Links - 6th June 2024 (2)

Mike Kudrna on X - "I had a former employee get into financial trouble  Sued us on a verifiable lie that he cut his thumb on the job and 8 years later could no longer use it  Workers comp attorney said she knows it's a lie but his attorney knows the exact dollar amount to ask for that is just below the threshold for court   So they'll settle instead   This is one reason everyone's insurance is so high. We allow these scams with no repercussion.  No harm in trying to sue is their belief"
Chef Andrew Gruel on X - "Employee got drunk on the first day of the job. Harassed employees, broke a glass and walked out. Asked for his job back. We said no. He filed a PAGA claim with a trial attorney - form lawsuit, claiming we didn’t pay overtime, vacation pay, breaks, etc. he only worked around 4 hours and when we gave him his final check I added $200 because he was clearly hurting. Trial attorney asked for $250k. I’m in over $50k fighting it and the state won’t drop it as PAGA never gets dismissed. All fake and proven false yet we will most likely be out over $100k.
Every attorney I’ve spoken to says we need to settle for well over 50k."

Thread by @seconds_0 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - " We think of the Aztecs and Incas as so old, but the Aztec civilization is younger than Oxford. Incans didnt exist until the 1200s.  There is extensive archeological remains of Peruvian civilizations (the Caral) existing in 3000 BC, predating the Incans by 4000 years That's contemporaneous with 4th Dynasty Egypt, the pyramid builders. They were a lowland river society with satellite villages on the coast. They lacked ceramics entirely, but had sophisticated cotton farming for production of fishing nets and were dependent on seafood. In 3000 BC, they had extensive trade networks - fancy shells from ecuador, dyes from andean highlands, hallucinogenic snuff from the amazon.  They worshiped the Staff God. This was found carved on a gourd in Caral, and imagery repeated throughout south american culture   There is no record of any kind of warfare at Caral for a thousand years. No multilated bodies, burned buildings, or other tell tale signs of violence. All settlement patterns are completely non-defensive. No walls or forts.  A thriving civilization without warfare is odd. They were massive builders with an enormous density of large sites. It was likely the most densely populated area in the entire world in the third millennium.  Small scale terracing, large scale platform mound masonry. Were talking dozens of massive step pyramids on 100s of acres  This is main pyramid at Caral-Supe. 520'x490', rising 59' tall.  It was occupied from 2600bc to ~2000bc when the Caral civilization collapsed. It was briefly occupied around 1000bc and from 900-1440ad, but with very few people on the outskirts. It was rediscovered in 1977.  Technological differences from Eurasian ancient civs are vast.  Total lack of ceramics is unique and accompanies lack of archeological visible art. They do no sculpture, no carving, no bas relief, and very little painting / drawing. Interiors are completely bare. What they do have is huge structures and enormous amounts of textiles. Quipu - string recording devices - suggest proto-writing existed. Large numbers of instruments - in particular 32 pelican bone flutes. Textile art would be less likely to survive 5000 years and is unsurprising. Unlike 4th Century egyptian pyramid construction, theres no question or controversy around Carals pyramid construction method. Quarried stone small enough to transport and gathered field stone were moved in reed bags, of which extensive evidence is preserved. These 'shicra bags' made of a long, very durable grass from the highlands, were filled with rocks and packed into retaining wall trenches in the step pyramids, hauled by hand.  There is some evidence that dried anchovies were used as currency and paid to hauling workers."

Scott Piper on X - "Google Cloud accidentally deleted a company's entire cloud environment (Unisuper, an investment company, which manages $80B). The company had backups in another region, but GCP deleted those too. Luckily, they had yet more backups on another provider."

Thread by @thinkingwest on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Kenneth Clark lamented that civilization was a fragile thing.  He observed three “enemies” that could topple even the mightiest cultures—what are they?🧵
The first enemy is fear:  “fear of war, fear of invasion, fear of plague and famine, that make it simply not worthwhile constructing things, or planting trees or even planning next year’s crops. And fear of the supernatural, which means that you daren’t question anything.”
Fear paralyzes a people and stifles adventure, invention, and grand building projects.  Fear leads to stagnation.
The second enemy is a lack of self confidence. Clark saw the late Roman empire as a prime example of a culture that didn’t believe in itself anymore:  “The late antique world was full of meaningless rituals, mystery religions, that destroyed self-confidence.”
When traditions and rituals lose their connection to what inspired them in the first place, they become the performance art of a dying civilization.  Cultures need to believe in something.
Finally, a civilization dies with exhaustion—the “feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people even with a high degree of material prosperity.”
Decadence, moral degradation, and lack of belief in something greater leave a society questioning the point of it all.  An aimlessness pervades society that is often only quenched by civilizational suicide. Clark tells a story by Greek poet Cavafy, in which he imagines an antique town that waits for barbarians to come and sack the city.  After a while, the barbarians move on and the city is spared. But the people are disappointed—destruction would have at least been interesting.
Enough doom and gloom—what’s the solution?  Clark draws a distinction between the “amenities” of civilization and the factors that caused it to prosper in the first place. A society can be “dead and rigid” even while enjoying great wealth:  “People sometimes think that civilisation consists in fine sensibilities and good conversations and all that. These can be among the agreeable results of civilisation, but they are not what make a civilisation”
Ultimately Clark says that flourishing civilizations have two things beyond a base-level of material prosperity: confidence and belief.  “confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws, and confidence in one’s own mental powers.” For example, the way in which the stones of the Pont du Gard Aqueduct are laid shows not only a triumph of technical skill, but a vigorous belief in law and discipline, as well as a confidence in the ability to accomplish great tasks.
But there’s something else great civilizations share:  “Vigour, energy, vitality: all the civilisations—or civilising epochs—have had a weight of energy behind them,” Clark says.
Clark’s thoughts on civilization should inspire reflection about our own. Does the West believe in its foundational principles, laws, or philosophy? Is the West confident in itself?  Or, is it fearful, timid, and exhausted?"
The West has lost confidence in and hates itself, so good luck

Thread by @thinkingwest on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder,” according to 20th-century historian Arnold Toynbee.  He claimed every great culture collapses internally due to a divergence in values between the ruling class and the common people…🧵
Toynbee was an English historian and expert on international affairs who published the 12 volume work “A Study of History,” which traced the life cycle of about two dozen world civilizations.  Through his work he developed a model of how cultures develop and finally die… Toynbee argued that civilizations are born primitive societies as a response to unique challenges—pressures from other cultures, difficult terrain or “hard country,” or warfare.
Toynbee writes:  “Civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges.”  But each challenge must be a “golden mean” between excessive difficulty, which will crush a culture, and ease, which will allow it to stagnate.  He believed civilizations continued to grow so long as they meet and solve new challenges, one after the other, in a cycle he calls “Challenge and Response.”  Thus, each civilization develops differently because each confronts and overcomes different challenges.
But societies do not respond to challenges as a whole; rather, it's a unique class of elites within a society that are the problem solvers.  He calls them the "creative minorities" who find solutions to challenges, and inspire—rather than force—others to follow their lead. The masses follow the solutions of the creative minorities by 'mimesis' or imitation, solutions they would have otherwise been incapable of discovering on their own.  This synchronicity between the creative minorities and the masses brings civilization to its height. Toynbee did not attribute the breakdown of civilizations to environmental forces or external attacks by other civilizations. Rather, it is the decline of the creative minority that leads to a culture’s downfall. Through moral decay or material prosperity, the creative minority degenerates. They are no longer the great men who solve society’s problems but are simply a ruling class intent on preserving their power.  They become what Toynbee calls the “dominant minority.” Toynbee points to a kind of self worship that takes hold of the dominant minority.  They become prideful about their positions of authority yet are wholly inadequate to deal with the culture’s new challenges. Ultimately the dominant minority, incapable of solving their culture’s actual problems, form a “universal state” in a gambit to shore up their power, but it stifles creativity and subjugates the proletariat (common people). Toynbee used the Roman Empire as a classic example.
Toynbee writes:  "First the Dominant Minority attempts to hold by force—against all right and reason—a position of inherited privilege which it has ceased to merit; and then the Proletariat repays injustice with resentment, fear with hate, and violence with violence.”  As society deteriorates, four sentiments exist within the proletariat:
Archaism - idealization of the past
Futurism - idealization of the future
Detachment - removal of oneself from a decaying world
Transcendence - confronting the decaying world with a new worldview
From the disunity between the dominant minority and the proletariat, and between the different proletariat dispositions, a unified culture is impossible, and the civilization eventually ends. Toynbee sums up the three aspects of failing cultures:  “...a failure of creative power in the minority, an answering withdrawal of mimesis (imitation) on the part of the majority, and a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole.”
It’s interesting to observe Toynbee’s formulation in light of the West’s current struggles.  What do you think—was Toynbee observing universal patterns of civilizational development that might shed light on our culture today?"

Uzay Bulut on X - "Pakistan's oppression of occupied #Kashmir is worsening.  As the world's attention is largely fixated on the war between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East, unrest has erupted in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in South Asia.  Tensions are rising in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) as the Pakistani government has been deploying troops from Punjab Province to suppress the imminent protests in the region due May 11. The protests aim to address the Kashmiri people's economic, social and political problems that Pakistan's government has failed to solve.  The United Kashmir People's National Party (UKPNP) and the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) have issued warnings to the government of Pakistan against the use of any force against protestors.  The warnings have apparently been ignored as Pakistan mobilized its troops to the area, leading to more protests.  Historical background info:  "In 1947, the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir became part of the Republic of #India. Shortly thereafter, Pakistani armed forces and Pashtun tribesmen invaded the area, forcing the largest Kashmiri political party to approve the accession. Indian forces were deployed to counter the attacks by Pakistan. In 1948, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 47 requiring all Pakistani military personnel to withdraw from the region before a plebiscite—which would have confirmed the people’s wishes to join India—could be called. Instead of this Pakistan increased its military presence, and no plebiscite was held. In the areas of Kashmir which remained outside of India, Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, 41,000 Hindu families were forced to flee from Pashtun tribesmen.  "The historic region of Kashmir has a total area of 85,807 sq. miles and is now divided between three countries. Pakistan occupies approximately 30,160 sq. miles, known as (PoK) and the Northern Areas."  Clashes between Pakistani troops and Kashmiri locals are expected to further escalate.  Fore more historical background info, please check: https://hinduamerican.org/wp-content/upl"
Time to blame India and the BJP's anti-Muslim agenda

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 on X - "Unpopular opinion: The best cities are built around pedestrians, and one reason American urbanism struggles is that most of our urbanists are hardcore cyclists instead of wannabe pedestrians"

How the Praying Mantis Hears - "Scientists long thought that praying mantises were deaf, but now biologists know that the insects have a single ear that enables them to pick up sounds far beyond the range of human hearing... "The ear doesn’t look like any other ear," says Yager, who is studying the auditory systems of insects. "They're the only animals known to have just one ear.""

Cock throwing - Wikipedia - "Cock throwing, also known as cock-shying or throwing at cocks, was a blood sport widely practised in England until the late 18th century. A rooster was tied to a post, and people took turns throwing coksteles (special weighted sticks) at the bird until it died. Cock throwing was traditionally associated with Shrove Tuesday. A contributor to The Gentleman's Magazine in 1737, during an anti-Gallican phase of British culture, was of the opinion that cock throwing arose from traditional enmity towards the French, for which the cock played an emblematic role. Cock throwing was a popular pastime with people of all classes, especially with children, and although widespread, was less common than cockfighting."

