Saturday, August 31, 2024

Links - 31st August 2024 (2 - Plastics/Recycling)

Thread by @salonium on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "I read this recent 'microplastics in the brain' article and I have a lot of questions. 🧵
First, the reporting of this study...  The Guardian article says it's "a pre-print paper still undergoing peer review that is posted online by the National Institutes of Health"  Note the NIH has many disclaimers on their site explaining they don't endorse the content of articles (For context, the NIH's PubMed provides public access to studies, republishing them from journals where they were originally published.  In this case, the preprint was originally published on Research Square, and is under review at the journal Nature Portfolio. Not by NIH.)
The Guardian article says the researchers looked at brain samples from people with & without dementia including Alzheimer's.  But this isn't mentioned anywhere in the paper Or in other papers by the same author. Where's this claim from?...
The article has this quote: "You can draw a line - it's increasing over time."  When I read this, I thought the study found consistently rising concentrations over the years between 2016 and 2024.  But in fact, there were samples from only two years: 2016 and 2024. The samples come from the Office of the Medical Investigator (OMI) in New Mexico, which conducts statewide autopsies of any sudden deaths each year.  But the study doesn't give any detail about why samples only came from two specific years. This is not just a matter of transparency, but having data from more years helps understand whether this was an actual trend, rather than a discrepancy or fluctuation. One more: the Guardian article originally comes from this article in The New Lede.  It has some alarming quotes which didn't make it into the Guardian piece.
Note, in the study, there were a total of 27 samples from 2016 and 24 samples from 2024.  That's seems fine for a preliminary study. But I question how much we can learn from these specific samples about microplastics concentrations across New Mexico, let alone at a global scale. Let's actually look at the study though.  To recap, the study is a preprint where 27 samples from 2016 and 24 samples from 2024 were obtained from the statewide autopsy department and analysed for concentrations of microplastics in different organs. Here's the link:
As I understand it, a major challenge with microplastics studies is properly accounting for potential contamination while handling or analysing samples.  Indeed, the study mentions some reasons the authors believe their results aren't due to contamination. For example, they say in the Limitations that they had KOH blank samples and measured the polymer composition of all plastic tubes and pipette tips, which are essential in the digestion and measurement process. But these aren't mentioned anywhere else in the study or supplement. No KOH blanks, pipette tips, tubes.  What were the results of these quality assurance steps? How about potential contamination at other steps before the researchers obtained the samples from the autopsy department — including the fixation and storage of the samples? The graphs in the results sections also have some oddities that aren't clarified in the paper. For example, the concentrations in brain samples in 2024 have much less variation than the other data. I think this is implausible, but the authors don't comment on it.
Maybe these questions will be answered during the review process at Nature Portfolio, but maybe they won't — either way, the reporting of this preprint is very poor. In my view, science journalists should ask questions to researchers and peers about the methods of studies, and tell us what they said.  Tell us what was done and why. We shouldn't only hear impressions of the headline results... It would also be good to hear from others e.g. chemists and forensics/autopsy researchers, on whether they think the specific methods were appropriate, aside from the points I made."

Thread by @eugyppius1 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - " Since July, all plastic bottles sold in EU must have tethered caps – they remain attached after unsrewing and interfere obnoxiously with attempts to drink. This is to save the oceans, altho Europe contributes almost no plastic waste to the seas. The big source is Asia. Retrofitting bottle factories to manufacture the new caps is estimated to have cost millions of Euros. They also, ironically, tend to use somewhat more plastic. Packings experts/engineers have told the press multiple times that this will achieve nothing & merely annoy people. The new regulation goes back to this 2016 EU Commission report on Marine Beach Litter in Europe, compiled by someone named Georg Hanke who I'm sure is a total shit. It compiles various surveys, ultimately showing that plastic bottle caps ... are a numerically frequent but otherwise minor source of ocean litter – vastly outpaced by things like fishing nets and random polystyrene debris. Hard to do anything about that stuff. The EU Commission looked at this report and picked the one thing they thought they could easily fix with a regulation, so now our plastic bottles have to suck. I know this is a small thing but it's basically the entire EU in microcosm. One thing that would really help, not only here but with global warming hysteria and virus lunacy and so many other things, is if we could get these ret@rds to stop measuring and surveying every last fucking thing. Every data trove, every report, becomes a new obnoxious project."

Meme - Person: "I NEED TO SAVE THE OCEAN FROM ALL THE PLASTIC!"
Seal tangled in plastic: "YES, THE NETS!"
Person: "THIS STRAW IS SO EVIL"
Seal tangled in plastic: "NO, THE NETS!"
"FISHING NETS MAKE UP HALF OF THE PLASTIC IN THE OCEAN"

Zero-Waste Stores Aren't As Good As People Think - "Zero-waste or refill stores all operate similarly: You bring your own containers, whether that’s Tupperware or other sealable plastic bowls, glass jars, or literally any container that can be filled, sealed, and then cleaned for re-use. Most products are offered raw, in bulk, in large dispensers or pump stations without individual packaging; some products (like dissolvable cleaning tablets that you mix with water) are sold individually. Most stores offer containers for sale (or for free, via donations) if you don’t have your own, or if you miscalculate and need a few extra...
Sanitation. You have to clean your reusable containers very thoroughly if you’re going to prevent bacteria or mold from creeping in—but the act of washing them can actually make them less safe to use, as rough scrubbing or dishwasher cycles can create grooves where bacteria can grow, as well as break the plastic down, allowing its components to leach into food.
Reusable math. The plastic, glass, or metal container you bring to a refill store most likely required a lot more resources to create than the flimsy single-use plastic in a standard grocery store—which means you have to use them a lot to actually have a net-positive impact. If this is a permanent shift in how you shop, you’ll eventually get there—but the number of uses resets every time you have to introduce a new container, further eroding the impact.
Price. Zero-waste shops usually have some pretty tough margins, and can be as much as three times more expensive for certain products than a traditional grocery store.
Spoilage and spillage. Single-use plastics are pretty good at keeping food fresh and free from blemishes—one study demonstrated that plastic-wrapped cucumbers lasted more than a week longer than “naked” ones. Unwrapped produce may spoil faster, leading to increased food waste.  There’s also the issue of spillage in the store—mistakes with dispensers or knocking loose produce onto the floor leads to waste and bruising, further increasing the potential for food waste.
Choice. Most zero-waste stores are fervently local and focused on environmentally friendly products, which makes sense. But that means that you might not find a lot of familiar brands in those dispensers, so you might need to adjust your expectations and preferences."

Asphalt: The #1 Recycled Material in the Country - "Asphalt pavement is recycled and reused at a rate of over 99%.
A wide variety of waste materials can be incorporated into asphalt pavements. Rubber tires, glass, slags, certain types of sand, and even pig manure can be found in modern asphalt paving mixtures."

Sustainable showdown: plastic vs. paper bags - "Paper bags are often viewed as the greener alternative because paper is made from trees, a renewable source.  Ironically, plastic bags were introduced in the UK over 60 years ago to replace the widely used paper bag which was being blamed for widespread deforestation.  Plastic was introduced to protect natural resources and save the trees... In 2011, the Northern Ireland Assembly produced a research paper to compare the environmental impact of plastic, paper and cloth bags. The Assembly said that it takes more than four times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag as it does to manufacture a plastic bag.  In that report they drew on research that had been done in 2005 by the Scottish Government who conducted an environmental assessment comparing plastic and paper bags – some of the results are outlined below... Paper bags are made from trees, a renewable source, but are paper bags the best option?  They tear easily, limiting their reuse, and their production creates 70% more air pollution than plastic bag production.   Another important factor to consider is that plastic bags consume less than 6% of the water needed to make paper bags.  It takes 1,004 gallons of water to produce 1,000 paper bags, and 58 gallons of water to produce 1,500 plastic bags.   On the flip side, paper does not pollute the ocean and can degrade quickly.  However, this depends on paper’s end-of-life use.  According to the Northern Ireland Assembly’s report, paper that ends up in landfill does not degrade “at a substantially faster rate than plastic does”...   You may be surprised to learn that plastic bags are the greenest ones, according to Omnicalculator.com’s study of eco-friendly bags. In eight out of nine of their impact categories, it has the lowest impact of all tested bags (plastic, paper, and cotton tote)."
Virtue signalling is not about helping, but looking like you're helping

New single-use and takeaway item bylaw in Toronto comes into effect Friday - "Getting take-out in Toronto is about to look slightly different as the city’s new single-use and takeaway item bylaw comes into effect later this week.  Starting Friday, businesses will be required by law to ask customers if they’d like a single-use “accessory food item,” such as utensils, straws, napkins, paper shopping bags etc. before providing them.  The bylaw was approved by Toronto City Council on Dec. 15 after being presented in a staff report as a way of reducing the single-use plastic waste that comes with take-out.  Businesses will also be required to accept reusable shopping bags and reusable cups if customers choose to use them...   Businesses who do not follow the new rule could face a fine of no less than $500 and no more than $100,000.  The city previously estimated that it will cost $450,000 to run and enforce the program, $250,000 in 2024 and $100,000 each in 2025 and 2026. Any further spending would need to be considered as part of the 2025 budget."
Shit like this is one reason property taxes are so high. But of course left wingers will still try to force everyone to live in cities, claiming that they are more efficient, while contradicting themselves by complaining that taxes there are too low

Fruit, vegetable producers warn plastic reductions could increase grocery costs - "A proposed federal plan to curb plastic packaging is on a timeline fruit and vegetable producers are calling “problematic” and “unrealistic.”...  She insists the industry is working on ways to reduce its use of plastics, but currently biodegradable alternatives are too expensive.  “The technology just isn’t there yet,” Steward said. “(The) biodegradable (plastic) industry is quite greenwashed right now.”  A study obtained by CTV News from the Canadian Produce Marketing Association said the proposed rules are expected to pass on a 30 per cent additional cost to the consumer.  The higher prices come from transition to more expensive packaging materials, inefficiencies in shipping and increased food waste.  “Everybody gets upset about the wrap on cucumbers,” said CPMA President Ron Lemaire. "The challenge you have is you have two days at home with your cucumber, as opposed to 15 days."...  More than two-thirds of all produce consumed in Canada is imported, so there are concerns of a trade chill as well.  “You’re dealing with international trade partners, and manufactures that may just say ‘you know what, were not ready to shift our production lines,’” said Michael Zabaneh, Retail Council of Canada's vice-president of sustainability."
Damn greedy companies raising food prices when people can't afford to live!

