#100% been “radicalized” to the left over the last 10 years when I used to be almost literally in the center

[aqueouserbium]

So, you're telling me that the U.S. political party that wants to marry, fuck, and impregnate minors also wants to disenfranchise older voters to further reduce their voice and power?

If the GOP wants to see a violent leftist, then I'm about to start going wild.

[whatdoesshedotothem]

Saturday 7 October 1837

8

1 ¾

A- had not long since had Cookson when I went to bed last night but was asleep  not quite in good sorts for I had just after dinner said something about her not bearing the di[s]appointment about the pony very well and was beginning to say if she had had more disappointments when she said she had had a great many and on my saying but I had not disappointed her it seemed that I had she was right on awaking this morning by on my gently wanting to know how I had disappointed her she got wrongish again and left the breakfast table before Mr. Gray and when she had only poured me out one cup of tea and tho’ all passed off tolerably when I saw her afterwards yet my own feeling was uncomfortable and I mused of getting rid of her – Mr. Hoylands’ man

SH:7/ML/E/20/0141

painted inside of hall ante cellar door, and I stood by – breakfast at 9 ¼ with Mr. Gray – A- there at 1st but soon went away – then had Braithwaite Mr. Husbands’ radical Northgate blacksmith – wanted his bill paying – not signed by Mr. Harper so could not be paid – Blythe afterwards told me, Mr. Harper declined signing it – too high – had Robert Schofield for A-‘s drain along the Crownest carriage road at 1/9 per rood = £8.1.10 ½ - £4 paid in a/c – A- poorly so paid Robert for her – had Mr. Firth senior and gave him check  in a/c of Northgate hotel £70 + £30 in a/c of Shibden hall – then had the man with Brays’ bill for lime and Booth with him, and gave the man a check for the amount = £38.3.0 and gave Booth check in a/c for £100 – then a little while with A- and wished good morning intending to go to the bank, and to ask Mr. Parker as to the law respecting returning horses as unsound – off about 12 ¼ - met Holt the engineer in the back road – returned with him – he had walked from Keighley sent him into the servants hall to dine with the servants and talked the engine matter over, with Mr. Gray who cannot yet understand the dead water business and how we shall avoid it at the new E.P. H- had brought his estimates of different considering engines

12 horse power  £300 without boiler or 360 with ditto      15 of horse power

14---------------------320 ----------------------400-------------------16

16----------------- 340--------------------------440--------------------20

Cliffes’ estimate £360 near the gas works Huddersfield  or

£430 and shafting and gearing

100  extra about £100.

200

730 and engine house £200

But C- would engage to put up a 10 horse engine with shafting and gearing and Engine house all complete for £500

Engine Holt said 4ft. strokes and 25 strokes per minute = 60ft. up and 60ft. down = 120 described by the pumps

mentioned 3 pumps instead of 2 (Mr. Gray thought they would work easier) yes! H- thought they would – mentioned the being bound in a hundred pounds penalty to have the engine working by Xmas or in 2 months from the time of receiving the other – he had said 4 months – would try – this to be settled afterwards – ended by giving him the following to answer ’40 yards lift – how many gallons delivered per minutes H- said if the engine was a portable one (a fixed engine or ‘land engine’ would cost double removing) he would move it for £10 – a land engine would cost double that moving – H- will consider the subject and give me an answer in gallons – said a 10 horse engine would burn along 8 loads of local per day

by 10 horse power

by 12 ditto ditto

by 14 ditto ditto

portable engine

6in. bore pumps

delivered by 2 and by 3 pumps’

Holt Engineer was hardly gone before Mr. Holt (collier) came with Mr. Cliffe of Huddersfield and another man, his engineer I should suppose – C- brought his estimate (vid. above) for a 14 horse power Engine too work two nineinch bore pumps and brought a plan of the engine to be warranted for six months they finding the fireman (I to pay him, I suppose) during the six months – C- explained what was comprised in the estate and I learnt the useful lesson that

the shafting and gearing would be extra about £100

and the engine house would be ditto about £200

quite against a portable engine – the difference would be in the expense of masonry – and they would move a land engine for as little as they would a portable engine – would move either for £20. quite against 3 pumps instead of 2 – would not work ½ so well – with a 14 horse

power engine two nineinch bore pumps was lift per minute 240 gallons

three six inch. ditto ditto ------------------------------------------ 120 ditto

two ditto ditto ditto ditto --------------------------------------------100 ditto

vid. Adcocks’ engineers pocket book of 1832.

their 14 horse power engine to have 2 nine in. bore pumps

pumps 10 strokes per minute

engine 25 or 30 strokes per minute

C- said the water wheel went too fast – there was ‘vibration’ makes 12 strokes per minute 10 strokes enough –

Holt owned that would not 240 gallons per minute to pump, nor even 100 gallons – they had been at the L.E.P. and owned that the present pumps were quite master of the present water and Holt owned that he did not expect to have as much water to pump as we have at present –

then why a 14 horse power engine? to pump the water so much faster that the engine may stand in the night – yes! but it cannot stand while the men are working as they will all night be till the Incline and all is completed and after that the engine will be moved to the Platform where 6 horse power is calculated to be enough – then why a 14 horse power?

Holt on taking him aside, owned that 10 horse power would be enough – sees no difficulty in carrying vent from Listerwick pit if 6ft. deep in water – and vent will be got to the Incline from the drift to let off the rag-water

C- will take the old pumps at 67. per cwt. the new will cost I think he said 15/. per cwt. the difference between a 14 and a 10 horse power engine = £124 with boiler and about £85 without boiler

10 horse engine boiler = £50 and 14 horse engine boiler = £70.

C- reckoned (including boiler) £31 per horse power .:. a ten horse Engine with boiler = £310

vid. last page Holt’s estimate 12 horse power with 15 horse power boiler = £360 or £30 per horse power

C- is a man of much ‘mouse-hole’ talk – would have not ‘after claps’  that is, I suppose fault found with his job when finished – he would not ‘make mouse holes’ – Mr. Gray told me at dinner he did not much like C- I like H- better –

C-‘s engineer owned that a 10 horse engine would work three six inch bore pumps and Holt collier owned that the present 2 were quite master of the present water, and he did not expect as much water in the new engine pit as in the present one!

While C- was here (after 2) Mr. Jubb called to see A- she had been gone ¼ hour? asked him to call again on Monday anytime before 1am he looked at Hotspurs’ eyes – believed he would go blind, but it might be a year or 2 before – doubted whether returnable because not at present unfit for his work – I proposed sending for Wheatly – yes! the best plan – he would know all about it – just before A- went Oddy came for wine for 1 of Nelsons’ men upon whom the old shed (coal shed) or something had fallen – supposed the man ½ dead – took him some of my fine old cognac brandy – It revived  him and he would soon be right again then it came out there was another man hurt, and sick and a candidate for brandy – A- sent him some of the household brandy for I saw there was time to get it – the 2 men were soon at their work again – Messrs. Holt and Cliff went away about 3pm then out about for a little while – George had been to Granny  hall to see the horses to be sold on Monday (near Brighouse) – all cart horses – had seen a brown 4 year old colt by shuttle of Mr. Macaulays’  in Georges’ opinion very likely to suit A- worth £30 to £35 but Mr. McA- might not ask that for him – then had Parkinson (and Booth had brought

SH:7/ML/E/20/0142

a hundred pounds from the bank) and had Booth to see all right paid to P- and had Blythe till 6pm – then out – at the turret and in front of the house till 6 50 – dressed – dinner at 7 50 (A- away to dinner tomorrow) and sat talking over the dead water and engines till 8 40 – coffee – read the paper partly aloud – strong address from Birmingham to Lord Melbourne against Peal’s bill of 1819, and our present ruinous monetary – vid. p. 4 of the paper and same p. shewing treasure-troves (coins found 18in. under the surface of the ground) to be the property not of the Lord of the manor, but of the crown – came upstairs at 9 40 and from then to 12 writing the whole of today – fine day F56 ½° at 9 40 pm – told Mr. Cliff that what I said was to go for nothing for that I should leave the business to Mr. Harper – that only one firm could have the job – I had nothing to do with estimates (unsuccessful) Mr. Harper would settle all that – looking over bills etc till 12 40

[tuesdayx]

So I thought it would be fun to do a song-by-song breakdown of our latest album Essential.

Essential started as some rough demos designated for a side project in late 2019, which then became our largest album to date in terms of song selection. Many of the themes deal with learning to cope with the changing world thanks to Covid, with a perspective of someone who had to keep working at an "essential" job with no option of self-quarantine. I was happy to continue working and being able to pay my bills over the past year, but there was always elements of stress, fear, and tension lingering over myself and everyone else in my position.

So here we go; starting from the top let's look at the Songs of Tuesday X's 6th album Essential.

1. Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams: the title was a reference to the 9/11 conspiracy memes, which as stated in the opening lines, "has nothing to do with this song." Written in January of 2020 before Covid had made any significant impact in the US, the song touches on many themes which happened to occur throughout the year, such as [another] Californian forest fire (Australia too), new diseases (Covid), a riot (the BLM movement over the summer, which I will state everything that movement has been fighting for is 100% justified and the United States is in desperate need of Police reform, as does our political system which has remained inherently racist to this day.), Civil War (and exaggeration for sure, but the civil unrest and political division in our country will soon split us apart further), more corporate giants(companies like Amazon profited more from this Pandemic than ever before and have helped further the gap between the American working class and the top 1%). Favorite line: "I won't get philosophical, I only wanted your attention."

2. The Only Difference Between You and Me is a Sense of Apathy and Your Brand New Nikes: This song is a blithing criticism of the American political system. Our two party system has left Americans with a choice between "the lesser of two evils" and allows politicians with no true interest in our needs to rise to power. The use of 3rd parties as an alternative is a overly simple compromise that would only just begin to alleviate the problems created in our political system. Both of our main parties are considered conservative parties to the rest of the world, and any progressive measures that would benefit society and reduce the effects of climate change are considered radical and preposterous by politicians with financial stakes in our crooked system where corporatations hold control and the people are treated as fuel for an otherwise worthless currency. Favorite line: "Listen to the radio, they played my favorite song. Now I'm bored and wanting more."

3. Blame it on the Elves: the title is a reference to an episode of the Podcast "Lore" by Aaron Menke (i can't recall which episode, but you should check it out anyway because it's great listen.) An instrumental interlude inspired by ragtime music of the 1920-30's, with an edge of course.

4. Class of Dropouts: This song was written when I was 16 during my sophomore year of high school and was originally featured on my now unavailable album "trees" before adopting the Tuesday X monicker. I brought it back 6 years later because I loved how raw and punk it was. The lyrics are dorky but I decided to leave them as is, it's a cool track for high school stoners to blare and let out their teen angst. Favorite line: "Walking in on my friends fucking."

5. Polaroids on My Bulletin Board: This is a song about growing up. As a 22 year old (now 23) who decided not to go to college straight out of high school, I felt isolated from my peers in a way. By going into the workfield right away I sometimes feel like I skipped a few years and missed out on a lot of opportunities. I regret not leaving my hometown sooner than I did and chasing my dreams of being a touring musician in a band. More often than not I reminisce of my youth playing shows and getting into trouble, as I now feel old and out of place in a scene I grew up in. Favorite line: "I know what it's like to be alive, I know what it's like to live a lie."

6. Labradoodle Underpass: Going back on the theme of growing up, this is about my recent experience with shows as an adult. When I was a teenager I felt ambitious and ready for anything, and I would drop literally everything to go to the nearest show. As an adult I feel introverted and constantly anxious about the world around me. I've missed out on a lot of great shows due to my own self doubt's and anxiety. Now that shows have been canceled for over a year I feel even more regret by not appreciating them more while I could. Favorite line: "23 years and a lingering fear that anything could happen, why am I here?"

7. Some Shit: This was me trying to be modest mouse lol jangly guitars and half talking/half singing vocals describing the world around me. I guess in a way it was an exercise in writing character description and setting, but otherwise it's just a chill track that almost feels aimless at parts. Favorite Line: "it's just some shit I learned from a friend. Just some shit I learned when I was trying to prepare."

8: Woe is the World: On the album this is a chorus snippet that barely a minute long (the full version is available as a bonus track on bandcamp, and it was actually a demo that turned out better than the final version.) I originally wrote this song when I was 15 with a different set of lyrics, but I came back to it while writing this album and re-wrote it to reflect my mental state and the world around me. Overall, just another melancholy track in a sea of melancholy songs. Favorite line: "you've never felt more alone than you do now, was everything worth it in the end?"

9. Then Why Was it Named Gideon?: the title is a reference to a line in Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour (my favorite series) and like the first track on this album doesn't have much to do with the song. "Gideon" is a simple love song, talking again about how growing up sucks but having the right person by your side can make all the shitty times worth it in the end. Favorite line: "it's time to move on, you're taking too long."

10. I am Here, I'm Looking at Her, and She is Beautiful: This song is entirely about the book "Perks of Being a Wallflower". That's it. Nothing else, let's move on. Favorite line: "Over Christmas I read them a poem about a brown paper bag and the boy who wrote it."

11. Try to Be a Filter, Not a Sponge: Like the previous song, this one is also mostly about "Perks of Being a Wallflower", but with elements of my own experience with toxic relationships. I like to think of it as the character Charlie's experience with Mary Elizabeth overall though. Favorite line: "She called my favorite book washed out trash, said I have no taste and I'm still too sad."

12. Lavender Spray Bottle: This instrumental dates back to 2017. I recorded the guitar part as a demo on my phone and forgot about it. Over time I forgot how to play the guitar part, so I used the demo as a basis and layered everything else on top of it. The title is a reference to a bottle of water with lavender essential oils mixed in that my ex used to fend away spiders in the house we lived in at the time.

13. Hindsight is 2020: I will admit, this is my favorite song on the whole album and was actually the last to be written and recorded. With a simple guitar part and layers of vocals, this song is a direct reflection of life during the peak of the pandemic. With curfews in place and rising case counts, I had to learn to cope with life at home during my late nights away from work. My partner was quarantined during this time and I reflected on the mental strain this put on her. Favorite line: "Don't go to work, you need the money but you're not happy when you're there. Sometimes life is so unfair."

14. I Don't Know How to Deal With Serious Emotions Without Turning Them into a Fucking Joke: the title came from a meme I found on my phone from high school. The song itself was about my own inability to handle serious emotions without coming off as sarcastic. In both the music and lyrics, the song starts as a simple confession before exploding into raw chaos. Favorite line: "it's so hard. I'm so scared, what have I become?"

15. Say Hello to My Little Friend: the last instrumental on this album. A short haunting tune that reflects the final two tracks. The title is probably a reference to Rambo or something, but I never watched it and I thought it fit the feeling of this song.

16. Minneapolis: What became one of the most emotional tracks on this song actually began as a joke. My partner was snap chatting a friend one night and they asked me to write them a song on the spot. So I improvised the first two verses and chorus of this song, referencing her going to school there at the time. I found I actually liked what I had written however, so I refined the track and changed it from a sassy country song into a melancholic lament of my experience in the twin cities and southern Minnesota. Favorite line: "I miss Camp Snoopy, and Paul Bunyon's log flume ride that went around the whole damn mall."

