
3. Banning sharks fin deprives poor communities of income...

Seafood traders, hotels and restaurants were hesitant to speak to me, as they were concerned that I was an undercover shark activist. Susan, a guest relations officer of one of the hotels I approached, informed me that her colleague had experienced an incident where an activist pretending to be a potential customer had obtained information about the hotel’s seafood source and had subsequently added the hotel to a blacklist... NGOs were similarly concerned that I could be working for shark trading groups, trying to uncover how much knowledge NGOs had procured on shark trading activities...

In terms of consumption, Singapore is the second largest consumers of shark fins per capita in the world (WWF, 2014)...

The anti-shark fin movement in Singapore remained relatively muted until 2009, when the Animal Concerns Research & Education Society (ACRES), a Singapore-based NGO, took the lead in launching a number of initiatives to raise public awareness about the impact of shark fin consumption on marine ecosystems...

In 2012, the anti-shark fin movement experienced an unexpected revival, reignited by a single Facebook comment made by an employee of a local seafood supplier, Thern Da Seafood.

“Screw the divers! Shark’s fin & Mola mola will also be launched at all NTUC Fairprice outlets during CNY [Chinese New Year] 2012! Exact date for launching will be out soon!
...

Its incendiary nature ignited an instant uproar amongst animal activists and the public the moment it entered public consciousness on 5 January 2012, resulting in a flurry of social media activity on Facebook and Twitter. Within a few hours, the comment had generated over 200 shares and 150 comments and calls for a boycott of the supplier and supermarket chain were made, while others complained to NTUC, calling on it to be socially responsible and stop selling shark fins.

It is interesting to note that nothing was said of the Mola mola. Similar to sharks, the Mola mola are considered a delicacy in some parts of the world, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, and some parts of the fish are used in traditional medicine. The Mola mola are frequently caught as bluefin and swordfish bycatch and as they are regarded as nuisance and bait thieves, it has been reported that some fishermen would ‘fin’ the Mola Molaout of spite before throwing the body back into the sea (Large Pelagics Research Lab, 2011). Although the Mola mola has been categorised as “vulnerable” under the IUCN’s classification,to date, there is no regulation of the fishery or bycatch of ocean sunfish, nor any conservation groups campaigning on the Mola mola. This thus calls into the question the “specialness” of sharks and their non-human charisma in triggering people to campaign on their behalf.

In less than 24 hours, NTUC released a statement it would withdraw all products from Thern Da Seafood and it would cease the sale of shark fin products by April 2012, becoming the second major supermarket chain to initiate a “no shark’s fin”policy. At that point, the only supermarket chain that had adopted the policy was Cold Storage, which joined the World Worldlife Fund (WWF) Singapore Sustainable Seafood Group in October 2011. Within two days of NTUC Fairprice announcement, a third supermarket chain, Carrefour, followed the lead...

The controversy was thus a tipping point for the anti-shark fin movement and a momentous victory for the anti-shark fin coalition. Not only did it result in removing a key retail supplier of shark fin to consumers, it had also catapulted the issue of shark fin consumption into public discourse. As Michael Aw, founder of the “No Sharks Fins Singapore” campaign,conveyed, ‘That was the moment... to take it to the next level... and we went viral within the week’.Capitalising on the currency of the issue, NGOs and animal activists began aggressively pushing forward their anti-shark fin campaigns...

There exists a great ecological diversity across the known 468 shark species (Compagno, 2001), differing in size, behaviour, biology and abundance, as well as residing in a wide range of habitats. Yet, despite this immense diversity, most humans’ awareness of sharks tend to draw from a select few well-known species, such as the great white shark, hammerhead shark, tiger shark and whale shark.Understanding of sharks is also often conflated into the singular of “the shark” –a fictional generic shark that embodies the prominent traits of various shark species.This is observed in the ways respondents generalised shark appearance and behaviour as they talked about sharks...

Although they may not possess the sort of “anthropomorphic cuddly charisma”that is frequently found in as the subject of conservation endeavours, sharks can be considered a charismatic species, possessing several vital characteristics that elevate them in the eyes of researchers, activists and certain people, even shark fin consumers(see Chapter Two). They can be regarded as possessing a form of feral and transgressive charisma(Lorimer, 2007)...

The term keystone species used in the second quote refers to species whose presence is vital in maintaining the organisation and diversity of their ecological community, as well as emphasising their exceptional importance in relation to the rest of their community(Mills et al., 1993). Given the assumed importance of keystone species, conservation biologists have advocated that they be special targets in the efforts to maximise biodiversity protection –what is termed as focal species, as their well-being can tell us about ecosystem health more generally...

In identifying sharks as keystone species, NGOsutilise the significance of the concept to draw attention to the importance of conserving sharks, and in doing so, elevate its(moral) worthiness for protection amongst the public and policy makers. Yet, it is important to note that not all shark species qualify as keystone species. NGOs continuously stress the importance of sharks to maintaining healthy oceans, drawing upon an oft-cited modelling simulation study conducted on the Hawaiian coral reef that the removal of tiger sharks led to a ‘total andrapid crash in the abundance of tuna and jacks’, due to the explosion in seabird population, of which sharks are their main predators. However, the same study also notes that the removal of reef sharks from the same ecosystem had ‘very small effects on the biomass dynamics’ (Stevens et al., 2000: 489) and concluded that the effects of removing large numbers of top predators like sharks are still largely unknown."

Too bad the thesis doesn't take a (critical) look at the geography of environmental virtue signalling as it applies to shark's fin - it explores the motivations for consuming shark's fin, but not really the motivations for opposing its consumption, taking ethical/environmental claims at face value. Given that it is precisely liberal urban elites who are into things like "ethical" consumption, veganism and boycotting shark's fin, I would say that it is actually alienation from food production that leads to late capitalist phenomena like "more ethical means of (food) consumption)" and "ethical responsibility to distant others"

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Links - 27th October 2020

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, My quarantine kitchen - "‘I am struck by how there are a couple of qualities you need to really cook well, that I've never been very good at. One is patience, there are certain things you just can't rush. You can turn up the heat and try to get something done faster, but it's not going to taste nearly the same. The other is restraint. You know, there are times when two very well chosen ingredients produce a much better effect than 20 sort of randomly thrown at it because you have them. And I think as an American, I always believe in the application of overwhelming force’"
 

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Coronavirus: Food’s frontline heroes - "‘I've been driving a truck for almost 35 years now… This is my lifetime dream. This is the only thing I've ever wanted to do. I wanted to follow my my dad's footsteps and my grandfather's footsteps and, you know, most of the kids growing up, they all wanted to be doctors and lawyers and firemen and policemen. I wanted to be a truck driver.’…  I've done a lot of disasters, hurricanes, tornadoes, and we have never gotten the attention that we're getting right now. It's amazing that I'm traveling up and down the highways, how many thumbs up I get, how many fist pumps were, you know, they want me to blow the air horn. Actually being able to see people on the overpasses holding some signs: We love you truckers. Well I guess now because it's a national crisis, well a global crisis actually, people are really understanding how vital trucking is to their everyday life, how vital we are to make sure those hospitals are supplied and how the grocery stores, all that stuff just doesn't magically appear on the shelves. It's being delivered by truck."

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, What next for restaurants? - "‘High rent means that restaurants really struggle to survive. To give you an idea of the cost of rent for restaurants, around 20 to 25% of restaurants’ cost is based on rent at the moment. And normally for a sustainable business that rate should be about 10 to 15%.’
‘And these high rents have a knock on effect onto the entire business. To operate on such tiny profit margins, you need to sell lots of food. So that even if you're only making 5% on a dish, if you sell enough of them, overall you'll make a reasonable sum of money. That often means opening more restaurants or doing takeout. But Jonathan says this doesn't always work out, especially if you need private investors to expand, which may put fast returns before quality. And:’
‘It also means that a lot more restaurants have to rely on delivery services. So we're talking services like Deliveroo and Just Eat. But the problem is, is that lots of these delivery companies take very cutthroat margins. So we're talking about 20, 25 30%. But very soon, they become indispensable to the restaurant, even though the margins mean they’re actually not making a huge amount of profit from them. The other thing which high rents and increased competition makes necessary is PR. And the reason why I find PR so harmful, one, it kind of inculcates this relationship of money to success. So that the more, the more essentially, the more money you have to spend on PR in the first place, the more likely your restaurant will get written about. And often these restaurants aren't the restaurants which actually serving quality food. And it means that the restaurants which actually are serving great food, but don't have the money to afford a PR eventually get forgotten about.’
‘And so why is it that restaurants can't just raise their prices to make their rent sort of a smaller proportion of their profit?’
‘For most people, the cost of eating out in London is already too high. Lots of people don't really realize the costs that go into food. And to justify a price increase would mean educating a customer about all those things. And that's not necessarily just about the food. It's about how the food is presented, about the atmosphere.’"

