Saturday, June 22, 2024

Links - 22nd June 2024 (2 - Hamas Attack Oct 2023)

Head of NYC's $63k-per-year Collegiate School is forced to resign after branding anti-Semitism taskforce a 'power play by Jewish families' - "The head of New York's oldest school has resigned a week after he was accused of dismissing its anti-Semitism task force as a 'joke'... Task force head Anna Carello found that one English teacher had accused Israel of genocide in front to 6th and 7th graders shortly after the terrorist attacks, while two others had harangued a Holocaust survivor invited to speak at the school. 'I feel like Collegiate has become a training camp for Columbia,' one parent at the $63,400 a year K-12 school told the New York post. The allegations came to light after Carello sued Lourie for gender discrimination last week claiming he undermined and sidelined her investigation as 'punishment' for her working with Jewish families. Her report on May 17 found that some staff blamed 'wealthy and influential' Jewish parents for tensions at the all-boys school which had 'skirted close to one of the oldest and most pervasive anti-Semitic tropes'. It revealed that Middle School English teacher Dwayne Alexis had been 'relieved of his teaching duties after presenting controversial lessons on the Middle East to his 7th-grade civics class and 6th-grade world history class', with some parents claiming he had accused Israel of genocide. It also revealed that two upper-school teachers had been 'reprimanded' after asking 'pressing questions' at a school Holocaust Assembly. 'There was a Holocaust survivor invited to speak at the school and a teacher took it upon herself to press him on a series of questions, one of which was could 'the swastika be a symbol of peace?' one parent claimed... concerned parents were not reassured when her report came in at nine pages, compared to the 400 pages of the school's 2020 response to 'institutional and other racism that pervades so much of our society'... Four years ago an internal task force recommended its mascot, motto and seal be changed because they could be considered offensive. And last week, the class of rising seniors signed a joint letter to staff and parents demanding they stop trying to impose 'specific political opinions' on them. 'We would like to emphasize that the moral leadership best for our community is one that does not prescribe what we should believe, but how we should engage with others in rational, open-minded and empathetic discourse,' they wrote."
The perils of letting left wingers take over and politicise everything

Anti-Israel protesters tried to infiltrate Jewish centre - "“Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” masked anti-Israel demonstrators chanted as they hiked through a wooded area behind the Prosserman Jewish Community Centre... The anti-Israel activists, many of them carrying massive Palestine flags and with their faces covered, walked through a Jewish neighbourhood in North York to get to the ravine and intimidated several local residents along the way. “F***ing filthy f***in Zionist pig,” one masked male demonstrator screamed at an onlooker. “You’re a dirty Zionist rat. That’s what you are. Happy about killing babies, right? Happy about killing babies?”... One of the anti-Israel demonstrators is shown tearing down an Israeli hostage poster, while another was wearing a jacket emblazoned with a sniper scope and “Shoot Zionist” on his back. Sana Zaid, a member of Toronto4Palestine — a group that participated in the counter-protest and supports the encampment at the University of Toronto — shared graphics of an inverted red triangle above local law enforcement protecting the Jewish community, a symbol used by Hamas to highlight its targeting of Israeli forces in propaganda videos that has become a popular graphic used by its supporters. A protester is filmed defacing a local billboard with a red triangle as another stomps on an Israel flag in view of the marchers. One Jewish participant at Sunday’s event saw the attempted infiltration as part of a new Canadian norm in the wake of October 7 and the atrocities committed by Hamas during its invasion of Israel. “The Jew haters in this city have become increasingly emboldened due to a lack of response from all levels of government. They’ve gone from chanting Intifada and wearing terrorist symbols to physically entering Jewish neighbourhoods to stalk and harass Jews. When will it end?”... Vivian Bercovici, a Post contributor and former Canadian Ambassador to Israel during the Stephen Harper government, was disturbed that Toronto police looked on without intervention as the anti-Israel demonstrators harassed the Jewish neighbourhood and attempted to infiltrate the local community centre. “Concealing one’s identity is a criminal offence in Canada in any violent context/protest. Here, we have masked men and women. Wearing one of the symbols of Hamas — a red triangle,” Bercovici wrote on social media. “This is not normal. They can go do this in their own neighbourhoods. But the intention is clearly to threaten Jews. Police are there — well — you can see for yourselves. Is this an effective law enforcement response @TPSMyronDemkiw police chief?”"
If "right wing" protesters were invoking the Christian god during a protest, the left would start ranting about "theocracy". And good luck if you try to break into a mosque
October 7th showed us how important it is to jail white nationalists and the far right to combat racist Islamophobia, which is the top threat to Jews today

Anti-Israel protesters tried to infiltrate Jewish centre : r/canada - "They dress like Hamas, yell genocidal slogans, and then cry Islamophobia when we call them terrorists."
Naturally, someone tried to make this about racism when they were masked

Anti-Israel protesters tried to infiltrate Jewish centre : r/canada - ""We're not antisemites, we're anti-Israel. Also, we like to protest in Jewish community centres and outside of Jewish people's houses while chanting genocidal slogans."  There's a crowd of people who, a few years ago, used to quote things like "A tolerant society can't tolerate intolerance" and "If you have 8 people at a table and one of them's a Nazi, you have 8 Nazis." Today those same people are happily sitting at the table with Nazis, and embracing intolerance."

Anyone here sick of WakeupSingapore peddling their pro-Palestine propaganda? : r/SingaporeRaw - "If palestine declare war on sg i wonder which side they will take"
Anyone here sick of WakeupSingapore peddling their pro-Palestine propaganda? : r/SingaporeRaw - "based on what many of them says online about the conflict, it really makes me think religion > country for them lol"
Anyone here sick of WakeupSingapore peddling their pro-Palestine propaganda? : r/SingaporeRaw - "Hahah dont bring race in. U all just forcing the world to accept your pro palestinian beliefs which we dont agree. We dont even agree with soem of israels actions but u know wat? Pro israel ppl , they dont make so much noise like yall and stir shit in sg. Palestiniabs & by extension hamas are not innocent either & we know it. That fact u associate uself as "bringing malays down " cos of our lack of support for palestine shows where ur loyalty lies.no one said anything about race. Clearly u are Religion> country."
Anyone here sick of WakeupSingapore peddling their pro-Palestine propaganda? : r/SingaporeRaw - "Its just very trendy topic. Indonesia is now taking and demolish Papuan land while crying Palestinian liberation, don't see them reporting them. They are also demolishing and clearing Orang Laut's floating villages in Riau, don't see them reporting either... They probably are. Supporting Palestine is like the most Political Correct thing in the Muslim world. As well as the unifying force for all Muslims regardless of class, values, wealth, political stance or nationality. This is something a lot of Muslim were since children. So to them seeing people not supporting Palestinian causes as fervently as they are seemed extremely bizarre and very heartless."

Anyone here sick of WakeupSingapore peddling their pro-Palestine propaganda? : r/SingaporeRaw - "Yeah means you really a selfish and heartless human being. Alot of people here feels that way too and thats sad. Truth hurts im sorry, but only chinese people here talk shit about this situation. AND WE STILL GONNA SUPPORT PALESTINE 🇵🇸 "
"Hahha. Can i report this to spf as racism? How do u know if we sre chinese or indians? Y are u pointing out the chinese? Maybe we shld file a police report to hunt u down lol"

Thread by @realchrisrufo on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - " EXCLUSIVE: The teachers union in Portland, Oregon, has created a curriculum that teaches kindergarteners that "Jewish people" are "settler-colonial" oppressors, prepares them to attend "protests," and celebrates Palestinian "martyrs."  Inside Portland's kindergarten Intifada. 🧵 The curriculum, co-published by the Portland teachers union, is called "Teach Palestine!" The union promotes the curriculum to its 4,500 and provides them legal justification to include it in the classroom—beginning with children as young as four and five years old. In pre-kindergarten, teachers are encouraged to read from a workbook by the Palestinian Feminist Collective, which blames "a group of bullies called Zionists" who "stole [Palestinian] land by force and hurt many people." The Portland curriculum then provides pre-K students "a sensory guide" for attending pro-Palestinian protests. It prepares the children for "signs," "chanting," "counterprotestors," and "tear gas." Featured slogans include "Abolish Prisons" and "Save Gaza." In kindergarten, the students learn "anti-Zionist" history. In one lesson, it describes Zionist Jews as land thieves who wanted to create "a country where rules were mostly fair for Jewish people with White skin." This, the students learn, is the evil of "settler colonialism." Before snack time, the teacher is encouraged to share "keffiyehs, flags, and protest signs" with the children, and have them create their own agitprop material, with slogans such as "FREE PALESTINE, LET GAZA LIVE, [and] PALESTINE WILL BE FREE." Finally, the hardcore ideology. The curriculum encourages students to chant in support of Palestinian martyrs and suggests that violence against Israel is justified: "Resistance is justified when people are occupied!" "We salute all our martyrs!"; "No peace on stolen land!""
In Portland, the Intifada Begins in Kindergarten - "Portland, Oregon, has earned its reputation as America’s most radical city. Its public school system was an early proponent of left-wing racialism and has long pushed students toward political activism... Students are encouraged to come up with a slogan that they can chant at a protest and complete a maze so that Handala can “get back home to Palestine”—represented as a map of Israel.  Other pre-K resources include a video that repeats left-wing mantras, including “I feel safe when there are no police,” and a slideshow that glorifies the Palestinian intifada, or violent resistance against Israel... The pamphlet includes chants that teachers can adopt in the classroom. Some imply support for militancy and political violence: “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!”; “We salute all our martyrs! mothers, fathers, sons and daughters!”; “Justice is our demand! No peace on stolen land!”  It’s not immediately clear to what extent the “Teach Palestine!” lessons have been adopted in Portland public school classrooms. But the teachers’ union claims that the district has been “actively censoring teachers” for promoting pro-Palestine ideologies; in response, it has assembled a legal guide for how teachers can keep promoting the lessons under the guise of meeting state curriculum standards."
Indoctrination of children is only bad when it hurts the left wing agenda
If you don't let radical left wing teachers teach their pre-school students to hate Jews, this is censorship and a violation of their freedom of speech