17. Before the Sunrise: the final song on the album is an intimate look at my relationship with my partner. Through past experiences i have become riddled with self doubt and always looking at improving myself as a person. With hopes that one day I'll be the person I'd like to be for mine and their sake, it's an optimistic tribute to my best friend. Favorite line: "the cycle ends until the sun rises again, you're my best friend."

Thank you all so much! Check out Essential and our other music on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple, and other places! I hope you all enjoyed this personal look at these songs that got me through the worst parts of 2020.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Doubting the Story of Exodus

By Teresa Watanabe Los Angeles Times religion writer    April 13, 2001

It’s one of the greatest stories ever told: A baby is found in a basket adrift in the Egyptian Nile and is adopted into the pharaoh’s household. He grows up as Moses, rediscovers his roots and leads his enslaved Israelite brethren to freedom after God sends down 10 plagues against Egypt and parts the Red Sea to allow them to escape. They wander for 40 years in the wilderness and, under the leadership of Joshua, conquer the land of Canaan to enter their promised land. For centuries, the biblical account of the Exodus has been revered as the founding story of the Jewish people, sacred scripture for three world religions and a universal symbol of freedom that has inspired liberation movements around the globe. But did the Exodus ever actually occur? On Passover last Sunday, Rabbi David Wolpe raised that provocative question before 2,200 faithful at Sinai Temple in Westwood. He minced no words. “The truth is that virtually every modern archeologist who has investigated the story of the Exodus, with very few exceptions, agrees that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all,” Wolpe told his congregants. Wolpe’s startling sermon may have seemed blasphemy to some. In fact, however, the rabbi was merely telling his flock what scholars have known for more than a decade. Slowly and often outside wide public purview, archeologists are radically reshaping modern understanding of the Bible. It was time for his people to know about it, Wolpe decided. After a century of excavations trying to prove the ancient accounts true, archeologists say there is no conclusive evidence that the Israelites were ever in Egypt, were ever enslaved, ever wandered in the Sinai wilderness for 40 years or ever conquered the land of Canaan under Joshua’s leadership. To the contrary, the prevailing view is that most of Joshua’s fabled military campaigns never occurred—archeologists have uncovered ash layers and other signs of destruction at the relevant time at only one of the many battlegrounds mentioned in the Bible. Today, the prevailing theory is that Israel probably emerged peacefully out of Canaan—modern-day Lebanon, southern Syria, Jordan and the West Bank of Israel—whose people are portrayed in the Bible as wicked idolators. Under this theory, the Canaanites who took on a new identity as Israelites were perhaps joined or led by a small group of Semites from Egypt—explaining a possible source of the Exodus story, scholars say. As they expanded their settlement, they may have begun to clash with neighbors, perhaps providing the historical nuggets for the conflicts recorded in Joshua and Judges. “Scholars have known these things for a long time, but we’ve broken the news very gently,” said William Dever, a professor of Near Eastern archeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona and one of America’s preeminent archeologists.

Dever’s view is emblematic of a fundamental shift in archeology. Three decades ago as a Christian seminary student, he wrote a paper defending the Exodus and got an A, but “no one would do that today,” he says. The old emphasis on trying to prove the Bible—often in excavations by amateur archeologists funded by religious groups—has given way to more objective professionals aiming to piece together the reality of ancient lifestyles. But the modern archeological consensus over the Exodus is just beginning to reach the public. In 1999, an Israeli archeologist, Ze’ev Herzog of Tel Aviv University, set off a furor in Israel by writing in a popular magazine that stories of the patriarchs were myths and that neither the Exodus nor Joshua’s conquests ever occurred. In the hottest controversy today, Herzog also argued that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, described as grand and glorious in the Bible, was at best a small tribal kingdom. In a new book this year, “The Bible Unearthed,” Israeli archeologist Israel Finklestein of Tel Aviv University and archeological journalist Neil Asher Silberman raised similar doubts and offered a new theory about the roots of the Exodus story. The authors argue that the story was written during the time of King Josia of Judah in the 7th century BC—600 years after the Exodus supposedly occurred in 1250 BC—as a political manifesto to unite Israelites against the rival Egyptian empire as both states sought to expand their territory. Dever argued that the Exodus story was produced for theological reasons: to give an origin and history to a people and distinguish them from others by claiming a divine destiny. Some scholars, of course, still maintain that the Exodus story is basically factual. Bryant Wood, director of the Associates for Biblical Research in Maryland, argued that the evidence falls into place if the story is dated back to 1450 BC. He said that indications of destruction around that time at Hazor, Jericho and a site he is excavating that he believes is the biblical city of Ai support accounts of Joshua’s conquests. He also cited the documented presence of “Asiatic” slaves in Egypt who could have been Israelites, and said they would not have left evidence of their wanderings because they were nomads with no material culture. But Wood said he can’t get his research published in serious archeological journals. “There’s a definite anti-Bible bias,” Wood said. The revisionist view, however, is not necessarily publicly popular. Herzog, Finklestein and others have been attacked for everything from faulty logic to pro-Palestinian political agendas that undermine Israel’s land claims. Dever, a former Protestant minister who converted to Judaism 12 years ago, says he gets “hissed and booed” when he speaks about the lack of evidence for the Exodus, and regularly receives letters and calls offering prayers or telling him he’s headed for hell.

At Sinai Temple, Sunday’s sermon—and a follow-up discussion at Monday’s service—provoked tremendous, and varied, response. Many praised Wolpe for his courage and vision. “It was the best sermon possible, because it is preparing the young generation to understand all the truth about religion,” said Eddia Mirharooni, a Beverly Hills fashion designer. A few said they were hurt—"I didn’t want to hear this,” one woman said—or even a bit angry. Others said the sermon did nothing to shake their faith that the Exodus story is true. “Science can always be proven wrong,” said Kalanit Benji, a UCLA undergraduate in psychobiology. Added Aman Massi, a 60-year-old Los Angeles businessman: “For sure it was true, 100%. If it were not true, how could we follow it for 3,300 years?” But most congregants, along with secular Jews and several rabbis interviewed, said that whether the Exodus is historically true or not is almost beside the point. The power of the sweeping epic lies in its profound and timeless message about freedom, they say. The story of liberation from bondage into a promised land has inspired the haunting spirituals of African American slaves, the emancipation and civil rights movements, Latin America’s liberation theology, peasant revolts in Germany, nationalist struggles in South Africa, the American Revolution, even Leninist politics, according to Michael Walzer in the book “Exodus and Revolution.” Many of Wolpe’s congregants said the story of the Exodus has been personally true for them even if the details are not factual: when they fled the Nazis during World War II, for instance, or, more recently, the Islamic revolution in Iran. Daniel Navid Rastein, an Encino medical professional, said he has always regarded the story as a metaphor for a greater truth: “We all have our own Egypts—we are prisoners of something, either alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, overeating. We have to use [the story] as a way to free ourselves from difficulty and make ourselves a better person.” Wolpe, Sinai Temple’s senior rabbi, said he decided to deliver the sermon to lead his congregation into a deeper understanding of their faith. On Sunday, he told his flock that questioning the Jewish people’s founding story could be justified for one reason alone: to honor the ancient rabbinical declaration that “You do not serve God if you do not seek truth.” “I think faith ought not rest on splitting seas,” Wolpe said in an interview. “For a Jew, it should rest on the wonder of God’s world, the marvel of the human soul and the miracle of this small people’s survival through the millennia.” Next year, the rabbi plans to teach a course on the Bible that he says will “pull no punches” in presenting the latest scholarship questioning the text’s historical basis. But he and others say that Judaism has also traditionally been more open to nonliteral interpretations of the text than, say, some conservative Christian traditions. “Among Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Jews, there is a much greater willingness to see the Torah as an extended metaphor in which truth comes through story and law,” said Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles. Among scholars, the case against the Exodus began crystallizing about 13 years ago. That’s when Finklestein, director of Tel Aviv University’s archeology institute, published the first English-language book detailing the results of intensive archeological surveys of what is believed to be the first Israelite settlements in the hilly regions of the West Bank. The surveys, conducted during the 1970s and 1980s while Israel possessed what are now Palestinian territories, documented a lack of evidence for Joshua’s conquests in the 13th century BC and the indistinguishable nature of pottery, architecture, literary conventions and other cultural details between the Canaanites and the new settlers. If there was no conquest, no evidence of a massive new settlement of an ethnically distinct people, scholars argue, then the case for a literal reading of Exodus all but collapses. The surveys’ final results were published three years ago. The settlement research marked the turning point in archeological consensus on the issue, Dever said. It added to previous research that showed that Egypt’s voluminous ancient records contained not one mention of Israelites in the country, although one 1210 BC inscription did mention them in Canaan. Kadesh Barnea in the east Sinai desert, where the Bible says the fleeing Israelites sojourned, was excavated twice in the 1950s and 1960s and produced no sign of settlement until three centuries after the Exodus was supposed to have occurred. The famous city of Jericho has been excavated several times and was found to have been abandoned during the 13th and 14th centuries BC. Moreover, specialists in the Hebrew Bible say that the Exodus story is riddled with internal contradictions stemming from the fact that it was spliced together from two or three texts written at different times. One passage in Exodus, for instance, says that the bodies of the pharaoh’s charioteers were found on the shore, while the next verse says they sank to the bottom of the sea. And some of the story’s features are mythic motifs found in other Near Eastern legends, said Ron Hendel, a professor of Hebrew Bible at UC Berkeley. Stories of babies found in baskets in the water by gods or royalty are common, he said, and half of the 10 plagues fall into a “formulaic genre of catastrophe” found in other Near Eastern texts. Carol Meyers, a professor specializing in biblical studies and archeology at Duke University, said the ancients never intended their texts to be read literally. “People who try to find scientific explanations for the splitting of the Red Sea are missing the boat in understanding how ancient literature often mixed mythic ideas with historical recollections,” she said. “That wasn’t considered lying or deceit; it was a way to get ideas across.” Virtually no scholar, for instance, accepts the biblical figure of 600,000 men fleeing Egypt, which would have meant there were a few million people, including women and children. The ancient desert at the time could not support so many nomads, scholars say, and the powerful Egyptian state kept tight security over the area, guarded by fortresses along the way. Even Orthodox Jewish scholar Lawrence Schiffman said “you’d have to be a bit crazy” to accept that figure. He believes that the account in Joshua of a swift military campaign is less accurate than the Judges account of a gradual takeover of Canaan. But Schiffman, chairman of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University, still maintains that a significant number of Israelite slaves fled Egypt for Canaan. “I’m not arguing that archeology proves the Exodus,” he said. “I’m arguing that archeology allows you, in ambiguity, to reach whatever conclusion you want to.” Wood argued that the 600,000 figure was mistranslated and the real number amounted to a more plausible 20,000. He also said the early Israelite settlements and their similarity to Canaanite culture could be explained as the result of pastoralists with no material culture moving into a settled farming life and absorbing their neighbors’ pottery styles and other cultural forms. The scholarly consensus seems to be that the story is a brilliant mix of myth, cultural memories and kernels of historical truth. Perhaps, muses Hendel, a small group of Semites who escaped from Egypt became the “intellectual vanguard of a new nation that called itself Israel,” stressing social justice and freedom. Whatever the facts of the story, those core values have endured and inspired the world for more than three millenniums—and that, many say, is the point. “What are the Egypts I need to free myself from? How does the story inspire me in some way to work for the freedom of all?” asked Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben of Kehillat Israel in Pacific Palisades. “These are the things that matter—not whether we built the pyramids.”

Teresa Watanabe Teresa Watanabe covers education for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining the Times in 1989, she has covered immigration, ethnic communities, religion, Pacific Rim business and served as Tokyo correspondent and bureau chief. She also covered Asia, national affairs and state government for the San Jose Mercury News and wrote editorials for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. A Seattle native, she graduated from USC in journalism and in East Asian languages and culture.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-apr-13-mn-50481-story.html

_____________________________

Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Joshua – there is no evidence any of them ever lived

The Divine Principle: Questions to consider about Old Testament figures

Unearthing the True Origins of the Bible 

– interview with Dr. Andrew Henry

[creepingsharia]

“Burned Alive”: Muslim Persecution of Christians, June 2020

This report fails to note the continued shut down of churches in the U.S. by tyrannical governors, and the bombing/arson of churches by leftists and anti-maskers.

07/27/2020 by Raymond Ibrahim

Cutfitri Handayani, Indonesia woman whose children were taken from her for converting to Christianity

The following are among the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of June 2020:

The Slaughter of Christians

Nigeria:  The jihad on Christians continued unabated in the West Africa nation. In what police described as a “brutal assault,” suspected Muslims raped and slaughtered Uwaila Vera Omozuwa, a 22-year-old Christian girl who was studying inside Redeemed Christian Church of God in Benin City. “We are all devastated by her death,” a spokesman of the church said, before explaining: “She [had] decided to do some private studies during the lockdown because the church was peaceful. She’s been taking the key from the parish pastor and returning it after her studies.”  The slain girl’s mother described what happened after she heard of the attack on the church:

I ran [to the church] but before I got there, they took her to a private hospital and when I saw my daughter, I cried. They raped her; the dress she was wearing that morning was white. The white had turned to red; all her body was full of blood….  My daughter was very kind and very intelligent and disciplined. We had just celebrated her admission to university.

In a separate incident, Muslim Fulani herdsmen entered a Christian owned mini-store and shot to death its owner and four other Christians. They did not steal anything from the store or the victims’ bodies.  Despite the presence of armed security, the terrorists were able to open fire for a full ten minutes, before absconding without a trace.  In response, Ibrahim Agu Iliya, a Christian man, assembled and led a team of unarmed civilians to apprehend the murderers.  He said,

These Muslim Fulani herdsmen have been attacking our communities because we are Christians.  Their desire is to take over our lands, force us to become Muslims, and if we decline, they kill us….The government’s inability to stop these Muslim Fulani herdsmen is because the government is being controlled by Fulani political leaders headed by Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president, who’s also a Fulani man.

Sunday Samuel—who witnessed and survived the attack, and whose 42-year-old slain sister Asabe Samuel was the store owner—agreed:

I strongly believe that some of these security personnel who are Muslims are conniving with these armed men to attack our people. These killings of Christians here are just too much of a pressure on us, and the sad reality is that our people have made representations to the government at both the state and federal levels and nothing has been done.

In another massacre on June 3—fresh on the heels of a May terror attack in the same region, where “more than 30 corpses of slain Christians still lay in nearby villages”—Muslim Fulani herdsmen shot or hacked to death with machetes nine Christians, most of them church-attending women and children; a three-year-old was seriously wounded.  Seven other Christians were kidnapped at gun point.

Burkina Faso:  “Christians were among those targeted and killed,” a June 5 report found, after “armed jihadists launched three separate attacks … that left at least 58 dead,” including children; dozens were also injured.  A “contact reported that it was clear from the testimony of a survivor that the militants were targeting Christians and humanitarians taking food to an internally displaced people camp, where many mainly-Christian villagers had taken refuge after fleeing prior jihadi violence.”  Any of their intended victims which the terrorists discovered were Muslim were spared.  A survivor recalled how the driver of his truck had cried “forgive, forgive, we are also followers of the prophet Muhammad!” This caused one of the terrorists to turn to the others and say, “They have the same religion with us,” which prompted an end to the attack on that vehicle. “Jihadi attacks on Christians in the African nation have been on the rise,” the report added:  “Last December, at least 14 people were killed when gunmen stormed a Protestant church service… Last April, gunmen killed a Protestant pastor and five other Christians who were leaving a worship service.”