Australia is one of the most taxed countries in the world. Now millions of households could be slugged with a new, world-first 'recycling tax' - "Aussies could be slugged with a world-first 'recycling tax' in a further blow to households already struggling with a cost-of-living crisis. The Albanese government has proposed several changes be made to exporting paper and cardboard waste from Australia from July 1. Under the proposed scheme, exporters will need to pay $30,000 for a licence and a fee of $4 on every tonne that is sent overseas. The National Waste and Recycling Industry Council (NWRIC) warned tens of millions of dollars would have to be passed onto Australians to cover the increased costs... In 2022, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) revealed Australia had the fourth highest income tax in the world. The average Aussies was taxed 23.2 per cent of their wages - a figure that is well above the average of 14.9 per cent across all 38 OECD nations... Visy and Opal are the only Australian companies who buy paper and cardboard recyclables. This means each year there is a surplus of about 1.2 million tonnes – about half of the total – that needs to be exported for recycling."
Obviously greedy companies need to just swallow the cost
Actually, having the costs of recycling made apparent is a good way to bring home the real costs of feel-good virtue signalling

Meme - "Me realizing I forgot to bring my reusable bags for the 47th time"
"Saving the environment" is not easy!

Plastic bags were created to save the planet, inventor’s son says - "Plastic bags were invented to save the planet, according to the son of Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin who created them in 1959.  The bags were developed as an alternative to paper bags, which were considered bad for the environment because they resulted in forests being chopped down.  They were significantly stronger than paper bags, which meant – in theory – they could be used over and over again...  alternatives to plastic bags are not necessarily the greener option. Although opting for paper or cotton bags would reduce litter and waste, they have other significant environmental effects.  According to the UK Environment Agency, a paper bag has to be used three times to be as environmentally friendly as a plastic bag that is recycled.  Making paper bags uses more energy and water and they are also heavier, which makes them more expensive to transport.  Bags made of cotton – a crop which requires huge amounts of water to grow – need to be used at least 131 times to be as good as a recycled plastic bag."
이창용어학원, 0301 - PLASTIC BAGS SUPPOSED TO HELP THE PLANET - "plastic bags are very efficient to make. We need very little oil. Super little energy and then we have a plastic bag"

New bylaw would force Toronto customers to specifically request plastic cups - "As early as March 1, 2024, businesses like restaurants and retail stores would be required to ask guests if they would like a disposable item, such as single-use plastic cups, containers, and even paper shopping bags, rather than simply giving them away.  The bylaw also means that businesses will be required to accept reusable containers from patrons and will face fines set by the provincial government if they do not comply.   Reports estimate that implementation of the new reduction strategy could cost the city $250,000 in the first year, reaching around $450,000 by the time the strategy is fully implemented in 2028"
When elites' lives are too good, they come up with ways to make normal people's lives worse. And then elites will complain budget deficits are so high because taxes are too low
Good luck with the lawsuits from people who get sick from their own dirty reusable containers

Plastic straw bans hurt kids and adults with disabilities, advocates say - "The family was thrilled when Von learned how to drink from a straw at the age of 3, she wrote in an online column. He otherwise doesn’t eat much by mouth, but still loves to go to restaurants to watch other families with their kids. It gives him a sense of normalcy and independence when he can sit with his parents during meal time and enjoy his juice, Paulson said. Bendable plastic straws work best for her son.  Indeed, the “Flex-Straw,” invented by Joseph B. Friedman in the 1930s, was first sold to hospitals as an easy, sanitary way to help patients easily drink from any position, according to the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.  Paulson has tried every non-disposable alternative, but none works as well. Metal straws get hot or cold, depending on the drink, so Von could burn himself. They’re also stiff, which could lead him to choke or chip his teeth, Paulson said, calling them “so dangerous.”... The other alternatives don’t work either, Paulson said: Silicone straws are too soft, while paper straws dissolve... Some restaurants have stopped automatically giving out straws, but are supposed to give them out on request. That doesn’t always happen.  A woman’s tweets recently went viral when she described what happened when she asked for a straw at a restaurant. The waitress refused because she didn’t think the customer looked “disabled enough.” The woman, who has a joint condition that makes it difficult to pick up a glass, complained that a waitress should not get to decide if a person is “validly disabled or not.” She later deleted the tweets, citing online threats... The Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund has heard of more and more cases like that since the straw bans went into effect, said spokesman Lawrence Carter-Long.  “There seems to be this almost shaming of people. While some disabilities might be obvious, others are less than obvious,” Carter-Long said. “Then it gets into this almost interrogation. If you just want to get a coffee or a cold drink, do you want to give the barista your medical history? A person shouldn’t be required to do that.” In almost every single case, straw bans have been made without input from people with disabilities"
Of course, one cope is that they can just ask for plastic straws. It's weird how "stigma" is not an issue when it comes to conflicting elements of the liberal agenda. And of course the reduced demand for plastic straws absolutely won't hurt the disabled in terms of reduced supply, because liberals are economically illiterate

Plastic straw alternatives bad for planet, people with disabilities - "Most straws pose injury risks, and are expensive, says the Center for Disability Rights... two of the most common straw alternatives — paper and metal — have drawn criticism for environmental experts such as Walker.  Paper straws use a lot of raw materials, and because of their single-use nature, do not lessen one's carbon footprint, Walker told USA TODAY.  Stainless steel, on the other hand, uses a fair amount of energy as well as mining resources to make."

Metal straws are killing people too - "a British woman was holding her drink, she fell over, and a metal straw stabbed her and killed her - the straw may have been eco, but it sure wasn’t friendly. Metal straws had turned evil too: they were chipping teeth, slashing gums, puncturing brain stems"
Of course, one sea turtle is a lot more important than a human

Should You Swap Plastic Straws For Paper Straws To Reduce Your Environmental Impact? - "paper straws really aren’t much more environmentally friendly than plastic straws. In fact, it’s possible that they’re actually worse for the environment.  We might think of paper as a material which is easily recyclable, but unfortunately that isn’t always true. Once used, paper straws will be soggy and contaminated by whatever you’ve drunk through them. That means that most councils in the UK do not have the infrastructure to recycle them. McDonalds came upon this problem when they made the switch from plastic to paper straws, and had to admit that the 1.8 million straws used in their ‘restaurants’ every day across the UK could not be recycled and so were being sent straight to landfill.  Of course, it isn’t only about where the straw goes at the end of its life. Paper is also pretty resource intensive to produce. It’s made from trees, which can make it seem like a good choice environmentally — trees are a renewable source. However, they’re also an incredibly valuable source of carbon capture, so we shouldn’t be cutting them down and using them up for anything other than an incredibly good reason. In my eyes, paper straws are not that.  Some studies argue that paper items are more resource and energy intensive to produce than paper. This includes statistics like:
Producing paper bags creates 70% more air pollution than producing plastic bags
Manufacturing paper creates 80% more greenhouse gases than plastic
Ultimately, the problem with plastic straws is the same as the problem with paper straws: is the energy used to produce them and transport them to your cocktail glass really worth the 20 minutes of use that you get out of it before you throw it away? They’re unnecessary single-use items.  It all comes down to thoughtless consumption in the end. The vast majority of us have absolutely no need for a straw to consume a drink. It’s just something we’ve come to expect, and that we use and discard without thinking about it...  if you really can’t do without a straw in your drink, why not get yourself a reusable metal, glass, or silicon straw which you can take with you and reuse forever — a much better option."
Of course the "solution" is to degrade quality of life. We better ban disposable forks and spoons soon - people can always eat with their hands

Why banning plastic straws isn't helping the oceans - "The straw that got stuck in that sea turtle’s nose? It almost certainly came from an Asian community with bad waste management.  But here’s the good news: We actually know how to fix both ghost gear and poor waste practices in the developing world. With ghost gear, you set up buyback programs with fishers to disincentivize them from simply chucking broken gear overboard. As for poor waste management, countries like Canada are actually really, really good at safely managing garbage. And the bang for the buck is huge: Kick a few million dollars towards a dump project in Indonesia, and you’re instantly diverting thousands of tonnes of plastic from the ocean. So with all that in mind, the next time you feel a pang of guilt at the plight of the oceans, ask yourself why the single most visible action against ocean plastic to date was to force millions of people to use crappy technology that does virtually nothing to solve the initial problem."
Too bad virtue signalling is more important than actually doing something useful

Paper straws contain more potentially toxic ‘forever chemicals’ than plastic. Should you give them up? - "in the journal Food Additives and Contaminants. A study by a European research group showed there are significant health and environmental risks associated with the paper-based and bamboo-based straws that have replaced plastic straws...  They studied plastic, paper and plant-based straws obtained in the USA. It showed that paper and plant-based straws contain PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances).  These are fluorine-based chemicals that have remarkable properties in repelling water, grease and pretty much anything. They are widely used in products designed to resist water and oil such as raincoats, furniture, cookware and food packaging.  PFAS are chemically and thermally very stable which means that almost nothing reacts or degrades them. This means they persist in the environment and will do so for thousands of years. For this reason, they have been dubbed ‘forever chemicals’.  They have been found literally everywhere from the Arctic ice to the Amazon rainforest. They also make it into the human body by migrating from packaging into our food and drink.  Once PFAS are in our blood they are associated with a number of health effects such as liver and kidney disease. There is also evidence that PFAS may lead to increased risk of high blood pressure in pregnant women, and decreased immune response. Some studies show an association of PFAS exposure with kidney and testicular cancer. They have been shown to harm wildlife too.  All the evidence points to paper and plant-based straws having significant PFAS in them. PFAS have also been found in plastic straws but at lower levels. The only material determined to be free of PFAS was stainless steel."
Saving one imaginary sea turtle is more important than avoiding possibly toxic chemicals. Of course the "solution" will be to force everyone to use steel straws

