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'What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for Beauty, and never see the Dawn!'
"It is at dawn, the rosy- fingered, that one must savor the divine Homer. Was he not describing for us the dawn of the world?"
For centuries, white “artists” have been mocking the death of George Floyd by their depiction of St Michael with his foot on Satan’s neck.— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) June 22, 2020
These so-called “works of art” are hate speech.
DESTROY 👏 THEM 👏 NOW 👏 pic.twitter.com/5Yrdb2wjvF
German authorities have expressed shock over a rampage of an “unprecedented scale” in the centre of Stuttgart, where hundreds of partygoers ran riot overnight and into Sunday, breaking shop windows, plundering and attacking police.
Two dozen people, half of them German nationals, were provisionally arrested and police reported 19 officers hurt. “They were unbelievable scenes that have left me speechless. In my 46 years of police service, I have never experienced this,” said the Stuttgart police chief, Franz Lutz.
Tensions built up shortly after midnight when officers carried out checks on a 17-year-old German man suspected of using drugs, said Stuttgart’s deputy police chief, Thomas Berger.
...At the height of the clashes, some 400 to 500 people joined in the battle against police officers and rescue workers.
As officers pushed back against the crowd, they broke up into small groups, carrying on their rampage around the city centre, breaking shop windows and looting stores along nearby Königstraße, a major shopping street.
It is no coincidence that it hit a city with a 44 per cent migrant population. Without a political paradigm shift, such scenes will repeat themselves in Stuttgart and in other German cities. What we need is consistently controlled immigration, more police and a crackdown on the judiciary against such criminals.
When asked where the "rage" came from, Yussef explains that many of the young people involved in the clashes, particularly people of color, feel they're too often regarded as suspects by police.
The tensions have become particularly raw in light of the protests against police brutality that launched in the United States.
Kolchin makes very clear that Russian serfdom was much more like chattel slavery than its medieval precursor. Medieval serfs existed in much more complex social arrangements and generally had relatively static obligations. Russian serfs were literally owned and far more subject to the whims of their owners.
It's interesting to learn that American slaves ate better than European workers, including I imagine the Lancashire mill girls, who supported the North even though the Civil War put them out of work, and slightly better than American workers.
Kolchin characterises both American slavery and Russian serfdom as responses by elites on the periphery of the capitalist world to labour shortage coming from demand for products of labour coupled with low population density. In both cases, the cost of coercion ‘paid off’ economically, particularly as there was deemed to be no moral cost. Kolchin has an excellent sense of how differently embedded in their different societies American slavery and Russian serfdom were (for example, the slaves lived in a slaveholder’s world, the serf’s in a peasant’s world; American slaveholders were much more effective and empowered as a social group than Russian serfowners; American slavery was vibrant and expanding, Russian serfdom was a system in decay).
I obviously wouldn't put Grant in the same category with Confederates, but what exactly is the worry re: "canceling" him? What happens if we are too critical of historical figures or hold them to a standard that's too high? Too anti-slavery? Too egalitarian? Who stands to lose?— Julia Azari (@julia_azari) June 20, 2020
The Catholic chaplain has been forced out at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology because of an email message he sent Catholic students that questioned whether George Floyd died because of racism and stated that Floyd did not live a virtuous life.
Father Daniel Moloney, a priest of the Archdiocese of Boston, was asked to resign last week, according to the archdiocese.
“In the wake of George Floyd’s death, most people in the country have framed this as an act of racism. I don’t think we know that. Many people have claimed that racism is a major problem in police forces. I don’t think we know that,” Moloney wrote in an email message to the MIT Catholic Community, according to a news story published Tuesday night in The Boston Globe.
Moloney, according to the Globe story of Tuesday, June 16, wrote that Floyd should not have been killed by a police officer in Minnesota, but also stated that Floyd “had not lived a virtuous life” and that police “deal with dangerous and bad people all the time, and that often hardens them.”
Some students complained to university administrators, including the university’s Bias Response Team.
This is much shocking even than the case two years ago of the Catholic Chaplain at the University of Glasgow who was removed by the University after he held a novena in his parish church at a parishioner's request, “in reparation” after a homosexual pride march. Not a word was said in his defence by his Archbishop or colleagues but he was fired by the University acting unilaterally, not with the complicity of the Church.