Mali: During near simultaneous raids on three Christian majority villages, “suspected Islamic radicals killed at least 27 people, some of whom were burned alive,” a June 4 report said:

Mali has been in chaos since 2012, when al Qaeda-linked jihadists seized the northern two-thirds of the country. French forces intervened the following year to drive them back, but the militants have since regrouped and expanded their operations into neighbouring countries such as Burkina Faso and Niger.

A separate report elaborates:

Mali suffered its worst year of extremist violence in seven years in 2019. Jihadi militants carried out murderous attacks in the north and central area, laying waste to Christian villages and causing hundreds to flee with only the clothes on their backs. In one of the worst attacks, in June 2019, at least 100 men, women and children were slaughtered in Sobame Da, a mainly-Christian village in the Mopti region of central Mali.

Pakistan:  On June 4, Muslim neighbors attacked a Christian family for purchasing a home in what they claimed was a “Muslim neighborhood.”  Despite being operated on five times, the father, Nadeem Joseph—who along with his mother-in-law was shot—succumbed to his wounds and died in a hospital on June 29.  Prior to the attack, the Christian family’s Muslim neighbors had regularly harassed them—including by damaging their home, riding loud motorcycles in front of it, and calling them “chooras,” a derogatory term meaning “unclean Christians.”  Before he died, Joseph had made a video from his hospital bed explaining what happened: “I am feeling scared even in the hospital,” he said. “I fear [for] my life and my family[’s]….  A month ago, I purchased a house in TV Colony. I still have to make the final payments to the seller, but Salman Khan, a Muslim in the neighborhood, has started harassing my family.”  After asking him to leave the neighborhood, because it was “meant for Muslim residents only,” Khan exclaimed: “How dare a Christian family live amid Muslims?…  Christians and Jews are the opponents of Muslims.  Therefore, you cannot stay in this house.”   It was then that Khan opened fire on Joseph and his family; he was shot twice in the stomach, and his mother-in-law in the shoulder.

In a separate incident, police killed a man after he cited his Christian faith as reason not to falsify his testimony, which they were urging him to do.  On June 22, police broke into the home of Waqar Masih.  According to the Christian:

Arif Jutt, a policeman, along with his others illegally barged into my house.  They searched for my father [Younis] and threw him down from his bed. They beat my father with their guns and continuously kicked him in stomach. My father could not survive the torture and breathed his last immediately.

Police were trying to get Younas to recant his eyewitness testimony against a Muslim family accused of murder.  When beating him did not yield results, they tried to bribe him.   “I am a Christian and I will never cheat and get bribed,” Younis had responded.  “My father’s deep commitment to his faith made the policemen aggressive,” Waqar continued. “During the attack, one of the officers shouted, ‘We will teach him a lesson for insulting us!’”

Sudan:  On June 6 in Omdurman, a number of mosque leaders called on the faithful to rid their “Muslim area” of South Sudanese Christians, prompting Muslims to rise up against and beat—and in one instance, kill—Christians. According to the report, “The mosque leaders told those at the evening prayer that the South Sudanese were infidels, criminals and brewers of alcohol, which is forbidden in Islam.”  In one of the attacks to follow, “three young Muslim men with rods, sticks and rifles subsequently beat two Christians.”  According to a source, “The attack left one of the two Christians [an 18-year-old] in critical condition after sustaining injuries on his head.  The Muslims who consider the area Muslim territory were shouting, ‘They [South Sudanese Christians] must leave this place by force.’”  Later, “mobs of young Muslim men” set fire to 16 make-shift shelters of plastic sheeting that had sheltered South Sudanese Christians, causing them to flee; 10 were injured in the assault, including one woman. Speaking afterwards, she said, “Muslim men have long harassed Christian women…  This issue is disturbing us, and it is not acceptable—but what can we do, oh God?”

Then, on June 20, near the capital of Khartoum, “young Muslim men shouting the jihadist slogan ‘Allah Akbar [God is greater]’ stabbed a [35-year-old] Christian to death in a street assault on him…  Mariel Bang is survived by his wife and four children ranging in age from 1 to 4 years old.”  Four other Christians who were traveling with Bang—three of whom were women—were also beaten, one left in critical condition.  “We will burn this place,” one of the assailants was heard to say.

Mozambique: “It was fierce, cruel and lasted three days,” a nun said of a jihadi raid on the town of Macomia that began on May 28 and continued for three days. She and the other Teresian Carmelite Sisters of Saint Joseph, who have served Macomia for 16 years, had temporarily fled their school and boarding house.   They returned on June 4, “even though the danger had by no means receded,” said Sister Blanca Nubia Castaño, because they were hoping, “at the very least to be able to visit (our) employees and their families and help them and give them new courage”:

As a result of this barbarism, the town center was completely destroyed, the majority of the administrative infrastructure was damaged and the commercial and shopping center was reduced to ashes….  We still don’t know the number of civilian victims or those of the security forces. On June 3, people slowly began to return to their homes, some of which had been burned, while others had been looted…. Our mission was saved because it is situated in the hills, close to a military base.

According to the report, “Since the end of 2017, violence in the region has claimed the more than 1100 lives” and “caused the displacement of some 200,000 people.”

Attacks on Apostates

Indonesia:  On June 17, Cutfitri (or Zulfitri) Handayani, a woman who converted from Islam to Christianity, uploaded an impassioned video recording (with English subtitles) describing her ordeals at the hands of her family, while regularly asking, “Is it wrong to have another religion? Is Christianity wrong?”  Among other abuses, her Muslim family and that of her ex-husband took custody of her two young sons, and falsely claimed that she had been kidnapped.  During her pleading, which was interrupted by uncontrollable weeping, she begged her sister to “please leave [at least] one of my children, don’t take them both….  How can you, my own family, seize my own children—are you happy at my condition, suffering without my children?”  She said that her sister would eventually surrender the young children to their father, who, Handayani hinted, is engaged in illegal activities.  “I beg you sister, reveal the truth, don’t slander [innocent] people.” She revealed that she was told that, in order for her children to be returned to her, she would first have to “return to Islam,” to which she replied, “even if it means I be murdered, I will never return there, because my faith belongs here, in Christianity!”

Uganda:  Muslims beat a Muslim convert to Christianity and his wife for refusing to recant, and torched their home.  Marijan Olupot, formerly an Islamic sheikh, had secretly embraced Christianity on Christmas Day 2019.  Later in May, he confessed his conversion to his two wives.  One joined him, the other refused—and reported the matter to a local Muslim leader, who publicized the apostasy among the local Muslim population. Accordingly, on June 8, around 11:30 pm, Muslim villagers surrounded and torched the convert’s home.  He, his wife, and three children—10, 12, and 14—barely managed to escape from the rear exit door.  “Unfortunately as we were fleeing in the night, the attackers managed to get hold of my wife and beat her with sticks, injuring her left hand and back and the right leg, but thank God my Christian neighbors rescued her,” the fugitive apostate explained:

As we were fleeing, I heard one of the Muslims, named Hamuza, calling out that the house should be completely destroyed [at which point the house was set on fire]…. We need prayers at this trying moment, as the Muslims are out to kill me.  My other wife is scheming for my death.

In a separate but similar incident, Muslims “beat a Christian convert with sticks and burned his home for refusing to renounce Christ,” a June 22 report said.  According to the 27-year-old apostate from Islam, he refused to open his door after area Muslims came knocking at night.  So, “[t]hey destroyed the door and made entry, but I escaped through the rear door.  They followed me and got hold of me and began beating me up. Neighbors came when I screamed for help.”   After a neighbor took him to, and while he was being treated in a hospital, the same Muslims “returned to his house and set it on fire,” he said.

General Abuse of Christians

Pakistan:  A Christian man and his family were essentially enslaved and abused “for their Christian faith,” a human rights activist said in a June 24 report.  Earlier in 2015, Bashir Masih, a Christian man, had agreed to be Ali Babar Waraich’s servant for an advance sum equivalent to $2,397 USD.  After five years of labor, not only did his Muslim “master” refuse to release Bashir and his family from their indentured servitude, but it was revealed that he had been abusing them.  According to Dr. Riaz Aasi, who is closely acquainted with this case,

During Waraich’s custody, Bashir and his wife were beaten and abused for their Christian faith.  However, Bashir [was] never hesitant to proclaim and practice his faith….  As a result of continuous years of abuse, Bashir’s legs have twisted, and he can’t walk without support.  Bashir has never been provided with medical aid for his legs….  Christian victims of bounded labor are voiceless.  They are extremely pressurized and threatened in the villages by landlords, resulting in the loss of their courage to speak against injustice. They prefer to suffer rather than raising their voices for justice. Therefore, victims in most cases keep silent to protect their families. Bashir went through the same experience.

In a separate but similar incident, a Christian teenager was sexually assaulted by his Muslim employer in early June; the boy’s father and brother were also beaten for trying to seek justice for him.  Saim Masih, 13, began working for Muhammad Tauseef to pay off his father’s loan from the Muslim (equivalent to $2,128 USD).  After a year’s worth of work, Saim’s father argued that the debt had been paid and that his son’s salary would need to be raised if Muhammad wanted the youth to continue working for him.  The Muslim “got irritated and rejected the demand,” a human rights activist explained.  He beat the father while calling him “a ‘choora,’ a derogatory term used to denote Pakistani Christians as untouchable.”  He then “began beating and sexually assaulting” the 13-year-old boy, to quote his older brother, Saqar.   However, when Saqar went to police to register a complaint against Muhammad, “police refused the application and abused Saqar,” who “was then pressurized to withdraw the application, but he refused.”  As a result, on June 5, the older brother went “missing for about 30 hours. When he was found, his body was covered with multiple injuries.” Masked men also threatened the father and other family members to drop the complaint.  “To date,” concludes the June 19 report, “local police have done little to protect Saim or his family. This is likely due to the religious bias faced by Christians in Pakistan.”

Finally, in a June 14 report, Hannah Chowdhry, a Pakistani human rights activist, offered more details concerning a church attack that occurred on May 9, when a Muslim mob trying “to take advantage “of the coronavirus lockdown … attempted to break into the church in a bid to illegally wrestle the property from its rightful owners.”  She elaborated:

There were two mafia gang members who brought five or six other men with them with guns and pistols….  They broke down the outer wall of the church. There was a cemented cross as well that they broke down and threw on the floor and they tried to break into the church….   Although the people are terrified about what has happened, they have started up services in the church again …. This happens on a regular basis and we just have to make people aware of what is happening around the world…. It’s devastating that this is still happening even during the pandemic.

Another rights activist added that authorities should but rarely take action against such land-grabbers; this “creates fear in local congregations and takes away their freedom to practice their faith.”

Iraq:  On June 2, “suspicious fires” consumed over 240 acres of mostly Christian land in the Nineveh district; they severely damaged “the livelihoods of those who are attempting to rebuild their lives following displacement from the Islamic State (ISIS).”  According to the report,

This is not the first instance of crop fires being set in Nineveh. Many residents are quick to blame either ISIS or the PMF (Popular Mobilization Forces), an Iranian-backed militia which controls the territory. The PMF is also a strong supporter of the Shabak, an ethnic [but Muslim] minority who also suffered persecution under ISIS but emerged from the genocide in a position of strength. There are often tensions between the Shabak and Christians, especially as the Shabak have moved into Christian areas in a sometimes forceful manner.

Separately, according to a report, Turkish airstrikes ostensibly targeting members of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) “impacted [several] villages” which are “home to Christian communities”: “Hundreds of Christian families who fled Mosul and the Nineveh Plains during the 2014 ISIS attacks now live in Zakho, one of the areas targeted by Turkey’s raids. Many of these Christians have been displaced once again.”

Syria: According to a June 17 report, an Aramean Christian woman “became terrified” when she discovered that two Kurdish militiamen had dug a tunnel that ended up in the backyard of her house.  “Aramean Christians across Northeast Syria have been complaining more than once about this military strategy that is being employed by the PYD/YPG [People’s Kurdish Protection Unit’s] Kurds.”  The brothers of the woman, “a respected deaconess in one of the local churches in Qamishli,” met with local Kurdish leaders in an effort to “get them to close the hole and find another tunnel exit.”

After the request was approved, one of the Kurdish representatives in Qamishli frightened the family, telling them: “These are our houses. In ten years, none of you will be left here and then your homes will be ours anyway.” This latest case has shocked the vulnerable Aramean woman who is afraid to stay at home alone and can’t sleep peacefully. The Arameans, who in the last years have been living under the Kurdish yoke in occupied Northeast Syria, have frequently been victims of the YPG’s scare tactics, intimidations, threats, oppression and (lethal) violence.

Commenting on these Kurdish tunnels that often presage the confiscation of Christian properties, a representative of the World Council of Arameans, said,

Everyone knows about it, but nobody knows whether or not a tunnel has been dug under their own house….  YPG Kurds target the native Arameans and their ancestral lands so that the latter will be turned into war zones from which the defenseless Christians will inevitably want to flee.

Raymond Ibrahim, author most recently of Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

About this Series

The persecution of Christians in the Islamic world has become endemic.  Accordingly, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed in 2011 to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that occur or are reported each month. It serves two purposes:

1)          To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, persecution of Christians.

2)          To show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Islamic Sharia.

Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols; apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytism laws that criminalize and sometimes punish with death those who “offend” Islam; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced conversions to Islam;  theft and plunder in lieu of jizya (financial tribute expected from non-Muslims); overall expectations for Christians to behave like cowed dhimmis, or second-class, “tolerated” citizens; and simple violence and murder. Sometimes it is a combination thereof.

Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and locales—from Morocco in the West, to Indonesia in the East—it should be clear that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.

Previous Reports :

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

Radical Trans Activism

Alright so que the children on tumblr calling me a transphobe and saying there is no such thing as a radical activist. 

Let me be clear in this opening statement. I do not hate or dislike trans people in any capacity. My issue is with and only with trans activists specifically of the radical type. I’ll explain.

Right now there is a subsect of Trans activists that have this idea that everyone can be trans. They use ideas like “If a boy likes girly things, they are a girl.” or “If they are a girl and the like boyish things they are actually a boy”. It doesn’t stop there though. They also will not question a person who believes they are trans at all. All they will do is just “yes yes yes, so brave so bold so great” with zero question at all. Even going so far as to say you don’t need body dysphoria at all to be trans. And their worst offense if that wasn’t the worst, is the fact they coined the term “egg”. As in “You are not actually gay or lesbian. You are actually strait. You are just a trans person waiting to “hatch”. *Also of note, this reinforces that stereotypes for clothing, toys, and products ARE gendered and need to stay separate. Meaning YOU are the ones trying to bring back gender stereotypes and keep them in place. Which is also harmful to people who are gender non conforming or a-sexual*

This type of stuff is all pretty disgusting because you will see activists lie and say this does not happen. But it does. And it happens often. There are even blog sites and discord servers dedicated to “hatching eggs”. How messed up a person do you have to be to tell a person in their late teens early 20′s they they are not gay. What are you saying? A man can love another man unless he’s “actually a woman”. The level of sheer bigotry coming off that is insane. The phrase “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” exists specifically for people like this. Neo Progressives that think progress at all costs, even lives, is the right path. It’s not. And I’ll tell you why. For the past 6 years, LGBT acceptance has been going down. Not because people are becoming bigger bigots. Not even. The reason is that being “hyper gay and angry” became a literal personality. Gay people have always wanted to just be accepted. More over, they just wanted to love who they love and that’s it. It was never “accept that I’m flamboyantly gay and hate everything that’s not gay” never once was that what “Pride” was about. Never once was that what was wanted. 