Is recycling plastic pointless? Hard truths about what happens to your recyclable waste - "Only 6 per cent of this waste was recycled. Is there any point, however, in trying to boost this rate?...   The first challenge in recycling plastic is that there are many different types of plastic.  Generally, there are seven categories of plastic, each with different properties, said Tong Yen Wah, an associate professor in the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS)... “All of them melt at different temperatures,” he said. “If we want to produce high-quality resins from recycling of the plastics, we need to separate them into a single stream of … plastics.”  It is a “big challenge” separating and baling the plastics accordingly, he added — as seen at one materials recovery facility (MRF), where recyclable items of all types are sorted and baled before being sent to recycling plants...   Under the Basel Convention, which Singapore acceded to in 1996, exporters must ensure that contamination of their plastic bales for export by other plastic types is capped at 0.5 per cent, otherwise the receiving country can ship them back.  In fact, Ang said his facility generally sends only three types of plastics for recycling: PET, HDPE and low-density polyethylene. Among the other plastics, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) — used for raincoats, for example — is not highly sought after, as the plasticisers commonly added to PVC can pose health risks when heated during the recycling process. Even what gets recycled is becoming increasingly difficult to export.  In 2019, it was estimated that 92 per cent of Singapore’s recyclable plastic was exported, as there were few plastic recycling companies in Singapore. But countries that Singapore exports its plastic to have tightened restrictions...  illegal recyclers may indiscriminately dump or burn plastic waste when they realise the waste they imported is contaminated and there is no means of recycling it...   Would building more plastic recycling facilities in Singapore to manage the plastic waste here be an option then? According to SEC deputy executive director Goh Wee Hong, this would not make sense.  “You’d need a big piece of land, and it’d be very labour-intensive,” he said and cited Singapore’s high energy costs too. “We don’t have economies of scale: We don’t have the volume that could help to sustain the factory.”  And the fact remains that recycled resin costs more than virgin resin. “How do we find more buyers to buy from us?” he questioned. “We already have a small pool of buyers buying recycled resin. To complicate matters, there may be a problem with the end product of plastic recycling.  Recycled PET is most commonly used to make bottled drinks. But last year, researchers from Brunel University London found higher concentrations of potentially harmful chemicals in drinks bottled using recycled PET compared with bottles made from new PET.   When Talking Point sent four regular plastic bottles of water and one bottle made of recycled PET for tests, the laboratory found a higher level of disinfectant known as quaternary ammonium compounds in the water from the recycled bottle compared with all the others.  These disinfectants are used in many cleaning solutions, according to Karina Gin, a professor in the NUS’ department of civil and environmental engineering.  “This probably came about from the washing procedures,” she said. “Disinfectant or detergent would have to be used to wash all the bottles.  “But (with) recycled plastic, they’d probably have to wash it more thoroughly — several times — to meet the food-grade quality … and therefore, very likely, incorporate more of this disinfectant in the process.” While the traces of disinfectant were “at safe levels”, it was “quite a surprise that we found disinfectant at all”, she said. “This is something that we don’t expect to find in our drinking water.”... About 60 to 70 per cent of all recyclable waste received is contaminated, according to Chye Thiam Maintenance senior plant manager Derek Chong. Contaminated items are non-recyclable and will be incinerated... Some shopping centres in Singapore have segregated bins for different recyclable materials. But sustainability professional Kavickumar Muruganathan noted that shopping centres are typically projects initiated by large developers with sustainability and environmental ambitions.  Scaling up such a system on a national basis can only come with “more resources”. “You need to buy compartmentalised bins for that and … also do the labelling,” said Kavickumar, an NUS College of Design and Engineering adjunct lecturer.  “A year or two could be the duration you’re probably looking at, or sometimes even longer if it’s hard to find those relevant materials to create the system. So we’re not likely to see that in the near future.”"

Islamism & the "Far Right:" a False Equivalence

Prescient piece from May by Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

Islamism & the "Far Right:" a False Equivalence

"Something remarkable happened in the British House of Commons on Wednesday, February 21st: Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, and Sir Keir Starmer, the Leader of the Opposition and likely next Prime Minister, bent the knee to Islamist intimidation and allowed threats of violence to dictate the business of the Mother of Parliaments. More precisely, Sir Lindsay broke parliamentary protocol to allow three separate votes on a ceasefire in Gaza on the grounds that this would protect MPs from threats to their safety.  As he told the House: “I don’t ever want to go through the situation of picking up a phone to find that a friend, of whatever side, has been murdered by terrorists.” 

This didn’t come about in a vacuum. For months since the attacks of October 7th, Britain’s cities have seen repeated massive pro-Palestine protests, often accompanied by radical rhetoric against Israel and its Western supporters. Britain’s counter-terrorism chief Matt Jukes warned in January of increased “radicalization” occurring over the war in Gaza. Against this backdrop of heightened scrutiny of their stance on the conflict, left-wing Labour Party politicians and their staff complained of being fearful of violent attacks, even as one of their Tory colleagues, Mike Freer, said he was resigning in response to death threats and murder attempts from Muslims. In response to all of this the Home Office announced £31m of public funds to hire bodyguards for MPs “so as to protect the UK's democratic processes from disruption.” I know the feeling.

Of course, the real issue looming in the background of these extraordinary and ominous developments is the UK’s now enormous Muslim population, much of which seems far more concerned about the ethnic and religious war in the Middle East than the domestic politics of the country in which they live. Yet Britain’s political and media elite, rather than focus on the combination of mass immigration, identity politics, and anti-Western dogma that created this problem, have chosen to spend the weeks since talking mostly about Islamophobia and the Far Right instead.

The pretext for the shift was an incident of lèse-diversité involving (now former) Tory MP Lee Anderson, who said that Islamists controlled London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Anderson accused him of “handing over our capital city to his mates” (i.e. Islamists). This clumsily worded remark was all the excuse the media needed to declare that the real issue is Islamophobia in the ailing Conservative Party. It also opened the way for activist groups to demand investigations into “structural Islamophobia” as well as attacks from predictable quarters such as Scottish National Party leader Humza Yousaf, who called for an investigation into “institutional Islamophobia,” and a pile-on from so-called One Nation Conservatives like Sayeeda Warsi, who said his remarks revealed a “rot at the heart” of the Conservative Party.

So far, so predictable. This is just the reality of contemporary Britain. Every year the nation gets more Muslim, and every year the nation gets more terrified of talking about Islam. What was more remarkable was the response of the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. Rather than seeking to refocus attention on the hijacking of the entire political process by mob rule (as former Home Secretary Suella Braverman called it), he instead reinforced the media and leftist narrative by “withdrawing the whip” from Anderson (that is, throwing him out of the Party), which precipitated his defection to the new, but genuinely conservative-seeming Reform Party. To make matters worse, he followed this up after extreme-leftist George Galloway’s victory in a Rochdale by-election with an address on extremism that only reinforced a sense of seriously disordered priorities.

Instead of pledging to fight back against Islamist intimidation of MPs or talking about how Galloway’s Gaza-centric campaign reflected the balkanization wrought by excessive immigration, Sunak instead feebly triangulated between Islamism on the one hand and the supposed rise of the Far Right on the other, telling us that they “feed off and embolden each other. They are equally desperate to pretend that their violence is somehow justified when actually these groups are two sides of the same extremist coin.”

This attempt to draw an equivalence between Islamism and the far right as equally threatening extremes between which Sunak’s Tories sit in the “Sensible Center” was seriously mistaken on at least three levels. 

For starters, it is glaringly at odds with the government’s own data about the realities of the terrorist threat in Britain. 

According to the 2023 CONTEST Report, the primary domestic terrorist threat comes from Islamism, which “accounts for approximately 67% of attacks since 2018, about three quarters of MI5 caseload and 64% of those in custody for terrorism-connected offenses.” It also accounts for 80% of the Counter Terrorism Police’s live investigations. A similar picture is evident on the Continent, where Europol’s director said in 2023 that “Islamist terrorism remains the biggest terror threat to Western Europe.”   

By contrast, what CONTEST calls Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism “amounts to approximately 22% of attacks since 2018, about a quarter of MI5 caseload and 28% of those in custody for terrorism-connected offences.” Overall, far right terror attacks in the UK so far this century have resulted in 3 fatalities and 10 injuries compared to 94 fatalities and 1819 injuries from Islamist ones. Three dead is three too many, but it is hardly equal to the threat of Islamism.

Proportionately, these figures are even more striking given that Islamists must look for their support among a Muslim population amounting to 6.5% of the UK total, whereas the Far Right can in principle address its message to a white population representing 80%.  It is a threat which can also draw succor from the fact a sizeable plurality of British Muslims candidly tell us they would prefer to live under Sharia law rather than integrate fully into British life and a significant minority of tens of thousands say they admire organisations like Al-Qaeda that are prepared to fight the West. Not unrelatedly, the 43,000 Islamists on the MI5 watchlist represent about 1% of the entire Muslim population of the country.

Moreover, as a prospective matter, Islamism is a more rapidly expanding force with immigration putting momentum on its side: as Matt Goodwin has pointed out, between 2010 and 2030, the number of Muslims in Britain is forecast to increase 94%, from 2.8 to 5.6 million. According to data I will release later, roughly 1 in 8 British children is born to Muslim parents. The threat won’t just grow - it will grow exponentially! The Far Right, by contrast, only ever rises (from a low base) in reaction to a perceived threat, which presently seems most likely to be provided by the sort of establishment immigration extremism that has prevailed in the UK since 1997 but which hopefully can be beaten at the ballot box before it engenders a threat on a remotely comparable scale. None of this is to make an excuse for right-wing terrorism. Terrorism is terrorism, and we should stop it wherever it arises. But in order to do so effectively, it helps to understand it.

