freemcflurry
No bio...
User ID: 106
freemcflurry
11mo ago
I think a big reason that urbanism is getting so much attention since 2020 is that it brings suburban swing voters within striking distance of rioters. The threat of violence is a useful stick when there's a close election or politically charged trial coming up. For example, Rep. Maxine Waters called on protestors to get more "confrontational" if Chauvin was acquitted at his trial. So violence is a useful tool but the problem is that a lot of voters live in the suburbs which aren't as easily accessible to BLM or Antifa. Even worse: they often have separate police forces and DA's that would be less sympathetic to burnings and beatings. If you get rid of the cars you force people to move closer to the city center where you're able to more credibly threaten them.
I don't know, Wikipedia at least says that the US pressured Germany to accept gastarbeiters from Turkey:
The first guest workers were recruited from European nations. However, Turkey pressured West Germany to admit its citizens as guest workers. Theodor Blank, Secretary of State for Employment, opposed such agreements. He held the opinion that the cultural gap between Germany and Turkey would be too large and also held the opinion that Germany didn't need any more laborers because there were enough unemployed people living in the poorer regions of Germany who could fill these vacancies. The United States, however, put some political pressure on Germany, wanting to stabilize and create goodwill from a potential ally. West Germany and Turkey reached an agreement in 1961.
The source is in German so I can't follow it up, though I do remember seeing this asserted in other places over the years.
Technically that was in 1961 and not the 1950s and the Turks aren't "third world" but if true it would support the core claim that the US intentionally tried to push diversity on its puppet states via the mass importation of non-western people.
freemcflurry
11mo ago
The eugenics side won didn't they? It was the law of the land in the 20s and 30s. The progressives changed their mind on it after WW2 because it was associated with the Nazis, but it wasn't stopped by opposition from outside the progressive camp.
freemcflurry
1yr ago
It would probably be funnier if there were right wing stand up comedians.
freemcflurry
1yr ago
I quite wonder why I am supposed to sympathize with white nationalism at all, considering the stakes, if I'm not firmly within the circle 1, "whites in every situation".
The alternative is being firmly a second class citizen in our current regime of constantly expanding affirmative action. I'd take a situation where I'm second best over one where I'm explicitly and constantly reminded that I'm the worst race.
In practice, in the insanely unlikely event that white nationalists take over the US I expect they would use an expansive definition of white if only because half of them are hispanic.
freemcflurry
1yr ago
Is a masters at MIT really that impressive? He did his undergrad at some state school.
freemcflurry
1yr ago
He'd already been convincted of two felonies (and presumably committed many more) for whatever you get out of burglary, a few hundred bucks I guess? Yeah that fits the pattern for how he lived the entire rest of his life until 2020. It would be weirder if he suddenly became responsible and good at evaluating risk.
freemcflurry
2mo ago
I don't know much about what they were doing there other than the articles you posted and similar ones that I remember from the time. The only specific position they mention from the CDC was a woman who trained Chinese workers to search for pandemic outbreaks. That does sound useful but since you're saying that the Chinese blatantly lied about it and didn't even try to contain it then detecting the pandemic wasn't the issue and having more Chinese government workers trained to do that wouldn't have helped. I don't know what leverage the CDC would have had to make the Chinese government be honest about anything.
Even in that article some of the people involved were skeptical that it would have made a difference:
“In the end, based on circumstances in China, it probably wouldn’t have made a big difference,” Scott McNabb, who was a CDC epidemiologist for 20 years and is now a research professor at Emory University. “The problem was how the Chinese handled it. What should have changed was the Chinese should have acknowledged it earlier and didn’t.”
China wasn't letting the CDC investigate:
“Dr. Redfield and I made the offer on January 6th - 36 days ago, 60,000 cases and 1,300 deaths ago,” Azar said. “We made the offer to send the CDC experts in to assist their Chinese colleagues to get to the bottom of key scientific questions like, how transmissible is this disease? What is the severity? What is the incubation period and can there be asymptomatic transmission?”
