Sunday Link Encyclopedia

The FBI is busy investigating pig kidnapping. No, I mean real pigs.

It’s embarrassing to see people engage in this kind of ridiculous discussions.

“Misunderstanding a new kind of gender dysphoria.” Also known as the dark side of consumerism.

Since there’s at will firing anyway, I guess we shouldn’t care about this case that will decide if workplace discrimination against transgender people is legal? I still care, though, and I believe it should definitely be against the law.

The Post-mass shooting checklist. Brilliant.

An insight into the marshmallow test that’s actually interesting.

This is probably the creepiest family I’ve seen in ages. That poor little girl.

Real feminism is happening in India.

How to stay productive when you fly.

Loved this article by an environmental journalist.

I‘m stunned by how weak and pathetic some academics are.

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56 responses to “Sunday Link Encyclopedia”

Stringer Bell

October 8, 2017

Video: Everyday Israelis express support for genocide https://t.co/hB9j8ouMXc

— Jewish Voice for Peace (@jvplive) October 3, 2017

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Clarissa

October 8, 2017

I’ve seen this happen to people, regular normal people I knew who went over there and had their minds colonized with this hatred. It’s horrible to watch.

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Dreidel

October 9, 2017

“Denial of Palestinian existence is key to Israeli identity.”

When I was stationed in Saudi Arabia in the early 1990’s, I saw a number of that country’s military maps. You’d think that military maps, at least, would want to show accurate borders and demarcation lines that should be heeded.

The Saudi military forces didn’t even show Israel on any of their maps. So which side is “denying the other’s existence”?

The so-called “Palestinians” and their Arab oppressors (countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, etc. who refuse to accept their fellow Arab refuges as citizens) have had sixty-nine years to come to terms with the fact that the nation called Israel isn’t going away.

It’s nobody’s fault but theirs that they can’t grow up and accept that obvious reality.

And Israel has tolerated that nonsense — and the savage butchery of the “Palestinian” terrorists — for far too long.

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1. el
  
  October 9, 2017
  
  Dreidel, no need to go to Saudi Arabia in the early 1990’s, just a few weeks ago in Egypt will suffice:
  
  Textbook featuring Israeli flag raises ire in Egypt.
  Study book for eight graders shows the Israeli flag instead of the Palestinian one on a map of the Middle East, causing the Education Ministry in the country to order the removal of the controversial page from the book and bar it from further distribution while it investigates the matter.
  
  https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5016142,00.html
  
  SB, only a few extremists among Israeli Jews are for genocide, but I do believe that a suitably worded survey would show most to be for ethnic cleansing because if you accept both of the below statements …
  
  A – a Palestinian viable and peaceful nation state will not happen
  B – As long as we live near Palestinians, we will have war
  
  Clarissa once mentioned helping Palestinians by welcoming them in the West.
  
  Many Israeli Jews think they should have a home in Lebanon or in other Muslim states.
  
  As for “The need to segregate and not to interact with Palestinians is part of the Israeli identity” (from SB’s link), may be this will provide a hint why (though I doubt it):
  
  // Palestinians were arrested Thursday on suspicion of murdering Reuven Shmerling, a 70-year-old Jewish man who was found dead Wednesday in a coal storehouse belonging to his family in the Kafr Qasim industrial zone, with signs of severe violence on his body.
  …
  The Shin Bet said that the evidence gathered so far pointed to an act of terrorism.
  …
  Shmerling employed Palestinian laborers at the site where his body was found.
  
  https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5026090,00.html
  
  Considering the degree of mutual hatred, we interact too much with Palestinians already.
  
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  1. Dreidel
    
    October 9, 2017
    
    @ el — “A Palestinian viable and peaceful nation state will not happen.”
    
    For nineteen years — from 1948 to 1967 — the so-called “Palestinians” did have their own state. It was called “Transjordon,” and it included both East Jerusalem (where no Jew was allowed to set foot) and all of the West Valley that had been annexed by Jordan after the lost Arab attempt to exterminate Israel in 1948.
    
