Monday, November 27, 2023


Aussie living in London reveals British things she thought were weird after making the move

She is absolutely right about British customer service. Wnen I would walk into a London shop for any reason, all the staff would pretend I did not exist. But I never tolerated that for more than a minute. I would simply say in a loud voice "I hate being invisible". That would be an electric shock to the staff concerned. They would literally run to serve me. Why? I had done that most abhorred British thing; I had "made a scene". I can be something of a stentor at times so that would have helped too

She mentions her shock of British customer service and that when she first arrived, she thought 'everyone was so rude'.

She said 'No one says hi to you when you first walk into a shop, people will literally just ignore you customer service wise.

'When I went and got my phone plan down, I sat down and was like "hey I want a phone plan' and they're like 'yep no worries".

'The girl turned around tapped in her computer for no joke 20 minutes, did not say a word to me and didn't even look at me.

'I was like is this normal? This is the most awkward thing I've ever done.'

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Hamas Atrocities Against Israeli Women Met With Deafening Silence

Showing that all the moral claims of the Left are a sham

Misogyny and cultural “norms” subjugating women are widespread in much of the Islamic world. These include female genital mutilation, forced marriages, persecuting women for not dressing according to strict Islamic standards, “honor killings,” and much more.

It’s no surprise then, but shocking and horrific nonetheless, that one “weapon” in Hamas’ inhuman massacre of over 1200 people in Israel on October 7, brutalizing thousands, and kidnapping more than 240, including young children and elderly women held hostage in Gaza, was the raping of Israeli women in the process. Underscoring that these are not individual criminal acts but part of something widespread and deliberate, it’s been described as a sexual pogrom.

Adding insult to injury, groups and people that should be advocating for women’s rights and under any other circumstance would be calling out such criminal behavior, have turned a blind eye to the forensic evidence, eyewitness accounts, and confessions of Hamas terrorists as if the victims and sexual crimes didn’t matter just because they are Jews. The evidence is clear. Medical examiners have reported that some of the rapes were so violent that the women’s pelvises were crushed.

A growing chorus has condemned ignoring these crimes or even denying that they happened using the hashtag, "#Metoo_unless_UR_A_Jew."

If the crimes happened to anyone else in the world, women’s groups, human rights organizations, the UN, and others would be decrying it. But the silence to these crimes that depict a depraved pattern of sexual violence used by the terrorists against their victims, is criminal in of itself.

If Hamas’ goal was to murder as many as possible, how did the terrorists allow themselves to stop for a gang rape? How is rape in any way part of any “resistance” that Hamas claims and the Islamic world celebrates? How did those fighting for the “resistance” ever think this was acceptable? How could any one of the Islamic terrorists be aroused when inflicting such horrors, much less multiple gangs of them? The answer is simple. It was premeditated. It is inhuman evil Islam at its worst. It’s the marrying of worship of massacring Jews with the overall repression of women. It’s a marriage made in hell.

This inhuman behavior does not stop at the borders of Gaza. It is at the core of how the Iranian Islamic regime treats women, and which trickles down to other adherents of the “religion of peace.” This is documented widely, including in the book “A Love Journey With God” by my friend Marziyeh Amirizadeh. If not for public outcry after her arrest and death sentence for converting to Christianity in Iran, she’d likely have experienced much more of the suffering that many Iranian women who she knew in prison did, including the raping of virgins before they are executed as executing virgins goes against “Islamic values.”

The threat of raping Jewish women in support of Hamas’ inhuman behaviors also made it to the celebrated halls of Ivy League colleges. Last month, Patrick Dai, a junior at Cornell, was arrested on federal charges of posting threats to “kill or injure another using interstate communications.”

In public online posts, Dai threatened to "shoot up" a campus building targeting Jews, said he would "stab" or "slit the throat" of Jewish men, and rape or throw off a cliff Jewish women on campus.

Other than the threatening remarks being horrific enough, it’s impossible to imagine how anyone could allegedly advocate for the Palestinians in upstate New York by threatening to rape Jewish women. It’s obscene.

