Links - 3rd January 2023 (2 - Climate Change)

Deluded green narratives around oil and gas must not allow us to surrender our energy security - "Energy security was taken for granted by much of Europe in the early part of the 21st century. Whilst much has improved since the Conservatives took office in 2010 – approvals of a new generation of nuclear plants, a well-developed offshore wind industry, fresh licencing rounds for North Sea oil and gas and recent support for shale gas – the spiralling costs associated with the war in Ukraine expose the brutal truth that we do not have enough energy.   Whilst there is a sensible debate to be had, a state of delusion appears to have descended over some commentators, politicians and activists when it comes to further exploration of North Sea oil and gas. They cry foul with a misleading environmental narrative that would see us surrender our energy security and harm thousands of Britons who rely on the North Sea for their livelihoods. No one credible honestly believes that we can turn off the oil and gas taps overnight, yet the Labour Party believe we should have an entirely decarbonised grid by 2030. This is not just implausible, it is a recipe for disaster."
Too bad they're still committed to net zero by 2050 and expanding "renewable" energy

Wind farm in Germany is being dismantled to expand coal mine - "A wind farm in Germany is being dismantled to expand the Garzweiler lignite mine. One of eight turbines installed at the location in 2001 has already been removed. Nevertheless, the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia said it would phase out coal by 2030, as did RWE, the company that owns the mine.  Wind turbines near the Garzweiler open pit mine in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, run by German energy giant RWE, is being removed to make way for more lignite exploitation. The turbines were in operation since 2001, and government subsidies have expired. Energiekontor and wpd, which is also active in the Balkans, operate the wind farm."
So much for the cope that even more renewables are needed

Snubbed by Canada, Germany turns to Qatar for its gas - "After an energy-hungry Germany was snubbed by Canada, Berlin has instead gone all-in on a gas contract with Qatar, the small, autocratic nation currently hosting the World Cup.  This week, German firms announced a 15-year contract to buy roughly two million tonnes of LNG per year of Qatari natural gas.  The multi-billion-dollar deal comes just three months after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made a rare official visit to Canada for the explicit goal of securing Canadian sources of liquid natural gas... Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said openly that there has “never been a strong business case” for Canadian LNG exports to Europe.  The prime minister then insisted on taking his German counterpart to Stephenville, N.L., the site of a proposed facility to make hydrogen gas from wind power. With any groundbreaking still years away — and with hydrogen still a vanishingly small piece of Germany’s energy mix — the visit didn’t appear to yield any particular German enthusiasm for Canadian hydrogen. Germany’s contract for Qatari gas begins in 2026, meaning that tankers of Qatari gas will be sailing into German ports until at least 2041.  The scope and longevity of the contract would seem to defy Trudeau government claims that German gas demands were merely a temporary stop-gap that carried no long-term opportunity for Canada.  In a press conference touting the German deal, Qatar’s minister of energy, Saad al-Kaabi, boasted about the “long-term” nature of the agreement, and assured the Germans that Qatar could guarantee their “long-term energy security.”... The Qatari deal comes with a fair amount of political awkwardness for Germany, given that Berlin has been particularly critical of the Gulf State’s poor record on human rights...   A recent poll found that 65 per cent of Germans believed that Qatar should never have been granted the World Cup, with some German bars refusing to show World Cup games due to the Gulf State’s human rights record."
Autocracies don't care about virtue signalling

Fast LNG happens – just not in Canada - "While some of Canada’s leaders question the business case for accelerating liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, one U.S. company alone is in the process of building five new LNG facilities in the Gulf of Mexico.    The first is expected to be finished in March 2023 and the next four “every few months” after until all are operational in 2024.  Energy-short Europe is a near-term target market, but New Fortress Energy says that long-term, the booming LNG business is global... With supportive permitting by regulators in both the U.S. and Mexico, repurposed offshore drilling rigs and floating platforms, New Fortress Energy expects to bring online seven million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of LNG export capacity before the end of 2024.    LNG buyers can move fast too. Germany just finished building its first floating LNG import terminal, completed in just 200 days.   Germany’s federal economics minister Robert Habeck said the new terminal is a “central building block for energy security”...   There are 33 LNG import terminal projects in Europe that are either under construction or in the planning phase, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.    The supply is desperately needed to replace imports from Russia, which supplied about 40 per cent of Europe’s natural gas before its invasion of Ukraine...   While LNG from B.C. will mainly be destined for Asia (where it can reduce emissions by replacing coal), analysts say it can also help meet demand in Europe.   “More western Canadian LNG would allow a lot of the other sources to go to Europe. It’s like a domino,” said Matthias Bloennigen, director of Americas consulting with Wood Mackenzie.   Asia represents 67 per cent of world LNG demand today, and that share is expected to grow to 73 per cent while demand doubles to reach 700 MTPA by 2040.   “We’re at the early stages of an LNG boom cycle,” said Kateryna Filippenko, Wood Mackenzie’s director of global gas research."

Gwyn Morgan: Hard facts puncture anti-fossil fuel fantasies - "The marvellous Christmas movie Polar Express, starring the inimitable Tom Hanks, ends with the words “anything is possible, if you only believe.” Except, as adults understand, many things aren’t possible, not even if some people do believe them. An obvious example is the fantasy that the 84 per cent of global energy supplied by oil and gas can be replaced by so-called “green energy... in the world capital of “if you only believe” fantasies, the prime minister of a country endowed with one of the world’s largest reserves of oil has presided over a seven-year long anti-oil industry scourge, thwarting multiple proposed export pipelines that could now have been supplying those captive market countries. Sharing his anti-oil zealotry seems to be a necessary qualification for Mr. Trudeau’s cabinet. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney recently went to Washington to present the Senate Energy Committee with plans to increase Canadian oil exports, thereby freeing-up more U.S. oil to help Europe reduce Russian oil purchases. The idea received a warm reception. Unfortunately, Kenney’s message was promptly contradicted by Federal Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, who told the same committee that shifting to renewables and hydrogen “will provide true energy and national security to Europe.” In other words, don’t count on Canada to help de-fund Putin’s murderous war unless it lasts five or ten more years. It’s incomprehensible that during a global oil and gas shortage brought on by the wanton destruction of a civilized democracy, our prime minister thinks all will be well if only Canada rids itself of fossil-fueled vehicles. Deep in delusion, he considers this a perfect time to announce a plan to have 60 per cent of new cars and light duty trucks be “zero emission” by 2030.  When you live in a perennial state of fantasy, facts don’t matter. But here are facts that do matter to Canadians forced to face the real-world impact.
Fact 1: High cost. The federal budget promises a $5000/vehicle rebate. There are 24 million gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles in Canada. Subsidizing replacement of just one million would cost $5 billion. The budget also contains $900 million for new charging stations. That’s helpful in urban centres but providing a charging station network necessary to allow e-vehicles to travel interurban highways would cost tens of billions more.
Fact 2: Revenue needs. The Trudeau government’s longer-term plan is to get rid of all fossil-fueled vehicles. Federal and provincial fuel taxes now total a stunning $22 billion each and every year. These revenues fund the cost of building and maintaining urban streets and highways. How long can it be before governments are forced to regain those revenues from electrical vehicle charging levies?
Fact 3: Grid stress... Electric vehicle advocates say the problem will be mitigated by mandating low amperage during off-peak, late-night hours. But most highway drivers travel during the day when the grid is near capacity. And they will need high-amperage DC quick-chargers during these already supply-tight hours.
Fact 4: Land demand. Refueling with gasoline or diesel takes around five minutes. But even rapid chargers need 30 minutes. That means six times more land occupied by charging stations."

Electric Car Batteries Lasting Longer Than Predicted Delays Recycling Programs - "Lithium-ion batteries are expensive to manufacture, partly due to the high cost of cobalt, mainly mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Cobalt extraction is the largest source of DRC’s export income, and the country accounted for more than two-thirds of global cobalt production in 2021.  While some carmakers have started building cobalt-free batteries—many Tesla batteries now rely instead on lithium phosphate—the demand for the hard, lustrous gray material is only likely to increase. The same is true for lithium, nickel, and other materials inside these batteries, which are mined in Russia, Indonesia, and other places where environmental oversight is often poor, labor standards are often lax, and where mining companies have been known to fuel conflicts with local communities. (You’ve heard of “blood diamonds”? There’s also “blood cobalt.”)  Reclaiming cobalt and more through recycling makes ethical and environmental sense, but the financial case is often poor...   The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that the world currently has enough capacity to recycle 180,000 metric tons of spent EV batteries annually. This is nowhere near enough: recycling experts estimate that the EVs bought in 2019 alone will eventually generate 500,000 metric tons of battery waste. By 2040, there could be 1,300-gigawatt hours’ worth of spent batteries in need of recycling...   Given the often poor economic case for recycling, it’s clear there need to be national and international policies to mandate EV battery recycling"
If you're one of those whose batteries fail, you're still screwed though. And with battery recycling mandates, the cost of electric vehicles is going to shoot up even more

The Singapore Green Plan 2030: What it means for car owners - "As an effort to further pave the way for greener vehicles (other than strictly regulating the number of cars on our roads), new registrations of diesel cars and taxis will cease from 2025 onwards.  Singapore will only allow registrations of electric vehicles from 2030... The closest to a regular petrol car you’ll be able to buy is a hybrid car."
So much for Singapore being safe from western fads because it's Asia (see also, the war on plastic, and wokeness)

Here’s why zero-emission vehicle mandates don’t work | The Star - "ZEV mandates don’t work. Look at the 12 U.S. states that have had ZEV mandates in place for evidence. Average ZEV registrations in those states last year was 6 per cent, only 3 per cent higher than the average in states without mandates. ZEV mandates alone are not a silver bullet to boosting sales. In fact, not one country leading the world in ZEV adoption has a sales mandate in place. ZEV availability is correlated to consumer incentives and charging infrastructure, not regulations. A mandated supply will fail without organically driven consumer demand. Auto dealers are independent businesses that base inventory decisions on what a local customer wants... The automotive industry has achieved a 29 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in new vehicles since 2005 due to investments into new technologies, including ZEVs and conventional powertrains, to meet increasingly stringent vehicle GHG emissions standards. Canada must continue to align its GHG emissions standards with the U.S. given the highly integrated nature of the industry. This gives Canadians access to the broadest range of vehicles and advanced technologies — at the lowest price... ZEV mandates don’t solve global supply chain disruptions. Automotive production of both gasoline-powered and ZEVs has not recovered from pandemic-related supply chain disruptions, including a global semiconductor shortage. Regulating ZEV sales will not change this fact. If the federal government is serious about increasing North American vehicle production and inventories, it should focus its efforts on solving global supply chain challenges first. Most importantly, a ZEV mandate will not make a difference if the federal government fails to increase consumer purchase incentives and build a comprehensive, accessible, and affordable charging network... For Canadians who can afford a ZEV, the next barrier is a lack of charging infrastructure. Compared to other jurisdictions with similar ZEV goals, Canada has one of the least comprehensive and ambitious charging infrastructure plans with a commitment to build just 50,000 public chargers"
Naturally, the "solution" is to throw even more taxpayer money at it

Shocker: EV charging infrastructure is seriously insecure - "If you've noticed car charging stations showing up in your area, congratulations! You're part of a growing network of systems so poorly secured they could one day be used to destabilize entire electrical grids, and which contain enough security issues to be problematic today.   That's what scientists at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico have concluded after four years of looking at demonstrated exploits and publicly-disclosed vulnerabilities in electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE), as well as doing their own tests on 10 types of EV chargers with colleagues from Idaho National Lab... the EV charging industry seems to have treated cybersecurity the same way as the companies behind the Internet of Things: As an afterthought."