This however leads us to a second problem with Sunak’s triangulating response to Islamist intimidation: it’s deeply misguided as a matter of electoral politics. He could have told voters that he understands how the unprecedented scenes in Westminster and British cities over recent months have arisen from the failed progressive paradigm that has governed all aspects of immigration and integration policy since Blair. Instead he sent out a further powerful signal that he is determined to reinforce it. 

It is simply delusional for the Tories to think that joining in with Labour’s distraction campaign against a far right phantom will benefit them politically. As an Opinium poll conducted after Anderson’s remarks showed, nearly three-quarters of Tory members believe that immigration has been bad for Britain and that multiculturalism is not working. 58% believe Islam is a threat to the British way of life, and they are twice as likely to have a negative view of immigrants as a positive one. The proportion of them who believe that Islamophobia is as big a problem as Islamism can, as such, be guesstimated at near zero.

This poll moreover came out against a backdrop of others showing that 8 in 10 former Tory voters think the party would have a better chance of winning the election with a leader who embraces “traditional Conservative values,” something the party under Sunak steadfastly refuses to give them. In large part as a result, the Reform Party has siphoned off the votes of almost one third of 2019 Conservative voters from the Tory’s right flank.

The fact that support for Reform has risen from 4% when Sunak became Prime Minister to an average of 14% now strongly suggests that his kowtowing to the left on the central issues of mass immigration and integration is not the answer to their electoral woes. All he has achieved through this approach is to alienate right-of-center voters, while failing to win over any centrists.

This leads me to the most troubling aspect of his speech: as an ideological matter it was symptomatic of the Tory Party’s near-total surrender to concept creep over the meaning of “far-right.” 

Historically, this designation referred to violent anti-democratic movements that stood for totalitarianism, military expansionism, and supremacist ideologies that countenanced the enslavement or genocide of ethnic or religious minorities. Today the term “far right” lacks any connection to such a plausible definition. This was vividly demonstrated when Lord Pearson, who sits as an independent peer in the House of Lords,  tabled a parliamentary written question in June 2023 asking whether His Majesty’s Government has “adopted a common definition of “far-right;” and if so, what it is.” Replying on behalf of the Government, Lord Sharpe, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, cited an Intelligence and Security Committee report which defines “Far Right” as “an umbrella term to encapsulate the entire movement which has a Far-Right political outlook in relation to matters such as culture, race, immigration and identity.”

It evidently escaped Lord Not-So-Sharpe that this definition is entirely circular: to say that “the far right are those with a far right outlook” is not informative but tautologous. I’m reminded of Ibram Kendi’s definition of racism. Not content with so obvious a cop-out, Lord Pearson persisted with another parliamentary question citing the previous answer and inquiring “what criteria are used to determine whether groups or individuals have a ‘far right outlook.’” Lord Sharpe responded once again, explaining that “far-right political outlook” means “views that Western civilisations are under threat from ‘non-native’ people and ideas.” 

This is, I wearily admit, is an improvement on the previous evasion. But it is still absurdly inflationary. As has been pointed out elsewhere, this definition would plausibly encompass both the government’s and Intelligence and Security Committee’s own oft-repeated claims that the UK and broader West are threatened by the (non-native) governments of China and Russia as well as by foreign Islamist groups. Moreover, it could easily be read to encompass any claim that there are serious costs associated with mass immigration of “non-native peoples” into the West. Consider, for instance, one of the most famous findings in the scholarly literature, Robert Putnam’s discovery that in ethnically diverse neighborhoods “[t]rust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.” Despite the fact this finding has been replicated by others and is clearly relevant it could amount to a far right view on this definition, an implication sufficiently costly as to discredit it too. 

Nor do matters improve much when we turn to the new definition of “extremism” just unveiled by Michael Gove as part of the effort to “combat the far right and Islamist threat.” It describes it as involving “the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance that aims to negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others; undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights; or intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve [this].” Aside from the fact that the second prong of this definition would seem (for better or worse) to rule out advocacy of, say, a non-monarchical system as extremism, there are two glaring problems with it. 

First, the new proposed definition will - like the definition used by Prevent before it - still be based on values. That is to say, it is based on what people think rather than what they do. As such, it is an example of what the philosopher Quassim Cassam has called ideological extremism rather than methods extremism. There are several major disadvantages with this approach. Unlike methods extremism which involves the use, threat or direct incitement of physical violence to achieve political or religious ends, ideological extremism is far more subjective. What “fundamental rights” do we have, after all, and how are they to be ranked when they conflict? The answers will reflect clashing ethical intuitions rather than the sort of hard facts we can adduce about violent methods. It is also relative, as what is deemed ideologically extreme now was mainstream twenty years ago; just consider the definition of marriage or the connection between sex and gender. Needless to say it is also far more intrusive upon our innermost freedom of thought.

Second, the new definition will be interpreted by bureaucrats rather than courts and ones whose institutions skew to the left ideologically. They are also subject to resource constraints and incentives for conflict aversion that will generally incline them to use these vaguely worded rules to side with the most fashionable and/or threatening side in a dispute. When deciding on what constitutes “hatred or intolerance,” for instance, do we really trust the Home Office to apply this evenhandedly between (say) small numbers of gender critical feminists or immigration restrictionists on the one hand, and thousands of Hamas supporters marching through London on the other? The fact that training materials under the Prevent counter-extremism program are known to have included the likes of Brexit voters, Douglas Murray and “cultural nationalism” as examples of right wing extremism show that a skeptical response is far from unfounded. Doubts about their impartiality seem more rational still, given the well documented fact that the mainstream media who socialize our bureaucratic hive-mind are statistically far more likely to decry political extremism on the right than on the left. This is especially true after the Great Awokening shifted the Overton Window sharply leftwards on matters like race, diversity, and gender over the last decade.

One might, in conclusion, wonder why an ostensibly center-right party has been willing to go along with scaremongering about the “far right” based on such incredible conceptual drift. As Frank Furedi has argued elsewhere, the answer probably lies in their recognition of the fact that “the political and ideological hegemony of the centrist technocratic elites is fast unraveling.” In a political context which has seen parties regarded by Tory elites as “Far Right” win elections or enter government in Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland, ascend to second place in the polls in Germany and be projected winners in upcoming elections in the USA and France, they have boxed themselves into a small neoliberal electoral niche. Perhaps they now see their main function as a sort of ideological containment, preventing a bolder offer that would appeal to socially and culturally conservative voters from being presented to the British people by stigmatizing it as extremist. That strategy may have worked so far in Britain but I do not think it will continue to do so. And I worry about how much Islamist extremism (and, for that matter, genuinely far-right extremism) will grow in the meantime.

As such, we can say that in promoting the fantasy of a far right equal in numbers or in menace to contemporary Islamism these cowardly centrists are guilty not only of perpetrating a statistical fraud on the public, of political incompetence and of philosophical illiteracy, but also of corrupting our political vocabulary in a disreputable attempt to salt the earth to their right so as to prevent a future democratic populist force from fixing their own disastrous legacy on immigration, integration and wokeness - which is to say, the very things that created the objectively greater Islamist threat in the first place. They need to find both the intellectual courage to look at terrorism objectively, and the moral courage to do something about its real sources. Please, I pray, let them do so soon.

 

 

Links - 31st August 2024 (1 - Migrants)

Remix News & Views on X - "🇩🇪🇸🇾Syrian population in Germany soars
2016: 60,000 Syrians in Germany
2023: 972,000 Syrians
🔺That's a 16x increase in 7 years.
🔺Over half receive citizen's welfare = 513,534 Syrians.
🔺Many of the rest receive housing, medical, etc. through the Asylum Seekers’ Benefits
🔺 65% of welfare recipients overall have a migration background, and 10% of Germany's total budget goes towards welfare payments known as "citizens' money."
🔺Germany continues to report soaring debt levels, with record budget deficits in 2023, equaling €2.45 trillion."
Whyvert on X - "There are 972,000 Syrians in Germany in 2023. 513,534 of them are on welfare. Many of the rest get government housing and other benefits."
Whyvert on X - "In 2017, a survey of economists by the Chicago Booth School of Business asked if refugees will benefit Germany. Only 6% said they would be net cost. Almost 1 million Syrians in Germany, over half on welfare, the rest get medical, housing benefits. Not great forecasting."
Clearly, to close the deficit, they need to import even more "refugees", because everyone knows that that's the only way to solve the demographic timebomb
If you don't trust the experts, you are ignorant

Remix News & Views on X - "🇩🇪‼️ On Saturday, two 14 and 15-year-old German girls were waiting at the bus station in Freital-Döhlen when they were approached by a 24-year-old Libyan migrant and sexually harassed. Another passenger intervened and the suspect tried to flee, but he was stopped by several passers-by who restrained him and kicked him on the ground.  Those who intervened are now being investigated for assault."

🇯🇵 Colonel Otaku Gatekeeper 🇯🇵 on X - "Due to the riots going over in the UK there much attention on the corruption of their police force. However Germany's Police is far worse, they've announced that they'll arrest anyone sharing this video of a German kid being beaten by Migrants. Thankfully I live in Japan so 🖕"

Axel Rudakubana named as suspect in Taylor Swift dance class stabbings - The Washington Post - "Britain got a name and a look Thursday at the 17-year-old charged with murdering three young girls and attempting to kill 10 others in a mass stabbing at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class... A judge agreed to lift the anonymity usually provided to minors in part to curb the speculation and misinformation that has sparked violent clashes in five cities and towns between far-right, anti-immigrant rioters and police.  The defendant’s name is Axel Rudakubana. He is not an asylum seeker, nor did he recently arrive in Britain by crossing the English Channel illegally on a raft, as incorrect and misleading social media posts had asserted. Nor was he a refugee on a watch list.  He was born in Cardiff, Wales. His parents are originally from Rwanda... Rudakubana is also set to turn 18 on Wednesday, when his name would probably have been released anyway, which could provide an “additional excuse for a fresh round of public disorder,” the judge said.  Rudakubana is accused of murdering Alice Dasilva Aguiar, 9, Bebe King, 6, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, with a curved kitchen knife on Monday after entering the dance class."
If the truth is not made public, it can be conveniently dismissed as "misinformation"

Captain Benjamin 🐺 on X - "I don’t know how common Rudakubana is as a surname in Rwanda, but this is odd that there was an elite commander in the Rwandan genocide with that name Even more odd when you know that there was also an asylum scheme which did allow some of the top brass in that genocide to escape from Rwanda and claim and asylum in Britain.  And even stranger still that there have been reports of Axel saying to classmates that Britain needed a genocide like Rwanda.  Very very dark."