Cooking For Winston Churchill | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "You get the First World War, which does put a stop to the silliness and it does an awful lot of things. But it does put a stop to the Edwardian silliness and menus which were habitually nine or 10 courses get pared down to only five or six. At Blenheim they were 28 courses. But that's really over the top. You get in the 1920s and 30s more of a focus on ingredients now, you get market gardens are beginning to flourish a lot, whereas the old style gardens and country houses where you could force anything out of season, they are starting to be less of a thing. You can still grow a pineapple if you want to. You’re also getting you know Dole, Dole company is now importing pineapple so is there really any point in growing your pineapple when you can buy it in a tin? So there's a change in what you can get hold of and the prestige of ingredients. Some things never go out of fashion, I mean, the Churchills ate plovers’ eggs like there was no- Plovers’ eggs. Honestly, the one thing that comes up so much, plovers eggs, they’re a small wading bird, completely illegal to eat a polover’s egg today. The 1920s and 30s see this increased sort of interest in ingredients and freshness. There's also a real interest in worldwide food in the 1920s and 30s. There's been an interest for a long time but you do start to see especially recipe books which obviously always are very aspirational, but they're published and you get more recipe books that deal with Italian food, or Chinese food, or recipes from lots and lots of different nations. And America is sort of starting to raise its head. It's somewhere that we could look to really for the first time. And so you get these absolutely ghastly composite salads in particular from America. So if you imagine putting grapefruit and fish and mayonnaise and red pepper all in the same dish, that's your American composite salad. And then the Americans go one step further and then put all of that into a jello or aspic, normally dyed green. And this is vogue for sort of jellied salads, which are one of the nastiest things you could imagine eating ever... it's also the era where sugar peaks. So we more sugar in the 50s than we've ever eaten per capita since. And having cooked the food from that era. It is, some of it, teeth meltingly sweet"

Tom Ellis On The Incredible Story Of Apllo 13 | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "I think kind of when you have had problems within a spacecraft, there were some Soviet missions in the late 70s, early 1980s. Where you have these guys up there for months at a time, and they start to get on each other's nerves. There's a, one case in the, I think in the early 80s, where a, one cosmonaut becomes very offended that another cosmonaut doesn't like his poetry"

Ghee Bowman On Indian Soldiers At Dunkirk | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘There was a lot of controversy surrounding Christopher Nolan's blockbuster film, Dunkirk, a couple of years back. And the conspicuous absence of Indian troops within that. I mean, do you see that film as being something of a missed opportunity in telling the Indian contingent story?’
‘It was a great film. I really liked that film. And I think he, Nolan made a lot of, you know, artistic choices to focus it quite narrowly. And I think, I think I would say that if probably the French have a greater right to be aggrieved by what was omitted, or how they were presented in that film. Yeah, and he completely omitted any mention or any shot of the Indian soldiers. But then there was 630 amongst 238,000. And they were there at a particular time, or two particular times. And I don't know, I mean, I think, I think the opportunity is still there. I think, because it is there, because they're very visual. They're very visually appealing, these soldiers, you know, they look interesting. They've got mules, they've got turbans, you know, they're singing and dancing literally, on occasion. So I think there's another film that's out there begging to be made, you know, by some Gurinder Chadha or some great British Asian filmmaker, take this idea and make it a whole new film about it. And I think you know, I'm sure Christopher Nolan will be happy to see that as everyone else will be.’"

Henry Hemming On The Real Spies Who Inspired Bond | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘I think his mother certainly played a part in inspiring the name M. You've talked about Miss Moneypenny. There are a couple of candidates there, but there's no obvious candidate. And I think in terms of the style of  that relationship is very innuendo heavy, flirtatious. All the evidence suggests Flemming just did not have that with the people who are meant to have inspired Moneypenny. There's also Q, and there is a real person who ran something called Q branch and what's called Charles Fraser Smith. And he during the Second World War ran this, this department which invented incredible gadgets that people working for SOE or commander units such as the one Fleming was involved in would go to to get these gadgets before they went into occupied Europe. And usually these were everyday objects that had some kind of weapon or tool hidden inside them such as a invisible inks, there was garlic flavored chocolate for British agents heading to France, which, had all sorts of problems with, this was to try and make them blend in with the local population. I mean, this suggests that French people were eating garlic non stop which I don't think they were at the time but also garlic flavored chocolate, that's, that's never going to work. Another one which I read about and again I've got problems with is the shoestring which was also a garotte, because if you wear a garotte as a shoestring it's not really going to work as a shoestring. Anyway, this is legend has it, these are some of the things that the real Q branch produced. And Fleming knew all about this. He described a Q branch in the books. He didn't actually describe a Q in the books, but he was involved in helping to oversee the scripting of the films. And I'm sure he played a part in the birth of that character onscreen.’...
‘The villains. And because I mean, it seems from what your article lays out that it’s a bit of a case of be careful, you'll end up in my novel definitely.’...
‘He's being bullied at school by two particular prefects. One was called Blofeld, the other was called Scaramanga, and Fleming obviously decided enough was enough, he’s going to get his revenge… Goldfinger. That was another one. The Bond villain Auric Goldfinger was, was very much inspired by Ernő Goldfinger who was the modernist architect. Ian Fleming did not like his buildings. Plenty of people in London did not. None of them had the kinds of reach that Fleming did. And Goldfinger tried to take him to court. He tried to sue him, tried to halt the publication of the book. I think at one point, Fleming suggested he had renamed Goldfinger as Goldprick, but the publisher thought that was just gonna make things worse. And I think there was some kind of compromise where they were going to sort of downplay the name Goldfinger in the publicity. But essentially, yeah, it was unchanged. And I think Goldfinger was furious for, for the rest of his life about that'"

The Mistresses Of Charles II | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "The mistress who became his his chief mistress during all of the decade of the 1660s was the notorious beauty Barbara Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine and later Duchess of Cleveland. She came from a royalist family who had stayed in England throughout the civil wars and been quiet. She appears to have had a rather more colorful lifestyle during the protectorate than is generally associated with that period of time. She had other relationships, the most notable of which was with the Earl of Chesterfield. She may or may not have been involved in lesbian relationships as well, but she almost certainly refers in one of her letters to her love of the Earl of Chesterfield, where she invites him to come for an afternoon meeting with a friend, which I think is probably one of the earliest recorded threesomes in English history. I mean, they weren't talking about tea and biscuits, put it that way"

How to explain gender differences in fear of crime: Towards an evolutionary approach - "Employing data from a sample of 610 Dutch high school students and their parents, this article argues in favour of an evolutionary explanation for the fact that women are more fearful of crime than men while they are less often victimized. With respect to a variety of events that involved physical injury, varying from robbery to being involved in a car accident, female respondents were, compared to male respondents, more fearful of every event, judged every single event to be more harmful, and consistently rated their own probability to experience these events in the future as higher. The findings suggest that fear of crime among women does not represent a real higher risk of being victimized, is not primarily linked to the risk of being raped, and is not an isolated phenomenon. Indeed, women seem in general more fearful of all kinds of events that might imply a physical injury. The observed gender differences were not influenced by the degree of traditionality of the family of the respondents as expressed in status differences between the parents, in the division of household tasks, and in having an intact family. The gender differences could neither be explained by a perceived norm that boys must be more risk taking than girls. It is concluded that the observed gender differences may be the result of sexual selection that favoured risk-taking and status fights among males, and being cautious and protecting one's offspring among females."

Kyūjō incident - Wikipedia - "It happened on the night of 14–15 August 1945, just before the announcement of Japan's surrender to the Allies. The coup was attempted by the Staff Office of the Ministry of War of Japan and many from the Imperial Guard to stop the move to surrender.The officers murdered Lieutenant General Takeshi Mori of the First Imperial Guards Division and attempted to counterfeit an order to the effect of occupying the Tokyo Imperial Palace (Kyūjō). They attempted to place the Emperor under house arrest, using the 2nd Brigade Imperial Guard Infantry."
Presumably the people who claim that the atomic bombs were just to intimidate the Soviets and Truman was a war criminal because of the bombs think this was a false flag

Would Japan have surrendered without the atomic bombings? - "There were two broad camps among Japan’s war leadership in August 1945, according to Hasegawa’s research.The war camp maintained that Japan must inflict tremendous damage on the Americans in order to win better terms than the “unconditional surrender” offered by President Franklin Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference in 1945.The peace camp contended that ending the war as soon as possible was the best way to achieve both camps’ overriding goal: retaining the emperor system...Japan’s war camp believed that the Soviet Union would eventually help broker a peace deal. Even after Stalin ended a neutrality pact with Japan in April 1945 and began massing troops toward Japanese-held territory, Japanese leaders held fast to this fantasy, Hasegawa said...Hiroshima was the latest bombing victim, albeit with a terrifying new weapon. However, Japanese forces still retained several divisions in Kyushu that prepared for an American invasion.“The highest decision-making body was not even convened after Hiroshima,” Hasegawa said. “The cabinet was divided. The atomic bomb was effective enough that for the first time, cabinet decision-makers decided to really terminate the war. But on what conditions, they were totally divided.”...Even after the bombs and the Soviet invasion, some of Japan’s hawks weren’t ready to stop fighting, according to some historians.Gen. Korechika Anami, Japan’s minister of war, called for conditions that the world wouldn’t have recognized as surrender.Anami wanted retention of the emperor, self-disarmament, no foreign occupation, and trial of any Japanese war criminals by Japan itself, according to “The Rising Sun,” John Toland’s 1971 Pulitzer Prize-winning history of Japan’s war empire.Emperor Hirohito, who had thus far stayed above the fray, put the debate over prolonging the war to an end when he called for a surrender...Declassified archives show a great deal of disagreement among U.S. officials over Soviet involvement in Japan...“The documentary evidence is overwhelming that Truman wanted the Soviets to enter the war and that on Aug. 8, he was very pleased to learn that they had done so,” Kort said.""

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Violence and electing Biden vs Trump

I was asked who was to blame for the mass violence in the US this year, and what electing either candidate would say about the violence:


"That's a good question.

If voting Trump out stops the violence, that suggests that the violence has been organised in order to get Trump out. Do you think sucuumbing to blackmail is a good thing? Even if it works in the short term, it opens you up to more blackmail in the medium and long run.

Consider that even Biden has condemned the burning, looting and murdering. Do you think that the rioters, if they saw that their rioting worked, would not be emboldened to push even more strongly for their agenda? Some of them want to defund or even abolish the police. Others want to destroy the US, or burn everything down.

Of course, one counter claim could be that Trump is inciting the violence, which is why voting him out will stop it. But I do not see empirical support for this claim. For example, we are told that Trump ending in the feds caused the riots in Portland. Yet, we know that the riots pre-dated his actions and continued after he withdrew the agents. And liberals' justifications for the riots do not mention Trump, but invoke police brutality, slavery, reparations and that kind of rubbish. Consider too that we saw a precursor to the current riots under Obama - which naturally was before Trump - and his stoking of grievance politics laid the seeds for the current, worse conflagration.

It is telling that the media is pivoting from calling the riots "mostly peaceful riots" to "Trump's America". i.e. What used to be a non-issue yesterday is now suddenly an atrocity - blamed on Trump, naturally. Of course, liberals won't notice, but those of us who have a better memory (deliberately or otherwise) will.

Ultimately, I agree that he is responsible just because of his position - but he is not to blame. It is useful to distinguish between the concepts of blame and responsibility. I disagree that he can't do anything because he is incompetent. Recall that when he tried to do something, he was called a fascist - and there was active pushback from Democratic cities which wanted the chaos to continue (Portland tried to fine the federal government for the fence around the courthouse with the excuse that it was in a bicycle lane, for example). And he can't legally do much anyway.

And since you don't know, he did indeed condemn the violence. He even said the George Floyd incident was a tragedy."