Commercial EV makers losing business as lenders deny loans worried over resale value

Motor Mouth: These EV claims don't make any goddamn sense - "Let’s take BMW’s promises of simultaneously increasing range and lowering cost first. As I said, the company says it is going to reduce the cost of its battery packs by 50 per cent. The problem for Munich is that, depending on the source of your cost breakdown, raw materials — the commodities we keep hearing about in the news, like lithium, nickel, and cobalt — make up about 52 per cent of the total cost of a typical electric-vehicle battery. The other three main costs are overhead (28 per cent), capital equipment (14 per cent), and labour (a little over five per cent). In other words, a 50-per-cent reduction in battery costs is going to require BMW find a way to build its batteries either without raw materials; or without a manufacturing plant... BMW is also promising a simultaneous 30-per-cent improvement in range, most of that increase — about two-thirds, says Green Car Reports — the result of the increased density of those new 46-millimetres cells. In plain terms, BMW is saying its extended range results from packing more of those raw materials — which, as I said, account for half of the total cost of the battery — into its cars. With pricing of those base minerals increasing, it’s hard to see how incorporating more of them is going to reduce the price of BMW’s batteries... batteries are not, as long predicted, becoming cheaper to produce. Oh, to be sure, the cost of lithium-ion cells have dropped dramatically in cost from the US$1,200 per kilowatt-hour they commanded way back in 2010. But in the last 12 months or so, thanks to supply-chain issues and a massive ramp-up in demand for EVs, the cost of a battery, according to Reuters, soared back to US$160 per kWh in the first quarter of this year. No wonder, then, that major EV automakers have had substantial price increases across their model lines — Tesla no fewer than three times, here in Canada — in the last 18 months. Nor does there look to be any respite in the near future. In fact, quite the opposite, most economic signals pointing to an increase in EV-related commodity pricing"

More than a plug: EV drivers need convenient stops to recharge - The Globe and Mail - "It may take longer to charge an electric vehicle (EV) than to refuel a conventional one. However, the extra time needed for that pit stop no longer has to seem like a chore, but rather a chance to shop, eat or work.  “EV drivers have different needs compared to the traditional combustion-engine drivers,” said Darren Smart, senior vice president, Energy Transition and Corporate Development at Calgary-based Parkland, an international convenience and fuel retailer.  “What used to be a five-minute stop to fill the tank with gas will become a 20 to 30-minute visit,” said Mr. Smart. “This gives us an opportunity to reimagine retail stations and give our customers the freedom to not only recharge their vehicles, but also recharge themselves.”... Even in the most advanced markets in the world, a driver never knows what they’ll get when they arrive at a charging station. Parkland executives saw that when they were in London and Norway to conduct market research on EV charging.  “We experienced first-hand that often the charging ports don’t work when you get there”, added Mr. Smart. “Range anxiety for EV drivers is real. Planning your journey around known charger locations, to find out they’re not operational when you arrive, is unacceptable. We are being thoughtful about how we can lead this emerging industry and have looked at stations from the lens of the customer.”"
"Prepare to waste more of your time planning and waiting if you have an electric car"

Opinion: Using crops to feed cars, not people, is reprehensible as war and climate-related food shortages intensify - The Globe and Mail - "Sometime next year, as the food-price crisis evolves into a food-availability crisis, we may have to choose between feeding our cars and feeding the world’s poor.  So far, feeding cars, SUVs and trucks is winning. Canada, the United States, Europe and other agriculture-rich regions are devoting ever-increasing amounts of their crop land to the feedstock that produces ethanol (made from corn or sugar cane) and biodiesel (generally from canola, soy, sunflower oils and animal fats).  Turning food into fuel was always a morally dubious proposition; now it is a crime against humanity, as the war in Ukraine and the sanctions, embargoes and Black Sea blockades that accompany it raise food prices to unaffordable levels and create shortages in some poor countries. Basic economics says that grinding up food to make fuel both decreases the amount of food that can be exported and raises its price... Ethanol and biodiesel are nothing new. They came on strong in the U.S. about two decades ago and played a role in the food-price crisis of 2007 and 2008 that triggered political and economic instability, including riots, in many countries. The Arab Spring revolutions that began in Tunisia were partly due to rising prices... a 2008 World Bank report said that “large increases in biofuels production in the United States and Europe are the main reason behind the steep rise in global food prices” (the bank said Brazil’s sustainable sugar-based ethanol actually had little to do with the food price increases).  Today, 40 per cent of the U.S. corn crop is devoted to making ethanol. Most gasoline in the U.S. contains 10 per cent ethanol, and President Joe Biden is setting new requirements that would increase that amount. Never mind that the environmental benefits of ethanol-laden gasoline are dubious at best, partly because corn-based ethanol has a lower heat value, so a car’s fuel economy suffers. But ethanol refineries create jobs and reduce the overall dependence on oil. In the Corn Belt of the Midwest, promoting ethanol is a vote-winner.  Canada is charging ahead with biofuels, too... The UN’s World Food Programme says some parts of the world are now “marching towards starvation.” It estimates the number facing “acute food insecurity” has doubled to 276 million since 2019 and that almost 50 million “are facing emergency levels of hunger.”  The midst of a food crisis – one with no end in sight – is no time for the West to boost biofuel mandates. The world needs less ethanol and other biofuels for cars and more food for humans. Any government that thinks otherwise is morally bankrupt."
"To "fight climate change", people must starve"

Glacier saga - "Not only are Montana’s glaciers an important icon for global warming (e.g. Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth), it also seems that the glaciers are an important political icon for progressive politicians in Montana...   The total area of Glacier National Park covered by glaciers shrank 70% from the1850s to 2015, according to US Geological Survey. Melting began at the end of the Little Ice Age (circa 1850) when scientists believe 146 glaciers covered the region, as opposed to 26 in 2019...        Much of the glacier loss occurred prior to 1966, when fossil-fueled warming was minimal.  The percentage rate of glacier loss during this early period substantially exceeded the percentage rate of loss observed in the 21st century.  I suspect that much of this melting occurred in the 1930’s... Looking much further back, Glacier National Park was virtually ice free 11,000 years ago... These glaciers have varied in size, tracking climatic variations, but did not grow to their recent maximum size until the end of the Little Ice Age, around 1850. An 80-year period (~1770-1840) of cool, wet summers and above-average winter snowfall led to a rapid growth of glaciers just prior to the end of the Little Ice Age.  So, the recent loss of glacier mass must be understood in light of the fact the glaciers reached their largest mass for the past 11,000 years during the 19th century... The USGS hasn’t updated its glacial survey since 2015 (gotta wonder why, with the huge losses they were expecting).  While the loss between 1998 and 2015 has decreased relative to prior decades, it appears that the ice loss has actually stalled or slightly reversed since 2008... The areal extent and mass balance of glaciers depends in the interplay between snow accumulation during the cold season and the glacier melting during summer.  There is no prima facie reason that slow warming of the average annual surface temperatures will cause net loss of glacier area/mass.  There are strong interannual and multidecadal variations in the amount of snowfall, and in some situations warmer winter temperatures can be associated with more snowfall.  The summer melt season is quite short.  The timing of the quixotic, weather-driven seasonal transition from snow to rainfall is a key determinant of the onset of the melt season and hence its duration.  During summer, the diurnal timing and overall amount of cloudiness can make a big difference in how much melting occurs.  And finally, soot associated with air pollution can provide a substantial accelerant for glacier melting; this is a huge issue for the Hindu-Kush-Himalayan glaciers, but I don’t see any reference to soot in context of Glacier National Park.  You will not be surprised to learn that ENSO, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) influence the atmospheric circulation patterns that influence both the cold season snow accumulation and summertime melt... If there is ever a place you might want to be kept warm by fossil fuels (or nuclear), Montana during winter is it.  Montana is one of the coldest states in the U.S...   Fortunately, Montana has a reliable power system with about 50% renewables (mostly hydro) with most of the rest produced by coal. There is a nontrivial contingent in Montana that is seeking 100% renewable power (hydro, wind, solar).  In addition to exceptional power demand for residential heating during such Arctic outbreaks, any power generation from renewables is at a minimum during such periods.  Montana’s solar and hydropower capacity are at their lowest during winter...   While Arctic outbreaks generally impact the northern Great Plains states the worst, the spatial extent of these outbreaks can be very large. The cold outbreak during February 2021 that impacted Montana also covered half of the U.S. and extended down to Texas, where massive power outages ensued that resulted in considerable loss of life. The large horizontal scale of these high pressure systems indicates that remote transmission of excess energy from someplace else is not going to be of much help if much of the continent is also suffering from cold temperatures and low winds.  The long duration of these events makes battery storage hugely infeasible.  The options are nuclear, gas and coal.   Nothing is simple when it comes to understanding the causes of climate change impacts.  The key to understanding is to look at the longest data records available, and try to interpret the causes of the historical and paleo variability.  Once you understand the natural variability, you aren’t so prone to attributing everything to fossil-fueled warming and making naïve predictions of the future.  And once you understand weather variability and extremes, you won’t be so enthusiastic about renewable energy."