Vancouver police arrest activist who praised October 7 terror attacks - "Police said they began their investigation after an April 26 video circulated showing “a woman on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery” delivering praise for the Hamas-led terror attacks of October 7.  “The speaker praised the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and referred to a number of terrorist organizations as heroes,” the police said in a statement...  at a protest on the front steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Charlotte Kates addressed the crowd.  “We demand a free Palestine from the river to the sea,” Kates said. “We stand with the Palestinian resistance and their heroic and brave action on October 7.”  She then led the crowd in a chant of “Long live October 7. Kates is the co-founder of the extremist anti-Israel group Samidoun along with her husband Khaled Barakat. Israel’s security service Shin Bet has long maintained that Barakat is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group considered a terrorist organization in Canada.  Samidoun has often acted a direct conduit for PFLP statements and literature.  Kates’s comments were denounced by B.C. Premier David Eby, who said they were the “most hateful” comments he could imagine... April 26 was far from the first time that Kates has praised October 7 or terrorism generally in a public forum. Earlier last month, she was an invited speaker at Al Quds Day demonstrations in Toronto, where she told cheering crowds, “on October 7, we saw the potential for a Palestine liberated from Zionism by the forces of the resistance.”  In March, she was a featured speaker at a Palestine Liberation 101 event at New York’s Columbia University where she similarly framed October 7 as showing “the potential of a future for Palestine liberated from Zionism.”"
The left are only against hate speech and inciting violence when it pushes the left wing agenda

WARMINGTON: Counter-protesters crossed line with swastikas displayed at Israeli rally - "One pulling a wagon with two young girls in tow showed a placard with the Star of David on one side and a swastika on the other with the message “Same s—. Different name.” It’s hard to know what was more shocking — seeing the moms doing this or one of the kids? Hate seems to be taught to the young now. If this evil was directed toward any other community than the Jews, Children’s Aid would be on speed dial... Toronto is also now a place where men covering their faces with keffiyeh’s not only step on a mannequin draped in an Israeli flag, but play soccer with its decapitated head... This isn’t protest. This is encouraging assassination and genocide! It’s far worse than anything Don Cherry ever did to get cancelled. And far more embarrassing to Canada. It’s a good thing that Freedom Convoy truckers were not doing this. Some anti-lockdown protesters in Ottawa in 2022 sat in jail for a whole summer and their mischief trials are still going on. When a swastika showed up in Ottawa during the Freedom Convoy, it garnered plenty of reaction. “When we see or hear hateful language and imagery, we must condemn it,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau posted to social media then. “The display of a swastika by an individual on Parliament Hill is unacceptable.” If what happened in Ottawa was considered mischief, what’s going on in Toronto could be that or worse... Mayor Olivia Chow couldn’t fit the 50,000-strong Walk With Israel into her weekend schedule — which included a visit to the Grilled Cheese Festival in Etobicoke — and has also so far not found the time to denounce these swastikas being displayed at Sunday’s event. Or pro-Hamas thugs allegedly yelling “Allahu Akbar” while sneaking through a ravine or calling Jewish citizens “Zionist rats” or “pigs” on a residential street. Whether it’s Jewish restaurants, businesses, synagogues or daycare centres being targeted, most of the time there’s a collective yawn. That’s why they keep escalating their actions. But swastikas? A mock decapitation and desecration of Netanyahu and threats on his life? What is the tipping point? Toronto’s mayor is not in this alone. Trudeau or Premier Doug Ford have also not weighed in like they would if this was a far-right militia intimidating a predominately a Black or Muslim neighbourhood. You would think swastikas in a largely Jewish area would spark outrage and disgust, the same as it should if someone were to disrespect another religion or race in a similar fashion. Not in Toronto in 2024."
Swastikas only discredit your protest if the left disapproves of the protest

Quiet Toronto street stormed by 'outrageous' anti-Israel protesters - "This gaggle of people looked like a militia from Gaza: Their heads, faces and eyes are all covered as they walked in unison along a quiet residential Toronto street, while chanting anti-Israel and anti-Jewish slogans... “You are a baby killer, that’s all you are. That’s what you do,” says a woman to another woman in a video recorded on Hove St. on Sunday, just an hour after the United Jewish Appeal’s Walk With Israel. “You are supporting genocide,” says a man. “You are a filthy Zionist rat, that’s all you are.” All of this is on video and within the sight of Toronto Police, who were riding on bikes alongside these mystery disrupters... Hove is a quiet residential street with families just west of Bathurst St. and just off Sheppard Ave. Those who live there had never seen anything like this. This seemed to be a provocation... “To have roving mobs going through neighbourhoods to harass Jewish or any residents is the sum of all fears for any city,” said Councillor James Pasternak. “This outrageous and (allegedly) illegal behaviour must be met by the full force of the law and our criminal justice system. Current laws, hate and criminal, are outdated and they must updated so we give police the tools they need to stop this madness.”... a man in Wolfie’s Deli told me he was “swarmed” by about 20 people and ended up with a broken thumb"
Of course, if you say they look like terrorists, you get accused of racism and Islamophobia

Michael Dolgin: Canadian Press tries to minimize support for Jewish state with biased report on Walk with Israel - "In our country, where bullets have been fired at synagogues and schools, windows broken and businesses defaced, we should be able to count on The Canadian Press to fairly report on this event and the context in which it took place. Instead, the writer abandoned even the appearance of being even-handed. Just as protesters already took to the streets against Zionists and Jews on Oct. 8, 2023, before the Israeli military responded to the events of the previous day, so many journalists have chosen a biased narrative. Our society, and the Jewish community, deserve journalism that is honest, unbiased and unflinchingly fair. The Canadian Press has failed to live up to those values."

Raymond J. de Souza: It's urgent Canada follows the money in the anti-Israel protests - "Canadians will recognize the Tides Foundation, the San Francisco-based “social justice” outfit, which appears in the reports. Tides was a key player in providing funds and strategy in a years-long campaign to prevent Alberta oil from getting to market. Tides has apparently widespread interests; disrupting Canadian life seems a common theme... In 2012, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) launched its “ Follow the Money ” project... “The project revealed, for the first time, the existence of substantial Middle Eastern funding (primarily from Qatar) to U.S. universities that had not been reported to the Department of Education, as required by law,” ISGAP reported. “Foreign donations from Qatar, especially, have had a substantial impact on fomenting growing levels of antisemitic discourse and campus politics at U.S. universities, as well as growing support for anti-democratic values within these institutions of higher education.” Qatar, along with Iran, is a principal patron of Hamas... When Germany came calling, asking to buy Canadian natural gas to replace its Russian supplies, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refused, despite the global climate and security benefits, as well as revenues for Canadians producers and jobs for Canadian workers. Canada was Germany’s first choice, but given an aversion to freezing in the dark, another choice had to be found when Canada refused to be a helpful ally. Qatar is not a German ally, but was willing to be helpful. Thus Europe’s largest economy has agreed to buy Qatari natural gas for 15 years. It will begin to flow to Germany in 2026. Untold billions will flow in the other direction."

Emma Teitel: Jewish kids are being victimized in Canada and nobody cares - "I used to say I wouldn’t send my kids to Jewish day school because it was too expensive. Now I’d rather not send them because there is an emerging trend in my country that involves antisemites shooting guns at Jewish schools under the cover of night. It’s a trend that more casual Jew haters shrug their shoulders at. After all, kids aren’t even at school after dark. And besides, have you seen Gaza? I can’t unsee Gaza. But forgive me if I’m also preoccupied with the once rising, now risen “tide” of antisemitism in Canada.  Forgive me as well if I am capable of simultaneously lamenting the killing of Gazan children and the grotesque fact that Jewish kids in Canada are being held responsible for their deaths... It is not an exaggeration to suggest that among Canada’s progressive left, there was exponentially more outrage at Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s recent offensive comments in response to the shooting of a Jewish school in Toronto than there was outrage at the shooting itself. Words are violence, and what not... “All Jews have to die,” a boy had told her. He then suggested she kill herself... At some Ottawa public schools, Jewish children are “being held collectively responsible for the war.” This is according to Tamara Taub, the co-founder of Jewish Parents of Ottawa Students Association, a group formed specifically to deal with antisemitic bullying in the aftermath of October 7. Taub recently conducted a survey of 66 Jewish kids from grades 6-12 in the Ottawa area, most of them students in the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. Seventy per cent said they have felt unsafe at school because they’re Jewish. Students report being labeled “murderers” and “baby killers” by their peers, having non-Jewish students scream “free Palestine” in their faces, chant Heil Hitler at them, demand they “pick a side” in the conflict, and even engage in physical violence. Sometimes the vitriol comes in an all-inclusive package.  In one incident, according to Taub, a Jewish student in grade 7 was asked by her peers if she supported Israel or Palestine. She declined to answer. When they pressed her, she conceded: “Israel.” As she walked away from the group, someone threw a rock at her head. Adults might be capable of admonishing the Israeli government without scapegoating Jews. Children are not so sophisticated. Indeed, if Canada’s media class can’t seem to denounce Benjamin Netanyahu without evoking the Third Reich, maybe it’s foolish to expect gentile elementary-school children not to paint their Jewish peers with the same poisonous brush... When a Jewish high school student spoke about being branded a “baby killer” at school in the aftermath of October 7, the only school trustee to ask her a follow up question, and to offer a kind word, was herself Jewish. The others said nothing. “We feel there is this concern that where we fall in the diversity and inclusion world seems to complicate things,” said Taub. “We’re not looked at as a minority.” In fact, as far as minorities go, Jews are minor. Muslims comprise roughly five per cent of the national population, Hindus 2.3 per cent and Sikhs 2.1. Jews make up 0.9 per cent of people in Canada. None of whom, as far as I know, serve in Israel’s war cabinet. Certainly, the children among them are not calling the shots in Rafah. It is a perverse fact that Jewish kids in Canada are being scapegoated during the day by their peers and at night by gunmen. It is even more perverse that this is old news."
Whataboutism is only bad when it hurts the left wing agenda