The raping of truth also comes from women who are charged with protecting women from sexual violence. The University of Alberta fired Samantha Pearson the head of the campus sexual assault center who signed an open letter denying Hamas terrorists raped women during the October 7 massacre. The letter censured Israel for repeating “the unverified accusation that Palestinians were guilty of sexual violence.”

“Naturally,” antisemites around the world, including women who would never question the allegations of rape by anyone else, are challenging the facts specifically because Israel is sharing these. Fortunately, non-Israelis have witnessed and reported on this reality. After witnessing the gruesome evidence of rape, filmed and broadcast by the terrorists themselves, journalist Jotam Confino wrote he saw, “Two dead women lying on the grass at musical festival – both with no pants on. One has her panties taken half off. The other doesn’t appear to have any on at all.

He saw an “eyewitness describing how she saw a woman being raped by several Hamas terrorists, pulling her hair as they raped her and took turns. One of them cut her breasts off – the others played with them like a toy. The last terrorist to rape her shot her in the head and continued to rape her until he finished.”

Most of the most horrific documentation has not been widely released out of respect for the victims, and because this is part of ongoing investigations and likely additional criminal charges. But the terrorists’ confessions alone are abundant.

One terrorist was asked during his interrogation: “And why take the kids and babies?” He replied, “To rape them.” Another terrorist also confirmed that babies were abducted and raped.

These captured terrorists were not acting as “freelancers.” There’s documented evidence of Hamas commanders issuing specific orders to the terrorists who perpetrated the massacres not only to kill and kidnap as many Jews as possible but to rape and sexually mutilate Israeli women.

In any other circumstances, where women ranging from babies to the elderly had been the victim of such ferocious, repeated sexual attacks, the #MeToo masses would have swung into full action. Yet that’s not happening. UN Women which published numerous articles decrying the situation of women in Gaza, has ignored crimes against Israeli women. There has not been any recognition of Israeli women who were burned alive, beheaded, raped, had their breasts cut off, had their babies cut out of their stomachs, or been violently kidnapped.

The silence of those who purport to fight sexual violence on behalf of all women everywhere has been deafening. It’s especially problematic in light of November 25 being the United Nations-designated International Day for the Prevention of Violence against Women.

Rape and sexual assault as a tactic in the context of terrorism and war is a war crime. The Geneva Convention requires “women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honor, in particular against rape or any form of indecent assault.” The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court states that “rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy, or any other form of sexual violence” is a crime against humanity.

In numerous previous wars, crimes against women were a cornerstone of international criminal indictments and prosecution of men responsible for orchestrating and participating in rape. Based on the silence of the world about these heinous Hamas crimes against women and girls, it is unimaginable that any special prosecutor will be enlisted to protect Israeli and Jewish women. The International Criminal Court has historically been so biased against Israel, as happens in many rape cases, it’s not impossible to see the ICC even blaming the victims. Maybe for dressing too provocatively.

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Rita Panahi: Right moves show voters reject far-Left idealism

Argentina: Elections have consequences and after years of far-Left, Peronist rule Argentina is a country in crisis with the inflation rate hitting 143 per cent earlier this month. Argentina has gone from a wealthy nation with an enviable standard of living to one plunged into poverty and economic chaos.

This week, firebrand Javier Milei, a conservative, libertarian, vehemently anti-socialist, anti-woke anarcho-capitalist won the presidential election in a landslide.

The world’s media went into a predictable meltdown – similar to when Italy elected centre-Right Giorgia Meloni as prime minister last year – but Argentinians have finally woken up to the lunacy of watching close to half of the population living in poverty despite being blessed with abundant natural resources.

Milei is no milquetoast politician, he is an outsider who has been clear in his desire to tackle the bloated bureaucracy that has so poorly served the country. He understands the ideological battle in Argentina, and the broader West, is not limited to economic policy.