Just Stop Oil: Police chief says officials are sticking to 'liberal democracy' after Braverman calls for crackdown - "A police leader has defended the “perfectly appropriate” response to Just Stop Oil after Suella Braverman called for tougher action.  Chief Constable Chris Noble, leader of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) protests, defended the approach to days of disruption to the M25.  It came after the home secretary told a conference of police leaders it was their “duty to take a stricter line to maintain public order” and accused them of an “institutional reluctance” to use their powers against protesters... "we’re not going to fight our way out of the environmental protest.”...   Following outrage over the arrests, Hertfordshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner-elect admitted police “got it wrong” but then accused journalists of “facilitating the protests”.  During a panel discussion on protests at the NPCC’s annual summit, David Lloyd said: “The editorial choices that many organizations are making to cover Just Stop Oil mean more protests are happening… You have to ask a question as a journalist with a camera, do you host, do you do the news or do you cover the news?”...   Several media freedom and human rights groups have sounded the alarm over Mr Lloyd’s comments, with Liberty calling suggestions for the media to change their reporting a “dangerous exaggeration”.  OpenDemocracy said it is journalists’ job to report the facts, “not to censor events to please the authorities,” while Index on Censorship added, “A cornerstone of media freedom is to let newsrooms decide what they want to prioritize.”"
"Liberal democracy" means allowing fringe groups to shut the country down. Apparently the right to protest is also the right to bring a country to its knees. Of course, if the "far right" were to protest, they must be shut down immediately
When journalists proclaim that they have an agenda, they still cannot be criticised because the press is sacrosanct and incorruptible

Sunak could be just the man to save the planet from Greta’s anti-capitalist creed - "he should have never ruled out going to the Cop27 summit... He doubtless had flashbacks to the Glasgow Cop26 summit when, as chancellor, he watched head-in-hands as Boris Johnson reeled off net zero pledges without even considering the cost. At the time, Sunak wondered how this climate debate could be carried out without the slightest question of trade-offs. Who would pay? How much? Was this politically deliverable? If such questions were never raised, then surely it’s not an agenda, but a charade? But as he’ll have realised, such charades are part of a PM’s job...   Sunak had no principled objection to lockdown. What drove him mad was the refusal to level with the Cabinet, let alone the country, about the likely damage to society and the economy. It might have all been worth it, but no one weighed up the drawbacks against the hoped-for benefits. When Britain decided to impose sweeping sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, Sunak strongly felt that Johnson ought to have admitted, at the outset, how all this would push up fuel prices. Failure to level with people from the start, he thought, would endanger long-term public support.  In his resignation letter, Sunak tried to make this point... This is why he may have a hard time ducking questions about how much net zero will cost. No one knows exactly, but he’s seen the Treasury estimates: about £50 billion a year, or a trillion pounds in all. Right now, he is looking at a series of deeply painful options on the package of cuts due this month: on schools, welfare and more – to hit £35  billion. So would it make sense to commit Britain to extra spending that would outweigh all the savings he is about to make? Isn’t net zero a prime example of the fatal “fairy tale” he so memorably warned about in his leadership campaign?  Sunak is now doing his bit to genuflect in front of Gaia and recite the green creed. That if “we” don’t fix this problem, then we fry. But he’ll also be aware of the logical fallacy. Who is “we”? Britons generate 1.6 per cent of global carbon emissions: even if this falls to zero, it won’t really move the dial on the overall climate change trajectory. Yes, we’d be a model for other countries. A noble goal. But is that what all this pain is for? Not to achieve change, but to set an example?  There is another line of argument, should Sunak want to take it. The environmentalism argument has been splitting for some time, between what you might call the “dark green” jeremiads of Greta Thunberg and the “bright green” message of tech and enterprise. Thunberg always saw economic growth and development as the problem. While launching her new book, she has taken her argument to its logical extension. She now defines herself against the “system defined by colonialism, imperialism, oppression and genocide by the so-called global North to accumulate wealth that still shapes our current world order”. This is the familiar, classic j’accuse against capitalism.   But there is another vision, perhaps best articulated by MIT academic Andrew McAfee. His research draws the opposite conclusion: that capitalism – together with tech and public awareness – has allowed the Western world “to tread more lightly on the planet”. The capitalist’s basic desire to cut costs, he says, means we have learnt to make things cheaper and do “more with less” (the title of his book). His research forms an uplifting and convincing corrective to the “dark green” narrative that has dominated environmentalism for so long.  Progress, of this most stunning kind, is there for those with an eye to see it...   Sunak can try to change the narrative, focusing on remarkable British progress and the case for optimism. The ferocious plans to force out gas boilers or impose crippling costs on homeowners may not be needed, given likely tech advances. It could be that a more imaginative approach would be better – and the best thing the global North can do to stop climate change is to help the spread of capitalism, sharing the technology that is driving down our emissions."

Greta Thunberg throws in her lot with the anti-capitalist Left - "Previously, she’d sold herself as a five-foot human alarm bell, a climate Cassandra. Her role was to warn, not to instruct: her most viral moments involved her scolding political leaders, not trying to supplant them. She strenuously avoided programmatic detail, saying such things were “nothing to do with me”. But now, on stage and in this book, she has found her political feet, specifically the Left-wing ideology of anti-capitalism and de-growth.   Interspersed among the usual directives about the need to pressure political leaders, her message was more radical and more militant than it has been in the past. There is no “back to normal”, she told us. “Normal” was the “system” which gave us the climate crisis, a system of “colonialism, imperialism, oppression, genocide”, of “racist, oppressive extractionism”. Climate justice is part of all justice; you can’t have one without the others. We can’t trust the elites produced by this system to confront its flaws — that’s why she, much like Rishi Sunak, won’t be bothering with the COP meeting this year. COP itself is little more than a “scam” which facilitates “greenwashing, lying and cheating”. Only overthrow of “the whole capitalist system” will suffice.   So now we are finally seeing the contours of Thunbergism. Run your eye down the contributors to The Climate Book and you can see who she’s been reading: Jason Hickel, Kate Raworth, Naomi Klein. For these people the climate crisis isn’t man-made. It’s made by capitalism, as are the other forms of social injustice which plague society. There’s no GDP growth — especially of the capitalist sort — without increasing carbon emissions. The only solution to this state of emergency is for rich countries to immediately abandon economic expansion as a social goal.   It is hardly surprising that Greta thinks this way given how closely tied environmental activism has become with the more experimental end of the modern Left."
Environmentalism once again turns out to be a cover for anti-Capitalism. Quelle surprise. No doubt because both philosophies are based on delusions about utopia

Ridiculous Zuccs: Purity Balls

"Chris Blakeley oh, I imagine most of the proud boys would gladly have a purity ball for their daughters..."

Somehow, it is against Facebook's Community Standards to talk about purity balls.

I'm guessing that this is because of Facebook's rules on mentioning "extremist" groups. This is also why even history pages on Facebook refer to Hitler as "An Austrian Painter" or "The Austrian Painter", even when mentioning him in a purely innocuous context.

Links - 3rd January 2022 (1)

Facebook - "Third-World Country? No. Sorry, it's Seattle..."

Meme - "Don't dress scantily! It's a sin!
Don't drink alcohol! It's haram!
Don't abort! Stay at home! Bear more babies!
Don't laugh! Don't dance! Don't hug!"
"ENOUGH!!! SHUT UP AND LEAVE US ALONE!!!"
"HELP MEEE!!! THEY ARE ATTACKING MY SACRED VALUES! I HAVE A RIGHT TO PRACTICE MY RELIGIon!"

Quebec election: Legault sorry for English content on his party’s website/a> - "Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) Leader François Legault says he regrets that English-language content was published on his party’s website. Campaigning ahead of the Oct. 3 provincial election, Legault told reporters in the Montreal suburb of Longueuil on Wednesday that he intervened personally to have the content removed."

Fruits and Vegetables Are Trying to Kill You - "evidence has mounted to suggest that antioxidant vitamin supplements, long assumed to improve health, are ineffectual. Fruits and vegetables are indeed healthful but not necessarily because they shield you from oxidative stress. In fact, they may improve health for quite the opposite reason: They stress you.  That stress comes courtesy of trace amounts of naturally occurring pesticides and anti-grazing compounds. You already know these substances as the hot flavors in spices, the mouth-puckering tannins in wines, or the stink of Brussels sprouts. They are the antibacterials, antifungals, and grazing deterrents of the plant world. In the right amount, these slightly noxious substances, which help plants survive, may leave you stronger.  Parallel studies, meanwhile, have undercut decades-old assumptions about the dangers of free radicals. Rather than killing us, these volatile molecules, in the right amount, may improve our health. Our quest to neutralize them with antioxidant supplements may be doing more harm than good.   The idea that pro-oxidant molecules are always destructive is “oversimplified to the point of probably being wrong,” says Toren Finkel, chief of the center for molecular medicine at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. “Oxidants may be a primordial messenger of stress in our cells, and a little bit of stress, it turns out, may be good for us.”... scientists began finding that exercise and calorie restriction increased lifespan in animals. Both elevated ROS. According to the ROS model of aging, animals that exercised and fasted should have died younger. But they lived longer... To improve health, he figured, perhaps we shouldn’t neutralize ROS so much as increase them in a way that mimicked what happened in exercise. That would boost native antioxidants, improve insulin sensitivity, and increase overall resilience.  Ristow called this idea “mitohormesis.”"

How the Chinese Gooseberry Got Rebranded as the Kiwifruit

Asia: Sextortion ring dismantled by police - "The cybercriminals contacted their victims, based mainly in Hong Kong (China) and Singapore, through online sex and dating platforms before asking them to download a malicious mobile application via a hyperlink to engage in ‘naked chats’.  Little did the victims know that this app was specifically designed to steal their phones’ contact lists. The syndicate would then blackmail victims by threatening to circulate their nude videos to their relatives and friends"

Poly student threatened to make ex-girlfriend an 'influencer' by leaking her nude videos, photos - "When his relationship came to an end, a young man threatened to circulate hundreds of his ex-girlfriend's nude photographs and videos, taunting her by saying she would become an “influencer” as a result.  He then began stalking her through an online platform she was using for her school lectures"

Female social worker accused of making sexual advances on over 40 moms, removing their children when rejected - "A female former Colorado social worker has been accused of making "sexual advances" towards at least 40 mothers, making false accusations of child abuse and threatening to remove their children from their care when they rejected her. Robin Niceta, 41, who was a child-protective worker in Arapahoe County, allegedly offered parents alcohol and invited them into her home before making sexual advances... "So far, several parents have come forward to let us know that they also had their children taken away from them as a result of Robin Niceta's actions related to their cases whether by what they believe to be false testimony during court of what they believe to be false reports.""

Love, Sex, Video games and Gamers: Soon - FML - "Today, my boyfriend was talking about video games. Bored of the subject, I started kissing his neck and chest in hopes of him to stop talking and getting some action. He did stop, only for him to say about a minute later, "You're lucky my games can't do this." FML"

Love, Weird and Cheating: Guilty - FML - "Today, I caught my husband saying, “Love you too, can’t wait to see you” on his phone. I asked him who he was talked to and he said, “my coworker Ricky.” When I asked to see his texts with “Ricky” he threw his phone out the fifth story window, saying “Oopsy!” He then threw a fit saying I owe him a new phone. FML"

Maduro wields powerful hate law against remaining foes in Venezuela - "Venezuela's "law against hate" is suddenly a key tool for Nicolás Maduro to repress dissent, particularly online. A Reuters review of over 40 recent arrests found in each case that authorities used the law to detain critics of the president, his aides or allies... After opposition legislators in March said the government was ill prepared for coronavirus, the president in a speech said they were seeking to “torture Venezuelan minds.” He accused them of “manipulating” the pandemic for political purposes.  Within days, prosecutors ramped up use of the law. "
Why liberals want hate speech and misinformation laws

Real life transformers. : MadeMeSmile

Meme - "Business Hours
Normally Opening: 11
Overslept: 12
Traveling: Closed
Normally Closed: 22:00
Too Many Girls: 23:00
Pretty Girls In: Not Closed
All Men: Early Closing"
Taken at Xiang Yuan Qiao Yunnan Cross Bridge Rice Noodle(RMD) in Richmond, British Columbia

Meme - Me losing my virginity: "Thanks guys"
*Warhammer, Anime, Tool, Libertarianism, Political compass memes, GTA online, "Classical Liberal", PragerU, Joe Rogan*: "So long, partner"

Meme - MEFeaterCEO @GabrielleAmani: "Progress is the best feeling in the world *mattress to bed*"
"I love posts like this. It shows realistic and relatable growth, which often isn't shown on social media."