Meme - "Free Palestine
"I am less afraid of a Palestinian or a Muslim than I am of a Christian man" *white woman wearing a keffiyeh"
We need to send all these left wingers to Palestine so they can discover what real rape culture is

(2) Gaza’s sky is black but Qatar is always sunny - YouTube - ""Eretz Nehederet" ("A Wonderful Country) is a satirical television show by the Israeli Broadcaster Keshet."
Previously linked, but on Instagram I think

Michael Davison's answer to What is this 'Chicken Elisso' pro-Hamas Quorans keep asking about? - Quora - "It seems that they’re trying to say that Israelis consider Gazans as if they were chickens produced by hatcheries and not human beings. The problem is that most Gazans are either Hamas members, Hamas supporters or have a family member who is a Hamas member. This makes it hard to determine what an “innocent Gazan” is.  Since I am seriously cynical about the Hamas casualty numbers provided immediately after an even, before a body count can even be started , I doubt that the 200 figure claimed is accurate. Remember the “500 dead” from the al Ahli hospital, announced about 10 minutes after the errant PIJ rocket landed in the hospital parking lot that eventually turned out to be about 25 people injured or killed.  Just another attempt to smear Israel with the idea that we consider Palestinians less than human."

Maya N's answer to Purely humanly, are the freedom of four Israelis equal to the lives of 250 Palestinians? Are they Chicken Elisso humans? - Quora - "Let’s say that tomorrow I steal your car.  You want your car back, and you’d rather nobody get hurt. So you offer me a deal: I return the car and hand over my carjacking tools, and you give me $2,000.  I say no. (I do not want to turn over my carjacking tools, since I’m planning to steal your car again later).  You call the police. They come to my house and order me to give the car back.  Instead of doing that, I pull out a gun and start firing at them. The police fire back, and kill me and my sister.  Was your car, an inanimate object, worth my sister’s life, you sick monster???  … Of course not. But it was me, not you, who threw my sister’s life away in pursuit of the car...   Hamas claimed 250 almost immediately, before the dust had settled. In the meantime, the number of deaths claimed by local hospitals stands at under 100, and the number of bodies visible in video clips after the “massacre” is about 12."

Israel’s failure to eliminate Hamas, explained - "it's very difficult to take apart a non-state terror group that has taken root inside a very small, urban, densely populated area when they've been there for almost 20 years. Hamas has taken many, many hostages; to this day there are over 100 hostages still in Gaza. It seems pretty likely that the Israeli military has had a difficult time getting to Hamas leadership and key players because they probably are surrounded by hostages. And as much destruction and devastation and killing that we've seen, I think there would have been probably even more if those hostages weren't there and they wouldn't have to worry about that collateral damage... As long as Hamas is there, Israel doesn't have to get into any kind of peace process, any kind of serious political negotiation. It doesn't have to take the Palestinian demands for a state, for liberation, for rights as seriously. Even if we assume that Netanyahu is committed to getting rid of Hamas, he has an interest in staying in power now, and the best way to stay in power is to keep the war going on and on... I think the US is very frustrated with the fact that there's no exit strategy, no end game, and no political postwar vision for Gaza... some people in Israel — even putting aside Netanyahu — are really committed to removing Hamas from power, even if it takes years, even if Israel has to be in rolling operations and some form of occupation for many years.  You have a real security issue and an internal domestic crisis, that Israelis have lost total confidence in the ability of the state to protect them."

Kevin Douglas's answer to Is the Gaza war the only time in military history where the side about to be completely destroyed (Hamas) thinks they're in a position to dictate terms to Israel and demand that they leave? Are they delusional? - Quora - "many of Hamas’ leaders aren’t exactly delusional.  This is Ismail Haniyeh: He is considered to be the leader of Hamas, which might make you think that he is a Che Guevara style revolutionary, who leads his people in armed resistance. This would be incorrect.  Haniyeh lives in Qatar and he is worth $4 billion. He is one of the wealthiest men on the planet while his people are currently living through a brutal war that may lead to starvation. And, might I add, this is a war he allegedly started for their benefit.  The thing is, if you are Ismail Haniyeh, the war in Gaza has not really been all that bad for you. You can continue to make ludicrous ceasefire proposals that will never be accepted because you aren’t the one on the ground suffering. It’s a great deal.  And, in fact, if you are Mr. Haniyeh, more civilian death is actually good for you. It means that the world will continue to hate the evil Israeli regime which means there will be all the more reason for someone like you, a brave freedom fighter on behalf of the Palestinians, to exist. Which means Middle-Eastern regimes will continue to prop you up, hide you away and flood you with endless amounts of sympathy and cash so you can continue to live it up far away from the fighting... his interests are actively opposed to those of the people in Gaza. He doesn’t mind if a few more Gazans die and, in fact, he probably wants to see a few more die so that he can have all the more to blame on the Israelis when he solicits more and more aid to be sent which he can then steal to fund his existence."

Pitbull Memes


"PITMOMMY
Blue haired woman: "Pits are NANNY DOGS. Besides, Chihuahuas are literal Demons. My sweet puppy is such a cuddle bug. It's how they're raised -"
*Pitbull mauls toddler*
Blue haired woman: "OH GOD! Who could have EVER seen this coming?!?

X:DOGTALONS"


Man in corner of room with chair vs bloodied Pitbull: "I mean yeah, she's dog reactive, hates small animals, has killed my neighbour's two cats, and almost mauled my nephew ... But other than that, she's such a great dog!"

Links - 22nd June 2024 (1 - Socialism)

Meme - Communist: "I support the working class"
Oil worker with Crucifix, Confederate flag in pickup truck, rifle and dead deer: "Well shucks. Good to hear, friend." *sticks hand out*
Communist: *looks disgusted*
Some left wingers tried to deny this is how they'd respond, but they hate all those things, do

Meme - "Sex toys seem like the kind of things bourgeoisie with too much time on their hands possess"
"fax"
"is this a joke or are you genuinely telling me the working class neither masturbates nor fucks"
"a member of the proletariat that values sexual satisfaction via means of pricey masturbation equipment rather than actual essential commodities, is a class enemy who is entertaining bourgeois materialistic ideas"

Meme - ina spicy fruit loop @inanolastname: "therapy is nice but i prefer full communism"
Communism as a "solution" for mental problems

Meme - "Mr. Ditkovitch, why did you escape your socialist country all those years ago? Socialism sounds awesome!"
"You lazy aS$ american teenagers won't last a day in an actual socialist country"
"But... I saw this TikTok video, while i was at work today..."

Meme - "Karl Marx writing a utopian fantasy book while his son is starving to death:"

Mythinformed on X - "“The goal is to dismantle the settler project that is the United States. For the freedom and future of all life on this planet depends on that.” University of Minnesota professor Melanie Yazzie admits the Woke quiet part out loud."
James Lindsay, full varsity on X - "Let's do a little homework on the group, Red Nation, platformed here at the University of Minnesota. "Revolutionary socialism is the primary political ideology of the Red Nation.""

Meme - Bug Vikky Storm - A Yung Hegelian @deathpigeon: "When you think of it, units of measurement are pernicious and harmful bullshit which never should've been invented and any proper communist movement should seek to abolish them. Like, the act of measurement itself is an inherent problem. It is the transformation of the subjective into the objective, and that's a path with horrible results we should avoid. Lengths of time, temperature, distance, volume, etc, all of these are subjective experiences, not objective things which can be reduced to objective measures."

Elon Musk on X - "There are two modern examples (Germany and Korea) where people were in essentially the same starting position, but the country got split along an arbitrary line.   One side went full government (communism), the other side went  about half government. A few decades later, the standard of living in the fully government side was roughly 5 times lower. This gap widened further with time.   A good test of which system is better is “who needs to build a wall to keep people in?” – that’s the bad one."

"Meme - "Hello leftists. You will never have your Revolution. You will never inspire loyalty. You only have (small) asymmetrical coalitions of militants because you're united by shared misery. It's the terminally online version of people joining gangs because they had absent or weak fathers. Virtually all of you are ugly. Normal people wince when they see you in public. Most of you can't even maintain eye contact when you order at a restaurant. You don't have the charisma or willpower to take power, let alone hold it. Your energy is not that of a true revolutionary, more just a crazy ex girlfriend who knows where you park your car."