“You can’t give leftards an inch,” he said before the election. “If you give them an inch, they will use it to destroy you. You can’t negotiate with leftards … Since they can’t beat us with real arguments, they use the repressive apparatus of the state (to destroy us)”. And like Trump before him, despite being falsely labelled a fascist and Nazi, Milei is ardently pro-Israel and plans to move Argentina’s embassy to Jerusalem.

Time will tell if he delivers on the comprehensive reforms he has promised or whether the “apparatus of the state” frustrates his agenda.

Anti-EU, right-wing populist Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party has won the most seats in the Dutch general election. Picture: AFP
Anti-EU, right-wing populist Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party has won the most seats in the Dutch general election. Picture: AFP
The Netherlands: In the space of three days we’ve seen the triumph of the Argentinian Trump and the Dutch Trump. On Thursday anti-EU, right-wing populist Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party won the most seats in the Dutch general election.

Wilders, who wants a more restrictive immigration policy and an end to what he calls “the Islamisation” of the Netherlands is set to become the country’s first hard-Right prime minister.

“The people must get their nation back,” Wilders said.

He is likely to end the emissions war against Dutch farmers and walk away from many of the Netherlands’ destructive climate change policies.

From Italy to Sweden and Finland to stalwart Hungary and now the Netherlands, hard-line conservatives are winning elections across much of Europe. Meanwhile in the UK, the lily-livered, Malcolm Turnbull-esque Tories are trailing Labour in the polls.

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Anarcho-Capitalism And Dr. Javier Milei

First Giorgia Meloni was elected prime minister of Italy. This despite the objections and smears of the self-important and seemingly all-powerful US Deep State and its Mockingbird press, which in the run up to the Italian general election had painted her as the second coming of Benito Mussolini

Never mind that the politics of the corporatist Deep State are a lot closer to Mussolini’s fascist vision than those of Meloni, who in the “real world” pragmatically governs from center-right – to the great disappointment of many on both sides of the spectrum.

In the current US corporate media-approved version of the political spectrum, the go-to political character assassination terms “Trump-like”, “alt right”, “far right”, fascist, libertarian, neo-Nazi, and radical are all bundled up as synonyms, interchangeably and reflexively applied to anyone whose political beliefs are to the right of the modern embodiments of Marx and Engels’ version of socialism collectively referred to as “Woke” culture.

Each interchangeable term being repeatedly weaponized and launched in harmonized Qassam rocket barrages against non-sycophant independent thinkers, writers, politicians, scientists or physicians who refuse to contort their speech to fit the approved narratives, gender identifiers and pretzel logic of the Globalist oligarchy.

Unfortunately for those who maintain the thesaurus of approved “advocacy journalism” euphemisms, “anti-Semitic” has recently become both too inconvenient and too complicated, necessitating that it be struck from currently approved character assassination lexicon.

After decades of alternating corrupt mismanagement by the two entrenched traditional Argentine parties (Peronists vs Radicals), an academic economist of the Austrian school named Javier Milei has been elected President of Argentina, adding salt to the self-inflicted wounds of approved narrative defenders.

And once again, we are predictably being gifted with the usual stream of character assassination and hate speech from Deep State corporatist media lapdogs. My, how the Mockingbird does love to sing.

As with Meloni’s election, we have been treated to yet another peek at the Wizard behind the curtain playing his Mighty Wurlitzer. Labeling Javier Milei as a television personality, a common trope in both domestic and international corporate media, is a gross distortion of reality.

Why is Milei’s training in the Austrian School of economics relevant?

Because the economic logic of the Austrian School is based on strict adherence to the idea that social phenomena result exclusively from the motivations and actions of individuals. Austrian school theorists hold that economic theory should be exclusively derived from basic principles of human action.

In other words, growth in the “wealth of nations” is the consequence of actions of the individuals which create value and wealth. The Austrian School emphasizes the importance of free markets, individualism, and minimal government intervention.

It should come as no surprise that Ayn Rand highly recommended the economic writings of the Austrian school, particularly those of Ludwig von Mises. Is this starting to make sense now?