Meme - End Wokeness @EndWokeness: "Media coverage of the monster who kiIIed 3 girIs in Southport vs reality:
*Axel Rudakubana as innocent young boy*
*Axel Rudakubana as young man*"

Meme - Paige🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @PaigeGCMG: ""Axel was expelled for carrying a knife/told us we needed a genocide like they had in Rwanda" #Southport #southportattack "
"Axel was expelled for carrying a knife. He was my class and teld us thet we needed a genocide like they had in Rwanda to fix the problems. Police knew him and he was known to social services"

Liza Rosen on X - "British woman harassed in London by Pakistani migrants who tried to terrorize Hindus in Britain over India's Security policy in Kashmir. UK's Indian community has a right to celebrate the Diwali (Hindu festival of lights) in peace, security & without fear."

Darren Grimes on X - "“The taxpayer doesn’t pay for asylum seekers.” These people walk among us."
Left wingers keep saying no one is illegal. Presumably this is linked to the current fetish for "people-centred language", so "immigrant who has migrated illegally" would be okay (for now). But they despise the law anyway (at least when it suits their agenda), so

Thread by @sam_bidwell on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "When we talk about immigration, we're often told that we need immigration because our public services, like the NHS, are reliant on it.  A short 🧵 on why this is nonsense - and why we shouldn't let the NHS be a thought-terminating cliché when discussing migration:
Let's start with a basic point - most migrants don't come to the UK to work in the NHS.  In fact, according to analysis from @BernoulliDefect, just 2.6% of the 1.22 million migrants who came to the UK in 2023 did so using the Health and Social Care Visa route. It's not even fair to say that immigrants are *disproportionately* likely to work in the NHS - thanks again to @BernoulliDefect.  Clearly then, it's possible to cut immigration - even radically so - without impacting the NHS' access to an overseas labour pool...
But maybe it's still fair to say that the system is 'dependent' on migration? After all, we don't have enough people training to be doctors and nurses here in the UK - it's simply inevitable that we have to prop up our system with foreign-trained practitioners, right?
Nope - this is entirely a self-imposed problem.  In partnership with the British Medical Association, the Government caps the number of training places at UK medical schools - currently it's 7,500, though there are indications that this might be increased over time to 15,000. When the cap was temporarily lifted in 2020/21, demand for medical training places shot up - before the cap was reimposed in 2022.  The obstacle to a self-sustaining NHS workforce is the UK Government's reticence to make a long-term investment in the UK's domestic workforce. This decision stems back to 2008, when the BMA voted to cap the number of medical places and ban the opening of new medical schools - for fear of "overproducing" doctors and "devaluing the profession".  This is racketeering and protectionism, plain and simple.
Between 2010 and 2021, 348,000 UK-based applicants were refused a place on a nursing course.  The House of Lords found that, in 2016 alone, 770 straight-A students were rejected from all medical courses to which they applied.  Failing to train our own workforce is a choice.
And, of course, there are second-order impacts of migration on public services as well. Like the rest of us, migrants use the NHS - between 2010 and 2020, there were 7 million new GP registrations by migrants.  That's BEFORE the 2022/23 spike in overall migration.
"But what if we rejected those applicants because they weren't good enough? We don't want low-quality medical practitioners."  As @93vintagejones notes, foreign-trained doctors are 2.5x more likely to be referred to the GMC as unfit to practice than British-trained doctors. We've known for years that foreign-trained doctors are more likely to fall below expected standards than British-trained ones.  We're substituting a high-quality domestic workforce for a low-quality international one, thanks to BMA protectionism and government incompetence.
"But training takes time! We won't be able to fill those gaps immediately."  First, successful management of public services requires a long-term perspective.  Second, that may be the case - so create a special, time-limited visa route for practitioners from certain countries.
Plenty of countries have schemes that enable high-quality migrants to come to the country for a fixed period of time, under particular conditions.  A policy of using migrant doctors to fill short-term gaps doesn't require us to open the borders in perpetuity - obviously. "But even if you opened those training places, you wouldn't fill them with British people."  Once again, we know that this isn't true - when the cap was temporarily removed, applications increased.  And if that doesn't work, there's a case for increasing public sector pay.
However we choose to address the NHS workforce, the key takeaway is that we shouldn't allow this to be a thought-terminating cliché.  Most migrants don't contribute to the NHS.  Our "reliance" on migration is entirely self-imposed.  We can choose to do things differently."

Meme - *Rubber dinghy of white people leaving*
*Rubber dinghy of black and brown people arriving*
Migrant: "where u going who gonna work for our benefits?"

End Wokeness on X - "Holy sh*t The illegal migrant who was arrested in March for r*ping a 15-year-old girl was released on $500 bail. But wait, it gets even worse: He was FLOWN in by Biden-Harris."

Meme - LouiseMichel @MVLouiseMichel: "Today, 40 people were rescued from two unseaworthy boats by the Louise Michel. All survivors have been safely brought onboard and provided food, water, and medical care."
Klaus Arminius @Klaus_Arminius: "This NGO group claims they “rescued” these immigrants.  The reality: NGO ship left Italy, docked at Libyan waters, waited for immigrants then picked them up.  They could’ve returned them to Libya but chose to bring them back to Italy.  NGOs are in collusion with migrant smugglers"

The effects of exposure to refugees on crime: Evidence from the Greek islands - "Recent political instability in the Middle East has triggered one of the largest influxes of refugees into Europe. The different departure points along the Turkish coast generate exogenous variation in refugee arrivals across Greek islands. We construct a new dataset on the number and nature of crime incidents and arrested offenders at island level using official police records and newspaper reports. Instrumental variables and difference-in-differences are employed to study the causal relationship between immigration and crime. We find that a 1-percentage-point increase in the share of refugees on destination islands increases crime incidents by 1.7–2.5 percentage points compared with neighboring unexposed islands. This is driven by crime incidents committed by refugees; there is no change in crimes committed by natives on those islands. We find a significant rise in property crime, knife attacks, and rape, but no increase in drug crimes. Results based on reported crimes exhibit a similar pattern. Our findings highlight the need for government provision in terms of infrastructure, social benefits, quicker evaluation for asylum, and social security."
Clearly, this is due to racism, discrimination and stigma by locals. The solution is to bring in even more refugees so the locals learn to be kinder and more tolerant

Do refugees impact crime? Causal evidence from large-scale refugee immigration to Germany - "Does large-scale refugee immigration affect crime rates in receiving countries? We address this question based on the large and unexpected refugee inflow to Germany that peaked in 2015–2016. Arriving refugees were dispersed across the country based on a binding dispersal policy, yet we show that systematic regional sorting remains. Our empirical approach examines spatial correlations between refugee inflows and crime rates using the administrative allocation quotas as instrumental variables. Our results indicate that crime rates were not affected during the year of refugee arrival, but there was an increase in crime rates one year later. This lagged effect is small per refugee but large in absolute terms and is strongest for property and violent crimes. The crime effects are robust across specifications and in line with increased suspect rates for offenders from refugees’ origin countries. Yet, we find some indication of over-reporting."

Meme - Zara @zarahussain999: "We will not fight for Britain"
Durham (Far Right) Massive: "Why would you? you're not British"
Zara @zarahussain999: "I'm now a British citizen :)"

Meme - Gandalf at parapets of Gondor: "Sire, the orcs are here"
Gandalf to Theoden: "Well don't be racist, let them in!"

Meme - Norway: "You were like a brother to me. I loved you"
Sweden (in Arabic): "I love you too Norway"

Whyvert on X - "One group of migrants in Sweden is making a positive contribution: Ukrainians. After only two years, 66% have a job. Half speak Swedish already. Not living on welfare, not engaging in crime."
Dynasty Builder🌱☀️ on X - "Ukrainians’ rape rate in Germany is even lower than that of German passport-holders. A big difference from migrants’ normal outcomes in German cities like Frankfurt."
Damn racism! They always treat white people better!

Connor Tomlinson on X - "The Guardian laments how formerly-progressive Sweden now has net negative immigration for the first time in 50 years. Swedes are legally required to report illegal migrants to the authorities. This has deterred the thousands of illegal migrants breaking into France and Britain from trying their luck in Sweden.
“The statistics show Sweden having a net outflow of immigrants for the first time in decades,” Annika Sandlund, the UNHCR representative to the Nordic and Baltic countries, told the Guardian.  Tobias Hübinette, a senior lecturer in intercultural studies at Karlstad University says for Swedish society, “it’s a pure catastrophe”, because fewer Somalians, Iraqis, and Syrians will come
As an Englishman, I would like to remind Swedes who are persuaded by Holmgren that 72% of Somalians and >30% of Iraqs in Britain live in taxpayer-funded social housing. Studies from Denmark and the Netherlands show these populations commit crimes at 2.5 times the rate of Nordic natives, and are never net tax contributors across their lifetime.
These new arrivals are not cultural or economic contributors. They live en masse at the host population's expense. If polite, progressive Sweden can pursue this sensible policy, then surely politicians in the UK can propose we do the same?"