University officials contacted the Archdiocese of Boston, which quickly sought Moloney’s resignation.
but we can know for sure, though, is that Chauvin’s act was evil.
"Barbers Mean Nothing In Life: A horny-handed son of the Balkan soil. He has lived the allotted three score and 10 years and then some. And despite the vicissitudes that have swept Romania, he still believes in the future of his country and the goodness of his God. He was a patient in the [Red Cross] hospital but refused to remain if his hair was cut. It is a 50-year growth and he wouldn't part with it."
Now Oxford University has said it intends to “decolonise” maths and science. How will it do that? Surely the speed of light, and Boyle’s law on the pressure of gases, are exactly the same whether you’re black or white?
I have read papers on decolonising the sciences and in every case the subtext seems to mean “make them a lot easier”. Ask students not to calculate the pressure of a gas as its container decreases in size, but how the poor gas feels, alone in its airtight container.
There should be a name for this fervid dismantling of western thought. I think “The Unenlightenment” fits pretty well.
“They are going to put him in a home and other people are going to be running the country. Sleepy Joe, he doesn’t even know where he is or what he’s doing or what office he’s running for. Honestly, I don’t think he knows what office he’s running for.”
‘homophobia, lesbophobia, biphobia, queerphobia, transphobia, sexism, misogyny, misogynoir, enbyphobia, ableism, racism, anti-Blackness, Islamophobia, whorephobia, ageism, fatphobia, eugenics, discrimination, stereotypes, respectability politics, the stigmatisation of HIV and the stigmatisation of addiction.’
If those behind Black Lives Matter UK really do intend to ‘dismantle’ capitalism, what might they wish to replace it with? And how would that benefit people of colour?
The only alternative system practised elsewhere in the world is communism. But as China’s Uighur Muslims, or the 1.5 million people from ethnic minorities who were deported or sent to gulags by Josef Stalin, would attest, that system can be very racist indeed.
Witnesses said he drunkenly declared ‘f*** Black Lives Matter’ before being punched and kicked by rival demonstrators.
But for how much longer? A petition to remove him has 380 signatures.
The ‘Get rid of Bryn Male’ campaign says: ‘On June 13 we all witnessed an honourable man, Patrick Hutchinson, carrying an injured stranger to safety. We are now aware that the injured man was Bryn Male. We cannot allow those... attitudes to be part of the club.’
“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"You never compromise with violence. You never compromise with intimidation. You never compromise with those who want to use it to extinguish freedom and democracy, because if you do then the very things for which you stand are extinguished." Margaret Thatcher
"I watched greedily, and concluded with absolute certainty that night that nobody was in charge, and that I could do anything I liked from now on. And I duly did." Peter Hitchens on 1967
We can regard the troubles of others with sympathy and patience. We hold out the hand of friendship and peace to every nation in Europe. But the affairs of Europe are not our concern. Every time we have involved ourselves in these affairs, it has brought us great burdens and great loss. We have prospered when we have kept clear of European politics.
Our one duty is to mind our own business. We should set an example of ordered freedom and sensible economics. These things are well within the genius of the British people, even if our Government finds them a bit difficult. For this, too, is one of the lessons of history: the British people are always a good deal wiser and more sensible than those who govern them.
A.J.P. Taylor
Boris Johnson was right the first time. He resisted lockdown for as long as he could, regarding it as a draconian, untested experiment that might cause far more harm than good.
Far better, he thought, to ask people to keep their distance, work from home, self-isolate if anyone in their household fell sick. Why pass needless laws and ask the police to pursue workers, lovers and dog-walkers? It’s better, he said, to level with people. Give them the facts, offer advice and trust them to do what’s right.
Only now do we know how well this was working. Most people were staying home on government advice (and their own concern). The virus seems to have peaked by lockdown on 23 March. None of this was known at the time. Instead, we had panic and Prof Neil Ferguson saying that 250,000 would die unless rules were mandatory. So politically, the Prime Minister had no choice.
I come from a country with no statues.