Jason Read on Twitter - "The cultural domination of fantasy over science fiction that we are currently living through just seems to be symptomatic of the broader turn towards fascism."
The left sees "fascism" everywhere. But really they're just seeing themselves

Al Peṭṭerson on Twitter - "1992: The humanities are useless. Study STEM.
2002: The humanities are useless. Study STEM.
2012: The humanities are useless. Study STEM.
2022: Why are nazis suddenly about to take over?
Well this has been fun, and my first-ever viral tweet! Subtweets and mockery abound, but quite a nice ratio. Thanks to all who participated. But alas, the sun's coming up in Moscow, so we're shutting off comments on the thread, because the bots are waking."
Everyone who disagrees with a liberal is a Russian bot
Giving that grievance studies has taken over STEM (e.g. Nature falling) this is even more far-fetches
Comments from a share: "the Third Reich was constructed not by atrocity barbarians but by the top intellectual and cultured philosophers of the time rich in Hagelian, Marxist, and Nietzchean thought tradition."
"Technically NAZIS are created by failing humanities students…."
"This is a wildly distorted reframing of what happened. The left took over the humanities (in what used to be the academy), and turned them into nonsense that was only useful for maintaining their power. Sane people rejected both their philosophy and their power, and now they’re panicking."
"of course they're real. Apparently I'm one, my manager is one, ted Cruz is one, my dog is one, mitt Romney is one, Tulsi gabbard is one, my neighbor's cat is one, Satoshi nakamoto is probably one, and I also suspect the mice that live under my sink are Nazis too since they don't vote democrat."
"Look to your left and youll see the thugs that destroy cities in the name of 'antiracism'. Look to mainstream media for the apologists that empower the thugs. Look to the university to see the professors that generate both."
"Except that the number of humanities majors grew significantly over that time period, while STEM, despite all the promotion, stayed relatively the same."
"oh yeah man, not like we live in a time where more people are getting useless degrees than ever before or anything lmfao"
"The best part is that you can’t tell if this was made by a leftist complaining about their delusions, or by a normal person noticing the leftist takeover of every cultural institution."
"The more humanities grads, the broader the nazi definition."
"This person obviously wasn’t educated in the critical thinking provided by a STEM degree"
"Not to mention that STEM is getting wrecked now as well."
"Hmm only in Western culture is it considered Nazism to think critically and logically"
"Remember kids, if 2+2 doesn't equal 5 you're a racist!"

Investigation underway after kindergarten students on Vancouver Island given worksheet on masturbation - "An investigation has been launched by officials in Alert Bay after reports started circulating about an inappropriate sex education worksheet given to kindergarten students.  The worksheet was allegedly used at T’lisa̱lagi’lakw school in 'Namgis First Nation'... 'Namgis First Nation issued a formal statement about the incident, and confirmed that there is an active investigation underway.  “It is the priority of ‘Namgis Council to ensure our young people are taken care of in a way that honours their safety, security and well being and reflects the values of our Nation,” the statement said. “We are dedicated to supporting our students, families and staff who have been impacted.”...   The statement also said that a complete assessment of the approval processes involving sensitive topics will be done. Other measures include using pre-approved resources to meet learning outcomes in the BC education curriculum"
Anyone who has concerns over what is taught in schools is a dangerous far right extremist

Arab States Demand That Netflix Drop ‘Offensive Content’ - The New York Times - "Egypt became the latest Arab country on Wednesday to demand that Netflix drop content that runs counter to its “societal values,” an escalation of a battle by regional authorities on Western-produced television shows and films that depict gay and lesbian characters onscreen.  The content, in the official telling, is anathema to their majority-Muslim societies. Egypt’s warning to Netflix, Disney+ and other streaming services, issued by its government media regulator, came a day after six Gulf Arab countries including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates called on Netflix to take down “offensive content” on its local streaming sites. They said in a statement that such programs “contradict Islamic and societal values and principles.”  Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar also joined in the Gulf countries’ request. Egypt’s statement used similar language, warning the streaming services that “legal action will be taken in the event of broadcasting content that conflicts with societal values.”... Several recent Disney films, including this summer’s “Lightyear,” “Thor: Love and Thunder,” “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” “West Side Story” and “Eternals,” were all barred from movie theaters in various places across the Middle East because they included L.G.B.T.Q. scenes such as same-sex kisses or touched on other L.G.B.T.Q. topics. Though it was banned elsewhere, “Eternals” made it to theaters in the United Arab Emirates after Disney edited out public displays of affection. Disney recently said it would not offer “Lightyear” or “Baymax,” a series that includes L.G.B.T.Q. characters, on the Middle East version of Disney+, its streaming service, to avoid inflaming regional sensitivities."
So much for media companies trying to play both sides

What Is ‘Radical Monogamy’?
When you go through a tortured path to get to basically the same endpoint

Meme - "I never understood why people organize runs to raise awareness for a cause. You know what gets my attention? Free food, then while I'm eating maybe tell me about Parkinson's."

What’s the best cuisine? - "American
Iranian
French
Chinese
Japanese
Italian
British"

Why Channel 37 Doesn’t Exist (And What It Has to Do With Aliens) - "the sudden, high popularity of television made the general bandwidth area where the telescope operated, 608-614 MHz, a bit of a hot commodity. It was literally the spot where channel 37 was supposed to go—and broadcasters wanted access to that channel.  It threatened to cover up a key window."

They Couldn't Take It With Them - The New York Times - "The gold, jewels, land, cash, art and palaces of the Russian imperial family had an estimated value of over $45 billion when the House of Romanov fell in 1917. A great deal of that wealth can be easily accounted for -- the Bolsheviks grabbed it. But enough to make dozens of people gloriously rich eluded their grasp and has been sought and claimed ever since... The family still had a fortune in diamonds sewn into the underclothes of the Grand Duchesses, but that only added irony to horror: during their executions, bullets ricocheted off the diamonds and the poor girls had to be finished off with rifle butts and bayonets."

Meme - "There are grown men who are really into the intricacies of children's movies. GIF: "WE JUST NEED TO GET YOU LAID""
"the problem is I got laid too much and have 3 daughters who care about this"

Single People Are Standing In Solidarity With This 20-Year-Old Over Her Hilarious Family Holiday Card - "This is 20-year-old Emily Seawright. She and her family live in California. Every year around the holidays, the Seawrights brainstorm a new Christmas card for the whole family... the Seawright 2017 Holiday Card was conceived. From left to right: The "Excited" couple are her parents; the "Engaged" couple are her sister and her fiancé; the "Expecting" couple are her older sister and her husband...and "Emily" is Emily.

Roy Wood Jr- Ex Jedi on Twitter - "6th grade I forgot the science fair was next day. 10pm in a panic, I find a loaf of molded bread my pops forgot to throw out. Made a study on mold, moisture & air. Got 2nd place in the school. 5th in the city. 😂😂 Bread so moldy I was praised for “conducting weeks of research”."

Meme - "Fuck today pay tomorrow"
Ahh... Thailand!

Meme - "EUROPEAN
I respect your opinion. But I disagree with. Let me explain why. You see
AMERICAN
Blow it out your ass"
"Idk why Americans take pride in sharing that image. You're basically admitting you're a bunch of arrogant retards that cant form a sentence."
"blow it out your ass"
Just like many Americans love to share that meme about Europeans saying "I Feel Bad For You" and Americans saying "I Don't Think About You At All", which is a lie anyway, since these same Americans love to go on about "socialism" in Europe, how they are being stabbed to death, how they have no rights and how they are small homogenous ethnostates

Dear David Attenborough, beautiful Netflix documentary. But your ‘solutions’ destroy nature even more - "By praising Dutch exports, you are only repeating our food industry’s marketing slogans. Please stop. Argue for hard measures to curb our own consumption. Hold food giants like Unilever to account. Condemn agriculture that comes at the expense of biodiversity. Not only in Borneo, but also in the Netherlands, and on your own island of Britain.   If Europe were to make it part of its policy to halve meat and dairy production in favour of seasonal vegetables, we would be able to manage without exports from outside Europe, while promoting healthier living and environmentally friendly farming... Without Dutch imports and exports, the world outside Europe would not have less, but more to eat, and not less, but more nature would be preserved."
Basically environmentalism is about degrading your quality of life and destroying your economy

(2) Facebook - "I catching up on news. Reading Sunday Times now and I see on Page 1 a magnet trying to attract some wooden blocks....no wonder we can't get foreign talent!"
Meme - "MAGNET FOR TOP TALENT"

Ants use pedometers to find home | New Scientist - "Wolf and his colleagues became interested in the mystery while studying Saharan desert ants (Cataglyphis fortis). When the researchers shortened the ants’ legs the insects had trouble finding home... the ants were removed from the food source and immobilised temporarily in a wax-like material. Wolf’s team then either removed about 1 millimetre from the tips of the insects’ legs or attached 1-millimetre “stilts” made of lightweight bristles... ants walking on stilts typically travelled 50% further than the normal distance and then began pacing back and forth looking for home.  And those with shortened legs paced back and forth in the channel after travelling, on average, only 50% of the normal distance to the nest...   Wolf says that the findings show that ants have an internal system that somehow keeps track of now many the steps they have taken, though he is quick to point out that the insects probably cannot “count” as such.  He suspects that the ants’ automatic step counter is part of their nervous system and that it gets reset each time they return to the nest.  The fact that ants with altered legs correctly estimated the distance home on future trips out from the nest supports Wolf’s speculation."

Meme - Tom Harwood @tomhfh: "Bicycles are inherently more right wing individualist than cars. No state licensing, no requirement for very heavy state infrastructure, no congestion, no reliance on anyone else, and infinitesimally less likely to kill someone."