James Lindsay, full varsity on X - "Thinking about squatters and history. As we all know, Communism is based entirely on theft, but they wouldn't say so. They would say they understand the concept of theft correctly and no one else does. What do they believe about property?  The Communist view of property is that it isn't something that is owned by individuals with their right to own it secured by the government. It's that all property is common-wealth owned by the communal commonwealth. In other words, all property is communal property.  Thus, for the Communist, claiming to own property privately as an individual is theft. You have stolen that property from the common-wealth and the communal commonwealth to privatize it as yours. You are therefore subject to vicious anti-theft laws and the seizure of your property by the state.  The state is empowered to seize all private property and redistribute it because it is the political embodiment of the people and is solely empowered with the capacity to distribute (or redistribute) property according to their description of the just desserts of society's common-wealth, which they call "equity" today.  In Western Marxism (identity-based Cultural/Critical Marxism), this concept of property belonging to the communal commonwealth extends to give us the idea of "cultural appropriation." Only the justified members of a collectivist "community" are entitled to use and benefit from the articles of cultural property generated by that community.  "Black" culture and its artifacts are "Black" community products produced by "Black" people for "Black" people and are treated as part of the common-wealth of "the Black Community." Membership in this communal community requires some fealty or deference to the prevailing Marxist ideology that defines the community through its "lived experience," which is to say Critical Race Theory. Rejecting CRT or its grifters, even if black, could render you outside that collective and its protections.  If someone outside of a specified communal community were to make use of the cultural capital of such a "commonwealth," that would be regarded as cultural theft. Its producers are no longer its sole beneficiaries, and the use of that cultural property is therefore a "cultural appropriation" that expropriates that common-wealth outside of the communal commonwealth; i.e., it is theft. You will notice it is treated as such.  "Land acknowledgements" also fall under this logic, though not quite so precisely. "You are on stolen land" that used to belong to whatever tribes, blah, blah, blah, but those tribes had a completely different understanding of ownership of land than we have in the West under ideas of private property ownership and stewardship. The logic is the same, then, though it uses a hybrid understanding of ownership to effect the same end in two steps.  Under the forthcoming Critical Immigration Theory, now in development and the early stages of deployment, "migrant" squatters have a "human right" to property in the sense of a global commonwealth, so your house, located where they have been relocated in the ongoing invasion, might be part of their common-wealth. This is how they're being instructed, at least, as they approach and enter the United States. "All those houses will be yours," so the reporting goes.  For you to claim that your house and home are in fact your property is for you to be stealing it from this broader ill-defined commonwealth that you are automatically a part of by virtue of being a "global citizen," whether you realize it or not. You are stealing from the communal commonwealth of the globe by withholding your property from squatters.  This is the Communist logic behind that phenomenon. This is how they think. Of course they are completely wrong. Communal ownership is a socioeconomic catastrophe that fails in every scalable setting it is tried. Equal protection of individuals under the law for their private property ensures greater fairness and justice than any other system humans have devised.   Communism steals in the name of ending theft, and it does so, like always, by deliberately misunderstanding the relevant words through the lens of Marxist theory, which is not just false but also diabolical and evil."

Velina Tchakarova on X - "‚It’s easy to be a communist in a free country. But try being free in a communist country.‘"

Meme - *Bro! Not Cool meme*
*American College Students pusuing*
*Communism*
*Cuban and Chinese immigrants stopping the American College Students*

Meme - "My (32f) husband (35m) says it's inappropriate for our daughter to call him "daddy"
My husband and I have been married for 9 years, and we have an 18-month-old daughter together. I'm not exactly sure if what I am about to describe is a definite issue or if it's something that I'm just overthinking and reading too much into. Our daughter started speaking and calling me "mama' and my husband a mix of "dada" and "daddy". Throughout the process of her learning to speak (mainly at 12 months) I would point and refer to my husband as "daddy" when we were both in that stage with our daughter of seeing her speak and helping her with words and identification. My husband would always give me what I thought was a dirty look when I would do that, but he never directly said anything so I just assumed I was overthinking it. But recently our daughter has been more consistently referring to him as "daddy" and he flat out told me that it makes him uncomfortable, and (his exact words) "wished" I had "used more appropriate language when teaching her to speak". This is why I think it's an issue now, I already knew he was giving me dirty looks 6 months ago but I at the time convinced myself he wasn't, but now he has directly told me and I have absolutely no idea what to think of it and how to respond. Where do I even begin with all of this?"

Meme - Rosedark @FreeRosedark: "What will be your position after communism is achieved?"
Lynn @cellopain: "Art teacher, I'd love to teach media arts and a new way of viewing visual media that doesn't really fit the education system currently. There's often correlation between incredibly good media and real world events so some kind of art relation to world events class would be neat."
Jacob Alperin-Sheriff @DemocraticLuntz: "Sorry you've been chosen to pick fruit"

for good things, against bad 🏳️‍🌈🌐🇺🇦 on X - "Why are worker’s cooperatives so rare? This is not a trivial question — because they can pay “dividends” in the form of wages, they can entirely avoid corporate income tax. They must be so inefficient by nature of their structure to outweigh their advantages."
wanye on X - "Socialists don't want to *build* things. They want to *take over* things that have already been built. And nothing demonstrates this better than the dearth of worker cooperatives."

Thread by @SwannMarcus89 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Communism was always a terrible ideology but at least Communists in the '20s were serious people who wanted to industrialize and build factories in the Soviet Union instead of ridiculous dorks who thought they could feed a commune with 2 hours of low-stress hobby farming per day Communism used to be "we need to work hard to expand our productive capacity" which just failed because central planning doesn't work and today Communism has all the problems of central planning while also attracting people who think reading Tarot cards is labor My favorite response in the "what will your job in the commune be" thread was the guy who said something like "political commissar who beats the shit out of people who think we should feed them while they do astrology""
Derek Whittom on X- "Mao: the problem with people is they don’t work hard enough
Online leftists: under communism, no one will have to do anything they don’t want to do!"
InmanRoshi on X - "I admire the 70s communist communes because at least they socialized and interacted with other human beings. They weren't just ordering Taco Bell from Doordash and poasting guillotine cringe from their 1 bedroom apartments."

[Socialists] What's stopping you from moving to a socialist country? : r/CapitalismVSocialism - "How can anyone take you seriously when you claim that socialism is better, yet you haven't chosen to live in a country that practices it? If it truly is superior, why haven't you made the move? Over the past decade, millions of Venezuelans have left their country in search of a better life, fleeing from yet another failed socialist experiment. Many of them have had to endure long and arduous journeys, walking thousands of miles to reach the United States. What is preventing you from doing the same?  You wouldn't even have to go through the same hardships as they have; you could simply board a plane and go. Additionally, in the past two years, more than 4% of Cuba's population has left the country, with hundreds of thousands resorting to makeshift rafts to escape the communist regime, uncertain of their fate. Yet, from the comfort of capitalism, you claim to know better than them and have the audacity to lecture them about the benefits of socialism.  Do you see the problem here? If you truly believe in your ideology, then prove it by living in a country governed by a socialist government. However, your options are becoming limited since the majority of people worldwide understand the destructive nature of your ideology. Until then, you can continue engaging in discussions on leftist subreddits, where it seems to be the norm to ban those with differing opinions. Just be aware that people outside of your circle will find it hard to take you seriously."

On "Real" Socialism - "Sometimes socialists allege that ostensibly socialist regimes aren’t really socialist because they don’t live up to the stated goals of socialism... On Robinson’s view, generosity and equality are baked right into the definition of socialism. Indeed, he is refreshingly explicit about this... If we define socialism in terms of a moral ideal, then a greedy political regime with little concern for equality and the common good can never, by definition, qualify as socialist. But as Jason Brennan has pointed out, we shouldn’t build moral principles into the very concept of socialism. For one, this move makes arguments about the moral status of socialist institutions completely uninteresting. To evaluate socialism, we need not look at the real-world outcomes produced by (ostensibly) socialist regimes; we need only check the words Merriam-Webster uses in its entry titled “socialism.” But I want to make a different point. Socialists who play the “not real socialism” card when real-world regimes fail to produce a worker’s paradise are thereby deprived of their right to criticize fascism. After all, consider these descriptions of fascism from Mussolini:
“Fascism establishes the real equality of individuals before the nation […] The object of the regime in the economic field is to ensure higher social justice for the whole of the Italian people.”
“When the war is over, in the world’s social revolution that will be followed by a more equitable distribution of the earth’s riches, due account must be kept of the sacrifices and of the discipline maintained by the Italian workers. The Fascist revolution will make another decisive step to shorten social distances.”
“We are fighting to impose a higher social justice. The others are fighting to maintain the privileges of caste and class. We are proletarian nations that rise up against the plutocrats.”
If one judges socialism in terms of its stated ideals rather than its real-world results, then why not do the same for fascism?"
Left wing logic is always non-universalisable, because it relies on special pleading

Meme - "HOW TO DO COMMUNISM
Cycle: "ESTABLISH A NEW COMMUNIST UTOPIA"
"ROB OR KILL THE SUCCESSFUL"
"FORCE THE REST TO WORK FOR FREE"
"RUN OUT OF FOOD"
"SAY IT WASN'T "REAL" COMMUNISM"
*repeat*

Meme - Kean Maynard: "Is "Liberal" The Furthest Left You Can Imagine? Because I Hate To Inform You Yankee, That's Literally Centrism. Kinda Odd That Your Mind Goes Straight To Molestation When You Someone Says Something You Don't Like Though. Are You On A Register?
This person is unavailable on Messenger."

Brianna Wu on X - "Star Trek is NOT SOCIALIST. If you think Star Trek was socialist, you didn’t understand Star Trek.   Technologically has progressed to a post-scarcity society on some places like earth. But, there’s private property ownership (Sisko’s restaurant, Picard’s Vineyard.) There’s private enterprise. There’s no centrally planned economy by earth’s government.   A huge part of Star Trek is the market economy. as they explore space, they are constantly trading resources and a lot of the relationships with other species even the Alpha quadrant are about resources. Many episode of DS9 are about the value of the outpost for intergalactic trade.   Individual freedom and private enterprise is a huge part of Star Trek. People design ships, explore space, and pursue careers as they fit. They have to meet standards to enroll in Star Fleet, they are not given the assignment by a central government.  The resources for survival don’t seem to be limited in some privileged societies in Star Trek, but that does not make it socialist."