Adobe Tells Users They Can Get Sued for Using Old Versions of Photoshop - "Adobe is warning some owners of its Creative Cloud software applications that they’re no longer allowed to use older versions of the software. It’s yet another example of how in the modern era, you increasingly don’t actually own the things you’ve spent your hard-earned money on... In a controversial move, Adobe pivoted away from the standard software model to the cloud-based subscription model in 2013, resulting in notably higher revenues (and higher prices for customers)...  It’s yet another example of how the products we buy in the modern era can lose functionality or stop working entirely on a lark. Be it a game console that loses features with a firmware update or entertainment products that just suddenly disappear, it’s a problem that’s increasing popping up in the always online era... this kind of thinking has increasingly permeated countless sectors, including DRM-based media, software as a service, and even client-server games. Both Doctorow and Gilbert noted that this kind of shifting landscape can often be particularly problematic for artists and creators, who often don’t want to risk ongoing projects by suddenly jumping to new versions of software that may contain unforeseen bugs. “When your tools are designed to treat you as a mere tenant, rather than an owner, you're subject to the whims, machinations, and unforeseeable risks of the landlord from whom you rent,” Doctorow noted. “And your legal rights are likely defined by a ‘contract’ that you clicked through a million years ago, which says that you agree that you don't have any legal rights.” It’s a comical, lopsided arrangement that copyright experts say isn’t changing anytime soon, leaving consumers with only one real option: when possible, don’t buy products from companies with a history of pulling the carpet out from beneath your feet.""single mother owned" "please show mercy"

Lottery winner loses big payout to ex-husband - "A court has ordered a woman to give her lottery jackpot of $1.3m (£800,000) to her former husband because she kept it secret during their divorce. The California state lottery commission confirmed that Denise Rossi won the money on December 28 1996 - 11 days before she filed for divorce from Thomas Rossi after 25 years of marriage. The superior court judge, Richard Denner, said Ms Rossi violated state disclosure laws and acted out of fraud or malice. In court papers, she admitted to concealing her winnings because she didn't want her former husband "getting his hands on them". Mr Rossi found out about the winnings more than two years after his divorce when he received a mailed solicitation from a company that pays lump sums for lottery winnings."

Chris 𓅨 on X - "Millennials who grew up in the pre-smartphone era are like Tolkein's elves who were the last to see the light of the Two Trees"

St. Vincent on X - ""All due respect," is a wonderful expression because it doesn't actually specify how much respect is actually due. Could be none."

Meme - "Hey Dad. I lost my virginity."
"What??? Who???"
"Sarah next door."
"Son. That poor girl is mentally retarded."
"Dad, you told me my first time should be with someone special."

Meme - "I'M SO TIRED OF WORK"
"TAKE THIS. IT WILL GIVE YOU ENERGY"
"OBLIGATION TO PAY RENT"

Meme - Doug Aoki @Nantanreikan: "Man who kept his boat besides his house was ordered from the city to put up a fence to hide the boat from view. So he built the fence and hired someone to paint it. *fence with boat on it*"

Meme - "TABLE 2. PERCENT OBESE AT WAVE 1 AND WAVE 3 BY RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION: AMERICANS' CHANGING LIVES, 1986-1994
Baptist - 24%, 30%
Fundamentalist Protestant - 18%, 22%
Pietistic Protestant - 13%, 19%
Nondenominational Protestant - 5%, 5%
Reformation-Era Protestant - 9%, 9%
Catholic - 17%, 17%
Nontraditionalist - 2%, 3%
Jewish - 1%, 1%
Other non-Christian - 0.2%, 0.7%
None - 6%, 7%"
Does Religion Increase the Prevalence and Incidence of Obesity in Adulthood? - "Previous research reveals that religion in America is related to variations in body weight. This article examines the relationships between religion and both body mass index (BMI) and obesity, which have increased in prevalence in the United States over the past two decades. Using longitudinal data from a national sample of adults, this study prospectively examines whether dimensions of religious life are associated with weight gain and the development of obesity during eight years of follow-up. We examine four dimensions of religiosity (attendance, salience, media practice, and consolation) and religious affiliation. Ordinary least squares regression analyses reveal that high levels of religious media practice are associated with higher BMI in women. Logistic regression analyses reveal that high levels of religious media practice and affiliation with a Baptist denomination increased the risk of obesity for women, but that a high level of religious consolation reduced the risk of obesity incidence for men. Attendance at religious services was associated with a lower risk of the incidence of obesity for women, suggesting the importance of studying links between dimensions of religious life and body weight."
Someone posted a rubbish unsourced table claiming the opposite - that Pagan + Neo-Pagan and Atheists were the fattest, and Christians of named sects were the least overweight

Meme - virgo * mami: "My daughter said her first word at 5 months and spoke sentences at 1. My son is 1.5 and hasn't spoken a word. They where both talked to and taught the same. Kids are all unique & reach milestones at different times. Don't ever compare your child's development to someone else's."
Clearly, if your child is not speaking at 10, there's nothing wrong if you talked to and taught him as you would any other, and you shouldn't compare him to other kids

Popcorn is prepared in the same pot, in the same heat, and in the same oil, yet the kernels do not all pop at the same time. Don't compare yourself to others. Your turn to pop is coming — Chromatical - Chromatical® - Evergreen Business Design for Digital Product Creators
Ironic. Some kernels never pop

People sickened after man runs out of milk when making mash - and uses 'foul' swap - "After seeing what he substituted milk with, however, many have argued that he should've just eaten his food without the mashed potato... the foodie opted to use chocolate milk instead"

Meme - "DEMS "NOBODY IS ABOVE THE LAW" STARTER PACK
LAPTOP *Hunter Biden*
EMAILS *Hillary Clinton*
CLIENTS *Ghislaine Maxwell*
RESEARCH *Anthony Fauci*"

Meme - "What you're looking for is already inside you *man looking into empty fridge*"

Meme - "Imagine telling someone this is your postcode man hahahahaahah"
"NE1 4BJ"

Meme - "Notifications: Your CPU temperature has exceeded 8612 degrees C. Prolonged use at this temperature may shorten the CPU's lifespan"
"Sun Surface temperature 5,505 degrees C"
"The power of the sun in the palm of my hand"

Meme - "Just had this transaction, the last four messages all came in a period of two minutes
Mini Yoto Player with...
"Yes i can would be 5£ extra via royal mail
???"
"Yeo that's fine, PayPal ok?" - Sent 8m ago
"Yes sure but Can you pay via paypal using family friend option to avoid delsys and fees im new account i dont want money on hold
Waste of time i guess
Not interrested? Weirdo like rest of you"
Conversation paused. This person can't be messaged on Marketplace at the moment."

Meme - "You gotta love the communist trolls that infiltrate this group, get butthurt over something you say and then relentlessly stalk your personal and business pages, because obviously they don't have to work today and have nothing but time..... Their hearts are "lost in kindness" though
Edit: The deleted messages he was championing, was me asking him if he knows how pathetic he looks trying to hurt people with laugh reacts etc. Then I decided just thanking him for being a fan was enough engagement."
*Casey Durrett laugh reacting 6 posts/reels in a row*
Casey Durrett: "I got a heart lost in kindness. A mind that's mostly mindless"
"I mean he did admit to being mindless LOL"
Casey Durrett: "Fucking cry harder. Your family deserves so much better than you..."
As usual, the people who talk about "kindness" are the least kind of all

Meme - *Obama Medal meme*
"CATE BLANCHETT NARRATING THE INTRO"
"GALADRIEL BEING CALLED "WISEST AND FAIREST OF ALL.""

Meme - Lioness in zoo: "I DON'T BELONG HERE... I LONG FOR FREEDOM."
Red River Hog in zoo: "THIS WALL SMELLS AMAZING!"

Meme - *Upset American Soyjak*
*Pepe the Frog and AGE OF CONSENT in European countries, with all having it at 16 or below*

Meme - Galadriel: "The mirror shows many things... Things that were... Things that are... And some things that happened in the books but couldn't fit into the 4 hour Return of the King film."

Meme - Quranism -> Islam -> Sunni/Shi'ah/Khawarij
Sunni: Hanafi, Hanabali, Maliki, Shafi'' Schools of law (Madhhab)
Shi'ah: Ismailism, Jafri, Zaidiyyah
Ismailism: Sevener -> Qaramita. Nizari -> Druze. Musta'ii -> Tayyibi
Tayyibi: Bohras. Dawoodi Bohras. Jafan Bohras. Sulaimani Bohras. Alavi Bohrs. Hobitahs Bohras. Aftba-I Malak Bohras. Progressive Dawoodi Bohras
Jafri: Twelver -> Ajbari, Usuli
Jafri: Alawi, Alevi
Khawarij -> Ibadiyya -> Nukkar, Azzabas
Sufi. Orders (Tariqah): Bektash, Chishti, Mawlawi, Oveyssi, Shadhil, *rest are unreadable*: Universal Sufism
Rudimentary groups: *Non-denominational Muslims
Mahdi'ist groups: Ahmadiyya, Mahdavia, Zikri, Faradian N.O.I. (Nation of Islam)"

Meme - "r/VaushV
I'm done with politics. It's so fucking over.
I’m tired, man. We’re going to live in a totalitarian Christian theocracy for the rest of our lives. Our only hope was a decrepit old man who’s too fucking stupid to pressure Israel to call for a ceasefire. And the voters are too blinded by their rage at his stupidity to think rationally, so they can’t even be bothered to vote to save their own lives. Trump is going to win in a landslide and kill every queer person, ethnic, religious, and racial minority, shut down every gender clinic and abortion clinic, and turn us into a theocracy. We are approaching a paradigm shift. A world dominated by technologically enforced totalitarian societies. Deepfakes and government spying will reach 1984 levels. The new fascist government will have literally zero blind spots and it will be completely, 100% incapable of being overthrown, and will last until the end of time. We will be forced to worship our leaders under pain of death. With the invention of things like neuralink, they might even figure out mind control. It’s over. We have utterly and pathetically lost so fucking hard. The day of the rope is imminent and inevitable. I’m Detrans, so I might be spared, but life is going to be unbelievably miserable. We failed."
"I like these peoples' dread. Deep down they know they crossed a civilizational line with 2020 and Covid and are scared to death of being punished by it"

In Defense of the Crusades

In Defense of the Crusades

"Christians and Catholics are supposed to think of the Crusades with shame and regret. It’s the kind of thing that detractors mention when they want to put us in our place if we get too assertive, especially in the political sphere of life but I can honestly say that the Crusades don’t bother me.

By saying that the crusades don’t bother me, I’m not saying that the evil or unjust things that happened during the crusades don’t bother me, but rather the fact that the Catholic Church called for the crusades and the fact that they took place in principle, from a Christian perspective, doesn’t bother me...

I was saturated in influences throughout my formative years that reinforced the same popular conclusions as most people which is that the Crusades are just one of many atrocities that shape the bad character of the medieval world and the Catholic Church.

I was formally educated in this idea at school and it was relentlessly reinforced through popular culture in whatever superficial commentaries I would encounter or through movies like The Kingdom of Heaven which depict Medieval Christendom as a desaturated, dark, and superstitious society while the Islamic world, by contrast, is vibrant, tolerant, and prosperous.

And any time the Crusades are mentioned, whether it’s in a YouTube pop education video or a Barack Obama speech, it’s taken for granted that it was a grave evil without ever considering or examining the details.