Now however, we have LGBT acceptance seeing an all time low. Worse than that, pride parades have become fetish parades. You know what that has caused? Even the idea of acceptance in traditionalist countries is now in the tank. Because they one thing LGBT people wanted all up until the early 00′s was not to be considered degenerate just because they love someone from the same sex. “Oh well those cultures are bigoted and they need to get with the times” I hear you say like to morons I know you are. Missing the bigger picture. Obama was anti gay marriage. And the only reason he was for it later on was for the votes for a second term. Meaning you need those countries to accept LGBT people in general as a large group. Instead however you have turned being gay into this “fuck cis people they are all stupid, dirty, unclean, and i’m better in every way because gay people never do anything wrong. Assault? Rape? Battery? Crime in general? Cheating? Nah never.” NEWS FLASH! Gay people are human too. Just like trans people. Just like cis/strait people. But you’ve all turned being gay into a personality type. It’s not. Being flamboyant is a personality trait. And not all gay people are flamboyant. Not all lesbians are butch. 

So how does this all play in to radical trans activism? Glad you *probably didn’t* ask. Just like with the above situation causing LGBT people in other countries to be seen as more and more degenerate as the US is almost always he main stage for that type stuff, you are all tying to erode things that are not fake. I mean people try to say male and female are not even real. Well funny you should say that because if they are not trans is also fake. Why change your body if what you feel is fake anyways. Your body isn’t male. Male isn’t real. See the logic there. Of course you don’t. You are probably either some tween on this hell site trying to act like you know better, or some 20 something that thinks they know everything. Me? I’ve got 8-10 years of psychological studies under my belt. Although, on to the fun bits. You need body dysphoria to be trans; Otherwise you are not trans. The difference is that trans people can’t help how they feel. You with your need to special saying you are trans is insulting as fuck to actual trans people too. Oh and the “yes men” I mentioned earlier? They are responsible for what is now 100′s of detransitions in the UK. Mostly teens-early 20′s. And a lot of them were affirmed left and right. Told that for sure they were trans. THEY WERE FUCKING INDOCTRINATED. And many will never be able to fully detransition either. Meaning their lives are fucked in some way or another. Why? Oh well lets list it off. 

Excess body hair up to and including facial and body hair

Hair loss

The growth of breasts on a biological boy

Weight loss or gain because of the transition hormones

Lower bone density

Less functional immune system

Stunted Height

Possible issues in brain development. 

Possible medical issues based on the hormones received that would not normally affect your biological sex. 

Dysphoria caused by either top or bottom surgery *which is not always reversible* (Which can also lead to depression and suicide feeling you made a rushed decision and made a huge mistake*

And that’s the short list. But the majority of people that were affected by this affirmation transitioning were mostly women. And a number of them were actually lesbians who saw being trans as a way to follow tradition of the male/female dynamic. And a large number were on the autism spectrum. 

So let me put this in a way you will understand. Radical Trans activists, much like the gay “children” today, are going to not only tank acceptance. They are likely going to make it harder to transition in the future. Because when the case number of detransitions reaches the 1000′s and Neo Progressives can’t hide them anymore, legislation will start to pass to protect people from all of this. Even if they are actually trans. And a recent pediatric study showed that over 90% of children with body dysphoria get over it by the time they are teens. The reason you all need to accept this is because you’d willingly ruin the lives of thousands of people just so one trans person can be happy. Which is pretty fucked up. To put that in prospective, that the same as you killing the many in the trolley problem. That’s what happens when you base your life decisions on feelings rather than logic and real life. 

Long story short? You are doing more harm than good. You will be the reason that a generation down the road, actual trans people can’t get transitions. And it will not just be a problem of the middle east or traditionalist countries. This will be western countries like Canada, The US, UK, Australia etc. Both socially and legally there will be more and more road blocks. And you might think it won’t happen but it will. Just like PC language police and woke culture has resulted in racism getting worse over the last few years. 

Take heed to what I’m saying. You can call me a bigot or whatever you like (it doesn’t make you right), but fact is as well intentioned as you might be, you need to understand that what you are doing, and saying, will bring far more harm than good. Also to anyone that sees this that might be trans, take your time, talk to people that don’t just affirm you. Honestly? Seek therapy with a therapist that will talk to you about the pros AND cons of transitioning. Do not listen to people on here, do not just listen to yes men. You need to know for sure before you transition. Just read above as to what can happen to you. You might thing it’s no big deal, but it is. Sure find yourself. But just because you don’t like your body doesn’t mean you have dysphoria. Legit go to and stick with therapy if you think you do have it though. Because fact is transitioning is not a magic fix all. No matter who tells you it is. And be sure to avoid and shut down radical activists. if you don’t, they will be the cause of trans people getting hurt in the future. Be it by legislation or by society or both. Love yourself before you change yourself and beware of people trying to turn you into something that you are not. Especially you younger people. You might think you and your friends know everything but I promise they don’t. And they often won’t be there after you make mistakes. 

[eurosong]

Good evening, folks, and welcome to today’s ESC statistical map! Like my language diversity maps, it’s about another thing that I’ve tracked for a long time and which I’m deeply invested in: the concept of “democracy” at Eurovision, that is to say, the idea of letting the people of each country decide who represents them. Not a radical idea, but one that has become increasingly marginalised over recent years - despite uproar like in 2017 about juries cancelling out televote winners in a third of all NFs - as broadcasters aim to capture the elusive jury vote by bringing in jurors into their own national finals.

A truth I find to be self-evident over my many years of ESC analysis is that the contest is cyclical. In recent years, there has been an upward trend in national finals - the UK resurrecting You decide, France bringing Destination Eurovision and the rebirth of the likes of Dora and Beovizija to name but a few - that certainly not uncoïncidentally occured after 5/6 winners between 2012 and 2017 had come through NFs. With the last two winners being an internal selection and an internally chosen song for a talent show winner, what goes up must come down. Internal selections comprised 45% of songs in 2016, 40% in ‘17, 33% in ‘18, 32% in 19 - but now have risen back up to 42%. Almost half of countries where the public has no say in their representative, including all the big 5 bar Italy - a curious move, especially for France, whose DE was a fan favourite and hugely diverse and qualitative.

What of the 56% that have some public say? Well, a vanishingly small proportion of them were determined exclusively by the public. In 2017,  In 2017, 21% of national finals were 100% televote, a figure that I noted at the time to be a drop compared to many previous years. Three years later, and only one NF (4% of all NFs) was 100% public vote: the slapdash internet duel to decide Senhit’s song for San Marino. Instead, we have to navigate through a curious array of different voting systems!

The most common way to choose a winner in NFs is to split the vote 50/50 between the jury and televote. I listed this as the “Swedish model” in previous democracy maps; this time around, I repurposed that label to specifically refer to NFs where, like in Melodifestivalen, the juries’ points don’t get simplified down but instead the televote is awarded the same number of points distributed proportionally (albeit, in Sweden, with the added complication of age groups). That way of doing a 50/50 split - shared only by Finland and Australia - is much rarer than what I’ll term the “Portuguese model” because of what happened in Festival da canção this year: Filipe Sambado has a commanding 21 pt lead over his nearest rival in the jury, but this was reduced to a mere two point difference with the jury winner getting 12 and the runner up 10 regardless of how far apart they were. In the televote, B��rbara Tinoco won, but despite the strong possibility of having received a lot more televotes than the 2nd, the difference was again simplified to 12 and 10. So the second place in both votes won, whereas in a proportional system, either the jury or the televote winner might have instead. This system is used by almost 40% of all countries with NFs and its appeal to broadcasters lies in how it ensures that a song that the jury tanked can never win even with a massive televote and vice versa, meaning that the eventual winner is a ‘compromise’ - well-enough liked by the public, respectable enough amongst jurors. That is also its downside: it doesn’t convert a song hugely popular with the public into a commanding number of points so is arguably less democratic than the other 50:50 model. I will never forget how folk were worried about whether The Roop would win despite the fact they were clear televote favourites.

In the other half of countries, the selection system is a true pot pourri. Three Nordic countries cling to the slightly more democratic model of 50:50 until 100% public superfinal, which allows juries to perform “quality control” but lays the ultimate choice entirely in the public’s hands. This number would have been 4, but Norway had to rely on a back-up jury to decide its gold final qualifiers, which meant that it instead added to the countries keeping the curious Hungarian system alive despite the Magyar disappearance - Slovenia and Latvia had a jury determine the finalists but then left the final say entirely in the public’s hands, with Latvia curiously adding an international internet vote to the more traditional televote - Samanta Tina ended up winning, but in the Latvia-only televote, another song had topped the list.

In the remainder of countries, we had a semi-public choice of artist with an entirely internal selection of song (Malta), 100% jury, so essentially a televised internal selection (Albania), a combination of jury, televote and demoscopic votes (Italy), the old Maltese model where the televote has a small minority (33%) of the vote (Albania) and a new Israeli model where the public had some, but not the majority, say in choosing their song.

I personally fear a continuing decline in NFs over the past two years. An NF is a world of diversity in and of itself, and when one dies, with it go a number of artists we may never learn of and songs we may never begin to love. Any format of NF is better than a few bigwigs picking a song for me - especially since so many internal selections are anything but risky, aiming for a mediocre placement in the final rather than win or bust - but the best kind are the ones where the public’s voice is heard and their money not wasted.

[whatdoesshedotothem]

Saturday 31 October 1835

7 40

11 20

A- returned last night - rainy night and rainy morning F47 ½°  at 9 am at which hour breakfast - A- and I off in the carriage to Leeds at  9 50 and arrived at 11 55 at Wilkinson’s shop by Whitehall - left A’s pendule at Wilkinson’s  - drove to Mr Barber’s, the schoolmaster, - sent for and spoke to him in Heaton’s bookseller’s shop and he followed us to the hotel - He reads well - was ready at multiplying £19.19s.6d. into itself writes a very good hand and good English and is sufficiently qualified to undertake the Knowle top school - aetatis 43 or 40 and his wife 3 years older than himself - a tall, thin, graver-looking man - has 7 children the youngest 7 years old - he said he had been unfortunate and looked as if what he said was true - he wanted a certainty of from £80 to £100 a year -  lives at n°7 Alfred terrace, ¾ mile from the Royal hotel - thought he had better see the house and school-rooms - his expense would be paid - if more was thought of him, A- would write and ask him to come over - said we would go and see his wife - A- had a mutton chop - we were off in a fly at 1 ½ and reached Alfred Terrace in 10 minutes - nobody but children at home - a nice, neat-looking neighbour, the wife of a retired Leeds shoemaker, and mother by her 1st husband marry [at] of Dewsbury, to Mrs Spence the druggist’s wife of York - came and asked us to her house - said Mrs Barber was gone to the hotel to speak to us, and she would send for her - we sat waiting an hour till 2 40 before Mrs Barber came back - she is a Methodist and her husband a liberal - but she would go to church and she say nothing about politics - would not vote against us - would not vote at all - has lost £800 by a suit in chancery that was his wife’s - she a Miss Saunderson of Aberfold - her father kept a boarding school there - and she has £32 per annum that is secured

 SH:7/ML/E/18/0122

 - she herself some years ago a ladies’ boarding school at Preston (in Lancashire I suppose) but her mind distracted when she was having young children of her own, and she gave up the school - looks respectable but worn down by poverty - qualified for undertaking all A- requires - the neighbour spoke highly in her favour and also in Mr Barber’s favour - had her about ¼ hour - ‘the lounge’ a sort of Bazaar next to the White Horse Inn the only place for sparthings - none to be found there - none in Leeds - so could not get the candlestick Mrs A. Walker wanted - back at the hotel in 2 hours -  A-‘s impression in favour of Mr and Mrs Barber? I am sorry he is a radical? and she a Methodist and that no references were given to a Mr Hare surgeon in Leeds, and Mr Barber has only been in Leeds 2 years - West is the best - me judice - mais c’est égal - A- n’aime pas sa femme -  A- must decide - home in 2 ½ hours at 6 ½ pm dressed - dinner at 7 ¼ - ¼ hour with my father and Marian - coffee - ½ asleep on the sofa upstairs - read the newspaper - wrote the whole of today till 10 - Rainy morning and day till after one - afterwards fair - Note tonight from the Halifax philosophical society announcing the monthly  meeting on Monday - F48° now at 10 pm then 20 minutes with my aunt - better today from having a good night last night.

[thethinkingman]

Do you dislike President Trump Because....

FOR ANYONE NOT SUPPORTING TRUMP:

Do you dislike that he made cruelty to animals a FELONY?

Do you dislike he gave billions to stop the opioid crisis?

He destroyed ISIS, killed how many terrorists without going to war and oh wait, everyone said we’d be in World War III by now with North Korea?

Do you dislike him because we are the Largest producer of oil?

Do you dislike him because he wanted to build a wall to keep criminals and drugs from coming in?

Do you dislike him because he just slashed the price for medications and some cases 50%, which is driving big Pharma nuts?

Do you dislike that he signed a law ending the gag-order on pharmacists that prevented them from sharing money-saving options on prescriptions?

Do you dislike that he signed the Save Our Seas Act which funds 10 million per year to clean tons of plastic and garbage from the ocean?

Do you dislike that he signed a bill for airports to provide breast-feeding stations for nursing moms?

Do you dislike that he signed the biggest wilderness protection and conservation bill in a decade designating 375,000 acres as protected land?

Do you dislike that he loves America and puts Americans first?

Do you dislike that he made a gay man the ambassador of Germany and then asked him to clean up national security and unclassified as much of it as possible for transparency?

Do you dislike that he’s kept almost every campaign promise (with ZERO support from Congress who work against him daily!) plus 100 more promises because Washington was much more broken than he thought?

Do you dislike like that he works for free, donating his salary to different charities?

Do you dislike that he’s done more for the black community than every other President?

Do you dislike that he listened to senator Scott and passed Invest In Opportunity Zones to help minorities?

Do you dislike that he passed prison reform, which gives people a second chance and has made quite a huge difference for the black communities?

Do you dislike that he passed VA reforms to benefit the very people who served our country and defend our freedom?

Do you dislike that he’s winning and signing new trade deals that benefit Americans, instead of costing us more?

Do you dislike that he loves his flag and his country?

Do you dislike that he calls out and has shown all of us that they ARE Fake News, and they twist the truth to control and mislead the people and he is trying to protect us from this?

Do you dislike that he’s ending wars?

Do you dislike that he has made a commitment to end child-trafficking and crimes against humanity and has made 1000’s of arrests already?

Do you dislike he’s brought home over 40 Americans held captive, the last one from Iran?

Do you dislike that he’s proven he was right about the Deep State and he was spied on?

Do you dislike that he was a Billionaire before he ran for President and now is worth at least 1/3 less... because he loves America THAT MUCH?

Do you dislike that he’s making the world pay their fair share for the UN for protection?

Do you dislike that he respects cops, veterans, ICE & First Responders?

Do you dislike that he does not sell out America to other countries, like the leaders prior to him have done?