Alberta oil could save Canada's crumbling road networks - "The country’s shoddy roads cost Canadian drivers $3 billion annually, according to a 2021 study by the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA). Getting mechanics to fix a tire rod that falls victim to a nasty pothole doesn’t earn you any discounts, just another headache. And highways that are seemingly under perpetual repair prevent freight trucks from getting where they need to be on time, further sapping productivity.  The CAA study suggests that spending a dollar today on road preservation could eliminate or delay “spending $6-$10 on costly repairs later on.”   But spending money up front, with taxpayers ultimately footing the bill, isn’t necessarily possible, and not simply because road repair isn’t a hot button political issue such as, say, affordable housing, but because a lot of municipalities don’t have the money to do anything more than fill potholes... Alberta crude produces asphalt binder — that black sticky stuff that holds asphalt together — of virtually unparalleled quality...   Asphalt has a limited life cycle. In Ontario, it ranges between 15 and 25 years. Hesp, in collaboration with some municipalities, including Timmins, has test sections of road made with straight Alberta binder that are showing a predicted life cycle of 40 years.  “If we do it smarter, I am sure we can make it 60 years,” he said.   The professor sketches a bright, future-facing picture, full of electric vehicles rolling over freshly paved, built-to-last roads held together with Alberta bitumen, and an oil industry that hasn’t been left for dead by electrification, but pivoted to a new calling: building roads. “Alberta has enough reserves underground to pave every road on Earth for the next 100 to 200 years”"

How do I stop people from adding me to Telegram groups and channels? - "If you join a large Telegram group that isn't just your friends, or especially if you join a large channel, chances are somebody is going to try to add you to other groups that they are trying to promote"

How To Stop Wasting Time On The Internet - "Holly Shakya of UCSD and Nicholas Christakis of Yale did a study of over 5200 people titled, “Association of Facebook Use With Compromised Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study.”... 'Our results show that overall, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with well-being.'... It was approved and published by “The American Journal of Epidemiology.”... From Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World:
A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time in a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else... Visit. Pick up the phone. Send a hand-written card. Those are the things that touch us. Don’t be the digital ghost. Be the real friend who reaches out.  “Liking” is something we should do with people, not with buttons."
I wonder what all the Americans claiming the CDC is corrupt for studying guns because guns aren't a disease will say

Project Habbakuk: Britain's WWII ice warship - "To gain the upper hand against the deadly German U-boats, the British had come up with a strange idea: make aircraft carriers out of giant icebergs. They were, after all, abundant, completely free and believed to be unsinkable. Crazy as it sounded, the project was approved by British prime minister Winston Churchill himself... At the time, ice was considered almost indestructible: the International Ice Patrol, established to destroy icebergs after one had sunk the Titanic in 1912, had reported that blowing them up wasn't easy, even with torpedoes and incendiary bombs."

Venting Emotions Can Be Psychological Damaging - "talking about thoughts and feelings after a trauma, or venting, may not help (Seery et al., 2008).  Worse, it may be psychologically damaging... If accurate, these results stand in stark contrast to what has become the accepted wisdom.  Offering psychological counselling in the aftermath of traumatic events has now become a normal, automatic official response.  Popular techniques include ‘Critical Incident Stress Debriefing’, which is thought to reassure trauma sufferers that their responses are normal and help reduce the chances of PST.  These techniques are in line with the ‘hydraulic theory’ of the emotions – a popularly held view of how the emotions work.  In this view, people’s emotions work in the same way as a pressure cooker.  Emotions build up inside until the mind can no longer contain the pressure."

AI Searches Public Cameras to Find When Instagram Photos Were Taken - "The Belgian artist has posted a video of his remarkable project that he calls The Follower which he began by recording open cameras that are public and broadcast live on websites such as EarthCam... The resulting video gives a slightly creepy behind-the-scenes look at Instagram influencers in the wild as they pose for the perfect social media photo...   Depoorter’s previous project, The Flemish Scrollers, involved flagging every time a Belgian politician uses their phone while at a government meeting. That project used AI and face recognition as well, and once a politician had been caught using their phone it was posted to Twitter with the distracted politician tagged."

Meme - "Before internet
>i want to fuck toasters
>dont be a fucking retard
>grow up
After internet
>I want to fuck a toaster
>google
>find a community with 1000+ members about people wanting to fuck toasters
>fuck up your life" Meme - "Customer states, no matter how much she tries, she cant inflate the tires to "100%"
93 psi
97 psi
96 psi
94 psi
Tire Pressure"

Saw this walking hotspot setup attached on to this dog on the bus today : toronto

‘Manipulated’ Alzheimer’s data may have misled research for 16 years - "The key theory of what causes Alzheimer’s disease may be based on ‘manipulated’ data which has misdirected dementia research for 16 years – potentially wasting billions of pounds – a major investigation suggests.  A six-month probe by the journal Science reported “shockingly blatant” evidence of result tampering in a seminal research paper which proposed Alzheimer’s is triggered by a build-up of amyloid beta plaques in the brain.   In the 2006 article from the University of Minnesota, published in the journal Nature, scientists claimed to have discovered a type of amyloid beta which brought on dementia when injected into young rats.   It was the first substance ever identified in brain tissue which could cause memory impairment, and seemed like a smoking gun.   The Nature paper became one of the most-cited scientific articles on Alzheimer’s ever published, sparking a huge jump in global funding for research into drugs to clear away the plaques."
"Trust the science"

Eli 🤠 on Twitter - "Muslims in the US: “Actually the Quran is accepting of same sex couples”
Muslims in England: “Are we allowed to make eye contact with the kafirs?”"

Links - 2nd January 2023 (2 - General Wokeness)

What Medicine Gets Wrong About Race - Freakonomics - "ENEANYA: The first eGFR equation in the United States was developed in 1999... "we’re going to have two equations, one for Black individuals, and then one for people who are not Black.” And that is how race was introduced into eGFR equations.
The rationale, at the time, had to do with creatinine, which is the main lab test used in the eGFR equation to make sure that somebody’s kidneys are filtering waste appropriately. Generally speaking, the higher the creatinine, the worse the kidney is functioning. But creatinine also depends on muscle mass: the more muscular an individual is, the higher their baseline creatinine level will be when their kidneys are functioning normally.
ENEANYA: And so we were taught in medical school like, “Oh, by the way, Black people are more muscular than every other race group, and therefore we need to kind of adjust for that using this different eGFR equation.” And many people didn’t feel like that made sense. I was one of those people. But medical students, they really are what drove the big change for eGFR equations. They were constantly pressing their professors in medical school, like, “There’s anthropology studies that show that biologically we are no different between racial groups. So why are you saying that Black people, have more muscle mass just inherently?” And professors couldn’t answer that question...
The Human Genome Project found that race has no genetic basis. In fact, the amount of genetic diversity that we observe within races is actually larger than what we observe across races...
ENEANYA: There was a group of medical students in 2017 at Harvard Medical School that really challenged the faculty and the faculty said, “You know what? You’re right. You’ve produced all this evidence. You’ve gone back to anthropological studies, sociological studies. We’re not going to use the Black eGFR equations anymore. We’re going to use one equation for everybody.” And so after they did that, my colleagues and I at the University of Pennsylvania decided to write this article in JAMA that was really challenging it. Like, why are we using this? This doesn’t make sense. And we should get rid of it. That was published in 2019. And, you know, I gave some talks here and there and we were trying to make changes at Penn, and then the pandemic hit and George Floyd was murdered. And that was really another racial reckoning in this country of how we’re treating racial and ethnic minorities differently. The same group that pushed out the eGFR equation at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess wrote a New England Journal perspective where they detailed all of these racialized algorithms, not just in nephrology and kidney care, but in cardiology and pulmonology. And that is where we start to see some movement. Institutions across the country just started to stop using this race-based eGFR equation because it’s wrong.
I like how they didn't actually look at whether black people have higher creatinine in reality, but just assumed they didn't

Higher Serum Creatinine Concentrations in Black Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease: Beyond Nutritional Status and Body Composition - "Serum creatinine concentrations are significantly higher in black compared with nonblack hemodialysis patients; these differences are not readily explained by differences in nutritional status or body composition."
It is racist to push black people down the priority list for transplants. So privileging them using the eGFR equation is anti-racist

What Does It Mean to Be a Species? Genetics Is Changing the Answer - "Based on a 1980 book by biologists Niles Eldredge and Joel Cracraft, under the definition of a phylogenetic species, animal species now can differ by just 2 percent of their DNA to be considered separate."
What is the most genetically diverse species? - "The split gill mushroom (Schizophyllum commune) has a nucleotide diversity of up to 20%, according to a 2015 study published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. According to the study, that's the greatest genetic diversity reported for any eukaryote, or organism whose cells have a nucleus. In other words, two different mushrooms will have different DNA bases at about 20 out of every 100 positions in their genomes. That's higher than the genetic diversity of the previous record holder, the roundworm Caenorhabditis brenneri, which has been reported to have a nucleotide diversity of 14.1%, according to a 2013 study that Cutter and colleagues published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. These species are considered to be genetically hyperdiverse, defined as having a nucleotide diversity greater than 5%"
Clearly species are a biological myth

Meme - "No one is trying to indoctrinae kids"
*RBG, Rosa Parks, Fauci, Kamala Harris, Pride, Black History, Martin Luther King, Feminist etc kids' books*

Rex Murphy: A foul-mouthed 'anti-racist' worthy of the Liberals - "Canadian Heritage knows the danger when it feels it, and it was Canadian Heritage, under Diversity and Inclusion Minister Ahmed Hussen, who doled out $133,800 to a group called Community Media Advocacy Centre (CMAC), to, as the Canadian Press put it, “build an anti-racism strategy” for Canadian broadcasting. On “anti-racism” no government has ever been as efficient as the current one. They, as the great cat poem states “search it here, they search it there, they search it everywhere.”... Take the case of Laith Marouf, to whom Minister Hussen directed those funds. Mr. Marouf, as Kay has documented from his Twitter account, has a pungent style: “You know all those loud mouthed bags of human feces, aka the Jewish White Supremacists; when we liberate Palestine and they have to go back to where they come from, they will return to being low voiced bitches of their Christian/Secular White Supremacist Masters.” Just the voice you want from an “anti-hate” specialist... “The Jewish White Supremacist Summit hosted by Apartheid Canada PM, Justin Trudeau, was the brainchild of Irwin Cotler, the Grand Wizard of Zionism in this colony. Notice that he looks like a dick without makeup, as he spews his bullshit.” If this isn’t an ode to Inclusion and Diversity, I know nothing about odes. Minister of Diversity and Inclusion Hussen, meantime, a full week after Kay gave this warped social warrior some attention, now tells Canada he is looking into the matter. To quote a brilliant tweet: “What’s to look into?” Well there is one thing to look into. And that is how your department with its overwhelming commitment to anti-racism managed to find and fund a sewer-source of what exactly your department was set up to fight. If Mr. Kay, who doesn’t have the resources of a whole government department can search Twitter, how did you possibly come to hire this man? Who said Yes? Who examined CMAC? Or is all you require in such matters that someone merely says they are “anti hate” and the words alone are enough. Efficiency again. One more post from this Mother Teresa of kindness and anti-racism: “I have a motto: life is too short for shoe laces, or for entertaining Jewish White Supremacists with anything but a bullet to the head.” Here’s another motto: A ferocious commitment to virtue-signalling should exercise the brain more than the mouth. And while I’m at it, campaigns against anti-hate could do with a lot of self-examination."
As usual, anti-racists are the biggest racists