    (The only area not included was Gaza, which Egypt treated as an Egypt-occupied military prison while refusing to grant citizenship to the “Palestinians” trapped there.)
    
    Instead of welcoming their fellow “Palestinian” Arabs as citizens, the Jordan government fought a bloody war against them, expelling the survivors into Lebanon, and ultimately renouncing annexation of the West Bank after it lost the territory to Israel in the 1967 war.
    
    The bottom line is that their fellow Arabs don’t want the “Palestinians,” except as pawns to be used to generate hatred for the one country, Israel, that’s been trying to make peace with those pathetic, eternally disposed people for almost 70 years now.
    
    And now its simply TOO LATE for any two-state solution! Israel will never retreat back to currently indefensible 1967 borders, and the contemptible, obviously anti-Semitic BDS movement that ridiculously attempts to compare the situation in modern-day Israel to to the apartheid system in South Africa is doomed to failure, if for no other reason than it’s being run by gutless academics who couldn’t go the distance on any cause if their privileged lives depended on it.
    
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el

October 9, 2017

SB, in a case you missed, I commented on your comment “Pickup artists fail to get laid in scandinavia” :

I’m Old

As for JewishVoiceForPeace link, I am not surprised that website and its commentors equate between Zionism and support for genocide. Going to Jerusalem to talk with Lehava members is similar to talking with neo-Nazi Trump supporters and then painting all Trump voters in this fashion.

I do find it curious that you seem more interested in Jews than in what happens in India since you unfortunately never talk about the country where you were born. Unfortunately, since part of the pleasure for me is exposure to new cultures and countries from people who live/d there (unlike you in Israel) and know what they are talking about.

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1. Clarissa
  
  October 9, 2017
  
  Obviously, not all men and not all Israelis, etc. And not all Trumpers march under Nazi banners. But when some do, it merits talking about.
  
  As for talking or not talking about “the country where you were born”, as somebody who has to explain at least once a week for the past 20 years why I don’t teach (or even read) Russian literature, I don’t see much value in this line of inquiry. This question will follow me around to my dying day, and God, does it ever get boring.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    October 9, 2017
    
    Also, I never lived in Spain and don’t plan to. And the suggestion that this disqualifies me from talking about it that I also keep encountering a lot bugs me massively.
    
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    1. el
      
      October 9, 2017
      
      Clarissa, you have studied Spain in depth, while cliff has so far only shown me 100% Palestinian propaganda sites, presenting this as unbiased reality.
      
      I do not search and link “all Palestinians are animals” kinds of pieces, which is exactly what SB’s article did to Jews.
      
      Do you not see that it would’ve been super easy to make worse interviews with Palestinians regarding what they want to do to Jews? Does it not merit talking about?
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        October 9, 2017
        
        “Do you not see that it would’ve been super easy to make worse interviews with Palestinians regarding what they want to do to Jews? Does it not merit talking about?”
        
        Reader Dreidel does it all the time right here on the blog. It’s clearly one of his favorite topics. But so what?
        
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        Stringer Bell
        
        October 9, 2017
        
        “I do find it curious that you seem more interested in Jews than in what happens in India since you unfortunately never talk about the country where you were born.”
        
        Straight from the apartheid playbook.
        
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      2. cliff arroyo
        
        October 9, 2017
        
        “while cliff has so far only shown me 100% Palestinian propaganda sites”
        
        When have I done that? The person you really mean would probably blow steam out of his elbows about you confusins the two of us…
        
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        el
        
        October 9, 2017
        
        I am sorry, cliff.
        
        I have indeed confused you with SB. 🙂
        
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Stringer Bell

October 8, 2017

“The FBI is busy investigating pig kidnapping”

It’s a difficult article to read, but I’m glad someone’s writing about how state power is used to protect animal cruelty.

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Clarissa

October 8, 2017

That the FBI would be running around hunting these activists is so deranged and wasteful that it’s shameful even to contemplate.

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1. UDR
  
  October 9, 2017
  
  We had a case in a neighboring state where animal welfare activists released hidden camera footage showing cattle being horribly abused.
  