Could it be possible that the ones who SELL OUT America to line their pockets OWN THE MEDIA AND HOLLYWOOD and hate him so much for trying to expose them and hate him for putting the PEOPLE first that they manipulate our thinking and control the information we get to steer US to hate him?

These people benefit when you hate the man trying to stop them... so they won’t have to give up the wealth they have gotten and continue to get thru mass taxation and control. Wouldn’t you at least want to RESEARCH this possibility?

Could 65,000 Americans already know the TRUTH... that he has done more for blacks in the last 20 years than our last 5 Presidents put together and is actually NOT a racist but you believe he is because it has been drilled into your head and yet you’ve never researched his accomplishments?

You can start by watching those daily briefings he did during the lockdown (all on line) and then watching the coverage on the Main Stream Media and how they twisted it.

Do you actually believe the President encouraged America to inject bleach?

Did you research the effects of UV LIGHT which is used to disinfect SCHOOL BUSES and medical equipment and is also being used as a treatment for bacteria and respiratory infections by injecting it into humans (search Healight but don’t use Google... they are part of the Deep State and manipulate what we see! And they sell our info, which is why you see merchandise pop up the day after you searched for something! Use Duckduckgo)!!! They want you to believe he is stupid, because if you figure out that he isn’t, they will lose billions of dollars and all their control.

I know... it is hard to let go of what you believed to be true for most of your life. You are not alone. But your BLIND hatred of this man who is literally trying to save us from the far Left, radical Socialists is going to be detrimental to our country if you continue to support their hatred.

They are teaching hatred and separation... even in families!

You are not allowed to agree with “part” of their agenda and think for yourself; you must repeat their FULL belief system or name-calling and insults ensue... this is the definition of a cult! All or nothing!

They despise LAW AND ORDER. Just look around you. He supports it, so we are safe and can live in a civilized society. He stands for unity and America first.

You will be amazed at how much more peace comes into your life when you turn off the FAKE NEWS and turn on the true America, where we focus on what unites us, not what divides us. The media hates him from day one. Impeachment was on the table before he was elected.

They said Impeach the mother Fuc#^*r.... but his rhetoric is bad?

He’s never given a chance yet he’s done more in 4 years than any president with zero help from the media, or democrats.

How dare he care so much about America. Love it or leave it. Do your research... I have!

All of these are verifiable things Trump has done! And it’s verifiable that the media twists his words!

AND THE LIST GOES ON...

#Trump #President Trump #media #elections #election2020 #hate #medialies #media #news #news media #fake news #MAGA

[cetospandiglia]

Ywsterday (sunday february 14th of 2021) there was an election in Catalonia and I feel like talking about it so I'm gonna explain it briefly (a brief explanation, a long post mayne 10 or 15 min read) for my American & international readers out there. (This will have a clear bias, I'm no journalist. That said, I don't belong to any of the parties discussed in this post.)

First, a bit of context for those completely unaware. Catalonia is a historical region of Spain with its own language (which has been marginalized and banned to various degrees during the last 3 centuries, which stirs controbersy to this day) and a separatist movement that has had moments of relevance and irrelevance along the last ~100 years.

Independence as a social movement has had its ups and downs, 25 years ago it wasn't very relevant but in the 2010s it started gainign traction ending in an unsuccessful unilateral declaration of independence in 2017 which resulted in the arrest or exile of most of the government (President Puigdemont is exiled in Waterloo, vice president Junqueras has spent years in prison now).

With that out of the way, to talk about the players in this election first we have to understand how does one get to be president of Catalunya.

Catalunya, as well as Spain as a whole and many other european countries and regions, doesn't have Presidential elections, they only vote for the parliament members: voters choose a party and once the Parliament is made up they vote for the president. In this particular case, the Parliament has 135 seats so if some party gets 68 seats they have an absolute majority and can govern by themselves in most cases (some things require 2/3 majority but to elect a president and to pass most laws it's just half+1).

The thing is, this election the winner didn't get anywhere near 68 seats, they got 33 so whoever ends up governing needs to pact. It's time to know the players:

To start, we're going to talk about the parties in the previous, independentist government:

THE INDEPENEDENTIST FORCES:

Junts per Catalunya (together for Catalunya) is a big, centrist coalition of organisations with left leaning and right leaning sectors. The left sees them as right wing and they're the only catalanist right wingers, so the rest of the right fucking hate their guts. They were in power for decades (under the name Convergència i Unió, the history of this party is convoluted) since the end of the fascist regime and did a lot of work to reestablish the place and institutions of the Catalan language (Franco was infamously against any languages in Spain that weren't Spanish). This is the party that the exiled president Puigdemont belongs to. Of the main 2 parties in power this was the bigger one until last night.

Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC, Republican Left of Catalunya, republican as in opposed to monarchy): Left wing, cataln nationalist run-of-the-mill european social democrats. They defend the catalan culture and language as JxC has done, they were in power as a part of the "tri partit" (three parties) with other left wing forces from 2003 to 2010 to avoid more years of JxC government. Then, independentist movement started to gain traction, the more conservative faction of JxC left and they (JxC & ERC) formed a government together with the complicit votes of CUP.

CUP (Candidatura d'Unitat Popular, Candidature of Popular Unity) is a far-left, socialist, quasi-anarchist organisation that used to have a few members of local councils but didn't even bother going to Catalan elections, then independence happened and have had a few MPs ever since. Not enough to pass any radical laws, but enough so that the JxC and ERC coalition needs their votes to govern: they vetoed Artur Mas, an infamously corrupt president and actually got what they wanted.

~

ELS COMUNS (the commons?) is neither independentist or unionist, they're a left wing party (less radical than CUP but also with less relevance and votes in the general Catalan panorama, although they have the Mayor of Barcelona). They try to pass progressive left leaning legislature and even though some of them want independence, they don't believe it's a pressing issue for the catalan people. Their Spanish Counterparts, Podemos, are in power as the 2nd, more "radical", left leaning force of a center-left coalition in the Spanish governent with PSOE.

~

THE UNIONISTS:

PSC (Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya, Socialists' Party of Catalunya) is the Catalun branch of PSOE (socialists etc etc español), a center-left party that is currently in the Spanish government. PSC used to have catalanist sectors and when they were in power in Catalunya (as the 1st force of the Tripartit) they passed laws to defend catalan etc (to this day since the death of Franco no regional government of Catalonia has been against defending Catalan). Those positions towards the language and culture probably remain but now they're explicitly anti independence. They're not super left but if you don't count Comuns as unionists, PSC is the farthest left you can go in the unionist side.

PP: the strong Spanish right wing party since the 90s, where all the francoists ended up after the transition in the 70s, they held the Spanish governent '96-2004 and 2011-2018 and do not want to defend catalan. They won't usually say it out right though, they'll say things like "spanish speakers are oppresed in Catalunya", and that's the same for all anti-independentists. In Catalonia, though, they have very bad results.

Ciudadanos (citizens) is basically a split from PP that formed in 2006 in Catalonia to be explicitly anti-catalanist. For a hot second it seemed like they could be the new strong party of the Spanish right but now the party is crumbling and in Catalunya specifically they've gone from 1st force (they still didn't govern) with 36 seats to second to last with only 6. Rumours say that the party will dissolve before the next election.

Vox is a far right party that likes Donald Trump and fucking hates independence and Catalunya, they're a new party and rn the strongest of the spanish right wing forces in Catalunya in 4th place in the parliament.

Now you know all the players I can explain THE RESULTS:

(the big hemicircle is yesterday's results, the little one is last election's)

PSC has had a slight edge over ERC but they haven't been able to reflect that in more seats. Cs has crumbled from first place to 8th. Vox has appeared out of nowhere, but the rise in unionist seats (26) between PSC and Vox is still smaller than the 30 seats Cs has lost.

In the independentist side, ERC has gained 1 seat, JxC lost 2 and CUP gained 5 for a total gain of 4 seats for the independentists.

Even thoug an explicitly far right force has entered the parliament, this election shows a trend towards left wing forces: unionists towards PSC rather than Cs, and independentist towards ERC and CUP.

Even though the JxC+ERC coalition is a mess, all analysts and journalists agree that ERC's Pere Aragonès has the best chance to become the next President. All evidence points to the fact that CUP will have an easier time voting for a leftist President from ERC than a centrist/right winger from JxC, and some rumours say that ERC could be looking for Comuns' support. They don't want independence but maybe they can be brought in to strengthen the left wing stance of this new government.

The opinions of analysts and the rumours I mention come from last night's TV3 election special.

Election results:

If you've read the whole thing thank you and I hope this has been useful 😊❤️

[the-bejeesus]

Another One Piece Birthday that Somehow Reveals a Lot of Lore

      So about a year ago I discussed how the Vivre Card Databooks use snow men’s birthdays to prove that a pre-timeskip arc occurred specifically at a certain date, allowing us to estimate when every pre-timeskip arc took place. However, because of the margin of error in the estimations, along with the vagueness of a “two year timeskip”, it was too difficult to pinpoint dates on any post-timeskip arcs.

      Well, not anymore. You see, for awhile now we’ve known that the Straw Hat Pirates’ birthday is June 13th, but we had no clue what that meant. Well, somebody translated the page for me, and it represents the day the Straw Hats reunited on Sabaody, making the Return to Sabaody arc take place June 13th, 1524. So now all we have to is take note of the passage of time to further estimate arc dates.

Our first immediate hurdle is the Straw Hats all losing consciousness. However, it can be assumed that they didn’t pass out for an entire day.

Despite Sanji passing out from blood loss, there’s no indication that a day has passed.

Despite Fishman Island having its own underwater light source, it appears that night and day still pass. Perhaps the tree is using light from the sun, so it can’t light up the water unless the sun’s out. Anyways, I’m going to count this as one day.

Arriving on Punk Hazard, there’s a huge storm, so it’s hard to tell if it’s day or night. But I would assume it’s the morning of June 14.

Again, there’s some evil knockout gas trying to get in our way, but because not much time seems to pass in Luffy’s group between Nami’s group passing out and waking up, I wouldn’t assume much time has passed. Probably not even an hour.

But that’s not all, Luffy and co are defeated by Caesar and once again left unconscious. However, Zoro’s team is left in tact, so it’s shown that not much time passes before they wake up.

Now you would think that the aftermath at least was a long time, right? After all, Mocha took some powerful drugs and needed recovery. But actually it would appear Law’s treatment was radically successful. The Straw Hats are having a huge banquet at the beginning of the aftermath, and people are still eating just when they’re about to leave.

When they set out, that’s when they finally go to sleep, making Punk Hazard June 14th and just a little bit of June 15th.

While you may have heard the phrase “Dressrosa is 100 chapters but somehow it all covers the course of one day”, and while that’s partially true, it’s ignoring the aftermath of the Dressrosa arc.

For one, night is shown to pass, but on top of that, it’s noted that the Straw Hats have stayed for 3 days since Doffy’s defeat, making it June 18th.

Zou begins on the same day,

Only for a week’s worth of sailing to pass later, making it June 25th.

“Now hold on, a week is vague. It could be exactly 7 days, or it could be 10, or 5!” True, but the dates add up when Robin says “can you tell us everything about the last 11 days from the start?” If it’s June 25th, the last 11 days have been June 15th through June 25th.

As Nami and co go on describing what’s been happening, night passes. This is the only time they can meet Master Cat Viper, as he and Duke Dogstorm have alternating shifts, making it June 26th.

Despite treating Zunesha’s injuries, no passage of time is really indicated, so when Luffy’s group leaves, it can be assumed to still be June 26th.

Now this is where it gets confusing. The Straw Hats note it’ll take multiple days to get to Whole Cake Island.

Then we’re told that it’s still just the first day since they’ve set off, though.

Then it cuts to Sanji and it’s several days later. What do you mean several?

Then when it comes back to the Straw Hats, it’s a few days later. A few??? Is that compounded by Sanji’s “several days later” or seperate?

So now we’re in Totto Land. I would assume it’s once again a week later, making it July 3rd.

Pudding sets up a reindez-vous for tomorrow, on July 4.

We do indeed end up seeing it takes a whole day to actually get to Whole Cake Island.

After the battle with Sanji, night falls. If you’re thinking “hey it’s just a storm” this is proven wrong by Big Mom going to sleep with Brook. The next day is July 5th.

After the wedding, the pursuit of the Straw Hats is shown to go all night long. making it July 6th.

It’s extremely hard to pinpoint when the Reverie happened because the Straw Hats are barely in it, so I’m just gonna say it’s July 6th.

Going into Wano there’s already some problems. For one, there’s no mention of how long it took to get there. And on top of that, they get shipwrecked and pass out. I think it’s safe to assume that it at least took a day to get there, considering how far behind their trail Big Mom ends up being. So it’d be July 7.

Then Kin’emon goes on to say that the Night of the Fire Festival, when they will raid Onigashima, is in exactly two weeks. So the Night of the Fire Festival would be July 21.

And sure enough those two weeks pass exactly as planned.

That is essentially the most info I could find. It’s rather unfortunate that guesswork had to be laid out once we got into Whole Cake Island, but I feel like it’s still pretty accurate.

So, combining what we’ve just estimated with the list of pre-timeskip dates I determined in a previous post, here’s the unofficial complete One Piece story arc timeline:

Pre-timeskip:

East Blue Saga -January 25th, 1522 — February 17th, 1522-

Romance Dawn -January 25th, 1522 — January 26th, 1522-

Orange Town -January 29th, 1522-

Syrup Village -January 30th, 1522 — February 2nd, 1522-

Baratie -February 5th, 1522 — February 10th, 1522-

Arlong Park -February 12th, 1522 — February 15th, 1522-

Loguetown -February 17th, 1522-

Alabasta Saga -February 18th, 1522 — March 8th, 1522-

Reverse Mountain -February 18th, 1522-

Whiskey Peak -February 18th, 1522-

Little Garden -February 21st, 1522-

Drum Island -February 24th, 1522-

Alabasta -March 1st, 1522 — March 8th, 1522-

Sky Island Saga -March 11th, 1522 — March 14th, 1522-

Jaya -March 11th, 1522-

Skypiea -March 12th, 1522 — March 14th, 1522-

Water 7 Saga -March 15th, 1522 — March 30th, 1522-

Long Ring Long Land -March 15th, 1522-

Water 7 -March 22nd, 1522 — March 23rd, 1522-

Enies Lobby -March 24th, 1522-

Post-Enies Lobby -March 27th, 1522 — March 30th, 1522-

Thriller Bark Saga -April 2nd, 1522 — April 5th, 1522-

Thriller Bark -April 2nd, 1522 — April 5th, 1522-

Summit War Saga -April 9th, 1522 — May 5th, 1522-

Sabaody Archipelago -April 9th, 1522-

Amazon Lily -April 11th, 1522-

Impel Down -April 15th, 1522 — April 16th, 1522-

Marineford -April 17th, 1522-

Post-War -May 1st, 1522 — May 5th, 1522-

Post-timeskip:

Fishman Island Saga -June 13th, 1524 — June 14th, 1524-

Return to Sabaody -June 13th, 1524-

Fishman Island -June 13th, 1524 — June 14th, 1524-

Dressrosa Saga -June 14th, 1524 — June 18th, 1524-

Punk Hazard -June 14th, 1524 — June 15th, 1524-

Dressrosa -June 15th, 1524 — June 18th, 1524-

Yonko Saga -June 18th, 1524 — July 21st, 1524 (continuing)-

Zou -June 18th, 1524 — June 26th, 1524-

Whole Cake Island -June 26th, 1524 — July 6th, 1524-

Reverie -July 6th, 1524-

Wano-kuni -July 6th, 1524 — July 21st, 1524 (continuing)-

What I find most interesting about these dates is that, a year ago I concluded that the pre-timeskip ended on May 5th, so if the Straw Hats were to wait exactly two years to get back together, June 13th, is not actually that far off. If it was like April or September that Return to Sabaody was supposed to happen, I’d be in a bit of trouble. I also find it interesting that everything from Return to Sabaody to most of Dressrosa was three days, and then over a month has gone by since then, almost entirely from traveling, sleeping, and waiting for the Fire Festival to come around.