Links - 25th October 2020 (George Floyd Unrest)

Arthur Kemp's Blog: George Floyd: A Test Case in Anti-White Hatred - "George Floyd: A Test Case in Anti-White Hatred - "The key findings from this report are:
1. No life threatening injuries identified (page 2 section III).
2. From the title of the autopsy report the cause of death is inferred to be cardiopulmonary arrest aggravated by law enforcement restraint and neck compression.
However:
(a)  no physical  damage to the neck or trachea is identified—except for resuscitation attempts.
(b) Suffocation by having weight restricting movement of the diaphragm—called  mechanical asphyxia—is ruled out. If this was the case, there would be tell tale signs, including oxygen starvation in Floyd’s blood samples.* Nothing was found that supported mechanical asphyxiation as a cause of death...
3. There is no evidence in the autopsy to support a death by homicide. This is an unfortunate case of a combination of factors, the most patent being Floyd under the influence of narcotic substances, his physical size and aggressive behavior. The role of the enforcement officers in this case does not support a conclusion of homicide...
the autopsy carried out within twelve hours of Floyd’s death indicated that he died of a heart attack, and not from being restrained by the police.The autopsy report went on to reveal that Floyd was, proverbially speaking, as high as a kite, and certainly near death from a drug overdose, at the time of his arrest. In fact, Floyd had a history of drug abuse, with no less than four previous arrests involving drugs... Floyd was suffering from the first symptoms of cardiac arrest and breathing difficulty long before he was restrained by Chauvin... Yet another flaw in the “racist white police” narrative lies in the fact that two of the officers charged in the Floyd case are nonwhites... Pressure from the mob and the Black Lives Matter groups on the politicians has reached such an extent that the city of Minneapolis even issued a “revised” cause of death “press release report” in which the “manner of death” was listed as homicide."

Heavy.com on Twitter - "George Floyd died due to asphyxia from sustained forceful pressure, according to an independent autopsy conducted by famed pathologist Michael Baden at the request of Floyd's family, their attorneys announced in Minneapolis"
"Independent"

 
Why to Be Skeptical of Michael Baden on Epstein’s Death - "Michael Baden has spent decades as the go-to freelance medical examiner on the media and lecture circuit. He testified at the trials of O.J. Simpson and Phil Spector (who had hired Baden’s second wife, Linda Kenney Baden, as his defense attorney). He has conducted private autopsies in the deaths of Michael Brown, Aaron Hernandez, Shannan Gilbert, and John Belushi. He’s been so frequent a guest on Fox News shows — including Fox and Friends, where he gave his Epstein opinion — that he was identified as “Death Correspondent” on the long-running late-night show RedEye.Hold Dr. Baden’s credentials up to the light, though, and a more checkered history emerges from his demi-celebrity status... Self-aggrandizement, however irritating, is not necessarily an indication of professional unreliability. The circumstances of his dismissal as chief medical examiner for the New York City office in 1979, and again from running the Suffolk County office in 1982, are bigger — and more worrying — red flags."

Complaint: Autopsy reveals nothing to support strangulation as cause of George Floyd’s death - "an autopsy revealed nothing to support strangulation as the cause of death. The exam concluded that the combined effects of being restrained, potential intoxicants in Floyd’s system and his underlying health issues, including heart disease, likely contributed to his death."

Melissa Chen - "Remember just a few weeks ago when there was broad consensus to apply heat on our elected leaders and corporate elites for gutting our middle and working class? When the priority was to decouple our economy from China's, bring critical supply chains home and rethink globalization? Seems like all is forgotten just because some CEOs posted some black squares with white words and our leaders wore kente scarves and took a knee."

Compare The Media on Twitter - "18.6% of Minneapolis’ total real estate listings have popped up for sale in just the last 7 days"
"Minneapolis City Council unanimously passes resolution to replace police department with a “community-led public safety system”"

The Taliban: an apology | The Spectator - "When the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, they embarked on a cultural agenda that we in the West mocked. As it turns out, they appreciated sensitivities that we did not recognise at the time: the threat that cultural history poses to the present... In our own time of crisis, as statues of Churchill, Gandhi, Queen Victoria, and even Lincoln have been defaced by men with beards (albeit better-trimmed) it is now clear that Mullah Omar was not just a fanatic pursuing a daft fantasy of cultural purity. He was modernising his country's cultural inventory, a process which Britain had not recognised the need for. Until now. The Taliban worked out - in a way that Britain was slow to - that public statues are not politically neutral. They are statements about who and what we honour as a society. They carry the power structures of one age into another. Every collective generation has the right to ensure their values are reflected in the statues they pass. Modernity means that the aperture narrows. Five years ago it was Rhodes must fall. Today it is Churchill must fall. It turns out there was a slippery slope—to utopia. There is a map of the statues that campaigners want torn down, in which we see such ghouls as Robert Peel (inventor of modern policing) William Gladstone (inherited slaveowning money), and Thomas Guy (investor in the South Sea Company). The Taliban banned musical instruments and dancing in the 1990s because they encouraged “moral corruption.” They would not have tolerated the mention of Fawlty Towers. And frankly, my dear, they would not have given a damn about Gone with the Wind. The Taliban drew strength from cultish beliefs taught in schools - and so, too, are we now seeing the maturing of a moral system developed on campuses. The Taliban were anti-Shia, seeing their revivalist Sunnism as the only acceptable version of Islam. The statue campaigners think they are the only acceptable heirs of liberalism, even though they represent just the strand of liberalism that emerged in 1960s coastal America. Under the Taliban, anyone who did not agree with their views sacrificed their right to have a voice. Today, we “no-platform.”... over the years, we’ve learned that our commitment to liberalism and free speech was outmoded. We won the battle over ourselves, and learned to see that the Afghan dogmatism that we wrote off as medieval was, in fact, the future.So if we put up new statues, we should perhaps give them a finite lifespan—preparing for the next generational conflict. That showdown will probably be about the environment. I will just remind everyone that Pope Francis, Michelle Obama, and Malala Yousafzai are not vegans."

We need to talk about Black Lives Matter - "we have seen major media outlets and politicians defending and even encouraging violent action. Some who have condemned looting, arson and physical attacks have even been accused of supporting white supremacy, a vile and disingenuous charge that is almost certainly intended to quash dissent. This has largely come about because activists, many of them white and middle-class, have taken the opportunity to exploit a worthy cause. The essential work of standing up against police brutality, as evinced by the unforgivable treatment of Floyd, is being obscured by a culture war that is freewheeling out of control. Those of us who have urged vigilance when it comes to the rise of identity politics and the cult of Social Justice have now been fully vindicated. For years we have warned about the ways in which the culture war had the potential to infect all public and political discourse. But we were dismissed as railing against niche politics confined to campus common rooms and the dark recesses of the internet. Now the culture war has exploded on to the streets of the UK. If that sounds like a fancy way to say ‘I told you so’, then so be it...  In all my life I have never met a single person who would not agree with the proposition that ‘black lives matter’... The latest protests have been infiltrated, and often stoked, by the presence of various groups who unite under the banner of ‘Antifa’. Like ‘Black Lives Matter’, these groups rely on the good nature of a public who are likely to interpret their name literally. After all, only a fascist would complain about anti-fascism. Even Mara Liasson, national political correspondent for NPR, fell for this basic rhetorical trick when she described the Normandy landing of more than 150,000 Allied troops as the ‘biggest Antifa rally in history’. Activist singer Billy Bragg posted an image of Winston Churchill captioned simply with ‘ANTIFA’. That protesters this week defaced the statue of Churchill in Parliament Square and branded him a ‘racist’ shows the incoherence of much of what is going on. To return to our common ground: not only is fascism vanishingly rare in the UK, but you would be hard pushed to find anyone who isn’t wholeheartedly opposed to fascism. We are all anti-fascist, which makes Antifa’s claim to be resisting a popular tyrannous force seem about 80 years out of date. The difference is that most of us understand that pepper-spraying a Trump supporter, or striking a UKIP voter over the head with a bike lock, doesn’t put us in the same bracket as those who fought actual fascists at Cable Street in 1936... our failure to instil critical thinking in our educational systems has led to many of the problems we face in today’s society. To make the case for measured and reasonable discussion of these sensitive issues is to open oneself up to entirely unfounded charges of racism. In such circumstances, most people would rather acquiesce for the sake of an easy life. We have even seen those who have raised questions about the wisdom of permitting mobs to destroy public landmarks being accused of endorsing the slave trade... we have seen a media and political class who are not interested in serious debate about the aims of the protesters, but would rather uncritically declare their fealty for fear of being mischaracterised... Hannah Arendt criticised the ‘rather fashionable’ tendency among white liberals to accept collective guilt, which she described as ‘the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits’. In this, she was articulating something that we all instinctively know. ‘Where all are guilty, no one is’... we must feel able to discuss movements such as Black Lives Matter critically, and not simply assume that its objectives are straightforwardly encapsulated by its name. How many people know, for instance, that part of the Black Lives Matter manifesto is a commitment to ‘dismantle cisgender privilege’ and ‘disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another’? The movement, in other words, is not solely about standing up to racism, a goal that anyone with an intact moral compass would share. Look carefully at the messages of the graffiti and the placards on many of these protests. Yes, we all agree that black lives matter, but can we really say the same for ‘all cops are bastards’ or ‘fuck Madeleine McCann’? That we have reached the point at which the majority of people are genuinely afraid of having difficult conversations is a tragedy for everyone... we are right to risk standing up for the values of a liberal democracy in the maelstrom of a seemingly endless culture war."