  The state’s government lept into action…adopting laws making it illegal to take hidden camera footage on agricultural operations and levying fines and prison time against activists and whistleblowers.
  
  http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article145847014.html
  
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Stringer Bell

October 8, 2017

How We Think About the Deficit Is Mostly Wrong
By STEPHANIE KELTON

When the government spends more than it gets in taxes, a “deficit” is recorded
on the government’s books. But that’s only half the story. A little double-entry
bookkeeping paints the rest of the picture. Suppose the government spends $100
into the economy but collects just $90 in taxes, leaving behind an extra $10 for
someone to hold. That extra $10 gets recorded as a surplus on someone else’s books.

That means that the government’s -$10 is always matched by +$10 in some other
part of the economy. There is no mismatch and no problem with things adding up.
Balance sheets must balance, after all. The government’s deficit is always mirrored
by an equivalent surplus in another part of the economy.

.
.
Perhaps no one is more skilled in the dark art of deficit deception than
Representative Paul Ryan, the House speaker. He has described the budget outlook
as a “fiscal train wreck,” and he has demanded cuts to programs like Social Security
and Medicare in the name of protecting future generations from a “crushing burden
of debt.” His language is poll-tested and inflammatory by design. It’s intended to
create a sense of urgency to move the budget into balance, where, we are told, the
math of federal spending will finally “add up.”

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Clarissa

October 8, 2017

I was stunned when last week I asked students what are the greatest issues that we will be facing in the future and aside from a couple of timid voices that mentioned the environment everybody else said the main problem was budget deficit. I never thought 19-year-olds could get so emotional about the budget deficit.

https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.js

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Jennifer S

October 9, 2017

Are you sorry for the little girl because she seems to be a fashion dolly for what I assume are her daddies? Maybe they are in the fashion business and just like giving presents. She seems happy. Of course I can’t read the language.

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cliff arroyo

October 9, 2017

“Are you sorry for the little girl”

Here’s a link in English.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3495996/The-Daddy-Fashion-Stylist-Pete-Fuentes-Instagram-sensation-daughter-Harlow.html

It would seem that either the girl is being treated like a living dress up doll (or portfolio?) and/or is learning too young to care too much about her appearance and clothes. Neither seems very healthy.

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Clarissa

October 9, 2017

My father would throw himself into an industrial shredder before he exhibited his daughters in such a sexualized way.

Moms who put their daughters into heels and makeup for beauty pageants are creepy. But dads who to it are creepy times ten.

As for her looking happy, what choice does she have but perform? These are people she depends on completely. And they have objectified her to the utmost degree.

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Stringer Bell

October 9, 2017

There's a lot going on right now, but this map of how far rural women have to drive to get an abortion is horrific: https://t.co/QNkaWr0rcV pic.twitter.com/TGc0tGXb10

— Bradford Pearson (@BradfordPearson) October 5, 2017

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cliff arroyo

October 9, 2017

As I always say, the natural development of feminism by the time it had achieved most of its realistic goals (late 1980s) was to expand to non-western cultures that desperately needed it – like all of Africa and Asia and Latin America.

Good luck to those Indian women and all women fighting real oppression! Too bad modern western feminism is so useless to you….

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Dreidel

October 9, 2017

Try googling “feminist imperialism” or “feminist colonialism” — you’ll get a thousand entries telling those white feminists to mind their own business.

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Spiderbaby

October 9, 2017

I think the reluctance of western feminists to discuss the misogyny of non-western countries comes from the fear of reenacting the colonialist mentality of the “White (Wo)man’s Burden”, where the civilized white comes and tells the ignorant savage how to live.
Also, the inference of western feminists may be counterproductive to local feminists, as the conservatives of the non-western countries can claim that gender equality is just an imposition aimed at destroying their country’s traditions and identity (so, imperialism).
So, how can we help non-western women to gain equality? What’s the right way to act?

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1. cliff arroyo
  
  October 9, 2017
  
  “the fear of reenacting the colonialist mentality of the “White (Wo)man’s Burden”, where the civilized white comes and tells the ignorant savage how to live.”
  