That’s the first indication that something’s amiss – that everyone has a moral opinion about it, but very few people know any meaningful details about it. That’s the worst kind of ignorance. It’s like racism. You hate something you don’t understand because you’ve been taught to hate it.

In my experience, it took a lot of personal study to overcome those same prejudices and they were dispelled not by forming new irrational prejudices clouded by ignorance, but by coming to terms with the actual historical facts that shaped those events.

Part of the reason people are so easily swayed to think of the Crusades as a stain on the character of Christianity is because we tend to interpret things we don’t understand by associating them with things we do understand.

And one general impression that a lot of people have about history, especially European history, is that in that far off time known as the olden days, white Europeans, were in the habit of attacking and colonizing peaceful nations composed of less pasty citizenry.

And since we all have this general impression of history, it’s very easy for someone who doesn’t like Christianity or the Catholic Church to tell the story of the Crusades with very selective details which reinforces that narrative...

The truth is, the Crusades were primarily a defensive war waged as a response to hundreds of years of Islamic expansion and aggression against Christian peoples which was now threatening to overwhelm Europe.

So when I say that the Crusades don’t bother me, I mean that in the same way that it doesn’t bother me that the Allies decided to fight WWII against Nazi Germany’s aggression.

But the Allies committed war crimes and killed countless civilians in their campaigns against the Axis powers. Yes, that’s true, but that doesn’t mean that the war itself was, in principle, wrong.

They had every moral right to fight back because if they hadn’t, you and I would be goosestepping our way to and from work and school shouting Heil Hitler every chance we get – assuming that our ancestors weren’t gassed.

So the question of the crusades, for me, isn’t did bad things happen. It’s more a question of whether or not the crusaders were right in choosing to fight that war at all.

A better summary of the crusades is to call it a series of conflicts and military expeditions between European Catholic Christians and Near Eastern Muslim belligerents in the Middle Ages. It was called for by Pope Urban II in response to a request for aid from the Byzantine Emperor Alexius.

Why was he calling for aid? Because at this point in history, Islamic armies, starting with their Prophet Mohammed himself, had already conquered and subjugated two thirds of the Christian world including the Holy Land, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain and they were now set to overwhelm the Christian Byzantine Empire and Europe.

So the Christian nations, seeing that the expansionist intentions of the Muslim world were not going to subside, organized a defence of the remaining territories in Anatolia and Europe. The 1st Crusade was a defensive war. Just like World War II.

Now some might say, then why did they insist on invading Muslim countries. Well, for starters, those were formerly Christian countries that were occupied by Muslims. Secondly, for the same reason that the Allies invaded Germany. They knew that simply defending their borders wasn’t going to end the aggression. They had to stop the aggressor.

And they were right, Muslim armies continued to invade into Europe throughout the Middle Ages getting as far as and nearly conquering modern day Italy and Austria. It’s notable that over a million Europeans were abducted by Muslim incursions and take back to be slaves in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_slave_trade)

So that’s the first reason I don’t think Christians shouldn’t regret the Crusades. It was a defensive war.

The second reason is because it highlights a key difference between Christianity and Islam, because both of them have doctrines about warfare.

Jesus never advocated for violence or war, but Christianity has a concept known as Just War Theory which was developed by St. Augustine who is now considered a Doctor of the Church...

In Islam, by contrast, Mohammed himself, developed a concept known as Jihad which has multiple meanings, but was primarily about waging warfare on non-believers in order to subjugate them and expand the influence of Islam. And so, that’s what they did. Mohammed himself raised an army and fought many battles to expand his influence.

Christians, by contrast, had to really crack open their theology just to justify violence in self defence because of how much Jesus taught about non-violence.

Muslims, by contrast, weren’t just given permission but commanded by Mohammed to assail non-believers in the hope of bringing the entire world under Islamic belief. Christians had no such permission according to the Bible or Church teaching so any examples of Christians doing that is in violation of their religion.

And the data tends to substantiate this claim. Dr. Bill Warner put together a database of 548 aggressive battles that Muslims fought in the name of Jihad. By contrast, crusade battles against Muslims accounted for 15 battles. http://cspipublishing.com/statistical/charts/Islam-BattlesDate.pdf

In fact Muslim armies had been attacking and conquering Christian societies and nations for nearly 400 years before the 1st crusade was called as a response. That is a LOT of turning the other cheek before deciding, maybe self defense is justified here.

And, I’ll just point out in closing that for all the evils that were committed by the crusaders, and there were evils committed by crusaders, it’s not like they were being egged on by the Church or Christians back home. For example, when the crusading army sacked Constantinople in the 4th Crusade, they did so in direct disobedience of the Pope who subsequently excommunicated the crusaders."

Links - 6th June 2024 (1 - Trans Mania)

Colin Wright on X - "These are the last 6 slides from a BIOL 104: Principles of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology lecture at Yale, a required course for all pre-med students. The slides attempt to obfuscate what males and females are by asserting that the binary concept of sex is "essentialist" and insisting that "Evolution is fundamentally anti-essentialist." Therefore, the binary notion of sex is unscientific and wrong.  They claim that "sex" is:
"a fact about history, not individuals"
"a cluster of iterative, coevolved, differentiated reproductive homologies"
"a becoming or enactment—a performance of the self"
They also claim that an organism's phenotype is "the performance of the individual self" and that "biology needs queer theory to get the phenotype right."  This is pure biological pseudoscience masquerading as science. This is a lecture I can envision Deepak Chopra giving.  There are many deep flaws with this portrayal of sex, but one of the most significant errors is the portrayal of binary sex as "essentialist." And while it is correct that biology is "anti-essentialist," it is not "essentialist" to point out an actual defining property of certain categories. "Essentialism" in biology implies something immaterial and unfalsifiable. But having the function to produce either small or large gametes is a material reality, and therefore not "essentialist."  Do not conflate "essentialist" and "reductionist."
Many natural phenomena or categories don't have a single defining trait. Species are reproductively isolated, lineage-based taxonomic classifications. Things like "races" are nonrandom statistical clusters of genetic relatedness.   But some biological phenomena, like the sex categories male and female, really do have single defining properties, which is rooted in the type of gamete—sperm or ova—an individual has the function to produce.   This isn’t “essentialism,” it’s just observing and describing biological reality. Different types of biological phenomena are described differently, because the world is what it is and it's the job of biologists to describe and explain it.  It is very worrying that Yale requires their medical students to take courses promoting biological pseudoscience."
Carrie Mendoza, MD on X - "And many electronic health records don’t have a category for biologic sex anymore, using confusing terms. This can cause all kinds of medication and ordering errors on top of inaccurate data analysis. Years of patient safety initiatives are being erased to support Orwellian Patient Experience. Dangerous."
Then when trans people get worse healthcare they blame "transphobia"

Genspect on X - ""Eunuch-maker" Marius Gustavson, who "mutilated paying customers and streamed it online", jailed for 22 years.  Gustavson's defense claimed these extreme body modifications led to "feelings of empowerment and greater acceptance of himself and feelings of contentment with his own body...He was stuck in a body he wanted to make changes to, and understood there were more people out there who wished to do the same."  The defense's remarks sound like they're straight out of the Eunuchs chapter in @wpath  Standards of Care 8, which declares that "eunuchs require access to affirming care [including castration] to gain comfort with their gendered self.""

i/o on X - "Aspirational quotes of the elites.
1940s: "My son is a colonel."
1960s: "My son is a doctor."
1980s: "My son works on Wall Street."
2000s: "My son started a tech company."
2020s: "My son is a woman.""

Stephanie Winn on X - "🚨This story is RICH! Must-read, you-can’t-make-this-shit-up, top-10-stories-for-the-2024-archives level rich.  A DEI grifter lying about her racial identity caused a Portland transgender-affirming therapy clinic to implode. Because the rule of social justice is, of course, that you can identify as whatever gender you want, and everyone must respect that, but you cannot lie about your race, no siree.   A bunch of staff who spend their days affirming people’s magical gender feelings were so offended that their company hired a white woman who falsely “claimed to be a person of Arab, South Asian and Latino descent” that they quit their jobs, then complained about how their own decision to leave will negatively impact their poor marginalized clients whose wellbeing ostensibly depends on having professionals shore up their “gender identity.”  The entire article contains not a single hint of irony nor drop of self-awareness.   “Raquel Saraswati” is the next Rachel Dolezal and I am here for it."

Candice Jackson on X - "A rant by a lesbian mom who won’t let my kids anywhere near anything labeled “LGBTQ+”, feels Pride has become Shame, and is acutely embarrassed by the claim to a MONTH of shoving rainbow slogans down everyone’s throats & garish, infantilizing, dictatorial flags on buildings & crosswalk murals, and the condescending, regressive “inclusion” mottos splashed everywhere by institutions & corporations actively erasing the female sex class and safeguards for women & children to propagandize “trans” & “queer” and pretend to take seriously something as meaningless & incoherent as “non-binary” while tripping over themselves to give men props, privileges, & engraved invitations to mock, degrade, & subjugate women: the more outrageous the domination, the louder the accolades & slobbering praise.  LGBTQ+ has become the solar eclipse ending LGB’s day in the sun of Western societal tolerance & acceptance. “Queering” (ie, rejecting, annihilating, reversing) social norms, standards, boundaries & value judgments certainly liberates some people — but nihilistic, hedonistic, ego-driven liberation without social constraints isn’t good or positive by measures of human flourishing, healthy development, or liberal society.   When chaos fills the vacuum after institutions & governments have “queered” away objective rules designed to promote balance between individual freedoms & social order, brute force & strength enforce personal desires & whims — most often at the expense of those who cannot defend themselves against raw power: children, women, people with disabilities.   This doesn’t necessarily mean all anti-social or unhealthy individual self-expressions (eg, kinks, fetishes, paraphilia, gender-faith) should be banned or punished by law, but such harmful practices certainly shouldn’t be celebrated, facilitated, encouraged, venerated, promoted, sacralized, shielded from social opprobrium, or exhibited to kids.   If homosexuals hope to maintain or restore the social bargain reached in the 2000s, that LGB are welcome to full civic & social participation (eg, a woman’s spouse being a woman doesn’t cause ostracism or negative treatment or even raise many eyebrows) on the premise that we are normal members of society who happen to have same-sex partners & we have enough self-respect not to need or demand that sincere religious disapproval of homosexuality be squashed by official power, then LGB need to not just distance from “LGBTQ+” but denounce that cultish societal pariah with all the indignant disdain we can muster.   TQ+ is a parasite feeding off LGB goodwill earned over decades by gays & lesbians — and now evaporating in a few short years due to TQ+ using our own organizations & channels (eg, school “inclusion resources”) to push gender religion, reality denial, kink/fetish celebration, & boundary/safeguarding evisceration, causing substantial harms mainly to women & children AND OURSELVES (disintegrating the very concept of homosexuality & shoving cohorts of gay men & lesbian women into closets constructed of sex stereotypes, med-tech body modifications, & shame for the bigoted, oppressive act of rejecting opposite sex partners).  And heterosexuals who see the absurdities & dangers posed by “LGBTQ+” need to push back, backlash, resist, object, & refuse to be coerced into silence & false consensus by the “LGBTQ+” hostile takeover of LGB causes & organizations.   It isn’t anti-gay to keep TQ+ far away from our kids — it’s homophobic not to.  (END RANT)"