UKTV to reinstate Fawlty Towers episode The Germans - "An episode of the classic 1970s sitcom Fawlty Towers is set to be reinstated on a BBC-owned streaming service after the service removed it because it contained “racial slurs”... The decision was criticised by John Cleese, who cowrote the show and played its main character, misanthropic hotel owner Basil Fawlty. The episode included a scene in which Major Gowen, a regular guest at the hotel, uses racist language in relation to an anecdote about the West Indies cricket team.Cleese told The Age newspaper: “If you put nonsense words into the mouth of someone you want to make fun of, you’re not broadcasting their views, you’re making fun of them. The major was an old fossil left over from decades before. We were not supporting his views, we were making fun of them. If they can’t see that – if people are too stupid to see that – what can one say?”He said there was a “really admirable feeling that we must make our society less discriminatory”, but said: “A lot of the people in charge now at the BBC just want to hang on to their jobs. If a few people get excited, they pacify them rather than standing their ground as they would have done 30 or 40 years ago.”.. In an apparent reference to the removal of comedy programmes from its streaming services, Cleese had criticised BBC bosses in a series of tweets. He said that those tasked with making decisions at the corporation were “cowardly and gutless and contemptible”.The broadcaster was run by a mixture of “marketing people and petty bureaucrats”, he added."
Liberals complain that criticising racism is called racist (even when it is racist), but are unable to recognise satire as criticism of racism

Puget Sound Socialist Party - "A version of this statue exists at the Emancipation Memorial in Washington D.C., and at Lincoln and Booth in Boston.
Fact: The monument in D.C. was paid for entirely by former slaves.
Fact: The fasces, a long-time symbol of fascism, is prominently displayed on the plinth. (yes, we are aware that it meant other things in the past, and what it represents now is a fascist symbol that MAYBE shouldn't be displayed on a monument of a white man towering above a Black slave?)
Fact: The following is a real quote from Abraham Lincoln in a letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862.
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."
#TearThemAllDown"
We know communists are ignorant of history after all - that's why they still push communism

Brendan O'Neill - "So this week started with the toppling of a statue of a slave trader and ended with a school in Sussex ditching its plan to name one of its houses after JK Rowling because she has committed the thoughtcrime of believing that people with penises are men, not women. What a deranged week it has been. Statues attacked, comedy classics erased from streaming services, people cancelled for wrongthink on everything from the bullshit idea of white privilege to the nonsense of genderfluidity. Anyone who thinks this has anything to do with George Floyd needs to give their head a shake. His death is merely being exploited by an emboldened woke mob that wants to cleanse the public sphere of every idea and image it finds offensive. It’s time for a big public pushback against these loonies."

Brendan O'Neill - "I did a radio discussion today about tearing down statues and the person I was up against said that certain statues make him feel upset and therefore they should be removed. “Why should I feel unhappy walking down the street?” This is the narcissism of wokeness summed up. They really do believe they have the right to glide through life without ever encountering a difficult idea, an offensive image, a dodgy statue. Anything that makes them feel bad, or which simply challenges their worldview, must be swept aside. Ban speakers I disagree with, drag down monuments I disapprove of, censor comedians I find offensive. They want the whole world to be a Safe Space. Well, safe for them and people who share their views — but dangerous for the rest of us who would always run the risk of being cancelled or purged.This is why the statue thing matters: not because anyone cares about a monument to a slave trader, but because this is part of a broader arrogant belief that we need a woke cleansing of the entire public sphere. It’s statues being dragged down now; it will be people later."
"Where they burn books, they will too in the end burn people" is another example of the "myth" of the slippery slope

Economist Urged to Drop Post Atop Journal After Criticizing Black Lives Matter - WSJ - "A prominent economist faced pressure from others in his field to step down from an editing post because of comments he made criticizing the Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police movements, reflecting some of the turmoil roiling economics and other professions following the recent police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man in Minneapolis.The sparring this week between critics and defenders of University of Chicago economist Harald Uhlig, the lead editor of the Journal of Political Economy, comes during national protests over police brutality and discussions about racial inequality and policing practices... “Time for sensible adults to enter back into the room and have serious, earnest, respectful conversations about it all,” Mr. Uhlig wrote. “We need more police, we need to pay them more, we need to train them better,” he added. Backlash grew quickly on Twitter, including demands from prominent and rank-and-file economists for Mr. Uhlig’s resignation from the publication, which describes itself as “one of the oldest and most prestigious journals in economics.”"
When even economics gets attacked by SJWs wanting to destroy academic freedom

Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts - "During a Black Lives Matter protest a white woman threw a Molotov cocktail at a police vehicle, when she was arrested she blamed a black man for giving her the explosive. She got it from a white man.She lost the narrative somewhere along the way...“When 27-year-old Samantha Shader was first arrested for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at police, she told detectives that the supplies—including glass bottles—were given to her by a group of Black men and women, according to federal court records.”“But weeks later, on Friday, police arrested a white man who admitted to providing the materials, 29-year-old Timothy Amerman.”"

white supremacy culture | Culturally Responsive Leadership
Resources for teachers to indoctrinate their students into hating white people

Nathan Cofnas on Twitter - "1745: David Hume denied a job at the University of Edinburgh because of his controversial views on religion (he was seen as an atheist).
2020: University of Edinburgh is being pressured to rename the "David Hume Tower" because of his (now) controversial views on race."
"institutions etc could save a lot of time and money if they just renamed everything using numbers, ie, Tower 14; there could be secret maps, hidden plaques, etc with donors' names on the buildings, available only to the elect, donors etc would love it, would feel very exclusive"
"Just finished his essay on morals, surprised he hasn't been cancelled for pointing out men and women have different moral imperatives"
"Predictable, yet weird.  What do we learn about people's mentality if they condemn an 18thC man for a few racist words, yet want to canonise Nyerere, a 20thC man who - great though he may have been in some ways - also impoverished and abused the human rights of millions?"

What's Really Going on in Seattle? - "Are they peaceful protests or are they riots? Bonneville’s KTTH-AM Seattle host Jason Rantz was in the middle of the mayhem for ten hours...
It was a riot. It wasn’t a peaceful protest. When you set fire to five construction trailers, ransack and destroy a Starbucks, throw a munition at a police station, and spend your afternoon hurling rocks, water bottles, and other items at cops, it ceases being peaceful. Anyone who treats this as just a run of the mill protest, or claims it’s just a few bad apples, are either lying or simply don’t know what they’re talking about. There have been peaceful protests. This wasn’t one of them... Locally, radio and TV covered it well, highlighting the destruction and how out of control it got. The Seattle Times, however, was embarrassing in their coverage. They downplayed the violence significantly, they implied police were to blame, and took 14 paragraphs before they even got to the arson, and 18 paragraphs before they got to the munition attack... Nationally, the only meaningful and honest coverage I’ve seen consistently is from FOX News. I’ve been on Tucker Carlson Tonight, FOX News at Night, Neil Cavuto Coast to Coast, and the Daily Briefing for weeks covering what’s happening and why. MSNBC and CNN have leaned on Mayor Jenny Durkan as a guest, who is trying to turn this into a Seattle vs Trump issue. It’s not. We had three riots in one week. That is out of control and it has nothing to do with Trump."

Sargon of Akkad - Posts - "Black Lives Matter mural in Chicago defaced to say 'All Lives Matter'"
"Don't they know? Only Black Lives Matter."

'White Lives Matter' written on California street 3 days after Black Lives Matter mural vandalized
Too bad they didn't stick to something that's verifiably not vandalism, like tearing down historic statues
It's all their fault for violently protesting. They should have stuck to "mostly peaceful" protests, like burning down businesses

Meme - "Considering racism is a mental illness, should racists be disqualified from voting until they complete a re-education program? If no, please explain why you are RACIST."
"I think they shouldn't be able to breathe the same air as Anyone"!"
Also mirrored
Nothing is too much in the pursuit of "anti-racism"

FORMULA ONE FAKE: Lewis Hamilton’s ‘Black Privilege’ Revealed By ‘Former Friend’ - "A FORMER Friend of Lewis Hamilton has accused the Formula 1 racer of ‘Black Privilege’ following his public endorsement of the far-left Marxist Black Lives Matter UK group.The man said: “I was there when Lewis Hamilton was in go-karts. He was handed everything because he stood out because of his colour.”"

Noel Jackson - "I often hear the argument that we can't hold Antifa accountable for the violence that Antifa perpetrates because there is no Antifa "membership card," more or less.I say that is bullshit propaganda that dumb people use to shill for the terrorist group they are not-so-secretly supporting.There are many known Antifa cells, there are many known Antifa tactics, there is a known Antifa uniform, there are known Antifa protocols, there is known Antifa symbology, and lastly but more importantly: there are MANY known Antifa terrorists.As in, there is no question, we know certain people are Antifa and we know they commit massive amounts of violence.Keep in mind I'm not talking about dumb kids who leave their mommy's house for the first time dressed in all black and they cover their face and try to punch a white guy because he might be a Trump supporter and the news told them to. Those people are absolutely violent shitheads that should be locked up, but they aren't terrorists.I'm talking about REAL terrorists who plan terror actions in the name of Antifa.So here are some ultra violent Antifa terrorists:
Caleb Perkins
Kai Russo
Finbar Slonim
These three guys^ are more or less an Antifa hit squad, they have financial backers, controllers, and lawyers on call who will bail them out of any situation they get into. These guys meet every definition of the word terrorist... *more names*... So I'm going to stop this post here. This was 20 minutes of research, and I'm not a detective or law enforcement officer of any kind, I'm just a guy, and look how easy it was for me to find this stuff.Now, if I can find this stuff, why can't law enforcement? Most of these people have been filmed multiple times committing violence on camera, that's material evidence right there. Law enforcement could cut the head off the Antifa snake right now by just arresting the people on this list alone and offering them deals if they turned over a few other high level Antifa terrorists.I get it, group labeling Antifa a terror faction is dangerous, we don't want law enforcement ruining the lives of 18 year old kids who are going to regret their actions in a year or two, but the people I have listed here are cold blooded terrorists who want Americans dead or hospitalized. Why not just focus on them? Morally, what is wrong with arresting the organizers and the people directing the violence?"
"Meme: "Sorry pal, our movement is DecentralisedTM therefore you literally CANNOT criticise it"

Policing the Police: The Impact of "Pattern-or-Practice" Investigations on Crime - "This paper provides the first empirical examination of the impact of federal and state "Pattern-or-Practice" investigations on crime and policing. For investigations that were not preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force, investigations, on average, led to a statistically significant reduction in homicides and total crime. In stark contrast, all investigations that were preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force have led to a large and statistically significant increase in homicides and total crime. We estimate that these investigations caused almost 900 excess homicides and almost 34,000 excess felonies. The leading hypothesis for why these investigations increase homicides and total crime is an abrupt change in the quantity of policing activity. In Chicago, the number of police-civilian interactions decreased by almost 90% in the month after the investigation was announced. In Riverside CA, interactions decreased 54%. In St. Louis, self-initiated police activities declined by 46%. Other theories we test such as changes in community trust or the aggressiveness of consent decrees associated with investigations -- all contradict the data in important ways."
More proof for the Ferguson effect

The Associated Press on Twitter - "Still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and protests over the George Floyd killing, cities around the nation are facing another challenge: a surge in shootings that has left dozens dead. Experts say the spike in violence defies easy explanation."
"When you neuter law enforcement, release hardened criminals from jail, institute "zero bail" to catch and release criminals immediately, this is what happens.  It is only difficult for idiots living in a dreamworld to understand.  To the rest of us it's pretty damned simple."
"defies explanation?  Have the not seen cities like NYC that have cut funding to police, and seen a spike in shootings?  Wow, no correlation there.   Face with rolling eyes"
"Weird.  Probably nothing to do with the media and lefts vilification of the police."
"You have to be kidding me. Anybody with half a brain saw this coming. Anarchy on the streets of multiple American cities...endorsed and encouraged anarchy at that. And you wonder why we have an increase in crime and violence?!?!?! Good Lord!!!!"