  In other words, feminists were tired of being unpopular and wanted people to like them. I’d say it’s more about the rise of post-modernism and it’s idea of all standards being arbitrary and meaningless and venomous works like Orientalism by Said which aided the politicization of radical islam throughout the muslim world by making middle eastern cultural practices immune to criticism. Fuck that. If your culture can’t stand criticism then it’s shit. No apologies.
  
  And I’m sorry, but I have a very hard time viewing practices such as burkas, female genital mutiliation, honor killing, widow burning, acid attacks, bride burning, foot binding, udnerage marriage, enforced gender segregation, gavage, infibulation etc etc etc as anything but ignorant savagery and no defense I’ve ever read has come close to changing my mind.
  Of course, some sensitivity in how to work against these things is fine and good (and rules me out), but the goal needs to be to eliminate these (and many other) practices that harm women under the guise of cultural autonomy or cultural relativism and instead feminism now is actively working to normalize them into new geographic areas.
  
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  1. Spiderbaby
    
    October 9, 2017
    
    I agree with you that western feminists, if they’re worthy of the name, shouldn’t close their eyes in front of these injustices, but, again, getting into action is not that simple.
    First of all, I think that women’s liberation is something that as to come from within these societies and cannot be imposed from the outside, otherwise the backlash -and a fierce one too- is practically inevitable. Western feminists can provide help and support and start a frank dialogue, but cannot barge in and say: “Here, sweety, let me free you from the retrograde customs of your society”. Nobody likes to hear from strangers that their way to live is wrong and barbaric and disgusting.
    For example, I’ve read various opinions from muslim feminists who are angry at western feminists for tolerating the face-covering veil, saying that they feel abandoned in their fight against sexism. But I’ve also read opinions of other muslim women who don’t want western feminists to tell them what thay should do. Imho, western feminists should support non-western feminists, but let them be the ones to lead the discussion with other non-western women in their community.
    (A thing that certainly doesn’t help is the way western conservatives try to hide their racism under the disguise of “helping women”).
    
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    1. cliff arroyo
      
      October 9, 2017
      
      “women’s liberation is something that as to come from within these societies and cannot be imposed from the outside”
      
      Agree in principle.
      
      “But I’ve also read opinions of other muslim women who don’t want ”
      
      Here’s the thing. Feminism should be about principles and not individuals, getting caught up in micro-managing individuals is how movements get derailed. Lots of western women didn’t/don’t like certain parts of second wave feminism. But they didn’t get veto power over the main goals of the movement and were treated as open enemies at times. The only for useful feminist ideas to spread is to support women fighting against misogynistic traditions and not giving equal attention to women who support misogyny (most misogynistic traditions are maintained by women, there is no way to further womens rights at the collective level without alienating and/or hurting (socially, psychologically) some individual women.
      
      “their community”
      
      I am getting to hate that word. It’s meaningless.
      
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  2. Clarissa
    
    October 9, 2017
    
    And it’s not like Western feminists completely withdrew from engagement with non-western women. Oh no, that’s not the case at all. They go to countries that have horrific domestic abuse stats, sky-high rape stats, widespread economic misery for women, a complete absence of any mechanisms for providing child support, etc and lecture women there on “mansplaining, manspreading, microaggressions, fatphobia” and other outlandish stuff like that. Women there look at them and decide that “feminism” is a mental disease.
    
    I described what happens in Ukraine but I’m quite confident that it’s not much different in other countries.
    
    Western feminists never abandoned the White Woman Burden. That burden right now is all about getting women across the world to parrot inanities about mansplaining in exchange for crumbs of funding. The difference between that and Columbus offering bells and mirrors to the indigenous people he grabbed and dragged to Europe as circus freaks escapes me.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      October 9, 2017
      
      Also, I remember vividly when Western feminists started coming to the post-Soviet space back in the 1990s. Their general attitude was that of extreme condescension to women who had no idea that all hetero sex is rape but who have a much much longer history of professional success, of providing for oneself, of standing up to life on one’s own. They would lecture condescendingly about the difference between sex and gender eliciting complete befuddlement among their audiences.
      