[nothingnessreality]

last vote

This may be your last chance to vote in a real election.

Here is something that most people don’t know. According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), about 1.5% of all males are psychopaths and about 4% are sociopaths. A psychopath is defined as a person who is born with zero empathy, and thus sees all people as just objects to be used. Sociopaths on the other hand also have no empathy but are made that way growing up, and so do mostly petty crimes.

So if you combine the two we have 6 million Americans who have no empathy, but that gets worse because this is on a scale from the lowest empathy to the highest and there are another 10 million Americans who have little to no empathy or caring for others outside the people they know. They are antisociety.

This 16% of Americans, believe it or not, is fairly normal, but in the last 40 years the number of Americans who only care about their family and friends has grown to well over 100 million Americans, a third of America!!! They are now the Radical Right, Trump cult. If this doesn’t shock you then maybe you have become one of the 100 million who are antisociety.

Why is that, and why have we become so divided? The answer is simple; we have been divided on purpose.

One Australian study found that 1 in 5, 20%, of corporate CEOs and lawyers are psychopaths! Other studies now show that when most people become wealthy they lose their caring for anyone outside their circle, So today 75% of the wealthy have no feeling or caring for anyone outside their circle. Thus they are antisociety in general, and many, 20% to 50%, are psychopaths. In other words this group of rich people don’t care if you live or die, and most would kill you if you stood between them and their money.

There are around 600 billionaires in the US, and if just 20% are psychopaths or sociopaths, which is easily true, we are talking about at least 100+ billionaires who would love to take control of the US, and do not care who they hurt doing it. With their billions they could easily create a secret group which would have all the money they would ever need to pay for subversion, propaganda, or anything else they needed to divide us. Guess what, that is just what is happening.

A large group of sociopathic billionaires, which the New York Times thinks may be around 400 members, has started a secret group who’s major goal is to take as much control of America as they can, and turn it into an oligarchy, where only they can vote. Because they have kept what they are doing a secret, what is going on has only started to come to light in the last ten years.

We now know that the head of this subversive organization is Charles

Koch, CEO of Koch industries. He has an annual income of 110 billion, according to Forbes. His Father was cofounder of the John Birch Society, in the 1950s, and before starting the John Birch Society he wrote a 30 page anti communism booklet, which contained a way that the US could be taken over. It was poorly thought out, but his two sons are now using the writings of Vladimir Lenin to try and do it for real. The John Birch Society is the most radical right wing organizations in American history, and was condemned by the Republican Party at the time, but all of their radical ideology has now become main steam Republican ideology, through the uses of propaganda and subversion.

At minimum 75%+ of Republicans are now as radical right wing as they can get. They hate society, government, blacks, gays, Unions etc., and think they should have total free will, to hell with the other 320 million Americans.

Some of the first members of the Koch organization were Richard Mellon Scaife, heir to the Mellon Banking and Gulf Oil; Harry and Lynde Bradley, defense contracts; John M. Olin, chemical and munitions Companies; Coors brewing family, and the DeVos family of Amway marketing.

I call them the Oligarchy because that is what they are trying to do, become the Oligarchy over the US, where only the wealthy can vote, and the 4 keys to subversion they use are Fear, Intimidation, Distraction, and Division. It has worked. We now are more divided than ever, in the whole of our history.

The Oligarchy budgeted 800 million to buy the president in the 2016 campaign, and every republican presidential candidate, except Donald Trump, had signed on and pledged allegiance to the oligarchy. Yes, literally signed a contract. Donald Trump used his own money to get elected by creating a cult following, just like Adolf Hitler did in Germany, and Benito Mussolini did in Italy. The oligarchy denounced Trump during the campaign, but once he got elected they made a deal with him to use members of the oligarchy in his cabinet.

Trump keeps saying he will be president for 12 more years. Where is he getting that? The president is term limited to 8 years and he has already had 4. I speculate that it may be part of the deal. Once they take control of the US he gets to have 12 more years.

So, for the past 4 years the Koch oligarchy has been setting up the US from the inside of the government to take control of it. Including packing the courts with their Judges, all trained at the Federalists Society, which is an oligarchy sponsored foundation for Lawyers.

Between 2015 to 2017 Mitch McConnell refused to seat any of Obama’s 100+ federal judges, including Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court. Then when Trump was elected McConnell quickly filled all the seats with Federalist Society Judges.

Keep in mind that it was the Radical Right Bolshevik party that took over Russia in the 1920s, and made Vladimir Lenin their leader. It was the Radical Right fascist party that took over Italy in 1922, and made Benito Mussolini their leader. It was the Radical Right Nazi party that took over Germany in 1933, and made Adolf Hitler their leader, it was the Radical Right Red Guard

that took over China in 1966, and made Mao Zedong their leader, and the list goes on. It is always the Radical Right that takes over a country and turn the country into an authoritarian government, and that is now happening in the US. It looks like it is our turn; the US now has a Radical Right that would rival any of these.

The best-documented book on the Koch’s and their syndicate, and how secretive they are, comes from an investigative reporter of the New York Times, Jane Mayer. Her book is called “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.”

Another book that shows, beyond any doubt, what the Koch syndicate is trying to do comes from Nancy MacLean, a social historian, who stumbled across a large stash of secret documents left behind after the death of a member of the Koch syndicate. Her book, after going though these secret files, is called “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America.”

If you want to know more about how Trump created a cult following read: “The Cult of Trump” by Steven Hassa. Dr. Hassa is a psychologist who studies cults. He got started because when he was a young man in college he got sucked into a Cult, and has first hand knowledge of how they work.

Too many Americans live in the illusion that it can’t happen here, but it absolutely can and is. If you refuse to believe that this is true you had better open your eyes, and do some research. Before you say this is hype you should at least read Nancy MacLean’s book. I can guarantee you that if they get control of the US your civil rights will be gone, and the first things they will do will be to ban all guns and get rid of anyone who is a threat to the government.

Today the Koch syndicate is well over 100 think tanks whose main goal is to take controls of America. Most of these foundations are charitable foundations on the surface, but in the basement is a large staff that does nothing but look for ways to subvert, radicalize, and divide American Democracy.

The more divided we become, the more control they have. They can use the Electoral College to their advantage, and that is how Trump got elected; this is why we are so divided, it is on purpose. The Oligarchy now literally owns just about every Republican in the House and Senate, who does just as they are told. Their only allegiance is to the Republican Party, and it is 100% controlled by the oligarchy.

If Trump gets reelected, and that is very likely because of the oligarchies use of voter suppression, and use of the Electoral College, it will be all over, the end of American Democracy. Because by the end of his next term they will have massed so much control working from inside the government that there will be no turning back, and I’m betting if this happens the US will split up because the blue states won’t cooperate with an authoritarian government, and the world’s longest standing constitution will melt away.

The reason Trump was able to con so many people is because they where set up before hand by the propaganda coming from the Koch syndicate, which, as I said, is a spin off of the John Birch Society, which had a surge of

membership in 2010. So, you better wake up as to what is really going on or the US will become an oligarchy where only the rich can vote.

Don’t think for a second that the Democratic Party leadership doesn’t know about this. A number of them have endorsements in the front of Nancy MacLean’s book, “Democracy in Chains.” But if they talk about it in public it will be turned into a political football. Joe Biden has said, “If Trump gets elected it may be the end of America as we know it.” So, this may be your last chance to vote in a real election.

[creepingsharia]

“Kidnapped, Raped, Humiliated, and Forced to Convert to Islam”: Muslim Persecution of Christians, December 2019

Martyred on Christmas Day: Islamic State in Nigeria videotaped the slaughter of 11 Christians

by Raymond Ibrahim

The following are some of the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of December, 2019; they are categorized by theme:

The Slaughter of Christians

Nigeria:  The Islamic State in West Africa Province released a video of the execution of 11 Christian aid workers on the day after Christmas.  The brief video shows one Christian being shot followed by 10 others being beheaded by masked jihadis standing behind the tied hostages. “This message is to the Christians in the world,” a man’s voice narrates over the footage. “Those who you see in front of us are Christians, and we will shed their blood as revenge for the two dignified sheikhs, the caliph of the Muslims, and the spokesman for the Islamic State [who were killed by the U.S.]”  Before being slaughtered, the captives reportedly made pleas, including to Nigeria president Muhammadu Buhari, to save them.  Buhari, who has himself been accused of turning a blind eye to the persecution of Christians in Nigeria—and even abetting it—condemned the executions, adding that “these barbaric killers don’t represent Islam.”

A separate report cited by Fox News found that more than 6,000 Christians have been slaughtered by Islamic terrorists since 2015—a thousand of them in just 2019.  According to the report,

They attack rural villages, force villagers off their lands and settle in their place — a strategy that is epitomized by the phrase: “Your land or your blood.” In every village, the message from local people is the same: “Please, please help us! The Fulani are coming. We are not safe in our own homes.”

The nomadic Fulani herdsmen “seek to replace diversity and difference with an Islamist ideology which is imposed with violence on those who refuse to comply,” Baroness Caroline Cox commented. “It is—according to the Nigerian House of Representatives—genocide.  Something has to change—urgently.  For the longer we tolerate these massacres, the more we embolden the perpetrators. We give them a ‘green light’ to carry on killing.”

Kenya: After armed Muslim militants stopped and stormed a passenger bus near the Somali border on December 6, they proceeded to separate the 56 passengers into Muslim and Christian groups—reportedly by asking them to recite the Islamic shahada (creed); 11 of those who would or could not due to their Christian faith, were paraded out of the bus. “They were told to lie on the ground face down and were shot at close range,” one report said. “The militants then ordered the bus to leave with the rest of the passengers.” The attackers apparently also relied on whether a passenger appeared to be local (meaning likely Muslim) or not (meaning likely Christian).  “The majority of the population in this region is Muslim,” Rev. Nicholas Mutua, a Catholic priest, explained. “The non-locals had come from other parts of the country and they would definitely have been Christians.” “One of the Muslim men gave me Somali attire, and when the separation was being done I went to the side of the Muslims, and immediately we were told to get [back] into the bus,” a survivor recalled. “As the locals were getting back into the bus, the non-locals who were left behind were fired upon with gunshots.”   Separating Muslims from Christians before slaughtering the latter has long been the modus operandi of Islamic terror groups.  In the Garissa University College massacre of 2015, when militants slaughtered nearly 150 people, a survivor explained how the Islamic terrorists burst into a Christian service, seized worshippers, and then “proceeded to the hostels, shooting anybody they came across except their fellows, the Muslims.”  Another witness said the gunmen were opening doors and inquiring if the people inside were Muslims or Christians: “If you were a Christian you were shot on the spot.  With each blast of the gun I thought I was going to die.”

Burkina Faso:  On Sunday, December 1, Islamic terrorists stormed a church during service and opened fire; 14 worshippers were killed and many injured.  The gunmen fled on motorbikes following the massacre.  Discussing this incident, a separate report offers statistics:

Burkina Faso’s Christian minority used to live in relative peace. Now the violence and persecution of Christians has quadrupled in the last two years and is expected to increase by [another] 60%…  Radical Islamic groups such as the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara and other local insurgents have pushed nearly half a million people from their homes.  Sunday’s attack comes after a Catholic priest was executed in February, five Christians were killed during an attack on a Church service in April, and 13 Christians were killed in a Church arson attack and procession in May. Most recently was on October 26 when unknown gunmen stormed a Christian village and reportedly killed 12 and abducted several others.

Cameroon:  In just the first half of December, Islamic militants “began an onslaught of attacks on Cameroonian Christians that left 7 dead and 21 captive to the terrorist group.”  According to the report:

On December 1, gunmen opened fire at a funeral in Mayo Sava district, in the far north of Cameroon. Four were killed and three were wounded. In another attack on the same day, militants ransacked homes and looted them of food and basic necessities. The next night, three more people were murdered and another was injured in another looting of Zangola village. A few days later on December 5, militants methodically searched for children and young adults and kidnapped them. In the middle of the night they came and stole nine girls and twelve boys from their homes, ranging from 12 to 21 years old. Four of the captives managed to escape. While en-route to their base, the Boko Haram militants attacked Tahert village where one girl was injured and a motorbike was stolen. Nearly 300 people have been killed in Cameroon in 2019 by Islamic militants, with 80% being civilians.

Pakistan: Naveed Masih, a 24-year-old Christian man was found hanging from a tree, dead, because he had earlier prevented Muslim men from harassing and pressuring a married Christian mother to convert to Islam.   Due to this, “a mob of 20 individuals attacked Naveed’s house,” the report says. “The mob beat Naveed and damaged many of the family’s belongings. The mob further threatened Naveed to not interfere with their efforts to convert the Christian woman.”  Two months later, he was lured to a supposed parley.  When he arrived at the meeting point, “he was brutally tortured and he was hanged from a tree as a result of protecting a Christian woman’s faith,” his father, Herbert, recalled:   “Carrying your son’s dead body in your arms is heartbreaking and unbearable.  It almost ended my life when I had to shoulder my son’s funeral….  My family is still under threats to withdraw the case against the culprits.  However, I have nothing to lose now.”

In a separate but similar incident in Pakistan, after sexually abusing him, two Muslim men killed Daud (“David”) Masih, a Christian teenager, on December 14 in a factory.  According to a local Christian activist, “Daud and his elder brother started working at the embroidery factory during the night shift about three months ago. They were additional breadwinners for the family as the mother is sick and their father is a day laborer.”  Weeks before the murder, Masih had complained about the “unethical behavior from his Muslim co-workers.”  Because the owner of the factory did not seem to care or intervene, Masih stopped going to work, until the owner assured him of protection.  He was abused and killed on the same day he returned to work; one of his murderers is allegedly the brother of the owner.  Last reported, the individuals accused of the crime have not been arrested and were pressuring and trying to bribe the victim’s family to drop the case:  “Although I am a poor Christian woman, I want justice for my son and punishment for those who killed Daud,” his mother said. “I will never go for compensation or reconciliation, as my son was killed brutally.”

Attacks on Churches

Philippines:  During Sunday Mass on the evening of December 22, Islamic terrorists detonated a bomb just outside Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Cotabato, a city on the island of Mindanao.  Twenty-two people were injured in the explosion, 12 of whom were soldiers patrolling the church as part of security measures adopted during the Christmas holidays.  Parish priest Zaldy Robles, who called it “a cowardly act on the eve of the Christmas celebrations,” said “casualties would have been unimaginable” had the bomb reached the inside of the church.  In 2009, a similar bomb attack on the same cathedral in Mindanao killed five people and injured 34.  Most of the Philippines’ Muslim minority live in Mindanao, which has been a hotbed of terrorism in recent years.  Among other attacks, “Islamic State-affiliated terrorists were blamed for twin suicide bombings at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Cathedral in Jolo, Sulu Province on Jan. 27 [2019], which killed at least 22 people and wounded more than 100. Jolo is a small island off the coast of Mindanao.”