BLM Toronto leader believes white people are sub-human, calls them 'genetic defects' - "A social media post has resurfaced from a Black Lives Matter Toronto co-founder in which she apparently argues that white people are “sub-human” and are “recessive genetic defects.” Yusra Khogali wrote the post on what appears to be her Facebook and attempted to use a genetic explanation involving melanin production to explain why white people are “defects.”"
"A charming message from the head of BLM Tornoto, who has been honored (a few years ago) by the city of Ontario for exemplary leadership."...
"“Whiteness is not humxness,” reads the statement. “in fact, white skin is sub-humxn.”  “White ppl are recessive genetic defects. this is factual,” the post later says. “white ppl need white supremacy as a mechanism to protect their survival as a people because all they can do is produce themselves. black ppl simply through their dominant genes can literally wipe out the white race if we had the power to.”  Khogali says that white people have a “higher concentration of enzyme inhibitors” which suppresses melanin production adding that melanin is important for a number of things such as strong bones, intelligence, vision and hearing. She adds, “melanin directly communicates with cosmic energy.”  In another post, Khogali tweeted, "Plz Allah give me the strength to not cuss/kill these men and white folks out here today."  After being criticized for the tweet Khogali responded by saying, "I am not a public official. I am not a police officer. The state does not entrust me with violent weaponry. I have never contributed to the mass targeting of a community. All I have done is used a turn of phrase, a rhetorical flourish, to voice my frustration and dared to be a person calling for justice.""
I guess Khogali herself gives us a good reason why BLM shouldn't get any power

BLM: rebels without a cause - "In a few short weeks, more black people have died from the chaotic and indiscriminate violence, excused by leftist media and politicians, than unarmed black people at the hands of the supposedly racist police in the whole of 2019... I referred to studies from Harvard, Washington State University and the City University of New York, which all suggested that police in the US do not shoot blacks more than whites. In fact, the evidence suggested they are less likely to shoot black suspects. More recent research bears out these findings. A 2019 study by researchers from Michigan State University, drawing on data compiled by the Washington Post and the Guardian, also found no evidence of anti-black tendencies in fatal police shootings.It is often noted that there are higher rates of blacks being shot by police when blacks are considered as a proportion of the US population. And this is true... Nevertheless, as the Washington Post has shown, while more blacks than whites are shot by police, when considered as a proportion of the US population, ‘the number of black and unarmed people fatally shot by police has declined since 2015’. Indeed, the number of blacks killed by police has fallen by 5.9 per cent since then, compared to just 0.3 per cent for whites, who still make up nearly half of all those killed by police.The statistics certainly cast a considerable amount of doubt on the now mainstream media narrative of systemic police racism. Chicago has been at the centre of recent BLM protests, so it’s worth looking at it in some detail. In 2019, there were around 500 homicides in Chicago. As of mid-June this year, there have been over 250 homicides. They have consisted mainly of young black men, killed by other young black men. Amazingly, Chicago police solve under 30 per cent of these murders. Is Chicago systemically racist? Hardly. It is one of the largest cities in the US. It is almost exactly a third black, a third white and a third Hispanic. It has been governed exclusively by Democrats since before the Second World War, and now has a black female city mayor in Lori Lightfoot, a black female district attorney in Kim Foxx, and a black superintendent of police in David Brown.It seems odd for BLM to be protesting in Chicago, of all places, about systemic racism. The facts suggest that if saving black lives is your chief priority, you ought to be demanding more policing and better leadership, rather than less policing and more leaders who happen to be black, as BLM does. Moreover, why does BLM never protest about the thousands of black people murdered each year? Why does it only protest when white police officers are involved? And why is it that many refuse to acknowledge the fact that crime is a problem overrepresented in the black community?The answer seems to be that for the likes of BLM, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, the chief concern is not black lives. Rather, it is to instil the narrative that the US is racist. As Booker T Washington noted over a hundred years ago, ‘there is a certain class of race problem-solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out, they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public’. Unfortunately, there is a lack of will in either the media or politics to challenge this dishonest narrative about the extent of racism in America.  Instead, many black commentators, scholars, politicians and celebrities like Thomas Sowell, Walter E Williams, Larry Elder, Ben Carson, Brandon Tatum, Candace Owens, Denzel Washington, and Morgan Freeman, who advocate proven remedies such as personal responsibility, reducing single-parent family rates and the introduction of school vouchers, are called Uncle Toms, sell-outs and worse. The Democrats have behaved particularly badly. Having sown the seeds of racial resentment in recent years, they are now reaping the harvest. Democrat-run cities, which account for 19 of the top 20 most violent cities in the US, are precisely the places where defunding the police is being floated as the ‘solution’... There are currently 36 black mayors of cities with over 40,000 residents in the US, and 16 of these are in cities where blacks are a minority, including Chicago, Dallas and the capital Washington, DC. Of today’s nine Supreme Court Justices, Clarence Thomas is black, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is Jewish, Samuel Alito is a second-generation Italian, and Sonia Sotomayor is Hispanic American. And black people dominate the lucrative sports, music and entertainment industries... In a debate on reparations, the late, great Christopher Hitchens defined racists not as those who discriminate, but precisely those who are unable to discriminate between individuals. Instead, the racist prefers to see individuals as groups, based on arbitrary markers like skin pigmentation.This is exactly what the so-called anti-racists are doing... The latest anti-racist lynching of America shows how much damage can be done by well-meaning people who follow narratives rather than facts, and who treasure feelings over truths. The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions."

Lucas Lynch - "Remember when many now justifying the looting thought a white kid smirking at a Native American man was a deadly menace?"
"Remember how we demand censorship for tweets seen as “fomenting and inciting violence” but all of a sudden fail to demand the same when blue checked liberals and celebrities tweeted out support for the riots and to “burn it all down?”"
"Smirking + being white = deadly menace
Looting + being intersectional = justice"
"Remember politicians asked you to stay home and practice social distancing but are now demanding you to take the streets?"
"He was grimacing."
"These are also the same people who say 'words are violence'."

The Yaboiposting - Posts - John Boyega: "Don’t waste time tweeting "you need to talk about police brutality against white people" go for one of your celeb coons for that. That Star Wars movie got you lot all the way fucked up. I am staying on topic. We are addressing a specific issue."
"“I expect White people to care about me to the same extent I DONT care about them!”"

Michael Tracey on Twitter - Amazon: "The inequitable and brutal treatment of Black people in our country must stop. Together we stand in solidarity with the Black community — our employees, customers, and partners — in the fight against systematic racism and injustice"
"Maybe if the country's most powerful corporations can adopt your "subversive" racial rhetoric without a second thought, your rhetoric is not actually subversive"
It's 100% a coincidence that this serves to distracts attention from actual shady shit that does go on - perpetuated by them

Pauline Hanson's Please Explain - Posts - "VANDAL ACTIVISTS PLOT TO TEAR DOWN STATUES OF CAPTAIN COOK
No doubt emboldened by the failure of state governments to enforce the law, activists are now plotting to tear down monuments of Captain Cook. This is why it was such a mistake to try and appease the mob, if you give them an inch they will take a mile. If our weak Premiers don't enforce the law how can you expect these ratbags to respect the law? Have we really reached the point where we need to have police guard the monuments of Australian heroes 24/7? Judging by just a few of these comments taken from social media we might have too! If we don't start demanding our state governments stand up to these activists and their lies, we will wind up watching as our history is torn down before our very eyes."

British anti-racism protestors call for destruction of Giza Pyramids

Nomadic Nomad Memes - Posts - "White man: "God... The history of my people is horrific.... I don't know how other nations of the world will ever forgive us" Mongolian man: "I wonder where we'll erect the next Chinggis Khaan statue
Is glorifying Genghis Khan fighting colonialism and white supremacy?

Uber Eats offers free delivery from restaurants owned and run by black people - "Khosrowshahi also reiterated Uber’s commitment to creating a “community that treats everyone equally and with dignity” and said the company does not tolerate “discrimination, harassment, or racism” on its platform... Uber’s announcement comes as numerous companies have pledged their commitment to supporting the black community amid ongoing protests against police brutality and racism in the US following the death of George Floyd"
Some races are more equal than others

Candace Owens - "Unbelievably, after raising $205,000 in 8 hours, GoFundMe suspended my campaign to raise money for the Parkside Cafe in Alabama. At their discretion, they deemed that raising funds to help save a conservative cafe that was being boycotted by a leftist mob, constituted "intolerance"... Meanwhile, they continue to allow funds to be raised to bail the very people that are looting and destroying these small businesses, out of jail.This honestly breaks my heart. Once again, conservatives and Trump supporters must adapt to a world that tells us that our very existence is unacceptable. That our ideas, thoughts, and now even our charitable efforts are unacceptable. That threatening, boycotting, and cancelling us is somehow permissible.The mob wants me to give up. Since my video this week reached 100 million people worldwide, I have had to deal with hundreds of anonymous death threats, plus the public posting of my address with a call to action for people to show up at my front door. Their obvious hope is that I will be bullied into silence. But it will never happen. In fact, I consider the mob to be my muse. They inspire me every single day get louder, to fight harder, and to create with even more conviction. If we can't campaign on their leftist websites, then we need to create our own."