Meme - Oz Katerji @OzKaterji: "The simplest way to understand Jacobin is that they want to spend their entire lives living comfortable middle class lives in liberal democracies while wishing that millions of other people are forced lived under a totalitarian dictatorship for their own vanity."
Benjamin Fogel: "Collapse by Vladislav Zubok is one of the most disturbing books I have ever read, I am convinced now more than ever that the end of the Soviet Union was the single most disastrous process of de-development of my lifetime the main fruits are reactionary nationalism and oligarchy"
Meme - 🌵🍌🚁🍦📈🤛🤛 @Cactus4Math: "When Soviets lose, humanity wins"
"Life expectancy, 1961 to 2019
1990 - Fall of Communism
Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria
*stagnation for most from 1970 to 1990, acceleration in all after 1990*

Meme - Swann Marcus @SwannMarcus89: "It is "Holocaust revisionism" to say that the Nazis murdered Jews and other "undesirables" for ideological reasons when in reality it just made economic sense for them to send some of their most productive workers to the gas chamber  I am a very intelligent Marxist"
Fredda @PunishedFredda: "This is Holocaust revisionism you illiterate baboon. The Nazis had a "starkly economic incentive for murder on a scale larger even than the Holocaust" due to food shortages. Slave labor replaced workers who had been called away to wage war on the Eastern Front."
Dev @sleepy_devo: "also the nazis ramped up the holocaust to the point that it crippled the war effort, ignoring their own material circumstances out of ideological devotion. when you're waging a war of belief you will do things regardless of material cost. marx didn't understand the human spirit."

Meme - Criminal Penguin @Crime_Penguin: "This is a good summary of leftism. It starts with a lot of high-minded talk of equity and justice and ends with a bunch of dysgenic freaks slaughtering beautiful dogs in a field because the dogs make them feel inferior."
Mary @Marylackalope: "This is worse than what they did to the royal family"
"Why are Borzois so rare? Borzois were rarely let out of Russia and so were nearly made extinct during the Russian revolution. During that time they were killed on mass because of their association with the aristocracy By the 1940s there were sparse pockets of Borzoi in America, England and Russia, but they were dwindling fast."

Meme - francesca fiorentini @franifio: "Think of socialism like a fancy baked good. Just because many have made a mess of their kitchen attempting it, doesn't mean you go around declaring you'll never eat souffle again! It just means you try harder."
Riltok @SergeyKhvatoy: "Oh no I burned the souffle again!" *2 men in military uniforms looking at tons of skulls*
Unfortunately the photo is from the Armenian genocide

Meme - Theo Jordan @Theo_TJ_Jordan: "Even the most heralded of Marxist roots share this feature. The desperate are easily duped.  "Let me tell you about Utopia..."  Snake oil from broken power-desperate shits like Karl (most astroturf socialists) who despise freedom, family, religion, success. Always has been. 👨‍🚀🔫"
"Iceberg top: Critical Race Theory.
Iceberg bottom: Marxism
Iceberg top: Climate Hysteria
Iceberg bottom: Marxism"
Catherine @bablu_raj5087: "Commissars always come from the political class. Every good Communist knows that the working class has no place in leadership."

Comecon - Wikipedia - "The organization of Comecon was officially focused on common expansion of states, more effective production and building relationships between countries within. And as in every planned economy, operations did not reflect state of market, innovations, availability of items or the specific needs of a country. One example came from former Czechoslovakia. In the 1970s, the Communist party of Czechoslovakia finally realized that there was a need for underground trains. Czechoslovak designers projected a cheap but technologically innovative underground train. The train was a state-of-the-art project, capable of moving underground or on the surface using standard rails, had a high number of passenger seats, and was lightweight. According to the designers, the train was technologically more advanced than the trains used in New York's Subway, London's Tube or the Paris Metro. However, due to the plan of Comecon, older Soviet trains were used, which guaranteed profit for the Soviet Union and work for workers in Soviet factories. That economical change lead to the cancellation of the R1 trains by A. Honzík. The Comecon plan, though more profitable for the Soviets, if less resourceful for the Czechs and Slovaks, forced the Czechoslovak government to buy trains "Ečs (81-709)" and "81-71", both of which were designed in early 1950s and were heavy, unreliable and expensive."

Thread by @daily_romania on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "🇷🇴 The Pitești Experiment: The Eastern Bloc's Most Brutal Prison  The experiment carried out in the Pitești Prison in Romania, aimed to torture and brainwash prisoners into absolute loyalty towards Romania's communist party  A thread ↓ The experiment was carried out between 1949 and 1951 on up to 5,000 prisoners from which up to 200 died in the process  The experiment is often refered to as the largest and most intensive brainwashing torture program in the Eastern Bloc
First Stage: "External Unmasking"  Each person in the experiment was first thoroughly interrogated and tortured to reveal personal details about their lives ("external unmasking") As a result, they had to disclose everything they were thought to have hidden in previous interrogations  To escape torture, many prisoners confessed to things they didn't actually do. Detainees, who were regularly and severely beaten, were forced to torture each other to break any past loyalties Different torture methods were used to break the prisoners  Guards would bring in buckets filled with shit and urine in which the heads of the prisoners were submerged almost to the point of death  The head was then raised, only to have his head pushed back into the sewage The prisoners' whole bodies were burned with cigarettes, their buttocks would begin to rot, and their skin fell off as though they suffered from leprosy Others were forced to swallow spoons of shit, and when they threw it back up, they were forced to eat their own vomit  Any prisoner who refused to become a torturer or did not beat former friends mercilessly was severely punished Electrical shocks, hallucinogenic drugs, whippings, near starvation and fatal beatings were daily rituals in the prison of Pitesti Besides physical violence, inmates undergoing "reeducation" had to work long hours doing humiliating tasks, like cleaning the floor with a rag held in their teeth  They were malnourished and kept in degrading and unsanitary conditions Not able to resist the physical and psychological violence, some prisoners tried to commit suicide by cutting their veins  Others ended their lives by throwing themselves through the opening between the stairways  Many died from beatings and torture
Second Stage: "Internal Unmasking"  In the second phase, "internal unmasking," the tortured prisoners had to give the names of those who had treated them less harsh or more kindly while in detention  Those would then get tortured again Guards forced inmates to attend Marxist political instruction sessions on topics like dialectical materialism and Joseph Stalin's History of Soviet Communism  These sessions were accompanied by violence and encouraged inmates to report each other for real or invented offenses
Third Stage: "Public Moral Unmasking"  Public humiliation was also used, especially in the third stage  Inmates had to give up all their personal beliefs, loyalties, and values  Religious inmates had to insult religious symbols and sacred texts like the Bible "When you said, ‘I still believe in God,’ in five minutes you were full of blood"  Roman Braga, survivor of the Pitesti Prison
The experiment was stopped by the authorities themselves  Over 20 high ranking officials involved in the experiment faced death sentences which were carried out by a firing squad on 17 December, 1954  Involved members of the Securitate were given light sentences and freed after Today, the former Pitesti Prison is a museum reminding people of the atrocities that happened during communist times  Around 10,000 people visit the museum every year "Many of us died, many of us became mad, but in some of us the good triumphed"  George Calciu, survivor of the Pitesti Prison  Calciu giving a rare interview in 1988, he was released from prison due to pressure from supporters such as U.S. president Ronald Reagan"
Clearly Abu Ghraib waterboarding was exactly the same, so the West has no moral standing to criticise this

Friday, June 21, 2024

Links - 21st June 2024 (2 - Climate Change [including Electric Cars])

Europe is revolting against the tyranny of electric cars - "The rest of Europe, Remainers like to tell us, is forging ahead into a glorious green future while Brexit Britain is stalling, the government backsliding one by one on its net zero commitments.     It is hard to square that narrative with what’s really going on across the channel. In March, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, registrations of new electric vehicles plummeted by 11.3 per cent. In Germany – the grown up country that’s supposed to show childish Britain how it’s done – the drop was even more precipitous at 28.9 per cent.  Apparently it’s not just Britain where motorists have gone distinctly cool on electric cars. The electric vehicle industry appears to going the same way as one of its own products when the battery charge lowers: it’s slowing rapidly to a crawl.        And it’s plain to me that the reasons in Europe are the same as they are here: electric cars are too expensive to buy, and too fussy to recharge. They have a niche as local runabouts for people with their own off-street recharging facilities, but little appeal otherwise.   Enthusiasts will point to the example of Norway, where the vehicles have a 90 per cent share of the market, but that exception merely demonstrates what has been clear for a while: people buy electric cars when the government rigs the market in their favour  In Norway, buyers of EVs pay less VAT, are given access to bus lanes or free parking in various regions, pay lower road tolls and are given the right to charge their vehicles if living in apartments. Add to that the government mandating that cars purchased in public procurement need to be zero emissions, and it’s not hard to see why sales are high.  Elsewhere, however, takeup is more moderate, and the EU’s dislike of cheap Chinese imports certainly isn’t going to help... the EU is telling motorists that it wants them to go electric, but when cheaper imported products arrive on the market making it slightly more affordable for them to do so, it it cracks down on those imports... Germany has a net zero target date of 2045, five years earlier than Britain, yet it has reopened coal mines.   Moreover, it’s wriggling out of its electric vehicle targets. Thanks to German carmakers, internal combustion engines will still be acceptable so long as they are capable of running on biofuels or synthetic fuels. And thanks to German homeowners, the ban on gas boilers were also watered down.    The problem, in other words, is not that Brits are lousy environmentalists. It’s that once again, Net Zero is collapsing as the public refuses to impoverish itself."