      And it hasn’t changed much from what I see. What Western feminists celebrate as the greatest achievement of feminism in Russia right now is a woman who became famous for getting naked in a supermarket, stuffing a whole raw chicken into her vagina, and filming the whole thing. In the meantime, abortion rights are being destroyed and little girls sold into marriage to old men who already have 3 or 4 such child wives. But who cares about that when the truly liberating acts of stuffing chickens into vaginas are being performed?
      
      How are women in these countries supposed to feel about feminism after all this? I’m just happy for the women in India who saw their way past all this shit.
      
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      1. cliff arroyo
        
        October 9, 2017
        
        “women who had no idea that all hetero sex is rape but who have a much much longer history of professional success, of providing for oneself, of standing up to life on one’s own”
        
        The good old unidirectional theory of progress! I’ve heard a time or two (no direct evidence but other expeirences make it sound likely) about some western feminists who travelled to Poland in the early 1990s having the idea that Poland was like the 1950s (in some purely physical terms of infrastructure and technology that was close to right).
        
        Anyhoo they embarrassed themselves and confused their audiences when they assumed that just like the US in the 1950s married women didn’t engage in paid work and were unprepared for audiences of women who all worked a number in management positions and whose mothers all worked. And they had nothing to offer the women in terms of things they were actually concerned about like sexual harassment and discrimination and husbands who drink too much and don’t help enough and a society set up in general in the most incovnenient way possible for working women with famileis.
        
        I’m completely on board with the idea that non-western cultures are not earlier versions of western culture and that women may have sources of social power that aren’t immediately obvious – but jeezus o’allah christ burkas and fgm are nothing that should be normalized while women like those in the linked article deserve support and admiration.
        
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        el
        
        October 9, 2017
        
        \ Anyhoo they embarrassed themselves and confused their audiences when they … were unprepared for audiences of women who all worked a number in management positions and whose mothers all worked.
        
        When both you and Clarissa talk about “western feminists” travelling to FSU, I am unsure who those people are.
        
        For instance, Israel pays to Sochnut workers in Ukraine, but who paid those feminists? Were they all independently rich – super rich, bored people who decided to entertain themselves? Usual people cannot leave their jobs for a long time.
        
        Also, I wonder why and how those feminists were so uneducated that they didn’t google before coming to Eastern Europe and didn’t check the most basic facts. It was very unprofessional.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        October 9, 2017
        
        There were tons of grants that academics or members of all kinds of non-profits could get to go civilize the savages back in the nineties.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        October 9, 2017
        
        And there was no Google back then although I agree about the rank ignorance of these folks.
        
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        DWeird
        
        October 9, 2017
        
        Most post-soviet countries had to create a different way of organizing society out of nothing, both in terms of economic organization and political and social mores. Since the appeal of the western life was a major contributor for ousting soviet regimes, a large number of thinkers and speakers were invited over in an attempt to learn about the West to better be able to emulate it.
        
        I know less about the western side of it, but I’m sure there were organizations that were genuinely trying to help, learn, or were actively looking for audiences or opportunities, too.
        
        Around the time I left Lithuania, the realization was kicking in that “the West” is not so much an unified set of principles as its own knotted bag of problems, and a number of people who helped bring about the revolution felt a bit shocked and disappointed. Don’t know quite where we go from here, but it would be nice for Europe not to implode while we figure it out.
        
        Also, I know Google feels like it’s been around forever, but it started in the mid-late 90s. And certainly very little reliable, up to date information on the day-to-day life in Soviet countries was even publicly available, not that it excuses the condescending attitude.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        October 9, 2017
        
        Yeah, yeah, yeah, this! A room full of post-Soviet women staring in complete befuddlement at American feminists who bemoan the trauma of men interrupting them was a sight to behold. Still makes me laugh. All those Soviet women would slaughter to see a man who speaks for himself. I remember coming to Canada and being stunned that boys spoke in class. To me, it was akin to the wonder of chairs speaking in class. So yeah, different problems.
        
        https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.js
        
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October 9, 2017

A Serbian writes about the link between the new Serbian Defence Dog breed and nationalism:

http://munchers-of-doom.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/the-nature-of-beast.html

I enjoyed his “Chronicles of absurdity” series too:

http://munchers-of-doom.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/the-chronicles-of-absurdity-act-one.html

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JProf

October 9, 2017

“How to Stay Productive When You Fly”–I don’t know why anyone would have to write a brief article about this… The solution is simple–if you want to work when you fly, then just do it. I’m not paying extra for TSA PreCheck just to be more productive. And if I don’t want to have a conversation with my seatmate, I don’t. There’s nothing really complicated about this at all.