Common Sense Extremists - Posts - Unitarian Univeralist church sign: "Black lives matter" *everything on fire*
"Unless you know better, the most likely explanation is this was set by a right-wing agitator."
Comments: "And then they say “rioting is language of the unheard. Rioting is justified. This is how you get change”“But still, this is the work of right wing agitators”.So just to confirm, in general, it’s okay, but this particular one is right wing agitatorS. Wouldn’t that mean it’s okay because he feels unheard?"
"So you’re actually claiming the Kenosha rioters are rightwing?
"Of course. The roaming bands of conservatives burning things down. "
"These are the same people that believe Trump is stealing mailboxes to prevent mail-in voting."
"Don’t they know the right wing is to busy working and raising kids?"
""Thinking that the Jewish people are behind everything? Nazis are such silly conspiracy theorists!" "Anything bad done by the left? Oh, that's just the worldwide neo-nazi network working against us..."And that's how you spot an extremist."
Comment (elsewhere): "[A] described the phenomenon before. Schrodinger's protester. A violent rioter is always a provocateur or covert cop until he is shot by cops, whereby the wave function collapses and he becomes an innocent peaceful protester."

Jordan Rachel on Twitter - "Remember that time republicans rioted, beat democrat voters, destroyed property, and torched American flags? ME NEITHER."

Michigan business owner under fire for 'ghetto' BLM post - "A Michigan business owner is being blasted as a racist over a Facebook post claiming the Black Lives Matter movement is reinforcing “ghetto stereotypes”... “The entire country is sick of your sh-t,” the shared post read. “Sick of the lawlessness, sick of the riots, sick of the threats and demands. The only thing you’ve managed to accomplish in all of this is to live up to the ghetto stereotypes. Congratulations.”"
Apparently there are no ghetto stereotypes

The Free Speech Union on Twitter - "Twitter shouldn't have censored the Tweet from one of the British leaders of BLM saying she wanted to enslave white people. In a free society, we should be able to see the views of political activists so we can make an informed decision about whether to support them or not."

Antifa’s American insurgency | Spectator USA - "We are witnessing glimmers of the full insurrection the far-left has been working toward for decades. The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis was merely a pre-text for radicals to push their ambitious insurgency. In a matter of hours, after the video of Floyd began circulating the internet, militant antifa cells across the country mobilized to Minnesota to aid Black Lives Matter rioters. Law enforcement and even the state National Guard have struggled to respond in Minnesota.Portland, Oakland, Los Angeles, Dallas and Atlanta are just some of the other cities waking up and finding smoldering ruins where businesses once operated. Nearly 30 other cities experienced some form of mass protest or violent rioting. At least three people have been killed so far.  Antifa, the extreme anarchist-communist movement, has rioting down to an art. The first broken window is the blood in the water for looters to move in. When the looting is done, those carrying flammable chemicals start fires to finish the job. Footage recorded in Minneapolis and other cities show militants dressed in black bloc— the antifa uniform — wielding weapons like hammers or sticks to smash windows. You see their graffiti daubed on smashed up buildings: FTP means ‘Fuck the Police’; ACAB stands for ‘All Cops Are Bastards’; 1312 is the numerical code for ACAB.  Last night, rioters reached the gates of the White House, possibly the most secure location on Earth. There, they chipped away at the barriers piece-by-piece while law enforcement struggled to respond. One Secret Service officer reportedly had a brick thrown at his head. Footage recorded at the scene showed him blood-soaked. Police were eventually able to repel masked rioters by using pepper spray and tear gas. That worked, for now.The militants uprising across the country want a revolution and they don’t care who or what has to be destroyed in the process. If their comrades die, they are elevated as martyrs in propaganda. Death is celebrated. At its core, BLM is a revolutionary Marxist ideology. Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors, BLM’s founders, are self-identified Marxists who make no secret of their worship of communist terrorists and fugitives, like Assata Shakur. They want the abolishment of law enforcement and capitalism. They want regime change and the end of the rule of law. Antifa has partnered with Black Lives Matter, for now, to help accelerate the break down of society.The US is getting a small preview of the anarchy antifa has been agitating, training and preparing for. Ending law enforcement is a pre-condition for antifa and BLM’s success in monopolizing violence. Those who are harmed first are the weak and vulnerable, the people who cannot protect themselves. Small business owners in Minnesota pleaded for mercy, even putting up signs and messages in support of the rioters, but to no avail. The destruction of businesses we’re witnessing across the US is not mere opportunism by looters. It plays a critical role in antifa and BLM ideology. Their stated goal is to abolish capitalism. To do that, they have to make economic recovery impossible. Antifa sees a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to exploit an economically weakened America during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s Going Down, one of the most popular antifa blogs in North America, tweeted"

Natural History Museum to review potentially 'offensive' Charles Darwin collection - "An internal review, sanctioned in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, has led to an audit into some rooms, statues, and collected items that could potentially cause offence.It warns that collections which some may find “problematic” could include specimens gathered by Darwin, whose voyage to the Galapagos Island on HMS Beagle was cited by a curator as one of Britain’s many “colonialist scientific expeditions”. Museum bosses are now desperately seeking to address what some staff believe are “legacies of colonies, slavery and empire” by potentially renaming, relabelling, or removing these traces in the institution... Legacies that may fall foul of the shift in opinion might be the exotic birds of Darwin and Captain Robert Fitzroy, as their shared journey to South American was “enable greater British control” of the region, according to the paper shared with staff.The great naturalist Darwin also has a statue in the museum's main hall, and a large wing named after him. There could also be calls for specimens gathered by Sir Joseph Banks to be addressed, as the botanist sailed with Captain James Cook on the Endeavor voyage in the service of the British Empire.The ceiling of the grand Hintze Hall, where Hope the blue whale’s skeleton hangs, could also be problematic for staff.The painted ceiling contains visual depictions of plants “like cotton, tea and tobacco” which were “the plants that fuelled the British Empire's economy”... The presence of a statue depicting Thomas Henry Huxley, known as Darwin’s Bulldog, could be questioned due to the scientist’s racial theories. The museum holds one of the largest collections of items gathered by Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish scientist who devised the Latin naming system of different species.He thought Africans "indolent", and his naming system could be seen as erasing indigenous terms for specimens then collected and renamed by European naturalists.The flora specimins of British Museum founding father Sir Hans Sloane, who benefited from slavery in Jamaica, also form a large part of the collection.Historical assemblages of items like Sir Hans’ Jamaican collection could be reviewed by the institution."
First they came for the Confederate Generals...

Everyday words and phrases that have racist connotations - ""Master bedrooms" were more widely implemented in American homes after World War II, intended to give working parents a private space within their own homes, Trelora notes.While it's unclear whether the term is rooted in American slavery on plantations, it evokes that history...
Blacklist/whitelist: In tech, a blacklist refers to a directory of specific elements, such as email addresses, IP addresses or URLs, that are blocked. A whitelist, by contrast, is made up of elements that are allowed. Though the origins of those terms don't appear to be directly connected to race, some argue that they reinforce notions that black=bad and white=good...
The Masters Tournament: It's one of the four major tournaments on the PGA tour and is usually called simply, "the Masters."... The name appears to have been a reference to golfers with great skills, but its connotations have brought the name under scrutiny...
Peanut gallery: The phrase typically refers to the cheapest seats in a theater, and is informally used to describe critics or hecklers...
Grandfathered in: This legal term broadly refers to the "grandfather clause" adopted by seven Southern states during the Reconstruction Era... Now, "grandfathered in" means that a person or company are exempt from following new laws, but "grandfather clause" in its original context disenfranchised Black Americans for decades...
Blackball, black mark: The terms both imply wrongdoing. If you bear a black mark, you've done something that people hold against you. If you've been blackballed, you've been banned from joining an organization because of something you've done.The phrases didn't originate in times of slavery, but the use of "black" to describe things that are wrong is subconsciously racialized, according to Douglas Longshore, a UCLA researcher who published a study in 1979 on color connotations and race."
More grievance mongering and 1984 language engineering

‘Kindergarten Cop’ screening cut for ‘romanticizing’ police in Portland

Common Sense Extremists - Posts - "Rest in power Summer Taylor.They were killed last night in Seattle after a man drove his car into a #BlackLivesMatterdemonstration. Summer was 24 years old."
"Wait, so since the driver was black and the victim was white we don't put race in the headline. Got it."
"How do you fail to notice that internalized racism caused a man to murder innocent people with his car simply because they dared say black people are people. Clearly racism is the underlying issue here no matter the race of the racist."

Rioters Burn, Loot Minneapolis After Murder Suspect Kills Himself - "More rioting broke out in Minneapolis after a murder suspect ran from police and then shot himself when officers caught up with him... despite the fact that police released video of the incident about 90 minutes after it happened that proved the suspect died by suicide, Black Lives Matter activists immediately gathered at the scene and began rioting"

The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 on Twitter - "McCarthy: "There is no place for QAnon in the Republican Party""
"Republicans have spent more time calling out their own supporters than the mobs looting and destroying American cities."

Wilfred Reilly on Twitter - "A permanent $50,000 memorial to George Floyd, probably including a statute and a street named after him, will soon be erected in Minneapolis. Some residents - in comments and a different piece - suggest naming a school after him. Thoughts?"
Deleted tweet: "Why not name the county drug rehab facility after him?"

These protests have nothing to do with racism - "The UK BLM protests are not about racial injustice. It is one thing to march ‘in solidarity’ and to demand justice. But what we are seeing here is a concerted effort to construct an all-encompassing mythology about what it means to be black in the world today – one that essentialises the black experience to be one of racism, oppression and victimisation, irrespective of any facts to the contrary. This pseudo-radical movement robs people of their agency and manipulates the goodwill of others. The attempt by these protesters to compare race relations in America to those in Britain is ridiculous and insulting. The two countries have vastly different histories and contexts... Despite polls consistently showing high levels of trust in police and faith in British democracy among black people in the UK, and despite the current cabinet being among the most diverse ever, BLM activists are determined to argue that British society is riddled with racism... the diversity of BAME voices on these issues is being erased. There are many different ideas of what progress, equality and fairness looks like, and how we could achieve those goals. But the one-dimensional narrative about white privilege, systemic racism and black victimhood is purported to be self-evidently true and indisputable. Several misleading statistics have been used to paint a picture of the UK as a racist society. One example is deaths in police custody. In reality, as the BBC has noted, ‘over the past 10 years, 163 people have died in or following police custody in England and Wales’. Of the 163, 13 were black. In fact, over the past 10 years, ‘a white individual who has been arrested was about 25 per cent more likely to die in custody than a black individual who had been arrested’... According to the Institute for Public Policy Research, the proportion of British-Nigerian pupils who gained 5 A*–C grades at GCSE (including maths and English) in 2010-11 was 21.8 percentage points higher than the England mean of 56.9 per cent, and much higher than the attainment of white British and British Jamaican children... BAME on-screen representation is at a ‘remarkable’ 23 per cent — this figure is actually higher than the BAME share of the British general population, which is estimated to be 14 per cent... groups of white people at protests are kneeling, apologising and begging for forgiveness for actions they did not commit, in a depressing display of self-flagellation and white guilt. It’s embarrassing. And it does absolutely nothing to move society forward. No ideas or policies are being offered – there is just virtue-signalling, power games and a pathetic spectacle that will only breed resentment and lead to a further descent into social disorientation... Anti-racism is no longer about fighting for the right of all people to be seen as individuals. It has become a corporation-endorsed movement about making meaningless gestures that do little to address complex issues... If you want to change society, start with yourself, start at home. I do not need to be told that my life matters. I know that my life matters, and I do not define my self-worth by the validation of others. White people owe me nothing and I expect nothing from them, other than basic respect for me as a human being."