I certainly don't think the CDC was capable of containing a pandemic in China given that they failed to do so in the US and that every other government that tried to contain it also ultimately failed, with the exception of a few island nations like New Zealand. Probably the only things that would have helped would be banning wet markets and banning gain of function research, but it seems like we've moved on now and nobody is going to do either of those things.
freemcflurry
7mo ago
I used to think cancellation was an internet thing, something you didn't have to worry about unless you were the unlucky, one in a million person who went viral. Then I saw a woman I know (who is herself very woke by my standards) get cut off from her entire social circle because of one comment. She apologized profusely but still her old friends won't hang out with her or talk to her.
freemcflurry
8mo ago
They don't.
freemcflurry
10mo ago
I'd say it's because it envisions a being so superhuman that you'd never want to do anything else but worship it and be loved by it. That's just a much more interesting concept to me than cruise ship heaven. It's less self centered. It's not something I can immediately imagine so it feels more right for an afterlife.
I'm not saying the show should have depicted that afterlife in particular. It could have gone with something else, but it still shouldn't have been a carbon copy of earth. Or if they did decide to do the "heaven is like a cruise ship" concept then they should address the short comings head on. They depicted a universe where humans have immortal souls that are inherently unhappy being immortal. That's pretty depressing when you think about it but they never addressed that and just acted like the suicide booth is a perfect happy ending.
freemcflurry
11mo ago
However disgusted we may be when our justice system lets a guilty man walk, we must remember that it was set up in this way on purpose: "it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer"
That was probably a fantastic rule for a country of 3 million devoutly religious English farmers. Whether it's a good rule at all times and all places is up for debate. El Salvador was recently pulled back from the brink of anarchy by discarding that rule and throwing the trouble makers in jail permanently and millions of people can now go about their lives without being terrorized by criminal gangs.
freemcflurry
1yr ago
That's a fully generalized argument against arguing with anyone. Liberals don't really care about universal healthcare, they just want to increase the size of the government because they hate freedom. Conservatives don't really care about abortion, they just hate women and want to control their bodies. I thought we weren't supposed to do that here.
freemcflurry
4mo ago
I think it's mostly a way to score points against the US and praise the European social democracies (+Canada) that leftists in the US tend to idealize.
freemcflurry
5mo ago
Beevor's book was pretty heavily slanted towards the Republican side imo.
freemcflurry
6mo ago
The mostly European upper crust are not the ones crossing the southern border. I think the long term effect will be an enormous underclass, high crime and general decay surrounding a few upper middle class enclaves. Basically what they have in South America today.
You can look at pictures from detention centers or border patrol and it's obvious that they aren't the Guillermo del Torro phenotype. They don't look anything like people from Italy or Spain.
freemcflurry
6mo ago
My hunch is that the political calculus is simply that "supporting" Israel bears little to no political costs, whereas opposing/ignoring Israel might have a remote risk of negative publicity or loss of campaign funding.
That's just kicking the question back though isn't it? Sure, politicians support Israel because opposing them has negative consequences but why is that the case?
I think this vote in particular is pretty meaningless, any nominal ally would get a vote of support after a major terrorist attack. But it's more puzzling why stuff like AOC opposing iron dome funding (until she caved and voted present) is so far outside the overton window. We can't agree on almost anything else but when it comes time to give money to Israel it passes with a supermajority.
freemcflurry
9mo ago
The Touhys' lawyer claims that Oher has threatened them with lawsuits before now that never went anywhere. I tend to believe the family, I think the idea that they were hoping to scam money out of a broke teenager is unlikely. The chances of even a really talented player going pro and getting rich are extremely slim.
freemcflurry
9mo ago
/10. BLM / structural racism
freemcflurry
1yr ago
Thanks, I had no idea. I tried to google it but kept coming up with news articles about how women had to have illegal abortions. But it sounds like it would have been pretty accessible if you were willing to take a road trip?
freemcflurry
1yr ago
That's pretty much every field though isn't it?
freemcflurry
1yr ago
Banning TikTok might be the first step in constructing an artificial moat.
freemcflurry
1yr ago
Online leftists call republicans "chuds" constantly, so there's your literal dehumanization.
freemcflurry
1yr ago
Maybe there are true examples out there, but every time I've seen a story about someone being imprisoned for 20 years over something trivial and read past the headline they turned out to have done a lot worse stuff or are a career criminal and this was the last straw.
If other people are racist against me how does it help me to unilaterally stop being racist against them? We already tried the race blind thing and every group except white people kept relentlessly advocating for their racial interests. South Africa tried the same thing with identical results. No truce is possible because the other side will shoot you in the face the instant you lay down your gun.
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