The UK’s New Study on Gender Affirming Care Misses the Mark in So Many Ways - "Further, experts note the report does not disclose all the people who collaborated on the project and their affiliations. Streed says, for similar reviews, “every author has to have their name on it and say what their conflicts of interests are, where they are getting their funding from. The Cass Report does not offer that information. For me, that is a big red flag.” Some of those connections have become clearer since the report was published. For example, the blog Growing Up Transgender uncovered a 2022 meeting between the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has dubbed “the hub” of the “anti-LGBT pseudoscience network.”  Representing SEGM were Richard Byng and R. Stephens, who were identified in the meeting as part of NHS’ “working group on Gender Dysphoria.”"
Jesse Singal on X - "I'm sorry but this is completely deranged. The author of this is young but where are the adults to step in and prevent this Breitbart-level garbage from being published? They've created this entire ecosystem of bullshit. SPLC describes SEGM as evil in a completely unhinged 'report,' then that gets cited by Mother Jones, a relatively mainstream outlet. So much laundering of nonsense. The left has a profound misinformation problem."
If you accept that the whole edifice is corrupted, this is no longer surprising
Trust the "Science". Unless it doesn't push the left wing agenda
Clearly, it is transphobic to have the same standards for evidence for trans "care" as for everything else in medicine
I like how the pro-trans experts they interviewed criticising the Cass report are from the US, and they're all misrepresenting the research

Meme - "HELL"
Devil: "HUH. YOUR NAME'S NOT ON OUR LIST"
Man: "Of course not. Because I don't belong here. I transitioned my children"
*Devil leads him to Extra-Hell"

Thumb-sucking Chatham paedophile who identifies as little girl jailed after secret phone found in ‘Hello Kitty’ bedroom - "A convicted paedophile who claims to identify as a little girl has been jailed for having a secret phone found in what was described as a "Hello Kitty" bedroom.  The device was one of two linked to Janiel Verainer discovered by police during a routine but unannounced "offender management" check... During the two-day hearing the paedophile asked to be referred to as 'Ms' and by the pronouns 'she/her', and sat in the dock thumb-sucking, with long hair in bunches and wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with pictures of kids' ABC building blocks as well as the words “I am mentally 3-7 years”.  But the court heard Verainer, whose previous convictions include sexual assault of a child and possessing indecent images, has no underlying mental health disorder, learning difficulty or brain injury... a psychiatric report concluded that despite an expressed desire to be diagnosed as an "adult-child" or with "adult-child syndrome", no such medical condition exists and was, the expert stated, "perhaps a life choice or a manifestation of extremely poor coping skills" by the defendant... During the trial, the court heard from Verainer's registered carer and partner Paul Hart, who gave evidence clutching a Hello Kitty soft toy and sucking on a baby's pink dummy... Verainer, who has also used the name Jorven Seren in the past, was previously handed a seven-month jail term suspended for 18 months in April 2022 after he flouted other conditions of the same SHPO and kissed two children. Janiel Verainer was previously spotted attending court dressed as an elf"
Being trans didn't use to be a medical condition either

Trans-Identified Toddler Rapist Featured By Women and Justice Project Infographic On "Discrimination" Faced By Transgender People - "A toddler rapist is being featured on a website dedicated to female inmates, with his quotes prominently displayed despite his well-documented criminal history of child abuse. Xena Grandichelli, born Jeffrey Willsea, is a high-risk sex offender in the state of New York... Grandichelli pleaded guilty to 11 counts of sexual abuse involving a 3 year-old girl in 1994, and was initially sentenced to 19 to 59 years in prison, dropped to 5 to 15 years at a later hearing. Upon release in 2014, he was assigned to the sex offender registry and categorized at the highest level, designating him a major recidivism risk and an ongoing threat to public safety.  Yet despite his horrific criminal record, Grandichelli became a highly-regarded trans activist and has spoken at top-tier universities since his release from prison. In 2016, Grandichelli spoke at NYU on the topic of incarceration and trauma, and led a workshop on trans issues for the National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People of Color Health Conference. The next year, he was a panelist representing “women’s experiences of incarceration” at Columbia University, which houses a gender identity program staffed by at least one member and former president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, Walter Bockting.  Grandichelli has also been presented with an Anti-Violence Project award referring to him as a “Community Hero.”  Notably, he has also partnered with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) and was designated as a Movement Building Team member. In a letter posted to the SRLP website, Grandichelli describes how team members from the organization actively worked to recruit him while he was still incarcerated for sexually abusing a child. As of May 2024, Grandichelli is still featured by the Women and Justice Project in a dedicated infographic highlighting “The Incarceration of Trans, Nonbinary & Gender Expansive People,” this is despite a recent wave of media attention surrounding his history of child rape...   Another prominent activist credited with helping on the infographic is the ACLU’s Chase Strangio. Despite frequently portraying trans-identified male inmates as vulnerable, the ACLU is currently representing multiple violent male offenders in their demand to either be transferred to a women’s prison or receive “gender affirming” accessories while incarcerated."
It's a right wing transphobic conspiracy theory that links pedopholia to trans mania

Maxien Stevens, transgender inmate who claimed she was punished for prisoner relationships, loses appeal - "A violent, serial paedophile who is serving a rare indefinite prison sentence says a nearly half-year stretch in “solitary confinement punishment cells” at the privately operated Auckland South Corrections Facility was illegally ordered as retribution for consensual relationships with other prisoners.  Maxien Stevens, 38, who is transgender, was housed at the Serco-run facility - which houses male prisoners but also accommodates those who identify as women - from June 2020 until November 2021. During that time, she was relocated almost 40 times - the majority of which were “due to behavioural and relationship difficulties with staff and prisoners”, a Corrections official noted at the time.  “This behaviour has been described as cyclic.”... Maxien Stevens was known as Michael Lesley Stevens when sentenced in 2004, at age 18, for sexual offending against a young boy, as well as unrelated charges of aggravated robbery and burglary... Her alleged outbursts have included threatening a staff member, activating the sprinkler fire suppression system in her cell, hacking into the prison IT system and establishing a chat room with other prisoners, shattering an observation window in her cell then spitting out glass when officers responded and refusing for two hours to come down from a fence. “Ms Stevens frequently exhibited overly sexualised behaviour towards other prisoners, including asking them to touch her breasts and other parts of her body in a sexual manner,” Court of Appeal justices Murray Gilbert, Christian Whata and Peter Churchman noted in their 45-page judgment released last week. “She also pursued romantic relationships with younger or vulnerable prisoners. [Prison] staff considered, based on their observations, that these relationships were not reciprocated, and they were concerned about the negative impact on the mental wellbeing of the young prisoners Ms Stevens fixated on. The issue was raised with Ms Stevens on numerous occasions, but her behaviour continued to escalate.”"

Meme - "Shaved my beard and felt incredible. Realized I'm trans!" - Lilly Contino

Meme - ""Feminists" who are super mad Margot Robbie got "cheated by The Man" out of her Barbie Oscar - but couldn't care less that Riley Gaines got cheated out of her NCAA medal by the man Lia Thomas."

This teacher went viral after calmly and brilliantly questioning a student who called JK Rowling a “bigot." Now he's been fired. - "high school teacher Warren Smith went viral after being asked by a student: "Do you still like [J.K. Rowling's] work, despite her bigoted opinions?" The conversation that followed was a masterclass in the Socratic method and critical thinking. In it, he asked a series of questions that forced the student to think critically about the assumptions he was making."

Outrage as drag queen leads kids in 'Free Palestine' chant - "The encounter, which unfolded at a “Queer Storytime for Palestine” event organized by the Valley Families for Palestine group in Amherst last week, had gone viral by Thursday as outrage mounted.  “Today what we’re going to do is shout ‘Free Palestine.’ Can I hear that?” the drag queen, known as “Lil Miss Hot Mess,” was filmed telling the children in the 30-second clip. “If you’re a drag queen and you know it, and you really want to show it, if you’re a drag queen and you know it, shout ‘Free Palestine.'”... Furious critics were quick to point out the hypocrisy of a drag queen touting the phrase given the harsh treatment of LGBTQ people in Gaza. “The harsh reality? Members of the LGBTQ+ community are often murdered in Gaza and other Palestinian areas such as Ramallah,” Stop Antisemitism tweeted alongside the recording.  “Often times members of the LGBTQ+ community seek refuge in Israel as their lives are endangered and their families excommunicate them. Were these children taught these points?”... The group also boasted of the “important lessons” the kids learned during the storytime event.  “We came together today in joy and solidarity and learned some important lessons about being ourselves, using our voices to speak out against injustice, and being fabulous while we do it,” a caption on the post read."
Clearly, drag queens are just teaching love, tolerance and acceptance
Why do left wing beliefs always come in a bundle?
Indoctrination is good when it's left wing indoctrination

Thread by @ProjectStark_ on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Case Report: A Drag Queen And Leather Bondage Gear, Inside Prince Bishop's Community Primary School  We've discovered images online of a Durham County-based primary school hosting a drag queen show and holding radical trans activist materials... On their website, they boast of their ‘Gold Award’ accreditation by the organisation Educate and Celebrate. This is part of an effort to “eradicate homophobia, biphobia and transphobia”. The event included the participation of Drag Queen Miss Emma, suspected to be Emma Royd, who is known locally. Royd, along with a teacher, judged children on their creatively painted outfits: We searched Royd’s social media and found a litany of sexualised posts, such as a video from February 2021 showing her twerking in a skin tight one-piece: Another post on Facebook showed Royd promoting a "dreamboys" event in April 2020: For their 2023 Pride month celebrations, the school's Facebook page showcases children's drawings featuring messages like "love has no gender," "be yourself LGBTQ+ pride," and "boys can wear skirts," accompanied by rainbow iconography. The controversial children's book "Grandad’s Pride" also appeared: In August 2023, ‘Grandad’s Pride’ hit the headlines when parents Will and Maria Taylor, of Hull, East Yorkshire, spotted a cartoon of a partially naked elder man in leather bondage gear contained within. The book also features illustrations of trans-identified females with post-surgical scars: Author Harry Woodgate, who uses they/them pronouns, specifies that the children’s book has a 4+ reading age... Neither the school's social media nor its website presents critiques of gender theory; they only show content that supports it, which breaks existing statutory requirements on political impartiality in UK schools."

Meme - "Remember kens, if they were real women
they wouldn't have to campaign so hard to tell you that they're real women."

Meme - "Wearing lipstick and "feeling" like a woman doesn't make you one.
SEX *giraffe*
GENDER *dog in giraffe costume*"

Thread by @benryanwriter on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "For the first time, a detransitioner medical-malpractice lawsuit will proceed in court, deemed by a judge to be legally viable. Prisha Mosley @detransaqua has sued in North Carolina “multiple doctors and health facilities on seven counts of fraud, facilitating fraud, breach of fiduciary duty rising to the level of constructive fraud, civil conspiracy, medical malpractice, negligent infliction of emotional distress and unfair and deceptive trade practices”... There are approximately 17 known detransitioner lawsuits filed against medical providers in the U.S. Legal sources have suggested to me that there are a few additional cases that remain under the radar. This includes a suit that names @AmerAcadPeds as a defendant. nysun.com/article/lawsui…  Recently, detransitioner Chloe Cole’s medical-malpractice case against Kaiser Permanente moved to its discovery phase. It had faced the apparent likelihood of going into arbitration, but no longer. @ChoooCole The recent publication of the WPATH Files could impact detransitioner medical-malpractice cases in the U.S. The publication in the UK of the landmark Cass Review, which found that pediatric gender-transition treatment is based on “remarkably weak evidence,” could aid the plaintiffs in detransitioner lawsuits in the U.S. My own reporting suggests that if even a single detransitioner lawsuit succeeds in securing a significant financial award, this will attract a flood of new litigation by law firms and plaintiffs that no longer see this as a risky venture, both financially and reputation-wise. One successful detransitioner lawsuit could cause a snowball effect that would drive up malpractice premiums for pediatric gender clinics and cause many to shutter. Additionally, health care providers might leave a space—or never entire it—that they see too litigious. Sued Over Policies on Transgender Children, American Academy of Pediatrics Pulls Forthcoming Book, Takes Steps To Protect Emails From Prying Eyes. The AAP is facing a lawsuit from a woman who underwent a female-to-male medical transition at age fourteen, which she later ceased and regretted. nysun.com/article/sued-o…"
Judge grants detransitioner's lawsuit against doctors to proceed in court: 'Sufficient' allegations - "Mosley’s case is the first detranistioner lawsuit that has been allowed to proceed in court, according to her attorney, Josh Payne."