Why did the protests over George Floyd turn into mass hysteria? - "One of the most distinctive things about the eruption of Black Lives Matter protests across the world is the speed with which they were endorsed by virtually every powerful institution and individual. From Hollywood to the churches, from big business to public-health officials, the word is out: support for BLM is essential, and in some cases mandatory... There is something perplexing about the way that elite institutions and powerful people are falling over themselves to be on the side of the angels. It is almost as if they have concluded that unless they act with haste in relation to supporting BLM, they will be in trouble. In some cases, institutions and companies have gone so far as to attack other businesses and individuals who appear to have strayed from the party line... As black actor Terry Crews has also discovered, only one point of view is allowed right now. He got called out for tweeting that ‘defeating white supremacy without white people creates black supremacy’. He was widely denounced. It is very difficult for a celebrity to hold or express genuine personal opinions these days. As one report notes, ‘People are urging celebrities to support Black Lives Matter online or stop posting entirely’... when even grown-ups behave like naughty children and ask for forgiveness for getting their words wrong, imagine the impact this censorious culture will have on actual children... When young children are faced with the demand to conform or else, it is clear that a powerful mood of illiberal intolerance is sweeping our societies. Threatened with being ostracised, children as young as 11 and 12 now feel compelled to fall in line. Suddenly, the term ‘peer pressure’ has acquired a whole new dimension... The language of intolerance is most strikingly expressed in the phrase ‘silence is violence’, or ‘white silence is violence’... the people who are most ferociously saying ‘silence is violence’ are not actually encouraging people to voice their views. What they’re really saying is that you are allowed to express one view – the view that accords with our doctrine. That is why even many people who have stated that they are against racism have been shut down. It is not enough to hate racism – if you are a white person, you must also acknowledge that you are complicit in all crimes committed against black people. Until white individuals acknowledge their privilege and signal their willingness to re-educate themselves, they remain on the wrong side of history. So the demand ‘silence is violence’ does not represent a call for discussion and debate; rather, it is a demand for linguistic conformity to a non-negotiable truth. It is actually about silencing those who disagree with the BLM narrative... The climate of groupthink has now become a kind of mass psychosis among white people desperate to communicate that they ‘get it’. We have seen videos of groups of white people getting on their knees and begging for forgiveness for their sins. These disturbing images resemble a medieval ritual of self-abasement. All that is missing is actual self-flagellation. At times, the impulse of self-loathing has given rise to a frenzy of moralistic outrage. The sight of Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, subjecting himself to the humiliation of an angry crowd shouting ‘shame, shame, shame’ confirms that we now have an epidemic of hysteria. The walk of shame being done by Frey and others, reminiscent of a scene from Game of Thrones, is not simply a response to racial injustice. More importantly, it is a testimony to the moral disorientation of American society. The pulling down of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol confirms that anti-racist protest has become meshed with an outburst of mass psychosis. What was really disturbing was not the actual tearing down of the statue but what happened afterwards. The statue was dragged through some streets before being thrown in the river. It was almost as if what was being dragged was a person rather than a statue. As I watched, a thought fleetingly rushed through my head: ‘What are they going to do next – open up Colston’s grave and rid the world of any trace of his existence?’ Mass hysteria, which is often an extreme example of groupthink, tends to disappear as fast as it emerges. But today, matters might be different. Today’s prevailing climate of intolerance is deep-rooted. The zeitgeist of intolerance that has already been institutionalised in higher education is now spreading through the rest of society. It will overwhelm our lives unless we have the courage to challenge its attempts to dictate what we may say and what we may think."

Mark Dice on Twitter - "Has anyone told them by rioting and looting they’re actually reinforcing the biggest “stereotypes” they want people to stop applying to them?"

Blaming Trump for the riots is a Democratic disaster | Spectator USA - "After months of trying to spin the nationwide unrest as ‘mostly peaceful’ or ignoring it entirely, Democrats have discovered some fresh messaging: the riots are violent and they’re Trump’s fault.Joe Biden seized on this new storyline during a campaign speech in Pittsburgh on Monday, telling voters that Trump is ‘stoking violence in our cities.’... To hear Democrats recap the riots, however, they were peaceful until white supremacist Trump supporters got involved. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler called antifa violence in Portland a ‘myth’ when approached about the subject in June. Mayor Muriel Bowser bragged in her Democratic National Convention speech about creating ‘Black Lives Matter Plaza’ in Washington, DC for the protesters, but did not mention some of those protesters torched the historic St John’s church outside of the White House. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan  described her city’s ‘autonomous zone’, which was forcibly taken over by armed protesters and where a black teenager would later be shot dead, as a ‘block party atmosphere’. Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded to the toppling of a statue of Christopher Columbus by giving a wave of her hand: ‘people will do what they do’. Rep. Ayanna Pressley went several steps further than her peers, encouraging ‘unrest in the streets’ during an MSNBC interview in August. No one blamed her for the Americans who were pulled out of their cars and pummeled for daring to drive on streets blocked by protesters.Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, promoted a bail fund intended for protesters in Minnesota. This would be disturbing enough considering the level of violence propagated by many of those protesters, but it’s even worse when you look at the other individuals who received those funds. One went on to assault a bar owner who was left with a traumatic brain injury after his release, another was charged with stabbing a friend for refusing sex, a third was charged with sexual assault and kidnapping, and a fourth charged with shooting at police. Biden denounced looting and rioting during a speech on June 2, but simultaneously blamed Trump and the police for escalating tensions. It was as absurd a statement then as it is now. Trump repeatedly offered federal assistance to governors and mayors as their cities were burned and looted. Biden must be in favor of allowing such violence to continue if he decries quelling rioting and restoring order as ‘escalation’. The Democrats in charge of those cities must have the same mindset, as many repeatedly declined the President’s offer of help... The consequences of allowing the riots to continue unabated are clear: homicide rates in 27 major American cities were up 21 percent in aggregate from May to June. It wasn’t until late August, after months of civil unrest that showed little sign of slowing, that local residents began arming themselves in a bid to defend their properties from destruction. This was a response to violence, not the creation of it. Citizens who watched as police around the country were told to stand down or were chased and burned out of their own precincts cannot be blamed for taking matters into their own hands when the state has failed them... So why, after months of his fellow party members denying and downplaying the summer of violence, did Biden unleash a speech in a swing state placing the blame squarely on Trump? Well, the polls are no longer in the Democrats’ favor. Support for Black Lives Matter has plummeted in swing states. Biden is underperforming when compared to Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Even Minnesota looks like it could be in play for Trump. These are all states where high turnout in rural and suburban areas — whose residents likely fear riots coming to their streets — could hand the election to Trump. The Biden campaign has presumably seen this trend and realized that allowing Trump to set the tone on being anti-violence is a losing strategy.Cue Biden asking people if they feel safer under Trump and portending ominously, ‘Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is reelected?’ Does that count as escalation? Because it sure sounds like a threat."

'I have a right to make sure that my home is secure': Chicago bans protesters from mayor's block - "Chicago police barred protesters from demonstrating outside the home of Mayor Lori Lightfoot... On Aug. 10, Chicago officials made the decision to raise bridges to the city's downtown in an attempt to prevent looting from occurring in the city's center. One jewelry and gift shop owner told the Chicago Tribune that city officials "have to get a hold of the city again." As she stood in front of her business, with its windows smashed, she said, "I feel like we are under attack and under siege.""
It's only good to protest outside Republicans' houses

Chicago Shootings Continue Amid Protests, Police Union Chief Now Asking Trump For Federal Help To Quell Violence - "“If you really wanted to help the city, let’s start with the fact that you would weigh in, Mr. President, on common sense… gun reform,” Lightfoot said. “It makes no sense that people from Chicago can go across the border to Indiana and buy military-grade weapons and bring them back to our city and kill our children.” The gun laws have not changed since the city’s last spike in violence, in 2016."

Chicago looters smash Ronald McDonald House with sick kids inside - "The charity says more than 30 families, as well as some sick children with them, were left “frightened” by those who smashed windows as they ransacked the Windy City during Monday’s chaotic crime spree... At least 13 cops were injured in violent clashes with looters, with 100 arrests. It started amid reports that a teen had been shot by cops, although police later said it was a 20-year-old man who had first fired at officers as he fled arrest.Ariel Atkins, a Chicago Black Lives Matter organizer, cheered the looting, calling it a “reparation.”'