In Ayn Rand’s literary metaphor of Galt’s Gulch, the productive have fled and formed their own community, where free-market principles prevail and those who are enterprising succeed without the need for government regulation.

“We are not a state here, not a society of any kind – we’re just a voluntary association of men held together by nothing but every man’s self-interest.

I own the valley and I sell the land to the others, when they want it. Judge Narragansett is to act as our arbiter, in case of disagreements.

He hasn’t had to be called upon, as yet. They say that it’s hard for men to agree.

You’d be surprised how easy it is – when both parties hold as their moral absolute that neither exists for the sake of the other and that reason is their only means of trade.” (Rand, 2007, p. 748)

Dr. Milei is basically an intellectual academic who became a truth warrior in response to the damage he saw being done to his country by a parasitic administrative state. In other words, he is yet another intellectual critic who is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

He graduated with a degree in economics from the University of Belgrano, and continued on to obtain a masters degree and doctorate in economics from the Instituto de Desarrollo Economico y Social and Torcuato di Tella University.

For over twenty years he taught University-level courses in macroeconomics, economic growth, microeconomics, and mathematics for economists, and authored several books in economics and politics.

His signature presidential campaign rallying cry has been “Long live freedom, damn it!”, coupled with criticism of the “thieving and corrupt political class” of Argentina. Austrian school logic formulated as populism for the masses. Labeling Dr. Milei as Trump-like is clearly a gross oversimplification.

Don’t cry for Argentina, a once and future jewel and the second largest South American country, which is endowed with an embarrassment of natural resource wealth.

Which assets have been mismanaged for decades by a parasitic and dysfunctional government, resulting in widespread economic devastation. During the 19th century the country enjoyed an almost-unparalleled increase in prosperity, resulting in early 20th century Argentina becoming the seventh-wealthiest nation in the world.

In 1896, Argentina’s GDP per capita surpassed that of the United States, and the country was consistently in the global economic top ten until at least 1920.

Argentina remained among the fifteen richest countries until the meteoric mid-century rise to the Presidency of a previously unknown minor military leader named Juan Perón.

This political earthquake was followed by a cascade of bad management, political, social, and economic upheaval, USG meddling, and a notorious “dirty war” of the State against dissident citizens.

Now, after decades of high government spending and economic stagnation, despite abundant natural resources, Argentina has become one of the poorest countries in the world. A case study in how a prosperous modern economy can be strangled by an overbearing and corrupt administrative state bureaucracy. Sound familiar?

Dr. Javier Milei leads the “La Libertad Avanza” (Liberty Advances) coalition, and has vowed to “put an end to the parasitic and useless political caste that is destroying this country”.

His parties’ campaign has broken the mold of traditional Argentine politics by focusing heavily on social media, particularly TikTok and YouTube, where he developed a strong following among younger supporters. “Today, the reconstruction of Argentina begins” he confidently asserted, as historic election results poured in.

“Argentina’s situation is critical. The changes our country needs are drastic. There is no room for gradualism, no room for lukewarm measures.” “Argentina will return to the place in the world which it should never have lost.”

No wonder the US Deep State and it’s Mockingbird media are out to draw blood from this charismatic populist economist. One who dares to combine alternative social media presence with attacks on a parasitic and useless political caste.

The elite members of the Atlantic Council and the Council on Foreign Relations must be wetting themselves. Time to let slip the dogs of the censorship-industrial complex, and to watch the Wikipedia and Google ranking manipulation begin. Don’t forget the popcorn.

The truth is that they should be running for their stockpile of Depends. For Austrian school economist Milei self-identifies as an anarcho-capitalist. Not as a “Trump-like”, “alt right”, “far right”, fascist, libertarian, neo-Nazi radical.

As such, Milei happens to be at the leading edge of a growing contrarian intellectual movement which directly challenges the legitimacy of the administrative state.

One which has now grown to the point where it can no longer be dismissed as “a small minority opinion”, and has been catapulted onto the world stage by an independent Latin American nation with nothing to lose and everything to gain.

