#1
Why is the blogger so hostile? What we are starting to get is better than before, and the best the president could negotiate given the disinterest and open hostility to the idea on the part of many of our Congresscritters. Not to mention that, as some here have pointed out in the past, the purpose is not to be impermeable, but to funnel illegal border crossers to defendable kill boxes. Let not the demand for the perfect be the enemy of the good.
#2
Mercer is the daughter of a South African Rabbi now living in Texas. She sees things through a slightly different lens. There is an underlying historical bitterness that would take a great deal of time to explain. Sort of like the game of Cricket. I understand it, but I don't at all enjoy it.
Perhaps a German analogy would help explain. She loves America, but has little use for Americans.
[QuodVernum] The vast majority haven't been told the truth about life for ordinary citizens, in France. As a result, they don’t understand the significance of the violent ‘gilets jaunes’ protests across the country. Having lived in France for years, REX explains why these are the most important protests in France since 1968 - and likely a beacon for citizens all across Europe.
Hit the link for the whole piece. This short Rantburg post can't do it justice.
Forget what FakeNews is telling you. This is no ordinary manifestation.
This is a genuine uprising by millions of city and country folk, young and old, crossing different ethnic and cultural lines.
Macron’s diesel tax hike wasn’t the cause of the gilets jaunes movement. It was the spark detonating a bomb, that has been building for decades.
It is the first time since 1968, that France has seen such a genuine and uprising popular uprising, against the French state.
This protest is different. And it has very specific, historic reasons, as this article will reveal.
The Real France
Think you know the real France? Here are a few facts that may shock you:
• The French state has been bankrupt since 2004. A minister finally admitted it in 2013.
• French GDP hasn’t risen above 2% in 50 years. Yes - FIFTY. The average annual GDP growth rate between 1949-2018? 0.78%.
• In 2018, 14% of the population in France live below the poverty line (they earn less than 60% of the median income).
• Worse, more than 50% of French people have an annual income of less than €20,150 a year (about $1,900 US per month).
• The 'official' unemployment rate is 10% - about 3.5 million citizens (in reality, it's much higher).
• The youth unemployment rate is 22%. Yes, you did read that right.
• Astonishing but true: the French government employs 25% of the entire French workforce...and it's impossible to fire them.
• Because the citizens make such little money, they pay no tax. Less than 50% of French pay any income tax at all; only around 14% pay at the rate of 30%, and less than 1% pay at the rate of 45%.
• The government can't deliver services without taxes, so it borrows money. France's debt-GDP is now 100%.
Another revealing statistic: "structural unemployment" is now at 9 -10%. That statistic measures when it is impossible to find people who have the skills and qualifications, to fill available positions. Why? French kids aren't being educated to participate in the workforce. So even if France has a growth spurt (it won’t), they won’t have the labor to fill the new jobs.
So how did this epic disaster happen? And if blame is to be allocated, who bears the most of it?
In other words - why are millions of French citizens on the rampage, right now?
Because there’s a real France, that few ever see.
The France of the gilets jaunes. Or as we might label them, les deplorables.
And they are in a state of fury at a ruling class who not only let the population suffer, while enjoying a life of luxury and wealth, but who also blame ordinary people for their own suffering.
[YES!] Callout culture. The quest for purity. Privilege theory taken to extremes. I’ve observed some of these questionable patterns in my activist communities over the past several years.
As an activist, I stand with others against white supremacy, anti-blackness, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, and imperialism. I am queer, trans, Chinese American, middle class, and able-bodied. This kind of shit is SO important, it has to be stated at the very beginning of the article.
Holding these identities scattered across the spectrum of privilege, I have done my best to find my place in the movement, while educating myself on social justice issues to the best of my ability. But after witnessing countless people be ruthlessly torn apart in community for their mistakes and missteps, I started to fear my own comrades.
As a cultural studies scholar, I am interested in how that culture‐as expressed through discourse and popular narratives‐does the work of power. Many disciplinary practices of the activist culture succeed in curbing oppressive behaviors. Callouts, for example, are necessary for identifying and addressing problematic behavior. But have they become the default response to fending off harm? Shutting down racist, sexist, and similar conversations protects vulnerable participants. But has it devolved into simply shutting down all dissenting ideas? When these tactics are liberally applied, without limit, inside marginalized groups, I believe they hold back movements by alienating both potential allies and their own members.