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JProf

October 9, 2017

About firing transgender employees–yes, I think it should be illegal to fire someone simply for being transgender, and I support non-discrimination laws that protect trans individuals. However, if and where there are such non-discrimination laws, if someone really wants to fire you because you’re trans, then that person will simply find another reason to fire you. So I’m basically pretty skeptical about how well anti-discrimination employment laws work in practice.

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Clarissa

October 9, 2017

It’s the principle of it that matters here. The very first step is for the courts to decide that firing people for being transgender is wrong. And then that’s a basis we can work from. The Civil Rights Act didn’t end racial discrimination but at least it set up the basic principle that it’s not ok.

But if the government can’t even accept the basic principle of not firing transgender people, that sets up back enormously.

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Evelina Anville

October 9, 2017

I’m surprised you found the academic advice article to be “weak and pathetic”. The analogy of “uptight white people” wasn’t particularly apt but I thought much of the advice was quite good. I especially liked that “verb chart” she developed in order to track how academics handle agreement and disagreement with each other.

I think that micro level analysis of language can be very useful to academic writers and it is seldom explicitly taught. I think I’m going to have my senor thesis students generate a similar chart to the one she created. I think it really opens up avenues for academic writers to situate their own work in relation to others–something that the senior thesis students struggle with.

Anyway, even though you hated it, thanks for posting it. I found the article useful and it gave me a good teaching idea. 🙂

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Clarissa

October 9, 2017

The article was quite good until it got to praising the exceptionally rude and obnoxious comment by the Wiradjuri woman. I don’t allow people to talk like that in my presence either in RL or on the blog. Any smug, self-congratulating rudeness gets shut down immediately. This is the essence of covert racism, treating non-white people as toddlers or trained monkeys. Oh, she peed all over herself, how cute.

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October 9, 2017

Uri discussed one of the latest terrorist acts in “A Tale of Two Stories”:
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1506697305

Wanted to ask SB whether he has ever read Uri’s column or anything written by Israeli Jews. Uri is as Left-wing as they come, so even SB may like him.

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Stringer Bell

October 9, 2017

She’ll be 85 next year, 91 when she finishes out her term. One of the biggest boosters of the military industrial complex.

I am running for reelection to the Senate. Lots more to do: ending gun violence, combating climate change, access to healthcare. I’m all in!

— Dianne Feinstein (@DianneFeinstein) October 9, 2017

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Stringer Bell

October 9, 2017

Who said this administration isn’t accomplishing anything?

BREAKING: EPA Administrator Pruitt says administration will withdraw from Obama-era clean power plan.

— The Associated Press (@AP) October 9, 2017

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el

October 9, 2017

\ Who said this administration isn’t accomplishing anything?

If you missed, this article about the achievements of Trump administration has recently been left in the comments:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/09/is-trump-actually-failing-though

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1. Stringer Bell
  
  October 9, 2017
  
  Thanks. I like Nathan Robinson a lot. Don’t know how I missed this one.
  
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cliff arroyo

October 9, 2017

“When both you and Clarissa talk about “western feminists” travelling to FSU, I am unsure who those people are”

Poland isn’t FSU, but in the aftermath of 1989 and the fall of communism there were tons of programs (mostly sponsored by the US government) both to send American ‘experts’ to Poland and professional Poles to the US for education and/or training.
The feminists would have been probably from a university sponsored by one of those programs or through grants created for that purpose.

“those feminists were so uneducated that they didn’t google before coming to Eastern Europe”

There was no google/email/internet in the early 1990s and part of the problem was that there were so few in the US who knew the first thing about Poland or any other country in the region, but if they were willing to go and knew which forms to fill out…. they could go (no, that’s not how I went).