It is not that Morocco never had statues. Not that long ago it had statues of French officials – of which only one remains, hidden in a consulate garden. It had, a bit earlier, statues of Christian saints and Roman dignitaries, of which there is no trace. Before that, it must have had statues of Phoenician deities. All have been destroyed, and with them visible proof of the complex history of North Africa.
...I will not say that as an African I am oppressed by Oriel’s statue of Rhodes and by the buildings Oxford owes to imperial largesse, nor that I feel incomplete, as a Catholic, by the absence of statues in some of the other niches. I do not wish to change a single stone of Oxford, because I love it. I love it as much, and maybe more, than I love any city I have lived in before.
There is no shame in loving the country you belong to. We immigrants love it, too. It is possible to criticise a country and the people who built it, while still loving it. Without a French presence in Morocco, I doubt I would have had any chance to enjoy an international academic career, let alone as a woman. My mother insisted that I should be educated in the French system; my grandmother’s pride was that I ended up teaching French to French teenagers.
Could I decolonise myself? No; nor do I wish to. I am proud of what the complicated past of colonialism made me. I feel no guilt about it, and the last thing I need now is the apologies of a French person feeling sorry for me.White guilt is unhelpful and condescending. Whenever someone tries to deploy it, I tell them that my ancestors were involved in the slave trade, too.He wanted his scholarships to create amity between the English speaking peoples and I assumed he did so because Anglo-Saxons and Germans are Teutons, but Dr. Daouda quotes from his will:
“no student shall be qualified or disqualified for election to a Scholarship on account of his race or religious opinions.”
Why did we rely, complacently, on the Football Lads Alliance and Britian First (sic), to support the veterans who wanted to protect the Cenotaph that commemorates Our Glorious Dead? It should have been the Police's job to do that, over the past three weeks, and just to be clear, All Cops Are NOT Bastards, particularly in the UK. But, as part of the mainstream conservative majority of our great nation, I am hanging my head in shame because I, and millions of us, were too frightened to come out last weekend and contest the hateful narrative that Great Britain is a historically and systemically-racist nation, rather than a shining light that did more than any other nation over the centuries to end slavery. For those of us who are Conservatives, marching, even protesting, isn't really our thing. We were worried that, if we supported the veterans and stood up for ourselves, some people (who, for some reason, we would still like to consider our friends) would openly denounce us as racists. Yes, we wanted to obey the law and socially-distance; yes we didn't want to antagonise our children some of whom were were marching with BLM; yes, we were surprised that some people off the telly, that we quite like, came out to support BLM; yes, we were horrified by the capitulation of our Police, forced to kneel, initially for their own safety, but then advised to do so by their useless commanders and yes, we were disgusted when the leader of the opposition followed suit. Some of us probably still believe what we are told by the BBC. But, none of us should welcome the Cultural Revolution being encouraged, and perhaps soon to be demanded, by these protests
“We know that this motto is a reminder of a historical legacy that is rooted in colonial power and oppression.”Bristol University said it was reviewing using the crests of Edward Colston (whose statue was toppled into the harbour), Henry Overton Wills III and the Fry family. The Frys made chocolate, were Quakers and therefore pacifists and were leading liberals and social reformers, as I recall.
"The British people have never more profoundly disappointed me. It seems so un-British to say, alright then I’ll just roll over and I’ll stay home. I think part of it was being able to feed into the Blitz narrative....She is a Democrat and feminist who likes Mr. Obama very much, came slowly to like Hillary and absolutely detests President Trump, but the Telegraph, a supposedly Conservative paper, feels it necessary to call her "controversial" to distance itself from her views on identity politics.
"The bizarre attachment to being confined to your homes and not making a living and relying on the government...I’m just dismayed."
'Ever opposed to nepotism, I disliked the prospect of our first female head of state achieving the position through marriage to a previous president, a cheap shortcut I considered anti-feminist. Besides, I opposed the political dynasty in principle. The US famously rejected monarchy in 1776, and phenomenons like the Kennedys, Bushes, and Clintons seemed antithetical to the American project.
'When in those early, why-can't-we-all-be-friends days of the Obama administration, the new president called a truce by appointing his rival secretary of state, I was disgusted. The woman lost. She wasn't due a compensation prize. By then well weary of her strained attempts at populist folksiness, inconsistent put-on drawl, unpersuasive tearfulness and gratingly nasal voice, I didn't want to have to keep looking at her face.'