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How on earth can the Black Death prove Britain was racist in the 14th century? That's the incendiary claim from the Museum of London

More pseudo-science in the service of Leftist racial hate

In a sick attempt to legitimise their Final Solution, Nazi 'doctors' in the 1930s and 40s would measure human skulls to try to prove the biological difference between Jews and non-Jews.

There was no scientific foundation for this revolting behaviour. How strange then that, almost a century on, self-professed 'anti-racist' academics are using methods that appear so similar.

This week, bizarre new research by the Museum of London sparked mockery and confusion after it concluded that black women were the group worst affected by the Black Death in 14th-century London.

It stated that their apparently inflated chances of death from plague were the result of the 'devastating effects' of 'pre-modern structural racism'.

Historians were outraged. One prominent academic described the findings as 'preposterous', while Minister for Women and Equalities Kemi Badenoch went as far as writing an open letter to the museum accusing it of 'whipping up tensions around history and racism'.

The research — which has not yet been made public — took remains from 145 people buried at three known plague cemeteries in London.

Of these, 49 died from plague and 96 from 'other causes'. It drew its conclusions seemingly from finding that nine of the people who died of plague 'appeared' to be of African heritage, while 40 seemed to be white, making 18 per cent of plague victims black.

Among those who died from other causes, eight were deemed to be black and 88 white, making only eight per cent black.

It thus concluded there were significantly higher proportions of 'people of colour and those of Black African descent' in plague burials compared to regular graveyards, leading the researchers to conclude that black people were more likely to die of the plague.

So what is the truth? Is it really possible to deduce from a tiny sample that black people were more susceptible to the disease?

Let us look first at the immigrant population of 14th-century London. Dr Joseph Hefner, one of the authors of the report, claims in a convoluted metaphor: 'This research takes a deep dive into previous thinking about population diversity in medieval England.'

The obvious trouble here is that Hefner has not yet publicly elaborated on how 'diverse' England was back then.

Records contain the names of 65,000 immigrants resident in England between 1330 and 1550. In the year 1440, the names of 14,500 foreigners were recorded, among a general population of approximately two million.

The overwhelming majority of these immigrants, however, were simply from other parts of the British Isles, including Scotland, Ireland and the Channel Islands. Others hailed from European nations such as Portugal, Sweden, Greece and Iceland.

There were certainly people of African descent living here — often referred to in historic records under the catch-all terms of 'blackamoor' or 'Ethiopian'.

One black man, known as Bartholomew, lived in Nottingham in the 13th century, and is mentioned in the 'Pipe Roll' of 1259, a financial record kept by the Exchequer. But it's challenging, if not impossible, to pinpoint an exact number of black people living in London, as such records barely exist.

One author of the Museum of London research has even admitted: 'We have no primary written sources from people of colour and those of black African descent during the Great Pestilence of the 14th century.'

Indeed, one record for the tiny parish of St Botolph without Aldgate, located within the City of London, shows there were just 25 black people living there. They were servants, traders and free or enslaved people from Spanish warships.

But that record is for the 16th century, some 200 years after the Black Death, and there is little other evidence available.

Given such tiny numbers and insignificant records, the burden of proof that these researchers must show to justify what appears to be their theory of racism is extremely high. The truth is that the actual numbers of black people living in London during the 14th century was likely to be vanishingly small.

Yet, here we come to the second issue with the report — its deeply questionable methods of research. It's worth noting that the authors of the study stressed that their methods were significantly more advanced than controversial 'cranial measuring' methods — such as those employed by the Nazis on Jews.

Whatever the truth, claims about the ancestry of the plague victims were made by examining the skull features and bones that made up the faces and by comparing them to modern populations.

But as David Abulafia, Professor of Mediterranean History at the University of Cambridge, explains, 'all sorts of factors' impact bone development, including diet and puberty. Ethnic origin is thereby difficult to determine. What's more, previous research into plague victims has shown that comparing bone structures of our medieval forebears to our own is redundant, as modern faces are significantly different.