Meme - "TAKE DETRANSITIONERS SERIOUSLY DetransAwareness.org"

The Heretical Liberal 🇨🇦🏳️‍🌈 on X - "Here's the face of the "woman" they sent to a female prison, where he predictably raped a female inmate. I say "predictably" because he's a male rapist who was in prison for "forced oral copulation" on two women.  Prison officials are stunned, because the rapists told them he was "no threat to women" and are reported to be inconsolable and disillusioned. After all, if you can't trust male rapists who promise not to rape, who CAN you trust these days? 🤦🏼‍♂️🤡  How in the fuck did we get to this place? How can PRISON OFFICIALS be so stupid that they couldn't fathom that male rapists might just lie about identifying as a woman if it means they get to go to the women's prisons?  Think of how terrifying it would be for a female inmate to be locked into your cell for the night with this hulking man as your cellmate, knowing that if you speak up or complain, it'll be YOU who gets punished.  This grotesque ideology is turning society inside out, and for what? To placate the unreasonable demands of societies predators, pedophiles and sex pests? Nah man. Fuck that. Enough is enough with this shit."
EXCLUSIVE DETAILS: Transgender Inmate Who Said He Was "No Threat" To Women Charged With Sexual Assault After Transfer To Women's Prison - "Tremaine “Tremayne” Deon Carroll, a male who identifies as a woman, was housed at the Central California Women’s Facility when the sexual assault took place but has since been moved to Kern Valley State Prison... Carroll was a problem inmate, and between 2001 and 2015, he received over a dozen Rules Violation Reports, one of which was related to filing false reports against a Peace Officer... Carroll referred to himself as “mentally disturbed” and stated he was on high doses of anti-psychotic medication...   In the vast majority of his complaints, Carroll refers to himself by “he/him” pronouns, and does not mention his gender identity or sexuality.  But in a case filed in March of 2021, Carroll suddenly invoked SB-132, also known as the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act. The law had been implemented just three months prior, and formally established the ability of inmates to be housed on the basis of their gender identity in California...  He also claimed he was in prison for “non-violent” offenses, in contradiction of his criminal history.  The next year, Carroll was profiled by the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, who featured him as being “an incarcerated transgender woman instrumental in several prison lawsuits.”... the District Attorney filed multiple charges against Carroll, including two counts of rape, and one count of dissuading a witness from testifying.  The incident is said to have occurred in January of 2024, and would have occurred while Carroll was incarcerated at the women’s prison...   Ironically, Carroll is one of the trans-identified males intervening in a lawsuit that seeks to prevent males from being housed in women’s prisons in California. The lawsuit, launched against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, includes four female inmates who all stated they had been victimized by trans-identified male transfers.  In 2022, the ACLU intervened in the case, suggesting that the state of California could not adequately fight the lawsuit and represent the interests of trans-identified males.  In his sworn testimony collected by the ACLU for the case, Carroll declared: “I know what it feels like to live in fear and to carry the weight of the past abuse by men. But I am not a threat [to women]. I strongly believe that everyone here at CCWF would benefit from more structured interaction — opportunities to sit and talk with each other and realize that we’re all in the same boat.”"

Links - 5th June 2024 (2 - China's 'peaceful' rise)

H. R. McMaster: What China Wants - The Atlantic - "Since the heady days of Deng Xiaoping, in the late 1970s, the assumptions that had governed the American approach to our relationship with China were these: After being welcomed into the international political and economic order, China would play by the rules, open its markets, and privatize its economy. As the country became more prosperous, the Chinese government would respect the rights of its people and liberalize politically. But those assumptions were proving to be wrong... John King Fairbank, the Harvard historian and godfather of American sinology, noted in 1948 that to understand the policies and actions of Chinese leaders, historical perspective is “not a luxury, but a necessity.” During our state visit, Xi and his advisers relied heavily on history to convey their intended message. They emphasized certain historical subjects. They avoided others... While the images broadcast to China and the rest of the world from the Forbidden City during our visit were meant to project confidence in the Chinese Communist Party, one could also sense a profound insecurity—a lesson of history that went unmentioned. In its very design, the Forbidden City seemed to reflect that contrast between outward confidence and inner apprehension... Like Xi, the emperors who sat on the elaborate throne in the heart of the Forbidden City practiced a remote and autocratic style of rule vulnerable to corruption and internal threats..... The party’s leaders believe they have a narrow window of strategic opportunity to strengthen their rule and revise the international order in their favor—before China’s economy sours, before the population grows old, before other countries realize that the party is pursuing national rejuvenation at their expense, and before unanticipated events such as the coronavirus pandemic expose the vulnerabilities the party created in the race to surpass the United States and realize the China dream. The party has no intention of playing by the rules associated with international law, trade, or commerce. China’s overall strategy relies on co-option and coercion at home and abroad, as well as on concealing the nature of China’s true intentions. What makes this strategy potent and dangerous is the integrated nature of the party’s efforts across government, industry, academia, and the military... The party’s efforts to exert control inside China are far better known than its parallel efforts beyond China’s borders. Here again, insecurity and ambition are mutually reinforcing. Chinese leaders aim to put in place a modern-day version of the tributary system that Chinese emperors used to establish authority over vassal states. Under that system, kingdoms could trade and enjoy peace with the Chinese empire in return for submission. Chinese leaders are not shy about asserting this ambition. In 2010, China’s foreign minister matter-of-factly told his counterparts at a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations: “China is a big country, and you are small countries.” China intends to establish a new tributary system through a massive effort organized under three overlapping policies, carrying the names “Made in China 2025,” “Belt and Road Initiative,” and “Military-Civil Fusion.”... The Belt and Road Initiative has created a common pattern of economic clientelism. Beijing first offers countries loans from Chinese banks for large-scale infrastructure projects. Once the countries are in debt, the party forces their leaders to align with China’s foreign-policy agenda and the goal of displacing the influence of the United States and its key partners. Although Chinese leaders often depict these deals as win-win, most of them have just one real winner. For developing countries with fragile economies, Belt and Road sets a ruthless debt trap. When some countries are unable to service their loans, China trades debt for equity to gain control of their ports, airports, dams, power plants, and communications networks. As of 2018, the risk of debt distress was growing in 23 countries with Belt and Road financing. Eight poor countries with Belt and Road financing—Pakistan, Djibouti, the Maldives, Laos, Mongolia, Montenegro, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan—already have unsustainable levels of debt. China’s tactics vary based on the relative strength or weakness of the target states. When undertaking large-scale investment projects, many countries with weak political institutions succumb to corruption, making them even more vulnerable to Chinese tactics... Despite earlier assurances that the port would not be used for military purposes, a Chinese submarine docked there the same day as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Sri Lanka in 2014... Chinese cybertheft is responsible for what General Keith Alexander, the former director of the National Security Agency, described as the “greatest transfer of wealth in history.” The Chinese Ministry of State Security used a hacking squad known as APT10 to target U.S. companies in the finance, telecommunications, consumer-electronics, and medical industries as well as NASA and Department of Defense research laboratories, extracting intellectual property and sensitive data... Companies in the United States and other free-market economies often do not report theft of their technology, because they are afraid of losing access to the Chinese market, harming relationships with customers, or prompting federal investigations."
From 2020

Ottawa allows Chinese acquisition of Canada’s Neo Lithium to pass with no formal national security review - The Globe and Mail
U.S. lawmakers blast Canada over sale of lithium mining company to Chinese firm - "A trio of U.S. lawmakers are blasting Canada’s “complicit approval” that allowed the sale of a Toronto-listed lithium mining company to a Chinese state-owned firm, and are urging Biden administration officials to investigate the acquisition...   American lawmakers questioned why Ottawa approved the sale since Canada and the U.S. recently created a Joint Action Plan(opens in a new tab) to strengthen critical mineral supply chains amid fierce competition from China."
From 2022

How much will Xi Censor? In the Czech Republic, signs about Tiananmen Square massacre welcome Chinese tourists - "In China, June 4 has been nicknamed “internet maintenance day” for the number of websites that go offline around the anniversary, their owners deciding that being dark is safer than accidentally publishing something which could provoke the ire of the authorities."

Met Gala Loser Balding 大老板 on X - "So since many people do not understand the first thing about Chinese cars, and I have the data from inside Chinese cars and what they monitor let's give a brief summary why the Biden administration is completely correct to tariff Chinese cars and should actually go further. You ready?
First, all modern cars, especially EVs, contain an enormous amount of electronics. These electronics monitor and can control a vast amount of both car operations, what happens inside the car, and even externally to the car. To some degree of fairness, this is true of all cars.  Second, we absolutely know that China monitors automobile data within China. Data is relayed from the car to centralized databases covering a variety of internal and operational data such as seatbelt, usage, location, speed, and all kinds of other data. Here is the kicker, we can even say China collects this data on cars outside of China. It gets better we can say this about Chinese made cars and with high probability foreign branded cars that use Chinese made components.  Third, given the electronic circuitry of the cars, one low security component gives someone with the "keys" to that component the ability to pretty much control the cars electronics from voice to hot spot and yes to things such as brakes. Batteries matter enormously because of the amount of code associated with them. Unlike other less important components, batteries interface with every system and any security weakness would give malign users easy access to all systems.   It is completely and entirely reasonable to say that Chinese cars, batteries, and components pose very valid national security risks to the United States. I would expect that the raising of tariffs here is just the beginning"