Sweden faces a crisis because of flood of immigrants - "There was a time when Sweden was looked upon by American liberals as an inspirational example of the Scandinavian welfare state. Although Europeans were less impressed, even the country’s immediate neighbors tended to, grudgingly, accept Sweden as a senior brother. After staying out of World War II, Sweden had evolved into a high-performing export-oriented economy, based on a stable parliamentary democracy and social consensus. The country had top-notch health care and education. It enjoyed social and gender equality, had low crime rates and little ethnic conflict. While grounds remain for optimism about some of these indicators, especially in the industrial sector, most have been transformed beyond recognition. Present-day Sweden carries the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of gangland killings in Europe. It boasts the lowest average age of serious offenders, with children in their low teens being arrested for murder. Increasing segments of suburbs are officially classified as “especially vulnerable areas,” where it is “hard, bordering on impossible” for the police to operate. In layman’s terms, these are no-go zones, where local clans rule and where first responders will not enter without flak jackets and police escort. An early warning was provided in 2017 when United States President Donald Trump made a quip about rioting in Sweden: “You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this!” Who indeed? At the time, such comments were met with disdain and ridicule. Today, it is not so funny anymore. Sweden has transitioned from being a model of inspiration to becoming a warning example. As gangland violence is spreading across borders, its Scandinavian neighbors experience growing fears of ending up in what is known in Denmark as the “Swedish condition.” Defying an old taboo, the Swedish government has called on the military to assist the police. It has even come to the point where the governor of the Bank of Sweden, Erik Thedeen, tells the Financial Times that the growing problem of shootings and bombings is so serious that it risks damaging the country’s long-term economic growth. Given the negative impact that a statement of this kind will have on markets, it is not to be taken lightly. Central bank governors weigh their words very carefully. While the deterioration in physical security is causing Swedish nationals with entrepreneurial skills to leave the country, it is also becoming increasingly difficult for industry to recruit high-level talent from abroad. These problems are amplified by a deterioration in the quality of education that has resulted from increasing ethnic disorder and outright violence in schools. In the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment rankings of students, Sweden is trending down. For a knowledge-based country, this is serious indeed, and the central bank is far from alone in raising the alarm. Warning bells have been sounding with increasing intensity for some time, and the political sphere has finally begun to shed its long-standing denial. The problem is that few if any seem to know what can be done. The main cause of the crisis is a combination of an open-door migration policy with no accompanying policy to help the newcomers integrate. The consequence has been the emergence of neighborhoods where almost all residents are immigrants, where unemployment rates are very high and where the children of immigrants go to schools where no other children, often not even teachers, are proficient in Swedish. This has served as an incubator for crime, as gangs take over where society fails. Having been long in denial, even the Social Democrats have now released a report of their own, recognizing that two decades of excessive immigration and failed integration have produced a national crisis. According to official statistics, the number of foreign-born residents in Sweden has increased dramatically over the past two decades. Out of a population of 10.61 million in 2022, a total of 2.14 million were registered as foreign-born, more than double the number in 2000. That comes to just over 20 percent. If a broader definition is used, to include those who are born in Sweden with two foreign-born parents, the number rises to 26 percent. Even if the government were to close the door completely on further immigration – which is clearly not going to happen – the share of foreign-born residents will likely still increase, for demographic reasons... At a casual glance, these numbers need not be taken as evidence of a dark future ahead. Those who take a positive view of migrants and asylum-seekers are right in pointing out that Sweden has a long history of successful immigration. The problem with this argument is that it refuses to accept that all migrants are not the same. The Swedish government has recently commissioned a study of the costs and benefits of migration, to be broken down by countries of origin. It is expected to highlight the current challenge: the task of integrating large numbers of illiterate adults with many children. Previous immigration waves amounted to accepting people from culturally similar countries who move straight into gainful employment. The reason why the problem has been allowed to get out of control is that so many representatives of the media and of the political establishment have for so long been cocooned in naive views of criminal dangers, leading to extremely lax legislation and enforcement, and of dangerous strains of Islamism, leading to a profound inability to scale up defenses against the current wave of radicalization. Those chickens are now coming home to roost. The heavy influx of migrants from countries with Muslim populations could lead to a situation in which Sweden elects a radical Islamist party to parliament, potentially as early as the 2026 election. (The Swedish name of the party is “Nyans,” which translates, interestingly, into “Nuance.”) While virtually all Swedes were Christians from the 12th to the early 20th centuries, that share has fallen to less than 60 percent today. It is not inconceivable that Sweden will have a majority Muslim population sometime this century. The trend is bound to energize Islamist circles that are calling for a divided legal system, where Sharia law applies for Muslim citizens... Denmark has been so successful because it started before the problems had gotten out of hand. In Sweden, the government has not only started late but also shied away from adopting the Danish example in its entirety. Doing so would require the dispersal of migrants to different regions and the requirement that children of migrants learn the local language and values, as in Denmark. The reason why this is not being considered in Sweden is that the existing agenda is already viewed as so radical that the outcome in the next general election is impossible to predict... the core of the problem is the uncertainty that legislation and law enforcement alone can be effective against the deepening chasm in societal norms and values. If that divide cannot be bridged, and few if any seem to know how that may be done, then the best that can be hoped for is that increasingly draconian law enforcement could curb the worst problems, as the country gets used to living with a parallel society that is ruled by gangs and radical Islamists. There are ample reasons for the neighbors to be concerned."
I remember when a Swede claimed that all the grenade explosions were really just firecrackers and only racists were worried

Meme - Inquisitive Bird @Scientific_Bird: "I have now completed my review of immigration and crime in Sweden. A short summary of the findings:
- Immigrants are overrepresented in crime in Sweden, especially organized crime.
- This persists into second generation.
- It's not explained by age and socioeconomic status."
"Rate of criminal suspicion in Sweden, by offense and background, 2015-2018
Crimes against life and health
Crimes against liberty and peace
Sexual crimes
Crimes of theft
Fraud
Crimes of vandalism and damages
Traffic crimes
Drug crimes
Deadly violence
Rape
Home burglary
Robbery"

How Did an Entire Sri Lankan Handball Team Vanish in Germany? - "The national German handball team was coming to Sri Lanka for a friendly match in Minuwangoda, a town on the western side of the island. The exhibition was being put on by the Asian-German Sports Exchange Program (AGSEP), an organization designed to expose young people in Sri Lanka to other cultures through sporting events. For it, the Sri Lankan Sports Ministry had hired a handball coach named Athula Wijenayaka, who Dietmar Doering, the founder of the AGSEP, believes was the one to dream up the wild plot to create a fake Sri Lankan national handball team. The team would be composed of 23 Sri Lankan men, who would fly to a national tournament in Germany, play handball and then promptly disappear... At 5 a.m., they finally slipped out of their hotel. “All of us, in groups of two and four, walked outside in different directions,” says Chandana. “We didn’t speak to others about where we were heading to.” That way, just in case any of them got caught, they wouldn’t have any information that might jeopardize one another. That said, most of them knew where they were headed anyway: Italy. “We knew from our relatives and friends, once we reached Italy there was no way of sending us back,” says Chandana. “Italian people are very friendly, and they like us to work in their restaurants. Sri Lankans in Italy have no problems with the police. We aren’t involved in drugs or any other criminal activities.”...  Within a decade, more than half of the 23 Sri Lankan handball players would return home... Doering, he originally wanted to bring every member of the team to court. “They made me look like a fool,” he says. After the incident, the German embassy also blacklisted AGSEP from ever participating in sporting events in the country again. “No more teams got visas thereafter,” he says. “That’s the sad side of the whole thing.”"

Meme - Carl Benjamin @Sargon_of_Akkad: "Just take a moment to reflect on how preposterous this statement is. She's saying that Americans aren't allowed their own self-identity to exclude other identities, that they aren't able to determine who is and isn't American. Americans, to her, are the nowhere people."
TheBlaze @theblaze: "Michelle Obama says Americans don't have a right to decide who enters our country: "No one has a monopoly on what it means to be an American! No one!""

Flyer Offering $30K Home Grant for Migrants Sparks Outrage, Company Apology - "An organization is apologizing after reports about its $30,000 homebuyer assistance program indicated that the funds were available only to non-U.S. citizens.  The circulating flyer about the Hacienda Community Development Corporation (HCDC) program sparked outrage on the Varney & Co. Fox Business show for allegedly providing $30,000 in home grants only to non-U.S. citizens living in Oregon.  "A taxpayer-funded group is offering $30,000 to new homebuyers....You cannot apply if you're an American citizen. What's with that?" Stuart Varney said on the show. The flyer shown in the segment specified that the grant was available only to non-U.S. citizens, including DACA recipients, refugees and green card holders.  "This is state-sponsored discrimination," Lauren Simonetti, a Fox business news anchor, said on the program. "That's their goal. They want to open up and the 'American dream' to non-U.S. citizens."  Varney added: "That's why we have an open border because eventually these folks will vote and vote Democrat because they're the people that let them in. That's what this is about."... The Latino-led organization based in Oregon receives funds for mortgage down payment assistance from Oregon SB 1579, the Economic Equity Investment Act, to "build economic stability, self-sufficiency, wealth-building opportunities and economic equity among disadvantaged individuals, families, businesses, and communities in the state," Fonseca said.  The nonprofit said the down payment money was available to 21 homebuyers through a pilot program funded through the Oregon Department of Economic Development. Participants had to be Oregon taxpayers with a mortgage pre-approved by a bank or credit union and meet two out of five risk factors outlined by the program, according to Fonseca.  The risk factors include experiencing discrimination because of race or ethnicity, English language proficiency, citizenship status, socioeconomic status and residence in a rural location... Hacienda issued a public statement on its website to clarify the claims that circulated about the program.  "Over the past few days, false information about Hacienda CDC and one of our downpayment assistance programs has rapidly circulated in conservative media, tabloid websites, and social media," the statement says.  "At the root of this are untrue claims about the people Hacienda serves. To be clear, we do not discriminate against anyone and serve all Oregonians equally.""
Clearly, if an organisation puts out "wrong" information and faces backlash, it's the fault of "conservatives"

Friday, August 30, 2024

Links - 30th August 2024 (2 - General Wokeness)

Meme *Am I So Out Of Touch?*
"MAYBE I AM AN NPC?
NO, HAVING THE SAME OPINIONS AS CELEBRITIES AND MAJOR CORPORATIONS WHILE REPEATING EVERY MEDIA TALKING POINT VERBATIM IS WHAT REAL PEOPLE DO"

Meme - "Me trying to avoid all of the gay propaganda in June. *Neo from the Matrix bullet time*"

Meme - *Seeing Pride flag over army camp through binoculars*
To Russian in Z tank: "Who is it?"
Russian in Z tank: "Americans."