Electric cars sold at record discounts as demand plunges - "Almost eight in 10 new electric cars are being sold at a discount as the industry reels from falling consumer demand.  Some 77pc of new electric vehicles (EVs) listed on Auto Trader were advertised at a discount last month, up from 55pc a year earlier, data from the company shows.  The degree of discounting is also on the rise, with the average reduction now standing at a record 11pc.  It came as Tesla announced a string of price cuts in China, the US and Europe following a slowdown in sales... the Government, which scrapped plug-in grants for households two years ago, said it saw no need to reintroduce incentives for EV buyers.  Andrew Bergbaum, a global automotive expert at AlixPartners, said the winding back of incentives had “led to a significant reduction in affordability”.  This created overcapacity, with manufacturers forced to slash prices to sell down their inventories, he added."

EVs are a Trojan horse for the destruction of driving - "If motorists just don’t want to buy electric vehicles, what are manufacturers to do? They can’t carry on cutting the prices of electric cars to the point they are selling them at a massive loss, and nor will they be able to afford to pay penalties of £15,000 for every petrol or diesel car they sell over the limit. Buyers of luxury cars might not mind paying that kind of surcharge, but motorists who want mass market hatchbacks certainly will. The only real option car-makers will have is to stop us buying petrol or diesel cars by withdrawing them from the market – as Ford has already done with the Fiesta. I wouldn’t be surprised if some car-makers chose to give up on the UK market altogether.    What’s crazy about the ZEV is that motorists have shown themselves to be happy buying hybrids. They don’t mind electrical traction; it is just that they don’t want to suffer the hassle of relying on public charging points or risk being stranded. Hybrids should have been the way to clean-up the car industry, allowing motorists steadily to move in the direction of electric vehicles. That would have allowed the recharging infrastructure to be built up over time – and who knows, maybe there would have come a point when EVs became good enough that people no longer saw the need to have an engine on board as well as batteries. But the government undermined the whole process by announcing that hybrids, too, will be banned, and trying to force us to leap to full electric vehicles in one go"

$57 billion to EV automakers: good investment or risky gamble? - "Ontario’s Ministry of Mines announced that an agreement was signed with Marten Falls and Webequie First Nation to develop road and community infrastructure to support the Ring of Fire mineral extraction and the livelihood of residents. However, these projects have historically been plagued by delays...   Despite an announcement last week that EV automaker Tesla would be shedding more than 14,000 jobs due to dropping sales, Bloomberg is predicting the electric vehicle market will increase by 22 percent this year.  Critics, however, say that billions of EV subsidies serve to increase the growing deficits at both levels of government and is a risky and ultimately harmful use of Canadian tax dollars.    “We have the federal government giving a $2.5 billion tax credit to a massive international Fortune 500 company, Honda,” Jay Goldberg, Ontario Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, told The Hub. “They’re punishing everyday Canadians by asking the middle class to pay for it.”  The Hub has calculated that the federal government and the provincial governments of Ontario and Quebec have publicly offered more than $40.59 billion in subsidies and tax credits for EV manufacturers in the past two years. This represents 15 percent more than the companies themselves have put forward for their investments in Canada’s EV sector.   Using numbers from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, it is estimated that the three major EV manufacturing projects in these two provinces—Volkswagen (headquartered in Germany), Stellantis-LGES (headquartered in the Netherlands and South Korea), and Northvolt (headquartered in Sweden)—will actually cost Canadian government as much as $50.7 billion after accounting for the cost of public borrowing to finance the massive public subsidies and forgone corporate tax revenues from the tax abatements.  According to the federal government, Honda’s Alliston project will create 1,000 permanent manufacturing jobs. However, during media availability following the announcement, neither Trudeau or Ford would put a price on how much the government paid, through their investments, for each of those jobs... both governments are effectively paying $5 million per directly created job. “They talk about indirect jobs but that’s never a full guarantee. We have no actual clear numbers,” he said.   Goldman said the government's focus on specific sectors of the economy ignores potential gains for employment made by lowering corporate and small business taxes. “If they’re putting $5 billion towards the one plant, imagine what $5 billion of tax relief could do to attract companies of all shapes and sizes from elsewhere,” he said."

RCMP warns push to switch to electric vehicles faces 'significant challenges' - ""We do fully anticipate that there are significant challenges with electric vehicle range for a lot of our units," said Sgt. Shaun Vickery, who works in the RCMP's national traffic programs and operational technologies unit.  "We don't want to put them into a situation where they will fail and put a member at risk or the public at risk because a piece of equipment didn't do what it was supposed to do... As the boots-on-the-ground police in eight provinces, all three territories and 150 municipalities, the RCMP covers vast portions of the country — including many remote and rural areas with limited charging infrastructure and strained power grids... "Responding to a call may require driving at a higher speed, which is going to consume more battery and decrease your range," said Vickery... Outfitting the vehicles with policing equipment has also turned out to be a challenge.  Andres Casimiri, manager of the Mounties' national fleet program, said the force basically had to gut the inside of the Teslas to make them into usable police cars."

Is the move to electric cars running out of power? - "In the UK, analysts say strong EV sales in recent years were fuelled by company car purchases, thanks to generous tax breaks.  But the household market is proving a tougher nut to crack, with people saying they are mostly put off by the high cost. The average price of a new EV in the US is over $60,000 (£47,433). Prices are similarly high in Europe and the UK.  Large state subsidies and greater production efficiencies mean the average cost to a Chinese consumer is just $30,000. And BYD's Seagull hatchback sells for less than $10,000... Here is the dilemma for European and US politicians. They want cheaper EVs to facilitate the climate transition, but not at the cost of undermining their own car manufacturers - the likes of Ford and Volkswagen - and local jobs.  In fact, the talk is actually of raising tariffs and other trade barriers on imports to keep out ultra-competitive Chinese EVs."

End Wokeness on X - "BREAKING: Far-left extremists just tried storming a Tesla factory near Berlin:"
i/o on X - "The far-left has conducted a campaign of vandalism against industries associated with fossil fuels for decades. An industry emerges that builds cars that don't require fossil fuels. The far-left attacks it. This suggests motives that are more nihilistic than idealistic."
Visegrád 24 on X - "German far-left vandals break through police lines and run for Tesla’s Gigafactory, hoping to disrupt production. These people clearly hate both fossil fuel cars and electric cars. They are modern-day luddites"

Germany: Sabotage case launched against Tesla protesters

Dr Jordan B Peterson on X - "The leftist plan to oh so virtuously deindustrialize will devastate the poor and do nothing but damage to "the environment" (whatever the hell illusory god that is).    The evidence is clear from the example, for example, of Germany: "green" policies produce:
More poverty
More reliance on foreign energy
More environmental degradation ( as the bloody German greens have now been driven by their own stupidity to burn lignite)
How is that serving the interest of anyone but the moralizing narcissists?  "I'm saving the planet!"  Yeah: I don't think so, sunshine.   The Cost of Mass Poverty - It's Not Good https://youtu.be/UirQmnGRo7Y?si=cmY4EsFmtk7NhYZe via @YouTube"

Just Stop Oil on X - "🚨 BREAKING: JUST STOP OIL BREAK MAGNA CARTA GLASS 🔥 Reverend Dr Sue Parfitt, 82, and Judy Bruce, 85, then glued their hands together, demanding an emergency plan to just stop oil by 2030. ✈️ Donate to help us take action at airports this summer —"
Left wing neuroses strike again

The vanity of the global climate talks - "this follows a pattern of climate policymaking in which, without much public debate or democratic input, targets are increased and brought forward. Some might think this shows a government getting serious about planning for the future. But what this on-the-hoof policymaking really reveals is a chaotic government that is struggling to cope with a climate agenda that is out of control, has no chance of success, and will create hardship for millions...   The new UK policy looks like an attempt to steal back the climate-champion thunder from the US, where Biden has reversed the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement. Or perhaps the green policy wonks advising the governments on both sides of the Atlantic believe that they can lure other national governments into their bizarre bidding war, in which national populations’ material interests are sold out to a global carbon bureaucracy. The UK’s bid will impose the most stringent emissions-reduction targets – and by extension, the greatest constraints on economic activity – in the world. Thanks, Boris! But while Boris Johnson is keen to elevate himself as the global climate champion, and Biden is equally keen to mark the end of the Trump years, other global leaders are not joining in. Despite Western pleading, India has ruled out committing to a Net Zero target, on the basis that it would clearly cause too much economic harm. China, which has pledged to reach peak emissions by 2030 and to aim for carbon neutrality by 2060, has also signalled it is unlikely to be increasing its green ‘ambitions’ any time soon... the consequences of imposing harsh climate policies on an unwilling population are plain for all to see, including the governments of developed economies. Just look at the year-long protests on the streets of France that were initially provoked by green taxes. The revolt may have been subdued by the Covid-19 lockdowns, but they have made a Marine Le Pen victory at the next presidential election more likely than ever before. The rising costs of energy have already started to push industrial production away from Europe – a suicide mission that the US is set to follow. Mass protests, high energy prices, economic decline and deindustrialisation… these are the fruits of the climate agenda in the richest countries. Why would poorer countries want to follow suit?... What is really being sought at these talks? An agreement to save the planet? Or an agreement to boost the egos of leaders in London, Brussels, Washington, Paris and Berlin? After all, how would Boris be able to ‘build back better’ – a slogan he shares with Biden – were it not for a global ‘emergency’ to elevate the buffoon to the status of planet-saving superhero? Ditto, the gaffe-prone cipher in Washington is casting himself as mankind’s last hope for survival. Don’t forget the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who barely won an election in which she was the only candidate. She too claims to represent civilisation’s last chance for escape from doom."
From 2021

John McGuirk on X - "The new Dutch government is essentially to bin the green agenda entirely: Cuts to farming gone. Fuel taxes cut. Subsidies for heat pumps and insulation gone. Electric car subsidies cancelled. 4 new Nuclear plants. They're tossing the whole thing in the trash."