Why China’s economy won’t be fixed - "WHATEVER HAS gone wrong? After China rejoined the world economy in 1978, it became the most spectacular growth story in history. Farm reform, industrialisation and rising incomes lifted nearly 800m people out of extreme poverty. Having produced just a tenth as much as America in 1980, China’s economy is now about three-quarters the size. Yet instead of roaring back after the government abandoned its “zero-covid” policy at the end of 2022, it is lurching from one ditch to the next. The economy grew at an annualised rate of just 3.2% in the second quarter, a disappointment that looks even worse given that, by one prominent estimate, America’s may be growing at almost 6%. House prices have fallen and property developers, who tend to sell houses before they are built, have hit the wall, scaring off buyers. Consumer spending, business investment and exports have all fallen short. And whereas much of the world battles inflation that is too high, China is suffering from the opposite problem: consumer prices fell in the year to July. Some analysts warn that China may enter a deflationary trap like Japan’s in the 1990s . Yet in some ways Japanification is too mild a diagnosis of China’s ills. A chronic shortfall in growth would be worse in China because its people are poorer. Japan’s living standards were about 60% of America’s by 1990; China’s today are less than 20%. And, unlike Japan, China is also suffering from something more profound than weak demand and heavy debt. Many of its challenges stem from broader failures of its economic policymaking—which are getting worse as President Xi Jinping centralises power... Why does the government keep making mistakes? One reason is that short-term growth is no longer the priority of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The signs are that Mr Xi believes China must prepare for sustained economic and, potentially, military conflict with America. Today, therefore, he emphasises China’s pursuit of national greatness, security and resilience. He is willing to make material sacrifices to achieve those goals, and to the extent he wants growth, it must be “high quality”. Yet even by Mr Xi’s criteria, the CCP’s decisions are flawed. The collapse of the zero-covid policy undermined Mr Xi’s prestige. The attack on tech firms has scared off entrepreneurs. Should China fall into persistent deflation because the authorities refuse to boost consumption, debts will rise in real value and weigh more heavily on the economy. Above all, unless the CCP continues to raise living standards, it will weaken its grip on power and limit its ability to match America. Mounting policy failures therefore look less like a new, self-sacrificing focus on national security, than plain bad decision-making. They have coincided with Mr Xi’s centralisation of power and his replacement of technocrats with loyalists in top jobs. China used to tolerate debate about its economy, but today it cajoles analysts into fake optimism. Recently it has stopped publishing unflattering data on youth unemployment and consumer confidence. The top ranks of government still contain plenty of talent, but it is naive to expect a bureaucracy to produce rational analysis or inventive ideas when the message from the top is that loyalty matters above all. Instead, decisions are increasingly governed by an ideology that fuses a left-wing suspicion of rich entrepreneurs with a right-wing reluctance to hand money to the idle poor. The fact that China’s problems start at the top means they will persist. They may even worsen, as clumsy policymakers confront the economy’s mounting challenges. The population is ageing rapidly. America is increasingly hostile, and is trying to choke the parts of China’s economy, like chipmaking, that it sees as strategically significant. The more China catches up with America, the harder the gap will be to close further, because centralised economies are better at emulation than at innovation. Liberals’ predictions about China have often betrayed wishful thinking. In the 2000s Western leaders mistakenly believed that trade, markets and growth would boost democracy and individual liberty. But China is now testing the reverse relationship: whether more autocracy damages the economy. The evidence is mounting that it does—and that after four decades of fast growth China is entering a period of disappointment"

People's Republic of China vs. the West - "In their internal speeches and planning documents, China’s communist party leaders describe their perceptions of this struggle quite openly: As Beijing sees it, China’s success depends on discrediting the tenets of liberal capitalism so that notions like individual freedom and constitutional democracy come to be seen as the relics of an obsolete system... Despite the concessions made to market-price mechanisms that have helped drive China’s recent economic boom, Chinese communists believe that they lead an ideological-political system distinct from and in opposition to those of the capitalist world. Circumstance forces temporary cooperation with the self-interested capitalists, but these two systems cannot be permanently reconciled. This was the message Xi delivered to party cadres in one of his first speeches as general secretary of the party in 2013, when he declared his faith in the “historical materialist view that capitalism is bound to die out and socialism is bound to win.” However, as “the ultimate victory of socialism over capitalism” may take several lifetimes to achieve, China’s communists should focus their efforts on a more modest goal... If China is to grow strong, it must be integrated with the world outside it. But there are dangers to “opening up” to the outer world. This is the lesson Chinese communists draw from extensive study of the Soviet failure. The party’s official explanation for the collapse of the Soviet Union—which has been communicated to party cadres through speeches, party school education, and even a full-length documentary—is that its demise had nothing to do with the weaknesses of its planned economy or the tensions inherent in a multinational empire masquerading as a people’s republic. In the telling of the Chinese Communist Party, the Soviet Union began to die the day Nikita Khrushchev denounced the cult of personality surrounding Joseph Stalin... Once it became possible to question the party leadership, the Soviets lost the ability to shore up the “ideological security” of their regime... Gorbachev’s decision to “open” the system and expose formerly culturally quarantined Soviet peoples to the enticements of the Western order was a suicide pact. Xi Jinping endorsed this explanation for the Soviet collapse in a 2013 address to party cadres... A leaked internal party directive from 2013 describes “the very real threat of Western anti-China forces and their attempt at carrying out westernization” within China. The directive describes the party as being in the midst of an “intense, ideological struggle” for survival. According to the directive, the ideas that threaten China with “major disorder” include concepts such as “separation of powers,” “independent judiciaries,” “universal human rights,” “Western freedom,” “civil society,” “economic liberalism,” “total privatization,” “freedom of the press,” and “free flow of information on the internet.” To allow the Chinese people to contemplate these concepts would “dismantle [our] party’s social foundation” and jeopardize the party’s aim to build a modern, socialist future... Chinese communists believe that the greatest threat to the security of their party, the stability of their country, and China’s return to its rightful place at the center of human civilization, is ideological. They are not fond of the military machines United States Pacific Command has arrayed against them, but what spooks them more than American weapons and soldiers are ideas—hostile ideas they believe America has embedded in the discourse and institutions of the existing global order... They imagine a future reality where even the notion that China could be more successful, wealthy, or powerful if it were free would sound too ridiculous to take seriously. Xi Jinping has given a name to this future world. He calls this vision “a community of common destiny for mankind.”... Xi Jinping declared that China had entered a “new era.” No longer would the country “hide its strength and bide its time,” as his predecessor Deng Xiaoping had directed the country to do in the initial stages of China’s opening up. Instead, China would begin to openly and proudly reshape the international system... The billions Chinese investors have plowed into infrastructure in developing countries under Xi’s “Belt and Road Initiative” are a key part of this plan. Each BRI-branded project, the party hopes, moves humankind another step closer to a new global order organized around economic partnership with Beijing. In Xi’s words, each is a chance to “welcome [other countries] aboard our development train.”"

The Thirty Tyrants - "I spoke with The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman about an article he wrote more than a decade ago, during the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency. His important piece documents the exact moment when the American elite decided that democracy wasn’t working for them. Blaming the Republican Party for preventing them from running roughshod over the American public, they migrated to the Democratic Party in the hopes of strengthening the relationships that were making them rich. A trade consultant told Friedman: “The need to compete in a globalized world has forced the meritocracy, the multinational corporate manager, the Eastern financier and the technology entrepreneur to reconsider what the Republican Party has to offer. In principle, they have left the party, leaving behind not a pragmatic coalition but a group of ideological naysayers.” In the more than 10 years since Friedman’s column was published, the disenchanted elite that the Times columnist identified has further impoverished American workers while enriching themselves. The one-word motto they came to live by was globalism—that is, the freedom to structure commercial relationships and social enterprises without reference to the well-being of the particular society in which they happened to make their livings and raise their children. Undergirding the globalist enterprise was China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. For decades, American policymakers and the corporate class said they saw China as a rival, but the elite that Friedman described saw enlightened Chinese autocracy as a friend and even as a model—which was not surprising, given that the Chinese Communist Party became their source of power, wealth, and prestige... What he called “The Swamp” appeared at first just to be a random assortment of industries, institutions, and personalities that seemed to have nothing in common, outside of the fact they were excoriated by the newly elected president. But Trump’s incessant attacks on that elite gave them collective self-awareness as well as a powerful motive for solidarity. Together, they saw that they represented a nexus of public and private sector interests that shared not only the same prejudices and hatreds, cultural tastes and consumer habits but also the same center of gravity—the U.S.-China relationship. And so, the China Class was born... A decade ago, no one would’ve put NBA superstar LeBron James and Apple CEO Tim Cook in the same family album, but here they are now, linked by their fantastic wealth owing to cheap Chinese manufacturing (Nike sneakers, iPhones, etc.) and a growing Chinese consumer market... After an an NBA executive tweeted in defense of Hong Kong dissidents, social justice activist King LeBron told Americans to watch their tongues. “Even though yes, we do have freedom of speech,” said James, “it can be a lot of negative that comes with it.” Because of Trump’s pressure on the Americans who benefited extravagantly from the U.S.-China relationship, these strange bedfellows acquired what Marxists call class consciousness—and joined together to fight back, further cementing their relationships with their Chinese patrons... Think tanks and research institutions like the Atlantic Council, the Center for American Progress, the EastWest Institute, the Carter Center, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and others gorged themselves on Chinese money. The world-famous Brookings Institution had no scruples about publishing a report funded by Chinese telecom company Huawei that praised Huawei technology. The billions that China gave to major American research universities, like $58 million to Stanford, alarmed U.S. law enforcement, which warned of Chinese counterintelligence efforts to steal sensitive research. But the schools and their name faculty were in fact in the business of selling that research, much of it paid for directly by the U.S. government—which is why Harvard and Yale among other big-name schools appear to have systematically underreported the large amounts that China had gifted them. Indeed, many of academia’s pay-for-play deals with the CCP were not particularly subtle. In June 2020, a Harvard professor who received a research grant of $15 million in taxpayer money was indicted for lying about his $50,000 per month work on behalf of a CCP institution to “recruit, and cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China’s scientific development, economic prosperity and national security.”... And because it was true that China was the source of the China Class’ power, the novel coronavirus coming out of Wuhan became the platform for its coup de grace. So Americans became prey to an anti-democratic elite that used the coronavirus to demoralize them; lay waste to small businesses; leave them vulnerable to rioters who are free to steal, burn, and kill; keep their children from school and the dying from the last embrace of their loved ones; and desecrate American history, culture, and society; and defame the country as systemically racist in order to furnish the predicate for why ordinary Americans in fact deserved the hell that the elite’s private and public sector proxies had already prepared for them... China’s lockdowns had nothing to do with the difference in outcomes. Lockdowns are not public health measures to reduce the spread of a virus. They are political instruments, which is why Democratic Party officials who put their constituents under repeated lengthy lockdowns, like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, are signaling publicly that it is imperative they be allowed to reopen immediately now that Trump is safely gone. That Democratic officials intentionally destroyed lives and ended thousands of them by sending the ill to infect the elderly in nursing homes is irrelevant to America’s version of the Thirty Tyrants. The job was to boost coronavirus casualties in order to defeat Trump and they succeeded. As with Athens’ anti-democratic faction, America’s best and brightest long ago lost its way... the melding of the American and Chinese elites reached its apogee during Trump’s administration, as the president made himself a focal point for the China Class, which had adopted the Democratic Party as its main political vehicle... The Central Intelligence Agency openly protected Chinese efforts to undermine American institutions. CIA management bullied intelligence analysts to alter their assessment of Chinese influence and interference in our political process so it wouldn’t be used to support policies they disagreed with—Trump’s policies... "During the Bush and Obama years, the standard assessment was that the Chinese have no desire to build a blue-water navy. It was inconvenient to their view. China now has a third aircraft carrier in production.”"