Yet Fang found himself denounced online as a racist, then hauled before H.R. His crime? During protests, he tweeted this interview with an African-American man named Maximum Fr, who described having two cousins murdered in the East Oakland neighborhood where he grew up. Saying his aunt is still not over those killings, Max asked:
I always question, why does a Black life matter only when a white man takes it?... Like, if a white man takes my life tonight, it’s going to be national news, but if a Black man takes my life, it might not even be spoken of… It’s stuff just like that that I just want in the mix.
Shortly after, a co-worker of Fang’s, Akela Lacy, wrote, “Tired of being made to deal continually with my co-worker @lhfang continuing to push black on black crime narratives after being repeatedly asked not to. This isn’t about me and him, it’s about institutional racism and using free speech to couch anti-blackness. I am so fucking tired.” She followed with, “Stop being racist Lee.”
'Rallied the nation indeed! I was a serving soldier in 1940. How we deplored his orations.'
'Churchill was a radio personality who outlived his prime.'
There are some people…who may be tempted to dismiss or downplay the virtuosity of Churchill as a writer …. Indeed, he has always had his detractors. Evelyn Waugh, that inveterate Churchill-basher, said he was a “master of sham-Augustan prose”, with “no specific literary talent but a gift of lucid self-expression”. After reading Churchill’s Life of his father Randolph, Waugh dismissed it as a “shifty barrister’s case, not a work of literature”…This explains one important reason why British journalists so much dislike Boris, though there are certainly others. Boris, when writing about Churchill, is talking about himself.
Why did Waugh sneer at Churchill’s writings? Notice that he–Waugh–had actually tried to emulate Churchill in the 1930s and got himself sent out to cover a war in Abyssinia. He produced Scoop of course, one of the great stylistic landmarks of the twentieth century. But his reporting had nothing like the same journalistic impact as Churchill’s. Is it that Waugh was just a teensy bit jealous? I think so; and it was not just because Churchill had become so much more famous than Waugh had been, by the time he was twenty five, but that he had made such stupendous sums from writing. And that for most journalists, alas, is the truly sensitive point for comparison.
Labour, writes a well-known political journalist, embraced the idea of Europe in 1998, as it was the best opponent of Thatcherism and seemed to mean trade union and welfare rights. But this came at a high cost, he writes. "In doing so, however, it abandoned the classic left-wing vigilance against the 'bankers' ramp' , the device which allows democracies to be overpowered by banks, central banks and their lackeys to run an economy in their own interests. The euro is just such a ramp. It was imposed without democratic endorsement and cannot be unstitched by democratic rejection. Hence perma-slump in large parts of the eurozone, 50 per cent youth unemployment in the worst bits, and German domination of the whole. Never, since the age of the dictators, have the workers been further from control over the means of production, distribution and exchange than they are in the EU today."
Oh glory be, at last someone has spelled out the left-wing (very left-wing) case for Brexit. But who is this seer? Gosh, it's Charles Moore, a high Tory, in the Spectator, the weekly conservative magazine. And some of you criticise me for writing in the Daily Mail. But it is here, on the right, that the left-wing case for Brexit is being made. Where Is The Thinking Left in this debate?
This time, a positive spike. https://t.co/6SmAx7pOKr— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) June 10, 2020
'Scientists at Oxford University and King’s College London are racing to develop an inexpensive ventilator that can be quickly built with off-the-shelf components. Should it matter that all the lead researchers on the project are men? If you believe university diversity bureaucrats and many academic deans, the initiative will be handicapped by the absence of women among the project heads. If there is a silver lining to the Covid-19 pandemic, it may be to expose as dangerous nonsense the practice of hiring researchers by sex and race rather than scientific accomplishments.
'Barely three months ago, face mask adverts were banned by the UK Advertising Standards Agency for ‘misleading’ claims that they help protect against Covid-19. Now, we have police enforcing such masks, and without any debate in parliament about the need for such a measure. Whether this will boost confidence or undermine it remains to be seen.'
27 police officers injured during largely peaceful anti-racism protests in London.
27 police officers injured during largely peaceful anti-racism protests in London.