Iraq: The Catholic Church of Divine Wisdom in Baghdad, built in 1929, was invaded on the day after Christmas in what was described by one report as a “hostile takeover attempt”: “Details remain scarce. Security footage of the invasion show that an Islamic leader was present amongst the invaders, who attempted to open the gate and remove the cross.”  Later reports revealed that the church had been “marked for demolition by the authorities, together with some surrounding buildings, as part of a redevelopment programme in the city,” but that “local residents say the project is driven by commercial and political forces, and does not take into account the significance of the church for the community.”

Indonesia: Several reports appearing around Christmas indicated the difficulties churches experience during the holiday season.  In “Aceh Christians forced to celebrate Christmas in a tent,” the BBC reported on December 23 that:

Christians in the Indonesian province of Aceh are preparing to celebrate Christmas in makeshift tents in the jungle.  Their churches were destroyed four years ago by Islamic vigilante groups and the police.  Indonesia – the world’s largest Muslim population – has a pluralist constitution that is meant to protect the rights of followers of all the major faiths.  But Church leaders in Singkil Aceh say the local authorities are stopping them from rebuilding….

Separately, authorities on the Indonesian island of Sumatra banned Christians from celebrating Christmas in private homes.  According to Sudarto, the director of an intercommunity initiative, “They did not get permission from the local government since the Christmas celebration and worship were held at the house of one of the Christians who had been involved. The local government argued that the situation was not conducive.”  He added that the ban on Christians to celebrate Christmas and the New Year “has been going on for a long time [since 1985], so far they have been quietly worshiping at the home of one of the worshipers, but they have applied for permission several times. Yet the permit to celebrate Christmas was never granted. The house where they performed worship services was once burned down in early 2000 due to resistance from residents.”

Discussing yet another incident, the Jakarta Post reported on Christmas Day that “Christians in Jambi city, Jambi, still struggle to find joy on the eve of the holy day since the authorities sealed a number of local churches in the city….  Several Christians in the region were aghast when they were welcomed by a notice plastered on the closed front doors of the Assemblies of God Church (GSJA) informing them the church was sealed on Dec. 24, instead of the customary Christmas prayers and services.”  This church is among three churches in the area to be closed down by the Jambi city administration following protests by local Muslim residents who cited the lack of building permits.  “This is the second Christmas celebration to feel depressing for us,” said its pastor Jonathan Klaise on Christmas Eve.  “It’s a difficult situation. We have no other choice but to cope with it…  We can only hope that we will soon be able to pray in our church.”

Attacks on Muslim Converts (“Apostates”)  to Christianity

Uganda: A Muslim man with three wives abandoned one of them and their three children on learning that she had converted to Christianity.  Problems began for Florence Namuyiga, 27, when she took her eldest son, aged 7, to the church that she had been secretly attending following her conversion last May. “That evening, while back at home, my son began singing some of the Christian songs that were sung in the church,” she explained. “My husband began questioning me where the son picked such kinds of songs, but I kept quiet. He then turned to our son, who narrated what he saw in church of both men and women worshipping together in one big hall. Thereafter we went to bed with no communication with my husband.”  Then, on November 29, her husband, Abudalah Nsubuga, 34, insisted she to go to Friday mosque prayers.  “I refused,” she said. “He started beating me up with sticks, blows and kicks.

When I fell down, he left me and went to the mosque. I began bleeding with serious injury on my left arm. That evening he did not come to the house but slept in the house of one of my co-wives.”  On the next day,

He arrived [home] and pronounced [ritual Islamic] words of divorce and threatened to kill me if I remained in the homestead…  There and then I left the homestead, leaving all my belongings behind….  I have been supporting my three children by washing peoples’ clothing around the village.  Indeed life is quite difficult for me and the children. I have realized that following Jesus is not easy. Sometimes I spend sleepless nights thinking on my future and that of my small kids, especially their school fees.

Iran: On December 20, Mohammad Moghiseh, the head of Tehran Revolutionary Court, sentenced nine Muslim apostates to a total of 45 years in prison.  “These Christian converts have objected to the verdict issued by the Tehran Revolutionary Court and are awaiting final appeal,” the report states. The day before sentencing, on December 19, the US Treasury Department accused Mohammad Moghiseh and another Revolutionary judge of violating justice and abusing the rights of religious minorities and others.

General Abuse of and Discrimination against Christians

Tajikistan: A Christian pastor who was sentenced to three years in prison on the charge of “singing extremist songs in church and so inciting religious hatred,” was released on December 18, 2020, after serving two-and-a-half years.  In 2017, authorities had raided the Good News of Grace Protestant Church in Khujand. Many of the congregation were beat, lost their jobs, and faced other forms of repercussions in the wake of the raid on their church.  Pastor Bakhrom Kholmatov, a 43-year-old married father of three, was then sentenced on the aforementioned charges.  According to the report,

Officials claimed that Christian songs found on his computer and the book More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell are “extremist materials.” They alleged that religious “experts” recognised the songs Praise God, O Unbelieving Country, Army of Christ and Our Battle is Not Against Blood and Flesh as “extremist and calling people to overthrow the government.”

“I’d like to express my huge gratitude to all the people who supported and prayed for me, my family and my church,” Kholmatov said in a statement. “All these three years I felt your prayers, they helped me to stand, they helped my precious wife and children, they helped the members of my church who were left without a pastor, then kicked by the authorities out of our building.”

Iran:  “The Iranian regime has begun cracking down on evangelical Christians in Iran in the run-up to Christmas,” Al Arabiya reported on December 15. “Security officials routinely arrest Christian citizens during the Christmas season, according to the 2019 US Commission for International Religious Freedom report, which found the regime arrested 114 Christians during the first week of December in 2018.”   Dabrina Tamraz, who experienced persecution as a Christian before she managed to flee the Islamic republic nine years ago, shed light on the plight of Christians by recounting her own experiences:  “Christmas celebrations make it easier for Iranian authorities to arrest a group of Christians at one time,” said the escapee who currently resides in Europe.  During a family Christmas gathering in Tehran in 2014, “My brother opened the door only to be confronted with about 30 plain clothes officers who pushed their way in. They separated men from women and conducted strip body searches. Three people, including my father, were arrested and charged with acting against national security and conducting evangelism.”  The report adds that “The Iranian government considers evangelism—the sharing of the Christian faith—a criminal act.”

As another example of the persecution and discrimination Christians routinely experience around Christmas, the annual Armenian Christian market at Tehran’s Ararat Club, which was supposed to be held between Christmas Eve and the New Year, was canceled by officials.  According to that report,

In a situation where the economy is declining and the business market is sluggish due to the policies of the Islamic Republic … this cancellation for preventing ‘Christian propaganda’ is an irrational decision.  The cancellation of the market, which is a clear sign of discrimination and inequality, has received widespread criticism in the Armenian community… Every year on the eve of Christmas, pressure on the Iranian Christian community by various government agencies is increasing, including arresting Christian activists, obstructing the business of Christian sellers, even those who sell Christmas decorations!…  Christian compatriots are subject to double discrimination, whether in the labor market, employment, job position or in violating their right to run private businesses.

Pakistan:  “A 14-year-old Christian girl from Zia Colony, Karachi, was kidnapped, forcibly converted and married off to a Muslim man,” Asia Times reported on December 3. “Our daughters are insecure and abused in this country,” the mother of Huma Younus, explained. “They are not safe anywhere. We leave them at schools or home but they are kidnapped, raped, humiliated, and forced to convert to Islam.”  The eighth grade student was seen by neighbors being forcefully dragged into a car by three armed men.  “She was kidnapped by Abdul Jabar, a Muslim,” her father said.  After the girl’s family went to police, Jabar sent documents to the family over WhatsApp: “He asked us not to be worried for Huma as she is now his wife and has entered into Islam”; however, “the religious conversion documents are fake,” said the mother, noting that the date of the document of the 14-year-old’s alleged conversion is the same date of her abduction.  “My daughter’s life is in danger. She could be tortured or killed. I beg the authorities to recover my daughter as soon as possible.”   “Christian girls are being abused and forcefully converted,” Fr. Saleh Diego, Director of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Karachi, said while discussing this latest incident:

The kidnappers are misusing religion for their motives and spoiling the lives of hundreds of young girls from the marginalized Christian community….Huma must be recovered with no further delay. This unethical and illegal practice must also be stopped and the kidnappers of Huma and other girls must be brought to justice and punished for their crimes.

To date, police and courts have largely been unresponsive.  “Abducting for the purpose of forced conversion and marriage is a major issue in Pakistan,” Asia Times concludes. “Most of the victims are Christian and Hindu girls and young women, forced to wed against their will to much older Muslim men.”

United Nations: According to a December 4 CBN News report, “Christian Syrian refugees … have been blocked from getting help from the United Nations Refugee Agency … by Muslim UN officials in Jordan.” One of the refugees, Hasan, a Syrian convert to Christianity, explained that Muslim UN camp officials “knew that we were Muslims and became Christians and they dealt with us with persecution and mockery. They didn’t let us into the office. They ignored our request.” “Hasan and his family are now in hiding,” the report adds, “afraid that they will be arrested by Jordanian police, or even killed. Converting to Christianity is a serious crime in Jordan.”  Timothy, another Jordanian Muslim convert to Christianity, confirmed: “All of the United Nations officials [apparently in Jordan], most of them, 99 percent, they are Muslims, and they were treating us as enemies.”  Addressing this issue, Paul Diamond, a British human rights lawyer, elaborated:

You have this absurd situation where the scheme is set up to help Syrian refugees and the people most in need, Christians who have been “genocided,” they can’t even get into the U.N. camps to get the food. If you enter and say I am a Christian or convert, the Muslim U.N. guards will block you [from] getting in and laugh at you and mock you and even threaten you…. [saying]  “You shouldn’t have converted. You’re an idiot for converting. You get what you get,” words to that effect.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of the new book, Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

About this Series

The persecution of Christians in the Islamic world has become endemic.  Accordingly, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed in 2011 to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that occur or are reported each month. It serves two purposes:

1)          To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, persecution of Christians.

2)          To show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Islamic Sharia.

Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols; apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytism laws that criminalize and sometimes punish with death those who “offend” Islam; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced conversions to Islam;  theft and plunder in lieu of jizya (financial tribute expected from non-Muslims); overall expectations for Christians to behave like cowed dhimmis, or second-class, “tolerated” citizens; and simple violence and murder. Sometimes it is a combination thereof.

Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and locales—from Morocco in the West, to Indonesia in the East—it should be clear that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.

[thechicchicsagency]

Can Anna Wintour Survive the Social Justice Movement? A reckoning has come to Bon Appétit and the other magazines of Condé Nast. Can a culture built on elitism and exclusion possibly change?On Monday, as swiftly as a 9-iron taken to a tee at Augusta, Adam Rapoport resigned as the editor in chief of Bon Appétit magazine after a damning Halloween photo circulated on social media that morning. Drawn from the vast insensitivity archives to which so many influential people have made inadvertent submissions, the picture, from 2004, shows him costumed in a tank top and thick chain necklace as his wife’s “papi,’’ the term she attached to it in an Instagram post several years later.As it happened, Mr. Rapoport had been facing mounting grievance from his staff about the magazine’s demeaning treatment of employees and freelancers of color and the dubious ways in which its popular video division presented culturally appropriated cooking. But these apparently were insufficient grounds for forcing him out.Over and over, power structures seem to require that accusations of racial bias are documented by photographic evidence — proof to override a reflexive or simply inconvenient skepticism. Police officers abused their authority for decades without consequence. It was not until a growing body of video footage revealed all the brutality, and the systemic prejudice at the heart of it, that the world began to express the outrage there to be mined all along — justice by iPhone.In that sense, Mr. Rapoport’s ouster at the hands of a camera was entirely fitting. Bon Appétit belongs to Condé Nast, a media empire perhaps unrivaled by any institution on earth in its supplication to image. For decades, both at the level of corporate culture and branded worldview, the company’s lifestyle magazines have held to the notion that there are “right’’ people and wrong people, a determination made by birthright. 

There are the rich, and there are the dismissible; the great looking, and the condemned — a paradigm that has now become dangerously untenable, and one the company has been striving to change.Within the Condé Nast framework, autocratic bosses were left to do whatever they pleased — subjugating underlings to hazing rituals with no seeming end point. So much was excusable in the name of beauty and profit. “Difficulty,” Kim France, a former editor in chief of Lucky magazine, told me, “was regarded as brilliance.

”No one at Condé Nast has had more of an outsize reputation for imperiousness wed to native talent than Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, the artistic director of the company and more recently its “global content adviser’’ as well. Mr. Rapoport, who spent 20 years at the company and turned around an ailing product in Bon Appétit, reported to her.What sort of management cues were to be taken? Famous for a self-regarding style — she might demand that subordinates arrive 30 minutes early for certain meetings she attended — Ms. Wintour was obviously not in the best position to try to convince him, for instance, that he should not ask his assistant (black and Stanford-educated) to clean his golf clubs. (That was one of the many revealing details in a Business Insider exposé of the food magazine that arrived this week.)Race is a fraught subject at Condé Nast. Several employees of color I spoke with, all of them laid off over the past few years, talked about the challenges they faced. They struggled to be heard or get the resources they needed to do their jobs at the highest levels; they faced ignorance and lazy stereotyping from white bosses when the subject of covering black culture came up; they all said they were exhausted by always having to explain it all.

Even though they were no longer at Condé Nast, not one of them felt free to speak on the record out of fear of retaliation from the company or the concern that they would be looked at as complainers, making it much harder to find work.Editors’ PicksHotels Transformed New York’s Social Life. Now What?Solving the Mystery of What Became of J.F.K.’s Other Patrol BoatOne former staff member who is black could not fail to see the irony in being made to go to unconscious bias training — which became mandatory at the company early last year — only then to lose a big chunk of his portfolio shortly thereafter. “I felt so devalued,’’ he said, “after working so hard.’’Unconscious bias training is supposed to alert you to your blind spots in your perception of people and ideas. But at the level of corporate and creative governance, the programming at Condé Nast has not been seamlessly woven into the company’s broader philosophy. Last month, during a round of layoffs, in which 100 people were let go amid the economic calamities of Covid-19, the company dismissed three Asian-American editors, all of whom covered culture at different publications.Among the top 10 editorial leaders listed on Vogue’s masthead, all are white. According to a spokesman for Condé Nast, across divisions on Vogue’s editorial side, people of color make up 14 percent of senior managers. On June 5, amid global protests spurred by the death of George Floyd, Ms. Wintour sent a note to her staff, acknowledging that “it can’t be easy to be a Black employee at Vogue,’’ and that the magazine had “not found enough ways to elevate and give space to Black editors, writers, photographers, designers and other creators.”Although Vogue has made a greater effort to feature black women on its covers in recent years — Rihanna, Serena Williams, Lupita Nyong’o — the gate swings open far more easily for those who are not. And in this particular area, too, legacy weighs heavily. When LeBron James made history as the first black man to grace the cover in 2008, he shared the space with a white supermodel, Gisele Bündchen, who appeared as a damsel in his clutches, an unmistakable reference to King Kong.