VIDEO: Coordinated Attack By Antifa Leaves 49 Chicago Officers Injured - "The Chicago Police Department (CPD) released video of the mayhem at Grant Park on Friday when 49 officers were injured by antifa hurling bottles, fireworks, and other projectiles at them in what officials described as a planned “mob action” to hurt police... the head of Chicago’s police union called Mayor Lori Lightfoot a “complete failure” and asked President Trump “to help save Chicago”"
Strange, since according to liberals, antifa does not exist and violent people are all "far right extremists" or "police agitators". This is some 4D chess going on here

WATCH: Chicago Police Release Video Of ‘Antifa’ Using Protest As Cover, Changing To All Black, Arming Against Cops

Black Lives Matter Holds Rally Supporting Individuals Arrested in Chicago Looting Monday - "“I don’t care if someone decides to loot a Gucci or a Macy’s or a Nike store, because that makes sure that person eats,” Ariel Atkins, a BLM organizer, said. “That makes sure that person has clothes.”... “That is reparations,” Atkins said. “Anything they wanted to take, they can take it because these businesses have insurance.”"
Strange how we are told that BLM is not responsible for looting

Chicago Black Lives Matter Activist Reflects On Looting - "Ariel Atkins: A lot of people are really attacking our pages. They’re like, ‘Oh, you support the looters.’ And yeah, we do, 100%. That’s reparations. And like however people choose to protest, especially if it was definitely in line with what happened with the shooting, which would be powerful to see people reacting … without organizers just being like, ‘We’re angry and this is what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna take the power back.’...
What do you say to people who argue looting undermines Black Lives Matter’s message?
Atkins: I think that those people are forgetting the way that history has ever worked. The way that history has worked, the way that we’ve ever gotten wins, has never been through peaceful protests alone, and I will say with quotes, “peaceful protests.” Winning has come through revolts. Winning has come through riots. Winning has come through constant, constant work. … The only people that can undermine our movement are the police, our oppressors, and then us when we don’t believe in the people that we’re fighting with. If we are constantly trying to tell each other exactly the right way to do it, as opposed to finding ways to support each other and get that collective win, that is undermining. I don’t undermine my movement.
What do you think of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s comments about the looting?
Atkins: This is the same woman who literally said, ‘Well, I haven’t heard anybody in real life say defund the police’ when you go to her block and there are people that literally have signs in their window that say defund the police, when people are literally protesting outside of her house every day screaming defund the police, and then when they’re protesting outside of her office. So, you know, she can just say anything she wants. … The whole idea of criminality is based on racism anyway, because criminality is punishing people for things that they have needed to do to survive or just the way that society has affected them with white supremacist B.S. So it’s like her deciding what is criminal and what isn’t.'"

Controversial Black Lives Matter leader remains defiant as support ebbs away - "To be fair to Joshua Virasami, a key leader of the UK’s Black Lives Matter movement, he has never attempted to hide his politics.For the past decade Mr Virasami has made little secret of his hatred for capitalism, the police, the media, greedy landlords, airports, and Tories.But now the 30-year-old activist and his fellow BLM leaders face a hemorrhaging of support and accusations of hijacking George Floyd's death after they tweeted attacks on Israel, and calls to “defund the police”... The account of the semi-official UK branch of the US movement on Twitter, recognised by the social media site with a blue tick, declared in December 2016 that “prisons and detention centres should be abolished”... In an article for a left wing website, he argued in favour of rioting on Britain’s streets’ saying: “We must situate the riot as a legitimate and necessarily violent form of protest in the struggle for freedom within racial capitalism."In another he wrote: “Anti-racism is anti-capitalist, and vice versa. There are no two ways around it.” And despite support for his campaign draining away in recent days over its political activism, Mr Virasami has been unrepentant."
If even Twitter verifies the account, liberals who refuse to believe anything bad about BLM will still claim that a verified BLM account saying something inconvenient doesn't mean anything

VIDEO: BLM Protesters Mob, Shoot At Vehicle That Refuses To Stop - "A vehicle attempted to drive through Black Lives Matter protest blocking the street on Monday in Provo, Utah and was shot at as they slowly moved through the crowd... Immediately after the shots are fired, the vehicle quickly begins speeding through the crowd, even as more members of the mob attempt to throw themselves in front of the vehicle."

Black Lives Matter Chapter Co-Founder Demands White People Give Up Their Homes - "The Louisville, KY, co-founder and organizer for Black Lives Matter, Charlotte Helm, drafted a list of requests for white people for things she believed should change... change up your will, just in case any of your inheritors espouse problematic views. She demands: “White people, if any of the people you intend to leave your property to are racists assholes, change the will, and will your property to a black or brown family. Preferably a family from generational poverty.” Other requests involve getting “racists” fired, before bringing up the diminutive manhood of men accused of racism... In 2015, one of the BLM movements co-founders, Patreese Cullors, admitted that they were “trained Marxists” in an interview."

Black Americans Have a Message for Democrats: Not Being Trump Is Not Enough - The New York Times - "It dawned on Sierra Moore, 24, who attended the protests carrying a homemade sign that read “No Justice, No Peace,” that she and her grandmother have been protesting the same issues over the course of a century... “If you want change in America, go and register to vote,” said Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta, but interviews with activists and leading Democratic figures including Stacey Abrams of Georgia, the longtime civil rights leader and former presidential candidate Jesse Jackson, and Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, flipped that typical framework: If Democrats want people to vote, party leaders need to listen to why people are angry... the former vice president, one of the Senate architects of the modern criminal justice system, cannot confront racism without addressing systemic inequalities, and he cannot address systemic inequalities by simply returning to a pre-Trump America."
Clearly, a century worth of grievances are Trump's (or Republicans') fault, even if people live in solidly Democratic cities/states
One accompanying photo is amusing, showing a lack of social distancing and masks

Tim Young on Twitter - "Finding the black person in this Black Lives Matter photo is harder than most Where's Waldos."

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Should we remove controversial statues? - "‘Three major demands are in their Manifesto. Removing symbols of colonialism was only one of them. They were also talking about the decolonization of the curriculum, and about improving the rates of recruitment of black students and staff. Now, campaigners, anti racist campaigners in higher education have been talking about the curriculum and students and staff demographics for many years, if not decades, but it was only when they started talking about the statue that these demands hit the front pages of newspapers and media.’...
‘I said that I thought the Rhodes trust was doing fantastically good work. And I did that on the basis of having stood alongside Nelson Mandela, at a conference in Westminster Hall with Tony Blair and Bill Clinton in 2003. At which he said how strongly he supported the trust. He then said, in 2008, we had set up already something called the Mandela Rhodes trust, to help heal the divisions... he went through all the preamble of the South African constitution to underline this point, and finishing signing the agreement between the Mandela trust and Rhodes, he said, looking at a photograph of Cecil Rhodes: Cecil, you and I are going to have to work together now. Now, if it was, all the problems associated with, with Cecil Rhodes’ history, if it was all right for Mandela, then I have to say it's pretty well alright for me…
There is a bit of hypocrisy, as Mary beard said, the last time round, in Oxford, taking money for 100 scholars a year, a hundred, about a fifth of them from Africa, to come to Oxford, and then saying we want to throw the Rhodes statue, wherever it is, and you were very honest about that earlier, in the Thames. I mean, we have to-’...
'There's a group of young undergraduates who I welcome, who go around the University, have a guided tour showing people, the places which were got through slavery or for other aspects of our history which, which people don't... approve of. But take my case. I was a colonial governor. I was the last colonial governor. I recognized, not least in my last speech when I left Hong Kong, that we'd acquired Hong Kong in appalling circumstances, which nobody could conceive would be justified today. But there was, we did some good things in Hong Kong. So that millions of refugees from Communist China came there. And almost every aspect of history, you have to look at, you have to look at both sides. And normally there is more than more than two sides as, as Simon Sharma was saying earlier, where do you place Gladstone? Where do you what do you do about Jans Mutts? What do you about, do about Cranwell? My family were potato famine Irish immigrants. I've walked underneath Cromwell's statue going into the Houses of Parliament for years, what am I supposed to think about it? What is a visiting Irish politician supposed to think about it? These are incredibly complicated issues. And we actually have to have a sensible discussion. And I'm pleased that it is turning into a discussion, not into acts of violence'"
Of course, we are still told that saying that destroying statues of slaveholders is only the beginning, this is the "myth" of the "slippery slope" Looks like Mandela needs to be cancelled for enabling white supremacy, since he was for reconciliation instead of destroying everything BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Tuesday’s business with Dominic O'Connell (link unavailable) - “One of Britain's top business schools, the Cass Business School in central London, is going to drop Cass from its name. It adopted that name just 18 years ago, after Sir John Cass, who was part of the early development of the British slave trade... [I asked] them why given Cass's pivotal role in the slave trade, the university had not dropped the name sooner
‘We genuinely didn't know. When the money was accepted in 2002, the due diligence would have been done on the Cass foundation, not on the name itself.’
‘But you must have known between now and 2002.’
‘No, no, no, we didn't. If you look now, of course, it's all over the internet. You look on the Wikipedia page, and you'll see on the, the section for Sir John Cass, it’s mentioned of the link with the, with the slave trade, but that was added on on the ninth of June.’
‘I was looking at your website earlier, and it suggests that 70% of your students are from the black, Asian, or the minority background’...
‘That's true for our undergraduates, yes, and about a quarter of our staff are BAME as well’”
Sounds like all the BAMEs members of the organisation weren’t alienated by the name (what we’re told is behind underrepresentation of “minorities” in whatever area). Either they didn’t know about Cass either (which means grievance mongers actually "harmed" them) and/or their school having the name of someone who did something now considered wrong more than 300 years later is not an issue to them

By the end of his life, Martin Luther King realized the validity of violence | by Hanif Abdurraqib
More than one person has thrown this mischevous article at me to claim that Martin Luther King Jr, in the last year of his life, supported riots. One person even proclaimed that to ay that he was against riots is whitewashing. Naturally, this is dishonest quote-mining

King's challenge to the nation's social scientists - " In September, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr., was only 38-years-old but already president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize when he took the podium at APA's Annual Convention in Washington, D.C.A re-reading of his powerful address today captures the urgent tone of the 60s, as he cajoled the nation's social scientists to 'tell it like it is.' In fact, to APA's membership, whom he addressed as 'concerned friends of good will,' his plea for help in changing a society 'poisoned to its soul by racism,' seems now ever more poignant in light of the tragedy that struck only seven months later...
"I believe we will have to find the militant middle between riots on the one hand and weak and timid supplication for justice on the other hand. That middle ground, I believe, is civil disobedience. It can be aggressive but nonviolent; it can dislocate but not destroy"
"Urban riots... may be deplored"
"They are a distorted form of social protest"
"Looting... [is how] the Negro [is] abusing property rights"
"A profound judgment of today's riots was expressed by Victor Hugo a century ago. He said, 'If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.'"
"It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crime"
"We ask Negroes to abide by the law"
"Negroes are moved by a suicide instinct in riots"
"we must reaffirm our belief in building a democratic society, in which blacks and whites can live together as brothers"
"We must never adjust ourselves to the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects of physical violence"
"It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence, it is either nonviolence or nonexistence""
MLK's actual speech

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