Dr Peter Rock, who led research into the way the shape of the human skull has changed over the centuries, has described the differences between modern and medieval features as 'striking'.

Only this year, there was embarrasment when the BBC had to remove a plaque in East Sussex that claimed an ancient skeleton known as 'Beachy Head Lady', dating from the Roman period, was the first known person of sub-Saharan origin in Britain. This conclusion was reached by scientists who — you guessed it — had measured her skull.

DNA analysis would soon establish that the woman was far more likely to be of Southern European origin, possibly Cyprus.

This did not stop the Museum of London researchers from using comparable methods, concluding that the apparently inflated death rate among black people during the plague was the result of 'devastating structural racism'.

Given that England in the medieval period was a feudal society, hardship was widespread, regardless of ethnic background. But the researchers have not indicated how they distinguished between the impact of poverty and nutrition on facial structures and the impact of race.

Richard Landes, an expert in medieval history and former professor of history at Boston University, described the Museum of London findings as 'theory over data' and 'a weaponised combination of post-colonial and critical race theory' developed in the States.

'Applying [these theories] to medieval Britain and using tiny, questionable numbers to somehow imply that the Brits in the 14th century were racist is silly,' he said.

Professor Abulafia echoed these sentiments, dismissing the claims as an attempt to 'rewrite the past', asserting that 'nowadays, the idea that we have to reinterpret the past in light of our concerns about equality, diversity and inclusion risks rewriting the past to fit in with contemporary ideologies'.

Rather than examining the facts, he warned, we're creating a case of 'my history versus your history'.

One absurd example of how contemporary comparisons were drawn by researchers came from Dr Rebecca Redfern, who worked on the report. 'As with the recent Covid-19 pandemic,' she told the BBC, 'social and economic environment played a significant role in people's health and this is most likely why we find more people of colour and those of black African descent in plague burials.'

This tenuous connection with the most recent pandemic incensed Kemi Badenoch.

She pointed out in her letter to the museum that government research into disparities in Covid infections among ethnic minority groups found that 'socio-economic factors, such as occupation, household composition and location were the real drivers behind higher rates of infection, and not racism'.

She added: 'In fact, the latest ONS data showed that females in the black African group had lower Covid rates than their white British counterparts — as did black African and black Caribbean men — during the Omicron period of the pandemic.'

Dr John Reeks, a lecturer in Early Modern History at Bristol University, also cautioned against making such direct links with present challenges. He said: 'The small sample size makes it very difficult to extract general lessons about things like social and economic status or health, or to draw comparisons to modern pandemics, such as Covid-19'.

The sad fact is, it seems Museum of London researchers have been desperately trying to push their narrative for some time, but until now had failed to find 'evidence' of discrimination. In 2019, when researching medieval remains recovered from plague burials, once again they took various skull measurements and compared these to modern-day human data to determine ethnicity.

However, they were then forced to admit that 'when [they] looked at how the skeletons were buried at East Smithfield, [they] found that none of the plague victims with Black African or mixed heritage had been maltreated as you might expect to see in a population group that might have suffered from discrimination.'

Perhaps this lack of evidence for racism in earlier research spurred the researchers to dig deeper in the hope of finding some.

Whatever the case, so excited was the BBC by the new findings that it shared details of the report on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Its post has been viewed nearly eight million times and received almost 6,000 comments — yet, predictably, the Corporation has so far failed to acknowledge the backlash and concern voiced about it by academics and the public.

The post, which includes a link to an article on the study, received a Community Note (context or clarifications provided by other X users) around 24 hours after it was first published. The note read: 'A previous study 'failed to identify any health disparities'. The current unpublished research found 9/49 of plague burials and 8/96 non-plague burials had African cranial measurements.This is not a statistically significant difference, even without cluster effects.'

The Community Note system only allows a note to be published on a post if people from varied political sides and opinions concur that the note adds something worthwhile to the post, or misses other serious context.

It is a sad testament to the state of academic research and to the BBC when ordinary Twitter users are better able to decipher the facts than our institutions.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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