National Affairs: THE NEGRO CRIME RATE: A FAILURE IN INTEGRATION - "THEY are afraid to say so in public, but many of the North’s big-city mayors groan in private that their biggest and most worrisome problem is the crime rate among Negroes. In 1,551 U.S. cities, according to the FBI tally for 1956, Negroes, making up 10% of the U.S. population, accounted for about 30% of all arrests, and 60% of the arrests for crimes involving violence or threat of bodily harm—murder, non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. In one city after another, the figures—where they are not hidden or suppressed by politicians—reveal a shocking pattern... Negro leaders sometimes argue passionately that arrest statistics wildly distort the comparative incidence of crime among Negroes and whites because cops are more likely to arrest Negroes for petty crimes or on mere suspicion. Protests Executive Editor Charles Wartman of Detroit’s Michigan Chronicle, a Negro weekly: “The number of Negroes booked is at least partially indicative of subconscious if not conscious racial persecution on the part of police officers.”  But inequality of treatment by the police may actually tend to shrink rather than inflate the statistics of Negro crime. Says Newsman Wartman in the next breath: “When Negroes violate social morals—sex, drinking, gambling—white cops bypass this as ‘typically Negro.’ ” Many Negro leaders protest that the police are far from diligent enough in dealing with crimes committed against Negroes—and Negroes are the victims in the great majority of Negro crimes of violence. Since Negroes, even when they are victims or innocent bystanders, are often wary of calling the police, many offenses of disorder and assault go unreported when committed by Negroes in the depths of a ghetto. Whether the statistics of Negro crime overstate or understate the reality, they are shrouded from public attention by what a Chicago judge last week called a “conspiracy of concealment.” In many cities, Negro leaders and organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People put pressure on politicians, city officials and newspapers to play down the subject. Fearing loss of Negro votes, few elected officials dare to resist the pressures.  Abetting the concealment campaign is the feeling shared by many whites that it is unfair, inflammatory and even un-American to talk about Negro crime. This feeling is reflected in the widespread newspaper practice of not mentioning a criminal’s race unless he is at large and the fact would help in identifying him. In hiding the facts about Negro crime, the “conspiracy of concealment” helps blur the causes of it. Negro leaders themselves often put forward explanations that are oversimple. Some hold that Negro crime is largely the result of migrations from the South: in the unfamiliar environment of the North, the argument runs, Negroes tend to be more crime-prone, just like white immigrants from abroad. But in fact, some studies have shown that, contrary to popular conviction, crime rates among foreign-born whites were lower than among U.S.-born whites. Most often, Negro leaders point to poverty as the No. 1 factor in Negro crime. As Editor Louis Martin of the Chicago Defender sees it, the main cause is poor and crowded housing. But the moderate crime rates among European immigrants, subject to similar stresses of poverty and bad housing, suggest that other factors may be more important... As many a public-housing official has learned to his dismay, better housing does not automatically bring about the improvement in character and conduct that do-gooders used to predict. Slum dwellers who move into brand-new public-housing projects often turn them into new slums as verminous and crime-ridden as the tenements they left behind. Negro leadership could make a start toward lowering Negro crime rates by abandoning the conspiracy of concealment and urging full disclosure of the facts to be met. Once they faced the facts, Negro leaders and organizations—including the N.A.A.C.P.—could help by wholeheartedly undertaking short-term efforts of rehabilitation, by accepting responsibility in an area where they habitually look the other way."
From 1958. The article goes on to argue for integration as the solution, but presumably more than 60 years later, they are still equally discriminated against

Poilievre rejects 'straight pride' message in controversial Calgary Stampede photo - "Conservative leader posed for a photo with a man wearing a T-shirt offensive to many in the LGBTQ community"

Meme Handmaid from The Handmaid's Tale: "A TV SHOW IS REALLY SCARING ME AND IT'S GIVING ME NIGHTMARES AND I'M GOING TO BLAME IT ON YOU"

Meme - "ChRiStlaNiTy Is BelnG fOrCeD oN uS! MEANWHILE, SOCIETY:
*Satanic scene from Montero (Call Me By Your Name)*
*Satanic scene Chris Brown / Fivio Foreign C.A.B. (Catch a Body)*
*Satanic scene from Sam Smith at the 2023 Grammy Awards*
*Satanic scene from Cardi B*
*Satanic scene from Lil Wayne - Love Me*
*Katy Perry with Devil Horns*

Thread by @johnarmstrong5 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "My new paper published today looks at attempts by the Quality Assurance Association for Higher Education (QAA) to impose ideas from "critical pedagogy" across university curricula in the UK, and looks at what happens if you follow their advice... 🧵
The QAA insists that all university subject areas cover Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Education (EEE) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The EDI theme is the most obvious concern. For example: Economics courses should show zero tolerance for microagressions. Mathematics courses should teach that some mathematicians were Nazis, but aren't asked to teach that some mathematicians were persecuted by Nazis. The Education for Sustainable Development theme is also worrying. The theme comes from the UN who want to "reorient education to address sustainable development". This means inserting political content into all courses across all educational institutions in all countries. As an example, the UN recommends that you should have students in music classes write songs about water conservation. The inspiration for such innovations comes from the Marxist educator Paolo Freire, the father of "critical pedagogy", a postmodern approach to teaching, which sees questioning dominant power structures in society as the central task of education. Paolo Freire has an almost mythical status among educationalists. It is claimed he taught 300 adults to read and write in 45 days. Sadly nobody seems to have attempted to reproduce this remarkable result. In fact, the literature on critical pedagogy is remarkably uninterested in whether it is an effective way to teach. They are more interested in the moral imperative to bring about political change.
The QAA is proposing that the academic community embraces critical pedagogy and incorporate political content across curricula. Yet they do not point to any case-studies at all to show the effectiveness of their approach. However, one case study does now exist. A module called "Gateway to King's" was piloted at King's College London. It was designed to introduce all first year students at King's to topics which map closely to each of the QAA's required themes. The plan was to roll the module out as a compulsory module for all first year students. However, the module was canned after the pilot. 1657 students were eligible to take the course, 366 enrolled and 42 completed it.
I argue that the reason the course failed is that the QAA's recommendations are fundamentally flawed. University students want to be taught high quality content by renowned experts. They do not want bland platitudes about citizenship, regurgitated myths about unconscious biases, indoctrination in postmodern politics. Nor do students want to pay the opportunity costs of pursuing someone else's hobby horse. Maths students want to study maths, music students want to study music, and it is politics students who want to study politics.
We should not allow quangos to determine what we teach. Instead we should pursue academically led curriculum development, guided by the individual research expertise of academics. This is the route to high quality Higher Education."
Alexandra Wilson on X - "I have long been uneasy about a growing compulsion for academics to bring political agendas into teaching and research. (I believe political views are private and that the lecturer has no right to use their platform for propaganda.) Turns out I wasn't just imagining this."
Alonso Gurmendi on X - "There is no such thing as “neutral knowledge” and so there is no such thing as “a-political teaching”. It doesn’t really matter what you’re teaching or which approach to knowledge you are taking. It is all always political"
Itai Sher on X - "Again really amazing to me that people say “everything is political” to try to obscure the fact that you can be more or less political and it’s a choice.  It’s like saying “everyone dies, so no point in trying to live a healthy lifestyle”."

EXCLUSIVE: Dildo ring toss, ‘pin the clit on the vulva,’ and ‘family friendly’ drag show featured at Ottawa’s Pride fest - "Saturday's big draw was the Drag Show Extravaganza on the TD Main Stage, featuring a host of drag performances. The drag queen who hosted the show introduced it as "family-friendly" and noted that drag "is supposed to be provocative, it's supposed to be political" and said that "Drag is not a crime! We're going to prove it to you today." One performance included a drag queen dancing while pictures of hot dogs—and people scarfing them down—were displayed on the screen. The drag queen eventually pulled a hot dog out of the costume and went on to squirt ample amounts of mustard. Another turned a slasher film into a sexualized dance routine between the murderer and his victim... Two participants were dressed as giant genitals. Men in "pup play" fetish gear were also present."
Damn conservatives making up things so they can feel persecuted!
If drag is supposed to be provocative and political, why are the left trying to force it on kids? And I thought people's literally existing was not supposed to be political. How strange

California Cops Stand Idly By As Men Expose Themselves, Pee On Each Other At Event Open To Kids - "Police appeared to opt out of taking action as San Francisco’s Pride march attendees openly performed oral sex on each other and engaged in disturbing sexual acts, including urinating on one another, during Sunday’s pride parade... One attendee laid down in an inflatable pool in a designated area called “The Fetish Zone” and let a woman pee on him. Another man wearing only a dog collar and a small cloth around his genitals stood in the pool and clapped... “The Fetish Zone” was designated as an 18+ zone but parade officials were allegedly not checking IDs... Another nude man appeared to stand with his genitals hanging out while children walked by during the parade...   There were children marching in the parade from multiple groups, including the Boy Scouts... Hansen asked members of San Francisco Police who were stationed at the event about the legality of the lewd behavior.  “Right across the fence you have a zone where people are giving each other blow jobs in public and pissing on each other in public. Is that legal?” Hansen asked.  The police said the event was technically not public despite the fact that it was taking place on a public street.  “It’s a pick your battle day. They want us to maintain civility on the outskirts of it,” one of the officers told him.  Democrats and left-wing media have spent years criticizing the idea that drag queen story hours and lewd pride events were rife with groomers.  ABC News ran a 2022 headline claiming “Some Republicans use false ‘pedophilia’ claims to attack Democrats, LGBTQ people.” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes accused Republicans of “playing footsie with Q-Anon” and called grooming allegations “an age-old smear to imply that members of the LGBTQ community are trying to prime children for sexual abuse,” in a 2022 monologue.  The Washington Post also called grooming accusations “part of a conservative effort to foster a moral panic that will help limit how and what educators teach,” in a 2022 article."