JIVANI: Do Trudeau Liberals even know what racism is anymore? | Toronto Sun - "Canadians ought to be concerned about what this reveals about our country. We are now at a point where Canadian government officials may not even be able to recognize racism when it’s right in front of their eyes, despite the fact that they talk about racism now more than ever before. Trudeau Liberals have spilled tons of ink and spent tons of tax-payer dollars to call Canada a racist country. The federal government’s Anti-Racism Strategy is over 6,000 words, including many terms that you’d find in a graduate school seminar: intersectionality, systemic, institutional, racialization, social participation. Like others who claim to be progressive, Trudeau Liberals have been so busy making racism complicated, that they’ve forgotten that calling out racism is actually straightforward. There’s no need to concern ourselves with ivory tower ideas like microaggressions or critical race theory. It should be simple, and it used to be. Before political correctness made it difficult for Canadians to have honest conversations with one another, most of us agreed that if you hate people because of what they look like or where they’re from, you’re a racist. Officials in Ottawa may have missed Marouf’s comments in their vetting process because, for Canada’s Liberal government, anti-racism is about optics, not substance. They could have been satisfied by CMAC’s use of progressive buzzwords, then failed to dig into the true beliefs of people affiliated with the organization. Such an oversight would be on-brand for a Prime Minister who struggles to back up his virtue signalling with honest conviction. This lack of judgment from government officials is yet another reason Canadians should be concerned about the Trudeau administration’s power grabs. Citing the need to stop hate speech and racism, Trudeau Liberals are working diligently to expand their regulatory power over what Canadians can say online through censorship legislation like Bill C-11"

Racist comments from anti-racism trainer a trend, not a mistake | Toronto Sun - "Should we be outraged that the Trudeau government hired someone who has said vile things about Jews, French-speaking people, and Black Americans — to name a few — to teach broadcasters not to be racist? Absolutely, but we shouldn’t be shocked... [Laith Marouf] said that French is an ugly language; and that “Frogs have much less IQ.” He once called Colin Powell the “Jamaican house slave of the Empire.”... The big problem is that this isn’t an isolated incident; the entire anti-racism industry should be called into question. In April 2021, I reported on federal anti-racism training which described objectivity, individualism, perfectionism, a sense of urgency, and Thanksgiving as “Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture.” This same training program for executives at Global Affairs Canada referred to our country as “this place we now call Canada” and questioned the existence of the state these same executives work for while collecting very large paycheques... the man who was then the top civil servant in Ontario accepted the idea that the entire public service was a “White supremacist organization” based off a single anonymous comment from an employee. Then there was a story about Ontario’s math curriculum stating that math “has been used to normalize racism” and that “a decolonial, anti-racist approach to mathematics education makes visible its historical roots and social constructions.” Then again, earlier this year, educators in Ontario were warning parents about the triggering aspects of being offered a free Canadian flag... Jonathan Kay, who has done great work on the Marouf file, recently profiled an anti-racism program from the British Columbia government which claims Canada’s Constitution inspired the Nazis and capitalism is a main problem with racism."

In vow to protect campus free speech, Quebec premier joins 'war on woke' - "Quebec Premier François Legault has steered his government toward yet another divisive ideological debate by declaring his intention to move swiftly to protect campus free speech from anti-racism activists... Legault said the problem in Quebec is with "a handful of radical activists who are trying to censor certain words and works." He was referring to recent cases at universities in Montreal and Ottawa where students objected to teachers using the N-word in class. In the University of Ottawa case, a lecturer was briefly suspended this fall after using the word while attempting to illustrate how some groups have reclaimed the slurs used against them. At Concordia University in 2019, a teacher apologized after using the word when mentioning the title of a book by Pierre Vallières... The controversy was revived earlier this month by a series of columns in La Presse by Isabelle Hachey, who argued that student demands for more sensitivity were going too far. Hachey's pieces cited several professors who said they now avoided teaching certain material, fearing backlash from "woke" students. A philosophy professor at the University of Ottawa told her he no longer referenced slavery when teaching about the ancient Greeks. A literature professor at McGill said the university forced her to let students skip pages of classic works of Quebec literature if they contained slurs, which most of the assigned works did... "We're seeing a movement come here from the United States and, frankly, I think it does not resemble us," Legault said... "It's a false debate. Professors already have freedom of speech. The problem is some want to abuse it," said Amissi Manirabona, a criminal law professor at the Université de Montreal... The perception that anti-racism ideologies have somehow infiltrated university administrations is also difficult to square with the fact that so few people of colour hold university leadership positions... The head of the federation, Jean Portugais, said more and more teachers are reporting confrontations with radical students... Like Legault, French President Emmanuel Macron has also blamed the U.S. for exporting a style of social justice activism that he claims undermines the republic's unity. Macron's increasingly right-leaning government promised this week to launch an inquiry into the influence of "Islamo-leftism" in its universities."
Professors who cannot teach material have freedom of speech, clearly. Because to liberals, "hate speech" is not free speech
Given that anti-racism is an obsession of white liberals, CBC is being mischevous as usual by claiming you need minorities in power for wokeness to rule

Legault says people who see discrimination everywhere are wokes - "Premier François Legault says he thinks people who see discrimination everywhere or want Quebecers to feel guilty about defending their values are wokes."

Quebec is leading the fight against 'le wokisme' - "At a time when most institutions are busy playing defence against woke activists, Canadians need inspiration to push back against ideologies that we know in our gut are simply wrong. Enter Quebec Premier François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) government. On Dec. 7, the national assembly passed a motion that expresses a commitment to merit-based hiring on university campuses and rejects the imposition of racial or gender quotas by the federal government... The motion reiterates the importance of academic freedom before denouncing “the interference of the federal government, which funds research chair programs according to certain criteria that do not reflect the specificity of Quebec.” Minister Déry, who is the first Jewish woman to be appointed to cabinet in Quebec history, is arguing in favour of a more substantive understanding of diversity than the federal government’s superficial focus on physical characteristics. The Government of Canada’s Canada Research Chairs Program insists universities meet diversity targets in hiring, but such targets do not account for the ideological or linguistic diversity that many Quebecers value... a history professor at Montreal’s Dawson College filed a human rights complaint against Laval University and the Canada Research Chairs Program alleging discrimination. Frédéric Bastien argues that he is qualified for the position of a Canada research chair in history, but his application was not accepted because he is a white male... When affirmative action was first introduced in the 1980s, its proponents insisted that identity differences would only be a factor in distinguishing between two candidates once comparable merit was established... Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, however, the Government of Canada has made a radical change away from the original purpose of affirmative action and now enforces diversity targets and quotas from the top down. Therefore, as the Canada Research Chairs Program demonstrates, a person’s race or gender is now being considered at the application stage, before a candidate’s merits can even be evaluated... This unwillingness to stand up for genuine equality of opportunity has enabled the spread of critical race theory in public schools and government offices in much of the country. But Quebec has proven to be different. It’s a province leading by example. Premier Legault’s resistance to “le wokisme” is well-documented. For years now, he has refused to adopt language like “systemic racism” to describe Quebec, even in the face of immense criticism and pressure from journalists"

Barrington Martin II on Twitter - "Today I will begin documenting racist things people who don’t think they are racist say to me on @twitter. I think this tweet is the perfect way to start. White liberals doing white liberal things here…"
"Change your name to DeShawn or Jamal, take off the suit, tie and handkerchief, put on a hoodie, and drive through a gated community of rich white folk and see what happens."
"It doesn’t apply to Uncle Toms"
"A black man upset at CRT?? That brother cooning lol"
"He went full *raccoon* today. He should switch to the Republican party."
"Somehow coons and white supremacists always quote Sowell. Strange, huh."

David Schwimmer: 'I’m very aware of my privilege as a heterosexual white male' - "I’m very aware of my own privilege as a heterosexual white male whose parents were able to pay for a private education for me. I’ve always felt a sense of responsibility to give back and to call things out if I see an abuse of power.”" (2020)
David Schwimmer admits he 'never felt white' growing up Jewish in America - ""I've never felt white. Never"... David Schwimmer / TV documentary, David Baddiel: Jews Don't Count." (2022)

How Social Justice Ideologues Hijacked a Legal Regulator - "The working group reported in 2016 that it had discovered “systemic racism” in the profession... One of the listed recommendations was that the Law Society should “require every licensee to adopt and to abide by a statement of principles acknowledging their obligation to promote equality, diversity and inclusion generally, and in their behaviour towards colleagues, employees, clients and the public.” When the Law Society announced this new requirement the following September, its advisory also stated that we Ontario lawyers should “demonstrate a personal valuing” of these principles. Despite the fact that I always have been a strong advocate for “equality,” this development left me flabbergasted: Our regulator was demanding that lawyers and paralegals draft and then obey a set of specific political ideas—both in their personal and professional lives—as a condition of their license... The Law Society was prescribing, effectively with the force of law, what to say and what to think. I never imagined that I would ever see such a thing in Canada... Compelling speech is unconscionable regardless of the principles a person is made to parrot. Today, we are being told to promote “equality, diversity and inclusion.” But once this line has been crossed, the content doesn’t matter. And tomorrow, we might be asked to pledge allegiance to some other ideological doctrine... The Law Society’s working group declared that one of its objectives was to ensure “better representation of racialized licensees, in proportion to the representation in the Ontario population, in the professions, in all legal workplaces and at all levels of seniority.” Note the specificity of this objective. Every lawyer and paralegal is now expected to adopt and promote racial representation according to proportion in the general population “in all legal workplaces” and “at all levels of seniority”—an enforced mosaic or grid of de facto quotas in vertical and lateral compartments based, essentially, on skin colour... Without having the nerve to say so directly, the Law Society is telling us that there are, in effect, too many white Jewish lawyers... When it became clear that the diversity faction had captured my profession’s regulators, I felt I had no choice. My first step was to tell the Law Society to, in effect, go to hell. I did so in a long letter, to which I have not yet received a reply. The second step was to refuse to comply with the new requirement. (The Law Society announced that there would be penalties for such failure, though not during the first year—so, thus far, I still have my license.) The third was to wind down my law firm, because I no longer feel that my legal practice is viable in this climate. The fourth was to join in a court challenge to the compulsory Statement of Principles, which is ongoing. Finally, I have joined a group of other lawyers and paralegals who oppose the Statement of Principles and who are organizing a campaign in the upcoming Law Society elections in April. In a surprising development, I will be running for “Bencher” (the somewhat quaint term used to describe the Law Society’s directors), with the goal of changing the Law Society from the inside."