A spokesman at Condé Nast admitted that much progress needs to be made in regard to diversity at the company, but he defended Ms. Wintour’s record, pointing out that she has passionately supported various designers of color throughout her career, helping to raise money for them through her work with the Council of Fashion Designers of America. She also installed two black editors to lead Teen Vogue, genuinely radical in its content, one following the other (Elaine Welteroth and then Lindsay Peoples Wagner).At the same time, Ms. Wintour has presided over Vogue for 32 years, and during that period she has done more to enshrine the values of bloodline, pedigree and privilege than anyone in American media. A brief and very inconclusive list of Ms. Wintour’s assistants in the 21st century includes the Yale-educated daughter of a prominent Miami dance director, the Dartmouth-educated descendant of a major bank president, the Princeton-educated daughter of an Oscar-winning screenwriter and so on. For so long it was central to the Condé Nast ethos that you had to be thin, gorgeous and impeccably credentialed to retrieve someone else’s espresso macchiato.

Even now, as the publishing industry continues to implode and wonderful writers who could really use the work (or at least the prestigious affiliation) abound, Vogue continues to list among its contributing editors people like the German heiress Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis and many others among the well born. Five years ago, Ms. Thurn und Taxis posted a picture on Instagram of a homeless woman reading Vogue, seated on the sidewalk, with the words, “Paris is full of surprises.” Vogue quickly issued a statement, calling the gesture distasteful, and then proceeded to run her byline on its website at least 10 more timesLast year, Grace Coddington, another contributor, who had held enormous influence over what was shot for Vogue and how, in her many years as the magazine’s creative director, was photographed with her collection of “mammy’’ jars, racist ceramics depicting African-American women as servile maids.

Ms. Wintour clearly believes that she can break from the past and kill off any vestiges of a system steeped in the benighted values for which she has become the corporate avatar. The public apology from Bon Appétit was quite startling in its admission of failure, particularly its concession that the magazine “continued to tokenize” the people of color that it did hire.As part of her contribution to this new wave of progressivism, Ms. Wintour wrote a piece for Vogue.com a week after the death of George Floyd, aligning herself with Black Lives Matter and calling on Joe Biden to select a woman of color as his running mate.For someone who had seemed so averse to activism as the world has roiled from inequality for years, it felt like a desperate grasp for relevance. A spokesman for the company bristled at the suggestion, arguing that it is Condé Nast’s job “to cover what’s going on in the culture in the moment.”As it happens, André Leon Talley, who recently wrote a memoir about his complicated relationship with Ms. Wintour, as a black man and longtime former editor at Vogue, also has a lot to say about the current moment. This week in a radio interview with Sandra Bernhard, he offered his opinion about his ex-boss’s professed transformation.“I wanna say one thing, Dame Anna Wintour is a colonial broad; she’s a colonial dame,” he told Ms. Bernhard. “I do not think she will ever let anything get in the way of her white privilege.”

[evilelitest2]

Do you know of any good resources on how and why Reagan won? He seemed to have a lot of resistance from the Republican old guard and all four of my grandparents absolutely despised him. But he somehow won with what sounded like was a very unpopular platform, and I don't understand exactly what happened.

I mean most electoral histories will have you covered, are you looking from a cultural perspective or an electoral perspective, or just a general overview of the 1980 election?  Personally I recommend the book “Backlash” on the larger reactionary movement of the 80s which is in no way relevant today...

But in short there are many reasons why Reagan won, many of them depressing familiar today

1) Ronald Reagan was an actor and was a really charismatic speaker, specifically he was very good at seeming friendly, approachable and non condescending.  It was extremely easy to understand Reagan’s message if you weren’t paying attention and he didn’t seem like some sort of elite who understood policies or knew where Cambodia was on a map, because he didn’t either.  With the possible exceptions of JFK, and OBama, Reagan is likely the most charismatic president in the last century and that makes a big difference in the election

2) Jimmy Carter was a bit of a mess.  I love Carter and I think he is one of the most moral people to ever be president (judging on a scale) but...his administration was extremely chaotic, inept, and really bad at messaging.  

3) Reagan cheated.  At his most famous debate with Carter, it turns out Reagan’s team had actaully managed to get Carter’s debate plans before hand, so Reagan knew exactly what Carter was going to say which is why Reagan seemed so invincible in the debate

4) The Economy.  Due to a wide variety of reasons including but not limited too the fallout of the Vietnam War, the OPEC oil crisis, the natural eb and flow of the market, and the failure of Kenysian economics meant that when the 1980 election was happening, America was in a pretty bad economic place.  Unemployment was high, inflation was spiraling and for many white people it was the first time they had ever experienced an economic downturn

This wasn’t really Carter’s fault, just like the economic boom in the 80s wasn’t really Reagan’s fault (though the initial crash certainly was) but that is how it was perceived.

5) The Failure of Kenysian Economics.  Now when I say “failure” i don’t actually mean “this is a bad system” Kenysan economics got us out of the Great Depression after all and lead to the largest economic boom in US history.  However they aren’t the end all, especially when politicians running things don’t really understand what they are doing.  So while they aren’t nearly as awful as the Free market economics that would follow, people were becoming disillusioned with the prior economic model

6) Vietnam.  Oh dear god Vietnam.  Reagan would be the first president who didn’t preside over Vietnam in any way, which meant he wasn’t tainted by the total fuck up that was that war.  America was still reeling from losing our first major war to a small nation that nobody had heard off before they started to kick our ass, and the battle over Vietnam has basically torn the country apart.  A huge amount of people felt pissed and humiliated over the defeat, and rather than question why we went to war or the morality of our tactics, blamed protesters and leftists for not supporting the war enough, a stabbed in the back myth if you will.  Also Vietnam was a Democrat fuck up, Republicans weren’t in power when it started under JFK and LBG, who collectively created the horrific circumstances of the war.  The republicans who oversaw it were the comparatively (to Reagan) more ‘moderates” of Nixon and Ford.  So American both felt humiliated and weak from looking a major war to a people we saw as inferior and was blaming everything associated with the left for it.  Reagan’s “Make America Great Again” message was extremely attractive to a lot of people, and since he didn’t have anything to do with the war, you couldn’t blame him for its failure.  

7) The Soviet Union.  The presence of the USSR hung over every US election since Woodrow Wilson, but after Vietnam a lot of Americans felt like the USSR was winning.  This was ironically utterly untrue as the Soviet Union would collapse only 11 years later, but the perception in America was that the US had been defeated by COMMUNISM and needed to get our groove back for round II.  And Reagan was by far the most aggressively confrontational anti Communist president we have had since FDR, so much so that he accidentally almost triggered a nuclear war and destroyed all of civilizations...whoops.  But that is what American wanted back then

8) The rise of the religious right.  For most of the 20th century, while religion was certainly a thing which effected politics, the US political landscape was largely secular, religion being evoked more than it made its own demands.  But due to rise of the Counter Culture movement, religious folks sort of went into panic mode and suddenly conservative fundamentalist Christianity was one the rise.  And Reagan embraced them 100%, leading to the fundementalist cancer that lives with us to this day

9) The death of the Counterculture.  At the exact same time as the Religious Right came into power, the group it was opposing had largely collapsed.  I mentioned this before when talking about the civil Rights movement, but once overt legal segregation had been outlawed, what was left were the far more serious, complicated and unclear problems, which lead to a lot of hippies burning out, falling into infighting, declaring victory and going home, or turning to more radical and largely ineffectual approaches.  And since so much of the counter culture was linked to to its fashion and aethetic, as the Hippie style/music/clothing/demeanor became lame and uncool, the causes behind them were seen as uncool as well.  Also the most dedicated leftists quickly turned to auto cannibalism and spent more time fighting each other rather than focusing on their enemy a dynamic which the left can always be counted on (cough what happened to Counterpoints cough) 

10) The larger cultural backlash.  America as a whole was feeling threaten by the left, and by extention the progressive made for women, racial minorities, and sexual minorities, and was pushing back against them.  The 60s and 70s was a moment of sudden shocking change which took the old guard by surprise and they didn’t know what to do, but once the left had burned themselves out a bit, the Right was able to reorganize, refocus their efforts, and remake their arguments to reassert the oppressive systems they so valued.  And for a lot of Americans who were passively bigoted, the incredibly fast pace of change got them scared and they sought comfort in the return of the familiar.  Again Reagan wasn’t just an actor, he was a cowboy actor from shitty kitch family films.  And as we’ve seen before in terms of Whitelash or Male Fragility, fear of losing privilege can get people to vote against their own interest (cough union workers cough)

11) America was facing a big choice.  After WWII, we were basically the only major nation with a good economy, which we were able to turn into a great economy, and had an over 20 year post war high.  But other nations started to compete with us (most notably Japan) and our status as the singular nation started to be threatened by the EU, India, China, Latin America, and our own changing history.  For the first time, Americans started to realize that maybe, not right away, but eventually, we would just be one nation among many again, rather than the only superpower.   Simultaneous, the threat of Climate change first started to be noticed, and Americans started to realize that maybe we should tone down the materialism, the consumerism, and the reliance on fossile fuels.  Carter infamously wore sweaters in the white house to save on gas and put solar panels on the roof, which was seen by many Americans (idiots) as weakness.  

Basically we had a choice, we could either 

A) Prepare our nation for the transformation period we were going for, and slowly start to move off oil as our economy changed and we had to make adjustments for it 

or

B) FUCK THAT.  THIS IS AMERICA AND WE DON”T COMPROMISE FOR ANYTHING.  YOU KNOW WHAT...LETS BE EVEN MORE RECKLESS

Americans were asked to choose between accepting an uncomfortable reality or embracing a comforting delusion.  

12) The Iran Hostage crisis.  This made Carter look weak internationally and everybody knows that America looking weak is worth destroying our own internal economy.  

13) The Democrats were in the middle of a civil war.  The Civil Rights movement and the Great Society had torn the democrats apart which means Carter was never really able to get his own party to obey him like the Republicans did.  WHats worse is that the aftereffect of the Vietnam War had basically crippled LBJ’s Great Society Program, meaning the Democrats were really chaotic

14) Finally, it is important to remember, the Democrats had held power from 1932 all the way to 1980s, the US was kind of a single party state for most of the century, and a lot of people were pretty sick of them.  Corruption, incompetence and hypocrisy are around in every party and the democratic congress in particular was widely hated, so the Republicans felt like this new exciting thing, something which could maybe bring a new era in America.  “Its morning in America”

And of course, Reagan was in many ways what white America wants, a giant self congratulatory message that lets us avoid dealing with real issues....

[phroyd]

Nineteen minutes before the first 911 call alerted authorities to a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Tex., a hate-filled, anti-immigrant manifesto appeared online.

It spoke of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” It detailed a plan to separate America into territories by race. It warned that white people were being replaced by foreigners.

The authorities were scrutinizing the 2,300-word screed on Saturday and attempting to determine whether it was written by the same man who killed 20 people and injured more than two dozen others near the Mexican border.

Police were interviewing the suspected killer, Patrick Crusius, a 21-year-old white man from Allen, Tex., a roughly 10-hour drive to the Walmart. What brought him to a crowded shopping center in El Paso is one of the many questions on the minds of investigators.

The manifesto that may be linked to Mr. Crusius described an imminent attack and railed against immigrants, saying, “if we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can be more sustainable.”

From New Zealand to Pittsburgh to a synagogue in Poway, California, aggrieved white men over the last several months have turned to mass murder in service of hatreds against immigrants, Jews and others they perceive as threats to the white race.

The unsigned manifesto, titled “The Inconvenient Truth,” draws direct inspiration from the mass murder of Muslims at two mosques in New Zealand in March that left 51 people dead. In that attack, the alleged killer published a manifesto online promoting a white supremacist theory called “the great replacement.” The theory has been promoted by a French writer named Renaud Camus, and argues that elites in Europe have been working to replace white Europeans with immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

Christchurch has become a rallying cry for extremists the world over. The manifesto potentially linked to the El Paso killings begins, “In general, I support the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto. This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

The gunman who opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, Calif., near San Diego, in April, posted an anti-Semitic diatribe on 8chan, the same online message board where the El Paso document surfaced. The Poway manifesto echoed the words of the Christchurch killer, and also drew inspiration from a massacre at a synagogue in Pittsburgh last October. In that mass shooting, the killer railed against immigrants, Jews and other groups.

The El Paso shooting, if the manifesto is linked to the gunman, potentially underscored the global spread of white supremacist ideology in the age of social media and at a time when immigration in America and elsewhere has become a divisive political topic.

Shortly after the mass shooting Saturday, Mr. Crusius’ LinkedIn and Facebook accounts were shut down. A LinkedIn page that circulated online after the account was closed down appeared to be several years old, and Mr. Crusius seemed to be a lost young man.

He wrote on LinkedIn while in high school, “I’m not really motivated to do anything more than what’s necessary to get by. Working in general sucks, but I guess a career in Software Development suits me well. I spend about 8 hours every day on the computer so that counts toward technology experience I guess.”

The posting concluded: “Pretty much just gonna see what technology careers present themselves to me; go with the wind.”

If the manifesto is conclusively linked to the suspected gunman in El Paso, federal authorities may treat Saturday’s attack as a hate crime or an incident of domestic terrorism.

The F.B.I. has said that more Americans have died in domestic terror attacks than in international terror attacks since 9/11, and that domestic terrorism is increasingly motivated by white supremacist ideology.

In July, F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray told Congress that the bureau had made about 100 domestic terrorism arrests in the first three quarters of the year, roughly the same number of international arrests over that time period. The bureau is on track to make more domestic terror arrests than it did in 2019.

No United States government agency is responsible for designating domestic terrorism organizations, and there is no criminal charge of domestic terrorism. Individuals who are considered domestic terrorists are charged under other existing laws, such as hate crime, gun and conspiracy statutes.

Officials have said that domestic terrorists continue to be radicalized online, where individuals are able to align with other extremists, become inspired and find the resources they need to act.

The investigation is currently being led by the state of Texas, with assistance from the local sheriff’s department, the F.B.I., Border Patrol and others. During a news conference Saturday afternoon, law enforcement officials said that they were exploring potential capital murder charges.

“Not speaking about this particular instance, which is still under investigation, the manifesto narrative is fueled by hate, and it is fueled by racism and bigotry and division,” said Veronica Escobar, the congresswoman who represents El Paso. “El Paso has historically been a very safe community. We’ve been safe for decades. We will continue to be safe.” She added, “This is someone who came from outside of our community to do us harm.”

Once again on Saturday, America’s epidemic of mass shootings intersected with the divisive issues of race and immigration.

The words of the manifesto, in citing “the great replacement” theory, echo the slogan that was chanted during a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. in 2017: “Jews will not replace us.”

The writer of the manifesto also suggested that Democrats in the United States have a strategy to gain a permanent majority by embracing the growing Hispanic population, a notion that has gained currency on right-wing radio shows for years.

The manifesto said the gunman planned to use an AK-47-style rifle, which has been frequently used in mass shootings. The four-page document said politicians of both parties were to blame for the United States “rotting from the inside out,” and that “the heavy Hispanic population in Texas will make us a Democrat stronghold.”

The manifesto also railed against automation and embraced an argument familiar in anti-immigrant circles: that immigrants are taking jobs from “natives.”

“My opinions on automation, immigration, and the rest predate Trump and his campaign for president,” the document says.

Phroyd