New York City LGBT Activists Chant ‘We’re Coming For Your Children’ - "Activists at a New York City drag march Friday can be heard chanting, “We’re coming for your children,” in videos of the event.  “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children,” the activists shouted as they marched. The marchers convened at Tompkins Square Park and made their way through the East Village before stopping at Stonewall Inn. Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, was the site of a police raid which sparked violent protests known as the Stonewall Riots in 1969. Other video taken of the event shows protestors with signs reading, “Groom Cissies” and “Drag isn’t for Cissies.” As concerns rise over explicit drag events marketed to and performed for children, some states are taking action to prohibit underage kids from attending these shows"
"This is not happening, and it's good that it is"

Libs of TikTok on X - "BREAKING: Police report from when Matt Walsh went undercover for his “Am I Racist” movie. The anti-racists called the police on him when they realized who he was. One of them told police she considered using a chair to break a window and escape because she felt unsafe in his presence and he’s “extreme” and has “radical views.”  You can’t make this up 😂  “Am I Racist” in theaters September 13th!  Buy tickets now to support @MattWalshBlog  and Daily Wire!"
These are the same people who go on about "white fragility"

Uzay Bulut on X - "Did you know that there are tens of thousands of actual slaves in Africa? The enslavers are predominantly Arabs.  Consider the Muslim African country of Mauritania as an example.  Mauritania is one of the last countries in the world where people are still born into slavery and literally owned by other people, facing a lifetime of abuse and forced labor.  “Slavery in Mauritania takes the form of chattel slavery, in which people are considered legal property and can be bought, sold, and owned.   “Here, enslaved people are maintained on a hereditary basis, thus their children are also considered the property of the enslavers.   “As a result, enslavers, who are predominantly Arab-Berbers or Arabs, commonly force enslaved people to do domestic chores, herd animals, and farmlands.   “Sadly, enslaved people in Mauritania are also often subjected to sexual and physical abuse by their masters, sometimes with children fathered by enslavers who then remain enslaved throughout their lives. (Source: Jessie-Lee Smith)”  The West’s human rights advocacy system is broken. If it wasn’t, then one of its main focuses would be the actual slaves in Africa."

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "From 2022: A school district board chairperson in Canada listed those views which she considers "red flags" in candidates running for the school board."
Jayne Herring, Trustee Candidate @CambridgeJayne: "embracing diversity of opinion
all voices are needed
give parents, students & staff their voices back
board has weaponized the rules
re-direct focus to academic excellence
honour the rights of all parents
put an end to identity politics"
Left wingers hate diversity of opinion, want to disempower parents, students & staff by giving all power to left wing activist, despise academic excellence and have contempt for parents

Meme - "theycantalk.com
Goose chasing man: How were kids and dogs getting Monkey Pox?
HOW WERE KIDS AND DOGS GETTING MONKEY POX"

Meme - "The Average Western Game Dev who is very passionate about gender and race when the game they spent 8-9 years developing is played by no one when it finally launches"

Microsoft Publishes New Inclusion Guide For Video Game Devs, Recommends Against Creating Female Characters With "Exaggerated Body Proportions" - "In doing their part to push the entire medium ever further towards a final form as a pile of boring and uninspired mush, Microsoft has released a new “Product Inclusion Guide” for video game developers which, in addition to a number of other such recommendations aimed at appeasing the terminally online, notably suggests that creators completely abstain from depicting any sexualized or ‘unrealistic’ female characters within their works... It should be noted that while Microsoft did cite four studies regarding representation in support of their arguments, all of them are extremely flawed in their methodologies.  Though the Diamond Lobby study claims that there is a stark lack of diversity in the overall gaming sphere, its findings are based solely on a surface level look at the “the 10 highest selling games” between 2017-2021.  Further, not only does the report fail to specify by which metric they determined the ‘highest selling’ games – amount of money pulled in? amount of units sold? – but it also does not name any of the specific titles (outside of Apex Legends, which it put forth as the “most diverse video game”) that were looked at. Then there’s the Geena Davis Study.  Published in 2021, the study not only takes particular issue with the long-disproven idea that video games can directly inspire an individual to real-world violence, but it’s also extremely disingenuous in making its arguments.  For example, in support of the study’s claim that gaming communities are “rife with identity-based prejudice, harassment, and bullying that are ultimately harmful to boys and young men,” the Geena Davis Institute cites such facts as “Streamers used some variation of the ableist language ‘crazy’ in one-in-five gameplay segments” and “Nearly one-in-four (23.7%) male characters express anger.” As for the two News Zoo studies, their results are called in to the question by the fact that not only is its information based entirely on self-responses, but the conclusions they extrapolate from this data are completely out of pocket.  Look no further than the fact that in their 2022 report, as produced in partnership with the Anti-Defamation League, the organization claims that roughly 12% of respondents reported that they had been on the receiving end of a ‘swatting’ call.   In the report, the ADL and NewsZoo assert that their information is based on “a nationally representative sample of nearly 100 million American adult gamers” (and that’s not even counting their teenage respondents), meaning should one follow their information to its presented conclusion, means that at least 19,400,000 players in the US had experienced this phenomena.  However, as they admitted at the end of their report, their information truly only represents the “2,134 Americans who play games across PC, console, and mobile platforms” that they actually sampled."

Meme - "You didn't see the 70s or the 80s or 90s. You know they took something but you don't fully understand what. The best way to understand what they took so to watch Beethoven from 1991. Things you'll see
- nuclear family
- Three kids
- Beautiful small town America
- Happy music
- No pessimism
- No politics
- No race baiting
- No gay indoctrination
- No trans indoctrination
- No underlying "message" about race
- Positive vibes
- Little worries because US is #1
You can really feel the optimism of America. Peak United States power. Peak economics."
When a culture loses faith in itself
Left wingers keep claiming the romanticised path that conservatives mythologise is the 60s, with racial segregation.

'X-Men '97' Creator Was Fired Over Egregious Internal Investigation - "“Above is #XMen fan-art I posted on Instagram for Gay Pride in June. On June 13, #Marvel sent a letter notifying me that they’d stripped my Season 2 credits due to the post,” DeMayo wrote on X Thursday, along with an illustration of a shirtless version of himself as the superhero Cyclops.  DeMayo, who spent several years at Marvel working on a draft of a long-gestating Blade feature as well as on the TV show Moon Knight, added: “Sadly, this is the latest in a troubling pattern I suffered through while on working on #XMen97 and #Blade.”  Marvel responded by saying that DeMayo’s behavior was the cause of his firing and for him losing his credits.  “Mr. DeMayo was terminated in March 2024 following an internal investigation,” said a Marvel spokesperson in a statement. “Given the egregious nature of the findings, we severed ties with him immediately, and he has no further affiliation with Marvel.”...  DeMayo was an avid social media user during his tenure at Marvel, sharing X-Men tidbits as well as shirtless pics of himself, and even running a non-explicit OnlyFans account. This all led the LGBTQ publication Out to declare him “the Sexy, Gay Marvel Writer & Showrunner to Know.”  On the surface, the notion that Marvel would strip DeMayo of a credit due to a social media post would stretch credulity, as outside observers note the gay Pride illustration is similar to any number of posts he made while employed at Marvel. And fired Marvel executive Victoria Alonso retained credit on projects she previously worked on following her exit in 2023. But the reveal of an internal investigation points to deeper causes."

Meme - Culture Crave @CultureCrave: "DeMayo was asked to stop sending such photos but persisted anyway  DeMayo was also reportedly let go from Netflix's #TheWitcher for similar behavior  Brad Winderbaum reportedly was the one who failed to look into details around his #TheWitcher departure Show more"
DiscussingFilm: "Beau DeMayo allegedly sent nude photos of himself in sexually suggestive "hero" poses to several young male staffers working on 'X- MEN 97', saying they could be used as "inspiration"  He also allegedly groped an assistant multiple times and emotionally/physically abusive to other staffers."
"To me, My X-Men!" *Beau DeMayo self-insert as Cyclops*
Beau DeMayo @BeauDemayo: "The truth will be revealed. After their Disney Plus disaster Marvel wants to mislead with alleged contract breaches over tweets. It's tragic it's come to this but unsurprising. Stay tuned."
Beau DeMayo @BeauDemayo: "This is their Disney-Marvel's usual playbook. Legal letters as well as other items to prove their long-standing pattern to follow . It's about finding a safe outlet. Thanks for your faith and patience."
Beau DeMayo @BeauDemayo: "I'll have more to say soon but must take a step back from social media to find a safer space for me to be out, proud, and nerdy. Stay tuned."

Meme - "JD Vance had sex with a couch, according to a now deleted tweet from a guy who literally already admitted that he made it.up."
"OMG SO TRUE"
"In other news, Disney has now stated that the homosexual creator of X-Men '97 was fired for sending nudes of himself to staffers and groping people."
"UM, I LIKED THAT SHOW SO I DON'T BELIEVE THE SOURCE."

Meme - "Being called 'sir by a Brit"
"Being called 'sweetie' by a Southerner"
"Being called 'sugar' by an old black lady"
"Being called 'champ' by a dad"
"Being called 'bigot' by a pink haired they/them SJW"

Meme - "...and that's how I made all these jokes and mockery of Jesus and Christianity"
"Impressive. very cool. when when will you do the same for Muhammad and Islam?"
"Not everyone is a racist islamophobic bigot like you, Harry."
"I thought you advocate for equality"

Meme - "LGBT MOVEMENT
VS CHRISTIAN BAKERS *fierce barking dog*
VS ISLAM *cowering leashed dog*"

Meme - "CURRENT GENERATION
I AM OFFENDED *Olympics opening ceremony Dionysus*
90'S & OLDER GENERATION
I DON'T GIVE A SH*T *Yusuf Dikec*"

Meme - "ALL races across the world were enslaved at one point in history. But there's only one race that is still crying about it and can't move on."

Sex between men, not skin contact, is fueling monkeypox, new research suggests
9th child in US tests positive for monkeypox - ABC News

Meme - "Monkeypox being found on children and animals"
"The media *walking away*"