The Law Society of Ontario's equity 'Inclusion Index' was a bad idea from the start - "At our Convocation on June 28, the benchers of the Law Society of Ontario voted not to publish an LSO equity “Inclusion Index” which had been compiled behind the scenes in 2019. Good. Convocation’s 2016 decision to try to create an “Inclusion Index” was a bad idea from the start. The thrust of the “Inclusion Index” project was to try to develop a set of statistics which would put pressure on Ontario’s legal “workplaces” to hire and promote legal and paralegal talent based on candidates’ ethnicities, rather than on their mundane individual merits... Convocation dumped the 2019 “Inclusion Index” product only on narrow grounds of defect relating to the 2019 work product itself, including its staleness, and did not find any fault with the overall “Inclusion Index” project"

Herschel Walker’s Candidacy Is an Assault on the Dignity of Black Americans - The Atlantic - "It’s impossible today to talk about Black men and white agendas without talking about Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for Senate in the runoff election in Georgia... Walker is a big, ball-carrying Black man, and these Republicans do not have an ounce of care for him. They are using him to advance their own Constitution-compromising agenda, the way conservative white people in this country have always used Black bodies when given half a chance. Walker stands up at podiums, and I feel shame and sorrow and resentment. He is incoherent, bumbling, oily. He smiles with a swagger that does nothing to disguise his total ignorance of how blatantly he is being taken advantage of by a party that has never intended to serve people who look like him. Walker’s candidacy is a fundamental assault by the Republican Party on the dignity of Black Americans. How dare they so cynically use this buffoon as a shield for their obvious failings to meet the needs and expectations of Black voters?... you are promoting a charlatan—a man morally and intellectually bereft enough, blithely egomaniacal enough, to sing and dance on the world stage against his own best interest. Is he in on the joke? Does he know they picked him to save money on boot black and burnt cork, this man who made his name by bringing the master glory on the master’s field, who got comfortable eating from the master’s table?... From where I sit, the election looks like a kind of grotesque minstrelsy. The Republican Party is saying that it wants power more than decency. It’s saying that race is a joke. We must all take note—it is willing to destroy a man to advance its cause. The party thinks he won’t break. And if he does, well, he wasn’t really one of them, anyway, was he?... Whoever wins today, Walker’s candidacy is an American tragedy."
Woe betide blacks who go off the Democratic plantation
Liberals claim the Republicans are racist because they don't put up black candidates. But when they put up black candidates, that's "evidence" of racism too

Meme - "I just found out that my husband fills the dog's water dish not from the tap, but from the fridge's water purifier feature. "She'd do the same for me", he said."
Bazi OwenZ: "As a minority, I am infinitely jealous of dogs for the empathy they receive"

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Patriot Games - "'Contemporary opposition to patriotism is usually more about a kind of expressing anti working class prejudices than it is about a serious critique of colonialism, or Empire or Britain's history. And that makes me just almost want to start flying the flag'...
‘I come from South Asia, you cannot tell me that I don't know about the history of the British Raj and its colonial past. But when I've come to this country, and I've written about this as well, I have yet to see another nation that looks at its past much more than the Brits do. I think the Germans do that really well as well. But the Brits do as well. I find that there's a real interest and a real desire to criticize ourselves, to criticize our past. You cannot say that for a lot of countries, including the country that I was born in’...
‘Yeah, well, I get that. But does it not worry you that we see patriotism being weaponized’...
‘For the last few years during the Brexit debate, being a Brexit supporter and ethnic minority, all the, and I mean, all the racist abuse that I've got has come from Remainers, with their names proudly shown on Twitter, for example, using, you know, the European Union's symbol on their Twitter handle. I've been called a toxic import.’"
Hatred for people's own countries is also weaponised, so

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, How Free Should Speech Be? - "'Kate Clanchy won the Orwell prize with her memoir, Some kids I taught and what they taught me. But she was targeted by a campaign that accused her of racism for using phrases like chocolate colored skin and almond eyes, and ableism for saying autistic children could be jarring company. She and her publisher parted ways messily and she says she contemplated suicide.'...
[On Joe Rogan] ‘He wasn't giving offense, potentially. I mean, that's what the charge is. He was killing people. I mean, this is, this is the, this is at its root is that this information, this misinformation, is such that people will die as a consequence of it. Now, I mean, you know, you have to establish that and I don't know how you do it. But if that's the case, this is a total different order of claim than somebody might be, quote, unquote, offended by something.’...
‘For goodness sake, I'm Jewish. And you know, the English literary culture is absolutely heaving with anti semitism. Anti semitism, we know from bitter experience has a direct effect as a murderous creed in causing attacks and murder of Jews. Now, you know, I mean, what are we gonna do? Cancel TS Eliot, who wrote among his many brilliant lines, the words, the the lines, the rats are underneath the piles, the Jew is underneath them not. What are we going to do, cancel all of those people? I mean, there is no end to it. Once you go down this road, you can't do this.’"
We know that the fat activists promoting Health At Any Size are killing people. So they should be censored

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, The Priorities of the Police - "'Attacks against Jews increased by 78% last year. There's a hell of a lot of, or a heck of a lot of actual physical violence against Jews at the moment, and it's on the rise. Communities asked for better patrol quicker response times and basically feel ignored… why is there then an ignored racial minority who's getting a lot of abuse? And that to me raises questions about ideological priorities, as well as what you pointed out, which are being sent to unglue people from bridges and things that they shouldn't really be doing.'"

Thread by @ZubyMusic on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "One of the biggest problems in modern society is people are so bored, comfortable, and complacent that they are INVENTING problems. 😂 It's like we're living in a massive role playing game. And if you don't play along with every character's personal 'reality' (solipsism, fears, delusions, and 'their truth') you are the bad guy."

Sunny Hostin calls white women Republicans roaches voting for Raid
Dehumanisation: How Tutsis were reduced to cockroaches, snakes to be killed
The Tutsis were privileged, so they could not have been victims of genocide, since genocide = power + mass killing

1200 Academics Denounced Me as Racist for Using a Quote from Fiddler on the Roof - "I recently wrote a paper titled Diversity is Diverse, which can be found here. The paper was written as a response to a critical commentary by Hommel (2022) of a published paper by Roberts et al (2020) titled Racial Inequality in Psychological Science. The general topic was diversity and racism in psychology. Oversimplifying only slightly, Hommel argued that Roberts et al: 1. Overstated the extent of racism in psychology; 2. the scientific justifications Roberts et al gave for advocating for more focus on racial diversity applied equally well to a myriad of other forms of diversity... My paper led off with this quote from the Fiddler on the Roof song, Tradition (which begins at 5:50 in the clip shown above): “Of course, there was the time he sold him a horse, and delivered a mule.” ... Academic rhetoric around diversity often functions to exclude the vast majority of Americans who are unwilling to conform to progressive dogmas...
“Similarly, when using that same political activist lens, “representation” does not mean statistical representation in proportion to the population, it means overrepresentation (in order to provide reparations for past bias). Inclusion and representation, too, then, can constitute (political social justice) mules delivered when (scientific) horses were promised.”...
Roberts was given a chance to reply to the exchange (which included Hommel’s paper, two other articles, plus mine). However, he pulled his paper from consideration to protest what he claimed was the unfair treatment at the hands of Fiedler and that the entire episode reflected the systemic racism endemic to psychology. He posted a version of his reply online, expanded to explain and document the ways in which he believed he had been victimized by racism. In that online version, Roberts addressed my paper only to denounce its racism... Roberts weaponized a 19th century racist trope that disappeared by 1950 according to his own source... Nonetheless, Robert’s framing of that section from my paper quickly got picked up by academics on social media who proceeded to immediate outrage with no fact checking... There was no evidence of knowledge that its metaphor originated, not in 19th century racist tropes, but in Fiddler on the Roof, a 1960s era play about early 20th century Jewish life in Russia... Fiedler was given no chance to explain or defend his actions, but he was given an ultimatum by APS (the professional organization overseeing the journal) to resign or be fired. He resigned... every reader who actually read my paper would understand that. But that is not how Outrage Mobs work. It is not how radical dogmatic political movements work. It is no longer how much of academia works"
Is it anti-semitic to say Fiddler on the Roof is racist?
Of course intent and context do not matter. As long as something can possibly be interpreted as racist, it is non-kosher

Special-needs man tortured while attackers livestream it on Facebook - "The footage shows the attackers cutting the victim’s hair with a knife until his scalp bled and slashing his clothes. He was also repeatedly slapped and cigarette ashes were thrown at him. “F–k Donald Trump, n—a, f–k white people!” one of the suspects can be heard telling the man in the video, which was livestreaming for roughly 30 minutes. “I should knock your a– the f–k out right now,” he says. “Stand up, boy!”... Later in the video, someone urges the man to say, “I love black people.”... One local community activist in Chicago, Andrew Holmes, has chosen to label the incident a “hate crime,” saying it fits within the law’s basic parameters... This isn’t the first time a white man has been attacked by a group of blacks who were seemingly upset over the election results. Just one day after Trump won, a video surfaced of a 50-year-old man being brutally assaulted on the West Side in the North Lawndale neighborhood, as onlookers called him out for voting for the real estate mogul. “You voted Trump?” a person says in the clip, before yelling: “Beat his a–!” Four people eventually were arrested and charged in connection with the attack"
Man Gets 8 Years In Livestreamed Attack, Torture Of Disabled Teen - "The alleged ringleader of the live-streamed torture of a kidnapped mentally disabled teen has been sentenced to eight years in prison, after pleading guilty to hate crime charges. Jordan Hill, 20, pleaded guilty to felony counts of aggravated kidnapping and hate crime... Hill allegedly took the victim to the West Side apartment of sisters Brittany and Tanishia Covington, where the incident took place. Brittany Covington narrated a Facebook Live video of Hill, her sister, and Tesfaye Cooper tormenting the victim. The video shows them slapping, punching, taunting and threatening to kill the victim."
If it had been the other way round...

The real 'intersectionality' - European and Arab oppression and persecution of Jews and Africans

The real 'intersectionality' - European and Arab oppression and persecution of Jews and Africans

"I watched a show on Al-Jazeera where the show’s hosts were moderating a debate among 4 people regarding the propriety of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement’s new platform, and its disgusting assertions that Israel is committing “genocide” against “Palestinians” and is an “apartheid” state.

Setting aside the absurdity of calling one of the freest and most democratic countries in the world an “apartheid” state (where all of its citizens, irrespective of race, ethnicity or religion can vote and fully participate in local, regional and national politics) or debating the crazy blood libel that Israel is committing “genocide” (when the population of Arabs who today identify as “Palestinians” has gone from around 1.1 million in 1948 to over 12 million[i]), one of the more troubling and ironic arguments put forth by the BLM representatives during this Al Jazeera panel was the notion that there is an “intersectionality” between the oppression and persecution of people of African heritage in the USA and the purported oppression of “Palestinians” in Israel...

BLM activists (such as these Al Jazeera panelists) claim there is a link between American racism and police brutality, which is based on over 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow laws in North America, and the Arab-Israeli conflict, which began when Jews began to have the audacity – barely over a hundred years ago – to act politically on their desire for freedom, emancipation and self-determination in their indigenous homeland.

“Intersectionality” has also led academic organizations such as the National Women’s Studies Association (“NWSA”) to endorse a boycott of Israel (as does the BLM platform) based on supposed “sexual and gender-based violence perpetrated [by Israel] against Palestinians.”[iii] Plainly, the NWSA must be getting its news straight from the Bizarro world because it accuses Israel, a bastion of women’s and LGBT rights, with engaging in sexual and gender based violence, while ignoring the obvious overlap/intersection between radical Islam, Arab dictatorships and gender based violence against women throughout the Arab world, including in territories governed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, where “women’s rights” and “LGBT rights” are an oxymoron, honor killings are rampant, and being gay can and often does equate to a death sentence.