In response to the unrestrained use of callouts and unchecked self-righteousness by leftist activists, I spend enormous amounts of energy protecting my activist identity from attack. I self-police what I say when among other activists. If I’m not 100 percent sold on the reasons for a political protest, I keep those opinions to myself‐though I might show up anyway.
On social media, I’ve stopped commenting with thoughtful push back on popular social justice positions for fear of being called out. For example, even though some women at the 2017 women’s march reproduced the false and transmisogynistic idea that all women have vaginas, I still believe that the event was a critical win for the left and should not be written off so easily as it has been by some in my community. Yeah, those "pussy hats" you heard of? Turns out they were a hate crime all along. That's how fast this stuff changes.
Understand, even though I am using callouts as a prime example, I am not against them. Several times, I have been called out for ways I have carelessly exhibited ableism, transmisogyny, fatphobia, and xenophobia. I am able to rebound quickly when responding with openness to those situations. I am against a culture that encourages callouts conducted irresponsibly, ones that abandon the person being called out and ones done out of a desire to experience power by humiliating another community member. Sinner confessing his sins.
I am also concerned about who controls the language of social justice, as I see it wielded as a weapon against community members who don’t have access to this rapidly evolving lexicon. Terms like "oppression," "tone policing," "emotional labor," "diversity," and "allyship" are all used in specific ways to draw attention to the plight of minoritized people. Yet their meanings can also be manipulated to attack and exclude.
Furthermore, most social justice 101 articles I see online are prescriptive checklists. Although these can be useful resources for someone who has little familiarity with these issues, I worry that this model of education contributes to the false idea that we have only one way to think about, talk about, and ultimately, do activism. I think that movements are able to fully breathe only when there is a plurality of tactics, and to some extent, of ideologies.
I am not the first nor the last to point out that these movements for liberation and justice are exhibiting the same oppressive patterns that we are fighting against in larger society. Rather than wallowing in critique or walking away from this work, I choose a third option‐that we as a community slow down, acknowledge this pattern and develop an ethics of activism as a response.
If we as activists do not feel safe in our experimental microcosms of justice and liberation, what can we attempt to replicate across larger society? What they wish to replicate across larger society is an oppressive collectivist regime all over again but this time without the humanity.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
12/12/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
As the old saying goes, "Now that cancer, world hunger and crime have been eliminated, we can now move on the really important things...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/12/2018 6:26 Comments ||
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#2
As a cultural studies scholar,
Now there's an oxymoron .......... or just a moron.
#7
Seems these cultural warriors live in a world of dog whistles and hidden agendas. In previous times these were known as voices in their heads and it was a sign they needed help. Now they are used as footsoldiers by corrupt liberals. Very sad.
[American Thinker] Has former CIA director John Brennan just made a very public threat against the physical well-being of the president of the United States? Director Brennan often comes across as an angry, ignorant man and may have just displayed proof of both of those character traits in a nasty public statement. Our former CIA director in response to a President Trump on December 10, 2018 said this:
John O. Brennan
@JohnBrennan
Dec 10
More John O. Brennan Retweeted Donald J. Trump
Whenever you send out such inane tweets, I take great solace in knowing that you realize how much trouble you are in & how impossible it will be for you to escape American justice. Mostly, I am relieved that you will never have the opportunity to run for public office again.
His statement, "you will never have the opportunity to run for public office again," should not be relegated to simple bluster from a blustery man, but investigated.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/12/2018 11:07 Comments ||
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#4
I think it would be a rare person to run for public office after serving in the highest office in the world. Even double so for a businessman who is slumming a bit in political office as he now has to dodge chimps throwing feces on a daily basis.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The year 2018 is coming to an end. It is time to recall all that has happened as that would foreshadow all that is in the offing in 2019. It is not an easy task to make predictions, irrespective of the methods of analysis used, as incidents and developments in general are becoming quite unpredictable.
The year 2018 is wrapping up in a couple of weeks. This year was marked by several what can be labelled as ’mega-trends’, according to Russian schools of international relations.
One such trend is the reduced role and influence of international organizations. The processes of crisis settlement and negotiations are bypassing international institutions, whether it may concern the crises in Syria or North Korea.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
12/12/2018 00:00 ||
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The hermeneutics of dichotomies and paradigms as archaized by gnomes.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/12/2018 6:54 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
North Korea