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Clarissa

October 9, 2017

Sorry, I repeated Cliff’s comment. I read them in the chronological order.

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October 9, 2017

Do you think it’s true or not?

Половина писем от одиноких женщин – про боязнь отношений.
И почти все письма от одиноких мужчин.
Есть всего одна причина такой боязни.
Всего одна.
Если вы боитесь отношений, то это потому, что вы хотите полностью опереться на партнера.
Это и мужчин касается. Даже если материально вы не хотите опираться (хотя многие мужчины хотят), эмоционально – да.

И вы боитесь, что вот вы прислонитесь спиной, а дверь откроется. И поэтому вы соблюдаете правило “не прислоняться”.
…
Все эти ваши страшные мысли не случайны. Вы понимаете, что быстро попадете в полную зависимость, потому что собираетесь переключиться целиком.

Вам страшно, потому что вы не понимаете, зачем нужен партнер, если не навешиваться на него (нее). Вы представляете, как вы стали зависимы, слабы, доверили все свои самые стыдные тайны, рассказали и поведали о всех своих слабостях, показали все свои уязвимости, потеряли все свои ресурсы и опоры, а вас коварно использовали. А потом еще зло насмехались.

https://evo-lutio.livejournal.com/548157.html

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Clarissa

October 9, 2017

I had a huge fear of relationships between my 2 marriages to the point where I had panic attacks when I heard the word “relationship.” My fear stemmed from my reluctance to carry the emotional burden of another person when I was barely managing to carry my own. I have never seen or heard rumors about a man who can carry his own emotional burden. Never ever. Maybe they exist, I’m not saying they don’t. Like unicorns.

Being completely dependent on a man and laying my burdens at his feet, like this post describes, is as realistic as sprouting wings and learning to fly. So I wouldn’t worry about it much. 🙂 It’s not a danger that’s about to befall you. Or me. Or anybody. 🙂

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Stringer Bell

October 9, 2017

2 million people employed as censors.

http://m.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2113377/its-seen-cool-place-work-how-chinas-censorship-machine?amp=1

‘It’s seen as a cool place to work’ – how China’s censorship machine is becoming a growth industry

I still remember how the chinese government tried to scrub this image from the internet. Didn’t work, though.

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Stringer Bell

October 9, 2017

Counterpoint: The ticket from LAX to Delhi for our flight in november is $390 round trip. I’ve paid as much as $1600 for one.

God Bless China!

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October 9, 2017

Was glad to read the following:

Israel was ranked 16th on the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index, advancing eight ranks from last year’s report, in which it was ranked 24th. Israel is the highest-ranked Middle Eastern country, followed by the United Arab Emirates at 17.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3722548,00.html

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October 9, 2017

In other news, Israeli teens decided to follow the creepy clown trend. I am afraid that somebody will think it’s terrorism and kill a stupid teen, or that real terrorists will use it somehow:

No laughing matter: Creepy clowns frighten Israel

Police and local authorities are trying to deal with children and teenagers in scary clown masks jumping strangers on the street; 10.5-year-old girl sprayed with tear gas by teens in clown masks in Be’er Sheva, while a 13-year-old boy with Dracula mask caught carrying knife in Herzliya.
…
The frightening clown sightings and attacks are not unique to Israel. During the fall of 2016, creepy clown sightings were reported in 19 different countries—particularly in the United States, Canada and Britain—and went viral on social media. In some cases, there were reports of violent assaults by clowns.

AND

As ‘bored’ teens dress as clowns, victims take arms

In throes of creepy clown epidemic, teens caught by police claim they acted out of ‘boredom’; younger children have taken to arming themselves with cap guns, rolling pins to fend off clowns, while teens have been caught with knives, clubs, irons.

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5026555,00.html

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October 11, 2017

The West vs. Iran: Force isn’t always the answer

Op-ed: Turning a country into part of the US-run global economic system has often led to dramatic changes in that country’s worldview. While economic prosperity likely won’t change Iran completely, what are the alternatives?

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5026948,00.html

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