Theatrics or threat: How to handle China's Communist party at 100 - "Cai Xia is a retired professor from Beijing's elite Central Party School, who spent her life working with and training senior officials until her growing doubts and criticisms forced her into effective exile last year.  She doesn't buy the idea that the Chinese people don't want political change, nor the notion that engagement with the Communist Party is better than the alternative... Expelled from the party while on sabbatical in the US and now unable to return to China out of fear for her own safety, she thinks it's folly to focus on the positives of economic change while ignoring the politics of the party.  "Western politicians and scholars lack a real understanding of China," she says.  "After China opened up to the world, it hoped to use the global system to strengthen its own power, that was the real intention. That's why it shows a friendly and open manner to the world; but, in fact, the party's Cold War mentality has never changed."  The West, she believes, fails to see that it is already locked into an ideological confrontation, whether it wants one or not. Deng Yuwen is the former editor of an influential Communist Party newspaper, the Study Times, another insider who is also now living in exile, unable to return to China for fear of arrest following his own published criticisms of the system.  He has some sympathy for the view that China's rapidly changing economy might once have held out the prospect of political reform.  "Ten years ago, the party was gradually fading into the background," he says.  "That's what Xi Jinping wasn't satisfied with, he considered it dangerous; so now using his own words - 'from North, South, East, West and centre' - the Party is comprehensively controlling the country."  Mr Deng believes that under this renewed dominance of the party, China has taken a great leap backwards.  It has become increasingly oppressive at home - with its giant re-education camps in Xinjiang and the mass arrests in Hong Kong - as well as increasingly ready to assert its authoritarian values on the global stage. "Now China is powerful, it's doing business with the world, so other countries need to be mindful of China's emotions and its practices," he says.  "This will gradually exert an influence on those countries. By accepting China's system and its logic, the West may gradually change, this could be a danger for the West."  Prof Cai goes even further, arguing that this is now a deliberate part of the strategy; if the forces of globalisation have failed to reform the Communist Party, it is all too ready to use those same forces to actively foist its values on the West.  "China has been preventing peaceful evolution, in which Western values might enter China and affect the Chinese public, and preventing it by all methods," she says.  "While at the same time, China is using the Western world's freedom of speech and freedom of the press to export its information, illusions and propaganda to other countries." As if by way of illustration, the BBC contacted more than a dozen academics at a number of Chinese universities, including Prof Cai's old party school, in the hope of speaking to them about the party, its place in Chinese society and the significance of the anniversary.  So tight are the controls on information within China, especially around important occasions like this one, that none of them were available or willing to speak.  The ministry of foreign affairs did not respond to several requests to help source a suitable expert on party matters, despite having offered to assist."

Chinese Catholics angry over book claiming Jesus killed sinner - "Catholics in mainland China are upset about the distortion of a Bible story in a school textbook, which claims Jesus Christ stoned to death a sinner woman in order to respect the law of the time.  The textbook, published by the government-run University of Electronic Science and Technology Press, aims to teach "professional ethics and law" to the students of secondary vocational schools.  The book quotes the story of Jesus forgiving the sins of a woman who committed adultery from the Gospel of John. But it has a changed ending. The crowd wanted to stone the woman to death as per their law. But Jesus said, 'Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone.' Hearing this, they slipped away one by one.  When the crowd disappeared, Jesus stoned the sinner to death saying, "I too am a sinner. But if the law could only be executed by men without blemish, the law would be dead," the textbook said...   "I want everyone to know that the Chinese Communist Party has always tried to distort the history of the Church, to slander our Church, and to make people hate our Church," his post said.  Mathew Wang, a Christian teacher at a vocational school, confirmed the content but said the textbook content varies from place to place within China.  Wang added that the controversial textbook was reviewed by the Textbook Review Committee for Moral Education in Secondary Vocational Education.  Wang said that the authors had used a wrong example to justify Chinese socialist laws.  The authors of the book, some Catholics said, want to prove that the rule of law is supreme in China, and such respect for law is essential for a smooth transfer to socialism with Chinese characteristics. A Catholic priest who refused to be named told UCA News that distorting the original text itself "is against morality and the law, so how can we still teach professional ethics with this book?"...   Paul, a Catholic in mainland China, told UCA News that several such distortions of Christian life and history keep happening but Christian protests will have no impact."

Meme - "I maxed out one million on my credit cards and fled the USA...
Fellow netizens, I'm graduating from university and about to leave. Before returning to China, I maxed out my credit cards from various banks (personal and business cards totaling $140,000! Equivalent to 1,000,000 CNY!!!) A big thank you to Chase, Citibank, and American Express for supporting me over the past three years. Although your banking services are excellent, I always remember that I am Chinese and my mission is to revive China! Let me use this first pot of gold in my life to contribute to my motherland! This is also a strong blow to American imperialism!!! A final lesson for American capitalists!!!"

Like NATO, but for Economic Warfare - The Atlantic - "On their own, few countries are powerful enough to stand up to bullying by China, and the existing security alliances upon which the world’s major democracies depend weren’t built to address the economic threats now emanating from Beijing. This spring, shortly after Australia called for an international investigation into the origins of COVID-19, the Chinese ambassador to that country threatened an economic boycott, declaring that the Chinese public could go without Australian wine and beef, among other products. Since China is Australia’s largest export market, this was no small threat. Subsequently, China blocked imports from major Australian meat producers and placed tariffs on Australian barley. More and more, China is using its massive economic weight to threaten countries that challenge its actions, criticize its leaders, or express sympathy for people whom it considers dissidents or separatists.  In April, Chinese officials threatened the European Union with unnamed repercussions if an official EU report described a Chinese “global disinformation campaign” related to COVID-19. (The EU toned down the report.) Beijing has threatened economic harm to German automakers if Germany attempts to exclude equipment made by the Chinese telecom giant Huawei from its 5G networks. Last year, China also threatened to impose trade restrictions on Sweden after a Chinese Swedish author was awarded a prize for persecuted writers by the Swedish chapter of the group PEN International. These moves represent a kind of economic imperialism. The Chinese Communist Party, which suppresses dissent at home, is trying to force other countries to abide by its authoritarian norms and use its preferred company to build their own essential communications networks... The problem is that the United States and its allies currently lack the ability to respond to the type of geo-economic threats that China is making. Specifically, they need a means of taking collective action when Beijing attempts to use economic power as a tool of political coercion. No country should face such threats alone. Many of America’s most important Cold War–era institutions, especially NATO, were designed to deter a primarily military threat from the Soviet Union. But back then, Moscow—unlike Beijing now—had limited economic leverage against the West...  a new kind of alliance—like NATO, but for economic rather than military threats—is needed to respond to the kind of statecraft that China is practicing. Under such a system, participating nations would provide mutual support when China threatens one or more members with economic repercussions for political actions. That assistance could involve the imposition of tariffs on Chinese goods by all member nations; the creation of a pool of capital to help a targeted nation withstand Beijing’s pressure; the release of strategic reserves of essential materials, such as rare-earth metals, that China produces and could withhold; and other forms of collective economic defense... Up to this point, the United States and other democracies have tightly integrated their economies with China’s without fully planning for the problems that the arrangement presents. China has used this economic integration for geopolitical gain."
From 2020

On the Ground in Africa

/pol/ - Politically Incorrect » Thread #64398540

"Reminds me of this MPC post: 

(I can't make a new topic, so I'm posting in this one, for reasons that will be clear very very quickly. I'm disappointed though, because I had a great thread name ready: I Miss the AIDS Down in Africa - Gonna Take Some Time To Explain Away Race for You.)

So many people wanted to hear about my time in Africa, and I want to talk about it, but I’m not really sure which angle to attack it from. You see, not only was I living there, I was a…
Peace Corps Volunteer.

Yep. The pozzed of the pozzed. Actually, it was a good experience, and it started me on the path of the shitlord by exposing me not only to Africans, but also to people so far to the left you need to pop a Truveda just to have a conversation with them. The whole thing was extremely eye opening, and I could write another entire post about international aid generally and Peace Corps specifically, but I want this one just about Africa, Africans, and the way they live.

First, a caveat. Africa is huge, and I can only speak for the little corner I was in. I was assigned to a remote village in the Sahel, basically the transition between the rainforests of central Africa and the Sahara desert, in francophone West Africa. I was in a very stable country (though we had some terrorist scares), and I would not only go back in a heartbeat, I regularly recommend that people go on vacation there. It’s a beautiful place: cheap, on the Atlantic, and open to (French speaking) foreigners. I have tons of shit to talk about it, though, but I’ll lead with the positive 

The good:
As I mentioned in the post that spawned this one, tribal African society works for them. They’re not smart, but they have strict, specific rules that they follow and that make things sorta work. By sorta work, I mean the power is on 6-8 hours a day, there is running water sometimes, and the roads have potholes so big it’s safer to drive in the bush next to them. But in the small town/village I was in, there was basically no crime, it was very safe to walk around at night, and people got along really well with each other.

How did they achieve this? If Asians are ant-people, well adapted to SCALEd societies, Africans are the opposite. They can’t handle scale, at all. When they live in villages of 100 to 1000, though, things are “functional”. They need familial hierarchies to function, though. Blacks have no morality, they don’t feel bad for doing anything the way you or I do. Their sense of shame and moral compunction is hierarchically imposed. There were a million little niggershines going on every day, and if they got away with it, it was all good. But if an elder catches you, you’re in for a world of hurt. Literally, because all punishment is corporal. They don’t mess around with stern lectures. It’s straight to the beatings, from a young age on.

The system also puts a huge premium on family and community, and nobody there had any desire to ever leave for good. Everyone wanted to get out to get paid, but nobody wanted to emigrate permanently to France or the US. They just wanted to make money, ship it home to “support” their family, and come back to have a little empire of dirt in the bush. 

They are also front-line fighters against shitlibs. They didn’t stand for that shit, at all. If you wanted to come into their villages and build some shit, great. If you wanted to give them lectures about how they needed to accept gays or change their ways, mobs and rocks were in your future. Luckily I worked in Agricultural development, so I mostly got to give away stuff. At the time I felt bad for the ones getting the rocks, but looking back I just laugh. Take that, striver poors!

The bad:
1. Once, a friend of another volunteer wanted to earn some money by baking bread. He got a little bit of money together and used it to buy ingredients. He built a mud stove himself, and cooked 30 loaves of “village bread” - basically misshapen, doughy baguette. He took the bread to the road, and started to sell them, until his father came by. His father said, “You have bread! The family needs bread!” and took 20 loaves for himself and the rest of the kids (this particular father had 4 wives and 8 kids per wife). Our enterprising African friend was left bankrupt. He lost his entire initial investment and never made bread again. 

This is the basic story of Africa: communalism gone insane. It is completely unthinkable to refuse a demand of an elder or a family member for money or food. People hid any small money they had, because if anyone knew they had it, there would be a line around the corner asking for loans and favors, and they would be honor-bound or whatever to say yes. I told my friends over and over to say no, and each time they politely explained to me that it was impossible. The whole system is built to pull people down to the lowest common denominator.

2. Every day, I ate the same meal – a huge communal bowl of rice, with fish and some vegetables. Every day, the family I lived with spent a good amount of money (for them) to buy bitter tomatoes and okra to put in the rice, despite the fact that nobody liked bitter tomatoes or okra. I asked, why do you waste so much money on these vegetables that nobody eats? They told me, because we don’t want anyone to think we’re poor.

Africans are all about face and presentation, to the point of self-ruin. We’re talking about people for whom buying a couple vegetables has a huge impact on their bottom line, but they still do it. Saving money is basically impossible. I’m convinced that they have no conception of the future, aside from a vague idea that tomorrow will come. Cause and effect seemed to have no meaning. People who planned well, saved money and invested were not lauded or emulated, just dismissed as flukes or having received the blessing of Allah. Actually, Africans probably took to Islam like flies to shit because in Islam, everything flows directly from God – it is a religion that gives people permission to believe that everything is out of their hands, which they believe anyway. 