“Intersectionality” has also allowed Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP), a grossly anti-Israel organization that is neither “Jewish” nor for “Peace,” to make the claim that the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the 70 year plus rejection (by the Arabs who now call themselves “Palestinians”) of any agreement that includes the right of the Jewish people to self-determination, is somehow linked to “the struggles of students of color, student survivors of sexual assault, and all others who on campus fight against oppression, whether imperialism, racism, patriarchy, police violence, or other systemic inequities.” [iv]

So according to JVP, there is an intersection somewhere between Israel’s ongoing fight with much of the highly patriarchal and misogynistic Arab world, where women are often treated as chattel, and where ethnic and religious minorities are de facto  and often de jure Dhimmi (second class citizens). While common sense would indicate that there is a link, it would not be the link JVP sees. Common sense would indicate that the same values that have led Arab leaders for decades to reject the notion of Jewish independence and self-determination in their indigenous homeland is also behind those same Arab leaders’ systematic and ongoing oppression of women and minorities. Of course, JVP ignores this “intersection” and instead claims that “intersectionality” somehow validates JVP’s attacks on Israel as well as the complete pass JVP gives to the misogynistic, dictatorial, patriarchs that dominate Arab society, including under both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

Of course, the fact that the colonized, confused and pampered Regressives, who make up the overwhelming majority of the JVP crowd, apply to the Arab world the soft bigotry of zero expectations and exclusively look to blame Israel for the lack of peace in the Middle East is about as shocking as a verbal gaffe by Donald Trump. As the saying goes, “if your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

What is somewhat surprising, and incredibly sad, is how many people – who purport to care about the impact of colonization and oppression of indigenous Africans and want to bring justice to the victims of that oppression and colonization (such as the many people that support the BLM movement) – seem to ignore the Grand Canyon sized intersection (link) between European colonization and oppression of both Africans and Jews, and the 1400 plus years of Arab colonization and oppression of both Africans and Jews.

If one wants to look at credible examples of “intersecting” and “related systems of oppression, domination or discrimination” one would be hard pressed to find a better example than the millennia plus oppression and colonization by both Europeans and Arabs of Africans on the one hand and Jews on the other...

In 641 C.E., the Caliph Umar decreed that Jews should be removed from all but the southern and eastern fringes of Arabia.[v] Can anyone say “ethnic cleansing”? As for the Levant, the Arab conquest and colonization began in earnest in 634 C.E. with Jerusalem falling to the Arabs and Caliph Umar in 637 C.E. What followed for Jews under Arab (and Ottoman) colonization, including in the Jews’ indigenous homeland and holiest city, was 1400 years of institutional racism (with numerous religious apartheid laws, just like in Europe), such as the first decree in 850 C.E. that Jews had to wear a yellow badge identifying them as “inferior,” which led to the systematic oppression and massacres of Jews...

While it is acceptable and popular to bash the European nations for all of their oppressive and brutal conduct as racist, colonialists (which the Europeans certainly deserve); for some reason Arab colonialism, racism and oppression of non-Arabs largely gets a pass. And even more inexplicably, for the very people in America that purport to care so much about “Black lives,” Arab colonialism and oppression of Africa and Africans (which continues to this very day) not only gets a pass by those that defame and libel Israel in the name of “intersectionality,” it gets wholly ignored.

But the Arab colonization and oppression of Africa and Africans is one of the greatest crimes in history and those that ignore that crime (or even worse deny it) are participants in that crime – “The denial of a crime constitutes the direct continuation of that very crime. Only recognition and condemnation can prevent the repetition of such crimes in the future” (Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan, April 23, 2014).

As was the case with the Arab colonization of Judea and the other indigenous peoples of the Levant, Arab settler colonization and persecution of indigenous Africans began with an invasion; the Arab invasion of Egypt in 640 C.E.[vi] After the Arab’s conquest of Alexandria in 643 C.E., they began demanding Nubian slaves from the south. This continued for over 600 years. For over 600 years, colonized and subjugated African kingdoms were forced to send tributes of African slaves to the imperial Arab ruler in Egypt.[vii] From as early as the 6th century C.E., the Arab conquerors developed slavery supply networks out of Africa, from the Sahara to the Red Sea and from Ethiopia, Somalia and East Africa, all to feed the demand for slaves throughout the Arab world and the Indian Ocean region.

While the Arab slave trade routes no longer ravage Africa, the persecution, institutional oppression, and cultural colonization of indigenous Africans continues to this very day in Mauritania, Sudan and all of North Africa.  Like Ancient Greeks trying to Hellenize the Jews of Judea, Arab conquerors in Africa, similar to their racist European counterparts, have justified their colonization and oppression of Africa and native Africans with missionary zeal and the claim that they were bringing “civilization” to the Africans. “We certainly cannot, under any conditions, relinquish our responsibility to help spread the light of knowledge and civilization to the very depth of the virgin jungles of the continent …” [Gamal Abdel Nasser in Philosophy of the Revolution, (1954)].

As with previous Arab and European conquests of African territory, the dictator Nasser’s supposed altruistic mission in Africa served as cover to bring the entire Nile under Arab rule; to further conquer, enslave and Arabicize indigenous Africans (as seen in the war in the Sudan), to take control of more African land through war, real genocide (not the imaginary kind made up by the BLM, JVP and SJP crowd), use of marauding gangs (like the Janjaweed in Darfur), the appropriation of African land (such as Libya’s action to take Chad’s Auzou strip), and the continued persecution of indigenous Africans in support of a now hereditary system of servitude and slavery (such as the recent arrest in Mauritania of 13 anti-slavery activists,[viii] where approximately 90,000 indigenous Africans are still enslaved).[ix]...

It is well documented that between 650 C.E. and 1900 C.E., approximately 20 million indigenous Africans were enslaved by Arab slave traders. In fact many historians estimate that over 20 million enslaved indigenous Africans were delivered through the trans-Sahara slave trade route to the Arab world. In his 2001 book, The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa, Dr. Alembillah Azumah estimates that over 80 million indigenous Africans died while being transported through the trans-Sahara slave route...

Unlike the European and American slave trade, Arab slavery of indigenous Africans often dealt in the sale of castrated male slaves. African males as young as 8 years old would have their genitals completely cut off. While approximately 70% of the victims of this castration procedure bled to death, to the Arab slave traders this was an acceptable risk because of the high price eunuchs fetched in the Arab slave trade. It is estimated that during the 10^th Century, the Caliph of Baghdad had as many as 7000 African eunuchs working in his palace.[xi]

One area where the European and Arab slave trade certainly “intersected” with each other was with the rape of indigenous African women. The eastern Arab slave trade dealt primarily with African women, maintaining a ratio of two female victims for each male. The big difference is that while the sexual slavery of indigenous Africans by Europeans and Americans lasted for approximately 370 years (beginning with the Portuguese in 1502 and ending with the abolition of slavery in the Americas in the 1860’s), the sexual slavery of indigenous Africans by the Arab slave trade began over 1200 years ago and (incredibly) in some Arab countries continues to this very day.[xii]

Just like their European counterparts’ “systems of oppression,” Arab oppression and persecution of Africans and Jews have often been supported and rationalized by Arab media, literature, religious claims and pseudo-science. To justify their persecution and even murder of Jews over the past millennia, both Arab and European literary, religious references, media and pseudo-science abounded with depictions of Jews as innately inferior and evil (and in the Arab world such propaganda has sadly only increased in modern times, not abated)...

In Rawdat al-taslim, Nasir al-Din Tusi, a well-known 13^th Century scientist and philosopher who lived in Baghdad, at a time when African slaves were already ubiquitous in the region, wrote: “The ape is more capable of being trained than the Negro.” Equally horrific, Ibn Khaldun, an Andalusian Arab historian and philosopher who spent most of his life (from 1332 – 1406) in Tunis and Egypt, in 1377 C.E. in the Muqaddimah[xiii] wrote that indigenous Africans are the “only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings.” In the Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun also wrote: “The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and proximity to the animal stage.”  And “[t]herefore, the Negro nation are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because [Negroes] have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.” Sadly, such venal, evil, racist writing is not difficult to find in Arab literature. Ibn Battuta, a famous 14^th Century historian and traveler, in his book the “Rihla” wrote of the so-called “Zanj” (a description used by medieval Arab geographers to refer to a portion of Southeast Africa as well as to the area’s Bantu inhabitants): “they are people of black color, flat noses, kinky hair, and little understanding or intelligence.”

Ibn Sina (also known as Avicenna), one of the most famous and influential philosophers/scientists of the Islamic Golden Age, described indigenous Africans as “people who are by their very nature slaves.” He also wrote: “[a]ll African women are prostitutes, and the whole race of African men are abeed (slave) stock.” Using language that Europeans later adopted to justify their persecution and murder of Jews, Ibn Sina equated indigenous Africans with “rats plaguing the earth.”[xiv] Given this vile use of literature and pseudo-science by the Arab world to justify slavery of indigenous Africans, and the fact that most Arab countries are to this day despotic dictatorships or theocracies, it is any surprise that slavery of indigenous Africans was only outlawed in countries like Yemen and Saudi Arabia in the 1960’s, in Mauritania in 2007 and that many Arab countries still engage in slavery.[xv] 

In the 21^st Century, almost 1000 years after Ibn Sina claimed all indigenous African men should be slaves; the Arabic word for slave “abeed” is still used interchangeably by Arabs in most Arab countries to refer to indigenous Africans. There is a reason that in modern Arabic parlance the word for a slave and for an indigenous African has remained almost synonymous. That reason is that after 1400 years of Arab colonialism, oppression and slavery of indigenous peoples throughout the Middle East and Africa, Arab supremacism is still at least as rampant as White supremacism was in America during the Jim Crow era. That is why in Sudan and Mauritania today Arabs still have African slaves. It is why Hamas has been engaged in human trafficking of indigenous Africans in the Sinai. It is why in just five years (between 2003 and 2008), over 300,000 Sudanese Africans were killed, 100,000 were abducted and 2.7 million were forced to become refugees, with their land appropriated for Arabs, and it is why Palestinian Authority dictator Mahmoud Abbas only a few weeks ago had no problem embracing and expressing solidarity with an (actually) genocidal ruler, the “Butcher of Darfur” Sudan’s dictator, Omar al-Bashir. When it comes to Abbas and his fellow Arab dictators like al-Bashir, African and Jewish lives have never mattered … for 1400 years and counting.

Which brings us to the most head scratching aspect of the BLM alliance with the advocates for the continuation of the Arab occupation, colonization and oppression of Jews in Judea; the ability of the BLM leadership to completely disregard the link (or enormous intersection) between the historical and present day Arab disregard and outright hostility to Jewish civil rights in the Jews’ indigenous homeland and the Arab world’s historical and present day hostility and disregard for the rights of indigenous Africans."

 

Weird. We all know that race was invented by Europeans in the 18th century to be used in colonialism