James Melville 🚜 on X - ""Bill Gates is backing the first high-altitude experiment of one radical climate change solution. Creating a massive chemical cloud that can cool the earth. It’s called solar geoengineering and it’s highly controversial.” ~ CNBC"
the Rich on X - "doomers: “we’re all going to die there’s nothing we can do besides socialism for some reason”
smart people: “okay let’s try using technology so we don’t die”
doomers: “no no science only socialism”"
Climate change hysteria is not about climate change

Meme - "WHY DON'T YOU TRUST THE EXPERTS?"
Medical Expert: "WE, THE EXPERTS, WERE WRONG..."
"NOw DO CLIMATE CHANGE."

Opinion | It Seems Odd That We Would Just Let the World Burn - The New York Times - "“Here is what this movement of millions should do, for a start,” Malm writes. “Announce and enforce the prohibition. Damage and destroy new CO2-emitting devices. Put them out of commission, pick them apart, demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let the capitalists who keep on investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed.”  The question at the heart of Malm’s book is why this isn’t happening already. “Were we governed by reason, we would be on the barricades today, dragging the drivers of Range Rovers and Nissan Patrols out of their seats, occupying and shutting down the coal-burning power stations, bursting in upon the Blairs’ retreat from reality in Barbados and demanding a reversal of economic life as dramatic as the one we bore when we went to war with Hitler,” he says... As to whether blowing up pipelines would work here, and now, Malm is less convincing. The likeliest outcome is that a few dozen climate activists would be jailed for years (as some already have been) and a wave of laws criminalizing even peaceful protest would sweep the nation. He has no answers for those who fear the probable political consequences: an immediate backlash that sweeps enemies of climate action into power, eliminating even the fragile hopes for policy progress... Elsewhere in the book, Malm is firmly opposed to tactics that could signal contempt or hostility for the working class. But the consequence of a wave of bombings to obliterate energy infrastructure would be to raise the price on energy immediately, all across the world, and the burdens would fall heaviest on the poor. Malm tries, at times, to resolve this tension, suggesting that perhaps the targets could be the yachts of the superrich, but in general he’s talking about pipelines, and pipelines carry the fuels for used Nissans and aged ferries, not just Gulfstream jets."
Climate change hysteria is about imposing an elitist, globalist agenda to destroy society because of left wing neuroses. Terrorism is good when it pushes the left wing agenda

Thread by @cremieuxrecueil on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "2024 is the hottest year on record, and it's been hotter than 2023 in part because of a global ban on shipping fuels containing sulfur dioxide.  Problem: SO2 causes acid rain, but it cools the globe. How can we just stay cool?  A new company might have found the solution.  🧵 Acid rain has been on the decline for many years, but in order to finally put the problem to rest, it'll be crucial to knock out sulfur dioxide emissions from shipping.  Globally, those emissions have been concentrated in these boxed-in regions where ships go to-and-fro. When the International Maritime Organization 2020 regulation went into effect, roughly 80% of sulfur dioxide emissions from international shipping went away overnight. If those sulfur emissions weren't stopped, sulfate aerosols would have acted to change the Earth's energy balance, cooling it down.  Think of this like sunscreen for the planet. Because shipping-related emissions were spread out over so wide an area, their cooling effect was pretty sizable despite being only a fraction of global sulfur emissions. The resulting rise in global temperatures when these went away inspired @ASong408 to think:  How can we keep the cooling while doing without the acid rain?  Watch this video. What you just witnessed was a balloon containing sulfur dioxide.  You just witnessed a stratospheric aerosol injection, AKA, a controlled sulfur release in the stratosphere.  This part is critical: the stratosphere.  The reason the stratosphere is so critical is that, if you release sulfur dioxide up there, it distributes widely and makes minimal acid rain.  There's no weather that far up, so there's nothing to bring it back down right away! Because there's nothing to bring the sulfur dioxide (+/as byproducts) back down from so far up, you can also consider this "sunscreen" extra long-lasting.  In other words, stratospherically-injected sulfur dioxide has a long "residence time." The residence time isn't forever, it's a few years.  So in order to ensure the world doesn't face an acid rain problem, the release has to be done in controlled amounts.  Luckily, modest amounts meet our goals: they cool Earth, stabilize her climate, and produce minimal acid rain The reason this works so well is that, when the sulfur is distributed so high up, it does better at cooling.  Accordingly, we can continue to fight sulfur dioxide emissions on the ground while moving smaller amounts into the stratosphere to keep our planet cool.  That's what @ASong408's company does, and, man does it work.  To hammer in just how well it works, check out these calculations:"
This doesn't push the left wing agenda, so climate change hystericists won't like it

How climate change alarmists are actually damaging the planet - "“You’ll die of old age, I’ll die of climate change,” reads a typical poster held by teenagers in climate rallies across the world. The media, activists and even politicians are unabashedly indulging in climate alarmism, stoking the fears of millions.  Books on the impending implosion of civilization due to climate change line shelves in bookstores across the world. Media outlets have changed the name of climate change, calling it the “climate emergency” or even “climate breakdown.” The cover of Time magazine tells us: “Be worried. Be very worried.”  Unsurprisingly, this causes most of us to brood about a future that we’re being told will be calamitous. Children are growing up terrified, with six in ten American teenagers now afraid of climate change. The scaremongering has reached such a crescendo that now half the world’s population really believes climate change will likely end the human race.  This alarmism is not only false but morally unjust. It leads us to make poor decisions based on fear, when the world not only has gotten better, but will be even better over the century.  Remember that the world today is much better in almost every measurable way...   The UN Climate Panel’s middle-of-the-road estimate for the end of the century is that we will be even better off... one of the UN Climate Panel authors warned against this: “We risk turning off the public with extremist talk that is not carefully supported by the science.”   How is it possible that the media’s portrayal of the impacts of climate change are so vastly removed from reality? Because simple, moderating factors are left out. Last year, a paper generated lots of headlines and clicks claiming that future sea-level rise would flood 187 million people.  But it was spectacularly misleading. It had to assume no one would adapt over the next 80 years. Actually, the research showed that as people obviously adapt, just 0.3 million people will have to move. The scary number is 600 times too large.  This trumped-up rhetoric leads us to make unrealistic promises. We have mostly failed our climate promises for the last thirty years, and we are poised to fail our Paris climate promises by 2030 as well. It also leads nations to make exorbitantly expensive promises of carbon neutrality by 2050, something that will be more costly than permanent coronavirus shutdowns. Only New Zealand has asked for an independent assessment of the cost of its climate policy. It will cost 16 percent of its GDP each and every year by 2050, making it more costly than the entire New Zealand public expenditures for education, health, environment, police, defense, social protection, etc. Spending 16 percent of a nation’s income to solve a smaller part of a 3.6 percent problem is bad policy. Moreover, it is unlikely to happen. We need smarter solutions."

Thank climate change nutsos for New York's summer blackouts - "The green fanatics have been so successful at crippling the Empire State’s power infrastructure that now a minor heat wave, just three straight days with temps only above 95 degrees, could plunge the state into darkness.   The grim news comes from the New York Independent System Operator, the nonprofit that runs the local power grid: In those near-inevitable circumstances, the NYISO warns, the system will be short more than 1,400 megawatts...   How have they done this? By demanding that the state switch generation away from tried-and-true sources like natural gas and oil (and nuclear) to wind and solar — except that the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow and the state’s solar and wind buildout is nowhere near sufficient to meet its massive, growing energy demand.  Yes, New York is shooting for an insane goal — cutting CO2 emissions 40% by 2030 and 85% by 2050 — and immiserating its citizens along the way. Pointlessly: Even if New York somehow hits this target (it won’t), the overall impact on climate change will be null, thanks to committed emitters like China and India — both still building coal plants by the dozens.   They know better than to try and choke off the carbon-based fuels that power the modern world — and will need to keep powering it until we get the only truly sustainable solution, nuclear energy, off the ground. Indeed, the Green New Dealers’ brainless strategy here, i.e. calling for transition before wind and solar can possibly get built out enough, has rendered New York City’s grid “dirtier” than Texas’ and the US average.  The only thing the green drive will achieve is depriving Empire State families of the blessings of modernity — like refrigeration and AC.  Not only will the juice not be there, the cost of trying to build enough wind and solar guarantees massive rate hikes.   With every new absurdity, climate fanaticism is revealed more and more as a quasi-religion, not a rational response to the risks of a warming world. Not that the true believers (or the politicians who pander to them) will pause to face these inconvenient truths.    Remember who to thank when you’re plunged into darkness in this summer’s dog days."
Of course, climate change hystericists will pretend that this is because they haven't built enough renewable capacity, since everyone Knows that renewables are the cheapest form of power

Collapse of projects shows again that wind power is not affordable - "The renewable-power fantasy is being blown apart by furious financial headwinds.  Already this year projects have tumbled in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts, and now Danish wind-power giant Ørsted has canceled two wind farms in New Jersey.  Over and over, the litany of causes is the same: inflation, higher interest rates that drive up capital costs and severe kinks in the supply chain.  These same problems are slamming proposed offshore-wind projects in New York as developers make final decisions on whether to start building turbines or cut their losses before they get worse... The four companies behind these prospective wind farms have all taken big hits to their balance sheets. Equinor has written its value down by $300 million.   Its partner, BP, wrote off more than $500 million. Eversource sliced $300 million off its portfolio’s value.  And Ørsted took a sledgehammer to its accounts, wiping out a whopping $5.6 billion. Its stock plunged more than 20%.  All this chaos caused a top BP executive to lament that the offshore-wind industry is “fundamentally broken.”  Indeed — and yet this broken industry is what New York’s climate activists have pinned their clean-energy hopes on.  If offshore wind had to compete on the free market, we wouldn’t even be talking about it.  The levelized cost of energy from natural gas is around $37 per megawatt hour.  The contracts the wind-energy companies struck with the state sets offshore wind’s price at $118 per megawatt-hour, three times as expensive as gas but still not enough to make turbines turn a profit.  To get out of the red, the firms had begged the PSC to jack up the price to between $140 and $190 per megawatt-hour... This is the danger of letting the government pick winners and losers. Watch the show “Shark Tank,” and you’ll see real investors having to decide whether to risk their own bankroll.  When experienced people are playing with their own money, they don’t care whether an idea sounds exciting or ticks the proper ideological boxes. They only care whether they’re likely to make money off it.  But when government provides subsidies to businesses, the investment decisions are made by folks who get to play with other people’s money... while an investor will walk away from a project that’s going down the tubes, government agencies will keep throwing good money after bad — there’s no cost to them, and it hurts to publicly admit you’re wrong."