3. A man asked me if I could give him 10 hectares of land and a diesel-electric water pump to irrigate it. This was not uncommon. The first thing people usually asked me when I told them I was an Agriculture Development person was for tractors, cars, livestock, anything. Completely shameless begging. Men in expensive silk clothes with nice black sedans would shamelessly beg for gimmiedats when they learned what I did. Anyway, I asked this particular guy what experience he had farming or gardening. He said none. I asked, then why do you want such a large scale enterprise? Why not get a small garden from the village chief and a used gas-pump to see how it goes? Maybe you’ll even earn enough money to upgrade in a year or two. He said, well, my cousin got 10 hectares and a diesel-electric pump from the government, so he was going to wait until he could get it too.

Gimmiedats are international. It’s disgusting. Every single cent of international aid is wasted on either bloodthirsty warlords, sniveling SWLP striver salaries, or gimmiedats for the underserving. In case you had any illusions, never give money to any international charity, ever. It breeds a mentality of helplessness and “mana from heaven”, not to mention an entire caste of African hustlers whose only job is to pitch their villages for various causes. The worst thing about this story? The man was completely right to not try a small scale enterprise. He’s African, they have infinite time. One day a government project will come to his village and give him his pump and his 10 hectares. He won’t do shit with it, but he’ll proudly show off his pump and everyone in the village will respect him for his achievement of receiving some gimmiedats. 

4. During the festival of Eid al-Hada, a ram must be sacrificed because blah blah who cares. After killing and stringing the ram up into a tree for butchering, a gaggle of boys (they are always around in groups of 10-50, usually begging for presents and money because idiot white people always give it to them) rushed to the dying animal with a pair of scissors, snipped off its balls, and ran away with their prize. I asked the closest mother why, she said they’re going to grill it – the balls are a prized treat for the boys. I asked, do the girls eat it too? Of course not, she said. They would get pregnant with a goat.

Africans are dumb as shit. Basically, they never grow up. You are dealing with 200 pound children. If you go into interactions with that mindset, things go alright, but if you expect anything adult from them, you’ll be disappointed and frustrated at every turn. They believe in everything you can list – ghosts, angels, demons, curses, charms, blessings, and magic. Oh, and magic. They love it. I was party to a number of village magic battles, where charms and counter-charms were buried at people’s doorsteps, protective wards were made, and potions were snuck into tea. It’s a huge deal, and everyone pays big money (for them) to the local shamans and witch doctors to get all these magical trinkets. Yes, even in Islamic Africa, it’s just like this. African Islam is the same as South American Christianity – totally fucked in the head. They are pagan savages first and moon-worshiping goatfuckers second. They just slap a varnish of Islam on it – the magic charm has a Koranic verse in it! – and go about their lives happily as before. 

5. A volunteer once fronted enough money for the farmer he lived with to buy fertilizer. They spread it together, and the yield was recorded. In total, it was 9 fold over the year prior. Instead of taking the money back for the loan, said volunteer forced the farmer to buy fertilizer for the next year, and save it. The next year came and they used it again, and again the yield was 10 fold over the first non-fertilizer year. This time, though, the volunteer had left the country. The farmer didn’t buy any fertilizer, and instead blew through the money he earned from his crop on frivolous crap and gifts to every extended family member who cast a shadow on his door. The next year his yields returned to the original level, and everyone went on with their lives as happy as before. The end.This is my penultimate Africa story. There’s a bit more to it – the Peace Corps showed graphs and charts of this particular case as a successful intervention. I only found out about the little coda because I specifically asked what happened the next year; they didn’t decide to share that little fact in the larger meeting. It brings together everything - the waste, the stupidity, the lack of foresight, the inability to see cause and effect, the massive importance put on frivolous crap, and the way communities tear down their best members. Here’s the takeaway: nobody who wasn’t white on that farm saw the connection between the yields, the money they were making and the fertilizer. Nobody stopped to think hey, we should buy more of this. 

That’s the insanity of Africa. 200 pound children, blowing huge stacks of cash on magic charms while they grind out a subsistence livelihood on the border of the desert.This is already super long, and I could really go on and on about this subject. There are more stories - the myths of the African family, more stories of faux-communalism, stories about crazy African religion and politics, and so on. The long and short of it, though, is this: they’re not terrible people, they just shouldn’t be anywhere near us. Africa is no shit the Garden of Eden. It’s no mistake that the people living there are giant children. Despite tons of diseases and ferocious animals, they want for nothing. Trees growing fruit are everywhere. Every weed is edible. Before the Western-induced population bomb, I’m not even sure they even required agriculture to feed themselves. If we’re going to live a world where complete ethnic cleansing and colonization is off the table, just let them have their little paradise and leave us alone. They have absolutely nothing to offer us nor anything to gain by interaction with the west. They’re a people frozen in time from tens of thousands of years ago, and I have no trouble leaving them like that."

/pol/ - Politically Incorrect » Thread #30209571

"A fragment from a blog of a Russian man who went on a business trip to South Africa, translated for your convenience.

http://tannen.livejournal.com/66587.html

Me and my friend had to spend roughly 10 hours in Johannesburg. We asked Mikhail and he convinced some kamikaze driver to take us on a tour through the city center. We, the two retards, thought that they were exaggerating about the danger just to frighten us. We thought that we'd get to the center, take a long good stroll through it and show everyone that Russians aren't afraid of anything.

We ended up not even coming close to doing any of these things.

Reason?

We nearly shat ourselves. 

The descent to Johannesburg from the plateau made the city look great. Beautiful, big, modern. Some skyscrapers here and there, some nice Victorian-style buildings. Green lawns, blue sky.
Upon actually entering the city, the picture changed drastically.
It looked completely abandoned.
There was no electricity.
Piles of trash just lying in the streets.
Burst sewer pipes flooding several spots.
The only thing clear of debris was the main road, the only functional electrical devices were the traffic lights.
And this was the city center, the relatively safe part of the city.

Prior to riding into the city, the driver appointed by Mikhail read us a short "do's and don'ts" lecture. He seemed very tense, gulping often and suspiciously looking around as he spoke:

"If you cunts want to survive this, do exactly as I say.
After we enter the city, NO LOUD NOISES, do not ATTRACT ANY ATTENTION!
NO FUCKING IPHONES OR CAMERAS flashing through the car windows!
DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT with ghouls! (that's what he called niggers)
And no matter what happens, DO NOT OPEN THE WINDOWS!
Because suddenly a lamp post can fall and block the way, and the ghouls will fucking siege us.
And remember that I have kids, so at least follow these rules for my sake..." 

We spent two hours riding around the city center.
It was quiet enough in the bus to hear a pin drop.
To understand what happened to the city, a small historical flashback is needed.

After the apartheid was over, a two-million swarm of Africans flooded the city, opening the era of African Reqonquista. They were not natives, they just left their usual places in the desert and went wherever life was better. Mikhail, the guy who got us the driver, lived in Johannesburg at that time and told us the following:

In the middle of an ordinary workday, something happened.
The office center's doors opened and an unorganized crowd of several thousand blacks rushed in, carrying their belongings in huge bags. They asked us not to pay any attention to them and continue working, while they were spreading around the building and occupying every bit of territory that was available. Armchairs, stools, sofas, restrooms and hallways - they were everywhere, happily chatting and wasting no time in taking whatever shiny things the building's original denizens had on them.
The office became filled with commotion. Chickens were butchered and gutted in the hallways, tables in audience rooms turned into cooking tables, restrooms became bathhouses.
The polite question "What's going on?" was answered with "This is our home now".
The subsequent, less polite question "What the fuck?!" met a reply "It will be better for everyone".

Mikhail called the cops.
Cops didn't come.
They apologized and explained that exactly the same thing is happening across the entire city.
Then everyone who could started to quietly flee the city, headed towards the suburbs and Cape Town, while erecting barriers to block the paths - hedges, moats, electrified fences. The last district of Johannesburg where you can meet a white man nowadays is the Pretoria suburb. 

After a massive exodus, owners of the buildings started thinking of what to do.

Bingo! They decided that if they switch off the electricity, water and sewer access to the buildings, the ghouls will leave them and return to the savannah.

So, they switched them off.
Ghouls didn't even notice.

Of course, in the savannah they had neither of these modern conveniences. "Where do they shit, then?" I asked Mikhail.
Mikhail replied that the office owners were also puzzled by this - and completely shocked after they found out.

You see, after invading the buildings, none of the ghouls could figure out what elevator shafts were for. Once they ripped out the elevator doors, they spent a few days scratching heads and spitting into the darkness, until it finally occured to them.

"Bless the white man's genius", thought the ghouls, and the shafts became both toilets and garbage dumps ever since. According to Mikhail, it takes roughly ten years for an average ghoul horde to shit up an office building to the point of complete unliveability. After that, like in good old prehistoric times, the horde migrates, occupying another building.  

We rode on through Johannesburg's streets, glued to the car windows, devouring the scenery with our eyes. Fashionable modern houses with boarded-up windows passed us by. When we came across a rare open window, we could see fires burning inside, with ghouls lying or walking around them.

(Once again) According to Mikhail, a new, albeit informal service appeared in Johannesburg. Bunches of tough guys go around offering to take the buildings back from ghouls. It happens like this: in the middle of the night several trucks drive up to the building, and hundred or two of armed thugs goes inside.

Quickly, they grab the sleeping ghouls and simply start throwing them out of the building, trying not to wake the whole horde up. Before the horde completely comes to its senses and starts expressing its displeasure, the thugs weld shut all doors and windows on the first floor and put up an electrified fence. After the building is cleaned and refurbished, it turns back into an office.

That's how the remnants of Johannesburg's white population live and work. In the evening and during the night they keep safe behind armored doors and private guards. In the morning they get into their cars and quickly, without stopping, ride outside their fortresses to work. After a short ride through more-or-less safe streets, they dive into one of the heavily guarded foxholes that leads to the underground parking garages. And that concludes their arrival to the workplace.

Another funny thing I noticed - if two "live" buildings are nearby, they are often connected by an aerial passage at the 10th or 11th floor. So office workers can even visit each other if they want to. The only trick to it is not to look down. Down there is ghoul territory."

 

Related:

 

South Africa fire: What are Johannesburg's hijacked buildings?

"Many buildings in the centre of the South African city of Johannesburg, where a horrific fire has killed more than 70 people, are deemed unfit to live in.

Yet these old blocks, abandoned by their owners or the city authorities, are full of families often paying rent to criminal gangs who run them.

The buildings, which lack running water, toilets or a legal electricity connection, are then said to have been "hijacked".

Scores of people often live in one room, often former offices. Fires are common - though nothing on the scale of the one that went up in flames overnight...

Following the exodus of businesses, the CBD became a no-go area with a reputation for crime and violence, and some buildings were reportedly abandoned by owners as rates owed to the council exceeded their value."

Hijacked Buildings and 'Shock and Awe' Tactics in Johannesburg's Low-Income Black Neighborhoods

"The Kiribilly building is in a desperate state. The floors and walls are filthy, the smell of urine wafts up from the disused elevator shaft. Residents on the upper floors have no water and run a hosepipe through the corridors and over the balconies in an attempt to get water from the ground floor. “My youngest child was staying here this year,” said Gqokoma. “Then I had to send her away to her grandmother because of the situation in these flats.”...

Section 26 of the South African constitution states that everyone “has the right of access to adequate housing” and that “the state must take reasonable legislative and other measures within its available resources to achieve the progressive realization of this right.” The South African Human Rights Commission further elaborates that “the State must create conducive conditions for all of its citizens, irrespective of their economic status, to access affordable housing.”

The constitution and the courts seem to be the last line of defense for low-income inner city residents."

There's a lot of material, so I will continue this in another post.