Trudeau minister warns your summer road trip will burn the planet - "In an incredibly bizarre outburst in the House of Commons this week, Health Minister Mark Holland described family road trips as if they were a trip to hell.  It all started with Conservative MP Rachael Thomas asking a benign question that should have resulted in a forgettable answer from the government. Next week the Conservatives have a motion coming forward for a vote to take 35 cents of tax off the price of gas so that Canadians can get a break. Thomas was asking the government if they would support the motion and described why they should... A question like that should have resulted in Holland, or some other minister, standing up and saying that they are concerned about affordability issues and the government working hard to address them. If Holland had done that, no one would have noticed the exchange, instead he had a meltdown like Clark Griswold in Christmas Vacation finding out he’s been enrolled in the Jelly of the Month Club.  “Mr. Speaker, there is good news for kids,” Holland said. “They can take a summer fun-time vacation where they are locked in a car for 10 consecutive days non-stop, with no bathroom breaks, and the Conservatives have a plan for them to have that summertime fun.”  If that sounds like Holland didn’t have good experiences with road trips as a kid, you might be right. But the health minister was just getting started with his unhinged response to an innocuous question, he still had to explain that road trips kill Mother Earth. “What is the cost?” Holland asked of the road trip. “It is to give up the future of the planet! Kids do not have to worry about climate change. They do not have to worry about taking action on the planet. They can enjoy their 10 hours in the car and let the planet burn.” Did you hear that kids?  Going to see Grandma or visiting a national park will kill the planet. Driving anywhere will make the earth burn.  Unless that driving, or flying, is done by Mark Holland and he does a lot of both.  The MP for Ajax spent more than $65,000 in travel through his MP’s office budget in the first three quarters of the 2023-24 fiscal year and more than $85,000 the previous year. As Minister of Health, Holland has flown to Deer Lake, Newfoundland; Moncton, New Brunswick; Regina, Saskatchewan; White Horse, Yukon; Vancouver, British Columbia and Iqaluit, Nunavit. And that’s just in the month of March.  Holland also represents a government headed up by Justin Trudeau, who took close to 20 flights in the month of May alone.  Yet this government wants to tell Canadians that their summer road trip will destroy the planet?  Beyond the hypocrisy, there is the bizarre description Holland has for road trips. He describes being locked in a car for 10 hours a day, for 10 days, with no bathroom breaks."
First, they came for the flights. Next, they came for the road trips...

The Persistence of Status

Alex on X

"The Chinese Communist Revolution consolidated its power by taking land from the elite. In the following generation, the previous elite once again reclaimed their social advantage.

This is not an isolated phenomenon...

The Cultural Revolution is one of the most extreme efforts of wealth equalization in all of human history, over 43% of all land assets were transferred to others. The goal was explicit: to eliminate income and wealth differences between the rich and poor in perpetuity.  

The vision of the revolution was to ensure that the elite could not pass on their status to future generations. So, beyond confiscating wealth, the Communists eliminated merit-based admission into universities.
 
Recognizing that education could also be an avenue for the persistence of elite status a quota of 5% was established for the children of "class enemies." The rest of the spots went to the children of workers peasants and soldiers.
 
They went to further lengths to persecute and ensure that status would not carry to the next generation. Beyond the general humiliation and torture of many, the Party "sent down" many urban students to do manual farm labor; the children of the elite were most subject to this.

The communists failed. Despite the initial and massive changes (land reform was one of the causes of the Great Famine), the elite regained their foothold. The extreme egalitarian conditions eased, and university admissions went back to being merit-based. 

So too did income differences re-emerge. They earned more than their past forced equals and even edged out the earnings of party members!  

But this is not an isolated phenomena, all throughout history we can find examples of groups persisting in status despite challenges. Consider another example of Communists making enemies out of their elite: The Soviet Union.
 
Stalin and the Communists imprisoned around 11 million people, of these almost 4 million were what they called Enemies of the People, a highly skilled and educated elite.
 
This was a broad group encompassing "intellectuals, artists, engineers, politicians, businessmen, professors, landowners, scientists, and affluent peasants."

As a group, they were many times more likey to be highly educated. 

Millions were executed or died in the gulag but some, including the enemies, survived. They and their descendants often stayed in the area around the area where they were imprisoned. Here you can see where they were taken from (the hexagons) and where the camps were.
 
Similar to the Chinese the task of imprisoning and executing the educated had no economic rationale. It was purely political, the goal was to "destroy" these families and take away any lasting advantage they might pass on to their offspring. 

So what happened to these remote regions now populated with the survivors of the communist regime? They do better in proportion to the amount of *enemies* that were imprisoned in the region. Nightlight, a measure of development, is significantly higher in these regions. 
 
The same goes for productivity and wages. 

The Soviets failed, today the descendants of the enemies shine brighter (literally). Here's a map of lights from space:
 
Of course, status persistence isn't isolated to communists; Rich southerners, many of whom held much of their wealth in slaves incurred great losses when slavery was abolished after the Civil War. 
 
Beyond losing labor farming their land became less productive; free labor is different from slave labor. For many, the transition from being a master to an employer proved challenging.

In effect, many of these families had the vast majority of their wealth erased. 

Not all rich families were wealthy on account of slaves so we can compare. For wealthy families, the amount of wealth lost depended largely on the number of slaves that the family held. 
 
However, a generation later most families had regained their status and by the third generation, there is seemingly no difference. 

Further south, in Cuba, the Castro regime was seizing power. Unlike most immigration today, these Cuban exiles intended to return once the regime fell. Many hoped the US would overthrow Castro, allowing them to go back. This didn’t happen, and they resettled in the US. 
 
Cubans, a well-off group of Latin immigrants are eclipsed still by the Exiles in particular. Despite being the targets of the regime and being unable to have gone back this group is more integrated and higher earning than other Cubans.
 
More generally they are healthier and more active than the other groups. There were also cognitive differences: one test found a 0.6d (or ~ 9 IQ metric point) difference between the exiles and other immigrants arriving 20 years later. 

The Samurai are an ancient, hereditary nobility of warriors that existed for centuries. During the Meiji era (1869) they lost this status and the monetary benefits associated. The turmoil of the war and post-war era further shocked these families and Japan.
 
Despite this, the Samurai and the Kazoku (another prestigious group) persisted in status. Their descendants, those with Samuari surnames, are highly overrepresented in academia today. 
 
And Samurai with rare surnames happened to persist at even higher representations. 

Japanese people were also deprived of status in another way: Interment. In 1942 many Japanese near the Pacific coast were sent to camps far away from the theater. 
 
Those who were interned had to relocate quickly and thus had to sell their property at a discount. They were also relocated upon their release.
 
Japanese living elsewhere were a lot less likely to be interned. So, what are the differences between these groups?

There was significantly less homeownership. However, this was recovered within a decade! 

Let's also look at income, the descendants of the interned also resembled that of the not interned fairly well. 
 
So status persists throughout history even in the most extreme scenarios. What explains this? Genes play a major role. Consider how status persists when the status is accurized purely through chance.
 
In 1832 the state of Georgia had got ahold of new land after the government removed the Cherokees. Due to some political oddities, the state eventually decided to hold a land lottery for the citizens of the state.
 
Unlike most lotteries where participation is selective (people worse with money are more likely to participate) this land giveaway had the precipitation of almost every person in Georgia.
 
There was a good amount of land to be won any winner could sell their land for around 4 years of wages; a substantial sum. However, this windfall did not seem to have any generational effects. It seems wealth—physical capital—is not easily transferable to human capital. 

Sadly in some families, a parent dies before the children are grown up, here we can observe what happens to these children. In 1919 the Spanish flu swept the world and many children lost a parent. What were the effects?
 
Overall they weren't large, the affected children seemed to have a similar life outcome to those that weren't affected. Interestingly, the death of a father had few significant effects at all.
 
Consider what happens if the child's parent remarries and gets the care of a step-mother/father.

Stepmothers might have a small effect... 
 
While stepfathers don't.  

This holds in other examples; we can compare families who used sperm donation as a fertility treatment to nearly identical other families.

When there is no genetic relation there is no resemblance in academic outcomes. 
 
Also, consider 400 years of data from England: the age of a father's death has little relation to future outcomes. 

And the things that cause status are more salient than the status itself. In 1940 Asians tested about as well as whites. However, they made substantially less money. 
 
So, is it any surprise that they largely caught up in around a generation? 

I find this particularly well put: 
 
"You can take away everything from people—their land, their material possessions, their social networks, their religious worship, all of it—but you can't take away their minds, and they only need to have kids to pass those on.""
 
 
Clearly, the power of Privilege was just too great. We need multiple generations of death camps and Communist reeducation to create the ideal society
 
The tabula rasa myth has very real harms